Following the news about a Galician politician-trombonist, here’s a Louisianan trumpet-playing coroner: The first time Dr. Minyard ran, in 1969, he lost to the incumbent. But four years later, he and a slate of other candidates viewed as reformers – including Harry Connick Sr., the “Singing D.A.” – were swept into office. Another of those…
Why is written music featured on birthday cards and in ads always gibberish? Don’t Barclays International care that the musically literate think them a bunch of peasants?
It doesn’t seem to show on Amazon, and it has little to do with Spain, but I’d like briefly to recommend most highly Antoon Aukes’ Second Line. 100 Years of New Orleans Drumming (the website is also his). Antoon is amongst other things a tapdancer, but don’t let that put you off.
The other day I was walking across a field with a very old and pretty conservative farmer when he suddenly started singing The Internationale, which he was made to learn during Communist rule (1936-9). Not to be outdone, I sang a verse of the fascist anthem, Cara al sol, which I learnt in order to…
The isleños (islanders), the Canarian-based dialect speakers based in St Bernard parish near New Orleans, are some of the less-publicised victims of the floods. Their victory against age-old enemies in the interests of yet more Anglo hegemony is commemorated in this 1970s song (more links; Mississippi song project): Setecientos setentaisiete, varias familias dejaron las Islas…
Where arse turns up regularly in jokes, proverbs and stories, bollocks–cojones–in CORDE’s version of sixteenth century Spain seem to be confined to medical treatises and to a verse novel of quite extraordinary and possibly unsurpassed filth. The anonymous Carajicomedia (1519) consists of the adventures of the noble Diego Fajardo’s one-eyed trouser snake, which is said…
From within my patent Dixieland trombone snorkel, I wonder how it was that Eddie DeLange got away with rhyming “Do you know what it means” with “to miss New Orleans”.
Missed it. I was into the music before Mr Kusturica started færting around, and it looks a lot more interesting than Glastonbury. Dear Guca, will you invite our gay tea-dance orchestra to play at next year’s festival? (Thankyou, Mr Toenail.)
Brits tend to see Trafalgar (search) as the stage on which British naval hegemony was established. The French official view, on the other hand, is that it is just another anniversary. For some Spaniards, meanwhile, apart from being a reminder of the perils of entrusting project management to the French, it recalls imperial glory (we’re…