Elizabeth Cotten’s “Freight Train” is just what I needed this evening.
(h/t to Jeff Guntzel)
We haven’t posted a Tuesday evening melody in several weeks. And this ditty couldn’t be a more fitting reentry.
Kara Holden offered this lovely Friday intermission in response to our question about the best song you’ve heard all week: Beneath us, constellations.
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
What’s the best song that you heard this week?
A wonderful way of connecting from NPR Music:
I feel like a lot happened in the music world this week. Or maybe I was just more aware of what was going on due to my obsessive #musicdiary2012 cataloging. In any case, I want to know the absolute best song that you heard this week. The song can be brand new to the Internet, an old song…
Would love to hear your suggestions.
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
The track that ends our upcoming show on the sounds of silence and the last quiet places? An instrumental song from The Pines.
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Adam Yauch’s Buddhism in Two Tracks
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
I’d like to send you off this Saturday with a pairing of tracks from the Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication: “Shambhala” and “Boddhisatva Vow.” After I read Tricycle’s interview with Adam Yauch about his life and his commitment to Buddhism in the mid-1990s, I came across this photo and caption by an Aussie, Julian Wearne:
I woke up this morning to hear the sad news about Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch’s passing after a three-year battle with cancer. I felt the only appropriate thing to do was put Paul’s Boutique on the turntable, turn it up, and enjoy one of the finest hip-hop albums ever released.
I’m not religious at all, and I’m not at all educated on the teachings of Buddhism, but I do think MCA’s interpretation of Buddhism can teach anyone a lot. From his song “Bodhisattva Vow”:
A Strength From Within To Go The Length
Seeing Others Are As Important As Myself
I Strive For A Happiness Of Mental Wealth
With The Interconnectedness That We Share As One
Every Action That We Take Affects Everyone
So In Deciding For What A Situation Calls
There Is A Path For The Good For All”
I’ve listened to these tracks so many times but had never really thought about the lyrics and what they said or whom they came from. It should’ve been obvious, but it took an Aussie’s photo on Flickr to shine a light on them in a new way. I hope you take a few minutes to listen to these tracks and remember the life of MCA, a phenomenal artist and a fine human being.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions in society in general about what actually brings happiness, we’re caught up in all these ideas that having a lot of money or having somebody beautiful to have sex with or having some cool objects, having a cool car, cool stereo or whatever is gonna make us happy. And those things actually don’t bring us happiness. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about how compassion or altruism actually brings a person happiness and I think that’s a lot of what’s trying to be put forward through the concerts and it seems like the optimum way to put those ideas forward is through helping the Tibetans gain their freedom because those values are so inherent within Tibetan culture.
—Adam Yauch (1964-2012), MCA of the Beastie Boys, from the Frontline report “Dreams of Tibet”
Yauch, best known by his rap moniker MCA of the Beastie Boys and his activism for Tibetan freedom, died yesterday from a three-year battle with cancer. Jaweed Kaleem offers a fine round-up for The Huffington Post on how Buddhist spirituality permeated his life and music, noting that he was “born in Brooklyn, New York to a Catholic father and a Jewish mother, [and] had practiced Buddhism since 1994.”
In the photo to the right, Yauch speaks at a press conference on June 13, 1998 prior to the Tibet Freedom concert at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Stephen Jaffe/AFP/Getty Images)
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Song of Sitting Bull at the Surrender of Fort Buford
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
For the Lakota people, Cedric Good House of Standing Rock Reservation says, songs kept different memories and meanings alive. Sitting Bull sang the song above, Mr. Good House says, to remind his people of their way of living at a time when things looked most bleak — in what the history books describe as the “surrender” at Fort Buford:
“Our story says it was an exchange of lifestyle. People were starving. He chose that the better would be for them to have food and shelter. So he in turn took his rifle, he gave it to his son; his son gave it to Colonel Buford or whatever his name was. And he’s the one that called it a surrender, but it wasn’t a surrender. It was an exchange of lifestyle. You’re going to give this lifestyle to my son, not to me.”
Check out the rest of our show, “Tatanka Iyotake: Reimagining Sitting Bull,” to hear more of Cedric Good House and Sitting Bull’s great-grandson Ernie LaPointe describe the spiritual legacy of Tatanka Iyotake.
Easter Sunday Soundtrack #11: “The Great Doxology”
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
The eleventh and final song to round out our Easter Sunday soundtrack for this year’s Pascha won’t leave your head. It’s a chant by The Monastic Choir of the Valaam Monastery called “The Great Doxology.” To those Orthodox Christians, Happy Pascha!
Easter Sunday Soundtrack #10: “Seven Magnificat Antiphons/O Weishit”
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Number ten in our Orthodox Easter Sunday soundtrack is “Seven Magnificat Antiphons/O Weishit” — composed by Arvo Pärt. This track comes to you from the On Being playlist for “Restoring the Senses: Gardening and Orthodox Easter” with Vigen Guroian. It’s exquisite.
Easter Sunday Soundtrack #9: “The Healing Bird”
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
The ninth song in our Orthodox Easter Sunday soundtrack comes from the Hover Chamber Choir of Armenia, “The Healing Bird.” This track comes to you from the On Being playlist for “Restoring the Senses: Gardening and Orthodox Easter” with Vigen Guroian. Happy Pascha!
