Wednesday, 9/28/11
Charisma needs no translation.
Mahmoud Ahmed & Badume’s Band, live, France (Festival de Sete), 2008
“Belomi Benna”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Atawurulegn Lela”
Vodpod videos no longer available.music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: miscellaneous keyboards
2011
Thursday, 9/22/11
You’re probably in the same boat—no MacArthur “genius” grant this year. Oh, well. These folks, unlike you and me, are half a million dollars richer than they were Monday.
Dafnis Prieto (b. 1974), drummer, composer
Proverb Trio: DP, drums; Kokayi, vocals; Jason Lindner, keyboards
Live, Puerto Rico (San Juan), 8/1/11
*****
Alisa Weilerstein (b. 1982), cellist
Zoltán Kodály, Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8 (1915), excerpt (1st Mvt.)
Live, Massachusetts (Worchester, College of Holy Cross), c. 2008
*****
Kay Ryan (b. 1945), poet
We’re Building the Ship as We Sail It
The first fear
being drowning, the
ship’s first shape
was a raft, which
was hard to unflatten
after that didn’t
happen. It’s awkward
to have to do one’s
planning in extremis
in the early years—
so hard to hide later:
sleekening the hull,
making things
more gracious.
The Niagara River
However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.
2011
Tuesday, 9/20/11
Life thickens as you get older, becoming more layered. The other night, for instance, listening to Mad Professor dub Bob Marley at a club on Chicago’s south side (Reggie’s, State near Cermak), I found it hard not to think of another night over thirty years ago, of another club on the other side of town (Quiet Knight, Belmont near Clark, now gone), of hearing Bob Marley not dubbed but live.
Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Trenchtown Rock”
Live, Chicago (Quiet Knight), 1975
2011
Wednesday, 9/7/11
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.
2011
Monday, 8/8/11
only rock ’n roll
(an occasional series)
Coldplay, “Rehab” (Amy Winehouse)/“Fix You”
Live, Chicago (Lollapalooza), 8/5/11
**********
lagniappe
reading table
when I’m dead
who’ll wear it next?
new summer robe—Kobayashi Issa, 1817 (trans. David G. Lanoue)
2011
Monday, 7/25/11
What better way to start the workweek?
Joe Lee Wilson, singer, December 22, 1935-July 17, 2011
Archie Shepp, “Money Blues” (featuring Joe Lee Wilson, lead vocals)
Things Have Got To Change (Impulse!), 1971
Part #1
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Part #2
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
Around Joe Lee (excerpt)
Vodpod videos no longer available.2011
Monday, 7/18/11
only rock ’n roll
(an occasional series)
Oneida, “The Adversary,” Ireland, 10/07
Vodpod videos no longer available.2011
Saturday, 7/16/11
what’s new
(an occasional series)
James Blake, “The Wilhelm Scream,” Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, 7/14/11
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
favorites
(an occasional series)
Hearing JB brought this MCOTD fave to mind (originally posted 11/23/09).
Here’s Arthur Russell, the “seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist and disco producer” who died in 1992 at the age of 40 (of AIDS-related complications) and is the subject of both a recent documentary, Wild Combination, and a new book, Hold On To Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992.
Arthur Russell
“Get Around To It”
*****
“You And Me Both”
*****
“This Is How We Walk on the Moon”
*****
“That’s Us/Wild Combination”
(Yeah, the fact that I’m posting four tracks by this guy shows how much his music, which I just encountered recently, has been getting under my skin.)
**********
[Russell’s] various distinctions—folkie, art-music songwriter and improviser, dance-club maven—seem incoherent until you hear several of his records. When musicians get angry about being categorized by critics, I usually feel frustrated: readers, after all, want to know what the record sounds like. With Russell, I take the musicians’ angle. Just listen to it and you’ll understand.
—Ben Ratliff, “The Many Faces, and Grooves, of Arthur Russell,” New York Times, 2/29/04
*****
For Arthur, there was no cachet to being eclectic. Rather, he played across genre because it would have required a colossal and entirely counterproductive effort on his part to stick to one sound. . . . Drifting into an ethereal, gravity-defying zone, Arthur had come to embody the interconnectivity of music.
—Tim Lawrence, Hold On To Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992 (2009).
2011
Friday, 7/8/11
It takes a village, in Fela’s world, to put on a show.
Fela Anikulapo Kuti, October 15, 1938-August 2, 1997
Live, Paris, 1981
Part 1
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Part 2
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
1938 Born 15 October in Abeokuta, Nigeria to politically active and middle class family.
1958 Sent to London to train as a doctor, but instead enrolled in the Trinity College of Music. Formed Koola Lobitos in 1961.
1969 Took Koola Lobitos to Los Angeles. His political zeal was fired when he befriended radical black activists including Angela Davis.
1971 Kuti renames his band Afrika 70 (and later Eygpt 80), and, newly politicised, he determines to give voice to Nigeria’s underclass.
1974 After he enraged the Nigerian establishment, the army almost destroyed Kuti’s home while trying to arrest him.
1977 In a second government-sanctioned attack, 1,000 soldiers descended on Kuti’s compound. He suffered a fractured skull, arm and leg in the onslaught and his 82-year old mother was thrown from an upstairs window. He left for voluntary exile in Ghana.
1978 Ghanian authorities deported Kuti back to Lagos. On his arrival he married 27 women simultaneously. Divorcing them in 1986, he said: ‘ no man has the right to own a woman’s vagina’.
1979 Founded his own political party MOP (Movement of the People)
1984 Jailed in Nigeria for five years on what was regarded as sham currency smuggling charges, and released in 1986 after a change of government.
1996 Arrested and released on an alleged drug charge.
1997 Died of complications from Aids aged 59.
*****
music clip of the day 