Text by Bruce Gallanter (Downtown Music Gallery, January 29, 2026)
“A Well Respected Man” by The Kinks, released as a single in 1965
‘Cause he gets up in the morning
And he goes to work at nine
And he comes back home at five-thirty
Gets the same train every time
‘Cause his world is built ’round punctuality
It never fails
Have you listened to MFM SPEAKS OUT yet? Check it out here: https://mfmspeaksout.simplecast.com/episodes/kaleta-F6R_FegB.
Legendary Afrobeat guitarist and MFM member Leon “Kaleta” Ligan-Majekodunmi joins “MFM Speaks Out” podcast host Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi, aka SoSaLa, to share his 50-year journey through music, activism, and survival. From growing up in Benin and Lagos to touring with Fela Kuti, King Sunny Adé, Shina Peters, and Lauryn Hill, Kaleta reflects on Afrobeat as both a musical language and a political force. The conversation explores Kaleta’s firsthand experiences inside Fela’s world, and what it means to carry cultural responsibility as an artist in diaspora. Along the way, Kaleta reflects on immigration, artistic survival, gun violence in America, and why music must always carry a message. This is a powerful, unfiltered look at Afrobeat’s past, present, and future — told by someone who lived it.
An Editorial by Dawoud Kringle
Last April, I wrote an editorial about Donald Trump coopting and taking control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (EDITORIAL: Trump and the Kennedy Center | DooBeeDooBeeDoo NY). The Kennedy Center was meant to be a cultural landmark honoring art, not Trump’s ego. There was no reason for him to have done this except to build or confiscate more monuments to his worthless legacy.
Now, he has taken it a step further. He slapped his name on it.
Earlier this month, White House press secretary / MAGA cheerleader Karoline Leavitt announced the news on social media, saying the Center board voted unanimously for the change: “Because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building.” Shortly after the announcement, Ohio Democrat Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex officio member of the board, refuted the claim that the vote was unanimous. Other Democrats in Congress who are ex officio members of the Kennedy Center Board, including Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, issued a statement stating that the President is renaming the institution “without legal authority. Federal law established the Center as a memorial to President Kennedy and prohibits changing its name without Congressional action.”
Text by Bruce Lee Gallanter (Downtown Music Gallery, December 12, 2025)
“Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” sung by Otis Redding & released in January of 1968
Written by Otis Redding and Steve Cropper
Keith Levenson‘s resume is a veritable who’s who of the music business, spanning from Annie and Dreamgirls to working with The Who and the London Symphony Orchestra. Now, from his home studio and as a Parkinson’s patient at the Cleveland Clinic, he has undertaken his most personal project: resurrecting Winchell, the 1991 Broadway musical that MFM member Levenson co-wrote with Martin Charnin (Annie). This new recording, featuring a stunning roster of guest artists like Roger Daltrey, Alice Cooper, Billy Idol, and Sally Struthers, is more than a cast album; it’s a benefit for the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Centre for Brain Health, a cause Levenson knows intimately as both a patient and a volunteer.
The subject, Walter Winchell, was the most influential news personality of the 1930s and 40s. He invented and pioneered the blend of news and gossip. Levenson’s score does not merely accompany this story; it embodies it. He has composed the sound of a headline. The music is a masterclass in pastiche, evoking the sounds of Gershwin and Porter but consistently subverting them to reveal the moral compromises at the story’s heart. The masterful orchestration is brilliantly telling, using snare drums, brass stabs, and chugging tonic/dominant harmonies to become the sound of Winchell’s life and the pounding pressure of the news cycle itself.
