1) Intro Eastern Point Beach
2) Anarcho Jazzm Arch (A March)
3) Old Folksinger
4) Ziggy’s Little Drummer Boy
5) Completely Different
6) Burma Shave
7) Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms
8) Bunion
9) How Come (You Do Me Like You Do)
10) It’s Beginning To Look A Lot (Like Xmas)
11) Is This Thing On
12) Chiapaneca
13) Frybread
14) Little Things
15) Swedish Folk Song
16) Manitou
17) Love Me For My Heart
18) Verseless Song
You’ll just need non-toxic clay, paper to put down for neatness and something pointy to make holes with.
As you’re embellishing it you could refer to the book, “Music Before Columbus” to see many instruments that seemed to resemble pan flutes, ocarinas and rattles. Some of these technologies will not have changed much in 40,000 years so you won’t be just imagining it as you complete this that you’re in touch with a process that is quite ancient.
Skill Activity:
Find evidence of musical styles and inspirations that existed in North America prior to the famous Christopher Columbus voyages.
Use primary and secondary sources while attempting to discover what instruments will have been constructed from the resources available in the Americas.
One resource on hand in the classroom is Samuel Marti’s “Music Before Columbus.”
Many of your other primary and secondary sources will have to be found online.
This museum has some other books that might be worth exploring too.
Product/Project:
Conduct research for the same evidence of musical instruments and styles in Italy and Spain.
Craft a persuasive essay claiming Italy or Spain influenced America’s music.
Craft another one saying the exact opposite that the Americas influenced Europe.
Support this with deeper evidence than what you’ll find at Wikipedia.
(although Wiki is allowed as a starting point for this exercise.)
For example you will find ancient ocarinas mentioned all over Europe and Asia.
Here’s one in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq2zfIc-Swg
Did China get this from the Americas so very long ago? Or was it the other way around? Perhaps they each came up with this without knowing each other at all. Explore the same possibilities for Spain and the Americas.
[Key Entry Point: Bridging]
[Extra Gardner Intelligences: Existential, Mathematical, Kinesthetic and Spatial]
Make your own graphic organizer by drawing a T-Bar down a single sheet of paper. You can label one side Real but the other side Legend, and organize all your evidence to one side or the other.
PRODUCT/Project:
Are you ready for one of the most unusual but enjoyable short research projects you’ve ever done in your life?
Using the melody from the old folksong “Follow The Drinking Gourd,” write some new lyrics based on this evidence of Peg Leg Joe.
He is only featured in the original song as “The Old Man,” so you can keep calling him that, or call him Peg Leg, Mr. Peg Leg, Mr. Joe, or whatever fits to the beat of the song. It is totally up to you.
There are many versions of this song you can find. You’re welcome to use mine free of charge.
The new lyrics you make will basically become a brand new song. Your exit ticket is to sing the new lyrics or say them somewhat poetically.
[Key Entry Point: Understanding]
[Extra Gardners: Existential, Mathematical, Body/Kinesthetic and Spatial]Â Â [Blooms: Applying, Creating, Evaluating, Understanding]
Task Card 3
Enrichment:
Make a short biographical paragraph about your favorite contemporary musical artist.
Find out about an old, dead and nearly forgotten musician and do the same.
Now compare and contrast the two.
This will hit the added “synthesizing” from Bloom’s Taxonomy but it will also have you appreciating where music comes from and where it might go.
Creativity is the limit if you hold strictly to the theories, but it’s the sky when you think about it, and music stretches across all of them and everywhere else.
Skill Activity:
Using Internet tools find out about Rock Star Brian May, the lead guitarist of Queen,
Gather information about what he’s been studying, and what school gave him a PHD in Astrophysics.
Compose a small moment story about the astrophysicist who became a rock star.
But replace yourself in as the main character as if you were Brian May.
Essentially you will drop out of college in the middle of your thesis to become a rock star and tour the world and then go back to complete it after your band has already made it.
Product/Project
List one specific thing you want to be when you grow up.
(It’s just fine if it was something different even yesterday or maybe you’ll change tomorrow.)
Try to remember some other things you always wanted to be. There were probably many.
Using just internet searching try to find some ways that you can be at least two more things besides your main choice at the same time.
Create a simple text file listing the 3+ things you want to be when you grow up.
Next to each one list at least two ways it’s possible.
Now in one paragraph or less at the bottom of the same text file, title it “Action Plan,” and simply state how you’re going to become at least three different things when you grow up.
[Extra Gardners: Existential, Intrapersonal]Â Â [Blooms: Creating, Remembering, Understanding]
Task Card 4
Enrichment: (Short Answer Questions.)
Watch Rhiannon Giddens sing “Black Is the Color”
How many musical instruments can you identify.
What musical styles do you think you hear Rhiannon’s band interpreting?
Do you consider this an old song or a new one?
If you’ve ever heard this song before, how is Rhiannon Giddens’ version different and how is it the same?
Skill Activity:
Listen to Storycorps’Â “Keeping Family Traditions Alive.”
Write a small moment from your life into an essay that might be worth “voicing over” a StoryCorps podcast someday.
Perhaps write about how your own family keep some of your traditions alive.
Here’s the beauty of NPR’s Storycorps van going around the nation empowering people to become recorders:
The story can be as complicated or easy as you wish it to be. Yes, it can be about a turtle you saved from getting squashed by a car once, or it could be about a dad attending his daughter’s kindergarten class as a surprise because he’s home from the war.
Surely something that’s happened in your life so far can be something you might want to “tell the whole world” with the help of the StoryCorps van.
Project/Product:
Start from the same Storycorps’ “Keeping Family Traditions Alive,” from the Skill Activity.
Now using an iPad, record and edit a StoryCorp-styled podcast of a small moment from your life.
Interview yourself, or a friend, or have a friend interview you.
You might want to script it yourself, or at least start from a one-page organizer.
For instance, I’ve been trying to talk my mom into letting me record her telling about the time when she was in her Junior year of High School and her date to the prom was Billy Martin from the New York Yankees.
[Key Entry Point: Authentic Problems]
[Extra Gardners: Existential, Mathematical, Body/Kinesthetic and Spatial]Â Â [Blooms: Applying, Creating, Evaluating, Remembering, Understanding]
Task Card 5
Enrichment:
Build a paper plate or papier Mache mask and teach yourself a circle dance similar to one that False Face Societies have done for thousands of years.
(Caveat/Warning: Be careful to keep this from being in a mocking way. We are trying to get a feel for what they do rather than steal their ritual or religious beliefs.)
There are plenty of tutorials on how to make a mask online. Sample a few and find one you can make most easily.
Good keywords to start with for the dances are, “medicine mask dance,” or “Iroquois dances.”
One challenge you will face is that you will find many more images of these than videos. The more traditional dances tend to forbid filming.
Yes, you may blend stomp dances and smoke dances to get an idea of what the same groups do. And then totally use your imagination how your mask will dance based on how you created it. Your role is to be the arms and legs of this mask as it travels time and space. Get it?
Skill Activity
Watch 29Oct15 Time For Kids video about Niizhoo (nee-shoo) Sullivan, 11, who loves to sing.
Niizhoo (nee-shoo) Sullivan, 11, loves to sing. He’s the lead singer of the drum group Hay Creek.
He has won several singing competitions. Niizhoo’s family lives in northern Wisconsin on an Ojibwe reservation.
Read the full article about Native singers and dancers if your school provides it.
On a piece of writing paper generate five fast facts from the video.
(For example, I noticed an ancient stick being used as a boom stand for a microphone by probably a proud dad or uncle. My first thought was “that’s so ghetto,” but then I realized with the microphone it is a perfect blend of the modern and the ancient all together in one place and time.
Project/Product:
Take a Google Maps journey to Wisconsin where Niizhoo lives.
Learn some fast facts about his tribe but also some of the other tribes in his state.
You can start with Oneida, Menominee and Potawatomi to be sure.
There are many tribes represented around Wisconsin.
Build a graph showing Tribal names and the differences and similarities represented.
Drumming
Dancing
Crafts
Food
Anything Else
______________
Ojibwe
Oneida,
Menominee
Potawatomi
Anyone Else
[Key Entry Point: Talent Development]
[Extra Gardners: Kinesthetic and Spatial]Â Â [Blooms: Creating, Evaluating, Remembering]
Task Card 6
Â
Â
Â
Enrichment:
Watch a short video of someone playing a wineglass harp.
You’ll see that this applies to everything from church pipe organs to drums and everything in between.
Product/Project:
Predict whether to line up the eight “notes” from full to empty, organizing it in a sensible way.
Make any necessary adjustments after tapping several glasses.
Now using 3 or more of the glasses find your way to something resembling a simple melody such as “Mary Had a Little Lamb”
or “This Old Man.”
One more adjustment: if you sense that one or more notes were much too high or low, try adding and subtracting water until it’s close.
Voila! You’ve constructed another musical instrument.
[Key Entry Point: Talent]
[Extra Gardners: Mathematical, Kinesthetic and Spatial]Â Â [Blooms: Creating, Evaluating, Applying]
Task Card 7
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Enrichment:
Watch a 4 minute snippet of the “Mary Mack” segment of PBS for Kids’ show “Lomax the Hound of Music.”
This hundred year old song began in Virginia and spread all over the nation memorized as a skipping song for a long time before it was ever written down.
Playground rhymes like this are some of the earliest inspirations for Hip Hop music.
List as many other Skipping songs, playground rhymes and jump rope tunes as you can from memory.
Conduct a web search for even more. Some of them were inspired by military cadences, so you could add the keyword “cadence,” to ones such as “jump rope” or “playground.”
Skill Activity:
The song “Mary Mack” is all about movement and beat; and this is why it made a great jump rope song.
It was also perfect for Rap and Hip-hop as the video’s elephant character Lil’ P-Nutt explained.
Make your own personal chalk-talk on a portable whiteboard by listing any other jump rope or skipping songs you remember from when you were young.
If you don’t remember titles you can try to search for them on the web.
Organize half a dozen or so by how much rhyme you see and how much rhythm you can feel.
Next you can pick one or two to make into a freeform rap. Either write them the same way and experiment out loud how you would sing them, or change the words around to suit the newer form.
Product/Project:
Record your rap from the previous skill activity to iPad.
You will need to be good at Garage Band or iMovie.
There are tutorials galore online.
Teacher knows PC recording tools better so he can help you on a chrome book,
but if you already know iPad, go for it.
[Extra Credit: 1) Teach the teacher iMovie 2) Teach a classmate. 3) Present rap to whole class.]
[Key Entry Point: Exploration]
[Extra Gardners: Linguistic, Body/Kinesthetic and Spatial]Â Â [Blooms: Creating, Remembering, Applying]
Task Card 8
Â
Â
Â
Enrichment:
Measure all the strings of a guitar. Length and width count.
(I suggest using an electric guitar or a steel string acoustic, because three of the strings on a classical guitar will vary from this and add confusion.)
Listen and compare to see if both length and width correspond to pitch and tone.
In other words, does each string have a lower or higher sound?
Does it sound fatter or thinner?
Is there any difference in volume or how long the string sustains after you pluck it once?
[Further Study. If you happen to find this fascinating, do a search in your spare time for the longstanding argument over 432hz tuning versus 440hz to acquaint yourself with this compelling difference of opinion. Some of the answers might be rooted in music therapy and have implications with psychology and medical fields.]
Skill Activity:
How are guitars and pianos similar and different.
Draw a simple sketch of the shape of a guitar. (a stick figure will work just find)
Search internet to find the following items and label them nearest to where they should be on a common guitar.
String
Soundhole or Pickup
Bridge
Tuning Peg
Anything else you can fit on the diagram.
Now research online to find five basic parts of a Piano.
Compose a short paragraph describing as many similarities and differences as you can find.
Product/Project:
Design just the hit points and lives for a video game where the following two characters go to war against each other.
One character is a guitar. Give him/her a name and use the Skill Activity from this card to come up with some criteria for points.
Do the same for a piano. What is his or her name? Does s/he have some of the same hit points? Are some higher/lower?
Now predict an outcome.
[Extended project suggestions. 1) If already skilled at Visual Basic, Java, etc., go ahead and build the game. 2) Write a persuasive essay to send to an already established gaming company suggesting your game. 3) Can you think of a way to make this same thing into a board game?]
[Key Entry Point: Exploration]
[Extra Gardners: Mathematical, Kinesthetic and Spatial]Â Â [Blooms: Creating, Analyzing, Evaluating, Applying]
Task Card 9
Enrichment:
Using the Online CIA Fact book learn some fast facts about Brazil’s people and culture.
I recommend using the keyword “introduction” in your first few searches, or they tend to take you right to the nitty gritty of all things “war and peace.”
Now give yourself a mini lesson on Carnival elsewhere on the Internet.
First, watch 40 seconds of Gabra womenfolk singing
Next watch snippets of a Gabra shepherd boy from David Mayberry Lewis’ Poor Man Shames Us All.
48:06-49:00 camel dance
49:13-50:00 do you like my song?
Lastly, just ponder the concept of giving a song away to someone for free.
Activity:
Goal: try for 3 levels of compare/contrast: Gabra versus. NYC., African music vs. American music and more specifically traditional music vs. popular music.
Just make notes of these “C&C’s.” It doesn’t have to be a formal essay.
Watch an advertising agency spending millions of dollars creating a jingle that was co-written by Ray Charles.
50:04Â In NY songs are not for giving they are for selling.
Hundreds of singers and bands were invited to make music to those words.
They were paid well even if their music wasn’t used in the ad.
The first of many ads premiered during the commercial break of the Super Bowl XXV.
Action: Write a few words requesting people purchase camel milk from a family in Gabra because they’re very nice.
Now see if they can fit right onto one of the many ads already made.
Product/Project:
Teach yourself how to remove vocals from a song using the recording tools app Audacity.
There are many tutorials online. (for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6TSETiRPu4)
Take the vocals out of “You got the right one baby, uh huh.”
50:12 of “A Poor Man Shames Us All”
Quickly jot down some lyrics that could seem like an ad for camel milk.
Either sing or speak a track over the music persuading people to buy camel milk from the Gabra family you previously studied because they’re so nice.
[Key Entry Point: Bridging]
[Extra Gardners: Existential, Mathematical, Kinesthetic and Spatial]Â Â [Blooms: Creating, Evaluating, Applying, Understanding, Remembering]
Comments Off on Ethnomusicology Museum – 30 Task Cards – Each One Essentially a Lesson Plan…
It was the weekend before Thanksgiving I remember that. I was on a bus returning from Phenix City Alabama to Green Bay Wisconsin and a friend of mine, John Heckenlively counted 22 Wafflehouses that we drove by. That was only the ones where you can see their signs from the road or they have a listing in one of the roadsigns along the highway! I’m sure there were many more.
So in between counting we crafted this parody of Arlo Guthrie’s classic hit, “Alice’s Restaurant.” John also called a friend of his at Z Studios in Milwaukee and purchased studio time on a 2 inch master. We did this on almost no sleep the minute we got there. I already had a guitar along for the trip so we walked right in there and recorded it. I’d say unrehearsed but we probably went over this song several dozen times on the bus instead of trying to sleep!
The last big memory I have of that session was that the song was almost exactly the time length of a 2 inch master tape. The engineer said afterwards he was stressed out at the very end because he was thinking any second now he would have to stop us and back up a tiny bit, then continue on trying to punch that in without too many noises between takes. He figured he’d just let us finish to not ruin our momentum and then just ask us to do the last part one more time. You see a traditional reel or spool is set for just a little bit more than 16 minutes. And this song came in at 16 mins and 40 some odd seconds. Back in the analog days they gave you 30 seconds or so of extra tape just to be safe but you shouldn’t count on it.
I held the last GÂ chord out for a sustain and natural fade, and just then tape machine started slapping that last piece of leader tape around and around at the first part of complete silence.
Perfect timing.
sincerely,
marco
ps:
Here’s the whole audio as an mp3 if you’d like that:
An old blog note I found in google cache. I don’t want this one to ever disappear and it looks like a database went away where this entry used to sit. Bummer.
Monday, 12 August 2013
The most serendipitous kismet I’ve had this side of the Millenium happened yesterday afternoon. I was looking around Danbury for Marian Anderson’s famous homestead. Not the studio, I’d already seen that, and I found a building I thought might’ve been it. I asked a guy in a station wagon near me if he knew if that building was the famous growing up home, and he said he wasn’t sure, but his granddaughter was about to have her cheer-leading camp and the instructor might know so I should wait and ask her.
“He’s a famous baseball player,” said the granddaughter. Well it turns out the fellow I asked was Gilbert Black who played professionally in the “Negro Leagues” in ’56!
He gave me an autographed photo and I gave him a copy of my newest CD, etc. He was delighted to meet a young folksinger because it turns out he went to grade school with Josh White’s daughter and he was shocked when being asked if I knew who Josh White was, I quickly recalled the name even though never knowing actual songs I could say I knew he got famous in the ’40s. He said he listened to nearly the entire NPR stream of this year’s folk festival for three days straight and almost none of the people there knew who he was. Pete Seeger sure, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, etc., but almost no one knew who Josh White was. Well, Mr. Black, I’ve heard of him, and now I’ve heard of you, and thank you for pointing that out so I can go find his renditions of “Joshua Fit,” and “Dying Bed” and stuff. Wow. Amazing.
Happy Valentine’s Day, err’budd… I mean Groundhog day, ummm, I mean Polar Plunge day, or Solar Flare? Bipolar Hair day. Fred Astaire; Stroller Chair, everywhere. Yes, I mean that from the depths of my heart, top and bottom. So here’s a recap of my year. Much more in depth than the algorithm Facebook decided to share, although I did like the pictures they chose. But it definitely did not tell a complete “story.”
Another circle around the sun. Beauty before me, beauty behind me. Beauty under my feet, so I walk lightly, deliberately and with great care.
Winter NAMM. I didn’t go this year. Enough said. I’ll miss the new technology; I’m kind of take-it-or-leave-it with being surrounded by so many petentious snobs and so few peers and mentors who truly are the real deal…
The year mostly begins with my song “Frybread” getting picked up to be the theme song of a TV pilot. I got paid a little bit of money and if the show ends up seeing light of day (the percentages on these things are rather daunting…) I’ll see a bunch more and be able to say “you knew me when,” or something. Or something.
Anniversary of Ant Hamlin getting murdered in cold blood in front of New York Amtrak and then his body was dumped near Shewville Road out in North Stoningtonish, Prestonish, Grotonish. Yuck. I’m friends with his ex and many other friends of his and this hurt my feelings a lot. Facebook got this one right and collected up 4 pix of the ceremonies including a rose I kept on my dashboard until early summer and brought over to bury about where his body had been found.
27jan Pete Seeger died. I don’t even know where to start writing about that. I’ll wait for clearer words and a different venue to write that. I could go long! One of the best tributes was written by his friend David Amram who was with him the moment he died.
He wrote this just a day and a half ago, but almost a full year after Pete’s passing. Profound!
What else can I say about “Desiree Bassett sits in with Foghat at the Wolf Den,” but wow, just wow.
Bob Dylan did a car ad for the Superbowl and everyone gave him a hard time but me it seems. I must say it was a great ad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlSn8Isv-3M
Bob Dylan is a master creative, a creative genius and a genius musician, what more can I say. Does anyone out there feel just a little less venomous toward Mr. Dylan a full year out now? I sure do appreciate the guy.
4april can be summed up academically this way. So this week I watched Frozen three times and DrumLine four times. Yay!
In fact I’ll give you two perspectives of the same day back to back. Two different substitute teachers co-teaching the same students.
“I watched Frozen 3X & DrumLine 4X. 2day I’ll teach Quantum Theory & Linear Equations 2 Theater majors. Neat!” — Marco Frucht
“Any day can turn around: I am now getting paid to watch Drumline, speak Spanish, and have my hair braided by middle schoolers #love” — Carolyn Luby
I released a fully remastered and engineered cut of my EP “Poems For Roberta Blackgoat” in April too. You’ll remember it as the one I printed 150 copies of to give away at my Indian Summer Music Festival performance in Milwaukee last year. I had so much fun giving it away to not just radio stations and industry bigwigs but anyone I met who was considering whether they could afford the asking price on my commercial CD. “Here, have this free even if you can’t get my commercial CD,” I’d say, maybe you’ll get it some other day at iTunes or Amazon, right? I think I sold a total of 5 rekkids and gave away more than a hundred. Yay! Sometimes cash flow is not only less important than what else is going on, but not important at all.
No matter what else happens every April 12, this day will always be the time I was was beaten to within a 3-minute blackout of my life in Washington DC back in 2003. I was telling someone just the other day that one of the last big purchase items I got for myself from my out-of-court settlement was a $1500 memory foam bed. I have no regrets with that, and I joke that I’m actually thankful I was a victim of police brutality since I can sleep so well now.
2may the late Link Wray’s birthday.
Stevie Wonder got my friend Dylan Jenet Collins signed. That was my high point for the month of March I think. Just rooting for that young Native American rockstar!
10 may New London Konetiuk’s 4th annual Youth Talent Show. I’m their instrumental talent coach. Some amazing moments that day. No, many amazing moments that day!
7june or so? Whalie Awards. Nominated for 2 or 3, win nothing. I will never win an award in New London because of people like, well I won’t name them there are 5 or 6 of them and they are very corrupt, very small minded and very self-centered not to mention big fishes in the littlest pond ever. Oh well, who cares. I don’t do this stuff for awards — nominations just tell me someone was thinking about me and makes my nose itch so I’m happy about that!
16june or so. I go to Hank’s Dairy Bar to see Noelle Smith. An amazing singer/songwriter who moved to North Carolina. Connecticut’s loss and America’s gain for sure.
21june I sing some of my zaniest renditions of my even crazier songs at the bonfire of a guy named Andrew and his wonderful family. Soooooo fun. I hope we do that again 3 or 400 more times next summer!
23june I get accepted to Sacred Heart on a full ride scholarship from the VocRehab section of the Veterans Administration. I should probably say that in allcaps. I GOT ACCEPTED TO SACRED HEART FOR GRAD SCHOOL! Wait, I should type it in allcaps but spaced out old gutenberg style, I’m just THAT excited about it.
I G O T A C C E P T E D T O S A C R E D H E A R T F O R G R A D S C H O O L !
Yeah, that was a highpoint in my year, perhaps my decade. I got rejected by UNH because they didn’t like my essay, and was feeling pretty terrible about that when the letter from SHU came in and patched it all up and made it better than better. Heck, I’ll say it, UNH is a horrible school anyhow. Their loss 😛
22junish Gabriel Ayala plays the National Anthem on a classical guitar at an Arizona Diamondbacks game. You could hear a pin drop! Wow.
26jun or so I drop off a single flower at the site where the murdered Ant Hamlin’s body had been dumped after someone killed him outside of Amtrak in downtown New London. His murder just like Mr. Spicer’s up the road from me here in groton remain unsolved from so long ago. Not among New London, Groton, Waterford submarine-capitol-of-the-world’s proudest moments, to be sure.
4th of July I publish Marc Frucht’s American Songbag. 🙂
12july my first A as a grad student. My bachelors degree did not even closely resemble these grades.
Jana’s movie starring alongside Lorenzo Lamas hits Walmart stores around the country. About the same time last year or so she managed to get onto Sony RED which my friend Tony helped start back in the day, and they agreed to some kind of distribution for her newest CD but when you walked into Walmart and BestBuy you had the clerk telling you it wasn’t present but you can order it. This time around I was able to walk right in the store and actual buy a copy of the DVD right on premises. Sooooo happy for Jana to be getting her artwork out there like that. She’s been working so hard in these industries!
Pauline Whitesinger dies. She was Roberta Blackgoats next door neighbor. (and by next door I mean half a mile down a fairly well graded dirt road) In the early 90’s I walked back and forth between those two house at least 5 dozen times. A couple times pickup trucks have pulled up and given me a ride half way there because a snowstorm had just begun that might have killed me before I got there. One time it was Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) cops that saved my life.
18aug – I sort of “ambush” the Governor GuerillaJournalist-Style at one of his openhouse town meeting forums in a coffeeshop to request that he bring gas prices down in southeastern CT since wages are so much lower in the parts of CT where gas prices are artifically low but wages are so much higher. I’ll never know if he brought the prices down two weeks later or if they did that on their own but it sure made some good press.
26aug my Making Wampum video gets to the 6000 hits mark which I’m happy about but I get a little suspicious. It seemed to climb really fast a couple days in a row. Looking for why the spike hit I discover that for one year this video had been included in an eBook by one of the CommonCore corporations outfitting schools with material they claim is better than what the schools are already using. Sort of a backhanded curriculum change without any reflection or deliberation on the school district’s part. Anyhew, state of New York school systems were using my homemade music Video as supplemental material to teach grade schoolers about NDN crafts in centuries past. I’m flattered and aggravated at the same time, to say the least.
9sep I find out that the makers of Duke Nukem video game have been using the .MID file of my song “Hey Mon” for years in their video games. They acquired it in a very “pirate” way from their own developers so I’ll never see a single penny from it, but I don’t care. I’m just happy to be able to say you can hear a melody that I wrote in some of the most popular singlepersonshooter games to ever hit computers prior to Grand Theft Auto and Mortal Combat and stuff, right? Ah, there’s a claim to fame I might not even tell too many people about, certainly not anyone under age 11 or so, yikes.
My coversong of the Violent Femmes’ coversong of Marc Bolan’s “Children Of The Revolution” gets shown for an entire month at a listening station in an art gallery as part of an installation at a national gallery in Sharjah, UAE. You get to hear my song in between ones by Joey Ramone and Aldous Huxley! I use an exclamation point there because this is way more exciting than it sounds.
30oct 4 years ago this day 6 teenagers killed my friend Matt Chew. That’s why I became a substitute teacher and that’s why I became an instrumental talent coach, to show young people all over my county that they can write a song, or sing along, or dance and shout or let it all hang out, instead of pulling a drive by or a beat down, right? Yupper and this led to the annual youth talent show that brings so much beauty out of and into New London!
9november I discover someone’s selling a used copy of my SOFFTY FASNFFTOF CD for almost 60 dollars online. I don’t know for sure yet but I think it’s a drop-shipper who hasn’t even purchased it yet but knows s/he can get it off of CDBaby anytime he needs to. If I ever see a penny from that transaction it will only be something like four-dollars-and-fifty-cents and there’s almost nothing I can do about it. This “recording industry” is dying a slow torturous twisted and sordid death and it’s killing off so many souls in the process. I refuse to care. I’m just flattered someone thought enough of my musical work to include it in his/her diabolical plans to take over his or her tiniest part of his world.
Janice Marie Johnson closes out the Nammys this year. I wasn’t able to go this year but was able to see the thing livestreamed on the web. Great stuff. My friends Clayson and Jeneda performed and got an award, so did the Plateros. Very happy for them. They get to tour as the Plateros now and also as part of the band Indigenous.
8oct. Educator Diane Ravitch speaks at Quinipiac college. That was major!
——————————————
HIGH POINT OF MY YEAR:
And sometime in early November I was the sole witness to a Kindergartner speaking for the first time. I won’t write much about it, but he was labelled with a nonverbal learning disability and was on watch for either Selective Mutism or full Mutism and I was supposed to lead in structured play and readalongs and make notes if I see him do even so much as a grunt or a snortle. Well since I’m not like your usual average “garden variety” substitute teacher I brought a guitar and played him some flamenco music three days in a row and sang to him a capella occasionally in between all the structured play. He had a favorite book called “Five Little Monkeys,” that I could read to him and point at pictures. I impovised my own little ditty to sing to him as the introduction of this book and then I’d ask if he wants to read it with me. The third day I did this he pointed at it and said, “Monk.” I nearly jumped out of my skin! “Did you just say “monkeys?” I asked him. He just puffed out his chest and grinned and said nothing else. So I read it to him and that’s all I’m going to say about that. It really was one of the “most high” moments I’ve experienced in 5 or 6 years, not just this past year!
——————————————
13ish November my friend Frank Waln makes it onto MTV with a major project he’d been working diligently on. I’m amazed that MTV allowed such monumental ideas to be shared in one movie short. Not since Little Steven led the Sun City campaign, or maybe with “We Are The World” did that much “movement” happen!
Please close the School of Americas no matter what name they’re giving WesternHemisphereInstituteForSecurityCooperation it’s still the School of Assassins. I’m embarrassed to be a patriotic American citizen having served in the US army signal corps with each new day that our tax dollars pay for us training paramilitary death squads like that. Look it up.
F I N A L E X A M S 🙁
(Translated from the Greco Roman to the English that means, “stress.”
2dec starts off the month AND THE FOLLOWING YEAR with auditions for the 5th annual New London Youth Talent Show coming up 13march (pi day by the way)
13dec Franc Gramz releases a CD to a fully sold out show at Hanafins Pub. I saw Dio Hanafin and his wife at a local Homegoods/Hardware store a few days later and he told me it was one of the best shows of his entire year, with his wife nodding in agreement the whole time.
Sometime between Thanksgiving and NewYears I found out online thanks to BlackBoard educational webapp that I managed to get 3 gradschool As and a B- at America’s most unaffordable college. My masters degree candidacy is more difficult, more stressful and rigorous all the while more fulfilling than I could have ever imagined it to be.
26dec My friend Tanya Tagac gets declared Canada’s best artist for 2014. Wow.
31dec – Noon. Save for eating dinner and other NYE stuff the very last thing I did this year was pretty neat. Late morning I get a call from DJ Dot who is the “Gramma” in Gramma’s attic. She’s had a last minute cancellation on her weekly TV show and can I come on and entertain TVland in one of those “Taped-Live” settings. Sure, when? Oh, a couple hours. I literally went home, got three guitars, tuned them up once quickly and scoured my room for several set-lists and cheat sheets because I knew I wouldn’t even have time to rehearse at all. I’ll stick to songs I know well. Yeah right. How did that work out for you? I had to cover for so many mistakes with humor that this show went from loose to fun to downright zany in less than 35 seconds. I hope that translates well to the upcoming show and isn’t too embarrassing for you. Or me!
Consequently, I had more fun entertaining on this show than I’ve had in any venue for years! The show airs in a few weeks and then I can start sharing movie shorts from it on vimeo or liveleak or something. Yay!
Happy GNU Year!
Sincerely,
marco frucht
aka Marco Capelli
e&p atizine since 1988
Singer/Songwriter since well, since I’ve been singering and songwritering.
PS: THIS JUST IN!! 2015 begins with my dear friend Eric Lichter nominated for a New England Music Award as Producer Of The Year. Eric owns and operates Dirt Floor Recording Studio which is almost entirely an analog environment. If you want an easy comparison of just how wonderful analog equipment can sound with the right producer placing mics and engineering you, you can listen to his three productions on my commercial CD and then contrast them against most of the others.
The results are in. Thank you all! It was tough, but the search is over.
We are excited for this year and promise an EPIC showcase!
Be sure to tell your friends and family! Bring joy this Holiday season. Tickets go on sale SOON!
1) William Nieves
2) Denny Ward
3) Eric Jones
4) Kairo Castillo
5) Lions Den
6) Jeni Flo Band
7) Ryder Singer-Johnson
8) Dance Infusion
9) Sara Coley
10) Moe Steele
11) Caroline Tanner
12) Jonas Picinich
13) Todd Belcher
14) Naomi Jones
15) Zak Ackart
16) CJ Thibeau
17) Juan Moscol
18) Anna Dozier
19) Carlos Rosario
20) Andrew Barnes
21) Ramon Mendez
22) Sara Maynara
23) Michael Okoasia **
24) Iyanla Page
25) Casey Flax
26) Rebecca Reyes
27) Rhythm ‘n Sync
28) Miquel DeJesus
29) Zionna Williams
30) Brian Johnson
31) Mykela Parker
32) Maria Bonanno
33) Joseph Salcedo
34) Ra’anna Clark
35) Serenity Davies
36) Kathianna Celestin
37) Aliyah Slater
38) Dina Erie
39) Crystaliz Sanchez
40) Brianna Brown
41) Kathy Liz
This show is going to be so off the chain, over the top, other worldly, out of the park, amazingly wild and wow, what else to say that begins with a “w” or an “o” did I say Wow? Yeah, wow, just wow.
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So here’s my reverse chronology rundown of the Nammys last night. Their 15th annual.Â
There were a couple glitches at the beginning of the show from the webstream’s point of view but overall it went really great. This is the first year they’ve managed to include anyone else anywhere else in the world who wanted to watch the Ceremony from afar. I’m really psyched about how well it went, and what an artifact it’s now become thanks to the people at Livestream, SingleFeather, and FNXdotOrg. Yippie!Â
· 10h10 hours ago BTW: I think Livestream’s company has plenty of bandwidth to archive shows so it’s probably going to be an “artifact” now. 🙂 · 10h10 hours ago And my sistah from anuddah mother, Janice Marie Johnson closes the show. #nama #nammys Kelly Montijo Fink and John Kane presenting the next one… #nama #nammys #nammy
More marco capelli @atizine · 11h11 hours ago @4JayMichael You’re welcome! So happy I can help out even a little bit from afar. I’ve been there backstage for so many other ones. · 11h11 hours ago It is so absolutely neato keen and awesomely wonderful to see @theplateros joining Indigenous. Now that’s rock n roll. Have Mercy! More · 11h11 hours ago @mwalim brings the music a capella to introduce Charly Lowry and DarkWater Rising. Wow. Best Rock Recording goes to the Ollivanders #nama #nammy #nammys Sihasin about to perform one of their songs. I think Woody Guthrie’s “Mean Things” is gonna be one of ’em. 🙂 Ryan Little Eagle Molina takes Best Instrumental Recording Nammy at the 15th annual #nammys for “The Long Journey Home.” More · 11h11 hours ago Janice Marie, how’s the lights for you. Too bright? Not bright enough? 😛 That’s right, boogie oogie oogie. Good work grrl!
Nama gives a guitar away. Weall usually sign it the night b4. It’s always a fundraiser for great things. Vets, heating fuel, antisuicide…
· 12h12 hours ago Joanne @JoShenandoah‘s daughter Leah performs one of her songs at NAMA15. 14nov14 🙂 · 12h12 hours ago Dark Water Running and Jimmy Wolf win Nammys. Couldn’t write fast enough for provenance. I’ll get the specifics asap. · 12h12 hours ago Sihasin takes the Debut Group Of The Year Nammy at the 15th annual #nammys for “Never Surrender!” Yippie!
More· 12h12 hours ago Tracy Bone takes the Best Country Nammy at the 15th annual #nammys Yippie! @raphaeldeas @NativeAwards I think it’s 15lbs, Raphael, but I know whatcha mean! @Edko5871 See what I mean? Edko’s houseband’s jam right now sounds like Eagles’ I can’t tell you why, meets Ted Nugent’s Stranglehold…
· 12h12 hours ago Jim Boyd gets “rekonized” at the 15th Nammys. Hard medicine; good medicine. Janice Marie Johnson hands Jim the Lifetime Achievement award.
· 13h13 hours ago Leah Shenandoah takes the Debut Artist Of the Year Nammy at the 15th annual #nammys for her rekkid “Spektra.”
More
· 14h14 hours ago “Indian Honkytonk Wonder Woman.” — One of the Superkids jammin live this sec w/ Wayne Silas, Jr. Menom & Oneida represent! @KarlaCarolAnn View conversation More
· 14h14 hours ago Spirit of Thunderheart wins the Best Traditional Recording #nammy at the 15th annual #nammys for “Rising.”
marco capelli retweeted Dani @xodanix3 · Nov 13 What I liked most about #RebelMusic was it showed Native Americans as human. Not as angry activist or stereotypes but as relateable ppl.
And here’s the complete list of winners:
Artist of the Year
Mato Nanji
Vanishing Americans Best Blues Recording
Vanishing Americans
Indigenous Best Compilation Recording
Don’t Let Me Forget
Kelly Montijo Fink Best Country Recording
Woman Of Red
Tracy Bone Debut Artist of the Year
Leah Shenandoah
Spektra Debut Group of the Year
Sihasin
Never Surrender Best Female Artist
Rita Coolidge
A Rita Coolidge Christmas Best Folk Recording
Keeper of the Dreams
Red Feather Woman Flutist of the Year
Rona Yellowrobe
The Gathering Best Inspirational Recording
Grace & Grit: Chapter I
Dark Water Rising Group of the Year
Plenty Wolf Singers
Medicine Wolf Best Historical/Linguistic Recording
Heart of the Buffalo
Richard Stepp & Rick McKee Best Instrumental Recording
The Long Journey Home
Ryan Little Eagle Molina Best Male Artist
Jimmy Wolf
A Tribute To Little Johnny Taylor Best Native American Church Recording
Apache Peyote Songs
Joe Tohonnie Jr Best New Age Recording
Bridge
Rushingwind & Mucklow Best Pop Recording
Day After Day
Jamie Coon Best Pow Wow Recording
Stoic
Tha Tribe Best Producer
Kevin Chief
Honoring The Mazinikijik Singers Best Rap Hip Hop Recording
One Tribe One Nation
The Council Record of the Year
Romanze Songs of Tosti
Lawrence Harris Best Rock Recording
Two Sons
The Ollivanders Song of the Year
Witchi Tai-To – Water Spirits
Shadowyze, Caren Knight Pepper and Jim Pepper Songwriter of the Year
Theresa “Bear” Fox
Diamond Best Spoken Word Recording
Grandfather Speaks
Ken Quiet Hawk Best Traditional Recording
Spirit of Thunderheart
Rising Best Music Video
Sisters ft Northern Voice
A Tribe Called Red Best Waila Recording
In Loving Memory of Our Beloved Father & Uncle
Family Pride Best World Music Recording
Nature Dance
Joanne Shenandoah Native Heart
Lex Nichols
The Long Road Lifetime Achievement
Jim Boyd
-30-
Comments Off on CEREMONY: NAMA15 Realtime Hilites From the ATIZINE LiveTweet.
Cappuccino.
Monkey and Bull make meal of
Pomegranite, potatoes, pineapple & peppers.
LL Zamenhof worked Pepsi's graveyard
Shift til the day he died. Poetic.
Death not for lack of irony.
For growing calamity, asks Esperanza,
Does one need fertilizer?
Removes tongue from cheek.
1477. Chris visits Iceland inquiring
As a wannabe Portugese picking up
Waterfront gossip of "the NewFound Lands."
Looks like Lawnmower Man on valium.
Vacation - Grape Cod. Dwelling on payola,
Punkrock, and plasma in Adobe Abode.
Hystorically, a bladder bag full of bull.
Mother Earth, you are beaux, bela, belle,
Beautiful - Where's Dr. Esperanto
When you NEED him??
Peabody Coal purchases CavenhamForest for a copper penny.
Mrs. Farthing leaves a pie on her porch for
The plutonium miners. Make mine a strip so
Rare IT'S STILL IN THE GROUND.
Spineless as a Portugese Man O'War, now if
That ain't the scumm calling the scummsucker scummy.
Sage tea makes sore throat to merely a wet
Groggy flemmy thing; yet Dire Wolf offers
12-page thesis on Yak semen.
Can God hear you in a Hindu Ashram?
"Yes," yells Yayo. She's 12 and SMARTER than you.
Fiesta. Laguna March 19, 1992
They say you'll be led by children.
Haiku: Zuni Moisture Dance
Mudhead Kachinas - Laura,
Yayo, HasKey Tso.
Sweatlodge. Madrid, NM
2 FAS children flying a kite.
Filthy fake fony false hair follicles
Now fact thanks to Rogaine.
Or was that Reagan??
Nancy's war-on-drugs:
Rhymes with moron thugs.
Open Mike is playing at the Chez What Cafe.
Who IS this Open Mike?
Just some honest Joe?
Stench fries and fillet of potatoes at
The Full Spoon Cafe.
And Bo Diddley's cook wears wine-red
Dingos pouring sherry in Mrs. Farthing's Chowder.
Pampa, TX. Letting go of Police Brutality -
Release, relax, relief.
2:30 a.m. Katy reads poetry for tips at the
Omaha Greyhound.
Makes 2-bucks on "Bernalilo Blues."
Mytho-philosophical street poems.
How do they make coffee in Nowata?
Strong - same as Coffeeville.
Trivia question: who's face on $5
Foodstamp??
Thomas Jefferson or Johnny Cash?
Movado watch with moon minute hand,
I straddle the corner of Florence
& Normandy contemplating cops.
A house full of cat-tails never falls;
And Medina pours Mecca a 20 oz. cup of
Mocha java.
Previously published in a $5 Chapbook entitled "I Slurp My Coffee."
Currently released as an album at:
http://www.reverbnation.com/marcfruchtpoet
And you can get the whole album as a printable .zip file at:
http://www.frucht.org/Poems4RobertaBlackgoat.zip
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The first time I saw Pete Seeger perform this live was in Providence Rhode Island. He was doing a tribute to Malvina Reynolds who he credited for his first hit single. It was an evening of folk music that was a who’s
who of “Pete Seeger & Friends.” Each did a song or two
that she’d written, and then they
ended the show with a stage full of people singing
Little Boxes for a very long time. I was in heaven.
Not for the fame around me, but for the mass of people
we were, singing together. It was something I can’t
describe in words. Greater than his banjo playing and
his beautiful voice that to this day remains clearer
than a bell, Pete Seeger’s gift really IS his ability
to get an entire “room” singing together.
“Katzberg recalled Seeger as emcee at a tribute to Malvina Reynolds at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in 1993, and singing at the Rhode Island Labor & Ethnic Heritage Festival in Pawtucket in 1996. The latter, she said, perfectly fulfilled a vision she once had about the festival. (Katzberg has a picture of herself on stage with Seeger.)”
Seeger also encouraged Oneida Nation musician Joanne Shenandoah. She was one of his favorite artists. He shared the stage with her on many occasions including a remarkable set with the late Odetta ten years ago, at Madison Square Garden for his 90th Birthday on May 3, 2009, and in 2012 when he, Shenandoah and Patti Smith sang at Cooper Union Hall in New York City for a human rights event. When asked last year as to which performance he wanted to attend he elected to hear Joanne Shenandoah, standing on the side of the stage for her entire hour long set.
Last night Lincoln Center Out Of Doors put on a ginormous memorial concert remembering Pete Seeger’s legacy through song.
It reminded me so much of that Malvina Reynolds tribute in Providence way back in the day. It had that same feel to it. Heck, at least 15 of last night’s performers were at that show.
Here goes some “explication” about the two newest recordings I’ve mastered and edited up. Enjoy.
Recorded live from the soundboard at a Bonfire in Groton, CT.
I noticed while I was organizing these tunes that it kind of serves as the best kind of ethnomusicology lesson you could ever receive for free. Pro Bono, my gift to you. Call now, operators are standing by…
16th Century Greensleeves. (cover of a Ritchie Blackmore arrangement of a very old song)
Other Side – Orig. Someone I was very sweet on turned to me one night and said, “why don’t you write a song about turquoise and silver and a pebble and a ring.” So I did.
Johnny B. Goode – Standard (played very non-standard)
Oh Boy – written by Sonny West, Bill Tilghman and Norman Petty. Made most famous by Buddy Holly
Hey Mon – Orig.
One Tin Soldier – Coven. Made most famous by the movie “Billy Jack.”
Little Things – Orig.
Wicked Wicked World. – Medley arranged by Marc Frucht. “Wicked World”
by Black Sabbath’s Ozzie Osbourne, “When The Levee Breaks” collected
folk style by Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. Last verse Original.
Happened Just That Way – Roger Miller
Seminole Wind – John Anderson
Want to hear just a cute cover of it by a little girl named Mary Elizabeth Kirkpatrick? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsN0zk7VojA Neat how sometimes a song can be kept immortal by lots of people giving it some love!
Mary Had a William Goat – I learned this parody from Carl Sandburg’s publication “American Songbag.”
Merry Minuet – I first heard the Kingston Trio version of this song from my mom and dad’s massive record collection. It was written by
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes – from the Movie of the same name.
I’ve actually been asked to sing it a capella at movie premieres and stuff.
Dream On Again – You notice how they sing, “sing with me” and it’s a song written in like Fm7 with a flatted 9th in the bass, and it’s a key that only Bessie Smith can sing but she’s gotta warm up all opera style before she even tries to sing it?
Evil Ways – Carlos Santana
Milli Vanilla – I wrote this as a parody to the Poison song “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”
FUN song – from Sponge Bob Square Pants. Just don’t ask me to sing the Campfire song or “I Ripped My Pants.”
Blister In The Sun – Violent Femmes. Done as a medley together with “American Music” and “Free.” Proof that the Bodeans stole liberally from the Violent Femmes. J/K they’re all friends with each other.
Oh Freedom – medley. My version of Pete Seeger’s version of Odetta’s version of several ancient spirituals
Do Wacka Do – more Roger Miller
FryBread – Orig.
* Recordings engineered in Groton, CT by Andrew Barnes