Posts tagged with "Music and Audio"

NPR Covers Gender Queer Kids

By Shira | May 8, 08 01:46 PM

On All Things Considered yesterday, there was a pretty in-depth piece about families dealing with gender queer kids. In typical NPR fashion there was an attempt at objectivity by interviewing two doctors with very different approaches - one who thinks kids should be forced to behave accordingly with their biological sex, another who focuses on the child's happiness and sense of comfort and security with their body and gender expression. It's nice to see these issues getting some mainstream media coverage.

Listen to Two Families Grapple with Sons' Gender Preferences

Songy

By Shira | Apr 11, 08 08:28 PM

I'm only allowed six songs on my MySpace page.

Here's another one (named by Ari):
songy (mp3, 1:28min.) »

I Never Thought I Would But Yes, I've Launched a MySpace Music Page

By Shira | Mar 30, 08 02:28 PM

shira playing
Originally uploaded by arimoore

There are many reasons that I dislike MySpace -- bad design, obnoxious advertising, the fact that it belongs to Rupert Murdoch -- but, the word on the street is that it's a good way to promote your music, so I've bitten the bullet and put up a page at myspace.com/shiragoldingmusic.

You can only put up six songs, so I tried to choose ones that represent the spectrum of music I like to make. Have a listen and let me know what you think. All of this is part of a plan to release an album, so I'd love feedback and any encouragement.

Earth Hour, Blackout Sabbath, and other symbols of sustainability

By Ari | Mar 29, 08 10:37 AM

Today I was happy to see Google blacked out in support of Earth Hour, tonight's hour of energy awareness (8pm - 9pm). Turn out your lights to participate, if you're into it.

However, reading about Earth Hour, I couldn't help but think Rufus Wainwright's Blackout Sabbath - 12 hours of no energy use at all, on the summer solstice, June 21, along with setting personal goals for sustainability - is a lot more hardcore. The World Wildlife Fund, who's behind Earth Hour, should have talked to Rufus and set their sights a little higher, pushed people a little harder!

On Rufus' short sample list of actions one can take for the environment, he even includes going vegan (my fingers are SO crossed right now that he'll join our vegan ranks... c'mon Rufus, you can do it...). Veganism is such an obvious step toward sustainability that it gets a little infuriating when I see Treehugger and WorldChanging and the like continually ignoring it as an option and suggesting people find "sustainable fisheries" and "happy meat", as if that solves much else besides making people feel a little better about oppressing animals.

I don't think I'm going to participate in Earth Hour, but I do think I'll do Blackout Sabbath. I loved the blackout too, and I think it could be magic to spend that time making art about the earth and the future, or writing by (vegan!) candlelight about the times to come and how we can make it beautiful. I like setting goals for myself, and I like participating in consciousness-raising events like fasts and the like, because I like, well, raising my consciousness. These events are symbols, but important ones: They're fissures in the wall of separation we put up between our energy-consuming, self-centered, here-and-now lives - and the future, our children's future, the future of the earth. We don't like to look over there, to see what we're actually setting up for ourselves. If it takes an hour (or 12 hours) of reflection and awareness to really take a good look at what we're doing and how we can change, then that symbolic act is a very useful one.

But in the end, we need more than just temporary observances and symbolic acts, right? If you're out of a room for over two minutes, there shouldn't be a light on in there. If you've got appliances with power indicator lights on them that are plugged in all day, they're just sitting there sucking up energy, and should be unplugged until they're needed. If your home just doesn't stay cool in the summer or warm in the winter, maybe you need to fix your insulation so all of that energy doesn't just fly our the window. In every situation we have the power to make decisions that add to the problem, or that make the world a better place. There are easy little things we can all do every day, all day, to go beyond symbols and toward true sustainability. What do you do? And do symbols help, or distract from this larger, deeper movement?

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast... #1?

By shirari | Mar 25, 08 06:32 PM

We've been talking about doing a podcast for a really long time and today we actually recorded one! Well, call it an experiment - if people are interested we'll record more. In the meantime, it's just a link to an MP3 file that you can download and play. Whee.

We talk about how we got into activism back in college, and how our veganism and anti-capitalism and sustainability activism are all related. Also features trash talk and an interruption by a kitten. Basically it's about living in line with our ethics, and having a very good time doing it. We've really loved learning from others' podcasts and hope someone will find something here that's worth listening to.

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #1: Who we are and what this is all about
March 25, 2008 - 17 minutes - 20.3MB

R.I.P.

By Shira | Mar 25, 08 01:55 PM

rip - 3.08.08.jpg

When people die around the same time, are their souls somehow interconnected? I'm not sure that I believe that we have a "soul" and I'm pretty certain that there is no after-life, other than a slow reunion with mama earth, and yet when people pass away in close succession, I can't help but searching for common threads. (Remember when James Brown, Robert Altman, Saddam Hussein and Gerald Ford died in November/December 2006?)

So what do filmmaker Anthony Minghella, author Arthur C. Clarke and musician Israel "Cachao" López have in common? They were all creative visionaries.

Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley is a beautiful film that captures the conflict between external and internal identities in a way that I have never seen before or since. It also shows how totally destructive homophobia, especially the internalized variety, can be.

Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey was written concurrently with the production of Kubrick's film and published after its release. The film, the book, the whole of Arthur C. Clarke's work, is an example of the best of what science-fiction has to offer the world - a glimpse into the future that shows us what we need to do today.

I actually hadn't heard of Israel López until a few days ago, when his death was announced. On NPR he was described as the "inventor of Mambo music." While I'm sure that, as with any artistic movement, López had many collaborators and co-inventors along the way, it's still pretty amazing to be known as the creator of anything. It's time to listen to the Buena Vista Social Club Soundtrack again (López composed a number of the songs).

So rest in peace Anthony, Arthur and Israel. If there is a heaven, I hope you're all up there working on a mambo/sci-fi/cinematic mash-up.

Vote Gogol Bordello

By Ari | Feb 7, 08 09:45 AM

One of my favorite bands, Gogol Bordello, has been nominated for Best Punk Album and Best Live Show in the 2008 Plug Independent Music Awards. Voting is open until February 15th, so if you're into them too, vote now!

If you don't know them, check them out. Gogol Bordello is an international punk-dub-gypsy party. When we saw them live a while back, the audience was so excited before the show that spontaneous hora mosh pits broke out when a Fanfare Ciocarlia song came on. And during the show... let's just say there was drag, wine, an accordion, and some premium dancing. Most endearingly, GB's multilingual lyrics criticize US immigration policy, capitalism, globalization and organized religion, tell the stories of the oppressed, and point at a future in which we all recognize each other as family instead of competition. Good stuff.

I am a foreigner and I'm walking
Through new streets
But before I want to I see the same deeds
Inherited by few a power machine
That crushes you and strangles you
Right in your sleep
But be it me, or it's you, the leisure class
I think we all know:
That be it punk, hip-hop, be it a reggae sound
It is all connected through
The gypsy part of town..
Let's go!
It's the underdog world strike!

(Via Gogol Bordello Mailing List)

Deer Song

By Shira | Feb 3, 08 06:17 PM

Here's a track I threw together today. I'm not happy with the vocals I recorded, but I think it works without them: Listen to "Deer Song" mp3 »

They're Cleaning Out the Back

By Shira | Feb 2, 08 05:13 PM

I felt inspired to record a little music this afternoon, so I laid down a few tracks on GarageBand. Everything's improvised, including the lyrics, which are a response to the happenings of the day: Listen to "They're Cleaning Out the Back" mp3 »

Angela Davis Tells It

By Shira | Jan 25, 08 03:33 PM

Earlier this week, on Martin Luther King Day, I happened upon an amazing speech that Angela Davis gave at Duke University in 2005. In an hour she manages to cover racism, homophobia, the war in Iraq, the prison industrial complex, media conglomeration and more (including some prescient shout-outs for Dennis Kucinich and Barack Obama).

Most importantly, Davis calls attention to the worldwide movement for social change, a network of people from around the globe, united in the belief that "Another World Is Possible." It turns out the World Social Forum, the largest annual convening of this movement of movements, is taking place right now, all around the world (in the past, it's been held in particular locations like Porte Alegre, Mumbai and Nairobe). The WSF site hosts an interactive Google map that you can search for actions in your area.

I found the Angela Davis speech on iTunes U, a pretty awesome section of the iTunes store where you can download free audio from various universities, including full courses. To find the speech, open iTunes, click on the store, click on "iTunes U" on the upper left side, then click on "Duke" in the universities list on the left, then on "Campus" in the topics list on the left, and then on "Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration" under Offices and Programs on the bottom. (Yes, it's really annoying that you can't bookmark or hyperlink things in iTunes,unless you know you don't mind installing AppleScripts.)

Does anyone out there know the deal on Shola Lynch's documentary Free Angela & All Political Prisoners? All I can find online is this video interview Shola did for AOL Black Voices about the project. I really want to see it, but I can't find any distribution info.

Ari and I are also working our way through the UC Berkeley class "Introduction to Nonviolence" with professor Michael Nagler. Just go to iTunes and do a search to find it. College without homework - woohoo!

Shirari Industries