July 10th, 2014 Empathy: the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions: the ability to share someone else’s feelings. Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Everyday we wake up to news of shootings in schools, children and teens bullied by their peers, gang violence, violent attacks against women, homosexuals, immigrant-bashing, brutalities inflicted on humans […]
ACEI BLOG - CREATIVITY
RIP: Maya Angelou
June 26th, 2014 Last month we lost the great Maya Angelou. Our guest blogger, Tom Schnabel, had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Angelou in 1995 when he hosted the radio show Cafe LA at KCRW, the public station housed at Santa Monica College. We’d like to share Tom’s recent blog about having Dr. Angelou as […]
IRAN: Happiness, Stealthy Freedom, and Faces of Iran on FB
June 12th, 2014 Happiness is… If you’ve been following the news from Iran recently, you must have heard the one about the group of six young women and men who posted a clip of themselves happily dancing to Pharrell Williams’ hit song “Happy!” As quickly as their video had gone viral, Iran’s morality police had […]
Russian Rock: Then and Now
May 23rd, 2014 I was Music Director of KCRW and host of Morning Becomes Eclectic during the 1980s and we did regular programs featuring the latest in Soviet-era Russian pop and rock music. Back then, the Cold War was alive and well, with Reagan and Brezhnev regularly rattling their swords. Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny once […]
Easter Island’s Only Concert Pianist
April 24th, 2014 Mahani Teave: Easter Island’s only classical pianist I recently saw a BBC feature by a Santiago-based correspondent on a young woman named Mahani Teave who is Easter Island’s only classical pianist. These are the type of stories I find truly inspiring. When you think of this remote and isolated South Pacific island, […]
World Music Teaches You Everything
April 3rd, 2014 Music tells the stories of our world I majored in Humanities as an undergraduate because it was broad-based and I could take many courses, from California Geography to Entomology to history, philosophy, languages and literature. Later, I took an MA in Comparative Literature for similar reasons: I could read the great writers […]
Celebrating Spring
March 13th, 2014 With nervous pleasure, The tulips are receiving A spring rain at dusk ––Richard Wright Cultures around the world celebrate spring as a time of renewal, healing, and rebirth, moving from the darkness of winter to the much-anticipated light of spring. Whatever form of celebration this takes, it is a time of new […]
Love and Romance: Our 3 Favorites in Music, Literature, Art and Film
February 13th, 2014 Last year for Valentine’s Day we posted a blog on how different cultures and countries celebrate the day. This year, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ve invited three of my friends and contributors to ACEI’s AcademicExchange blog to chime in and share their most favorite romantic songs/musical compositions, literary creations, film and […]
Calypso Gets Muzzled in Guyana
January 16th, 2014 Q: Why is it that music always gets banned in totalitarian regimes? A: Because music is a human expression of freedom. Q: Why did the Vatican try to suppress music that had any rhythm to it? A: Because rhythm is dangerous and might make people want to get down, shake some booty, even fornicate. In Germany […]
Nelson Mandela, South African Music and the Struggle Against Apartheid
December 26th, 2013 On December 5, 2013, Nelson Mandela, a beloved hero, a giant of history and one of the greatest visionary leaders of our time who fought to protect and promote human rights, passed away. As we come to the end of 2013, we would like to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela by sharing […]