Author: Mark

Posted in Cross Cultural Comments

Dear Pete Seeger …

I think there are angels …

 

Hommage to Pete

 

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Posted in Photos Cross Cultural Comments street signs

Savannah signs

 

 
slow narrow road
 
just a photo taken on the Isle of Hope!

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Posted in Cross Cultural Comments

Happy Birthday, Moses Asch!

Without Moses, there’d be no record …

Moses Asch (1905-86) was the founder and driving force of Folkways Records.

Moe started Folkways in 1948, building upon experience with his prior recording companies, Asch and Disc. Moe produced over 2,100 Folkways recordings—an average of one per week for thirty-eight years. Albums were not produced for commercial purposes. Moe never had a hit. He never took a recording out of print because it was a poor seller. As he said, “Would you take the letter ‘q’ out of the dictionary because it is used less than other letters?”

The son of Yiddish author Sholem Asch, Moe was born in Poland and came to New York as a youth. Studying radio electronics, he became interested in American folk music in the 1920s after reading John A. Lomax’s book on cowboy ballads. “It had an introduction by Teddy Roosevelt, which guided me through life because he said that folklore and folksongs were the real expression of a people’s culture.” A meeting with Albert Einstein inspired Moe’s mission to document the world’s sounds.

Moe developed relationships with Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Langston Hughes, Mary Lou Williams, Ossie Davis, and Ella Jenkins. He recorded Margaret Mead and W.E.B. Du Bois. Ethnographers sent him field recordings. He had Sam Charters, Harold Courlander, Harry Smith, Fred Ramsey, John Cohen, and Mike Seeger develop recording series and compilations. He gave Guy Carawan a tape recorder to document the African American Civil Rights Movement. Moe formed a partnership with Norman Granz for a jazz series. He released protest music of the 1960s. He also documented computer music, the sounds of frogs, and the streets of New York. Moe used Ben Shahn artwork for album covers and pioneered the use of detailed liner notes.

Moe took a scientific approach to recording. He objected to the use of the studio as a place where the engineer manufactured the sound from isolated performances. He saw recordings as a means for artists to express themselves free from interference by technicians. He did not like stereo because it “lied” about the location of the performers. He did not like multitrack because it gave the engineer too much power. He favored an approach that would allow the entire performance to be recorded through one microphone and rely on the musicianship of the performers to ensure that the sound was balanced. He recorded “flat.” He saw the record as a document and the performer as the artist around whom the document was constructed. Some complained about the quality of his recordings. But Moe persevered so that people in the future would have a reference point and not need to second-guess how an engineer hyped the sound. Now, with better techniques, his engineering is lauded by technicians for its clarity, integrity, and faithfulness to the sounds as performed.

Importantly, Moe demanded that Folkways recordings contain and reflect social values. He said: “I came to own several tapes of songs by the Nazi SS troops, but I won’t issue them. I won’t issue propaganda or anything that is used against people.”

Moe was a sometimes difficult man with a large mission in a tough business, applying hard work, determination and a lot of chutzpah. He relied on many partners and co-workers, including Marian Distler and Irwin Silber.

In a Declaration of Purpose, Moe stated: “My obligation is to see that Folkways remains a depository of the sounds and music of the world and that these remain available to all. The real owners of Folkways Records are the people that perform and create what we have recorded and not the people that issue and sell the product. The obligation of the company is to maintain the office, the warehouse, the billing and collection of funds, to pay the rent and telephone, etc. Folkways succeeds when it becomes the invisible conduit from the world to the ears of human beings.”

The Smithsonian’s acquisition of Folkways Records, initiated with Ralph Rinzler before Moe’s death, was completed by the Asch family and takes the form of the Moses and Frances Asch Folkways Collection and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. A Folkways Advisory Board, chaired by son Michael Asch, ensures continuity with Moe’s ideals, including the proviso that every recording always remains available to the public.

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Posted in Cross Cultural Comments

The History of English … in English!

Interested in the history and global use of English?

Here’s a very good and fun source:

The History of English in English …

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Posted in Cross Cultural Comments France Paris

just a traffic sign in Paris …

I am sincerely proud to hold French nationality as well as American citizenship. But of course, having a French passport does not make you French.

Parisians are very smart. They can understand this traffic sign as they pass it while driving at the city speed limit of 50km/hour in their approach to the stoplight.  I wonder if it’s on the test for the good-for-a-lifetime “permis de conduire” (permission to drive)?

(at Denfert …)

((Laughing … at ourselves ???))

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Posted in Cross Cultural Comments

Have you googled it?

Have you googled it?

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Posted in Cross Cultural Comments

West Side Story – Prologue

A flashback to the Jets and the Sharks

 

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Posted in Cross Cultural Comments

Sholem Aleichem – Penguin Classics On Air – Penguin Group (USA)

Discover this – you won’t regret it!

In this episode of Penguin Classics On Air, Elda Rotor introduces Penguin Classics editor John Siciliano and his interview with Aliza Shevrin, translator of TEVYE THE DAIRYMAN AND MOTL THE CANTOR’S SON, as well as WANDERING STARS, about the life and works of Sholem Aleichem, the difference between FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and TEVYE THE DAIRYMAN, Yiddish humor, life, and culture from Russia to the Lower East Side, and what to do with five (or is it three? Or seven?) daughters.

Sholem Aleichem – Penguin Classics On Air – Penguin Group (USA).

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Posted in Cross Cultural Comments

Desire and Judgment

In this week’s New Yorker, Adam Gopnik, talking about sex and politics, reminds us of the Yiddish saying which can be roughly translated like this:

“When passion walks in the door, reason jumps out the window.”

The reverse can also be true.

“When reality walks in the door, desire escapes through the chimney.”

Desire is not subject to the language of judicious choice, or it would not be desire, with a language all its own. The point of lust, not to put too fine a point on it, is that it lures us to do dumb stuff, and the fact that the dumb stuff gets done is continuing proof of its power. (by Adam Gopnik, published in The New Yorker, November 26, 2012)

This article was referring to another of the “scandals” about high ranking officials having what are known as extra-marital affairs. In this specific case, it was a general in the army. 

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Posted in Cross Cultural Comments

New York Fashion – Tucked In – by Bill Cunningham

After decades of dressed-down, often disheveled styles, a few men with high antennas are signaling a major new direction: pressed and tailored.

Bill describes the tendency as “the straw in the wind” – the direction that style is taking!

Here’s the video!

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