Perspectives on information, technology and people
04 October 2022 1230-1345
② watch presenter in Sakai calendar
A French army marching band medleys Daft Punk at the end of the Bastille Day parade, 2017.
It's Bastille Day in France, so what better way to celebrate 1789's violent overthrow of the monarchy than with some French house music — désolé, musique de maison -- arranged for a marching band? ... It's a fun arrangement, and bizarre to see house music played on brass instruments for a bunch of politicians. But maybe the best part is when the older military dignitaries also recognize a song — "Get Lucky," n'est-ce pas? — and cannot for the life of them clap along to the beat. It is all très français.
NPR
back to top
③ read
Muscular Bonding: How Dance Made Us Human
Do we dance simply for recreation? Or is there a primal urge that compels us to do it? Historian William McNeill claims it saved our species by creating community togetherness and transforming “me” into “we.”
back to top
④ ponder presenter in Sakai calendar
Close Order and Close Quarter: The Culture of Combat in the West
John France, The International History Review, Sep 2005, Vol 27, No 3 (Sep 2005), pp. 498-517
Do you see any relationships here between information, technology, and people from an array of disciplinary, professional, cultural, and other orientations?
back to top
⑤ listen presenter in Sakai calendar
a Minha Casa
Cristina Branco, born in 1972, did not start out to be a fado singer, but she has studied the poems from which major fado lyrics are taken and continues to work on her fado repertory, accompanied by Custódio Castelo on guitar and as composer. From the Last.fm entry ...
She grew up far from the fado houses of Lisbon and nothing suggested that she was predestined for the fado. Like almost all young Portuguese born after the revolution of 1974, she was interested in folk music, jazz, blues, bossa nova but not in fado. She regarded it as a genre for a different generation. This lasted until her 18th birthday, when her grandfather gave her the album Rara e Inédita by Amália Rodrigues. Suddenly, Cristina Branco discovered all the emotions that the genre could offer in the close connections that arose among voice, poetry and music. The amateur singer - then studying communication sciences and still full of her ambition to become a journalist - began to develop her vocal technique and to take her new vocation seriously.
back to top
⑥ an unanswered question
Finally, at least one time per session, you all are offered the opportunity to put me on the spot.
What is the "one big question" that the readings posed, but did not answer?
If I can't come up with an answer immediately, I will research it and have it for you at the subsequent session.