2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,400 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

To not be divided or to not be defeated: That is the question, people.

At the Occupy Wall Street demonstration on Wednesday, October 5, 2011, I was heartened by the incredibly large number of young people out in the streets taking part in their democratic rights in ways that their textbooks, teachers and parents have been mostly silent about. They were marching for their rights…  doing something that until now was only being modeled by a fringe group of right wing bullies called the tea party. In so doing, they are creating for themselves a culture of participation that has been so desperately lacking in America ever since the sold out greed of the Me generation of politics: Ronald Reagan and his ilk.

Because of this gap in people’s movement, there is a need for us all to reconnect on a cultural level. For older people to drop their elitist laziness (I’ve been there, done that… I was out on the street before they were born…) and to get back in the street (because obviously, we weren’t spectacularly successful the first time around). Even more important is for young people to learn about the experiences of our older generation, the success, and especially the ways we went wrong… because they are the ones that must take us forward from here. And there were many mistakes: the surrender to drugs which flooded our movement in a fairly orchestrated way, the flirtation with divisive bolshevik ideologies which sought to create change by destroying America and sending people through even more misery in order to wake them up – the heartless Stalinist approach.

And along the way, they will enjoy the knowledge that they are part of a historical movement that transcends generations, languages, cultures and societies. That’s why I was so upset when I heard a young woman chanting on Wednesday:

The people!

United!

Will never be divided!

It was like fingernails on the blackboard. I corrected her, by shouting The People! United! Will never be DEFEATED! Then when I saw the embarrassment on her face, I felt conflicted, wondering if it was really necessary to correct people when they are expressing themselves… Was I just being a curmudgeonly old school teacher.

So I reflected on it. And came up with some reasons why I stand by my action. First of all, never being defeated is more important than never being divided. There may be issues that divide us, things that we have to work out, and that is fine. But we should be ready to put that all aside when our existence and the strength of our movement is in danger. Divide if you must, people, but please, never be defeated!

And also, it is advisable to remember our history, something that my generation could have done much better. This slogan sounds nice with the “divided” ending because then it rhymes. The original doesn’t rhyme because the original is a translation from the Spanish, which does rhyme:

El Pueblo!

Unido!

Jamás será vencido!

And it comes from the Allende Revolution in Chile, the progressive movement that managed to gain control of the government of that country, only to see it all crushed under the CIA backed coup d’etat of General Pinochet. The wikipedia entry on this slogan goes as far back as a song by the group Quilapayún, a Chilean folk lore group closely associated with the Allende movement. Let’s not forget Chile, a country which has suffered from some of the worst excesses of U.S. interventionism in Latin America in recent decades. They are way beyond that history, and so are we, thank God, but it is important to know that although the present protest, no matter where or when, may be suppressed temporarily, we will always be remembered and our voices will ring out across the years, from land to land. El Pueblo!

Bayonne Bridge: Sydney it ain’t, but it’s a beautiful span anyway

view from St. George, Staten Island. Most people don't get any closer than this.

The Bayonne Bridge has been a beautiful sight on the New York harbor horizon since 1931. And for me, it has remained on the horizon – far away, as the urge to travel between the  residential squalor of Port Richmond in Staten Island to the industrial wreckage at the tip of the Bayonne peninsula in New Jersey has never been high on my list of things to do. But a recent article about the bridge has stoked my interest enough to convince me to get up close and take a walk across the span.

When the bridge opened 80 years ago, arching gracefully over the watery passage known as the Kill Van Kull, it was the longest steel arch bridge in the world. It is still the fourth longest. If the parabola design looks familiar it is probably because of its far more famous cousin, the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia (in fact, the same golden scissors were used to cut the ribbon on both bridges). Although its span is a few feet longer than that Australian bridge, it seems much lighter, without the massive masonry pylon towers. But an even greater difference is the destiny of each bridge in its city’s life. The Sydney Harbour Bridge is centrally located, a major artery and a major conduit for the economy of that city. It is a symbol of the city and valued enough to be well maintained and kept in the public spotlight. The Bayonne Bridge, on the other hand, is almost unknown to most New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. Connecting two perennially depressed areas, it has never really reached its potential (a second roadway, though planned, was never deemed necessary) and it has slipped into the shadows, rusting away at the periphery of New York Harbor. Most people only know it as a nameless silhouette on the

Mariners Harbor, the neighborhood at the Staten Island approach to the bridge.

horizon as they ride across the harbor on the Staten Island Ferry. Even commuters between Staten Island and New Jersey are far more likely to use the other two bridges, the Goethals and the Outerbridge Crossing.

However, the bridge’s obscurity may finally come to an end, as the Port Authority now plans to raise the roadway of the Bayonne Bridge in order to allow container traffic to reach Newark Bay from the harbor.  It is considering plans to include in the new roadway an extension of the Huson-Bergen Light Rail line into Staten Island, beyond its present terminus in Downtown Bayonne. Let’s hope they also keep the walkway, which gives such unique views of harbor traffic westward between Staten Island’s North Shore and New Jersey.

 

 

Some more pics taken on the bridge:

Way in the background is the Newark Bay Bridge, another steel arch bridge.

The steel arch. Longer than the Sydney bridge by a few feet.

A barge in Newark Bay

Suicide prevention sign on the walkway. Every year someone tragically jumps into the dank Kill Van Kull.

Overgrown station of the abandoned North Shore rail line on Staten Island.

A Book Festival Grows Fast in Brooklyn

Once again the cultural expansion in Brooklyn was on full display this weekend, this time at the Brooklyn Book Festival. There had been a surprising number of side events at bookstores

BBF at Brooklyn Borough Hall

and beer gardens throughout the borough in the three days leading up, (for instance, the Vin Fiz readings posted about below) but I was still unprepared for the extent and scope of the main event itself on Sunday. It was enormous, with vendor booths and stands stretching throughout the lanes of Cadman Plaza in front of Borough Hall. At each hour from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. there were readings and panel discussions going on at eight different halls, including the courtroom in Borough Hall, the main hall of the Brooklyn Historical Society and the auditorium at St. Francis College. There were a couple of outdoor stages and even the expanses of the beautiful St. Ann’s Church were pressed into service.

There at St. Ann hundreds of people filled the pews under the gothic ceiling to hear an interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri. It was an astounding sight.

Sheri Holman, Terry McMillan, Nina Revoyr and Bernice McFadden

Star power was certainly on display elsewhere at the festival. Diva power is not one of my favorite spectacles, so I decided to skip Paul Auster, but I did manage to get my nose full of egomania anyway, from some more satisfying providers. Terry McMillan, the author of Waiting to Exhale, was the quintessential diva hamming it up for her adoring fans during her panel, making faces as her fellow panelists read, ostensibly in support of the text, but in the end just making sure that all eyes remained on her. I don’t know much about stagecraft, but I am sure that this is a cardinal sin of ensemble acting. When McMillan read, however, all was forgiven, as her writing is spot-on and her presentation skills were enthralling. She brought the text, from a work in progress, to life with the first syllable. And what a text: the inner voice of a housewife struggling to come to terms with a flawed marriage was powerful and haunting. Another divo who was not above antics to draw attention was Arthur Phillips, who whooped it up at the intro for another writer, again to make sure all eyes were on his chiseled good looks and stubble whiskers which had been perfectly aged to outline his dimples and square, manly jaw. He was the author a few years back, of the gimmicky titled Prague (the novel was about Budapest). And again, it was a case of drop-dead fantastic writing and championship presentation – in this case an autobiographical passage about a young woman throwing herself at his sexy bad self. The writing was tour-de-force brilliant and could even whet the appetite to read more

Kevin Wilson, Jessica Hagedorn and Arthur Phillips

about him in The Tragedy of Arthur. This was a great panel, with Kevin Wilson reading from The Family Fang about a flim-flam family in Atlanta. I instantly liked him when I saw that he was wearing a tie that I own (owned?) that I must have bought for a  dollar about thirty years ago. His reading voice was mellifluous proving how beautifully fitting a Southern voice can be for a thoughtful text. Jessica Hagedorn read from Toxicology about a quirky, aging couple in the West Village. All three were worthy of far more attention than the short hour they had to share.

There were other big draws with some of them, like Edmund White and Bernice McFadden, in the capacity of moderators as well as panelists. There were writers to meet, too. 290 different writers were listed in the program as signing books during the day at various locations! They ranged from the sublime (Joyce Carol Oates at St. Francis) to the slime (Senator Joe Lieberman at Borough Hall).

Amintava Kumar

There were ideas that inspired. I attended the discussion about time travel with Samantha Hunt, author of The Invention of Everything Else, historical fiction centering on Nikola Tesla, and with Diana Galbadon. Galbadon, another big draw at the festival, is the author of the NY Times #1 bestselling series of Outlander novels. With her insight and ironic sense of humor she showed why people are willing to plod through thousands of pages of romance and then beg for more. Unfortunately,  her reading from her latest work showed just how she arrives at thousands of pages – in the excerpt, which consisted of a couple of thousand words, her hero does nothing but look around in one spot of a dark tunnel he finds himself stuck in. I also attended a panel about unreliable subjects in non-fiction writing with a very charming Amintava Kumar (A Foreigner Carries in the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Bomb) and a confused discussion about the guidance that religious traditions can give to a spiritual writer, with Michael Mohommad Knight, a follower of the Nation of Islam (the “Black Muslims”), who tried, I think quite unsuccessfully, to explain why he (who is white) believes that the white man is the devil. Other, only slightly less perplexing apologias were given by Darcy Steinke and Peter Bebergal who spoke about the dilemmas that they faced, tapping into traditions for inspiration, but at the same time attempting to maintain their conceptual autonomy.

The festival was ample proof of how much the cultural life of New York City needed to expand beyond the confines of Manhattan island where the concentration of power and wealth leads each culture event to eventually wall up into a rarefied exercise in elitism. Just compare this totally free festival with the New Yorker Festival where audience tickets range from $30 to $75 and well beyond. The open, free wheeling atmosphere of Brooklyn provides a home where a more daringly innovative approach to the arts can thrive. Marty Markowitz, the indefatigable borough president, who usually hits the mark with his unabashed boosterism (usually – I hate the fuhgeddaboutit sign on the Belt Parkway) says in his short welcoming lines in the official program that this festival is “the most hip, smart and diverse book festival in the Northeast – not to mention the biggest!” You got it, Marty!

The ceiling at St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church

Vin Fiz Centennial: the grape soda that flew

100 years ago today Cal Rodgers took off in his Wright Brothers plane from Brooklyn on his way to Los Angeles, in an attempt to win the $50,000 prize offered by William Randolph Hearst for the first air journey from coast to coast in less than 30 days. Rodgers’ flight was sponsored by the Armour Meat Company and his plane was named after the new soft drink they were peddling – the Vin Fiz.

The 1912 advertising image

At the oddest literary reading I ever attended (or was  that the Paris metro reading?) excerpts from E. P. Stein’s Flight of the Vin Fiz  and Eileen F. Lebow’s Cal Rodgers and the Vin Fizwere presented in the little exhibition room at Hangar B of Floyd Bennett Field, near where the Vin Fiz took off. That helped me to see the Vin Fiz as a real aircraft, and not as I imagined it: some kind of grape soda. Alas, there was no Vin Fiz served at the event, since the soft drink never really

an overgrown runway at Floyd Bennett Field

took off (see testimonials below). The other Vin Fiz did take off, but it didn’t quite make it to Los Angeles in 30 days… more like 49, having crashed and sputtered several times along the way.

 

Afterwards, the attendees were allowed to wander around in the hangar to puzzle over the airplane carcasses in various stages of recomposition there. It is a workshop for the reconstruction of historical aircraft, and there were some marvelous examples there. Afterwards, my friend and I wandered around the disused airport that has sat idle along Flatbush Avenue for decades. It was a beautiful day and we watched as enormous airbuses and boeings lumbered low in the sky as they approached JFK airport just a bit to the east. We also took some time

One of the many planes being restored

to watch the model airplane enthusiasts fly their own tiny aircraft on one weedy runway. It was an interesting day to reflect on the caprices of fate: the beverage that gains immortality as an aircraft, the prize that was never won, the world war two bombers and troop transports that retire to lives as tinker toys and the airfield that still lives, but only vicariously. I have to appreciate history’s ironic sense of humor. It leaves me with one burning question. What did Vin Fiz taste like?

 

With the wonders of the internet I was able to find out not only where it can be found today (in New Hampshire and Ohio!) and also an idea of its taste, judging from the following testimonials from 1911:

“Tastes like a cross between river water (sludge) and horse slop.”

“You have to sneak up on it to get it down.”

“It has a laxative effect.”

 

Doesn’t that make you just want to go out and get some? You can! Go to the Vin Fiz website to find out where.

 

 

 

Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino brings the bite of the tarantula to Alphabet City.

CGS, a group, from Southern Italy performs an astoundingly lively and living folk music that has existed undisturbed and undiscovered right in the middle of the Mediterranean for centuries. It is wonderful to hear it played so authentically in New York, albeit at Drom, a small club on Avenue A in Alphabet City.

Folk Music of Southern Italy

When people think of Southern Italian music, they generally conjure up Neapolitan music, which being the product of a large city, has a long history of commercialization and interaction with other musics. (see my article about Passione below). World music lovers might be familiar with other folk styles from the Neapolitan region, Campagna, through the efforts of La Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare, but the tarantella of the rural Salentino, with its characteristic pizzica style, a frenetic dance music which has been said to cure the bite of the tarantula, has remained in obscurity, ever in danger of extinction through emigration and indifference.

That would be a tremendous pity. This music has a historic quality that is unmatched elsewhere in Italy. The music of La Nuova Compagnia is closely related, but it is from a far more cosmopolitan and urban environment around Southern Italy’s main city and seaport. It reflects a society that thrives on cultural cross-fertilization and academic musical training. When you listen to the albums of NCCP you can hear the influences of other Mediterranean cultures, the melodies that gave inspiration to operatic composers from Pergolesi to Rossini and singing styles that grudgingly acknowledge the dictates of bel canto conservatories. In the music of the Salento, (in Puglia, the heel of the Souther Italian boot) in contrast, you hear the  sounds as they have existed for centuries in all their rustic glory. Right there, at very nearly the geographical center of the Mediterranean, the Salento culture has remained strong, like a little land in the permanent eye of the storm that has been the history of this sea over the centuries.

Even with the modern embellishments of violin and popular melodies that CGS brings to their music, there is nothing that I can point to as a close cousin to this sound. Sure, I can hear a wisp of fado in the ballads and clearly hear the Balkans resonating in the hollow-fifth male harmonies that imitate the sound of the bagpipes, and in the raw female voices, but the pizzica, with its frenetic drumming and bagpipe drone and its hypnotic melodies is something that can only be related to musics of a renaissance era past. Those simple melodies, often based on a triad of notes ascending and descending over and over again can be tiresome in some the songs, giving the tarantella a ninna-nanna lullaby quality, but in the pizzica they reveal their power: it is their very simplicity that gives the music its trance inducing dynamic. It is a music that comes alive in performance.

Alessandra Belloni performs

The Heritage Musical Groups

The post 1968 period brought an ethnic reawakening in Western societies as part of a broader urge for cultural exploration. The NCCP was formed in 1970 and the CGS later in the decade, as part of a new awareness of the value of the tarantella. In 1980 the formation of a New York group, the Giullari di Piazza brought the Southern Italian folk music to American audiences. The founder of that group, Alessandra Belloni, has dedicated herself to this music, laboring to bring this music to light from under a mountain of misconceptions and an active indifference from the Italian American community, who instead of championing the music of our people, generally turn up their noses and plug their ears at the very mention of the word “tarantella.” It is a word that conjures images of obligatory wedding dances on a level with the Hokey-Pokey and walking like an Egyptian. Belloni made a guest appearance with Canzoniere at Drom last night, and she made a spectacular impression with her passionate singing and dancing (to the point of writhing on the floor in pizzica passion). Although much older in years, she held her own with this group of virtuosi, blending perfectly with their incessant idiophones and string drums, blaring bagpipe, feverish violin and the smoking fisarmonica (can you imagine hot licks on an accordion? I couldn’t until last night).

An Audience for Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino

During the past decade, with the establishment of the annual tarantella festival in the Salento, La Notte della Taranta, (see below) the CSG has finally begun to gain recognition outside of its small region. Certainly there is a wider audience for this music. Anyone interested in world music would be enthralled by this sound, it is unique and vibrant and expressly danceable, a fact that was attested to by the unusually large number of people who ended up jumping around on the dancefloor in front of the musicians. If you get a chance to get to Casa Italiana at NYU on October 3rd, prepare to be enchanted, and bring a few extra dollars to buy one of their CDs.

Some Links:

Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino website

Alessandra Belloni, Giullari di Piazza

La Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare

Casa Italiana at NYU events

La Notte della Taranta

The venue: Drom

My articles:

my ezine article about Il Sibilo Lungo della Taranta

re: Passione, musica napoletana