seeline

I once saw part of a John Wayne movie dubbed in German - quite an experience, to say the least!

Yes, that is right. Friesland is in the north, opposite of (Noord) Holland. Utrecht is in the middle. I didn't know you studied art. That's nice. So you know all about Johannes Vermeer, Frans Hals en Jan Steen! I've always liked Rembrandt's light myself. Do you have a favourite painter from that time? Speaking of losing knowledge. I was in a store and asked for the price of something and the girl in the store said: "Oh, that one has a discount of 60 percent." She couldn't tell me the price though. The girl at the cash register said that she was happy she didn't have to count back when she had to give change as the machine counted for her. I think they were both around 18. Arithmatics is only taught in primary school, so they loose it quickly if they don't train it anymore. Too bad. I don't have a single favorite painter from that time - they were all great at different things (Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals and Steen). I am a big fan of Dutch 17th c. landscape and seascape paintings - the light and clouds in the best are amazing! - as well as some of the better painters of still life, genre scenes and church interiors. (I love architecture.) There are just so many painters from that time - the art market exploded as the Netherlands got wealthy from trade. All that said, Rembrandt is probably my favorite of all of them - for his prints and drawings as much as for his paintings. A friend of mine married a guy from Friesland, which is partly how I know about that, and Utrecht... well, we even have an art materials company over here called Utrecht. (Believe it or not.) * I have never been good at mental arithmetic and to be honest, computerized cash registers worked for me, back when I was in retail!

It seems more sensible than having a county divided in two with no common border, though (Flintshire, pre-1972).

the 1972 changes look like a reversion to medieval names of various parts of Wales - ?

page - Friesland, Utrecht (this is a province, yes?) and beyond that, I would have to look. (I studied Dutch 17th c. art in graduate school, though that was not my primary subject.) * It would be very revealing to see how people from the US (like me) would do at identifying geographical landmarks and provinces of Canada. Am afraid Mexico would be a lost cause. The only time I can recall it being discussed in public school history classes was re. the Mexican-American war, in the early 19th c. Oh, and as "our neighbor to the south." We didn't learn anything about Canada, either, except in the context of the French-Indian wars and the American revolution. (Or war of Independence, or whatever you Brits call it. - am blanking on the term.)

why? That seems ridiculous and quite strange. As a kid, I learned some of the county names from songs: "In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly happen" and so on...

I think Naxos is a very good label!

that's my cup of tea, along with some old DG Archiv recordings of Praetorius' Christmas choral music (not in print - my LP copy is very old and showing its age more than I'd like). I also like some of the stock medieval/Renaissance xmas recordings that are in circulation, since they generally have a good variety of pieces and are so different than most other kinds of xmas music. Anonymous 4's On Yoolis Night (Harmonia Mundi) is worth checking out, so long as you know what'you're getting into. Paul Hillier and the Theatre of Voices (same label) have also done some interesting seasonal recordings. This album is also quite nice (on Harmonia Mundi) -

I completely agree with your assessment (I am interested in poetry, so I almost mentioned Shropshire, but I was uncertain as to whether it was a county or some other type of geographic region), but what very small percentage of the U.S. population do those Anglophiles comprise? If I asked all sixty of the college graduates with whom I work (and, yes, I realize that there are a lot of very bright people who do not have a college education as well as a lot of college graduates who are idiots) to name as many counties as they could in the United Kingdom, I doubt that I would receive more than a handful of correct answers. My geekiness re. English history and literature is showing, I think... Although I suspect that I know some of the old names for the counties, not the ones that are used currently (for the most part), and I wouldn't even come close to being able to name them all! (Not sure I could name all 50 states without a cheat sheet, for that matter.)

I dunno - my hunch is that there are more than a few US-based Anglophiles who would get at least a few of the counties, though not necessarily be able to identify them on a map. Names of counties are often cited in novels and sometimes in poems and song titles. Avid folk fans might do better than you'd imagine!

Elis' discography is huge and pretty varied, and tends to go in and out of print (yes, all of it, or nearly all) often... my two favorites are the album she made with Toots Thielmans and the performance from the TV show "Ensaio" that was issued on DVD a few years back. there are lots of clips from it on YouTube - I'd link to some, but am typing on my phone right now, so.. maybe later?

Hey, page! She is a very gifted singer, but I am fairly hesitant to recommend many of the discs with English lyrics. I think she sounds best - and phrases best - when singing Brazilian Portuguese lyrics, but that said, I haven't heard her Chet tribute, so can't comment on it. You would love the original Brazilian Duos album, as well as Duos II. (All on the same label.) And yes, she works with some amazing musicians on all of her recordings. Marco Pereira is one of my favorite Brazilian guitarists, and their collaboration (which started on Brazilian Duos) is impressive. he composed a piece for her (Sambadalu) that's on her 1st Duos album. (iirc, both of them have recorded it elsewhere.)

Amazon.com sells a lot of items below cost, and that's definitely a factor, along with their Cloud service for music purchases + their new CD + Cloud offers. (Get the CD and have a digital copy of the album available on their Cloud player, too.) I do think that streaming services have undercut sales for many "niche" albums and genres tremendously, although for me, being able to listen to something and then deciding on purchases has led to more CD buying, not less.

Good choices, page! My current new album choice (jazz, not Brazilian) is René Marie's latest, featuring Wycliffe Gordon and many others - really nice charts and interpretations. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVvsXJfQQ3U

page - nice to see you here! (I was "clave" on the AAJ forum.) I really like all three of Luciana Souza's Duos recordings - great material, and superb accompanists.

One of my favorites by Joyce is Ilha Brasil, which came out in the 90s. Very hard to find, but it has a great selection of songs, terrific charts and some of the best musicians, in large and small ensembles.

ikwym about her going off-key at times, but she has absolutely wonderful phrasing and I'll definitely try and track down her latest. (Might be available for listening via Rdio.com, Spotify, etc.) You're not alone in having mixed feelings about some Brazilian singers who sing English lyrics, either! I think Caetano Veloso's "A Foreign Sound" is awful. The idea was a good one, but the execution is another thing entirely. (I added a bit to my previous comment as well...)

Thanks so much Bev - really appreciate the heads-up! Loved the show overall, though I think the emphasis on politics vs. what was happening as a younger generation of singer/songwriters (like Joyce herself, as well as Chico Buarque, Edu Lobo, Geraldo Vandré and many others) was emerging is something that would, ideally, have been highlighted as well. The media (radio and TV) started having "festivais" (festivals) - songwriting/performing competitions that allowed many of the names I just mentioned to gain recognition. For example, Joyce is part of the second generation (so to speak) of bossa nova, but she is also someone who did experimental work in what came to be known as MPB (Musica popular brasileira) early on and wrote songs that Elis Regina and others sang on live TV and then recorded. (A friend of mine interviewed Airto and Flora Purim many years ago, and they were adamant that music changed primarily due to the rise of singer/songwriters, rather than by an imposition on culture by the government, though I'd imagine that someone who wasn't involved in the music scene - or a big fan - might assume otherwise.) Things didn't move from bossa nova straight to Tropicalia by any means. (And Brazilian rock started much earlier than the program might lead one to believe, but that's definitely beyond the scope of this docu!) that aside, this is a truly delightful show. Joyce's demonstration of a samba in "straight" style vs. a bossa nova treatment is hugely helpful, as is Monica Vasconcelos' explanation of the difference between the rhythms of sung Portuguese and sung English - perfect example of what Brazilians call "balanço." One thing I do wish is that there was some mention of the black musicians, singers and songwriters who were part of bossa nova and what, for lack of a better term, I'll call proto-bossa nova. But for such a brief program, they managed to hit on a *lot* of important things, and I'm very grateful for it. Edited to add: maybe the government tried to inject american music into Brazilian music, but it had already been there for decades and decades - the original bossa nova composers and lyricists were listening to it and being influenced by it, but were reinterpreting what they heard in a Brazilian way. Joyce's observation at the end of the program is especially poignant.

I dunno - read Clement Greenberg (and others) on the Abstract Expressionists, and it pretty much leaps off the page. Dealers often feel that they have to create a mystique surrounding the works they're selling; some artists are good at being outrageous (and creating their own PR), while most don't care about that side of things. Museum curators (not all, but many) and academics perpetuate jargon and make it denser and more opaque. What I heard from my profs when I was a studio art major was mostly jargon that came about as a result of Abstract Expressionism and similar movements, though to be fair, they weren't big on jargon. Edited to add: there were schools - like the Bauhaus - that did seem invested in creating a new vocabulary for describing art (and meaning), just as they were invested in fostering a certain kind of aesthetic and new work. Kandinsky - writing well prior to the Bauhaus - was another who tried to create a new vocabulary and philosophy of art. Architects like Le Corbusier also played a part in developing what turned into jargon - and, to be fair, I think that a lot of what is now jargon wasn't intended to create barriers, but a *lot* of art world types do like to keep people at arms' length as well as to convince outsiders of their seriousness and high purpose. (while others could care less.) One thing to keep in mind is the difficulty of describing visual art (and music) in words. People do tend to fall back on jargon because it's a convenient shorthand for things that are difficult to express. That said, there's a lot of silliness about art with a capital A!

They're absolutely right about "International Art English"! It's all jargon, as far as I can tell. (From having spent quite a few years in the trenches both listening to it being used and using it myself.)

Count me in - download, please.

My hunch is that this set will end up in university music libraries... Just like many university press books that have ridiculous prices and are intended for the institutional (library) market only. I hope that - maybe - the recordings of African music and spoken word material will be issued separately, though I'm not going to hold my breath.

I think you're right about many listeners and dancers, but for the people who are performing the music, I wonder....

I feel less skeptical, as I think he's right (in that there's an "underground" scene that's been around for quite some time), also because - love him or hate him - Will Friedwald (author) has been known to write about jazz...

I really like all of those guys (but then, I love both Ghanian and Nigerian highlife). does fuji get much airplay these days? (Barrister, Kollington, etc.)