A Small Group of Militants’ Outsize Role in the Capitol Attack

 

“As federal prosecutors unveil charges in the assault on the Capitol last month, they have repeatedly highlighted two militant groups — the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys — as being the most organized, accusing them of planning their strategy ahead of time and in some cases helping escalate a rally into an attack. The two organizations stand in contrast to a majority of the mob. Of the more than 230 people charged so far, only 31 are known to have ties to a militant extremist group. And at least 26 of those are affiliated with the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys. The groups differ in their focus and tactics: The Oath Keepers are part of an anti-government militia movement that emphasizes military-style training, while the Proud Boys espouse an ideology of male and Western superiority, with members often expressing white-supremacist and anti-immigrant views. But the groups have been united in their allegiance to former President Donald J. Trump. ...”

NY Times

******NY Times - The Lost Hours: How Confusion and Inaction at the Capitol Delayed a Troop Deployment

2021 February: 77 days: Trump’s campaign to subvert the election

A Collision at Anfield Does Little to Slow Liverpool’s Fall

 

Mohamed Salah cut down by Tom Davies, a fair reflection of Liverpool’s afternoon, its month, its season.

“LIVERPOOL, England — It is every week, now, that Liverpool seems to lose another little piece of itself. An unbeaten home record that stretched back more than three years disappeared in January, spirited away by Burnley. The sense of Anfield as a fortress collapsed soon after, stormed in short order by Brighton and then by Manchester City. The golden afterglow of the long-awaited Premier League crown that arrived last summer has been dimming for some time, but it darkened for good last week, with Jürgen Klopp conceding the Premier League title while still in the bitter grip of winter. And then, as fireworks boomed and car horns blared across Merseyside on Saturday evening, came what may be the most hurtful shift of all. Everton had not tasted victory at Anfield this century. ...”

NY Times

Jazz On Film...Michel Legrand

 

“Celebrating the life of the legend that is Michel Legrand and music for the New Era, this stunning stand-alone collection, compiled by label owner Jason Lee Lazell for Record Store Day 2020, features the jazz cuts from some of the most iconic films of the French New Wave era….  Michel has collaborated with jazz greats such as, Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan, Bud Shank, Lena Horne and in later times, contemporary artists such as  Iggy Pop, Carla Bruni, Rufus Wainwright, Jamie Cullum, Madeline Peyroux… Legrand’s songwriting skills flowered in the early 1950s through intimate acquaintance with the modern chanson movement in Paris, at first as a gifted piano accompanist. ...”

Moochin' About (Audio)

W - Michel Legrand

Modern Painters - John Ruskin (1843–1860)

 

“Modern Painters (1843–1860) is a five-volume work by the eminent Victorian art critic, John Ruskin, begun when he was 24 years old based on material collected in Switzerland in 1842. Ruskin argues that recent painters emerging from the tradition of the picturesque are superior in the art of landscape to the old masters. The book was primarily written as a defense of the later work of J.M.W. Turner. Ruskin used the book to argue that art should devote itself to the accurate documentation of nature. In Ruskin's view, Turner had developed from early detailed documentation of nature to a later more profound insight into natural forces and atmospheric effects. In this way, Modern Painters reflects ‘Landscape and Portrait-Painting’ (1829) by American art critic John Neal by distinguishing between ‘things seen by the artist’ and ‘things as they are.’ ...”

W - Modern Painters

Radicals On Film: The Intertwining Legacies Of John Ruskin & Peter Fuller (Video)

Gutenberg - Modern Painters

amazon

2014 March: John Ruskin

The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858-9.

Saint John Coltrane: The San Francisco Church Built On A Love Supreme

 

“Little of San Francisco today is as it was half a century ago. But at the corner of Turk Boulevard and Lyon Street stands a true survivor: the Church of St. John Coltrane. Though officially founded in 1971, the roots of this unique musical-religious institution (previously featured here on Open Culture) go back further still. ‘It was our first wedding anniversary, September 18, 1965 and we celebrated the occasion by going to the Jazz Workshop,’ write founders Franzo and Marina King on the Church’s web site. ‘When John Coltrane came onto the stage we could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit moving with him.’ Overcome with the sense that Coltrane was playing directly to them, ‘we did not talk to each other during the performance because we were caught up in what later would be known as our Sound Baptism.’ Or as Marina puts it in this new short documentary from NPR’s Jazz Night in America, ‘The holy ghost fell in a jazz club in 1965, and our lives were changed forever.’ ...”

Open Culture (Video)

2011 November: John Coltrane Quartet, Live at Jazz Casual, 1963, 2012 March: John Coltrane 1960 - 1965, 2012 September: "Naima" (1959), 2012 October: Blue Train (1957), 2013 April: The World According to John Coltrane, 2013 November: A Love Supreme (1965), 2014 July: New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot, 2014 November: Coltrane’s Free Jazz Wasn’t Just “A Lot of Noise”, 2015 February: Lush Life (1958), 2015 May: An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”, 2015 July: Afro Blue Impressions (2013), 2015 September: Impressions of Coltrane, 2015 December: Giant Steps (1960), 2016 January: Crescent (1964), 2016 April: The Church of Saint John Coltrane, 2016 July: Soultrane (1958), 2016 December: Dakar (1957), 2017 July: The John Coltrane Record That Made Modern Music, 2017 October: Live at the Village Vanguard (1962), 2017 December: Interview: Archie Shepp on John Coltrane, the Blues and More, 2018 March: Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago (1959), 2018 June: Lost John Coltrane Recording From 1963 Will Be Released at Last, 2018 July: Stream Online the Complete “Lost” John Coltrane Album, Both Directions at Once, 2018 November: Jazz Deconstructed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Groundbreaking and Radical?, 2020 January: John Coltrane’s Handwritten Outline for His Masterpiece A Love Supreme

Paul Delaroche - The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833)

 

“British history looks bloody and macabre in this painting of the last moments of Jane Grey, who was installed on the throne for just a few days to preserve a Protestant succession before being overthrown by Henry VIII’s eldest daughter, Mary. Delaroche spares no pathetic detail. She shakes with horror in her matching silk dress and blindfold as her ladies in waiting wail and swoon. Even the executioner feels the tragedy of it. Delaroche often homed in on the violence of the British past and its grim stage, the Tower of London, where this is set: he also depicted the young 15th-century princes murdered in the Tower, probably by their uncle, Richard III. But appearances can be deceptive. While he choses to project his nightmares on the British past he is clearly also representing a more recent French history. For Lady Jane Grey, read Queen Marie-Antoinette going to the guillotine. ...”

National Gallery

W - The Execution of Lady Jane Grey

Jardin des plantes

 

“The Jardin des plantes (French for ‘Garden of the Plants’), also known as the Jardin des plantes de Paris when distinguished from other jardins des plantes in other cities, is the main botanical garden in France. The term Jardin des plantes is the official name in the present day, but it is in fact an elliptical form of Jardin royal des plantes médicinales (’Royal Garden of the Medicinal Plants‘), which is related to the original purpose of the garden back in the 17th century. Headquarters of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (National Museum of Natural History), the Jardin des plantes is situated in the 5th arrondissement, Paris, on the left bank of the river Seine, and covers 28 hectares (280,000 m²). Since 24 March 1993, the entire garden and its contained buildings, archives, libraries, greenhouses, ménagerie (a zoo), works of art, and specimens' collection are classified as a national historical landmark in France (labelled monument historique). ...”

Wikipedia

Scanner Modulates the Source

 

“... Scanner found the spectacle in the everyday. And so it was a huge pleasure today when one of Scanner’s old voices appeared in a new piece, albeit a brief one. Today is Fat Tuesday, and perhaps by chance or perhaps by perfect design, the music synthesizer company Mutable Instruments, based in Paris, France, released a new module called Beads (having lived in New Orleans for four years, I found the connection natural, but it was likely coincidence). The module had clearly already been in the hands of many forward-thinking synthesizer musicians for some time, because right on cue YouTube and Instagram (as of this evening, I couldn’t find any on Vimeo) were filled with video demonstrations of this new module’s features. ...”

disquiet (Video)

2012 October: Scanner, 2015 December: Robin Rimbaud (Scanner), 2017 September: The Great Crater (2017), 2018 January: Podcast 523: Scanner, 2019 September: scanner - Unearthly Powers (2019), 2020 May: Tonspur: Artists in Isolation Live

The Universal Appeal of Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love” Image

 

“When people think of the most influential artists in punk, there are some obvious options. You’ve got the Clash, The Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, Joy Division, Black Flag, Fugazi. But a band that get overlooked for their considerable influence is the Buzzcocks. Think about it. Their 1977 Spiral Scratch EP was the first independently released punk record, which fused the idea of DIY to the punk ethos. It set a precedent for bands releasing their own music, their New Hormones label predating Rough Trade, SST, Touch and Go, Subpop and Dischord. Guitarist Pete Shelley and original frontman Howard Devoto also booked the Sex Pistols to play their first Manchester gig, making the band not just a London scene blip but a national presence, as well as kickstarting the Manchester punk/indie scene. Plus for better or worst, they invented pop punk and did it better than any other band since. But for this video Trash Theory will be focusing on their greatest moment: ‘Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)’.”

That Eric Alper (Video)

2017 May: Singles Going Steady (1979)

Il Maestro By Martin Scorsese: Federico Fellini and the lost magic of cinema

 

 

“Ext. 8TH Street - Late afternoon (C. 1959). Camera in nonstop motion  is on the shoulder of a young man, late teens, intently walking west on a busy Greenwich Village thoroughfare. Under one arm, he’s carrying books. In his other hand, a copy of The Village Voice. He walks quickly, past men in coats and hats, women with scarves over their heads pushing collapsible shopping carts, couples holding hands, and poets and hustlers and musicians and winos, past drugstores, liquor stores, delis, apartment buildings. ... He cuts back east on West 4th past Kettle of Fish and Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square South, where a man in a threadbare suit is handing out leaflets: Anita Ekberg in furs, and La Dolce Vita is opening at a legitimate theater on Broadway, with reserved seats for sale at Broadway ticket prices! ...”

Harpers

2017 March: Roma (1972), 2017 September: Fellini Satyricon (1969)

Fania Records

 

DJ Turmix

“Fania Records is a New York based record label founded by Dominican-born composer and bandleader Johnny Pacheco and Brooklyn born Italian-American ex-New York City Police Officer turned lawyer Jerry Masucci in 1964. The label took its name from a popular luncheonette frequented by musicians in Havana, Cuba that Masucci frequented when he worked for a public relations firm there during the pre-Castro era. Fania is known for its promotion of Salsa music. Frustrated by the meager amount of money he was receiving for his recordings, Pacheco started Fania in 1964 and sold records to music stores out of the trunk of his car. ... Among Fania's signature stars are: Willie Colon, Celia Cruz, Eric Gale, Larry Harlow, Ray Barretto, Ralfi Pagan, Luis ‘Perico’ Ortiz, Bobby Valentín, Rubén Blades, Héctor Lavoe, Cheo Feliciano, Adalberto Santiago, Ismael Miranda and many others. ...”

Wikipedia

YouTube: Fania Vinyl Sets (ft DJ Turmix) - SALSA 30:17, Boogaloo #1 28:59, Boogaloo #2 31:07, Boogaloo #3 31:02, Boogaloo #4 27:26, Latin Funk 28:38

2011 November: Charlie Palmieri, 2014 March: Harlem River Drive - Harlem River Drive (1971), 2014 October: Fania at Fifty, 2017 December: Nu Yorica: Culture Clash In New York City - Experiments in Latin Music 1970-77, 2018 December: Latin Underground Revolution: Swinging Boogaloo, Guaguanco, Salsa & Latin Funk from New York City 1967-1978, 2017 June: Eddie Palmieri - Unfinished Masterpiece (1976), 2018 July: The Soul Of Spanish Harlem / El Barrio: Sounds from the Spanish Harlem Streets, 2011 June: Mario Bauzá, 2017 June: Rhythm & Power: Salsa in New York, 2012 February: Rubén Blades, 2017 December: Carlos Vera: Barcelona's Boogaloo: Mixes and Mashups, 2019 April: An NYC Mambo, Boogaloo and Salsa Family Tree, 2019 October: Best Fania Samples: 20 Latin Grooves That Helped Build Hip-Hop

The Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky (1986)

 

"The Society of Mind is both the title of a 1986 book and the name of a theory of natural intelligence as written and developed by Marvin Minsky. In his book of the same name, Minsky constructs a model of human intelligence step by step, built up from the interactions of simple parts called agents, which are themselves mindless. He describes the postulated interactions as constituting a 'society of mind', hence the title. The work, which first appeared in 1986, was the first comprehensive  description of Minsky's 'society of mind' theory, which he began  developing in the early 1970s. ... He develops theories about how  processes such as language, memory, and learning work, and also covers concepts such as consciousness, the sense of self, and free will; because of this, many view The Society of Mind as a work of philosophy. ..."

Wikipedia

The Society of Mind: Written by Marvin Minsky. Formatted for the web by Dylan Holmes. (Video)

[PDF] Society of Mind

amazon

YouTube: Marvin Minsky: Mind As Society (excerpt) - Thinking Allowed DVD w/ Jeffrey Mishlove, Interview with Marvin Minsky, Kurzweil Interviews Minsky: Is Singularity Near?

First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack.

 

“At least six people who had provided security for Roger Stone entered the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, according to a New York Times investigation. Videos show the group guarding Mr. Stone, a longtime friend of former President Donald J. Trump, on the day of the attack or the day before. All six of them are associated with the Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia that is known to provide security for right-wing personalities and protesters at public events. ...”

NY Times

W - Oath Keepers

NY Times - ‘This Kettle Is Set to Boil’: New Evidence Points to Riot Conspiracy (Video - Jan. 2021)

The Atlantic: A Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans (Nov. 2020)

Narcisse-Virgilio Díaz de la Peña, The Storm, 1871

 

“This brooding landscape was painted in the wake of the defeat of France by Prussia, at a time of national crisis and soul-searching. You can see it in that low, heavy, apocalyptic sky. Díaz had Spanish parents but they died when he was a child and he grew up in Paris. He was part of a pioneering landscape school who liked to paint around Fontainebleau, mixing emotional romanticism with rough on-the-spot realism. This is a haunting example of his poetic feel for the gusts and vapours of the changing woods and fields.“

National Gallery

W - Narcisse-Virgilio Díaz de la Peña

Horse Money - Pedro Costa (2015)

 

“’We’ll keep on falling from the third floor. We’ll keep on being severed by the machines. Our head and lungs will still hurt the same… We’ll be burned… We’ll go crazy. It’s all the mould in the walls of our houses… We have always lived and we will always die like this. It’s our sickness.’ This is how one of a congregated group of Cape Verdean immigrant labourers describe their lot in Pedro Costa’s Horse Money, a film that might be subtitled ‘A Universal History of Poverty’. Costa’s film begins with an overture of images by the Danish-American photographer Jacob Riis, showing the bare, stifling tenements of New York City a century ago, yet not so far from the scenes in the Fontainhas slums in Lisbon to which Costa has returned time and again. This precedes Horse Money’s ‘contemporary’ narrative, which begins with Costa’s star and muse Ventura, wearing nothing but a pair of red briefs, descending a gloomy stairwell into the bowels of what at first looks like a stone-walled medieval dungeon, though from one shot to another it may change to appear as a clean, modern hospital. ...”

Sight & Sound

Film of the Week: Horse Money

Horse Money: An Interview with Pedro Costa

Pedro Costa on the Mysteries of ‘Horse Money,’ Films About Forgetting, and Bart Simpson

W - Horse Money

YouTube: HORSE MONEY - New UK trailer

2010 May: Pedro Costa, 2020 October: Vitalina Varela (2019)

Pedro Costa

David Macaulay: Building A Mill Town

 

“The Heritage Winooski Mill Museum is pleased to present a selection of David Macaulay’s original illustrations of mill town landscapes and waterpower technology from his book MILL (1983). Pages from the authors sketch book show his process for researching and developing both the storyline and images for the fictional mill town of Wicksbridge. Through his detailed studies of the mechanics and architecture of real historic mills, Macaulay's illustrations brings us on a journey through time to gain a deeper understanding of how New England mill towns evolved. As you look through the exhibit, you may notice some similarities to the Champlain Mill and other mill structures in the Winooski mill district and Vermont. ...”

The Mill Museum (Video)

Burlington's Manufacturing Heritage along the Winooski River

W - Winooski Falls Mill District

amazon

Harry Sword - Monolithic Undertow

 

“... Many ancient instruments – didgeridoo, bullroarer, carnyx – produced sustained tones, while the ancient Greeks evoked the delirium of Dionysus with the drone of the Aulos pipes. Indeed, religious practice all over the world, from the sacred Buddhist Om to haunting Gregorian chant, continues, as it has done for centuries, to centre the drone as a sonic enabler of meditative transcendence. In Monolithic Undertow, I trace the drone from those ancient beginnings through the 20th century, where it underpinned sounds of many divergent persuasions – not limited to the New York minimalist ley line that linked the Theatre of Eternal Music to the Velvet Underground; the vital influence of Ravi Shankar’s sitar drone on the ecstatic jazz of Alice Coltrane and the Beatles nascent psychedelic experiments; the punk axis that leads from the Stooges to Sonic Youth; and the physical metallic bass weight of Earth and Sunn O))). ...”

Guardian - No drone unturned: tracing the sound that unites ancient and modern (Video)

Harry Sword brings Monolithic Undertow to White Rabbit

audible (Audio)

Scientist ‎– ...The Dub Album They Didn't Want You To Hear!

 

“King Tubby protege Scientist knew a thing or two about dubbing in the '70s and '80s - he knocked out enough albums to prove the point, most of which were dark chest-rumbling escapades beyond the mixing desk borne out of street dances and smoke-filled bars. Jah Life, King Tubby, Radics and Scientist himself became synonymous with hard-hitting studio sessions, both for themselves and as guest mixers for reggae royalty. One lesser-known artist was the no-less important Flick Wilson whose School Days album forms the basis of the dubs here. Culled from various 1980's sessions and studio lock-ins, The Dub Album They Didn't Want You To Hear is an exemplary exercise in authentic Jamaican roots-reggae enriched by Scientist's deft manipulation of mixing-desks and echo-chambers - the man's a monster. ...”

Peek-a-Boo

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: The Dub Album They Didn't Want You To Hear

the artwork - Oral History: Barbara Kruger

 

“What started out as a protest poster rejected by the organisers of a women’s-rights march on Washington DC in 1989 went on to become an iconic 20th-century artwork. Transcending politics, national borders and the logistics of fly-posting, Barbara Kruger’s ‘Untitled (Your Body Is a Battleground)’ is now an internationally recognised call to arms for social justice in all its diversity. This is the story of the making of an American masterpiece. ...”

the gentlewoman

2008 February: Barbara Kruger, 2013 February: The Globe Shrinks, Barbara Kruger, 2014 June: Barbara Kruger at Modern Art Oxford

 

The campaign: “Untitled (Your Body Is a Battleground)” poster fly-posted in New York City, 1989.

Carl Jung: Tarot Cards Provide Doorways to the Unconscious, and Maybe a Way to Predict the Future

 

“It is generally accepted that the standard deck of playing cards we use for everything from three-card monte to high-stakes Vegas poker evolved from the Tarot. ‘Like our modern cards,’ writes Sallie Nichols, ‘the Tarot deck has four suits with ten ‘pip’ or numbered cards in each…. In the Tarot deck, each suit has four ‘court’ cards: King, Queen, Jack, and Knight.’ The latter figure has ‘mysteriously disappeared from today’s playing cards,’ though examples of Knight playing cards exist in the fossil record. ... The eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung, however, might have done so. ...”

Open Culture

Impeachment Trial Updates: Prosecution Recreates Capitol Riot Using Explicit, Never-Before-Seen Video

 

“House Democrats prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday showed disturbing, never-before-seen video footage of his supporters rampaging into the Capitol last month and searching for former Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to harm or even kill them. In powerful images played for a silent, sober Senate chamber, the House managers put the horror of the Jan. 6 siege on vivid display as rioters smashed their way into the building, overwhelmed police officers and marched through the halls seeking to stop the counting of the Electoral College votes and hunt down those perceived as Mr. Trump’s antagonists. The footage from Capitol security cameras showed Mr. Pence, who alienated Mr. Trump’s supporters by refusing to try to overturn the election, being rushed by Secret Service officers down a staircase to escape invaders calling for his death. Ms. Pelosi’s staff members were shown barricading themselves into an office just minutes before the mob arrived and tried to break down the door. ...”

NY Times (Video)

The Sopranos Sessions - Matt Zoller Seitz, Alan Sepinwall (2019)

 

“... This is how David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, described the legacy of his most famous body of work to Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall during one of the many coffee-house round-tables they convened for The Sopranos Sessions, a weighty tome –  filled with recaps, discussions, dissections, analyses, insights, and interviews – being released this week to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the transmission of the show’s first episode. Chase’s shoot-from-the-hip, fatalistic world-view is often a dead ringer for that of his most famous fictional creation’s, depressed mob boss Tony Soprano. Tony would almost certainly have assessed his own existence in the same terms as Chase does the show’s. Namely: ‘It’s all a big nothing.’ ...”

The Sopranos Sessions Review: A 5-Star Tribute to a 5-Star Show

Does Tony Live or Die at the End of The Sopranos?

[PDF] The Sopranos Sessions

amazon

2020 July: The Sopranos - Season 1, 2020 July: Season 2, 2020 August: Season 3, 2020 August: Season 4, 2020 September: Season 5, 2020 December: Season 6

Jeannine Schulz’s “Rooms and Surfaces I”

 

Rooms, Surfaces And A Painting

“Here’s another fine piece from Jeannine Schulz, whose ’Intense’ I wrote about earlier this week. Like that track, this new one, posted just today, ‘Rooms and Surfaces I,’ shows an internal development, a means of altering over time, that is often lacking in standalone SoundCloud ambient recordings. What makes it so special to listen to is how that change occurs according to some unheard metronome, in phases whose distinct qualities are imperceptible as they shift, but are fully recognizable when you scan through the piece, dropping the metaphoric needle here and there: first the rising drones, then heart-pulsing percussion, then that same rhythm rendered as a glitch-like filter, later a halo effect an octave higher, then an octave higher still, then a cello-like line slow and mournful. ...”

disquiet (Audio)

SoundCloud (Audio)

Bandcamp (Audio)

Tides

A forgotten artist and the city’s ‘terrible beauty’

 

“Downtown Street,” 1926

“Glenn O. Coleman’s career as a celebrated Gotham illustrator and painter was a short one. Born in Ohio in 1887, he grew up in Indiana and arrived in Manhattan in 1905 to attend the New York School of Art, studying under Robert Henri and Everett Shinn. Coleman earned a name for himself in the 1910s and 1920s city art scene with ‘personal depictions of simple, struggling humanity,’ as the Spellman Gallery put it. His illustrations (some of which he made into lithographs) and paintings reflected the subject matter of his Ashcan teachers: Bowery bums, election night bonfires, slum kids, cops, criminals, ‘silk-hatted tourists,’ bar stool sitters, and other denizens of Lower Manhattan’s pockets and corners, typically at night. ...”

Ephemeral New York

Whitney

 

“Coenties Slip,” 1928

Stambali: the last dance with the spirits

 

“Stombali, stambali or stambeli… The origin of the word is multiple and imprecise. Some suggest a reference to ‘Istanbul’ – in Arabic, stambali means ‘who comes from Istanbul’ – while others think that the term derives from ‘stambeli’, which describes an ensemble of possession rituals among certain Nilo-Saharan peoples, such as the Songhai: ‘we can safely say that the stambeli is a cult, or more precisely a type of African rite, modified yet embraced by Islam,’ explains Amine Metani. A musician and founder of the electronic trance label Shouka, Amine – much like Tunisian producer Ghoula and artists of the Arabstazy collective – draws largely on influences within this sound shrouded by secrecy. ...”

PAM 

 Nefta, in the Tunisian Djerid. Mohamed, a guardian of the sanctuary of Saint Sidi Merzoug, devoted to the spirits of the Banga, wears the clothes of Bou Saadiya, a mythological character within the stambali community. He holds a pair of chkacheks – a metallic percussion instrument that forms an essential part of the ceremony. 

Ronald Shannon Jackson & The Decoding Society - Mandance (1982)

 

“... [Ronald Shannon] Jackson formed his band, The Decoding Society, in 1979, as a showcase for his blend of avant-garde jazz, rock, funk, and ethnic music. The instrumentation and arrangements, along with Jackson's compositions and drum style, brought The Decoding Society critical acclaim. Although considered to be part of the ‘new fusion’ movement that emerged from Ornette Coleman's harmolodic concepts, Jackson was able to implement a voice of his own. The Decoding Society's music can be hot, savage, and danceable, or cool, gentle, and contemplative. American, Eastern, and African sounds are distilled under Jackson's guidance. Meters, feels, tempos, and stylistic references are heard throughout different compositions; many times within a single piece of music. ...”

W - The Decoding Society and Other Projects

W - Mandance

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: Man Dance, Catman, Alice In The Congo

YouTube: Ronald Shannon Jackson Decoding Society Montreux 1983 28:38

Life on Venus? The Picture Gets Cloudier

 

A false-color view of Venus taken by Japan’s Akatsuki Venus Climate Orbiter in 2018.

“A team of astronomers made a blockbuster claim in the fall. They said they had discovered compelling evidence pointing to life floating in the clouds of Venus. If true, that would be stunning. People have long gazed into the cosmos and wondered whether something is alive out there. For an affirmative answer to pop up on the planet in the orbit next to Earth’s would suggest that life is not rare in the universe, but commonplace. The astronomers, led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales, could not see any microscopic Venusians with their telescopes on Earth. Rather, in a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, they reported the detection of a molecule called phosphine and said they could come up with no plausible explanation for how it could form there except as the waste product of microbes. ...”

NY Times

 

A colorized mosaic of the surface of Venus, seen through its clouds by the Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s.