Aux Résistances - Noun Ya

Aux Résistances est un album magnifique. Les talents de Yann Pittard et Naissam Jalal se mèlent pour créer Noun Ya, aboutissant à une création minimale et merveilleuse au même temps. Il est domage qu'il n'y aie plus de matériel sure le site Myspace du duet et qu'on ne trouve l'album que chez des marchands japonais.

Heureusement, on a youtube:

Soul of Morocco - Oum

This is a great album. You can download it for free here. Let me just put this production in context: Oum is a Saharawi woman who sings modern music in the Moroccan dialect (and in Amazigh) instead of doing covers of 1,000 years-old songs in literary Arabic. She also has the courage of showing up to her concerts without a headscarf and with naked arms.

Oum is a testimony that there is still some hope for modernity to arrive in the Middle East.

The Condensed 21st Century Guide to King Crimson - King Crimson

The title of this album is a great description of its contents: in 32 tracks, The Condensed 21st Century Guide to King Crimson presents the band's most representative (commercial?) tracks  throughout its 40+ years of history.

Collectionists and enthusiastic new-listeners are the most obvious constituencies for this album (non-enthusiastic listeners shouldn't even try: King Crimson is something you like or not). With this album, the second group will finally be able to understand what is behind the chaotic and ever-changing style, and will also realize that King Crimson is Robert Fripp's personal project and that's it.

The best review of this album I was able to find is here. A slightly less good review is here.

Les croisades sous le regard de l'Orient - Ensemble al-Kindi & Omar Sarmini

Great album and an even better booklet. I consider this a tribute to the Krak des Chevaliers, partially destroyed in the ongoing Syrian Civil War -the fact that WMD's have been partially removed doesn't mean it's still not over.

Cambio de destino - Jon Juaristi

Jon Juaristi pasó de ser un militante de ETA a un defensor del nacionalismo español que escribió sus memorias, intituladas Cambio de destino poco después de haber sido destituido de la dirección del Instituto Cervantes por el gobierno socialista de Zapatero.

Quise leer Cambio de destino porque alguien me lo recomendó como una lectura adecuada de la situación en España a mediados de la década pasada y porque tengo la certeza de que España dejará de existir en su forma actual en lo que me queda de vida. Escribo esto sin juicios de valor; además, lo que yo piense sobre la existencia o no-existencia de España es lo de menos. Lo que sí es un hecho es que el liderazgo político catalán actual se puso en una posición imposible al poner de golpe la independencia en la agenda política. Cuando Mas y compañía se den cuenta que la cosa no era por ahí y que el debate era eminentemente fiscal, personas más radicales y con más agallas y menos seso coparán la agenda y, una vez las masas encendidas, declararán la independencia. Sic temper tyrannis, y todo eso...

Me gustaría decir que Cambio de destino es una cuidada reflexión del proceso que lleva a una persona de un extremo ideológico al otro, pero no lo es.  En realidad, Cambio de destino es un recuento de personas y personajes que jugaron un papel en los primeros cuarenta y tantos años de la vida de Juaristi. Algunos pasajes resultarán de interés general, pero la mayoría son tan específicos, que sólo resultan provechosos para las personas extremadamente familiares con el conflicto vasco. Mi regla de dedo es que todas las personas que tengan una idea de quién es Jon Kerejeta pueden leer el libro y entenderlo. A ellos también les recomiendo leer esta reseña que toma este libro un poquito más en serio. El resto del mundo puede hacer cosas más provechosas con su tiempo como escuchar esto:

Maronite Chant - Marie Keyrouz & Ensemble de la Paix

Maronite Chant, an album produced by Harmonia Mundi, is presented with this video of Marie Keyrouz and no further introduction:

Liturgies coptes - Ensemble David

Les observateurs occasionnels du Moyen Orient peuvent être excuses de croire que les coptes étaient une minorité respectée jusqu’à la chute de Hosni Mubarak. En réalité, les coptes sont opprimés depuis l’implantation de l’Islam en Egypte et au Soudan. Le pape Chenouda III, chef de l’Église copte a été mis en résidence surveillée entre 1981 et 1985. Plus récemment, le soi-disant « printemps arabe » a résulté dans une série d’attaques contre des églises et personnalités coptes. Un jour, le Monde comprendra que la démocratie et les droits de l’homme, ainsi comme toute autre idée de modernité, ne sont pas compatibles avec le voile Islamique…

Dans ce contexte, l’album Liturgies coptes de l’Ensemble David, production de l’Institut du MondeArabe, est un rappel du danger subi par les communautés coptes au Moyen Orient. 

Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock

When it was released in 1958, Vertigo received mixed critics and barely broke even. In 2012, it replaced Citizen Kane "as the best movie of all time" in the Sight & Sound critics poll. The value of the lists including  the best (or worst) movies is in the eyes of the beholder. The fact is, though, that Vertigo has been rehabilitated since Alfred Hitchcock filmed it.

I found Vertigo slow and excesively long. The plot is quite decent but, as is usually the case in movies, Hitchcock tries to solve everything in the last 15 minutes after 2 hours of forgetable scenes that barely provide any information. I tend to agree with the contemporaneous critics of the movie, which didn't see anything innovative in Vertigo. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find anything online which could help me understand why Vertigo became a cult movie either. For once, Wikipedia didn't provide any useful information, and most of the critiques that I came across on IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes just tell me that I have to choose between liking the movie or feel like an idiot -the critiques that didn't put me in that juncture were spoilers. 

I can only guess that Vertigo is currently considered a masterpiece because professional critics started saying so and then the crowd followed. Vertigo has all the things that critics love about movies: some subtle sexual messages (which go mostly unadverted by modern audiences), a twisted plot, and an amibguous ending. 

The fact that Vertigo is considered a masterpiece is, I guess, one of the reasons you should watch it. But don't expect too much about it.

The Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch - Choir members of churches Saint-George and Saint-Ephraim, Aleppo

As I write, Syria is in the process of being destroyed. A protracted civil war, weapons of mass destruction, and sectarism will likely result in the death of a country. As a graduate student, I spent one of the happiest periods in my life in Syria. By the end of my period there, I had found four good friends who are likely endangered: a Kurd, a Christian, an Alaouite, and a Jewish Armenian. I haven't heard from them since the "Arab Spring" arrived to Syria and I can only hope that they and their families will eventually escape the terror and will find a safe haven.

If Syria survives as a single country, it will be after years, maybe decades of sectarian conflict. At the end, one group will prevail after killing and subjugating all its rivals. As a tribute to the current diversity of Syria, I would like to invite the readers of this blog to listen to The Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch, a production by the coir members of the churches of Saint-George and Saint-Ephraim from Aleppo, which is probably the most Arab and Christian city of the entire country. The album is available here.