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Category Archives: Music and the Arts
Viva la Vuvuzela
If you haven’t gotten enough of the Vuvuzela during the World Cup, YouTube is helpfully providing a special Vuvuzela button on selected videos (you can only hope that your video will be selected). Just click on the soccer ball icon and the haunting refrain of the Vuvuzela will be inserted into the audio track. In [...]
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El Sistema Comes to the U.S.
My mother, who lives in Los Angeles, has been telling me about the new, young conductor of the LA Philharmonic and his involvement in music education for disadvantaged kids but it didn’t really sink in until I watched some YouTube videos (see below) of performances by the youth symphony that he directs in his native [...]
Posted in Music and the Arts Tagged Gustavo Dudame, Jose Antonio Abreu, music, sistema, video 6 Comments
Hard Times Come Again No More
This Thanksgiving day feels a bit melancholy to me. We’re in a time of radical change and the stresses and strains are being felt all over. This song, by Stephen Foster, is from hard times of another era (the great depression of 1850), yet speaks eloquently of bringing empathy to people of all circumstances. That [...]
A Cautionary Tale
Joe Pug told this story onstage at the fall Strawberry Music Festival, about a conversation he had not long ago with Steve Earle. Seems Joe was strolling around backstage with an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear. Steve (pointing at cigarette): You better quit those things if you want to last 20 or 30 years [...]
Posted in Music and the Arts Tagged cigarette, heroin, Joe Pug, scorpion, Steve Earle, Strawberry Leave a comment
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings: American Originals