sounds of India
day three
Shivkumar [AKA Shiv Kumar] Sharma (1938-), santoor
Raag Hamsadhwani, live
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Indian music calls for surrender. Of what? Busyness. Distractability. Impatience.
*****
reading table
[S]ince we do float on an unknown sea, I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way carefully; who knows what might depend on it?
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), letter to Robert Lowell
sounds of India
day one
Nikhil Banerjee (1931-1986), sitar, Raag Jaijaiwanti, live recording
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lagniappe
reading table
Everything only connected by “and” and “and.”
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), “Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance”
basement jukebox
The Falcons (feat. Wilson Pickett, lead vocals; Robert Ward, guitar)
“I Found A Love” (1962)
***
Albert Washington (feat. Lonnie Mack, guitar)
“Hold Me Baby” (1969)
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lagniappe
reading table
[T]he greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist. I last felt that in relation to a poem while in the sitting room of Elizabeth Bishop’s old home in rural Brazil. I stood in a corner, apart from the general conversation, and read “Under the Window: Ouro Preto.” The street outside was once an obscure thoroughfare for donkeys and peasants. Bishop reports overheard lines as people pass by her window, including the beautifully noted “When my mother combs my hair it hurts.” That same street now is filled with thunderous traffic — it fairly shakes the house. When I finished the poem I found that my friends and our hosts had left the room. What is it precisely, that feeling of “returning” from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger — then it fades, but never completely.
—Ian McEwan, New York Times Sunday Book Review, 12/9/12
The 1960s—a decade of relentless experimentation, bold innovation, of searching, always, for something new, something true.
Freddie and the Dreamers, “Little Bitty Pretty One,” “A Little You”
Live, London, 1965
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lagniappe
reading table
Last night I had a dream. I was in France. Paris was again falling to the Germans, but it had become such a habit that one had to look closely to see that anyone really cared. I arrived in Paris (from the front, I think, but there wasn’t much of one) went to a party, where I was surrounded by acquaintances. They became distant and shadowy when I approached them. Suddenly I saw you and gave you a tremendous hug. You moved to another table. I said: ‘I know where there are a couple of good French restaurants.’ You said: ‘They’re all French here.’
—Robert Lowell, Letter to Elizabeth Bishop, 6/14/1953,
in The Letters of Robert Lowell (Saskia Hamilton ed., 2005)
old stuff
Your day is about to get better.
Hoagy Carmichael & Ella Logan, “Two Sleepy People” (H. Carmichael &
F. Loesser), 1938
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lagniappe
reading table
I was made at right angles to the world
and I see it so. I can only see it so.
I do not find all this absurdity people talk about.
Perhaps a paradise, a serious paradise where lovers hold hands
and everything works.
—Elizabeth Bishop, “Keaton” (excerpt)
clear, adj. bright, luminous; transparent; free from obscurity. E.g., alto saxophonists Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green.
Rudresh and Bunky, talking and playing (with Jason Moran, piano; Francois Moutin, bass; Jack DeJohnette and Damion Reid, drums)
Vodpod videos no longer available.Listening to these guys, who’d ever guess that one is nearly twice as old as the other? (Rudresh is 39, Bunky 75.)
*****
Here’s a track from their recent album (Apex, 2010), “Playing with Stones,” featuring Rudresh (Bunky sits out).
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
My favorite moment in this next clip comes at 2:24, when alto saxophonist Greg Osby, listening to Bunky, tilts his head, as if to say, “Did you hear that?!”
Bunky Green (with alto saxophonists Greg Osby and Steffano di Battista), “Body and Soul,” live, Germany, 2008
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
reading table
In the is-this-a-great-country-or-what department, how delicious to learn
that two great American artists—trumpeter Roy Eldridge and poet Elizabeth Bishop—were born, one hundred years ago, within days of each other. (Eldridge was born on January 30, 1911, Bishop on February 8th.)
Sandpiper
The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.—Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn’t tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.—Elizabeth Bishop
music clip of the day 