Fresh New Beats on al-Jazeera's 'Playlist'

Wow! So I was surfing the web, looking at various bands that I like and seeing what new music I could find when, by nothing more than sheer chance, I stumbled across some videos from Doha-based media outlet al-Jazeera's Playlist. Apparently, it's a music show that goes around the world finding fresh new sounds from different artists - they've got some great selections from the US, the Middle East, Britain, Europe, Africa and beyond. And alot of artists that I really like have been featured too! Dengue Fever, Balkan Beat Box, Rachid Taha, Gogol Bordello, Hanine y Son Cubano, Toumani Diabate, M.I.A., Akli D, Tony Hanna and the Yugoslav Brass Band, Justin Adams, Tinariwen, Soap Kills, the Chehade Brothers....

Man, I am in LOVE! And no, thats not a reference to anchorbabe Ghida Fakhry. I absolutely love it when I find stuff like this, because it gives me a whole bunch of new artists to explore and see what I might like or want to experiment with. Plus, it makes me feel so cutting edge... knowing about all the cool new music before all of my friends and associates, you know. Its like the good old days, when I would discover some really obscure random band who would become big later... This show is AWESOME, and so up my alley. Really pisses me off that it's so hard to get al-Jazeera out here in the Midwest. People have gone to GREAT LENGTHS to suppress it out here. But at least you can still watch it online, and for free nonetheless. Plus, there are a bunch of clips floating around on YouTube. Looks like the current show is focusing on some of the new talent coming out of South Africa (one of the powerhouses of African music, in fact).

Given that their selections mirror my taste in music pretty well, I think I am obligated to look up some of the other artists on their site. I get a feeling some most of them would be right up my alley. Also, Michelle, if you are reading this, check it out. I know you like some of this music too (Gogo Bordello, Rachid Taha, M.I.A., Balkan Beat Box, Calexico, etc). I get a feeling this might be a good show to watch. Time for some internet surfing and sampling of bands on Amazon and iTunes....

Causes for ConCERN

To be honest, I never expected to be posting this blog. To be honest, I never expected to make it this far. I kind of figured that CERN creating a miniature black hole would cause the end of the world, or at the very least make it so we we're living in some sort of post-apocalyptic Mad Max type scenario. You know, just to spite me and all. Hell, I was even willing to entertain the notion that time and space would break down and prehistoric monsters would rampage through the streets.

But no... CERN has come and gone and nothing. Not even some sort of vaguely ominous clouds, or dramatic music, or anything like that.

Go figure.

Between my Burmese class and my Paleontology class, I've been kept fairly busy. Actually, in the course of doing research for my paper, I've found theres quite a bit of overlap between Burma and the Indian subcontinent... over in Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, the Chittagong Hill Tracts. That part of the world. Especially when you get into the British Colonial period. Burmese expansion into the west is largely what provoked the Anglo-Burmese Wars! Of course, by 1824 the British Empire controlled all of Burma...

But I'm kind of burned out on that for the moment, as fun as it is to talk about head hunters and dacoity.

I've also been thinking I want to get some sort of crazy new animal, especially if it was something that I could freely allow to roam around my room. Ever heard of giant coconut crabs (Birgus latro)? Biggest land arthropod in the world, weighing some 10 pounds or so and with a leg span of three feet! They live pretty much all through the Pacific and Indian Ocean, from about say... Tahiti all the way west to Madagascar, and on most of the islands. Its pretty much a scaled up hermit crab. They also apparently have a thing about stealing silverware. How lulzy is that? It seems that the Okinawans even keep them as pets, which sounds about right for the Japanese.



I SO want to get one.

I also caught a frog the other day. In a shoe box, in fact. Named him 'hoppy' in honor of the episode of Monk that was on that day. Turns out the flooding is really great for wildlife. Worms, water bugs, frogs, shrews, turtles, all sorts of stuff.



Also looks like Uzbek journalista and activist Umida Niazova was in the news again, being honored with an award from Human Rights Watch International for her work. It seems that what I've heard about reporters who become stories having a hard time getting out of the spotlight is true. Then again, her whole trial was a political thing, really. I've found myself reading alot more Uzbek and Welsh news media lately, especially when I'm waiting around between classes.

Of course, BBC (or, the Beeb, as those in the know call it) is fun in general. I'm absolutely in love with the show Primeval, which some of my friends in other parts of the Anglophone world had known about for years anyway. I WISH we had dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures roaming about through the streets... how awesome would that be to bring, say, a family of Australopithecines to my Paleontology class? I work under the assumption A. boisei would help me study for class.

Not going to Chicago World Music fest this year... Really, its alot of things. I don't have the money, most of my time is getting wasted on other things, and to be honest I disdain being associated with a crowd of uncouth pseudo-intellectual yuppies who don't appreciate the fine art of the maqam. I know for a fact I can't make tonight's show featuring Mamek Khadem and Gaida Hinnawi, which was pretty much the only thing I even wanted to bother seeing in the first place, and I suspect I won't go see Gaida Hinnawi's performance tomorrow with Amir el Saffar.

EDIT: Screw wallowing in self-pity. Screw all ther drama and feeling sorry for oneself and the pathetic whining. Yeah, it sucks that I didn't get to go to Chicago World Music Festival this year. Alot, but I can't sit around crying over the past. It's done and gone, so no more. There will be other shows, other artists, other places to go and things to do. Gaida Hinnawi has an upcoming show at the Arab American National Museum and Mamek Khadem... well, there aren't really any good venues for Persian art/culture here in the Midwest, beyond maybe the Iran House of Greater Chicagoland. But whatever. Live and learn.

And yes, the new episode of Primeval did rock, thank you very much!

Caucasian Breakdown

So... things between Georgia (as in the Caucasian Republic of Georgia, not the U.S. State of the same name) and the Russian Federation have continued to be interesting. In theory, the Russians are acting as 'peace keepers,' and confining their efforts to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Of course, their definition of peace-keeping seems very different from that of the rest of the world. Much in the same vein as the U.S. 'private military contractors' (wink wink) in Iraq, come to think of this. Don't you love euphemisms?

So what is all this nonsense about anyway? Well, although I'm posting this rather later than I would like, I think it my duty to put out some factual information before the vapid, pop-culture psuedo-intellectuals decide adopt the issue as their latest cause célèbre en masse, without knowing or caring about the people on the ground, and proceed to flood cyber-space with bullshit telling us what we 'need to know' about this or that.

So... Russia, the 'Evil Empire' as some of you who remember the Reagan years might know it. What is their deal? Well... the long and the short of it is that Russia has not enjoyed the most cordial relations with their Caucasian neighbors to the south. I refer in this case to Chechyna, but also Dagestan, Ingushetia, and of course Georgia.

First of all, though, let me clear up something. When I say 'Caucasian,' I do not in fact mean 'white.' Well, not directly. In this context, Caucasian refers to the Caucasus region, which includes the independent states of Armenia, Gerogia and Azerbaijan, as well as portions of the Russian Federation and perhaps Iran and Turkey. The region is far from homogeneous, however. Its more of a patchwork of ethnicites, languages and religions - Apostolic Armenians, Shi'ite Azeris, Caucasian Jews in Azerbaijan, Orthodox Abkhaz and Cossacks, Sunni Laz and Adjarians, Buddhist Kalmyks, and many others. Indeed, historically Arab georgaphers knew the region as al-Jebel al-Alsun, the Mountain of Tongues.

So how does this relate to Mother Russia, you ask? Well, this goes waaaay back to the Tsarist days of Russian expansion. See, one of the greatest ambitions of Russian Imperialism was the acquisition of warm sea ports; a quest which literally took them across Russia, from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Amongst the most important acquisitions were the warm, rich lands in the south.

Fast forward to today. Sure, sure, the Soviet Union has collapsed, but even so, three things have remained at the core of Russian identity - Православие (Pravoslavi, or Orthodoxy) самодержавие (Samoderzhavi, or Autocracy) and народность (Nardnost, or National Spirit). Hell, Russia can claim a direct inheritance from the ROMAN EMPIRE! Long after Rome had fallen in the West, Konstantinopolis continued to rule the East. Even after the Turks finally conquered the city in 1453, Muscovy claimed to be the 'Third Rome.' In fact, the very word Tsar (formerly transliterated as Czar) is derived from the word 'Caesar.' The Russians are a proud people, in spite of widespread poverty, depression and government corruption.

BUT... what really bothers the Russians is the loss of what they see as 'their' territory. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, not only did the Warsaw Pact countries like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland go their own ways, but countries like Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Lativa and Ukraine (and please bear in mind that Kiev is the birthplace of Russian culture) have broken away from Russia. This left many ethnic Russians stranded well beyond Russian borders, incidentally. Moreover, huge tracts of land in Asia, such as Sakha, Komi, Buryatia, Karelia and Tatarstan, have pretty much complete autonomy within the Russian Federation. As far as many Russians are concerned, the Russian Empire... no, the very SOUL of the Russian people, is being broken apart.

And thats really what Chehnya boils down to. It's not about oil or gas, as the Russians have plenty of resources. Nor is it about religion, as Islam is a majority in other areas where the Russians have few problems with the local populace. No, its really about territory; no matter how small a scrap of land, the Russians see it as part of THEIR Empire, and its a humiliation they will not accept.

I am reminded immediately of a poll I had once heard about that was conducted in Russia. The question was something along the lines of 'what ethnicity wouldn't you want moving next to you.' Incidentally, aside from western Europeans, the highest rated groups were the Gypsies, Caucasians and finally Jews. Asians and other (non-Russian) Slavs were mostly tolerated. No doubt this extreme bias reflected the (then) heightened tensions with Chechnya, as well as revealing some disturbingly widespread racial prejudices.

But, getting back to the Caucasus, this current spat of things with Georgia actually owes to the the geo-political situation in the Balkans, which goes back to another pillar of Russian identity, pan-Slavism. See, one of the main arguments for Russian expansion always hinged on the argument that the fellow Slavic peoples (particularly the Orthodox Slavs) were being oppressed by the Ottoman Turks and Austro-Hungarians. Mother Russia, then, stood to 'protect' these little Slavic brethren through military force. Similar sentiments were used to justify Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe. Of course, as always, nobody actually bothered to ask the people living there in the first place, but then I guess thats the point.

Today, the Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia are things of the past. But the Russians still see this as 'their' backyard. So between the missile defense system in Poland and American/Western support for an independent Kosova, the Russians once again find themselves fearing that they have lost their voice on the world stage. Well, if we can back Kosovo, the Russians say to us, then they will back South Ossetia. As usual, the western media has completely forgotten about Kosova's sovereignty and moved on to the fast paced world of celebrity sex tapes and iPhones, but Russia... Russia has made good on her promise. This whole thing in South Ossetia is basically a pissing contest between Russia and the US/EU, with the Georgians caught up in between.

It doesn't help that Georgia has been seeking NATO membership, another move that I heartily support.

Now, as my old Russian teacher knows, I love the Caucasian peoples. Such a beautiful mosaic of cultures. But I don't see how South Ossetia and Abkhazia will fare any better by being annexed into the Russian Federation. Certainly their Chechnyan brethren have not fared well. But then, the geographic borders of the entire Caucasus region do not actually reflect the distribution of peoples living there, and indeed should extend well into Iran and down to the Mediterranean coast were we to draw them in any logical pattern anyway.