July 18, 2013 This week’s Rhythm Planet features a wide variety of new music from around the world in many different styles. We feature some Brazilian classics from the band Azymuth and French bossa novista Nicola Conte’s new collection Viagem 5, some cool vibes to beat the heat with Joe Locke and Milt Jackson; we debut new albums […]
ACEI BLOG - ARTS
America’s Jazz Ambassadors
May 16, 2013 During the cold war in the 1950s and 60s, when America was worried about Sputnik, ICBMs, and building bomb shelters, there was a quiet but determined cultural diplomacy going on behind the Iron Curtain. The U.S. State Department around the mid-1950s started sending American jazz musicians into Russia, newly-independent African nations (whom […]
Mali: A country under siege; its music silenced.
January 18, 2013 Without music, life would be a mistake. ~-Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols Why They Hate Music? When the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran in 1979, he said the following: “Music is no different than opium. Music affects the human mind in a way that makes people think of nothing but music […]
Reflection, Renewal, and Red Underwear
December 20, 2012 At the close of this year—at least in the Gregorian calendar— which is celebrated in Europe and in the Americas, I find myself reflecting on what entering a New Year means to people around the world. As I am at the end of my first year living abroad, the differences and similarities […]
OUR RICH ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE
August 16, 2012 The other night I read–well, actually just perused—Malinowski’s Kiriwina: Fieldwork Photography 1915-1918–an amazing book about the Polish-born father of modern cultural anthropology’s stay in Papua and the Trobiand Islands. He went to New Guinea and studied the inhabitants there with unprecedented rigor. I also listened to an Argentine pianist named Bruno Leonardo […]
Useless Literary Terms Come Alive
May 17 2012 Synedoche: figure of speech wherein part represents whole, e.g. “crown” stands for “king” or “queen”. Objective Correlative: T.S. Eliot’s literary device, akin to metaphor, where an object or thing represents an emotion or feeling. How do I know such obscure things? Rather than following my dad’s advice to pursue a more practical […]
Repetition Plus Expression Equals Satisfaction
May 10 2012 On a week bookended by a beginning guitar class at McCabe’s Guitar Shop and a painting retreat in Encino, I was buffeted by a key challenge of the reinventing Boomer. The guitar classes were held in a room that does triple duty as concert hall, classroom, and showroom. All manner of stringed […]
George Whitman, Shakespeare & Co., and what I learned from living in Paris
December 29, 2011 George Whitman died recently at the ripe old age of 98. He took over the famous Left Bank bookstore, Shakespeare & Co., after the original owner, Sylvia Beach, left it at the onset of World War II. She ran it as a publishing company that famously published James Joyce’s revolutionary novel […]
Education and the Arts: A Cultural Crossroads
November 17, 2011 Everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention. –Ancient Buddhist Proverb What does it feel like when your world is out of balance, off kilter, or out of control? Koyaanisqatsi, the Hopi word meaning- A life out of balance -is born of the Native American understanding that the world and all living things […]