Something cheery to start the weekend.
Lucinda Williams, “It’s Gonna Rain” (L. Williams), live (studio performance), Seattle, 2/11/15
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lagniappe
reading table
How can you give orders when nobody is listening?
—John Ashbery, “Be Careful What You Wish For” (New York Review of Books, 3/5/15)
more sounds of Mali
Toumani Diabate (kora), live, India (New Delhi), 2011
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lagniappe
random thoughts
If today is the answer, what is the question?
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taking a break
I’m taking some time off—back in a while.
Why start the week with the same old stuff?
Derek Bailey (1930-2005, guitar), Min Tanaka (1945-, dance), Japan, 1993
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lagniappe
reading table
For you fleas too,
The night must be long,
It must be lonely.—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828; translated from Japanese by R. H. Blyth)
*****
the beat goes on
Nineteen hundred posts—and counting.
old school
Soul Revivals, “If You Miss Me,” c. 1975
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lagniappe
reading table
Speak, You Also
by Paul Celan (1920-1970, translated from German by Michael Hamburger)Speak, you also,
speak as the last,
have your say.Speak—
But keep yes and no unsplit.
And give your say this meaning:
give it the shade.Give it shade enough,
give it as much
as you know has been dealt out between
midnight and midday and midnight.Look around:
look how it all leaps alive—
where death is! Alive!
He speaks truly who speaks the shade.But now shrinks the place where you stand:
Where now, stripped by shade, will you go?
Upward. Grope your way up.
Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer.
Finer: a thread by which
it wants to be lowered, the star:
to float farther down, down below
where it sees itself gleam: in the swell
of wandering words.
basement jukebox
Hank Snow (1914-1999), “Honeymoon on a Rocket Ship”(C. E. “Hank” Snow, J. Masters), 1953
sounds of Mali (day four)
Tinariwen, live, Paris, 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
It was what it might have been to be alive, but tenderly.
—Lucie Brock-Broido, “A Meadow” (Stay, Illusion)
sounds of Mali (day three)
Ballake Sissoko (kora) and Vincent Segal (cello), live, Washington D.C., 2011
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Perpetual astonishment is one plausible response to being alive in this world. Abject despair is another. The list goes on.
sounds of Mali (day two)
Trio Da Kali and Kronos Quartet, “Diaraby,” live, University of Maryland, 2014
sounds of Mali (day one)
Africa Express, “Terry Riley’s in C Mali,” 2013-15
I am overwhelmed and delighted by this CD. I was not quite prepared for such an incredible journey, hearing the soul of Africa in joyous flight over those 53 patterns of ‘In C’. This ensemble feeds the piece with ancient threads of musical wisdom and humanity indicating to me that this work is a vessel ready to receive and be shaped by the spontaneous feelings and colours of the magician/musician. I could not ask for a greater gift for this daughter’s 50th birthday.
—Terry Riley (1935-)
what’s new
D’Angelo and the Vanguard (Pino Palladino, bass; John Blackwell, drums; Jesse Johnson & Isaiah Sharkey, guitars, et al.), Saturday Night Live, 1/31/15
“Really Love”
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“The Charade”
