“Historians now credit him with having pretty much invented the American pop song in its purest form: the bastard stepchild of the parlor song and the minstrel song, of the European and African strains of American music.” (And that child is very much a bastard – ever heard the second verse of “Oh, Susannah”? Yikes.)
Tag: 03.12.14
Will ObamaCare Create A Boom In The Number Of Artists Who Can Now Be Artists?
“The Affordable Care Act made some of its most sweeping reforms in the arenas of health care for women and health care for the self-employed. This means that female freelance musicians are among the Americans whose lives have been most deeply affected by this policy.”
War, Secret Love, Death – Keys To Tove Jansson’s Moomintrolls
“You could read this as being the lesbian love between Tove and Vivicka. They have their secret love in this suitcase, and when they open the suitcase and show it to the whole of Moominvalley it is also a picture of how they show their love to the world. It’s a really beautiful story.”
Decline Of The Public Intellectual
“A generation ago, political scientists were public intellectuals. We wrote lucid prose. We spoke to the issues of the day. We advised President John F. Kennedy. But now all we care about is math, jargon and one another.”
Amazon Publishing Makes a Move Into Germany
“Amazon Publishing is starting a new German-language publishing program that will be based in Munich … Many of the titles first released in Germany will [subsequently] be published in English-language editions by AmazonCrossings.”
There’s More to Making Non-Sexist and Non-Racist Art Than (Thinking You’re) Not Being Sexist or Racist
“The folks at South African game development studio QCF Design have a post which addresses this issue in some thought-provoking ways” – which they tried putting into practice in their game Desktop Dungeons.
‘In the Black Box, You Can Do Really Anything. We Have Always Abused That.”
That statement pretty much sums up the famously confrontational Belgian theatre troupe Ontroerend Goed. You’ll love how they got their start: “Suddenly we were told that what we made was theatre, and given money to make more.”
How Do You Dramatize Depression? With Werewolves, Of Course
Matt Osman, author of The Boy Who Cried: “My mind hit on werewolves, the original lunatics. I would create a world where it was depression that was the myth and werewolves were treated by the state as a common occurrence to be quietly put away.”
Budapest Launches An Architectural Competition To Build Five New Museums At Once
“Officials say that the total estimated costs for the five museum buildings in the cultural quarter is 75 billion Hungarian forints (€239m), with much of the money coming from funds allocated to the country by the EU.”
A Utopian Society – One Group’s Quest To Build A Floating Country That Creates Its Own Culture
“About six years ago, a group based in California’s Bay Area, led by the grandson of U.S. economist Milton Friedman, began designing and raising money for a floating ocean city-state, whose citizens could harness the sea to solve hunger, cure sickness and fix climate change.”