I Can't Hear You!

A research team in Beirut has determined that professional singers may have a risk of slight hearing impairments when compared with non-singers. A.L. Hamdan, et al, used transient-evokd otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs) to find this result. They played clicks or pure tones for the singers and nonsingers, and measured the amplified and filtered responses to see if they were normal or not. If an evoked emission is not in the normal range, that suggests a damaged cochlea. While the singers' responses were in the normal range, they were "less robust" than those of the non-singers. This is a preliminary study, concerned more with establishing methedology than in finding universal results. So you vocalists should not be panicking yet. I SAID, YOU SHOULDN'T BE PANICKING YET!

AL Hamdan, KS Abouchacra, AG Al Hazzouri, and G Zaytoun. (2008). "Transient-Evoked Otoacoustic emissions in a group of professional singers who have normal pure-tone hearing thresholds," Ear and Hearing (preprint, March 29).

Play Donkey Kong!

An Episcopal priest has been making Youtube videos to drum up business. In one video, Father Matthew plays a Super Mario theme on his church's carillon:

FriPod: Family

My parents are visiting, making the Hoosier swing on their way home from snow bird paradise.

1. "Royal Family" by Gladys Hampton and M. Royal, performed by Lionel Hampton on Flying Home (1942-1945).

2. "The O'Hara Family" by Max Steiner on the Gone With the Wind soundtrack.

3. "Ode to My Family" by The Cranberries on No Need to Argue.

4. "I am Weary (Let Me Rest)" by Pete Roberts, performed by The Cox Family on O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack.

5. "Wildwood Flower" by Carter, Ellis, and Frigo; performed by The Carter Family.

6. "Familien-Gemälde" from Four Duets, op. 34, by Robert Schumann, performed by Dorothea Röschmann, Ian Bostridge, and Graham Johnson.

7. "Be Kind to Your Parents" by Harold Rome, performed by Pete Seeger on Children's Concert at Town Hall.

How to Protest

I've been thinking about Daniel Wolf's challenge to boycott the Olympics, and what my response should be. The Dalai Lama encourages peaceful engagement, focused on communication between all parts. I agree with this, and feel that a boycott hampers communication too much. A boycotter gives the impression that s/he will not listen to the boycotted entity until X is achieved. But what if 2-way communication is needed to achieve X? I've read some fascinating arguments on Crooked Timber about the specifics of the China-Tibet-Olympics issue. One in particular, made by a Chinese activist, reminds us that the Chinese government is not oppressing only the Tibetans, but also the majority ethnic group and other minority ethnic groups. By chanting "Free Tibet" we send a signal that we care only about the Tibetans and not about the rest of the Chinese populace. This essentially strengthens the Chinese government's position. Read the comment to see how.

So protests need to be done carefully. Success requires speaking truth, especially topower. But success also requires knowing who all of the players are, and doing everything possible (while still speaking truth) to keep them all engaged. I will not boycott the Olympics, but I will talk about human rights issues every time I mention the Olympics. I won't avoid Chinese products, but I will write letters to Congress and to newspapers reminding people about all of the human rights issues. And when I speak of the human rights issues, I will NOT dehumanize the people in the Chinese government. The administration is doing awful things, but the people in the government are still human beings, not monsters.

In other protest news, and related more to music, I got this email yesterday:

The U.S. Campaign for Burma and Fanista.com have partnered together with Hollywood celebrities to raise awareness around the atrocities occurring in Burma. The Burma Project consists of celebrity spokespeople filming video spots in the Los Angeles area to inform U.S. citizens about the imprisonment of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, and Burma's struggle for democracy.

Musician Brett Dennen will be taping his US Campaign for Burma video tomorrow morning, April 10 in Santa Monica. The first shot will be at 9 AM. You will be able take your own videos and photos during the shoot. After the shoot you'll have the opportunity to interview Brett, as well as speak with the creative team who is putting this campaign together and the folks at the US Campaign for Burma. Please let me know if you are interested in receiving a media pass for this video shoot, and I can connect you with the appropriate person who will be on location.

Raising awareness is awesome, especially given the censorship that oppressive governments use to keep awareness down. I hope the videos manage to raise the issue without making monsters.

What's important

Norman Lebrecht's latest post managed to tick me off in two ways. This itself is quite normal, as I don't often agree with him. But what is impressive this time is that he was able to be doubly offensive in one sentence.

To many men - forgive me, this is not a feminine thing - a collection is life itself.

While the sentence clearly exhibits male chauvinism, the misogyny isn't readily apparent in this one sentence. For that we must look at the subsequent paragraphs, where he feels a woman was completely wrong for selling her dead relative's record collection.

Widow or daughter, it hardly matters whom. Move on, dear, move on. C'est la vie. My condolences. I do understand (the hell I do...).

How dare this uppity female try to find closure in a positive way by donating her departed love's treasure to charity? She clearly doesn't (and can't) understand the IMPORTANCE of this collection, being a silly woman.

The second affront in the aforementioned sentence is the clear focus on materialism: "the collection is life itself." Again, clarity is gained by examining the rest of the post:

A windfall for the starving masses in Sudan? Relief for the suffering Palestinians? Gimme a break. Give your old clothes and knick-knacks to Oxfam if you like. This is a man's life being broken up, down in the knacker's yard of Tavistock.

No, this is not a man's life. It is a facet, and likely an important one, of that person. But this recently deceased man also clearly had at least one loved one, who is also an important part of his life, and likely had other interests, other things produced, other dreams. A life is not solely defined by material goods. That idea is far too much of "the one with the most toys wins" philosophy. Norman would argue that it isn't the quantity of the records, but the quality:

Some poor soul had built up this collection with care, balancing the familiar with the esoteric, Furtwaengler's Beethoven with Stockhausen's Stimmung, Mozart from Bruno Walter and Machaut from whoever recorded it first in the 1950's or 1960s. This was a person of taste and discrimination whose aesthetic take on life is being scattered to the four corners of the earth.

The value of a record collection lies in the ability to listen to those recordings. This "poor soul" can no longer listen to that collection* and it is clear that his next of kin has no interest in listening to them either. She found the excellent solution, give the records to a charity who can sell them to people interested in listening to the wonderful music. This benefits both the music-loving populace around Devon and those starving and suffering Sudanese and Palestinian masses that Norman is so quick to dismiss.

I am a musician, someone who made the decision to make his living creating and studying artworks. I clearly find this activity to be valuable, otherwise I couldn't do it full-time. However, I recognize that there are things more valuable than music. Ending poverty and other forms of suffering is definitely more important. Fortunately I don't have to sacrifice all of my music to make donations of time and money to appropriate charities. Likewise, the recently deceased man didn't have to sacrifice his music either, and yet now can posthumously help these charities.

I really don't understand what damage Norman thinks has been done. A man built an impressive collection of records, a collection that was important to him. But this man is now dead, so he isn't being hurt. I think the one being damaged is Norman and like-minded individuals, those who wish their collections were important enough to be archived in a museum or library. Norman is hoping for posterity, hoping to live on through the Norman Lebrecht music collection. Seeing a similar collection "scattered to the four corners" makes that dream of prosperity less likely. If it means that much to you, Norman, you should write up your will requiring the collection to remain intact. That will probably require setting aside funds to store and maintain this collection, unless you can get assurances from a museum or library. But don't blame the next of kin for measuring prosperity in different ways than you.

*I hear that Heaven has awesome non-DRMed audio files of every bit of music ever created, at whatever bitrate you want. Being Heaven, Nyquist's Limit doesn't apply, so you analogophiles don't need to worry.

What clarity?

Today at church we were discussing the history of church music. During this discussion I had a thought. It is widely accepted that the Council of Trent wanted simplified music so congregations could understand the words. However, these masses were being sung in Latin both before and after the Council of Trent. So, who in the congregation would understand the Latin in the first place? If they recognized the typical Mass sections, they should have been able to do so in pre-Trent masses, to the level that they knew the basic theology of Latin masses. Were the changes in musical style for under-educated priests, or for the educated ruling classes? It certainly wasn't for Giuseppe Lunchbox. Could it be that Pope Julius III just preferred Palestrina's music and decided to encode it into Catholic theology?

FriPod: MLK

1. Sinfonia, Movement II "O King" by Luciano Berio, performed by Sinfonia Singers, Orchestre Philharmonique, and Luciano Berio. Here is Tim Rutherford-Johnson's description:

[...] the second movement, a lament for Martin Luther King. This was also published as a separate work, O King. The singers change ring on the syllables of King's name with bell-like tones - supported closely by the orchestra. No actual bells are used though, and the effect is much sharper, more resistant, than simple funeral chimes. One can hear ethereal ascents in some of the string glissandi, or prayer in the softer incantations of King's name, but the sharp accents from horns, piano, clarinet and vibraphone never allow this music to subside into peaceful meditation (although it remains glisteningly beautiful), it forces attention. In the last minute of the movement, the steady - if lopsided - pulse of the music quickly frays and all disintegrates into another hushed vocal cluster as for the first time 'Martin Luther King' is heard in full statement.

2. "Luther" by Marvin Hamlisch, from The Sting soundtrack.
3. "The Most High And Mighty Christianus The Fourth, King Of Denmark, His Galliard AKA The Battle Galliard" by John Dowland, performed by Eden Karamazov.
4. "The Dreams of Kings" by James Horner, from the House of Sand And Fog soundtrack.
5. Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies, performed by the Fires of London.
6. "Good King Wenceslas" performed by Christ Church Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, Indianapolis.
7. "The King of the Golden Hall" by Howard Shore, from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack.
8. "King of the Zulus" by Lilian Armstrong, performed by Louis Armstrong on The Hot Fives & Sevens, Vol. 1.
9. King Stephen Overture op. 117 by Ludwig van Beethoven, performed by a) London Symphony Orchestra with Pierre Monteux, b) Berlin Philharmonic with Herbert von Karajan.
10. "Knozz-Moe-King" by Wynton Marsalis on Live at Blues Alley.
11. "The Perfect King" by Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell, from the Shrek soundtrack.
12. "The Return of the King" by Howard Shore, from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrack.

13. "Pride (In the Name of Love)" by U2.