We spent Christmas in Agaete, a cute and mostly quiet village near Gran Canaria. I say “mostly quiet” because two (of five) nights were not quiet. I don’t remember Nochebuena being celebrated so loudly in Corralejo. In fact, I don’t remember it being celebrated in Corralejo at all. But here, there was music and fireworks until 3 am. And then, on Saturday, there was a band playing just a few meters from the house we were staying. At some point, Yuri went out to see them. A bit later, I joined him.
This happened to be Gran Canaria Big Band and Fasur Rodríguez presenting “Frank Sinatra Tribute”. To be honest, I never understood what was so great about Frank Sinatra. I find his manner of singing out of tune (not even slightly out of tune) rather irritating, and lyrics of many “Sinatra classics” far too cheesy for my liking. Fasur has a great voice but I wish he didn’t copy the said out-of-tuneness so much. On the other hand, the band was simply perfect. It was a while since I heard the big band sounding exactly the way the big band should sound.
After the show, I went to chat with the musicians. As it happens, the band is all-male except the drummer, Xerach Peñate. Even that was an accident: she told me she was replacing the “official” drummer who got ill. And I bought the CD — but not before asking them if they have one for sale!
As could be guessed from the name, Straight Ahead is a tribute to Count Basie. Five songs feature vocals by Laura Simó. No Sinatra nonsense here, except maybe The Lady is a Tramp. My favorite tracks, however, are the instrumentals, Calles Vacías by the band’s pianist Rayco León and Gentle piece by Kenny Wheeler.
Today’s web feed brought the sad news: died Grigori Dashevski (Григорий Михайлович Дашевский, 25.02.1964—17.12.2013), Russian poet and literary translator. One of the last works of Dashevski was the Russian translation of Stopping by Woods.
Frost wrote the poem in June 1922, that is, as far from “the darkest evening of the year” as one can get. Couple of months ago, the polls revealed that Stopping by Woods is a most-requested poem on BBC’s Poetry Please, the world’s longest-running poetry programme.
Robert Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Роберт Фрост, перевод Г.М. Дашевского
Остановившись у леса снежным вечером
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Чей лес, мне кажется, я знаю:
в селе живет его хозяин.
Он не увидит, как на снежный
я лес его стою взираю.
В недоуменье конь, конечно,
зачем в ночи за год темнейшей
мы стали там, где нет жилья,
у леса с озером замерзшим.
Он, бубенцом слегка звеня,
как будто бы корит меня,
да веет слабый ветерок,
пушистым снегом шелестя.
Лес сладок, темен и глубок,
но в путь пора мне — долг есть долг.
И ехать долго — сон далек,
и ехать долго — сон далек.
I don’t listen to classical music that much, even to Bach, and most probably would not be able to distinguish Jarrett/Makarski interpretation from some other smoothly-played version. However, it was thanks to Jarrett, the pianist I know and respect, that I paid any attention to this album at all. It was on display in the library, in the “New CDs” section. Unmistakeably ECM. (I used to love ECM designs. Now they depress me. That’s what living in Finland does to you. You look out of the window and see the ECM cover art.)
the usage of calling these sonatas “Violin Sonatas” tout-court is absolutely wrong, because Bach was probably the most... democratic musician in his time and granted to each instrument its own personal space in his works. Indeed, the autographed copies of these sonatas report them as “Sonatas for cembalo certato and solo violin, accompanied by a viola da gamba, if one likes (!)” and listening to them makes understand why, in the headline, the priority has been given to the keyboard instrument.
I am glad that Jarrett chose piano for his part. One can tolerate only so much of harpsichord. But here, I was listening to this double CD in one sitting (well I was actually lying down, but you know what I mean), and did not get tired of it.
Mma Ramotswe has a reason to worry: a rival detective agency is set up in town. A younger apprentice of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni finds the Lord. In the meantime, Mma Makutsi opens her phenomenally successful Typing School for Men — so successful, she almost gets a boyfriend.
That afternoon, when Mma Makutsi had been dispatched to the births, deaths, and marriages registry to pursue some routine enquiries on behalf of a client, Mma Ramotswe was visited, unannounced, by a woman whose view of the Satisfaction Guaranteed Agency and its boastful proprietor was quite the opposite of the view held by the apprentice. She arrived in a smart new car, which she parked directly outside the agency door, and waited politely for Mma Ramotswe to acknowledge her presence before she entered the office. This always pleased Mma Ramotswe; she could not abide the modern habit of entering a room before being asked to do so, or, even worse, the assumption that some people made that they could come into your office uninvited and actually sit on your desk while they spoke. If that happened to her, she would refrain from speaking at all but would look pointedly at the bottom planted upon her desk until her disapproval registered and it was removed.
Baraat (not to be confused with Borat) is a North Indian wedding procession, often featuring its own band. Red Baraat is a nine-piece dhol‘n’brass band founded by Sunny Jain in Brooklyn. The band’s debut studio album, Chaal Baby, is fun from beginning to end. Imagine funky Balkan brass band playing bhangra! Naturally, the program includes Punjabi Wedding Song as well as the unusual rendition of Tunak Tunak Tun. My favourite song of the lot is Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna.
Compared with original US album, the European edition inexplicably omits two great songs, Aaj Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai and Dum Maro Dum. Instead, there are the “live in Brooklyn” versions of Baraat To Nowhere (featuring excerpt of Mundian To Bach Ke) and Hey Jamalo. In my view, hardly a good replacement. I read that Red Baraat is great to watch live, but that does not always mean it is equally great to listen to. And they really, really should lose the rap.
For most Russian speakers, Aleksander Griboyedov remains homo unius libri, the book in question being his great comedy Горе от ума (Woe from Wit). Yes, we all have been learning by heart Chatsky’s monologue in high school. For the rest of the world, Griboyedov is largely unknown but for his beautiful Waltz in E minor.
To my surprise, I found (and bought for €2!) a hefty 1953 hardback edition of Griboyedov works in one of Porvoo’s second-hand shops. I spent a few long November evenings reading this book. Mind you, I did not read all of it. I don’t think Griboyedov’s letters were meant to be read by anybody but their recipients, so I gave them a miss. (But I did read a preface by Vladimir Orlov, complete with quotes from Lenin, Stalin and Malenkov.)
And so, another discovery was made: apart from Woe from Wit, Griboyedov authored a few more plays. Of them, Студент (The Student) is by far the funniest one. This scene below could have been written by Gogol. Benevolski, a student from Kazan, is the protagonist; Sablin, a Hussar captain, is his drinking companion; and Fed’ka is Benevolski’s servant.
Саблин(наливает и поет).
Vive Henri quatre!
Vive ce roi vaillant!
Беневольский. О! умолчите! что за охота петь французскую песню? У нас столько своих пленительных мелодий певцов своей печали.
Саблин. Пусть они сами свою печаль поют, а я стану петь «Vive Henri IV», оттого именно, что это вовсе не печально.
Беневольский. Но есть ли тут хоть малейшее воспоминание для души русского?
Саблин. Преславное: наш вход в Париж, мы первые заставили петь эту песню. Вот было житье! Выпьем скорее в память этого счастливого дня! Пей же, ну, без гримас!
Беневольский(с стаканом в руке). Вакх!.. тебе!
Саблин(вливает в него весь стакан). Без росказней!
Федька. Пей, да про себя разумей.
Саблин(выпивши). Что за бургонское! стакан было проглотил.
Беневольский(сморщившись). Нектар.
Саблин. Беневольский! душа моя! выпьем еще по стаканчику.
Беневольский. Нет, никак; я еще с обеда отуманен этими парами.
Саблин. Беневольский! не будь хоть теперь Беневольский: выпей, не заставляй себя просить. Беневольский, знаешь? я тоже когда-то учился по-латыни и очень помню одну пословицу... постой! кажется: что у трезвого на уме, то у пьяного на языке.
Беневольский. In vino veritas.
Саблин. Ну, а ведь ты теперь не трезвый. — Скажи мне, любишь ли ты меня?
Беневольский. Люблю.
Саблин. А я тебя не люблю, да всё равно: ты любишь, так докажи, выпей! на! Да полно, я не в шутку рассержусь; бери же, вот так, поцелуй меня! стукнем!
Беневольский. Чашу в чашу.
Федька(подкрадывается). Подойду поближе, хоть понюхать. (Саблин пьет, а Беневольский ловит эту минуту, чтоб вылить стакан, и попадает прямо Федьке в лицо и на платье) Что за обливанье, сударь? еще я покамест свое платье ношу, когда-то сошьете!
Саблин. Выплеснул! не выпил! Поделом не терплю я этих марателей: всякий из них, последний, презирает всех, думает, что он всех умнее, ничем не дорожит.
Беневольский. Именем дружбы...
Саблин. Плевать я хотел на твою дружбу и знаться с тобой не хочу. — Поеду домой. (Смотрится в зеркало) Раскраснелся, досадно! никуда нельзя показаться: про меня и так бог знает что говорят. (Уходит)
by Laura Heyenga, Rob Ryan and Natalie Avella
featuring works by Thomas Allen, Hina Aoyama, Su Blackwell, Zoe Bradley, Yulia Brodskaya, Peter Callesen, Laura Cooperman, Béatrice Coron, Cindy Ferguson, Emily Hogarth, Molly Jey, Andrea Mastrovito, Nikki McClure, Heather Moore, Elsa Mora, Helen Musselwhite, Chris Natrop, Mia Pearlman, Casey Ruble, Rob Ryan, Justine Smith, Matthew Sporzynski, Yuken Teruya, Kako Ueda, Emma van Leest and Patricia Zapata
Were you the kind of child that ate your way all around the edge of the hole in the middle of a biscuit bit by bit with tiny teeth in little nibbles?
Were you the kind of child who spent much more time drawing margins and making multi-colored borders and underlining the titles and subtitles of your homework than ever actually doing it?
I know I was. As a consequence, I saw this book in the library, started to read the preface by Rob Ryan and simply could not leave it there. No way.
I like the fact that I don’t need paint or brushes or water or oil or palettes or canvas, just a piece of paper, a knife, and a pencil, and a rubber eraser. So much less — less mess, less waste, less stuff. More time — more time to say the things I have to say without detail getting in the way. No adding on of paint, layer after layer — no more never quite knowing when to stop. Only taking away and taking away, first of all, all of the holes from the middle of all of the doughnuts in the world, and then the tiny slivery gaps that exist in the spaces in some lovers’ entwined fingers, or maybe that tiny little island of nothingness that lives between two pairs of kissing lips.
Now let me ask... Could you leaf through this book and still dismiss paper cutting as a serious art form? No. But I am sure you know somebody like that. Perhaps he spent all of his childhood diligently doing his homework. Let’s ignore him and do some important stuff.
It is not a how-to book. Its purpose is to inspire; and there are no rules anyway. No expensive materials or equipment is needed. Would you like to give it a try?
Are Nordic films really as melancholic, depressing, and humourless as rumour has it? Four Nordic film journals — Filmmagasinet Ekko from Denmark, Rushprint from Norway, Flm from Sweden and Episodi from Finland — have tasked themselves with finding the exceptions that showcase the cheerful and self-deprecating side to Nordic cinema.
Not that I ever suspected Nordic cinema of humourlessness. It took me a while to go through the whole collection. Truth to be told, most of these shorts are depressing and melancholic, except for a couple of positively sinister ones. As for “funny”... They are funny, but weird funny rather than hilarious funny. Cheerful they are not.
Other delights include Swedish Elixir (that is, a magic formula to transform immigrants into true Swedes); Finnish animation The Irresistible Smile; and Danish Oscar-winning Election Night (which also could be found on Cinema 16: European Short Films collection).
Las Palmas by Johannes Nyholm (Sweden, 2011, 13 min)
No Sex Just Understand by Mariken Halle (Norway, 2011, 15 min)
Äiti ei enää keilaa (Mother Doesn’t Bowl Anymore) by Teemu Nikki (Finland, 2010, 10 min)
Slitage (Seeds of the Fall) by Patrik Eklund (Sweden, 2009, 18 min)
This Is Alaska by Mårten Nilsson and Gunilla Heilborn (Sweden, 2009, 10 min)
Space Monkeys by Jan Rahbek (Denmark, 2008, 8 min)
Sunday Mornings by Jannicke Låker (Norway, 2008, 9 min)
Naglinn (The Nail by Benedikt Erlingsson (Iceland, 2008, 16 min)
Sagan om den lille Dockpojken (The Tale of Little Puppetboy) by Johannes Nyholm (Sweden, 2008, 18 min)
Anna by Helena Stefánsdóttir (Iceland, 2007, 13 min)
Occupations by Lars von Trier (Denmark, 2007, 3 min)
Ilo irti (The Irresistible Smile) by Ami Lindholm (Finland, 2006, 6 min)
Järvi (The Lake) by Maarit Lalli (Finland, 2006, 9 min)
Elixir by Babak Najafi (Sweden, 2004, 26 min)
De beste går først (United We Stand) by Hans Petter Moland (Norway, 2002, 9 min)
Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers by Ola Simonsen and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson (Sweden, 2001, 10 min)
Døren som ikke smakk (Shut the Door) by Jens Lien (Norway, 2000, 10 min)
Pilot for En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron (A Pigeon Sat on a Branch - Reflecting on Existence) by Roy Andersson (Sweden, 2011, 8 min)
I don’t sweeten my tea or coffee, but I enjoy reading what is written on Spanish sugar sachets. Our last day on Fuerteventura, we had coffee in our favourite pasteleria in Antigua. One of the sachets had this Woody Allen joke on it:
El sexo sin amor es una experiencia vacía. Pero como experiencia vacía es una de las mejores.
Now that we have two teenagers in the house, I thought it is appropriate to watch the source of the above quote with them. They watched and loved Sleeper and Zelig, but I was a bit afraid that the humour of Love and Death would be lost on them (blissfully ignorant of Tolstoyevsky etc.) I really shouldn’t have. The movie was a roaring success. Now they are going to annoy me randomly quoting it. Because every single line is a classic.
Oh well. I’ve finally finished this book. Why it became an international bestseller, I don’t know. There’s enough good and bad books about time travel already. A bit of sci-fi that could have been interesting. In fact, the concept is interesting. But it was explained in the very first chapter. Eighteen pages. It could have been a good, or even great, short story. What we have instead is a pretentious romance going for five hundred something pages. So I was trudging through it for the last month in a hope that something unpredictable (from that first chapter) will happen. No such luck.
Just one question: why on earth the person who leaves his clothes behind when time-travelling (fascinating theory, although, as any time traveller can confirm, completely wrong) he does not go someplace nice? I mean, if he moved to Fuerteventura, it would be so much easier on everybody. He could appear out of nowhere and sit naked there, without having any job, and read Rilke aloud to his heart’s content, and nobody would give a hoot. But no, he has to be either in South Haven or in Chicago, where there’s always a pressing need to steal clothes, or else people will stare, or beat him up, etc. I guess it is because the author has lived in or near Chicago for most of her life and cannot possibly imagine there could be life elsewhere.
On this all-original album, Leningrad Cowboys sound great — even without Alexandrov Ensemble. Maybe not all songs are everybody’s shot of vodka, but they all are worth sampling. If I may advise, don’t buy the MP3 album, get the real thing, if only for the exclusive explosive cocktail recipes. For example, here’s the song:
And here’s the recipe:
Take 50 liters of quality vodka and pour it into a bathtub, crash 5 balalaikas and throw them in. Sprinkle some gunpowder on top and dive in naked with a few yellow rubber ducks. Take a water pistol, fill it and enjoy! After a few drinks, call your neighbors and ask them to visit. Remember to repeat three times everything you say... Nothing’s better than a confused neighbor.
After listening to Na Afriki, I went to check some of her live videos on YouTube. What an amazing woman: composer, singer, dancer, percussionist. Dobet left school at 12 to study theatre, dance, music and singing with her father and his fellow artists. She is now on the top of my “to watch” (live!) list.
He played with The Velvet Underground, Gary Moore and even Sir Paul. Enough memoir material by any standard. But for me, as probably for about everybody else, he always was — still is — theDeep Purple drummer. There never was DP without Ian Paice.
You’d think there should be plenty of DVDs around showcasing Paice’s talent. Well... (drum roll please...) no. But there is at least this one.
On The Drums is a curious collection of Paice-related bits and bobs. Released by Edel in 2008, it looks like a European repackaging of 2002 American DVD Not for the Pros. In contrast to what Amazon says, this DVD is region-free (not region 2). The picture quality could have been better; the sound is OK for the most part, but I wouldn’t mind having subtitles.
Ian Paice’s Drummers Guide
The “main feature” is a fifty-minute documentary where Paice travels the world visiting the musical instrument factories: Pearl in Japan, Paiste in Switzerland (hey, I just learned another Finnish word!), Pro-Mark and Remo in America. He demonstrates just a little bit of his technique but clearly not enough to be considered an instructional. The film is interspersed by snippets of Deep Purple archive footage. I find them rather distracting; luckily, you can choose a viewing option without these clips.
Abbey Road Session
...contains two cool instrumentals, Paicesetter and Dustbins. Paice is accompanied by Colin Hodgkinson on bass and Miller Anderson on guitar. I did not realise Paice is left-handed until I watched this! Now if the entire DVD was material of this quality, I wouldn’t hesitate to give it five stars.
Roadie’s Eye View
This section has several songs or fragments filmed during Deep Purple’s 2001 US tour, with a twist: the camera, for a change, is focused on Paice. Ted the Mechanic, Lazy, Knocking At Your Back Door and Highway Star are shown in their entirety, but the highlight is the middle section of Fools, which is not even a drum solo and still is mind-blowing. But why on earth didn’t they show the full Fools?
Drum Clinic
That could have been really interesting... (short drum solo please...) if any part of it lasted more than ten seconds, that is. What we have here is just some short promo for Australian TV. Total waste of time.
Ian Paice Interview
Another bit filmed for Aussie TV. Rather more entertaining than the “drum clinic”. Paice, apart from being simply the greatest rock drummer alive, appears to be very nice (and humble) bloke.
Retro Mix
A montage of old and new(ish) Deep Purple clips set to Paicesetter. Please ignore it and watch the Abbey Road Session again.
In goodold Soviet times, you simply were not allowed to publicly perform popular songs in a foreign language. That is, not in Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Uzbek and so on. I guess Bulgarian was still OK. Polish was already suspicious. English, of course, a big no no.
So this is what VIAs would do: sing cover versions of well-known Western songs with (usually) Russian lyrics.
Back then, I thought of it as something unique to USSR. How I was mistaken. Now every morning I listen to a Finnish radio station and hear quite a lot of Anglo-American pop and rock sung in Finnish. Maria Gasolina is one of the bands that specialises in this art. And when I say “art”, I mean it.
By their third album, they became truly versatile, expanding their repertoire from mostly Brazilian pop to, well, other “international” pop: from Carimi’s Ayiti bang bang to Femi Kuti’s Beng beng beng. Good taste in choosing the material, great arrangements, and a pleasure to listen to, from beginning to end. Still, my favourite tracks come from Brazil: Nykyaika, Susta huolimatta, Teemalasit... When it gets cold and dark, like now for example (it was snowing this morning!), a ray of Brazilian sunshine is just what the doctor ordered.
In Brazilian Portuguese slang, “Maria gasolina” means a girl who only dates motorists. Why did they choose this expression to name the band? Who knows. Maybe they don’t take themselves too seriously. Or maybe they just like the sound of it.
Nykyaika / Maracatu atômico (Jorge Mautner / Nelson Jacobina)
Taneli Bruun: tenor and soprano sax
Kalle Jokinen: guitar
Lissu Lehtimaja: trumpet, vocals
Mikko Neimo: drums
Matti Pekonen: bass
Essi Pelkonen: alto sax
Aarne Riikonen: percussion, sampler
Sanni Verkasalo: flute, clarinet
Guests
Alexandra Babitzin: chorus (2)
Valtteri Nevalainen: vibraphone (3)
Mikko Ojanen: synthesizer (5, 6)
Panu Syrjänen: bass sax (4)
Finnish lyrics by Lissu Lehtimaja
Arranged by Maria Gasolina except 9 arranged by Ilppo Lukkarinen
Recorded and mixed by Panu Syrjänen, Mikko Ojanen and Taneli Bruun
Produced by Maria Gasolina, Gasolina Records 2010
My, it is getting cold here. Cold, as in below 0 °C cold. Which means that, for example, I have to drain the water tank in sauna. Which also means that the beer season is almost over. And so, for the first time in two months of our life in Finland, we’ve ventured to the nearest Alko shop.
It was really painful to see some of my favourite Spanish wines so exorbitantly priced. At times, three times as expensive as in Spain.
The trick, for me at least, is not to look at Spanish wines at all, but concentrate on French and Italian ones instead. I already mentioned that Italian wine was rather expensive in Corralejo. And look, I found this nice bottle of Bardolino, just under €8. That makes me feel, if for a short while, slightly better. Although of course it is still a daylight robbery.
The label info, as it often happens, is lost (or reinvented) in translation.
Proveniente da vigneti nella zona collinare del lago di Garda sud-orientale, è un vino fresco, con deliziosi aromi fruttati, che ricordano marasca e ribes, di medio corpo e sapido al palato. Si accompagna a piatti tipici della cucina veronese como risotti, luccio con polenta o coniglio in umido.
Bardolino indicates the vineyards located in south-eastern shore of Lake Garda. This is a clean, crisp, light ruby red wine, with delightful aromas of wild cherry and blackcurrant and a fresh acidity on the palate. Pairs well with first course dishes, such as risotto, fish soups and white meat entrées.
Oh, I wouldn’t mind the rabbit stew with it! In fact, that’s exactly what I’d be considering to consume in Corralejo this time of year. (Sadly, pike wasn’t on offer in Fuerte.) But, for the benefit of English, who obviously will be shocked by the gastronomical use of their fluffy pets, an alternative is found... which is not even close.
So what’s “Arctic” doing in the title? I don’t really know. Maybe it is to indicate that Finland is close to Arctic? But I can’t honestly say I hear anything specifically Finnish or Nordic here. If somebody played it to me and said that it is a 1970s recording of an obscure American band, I would probably believe it. The keyboards definitely sound vintage 1970s. As it happens, Afro-American-Arctic is a 2007 album by an obscure (but great nonetheless) Finnish band. And, as far as my (not very thorough) research shows, it is the only album recorded by Rhythm Funk Masters. Which is a bloomin’ shame, because after listening to it for half a dozen times, I want more of them! Just listen, and you’ll want too.
I post here the complete credits: funk should know its heroes.
Enormous Introduction
Gogo
Nudinuff
Non Compos Mentis
Radio Bembe
Latin Bantu Lounge
Bushman
Frantic Activity
Highway
Arctic Rainforest
Rhythm Funk Masters
Mikko Pöyhönen: drums
Jarkko Toivanen-Myllärniemi: bass
Mikko Kosonen: guitar
Jukka Heikkinen: keyboards
Aleksi Ahoniemi: tenor sax, soprano sax, flute
Timo Lassy: baritone sax, flutes (7)
Mikko Pettinen: trumpet
Jay Kortehisto: trombone
Tero Rantanen: percussion, conga solo (5)
Aarne Riikonen: percussion
Juuso Hannukainen: percussion, tama solo (9), djembe solo (2)
Guests
Fernando Da Silva: the voice (1)
Aleksi Oksanen: djembe (1, 2, 4)
Terhi Valmala: kenkeni, sangban, dundunba (1, 2, 4)
Jukka Uljas: tenor sax solo (2)
Teijo Jämsä: drums (7)
Abdissa Assefa: percussion (7)
Eero Savela: flugelhorn (7)
Tapani Rinne: bass clarinet (10)
Composed by Jukka Heikkinen except 1 by Jukka Heikkinen / Jarkko Toivanen-Myllärniemi and 3 by Jukka Heikkinen / Sami Saari
Recorded at Sumo, Helsinki by T-Mu Korpipää and Jukka Heikkinen
Mixed at Sumo by T-Mu Korpipää except 7 by Jukka Heikkinen
Mastered at Finnvox by Pauli Saastamoinen
Artwork and photo by Jani Tolin at Alfons Helsinki
Produced by Jukka Heikkinen
In case you were ever wondering — which I doubt — whether Finnish folk music could possibly mix with hilbilly, here’s the answer. Or maybe not. For the most part, it sounds like American old-time songs, just sung in Finnish. Out of twelve tracks, only three could be reasonably called polkas (or polkkat?): Kauppias Intiassa, Vingelska (the only instrumental piece here) and Karjalan poikia. So what? It is all jolly good stuff. I can imagine these guys playing in a pub (which they probably do) and people actually dancing to this music.
Vingelska
This album is dedicated to the memory of Jenny “Jingo” (Viitala) Vachon (1918—2009), a Finnish-American musician, artist, writer and local historian. According to the liner notes, or, rather, the short commentaries to the songs, “Jingo made American songs out of Finnish songs and vice versa”.
If you want to sing along, the lyrics are there. For the benefit of non-Finnish speakers, the lyrics are translated to English too (while many of the texts originated as Finnish translations of American folk songs, as, for example, Wabash Cannonball, which was translated from English by Jingo Viitala).
I am not quite sure whether Polkabilly Rebels is just the name of the album or also the band. The CD cover has the names of the four musicians on it. Amazon and some other sources, including Wikipedia, list Polkabilly Rebels as one of J. Karjalainen solo albums. But then Amasa Blues is presented as “A Polkabilly Rebels original”. To be sure I don’t forget anybody, here are the complete credits:
J. Karjalainen: vocals, guitar, 5-string banjo and fiddle
Veli-Matti Järvenpää: 1- and 2-row button accordion
Mitja Tuurala: upright bass
Tommi Viksten: electric guitar
Marjo Leinonen: vocals on Hopeinen veitsi (The Silver Knife)
I’m still to listen to Juhola’s 2010 record, Fantasiatango. In the meantime, I got hold of Fantasiatango 2. My it’s good. Very different from her debut album, Miette, and probably as good. (The more I listen to Miette, the more I like it. Let’s see.) As the name suggests, it is mostly tango, with numerous twists. I like these little descriptions for the songs:
Summer is my religion. I run outside into the tropical night. Winter can’t catch me, no sir! I don’t want antidepressants; just give me some of that Vitamin D – light therapy! (Bipolär tango / Bipolar Tango)
Or:
It’s –32 °C: the wind whips my face and snow blankets the streets, the cars and my thoughts. I want to be under a palm tree. Time for a last-minute departure to Tenerife! (Etelän kaipuu / Longing for the South)
I start to suspect that she’s a tad unhappy with Finnish weather.
Bipolär tango, featuring Swedish rapper Promoe: I don’t understand a word but who cares, it’s great anyway.
The history of indigenous African art has been misdirected by Western aesthetic preferences, which give an undue pride of place to figural or abstract sculpture (a pre-eminently patriarchal art) and less visibility to the role of textiles, decorative arts and performance arts (pre-eminently matriarchal arts) in the construction of indigenous identity.
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie
There is no question that humans came out of Africa. Naturally, human culture came out of Africa too, but we Westerners tend to ignore this fact. The West, above all, values literature, painting and sculpture, while Africans are more concerned with oral tradition and the subject of this book: cloth.
Cloth in Africa is much more than “just” a material for clothing. Cloth served as a currency until minted coins replaced it in the last century. Protective gowns or shirts may be decorated with Quran inscriptions, or have numerous charms sewn into them, or both. The kanga, which often bears subtle (or not so subtle) slogans in Kiswahili, is a powerful communication instrument. Cloth is also a means of declaring the social status:
Sometimes the only true measure of a man’s status in life is revealed after his death, as is still the case among the Kuba people of the Kasai region of the southern Congo Basin, where the fine cloth which a chief or high-ranking official has accumulated throughout his life is shown to a wider public for the first time at his funeral.
Last but not least, textiles serve as historical documents. In short: if you want to understand anything at all about African culture, you’d better have a serious look at the African textiles.
On more than one occasion, the author points out that the indigenous-ness of any tradition is not a particularly helpful concept. I like the story told in Chapter 3: in the 19th century, the Dutch embarked on producing the printed cloth imitating Javanese batiks. The textile proved to be not too popular in Indonesia but appealed to Ghanaian soldiers employed by the Dutch. Then a Scotsman sets up a company in Glasgow and pirates the Dutch, um, imitations. In the post-colonial times, textile factories were established in West African countries, but now the production is threatened by cheap Chinese copies of... the “West African” designs!
The author, Chris Spring, is a curator at the British Museum; the book is published by The British Museum Press. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the beautiful textiles illustrated in the book are from the British Museum collection. African Textiles Today also includes shots of artistic installations, for example Nike v Adidas by Hassan Hajjaj and Space Walk by Yinka Shonibare, as well as documentary and street photography. The last chapter shows textiles through the eyes of African photographers such as Seydou Keïta, Oumar Ly, Malick Sidibé and Jacques Touselle.
Unlike its sequels, Portuguese Irregular Verbs has no plot to speak of as it is a collection of more or less independent stories featuring the trio of German academics. Meet Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, the author of a seminal work on Portuguese irregular verbs, simply but majestically entitled Portuguese Irregular Verbs, and his two colleagues, Professor Dr Dr (honoris causa) Florianus Prinzel and Professor Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer.
Ah, to be a philologist! To work in an (apparently spared by crisis) academic Institute and travel the world! In this book, von Igelfeld finds himself in Switzerland, Ireland, Italy and Goa (by special invitation of J.G.K.L. Singh of Chandighar, author of Dravidian Verb Shifts). I could swear that I have met him, or maybe his identical twin, a biologist, in all these places.
That evening, after he had taken a refreshing drink of mango juice on the main verandah, von Igelfeld ventured out onto the road outside the hotel. Within a few seconds he had been surrounded by several men in red tunics, who started to quarrel over him until a villainous-looking man with a moustache appeared to win the argument and led von Igelfeld over to his cycle-driven rickshaw.
‘I shall show you this fine town,’ he said to von Igelfeld as the philologist eased himself into the small, cracked leather seat. ‘What do you wish to see? The prison? The library? The grave of the last Portuguese governor?’
Von Igelfeld chose the library, which seemed the least disturbing of the options, and soon they were bowling down the road, overtaking pedestrians and slower rickshaws, the sinister rickshaw man ringing his bell energetically at every possible hazard.
The library was, of course, closed, but this did not deter the rickshaw man. Beckoning for von Igelfeld to follow him, he took him through the library gardens and walked up to the back door. Glancing about him, the rickshaw man took out a small bunch of implements, and started to try each in the lock. Von Igelfeld watched in amazement as his guide picked the lock; he knew he should have protested, but, faced with such effrontery, words completely failed him. Then, when the door swung open, equally passively he followed the rickshaw driver into the cool interior of the Goa State Library.
The building smelled of damp and mildew; the characteristic odour of books which have been allowed to rot.
‘Here we are,’ said the rickshaw man. ‘These books are very, very old, and contain a great deal of Portuguese knowledge. The Portuguese brought them and now they have gone away and left their books behind.’
In 2007, while visiting Turku, I wandered into a music shop and, on a whim, bought a CD of a hitherto unknown to me musician released by a hitherto unknown to me label. The musican’s name was Pekka Pohjola. (Sadly, he died in 2008.) The label, already long-dead, was Love Records. I don’t remember exactly what was the reason I bought the album, Pihkasilmä kaarnakorva, but it is most likely that I was intrigued by the combination of a stained glass-inspired cover art with the Love Records somewhat risqué logo:
The fact is, after listening to the CD in my hotel room, I rushed back to that shop and bought another Pohjola album.
Six years later, at the Porvoo city library, I discovered quite a lot of Love Records catalogue, including Love Jazz 1966—1977. From the liner notes of the album:
It might actually be easier to list who didn’t record for Love Records. In spite of this fact, and considering the musical background of the founders, Love Records published surprisingly few jazz albums. However, what lacks in quantity is made up for in quality. Love Jazz 1966—1977 is not aiming to be an inclusive cross-section of the jazz produced by Love Records, but focuses instead on some of the more swinging pieces. The compilation contains established jazz classics, a few lesser known, but all the more lively pieces, and a couple of rare treasures.
One of these rare treasures is Haka Blues by The Otto Donner Element All Stars. It is one of my favourite tracks here, together with Stella By Starlight by Paquito D’Rivera and his Cuban-Nordic band featuring “the great Dane with the never-ending name”, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, and Deodatoesque Grandma’s Rocking Chair by Olli Ahvenlahti — listen to the funky bass line by the very same Pekka Pohjola to whom I owe my acquaintance with Love Records!
I found this book entertaining enough, albeit not as much as According to Arnold. The problem is, I couldn’t care less about its protagonist. In spite (or maybe because) of his obsession with his dead ancestors, he is just plain boring. I loved the language though.
I was not able to check whether all the cheeses mentioned in the book really exist. At least toulomotyri appears to be genuine. But I was sorely disappointed that neither majorero nor any Finnish cheese were in Edward Trencom’s cellar.
Elizabeth had an absolute abhorrence of impinging on other people’s territory. Indeed, there was a side to her that was peculiarly English — not in the patriotic sense of flag-waving and hymn-singing and cabbage that’s been boiled for so long that it’s no longer green. It was more the fact that she valued more than anything else in the world the much underrated virtue of respecting one another’s space.
She fully understood why commuters on the train to London liked to hide behind the vast acreage of The Times. After all, she thought, didn’t everyone have the right to a few snatched moments on the way to work, simply enjoying the privacy of their own company?
I borrowed this DVD from Porvoo City Library. While I am here, I have to use it — it’s not that you get to hear a lot of Finnish music outside of Finland.
Kimmo Pohjonen, however, by now is known worldwide. “Jimi Hendrix of the accordion”? What nonsense. There’s very little in common between Pohjonen and Hendrix — apart from their awesomeness, that is. If I had to make comparison to a rock guitarist, I’d rather go for a living one, namely, Robert Fripp. (And, by the way, KTU, the project of Pohjonen and two former King Crimson members, Pat Mastelotto and Trey Gunn, is alive and kicking and will give two concerts in Poland later this month.)
On Uniko (recorded live at the Helsinki Festival in 2004), Pohjonen and Samuli Kosminen collaborate with Kronos Quartet to create a fantastic soundscape. It is developing slowly but surely. The virtuosity is there all right but there is no display of virtuosity. Just organically-grown music that you want to taste forever.
My chromatic tuner died this spring. At first I thought there was a problem with a battery, or the battery contact. I’ve changed the battery couple of times and added a bit of duct tape to keep it firmly in place. Still, it required me pressing on the battery compartment (squeezing the electrons out?) to make it go. And then, even that stopped working.
During my last visit to Cambridge I ventured to the very same music shop in a hope to buy a replacement. There are not selling Crafter tuners any longer. However, the shop assistant did show me a selection of gadgets and recommended this model as the one that works well both on string and brass instruments. (He said he himself plays trumpet and clips this tuner to the bell.) So I bought it.
It is a great little gizmo and so far it has been working just fine. The “pitch” button is used to calibrate the concert A between 430 and 450 Hz. The “item” button allows to switch between the instrument (guitar, bass, violin, ukulele) and chromatic (keys F, B♭, E♭ and, naturally, C) modes. Finally, the “flat” button makes the E♭ tuning and D tuning of guitar and bass a piece of cake. (It is not that difficult anyway.) The clip provides two rotational degrees of freedom and can be swapped between the left and the right side of the tuner. The LCD display looks as if taken from some vintage sci-fi movies. Last but not least: black is cool but metallic red is even cooler.
You can buy yourself one from Amazon for one-third of the price I paid in the shop.
This was the first book of Ray Bradbury I ever read, in summer of 1977. (I discovered many other things that summer: ABBA, Livin’ Blues, Alexander Galich and One Hundred Years of Solitude, to name a few.) A former student of my mum gave me Марсианские хроники to read. He suggested me to draw an illustration for each chapter. So I did. I don’t think any of these have survived. I remember that I gave the drawing for The Green Morning to the owner of the book. Doesn’t matter: I know that The Martian Chronicles are illustrated by me.
I just found out from Wikipedia that the 1997 edition of the book moved all the dates forward by 31 years. That doesn’t sound right. In the original Bradbury calendar, today is already The Off Season (Мёртвый сезон).
I came to identify Fuerteventura with Bradbury’s Mars. Especially when the calima was blowing. Now I am back to Earth. There are rivers and lakes and forests, with berries and mushrooms. It is raining every other day and I don’t have to sweep red sand from the patio. They say it can be a lot of snow in winter. It is all familiar but feels a bit weird.
“I made up my mind when I came here last year I wouldn’t expect nothing, nor ask nothing, nor be surprised at nothing. We’ve got to forget Earth and how things were. We’ve got to look at what we’re in here, and how different it is. I get a hell of a lot of fun out of just the weather here. It’s Martian weather. Hot as hell daytimes, cold as hell nights. I get a big kick out of the different flowers and different rain.”
“I’m not surprised at anything any more,” said the old man. “I’m just looking. I’m just experiencing. If you can’t take Mars for what she is, you might as well go back to Earth. Everything’s crazy up here, the soil, the air, the canals, the natives (I never saw any yet, but I hear they’re around), the clocks. Even my clock acts funny. Even time is crazy up here. Sometimes I feel I’m here all by myself, no one else on the whole damn planet. I’d take bets on it.”
About a year ago, we were visiting our friend, my former colleague and bandmate-turned-writer, Martina Munzittu. I’ve noticed the Pythonesque cover of the book laying on her table. The novel, it has to be added, is written by another former colleague of mine. I asked Martina if she read it and she said “not yet”. Yuri also got interested and while we were chatting and having lunch and chatting again, he read about a third of the book. Later that day, he asked me to order it from Amazon, which I did. I also got a Kindle version of it (for free, as it happens).
It was not until the last week of July though that I came to read it myself. We were busy packing and storing when Timur expressed a desire to take TUIB with us to Finland, because Yuri told him the book is very good. I told him it’s a bit of an overkill to carry a hardcopy in our luggage when we have it on Kindle. After that, I proceeded to read this very hardcopy while I could.
It turned out to be better than I expected. Actually, brilliant. If you like Douglas Adams, Monty Python and Red Dwarf, I am sure you will enjoy TUIB. Even if you hate all of those... you still should give TUIB a try. It is very user-friendly and even has a Glossary explaining, sometimes correctly, some of the scientific mumbo-jumbo.
anaX was hooking the extensible, spring-coil lead of the all-purpose, high internal impedance recharger to the brass-alloy nodal-anode batteries of emergency deep-space survival module No 3. And she was doing it a lot faster than it takes to say it.
LEP was quietly singing “Daisy, Daisy” to himself. anaX took it to be a normal pastime for ship’s computers, as she had heard it somewhere before, but it wasn’t long before this pastime started to irritate her. She looked up from recharging the batteries and said, “LEP?”
LEP stopped singing. “Yes?”
“Tell me something about yourself,” she said. “Talk to me for a bit.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” said LEP with uncharacteristic modesty.
“I’m sure there is.”
“Well, you’re quite right. There is. And every bit of it is phenomenally interesting.”
“Go on, then.” She continued with her recharging.
“I’m deeply flattered,” said LEP. “I hadn’t realized you were so interested in me.”
“I’m not. But it’s got to be better than your singing.”
A BBC report says that Cambridge is “Britain’s top cycling city”. If this is indeed so, I feel sorry for the rest of Britain. For Cambridge, the last time I was looking (last month), is still far from being truly cycle-friendly. Unfortunately, there are no shortage of cyclist haters in Britain. This hatred is often based on a belief that it’s them, motorists, who are paying the mythical “road tax” while the rest are (equally mythical) “road tax dodgers”. On the other hand, (some of) the cyclists in Cambridge are arrogant like nowhere else. When Douglas Adams wrote about “a cyclist, who cursed and swore ... from a moral high ground that cyclists alone seem able to inhabit”, I’m sure he meant Cambridge cyclists.
I bought my first bicycle in 1998, shortly after moving to Cambridgeshire, in a hope to use it for my work commute. Back then, I had this mental image of Cambridge as a safe cycling place, which I by some reason extended to the rest of the county. The reality was different. The semblance of the cycling path was disappearing half-way from the village, and I was never feeling suicidal enough to hit the motorway. And so, for the next 13 years, my Integra Phantom was resting. (Resting, not rusting. It started to rust only here.)
I resumed cycling two years ago, in Corralejo. My first week here, I bought a budget Berg. Both Yuri and Timur were learning cycling on it, and then Yuri was using it daily, so it suffered a lot. In two years, I changed the pedals, wheels, gears, brakes (twice), saddle (twice), tyres (twice), countless inner tubes... well more or less everything apart from the frame and the chain. I reckon I invested in it at least twice as much as it was worth new. Still, cycling is the way to go in Corralejo. From our house, it is a 15-minute ride to the school and the same to Flag Beach.
When my old bike has finally arrived from England, I took it for a check-up to the sports shop where I bought the rest of our bike fleet. That’s when and how I learned (from “my” mechanic) that the brake levers in left-side-driving countries are the other way round compared to the rest of the world.
Now Corralejo is reasonably crime-free but one day Timur phoned from the school and said that his bike has disappeared. By that time, it also was a well-battered contraption scarcely worth stealing. Still, I went to the police to report the incident, if only for the sake of the experience. Needless to say, I never heard back from them.
Cycling in Corralejo is a breeze. Not because of the infrastructure — the cycling paths can be good, bad or absent — but thanks to the attitude. ¡Tranquilo, hombre! It’s only guiris (foreigners) who wear cycling helmets. Nobody bothers with hand signals either. The motorists normally leave the cyclists in peace; the cyclists don’t seem to be excessively irritating either. For me, the major annoyance comes in form of obese pedestrians who insist on crawling three or four a-breast, taking all of the pavement and a cycling path.
Ironically, just as we are planning to move, they, at long last, finished the re-surfacing of the high street and even put the new bike parking racks. If you are visiting Corralejo, think seriously of renting a bike. If you are moving in... do you need a second-hand one?
Take the linen slipcase off. Open the linen-bound book. Read the text. Admire the tritone photographs Ansel Adams himself would approve of. Hang a print on the wall.
Much has been said and written about Adams’ legendary technique — probably too much, for in fact it was no better than it needed to be to describe what he wanted to describe; often it was not good enough for that, as he repeatedly deplored. His technique had to be better than that of most photographers because his subjects required it. Photographing the air of Yosemite required a more sophisticated technique than was required to photograph its geology. Otherwise, Adams’ insistence on precision would have been just showing off — fancy dancing with no partner, and none in view.
After watching the first episode of Elementary, I thought it was vastly inferior to Sherlock. Where British make three episodes per season, Americans make 24. Surely they can’t be all as good?
Well I was right here: they aren’t. Some of them are weak, and the very last one of the season is just plain silly. And there are some quite good too.
Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock Holmes is as arrogant and annoying as Cumberbatch’s character in Sherlock — or, indeed, as Moriarty in Sherlock. But there’s more to this particular Holmes than genius and arrogance. Eventually, I grew to like him. Maybe because of his vulnerability. Mainly because of his vulnerability. Lucy Liu makes a very decent Dr. Watson: intelligent, reserved and trustworthy. Also, while learning from Holmes, she teaches him a thing or three. Little wonder Holmes, now “clean” ex-addict, becomes so dependent on her. Elementary offers something that was missing from other recent interpretations of Conan Doyle classic stories: development of friendship between Holmes and Watson. On the other hand, Moriarty, aka Irene Adler (Natalie Dormer), is a complete disaster.
This book has 16 stories of widely variable quality. Now don’t get me wrong: there’s no sloppy work here. On the contrary, the author puts a lot of thinking into every sentence. However, at times it looks like he wants the reader to spend as much time pondering over every sentence. It’s all very literary but it does not flow: too viscous. Not my idea of a good short story. In general, not my idea of a good story.
An Island is the longest and least believable of the lot. Who on earth writes letters like these, especially to a loved one? It gets more compelling when the story is not exactly supposed to be believable, as with Charis or Doubles. In my view, Asylum and Strong Enough to Help are the best.
It was not until last week though that I finally sorted it. By that time, I couldn’t find any reasonably priced hotels in El Cotillo for two nights. So, guess what, I booked our stay for three nights. Which provided us with a welcome escape from extremely noisy neighbours who arrived for holidays. (I never thought I am going to say this, but here you are: I am counting time till we leave this house for good.)
What I wrote last year remains true. Still, no publicity. Maybe because this year marks the 10th anniversary of the festival, they managed to print the colourful booklets and posters, although I only saw them in El Cotillo. The festival website had a list of bands, but it was not even said which band plays which night. The DJ breaks were still far too long. The police, even in greater numbers, were still hanging around the centre. This time they brought red and blue LED traffic flares, so their stretch of road looked more festive. The special buses seemed to run on time.
For me, the highlight of the first night were The Monos from Gran Canaria. I was more than impressed by their versatility and level of musicianship. Yes, it’s “only” rock’n’roll. Plus cumbia, funk, rancheras, reggae, ska, and even tango. And what a killer horn section! Who said that Canarians can only play timple? Oh, by the way, they also have a killer timple player. Listen to Llora la Tierra and Canarito de sangre and hear for yourself.
On Saturday night, as I was walking towards Playa de la Concha, I heard music coming from one of the streets. I came closer. It was a garage used as a dining room. Inside, a middle-aged woman was sitting near the gate, another was standing, probably cooking. An old man was at the table, playing timple and singing, paying no attention whatsoever to the beat from Playa de la Concha.
I guess every outdoor festival struggles with the problem of waste. In the early hours of Sunday, the garbage containers were overflowing. Maybe they were not emptied on Saturday morning. I don’t know what was happening with portaloos, I did not dare entering them this year.
The Palestinian rap trio DAM played an electrifying set on the second night. They even taught the audience some clapping patterns and a few Arabic (I believe) words. My only wish was they were backed by a real band. And, magically, my wish came true, for the next act, Babylon Circus, graciously invited DAM on stage and backed them for a truly great performance. That, I thought, is how Palestinian rap should sound.
Babylon Circus were the heroes of the night. To label them as “ska and reggae group” is, at best, misleading. Of course they do play ska and reggae, but these are fused with chanson, rock, swing and, yes, kind of music you’d expect to hear in circus. They sing in both French and English (yes, with cute French accent). The audience were exhausted from all this singing and shouting and jumping, while it looked like Babylon Circus were ready to play another set!
A hard act to follow, they are. Perhaps inevitably, the next band sounded, well, less great. I felt really sorry for them. To avoid further disappointment, I went back to the hotel. The formerly musical garage was dark and silent.
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