MUSIC REVIEW | ROSWELL RUDD AND MAMADOU DIABATE
When Cultures' Sounds Don't Match, but Echo
By KELEFA SANNEH

Published: February 18, 2004

How do you tune a balafon? At an engrossing concert at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn on Friday night, the trombonist Roswell Rudd gave the answer: you don't.

The balafon is a wooden West African instrument that resembles a xylophone, and every balafon produces a slightly different set of notes. So the members of Mr. Rudd's hybrid band made sure their instruments matched Balla Kouyate's balafon. The only way to stay in tune was to be slightly out of tune.

The concert grew out of a 2002 CD called, "MALIcool" (Sunnyside/Universal), a collaboration between Mr. Rudd and the Malian kora player Toumani Diabate. (The kora is a 21-string instrument with a long neck.) For the current tour, Toumani Diabate has been replaced by another kora virtuoso, his cousin Mamadou Diabate, but the spirit remained the same. Mr. Rudd and his bandmates explored a world of musical assonance, where instruments echoed one another without quite falling into lockstep.

Mr. Rudd sometimes amused Mr. Diabate and Mr. Kouyate by unleashing wildly off-kilter trombone slides. When he swung his instrument while emitting long warping notes, he looked and sounded like a drunken elephant. Other times Mr. Rudd just sat back and watched, swaying in time to the swinging polyrhythms.

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We are pleased to announce a five-day meeting for experienced Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) developers from across Africa, to be held March 15th - 19th in Namibia.

During the five day event, participants and facilitators will share technical skills and experiences, discuss key challenges in realising F/OSS projects, and develop concrete strategies for strengthening the nascent community of F/OSS technologists working in African contexts.

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War as an Excuse for Everything
Is it Just Me, or is President Bush's Demeanor a bit Napoleonic these Days?

by Robert Scheer

The enemies of the republic are everywhere, he says over and over, and only he stands between them and our utter ruin. Sunday on "Meet the Press," he could say nothing without also referring to military battles he is apparently fit to fight — presumably based on his stealthy stint in the National Guard.

I am a "war president … with war on my mind," he insisted to Tim Russert, dodging the newsman's every question, as if his trainers had assured him that the phrase was a talisman that would ward off all charges of ineptitude and bad-faith leadership. Yet it was hardly clear from his filibustering responses exactly what war it was that Bush thought he was fighting.

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from The Village Voice, The Sound of The City
February 4 - 10, 2004
by Roy Nathanson

Sam Furnace, 1954-2004
A precise and marvelous architect of jazz leaves this world

I first met Sam Furnace 30 years ago in the Henry Street Settlement Jazz Band, directed by Basie tenor man Billy Mitchell. We were both around 20 and he was the best and most elegant-sounding sax player my age I'd heard.

Sam couldn't decide between becoming an architect or a professional musician, so in a way he did both. He created precise and marvelous architecture with his crisp sound and the complexity and penetrating turbulence of his lines. On alto or baritone he could tear the roof off at will. He was an incredibly smart and funny guy and a musician's musician. On January 26, Sam left us.

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A memorial concert for Sam Furnace will be held March 7, at St. Peter's Church.

from Population: A Systems Approach

(a) The Boiling Frog

Systems thinkers have given us a useful metaphor for a certain kind of human behaviour in the phenomenon of the boiled frog. The phenomenon is this. If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death. An example of the smiling-boiled-frog phenomenon, is provided by our own culture. When we slipped into the cauldron, the water was a perfect temperature, not too hot, not too cold...

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... Every 'philosophy' in Sanskrit is in fact a 'theory of everything'. [The many strands are synthesised in Vedanta --Veda + anta--, which means the 'last word in Vedas'.] Mimamsa, which is a part of the Vedas, even ignores the God idea. The reality as we know was not created by anyone --it always was--, but may be shaped by everyone out of free will. Which is a way of saying --in OOP terms-- that you may not touch the mother or core classes but may create any variety of instances of them. It is significant that no new 'classes' have had to be created. Thathachar believes it is not a 'language' as we know the term but the only front-end to a huge, interlinked, analogue knowledge base. The current time in human history is ripe, he feels for India's young techno wizards to turn to researching Mimamsa and developing the ultimate programming language around it; nay, an operating system itself. ...

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The Passing of a Legend
WALLACE BLACK ELK
(1921-2004)
By Clare Cunningham


VANCOUVER, BC--January 29, 2004 (OTVNewswire)--Surrounded by friends and family, Wallace Black Elk dropped his robe last Sunday at his home in Denver, Colorado. He passed on in a sweat lodge, a place where he was most comfortable and at peace, a fitting place for making his familiar journey to the spirit world. Only this time, it was a final journey from which he did not return.

Wallace is known and loved around the world and will be missed by many. A great soul, a champion of truth. He carried a message of peace and unity to all who would listen, as does the Dalai Lama and others of his stature.

We honor this great holy man and a spirit whose caring for Mother Earth and all her people was immense. A man whose perspective was at once hilarious (he had a great sense of humor) and a profound commentary on prevailing conditions on our planet...

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