Thursday, August 06, 2009

Mid-week update from Walnut Creek

OK, this is wonderful. On my way over to Walnut Creek Tuesday, I listened to this inspiring NPR segment featuring the young Scottish-Cuban ethnomusicologist Canyon Cody. You gotta give this a listen. Click on "Granada Doaba" below. An entire 14 tune assemblage of great electic music. You can listen to the whole thing live online, and/or download it for free. These cats are seriously takin' care of bidness.

"Granada Doaba explores the broad roots and divergent branches of flamenco hip-hop. Inspired by the religious convivencia of Al-Andalus, the album features 16 musicians from around the world who all currently live in Granada, Spain. Spain’s history of multicultural confluence dates back to the early morning of mankind. Andalusia, the birthplace of flamenco and southernmost region of Spain, sits at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and the New World. Until the Christian reconquista of Granada in 1492, southern Spain was known as Al-Andalus, a Muslim Empire that controlled Andalusia for 800 years. Flamenco is Andalusian Gypsy music and dance with a diverse history of Arab, Jewish, Indian and Afro-Latin influences. As a result of convergent paths of immigration, rhythms from around the world have come together in Andalusia, where they evolved into an indigenous musical culture: flamenco.

Hello! My name is Canyon Cody. In 2008, I was awarded a Fulbright Scholar research grant to study multicultural fusion and collaboration in Andalusian music. In concert with the Fulbright program’s mission statement, my project engaged the local Granada community by organizing a series of collaborative recording sessions in our home studio. Gnotes is my partner in grime. He’s a multi-instrumentalist rapper who produced the 14 songs on Granada Doaba, which correspond with the 14 chapters of my accompanying academic text about the global roots of local music. Though the historical theory of convivencia initially motivated the recordings, the resulting songs eventually took up a life their own, which forced me to re-orient my thesis. In the end, we made an album in the dark and then I studied the result in order to shine some light on the process."
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Later, peeps, I'm gonna jump on the BART with my road bike and head into San Francisco for the day.

FRIDAY QUICK NOTE

Props to Cuz Jojo...
Marriage Counseling & the String Bass

A couple whose relationship has deteriorated to a point where they weren’t even talking to each other went to see a marriage counselor.

After about 45 minutes where the couple wouldn’t talk and were sitting as far away from each on the couch as they could, the counselor got up and walked over to the closet, pulled out a full size string bass and started playing.

Within seconds, the couple moved closer and started talking. Within a minute, they were holding hand and starting to get very romantic.

After about 5 minutes, the counselor stopped playing and sat down. The couple turned to the counselor and asked, “How did you know that playing the bass would get us back together?”

The counselor answered, “No one can resist talking during a bass solo!”
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THE DUCKS

Cheryl's apartment compound has this cool interior moat pond surrounding the clubhouse. It's full of ducks and other critters. Two of them have started hanging on our porch, 'cause we've been giving them some bread crumbs.

This one -- I call her "Gimpy" (she kinda hobbles around) -- was just eating out of my hand, LOL! They come right up to the sliding glass door and just stand there repeatedly, looking in.
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SATURDAY QUICK NOTE: ELISA FURR

Las Vegas Entertainer Elisa Furr is gearing up to walk the red carpet on August the 8th and take the stage as a featured performer, along with Stanley Clark, Chick Corea, Brenda Cifuentes and Chaka Khan to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Celebrity Center at their annual GALA on August 8th in Hollywood, CA.

Past attendees have included John Travolta and Kelly Preston, Jenna Elfman, Priscilla Presley and Kirstie Alley.
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