Saturday, June 13, 2009

The Media that Can be Yours this Week


From Sweden, Adiam Dymott, born 17th December 1982, is a Swedish singer living in Södermalm in Stockholm.

Welcome to my regular list of recommended media for the last week or two (its been a busy time). Adiam Dymott is a face on the Swedish pop scene at the moment and I think the music is cool and the look alluring, although I will not be rushing out to buy the CD. I thought to add it here to give an idea of what is happening in Sweden at the moment.

I am moving out of the family apartment following what has become, after two months of discussion, a mutual decision for us to live apart. With two kids (9 and 4 years) we will of course continue to work together daily. It is a difficult thing with uncertainty the main feeling I am experiencing at the moment. However, the results of the decision are already being felt with a much more relaxed atmosphere between us. I thought I should mention it here, as this blog is my main presence on the net.

Now on to the media that I think is special:

American Prince 2009
In 1978, director Martin Scorsese turned his camera on his friend and roommate, Steven Prince, with his lost documentary "American Boy". Best known for his role as the gun salesman in Taxi Driver, Prince was a true-life raconteur, actor, ex-drug addict, and road manager for Neil Diamond. To Scorsese, Steven's life was more fascinating than what any screenwriter could dream up, it had to be captured in celluloid. To Tarantino, one of the most memorable scenes in film history is an homage that actually happened to Prince in real life. Three decades later, filmmaker Tommy Pallotta draws out Steven Prince to recount his days since "American Boy" and to compose the next chapter of his story.


Times ain't like they used to be: Africa and The Blues

In 1969 Gerhard Kubik chanced to encounter a Mozambican labor migrant, a miner in Transvaal, South Africa, tapping a cipendani, a mouth-resonated musical bow. A comparable instrument was seen in the hands of a white Appalachian musician who claimed it as part of his own cultural heritage. Through connections like these Kubik realized that the link between these two far-flung musicians is African-American music, the sound that became the blues.

Such discoveries reveal a narrative of music evolution for Kubik, a cultural anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. Traveling in Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, and the United States, he spent forty years in the field gathering the material for Africa and the Blues. In this book, Kubik relentlessly traces the remote genealogies of African cultural music through eighteen African nations, especially in the Western and Central Sudanic Belt.

Included is a comprehensive map of this cradle of the blues, along with 31 photographs gathered in his fieldwork. The author also adds clear musical notations and descriptions of both African and African American traditions and practices and calls into question the many assumptions about which elements of the blues were "European" in origin and about which came from Africa. Unique to this book is Kubik's insight into the ways present-day African musicians have adopted and enlivened the blues with their own traditions.


Benjamin Zephaniah: Rasta X

Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah (born 15 April 1958, Coleshill, Birmingham, England) is a British Rastafarian writer and dub poet. He is a well-known figure in contemporary English literature, and was included in The Times list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008.
Zephaniah has said that his mission is to fight the dead image of poetry in academia, and to "take [it] everywhere" to people who do not read books.



Prince Rama of Ayodhya live at WFMU (MP3's)

The trio of Michael Collins, Taraka Larson, and Nimai Larson met in the summer of 2007 on a Florida Hare Krishna farm, relocating to Boston and immersing themselves deep into the creation of ritualistic, holistic, and cinematic psychedelic sound. Having played shows in the US and UK with the likes of Teeth Mountain, Magik Markers, Indian Jewelry and others, their live sets have garnered a reputation for incorporating its audiences into the instrumental fold, and drawing musically from a rich variety of multicultural sources. They brought their live set to Brian Turner's show on May 12th and kindly let us put up these MP3s.

Intelligent Video: The Top Cultural & Educational Video Sites | Open Culture
Looking for great cultural and educational video? Then you’ve come to the right place. Below, we have compiled a list of 35 sites that feature intelligent videos. This list was produced with the help of our faithful readers, and it will grow over time. If you find it useful, please share it as widely as you can. And if we’re missing good sites, please list them in the comments below.

Music Musica Musique: Allen Ginsberg: Songs of Innocence and Experience (1969)
Wonderful and psychedelic experience in which Ginsberg recites and sings, with your own music and surrounded by great musicians and friends, the beautiful poems by Blake.


Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds :: Austria, October ‘86
Posthof, Linz, Austria gig from October 9, 1986. The mp3s are culled from a vinyl bootleg (audience recording) known as the Black Folder. Anyone interested in the intensity of the Bad Seeds during the mid-eighties ought to give these at least a cursory spin.


WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Jean Baudrillard, Rock Star!
Unbelievable but true! Baudrillard recites his poetry backed up by an all star band featuring Tom Watson, Mike Kelley, George Hurley, Lynn Johnston, Dave Muller and Amy Stoll, special guest vocalist Allucquère Rosanne Stone. Recorded live as part of the Chance Festival at Whiskey Pete’s Casino in Stateline Nevada, 1996. You’ve never heard Baudrillard like this before! Music to read Nietzsche to.


LEPORK RECORDS
Lepork Records is a new net label specializing in South American punk artists. The small offering of online albums is interesting but I was especially drawn to The Leftouts and their free album titled Last One Standing. It is a raucous effort incorporating power pop with punk. I especially like the opening track, “19 Days” and the tense title tune. This album, as well the the albums by other bands on this net label deserve a listen for their inexhaustible energy but also to show how global the punk genre has become.

Reason and Persuasion: Three Dialogues by Plato
The book is © John Holbo and Belle Waring and will be available as a paperback from Pearson Asia by mid-August, 2009.
The book is available now as a freely viewable, downloadable (but not freely printable) PDF from Issuu.com. It is presently at the final draft stage. We have to make all final changes in the next week or so. We're hoping you can help. Feel free to read, make comments, criticisms and suggestions. Typos, all the little stuff - we would be most grateful to catch them now rather than later. More substantive revisions? Time is short but we want the book to be good and most definitely not to have glaring problems. We'll do what we can with the time I have left. Holbo does all the layouts, so he can tear apart and rebuild if necessary.
You'll get the hang of the Issuu interface, which is intuitive and elegantly minimal. The book itself doesn't take much explaining: it's a book. The content is a bit mixed, as the long title indicates. It contains the full text of three Plato dialogues, translated by Belle Waring. It contains introductory chapters and commentary on each dialogue by John Holbo. It's got little pictures. It's intended for introduction to philosophy classes, but we hope it is good for more than that.


UbuWeb Sound - Gwilly Edmondez
Gwilly Edmondez emerged as a singular entity from South Wales's legendary Radioactive Sparrow (1980-2003) in late 1980s. His work is about immediate performance, collage, and improvisation. He operates both as a solo artist and as collaborator in several groups (mostly duos). He also issues recordings as Virginia Pipe (fantasy breaks); Copydex (collage); and Gustav Thomas (Gameboy compositions). In his day job, he teaches postvernacular composition at Newcastle University.

HARRY PARTCH VS LLYN FOULKES

In this corner: Harry Partch, dead, former hobo who spent the '30s and '40s hopping trains, traveling around the country in pursuit of a buck and a meal, composer of songs that sometimes reflected this background, creator of fantastical micro-tonal instruments, the subject of a concert this Fri and Sat downtown at the REDCAT performed on said instruments, lovingly restored.

Harry Partch: "Barstow: Eight Hitchiker Inscriptions" from the out-of-print '60s classic "The World of Harry Partch," tho a remake from 1982 by his ensemble can be found on "The Harry Partch Collection, Vol 2."

And in this corner, Llyn Foulkes, alive, one of the "Visionary Artists From L.A." featured at the Hammer Museum in Westwood whose non-conformist attitudes have kept the art-world from embracing them, even as "outsiders," who will be performing original songs inspired by his Spike Jones and swing-infused youth this Friday night on his "Machine," a one-man band riot of honk-horns, percussion, organ pipes, and a bass string.


Negative Sound Institute
Negative Sound Institute offers music that is available exclusively through free mp3 downloads

Shipwreck Radio By Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter
Curated by Anne Hilde Neset and Rob Young for Lofoten International Art Festival
Produced by Eivind Furnesvik and Kunst I Nordland
A radio art intervention in Lofoten, Norway, June 2004
The string of islands off the northern coast of Norway, high up above the Arctic Circle, is better known for its dried cod and midnight sun than for sound art. Between May and July 2004, this changed as two of the UK's most respected, enigmatic sonic artists were marooned with the task of making a sonic record of their time on these unfamiliar islands.
The airwaves were hijacked as their work in progress made interventions on the local radio station Lofotradioen 104.4 FM. The piece was eventually re-edited and made into two double NWW albums for release on Stapleton's label United Dairies, Shipwreck Radio Vol1 and Shipwreck Radio Vol2.


The AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music

The AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM) was established on 1 April 2004, supported by a 5-year grant of just under £1m from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
A partnership of Royal Holloway, University of London (host institution) with King's College, London and the University of Sheffield, CHARM's aim was to promote the musicological study of recordings, drawing on a wide range of approaches ranging from computational analysis to business history; click here for further details.
Its activities included a major discographical project , residential symposia and other events, and research projects.
Through this website you can discover more about these activities, access our online discography and library of ex-copyright recordings, see details about our publications, or find information about early recording history and methods for analysing recordings.
CHARM researchers won a further five years of funding from 2009 under the AHRC's Phase 2 Research Centres scheme, but with a new research programme focussing on the musicological study of live performance. This changed focus is reflected in the successor centre's name: the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMPCP). The new Centre will begin on 1 October 2009.

Pathway To Unknown Worlds: Augustus Pablo Meets Lee Perry & the Wailers - Rare Dubs 1970 - 71
A1 Soul Rebel Dub
A2 Don't Rock My Boat Dub
A3 Corner Stone Dub
A4 Rainbow Country Dub
A5 Screwface Dub
A6 400 Years Dub
A7 Concrete Jungle Dub
B1 Satisfy My Soul Dub
B2 It's Alright Dub
B3 Put It On Dub
B4 Long Long Winter Dub
B5 Soul Almighty Dub
B6 No Sympathy Dub
B7 Keep On Moving Dub

Producer : Lee Perry

Backing Band : The Wailers
Drums : Carlton Barrett
Bass : Family Man
Guitar : Alva Reggie Lewis
Keyboards : Glen Adams
Melodica : Augustus Pablo & Keesy


Miles Davis Live 1970
Live at the Fillmore East, NYC, March 6, 1970

Electronic Music from the Middle Eastern Avant-Garde (1959-2001)
As part of Ubu’s new partnership with Bidoun Magazine - Art & Culture from the Middle East, we’ll be bringing you a slew of wildly rare avant-garde culture. We begin by featuring six historic electronic musicians and sound poets:

Dariush Dolat-Shahi “Electronic music, Tar and Setar” (1985) and “Otashgah” (1986) [MP3]

Halim El-Dabh “Leiyla Visitations” (1959) [MP3]

Forough Farrokhzad “Radio Tehran Sessions” (1962-1964) [MP3]

Ali Reza Mashayekhi “Electronic Music” (1970-2001) [MP3]

Bijan Mofid “Shahreh Ghesseh” (1967)

Ilhan Mimaroglu “ Electronic Music” (1964-1983) [MP3]


Enjoy the music for life is short.

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