I'm sitting here singing "All God's critters got a place in the choir" and suddenly I can't because I'm crying and I don't know why. I don't know what this song ever did to me ( Read more... )

These Ukrainian ladies singing a song together ( Read more... )

Last night and the night before I had almost a normal amount of sleep. I read somewhere that an important part of falling asleep is the body temperature dropping, and I had a moment of clarity. Post-surgical insomnia is quite possibly probably maybe at least partly a bit due to the body's temperature being a bit elevated for healing purposes! So I ( Read more... )

The Daily Bleed by Auntie Dave has an email service my father connected me to a million years ago. Every day it sends a list of birthdays, death days, other events, and cool quotations. I don't usually get around to reading it but today the subject line was "Citizen Kafka" and that was intriguing because I had never heard of kafka referred to that ( Read more... )

I told myself that I would return to not-Poland in March, and I have, armed with the realization that there are several stories in there and I need tell only one or two of them in any particular volume ( Read more... )

I'm listening to this recording of a late concert by the New Lost City Ramblers. There's a little raucous song called "Brown Skin Gal" and the commentary goes sort of lkike this: "You tell them about this song, Mike, because I don't understand it." And Mike Seeger says he doesn't know anythiung about it either except he got it off a man in ( Read more... )

There's this shanty I have heard a few times. It has Mexico in it, and it's not "Away Santa Anna," or "The Plains of Mexico," or "Round the Bay of Mexico." It's beautiful. It's slow, kind of like those, or "Bound for the Rio Grande." (which apparently refers to Rio Grande del Sur in Brazil, not Rio Grande del Norte in Mexico -- which I thought was ( Read more... )

1. Tonight's favorite: Taraf de Haïdouks, Romani-Romanian band. I shouldn't have to tell you not to read the comments, but of course I did, and now I know thatr there are people who are unable to parse "Romani-Romanian" in four languages, and also that for some people the important thing about this music is that Romanians should actgually be called ( Read more... )

1. Now I know what a musette de cour is. It is ridiculously cute and you can find them playing Vivaldi on Youtube. Also this painting of a dandy playing one, all clothed in velvet and silks (both the man and the musette ( Read more... )

I'm listening to Lead Belly this afternoon. I've found some songs I hadn't heard before and some that I had forgotten about or never knew the words to. I decided I wanted to examine the lyrics to "Whoa Back Buck." I had to search more than ten sites before I found the lyrics to the recording I was listening to. All the other sites had some ( Read more... )