is killing innocent people.
Kinkatso & Co.
Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie ~ Pascal, Pensée 206
Sunday 8 October 2023
I STAND WITH ISRAEL.... ALWAYS!
is killing innocent people.
Thursday 31 August 2023
MY MUSICAL MEMORIES...
Me, Kinkatso Hey, I'm just an old hippie! You know, peace and love... |
Girl groups and female singers, such as the Shirelles, Betty Everett, Little Eva, the Dixie Cups, the Ronettes, Martha and the Vandellas and the Supremes dominated the charts in the early 1960s. This style consisted typically of light pop themes about teenage romance and lifestyles, backed by vocal harmonies and a strong rhythm. Most girl groups were African-American, but white girl groups and singers, such as Lesley Gore, the Angels, and the Shangri-Las also emerged during this period.
Around the same time, record producer Phil Spector began producing girl groups and created a new kind of pop music production that came to be known as the Wall of Sound. This style emphasized higher budgets and more elaborate arrangements, and more melodramatic musical themes in place of a simple, light-hearted pop sound. Spector's innovations became integral to the growing sophistication of popular music from 1965 onward.
Also during the early 1960s, surf rock emerged, a rock subgenre that was centered in Southern California and based on beach and surfing themes, in addition to the usual songs about teenage romance and innocent fun. The Beach Boys quickly became the premier surf rock band and almost completely and single-handedly overshadowed the many lesser-known artists in the subgenre. Surf rock reached its peak in 1963–1965 before gradually being overtaken by bands influenced by the British Invasion and the counterculture movement.
The car song also emerged as a rock subgenre in the early 1960s, which focused on teenagers' fascination with car culture. The Beach Boys also dominated this subgenre, along with the duo Jan and Dean. Such notable songs include "Little Deuce Coupe", "409", and "Shut Down", all by the Beach Boys; Jan and Dean's "Little Old Lady from Pasadena" and "Drag City", Ronny and the Daytonas' "Little GTO", and many others. Like girl groups and surf rock, car songs also became overshadowed by the British Invasion and the counterculture movement.
The early 1960s also saw the golden age of another rock subgenre, the teen tragedy song, which focused on lost teen romance caused by sudden death, mainly in traffic accidents. Such songs included Mark Dinning's "Teen Angel", Ray Peterson's "Tell Laura I Love Her", Jan and Dean's "Dead Man's Curve", the Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack", and perhaps the subgenre's most popular, "Last Kiss" by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers.
In the early 1960s, Britain became a hotbed of rock 'n' roll activity during this time. In late 1963, the Beatles embarked on their first US tour and cult singer Dusty Springfield released her first solo single. A few months later, rock 'n' roll founding father Chuck Berry emerged from a 2+1⁄2-year prison stint and resumed recording and touring. The stage was set for the spectacular revival of rock music.
In the UK, the Beatles played raucous rock 'n' roll – as well as doo wop, girl-group songs, show tunes – and wore leather jackets. Their manager Brian Epstein encouraged the group to wear suits. Beatlemania abruptly exploded after the group's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Late in 1965, the Beatles released the album Rubber Soul which marked the beginning of their transition to a sophisticated power pop group with elaborate studio arrangements and production, and a year after that, they gave up touring entirely to focus only on albums. A host of imitators followed the Beatles in the so-called British Invasion, including groups like the Rolling Stones and the Kinks who would become legends in their own right.
As the counterculture movement developed, artists began making new kinds of music influenced by the use of psychedelic drugs. Guitarist Jimi Hendrix emerged onto the scene in 1967 with a radically new approach to electric guitar that replaced Chuck Berry, previously seen as the gold standard of rock guitar. Rock artists began to take on serious themes and social commentary/protest instead of simplistic pop themes.
A major development in popular music during the mid-1960s was the movement away from singles and towards albums. Previously, popular music was based around the 45 single (or even earlier, the 78 single) and albums such as they existed were little more than a hit single or two backed with filler tracks, instrumentals, and covers. The development of the AOR (album-oriented rock) format was complicated and involved several concurrent events such as Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, the introduction by Bob Dylan of "serious" lyrics to rock music, and the Beatles' new studio-based approach. In any case, after 1965 the vinyl LP had definitively taken over as the primary format for all popular music styles.
Blues also continued to develop strongly during the '60s, but after 1965, it increasingly shifted to the young white rock audience and away from its traditional black audience, which moved on to other styles such as soul and funk.
Jazz music and pop standards during the first half of the 1960s was largely a continuation of 1950s styles, retaining its core audience of young, urban, college-educated whites. By 1967, the death of several important jazz figures such as John Coltrane and Nat King Cole precipitated a decline in the genre. The takeover of rock in the late 1960s largely spelled the end of jazz and standards as mainstream forms of music, after they had dominated much of the first half of the 20th century.
Country music gained popularity on the West Coast, due in large part to the Bakersfield sound, led by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Female country artists were also becoming more mainstream (in a genre dominated by men in previous decades), with such acts as Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette.
Already heralded by Colin MacInnes' 1959 novel Absolute Beginners which captured London's emerging youth culture,[10] Swinging London was underway by the mid-1960s and included music by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, Small Faces, the Animals, Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and other artists from what was known in the US as the "British Invasion".[11] Psychedelic rock from artists such as Pink Floyd, Cream, Procol Harum, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Traffic grew significantly in popularity.
Large venues, besides former music halls, included Hyde, Alexandra and Finsbury Parks, Clapham Common and the Empire Pool (which became Wembley Arena). This sort of music was heard in the United Kingdom on TV shows such as the BBC's Top of the Pops (where the Rolling Stones were the first band to perform with "I Wanna Be Your Man"), and ITV's Ready Steady Go! (which would feature Manfred Mann's "5-4-3-2-1" as its theme tune), on commercial radio stations such as Radio Luxembourg, Radio Caroline and Radio London, and from 1967 on BBC Radio One.[12][13]
The Rolling Stones' 1966 album Aftermath has been cited by music scholars as a reflection of Swinging London. Ian MacDonald said, with the album the Stones were chronicling the phenomenon, while Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon called it "the soundtrack of Swinging London, a gift to hip young people".
During the early 1970s, popular music continued to be dominated by musicians who had achieved fame during the 1950s and the 1960s such as the Rolling Stones, The Who, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, and Eric Clapton. In addition, many newcomer rock groups such as Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin appeared. The Beatles disbanded in 1970, but each member of the band immediately released a highly successful solo album, and Paul McCartney especially would remain extremely popular throughout the decade. Singer-songwriters such as Elton John, James Taylor and Jackson Browne also came into vogue during the early 1970s.
So, to make a long story short, the Sixties and Seventies form the background of my musical predilections. Here is a selection of my preferences:
WORDS, by the Bee Gees
HEY JUDE, by The Beatles
LOVE IS BLUE, by Paul Mauriat
violin of the beautiful song by Francis Lai
the WDR Funkhausorchester
DELILAH, by Tom Jones
LARA'S THEME (Dr. Zhivago), by Maurice Jarre
C'ERA UNA VOLTA IL WEST, by Ennio Moricone
(Greatest Hits)
ACQUA AZZURRA, ACQUA CHIARA, by Lucio Battisti
LONG COOL WOMAN IN A BLACK DRESS, by The Hollies
To be continued... (I'm open to suggestions, c'mon!)
Wednesday 30 August 2023
MUSIC AND PRAYER
A young Bob Dylan singing his songs |
Why Music is Fundamental to Jewish Prayer
Jewish tradition teaches that music unlocks the door to divine connection.
Music is the most immaterial and ephemeral of all the art forms. We can’t see music, we can’t grasp it in our hands, but we can feel it working through us and the world. As such, music represents our connection to the divine, to each other, to everything. Music is a wordless prayer that opens up our imaginations to the divine source of all life.
In the Hebrew numerological system known as Gematria, the numerical value of the words for prayer, tefillah, and song, shirah, are identical. From this we can see that music is a form of prayer, and prayer is a form of music. They are like two legs of the spiritual throne, mutually supporting each other. Indeed, the Talmud teaches us that music and prayer are virtually synonymous, declaring:
Where there is song, there is prayer Berakhot 6a
What is the source of this linkage? Is it possible that music can open our ears and our hearts so that we can better sense the nuance and subtleties of the world around us? If we open our mouths and sing our imperfect songs, can we connect with the divine songs of all creation? Can our prayer chants open the gates of heaven? Can our melodies unlock divine mysteries?
Jewish tradition suggests that it can. The prophets of ancient Israel surrounded themselves with music, using its power to help them enter an ecstatic mindset. In one story, the prophet Elisha wanted to hear the word of God, so he requested that a musician start to play. As soon as the musician played, Elisha’s prophetic abilities commenced: “And when the musician played, the hand of God was upon him.” II Kings 3:15
In another story, Saul, who had not yet become king, joined a roving band of prophets and musicians who were playing a harp, drum, and flute to help the prophets enter a state of expanded consciousness. I Samuel 10:5-6 These three instruments — harp, drum, and flute — represent the three paradigmatic elements of music: harmony, rhythm, and melody. Joining the parade of musicians, Saul found that this musical-prophetic experience allowed the spirit of God to rest upon him and allowed him to transform into an ish acher, a different person, to find an alternate reality of himself in which he became capable not only of prophesying, but ascending the throne of Israel.
Music, we might assume, must have opened up the prophets’ ears, enabling them to hear the divine voice speaking through them. Music, in this sense, worked like an elite reconnaissance unit sneaking through the prophets’ defensive bulwarks and barriers, or like a sweet-talking lover wooing his beloved. Music paved the way for the bestowal of the great gift of divine love, of the prophecies which we have at least partly retained in the words of the Torah and later poetry and writing.
Is it possible that music also can help us enter different realms and discover alternate realities in which we might pursue better versions of ourselves? Can music open us up to our own inspiration and prayers as it opened up the pathways of the prophets?
The 18th-century Hasidic master Nachman of Breslov offers that there might be something left that we can access from this source of prophecy. A sacred musician, he explains, is called a chazzan — a Hebrew word with the same root as the word hazon, meaning “vision,” and which is also the common modern term for a prayer leader. The chazzan, Rebbe Nachman tells us, “snatches the song from the place where prophets suckle.”
Melodies form a divine ladder that connects the earth with the heavens. In Hebrew, the word sulam means both “ladder” and “musical scale.” Perhaps the most famous story of a path to the heavens is the story of Jacob’s ladder, in which the patriarch dreams of a ladder on which angels are going up and down. Angels, according to the medieval authority Maimonides, had one essential function: singing.
Jacob’s ladder must then have been a kind of musical scale, with melodic angels rising and descending along with the prayers of mankind. When we sing, we hope to allow ourselves to experience a state of elevation, a taste of the heavens, a glimpse of the best versions of ourselves.
To be a musician then is to be an activist of the spirit. But the music doesn’t do this on its own. It requires us to react to the music, to open up, to change along with it. We must allow the sound of our singing to awaken us, to bring us to positive action, to let song help us to do our work in the world with sensitivity and grace.
Ultimately, melodies are just a bunch of notes—whether they’re fundamentally meaningless or transcendent depends entirely upon how we choose to listen, how we choose to direct our intentions, and whether we let ourselves join the song. Singing signals not an escape from life but an imaginative attempt to remind us what is yet possible. Music offers us rung after rung to climb to the heavens, where we hope to discover our best selves, so that we can then emulate that holiness in our regular lives. Let us find our melodies, and let us find our prayers, and let us bring the world to life.
This essay is adapted from “The Torah of Music: Reflections on a Tradition of Singing and Song” by Joey Weisenberg with translations by Joshua Schwartz.
Monday 28 August 2023
The Essence of Rosh Hashanah
Rosh Ha-Shanah is celebrated from the evening of Fri, 15 Sept 2023 to Sun, 17 Sept 2023
Rosh HaShanah (Hebrew: רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה, Rōʾš hašŠānā, literally "head of the year") is the Jewish New Year. The biblical name for this holiday is Yom Teruah (יוֹם תְּרוּעָה, Yōm Tərūʿā, lit. "day of shouting/blasting"). It is the first of the Jewish High Holy Days (יָמִים נוֹרָאִים, Yāmīm Nōrāʾīm, "Days of Awe"), as specified by Leviticus 23:23–25,[1] that occur in the late summer/early autumn of the Northern Hemisphere. Rosh Hashanah begins a ten-day period of penitence culminating in Yom Kippur, as well as beginning the cycle of autumnal religious festivals running through Sukkot and ending in Shemini Atzeret.
Rosh Hashanah is a two-day observance and celebration that begins on the first day of Tishrei, which is the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year. In contrast to the ecclesiastical lunar new year on the first day of the first month Nisan, the spring Passover month which marks Israel's exodus from Egypt, Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the civil year, according to the teachings of Judaism, and is the traditional anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman according to the Hebrew Bible, as well as the initiation of humanity's role in God's world.
Rosh Hashanah customs include sounding the shofar (a hollowed-out ram's horn), as prescribed in the Torah, following the prescription of the Hebrew Bible to "raise a noise" on Yom Teruah. Its rabbinical customs include attending synagogue services and reciting special liturgy about teshuva, as well as enjoying festive meals. Eating symbolic foods, such as apples dipped in honey, hoping to evoke a sweet new year, is an ancient tradition recorded in the Talmud.
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Sunday 27 August 2023
MORE LOVE FROM DR. SAXLOVE...
Two weeks ago I posted a comment on Dr.SaxLove's piece "Smooth Motown Jazz" on YouTube, thanking him for his great compilations. Here it is:
If ya ain't got it in ya, ya can't blow it out" said Louis, and Mark's got it! Thanks, man.
- Reach out to Mark at https://drsaxlove.com/contact