Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

After meeting as members of a Finnish youth group and then studying at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy folk music department, these women came together as Värttinä in the 1980s.  While they championed and revived "the unique polyphonic music of the Finno-Ugric people of Karelia, a region of eastern Finland extending into Russia" they also introduced contemporary influences by eschewing folk costumes and turning away from previoius notions that women should only sing a capella.

Their second record, Seleniko (1992) is a revelation presenting the extraordinary voices of strong women singing intricate, but robust folk melodies.  The song, Kyl Vuotti Uutta Kuuta hear it ("The Village Awaits the New Moon"), is a vocal tour de force.  A very rough and partial translation from the Vartinna site goes like this:

The village waited for the new moon.
They said my brother would return
empty handed when he was off hunting.
They were wrong. The eagle caught
the duck.

It begins with a sole female voice singing the melody followed by a second voice repeating it, and then finally by the entire ensemble singing it together.  The effect is of a group of women "burning down the house" as David Byrne used to sing as if the human voice could become a sonic force of nature.

For further information, please visit the Värttinä official site and the Värttinä forum.

WARNING: This mp3 blog exists to spread the wonder and genius that is traditional music. It does NOT exist to enhance your private mp3 collection. So by all means come, listen, enjoy, then follow the links to buy the music. If you come, listen, download, then leave—you’re violating the spirit behind this blog and doing nothing to support the artists featured here. And if you link to my mp3 file at your own site, then you’re stealing my bandwidth and being pretty uncool. So please don’t do it.

tags finnish-music, vartinna, village-awaits-the-new-moon

The Federal Bureau of Prisons announced today that Martha Stewart would begin serving her prison sentence at the Alderson Federal prison camp in Alderson, WV (Martha Stewart Assigned to Prison in West Virginia).

One of the reasons given for the assignment was the need for extra hands to work in the local coal mine. “We thought Martha had had enough of doilies and cake decoration and might like a change of scenery for this next act in her life,” said a prison official. “Our mines are pretty grim looking and we thought she might also help us spruce them up a bit so our prison campers don’t get too depressed working down there. All in all, we’re really looking forward to Martha’s coming. She should make things fun around here.”

tags martha-stewart, west-virginia

If I had to describe S.E. Rogie with a simple, pithy phrase I’d call him the "good time palm wine poet" (more on palm wine music here).  His music contains all the languor, gentleness and bonhommie of an afternoon spent drinking with friends and lovers at a local palm wine bar in his native Sierra Leone.  His guitar playing is simple, unadorned and yet deeply tuneful.  His voice is a warm, deep baritone that can creep into a tenor register.  The songs have a rollicking rhythm that carries the listener along like a gentle cresting wave.  His music is full of love and gracious living.  Just the kind of fellow you’d like to spend a long lazy Sunday afternoon with spinning tunes, telling stories and enjoying what life has to offer.

One of my great regrets in life is that I first discovered Rogie just before his death.  He had already completed a U.S. tour which was, alas, his last one.  But I did have an aural legacy that he left behind in the form of his last recording, the hilariously titled, Dead Men Don’t Smoke Marijuana.  It is a totally lovely, captivating record which provides a terrific introduction to his music.  Listen here to African Gospel

WARNING: This mp3 blog exists to spread the wonder and genius that is traditional music. It does NOT exist to enhance your private mp3 collection. So by all means come, listen, enjoy, then follow the links to buy the music. If you come, listen, download, then leave—you’re violating the spirit behind this blog and doing nothing to support the artists featured here. And if you link to my mp3 file at your own site, then you’re stealing my bandwidth and being pretty uncool. So please don’t do it.

Le Pichet is simply put, the best French bistro in Seattle. Yes, I know it has stiff competition from Cafe Campagne and others. But James Drohman (formerly of Campagne) and Joanne Herron have created a masterful culinary establishment and we here in Seattle have the opportunity to partake of some of the finest bistro cooking you’ll find north of San Francisco.

Besides the extraordinary food, I just love the tone and atmosphere of the place. It’s calm and cozy, never rushed. The wait staff always treats you with good cheer. The only “problem” is that at 18 seats or so, it’s sometimes hard to get in. But now they’re open for lunch so you have a few extra opportunities to get in you didn’t have before.

The crying shame is that Seattle Zagat rates this place at a 23 I think. What an outrage! In my opinion, if you want to rate Rover’s at 27 or 28, Le Pichet shouldn’t be very far behind. Yes, of course the two restaurants are attempting to do different versions of French food. But Le Pichet IS at a similar level in its particular category.

At our last meal, we enjoyed walnut crusted calf’s liver on bed of lentils, hangar steak on bed of cauliflower doused in tomato goat cheese sauce and almond-cherry ice cream. It was all simply heavenly.

A pretty good review of Le Pichet can be found at Gayot.com and you may read Nancy Leson’s excellent review here. The images are from the same Pacific NW Magazine article.

Le Pichet
1933 First Avenue
Seattle
256-1499

Gilberto Gil calls the songs on O Sol de Oslo (1998), ‘backlander music.” It is an interesting term. We’re used to thinking in terms of the back country as being some remote place where nothing much happens. The big cities are where everything important is supposed to happen. Here is where styles are defined and evaluated. Here’s where what’s hot and what’s not is decided. Every other place is in the margins.

Well, Gil turns that assumption on its head. He posits that ALL of Brazil’s great indigenous music comes from the back country. Without it, everything else remaining in Brazilian music would be a stale pop derivative. That’s why he’s devoted his life to promoting the music of Brazil’s poor, working class and ethnic minorities.

Allmusic.com describes Tata Engenho Novo (hear) as a “Northeastern coco.” It is a furiously fast vocal track which races breathlessly from start to finish. Paula Maya, KBCS’ Brazilian music DJ, called it a collaboration in the Bahian native people’s musical style. When you listen to it, you’ll be in for a fun vocal romp!

Here is another excellent review of O Sol de Oslo.

WARNING: This mp3 blog exists to spread the wonder and genius that is traditional music. It does NOT exist to enhance your private mp3 collection. So by all means come, listen, enjoy, then follow the links to buy the music. If you come, listen, download, then leave—you’re violating the spirit behind this blog and doing nothing to support the artists featured here. And if you link to my mp3 file at your own site, then you’re stealing my bandwidth and being pretty uncool. So please don’t do it.

One of my blog categories is Folk & World Music. I've decided to turn it into an mp3 blog. In order to promote awareness of this project, I registered my blog feed with mp3blogs.org, an aggregator devoted to this field. But the problem was that I was now feeding every single post I created to mp3blogs.org and not just the ones devoted to music. With Laura's help from Six Apart, I created a category-specific feed that will only give mp3blogs.org my music posts. Here's how you do it: First, you need a Typepad Pro account allowing you to create advanced templates. Then, create a new index template dedicated to the category (you can also do ...

Kepa Junkera (credit: Attambur.com) Kepa Junkera is, simply put, one of the the best, if not THE best reed players in the world. He hails from Basque country and is the master of the diatonic accordion known as a trikitixa or "bellows from Hell." Kepa has such a deft, athletic and riotous touch on the keyboard that he turns an otherwise devilish instrument into a heavenly one. When he was a very young boy he first took to the trikitixa and mastered it while most other children are stumbling through learning proper fingerings. Still at a ...

Sue Neiderer (credit: Dith Pran/NYT)Sue Niederer is just another Jewish mother in suburban New Jersey. But that's where she parts company with all the rest. You see, her son, Seth Dvorin, 24, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in February. Sue never supported the war and didn't want Seth to go. But he felt duty bound to honor the commitments he made not only to the Army, but to his comrades. Chris Hedges has written a compelling acount of the anger, grief and surprising political voice of Sue Niederer in Mourning the Warrior, and Questioning the ...

I know the first thing you're gonna ask: "What, are you a glutton for punishment??" Why do you go around collecting these clunkers? I have to admit I love (in a very perverse way) coming across the worst journalism about the blogging phenomenon. For me, it's something akin to that Time or Newsweek reporter in the Bob Dylan Don't Look Back documentary who asks such incredibly inane and offensive questions of Dylan and ends up being savaged for his trouble. You don't exactly relish Dylan's cruelty, but you do relish the fellow getting his comeuppance for being such a square. While much journalism about blogging is becoming more sophisticated and useful, there is still so much crap out there. ...

"I promise we'll call the new health planthe 'John Paul Special,' so help me God!" The Bush administration has broken new ground in its "faith-based" initiative, this time by offering federal employees a Catholic health plan that specifically excludes payment for contraceptives, abortion, sterilization and artificial insemination. --from Federal Employee Health Plans Include One With Catholic Tenets Special to the New York Times September 25, 2004 (Yom Kippur) WASHINGTON--After Jewish groups raised a flood of protest against the "Catholic" health care plan offered to federal employees, the Director of Faith Based Initiatives announced: ...