Following up on my earlier post about robots in positions of authority –
Robot officiates wedding:
June 2007, South Korea …
A robot has acted as master of ceremonies at a South Korean wedding in what its creators claim is a world first.
Tiro the robot assisted at the wedding of Seok Gyeong-jae, one of the engineers who designed [...]
For those of you who can read Spanish, this is an announcement from Argentine composer Maria del Carmen Aguilar regarding an upcoming festival of religious choir music in Buenos Aires:
Hola: el Estudio Coral de Buenos Aires dirigido por Carlos Lopez Puccio ofrecera un concierto con entrada libre el Domingo 4 de Mayo a las 18 [...]
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/N_blJzon-hA" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
The inventor of the modern crooning style, I came across Al Bowlly thanks to this song being the ending credit for the John Batchelor Show which I listen to Sunday evenings.
- Rudy Carrera.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/63OeB5iv3oY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Sumptuous folk music from Galicia, Spain, by Luar na Lubre.
- Rudy Carrera.
Interesting developments in Motor City ….
Yo Yo Ma and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra will soon submit to a robotic overlord in the form of Honda’s Asimo, which will pick up a baton to conduct the orchestra.
The robot will lead the humans in a performance of “Impossible Dream” from the musical “Man of La Mancha,” [...]
I’ve been feeling very introspective the past week. I learned just a few days ago that an old friend who I lost touch with from high school committed suicide in the fall of 2005.
I remember her as a cheerful, intelligent, thoughtful and kind person. Her dream in high school was to become a [...]
If you know weird keyboard-based music, then Bob Moog should be someone you idolize. He passed away not so long ago, but his legacy lives in this blog just launched (by some genius using Wordpress, naturally!) to live-blog the Mooged Out festival in Ashville, North Carolina.
- Rudy Carrera.
“We can now see that there is a logical structure linking many, many different musical concepts.”
Three music professors — Clifton Callender at Florida State University, Ian Quinn at Yale University and Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton University — have devised a new way of analyzing and categorizing music that takes advantage of the deep, complex mathematics [...]
[kml_flashembed movie="http://it.youtube.com/v/sJbwGYa_XnQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
I’m cheating a bit here! Lot-Lorien are a band I’ve worked with since their inception 10 years ago as their publisher, and it’s time they get brought to a wider audience. This is their signature tune performed at their 10-year anniversary concert on April 10, 2008. I [...]
[kml_flashembed movie="http://it.youtube.com/v/guDRZyJi2WQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Värttinä come from Finland, sing in the Finno-Ugric languages in their native country and in Russian Karelia, and are one of the leading lights of the Scandanavian new folk music scene. They make for a sublime listen.
- Rudy Carrera.
This is funny! Conservative commentator (and one of my favorite reads) James Taranto is honored in a roundabout way by Kenyon Wilson, conductor of the tuba/euphonium ensemble, who will feature a piece titled ‘Kerfuffle,’ a word Taranto is credited for integrating into political discussions. The piece is shown here in its entirety:
The University [...]
Brian Davidson, drummer of psychedelic group Gong, has passed away at the age of 66.
- Rudy Carrera.
ArtBistro.com features New York Times design director Khoi Vinh and his opinions on the future of design.
- Rudy Carrera.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/pSD_qvGbCJk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
The Vodka King and Holland’s wildest drummer pair up for this performance in Amherst, Massachusetts.
- Rudy Carrera.
Carver’s Dog gives a beautiful post on the loss of some many of America’s coolest writers. The picture of Tom Waits alone is worth the price of admission.
- Rudy Carrera.
After local elections in Ethiopia, voters were greeted by this sun with a halo, considered to be a portent of good things to come. I hope so.
- Rudy Carrera.
Another off-beat film, though it did make a splash a few years ago, is Saving Grace. The story of a widow who takes up marijuana cultivation to pay off debts and save her home. Understated (but then it’s English, so…) and hilarious.
- Radhika Yelkur
One of Britain’s coolest art magazines, Frieze came to my attention well over a decade ago when they included with one of their releases a 3-inch compact disc featuring music from Japanese noise terrorists The Boredoms. They continue to showcase some of the most provocative modern art around, though they overindulge themselves in the [...]
…you’re making this a very interesting place! More, please!!
- Rudy Carrera.
Christopher Clark does a wonderful service in clarifying the misunderstood history of what was once the powerhouse (both militarily and intellectually) of Europe from the 17th Century until just after the Second World War. Prussia was a sort of modern Spartan state, yet this region also gave birth to a vigorous Protestantism, philosophy in the [...]
All talk and no action. And that’s a good thing in Richard Linklater’s ‘Waking Life’, a beautiful live action rotoscoped film that floats between sleep and wakefulness, life and death. The characters talk about life as they experience it: existential, suicidal, dreamlike…. Philosophy at its accessible best. And it has Ethan Hawke and a host [...]
This has to be one of the most fascinating documentaries I have ever seen. Bennet Miller’s debut documentary ‘The Cruise’ follows New York tour guide Timothy “Speed” Levitch, on his tours and in his life, as he talks about his greatest love and obsession: New York.
If and when I visit New York, I hope he [...]
[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/9pBMxp8EJFA" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/L6YpYKPcEBQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Iannis Xénakis, the Romanian-Greek-French composer, led a full life. He came from a middle-class Greek family who lived near the Black Sea, fought for both Greek fascists and then leftists, where he suffered facial disfigurement from an explosion. After being sentenced to death [...]
[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/Jf1W3JQsLP4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
My brother and I were indie geeks as kids. His specialty was Anglo music, where mine was in the realm of the unpronounceable. He dug up some Wedding Present LPs and played them for me, knocking me off my duff immediately upon listening. Here are David Gedge [...]
Big Boi on combining Hip-Hop and Ballet:
“You have two different forms of art coming together to make one feature. You got distinction and the elegance and the sophistication of the ballet with the funk of me and my band …”
Continuing with his originality and trend-setting achievements, OutKast’s Big Boi spoke with American Public Media on [...]
Hello, community!
Malcolm has invited me to post here because I would like to share some news and keep you apprised of its progress.
Some years ago, now over ten years in fact, I survived and escaped a really terrible ordeal. Out of that ordeal I wrote a cycle of 15 poems (how often great art comes [...]
There are millions of people who trade live recordings of their favorite bands. If you know how to use Bit Torrent (and just ask if you don’t), you can easily download shows in a high-quality format (such as FLAC) by subscribing to Dime-A-Dozen.org. They have a cap of 100,000 members, and [...]
Walking through my new home town (Siena, Italy) the other day, I found myself drawn to the various window displays with cute summertime dresses, sunglasses, sunhats, and bathing suits.
Different variations of “I want” thoughts passed through my head, sprinkled with feelings of lack: Not having a perfect body, not having enough money, and not having [...]
“The average noise in Cairo from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. is 85 decibels, a bit louder than a freight train only 15 feet away.”
Noise — outrageous, unceasing, pounding noise — is the unnerving backdrop to a tense time in Egypt, as inflation and low wages have people worried about basic survival, prompting strikes and [...]
There has been some debate over the authenticity of Paul Theroux’s claims about VSN, but one thing is for sure: the old guy is a charmer. Invited to meet Indian writers when he was travelling in India a few years ago, he told them that the world was not interested in their subject matter (life/growing [...]
A. P. David of More Intelligent Life Magazine writes two wonderful articles on the Father of Western History:
Reading Herodotus
Herodotus and Bad Fate
- Rudy Carrera.
No, not the hat, or the Moroccan city, but a spectacularly good restaurant in Phoenix. If you visit the city, and if you love Mediterranean-style food, this is your best bet. I recommend the Danish bleu cheese ciabatta burger. It made for some tasty eating!
- Rudy Carrera.
Hello. I’m Janelle Renée. I’m Babel’s newest blogger.
What am I doing here? Who am I? Good questions! I’m still figuring out the answers to those questions, but the short answers of what I do know are:
Malcolm Lawrence, the founder/CEO and Editor-In-Chief of the non-profit organization behind this blog, found me on [...]
NPR put up a story that gave me quite a surprise today. So much so, in fact, that I had to do a double-take. Did I read this correctly? YaHoWa 13?! I used to sell their records in my former life as one of L.A.’s hipper music buyers for Aron’s Records in my misspent youth. [...]
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/6UV3kRV46Zs" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
The band-leader who popularized the most ridiculous dance of all time has died. This Bavarian travesty of a dance has haunted Oktoberfests all over the world, making otherwise sober looking German Catholics look like drunken krauts. You’ve just gotta love that!
- Rudy Carrera.
The Guardian, a paper I normally loathe, comes up with a gem in the music department:
A song about the 13th century Albigensian heresy, sung in French by a Belgian nun, reached No 1 in the 1960s. We can learn a lot form that
Joe Queenan
Friday April 4, 2008
guardian.co.uk
When I was 13 years old, a Belgian nun [...]
Wow, that’s sad that a story like this comes out after the poor old sod has died and can’t defend himself from this hatchet job.
- Rudy Carrera.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/GlE2SolEp_Q" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Though I’m not Roman Catholic, I have a high appreciation for the current Pontiff, Benedict XVI (formerly theologian, writer and philosopher Joseph Alois Ratzinger). It simply amazes me that secularists see the world of Christendom to be a stunted, intellectually bankrupt collection of simpletons when scholars from all three [...]
This post is from the Xinhua News Agency of China, and was noted by Luigi Kapaj, who is owed thanks for posting this on a Mongol newsgroup:
April 03, 2008
Mongolia issues dictionary for “Secret History of the Mongols”
A total of 200 copies of a dictionary for “Secret History of the Mongols”
were published recently in Ulan Bator, [...]
A Nigerien (NOT Nigerian) ex-slave gets her day in court. Sadly, we still live in an age where real slavery exists.
- Rudy Carrera
The Washington Post waxes on one of the great elder statesmen of jazz, Dave Brubeck.
- Rudy Carrera.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/NoCtonftiXA" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
I profusely thank Dean Carlson of Fusion Radio for hipping me to one of Norway’s most beautiful new voices. Hanne Hukkelberg has a quality to her voice that floats somewhere between the Icelandic chanteuse Emiliana Torrini and and the slightly funky American sound Edie Brickell once had.
- Rudy Carrera.
Critical reading for those of you who wish to consider themselves brainiacs. The writing of these articles is superb, the subject matter wonderfully worthwhile, and one can fritter a whole night away reading these slices of art.
- Rudy Carrera.
Archaeologists have discovered human DNA in coprolites — fossilized feces — dating back fourteen thousand years:
Archaeologists knew about Oregon’s Paisley Caves back in the late 1930s. These shallow caves were carved into a hillside by a prehistoric lake. Inside, they found animal bones, stone tools and other signs that humans camped or lived there. But [...]
The beautiful, talented and charming (yes, I butter up my friends) Katia had an exhibit on traditional masks worn in the Bulgarian countryside. Take a look at them here.
- Rudy Carrera.
I feel like a sliver of my youth died with these two. Klaus Dinger was a member of an early formation of Kraftwerk, and would leave the band to form Neu! Chris Moriarty was a member of seminal New York post-Industrial group Controlled Bleeding. These groups helped for a lot of my [...]
[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/k7S87a_ccJg" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
John Zorn is America’s most recognizable proponent of improvisational music. He’s also an amazing composer, has a business stake in an improv club, and heads the Tzadik Records empire. Here he is performing with Dave Douglas, Greg Cohen and Kenny Wollesen as MASADA at the Jazzfestival Hamburg in [...]