The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

April 17, 2008


Two works with Lacanian basics, online work notice, gig announcement


http://www.alansondheim.org/manimal.mp4
http://www.alansondheim.org/mold.mp4


Please note I will send out only once a week; at this point I don't think
anyone's looking or reading these texts/media files; at once a week maybe
someone will look at something. And if not it wastes a lot less of your
time on delete. You can always check www.alansondheim.org for updates. I
recognize I'm writing to myself here. Come to the gig below. - Alan, bad
health. For God's sakes help support Tom Clark if you can.


Gig announcement:


Fire Museum Records presents:

The Fire Museum Records/Majmua Music Label Showcase!

Balcony @ The Trocadero
1003 Arch Street, Philadelphia
Monday, April 21st 10PM
Free


Featuring:

Alan Sondheim

Dora Bleu

George Korein

Eric Carbonara

Aditi Tahiti



Fire Museum Records proudly presents the Fire Museum Records/Majmua
Music label showcase. The evening begins with two artists whom have
releases slated for release on Majmua Music. First up, vocalist &
harmonium player Aditi Tahiti (joined this evening by Nasrudra on
saxophone) sets the scene, performing music influenced by her
upcoming release The Time Canvas (to be released later this year) and
more. Recently relocated to New York, this will be Aditi's first
performance in Philadelphia.

Up next, Philadelphia's own Eric Carbonara has been winning rave
reviews for his solo acoustic guitar music as heard on Exodus
Bulldornadius (Locust Music). Carbonara's playing draws on the rich
musical styles from Andalusian Roma-Flamenco to Hindustani & North
African folk to form a kind of exalted pidgin style of playing that
covers a wide emotional terrain from meditative calm to restless
unease. Eric is also a member of the Psychedelic rock group Soft
People; his release on Majmua Music is slated for later this year.

George Korein has developed a reputation in the Philadelphia musical
underground for being a true musical iconoclast. A frequent
collaborator with Charles Cohen, Alex Nagle, Jesse Krakow and many
others, George also produced and provided electronics on Helena
Espvall's (of Espers) solo cd Nimis & Arx. Moving from no-wave moods
to textured noise works to improvisation and catchy pop moments
(sometimes in the course of the same song), we can't guarantee that
George's set will resemble at all the sounds to be found on Another
Corpse, which is the debut release on Majmua Music.

Hailing from Montreal, Dora Bleu is the latest group led by Dorothy
Geller, previously of From Quagmire (VHF Records) and Laconic Chamber
(Camera Obscura). Her music can be considered "of folk" while not
referencing traditional folk forms, anchored by a very explicative
voice and guitar playing with an accompaniment that is alternatively
unified song form or seemingly improvised depending on what is
required in the moment. For this tour Dorothy is working with some of
the brightest lights in the Montreal experimental music scene: Sam
Shalabi (Shalabi Effect, etc) on electric guitar, Alex St. Onge (Et
Sans, etc) on upright bass, and Gordon Allen on trumpet. The (Axa
Hour of) Dora Bleu release Clones of Eros is available on Fire Museum
Records.

Alan Sondheim is perhaps best known in musical circles for his pair
of recordings on the legendary ESP Disk label, but his first
recording, The Songs was released on Riverboat Records in 1967 (and
has been reissued on Fire Museum Records). The multi instrumentalist
returned with his first proper release of new recordings in almost 20
years with the release of Skin/n in 2006 on Fire Museum Records. This
recording of solo guitar and alpine zither pieces was highly
acclaimed, earning the following accolade from The Wire Magazine:
"(T)he music evokes an ethnographic hybrid of countless string
instrument traditions, from koto to bluegrass, vigorously wiping past
idiomatic technique as it does so. As a rough equivalent, you'd do
equally well to imagine either David Fair or Derek Bailey punking out
in imitation of Robbie Basho. The results are so compellingly
idiosyncratic that any number of newly bearded Americans and brazen
improv festival tryhards pale as extremely corny in compa
  rison." Appearing in Philadelphia for the first time, this year will
also see the release of "Boojum", a recording of experimental lounge
music.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:33:53 -0700
From: amy king <amyhappens@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU>
To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject: Aime Cesaire, voice of French Black pride, dies

Thu 17 Apr 2008, 13:18 GMT
By Astrid Wendlandt

PARIS (Reuters) - French Caribbean poet Aime Cesaire,founding father of the "negritude" movement that celebrated blackconsciousness, died in his native Martinique, France'sMinistry of Culture said on Thursday.

Cesaire, 94, who was mayor of the island's main city Fort-de-France for morethan half a century, was admitted to hospital last week suffering from heartand other problems.

His writings offered insight into how France imposedits culture on its citizens of different origins in the early part of the 20thCentury.

The theme still resonates in French politics today, as thecountry continues to struggle to integrate many of its residents of African andNorth African origin.

In 2005, Cesaire refused to meet then French InteriorMinister Nicolas Sarkozy (now French president) over concerns that Sarkozy'sconservative UMP party had pushed for a law which proposed to recognise thepositive legacy of French colonial rule. The law was eventually repealed.

Cesaire and African intellectual Leopold Senghor -- laterpresident of Senegal-- founded "The Black Student" in 1934, a journal that encouragedpeople to develop black identity.

ANTI-COLONIAL VOICE IN THE 1960s

The Caribbean writer rose to fame with his "Notebook ofa Return to the Native Land", written inthe late 1930s, in which he says "my negritude is neither tower norcathedral, it plunges into the red flesh of the soil."

His poems expressed the degradation of black people in the Caribbean and describe the rediscovery of an Africansense of self. In his "Discourse on Colonialism", first published in1950, Cesaire compared the relationship between the coloniser and colonisedwith the Nazis and their victims.

He was a mentor to fellow Martinican author Frantz Fanon,and their anti-colonial writings were a major influence in the headyintellectual climate of the 1960s and 1970s in France.

The negritude movement was a counterpart to the Black Pridemovement in the United States,though it has been criticised for not being radical enough.

Cesaire was also a friend of the French surrealist poetAndre Breton who had encouraged him to become a major voice of Surrealism.

Cesaire's anti-colonial rhetoric did not prevent him from havinga long-lasting political career.

After becoming mayor of Fort-de-France in 1945 at the age of 32, hewas elected deputy of parliament a year later, a post he held until the early1990s.

A graduate of the prestigious French Ecole NormaleSuperieure -- unusual for a black Martinican in the 1930s -- he remained amember of the French communist party until the Soviet Hungarian repression of1956.

Cesaire was born in 1913 in the small town of Basse-Pointe in Martinique.He married Suzanne Roussi in 1937, a gifted writer in her own right, with whomhe had six children.

http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN745797.html

_______



http://www.amyking.org






       ____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better friend, newshound, and
know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile.  Try it now.  http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

Generated by Mnemosyne 0.12.