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Top 50: Entertainment

The Future By Rainer Maria Rilke

Poem text and context: https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/01/11/let-this-darkness-be-a-bell-tower-rilke

Music: Bach Cello Suite No. 5 in C Minor, performed by Colin Carr

Art: Arthur Rackham, 1926

POEM TEXT / CONTEXT

"Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower" by Rainer Maria Rilke (read by Maria Popova)

Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba: Ba Power
Release date: April 24th 2015
Glitterbeat Records
www.glitterbeat.com

Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba’s fourth album Ba Power (and his first for Glitterbeat Records) is a striking, career defining record marked by mesmerizing songs, razor-sharp riffs and full-throttle emotions. Following two years of worldwide touring for the much heralded Jama Ko album, Bassekou’s band, Ngoni Ba, has turned up the volume and dynamics significantly and Bassekou’s masterful ngoni playing has achieved a new level of intensity that can only be called: afro-rock. Distortion and wah wah and propulsive rhythms are now the defining backbone of his songs and the heat lightning vocals of his wife Amy Sacko, more than ever serve as the passionate and perfect foil. This is not the same Ngoni Ba. This is indeed: Ba Power.

When asked what Ba Power means to him, Bassekou told us:
"Ba", in Bambara means "strong" or "great" and it also means "group.” I called the album Ba Power because I think the messages on it are very important and strong, and it is also definitely the album with the toughest sound I've ever made. I want these songs to grab as many people as possible.”

Without question Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba has revolutionized the sound and narrative possibilities of the ngoni, the lute-like instrument that is essential to Mali’s Griot culture. Griots are esteemed musician/storytellers whose lineage stretches back centuries. Bassekou was born into this resonant tradition but his relationship to it has been anything but static. From the beginning of his career, through his invention of a previously unheard repertoire built around the melodies and rhythms of four interlocking (and at times electric) ngonis, Bassekou has demonstrated his respect for the past by radically pulling it into the future. 

Ba Power contains all the swagger, precision and wide-eyed excitement that the title implies. It is the album where Bassekou’s music engages with the world in ways he could have only imagined 10 years before. It is the album where he confirms his status amongst the 21st centuries most relevant musical artists.

I think African music and culture deserve to be spread to the broadest audience possible.
That is what I want to accomplish with Ba Power.
--Bassekou Kouyaté


Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba - Siran Fen

Eve Ensler has helped women all over the world tell the stories of their lives through the stories of their bodies. Her play, "The Vagina Monologues," has become a global force in the face of violence against women and girls. But she herself also had a violent childhood. And it turns out that she herself was like so many of us western women, obsessed by our bodies and yet not inhabiting them — without even knowing we're not inhabiting them. Until she got cancer.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/a-second-wind/6050

Eve Ensler — Messy, Human Love

Alzheimer's disease has been described as "the great unlearning." But what does it reveal about the nature of human identity? What remains when memory unravels? Alan Dienstag is a psychologist who has led support groups with early Alzheimer's patients, as well as a writing group he co-designed with the novelist Don DeLillo. He's observed the early stages of Alzheimer's as a time for giving memories away rather than losing them. 

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/alan-dienstag-alzheimers-and-the-spiritual-terrain-of-memory/64

Alan Dienstag — Love Endures

Alzheimer's disease has been described as "the great unlearning." But what does it reveal about the nature of human identity? What remains when memory unravels? Alan Dienstag is a psychologist who has led support groups with early Alzheimer's patients, as well as a writing group he co-designed with the novelist Don DeLillo. He's experienced the early stages of Alzheimer's as a time for giving memories away rather than losing them.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/alan-dienstag-alzheimers-and-the-spiritual-terrain-of-memory/64

Alan Dienstag — Alzheimer's and the Spiritual Terrain of Memory


From the moment of his diagnosis with ALS, Bruce Kramer began writing — openly, deeply, and spiritually — about his struggle, as he puts it, to live while dying. He died while we were in production on this show. His words hold abiding joy and beauty, and reveal an unexpected view opened by this disease.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/bruce-kramer-forgiving-the-body-life-with-als/7420

Bruce Kramer — Dis Ease, the Great Teacher

This is spoken word album that features me reading [mostly] other peoples' poems. (I wrote one.) All of the authors or sources are credited in each track listing.  I am sometimes accompanied by Harold Taddy on the guitar/moog noise pedals/drums, etc. I play the rain stick on one track. 



you who never arrived [written by rainer maria rilke]

i am, o anxious one [written by rainer maria rilke]

Background and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/12/23/bob-dylan-reads-twas-the-night-before-christmas/

BACKGROUND / POEM TEXT

Bob Dylan reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”

Poem text and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/04/02/meryl-streep-morning-song-sylvia-plath/

Recorded at Poetry & the Creative Mind 2014, hosted by The Academy of American Poets.

Meryl Streep reads "Morning Song" by Sylvia Plath

Published April 7, 2018 — An expat living in Saigon describes the bustle of Ho Chi Minh City's famous Bui Vien Street, and explains why this backpacker district has recently become a weekend destination for local families. Then tour guides from Spain share updates and travel tips for the land of tapas and toreadors.

For more information on Travel with Rick Steves — including episode descriptions, program archives, and related details — visit www.ricksteves.com.

520 Saigon's Bui Vien Street; Spain 2018

Drake, "I Get Lonely Too"

Exclusive new track from the soundtrack to Jordan Peele's upcoming Us movie, with music by Michael Abels. The soundtrack will be released on March 15, and the movie will be in theaters from March 22.

Us (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Anthem - Us Movie Soundtrack

Pas De Deux - Us Movie Soundtrack

Nolwenn Leroy - "Moonlight Shadow"

From a BBC radio segment broadcast on April 29th, 1937. Background and transcript:http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/04/29/craftsmanship-virginia-woolf-speaks-1937/ 

MORE/TRANSCRIPT

On Craftsmanship: The only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf's voice

Chesterton was a larger than life character in every sense - and this English road trip is entirely in that spirit.

The Rolling English Road - GK Chesterton

Poem text and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2021/01/31/elizabeth-bishop-one-art

Recorded by @amandapalmer for Brain Pickings.

Amanda Palmer Reads "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop

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