What a great way to wake up this Saturday morning. Love Hamza El Din. Thank you, givemypoorheartease:
Al Oud: Instrumental and Vocal Music of Nubia (Vanguard 1965).
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
The Rite of Spring: Igor Stravinsky’s own hand-written manuscripts are published for the first time in 2013
And at no time is it more vital to think about the coming season. Winter be gone!
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Kicking off this final day of the work week with this smooth track from Laura Marling. Where can I go? Where can’t I go.
Thanks, mojomagazine:
New music from Laura Marling = a great morning. Check out new track Where Can I Go? here.
Marling’s new album, Once I Was An Eagle, is due for release on May 27.
(via mhisadj)
“Feeling Good” was the first Nina Simone song I heard.
I was 31, recently divorced, and I needed to find her. Her recordings became a frequent companion. Nina Simone gave me the sound of her soul — as an activist, as a woman want of love, full of wit, and hardened by pain. She deserves to be celebrated.
Joyeux anniversaire Mme. Simone!
~Stefni Bell, coordinating producer
Nina Simone’s “Since I Fell For You”from Sugar In My Bowl makes this morning fine.
(My thanks to theantidote)
Tuesday Evening Melody: “I & Thou” by The Daredevil Christopher Wright
by Susan Leem, associate producer
“I love exploring my own doubt, and how people have wrestled with the idea of understanding human motivation, purpose.”
~Jason Sunde, songwriter
Martin Buber’s 1923 seminal work I and Thou is essential reading for many a seminary student. And, the Wisconsin band The Daredevil Christopher Wright has rendered this classic namesake into song. And it’s got us reading and talking more about this Jewish religious thinker too.
“Every Thou in the world is by its nature fated to become a thing, or continually re-enter into the condition of things.”
~Martin Buber, from I and Thou
Our colleague Chris Roberts spoke with the songwriters for his latest story at Minnesota Public Radio. Listen to the audio (left).
Tom Waits sings “Shenandoah” with Keith Richards. Classic.
As Open Culture describes it, the song is part of a sea shanty tsunami:
“In 2006, Anti- Records, home of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Neko Case, Kate Bush (and so many more favorites of mine, this list is already too long), published the tons-of-fun compilation Rogue’s Gallery, a selection of sea shanties and pirate songs as interpreted by an ensemble of luminaries from the pop, indie, and folk worlds. The two-CD, forty-three track release is available on YouTube (I’d recommend Nick Cave’s “Fire Down Below,” but he’s an old hand at this kind of thing).
(via @KristaTippett)
We revive the too-long-dormant Tuesday evening melody with these haunting lyrics of The Long Wives, the solo project of Brandy St. John. The song is rather dark, the religious imagery visceral, and somehow I find some sustenance in its beauty:
They’re fighting in the streets
They’re fighting on the TV
Did you learn to make a fist
Before you learned to speak?
And did you cut your teeth a little too soon?
The answer lies in your eyes
It lies in our woundsThe violence of man
The violence of the beast
The violence in your heart
Your violence for me
And the blood it runs
And the blood it runs
And the blood it runs byThe master comes to eat
The blood and the body
Now he’s full of Christ
And the life of the party
He has a gun for you, he has a gun for me
He just asks that we all send him some money
All he really needs is a little more money…
Flash mob delights Spaniards waiting in the unemployment line in a Madrid office with The Beatles classic “Here Comes the Sun.” The soloist is marvelous.
