sageofthpalouse (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sageofthpalouse) wrote,@ 2009-08-29 11:57:00 |
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Kannada ... Telugu ... Gujarati ... Tamil ... Malayalam ... English ...
Much anticipated trip to Ashland ... attempting some mini prep for the plays we will see there including Music Man. Powells keeps promising Meredith Willson’s “There I Stood With My Piccolo” as “coming in August.” So far coming only to a website near you, but there’s still time for the book, which sounds funny and droll from the title.
Some light reading on Music Man revealed the origin of the famous Trouble in River City as a long excised section of dialog.
The origins in speech theme impelled me – laterally – to go pick up jazz saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthapa’s recording Mother Tongue. It is a concept album that points up the diversity of languages in India. The tracks are named for some (by no means all!) of India’s major languages. The jazz riffs are based on transcriptions of native speakers’ indignant reactions to the following dumbass question “Do you speak Indian?” or possibly the more incrededibly numbnuts question “Do you speak Hindu?” ... One track of course is “English” and I can imagine the original response: “You are expecting from ignorant Americans what?” or perhaps “Crackah boy, I speakin de Suthin Baptis!”
Mother Tongue ... is a term of art in India where English is the definitive text of law, but to my ear the jazz takeoff is tongue in cheek, like a momma cat pinning a cub and roughly licking it into shape.
If you are actually fortunate enough to come into possession of this remarkable CD, a suggestion: don’t peak at the track listings first. Can you guess which one is “English”? I goofed and missed my chance. It sure does sound English to me, but unfortunately not a hint of River City ... maybe River Ganges.
Did song come before speech? If so, this recording goes to a concept of jazz and its improvisational conversational forms as primal sublimated speech. And “language is fossil poetry” poets might agree. There is that remarkable passage in Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner where the dead sailors come to “life” ... they are mere tools, bodies and spirits without souls, but they are musical. Very cool and creepy.
Now please have mercy on my pedantic little post. It has kept me at rest for a few minutes. The shirked task before me is: cleaning gutters.
Much anticipated trip to Ashland ... attempting some mini prep for the plays we will see there including Music Man. Powells keeps promising Meredith Willson’s “There I Stood With My Piccolo” as “coming in August.” So far coming only to a website near you, but there’s still time for the book, which sounds funny and droll from the title.
Some light reading on Music Man revealed the origin of the famous Trouble in River City as a long excised section of dialog.
The origins in speech theme impelled me – laterally – to go pick up jazz saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthapa’s recording Mother Tongue. It is a concept album that points up the diversity of languages in India. The tracks are named for some (by no means all!) of India’s major languages. The jazz riffs are based on transcriptions of native speakers’ indignant reactions to the following dumbass question “Do you speak Indian?” or possibly the more incrededibly numbnuts question “Do you speak Hindu?” ... One track of course is “English” and I can imagine the original response: “You are expecting from ignorant Americans what?” or perhaps “Crackah boy, I speakin de Suthin Baptis!”
Mother Tongue ... is a term of art in India where English is the definitive text of law, but to my ear the jazz takeoff is tongue in cheek, like a momma cat pinning a cub and roughly licking it into shape.
If you are actually fortunate enough to come into possession of this remarkable CD, a suggestion: don’t peak at the track listings first. Can you guess which one is “English”? I goofed and missed my chance. It sure does sound English to me, but unfortunately not a hint of River City ... maybe River Ganges.
Did song come before speech? If so, this recording goes to a concept of jazz and its improvisational conversational forms as primal sublimated speech. And “language is fossil poetry” poets might agree. There is that remarkable passage in Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner where the dead sailors come to “life” ... they are mere tools, bodies and spirits without souls, but they are musical. Very cool and creepy.
Now please have mercy on my pedantic little post. It has kept me at rest for a few minutes. The shirked task before me is: cleaning gutters.
