March 12, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Ain’t It Strange?
By PATTI SMITH
ON a cold morning in 1955, walking to Sunday school, I was drawn to the voice of Little Richard wailing “Tutti Frutti” from the interior of a local boy’s makeshift clubhouse. So powerful was the connection that I let go of my mother’s hand.
Rock ’n’ roll. It drew me from my path to a sea of possibilities. It sheltered and shattered me, from the end of childhood through a painful adolescence. I had my first altercation with my father when the Rolling Stones made their debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Rock ’n’ roll was mine to defend. It strengthened my hand and gave me a sense of tribe as I boarded a bus from South Jersey to freedom in 1967.
Rock ’n’ roll, at that time, was a fusion of intimacies. Repression bloomed into rapture like raging weeds shooting through cracks in the cement. Our music provided a sense of communal activism. Our artists provoked our ascension into awareness as we ran amok in a frenzied state of grace.
My late husband, Fred Sonic Smith, then of Detroit’s MC5, was a part of the brotherhood instrumental in forging a revolution: seeking to save the world with love and the electric guitar. He created aural autonomy yet did not have the constitution to survive all the complexities of existence.
Before he died, in the winter of 1994, he counseled me to continue working. He believed that one day I would be recognized for my efforts and though I protested, he quietly asked me to accept what was bestowed — gracefully — in his name.
Today I will join R.E.M., the Ronettes, Van Halen and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On the eve of this event I asked myself many questions. Should an artist working within the revolutionary landscape of rock accept laurels from an institution? Should laurels be offered? Am I a worthy recipient?
I have wrestled with these questions and my conscience leads me back to Fred and those like him — the maverick souls who may never be afforded such honors. Thus in his name I will accept with gratitude. Fred Sonic Smith was of the people, and I am none but him: one who has loved rock ’n’ roll and crawled from the ranks to the stage, to salute history and plant seeds for the erratic magic landscape of the new guard.
Because its members will be the guardians of our cultural voice. The Internet is their CBGB. Their territory is global. They will dictate how they want to create and disseminate their work. They will, in time, make breathless changes in our political process. They have the technology to unite and create a new party, to be vigilant in their choice of candidates, unfettered by corporate pressure. Their potential power to form and reform is unprecedented.
Human history abounds with idealistic movements that rise, then fall in disarray. The children of light. The journey to the East. The summer of love. The season of grunge. But just as we seem to repeat our follies, we also abide.
Rock ’n’ roll drew me from my mother’s hand and led me to experience. In the end it was my neighbors who put everything in perspective. An approving nod from the old Italian woman who sells me pasta. A high five from the postman. An embrace from the notary and his wife. And a shout from the sanitation man driving down my street: “Hey, Patti, Hall of Fame. One for us.”
I just smiled, and I noticed I was proud. One for the neighborhood. My parents. My band. One for Fred. And anybody else who wants to come along.
Patti Smith is a poet and performer.
Monday, March 12, 2007
The Electric Kantele (Finnish Folk zither)
Arto Sirén: An ancient instrument enters the modern era
(text originally published in Finnish Music Quarterly 3/2003)
Kimmo Pohjonen, Timo Väänänen and
Ismo Alanko around Koistinen model
The electric variant on Finland's national instrument, the kantele, is an open invitation to play and compose not only folk but music in any genre.
The history of the kantele would, in the light of contemporary research, appear to stretch back about two thousand years. Developments were slow until the mid-19th century, when interest grew following the publication of the national epic, the Kalevala. In time, the kantele came to be regarded as Finland's national instrument – a process that was to curb further modifications for decades to come.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the kantele acquired more strings (the traditional model had five), but it was still tuned
chromatically. Not until 1927 did Paul Salminen, a resident of St. Petersburg who settled in Finland in 1919, come up with a concert kantele equipped with a mechanism allowing the player to raise or lower the pitch. It continued to be played in the National Romantic spirit, however, and the sound produced was weak.
Many would claim that the gentle sound of the kantele, which lends itself perfectly to meditation, is in fact one of its strengths. Yet others regard it as the main obstacle to spreading beyond Finland's shores. And indeed, the soft sound was one of the reasons why, at one time, it was obliged to make way for the fiddle and accordion on its native soil, in Finland and Karelia. Since the kantele was rediscovered in the 1970s, its volume has been the subject of growing attention.
Advances in the teaching of the kantele and the growing number of players have made people more aware of the instrument's potential. It has thus expanded into the classical, world music and other arenas, and in doing so encountered challenges of a new kind. Over the past few decades solutions to the problem of audibility have been sought by building instruments of a construction designed to yield a louder sound, and by exploiting electricity and amplification technology.
First electric kantele in the USA
The attitudes of the Finns to the electrification of their national instrument have nevertheless been reserved. The first electric kantele was made not in Finland but in the USA.
This historic instrument was produced in the 1940s by Vilho Saari, an emigrant from Halsua. The impact of the world's first electric kantele remained slight, however, and it did not excite the Finns in the same way as the electric guitar developed at about the same time and destined to sweep the world.
Not until the early 1970s were the first steps towards electrifying the kantele taken in Finland, when the Karelia ensemble led by Edward Vesala and Seppo "Baron" Paakkunainen tried amplifying the sound with microphones. Even so, the instrument still had very narrow application, and external mikes continued to be virtually the only means of amplification. Yet the idea remained ticking over in the minds of players and instrument makers.
Breakthrough slow
A new page was turned in the history of the electric kantele in 1983, when Jussi Ala-Kuha built a 26-stringed electric kantele on the lines of a semi-acoustic electric guitar at his instrument workshop in Kaustinen. This electric kantele by a builder widely known for his guitars and mandolins underwent exhaustive testing with an electric guitar, bass and other instruments.
The experiments and faith in the potential of the new instrument were further enhanced by the EMF kantele microphone patented by Kari Kirjavainen in 1984 and still in widespread use. Also dating from about this time was the 5-stringed electric kantele of innovative design made by Rauno Nieminen. Having successfully passed all the tests, the electric kantele made its appearance in the Salamakantele ensemble from Kaustinen. Among the experimenters were Hannu Saha, who later made the kantele the topic of his doctoral dissertation, and the American-Finn Carl Rahkonen.
Having set off along a new track and been the subject of much debate, the electric kantele met an overwhelming wave of opposition from players. Such slogans as "great new potential", "modern", "revolutionary design" and "kantele enters new spheres" were not compatible with 1980s concepts of the Finnish national instrument. Jussi Ala-Kuha refused to be daunted, however, and continued working on the kantele alongside his other stringed instruments. He still looks upon the acoustic kantele as the basis for his electric models, but has incorporated sound-improving features borrowed from the kanteles of the first half of the 20th century and the zither, a kindred instrument familiar in Central Europe.
“I don't make flat, board-like instruments because I don't consider they produce a good sound,” says Jussi Ala-Kuha. “Instead, I have sought ideas from the models made in the Perho River Valley, the heart of Finnish kantele culture, and used them to build electric ones as well. The main idea throughout has been to amplify the sound of an acoustic.”
Ala-Kuha makes JAK electric kanteles to order as a supplement to his main items, which are guitars and mandolins. Over the years his workshop at Töysä in South Ostrobothnia has produced ten semi-acoustic electric kantele models, the biggest of them fully-mechanised ones with 33-37 strings designed for professional use.
The kantele hits the media
The public at large has really become aware of the existence of the electric kantele over the past few years, through the models designed and manufactured by Hannu Koistinen of Rääkkylä while working on a development project for the concert kantele. But despite the recognition he has received for his work as an instrument builder and to make the instrument better known, the electric kantele was not invented by him. Nor do the slogans employed in advertising the new electric kantele differ much from those applied to the instruments of Ala-Kuha twenty years ago.
In addition to his pioneering development, Koistinen does, however, enjoy a more favourable climate of opinion than his predecessors. This has to some extent assisted marketing of the Koistinen electric kanteles in the past few years and afforded them greater coverage by the media.
Hannu Koistinen, who began making kanteles in the late 1980s, was originally inspired by the work of his father, master kantele maker Otto Koistinen, from the late 1950s onwards. In addition to improving the technical properties and gaining publicity for the instrument, son Hannu is eager to give it a new image.
“The electric kantele opened my eyes to the need to seek out the dynamic aspects of the instrument, and not just its gentle, beautiful sound. Even so, the instrument alone is not sufficient to change the way people think; because an instrument only really comes to life when people start writing new music for it. I shall be interested to see what turns up, and I'm sure that the electric kantele will, like the ordinary kantele, spread further and further afield in the next few years, and no longer be confined to Finland.”
Folk and World Music
Timo Väänänen
with the "Wing" Catchy design
Just recently, Hannu Koistinen has concentrated on developing a whole range of electric kanteles. Alongside the big electric model, his Wings series of instruments with 5-15 strings played at the neck like a guitar has seen the light of day. Despite the widespread interest aroused by the small kanteles equipped with the microphones of Kimmo Sarja of Kaustinen, the Koistinen flagship is the 39-stringed electric kantele in orange Lamborghini paint that has caught people's eyes with its modern design.
“I've found giving the instrument a new design challenging, and I look on design as a major way of modernising the kantele. Because the design is what gives the instrument its image.”
Kantele artist Timo Väänänen has been in on the development of Koistinen electric kanteles since 1997 and is particularly pleased to see the innovations introduced in the small kanteles.
“The small electric kanteles lower the threshold for players thinking of taking up the instrument. They also work well in an ensemble, where they usually assume the role of a comp instrument. A big kantele is much more demanding to play, and it may not be so easy to accommodate in a band. A big electric kantele covers the same register as keyboards, and the quality of the sound can be altered by various effects, just as on an electric guitar. Even so, there is no clear model for using it in an ensemble.”
The big electric kantele has already become very popular, calling forth various views on the music composed for it.
“Kantele development has reached a very dynamic stage,” says Väänänen. “The instrument has lost none of its diversity and will no doubt continue to make progress under the influence of players and builders. I'm very curious to see how the rising generation of kantele players exploit the potential of the electric kantele. They have a bigger than ever range of instruments to choose from, an open mind on music making, and opportunities for better and better tuition. So I reckon that ten years from now, we'll have come a long way in playing the electric kantele.”
Traditional and new sounds
Thanks to the sound-processing options nowadays available with an electric kantele and modern technology, it is impossible to specify any particular sound ideal for the instrument. In the future, the kantele may travel further and further away from its traditional sound and context.
“The kantele of the future will act as a sound source for increasingly synthetic projects,” reckons kantele builder Hannu Koistinen. “Or at least it has all the potential for this. Yet despite all the processing, I don't think the inherent character and timbre of the kantele sound will really change very much. All in all I believe the kantele has just as much chance of making a go of it in world music as any of the other instruments already being used worldwide by the great stars.”
The electric kantele is a marvellous tool for the player who grasps its full potential, but players' sense of style is also being tested more and more as the sound and the ways this is used expand.
“It's important to understand sound qualities in playing the electric kantele,” stresses kantele researcher-musician Hannu Saha. “Failure to do so will destroy both the instrument and its powers of expression. In this respect there are no ready models to work from; in the long run, experience is the best teacher.”
Saha expects the electric kantele to acquire far greater significance in the future. “Yet it's important to remember that it will never fully replace the acoustic kantele. They are two different instruments, just like the acoustic and electric guitar.”
Growing interest
The publicity afforded the Koistinen electric kanteles has aroused growing interest in the models made by others, too. These others include Ala-Kuha, already mentioned, and Pekka Lovikka, who began making kanteles in 1983 and this spring brought out his own electric kantele.
“At first I wondered why make an electric kantele, but when I looked into it, and having made a few, I came to view the potential and idea in a new light. The very look of the flat kantele helps the player to do away with any restricting images of the instrument and to venture out into new fields and listen to it with a new ear,” says Pekka Lovikka, director of Ylitornion Soitintuote.
According to Lovikka, the flat kantele further permits a new kind of contact between player and audience. Despite the innovations and ongoing trends, Lovikka still views the results with humility and restraint. Despite what may seem to have been major steps forwards, he does not see any real limits to the instrument's development. His works produce electric versions of all his big kanteles, and these will shortly be supplemented by a range of small electric ones.
Like Hannu Koistinen, Pekka Lovikka has faith in the future of the electric kantele, but he has not been at such pains to give the instrument a new shape and image. Instead, he wishes to make the potential of present-day electro-acoustics available as such to interested kantele players. One of the users of the Lovikka 39-stringed electric kantele painted an electric shade of blue is Outi Nieminen, a member of the pioneering world music ensemble Piirpauke and now, with her husband Ismaila Sane, of the Senfi duo devoted to Finnish-Senegalese music.
“The sound box kantele is a precious, magnificent instrument and suitable for almost all kinds of music, but not for amplified ensemble playing. That's why for me, at least, the electric kantele is an invaluable tool,” says Outi Nieminen. “Working as I do in a multicultural environment, I can be an equal member of the band even in a big hall, and still be heard. I would say from experience that the electric instrument is enriching kantele music and, with all the new things it has to offer, bringing it closer to young people. This will not, however, take place of its own accord. Instead, players will need to adopt an even more liberal attitude both to the instrument and to different musical styles.”
Another advantage of the electric kantele is that it withstands changes of climate much better than an acoustic one. The Lovikka Electric Tropical model that has just gone on the market will make life much easier for kantele musicians travelling and performing in various corners of the world.
“The great thing about my present instrument is not only that it can be heard better, but also that I can play it in the frozen north or in Tenerife or hottest Africa and it behaves in exactly the same way,” says Outi Nieminen.
Exports reliant on random contacts
The ability to withstand climate changes greatly enhances the export prospects for the kantele. Pekka Lovikka reckons there would be a considerable demand for Finnish kanteles if only the makers and interested buyers could find one another better than at present. Due to the meagre marketing resources, exports are for the time being still to a great extent reliant on random contacts.
One of the bottlenecks in the export of acoustic and electric kanteles is, in Pekka Lovikka's opinion, the lack of tuition in the large instrument abroad. There is great interest, especially in the United States, but it tends to fall off in the absence of teachers and tuition. The high price of the large kanteles also makes people stop and think before investing in one. As the volume of production and the number of manufacturers increase, the prices will probably fall to some extent, but it is pointless to expect any drastic drop as a result of mass production. The price of a large electric kantele of professional standard at present (2003) varies between €3,800 and €10,000, depending on the model and the maker.
Now that the electric kantele has found its niche in Finland, it remains to be seen how it will fare abroad. But thanks to the sustained efforts of a number of people and the new electric models, the kantele is better equipped to satisfy players' wishes and increasingly varied needs.
© Arto Sirén
Translation: © Susan Sinisalo
___________________________________
Photos:
Pohjonen, Väänänen, Alanko: Aki Paavola
Timo Väänänen: Ilari Ikävalko
(text originally published in Finnish Music Quarterly 3/2003)
Kimmo Pohjonen, Timo Väänänen and
Ismo Alanko around Koistinen model
The electric variant on Finland's national instrument, the kantele, is an open invitation to play and compose not only folk but music in any genre.
The history of the kantele would, in the light of contemporary research, appear to stretch back about two thousand years. Developments were slow until the mid-19th century, when interest grew following the publication of the national epic, the Kalevala. In time, the kantele came to be regarded as Finland's national instrument – a process that was to curb further modifications for decades to come.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the kantele acquired more strings (the traditional model had five), but it was still tuned
chromatically. Not until 1927 did Paul Salminen, a resident of St. Petersburg who settled in Finland in 1919, come up with a concert kantele equipped with a mechanism allowing the player to raise or lower the pitch. It continued to be played in the National Romantic spirit, however, and the sound produced was weak.
Many would claim that the gentle sound of the kantele, which lends itself perfectly to meditation, is in fact one of its strengths. Yet others regard it as the main obstacle to spreading beyond Finland's shores. And indeed, the soft sound was one of the reasons why, at one time, it was obliged to make way for the fiddle and accordion on its native soil, in Finland and Karelia. Since the kantele was rediscovered in the 1970s, its volume has been the subject of growing attention.
Advances in the teaching of the kantele and the growing number of players have made people more aware of the instrument's potential. It has thus expanded into the classical, world music and other arenas, and in doing so encountered challenges of a new kind. Over the past few decades solutions to the problem of audibility have been sought by building instruments of a construction designed to yield a louder sound, and by exploiting electricity and amplification technology.
First electric kantele in the USA
The attitudes of the Finns to the electrification of their national instrument have nevertheless been reserved. The first electric kantele was made not in Finland but in the USA.
This historic instrument was produced in the 1940s by Vilho Saari, an emigrant from Halsua. The impact of the world's first electric kantele remained slight, however, and it did not excite the Finns in the same way as the electric guitar developed at about the same time and destined to sweep the world.
Not until the early 1970s were the first steps towards electrifying the kantele taken in Finland, when the Karelia ensemble led by Edward Vesala and Seppo "Baron" Paakkunainen tried amplifying the sound with microphones. Even so, the instrument still had very narrow application, and external mikes continued to be virtually the only means of amplification. Yet the idea remained ticking over in the minds of players and instrument makers.
Breakthrough slow
A new page was turned in the history of the electric kantele in 1983, when Jussi Ala-Kuha built a 26-stringed electric kantele on the lines of a semi-acoustic electric guitar at his instrument workshop in Kaustinen. This electric kantele by a builder widely known for his guitars and mandolins underwent exhaustive testing with an electric guitar, bass and other instruments.
The experiments and faith in the potential of the new instrument were further enhanced by the EMF kantele microphone patented by Kari Kirjavainen in 1984 and still in widespread use. Also dating from about this time was the 5-stringed electric kantele of innovative design made by Rauno Nieminen. Having successfully passed all the tests, the electric kantele made its appearance in the Salamakantele ensemble from Kaustinen. Among the experimenters were Hannu Saha, who later made the kantele the topic of his doctoral dissertation, and the American-Finn Carl Rahkonen.
Having set off along a new track and been the subject of much debate, the electric kantele met an overwhelming wave of opposition from players. Such slogans as "great new potential", "modern", "revolutionary design" and "kantele enters new spheres" were not compatible with 1980s concepts of the Finnish national instrument. Jussi Ala-Kuha refused to be daunted, however, and continued working on the kantele alongside his other stringed instruments. He still looks upon the acoustic kantele as the basis for his electric models, but has incorporated sound-improving features borrowed from the kanteles of the first half of the 20th century and the zither, a kindred instrument familiar in Central Europe.
“I don't make flat, board-like instruments because I don't consider they produce a good sound,” says Jussi Ala-Kuha. “Instead, I have sought ideas from the models made in the Perho River Valley, the heart of Finnish kantele culture, and used them to build electric ones as well. The main idea throughout has been to amplify the sound of an acoustic.”
Ala-Kuha makes JAK electric kanteles to order as a supplement to his main items, which are guitars and mandolins. Over the years his workshop at Töysä in South Ostrobothnia has produced ten semi-acoustic electric kantele models, the biggest of them fully-mechanised ones with 33-37 strings designed for professional use.
The kantele hits the media
The public at large has really become aware of the existence of the electric kantele over the past few years, through the models designed and manufactured by Hannu Koistinen of Rääkkylä while working on a development project for the concert kantele. But despite the recognition he has received for his work as an instrument builder and to make the instrument better known, the electric kantele was not invented by him. Nor do the slogans employed in advertising the new electric kantele differ much from those applied to the instruments of Ala-Kuha twenty years ago.
In addition to his pioneering development, Koistinen does, however, enjoy a more favourable climate of opinion than his predecessors. This has to some extent assisted marketing of the Koistinen electric kanteles in the past few years and afforded them greater coverage by the media.
Hannu Koistinen, who began making kanteles in the late 1980s, was originally inspired by the work of his father, master kantele maker Otto Koistinen, from the late 1950s onwards. In addition to improving the technical properties and gaining publicity for the instrument, son Hannu is eager to give it a new image.
“The electric kantele opened my eyes to the need to seek out the dynamic aspects of the instrument, and not just its gentle, beautiful sound. Even so, the instrument alone is not sufficient to change the way people think; because an instrument only really comes to life when people start writing new music for it. I shall be interested to see what turns up, and I'm sure that the electric kantele will, like the ordinary kantele, spread further and further afield in the next few years, and no longer be confined to Finland.”
Folk and World Music
Timo Väänänen
with the "Wing" Catchy design
Just recently, Hannu Koistinen has concentrated on developing a whole range of electric kanteles. Alongside the big electric model, his Wings series of instruments with 5-15 strings played at the neck like a guitar has seen the light of day. Despite the widespread interest aroused by the small kanteles equipped with the microphones of Kimmo Sarja of Kaustinen, the Koistinen flagship is the 39-stringed electric kantele in orange Lamborghini paint that has caught people's eyes with its modern design.
“I've found giving the instrument a new design challenging, and I look on design as a major way of modernising the kantele. Because the design is what gives the instrument its image.”
Kantele artist Timo Väänänen has been in on the development of Koistinen electric kanteles since 1997 and is particularly pleased to see the innovations introduced in the small kanteles.
“The small electric kanteles lower the threshold for players thinking of taking up the instrument. They also work well in an ensemble, where they usually assume the role of a comp instrument. A big kantele is much more demanding to play, and it may not be so easy to accommodate in a band. A big electric kantele covers the same register as keyboards, and the quality of the sound can be altered by various effects, just as on an electric guitar. Even so, there is no clear model for using it in an ensemble.”
The big electric kantele has already become very popular, calling forth various views on the music composed for it.
“Kantele development has reached a very dynamic stage,” says Väänänen. “The instrument has lost none of its diversity and will no doubt continue to make progress under the influence of players and builders. I'm very curious to see how the rising generation of kantele players exploit the potential of the electric kantele. They have a bigger than ever range of instruments to choose from, an open mind on music making, and opportunities for better and better tuition. So I reckon that ten years from now, we'll have come a long way in playing the electric kantele.”
Traditional and new sounds
Thanks to the sound-processing options nowadays available with an electric kantele and modern technology, it is impossible to specify any particular sound ideal for the instrument. In the future, the kantele may travel further and further away from its traditional sound and context.
“The kantele of the future will act as a sound source for increasingly synthetic projects,” reckons kantele builder Hannu Koistinen. “Or at least it has all the potential for this. Yet despite all the processing, I don't think the inherent character and timbre of the kantele sound will really change very much. All in all I believe the kantele has just as much chance of making a go of it in world music as any of the other instruments already being used worldwide by the great stars.”
The electric kantele is a marvellous tool for the player who grasps its full potential, but players' sense of style is also being tested more and more as the sound and the ways this is used expand.
“It's important to understand sound qualities in playing the electric kantele,” stresses kantele researcher-musician Hannu Saha. “Failure to do so will destroy both the instrument and its powers of expression. In this respect there are no ready models to work from; in the long run, experience is the best teacher.”
Saha expects the electric kantele to acquire far greater significance in the future. “Yet it's important to remember that it will never fully replace the acoustic kantele. They are two different instruments, just like the acoustic and electric guitar.”
Growing interest
The publicity afforded the Koistinen electric kanteles has aroused growing interest in the models made by others, too. These others include Ala-Kuha, already mentioned, and Pekka Lovikka, who began making kanteles in 1983 and this spring brought out his own electric kantele.
“At first I wondered why make an electric kantele, but when I looked into it, and having made a few, I came to view the potential and idea in a new light. The very look of the flat kantele helps the player to do away with any restricting images of the instrument and to venture out into new fields and listen to it with a new ear,” says Pekka Lovikka, director of Ylitornion Soitintuote.
According to Lovikka, the flat kantele further permits a new kind of contact between player and audience. Despite the innovations and ongoing trends, Lovikka still views the results with humility and restraint. Despite what may seem to have been major steps forwards, he does not see any real limits to the instrument's development. His works produce electric versions of all his big kanteles, and these will shortly be supplemented by a range of small electric ones.
Like Hannu Koistinen, Pekka Lovikka has faith in the future of the electric kantele, but he has not been at such pains to give the instrument a new shape and image. Instead, he wishes to make the potential of present-day electro-acoustics available as such to interested kantele players. One of the users of the Lovikka 39-stringed electric kantele painted an electric shade of blue is Outi Nieminen, a member of the pioneering world music ensemble Piirpauke and now, with her husband Ismaila Sane, of the Senfi duo devoted to Finnish-Senegalese music.
“The sound box kantele is a precious, magnificent instrument and suitable for almost all kinds of music, but not for amplified ensemble playing. That's why for me, at least, the electric kantele is an invaluable tool,” says Outi Nieminen. “Working as I do in a multicultural environment, I can be an equal member of the band even in a big hall, and still be heard. I would say from experience that the electric instrument is enriching kantele music and, with all the new things it has to offer, bringing it closer to young people. This will not, however, take place of its own accord. Instead, players will need to adopt an even more liberal attitude both to the instrument and to different musical styles.”
Another advantage of the electric kantele is that it withstands changes of climate much better than an acoustic one. The Lovikka Electric Tropical model that has just gone on the market will make life much easier for kantele musicians travelling and performing in various corners of the world.
“The great thing about my present instrument is not only that it can be heard better, but also that I can play it in the frozen north or in Tenerife or hottest Africa and it behaves in exactly the same way,” says Outi Nieminen.
Exports reliant on random contacts
The ability to withstand climate changes greatly enhances the export prospects for the kantele. Pekka Lovikka reckons there would be a considerable demand for Finnish kanteles if only the makers and interested buyers could find one another better than at present. Due to the meagre marketing resources, exports are for the time being still to a great extent reliant on random contacts.
One of the bottlenecks in the export of acoustic and electric kanteles is, in Pekka Lovikka's opinion, the lack of tuition in the large instrument abroad. There is great interest, especially in the United States, but it tends to fall off in the absence of teachers and tuition. The high price of the large kanteles also makes people stop and think before investing in one. As the volume of production and the number of manufacturers increase, the prices will probably fall to some extent, but it is pointless to expect any drastic drop as a result of mass production. The price of a large electric kantele of professional standard at present (2003) varies between €3,800 and €10,000, depending on the model and the maker.
Now that the electric kantele has found its niche in Finland, it remains to be seen how it will fare abroad. But thanks to the sustained efforts of a number of people and the new electric models, the kantele is better equipped to satisfy players' wishes and increasingly varied needs.
© Arto Sirén
Translation: © Susan Sinisalo
___________________________________
Photos:
Pohjonen, Väänänen, Alanko: Aki Paavola
Timo Väänänen: Ilari Ikävalko
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Latina Goes to Blond in Identity Experiment
Fade to Blonde
As an experiment in ethnic identity, a proud, political Latina reaches for the bleach
By Belén Aranda Alvarado
Sunday, March 11, 2007; W20
WHEN I THINK OF THE SPACE WHERE LATINAS AND BLONDNESS MEET, I always remember Iris, a Puerto Rican classmate from my days at Columbia University. Iris was one of those women whom men generally like and women generally don't. She was more comfortable with playful banter than serious exchanges, and it was rumored she liked flirting with other women's boyfriends. But to many of the other Latinas in our class -- at least those newly politicized and hyper ethnically aware, like me -- she was guilty of larger crimes. Iris once infamously represented the Puerto Rican student group by offering free salsa lessons while wearing a white ruffled peasant blouse, hoop earrings and bright red lipstick. She never disguised her love of traditional, totally un-PC frat parties, the kind where they played AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" to pack the dance floor. And she dyed her hair blond. An orange-y, brassy blond.
At the time, my biggest desire was to make my light-skinned Chilean self look as identifiably Latina as possible. Saddled with a hair texture that was, at best, ethnically ambiguous and, at worst, simply wavy, I coveted Iris's naturally tight, corkscrew curls. It was the kind of mane I would've described as "Jewish hair" when I was still going to high school in Rockville, but now it seemed to be Caribbean-beauty perfection. Iris's decision to color it was unfathomable, a sure sign of succumbing to mainstream "white is right; blond is better" beauty standards. It couldn't have puzzled me more if she'd slapped on some blue contact lenses and asked us to call her Madison. Didn't she love her brown self?
I solved my own hair dilemma by visiting the JC Penney salon while on a trip home and getting the chunky white girl behind the counter to give me a spiral perm. She botched it enough that I got my money returned, but, to my elation, people back at school let me know that they thought this -- my botched perm -- was my true hair. They assumed I'd been blowing it straight until then. Joy! My ethnic identity unmistakably announced.
After our 1995 graduation, more than 10 years would pass until I would see Iris again. It would be at a reception hosted by Columbia's Latino alumni group, and, in the weeks before, I would think of Iris frequently. She would show up brunette. But there would be another blonde in attendance -- me.
A FEW WEEKS BEFORE THE RECEPTION, I was asked to go blond for this article. The editor was looking for someone politically aware and proud of her Latina looks. I literally wrote the book on Latina beauty. (Really. It's on Amazon.com.) What's more, I just happened to have already marked on my calendar a perfect testing ground for this change-of-tresses: the reunion, where friends would be receiving awards for going on hunger strikes and taking over buildings to persuade the university to add a Latino studies major. Imagine the escandalo when I walked in blond.
My former classmates, I imagined, would think I'd done it for the usual reason: to snag a little of the love our society ladles on blondes. Consider a study cited in the Chronicle of Philanthropy last year: When the researchers sent a bunch of undergrads out collecting donations door-to-door, pretty girls unsurprisingly brought in the most money -- but blondes far out-raised equally fly-looking brunettes. Yet another study related that, given a choice of hair color, most men making more than $75,000 a year would pick blond partners. A scientific article by a McGill University anthropologist posited that the reason there are so many flaxen-haired Europeans may be that during the Ice Age, when successful male hunters were in short supply, women with eye-catching blond hair had a mating-game advantage over their darker peers.
Latinos come in all colors, but our standard mix of European, African and indigenous heritage means that naturally golden hair, while it does occur, is rare. So any bonus blondness brings is beyond pretty much the whole ethnic group -- which, on some level, feels unfair and infuriating. No wonder so many of us turn to chemicals: Across the board, Latinas buy more hair care products -- including dyes and the attendant deep-conditioning treatments -- than women in any other ethnic group. And no wonder the Latinas who equate going blond with changing your name from María to Mary disdain their frosting cap-, highlighting brush-wielding sisters.
I'm aware of all this. And I love being Latina: I'm convinced that, at some point or another, everyone who isn't part of our cool cultural hybrid secretly wishes they could be. But 10 years past college, I craved another sort of privilege: that of unburdened whimsy. If white women can change their hair color the way they change their lipstick -- with complete impunity and no worries over "correctly" representing their community -- why couldn't I? Even women's studies majors now march on Washington in tight pink baby-tees that scream, "This is what a feminist looks like!" So had enough time gone by that I could be a righteous, fierce, representin' Latina, and yet go blond?
I told the editor I'd do it.
As soon as I got off the phone, I went out and bought the beauty bible for Latinas on the lightening path: Us Weekly, the supermarket rag that regularly features photo after photo of dyed and highlighted Latina celebs. Jessica Alba, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Eva Mendes -- they're all there, having gotten lighter-haired as their stars rose. (Cameron Diaz is claiming she's going to stick to her new brown locks, but I suspect it's a post-breakup dye job -- meant to shock, not to stay.) In the issue I bought, practically the only Latina celeb missing was beautiful, intelligent, raven-tressed Salma Hayek. I love Salma. I bet she'd kill in a big-budget superhero flick (like Jessica) or as the girlfriend to corrupt cop Denzel Washington (like Eva). But instead she seems -- to me at least -- to be one of the most under-appreciated Latina actresses out there. Why don't we see her more? I wasn't even sure what new movie Jessica Alba was in, but there she was full-page in another tabloid, getting her nails done at a charity event. Maybe if Salma got highlights . . .
I called various salons in town and started getting an education in the economics of blondness. While the women's magazines I read as a teen promised easy blond streaks via lemon juice, the truth is that taking hair from jet black (that's me) to something approximating blond requires many chemicals, many salon hours and many dollars. The cheapie drugstore, do-it-yourself route isn't available, as the chemicals needed to strip dark hair of its pigment aren't legally sold to anyone without a beautician's license. (And with good reason. The smell alone is enough to cause tears.) Salons around town gave me preliminary estimates starting from $250 to $500 -- emphasizing that the bill was liable to grow once the stylists actually got a look at my hair. And that was without the expensive conditioning shampoos and weekly deep-conditioning treatments I'd need afterward, to prevent my ends from splitting, frizzing and breaking off completely.
I decided that I'd go to a Dominican-owned salon I'd seen close to my home in Wheaton. A Latina hairdresser, I reasoned, would have experience taking a client with chemically relaxed hair like mine from one end of the color spectrum to the other. And the salon would do it for the bargain-basement $250 -- all The Post was willing to spend.
It took not one, but two days of six-hour sessions to get to a passably blond hair color. At the end of the first, I left thinking I looked strawberry blond. At home, my neighbor set me straight: My hair was actually Irish-jig red. I could have auditioned for "The Lord of the Dance." After much on-the-phone complaining -- and then begging -- with my stylist ("You were happy with it when you left," she kept saying, impatiently, in Spanish), she took me in for another session, gratis, to add blond highlights. And that, she told me, was as blond as I was going to get. My hair certainly didn't look God-given, but at least it could reasonably be described as blond.
When I got home, my sister, her boyfriend, my neighbor and my boyfriend gathered around. The unanimous verdict: a thumbs-up. Only one person registered disapproval: my 5-year-old daughter, Natalia. "Mami, you painted your hair," she said, running her hands over my tresses. "Your hair is dark like mine."
I've always been the culturally conscious parent, making sure she had plenty of "Dora the Explorer" DVDs to offset the glossy, blond perfection of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Barbie and countless other mermaids and fairies. But in my rush to seize my blond moment, it hadn't occurred to me that my daughter might connect my change to her own stunning, raven hair. I'd be going back to my real hair color soon, I told myself.
IN HER BOOK BLONDE LIKE ME, author Natalia Ilyin describes the blond effect as "a gentle rise in the tidewaters of public friendliness." In her brightest moments, the blond Ilyin reports, she was the recipient of impulsive marriage proposals and the cause of minor traffic accidents; at times she felt like "power and sex personified" -- exactly as I'd always thought blond life would be.
My expectations for myself were more modest. A compliment -- or a drink? -- from a stranger. Salesclerks with suddenly improved attitudes. A heightened interest in what I had to say.
In the first few days, my new hair color definitely gave me a little buzz. At brunch, my family suggested that it flattered my skin tone, maybe even more than my natural color did. And my boyfriend's growled comment, "You look gooood," had me feelin' frisky. We were both getting a nice boost from my frosted tresses.
But there were unexpected bumps along the way. The day after my initial salon visit, my reflection caught me by surprise as I came out of a bathroom stall. What I saw in that unself-conscious moment: bland, blah, like-everybody-else-ness. I'm light-skinned, with what can be described as Caucasian features. To many people -- Latinos and Anglos alike -- I don't "look Latina." Until that moment, I'd had no idea that I wielded my black hair in the same way that I use the accent in my first name and my long, vowel-ending hyper-ethnic last name: as a banner, letting people know in no uncertain terms "Sí, soy Latina!" Without it, I felt erased.
Entire books have been written about blondness. Ilyin's made the biggest impression, because there I found a perfect description of my motivations: I was what Ilyin calls an "ironic blond," someone making a statement with an overt appropriation of a style not originally intended for her. Think Madonna, Li'l Kim or RuPaul, who, when questioned about the politics of his wigs, said, "I'm not going to pass as white, and I'm not trying to . . . [but] I want to create outrageous sensation, and blond hair against brown skin is a gorgeous, outrageous combination."
Gorgeous outrageousness was also what I was after, especially as I prepared to attend the Latino alumni reception at my alma mater. Imagining gasps and looks of horror, I planned ahead, getting a spray tan and even considering (briefly) wearing the blue contact lenses that would create a perfect fake hair/fake eyes/fake tan triumvirate of wildly inappropriate personal grooming choices for a politically correct college-educated Latina. Oh, the whispers, the stares, the scandal!
But when I arrived at the dinner and met friends I hadn't seen in years, they embraced me and said . . . "Hi." I felt the need to explain my experiment, but if the women said anything about my hair, it was that they really liked it. That threw me off. They weren't supposed to actually like me as a blonde, much less tell me I looked better. I waited expectantly for the reaction from one friend in particular, Jenny. An architect of the hunger-strike-building-takeover-sparking-massive-national-media-attention endeavor, she was Puerto Rican, worked for a nonprofit and lived in a predominantly Latino section of town. In other words, homegirl was down. When she saw me she, said, "Oh, you changed your hair." I complimented her on her 'do, and I'm pretty sure that after that we went and got a drink from the open bar. Nothing else. Nada.
There was only one friend, a black woman, who told me she thought I looked "less Latina." On a black or darker-skinned Latina woman, she said, blond was okay; they'd never be mistaken for either being white or wanting to look as if they were. But on me, with my fair skin and straight hair, it was too close to "passing" for her comfort. The closest I can get to blond-on-brown outrageousness is to get a fake tan. But no one would think I was embarking on a subversive beauty experiment. They'd just assume I was trying to get a job at Hooters.
Iris was now a brunette working for the Cleveland port authority. She'd attended this Latino alumni event every year since its inception, she said, flying in from Ohio for the weekend. She seemed amused that I remembered her as a blonde.
"It was such a short time in my life," she told me later. She said there'd been a price to pay for the color change at the time. From Latinos of both genders, she said, "the reaction was, 'You're too whitewashed.'" But it had been worth it. The change had allowed her to step out of the stereotyped role of the submissive Latina. "It was like Mariah with Mimi, like Madonna with Dita," she said. "I felt like I was a different character, more free, more daring."
Who knew? Iris had been an ironic blonde, too.
According to Iris, Latino men had been particularly disapproving of her change. I'd had a different experience. About a week before, on a weekday afternoon, a guy probably 10 years younger than I had sidled up as I was waiting to cross a street and said: "Hey, ma, you look good! You got a man?" At the time, I was pushing my sleeping daughter in her stroller -- a scenario that, in my experience, deters most men. But not this guy. He even worked her into his whole approach: "She yours?" he asked. "Aw, she beautiful just like you." Either he was really, really hard up, I'd thought, or the blond hair really was working a mojo of some kind.
But the men at the Latino reunion -- the same Ivy Leaguers who had known Iris years before -- ignored my blondness completely. Forget any ramped-up flirtatiousness, it was hard getting them to talk to me at all. When I finally approached one and asked point-blank, "Do you notice anything different about me?" he got such a panicked look on his face that I thought maybe, by accident, I'd asked him if I looked fat. "You changed your hair. It's what women do," he practically wailed.
A few weeks later, Jenny and I had brunch, and I broached the topic of blondness again. "I only heard from someone else later that you were doing it for an article, and I have to say I was relieved," she told me. A-ha! Here it was: the "What were you thinking?" discussion, the outrage at a hegemonic white-dominant concept of beauty that left all non-blondes to feel marginalized. Heated debate! Emotional exchanges!
"I think it was the wrong tone of blond, and I think that is a mistake a lot of Latina women make," she explained. "I've been thinking about going blond, too, and I wanted to figure out how to get the right blond, instead of that orangy blond so many of us get that I just think looks so tacky."
Afterward, I e-mailed around to see how many of the women I'd seen or talked to since changing my hair color shared Jenny's caveat. A number of them e-mailed back in the affirmative. Going blond was fine, but the wrong shade? Eeewww. So we can be upper-crusty Bergdorf blondes, but not drugstore blondes?
Apparently so.
There had been a time, in the early, giddy days of my blondness, when I'd considered keeping the new color, at least for a while. The Post had promised to take me back to my natural black, but maybe, I'd thought, it could be persuaded to pay for a touch-up instead? In the name of research? Now, despite tons of conditioner, my hair looked dried, frizzy and beat. I'd tried re-dyeing my eyebrows myself, to match my tresses, and that looked terrible, too. It's not that I didn't want the kind of hair my friends were saying was "the right kind" of blond. I just didn't have the money. And it wasn't worth it to spend any of my own funds on coloring.
IF THE EXPERIMENT HAD ENDED THERE, it might have left me with the impression that all you need for politically liberated, whimsy-inspired blondness is fistfuls of cash. But then came the wedding.
A Latina friend was getting married. The reception was held in a funky loft space, and I was full of the pleasure of attending -- until I found my table. There, accompanied by her preternaturally tan, distractingly handsome Latino boyfriend and sporting both a short aqua mini-dress and a head of perfect, white-gold hair, sat my doppelganger, another dyed Latina. She was talking -- no joke -- about vacationing in St. Barth's. Far from the only rubia at the party -- there's a saying that Latinas don't go gray, we go blond, and the older generation at this shindig bore that out -- she was the only one who rankled me.
With astonishing quickness, I made a series of decisions about who she was. I decided that if I settled down next to her and asked her how she kept her double-processed ends from splitting or what conditioner she used, she'd probably whip out a much-handled photo of a blond baby, swear it was her and insist that she was "simply going back to nature." She probably tries to live her life as a real blonde, I thought. And gets away with it, too. Because she probably has the money and time that can give anyone a swinging, shiny Pantene ad head of hair. She wasn't an ironic blonde like me.
I ended up leaving the wedding early. On the way home, though, a thought struck me. About a week before, I'd been on the phone with one of my Latino friends from business school, and told him I'd gone blond. "Then you can get a job at Sin City," he joked, referring to a local strip club frequented by young, working-class Latinos. We had both laughed. Being compared to a stripper hadn't bothered me -- there's something so unapologetic and edgy about the stereotypical stripper look. But the idea of being confused with a blonde who might be trying to pass was horrifying. The problematic blonde, for me, was the woman at my table, who, despite my own complicated feelings about being blond, I immediately assumed was trying to hide her ethnicity. But then, where did that leave the bleached-blond Latina? If your hair is "not the right tone," then you're tacky, cheap, orange. And irony, as Iris's experience showed, is no protection. But if your privilege -- both of skin color and of wallet -- allows you to execute the transformation too well, you're trying to pass?
Damned if you do; damned if you don't.
AFTER THE WEDDING INCIDENT, it was all work and no fun, as my poor locks strained under too many chemical processes. I wasn't sure I'd really gotten to the bottom of the blond conundrum, but I knew I'd had enough. A second wedding gave me just the push I needed to go back to brunette. My roots had long been showing, as my boyfriend himself had pointed out. The blond hair had to go.
I did what many a Latina has done in moments like this: I called my cousin. As a real-life hairdresser, she's subjected herself to various hair color incarnations. When she came to save me with a color rinse and shag haircut, she herself was sporting a tongue-in-cheek platinum mullet with deep purple on the sides. "You'd better really be ready to go back to being brunette," she scolded me. She said she'd had too many clients come in claiming to want some change, only to end up crying in her stylist's chair. "These women," she sighed, shaking her head. "In the end, they just can't handle it."
And there it was. I, in fact, do have a deep connection with her customers, Latina and non-Latina alike. I didn't like this change. The change in status from being more Obviously Hispanic to Ethnically Ambiguous, at best. The misinterpreted intentions. It was all too stressful.
I'll stay brown and proud, muchas gracias.
Though I'd still love to try those blue contact lenses . . .
Belén Aranda-Alvarado is a brunette marketing manager in New York City, where she lives with her daughter, Natalia -- also a brunette. Her e-mail is belenarandaalvarado@yahoo.com.
Gilberto Gil, Digital Arts, and Intellectual Property
New York Times
March 11, 2007
Music
Gilberto Gil Hears the Future, Some Rights Reserved
By LARRY ROHTER
SALVADOR, Brazil
ON Wednesday the Brazilian minister of culture, Gilberto Gil, is scheduled to speak about intellectual property rights, digital media and related topics at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Tex. Two nights later the singer, songwriter and pop star Gilberto Gil begins a three-week North American concert tour.
Rarely do the worlds of politics and the arts converge as unconventionally as in the person of Mr. Gil, whose itinerary includes a solo performance at Carnegie Hall on March 20. More than 40 years after he first picked up a guitar and sang in public, Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira is an anomaly: He doesn’t just make music, he also makes policy.
And as the music, film and publishing industries struggle to adapt to the challenge of content proliferating on the Internet, Mr. Gil has emerged as a central player in the global search for more flexible forms of distributing artistic works. In the process his twin roles have sometimes generated competing priorities that he has sought to harmonize.
As a creator of music, he is interested in protecting copyrights. But as a government official in a developing country celebrated for the creative pulse of its people, Mr. Gil also wants Brazilians to have unfettered access to new technologies to make and disseminate art, without having to surrender their rights to the large companies that dominate the culture industry.
“I think we are moving rapidly toward the obsolescence and eventual disappearance of a single traditional model and its replacement by others that are hybrids,” Mr. Gil said in a February interview at his home here in northeast Brazil, one day before the start of Carnival. “My personal view is that digital culture brings with it a new idea of intellectual property, and that this new culture of sharing can and should inform government policies.”
Raised in the poor, arid interior of the Brazilian northeast, Mr. Gil, 64, has been straddling disparate worlds most of his life. No black Brazilian had ever served as a cabinet minister before he was appointed four years ago, and as a young man fresh out of college he worked for a multinational company at a time when few black Brazilians had access to such jobs. Later, during a military dictatorship, he was jailed and then forced into exile in Britain.
After returning to Brazil in the 1970s he made records that urged black Brazilians to reconnect with their African roots, and was an early champion here of Bob Marley and reggae. But Mr. Gil has also read widely in Asian philosophy and religions and follows a macrobiotic diet, leading the songwriter, producer and critic Nelson Motta to describe his style as “Afro-Zen.”
In person Mr. Gil is warm, calm and engaging, a slim, dreadlocked figure with an elfin, humorous quality that tends to disarm critics. As both individual and artist he has always tended to be open-minded and eclectic in his tastes; the poet Torquato Neto once said of him, “There are many ways of singing and making Brazilian music, and Gilberto Gil prefers all of them.”
A fascination with technology has been another constant in Mr. Gil’s long career. He wrote his first song about computers, called “Electronic Brain,” back in the 1960s, and has regularly returned to the theme in compositions like “Satellite Dish” and “On the Internet,” which was written in the early 1990s and contains this verse:
I want to get on the Web
Promote a debate
Bring together on the Internet
A group of fans from Connecticut
I want to go on the Web to contact
Homes in Nepal and bars in Gabon
“I don’t think there is anyone quite like Gil anywhere in the world,” said John Perry Barlow, the former Grateful Dead lyricist who is a friend and the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the groups in the forefront of the drive to reform the current intellectual property rights system. “He’s a spearhead. He’s been thinking about I.P. issues forever and clearly gets the importance of all of this. But he’s also in a unique position to implement his ideas.”
One of Mr. Gil’s first actions after becoming culture minister in 2003 was to form an alliance between Brazil and the nascent Creative Commons movement. Founded in 2001, Creative Commons is meant to offer an alternative to the traditional copyright system of “all rights reserved,” which the movement’s adherents — from scientists and artists to lawyers and consumers — believe has impeded creativity and the sharing of knowledge in the Internet age.
In its place Creative Commons has devised a more flexible structure that allows artists to decide what part of their copyright they wish to retain and what part they are willing to share with the public. With input from Mr. Gil and many others, the organization has created licenses that permit creators and consumers to copy, remix or sample a digital work of art, so long as the originator is properly credited.
More than 145 million works have been registered with Creative Commons licenses, including videos, photographs, written texts, blogs and of course music. Because Brazil is “a country that has music in its genetic code,” to use Mr. Barlow’s phrase, and because Brazilian music has become a global force, the idea of loosening the automatic control of artistic works by a handful of conglomerates headquartered a hemisphere away has resonated strongly here.
“Look at remixing on music sites, which has become a core of creativity on the Internet and produced a huge archive of legally usable music,” said Lawrence Lessig, the author of “Free Culture” and founder of Creative Commons. “That has allowed a whole bunch of people to display themselves as artists and be picked up by record labels and Web sites, and all of that began because Gil got us to think about what kind of freedom was necessary for music.”
As culture minister Mr. Gil has also sponsored an initiative called the Cultural Points program. Small government grants are issued to scores of community centers in poor neighborhoods of some of Brazil’s largest cities to install recording and video studios and teach residents how to use them.
The result has been an outpouring of video and music, much of it racially conscious and politically tinged rap or electronica. Since Brazilian commercial radio, which is said to be riddled with payola, will not play the new music, the creators instead broadcast their songs on community radio stations and distribute their CDs independently, at markets and fairs, rather than through existing record labels.
With that project, “you’re now creating freely licensed content and demonstrating the creativity latent in the society,” Mr. Lessig said.
Brazil’s official stance on digital content and intellectual property rights is in large part derived from Mr. Gil’s own experience. In the late ’60s he and his close friend Caetano Veloso, along with a handful of others here and in São Paulo, started the movement known as Tropicalismo, which blended avant-garde poetry, pop influences from abroad and home-grown musical styles then scorned as corny and déclassé.
In a way, the Tropicalistas engaged in sampling before digital sampling existed, using cut-and-paste, mix-and-match collage techniques that are common now but were considered bizarre at the time. In recent years their music and approach has been embraced by pop performers as diverse as David Byrne, Nirvana, Beck, Nelly Furtado and Devendra Banhart.
When “world music” first appeared in the United States and Europe and Mr. Byrne, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and others began incorporating Brazilian rhythms into their work, Mr. Gil was initially skeptical of the phenomenon, complaining of “cultural safaris” by adventurers in Land Rovers “looking for all the rare specimens.” But thanks in large part to technological advances, he said, that practice has “changed completely,” and pop stars are now “more respectful” of other cultures.
“Today the hegemony of the North has, in a certain form, been broken,” he said. “Local tendencies are allowed to manifest themselves and adopt their own languages and forms of packaging. It’s no longer that vision of transforming some regional raw material into a single, standardized product. Today you have all kinds of local scenes that utilize universal elements,” like Brazilian, South African and Arab rap.
As a Tropicalista, Mr. Gil was also involved in an episode that is Brazil’s equivalent of Bob Dylan being booed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. When the Tropicalistas played electric guitars and rock rhythms at a São Paulo song festival in 1967, they were jeered and accused of being agents of American imperialism who were trying to impose noxious foreign influences on Brazilian music.
Mr. Gil’s complaints about the inequities of copyrights are derived in part from his own experience. Like many other musicians he signed contracts early in his career that essentially gave away publishing rights to the songs he wrote. But he waged a seven-year court battle to regain his rights, which ended recently with a favorable ruling that opens the door for other Brazilian artists to regain their rights as well.
“The old contracts were completely concessionary, in which all rights over the work were ceded to the contract holder, in absolute form,” he said. “I fought to bring my own work back under my control, arguing that there exists a unilateral right to break the contract. And we won. It was the first time this happened in Brazil, based on an artist’s rescinding a contract, and without a negotiated accord.”
Now that Mr. Gil has regained ownership of his own catalog of more than 400 songs, he is putting the concept of “copyleft,” as the alternative system is sometimes called, into practice. He retains all rights on some songs, some rights on others and declaring “no rights reserved” on others, which are now free for others for use in remixes or videos.
With such an approach an artist “no longer needs to transfer the administration of his rights to an entity called the record company, the movie studio or the song publisher,” Mr. Gil said. “He can do it himself.”
DESPITE all his brushes with politics over the years, it was only at the end of the ’80s, when he was elected to the City Council here in Brazil’s third-largest city, that Mr. Gil ventured into conventional party politics. His constituency was an unusual mixture of poor and working-class blacks and middle-class, mostly white, environmentalists.
But he withdrew after one term, turning aside requests he run for Brazil’s Congress by saying he was tired of partisan bickering and wanted to resume his performing career. Many Brazilians were therefore surprised when he jumped back into politics after the country’s first left-wing government was elected in 2002 and he was offered the cabinet post of culture minister, and then again late last year when he agreed to stay on for a second term.
“I still don’t like politics,” he said. “I’d rather see my position in the government as that of an administrator or manager. But politics is a necessary ingredient. You have politics in the government, with ministers, on the issue of how the budget is divided, the cake sliced up, the distribution of resources. You have to choose priorities, to tend to some and not to others.”
Mr. Gil’s tenure has not been without controversy. He is a member of the Green Party, not the ruling Workers’ Party, so when he was first appointed, some party loyalists were miffed that the job had not gone to one of their own, and responded with manifestos criticizing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s choice of a pop star thought to be ideologically suspect.
“You have to remember that Tropicalismo was fought by the traditional Stalinist left, and that even today some of those same people are in the Workers Party and the unions,” said Mr. Motta, who is also the author of “Tropical Nights,” a history of Brazilian popular music since the 1960s. “They want to bring culture under state control and know nothing about the digital world and the Internet, so of course they oppose a true revolutionary like Gil, who has always pushed for new things.”
Since Mr. Gil became minister, Brazilian government spending on culture has grown by more than 50 percent, testimony both to his prestige and negotiating skills. As minister he has devoted time to selling Brazilian music abroad, but has also labored to draw attention to Brazilian film, painting, sculpture and literature in foreign markets.
“One thing to remember about Gil,” said Hermano Vianna, an anthropologist, writer and a leading figure in Brazil’s digital culture movement, is that “he sees culture not just as art, but also as an industry. To Gil culture is not just an accessory but an important part of the economy and even a motor of economic development.”
Over the last four years, though, Mr. Gil has cut way back on his own performances, the part of being a musician he says he enjoys most, and nearly stopped recording. His most recent disc, “Gil Luminoso,” is a collection of 15 of his songs, including “Electronic Brain,” that he rerecorded in 1999 with just voice and guitar, to accompany a book about him.
Why give up something as gratifying as playing music for the wear and tear of public administration? “Life is not just pleasure,” he said. “The first phrase of the Vedic scriptures is that ‘All is suffering.’ Difficulty is stimulating, challenging, it’s an element of the pulse of life.”
Besides, he is at a point in life “where I no longer want to have a commitment to my career, in the classical sense of a profession,” he said. “I no longer see music as a field to be exploited. I see it now as an alternative area of action, part of a broad repertory of possibilities that I have. Music is something visceral in me, something that exudes from me, and even when I’m not thinking about it, I will still be making music, always.”
March 11, 2007
Music
Gilberto Gil Hears the Future, Some Rights Reserved
By LARRY ROHTER
SALVADOR, Brazil
ON Wednesday the Brazilian minister of culture, Gilberto Gil, is scheduled to speak about intellectual property rights, digital media and related topics at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Tex. Two nights later the singer, songwriter and pop star Gilberto Gil begins a three-week North American concert tour.
Rarely do the worlds of politics and the arts converge as unconventionally as in the person of Mr. Gil, whose itinerary includes a solo performance at Carnegie Hall on March 20. More than 40 years after he first picked up a guitar and sang in public, Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira is an anomaly: He doesn’t just make music, he also makes policy.
And as the music, film and publishing industries struggle to adapt to the challenge of content proliferating on the Internet, Mr. Gil has emerged as a central player in the global search for more flexible forms of distributing artistic works. In the process his twin roles have sometimes generated competing priorities that he has sought to harmonize.
As a creator of music, he is interested in protecting copyrights. But as a government official in a developing country celebrated for the creative pulse of its people, Mr. Gil also wants Brazilians to have unfettered access to new technologies to make and disseminate art, without having to surrender their rights to the large companies that dominate the culture industry.
“I think we are moving rapidly toward the obsolescence and eventual disappearance of a single traditional model and its replacement by others that are hybrids,” Mr. Gil said in a February interview at his home here in northeast Brazil, one day before the start of Carnival. “My personal view is that digital culture brings with it a new idea of intellectual property, and that this new culture of sharing can and should inform government policies.”
Raised in the poor, arid interior of the Brazilian northeast, Mr. Gil, 64, has been straddling disparate worlds most of his life. No black Brazilian had ever served as a cabinet minister before he was appointed four years ago, and as a young man fresh out of college he worked for a multinational company at a time when few black Brazilians had access to such jobs. Later, during a military dictatorship, he was jailed and then forced into exile in Britain.
After returning to Brazil in the 1970s he made records that urged black Brazilians to reconnect with their African roots, and was an early champion here of Bob Marley and reggae. But Mr. Gil has also read widely in Asian philosophy and religions and follows a macrobiotic diet, leading the songwriter, producer and critic Nelson Motta to describe his style as “Afro-Zen.”
In person Mr. Gil is warm, calm and engaging, a slim, dreadlocked figure with an elfin, humorous quality that tends to disarm critics. As both individual and artist he has always tended to be open-minded and eclectic in his tastes; the poet Torquato Neto once said of him, “There are many ways of singing and making Brazilian music, and Gilberto Gil prefers all of them.”
A fascination with technology has been another constant in Mr. Gil’s long career. He wrote his first song about computers, called “Electronic Brain,” back in the 1960s, and has regularly returned to the theme in compositions like “Satellite Dish” and “On the Internet,” which was written in the early 1990s and contains this verse:
I want to get on the Web
Promote a debate
Bring together on the Internet
A group of fans from Connecticut
I want to go on the Web to contact
Homes in Nepal and bars in Gabon
“I don’t think there is anyone quite like Gil anywhere in the world,” said John Perry Barlow, the former Grateful Dead lyricist who is a friend and the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the groups in the forefront of the drive to reform the current intellectual property rights system. “He’s a spearhead. He’s been thinking about I.P. issues forever and clearly gets the importance of all of this. But he’s also in a unique position to implement his ideas.”
One of Mr. Gil’s first actions after becoming culture minister in 2003 was to form an alliance between Brazil and the nascent Creative Commons movement. Founded in 2001, Creative Commons is meant to offer an alternative to the traditional copyright system of “all rights reserved,” which the movement’s adherents — from scientists and artists to lawyers and consumers — believe has impeded creativity and the sharing of knowledge in the Internet age.
In its place Creative Commons has devised a more flexible structure that allows artists to decide what part of their copyright they wish to retain and what part they are willing to share with the public. With input from Mr. Gil and many others, the organization has created licenses that permit creators and consumers to copy, remix or sample a digital work of art, so long as the originator is properly credited.
More than 145 million works have been registered with Creative Commons licenses, including videos, photographs, written texts, blogs and of course music. Because Brazil is “a country that has music in its genetic code,” to use Mr. Barlow’s phrase, and because Brazilian music has become a global force, the idea of loosening the automatic control of artistic works by a handful of conglomerates headquartered a hemisphere away has resonated strongly here.
“Look at remixing on music sites, which has become a core of creativity on the Internet and produced a huge archive of legally usable music,” said Lawrence Lessig, the author of “Free Culture” and founder of Creative Commons. “That has allowed a whole bunch of people to display themselves as artists and be picked up by record labels and Web sites, and all of that began because Gil got us to think about what kind of freedom was necessary for music.”
As culture minister Mr. Gil has also sponsored an initiative called the Cultural Points program. Small government grants are issued to scores of community centers in poor neighborhoods of some of Brazil’s largest cities to install recording and video studios and teach residents how to use them.
The result has been an outpouring of video and music, much of it racially conscious and politically tinged rap or electronica. Since Brazilian commercial radio, which is said to be riddled with payola, will not play the new music, the creators instead broadcast their songs on community radio stations and distribute their CDs independently, at markets and fairs, rather than through existing record labels.
With that project, “you’re now creating freely licensed content and demonstrating the creativity latent in the society,” Mr. Lessig said.
Brazil’s official stance on digital content and intellectual property rights is in large part derived from Mr. Gil’s own experience. In the late ’60s he and his close friend Caetano Veloso, along with a handful of others here and in São Paulo, started the movement known as Tropicalismo, which blended avant-garde poetry, pop influences from abroad and home-grown musical styles then scorned as corny and déclassé.
In a way, the Tropicalistas engaged in sampling before digital sampling existed, using cut-and-paste, mix-and-match collage techniques that are common now but were considered bizarre at the time. In recent years their music and approach has been embraced by pop performers as diverse as David Byrne, Nirvana, Beck, Nelly Furtado and Devendra Banhart.
When “world music” first appeared in the United States and Europe and Mr. Byrne, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and others began incorporating Brazilian rhythms into their work, Mr. Gil was initially skeptical of the phenomenon, complaining of “cultural safaris” by adventurers in Land Rovers “looking for all the rare specimens.” But thanks in large part to technological advances, he said, that practice has “changed completely,” and pop stars are now “more respectful” of other cultures.
“Today the hegemony of the North has, in a certain form, been broken,” he said. “Local tendencies are allowed to manifest themselves and adopt their own languages and forms of packaging. It’s no longer that vision of transforming some regional raw material into a single, standardized product. Today you have all kinds of local scenes that utilize universal elements,” like Brazilian, South African and Arab rap.
As a Tropicalista, Mr. Gil was also involved in an episode that is Brazil’s equivalent of Bob Dylan being booed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. When the Tropicalistas played electric guitars and rock rhythms at a São Paulo song festival in 1967, they were jeered and accused of being agents of American imperialism who were trying to impose noxious foreign influences on Brazilian music.
Mr. Gil’s complaints about the inequities of copyrights are derived in part from his own experience. Like many other musicians he signed contracts early in his career that essentially gave away publishing rights to the songs he wrote. But he waged a seven-year court battle to regain his rights, which ended recently with a favorable ruling that opens the door for other Brazilian artists to regain their rights as well.
“The old contracts were completely concessionary, in which all rights over the work were ceded to the contract holder, in absolute form,” he said. “I fought to bring my own work back under my control, arguing that there exists a unilateral right to break the contract. And we won. It was the first time this happened in Brazil, based on an artist’s rescinding a contract, and without a negotiated accord.”
Now that Mr. Gil has regained ownership of his own catalog of more than 400 songs, he is putting the concept of “copyleft,” as the alternative system is sometimes called, into practice. He retains all rights on some songs, some rights on others and declaring “no rights reserved” on others, which are now free for others for use in remixes or videos.
With such an approach an artist “no longer needs to transfer the administration of his rights to an entity called the record company, the movie studio or the song publisher,” Mr. Gil said. “He can do it himself.”
DESPITE all his brushes with politics over the years, it was only at the end of the ’80s, when he was elected to the City Council here in Brazil’s third-largest city, that Mr. Gil ventured into conventional party politics. His constituency was an unusual mixture of poor and working-class blacks and middle-class, mostly white, environmentalists.
But he withdrew after one term, turning aside requests he run for Brazil’s Congress by saying he was tired of partisan bickering and wanted to resume his performing career. Many Brazilians were therefore surprised when he jumped back into politics after the country’s first left-wing government was elected in 2002 and he was offered the cabinet post of culture minister, and then again late last year when he agreed to stay on for a second term.
“I still don’t like politics,” he said. “I’d rather see my position in the government as that of an administrator or manager. But politics is a necessary ingredient. You have politics in the government, with ministers, on the issue of how the budget is divided, the cake sliced up, the distribution of resources. You have to choose priorities, to tend to some and not to others.”
Mr. Gil’s tenure has not been without controversy. He is a member of the Green Party, not the ruling Workers’ Party, so when he was first appointed, some party loyalists were miffed that the job had not gone to one of their own, and responded with manifestos criticizing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s choice of a pop star thought to be ideologically suspect.
“You have to remember that Tropicalismo was fought by the traditional Stalinist left, and that even today some of those same people are in the Workers Party and the unions,” said Mr. Motta, who is also the author of “Tropical Nights,” a history of Brazilian popular music since the 1960s. “They want to bring culture under state control and know nothing about the digital world and the Internet, so of course they oppose a true revolutionary like Gil, who has always pushed for new things.”
Since Mr. Gil became minister, Brazilian government spending on culture has grown by more than 50 percent, testimony both to his prestige and negotiating skills. As minister he has devoted time to selling Brazilian music abroad, but has also labored to draw attention to Brazilian film, painting, sculpture and literature in foreign markets.
“One thing to remember about Gil,” said Hermano Vianna, an anthropologist, writer and a leading figure in Brazil’s digital culture movement, is that “he sees culture not just as art, but also as an industry. To Gil culture is not just an accessory but an important part of the economy and even a motor of economic development.”
Over the last four years, though, Mr. Gil has cut way back on his own performances, the part of being a musician he says he enjoys most, and nearly stopped recording. His most recent disc, “Gil Luminoso,” is a collection of 15 of his songs, including “Electronic Brain,” that he rerecorded in 1999 with just voice and guitar, to accompany a book about him.
Why give up something as gratifying as playing music for the wear and tear of public administration? “Life is not just pleasure,” he said. “The first phrase of the Vedic scriptures is that ‘All is suffering.’ Difficulty is stimulating, challenging, it’s an element of the pulse of life.”
Besides, he is at a point in life “where I no longer want to have a commitment to my career, in the classical sense of a profession,” he said. “I no longer see music as a field to be exploited. I see it now as an alternative area of action, part of a broad repertory of possibilities that I have. Music is something visceral in me, something that exudes from me, and even when I’m not thinking about it, I will still be making music, always.”
Saturday, March 10, 2007
The Onion: Secret Jimmy Page Guitar Riff To Be Retrieved to Save Rock and Roll
The Vault believed to contain Page's unreleased riff:
Click on the link to read the original:
Click on the link to read the original:
Jefferson: The First Jewish President?
Jefferson: The First Jewish President?
Newsweek
March 12, 2007 issue - U.S. President. Author of the Declaration of Independence. Force behind the Louisiana Purchase. And ... Jew? A new genetic study raises the tantalizing possibility that Thomas Jefferson may have had Jewish ancestry.
Researchers at the University of Leicester have found that the Founding Father's Y chromosome is part of a line known as K2; estimated to be about 20,000 years old, the line has been found scattered about Western Europe, notably in Iberia, France and Britain, but it is most prevalent in the Middle East. Since K2's European distribution "lacks clear structure," as Mark Jobling, a coauthor of the study, puts it, scientists aren't able to trace an exact origin. But how might a 20,000-year-old chromosomal line predominantly found in the Middle East end up dispersed across Europe? One of the best explanations is the Jewish Diaspora, in which the Jews spread west through much of Europe.
Without more data, the University of Leicester researchers can't be certain—but that didn't stop the American Jewish and Jeffersonian communities from buzzing about the prospect. "Monotheism, Moses and Monticello? We should be so lucky," wrote David A. Harris, head of the American Jewish Committee, in an e-mail to NEWSWEEK. "I think it's delightful to find through genetic studies more and more that different people are inseparable in their origins," says Peter Ochs, a professor of modern Judaic studies at the University of Virginia, which Jefferson founded. "We also like him. He's a brilliant, complex, imperfect person, like the great Biblical models—brainy, who uses his mind to build things, and yet very human." The Leicester team previously researched Jefferson's genes to determine whether he had fathered children with a slave, Sally Hemings.
—Nick Summers and Marc Bain
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17439183/site/newsweek/
Newsweek
March 12, 2007 issue - U.S. President. Author of the Declaration of Independence. Force behind the Louisiana Purchase. And ... Jew? A new genetic study raises the tantalizing possibility that Thomas Jefferson may have had Jewish ancestry.
Researchers at the University of Leicester have found that the Founding Father's Y chromosome is part of a line known as K2; estimated to be about 20,000 years old, the line has been found scattered about Western Europe, notably in Iberia, France and Britain, but it is most prevalent in the Middle East. Since K2's European distribution "lacks clear structure," as Mark Jobling, a coauthor of the study, puts it, scientists aren't able to trace an exact origin. But how might a 20,000-year-old chromosomal line predominantly found in the Middle East end up dispersed across Europe? One of the best explanations is the Jewish Diaspora, in which the Jews spread west through much of Europe.
Without more data, the University of Leicester researchers can't be certain—but that didn't stop the American Jewish and Jeffersonian communities from buzzing about the prospect. "Monotheism, Moses and Monticello? We should be so lucky," wrote David A. Harris, head of the American Jewish Committee, in an e-mail to NEWSWEEK. "I think it's delightful to find through genetic studies more and more that different people are inseparable in their origins," says Peter Ochs, a professor of modern Judaic studies at the University of Virginia, which Jefferson founded. "We also like him. He's a brilliant, complex, imperfect person, like the great Biblical models—brainy, who uses his mind to build things, and yet very human." The Leicester team previously researched Jefferson's genes to determine whether he had fathered children with a slave, Sally Hemings.
—Nick Summers and Marc Bain
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17439183/site/newsweek/
Friday, March 09, 2007
Baby Loves Disco
Christian Science Monitor
from the March 09, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0309/p11s01-lifp.html
'Baby Loves Disco': clubbing for the Mommy-and-me set
The immensely popular events held during the day at nightclubs around the country encourage parents to treat toddlers as mini adults.
By Gloria Goodale | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
HOLLYWOOD, CALIF.
IT'S One o'clock on a recent Saturday. Inside The Knitting Factory, a well-known local nightclub, loud music pulsates through a crowd of dancers, inviting them to "leave the nine to five up on the shelf, and just enjoy yourself." The mirror ball overhead sends light sparkles through the dimly lit room, illuminating the occasional beer bottle or cocktail in a partyer's hand.
Occasionally, though, it also lights up another kind of bottle, the kind that babies use, because this is not a late-night party. This 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. bash coincides with most children's afternoon naptime.
The event is a midday soiree specifically for the Mommy-and-me set – a nationwide phenomenon known as Baby Loves Disco. One afternoon each month, local organizers take over a nightclub – complete with a cash bar and the regular DJ spinning his normal playlist – and throw open the doors to anyone under the age of 7, accompanied by parents.
The two-year-old concept, now in 16 cities, has clearly struck a national nerve. It sells out every time it expands into a new city, just as it did this past month in Boston. But as Baby Loves Disco has outgrown its humble origins in Philadelphia, acquiring sponsors and partners along the way, the concept of combining babies and clubbing is coming under sharper scrutiny. Some child advocates call it downright dangerous while other cultural observers call it the latest sign of an ongoing fundamental shift in our attitudes toward children.
"One of the major premises revealed in [Baby Loves Disco] is that we've shifted from a child-friendly to an adult-driven lifestyle," says Lynne Griffin, an author and registered nurse who teaches in the Family Studies graduate program at Boston's Wheelock College. "What we're seeing increasingly is adults sharing a lifestyle with their children that is geared towards adult needs for everything from sleep to daily activities such as entertainment and communication."
Noting that parenting styles tend to go in cycles, many clinical experts dub this a period of permissive parenting, in which adults do not set appropriate boundaries between themselves and their offspring.
"I'm seeing parents who look at their children and say, 'He's just like me, so whatever is good for me is good for him,' " says Don MacMannis, a child psychologist who is codirector of The Family Therapy Institute of Santa Barbara, Calif.
From humble beginnings...
This traveling, mixed-age homage to '70s and '80s club life began as a backyard party at founder Heather Murphy's home. A former dancer, Ms. Murphy says she and her husband wanted to share their favorite family activity with their friends.
"What we like to do is put on music, have a glass of wine and hang out with the kids," she says.
This private party quickly outgrew her home and she looked around town for a venue to rent. She picked a local nightclub because it was already set up for the kind of festive, music and dance party atmosphere she sought.
The party expanded first to New York when partner Andy Hurwitz, who was already promoting a Baby Loves Music business, came on board. It quickly began to expand beyond New York, opening in locations such as Portland, Ore. and Chicago; in the next few months, the event will expand to four more cities, including San Diego and Atlanta.
Nightclubs have been the logical choice for a daytime party looking for a home, says Murphy.
And she doesn't worry that it might be sending children the wrong idea about the virtues of nightclubbing.
"We all have these ideas about what a nightclub means in our adult minds," she argues, "but those are huge assumptions. Children don't have those ideas."
Murphy says her group carefully screens local hosts in each city to ensure they uphold the party line, offering balloons, bubbles, and child-appropriate food such as fruit and box drinks, in addition to the music and open bar. Organizers of the Los Angeles Baby Loves Disco have created a space for the crawling set to boogie the, er, afternoon away, with blankets spread on the trash-strewn, sticky floor. Ropes hang in front of off-limits areas such as multiplatformed stages. A local spa has set up an adults-zone for Pilates, yoga, and belly dancing instruction, as well as massages. In addition, says host Chip Smith, parents are supposed to keep their alcoholic beverages at least a yard above the ground to prevent them from falling into the hands of the box-drink crowd.
A hit with parents
Lawyer Lynne Smith stands on the dancefloor with her 3-year-old son, Sanders, falling asleep in her arms. "I love to dance and I can bring my son, so this is great," she says.
Dad David Levin chases his two sons across the dance floor, pausing just long enough to say, "I like that I can have a drink while the kids are having fun."
Despite its obvious appeal, this boundary blurring between what clinical psychologist Nancy O'Reilly calls one of our most adult activities – nightclubbing – and young children is worrisome. A lot can happen quickly in a darkened room with a lot of mixed-age activity, from a child picking up the wrong drink to a stranger walking out a side door with the wrong child, she suggests.
While it may have started as a well-intentioned effort at creating community, organizers have dropped the ball, she contends.
"If you leave so many things without some kind of boundaries, you're just asking for trouble," argues Ms. O'Reilly, the founder of WomenSpeak.com, whose practice is based in Springfield, Mo.
Mr. Hurwitz admits to being a deer caught in the headlights of so much national attention, and explains that the group has evolved so quickly – and reached such a wide and enthusiastic audience – that some of the details, such as low-rent venues, may have gotten away from it. When asked about trashy bathrooms and dirty floors in the Los Angeles club, he apologizes, explaining that clubs in other cities are brighter and cleaner. But he stands behind the philosophy of Baby Loves Disco. "[It's] real music, with real DJs in a real nightclub where they can dance, and have an authentic experience," says Mr. Hurwitz. "That's what we're trying to offer to parents just as another option for the whole family to enjoy."
Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links
from the March 09, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0309/p11s01-lifp.html
'Baby Loves Disco': clubbing for the Mommy-and-me set
The immensely popular events held during the day at nightclubs around the country encourage parents to treat toddlers as mini adults.
By Gloria Goodale | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
HOLLYWOOD, CALIF.
IT'S One o'clock on a recent Saturday. Inside The Knitting Factory, a well-known local nightclub, loud music pulsates through a crowd of dancers, inviting them to "leave the nine to five up on the shelf, and just enjoy yourself." The mirror ball overhead sends light sparkles through the dimly lit room, illuminating the occasional beer bottle or cocktail in a partyer's hand.
Occasionally, though, it also lights up another kind of bottle, the kind that babies use, because this is not a late-night party. This 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. bash coincides with most children's afternoon naptime.
The event is a midday soiree specifically for the Mommy-and-me set – a nationwide phenomenon known as Baby Loves Disco. One afternoon each month, local organizers take over a nightclub – complete with a cash bar and the regular DJ spinning his normal playlist – and throw open the doors to anyone under the age of 7, accompanied by parents.
The two-year-old concept, now in 16 cities, has clearly struck a national nerve. It sells out every time it expands into a new city, just as it did this past month in Boston. But as Baby Loves Disco has outgrown its humble origins in Philadelphia, acquiring sponsors and partners along the way, the concept of combining babies and clubbing is coming under sharper scrutiny. Some child advocates call it downright dangerous while other cultural observers call it the latest sign of an ongoing fundamental shift in our attitudes toward children.
"One of the major premises revealed in [Baby Loves Disco] is that we've shifted from a child-friendly to an adult-driven lifestyle," says Lynne Griffin, an author and registered nurse who teaches in the Family Studies graduate program at Boston's Wheelock College. "What we're seeing increasingly is adults sharing a lifestyle with their children that is geared towards adult needs for everything from sleep to daily activities such as entertainment and communication."
Noting that parenting styles tend to go in cycles, many clinical experts dub this a period of permissive parenting, in which adults do not set appropriate boundaries between themselves and their offspring.
"I'm seeing parents who look at their children and say, 'He's just like me, so whatever is good for me is good for him,' " says Don MacMannis, a child psychologist who is codirector of The Family Therapy Institute of Santa Barbara, Calif.
From humble beginnings...
This traveling, mixed-age homage to '70s and '80s club life began as a backyard party at founder Heather Murphy's home. A former dancer, Ms. Murphy says she and her husband wanted to share their favorite family activity with their friends.
"What we like to do is put on music, have a glass of wine and hang out with the kids," she says.
This private party quickly outgrew her home and she looked around town for a venue to rent. She picked a local nightclub because it was already set up for the kind of festive, music and dance party atmosphere she sought.
The party expanded first to New York when partner Andy Hurwitz, who was already promoting a Baby Loves Music business, came on board. It quickly began to expand beyond New York, opening in locations such as Portland, Ore. and Chicago; in the next few months, the event will expand to four more cities, including San Diego and Atlanta.
Nightclubs have been the logical choice for a daytime party looking for a home, says Murphy.
And she doesn't worry that it might be sending children the wrong idea about the virtues of nightclubbing.
"We all have these ideas about what a nightclub means in our adult minds," she argues, "but those are huge assumptions. Children don't have those ideas."
Murphy says her group carefully screens local hosts in each city to ensure they uphold the party line, offering balloons, bubbles, and child-appropriate food such as fruit and box drinks, in addition to the music and open bar. Organizers of the Los Angeles Baby Loves Disco have created a space for the crawling set to boogie the, er, afternoon away, with blankets spread on the trash-strewn, sticky floor. Ropes hang in front of off-limits areas such as multiplatformed stages. A local spa has set up an adults-zone for Pilates, yoga, and belly dancing instruction, as well as massages. In addition, says host Chip Smith, parents are supposed to keep their alcoholic beverages at least a yard above the ground to prevent them from falling into the hands of the box-drink crowd.
A hit with parents
Lawyer Lynne Smith stands on the dancefloor with her 3-year-old son, Sanders, falling asleep in her arms. "I love to dance and I can bring my son, so this is great," she says.
Dad David Levin chases his two sons across the dance floor, pausing just long enough to say, "I like that I can have a drink while the kids are having fun."
Despite its obvious appeal, this boundary blurring between what clinical psychologist Nancy O'Reilly calls one of our most adult activities – nightclubbing – and young children is worrisome. A lot can happen quickly in a darkened room with a lot of mixed-age activity, from a child picking up the wrong drink to a stranger walking out a side door with the wrong child, she suggests.
While it may have started as a well-intentioned effort at creating community, organizers have dropped the ball, she contends.
"If you leave so many things without some kind of boundaries, you're just asking for trouble," argues Ms. O'Reilly, the founder of WomenSpeak.com, whose practice is based in Springfield, Mo.
Mr. Hurwitz admits to being a deer caught in the headlights of so much national attention, and explains that the group has evolved so quickly – and reached such a wide and enthusiastic audience – that some of the details, such as low-rent venues, may have gotten away from it. When asked about trashy bathrooms and dirty floors in the Los Angeles club, he apologizes, explaining that clubs in other cities are brighter and cleaner. But he stands behind the philosophy of Baby Loves Disco. "[It's] real music, with real DJs in a real nightclub where they can dance, and have an authentic experience," says Mr. Hurwitz. "That's what we're trying to offer to parents just as another option for the whole family to enjoy."
Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Ola Simonsson`s "Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers"
Yeah, it's from back in 2001, but it's a great percussion short film.
Critic/Theorist Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)
March 7, 2007
Jean Baudrillard, 77, Critic and Theorist of Hyperreality, Dies
By PATRICIA COHEN
The French critic and provocateur Jean Baudrillard, whose theories about consumer culture and the manufactured nature of reality were intensely discussed both in rarefied philosophical circles and in blockbuster movies like “The Matrix,” died yesterday in Paris. He was 77.
Michel Delorme, director of Galilee, Mr. Baudrillard’s publisher, announced his death, which he said followed a long illness.
Mr. Baudrillard, the first in his family to attend a university, became a member of a small caste of celebrated and influential French intellectuals who achieved international fame despite the density and difficulty of their work.
The author of more than 50 books and an accomplished photographer, Mr. Baudrillard ranged across different subjects, from race and gender to literature and art to 9/11. His comments often sparked controversy, as when he said in 1991 that the gulf war “did not take place” — arguing that it was more of a media event than a war.
Mr. Baudrillard was once considered a postmodern guru, but his analyses of modern life were too original and idiosyncratic to fit any partisan or theoretical category. “He was one of a kind,” François Busnel, the editor in chief of the monthly literary magazine Lire, said yesterday. “He did not choose sides, he was very independent.”
With a round face and big, thick glasses, Mr. Baudrillard was known for his witty aphorisms and black humor. He described the sensory flood of the modern media culture as “the ecstasy of communication.”
One of his better known theories postulates that we live in a world where simulated feelings and experiences have replaced the real thing. This seductive “hyperreality,” where shopping malls, amusement parks and mass-produced images from the news, television shows and films dominate, is drained of authenticity and meaning. Since illusion reigns, he counseled people to give up the search for reality.
“All of our values are simulated,” he told The New York Times in 2005. “What is freedom? We have a choice between buying one car or buying another car? It’s a simulation of freedom.”
This idea was picked up by the American filmmakers Andy and Larry Wachowski, who included subtle references to Mr. Baudrillard in their “Matrix” trilogy. In the first movie of the series, “The Matrix” (1999), the computer hacker hero Neo opens Mr. Baudrillard’s book “Simulacra and Simulation,” which turns out to be only a simulation of a book, hollowed out to hold computer disks. Mr. Baudrillard later told The Times that the movie references to his work “stemmed mostly from misunderstandings.”
He was also a fierce critic of consumer culture in which people bought objects not out of genuine need but because of the status and meaning they bestowed.
Born in 1929 in Reims, Mr. Baudrillard later attended university in Paris, earning a doctorate in sociology while teaching German to high school students. He published his first book, “The Object System,” in 1968.
In 1986 he published a kind of travelogue called “America,” in which he wrote, “America is the original version of modernity,” referring to what he considered the almost complete blurring of reality and unreality. To his French readers, he said: “We are a copy with subtitles.”
He retired in 1987 from the University of Paris X, Nanterre, and then devoted himself to writing caustic commentaries and developing his philosophical theories. Although he shunned most media, he frequently wrote for newspapers.
“The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin Towers” was published just a year after 9/11. In it, he argued that Islamic fundamentalists tried to create their own reality; the resulting media spectacle would give the impression that the West was constantly under threat of terrorist attack.
The current American invasion of Iraq is an effort to “put the rest of the world into simulation, so all the world becomes total artifice and then we are all-powerful,” he told The Times. “It’s a game.”
Like other postmodernists with whom he was often associated (despite their differences), he was frequently criticized as obscure. “If the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing,” Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont wrote in their 1998 book “Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science.”
Mr. Baudrillard was not unaware of the problem. “What I’m going to write will have less and less chance of being understood,” he said, “but that’s my problem.”
Jean Baudrillard, 77, Critic and Theorist of Hyperreality, Dies
By PATRICIA COHEN
The French critic and provocateur Jean Baudrillard, whose theories about consumer culture and the manufactured nature of reality were intensely discussed both in rarefied philosophical circles and in blockbuster movies like “The Matrix,” died yesterday in Paris. He was 77.
Michel Delorme, director of Galilee, Mr. Baudrillard’s publisher, announced his death, which he said followed a long illness.
Mr. Baudrillard, the first in his family to attend a university, became a member of a small caste of celebrated and influential French intellectuals who achieved international fame despite the density and difficulty of their work.
The author of more than 50 books and an accomplished photographer, Mr. Baudrillard ranged across different subjects, from race and gender to literature and art to 9/11. His comments often sparked controversy, as when he said in 1991 that the gulf war “did not take place” — arguing that it was more of a media event than a war.
Mr. Baudrillard was once considered a postmodern guru, but his analyses of modern life were too original and idiosyncratic to fit any partisan or theoretical category. “He was one of a kind,” François Busnel, the editor in chief of the monthly literary magazine Lire, said yesterday. “He did not choose sides, he was very independent.”
With a round face and big, thick glasses, Mr. Baudrillard was known for his witty aphorisms and black humor. He described the sensory flood of the modern media culture as “the ecstasy of communication.”
One of his better known theories postulates that we live in a world where simulated feelings and experiences have replaced the real thing. This seductive “hyperreality,” where shopping malls, amusement parks and mass-produced images from the news, television shows and films dominate, is drained of authenticity and meaning. Since illusion reigns, he counseled people to give up the search for reality.
“All of our values are simulated,” he told The New York Times in 2005. “What is freedom? We have a choice between buying one car or buying another car? It’s a simulation of freedom.”
This idea was picked up by the American filmmakers Andy and Larry Wachowski, who included subtle references to Mr. Baudrillard in their “Matrix” trilogy. In the first movie of the series, “The Matrix” (1999), the computer hacker hero Neo opens Mr. Baudrillard’s book “Simulacra and Simulation,” which turns out to be only a simulation of a book, hollowed out to hold computer disks. Mr. Baudrillard later told The Times that the movie references to his work “stemmed mostly from misunderstandings.”
He was also a fierce critic of consumer culture in which people bought objects not out of genuine need but because of the status and meaning they bestowed.
Born in 1929 in Reims, Mr. Baudrillard later attended university in Paris, earning a doctorate in sociology while teaching German to high school students. He published his first book, “The Object System,” in 1968.
In 1986 he published a kind of travelogue called “America,” in which he wrote, “America is the original version of modernity,” referring to what he considered the almost complete blurring of reality and unreality. To his French readers, he said: “We are a copy with subtitles.”
He retired in 1987 from the University of Paris X, Nanterre, and then devoted himself to writing caustic commentaries and developing his philosophical theories. Although he shunned most media, he frequently wrote for newspapers.
“The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin Towers” was published just a year after 9/11. In it, he argued that Islamic fundamentalists tried to create their own reality; the resulting media spectacle would give the impression that the West was constantly under threat of terrorist attack.
The current American invasion of Iraq is an effort to “put the rest of the world into simulation, so all the world becomes total artifice and then we are all-powerful,” he told The Times. “It’s a game.”
Like other postmodernists with whom he was often associated (despite their differences), he was frequently criticized as obscure. “If the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing,” Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont wrote in their 1998 book “Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science.”
Mr. Baudrillard was not unaware of the problem. “What I’m going to write will have less and less chance of being understood,” he said, “but that’s my problem.”
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Aboriginal Australian Culture & Tourism
Slate
Well-traveled
Going Native in the Australian Outback
The tricky task of balancing visitors' expectations of aboriginal culture with the real thing.
By Rolf Potts
Updated Tuesday, March 6, 2007, at 11:22 AM ET
From: Rolf Potts
Subject: The Pitjantjatjara Word for Tourists and Ants Is One and the Same
Posted Monday, March 5, 2007, at 1:07 PM ET
Here's some advice for anyone hoping to capture the contradictions of Australian outback tourism within a single snapshot: Bring your camera to the base of Uluru—the massive orange-red monolith smack in the center of the Australian continent—and aim the lower half of your viewfinder at the large sign near the hiking trailhead. This sign, which was erected by the local Pitjantjatjara people, solemnly requests that you don't climb up the face of a rock that they consider sacred. Aim your camera at a certain angle, however, and the top half of your viewfinder will capture the knots of tourists who've decided to climb the rock anyway (aided by a safety chain designated by the Australian National Park Service for that very purpose).
The Pitjantjatjara euphemism for tourists in their homeland is minga tjuta—"ants"—and from this angle you can see why: Looking up from the base of Uluru, the tidy lines of people inching up the climbing trail look like insects on a mound.
I, too, have come to central Australia as a minga tjuta, though I'm not here to scale the slopes of Uluru. Rather, I have resolved to spend the next week looking for a meaningful experience of Australian aboriginal culture. My guide for today, a Pitjantjatjara man named Wally Jacob, is late—so I've been killing time by taking photos of central Australia's iconic sandstone landmark and the dusty, red desert that surrounds it.
I've always prided myself on traveling independently in unfamiliar cultures, but joining a guided tour of aboriginal Uluru is something of a necessity: Indigenous people in this part of Australia are famously averse to the notion of random backpackers wandering onto tribal land without a formal welcome, and anthropologists have noted that Aborigines generally prefer busloads of superficial tourists (who buy a lot of souvenirs and are quickly gone) to more earnest seekers, who unwittingly traipse through ceremonial lands, make themselves at home, and ask a lot of intrusive questions. This cultural distaste for drop-in visitors goes back to the earliest interactions with Europeans in Australia. The first aboriginal phrase recorded by 18th-century British convict-settlers was warra-warra ("go away"), and Capt. James Cook noted in his 1770 expedition journal that, in spite of his attempts to interact with indigenous Australians, "all they seemed to want was for us to be gone."
Since it has become unrealistic for outsiders to "be gone" from this Australian landscape, local Aborigines have used organized tours as a way of retaining control over how visitors see their ancestral homeland. Besides competition from nonaboriginal tours—including camel treks and helicopter flyovers—local control is certainly not all-encompassing: Because of functional compromises in regaining legal ownership of Uluru from the Australian government in the 1980s, climbing the rock was never formally outlawed. And, given that 250,000 or so tourists ascend the sacred site each year in defiance of Pitjantjatjara wishes, it's safe to assume that many visitors are more interested in the scenic pleasures of the monolith than the aboriginal culture that surrounds it. During the tourist high season, the nearby hotel complex swells to become the fourth-most-populous settlement in Australia's Northern Territory—and more people pass by Uluru in a single week than Pitjantjatjara people of previous generations saw in a lifetime.
When Wally arrives—dressed in flip-flop sandals, dirty brown pants, and a crisp blue oxford shirt that reads "Anangu Tours"—he barely notices the crowds of tourists. Instead, he grins and points to a spot 20 feet away from us. "Ngintaka," he says.
I look to Keiran Lusk, the tall, salt-and-pepper bearded Australian who serves as Wally's interpreter. "Perentie lizard," he says. A couple of seconds pass before I see the wrinkly, long-necked reptile—a 4-foot-long creature that has probably been sitting there since I first arrived. "No worries," Keiran confides. "I didn't see him, either."
Now that the ngintaka has been spotted, a knot of tourists gathers. Several cameras flash at once, and the lizard flees. Wally shrugs, tugs a brown Billabong ball cap onto his head, and leads us down the hiking trail.
As we skirt the base of Uluru, I chat indirectly with the gray-haired Pitjantjatjara guide, asking my questions via Keiran. Wally tells me that he was born in the bush 53 years ago, then taken by his mother to a Lutheran mission, where he was given his European name. He tells me that he's tired today, because he was busy collecting spear-wood the night before. He tells me about his efforts to teach old traditions to Pitjantjatjara teenagers, who often prefer video games or hip-hop music to spear-hunting and bushcraft. These young people, he says with a weary giggle, are like tourists: It's hard to hold their attention for very long.
Keiran adds details and clarifications as he translates for Wally. "Modern improvements have had mixed results in aboriginal Australia," he says. "The younger generation is living on TV and junk food. They're losing a part of themselves because they've lost their connection to the land. Some of them are dying before their parents because of alcoholism or diabetes."
As he says this, Keiran keeps an eye on people in other tour groups, and he casually steps into the line of sight whenever someone tries to take Wally's picture. When I ask him why he does this, Keiran tells me it's not just an issue of respect, but also business integrity. "Tourists love to have aboriginals in their pictures of Uluru. It makes the photos seem more authentic. But if we let every random person take Wally's picture, people would lose an incentive for taking our tours. Plus, we'd never get anything done."
Wally leads us to a cave at the base of Uluru that is associated with the mala tjurukpa, or "hare wallaby dreaming," which describes an event in Pitjantjatjara prehistory. Such mythic stories of "dreamtime"—epic tales wherein snakes walk, wallabies throw spears, and mulga seeds seek revenge—are central to aboriginal religious and ethical beliefs, describing in detail the creation of the world and humankind's role in it. Celebrated in classic travel books like Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, these dreamtime stories are one of the most intriguing aspects of indigenous Australian culture.
The stories are also one of the most misunderstood aspects of indigenous culture. One hundred years ago, for example, European anthropologists believed that a central dreamtime story for the Pitjantjatjara involved the pungkalungu—giant, flesh-eating ogres who exacted revenge for misdeeds. As it turned out, pungkalungu stories were merely informal Pitjantjatjara folk tales—a local variation of the bogeyman, used to scare naughty children.
" 'Dreamtime' is an imperfect translation," Keiran tells me. "Tjurukpa, as the Pitjantjatjara understand it, is no dream. There's no good equivalent word in English; it's a kind of traditional law, which describes history, geography, and morality. Researchers estimate humans have lived near Uluru for 22,000 years, but the Pitjantjatjara believe that they have always been here, that tjurukpa is part of an ongoing condition, not a mythic past. This oral tradition is accumulated through years of ceremonial initiation and life experience, and it's one of the most technically and legally complex religious systems in the world."
Keiran goes on to relate the dreamtime story of mythic hare-wallabies who visited Uluru and unwittingly found themselves in a feud with the mulga-seed men, the wintalka. The vengeful wintalka created a dog monster to destroy the ceremonial camp of the hare-wallaby men, and signs of the struggle are evident in the lumps and notches of Uluru's furrowed red slopes.
As stories go, the mala tjurukpa isn't particularly spellbinding, but Keiran tells me the purpose of tjurukpa is not to entertain but to teach lessons about respecting ceremonial rules or finding food. "Besides," he says, "you're only getting a small fragment of the story, which itself is connected with other stories. To fully understand the tjurukpa, you'd have to live close to the land for many years. Even then, tradition dictates what you can and cannot know. Wally may be a male elder, but that doesn't mean he has access to female stories and ceremonies."
I notice Wally has wandered off and is now rolling a cigarette under a tree near the Kantju Gorge water hole. "Piiwi," he says, as Keiran and I approach him. He points up at the tree, but it's several moments before I spot a pair of owllike tawny frogmouths—mother and hatchling—perched on a branch. Their coloring is so similar to the tree bark that I can just barely make them out. "She's moved," Wally says to Keiran. "She used to live in a different place. I've never seen her here before. And I never knew she'd had babies."
As Wally puffs on his cigarette and grins up at the piiwi, I realize that his very strength as a tour guide is that he doesn't really give a crap about tourists. Instead of trying to deliver standardized cultural information, the Pitjantjatjara elder is merely offering me the chance to tag along as he enjoys a stroll in his homeland. And, while a morning tour of Uluru can hardly do aboriginal heritage justice, Wally's keen eye for the land hints at a richer cultural story. His story is, in fact, the tale of the oldest continuous culture in the world—stretching well into the Pleistocene Age, when people lived with no permanent possessions, no food preservation, and no distinction between labor and leisure. It's a tale of the first continent in human history to be settled by sea travel, 60,000 years ago—and the intimate knowledge of climate, animal habits, plant cycles, and insect life necessary to subsist in a harsh land.
It's also a story that gets muddled by the noise of the modern world—though modernity seems to be popularizing Pitjantjatjara culture as much as it compromises it. Indeed, even though resort restaurants, camel treks, and tour buses would seem to diminish the aboriginal presence here, the constant stream of visitors creates an inevitable market of fascination in the local culture. Among the hundreds of historically distinctive indigenous societies within Australia, mass tourism has transformed the Pitjantjatjara into an antipodean equivalent of the Navajo—a culture that is celebrated and romanticized by the same public consciousness that threatens to dilute it.
When our morning trek concludes, Keiran mentions that I can buy into a more in-depth Pitjantjatjara tour tomorrow, where I'll be able to dine on witchety grubs, identify bush fruits, and learn how to throw a spear.
I decline—not because I don't want to do these things, but because of that old tourist irony: To get a proper taste of aboriginal culture, I feel I need to find a landscape that isn't so overrun by other tourists.
Bidding my Uluru guides farewell, I fire up my rental car and head east on the Lasseter Highway.
From: Rolf Potts
Subject: If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Arrernte Country
Posted Tuesday, March 6, 2007, at 11:22 AM ET
Travelers wanting to catch a glimpse of an aboriginal dance performance near the tidy Australian outback town of Alice Springs are usually pointed to the Red Centre Dreaming show, which includes a three-course buffet dinner and all the sparkling wine you can drink. Since the local Arrernte Aborigines don't feel comfortable sharing their ceremonial dances in front of a paying audience, the Red Centre Dreaming performers are brought in from the state of Queensland, hundreds of miles away. In cultural terms, watching Queensland aboriginal dances in Alice Springs is kind of like going to Denmark to watch a flamenco performance—but the tourists here don't seem to mind.
Though I'm trying my best to understand the cultural intricacies of indigenous Australian society, at times it can be hard to keep up with all the new information. Yesterday, while visiting Uluru National Park, I managed to learn a number of Pitjantjatjara aboriginal words, such as kapi, which means "water," and tjala, which means "honey ant." Today, having driven five hours to Alice Springs—a small increment on any map of Australia—I've discovered that these words are now useless. Here, in the local Arrernte language, "water" is kwatye; "honey ant" is yerrampe. For travelers hoping to learn about aboriginal culture while seeing the sights of central Australia, this can be somewhat befuddling—kind of like the "If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium" phenomenon of Western European package tourism, but without any easily identifiable frontiers.
Before the arrival of European interlopers, indigenous Australian societies spoke around 250 languages and 700 dialects. Though all these aboriginal subcultures shared a land-based nomadic lifestyle, similar religious practices, and some forms of intertribal trade, they never developed a collective sense of "aboriginal" identity, and broad cultural variations existed across relatively short distances. British settlers in the late 18th century, for example, noted that Aborigines on the north side of Sydney Harbor spoke a different language from those living on the south side. To this day, most indigenous Australians identify more with their historical kinship group than a general "aboriginal" identity, and the closest thing to a cultural lingua franca is English (which is usually pidginized, since its vocabulary isn't well suited to expressing the nature-based indigenous worldview).
Thus, a visit to Alice Springs can be confusing, since the town functions as an administrative center that attracts people from all parts of central Australia. Tourists browsing the souvenir shops and indigenous-art galleries along the Todd Street Mall might assume that the groups of aboriginal people dozing along the walkway are all hard-luck locals—an outback variation of the urban homeless—when, in fact, there's a good chance those aboriginal folks are themselves tourists to Alice Springs. One group lounging along Todd Mall, for example, might be a family of Pintupi speakers in town for a daughter's softball tournament; another might be Kaytetye women who've hitched in for land-rights hearings; a third group might be young Alyawarr men indulging in a one-week bender, since their elders don't allow alcohol on indigenous land. And, since more than 20 percent of Alice Springs' 30,000 permanent residents are of aboriginal heritage, all these visitors might have trouble relating to indigenous locals, who are known to drive Land Cruisers, live in suburban bungalows, and feel more comfortable speaking English than their traditional languages.
My guide here in Alice Springs, a handsome, 46-year-old Arrernte man named Bob Taylor, speaks almost no Arrernte. This is because, at age 8, he was forcibly taken from his Arrernte mother and—with the approval of the Australian government—sent to a home for "half-caste" aboriginal children in South Australia, where, for the next nine years, he was allowed to speak only English. More than 100,000 indigenous children, collectively called the "Stolen Generation," suffered this practice of enforced assimilation between 1910 and 1970. Unhappily trapped between cultures as a young man, Bob eventually found his calling as a chef and wandered his way to Europe, where he landed work at various five-star hotel restaurants in Holland. Ask him about this experience, and he'll tell you about the idiosyncrasies of his Dutch ex-girlfriends with the same affection and enthusiasm he uses to describe his Arrernte cousins.
Bob started his tour operation two years ago, as a way of embracing his heritage and taking a break from the boozy trappings of restaurant culture. His business, RT Tours, has a fleet of one 12-person bus; he is the only employee. Since this is low season for tourists, I am his lone client. Today we are driving 50 miles out of Alice Springs to West MacDonnell National Park, where Bob plans to grill kangaroo filets and teach me how to find bush food. I notice he's packed a didgeridoo—a long, wooden, tubelike aboriginal instrument famous for its growling, ethereal sound. From my research, I know that the Arrernte people didn't historically use the didgeridoo, but I don't mention this to Bob.
As we drive, the landscape outside our bus is spectacular: prickly yellow spinifex grass clumped in the dark orange soil; furrowed ridges of dusty purple rock; broad blue horizons. Twice the size of California, Northern Territory is home to just over 200,000 people (most of whom live in Darwin, on the northern coast), and the sense of dry, sprawling emptiness is visceral and humbling. Leathery kangaroo carcasses—roadkill, from the looks of it—fringe the roadside.
I ask Bob how it feels to be a child of the Stolen Generation, but he doesn't seem to want to dwell on it. Instead, he steers the conversation to his business and how he feels he's in a unique position to bridge two cultures. "Tourism is a great opportunity for aboriginal people to share their culture and create economic opportunities," he says. "The biggest problem is that we're not really driven by the dollar. Most aboriginal businesspeople are more interested in living close to the land, getting off welfare, and preserving traditions for future generations. I like to think that my business is an example of the opportunities that are out there."
"What kinds of people usually come on your tours?"
"Europeans. A lot of Germans, plus some Italians and French. For some reason, these people are interested in indigenous cultures from all over the world. That means my main competition isn't Sydney or the Great Barrier Reef, but places like Nepal and Peru. Aboriginal tour operators are trying to get the word out, trying to convince people that our culture is as old and interesting as you'll find anywhere. I just wish we could get more of you Americans to come out."
"You don't get many Americans?"
"American tourists out here tend to be older folks, who don't like hiking around and getting dirty. They're happy to see a dance or listen to a didgeridoo at their hotel, then fly back to Sydney. But if you want to understand aboriginal Australia, you have to come here for the land itself. If you don't experience the flies and the heat and the long distances, you're going to miss the point."
When we arrive at MacDonnell National Park, Bob dons a broad-brimmed felt hat and leads me on a two-hour hike along the steep, red-rock chasms. Here, we spot rock wallabies along the cliffs, examine the sandy foxholes made by kangaroos digging for water, and scan the landscape for bush food. Since plants don't grow much in the searing heat of the Australian summer, Bob breaks out a Tupperware jar containing fruits he's collected on other journeys. I can't keep up with the Arrernte words for all the food, but Bob points out that each fruit has an English nickname: bush fig, bush cucumber, bush banana, bush orange. As I sample the foods, I find that these names are somewhat arbitrary: The bush coconut, for example, is sweet and fleshy, but it resembles a tree gall; the bush tomato has an acidic, raisiny taste. Bob tells me that over 30 edible bush fruits are known to aboriginals in central Australia and that the European explorers who famously starved to death here in the 19th century died in a land where indigenous people had prospered for 20,000 years.
Leading me back out of the canyons, Bob sets up kitchen gear at a picnic area and cooks me a tasty lunch of seared kangaroo filets and bread dipped in bush spices. As I eat, he takes out the didgeridoo and begins to play, showing me how he circulates air through his nose to make a continuous breath. As much as I enjoy the spooky, reverberating music, I can't contain my curiosity. "I've read that the didgeridoo doesn't come from central Australia," I say when he's finished.
"You're right," he says. "It comes from the north, in Arnhem Land. But I've found that tourists want to hear aboriginals play the didgeridoo, regardless of where it comes from. When you run a business like mine, that's the trick: balancing people's expectations of aboriginal culture with the real thing. That's why a town like Alice Springs has galleries full of paintings from a culture that never had houses to hang them in."
"You mean all that aboriginal art isn't authentic?"
"It depends on what you mean by authentic. But yeah: If you want to see how tourist demand changes local traditions, look at the aboriginal art business."
The following day, I head into Alice Springs to do just that.
Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. His travel-themed blog can be found at Vagablogging.net.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2161053/
Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Well-traveled
Going Native in the Australian Outback
The tricky task of balancing visitors' expectations of aboriginal culture with the real thing.
By Rolf Potts
Updated Tuesday, March 6, 2007, at 11:22 AM ET
From: Rolf Potts
Subject: The Pitjantjatjara Word for Tourists and Ants Is One and the Same
Posted Monday, March 5, 2007, at 1:07 PM ET
Here's some advice for anyone hoping to capture the contradictions of Australian outback tourism within a single snapshot: Bring your camera to the base of Uluru—the massive orange-red monolith smack in the center of the Australian continent—and aim the lower half of your viewfinder at the large sign near the hiking trailhead. This sign, which was erected by the local Pitjantjatjara people, solemnly requests that you don't climb up the face of a rock that they consider sacred. Aim your camera at a certain angle, however, and the top half of your viewfinder will capture the knots of tourists who've decided to climb the rock anyway (aided by a safety chain designated by the Australian National Park Service for that very purpose).
The Pitjantjatjara euphemism for tourists in their homeland is minga tjuta—"ants"—and from this angle you can see why: Looking up from the base of Uluru, the tidy lines of people inching up the climbing trail look like insects on a mound.
I, too, have come to central Australia as a minga tjuta, though I'm not here to scale the slopes of Uluru. Rather, I have resolved to spend the next week looking for a meaningful experience of Australian aboriginal culture. My guide for today, a Pitjantjatjara man named Wally Jacob, is late—so I've been killing time by taking photos of central Australia's iconic sandstone landmark and the dusty, red desert that surrounds it.
I've always prided myself on traveling independently in unfamiliar cultures, but joining a guided tour of aboriginal Uluru is something of a necessity: Indigenous people in this part of Australia are famously averse to the notion of random backpackers wandering onto tribal land without a formal welcome, and anthropologists have noted that Aborigines generally prefer busloads of superficial tourists (who buy a lot of souvenirs and are quickly gone) to more earnest seekers, who unwittingly traipse through ceremonial lands, make themselves at home, and ask a lot of intrusive questions. This cultural distaste for drop-in visitors goes back to the earliest interactions with Europeans in Australia. The first aboriginal phrase recorded by 18th-century British convict-settlers was warra-warra ("go away"), and Capt. James Cook noted in his 1770 expedition journal that, in spite of his attempts to interact with indigenous Australians, "all they seemed to want was for us to be gone."
Since it has become unrealistic for outsiders to "be gone" from this Australian landscape, local Aborigines have used organized tours as a way of retaining control over how visitors see their ancestral homeland. Besides competition from nonaboriginal tours—including camel treks and helicopter flyovers—local control is certainly not all-encompassing: Because of functional compromises in regaining legal ownership of Uluru from the Australian government in the 1980s, climbing the rock was never formally outlawed. And, given that 250,000 or so tourists ascend the sacred site each year in defiance of Pitjantjatjara wishes, it's safe to assume that many visitors are more interested in the scenic pleasures of the monolith than the aboriginal culture that surrounds it. During the tourist high season, the nearby hotel complex swells to become the fourth-most-populous settlement in Australia's Northern Territory—and more people pass by Uluru in a single week than Pitjantjatjara people of previous generations saw in a lifetime.
When Wally arrives—dressed in flip-flop sandals, dirty brown pants, and a crisp blue oxford shirt that reads "Anangu Tours"—he barely notices the crowds of tourists. Instead, he grins and points to a spot 20 feet away from us. "Ngintaka," he says.
I look to Keiran Lusk, the tall, salt-and-pepper bearded Australian who serves as Wally's interpreter. "Perentie lizard," he says. A couple of seconds pass before I see the wrinkly, long-necked reptile—a 4-foot-long creature that has probably been sitting there since I first arrived. "No worries," Keiran confides. "I didn't see him, either."
Now that the ngintaka has been spotted, a knot of tourists gathers. Several cameras flash at once, and the lizard flees. Wally shrugs, tugs a brown Billabong ball cap onto his head, and leads us down the hiking trail.
As we skirt the base of Uluru, I chat indirectly with the gray-haired Pitjantjatjara guide, asking my questions via Keiran. Wally tells me that he was born in the bush 53 years ago, then taken by his mother to a Lutheran mission, where he was given his European name. He tells me that he's tired today, because he was busy collecting spear-wood the night before. He tells me about his efforts to teach old traditions to Pitjantjatjara teenagers, who often prefer video games or hip-hop music to spear-hunting and bushcraft. These young people, he says with a weary giggle, are like tourists: It's hard to hold their attention for very long.
Keiran adds details and clarifications as he translates for Wally. "Modern improvements have had mixed results in aboriginal Australia," he says. "The younger generation is living on TV and junk food. They're losing a part of themselves because they've lost their connection to the land. Some of them are dying before their parents because of alcoholism or diabetes."
As he says this, Keiran keeps an eye on people in other tour groups, and he casually steps into the line of sight whenever someone tries to take Wally's picture. When I ask him why he does this, Keiran tells me it's not just an issue of respect, but also business integrity. "Tourists love to have aboriginals in their pictures of Uluru. It makes the photos seem more authentic. But if we let every random person take Wally's picture, people would lose an incentive for taking our tours. Plus, we'd never get anything done."
Wally leads us to a cave at the base of Uluru that is associated with the mala tjurukpa, or "hare wallaby dreaming," which describes an event in Pitjantjatjara prehistory. Such mythic stories of "dreamtime"—epic tales wherein snakes walk, wallabies throw spears, and mulga seeds seek revenge—are central to aboriginal religious and ethical beliefs, describing in detail the creation of the world and humankind's role in it. Celebrated in classic travel books like Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, these dreamtime stories are one of the most intriguing aspects of indigenous Australian culture.
The stories are also one of the most misunderstood aspects of indigenous culture. One hundred years ago, for example, European anthropologists believed that a central dreamtime story for the Pitjantjatjara involved the pungkalungu—giant, flesh-eating ogres who exacted revenge for misdeeds. As it turned out, pungkalungu stories were merely informal Pitjantjatjara folk tales—a local variation of the bogeyman, used to scare naughty children.
" 'Dreamtime' is an imperfect translation," Keiran tells me. "Tjurukpa, as the Pitjantjatjara understand it, is no dream. There's no good equivalent word in English; it's a kind of traditional law, which describes history, geography, and morality. Researchers estimate humans have lived near Uluru for 22,000 years, but the Pitjantjatjara believe that they have always been here, that tjurukpa is part of an ongoing condition, not a mythic past. This oral tradition is accumulated through years of ceremonial initiation and life experience, and it's one of the most technically and legally complex religious systems in the world."
Keiran goes on to relate the dreamtime story of mythic hare-wallabies who visited Uluru and unwittingly found themselves in a feud with the mulga-seed men, the wintalka. The vengeful wintalka created a dog monster to destroy the ceremonial camp of the hare-wallaby men, and signs of the struggle are evident in the lumps and notches of Uluru's furrowed red slopes.
As stories go, the mala tjurukpa isn't particularly spellbinding, but Keiran tells me the purpose of tjurukpa is not to entertain but to teach lessons about respecting ceremonial rules or finding food. "Besides," he says, "you're only getting a small fragment of the story, which itself is connected with other stories. To fully understand the tjurukpa, you'd have to live close to the land for many years. Even then, tradition dictates what you can and cannot know. Wally may be a male elder, but that doesn't mean he has access to female stories and ceremonies."
I notice Wally has wandered off and is now rolling a cigarette under a tree near the Kantju Gorge water hole. "Piiwi," he says, as Keiran and I approach him. He points up at the tree, but it's several moments before I spot a pair of owllike tawny frogmouths—mother and hatchling—perched on a branch. Their coloring is so similar to the tree bark that I can just barely make them out. "She's moved," Wally says to Keiran. "She used to live in a different place. I've never seen her here before. And I never knew she'd had babies."
As Wally puffs on his cigarette and grins up at the piiwi, I realize that his very strength as a tour guide is that he doesn't really give a crap about tourists. Instead of trying to deliver standardized cultural information, the Pitjantjatjara elder is merely offering me the chance to tag along as he enjoys a stroll in his homeland. And, while a morning tour of Uluru can hardly do aboriginal heritage justice, Wally's keen eye for the land hints at a richer cultural story. His story is, in fact, the tale of the oldest continuous culture in the world—stretching well into the Pleistocene Age, when people lived with no permanent possessions, no food preservation, and no distinction between labor and leisure. It's a tale of the first continent in human history to be settled by sea travel, 60,000 years ago—and the intimate knowledge of climate, animal habits, plant cycles, and insect life necessary to subsist in a harsh land.
It's also a story that gets muddled by the noise of the modern world—though modernity seems to be popularizing Pitjantjatjara culture as much as it compromises it. Indeed, even though resort restaurants, camel treks, and tour buses would seem to diminish the aboriginal presence here, the constant stream of visitors creates an inevitable market of fascination in the local culture. Among the hundreds of historically distinctive indigenous societies within Australia, mass tourism has transformed the Pitjantjatjara into an antipodean equivalent of the Navajo—a culture that is celebrated and romanticized by the same public consciousness that threatens to dilute it.
When our morning trek concludes, Keiran mentions that I can buy into a more in-depth Pitjantjatjara tour tomorrow, where I'll be able to dine on witchety grubs, identify bush fruits, and learn how to throw a spear.
I decline—not because I don't want to do these things, but because of that old tourist irony: To get a proper taste of aboriginal culture, I feel I need to find a landscape that isn't so overrun by other tourists.
Bidding my Uluru guides farewell, I fire up my rental car and head east on the Lasseter Highway.
From: Rolf Potts
Subject: If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Arrernte Country
Posted Tuesday, March 6, 2007, at 11:22 AM ET
Travelers wanting to catch a glimpse of an aboriginal dance performance near the tidy Australian outback town of Alice Springs are usually pointed to the Red Centre Dreaming show, which includes a three-course buffet dinner and all the sparkling wine you can drink. Since the local Arrernte Aborigines don't feel comfortable sharing their ceremonial dances in front of a paying audience, the Red Centre Dreaming performers are brought in from the state of Queensland, hundreds of miles away. In cultural terms, watching Queensland aboriginal dances in Alice Springs is kind of like going to Denmark to watch a flamenco performance—but the tourists here don't seem to mind.
Though I'm trying my best to understand the cultural intricacies of indigenous Australian society, at times it can be hard to keep up with all the new information. Yesterday, while visiting Uluru National Park, I managed to learn a number of Pitjantjatjara aboriginal words, such as kapi, which means "water," and tjala, which means "honey ant." Today, having driven five hours to Alice Springs—a small increment on any map of Australia—I've discovered that these words are now useless. Here, in the local Arrernte language, "water" is kwatye; "honey ant" is yerrampe. For travelers hoping to learn about aboriginal culture while seeing the sights of central Australia, this can be somewhat befuddling—kind of like the "If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium" phenomenon of Western European package tourism, but without any easily identifiable frontiers.
Before the arrival of European interlopers, indigenous Australian societies spoke around 250 languages and 700 dialects. Though all these aboriginal subcultures shared a land-based nomadic lifestyle, similar religious practices, and some forms of intertribal trade, they never developed a collective sense of "aboriginal" identity, and broad cultural variations existed across relatively short distances. British settlers in the late 18th century, for example, noted that Aborigines on the north side of Sydney Harbor spoke a different language from those living on the south side. To this day, most indigenous Australians identify more with their historical kinship group than a general "aboriginal" identity, and the closest thing to a cultural lingua franca is English (which is usually pidginized, since its vocabulary isn't well suited to expressing the nature-based indigenous worldview).
Thus, a visit to Alice Springs can be confusing, since the town functions as an administrative center that attracts people from all parts of central Australia. Tourists browsing the souvenir shops and indigenous-art galleries along the Todd Street Mall might assume that the groups of aboriginal people dozing along the walkway are all hard-luck locals—an outback variation of the urban homeless—when, in fact, there's a good chance those aboriginal folks are themselves tourists to Alice Springs. One group lounging along Todd Mall, for example, might be a family of Pintupi speakers in town for a daughter's softball tournament; another might be Kaytetye women who've hitched in for land-rights hearings; a third group might be young Alyawarr men indulging in a one-week bender, since their elders don't allow alcohol on indigenous land. And, since more than 20 percent of Alice Springs' 30,000 permanent residents are of aboriginal heritage, all these visitors might have trouble relating to indigenous locals, who are known to drive Land Cruisers, live in suburban bungalows, and feel more comfortable speaking English than their traditional languages.
My guide here in Alice Springs, a handsome, 46-year-old Arrernte man named Bob Taylor, speaks almost no Arrernte. This is because, at age 8, he was forcibly taken from his Arrernte mother and—with the approval of the Australian government—sent to a home for "half-caste" aboriginal children in South Australia, where, for the next nine years, he was allowed to speak only English. More than 100,000 indigenous children, collectively called the "Stolen Generation," suffered this practice of enforced assimilation between 1910 and 1970. Unhappily trapped between cultures as a young man, Bob eventually found his calling as a chef and wandered his way to Europe, where he landed work at various five-star hotel restaurants in Holland. Ask him about this experience, and he'll tell you about the idiosyncrasies of his Dutch ex-girlfriends with the same affection and enthusiasm he uses to describe his Arrernte cousins.
Bob started his tour operation two years ago, as a way of embracing his heritage and taking a break from the boozy trappings of restaurant culture. His business, RT Tours, has a fleet of one 12-person bus; he is the only employee. Since this is low season for tourists, I am his lone client. Today we are driving 50 miles out of Alice Springs to West MacDonnell National Park, where Bob plans to grill kangaroo filets and teach me how to find bush food. I notice he's packed a didgeridoo—a long, wooden, tubelike aboriginal instrument famous for its growling, ethereal sound. From my research, I know that the Arrernte people didn't historically use the didgeridoo, but I don't mention this to Bob.
As we drive, the landscape outside our bus is spectacular: prickly yellow spinifex grass clumped in the dark orange soil; furrowed ridges of dusty purple rock; broad blue horizons. Twice the size of California, Northern Territory is home to just over 200,000 people (most of whom live in Darwin, on the northern coast), and the sense of dry, sprawling emptiness is visceral and humbling. Leathery kangaroo carcasses—roadkill, from the looks of it—fringe the roadside.
I ask Bob how it feels to be a child of the Stolen Generation, but he doesn't seem to want to dwell on it. Instead, he steers the conversation to his business and how he feels he's in a unique position to bridge two cultures. "Tourism is a great opportunity for aboriginal people to share their culture and create economic opportunities," he says. "The biggest problem is that we're not really driven by the dollar. Most aboriginal businesspeople are more interested in living close to the land, getting off welfare, and preserving traditions for future generations. I like to think that my business is an example of the opportunities that are out there."
"What kinds of people usually come on your tours?"
"Europeans. A lot of Germans, plus some Italians and French. For some reason, these people are interested in indigenous cultures from all over the world. That means my main competition isn't Sydney or the Great Barrier Reef, but places like Nepal and Peru. Aboriginal tour operators are trying to get the word out, trying to convince people that our culture is as old and interesting as you'll find anywhere. I just wish we could get more of you Americans to come out."
"You don't get many Americans?"
"American tourists out here tend to be older folks, who don't like hiking around and getting dirty. They're happy to see a dance or listen to a didgeridoo at their hotel, then fly back to Sydney. But if you want to understand aboriginal Australia, you have to come here for the land itself. If you don't experience the flies and the heat and the long distances, you're going to miss the point."
When we arrive at MacDonnell National Park, Bob dons a broad-brimmed felt hat and leads me on a two-hour hike along the steep, red-rock chasms. Here, we spot rock wallabies along the cliffs, examine the sandy foxholes made by kangaroos digging for water, and scan the landscape for bush food. Since plants don't grow much in the searing heat of the Australian summer, Bob breaks out a Tupperware jar containing fruits he's collected on other journeys. I can't keep up with the Arrernte words for all the food, but Bob points out that each fruit has an English nickname: bush fig, bush cucumber, bush banana, bush orange. As I sample the foods, I find that these names are somewhat arbitrary: The bush coconut, for example, is sweet and fleshy, but it resembles a tree gall; the bush tomato has an acidic, raisiny taste. Bob tells me that over 30 edible bush fruits are known to aboriginals in central Australia and that the European explorers who famously starved to death here in the 19th century died in a land where indigenous people had prospered for 20,000 years.
Leading me back out of the canyons, Bob sets up kitchen gear at a picnic area and cooks me a tasty lunch of seared kangaroo filets and bread dipped in bush spices. As I eat, he takes out the didgeridoo and begins to play, showing me how he circulates air through his nose to make a continuous breath. As much as I enjoy the spooky, reverberating music, I can't contain my curiosity. "I've read that the didgeridoo doesn't come from central Australia," I say when he's finished.
"You're right," he says. "It comes from the north, in Arnhem Land. But I've found that tourists want to hear aboriginals play the didgeridoo, regardless of where it comes from. When you run a business like mine, that's the trick: balancing people's expectations of aboriginal culture with the real thing. That's why a town like Alice Springs has galleries full of paintings from a culture that never had houses to hang them in."
"You mean all that aboriginal art isn't authentic?"
"It depends on what you mean by authentic. But yeah: If you want to see how tourist demand changes local traditions, look at the aboriginal art business."
The following day, I head into Alice Springs to do just that.
Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. His travel-themed blog can be found at Vagablogging.net.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2161053/
Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Rock Hall of Fame to Induct Rappers
Rockers making room for rappers in Hall
Grandmaster Flash induction signals the time of hip hop is upon us
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:37 a.m. PT March 6, 2007
NEW YORK - Ask Grandmaster Flash about hip-hop stars deserving of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he’s quick with a list of rap icons.
“Afrika Bambaataa. Run-DMC. KRS-One,” he says, barely pausing for a breath. “Big Daddy Kane. LL Cool J. Eric B and Rakim. Tribe Called Quest. The list goes on and on.”
Flash left himself out, with good reason: The DJ and partners the Furious Five enter the Hall on March 12 as its initial rap inductees. The Bronx hip-hop pioneers are part of an otherwise traditional class: R.E.M., Van Halen and a pair of fellow New York City performers, Patti Smith and the Ronettes.
As the first citizens of hip-hop nation in the Rock Hall, the arrival of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five signals a new age at the Cleveland attraction: Smith likely marks the end of the ’70s punk inductees, and the time of hip-hop is upon us.
“This announces the beginning of the rap era for the Hall,” said Bill Adler, a hip-hop historian — currently editing the “Eyejammie Encyclopedia of Hip-Hop” — and member of the Hall’s nominating committee. “Flash and the Furious Five are going to open the floodgates.”
Adler, a publicist for the hugely influential Def Jam Records in the mid-1980s, offered his own list of rappers destined for induction: “The Beastie Boys, very quickly. Run-DMC and LL Cool J will get in pretty quickly. Slick Rick.”
‘The Message’ was heard
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five enter 25 years after their groundbreaking single, “The Message,” about hard times in their native borough during the Reagan Administration. It was the first popular rap song with a social theme — “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under,” went the hypnotic chorus.
“One of the pivotal points in hip-hop history,” said Furious Five rapper Melle Mel, who acknowledged his group initially wanted to pass on the song.
The group, which also featured Kid Creole, Cowboy, Mr. Ness and Raheim before an acrimonious 1983 split between Flash and Mel, had missed induction on two previous occasions. So when word arrived of the honor this year, Flash said he was initially skeptical.
“When it sank in that we were in, it was a good feeling for hip-hop,” Flash said. “I think it’s bigger than Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. To get that kind of respect is good for hip-hop.”
Melle Mel recalled lying in bed — “I usually sleep with the TV on” — when he heard the news that R.E.M. and Van Halen were in. Before he could roll over, the announcer added the name of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
“The fact that we’re in the Hall of Fame speaks volumes,” said Melle Mel. “People try to separate hip-hop music like it stands alone, but it really doesn’t. We’re in with all the great groups in the history of music. It further legitimizes hip-hop.”
The Hall gets with it
Admitting a hip-hop group to the home of rockers from Chuck Berry through U2 is a bigger step for the Hall of Fame than it is for many rap aficionados, said Erik Parker, director of content at the hip-hop web site SOHH.com.
“The average hip-hop fan long ago learned to live without validation,” said Parker. “They realized it was already accepted as part of the mainstream culture.” (VH1 started honoring rap’s pioneers three years ago in a Rock Hall-like ceremony, and two years ago honored Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five).
The Hall is undeniably an equal opportunity inductor: its first class included James Brown and the Everly Brothers, while last year’s group featured Miles Davis and the Sex Pistols.
But its requirement that candidates can’t get inducted until 25 years after their first release kept many of rap’s founding fathers from a shot at stepping inside the Hall until recent years. Unlike rock, which dates back more than a half-century, rap is a relatively young genre — about 30 years old.
Parker said the timing for Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s induction was impeccable.
“This is what’s really key: their ‘Message’ is still relevant today, 25 years later,” he said. “The words in that song couldn’t ring truer.”
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17484676/
Grandmaster Flash induction signals the time of hip hop is upon us
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:37 a.m. PT March 6, 2007
NEW YORK - Ask Grandmaster Flash about hip-hop stars deserving of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he’s quick with a list of rap icons.
“Afrika Bambaataa. Run-DMC. KRS-One,” he says, barely pausing for a breath. “Big Daddy Kane. LL Cool J. Eric B and Rakim. Tribe Called Quest. The list goes on and on.”
Flash left himself out, with good reason: The DJ and partners the Furious Five enter the Hall on March 12 as its initial rap inductees. The Bronx hip-hop pioneers are part of an otherwise traditional class: R.E.M., Van Halen and a pair of fellow New York City performers, Patti Smith and the Ronettes.
As the first citizens of hip-hop nation in the Rock Hall, the arrival of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five signals a new age at the Cleveland attraction: Smith likely marks the end of the ’70s punk inductees, and the time of hip-hop is upon us.
“This announces the beginning of the rap era for the Hall,” said Bill Adler, a hip-hop historian — currently editing the “Eyejammie Encyclopedia of Hip-Hop” — and member of the Hall’s nominating committee. “Flash and the Furious Five are going to open the floodgates.”
Adler, a publicist for the hugely influential Def Jam Records in the mid-1980s, offered his own list of rappers destined for induction: “The Beastie Boys, very quickly. Run-DMC and LL Cool J will get in pretty quickly. Slick Rick.”
‘The Message’ was heard
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five enter 25 years after their groundbreaking single, “The Message,” about hard times in their native borough during the Reagan Administration. It was the first popular rap song with a social theme — “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under,” went the hypnotic chorus.
“One of the pivotal points in hip-hop history,” said Furious Five rapper Melle Mel, who acknowledged his group initially wanted to pass on the song.
The group, which also featured Kid Creole, Cowboy, Mr. Ness and Raheim before an acrimonious 1983 split between Flash and Mel, had missed induction on two previous occasions. So when word arrived of the honor this year, Flash said he was initially skeptical.
“When it sank in that we were in, it was a good feeling for hip-hop,” Flash said. “I think it’s bigger than Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. To get that kind of respect is good for hip-hop.”
Melle Mel recalled lying in bed — “I usually sleep with the TV on” — when he heard the news that R.E.M. and Van Halen were in. Before he could roll over, the announcer added the name of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
“The fact that we’re in the Hall of Fame speaks volumes,” said Melle Mel. “People try to separate hip-hop music like it stands alone, but it really doesn’t. We’re in with all the great groups in the history of music. It further legitimizes hip-hop.”
The Hall gets with it
Admitting a hip-hop group to the home of rockers from Chuck Berry through U2 is a bigger step for the Hall of Fame than it is for many rap aficionados, said Erik Parker, director of content at the hip-hop web site SOHH.com.
“The average hip-hop fan long ago learned to live without validation,” said Parker. “They realized it was already accepted as part of the mainstream culture.” (VH1 started honoring rap’s pioneers three years ago in a Rock Hall-like ceremony, and two years ago honored Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five).
The Hall is undeniably an equal opportunity inductor: its first class included James Brown and the Everly Brothers, while last year’s group featured Miles Davis and the Sex Pistols.
But its requirement that candidates can’t get inducted until 25 years after their first release kept many of rap’s founding fathers from a shot at stepping inside the Hall until recent years. Unlike rock, which dates back more than a half-century, rap is a relatively young genre — about 30 years old.
Parker said the timing for Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s induction was impeccable.
“This is what’s really key: their ‘Message’ is still relevant today, 25 years later,” he said. “The words in that song couldn’t ring truer.”
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17484676/
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