Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Saturday, November 24, 2012
The African Tribes of OMO
- They live near the river of OMO in Ethiopia.
- The genius of the Picture is alive in each member of these tribes? an ancestral art.
- They live in an area with plenty of pigments.
- They paint with their fingers, by fast movements of the hand.
- Their bodies are for them the canvas for their pictures.
- Their desire to be beautiful in their eyes drives them? as Miro, Pollock, Klee, Picasso have been driven.
- Six years Hans Sylvester saw and photographed them.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Jewish Christmas Music
Spotify Play List
How Jewish songwriters wrote the score of Christmas
DAVID HINCKLEY
Sunday, December 18, 2011
The longest running gag about Jews and Christmas, at least in New York, is that Jews love the holiday because, with Christians all busy opening stockings and quaffing eggnog, you can get into popular movies without waiting in long lines.
But the Jewish contribution to Christmas, at least in popular culture, goes way beyond passive appreciation.
If it weren't for Jewish songwriters and moviemakers, a big chunk of our Christmas tradition would melt away faster than Frosty the Snowman.
Almost everyone knows that American's most popular secular seasonal song ever, White Christmas, was written by Irving Berlin, whose Jewish parents transported young Israel Baline from Siberia to the Lower East Side some 50 years earlier.
But when the American Society of Composers and Publishers releases its annual list of the 25 most popular holiday season songs, a good half of them have music and/or lyrics by Jewish writers.
Without Jewish writers, we would just for starters not have €œRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire. And how did this happen?
To be honest, I don't think most of them were even thinking about€ the religious part, suggests Rich Conaty, host of The Big Broadcast€ Sunday nights on WFUV (90.7 FM). They were writing for an occasion. They wanted to write popular songs appealing to a wide audience. Part of it, he says, was just a numbers game.
A huge percentage of the great Tin Pan Alley songwriters were Jewish, he says. So by the law of averages, they were going to write some of our great Christmas songs. If not them, who?
Johnny Marks, who was Jewish, not only created €œRudolph, but A Holly Jolly Christmas€ and Rockin Around the Christmas Tree.
Perhaps Marks had to write Rocking because Berlin never would have. Berlin even hated the rock'n roll renditions of his own songs, like White Christmas by the Drifters and Elvis Presley.
The Christmas song to which many New Yorkers feel most attached, Silver Bells, came from Jewish writers Jay Livingston and Walter Evans.
Jewish writers also gave us the loneliest of Christmas songs, I'll Be Home for Christmas, written by Walter Kent and Buck Ram.
Mel Torme and Bob Wells wrote The Christmas Song in the desert on a hot day in July, they always said.
The classic Christmas movies Holiday Inn (1942) and White Christmas (1954), besides both having music by Berlin, had Jewish directors: Mark Sandrich and Michael Curtiz.
The best modern Christmas movie, 2003's Love, Actually, was directed by the Jewish Richard Curtis, and the 2009 remake of A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey was directed by the Jewish Robert Zemekis.
Berlin wrote White Christmas as part of the Holiday Inn score that required a song for each major holiday. So he also wrote the almost equally famous Easter Parade, about another holiday built on the story of Christ.
There are conflicting reports on how Berlin felt about White Christmas. Some say he considered it just another song. The more endearing story is that he told his secretary, This is the best song I've ever written. Heck, it's the best song anyone's ever written.
What's clearer and sadder is that Berlin, while not an Observant Jew, found little personal joy in the day. His son Irving Jr., three weeks old, died on Christmas in 1928.
That might be part of the reason White Christmas has such a strong undertone of melancholy, yearning for something that feels just out of reach.
What's indisputable, though, is that Christians have no hesitation embracing any of these Jewish-created Christmas songs and films. They endure because, like all successful art, they say something the audience is feeling.
And shorter movie lines really only begin to repay the debt.
dhinckley@nydailynews.com
Here are some new Jewish Christmas Songs.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/121598/hebrews-for-the-holidays/#ixzz2C7YGyUKF
Here are some new Jewish Christmas Songs.
Santa’s On The Rooftop:
He Delivers:
The Rhythm of Joy:
A Different Kind of Xmas:
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/121598/hebrews-for-the-holidays/#ixzz2C7YGyUKF
Monday, November 12, 2012
2013 Car of the year may be the best ever.
Perhaps the best car ever! It's electric with a top speed of 133 mph. I want one.
Friday, November 9, 2012
What is important to teach in schools
What if we gave every 8th grade student the GED High School equalization test? Those that passed could go straight to college.
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