Friendly Noises

Elsie Houston: Queen of Brazilian Song

2011-12-17T06:25:00.000-08:00

Cover of new Marston Elsie Houston CD

Marston's new Elsie Houston CD is a thing of beauty. It is as comprehensive as one could ever expect, including recordings from each stage of her career, and the sound quality--newly restored by the geniuses at Marston--is terrific for tracks this old.

The recordings include her set of Villa-Lobos Serestas from 1928, a sampling of Brazilian and Paris recordings from the early 1930s, her Liberty Music Shop sides from the late 1930s, and her main commercial release--Elsie Houston Sings Brazilian Songs, from 1941. But the reason this is a must-get for Elsie Houston fans (and music historians in general) is the inclusion of a series of never-before-released test tracks from the Liberty Music Shop as well as an unpublished set of de Falla songs, "Siete Canciones Populares Españolas."

The new LMS tracks are:

"Toada P'ra Você" by Oscar Lorenzo Fernández
"Xango" by Villa-Lobos
"Villancio Andaluz," "Villanacio Gallego," and "Villancio Castellano," by Joaquín Nin
"Sur l'herbe" by Ravel
"Quand je Chante Cette Melodie" by Nilvar

According to the liner notes, Elsie Houston handed the LMS test pressing to her friend (and photographer), Marcus Blechman, a few days before her suicide. The disc is lost but a tape remains, the source of these tracks.

For better or worse, I can see quite a bit of my own work informing the liner notes (for which I get a thanks in the acknowledgements), which is concerning simply because my own knowledge of EH is so tentative and fragmentary. At the same time, the notes provide some splendid new (to me) pieces of information--including an ironic twist to the financial crisis that pushed Elsie Houston to take her own life. Apparently, a large check from a Georgetown arts patron was in the mail.

Order Elsie Houston: Queen of Brazilian Song

Elsie Houston and Iara Rennó

2011-07-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

I was pleasantly surprised (to say the least) to stumble across this recent video of Brazilian artist, Iara Rennó, performing the Elsie Houston standard, "Cadê Minha Pomba-rola."

From Elsie Houston to Carmen Miranda by Iara Rennó from MOCHILLA on Vimeo.
(I'd forgotten the song translates to "Where is my turtle-dove?" or more to be more ornithologically specific, "Where is my ruddy ground-dove?"). Rennó is a particular fan of the Brazilian art scene in the 1920s and 30s, thus the Elsie Houston tribute.

Incidentally, Marston is getting ready to release a comprehensive Elsie Houston CD, which will apparently include the some of her earliest recordings in addition to the better-known Brazilian Songs album.

Rennó is quite an artist in her own right. I was particularly interested in her musical take on Mario de Andrade's fantastic surrealistic novel, "Macunaíma Opera Tupi," released as a CD and staged as a musical. Here is a series of clips from a 2008 production.

Here is a longer excerpt from the opera from what is apparently a more recent production.

This is the kind of thing the American Repertory Theater has been staging recently (in fact, Rennó's sinewy confidence as a performer reminds me a bit of Amanda Palmer, star of the ART's production of Cabaret). I wonder if anyone from the ART is listening...

China Night Intercultural Vortex (Part 2 of 2)

2011-05-14T04:56:00.000-07:00

[Note: this post replaces a somewhat more elaborate version that Blogger seems to have lost in its great meltdown last week. If and when the old version comes back, I'll delete this one]
Song 3. "Gomen Nasai" sung by Richard Bowers. (I couldn't find a YouTube version). You can listen to the track via original Beware of the Blog post.

"Gomen Nasai" is perhaps THE classic example of the GI song. Written by and for Americans stationed in Japan (and marketed to the Japanese public on that basis), its title is a common Japanese phrase used to request forgiveness, including situations when one is turning down a romantic overture. It is a phrase that GIs in Japan were probably quite accustomed to hearing. In this case its use is reversed so that it is the English-speaker asking forgiveness in order to repair a relationship with a (in this case explicitly) Japanese lover. The use of the native phrase shows a willingness to accommodate and the beginnings of an intercultural attitude. The fact that most versions began with some "oriental" sound (Chinese gongs, or the Japanese folk tune "Sakura Sakura" in Bower's version) maintained its "exoticism," nevertheless...

"Gomen Nasai" was a modest hit in the United States and became something of a vocal standard among American singers. A brief run through its varieties in iTunes reveals recordings by Slim Gaillard, Eddy Howard, Margaret Whiting, Sammy Kaye, David Hughes, and the Club Nisei Orchestra. And Harry Belafonte, for which we do have a YouTube version (though I suspect not for long).

(Bowers, an African American NCO from New Jersey, by the way, has better Japanese pronunciation than Belafonte)

The relative success of a song called "Gomen Nasai" in the United States, it should be noted, was a fact not missed in Japan.

HERE'S THE THING

One of the many early 1950s recordings of "Gomen Nasai," was by the 16-year old (!) Japanese singer, Chiemi Eri. I have not actually heard this recording but it is documented in the Federal Records discography. It was the B-side of "Pretty-Eyed Baby," a song that IS available on YouTube in both English

and Japanese versions.

The American version is credited to "Chiemi Eri and GI Joe." I don't know who "GI Joe" really was (the YouTube uploader credits the Chuck Miller Trio, though there is no other documentation of this). If the recording of "Gomen Nasai" is like "Pretty-Eyed Baby," it is all Eri, thus reversing the original dramatic context and returning the "I'm sorry" part to the Japanese female speaker (and re-orientalizing such phrases as "my butterfly heart.")

Chiemi Eri, it should be noted, was a pioneer Japanese cross-over into the post-war US musical marketplace. While there was surely some novelty connected to her success, it is also clear that she had the musical chops to sing with groups like the Count Basie Orchestra and the Delta Rhythm Boys.

It would also appear that she herself, known by the troops as "Ellie," was a product of the post-war GI music scene. It is this context that allowed the development of her signature style--singing in both Japanese and English--and her success for different reasons in both countries.

Song 4. "The Soba Song," sung by Hibari Misora.

"The Soba Song," known as "Charumera Sobaya" in Japan, is so rich with meaning it may just blow the doors off this intercultural theme. In fact, it has come to symbolize (and I think this was the intention from the beginning) crazy cultural mishmashes. Here is a YouTubed taste.

Written by Bobby Norton, it is a C&W take on a Japanese topic--the traveling ramen maker who pushes his cart around announcing "O-soba, O-soba!" blowing a tune on a specialized double-reed horn called a "charumera." (The violin/kokyu? figure at the beginning/end of the song is supposed to represent a typical charumera phrase.) Note, "ramen" is categorized in Japan as a Chinese food and was apparently known as "shina soba" (recognize that banned term?) in the immediate postwar era.　Charumera is now a popular brand of instant ramen that trades off of the nostalgic imagery.

The singer is Hibari Misora, perhaps the most celebrated Japanese singer of her era. Like Chiemi Eri, she was 16 at the time of the recording, though Hibari had been a popular singer since the age of 12. Hibari sings in both Japanese and English, though she's clearly not in her element in the English verses and the lyrics may be difficult to make out. Here's a video of someone singing the English verses clearly.

As you can tell, the song uses the classic food-as-nation trope, the sobaya as both a means of understanding a foreign culture and as a delightful, slightly salacious ("soba slurping time"), point-of-entry. (I don't know if Bobby Norton is also responsible for the Japanese lyrics, though it would be pretty cool if he was...)

HERE'S THE THING

In the China Night version of "The Soba Song" there is a stunning musical break which suddenly transitions from C&W guitar plucking to pentatonic kokyu/koto(?) and then suddenly back to C&W again--an abrupt contrast between "East" and "West" that nevertheless shows the commonalities of guitar/koto and fiddle/kokyu. This syncretic moment has made it attractive to other artists in the cross-cultural mode, the most celebrated version provided by the 3 Mustaphas 3.

The 3 Mustaphas 3 version swaps out the pentatonic "Japanese" passage for something more "middle eastern," but, nevertheless, maintains the deliberate cultural juxtaposition.

My favorite version is by a contemporary Japanese group, "Kiwi and the Papaya Mangos," which adds a host of other musical styles, including Brazilian Forro, to the mix.

And amplifying the remarkable kitsch value of the original, we have the 5.6.7.8's releasing their version a couple of months ago.

The a-side of the 5.6.7.8's single is "Sho-jo-ji (Hungry Raccoon)," another kitschy song from the "oriental pop" genre in the 1950s. It is based on a children's song from the 1920s, but recorded in an English version (complete with undifferentiated "oriental" sound and exaggerated "Japanese" accent) by Eartha Kitt.

I think you will find the 5.6.7.8's version is an improvement

China Night Intercultural Vortex (Part 1 of 2)

2011-04-04T08:59:00.000-07:00

China Night is an EP released in the 1950s, popular among US GIs stationed in Japan. It has been making the internet rounds and was recently posted on WFMU's Beware of the Blog. I did a little digging to find out some basic information and was soon pulled into a vortex from which I am only beginning to emerge. This EP strikes me as the perfect subject for this blog and I hope that I am able to do it justice.

A couple of background resources: This Japanese blog post, analyzing the EP song by song. And a 2004 paper by Minako Waseda appearing in Yearbook for Traditional Music (perhaps your library can give you digital access) titled, "Looking both ways: GI Songs and Musical Exoticism in Post-World War II Japan."

First song: "China Night" by "Ho Mei Fan." Below is the YouTube rendition (if that goes away here's a more stable source).

This song was beloved by U.S. soldiers serving in the Korean War, who were stationed in Japan and/or visiting Japan on leave. Its chorus, "Shina no yoru yo," became a soramimi, heard as "She ain't got no yoyo" (or, as one crude but believable YouTube commenter has it, "She ain't got no pants on.") I don't know if its deliberately exoticized tone was read as "Chinese" or "Japanese" or simply as an emblem of the "Orient" generally, but was clearly an appropriate theme song for GIs' (often sexualized) encounters with the exotic. This explains its inclusion on this EP, which collected "Japanese" songs popular among American soldiers and sold them back to the Japanese public.

HERE'S THE THING

This is a cover version of a song first made popular in 1938 by Hamako Watanabe and which served as the theme song for a hit 1940 movie.

The song and the film were essentially propaganda, Imperial Japan's ruthless invasion of China soft-pedaled as a romantic dream. The U.S. Occupation knew this and initially banned the song, particularly sensitive to its title--"Shina," the old European-derived term for China, had come, during the Imperial Japanese era, to be a deeply insulting derogatory term. (Indeed, it is still considered insulting to this day, which is a caution to those who would throw the characters representing "Shina" ("支那") around heedlessly.) For obvious reasons, during the Korean War, the U.S. became somewhat less eager to protect the feelings of the people of China, and the ban was lifted and the song re-recorded.

Hamako Watanabe was apparently signed to another label, so Columbia chose a Japanese singer of Chinese ancestry (or perhaps better put, a singer whose father was Chinese who grew up in Japan but who was forced to live in Shanghai during the war because of her ancestry where she was commonly rejected as Japanese and who returned to Japan to sing professionally after the war). Her name on the Columbia label, 胡美芳, is romanized as "Ho Mei Fan" (I've also seen "Hu MeiFang"), but she was known in Japan as "Ko Hibou." If you look up "Ko Hibo" on YouTube you will see a lot of Christian songs (she apparently became the rare Japanese convert in the 1970s and an important cultural ambassador after the opening of the PRC).

Second song: "Japanese Rumba" by "Norman Nishimoto" and "George Shimabukuro." Here's a YouTubed version.

This and the two following can be properly categorized as "GI songs" or "shinchu-gun" songs. They were generally composed and/or performed by Americans and "addressed" (Waseda's word, an appropriate one) to American GIs in Japan. "Japanese Rumba" (also spelled "Rhumba") combines a pop approximation of the Cuban rhythm with lyrics straight from a Japanese-English phrase book. (Note: while use of rumba style might seem to be an additional intercultural wrinkle here, it had been, in fact, thoroughly assimilated in Japan as a pop genre. Here is a taste of a more energetic Japanese attempt to capture the essence of rumba during this era.) To American soldiers the song probably represented a useful mnemonic and/or a danceable set of references to their alien situation. And a handy set of phrases to help them negotiate romantic relationships. By all accounts it was widely performed and enjoyed.

HERE'S THE THING

This song, as Waseda argues, exoticizes in two directions at once. While it may seem like a "Japanese" song to an American audience, this is a very strange song for a Japanese audience, full of lyrical non-sequitors and Americanized pronunciations. (In some cover versions, such as this one, the Japanese is rendered so horribly that it might as well be "Nagasaki"-style verbal nonsense). This duality is further reinforced by its performers, two Japanese Americans from Hawaii, equally exotic and familiar to both American and Japanese audiences. According to Waseda, Shimabukuro, the lead singer, actually had decent Japanese pronunciation skills but deliberately Americanized his pronunciation for marketing reasons; the Japanese record-buying public, it was felt, would be more comfortable if the singer of this song appeared more distant from "authentic" Japanese-ness.

Leave it to Haruomi Hosono, of Happy End and YMO fame, to muck with this cultural estrangement in his 1978 search for a Martin Denny-style exotic sublime, "Paraiso." Hosono plays it straight, with appropriate elongated Americanized pronunciation, as can be heard in YouTubed form below:

Shuhei Hosokawa, has a great essay on Hosono in which he claims that Hosono's mimicry works to exoticize American exoticization. Personally, Hosono's rendition makes me feel very uncomfortable; I hear sardonic mockery beneath Hosono's mellow delivery--a reflecting back of projected American ignorance. Of course, I'm not the intended audience. Despite the English on Paraiso's cover, and Hosono's Americanized, "Harry," and the overwrought Buddhist iconography, this is an album and a song intended for a Japanese public--intercultural hall of mirrors territory.

End of Part 1. Part 2 to follow.

Japanese anti-nuclear power anthem from 23 years ago

2011-03-17T05:21:00.000-07:00

Like everyone else I daily alternate between heartbreak and horror as the events in Japan unfold. But I'm also filled with disgust as it becomes clearer and clearer that a lot of the trouble comes from someone's attempt to make a buck. Dissent around nuclear power in Japan has been suppressed for decades. Case in point (here's the music angle): The Blue Hearts' protest song, "Chernobyl," which was not released on their original label, Meldac, because Meldac was owned by Mitsubishi and Mitsubishi was into nuclear power technology. (Apparently this story is more complicated than an outright ban--the band just didn't want the hassle of the prolonged negotiation process to get permission to release it). At any rate here it is.

I highly recommend visiting the YouTube page itself because the poster has added lyrics/English translation via the "interactive transcript" button.

I've already seen a few Japanese blog posts directly referencing this song, a cultural touch-point in the history of anti-nuclear discourse.

Naomi Chiaki

2010-11-17T17:05:00.000-08:00

One of the problems with being so focused on the indie and underground side of music (as I was when I had my year in Japan a couple of decades ago) is that you miss genius that's right out in the open, everywhere in the mass media. While I may have had a vague awareness of Naomi Chiaki (ちあきなおみ) back then, it's only recently that I've really come to appreciate her brilliance. This post is a resource for those in the English-speaking world who might want to know more.

The standard capsule biography of Naomi Chiaki (see her IMDB entry for an example) refers to her top rank talent (perhaps the best Japanese singer, EVER) and the fact that she made a sudden break from the world of show business after the death of her husband. She was 45, had shown no signs of diminishing ability, and fans ever since have been trying to coax her back onto the stage.

As for me and most of Japan, my first exposure was this song, her debut single in 1969,"Ame ni nureta bojou." (I'll admit being struck by the jazzy kayokyoku arrangement as much as by her singing.)

You can already hear some of her trademarks--her incredible range, expressiveness, and dramatic flights. She was immediately promoted as an idol of the "sexy" variety, largely because of her deep, husky natural speaking voice. And she was handed a string of pop songs to sing.

Take the following crowd-pleasing hit from 1970, "Yottsu no onegai,"
(my favorite moment in the second clip above is when a talent in the background imitates her already distinctive non-mic hand gesture).
The b-side, "Koi no Mekura," is also pretty awesome (YouTube link here).

Rather than being limited by this light-weight material, Chiaki would use it as a platform for other talents. Here's a clip from a 1977 TV program that features "Yottsu no onegai" sung in the style of four different characters (innocent unmarried girl, sultry woman on honeymoon, authoritarian father, old woman)

Indeed, Chiaki's talents as a diseuse translated into an extensive acting career during the 70s and 80s, including a stint as a solo performer in Lady Day, the Billy Holiday story.

You can see an example of her powers of expression in this performance of "Nee, Anta" from close to the end of her career.

In this case, the expressiveness is highly mannered (though no less effective), a quality that had attracted the attention of professional kabuki performers, particularly onna-gata (the male performers of female roles). Unsurprisingly, she also became a bit of a trans-gender icon in general.

The pinnacle of Naomi Chiaki's pop career was undoubtedly "Kassai," Japan's record of the year in 1972. This song about the death of a lover, darker and and more dramatic than her previous work, was apparently thought for many years to be autobiographical. (I've sometimes thought that the actual death of her husband, and the demand that this song remain part of her repertoire, is what finally drove her from the stage).

This particular performance style would become iconic. You can see it again in a performance of her hit the following year, "Yakan Hikkou"

Simultaneously, Chiaki had become a highly accomplished singer of enka. Here's a performance of her 1975 hit, "Sadamegawa"

My favorite Naomi Chiaka enka performance (I wish I had the video) is this rather more unrestrained medley from 1973.

My knowledge of enka is not very deep, but the improvisational flights during her rendition of "Muhoumatsu no isshou" seem way over-the-top to me, almost free jazz--especially her use (prized in enka) of the roughest, most guttural qualities of her voice.

This may help to explain the occasional name check she gets in more underground circles. Make no mistake, most of her recorded output, especially later in her career, fits neatly into easy listening (albeit elevated by the quality of the singer). But I was struck by her inclusion among the celebrated Japanese free jazz, acid folk, and noise artists on this list.

She was clearly attracted to that world. Her 1977 single, "Yoru e Isogu hito," was written by none other than Kazuki Tomokawa and represents a deliberate break from her pop idol past.

This choreographed but unhinged performance, perhaps the weirdest moment in the history of the rather conservative New Year's program, Kohaku Uta Gassen, made Chiaki the subject (in my opinion) of rather unkind parodies.

But also the hero of folks looking for something different.

Also of note in this regard, a cover of Maki Asakawa's trademark, "Kamome," written by underground playwright Shuji Terayama. (It means "seagull," which I hope explains the imagery on this video).

Lest we get too carried away, here's a reminder of the original (superior, in my opinion, more because of the arrangement than the vocal performance).

Ultimately, though, Naomi Chiaki's search for something different would take her in a more intercultural direction. Western music had, of course, been part of her musical upbringing. Here's a clip from a 1977 show in which she runs though some of the pieces in her "jazz kissa" repertoire from the late 1960s.

She was also attracted to French chanson.
Here's her Japanese-language rendition of "La Boheme."

She also did a chilling version of Edith Piaf's "L'accordeoniste."

Finally solidifying her reputation as a singer who could sing anything, she turned late in her career to fado, the Portuguese song form. Here's a clip from a TV special that shows a glimpse at her approach.

According to the narration (and legitimizing Chiaki's appearance as a topic on this blog!), she tapped into the similarities between fado and Japanese song (in melody line, vocal effects, as well as thematic sadness) for her performances. It is a sign of her success that this clip has garnered some positive feedback from Portuguese viewers.

And then in 1992 she suddenly stopped appearing in public.

Well, that's my version of the Naomi Chiaki story. I am still learning, so I welcome your feedback. I am grateful for the labors of a particularly devoted set of YouTube uploaders. My story is also greatly informed by a set of TV specials, more or less available online.

The standard account, available in three parts on the Chinese video site, Youku, is a 2005 NHK BS2 special. (Pre-roll Chinese-language KFC commercials are a fringe benefit).

There is also a tribute show from last year preserved in pieces via this Youtube user channel. This show includes a few interviews (see especially this discussion with a professional onna-gata) and an out-pouring of faxes from Chiaki's vast fandom.

Finally, there is a 1977 show preserved (though the video is rather rough) in 7 pieces in which Naomi Chiaki tells her own story. It starts here. I've already presented some of the clips above. Of particular interest, a fuller performance of "Yoru e isogu hito."

Mayumi Kojima

2010-02-19T16:55:00.000-08:00

I don't know exactly what it is about Mayumi Kojima. Is it the voice/charm of the singer? Is it the deliberate avoidance of "rock" and the embrace of older, jazzier styles? Is it the catchy songs? Is it the intricate arrangements? I don't know. All I know is I never get tired of her.

Here's a taste of the charm (I can't embed it. Just click on the link.)
Sensei no ki ni iri

Cecile Cut Blues (from Sayonara Cecile, still my favorite)

Poltergeist (From Ai no Poltergeist, Asa-chang on drums)

Himawari (Sunflower)live

WaiWaiWai (from My Name is Blue. Could be my favorite video ever)

Fusen (with animation by Mayumi Kojima herself)

Nintendo Commercial (Hatsukoi)

Last Shot (from Swingin' Caravan)

Newest: Arabesque from brand new album Blue Rondo

Elsie Houston recordings in the Library of Congress

2010-02-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

A visit to the Library of Congress reveals previously unheard Elsie Houston treasures. I had to arrange to have them digitized ahead of time, and you need to register as a researcher to get access, but they are worth the trip. And there's at least one I haven't heard yet. They add some specific details to her role as an unofficial "Good Neighbor Policy" ambassador.

Recording #1
The Rudy Vallee Show, January 6 1938, NBC Red 8:00.

EH contributes two songs but there is a good deal of interaction between EH and Vallee that I've transcribed below.

The songs are

1) Oi o Sapo (AKA "Dansa de Caboclo") with accompaniment by an unknown pianist.

2) Jongo. This is one of EH's "voodoo" numbers and appears on a Liberty Music Shop recording. This version, accompanied by EH's own drumming, is more open, more chant-oriented, and more severe-sounding than the LMS recording. It is probably closer to the version she performed in concert. (Ray C. B. Brown in the Washington Post describes it thus: "All trace of refinement was banished from her voice, which took on a rough, uncouth, and barbaric intonation."(7/25/1941))

Dialogue transcription:

Vallee (program introduction): ...Senora Elsie Houston, whose excitingly novel Brazilian voodoo songs have never before been heard on the air.
...

Vallee (segment introduction):...and a headline attraction at the more top hat supper clubs of Paris and New York, currently she is engaged at Le Ruban Bleu here in town and she will make her first American concert appearance at the Guild Theatre shortly. Her first song a folk chant of Northern Brazil, the Amazon country, is called...

Vallee: "What is it called, Senora?"

Elsie Houston: "Oi o Sapo." I will sing it for you first, Mr. Vallee...and you will tell me if you can understand what it means, no?

Vallee: But yes, Senora. So here 'tis "Oi o Sapo."

EH sings "Oi o Sapo" [Applause]

Vallee: Ai que linda.

EH: Now Mr. Vallee, you tell me what does it mean?

Vallee: You want me to guess?

EH: If you can, yes?

Vallee: Well I should think that it's a song about a beautiful South American girl who is very angry with her boyfriend. She says "Beat it sap, we're all washed up."

EH: (laughs) You are very wrong, Mr. Vallee. It's a song about a frog and the song is saying..."Look at the frog. He is in his hole. He is in his home. He is in his home. He is in his hole. And I'll bet you he wants to fight somebody."

Vallee: That just goes to show how wrong one can be. Miss Houston's next is a magic or voodoo song. It is addressed to a deity known as Exu. Who is Exu, Senora?

EH: Exu is the devil, Mr. Vallee. It is necessary to keep Exu away by singing this song.

EH sings "Jongo." (Audience members laugh when she sings the "qua qua qua" part.)

The segment is done. Vallee announces a Jello commercial

Recording #2
November 6, 1940 Fiesta Pan Americana! (NBC Blue network, 9:35-10:00 p.m.)

This was a Good Neighbor Policy-oriented program. Elsie Houston contributes two songs accompanied by the NBC Studio Orchestra. There is a short introduction and limited interaction with the host. EH simply announces her songs.

Song 1: Adios te Digo ["I say farewell to thee"], Argentine folk song.

Song 2: Oi o Sapo ["The frog song"].

Recordings #3 #4
Songs by Elsie Houston NBC White (shortwave) 6:45-7:00 p.m. A 15 minute program announced in Portuguese featuring a selection of songs from EH's repertoire. She was accompanied by NBC staff pianist (and later world famous virtuoso), Earl Wild. Her theme song was "Eh! jurupanã" sung live on intro and outro.

The Library of Congress has four programs in its collection.
I listened to June 5 1942 and June 19 1942
The other two, July 3 1942 and July 17 1942 remain unheard.

June 5, 1942.
Note: there is substantial interaction between the host and EH but it is all in Portuguese and thus a mystery to me. Someone with appropriate language skills might want to investigate. I am also limited in my ability to identify the songs she sings, though the important thing to note is that these songs are pan-American in spirit, drawn from a wide varieties of cultures in the "New World"). The Library of Congress has tapes of the original records made by NBC. There are many skips and crackles on these recordings.

1. Eh! jurupanã (intro)
2. Villancico Gallego by Joaquin Nin
3. Unknown song in Spanish
4. Unknown Lullaby (from Ecuador?)
5. Unknown Folk Song (from Peru?)
6. De Blanca Tierra (from Bolivia)
7. Muchacha Bonita (from Peru)
8. Vai Azulao by Jaime Ovalle
9. Eh! jurupanã (outro)

June 19, 1942

1. Eh! jurupanã (intro)
2. Unknown folk song in Spanish (Mexican?)
3. Unknown song in French (by Jean-Jacques Rousseau?)
4. Las Margaritas (Peru)
5. My Lord, What a Morning! (Negro Spiritual)
6. Unknown song by Hekel Tavares
7. Maria La O (Cuba)
8. Eh! jurupanã (outro-talked over)

EH didn't, as far as I know, perform her Negro Spiritual repertoire for North American audiences. She did when in performing in Brazil and probably in France. Given the intended audience for this program was in Brazil, the inclusion of "My Lord, What a Morning!" makes sense. This was the Burleigh arrangement, also used in Marian Anderson's famous version.

Recording #5
from Music of the New World program "Songs of romanticism and sentimentality" February 11, 1943 NBC 11:30 p.m.(nine days before EH's suicide).
This could have been another Good Neighbor Policy-oriented program, but it also had an educational component (an associated handbook could be ordered from the station). EH contributed two songs, both accompanied by the NBC Studio Orchestra. There is no interaction between the host and EH. She is simply "here to sing it for us."

1) "El Desengaño," described as a sentimental love song from Argentina.

2) "Morena, Morena" by Luciano Gallet.

Her performances are lovely. She is able to hit the high notes in the rather conventional first song, but overall her voice seems a little weaker than in other recordings.

Manuel de Falla's "Nana"

2009-11-14T05:44:00.000-08:00

I suppose this is what it's all about. Music as universal communication. In this case, a lullaby with a simple but emotionally potent arrangement. A global recital staple, both sung

and "sung."

I find it indescribably haunting, expressing the intense tenderness (sadness?) that comes with caring for a small child.

Here's my favorite version, by the Brazilian soprano, Elsie Houston. (My profound gratitude to the person who shared this with me--this was apparently never released and has only been available on test pressings). This is the kind of performance that attracted people like Harry Partch to her--no recital hall projection here, but soft, intimate, a real lullaby, and if you know the Elsie Houston biography, devastating.

End of Geocities means End of my Shonen Knife page

2009-10-07T15:15:00.001-07:00

Wow, the end of an era in so many ways. For a limited time only, a link to my Geocities Shonen Knife page, laid out in tables and associated with a defunct email address. I will let it fade away... [And yes, I am aware that the headline sounds like something out of The Onion.]

America's Sonic Weapon redux

2009-06-06T04:58:00.001-07:00

Here we go again. Jazz Diplomacy, this time aimed at the Middle East. Appears we'll be using a lot of "soft power" tactics in the next four years.

Here's a link to this widely distributed AP story from the CBS News site.

Here's a video version from Reuters (I could only find the Arabic version).

Constantine Dima jazz
Uploaded by Zouaghi25. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Actually, Dimajazz looks like a good time.
Here's a clip of Minnesota blues man, Bernard Allison (one of the beneficiaries of the State Department program).

Dear Fu-Fu

2008-10-24T04:57:00.000-07:00

Interesting thing about the most recent Deerhoof album, Offend Maggie: Satomi sings a lot of it in Japanese. We saw this a little bit on Green Cosmos (originally intended for a Japanese audience) but this is the first time it's been fully integrated into the act. Maybe it's just for this album--Offend Maggie's reincarnation theme is all about blurred and shifting identities and the Japanese-English movement helps to produce that effect. But I find it also draws attention to cross-language puns (the so-called soramimi). I hadn't noticed, for example, the band's name itself is a near homonym in Japanese pronunciation for "Dear Fu-fu"--Dear Husband and Wife. Now that Greg and Satomi are married this actually takes on some significance. Also interesting--they've been touring with Experimental Dental School (another US/Japan Dear Fu-fu).

Why is this funny?

2008-05-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

Jumping to the top of the popurls list is this clip from SNL, featuring a "Japanese" version of the Office. I'm serious. Why is this funny? Anyone the least bit familiar with Japanese TV knows that the workplace, complete with buffoonish boss, is in fact a stock comedic context. So the whole set-up of the gag, that it would be "funny" for The Office to be set in Japan, is wrong. Is it funny that everyone is speaking intelligible (and very bad) Japanese? Would it be as funny if everyone were speaking French poorly? Or is this all an Albert Brooks-like exercise in making the audience squeam? I honestly don't get it. [And don't get me started on the "wacky" Japanese commercial parody.]

Radiolab on Songs that Cross Borders

2008-04-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

I thought I should mention a couple of segments from Radiolab's most recent podcast. One on the popularity of American country music in Thailand and Zimbabwe (one key, it seems, is the simulation of "crying" by both voice and instrument (steel guitar). The other on the sad story of Afghan pop legend, Ahmad Zahir (the "Afghan Elvis"). The first speaks to the universality of some musics' effect on us. The second to the intertextual/intercultural nature of pop music.

SUPER ZIZEK

2008-03-03T14:38:00.000-08:00

I don't even know what this is. But the reference is no accident. Slavoj is IT.
[UPDATE: What it is is pretty damn good.]

Ethiopian Idol

2008-02-13T09:46:00.000-08:00

One of my students referenced Ethiopian Idol in a recent paper about global TV and I've been hooked since. Unlike most of the Idol versions around the world, the performers on the Ethiopian version channel local pop songs and singing styles. And aside from tonal issues I have no clue what makes for a satisfactory vocal performance, which is what makes it interesting, I think. The YouTube channel doesn't provide English translations so I don't know what the judges are saying. Apparently, some of the judgments are rather harsh from an Ethiopian cultural perspective but they are wrapped in a calm restrained tone (unlike Simon Cowell's). Reading the comments also provides some insight into local politics (local ethnic conflicts, cultural imperialism, etc).

Japrocksampler

2008-02-08T16:36:00.000-08:00

I'd like to state at the outset that I find Julian Cope's Japrocksampler to be an extraordinarily useful reference to a short but previously neglected era in Japanese popular music--the hard rock/psych period of the early 1970s. It provides a context for understanding the interconnections between the bands of the period and their predecessors in both the "Group Sounds" and avant garde electronica movements. Any book that spends so much time trying to unpack the work of J.A. Caesar deserves a medal.

But

Cope's supreme confidence in his critical opinion (and he does have a good ear, even if I'm not as fond of the Black Sabbathisms of the Flower Travellin' Band or the druggy drones of Far Out as he is) turns to ignorant arrogance in respect to Japanese culture and language. Here's a hint, in the mandatory preface indicating how an author will handle the order of Japanese names:

Japanese names note: During the past decade, the Japanese have been returning to their old tradition of placing surnames first and given names last. And so, in the interests of cultural correctness, it would have been preferable for this Japrocksample to have followed a similar path. For the purposes of this book, however, Julian Cope has considered that such a line would not be possible because of Yoko Ono's role in the storyline; her fame is far too great, and her place in rock'n'roll myth far too established to attempt to foist the name Ono Yoko on the public at this late stage.

The man has no idea what he's talking about, yet manages to assert a picture not just of expertise but of complex contextual understanding (during the past decade indeed...rather it's standard surname first in Japan and variable in English depending on one's projection of Westernization). Not that he would necessarily know a surname when he saw one (the rockabilly star, Kosaka Kazura (sic, it's actually Kazuya), gets indexed under Kazura). He also defies the standards of romanization, insisting on inserting "t"s where they don't belong (Utchida and Murahatchibu). Add a handful of silly errors (he misspells Hibiya and Hakone and places the protest movement at Haneda instead of Narita Airport) and it becomes clear that Cope thought he could just plow through with some books about the history of Japan, a translator for lyrics, and no real expert Japanese oversight. (He does mention Alan Cummings in the acknowledgements section. I trust Cummings didn't read the full draft).
Which brings me to my real contention. The era that Cope describes does have a standing body of critical discussion in Japanese. Why he couldn't have reached out to some of the real experts in this area for some help in this project is a mystery to me. (By the way, I don't mean myself. I used to think Les Rallizes Denudes's name in Japanese was the "Naked Larries.") I'm happy to see that he is, wikipedia-style, opening up his web-based reference area to contributions. I just wish some knowledgeable folks from Japan would get involved...

[Update: It turns out "Naked Larries" is a legitimate reading after all.]

So Savoeun all the time

2007-12-15T10:37:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'm just sleep deprived, but all I want to do is listen to Cambodian soul by So Savoeun. More here.

"American" Hardcore

2007-10-31T06:23:00.000-07:00

I missed American Hardcore during its theatrical run, so I waited until it was available at the Newton Public Library in order to see it. (Libraries are the new punk rock, man). And was amused to see that Sony Pictures Classic (the distributor) had tagged a disclaimer at the start informing viewers that the opinions shared by the old and fat hardcore dudes (Ian is the only one who still looks like himself--the straight edge lifestyle worked out after all) were for "entertainment" only and did not reflect the views of Sony Pictures Classic. As if there was ever a music scene LESS about "entertainment" than hardcore punk...

Here's my real beef. Hardcore was not an "American" thing. Anyone who ever opened an MRR during the eighties would know that it was a global phenomenon with truly amazing sounds to be heard in Japan, Italy, Brazil etc. The most truly politically radical hardcore band, D.O.A., was Canadian. So it confuses me that the US map is the film's icon of choice. Unless this this just represents the "American" scene report, and we're just waiting for all the other countries to mail theirs in...

Dynamite Pops

2007-10-06T10:58:00.000-07:00

I've become very fond of nostalgia idol camp covers band, Dynamite Pops. Above, their version (sung by "Pocky Miyazawa") of Matchi's early 80s earworm, "Gingiragin ni sarigenaku." Maybe I'm just a sucker for live drum arrangements of disco. Their take on Checkers' "Gizagiza heart no komoriuta" (below) is also right on.

Iva Bittova in the house

2007-07-20T05:35:00.000-07:00

OK, in the Greater Boston house.
I can't see making the 5hr round trip to Williamstown to see her tomorrow at Bang on a Can, but if you are in the vicinity you'd be crazy to miss her. A stunning performer with Romani/Moravian roots, Bittova has an amazing versatile voice and wicked violin skills. I'm most familiar with her 1997 CD,Bile Inferno, but I just happened to pick up the new ECM release of Vladimir Godar's Mater (seriously, it was filed next to the new Golijov that I was looking for) and I was reminded how special she is. And then today, in the Globe, an article announcing she was coming to Mass MoCa for a concert. And the tickets are pretty cheap too. Decisions....

Japanese and Japan-related music on Rhapsody: A list

2007-06-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

Doing my part to support (legal) access to music across cultural boundaries, I've scoured the Rhapsody. com servers for Japan-related music. It was not simple to find. Much of it, frankly, was buried and poorly indexed. But I was delighted to find not only Tzadik's amazing "New Japan" collection, but a bunch of stuff from Alchemy Records! Up and coming is Australia's Chapter Music (I've already fallen in love with Tenniscoats).

I present it in two categories below. First, rock pop and experimental. Compilations follow. Second, I've grouped traditional, new age, and classical. Links go straight to Rhapsody.

Rock/Pop/Experimental

9mm Parabellum Bullet

A Qui Avec Gabriel

Acid Android

Acid Mothers Temple

Acid Mothers Temple SWR

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U. F. O.

Adachi Tomomi Royal Chorus

Deepsea Drive Machine

Derek and the Ruins

DJ Krush

DJ Krush & Toshinori Kondo

Fantastic Plastic Machine

Limited Express (has gone?)

Lolita-Complex

Lolita No. 18

Luminous Orange

Maher Shalal Hash Baz

Junko Tanaka (enka)

COMPILATIONS

The Curse Of The Damned: A Tribute To The Damned From Japan

Do you remember Rock n Roll Highschool? (Tribute to Joey Ramone)

Into the vision

The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift (Universal)

Japan in Decline

Japanese group sound

Jellybean's Jumpin' Jukebox

Kyukyoku Gitai Seibutsu beta

Moon on the water

The Night Gallery -21st century psychedelic underground-

The Night Gallery 2 -21st Century Osaka Greasy Truckers

The Night Gallery 3 -21st Century Psycho Out-

Osaka Street Artists (Strevo 2)

Quotation of Dream (Love and Soul of Toru Takemitsu)

Songs for Nao: Fourteen Bands from Japan

Ten Plants 2 (Childrens Songs)

Tokyo Folklore

Valley of the Tokyo Dolls (Tribute to Johnny Thunders)

TRADITIONAL/ CLASSICAL/ NEW AGE MUSIC/

Agatsuma

Asian Drums

Bamboo Flute Lullabies of Japan

Courtly Songs, Koto

Festival of Japanese Music in Hawaii, Vol 1.

Festival of Japanese Music in Hawaii, Vol 2.

Folk Music of the Amami Islands, Japan

Folk Tales read by Elizabeth Falconer

Gagaku-Ancient Japanese Court and Dance Music

Gagaku-Japanese Court Music

Ichigo-Ichie/Okinawa

Joji Hirota

Kazu Matsui (Shakuhachi)

Kitaro

Japan-The Heart of Zen

Japan: Traditional Vocal and Instrumental Music

Japanese Buddhist Ritual

Japanese Koto Consort

Japanese Koto Orchestra

Japanese Masters of the Shakuhachi

Japanese Melodies

Japanese Mood Music

Japanese Music for Accordion and Viola

Japanese Noh Music

Japanese Orchestral Favorites

Japanese Orchestral Music

Japanese Percussion Music

Japanese Popular Songs (Mother's Song)

Japanese Traditional and Shakuhachi Music

Koto Music of Japan

Mori Chieko: Jumping Rabbit (Koto)

OHKI: Japanese Rhapsody/Symphony No. 5, "Hiroshima"

Sakura: A Musical Celebration of the Cherry Blossoms

Shakuhachi-The Japanese Flute

Shakuhachi Honkyoku Japanese Flute

Sonorities: Japanese Accordion Music

The Soul of the Koto

The Soul of The Koto Volume 2

The Spirit of Dusk, Shakuhachi Flute Vol 3

The Spirit of Silence, Shakuhachi Flute Vol 1

The Spirit of Wind, Shakuhachi Flute Vol 2

The Art of the Japanese Bamboo Flute

The Japanese Cello

The Japanese Koto

Taiko-Drum Music of Japan

Toru Takemitsu

Traditional Folk Songs of Japan

Traditional Music of the Japanese Geisha

Venerated Patterns of China and Japan

Waka and Other Compositions: Contemporary Music of Japan

Michiyo Yagi: Shizuku (Koto)

Yamanakabushi

Keiji Haino at MIT

2007-05-20T03:46:00.000-07:00

Haino's appearance at MIT was officially part of a collaboration with Cameron Jamie, film-maker and pop-culturist. They would show one of Jamie's recent works (the fake Joan-of-Arc, backwards hot dog eaters one) and Haino would do a live soundtrack. I was a bit worried we wouldn't get the full Haino experience but I shouldn't have. Throughout the hour or so he played, I kept having to check my earplugs to make sure they were still in. The heads of people without earplugs kept exploding, spewing brain matter throughout the Bartos theatre.

I have been a casual listener to Haino's work, both solo and his various collaborative projects, but this performance made me a believer. The set-up was fairly simple--voice, guitar, a pedal-controlled loop mechanism, and some major league distortion boxes (no hurdy-gurdys this time). He would sing/play, record it, and play back over it, creating multiple layers of sound, some stunningly beautiful, others freaky.

The muttered consensus after the show was that the Cameron Jamie film was less than impressive but that Haino was AWESOME. The situation reminded me of the free jazz film, New York Eye & Ear control, which pairs a run-away-truck soundtrack with rather banal imagery. At some points Haino's work matched the images on the screen perfectly--he had some sort of filter that made his guitar produce the sound of a pipe organ with all its keys pressed simultaneously (matching some cathedral imagery), and there was a brief and powerful moment when Haino's looping gutturals and slashing guitar work was a perfect complement to the obscenity of the backwards regurgitation of contest hot dogs (it drove at least one listener from the room). But overall, it was Haino's show and I'm glad I went, and I was also glad when it was over.

Here comes (indie) Cpop!

2007-04-04T13:13:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting effects of RIAA heavy-handedness on the music blogging scene has been the escape of uploaders into the (perceived) safe harbors of out-of-print records, indie labels, and foreign releases. [The winking complicity of upload services and the growth of the professional deleter is another interesting part of this story].

For those hungry for a taste of the non-anglo rock world this has produced an astounding bonanza. It is possible to gorge on jpop, for example, and fill up many hard drives without much effort. Other Asian countries' music scenes have not been served up with quite such energy, but they are also out there for the plucking.

I've been, um, sampling a little of the China scene and I have to say I'm rather impressed. Not with derivative mainstream junk, but with the sweet sweet indie pop coming out of Hong Kong and Taiwan over the past five years or so. This would include bands like Ketchup, The Pancakes, Marshmallow Kisses, and Bad Daughter. A late but lovely addition to the global indie pop movement that crested around the year 2000. [The Beijing punk story is also intriguing but I've not yet sampled much beyond the great girl punk pioneers, Hang on the Box and neo new wavers, New Pants].

Puffy AmiYumi: Language does not matter in communication

2007-03-07T06:19:00.000-08:00

From the 2006 MOFA Diplomatic Bluebook, a special section on overseas public relations and public diplomacy featuring Puffy.

Harvard/MIT have an interesting ongoing project called "Cool Japan"--I attended a conference session last weekend. Lots of discussion about Japan's emphasis on "Soft Power" (don't get me started...) as a tool of foreign policy. And a number of prominent Japan popologists in the room (including Ian Condry--the conference organizer, Susan Napier, and Roland Kelts).

Complicity alerts were all around. The Japanese Consulate, for example, passed around a questionnaire about attendees' Japanese pop culture consumption. I left wondering what the role of academics might be in all this. Are we just fans armed with big vocabularies (despite our hopes to "intervene")? Are we a marketing arm for jpop-US? Agents of public diplomacy (even when critical of Japanese government policy, we are still promoting Japan-the-brand)? Not that I haven't come to terms with complicity in my own stuff--just food for thought...

GO!GO!7188 come to America

2007-02-15T14:52:00.000-08:00

GO!GO!7188, arguably the finest "commercial" rock band on the planet, are participating in this year's SXSW Japan Nite Tour. Not at the Boston show--DARN IT--but at several other spots including New York, Chicago and LA.

[UPDATE]
A little investigation reveals some JETRO involvement here, particularly at the SXSW conference itself. Some commentary in Japan music circles is critical of the choice of GO!GO!7188, the implication being that they are has-beens who haven't done anything interesting in years. Personally, I think folks are being a little tough on poor Parade. And I'm still not quite getting the constant comparison between these folks (A ROCK BAND) and Shiina Ringo (AN ARTISTE). Regardless, thanks to YouTube and an extended cam arm, it's like we were there....

Touching music

2007-01-29T11:50:00.000-08:00

A fantastic show from last year on the very cool WNYC project, Radio Lab. Includes a segment on music and language (and why perfect pitch is more common among Chinese than English speakers), and another on music and neurology (it turns out that sound is a form of touch and that the neurons that make sense of unfamiliar sounds can drive you crazy if overloaded). The music-as-a-form-of-touching made me think, for some reason, of "In My Language"--the YouTubed autism-as-constant-interaction-with-the-world performance piece.

The childlike foreigner meme

2006-12-15T05:31:00.000-08:00

Japan Probe continues its campaign against a regular segment on the Japanese tv show Haneru no Tobira that features "foreigners" (i.e., prosthetic noses and national costumes) competing to see who can pick up slippery sushi with chopsticks. Despite its offensiveness, I find the segment kind of awesome as a cultural text. First, its overt play with "national characters"--which puts the essential silliness of the notion right on display. (And I'm a sucker for a good "American" caricature, despite having been the butt of "hana ga takai" taunts when I lived in Japan). Second, it is a good example of the universality of the "childlike foreigner" meme (Borat, anyone?)

There are good structural reasons for the universality of the "childlike foreigner." The foreigner quite often needs explicit instruction in culturally implicit matters, just like a three-year-old (you mean I shouldn't wear the bathroom slippers out into the living room?). The problem on a personal level is the persistance and generality of the stereotype--the frustration of knowing the culture and still being presumed to be a "child" or not knowing the cultural fluently and always having to position one's self in an inferior way. The problem on a larger level is, well, imperialism... (isn't Borat really supposed to be an Iraqi?)

Sake and Intercultural Halls of Mirrors

2006-12-13T15:13:00.000-08:00

Sake consumption in Japan is way down over the past decade. The youth view it is as old fashioned and prefer wine and beer. According to this article in the India Times, marketers are trying to increase the trendiness of sake by pointing to sake consumption in the US and other Western markets (where people are drinking sake with their sushi because it is perceived as being what people in Japan drink).

Quick, before JASRAC gets them

2006-12-05T14:12:00.000-08:00

GO!GO!7188: Kinkyori ren-ai

THE HIGH-LOWS: Sennen no Medal

Games and National Cultures

2006-12-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

Let me say at the outset that usually when I hear the expression "national culture" I reach for my, er, de-essentializationizer. Particularly in reference to Japan, where the putative "uniqueness" and homogeneity of Japanese culture has so long been used by the right wing to keep foreign influence out and conformity in. But when Henry Jenkins uses the term, I feel I have to at least listen. Jenkins interviews Chris Kohler, author of a recent book on Japanese video game culture (which I am now obliged to go out and get). What I find interesting is the suggestion that the US market is requiring less and less cultural "deodorization" when it comes to Japanese video games. Perhaps the day will soon be here when characters can actually eat rice balls instead of donuts!

Linda Linda Linda

2006-11-12T16:42:00.000-08:00

Recently shifted into consumption from production mode, triggered by gift of complete Blue Hearts catalog, plus the recent Blue Hearts inspired teen movie, Linda Linda Linda. I plan to write more extensively about both, but for now two comments. First, the Blue Hearts have experienced a resurgence of popularity in Japan, and given the current popularity of Puffy AmiYumi perhaps they'll finally break in the US market. Second, the movie presents a great alternative to normal well-intentioned but sterile approaches to cross-cultural relations--in this case Korean-Japanese relations.

End of the golden age of YouTube, today.

2006-10-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

Sigh. We knew it would happen eventually. But the extreme copy protectionist JASRAC has pulled the plug on our intercultural fun.
[Actually, it's not as bad as I thought it might be. Qoogle is still offering up working clips. But some folks are clearly hurting. And this is the shape of things to come.]
Looks like torrent time!

Syncrete Jungle

2006-10-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

"Je T'aime Moi Non Plus" in Thai. "Koi no American Football" by the Finger 5. Grace Chang sneezing.

I must be dreaming. Asian Pop Oldies.

[It was a dream. It seems to have vanished.]

Cartoon War Meme

2006-10-06T05:50:00.000-07:00

Two new recent examples:

Sino-Japan Media Culture Conflict

A Japanese firm releases an adult computer game with a Dream of the Red Chambers theme, infuriating Chinese cultural nationalists. Chinese TV "responds" by presenting Hogan's Heroes-type kids program in which smart cartoon Chinese kids outwit stupid cartoon Japanese soldiers.
Via Global Voices Online.

"Why They Hate Us"
("They" don't, by the way)
A Washington gallery presents anti-US editorial cartoons from around the world.

"International cultural exchange is impossible..."

2006-10-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

"Therefore we must try."--Tadashi Suzuki.

Had a chance to see bobrauschenbergamerica at the ART last night, and had a good time. It is a fun show, about mid 20th century American exuberance and good nature (with a special discordant appearance by triple murderer, Bob the Pizza Boy). The show was written for an international audience and frankly I can see it working better in that context than before a crowd of elderly American theatre subscribers. Nevertheless, worth an evening out just to see the martini slip-n-slide.

I was intrigued by the connection with Tadashi Suzuki (it is a SITI show). Worth a follow-up.

Soramimi: Interlinguistic Mondegreens

2006-09-27T04:50:00.000-07:00

For a long time, (the apparently immortal) Japanese comedian and talkshow host, Tamori, has been running a TV segment called "Soramimi Hour" in which viewers send in funny misheard lyrics (usually English) and they get acted out on the air. YouTube, almost since its inception, has been clogged with examples. (Search for "soramimi" and watch out if you're easily offended).

The soramimi phenomenon (Wikipedia entry here, explanation by Mari Kanazawa here) is part of a larger phenomenon known as the "Mondegreen" (Wikipedia) and is an inevitable aspect of interlinguistic contact. It makes sense that a string of sound produced in one language might be interpretable as something else to speakers of another language. This is a different side of intercultural communication, not about mutual understanding at all but often about the deliberate creation of misunderstanding. At the same time, it is undeniably one of the pleasures of the intercultural space.

Thanks, TV in Japan.

Fake Japanese?

2006-09-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of interested in NBC's "Heroes," despite its awful dialogue and obvious "Lost" inspiration. Partly because of the prominence of a "Japanese" character, "Hiro Nakamura," played by Japanese American actor, Masi Oka. The Japanese dialogue (subtitled in English), while fluently produced by Oka and company, just rings wrong to my ears. It is full of little phrases and notes, like "manga" and "baka" that seem to play directly to the fan-sub crowd. The banners lining the Hollywood set version of a Tokyo alley are mostly orthographically correct (spelling out words like "karaoke" and "sushi") but are nothing you'd ever actually see in Japan. This is a great but strange improvement over the ignorant squiggles and chatter that are often supposed to pass for "Japanese" in Hollywood productions. It is Japanese for American otaku.

Thank you, Japanese people, for the Swankys.

2006-09-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

Feels like it's 1989 again...

"Thank you very much, American People, for 'Love me tender'"

2006-09-07T04:22:00.000-07:00

Rock n Roll n international understanding.
via An Englishman in Osaka

TV in Japan

2006-08-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

From the "wacky Japanese" school of YouTube-powered blogs. Laughing with or laughing at? I'll let you decide.
[I do appreciate it's alerting me that Vermillion Pleasure Night clips have shown up on YouTube]

Battle of the Simplistic Demographic Categories

2006-08-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

My take on the new season of Survivor, the one featuring four teams defined by racial labels, is to give it a chance. Surely it won't rely on trite "ultimately we're all the same" sentiment or exploit tensions based in long histories of discrimination. I'm thinking it will feature lots of ironic self-reflexivity as the contestants look at each other and go "they're dividing us into groups how? WTF are they thinking?"

iiv tv

2006-08-21T19:12:00.000-07:00

24 hour internet interactive TV from Japan. Offers streams and on-demand content. Very interesting.

Spoo and Bus Uncle

2006-08-12T17:48:00.000-07:00

No, this is not a spoo bus uncle youtube video remix (though that's not a bad idea...) but just a note about YouTube and the global circulation of culturally idiosyncratic pop phenomenon.
The Spoo (explained here) phenomenon was spurred by a bad drawing by one of the hosts of kids show Okaasan to Issho and boosted into pop culture lore by Japanese bulletin board powerhouse , 2channel and YouTube. The original is first below, followed by a remix.

Bus Uncle (explained here) shows a middle-aged Hong Kong man berating a younger man for daring to tap on his shoulder to ask him to chat more quietly on his cell phone. Hugely popular, particularly after being translated, it has become part of Chinese pop culture.
The original clip is first below, followed by a remix.

Both are phenomena that were dependent on YouTube for their growth and via YouTube are now readily accessible to a wider audience (people like you and me, for instance) who might wonder what all the fuss is about.

"Musician seeking female vox jpop triphop"

2006-08-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

From a classified ad in the Phoenix this week:

Im looking for a girl who can sing/write in japanese. more melodic than Noriko, less pop than Utada.

Now I'm certainly fond of Deerhoof, Blonde Redhead, Enon et al, but I didn't realize this was now an aesthetic option.

2006-08-07T13:09:00.000-07:00

this pretty much sums it up

qoogle

2006-07-21T05:57:00.000-07:00

My embarassing frame-dropping hano-chan upload quickly got clicks from Japanese YouTube hack, "qoogle," which calls itself "an improved video search for clips from YouTube." They offer an alternative dig-like popularity system, "qoogle video clippers." A quick glimpse into the Japanese zeitgeist...

Hano-cha smooths intercultural conflict

2006-07-19T05:41:00.000-07:00

そういうことで

Meanwhile, brand character, Hano-chan, is kind to others.

[UPDATE: The second hano-cha vid is dropping frames. See a much smoother original (and many other Hano-chan flicks) at the official Hano-chan movie site]

"Both soccer and music are exuberant representations of place..."

2006-07-01T16:02:00.000-07:00

"and universal languages by which whole cultures meet and mingle"
--Siddharta Mitter, introducing a World Cup/World Music mash-up fantasy in Friday's Boston Globe. With song samples.

[UPDATE: Looks like Rammstein vs. Nicola Conte and Sara Tavares vs. Disiz La Peste]

Meanwhile WFMU's People Like Us plans to offer the "worst football music from around the world" on Monday night.

YouTube's Global Community

2006-06-26T06:15:00.000-07:00

Just a quick story.

We put some videos of my son performing up on YouTube. We thought friends and relatives might be interested. And it would save us server space. We embedded the YouTube videos in the family blog (which, by the way, seemed to attract Blogger's spam sniffers) and waited.

Soon the views started trickling in and then ratings and comments. Not by family and friends, but strangers. Mostly from Europe. One of the clips is of him singing a Schubert song. Two comments, one from the UK, the other from Germany, evaluate his German pronunciation. Another clip shows him at the piano performing a song by a popular (among the kids anyway) singer-songwriter. This shows up embedded in an Austrian blog about contemporary musical theatre (and views have been flowing via that link every since).

Meanwhile, I put up a video of one of the more obscure Japanese bands of the 1990s. Over 500 views and counting.

I am always touched and a little bit bemused by the optimism of early 20th century music critics who believed that musical exchange was the key to cross-cultural understanding. But I get the sense that something like that is happening here.

This machine killed fascists (and non-fascists)

2006-06-11T13:40:00.000-07:00

Indira A.R. Lakshmanan in today's Globe reports on a Colombian musician, César López, who makes guitars out of guns.

While playing outside a Bogotá social club to commemorate victims shortly after a 2003 terrorist bomb attack there, Lopez noticed that a soldier standing guard was holding a rifle in the same way that a musician holds a guitar.

``But he was in a very aggressive and paranoid stance, while we were there in a very loving stance. I got the idea: What if these two were merged -- the worst invention of humanity with the most beautiful," López said.

So was born the ``escopetarra" -- a combination of the words for rifle (escopeta) and guitar (guitarra) -- a symbol of civilization overcoming destruction.

López explained his idea to the Bogotá mayor's office, which gave him half a dozen decommissioned Winchester 16-caliber rifles from the city's guns-for-food buyback program. He took them to an instrument maker, who, for about $900 each, mounted a fretboard over the barrel of each shotgun, added metal strings running down from the muzzle, and inserted a pickup and a jack to wire the instrument to an amplifier.

Most of the donated guns had belonged to criminals, but the one López kept for himself was used by a member of the leftist National Liberation Army, known as the ELN, to kill seven people, according to a former owner.

"I loved acid rock in college--and I still do"

2006-05-16T15:05:00.001-07:00

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Today's "Red" (Bono-edited) issue of the Independent provides a list of some musical favorites.
"Acid rock" is an interesting code word, diplomatically chosen. No one uses it any more, except political types. (via Beware of the Blog)

Eurovision!

2006-05-16T05:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, Eurovision.

[UPDATE: Finland in a shocker!]

Good Podcast: absolutely intercultural

2006-05-08T18:15:00.000-07:00

The 'absolutely intercultural' podcast, only four episodes old, has gotten off to a very encouraging start. The host, Anne Fox, strikes me as having the right balance of knowledge and bemusement to make this work. Episode 4's segment on the "living library" (actually taken from an InfoSpeak program), in which people representing particular cultural/religious/political viewpoints can be "checked out" for 45 minutes of discussion is particularly amazing.

Public Diplomacy Game competition

2006-05-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

via Boing Boing.
Anyone else heading out to Annenberg Island to check out the festivities on Monday?

[UPDATE: Well, that was interesting. Sitting in a virtual amphitheater, watching a real video feed. Given the Boing Boing boost, I thought there'd be more competition for seats. Everything worked swell, though like any event dependent on amplification there was wide variability in sound level. And I learned quite a bit about the personalities running the PD program at USC. Even as my toddler wailed because she wanted to play Blues Clues instead. (I finally gave in and had to leave before the award winner was announced)

BUT

I'm still somewhat dismayed by the restricted intellectual vocabulary people use to talk about public diplomacy. Still full of "mutual understandings" and "seeing things from the other's point of view" and "misconceptions about who 'we' are." Given PD is a ruthlessly pragmatic field, I guess it makes sense to trot out unexamined concepts that seem to work. Unfortunately, the games based on such notions tend to reinforce these mindsets.]

The eroding wall between psyops and public affairs

2006-05-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

The Columbia Journalism Review's Daniel Schulman offers a compelling look at the Bush administration's use of domestic propaganda. This is partly, not completely, explained by the globalization of information:

In Iraq then, and indeed in the broader war on terror, it is not the use of information as a weapon that is new, but rather the scale of the strategy and the nature of the targets. Increasingly, the information environment has become the battlefield in a war that knows no boundaries, its offensives directed not just at the insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, or at regimes that take an adversarial posture to U.S. policy, but at the world at large. Technological advances, meanwhile, have made access to information instantaneous and ubiquitous, erasing longstanding barriers, legal and otherwise, that in the past have protected the American public and press from collateral damage in propaganda campaigns.

At the same, Schulman argues, not only does this blurring of boundaries threaten the credibility of the government and the press, there is also little evidence that the information war on terror is actually working.

Muslim WakeUp!

2006-04-18T04:08:00.000-07:00

If anyone makes that crack, "Why don't Muslims complain about x?" (x=suicide bombers, sexism, homophobia), send them to Muslim WakeUp!, the home of politically and socially progressive discussion about Islam and being a Muslim in the US.

Today's Globe has a profile on local band, The Kominas, who play "taqwacore" (hardcore punk with Muslim themes) and have gained an international following via their association with Muslim WakeUp! (Here's their MySpace page).

Japan Society Hipness

2006-04-14T12:53:00.000-07:00

Is it just a generational thing? The right aged folks being Japan Society trustees or something? Because, damn, they are bringing some interesting stuff. Last year's Little Boy, and in May, Haino Keiji, Makigami Koichi and Yamataka Eye do a couple of concerts, presented by Tzadik. (via avant music news)

Rhapsody's got the whole John Zorn catalog! Oh, wait, no it doesn't. Actually maybe it does, kind of.

2006-04-11T05:08:00.000-07:00

Imagine my joy when I search for "John Zorn" on Rhapsody and discover dozens and dozens of albums listed. And my despair when I find that most of them cannot be played. It looks like Rhapsody has failed to make a very robust licensing deal with Tzadik, a shame for those of us who like the rich multicultural improv thing (Keiji Haino et al). Maybe there is hope on "John Zorn Radio."

[UPDATE: I spoke too soon. The Tzadik stuff IS available on Rhapsody, but not via the Browser interface (which is the only way Rhapsody works with the Mac). Meanwhile, I have enough Tom Ze´ to keep me happy for a while.]

K-Boom hits the United States

2006-04-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

An AP story in the Boston Globe today claims "Korean soap operas are capturing American hearts." As in Japan, part of the appeal seems to be the simpler, more socially conservative milleu of these soap operas. And dashing, "scarf-wearing" superstar, Bae Yong-joon. While it is a bit of a stretch to call this a national trend (the article was posted from cultural outpost Honolulu), and the story reads a little like a press release for YA Entertainment, it does signal the arrival of the Korean cultural industry as a global power.

Tokyo Governor disses Mickey Mouse

2006-04-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

Naughty nationalist, Shintaro Ishihara, in today's New York Times:

I hate Mickey Mouse," Mr. Ishihara pronounced acidly from the podium on Saturday afternoon. "He has nothing like the unique sensibility that Japan has.

Any Pikachu haters out there itching to send a return volley?

Australia and Indonesia lob cartoon bombs at each other

2006-04-01T18:00:00.000-08:00

Story in today's BBC NEWS feed: "Australian cartoon irks Indonesia"

Indonesia said the drawing, apparently depicting the president and a Papuan as fornicating dogs, was "not helpful".

It followed the publication in an Indonesian newspaper of a cartoon depicting Australia's prime and foreign ministers as copulating dingoes.

See the cartoons here. (Rakyat Merdeka, the Indonesian paper, seems quite pleased with the controversy)

Need I note the odd spectacle of an entire country mouthing the words, "not helpful"?

World Peace and Cup Noodles

2006-03-13T05:09:00.000-08:00

Nissin's Cup Noodle "No Border" campaign ends today. There are still a few commercials from the campaign viewable on the site, through the "CM" door. These include "Flower" (with its "flowers plus rusty tank equals world peace" message), "Jikyu [Earth]" (the world from outer space has "no border"), and, most potently, "Egao [Smiling faces]," in which Afghan refugee children living in Iran smile for world peace (the website notes that Cup Noodle is not actually available in Iran and warns Muslims that Cup Noodle sold in Japan does not adhere to Islamic dietary codes). I'll let you decide what to make of it. I'll note that judging from Nissin's PR material, they are being absolutely sincere.

Japanese indie rock from the 1980s! YouTube!

2006-02-17T15:52:00.000-08:00

Bringing back fond memories...
(All links except the first open up a YouTube video, some of which may take some time to load)
Nagomu Records (Bachikaburi, ZIN SAY, Tama, Uchoten, etc)
Blue Hearts (LInda Linda)
Lip Cream
The Plastics
Jun Togawa (Yapoos)
and one for the 90s
Boredoms live in ny

Cartoon War

2006-02-04T14:53:00.000-08:00

I can't think of another case where cartoons have caused quite so much trouble.

But, I feel it's very important not to blame it on some sort of "Clash of Civilizations."

First of all, it is very common for newspapers to be perceived and used as indices of national sentiment. Even in democracies. (I wrapped a whole dissertation around this fact during the era of U.S.-Japan friction many years ago). It's not the actions of the newspaper itself but the suspicion, sometimes correct, that the newspaper represents general public sentiment. If Muslims in Denmark hadn't felt a general lack of respect I doubt they would have expressed nearly as much outrage. Similarly, current protests in the Middle East are just another opportunity to rail against a general sense of disrespect. For commentators to pedantically point out the difference between newspapers and nations is to miss the bigger picture (and to treat Muslims as uncivilized and ignorant--the suspected disrespect confirmed.) I also guess there is an unrepresentative proportion of thugs in the protesting crowds.

Second of all, the depiction of the Prophet has long been known as a trigger point, the line that one crosses at one's own risk, like flag burning in the U.S. You have the right to do it, but need to understand that your action is likely to have a direct and negative response. I've long argued that journalism needs to be seen more in discourse/speech act terms, precisely for these kinds of reasons. Journalism is not just about "truth." It is also a form of participation in an ongoing chain of interactions. That said, the threat of censorship is itself a journalistic trigger point producing something akin to "psychological reactance." So we've got a problem. How to proceed? With an understanding and compassionate attitude, please.

UPDATE: I'll turn the floor over to Juan Cole, in Salon.

Rather than merely an East-West issue or a clash of civilizations, the caricature controversy should be seen as part of a culture war within Muslim societies. Precisely because the issue is distant and not very important, it is a cost-free bandwagon on which everyone can jump in search of greater legitimacy among Muslim publics. There is no downside in the Muslim world to defending the prophet Mohammed from Western insults. Pro-American politicians such as Abul-Gheit can use it to burnish their nationalist image, while Sistani can embrace the campaign as part of his old rivalry with the Sadr movement. The cleric Tantawi can employ it to boost his popularity among the rank and file in Egypt and to offset the popularity of the lay fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. It can be used to mobilize Muslims in Kashmir who care a great deal more about Indian repression than about Danish newspapers.

It's raining cultural ambassadors!

2006-01-29T06:10:00.000-08:00

Today's New York Times[reg required] reports on Korean pop star, "Rain."

At 23, Rain, who has been labeled the Korean Justin Timberlake and the Korean Usher, is a serious and driven performer (with washboard abs, winsome looks and a Gene Kelly-like ability to leap through puddles while performing his hit song, "It's Raining"). He wants nothing less than to break down barriers, build cultural bridges and become the first Asian pop star to succeed in America.

Albert Brooks: Public Diplomat

2006-01-28T18:36:00.000-08:00

I felt it my scholarly duty to see the new Albert Brooks film, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, and I must say I found it both funnier and subtler than most of the people in the room. I'm still trying to confirm, though, whether its obvious flaws were Brooks's intentions or the intervention of hapless studio execs. Brooks's comedy has always been perched at the meta level and this film's failure to make people laugh (and its awful title) is part of its point, I think, or hope...

At any rate, one sign that there is something interesting going on is the prominence given the "Allah Made Me Funny" comedy tour in the promotion of the Brooks movie. (Unless the pairing is as satirically tone deaf as the official promotional copy on the movie's website, or the trailer for that matter...).

[update, after some more thinking]

The best traditional gag in the movie: Brooks is so immersed in a conversation about comedians needing to adjust to the cultural expectations of their audiences that he walks right past the Taj Mahal without noticing it. A little like a movie called "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" based almost entirely in New Delhi.

This is the key point: that most discourse about cross-cultural communication, whether in public diplomacy or global marketing, starts with the perceived need for "us" to get our message more clearly across to "them." And this assumption is profoundly clueless.

Favorite Good Neighbor Moments (Second in a series)

2006-01-23T11:45:00.000-08:00

In lieu of a real podcast, an audio excerpt:
From the Jan 21, 1942 edition of Orson Welles's "Hello Americans," a calypso about the Good Neighbor Policy by Sir Lancelot. (mp3 is 2.2MB)

Favorite Good Neighbor Moments (First in a series)

2006-01-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

From Cary Reich's biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller (p. 210-11) depicting Sunday night Latin American sing-a-longs at Rockefeller's Washington home:

Rockefeller proceeded to hand out mimeographed booklets containing the lyrics for some fifty different Spanish songs, all of which were numbered. Then he called out a number, popped a record on the Victrola and set the needle down. "Forty-four," Rockefeller yelled. "Alla en el Rancho Grande." As the music swelled, the dulcet tones of dozens of bureaucrats and their wives filled the house, singing along in (for the most part) execrable Spanish. ..
"Twenty-three," Rockefeller shouted. "Expropiacion." Braden [Ambassador to Colombia] was aghast when he glanced at the lyrics: the tune was a Mexican ditty penned in honor of the country's expropriation of American oil company properties. "We've expropriated the oil fields," the song ran. "Now we're going to expropriate the Atlantic Ocean." Rockefeller lustily led the singing. "Expropiancion," he bellowed...
[B]Raden was most agog at the sight of a tousle-haired man across the room. It was none other than Henry A. Wallace, the Vice President of the United States. His high-pitched Iowa twang wrapped itself around the Spanish refrain: "Expropiacion!"...

Rhapsody for the Mac

2005-12-09T04:58:00.000-08:00

Despite my lingering queasiness about the corporate ownership of the Rhapsody service, I have to say the service is getting better and better. The browser-based, Mac friendly move is the latest innovation. After a bit of a struggle to get username and passwords recognized, it is working just fine.

Boneless Tonal Mollusks

2005-12-07T15:38:00.000-08:00

Possible names for ironic Indie Rock Bands/Japanoise Groups inspired by Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective.
Amoeba Weeps
Poultry Yard Bombs
Boiler Factory Catastrophe
Demented Eunuch
Doleful Mutterings
Hateful Fungi
Melodic Nerve Fever
Pest-House
Raging Satanic Fury
Ear Stink
Tin Pans
Intoxicated Woodpecker

Rhapsody wa sugoi!

2005-11-11T05:53:00.000-08:00

Out of nowhere, Rhapsody drops a load of Japanese indie stuff onto their service. A completely random mix of punk (Cobra), new age (Masago Hideaki), and prog-rock (the amazing Jun Togawa). Dozens of 'em (some of which remain uploaded but hidden, such as the Japanese punk band tribute album "Curse of the Damned").

I did a little detective work to figure out where it all came from. It seemed to center around just a few Japanese indie labels: PICTUS (which I think is more a distributor than a label per se), MEASURE, and TOERA. I bet it all came to Rhapsody via the long tail darling IODA.

But why now, in such a big jumbled clump? My theory is that they were all part of the same transliteration project. Unlike iTunes, which (blessedly) allows for Japanese characters, everything in Rhapsody needs to be in the English language character set. One clue: Jun Togawa is listed as "Togawa Jyun," technically correct but not the way folks in the English speaking world usually refer to her.

Pronounce my name

2005-11-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

So Steve Rubel and Joe Jaffe read my comment on the air, and have some fun with the pronunciation of my name. (It's been Americanized to "OHlkers," by the way, though Jaffe is technically right according to the rules of German pronunciation). A memorable moment that deserved a musical reply: "Pronounce my name." (Rubel and Jaffe samples backed by Garage Band riffing, hosted on Our Media).

What's this all about then.

2005-11-09T10:58:00.000-08:00

I really admire folks who are able to just sit in front of the microphone, talk for a half an hour, and pop an MP3 onto the internet. Not blessed with the gift of gab (in fact, people who know me might say I need to be prodded out of a semi-autistic state), I've also been cursed recently with a mouth of bubbling saliva (thanks, swallowing problems!). So all of this has been put on hold.

Which begs the question of what this all is. So let me make a tentative mission statement. I've long been interested in international cultural diplomacy, both of the official propagandistic variety (Bolshoi Ballet) and the softer artistic exchange kind (Japanisme in France in the late 1800s). Particularly interesting to me is the way ideas of "the nation" and the "relationship" get incorporated/interpreted into the work. And because this would be an audio program, I'd focus on music.

I'm working on four different topics along this line, trusting more will come along.

1. Inspired by the recently rediscovered set by Monk and Coltrane initially recorded for the Voice of America, I began thinking about Willis Conover's Jazz Hour. To what extent did jazz become an officially sanctioned "symbol of America" and to what extent was it taken as such? I remember my old teacher Vassily Aksyonov talk about his Russian experiences in the 1960s listening to, and exchanging tapes of, the Jazz Hour (and how disappointed he was when he came to the States and couldn't find jazz on the radio anywhere).

2. I fell in love with a punk pop band called the Blue Hearts when I was living in Japan 15 years ago. The band made an abortive attempt to make it in the US in the early 1990s. I've since learned there has been a Blue Hearts revival in Japan and there is a small expat cult of fans. I'm particularly interested in the pop punk band as a boundary spanner in general.

3. What was the "Japanoise" phenomena of the late 1990s? Why were CDs produced with titles like "American Salutes Merzbow?" and "US-Japan Noise Treaty?"

4. The Good Neighbor Policy during the WWII era has gotten a lot of critical attention, but I've become particularly interested in the role of radio. There were a number of programs on major US radio networks featuring Latin American music hosted by the likes of Elsie Houston and Olga Coelho. To what extent was this official propaganda?

At rate, some ideas. At some point, when I can speak without gurgling, these, at least, will get done.

Deerhoof remix project

2005-10-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

The funloving generous folks of Deerhoof are offering bass, guitar, drums, guitar/vocal tracks to remix and upload. Link.
[Guess which remix is mine...]

Podcasting

2005-10-06T17:07:00.000-07:00

I mean the word. How about RSS radio? Or the Japanese neologism "digeo?"

OurMedia experiment: Tape Recorders

2005-10-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

Just uploaded a short experiment to OurMedia, called "Tape Recorders." My own guitar/garageband's drums/voice (too low in the mix, I know) by Vassily Aksyonov and Don Swaim. Aksyonov is talking about the danger of the media of reproduction (tape recorders, photo copiers, microchips) to totalitarian societies. Source.

Free culture

2005-10-05T04:49:00.000-07:00

Wow, US copyright law IS messed up! But this didn't really hit me strongly until I tried to plan my own ~~podcast~~ rss-ed audio program. Now I get what those Creative Commons folk are all about. On broadcast radio I always felt I could play anything I wanted (protected by BMI and ASCAP bills that someone else was paying). With ~~podcasting~~ rss-ed audio shows the need for a "mechanical," performance license screws everything up. I still think that "fair use" will cover the brief excerpts I plan on using in the show, but I've vastly scaled back what I plan to use.

Friendly Noises

2005-09-16T11:19:00.000-07:00

Welcome. This is the future home of my ~~podcast/podcast~~ rss-ed audio show notes. (Once I finally finish a show!) Stay tuned!