J Bogart
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jonathanbogart.net
J Bogart
@jonathanbogart.net
Library worker, researcher and writer about culture from the first third of the 20th century, depressive.

https://jonathanbogart.net
exactly! i don’t want to write about what everyone else has already written enough to train an llm on! i want to create new knowledge! even though (maybe even specifically because) it’s not profitable!
One thing about these AI bots is you can ask them how to build a website or change a tire & they'll give you pretty good advice, but if you ask them how to stage an original & compelling historiographical intervention in the niche topic you're currently obsessed with you only get blank stares.
December 9, 2025 at 10:45 PM
first book printed in english, let’s go

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictes_...
December 9, 2025 at 10:40 PM
thinking about how i first learned to type diacritics in order to spell george pérez’s name correctly, and now every time i restart my computer i have to go into settings and remove the basic usa keyboard because windows 11 hates difference
December 9, 2025 at 2:13 AM
uh oh
December 9, 2025 at 12:02 AM
i'm too late to say i'll go first

youtu.be/cVUgQ9xL-TY
December 8, 2025 at 11:29 PM
actual bluesky challenge: post your favorite work of art from fifty years before you were born.
December 8, 2025 at 11:10 PM
hazards of taking years between blog posts: i'd completely forgotten that i listed a certain record (rec. 11/32, rel. 1/33) in my 1932 roundup and was halfway through a writeup of it for 1933 before noticing.
December 8, 2025 at 7:50 PM
maybe it's just the ascetic religious separatism in my upbringing talking, but the idea that all cultural production is doomed because a bunch of megacorps are sunsetting the late 20th century model of funding and distribution feels premature. i'm not even a big DIY guy but: people will make art.
December 8, 2025 at 4:48 PM
been thinking about ways to mark my 50th birthday, coming up in two years. i already have one project about a quarter done that will run all of 2027, but a more personal one, engaging with the art made in my lifetime that has mattered to me, is brewing,
December 8, 2025 at 2:33 PM
anyway,
December 8, 2025 at 1:33 AM
"no star (wars or trek), lotr, marvel, disney animated or pixar" is a pretty good thumbnail sketch of my aesthetic wheelhouse, as someone who grew up loving all of the above insofar as i had any access to it. but 1 Cor 13:11
December 8, 2025 at 1:26 AM
wilco discourse on my timeline like a quarter century didn't happen
December 7, 2025 at 11:47 PM
Reposted by J Bogart
And since I don’t want folks to think that the only thing notable about Albert Dorne was his resemblance to Abe Vigoda, here’s a reminder that he was, in fact, a world-class badass draftsman.
December 7, 2025 at 12:18 AM
Europeans refusing to recognize black Americans as Americans and considering the U.S. a white supremacist nation even more than white supremacists here do (they're trying to make it one again, which means they know it isn't) fuck off
I once got in an argument with a Norwegian coworker who said that America never created any real culture. I pointed out things like jazz and he was like “but really that’s African and Caribbean,” so finally I landed on ranch dressing, and I am proud to confirm that we got that goin for us
December 6, 2025 at 5:10 PM
listened to Titica's new album on my walk today, her third in fifteen years as Angola's premiere trans recording artist. kuduro, semba, dancehall, kizomba, and what i think i'm going to have to call funk angolana, using Brazilian rhythms in non-Brazilian ways.

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Passarelas da Vida - YouTube
www.youtube.com
December 5, 2025 at 10:16 PM
December 5, 2025 at 6:08 PM
my favorite silent these days is most likely Límite (1931), one of the great monuments of Brazilian modernism and a late example of the populist avant-garde that vanished overnight with the conversion to sound.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWDW...
December 4, 2025 at 11:05 PM
J. Bogart klaxon: French-born singer of Cape Verdean immigrant parents blending CV coladeira and FWI shatta

youtu.be/YzpFr2B94to-d-
Andreia - Full Bad (Official Video)
YouTube video by Andreia Musica
youtu.be
December 4, 2025 at 9:29 PM
i just now realized that every time i've read the name paul dano i've been picturing paul bettany
December 4, 2025 at 8:53 PM
i know i'm the only person liable to be affected, but a new French avant-r&b singer and an established Brazilian rapper (among, I'm sure, others) both using the mononym Ebony is going to complicate my 2025 longlist bookkeeping
December 4, 2025 at 5:46 PM
anyway here's one of my favorite current Cuban singers covering my all-time favorite classic salsa song:

youtu.be/ey3DSihbp9E?...
Daymé Arocena performs Celia Cruz classic “Quimbara” (Live!)
YouTube video by Hispanic Heritage Foundation
youtu.be
December 4, 2025 at 5:12 PM
the christmas canon in my house growing up
December 4, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by J Bogart
December 4. In Cuba, the day of Santa Bárbara / Changó. The day on which both Machito and his Afro-Cubans and Los Van Van were founded.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y06C...
Celina y Reutilio - Que Viva Chango (Video Oficial) 1949
YouTube video by Celina y Reutilio
m.youtube.com
December 4, 2025 at 3:49 PM
i must be a music writer because i'm not anything else worth mentioning, even though i only briefly wrote for publications fifteen years ago. this, the 50th and final in a series of mini-essays i wrote over the first 25 days of the year, is the best i got: www.jonathanbogart.net/blog/2025/01...
December 3, 2025 at 10:20 PM