From Vashti Bunyan: once I had a child he was wilder than moonlight he could do it all like he’d been here before once I had a child she was smiling like sunshine she could see it all like she’d been here before then I had a child took his while like northern summer and he knows it all like he’s been here before This song reminds me of my kids… mp3: Vashti Bunyan – Here Before
Jockey Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo has died at age 62. Even people who are not fans of world music know the legacy of this man’s work. Jockey was the founder of LBM, although he took a backseat to his brother who sings the lead for the group. According to a report on CBC today, he chose the name because “Ladysmith” was his home township, “Black” was for the colour of the strongest oxen, and “Mambazo” means to cut down with an axe, a reference to the fact that the group started out singing in contests and that it would …
From the logs of The Whalesong Project, located in Kihei on Maui: We witnessed a beautiful and unusual, from a modern western perspective, event this week. Raina Ferris visited us from Aotearoa, New Zealand, and we took her out on the ocean to support her cultural interest and connection to the whales. Raina is a Maori kai-karanga tahuna (spiritual chanter) and professor of Maori studies at Te Wanganga O Raukawa in Otaki. She came to Maui to share Maori tradition, and to further research on ancient ties between Maui and Aotearoa – alluded to in the ancestral chants of her …
Here’s an mp3 post for a rainy Friday afternoon, another contemplative moment. This is Allegri’s Miserere, a stunning piece of choral music composed in the 1630s. It is so sublime that for a long time it was only performed once a year and anyone who wrote it down would be excommunicated for doing so. The story goes that Mozart (whose 250th birthday is today) broke the ban by hearing the piece, transcribing it from memory and then giving it away. In this respect Wolfgang may have preceeded Napster by a couple hundred years. Thanks to Wolfgang’s transgressions, this Miserere is …
It’s been an age since I posted, mostly because I was on Maui over New Years, unplugged for the most part and not at all inclined to blog. So I’ll ease back into it, with some music to start of your new year. While on Maui I bought a bunch of slack key guitar records by the likes of Sonny Lim and George Kahumoku Jr. Slack key guitar is a Hawai’ian style that originated with the Mexican paniolo cowboys that helped establish ranching in the early 20th century across the Hawai’ian islands. These dudes brought their Mexican cowboy guitar styles, …