27492. (Homer) The Odyssey [tr. Stephen Mitchell] [previously read at 4398 in Rieu trans.]
27493. (Miljana Radivojević, et al) The Provenance, Use, and Circulation of Metals in the
. . . . . European Bronze Age: The State of the Debate [article]
27494. (James Blinkhorn & M. Grove) Structure of the Middle Stone Age in Easter Africa
. . . . . [article] [d]
27495. (Sheila McCullagh) Tom Cat and the Wideawake Mice
27496. (Siân Halcrow) On Engagement with Anthropology: A Critical Evaluation of Skeletal
. . . . . and Developmental Abnormalities in the Atacama Preterm Baby and Issues of
. . . . . Forensic and Bioarchaeological Research Ethics [article]
27497. (Kenneth Robeson) Doc Savage #68: Fortress of Solitude
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READING – AUGUST 2018
(Richardson 1962) The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
There is more to this bleak story of a young man in a juvenile detention facility than just another bit of “social realism” or the usual formula of redemption-through-sport. There are layers and layers in Alan Sillitoe’s story, and Ralph Richardson’s film gets many of them across. It’s about being controlled, being used, being forced to play roles for others, and finally rebelling against it in a way that makes some sense. The actors clearly understood these subtleties, and avoided clichés in interpreting the roles. Tom Courtney became a star on the strength of this performance. Michael Redgrave, by then a venerable icon, worked every scene with him in delicate balance. This film still has a high reputation in the British cinema, and justly so.
Kurdish Folk Music
Kurdish band Nishtiman performed their second album “Kobane” Toronto, Canada, Sep. 29, 2017. The band unites musicians from the different Kurdish communities of Iraqi Kurdistan Iran, and Turkey.
For a pedigree of musical continuity, you can’t beat Kurdistan. The oldest known notation of music dates from the ancient Hurrian kingdom, in the second millenium BC. Two sacred hymns recovered by archaeologists from that ancient civilization, located in the heart of today’s Kurdistan, are in the same mode and bear a visible kinship to the Kurdish folk music of today. The modern Kurdish folk movement is fragmented: variant scenes in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran, Syria, or Turkey, as well as a Kurdish diaspora in Europe and North America. In Turkey, singing in the Kurdish language was against the law, punished by imprisonment and physical abuse, until very recently. In Iran, however, it thrived, and in newly self-governing Kurdistan, I’m sure it must be undergoing quite a renaissance. Other than a few stray pieces on general collections of middle eastern music, the only recordings I have are one by instrumentalists Tahmoures and Sohrab Pournazeri, with accompanying vocals by Rojan, entitled simply Kurdish Folk Music, and a cd called Kurdish Dances featuring Mohammad Bhamani on dozak and sornâ, ‘Abdollâh Nabiollâhi on dobol, and vocals by ‘Abdollâh Qorbâni. But I heard a marvelous live concert last year, at the Agha Khan Museum in Toronto. The first thing that strikes the listener is the music’s accessibility. The melodies are catchy and upbeat, and not buried in the microtonal intricasies and melisma that makes it hard for outsiders to follow middle eastern music. You could easily party to this music, in a modern disco, though it is purely traditional.
Sixth Meditation on Democracy [written January 10, 2008] REPUBLISHED
In the beginning years of this blog, I published a series of articles called “Meditations on Democracy and Dictatorship” which are still regularly read today, and have had some influence. They still elicit inquiries from remote corners of the globe. They are now buried in the back pages of the blog, so I’m moving them up the chronological counter so they can have another round of visibility, especially (I hope) with younger readers. I am re-posting them in their original sequence over part of 2018. Some references in these “meditations” will date them to 2007–2008, when they were written. But I will leave them un-retouched, though I may occasionally append some retrospective notes. Mostly, they deal with abstract issues that do not need updating.
For this Meditation on Democracy, the sixth in the series, I will undertake a critique of some currently dominant ideas about the role of democracy in human history, and attempt to provide a conceptual framework for looking at democracy in a different, more realistic way. This will mean that some of the ground covered in earlier meditations will be revisited. It will also draw on the collaborative work between myself and Prof. Steven Muhlberger, published in the Journal of World History, and on the World History of Democracy Website. I am exclusively responsible, however, for the views expressed in this series.
Estêvão Lopes Morago
Lisbon at the time of Lopes Morago: a global entrepôt.
Much of the artistic achievement of the Portuguese Renaissance was destroyed by the great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, which killed 30,000 people. Among the losses where most of the works of the composer Estêvão Lopes Morago (c.1575 — after 1630). But some of his work that survives indicates that he was very good. I have only five short pieces, recorded by the Gulbenkian Foundation choir on their Portugaliae Musica series. All are polyphonic pieces, four of them for four voices, one for a double choir of 3 and 4 parts each. The most beautiful is the Jesu redemptor, which is a litany for the dead, praying for Christ to accept the soul of the departed, and perhaps sung during the cortège, between the house of the deceased and the church. Morago was actually a Spaniard, but apparently spent most of his life in Portugal as choir-master of the Cathedral of Viseu.
Image of the month: a fine Hockney
Model With Unfinished Self-Portrait (1977) by David Hockney. A profoundly civilized painting, one of the finest produced in America — part of a noble heritage that is now endangered by the wave of brutal barbarism that is sweeping over that land.
FILMS – JULY 2018
(Nyby 1951) The Thing [aka The Thing From Another World]
(Craven 1982) Swamp Thing
(Tenold 2018) Brandon’s Cult Movie Reviews: Swamp Thing
(Warner 2012) How the Universe Works: Ep.14 ― Comets: Frozen Wanderers
(Harris 2012) How the Universe Works: Ep.15 ― Asteroids: Worlds That Never Were
(Harris 2012) How the Universe Works: Ep.16 ― Birth of the Earth
(Benner 1977) Outrageous!
(Moffatt 1984) Doctor Who: Ep.625 ― The Twin Delema, Part 3
(Moffatt 1984) Doctor Who: Ep.626 ― The Twin Delema, Part 4
(Borzage 1928) The River [surviving scenes]
(Thiele 1943) Tarzan’s Desert Mystery
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First-time listening for July 2018
29222. (Arthur Sullivan [& W.S. Gilbert]) The Sorceror [complete opera; D’Oyly Carte]
29223. (Global Communication) Fabric 26 [DJ Mix 12 by Mark Pritchard, 12 by Tom Middleton]
29224. (Giacomo Meyerbeer) L’Africaine [complete opera; d. Capuana; Stella, Nikolov, Rinaldi]
29225. (Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan) Golden Krithis: Colours
29226. (3 Inches of Blood) Here Waits Thy Doom
29227. (Giacomo Meyerbeer) Les Huguenots [complete opera; d. Diederich; Pollet, Ghiuselev, Leech]
29228. (Jason Isbell) Southeastern
29229. (Domenico Scarlatti) Missa Breve “La Stella“
29230. (Queensrÿche) Operation Mindcrime
29231. (Péter Eötvös) Angels in America! [complete opera; d. Eötvös; Belcher, Hendricks;
. . . . . Migenes — 2006]
29232. (Chitti Babu Challapally) Raga Naatai: Adi Taal “Sarasiruhasan“
Read more »
READING — JULY 2018
27476. (Adam Grydehøj) Islands as Legible Geographies: Perceiving the Islandness of Kalaalit
. . . . . Nunaat [article]
27477. (David G. Harwell) Introduction to The Science Fiction Century [preface]
27479. (Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth & Dirk Wylie) Vacant World [story] [d]
27480. (N. K. Jemisin) Stone Hunger [story]
27481. (Oliver Dietrich) Travelling or Not? Tracing Individual Mobility Patterns of Late Bronze
. . . . . Age Metalworkers in the Carpathian Basin [article]
27482. (Bert van der Spek) Homerus en de oosterse epiek [article]
27483. (Andromeda Romano-Lax) Plum Rains
27484. (Christopher P. Atwood) Imperial Itinerance and Mobile Pastoralism ― The State and
. . . . . Mobility in Medieval Inner Asia [article]
27485. (Siân Halcrow) Why It’s Not OK for Human Skeletal Remains to Figure in NZ
. . . . . Freemason Rituals [article]
27486. (Michael Mucci, Ben Caldwell, Rick Lacy & Emanuel Tenderini) Homer’s The Odyssey
. . . . . [graphic novel]
27487. (Arthur C. Clarke) Travel by Wire! [story]
27488. (Primitiva Bueno Ramírez, et al) Secuencias gráficas Paleolítico en la Sierra de San
. . . . . Pedro. Tajo internacional. Cáceres [article]
27489. (Charles Lamb) The Story of Ulysses
27490. (Kevin G. Daly et al) Ancient Goat Genomes Reveal Mosaic Domestication in the
. . . . . Fertile Crescent [article]
27491. (Lavanya Vemsani) Narasimha, Lord of Transitions, Transformations, and Theater
. . . . . Festivals: God and Evil in Hindu Cosmology, Myth, and Practice [article]
Sichuan Folk Song
The huge western Chinese province of Sichuan has its own, distinct history. It consists of a broad and fertile basin around the city of Chengdu, ringed by a sparsely populated wilderness of mountains, forests and swamps. While this was a center of ancient non-Han civilization as early as the second millennium BC, it gradually became Sinified over the centuries, and the city and fertile regions are inhabited by Han Chinese speaking a southwestern dialect of Mandarin. However, most of the province consists of rugged mountains, and these are the home of many minority groups, ethnically and linguistically not at all Chinese. Among them are the Yi, related to the Burmese, the Qiang, and the Naxi (or Nakhi). The western half of the province is culturally closer to Tibet, many of the minorities speaking dialects of Tibetan, or closely related languages. All these minorities have distinctive musical traditions, and the metropolitan musical mainstream of China has drawn from them with the same mixing and mining process that went on in the development of America’s folk music. The album I have, Sichuan Folk Song and Ballad, Volume 2 gives a good sample of this variety. Personally, the more “folky” the songs are, the more they appeal to me. I particularly like the Naxi song “This Hill is Not As High As That One”.
China’s many ethnic minorities, who comprise tens of millions of people, have been hidden from the world’s view by millennia of obsessive imperial centralism and racism. In some cases, there are cultures of a million or more people about whom one cannot find a single book in a large university library. Can you imagine what it would mean if there was not a single book in a major library devoted to Wales, or the Basques, or to Estonia? Fortunately, the musical wealth of Sichuan can give us a foot-in-the-door to celebrating a diversity that has been kept from our view by ideology and intellectual laziness.