drone life 5: Chicago alderman proposes using drones for students' safe passage to school

Yes, seriously, Chicago Alderman George Cardenas proposed this.

And the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International chimed in, saying that 'drones can be a boon to law enforcement agencies by keeping officers out of dangerous situations, helping with search and rescue missions, responding to natural disasters and saving on the bottom line. The group claims drones can operate for as little as $25 to $75 per hour, which is far less than the $400-per-hour cost of using a manned helicopter.' And -- “The technology could certainly be used to help keep children safe. Importantly, however, it is up to local leaders to determine whether this is an appropriate use in their community," according to AUVSI spokeswoman Melanie Hinton.

One wonders whether Mayor Rahm Emmanuel might not be in favor, since all the school closings that his administration mean that many school children who going to new schools will have to cross gang boundaries and to be "in the line of fire."

drone life 4: Seymour Hersh

"Like killing people, how does [Obama] get away with the drone programme, why aren't we [journalists] doing more? How does he justify it? What's the intelligence? Why don't we find out how good or bad this policy is? Why do newspapers constantly cite the two or three groups that monitor drone killings. Why don't we do our own work?"

Seymour Hersh, to The Guardian, September 27, 2013.

drone life 3: Lynn Hill on "Capacity" (Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd's Holding It Down: The Veterans' Dreams Project)

I learned of this thanks to a tweet of Teju Cole.

As you no doubt know, the great jazz pianist Vijay Iyer just received a prestigious MacArthur Award.

You will find him even more deserving when you learn, as I just have, of his recent release, with Mike Ladd, of Holding It Down: The Veterans' Dreams Project. I've only listened to a few tracks (it came out on September 24) but what I've heard is great. The publicity from Pi Recordings describes the album as follows: "a thought-provoking, sometimes frightening, and ultimately exhilarating combination of music, poetry and song, created from the actual dreams of young veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars." And check out the vid below that introduces the project.



But because I sometimes blog here (not very profoundly) about drones, I was particularly interested in the track "Capacity" (which you can listen to here), featuring the poetry and recollections of Lynn Hill, who worked as a drone operator, firing missiles remotely into Iraq from her base in Las Vegas. "Soft kill," she calls it. It's very powerful stuff.

Here's a section of her poem:

I have a capacity for war. I have a capacity for hate. I have a capacity for insanity. For anger. For lies. 525,600 minutes times 2, before I break into an explosion of thoughts, of insurgents and soft kills, and career moves. Capacity for destruction. Capacity for loss. Capacity for death, violence, nothingness. 24 months of pain and disgust. Actions of my hands accuse me. Guilty, charge. Unclear clear details and shaky intell, but still I pull the trigger. There’s a limit to madness. Gague clocks out at two years, but they serve up poison like entrees at Blueberry Hill. Crazy with a side of numb. It took 63,720,000 seconds to go from me to somebody else. 

And check out the NEA interview with Lynn Hill, where she reflects more on her poetry and her work as a Predator Drone operator.

I have a capacity for war. I have a capacity for hate. I have a capacity for insanity. For anger. For lies. 525,600 minutes times 2, before I break into an explosion of thoughts, of insurgents and soft kills, and career moves. Capacity for destruction. Capacity for loss. Capacity for death, violence, nothingness. 24 months of pain and disgust. Actions of my hands accuse me. Guilty, charge. Unclear clear details and shaky intell, but still I pull the trigger. There’s a limit to madness. Gague clocks out at two years, but they serve up poison like entrees at Blueberry Hill. Crazy with a side of numb. It took 63,720,000 seconds to go from me to somebody else. To change. - See more at: http://arts.gov/audio/lynn-hill#file_audio_default_group_audio_transcript

I have a capacity for war. I have a capacity for hate. I have a capacity for insanity. For anger. For lies. 525,600 minutes times 2, before I break into an explosion of thoughts, of insurgents and soft kills, and career moves. Capacity for destruction. Capacity for loss. Capacity for death, violence, nothingness. 24 months of pain and disgust. Actions of my hands accuse me. Guilty, charge. Unclear clear details and shaky intell, but still I pull the trigger. There’s a limit to madness. Gague clocks out at two years, but they serve up poison like entrees at Blueberry Hill. Crazy with a side of numb. It took 63,720,000 seconds to go from me to somebody else. To change. - See more at: http://arts.gov/audio/lynn-hill#file_audio_default_group_audio_transcript

I have a capacity for war. I have a capacity for hate. I have a capacity for insanity. For anger. For lies. 525,600 minutes times 2, before I break into an explosion of thoughts, of insurgents and soft kills, and career moves. Capacity for destruction. Capacity for loss. Capacity for death, violence, nothingness. 24 months of pain and disgust. Actions of my hands accuse me. Guilty, charge. Unclear clear details and shaky intell, but still I pull the trigger. There’s a limit to madness. Gague clocks out at two years, but they serve up poison like entrees at Blueberry Hill. Crazy with a side of numb. It took 63,720,000 seconds to go from me to somebody else. To change. - See more at: http://arts.gov/audio/lynn-hill#file_audio_default_group_audio_transcript

PS: Vijay Iyer's 2003 collaboration with Mike Ladd, In What Language?, is also terrific.

Orient-Institut Studies 2 (2013) - Inverted Worlds: Cultural Motion in the Arab Region

Volume 2 of Orient-Institut Studies (put out by the Orient-Institut Beirut and the Orient-Institut Istanbul) recently came out (the journal is published only online). It's the Proceedings of the Conference, "Inverted Worlds: Cultural Motion in the Arab Region," Beirut, October 4–8 2012. I've not had time to do more than skim some of the articles, but they are all about the Arab uprisings and culture. Since my main area of interest is music, I thought these essays seemed particularly interesting:

Yves Gonzalez-Quijano: Rap, an Art of Revolution or a Revolution in Art?

Ines Dallaji: Tunisian Rap Music and the Arab Spring: Revolutionary Anthems and Post-Revolutionary Tendencies

Stephan Procházka: The Voice of Freedom: Remarks on the Language of Songs from the Egyptian Revolution 2011

Simon Dubois: Street Songs from the Syrian Protests

Nader Srage: The Protest Discourse: The Example of “Irhal” (Go/Get Out/Leave)

And there are more articles on graffiti, poetry, jokes and more. All the articles are online. Please check it out.

more kufiyaspotting: Main Attrakionz

Main Attrakionz are a rap duo from Oakland, California, 

well known players in the "cloud rap" rap subgenre.

And they seem to really like kufiyas. In all the colors.

drone life 2: NYPD drones

In December 2012 the NYPD arrested the artist Essam Attia for posting 100 posters around the city suggesting that New York's finest were using drones to control crime. In particular, given the image, it intimates a targeting of the undocumented. (The image of the fleeing family is lifted from a warning sign developed by the California Department of Transportation to warn drivers, on I-5 north of San Diego, that illegal immigrants might be crossing.)

The posters also are riffing on a current iPod add seen around town:

Just a month after Attia was arrested, CBS News reported that the NYPD might be considering using drones in its crimefighting efforts.

A year earlier, anti-war activists in the city, led by a US army vet who had worked with drones during two tours in Iraq, were posting signs saying: “Attention, authorized drone strike zone.”

Stay tuned...

Esther Ofarim does Scott Walker

I posted previously about Esther (born Esther Zaied, in Safad) and Abi Ofarim, their 1968 #1 hit "Cinderella Rockafella," and the fact that Esther's parents were Syrian Jews.

This is just a footnote. But a beautiful one.

It's Esther who performs Scott Walker's "Long About Now" on his 1970 album, 'Til the Band Comes In. As Dangerous Minds (where I learned about the recording) tells us, she really kills it.

Why did an Israeli singer, best known for a novelty song, do a guest vocalist on a Scott Walker album?! According to Dangerous Minds, the lyrics were just too much for him to sing. And -- his manager at the time was the Israeli Ady Semel, who also managed Esther and Abi. Strange convergence. And yet, what a result. Here's Esther doing the song live on the Rolf Harris Show in 1970. (Yeah, that Rolf Harris, who recorded "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport" 1959, and in 2013 was charged with child sexual assault. His show ran on BBC1 from 1967-74.)



The album, 'Til the Band Comes, was a commercial and critical flop. But as you know, Scott Walker's reputation has been growing and growing since the mid-eighties, and he is now considered an important experimental and avant-garde artist. A far cry from his pop days as part of the Walker Brothers, and this 1966 hit (the one I remember the best, as it was #1 in England -- and I lived in Lebanon and therefore it was the UK charts that we had best access to.) (Scott is on the right.)

Rai rebels redux: Khaled flees homosexual-friendly France for the warm embrace of the Moroccan monarchy

Back in June, it was announced that the King of Rai, Khaled, rai's legendary "bad boy" would be decamping France for Morocco. He and his wife Samia (a Moroccan citizen) had decided do so after France legalized gay marriage, and for the sake of the proper moral education of his children.

In August, a royal decree granted Khaled Moroccan citizenship, and King Mohammed IV (towards whom the rai singer has expressed his friendship and admiration) went so far as to give Khaled a villa on the Saâdia coast.

 Rebel, indeed. (See my 2010 post on Khaled here.)

Andalusian music responsible for the fall of Arab Spain, says the Imam of Zeitouna mosque (Tunisia)

In fact, Cheikh Houcine Laabidi put it this way, according to Tuniscope (14 September, 2013): reckoning that the Arabs were too preoccupied by their music, he argued that malouf (the brand of Andalusian music played in Tunisia) had contributed to the fall of the Islamic state of Andalusia. It seems he was exercised by the fact that Tunisian national television had broadcast concerts by the Tunisian malouf artist Zied Gharsa.

Malouf is the 'classical' Andalusian tradition as it is done in both Tunisia and in the city of Constantine in Algeria, and it is said to originate from Seville. Cheikh Raymond Leyris was a famous Jewish Algerian malouf practitioner from Constantine.

Here is Zied Gharsa:



PS (added September 25): This post got tweeted and a gentleman from Constantine commented that malouf is played throughout the Maghreb, not just Constantine. So I should clarify: Andalusian music is played throughout the Maghreb and malouf is the name for the Tunisian and Constantine variant. Elsewhere it's known variously as hawzi, gharnati, andalusi...

Arabic Elements in Palestinian Yiddish

Don't you really, really want to read this book? I'm about too, soon. Amazingly, it is in the University of Arkansas library (it's part of the Kenneth L. Brown collection), and I just reserved it. If I find time, I will report back.

Tehran Street Style

This is a lovely photo album of 'street style' in Tehran. Mostly women. If it's "street," however, it's definitely uptown and not downtown. Here's a sample.

Get this: Mutamassik's newly remastered "That Which Death Cannot Destroy." Free!

photo: Morgan Craft

In case you don't already know how cool Mutamassik is, The Wire is promoting this. That enough for ya?

About the recording, Mutamassik sez: "It still 'cannot be bought or sold' and I'm playing all the instruments, again, as opposed to sampling ghosts of my ancestors whose names I did not even know."

Here's the link to The Wire, which will link you to the downloads.

I don't, alas, have time to review the release, but I did review her album, Masri Mokkassar: Definitive Works here.

Battle of Algiers Mambo

If you've seen The Battle of Algiers, you of course remember the famous scenes when the two young Algerian women, dressed up to look like évoluées, plant bombs in a milk bar and a bar. The scene is based on historical fact. On September 30, 1956, the FLN militant Zohra Drif planted a bomb at the Milk Bar, which, according to Raphaël Draï (Le pays d'avant, 2008, Paris, p. 228), was one of the most popular hang-outs for young Europeans, as well as young bourgeois Arab women. Samia Lakhdari planted her bomb at L'Otomatic, the most popular student bar of Algiers.

The song playing on the jukebox, according to Draï (at L'Otomatic, I think he means, but it's not clear) was a mambo that was all the rage, from the 1954 film starring Sophia Loren, La Donna Del Fiume (known as La Fille du fleuve in French, Woman of the River in English). Draï doesn't tell us what his source is for this fact.

Perhaps it was this one, from a scene in the film which features the sultry dancing of Loren. I have not been able to identify the title or the artists.



The video identifies the song as "Mambo Bacan," but clearly that's not what it is. This is "Mambo Bacan," sung by Sophia Loren, and also from the movie soundtrack.

I've blogged previously about the song playing in the milk bar in The Battle of Algiers, when the bomb goes off. If you read the comments for the post, you will find that the song is identified as "Rebecca," and that it's by The Chakachas. You can listen here. It's a cha-cha-cha.

On Bob Azzam's "Mustapha" (a.k.a. "Ya Mustapha")

From Michel Launay's great book, Paysans Algériens: La Terre, La Vigne et Les Homme (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1963). He is describing what he considers the negative effects of what he calls "double culture" (French, Algerian) on the small group of educated in the arrondissement of Aïn Témouchent, in the late fifties and early sixties. He writes, on p. 381:

J'ai écouté, pendant l'été 1962, de navrantes conversations, où des titulaires du B.E.P.C. [Brevet d'Études du Premier Cycle], instructeurs scolaires ou autres petits fonctionnaires des villages, trahissaient inconsciemment leur egoïsme et leur futilité. L'exemple de leurs dirigeants qui s'entre-déchiraient n'était qu'une excuse: s'ils critiquaient alors l'A.L.N. [Armée de Libération Nationale], c'était non pas parce qu'elle avait déçu le peuple, ce qui était le cas, mais parce qu'elle interdisait les surprise-parties et les boissons alcoolisées. Pour d'autres «intellectuels» du même type, mais amoureux du Caire, la culture arabe es symbolisée par les disques et les films de cet «Hollywood d'Orient». La chanson Mustapha en synthétise l'ineptie.

To summarize, these "intellectuals" were characterized by egoism and shallowness, they were critical of the Algerian liberation movement because it forbade "surprise parties" and alcohol, they were enamored of the music and cinema of Cairo, and, what summed up their absurd position was: "Mustapha."

Here is Bob Azzam's famous and much beloved song (also known as "Ya Mustapha"). Notice how it modulates between Western and Oriental modes (more than 30 years before Khaled's "Didi," which does the same thing).

And here's an article on the song, and Azzam, from Time magazine. Note all the punning. (Such punning was revived in media coverage of the world music phenomenon in the 1980s, and it continues til today.)

Most Happy Fellah
Time, Monday, May 30, 1960

"It has a wiggly-hipped, exotic beat that sounds part Latino, part Arab. When the song is played at Geneva's tonier-than-thou Chez Maxim's, aging bankers and their young girl friends go into curious convulsions on the dance floor; at least one U.N. functionary has been known to snatch up a tablecloth, wrap it around his waist and do a belly dance. In Paris the tune tumbles endlessly from Left Bank students' rooms; chefs abandon soufflés to hear it. From Stockholm to Sorrento, Bandleader Bob Azzam's Mustapha has spread like a rampaging fungus, is the biggest European juke and nightclub tune since Volare.

Tomato Sauce. Like 37-year-old Azzam himself—who was born in Cairo, lives in Geneva, drives a Chevrolet station wagon and speaks five languages—the song is a hybrid, Eurafrican polyglot. Written in French, Italian and Arabic, its lyrics may have been found in a Babel café:

Chérie, je t'aime, Chérie, je t'adore,
Como la salsa del pommodore.
Ya Mustapha, ya Mustapha
Ya baheback, ya Mustapha.
Sabaa senine fel Attarine,
Delwati guina Chez Maxim's . . .

All this is, more or less, the story of a fellah who once lived in the Cairo slum of Attarine [sic: Attarine is in Alexandria, not Cairo, and is more middle class than slum], is now at Chez Maxim's (where Bandleader Azzam himself hit the big time), and adores his girl "like tomato sauce" (salsa del pommodore in Azzam's pidgin Italian). But the words do not matter. They merely complement the international melody, which tinkles like goat bells near the White Nile and clicks like the heels of an Andalusian gypsy. Scored by Azzam for bongos, flute, tambourine, echo chamber and his own voice, Mustapha is adapted from an Egyptian student song, but owes much of its popularity to electricity. When he plays the song at nightclub engagements or recording sessions, onetime Electrician Azzam surrounds himself on the bandstand with an impressive bank of hi-fi equipment, places a microphone before each member of his five-man combo, whirls dials feverishly to doctor their output as it blends in the echo chamber, before a final electric impulse sends it shivering through the audience.

Fox-Oriental. Bob Azzam learned his electronics in the British Royal Navy, set up his own business after World War II, may have been discouraged by the outcome of his biggest contract, the complete wiring job for a pair of 200-room palaces belonging to Saudi Arabia's Premier Feisal. Azzam worked for a year, putting in everything from air conditioning to electric-eye doors, but had trouble collecting bills and ended up without a profit. Turning to music, he organized a combo and began picking up engagements around the Levant, hit it biggest in Lebanon with his "slow rocks," "fox rocks" and boleros.

The band caught the last ship when the Lebanese civil war broke in 1958. In less than two years, Azzam & Co. had driven the Continent wild on Mustapha's "fox-oriental" mixture. From then on, every thing was pure tomato sauce."

Bob Azzam was a Christian, born in Egypt to Lebanese parents in 1925, died in Monaco in 2004. He enjoyed a long career in Europe and the Mediterranean more broadly. He's a kind of Egyptian version of Charles Aznavour or Tino Rossi, or maybe the best analogy is Dalida. Here's an account of the song, which seems not to have originated with Azzam, although he did copyright it and make it huge. And the wikipedia take. Here is a post on Azzam by a Swede, Matts Werner, who was friends with Azzam. (Use google translate, if you don't know Swedish. Azzam was a hit in Sweden too.)

Some claim that this guy, the Turkish-Jewish singer Dario Moreno, did the original, but who knows. In any case, this version is a great deal of fun. I love it when it shifts into big-band gear.

Azzam did two other well-known songs with a strong Middle East flavor, "Ali Baba Twist," and "Fais Moi Le Couscous." ("Habibi Rock" and "Shish Kebab" are great fun too.)

At the time of nationalist struggles, the kind of cosmopolitan culture that "Mustapha" represented was very much frowned upon by nationalist militants, with whom Launay is in sympathy. Now we tend to look upon it with more favor, and sympathy.

Cheikha Rimitti record jacket

This is from toukadime's instagram account, which is fabulous.

This of course is not a photo of the Cheikha. It was common for recording companies in Algeria to put photos of European-looking models on the jacket when it came to marketing female singers, and it became even more common to market female artists this way when cassettes replaced vinyl.

This one might actually depict Cheikha Rimitti. But I'm not sure.

And you can hear that song, "Ya Nafrah L'kssida" here, again, courtesy toukadime. (He doesn't give us the date of release.)

Cheikha Rimitti, Charrak Gataa‘

I previously posted on this song (usually translated as "Tear, Cut" or "Tear, Lacerate,") recorded in 1954, arguing that the claim that the song was an unambiguous call on young Algerian women to abandon their virginity.

I've been searching for (a) a good transcription of the lyrics and (b) a translation. I went back to the task today and discovered that there are (at least) two versions of the song.

First, there is this version, released on Pathé in 1954, which is 6:07 long.

And, there is this version, which is 3:42 long.

The shorter version is one found on this CD, released by L'Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, from a series of concerts Rimitti gave at the IMA in February 1994.

I found this translation here, which I've fixed just a bit, but it still doesn't make sense in a lot of places. It's a bit of a mess in fact. I will come back to it shortly, I hope, but in the meantime inshallah someone will see this and help me out!

Lacère, déchire 

lacère, déchire 

lacère, déchire  

la figure Rimitti revient

lacère, déchire 

j'ai déchirer droit sur le coté

la la la la la la

la route de Blida est loin

et nous prenons une taxi

route de Blida route de Blida

regardez moi ils m'ont demander de payer

lacère, déchire 

la figure de Rimitti est de retour

fais comme ci comme ça comme hier a l'hotel

comme hier sur le lit (bis) 

Ya ya ya

l'amour dans nos yeux chez les faikine

l'amour ya l'amour l'amour

retournade retournade retournade

retournade retournade fait le fort a celui qui le desir

l'amour ya l'amour l'amour

dix bagards est compagnon me devore

faiseur d'histoire nous envoyer des belle colombe

lacère, déchire lacère, déchire lacère, déchire 

lacère, déchire l'ombre de Rimitti reapparait

More later...

Dalida in kufiya

The great French singing star, born in Shubra, Cairo, Egypt. I have no idea what the source of this photo is, or when or where it was taken. But I love it.

And just for good luck, here's Dalida as Iolanda, singing "Desiderio di un'ora" in the 1954 Egyptian film Sigara wa ka's (A cigarette and a glass). She is making Hoda (Samia Gamal) jealous as hell.

Mahragan in Beirut (Sadat and DJ Amr 7a7a)

 (The Daily Star/Hasan Shaaban)

Sadat and Amr 7a7a made a "surprise" appearance at the Home Works 6 forum on May 15 in Beirut. "Unassailably cool," writes Jim Quilty in The Daily Star.

Read more about Home Works and mahragan here.

Madonna in kufiya

I posted a photo of Madonna in a kufiya back in 2010, along with a note on the scene in early 80's New York City that might have produced her accessory choice. It wasn't a very good photo. Now, at last, I've located a much, much better one, via pinterest. Check it out.

Badu, Badu

Do you think Erykah is wearing a pink kufiya in this photo, used to announce The Beat Tape Vol. 2 from her project The Cannabinoids? Which, by the way, you really should grab and listen to. Try Vol. 1 too.