Habibi Funk’s Musical Revivals

 

“In a small shop in Casablanca in 2013, Jannis Stürtz dropped a needle on a vintage vinyl recording of Fadoul, one of Morocco’s most-popular musicians of the 1970s. What he heard next was ‘a mighty voice and a raw sound’ that Stürtz, a Berlin-based DJ and music producer, found ‘enormously inspiring.’ The ‘energetic performance and very lively atmosphere preserved in the recording tugged at me,’ he says. He heard clear links in it to alternative music scenes in Germany and the West. ‘When I listened to Fadoul’s album Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag, I found he was blending rock and funk’ in a style both Moroccan and inspired by James Brown, America’s ‘Godfather of Soul.’ The experience led Stürtz, now 36, to the founding of his second recording label. In 2000 he and a friend had turned their fascination with vinyl and African and Asian funk into Jakarta Records. ...”

AramcoWorld

Habibi Funk - A spotlight on Arab grooves - An exhibition

FvF Mixtape #111: Habibi Funk

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

French Collectives Pagans & La Nòvia Plunge Traditional Folk in Drone and Noise to Bracing Results Image

 

“‘Plugging in’ can be a dangerous thing to do in a traditional folk environment—just ask Bob Dylan. Or, for that matter, French musician Guilhem Lacroux, who received a ‘mixed’ reaction the first time his groups, Toad and La Baracande, toured the traditional music circuits in their home country. Perhaps it was their ‘harsh noise’ aesthetic that did it. ... La Nòvia is a unique proposition. Consisting of 12 musicians spread between Mulhouse in the east and Pau in the southwest, it’s not really a label so much as, ‘a place to exchange and to meet,’ says Lacroux. It’s also become a key player in the movement to bring France’s oft-maligned and half-forgotten folk tradition into the present day. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

A 16th-Century Astronomy Book Featured “Analog Computers” to Calculate the Shape of the Moon, the Position of the Sun, and More

 

“If you want to learn how the planets move, you’ll almost certainly go to one place first: Youtube. Yes, there have been plenty of worthwhile books written on the subject, and reading them will prove essential to further deepening your understanding. But videos have the capacity of motion, an undeniable benefit when motion itself is the concept under discussion. Less than twenty years into the Youtube age, we’ve already seen a good deal of innovation in the art of audiovisual explanation. But we’re also well over half a millennium into the age of the book as we know it, a time that even in its early phases saw impressive attempts to go beyond text on a page. Take, for example, Peter Apian‘s Cosmographia, first published in 1524. ...”

Open Culture

TRUMP IMPEACHED AGAIN

 

“The House on Wednesday impeached President Trump for inciting a violent insurrection against the United States government, as 10 members of the president’s party joined Democrats to charge him with high crimes and misdemeanors for an unprecedented second time. Reconvening under the threat of continued violence and the protection of thousands of National Guard troops, the House was determined to hold Mr. Trump to account just one week before he was to leave office. At issue was his role in encouraging a mob that attacked the Capitol one week ago while Congress met to affirm President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, forcing lawmakers to flee for their lives in a deadly rampage.The House adopted a single article of impeachment, voting 232 to 197 to charge Mr. Trump with ‘inciting violence against the government of the United States’ and requesting his immediate removal from office and disqualification from ever holding one again. ...”

NY Times

c|net: Donald Trump impeached following deadly riot at US Capitol

CNN: Trump's been impeached again. What's next?

aljazeera: Donald Trump impeached for ‘inciting’ US Capitol riot

Colette (2018 film)

 

Keira Knightley

 

“Colette is a 2018 biographical drama film directed by Wash Westmoreland, from a screenplay by Westmoreland, Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Richard Glatzer, based upon the life of the French novelist Colette. It stars Keira Knightley, Dominic West, Eleanor Tomlinson, and Denise Gough. ... Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is a young woman from the rural Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye at the end of the 19th century, who begins an affair with Willy. Willy eventually brings Colette to Paris as his bride, with socialites expressing surprise a libertine like him would marry. Willy refers to himself as a ‘literary entrepreneur’, employing a number of ghostwriters to write articles. However, he finds the limited output does not bring in enough revenue to cover his expenses, due to his expensive lifestyle of entertaining socialites. He commissions one ghostwriter to work on a novel while Colette manages his correspondence. ...”

Wikipedia

NY Times: ‘Colette’ and One Woman’s Lust for Life (Video)

TIME: What to Know About the Real Author Who Inspired the Movie Colette

YouTube: Colette Trailer #1

W - Colette

Colette on Writing, the Blissful Obsessive-Compulsiveness of Creative Work, and Withstanding Naysayers

amazon: Colette

Colette

Jungle Lab

 

“The machete-wielding scientists ventured into the Amazon, hacking through dense jungle as the mid-morning temperature soared past 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 C). Soaked in sweat, the small group of men and women sawed and tore trees limb from limb. They drilled into the soil and sprayed paint across tree trunks. This is vandalism in the name of science. In the trees about 90 km (55 miles) from Rondônia state capital Porto Velho, the Brazilian researchers are seeking to learn how much carbon can be stored in different parts of the world’s largest rainforest, helping to remove emissions from the atmosphere that foment climate change. ...”

Reuters: Amazon rainforest

How a Presidential Rally Turned Into a Capitol Rampage

 

“When President Trump railed against the election results from a stage near the White House on Wednesday, his loyalists were already gathering at the Capitol. Soon, they would storm it. We analyzed a crucial two-hour period to reconstruct how a rally gave way to a mob that nearly came face to face with Congress. The day’s events were captured by protesters and witnesses who live-streamed the action or posted the scenes on social media. The footage shows the simultaneous and alternating perspectives of Mr. Trump at the podium, the lawmakers inside the Capitol and the swelling numbers  — and growing violence — of the rioters on the ground.  ...”

NY Times (Video)

NY Times: ‘They Got a Officer!’: How a Mob Dragged and Beat Police at the Capitol (Video)

NY Times: ‘Our President Wants Us Here’: The Mob That Stormed the Capitol

NY Times: Impeach Trump Again

Where to Begin With Biosphere’s Dreamlike Electronica

 

“Say ‘biosphere’ and most people will think of the research site in Oracle, Arizona that has replicated seven of Earth’s biomes in order to study our ecosystems and place in the universe. But Biosphere is also the musical alias of Norwegian producer Geir Jenssen. The name is fitting; as Biosphere, Jenssen builds experimental electronic soundworlds that can be at once universal and site-specific—a closed system that feels seemingly infinite. Now thirty years into his career, Jenssen continues to make deep-focused and wide-ranging music, always seeking new vistas. He’s a tireless innovator and explorer, frequently mentioned alongside electronic legends like Aphex Twin, Carl Craig, and Autechre Inspired by the likes of New Order, Depeche Mode, and Brian Eno as a teenager in northern Norway, Jenssen utilized the synthesizer to begin making his own music. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

Behold an Interactive Online Edition of Elizabeth Twining’s Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants (1868)

 

“‘Who owned nature in the eighteenth century?’ asks Londa Schiebinger in Plants and Empire, a study of what the Stanford historian of science calls ‘colonial bioprospecting in the Atlantic World.’ The question was largely decided at the time by ‘heroic voyaging botanists’ and ‘biopirates’ who claimed the world’s natural resources as their own. The matter was settled in the next couple centuries by merchants like Thomas Twining and his descendants, proprietors of Twinings tea. Founded as Britain’s first known tea shop in 1706, the company went on to become one of the largest purveyors of teas grown in the British colonies.One of Twining’s descendants, Elizabeth Twining, carried on the legacy as what Schiebinger calls one of many ‘armchair naturalists, who coordinated and synthesized collecting from sinecures in Europe,’ a role often taken on by women who could not travel the world. ...”

Open Culture

Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants: About the project 

An early image of ice skaters in Central Park

“The building of Central Park began in 1858. Later that year, the first section opened to the public: the 'skating pond,' aka the Lake. You’ve probably seen paintings and illustrations of 19th century New Yorkers ice skating in Central Park and on the ponds of Brooklyn. But this Currier & Ives lithograph (after a painting by Charles Parsons) might be the earliest.In ‘Central-Park Winter, the Skating Pond,’ it’s 1862, the middle of the Civil War. Yet the frozen pond is a scene of pure joy: couples in fancy skating outfits (yep, they were a thing) glided together, a rare opportunity for socially acceptable coed mingling. Kids play, adults fall, a dog is getting in on the fun, and everyone is enthralled by the magic of the ice under Bow Bridge. [Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art]”

Ephemeral New York

How Instruō Went Virtual

 

“Just as December 2020 was coming to a close, and the year’s surprises, both good and horrible, were seemingly behind us, a new surprise — quite the former — popped up for modular-synthesizer enthusiasts. The hardware manufacturer Instruō, based in Glasgow, Scotland, announced that it was making almost all of its modules available in software form, 17 total, and better yet: entirely for free. The modules run on the free VCV Rack software platform, which is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux. (Visit Instruo at instruomodular.com, and VCV Rack at vcvrack.com.) ...”

disquiet (Video)

Beat Jazz Vol. 1 & 2: Pictures From The Gone World

 

“A mainstay favorite for years, this compilation collects music inpsired by the beatnik scene. The musical interpretation of blase on the New Bangs ‘Go Go Kitty’ is worth the admission all by itself. Way out poetry readings over bop combos, drugged up beret-wearers, and finger-popping hipsters making fifties pop. Featured artist: Jack Kerouac, Jack Hammer, Slim Gaillard, Gregory Corso, The Cosmic Rays with Sun Ra, Moondog and Coleman Hawkins. Beat poetry, hip Jazz and Be-Bop with the feel of a smoky club underground club in the early '60s, make this one of the coolest compilations you'll ever hear. ...”

Holland Tunnel Dive

Discogs (Video), Discogs Beat Jazz:: Pictures From The Gone World Vol.2

YouTube: Beat Jazz: Pictures From The Gone World Vol. 2

Awe and Shock - How the world reacted to the Trumpist mob that sacked the heart of American democracy.

“Around the world, the shock of Wednesday’s assault on Capitol Hill brought into sharp focus a question that has been smoldering for four years among America’s allies and adversaries. ‘And again the doubt,’ wrote Emma Riverola in El Periódico de Catalunya, a Barcelona, Spain, daily, in painfully graphic terms. ‘Is this just a final burst of pus? Or has the infection spread, now threatening to cause a sepsis of the entire system?’ Was Donald Trump an aberration or the ominous onset of decline in the world’s premier democracy? The question echoed in democracies beset in recent years by populist movements nurtured by the same blend of far-right nationalism and blue-collar grievances as President Trump’s following. ... From the other end of the geopolitical spectrum, entrenched authoritarian regimes exulted in the disarray in a superpower accustomed to hectoring and sanctioning them over their suppression of democratic and human rights. ...”

NY Times

BBC - Capitol riots: World media see Trump ignite an 'insurrection' (Video)

YouTube: End times for President Trump, new dawn for Trump media? -  Al Jazeera

NY Times: The American Abyss

America Is Not Exceptional. Its History of Violence Cannot Be Denied.

Reuters: Factbox-World shocked by Trump supporters' attack on U.S. democracy

Open Culture - Mayhem Inside the Capitol: 40 Minutes of Footage (Video)

Rebecca Solnit: When the President of Mediocrity Incites an Insurrection

In These Times - Equating White Nationalists and "Left Radicals" Is What Got Us Here in the First Place

NY Times - America in 2021: Racial Progress in the South, a White Mob in the Capitol

How the Insurgent and MAGA Right are Being Welded Together on the Streets of Washington D.C.  - Robert Evans

Flair Magazine: The Short-Lived, Highly-Influential Magazine That Still Inspires Designers Today (1950)

 

“All magazines are their editors, but Flair was more its editor than any magazine had been before — or, for that matter, than any magazine has been since. Though she came to the end of her long life in England, a country to which she had expatriated with her fourth husband, a Briton, Fleur Cowles was as American a cultural figure as they come. Born Florence Freidman in 1908, she had performed on herself an unknowable number of Gatsbyesque acts of reinvention by 1950, when she found herself in a position to launch Flair. Her taste in husbands helped, married as she then was to Gardner ‘Mike’ Cowles Jr., publisher of Look, a popular photo journal that Fleur had helped to lift from its lowbrow origins and make respectable among that all-powerful consumer demographic, postwar American women. ...” Open Culture (Video)

2009 March: Jean Cocteau, 2016 February: In Which Jean Cocteau Gives Elan To This Milieu, 2019 October:  Orpheus (1950)

Sagitta

“Sagitta is a dim but distinctive constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for 'arrow', not to be confused with the significantly larger constellation Sagittarius, the archer. It was included among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union. Although it dates to antiquity, Sagitta has no star brighter than 3rd magnitude and has the third-smallest area of all constellations. Gamma Sagittae is the constellation's brightest star, with an apparent magnitude of 3.47. It is an ageing red giant star 90% as massive as the Sun that has cooled and expanded to a diameter 54 times greater than it. Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, and Theta Sagittae are each multiple stars whose components can be seen in small telescopes. ...”

W - Sagitta

W - Urania's Mirror

Card 32 illustrates twelve constellations: nine modern ones (Corvus, Crater, Sextans [here Sextans Uraniæ], Hydra, Lupus, Centaurus, Antlia [here Antlia Pneumatica], and Pyxis [here Pyxis Nautica]), the now-subdivided Argo Navis, and the former constellations Noctua and Felis.

2021 storming of the United States Capitol

“On January 6, 2021, supporters of U.S. president Donald Trump stormed the United States Capitol. The event disrupted a joint session of Congress during which the Electoral College vote was to be certified, affirming Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election. The event followed numerous failed attempts by Trump and his supporters to overturn the election results. ... The demonstration culminated in a riot, in which the Capitol was stormed by Trump supporters. Congress was in session at the time, conducting the Electoral College vote count and debating the results of the vote. As the protesters arrived, Capitol security evacuated the Senate and House of Representatives chambers and locked down several other buildings on the Capitol campus. Protesters broke past security to enter the Capitol, occupying the evacuated Senate chamber while guards drew handguns to prevent entry to the evacuated House floor. Several buildings in the Capitol complex were evacuated, and all buildings in the complex were subsequently locked down. ... The crowd was dispersed out of the US Capitol later that evening. The process to certify Electoral College results resumed shortly after 8 p.m. and continued to its conclusion the following morning. The riots and storming of the Capitol were described as insurrection, sedition, and domestic terrorism. Some news outlets labeled the act as an attempted coup d'état by Trump. The incident was the first time the Capitol had been overrun since the 1814 burning of Washington by the British during the War of 1812. ...”

Wikipedia (Video)

Politico - ‘Is This Really Happening?’: The Siege of Congress, Seen From the Inside (Video)

YouTube: Trump Supporters Storm US Capitol, US Lawmakers and Global Leaders Condemn Attack, Who Were The Capitol Hill Rioters, And The Woman Who Was Shot?, Inside the US Capitol as Trump supporters storm building

NY Times - Biden’s Win Is Confirmed, but Nation Is Shaken (Video)

Jacobin: Republican Elites Are Responsible for Today’s Storming of the Capitol

The Atlantic: The Sun Is Up. Impeach and Convict.

The Atlantic: What Trump and His Mob Taught the World About America

MOB STORMS CAPITOL, INFLAMED BY ANGRY TRUMP SPEECH

“Protesters loyal to President Trump stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, halting Congress’s counting of the electoral votes to confirm President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory as the police evacuated lawmakers from the building in a scene of violence, chaos and disruption that shook the core of American democracy. Around 2:15 p.m., as the House and Senate debated a move by a faction of Republicans to overturn the election results, security rushed Vice President Mike Pence out of the Senate chamber and the Capitol building was placed on lockdown after angry pro-Trump demonstrators surged past barricades and law enforcement toward the legislative chambers. For a time, senators and members of the House were locked inside their respective chambers. Images posted on social media showed scenes of supporters violently tussling with the police as at least one protester took to the rostrum of the House chamber to declare his support for Mr. Trump. ...”

NY Times: Pro-Trump Mob Swarms Capitol (Video)

*******NY Times: Trump Is to Blame for Capitol Attack

Love and Hate in a Different Time - Gabriels (2020)

“Introducing Gabriels - an LA based group made up of singer Jacob Lusk and producers Ari Balouzian and Ryan Hope. ‘Love and Hate in a Different Time’ is their new single and the perfect taster of their genre-defying sound. Their debut single ‘Loyalty’ was released on the seminal R&S Records, that and their follow up ‘In Loving Memory’ received support from the likes of Gilles Peterson, Virgil Abloh and Benji B. Both tracks served as solid stepping stones to reach this point in their fledgling career with a full debut EP due for release before the end of the year.  ...”

Piccadilly Records

Bandcamp (Audio/Video)

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Love and Hate in a Different Time (Short Film)

Lost Profiles: Memoirs of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism - Philippe Soupault (1963)

 

"Lost Profiles: Memoirs of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism is a diminutive, stylish book that kicks off by appreciatively documenting a curiously seedy period of transition within the anti-rationalist French avant-garde: from Dada to Surrealism. Published by legendary City Lights in late 2016, this alluring collection of amiable reminiscences was penned by co-founding Surrealist poet Philippe Soupault (1897–1990) and first appeared in French in 1963 as Profils perdus. City Lights has bracketed this English translation with an introduction by Mark Polizzotti, the director of the publications program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and an afterword by poet Ron Padgett. ..."  

A French Surrealist’s Eclectic Remembrances of His Cohort, Finally in English  

W - Philippe Soupault  

City Lights  

amazon

Michael Cunningham on Virginia Woolf’s Literary Revolution

“Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ is a revolutionary novel of profound scope and depth, about a day in the life of a woman who runs a few errands, sees an old suitor and gives a dull party. It’s a masterpiece created out of the humblest narrative materials. Woolf was among the first writers to understand that there are no insignificant lives, only inadequate ways of looking at them. In ‘Mrs. Dalloway,’ Woolf insists that a single, outwardly ordinary day in the life of a woman named Clarissa Dalloway, an outwardly rather ordinary person, contains just about everything one needs to know about human life, in more or less the way nearly every cell contains the entirety of an organism’s DNA. With ‘Mrs. Dalloway,’ Woolf asserted as well that we are all embarked on epic journeys of our own, even though, to the untrained eye, some of us, many of us, might look as if we’re only there to tidy up or to do our best to amuse our bosses. ...”

NY Times

Michael Cunningham on the Novel That Would Become Mrs Dalloway

2019 April: Bloomsbury Group, 2020 August:  How Virginia Woolf Kept Her Brother Alive in Letters

Interview: Suzanne Ciani, Synth Pioneer

“A synth pioneer and adventurous electronic composer since the early ’80s, Suzanne Ciani has defied hasty assumptions about genre, sound design and nerdism ever since. Suzanne’s ongoing romance with the synthesizer started at an early age, precisely when she was first introduced to sound modulation via the Buchla synth. And as a trained piano and keyboard player (Suzanne Ciani was also the first woman on the cover of Keyboard magazine), she devoted a large part of her musical endeavours to coaxing feminine sensibilities out of the machines, providing a stark counterpoint to the inherent machismo of the tech world. ...”

Red Bull Music Academy (Video)

Modular Love: Suzanne Ciani Interviewed

2019 July: Suzanne Ciani: a masterclass in modular synthesis