sounds of Mali
Salif Keita, live, Germany (Stuttgart), 1995
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lagniappe
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[C]ommunication is an undependable but sometimes marvelous thing.
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), letter to Randall Jarrell, December 26, 1955
sounds of Ethiopia
Hailu Mergia, live, New York, 2016
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summer heat—
today, all day
the playful clouds—Kobayashi Issa, 1763-1827 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue with assistance from Sakuo Nakamura)
I could listen to these two—he’s long been one of my favorite pianists—all day.
Sara Serpa (1979-, vocal), Ran Blake (1935-, piano), “Night and Day” (C. Porter),
live, New York (Kitano), 2016
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He thought his head would explode, if the forenoon kept burning into the jungle all around him and the gulls kept screaming and the monkey kept regarding its surroundings carefully, moving its head and black eyes from side to side like someone following the progress of some kind of conversation, some kind of debate, some kind of struggle that the jungle—the morning—the moment—was having with itself.
—Denis Johnson (July 1, 1979-May 24, 2017), Tree of Smoke (National Book Award for Fiction, 2007)
never enough
Thelonious Monk Quartet (TM, piano; Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Butch Warren, bass; Frankie Dunlop, drums), live, Tokyo, 1963
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Men are children. They must be pardoned for everything, except malice.
—Joseph Joubert, 1754-1824 (The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, translated from French by Paul Auster)
more
Hound Dog Taylor (1915-1975) & the Houserockers (Brewer Phillips guitar; Ted Harvey, drums), “Sadie,” 1974
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one man, one fly
one large
sitting room—Kobayashi Issa, 1763-1827 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
timeless
James P. Johnson (piano), Sidney DeParis (trumpet), Vic Dickenson (trombone), Ben Webster (tenor saxophone), Jimmy Shirley (guitar), John Simmons (bass), Sidney Catlett (drums), “After You’ve Gone” (T. Layton, M. Harris), 1944
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Your actual experience is a complete flux.
—Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
never enough
Johann Sebastian Bach, transcriptions by György Kurtág
Márta and György Kurtág (piano), live, Budapest, 2015
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Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), talking about words
BBC radio broadcast, April 29, 1937
timeless
Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935-1977), “Haunted Feelings,” 1971
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secluded house—
the drunk hired hand
in the autumn dusk—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue
This, I just found, has more than 21 million views. (Where have I been?)
Florence and the Machine, “Cosmic Love”
Live (studio performance), Seattle, 2010
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I had been happy, happy enough, but now I often found myself uttering a spontaneous prayer that went, simply: She is here, still here.
—George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
Sometimes I just want to be swept away.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), String Quartet in F major (1903), 1st Mvt.
Takács Quartet, live, New York, 2017
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cloud becomes a mountain
becomes
a cloud—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue
