The most interesting blogs are those that offer music that is not otherwise easy to find. Excavated Shellac for instance is a “blog dedicated to 78rpm recordings of folkloric and vernacular music from around the world” and offers anything from Peruvian muliza to Norwegian Hardanger fiddlers to Jewish singers of the Maghreb (Excavated Shellac is also on Facebook here). Another great resource is Awesome Tapes from Africa, run by Brian Simkhovitz in Brooklyn who digitises cassette tapes with African music and puts them online: from Ghanian rap (be sure to listen to Okra’s Agynoamoa Kwesi) to traditional Toma music from Guinea, it is all there and you would never hear this were it not for the net (be sure to also check this interview with Brian in Green Owl). Or what about a blog like Monrakplengthai offering all kinds of Thai music digitised by another enthusiast.

Know any other good mp3 blogs? List them in the comments for others to enjoy..

To listen to it all Mac users can get a gem of a little program called Peel, which allows you to subscribe to mp3 blogs, listen to the music they offer and download the mp3′s you like to iTunes, all from within one interface; it could hardly be made easier!

For your added musical entertainment below is the teaser of a documentary hopefully to be made on music in Mali after the 1960s and the role of regional and national orchestras in its musical development since then, great stuff! Also check this tape of the Ensemble Instrumental National du Mali on Awesome Tapes from Africa and a description of the band here)

Lee is to comedy what Pere Ubu is to rock music: an artist with a loyal and dedicated following, someone you love or hate, someone who is never complacent in his work but continues to push boundaries, not for the sake of it but simply because there is no other way for him. Lee is a genius in his trade. Rarely does a comedian manage to combine razor-sharp wit and biting social commentary with such subtlety and gentleness in a unique trademark style. Indeed, his deceptively soothing voice is an essential part of his art, creating a tension between form and content to maximal comic effect.

Apart from his stand-up shows he is also known as the writer of  Jerry Springer – The Opera and his recent BBC series Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. Currently on tour in the UK he will soon be playing The Leicester Square Theatre for 6 weeks with his latest show, “If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One”.

I saw a preview of the show in the basement of the same theatre. Actually, if you are ever in London in June/July you will have the great opportunity to see many comedians playing small comedy clubs all over London with try-outs of their upcoming Edinburgh Fringe festival show, a great chance to see them in a much more intimate setting than you normally would. But back to Lee; during the preview he also tried out his meanwhile infamous routine on Topgear’s Richard Hammond using the latter’s car accident and recovery in 2006 as a means to comment on the British media’s obsession with celebrities. Unsurprisingly in this tabloid country, an outraged Daily Mail came to Hammond’s defense while this Guardian reviewer realised what Lee was really after.

One of his shows, 90s Comedian, almost did not make it on DVD but was saved for posterity by the good people from Go Faster Stripe (check out the clips also).

Go and see him and until then enjoy this bit from his show 41st Best Standup Ever called the Big Brother Racism Scandal:

One of those events was the Berlin Wall of Sound, an initiative of the Dutch rock band Noir, from Groningen, which brought together a 200 meter long wall of (bass-)guitarists playing a 6-minute composition intended to be a “commemoration in sound as a counterpart to a commemoration in silence”. It took place in the Mauerpark yesterday afternoon in the drizzling Autumn rain.

Yesterday was of course also the official celebration at the Brandenburger Tor where many world leaders gathered to speak solemn words about freedom won and tyranny defeated. Too bad for many of the tourists and Berliners the area around the Brandenburger Tor was hermetically sealed of, apparently because of “too many people” already in the area; unsurprisingly some of those turned away clearly voiced their anger that an event that was supposed to celebrate a people’s new-found freedom became an event without those people being able to attend.

I could have known this would happen of course so while Gordon Brown was delivering his speech I headed for the Bösebrücke hoping to find a different type of celebration. Indeed, after Merkel’s visit during the day lots of media were still out there interviewing some of the locals who had been part of the events 20 years earlier. But as it was getting late and the rain had become more than drizzling many people had left already. Nevertheless the Mauer Mob was still standing, a human chain of thousands of people formed along the track where the former Wall run its course.

Below are a few pics I took in the Mauerpark and one of the Bösebrücke in the evening. For a general impression of the day be sure to check this photo gallery on the website of the Berliner Zeitung.

[View with PicLens]

Stephen K Amos Live At The Apollo – Part 1

Stephen K Amos Live At The Apollo – Part 2

In addition to these spaces, showcasing the new generation of Turkish and international artists, two established names in 20th century art history were also celebrated. A big exhibition on Joseph Beuys and His Students ran in the Sakip Sabanci Museum and still on show is a major retrospective of Yüksel Arslan in Santralistanbul.

These expositions cover a wider range of topics and techniques but they have one thing in common in that they all, to varying degrees, pose the question of what relation art has, or should have, towards the political. The Biennal took its motto, What Keeps Mankind Alive, from the song Denn wovon lebt der Mensch? that was part of Bertold Brecht’s Dreigroschenoper and set out, at least on paper, to question the role of the Left in contemporary society. My Name is Casper, while organised in opposition to the Biennal, was similarly political in its aims. Questions about the role of art in society were also a constant in the life and work of Beuys while Arslan had a Marxist phase in which he produced two series of paintings dealing with Das Kapital.

It is thus clear that the current generation of artists, as represented in the Biennal and Casper, sees politics as an important subject for modern art. And art should not merely reflect politics but also be engaged and thus itself political, if the two can be separated at all. The question is of course how the message affects the medium: how do you engage with politics without turning art into a flat form of political propaganda? In one of the rooms of the Beuys exhibition a quote was printed that is illuminating: ”Art is not there to provide knowledge in direct ways. It produces deepened perceptions of experience. If the aim was to be simply understood, we would have no need for art.”

If this is the yardstick against which to measure the aforementioned exhibitions then modern art has a problem. Both in the Biennal and My Name is Casper the political descends into sloganism which leaves very little to the imagination and makes one wonder if this is all that modern artists have to comment on politics in the 3rd millenium. By contrast Arslan managed to create some works that seem simplistic on the surface but nonetheless force the viewer to engage with them; they provoke and challenge, in other words, aim not just to be “simply understood”.

One thing is clear though: whether succesful or not in their explorations of politics, the fact of having these expositions taking place at almost the same time in Istanbul provided a unique and intriguing window on the perennial question of the function of art in our society.

See also this AFP news item about the Biennal:

On 3 October Pere Ubu performed “Bring me the head of Ubu Roi” in the Passionskirche in Berlin as part of their current European tour,  featuring electronics wizard Gagarin, and animation by The Brothers Quay. As always drummer Steve Mehlman and bass player Michele Temple did a brilliant job in keeping the performance on track.

An evening with David Thomas is never dull, whether he performs solo, with Two Pale Boys or Pere Ubu. And so we got it all: Thomas in the role of Ubu Roi himself, whispering and thundering while being backed up by the band who also played their parts in the theatrical music piece that Thomas has created; Thomas giving stage directions during the performance, explaining the audience he believes in “rehearsing on stage”; and Thomas becoming appropriately intoxicated for his role, keeping the audience wondering whether we were watching a genius at work immersing himself completely in his role or one of rock music’s legends with a substance issue.

In the end that is a rather artificial dichotomy though: Thomas is a fully dedicated artist taking his work very seriously but is also the first to poke fun at the pretentiousness of a performance like this. Indeed, a DT performance never comes without a fair dose of self-relativisation and Thomas exclaiming “It’s hard being a method actor when you’re drunk”, when forgetting some lyrics, was quite memorable. As were the three Pere Ubu songs that finished the evening, including of course the brilliant Non-Alignment Pact.