3quarksdaily

JOHN PEEL DAY

October 13th 2005 is the date of the the first John Peel Day. The BBC has put up a tribute website that includes information about events around the UK including concerts, radio broadcasts and events.

Music Without Magic

From The Wislon Quarterly:

Schubert’s song may well be the most beautiful thank-you note anyone has ever written, but it’s also something else. It’s a credo, a statement of faith in the wondrous powers of music, and by its very nature an affirmation of those powers. But just how does our gracious Art exercise these powers? How does it comfort us, charm us, kindle our hearts? We might start our search for answers by positing two fundamentals: a fundamental pain and a fundamental quest. A fundamental pain of our human condition is loneliness. No surprise here: We’re born alone, we’re alone in our consciousness, we die alone, and, when loved ones die, we’re left alone. And pain itself, including physical pain, isolates us and makes us feel still more alone, completing a vicious circle. Our fundamental quest—by no means unrelated to our aloneness and our loneliness—is the quest for meaning, the quest to make sense of our time on earth, to make sense of time itself.

Where does music come in?

More here.

Critical Digressions: Dispatch from Karachi

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

We have touched down in Karachi and are reacquainting ourselves with the city through rituals that we religiously repeat every six months: in the afternoon, we get into our ‘97 Corolla, turn up the AC, turn on FM 89 (that plays Duran Duran's "Wild Boys" and "Taste of Summer" back to back with Nazia Hassan and our new generations of rockers, Noori, EP and Jal), pick up a copy of the Friday Times from our man at PIDC (who asks us how we've been and inquires about the political climate in the US), drop our dry-cleaning at the Pearl, get a shave and olive oil massage at Clippers (where we are informed of the reflexology treatment that they have recently introduced), get a beer for the road at the Korean restaurant (which nestles between our legs), and then by the evening, meander through Saddar, passed paan-wallahs, underwear-wallahs, open-air gyms, tea houses, Empress Market, the Karachi Goan Association building, to get a shirt altered, buy some DVDs (Carlito’s Way, Aurat Raj and Disco Dancer), and have fresh falsa juice as the sun warms our back and the sea breeze wafts through the city, portending the monsoon. On Thursday nights we will attend qawwalis at moonlit tombs of saints, on Friday nights we will attend the rollicking Fez disco at the Sind Club, on Saturdays, head to Burns Road for a plate of killer nihari (a hot, soupy dish prepared with calves' calves), and on Sunday, chat with old friends over Famous Grouse and Dunhills about the way things are and will be. Here, we are ourselves and we are alive.

William Dalrymple, however, an insightful commentator on India, writes, "Karachi is the saddest of cities...a South Asian Beirut." The analogy, of course, is incorrect. Looking at a map of Karachi he writes, "The pink zone in the east is dominated by the Karachi drug mafia; the red zone to the west indicates the area noted for the sophistication of its kidnapping and extortion rackets; the green zone to the south is the preserve of those specializing in sectarian violence." Ladies and gentlemen, we have lived in Karachi and can tell you with great certainty that this take on Karachi is facile. It is as if we were passing through New York in the early '90s and were to comment: New York is today’s Sodom. Down Atlantic Avenue, across Brooklyn, in areas such as Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, and Brownsville, gang warfare and the crack epidemic have transformed traditionally middle-class cantons into a no-man’s land. Bullet holes and crushed needles mark and mar desolate facades and streets. But urban decay is not simply a peripheral phenomenon. In Manhattan, whether north or south, Harlem and Manhattan Alley or Hell’s Kitchen and the Bowery, ethnic warfare plays out on the streets: Blacks, Hispanics, Irishmen, Italians, Chinese pitted against each other, daggers drawn.

Dalrymple has written a number of brilliant books on India (and lives there) but neither his view on Karachi nor ours of New York is complete and consequently, is inaccurate. There is more to New York than bullets and needles. But Karachi gets short shrift: outside observers are able to reduce Karachi to a few facts and artifacts. Since we don’t control our own discourse, others are able define, in fact, redefine the city, see what they want to see. Take Tim McGirk’s ludicrous article in Time in which he perceived Karachi through the eyes of a “hit-man.” That’s like perceiving Los Angeles through the eyes of a 7th Street Crip! This variety of analysis is not only poor but wrong. Karachi’s murder rate, in fact, is at par with Delhi’s (and DC's). And in Bombay, mobsters not only run the movie industry but become politicians and politicians stir murder and champion rape! Of course, Bombay is not merely the sum of squalid facts. Neither are other megacities like Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Lagos and Jakarta (even Lahore), although they share many similar problems.

The problem with reportage is not simply one of dominant discourse but of the news infrastructure in this part of the world. Unlike other cities, Karachi (and indeed all of Pakistan), is typically covered from another country: the South Asian bureaus of major newspapers are based in Delhi. Naturally, then, the worldview of reporters like Barry Bearak, Celia Dugger, David Rhode and Amy Waldman (all of whom, incidentally, can't hold a candle to the knoweldgeable Dalrymple) are colored by local prejudice. On the other hand, former US Consul General John Bauman, an insider – somebody who has lived in Karachi for many years, not just passing through on a ten day junket – says “there are so many good things being done in this city. The city is a lot more complex than the single image people get in the United States.”

Take our word for it: Karachi is wonderfully vibrant. There are dimensions of Karachi not often appreciated by outside observers (foreign reporters and disgruntled expatriates alike): Karachi's vibrant cultural life comprises open-air pop concerts, classical dance shows, art exhibits, independent film festivals and coffee houses; there is great dining, street-side or indoors, and a throbbing nightlife. Karachi is very similar to New York; the same frenetic rhythms beat under our feet.

I Want My Hyphenated-Identity MTV

From The New York Times:

Azhar Usman, 29, with his knitted skullcap and full beard, presented somewhat differently. An MTV executive, he explained, had recruited him, saying: "We're going to redefine the identity of the MTV host. It doesn't have to be someone sexy and good-looking." A comedian (and lawyer) from Chicago, Mr. Usman used the audition to invent an exaggeratedly accented (and quite amusing) character: Vijay the V.J.

"My uncle in India says desi stands for 'doctors earn significant incomes.' My relatives in Pakistan say desi means 'Don't ever say India.' Here on MTV, desi means South Asian flavor, style and music. Check this new video out. It's going to knock your socks off. You've heard of a big production budget. How about 500 backup dancers? This is like 'Grease' meets desi, making it ...greasy. No, that doesn't sound right. People think in my country everybody so sad, crying, terrorism," Vijay said. "We not terrorism, we dancing. Not dancing like panties falling down .... What is this panties falling down" the buttocks?

More here.

Music Without Magic

From The Wilson Quarterly:

Music is both a balm for loneliness and a powerful, renewable source of meaning—meaning in time and meaning for time. The first thing music does is banish silence. Silence is at once a metaphor for loneliness and the thing itself: It’s a loneliness of the senses. Music overcomes silence, replaces it. It provides us with a companion by occupying our senses—and, through our senses, our minds, our thoughts. It has, quite literally, a presence. We know that sound and touch are the only sensual stimuli that literally move us, that make parts of us move: Sound waves make the tiny hairs in our inner ears vibrate, and, if sound waves are strong enough, they can make our whole bodies vibrate. We might even say, therefore, that sound is a form of touch, and that in its own way music is able to reach out and put an arm around us.

One way we are comforted when we’re lonely is to feel that at least someone understands us, knows what we’re going through. When we feel the sympathy of others, and especially when we feel empathy, we experience companionship—we no longer feel entirely alone. And strangely enough, music can provide empathy. The structure of music, its essential nature—with many simultaneous, complex, overlapping, and interweaving elements, events, components, associations, references to the past, intimations of the future—is an exact mirror of the psyche, of the complex and interwoven structure of our emotions. This makes it a perfect template onto which we can project our personal complexes of emotions. And when we make that projection, we hear in music our own emotions—or images and memories of our emotions—reflected back. And because the reflection is so accurate, we feel understood. We recognize, and we feel recognized. We’re linked with the composer of the music by our common humanity. And if a composer has found a compelling way to express his or her own emotions, then to a certain extent that composer can’t really avoid expressing, and touching, ours as well.

More here.

Tis the season for loads of crap Christmas records

We are inundated at the same time every year with tired retreads of otherwise joyous music from mildly talented popstars and/or would be adult-contemporary crooners. If you, like me, are finding yourself just-not-satisfied with, say, Jessica Simpson's latest contribution to this merry pile of garbage, here's a few suggestions...

1. John Denver & The Muppets: A Christmas Together: If you have kids, treat yourself and them to this record. They will remember you for it as they put you in a rest home.

2. Harry Connick Jr.: When My Heart Finds Christmas: An adult-contemporary crooner worth his weight in scotch & soda, Harry brings his showmanship and candor to these carols. And not without it's softer side, the album features a lovely rendition of Ave Maria.

3. Vince Guaraldi Trio: A Charlie Brown Christmas: Rightfully a holiday (and jazz) classic that never goes away. One second your tapping your foot to "Linus and Lucy", the next your caught up in the reverent melancholy of "Christmas Time Is Here".

4. Handel's Messiah: Christmas time, Old Testament-style. Full of drama, fire and brimstone, the Messiah is epic in or out of the context of the bible.

Happy holidays from 3 Quarks. Fa la la la...

New Iron & Wine EP due in February

Mr. Sam Beam of Iron and Wine prepares to add another EP to his rapidly expanding catalog. Entitled Woman King and scheduled for release via Sub Pop on February 22nd, the disc will contain six brand new songs-- his first recordings since Our Endless Numbered Days.

Here, have a tracklisting.

01 Woman King
02 Jezebel
03 Grey Stables
04 Freedom Hangs Like Heaven
05 In My Lady's House
06 Evening on the Ground (Lilith's Song)

More here

The Arcade Fire: Funeral

The title of The Arcade Fire's debut Lp, while not in reference to the music, is meant literally. In the months leading up to recording, bandmember Regine Chassagne's grandmother passed away. Less than a year later Win and William Butler's grandfather died and bandmate Richard Parry's aunt the following month. In the liner notes you'll find their dedication towards the bottom of the second page, a total of nine names arranged beneath it. It is presumably for them, the dearly departed, that the album earned it's austere title, Funeral. In contrast to the dark themes and melancholy that could mire an album made during such a period of loss, Funeral bristles with life. It is the sound of six young souls raging against the dying of light and it is one of the most exciting records of the year.

The Arcade Fire's Official Website
A full review of Funeral at Pitchfork

The Verve: This Is Music

The Verve never made much sense in the context of Britpop. From 1993-97 British music was dominated by the Gallagher brother's laddish buffoonery, Damon Albarn's pretty mug and wit, Jarvis Cocker's working class escapist anthems, and Thom Yorke's barbed melancholy. During this period The Verve were creating moody rock'n'roll full of soul, darkness and light. Their final and seminal album, Urban Hymns, was released just a few months after OK Computer and on the same day (August 26, 1997, the day Britpop died) as Oasis' third record. The Verve lasted long enough to tour in support of Urban Hymns, but would officially break up soon after.

This Is Music: The Singles 92-98 is their first official release in five years and features two new tracks. The compilation culls together songs from their three full-lengths, as well as their first single, "All In The Mind". The songs are as good today as they were years ago, although this album only tells half the story. The Verve made complete records, they weren't a "singles" band. For a full appreciation start with Urban Hymns and work backwards through A Northern Soul and A Storm In Heaven. If only to gain a cursory understanding of one of the great and too-often-overlooked bands of the '90's, this will do.

Click here to view a full review of the album at Pitchforkmedia.com

Tamil Refugee climbing the British charts

This week's New Yorker has a piece on Maya Arulpragasam (aka M.I.A.), the Sri Lankan Tamil Londoner, whose singles have been rising on the British charts. 

"[M]ost of what you find in the world-music section tends toward the gentle, melodious, and uplifting, as if the world were that way.  The music of Maya Arulpragasam, a twenty-seven-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil who moved to England when she was nine and performs under the name M.I.A., is not like that. Anyone who has trolled through bins on Canal Street for videos of kung-fu movies or reggae mix tapes will recognize M.I.A.’s first single, 'Galang' (2003), as an example of actual, on-the-ground world culture: synthetic, cheap, colorful, staticky with power. The beat is shuffling and abrasive, made from what sounds like the by-products of some other, more polite song. It most resembles Jamaican dancehall patterns, but with a twist. Alongside the beat runs a distressed motif that may have been a melody before it was Xeroxed fifteen times. The lyrics combine the exhortations of dancehall ('London calling and speak the slang now, boys say wa, go on girls say wa wa'), the embattled war mentality of American hip-hop . . ."

The article mentioned her song "Sunshowers" which took a melody from one of my recent favorites, "Sunshower" by Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band.  So I went in search and found it on her website.  Pretty damn good; check it and the rest out.