Jazzy D's Soul Notes

'Ukraine's guerrilla warfare could topple Putin' - Mark Galeotti on Russia's invasion



When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 the West had a historic opportunity to form a close and friendly relationship with Russia. As Russian tanks roll into Ukraine, the question becomes: what went wrong? To discuss the history behind the current invasion Steven Edginton is joined by Russian expert Mark Galeotti in the latest Off Script podcast.

This analysis was fascinating and to be spot on.

I have been listening to some Pete Seeger and some blues and old-timey music and I found this documentary via youtube.

Alan Lomax. "Appalachian Journey" (1991)




Between 1978–85, the great American folklorist and musicologist Alan Lomax revisited his old song-hunting grounds, the Deep South and South West, with a PBS film crew to make a television series called American Patchwork. It finally aired in 1991, using only a fraction of the 400 hours of footage. Now, a selection of this material – interviews, songs, and dances by farmers, railwaymen, blues singers, and tall-tale spinners – have been made available, in true Lomax spirit, to all. Not via some luxurious DVD box set, but on an open-access YouTube channel dedicated to his work. The channel has been set up by the Association for Cultural Equity, the charitable organization set up by Lomax in 1983, and which now preserves and promotes the legacy of its founder, who died in 2002.

An unorthodox portrait of Reagan’s America is revealed through these short outtakes. In the era of movies like Tron and Back To The Future, here is a world of music – a Sacred Harp weeping prayer, Clyde Maxwell’s wood-chopping holler, Joe Savage’s Texan blues, the wonderfully wiry coal miner and union activist Nimrod Workman – largely unchanged since Lomax was visiting Parchman Farm with his father in the 1930s; only the backdrops and interiors have modernized. There are surprises, too, such as Chester Zardis’s fluent jazz bass solo.

As well as these clips, which are being daily added, the channel is hosting older rarities, such as the evocative 16-minute documentary To Hear Your Banjo Play from 1947, narrated by Pete Seeger. Brownie McGhee, Woody Guthrie, and Seeger himself appear in the film, which relates the banjo’s history, first as an African survival made with gourds and possum skins, then as the 20th-century accompaniment to hoedowns, spirituals, and field hollers. There are also outtakes from Lomax’s film The Land Where The Blues Began, and a wonderful episode of Boston TV’s Screening Room, a 1975 arts program where he showed his film Dance And Human History and began to elucidate the questions about the similarities and differences in cultures that would mushroom into his weighty theories of Cantometrics in the last years of his life.

An underrated singer and songwriter and that deserves a reappraisal.

The Lost Genius of Judee Sill (BBC Radio Documentary, 2014)



"Ruth Barnes delves into the extraordinary story of the musician Judee Sill.

The first act signed to David Geffen's Asylum Records in the early 1970s, Judee Sill produced two astonishingly beautiful albums in her lifetime.

Seemingly emerging from the Laurel Canyon scene, her music wove a diverse tapestry of influences - from gospel piano to Bach, rhythm and blues to country, forty-part vocal harmonies blending into piano ballads...

So why did Judee Sill disappear from view? Ruth Barnes traces Judee's peculiar life story - hearing tales of armed robberies, reform school and addiction, alongside musical invention and heartstopping songs.

With contributions from family, friends, lovers and devotees of her music including JD Souther, XTC's Andy Partridge, Jim Pons, Tommy Peltier and 'Whispering' Bob Harris.

This is very worrying - the rise of Neo-Nazis across the world - BBC Radio 4 (File on 4)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k9br

Last year, a 16-year-old boy from Durham became the youngest person ever convicted of planning a terrorist attack in the UK, spurring reporter Daniel De Simone to delve deeper into this shadowy world.

Police say right-wing extremism is the fastest growing terrorist threat - and that the coronavirus pandemic may be leaving teens vulnerable to radicalisation.

As he investigates the movement, Daniel reveals the inner-workings of these militant extreme right-wing groups who seek to spark a race war and destroy society. Working with investigative journalists in the US and Russia, he tracks down some of the movement’s most extreme and influential men.

Last night I watched Spelling The Dream on Netflix.
Without no acceptation of what I would expect from this documentary and what might be elided I was pleasantly engrossed in it. These spelling competitions are probably catnip to documentarians and might have been for some time, but this one takes an unusual angle by probing the question as to why Indian- American kids have been national spelling bee champions for the last 12 years. Some of the factors suggested that as Indian kids tend to be multilingual, that includes both English and Hindi as well as less know Indian languages such as Telugu,  helps them to be whiz-kids (sorry for the pun) at spelling.

I also noticed that their grasp of prefixes, suffixes and the roots of words also garnered them to achieve such high degrees of vocabular heights.

Fascinating documentary though.

This is aa fascinating documentary of Doctor who during the wilderness years when it was off the air.

Dr Who Review - The Wilderness Years & The Paul McGann Era

Well, it is now midday here in sunless Ospringe. The surprise package from my brother is coming today and not tomorrow now. So I am here waiting for arrival from Amazon. I had plans to pop out into town but that is now on hold. I have three items to post but they can be done tomorrow. Meanwhile, I have been reading and watching a fascinating interview with Joni Mitchell at seventy. The discussion was posted in three parts on YouTube.


Joni Mitchell on the "Failure of the Baby Boomers"

More of the post-punk band from Macclesfield - up north to you southerners.



Although I an a Sumner I bear no relationship with Bernard Sumner of the band. Drat!

This is why I love jazz - its rhythmic complexity -

The most feared song in jazz explained

It is a punting shame that Shada, written by Douglas Adams of Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy fame ,the lost TV episodes of Doctor Who never got aired,as mentioned in this fascinating documntary .. and i did like Lalla Ward as Romana!

Taken Out Of Time (The Making And Breaking Of Shada)