Gregorian chant

Wikipedia - "Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services. It is named after Pope Gregory I, Bishop of Rome from 590 to 604, who is traditionally credited for having ordered the simplification and cataloging of music assigned to specific celebrations in the church calendar, although it is known now that he could not have done it as a system for notating music had not been established at the time. The resulting body of music is the first to be notated in a system ancestral to modern musical notation."
Wikipedia
Chant Links
Gregorian Chant
YouTube: Deum verum, Canto Gregoriano, Chant of the Early Christians

The Naked City - Jules Dassin

Wikipedia - "The Naked City is a 1948 black-and-white film noir directed by Jules Dassin. Based on a story by Malvin Wald, the film depicts the police investigation that follows the murder of a young model. A veteran cop is placed in charge of the case and he sets about, with the help of other beat cops and detectives, to find the girl's killer. The movie, shot partially in documentary style, was filmed on location on the streets of New York City and features landmarks such as the Williamsburg Bridge, the Whitehall Building, and an apartment building on West 83rd Street in Manhattan as the scene of the murder."
Wikipedia
Noir of the Week
Classic Noir
Criterion
YouTube: The Naked City (1948), Williamsburg Bridge 1948 from The Naked City

Le Morte d'Arthur

King Arthur lay dying at Avalon. (Painting by Edward Burne Jones)
Wikipedia - "Le Morte d'Arthur (originally spelled Le Morte Darthur, Middle French for 'the death of Arthur') is a compilation by Sir Thomas Malory of Romance tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table. ... First published in 1485 by William Caxton, Le Morte d'Arthur is perhaps the best-known work of English-language Arthurian literature today. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their principal source, including T. H. White for his popular The Once and Future King and Tennyson for The Idylls of the King."
Wikipedia
W - The Once and Future King, T. H. White

Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder

"The launch of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang's first West Coast exhibition went off with a bang Saturday night as 40,000 rockets exploded in the sky above the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. In this video uploaded by Sarah St. Clair Renard, a gathered crowd counts down to the rocket launch and then cheers at the massive display of smoke and fire."
Huffington Post (Video)
designboom
Arrested Motion

2008 March: Cai Guo-Qiang
2009 October: Cai Guo-Qiang - An Introduction
2012 March: Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe

#4 Gregg Kowalsky – Battery Townsley (Senufo Editions, 2011)

"For years I have been following the work of Gregg Kowalsky, first under his moniker Osso Bucco and later with his normal name. His break through must have been his first album on Kranky “Though the Cardinal Window” in 2006, after which a stream of releases on Root Strata, Kranky and other labels got released. In the beginning Kowalsky was mainly active with laptop-based music (as far as I know the source of the sound) but after his first one on Kranky he switched to manipulated tape sounds. Which is since end 2006 he has been exploring."
Collecting Records (Video)
SoundCloud: gregg kowalsky - battery townsley (Video)
Gregg Kowalsky (Video)
senufo edition (Video)
YouTube: The Sound of Battery Townsley

Stiff Little Fingers - "Alternative Ulster"

"Jake Burns formed Stiff Little Fingers In 1977 after seeing the Clash play in his hometown Belfast. (The band’s name was taken from a 1977 Vibrators lyric 'If it wasn’t for your stiff little fingers nobody would know you were dead'…) Gordon Ogilvie, a local journalist, caught their live show and was impressed. He encouraged them to write their own songs about what they knew best--life in Belfast."
SLF
YouTube: Alternative Ulster, Suspect Device, Belfast 1980 -1, 2, 3. Tin soldiers.

2009 February: Stiff Little Fingers

Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu

"This site is devoted to Marcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu- known in English as In Search of Lost Time and Remembrance of Things Past—for an audience of general readers. While my interest in Proust is broad these pages focus on the novel rather than on biography. I believe a genuine homage to Proust, to paraphrase Alain de Botton, means looking at our world through his eyes, rather than looking at his world through ours."
Temps perdu
"The Threat to Proust" by Roger Shattuck
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust - Translated from the French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff
amazon: In Search of Lost Time: Proust 6-pack (Proust Complete)
Lydia Davis's version of Swann's Way

2008 June: Marcel Proust
2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life

Big Bill Broonzy

Wikipedia - "Big Bill Broonzy (June 26, 1903 – August 15, 1958) was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star."
Wikipedia
Big Bill Broonzy
npr - Big Bill Broonzy: History's Musical Chameleon (Video)
YouTube: Hey Hey, 1957: 3 Songs, Just A Dream, Roll Dem Bones, Key to the Highway, Baby Please Don't Go, I Can't Be Satisfied, Good Liquor Gonna Carry Me Down, You Drink Too Much, Sun Gonna Shine In My Back Door Someday

Renzo Piano’s Addition to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston

"Isabella Stewart Gardner was one of the great patrons of the arts in the early 20th century and counted the artists James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent and the writer Henry James among her friends. Because she disliked the dark, cold, institutional spaces typical of the American museums of her day (the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, for example — a short walk from the Gardner), she designed her home/museum to look like a 15th-century Venetian-style palazzo with three stories of galleries around a central courtyard filled with flowers."
Left Bank Art Blog
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston
Wikipedia
REDUR: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (Video)
YouTube: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Webisode (3)

Levon Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012)

"Mark Lavon 'Levon' Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012) was an American rock multi-instrumentalist and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and frequent lead and backing vocalist for The Band. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, and creative drumming style highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as 'The Weight', 'Up on Cripple Creek', 'Ophelia' and 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down'."
Wikipedia
Levon Helm
YouTube: The Hawks - Farther Up The Road (1961), Up on Cripple Creek, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, A Fool in Love, Promised Land, Mystery Train, When I paint my masterpiece, Atlantic City, Only Halfway Home, Poor Old Dirt Farmer, Anna Lee - Levon Helm 2011 Ramble at the Ryman

Jack Kirby’s Collages in Context

Hannah Hock, Raoul Hausmann, Dada
"Jack Kirby had choices to make, especially considering he could do it all: writing, penciling, inking, coloring. Along the way he found it prudent to concentrate on what he could do best: dream big and render those flights of fancy in graphite. Why then would he choose to break his stride and search through various magazines in search of the right image, rubber cement in hand?"
Jack Kirby’s Collages in Context
Wikipedia

1980 - A Pina Bausch

"Here is another excerpt from the superb work entitled '1980-A PIECE BY PINA BAUSCH' which was filmed at The Sadlers Wells Theatre in London." Montreal, Place des Arts, 1985
YouTube 1980 - A Pina Bausch (another excerpt), 1980
Guardian: Dancing in the dark
NYT: Premiere Of '1980, A Pina Bausch'
YouTube: Wim Wenders on Pina Bausch

2008 May: Pina Bausch
2009 July: Pina Bausch, 1940-2009

Ahh...The Name Is Bootsy, Baby!

Wikipedia - "Ahh...The Name Is Bootsy, Baby! is a funk album by Bootsy's Rubber Band, released on January 14, 1977. It reached number one on Billboard magazine's Top R&B/Soul albums chart, the first P-Funk release to achieve this goal. The album was produced by George Clinton and William 'Bootsy' Collins and arranged by Bootsy and Casper (names William Collins uses to refer to his various roles)."
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube: Ah The name is Bootsy baby/Disco to go, Rubber Duckie & Psychoticbumpschool, I'd Rather Be With You, The Pinocchio Theory

John Cage Unbound: A Living Archive

"Welcome to a living archive featuring narrated performance videos professional musicians, students, and performers from all walks of life. Watch, listen to, and compare artistic interpretations. Get an up-close look at rare John Cage manuscripts housed at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Most important, submit your own video: how do you bring Cage's music to life?"
John Cage Unbound: A Living Archive (Video)
WNYC: A John Cage Web Reliquary
John Cage Online
UbuWeb: "Writing Through Finnegans Wake" (1977) and "Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake" (1977)

PBS American Roots - Episode 1: Chapter 1: Fisk Jubilee Singers

"When First Unto This Country traces the emergence of roots music in America from its European and African origins through its maturation into American musical genres such as spirituals, blues, country and gospel. For the first time, American 'folk' music is defined as scholars and music industry entrepreneurs travel throughout the nation to record authentic cultural expression through field recordings, photographs, early newsreels, and ethnographic footage. "Hillbilly" and "race" records become profitable recording industry genres that popularize regional music. The emergence of radio broadens audiences and helps the crossfertilization of various musical forms."
YouTube: Episode 1: Chapter 1: Fisk Jubilee Singers

Roberto Musci

Wikipedia - "Roberto Musci (b. March 27, 1956 in Milan, Italy) is a music composer, performer, saxophonist and guitar player. Musci studied saxophone and guitar. From 1974 to 1985 he travelled around the world to study African, Indian, and Near & Far Eastern music, to make field recordings and collect musical instruments. He recorded LPs and CDs for different European labels (including Raw Materials, Recommended Records, Victò, Lowlands, and Island Records)."
Wikipedia
Roberto Musci
YouTube: Water Messages, Dialogue Between A Dreamer And Others, Urban & tribal, Broken Oxygen, Keep tree funeral march, Alchemy

Stamen's watercolour maps are things of great beauty - now there's a print version

"My favourite thing about the internet is how it facilitates communities coming together around any number of specialist and obscure interests, so that whatever floats your boat you can easily find and connect with like-minded obsessives. The mapping community (my new favourite community) was a flutter with excitement a couple of weeks back when superb San Francisco studio Stamen released the second part of their city tracking project, particularly with regards to the eye-meltingly gorgeous watercolour style."
It's Nice That
stamen

Floating Bear

"After my deal to obtain Floating Bear #24 fell through a month or so ago, Floating Bears have been much on my mind. I broke down and bought a run of 31 of these fragile mimeos from William Reese Company. This bookstore is proof positive of the value and importance of the true bookman. I received three catalogs along with my purchase including a two volume catalog of 20th Century periodicals."
Reality Studio
Reality Studio Archive
Reality Studio, Floating Bear 24
Jacket2: Bibliographic Bunker
ZineWiki: The Floating Bear

Kate and Anna McGarrigle

Wikipedia - "Kate and Anna McGarrigle is the self-titled 1975 debut album by Kate and Anna McGarrigle. The album includes 'Heart Like a Wheel,' the McGarrigles' most famous song, which was first released by Linda Ronstadt in 1974."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Talk To Me Of Mendocino, Foolish You, Go Leave, Heart Like a Wheel (Caffe Lena, 1990), Kate & Anna McGarrigle and Linda Ronstadt : Heart Like A Wheel, Complainte pour Ste Catherine, Be My Baby, My Town

2008 July: Kate and Anna McGarrigle
2010 January: Kate McGarrigle 1946 – 2010
2012 January: Entre Lajeunesse et la sagesse

Clouds 365 Project

"Kelly DeLay: This is Year Three of the Clouds 365 Project. I started the Clouds 365 Project on July 1, 2009, as a commitment to do something creative every day. My goal was, and still is, to shoot an image or video of clouds every day for 365 days. On days that are cloudless or rainy, I have to stretch creatively to illustrate the day. There are no rules; I just want to react and see where this project takes me."
Clouds 365 Project
Clouds 365 Project - Year 3(Video)
Clouds 365 Project - Blog

Dub Syndicate

Wikipedia - "Dub Syndicate is a dub band, formed by Adrian Sherwood, and it became a showcase for Adrian Sherwood's collaboration with Style Scott, former ace drummer with the Roots Radics and Creation Rebel. Dub Syndicate initially evolved out of Creation Rebel and had a classic dub sound until the third album, Tunes From The Missing Channel (1985), where Dub Syndicate gave birth to a highly experimental more technological dub sound. Dub Syndicate's new sound centered around the interaction of Scott, Sherwood, and members of Tackhead, Skip McDonald, Keith LeBlanc, and Doug Wimbish."
Wikipedia
Dub Syndicate biography
YouTube: Brighton's Stanmer Park, 30th May 1994, Lee Scratch Perry & Dub Syndicate - Jungle, Brancaleone 10 Nov 2011, Ravi Shankar Rootsman (Rare Version), Forward Not Back, Bim Sherman & Dub Syndicate, Let the Spirit Rise

2011 September: Adrian Sherwood

Skipping rope

Kids playing jump-rope on the sidewalk in NYC, 1946
Wikipedia - "Jump rope (American English) or skipping rope (British English) is the primary tool used in the game of skipping played by children and many young adults, where one or more participants jump over a rope swung so that it passes under their feet and over their heads. This may consist of one participant turning and jumping the rope, or a minimum of three participants taking turns, two of whom turn the rope while one or more jumps. This is called long rope. Sometimes the latter is played with two turning ropes; this form of the activity is called Double Dutch and is significantly more difficult. Jump-rope rhymes are often chanted beginning when the skipper jumps in and ending when the skipper is tripped up."
W - Skipping rope
W - Skipping-rope rhyme
W - Double Dutch (jump rope)
W - Clapping game
YouTube: Jump Rope Cinderella, Jump rope tricks, Hand Clapping Game "Sevens"

Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy - Robert Farris Thompson

"Introduction: The Rise of the Black Atlantic Visual Tradition. Listening to rock, jazz, blues, reggae, salsa, samba, bossa nova, juju, highlife, and mambo, one might conclude that much of the popular music of the world is informed by the flash of the spirit of a certain people specially armed with improvisatory drive and brilliance. Since the Atlantic slave trade, ancient African organizing principles of song and dance have crossed the seas from the Old World to the New. There they took on new momentum, intermingling with each other and with New World or European styles of singing and dance."
Web Archaeolgy
amazon: Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy
Flash of the Spirit: Big Freedia’s Sissy Bounce & Sierra Leone Tribal (YouTube)
Mashpedia: Kongo people (Video), Haitian Vodou, Oshun

Rosanne Cash - "I Was Watching You"

"Rosanne Cash casts an eye on life, love and loss on The Tonight Show in Feb.2006."
YouTube

2010 March: Rosanne Cash
2012 January: Black Cadillac

The Museum of Innocence - Orhan Pamuk

"In Istanbul, one hot, sun-soaked day this past summer, the novelist Orhan Pamuk leaned back in his chair, a writerly throne in an overfull study, and looked out the window. He trained his eyes on the unblemished vista before him, where the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn run into one another and emerge as a perfect muddle of turquoise. Today, he announced, he was depressed."
NYT: The Objects of the Exercise
amazon: The Museum of Innocence, (1)
W - The Museum of Innocence
npr: Orhan Pamuk's 'Museum' Of Obsession, Innocence (Video)
Guardian: Orhan Pamuk on The Museum of Innocence (Video)

Troubled Voyage In Calm Weather - The Early Years of the Incredible String Band

"'There is something occult and mysterious and unexplained about the Incredible String Band,' mused Lilian Roxon way back in the Counterculture's famous long ago, 'as if it were conjured out of nowhere with a magic spell, and perhaps it was.' Words of a similar cadence might well be uttered by many of us about the year these ones were written: 1969."
Perfect Sound Forever
Five Thousand Spirits Singing and Gladly Dancing
YouTube: Ithkos and Rehearsal (1972), The Letter - (Live at Woodstock 1969), When You Find Out Who You Are, Everything's fine right now, Empty Pocket Blues (Live 1970), Gently Tender, Red Hair

2008 August: Incredible String Band

A Trip to Charles Olson’s Gloucester

"... Except for that letter, for years I kept largely to myself and have had a limited correspondence. That has begun to change recently but for the most part I still remain wary of my idols despite all the wonderful insight they could bring. Charles Olson would have been an exception to that rule had I been fortunate enough to have been born a full two decades earlier. From all accounts, Olson was one of the great talkers of all time at home, in the library, looming over the lecture hall, sitting at the kitchen table, or holding forth in the barroom."
Reality Studio
Poetry Foundation: I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You
Poetry Foundation: Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 [withheld]
The Battle of Gloucester: Vincent Ferrini Meets Charles Olson

2009 January: Charles Olson
2009 April: Rockport Harbor
2010 March: Charles Olson: August 1963
2010 September: Charles Olson: The Art of Poetry No. 12
2010 December: "In Cold Hell, in Thicket", NET film
2011 January: Woodberry Poetry Room Oral History Initiative
2011 July: Charles Olson: February 21, 1957
2011 October: Photograph Database

Nigeria 70 - Sweet Times: Afro-Funk Highlife

"Strut announce the return of their pioneering ‘Nigeria 70’ compilation series with an exclusive new third volume: ‘Sweet Times: Afro Funk, Highlife & Juju from 1970s Lagos’ compiled again by series curator Duncan Brooker. Excavating another choice batch of rare grooves from Nigeria’s label archives, the new edition places the spotlight on some of the deeper fusions happening across the country during the 1970s as traditional guitar highlife blended with jazz and funk, hypnotic juju grooves became more progressive and young Nigerian bands came through with their own heavy West African take on U.S. soul, funk, disco and rock."
Strut
amazon
Duncan Brooker on Nigeria 70: Sweet Times
Nigeria70-Sweet Times (Video)
YouTube: Nigeria 70 - Sweet Times preview trailer, Chief Commander Ebeneza Obey and his International Brothers - Ajoyo

Rosie Sanders

Delphiniums (detail)
"Botanical painting has a long and specific history, cataloguing plant species in excruciating detail, often abstracting them against a plain paper void away from their natural context. Moving away from this conventional approach to botanical art but continuing a tradition of valued documentation of flowers that has earned her five Royal Horticultural Gold Medals, artist Rosie Sanders creates contemporary and striking portraits of backlit blooms in the less than perfect phases of degeneration."
It's Nice That: Contemporary botanical painting in Rosie Sanders' exhibition Against the Light
Rosie Sanders
YouTube: Part 1: The inspiration behind her work, Part 2: Rosie at work in her studio

Speaking in Tongues - Talking Heads

Wikipedia - "Speaking in Tongues is the fifth studio album by the band Talking Heads, released in 1983. The album was a commercial breakthrough that produced the band's first (and only) American Top 10 hit, 'Burning Down the House', which was accompanied by a promotional video."
Wikipedia
Rolling Stone
YouTube: Burning Down the House, Making Flippy Floppy, Girlfriend Is Better, Slippery People, Swamp, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)

The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951

"In 1936 a group of young, idealistic photographers, most of them Jewish, first-generation Americans, formed an organization in Manhattan called the Photo League. Their solidarity centered on a belief in the expressive power of the documentary photograph and on a progressive alliance in the 1930s of socialist ideas and art. The Radical Camera presents the contested path of the documentary photograph during a tumultuous period that spanned the New Deal reforms of the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War."
The Jewish Museum
NYT: Artists Equipped With a Social Conscience
NYT: 15 Years That Changed Photography

The American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1966, Vol. 1 (1962)

"Unearthed some 40 years after the fact, this has to be one of the finest blues collections ever assembled on video. Thanks to a couple of young promoters who brought the musicians to Europe--where they were treated with a good deal more respect and dignity than in America--we get an extraordinary lineup of bluesmen and women: Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Sippie Wallace... the list goes on."
amazon: The American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1966, Vol. 1 (1962)
YouTube: 1:10:50. 01. T-Bone Walker — Call Me When You Need Me 02. Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee — Hootin' Blues 03. Memphis Slim — The Blues is Everywhere 04. Otis Rush — I Can't Quit You Baby 05. Lonnie Johnson — Another Night to Cry 06. Sippie Wallace — Women Be Wise 07. John Lee Hooker — Hobo Blues 08. Eddie Boyd — Five Long Years 09. Walter "Shakey" Horton 10. Junior Wells — Hoodoo Man Blues 11. Big Joe Williams — Mean Stepfather 12. Mississippi Fred McDowell — Going Down to the River 13. Willie Dixon — Weak Brain and Narrow Mind 14. Sonny Boy Williams — Nine Below Zero 15. Otis Spann — Spann's Blues 16. Muddy Waters — Got My Mojo Working 17. Finale: Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon — Bye Bye Blues 18. Earl Hooker — Walking The Floor.Over You/Off The Hook

Here Come the Warm Jets - Brian Eno

Wikipedia - "Here Come the Warm Jets is the debut solo album by Brian Eno. Produced by Eno, it was released on Island Records in 1974. The musical style of Here Come the Warm Jets is a hybrid of glam rock and art rock, similar to Eno's previous album work with Roxy Music but with songs that are more quirky and experimental. The album features various guest musicians, including Robert Fripp of King Crimson and members of Roxy Music, Hawkwind, Matching Mole, and The Pink Fairies. In developing the album's words and music, Eno used unusual methods such as dancing for his band members and having them play accordingly, and singing nonsense words to himself that would form the basis of subsequent lyrics."
Wikipedia
enoweb/lyrics
YouTube: China My China, More Blank than Frank, Baby's on Fire - The BBC Sessions (1974), Blank Frank, Dead Finks Don't Talk

The Ex + Tom Cora

"The Ex is an anarchist band from the Netherlands. They formed in 1979 at the height of the original punk explosion and have released more than twenty full length albums since. In the early 1990s they collaborated with the late Tom Cora (September 14, 1953 - April 9, 1998), who was a United States cellist and composer, best known for his improvisational performances in the field of experimental jazz and rock."
last.fm
W - The Ex
YouTube: Lamp Lady, State of Shock, Hidegen Fújnak A Szelek, The Flute's Tale, Hickwall 1993, New Clear Daze, The Big Black

2010 June: Tom Cora
2012 February: Fred Frith & Tom Cora

Philip Wolfhagen

"Philip Wolfhagen is, quintessentially, a painter of the Australian landscape, one whose work has been exclusively absorbed into his private obsession with Tasmania, the terrain of his personal origins. His work is physical, dense in its application, sombre in mood and tonality, the result of a deeply experienced, enduring engagement with an ancient, yet eternally living subject."
Sherman Galleries
Karen Woodbury