More on Mirabai

Link

As promised, here is the link to the entry on Mirabai and her work!  Her poems are also song lyrics, and she was a devotee of the Hindu god Krishna.

Ono no Komachi

Link

I thought I'd add a link to an entry on the ninth-century Japanese poet, Ono no Komachi.  She is a wonderful, concise, and passionate poet who continues to intrigue the Japanese.

In the 19th century, the woodblock printer Ando Hiroshige and others depicted her in their work.

More recently playwrights have also depicted her.  Below is a scene from Aoi/Komachi, a performance of two of Yukio Mishima's plays.

Indian Music

Link

The picture above is from a bhajan (a type of Indian poetry) session at a festival in Mysore, India.  Here's a little more information about this festival:  http://www.dattapeetham.com/india/festivals/ganapati2004/ganapati2004.html

The link above is to a blog entry on Indian music that goes along with the entry on poet & lyricist Mirabai that I will post soon.  However, if you're not familiar with Indian music, you will need this background information before I post the entry on Mirabai and her poems. 

Gary Snyder's Reading at the Smithsonian

Link 

Here's a link to my blog entry about Beat poet and translator Gary Snyder's recent reading in DC.  He is one of my favorite poets these days.  As you might imagine from the picture above, he writes about nature and is based out west in Northern California.  Enjoy!

An English Ph.D's 100 Years of Popular Music

  This spring, in my EN 202 class, we talked about the relationship between song lyrics and poetry...the impulse to create a canon, um, I mean a list of "Best Songs Ever," and one academic's campaign to award Bob Dylan a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Blame it on Richard Thompson & his 1000 Years of Popular Music. 

http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-748-from-medieval-madrigals-to-britney-spears.html

The list below is my husband (Ph.D., Indiana University)'s pop music canon...I mean...his 16 Best Songs Ever.  As he is old enough to remember when John Lennon was alive (or who he is), his list may be different from yours.  As he is younger than Richard Thompson, his list is also different from Mr. Thompson's.

Am not sure if these are in any particular order, but he is at work right now, so I won't check.

Number 1 is Anita O'Day and Roy Eldridge's "Let Me Off Uptown"  Below are two different versions, both blurry as they are from the mid-20th century.  Anita O'Day was that era's Amy Winehouse except that she survived and thrived until the age of 87.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoSAPaThWJE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQiFvTK-kNI

Here is a picture of her at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958.


Next is Aretha Franklin's "Spirit in the Dark."  Hooray for YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3SBJ57H4yY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UV_LH1VrMo

Below is a picture of Ms. Franklin singing a duet of this song with Ray Charles. 
The Beatles come in third with "A Day in the Life" from the Sgt. Pepper Album.

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles/_/A+Day+in+the+Life


  Number four is Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child."  Like Ono no Komachi, Ms. Holiday figures in many plays.  The actor in the second picture is Dawn P. Hope who looks a bit like Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues, a 1970s movie about Ms. Holiday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IYTx60s07A

http://www.last.fm/music/Billie+Holiday/_/God+Bless+the+Child



Song #5 is Bob Marley's "Redemption Song."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7pAvbjChQM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJHgMD1S0bg

Blossom Dearie follows at #6 with "A Fine Spring Morning."  Hmmm...I wonder what my husband's favorite kind of music is!!

http://www.last.fm/music/Blossom+Dearie/_/A+Fine+Spring+Morning

Ella Fitzgerald's song (#7) is "How High the Moon."  Her version of "Cottontail" is pretty awesome, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXbXD2y_5ZY
http://www.last.fm/music/Ella+Fitzgerald/_/How+High+the+Moon

http://mp3vector.com/ella-fitzgerald/cottontail/download-mp3-track151966/

We zoom into the late 1970s with song #8--Elvis Costello's "Hand in Hand."  The picture below dates from that era, too.  I've seen Costello in concert recently, and he is very jovial looking.

http://www.last.fm/music/Elvis+Costello/_/Hand+in+Hand

  Also from the 1970s...1974...to be exact is our #9 song...Joni Mitchell's "Same Situation."

http://artists.letssingit.com/joni-mitchell-lyrics-same-situation-z753j43

We zip back to the 1950s with King Pleasure's "Parker's Mood for Love" at #10.

http://www.last.fm/music/King+Pleasure/_/Parker's+Mood

King Pleasure is actually one man and not a band.  However, I can't find a picture of him.

Here's "Cottontail" at #11.  This isn't Ella's version; it's by Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, a group from the late 1950s & early 1960s.  Recently, I saw Jon Hendricks in concert.  At 80+, he is still in good voice and can still fit into his WWII uniform. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3vf-XOAILw


Louis Armstrong appears at #12 with "Basin St. Blues."  YouTube never ceases to amaze me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GuDExkBmnU

  Would you believe that a very recent song has made it to #13?  OK, it's Nellie McKay's "Ding Dong."  Does she count?  Take a listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXYgziSxxt8

Ms. McKay is quite charming and quirky live.

The 1980s ring in with...Paul Simon's "Graceland" at #14.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtT7Og2LBbE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXgQtL3aEmQ


Ack!  Another 1980s song at #15.  But it's okay.  It's "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" by The Talking Heads, a group that I wish that I had paid more attention to back in the day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68KLZCVFDQI

And , finally, from 2000 is #16..."It Doesn't Matter" with Wyclef Jean, the Rock, and Melky Sedeck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmv--UJ3eJM



Enjoy!

Waiting for Godot at the Warehouse Theater

This afternoon my husband and I went out in the insane heat to see Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot at DC's Warehouse Theater, a gritty venue north of Gallery Place/Chinatown.  This play may not quite be the kind of contemporary play that the City Paper's critics would like to see more of, but I thought that it was well worth reviewing for the EN 202 blog.  Moreover, Waiting for Godot has been an extremely influential play, even from its first performances.

Did you know that Waiting for Godot was originally in French?  Its author, Samuel Beckett, was born in Ireland, but he chose to write in French (after WWII) because that language enabled him to "write 'without style.'"  (At the time, he was living in Paris.)  Beckett then translated his play into English, his first language.

The premise of Waiting for Godot is this: two men Vladimir or "Didi" and Estragon or "Gogo" are waiting in a field by a tree because Godot, a man who has agreed to help them out, has said that he would be coming there.  It's not clear where the men are or when the play takes place.  At one point, Vladimir and Estragon talk about picking grapes somewhere in France and being together for fifty years.  However, this is not a realistic play.  In fact, critic Normand Berlin notes that Beckett refused to answer famed theater actor Ralph Richardson's questions about the characters in his play.  For Berlin himself, the absence of specificity or backstory was exciting, and he views the two characters as archetypes.

Along the way, Vladimir and Estragon chat to kill time.  At times, they discuss very mundane matters, and Estragon grumbles about his ill-fitting boots.  Then he turns around and suggests to his companion that they hang themselves on the tree.  They do not because they have no rope with them.  They also motivate themselves to wait for Godot and, at one point, mistake Pozzo, a wealthy man with a slave named Lucky, for him.  One of Godot's servants then arrives, informing the two men that his master will not be coming.  After a brief intermission, the play begins again, and it is the next day--or is it?  First Vladimir and then Estragon return to the stage.  Vladimir is cheerful, trying to remember a song about a dog; the other man straggles in, without shoes and with scrapes and bruises from a fight.  The two men reconcile and talk about going off separately.  Again Pozzo comes on stage.  This time he is blind, his slave is mute, and both helplessly fall down onto the ground.  They need Vladimir and Estragon's help to get up.  Again Godot's servant comes on stage.  He does not recognize Vladimir or Estragon even though Vladimir begs him to.  The servant leaves, followed by the two men.

The actors at the Scena Theater (Chris Davenport and Dan Brick) look relatively young as you may gather from the picture above.  Here are some pictures of other pairs.  James Laurenson and Alan Dobie portray a more elderly pair.

Charles Spencer's review is also well worth reading as he discusses the difficulties of staging Godot in the 2000s, more than fifty years after the play's exhilarating debut:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/10/11/btgodot11.xml


The Classical Theater of Harlem traveled to New Orleans to perform Waiting for Godot.  Mother Jones' Nick Baumann has written about their open-air performance:

http://www.motherjones.com/arts/feature/2007/11/waiting-for-godot-in-new-orleans.html

Colleges like Wichita State University in Kansas and Montreal's McGill University have staged this play as well.  The photo below from Wichita State shows Lucky and Pozzo as well as Vladimir and Estragon.  Lucky is the young woman with the bags.

The picture below is from McGill's performance:

  For more information about this production, see this link:  http://media.www.mcgilltribune.com/media/storage/paper234/news/2004/02/10/AE/Two-Guys.And.A.Tree-603040.shtml

The picture below is from a 1984 bilingual production (Hebrew and Arabic) staged in Haifa, Israel

  I will close with a link to Normand  Berlin's article that truly puts Beckett and Godot in context:

http://www.samuel-beckett.net/BerlinTraffic.html

Calypso--The Mighty Sparrow and More

With Spring Semester over, this blog is on hiatus, but I hope to be teaching EN 202 again soon.  So I thought I would close Spring 2008 and begin...Spring 2009?...with an an entry on Calypso.  Many of these sites are from an annotated bibliography written by a Trinidadian-American student from EN 201.  (Thank you, Marilyn!)  The picture above is the cover of the CD that I played in class.  The site below has more information about this particular collection:

http://www.amazon.com/First-Flight-Early-Calypsos-Collection/dp/B000BH4YMM/ref=sr_1_7/002-3473942-4057656?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1211249211&sr=1-7

As you will realize, the songs I played in class were probably the more PG-rated ones.  The Mighty Sparrow is a trickster and a social critic, which at times forces one to be PG-13 or NC-17. 

This biography from Ice Records' site is probably just the right length:

http://www.icerecords.com/MightySparrow.htm

Here is a link to The Mighty Sparrow's own site.  Since it is very much a commercial site, it is quite up-to-date.

http://www.mightysparrow.com/

Or is it?  On the other hand, you may prefer to go to You Tube to see this artist in performance!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-xsJDtGQwQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K54xLBA-KHg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHdFjyNkwHI

Here, he is interviewed.  From his hairstyle, it looks to be an interview from the 1990s. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGsPSHEn_AQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poj84VBlqpk

For an overview of calypso music, Wikipedia's entry is a good place to begin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/calypso_music

In 2005, Miami's Historical Museum of Southern Florida staged an exhibition on calypso's history:

http://calypsoworld.org/noflash/introduction.htm

Or you may prefer to listen to a few clips from Calypso Calaloo, a more historical collection put together to accompany a history of calypso:

 http://www.amazon.com/Calypso-Calaloo-Various-Artists/dp/B0000002TN

Here are links to sites about some of the musicians featured in this collection.  The first is Lord Invader:

http://www.globalsound.si.edu/feature_12A.aspx

http://calypsoworld.org/noflash/artists-13.htm

Another, Lord Invader, began performing in the 1890s and continued up until the 1950s.  Unfortunately, I could not find much about him online.

Lovey's Band began recording in the 1910s:

http://www.trinbagopan.com/forum/webbbs_config.cgi/noframes/read/134

http://www.calypsoworld.org/trinidad/lovey_band.htm

Here are links to other historical collections:

http://juneberry78s.com/sounds/ListenToCalypso.htm

http://www.moistworks.com/2006/01/1.html

A specific example of calypsonian social commentary is Lord Caresser's "Edward VII/Love, Love Alone," which is actually sung by others here:

http://calypsoworld.org/noflash/songs-3.htm

My student from EN 201 informed me about Lord Kitchener, who came a generation before the Mighty Sparrow and did much to popularize calypso throughout the world.  At the sites above, you'll be able to listen to his songs and his "battles" with other performers.

http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Biography/History_LORDKITCHENER_Peopleofthecentury.htm

http://calypsoworld.org/noflash/artists-20.htm

Lord Melody battled with the Mighty Sparrow.  I'm also including information about two of the songs Lord Melody made famous:

http://calypsoworld.org/noflash/artists-01.htm

http://calypsoworld.org/noflash/songs-5.htm

http://calypsoworld.org/noflash/songs-10.htm

Did you know that there have been female calypsonians?  An early performer was Lady Trinidad:

http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Biography%5Cbio_ThelmaLewis_LadyTrinidad.html

http://www.bestoftrinidad.com/calypso.html

Calypso Rose is a current performer, and in one of the videos above we saw her perform with the Mighty Sparrow.

http://www.bestoftrinidad.com/calypso/rose.html

http://www.trinisoca.com/articles/2003/2601.html

http://jouvay.com/interviews/calypsorose.html

My student's annotated bibliography also mentioned soca and chutney, two newer genres of music, but I'm afraid that they will need a separate entry of their own.