Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Los Angeles 014
Mexican, German and Chinese food. Complete with overpriced American money-dispensing Machine. Or that's a Chinese ATM. Couldn't tell which.
Los Angeles 012
Took this in downtown Los Angeles over the weekend. It's a giant advertisement for German Beer, but it's using Mexican images. Huh?
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Calaveras Celtic Festival 2007 2
Went to the Calaveras County Celtic Festival, a mish-mash of everything Celtic, American and renaissance. Yet another example of how Americans adopt so much from other cultures and call it their own. Actually, this guy is more of a character from a Conan movie than from Celtic culture, but when you are drinking Guinness all day, who really cares? eh?
Calaveras Celtic Festival 2007 8
Went to the Calaveras County Celtic Festival, a mish-mash of everything Celtic, American and renaissance. Yet another example of how Americans adopt so much from other cultures and call it their own. Here, Jazz trumpeter Michael Mooney plays an American folk song with the Sonora group "The Black Irish Band." Wow, I'm confused just writing that.
Calaveras Celtic Festival 2007 19
Went to the Calaveras County Celtic Festival, a mish-mash of everything Celtic, American and renaissance. Yet another example of how Americans adopt so much from other cultures and call it their own. This is the band Culann's Hounds from San Francisco. They play a mix of punk, American folk, French Folks and some Celtic-type songs, yet everyone called everything they did "Irish." God Bless America.
Calaveras Celtic Festival 2007 24
Went to the Calaveras County Celtic Festival, a mish-mash of everything Celtic, American and renaissance. Yet another example of how Americans adopt so much from other cultures and call it their own.
Calaveras Celtic Festival 2007 26
Went to the Calaveras County Celtic Festival, a mish-mash of everything Celtic, American and renaissance. Yet another example of how Americans adopt so much from other cultures and call it their own.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Chen Yi
Nina Flyer and Chen Yi both crack up at a joke that Chen made just before students performed one of Chen's pieces at University of the Pacific on Friday.
Flyer is a grammy-nominated cellist. Chen is a world-famous composer who has written works for Yo Yo Ma, some of the greatest orchestras in the world and for many other world-famous starts. Chen wrote her latest piece for The New Pacific Trio, a group of faculty members at University of the Pacific. Flyer is a member of that group.
So why is this in Teriyaki Donuts? Well, Dr. Chen's music is a fascinating mix of European-style chamber music and Chinese folk music. Chen grew up in Communist China where, as a child, she was forced to work in aggrarian labor camps. But as she would later say in interviews, at night she would play her violin, learning Chinese folks tunes.
As a young adult, she was selected to study music in China shortly after the government reopened the universities there at the tail end of the cultural revolution. She ended up becoming the first female in China and one of the first Chinese citizens to earn a doctorates degree in China in classical composition.
She later moved to the United States where her career really took off. Here, her work started to get international recognition. Her work is now performed around the world by some of the biggest names in music.
I heard several of her pieces played at University of the Pacific Friday and I was blown away. It was really cool to hear the Chinese synchopation and the famed climbing and falling notes that many of us associate with Chinese music to be perfectly blended in such European-style compositions. It was a perfect collision of two different cultures, thus coming up with a totally new and independent sound.
Now, of course, I'm not saying she's the first to do this. She may be, I just don't know. But the combination of two different cultural art forms as done here by Chen Yi in America nominates her for Teriyaki Donuts, at least in my mind.
Flyer is a grammy-nominated cellist. Chen is a world-famous composer who has written works for Yo Yo Ma, some of the greatest orchestras in the world and for many other world-famous starts. Chen wrote her latest piece for The New Pacific Trio, a group of faculty members at University of the Pacific. Flyer is a member of that group.
So why is this in Teriyaki Donuts? Well, Dr. Chen's music is a fascinating mix of European-style chamber music and Chinese folk music. Chen grew up in Communist China where, as a child, she was forced to work in aggrarian labor camps. But as she would later say in interviews, at night she would play her violin, learning Chinese folks tunes.
As a young adult, she was selected to study music in China shortly after the government reopened the universities there at the tail end of the cultural revolution. She ended up becoming the first female in China and one of the first Chinese citizens to earn a doctorates degree in China in classical composition.
She later moved to the United States where her career really took off. Here, her work started to get international recognition. Her work is now performed around the world by some of the biggest names in music.
I heard several of her pieces played at University of the Pacific Friday and I was blown away. It was really cool to hear the Chinese synchopation and the famed climbing and falling notes that many of us associate with Chinese music to be perfectly blended in such European-style compositions. It was a perfect collision of two different cultures, thus coming up with a totally new and independent sound.
Now, of course, I'm not saying she's the first to do this. She may be, I just don't know. But the combination of two different cultural art forms as done here by Chen Yi in America nominates her for Teriyaki Donuts, at least in my mind.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Prost!
Last night I accidentally discovered a whole new Teriyaki Donut called Gypsy Punk. It's a new musical movement out of the Russian area of New York that mixes Slavic styles of music with punk rock. The band that I hears play it is called Gogol Bordello. They opened for Primus in Berkeley.
Gogol Bordello is led by a tall, thin Romanian guy who wears green tights on stage and plays gypsy-style acoustic guitar. He's backed up by a full rock band, an accordion, a fiddle player and these two girls who occasionally run out on stage to sing back up while dressed in biker shorts and shirts and wearing skateboarding knee and elbow pad protection. They all dance a mix of the punk-style pogo stick and the line dancing that's often featured at Jewish weddings. Very strange to see.
The songs all have a heavy Slavic beat to it and use a mix of Romanian, Russian and English. The English is broken, as the lead singer has a very thick Romanian or Russian accent, but also sings with a Tom Waits-type grovel on top of it.
Lyrics include lines like "Upon arrivin' in the melting pot, I get penciled in as a goddamn white," "And you see brothers and sisters, all engaged in sport of help, making merry out of nothing like in a refugee camp," and "Start wearing purple for me now."
Oddly enough, the combination works really well. In some ways, they sound a bit like the early Pogues, which mixed Celtic and punk. They put on a heck of a show, although it's one of the strangest performances I have seen in a while.
Take the time to check them out. I purchased their album "Gypsy Punks Underdog World Strike," which I absolutely have no idea what it means. But my daughter and I listened to the album twice on the way home and they can add us as their newest fans.
Gogol Bordello is led by a tall, thin Romanian guy who wears green tights on stage and plays gypsy-style acoustic guitar. He's backed up by a full rock band, an accordion, a fiddle player and these two girls who occasionally run out on stage to sing back up while dressed in biker shorts and shirts and wearing skateboarding knee and elbow pad protection. They all dance a mix of the punk-style pogo stick and the line dancing that's often featured at Jewish weddings. Very strange to see.
The songs all have a heavy Slavic beat to it and use a mix of Romanian, Russian and English. The English is broken, as the lead singer has a very thick Romanian or Russian accent, but also sings with a Tom Waits-type grovel on top of it.
Lyrics include lines like "Upon arrivin' in the melting pot, I get penciled in as a goddamn white," "And you see brothers and sisters, all engaged in sport of help, making merry out of nothing like in a refugee camp," and "Start wearing purple for me now."
Oddly enough, the combination works really well. In some ways, they sound a bit like the early Pogues, which mixed Celtic and punk. They put on a heck of a show, although it's one of the strangest performances I have seen in a while.
Take the time to check them out. I purchased their album "Gypsy Punks Underdog World Strike," which I absolutely have no idea what it means. But my daughter and I listened to the album twice on the way home and they can add us as their newest fans.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Dave Brubeck Institute Quintet 3
Yup, I'm still alive. Just been really busy. Of course, I had to post this. Yet another jazz musician playing live in downtown Modesto. Besides the fact that Jazz is a mish-mash of musical styled from all around the world, it's also somewhat of a Teriyaki Donut that the Brubeck Jazz Institute Quintet (possibly one of the finest young quintets in the nation) would play in a country town like Modesto, California and draw a standing-room only crowd. Country meets jazz. Go figure.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Bluegrass
I went to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco and captured some photos for this blog. So how does the American music of bluegrass fit in here?
Bluegrass is really the combination of three different types of music:
Irish music, blues and European folk. It came out of the Kentucky region originally, thus many people think that it's named after the famous grass from that area. But I recently had a music professor explain another theory - the name comes from the combination of Blues and grassroots or folk music.
Anyway, most of the bluegrass musicians I know also play Celtic and blues and most of the celtic musicians I know play blues and bluegrass as well. The styles really are similar.
Here is a punk rock girl playing bluegrass fiddle during the festival so she can earn some money.
One group I didn't get a photo of because it didn't occur to me until too late was The Pine Leaf Boys. They had a singer who played bluegrass but sang all his songs in traditional Creole - a mix of French, English and Spanish that's often only heard in Louisiana. That language alone is worthy of its own Teriyaki Donuts post.
Maybe another day, though.
Bluegrass is really the combination of three different types of music:
Irish music, blues and European folk. It came out of the Kentucky region originally, thus many people think that it's named after the famous grass from that area. But I recently had a music professor explain another theory - the name comes from the combination of Blues and grassroots or folk music.
Anyway, most of the bluegrass musicians I know also play Celtic and blues and most of the celtic musicians I know play blues and bluegrass as well. The styles really are similar.
Here is a punk rock girl playing bluegrass fiddle during the festival so she can earn some money.
One group I didn't get a photo of because it didn't occur to me until too late was The Pine Leaf Boys. They had a singer who played bluegrass but sang all his songs in traditional Creole - a mix of French, English and Spanish that's often only heard in Louisiana. That language alone is worthy of its own Teriyaki Donuts post.
Maybe another day, though.
Bluegrass punk
Famous British punk rocker Billy Bragg (started recording in the early '80s) performed a complete set of his folk songs at the festival. They fit right in since bluegrass draws heavily from folk. Bragg also threw in a country tune that he wrote as well as one from Johnny Cash.
Superstar
Gillian Welch performs her strict bluegrass set during the festival. She drew a huge overflow crowd. There must have been at least 10,000 people in her audience alone, even though there were five stages altogether.
Gillian Welch
Gillian Welch is a superstar in the bluegrass arena. She was promoted to that when one of her songs was picked for the soundtrack of "O Brother Where Art Thou?" She was then featured on the smach follow-up live album "Down From the Mountain." The crowd was so big for her, I couldn't get very close and had to use a zoom. Since light was quickly fading, it was difficult to get a good shot.
T Bone Burnett crossover
Here, Oscar-nominated and grammy-winning singer, songwriter and producer T Bone Burnett plays a nearly rock-like set while backed up by virtually all bluegrass musicians. Because bluegrass essentially came from a hodgepodge of other music from Ireland, Europe and Africa, it's easy to switch between styles because they all follow basically the same formulas.
T Bone Burnett
As I said earlier, many bluegrass musicians easily cross over between styles. Here, T Bone Burnett (Grammy winner and nominated for an Oscar) plays an all-electric set of his Tom Wait's like folk songs.
Austin Lounge Lizards up close
This is one of the big acts at this year's Mostly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, the Austin Lounge Lizards. They opened their set with a song called "Yet Another Stupid Song About Texas."
Austin Lounge Lizards
Like blues, bluegrass music sometimes can be irreverant. And one of the most irreverant groups out there is the Austin Lounge Lizards. Their latest album pokes fun at commercials, modern religion and the medical industry.
Dancers
As you can see, people of all ages still seem to enjoy Bluegrass. Here, they dance to a tune by The Stairwell Sisters.
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