Best song I’ve ever heard about domestic violence: “Johnny’s Girl” by Spirit Artis. The music is not complex: mostly Artis’s expressive voice, with her understated guitar accompaniment, and a touch of overdubbed harmony singing. The song is powerful enough that it doesn’t need any more than that.
In a podcast, Artis said this is a song about toxic relationships as viewed by a third party. She had seen relationships where one partner subsumes themselves in the dominant partner, so that person isn’t even known by their own name; they’re just known as “Johnny’s girl,” or “Gwyneth’s boy,” or whatever. I’ve done a little bit of work with people in domestic violence situations, and Artis’s lyrics get at some uncomfortable truths:
“Johnny’s girl, she’s lost herself again, She said, ‘He’s different, you don’t know him like I do,’ But Johnny-boy’s abusing on our friend, She said, ‘He’ll change, just give him time, this bruise will fade’….”
In the same podcast, Artis added that she sang this song to someone she knew who needed to hear it, and that person got out of the toxic relationship that they were in. So I’m linking to this song on my blog — in case there’s someone else out there who needs to hear it.
Screen grab from the podcast mentioned in the post
I’ve picked up the ukulele again, but there’s not a lot of live ukulele happening in southeastern Massachusetts. So I’ve been getting my uke fix watching the weekly video podcast of Hawaii Music Supply, which you can find on their YouTube channel. Yes, they promote their high-end ukuleles. Yes, there’s a lot of pointless chit-chat, as on every podcast. But there’s also plenty of music, with some of the best of the newer ukulele players, sometimes playing songs and compositions they haven’t yet recorded. Players like Honoka, Neil Chin, Taimane Gardner, and many others, appear on the podcast and jam with regulars Corey Fujimoto and Kalei Gamaio.
For someone like me who’s trying to pick up the uke again, it’s really helpful to hear what really good ukulele playing sounds like. Plus ukulele players tend to be welcoming friendly people, and the ukulele itself is a gentle happy instrument. I put this podcast on while I’m cleaning the floor or doing laundry, and it cheers me right up even on a rainy windy winter day.
But here’s my playlist for this year’s World Ukulele Day. It’s mostly instrumental, except for two pieces. Many of the performers are from Hawai’i, of course, but I tried to make this about world ukulele by including players from Thailand, Japan, the US mainland, Germany, England, and Canada. Musical styles range from traditional Hawai’ian to jazz to pop to folk and beyond.
Corey Fujimoto may not be showy like some Big Name Uke Players, but his musicianship and technical prowess are top drawer. This Presto movement from a Bach sonata shows off both his technical prowess, and his excellent musical taste.
Screen grab from the Corey Fujimoto video
“Ukulele, I Love You” written and performed by Singto Numchok with the Ribbee Crew (Thailand)
The words to this song are both silly and sweet. The real joy in this video is watching five top-notch uke players, all doing different things with the same tune. If you have five really good uke players, you really don’t need any other instruments.
Japan has some of the best uke players in the world, and Natoyama is one of Japan’s best players. Enough said.
“Spain” performed by Andrew Molina, Kalei Gamaio, and Neal Chin (Hawai’i)
Three younger uke players trading improvised solos based on Chick Corea’s jazz standard “Spain.”The musical interaction between the three players results in sheer joy.
Screen grab from the video. L-R: Neal Chin, Kalei Gamaio, Andrew Molina
John King was trained as a classical guitarist in the campanella style, and he made his name in uke circles by performing classical music on the uke. His arrangements of melodies by Hawai’ian composers are less well known, but well worth listening to. Both his arrangements and his playing are understated, allowing the beauty of the melodies to shine through.
Pfeiffer is another player who trained as a classical guitarist then switched to uke. She is probably best known for her uke method books, but her performances are well worth listening to as well.
A video from the near end of Harrison’s life. Topnotch rhythm playing from a master guitarist and uke player. (Note the name “Keoki” on the headstock of the uke — that’s Harrison’s uke name.)
Screen grab from the George Harrison video.
“Swallowtail Medley” performed by John King (US mainland) and James Hill (Canada)
James Hill is a ukulele virtuoso, and he sometimes suffers from virtuoso-itis, making music more complicated than it needs to be. Not in this video, where Hill plays second fiddle, er uke, to John King.
“Neptune’s Storm” performed by Taimane Tauiliili Bobby Gardner (Hawai’i)
Taimane Gardner is another incredible uke player who sometimes suffers from virtuoso-itis. But in this performance, the high level virtuosity she displays is well matched to the requirements of the music.
For my money, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole was the best ukulele player ever. He doesn’t play with the virtuoso pyrotechnics of a James Hill, a Jake Shimabukuro, or a Taimane Gardner. But his playing is perfect. So is his singing.
Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has maintained the “Doomsday Clock.” That mythical clock shows how close humanity is to total destruction. Originally, the Clock only looked at the danger from nuclear armageddon, but in recent years has included threats from ecological catastrophe, bio-security, and other controllable threats to humanity.
The Clock was advanced from its previous setting of 100 seconds before midnight (i.e., to destruction), up to 90 seconds before midnight. According to Rachel Bronson, PhD, president and CEO, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “90 seconds to midnight is the closest the Clock has ever been set to midnight.” The Bulletin’s press release attributes most of the increase in threat to humanity to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and ongoing threats that Russia will use nuclear weapons.
Ten years ago, the Clock was set to 5 minutes (300 seconds) to midnight. When I first got active in the movement calling for reduction in nuclear stockpiles, back in the late 1970s, the Clock was set at 9 minutes to midnight, and we thought that was terrifying.
I still remember attending a Sun Ra concert in Philadelphia sometimes around 1983, when Sun Ra led his band in a snake dance through the audience while chanting, “It’s a motherfucker / Don’t you know / If they press that button / Your ass gonna go.” That chant was one of the things that helped me make sense of something you can’t really make sense out of. Nuclear war. It’s a motherfucker — and Sun Ra never used strong language, except in this piece, but that strong language is the only possible language for this topic — but there it is. Don’t get frantic about nuclear disaster, but don’t ignore it either. Confront it head on, in all its seriousness, with all the possibility of oblivion, while making music about it.
(For the record, the live version I remember hearing differs from the 1982 recorded version. Musically, the version I heard in Philadelphia is probably more like the live version recorded in Germany in 1984; though the words of the German recording differ from what I remember. There’s also the version recorded in Paris in 1983, which is quite different musically. No matter. If you’re looking to make sense out of nuclear armageddon, the effect of any of the recorded versions is the same: helping us make sense of the senseless.)
Screen grab from a 1984 film of Sun Ra performing “Nuclear War” in Paris.
Three of us were in the office in the early afternoon. Each of us was feeling a little bit grumpy. Each of us was glad to be done with 2022, and hoping that 2023 will be a little bit better.
I told them my theory. Here we are, three years into a pandemic. Historically, pandemics have ended after a year and a half. But this pandemic is still going strong. I told them about this article I read that blamed the Ukraine war on the pandemic — Putin took advantage of societal chaos to launch his war.
I think I might even blame the pandemic for what happened in the U.S. House of Representatives today. The Republicans could not elect a Speaker of the House. Sure, we can blame it on right-wing extremists and ideologues. But I suspect part of the reason that people are voting right wing extremists and ideologues into office is that people are afraid and angry and doing stupid things like voting for people who can’t and won’t govern effectively.
It’s time to start playing ukulele again. I’ll never be a good ukulele player, but who cares. Pick up a ukulele, and you can’t help smiling. To quote George Harrison: “[The uke] is one instrument you can’t play and not laugh.”
Even if I can’t play it very well, a uke makes me feel better. Especially if it’s Carol’s uke, the one with blue flowers painted on it.
I always thought of Gil Scot-Heron as the godfather of rap. But Ted Brooks and the Jubalaires antedated him by a couple of decades.
The Jubalaires formed as the Royal Harmony Singers in the late 1930s. Coming out of the Southern gospel tradition of Jubilee-style quartets, the Jubalaires went north to New York City. By 1946, they were regulars on the popular Arthur Godfrey radio program, and they had their own fifteen-minute program every Sunday morning as well. They were accompanied by a series of excellent jazz guitarists, but their music was mostly focused on tight vocal harmonies. As a gospel group, the topic of many of their songs was Bible stories or other religious topics.
So where does the rap come in? Well, one of their best known recordings is a song called “Noah.” After singing an introductory part in four-part harmony, baritone Theodore “Ted” Brooks takes the lead. But Brooks doesn’t sing, he raps. It wasn’t called rap back then, but today there’s no other word for it. His rhythm, his rhymes, the whole feel of it sounds a lot like some of the early rap I listened to back around 1980. I could almost imagine that Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had listened to Ted Brooks, except that the members of that group were born in the late 1950s and early 1960s, well after the hey-day of the Jubalaires. And of course, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five did not take Bible stories for their topics. But if they had — if they had done something about the story of Noah, for example — we could imagine that it might have sounded something like Ted Brooks in the mid-1940s:
“Hey children, stop, be still and listen to me, When God walked down to the brandy sea He declared that the evil descend from man, And then he decided to destroy the land. He spoke to Noah, and Noah stopped. He said, ‘Noah, I want you to build me an ark, ‘I want you to build it three cubits long, ‘I want you to build it big and strong, ‘I want it thirty high and fifty wide ‘So it will stand the wind and tide.’…”
Screen grab from a video of “Noah” by the Jubalaires, c. 1946. Ted Brooks is in the center.
Hard to believe that the first rapper was making rhymes about Bible stories. Now I’ve got to figure out a way to use this in a Sunday school curriculum….
More Jubalaires with rapped verses: God’s Gonna Cut You Down (not sure who takes the lead on this recording; this was later covered by Johnny Cash); The Preacher and the Bear (is that Caleb Ginyard taking the lead? I’m not sure).
I was talking with one of the elders in our congregation this afternoon. Somehow, we got to talking about classical music. She happened to know a great deal about opera, and asked me if I knew Ileana Cotrubas. I didn’t. She played me a short recording.
Now, I tend to prefer mezzo-sopranos to sopranos, and non-operatic sopranos to operatic sopranos; give me Jan De Gaetani or Catherine King over Beverly Sills or Maria Callas any day. So I did not expect to like Ileana Cotrubas.
But, to my surprise, I really liked the recordings she played for me: a lovely warm voice that didn’t get brittle on the high notes; extraordinary articulation; not too much vibrato. So I’ve just spent way too much time on Youtube listening to Cotrubas — like this recording of her singing an aria from La Boheme.
This reminded me of a visit Carol and I paid to my father in his last year. He was wheelchair bound, couldn’t talk; it was hard to know how much cognitive ability he had left. He had always been a real opera buff, so Carol and I decided to play some Youtube recordings of opera for him. I found a recording of Beverly Sills, and started to play it. Dad’s face turned into a big scowl. “Oops, sorry Dad,” I said. “I forgot that you don’t like Beverly Sills.” Actually, it was worse than that, he actively disliked her, saying her voice was too hard or brittle or something, I’ve forgotten exactly what now. So I quickly found a recording of Maria Callas; he always liked Maria Callas. His scowl went away, and we spent several happy minutes listening to Maria Callas. (Mind you, I don’t care for Maria Calls, but I was happy that we found something that gave Dad pleasure.)
It’s funny how I, like my father, have these visceral, unreasoning, and very strong preferences regarding vocal quality. There are some singers that I want to listen to, and other singers — as much as I might appreciate their artistry or expertise — that I’d rather avoid. This applies to speakers, too. So, for example, there are some ministers whose artistry I admire, but I don’t want to listen to them; and there are other ministers to whom I’m always ready to listen.
My mother would have said, “They can’t help their voice,” excusing those people whose voices I don’t like. Sorry, Mom. It’s completely irrational, but there it is. And — sorry, Dad, that I ever thought you’d want to listen to Beverly Sills….
At the end of August, “The Ongoing History of Protest Music” website had a blog post titled “A Month of Protest.” The first song they featured was “Black AF,” by Crystal Axis, an Afropunk band from Kenya. (Before you crank up the sound be aware that, like a lot of punk rock, “Black AF” is Not Safe For Work.)
I didn’t even know that leftist punk rock still existed. But Crystal Axis are keeping the tradition alive with some really hard-hitting songs. As I started listening to their music, I was particularly struck by their 2017 song “Leopold,” an anti-colonialist song about King Leopold of Belgium. Leopold led Belgium in the brutal exploitation of the Congo, and Crystal Axis’s lyrics provide a concise summary of the king’s self-justification:
“I’m the king and it’s all mine Under Force Publique and Christ Your hands are mine tonight Fingers up one time!”
Leopold was especially notorious for ordering the amputation of the hands of workers if work quotas were not met. Theologically he, like other Western colonial rulers, used the Christian religion both as a cover and as a justification for his crimes against humanity.
“Take the Throne,” a song they released last year, also has some leftist theological comment. First, the lyrics call out the injustice caused by gross economic inequality, where the rich are literally starving the rest of the world:
“You eat, we watch; a revolution’s born We’ll tear down the walls and then we’ll take the throne”
Now comes their theological commentary:
“The voice of the people is the voice of God Too many lies, deities we can’t applaud”
As someone who loves punk rock, I really enjoyed hearing leftist theology in the context of topnotch music. For more, visit their website or their Facebook page.
Back in July, Carol and I drove to the Cumberland County Fairgrounds in Maine.
We sang Sacred Harp, in a pulling shed, with forty other Sacred Harp singers. There were horses trotting around the race track next to the pulling shed.
Click on the image above to view the video on Youtube
The pandemic shut down in person singing for a long time. It felt really good to sing with other people in person.
I was glad to see that someone posted videos of us singing, so I could be reminded of one of the highlights of my summer vacation.
