Some singers once you begin listening to them you cannot stop.
Umm Kulthum (spelled variously in English; c. 1904-1975), “Enta Omri” (You Are My Life), live, Paris (Olympia Theater), 1967
Listening to this one night at 2:30 a.m., after waking up and getting a glass of milk, I couldn’t make up my mind: Is YouTube a good thing, or a bad thing, for insomniacs?
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lagniappe
found words
Scores Are Killed as Forces Storm Camps of Morsi Backers
Last night, at FitzGerald’s (see the last two posts), everybody was intoxicated by music. Violent behavior? None. Here, at this club 7,500 miles away, the story’s the same, as you’ll see. The way to world peace seems plain: put a club on every corner.
The recapture of Timbuktu was done by moonlight. More than 250 French troops parachuted down to the northern entrance of the fabled desert city, while an armoured column sealed the southern exit.
After close to a year of occupation by Islamists, which has driven more than half the population from Mali’s cultural heart and left an unknown toll on its famous libraries and shrines, the ordeal was over.
“Not a shot was fired,” said a French Colonel who declined to give his name, but confirmed he had led the 12-day operation to retake the city.
By this afternoon the city’s maze of dusty streets were being patrolled by French and Malian troops for remaining militants and crowds had gathered at every corner chanting: “Vive la France, vive le Mali!”
Women and children mobbed two pick-up trucks of Malian soldiers that arrived after the French force had sealed the city. One man was dressed from head to foot in a costume that he had fashioned from hand-stitched Tricolore flags. Many of the women were dressed in vivid colours and had removed their veils to replace them with flags.
Mohamed Ibrahim Traore, a shopkeeper whose store has been closed for months said the women were happy “because they don’t have to put on the veils on their face”. “Today we got our liberty back,” he said. “Every Malian deserves their liberty, the Frency army and the Malian army have given us this.”
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A crowd had gathered at the house of singer Akia Coulibaly. Dressed in a turquoise wrap she stopped her street show briefly to recount how life has been since last April when Timbuktu fell into the hands of Islamists.
“We are having a party,” she shouted over the din. “We haven’t danced or sung while they have been here. They cut hands, they beat people. We have been prisoners.”
I think you should check out the YouTube link below. From Dore Stein who is the host of a great radio show on Sat. nights on the SF United School District’s radio station, KALW.
Melos: Mediterranean Songs (filmed in Tunisia and Germany, 2011)*
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taking a break
I’m taking some time off—back in a while.
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*With Dorsaf Hamdani & Ensemble (Tunisia), En Chordais (Greece), Juan Carmona & Ensemble (Spain), Keyvan Chemirani (France/Iran), et al.
One click of the computer and thousands of miles disappear.
Baro, Guinea, 2010
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lagniappe
radio
Today, Louis Armstrong’s real birthday (as determined, many years after his passing, by New Orleans music historian Tad Jones), my ears will be tuned to WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University), which will be all Pops, all day.
Why not start the week with someone you may never have heard before (as I hadn’t until the other day, when I bumped into her on WFMU-FM’sMudd Up! with DJ/Rupture)?
Madosini (1922-), “Uthando Luphelile” (Power to the Women, 2005)
music clip of the day 