But Rose, who goes to sea to study the northern stock, said, "Fishermen are seeing many strange things that are a sign things are not right." The cod have been reaching sexual maturity younger and smaller. Undersized four-year-olds are spawning. This is not surprising. When a species is in danger of extinction, it often starts reaching sexual maturity earlier. Nature remains focused on survival. But Rose also said cod were seen spawning in water temperatures of minus one degree Celsius. Cod are supposed to move to warmer water for spawning. Fishermen keep reporting aberrations, such as fish in an area where they have never been before, or at different depths, or a different temperature, or at a different time of year.
Perhaps even more disturbing, Rose's studies have concluded that the northern stock has stopped migrating. The stock had normally followed a 500-mile seasonal migration, but rose believes that after 1992, the survivors came inshore and stayed. He does not know the reason for this but speculates that bigger, older fish were the leaders and are no longer there to lead. It is also possible that cod migrate because they need food and space for spawning. With the population so reduced, this is no longer necessary.
Whatever steps are taken, one of the greatest obstacles to restoring cod stocks off of Newfoundland is an almost pathological collective denial of what has happened. Newfoundlanders seem prepared to believe anything other than that they have killed off natures bounty. One Canadian journalist published an article pointing out that the cod disappeared from Newfoundland at about the same time that stocks started rebuilding in Norway. Clearly the northern stock had packed up and migrated to Norway.
Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is the natural world, and then there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works in nature does not always appeal to us.
Cod
A Biography of a Fish That Changed the World
Mark Kurlansky
Vintage 1999
Happy Hunting...
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Ingredients
The cast in order of appearence on 'You Flossed the Stars'
when to steer's uncertain
and all objectivity is gone
the only thing to do is run
you want it all you flossed the stars
when to steer's uncertain
and all objectivity is gone
the only thing to do is run
you want it all you flossed the stars
ooooh!
er er er er
aah!
boom boom boom
in his purse he has supernovae
research has shown this is nearly over
Happy Hunting!
when to steer's uncertain
and all objectivity is gone
the only thing to do is run
you want it all you flossed the stars
when to steer's uncertain
and all objectivity is gone
the only thing to do is run
you want it all you flossed the stars
ooooh!
er er er er
aah!
boom boom boom
in his purse he has supernovae
research has shown this is nearly over
Happy Hunting!
Thursday, November 5, 2009
With Mouth Wide Open
The hero, Gadus morhua, is not a nice guy.
It is built to survive. Fecund, impervious to disease and cold, feeding on most any food source, traveling to shallow waters and close to shore, it was the perfect commercial fish and the Basques had found its richest grounds. Cod should have lasted forever, and for a very long time it was assumed that it would. As late as 1885, the Canadian Ministry of Agriculture sad "Unless the order of nature is overthrown, for centuries to come our fisheries will continue to be fertile."
The cod is omnivorous, which is to say it will eat anything. It swims with its mouth open and swallows whatever will fit - including young cod. Knowing this sports fishermen in New England and Maritime Canada jig for cod, a baitless means of fishing, where a lure by its appearance and motion imitates a favorite prey of the target fish. A cod jigger is a piece of lead, sometimes fashioned to resemble a herring, but often shaped like a young cod.
Yet cod might be just as attracted to an unadorned piece of lead. English fishermen say they find Styrofoam cups thrown overboard from Channel-crossing ferries in the bellies of cod.
The cod's greed makes it easy to catch, but the fish is not much fun for sportsmen. A cod, once caught, does not fight for freedom. It simply has to be hauled up, and it is often large and heavy. New England anglers would far rather catch a bluefish than a cod. Bluefish are active hunters and furious fighters, and once hooked, a struggle ensues to reel in the line. But the bluefish angler brings home a fish with dark and oily flesh, characteristics of a midwater fighter who uses muscles for strong swimming. The cod, on the other hand, is prized for the whiteness of its flesh, the whitest of the white-fleshed fish, belonging to the order Gladiforms. The flesh is so purely white that the large flakes almost glow on the plate. Whiteness is the nature of the sluggish muscle tissue of fish that are suspended in the near-weightless environment at the bottom of the ocean. The cod will try swim in front on an oncoming trawler net, but after about ten minutes it falls to the back of the net, exhausted. White muscles are not for strength but for quick action - the speed with which a cod, slowly cruising, will suddenly pounce on its prey.
Cod
A Biography of a Fish That Changed the World
Mark Kurlansky
Vintage 1999
It is built to survive. Fecund, impervious to disease and cold, feeding on most any food source, traveling to shallow waters and close to shore, it was the perfect commercial fish and the Basques had found its richest grounds. Cod should have lasted forever, and for a very long time it was assumed that it would. As late as 1885, the Canadian Ministry of Agriculture sad "Unless the order of nature is overthrown, for centuries to come our fisheries will continue to be fertile."
The cod is omnivorous, which is to say it will eat anything. It swims with its mouth open and swallows whatever will fit - including young cod. Knowing this sports fishermen in New England and Maritime Canada jig for cod, a baitless means of fishing, where a lure by its appearance and motion imitates a favorite prey of the target fish. A cod jigger is a piece of lead, sometimes fashioned to resemble a herring, but often shaped like a young cod.
Yet cod might be just as attracted to an unadorned piece of lead. English fishermen say they find Styrofoam cups thrown overboard from Channel-crossing ferries in the bellies of cod.
The cod's greed makes it easy to catch, but the fish is not much fun for sportsmen. A cod, once caught, does not fight for freedom. It simply has to be hauled up, and it is often large and heavy. New England anglers would far rather catch a bluefish than a cod. Bluefish are active hunters and furious fighters, and once hooked, a struggle ensues to reel in the line. But the bluefish angler brings home a fish with dark and oily flesh, characteristics of a midwater fighter who uses muscles for strong swimming. The cod, on the other hand, is prized for the whiteness of its flesh, the whitest of the white-fleshed fish, belonging to the order Gladiforms. The flesh is so purely white that the large flakes almost glow on the plate. Whiteness is the nature of the sluggish muscle tissue of fish that are suspended in the near-weightless environment at the bottom of the ocean. The cod will try swim in front on an oncoming trawler net, but after about ten minutes it falls to the back of the net, exhausted. White muscles are not for strength but for quick action - the speed with which a cod, slowly cruising, will suddenly pounce on its prey.
Cod
A Biography of a Fish That Changed the World
Mark Kurlansky
Vintage 1999
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Interview in Argus
Expanding the musical horizon October 28, 2009
By Atiyyah Kahn
Righard Kapp and Ramon Galvan are two greatly underrated names on the local music scene.
While not at all similar in sound, they do pose a challenge to anyone comfortable with the idea of "easily digestible music".
Kapp has been playing in bands since high school. Best described as a perfectionist and a conceptualist, he is recognisable by playing a right-handed guitar upside down.
He co-ordinates the annual improvised music festival, On the Edge of Wrong. His earlier musical forays were in ambient guitar music, but he became interested in looping guitars, effects and noise. Once settled in Cape Town, Kapp joined The Buckfever Underground.
On his album Strung Like a Compound Eye, Kapp focuses on acoustic guitar compositions, with a cross-pollination of concepts with artists Ross Campbell, Marcel Van Heerden, Toast Coetzer and Lee Thompson. It is co-produced by producer-engineer Dirk Hugo, whom Kapp compliments: "He really pushed me on areas I needed to work on. He is able to understand abstract concepts and put them into a concrete form."
Galvan is the ex-keyboardist and vocalist for Blackmilk. On hearing his album Outer Tumbolia my reaction was not unlike stumbling upon a secret treasure, as I imagined him hiding in some lair making music in a room full of toys.
His MySpace page describes his music as "guitars trying to sound like kalimbas". Galvan is a self-taught guitarist and has been involved in music since school.
Blackmilk started in the '90s, after sharing a flat with members from Lithium. Galvan says: "I picked up the synthesiser and we made a lot of noise, then we went our separate ways."
The idea of a solo album came about in the early 2000s and Galvan says: "After Blackmilk, I thought about doing something less noisy; more intimate. I taught myself guitar and fiddled around with things like kalimbas and put together a body of work."
Galvan writes songs on guitar, but uses many other instruments - a chandelier, a whistle, a bulbul tarang, an auto-harp and a kraakdoos - to which he shrugs, saying: "Collecting weird instruments is part of my hobby."
Tumbolia refers to the "the land of dead hiccups and extinguished light bulbs". Galvan explains: "It's a reference to where dreams go to when you wake up. There is a sparseness to the album. Some of the songs are strung together with skeletons or ghosts of songs."
Both artists are signed to the Jaunted Haunts Press label, which is headed by Kapp, who also does the artwork for the albums. They spare me a bitch-session about the difficulties of being independent artists and are surprisingly positive about their songs not standing much of a chance of radio play.
Kapp comments: "Radio is a very specific kind of format. They wouldn't playlist it."
In their own ways, these two provide a challenge to the listener, something many musicians don't concern themselves with.
Kapp says: "I think the conversation about challenging music is yet to be started, as there are tons of musicians creating music like this."
Ultimately, it's about educating one's ears and Galvan and Kapp's albums are a good place to start.
By Atiyyah Kahn
Righard Kapp and Ramon Galvan are two greatly underrated names on the local music scene.
While not at all similar in sound, they do pose a challenge to anyone comfortable with the idea of "easily digestible music".
Kapp has been playing in bands since high school. Best described as a perfectionist and a conceptualist, he is recognisable by playing a right-handed guitar upside down.
He co-ordinates the annual improvised music festival, On the Edge of Wrong. His earlier musical forays were in ambient guitar music, but he became interested in looping guitars, effects and noise. Once settled in Cape Town, Kapp joined The Buckfever Underground.
On his album Strung Like a Compound Eye, Kapp focuses on acoustic guitar compositions, with a cross-pollination of concepts with artists Ross Campbell, Marcel Van Heerden, Toast Coetzer and Lee Thompson. It is co-produced by producer-engineer Dirk Hugo, whom Kapp compliments: "He really pushed me on areas I needed to work on. He is able to understand abstract concepts and put them into a concrete form."
Galvan is the ex-keyboardist and vocalist for Blackmilk. On hearing his album Outer Tumbolia my reaction was not unlike stumbling upon a secret treasure, as I imagined him hiding in some lair making music in a room full of toys.
His MySpace page describes his music as "guitars trying to sound like kalimbas". Galvan is a self-taught guitarist and has been involved in music since school.
Blackmilk started in the '90s, after sharing a flat with members from Lithium. Galvan says: "I picked up the synthesiser and we made a lot of noise, then we went our separate ways."
The idea of a solo album came about in the early 2000s and Galvan says: "After Blackmilk, I thought about doing something less noisy; more intimate. I taught myself guitar and fiddled around with things like kalimbas and put together a body of work."
Galvan writes songs on guitar, but uses many other instruments - a chandelier, a whistle, a bulbul tarang, an auto-harp and a kraakdoos - to which he shrugs, saying: "Collecting weird instruments is part of my hobby."
Tumbolia refers to the "the land of dead hiccups and extinguished light bulbs". Galvan explains: "It's a reference to where dreams go to when you wake up. There is a sparseness to the album. Some of the songs are strung together with skeletons or ghosts of songs."
Both artists are signed to the Jaunted Haunts Press label, which is headed by Kapp, who also does the artwork for the albums. They spare me a bitch-session about the difficulties of being independent artists and are surprisingly positive about their songs not standing much of a chance of radio play.
Kapp comments: "Radio is a very specific kind of format. They wouldn't playlist it."
In their own ways, these two provide a challenge to the listener, something many musicians don't concern themselves with.
Kapp says: "I think the conversation about challenging music is yet to be started, as there are tons of musicians creating music like this."
Ultimately, it's about educating one's ears and Galvan and Kapp's albums are a good place to start.
http://www.tonight.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=348&fArticleId=5221239
Also 'Trying to Tell (Summer House)' sample stream available on channel24.co.za
The former front man from avant SA rockers Black Milk channels Scott Walker's Drift on this delicate existential blend of arcane folk and bludgeoning menace. Off his debut solo album, 'Outer Tumbolia'.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Folk II
Folklore definitions vary from country to country, epoch to epoch, scholar to scholar. The American Standard Dictionary of Folklore and Mythology alone offer twenty-one of them. All of them concur that folklore is developed and transmitted by 'the people', but neither dictionaries or professors agree on a meaning of the term that would be the same everywhere, leading Arnold Van Gennep to remark: 'What's the good of worrying about where folklore begins and end when we don't even know what categorises it?' Out of his vast experience, the best the great Belgian folklorist could suggest is that the difficulty is lessened by the kind of intuition scientists acquire though practice, so that just as a numismatist can tell true coins from false from their rough and soapy feel, the folklore specialist may 'instinctively' tell the authentic folk creation from, say the vaudeville song sung in the same company. Fortunately, intuition is not all that is left to us. Still, if musical folklore is a science, experience shows that it is subject to sudden caprices and its delineation is very hard to fix. In 1954, after long discussion, the International Folk Music Council adopted this definition:
Folk music is a product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. the factors that shape the transmission are: (i) continuity, which links the present with the past; (ii) variation, which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.
The term can be applied to music that has evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by contemporary or art music and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of the community.
The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the re-fashioning and the re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk character.
Folk Song in England
A.L. Lloyd
Lawrence & Wishart Ltd 1967
Folk music is a product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. the factors that shape the transmission are: (i) continuity, which links the present with the past; (ii) variation, which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.
The term can be applied to music that has evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by contemporary or art music and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of the community.
The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the re-fashioning and the re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk character.
Folk Song in England
A.L. Lloyd
Lawrence & Wishart Ltd 1967
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Keeping good company on the wire(less)
Playlisted on Pseu Braun's show on 16th Oct on WFMU with the likes of Atlas Sound, Robert Wyatt, Tickley Feather, Sun Araw, Mika Vainio, Dodos and the post This Heat, Flaming Tunes!
Playlist online
Update: Bob W's show played 'No Rest' on same day
WFMU-FM is a listener-supported, non-commercial radio station broadcasting at 91.1 Mhz FM in Jersey City, NJ, right across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. It is currently the longest running freeform radio station in the United States.
The station also broadcasts to the Hudson Valley and Lower Catskills in New York, Western New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania via its 90.1 signal at WMFU in Mount Hope, NY. The station maintains an extensive online presence at WFMU.ORG which includes live audio streaming in several formats, over 8 years of audio archives, podcasts and a popular blog.
Also made an appearance in-studio, some months back on The Unhappy Hour on Bush Radio 89.5 FM. Righard Kapp and me both. We chatted with Toast who was DJ-ing that night, performed live on-air with our acoustic guitars, played some tunes off our respective albums and played songs from our own favorite CD's. Righard played some Tortoise and Andre Van Rensburg and I played some Linda Perhacs and Francis Bebey, but more about him another time...
Playlist online
Update: Bob W's show played 'No Rest' on same day
WFMU-FM is a listener-supported, non-commercial radio station broadcasting at 91.1 Mhz FM in Jersey City, NJ, right across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. It is currently the longest running freeform radio station in the United States.
The station also broadcasts to the Hudson Valley and Lower Catskills in New York, Western New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania via its 90.1 signal at WMFU in Mount Hope, NY. The station maintains an extensive online presence at WFMU.ORG which includes live audio streaming in several formats, over 8 years of audio archives, podcasts and a popular blog.
Also made an appearance in-studio, some months back on The Unhappy Hour on Bush Radio 89.5 FM. Righard Kapp and me both. We chatted with Toast who was DJ-ing that night, performed live on-air with our acoustic guitars, played some tunes off our respective albums and played songs from our own favorite CD's. Righard played some Tortoise and Andre Van Rensburg and I played some Linda Perhacs and Francis Bebey, but more about him another time...
Friday, October 16, 2009
Folk I
What are we to understand by 'folk'? A whole nation, with or without minorities? A single class (the lower class)? A section of that class (country workers)? In those parts of Western Europe and America where class distinctions, thought real enough, are rather blurred, some people, specialists as well as amateurs, have taken 'folk' to mean the nation, all classes, upper, lower, urban, rural, regardless of social, historical or spiritual differences. This was the view of German romantics of the time of Goethe and Herder and with modifications it has gone in and out of fashion several times since (in America at the moment it is rather 'in'). It is a permissible view in the attenuated sense that we are all bearers of some sort of folklore, if only in the form of the dirty story, apparently an indestructible type of oral 'literature'. The trouble is, such a prospect extends too easily to a boundless panorama going beyond all reasonable definition, so that in the field of song for instance any piece that has passed widely into public circulation is identified as 'folk', especially if one can pretend it somehow expresses part of the essential character of the nation. Thus, Silcher and Heine's 'Die Lorelei' is exhibited as folk song, likewise 'The bonnie bank o' Loch Lomond' (words and tune by a Victorian aristocrat, Lady John Scott), Stephen Foster's 'Old folks at home', and more recently with even slederer title, Bob Dylan's 'Blowin' in the wind'. To say nothing of Pottier and Degeyter's 'Internationale'. By this time we are not far from the vague contours suggested by Louis Armstrong's dreary axiom: 'All music's folk music: leastways I never heard of no horse making it.'
Against this broad and hardly manageable 'popular' view of folk song as national song is set the restricted picture offered by several scientists of musical folklore who follow Bartók in considering the term 'folk song' to be synonymous with peasant song, and who maintain that no other part of the nation but working farmers and farm labourers are true shapers and bearers of traditional verse and melody.
It is worth considering how Bartók came to this opinion for his conclusions are paralleled by those of Cecil Sharp, though Sharp's are by no means so firmly based. As a very young man Bartók was among those who thought that national music and folk music were one and the same. In 1896, while he was still in his teens, Hungary celebrated it millennium in a fever of nationalism that lasted for several years. Kodály has described the time. Everything was to be Hungarian not Austro-German: Hungarian words of command in the army, a Hungarian coat of arms on every post office, a Hungarian anthem to replace Haydn's Hapsburg hymn. he young Bartók wore Hungarian costume, then back in fashion, even on the concert platform. In his search for a Hungarian style of composition freed from German influence he was attracted to the verbunkos idiom of of the gypsy orchestras imagining, as Liszt had, that this was folk stuff; whereas in fact the repertory of the gypsy bands is principally made up of fanciful treatments of tunes composed from the mid-nineteenth century onward by educated amateurs of aristocratic or bourgeios birth; and though this kind of light popular air is often taken for Hungarian folk song, the real thing is vastly different, as Bartók discovered when he set off with his long-horned Edison recording machine to collect peasant songs in the Szekely-Hungarian villages of Transylvania
Folk Song in England
A.L. Lloyd
Lawrence & Wishart Ltd 1967
Against this broad and hardly manageable 'popular' view of folk song as national song is set the restricted picture offered by several scientists of musical folklore who follow Bartók in considering the term 'folk song' to be synonymous with peasant song, and who maintain that no other part of the nation but working farmers and farm labourers are true shapers and bearers of traditional verse and melody.
It is worth considering how Bartók came to this opinion for his conclusions are paralleled by those of Cecil Sharp, though Sharp's are by no means so firmly based. As a very young man Bartók was among those who thought that national music and folk music were one and the same. In 1896, while he was still in his teens, Hungary celebrated it millennium in a fever of nationalism that lasted for several years. Kodály has described the time. Everything was to be Hungarian not Austro-German: Hungarian words of command in the army, a Hungarian coat of arms on every post office, a Hungarian anthem to replace Haydn's Hapsburg hymn. he young Bartók wore Hungarian costume, then back in fashion, even on the concert platform. In his search for a Hungarian style of composition freed from German influence he was attracted to the verbunkos idiom of of the gypsy orchestras imagining, as Liszt had, that this was folk stuff; whereas in fact the repertory of the gypsy bands is principally made up of fanciful treatments of tunes composed from the mid-nineteenth century onward by educated amateurs of aristocratic or bourgeios birth; and though this kind of light popular air is often taken for Hungarian folk song, the real thing is vastly different, as Bartók discovered when he set off with his long-horned Edison recording machine to collect peasant songs in the Szekely-Hungarian villages of Transylvania
Folk Song in England
A.L. Lloyd
Lawrence & Wishart Ltd 1967
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