Leap In The Dark

Epic poems were things they used to write in the olden days to record the deeds of heroes and recount the histories of earth shattering events. They most definitely were never about the likes of you and me, nor did they bother themselves with the minutiae of everyday life. Even if they ever did talk about lessor mortals, they were written in language that made them inaccessible to all but the most highly educated.

Now that we are into the twenty-first century, the idea that any art form's subject would be limited to somebody or something because of status sounds ridiculous to our ears. Yet the idea that an epic poem could be about something other than a hero, or written in vernacular instead of elegant language, is as alien to our ears as it would have been a thousand years ago. Yet in the 1940's, not only did Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet commence work on an epic poem about the people of his country, he wrote in a style that could easily be understood by anyone with basic literacy skills.

A complete translation into English of hisHuman Landscapes From My Country, published by Persea Books and distributed in Canada by Penguin Canada, is now available for the first time. Hikmet began writing it in 1941 while a political prisoner in his native Turkey, and only finished it in 1950 when he was released as part of a general amnesty. Parts of it were published in translation in 1960 and '65 in France and Italy, and in the former Soviet Union in 1962, but it wasn't until after his death in 1963 that it was published in his homeland.

To understand this work you need to know something about Nazim Hikmet, and about Turkey. Hikmet was born in 1903 (there seems to be some dispute over his birth date as I've read everything from 1900 - 03) in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. By the end of WWl Turkey had gone from an empire whose borders stretched from the Balkans to Egypt, to being the size it is today. Hikmet was born into a family of progressive intellectual professionals, and was exposed to poetry at an early age through his artist mother and poet grandfather. He had his first poems published in 1917, but after the war he left Allied occupied Turkey to attend university in Moscow where he was exposed to artists and writers from all over the world.

He returned to Turkey when it declared independence in 1924, but quickly ran afoul of the new republic and was arrested for working on a leftist magazine. He managed to escape and flee to Russia, only to return again in 1928 during a period of general amnesty. Although he was able to publish nine books of poetry and worked as a proof-reader, journalist, scriptwriter, and translator over the next ten years, he also spent time in jail on various political charges. In 1938 he was arrested and sentenced to twenty-five years in jail for "writing poems that encouraged thoughts of mutiny in navel officers".

As an intellectual leftist Hikmet had very little contact with people outside his class and education background until he was sentenced to jail in 1938 and found himself immersed in their world. Meeting these people, and being forced to see the world from their point of view, was what inspired him to begin working on Human Landscapes From My Country. Not only did he want to describe who these people were and what their lives were like, he wanted to do so in such a manner that they would be able to read it. So "Landscapes" is a lot like a sketchbook as its filled with descriptions of people and places that Hikmet encountered during his roughly thirteen years in prison.

"In the third class waiting room/two red headed Bulgarian immigrants/with blue buttons on their shirts/and homespun yellow pants worn at the knees/squat/on the concrete/against the wall/instead of sitting on the wooden benches." With only a minimum of words Hikmet has drawn a picture that not only gives us a physical description of the men, but tells us something of their station in life. They are obviously poor, as they are wearing threadbare pants and shirts whose original buttons have been replaced, but there's more to this picture than just a description of poverty. You can be sure that Hikmet has mentioned them not using the benches for a reason, but why? Whatever the reason, Hikmet has not only given us enough information to visualize the scene, but has also so in such a way that his readers will see the men as segregated from the rest of the train's passengers. Any Turkish person reading this will be aware that the Ottoman Empire warred with Bulgaria at one time and understand the implications of that separation

The train they are waiting to board is carrying a variety of people across Turkey; three prisoners being transferred and their guards, a student, a small time crook, a widow, a pregnant woman travelling alone, a mother and a daughter, and a variety of other people. These are the occupants of third class carriage number 510, and as Turkey alternatively speeds and creeps by their windows, we drop in and out of various conversations and individual's memories. A former soldier recounts the horrors of Gallipoli (WWl battle between Turkish and Australian/British troops that was a slaughter for both sides) and the awful conditions for the wounded: "My wounds got maggots./I open my cape:/little white worms/with black heads./I bend over to look,/but the critters are smart:/when the see me,/they scurry back in the wounds."

There's nothing romantic about those blunt words, and you try and imagine what it would be like to carry that memory with you for so long. Gallipoli was in 1915 and the train ride is taking place in 1941. Twenty-six years later and still his strongest memories are of war and maggots in his wounds. Yet he's so matter of fact about it, that not once do you feel like he's seeking sympathy or complaining. It's just how things were.

Human Landscapes From My Country carries the subtitle "An Epic Novel In Verse", yet unlike most novels it doesn't just follow the fortunes of one or two characters, it draws a picture of a people and a country. Using the same straight-forward, and sometimes graphic language, that I've cited here throughout, Hikmet has created a panoramic view of Turkey and her people. Through the eyes of the various people who he sketches we are given a view of what life was like in Turkey from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the start of WWll. At turns poignant, funny, and thoughtful, it is always eminently readable and wonderfully accessible.

You can purchase a copy of Human Landscapes From My Country either directly from Persea Books or through an on line retailer like Amazon.ca.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:34 PM | Permalink

Every year at this time the media begins to reflect back on the events of the past twelve months in order to tell us everything of importance that occurred. While there are news items of significance that will be hashed out on editorial pages or in comments sections, things really begin to heat up when the best of and worst of lists start to make their appearances in entertainment sections. Ten was the magic number for these lists long before a certain late night talk show host began his parody of them, so top and worst ten lists of everything from movies to cell phones from the previous year are produced by anyone with access to a computer and the Internet.

While some of the news stories that appear in lists aren't always cheerful, the majority of them are events that we are familiar with and that won't cause us to lose any sleep at night. Unfortunately there is one list, that is now entering its eleventh anniversary, of which neither of those two statements are applicable. Every year since 1998 Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) have been issuing a top ten list of the past year's worst humanitarian crises. For the most part these situations have boiled over into crises status because they have gone largely unreported in the press and aid agencies are not being supported in their efforts to take care of those affected.

For those of you unfamiliar with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders as they are known in the English speaking world, they are an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971. MSF provides aid to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters. They provide independent and impartial assistance to those who are most in need and reserve the right to speak out to bring attention to neglected crises, to challenge inadequacies or abuse of the aid system, and to advocate for improved medical treatments and protocols. In 1999 their efforts were recognized when they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the work have done to make the world a slightly more caring place.

Needless to say as a completely independent body with no alliances to any religion, military, or government, they tend to piss people off all over the world as they don't care who they criticize. They adhere strictly to a system based on the humanitarian principles of medical ethics and impartiality, so they don't set any stock by anybody's political or social agendas. It's probably because of this that MSF has usually been one step ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to getting the word out about humanitarian disasters. In 1985 they warned about the Ethiopian government's forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of its population that preceded the famine in '85; in 1994 they called for military intervention in Rwanda in response to the ongoing genocide; in 1995 they condemned the Serbian massacre of civilians at Srebrenica; denounced the Russians for their bombardment of the Chechen capital Grozny in 1999; and more recently called for international attention to the crisis in Darfur in 2004 and 2005 at the UN Security Council.

Since 1998 they have been using their "top ten" lists of humanitarian crises to let the world know of the situations that are the most dire and where people are most affected. This year's list is no exception to the previous ones in that there has been little or no mention of any of these situations in the mass media, nor has there been any concentrated effort made to alleviate the crises. One thing each of these circumstances has in common is that they are all on going, all of them are preventable, and in most cases they are occurring because aid workers are being prevented from assisting those in need.

This past year's (2008) top ten ongoing humanitarian crises according to Medecines Sans Frontieres are: the worsening humanitarian crises in Somalia; a critical need of assistance required in Ethiopia's Somali Region; critical health needs remaining unmet in Myanmar; civilians being killed and displaced due to intensive fighting in Northwest Pakistan; the health crises sweeping Zimbabwe as violence and economic collapse spreads; no end in sight to the violence and suffering in the Sudan; civilians trapped by war raging in Eastern Congo; civilians in Iraq in urgent need of assistance; there are still millions of malnourished children throughout the world despite advances in lifesaving nutritional therapies; and the rise of tuberculosis as a cause of death among people living with HIV/AIDS.

Unlike other lists this one doesn't celebrate anything except our failure as a species to look after our fellows and our ability to look the other way. If you have any doubts as to the importance of this list, you only need to look back to the crises that MSF has warned the world about in the past to be reminded about the consequences of inaction. This is one top ten list that can't just be dismissed as a typical exercise in end of the year rumination. Please take the time to follow the links in the list above, and maybe even forward them to a local aid agency or political representative. Although I enjoy top ten lists as much as anyone, this is one, as I'm sure you'd agree, that I would happily see made obsolete.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:12 AM | Permalink

The Canadian Parliament has been closed since the first week of December as Prime Minister Steven Harper convinced Governor-General Michaelle Jean to suspend it until the end of January so he wouldn't lose power. The opposition parties were preparing to vote against him and his Conservative Party of Canada, and offer themselves as an alternative in the form of a coalition of two parties, The Liberals and The New Democratic Party (NDP), supported by a third, The Bloc Quebecois.

Now little Stevie isn't one to sit idly by and let fate rule his destiny, nor is he going miss out on any chance that he has to put his stamp on the face of Canadian government for years to come. So he has spent the last week before Christmas doing as much as he can get away with without Parliament being in session. He has named a new judge to the Supreme Court Of Canada, appointed nineteen friends and fellow travellers to the Senate, and authorized a bail out package to Chrysler and General Motors of four billion dollars.

I'm going to skip over the first part, the appointment of a judge to the Supreme Court for a second, because I could hear all my American friends wondering about naming people to the Senate. In Canada we don't have an elected Senate, the closest thing to be found to the Senate in another government would be the British House Of Lords. In Canada though, instead of being born into a seat, you need to be a friend of the sitting government in order to get one of these plum positions. For plum they are, paying out an annual salary of $130,400 until retirement at age seventy-five, followed by a pension indexed to inflation.

Now it's no big thing for a Prime Minister to pack the Senate, it's an old Canadian political tradition. It's how you reward the party faithful and your friends for the work they've done on your behalf over the years. The thing is that Prime Minister Harper, and long before he was even a member of Parliament, has been a fierce proponents of an elected Senate. You see a Prime Minister can't just appoint people willy-nilly to the Senate, they have to be evenly divided among the provinces to guarantee equal representation. So Mr. Harper has advocated that provincial legislatures nominate people for Senate appointments and that the sitting federal government should abide by their selections.

To give the devil his due, the first appointment Steven Harper made to the Senate was a man who had been put forward by the Alberta legislation, but not this time. Of course he's saying he takes no joy in having to stack the Senate, but it's the provinces fault for not getting it together to nominate anybody. Of course, that's why he's had to find nineteen people to sit in the Senate who all happen to have opposed the proposed coalition government. Now the Senate does not have the power to defeat any motion passed by the House of Commons, and could not overturn a vote of non-confidence taken in the house, but they can make things difficult for a government.

Normally they serve as a rubber stamp for bills passed by the House of Commons, but if the opposition holds the majority of seats in the Senate as the Liberals currently do (even after the addition of nineteen Conservatives it will be 58 Liberals to 39 Conservatives) they can delay passage their passage by holding hearings or voting against them and sending them back to House for further discussion. Aside from Mr. Harper's previous stance making him look a bit of a hypocrite in this case, the opposition is also questioned his political legitimacy to appoint people to the Senate as he's only still Prime Minister because he suspended parliament.

Harper's appointment of Mr. Justice Thomas Cromwell to the Supreme Court of Canada has raised more than a few eyebrows for many of the same reasons that his stacking the Senate has caused consternation. You see Harper has been advocating that all people appointed to the Supreme Court must undergo full parliamentary scrutiny before they are approved, but again he decided that circumstances dictated that he act with immediately. Calling the process, "stupid, wrong, and foolish" political science professor Peter Russell, and expert on the judiciary, criticized the Prime Minister for ignoring the all party process used to compile a list of finalists, and then bypassing the parliamentary review process.

Of course Harper has made no secret of his dislike for the Supreme Court's application of The Charter of Rights and Freedoms to do things like strike down aspects of his anti-terror legislation, enshrining the right for same sex couples to marry, and other decisions he considers interference with his government's ability to impose legislation that might infringe upon civil rights. The fact that, according to Prof. Russell, Justice Cromwell can be expected to use the Charter sparingly to strike down legislation, and who will generally place the interests policing ahead of the rights of the accused, might just have had some bearing on the Prime Minister's decision to appoint him while Parliament is suspended. For even if he should go down to defeat when the house is reconvened, the appointment will stand, and the face of the Supreme Court of Canada will be changed forever.

Now everyone had expected an announcement of some sort regarding the bail out of the auto industry, especially in wake of the American government's announced $17.4 billion . No matter how bitter a pill it is to swallow that we have to bail out these bastions of Free Enterprise and opponents of government regulation due to their own incompetence, no one denies that we have any choice in the matter. If the auto industry were to go under the ripple effects on the Canadian economy would leave it in such tatters that it would take years to recover. The communities that rely directly upon one or other of the big three's car plants for direct employment and the money their employees put into local economies are only the tip of the iceberg.

Dotted mainly throughout Ontario are auto parts plants that supply the industry both in Canada and the United States. A great many of these companies are located in smaller communities where they constitute a town's major employer. During strikes when part orders are curtailed these communities suffer because of lay-offs, but they can tighten their belts and ride out those short term losses. However if the big three were to vanish, these plants would close their doors for good and the economic devastation would cause the modern day equivalent of ghost towns to spring up across the province.

The problem is that by doing the deal unilaterally, without Parliament's input, the Prime Minister has been able to fudge the details of the plan according to opposition parties whose main concern is the lack of any guarantee that Canadian jobs will be preserved. While supposedly there are some production guarantees included in the agreement, according to Liberal Member of Parliament John McCallum, there is nothing in it that secures the jobs of Canadians.

What nobody seems to mention, which I find very surprising, is why the government didn't demand some semblance of accountability from the corporations. If we are going to be handing GM a loan of up to $3 billion and Chrysler $1 billion, you'd think the least we could ask of them is that make some sort of commitment to ensure that they will change the business practices that got them into this predicament in the first place. (If you're wondering about the fact that Ford is conspicuous by their absence its because they've not requested any outright loans, merely access to a line of credit that they can draw on as needed) When any business applies to a lending institution for a loan they are obliged to offer proof of a viable business plan that shows how they see plan on paying back the loan. While Harper has said that the loans aren't a blank cheque and that companies and employees will have to make concessions, he didn't say what that might entail.

Since their biggest failing has been their inability to compete against the Asian car industry and their unwillingness to embrace new technologies that would make their cars more fuel efficient and less dirty, wouldn't it have been a good thing to make those conditions of the deal? How about insisting that they work on making an affordable hybrid car that would cost less for purchasers to operate and be less harmful to the environment? How about retooling their line so they stop mass producing trucks and SUVs, or other expensive big ticket items, and focus on producing inexpensive, fuel efficient, passenger cars for families?

Since Steven Harper became Prime Minister in 2006 he has shown a singular lack of desire to involve anyone but his closest advisors in making any decisions. For the two years of his first term he was effectively able to use Parliament as a rubber stamp for his policies as the opposition parties were in disarray and either unable or unwilling to stand against him. However, only twenty-seven days into his second term he found out that was no longer the case when he tried to push through his economic statement and he only escaped being ousted by suspending Parliament.

Yet apparently he hasn't learned his lesson, as he's spent the two weeks since doing anything he can to unilaterally run the country. While there is nothing technically illegal in any of the decisions he has made, it won't do anything to dispel the opposition's mistrust or their belief that he will stop at nothing to get his own way no matter what. If his behaviour over the period between cancelling Parliament and its recall at the end of January was designed to reassure the opposition and Canada that he has changed his ways, its done the opposite. In fact his behaviour has only reinforced the previous opinion of him being intractable and unwilling to work with the opposition to create legislation for the good of the country. If he keeps this up, his suspension of parliament will have only succeeded in delaying the inevitable, and he and the Conservative Party will be back on the outside looking in again.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:47 AM | Permalink

It used to be in order to be famous you had to have done something important or have an ability that distinguished you from other people. Artists, scientists, thinkers, explorers, inventors, and military leaders were all likely candidates for fame as they were all in careers that provided opportunities for renown. Any celebrity or fame that came their way was earned because of their talents or skill. Now, things have changed, and celebrity has become a goal on to itself with people willing to do almost anything to get their moment in spotlight.

These are the people so many of us love to hate, especially those who appreciate the work that goes into actually creating something of intrinsic value. It's enough to make you pretty hot under the collar seeing talentless wasters with column space in newspapers and having their faces splashed all over the popular magazine. Wouldn't the world be a better place without these air-heads, or the people who created the opportunities for their creation in the first place?

Well, in Christopher Brookmyre's most recent book, A Snowball In Hell, available through Penguin Canada, former terrorist for hire Simon Darcourt has decided enough is enough and its time to give the public what they really want, reality television with celebrity guests competing against each other for the public's approval just like they do on Big Brother and Survivor. However, getting voted off Simon's show doesn't just mean you won't come back next week, you won't be coming back at all, except for in a box.

You can't help but be struck by how intelligent his arguments, and compelling his justifications, are for the things he's doing. Sure he's a bit extreme but you do have some sympathy for what he's doing, don't you? However, after abducting a prominent producer, one Nick Foster, boy band producer from the 1980's and 90's, and a reality show creator in the present day, and broadcasting his execution live to those attending an industry tribute to the same Nick Foster, the police don't quite agree with this assessment. They even agree less when it's become apparent that he has created a new reality show for the public to watch by kidnapping the winners of Nick's last venture.

Of course he's not going to kill them off one by one - he's going to have the audience vote on how much oxygen each girl gets in a day based on her performance until one runs out of air time - so to speak. Oh, and to make sure everybody broadcasts his little extravaganza he lets it be known that he will kill all three of the girls immediately if the broadcast is shut down or any attempt is made to trace the server it's being beamed from. So the cops call in the one person who handed Darcourt his ass before, Detective Inspector Angelique de Xavia, who thwarted Simon's plan to blow up a hydroelectric installation in Scotland back in 2001. The biggest problem they face this time though is figuring out what the former mercenary wants.

As if things aren't complicated enough, it turns out the police aren't the only ones not amused by Simon's telecasts, as Angelique finds out when she receives a text message from an interested party wanting Darcourt delivered to them instead of being hauled off to prison. As incentive they send a photo along with the message - her parents handcuffed to chairs.

If she ever wants to see her parents alive again she's going to not only have to track down Darcourt, but make him disappear in plain view of her superiors and the public. It's a good thing she knows a magician, Zal Innez, who five years ago not only made off with a whole lot of money from a Glasgow bank, screwed over two mob families, but had stolen her heart. Although the feelings are mutual, he's as equally besotted with her, they both believe they are doing the other a favour by not being in each other's lives - what kind of future can a thief and a cop have together? Yet without Innez Angelique knows she's not a hope in hell of saving her parents, let along snaring Darcourt.

Christopher Brookmyre's skill resides in not only writing plots which have more switch-backs than a road twisting up the side of a mountain, but in making those same plots believable. With parts of the book being written in Darcourt's voice, we see him assembling all the pieces for what we think is the penultimate game and are chilled by the delight he takes in revelling in other people's weaknesses. He is, unfortunately, as brilliant as he thinks he is, and we can only sit back helplessly as he lets us in on his secrets or as he invites us to laugh along with him at his perverse form of social critique.

What's even more amazing is that Brookmyre is able to use this highly amoral character to brilliantly satirize our obsession with celebrity and fame. Day after day the press publish tallies on which of the three original contestants are attracting the most attention in the press, and thus earning the right to breath. Night after night the public gather around their computers and televisions to watch the performances as the three girls compete for the approval they so desperately need to stay alive. It's reality television taken to its most nightmarishly logical conclusion with the only real winner being the one behind the scenes pulling all of our strings.

A Snowball In Hell is a brilliant and devastating book that proves once again that Christopher Brookmyre is one of the best social critics going as well as being one of the most original crime fiction writers you'll ever read. There are no cows sacred enough not to be slaughtered by his pen, over inflated egos safe from the prick of his words, or moralistic hypocrites who can escape his wrath. Yet at the same time he ensures that we never forget, in contrast to Simon Darcourt's opinion, that even the "contestants" in the reality show from hell are living and breathing people who are just looking for something to fill the void in their lives.

It's a sad and confused world that we live in if people feel they have to prove their worth by becoming famous. Who are we to begrudge them their moment of glory, no matter how contrived or silly it might appear in our eyes? While aiming a slap at the industry that creates these opportunities, Brookmyre hits those who sit in judgement on the participants with a shot between the eyes: How are you any different from Simon Darcourt except for perhaps how you express your opinion of these people?

A Snowball In Hell can be purchased directly from Penguin Canada or an online retailer like Amazon.ca.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:12 AM | Permalink

We in the West have always had a fascination with all things Eastern to the extent that we have created various stereotypes and cliches to ensure that countries like India are what we want them to be. At one time she was the Mecca for all things spiritual; everybody from pop stars to bored middle class housewives looked to India for enlightenment and sought out the services of any guru willing to take them on as a student. They revelled in the exotic and the mysterious until they discovered that spiritual advancement wasn't something that happened overnight and was a continual work in progress, at which point they dropped it like a hot potato.

Forty years later our fascination is now centred around the economic miracle that is modern India - The Economic Tiger of The East! Instead of ashrams and gurus the West now comes to India in search of cheap labour for their manufactured products and call centre employees to explain how to use them and trouble shoot their problems. Where it used to be that the sons and daughters of the affluent West would seek India's shores for enlightenment, we now welcome the children of their rich to enlighten them with free market capitalism, business and science degrees, and the great myth of the global economy.

Yet one thing hasn't changed, our unwillingness to look behind the facade of the image that we have created. We continue to ignore the poverty; the way politicians exploit the mistrust between Muslims and Hindu out of one side of their mouths and condemn the violence that occurs afterwards out of the other; the caste system that continues to be rigidly enforced by society no matter what it says on the law books; and the continual degradation of women who are still to often considered no more than chattel to be bought on sold on the marriage market. Indian apologists on both sides of the world will tell you that it's all different now, by which they mean it's better hidden, but talk to those who care to see and they will tell you that nothing has changed.

Indu Sundaresan is one of the new generation of Indian novelists who are not only seeing, but are willing to write about those things that are going on behind closed doors, in the back streets, and far beyond the glare of bright city lights. In her newest collection of short fiction, In The Convent Of Little Flowers, published by Simon & Schuster Canada, she covers everything from elder abuse, the consequences of the caste system, and the hardships that are still common place for women in India. In case we think that some of the more extreme things she describes are invention, she has included a postscript with the collection where she explains that each story was inspired by actual events occurring in India that she had either read about or been told about.

However, lest you think she is an expatriate Indian, or Non Resident Indian (NRI) as they are sometimes sneeringly called, with an axe to grind as she now lives in Seattle Washington in the United States, the prevailing emotion that comes across in these stories is that of sadness, not anger. What makes the stories in this book much more powerful than others that I've read dealing with similar subject matter is that there is no finger pointing, no laying of blame. In fact the prevailing sentiment in all the stories is that even those characters who are the perpetrators of appalling actions are as much victims as those they abuse.

There are two stories in particular which bring this to mind for me, "Three And A Half Seconds" and "The Faithful Wife". In each of these stories there is the obvious victim, the ones who suffer because of the actions of others. Yet because of the way Sundaresan writes, without trying to manipulate our emotions and without pointing out the obvious, but letting the story speak for itself, we can't help but see beyond the events described into the moral vacuum that has developed in a country that is caught in transition between its past and its potential future.

We're not really sure what "The Faithful Wife" is about for the first little bit of the story. By all appearances it seems to be about a prodigal child returning home to face the family's patriarch to seek redemption for some past misdeed. However it gradually comes out that things aren't as we first perceived, and as events unfold we begin to understand the horror that is about to take place in this peaceful village. Like the young man we want to blame his grandfather for what is going to happen, for he, we think, has the power to stop it. After all, he's the one who asks why his grandson has come in a way that suggests he has no business being there, and it was his grandmother who sent him the message about what was to happen.

Although the practice of burning a wife with her husband, known as Sati, had been outlawed since 1829, the twelve year old girl who had been married to the sixty-three year old shopkeeper who died of natural causes has "chosen" to be burned along with her late husband on his pyre. After all, what kind of life awaits a person widowed at twelve years old, "a blight to her family" says the grandfather, "she will be considered an ill omen." We want to hate him for those words, want to hate him for not doing anything to stop it, but he is one person against a village, so he has done the next best thing. He has let his wife summon his grandson, a reporter, home so he can write about it, so that people will know it has happened, and so maybe nobody else will ever have to be forced into doing what this girl did.

Poverty and caste are the villains of "Three And A Half Seconds", even though they don't own the arms or hands that beat elderly parents. Elderly parents whose crimes of being from a poor farming village and the wrong caste are the reasons for their son gives for him repeatedly failing his exams at work, as nobody wants him to be promoted because of his family. The same parents who left the village they had been born in after drought had destroyed their family fields and the government had washed its hands of them, who had lived on the streets of Mumbai while working so he could have school and a future. Elderly parents who in the end only have their love for each other and who wonder where they failed their son that he hates them so much,

Not all of the stories are about people being defeated by India, some are about the ways they are finding the means to overcome the past and move themselves, and their families beyond the anachronistic lives that traditions have forced onto them. Things don't have to be this way Sundaresan is saying in her stories, but only if we are willing to see what's in front of our eyes, and speak out against it. Of course there are plenty of people who are content with the status quo because it ensures their positions of power, and there are also those who will be critical of anybody daring to speak out against what they will claim are important elements of their culture.

They will denounce Sundaresan as a trouble maker who has lived away from home for too long, or will accuse her of being sensationalistic for only talking about the negative aspects of life in India and not talking up the great economic miracle. Yet there is nothing sensationalistic or lurid about these stories. In fact there's a kind of beauty to them that can only exist when a writer loves her subject matter a great deal. These stories are filled with nothing but respect and admiration for the author's birth country and love for the people who live there, yet they are not blind to how outdated attitudes and archaic moral codes are the biggest threat facing India.

Many countries the world over hide dirty secrets behind the veils of tradition and custom and India is no different. Yet more and more writers are proving their love for their country by pulling back those veils in the hopes that future generations won't suffer the indignities that people today are still being forced to endure. Indu Sundaresan's collection of short stories, In The Convent Of Little Flowers is one of the best examples of this that I've read in a long while. Elegant and eloquent, her stories speak from the heart and are full of compassion for all those caught up in the confusion of a country trying to find its way out of a dark past and into a better tomorrow.

In The Convent Of Little Flowers can be purchased either directly from Simon & Schuster Canada or from an on line retailer like Amazon.ca.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:13 AM | Permalink

As anyone who has done any amount of interviews with professional performers will know they usually follow a pretty cut and dried formula. You're told what time to phone the person, and how long - usually twenty minutes - that you have to talk to them, and you know that you're one of about forty people that they are going to be talking to that day as they play "promote my product". Sometimes though you get lucky and have the chance to just talk to somebody - have a real conversation instead of feeding them questions which they respond to with stock answers.

So sit back and enjoy eavesdropping on my conversation with an extraordinary musician and artist, Francis Jocky.

It's always a good sign that an interview will go well when the first words out of the person's mouth that you're going to interview are along the lines of "I'm so glad to speak to you". I was rather taken aback by that as its not the usual reaction one expects from an interviewee. If that surprised me, the next words out of Francis' mouth took me even more aback.

"When I read the review you wrote of me two years ago (for Mr.Pain) it was like you had known me for twenty years" Francis continued.

Well, so much for any pretence at maintaining a professional attitude, because I spent the first ten minutes listening to this wonderful voice at the other end of the phone piling me with some of the nicest compliments I've ever had. Yet I also realized as I listened to him that it was more than just him complimenting me, it was the voice of a person who was frustrated by the music industry's attempts to pigeon hole him as an African musician. "They don't understand that I love all styles of music - that it doesn't matter to me whether its a country song or anything else - if I like the melody I like the song. A good song is a good song no matter what it is."

Now you hear this a lot from people, but not often with the same sort of intense passion that I could hear in Francis' voice, and it made me curious as to where this came from. He had already told me that he had been born in the Cameroon, central West Africa, not a country I'd ever associated with being a hot spot for international music.

"When I was younger my parents used to travel to Europe and they brought back many types of music for us to listen to. I started being interested in music when I was eight years old, and I was listening to Bob Marley, Randy Newman, and Jackson Browne."

Okay wait a minute - Bob Marley, sure - but Randy Newman and Jackson Browne. An eight year old kid in the Cameroon even knowing who Jackson Browne is let alone listening to and appreciating his music stopped me cold. Hell most people I know in North America don't know the name Jackson Browne. When I passed this along to Francis he laughed.

"I know it's funny. I went to see Jackson play in New York - he has a new CD out now, (Time The Conqueror) and is playing shows - and I went backstage to see him and ask him to sign a copy of my CD. I talked to him for thirty minutes. He was surprised too when I told him that I was a musician and that Late For The Sky (one of Browne's early releases) was what inspired me to become a musician. I was nine when I first heard it and I was just learning piano then, and there was something about his songs, even though the lyric are about many different things, even songs about cocaine, but still there was something very spiritual about them. They are songs that I can still listen to now years later and feel the same things that I felt then, enjoy the same way."

"You know", he continued, " When I'm trying to compose now - the songs they have to come from the heart - I want to be able to listen to them three years from now and still like them as much as I like them now - and this is what I learned listening to Jackson's music."

While we had a great time comparing notes about Jackson Browne's music and laughing about the songs we liked, like I said I don't know many people who listen to him so it was nice to talk to someone else who does, I attempted to get us back on course and talking about him instead. We had left him at eight years old listening to Jackson Browne -

"When we moved to Paris, I was about thirteen or fourteen when my family moved to France, I discovered Jazz music, people like Theolonius Monk - and although I had started learning piano in Cameroon, listening to this music pushed me to learn more and more and expand my talent.

I was really surprised though when I got there, you see I didn't know about Black radio and White radio. I quickly found that out though when I asked people about a Dolly Parton song that I had liked and they looked at me funny - like what was I listening to that for. But I listen to and learn from all types of music, and still do. Like when I was playing with Jon Anderson or when I had listened to Stevie Wonder's music... It was listening to Stevie's music that I learned that a great song has to say something - it can't just be a tune or a nice melody, but there has to be a heart to it."

So you're probably all ready getting the picture that Francis isn't your ordinary pop musician, what with his wide range of musical influences, but even more unusual is the fact that he holds a PHD from the Sorbonne University in Paris. Since we had made it to Paris I couldn't resist asking him about it. He laughed, as if it were not really any big thing

"Well you see, when I told my mother I wanted to be a musician, she said fine but finish your education first. So there I was going to university during the day and playing in clubs at night. The PHD was easier because you don't really have to go to school too much - you just have work for three years on a thesis. Now my teachers wanted me to do something on American Policy, but I wasn't really interested, and I wanted to do it on Zimbabwe and South Africa. This was in the nineties and there was still apartheid in South Africa while Zimbabwe had Black rule. Well they weren't that interested in that, but compromised and said why not do something about the UN, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

They weren't too happy with the result because I wrote mainly about South Africa and Zimbabwe, and very little about the UN, but they had to accept what I had done because of all the work I did. Of course all the time I was working on it (the PHD) I was continuing to play music too."

As you can tell, Francis hasn't taken everybody's idea of the normal route in pursuing a pop music career, and that has included having to deal with challenges that have sprung up because of his background and where he has been living. Early on in his career he elected to sing his music in English - I assume because so many of the people he listened to growing up were singing in that language. Living in Paris that decision created a problem for him.

"In France seventy per cent of the music on the radio has to have French lyrics which meant the chances of me getting my music heard on the radio there weren't very great considering all the other people in the world who are more well known than me who sing in English. I think because they are a small country surrounded by so many other languages that they are scared of losing their culture. But at the same time that makes them lose track of the big picture beyond their borders. So a record company might not want to sign me to their label because I sing in English and they don't think they'll get much radio play in France, but they don't stop to think about international performances and radio.

I have to be able to write in the language I want to for me to be able to believe in my lyrics properly. It's like Nina Simone, you listen to her and she's living in her lyrics. She gives you what she has inside. You hear her sing only one note and its so powerful - because she sounds like she is going to die in that note - surrender herself completely. I want to be able to do that with my songs, and you can't do that if you're not doing things in exactly the way that's most right for you."

Earlier on Francis had mentioned that he had worked with Jon Anderson of Yes. This was another way in which his career has been different from others as he has chosen to do collaborations with others instead of merely focusing on his own work - I was curious as to why he made the decision to work with others.

"I love their music - there's no way I would say no" Implying what kind of fool would say no at the opportunity to work with people like Bono, Jon Anderson, and others who Francis has worked with in the past.

The funny thing about working with Jon Anderson was that he wanted me to play keyboards - I said Jon, Yes has songs that are twenty minutes long - I don't know half the songs - how am I going to do them. He said don't worry you'll be fine. We were also going to be doing new material and I had some specific ideas on what I would like to see happen with Jon's voice. A lot of the time on Yes's songs his voice gets lost among all the other things going on, so I wanted to put it up front - keeping the music simple with a solid groove and let the world see what his voice sounded like in the foreground.

I learned a lot about improvising from that time - especially playing keyboards (laughs) but Jon liked what I was doing so much that he wanted me to be composing all the time, so I was writing ten songs a day and we were working with them. At times I would just improvise on the piano and he would start to sing and we created songs that way. It was one of the best learning experiences I had as a musician and working in a studio."

That seemed like a good cue for asking about the production of his most recent release Sanctified as I had noticed quite a number of differences between it and his first record Mr. Pain. I had also been curious to find out about the inclusion of Andrew Blakemore as a co-lyricist and how that worked.

"With Sanctified I composed all the songs at once, which was different from Mr. Pain because it contained songs that I had written from various points in my career. I wanted the production to be much simpler - I wanted it to be almost naked - no production at all if possible. That honesty I mentioned hearing in Nina Simone's voice was my inspiration. Emotion is real - I'm looking for integrity when I make music - that's my goal in everything. You don't do music to make money - you do it because you are inspired to do it, are moved to do it, and the only way you can be true to that is by ensuring that you're as honest as possible with everything that you do.

Andrew writes songs for Janet Jackson and I've always admired and respected his work. I write the lyrics first and then have Andrew look them over to see how they can be made into a better song. I trust him to understand what it is I'm trying to say and I don't have any ego about them, because all I care about is them being a good song. So even if Andrew says start over again from the beginning I will. It's great to work with someone who understands what it is you want to do and doesn't try to impose something else on you."

" I was going to sign with (I'm leaving out the name of the label to save them from looking like assholes), a label I had really admired for the people who had recorded with them in the past, and they had been happy with what I was doing. Then all of a sudden they want me to do African music, they say they want me to become the next Hugh Masekela (South African jazz trumpeter). I was very confused, I mean I like jazz but I don't play it. Then they started worrying about the lyrical content of songs on Mr. Pain, that "Tell Me Why" was too political because it questioned Mr. Bush about the invasion of Iraq. This was a couple of years ago, before it was as popular today to be critical about the war, and they didn't think anybody would play it on the radio.

"All these people say to me - Why don't you do African music - well why don't African music do me? Why don't you sing in the language of your own country? You know, there are over two hundred different dialects spoken in the Cameroon - which language do they want me to sing in?"

Well, I said interjecting, the problem is that many people over here seem to forget that Africa is a continent not a single country, and they don't realize that there's no such thing as "African music". Asking you to sing African is a stupid as asking Bruce Springstien to sing North American or Bono to sing European, but people don't get that.

"I don't care where a song comes from, I listen to the soul in it. I do music for all people to listen to, not just people from here or there, so this makes no sense to me when they say do African music."

I could almost see him shaking his head at the other end of the line, and remembered what he had said at the beginning of our conversation about how happy he had been reading my review, that I had understood what he was trying to do, and hadn't cared about anything about the music. I wondered what he would like people to take away after having listened to his music

"When I listen to music I want it to fill my soul, I want it to speak to my soul. When it comes down to it all we really have our souls and sometimes you need to feed your soul. If my music can speak to one soul, that would be great, that's what I've wanted to do right from the time I first heard Jackson Browne's songs and they spoke to that place in me. It doesn't matter what language they're in."

Talking about souls naturally led me into asking about the title of the newest disc, Sanctified. It's not normally a word you hear associated with pop music, outside of gospel circles, so I wondered what it meant to Francis within the context of his disc.

"My daddy was a preacher, so I have a lot of respect for people's religions and beliefs and I don't want to offend anybody with that title or the way I use it. But I'm using it as a metaphor for passion - the emotional power that happens when you love for instance. It's not specific to any belief, but it comes back to my desire for music to fill the soul."

"Some people have questioned me about the picture on the cover of the disc (Francis is wearing Angel wings and playing guitar) and wonder what it signifies. The truth is that it was from a campaign to raise money for the fight against cancer in France, and all of us who took part were considered as angels for donating our time so we all had our pictures taken with wings, and then the pictures were sold to raise more money. I thought the picture worked with the title so that's why we put it on.

I believe that God is everywhere, even when you love, and music, no matter what the subject, lets me express that belief."

One of the things that I had felt when listening to Francis' music this time, was that there was a spiritual quality to what he was doing similar to the connection between Indian musicians and their music. When I mentioned that to him he agreed that it was the "same feeling" and added how peaceful it was for him to be doing music.

We were both starting to wind down by then, as we had been talking for nearly two hours, but I think he summed up a lot about himself and his music in his final few sentences.

"They call me an enigma (There's worse things they can call you Francis) (laughs)"That's true, but it's because all my songs are different, and my music comes from all over. I can't just play one type of song or I get bored and I won't be true to what I want to do."

Francis Jocky is going to be very busy now, as aside from promoting his new disc Sanctified (The release party is this Sunday, December 21st/08 at Joe's Pub at the Public Theatre, 425 Lafayette St. NYC starting at 7:15 pm) he's also just become the cultural ambassador for a new charity, All For Africa, and his first duties will be performing at the All For Africa Barack Obama Inauguration Party this January in Washington DC. He'll also be popping up on your television quite a bit over the next little while as he just did a recording for Fearless Music that will be shown on Fox TV and LC2 International TV has just finished a documentary on him and the disc Sanctified.

I hope you enjoyed listening in on my conversation with Francis, he really is as unique an individual as he sounds in this interview, and his music is a reflection of those qualities that distinguish him from others. The industry may think of him as an enigma because he doesn't fit into one of their neat boxes for easy packaging, but there's nothing puzzling about the quality of his music and the depth of his passion for what he does.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:32 AM | Permalink

It used to be you could safely walk into a record store and pick up a long playing record of Irish, zydeco, klezmar, or gypsy music and know what you'd be getting. You could tell just by looking at the covers that those were simpler times. Everybody was wearing their colourful ethnic clothing and had big happy smiles plastered across their faces. You knew who was who and what was what; gypsies were gypsies, Jews were Jews, and you would never confuse the music they played with anything somebody from New Orleans or County Warwick released. Now, not only do you have to buy your music on those CD things, where you can barely see what the people on the cover look like let alone what they're wearing, you can't even be sure if you pick up a recording of gypsy music it will sound like its supposed to sound, like the way you want it to sound.

Its all the fault of that damned, so-called Irish band, The Pogues. They were the ones who first started messing around and changing people's attitudes towards ethnic music. Making them believe that it didn't have to be played the same way over and over again. That it was all right to sing about contemporary issues instead of the great events from hundreds of years ago that were truly meaningful. Well it was bad enough when it was only Irish music, but now its spread everywhere. Punk zydeco bands who play klezmar music, klezmar bands that use hip hop techniques and gypsy violins, and now, worst of all, punk Gypsy music.

All you have to do is listen to the upcoming release from the Serbian gypsy band KAL, Radio Romanista, being released on Asphalt Tango Records January 2009, to hear an example of how deeply the influence of those miscreant Pogues has spread. First off, just look at the way the members of KAL dress. Instead of wearing the colourful costumes of their people, they dress in black. What kind of statement does that make? Haven't they ever seen pictures of how they're supposed to dress, don't they have any respect for what we expect gypsies to look like?

Then there's the music they play. While they might play all the right instruments; violin, accordion, guitar, percussion, and drums, it sure doesn't sound like what its supposed to sound like. I don't care what the lead singer says about "stereotypes" and "cliches". Where does he get off saying things like, "If you expect from me music because I am a Gypsy then I'll do it but don't think that I'll not use it to say very important things about my people - Don't just look at us as entertainers - we're no longer going to stay silent and entertain you." That's all very well and good, but what kind of gypsy music sounds like a run a way train, or is accompanied by that hip-hop, beat box, rhythm that you usually hear in dance halls. They have the gall to take so much pride in the fact that they've even given it a name: Rock n' Roma!

Even the name of the band, KAL, is depressing as it means black in the gypsy language, and than there's the songs themselves and what they talk about. It's a darn good thing they don't sing very many songs in English I tell you. Who wants to hear songs like "Radio Romanista" which imagines a gypsy country that has a national radio station. Gypsies don't have a country - they wander, how could they be gypsies if they had their own country - don't these guys know anything? Or what about "I'm A Gypsy", the title sounds promising enough, but then the lyrics: "I'm a gypsy, I'm looking for my place under the sun, I have no home, my country is the entire road" Well, duh? Everybody knows that - but he doesn't sound happy about it, it sounds like he wants a place to call home. What kind of real gypsy complains about not having a home or a grave?

They don't even call themselves gypsies these guys in KAL, they call themselves Roma, which is really confusing as it makes them sound like they either come from Italy or from Romania. Why can't they be happy being called gypsy like we've been calling them for years? Don't they understand anything about tradition? Have they no respect for what we expect from them? What ever gave them the idea that we wanted to know about their reality? That they fall in love, get their hearts broken, or that their lives are anything at all like ours? Why can't they be happy being what we want them to be?

No, they insist upon joining the twenty-first century and changing their music to suit their needs so it expresses how they're feeling. Who wants to know that they live in segregated neighbourhoods, that their houses get burnt out from under them, and that they are still harassed and tormented wherever they go? Why can't they sing songs about caravans, dancing round the fire, and other traditional stuff like they show in the movies? Haven't they ever seen King Of The Gypsies or listened to Cher? Aren't they modern enough for them?

It's a sad commentary on the state of the world when you can no longer count on ethnic groups to behave the way you want them to. Radio Romanista by KAL only confirms this disturbing trend of people taking charge of their own lives and justifying it with words like pride and self awareness. Not only do they expect us to call them by the name they use for themselves, Roma, they expect us to accept the fact that their music can change to reflect the world around them just like everybody else.

I don't know about anybody else but I blame it on the Pogues. Blame it on the Pogues, blame it on the Pogues, you'll feel so much better, just blame it on the Pogues. (With apologies to Kris Kristofferson)

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:57 AM | Permalink

One tends to forgive a lot when a people's history has been as fraught with difficulty as has the Irish. Although Irish nationalist invective is aimed towards the English these days, they are merely the most recent of invading forces that swept across the Islands to the west of mainland England. According to legend even the Celts were invaders at one time, sweeping the original inhabitants away, only to be pursued themselves by the Romans, who in turn were raided by Saxons and Vikings alike before the English even got it together to invade. Even the supposed hero of Ireland, St. Patrick, was an invader, as he was second a generation Roman born in Britain who led an army into Ireland to purge the traditional religion and ensure the ascendancy of Christianity.

So it's easy to understand and forgive them if they tend to get maudlin and sing songs that celebrate their occasional victories over an enemy, or getsentimental over the sound of a clear tenor voice singing of the glories of a dark haired woman's sparkling eyes. Of course there's a world of difference between the Chieftans and The Clancy Brothers singing the old songs, and The Pogues tearing a hole through tradition and singing about Irish life in the twentieth century, but it's all from the same tradition, so to try and generalize about Irish music is as dangerous as it is to try and generalize about anyone's culture.

On the other hand it gets a little difficult not to when in recent years we've seen an upsurge in the marketing of big market Celtic extravagances like Riverdance and its offshoots. One of the more successful successors of the dance shows has been David Downes', the musical director of Riverdance, latest show Celtic Women. Currently featuring four vocalists (there have been as many as five) and a violinist backed by traditional Irish instruments, a choir, and a orchestra, the show is a mixture of Irish songs, show tunes, contemporary, and original material in one glitzy package.

Since its inception in 2005 the show has sold millions of CDs and DVDS, made television specials and appearances, performed countless live shows, and saw their first CD hit number one on the Billboard world music charts for sixty-eight weeks. This year Manhattan Records has released a compilation DVD, The Greatest Journey: Essential Collection, that brings together excerpts from the three television shows; Live From The Helix Dublin, A New Journey: Live From Slane Castle, and A Christmas Celebration which acts as a retrospective of their career to date.

Over the course of twenty-five tracks the DVD gives you a very good idea what it must be like to attend one of their shows, even though the Slane Castle show was staged and not shot live, as they capture the total experience with orchestration, lights, sets, and audience interaction. Of course the other thing it does is give you a very good idea of what they are like musically. While there is denying that all the women are gifted musically, the music carefully orchestrated and arranged, and the individual soloists within the accompanying band very talented, the show is designed to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. Therefore many of the rough edges that can make folk music in general, and Irish music in particular, exciting, have been smoothed away for easy digestion.

The choice of material is the first clue as to the direction the show will take as it includes such chestnuts like "Danny Boy", a composition by David Foster called "The Prayer", "Somewhere Over The Rainbow", and other songs taken from the safe and comfortable middle of the road catalogue that could fit into the play list from any adult easy listening station without making waves. The only occasions on the disc where the music even approaches obtaining some of the wildness and abandon that one associates with the best of Irish music are the violin solos by Mairead Nesbit as she careens around the stage wailing away on her fiddle. In fact her performances, especially on "Shenandoah - The Contradiction" where she's joined by both percussionists on bodhran, are probably the best things musically about the DVD.

Of course in some ways the choice of material isn't really the appeal to these concerts, it's the spectacle that captures the imagination and captivates the audience. When you have anywhere up to six very attractive woman dressed in gowns appearing on exotic sets with a castle as a backdrop, like at Slane Castle, illuminated by lights and blazing torches, and backed by not only an orchestra but gifted individual musicians, you can't help but get caught up in the moment at times no matter what the music is. The package is designed to elicit an emotional reaction from the listener, and the DVD does this with far more success than a CD ever could as you are exposed to the full weight of the show.

Technically the disc is superlative, with Dolby digital sound and wide screen picture. Although, since the original shows were shot in the days before high definition, and apparently shot directly to video, you still get the occasional colour distortion in the background from the glare of the lights. As far as special features aside from the main body of the disc, they've included a documentary that tells how the show Celtic Women came about, behind the scenes looks at the recording of the three television specials and the their second CD, and interviews with each of the regular cast members, David Downes, and various other members of the production company.

There can be no doubt that Celtic Women is a phenomenal success the world over, selling out shows in Europe, North America, and Japan and continuing to sell CDs and DVDs by the bushel load. However, the music you hear on this DVD, and I'd have to assume on their CDs, isn't what you'd hear scratched out on fiddle and guitar down at the pub on a Saturday evening, and you're not going to hear anything even mildly controversial, or even precious little Gaelic. Light and ethereal, the music is as fluffy as a cloud and generally as substantial as candy floss; neatly packaged in a show designed to maximize emotional reactions and minimize thought. As musical extravagances go Celtic Women The Greatest Journey: Essential Collection works remarkably well, as an example of Irish or Celtic music on the other hand, aside from occasional flashes of life, its a pale imitation at best.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:14 AM | Permalink

One of the things that I've never liked about country music is its predilection for sentimentality and cheap emotional appeals. There can't be anything more annoying then listening to someone wearing six thousand dollars worth of clothing and jewellery singing about their poor but happy childhood. Or, how the person they admire the most was their dear old Ma because she was a God fearing Christian who could feed six kids, the cow, and her no good drunkard of a husband, when there wasn't any food in the cupboard or money in her purse.

Not only do those types of songs make me want to gag, but they also romanticize the reality of poverty and living with an abuser, which is a disservice to anyone who actually has had to live through those experiences. Thankfully there are some country music performers who have lived through these types of experiences and would never trivialize them. That doesn't meant they always escape falling into the trap of resorting to appeals to cheap sentiment or manipulating simplistic emotional responses from their listeners, but at least they can be counted on to deliver the occasional nugget of reality unlike the majority of their contemporaries.

I don't think this dichotomy is more obvious in anyone than it is in Merle Haggard, as one minute he can be signing a song that genuinely talks about the difficulties faced by a person released from prison, and the next he'll be singing some sentimental slop about a family of musicians led by a blind guitar playing father and their deaf mother. This was really brought home to me watching a new DVD just released by Shout Factory and the Country Music Hall Of Fame, Legendary Performances: Merle Haggard.

Culled from television appearances that Merle made between 1968 and 1983 the fifteen tracks on this DVD do a nice job of showing how his music evolved during the fifteen years he was at the top of his game and providing an overview of the type of material he does best. For those of you who're only familiar with songs like "Okie From Muskogee" that managed to get some cross over play, this disc will give you a much better understanding of the type of music Merle first became famous for in country music circles.

"Branded Man", which is taken from a 1968 appearance that he made on Country Music Holiday hosted by Wally Fowler, was his second number one hit record and also one of him most directly autobiographical. Haggard had spent ten years in and out of jail and detention centres up until 1957 when he was arrested for a robbery attempt that went bad. It was three years after he was paroled in 1960 that he recorded his first album. When you listen to "Branded Man", you can hear Merle talking about those years after he was released from prison, and the mark that everybody who has ever done time carries with them for the rest of their lives.

Songs like "Mama Tried" and "The Bottle Let Me Down" from the same time period are based enough in reality that they ring with authentic emotion especially with Merle's unaffected delivery. At that stage of his career he voice was smooth and rich, almost a baritone, and unlike others of the time he didn't have a noticeable accent or attempt to make his voice sound more country. Perhaps because he was from California he didn't feel the need to make himself sound like a hillbilly, but whatever the reason, his delivery is part of what makes these first songs as effective as they are.

Some of the other songs like "Daddy Frank (Guitar Man)" (the one about the blind guitar player) and "I Take A Lot Of Pride In What I Am" show that Haggard was as susceptible as anyone to writing songs that sentimentalize people instead of telling a true story like he had with other material. Listening to them, and songs from later in the disc like "The Roots Of My Raising" from a 1977 Porter Wagoner Show gives you a different view of Haggard. With these songs it feels like he's pandering to the Nashville establishment and giving them what they want to hear. The last song especially as it extolls the virtues of family and the simple life which is the bread and butter of country music.

The same could be said of one of Merle's biggest hits, "Okie From Muskogee", and the less widely known "The Fightin' Side Of Me" as they are in step with another of Nashvilles' favourite themes, my country right or wrong. While "Okie" extolls the virtues of being a Redneck -"We still fly "Old Glory" down at the court house" and "We don't wear our hair long and shaggy", "Fightin' Side" contains such admirable sentiments like "Love it or leave it" when referring to America. For someone who was supposedly an "outlaw" as far as Nashville was concerned, these two songs are amazingly conservative, especially as they were written in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam war.

While the picture quality of this DVD is dependant on the quality of the original television show, so at times its not going to be as good as you're used to, the sound quality is very good throughout. While there are no specifications listed for the disc, the picture is fullscreen and I can only assume the sound is regular stereo. There's no mention of whether or not any of the sound was re-mastered, so I assume you're getting everything exactly as it was on the original television shows. As far as special features go, they've included an interview with Merle and his second wife while on board their tour bus that was done in 1981 and footage from his induction into The Country Music Hall of Fame. The best part of that was his thank you list, which looked like it was written on toilet paper, and the fact that he made sure to thank his plumber and his pest control person.

If you are a Merle Haggard fan Merle Haggard: Legendary Performances will be a treat for you as it presents a well put together retrospective of some of his favourite songs performed around the times when they were written and first popular. Merle's music may have at times veered over too far into the sentimental mush and jingoism that is the bane of modern country music, but he also wrote some genuinely compelling songs that talked about realities few others had the nerve to write about at he time. You'll see both sides of him on this DVD, and it says a lot about him that the latter is strong enough to outweigh the former.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:35 PM | Permalink

I had wondered how Steven Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, expected to get away with calling normal parliamentary procedures like a vote of non-confidence and a coalition government treason and coup d'etat? How could any member of parliament be so cynical as to expect not to get caught in such an outright lie? In fact he himself became Prime Minister after "overthrowing" a government in 2005 through the same non-confidence procedure and winning the subsequent election. True he didn't have the opportunity to form a coalition government, but that's mainly because nobody would want to join forces with him, and the government he defeated had been sitting for two years, not twenty seven days.

Well now I know the answer. According to a survey conducted between December 9th and 12th, after the whole circus died down in Ottawa, a majority of Canadians don't know that we don't directly elect our Prime Minister, who the head of state is, or how to best describe our system of government. On the plus side, ninety percent knew that a Governor-General could refuse to let a sitting government call an election upon losing a vote of confidence in the House Of Parliament.

The survey was commissioned by a group known as The Dominion Institure who claim their goal is to build active and informed citizens through greater knowledge and appreciation of the Canadian story. Well judging by the results of their survey they have a hell of a long way to go if they want to even come close to achieving this goal. If fifty-one percent of Canadians believe that the Prime Minister of Canada is elected by direct vote like the American President, is it any wonder that the Conservative Party was able to convince people that the proposed coalition government of a couple a weeks ago was "undemocratic"?

Aside from not understanding how the parliamentary system of government works, which has been in place since 1867 when the country was formed, only a bare majority knew that we are a constitutional monarchy. Now I know to people who live outside of Canada that the concept of a constitutional monarchy sounds more than a little obscure, and why shouldn't it? They haven't grown up with the system or studied it in school. Finding out that Canadians are equally ignorant about such basic precepts when it comes to the government they live under is not only embarrassing, but more than a little scary.

Maybe it doesn't seem like such a big deal to some of you that most Canadians think either the Prime Minister or the Governor General are head of state, or that they can't name the style of government we live under. However ask yourself this, how much difficulty would an American have in telling you that the President is head of state or that they live in a republic? Why should it be so difficult for Canadians to do the same thing?

However that is trivial when compared with the fact that the fifty-one percent of the people polled in this survey believed that the Prime Minister was elected directly. That shows a not only a complete lack of knowledge as to how our system of government works at its most basic, but just how few people actually vote in federal elections. If you've ever stepped into a polling booth on election day in Canada to cast a vote you'd have noticed that nowhere on the ballot you fill out is there a place to vote for Prime Minister. Even if the margin of error, 3.1%, for this survey is factored in, it means that forty-eight per cent of Canadians of eligible voting age have never stepped inside a voting booth, or don't understand what it is they are doing when they cast a ballot.

(I'm beginning to feel silly explaining this in every article I write about Canadian politics, but obviously it's needed. Canada works under a system of parliamentary democracy where the country is divided up into electoral districts called ridings based on population density. Each riding represents one seat in the House of Commons, and political parties select candidates to run as their representative in each riding. The political party that elects the most candidates forms the government with the leader of that party becoming Prime Minister.

If no party wins an outright majority of seats in the House of Commons the one with the most seats tries to rule with either the support of another party or on its own. A minority government can lose votes in the house without having to resign except for one on financial matters or if the other parties pass a motion of Non-Confidence. When that happens the Prime Minister asks the Governor-General, the Queen's (the head of state) representative in Canada, to dissolve parliament so a new election can be called. The Governor-General has the option of asking the opposition if they feel like they can form a government, or the opposition can ask the Governor-General for the chance to form a government if they can offer proof of their ability to govern. That would usually require a coalition of parties with sufficient votes in the House to defeat a motion of Non-Confidence, and a guarantee that the coalition would last for a particular length of time.)

In order for a democracy to work a country's population has to at least understand how their system of government works. If they don't they can be manipulated by unscrupulous leaders who would take advantage of their ignorance to prevent the checks and balances built into the system from working. When a government under a parliamentary system does not receive a majority of the seats in the House of Parliament, it is understood that they do not have sufficient support to be a representative voice of the country. It is the opposition's responsibility to ensure that the governing party is responsible to the whole country, not just those who voted for them, and ensure that legislation represents the majority as much as possible.

Since Steven Harper and The Conservative Party of Canada were first elected to a minority governing position in 2006 they have acted like they have a majority government. Until this past November they were given a free ride by an opposition in disarray for various reasons. Now, when the opposition acts like they are supposed to, calling the government on legislation they did not think represented the best interests of the entire country, Steven Harper accused them of attempting to overthrow the government and usurping the democratic process. He was able to get away with that because too many Canadians don't understand how their own system of government works.

Marc Chalifoux, president of The Dominion Institute, summed up the situation succinctly when commenting on the survey: "Canadians certainly were interested by what was going on in Ottawa (the capital city of Canada) but lacked, in many cases, the basic knowledge to form informed opinions." When the people a system of government is supposed to represent don't understand how it works they surrender what voice they might have had in its process. If the people of a country have no voice in their government can it really be called a democracy?

Until Canadians can get it together to understand even the most basic principles of their own system of government they will remain at the mercy of who ever wields power in Ottawa. Until that time we are a democracy in name only.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:41 AM | Permalink

With the advent of speciality television stations like The History Channel and Discovery there has never been a healthier market for documentary movies. Gone are the days when the documentary was considered so commercially unviable that aside from the occasional nature film produced by people like The Disney Corporation, the chances of them receiving any public attention were minimal. Now, aside from the above mentioned channels, film festivals like Hot Docs, the annual Toronto Canada round up of international documentaries, have sprung up that not only give people the opportunity to see them in the cinema, but give the movies and their producers the exposure needed to attract a distributor.

Documenting an event or events, a person's life, or any of the other subjects that end up being grist for a film makers mill, traditionally the camera played the part of neutral observer. Never commenting or passing judgement, merely recording, it was a supposedly impartial eye that allowed us to be a fly on the wall in rooms so that we could overhear those conversations we would normally miss. Of course even in the pre Michael Moore, documentary with an axe to grind days, objectivity was highly subjective, as the director and producer could still control what we saw and heard by what they chose to shoot or not shoot.

Producers of documentaries dealing with historical matters face different challenges than those working on contemporary issues as they are unable to film the events under discussion. Depending on the time frame they may be able to find archival footage that's applicable, but on the whole they are reliant on voice overs, stills, and other static means of disseminating the information, including the infamous "talking head". Experts in the field are usually filmed sitting down so that they are only visible from the waist up, and become nothing more than talking heads holding forth on the subject matter. While they lend an air of credibility to a film, unless they are particularly interesting or dynamic, too many talking heads can sap the life right out out of it.

With a subject matter as interesting as the history of African Americans in New York City, you'd think that the directors of New York Noir: The History Of Black New York, produced by Little Dizzy Home Video would have had no problems making an interesting and informative film. Of course they suffered from the constraints of not having any footage dating back to the days when the city was called New Amsterdam and ruled by the Dutch in he early 1600's. Still it was to be hoped that they would have found a more interesting way of presenting the material than relying as heavily upon "talking heads" as they did, or at least found ones who were marginally more interesting than those they ended up with.

Instead of simply laying out the history of New York as seen through the eyes of the African American community, what they've done is divide the movie up into a series of chapters dealing with the various issues and topics relating to the theme of the movie. Starting with the history of black New York City, the chapters covered such topics as politics, civil rights, business, heroes, entertainment, and the great Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's and thirties. While the movie makes certain that you know it won't be shrinking from dealing with the truth of the black experience in New York City, the opening chapter is called "Living A Lie" in reference to the fact that in spite of the constitution's claim that all men are created equal, African Americans went from slavery to second class citizens, there is still something about its focus that rang hollow.

Now, obviously this movie was made prior to the most recent American presidential election so they make no mention of Barack Obama's election, and Colin Powell is from New York City, but to place him at the zenith when talking about heroes seemed to me a little unsettling. In fact the whole hero section dealt with African American participation in American wars dating back to the revolution as if being a soldier was the sole outlet for heroism. Again they didn't stint from talking about the how black soldiers were allowed to die for their country in WWl but were treated like dirt upon their return home from the front, but they glossed over Vietnam by simply saying many blacks served with distinction.

There was no mention of how under a policy, known as McNamara's 100,000, in honour of Robert McNamara who authored the plan, physical and intelligence requirements for entrance into the armed forces were lowered. Or that from 1966 on, each year, for three years, recruiters swept through the urban centres and rural areas snapping up the uneducated to serve as front line troops, resulting in a disproportionate number of poor blacks serving and dying in Vietnam.

While the makers of the movie did a credible job in explaining how the Harlem Renaissance came about, they only briefly mentioned how the bottom was allowed to fall out because most of the real estate, including apartments and businesses were owned by whites and that the city officials did its best to ignore spending any money on infrastructure, schools, and health care for the district. Although the movie went to great lengths to extoll the virtues of the few African American business people who were successful in the early part of the twentieth century and showed it was possible for "blacks to pursue the American Dream", the poverty, crime, and horrible living conditions that have been the lot of the majority of blacks in New York City is glossed over.

I also question the fact that in the Civil Rights segment of the movie they focused so much attention on Marcus Garvey, without once mentioning his infamous "Back To Africa" policy which received support from folk like The Ku Klux Klan, or barely mentioned Shirley Chisholm. While they did say that as New York's Twelfth district congresswoman she was the first African American woman to enter Congress, they failed to mention that she sought the Democratic nomination for President in 1972. To give the movie its due, they did present one of the fairest treatments of Malcolm X that I've seen, mentioning that he never advocated violence, only self defence, and how after making his pilgrimage to Mecca he began preaching universal brotherhood.

To try and cover a topic as complex as the history of African Americans in New York City, as New York Noir: The History Of Black New York attempts, with any sort of authority would require far more time than the fifty minute length of this movie allowed. While they don't shy away from mentioning the usual stories about the battles for integration and the overt racism of city hall and the New York Police in the past, they also make no attempt to go below the surface of any of the issues or mention anything about what life is like currently.

There is no mention of how badly the population has been damaged by the HIV/AIDS virus, or the affects of drugs and its related violence on the community. Nor is there any examination of the state of the school system in the inner city, the availability of health care, how many African Americans in New York have health insurance, or what the economic prospects for the current generation of young blacks coming of age in New York City are like.

By ignoring these types of details, making injustice sound like a thing of the past, and glossing over some of the more insidious crimes against the community, this movie doesn't even come close to telling the history of black people in New York City as its title claims. Its movies like this one that perpetuate the lie that everything is all right with American society today, and inequality is a thing of the past. That's a dangerous message to be sending, and the harm a movie like this can do shouldn't be underestimated. It's a very good example of how through omission a documentary movie can offer a distorted view of the truth without resorting to telling outright lies.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:09 AM | Permalink

I'm sure we've all seen or heard various documentaries about the history of popular music in North America that have traced the roots of jazz and blues music back to the tribal sounds of Africa. Or how the blues developed out of the songs, "hollers", that the slaves used to sing while working in the fields that were a mixture of old tribal rhythms and the Christian hymns that the slave owners forced down their chattel's throats in an attempt to pacify them. However, most of us are probably unfamiliar with how the music that developed in both North and South America returned to Africa to influence the popular music scene in various West African nations.

In the 1980's, thanks to Peter Gabriel's World Of Music and Dance (WOMAD) festival, African popular music started to come the attention of European and North American audiences. Performers like King Sunny Ade from Nigeria exposed us to the previously unheard of genres high life and juju; guitar driven, high energy, and exuberant music that kept people on the dance floor for hours on end. However Nigeria was only the tip of a widespread pop music scene in Africa. Thinking that King Sunny Ade represented African pop music would have been as stupid as thinking a blues musician from Chicago represented all of North American pop music.

Benin lies on the West coast of Africa and butts up against Nigeria in the south, Niger in the east, and equally tiny Togo to the north. What distinguishes Benin from its neighbours is the fact that it happens to be home to Vodoun - or as we know it over here Voodoo. So it should be no surprise that the popular music of Benin draws heavily upon the rhythms of Vodoun rituals, but what is surprising is the other influences that have come into play. The Vodoun Effect: Funk & Sato From Benin's Obscure Labels 1972 -1975 a recent release on the Analog Africa from Germany, that has collected together fourteen tracks by one of Benin's most popular bands, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou. Recorded in the 1970's on a variety of small independent labels, they show not only the Vodoun influence but how music from both South and North America found its way back across the Atlantic Ocean.

According to the publicity material that came with the disc in the late 19th century a group of freed slaves from Brazil returned to Benin and over the years their dances and songs were incorporated into Beninese ritual, and from there worked their way into the popular culture. In the 1960's and 1970's American soul and funk music started making its presence felt in Africa, and along with the sounds of pop music from neighbouring Nigeria were assimilated into the popular music scene in Benin.

When you listen to Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou you have a choice, you can either try and analyse the individual songs in an attempt to discern the particular influences that are present in each song, or you can just sit back and enjoy the ride. Of course there are times when you just can't help noticing obvious influences, especially when the songs are as radically different from track to track as they are on this disc. One moment you'll be listening to a song that you swear if it continued a second longer would have sent you off into a trance the rhythm is so hypnotic, while the next, you can't help feel like you're listening to 1970's era Santana the Latin groove becomes so strong.

Now a lot of these songs were recorded early in the band's career and you get the feeling in some instances that they are trying out a new sound. However, on some of the tracks, and these are the ones that are my favourites, they have started to synthesize the various influences into their own sound. While you can still hear the occasional distinctive trait; the staccato horn sound of funk, an underlying rhythm that sends a peculiar shiver up your spine, or an electric organ riff that sounds like it might have strolled over from "Black Magic Women" to sit in for the take, the band shows they weren't going to be content just being imitators of other people's sounds.

It's interesting to hear the difference between various tracks on the CD as they show the band's sound developing and becoming more sophisticated. On the first track, "Mi Homlan Dadale" they sound like any number of African pop bands, not even incorporating any of their own traditional rhythms into the music. By the sixth track, "Se Tche We Djo Mon", and the seventh track, "Dis Moi La Verite", your hearing an amazing progression in their playing. The latter of the two is especially impressive for you can hear the beginnings of a successful marriage between the hypnotic rhythms of Vodoun, the distinctive sound of a latin melody, and the brassiness of American funk. It still sounds a little like three different styles of music are being played at once, but you can tell what the band is trying to accomplish, and it in no way diminishes the fact that the song is a hell of a lot of fun to listen too.

The only drawback to The Vodoun Effect is the sound quality on some of the tracks is not very good. This has nothing to do with the contemporary engineering, but with the fact that when the band originally recorded it was often with everybody piled into the studio gathered around two microphones. It's actually remarkable at how well balanced the sound is considering the size of the band and the number of instruments involved in making the recordings. The only real problem that crops up is distortion of the vocals and the horns, as they both occasionally sound like the levels were far too high when they were recorded.

This is a fascinating recording of some extraordinary music, by a group of highly skilled and dedicated musicians. We still know so little about African popular music over here in North America, that any recordings that shed light upon something that hasn't received wide spread exposure yet is interesting as well as important. It's also nice to know that Analog Germany is making plans to release more music by Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou from later in their career that should show the band's talent in a far better light. If they're this good raw, we're going to be in for a real treat when the next batch of recordings are released, the only pity is that it's taken so long for their music to find its way back over the ocean again.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:33 AM | Permalink

It seems like everyday there's another new band, singer, or musician releasing a disc of music that's pretty much indiscernible from the rest of what you hear. No matter what genre or category their music falls into, most everybody you listen seem to be adhering to the principal that originality is bad and sounding like everybody else as much as possible is good. When classical musicians play a piece that everybody has heard, "Moonlight Sonata" by Beethoven for example, and countless others have played, they, at least, attempt to make their performance unique from others through the strength of their personality and their own individual style of performance. In pop music it seems the opposite prevails as more and more everybody tries to sound like last year's hit.

Coming across a performer who attempts to place their own stamp on the music they're playing is like stumbling across an oasis in the desert. Listening to a musician who not only imprints his or her music with personal touches, but has also dared to fiddle with excepted formulae to creates something original has become such an oddity that when we do come across them they are definitely worth celebrating.

That was the case when I first heard Francis Jocky a couple of years ago when he released Mr. Pain his first CD. At the time I remember being blown away by his passion and the emotional honesty of his music, both of which have become conspicuous by their absence in popular music these days. So when I was offered a copy of his new EP, Sanctified, being released in the next couple of weeks by KoKo Records, I was genuinely interested in seeing what he was doing now. It's been two years since his last release and he's now based in New York instead of Paris France, and I wondered what effect the intervening years and the change in geography would have had on his music.

The answer to that is none at all, as he hasn't lost any of the qualities that I admired in the first place, and tons, because there is much more to his music now then there was before. Where on Mr. Pain Jocky seemed content to confine himself to R&B, and pop influenced soul music, on Sanctified he has spread his wings (Sorry, not a deliberate pun on the cover art). There are only six songs on this EP, and while two of them, "Ghost" and "Everything" were along the lines of the material found on his first release, it felt like he was trying something new with his music.

You could hear it in the aggressive, almost hard edge of the opening track "You Feel The Heat", the hint of a reggae back beat in "Meant To Last", and the way the sound of the last two tracks, "Your Way" and "Sanctified" appears to fill the room without being loud or over produced. On the first release, in comparison to this, it now feels like he was restraining himself, almost like he was letting himself be confined by the needs of the genre he was performing. Somewhere, somehow, in the last two years, he seems to have found the key to balancing the need for sounding professional and polished with the needs of his heart to express itself as fully and completely as possible.

Instead of holding back on his vocals to take advantage of the natural smoothness that was on display on Mr. Pain, he now lets his voice express every nuance of emotion that he's trying to impart with each song. Without sounding like he's straining, or even worse affecting to feel emotions, his voice catches during moments of passion and he shows an overall intensity in all his singing that really took me by surprise. I had enjoyed his voice on the first disc, but on Sanctified I was impressed by his willingness to take risks and let himself go like the great soul singers of the past. With this release Jocky has taken the step that has allowed him to transcend being just another talented vocalist and demonstrates what it is to sing directly from your soul; what it means to be a soul singer.

The first time I listened to Sanctified I experienced the same feelings of uplifting I get from listening to the best spiritually inspired music. Normally that only happens when I listen to people like The Staples and other gospel singers of equal power, classical music inspired by the wonder of creation, or pop musicians, like Xavier Rudd ,who are able to tap into the same vein of inspiration as gospel singers but sing about earthly matters. Francis Jocky, in spite of the disc's title and the cover art depicting his with angel wings, hasn't written a gospel disc per se, as the lyrical content of songs like "Meant To Last" and "Everything" exemplify through their dissection of failed relationships, but taken as a whole the disc seems to reflect the awe he feels at being alive.

This disc celebrates being alive and the wonder it is that we as humans have the capability to feel. Even the pain we feel at lost love, or from anything that causes us sadness, is proof that we are alive and part of the world. Sanctified doesn't celebrate a particular faith or even a God, yet there is no denying the intensity of its spirituality. I'm trying my best not to read things into the music that aren't there, but after listening to the disc a number of times none of those sensations were dispelled or diminished. Without looking through rose colour glasses or denying any of the problems the world faces, Jocky has created a six song EP redolent with the beauty of being alive.

With his first CD, Mr. Pain, Francis Jocky showed that he was a gifted song writer who understood the importance of heartfelt honesty in his music. Now, with the release of his second recording, Sanctified, he shows that not only does he still posses those gifts but the ability to take them to the level of artistry. There are very few musicians, let along popular musicians, who are able to surrender themselves to their music in such a way that it becomes a spiritual experience to listen to them no matter what they are singing about; Francis Jocky is one of them.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:13 AM | Permalink

It's been an exciting couple of weeks in Canadian politics, and it doesn't look like the action is going to slow down any time soon. When Conservative party leader, Prime Minister Steven Harper received permission from Governor-General Michaelle Jean to postpone parliament until January 26th/09 in order to avoid facing a vote of non-confidence in the House Of Parliament, it appeared he might have dodged a bullet. His popularity had risen in the polls and the Liberal Party, leaders of a proposed coalition government poised to replace him after the non-confidence vote, were starting to turn on themselves over who should lead their party when the house reconvened.

Before the events of the last two weeks or so went down the Liberal party were just beginning the process of electing a new leader to replace Stephane Dion who had led them to their worst election result in twenty years. Of the three men who had announced their intention to seek the position, two, Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff were considered the front runners, with Igantieff having a slight edge due to his popularity among the Liberal Members of Parliament (MP). Still, in a leadership convention anything can happen and Rae was planning an extensive cross country tour in the hopes of convincing those selected as delegates to the convention that he was the man for the job.

However with the very real possibility of the government still going down to defeat when the House reconvenes, Dion was being a considered a liability by even members of his own party in the event of the coalition being called upon to form a government or, even worse, an election were to be called. One of the reasons that Stephen Harper felt fairly secure in postponing parliament was for that reason. He figured by the time the house re-convened the Liberals would be too busy with picking a new leader to risk defeating him in an election with a lame duck leader.

Well the Liberals have called his bluff, and two very intelligent and proud men have put aside their own political ambitions in order to make the Liberals as unified and strong as possible no matter what happens at the end of January 2009. Stephane Dion offered to step down immediately, and Bob Rae has stepped aside to allow Michael Ignatieff to become leader of the party. The party had been discussing ways of holding a speeded up leadership convention, either by having a new leader elected by the Liberal caucus or expanding the vote to include riding association heads (a riding is the equivalent of an electoral district and each riding represents a seat in the House Of Commons) and all candidates from the last election to ensure that all ridings had a say in the matter.

While they will still be going through with both votes, it will now simply be a formality as there is only the one candidate, Michael Ignatieff. This does raise the question as to what happens now? When the Liberal party was rounding up caucus members to sign the coalition agreement the last to sign was Ignatieff, in fact he signed it three hours after the deadline for signing had passed. It has also been said that if the coalition had taken office earlier this month, he would not have accepted a cabinet post in the new government. Now whether or not that's because he was preparing to be the new leader as of May 2009 and wanted to distance himself from anything to do with Stephane Dion, or he didn't believe in the idea of a coalition, isn't known. What is known is one of his staffers has been quoted as saying "coalition if necessary, but not necessarily a coalition" It appears that he is more than willing to use the threat of the coalition to keep Steven Harper in check, but not about to jump the gun and vote Harper's government down just for the sake of voting against him.

The one hitch in that plan is that he did sign the coalition agreement and backing out at this late date unilaterally would quickly sour his relationships with the other opposition parties unless he can convince them it's in all of their best interests. Both Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) the other member of the coalition, and Gilles Ducette, leader of the Bloc Quebecois, who have promised to support the coalition in parliament for eighteen months by not voting against them on bills that would cause them to lose power, have publicly said that they believe the coalition still stands and are still planning for that eventuality.

(As opposed to the lie that Steven Harper and his Conservative Party have been spouting, the Bloc Quebecois would not be part of the coalition government and would not be given any cabinet posts in that government. Anyway, he was willing to do a deal with them two years ago when he was in opposition to try and form a government so he should be careful about who he accuses of what. In fact he pissed off Quebecer's so much with his anti-Quebec comments over the last couple of weeks that he is considered responsible for the improved showing of the Parti Quebecois (provincial separatist party) in the Quebec provincial election this past Monday, December 8th/08)

I have a feeling that unless the Conservative Party do something incredibly stupid, like still try to pass the same financial plan that caused this mess in the first place, or not offer a solid package of financial incentives to help stimulate the economy in whatever plan they do propose, they will probably ride this storm out. Michael Ignatieff is an unknown quality for Canadians, and he's wise enough to know that he would be risking his political career by becoming Prime Minister as the head of the coalition unless he can offer an iron clad case to Canadians that the Conservatives and Stephen Harper are unfit to rule. Instead I think he will take this opportunity to establish himself and bash the crap out of Harper and his party until the summer recess, and then next fall pull the plug on Steven Harper and run head to head with him for the Prime Minister's office.

Of course considering the volatile political climate we find ourselves in right now, everything could change again overnight. There have been rumbles of discontent from the rank and file of the Conservative Party. Harper has had two elections now with which to attempt to win a majority and even with a weakened Liberal party encumbered with a leader nobody really liked, he was still unable to deliver a majority government this time. The Liberals may not be the only party who change their leadership between now and next year.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:26 AM | Permalink

It was really hard to take Batman seriously back in the days when he was on television and all his punches were accompanied by cartoon balloons spelling out "kapow" and knowing it was Adam West under the cowl. The 1960's show was only saved by the presence of people like Eartha Kit playing Cat Woman - even in those days the villains were a lot more interesting than the heroes. When Michael Keaton donned the cowl for the 1980's version of Batman/Bruce Wayne, the movie was at least visually more interesting as under Tim Burton's direction Gotham City looked like somewhere Dante may have visited on his package tour of Hell. Yet, even though Jack Nicholson was obviously born to play The Joker, the movie ended up being just another super-hero verses super-villain piece where everything was decided in the final frames.

The subsequent movies that rotated various face behind the cowl, and villains to be on the receiving end of the "kapows", were as lame as the original television show and you couldn't even laugh at them because they lacked the high camp quality that made Adam West and company bearable. So the news that a new attempt at filming the guy in the pointy eared cowl didn't exactly bowl me over, but when I eventually did see Batman Begins, I was impressed. Not only did it give a plausible explanation for how Batman received his training, it never made him out to be anything more than a human being, as vulnerable and fallible as the rest of us.

When the promotional material started appearing for The Dark Knight, the sequel to Batman Begins, showing the first images of the late Heath Ledger as The Joker, it looked like the folk behind the movie, writer/director Christopher Nolan and writer Jonathan Nolan, were going to take the story in a direction that promised to go places that not only previous Batman movies hadn't gone, but none of the other super-hero movies made had dared either. Working outside the law, Batman is able to do things that the cops aren't able to, but does that make him a hero because he's willing to torture somebody to find out information? We get upset because our government has been authorizing torture of possible terrorists - how is Batman beating up on The Joker any different?

On the surface The Dark Knight doesn't sound much different from any other movie of its kind. A new crook, The Joker, has appeared on the streets of Gotham. He is so deranged and crazy that he scares even the already established criminals. Lined up against him, and the other forces of evil, are the usual types; the lone honest cop in a nest of thieves, Lieutenant then Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), the new gung-ho District Attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), his beautiful and plucky assistant Rachel Dawes, who also happens to be his main squeeze and the love of Batman's life (Maggie Gyllenhall), and Batman/billionaire Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale). After robbing one of the bank's organized crime uses to launder its money, The Joker gives the crime bosses an offer they can't refuse - give me half your money and I'll kill the Batman for you. It's once they take him up on the offer that the game begins, a game which is fixed so no matter how the Batman plays it he loses.

The Joker promises to kill at least one person a day until the Batman surrenders to him, and he gives the good guys just enough clues to let them know who his targets are, but still manages to take out two of his first four targets, plus three others, without anybody getting close to him. In fact he's so far ahead of them, that he anticipates the trap they set for him and counts on them arresting him so he can carry out the next stage in his plan, kidnapping Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes. He sets it up so that by the time he tells the forces of good where they are being kept there is only time to save one of them.

The problem facing Batman and his allies is that they think The Joker is just another criminal who wants something - money, power, or any of the other things they are used to dealing with when it comes to the underworld. But as Batman's faithful retainer Alfred (Michael Caine) puts it, some men just like to watch the world burn, and don't really care about anything else. The Joker is pushing them all to their limits, seeing what it takes to make them step over the edge into his world, into the world of chaos where there are no boundaries or rules.

The Batman has been teetering on the edge of that world since his parents were killed as a kid. In the first movie he refused take the step that would make him an outlaw when he refused to be judge, jury and executioner and set himself against those who acted like that. However The Joker forced him to do things differently. By the end of the movie he realizes that in order to combat people like The Joker, he couldn't be a hero. In order to defeat darkness you don't have the option of being a white knight, pure of heart and free of evil influence, you have to think and act like the people you are fighting; you have to be a Dark Knight.

To be honest that's not a message I'm comfortable with as it's the handy excuse used by our governments in order to justify the various measures they've taken in the "War On Terror". However, there's a big difference between dealing with a known criminal as Batman is doing with the Joker and the other crime bosses in the Dark Knight and imprisoning people without proof, sending innocent people off to foreign countries to be tortured, or putting people on trial without telling them the charges against them.

In the lead up to the movie, and especially with his death a little less then a year ago on January 22nd/08, a lot was made of Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker. Unlike when Jack Nicholson played the part, where it was obviously Jack under the make-up and purple suit, Ledger is nowhere to be seen in this performance. From the sort of scuttling walk, the gleam in his eye, the voice teetering on the edge of madness, and down to the least mannerism, Ledger created a character where nothing of himself showed through. It was brilliant performance, but what was most impressive about the character was that it didn't overshadow the movie.

Ledger's creation was the axis the movie turned on, as all the other characters' actions had to be seen as either a result of his behaviour, or in light of his actions. That meant The Joker had to be powerful, but not so powerful a figure that the other characters were overshadowed by him. Both Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart, as Batman and District Attorney Harvey Dent respectively, responded wonderfully. Both men did masterful jobs of showing how The Joker effected their characters the changes they underwent as the movie progressed. In fact it was the interrelationship between these three characters that gives the movie the depth that all of the previous forays into depicting a super-hero on screen have lacked.

The other thing that makes this movie work so well, is how little it relies of special effects. Sure the Batman does a few things that defy gravity, but the movie is still carried on the backs of the actors and is much better for it. As I was watching a downloaded DivX version of it, I can't comment on the quality of the sound or things like that, but what I did appreciate was the way the director was willing to use silence, or just the ambient sounds of the world at times, instead of relying on background music or chatter to create atmosphere. The opening sequences of the movie are riveting for that very reason, and it brings us into the world the Nolans have created more effectively than any other movie I've seen.

The Dark Knight is not your typical super-hero movie and because of that its not only far superior to any other Batman movie made, its one of the better movies I've seen in a long time. I may not agree with the message that in order to combat evil you have to be willing to do the things they do, but the context which they have placed it in does give it more credence than the justifications offered by politicians in our world for their behaviour. At least Batman is honest about what he is doing. Brilliantly acted, superbly directed and scripted, and with minimal special effects, The Dark Knight not only lives up to its hype, it exceeds the expectations generated by it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:55 AM | Permalink

Music has always had the power to inflame people's passions. From ultra nationalist songs that whip up hatred against others to religious music that inspires devotions, music has the potential to have the strongest and most immediate emotional impact of all the arts. Therefore, it's little wonder that down through the years music and songs have been written to express both dissatisfaction and appreciation for the way the world is going.

While I'm sure you can find examples of protest songs from almost every era of civilization, just check out the Irish songs about the British occupation, it really wasn't until the twentieth century that English language protest songs began to take the shape that we are familiar with. Most of the early ones dealt with the plight of the working class in North America and called for the establishment of unions. As the twentieth century progressed, and fell into the depression of the 1930's, songs the plight of the poor farmers and the social/political system that could allow the crises to happen began to be heard.

However it wasn't until after WWll and the popularization of folk music that protest songs began to obtain widespread popularity in English speaking North America. With first the civil rights movement in the United States, and then the war in Vietnam, causing people to question the moral authority of government and society's inequities protest, songs and the people who sang them gained widespread popularity. Country Joe McDonald's "Feel Like I'm Fixing To Die Rag", and Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A Changing" were along the lines of typical folk songs, while Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers Of America" showed that the protest song didn't have to be limited to just folk singers.

Yet, after only a relatively short time the protest song's popularity died again. It seemed that when the impetus created by the unique combination of events and circumstances that had fostered the movement for social change died, so did interest in listening to songs about what was wrong with society or other people's troubles. While punk bands like the Clash, or musicians like Billy Bragg made no bones about their politics and did their best to motivate their listeners, the majority weren't interested. Like punk, rap and hip-hop had the potential to speak for the disenfranchised, but it was co-opted until now it glorifies the very things it originally protested against. (Check out the the lyrics of any Grandmaster Flash song from the early eighties and compare it to what's being sung as rap now and you'll see what I mean)

Now that doesn't mean that protest music is dead, it just means you have to look a little bit harder to find it. As a public service the good people at Ruf Records in Germany are releasing a new compilation CD of protest music recorded in the last few years. Rich Man's War: New Blues & Roots Songs Of Peace And Protest, to be released in the United States and Canada in the new year, is a collection of topical blues songs that were written in response to the first American presidency of the 21st century. While Ruf Records is distributing the disc, only two of the performers appearing on the disc are from their label, as producer Kenneth Bays has searched out recordings by as diverse a group of blues players as he could find. You'll notice that some of the songs seem to stretch the definition of blues somewhat, which explains the slightly unwieldy title, but does nothing to diminish the quality of the music.

I guess it only shows how unpopular protest songs have become when of the twelve songs on the disc not only have I only heard two of them before, "Follow The Money" by Bob Brozman and "Jesus And Mohammed" by Candye Kane, but I only recognized the names of two of the other musicians who had contributed to the recording; Guitar Shorty and Eddy "The Chief" Clearwater. Which is a great pity, because not only are the songs on this disc all intelligent, and sometimes quite funny, but even better, they are all good pieces of music. Protest music has received a bit of bad rap over the years for being painfully earnest and painful to listen to as its been wilfully misrepresented by those who'd rather we'd not be reminded that the world isn't quite the way the government depicts it.

Needless to say as the songs collected here are all in direct response to the Bush administration and its policies their primary focus is on topics that have dominated the newspapers since his election. What was nice to see was how each of the performers found a way to address the issue they chose to talk about without resorting to making villains out of people like the soldiers being sent overseas, but attacked the policies and motivations of those who made the decision to send them. Even better, there are a couple of songs that don't even resort to blaming anybody in particular, but instead seem to be shaking their heads with regret at the whole damn situation.

Two of the best songs on the disc are the previously mentioned "Jesus And Mohammed" by Candye Kane and "A Time For Peace" by Eddy "The Chief" Clearwater. In the former, Candye Kane imagines a conversation taking place between the two prophets and them shaking their heads in disbelief at how their followers could have screwed up their respective messages so badly. "This isn't what we wanted, both were heard to say, how could our words of love lead us to this day/ Oh my children don't you understand, misery and hatred won't get you to the promised land". Sung along the lines of a country/blues gospel number, and especially with Candye Kane's big and expressive voice, the song is a particularly effective condemnation of the hatred generated by all those who would have their followers on either side believe they are fighting a holly war.

Like Candye Kane, Eddy "The Chief" Clearwater has turned to the gospel roots of blues music for his song, complete with an echoing organ solo and church choir. "How many politicians have to lie? How many good soldiers have to die?". What makes this song so effective is the stark simplicity of its message, "It's time for love/It's time for peace/It's time for war...to cease", and the genuine passion that he and the choir are able to bring to what they are saying. "A Time For Peace" is a genuine prayer for peace that transcends individual religions or politics and reminds us if we don't keep love in our hearts we're no better than those we criticize for making war.

Rich Man's War is a collection of intelligent, musically interesting songs written in response to events of the last eight years. You probably won't have heard many of the songs on this disc performed before, and you may not have even heard of some of the performers themselves. However, after eight years of listening to one version of events and maybe starting to feel a little uncomfortable with what you've been told, don't you think it's about time to give some other opinions a chance? This CD represents that chance - maybe you should give it a listen.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:37 AM | Permalink

It wasn't too long ago that you could count the number of women rock guitar players on the fingers of one hand. After Bonnie Raitt, the Wilson sisters from Heart, and Melissa Ethbridge you had to really struggle in order to think of anyone else. Well, as the man said, the times they are a changing, and now its becoming more and more common to see a woman fronting a band not only as the lead singer, but also as the lead guitar player. They're obviously still in a minority situation, but at least now it's no longer considered an oddity or a novelty act when a woman fronts a band, and the days of people saying, "Hey, she plays pretty good for a chick" are becoming a thing of the past.

I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but a good many of these guitar women are showing up fronting blues bands. A couple of years back the German independent blues label, Ruf Records released a two disc set called Blues Guitar Women. Canadian guitarist Sue Foley, who helped put together the compilation, said in her liner notes that she found it alarming that she was able to fill two CDs so easily, because it made her realize just how many women were out there playing the blues, and how many weren't getting the recognition they deserve.

Unfortunately, just like their male counterparts, a great many of these guitar players are pretty much indistinguishable from each other. It seems like women are just as inclined to fall into the loud, hard, and fast school of playing as men, forgetting that a little bit of diversity makes music a heck of lot more interesting. So when someone like Joanne Shaw Taylor shows up with a CD like her forthcoming White Sugar (January 1st/09 on Ruf Records) I pay attention. Not only has Joanne written all the tracks on the CD, she understands that music, especially the blues, sounds a whole lot better when you don't play the same thing over and over again.

As with so many blues guitar players since the 1960's Taylor hails from Great Britain, and like those who came before her she looked to the United States for her inspiration. In her press materials she cited Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix, and Albert Collins as the musicians who made her want to pick up a guitar and dedicate herself to playing the blues. Although she has also followed in their footsteps by fronting a trio, she sells herself short by saying she fronts a power trio. For while it's true her music has plenty of power, there's none of the let's make their ears bleed mentality that I would normally associate with the term.

At sixteen, in 2002, she was touring Europe with former Eurythmics guitar player Dave Stewart's super group D.U.P., and maybe that experience played a role in developing her sensitivity to the potentials that exist in blues music. Whatever the reason White Sugar not only demonstrates that Taylor can play and sing, but understands music far better than a great many musicians with far more years under their belts. It's hard to put into words what it was about the music that gave me that impression, but listening to the disc one of the first things I noticed was that each note played on her guitar was a distinct moment in time no matter how fast she was playing or what effects had been added. It was like every note she played or sang was the most important one in her life and she was investing all of herself into that moment.

Of course it doesn't hurt that her voice sounds like its wreathed in the smoke of a thousand whisky soaked bar rooms. Unlike some who affect rawness in their singing voice, Taylor hasn't sacrificed expression for character, which prevents her from becoming monotonous. Whether she's playing a slow blues number like "Time Has Come" or a hard rocker like "Who Do You Want Me To Be" she makes her vocals as interesting as her guitar playing. While her range may not be the biggest, she makes full use of what she has, and understands that you don't have to be loud to express passion or power.

However, it's her guitar playing where she really shines, for no matter whether she's playing Texas blues, playing hard, or playing soft she shows an affinity for the music and her instrument that belies her years. Any half way decent guitar player can bend notes or run leads, but what separates the gifted from the rest of the pack is the expression they are able to put into their music. The guitar should sound like its an extension of the player's singing voice, crying out those words that we can't articulate because we don't have a vocabulary extensive enough to articulate that kind of passion.

When Taylor's guitar leads follow hard upon her lyrics it sounds like she's continuing the thought she began while singing. No matter how fast she's playing you can't help but hear how interconnected the music and the lyrics are. Her guitar leads add an extra layer of emotion to what was being expressed by her vocals so instead of sounding like an obvious lead break the one flows into the other seamlessly. One of the reasons Taylor is able to do that so well is she's as equally comfortable playing rhythm as she is cranking out the leads. This is really obvious on a song like "Heavy Heart" with its R&B groove that she plays with an almost elegant smoothness.

Joanne Shaw Taylor joins the ever growing number of young women who have picked up electric guitars and pursued the life of a blues guitar player. With White Sugar, her first solo release, Taylor shows that she has the promise to be a force to be reckoned with for a long time. While there are plenty of people who can sing, play guitar, and write songs, there are precious few who have the passion and soul that elevates their music beyond the ordinary: Joanne Shaw Taylor, is one of them.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:10 AM | Permalink

In an attempt to prevent his government from going down to defeat in the House of Commons and be replaced by a coalition made up of opposition Members of Parliament, Prime Minister Steven Harper has received permission from Governor-General Michaelle Jean to suspend the current session until January 26th/09. Taking advantage of a little known parliamentary technicality called "prorogation", which gives the Prime Minister the right to shut down Parliament in case of an emergency, Harper will avoid having to face a vote on his fiscal policy scheduled for December 8th/08.

The opposition parties had already made it clear that they planned on defeating the governing Conservative Party in that vote, and approaching the Governor General with the coalition deal they had worked out over the past few days in the hopes of being given the opportunity to form a government. The coalition would have temporarily been led by current Liberal part leader Stepheane Dion (he would be replaced in May by whoever won the Liberal leadership convention) and would have included members of the New Democratic Party (NDP). The Bloc Quebecois, the Quebec nationalist party, wouldn't have been an official part of the coalition but had agreed to support the new government on all issues of confidence to allow them to rule without having to call an election. (In a parliamentary system a minority government can lose votes in the House of Commons as long as they aren't on fiscal issues or specific motions expressing lack of confidence in the sitting government.)

Mr. Harper is the first Prime Minister in current history to have chosen this option rather than face going down to defeat in the House of Commons. As recently as 2005 then Prime Minister, Liberal leader Paul Martin, knew very well that he would be defeated on an economic package he was presenting to the House of Commons, but like every other minority government prior to him, including Conservative leaders Joe Clark in 1979 and John Deifenbaker in 1963, he acceded to the wishes of Parliament. Former Governor-General Ed Schreyer cited those previous instances when warning that granting a wish for prorogation at this point would be an evasion of the process to Parliament and set a dangerous precedent for the future.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:33 AM | Permalink

When an author kills off the majority of his lead characters after having written six books tracing their adventures you tend to accept that just maybe you won't be reading any more stories about them. Oh sure the author could write some sort of pre-quell which could tell of their early days together or how they first met, but no matter how well written those things are they can be strangely dissatisfying. It's like having grown up with a group of friends and shared many life experiences with them along the way to all of a sudden have them revert back to the way they were when you first met them. In your minds eye you can still see them as they are today, but what you "hear" and witness is them years ago, and they are virtually strangers.

Of course there are other ways an author can bring characters back from the dead if he or she so chooses especially when they inhabit the type of worlds that exist in fantasy literature. There's usually no shortage of magic or magic users capable of performing a resurrection or two. In fact so many characters do seem to pop back after having kicked the bucket that it has become something of a cliche. Even worse is that the majority of those stories are a disservice to the original books that featured the characters in question as they end up feeling like attempts to exploit the characters' popularity.

When James Barclay wrote Demonstorm he seemed to have brought the adventures of the mercenary group known as The Raven to an end. After two trilogies, The Chronicles Of The Raven and The Legend Of The Raven only two of the group of soldiers and warrior magicians remained alive after saving their world from the grips of a demon invasion. So when I learned that a seventh book, Ravensoul, distributed in Canada by McArthur & Company, was forthcoming, I was surprised. Yet, after having watched as the books featuring The Raven had grown increasingly complex, and seen how Barclay's ability to make the implausible possible had resulted in another magnificent Epic Fantasy series, The Ascendants Of Estorea (Cry Of The Newborn & Shout For The Dead), there was reason to hope that he could make bringing his people back from the dead work.

It's been ten years since The Raven had successfully beaten off the invasion of their world by the denizens of the demon dimension, and under the leadership of Sol, The Unknown Warrior, who had once led the mercenary troupe into battle, the country of Balaia is finally starting to recover. While some things, like the destruction of the various colleges of magic and their attendant cities, and in particular one college's heart (the conduit of magical power for all who studied a specific college's methodology), will take longer to recover from than others, it's finally starting to look there will be a future that is based on more than just eking out an existence.

However, for the last while Sol has been plagued with nightmares of his former companions desperately reaching out to him for help. Although his wife puts it down to his having had to watch them all die while he and Denser, the magician who was the only other survivor, made their way back to their own dimension, when a re-animated corpse claiming to be possessed by the soul of his former brother in arms, Hirad Coldheart, shows up at his front door the dreams take on a new meaning. For it's not just Hirad who has returned, but other members of The Raven, even some who had died long before the battle with the demons, are walking around in other bodies, claiming that their dimension has been destroyed, and Sol's world faces the same threat.

Needless to say, despite the presence of forty or fifty re-animated corpses walking around the city of Xetesk, the strongest surviving college of magic, Sol and Denser take a little convincing that the threat is real. However when they lose contact with the Southern continent, the home of the elves, they begin to suspect there might be some truth to what these lost souls are saying. Yet how do you pack up a whole continent's, let alone a world's, population and move them to another dimension? In fact why should you? Hadn't Balaia and its people proven itself in conflict before and overcome almost impossible odds to fight off the demons? What could be worse than that?

The elves know, as two thousand years ago they had fled their original dimension to travel to the one they all now occupy in an attempt to escape the destruction wrought by the Garonin. It's not that this race comes to conquer - they come to suck the very life force out of any dimension they enter in a bid to fuel themselves to fight the wars being fought in their own dimension. Fighting the Garonin is impossible as for every soldier cut down they are immediately able to transport 100 across dimensional space to take its place. Even worse, since they are harvesting the life force of the planet, once they reach Balaia they are focusing their attacks on the centres of magic - the college cities - where that essence is concentrated in each magical branch's heart. As the hearts die, so does the country's best means of defence, magic.

The Raven stories were always a cut above typical sword and sorcery stories in their sophistication as Barclay always managed to make them about more then just the plot. Somehow topical themes; the relationship between power and responsibility, no action exists in isolation, and the very delicate balance that must be maintained for any world to survive, were always an integral part of each plot without them ever being in your face. Even more impressive, was that no matter how incredible some plot twist might seem, within the context that he created for the world of his characters and their adventures, they always made sense and were never outlandish.

If you haven't read the previous six books featuring The Raven, the bald details of Ravensoul's plot that I've laid out for you might seem outrageous, but within the context of what he had previously written this book not only fits into the world, it feels like an even better conclusion to the series than the previous book. It's as if Barclay has gathered up all the various threads of the previous stories and woven them together to finish the picture he had begun drawing in the first book.

As a band of warriors The Raven were always greater than the sum of their parts, somehow always managing to win through in the end no matter how insurmountable the odds against them appeared. Yet what made them such an appealing group of individuals was their humanity as none of them were perfect and they were subject to the same fears and foibles as the rest of us. However, not even death could shake their faith in their belief that they would win through in the end, simply because they were The Raven, and The Raven always won through in the end.

In the hands of a lesser writer a book that relied on resurrecting the majority of its characters for the story to work could have come across like a crass attempt to cash in on earlier popularity. Instead James Barclay has written a story equal to, or better, than any of the ones previously featuring The Raven. However, no matter how good any of the individual novels in either The Chronicles or The Legend Of The Raven are, like the mercenary group itself they are greater than the sum of their parts. Reading one of the seven books might be an exhilarating experience, but it's only by reading all of them that you can truly appreciate Barclay's accomplishment with this series. Now, with the publication of Ravensoul the picture is truly complete, and we can see just what a masterpiece it is that he has created.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:44 AM | Permalink

Even centuries after an empire's fall, traces of that civilization can be found throughout the geographical area that it once occupied. Roman ruins dot the landscape from Great Britain to the Middle East, the decorative arts of the Ottoman Empire can still be seen throughout Spain, and the Taj Mahal in India is a permanent reminder of the Mogul Empire. However, if you want to see examples of the influence that's still being exerted by some of these great powers look at the similarities in traditional music among the countries they once occupied or that came under their sphere of influence.

This is especially true of the various cultures that at one time or other were ruled by the Ottoman Empire of Turkey. Aside from any of their own musical traditions that they might have carried with them as they expanded across Europe and the Middle East, they also brought with them any of the influences they may have absorbed along the way. From Egypt to Spain and throughout the Balkans enough similarities in music can be found that it's possible for contemporary musicians with roots in any of the cultures touched by the Empire to feel comfortable playing and adapting the music of another region that had come under their influence.

This was really brought home to me when I listened to the self-titled CD by the duo who make up Teslim. While violinist Kaila Flexer draws upon a background in Jewish music, oud, and a multitude of other plucked string instruments, player Gari Hegedus combines his Eastern European heritage, Hungarian, with a love for the traditional instruments of the Middle East. As a result the music on their CD, Teslim, not only reflects their individual heritage and interests, but is an example of the common ground that exists between the music of different cultures.

Would you have considered it possible for a traditional Sephardic Jewish melody in praise of God, "El Meod Na'ala" ("God Is Very Divine") to be played in such a manner that it would be reminiscent of Turkish Sufi music? Maybe not, unless you happen to remember that the Sephardic Jews inhabited the Iberian peninsula, Portugal and Spain, in relative peace when it was part of the Ottoman Empire. While it's highly doubtful that they would have written music that was in that style, the music that they developed during that time would have reflected the culture around them.

Listening to "El Meod Na'ala" you'd never know that it hadn't been originally written the way its performed on Teslim as it sounds perfectly natural. There's none of the forced sound that you so often hear when people try and combine musical traditions that have no business being put together. In fact unless you knew that it was made up of a melody from one culture and the rhythmic pattern of another you couldn't tell as they fit together so seamlessly. While not all the of the songs on the CD draw upon multiple traditions, each of them could very well have its origins in one or other of the countries that at one time was under the sway of the Ottoman Empire.

While that may explain why the divergent styles being played on this disc work so well, it doesn't even come close to describing the experience of listening to the music these talented musicians and their occasional guests perform. I have listened to any number of CDs by extremely talented musicians playing all sorts of music on an incredible array of instruments, but very rarely have I heard music that has managed to affect me in the way this disc did. There is a haunting quality to everything they played that seemed to speak to me on an emotional level that nothing I've heard before has done in the same way.

Have you ever been somewhere, for me it's usually somewhere in nature - deep in a forest or by a large body of water early in the morning - where you are reminded of just how truly magical the world is? Where for a few precious moments you are able to forget everything about the mundane world we usually live in and are transported outside of yourself. Listening to this CD had a similar affect on me. There was something about the sounds of the instruments and the rhythm they followed that elicited the same sensation of being part of something far bigger than my own life and its trivial concerns like when I'm surrounded by the wonders of nature.

It's not like the songs are about great spiritual matters or anything like that, or there has been any attempt on the part of the musicians to create that type of atmosphere. I think the closest they come to writing about spiritual matters would be the song I mentioned earlier, "El Meod Na'ala" and another piece called "Knight Of Cups", inspired by the Tarot card of the same name. Most of the other songs are about more mundane matters, like Gari's granddaughter learning how to walk, "Kiana's Waltz", or inspired by the rhythmic patterns of other songs as was the medley of "Elk"/"High Tide"/"Yetierre", where the first two songs were inspired by the time signature of the last.

It's not even as if the music is able to overwhelm you with its power either, as there only at most four people playing at a time, and the majority of the time only two, Perhaps, though, that's part of the answer; the simplicity of the sound allows it to be a more direct and personal experience than we're used to having with music today. With the most elaborate arrangement on this disc involving three violins, a couple of different plucked instruments, and a frame drum, there is an immediacy to this music that you don't often experience anymore.

Normally we are listening to multiple sounds that we have to sort into a form inside our head that will allow us to comprehend them. Whether we want to or not that means we are bringing our intellect into play and erecting barriers between our emotions and the music. Here the music has the opportunity to "speak" directly to us on an emotional level as we are not having to "interpret" or rationalize it. Haven't you ever noticed how much more powerful a solo instrument is, even though its quieter than the entire band or orchestra? Well it's the same situation here, but for the entire length of each song instead of just for a moment or two during the piece.

Of course if the two musicians weren't as incredibly gifted as Kaila Flexer and Gari Hegedus are it might be a different story. For not only are they technically skilled at what they do, but they have an amazing ability to transmit emotion with their playing. At the same time they never exaggerate the significance of what you're hearing, but are able to communicate the feelings that are generated by the simple pleasures in life - like watching your grandchild take her first steps - in such a way that it captures the true sublime nature of the moment.

Teslim by Teslim is not only unique because it allows us to see the common musical heritage that so many different cultures draw upon, but because the music on the disc brings the magic of the world alive. This is a beautiful collection of music that will remind you of what it is that music can do in the hands of skilled people whose love for what they do comes through in every note they play.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:59 AM | Permalink

With contemporary composers utilizing such a wide range of instruments, and drawing upon so many different sources for inspiration, is it still reasonable to differentiate between them and the modern jazz musician? As both genres continue to explore forms of composition and musical styles that extend beyond the boundaries previously associated with them, the space dividing them has narrowed considerably. In fact, judging by some of the music I've heard recently, jazz musicians seem to be the ones doing the most to expand music's potential to express ideas and emotions.

This was brought home to me again listening to the latest release on Anzic Records by trumpeter Avishai Cohen called Flood. Flood is the second recording in what he's titled The Big Rain Trilogy, and while the CD is a description of a flood along the lines of the one experienced by Noah, Cohen describes it as an attempt to tell the story from the point of view of nature, where death is a part of the natural cycle and is actually crucial for nature's survival. As he says, "Nature does not lament the flood nor resist it, but rather accepts it as its own." With the trilogy he is attempting to build a picture of the life that exists before, during and after the flood; nature's strength and beauty, and humanity's search to improve itself in the hopes of preventing another flood.

Flood is divided up into seven sections with each one representing a different stage in the life of the flood from its very beginnings as rain ("First Drops"), to the earth's renewal after the waters have receded ("Cycles: The Sun, The Moon, And The Awakening Earth"). With Cohen's trumpet, only being accompanied by band-mates Yonatan Avishai's piano and Daniel Freedman's percussion it's difficult to see how they could create the range of sound one presumes would be needed to fulfill his objective with the music. However, after listening to the composition for the first time I realized that Cohen was utilizing more than just the sounds of the instruments to achieve his desired objective, there was also the manner in which the sounds were played to be considered, and of course the various rhythms utilized and their inter-relation.

It's the piano that opens the piece, and Yonatan Avishai's playing captures the sound and feel of rain drops falling to the ground. At first its very relaxing, almost trance inducing, like listening to the sound of a gentle rain on a peaceful summer afternoon, and even as the rain intensifies with the addition of percussion and trumpet, you never are given the impression of being at risk, as the sound continues to wash over you. Gradually though a certain level of discordance creeps into the music with both the piano and the percussion starting to increase in tempo. However, instead of the trumpet becoming more shrill or intensifying in some way to match them, Cohen continues to play with the same smoothness that marked his entrance into the piece.

Nature doesn't panic when it rains, that's a human thing. So, although I found myself initially wanting the trumpet to reflect the anxiety I would feel because of an increase in a rain storm's tempo, Cohen's trumpet reminded me that this wasn't about humans, but about nature. The smoothness of the trumpet, and its repeating the same patterns all the way through the opening piece, establishes that nature accepts the flood and all its consequences without reacting like we would.

Talk about making best use of minimal resources. With only three instruments not only does Cohen manage to create the atmosphere and sound of rain falling so that we know the flood is beginning, he establishes the point of view that we will be seeing everything from for the remainder of the piece. Finally, he also sets the precedent for what each instrument will represent throughout the course of the music; the piano will describe the events as they occur, percussion will accent and colour the events adding to their flavour and giving them depth, and the trumpet will give sound to the voice of the natural world.

As we progress through the various stages of the flood Cohen tries to capture the feel of the world being covered by an endless expanse of water with the two pieces "Heavy Water: Prologue" and "Heavy Water". The former is a short trumpet solo that sets the stage for the piece following it. Slow and extended notes, with just the tiniest amount of reverb added on, create an image of a vista of water stretching as far as the eye can see. We jump into the main body of "Heavy Water" without a break, but with the sudden addition of the piano and percussion increasing the tempo of the piece. It's as if he's reminding us that just because all we can see is water doesn't mean there's no life or that everything is as monochrome as one might believe from seeing a huge body of water.

Of course flood waters aren't just going to sit there idly doing nothing even if they cover the whole world. Sure there aren't as many beaches as there were before for the tide to come in and out on, but that doesn't mean that its not moving. Perhaps a mountain top or two break the horizon and the water ebbs and flows around their peaks? Or what is the weight of the water doing to whatever lies underneath it? How is the world being reshaped by the flood - what will be born out of this chance of rebirth?

To be honest I wasn't sure what to expect when I went to listen to this disc, and I was surprised by the depth of feeling and vision that Cohen and the other two musicians were able to generate with only the three instruments. Over the course of listening to Flood you gradually get a feel for what they are doing as Cohen does a good job of establishing how the music is presented and its major themes. Interestingly enough I don't normally find either trumpet of piano the easiest of instruments to listen to, but there was something about the way their sound was being used during these pieces, and knowing what it was that they were trying to communicate, that made me almost forget the instruments and focus only on the music.

I don't know if you would call Flood a jazz recording or not, I guess it depends on how liberal you are with your definition of jazz, however, no matter what you call it, there's no denying that it is a compelling and powerful piece of music. Close your eyes, lay back, and listen as the flood waters first cover the world and then gradually recede leaving behind a chance for a new beginning.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:13 AM | Permalink

I always feel a certain amount of sympathy towards those who attempt to adapt beloved stories into movies. No matter what they do, or how good a job they do, there will be always someone who will find something to criticize about the final result. The majority of the time the criticisms, rather unfairly I think, revolve around changes made to the story that were necessitated by the adapting process. Whether it's a character omitted, or a plot line trimmed, most movie adaptations are forced to shorten the original story because of the time constraints of the medium.

So when I go to see a movie adaptation of a book that I've really enjoyed, I do my best to try and look past the the story as it unfolds on the screen and focus on how well they've managed to recapture the spirit, or intent, of the original. The last three movie instalments of the Harry Potter series; Prisoner Of Azkeban, The Goblet Of Fire, and The Order Of The Phoenix, all took liberties with the books they were based on, but did such a great job of bringing the world and the characters to life, and capturing the essence of each book, that they worked.

After having been pleasantly surprised by the excellent job those involved with bringing the first book of C.S. Lewis' series of children's stories set in the magical land of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, to life, I was looking forward to enjoying the second movie, The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian, just as much. Not able to get out to movie theatres easily, and too impatient to wait for its release on DVD, I downloaded a DivX version from a legitimate site. (Not that I'm worried about depriving the Disney Corp. of a few bucks, but I don't trust file sharing sites, so I'm more than willing to pay $1.99 for a copy of a movie that I can play on my computer). Unfortunately, and almost right from the start, Prince Caspian fell far short of the mark set by its predecessor, as those responsible for it took what was a straightforward story, complicated it needlessly with sub-plots, and buried the book's themes of faith and belief to the point they were almost unrecognizable.

English brothers and sisters, Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henley) had stumbled into the magical land of Narnia while evacuated to the country from London during the air raids of WWII. While there they, with the help of the great lion Aslan, had led the mythical beings (talking animals, fauns, satyrs, giants, and centaurs) of the land in overthrowing the evil White Witch who had ruled the country and kept it locked in winter for a hundred years. Although they stayed in Narnia until they grew to be adults, and ruled as Kings and Queens, when they stumbled home as accidentally as they had gone in the first place, they found that absolutely no time had passed at all. One hour passing in our world could be the equivalent of anything from a year to a century passing in Narnia.

A year has passed and while the four children are waiting impatiently to return to Narnia, things have changed drastically since they left. Humans still rule, but instead of caring for the beings of the country who inhabited it when they arrived, the Telmarins conquered the country and done their best to exterminate all the original inhabitants. Those who survived have hidden themselves deep in the woods, or in some cases reverted to being dumb animals. Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) is the rightful heir to the Telmarin throne, but with his father dead, his Uncle Miraz rules as regent. When Miraz's wife has a baby son, Caspian's life is in danger, as Miraz will want his son to inherit the throne, so his tutor sends him away just in time to avoid an assassination attempt by soldiers in his Uncle's employ.

Caspian's tutor, a half dwarf, had told him the real history of Narnia, so he knew who had originally occupied the lands, but like other Telmarins thought them to be extinct. As a farewell gift, his tutor gives him Susan's magic horn, which he had somehow recovered. When that horn is blown it will bring its user powerful help, and in this case when Caspian blows it, it hauls the four children back to Narnia from England. Joining forces with Caspian and the old Narnians who have been in hiding, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy - battle to overthrow Miraz and restore Caspian as rightful King.

While the movie followed the same basic plot line as the book, what's described above, they seemed to have lost track of what the story was about. While the original books were dominated by Christian imagery, which was only natural as Lewis was a devout Christian, they also were designed to teach children about the power of faith and belief. Narnia was a wondrous place where myths came alive, animals talked, and trees danced. However, in order for it to survive, people have to want it to survive, which means not just sitting idly back and waiting for someone to come and save them when things go bad, but to make the effort themselves to set things right. According to Lewis, that, and faith in what you believe in, are an unbeatable combination.

While the movie version of Prince Caspian makes passing reference to believing and having faith, it's done through showing the opposite traits in characters; impatience, questioning, and losing faith; rather than any positive demonstrations of belief. The various side plots introduced for the movie; turning the Telmarins into refugees from 15th century Italy, complete with thick, and in some cases bad, Italian accents, a rivalry between Peter and Caspian, an extra battle, and added in action sequences that hadn't existed in the book, might fill up screen time, but they do nothing to advance the main themes of the story.

In the book, when the four children land in Narnia, Caspian had blown the horn that summoned them after he and his forces had suffered a defeat at the hands of his uncle's army. Like in the movie the children meet up with the character of Trumpkin the dwarf (Peter Dinklage and he guides them to Caspian. However, in the book, while on the way to meeting Caspian the five of them meet up with Aslan. He sends Peter, Edward, and Trumpkin off to meet with Caspian, while he and the two girls travel through Narnia waking the tree and river spirits and generally reviving the magic of the country. It's a beautiful journey that reminds the reader of all that is wild, exciting and beautiful about Narnia and makes Aslan real to us. What we are given in the movie instead of this is the extra battle scene, which might make for excitement, but does little to weave the spell of magical beauty that the book or the first movie did.

After watching the movie I was left with a feeling of disquiet, like something wasn't quite right. For although the acting was in general as good as that in the first movie, if not even better (aside from the silly Italian accents every Telmarine has to speak with), the creatures were every bit as believable as they were as before, and the cinematography just as lush and gorgeous, it wasn't anywhere near as satisfying to watch as The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. It was like the difference between eating a fast food meal, and one that somebody had worked at for hours preparing for you. They both fill you up, but only the latter has the intangibles that make it satisfying to both body and soul.

If you only are interested in watching an exciting action and adventure movie, than The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian won't disappoint you. However, if you were hoping for something a little more, something that would capture the same feeling of lightness and delight that you felt from the first movie or from reading the books, you won't find it here. Narnia is a magical country where we can go and remind ourselves of the meaning of faith and belief, no matter what it is we believe in personally. Prince Caspian, the movie, takes place in a far different Narnia, and is the worse for it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:02 AM | Permalink

There is something very odd going in on Canada this week, Canadian politics are exciting. Normally politics in Canada is about as predictable as watching paint dry, you know what the result is going to be well in advance no matter how much anyone says otherwise. So what's been going on over the past week, and what will come to a head in another week's time on Monday December 8th, is really quite incredible as its something that has almost never happened before in Canadian history.

For the first time since WW1 and Prime Minister Robert Borden's war time Union government made up members of both his Conservative Party and Wilfred Laurier's Liberal Party, Canada is looking at the very real possibility of a coalition government running the country. Led by the Liberals, as they have the second largest number of representatives in the House of Commons, it would also include the left leaning New Democratic Party (NDP). Although the Bloc Quebecois, the Quebec nationalist party, would not be part of the coalition, they have all ready made it clear that they would be willing to vote with them on important issues.

What's that you say, what about the guys who won the election on October 14th (2008)? While it's true the Conservative Party of Canada won the largest amount of seats in the last election, as everyone predicted they didn't elect enough Members of Parliament to have an outright majority in the House of Commons. Under these circumstances the government can lose votes in the House of Commons without any serious ramifications except in the case of a vote on fiscal matters or what is known as a vote of Non-Confidence.

Under normal circumstances when a government loses in either of these situations they would be forced to dissolve parliament and call an election because they are no longer able to govern. However, there is also the option that the opposition parties can go to the Governor-General of Canada, The Queen's representative, and ask her permission to form the government without a new election being called. Canada is a constitutional monarchy with the Queen of England being our titular head of state. Both her role and the role of the Governor-General are strictly ceremonial and they are not allowed to refuse a legitimate request by the opposition to form a coalition government.

How these circumstances came about is last week Prime Minister Steven Harper's government introduced a fiscal package to the House of Commons that was what they called the first stage of their solution to help steer Canada through the upcoming financial crises. Instead of offering ways of stimulating the economy they have proposed a series of spending cuts and taking away civil servants right to strike. The opposition parties were so upset by this that they made it clear they would not support the bill, which means that the government would go down to defeat on a fiscal matter, necessitating an election. Knowing full well the opposition wouldn't force an election so soon after the last one, the government refused to back down, probably not believing that the three opposition parties could set aside their differences and form a coalition.

One of the major stumbling blocks towards forming the coalition is the question of who would be the Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal party, as they are just beginning the process of replacing the man who led them into the last election Stephane Dion. While he is still the leader of the party, the leader of the NDP, Jack Layton, had made it clear that he would not agree to any deal that made Dion Prime Minister. As the vote on the fiscal package is imminent the Liberals don't have time to hold a leadership convention, so they will have to pick someone from among the caucus to be leader. The question is whether or not the candidates running for the leadership would be willing to allow one of their number to become interim leader, and Prime Minister.

Initially the Conservative Party was going to hold the vote on this coming Monday, December 1st/08, but when they saw the way the wind was blowing they put it off until December 8th. They hope to use the coming week to convince the people of Canada that the rightfully elected government is being hijacked and to sway opinion against the coalition. Unfortunately the extra week will also give the Liberals and the NDP the opportunity to figure out a way to make it work. If the Liberals are able to appoint a new leader in that time, probably Michael Ignatieff not only will it satisfy the NDP, but it will also take some of the sting out of the Conservative party's spin against the coalition.

In his speech announcing the delay on the vote Steven Harper challenged the legitimacy of Stephane Dion to become Prime Minister as he has all ready agreed to resign as leader of the Liberal party. If Stephane Dion does remain as leader when the coalition approach the Governor General about forming the government it could mean that Steven Harper and the Conservative Party might not recognize the legitimacy of the new government and be the beginnings of a constitutional crises. Unfortunately for Mr. Harper, constitutional experts say that Governor General Michaelle Jean will have little choice but to give the coalition the chance to form a government as long as they meet certain provisos, even if Stephane Dion remains leader.

According to Louis Massicotte, an expert in government affairs, there is overwhelming cause for not calling a new election under the current circumstances. According to precedent from both British and Canadian parliamentary history whenever a government is defeated during its first sitting there is no election. As long as the three opposition parties, the Liberals, NDP, and the Bloc Quebecois, produce a written agreement guaranteeing support for the coalition and how long it would last, it would be Ms. Jean's duty to accept it so soon after an election.

As of now the NDP and the Liberals are still negotiating and the Conservative party are putting their spin campaign in motion, and the next week promises to be one of the more interesting ones ever in Canadian politics. How it will play out in the end is still anybody's guess, but come Tuesday December 9th/08 there might just be a new government in place without an election being called. I guess we couldn't let the Americans be the only ones to make electoral history this year.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:31 AM | Permalink