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Posts Tagged ‘culture’

Art for Art’s Sake

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Photo: Getty Images

I have been as keen as anyone to talk about the arts in terms of their economic contributions to communities. (You have to defend the arts in the language people understand.) But in the end, a focus on economic return is limiting. There are other values on the spectrum from “art for art’s sake” to “art for the economy’s sake.”

How about art for wonder’s sake, joy’s sake, self-expression’s sake, mystery’s sake — for the sake of just seeing what comes out and where it leads?

Over in Scotland, Tiffany Jenkins of The Scotsman is having a fit about Maria Miller, the Scottish Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Sport?!), who expressed her own take on the arts in a recent speech.

Says Jenkins, “The speech began with the right noises – ‘culture educates, entertains and it enriches’ – but quickly took a wrong turn, concentrating on what culture can ‘deliver,’ specifically for the economy, using sentences such as: ‘It allows us to build international relationships, forging a foundation for the trade deals of tomorrow.’ “

Uh-oh.

“It matters,” writes Jenkins, “because of what happened with the funding body Creative Scotland, where there was a major negative reaction … in part due to an agenda that instructed the arts to be about the economy …

“To her credit Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet secretary for culture and external affairs for Scotland, was reported on Twitter responding to Miller’s speech stating: ‘The Scottish Government does not see arts and culture as a commodity.’ …

“That the arts are central to the economy is not an isolated idea, or a new one. … [But] it is a philistine approach that misses the value and point of culture. It is true that the Edinburgh festivals, for example, bring a strong financial return. … But even in this case, the financial return is not the best thing about the festivals – or why people come back every year to perform or to watch. They do it because they love it, enjoy it and are driven to participate in something meaningful. …

“Let us not forget the economic climate in which the Arts Council was established. This was a period in the 1940s, after a devastating war, when Britain was in a dire financial situation. The funding body was set up not to use the arts to get the country out of the economic crisis, in the blunt instrumental terms they are discussed today, but to stimulate ‘the best’ work.

“Economist John Maynard Keynes, the council’s first chairman, wanted to bring forth a ‘creative renaissance’ that was artist led, and acted at ‘arm’s length’ from the government, a vision that I would have no trouble with if it were realized today.” But it isn’t, complains Jenkins. Many of her concerns are pretty universal.  More.

It’s an argument we will never hear the end of, having been debated in every generation. I am coming down firmly on the side of “yes, and…”

In other words, the arts can be great for the economy, but that is just the tiniest part of why they are great.

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A Multicultural St. Mark’s Passion

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 27, 2013 | 2 Comments »

I liked this National Public Radio story on a Jewish South American composer creating a St. Mark’s Passion that uses many ethnic styles and has enthusiastic urban kids in the chorus.

Anastasia Tsioulcas writes, “Salsa rhythms, Brazilian martial arts and a Jewish prayer of mourning: It’s not exactly what you would expect from a classical composer’s setting of the Gospel according to St. Mark. But that’s exactly what Argentine Jewish composer Osvaldo Golijov, a MacArthur ‘genius,’ did when he was asked to write a choral work based on one of the gospels, in a hugely acclaimed piece that’s been presented around the globe …

” ‘I never expected a Passion to have this funk and Spanish and everything inside it. I never thought I would be able to sing them,’ says Andrew Farella, a 16-year-old bass in the chorus. He and his friend Jerry Ortiz, another 16-year-old bass, say they’re thrilled to hear all these different kinds of music within Golijov’s work — ones they know well from their own lives.

” ‘I’m actually very excited to do this piece, me being from the Latin culture,’ says Ortiz, who is Dominican and Puerto Rican. ‘Everything that’s in here is based on my culture, my background. So I can feel the music when we sing it. I was kind of surprised to hear African and also Indian stuff. But he talked about how in Latin America we come from three places. There’s our white side, our Native American side and there’s our African side. And that’s basically what La Pasión is — coming from those three to combine into one, the Holy Trinity.’ “

Follow this link to read more and hear the music.

Something different for Easter.

Photo: Chris Lee/Carnegie Hall
A coach and high school students work on Osvaldo Golijov’s Passion According to St. Mark with the composer (right) in November 2012.

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Refugees Learn to Cope with Snow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Portland, Maine, has a reputation for being welcoming to immigrants and refugees. As a result, newcomers have been giving back, taking seriously their training in how to start a business, for example, hiring people, and boosting the city’s economy.

In this story by Jess Bidgood at the NY Times, we learn about Portland’s “class intended to help immigrants from warm countries cope with the cold.”

Bidgood writes about newcomers “squeezed into a plain conference room at the city’s center for refugee services … to be schooled in a central piece of Portland’s cultural curriculum for its growing population of new arrivals, many of whom are asylum-seekers from Central Africa: the art of handling a Maine winter.

“The instructor, Simeon Alloding, a human services counselor here, sat at the front of the room, ticking off winter’s many perils as clip art images of a penguin and an elephant decked out for cold weather hovered in a PowerPoint presentation behind him. ‘Everyone here has fallen, right?’ Mr. Alloding asked as he began a discussion on how to navigate the city’s icy sidewalks. ‘You don’t walk too fast, you don’t take long steps.’ …

“On this slushy morning, there were more attendees than could possibly find seating, and late arrivals clustered around the entrances to the room, many still wrapped in winter coats and hats despite the stifling heat of the room.”

The refugees help each other with translation, but some questions are hard to answer, like how to know what tomorrow’s weather might be.

“Miguel Chimukeno, from Angola, rose to ask a question in Portuguese, which another student translated to French, which the French interpreter, Eric Ndayizi, posed to Mr. Alloding.

“ ‘He’s low income — zero income — and you said they should watch TV and know some information. How does he get TV?’ Mr. Ndayizi asked.

“ ‘There’s nobody that’s going to issue out TV’s,’ Mr. Alloding said. ‘My only suggestion is that you talk to your neighbors.’ ”

More.

Photo: Craig Dilger for The New York Times

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Loyal League of Yiddish Sons of Erin

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 20, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

In case you missed it (ICYMI, as they say on twitter), National Public Radio had a delightful story about Irish Jews last weekend:

“St. Patrick’s Day in New York now means parades and green beer. But 50 years ago, it also meant green matzo balls at the annual banquet of the Loyal League of Yiddish Sons of Erin. The league was a fraternal organization of Irish-born Jews.

“The major migration of Jews to Ireland started in the 1880s and ’90s, says Hasia Diner, who teaches history and Judaic studies at New York University. Thousands moved [to Ireland], primarily from Lithuania. …

” ‘Then the Irish Jews, as Jews historically did, they went to where there were better economic opportunities,’ Diner says.

“A lot of Irish Jews found those opportunities in New York. Like many immigrant groups, they kept their culture alive in the New World. And in the early 1960s, they formed the Yiddish Sons of Erin.

“According to member Rosalyn Klein, the whole thing started as a joke. … A restaurant took out a newspaper ad for a meeting of Irish Jews. Klein thinks they didn’t really expect people, but a lot of them showed up.

” ‘And most of them had lived in Dublin, so it was kind of this mishpocha getting together again,’ she says.”

For many years after, a big Jewish St. Patrick’s Day celebration was held in New York and was de rigeur for politicians and celebrities.

More here.

Photo: SmittenKitchen.com.
This is a normal matzo ball. I couldn’t find a green one.

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Malian Musicians Defend Culture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 17, 2013 | 2 Comments »

As Jane once observed, Suzanne’s Mom’s blog likes making connections between random unconnected matters.

This entry makes at least three connections, starting with a Malian colleague at work and ending with a biographer friend who was mentioned in a murder mystery.

To begin at the beginning, I joined my current organization about seven years ago and was “onboarded” with a young guy from Mali. Although he moved back to Africa after five years, we keep in touch, and naturally I have been distressed by the recent trouble in his homeland.

That is why an article by music critic Jim Fusilli in the the Wall Street Journal caught my eye. “To the musicians from Mali [in Paris], the attempt by terrorists associated with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to suppress music in their country’s north goes beyond politics and religion: It’s an offense to the soul of the nation, where music is more than entertainment, it’s essential to life.”

Fusilli says the musicians are “leveraging their international reputations as creators of the country’s often-inspired music, which ranges from brooding, spiritually minded tunes played on traditional African instruments to a fiery fusion of Afrobeat, rock, R&B and indigenous sounds. It’s a melting pot that absorbs the music of other cultures without losing its native identity.

“On her next album, ‘Beautiful Africa’ (Nonesuch), out in the U.S. on April 9, the singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré sends a message of support to Mali’s women. In Bambara, English and French, she sings: ‘I want to hear your laughter. I admire your courage. I miss your smile.’ ” More.

Now, as it happens, Jim Fusilli, in addition to being a music critic, wrote a mystery series that I gobbled up, and in one novel I noted that the hero was reading a biography by a friend of mine. The biography was of John Quincy Adams, and when I told author Paul C. Nagel, he was delighted that JQA had made it into a mystery story.

So when I read that Fusilli would be at Kate’s Mystery Books, I squeezed through the holiday mystery-buying crowd and gave him Paul’s e-mail. And thus they were in touch.

And thus a colleague from Mali connects to the biographer of John Quincy Adams.

Photograph of Rokia Traoré:  http://www.africanmusiciansprofiles.com/

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Tortillas for Somalians

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I liked this multicultural story by Fernanda Santos in the NY Times. It demonstrates that people from different cultures can adapt to one another’s foods and customs very nicely in the U.S. melting pot.

It is all happening at the Ranch Market in Phoenix.

“Tortillas are a Mexican staple of transnational appeal here, bridging divisions carved by Arizona’s tough stance on immigration and reaching far beyond Latin American borders.

“The factory, at the Ranch Market store on North 16th Street, employs a pair of Iraqi refugees to whom flour tortillas have become a replacement for the flat bread known as khubz. There are also Cubans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans and, of course, Mexicans manning the machines like the rounder, which turns the masa into balls that are then pressed and cooked in 500-degree ovens at a rate of eight dozen disks a minute.

“Refugees from Somalia buy Ranch Market tortillas as a substitute for a pancake-like bread called canjeelo. Koreans have taken to using them to wrap pieces of spicy barbecued pork, like a taco. Foodies like them because they are the closest thing to an authentic tortilla that they can find at a supermarket here.”

Read more here.

Photograph: Joshua Lott for The New York Times
The Ranch Market on North 16th Street in Phoenix churns out eight dozen tortillas a minute, cooked in 500-degree ovens.

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Want Radio in Cherokee, Maori, Gaeilge?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 16, 2012 | 2 Comments »

I have blogged several times about vanishing languages and the people who seek to preserve them.

Now it seems that community radio is getting into the act, with programs that are becoming a piece of the cultural-survival puzzle. This is happening worldwide, including in the United States.

“The swift and sure loss of indigenous language in the U.S. was hardly an accident,” writes Alexis Hauk at the Atlantic. “From the latter part of the 19th century to the latter part of the 20th, the Bureau of Indian Affairs systematically sent generations of Native American kids into boarding schools that were more focused on punishment and assimilation than on education. In a piece for NPR in 2008, Charla Bear reported on the terrible conditions that persisted at these schools for a century—how kids were given Anglo names, bathed in kerosene, and forced to shave their heads.

“In recent years, the government has taken steps to reverse some of the damage. In 1990, the Native American Languages Act was passed, recognizing the right of indigenous populations to speak their own language.”

Lobbying by Loris Taylor, the CEO and president of Native Public Media, “helped lead to the creation in 2009 of the [Federal Communications Commission]‘s ‘Tribal Priority’ for broadcasting,” writes Hauk, “and then, a year later, to the establishment of the FCC Office of Native Affairs and Policy, which promotes technology and communication access on tribal lands.”

Mark Camp, deputy executive director at Cultural Survival, says that “Congress’s passage of the Community Radio Act in 2011 means that community radio stations could soon—in Camp’s words—’mushroom,’ which offers a lot of potential for Native American media on reservations, where there is usually little infrastructure and in many cases no electricity (certainly no wifi). In these areas, a low-power FM station that’s plugged into the grid in the center of town allows people with battery-powered, handheld radios to listen in to what’s happening all around them.” Read more.

Update: Asakiyume adds this link from “The Take Away.”

Arizona’s KUYI 88.1 broadcasts in Hopi to approximately 9,000 people. Photograph: KUYI

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/culture_test/kuyi%20615%20radio.jpg

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The United Nations of Soccer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

The Manhattan Paris Saint-Germain soccer team is made up of both rich and poor boys from many cultures. Coach Wilson Egidio thinks the team’s diversity is part of its success.

Vivian Yee has the story at the New York Times. She writes that Amara, for example, “joined the team after an eagle-eyed former player for Mr. Egidio spotted him playing on a Bronx playground. [He] wound up scoring the goal that made Paris Saint-German the first Manhattan youth club to reach the national playoffs.

“For the players, their coaches and parents, the team’s diversity is a source of success as well as pride. Their international styles, they say, add fluidity and creativity to their game.

“Combined with Mr. Egidio’s Brazilian approach — he grew up in Brazil and played professional soccer there — that could be key in the national tournament.”

Click here to read about this week’s competition and the backgrounds of the players.

Photograph: Christopher Gregory, New York Times

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Bluegrass in Afghanistan

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 19, 2012 | 3 Comments »

The bimonthly magazine called the Utne Reader likes to showcase alternative and contrarian views on the news. Here’s a sort of hands-across-the world story about taking bluegrass music to Afghanistan.

“My name is Peyton Tochterman. I’m a musician from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I make my living writing, teaching and performing American Folk music—the music that tells stories in notes, chords and verse about who we are and what we Americans are all about. And I’m now in war-torn Afghanistan. …

“In little more than a week we have already met thousands of Afghans and found them to be kind, generous, hospitable, talented and honorable. They take great pride in their heritage and culture, but they also have a thirst for American Folk Music, for the stories we tell, our instruments and the way we play. The Afghan musicians with whom we played are some of the best in the world and were eager to share their masterful techniques and songs.

“Some might ask, ‘What difference can a folk singer from the Blue Ridge Mountains make in a tortured place like Afghanistan?’ It’s a valid question—partly answered by one of the State Department officers who said our visit did ‘more for diplomacy between Afghanistan and the United States than any diplomat had done, more then any road that was built, or any power plant that was constructed in the last year.’ ” Read more.

Photograph of Peyton Tochterman: The Utne Reader

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Craft Shop Offers Etiquette for Kids

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 11, 2012 | 2 Comments »

The hobby shop Dabblers has a lot going on all the time — many kinds of craft classes, birthday parties, a mini restaurant with great coffee, and now something that sounds like a throwback to an earlier age. It’s an etiquette workshop for children ages 8 to 11!

I’m very curious to know how many kids (or their parents) sign up. The workshop in March is to be led by “a noted Etiquette Expert in the Boston area and will cover: introductions, dining skills, how to be a considerate friend, family member and classmate.”

(How does one get to be a noted Etiquette Expert, capitalized?)

I remember when John, and later Suzanne, went to ballroom class in middle school. The kids learned some etiquette there, but I don’t know how many details stuck. I listened in and learned you are supposed to say, “Mrs. Streitweiser, may I present Dr. Turnipseed?” but I have never been good at practicing it. I did think such classes were extinct. Good luck, Dabblers!

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All Dragons Are Lucky

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

A couple weeks ago, a friend told Suzanne that not only is 2012 the lucky Year of the Dragon, it’s the Year of the Golden Dragon — in her view the luckiest year of all.

But a little web research suggests that something was lost in the translation. The Year of the Golden Dragon was Y2K, 2000.

Not to worry. All dragons are lucky. This is the year of the Water Dragon.

The Chinese Fortune Calendar site says, “2012 is Year of the Dragon and it will arrive on February 4, 2012. (Note: Chinese New Year Day is on January 23, 2012. The first day of 2012 Chinese Astrology Year is on February 4, 2012.) Many people must be eager to know if they will have better luck in the coming year than previous years. Here, we want to use Chinese Astrology Five Elements (Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth) theory to explain people’s fortune in 2012 and foresee what will be happening to them in the year of the Dragon.” Read more to learn how metal is the element associated with the Golden Dragon.

Moving right along, the 2012 Dragon site observes, “The fact that 2012 is a Water year is extremely important and demands consideration. That’s because Water nourishes the Dragon’s fixed element, Wood, giving this Dragon a big advantage over the rest of the breed when it comes to bringing good luck. The same holds true for accomplishment. This Dragon is actually going to realize some of those big dreams!” So that site maintains that the Water Dragon is the luckiest dragon.

Wikipedia: “In Chinese Taoist thought, water is representative of intelligence and wisdom, flexibility, softness and pliancy; however, an over-abundance of the element is said to cause difficulty in choosing something and sticking to it. In the same way, Water can be fluid and weak, but can also wield great power when it floods and overwhelms the land.” In our family, the attribute of not being able to choose something is called “The I-do-and-I-don’t problem.”

The Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation weighs in: “The dragon sign is associated with spring and the dragon water sign is likely to become a flowing river rather than a stagnant lake, which means that you need to begin 2012 off to a fast start as things are expected to happen early in the year. Hopefully we used some of the quiet time in the past year to plan your moves for 2012.” Uh-oh.

But given that Suzanne is in the jewelry business (Luna & Stella), she might be most interested to know that in China, jewelry buying is going berserk for the Year of the Dragon.

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