The Snow! The Wind! Laundry! Ripper Street! Cuban Jazz!

     . . . . The snow began snittering sometime before dawn, and by now is full snart.  

Which was fine, until the wind kicked in.  So this must be why the weather sites for all our bit of New York are red with Winter Storm!  Storm warning in effect until 11 PM.  However, alas this snow front is passing all the rest of the state by, as it hugs the coast.  New England will probably get a lot, but western and upstate New York, probably nothing.  Not good for our drought conditions which are state wide. We've also been receiving a fair amount of rain in our little bit, but other parts not.  Which doesn't help us either, as our water supplies are further north.

So, an enforced snow day here.  Whatever shall we do? Play hot music from hot climates to help feel warm.

Himself?  He's all comfy and happy, back in bed, reading a book by a friend which deals primarily with the Dominican Republic's independence process -- from both Spain and Haiti, and eventually the U.S. too.  At one point, though, during the first administration of Grant, the small power elite did beg the U.S. to take them as its own.  It also at one point declared itself a part of Spain again -- without bothering to inform Spain.  Which really didn't want it.  Nobody wanted the DR.  Except Haiti.  And thereby hang many miserable tales which are ongoing.

Me, I'm a climbing the laundry mountain, which keeps me from spending the entire day sitting down, as I must run up and down the stairs to the basement where the machines are.  Also, Himself can help.  :)

We went out before it got dark to to pick up a few things from Gourmet Garage, which was an adventure between the wind and the restaurants on the block ignoring the City's laws about shoveling and salting the sidewalks, and the ice, ice, ice under the snow. We could have managed dinner without going out, but to be honest, I wanted to go out.

It's been so long since I've experienced a real snow here, it's as though it's all brand new.

     . . . . This time last year we were in Cuba.  Which, if a hurricane and a Russian manipulated election hadn't gotten in the way, is where I was supposed to be today.  

Coffee plantation, southeast Cuba; I visited this one the first time back in -- 2001?

By the way, our March trip to eastern Cuba is filling right up. Some of the Travelers are repeats from the January trip, that's what splendid, intrepid, serious Travelers they are!  The others coming sound equally cool, and some of them we have known for a long time too.  So it's going to be a terrific experience, to which I'm already looking forward.  I'm looking forward particularly today, to being in Oriente's Caribbean climate!

     . . . . Tonight I'll probably watch the second half of the fourth and last season of Ripper Street (2016). This fourth season, after the abrupt cancelation of the show by BBC, after it got rescued by amazilla, is even darker than the previous seasons. I've really liked this series for all kinds of reasons, with the exception that the writers couldn't figure out what to do with primary female characters except to make them duplicitous whores or insane, and preferably both. This is a short season, only 7 episodes.

The time for Ripper Street to go has probably come anyway.  It's good to have it go out on a standard even higher than its previous seasons achieved. The actors are all so good, they've been having other jobs all along.

Ah, here we are in Ripper Street's comfort zone -- no women around!

Matthew Macfadyen, who plays Detective Inspector Edmund Reed, even showed up in the first episode of the first season of The Last Kingdom, while Jerome Flynn, who plays Det. Sgt. Bennet Drake, is everyone's favorite Got character, Bronn . The actors's talent is much of the pleasure of this series. I loved them as ensemble, but the characters' story lines have been diverging from  the ensemble aspect anyway, as with Detective Reid having left the force at the end of last season.  The manipulations to get him back on the force this season were not quite what anyone could call plausible, particularly as the roles are reversed with Drake now being Reid's superior.

----------------

P.S.  Love it -- a report from Havana Jazz Fest by amigo, Larry Blumenfeld:

"Cuba is the Missing Link in Jazz History."  Is it ever!  Read it here.

Perhaps it's time to begin the Saturday night ritual, which has been by-passed in the last holiday weeks -- pasta and jazz!


I have the technology for both (and the ingredients).

Villainy vs. Evil + Jazz + Television + Beer

It was Himself's birthday yesterday (the big party is tonight -- a rooftop barbeque in the West Village).  In the natural order of such occasions, we shared dinner with some old friends.*

I had been somewhat concerned about how dinner would go, meaning the emotional tone of it, here at the conclusion of yet another truly awful week of tragic and terrible events. Not least of which bad news is Congress's refusal to fund anything to help pillaged Puerto Rico even to attempt to counter the Zika crisis that has already infected so many expectant Puerto Rican women -- four of the people with whom we were eating are Puerto Rican.

But mostly, as we are indeed all old, trusted and loved friends, we had an enjoyable time and didn't have to put out a lot of energy to keep from things that are depressing and terrifying.  Music, art, travels, friends in common, some television and film discussion, and always back to music and gossip about some of the more bold face names that the talent agency that of the one of our mutual friends owns, manages.


Pedrito Martínez


Chucho Valdés

We did discuss though, the depressing piece in the Guardian yesterday that inquired whether jazz has risen from the grave of irrelevancy and is again hip.  Why was this depressing?  Because anybody who honestly follows contemporary jazz knows that since the 1920's, for the last two decades, jazz is as least as exciting and ground-breaking, because Afro Latin Jazz artists, particularly from Cuba and Puerto Rico have made it so -- they've long been world class, even though so much of the self-defined hipster non-Spanish speaking music establishment refuses to notice. When not crazed with other work, el V himself tends to be out several nights a week, attending great shows of his Afro Latin jazz buddies everywhere from Dizzy's Club Coca Cola (Lincoln Ctrs.'s jazz space at Columbus Circle), the Jazz Standard, Sub Rosa, The Blue Note, The Bitter End, etc.  I often go with him. Yet the stupid article never mentioned a single Afro Latin artist, not even any from Cuba. Talk about self-willed ignorance.

In a different conversation last night, vis a vis talking about a Brasilian telenovella from ancient days, El Rey del Ganado, that was very popular with Spanish speaking audiences too, and the ladies had grown up with In Ponce, while el V and I watched it during that long stay, 1999-2000 in Havana -- we asked, what is a real villain?  What makes a person or character an actual evil person, rather than a cartoon Big Bad Guy Villain? Beyond the lazy signals that change to some degree from one decade to another -- now it's pedophiles in particular.  It used to be gay people, but that's pretty much over. (GOOD!) Some of us still watch Got, while some of us had quit -- some of us quit even several seasons ago.

These television / movie eviLes are outsized cartoons -- a big reason those of us who quit watching Got quit, and why none of us go to superhero comics movies. Audiences adore these villains, while often sneering at their victims. Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, we thought of, obviously. And for my own first personal experience of this pop culture attitude, the film Bonnie and Clyde. When I protested that the protagonists got what they deserved because they killed innocent people and stole their money, and many of those whose money was stolen from the Depression era beleagured banks were poor farmers, my more "sophisticated' peers sneered -- "They were stupid and deserved to die!" Those who attempt to counter such villains are also sneered at, and often depicted as bumbling idiots -- or more evil than the villains.

Whereas in life villains seem to be usually well-dressed and don't carry weapons and are merely servants of faceless vast corporations (unless police or George Zimmerman -- and whoops, Zimmerman behaves like a cartoon, but he's still evil, he's still a villain. Which led us to contemplate the cartoon horror from our City currently demanding to be POTUS -- is he evil, is he a villain? As we're all NYC residents at least for our entire adult lives, and thus have been inflicted with him all our entire adult lives close-up and personal, we agreed he's both.

Later we progressed to contemplation of what happened in Dallas -- evil? a villain? a black man whose mind snapped after a lifetime of war made on the color of his skin and the awareness that in the U.S. there's been war waged against black people in this country since 1619.

Why then, is it classified as 'race war' by rightwingers, whites, media and so-called experts only when a person of color kills or attacks a white person / a cop, (cops who kill people of color have also been of color, thus the division into white people and cops / police state), whereas the killings are tragic mistakes day after day, year after year of white people / cops killing people of color with impunity and immunity?  Why are flags all over the country hung at half mast and the Empire State Building lit red white and blue (which was directly in our line of sight from our restaurant table) because cops got killed in Texas, but the Empire State Building doesn't get lit up when people of color are killed every day by white people / cops? Why is it that it's demanded that killing of someone in a blue uniform be classed a federal hate crime and that Men in Blue Matter, but that #blacklivesmatter is now responsible for hate crimes and murder, when Black Lives Matter has always been about exactly the opposite?Needless to say, one might hope, is that none of us advocates or wants anybody to shoot anybody -- or be cruel, mean, bullying, exploitive, repressive or oppressive to anybody.

We did not resolve this question of what makes a villain a villain, what makes evil evil, needless to say.  We were also drinking margaritas. Very, very fine margaritas.





As well we had a happy conversation about this development about a beer pipeline in Bruges; the entire table voted in favor of the pipeline -- this subject also came to us thanks to the Guardian.  As everyone at the table, in one way and another, is part of the European music festival circuit, everyone has been to Bruges and certainly has partaken of Belgian beers.

Yah, a hot an humid night, margaritas and cerveza were the Thing.



A conversation not so festive was what Brexit means for artists, entertainers, musicians and so on. Among other things this means that any BBC production will cost more as those terrific location landscapes made such splendid use of in series such as The Musketeers will be more difficult for the production teams and actors to get to and work in; recall Prague and surrounding locations in the Czech Republic stood in for Paris and the French countryside, forests and mountains. This could also affect, even, gasp, Got!

--------------------------* It was beautiful yesterday, as so many friends from all over the City, the country and, yes, the world, reached out by phone, e-mail, snail mail, and other ways, to wish el Vaquero happy returns of His Day.  The esteem, respect, affection, and in many, many cases, love, in which he's held by peers, colleagues and very old friends is something to behold.  It made him (and me too!) so happy.

I Was Wrong

10 degrees here shortly before 9 AM, and still snowing, though fairly lightly by now.

Some flakes began to fall about a block after we set off for the subway at dinner time to hook up with our friends. By the time we arrived in the east 20's it was coming down smartly. When we left the Jazz Standard it was pouring snow with already about an inch accumulated. So far we've got at least 10 inches in Central Park. The wind is getting nasty. So I was wrong about what we'd get out of this storm. (But I like to be optimistic about these things -- since snow in the City is such a pita.)

Butler on the piano of course; Steve Bernstein, one of the best trumpet musicians currently around ; Steve also conducted the Hot 9.  Great performance, and I felt I was back in New Orleans.  Until I went outside again.

One of our friends had planned to take a bus back to Virginia after Henry Butler and the Hot 9's set. As her bus didn't leave until 3 AM I'm guessing this day will not find her back in Williamsburg, where she's on the music faculty at William and Mary.

My other prognostications for yesterday, however, all turned out correct.

Plus the pulled pork is now cooked. I turned on the crock pot about 3:30 PM yesterday, and by this morning it was perfect. Who knew? It was a lot easier than doing in the oven.

Everything is closed -- schools, etc. Except the subways, though a few of them have been barned to keep them out of harm's way.

Tonight it's supposed to be 5 degrees. A dramatic beginning to 2014, and to NYC's de Blasio's spanking new mayorship. Incidentally, there's a vid posted on the NY Times website of Bill de Blasio shoveling the snow in front of the family's Brooklyn house. I thought they'd agreed as a family to move into Gracie Mansion?  But on fb, again, according to the Times, when their son's friends asked him to pressure his dad to close school in NYC today, NYC's first lady posted as response to what Dante would be doing if the schools were closed, photos of a snow shovel and sack of salt.  Incidentally2, the video of the shoveling mayor is very short ....

Tonight - Tuning Into Treme With Special Guest Eric Overmyer

The final, truncated season of Treme opens (HBO) this comming Sunday, December 1.

I hope the frightful weather advisory doesn't keep us or anyone else away.

Here are the details of the event, held at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.

Mardi Gras! Tomorrow!

For some people.

Got to do an NYU gig on Cuba. Also, Abe Lincoln's birthday!


Rainstorm with excellent flood potential Wednesday -- thank goodness el V flies to San Fran either Wednesday AM or early afternoon, can't remember which, to present at a Cuban Salas Convention, with lot of dance department  people, as well as enthusiastists. And another blizzard this weekend. We shall see. But this means I need to go shopping tomorrow for hunkering again, just in case.

He had to go to the Eye Ear and Throat person today, because his head is still so congested and ears won't unplug from flying congested on Tuesday. He can't fly again with congestion and ears already plugged up. There would be a passenger event, as the airlines call it.

That tiny piercing of the eardrum to allow drainage couldn't be done, because you can't fly if you have it done. So the doctor told him to use sudafed, which is essentially speed. Which means getting it from the drugstore is a major pain even though it's an over-the-counter drug. You can't get much at a time, and you have to sign all these papers that supposedly prove you're using it as it is intended rather to to make meth.

Everything gets more of a hassle all the time. This is hardly the land of the free is it.

Ah well. We'll have an early V-day dinner tomorrow night and then head off to the Jazz Standard for some spectacular guitar music. As these are some South American musicians surely they will invoke Mardi Gras?

But it's not New Orleans.  That's the one.

Weather Confuses Jazzy Decisions

Such as what shall I wear to the Jazz Standard tonight? We're going to the late show, in order to, at their invitation, hang out with the artists afterwards. Weather tonight is predicted to be "a wintery mix of snow, sleet and rain late." The word that matters here is "late." What is meant by "late tonight?" Before midnight? After midnight? This really matters as to my footgear. My weather boots or a pair of the sexy ones?

I've been looking forward to this for quite a while: Galician bagpipes!

" Cristina Pato & The Migrations Band in association with the Barcelona Jazz Festival
For the past fifteen years, Cristina Pato has been forging new creative paths for the Gaita or Galician bagpipe. In 1998, she became the first female Gaita player to release a solo album, followed by three more albums including the self produced The Galician Connection (2010). She’s engaged in creative collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma & the Silk Road Ensemble, the Chieftains, and the Chicago Symphony, fusing strains of Latin music, jazz, pop and contemporary music to bring her unique vision to life. . This Jazz Standard special event commemorates the release of Cristina Pato’s new Sunnyside album, Migrations, and is presented in association with the Barcelona Jazz Festival.

“This album is my personal and musical migration from the path I was supposed to follow,” says the artist, “and celebrates all the things that helped me to create my own way.” 

If I get through to Thursday without the flu, then I'll be somewhat protected, if that statement about partial protection after 5 days is true. I remain baffled though as to what a partial protection against flu could possibly be. Either you're susceptible to the virus or you are not, right?

*Music Is My Mistress* Edward Kennedy Ellington

Duke Ellington's autobiography.

His account of growing up in Washington D.C. is like eating the most perfectly ripe and flavor-stuffed peach.

"Love you madly," in many languages, was how the Duke concluded his performances.  You can believe he meant those words because he was one of the blessed among men, beginning with the perfect upbringing, childhood an youth.


"So I was pampered and pampered, and spoiled rotten by all the women in the family, aunts and cousins, but my mother never took her eyes off precious little me, her jewel, until I was four years old ...." 

I've become increasingly interested in Washington D.C. since spending time there while living on the Eastern Shore.  This is a good introduction to that era that hosted the three cities that contained, even long before the Civil War, the largest populations of skilled, prosperous free people of color:  New Orleans, Baltimore and D.C.

Kind Of Overwhelmed

With the ever worse news out of the Gulf, all that has to be accomplished here before going there, i.e. C'town.  I find myself wishing we were there already -- so tired am I have of my neighborhoods in which you can't walk anywhere anymore because of the density of out-of-towners, out-of-neighborhooders, tourists, etc.  It's just farkin' miserable.  I have these fantasies of this small, picturesque town, with so few people around, if only because it is a car culture and nobody walks.  While, I, on the other hand, living so close to the river, can walk there easily whenever I want to.

AND, far more cheering, on my other tail -- it is certain, as far as these things can be, that M and her daughter are arriving at JFK tomorrow!

Do not forget, it's not only the Louis Armstrong festival in New Orleans, but the second celebration of Pops' birthday starts at midnight, edst here on the east coast, on WKCR Radio out of Columbia University.

Happy Birthday, Louis Armstrong!

Happy 4th of July hot dog eating contests. In yesterday's contest here, the usual winner was defeated by an elephant.

We're such a democratic nation, we even allow elephants to overeat what isn't good for anybody to eat, in honor of democracy and independence.

Is there anything more representative of how fallen this nation is, that it is working to turn overeating into a competitve 'sport,' and classify the eaters as 'athletes?'

On a planet where over 1 billion go to sleep each night hungry?

I would be truly miserable but for this antidote: our American Treasure, Phil Schaap, is conducting his annual 4th of July WKCR all day and night Louis Armstrong broadcast. Let us recall that Louis Armstrong, though born in August, chose as his official birthday, July 4th.

In the meantime, here, all day, we have a heat advisory in effect, as well as advice to stay inside due to the levels of ozone in the air.

Tonight, though, tonight -- fireworks, then the Afro-Cuban All Stars at S.O.B.'s.

ETA: Though we are sitting here in the a/c sorting through our tax stuff (we need to file quarterly) -- we are in heaven: Satchmo and Bing Crosby, dueting an entire album!

The Prehistory of New Orleans: Treasures from the Hogan

On AfroPop tonight, at least on the radio station here.  Vaquero made the program this week.

It can be streamed here on the AfroPop Worldwide site.