Dobby Dobson was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1942 and has been cutting records for almost forty years. His cover of "Carry That Weight" will make any "Top Covers of The Beatles" list. Easily. I hope y'all enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYfuWTj9pFU
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Friday, 10 August 2012
Applied Lessons
This is video from the future showing my good friend Scott and I practicing what we learned in New British Voices after I getting yoked at Gregory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKfxAUFo7xo&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKfxAUFo7xo&feature=player_embedded
Thursday, 9 August 2012
Harrods and women in Burqa
Yesterday I went to Harrods before the Olympics Volleyball game and ended up splurging a little bit in the make up-section (no regrets), but while I was there, I noticed something interesting: Several muslim women, complete with traditional burqa — I don't know if it is still called burqa if it doesn't covers the face. They were dressed in those long, long sleeved black dressed that reveal nothing of their body, and their hairs were completely covered as well — paraded around the department store, modeling their brand glasses and bland handbags. That is all one could see of them, but I bet most of those women were wearing little Channel and Prada dresses underneath their burqas.
I thought those women, your average "posh" muslim women going about their businesses, were interesting because they are supposed to live separated from the word of men, yet they are still every bit as vain as I, dressed in a skirt that reveals my knees (Scandalous!). They still freak out about Louboutin shoes and McQueen dresses, they go into little splurging sprees inside the make-up department, same as me. I other words, doesn't matter how their religions tries to surpress them, women will be women.
And maybe my surprise is do to the fact that you don't really see a lot of "posh"muslim girls in a daily basis, at least not in English, because most of the muslim population in England is impoverished, but I just thought that it was a wonderful thing that even under the constrain of their cultures and religions, those girls I saw at Harrods look the time to look themselves in the mirror and see beauty.
Aside: That made me remember of a scene in Sex and The City... Not my favorite movies, but the way they managed to kind of explain muslim culture in 30 seconds (and the woman in burqa eating fries, which is something I had never pictured before) was really interesting...
I thought those women, your average "posh" muslim women going about their businesses, were interesting because they are supposed to live separated from the word of men, yet they are still every bit as vain as I, dressed in a skirt that reveals my knees (Scandalous!). They still freak out about Louboutin shoes and McQueen dresses, they go into little splurging sprees inside the make-up department, same as me. I other words, doesn't matter how their religions tries to surpress them, women will be women.
And maybe my surprise is do to the fact that you don't really see a lot of "posh"muslim girls in a daily basis, at least not in English, because most of the muslim population in England is impoverished, but I just thought that it was a wonderful thing that even under the constrain of their cultures and religions, those girls I saw at Harrods look the time to look themselves in the mirror and see beauty.
Aside: That made me remember of a scene in Sex and The City... Not my favorite movies, but the way they managed to kind of explain muslim culture in 30 seconds (and the woman in burqa eating fries, which is something I had never pictured before) was really interesting...
Wednesday, 8 August 2012
Kebab Craziness
I love street food. I am unafraid of the potential gastro-intestinal consequences of its consumption and often rate it over haughtier, "finer" cuisine. It's also dirt cheep. Naturally then I made it my duty soon after settling in at Oxford to map the best food carts and street vendors in town.
I spent many a night and early morning hiking (or swaying) in every cardinal direction looking for new roadside restaurants. Hundreds of pounds, tens of miles, and one wacky prostitute encounter later I've made some interesting discoveries:
First: The inverse price-taste principle* still holds up even abroad in a socialist country.
Second: The best food carts are actually in or close to the city center, waiting to poach the loose pockets of drunk Spaniards coming back from the club district.
Thirdly: The only radio station that plays into the wee hours of the night stacks its playlist with the best of the best 80's pop female vocalists.
Lastly: Every street food vendor in town is a kebab joint run by bilingual immigrants from some Muslim Mediterranean country. Seriously, I couldn't find cart run by another ethnicity.
A personal hero of mine Anthony Bourdain considers a country's street food to be a window into its soul. I can tell you that the English fascination with lamb, kebabs, and doners is not isolated to just Oxfordshire. Now what does that say about England?
*The less it costs, the better it tastes!
I spent many a night and early morning hiking (or swaying) in every cardinal direction looking for new roadside restaurants. Hundreds of pounds, tens of miles, and one wacky prostitute encounter later I've made some interesting discoveries:
First: The inverse price-taste principle* still holds up even abroad in a socialist country.
Second: The best food carts are actually in or close to the city center, waiting to poach the loose pockets of drunk Spaniards coming back from the club district.
Thirdly: The only radio station that plays into the wee hours of the night stacks its playlist with the best of the best 80's pop female vocalists.
Lastly: Every street food vendor in town is a kebab joint run by bilingual immigrants from some Muslim Mediterranean country. Seriously, I couldn't find cart run by another ethnicity.
A personal hero of mine Anthony Bourdain considers a country's street food to be a window into its soul. I can tell you that the English fascination with lamb, kebabs, and doners is not isolated to just Oxfordshire. Now what does that say about England?
*The less it costs, the better it tastes!
Monday, 6 August 2012
Sessions with Schulze 1
First off I would like to apologize for making my readership wait with baited breath for so long before releasing this first session with Schulze. I hope you will still find the time to read through my report and post any comments y'all might have. I will shoot any particularly interesting remarks back to my source and hopefully a productive dialogue will emerge.
Secondly, I would like to thank my good friends Matt, Scott, and Kerry for the hospitality they showed me during my visit to Newcastle. If this post seems a bit brief, it is because they were more enthusiastic in welcoming up North than participating in potentially controversial political discourse.
This post is my summary of their collective beliefs and is not in any way representative of my own. Now you have no excuse for being overly nasty in your comments.
The Newcastlers are not ignorant or bigoted in any way, in fact two of them are going through a Master's program in education currently with the goal of becoming secondary school teachers. I preface my report with this statement because their views, I suspect, will run very contrary to that of my classmates. They do not hold any prejudiced attitudes towards non-English people, in fact recognizing most gratefully the contributions immigrants can make to British society overall, but that does not stop them from positing some concerns about the recent trend in surging immigrant numbers. They are not concerned with losing jobs or moral erosion or whatever jazz colors the immigration debate in America. No, their concern is anchored to the concept of cultural preservation.
Now I know it seems like the height of hypocrisy for the British of all people to be concerned with the preservation of British culture. These are the very people which conquered numerous peoples and led to the purging of an untold amount of cultural practice and knowledge around the world. However, denying the modern British access to a concern shared by numerous peoples is unjust.
England, unlike America with its Melting Pot persona, has for nearly all of its modern and not-so-modern history been a nation-state, that is a political entity populated by a particular ethnic group. England was the home of the Anglo-Saxons. Anything popularly portrayed as "English" such as commonwealth law, the House of Windsor, cricket, etc. was invented by these pale, proud, German orphans. This single population group accounted for 95+% of the total demography of England until the mid-20th century. That's when the sons and daughters of the Mother Country started knocking and coming "home" shortly followed by everyone else as Globalization shrunk the world.
Now as I mentioned before my friends are perfectly cool with immigrants coming over, kicking their feet up, queuing up for the NHS, whatever. Heck, some of their best friends are not English. However, according to some recent reports (EDIT: I never bothered to corroborate their facts and figures) the population of recent immigrants is set to overtake the English sometime in the next century. Anglo-Saxons will no longer be the dominant ethnic group and a hefty chunk of the population will only be first or second generation English subjects. The possibility that England would no longer be the home of the English and that proper English culture might be tangibly influenced by their new fellow citizens could become a reality. An England without "real English." This is what concerns them.
Now when other peoples begin to lose their homeland or the practices which define their particular culture it is the common liberal artsy response to jump to their aid. Free Tibet! I Yield for Kurds! A Place Called Oaxaca Actually Exists and It Needs Your Help! My friends have little faith that anybody will ever sympathize with their supposed plight. This immigrant population trend cannot be interrupted without radical and unethical action or the election of a BNP government, impossibilities all because of the afore mentioned up right nature of my friends. Unfortunately, not everyone in England shares their temperament. Supposedly we will all be alive to see how it plays out.
*I know I've used the terms English and British somewhat loosely in this post. Deal with it.
Secondly, I would like to thank my good friends Matt, Scott, and Kerry for the hospitality they showed me during my visit to Newcastle. If this post seems a bit brief, it is because they were more enthusiastic in welcoming up North than participating in potentially controversial political discourse.
This post is my summary of their collective beliefs and is not in any way representative of my own. Now you have no excuse for being overly nasty in your comments.
The Newcastlers are not ignorant or bigoted in any way, in fact two of them are going through a Master's program in education currently with the goal of becoming secondary school teachers. I preface my report with this statement because their views, I suspect, will run very contrary to that of my classmates. They do not hold any prejudiced attitudes towards non-English people, in fact recognizing most gratefully the contributions immigrants can make to British society overall, but that does not stop them from positing some concerns about the recent trend in surging immigrant numbers. They are not concerned with losing jobs or moral erosion or whatever jazz colors the immigration debate in America. No, their concern is anchored to the concept of cultural preservation.
Now I know it seems like the height of hypocrisy for the British of all people to be concerned with the preservation of British culture. These are the very people which conquered numerous peoples and led to the purging of an untold amount of cultural practice and knowledge around the world. However, denying the modern British access to a concern shared by numerous peoples is unjust.
England, unlike America with its Melting Pot persona, has for nearly all of its modern and not-so-modern history been a nation-state, that is a political entity populated by a particular ethnic group. England was the home of the Anglo-Saxons. Anything popularly portrayed as "English" such as commonwealth law, the House of Windsor, cricket, etc. was invented by these pale, proud, German orphans. This single population group accounted for 95+% of the total demography of England until the mid-20th century. That's when the sons and daughters of the Mother Country started knocking and coming "home" shortly followed by everyone else as Globalization shrunk the world.
Now as I mentioned before my friends are perfectly cool with immigrants coming over, kicking their feet up, queuing up for the NHS, whatever. Heck, some of their best friends are not English. However, according to some recent reports (EDIT: I never bothered to corroborate their facts and figures) the population of recent immigrants is set to overtake the English sometime in the next century. Anglo-Saxons will no longer be the dominant ethnic group and a hefty chunk of the population will only be first or second generation English subjects. The possibility that England would no longer be the home of the English and that proper English culture might be tangibly influenced by their new fellow citizens could become a reality. An England without "real English." This is what concerns them.
Now when other peoples begin to lose their homeland or the practices which define their particular culture it is the common liberal artsy response to jump to their aid. Free Tibet! I Yield for Kurds! A Place Called Oaxaca Actually Exists and It Needs Your Help! My friends have little faith that anybody will ever sympathize with their supposed plight. This immigrant population trend cannot be interrupted without radical and unethical action or the election of a BNP government, impossibilities all because of the afore mentioned up right nature of my friends. Unfortunately, not everyone in England shares their temperament. Supposedly we will all be alive to see how it plays out.
*I know I've used the terms English and British somewhat loosely in this post. Deal with it.
Sunday, 5 August 2012
A Song We All Know
Oh yes. Punjabi MC - Mundian To Bach Ke. 1998. Produced in England by a British-Indian artist. Doesn't get much better than that.
But the other day I was looking for it because I really wanted to listen to the song all the way through (I'd never done it before), and as I was looking at the lyrics websites and whatnot, I realized I had no earthly idea what the song actually meant in English.
So naturally, I looked it up.
And I was little bit surprised.
KEEP YOR FACE DOWN AND HIDE IT WITH A SCARF
DON'T JUST GIVE YOUR LOVE TO ANYONE
CHORUS
BE CAREFUL OF THE BOYS
YOU'VE ONLY JUST GROWN UP
IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT THAT YOU'VE GOT BEAUTIFUL EYES
ONCE YOU'VE REALISED THIS YOU WILL BECOME SHY
LOOK AFTER YOUR YOUTH
THIS TIME WON'T COME AGAIN
CHORUS REPEATS
AS YOU ARE GROWING UP PEOPLE ARE BECOMING AWARE OF YOUR GOOD LOOKS
EVERYONE IS LOOKING AT YOUR THIN WAIST
THERES NO ONE LIKE YOU
CHORUS
THE BOYS ARE TALKING ABOUT YOU EVERYDAY
THE STREETS ARE FULL OF STORIES ABOUT YOUR LOOKS
DON'T LET THE ATTENTION DROWN YOU.
Basically it's a song warning a young girl about maintaining her modesty because the boys are watching her and creating a reputation for her simply because she's beautiful. Not exactly as happy as I expected it to be. And it sort of made me feel uncomfortable as a younger girl, even though I'm not part of the culture, and it's not 1998. It's still a strange message to devote an entire song to, and even stranger still that it's become so wildly popular across the Western world.CHORUS
But I must confess, I still think it's fun to listen to.
It's not like things are black and white.
In this course we discuss the voices of British immigrant minorities. One aspect of this immigrant community that we have yet to discuss and probably won't be able to due to time is the tension between different minority groups. I'm not sure what the status of this issue is in London, but in other cities around the world it is prevalent. One salient example is Los Angeles. This diverse city is known for its racial tensions, not just between the white and ethnic populations, but also inside of the latter.
The 2004 film Crash, directed by Paul Haggis, explores this subject in depth. Part of the film focuses on the the six degrees of separation concept, but more interesting is the way it conveys tensions between different ethnic groups. The tagline of the film is "it''s not like things are black and white." Haggis demonstrates this by including African Americans, Persians, and Hispanics to name a few. It's a really moving film, and I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it. It's definitely one of my favorites. It won three oscars including Best Motion Picture.
Here is one of the most emotional scenes from the film. The Persian man who approaches with a gun has just had his store burglarized. He blames the Hispanic man for not properly changing the locks. (there is more to this specific story, but this is a decently summary)
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