Long interview with clownface's war advisor, Lt. General Lute, It's well worth reading, for they talk about the draft, though, Lute clearly was most reluctant to do. Which is what makes this whole interview interesting.
[ You know, given the stress on the military and the concern about these extended deployments for an all-volunteer military, can you foresee, in the future, a return to the draft?
You know, that's a national policy decision point that we have not yet reached, Michele, because the —
But does it make sense militarily?
I think it makes sense to certainly consider it, and I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table, but ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another. Today, the current means of the all-volunteer force is serving us exceptionally well. It would be a major policy shift — not actually a military, but a political policy shift to move to some other course. ]
This was also very interesting to hear:
[ How heavy a toll is the war taking on American forces? Do you agree with other military leaders who have expressed worries that U.S. forces are near the breaking point?
As an Army officer, this is a matter of real concern to me. Ultimately, the American army, and any other all-volunteer force, rests with the support and the morale and the willingness to serve demonstrated by our — especially our young men and women in uniform. And I am concerned that those men and women and the families they represent are under stress as a result of repeated deployments.
There's both a personal dimension of this, where this kind of stress plays out across dinner tables and in living room conversations within these families, and ultimately, the health of the all-volunteer force is going to rest on those sorts of personal family decisions. And when the system is under stress, it's right to be concerned about some of the future decisions these young men and women may make. I think our military leaders are right to be focused on that.
There's also a professional and broader strategic argument to this, and that is that when our forces are as engaged as they have been over the last several years, particularly in Iraq, that we're concerned as military professionals that we also keep a very sharp edge honed for other contingencies outside of Iraq.
When military leaders, though, talk about the breaking point, what are they talking about? What's the real worry there?
I think that most who have talked about the stress on the force are concerned that in today's all-volunteer force, especially with the sort of quality individuals that we're interested in attracting to the all-volunteer force, that we're actually competing in the marketplace — in the labor marketplace — for a very narrow slice of high school graduates without records with the law who come to us with a clean bill of health and the potential to serve this country in some very demanding missions.
So when you're competing in that marketplace, I think the concern is that these people are challenged and feel the respect to the nation and feel a calling to something beyond themselves, beyond just a personal calling, and that these things remain in place and, therefore, make the all-volunteer force viable in the long run. ]
Just exactly what is he saying here?
Showing posts with label Summer 2007. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summer 2007. Show all posts
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
While We Go About Dreaming That It Can't Happen Here
Discussions are popping up that we are on the cusp of martial law in the United States. (Not in the primary media, of course. Indeed, if that's what you depend on for the news you wouldn't even know how huge the anti-Iraq momement is.)
Here's the latest one.
The Cindy Sheehan Peace Caravan gave us matching t-shirts: IMPEACH BUSH and IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST.
But I say the first figures we need to impeach is us. IMPEACH US FIRST. We let this happen.
Most people in the country don't even know there is an out of Iraq movement, much less how large it is, because all they see is primary media. Primary media hardly mentions anything that isn't about itself or what our masters want us to hear.
And WE FARKIN' ALLOW IT.
IMPEACH US FIRST, and then, IMPEACH THE MEDIA.
IMPEACH, INDICT, INCARCERATE.
Here's the latest one.
The Cindy Sheehan Peace Caravan gave us matching t-shirts: IMPEACH BUSH and IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST.
But I say the first figures we need to impeach is us. IMPEACH US FIRST. We let this happen.
Most people in the country don't even know there is an out of Iraq movement, much less how large it is, because all they see is primary media. Primary media hardly mentions anything that isn't about itself or what our masters want us to hear.
And WE FARKIN' ALLOW IT.
IMPEACH US FIRST, and then, IMPEACH THE MEDIA.
IMPEACH, INDICT, INCARCERATE.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
It's Our Anniversary
It's a beautiful day.
We're packing boxes, moving office.
St. Ann was our anniversary celebration, I think, just as it was Vaquero's birthday.
And now we've had dinner and champagne and dessert, and watched some Abukuá ritual and music from Epke in the Calabar, and are checking facts for an AFRO POP radio program, and all and all, feel this was a great one too.
We've had so many different great anniversaries.
One I recall with great vividness, was in Santiago de Cuba, my first trip to Cuba, which fairly coincided with Carnival.
We're packing boxes, moving office.
St. Ann was our anniversary celebration, I think, just as it was Vaquero's birthday.
And now we've had dinner and champagne and dessert, and watched some Abukuá ritual and music from Epke in the Calabar, and are checking facts for an AFRO POP radio program, and all and all, feel this was a great one too.
We've had so many different great anniversaries.
One I recall with great vividness, was in Santiago de Cuba, my first trip to Cuba, which fairly coincided with Carnival.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Our Culture
I've recently spent an intense span of time considering culture and identity in the context of the personal and the national, the colonialized and the colonizer. This was within the matrix of France and Europe, in the Caribbean and New World. You might think that the issues of the U.S. would be peripheral, at best, to this matrix. And it was, though it loomed, for a fundamental consideration for those who are a "colony of citizens," as brilliant Laurent Dubois has called them, is that if they are NOT France, then they are very likely to become subject to the U.S., which they view as contemptible, and thus fear.
And thus one inevitably must begin to consider the 'culture' of one's own home, which in my case is the U.S.
And this seems to be, from the wider perspective, to be more and more what the majority culture of this nation is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/us/22road.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
[ California highways have been shut down by wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes and police chases. And now road rage.
Drivers inconvenienced by a road-widening project subjected construction workers to so much abuse — death threats, BB gun shootings, a flying burrito — that the state shut down California Highway 138 altogether. ]
[ Last September, Charles Fenn was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon on accusations that he clipped a flagman with his vehicle on his way home to Wrightwood.
“I’m the victim,” Mr. Fenn maintained in a brief telephone interview, declining to say anything else. ]
These are indeed the children of clownface, and why the rest of the world sees this nation by and large as filled with obese, selfish, cruel, mean, ugly, ignorant hordes that they don't want in their back yard.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/washington/21intel.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1185020154-Jvzyw4DarBWBCdL+L+iRfg
[ A new executive order signed by President Bush does not authorize the full set of harsh interrogation methods used by the C.I.A. since the program began in 2002. But government officials said the rules would still allow some techniques more severe than those used in interrogations by military personnel in places like the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. ]
The wording is so vague that anything short of actual death appears permitted.
Anyway, it proves its mendacity that the regime felt it needed to execute an exec order re torture, when it claimed all along that it did not torture. Just like it claimed it didn't have secret prison camps. Nobody even bothers to deny the existence of the secret prison camps now. Feh. Crooks & Liars from start to finish. How can they put the words democracy, human rights, free and fair elections in their mouths and tell OTHER NATIONS they must obey such injunctions as issued by them? Thus we are the nation that employs torture -- not because it is useful, as it has been proven time and again, over the ages, not to be. But because we like it. It is another example of the top trickle down.
You all know that the first mention in primary media -- the New York Times -- of this clownface, was in the case of him defending the use of branding with red hot coat hangers the freshman being intiated into his fraternity. "It's no worse than getting burned with a cigarette."
These are the behaviors of sociopaths.
Sports fans abuse the players of the teams they support when the players make errors, they abuse the players of the teams they don't support, because they are the 'other.' They riot against each other.
The ignorance and brutality of the so-called Dark Ages reign.
Yet, as in the Dark Ages there are pockets of resistence and light -- the kids who go to New Orleans to help build houses for the evacuated that the fed gummit keeps gumming up, deliberately, the works for them to return home; the people who dare to write and speak publicly against the evil and ignorance spread by those on top. How long, how long ....
Many of the worst villains in literature and other 'entertainment' media are torturers. One of sf's great character - villains is Dune's Baron Harkonnen, straight out of the 16th / 17th Revenge Tragedies, is an unabashed sadist-torturer, who takes great pleasure in being so. However, his creator does not ever suggest anything other than that he tortures because he is a villain and he's a villain because he tortures.
SF has also contributed Gene Wolfe's Severian (the name of the principal character in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose partially autobiographical novel Venus in Furs, is the most famous S&M novel ever).
THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN series is considered by many as a stylistic masterpiece of manners; others see it as creepy (not to mention dull), particularly within the context of other works Wolfe has produced. It is creepy to attempt to make a torturer guiltless and sympathetic. Severian loves torturing -- oh, but he has a soul, and feels guilt. Sort of. It is necessary to this sympathy that he belongs to a Guild, quite like the Inquistition. This is to legitimize what he does. Supposedly.
Yet Wolfe must go further than this to make him a sympathetic character; Severian's had to be coerced, and then trained, when still a most malleable youthm into the sophisticated wielding of his 'art.' I.e., it's not supposed to be his choice.
However, Wolfe also chooses to include the information that these meticulous tortures are inflicted -- NOT FOR INFORMATION, but for the inexplicable satisfaction of Others. Often these people are entirely innocent of anything.
Civilized peoples don't torture. Period.
The Iroquois's tortures of their captives have become legendary in their prolongation and attention to physical detail -- keeping the victim alive and suffering as long as possible. Those tortures were not inflicted for information either; they were done for the pleasure of doing them. The only possible justification to that then, for the victims, was to make the endurance and suffering a manhood test. Yet, they, like Apaches and Commanches and any other of the Natives who ritually practiced torture, were considered savages. The accusation that one had 'gone native' included practices like scalping of Indians -- mostly an innovation provided by the invading Europeans. Most shocking of all was that women of these tribes also tortured their enemies.
The greatest villains of all, in literature and popular media, are, of course, women, women who participate in torture -- because when a woman does so, we have crossed so clearly the line that our cultures have set up to separate humanity and civilization and value for the spirit into the world of evil. The names of the (few) women engaged in SS tortures will live in infamy through recorded history. It is when women are involved with torture that it becomes utterly clear how connected to the toxic, evil eros-thanatos impulse torture is, because, you know, that's why they make those movies -- it gets guys hot. That's much of the impulse that keeps the SS constantly in the forefront of bad guys, and movies dealing with them and their activities are still being made, books are still being written. It gets guys hot.
Those who justify torture seem not to realize what their eager justification reveals about themselves.
And thus one inevitably must begin to consider the 'culture' of one's own home, which in my case is the U.S.
And this seems to be, from the wider perspective, to be more and more what the majority culture of this nation is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/us/22road.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
[ California highways have been shut down by wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes and police chases. And now road rage.
Drivers inconvenienced by a road-widening project subjected construction workers to so much abuse — death threats, BB gun shootings, a flying burrito — that the state shut down California Highway 138 altogether. ]
[ Last September, Charles Fenn was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon on accusations that he clipped a flagman with his vehicle on his way home to Wrightwood.
“I’m the victim,” Mr. Fenn maintained in a brief telephone interview, declining to say anything else. ]
These are indeed the children of clownface, and why the rest of the world sees this nation by and large as filled with obese, selfish, cruel, mean, ugly, ignorant hordes that they don't want in their back yard.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/washington/21intel.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1185020154-Jvzyw4DarBWBCdL+L+iRfg
[ A new executive order signed by President Bush does not authorize the full set of harsh interrogation methods used by the C.I.A. since the program began in 2002. But government officials said the rules would still allow some techniques more severe than those used in interrogations by military personnel in places like the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. ]
The wording is so vague that anything short of actual death appears permitted.
Anyway, it proves its mendacity that the regime felt it needed to execute an exec order re torture, when it claimed all along that it did not torture. Just like it claimed it didn't have secret prison camps. Nobody even bothers to deny the existence of the secret prison camps now. Feh. Crooks & Liars from start to finish. How can they put the words democracy, human rights, free and fair elections in their mouths and tell OTHER NATIONS they must obey such injunctions as issued by them? Thus we are the nation that employs torture -- not because it is useful, as it has been proven time and again, over the ages, not to be. But because we like it. It is another example of the top trickle down.
You all know that the first mention in primary media -- the New York Times -- of this clownface, was in the case of him defending the use of branding with red hot coat hangers the freshman being intiated into his fraternity. "It's no worse than getting burned with a cigarette."
These are the behaviors of sociopaths.
Sports fans abuse the players of the teams they support when the players make errors, they abuse the players of the teams they don't support, because they are the 'other.' They riot against each other.
The ignorance and brutality of the so-called Dark Ages reign.
Yet, as in the Dark Ages there are pockets of resistence and light -- the kids who go to New Orleans to help build houses for the evacuated that the fed gummit keeps gumming up, deliberately, the works for them to return home; the people who dare to write and speak publicly against the evil and ignorance spread by those on top. How long, how long ....
Many of the worst villains in literature and other 'entertainment' media are torturers. One of sf's great character - villains is Dune's Baron Harkonnen, straight out of the 16th / 17th Revenge Tragedies, is an unabashed sadist-torturer, who takes great pleasure in being so. However, his creator does not ever suggest anything other than that he tortures because he is a villain and he's a villain because he tortures.
SF has also contributed Gene Wolfe's Severian (the name of the principal character in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose partially autobiographical novel Venus in Furs, is the most famous S&M novel ever).
THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN series is considered by many as a stylistic masterpiece of manners; others see it as creepy (not to mention dull), particularly within the context of other works Wolfe has produced. It is creepy to attempt to make a torturer guiltless and sympathetic. Severian loves torturing -- oh, but he has a soul, and feels guilt. Sort of. It is necessary to this sympathy that he belongs to a Guild, quite like the Inquistition. This is to legitimize what he does. Supposedly.
Yet Wolfe must go further than this to make him a sympathetic character; Severian's had to be coerced, and then trained, when still a most malleable youthm into the sophisticated wielding of his 'art.' I.e., it's not supposed to be his choice.
However, Wolfe also chooses to include the information that these meticulous tortures are inflicted -- NOT FOR INFORMATION, but for the inexplicable satisfaction of Others. Often these people are entirely innocent of anything.
Civilized peoples don't torture. Period.
The Iroquois's tortures of their captives have become legendary in their prolongation and attention to physical detail -- keeping the victim alive and suffering as long as possible. Those tortures were not inflicted for information either; they were done for the pleasure of doing them. The only possible justification to that then, for the victims, was to make the endurance and suffering a manhood test. Yet, they, like Apaches and Commanches and any other of the Natives who ritually practiced torture, were considered savages. The accusation that one had 'gone native' included practices like scalping of Indians -- mostly an innovation provided by the invading Europeans. Most shocking of all was that women of these tribes also tortured their enemies.
The greatest villains of all, in literature and popular media, are, of course, women, women who participate in torture -- because when a woman does so, we have crossed so clearly the line that our cultures have set up to separate humanity and civilization and value for the spirit into the world of evil. The names of the (few) women engaged in SS tortures will live in infamy through recorded history. It is when women are involved with torture that it becomes utterly clear how connected to the toxic, evil eros-thanatos impulse torture is, because, you know, that's why they make those movies -- it gets guys hot. That's much of the impulse that keeps the SS constantly in the forefront of bad guys, and movies dealing with them and their activities are still being made, books are still being written. It gets guys hot.
Those who justify torture seem not to realize what their eager justification reveals about themselves.
Friday, July 20, 2007
All-Star Group of Sudanese Musicians and Dancers on Summer Stage
MUSICIANS CALL FOR A UNIFIED SUDAN The First Annual Sudanese Music & Dance Festival
Saturday, July 21st, 2007 from 3:00pm to 7:00pm
at Central Park SummerStage, NYC
"An unprecedented gathering of Sudanese musical and dance legends from all regions and religions of Sudan..."
With appearances by:
* Sharhabil Ahmed
* Abu Araki Al Bakhiet
* Yousif El Moseley
* Hadia, Ammal, Hayat "Al Balabil" (The Humming Birds)
* Ali El Sigade
* Omer Banaga
* Rasha Sheikh Aldein Gibreel
* Al Warif Sheikh Aldein Gibreel
* Brides of the Nile Dance Group
* Emmanuel Kembe (South of Sudan)
* Omer Ihsas (Darfur)
* The Nile Music Orchestra
To most of us in the West, the Sudan has become synonymous with refugees,war and genocide. But the country had a rich and thriving culture before the imposition of fundamentalist rule in 1989 - a fact that makes the current situation there all the more tragic. SummerStage is proud to host a showcase of Sudanese culture, featuring legendary Sudanese artists who are reuniting for the first time in 20 years to celebrate the past and hope for a peaceful future.
For event details & directions, see below or visit http://www.summerstage.org
FREE Event and World Wide Broadcast on www.staytunedtv.tv
Produced by Dawn Elder Presented with the support of the Sudanese Information Center
THE STORY BEHIND THIS HISTORIC EVENT...
This summer, an unprecedented gathering of musicians from the East African nation of Sudan will come together in New York to accomplish something politicians, war lords and diplomats have thus far failed to do: Unify Sudan!
Sudan is Africa’s largest country. It is also one of the most diverse, with some 300 ethnic groups living in deserts, mountains, and along the shores of the great Nile River. Once called “the bread basket of Africa,” Sudan today is better known for poverty, war, and ethnic and religious division. At the heart of Sudan’s crisis is the fact that the country has never really coalesced. In ancient times, the north was the Kingdom of Nubia, with close ties to Egypt and the Arab world, and the south the territory of African agricultural groups, such as the Dinka, Shilluk, Nuer, and Azande. The south was physically cut off from Nubia by the nearly impassable swamplands of the White Nile. These two distant worlds became politically joined when Egypt annexed Sudan in the 19th century. When Britain then occupied Egypt in 1898, it claimed Sudan without so much as a fight. The trouble was, neither occupier had ever sought to forge an overarching, Sudanese identity. This was a country in name only.
Sudan won its independence in 1956, but given its history, fair and effective governance was impossible. Power tended to center in the Muslim north, and after the government imposed sharia law in 1989, people in the Christian south felt radically disenfranchised and victimized. After much strife and conflict, the north and south established a fragile Peace Accord in 2005. Meanwhile, new fighting surged in the West, in Darfur, and the world’s attention focused there. The broad array of Sudanese musicians participating in the Sudanese Music and Dance Festival believe that both of these conflicts must be understood as pieces in a larger puzzle, the puzzle that is Sudan. Today, with the North-South Peace Accord as a model to be applied in Darfur and elsewhere, many Sudanese sense an opportunity to at last build a nation. These artists intend to show the way.
The Sudanese Music and Dance Festival event is produced and created by a veteran of daring world music initiatives in the United States, Dawn Elder.
Elder, a composer and award-winning music producer, has a passion for Sudanese music which goes back to her work with one of the greatest living Sudanese singers, Mohammed Wardi. Wardi no longer leaves his homeland, but the superlative orchestra that backed him and other Sudanese legends, the Nile Music Orchestra, will be the musical hub of this historic, Sudanese showcase, and the spirit of Wardi and his seminal generation will pervade the performance.
A Pantheon of Sudan’s Diverse Cultural Legacy
The artists participating in the Sudanese Music and Dance Festival have lived the diverse and troubled history of Sudanese music. One of the festival’s grandest figures, Shurahibeel Ahmed, was born in Omdurman in central Sudan in 1935, and he came to the capital, Khartoum, at a time when the lyric songs of the Sudanese tambour (lyre) were beginning to find common ground with the Arabic maqaam system of music, as well as the tradition of madeeh, praise songs to the Prophet Mohamed. The secular, and at times irreverent haqiba genre was emerging as an entrancing and distinctly local form of recreational song, especially popular at weddings. Shurahibeel was transfixed when he encountered a man from southern Sudan playing a guitar, an instrument he had never seen. Shurahibeel went on to specialize in guitar, and also to play saxophone, trumpet and trombone. He fell in love with jazz, the songs of Harry Belafonte, and Egyptian art music, especially Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, and all of this went into his unique and groundbreakingstyle. Shurahibeel recalled the 50s as a time of exuberance and optimism in Khartoum. Still, like Sudanese many greats of his generation, he ventured on to Cairo to begin his recording career. But he returned home, and during the 60s and 70s, his performances on Sudanese radio and television helped set a new, modern direction for popular music throughout the country.
In the 70s and 80s, fascinating musical hybrids flourished in Sudanese cities, such as Khartoum in the north, and Juba in the south. Mohammed Wardi’s rich fusion of elements made him a sensation, along with other vocal giants such as Abdel Gadir Salim, Abdel Aziz el Mubarak, and Abu Araki Al Bakheit, who will represent this crucial generation in the festival. The music was orchestral and celebratory, Arab and African - quintessentially Sudanese.
The musical director for the Sudanese Music and Dance Festival is Yousif El Moseley, who moved from singing traditional songs with percussion to composing for and performing with wedding bands in 1970s Khartoum. As a star student at the Institute of Drama and Music, El Moseley earned the chance to travel to Cairo, where he attained a Masters degree in composition. When he returned to Khartoum in 1989 modernity was in the air. The amazing Balabils had hit the scene. This trio of talented, musically trained Nubian teenagers became Khartoum’s answer to the Supremes, and they revolutionized social and artistic possibilities for Sudanese women.
Music and social life were advancing hand in hand as Sudan broached a new era, and El Moseley was poised to shepherd the Sudanese music scene to new heights. But shortly after his return, this tale of promise ended with the coup of 1989, and the imposition of sharia law. From this time onwards, life became terribly difficult for musicians. There was an 11PM curfew, and popular figures like El Moseley and Al Bakheit faced pressure to sing for the regime. Both refused, and suffered the consequences. El Moseley eventually moved to Cairo, where he became a successful producer, and between 1992-96, recorded 45 albums for all the top Sudanese singers. Al Bakheit tried to retire rather than sing for the regime, but his fans wouldn’t let him stop, and he was harassed and threatened often as government minders scanned even his love songs for subversive messages.
There are many terrible stories from the 1990s and since. Irreplaceable manuscripts and recordings - especially of artists from the south - have been destroyed and erased. Musicians have been beaten, even murdered, and over 200 of the most beloved performance artists have gone into exile. From Cairo, Yousif El Moseley moved to the United States in 1996, and he now teaches in Monterrey, California. A number of other singers of his generation have followed him to the U.S., and the musicians with whom he made so many classic recordings, the Nile Music Orchestra, now live in Virginia. Some Sudanese artists, like the young singer/songwriter Rasha Sheikh Aldein Gibreel, moved to Europe. Rasha has made a promising crossover
career blending Sudanese tradition with contemporary jazz and world music, and delivering powerful social commentary. Meanwhile, Rasha’s older sister, Tumadir Sheikh Aldein Gibreel, abandoned her career as an actress and director Sudan to found the Brides of Nile Dance Group, presently based in Boston.
In New York, these artist will be reunited not only with one another but with legends like the Balabils - now Monterrey - and beloved artists who still struggle to make ends meet in Khartoum, like Shurahibeel Ahmed, Abu Araki Al Bakheit, and Zeidan Abrahim, beloved for his soft voice and sad songs. There will also be singers from the next generation, like Atif Aneis and Omer Banaga, who made his name with the band Igd Al Galad, champions of modernizing Sudanese folklore as electric pop music.
Most radical of all will be combination of these artists with rising stars from the southern Sudan and Darfur. Emmanuel Kembe is a contemporary Afropop star from the south, whose frank lyrics caused him to be jailed in Sudan in 1994. From his home in exile in the United States, Kembe now makes hugely successful recordings, and tours for the Sudanese diaspora community worldwide. Omer Ihsas of Darfur transitioned from a medical nurse to a successful soul singer, and now creates haunting, bluesy contemporary music, deeply connected with the suffering of his people back in Sudan.
The Nile Music Orchestra includes some of Sudan’s most respected instrumentalists as well.
The group’s elite corps of string players, the Nile Strings, includes veterans with over 25 years of experience in the Sudan Radio and Television Orchestra, and other top ensembles. Ahmad “Bass” Al Tigiani is a master violinist, songwriter, composer, arranger and singer, beloved for his vocal adaptations of folk songs from his native region, Darfur. Merghani El Zain studied violin and composition in Russia in the late ‘80s and returned to found, along with years as part of Abdel Gadir Salim’s ensemble. Mekail Bakhid is another veteran violinist from Darfur, but there is also young blood in today’s Nile Strings, notably up-and-coming violin virtuoso Magdi Al Ageib. Among keyboardist Mahir Hassan, with over 25 years experience backing Sudanese vocal stars, and superstar percussionist Faiz Miligy, who comes from one of Sudan’s most beloved musical families in the central, Jazira region. Members of the Nile Music Orchestra will travel from Sudan, Canada, the UK, and many parts of the United States for this unprecedented performance.
Although these artists come from different locations, ethnic backgrounds, generations, and experience, they all share a passionate vision of a united Sudan. Their presence on one stage will not only be an unprecedented summit of Sudan’s greatest living musical talent, and an emotionally charged reunion for the participants, but most of all, a powerful symbol of what could be possible back home. This will be a true life example of musicians showing the way to a better world.
This entire event will be presented worldwide via streaming on StayTunedTV.tv, the new all-music network bringing the music of the world to you via the internet.
The Production and Its Producers
Dawn Elder is also the Director of Programming for the internet all-music and dance site, www.StayTunedTV.tv. StayTunedTV is producing the concert video of the event for worldwide streaming as a “Recorded Live” event. The video production will be directed by John Kuri, an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and television producer. Kuri created the StayTunedTV concept and has produced and directed the majority of the programming available on StayTunedTV.TV. StayTunedTV is a presentation of Kuri Productions, Inc. and its sister corporation Elixir Entertainment, Inc.
Dr. Mahmoud Mutwakil, head of the Sudan Information Center, and a key sponsor of the Sudanese Music and Dance Festival, says that everyone involved in this event shares one overriding motivation, “to work for a united, peaceful, democratic, and just Sudan.” Dr. Mutwakil concludes, “It’s time that these senseless wars stopped, and that people sat down together and solved their problems once and for all.”
For more information regarding the Sudanese Music & Dance Festival events, the artists participating or music producer Dawn Elder and StayTunedTV.tv, contact: Gillian Zali at 310-291-7909, gillzali@msn.com.
Media inquiries for Central Park Summerstage: Kristin Coleman, 212-561-7469
Location and Directions: Central Park SummerStage is located at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park. Enter the park at 69th St. & 5th Ave. on the east side or at 72nd St. & Central Park West on the west side.
By Subway: East side: 6 train to 68th or 77th Streets West side: 1, 2, 3, 9, B or C trains to 72nd Street
By Bus: East side: M1, M2, M3 or M4 to 72nd Street and 5th Avenue West side: M7, M10, or M11 to 72nd Street and Central Park West Crosstown: M-66 or M72 to Central Park West or Fifth Avenue
Saturday, July 21st, 2007 from 3:00pm to 7:00pm
at Central Park SummerStage, NYC
"An unprecedented gathering of Sudanese musical and dance legends from all regions and religions of Sudan..."
With appearances by:
* Sharhabil Ahmed
* Abu Araki Al Bakhiet
* Yousif El Moseley
* Hadia, Ammal, Hayat "Al Balabil" (The Humming Birds)
* Ali El Sigade
* Omer Banaga
* Rasha Sheikh Aldein Gibreel
* Al Warif Sheikh Aldein Gibreel
* Brides of the Nile Dance Group
* Emmanuel Kembe (South of Sudan)
* Omer Ihsas (Darfur)
* The Nile Music Orchestra
To most of us in the West, the Sudan has become synonymous with refugees,war and genocide. But the country had a rich and thriving culture before the imposition of fundamentalist rule in 1989 - a fact that makes the current situation there all the more tragic. SummerStage is proud to host a showcase of Sudanese culture, featuring legendary Sudanese artists who are reuniting for the first time in 20 years to celebrate the past and hope for a peaceful future.
For event details & directions, see below or visit http://www.summerstage.org
FREE Event and World Wide Broadcast on www.staytunedtv.tv
Produced by Dawn Elder Presented with the support of the Sudanese Information Center
THE STORY BEHIND THIS HISTORIC EVENT...
This summer, an unprecedented gathering of musicians from the East African nation of Sudan will come together in New York to accomplish something politicians, war lords and diplomats have thus far failed to do: Unify Sudan!
Sudan is Africa’s largest country. It is also one of the most diverse, with some 300 ethnic groups living in deserts, mountains, and along the shores of the great Nile River. Once called “the bread basket of Africa,” Sudan today is better known for poverty, war, and ethnic and religious division. At the heart of Sudan’s crisis is the fact that the country has never really coalesced. In ancient times, the north was the Kingdom of Nubia, with close ties to Egypt and the Arab world, and the south the territory of African agricultural groups, such as the Dinka, Shilluk, Nuer, and Azande. The south was physically cut off from Nubia by the nearly impassable swamplands of the White Nile. These two distant worlds became politically joined when Egypt annexed Sudan in the 19th century. When Britain then occupied Egypt in 1898, it claimed Sudan without so much as a fight. The trouble was, neither occupier had ever sought to forge an overarching, Sudanese identity. This was a country in name only.
Sudan won its independence in 1956, but given its history, fair and effective governance was impossible. Power tended to center in the Muslim north, and after the government imposed sharia law in 1989, people in the Christian south felt radically disenfranchised and victimized. After much strife and conflict, the north and south established a fragile Peace Accord in 2005. Meanwhile, new fighting surged in the West, in Darfur, and the world’s attention focused there. The broad array of Sudanese musicians participating in the Sudanese Music and Dance Festival believe that both of these conflicts must be understood as pieces in a larger puzzle, the puzzle that is Sudan. Today, with the North-South Peace Accord as a model to be applied in Darfur and elsewhere, many Sudanese sense an opportunity to at last build a nation. These artists intend to show the way.
The Sudanese Music and Dance Festival event is produced and created by a veteran of daring world music initiatives in the United States, Dawn Elder.
Elder, a composer and award-winning music producer, has a passion for Sudanese music which goes back to her work with one of the greatest living Sudanese singers, Mohammed Wardi. Wardi no longer leaves his homeland, but the superlative orchestra that backed him and other Sudanese legends, the Nile Music Orchestra, will be the musical hub of this historic, Sudanese showcase, and the spirit of Wardi and his seminal generation will pervade the performance.
A Pantheon of Sudan’s Diverse Cultural Legacy
The artists participating in the Sudanese Music and Dance Festival have lived the diverse and troubled history of Sudanese music. One of the festival’s grandest figures, Shurahibeel Ahmed, was born in Omdurman in central Sudan in 1935, and he came to the capital, Khartoum, at a time when the lyric songs of the Sudanese tambour (lyre) were beginning to find common ground with the Arabic maqaam system of music, as well as the tradition of madeeh, praise songs to the Prophet Mohamed. The secular, and at times irreverent haqiba genre was emerging as an entrancing and distinctly local form of recreational song, especially popular at weddings. Shurahibeel was transfixed when he encountered a man from southern Sudan playing a guitar, an instrument he had never seen. Shurahibeel went on to specialize in guitar, and also to play saxophone, trumpet and trombone. He fell in love with jazz, the songs of Harry Belafonte, and Egyptian art music, especially Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, and all of this went into his unique and groundbreakingstyle. Shurahibeel recalled the 50s as a time of exuberance and optimism in Khartoum. Still, like Sudanese many greats of his generation, he ventured on to Cairo to begin his recording career. But he returned home, and during the 60s and 70s, his performances on Sudanese radio and television helped set a new, modern direction for popular music throughout the country.
In the 70s and 80s, fascinating musical hybrids flourished in Sudanese cities, such as Khartoum in the north, and Juba in the south. Mohammed Wardi’s rich fusion of elements made him a sensation, along with other vocal giants such as Abdel Gadir Salim, Abdel Aziz el Mubarak, and Abu Araki Al Bakheit, who will represent this crucial generation in the festival. The music was orchestral and celebratory, Arab and African - quintessentially Sudanese.
The musical director for the Sudanese Music and Dance Festival is Yousif El Moseley, who moved from singing traditional songs with percussion to composing for and performing with wedding bands in 1970s Khartoum. As a star student at the Institute of Drama and Music, El Moseley earned the chance to travel to Cairo, where he attained a Masters degree in composition. When he returned to Khartoum in 1989 modernity was in the air. The amazing Balabils had hit the scene. This trio of talented, musically trained Nubian teenagers became Khartoum’s answer to the Supremes, and they revolutionized social and artistic possibilities for Sudanese women.
Music and social life were advancing hand in hand as Sudan broached a new era, and El Moseley was poised to shepherd the Sudanese music scene to new heights. But shortly after his return, this tale of promise ended with the coup of 1989, and the imposition of sharia law. From this time onwards, life became terribly difficult for musicians. There was an 11PM curfew, and popular figures like El Moseley and Al Bakheit faced pressure to sing for the regime. Both refused, and suffered the consequences. El Moseley eventually moved to Cairo, where he became a successful producer, and between 1992-96, recorded 45 albums for all the top Sudanese singers. Al Bakheit tried to retire rather than sing for the regime, but his fans wouldn’t let him stop, and he was harassed and threatened often as government minders scanned even his love songs for subversive messages.
There are many terrible stories from the 1990s and since. Irreplaceable manuscripts and recordings - especially of artists from the south - have been destroyed and erased. Musicians have been beaten, even murdered, and over 200 of the most beloved performance artists have gone into exile. From Cairo, Yousif El Moseley moved to the United States in 1996, and he now teaches in Monterrey, California. A number of other singers of his generation have followed him to the U.S., and the musicians with whom he made so many classic recordings, the Nile Music Orchestra, now live in Virginia. Some Sudanese artists, like the young singer/songwriter Rasha Sheikh Aldein Gibreel, moved to Europe. Rasha has made a promising crossover
career blending Sudanese tradition with contemporary jazz and world music, and delivering powerful social commentary. Meanwhile, Rasha’s older sister, Tumadir Sheikh Aldein Gibreel, abandoned her career as an actress and director Sudan to found the Brides of Nile Dance Group, presently based in Boston.
In New York, these artist will be reunited not only with one another but with legends like the Balabils - now Monterrey - and beloved artists who still struggle to make ends meet in Khartoum, like Shurahibeel Ahmed, Abu Araki Al Bakheit, and Zeidan Abrahim, beloved for his soft voice and sad songs. There will also be singers from the next generation, like Atif Aneis and Omer Banaga, who made his name with the band Igd Al Galad, champions of modernizing Sudanese folklore as electric pop music.
Most radical of all will be combination of these artists with rising stars from the southern Sudan and Darfur. Emmanuel Kembe is a contemporary Afropop star from the south, whose frank lyrics caused him to be jailed in Sudan in 1994. From his home in exile in the United States, Kembe now makes hugely successful recordings, and tours for the Sudanese diaspora community worldwide. Omer Ihsas of Darfur transitioned from a medical nurse to a successful soul singer, and now creates haunting, bluesy contemporary music, deeply connected with the suffering of his people back in Sudan.
The Nile Music Orchestra includes some of Sudan’s most respected instrumentalists as well.
The group’s elite corps of string players, the Nile Strings, includes veterans with over 25 years of experience in the Sudan Radio and Television Orchestra, and other top ensembles. Ahmad “Bass” Al Tigiani is a master violinist, songwriter, composer, arranger and singer, beloved for his vocal adaptations of folk songs from his native region, Darfur. Merghani El Zain studied violin and composition in Russia in the late ‘80s and returned to found, along with years as part of Abdel Gadir Salim’s ensemble. Mekail Bakhid is another veteran violinist from Darfur, but there is also young blood in today’s Nile Strings, notably up-and-coming violin virtuoso Magdi Al Ageib. Among keyboardist Mahir Hassan, with over 25 years experience backing Sudanese vocal stars, and superstar percussionist Faiz Miligy, who comes from one of Sudan’s most beloved musical families in the central, Jazira region. Members of the Nile Music Orchestra will travel from Sudan, Canada, the UK, and many parts of the United States for this unprecedented performance.
Although these artists come from different locations, ethnic backgrounds, generations, and experience, they all share a passionate vision of a united Sudan. Their presence on one stage will not only be an unprecedented summit of Sudan’s greatest living musical talent, and an emotionally charged reunion for the participants, but most of all, a powerful symbol of what could be possible back home. This will be a true life example of musicians showing the way to a better world.
This entire event will be presented worldwide via streaming on StayTunedTV.tv, the new all-music network bringing the music of the world to you via the internet.
The Production and Its Producers
Dawn Elder is also the Director of Programming for the internet all-music and dance site, www.StayTunedTV.tv. StayTunedTV is producing the concert video of the event for worldwide streaming as a “Recorded Live” event. The video production will be directed by John Kuri, an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and television producer. Kuri created the StayTunedTV concept and has produced and directed the majority of the programming available on StayTunedTV.TV. StayTunedTV is a presentation of Kuri Productions, Inc. and its sister corporation Elixir Entertainment, Inc.
Dr. Mahmoud Mutwakil, head of the Sudan Information Center, and a key sponsor of the Sudanese Music and Dance Festival, says that everyone involved in this event shares one overriding motivation, “to work for a united, peaceful, democratic, and just Sudan.” Dr. Mutwakil concludes, “It’s time that these senseless wars stopped, and that people sat down together and solved their problems once and for all.”
For more information regarding the Sudanese Music & Dance Festival events, the artists participating or music producer Dawn Elder and StayTunedTV.tv, contact: Gillian Zali at 310-291-7909, gillzali@msn.com.
Media inquiries for Central Park Summerstage: Kristin Coleman, 212-561-7469
Location and Directions: Central Park SummerStage is located at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park. Enter the park at 69th St. & 5th Ave. on the east side or at 72nd St. & Central Park West on the west side.
By Subway: East side: 6 train to 68th or 77th Streets West side: 1, 2, 3, 9, B or C trains to 72nd Street
By Bus: East side: M1, M2, M3 or M4 to 72nd Street and 5th Avenue West side: M7, M10, or M11 to 72nd Street and Central Park West Crosstown: M-66 or M72 to Central Park West or Fifth Avenue
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Friday, June 8, 2007
Dorgan's Immigration Bill Speech in the Senate
It's long, like 8 minutes. Well worth the time.
He's so danged reasonable ....
He's so danged reasonable ....
Thursday, June 7, 2007
John Boutté
If you have an interest in New Orleans, New Orleans music and all goes with it, this is what we experienced last night.
But when so much of the audience, especially from Asia, laughed, I wept.
I wept through John's rendition of "The Train They Call The City of New Orleans." He brought me entire new levels of experience out of that song, that once, when I was very young, just seemed weird and -- What????
Our popular music is one of the few places that provides popular access to American history, it seems, in these days since the neocons declared the end of history and changed our language. Wiping out real instruments, real skill at the instruments and knowing music, and substituting computer programs for musicians, and thus the end of rhythmic sophistication and knowledge (which is a real discipline, and why there are no jokes about stupid drummers in Latin and Indian and African music, like there are in Rock 'n Roll) has played an enormous role in destroying this nation's ability to consider history. New Orleans is filled with music and musicians who are as much the keepers of our national history as is the architecture and the archives. This goes a very long way toward explaining to the bewildered just why so many people insist that New Orleans matters and must continue to exist.
But now I know, oh, right down to the bottom of my soles and my soul, what the train they call the City of New Orleans is about.This artist, John Boutté, comes across kinda simple, coz that's what the consumers like to believe is going on with musicians, especially from New Orleans. But he started his life in the banking industry. He gave it up to follow his gift, which is both expression, and the most solid landing on key and being in tune you can find, even within opera. When he does that Sahellian push for crescendo and ornamentation of a note, you don't sit there mesmerized for fear he may fall off, but because you are relaxed in the delight of knowledge -- that he's so solid in his voice placement that he will stay and not lose, drop or fall.
He is very good at representing what's going on down home too, right now, to his ecstatic audiences:""You need to know that Katrina didn't hit New Orleans. The levees failed, and we got flooded. The shingles on the house my father built are fine. But the place filled with water. And the place sat in water. For weeks and weeks and weeks."
Most of the people in that audience last night at Joe's Pub, part of the Public Theater Complex, had seen John play in his little usual gig room in NO -- where sometimes there were very few audience members. Our best friends in NO love him, and his gig is their favorite night out, hang. Which is, why, of course, I / we know him and his work and call him by his first name.It was an emotionally complex artistic experience. Art is emotionally complex as well as intellectually complex. But this one was more than so usually, due to so much personal baggage.
But when so much of the audience, especially from Asia, laughed, I wept.
I wept through John's rendition of "The Train They Call The City of New Orleans." He brought me entire new levels of experience out of that song, that once, when I was very young, just seemed weird and -- What????
Our popular music is one of the few places that provides popular access to American history, it seems, in these days since the neocons declared the end of history and changed our language. Wiping out real instruments, real skill at the instruments and knowing music, and substituting computer programs for musicians, and thus the end of rhythmic sophistication and knowledge (which is a real discipline, and why there are no jokes about stupid drummers in Latin and Indian and African music, like there are in Rock 'n Roll) has played an enormous role in destroying this nation's ability to consider history. New Orleans is filled with music and musicians who are as much the keepers of our national history as is the architecture and the archives. This goes a very long way toward explaining to the bewildered just why so many people insist that New Orleans matters and must continue to exist.
But now I know, oh, right down to the bottom of my soles and my soul, what the train they call the City of New Orleans is about.This artist, John Boutté, comes across kinda simple, coz that's what the consumers like to believe is going on with musicians, especially from New Orleans. But he started his life in the banking industry. He gave it up to follow his gift, which is both expression, and the most solid landing on key and being in tune you can find, even within opera. When he does that Sahellian push for crescendo and ornamentation of a note, you don't sit there mesmerized for fear he may fall off, but because you are relaxed in the delight of knowledge -- that he's so solid in his voice placement that he will stay and not lose, drop or fall.
He is very good at representing what's going on down home too, right now, to his ecstatic audiences:""You need to know that Katrina didn't hit New Orleans. The levees failed, and we got flooded. The shingles on the house my father built are fine. But the place filled with water. And the place sat in water. For weeks and weeks and weeks."
Most of the people in that audience last night at Joe's Pub, part of the Public Theater Complex, had seen John play in his little usual gig room in NO -- where sometimes there were very few audience members. Our best friends in NO love him, and his gig is their favorite night out, hang. Which is, why, of course, I / we know him and his work and call him by his first name.It was an emotionally complex artistic experience. Art is emotionally complex as well as intellectually complex. But this one was more than so usually, due to so much personal baggage.
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