EXPRESSING THE INEXPRESSIBLE: A Steamfunk Soundtrack!
EXPRESSING THE INEXPRESSIBLE: A Steamfunk Soundtrack!
Carolina Chocolate Drops
Would The Matrixhave…
When the Sex Pistols appeared on the BBC singing God Save the Queen, China was still in the grips of the Cultural Revolution – most music was banned, and Mao ruled supreme. Nearly 40 years later, punk is alive and kicking in Beijing.
The Harlem Playgirls was an African American swing band active in the Midwest and throughout the United States from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s.
h/t Vnylist
From the artist’s website:
The “Igil” is a traditional instrument from Tuvan, a Russian country with Mongolian heritage, basically is a Cello with two groups of strings, (about 60 strings in the short side and 90 strings the long one).With the online guidance of some people who build their own instruments, Im make a Igil using the body of a old banjo and Violin pieces…Taking advantage that will not look like a traditional Igil, I decorate it in a Steampunk style.This is a very personal project because I love the sound of the Igil, and since I see it for first time, I always want to have one. Because the cost of a traditional igil ($800-$1000) and the one year waiting list, I decided go ahead and look for options to made it in my own.The result is not just the instrument I want but also a piece of Art, an amazing fusion of influences (igil original from Tuvan, a Russian country with Mongolian heritage, Being myself from Costa Rica, using a traditional American banjo, and decorate with embossed metal, an Mexican tecnique, finally with a Steampunk concept: a European movement now popular in all the globe)For years I look for options to get an Igil, finding no much information about it, that is way I decided share my project here, to help and encourage other igil’s lovers.
South Carolina native James Arthur Briggs (1899-1991) was a member of the Harlem Hellfighters’ band during World War I. He did not serve during the war because he was too young. Once the war was over, he joined other band members who returned to Europe to fuel the fire that their military jazz band had begun.
Briggs was one of the Americans interned by the Nazis when he refused to leave Paris prior to their invasion. He survived detention in two concentration camps to continue to play and teach jazz in the post-war era. He founded Hot Club de France, a night club that helped define jazz in Paris over six decades.
Briggs is laid at the Montmartre cemetery in Paris.
Happy birthday, Ella Fitzgerald! The “First Lady of Song” would have been 95 years old.
Her voice is instantly recognizable. Her youthful exuberance, pure sound and positive energy just make you feel good. Her incredible technical abilities were self-evident, but when she sang, she radiated a joy consistent with her own character both on and off the bandstand.
Download an hour-long documentary about the undisputed queen of jazz, then search our rich Jazz Profiles archive.
Photo: George Konig/Hulton Archive
Once, when Mexico was the bellybutton of the universe, Isabel Vargas Lizano ran away from home and resolved to make herself into a Mexican singer. This was in the 1930s, when Europe was on fire, the U.S. out of work and Mexico busy giving birth to herself after a revolution.
READ MORE at the New York Times.
Final Chance!
(via Walter Sickert & the ARmy of BRoken TOys~ Soft Time Machine~ Kickstarter)
