Alistair MacLeod

Wikipedia - "Alistair MacLeod, OC FRSC (July 20, 1936 – April 20, 2014) was a Canadian novelist, short story writer and academic. His powerful and moving stories vividly evoke the beauty of Cape Breton Island's rugged landscape and the resilient character of many of its inhabitants, the descendants of Scottish immigrants, who are haunted by ancestral memories and who struggle to reconcile the past and the present. MacLeod has been praised for his verbal precision, his lyric intensity and his use of simple, direct language that seems rooted in an oral tradition. ... In 2000, MacLeod's two books of short stories, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories (1986), were re-published in the volume Island: The Collected Stories. MacLeod compared his fiction writing to playing an accordion. ..."
Wikipedia
Alistair MacLeod Interviewed

2011 June: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood - Alistair MacLeod, 2016 February: Island (2001), 2016 October: Alistair MacLeod - No Great Mischief (1999)

New label Zel Zele launches with holy grail Turkish jazz-funk 7″

"London-based DJs Debora Ipekel and Ece Duzgit are launching new label Zel Zele with the release of Ümit Aksu Orkestrası’s 1975 orchestral jazz-funk roller ‘Bermuda Şeytan Ücgeni’ on a limited 7″, backed with a psychedelic ode to Istanbul’s Bosphorus Bridge, ‘Boğaziçi Köprüsü’. Bringing together a selection of Turkey’s most talented musicians under the guidance of pianist, arranger and songwriter Ümit Aksu, both tracks make experimental use of an FBT brand synthesizer, brought to Turkey from Italy by Aksu’s son. Moving from Blaxploitation soundtrack to Sun Ra-esque synth wig-out, you can hear ‘Bermuda Şeytan Ücgeni’ below. According to Debora and Ece, Zel Zele will continue to release genre and era-hopping music 'that knows no borders, race, gender or genre… bringing the old and the new, from the dustiest of crates to fresh music, with its non linear sound.' Ümit Aksu Orkestrası’s ‘Bermuda Şeytan Ücgeni’ is released on 7″ on 19th October. Pre-order a copy here and check out the striking, original 1975 artwork below."
Vinyl Factory (Audio)
Bermuda Şeytan Üçgeni by Ümit Aksu Orkestrası (Audio)
Soundcloud: Zel Zele Mixtape #1 – Grup Ses 37:26

You? Me? Us? - Richard Thompson (1996)

"... In anyone else’s hands, You? Me? Us? would be an epic bring-down. Even Thompson risks overplaying his hand by splitting this 19-track double CD into separate amplified ('Voltage Enhanced') and acoustic ('Nude') discs. The division of mood seems arbitrary in places. ... Of the two versions of 'Razor Dance,' the hot splatter of blood and tears on the electric take better suits the song’s deceptively exuberant chorus and sense of mounting crisis. But there is both good sense and emotional resolution, however fragile, in Thompson’s programming, and his singing and playing — supported by a small top-drawer cast, including the great British stand-up bassist Danny Thompson (no relation), drummer Pete Thomas of Elvis Costello’s Attractions and an old Fairport Convention band mate of Thompson’s, guitarist Simon Nicol — are uniformly marvelous. ..."
Rolling Stone
W - You? Me? Us?
Discogs
amazon, iTunes
YouTube - The Ghost of You Walks, Cold Kisses, Dark Hand Over My Heart, Baby Don't Know What To Do With Herself, She Cut Off Her Long Silken Hair
YouTube: You? Me? Us? 19 videos

2011 July: Shoot Out the Lights - Richard and Linda Thompson, 2012 February: I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, 2014 March: Videowest 81, 2015 October: Richard & Linda Thompson - Rafferty's Folly (1980), 2015 December: Rumor and Sigh (1991), 2016 March: Hand of Kindness (1983)

The 2018 Progressive Honor Roll

From left: Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib. Illustration by Louisa Bertman.
"Progressives were on the march in 2018. They weren’t just resisting Trump; they were outlining the alternative to Trumpism. They weren’t just winning the battle of ideas by moving Medicare for All and Fight for $15 proposals into the mainstream; they were winning battles at the ballot box as well. The fight for the future is far from over, but 2018 offered signs that it can and will be won. The Nation’s 2018 Progressive Honor Roll recognizes the dissidents and the strategists, the veteran campaigners and the next-gen leaders who are charting the course. ..."
The Nation

Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape

J.M.W. Turner, Wolf's Hope, Eyemouth (c. 1835)
"... J.M.W. Turner traveled widely throughout Britain and Europe, capturing the wonders of the world including the rivers of France, the Alps of Switzerland, and the canals of Venice. He began his career as a topographical draughtsman, for which attention to detail and accuracy were paramount. His style evolved in order to capture the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. Turner’s late oil paintings and watercolors verge on abstraction and are often erroneously thought to have inspired the French Impressionists: for all his travels, his paintings were little known outside of England. Critics of Turner’s day were largely uncomplimentary. ... John Constable endeavored to capture the essence of nature in his landscapes, inspired by the countryside around East Bergholt. Writing to his close friend John Fisher, he related: 'Still I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate ‘my careless boyhood’ with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful….' ..."
The Clark
Art History News

John Constable, The Wheat Field, 1816

November 2007: J. M. W. Turner, 2009 April: Turner & Italy, 2011 June: J. M. W. Turner - 1, 2014 June: In Which We Find His Theory Of Color Implausible, 2014 September: The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free, 2015 May: Mr. Turner (2014), 2018 November: The Slave Ship (1840), 2008 July: John Constable, 2014 November: The Hay Wain, 2009 October: Hay in Art, 2010 March: Van Gogh Museum, 2010 May: Why preserve Van Gogh's palette?, 2012 April: Van Gogh Up Close, 2015 May: Van Gogh and Nature, 2016 January: Van Gogh's Bedrooms, 2016 November: Wheat Fields - Van Gogh series. 

Cedric 'Im' Brooks And The Divine Light - From Mento To Reggae To Third World Music (1973)

" First time on CD for this rare vintage session from saxophonist extraordinaire Cedric ‘im’ Brooks recorded in 1973 at Randy’s Studio, 17 North Parade, Kingston, Jamaica and produced by the African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica plus three tracks added to the original ten track vinyl produced by Clive Chin. The songs selected trace the development from mento, through JA R&B, ska, rocksteady and reggae. A fascinating album. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Satta Massa Gana, Let's Do Rock Steady, Steaming, Schooling The Duke, Put It On

Meet Henry Darger, the Most Famous of Outsider Artists, Who Died in Obscurity, Leaving Behind Hundreds of Unseen Fantasy Illustrations and a 15,000-Page Novel

"In his cheeky invention of a character called Marvin Pontiac, an obscure West African-born bluesman, the avant-garde composer and saxophonist John Lurie created 'a wry and purposeful sendup of the ways in which critics canonize and worship the disenfranchised and bedeviled,' Amanda Petrusich writes at The New Yorker. Lurie's satire shows how the critical fetish for outsider artists has a persistent emphasis: a hyperfocus on 'misshapen yet pervasive ideas' about class, race, education, and ability as markers of primitive authenticity. The term 'outsider art' can sound patronizing and even predatory, laden with assumptions about who does and who does not deserve inclusion and agency in the art world. Outsider art gets collected, exhibited, catalogued, and sold, usually accompanied by a semi-mythology about the artist’s fringe circumstances. ..."
Open Culture (Video)
W - Henry Darger
Salon - "Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal" by John M. MacGregor
On Henry Darger’s 15,000-Page Novel
amazon: Henry Darger

“Untitled” (mid 20th century), watercolor, pencil, carbon tracing, and collage on pierced paper, 24 x 106 1/2 in.

The End of Europe? - Thomas L. Friedman

Yellow Vest protesters clashed with the police in Paris on Saturday.
"PARIS — Ever since World War II, the liberal global order that has spread more freedom and prosperity around the world than at any other time in history has been held up by two pillars: the United States of America and the United Nations of Europe, now known as the European Union. Both of these centers of free markets, free people and free ideas are being shaken today by rural and beyond-the-suburbs insurgencies of largely white working-poor and anxious middle classes, which have not generally benefited from the surges in globalization, immigration and technology that have lifted superstar cities like London, Paris and San Francisco and their multicultural populations. ..."
NY Times

2018 December: Paris Burning, 2018 December: Yellow vests movement

Travelers of Al-Andalus, Part II: Abu Hamid Al-Garnati’s World of Wonders

"Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Suleiman ibn Rabi al-Qaysi, known more conveniently to posterity as Abu Hamid Al-Garnati and so named after his hometown of Granada ('Garnata'), sailed, caravanned, traded and trekked from the Arab West to the northern- and easternmost reaches of the Islamic world and beyond. Born in the year 1080 under the last of the Zirid kings, he was a merchant and a scholar who, in a 90-year lifetime, wrote on a variety of subjects in two works following the literary tradition called kutub al-‘aja’ib in Arabic, or 'books of wonder'—a genre that he helped to define. As one might expect from the name, a 'book of wonders' is not only what one sees and hears on one’s travels, but also what one could not have possibly seen because it did not then nor did it ever exist. At the same time, these 'wonders'—of legendary places, mythical people and wholly imagined events—make for good reading. ..."
Aramco World

2016 March: Travelers of Al-Andalus, Part VI: The Double Lives of Ibn al-Khatib, 2017 April: Travelers of Al-Andalus, Part I: The Travel Writer

Makaya McCraven – Universal Beings (2018)

"Jazz drummer Makaya McCraven could not possibly have predicted that the release date of his new album, Universal Beings, would coincide with a week of domestic terrorist acts fueled by racism, anti-semitism, and anti-immigration hysteria. Though his album’s 'all-encompassing message of unity, peace & power' would be welcome at any time, it is particularly transformative at this moment as a reminder of our shared humanity and the need to bridge cultural divides. The double CD is divided into four distinct sections, organized around recording sessions in New York, Chicago, London and Los Angeles. Makaya, who was born in Paris, France to expat American jazz drummer Stephen McCraven and Hungarian singer Agnes Zsigmondi, sought other globally-minded musicians for these four ensembles. ..."
Black Grooves (Video/Audio)
Makaya McCraven's Utopian Vision of Jazz Could Change the World (Video/Audio)
Discogs
amazon, spotify
Mondria An Jazz: Makaya McCraven Boiler Room London Live Set (Video)

Newen Afrobeat

"Meet Newen Afrobeat, one of the first Chilean Afrobeat ensembles. Formed in 2009, they have a firm foothold in the Latin American response to the style created by Fela Kuti and brought to the continent with the arrival of West African slaves. The union of the African tradition with Chilean musical heritage is reflected in the band name. ‘Newen’ is taken from Mapudungan, – the language of one of the main indigenous communities in Chile, the Mapuche people. It means the force or spirit that manifests itself within every person. Their music represents Afrobeat with an extra potency. Formed of close to 20 musicians, Fela Kuti’s famous warcry 'Music is the weapon' resonates in their every rhythm. ..."
Música Macondo (Audio/Video)
W - Newen Afrobeat
Discogs (Video)
amazon: Newen Afrobeat
YouTube: Newen Afrobeat feat. Seun Kuti & Cheick Tidiane Seck - Opposite People (Fela Kuti)(Live)
YouTube: Newen Afrobeat - Full Album 56:57, Newen Plays Fela 25:48

Iraq’s Post-ISIS Campaign of Revenge

Watch “The Backstory”: Ben Taub on the future of Iraq, following the Islamic State’s defeat in Mosul. (Audio)
"A September morning in Baghdad. Traffic halted at checkpoints and roadblocks as bureaucrats filed behind blast walls and the temperature climbed to a hundred and fifteen degrees. At the Central Criminal Court, a guard ran his baton along the bars of a small cell holding dozens of terrorism suspects awaiting trial. They were crammed on a wooden bench and on the floor, a sweaty tangle of limbs and dejected expressions. Many were sick or injured—covered in scabies, their joints twisted and their bones cracked. Iraqi prisons have a uniform code—different colors for pretrial suspects, convicts, and those on death row—but several who had not yet seen a judge or a lawyer were already dressed as if they had been sentenced to death. Down the hall, the aroma of Nescafé and cigarettes filled a windowless room, where defense lawyers sat on couches, balancing stacks of paper on their laps. Most were staring at their phones; others sat in silence, arms crossed, eyes closed. In terrorism cases, lawyers are usually denied access to their clients until the hearing begins. ..."
New Yorker (Audio)
YouTube: Iraq’s Post-ISIS Campaign of Revenge | The Backstory | The New Yorker (Video)

Thousands of men and boys have been convicted of ISIS affiliation, and hundreds have been hanged. But these cases make up only a small fraction of the detainees. Thousands of families have been sent to camps in the desert, cast out from society.

2018 July: NY Times: Caliphate (Audio), 2014 August: The Islamic State, 2014 September: How ISIS Works, 2015 February: The Political Scene: The Evolution of Islamic Extremism, 2015 May: Zakaria: How ISIS shook the world, 2015 August: ISIS Blows Up Ancient Temple at Syria’s Palmyra Ruins, 2015 November: Times Insider: Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis, 2015 November: Three Teams of Coordinated Attackers Carried Out Assault on Paris, Officials Say; Hollande Blames ISIS, 2015 November: The French Emergency, 2015 December: A Brief History of ISIS, 2015 December: U.S. Seeks to Avoid Ground War Welcomed by Islamic State, 2016 January: Ramadi, Reclaimed by Iraq, Is in Ruins After ISIS Fight, 2016 February: Syrian Officer Gave a View of War. ISIS Came, and Silence Followed., 2016 March: Brussels Survivors Say Blasts Instantly Evoked Paris Attacks, 2016 April: America Can’t Do Much About ISIS, 2016 June: What the Islamic State Has Won and Lost, 2016 July: ISIS: The Cornened Beast, 2016 October: Archaeological Victims of ISIS Rise Again, as Replicas in Rome, 2016 December: Battle Over Aleppo Is Over, Russia Says, as Evacuation Deal Reached, 2017 January: Eternal Sites: From Bamiyan to Palmyra, 2017 February: Tour a City Torn in Half by ISIS, 2017 March: Engulfed in Battle, Mosul Civilians Run for Their Lives, 2017 May: Aleppo After the Fall, 2017 July: Iraqi forces declare victory over Islamic State in Mosul after grueling battle, 2017 July: The Living and the Dead, 2017 October: ISIS Fighters, Having Pledged to Fight or Die, Surrender en Masse, 2018 August: After ISIS, Iraq Is Still Broken, 2018 September: Fight to Retake Last ISIS Territory in Syria Begins

A Rorschach of Extended Abstraction - Szymon Kaliski

"There are drones, and they are varied, and amid those drones are drones that are something else in disguise. Sometimes that something else is a trick of the ear, a figment surfacing in the sonic Rorschach test of extended abstraction. Sometimes it’s something buried just below the surface. If ambient music inherently explores the liminal, presenting a still surface that suggests untold action underneath, then a track like Szymon Kaliski’s superb '2018-12-13' plays with the ear by introducing elements hinting at a more formal music that never comes into focus. ... Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/szymonkaliski. More from Kaliski, who is from Poznań, Poland, at szymonkaliski.com."
disquiet (Video/Audio)
Szymon Kaliski

The Physical and Spiritual Art of Capoeira

Mestre Lua Santana playing at Permangolinha, the three-day retreat run by Mestre Cobra Mansa.
"VALENÇA, Brazil — The white-bearded, dreadlocked master and his bushy-haired student face off in an open-sided compound set amid cacao trees and coffee bushes. The two are in constant motion, swinging back and forth in what is called the ginga — the fundamental movement of the Brazilian combat game capoeira. At times, the way they feint and kick, and roll under and over and around each other, looks like choreographed dance. But then one side does something the other is not expecting, and it becomes clear that this is a game of strategy, not a planned dance. Mestre Cobra Mansa’s ginga transforms into the movement of a staggering drunk, then a marionette whose puppeteer has suddenly let the string go slack. Then he’s in a handstand. From there, a leg strikes out like a lightning bolt, stopping just short of hitting his opponent’s face. ..."
NY Times

Capoeira instruments at Kilombo Tenondé.

2014 June: Capoeira

Castles as Coffins

Cape Coast Castle—Cape Coast. 1653 Sweden, 1665 Britain, 2004–05 and 2017, emele wood and enamel, 45″ x 133″ x 88″.
"The artist makes coffins. But these aren’t your standard-issue pine boxes—they are red snappers, Spalding basketballs, giant shoes. In the Ghanaian tradition of abeduu adekai (roughly translated, 'receptacles of proverbs'), the dead are honored via figurative coffins that reflect the lives of those interred. A street vendor might be buried in a soda bottle, a gynecologist in a casket shaped like a uterus. In 2004, Joe veered from his typical fare and created thirteen large-scale models of the still-standing slave castles and forts on the coast of Ghana. These buildings served as processing centers for the more than six million people enslaved and sent to the Americas and the Caribbean between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Seven of Joe’s sculptures are on view until February 24 at the American Folk Art Museum, in New York, for the exhibition 'Gates of No Return,' named for the doors through which countless souls passed on their entry into forced servitude. 'Nobody would be buried in a slave castle coffin,' Joe has said, but these miniatures signify death just the same, looming as reminders of the millions of lives lost to and the histories decimated by the slave trade. ..."
The Paris Review
Folk Art Museum - Paa Joe: Gates of No Return
W - Paa Joe
YouTube: Fantasy Coffins | Paa Joe Ashong // 60 Second Docs, Ghana's Coffin Art: Paa Joe Waits For Your Last Dream...

Eric Rohmer - Nadja à Paris (1964), André Breton - Nadja (1928)

"Occasionally, unintentionally, triggered by a smell or an old tune, my mind drifts to that time when Paris didn’t resemble the USA at all, when life on the street and screen was similar and our days appeared like the films of the nouvelle vague. There was something breezy about reasons then, why you did this or that, no clear motivation or Hollywood endings. Of course there were American films around but many were quite good, nothing like the bang-bang violence we now dump all over the globe. Those films didn’t crush or overwhelm others in quantity (a reason why they were so admired) and you could also see French, Italian, Polish, Czech, or Russian films any time. There was a cinematheque, which for students was one franc. Most of us were poor and so we worried about three essentials—a room, the student restaurant, and a subway card. ..."
NYBooks (Video)
W - Nadja
[PDF]Andre Breton – Nadja
amazon: Nadja André Breton

2010 February: Eric Rohmer, 2018 April: A Cinematic Journey Through Paris, As Seen Through the Lens of Legendary Filmmaker Éric Rohmer: Watch Rohmer in Paris

The Solace of Birds in Winter

On the wing after a snowfall in Nevsehir, Turkey, last week.
"In the search for comfort in the face of so many 21st-century dangers — to democracy in the age of fake news, to the natural world in the age of climate change — I don’t normally think of winter as offering much in the way of consolation. Many of the most interesting creatures have gone to ground now. The cheery chipmunks are asleep in their tunnels beneath my house. The queen bumblebees have made themselves a little sleeping chamber deep in the soil of my garden. Somewhere nearby, the resident rat snake is also sleeping underground, and, at the park, the snapping turtles and bullfrogs have settled themselves into the mud at the bottom of the lake. All the loveliest insects are gone now, too. The honeybees are huddled up in their hives, vibrating their wings to keep warm and feeding on the honey they’ve stored for just this reason. The monarch butterflies have long since migrated to their Mexican wintering grounds. My flower beds are nothing but a jumble of dried stems and matted clumps, a collection of dead vegetation I’ve left undisturbed for my tiniest neighbors to shelter in. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Let Your Winter Garden Go Wild (Margaret Renkl - Feb. 10, 2018)

Hugh Mundell – The Blessed Youth (2007)

"Hugh Mundell was born in East Kingston, Jamaica, on the 14th July 1962, and shot dead there on October 14, 1983 while sitting in a car with a very young Junior Reid. Mundell was extremely young when he recorded his first tune for producer Joe Gibbs, the unreleased 'Where Is Natty Dread'. However, his recording career really took off when his precocious talent impressed Horace Swaby better known as Augustus Pablo. The latter produced the blessed youth’s first single release 'Africa Must Be Free' in 1975. ... The (now defunct) French label Makasound has unleashed a great Hugh Mundell set rightfully called 'The Blessed Youth'. This compilation cd culls all the tracks from the “Time & Place” and 'Blackman’s Foundation' albums – although some are actually the rare extended versions & deejay cuts of the album tracks – with the solid album opener 'Rastafari Tradition' lifted from Augustus Pablo’s 'Earth’s Rightful Ruler'. ..."
Reggae Vibes (Audio)
Discogs
YouTube: The Blessed Youth Compilation [Full Album]

2010 September: Hugh Mundell, 2015 June: Hugh Mundell & Augustus Pablo - Jah Will Provide + Hungry (Dub Version), 2015 August: Africa Must Be Free By 1983 + Dub (1978)

Your Groove • DeForrest Brown, Jr. on Kevin Beasley and Underground Resistance

"The rigged sound of Techno is a language, dense with sentiment and context. In October, as part of its ongoing 'Posthuman' series, Performance Space New York hosted 'Man Machine,' a conversation between the Detroit-based electronic music collective Underground Resistance and artist Kevin Beasley. Founded in 1989 by Jeff Mills and 'Mad Mike' Banks, later joined by Robert Hood, Underground Resistance was militant in its rejection of 'programming by mediocre mainstream music and public institutions.' Now they are the inheritors and protectors of the 'original' techno sound. They were anti–status quo, citing Detroit radio personality Electrifying Mojo’s eclectic song selections as a starting point for the voracious techno sound. Mojo’s programs introduced inner-city Detroit to a broad spectrum of music, weaving entire narratives connecting the B-52s to Kraftwerk to Prince. Techno is more than the sum of its mechanical processes; like any machine, it also includes an operator, an inspired soul spurring it into motion. At Performance Space, Underground Resistance was represented by label manager Cornelius Harris and DJs Mark Flash and John Collins. ..."
ARTFORUM
Guggenheim: Kevin Beasley
Whitney - Kevin Beasley: A view of a landscape
twitter - DeForrest Brown, Jr. | Speaker Music
Kepla & DeForrest Brown Jr. reunite for The Wages Of Being Black Is Death on PTP, premiere “Black Icarus, Or Uncle Tom” (Audio)

Neruda - Pablo Larraín (2016)

Wikipedia - "Neruda is a 2016 internationally co-produced biographical drama film directed by Pablo Larraín. Mixing history and fiction, the film shows the dramatic events of the brutal suppression of Communists in Chile in 1948 and how the poet Pablo Neruda had to go on the run, eventually escaping on horseback over the Andes. After winning the 1946 election with the support of the Communists, Chile's president turns against them, bans the party and orders mass arrests. The senator Pablo Neruda, former ambassador and well-known poet, speaks out forcefully against the repression. Warned that he is in danger, with his wife Delia he takes the road through the mountains to Argentina, but they are turned back at the frontier and have to go into hiding. A keen young policeman, Óscar Peluchonneau, is appointed to lead the hunt for the fugitives. ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian - Fast, loose and lyrical: Pablo Larraín's Neruda anti-biopic
NY Times: Why the Movie ‘Neruda’ Is an ‘Anti-Bio’
YouTube: Neruda Official Trailer 1 - Gael García Bernal Movie, NERUDA Interview with Gael García Bernal & Pablo Larraín


February 2009: Pablo Neruda, 2011 November: 100 Love Sonnets, 2015 November: The Body Politic: The battle over Pablo Neruda’s corpse, 2015 December: In Chile, Where Pablo Neruda Lived and Loved, 2016 May: Windows that Open Inward - Pablo Neruda. Milton Rogovin, Photographing., 2018 March: What We Can Learn from Neruda’s Poetry of Resistanc, 2018 July: Poet of the People: The partisan world of Pablo Neruda

Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today

"Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today examines how the internet has radically changed the field of art, especially in its production, distribution, and reception. The exhibition comprises a broad range of works across a variety of mediums—including painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects—that all investigate the extensive effects of the internet on artistic practice and contemporary culture. Themes explored in the exhibition include emergent ideas of the body and notions of human enhancement; the internet as a site of both surveillance and resistance; the circulation and control of images and information; possibilities for new subjectivities, communities, and virtual worlds; and new economies of visibility initiated by social media. ..."
Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston
Brooklyn Rail
Yale Books: Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today
YouTube: Art in the Age of the Internet at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston | Connecting Point, Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today

Istanbul Sessions - Ilhan Ersahin (2015)

"Confusion is good sometimes. It’s a way to start thinking about whatever you are confused about. This is what Ilhan Ersahin’s Istanbul Sessions do since 2008. They managed to fire the stages all across the world: from New York to Istanbul, from Paris to Sao Paolo, from London to Skopje... Questions they spread all these years where like: are they really turkish? is this really jazz? doesn’t it sound like a rock band? how come a jazz ensemble can really be like a band? How can they be so able to jam with any musician they meet on stage? And so on... It’s a simple fact Ilhan Ersahin, being one of the rare moguls of New York City underground scene via his club and record label (nublu), is traveling all around the world. It’s possible to see him jamming with Red Hot Chili Peppers in Sao Paolo, featuring Bugge Wesseltoft in Blue Note Tokyo and/or playing a beautiful oriental set with turkish gypsies in an elegant concert hall somewhere in Europe. His newyorker energy is with him all the time. How about Istanbul Sessions then? It’s a summary of all you read above. Master level musicianship meets a high eclecticism where the cliché of 'east-to-west crossover' finds its true sense and power. ..."
Ilhan Ersahin (Video (Live) / Audio)
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: ILHAN ERSAHIN'S ISTANBUL SESSIONS - MCCOY (Live), VISA FOR MUSIC - ILHAN ERSAHIN'S ISTANBUL SESSIONS «SARIYER» en session acoustique (Live)

Sun Ra – Of Abstract Dreams (2018)

"Sun Ra‘s Of Abstract Dreams is a previously unreleased album from jazz pianist and bandleader’s archives. This four-piece recording (released in March by Strut Records) was performed for WXPN-FM radio station between approximately 1974 and 1975. The compositions i the album are always surprising and contrasting, led by Sun Ra on the piano before morphing in beautiful and unexpected ways. The album feels conversational between the instruments, weaving stories and calm mania. The recordings also have the vibe of a smoky music room of band members really enjoying playing together and having time collectively. ..."
Rhythm Passport (Video)
boomkat (Audio)
Discogs (Audio)
YouTube: Island In The Sun, Unmask The Batman, New Dawn, I'll Wait For You

Transforming Nature with James Schuyler

"... James Schuyler’s poem suggests an alternative, more potentially rescuing aspect to our human impulse to impose humanness on the natural world. While this impulse—or curse, as Charlotte Smith would have it in her 'Sonnet, On being Cautioned against Walking on a Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It was Frequented by a Lunatic'—can be a reminder of our estrangement from wilderness, its transformative power can make of wilderness a comfort, a stay against the metaphysical fears that Smith’s lunatic can never know, and that John Clare hints at in his reference to melancholy moods in 'To the Fox Fern.' 'The Bluet' is a poem straight from the Transcendental school of thinking, wherein the natural world was believed to be shot through with divine meaning. ..."
Poets House

2008 January: James Schuyler, 2009 October: James Schuyler: Six New Recordings Added, 2011 March: Broadway: A Poets and Painters Anthology, 2011 December: An Anthology of New York Poets, 2012 July: A Schuyler of urgent concern, 2013 July: In Fairfield Porter / James Schuyler country: Penobscot Bay, Maine, 2014 November: Just the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler 1951-1991, 2015 October: The Morning of the Poem (1980),June 2016: New Video of James Schuyler’s Legendary Debut Reading in 1988, 2016 August: A few of Schuyler's revisions - Charles North, 2016 December: James Schuyler - “December”, 2017 February: A day like any other (PoemTalk #85) - James Schuyler, 'February'

Funk Spectrum - Real Funk For Real People Vol. I / II / III

"Scottish DJ and record collector Keb Darge is perhaps the biggest name on the U.K.'s deep funk scene, respected for his encyclopedic knowledge of rare funk 45s and his impeccable taste as a compiler. Originally released as a double-vinyl set in 1997, Keb Darge's Legendary Deep Funk, Vol. 1 is the compilation that first established that reputation, and it still stands as a landmark collection in the rediscovery of deep funk. No longer was it the exclusive domain of obsessive collectors paying triple-digit prices for obscure records, or club patrons who knew where to hear their favorite DJs spin jealously guarded tunes in a live setting. Legendary Deep Funk, Vol. 1 certainly wasn't the first such compilation, but it was probably the highest-profile up to that point; it also benefited from Darge's taste for the harder, heavier end of the spectrum, which gives it a fairly unified sound and a crackling energy throughout -- much like a smartly paced DJ set. ..."
Holland Tunnel
Discogs - Vol. I (Video), Vol. II (Video), Vol. III (Video)
amazon - Vol. I, Vol. II, Vol. III
YouTube: DJ Shadow - Funk Spectrum -4th Coming, Deep Heat - Do It Again, The Third Guitar - Baby Don't Cry, Total Experience - Contradiction, Luther Davis Group - To Be Free, The Chosen Few - We Are The Chosen Few

Yellow vests movement

Wikipedia - "The yellow vests movement (French: Mouvement des gilets jaunes, pronounced [ʒilɛ ʒon]), also referred to as the yellow jacket movement, is a protest movement that started online in May 2018 and led to demonstrations that began in France on 17 November 2018 and rapidly spread to Wallonia, the formerly heavily industrialised, French-speaking, southern part of Belgium. The yellow vest was chosen as a symbol, because all French motorists had been required by law (since 2008) to have high-visibility vests in their vehicles when driving (as a safety measure should the driver be required to exit the vehicle on the roadside). As a result, reflective vests have become widely available, inexpensive and symbolic. By early December 2018, the symbol had become increasingly common from Europe to Iraq, as different groups made use of their high-visibility vests to draw attention to their agendas. Motivated by rising fuel prices, the high cost of living and claims that a disproportionate burden of the government's tax reforms were falling on the working and middle classes (especially those in rural and peri-urban areas), protesters have called for reductions in fuel taxes, the reintroduction of the solidarity tax on wealth, the raising of the minimum wage, and the resignation of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: The Power of the Yellow Vest (Dec. 4, 2018)
NY Times: Learning With: ‘French Police Crack Down on ‘Yellow Vests’ With Tear Gas and Over a Thousand Arrests’ (Video)
Jacobin: Macron’s Climate Tax Is a Disaster
Jacobin: Can the Yellow Vests Speak?

2018 December: Paris Burning

MADONJAZZ #148: Deep, Spiritual World Jazz Sounds

"MADONJAZZ #148: deep, spiritual world jazz sounds. An 1hr journey across various cultures around the world, from French-Chinese avant-garde electronica, to spiritual world jazz from Don Cherry and French folk, to deep jazz afro-grooves from Mongo Santamaria and Chico Hamilton, to African percussion jazz from Lulumba and the Family of Percussion. Broadcasted live 27 OCT 2018."
Mad On Jazz (Audio)

The Guardians and the War on Truth

"The stout man with the gray goatee and the gentle demeanor dared to disagree with his country’s government. He told the world the truth about its brutality toward those who would speak out. And he was murdered for it. Every detail of Jamal Khashoggi’s killing made it a sensation: the time stamp on the surveillance video that captured the Saudi journalist entering his country’s Istanbul consulate on Oct. 2; the taxiway images of the private jets bearing his assassins; the bone saw; the reports of his final words, “I can’t breathe,” recorded on audio as the life was choked from him. But the crime would not have remained atop the world news for two months if not for the epic themes that Khashoggi himself was ever alert to, and spent his life placing before the public. His death laid bare the true nature of a smiling prince, the utter absence of morality in the Saudi-U.S. alliance and—in the cascade of news feeds and alerts, posts and shares and links—the centrality of the question Khashoggi was killed over: Whom do you trust to tell the story? ..."
TIME (Video)

Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done

"For a brief period in the early 1960s, a group of choreographers, visual artists, composers, and filmmakers gathered in Judson Memorial Church, a socially engaged Protestant congregation in New York’s Greenwich Village, for a series of workshops that ultimately redefined what counted as dance. The performances that evolved from these workshops incorporated everyday movements—gestures drawn from the street or the home; their structures were based on games, simple tasks, and social dances. Spontaneity and unconventional methods of composition were emphasized. The Judson artists investigated the very fundamentals of choreography, stripping dance of its theatrical conventions, and the result, according to Village Voice critic Jill Johnston, was the most exciting new dance in a generation. ..."
MoMA (Video)

Peter Moore’s photograph of Trisha Brown and Steve Paxton in Brown’s Lightfall. Performed at Concert of Dance #4, Judson Memorial Church, January 30, 1963.

2017 August: Judson Dance Theater

In a Transplanted Final, Even the Copa Libertadores Is Sanitized

River Plate celebrating with the Copa Libertadores trophy after the victory over Boca Juniors, their intracity rivals from Buenos Aires, on Sunday in Madrid.
"MADRID — Pity Martínez, his legs like lead, took a deep breath. After 120 minutes of impossible tension, after a journey of 6,000 miles, after a game that had lasted a month, there was one more run to make. So he ran. Away from the last vestiges of resistance Boca Juniors could muster, away from all the turmoil and strife that had enveloped the final of the 2018 Copa Libertadores, and into the wide green expanse of Santiago Bernabéu, toward the unguarded goal, toward a place in eternity. Behind him, a sea of red and white bounced and broiled, urging him on, waiting for that moment of release, of certainty: for the third goal that would seal River Plate’s 3-1 victory — and, just as important, Boca’s defeat — and ensure that, for the fourth time in its history, River would be the South American champion. This one, though, will always mean the most. Nothing else will ever really compare. How could it? It was all too perfect: beating Boca, its counterweight in the Great Schism that defines Argentine soccer, its opposite pole in perhaps the fiercest rivalry in world sport; seizing the chance — in that moment that Martínez rolled the ball into an empty net — not only to savor its own ecstasy but to taste Boca’s pain, each sensation feeding on the other, swirling, metastasizing. ..."
NY Times
W - 2018 Copa Libertadores Finals

Buenos Aires deployed a significant police force on Sunday around the Plaza de la República.

2018 November: NY Times: In Buenos Aires, a Rivalry Stretches Passions to the Limit

Zafraan Caravan : The Joujouka International

"The Joujouka International tells the story of a musical tradition of The Master Musicians of Joujouka dating back more than six centuries. It explores the current state of this ritualistic Sufi music consisting of percussion and traditional pipe instruments by looking and listening to the people continuing to practice it in its spiritual birthplace – the village of Joujouka, in the Rif mountain region in Northern Morocco. The story of Joujouka has many unexpected twists and turns throughout their long history. From explicits reference in the cut-up novels by William Burroughs, through tales of Islamic mysticism and even featuring on the Pyramid Stage of Glastonbury Festival, the unique sound of The Master Musicians of Joujouka’s pipes and drums have resonated far and wide. This radio piece attempts to retrace some of these key steps, and to understand why people — as distinct as Brian Jones and Ornette Coleman — have flocked to the mountains of Northern Morocco to experience this utterly singular music. ..."
Cashmere Radio (Audio)

2015 December: Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka (1971), 2017 Saturday: Boujeloud - Master Musicians of Joujouka (2008)

The Sheck Wes story

"Sheck Wes is a 19-year-old chart topping rapper from Central Harlem in New York City. He grew up on 116th Street and Lenox, right in the heart of a neighborhood that has come to be known as 'Le Petit Senegal.' The area has been rapidly gentrifying since the early 2000s, but even today if you walk the area surrounding 116th street you can pass a plethora of stores run by a largely Francophone population of African immigrants, serving Manhattan’s uptown population. African restaurants, tailors, bakeries, Islamic centers and music shops were once regular fixtures in a neighborhood now filling up with condos and coffee shops. Wes’s father is a tailor (who once worked for legendary hip hop stylist Dapper Dan) and his mother a hair braider in the area. Their community’s story is an important lens through which to understand African immigrant culture that is not yet widely recognized. The largest single group in Little Senegal are the Mourides—members of an entrepreneurial branch of Sufi Islam which has its roots in late 19th century colonial French West Africa. ..."
Africa Is a Country
W - Le Petit Senegal
Little Senegal on Harlem's 116th Street shrinks as gentrification takes hold
NY Times: A One-Woman Welcome Wagon in Le Petit Sénégal
NY Times: In Harlem's Fabric, Bright Threads of Senegal
Dapper Dan
How Little Senegal Became Harlem’s West African Hub

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

"Robert Plant called her his 'favorite singer out of all the British girls there ever were.' But a compliment of her singing alone undercuts the holistic talents of the musician Sandy Denny. To be sure: Her sublime voice stands on its own in the Anglo-folk canon, but her songwriting and lyricism are equally impressive. Both aspects of her talents remain essential to the fabric of the British folk-rock movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. Though the modern music press frequently portrays Denny as a cartoon-ish caricature of a temperamental singing faerie, she in fact endures, 40 years after her death, as an unexampled lyricist and songwriter, and an equally magnetic performer. ..."
Reverb LP (Video)

2009 March: Sandy Denny, 2013 January: "A Sailor’s Life" - Fairport Convention, 2013 May: The North Star Grassman and the Ravens, 2018 March: Like an Old Fashioned Waltz (1974), 2018 April: Seven and a Half Short Notes on Sandy Denny

Songs of the Underground Railroad

John Osler
Wikipedia - "Songs of the Underground Railroad were spiritual and work songs used during the early-to-mid 19th century in the United States to encourage and convey coded information to escaping slaves as they moved along the various Underground Railroad routes. As it was illegal in most slave states to teach slaves to read or write, songs were used to communicate messages and directions about when, where, and how to escape, and warned of dangers and obstacles along the route. One reportedly coded Underground Railroad song is 'Follow the Drinkin' Gourd'. The song's title is said to refer to the star formation (an asterism) known in America as the Big Dipper and in Europe as The Plough. The pointer stars of the Big Dipper align with the North Star. In this song the repeated line 'Follow the Drinkin' Gourd' is thus often interpreted as instructions to escaping slaves to travel north by following the North Star, leading them to the northern states, Canada, and freedom: The song ostensibly encodes escape instructions and a map from Mobile, Alabama up the Tombigbee River, over the divide to the Tennessee River, then downriver to where the Tennessee and Ohio rivers meet in Paducah, Kentucky. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Follow the Drinkin' Gourd
Underground Railroad - Songs
PBS: Coded Spirituals (Video)
YouTube: Steal Away: Songs of the Underground Railroad 16 videos

John Coltrane - YouTube: Song Of The Underground Railroad

Liminal: Sigur Rós

"Liminal is an ‘endless’ Sigur Rós ambient playlist which is live today [May 8, 2018], brought to you by Jónsi, Alex Somers and Paul Corley. It will be built over linear time into a never-finished project. Albums will be released, volumes added to. Liminal, both live and locally, takes the listener to a place neither here nor there; a 'liminal' space. Liminal + Liminal 2 + Liminal 3 = approximately 3 hours of ambient 'chill-out' music from Iceland, both original compositions and remixes of works by this trio and others. ..."
Sigur Rós (Video)
Bandcamp: Liminal, Liminal 2, Liminal 3
YouTube: liminal [Full Album Stream], liminal 2 [Full Album Stream], tónandi liminal
YouTube: Sigur Rós - Route One [Part 1 - 1080p], Route One [Part 2 - 1080p], Route One [Part 3 - 1080p]