The Rumba Kings

 

“The Rumba Kings, a documentary film by Alan Brain that traces the history of Congolese rumba and its contribution to world music, is finally being released. North American audiences will be the first to see it when it is broadcast online at the DOXA festival in Vancouver. This will take place on 6th May – don’t miss it! Without doubt the hour-and-a-half-long film is the one that all you music lovers have been waiting for.  Why is that? Well first, because it pays tribute and does justice to this original sound, born of the meeting between Congolese and Cuban rhythms after the slave trade had scattered the children of Africa all over the lands of America. ...”

PAN - The Rumba Kings: Film gets world premier at DOXA festival (Video)

Africa Is a Country: Musically, Congo is the mothership

Alan Brain on Congo Music Documentary: "The Rumba Kings" (Video)

YouTube: The Rumba Kings - Trailer

​College Basketball Begins With Plenty of Changes

 

“A showcase in Madison Square Garden raised the curtain on the men’s college basketball season on Tuesday night, with No. 9 Duke beating Kentucky, 79-71, and No. 3 Kansas topping Michigan State, 87-74, in front of a big crowd ‘“To be on this stage, be in this moment, lead my team to a win — that’s why I came back,’ said Ochai Agbaji of Kansas, who led the Jayhawks with 29 points after spending part of the off-season considering whether to enter the N.B.A. draft. The games begin a 2021-22 season that is likely to look much different from last season because of changes in the game and players switching teams. ...”

NY Times

ESPN - 2021-22 men's college basketball preview: Preseason picks, rankings, complete coverage

CBS Sports - United States of College Basketball 2021-22: Where every team ranks in each state, from top to bottom

SI - Ranking Every Team in Men’s College Basketball, From Gonzaga (No. 1) to UMES (No. 358)

Top Freshman in College Basketball 2021-2022

The Ringer - The Legend of Chet Holmgren, 7-Foot String Bean, Has Just Begun (Video)

W - 2021–22 NCAA Division I men's basketball season

Coffee and Climate Have a Complicated Relationship

 

A cupping session at Los Papales, a coffee farm in Jinotega, Nicaragua.

“Wilston Vilchez, a third-generation coffee farmer in the mountains of Nicaragua, has witnessed drastic climatic changes on his 25-acre coffee and cacao farm for years, but when two hurricanes hit within 15 days last year, many other farmers he knows realized they needed to be part of the solution. ... Mr. Vilchez, who also manages an agricultural cooperative of about 300 farmers, said that the effects of climate change — rising temperatures, less predictable rainfall, wild swings from drought to flooding, new pests and more — were making it more and more difficult to earn a living from coffee, an experience felt by farmers around the world. ...”

NY Times

2010 September: Espresso, 2013 April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo, 2015 November: The Case for Bad Coffee, 2016 January: 101 Places to Find Great Coffee in New York (2014), 2017 June: How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business, 2017 September: Our 7 Favorite Literary Coffee Shops, 2017 October: Clever Literary Coffee Poster, 2017 October: Coffee as Existential Statement: A Crisis in Every Cup on Valencia Street, 2018 February: The Trencherman: A Tale of Two Coffee Shops, 2020 April: Unfair trade, April 2020: A (Very) Brief History of NYC Espresso, 2020 May: The Islamic History of Coffee, 2021 January: The Life Cycle of a Cup of Coffee: The Journey from Coffee Bean, to Coffee Cup, 2021 June: Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard, 2021 July:  The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?, August 2021: The Birth of Espresso: How the Coffee Shots The Fuel Our Modern Life Were Invented, 2021 October: Brew: A Brief History of Coffee

 

Sacks of coffee in the Zona de los Santos area of Costa Rica.

How Kraftwerk Made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

 

Ralf Hütter, left, Florian Schneider, Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos of Kraftwerk in 1981.

“... In this vein, we might call German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk a ‘seminal matrix’ of musical activity, an economy of creative work led by two fathers — Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter  — who midwived a techno/electro revolution, and — indirectly — through early spin-off projects like NEU!, an experimental post-punk/New Wave revolution. The best known of the ‘Krautrock’ bands to emerge in the 1970s, early versions of Kraftwerk included in its ranks German producer Conny Plank (unofficially) as well as drummer Klaus Dinger, and guitarist Michael Rother, both of whom went on to play in the aforementioned NEU! and ‘seminal’ avant-garde bands like Harmonia and La Düsseldorf. ...”

Open Culture (Video)

NY Times: A Techno Group Wary of Technology

2008 April: Kraftwerk, 2011 March: Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution, 2011 March: Kraftwerk - Documentary, 2011 April: Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany, 2011 May: Autobahn, 2011 October: Trans-Europe Express, 2012 February: Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, 2012 October: Radio-Activity, 2014 May: "The Telephone Call" (1987), 2014 November: Kraftwerk - live at Cirkus, Stockholm, 2020 September: Tour de France Soundtracks (2003), 2020 October: Fassbinder and Kraftwerk: A Marriage Made in a New Germany

​Football Manager 2022

 

“Welcome, friend. Welcome to a brave new world. Forget about the metaverse — Football Manager is the only alternative reality people like us will ever need. For here, within the confines of our laptops, we can live our dreams, write our stories and be the people we always knew we could be. But, by thunder, there’s a lot going on, isn’t there? Stick with me and I’ll guide you through it. We’re going to strip it all down and work on the basics. So start a new game, select career mode and, for the sake of argument, pick Tottenham Hotspur and hit ‘Quick Start’. There will be a short pause as your computer rumbles through the set-up process. Use this time to remind yourself that nothing good comes easily. …”

FM22: The definitive beginner’s guide to Football Manager

Football Manager 2022 (Video)

Football Manager 2022: The 20 best non-European teams to manage in the new game

FM22: Managing Newcastle United on Football Manager (Part 1)

Football Manager 2022 wonderkids: The 20 best young players to sign in FM22

Football Manager 2022: The 20 best teams to manage in the new game

Michael Gibbs & NDR Bigband - In My View (2015)

 

“... With In My View, and forty years after first working with the NDR Bigband, Zimbabwe-born arranger, composer and musician Michael Gibbs returns with one of his most personal statements. Roughly divided between originals and arrangements of compositions by Ron Carter, Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk and Carla Bley, the NDR Bigband is joined by guest drummers Gene Calderazzo and Adam Nussbaum in what surely ranks as a definitive entry in Gibbs' discography to date. Gibbs' compositions explore strikingly different terrain. ...”

All About Jazz

Bandcamp (Audio)

Discogs

amazon

YouTube: ‘Tis As It Should Be

​Roadrunning: Joshua Clover in Conversation with Alex Abramovich

Jonathan Richman around 1972, with Modern Lovers

“What follows is part of an email exchange between Alex Abramovich and Joshua Clover about Jonathan Richman’s song ‘Roadrunner.’ Their conversation takes the scenic route, beginning with a materialist definition of rock ’n’ roll and ending by arguing over the Velvet Underground (too ironic? Too elitist?). Along the way, they touch on the nature of influence, poetry versus criticism, art versus revolution, the specificity of rock ’n’ roll freedom, and what it means to drive with no way out. ...”

The Paris Review

Judge Rejects Trump’s Bid to Keep Papers Secret in Jan. 6 Inquiry

 

Former President Donald J. Trump can assert executive privilege, a judge ruled, but President Biden is not obliged to honor that assertion.

“A federal judge on Tuesday night rejected a bid by former President Donald J. Trump to keep secret papers about his actions and conversations leading up to and during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters.In a 39-page ruling, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that Congress’s constitutional oversight powers to obtain the information prevailed over Mr. Trump’s residual secrecy powers — especially because the incumbent, President Biden, agreed that lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6 riot should see the files. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: At the Willard and the White House, the Jan. 6 Panel Widens Its Net

NY Times: Trump Officials Illegally Campaigned While in Office, Watchdog Finds

****NY Times: Swift Ruling Tests Trump’s Tactic of Running Out the Clock

***NY Times: Man Sentenced to 41 Months for Assaulting Officer in Capitol Riot

2021 February: 77 days: Trump’s campaign to subvert the election, 2021 February: First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack., 2021 February: A Small Group of Militants’ Outsize Role in the Capitol Attack , 2021 March: Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol, 2021 March: ‘We’ve Lost the Line!’: Radio Traffic Reveals Police Under Siege at Capitol, 2021 April: Capitol Police Told to Hold Back on Riot Response on Jan. 6, Report Finds, 2021 May:  Trump Is Marching Down the Road to Political Violence, 2021 June: Senate Report Details Security Failures in Jan. 6 Capitol Riot, 2021 July: Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol, 2021 July: ‘A hit man sent them.’ Police at the Capitol recount the horrors of Jan. 6 as the inquiry begins., 2021 September: Among Those Who Marched Into the Capitol on Jan. 6: An F.B.I. Informant, 2021 October: Jan. 6 Was Worse Than We Knew, 2021 October: 90 Seconds of Rage

Downtown 81 - Edo Bertoglio (1980-81)

 

“Downtown 81, a ‘lost’ no-budget film shot on location in Manhattan some nineteen years ago, finally had its debut last month, at Cannes. Directed by Edo Bertoglio and written by Glenn O’Brien, this lighthearted document of the East Village scene stars a twenty-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat as himself, with countless hipster cameos, including hip-hop pioneer Fab Five Freddie, ’80s Fiorucci designer (and the film’s producer) Maripol, record-label guy Marty Thau, and Blondie chanteuse Debbie Harry as the fairy princess. But the real star of the film is the gritty milieu of a New York long gone. A lot has happened in nineteen years. Now that the Lower East Side has become something of an Epcot simulacrum of itself, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic for Ye Olde Loisaida’s antique bohemian realities: brazen dope dealers, trash-strewn lots connecting burned-out buildings, artist-musician inhabitants lugging their own equipment to gigs. ...”

ARTFORUM

GQ: Downtown 81 Will Help You Understand Your ‘80s NYC Nostalgia (Video)

W - Downtown 81

Criterion (Video)

Discogs: Downtown 81 (Video)

YouTube: Downtown 81 Clip - "New York Is My Kind of Town"

2013 April: Saving Basquiat: Seeing the Art Through the Myth-Making at Gagosian, 2015 February: Now's the Time, 2015 May: Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks, 2015 December: The Notebooks, 2017 June: New Art, New Money (February 10, 1985)

Dark Waters - Todd Haynes (2019)

 

“Dark Waters is a 2019 American legal thriller film directed by Todd Haynes and written by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan. The story dramatizes Robert Bilott's case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont after they contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals. It stars Mark Ruffalo as Bilott, along with Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, William Jackson Harper, and Bill Pullman. The film is based on the 2016 New York Times Magazine article ‘The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare’ by Nathaniel Rich. ...”

Wikipedia

The Atlantic: A Chilling True Story of Corporate Indifference

NY Times - ‘Dark Waters’ Review: The Killing Fields of West Virginia (Video)

Slate: What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Dark Waters

amazon

YouTube: DARK WATERS | Official Trailer

2016 April: Carol (2015), 2016 April: Far from Heaven (2002), 2016 July: Mildred Pierce - Kate Winslet (2011)

​The mystery of the “same sky” postcards

 

“James Brouwer has been collecting postcards for more than 30 years. His collection numbers over 11,000; images of old-age homes, ugly restaurants, onlookers, and 1960s advertising are neatly organized in boxes in his Canadian home. But James started to notice that some of his postcards — dozens, in fact — appeared to have the exact same sky. Looking even closer, he noticed that the same-sky postcards were all made by one publisher: Dexter Press out of West Nyack, New York. ...”

VOX (Video)

​Guest Mix: Arabic Tapes and Records with Habibi Funk

 

“Jannis from Habibi Funk played some awesome gems from his Berlin flat on My Analog Journal guest mix. As a collector and music lover, Zag is a huge fan of his label and him as a selector, owning almost all of the releases that they release. Last week when Jannis asked if he can make a guest mix for the channel, Zag was thrilled! In this mix, you will hear some legends like Ziad Rahbani and Ahmed Fakroun. And he’s playing both tapes and records. Honestly, we enjoyed every second of it and hope you will too. ...”

Arabic Tapes and Records with Habibi Funk (Video)

SoundCloud (Audio)

2017 June: Ahmed Malek and Other Treasures From Habibi Funk’s North African Crate - Digging Expeditions, 2017 July: Lebanon: Various artists - Jakarta Radio 010 Mix, 2017 December: From the Counter: Beirut, 2018 June: "Habibi Funk 001 Mix" by Jannis of Jakarta Records (Mix of Arabic 60s & 70s), 2019 September: Habibi Funk, the label playing hide and seek in Medina, 2021 January: Habibi Funk’s Musical Revivals

​Down and out in George Orwell’s Paris: A guide to the secret Paname

 

“To begin our guide to Paris: the city of love, luminosity and four macaroons for a mortgageable fee — we start with a little-known condition called Kalopsia. This alluring word denotes the delusion of things appearing more beautiful than they actually are. It is commonly induced in Asian tourists when visiting the French capital owing to a sizeable smack of a Parisian culture shock. That is not to say that Kalopsia sufferers overrate the beauty of the Sine or marvel a little too much at the Eiffel Tower, but that they sport such rose-tinted eyes that coughed out phlegm on the pavement is transfigured into a tramp’s oyster that somehow represents an abstraction of civility. ...”

Far Out Magazine (Video)

W - Down and Out in Paris and London

2011 July: Spanish Civil War - 75 Year, 18 July, 2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother), 2012 June: "The Spanish Earth", Written and Narrated by Ernest Hemingway, 2013 January: The Real George Orwell, 2015 August: Songs of the Spanish Civil War, 2016 September: George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia (1938), 2017 January: Guernica (2016), 2019 September: What Makes Guernica So Shocking? An Animated Video Explores the Impact of Picasso’s Monumental Anti-War Mural

 

Cafe du Dome

Driving by the Lake With John Ashbery

 

“It was convenient for John Ashbery, and dumb luck for me, that I was living in Rochester and could pick him up at the airport whenever he arrived from New York to visit his mother. Sometimes, because he didn’t like to fly, he’d arrive at the bus station instead; but I could meet him there too. It was an arrangement from which we both might profit, he explained, not profit in the American sense but in a way best expressed if you said it in French, profiter de. And thus we began my unexpected education, a kind of improvised fellowship with visiting tutor and bonus bits of wisdom delivered in French. ...”

LitHub: By Douglas Crase (October 28, 2020)

​When the Solution Is the Problem

 

That split-second when everyone thinks the ends justify the means.

“Not once, in two decades, had David Beckham heard the moment. He had witnessed it at the time, of course. More than that, in fact: He had summoned it and created it and lived it. He had, presumably, watched the moment more than once in the intervening years, too. But it was not until a couple weeks ago that he sat down and listened to it. The moment he did was — obviously — captured for posterity, a social media post as meta as they come: a man recording his own reaction to a recording of himself. As Beckham listens, he has a look of fierce concentration on his face, mixed with just a little genuine concern, as if he really does not know how it all ends. The audio plays in the background, an echo of his past: the last couple minutes of the BBC radio commentary of England’s meeting with Greece on the road to the 2002 World Cup. …”

NY Times (Audio)

 

Reading Around New York

 

1979 | The New York Public Library

“On Thursday, May 3, 1979, the New York Times staff photographer Fred Conrad visited the main branch of the New York Public Library. A crowd had gathered on the steps outside — in groups, in pairs, talking, eating. But among this gathering, a few sat slightly apart, heads bent. They appeared oblivious to those around them, unaware of the photographer’s lens. They were reading. Even in the busiest of places, if you have a good book, you can retreat into solitude. And when you live in a city like New York, a book can be even more than a story at your fingertips. It can also be a respite, an escape, a sanctuary, a diversion and a travel companion. ...”

NY Times

2015 August: The New York Public Library, 2015 August: Underground New York Public Library, 2016 January: Lifting the Veil on the New York Public Library’s Erotica Collection, 2016 March: 11 Essential Feminist Books: A New Reading List by The New York Public Library, 2017 September: Get NYPL Digital Collections Tab for Your Browser, 2017 September: Ex Libris: The New York Public Library

 

1961 | Barnard College

Creation Rebel - Dub From Creation (2004)

 

“This is the seminal first studio work by revered dub producer Adrian Sherwood (Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, African Head Charge), engineered by Dennis Bovell (Fela Kuti, The Slits, Orange Juice). Dub From Creation was originally released on pre-On-U Sound label Hitrun in 1978. Recommended for fans of Scientist, King Tubby and the Wackies label. A classic of the genre unavailable on vinyl since original release and now commanding high prices second-hand. Feeling quiet nostalgic and honoured that this one came my way for a review as it is choc a bloc with memories of dubbist sessions from the late 70s and 80s, whence as a student of the I ‘n’ I music vibes I would literally close my ears to virtually everything else. As long as it was dub it was dubbed. ...”

Holland Tunnel Dive

Bandcamp (Audio)

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Dub From Creation, Frontline Dub, Rebel Rouser

Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented

 

“‘We regarded ourselves as engineers, we maintained that we were building things…we put our works together like fitters.’ So declared the artist Hannah Höch, describing a radically new approach to artmaking in the 1920s and ’30s. Such wholesale reinvention of the role of the artist and the functions of art took place in lockstep with that era’s shifts in industry, technology, and labor, and amid the profound impact of momentous events: World War I, the Russian Revolution, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the rise of fascism. Highlighting figures such as Aleksandr Rodchenko, Lyubov Popova, John Heartfield, and Fré Cohen, Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented demonstrates the ways in which artists reimagined their roles to create a dynamic art for a new world. ...”

MoMA (Video)

NY Times: The Artists Who Redesigned a War-Shattered Europe

amazon

​‘Computer Games’: How George Clinton’s Solo Debut Played To Win

 

“Could the old funkateer still deliver the goods? Parliament-Funkadelic, the 70s masterfunkers, ran out of road as the 80s arrived, caught in a traffic jam of contractual hassles, personnel problems, personal problems, and overstretch. Parliament, Parlet, Funkadelic, Brides Of Funkenstein, Bootsy, Sweat Band, Philippe Wynne, the aborted project with showman-guitarist Roger Troutman… there was only so much Uncle Jam could cope with. And music was moving fast, with rap and electro trouncing funk as the kids’ choice, while even mainstream dance music was growing increasingly electronic. It was time to regroup, but how? George Clinton, leader of P-Funk, knew what to do. ...”

udiscover (Video)

2009 January: George Clinton, 2010 December: Mothership Connection - Houston 1976, 2011 October: Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove, 2011 October: "Do Fries Go With That Shake?", 2012 August: Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein – The Story Of George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, 2015 July: Playing The (Baker's) Dozens: George Clinton's Favourite Albums, 2015 August: Chocolate City (1975), 2016 February: Maggot Brain - Funkadelic (1971), 2016 June: P-Funk All Stars - Urban Dancefloor Guerillas (1983), 2017 March: Up for the Down Stroke - Parliament (1974), 2017 May: P-Funk mythology, 2019 September: Tear the Roof Off the Sucker: An Introduction to Parliament Funkadelic, 2019 December: Cosmic Slop - Funkadelic (1973), 2020 July: How George Clinton Made Funk a World View

War and Peace - Sergei Bondarchuk (1967)

 

“War and Peace (Russian: Война и мир, trans. Voyna i mir) is a 1966–67 Soviet war drama film co-written and directed by Sergei Bondarchuk and a film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace. The film, released in four installments throughout 1966 and 1967, starred Bondarchuk in the leading role of Pierre Bezukhov, alongside Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Ludmila Savelyeva, who depicted Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Natasha Rostova. ... War and Peace also won the Grand Prix in the Moscow International Film Festival, the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Since its release, the film is often considered to be the grandest epic film ever made, with many asserting its monumental production as unrepeatable and unique in film history. ...”

Wikipedia

Criterion - War and Peace: Saint Petersburg Fiddles, Moscow Burn, A Tolstoy Adaptation That Defies Gravity (Video)

Criterion (Video)

NY Times: A Peerless ‘War and Peace’ Film Is Restored to Its Former Glory

One of film’s greatest epics is a 7-hour adaptation of War and Peace. Really.

2019 July: War & Peace (TV 2016), 2021 September: ​“I Would Not Take Prisoners.” Tolstoy’s Case Against Making War Humane

This Week's Sky at a Glance, November 5 – 13

 

“Nova Cassiopeiae 2021 is still magnitude 8.4 as of November 5th, more than 7 months after it erupted. Charts and comparison stars. Friday, November 5.  At dusk this week, the Jupiter-Saturn line in the southern sky tilts only mildly, as shown below. Look far to their lower right for bright Venus. As evening progresses, Venus sets and the tilt of the giants steepens. The Summer Triangle Effect. Here it is early November, but Deneb still shines near the zenith as the stars come out. And brighter Vega is still not far from the zenith, toward the west. The third star of the 'Summer' Triangle, Altair, remains very high in the southwest (high upper right of Jupiter and Saturn). They seem to have stayed there for a couple months! Why have they stalled out? ...”

Sky & Telescope

​Making It: Pick up a spot welder and join the revolution.

 

Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome Patent 1965

January 5, 2014: "In January of 1903, the small Boston magazine Handicraft ran an essay by the Harvard professor Denman W. Ross, who argued that the American Arts and Crafts movement was in deep crisis. The movement was concerned with promoting good taste and self-fulfillment through the creation and the appreciation of beautiful objects; its more radical wing also sought to advance worker autonomy. The problem was that no one in America seemed to need its products. The solution, according to Ross, was to provide technical education to the critics and the consumers of art alike. This would stimulate demand for high-quality objects and encourage more workers to take up craftsmanship. ...”

New Yorker

Off the Rim: Jim Carroll

 

December 2010: “If there is one moment when the 1995 film adaptation of ‘The Basketball Diaries’ manages to come alive, it occurs when the preening, miscast Leonardo DiCaprio—playing the teen-age Jim Carroll—gets nearly as wet as he soon will in ‘Titanic.’ Carroll and his buddies are shooting baskets in a Manhattan playground after having attended the funeral of their pal Bobby, who has died of leukemia at the age of sixteen. The skies suddenly open, but the boys play on through a rain-lashed catharsis. As DiCaprio hangs by his arms from the basketball hoop, soaked and giddy with rage and release, the soundtrack delivers Carroll’s most famous song, a blasting, propulsive necrology called ‘People Who Died’: Teddy’s sniffing glue, he was 12 years old / He fell from the roof on East Two Nine / Cathy was eleven when she pulled the plug / On 26 reds and a bottle of wine. . . .Those are people who died, who died / Those are people who died, who died / They were all my friends, and they just died. ...”

New Yorker

YouTube: Lou Reed - People Who Died w/ Jim Carroll - 9/25/1984 - Capitol Theatre

2009 September: Jim Carroll, 2014 October: Catholic Boy (1980)

Culture Clash In Havana Cuba - Experiments In Latin Music 1975-85 Vol. 1, Vol. 2

 

“Cuba: Music and Revolution: Culture Clash in Havana: Experiments in Latin Music 1975-85 Vol. 1 is the new album compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records) that explores the many new styles that emerged in Cuba in the 1970s as Jazz, Funk, Brazilian Tropicalia and even Disco mixed together with Latin and Salsa on the island as Cuban artists experimented with new musical forms created in the unique socialist state of Cuba. ...”

sounds of the universe: Vol. 1 (Audio), Vol. 2 (Audio)

Discogs - Vol. 1 (Video), Vol. 2 (Video)

amazon: Vol. 1, Vol. 2

​Your Garden Isn’t Winding Down: It’s Still Lichen Season

 

Unpainted wood garden furniture is a popular substrate for colonies of certain lichens, including common greenshield (Flavoparmelia caperata), spangled rosette (Physcia millegrana), hammered shield (Parmelia sulcata) and a crustose species called Lecanora strobilina.

“What are lichens? They are neither plant nor animal. If that doesn’t make them inscrutable enough, there is also this: A lichen might, at first glance, be mistaken for an errant wad of chewing gum or a misplaced splatter of paint.But they are very much living creatures and are thought to be one of the earliest land-dwelling forms of life. They are among the most widespread, too, present on every continent, covering an estimated 8 percent of the planet’s land. They inhabit even Antarctica and the harshest deserts, including some places where plants and animals cannot thrive. Closer to home, you may find them happily taking up residence on your wooden garden bench or picket fence, stone walls or other rock surfaces, or on the trunks and branches of trees and shrubs. ...”

NY Times

W - Lichen

PBS: For the Love of Lichens (Video)

 

 Rhizocarpon geographicum

Spiritual Jazz 12: Impulse!

 

“... Home to John and Alice Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Yusef Lateef, McCoy Tyner and countless other musical pioneers, Impulse! was the most important and forward-thinking jazz label of the 1960s. With the music-first attitude of an independent but the clout of a major, producers Creed Taylor and Bob Thiele made Impulse the defining imprint of a crucial decade of social upheaval that still resonates today. They hand picked the top players of the moment and gave them freedom to record the music they wanted, setting out their stall with a bold slogan – ‘The New Wave Of Jazz Is On Impulse!’ ...”

Bandcamp

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: spiritual jazz 12 : Impulse !      16 videos