anthrodesign

• [from Dan_Soltzberg] Flow [Future Perfect] – [A lovely observation on how behavioral flows in the cafes of several countries reflect differing cultural values.]
• [from Dan_Soltzberg] Getting unstuck: solving the perfect problem [Seth's Blog] – [Short piece on strategy for solving sticky problems.] The way to solve the perfect problem is to make it imperfect. Don't just bend one of the constraints, eliminate it. Shut down the factory. Walk away from the job. Change your product completely. Ignore the board.
• [from steve_portigal] Multimedia E-Books, Adorned With Video Extras [NYTimes.com] – [The language we use to describe an emerging technology or form of communication is in flux as its meaning, marketing, and perceived usefulness is in flux] In the spring Hachette Book Group called its version, by David Baldacci, an “enriched” book. Penguin Group released an “amplified” version of a novel by Ken Follett last week. And on Thursday Simon & Schuster will come out with one of its own, an “enhanced” e-book version of “Nixonland” by Rick Perlstein. All of them go beyond the simple black-and-white e-book that digitally mirrors its ink-and-paper predecessor. The new multimedia books use video that is integrated with text, and they are best read — and watched — on an iPad, the tablet device that has created vast possibilities for book publishers.

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I was fixing broken links on our blog today and had the opportunity to look at many different versions of the “Page Not Found” page in fairly rapid succession.

Here of course is the basic version; with its classic minimalism, one imagines how it would look in Helvetica.

Many sites provide some form of what the Montreal Gazette offers – “we didn’t find what you wanted, here’s a way to search our site.”

But one stood out…

Penguin Books, Australia, takes this little corner of their site – a place where mere arrival already means something has failed – and offers users an unexpected dose of humor, acknowledgment of the situation of being there, and a full set of choices about where they’d like to go next on the site. It was a little spark of delight, and it made me want to buy a book from them.

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I must admit I’m a sucker for a great speech and Paul Hawken gave one last year as the commencement speaker at Portland University about what “it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating.” A few excerpts below and a link to the full text.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

2009 Commencement Speech by Paul Hawkin (at Portland University): Healing or Stealing?

 I’ve written several pieces on what is often described as an ongoing revival of American traditional music (listed below with links). A piece on NPR today and in the N.Y. Times earlier this week on Southern California’s Frank Fairfield brought the subject back to mind. While you (or I) may argue with the assertion that this is a revival — did it ever go away — there is undoubtedly more media attention being paid to performers of American vernacular music, such as Frank Fairfield, Tim Eriksen, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Blind Boy Paxton (to name a few). One of the encouraging aspects of this “revival” is the reclaiming of the history of musical exchange between Anglo- and African Americans that was pushed out of our collective memory by Jim Crow and record companies — I’ve written about that recently so I won’t repeat myself here (go to A history of jazz & country interchange for that). This could be a revolutionary force in American culture or am I just being too hopeful? Regardless, what the new “revivalists” are doing is aptly described by Pierre Bourdieu in Rules of Art:

…one cannot revolutionize a (artistic) field without mobilizing or invoking the experiences of the history of the field, and the great heretics inscribe themselves explicitly in the history of the field, mastering its specific capital much more completely than contemporaries so that revolutions take the form of a return to sources (1996, pg. 238).

Previous writings on:

Tim Eriksen:

• • Postmodern Traditional Music How Tim Eriksen became perhaps the only musician to play with both Kurt Cobain and Doc Watson.
  • Finding a Voice (Interview of Tim Eriksen)
  • “Northern Roots,” “Americana,” “Traditional Music” — The Strategic Nature of Genre Definition

Carolina Chocolate Drops:

• • CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS DROP NEW ALBUM: “GENUINE NEGRO JIG”

• [from steve_portigal] Doomsday shelters making a comeback [USATODAY.com] – The Vivos network, which offers partial ownerships similar to a timeshare in underground shelter communities, is one of several ventures touting escape from a surface-level calamity. Vicino, who launched the Vivos project last December, says he seeks buyers willing to pay $50,000 for adults and $25,000 for children. The company is starting with a 13,000-square-foot refurbished underground shelter formerly operated by the U.S. government at an undisclosed location near Barstow, Calif., that will have room for 134 people. Vicino puts the average cost for a shelter at $10 million. Vivos plans for facilities as large as 100,000 square feet, says real estate broker Dan Hotes, who over the past four years has collaborated with Vicino on partial ownership of luxury homes and is now involved with Vivos. Catastrophe shelters today may appeal to those who seek to bring order to a world full of risk and uncertainty, says Alexander Riley, an associate professor of sociology at Bucknell University.
• [from steve_portigal] Market researchers get new tool in iPad [USATODAY.com] – [No doubt getting people to participate in surveys is an exercise in persuasion or seduction, but if there's a cool factor, something seems wrong to me] The gadget is luring curious consumers who've never seen one to participate in research projects conducted at shopping malls, primarily because they just want to see how it works. At many of the centers response was so good that survey takers collected the required information in about three weeks instead of the four they'd anticipated. The iPad presented its own set of research challenges. Some overheated in direct sunlight and shut down. In one case, a consumer at a mall in Rhode Island was so enamored with the iPad, he grabbed it from the interviewer and ran off.

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• [from steve_portigal] newWitch Magazine – Cutting Edge Paganism – [Seen in a "magic" shop today during a post-fieldwork ramble] newWitch is a magazine dedicated to, featuring, and partially written by young or beginning Witches, Wiccans, Neo-Pagans, and other earth-based, ethnic, pre-Christian, shamanic, and magical practitioners. Everyone from Traditional Wiccans to potion-makers to Asatruar to eco-Pagans can find something in these pages. The one thing we all have in common is a willingness to look at the world, our magical and spiritual paths, and ourselves in new ways. We hope to reach not only those already involved in what we cover, but the curious and completely new as well.
• [from steve_portigal] Can the Kindle and Its Ilk Ease Textbook Inflation? [Village Voice] – [Thanks @dastillman] Pace offered the Kindle to students with course materials already preloaded on the device. Students had the option to buy the Kindle (at a discounted price) at the end of the course. Student complaints ranged from difficulties in taking notes to clumsy navigation controls. The electronic annotation feature was especially “slow and cumbersome,” requiring students to manipulate a tiny button to underline passages and type notes on the Kindle’s ergonomically unfriendly keyboard. The photos, pictures, and diagrams in the e-textbook were all black and white and image quality was not quite as sharp as in print….Soares found time eaten away by technical issues. Kindle books have no page numbers, so it was a challenge to get all the students on the same page. “It’s one thing to read a mystery or novel on the Kindle, but the way you read a textbook is different. You are flipping back and forth while reading, and navigation was cumbersome, even with bookmarks.”
• [from steve_portigal] Doomsday shelters making a comeback [USATODAY.com] – The Vivos network, which offers partial ownerships similar to a timeshare in underground shelter communities, is one of several ventures touting escape from a surface-level calamity. Vicino, who launched the Vivos project last December, says he seeks buyers willing to pay $50,000 for adults and $25,000 for children. The company is starting with a 13,000-square-foot refurbished underground shelter formerly operated by the U.S. government at an undisclosed location near Barstow, Calif., that will have room for 134 people. Vicino puts the average cost for a shelter at $10 million. Vivos plans for facilities as large as 100,000 square feet, says real estate broker Dan Hotes, who over the past four years has collaborated with Vicino on partial ownership of luxury homes and is now involved with Vivos. Catastrophe shelters today may appeal to those who seek to bring order to a world full of risk and uncertainty, says Alexander Riley, an associate professor of sociology at Bucknell University.
• [from steve_portigal] Market researchers get new tool in iPad [USATODAY.com] – [No doubt getting people to participate in surveys is an exercise in persuasion or seduction, but if there's a cool factor, something seems wrong to me] The gadget is luring curious consumers who've never seen one to participate in research projects conducted at shopping malls, primarily because they just want to see how it works. At many of the centers response was so good that survey takers collected the required information in about three weeks instead of the four they'd anticipated. The iPad presented its own set of research challenges. Some overheated in direct sunlight and shut down. In one case, a consumer at a mall in Rhode Island was so enamored with the iPad, he grabbed it from the interviewer and ran off.

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I was shopping for laptops recently, and was shocked by how difficult it was to find a reasonably priced model with a comfortable keyboard and trackpad, and a front edge that was wrist-friendly. The experience made me wonder why so little attention seemed to be being paid to such a fundamental aspect of the product.

Why don’t ergonomics have more sex appeal? Shouldn’t a well-designed physical interfacing of human and built object be one of the most valued aspects of design? While in truth ergonomics are interwoven (or should be) with aesthetics and materials, our excitement seems to gravitate towards how things look and feel, or cleverness of concept, rather than how well they work with us.

A quick read through this recent interview with Jonathan Ive on Core77 reveals a worshipful discussion of iPhone 4 materials.

It is this sort of materials obsession and constant experimentation that led to a decision to use scratch-resistant aluminosilicate glass for the front and back of the phone, as well as developing their own variant of stainless steel to edge the device.

I had to travel all the way back to 2007 to find someone talking specifically about a sexy merger of design and ergonomics/usability.

Is it that when ergonomics work, they are invisible? That they generally succeed by creating an absence of negative experience, but don’t extend into the realm of pleasure creation, where they might generate more attention?

Dieter Rams’ “weniger, aber besser (less, but better)” design philosophy – and indeed Jonathan Ive’s as well – heads in a similar direction – the absence of superfluous elements, but yet we still find it sexy.

Perhaps part of the picture is the lack of sex appeal that discussions of ergonomics tend to have. Is this an issue of professional culture? What is more important than objects that – never mind giving us pleasure – at the very least don’t injure us? Maybe that’s it – it’s too serious an aspect of design to engender the fun spirit we find in aesthetics?

The movie Waterworld (one of a handful of movies-most-people-think-are-bad that I like), while over the top and mostly quite silly, nicely illustrates the balletic relationship of person and object that good ergonomics make possible, as Kevin Costner’s character Mariner singlehandedly sails and otherwise operates his boat throughout the film. The boat’s steampunk aesthetic won’t be for everyone, but it’s perfectly designed to work with the needs of its user, and to me there’s something really sexy about that.

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Working on a couple of posts but still too busy to put much time into it. In the meantime, here’s a repost of a Jon Pareles piece (N.Y. Times) on how Bassekou Kouyati has revolutionized the use of the ngnoi but first here’s a YouTube video of Kouyati with another “revolutionary” who has taken the banjo into new territory (in this case, you could call it a post-modern encounter with an ancestor).

Expanding the Boundaries of a West African Instrument

By JON PARELES

Published: July 26, 2010

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times: Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba Mr. Kouyate with the ngoni, a traditional lute from Mali that dates back hundreds of years, performed with his band at SummerStage in Central Park on Sunday.

There were no Western instruments onstage when the Malian griot Bassekou Kouyate and his band, Ngoni Ba, performed at SummerStage in Central Park on Sunday afternoon. Ngoni Ba is a string band — four sizes of ngoni, a four-stringed African lute that’s an ancestor of the banjo — with Mr. Kouyate’s wife, Amy Sacko, as lead singer, along with two percussionists playing calabashes and tama, a West African pressure drum. The band wore African clothes, and the songs were in Bambara, Mali’s main language. One, a meditative 17th-century praise song that Ms. Sacko sang in expanding arabesques, delved into 2,000-year-old Malian history.

But this was no traditional African concert. Through technique, technology and open ears, Mr. Kouyate hurls the ngoni into the 21st century. After performing in groups with notable Malian musicians like Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté, Mr. Kouyate has taken an instrument traditionally used to accompany a singer, pushed it into the foreground and multiplied it into an ensemble.

The bass and tenor-register ngonis in Ngoni Ba, founded in 2005, were invented by Mr. Kouyate, and they bring extra layers of counterpoint to what was already intricate, quick-fingered music. Traditional musicians play the ngoni in their laps while seated; (to read more…)

• [from steve_portigal] How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Flow [Nieman Storyboard] – [Via @kottke. While many decry the loss of personal connection that our devices lead to; here's a theory that says the opposite, that it creates feelings of greater connectness] I was traveling with friends, and one of them took a call. Suddenly, instead of feeling less connected to the people I was with, I felt more connected, both to them and to their friends on the other end of the line (whom I did not know). My perspective had shifted from seeing the call as an interruption to seeing it as an expansion. And I realized that the story I had been telling myself about who I was had widened to include additional narratives, some not “mine,” but which could be felt, at least potentially and in part, personally. A small piece of the global had become, for the moment, local. And once that has happened, it can happen again. The end of the world as we know it? No — it’s the end of the world as I know it, the end of the world as YOU know it — but the beginning of the world as WE know it.
• [from steve_portigal] The Acceleration of Addictiveness [Paul Graham] – [Via @waxpancake. He describes how slowing down by taking hikes gives him a mental and creative freedom that his addictions have rendered otherwise inaccessible] Most if not all the things we describe as addictive are. And the scary thing is, the process that created them is accelerating. We wouldn't want to stop it. It's the same process that cures diseases: technological progress. Technological progress means making things do more of what we want. When the thing we want is something we want to want, we consider technological progress good. If some new technique makes solar cells x% more efficient, that seems strictly better. When progress concentrates something we don't want to want—when it transforms opium into heroin—it seems bad. But it's the same process at work. No one doubts this process is accelerating, which means increasing numbers of things we like will be transformed into things we like too much.
• [from steve_portigal] Exactitudes® – [Thanks @MicheleMarut! Pattern-matching is a fabulous way to develop observational skills] Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek have worked together since October 1994. Inspired by a shared interest in the striking dress codes of various social groups, they have systematically documented numerous identities over the last 14 years. They call their series Exactitudes: a contraction of exact and attitude. By registering their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code, Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people’s attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis that the artistic aspect clearly dominates the purely documentary element.

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• [from steve_portigal] Drilling Down – Why Elite Shoppers Eschew Logos [NYTimes.com] – Rather than rely on obvious logos, expensive products use more discreet markers, such as distinctive design or detailing. High-end consumers prefer markers of status that are not decipherable by the mainstream. These signal group identity only to others with the connoisseurship to recognize their insider standing. In one study, fashion students were more likely than regular students to favor subtle signals for products visible to others, like handbags. But for private products less relevant to identity, like underwear and socks, there was no difference between the groups. Jonah Berger, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the paper’s authors, said it was not that insiders simply had a dislike for logos. Instead, he said, they avoid them “in identity-relevant domains to distinguish themselves from mainstream consumers who buy such products to show they’ve made it.”
• [from steve_portigal] ElderGadget.com | News and Reviews of Products with Elder Friendly Features – Those of us with aging parents share many things, chief among them the desire that our elderly loved ones have the opportunity for the same quality of life that we enjoy. For some this means remaining independent, for others it might mean a need to make caregiving simpler to meet the needs of people we love. The elderly prefer simple uncomplicated gadgets and products which are lighter and specially designed with higher contrast, pre-programmed features. Products of use might include talking Pill boxes, medi-alerts, and a myriad of gadgets with simple “how to use” instructions. That’s the focus with Eldergadget, a comprehensive blog where a person with an aging loved one can go to find the latest gadgets that meet a seniors needs and maybe some products you have never dreamed possible. We also bring you the latest up to date news, videos and developments in technology for seniors. We also include lighthearted fare such as humor and retro gadgets in order to brighten a person’s day.

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Here’s my review of the best live show I’ve seen this year — published on Afropop.org today.

Fat Freddy’s Drop: Live in San Francisco

Fat Freddy’s Drop tore up the Independent in San Francisco on Friday, June 25. Soul drenched vocals and reggae riddims mixed with electronic effects, club beats and a killer horn section to create a fresh sound that is contemporary but deeply rooted in a diverse collection of black music styles that came of age in the 1970s. Funk, soul, reggae, ska, dub—sometimes straightforward, sometimes deconstructed—were not unexpected from an outfit that started out as a jam band. What was unexpected was that it all worked!

I was drawn to Fat Freddy’s Drop’s show by the song “Boondigga” (from their last album Dr. Boondigga and the Big BW), which had been firmly entrenched on my personal playlist for a month before the show. The song came early in the eighty-minute set so if things had bogged down or fell flat, I wouldn’t have second thoughts about cutting out and looking for a plan B but I didn’t leave until the show ended. Now back to the song that drew me to the show because I think there’s something in there that explains the appeal and brilliance of Fat Freddy’s Drop. “Boondigga” opens on a smooth soul groove, anchored by the sweet Philadelphia sounds laid down by the horn section and driven by a very ‘70s electronic drum track. Joe Dukie’s smooth vocals ride on top of the slowly building arrangement that does not gain its full power until after the break, three minutes in. A subtle shift in the horn chart brings in the more harmonically extended controlled dissonance that Tower of Power brought out of Oakland signaling the beginning of a major deconstruction of Boondigga’s smooth soul sound. The horns exit and a soulfully deviant aural soundscape is created from distorted guitar, swelling keys and electronics. Live the horn section left the stage at the start of the deconstruction, which was given twice as long to develop as on the album – a full four minutes. And that was true of the entire show: (for the rest…)

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Another installment in the excellent series on Taqwacore from my sadiqi at Tales from Bradistan.

MONDAY, 26 JULY 2010

Al Thawra

I am the revolution and you are the revolution In your spirit you have the power In your heart lies the secret From your lips spills the truth That the wine of power is in our blood Together we can make a revolution Tell your comrades I am the revolution We are the revolution

Recently I drove over to Preston to meet two of the bands that are at the forefront of thetaqwacore scene in the USA. I already wrote about The Kominas with some thoughts about the documentary film Taqwacore: The Birth Of Punk Islam. The other band on the tour were Al Thawra (“The Revolution” in arabic) from Chicago, a group that were not given much airtime in that film but certainly deserve greater recognition.

Al Thawra are a trio but on this trip they had expanded to four members. Syrian-Polish-American Marwan Kamel sings and plays guitar; Matt Scott stood in for the absent bassist Mario Salazar; Micah Bezold was on drums; and Adam Jennings from Winters In Osakaguested by playing the sampler. (to read on…)

The “dancing guy video has become viral — over 3 million hits for the original. And it’s making its way into business presentations. I saw Gentry Underwood of IDEO use it to illustrate the herd aspect of human behavior in a talk on ethnography and design at PARC in Palo Alto. And below is a link to an article by music business strategist Derek Silvers on whaa we can learn about leadership from Dancing Guy (the video gives a capsule version — the text is available on Silver’s blog, a new find I’m bookmarking today).

Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

Also worth checking out is Silvers’ entry on the human need for drama:

Kurt Vonnegut explains drama

I was at a Kurt Vonnegut talk in New York a few years ago. Talking about writing, life, and everything. He explained why people have such a need for drama in their life. He said, “People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories. Let’s look at a few examples.” (read more…)

And I’d recommend checking out Underwood’s Social Software: The Other ‘Design for Social Impact,’ by Gentry Underwood which extends his presentation at PARC.

• [from steve_portigal] Does Language Influence Culture? [WSJ.com] – [Stanford psychology prof Lera Boroditsky examines how it does, and why it does] Just because people talk differently doesn't necessarily mean they think differently. In the past decade, cognitive scientists have begun to measure not just how people talk, but also how they think, asking whether our understanding of even such fundamental domains of experience as space, time and causality could be constructed by language…All this new research shows us that the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express. The structures that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we construct reality, and help make us as smart and sophisticated as we are…As we uncover how languages and their speakers differ from one another, we discover that human natures too can differ dramatically, depending on the languages we speak. [Thanks @ebuie]
• [from steve_portigal] Facebook Is to the Power Company as … [NYTimes.com] – [The gap between being a customer and being a happy customer. Will Facebook be like Microsoft in a few decades, *still* whining about not being beloved - let alone actively disliked?] It was a typically vexing week for Facebook. On the one hand, the social-networking service signed up its 500 millionth active user. On the other hand, it was found to be one of the least popular private-sector companies in the United States by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Apparently, Americans were more satisfied filing their taxes online than they were posting updates on their Facebook page. It is a continuing contradiction: Facebook is widely criticized for shifting its terms of service and for disclosing private information — and yet millions of people start accounts each month.
• [from steve_portigal] Digital Domain – Even With All Its Profits, Microsoft Has a Popularity Problem [NYTimes.com] – [We want your money and your love!] Microsoft’s enterprise software business alone is approaching the size of Oracle. But despite that astounding growth, Microsoft must accept that, fair or not, victories on the enterprise side draw about as much attention as being the No. 1 wholesale seller of plumbing supplies. Microsoft won’t receive the adoring attention that its chief rival draws with products like the iPad. In a conversation earlier this month, Mr. Shaw explained what prompted him to write his post. “I noticed some pretty critical conversations going on in the technosphere among the technorati,” he said. “There’s a gap between that conversation ­ ‘the company is not doing well, period’ ­ and what the company is actually doing.” In the blog, he writes, “With Windows 7, Office 2010, Bing, Xbox 360, Kinect, Windows Phone 7, in our cloud platform, and many other products, services and happy customers, 2010 is shaping up as a huge year for us.”

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Histories of American popular music have tended to create a clear bifurcation of “White” and “Black” musical genres. Country music has been portrayed as a genre primarily drawn from Anglo-Scottish roots. The significant influences of African Americans on the genre have been diminished or placed in a carefully constructed pre-history. African American musical genres have also been defined within strict boundaries—stripped of areas of inter-cultural contact, influence and collaboration. This separation was largely created by the commercial music industry during the 1920′s when widespread recording of “blues” and “hillbilly” artists began in the South. A&R representatives of northern record companies were instrumental in shaping the repertoire of black and white artists along perceived lines of marketability. The “blues craze” of the 1920′s had a particularly dramatic effect on the future of African American popular music. Most African American performers had a large repertoire of different types of songs but the only material most record companies wanted to record were blues. This had a powerful effect on shaping the perception of  African American music that was subsequently reflected in scholarship on the blues. Early blues scholars were often preoccupied with looking for “authentic” blues, material uncolored by intercultural contact, not only with “White” music but also with commercial forms of African American music that they perceived as less authentically “Black.” Styles of the blues were legitimized by separating them from other styles of music and by constant reference back to their roots in rural black culture. (Callen, “A Deconstruction of a Constructed Genre: A Critical View of the Oakland Blues” presented at the 44^th Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Austin, Texas. October 1999.)

The quote is from my first conference presentation as an ethnomusicologist based on research I’d done on the West Coast Blues in which I’d found that the clear separations made between Black and White musical traditions in the U.S. were a misrepresentation of a history of continual exchange. It was something that was obvious and I should have known but ran contrary to the common sense version of American history that I had accumulated. My research on the West Coast Blues began my interest in the process of genre definition and those frequent moments when genre categories are inadequate and transgression is necessary and inevitable. Lately, it’s been interesting to watch the rediscovery (again) of the connections between jazz and country music — did everyone really forget Texas Swing and Bluegrass? Below are a couple of excerpts from an excellent Jazz Times article by Geoffrey Himes on the history of jazz / country collaborations and a new crop of “fusions” worth checking out — and advocacy for a definition of jazz less as a genre or style than as a process that can be applied to any musical material. The article is well worth reading in its entirety.

Jazz and Country Fusion: The Searchers

December 2008 Geoffrey Himes

When Sonny Rollins released his Way Out West album in 1957, the cover featured the tall tenor saxophonist standing out in the desert between a bleached cow skull and a multi-armed cactus. In the William Claxton photo, Rollins cradled his horn like a six gun, planted his fist by his holster and peered out slyly from beneath a big gray cowboy hat. The cowboy theme carried over into the music as the trio of Rollins, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne played “I’m an Old Cowhand,” “Wagon Wheels” and the leader’s title tune.

It was an important record for several reasons. For one, the piano-less format allowed Rollins the harmonic freedom to break with bebop orthodoxy and to follow his melodic inspiration wherever it led. For another, it challenged the assumption that only blues, ballads and show tunes were the proper materials for jazz improvisation. The album proved that country music, even ersatz country music like Johnsy Mercer’s “I’m an Old Cowhand,” could inspire great jazz performances.

Rollins wasn’t the first to point this out. After all, in 1930 Louis Armstrong had played trumpet on “Blue Yodel No. 9” by the “Father of Country Music,” Jimmie Rodgers. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys had recorded “Basin Street Blues,” one of Armstrong’s signature tunes, in 1946. But Rollins was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace country music so emphatically.

It has taken a long time, but country music is now winning grudging acceptance from the jazz world. One of 2008’s best-selling jazz releases was the Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson collaboration, Two Men With the Blues (Blue Note). This country-jazz hybrid was new territory for Marsalis, but Nelson has been singing and picking jazz standards all his life and even recorded a jazz-guitar record, The Gypsy, with Jackie King in 2001.

Another key release last year was Charlie Haden’s Rambling Boy (Decca), a collection of old country songs he sang as a young boy in the Haden Family. Before he moved to Los Angeles and joined the Ornette Coleman Quartet, Haden sang with his parents and siblings on the radio in Iowa and Missouri. Haden first hinted at those origins on his 1997 duo album with Pat Metheny, Beyond the Missouri Sky. Now Haden revisits the actual songs of the Haden Family with help from his kids, Metheny, Elvis Costello and such country stars as Rosanne Cash, Vince Gill and Ricky Skaggs.

Jenny Scheinman, the jazz violinist who has recorded with Bill Frisell, Norah Jones and John Zorn, released two KOCH label albums in 2008. Crossing the Field is an instrumental jazz record with Frisell and Jason Moran, but Jenny Scheinman is a vocal project, featuring country and folk songs recorded with fellow members of Frisell’s band. (to read the rest)

Rollins, Haden and their fellow fusioneers take the approach that jazz is primarily a process, not a repertoire. Almost any piece of music can be given an elastic syncopation, substitute chords and theme-and-variation improvisation. Some tunes may work better than others, but Rollins has demonstrated that a successful tune might as easily be a calypso as a show tune, a Hank Williams song as readily as a George Gershwin number.

“Jazz can use any source material,” argues Scheinman. “Jazz is an approach, and you can start with any melody and make it work for improvisers. The tune is just the conversation topic, and you can take the topic anywhere you want.”

“That’s what’s so amazing about jazz,” Frisell agrees. “That’s why it’s such a perfect world to be in. I don’t think there are any rules as far as what you use as source material. It’s more about having the opportunity to take what you know, to draw from your experience, and do whatever you want with it. All my heroes—Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk—took the music that was around them, the music that they liked, and transformed it through their own eyes.”

If this is true, if jazz is a process that can be worked on any ingredients, what are the advantages of turning to country music for raw materials? Well, the genre is full of gorgeous melodies, aching emotions and rural textures that have been largely untouched by the jazz world. While blues, ballads and show tunes have been worked to exhaustion, country music represents a largely unplowed field. Here is a wealth of material just waiting to be alchemized into jazz, if only musicians and audiences can overcome their prejudices.

• [from steve_portigal] Monster Cable announces deal with Yao Ming [SF Chronicle] – [It's easy to be cynical about these sort of deals when they use the verb "design" to characterize the role that the endorser will play. What is the generative process involved to develop these new products? I can't help but think of Homer Simpson creating his dream car] Monster Cable Products Inc. announced a deal with Houston Rockets basketball center Yao Ming to design a line of consumer electronics and related products to be sold in China, his home country. The "Yao Monster" line, which will include headphones, bags, home theater cables and performance glasses, is part of the Brisbane company's latest marketing push into China.

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Two reposts of interesting blog posts I’ve read lately on research (from the design sector).

In case you’re curious or have a memory lapse (like I did), here’s a short “definition” of verstehen from Wikipedia (where else):

Verstehen is a German word which does not directly translate into English but is loosely synonymous with “understanding” or “interpretation”. In the social sciences it refers to a kind of non-empirical, empathic, or participatory examination of social phenomena. The term is particularly associated with the German sociologist, Max Weber, whose antipositivism established an alternative to prior sociological positivism and economic determinism, rooted in the analysis of social action. In anthropology, verstehen holds parallels with cultural relativism and has come to mean a systematic interpretive process in which an outside observer of a culture attempts to relate to subcultural group, or indigenous people, on their own terms and from their own point-of-view.

(1) From the online magazine Interactions:

Adding By Leaving Out: The Power of the Pause Liz Danzico

We tend to think of the pause as awkward. In speech, pregnant pauses connote uncomfortable silence; we veil silence with fillers. As professional communicators, we’re trained to deliver smooth speech, censoring out “um” and “ah.” Public-speaking groups, such as the well-known Toastmasters, fine every member who utters an “uh” or “um” during a speech. This distaste for the pause – and the inverse, seeking an always-on state – is a battle we face at school, at work, and in industry at large.

I propose that we’re too impatient with the pause, and as a result, we’re missing out on a great deal. What would happen if, as communicators and designers, we became more comfortable with the pause? Because it turns out we can add by leaving out. The pause has power. (hit link @ title for the rest)

(2) From Copernicus Consulting (a Toronto design research and strategy firm):

The essence of qualitative research: “verstehen”

by Sam Ladner on October 15, 2009

“But how many people did you talk to?” If you’ve ever done qualitative research, you’ve heard that question at least once. And the first time? You were flummoxed. In 3 short minutes, you can be assured that will never happen again.

Folks, qualitative research does not worry about numbers of people; it worries about deep understanding. Weber called this “verstehen.” (Come to think of it, most German people call it that too. Coincidence?). Geertz called it “thick description.” It’s about knowing — really knowing — the phenomenon you’re researching. You’ve lived, breathed, and slept this thing, this social occurrence, this…this…part of everyday life. You know it inside and out. (hit link @ title for the rest)

Here are some photos from the TEDx Taipei event which occurred yesterday. It was a great event, super well organized, with excellent speakers all around. Congrats to Kevin, Jason and the whole team for putting on a terrific show. There were many people I didn’t get photos of, this is just a small selection of what was on offer.

The event was held in a renovated space that is now an arts/culture center

Rehearsal

Jason and Kevin on stage

Dinner the night before, with the group Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group doing a sketch based around Michael Jackson, and with a performance of Thriller.

TEDx Day

Jason doing introductionsZoo Nutritionist demonstrating zoo feeding practices with volunteersAnother zoo feeding practice: the Pinata

A chalk wall for people to leave messagesDesigner Alice Wang presenting. This is what it feels like on-stage, a blurThe BaBa Band

Taiwan tennis professional and advocate Jeff Hsu

Dancer Fang-Yi Sheu