Happy Birthday, Claire.

One Claire I know was a toddler when the Rheostatics recorded this.
Always loved the song, and Claire is the best girl's name, ever.

Life is all about beginnings and endings, and this song is all the more poignant to me now, owing to it's connection to Paul Quarrington, who wrote the song for the soundtrack for the movie based on his novel, "Whale Music".

Claire turned 20 on Jan. 20. Happy Birthday!!

Paul Quarrington died on Jan 21, 2010, at age 56.

Bruno, Saskatchewan Declares June 7 Julie Doiron Day

This story is tangentially related to the "power of one"/creative contagion theme in the previous post.

I've written before about All Citizen's Gallery, and the two young artists who brought their artistic and creative energies to the tiny farming community of Bruno, Saskatchewan, pop. 590. Julie Doiron recently gave a concert at All Citizens, and was surprised when the Mayor declared June 7 to be "Julie Doiron Day". Ms. Doiron was further honoured by the unveiling of a bench and plaque.

I love this video clip of Tyler Brett and the Mayor making the presentation. A bit of research was required to uncover the Mayor's name: she is Audrey Ludwig. I'll bet she'd have a thing or two she could teach big-city politicians about community-building and the "creative class". Richard Florida might want to consider inviting her to deliver a guest lecture at the University of Toronto.



Click here for a lovely Julie Doiron music video.

Exponential Joy

Happiness is wonderfully contagious. It just takes one creative person to get things rolling. This clip about fun-gone-viral has itself gone viral. You may have already seen it elsewhere, but I am posting it as my little contribution to cultural probiotics.



Music by Santigold, Sasquatch Festival out on the Left Coast (Cascadia somewhere)

Kate Bush Talks to Kids About Making Art

Another post on the general topic of art and education. Here is a clip from the early 80's British TV show "Razzmatazz" featuring a sweet and sincere Kate Bush talking to kids about the art, music and choreography involved in making a music video.

"I'm very lucky because my interests are actually my work, and in so many ways, any interest I have can become a part of my work...that's the wonderful thing about art...anything you do can then become your work... just keeping your mind open for all these things. It's really fun. Life becomes work."

I wonder what these children went on to do in their lives. They seem so attentive, and I cannot help but think that this experience must have been influential.

Speaking of which: Kate Bush's work would appear to have been an influence on Marcel Dzama and his skating ghosts as well. And a good influence, it is.




(video clip via, via)

Playing For Change

Playing for Change is a charitable organization founded by Grammy award-winning producer and engineer Mark Johnson. The foundation's mission is to "connect the world through music". The bricks-and-mortar part of the mission is to build music schools and art schools around the world. Two projects are well underway in South Africa, and the foundation has also been supporting Tibetan refugee centres in India and Nepal.

This music video produced by Playing for Change is an inspiring demonstration of the internet's creative commons philosophy at its best. "Thirty seven musicians from five continents assemble together to create one unified track. The musicians have never met in person and connect through their music. Each track is added to the song as the musicians are recorded live outside across the globe. The end result is a remarkable human connection and a powerful song."

Marcel Dzama: Department of Eagles

Marcel Dzama: Even More Calamities (storyboard for "No One Does It Like You" video). 2008. Ink, root beer base, water color, and paper, 22" x 14"





This beautiful video for "Department of Eagles" premiered at MoMA on March 24, 2009. Produced by Directors Bureau. Direction: Patrick Daughters and Marcel Dzama. Costumes and Sets: Marcel Dzama.

I have tried in vain to discover who was responsible for the choreography. Please post a comment if you know.

If you click through to the MoMA site, you'll note that Dzama is identified as a New York City-based artist...of course, we know that he's from Winnipeg.

Cultural Universals in Music and Emotion

Earthenware pot: contemporary Mafa culture
Photograph by maremagna

Dave Munger at "Cognitive Daily" has a fascinating post today on the cultural universality of the perception of emotions as conveyed by music.

"The Mafa people, who live in the far north of Cameroon in the Mandara mountains, are one of the most culturally isolated groups in the world. Since many of their settlements lack electricity, there are some individuals who have never been exposed to western movies, art, or music.

Because of their isolation and very different musical tradition, they can help answer a question that has perplexed music scholars and psychologists for generations: are there musical "universals"? In other words, do the emotions conveyed by music depend on what we've learned through our culture, or can anyone perceive the emotion intended by a composer of a given musical work? Does "good" or pleasant music have cultural boundaries?"

Click through to read the entire article, if only to listen to the audio clips of Mafa music, which to me felt like a spring-time riot of buds and shoots bursting out of the ground. A little more web research revealed that the Mafa only use music as a celebratory medium, primarily around planting and harvesting. Curious about Mafa art, I was able to find the above example of an extraordinary hand built earthenware vessel, with human teeth.

Nobuo Kubota Accepts Governor General's Award

Please note: the following video is NOT Nobuo Kubota's GG acceptance speech (but wouldn't that have been fun!).




The above is a clip from Kubota's sound poetry performance at Proposta 2001 in Barcelona.

Kubota was born in 1932 in Vancouver, and came to Toronto as a young man to study architecture at U of T. He practiced architecture for 10 years before turning his attention to sculpture in the early 70s. Most of his sculptural works have been installations which focus implicitly or explicitly on sound and language.

Kubota played saxophone as a member of the Artists Jazz Band, but ultimately had to abandon the instrument when he developed a painful auditory sensitivity. He later joined the CCMC (Canadian Creative Music Collective, formed in 1975 by Michael Snow and featuring a revolving group of artist/musicians over the years). As a performer, Kubota uses a range of extended vocal techniques which explore the boundaries of the human voice. Influenced by Kabuki and Noh theatrical traditions, his facial expressions are deliberate, exaggerated, and made all the more humourous by the maintenence of a neutral, deadpan deportment in the interstitial silences of his performance.

Kubota describes himself as an practitioner of Intermedia: the movement of an idea from one form (e.g., sound) and continuing into another form (e.g., sculpture).
Here is a clip of work created in collaboration with fellow Intermedia artist and poet Mark Sutherland. The oval voiceprint of Kubota's vocals is a real-time spectrogram: no manipulation or animation is involved. (see the post re: June Callwood Park for a fascinating use of the voiceprint in landscape architecture).