Think you can listen to these guys without moving?
Just try.
Staff Benda Bilili
Live, Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa)
“Na Lingui Yo,” c. 2007
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Polio,” c. 2007
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Singing, playing, talking, 2011
Vodpod videos no longer available.passings
Wade Mainer, singer, banjo player, April 21, 1907-September 12, 2011
“I’ll Be a Friend to Jesus” (1936)
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Singing, playing, talking (c. 2004)
Part 1
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Part 2
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Part 3
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
lagniappe
What we was playin’ in the ’30s was true country music—no electric instruments, no copyrights. Something’d happen and someone’d write a song about it—nobody owned it, nobody’d know who wrote it. The music just told a story.
Mahogani Music Promotional Video, Detroit (2010)
Vodpod videos no longer available.Yeah, the interplay between these two is awfully cliche.
But there’s a lot to like here: the sounds,* the colors, the composition, the sense of place.
I dig the camera-shy dog, too.
*Joe Simon, “Theme from Cleopatra Jones” (1973)
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lagniappe
art beat
Yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after an oral argument in the nearby federal court of appeals, in a drug case involving 20 kilos of cocaine—from the sordid to the sublime):
Vasily (AKA Wassily) Kandinsky
Painting with Green Center, 1913
*****
Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons), 1913
passings
DJ Mehdi, DJ & producer, January 20, 1977-September 13, 2011
“I Am Somebody” (feat. Chromeo), 2007
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Live (with Busy P), Ireland (Dublin), 2008
#1
Vodpod videos no longer available.
***
#2
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#3
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Remix, Architecture in Helsinki, “In Case We Die,” 2006
Vodpod videos no longer available.What a joy to find, as I did yesterday, new sounds that provide so much pleasure.
Starlicker (Rob Mazurek, cornet; Jason Adasiewicz, vibraphone; John Herndon, drums), “Horseshoes,” live, Iowa (Dubuque), 2011
Vodpod videos no longer available.two takes
Here’s a very different piece by Steve Reich—one I first heard, in a New York performance by Reich’s ensemble, 40 years ago. At the time, the only way he could get his music heard was to play it himself.
Steve Reich, Drumming (1971), excerpts
So Percussion, live, Baltimore (Johns Hopkins University), c. 2009
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Steve Reich (wearing cap) with members of Ensemble Modern
Live, Germany (Cologne), 2009
More? Here. And here. And here.
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lagniappe
All music theory refers to something that has already happened, but if it is taken as a prescription, or worse a manifesto, heaven help you.
Steve Reich, WTC 9/11 (2010), excerpts
Kronos Quartet, with prerecorded tape
1st Movement
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
3rd Movement
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
reading table
They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.—Wislawa Szymborska, “Photograph from September 11” (trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak)
*****
Barbarism is not the prehistory of humanity but the faithful shadow that accompanies its every step.
—Alain Finkielkraut, Le mécontemporain, (epigraph, Clive James, As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002 [2003])
lucid, adj. suffused with light, luminous. E.g., Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet.
Morton Feldman, Piano and String Quartet (1985)
Kronos Quartet with Aki Takahashi (piano)
In a world that keeps getting faster and noisier, Feldman offers a refuge.
Here time slows. Quietly.
hearing colors, seeing sounds
John Coltrane, “Giant Steps,” excerpt (Giant Steps, Atlantic, 1970)
Animation by Michal Levy (2001)
(Yo, Michael: Thanks for the tip!)
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lagniappe
Synesthesia is a rare neurological condition that leads stimulation in one sensory pathway to trigger an experience in another. Basically, a short-circuiting in the brain that enables such strange phenomena like perceiving letters and numbers as inherently colored (color-graphemic synesthesia) or hearing sounds in response to visual motion. More than 60 types of synesthesia have been identified, with one of the most common being the cross-sensory experience of color and sound — “hearing” color or “seeing” music.
Israeli artist and jazz musician Michal Levy . . . is an actual synesthetic: When she listens to music, she sees shapes and colors as different tones, pitches, frequencies, harmonies, and other elements of the melody unfold.
What’s surprising here isn’t that there are so many wonderful moments. Given the line-up, you’d expect that. What you wouldn’t expect is for these guys to sound so cohesive, as if they’d been playing together for years.
Sun Ra All Stars (SR, keyboards; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet, vocals; Lester Bowie, trumpet; Archie Shepp, tenor saxophone, vocals; John Gilmore, tenor saxophone; Marshall Allen, alto saxophone, percussion; Philly Joe Jones, drums; Clifford Jarvis, drums; Famadou Don Moye, drums, percussion), live, Germany (Berlin), 1983
Vodpod videos no longer available.More Sun Ra? Here. And here. And here.
More Don Cherry? Here. And here. And here.
More Lester Bowie? Here. And here. And here. And here.
More Archie Shepp? Here.
music clip of the day 