Uplifting Thoughts for the Isolated and Depressed in Times of Plague

[cruxlover]

Back to Americana, specifically the genre "Country and Westen" music. Many would place Hank Williams as the top of the songwriters of this style. One commentator said, "He's the Shakespeare of Country Music, except Shakespeare couldn't yodel!"

Goodbye, Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go, pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou
Jambalaya and a craw fish pie and filé gumbo
'Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher amio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gayo
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou
Thibodaux Fontaineaux the place is buzzin'
Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozen
Dress in style and go hog wild, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou
Jambalaya and a craw fish pie and filé gumbo
'Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher amio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gayo
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou

pi·rogue - a long, narrow canoe made from a single tree trunk, especially in Central America and the Caribbean. French derivation. Poling a pirogue is similar to punting in England
bayou- a body of water typically found in a flat, low-lying area, and can either be an extremely slow-moving stream or river (often with a poorly defined shoreline)
ma cher amino - Cajun French for "my dear friend;" "my girlfriend."
Jambalaya - dish of West African, French (especially Provençal cuisine), and Spanish influence, consisting mainly of meat and vegetables mixed with rice. Traditionally, the meat always includes sausage of some sort, often a smoked meat such as andouille, along with pork or chicken. The vegetables are usually the mixture known as the "holy trinity" in Cajun cooking, consisting of onion, celery, and green bell pepper,
Crawfish pie - a baked savory pie common in the Cajun and Creole cuisine of Louisiana. It is similar in appearance to a pot pie and contains crawfish.
Gumbo - a soup popular in the U.S, and is the official state cuisine of Louisiana. Gumbo consists primarily of a strongly-flavored stock, meat or shellfish, a thickener, and what Louisianians call the "Holy Trinity" of vegetables. This one is heavily seasoned with filé powder, a spicy herb made from the dried and ground leaves of the North American sassafras tree
Fill fruit jar - drink moonshine liquor

View attachment 863710View attachment 863711View attachment 863713View attachment 863714View attachment 863715View attachment 863716

A song to make @Apostate 's mouth water!

I especially like the end of this clip - "Train". Left it much longer they would end up plastered across the pilot of CSX.
(At the start my immediate thought was " those rails are bright - double track main line - dodgy, very dodgy."
But no doubt they would have been forewarned by the vibration up their arses - sit on rail, not such a bad idea.)

 

[elephas]

Alessandro Marcello - Concerto in D minor for oboe and orchestra

J.S. Bach / A. Marcello - Concerto in D minor, BWV 974 (Piano version, Vikingur Olaffson)

 

[elephas]

Procol Harum - The Worm and The Tree (1977)

 

[Eulalia]

I have no problem with music with religious overtones, as long as I don't understand the language it's sung in.

Well, not wishing to distress your sensitive spirit, Frank, the original is only religious in a very broad, pantheistic way:

Holl amrantau'r sêr ddywedant
Ar hyd y nos
"Dyma'r ffordd i fro gogoniant,"
Ar hyd y nos.
Golau arall yw tywyllwch
I arddangos gwir brydferthwch
Teulu'r nefoedd mewn tawelwch
Ar hyd y nos.

O mor siriol, gwena seren
Ar hyd y nos
I oleuo'i chwaer ddaearen
Ar hyd y nos.
Nos yw henaint pan ddaw cystudd
Ond i harddu dyn a'i hwyrddydd
Rhown ein golau gwan i'n gilydd
Ar hyd y nos.

My translation, trying to roughly match the syllabic count, though not the rhymes - Google makes a dog's breakfast of it, and the translations on the web are mostly far removed from the original, though I was reassured to find a fairly literal one that reasonably well confirmed my hunches - but there are members here whose Welsh is much better than mine -

All the twinkling stars are saying,
All through the night,
Here's the way to the land of glory,
All through the night.
Any other light is shadowed
In this show of perfect beauty,
Family of the heavens in silence
All through the night.

O how cheerfully smiles the stars' light
All through the night,
Lightening their earthly sister,
All through the night.
Night is old age
When grief troubles,
But to lighten man
In his evening,
We give our weak light together
All through the night.

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

Procol Harum - The Worm and The Tree (1977)

The artwork for the album cover was by Dickinson, the then-girlfriend, and subsequently, wife of Keith Reid. I remember being captivated in 1967 by the art as well as the music. It was heavily influenced by the style of the late-victorian illustrator Aubrey Beardsley. (a favorite of @Eulalia )
To mark their 50th-anniversary seminal rock act Procol Harum with founder member Gary Brooker at the helm returned with a new studio album 'Novum' in 2017
“Novum” features a stunning cover artwork by Julia Brown which references elements of the sleeve of the band’s eponymous debut album in 1967.

 

[Eulalia]

Back to Americana, specifically the genre "Country and Westen" music. Many would place Hank Williams as the top of the songwriters of this style. One commentator said, "He's the Shakespeare of Country Music, except Shakespeare couldn't yodel!"

Goodbye, Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go, pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou
Jambalaya and a craw fish pie and filé gumbo
'Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher amio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gayo
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou
Thibodaux Fontaineaux the place is buzzin'
Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozen
Dress in style and go hog wild, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou
Jambalaya and a craw fish pie and filé gumbo
'Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher amio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gayo
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou

pi·rogue - a long, narrow canoe made from a single tree trunk, especially in Central America and the Caribbean. French derivation. Poling a pirogue is similar to punting in England
bayou- a body of water typically found in a flat, low-lying area, and can either be an extremely slow-moving stream or river (often with a poorly defined shoreline)
ma cher amino - Cajun French for "my dear friend;" "my girlfriend."
Jambalaya - dish of West African, French (especially Provençal cuisine), and Spanish influence, consisting mainly of meat and vegetables mixed with rice. Traditionally, the meat always includes sausage of some sort, often a smoked meat such as andouille, along with pork or chicken. The vegetables are usually the mixture known as the "holy trinity" in Cajun cooking, consisting of onion, celery, and green bell pepper,
Crawfish pie - a baked savory pie common in the Cajun and Creole cuisine of Louisiana. It is similar in appearance to a pot pie and contains crawfish.
Gumbo - a soup popular in the U.S, and is the official state cuisine of Louisiana. Gumbo consists primarily of a strongly-flavored stock, meat or shellfish, a thickener, and what Louisianians call the "Holy Trinity" of vegetables. This one is heavily seasoned with filé powder, a spicy herb made from the dried and ground leaves of the North American sassafras tree
Fill fruit jar - drink moonshine liquor

View attachment 863710View attachment 863711View attachment 863713View attachment 863714View attachment 863715View attachment 863716

A song to make @Apostate 's mouth water!

I love that, but - speaking from a position of abysmal ignorance, isn't that Cajun rather than C&W? I enjoy Cajun music, but confess C&W tends to sound rather 'sameish' to my uncultured ear.

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

but there are members here whose Welsh is much better than mine -

Say it isn't so!

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

I love that, but - speaking from a position of abysmal ignorance, isn't that Cajun rather than C&W? I enjoy Cajun music, but confess C&W tends to sound rather 'sameish' to my uncultured ear.

Though using Cajun words and settings, Williams wrote a very American Engish style to appeal to a broad audience.
"Ethnic music is usually unpalatable for a mass-market unless it is diluted in some way (Harry Belafonte's calypsos, Paul Simon's Graceland… the list is endless). The broader audience related to 'Jambalaya' in a way that it could never relate to a true cajun two-step led by an asthmatic accordion and sung in patois." - Escott, Colin; Merritt, George; MacEwen, William. Hank Williams: The Biography.
It wasn't until 15 years later that the broader public was exposed to authentic Cajun music when Johnny Cash had the fiddle player Doug Kershaw on his national TV show in 1967.

The purer Zydeco version hit big in the late 80s with superstar Buckwheat Zydeco

 

[elephas]

View attachment 863833The artwork for the album cover was by Dickinson, the then-girlfriend, and subsequently, wife of Keith Reid. I remember being captivated in 1967 by the art as well as the music. It was heavily influenced by the style of the late-victorian illustrator Aubrey Beardsley. (a favorite of @Eulalia )
To mark their 50th-anniversary seminal rock act Procol Harum with founder member Gary Brooker at the helm returned with a new studio album 'Novum' in 2017
View attachment 863836“Novum” features a stunning cover artwork by Julia Brown which references elements of the sleeve of the band’s eponymous debut album in 1967.

Procol Harum is my favorite rock band. The cover in the video is from the first album of 1967, but this song is from 1977 album Something Magic, which also has a nice surreal cover.

 

[Eulalia]

Though using Cajun words and settings, Williams wrote a very American Engish style to appeal to a broad audience.
"Ethnic music is usually unpalatable for a mass-market unless it is diluted in some way (Harry Belafonte's calypsos, Paul Simon's Graceland… the list is endless). The broader audience related to 'Jambalaya' in a way that it could never relate to a true cajun two-step led by an asthmatic accordion and sung in patois." - Escott, Colin; Merritt, George; MacEwen, William. Hank Williams: The Biography.
It wasn't until 15 years later that the broader public was exposed to authentic Cajun music when Johnny Cash had the fiddle player Doug Kershaw on his national TV show in 1967.

The purer Zydeco version hit big in the late 80s with superstar Buckwheat Zydeco

Ah yes, that's real! That's my problem, so much traditional music was diluted, homogenised, one of the joys of YouTube is being able to find, with a good bit of digging, 'real' blues, cajun, country etc. - and from all over the world.

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

Ah yes, that's real! That's my problem, so much traditional music was diluted, homogenised, one of the joys of YouTube is being able to find, with a good bit of digging, 'real' blues, cajun, country etc. - and from all over the world.

That opening episode of the Johnny Cash show featured an appearance by Bob Dylan, his first on National TV. The show had blockbuster ratings between Dylan and Cash, a C&W and crossover superstar already. Cash and Dylan sang a pair of some duets that were very good. The producers wanted to cut Diggy Di, too ethnic for TV. Cash said, "We run that part or I quit." I remember many in my age group (19 - myself included) being absolutely floored by the young cajun who played like he was on "speed."

 

[fallenmystic]

Paham mae dicter, O Myfanwy,
Yn llenwi'th lygaid duon di?
A'th ruddiau tirion, O Myfanwy,
Heb wrido wrth fy ngweled i?
Pa le mae'r wên oedd ar dy wefus
Fu'n cynnau 'nghariad ffyddlon ffôl?
Pa le mae sain dy eiriau melys,
Fu'n denu'n nghalon ar dy ôl?

For a brief moment, I thought that post was from Rias until I realized there's no "meow" or squirrel reference in it.

 

[Frank Petrexa]

Well, not wishing to distress your sensitive spirit, Frank, the original is only religious in a very broad, pantheistic way:

Holl amrantau'r sêr ddywedant
Ar hyd y nos
"Dyma'r ffordd i fro gogoniant,"
Ar hyd y nos.
Golau arall yw tywyllwchI arddangos gwir brydferthwch
Teulu'r nefoedd mewn tawelwch
Ar hyd y nos.Hyd y nos.

O mor siriol, gwena seren
Ar hyd y nosI oleuo'i chwaer ddaearen
Ar hyd y nos.
Nos yw henaint pan ddaw cystudd
Ond i harddu dyn a'i hwyrddydd
Rhown ein golau gwan i'n gilydd
Ar hyd y nos.

My translation, trying to roughly match the syllabic count, though not the rhymes - Google makes a dog's breakfast of it, and the translations on the web are mostly far removed from the original, though I was reassured to find a fairly literal one that reasonably well confirmed my hunches - but there are members here whose Welsh is much better than mine -

All the twinkling stars are saying,
All through the night,
Here's the way to the land of glory,
All through the night.
Any other light is shadowed
In this show of perfect beauty,
Family of the heavens in silence
All through the night.

O how cheerfully smiles the stars' light
All through the night,
Lightening their earthly sister,
All through the night.
Night is old age
When grief troubles,
But to lighten man
In his evening,
We give our weak light together
All through the night.

So you're saying it's like Einstein's dieism--nature is the god.
You know Welsh too. Interesting. I wanted to learn Navajo once, and still have the books, but never did. (One table in there of verb forms indicated that there were lots of forms, but most verbs don't use them.) The Navajo Nation is one of the worst hotspots for the virus in the United States--families live close together. It's so bad Medicins San Frontiers sent a team in there--the Indian Health Service is an underfunded joke (worse than the VA). I hope they come out of it OK.

 

[Eulalia]

So you're saying it's like Einstein's dieism--nature is the god.
You know Welsh too. Interesting. I wanted to learn Navajo once, and still have the books, but never did. (One table in there of verb forms indicated that there were lots of forms, but most verbs don't use them.) The Navajo Nation is one of the worst hotspots for the virus in the United States--families live close together. It's so bad Medicins San Frontiers sent a team in there--the Indian Health Service is an underfunded joke (worse than the VA). I hope they come out of it OK.

That's very sad, and shameful in a wealthy nation. Not that we Brits have much to feel proud of just now.

On 'Ar hyd y nos', the words are by 'Ceiriog', John Ceiriog Hughes, 1832-87, sometimes called the Robert Burns of Wales, like Burns he wrote lyrics to already popular, traditional tunes, as in this case. He sought to do for Welsh poetry what Wordsworth and Coleridge tried to do for English in the Lyrical Ballads, adopting a simple, natural style. I can't claim to know much about his beliefs, but he seems to have shared Wordsworth's kind of pantheism - if God is not identical to Nature, at least Nature is all we can know of God.

 

[Frank Petrexa]

On this topic, there is an Indian art museum in downtown Phoenix called the Heard Museum. I am not a big art type, but one exhibit they have is based on the collection of Barry Goldwater (no politics expressed or implied). These are the Katsina dolls, painted wooden carvings of the gods of the Hopi. The gods live in the San Franciso peaks around Flagstaff--seven thousand feet up or so, and visit the Hopi on their mesas to bring rain and bounty, and are potrayed in all festivals. There are over a hundred different ones. The Hopi live on the mesas (presumably for defense) and farm the dry valleys. The Navajo also farm, but mainly raise livestock--sheep in particular--and so are accomplished weavers.
The Hopi Reservation is surrounded by the much larger Navajo Reservation. The two "tribes" have always had an uneasy relationship (the Hopi creation myth goes into detail about the origin of the Hopi, then in one sentence states "then he created the Navajo"). They had to go to court to settle a dispute about the reservation boundaries. The Navajo are much more numerous, and the Hopi are much more reclusive. They flat out banned tourism for a while. I have not read about how the Hopi are faring in the emergency.
On the one hand, it isn't good to see people left behind by civilization (even if it is mostly their choice), but on the other it is tragic to see rich cultures die out and people ashamed of their heritage.
The United States Government around the turn of the 20th century had a policy of integrating these people into American society, and set up a boarding school (mandatory for a while) in Phoenix to teach modern ways and suppress native languages and even replace native names with Anglicized ones. When World War II came along, there was a realization that possibly indigenous languages would be a ready-made code for small infantry unit communication, and the Navajo contributed a cadre of "code talkers" that served on the front lines with the Marines in the Pacific.

Apparently the Amazon aboriginies are also having a very hard time with the virus, made worse by the leadership of Brasil.

Not so "uplifting". I'll stop.

Hopi Katsina Dolls: 100 Years of Carving

Welcome to the Hopi Tribe - The Hopi Tribe

Quick Links: Emergency Rental Assistance Program Applications Hopi Hunting & Trapping Applications Social Services Contact Information Hopi Senom Transit Schedule General Welfare Emergency Assistance Program Question Contact Imogene... Read more »

www.hopi-nsn.gov

Navajo Nation

 

[Frank Petrexa]

For years, the United States Mint has been trying to get people to use dollar coins instead of bills, with spectacular lack of success. Every year, a "Native American" dollar coin is issued, with Sacagawea ( the guide for Lewis and Clark in the 1803-06 expedition to explore the "Louisiana Purchase"--mostly by canoe up the Missouri River) on the obverse and a native American theme on the reverse. In 2016, the theme was the "code talkers". Sacagawea was a teenager who had been abducted and was married to a fur trader when she joined the expedition. She was a Shoshone, and when the expedition pushed into Wyoming--Idaho-Oregon--Washington, she was reunited with her brother.

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

Symphonie No. 3 "avec orgue" was completed by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1886 at what was probably the artistic peak of his career. Saint-Saëns said "I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again." Here is the finale, a great orchestra pitted against a great organ in a classical soundfest! Performed down under by the Auckland Symphony Orchestra

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

It's 90 in Myrtle Beach and Summer is nigh! Mindless, great Summer Song.

When the weather's fine
You got women, you got women on your mind
We're always Happy
Life's for livin' yeah, that's our philosophy

 

[Eulalia]

dig the lockdown hairstyles!

something different, surely uplifting

 

[fallenmystic]

I was about to post this in the Music Nostalgia thread but thought it'd be better to do it here since it's not exactly a music video. It's one of the iconic scenes from the series of films that the famous duo had made:

It never gets old for me to see how gracefully Ginger's dress floats around her as she impeccably matches every moves that Fred Astaire - one of the best tap dancers of his time - makes, and in high heels.