UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger
This web-tool on the UNESCO website allows you to see the status of more than 2000 endangered languages around the world, along with the number of speakers. The search can be narrowed by country or ‘language vitality’. Extinct languages are also included in the database.
Brahui Language and Music
There are currently 2.2 million Brahui in the world, most of which live in Balochistan (Pakistan). Brahui demographics are unique as Brahui is the only Dravidian language spoken outside India. Brahui is considered to be a remnant of the once large Dravidian language group in the area which was progressively replaced by the arrival of Iranian/Indo-Aryan languages in South Asia. The Brahui people migrated from central India around 1000 A.D. Brahui is classified as an endangered language by UNESCO. Brahui music is a subcategory of Balochi music, which stems from Iranian music forms but has a strong musical relationship with Pakistani music and culture.
Maldives ministers prepare for underwater cabinet meeting
Politics in the Maldives will sink to a new low later this month, when the nation’s cabinet holds its first meeting underwater.
The country, a collection of atolls and islands in the Indian Ocean, stands less than two metres above sea level, and as climate change causes seas to rise it will probably be the first nation to sink beneath the waves.
Under the threat of that looming watery Armageddon, President Mohamed Nasheed has announced plans to hold a cabinet meeting under the sea, ahead of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen this December.
Ministers clad in wetsuits and shouldering oxygen tanks, will meet about 20ft (6m) underwater on 17 October. They will communicate through hand gestures, according to Aminath Shauna, an official from the president’s office.
“It is to send a message to the world. The intention is to draw the attention of the world leaders to the issue of global warming and highlight how serious are the threats faced by Maldives as a result,” she said. “If we can stop climate change, the lowest-lying nation on earth will be saved.” The gathering will take place off the island of Girifushi, which lies about 20 minutes’ journey by speedboat from the capital, Male. One minister has already had to pull out: scuba instructors said the education minister was not fit enough to take on the dive.
(…)
Obamas colour White House walls with modern art
The Obamas are decorating their private spaces with more modern and abstract artwork than has ever hung on the White House walls.
Pieces by contemporary African-American and Native American artists are on display. Bold colours, odd shapes and squiggly lines have arrived. So, too, have some obscure artefacts, such as patent models for a gear cutter and a steamboat paddlewheel, which now sit in the Oval Office.
Works by big names from the modern art world – Jasper Johns and Mark Rothko – are rubbing shoulders with lesser-known artists such as Alma Thomas, an abstract painter from the 1960s and 1970s.
Thomas’s Watusi (Hard Edge) hangs in the east wing, where Michelle Obama has her offices. The acrylic on canvas, on loan from the Hirshhorn Museum, shows a jumble of geometric shapes in bright reds, blues and greens.
Glenn Ligon’s Black Like Me No 2, a Hirshhorn loan now hanging in the first family’s living quarters, is a “text painting” that reproduces words from the 1961 book Black Like Me, a non-fiction account by a white man who disguised himself as a black man and travelled through the south.
Ligon, a black artist from Brooklyn, said the painting’s theme fitted with the president’s efforts to create a dialogue between races. “It’s a really important part of what he’s about and symbolically what he’s done,” he said.
Jeri Redcorn, a 69-year-old Native American artist from Norman, Oklahoma (…)
Porthcressa Beach in Hugh Town, St Mary's, Isles of Scilly, where islanders are taking part in an energy-saving experiment. Photograph: Richard Sowersby/Rex Features
Many people believe England’s westernmost point to be Land’s End. The clue’s in the name. But travel 28 miles west of Land’s End and you hit – as many sailors have literally done over the centuries – the sublimely beautiful Isles of Scilly, which boasts the UK’s southernmost point and is also one of the world’s premier sites for wreck diving. The honour of westernmost point goes to Rockall, an uninhabited islet far out in the Atlantic Ocean, although it’s best not to go on about it too much as Iceland, Ireland and Denmark lay claim to it too.
The Isles of Scilly’s relative isolation and microclimate makes them a wonderful holiday destination, but their distance from the mainland also affords them the chance to take part in an interesting experiment. Tomorrow, the islanders – some 2,000 people – will conduct, according to the organisers, the “first coordinated attempt by a community to reduce their electricity use and to have the effects of their efforts measured in real-time”.
The event is being called E-day 2009 and it is the culmination of the Isles of Scilly Earth summit, which took place over the weekend and saw “international, national, and local islanders talk about the impact of climate change and human activity on their island”.
This is the plan:
E-day will involve everyone on the Isles of Scilly being asked to switch off electrical items which do not need to be on, so that collective energy saving can be measured. The energy savings achieved by a family, the school and the community on the Isles of Scilly will be compared with the baseline conditions simultaneously experienced across the UK.
The fact that a single cable carries electricity to the Scillys from the mainline makes it all the easier to measure the energy used on the islands over the course of the day – something that the E-Day organisers admitted was a struggle to achieve during last year’s event in which they tried to measure the energy use reduction across the whole of the UK on a particularly cold February day.
It led to an admirably honest assessment by organiser (and BantheBulb.org founder) Matt Prescott:
E-Day 2008 did not succeed in cutting the UK’s electricity demand. The drop in temperature between Wednesday 27 February and Thursday 28 February probably caused this, as a result of more lights and heating being left on than was originally predicted. The National Grid refined its assessments, based on actual weather data, during Thursday afternoon but I am afraid that E-day did not achieve the scale of public awareness or participation needed to have a measurable effect. I will do my best to learn the relevant lessons for next time.
The hope is that this year’s event will be a success with its focused, localised approach and, crucially, the support of the island community. Dr Prescott will be posting a blog about how the day went on environmentguardian.co.uk later this week, but if you’re a Scillonian please do tell us what you’ve got planned for the day.
More widely, let us know what you think about E-day, Earth Hour and similar campaigns: do they help to raise awareness about energy-saving measures?
Isles of Scilly power down for E-day
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2009/oct/05/isles-of-scilly-e-day
Mercedes Sosa, the celebrated Argentinian folk singer and political activist, has died of kidney failure aged 74. Sosa possessed a deep, alto voice, a strong sense of conviction and had a warm, engaging persona. Combined, these qualities helped to make her one of the few Latin American musicians who could, across five decades, command a wide international audience. Described as “the voice of Latin America”, she was revered as a commentator on the political and social turmoil that afflicted the continent.
Born Haydée Mercedes Sosa, in San Miguel de Tucumán, the capital of one of Argentina‘s smallest provinces, to a working-class family of mixed French and Amerindian (Quechuan) ancestry, she began singing and folk dancing as a child. Aged 15, Sosa won a singing concert sponsored by a local radio station. The prize was a two-month contract to perform for the station, and this allowed her to turn professional. Initially singing a wide variety of popular songs, Sosa gained a local reputation as a rising talent and, on marrying the musician Manuel Oscar Matus, the couple began looking to new developments in Latin American music. In the early 1960s, this led to them embracing the “nueva canción” (new song) movement, which unconsciously mirrored the US folk movement as Chile‘s Victor Jara and Cuba’s Silvio Rodríquez reshaped Latin America’s troubadour tradition to reflect the struggles under way across the continent.
Sosa and Matus chose nueva canción songs that suited her voice, such as Violeta Parra’s Gracias a la Vida (Thanks to Life) and Horacio Guarany’s Si Se Calla el Cantor (If the Singer Is Silenced), and her success helped to popularise the movement. Sosa’s ability to convey a wide emotional range meant that listeners connected strongly with both songs, and singer, and by the mid-1960s, she was very popular in Argentina. Nicknamed “La Negra” because of her long, jet-black hair and Amerindian heritage, Sosa issued a series of albums, including Romance de la Muerte de Juan Lavalle (Ballad of the Death of Juan Lavalle) and Mujeres Argentinas (Argentinian Women), that established her as one of Latin America’s most celebrated and distinctive artists. By the late 60s, Sosa was drawing material from across Latin America (including Amerindian material) and this established her as a pan-Latin American star. When Sosa and Matus’s marriage ended, Matus forged a respected solo career in Argentina.
In the early 70s Sosa acted in the film El Santo de la Espada (The Saint of the Sword), a biopic of the Argentinian independence hero José de San Martín. Sosa’s popularity found her touring internationally, her leftist political sympathies – a 1972 album Hasta la Victoria (Until Victory) celebrated workers’ struggles – making her especially welcome in the Soviet bloc. As a champion of the rights of the poor, Sosa became known as “the voice of the voiceless ones”. These political leanings caused Sosa trouble when the Argentinian military, under Jorge Videla, staged a coup in March 1976. Initially, only some of Sosa’s songs were censored, but as she became seen internationally as a literal voice of freedom, the harassment increased. In early 1979, Sosa was performing in the Argentinian university city of La Plata when the military stopped the concert. Humiliating Sosa by searching her on stage, they then arrested her and 350 members of the audience. Sosa was detained for 18 hours until international pressure forced her release (she was fined $1,000) but this event – alongside increasing numbers of death threats – forced her to flee to Europe, where she lived in Madrid and Paris.
Sosa found exile difficult and returned to Argentina in early 1982. The military junta remained in power, but Sosa’s fame excluded her from punishment, and a series of concerts she gave at Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires opera house), with guest appearances from celebrated Argentinian singers, found her truly welcomed home. A live recording of these concerts was issued after the junta fell. Sosa continued to tour (performing in the UK several times) and to record, her fame growing on an international scale – she shared stages and/or studios with Luciano Pavarotti, Sting and Shakira. In a career spanning almost six decades, she released 70 albums. She won three Latin Grammy awards and received a huge number of honorary titles including the UN Voluntary Fund for Women (Unifem) prize from the United Nations, in recognition of her defence of women’s rights. She remained politically active and vocally opposed Carlos Menem when he was Argentinian president.
“I didn’t choose to sing for people,” Sosa said in a recent interview on Argentinian television. “Life chose me to sing.” Overweight for many years, Sosa began suffering serious health problems in this decade. She was admitted to hospital two weeks ago suffering from liver problems. Progressive kidney failure and cardiac arrest followed. She is survived by her son, Fabián.
• Haydée Mercedes Sosa, singer, born 9 July 1935; died 4 October, 2009
Mamane Barka – The Last Master of the Biram
As a nomad of the Toubou tribe, Malam Mamane Barka is the indisputable son of the desert and the world’s only remaining master of the biram. He maintains the tradition single-handedly, bringing the boat-shaped instrument to world’s attention with his own unique blend of desert blues.
Mamane Barka was born in Tesker, in the eastern part of the Niger Republic, in 1959. He was a teacher for many years before his skills on the ngurumi, a traditional string instrument, made him a celebrated musician in Niger and Nigeria. In 2002, he received a UNESCO scholarship to materialize his dream of reviving the tradition of the biram, an enormous boat-shaped five-string harp. He travelled to Lake Chad to meet the Boudouma, an ethnic group of nomadic fisherman, and their sacred instrument, the biram, which they believe is protected by the spirit of the lake Kargila. At the time Boukar Tar – the only remaining master of the biram – was still alive and he taught Mamane the secrets of the holy instrument and the lyrics of the mystical songs. He then gave Mamane the last biram and asked him to promote it all over the world.
Sadly Boukar Tar has now passed away and Mamane is the only master of the biram in the world. He is maintaining the tradition single-handedly, bringing the instrument to the attention of the wider-world with his own blend of desert blues. With Oumarou’s trance-inducing percussion this album not only pays respect to the spiritual biram, but is also homage to the traditional percussion instruments of the rich Nigerien culture: the douma (the spiritual drum), the kalangou and the calabash.
source: http://www.soas.ac.uk/events/event53612.html
Moroccan Chaabi
Performed mostly at festivals, weddings and other celebrations, Chaabi (meaning “of the people” in Arabic) is a modern popular form of music in Morocco influenced from various forms of Moroccan folk music. Not unlike Algerian Rai, during the 70s the Chaabi musical form quickly adopted the keyboard, electric guitar and increasingly controversial lyrics concerning politics, love and everyday life. Controversial lyrics, especially within Chaabi Ghiwane songs, resulted in the exile and imprisonment of artists, although the overall repercussions were much less severe than those suffered by Algerian Rai artists.
A very recognisable Chaabi musical style is a 12/8 rhythm, divided into two rapid 6/8 segments, one in 2-2-2, the other in 3-3. A song will eventually settle into a question-and-answer routine, before it suddenly breaks into a ‘leseb’, an exhilarating speed-up of the original tempo. The band will often accompanied by a group of female dancers. The Chaabi dancing style is endemic to Morocco: it involves a form of hip movement and hair swaying which descended from the remnants of Arabo-Andalusian culture, and is thus linked to Spanish Flamenco dancing. Chaabi music and dance is also very influenced by several musical styles including arabic Sufi music, Gnawa (a moroccan musical style originating from Sub-Saharan Africa brought to Morocco over the centuries through the saharan slave trade), Berber folk music, and western pop music.
Billionaires for Wealthcare
During the September 12 right-wing demonstrations in Washington DC, a new group appeared, called Billionaires for Wealthcare.
Credit Crunch (Home) Economics
Ever wondered whether so-called green cleaning products are really any better from the environment? Have you ever considered making your own cleaning products? Both questions are tackled by green-living expert Lucy Siegle in the first of her Ask Lucy videos.
And on a similar theme, this week’s You Ask They Answer gives you the chance to ask the questions to eco-cleaning product manufacturer Method.
(…)
Fire EXIT 