"The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century -- a guide on contemplative prayer in the late Middle Ages. The underlying message of suggests that the way to know God is to abandon consideration of God's particular activities and attributes, and be courageous enough to surrender one's mind and ego to the realm of _unknowing_ at which point one may begin to glimpse the nature of God. - wiki I made this recording with Gallegher as she prepared for an exhibition at the ICA/Boston in 2011. She lives and has a studio in Jamaica Plain, and is a professor at Boston College. - sMs"
"Copland finished writing his Sonata for Violin and Piano in Hollywood in 1942, as he was working on his score for the film The North Star. The sonata was dedicated to the memory of a friend who died in the war, Lieutenant Harry H. Dunham. -- Library of Congress Prewar, Dunham was a world traveler and film cinematographer. In 1934 he filmed native people in Samoa. In 1936 he traveled to China and filmed the Chinese 8th Army being routed by Japanese Army for the documentary China Strikes Back (1937). Dunham was also a cinematographer for Too Much Johnson (1938) directed by Orson Welles. He married a woman, Marian Chase, and was reportedly also romantically involved with several men in the artistic circles he moved in. Dunham, Paul Bowles, and Copland traveled together in Morocco. Copland learned of Dunham's death just as he was finishing the piece. "
"Ronald Earsall DeVaughn; April 30, 1947 – August 10, 2022) was an American cellist known for his work in jazz and classical settings. Jazz musician and fellow composer Tomeka Reid hailed Abdul Wadud's _Camille_ (from this album) in a 2020 feature in the New York Times on music that one could play to make friends fall in love with the cello -- wiki His improvisory collaborations with Julius Hemphill & with James Newton are worth seeking out."
"Blanchard (b: 1962) is an American trumpeter, pianist and composer. He started his career in 1982 as a member of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, then The Jazz Messengers. He has composed more than forty film scores and performed on more than fifty. A frequent collaborator with director Spike Lee, he has been nominated for two Academy Awards. See link for more detail on the work from today's Margin. "
"Alyans (which, from the Russian, translates to Alliance) started out as a New Wave, synth-pop band from Moscow, Russia that played and recorded in the musical underground from 1981 to 1984 in the Soviet Union. In 1984 the Soviet Union began to persecute underground rock bands who they believed were too closely influenced by the style and music of the West, arresting and imprisoning very prominent musicians from the underground movement. As a way to avoid this same fate, Alyans was forced to disband for two years until the campaign against rock musicians faded out. (see link)"
"This recording was made by Alan Lomax on Feb 1, 1948 at the Parchman Prison. Sunflower County MS. The singer, CB Cook (aka 88) was incargerated there as were the other performers on this collection. Lomax had been there once before, with his father. This time, he was equipped with a state-of-the-art reel-to-reel tape deck, on which he documnted as best an outsider could the stark and savage conditions of the prison farm, where the Black inmates labored “from can’t to can’t,” chopping timber, clearing ground, and picking cotton for the state of Mississippi. They sang as they worked, often keeping time with axes or hoes, adapting to their condition the slavery-time hollers that sustained their forbears and creating a new body of American song. Theirs was music, as Lomax wrote, that “testified to the love of truth and beauty which is a universal human trait.” As he wrote in 1958: “A few strands of wire were all that separated the prison from adjoining plantations. Only the sight of an occasional armed guard or a barred window in one of the frame dormitories made one realize that this was a prison. The land produced the same crop; there was the same work for blacks to do on both sides of the fence. And there was no Delta black who was not aware of how easy it was for him to find himself on the wrong side of those few strands of barbed wire…. These songs are a vivid reminder of a system of social control and forced labor that has endured in the South for centuries, and I do not believe that the pattern of Southern life can be fundamentally reshaped until what lies behind these roaring, ironic choruses is understood.” - Lomax Digital Archive"
"This recording was made in 1933. Considered the _patriarch of the rebetiko_, Vamvakaris was born in Syra (Greece) in 1905. At the age of twelve, in the false belief that he was wanted by the police, Vamvakaris fled Syros for the port of Piraeus. He worked as a stevedore, a pit-coal miner, a shoe-polisher, a paperboy, a butcher, and other odd jobs. He heard a bouzouki player playing, and vowed that if he did not learn to play the instrument in six months he would chop off his own hand with a cleaver -- wiki. P.S. he learned to play. "
"Jarrell an American fiddler, banjo player, and singer from the Mount Airy region of North Carolina's Appalachian Mountains. Jarrell's first fiddle, which he bought for $10, is now in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution" Click link for more
"The album was recorded during a three-week session in the rocky desert near Djanet, a town on the southern rim of the Tassili n'Ajjer plateau, in south-eastern Algeria. It was this protected region from which the group derived the album's name. The plateau served as an alternate location to record the album after Tessalit, the band's home town in northern Mali, proved to be too precarious due to renewed conflict. The region's close proximity to Libya made it a place of relative safe passage for Kel Tamashek fighters who traveled from the refugee camps in Libya to the battlefront of northern Mali during the 1980s and the Tuareg Rebellion during the early 1990s.[4] It was during this time that the group's founding members first came to play together as political exiles in tents and around campfires of refugee settlements. - wiki"
"Describing Push the Sky Away in the album's press release, Nick Cave said _if I were to use that threadbare metaphor of albums being like children, then Push The Sky Away is the ghost-baby in the incubator and Warren's loops are its tiny, trembling heart-beat._[8] The songs on the album were written over the course of twelve months and _took form in a modest notebook_ kept by Cave. The notebook contained notes on the album's songs, which were composed from _Googling curiosities, being entranced by exotic English Wikipedia entries 'whether they’re true or not'._[8] The song We Real Cool also mentions Wikipedia by name. According to Cave, the songs illustrate how the internet has influenced _significant events, momentary fads and mystically-tinged absurdities_ and _question how we might recognise and assign weight to what's genuinely important._ - wiki"
"aka Robert Rolston is an American musician and leader of the eponymous one-man-band, _Quintron_. He is a nightclub organist and inventor, who has patented a number of his own inventions and often performs at his own private club, the Spellcaster Lodge in New Orleans. He frequently performs with his wife, musician and puppeteer Panacea Pussycat (also known as Miss Pussycat), co-founder of the 9th Ward's defunct Pussycat Caverns. - wiki"
"This main character in Kurosawa's classic, Kanji Wanatabe (played by Shimura) learns he is dying. This theme song to the film springs from a desire to advise young people not to take their youth for granted -- life is brief and your days will never return -- and aligns with the plot of the story. He concentrates his finals days on trying to bring happiness to others. Takashi Shimura rehearsed the song, Kurosawa instructed him to _sing the song as if you are a stranger in a world where nobody believes you exist._ The song was composed in 1915 and widely popular in Japan. "
"Background vocals: The Sasaktunes (which Joni named her overdubs on this and other recordings). Joni wasn't able to make Woodstock. She tells the story of being in Chicago the night before helping Croby, Stills, Nash & Young made their debut there, and couldn't get it together to make it Yasgers. This she wrote in homage to the event, which showcased many of her friends and collaborators. "
"This just released by Argentinian producer Pedro Canale who has traveled the world with this musical project. He has been an active latinamerican electronic musician, since 2006. -- bandcamp"
"AKA Nicoleta Chapra, born in Athens. Studied painting at the School of Fine Arts. She began her recording career in the 1960s by participating in the so-called new wave of Greek music. Composer Stratigopoulou was a Greek singer, writer, and university academic. She acquired recognition in the literary world for translating the works of the Chilean nobel laureate Pablo Neruda into the Greek language. - wiki"
"Bass: Monty Budwig;Clarinet/arranger: Bill Smith; Drums: Shelly Manne: Guitar: Jim Hall. Smith worked extensively in modern classical music, third stream and jazz, and was perhaps best known for having played with pianist Dave Brubeck intermittently from the 1940s to the early 2000s. He put together a jazz group to play for dances at 13, and at the age of 15 he joined the Oakland Symphony. He idolized Benny Goodman, but after high school, a brief cross-country tour with a dance band ended his romance for the life of a traveling jazz musician. He gave two weeks' notice when the band reached Washington, D.C. Encouraged by an older band member, Smith to New York. - wiki"
