Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts

Friday, August 05, 2011

Mariachi Beluga

Surreal: A Mariachi band plays "Yellow Bird" to a Beluga whale through aquarium glass and the Beluga nods its head in time to the music, obviously enjoying the concert...another great video via my favorite daily-refreshment website, Cute Overload:

http://cuteoverload.com/2011/08/05/whale-treasures-fiesta/

I discovered from the comments by the blog readers that the aquarium is in Mystic, Connecticut, and the Beluga is a young one named Juno, verified here.

This makes me wistfully recall my long-held secret desire to learn to play the ukulele. My golden years are here, so maybe now's the time. I could serenade the penguins at the Audubon Aquarium.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Silent Monks Singing Hallelujah


The "Hallelujah Chorus" of Handel's Messiah is one of the most beautiful chorales ever written. Take a look at this charming, novel and humorous performance of it:

Silent Monks Singing Hallelujah

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Celebrations

The title of this post is both ironic and non-ironic.


I'm writing about two funerals--hardly material for celebration. Yet here in New Orleans, a funeral can be as much a celebration of life as it is mourning for the dead.

Two local celebrities died last week, both of them closely connected to the New Orleans music community.

Eaglin jazz funeral; photo by Brett Duke, The Times-Picayune



The first was Snooks Eaglin, a blind R&B guitarist known for his virtuousity, who influenced many other musicians. This excellent article about Snooks includes a YouTube video of Snooks playing at his favorite venue, Rock 'N' Bowl, and simultaneously giving a music lesson to another local musician, George Porter, Jr. The video is vintage Snooks: he treats Porter--famous as a member of The Meters and considered one of the greatest living bass guitarists--like a newbie. (Porter was one of Snooks' biggest fans and loved playing sets with Snooks.)

The second celebrity we lost was Antoinette K-Doe, widow of Ernie K-Doe, who revived Ernie's musical career and reputation in his last years, kept his memory active after his death, and helped many musicians and others in the community.

Apart from their fame on the local music scene, Snooks and Antoinette had something else in common: Their funerals were held at nightclubs.

Snooks' funeral service at The Howlin' Wolf featured tributes, both verbal and musical, by numerous stars of the New Orleans music scene, and concluded with a traditional jazz funeral escort to the cemetery.

It was the Warehouse District nightclub's first funeral.

"We've had people laid out here before," noted Howlin' Wolf owner Howie Kaplan, "but they were still breathing."

(From music writer Keith Spera's blog on the Times-Picayune website)

Antoinette's wake was held at her own club, the Mother-in-Law Lounge, which she had made into a shrine for her late husband. Her funeral service was at a church, and she too had a traditional jazz funeral escort to her interment.

K-Doe jazz funeral; Photo by Keith Spera, The Times-Picayune

All the coverage of the events shows how much the funeral guests celebrated the lives of the deceased. There was sadness, but also joy and happy memories.

Celebrations.