The Music Thread That Isn't "Music We Love"

[Guest]

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[Jill]

Still am on that El Sistema roll.

Obviously, I could control myself if I tried.  And if I wanted to.  Turns out, though, that I have one of those too often aching innards of a disposition where apparently for emotional survival’s sake, I’m forever on the lookout for things that will bring me (and I hope, others) joy and life-savor.  And this stuff very much does.  


The spirit in the love-generating (himself-) El Sistema-trained conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, that clearly permeates and dances around in the kids he conducts, and that’s so obvious, especially around and after about the 8 minute mark of the last of the 4 videos below, I don’t know how anybody could ever have too much of something like that, or, again, not wish the same for every single kid in the universe.

Ave Maria. MPG


Niños Cantores de Venezuela (Selección Metropolitana)


How Music Saved Venezuela’s Children


Orquesta Juvenil Simón Bolívar de Venezuela - BBC Proms 2007



EDIT: Okay.  So, now you can shoot me.  For sure you can ignore me.  You could save us all and banish me forEver from the Forum, or, you can partake of a bit more (for me) exaltation by checking out the video at the following link, especially, from about five minutes twenty seconds on.   
http://tedxkidstokyo.com/announce/gustavo-dudamel-leads-el-sistemas-top-youth-orchestra/

In the process, you might be turning yourselves onto some music that I know that I never before had heard of but found, somewhat to my surprise,  that I very much liked.  Super sweet-looking Gustavo and his kids having been the ones to introduce me to it no doubt helped a lot, but it’s kind of neat music in its own right, Danzón Nº 2 by a Mexican composer (and it ain’t even mariachi), Arturo Márquez .  At least, I thought it was pretty neat music, and this is coming from someone whose “catalogue” of cared about classical music is pretty embarrassingly slim.



“Young children play with papier-mache instruments in a scene from "El Sistema: Music to Change Life..”

[Jill]

Apparently, I can’t help myself.
Or, maybe it’s just that I don’t want to enough.

I just now sent the following, along with the attached pics, to some music-and kid-loving friends of mine.  These are all from “El Sistema," which I seem to love more and more, the more that I learn about it.

“The video gets better with repeated viewings of it (smile).


(It's nice, too, if you close your eyes and listen, after the first time, just to the audio portion of it.  Gustavo Dudamel's exceptional kindness, compassion for the kids, and humor is really accentuated that way -- but then, you miss his great dimples and wonderful expressions).”


Maybe you’ll like this stuff.  Maybe you won’t.  Maybe/probably obviously, I hope that you will.
Jill


EDIT:  No, not related, but this may be of interest to some of you, anyway.  Just came across the following which made me think of when I was a kid, and being then, the high-powered intellectual that I have remained to this very day, of when I used to read the “And, Boy, Was My Face Red?!?” section of Readers Digest.
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/former-mass-governor-had-uncomfortable-moment-diner-hampshire-153559334.html

EDIT #2, I'm entitling, "There's Just Something About Those Buffetts..." This particular link, the one I'm going to give you isn't going to be about the musical Buffett, Peter Buffett, whom I highlighted earlier in this thread.  He's very neat.  Turns out that neat dad, Warren (and now gone, but presumably neat mom) had more than one neat kid.  Their son, Howard Buffett, was featured in a 60 Minutes segment last night, and I just discovered that that segment is available online for the watching.

So, if you like farmers, you like great big and compassionate hearts, if you're interested in the issue of how to feed the world's hungry, and you just respond, positively, as I seem to, to down home, real and unpretentious caring people, you'll like watching this:   http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7391360n


EDIT #3: At 2 o’clock in the morning, I thought you all probably needed a little “Dude Dog” to go along with your Gershwin.

[Jill]

Without in any way intentionally setting out to do this, for whatever reason, I’ve been on a little mini-journey, this morning, on which I’ve kept on coming across different stories, where, (as I alluded to in my earlier Learning Through Pictures post), I’ve been reminded of how lucky I am to live in the country I live in and to have the life, the family, and the circumstances I was born into.

It was this picture (click on it for full impact) that first caught my attention on this article.  And then, its headline.  It’s quite a story, and particularly, that whole concept the Indonesian authorities employed of “spiritual cleansing,” has to give us reason for pause and reflection.

Rock music fans shaved and shamed in Indonesia

EDIT: Just saw that there was a photo gallery that accompanied this article.  So, I’m adding a couple more pics, the last one showing some of the Indonesian kids being subjected to that “spiritual cleansing” I mentioned.  No doubt there are a bunch of people in our own countries who wouldn’t mind doing some “spiritual cleansing” on some of us.



As an aside, but still somehow related to this same theme, while I was zipping about on the Internet this morning, I was watching what ended up being a really fascinating Charlie Rose show.  In the first segment, he interviewed the Time Magazine honchos who explained why they’d selected “The Protester” as their Time’s Person of the Year.  (Turns out that Ai Wei Wei, apparently, had been their runner-up choice).  And then they interviewed the wonderfully sharp, versatile and engaging actress, Viola Davis, most recently, of “The Help,” who spoke of what it was like to grow up black and poor in 1960’s America and how that life experience compelled her to do what she does and do it so incredibly well.

[Jill]

Am putting this post here instead of in the Movie thread where I’d started to put it because I got afraid that there might be some here who would be less than enchanted with my peppering the Forum with news of El Sistema.  At least this way, if people want to avoid any more mention of it, they can decline the opportunity of clicking on this thread.

Ever since I first heard about the film, Dudamel: Let the Children Play, a film described as focusing on the various El Sistema offshoots that have been springing up all over the world, I’ve been very much on the lookout for it.  As in very, Very much.
http://dudamel.net/  

(NOTE: I didn’t make the preceding a live link here because I think it’s one of those where the music and the video start playing, automatically, without you initiating it.  Thought that that had the potential of being a little too aggravating for those who have yet to fall quite so thoroughly and madly in love as I ).

I look, every few days, in the hope that some website is going to tell me that the DVD for Let The Children Play has finally been released and that it will tell me how I’ll be able to get a hold of it.

So, that’s how, this morning, I came across the 2 video clips I’m giving you.  Turns out that the first one is actually for the original El Sistema DVD which I know I’ve likely driven a bunch of you nuts with for how much I love it and have talked about it.  Somehow, kind of amazing to me, for all my enthusiasm, I’d never seen this first video, a different promotional video than the one that had gotten me started.  


This one for the original El Sistema, I think, is beyond irresistible.
It just fills me.



The second video is one I’d seen, for the film I’ve been looking for.  If you love kids and you love music and you love the idea of raising the poor out of the sometimes desperation of their lives and circumstances, I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t embrace this ongoing and ever-beautiful story.




EDIT:  Okay, here's this one LAST one that just came jumping out at me from my laptop.  After this, I'm going to throw my computer into the pond to save us all!  But before I do,  I have to ask, first:

Is it really possible that there could be anyone in the world who could watch this and NOT want this kind of joy, this kind of opportunity for EVERY KID?!  
 


EDIT #__: If I said that this was going to be my last “edit” of the year, would any of us believe me?  I guess I’d just better not come across any more priceless gems like the ones that follow.  They depict the next generation’s Nadja Salerno-Sonnenbergs & Itzhak Perlmans, joyously well on their way.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=8x3cj98o1hk


Finally, I’m giving you a link and a picture promoting Gustavo Dudamel’s upcoming appearance on Sesame Street.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Gustavo-Dudamel-muppet-music-master-130587923.html

and
There's a new book, hot off the presses.  I've only just read the beginning of it so far, but surprise, surprise, so far, I really love it.

[Jill]

Thought this was an interesting article…..
For politically aware songs, the '00s were all for naught


And I remember, years ago, when KF Brooke and I had the great pleasure of hanging out for a few days at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, the same concern was raised there about the relative quiet of the poets, too, in these complex, trouble-fraught times…


Here’s hoping that even more of those who happen to have a special ear, a special sensitivity, and a special musical or poetical voice will sing them out with even greater impact and fervor in the year/s to come. Apropos same, check out some of the old songs and other treasures that can be found at the Social Justice Song Index,  here *.


And, as long as I'm posting in one of the music threads this morning, anyway, let me turn you onto a place that I only, super recently, discovered.  I found out about it when I was googling El Sistema-related programs in the United States.  Came across this gem (definitely check out their 8 minute introductory video- see, below), the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, learning about the existence of which gave me great gladness.




EDIT: *Went leafing through some of the subject headings at that link I gave you, in part, to see how difficult it might be to locate an audio/video version of the songs that the website simply gives you the beginning lyrics for.  (Sorry about my English).  Figured I could try to locate them by going either to youtube, iTunes, Amazon, or by simply googling the title of the song, as a last resort.  

So, I s’pose because the words they had written there “spoke” to me, I decided to see if I could track down the song, Ella’s Song, by Bernice Johnson Reagon, which I’d never heard and which I’d happened upon under (which, by the way, as will come as a surprise to some of you, was not the first subject heading I skimmed through), “Race and Racism Songs.”  I didn't see this written anywhere, though I'm sure it is written there, but I'm guessing that the Ella for whom the song is named is probably the incomparable civil rights activist and humanitarian, Ella Baker.

Happily, I found the song almost immediately, and ended up thinking it was pretty nice.  Maybe you will, too.
Check it out if you feel like it, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Uus--gFrc

And here are the original lyrics for it.

And lastly,
Go to pixdaus.com   When there, type the word, music, into the search space.  Then click on “Search” for 11 pages of purportedly music-related pics.  There are some apparently irrelevant ones, a few throwaways, but many many pleasure-giving others.

and, really really lastly….
http://pixdaus.com/?sort=tag&tag=dance


And lastlylastlyreallylastly…
I love this stuff.  Many of us already knew about the healing quality of music, but for people like the central characters of the stories below, that healing quality borders on miraculous.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/12/26/144152193/singing-therapy-helps-stroke-patients-speak-again

http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/11/15/gabrielle-giffords-healing-music/


Turns out I lie.  So, you can go ahead and sue me.
But, do yourselves a favor and sue me after you watch the wonderful video clips in the Giffords story link, above, and those that I just now found, below, that ended up costing me the price of a new DVD I decided I needed to order.  You know, "for science."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mejPllxcEJI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oswz2UuwFp4&feature=related

[Jill]

Last night, some friends and I watched one of the most special, uplifting and in certain ways, incredible stories I’ve ever seen recounted in a DVD called “Soweto Strings.”  I’d come across it when googling, while trying to locate global offshoots, or, at least, distant relatives of the Venezuelan program, El Sistema, about which I am currently and absolutely enthralled and, (as has undoubtedly become painfully obvious to some of you) rather happily obsessed*.

The classically trained English viola player, Rosemary Nalden, who ended up helping transform these South African township kids into consummate musicians seemed, especially early on in the story, as different from the charismatic Gustavo Dudamel and his infinitely gentle maestro, José Antonio Abreu, as you could imagine (but, as it turned out, only in certain less than the most fundamental of ways).  Still, the results she achieved, the gifts she helped nourish, and the magic she helped the kids to make were no less miraculous.  

The film, the story behind it, was absolutely beautiful. (Don’t know, at this point, how realistic it is to hope so, but if there is any way that my friend and I might be able to stop by the school that was featured in the film when we’re in South Africa next spring, well,  you might guess, we’re very much going to try).

Watch the first two and a half minutes of this to know some of this story’s joy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO9nq5I9s9I


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AUsvD_WY1I

(Not quite 3- minute-long “60 Minutes” introduction)
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=617092n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox

http://www.buskaid.org.za/
http://www.africultures.com/php/index.php?nav=groupe&no=702
http://africlassical.blogspot.com/2009/11/samson-diamond-head-of-buskaid-soweto.html


*As I wrote my sibs yesterday,
“... Since this program ties together KIDS, MUSIC, SOCIAL JUSTICE, HELPING THE POOR and DIFFERENT CULTURES, it's like it was sort of tailor-made just for me.”


EDIT: Not exactly related, but this is a happy morning (afternoon, evening) slideshow I’d once posted and that had gotten lost amongst a bunch of other links.  I watched it early this morning, myself, completely perhaps, for the very first time, and thought it was worth tagging onto this, as long as I was going to be here, anyway.

EDIT #2: Talk about music being the universal language….
Just came across this.  Loved it.  (I know that Maestro Abreu would love it, too).  The joy of this stuff abounds and abounds, and it just keeps abounding.
http://www.classicsa.co.za/site/features/view/buskaid_back_from_columbia_and_ready_to_wow_local_audiences/

http://www.mio.co.za/topic/buskaid-ensemble
http://www.facebook.com/Buskaid?sk=wall

See if you can recognize one of the lovely women in the picture I'm just now adding......


EDIT #3 (and then I think I’m done).
Went off in hopes I could find either pictures or better yet, a video of the coming together of the kids from Soweto with the kids from Cartagena, Colombia, as described in the first of the three links, just above.  No such luck, but….

I did come across this one video, the one that will be the last one of this post, which gives you the really wonderful flavor of the school and the Colombian dancers that the Soweto kids got to go exchange with.  Most people here at KF, of those relatively few who have even gotten to this point, are not going to want to take the time to watch this video, but….  

If you have any feelings for the ARTS, even if you’re a pure dilettante like I am, if you have any love of learning about different cultures, here, that of Colombia,  and if you have a special caring for young people, let me just tell you-- there are some riches to be found if you’ll just take the time to look.

Start at about 1 minute and continue through to about 6 minutes 10 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1393DuaNgQ

[Jill]

I know that touching stories, as with just about everything else, that they're in the “eyes,” the heart, the particular sensitivity of the beholder, the experiencer.  With that caveat out of the way, I’m here to tell you that a movie we watched last night, Thunder Soul, was easily one of the sweetest, one of the most satisfying films I’ve ever seen.   One of those deals where life works out just about exactly how you’d hope and wish it would.


Think about checking it out.  And if you do, try to watch it with/share it with someone you love, someone who hopefully will make all those grownup notquitegurgle sounds that signal pleasure and joy and sheer contentedness.   Try to watch it with someone who will turn to look at you just as you’re turning to look at them when the movie elicits one of those “Isn’t this just DEAR?!”/ “Isn’t this just SWEET?! full-face smiles that burst forth to celebrate the perfection of a moment.  I loved this movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vea-nOKEGFY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdgsNnBWx0M

EDIT: As long as you're here having your musical horizons expanded (I hope), anyway, I thought I'd go ahead and share something with you that really is quite STUPENDOUS!  You'll find it at the youtube clip that follows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEZj0yjfzbc

[Jill]

I’m thinking maybe only a handful of the people now reading posts at KF, especially of the smaller number who even look at posts in the Lounge section here, that perhaps not anymore than 1 or 2 or 3 of you will find this particular post of interest.  Having that belief makes it a little discouraging to want to take the time or make the effort.  

The other side of it, though, is that I know that I, personally, would have been really grateful if someone else had taken the time, if I didn’t already know about this stuff, myself.  So, with that in mind, for you maybe 1 or 2 or 3 Kfs out there…..

Turns out that this coming Saturday there’s going to be a broadcast of a concert taking place in Venezuela that will be shown in movie theaters all over the U.S. and Canada.*   I’ve never gone to anything like this and don’t know that I will even like the Mahler piece they’re playing.  I’m kind of thinking that it doesn’t matter whether I will or not.  This is going to be so much bigger than a particular piece of music.  I’m going to go see it because of the grandeur of it, the ambitiousness of it, the joy of the coming together of so many people making music.  Because of my love of/belief in the hope of El Sistema.

It may well be the closest that I am ever going to get, personally, to watching Gustavo Dudamel conduct** .  From the videos I’ve seen and the book and articles that I’ve read, I know that he wears his love of music in his face, in the way he moves, almost in the way he breathes.  I love how he is so exalted, so elevated and so transported by music.  I sometimes get to feel some of that myself, so it’s a kick for me to see it in someone else, especially in someone who is so engaging, so real and unpretentious, so thoroughly full of life and all of its possibilities.  The fact that I like his dimples and the warmth of his smile doesn’t hurt a bit.  By now it could go without saying that I’m a believer – in him and perhaps even more so, in his mentor, Dr. Abreu, and his beautiful vision.

Even Dudamel is wowed by huge Mahler Eighth rehearsal in Caracas

Caracas diary: Meeting the youngest musicians of El Sistema

* My apologies to any KF living elsewhere who would have liked to have seen this.  Had it been up to me, it would have been broadcast worldwide.

** That said, it’s Africa this year.  Fantasy has it, though, that it might be North and South America, (Venezuela, included), for an El Sistema-related, music-savoring, maybe trying-to-help-support-El Sistema offshoot-trip possibly next year or the year after.  Who knows?  We've already been talking about it and dreaming about it.  Even getting only that far has been pretty fun.

EDIT: Unrelated, except to the extent that the following are still about music, not exactly of the same genre as above.
Employing Music in the Cause of Social Justice (I love the picket line pic).

Homeless Choir  (Good Ol’ San Francisco)
Singers of the Street

Girl Plays 3 Instruments At Once
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE2jy23iG2M&feature=related

One Man Band and His Singing Dog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgdiJpUUhfA&feature=related
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I'm sure it's part of the perversity of my personality that since we now have a 24 hour time limit in which we can modify our posts, having a rule that we didn't use to need makes me feel I want to keep adding and adding and adding to my posts in a way I never, before, had any inclination to.  Not very mature, I'm sure.

EARLY MORNING EDIT: When having a look at NPR, this morning, the title of an article, Professor Hits A Wall And Falls In Love, snagged me sufficiently to make me want to click on it.  Cute story.  The best part for me?  I’d thought when I saw that a professor had hit a wall that the writer was speaking figuratively!

Everyone has a story.  The very neat program, Story Corps, like the now sadly gone Studs Terkel, just happens to be wonderfully adept in uncovering some of the more engaging ones.  Somehow, there’s a kind of music in that.

And while I was at NPR, anyway, I decided to click on its music category just to see if I might find a story perhaps a little more relevant in my last available hours to add to my post.  It was the picture that I’m adding, below, that first caught my attention.  I thought it was absolutely perfect for depicting the way that many of us, at some time in our lives, have responded either to classical music or, for that matter, to many other genres of music that people with us loved and that we, ourselves, at least, at that time in our lives, found tantamount to the sound of someone scratching a chalkboard. When I was in elementary school and junior high school, that picture could have been me for how I responded to my best friend's mom changing the radio station to torture us with classical music!
Why Do People Hate Rap And Opera?

[cjp1973]

I hope after you have seen it Jill you will report back...   Sounds like it will be great.

[Jill]

I got a kick out of the video in this article.  (Click on the pic at the top of it to get it going).  
(Side Comment: I can understand, sort of, some people not being enamoured of the guy's politics.  But I don't know how anybody could remain totally hardened in the face of that irrepressible smile.  I just don't)).
Obama Joins Jagger, B.B. King, To Belt Out Blues


The second article, the one about Alan Lomax’s work being preserved, I came across the other day.  I have long thought that Alan Lomax, and his father before him, had one of the neater jobs in the entire world.  

He almost singlehandedly (actually, they almost “twohandedly”) managed to preserve with their sometimes scratchy recordings and tireless efforts what otherwise would have been the forever irretrievable cultural treasures of some of our most distinctively American folk and blues music.  And that’s not even to talk about the incredible collections that have their names on it of music they collected and virtually saved for the rest of us from other parts of the world.

To get a sense of the breadth and mountain of it, you need only go to Amazon and punch in the search term, “Alan Lomax.”  Or, if you’re lucky, you might still be able to watch the wonderful PBS presentation of a few years ago called, “Lomax, The Song Hunter,” which I was lucky enough to tape and to be able to share.

According to the DVD’s synopsis, found if you click on the title, above, it was Alan Lomax’s dad who discovered Leadbelly (and who, apparently, was the one that got him out of jail) and who also was almost singularly responsible for helping introduce Woody Guthrie* to the American public.  It’s pretty sweet imagining the incredible times that father and son must have had (sometimes) together when puttering down those dusty country roads, excited beyond expression in the anticipation of the next gem they might soon be happening upon.  

There's something so really special and just lovely hospitable about country people, anyway.  And then, to be able to share in their love, their making of music.  And sometimes, even, to be able to play with them.   What incomparable joy.


Folklorist’s Global Jukebox Goes Digital

* And since "we're" on the subject of Woody Guthrie, anyway, here's a really terrific Life Magazine photo collection of him that captures a time in history that feels a million years long time past seen.