position:singer

Sikh drivers are transforming U.S. trucking. Take a ride along the Punjabi American highway - Los Angeles Times
▻https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-col1-sikh-truckers-20190627-htmlstory.html

By Jaweed Kaleem, Jun 27, 2019 -
It’s 7:20 p.m. when he rolls into Spicy Bite, one of the newest restaurants here in rural northwest New Mexico. Locals in Milan, a town of 3,321, have barely heard of it.

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Punjabi-operated truck stops

The building is small, single-story, built of corrugated metal sheets. There are seats for 20. The only advertising is spray-painted on concrete roadblocks in English and Punjabi. Next door is a diner and gas station; the county jail is across the road.

Palwinder Singh orders creamy black lentils, chicken curry and roti, finishing it off with chai and cardamom rice pudding. After 13 hours on and off the road in his semi truck, he leans back in a booth as a Bollywood music video plays on TV.

“This is like home,” says Pal, the name he uses on the road (said like “Paul”).

There are 3.5 million truckers in the United States. California has 138,000, the second-most after Texas. Nearly half of those in California are immigrants, most from Mexico or Central America. But as drivers age toward retirement — the average American trucker is 55 — and a shortage grows, Sikh immigrants and their kids are increasingly taking up the job.

Estimates of the number of Sikh truckers vary. In California alone, tens of thousands of truckers trace their heritage to India. The state is home to half of the Sikhs in the U.S. — members of a monotheistic faith with origins in 15th century India whose followers are best recognized by the uncut hair and turbans many men wear. At Sikh temples in Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield and Riverside, the majority of worshipers are truck drivers and their families.

Over the last decade, Indian Americans have launched trucking schools, truck companies, truck washes, trucker temples and no-frills Indian restaurants modeled after truck stops back home, where Sikhs from the state of Punjab dominate the industry.

“You used to see a guy with a turban and you would get excited,” says Pal, who is in his 15th year of trucking. “Today, you go to some stops and can convince yourself you are in India.”

Three interstates — the I-5, I-80 and I-10 — are dotted with Indian-American-owned businesses catering to truckers. They start to appear as you drive east from Los Angeles, Reno and Phoenix, and often have the words “Bombay,” “Indian” or “Punjabi” on their storefront signs. But many, with names like Jay Bros (in Overton, Neb.) and Antelope Truck Stop Pronghorn (in Burns, Wyo.) are anonymous dots on a map unless you’re one of the many Sikhs who have memorized them as a road map to America.

The best-known are along Interstate 40, which stretches from Barstow to North Carolina. The road, much of it alongside Historic Route 66, forms the backbone of the Sikh trucking world.

It’s a route that Pal, 38, knows well. Three times a month, he makes the seven-day round trip between his Fontana home and Indiana, where he drops off loads and picks up new ones. Over his career, he’s driven 2 million miles and transported items as varied as frozen chickens and paper plates. These days, he mostly hauls chocolate, rice and fruits and vegetables from California farms. Today, it’s 103 containers of mixed produce, with mangoes, bell peppers, watermelons, yellow onions and peeled garlic among them. All are bound for a Kroger warehouse outside Indianapolis.

Across the street from Spicy Bite, dozens of arriving drivers form a temporary village of 18-wheelers in a vast parking lot by the interstate. Most are white. Nearly all are men. More are older than younger.

But every now and then there are Sikhs like Pal, with long salt-and-pepper beards, colorful turbans and thick Indian accents. They head straight toward Spicy Bite.

Lines can form out the door at the restaurant, which opened two years ago outside the Petro Stopping Center, a longtime mainstay for truckers headed east.

Pal makes a point to stop by the restaurant — even just for a “hello” — when he sleeps next door. The Sikh greeting is “Sat sri akaal.” It means “God is truth.” In trucking, where turnover is high, business uncertain and risk of accidents ever present, each day can feel like a leap of faith and an opportunity to give thanks.

Punjabi Americans first appeared on the U.S. trucking scene in the 1980s after an anti-Sikh massacre in India left thousands dead around New Delhi, prompting many Sikhs to flee. More recently, Sikhs have migrated to Central America and applied for asylum at the Mexico border, citing persecution for their religion in India; some have also become truckers. Estimates of the overall U.S. Sikh population vary, placing the community’s size between 200,000 and 500,000.

In recent years, corporations have pleaded for new truckers. Walmart kicked up salaries to attract drivers. Last year, the government announced a pilot program to lower the age for driving trucks from 21 to 18 for those with truck-driving training in the military. According to the American Trucking Assn., the trucker shortage could reach 100,000 within years.

“Punjabis are filling the gap,” says Raman Dhillon, a former driver who last year founded the North American Punjabi Trucking Assn. The Fresno-based group advises drivers on regulations, offers insurance and tire discounts, and runs a magazine: Punjabi Trucking.

Like trucking itself, where the threat of automation and the long hours away from home have made it hard to recruit drivers, the Punjabi trucking life isn’t always an easy sell. Three years ago, a group of Sikh truckers in California won a settlement from a national shipping company after saying it discriminated against their faith. The drivers, who followed Sikh traditions by wrapping their uncut hair in turbans, said bosses asked them to remove the turbans before providing hair and urine samples for pre-employment drug tests despite being told of the religious observance. The same year, police charged a man with vandalizing a semi truck at a Sikh temple in Buena Park. He’d scribbled the word “ISIS.”

Still, Hindi- and Punjabi-language newspapers in the Eastern U.S. regularly run ads promising better wages, a more relaxed lifestyle and warm weather as a trucker out West. Talk to any group of Sikh drivers and you’ll find former cabbies, liquor store workers or convenience store cashiers who made the switch.

How a rural Oklahoma truck stop became a destination for Sikh Punjabis crossing America »

“Thirty years ago, it was hard to get into trucking because there were so few people like us in the business who could help you,” says Rashpal Dhindsa, a former trucker who runs Fontana-based Dhindsa Group of Companies, one of the oldest Sikh-owned U.S. trucking companies. When Pal first started, Dhindsa — now a close friend but then an acquaintance — gave him a $1,000 loan to cover training classes.

It’s 6:36 a.m. the next day when the Petro Stopping Center switches from quiet darkness to rumbling engines. Pal flips on the headlights of his truck, a silver ’16 Volvo with a 500-horsepower engine. Inside the rig, he heats aloo gobi — spiced potatoes and cauliflower — that his wife prepared back home. He checks the thermostat to make sure his trailer isn’t too warm. He takes out a book wrapped in a blue cotton cloth that’s tucked by his driver’s seat, sits on a bed-turned-couch and reads a prayer in Punjabi for safety on the journey: There is only one God. Truth is His name…. You always protect us.

He pulls east onto the highway as the sun rises.

Truckers either drive in pairs or solo like Pal. Either way, it’s a quiet, lonely world.

Still, Pal sees more of America in a week than some people will in their lives. Rolling California hills, spiky desert rock formations, the snow-dusted evergreens of northern Arizona, the fuzzy cacti in New Mexico and, in Albuquerque, hot air balloons rising over an orange sky. There’s also the seemingly endless fast food and Tex-Mex of Amarillo and the 19-story cross of Groom, Texas. There’s the traffic in Missouri. After hours of solitude on the road, it excites him.

Pal’s not strict on dogma or doctrine, and he’s more spiritual than religious. Trucking has shown him that people are more similar than different no matter where you go. The best of all religions, he says, tend to teach the same thing — kindness to others, accepting whatever comes your way and appreciation for what’s in front of you on the road.

“When I’m driving,” Pal says, “I see God through his creation.”

His favorite sights are the farms. You spot them in Central California while picking up pallets of potatoes and berries, or in Illinois and Indiana while driving through the corn and soybean fields.

They remind him of home, the rural outskirts of Patiala, India.

Nobody in his family drove trucks. Still, to Pal, he’s continuing tradition. His father farmed potatoes, cauliflower, rice and tomatoes. As a child, Pal would ride tractors for fun with Dad. Today, instead of growing food, Pal transports it.

He wasn’t always a trucker. After immigrating in 2001 with his younger brother, he settled in Canoga Park and worked nights at 7-Eleven. After he was robbed at gunpoint, a friend suggested trucking. Better pay, flexible hours — and less dangerous.

Three years later, he started driving a rig he didn’t own while getting paid per mile. Today, he has his own company, two trucks between himself and his brother — also a driver — and bids on shipments directly with suppliers. Nationally, the average pay for a trucker is just above $43,000. Pal makes more than twice that.

He uses the money to pay for the house he shares with his wife, Harjeet Kaur, 4-year-old son, brother and sister-in-law, nieces and parents. Kaur threads eyebrows at a salon and video chats with him during lunch breaks. Every week before he leaves, she packs a duffel bag of his ironed clothes and stacked containers of food for the road.

“I love it,” Pal says about driving. “But there are always two sides of the coin, head and tail. If you love it, then you have to sacrifice everything. I have to stay away from home. But the thing is, this job pays me good.”

The truck is fully equipped. From the road, you can see only driver and passenger seats. But behind them is a sleeper cab with a bed that’s 6-foot-7 by 3-foot-2.

Pal likes to connect the TV sitting atop a mini-fridge to his phone to stream music videos when he’s alone. His favorite songs are by Sharry Maan, an Indian singer who topped charts two years ago with “Transportiye.” It tells the story of a Sikh American trucker who longs for his wife while on the road. At night, the table folds down to become a bed. Pal is just missing a bathroom and his family.

The life of a Sikh trucker is one of contrasts. On one hand, you see the diversity of America. You encounter new immigrants from around the world working the same job as people who have been truckers for decades. All transport the food, paper and plastic that make the country run. But you also see the relics of the past and the reminders of how you, as a Sikh in 2019, still don’t entirely fit in.

It’s 9:40 a.m. on Saturday when Pal pulls into Bowlin’s Flying C Ranch rest center in Encino, N.M., an hour past Albuquerque and two from Texas. Here, you can buy a $19,999 stuffed buffalo, Baja jackets and fake Native American moccasins made in China in a vast tourist stop attached to a Dairy Queen and an Exxon. “God Bless the U.S.A.” by Lee Greenwood plays in the background.

It reminds Pal of the time he was paying his bill at another gas station. A man suddenly shouted at customers to “get out, he’s going to blow up this place!” “I will not fight you,” Pal calmly replied. The man left. Those kinds of instances are rare, but Pal always senses their danger. Some of the most violent attacks on Sikhs this century have been at the hands of people who mistook them for Muslims or Arabs, including the case of a turban-wearing Sikh man in Arizona who was shot dead by a gunman four days after the Sept. 11 attacks.

For Pal, suspicious glances are more common. So are the truckers who think he’s new to the business or doesn’t speak English. None of it fazes him.

“Everybody relates to us through Osama bin Laden because we look the same,” he says, driving across the plains toward the Texas Panhandle. “Or they think because my English sounds different that I am not smart. I know who I am.”

Every day, he wears a silver bracelet that symbolizes a handcuff. “Remember, you are handcuffed to God. Remind yourself to not do bad things,” Pal says. It reminds him to be kind in the face of ignorance and hatred.

At a Subway in Amarillo a few hours later, he grabs his go-to lunch when he’s taking a break from Indian food: a chicken sandwich on white bread with pepper jack, lettuce, tomato and onion. At home, the family is vegetarian. Pal relishes chances on the road to indulge in meat. He used to depend solely on his wife’s cooking. Today, he has other options. It’s a luxury to switch from homemade meals to Punjabi restaurants to fast food.

Trucking has helped Pal find his faith. When he moved to the U.S., he used to shave, drink beer and not care much about religion. But as he got bored on the road, he started listening to religious sermons. Twelve years ago, he began to again grow his hair and quit alcohol; drinking it is against the faith’s traditions. Today, he schedules shipments around the temple calendar so he can attend Sikh celebrations with his family.

“I don’t mind questions about my religion. But when people say to me, ‘Why do you not cut your hair?’ they are asking the wrong question,” Pal says. “The real question is, why do they cut their hair? God made us this way.”

It’s 4:59 p.m. when he arrives in Sayre, Okla., at Truck Stop 40. A yellow Punjabi-language billboard advertises it as the I-40 starts to bend north in a rural region two hours from Oklahoma City.

Among the oldest Sikh truck stops, it has a 24-hour vegetarian restaurant, convenience store, gas station and a housing trailer that functions as a temple — all spread over several acres.

Pal has been coming here for more than decade, since it was a mechanic shop run by a Sikh former trucker who settled on the plot for its cheap land. When he has time, Pal lingers for a meal. But he’s in a rush to get to Joplin, Mo., for the night so he can make his drop-off the next day.

He grabs a chai and heads to the temple. Resting on a small pillow upon the altar is the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book. An audiotape plays prayers on a loop. A print of Guru Nanak, the faith’s founder, hangs on the wall.

Pal prostrates and leaves a few dollar bills on the floor as a donation for upkeep. He prays for God to protect the temple, his family and himself on the 891 miles that remain until he hits the Indianapolis suburbs.

“This feels like a long drive,” Pal says. “But it’s just a small part of the journey of life.”

#USA #LKW #Transport #Immigration #Zuwanderung

9-year-old Jordanian singer to perform at Las Vegas gala | Jordan Times
▻http://jordantimes.com/news/local/9-year-old-jordanian-singer-perform-las-vegas-gala

Jordanian winner of MBC 4’s Arabs Got Talent 2017 Emanne Beasha on March 2 will perform at a philanthropic gala in Las Vegas, along with Grammy nominated singer songwriter Jewel, a joint MBC-One Night statement said.

Nine-year-old Beasha will take part in the sixth annual “One Night for One Drop” event, imagined by Cirque du Soleil and aimed at collecting funds to benefit safe water access programmes around the world, the statement said.

Le résultat est assez étonnant !

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=221&v=ao8sC4kt6CI

What Does Bruce Springsteen’s ’Born In The U.S.A.’ Really Mean? : NPR
▻https://www.npr.org/2019/03/26/706566556/bruce-springsteen-born-in-the-usa-american-anthem

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If you’re listening closely, the lyrics of “Born in the U.S.A.” make its subject pretty clear: The 1984 hit by Bruce Springsteen describes a Vietnam War veteran who returns home to desperate circumstances and few options. Listen only to its surging refrain, though, and you could mistake it for an uncomplicated celebration of patriotism. You wouldn’t be the only one.

At other times, Springsteen dropped the upbeat chorus — singing only the verses, forcing his audience to hear the dark story of the veteran. When the U.S. invasion of Iraq loomed in 2003, he told his audience the song was a prayer for peace.

Onkey says the complexity of “Born in the U.S.A.” is why it endures: “It describes the ambiguities and challenges of the country that I have grown up in. And for me, it’s a rock-and-roll anthem: This singer, this scream, the sound of the guitar and the scale of the song suggest that rock and roll is big enough and important enough to tell that story.”

Maybe the meaning of “Born in the U.S.A.” is the distance between the grim verses and the joyous chorus. It’s the space between frustrating facts and fierce pride — the demand to push American reality a bit closer to our ideals.

#Musique #Bruce_Springsteen

The Top 25 Songs That Matter Right Now - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/07/magazine/top-songs.html

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It usually takes a while — a decade or two — before we can look back at a particular era of American life and see it as something coherent, something whose every aspect is marked by one overarching mood. It takes a certain amount of hindsight to notice how all the wildly different reactions people had to the moment were still, in the end, reactions to the same thing; all the different poses they adopted were still being struck against the same backdrop.

But this era — this year, and the last one, and one or two before that — might be an exception. There’s an oddly strong in-the-moment consensus on how everyone is feeling these days, and it is not good. At some point it became a routine conversational tic for all sorts of people, of all sorts of persuasions, to express, with an incredulous gesture, that things feel a bit grueling and frantic lately, don’t they? Musicians are no exception. “Life is pretty tumultuous right now for all of us,” said the crossover country star Kacey Musgraves, while accepting a Grammy for the Album of the Year. The Swedish singer Robyn acknowledges that “pop at the moment is depressing” in an interview midway through this issue. “The music kids are listening to is heavy! Maybe it’s hard to be positive and optimistic at the moment.”

L’air du temps en chansons version USA 2018.

#Musique #2018

Old Palestinian photos & films hidden in IDF archive show different history than Israeli claims

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Palestinian photos and films seized by Israeli troops have been gathering dust in the army and Defense Ministry archives until Dr. Rona Sela, a curator and art historian, exposed them. The material presents an alternative to the Zionist history that denied the Palestinians’ existence here, she says.

The initial reaction is one of incredulity: Why is this material stored in the Israel Defense Forces and Defense Ministry Archive? The first item is labeled, in Hebrew, “The History of Palestine from 1919,” the second, “Paintings by Children Who Go to School and Live in a Refugee Camp and Aspire to Return to Palestine.” The third is, “Depiction of the IDF’s Treatment and Harsh Handling of Palestinians in the Territories.”

Of all places, these three reels of 16-mm film are housed in the central archive that documents Israel’s military-security activities. It’s situated in Tel Hashomer, near the army’s National Induction Center, outside Tel Aviv.

IDF archive contains 2.7 million photos, 38,000 films

The three items are barely a drop in an ocean of some 38,000 films, 2.7 million photographs, 96,000 audio recordings and 46,000 maps and aerial photos that have been gathered into the IDF Archive since 1948, by order of Israel’s first prime minister and defense minister, David Ben-Gurion. However, a closer perusal shows that this particular “drop in the ocean” is subversive, exceptional and highly significant.

The footage in question is part of a collection – whose exact size and full details remain unknown – of “war booty films” seized by the IDF from Palestinian archives in raids over the years, though primarily in the 1982 Lebanon War.

Recently, however, following a persistent, protracted legal battle, the films confiscated in Lebanon, which had been gathering dust for decades – instead of being screened in cinematheques or other venues in Israel – have been rescued from oblivion, along with numerous still photos. The individual responsible for this development is Dr. Rona Sela, a curator and researcher of visual history at Tel Aviv University.

For nearly 20 years, Sela has been exploring Zionist and Palestinian visual memory. She has a number of important revelations and discoveries to her credit, which she has published in the form of books, catalogs and articles. Among the Hebrew-language titles are “Photography in Palestine/Eretz-Israel in the ‘30s and ‘40s” (2000) and “Made Public: Palestinian Photographs in Military Archives in Israel” (2009). In March, she published an article in the English-language periodical Social Semiotics on, “The Genealogy of Colonial Plunder and Erasure – Israel’s Control over Palestinian Archives.”

Now Sela has made her first film, “Looted and Hidden: Palestinian Archives in Israel,” an English-language documentary that surveys the fate of Palestinian photographs and films that were “captured” and deposited in Israeli archives. It includes heretofore unseen segments from films seized by the IDF from Palestinian archives in Beirut. These documentary records, Sela says, “were erased from consciousness and history” for decades.

Sela begins journey in 1998

Getting access to the films was not easy, Sela explains. Her archival journey began in 1998, when she was researching Zionist propaganda films and photos that sought to portray the “new Jew” – muscular, proudly tilling the soil – in contradistinction, according to the Zionist perception, to the supposedly degenerate and loutish Palestinian Arab.

“After spending a few years in the Central Zionist Archive in Jerusalem and in other Zionist archives, researching the history of Zionist photography and the construction of a visual propaganda apparatus supporting the Zionist idea, I started to look for Palestinian visual representation as well, in order to learn about the Palestinian narrative and trace its origins and influence,” she says.

That task was far more complicated than anyone could have imagined. In some of the Zionist films and photos, Sela was able to discern, often incidentally, episodes from Palestinian history that had “infiltrated” them, as she puts it. For example, in Carmel Newsreels (weekly news footage screened at local cinemas) from 1951, showing the settlement of Jews in Jaffa, demolished and abandoned Arab homes are clearly visible.

Subsequently, Sela spotted traces and remnants of a genuine Palestinian visual archive occasionally cropping up in Israeli archives. Those traces were not immediately apparent, more like an elusive treasure concealed here and there beneath layers of restrictions, erasures and revisions.

Khalil Rassass, father of Palestinian photojournalism

Thus, one day she noticed in the archive of the pre-state Haganah militia, stills bearing the stamp “Photo Rissas.” Digging deeper, she discovered the story of Chalil Rissas (Khalil Rassass, 1926-1974), one of the fathers of Palestinian photojournalism. He’s unknown to the general public, whether Palestinian or Israel, but according to Sela, he was a “daring, groundbreaking photographer” who, motivated by a sense of national consciousness, documented the pre-1948 Palestinian struggle.

Subsequently she found hundreds of his photographs, accompanied by captions written by soldiers or Israeli archive staff who had tried to foist a Zionist narrative on them and disconnect them from their original context. The source of the photographs was a Jewish youth who received them from his father, an IDF officer who brought them back with him from the War of Independence as booty.

The discovery was unprecedented. In contrast to the Zionist propaganda images that exalted the heroism of the Jewish troops and barely referred to the Palestinians, Rissas’ photographs were mainly of Palestinian fighters. Embodying a proud Palestinian stance, they focused on the national and military struggle and its outcome, including the Palestinians’ military training and deployment for battle.

“I realized that I’d come across something significant, that I’d found a huge cache of works by one of the fathers of Palestinian photography, who had been the first to give visual expression to the Palestinian struggle,” Sela recalls. “But when I tried to learn more about Chalil Rissas, I understood that he was a forgotten photographer, that no one knew the first thing about him, either in Israel or elsewhere.”

Sela thereupon decided to study the subject herself. In 1999, she tracked down Rissas’ brother, Wahib, who was working as a photographer of tourists on the Temple Mount / Haram a-Sharif in Jerusalem’s Old City. He told her the story of Chalil’s life. It turned out that he had accompanied Palestinian troops and leaders, visually documenting the battles fought by residents of the Jerusalem area during the 1948 War of Independence. “He was a young man who chose the camera as an instrument for changing people’s consciousness,” Sela says.

Ali Za’arur, forgotten Palestinian photographer

Around 2007, she discovered the archive of another forgotten Palestinian photographer, Ali Za’arur (1900-1972), from Azzariyeh, a village east of Jerusalem. About 400 of his photos were preserved in four albums. They also depicted scenes from the 1948 war, in which Za’arur accompanied the forces of Jordan’s Arab Legion and documented the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem. He photographed the dead, the ruins, the captives, the refugees and the events of the cease-fire.

In the Six-Day War of 1967, Za’arur fled from his home for a short time. When he returned, he discovered that the photo albums had disappeared. A relative, it emerged, had given them to Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek as a gift. Afterward, the Jerusalem Foundation donated them to the IDF Archive. In 2008, in an unprecedented act, the archive returned the albums to Za’arur’s family. The reason, Sela surmises, is that the albums were captured by the army in battle. In any event, this was, as far as is known, a unique case.

Sela took heart from the discoveries she’d made, realizing that “with systematic work, it would be possible to uncover more Palestinian archives that ended up in Israeli hands.”

That work was three-pronged: doing archival research to locate Palestinian photographs and films that had been incorporated into Israeli archives; holding meetings with the Palestinian photographers themselves, or members of their families; and tracking down Israeli soldiers who had taken part in “seizing these visual spoils” and in bringing them to Israel.

In the course of her research Sela met some fascinating individuals, among them Khadijeh Habashneh, a Jordan-based Palestinian filmmaker who headed the archive and cinematheque of the Palestinian Cinema Institute. That institution, which existed from the end of the 1960s until the early ‘80s, initially in Jordan and afterward in Lebanon, was founded by three pioneering Palestinian filmmakers – Sulafa Jadallah, Hani Jawhariyyeh and Mustafa Abu Ali (Habashneh’s husband) – who sought to document their people’s way of life and national struggle. Following the events of Black September in 1970, when the Jordanian army and the Palestine Liberation Organization fought a bloody internecine war, the filmmakers moved to Lebanon and reestablished the PCI in Beirut.

Meeting with Habashneh in Amman in 2013, Sela heard the story of the Palestinian archives that disappeared, a story she included in her new documentary. “Where to begin, when so much material was destroyed, when a life project falls apart?” Habashneh said to Sela. “I can still see these young people, pioneers, bold, imbued with ideals, revolutionaries, who created pictures and films and documented the Palestinian revolution that the world doesn’t want to see. They refused to be faceless and to be without an identity.”

The archive established by Habashneh contained forgotten works that documented the Palestinians’ suffering in refugee camps, the resistance to Israel and battles against the IDF, as well as everyday life. The archive contained the films and the raw materials of the PCI filmmakers, but also collected other early Palestinian films, from both before and after 1948.

Spirit of liberation

This activity reflects “a spirit of liberation and revolt and the days of the revolution,” Habashneh says in Sela’s film, referring to the early years of the Palestinian national movement. That spirit was captured in underground photographs and with a minimal budget, on film that was developed in people’s kitchens, screened in tents in refugee camps and distributed abroad. Women, children, fighters, intellectuals and cultural figures, and events of historic importance were documented, Habashneh related. “As far as is known, this was the first official Palestinian visual archive,” Sela notes.

In her conversation with Sela, Habashneh nostalgically recalled other, better times, when the Palestinian films were screened in a Beirut cinematheque, alongside other works with a “revolutionary spirit,” from Cuba, Chile, Vietnam and elsewhere. “We were in contact with filmmakers from other countries, who saw the camera as an instrument in the hands of the revolution and the people’s struggle,” she recalled.

“Interesting cultural cooperation developed there, centering around revolutionary cinema,” Sela points out, adding, “Beirut was alive with an unprecedented, groundbreaking cultural flowering that was absolutely astonishing in terms of its visual significance.”

IDF confiscates film archive

But in 1982, after the IDF entered Beirut, that archive disappeared and was never seen again. The same fate befell two films made by Habashneh herself, one about children, the other about women. In Sela’s documentary, Habashneh wonders aloud about the circumstances in which the amazing collection disappeared. “Is our fate to live a life without a past? Without a visual history?” she asks. Since then, she has managed to reconstruct a small part of the archive. Some of the films turned up in the United States, where they had been sent to be developed. Copies of a few others remained in movie theaters in various countries where they were screened. Now in her seventies, Habashneh continues to pursue her mission, even though, as she told Sela during an early conversation, “the fate of the archive remains a puzzle.”

What Habashneh wasn’t able to accomplish beginning in 1982 as part of a worldwide quest, Sela managed to do over the course of a few years of research in Israel. She began by locating a former IDF soldier who told her about the day on which several trucks arrived at the building in Beirut that housed a number of Palestinian archives and began to empty it out. That testimony, supported by a photograph, was crucial for Sela, as it corroborated the rumors and stories about the Palestinian archives having been taken to Israel.

The same soldier added that he had been gripped by fear when he saw, among the photos that were confiscated from the archive, some that documented Israeli soldiers in the territories. He himself appeared in one of them. “They marked us,” he said to Sela.

Soldiers loot Nashashibi photos & possessions, take photo from corpse

Another former soldier told Sela about an unusual photo album that was taken (or looted, depending on one’s point of view) from the home of the prominent Nashashibi family in Jerusalem, in 1948. The soldier added that his father, who had served as an IDF officer in the War of Independence, entered a photography studio and made off with its archive, while other soldiers were busy looting pianos and other expensive objects from the Nashashibis. Another ex-soldier testified to having taken a photo from the corpse of an Arab. Over time, all these images found their way to archives in Israel, in particular the IDF Archive.

Sela discovers IDF archive

In 2000, Sela, buoyed by her early finds, requested permission from that archive to examine the visual materials that had been seized by the army in the 1980s. The initial response was denial: The material was not in Israel’s hands, she was told.

“But I knew what I was looking for, because I had soldiers’ testimonies,” she says now, adding that when she persisted in her request, she encountered “difficulties, various restrictions and the torpedoing of the possibility of perusing the material.”

The breakthrough came when she enlisted the aid of attorneys Michael Sfard and Shlomi Zacharia, in 2008. To begin with, they received word, confirmed by the Defense Ministry’s legal adviser, that various spoils taken in Beirut were now part of the IDF Archive. However, Sela was subsequently informed that “the PLO’s photography archive,” as the Defense Ministry referred in general to photographic materials taken from the Palestinians, is “archival material on matters of foreign affairs and security, and as such is ‘restricted material’ as defined in Par. 7(a) of the Archives Regulations.”

Then, one day in 2010, Sela received a fax informing her that Palestinian films had been found in the IDF Archive, without elaboration, and inviting her to view them. “There were a few dozen segments from films, and I was astonished by what I saw,” she says. “At first I was shown only a very limited amount of footage, but it was indicative of the whole. On the basis of my experience, I understood that there was more.”

A few more years of what Sela terms “endless nagging, conversations and correspondence” passed, which resulted in her being permitted to view dozens of segments of additional films, including some that apparently came from Habashneh’s archive. Sela also discovered another Palestinian archive that had been seized by the IDF. Established under the aegis of the PLO’s Cultural Arts Section, its director in the 1970s was the Lod-born painter and historian Ismail Shammout (1930-2006).

One of the works in that collection is Shammout’s own film “The Urgent Call,” whose theme song was written and performed by the Palestinian singer Zainab Shathat in English, accompanying herself on the guitar. “The film was thought to be lost until I found it in the IDF Archive,” says Sela, who describes “The Urgent Call” as “a cry about the condition of Palestine, its sons and its daughters.”

Viewing it takes one back in time to the late 1960s and early ‘70s, when the cinema of the Palestinian struggle briefly connected with other international revolutionary film movements.

Legendary French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard

For example, in 1969 and 1970 Jean-Luc Godard, the legendary filmmaker of the French New Wave in cinema, visited Jordan and Lebanon several times with the Dziga Vertov Group of French filmmakers (named after the Soviet pioneer documentarian of the 1920s and ‘30s), who included filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin, who worked with Godard in his “radical” period. They came to shoot footage in refugee camps and in fedayeen bases for Godard’s film “Until Victory.” Habashneh told Sela that she and others had met Godard, assisted him and were of course influenced by his work. [Ed. note: Godard’s work on Palestine caused him to be accused of antisemitism by the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen and others. “In Hollywood there is no greater sin,” the Guardian reported.]

Along with “The Urgent Call” – excerpts from which are included in her “Looted and Hidden” documentary – Sela also found another Shammout work in the IDF Archive. Titled “Memories and Fire,” it chronicles 20th-century Palestinian history, “from the days depicting the idyllic life in Palestine, via the documentation of refugeehood, to the documentation of the organizing and the resistance. To use the terms of the Palestinian cinema scholar and filmmaker George Khleifi, the aggressive fighter took the place of the ill-fated refugee,” she adds.

Sela also found footage by the Iraqi director Kais al-Zubaidi, who worked for a time in the PLO’s Cultural Arts Section. His films from that period include “Away from Home” (1969) and “The Visit” (1970); in 2006 he published an anthology, “Palestine in the Cinema,” a history of the subject, which mentions some 800 films that deal with Palestine or the Palestinian people. [Ed. note: unfortunately it appears this book has never been translated into English.]

IDF seals the archive for decades

Some of the Palestinian movies in the IDF Archive bear their original titles. However, in many other cases this archival material was re-cataloged to suit the Israeli perspective, so that Palestinian “fighters” became “gangs” or “terrorists,” for example. In one case, a film of Palestinians undergoing arms training is listed as “Terrorist camp in Kuwait: Distribution of uniforms, girls crawling with weapons, terrorists marching with weapons in the hills, instruction in laying mines and in arms.”

Sela: “These films and stills, though not made by Jewish/Israeli filmmakers or military units – which is the central criterion for depositing materials in the Israeli army archive – were transferred to the IDF Archive and subordinated to the rules of the State of Israel. The archive immediately sealed them for many decades and cataloged them according to its terminology – which is Zionist, Jewish and Israeli – and not according to the original Palestinian terminology. I saw places where the word ‘terrorists’ was written on photographs taken by Palestinians. But after all, they do not call themselves as such. It’s part of terminological camouflaging, which subordinated their creative work to the colonial process in which the occupier controls the material that’s captured.”

Hidden Palestinian history

Sela’s discoveries, which are of international importance, are not only a research, documentation and academic achievement: They also constitute a breakthrough in regard to the chronicling of Palestinian history. “Palestinian visual historiography lacks many chapters,” she observes. “Many photographs and archives were destroyed, were lost, taken as spoils or plundered in the various wars and in the course of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

From her point of view, the systematic collecting of Palestinian visual materials in the IDF Archive “makes it possible to write an alternative history that counteracts the content created by the army and the military archive, which is impelled by ideological and political considerations.” In the material she found in the army archive, she sees “images that depict the history of the Palestinian people and its long-term ties to this soil and this place, which present an alternative to the Zionist history that denied the Palestinians’ existence here, as well as their culture and history and the protracted tragedy they endured and their national struggle of many years.”

The result is an intriguing paradox, such as one often finds by digging deep into an archive. The extensive information that Sela found in the IDF Archive makes it possible to reconstruct elements of the pre-1948 existence of the Palestinians and to help fill in the holes of the Palestinian narrative up until the 1980s. In other words, even if Israel’s intention was to hide these items and to control the Palestinians’ historical treasures, its actions actually abet the process of preservation, and will go on doing so in the future.

Earlier groundbreaking discovery – confiscated Palestinians books & libraries

Sela’s research on visual archival materials was preceded by another groundbreaking study – dealing with the written word – conducted by Dr. Gish Amit, an expert on the cultural aspects of Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Amit chronicled the fate of Palestinian books and libraries that, like the photographs and films Sela found, ended up in Israeli archives – including in the National Library in Jerusalem.

In his 2014 book, “Ex-Libris: Chronicles of Theft, Preservation, and Appropriating at the Jewish National Library” (Hebrew), Amit trenchantly analyzes the foredoomed failure of any attempt to conceal and control the history of others. According to him, “an archive remembers its forgettings and erasures,” “documents injustice, and thus makes it possible to trace its paths” and “paves a way for forgotten histories which may, one day, convict the owners” of the documents.

However, Amit also sees the complexity of this story and presents another side of it. Describing the operation in which the Palestinian books were collected by Israeli soldiers and National Library personnel during the War of Independence, he raises the possibility that this was actually an act involving rescue, preservation and accessibility: “On the one hand, the books were collected and not burned or left in the abandoned houses in the Arab neighborhoods that had been emptied of their inhabitants. Had they not been collected their fate would have been sealed — not a trace of them would remain,” he writes, adding, that the National Library “protected the books from the war, the looting and the destruction, and from illegal trade in manuscripts.”

According to the National Library, it is holding about 6,500 Palestinian books and manuscripts, which were taken from private homes whose owners left in 1948. The entire collection is cataloged and accessible to the general public, but is held under the responsibility of the Custodian of Absentees’ Property in the Finance Ministry. Accordingly, there is no intention, in the near future, of trying to locate the owners and returning the items.

Israeli control over history

Sela views the existence of these spoils of war in Israel as a direct expression of the occupation, which she defines, beyond Israel’s physical presence in the territories, as “the control of history, the writing of culture and the shaping of identity.” In her view, “Israel’s rule over the Palestinians is not only geographic but extends also to culture and consciousness. Israel wants to erase this history from the public consciousness, but it is not being successful, because the force of the resistance is stronger. Furthermore, its attempts to erase Palestinian history adversely affect Israel itself in the end.”

At this point, Sela resorts to a charged comparison, to illustrate how visual materials contribute to the creation of personal and collective identity. “As the daughter of Holocaust survivors,” she says, “I grew up in a home without photographic historical memory. Nothing. My history starts only with the meeting of my parents, in 1953. It’s only from then that we have photos. Before that – nothing.

“I know what it feels like when you have no idea what your grandmother or grandfather looked like, or your father’s childhood,” she continues. “This is all the more true of the history of a whole people. The construction of identity by means of visual materials is very meaningful. Many researchers have addressed this topic. The fact is that Zionist bodies made and are continuing to make extensive and rational use of [such materials too] over a period that spans decades.”

Sela admits that there is still much to be done, but as far as she’s concerned, once a crack appeared in the wall, there was no turning back. “There is a great deal of material, including hundreds of films, that I haven’t yet got to,” she notes. “This is an amazing treasure, which contains information about the cultural, educational, rural and urban life of the Palestinian people throughout the 20th century – an erased narrative that needs to be restored to the history books,” she adds.

Asked what she thinks should be done with the material, she asserts, “Of course it has to be returned. Just as Israel is constantly fighting to retrieve what the Nazis looted from Jews in the Holocaust. The historical story is different, but by the same criterion, practice what you preach. These are cultural and historical materials of the Palestinian people.”

The fact that these items are being held by Israel “creates a large hole in Palestinian research and knowledge,” Sela avers. “It’s a hole for which Israel is responsible. This material does not belong to us. It has to be returned to its owners. Afterward, if we view it intelligently, we too can come to know and understand highly meaningful chapters in Palestinian history and in our own history. I think that the first and basic stage in the process of conciliation is to know the history of the Other and also your own history of controlling the Other.”

Defense Ministry response

A spokesperson for the Defense Ministry, which was asked to comment on the holdings in the IDF Archive, the archive contains 642 “war booty films,” most of which deal with refugees and were produced by the UNRWA (the United Nations refugee relief agency) in the 1960s and 1970s. The ministry also noted that 158 films that were seized by the IDF in the 1982 Lebanon War are listed in orderly fashion in the reading-room catalog and are available for perusal by the general public, including Arab citizens and Palestinians.

As for the Palestinian photographs that were confiscated, the Defense Ministry stated that there is no orderly record of them. There are 127 files of photographs and negatives in the archive, each of which contains dozens of photographs, probably taken between the 1960s and the 1980s, on a variety of subjects, including visits of foreign delegations to PLO personnel, tours of PLO delegations abroad, Palestinian art and heritage, art objects, traditional attire and Palestinian folklore, factories and workshops, demonstrations, mass parades and rallies held by the PLO, portraits of Arab personalities and PLO symbols.

The statement adds that a few months ago, crates were located that were stamped by their original owners, “PLO/Department of Information and National Guidance and Department of Information and Culture,” during the evacuation of the archive’s storerooms in the Tzrifin base.

▻https://israelpalestinenews.org/old-palestinian-photos-films-hidden-idf-archive-show-different-
#historicisation #Israël #Palestine #photographie #films #archive #histoire #Khalil_Rassass #Ali_Za’arur
ping @reka @sinehebdo @albertocampiphoto

Pétition de personnalités britanniques (Vivienne Westwood, Peter Gabriel, Mike Leigh, Julie Christie, Maxine Peake, Wolf Alice, Roger Waters, Caryl Churchill, Al Kennedy) contre la tenue de l’Eurovision en israel et sa diffusion par la BBC.

(un article en parlait déjà là: ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/756450 )

The BBC should press for Eurovision to be moved from Israel
The Guardian, le 29 janvier 2019
▻https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jan/29/the-bbc-should-press-for-eurovision-to-be-moved-from-israel

Traduction en français:

La BBC devrait faire pression pour que l’Eurovision n’ait pas lieu en Israël
The Guardian, le 29 janvier 2019
▻http://www.agencemediapalestine.fr/blog/2019/01/31/la-bbc-devrait-faire-pression-pour-que-leurovision-nait-pas-lie

Peter Ahrends, architect
Amir Amirani, filmmaker
Jonathan Arndell, architect, artist
Roy Battersby, director
Bloody Knees, band
brave timbers, band
Jen Brister, comedian
Carmen Callil, publisher, writer
Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso, performer
Julie Christie, actor
Ian Christie, film historian, broadcaster
Chipo Chung, actor
Caryl Churchill, playwright
Michael Darlow, tv writer and director
Paula Darwish, musician
April De Angelis, playwright
Tam Dean Burn, actor
Drones Club, band
Nancy Elan, violin
Gareth Evans, producer, curator
Peter Gabriel, musician, founder WOMAD festival
Lots Holloway, singer, songwriter
Rachel Holmes, writer
Brigid Keenan, author
Patrick Keiller, artist, filmmaker
Reem Kelani, musician, broadcaster
AL Kennedy, writer
Desmond Lambert, musician
Mike Leigh, writer, director
Ken Loach, director
Sabrina Mahfouz, writer
Miriam Margolyes, actor
Yann Martel, writer
Declan McKenna, singer, songwriter
JD Meatyard, musician
Pauline Melville, writer
Giuliano Modarelli, musician, composer
Object Blue, DJ
Maxine Peake, actor
Jocelyn Pook, composer
TJ Rehmi, composer, producer
Reverend & the Makers, band
Leon Rosselson, songwriter
Rrose, DJ
Alexei Sayle, comedian, author
David Scott, music producer
Nick Seymour, musician
Sarah Streatfeild, violin
Roger Waters, musician
Vivienne Westwood, fashion designer
Wolf Alice, band

#Palestine #Eurovision #BDS #Boycott #BBC #Grande-Bretagne

Everipedia Internet Culture Roundup #5: Tattoos Are Forever
▻https://hackernoon.com/everipedia-internet-culture-roundup-5-tattoos-are-forever-fd850f7c5c68?s

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/850/0*L0yyZi3Its6OOtPx.png

Tattoos are a permanent mark that symbolizes how you feel about someone or something a certain point in time. It has become a starter of conversations for many interactions. Roger Stone got his #tattoo of Richard Nixon years ago and carries the former President’s spirit quite literally on his back. Kelsey Karter supposedly got singer Harry Styles’ tattoo on her face this week and many are wondering how her future significant other will feel about it in a few years. Notorious #wikipedia editor Philip Cross is not known to have tattoos, and his editing activity makes people question whether he is a person at all or a group of people trying to sway public opinion. Dan Riffle does not care if you have a tattoo or not, only if you are a billionaire because he considers that to be an economic (...)

#economic-inequality #media #roger-stone

„Russian Roulette”
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOii45HUP40

The New American Songbook: The oldies of the future.
▻https://slate.com/culture/2018/10/the-new-american-songbook-the-oldies-of-the-future.html

Oct 18, 2018 - Here are the hits of the past 25 years that we’ll be listening to for the next 100.

What makes a song last? The history of popular music tells us that many masterpieces of songcraft—and even the most world-conquering smashes—are quickly forgotten.

Meanwhile, many earworms burrow deep into the collective consciousness, where they take root, whether we like it or not.

Which of today’s hits will be tomorrow’s classics?

Who could have predicted that “Don’t Stop Believin’ ”—which was, upon its release in 1981, a commercial disappointment from a critically derided band—would become the 20th century’s best-selling digital download?* Or that it would be a “novelty” dance single, of all song varieties, that would become Billboard’s pick for the greatest single of all time?

Separating the most durable tunes from the millions of other would-be classics is no easy task. So we asked critics, musicians, and industry professionals to predict which tracks from the past 25 years we’ll still be dancing and singing along to for the next 100 years. Some of these songs our children will belt in sports arenas. Others our grandchildren will dance to at their weddings.

The New American Songbook is emphatically not a list of the best songs of the past quarter-century, although many of these tracks would make that list, too. As predicted by our panel, tomorrow’s oldies, like tomorrow’s America, will be a lot less male-dominated, and a lot more diverse. Less than a third of the songs on our list are fronted by white men, and no artists are featured more frequently than pop music’s first couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Classic rock will soon be rivaled by classic rap, and the Cole Porter of the next American songbook may be Max Martin.

Below, find the Top 30 songs, in order, all of which were nominated by at least two of our panelists. You can also read the individual ballots of everyone from Chuck Klosterman to NPR’s Ann Powers to Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood. Which of today’s hits will endure as tomorrow’s golden oldies? Here’s our best guess.

30. Idina Menzel – “Let It Go”

Producers: Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez
Songwriters: Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez
Year: 2013

29. Liz Phair – “Fuck and Run”

Producers: Liz Phair, Brad Wood
Songwriter: Liz Phair
Year: 1993

28. Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers – “Get Lucky”

Producers: Thomas Bangalter, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo
Songwriters: Thomas Bangalter, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Nile Rodgers, Pharrell Williams
Year: 2013

27. Alanis Morissette – “You Oughta Know”

Producer: Glen Ballard
Songwriters: Alanis Morissette, Glen Ballard
Year: 1995

26. Old Crow Medicine Show – “Wagon Wheel”

Producer: David Rawlings
Songwriters: Bob Dylan, Ketch Secor
Year: 2004

25. Destiny’s Child – “Say My Name”

Producer: Darkchild
Songwriters: LaShawn Daniels, Rodney Jerkins, Fred Jerkins III, Beyoncé, LeToya Luckett, LaTavia Roberson, Kelly Rowland
Year: 1999

24. Israel Kamakawiwoʻole – “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World”

Producers: Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, Jon de Mello
Songwriters: Edgar Yipsel Harburg, Bob Thiele, George David Weiss
Year: 1993

23. Beyoncé ft. Jay-Z – “Crazy in Love”

Producers: Rich Harrison, Beyoncé
Songwriters: Beyoncé, Rich Harrison, Eugene Record, Shawn Carter
Year: 2003

22. Nine Inch Nails – “Hurt”

Producer: Trent Reznor
Songwriter: Trent Reznor
Year: 1994

Producers: Dr. Dre, Mike Elizondo
Songwriters: Curtis Jackson, Andre Young, Mike Elizondo
Year: 2003

20. Adele – “Rolling in the Deep”

Producer: Paul Epworth
Songwriters: Adele Adkins, Paul Epworth
Year: 2010

19. Oasis – “Wonderwall”

Producers: Owen Morris, Noel Gallagher
Songwriter: Noel Gallagher
Year: 1995

18. Backstreet Boys – “I Want It That Way”

Producers: Kristian Lundin, Max Martin
Songwriters: Andreas Carlsson, Max Martin
Year: 1999

17. Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris – “We Found Love”

Producer: Calvin Harris
Songwriter: Calvin Harris
Year: 2011

16. The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”

Producer: The Killers
Songwriters: Brandon Flowers, Dave Keuning, Mark Stoermer, Ronnie Vannucci Jr.
Year: 2003

15. Céline Dion – “My Heart Will Go On”

Producers: Walter Afanasieff, James Horner, Simon Franglen
Songwriters: Will Jennings, James Horner
Year: 1997

14. Santana ft. Rob Thomas – “Smooth”

Producer: Matt Serletic
Songwriters: Itaal Shur, Rob Thomas
Year: 1999

13. Lauryn Hill – “Doo Wop (That Thing)”

Producer: Lauryn Hill
Songwriter: Lauryn Hill
Year: 1998

12. Drake – “Hotline Bling”

Producer: Nineteen85
Songwriters: Aubrey Graham, Paul Jefferies, Timmy Thomas
Year: 2015

11. Eminem – “Lose Yourself”

Producers: Eminem, Jeff Bass, Luis Resto
Songwriter: Marshall Mathers
Year: 2002

10. Carly Rae Jepsen – “Call Me Maybe”

Producer: Josh Ramsay
Songwriters: Carly Rae Jepsen, Josh Ramsay, Tavish Crowe
Year: 2012

9. TLC – “Waterfalls”

Producer: Organized Noize
Songwriters: Marqueze Etheridge, Lisa Lopes, Organized Noize
Year: 1994

8. The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army”

Producer: Jack White
Songwriter: Jack White
Year: 2003

7. Mariah Carey – “All I Want for Christmas Is You”

Producers: Mariah Carey, Walter Afanasieff
Songwriters: Mariah Carey, Walter Afanasieff
Year: 1994

6. Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars – “Uptown Funk”

Producers: Mark Ronson, Jeff Bhasker, Bruno Mars
Songwriters: Jeff Bhasker, Philip Lawrence, Peter Hernandez, Mark Ronson, Nicholas Williams, Devon Gallaspy, Lonnie Simmons, Charles Wilson, Ronnie Wilson, Robert Wilson, Rudolph Taylor
Year: 2014

5. The Notorious B.I.G. – “Juicy”

Producers: Poke of Trackmasters, Pete Rock
Songwriters: Christopher Wallace, Hunter McIntosh, Sean Combs, Pete Rock, Jean-Claude Olivier, Samuel Barnes
Year: 1994

4. Kelly Clarkson – “Since U Been Gone”

Producers: Max Martin, Dr. Luke
Songwriters: Max Martin, Lukasz Gottwald
Year: 2004

3. Beyoncé – “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”

Producers: Christopher Stewart, Terius Nash, Beyoncé
Songwriters: Christopher Stewart, Terius Nash, Thaddis Harrell, Beyoncé
Year: 2008

2. Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys – “Empire State of Mind”

Producer: Al Shux
Songwriters: Angela Hunte, Alicia Keys, Alexander Shuckburgh, Bert Keyes, Janet Sewell-Ulepic, Shawn Carter, Sylvia Robinson
Year: 2009

1. Outkast – “Hey Ya”

Producer: André 3000
Songwriter: André 3000
Year: 2003

This future standard has the “best hook in history,” writes Powers. And it’s perhaps the strongest testament to Outkast’s world-conquering, genre-bending hit that you can’t help but mentally scroll through this perennial list-topper’s many catchy bits and respond, “Wait—which one?” Of course there’s the titular chorus, at once triumphant and melancholy. (While some panelists referred to it as “an expression of pure pop joy,” the lyrics find the singer worrying that all love is transient.) But there are also the hand claps putting three exclamation points on each couplet, the call-and-response section that lets the audience deliver the cooler-than-cool punchline, the “shake it like a Polaroid picture” bridge that people will be singing long after they’ve forgotten the purpose of shaking Polaroids, even the repetition of 14 straight “all rights” that embodies this song’s perfect combination of pop universality and André 3000 weirdness. (See also the time signature, which is either a standard 4/4 or a downright bizarre 11/4, depending on whom you ask.)

And these hooks have already sunk themselves into subsequent generations. As Kois writes, “The first time I played this song for my kids it was as if they’d already heard it 1,000 times.” If what they say is “Nothing is forever,” “Hey Ya” might be the exception.

#musique

HARDY FOX -------- BRAIN CANCER -------- 1945 - 2018
▻http://www.hardyfox.com/home

Hardy Fox grew up in Texas. After college he moved to San Francisco reveling in the free love days of 1967-68. He co-founded the much loved cult band, the Residents, where he was primary composer.

Hardy retired from The Residents in 2015 but continued to compose for the group through 2018. In addition to his work with that band, he has recorded as a solo artist under various names including Charles Bobuck, Combo de Mechanico, Sonido de la Noche, Chuck, TAR, among others.

#the_residents

Tony Joe White, ‘Swamp Rock’ Singer and Songwriter, Dies at 75 - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/obituaries/tony-joe-white-dead.html?emc=edit_th_181027&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=2593252

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/10/27/obituaries/27WHITE-OBIT/26WHITE1-facebookJumbo.jpg

Tony Joe White, the Louisiana singer and songwriter who wrote Brook Benton’s Top 10 hit “Rainy Night in Georgia” and had a Top 10 hit of his own with “Polk Salad Annie,” died on Wednesday in Nashville. He was 75.

Mr. White’s style, a mix of blues, country and rock ’n’ roll sung in a deep, growling voice, came to be known as swamp rock and earned him the nickname Swamp Fox. His songs were covered by Elvis Presley, Tina Turner, Waylon Jennings and many others.

J’avais eu l’occasion de la voir sur scène à Caen. Un style si particulier, immédiatement reconnaissable.
Les rockers ne mourant pas toutes et tous à 27 ans, on va avoir une liste qui va s’allonger sérieusement dans les années qui viennent ; les sixties commencent à dater.

J’adore les anecdotes :

Mr. White worked with Tina Turner on her critically acclaimed album “Foreign Affair” (1989), contributing four songs and playing guitar and harmonica. He said in 2006 that Ms. Turner was taken aback when they first met.

“She turned around and looked at me and started hysterically laughing and couldn’t get her breath,” he recalled. “She was doubling over, and I thought, ‘Are my pants unzipped or something?’ Finally she got her breath and came over to me and gave me a big hug and said: ‘I’m sorry, man. Ever since “Polk Salad Annie” I always thought you were a black man.’ ”

#Musique

L’article d’une DJ israélienne à propos des annulations récentes. Quelques points à noter :
1) elle n’est pas surprise de l’annulation de Lana del Rey
2) elle est surprise en revanche de l’annulation de DJs, car ce milieu n’était pas touché par la politique et BDS, et elle se demande si ce n’est pas le début de quelque chose...
3) elle cite Gaza, la loi sur l’Etat Nation, les arrestations d’activistes à l’aéroport, mais aussi la proximité entre Trump et Netanyahu, qui influence surtout les artistes américains
4) on apprend que tout le monde sait qu’il y a des artistes, et non des moindres, qui même s’ils ne le disent pas ouvertement, ne viendront jamais en israel : Beyoncé, The Knife, Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire, Deerhunter, Sonic Youth, Lil Yachty, Tyler the Creator, Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper, Vince Staples, Moodymann, Kyle Hall, the Martinez Brothers, Ben UFO, DJ Ricardo Villalobos, Matthew Herbert, Andrew Weatherall... C’est ce qu’on appelle le boycott silencieux...
5) il y a aussi le cas de ceux qui ne viennent que si les concerts sont organisés par des Palestiniens : Acid Arab et Nicolas Jaar
6) même si cela me semble faux, le fait d’accuser certains artistes de boycotter parce que c’est à la mode est un aveu que BDS a le vent en poupe dans le milieu de la musique

The Day the Music Died : Will BDS Bring Tel Aviv’s Club Scene to a Standstill ?
Idit Frenkel, Haaretz, le 7 septembre 2018
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-day-the-music-died-will-bds-halt-tel-aviv-s-club-scen

Lana Del Rey should have known better. And if not Del Rey herself, then at least her managers, PR people and agents.

As the highest-profile artist who was scheduled to appear at the Meteor Festival over the weekend in the north, it was clear she’d be the one caught in the crossfire , the one boycott groups would try to convince to ditch an appearance in Israel. That’s the same crossfire with diplomatic, moral and economic implications that confronted Lorde, Lauryn Hill and Tyler, the Creator: musicians who announced performances in Israel and changed their minds because of political pressure.

Del Rey, however, isn’t the story. Her cancellation , which included some mental gymnastics as far as her positions were concerned, could have been expected. Unfortunately, we’ve been there many times and in many different circumstances.

Tsunami of cancellations

The ones who caught us unprepared by drafting an agenda for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict turned out to be DJs like Shanti Celeste, Volvox, DJ Seinfeld, Python and Leon Vynehall, who also dropped out of Meteor. Why was this unexpected? Because Israel’s nightlife and clubbing scene – especially in Tel Aviv – had been an oasis regarding cultural boycotts, an extraterritorial hedonistic space with no room for politics.

The current tsunami of cancellations, while it might sound trivial if you’re untutored in trance music, could reflect a trend with effects far beyond the Meteor Festival. In the optimistic scenario, this is a one-off event that has cast the spotlight on lesser-known musicians as well. In the pessimistic scenario, this is the end of an era in which the clubbing scene has been an exception.

Adding credence to the change-in-direction theory are the cancellations by DJs who have spun in Tel Aviv in recent years; Volvox, Shanti Celeste and Leon Vynehall have all had their passports stamped at Ben-Gurion Airport. And those times the situation wasn’t very different: Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister, the occupation was decades long and there were sporadic exchanges of fire between the sides.

Moreover, two of the DJs spearheading the struggle on the nightlife scene regarding Mideast politics – the Black Madonna and Anthony Naples – have been here, enjoyed themselves, been honored and promised to return, until they discovered there’s such a thing as the occupation.

Americans and Brits cancel more

So what has changed since 2015? First, there has been a change on the Gaza border, with civilians getting shot. These incidents have multiplied in the past three months and don’t exactly photograph well.

Second, news reports about the nation-state law and the discrimination that comes with it have done their bit. Third, the arrests and detentions of left-wing activists entering Israel haven’t remained in a vacuum.

Fourth, and most importantly, is Donald Trump’s presidency and his unconditional embrace of Netanyahu, including, of course, the controversial opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. As in the case of Natalie Portman’s refusal to accept a prize from the state, the closeness between the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government – under the sponsorship of evangelical Christians – has made Israel a country non grata in the liberal community, of which Hollywood is one pole and nightlife the other.

It’s no coincidence that the DJs canceling are either Americans or Brits on the left; that is, Democrats or Jeremy Corbyn supporters in Labour – people who see cooperation with Israel as collaboration with Trump and Britain’s Conservative government.

Different from them is Honey Dijon, the black trans DJ from Chicago who in response to the protest against her appearance at the Meteor Festival tweeted: “All of you people criticizing me about playing in Israel, when you come to America and stand up for the murder of black trans women and the prison industrial complex of black men then we can debate. I play for people not governments.” Not many people tried to argue with her. Say what you will, contrarianism is always effective.

The case of DJ Jackmaster

Beyond the issue of values, at the image level, alleged collaboration can be a career killer, just as declaring a boycott is the last word in chic for your image nowadays. That’s exactly what has happened with Scotland’s DJ Jackmaster, who has gone viral with his eventual refusal to perform at Tel Aviv’s Block club. He posted a picture of the Palestinian flag with a caption saying you have to exploit a platform in order to stand up for those who need it. The flood of responses included talk about boycotting all Tel Aviv, not just the Block.

Yaron Trax is the owner of the Block; his club is considered not only the largest and most influential venue in town but also an international brand. Trax didn’t remain silent; on his personal Facebook account he mentioned how a few weeks before Jackmaster’s post his agent was still trying to secure the gig for him at the Block.

“Not my finest hour, but calling for a boycott of my club at a time when an artist is trying to play there felt to me like crossing a line,” Trax says. “Only after the fact, and especially when I saw how his post was attracting dozens of hurtful, belligerent and racist responses – and generating a violent discourse that I oppose – did I realize how significant it was.”

Trax talks about the hatred that has welled up in support of Jackmaster’s Israel boycott – just between us, not the sharpest tool in the shed and someone who has recently been accused of sexual harassment. As Trax puts it, “The next day it was important to me to admonish myself, first off, and then all those who chose to respond the way they responded.”

In a further well-reasoned post, Trax wrote, “I have always thought that people who take a risk and use the platform that is given to them to transmit a message they believe in, especially one that isn’t popular, deserve admiration and not intimidation or silencing.” Unsurprisingly, the reactions to this message were mostly positive.

Notwithstanding the boycotters who have acceded to the demands of Roger Waters and Brian Eno – the most prominent musicians linked to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – there are plenty of superstar musicians like Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and the Rolling Stones who have come to Israel as part of their concert tours, even though they suffered the same pressures. The performers most vocal about their decision to appear in Israel have been Radiohead and Nick Cave.

At a press conference on the eve of his concert, Cave expressed his opinion on the demand to boycott Israel: “It suddenly became very important to make a stand, to me, against those people who are trying to shut down musicians, to bully musicians, to censor musicians and to silence musicians.”

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke took the message one step further and tweeted: “Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing its government. We’ve played in Israel for over 20 years through a succession of governments, some more liberal than others. As we have in America. We don’t endorse Netanyahu any more than Trump, but we still play in America.” As Yorke put it, music, art and academia are “about crossing borders, not building them.”

There’s a lot of truth in Yorke’s declaration, but whether or not musicians like it, appearances in Israel tend to acquire a political dimension; any statement becomes a potential international incident. Thus, for example, after Radiohead’s statement, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan saluted the band, and after Cave’s press conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted “Bravo Nick Cave!”

The trend continues when we step down a league from the A-listers, like Beyoncé, who doesn’t intend to perform in Israel despite her annual declaration that she’ll come “next year.” There’s the second level, the cream of international alternative rock and pop – refusals to appear in Israel by bands “of good conscience” like the Knife, Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire and Deerhunter.

The most prominent voice from this territory is that of former Sonic Youth guitarist and vocalist Thurston Moore. Yes, he appeared with his band in Tel Aviv 23 years ago, but since then he has become an avid supporter of BDS, so much so that he says it’s not okay to eat hummus because it’s a product of the occupation.

’Apartheid state’

At the next level of refusers are the major – and minor – hip-hop stars. In addition to Lil Yachty and Tyler, who canceled appearances, other heroes of the genre like Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper and Vince Staples have refused from the outset to accept invitations to Israel. It’s quite possible that the connection between BDS and Black Lives Matter is influential. As early as 2016, Black Lives Matter published a statement supporting BDS and declaring Israel an “apartheid state.”

Which brings us to electronic music and the cultural phenomenon that goes with it – the club culture. In numerical terms, club culture is smaller, but the information that flows from it on the ground or online flows much faster.

Moreover, not only is club culture more sensitive to changes and far more alert to ideas and technological advances, its history is marked by struggles by oppressed groups. It can be said that African-Americans, Hispanics and gay people were the first to adopt the “night” way of life, back in the days of New York’s clubs and underground parties in the ‘70s. Accordingly, these groups have been the ones to nurture this lifestyle into today’s popular culture. Hence also the association with movements like BDS.

Boiler Room Palestine

Indeed, the current trend points to a step-up in the discourse; in the past year the top alternative culture magazines – of which the electronic music magazines play a key role – have published articles surveying musical and cultural happenings in Palestinian society.

The online music magazine Resident Advisor has had two such stories, the first about a workshop for artists with the participation of the Block 9 production team, musicians Brian Eno and Róisín Murphy (formerly of Moloko) and American DJ the Black Madonna. The workshop, which included tours, discussion groups and joint musical work, was held at the Walled Off Hotel in Ramallah, also known as Banksy’s hotel because of the street artist’s involvement in its planning in the shadow of the separation barrier.

The second article surveyed the Palestinian electronic scene and its leading players – promoters, DJs and producers who are operating despite the restrictive military regime. In addition, the writer accompanied the production of Boiler Room Palestine in Ramallah in June. (The wider Boiler Room franchise has been the world’s most popular pop party for the past five years.)

Another example includes the style magazine Dazed, which wrote about the cultural boycott movement immediately after the cancellation of Lorde’s concert, and just last month New York Magazine’s culture supplement Vulture set forth its philosophy on the boycott (also in the context of Lana Del Rey). It predicted that the awakening we’re seeing today is only in its infancy.

This partial list isn’t a clear declaration about “taking a stance” – after all, progressive media outlets in culture laud Israeli artists (for example Red Axes, Moscoman and Guy Gerber) or local venues, like the Block club. But if you add to these the scores of Facebook battles or Twitter discussions (like the one Del Rey found herself in), you’ll get noise. And noise generates questions, which generate more noise and raise consciousness. And from there to change on the ground is a modest distance.

’These are people who slept on my sofa’

Refusals of invitations or cancellations of concerts in Israel by artists didn’t begin with BDS or the increasing volume of the past two years. After all, a visit to Israel all too often requires an intrusive security check. It’s hard to complain about a DJ who isn’t keen to have his underwear probed.

Also, there’s a stratum of artists who’ve appeared in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Haifa and have decided to stop coming – unless there’s a Palestinian production. Two examples are the French band Acid Arab (Parisians Guido Minisky and Hervé Carvalho) and the American producer – and darling of the hipster community – Nicolas Jaar . Jaar appeared in Tel Aviv a bit under a decade ago, just before he became a star, while Acid Arab not only performed in Tel Aviv but was also involved in projects with Israeli musicians – so plenty of people called the duo hypocrites.

“I have no problem with strong opinions, but in the case of Acid Arab it annoyed me at the personal level – these are people who slept on my sofa, recorded with local musicians, and the day they put up their post announcing they wouldn’t play in Tel Aviv, they also asked me to send them some music,” says Maor Anava, aka DJ Hectik.

“I have no problem with people changing their minds on the go; it’s clear to me that a visit to the separation fence can do it, but what bothered me is that it’s entirely a PR and image move, apparently at the advice of their agent,” he adds.

“We’ve reached a situation in which a boycott of Israel is the trendiest thing and situates you in the right place in the scene – as a supporter of the Palestinian freedom fighters against the terrible Zionist occupier, something that can get you to another three big festivals. If you performed in Tel Aviv, apparently they’d do without you.”

Thus at the end of last year, Acid Arab and Nicolas Jaar appeared in Haifa and Ramallah at parties produced by Jazar Crew, the only electronic collective in Israel that isn’t afraid to mix in politics.. So it surprised no one when Jazar received laudatory – and justified – coverage not only in Bar Peleg’s Haaretz piece but also in Resident Advisor.

Is the party over?

So are we seeing the onset of the electronic boycott of Tel Aviv, one of the world’s clubbing capitals? Well, the city is still a flourishing center of parties and club events every week. “ As of today it hasn’t yet happened that we’ve directly encountered an attempt by the cultural boycott to influence artists who are slated to appear at the club,” Trax says.

“But we’re definitely seeing a change in the surrounding behavior. Nasty responses that people are leaving for a DJ who announced an upcoming gig with us have led to fewer famous DJs announcing appearances at the Block – even those who always promote themselves.”

He notes a slowdown in the past two years. “A number of DJs who used to appear with us – Moodymann, Kyle Hall, the Martinez Brothers – have announced they won’t be returning, ” Trax says, referring to three American acts. “But there isn’t any set reason why. If the cultural boycott has an influence here I wouldn’t be surprised, because the Detroit junta is very political. And this also applies to UFO,” a successful British DJ and a high-profile voice in the European underground arena.

Not all DJs who have chosen not to come to Israel have taken their stance amid the strengthening of the BDS movement. Some of the top people in the dance industry – including star Chilean-German DJ Ricardo Villalobos and British DJs and producers like Matthew Herbert and Andrew Weatherall – have for years been refusing to spin in Israel. They’ve made clear that this is their way of opposing Israel’s activities in the territories.

Another great DJ, Tunisian-born Loco Dice who lives in Germany, is also considered a vocal opponent of Israel. But in December he played at the Block, and Trax doesn’t recall any signs that his guest was hostile to the country. This shows that a change of awareness works both ways.

There’s a similar story: the decision by DJ Tama Sumo of the Berghain club in Berlin to play in Israel after a long boycott. She and her partner DJ Lakuti, a pillar of the industry, donated the proceeds of her Tel Aviv set to an organization for human rights in the territories.

“As of now I don’t feel that the names who have decided to stop coming will change anything regarding the Block, because our lineup of VIPs isn’t based on them,” Trax says. “But if the more commercial cream of the clubs – DJs like Dixon, Ame and Damian Lazarus, or the big names in techno like Nina Kraviz, Ben Klock, Jeff Mills or Adam Beyer – change their minds, that will be a real blow to us, and not just us.”

Amotz Tokatly, who’s responsible for bringing DJs to Tel Aviv’s Beit Maariv club, isn’t feeling much of a change. “The cancellations or refusals by DJs and artists based on a political platform didn’t begin just this year. I’ve been encountering this for many years now. There are even specific countries where we know the prevailing mood is political and tending toward the boycott movement. For example England. The rhetoric there is a priori much stronger,” Tokatly says.

“But take Ben UFO, who has played in Tel Aviv in the past. When we got back to him about another spinning gig he said explicitly, ‘It simply isn’t worth it for me from a public relations perspective, and it could hurt me later on.’ DJs like him make their own calculations.”

Tokatly doesn’t believe in a “Meteor effect” that will send the visiting DJ economy to the brink of an abyss. “I’m giving it a few weeks to calm down, and in the worst case we won’t be seeing here the level of minor league DJs who have canceled due to the circumstances,” he says.

“In any case, they’re names who would have come here – if at all – once a year. Regarding artists who have a long-term and stable relationship with the local scene, we haven’t seen any change in approach yet.”

Unlike Trax and Tokatly, Doron “Charly” Mastey of the techno duo TV.OUT and content director at Tel Aviv’s Alphabet Club says the recent goings-on haven’t affected him too much; his club is unusual in that doesn’t base itself on names from abroad.

“I don’t remember any case of a refusal or cancellation because of political leanings,” he says. “But with everything that’s happening now regarding Meteor, and if that affects the scene down the road and the airlift to Tel Aviv stops, I’m not at all sure that’s a bad thing.”

Mastey has in mind the gap between the size of the audience and the number of events, parties and festivals happening in Israel right now. “The audience is tired, and indifferent,” he says.. “And if this kick in the pants – of cancellations – is what’s going to dismantle the scene in its current format, then it will simply rebuild itself. I hope in a way that’s healthier for everyone.”

In any case, if the rest of the world has realized that it’s impossible to separate politics from anything, and definitely not from club culture, which started out as a political and social movement, then the best thing we can do is try to hold the discussion in an inclusive a way as possible. An Israeli DJ working in Berlin who requested anonymity thinks that these ideas should be taken one step further.

“Nowadays, for artists who want to go to Israel, two proposals are on the table,” he says. “Support the boycott or support the occupation. These two things are depicted even if they aren’t accurate, and between the two options there are a thousand more levels.”

He believes there is scope for taking action. “The local scene must know how to fill the vacuum and craft alternatives to the boycott’s demands,” he says. “For example, by showing artists other ways to take a stand, whether by cooperating with Palestinians or suggesting that they donate the proceeds of their Tel Aviv appearances to a human rights group.”

The voices calling for a cultural boycott of Israel, whether in sports, concerts or the subfield of electronic music, aren’t going to disappear. If anything, they’re only going to grow louder.

Moreover, if we take into account the complexity of the conflict, maybe we should seek to communicate these insights in a way that drops the imagery of absolutes like left-right, bad-good, Zionist-anti-Semitic. The club culture exists to connect extremes, not separate people. Our demand to continue a vibrant electronic scene is just as legitimate as that of the boycott supporters’ attempts to create awareness.

Even if we don’t agree with the idea of the boycott, it’s still possible to accept the realization that there are people who think differently – who want to perform for the other side as much as they want to perform for us. This doesn’t make them an existential danger.

Moreover, as the Israeli DJ working in Berlin says, the Israeli scene needs an arsenal of proposals for constructive activism; it must provide alternatives to the BDS call to boycott – and not automatically flex an insulted patriotic muscle. This might not be the easiest thing to do, but hey, this is Israel. It’s not going to be easy.

#Palestine #BDS #Boycott_culturel

Plus de 140 artistes (dont une vingtaine de français) de 18 pays, dont des participants à l’Eurovision signent une lettre appelant au boycott de l’Eurovision 2019 si elle a lieu en israel:

Eurovision, ne blanchissez pas l’occupation militaire et les violations des droits humains par Israël
The Guardian, le 7 septembre 2018
▻https://www.bdsfrance.org/plus-de-140-artistes-signent-une-lettre-appelant-au-boycott-de-leurovisio

Boycott Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Israel
The Guardian, le 7 septembre 2018
▻https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/sep/07/boycott-eurovision-song-contest-hosted-by-israel

L-FRESH The LION, musician, Eurovision 2018 national judge (Australia)
Helen Razer, broadcaster, writer (Australia)
Candy Bowers, actor, writer, theatre director (Australia)
Blak Douglas, artist (Australia)
Nick Seymour, musician, producer (Australia)
DAAN, musician, songwriter (Belgium)
Daan Hugaert, actor (Belgium)
Alain Platel, choreographer, theatre director (Belgium)
Marijke Pinoy, actor (Belgium)
Code Rouge, band (Belgium)
DJ Murdock, DJ (Belgium)
Helmut Lotti, singer (Belgium)
Raymond Van het Groenewoud, musician (Belgium)
Stef Kamil Carlens, musician, composer (Belgium)
Charles Ducal, poet, writer (Belgium)
Fikry El Azzouzi, novelist, playwright (Belgium)
Erik Vlaminck, novelist, playwright (Belgium)
Rachida Lamrabet, writer (Belgium)
Slongs Dievanongs, musician (Belgium)
Chokri Ben Chikha, actor, theatre director (Belgium)
Yann Martel, novelist (Canada)
Karina Willumsen, musician, composer (Denmark)
Kirsten Thorup, novelist, poet (Denmark)
Arne Würgler, musician (Denmark)
Jesper Christensen, actor (Denmark)
Tove Bornhoeft, actor, theatre director (Denmark)
Anne Marie Helger, actor (Denmark)
Tina Enghoff, visual artist (Denmark)
Nassim Al Dogom, musician (Denmark)
Patchanka, band (Denmark)
Raske Penge, songwriter, singer (Denmark)
Oktoberkoret, choir (Denmark)
Nils Vest, film director (Denmark)
Britta Lillesoe, actor (Denmark)
Kaija Kärkinen, singer, Eurovision 1991 finalist (Finland)
Kyösti Laihi, musician, Eurovision 1988 finalist (Finland)
Kimmo Pohjonen, musician (Finland)
Paleface, musician (Finland)
Manuela Bosco, actor, novelist, artist (Finland)
Noora Dadu, actor (Finland)
Pirjo Honkasalo, film-maker (Finland)
Ria Kataja, actor (Finland)
Tommi Korpela, actor (Finland)
Krista Kosonen, actor (Finland)
Elsa Saisio, actor (Finland)
Martti Suosalo, actor, singer (Finland)
Virpi Suutari, film director (Finland)
Aki Kaurismäki, film director, screenwriter (Finland)
Pekka Strang, actor, artistic director (Finland)
HK, singer (France)
Dominique Grange, singer (France)
Imhotep, DJ, producer (France)
Francesca Solleville, singer (France)
Elli Medeiros, singer, actor (France)
Mouss & Hakim, band (France)
Alain Guiraudie, film director, screenwriter (France)
Tardi, comics artist (France)
Gérard Mordillat, novelist, filmmaker (France)
Eyal Sivan, film-maker (France)
Rémo Gary, singer (France)
Dominique Delahaye, novelist, musician (France)
Philippe Delaigue, author, theatre director (France)
Michel Kemper, online newspaper editor-in-chief (France)
Michèle Bernard, singer-songwriter (France)
Gérard Morel, theatre actor, director, singer (France)
Daði Freyr, musician, Eurovision 2017 national selection finalist (Iceland)
Hildur Kristín Stefánsdóttir, musician, Eurovision 2017 national selection finalist (Iceland)
Mike Murphy, broadcaster, eight-time Eurovision commentator (Ireland)
Mary Black, singer (Ireland)
Christy Moore, singer, musician (Ireland)
Charlie McGettigan, musician, songwriter, Eurovision 1994 winner (Ireland)
Mary Coughlan, singer (Ireland)
Luka Bloom, singer (Ireland)
Robert Ballagh, artist, Riverdance set designer (Ireland)
Aviad Albert, musician (Israel)
Michal Sapir, musician, writer (Israel)
Ohal Grietzer, musician (Israel)
Yonatan Shapira, musician (Israel)
Danielle Ravitzki, musician, visual artist (Israel)
David Opp, artist (Israel)
Assalti Frontali, band (Italy)
Radiodervish, band (Italy)
Moni Ovadia, actor, singer, playwright (Italy)
Vauro, journalist, cartoonist (Italy)
Pinko Tomažič Partisan Choir, choir (Italy)
Jorit, street artist (Italy)
Marthe Valle, singer (Norway)
Mari Boine, musician, composer (Norway)
Aslak Heika Hætta Bjørn, singer (Norway)
Nils Petter Molvær, musician, composer (Norway)
Moddi, singer (Norway)
Jørn Simen Øverli, singer (Norway)
Nosizwe, musician, actor (Norway)
Bugge Wesseltoft, musician, composer (Norway)
Lars Klevstrand, musician, composer, actor (Norway)
Trond Ingebretsen, musician (Norway)
José Mário Branco, musician, composer (Portugal)
Francisco Fanhais, singer (Portugal)
Tiago Rodrigues, artistic director, Portuguese national theatre (Portugal)
Patrícia Portela, playwright, author (Portugal)
Chullage, musician (Portugal)
António Pedro Vasconcelos, film director (Portugal)
José Luis Peixoto, novelist (Portugal)
N’toko, musician (Slovenia)
ŽPZ Kombinat, choir (Slovenia)
Lluís Llach, composer, singer-songwriter (Spanish state)
Marinah, singer (Spanish state)
Riot Propaganda, band (Spanish state)
Fermin Muguruza, musician (Spanish state)
Kase.O, musician (Spanish state)
Soweto, band (Spanish state)
Itaca Band, band (Spanish state)
Tremenda Jauría, band (Spanish state)
Teresa Aranguren, journalist (Spanish state)
Julio Perez del Campo, film director (Spanish state)
Nicky Triphook, singer (Spanish state)
Pau Alabajos, singer-songwriter (Spanish state)
Mafalda, band (Spanish state)
Zoo, band (Spanish state)
Smoking Souls, band (Spanish state)
Olof Dreijer, DJ, producer (Sweden)
Karin Dreijer, singer, producer (Sweden)
Dror Feiler, musician, composer (Sweden)
Michel Bühler, singer, playwright, novelist (Switzerland)
Wolf Alice, band (UK)
Carmen Callil, publisher, writer (UK)
Julie Christie, actor (UK)
Caryl Churchill, playwright (UK)
Brian Eno, composer, producer (UK)
AL Kennedy, writer (UK)
Peter Kosminsky, writer, film director (UK)
Paul Laverty, scriptwriter (UK)
Mike Leigh, writer, film and theatre director (UK)
Ken Loach, film director (UK)
Alexei Sayle, writer, comedian (UK)
Roger Waters, musician (UK)
Penny Woolcock, film-maker, opera director (UK)
Leon Rosselson, songwriter (UK)
Sabrina Mahfouz, writer, poet (UK)
Eve Ensler, playwright (US)
Alia Shawkat, actor (US)

#Palestine #BDS #Boycott_culturel #Eurovision

▻https://mavisstaples.bandcamp.com/track/no-time-for-crying

The history Mavis recalls from her early years touring with her family as The Staple Singers, the prejudice, ugliness and danger, well it’s all still here. In response, the singer has delivered If All I Was Was Black, ten songs about contemporary America today, a present day filled with ghosts of the past. “Nothing has changed,” Mavis remarked in early August, just days before neo-Nazis marched with swastika flags in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a young woman was murdered. "We are still in it.”

https://78.media.tumblr.com/043f09d3d94f851b63c41b07ed607428/tumblr_pd0lu2swiC1rmv2fno1_540.jpg

Colin Kaepernick’s name removed from Madden 19 song
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-08-03-colin-kaepernicks-name-removed-from-madden-19-song

Name censored in “Big Bank,” verse’s singer did not approve of the change

#Politics #Publishing

Nina Simone’s Childhood Home Gets ‘National Treasure’ Designation - The New York Times

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/arts/music/nina-simone-childhood-home-national-treasure.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/06/19/arts/19simone-item2/19simone-item2-facebookJumbo.jpg

The house where the singer #Nina_Simone was born is in bad shape. The ceiling is crumbling, the walls chipping, the floorboards sagging; stray wooden planks are strewn against the walls. Last year, it seemed inevitable that the house would succumb to time.

But, thanks to the teamwork of four artists and a nonprofit, the site has a new lease on life. On Tuesday, the house in Tryon, N.C., was named a “National Treasure” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The organization will devise a plan to rehabilitate the house so that it might be used by future artists.

#mémoire

60 dead in Gaza and the end of Israeli conscience - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz.com
On the night of the Palestinians’ slaughter, Zion exulted an embassy and a Eurovision. It’s difficult to think of a more atrocious moral eclipse
Gideon Levy May 17, 2018 12:16 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-60-dead-in-gaza-and-the-end-of-israeli-conscience-1.6095178

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6095323.1526492410!/image/3940274000.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/3940274000.jpg

When will the moment come in which the mass killing of Palestinians matters anything to the right? When will the moment come in which the massacre of civilians shocks at least the left-center? If 60 people slain don’t do it, perhaps 600? Will 6,000 jolt them?

When will the moment come in which a pinch of human feeling arises, if only for a moment, toward the Palestinians? Sympathy? At what moment will someone call a halt, and suggest compassion, without being branded an eccentric or an Israel hater?

When will there be a moment in which someone admits that the slaughterer has, after all, some responsibility for the slaughter, not only the slaughtered, who are of course responsible for their own slaughter?

Sixty people killed didn’t matter to anyone – perhaps 600 would? How about 6,000? Will Israel find all the excuses and justifications then also? Will the blame be laid on the slain people and their “dispatchers” even then, and not a word of criticism, mea culpa, sorrow, pity or guilt will be heard?

On Monday, when the death count spiked alarmingly, Jerusalem celebrated the embassy and Tel Aviv rejoiced over Eurovision, it seemed that such a moment will never come again. The Israeli brain has been washed irrevocably, the heart sealed for good. The life of a Palestinian is no longer deemed to be worth anything.

If 60 stray dogs were shot to death in one day by IDF soldiers, the whole country would raise an outcry. The dog slaughterers would be put on trial, the nation of Israel would have devoted prayers to the victims, a Yizkor service would be said for the dogs slaughtered by Israel.

But on the night of the Palestinians’ slaughter, Zion rejoiced and was jubilant: We have an embassy and a Eurovision. It’s difficult to think of a more atrocious moral eclipse. Neither is it difficult to imagine the reverse scenario: 60 Israelis are killed in one day and the crowds celebrate the embassy in Ramallah and rejoice over a concert in El Bireh to cheer the winning of the Arab “A Star is Born,” while television hosts and interviewees giggle during the live broadcasts. Oh, those Palestinian animals, oh, the monsters.

On the eve of this black Monday I found myself sitting in one of the television studios beside a giggling right-winger. Giggling isn’t the right term, he was bursting with laughter. It made him laugh so hard, the mass killing, and he found it even funnier that someone was appalled by it. Israel Hayom opened with the “Shehecheyanu” blessing in its main headline about another matter, unaware of the dark irony. Yedioth Ahronoth held a learned discussion over whether Hamas leaders should be eliminated now or not, who’s in favor of the murder and who’s against it. Imagine a discussion in a Palestinian newspaper: for and against murdering Gadi Eizenkot.

The truth is that Israel is well prepared to massacre hundreds and thousands, and to expel tens of thousands. Nothing will stop it. This is the end of conscience, the show of morality is over. The last few days’ events have proved it decisively. The tracks have been laid, the infrastructure for the horror has been cast. Dozens of years of brainwashing, demonization and dehumanization have borne fruit. The alliance between the politicians and the media to suppress reality and deny it has succeeded. Israel is set to commit horrors. Nobody will stand in its way any longer. Not from within or from without.

Apart from the usual lip service, the Trump-era world won’t lift a finger, even when Gaza becomes, heaven forbid, Rwanda. Even then our observers and analysts will recite that the IDF has accomplished its goals, that the IDF displayed restraint, that it’s the most moral and “what would you suggest doing instead?”

The chief of staff would be crowned man of the year, the moderate, good man, the opposition would tweet their applause. In the town square the “leftist” singer’s victory will be celebrated, nobody would even think of canceling the party going on, or at least set aside a moment for the dead.

We’re already there. That moment is here. Rwanda is coming to Gaza and Israel is celebrating. Two million human beings we’ve imprisoned already, and their fate matters to no one. The pictures that occasionally flicker of children without electricity and parents without water, of crippled people being shot to death and of leg amputees, all children of refugees from the 1948 disaster we landed on their heads.

What has that to do with us? It’s Hamas’ fault. Sixty individuals killed in one day, and not a shred of sorrow has been sighted in Israel. From now on, it never will be.

Wanlov The Kubolor and the spirit of forward thinking
▻https://africasacountry.com/2018/05/wanlov-the-kubolors-spirit-of-forward-thinking

Wanlov the Kubolor is many things; singer, songwriter, producer, filmmaker, music video director, public intellectual, social commentator, genius, maverick

’Thus says the Lord’: Religious tune at Jerusalem embassy opening drowns out protests - Israel News - Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-u-s-opens-jerusalem-embassy-as-gaza-border-clashes-escalate-1.6084

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6091463.1526313738!/image/3931366278.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/3931366278.jpg

“Thus says the Lord, ’I will return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the City of Truth,’” Netanyahu said in conclusion, quoting a verse from the Book of Zekhariah, which some Christian denominations interpret as a reference to Jesus. Netanyahu spiced up his speech with own Shehecheyanu, a Jewish prayer to celebrate special occasions.

Right after Netanyahu, evangelical pastor John Hagee urged the audience: "Can we all shout Hallelujah?" The songs “God Will Grant Strength to His People,” ("with the help of God," added singer Hagit Yaso) and “Peace Will Come to Us” were the artistic segment that followed.

In complete contrast to those sentiments, demonstrations and arrests outside the compound could be learned of with the help of push notifications on smartphones. At the ceremony, only the speakers, the music, the applause and, on occasion, the chirping of birds was heard.

#sionistes

CCTV footage shows Prince visiting doctor the day before his death | Music | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/20/prince-cctv-footage-sinead-o-connor

The archive comprises what attorney Mark Metz described as the “vast majority” of evidence in the case, and contains a police interview with the singer Sinéad O’Connor from 2 May 2016 in which she alleges Prince “used hard drugs commonly”. The Irish musician, who rose to fame in 1990 with the single Nothing Compares 2 U – a song written by Prince – claimed: “I’ve seen him in very frightening conditions after using drugs.” She alleged that he was abusive towards women while intoxicated: *“He had been extremely violent to a number of women in his life, including myself, and several women were put in the hospital while Prince was under the effects of these medications.

*

#Prince

▻https://umen.bandcamp.com/track/they

The Sub Pop reissues cover everything in the U-Men catalogue: two EPs, two singles, one full-length record, and five previously unreleased studio cuts. The recordings still hold up: though they belonged to no specific scene, and none of them had taken any formal music lessons, the members artfully drew on influences like The Birthday Party, Pere Ubu, Gang of Four, Captain Beefheart, Public Image Ltd, and Iggy Pop to assemble a sound unlike anything happening in Seattle at the time.

“Most important, they rocked,” says Mudhoney singer/guitarist Mark Arm, who first saw the band in the early ‘80s. “You didn’t think of them as being an arty band. If you listen to the music, their arrangements are really weird. The lyrics are odd. It doesn’t seem like, on paper, it would be something that would get a whole bunch of kids just rolling around on the floor. But it did. They were a band that everyone could agree on.”

▻https://umen.bandcamp.com/track/bad-little-woman

▻https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/11/14/u-men-feature
#U-Men #Sub_Pop #punk #bandcamp

Love - 7 And 7 Is
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6An7KGK6U3c

Love (band)
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_(band)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/LOVE60s.png

Love is an American rock group that was most prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were originally led by singer/songwriter Arthur Lee[5], who wrote most of the songs, although some of their best known songs were written by Bryan MacLean. One of the first racially diverse American bands, their music drew on a diverse range of sources including folk rock, hard rock, blues, jazz, flamenco and orchestral pop.[6]

While finding only modest success on the music charts, Love would come to be praised by critics as one of the finest and most important American rock groups of their era. Their third album, Forever Changes (1967), is generally regarded as their masterpiece.

More than 100 artists including leading lights in film, theatre, literature, and music have come together to sign a statement of support for the singer, songwriter and record producer Lorde. While signatories to the letter, which is published on the Guardian’s letter page, may hold a range of positions on BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), they are united in their defence of the right to freedom of conscience.

’We write in support of Lorde, who made public her decision not to perform in Israel and has now been branded a bigot in a full page advertisement in the Washington Post (Report, 1 January).

Shmuley Boteach, the author and promoter of the advert, supports Israel’s illegal settlements and wrote last month on Breitbart to thank Donald Trump for “electrifying the world” with his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in defiance of international law.

He has nothing to teach artists about human rights. We deplore the bullying tactics being used to defend injustice against Palestinians and to suppress an artist’s freedom of conscience. We support Lorde’s right to take a stand.’
▻https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jan/05/lordes-artistic-right-to-cancel-gig-in-tel-aviv

Concerning Fanon
▻http://www.warscapes.com/reviews/concerning-fanon

http://www.warscapes.com/sites/default/files/field/image/Concerning-violence640.jpg

Concerning Violence, a documentary by Swedish filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson, opened to a packed theatre at the Sydney Film Festival last week, and despite being a powerful film, it did not close to the enthusiastic cheers and applause that other films had. Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, scholar of postcolonial studies and a legend in her own right, offers a monotone introduction to the film. Spivak’s short lecture on Martinican psychiatrist and anticolonial thinker Frantz Fanon appropriately ushers viewers into the universe of this documentary, which is decidedly academic, theoretical, pedagogical and, to some degree, experimental.

Though a seasoned documentary filmmaker, Olsson’s claim to fame, at least in the United States, was a recent documentary—Black Power Mixtape—that brought together dormant archival footage from the Black Power movement. This documentary was widely reviewed and appreciated partly because of the ease with which the material could be digested and the straightforward collage approach to the narrative. Concerning Violence is a completely different beast.

Relying yet again on possibly forgotten footage from Swedish archives, I have a feeling that it will be generally perceived that the film has been anchored in Frantz Fanon’s controversial essay, “Concerning Violence,” from his 1961 book, The Wretched of the Earth. However, I had the distinct impression that we were being provided a visual exegesis on Fanon’s famous, misunderstood and over-read text about violence, and that the images, in fact, served to bolster, or rather, offer, a kind of choreography to the text. Olsson’s interest is in decolonization—that short yet potent moment at the tail end of an anti-colonial war followed by the transfer of power when the new nation comes into being. This has often proven to be one of the most violent episodes in postcolonial history, and Fanon is its most articulate philosopher.

The film’s subtitle, “Nine Scenes from the Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense,” reflects Olsson’s investment in making Fanon’s theory relevant and up-to-date. The opening sequence offers a brief thrill which is immediately appropriated: Choppers whir in the air and soldiers shoot down terrified cows in a vast and lush field. This footage is reminiscent of Coppola’s war scenes in Apocalypse Now, but the illusion is immediately shattered as the camera closes in and holds on the face of a murdered cow, blood slowly trickling down from her nostrils. This is the first scene out of the nine, titled “Decolonization,” and focuses on the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in 1977 as it carries out a stealth attack on the Portuguese-ruled and oil-rich Cabinda province in Congo. This footage is juxtaposed with that of white, pre-pubescent boys playing golf as African caddies follow them around carrying their clubs. A throaty and assertive rendition of lines such as, “Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder,” is delivered by singer, songwriter and activist Lauryn Hill, who reads Fanon’s passages on decolonization, nationalism and violence. As she recites, Fanon’s words are also shown as text on the screen in a large serif font.

Jon Hendricks, 96, Who Brought a New Dimension to Jazz Singing, Dies - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/obituaries/jon-hendricks-96-who-brought-a-new-dimension-to-jazz-singing-dies.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/13/arts/hendricksobit2/hendricksobit2-facebookJumbo.jpg

Jon Hendricks, a jazz singer and songwriter who became famous in the 1950s with the vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross by putting lyrics to well-known jazz instrumentals and turning them into vocal tours de force, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 96.

Mr. Hendricks did not invent this practice, known as vocalese — most jazz historians credit the singer Eddie Jefferson with that achievement — but he became its best-known and most prolific exponent, and he turned it into a group art.

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, with Mr. Hendricks as principal lyricist and ebullient onstage between-songs spokesman, introduced the concept of vocalese to a vast audience. Thanks not just to his clever lyrics but also to the group’s tight harmonies, skillful scat singing and polished showmanship, it became one of the biggest jazz success stories of the late 1950s and early ’60s.

Une anecdote très intéressante, qui montre la grande difficulté que représente intégrer le jazz, s’imprégner de jazz. Même les choristes n’arrivaient pas a rendre le balancement, le feeling qui fait le jazz, ce lui qui ne s’écrit pas sur une partition, mais se transmet par le disque, l’imitation et la participation à la famille des musicien·ne·s de jazz.

Mr. Hendricks proceeded to write words for 10 songs from the Count Basie band’s repertoire, based on the original recordings. Mr. Lambert wrote vocal arrangements. ABC-Paramount Records agreed to turn the concept into an album.

Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Lambert hired a rhythm section to accompany their vocals and a 12-piece choir to simulate the sound of the Basie band’s reed and brass sections. When the choir had trouble mastering the rhythmic nuances of the Basie style, Annie Ross, a British-born jazz singer who had made some vocalese recordings of her own, was brought in to coach it.

Ms. Ross’s efforts to imbue the studio vocalists with the proper jazz feeling proved futile, and they were let go. She ended up singing on the session with Mr. Lambert and Mr. Hendricks; their voices were multitracked, a rarity in those days.

The resulting album, “Sing a Song of Basie” (1958), was a hit. In the wake of its success, the three vocalists decided to make their partnership permanent.

Étrange article du New York Times qui ne parle jamais des engagements politiques et anti-ségrégationnistes de Jon Hendricks, de sa participation à la NAACP... Pour cela, il faut se reporter au livre de Nicolas Beniès Le souffle de la liberté (►https://cfeditions.com/souffle1944)
voir ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/646938

#Jon_Hendricks #Jazz #Vocalises