Walter Kitundu

I pretty much like everything about this guy.

Daphne Oram: mother of experimenal music

                               

Daphne Oram was born in 1925 in England.  She was very interested in both songwriting and electronics.  in 1946, while many males were fighting a war abroad, Oram took a job at the BBC as a "junior balancing engineer".  A balancing engineer is similar to a mixing engineer except in that time it was too expensive to record shows so everything was done live.

That all changed in the 50s when the tape machine was implemented at BBC.  Oram was one of the first people to experiment with tape not as a means to record but as a medium for a new kind of music and I would argue art.

Once everybody at her work would leave for the night, she would experiment with the the sounds recorded on the tape.  Speeding the up, slowing them down, splicing tape together, and playing the sounds backwards.  Later on she even developed a interchangeable set of wheels that could change the sounds pitch by changing the speed of the play heads.  This effectively turned the tape machine into the first synthesizer.

It is pretty easy to imagine that the BBC was not very interested in the work that Oram was doing.  It took years for them to even set up a department that dealt with electronic sounds and when they finally did they didn't let her be a part of it.  Also to avoid any problems with musicians unions anything that was made through her system was not allowed to be called music.

Daphne Oram eventually went on to be the first women to make her own recording studio in 1959.  She received a substantial grant initially, but eventually had to take some commercial work such as helping make some sounds for a ballet version of Beauty and the Beast.

Oram experimented with sounds and electronics the rest of her life, but she also wrote compositions.  Most of them have remained unperformed to this day, but she did record a song called "four aspects" which uses all tape machines as the instruments in 1960.  It sounds very sci-fi.  If I knew how to upload music I would put it on this post.

Anyhoot, for how important she was to music both technically and artistically, I can't believe I hadn't heard of her until last week.  She's one special lady.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Oram

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/aug/01/daphne.oram.remembered

http://web.archive.org/web/20060210194050/http://www.sonicartsnetwork.org/Oram/oram.html

                                         

ELEVATING THE ART

R.I.P. Yma Sumac

Yma Sumac with no doubt is one of the most remarkable voices of our time, with a vocal range which is rarely found once in a century. Her use of voice is also completely her own style, which she developed in a rather autodidactic or at least very individual way. For most of the time she tried to promote legends and folk songs from Peruvian origin, but she also sang mambo amongst other things. Because she stayed in America most of the time, apart from a short while in Russia, in the fifties they preferred to present her music with a big orchestra, where she was presented to the world as an exotica queen, or as a diva with a remarkable voice.- Psychedelic V/H Folk

Yma Suma website
Miracles: The album Yma fans can't stand

2008, new technology, same old shit

FROM savetheinternet.com :

Verizon Blocks Pro-Choice Text Messaging

September 26th, 2007 by tkarr

We’ve just been handed another view of Verizon’s gatekeeper tendencies with a report Wednesday night that the company’s wireless arm is blocking pro-choice text messages.

According to the New York Times, Verizon Wireless has rejected Naral Pro-Choice America efforts to use Verizon’s mobile text-message program to communicate to its membership.

What free speech looks like Take Action Now to Stop the Gatekeepers (Photo courtesy of gizmodo)

Such text messaging is an important new tool for advocacy organizations seeking to educate and alert their members. Verizon decision to block this new form of political speech interferes with its users’ right to get information that they choose to receive.

The move gives off a familiar scent — and puts Verizon in the same league with its cohorts at AT&T, who in August censored the live Webcast of a Pearl Jam performance that included criticism of President George Bush.

The truth is that whenever given the choice, phone companies will opt to discriminate against content they don’t like. Such efforts to stem the free flow of information should be a wake up call for anyone concerned about phone company plans to begin filtering Internet content.

Verizon and AT&T routinely rail against Net Neutrality as a “solution in search of a problem.” They swarm Washington with lobbyists offering promises never to interfere with the free flow of online content. And then they lobby for new laws that will allow them to do just that.

AT&T and Verizon share a history of breaking trust with the public, including handing over customer phone records to the government — and then seeking immunity from prosecution for doing so; promising to deliver services to underserved communities and then skipping town; pledging never to interfere with the free flow of information while hatching plans with the likes of Cisco and Viacom to build and deploy technology that will spy on online traffic.

Earlier this month, Verizon filed suit against the FCC for trying to pry open the Wireless market to more consumer choice and competition. In Verizon’s myopic view, consumers should never benefit from the free market — and especially not those who are locked into their draconian wireless contracts.

The bottom line is never trust Verizon or AT&T at their word. Phone companies act in bad faith toward the public and will do whatever they can get away with — including sacrificing their users’ freedom to choose — to advance their financial interests.

The Verizon network crowd that famously shadows users wherever they go has now taken on an Orwellian cast. No, Verizon, we don’t want your mob to surround us. We simply want you to get out of our way.

Wow. Longest dreadlocks-World Record

From the World Records Academy:

Mandela's dreadlocks, which she started growing 20 years ago, are longer than she is tall. She cradles her locks in her arms like a baby. She wraps it around her neck like a scarf. She lets it hang down her back and trail behind her like a bridal veil.

Asha Mandela, who is originally from Trinidad, said she first cut all of her hair off and began growing the 20-year dreads while she was living in New York.



Can someone post some other great dreadlock youtube clips in the comments? I know they're out there!

R.I.P. Rudy Ray Moore, aka Dolemite

"Rudy Ray Moore, whose standup comedy, records and movies related earthy rhyming tales of a vivid gaggle of characters as they lurched from sexual escapade to sexual escapade in a boisterous tradition, that helped shape today's hip-hop, died Sunday in Akron, Ohio. He was 81." - Chicago Tribune