LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Round 2 of the New Yorker Haitian Round Table & 1st Mention of TYBTF

The Year Before the Flood via the Miami Herald and Jordan Levine:

Check out the second online roundtable on Haitian music at the New Yorker, with Miami author Edwige Danticat, the amazing writer Ned Sublette (no, he doesn't have a website, but he's a musician, musicologist, producer, Cuban music pioneer and expert, passionate communicator, and author of two of the best ever books on music, Cuba: From the First Drums to the Mambo and The World That Made New Orleans, and the coolest guy to ever wear a cowboy hat in NYC). Ned's new book, The
Year Before the Flood, about his year in New Orleans before Katrina, is available for pre-order at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. He says it's his best work yet, which is saying something.


Via Vaquero:

"Round two of the roundtable on Haitian music, with (what a cast) Laurent Dubois, Elizabeth McAlister, Edwige Danticat, Garnette Cadogan, Madison
Smartt Bell (who sat this round out), and yr humble servant, is up at Sasha
Frere-Jones's New Yorker blo
g. i'm pleased that they used a photo I took at a gagá in the D.R."

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