Thursday 31 August 2023

Free live music and stuff in Las Palmas, August 2023

Culture-wise, August here is dead. Dead. And after the incredibly busy July, it felt especially dead. Enter LPA Groove Summer, a two-day (or should I say three-night?) mini-festival organised by Miguel Ramírez. This is a second edition of the cycle: the first was last summer in Miller. Thankfully, this year they moved LPA Groove Summer outdoors, to Parque Doramas: better ambience and closer to me.

  • 11 August: Los Jinetes del Groove / Mirla Riomar @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, Parque Doramas, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
      According to our City Hall notice, Los Jinetes del Groove were “born in La Laguna as a response to the lethargy caused by the health crisis”. A healthy dose of jazz-funk interspersed with humorous intermissions. I really liked all the songs but if I had to choose my three favourites, they would be Freedom, No More Passport and Slow, Bro. Featuring Pablo Galán (drums), Pablo González (keyboards), Diego Jiménez (sax) and Jonay Mesa (guitar).
      The second part did not disappoint: an exuberant celebration of Afro-Brazilian music and dance by Mirla Riomar (vocals, percussion, dance) accompanied by Antony da Cruz (bass), Marcelo Montenegro (drums), Cra Rosa (percussion) and Marcel Valles Perpinya (guitar).
  • 12 August: Nymura / Gisele Jackson & The Shu Shu’s @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos
      Nymura is a solo project by Ruyman Franco (DJ, rap, keyboards, bass guitar), on this occasion accompanied by Tana Santana (bass guitar, keyboards), Pablo Queu (guitar), Juan Pérez (drums) and Alba Gil Aceytuno (alto sax, flute, rap), plus a guest Devitha Pradinda (vocals, keys).

And a bit of art:

Looking forward to more life in September.

Monday 28 August 2023

Life Lines: Poets For Oxfam

by Various Authors

This was the only non-second hand CD I ever bought from Oxfam, back in 2006. I’ve been coming back to it ever since.

There are poems OK, good and brilliant. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a fan of vers libre, so I tend to skip those, except perhaps of Look at These by Helen Farish. My absolute favourites are Sexy at Sixty by Pam Ayres, No Ball Games by Sophie Hannah, No Ball Games, and that ultimate pièce de résistance by John Hegley with Keith Moore on tuba: St George’s Day.

Life Lines: Poets For Oxfam

  1. Dannie Abse, The Stethoscope
  2. Fleur Adcock, A Rose Tree
  3. Patience Agbabi, Countdown to Zero
  4. Al Alvarez, Anne Dancing
  5. Simon Armitage, Two Clocks
  6. Pam Ayres, Sexy at Sixty
  7. Sebastian Barker, The Walkway
  8. Charles Bennett, A Woman Made of Bees
  9. Ashok Bery, A Very Short History of British India
  10. Alan Brownjohn, Talking Animals
  11. Melanie Challenger, Limb
  12. Polly Clark, Hedgehog
  13. Olivia Cole, Breaking the Ice
  14. Wendy Cope, Spared
  15. Tim Cumming, The Knowledge
  16. Charlie Dark, Airborne
  17. Isobel Dixon, And
  18. Carol Ann Duffy, Prayer
  19. Ian Duhig, From the Irish
  20. Frank Dullaghan, Man On The Moon
  21. Helen Farish, Look at These
  22. Peter Finch, Ben Lomond
  23. Annie Freud, Canaletto Orange
  24. Anne-Marie Fyfe, Signallings
  25. Giles Goodland, Corrections
  26. Lavinia Greenlaw, Spirit of the Staircase
  27. Sophie Hannah, No Ball Games, etc.
  28. David Harsent, Toffee
  29. John Hegley, St George’s Day
  30. Kevin Higgins, A Brief History of Those Who Made Their Point Politely and Then Went Home
  31. Alan Jenkins, Inheritance
  32. Mimi Khalvati, Ghazal after Hafez
  33. Nick Laird, Cuttings
  34. Roddy Lumsden, My True love
  35. Chris McCabe, Axis of Evil
  36. Roger McGough, Half Term
  37. Jamie McKendrick, Ancient History
  38. Lachlan Mackinnon, Marfa, Texas
  39. Adrian Mitchell, Human
  40. Esther Morgan, Bone China
  41. Andrew Motion, Anne Frank Huis
  42. Daljit Nagra, Darling and Me
  43. Cath Nichols, Corona
  44. Eric Ormsby, My Mother in Old Age
  45. Ruth Padel, Tiger Drinking at Forest Pool
  46. Pascale Petit, Self Portrait with Fire Ants
  47. Mario Petrucci, On the Onset of Tinnitus
  48. Clare Pollard, A London Plane Tree
  49. Peter Porter, Chorus At The End Of The First Act
  50. Sally Read, Mastectomy
  51. Denise Riley, Shatung
  52. Maurice Riordan, The January Birds
  53. Henry Shukman, Piano Solo
  54. George Szirtes, Water
  55. Jo Shapcott, Of Mutability
  56. Owen Sheers, Not Yet My Mother
  57. John Siddique, Cheap Moisturizer
  58. John Stammers, Mary Bruton
  59. Greta Stoddart, You Drew Breath
  60. Liane Strauss, Ça ce n’est pas
  61. Todd Swift, Lost at Austerlitz
  62. Heather Taylor, Trouble
  63. Tim Turnbull, New Romantic
  64. Jonathan Ward, Anna and the Swan
  65. John Welch, Taking Refuge
  66. Jackie Wells, Only a 9-Year-Old
  67. Briar Wood, Tent
  68. Tamar Yoseloff, Barnard’s Star
  69. Benjamin Zephaniah, A Picture of a Sign

Wednesday 16 August 2023

Piranesi

by Susanna Clarke
‘It’s all in the book I wrote. I don’t suppose you happen to have read it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Pity. It’s terribly good. You’d like it.’
Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

It took ten years for Susanna Clarke to write her debut masterpiece. Another sixteen years passed before she published her second novel. And it was totally worth the wait. Because, you see, Ms Clarke has written a book that’s even better than Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. That’s what I call quality.

I don’t think the sixteen year gap was deliberate but the number 16 seems to be important to the author. As in the name of one of the characters. Or the number of etchings in Imaginary Prisons by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (2nd edition; the first edition contained 14). Anyway, it’s a good number.

‘I was the greatest scholar of my generation. Perhaps of any generation. I theorised that this ...’ He opened his hands in a gesture intended to indicate the Hall, the House, Everything. ‘ ... existed. And it does. I theorised that there was a way to get here. And there is. And I came here and I sent others here. I kept everything secret. And I swore the others to secrecy too. I’ve never been very interested in what you might call morality, but I drew the line at bringing about the collapse of civilisation. Perhaps that was wrong. I don’t know. I do have a rather sentimental streak.’

Wednesday 9 August 2023

もののけ姫

a film by Hayao Miyazaki

I think Princess Mononoke was the first Studio Ghibli film I saw, yet somehow it never became my favourite. Rather the opposite. Still, I endured it quite a few times when the kids were little. Yesterday, we sat down to revisit it.

It’s amazing how much I’ve forgotten in, um, fifteen years or so. I definitely enjoyed the movie now, yucky stuff notwithstanding, maybe because we watched it (for the first time!) in original Japanese, maybe just a nostalgia effect. There are many parallels with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Lady Eboshi, of course, is a mediaeval version of Princess Kushana, as San (aka princess Mononoke) is a (p)reincarnation of Nausicaä. Kodama the tree spirits are almost unbearably cute; of human characters, the Iron Town women are the most appealing.