http://facethemusicwcbnfm.blogspot.com/

http://shostakovichahiddenvoiceisbest.blogspot.com/

"Poetry is only the result of a given poet's yearning for an 

absolute reality on a level where nothing can succeed but the 

impulses of a great power of intuition combined with an 

extremely acute sense of the most remote connections uniting 

all things." 

- Pierre Reverdy 1924

airing/streaming an hour of old world polkas & mazurkas & such

wednesday november 26th 2014 WCBN 88.3 FM www.wcbn.org

DRIVE TIME POLKA PARTY
Wednesday 8/27/14 from 6-7 PM 

WCBN 88.3 FM www.wcbn.org 8.27.14

Selection of Polkas by Johann Strauss II

Electromagnetic Polka

Op 110

1852

Explosions Polka

{aka Exploding Cotton Wool Polka}

Op 43

1847

Whiplash Polka

Op 60

1848-49

Magic Bullets Polka

{aka Free Balls Polka}

Op 326

1868

Demolition Men Polka

Op 269

1862

Amazons Polka

{may refer to female equestrians}

Op 9

1845

Lawsuit Polka

Op 294

1865

Spleen Polka-Mazurka

Op 197

1857

Singer’s Joy

{for male chorus}

Op 328

1843

Satanella

{adapted from the Satanella ballet}

Op 124

1853

Lucifer Polka

Op 266

1862

Devil of a Fellow Polka

Op 244

1860

Electrophorus Polka

Op 297

1865

Over the Telephone Polka

Op 439

1890

The Dot on the “I” Polka

Op 377

1877

Procession of Masks Polka

Op 240

1860

Hardly ever get to do this show, especially as a 60 minute swath, which only seems to happen in the summertime when students are scarce. Perhaps you recall my infatuation with the waltzes of Johann Strauss II. The same approach was used here, i.e. exercising a preference for the quirkier, funnier and more unusual titles. I worked up somewhat of a Polkabild schematic, and rendered the ramifications down to an hour's worth of mid-to-late 19th century Viennese strata. 

This fellow had a weird sense of humor, and seems to have enjoyed teasing the public with titles that hinted at the "diabolic" nature of dance music. The example that first caught my attention was the "Satanella" polka, apparently based upon a similarly named ballet which dealt with a devilish female who was more worrisomely complicated than Cinderella or Thumbelina, to be sure. I'm also tempted to refer to the Magic Bullets number as the "Lee Harvey Oswald Polka".

Example of the kind of language that has become more prevalent over the past decade, much to my horror and dismay: "There Are Only Four Types of People — Are You Hiring The Right Ones?" Whereas my visceral response contains several words that are conventionally viewed as "obscene", the real obscenity lies within this manufactured pseudo-science of demographic typology. This newly bred brand of pod-people "Professionals" which I will henceforth refer to as "Typos" generate income for themselves by hatching over-generalized rhetoric that fails to address the true challenges that real people face. Race, class, gender and...age group. It's mostly about marketing. I resent the living hell out of this burgeoning industry.

arwulf arwulf 7/15/14

from a discussion regarding traditional blues music and why it matters so deeply to some folks:

Us kids in Ann Arbor who worked the Blues & Jazz festivals in the early 1970s really got it right between the ears. Hanging out with One String Sam when I was sixteen provided what was for me unprecedented context, up close. The music has to make sense to your heart, and we still have a lot of cultural fissures in the body politic. If, for example, blues musicians keep beginning songs with the phrase "I woke up this morning", the words & tones directly reference the fact that harsh realities are especially challenging when encountered before the dawn has finished breaking. Repetition, I've got to point out, can be an extremely powerful tool. Say things twice or thrice and make sure that maybe--hopefully--the message is getting across. That to me is the kernel of the familiar formula.

I've reviewed a lot of CD compilations packed with 78 rpm recordings that were never intended to be heard one after the next, but rather as a single platter with one song on each side. What I realized one afternoon was that 24 songs sounding remarkably alike may be understood as verses in one piece lasting at times more than one hour. It's a ritual, not necessarily entertainment, although some rituals or parts therein may trigger something like what we understand as a sense of being entertained. In a larger way, if a whole lot of people are all singing what sound like similarly stated verses to the same song, to me that indicates that the ritual has expanded exponentially, and frankly that fills me with hope. But not everybody is going to tap into this.