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Hamid Drake (drums, percussion; MCOTD Hall of Fame), Michael Zerang (drums, percussion), Joshua Abrams (bass, gumbri), Ayako Kato (movement), live, Chicago (Constellation), last night
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Chicago
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reading table
Don’t say my hut has nothing to offer:
come and I will share with you
the cool breeze that fills my window.—Ryokan (1758-1831), translated from Japanese by John Stevens
testify!
United House of Prayer Shout Bands, live, published 2011
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lagniappe
random sights
a while ago, Ireland (Dingle Peninsula)
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reading table
Do you sometimes imagine that you’re getting used to the emergency? I think I can guarantee that you’re not, burdened by states of mind that will be comprehensible only retrospectively, when they no longer pertain. The world going on nonetheless, as the world will, feels bizarrely conditional, subject in thought and action to a blanketing subjunctive mood: things as we wish they were. We are waiting this out with nostalgia for lost freedoms, fear and empathy in the present, and, perhaps, vague anticipation of eventual survivor’s guilt. Never has social privilege seemed more unfair while being clung to so tenaciously. Some of us—artists—are undergoing the siege in ways that can alert us to the subjective dimensions of an objective calamity. We should want those people to keep it up as best they can.
—Peter Schjeldahl, “The Art World: The Melancholy Gestalt of Isolation” (reviewing 100 Drawings from Now, Drawing Center, New York), New Yorker, website (12/14/20), 12/21/20 issue (“The Fix We’re In”)
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streaming
Tomorrow, 6:30 a.m. (CST): the 30th annual winter solstice concert by Chicago-based percussionists Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake (MCOTD Hall of Fame).
passings
Henry Grimes, bassist, November 3, 1935–April 15, 2020
With Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone), Don Cherry (trumpet), Billy Higgins (drums), live, Rome, 1962
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With David Murray (tenor saxophone), Hamid Drake (drums, MCOTD Hall of Fame), live, Finland (Kerava), 2004
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With Kidd Jordan (tenor saxophone), live, New York, 2010
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Chicago (Columbus Park)
MCOTD Hall of Fame
No drummer gives me more joy.
Aly Keita (1969-, balafon), Hamid Drake (1955-, MCOTD Hall of Fame, drums), live, Italy (Santa’Anna Arresi, Sardinia), 2017
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MCOTD Hall of Fame
Hamid Drake (drums; MCOTD Hall of Fame), David Murray (tenor saxophone), live, 2017
(Taking a break—back in a while.)
drum festival
day two
Hamid Drake (MCOTD Hall of Fame, drums), Sylvain Kassap (clarinets), Benjamin Duboc (bass), live, France (Pantin), 2016
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lagniappe
reading table
I haven’t died before, so I sometimes get a bad case of beginner’s nerves, but they soon pass.
—Cory Taylor (1955-2016), Dying: A Memoir
sounds of Chicago
Solstice Drum Quartet (l-r: Michael Zerang, Mike Reed, Hamid Drake [MCOTD Hall of Fame], Avreeayl Ra) & Guests (Mars Williams, Nick Mazzarella, saxophones; Dan Phillips, guitar; Tatsu Aoki, bass), live, Chicago, 2016