Pithy Female Vocalists

At least I occasionally watch good stuff on YouTube.  For example, PITHY FEMALE VOCALISTS: my favorite music, most of the time, except for SWEET FOREIGN CHOIRS, which often include pithy females anyway.

Take, for example, Lauryn Hill, who’s pretty much wonderful in every way.  And most certainly very, very pithy

Parisa is another, both on the front of staggering technique, and on the female-vocalist-in-a-predominantly-Muslim-Country front, which can require a lot of finesse (not that being a classy singer doesn’t require a lot of finesse pretty much anywhere in the world).  Some of the runs in this song are just jaw-dropping.  Also, the discussion board is the most nuanced I’ve ever seen on YouTube. (I know, that’s not saying much at all)

Oum Kalthoum can never be passed over on any list of Pithy Female Vocalists.  The list that passes her over is wide open to accusations of Eurocentrism, Orientalism, and I’m sure a host of other “isms.”  This link is only for about an eighth of an entire song, as most of her songs are about an hour long (her voice only comes in toward the end of the clip).  Her voice is unbelievably expressive of romantic love, even when I can’t understand the lyrics (though I do know this one is a love song).

Then there’s Divna.  She has the clearest tone I’ve ever heard in a voice, male or female.  Very devotional too, obviously.  This is a version of Psalm 102.

There are more, but maybe I should make a separate post for “pithy female country/ folk vocalists.”   They deserve a post of their own, as do all of the above.

on Don Quixote and martyrdom

I want to resurrect my blog.  But today, I don’t have time to write.  In lieu of writing something new, let me quote you a bit from an e-mail I recently wrote Mark.

“Behind my laptop, as you know, there are two little pictures scotch-taped to my closet wall.  One is a photograph of two Uzbek children sitting on the roof of a very old building (I’ll tell you about that one another time).  The other is a sketch, a copy of Picasso’s Don Quixote, made with charcoal on a raggedy-edged piece of journal paper.  I made it one day when my family was backpacking, and we were sitting around the campfire; I grabbed a stick from the fire and drew it.  No joke.  I’m usually not that good at drawing, but the inspiration hit me that day and I was relaxed for lack of technology.  I like this picture, and I try to keep it in a place I can see often.

There’s something about Don Quixote, you know: as ridiculous as he is, and as much as he is the butt of a really great satire, he is such a sympathetic character, because he has a little bit of the soul and the dedication of the martyr.  In Don Quixote’s case it doesn’t matter so much that he’s crazy.  What matters is his reckless abandon: the way he marches out to battle, without any thought for the opposition of others or the tyranny of popular opinion.  It’s a very admirable quality, you know, and the truly sad thing about Don Quixote is he marks the death of the Martyr.  Because the moment martyrdom becomes absurd – rather than the highest expression of devotion to the Beloved – it of necessity ceases to exist.  No one will die for a sham, a joke, a mockery.  And when all the world becomes such a sham, people give up on Death (with a view toward Resurrection, of course) and settle for “passing away.”

Dostoevsky understood something of this.  In this sense he perhaps does violence to Cervantes – who really just wanted to make fun of an absurd old man.  Dostoevsky adopts  Don Quixote and makes him a Holy Fool.  It is in this sense – the Dostoevskian sense – that I remember Don Quixote, every time I look up from my paper.

I suppose this is the same reason I keep an icon of the Three Holy Youths and their mother Sophia on my wall.  But they’re real.  I love Don Quixote (and Dostoevsky) because they primed me to love St. Nadina.  They gave me a representation, so that I might be able to recognize the real thing when I found it.  That’s the way I think all fiction should be anyway.”