'West Africa. Blinding white light, dust and scrub, salt flats and mangrove swamps, a village called Dulaba in the Gambia. People are scratching a living out of rice, groundnuts, millet. At the appointed time, the women beat their grandmothers' drums and go to the bush for the circumcision rituals. No man is allowed. . . . . . . To Mark Hudson, a casual visitor, Dulaba in 1985 was a fascination; its stark landscape vivid with the presence of its women. What were their lives, bounded by Islam, by female circumcision, by the necessity to work in the fields and to obey first their mothers and then their husbands? Out of his year in Dulaba has come a wonderful book. Reading it is like watching a picture being painted. . . . . A moving, evan a majestic book' Listener
Towards the end of his life Titian didn't finish his paintings. The elderly artist kept them in his studio, never quite completing them, as though wanting to endlessly postpone the moment of letting go. Created with the fingers as much as the brush, Titian's last paintings are imbued with a sense of final, desperate effort - a rawness and immediacy that weren't to be seen again in art for centuries. But what did Titian, who experienced as much in the way of material success as any artist before or since, mean by these works? Are they a harrowing, final testament or simply a collection of unfinished paintings? In the outbreak of plague that finally killed him, Titian's studio was looted, and many paintings taken. What happened to them is not known. This book is a quest - a journey through Titian's life and work, towards the physical and spiritual landscape of his last paintings. Looking at Titian's relationships with his artistic rivals, his patrons - including popes, kings and emperors - and his troubled dealings with his own family, the narrative moves from the artist's hometown in the Dolomites to the greatest churches and palaces of the age. Parallel with these physical travels is a journey through the paintings, following the glittering trajectory of Titian's life and career, the remorseless formal development that led to the breakthroughs of his last days. Titian: The Last Days is an exploratory history of the artist and his world that vividly recreates the atmosphere of sixteenth-century Venice and Europe, a narrative in which the search for the subject becomes part of the subject itself. The result is a brilliant and compelling study of one of Europe's greatest artists that is at once passionate, engaging and deeply personal.
For many, December 26 is more than the day after Christmas. Boxing Day is one of the world’s most celebrated cultural holidays. As a legacy of British colonialism, Boxing Day is observed throughout Africa and parts of the African diaspora, but, unlike Trinidadian Carnival and Mardi Gras, fewer know of Bermuda’s Gombey dancers, Bahamian Junkanoo, Dangriga’s Jankunú and Charikanari, St. Croix’s Crucian Christmas Festival, and St. Kitts’s Sugar Mas. One Grand Noise: Boxing Day in the Anglicized Caribbean World delivers a highly detailed, thought-provoking examination of the use of spectacular vernacular to metaphorically dramatize such tropes as “one grand noise,” “foreday morning,” and from “back o’ town.” In cultural solidarity and an obvious critique of Western values and norms, revelers engage in celebratory sounds, often donning masks, cross-dressing, and dancing with abandon along thoroughfares usually deemed anathema to them. Folklorist Jerrilyn McGregory demonstrates how the cultural producers in various island locations ritualize Boxing Day as a part of their struggles over identity, class, and gender relations in accordance with time and space. Based on ethnographic study undertaken by McGregory, One Grand Noise explores Boxing Day as part of a creolization process from slavery into the twenty-first century. McGregory traces the holiday from its Egyptian origins to today and includes chapters on the Gombey dancers of Bermuda, the evolution of Junkanoo/Jankunú in The Bahamas and Belize, and J'ouvert traditions in St. Croix and St. Kitts. Through her exploration of the holiday, McGregory negotiates the ways in which Boxing Day has expanded from small communal traditions into a common history of colonialism that keeps alive a collective spirit of resistance.
Robert Wyatt started out as the drummer and singer for Soft Machine, who shared a residency at Middle Earth with Pink Floyd and toured America with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He brought a jazz mindset to the 1960’s rock scene, having honed his drumming skills in a shed at the end of Robert Graves’ garden in Mallorica, Spain. Wyatt's life took an abrupt turn in 1973, when he fell from a fourth-floor window at a party and was paralyzed from the waist down. He reinvented himself as a singer and composer with the extraordinary album Rock Bottom, which he followed with an idiosyncratic string of records that uniquely combine the personal and political. Along the way, Robert has worked with the likes of Brian Eno, Bjork, Jerry Dammers, Charlie Haden, David Gilmour, Paul Weller and Hot Chip. Marcus O’Dair has talked to all of them—indeed anyone who has shaped, or been shaped by Wyatt over five decades. Different Every Time is the first biography of Robert Wyatt, and it was written with his full participation. It includes illustrations by Alfreda Benge and photographs from Robert’s personal archive.
COULD YOU BE LOVED is of all Humankind acknowledging shared origin for Progress with Peace. " . . insightful . . incisive and instructive . . a beautiful poetic move . . brilliant . . author, poet, philosopher Tekla Mekfet relates Bob Marley's poetics to African philosophy, the Bible and the problems of Babylon as we encounter them in Jamaica and the world. . . helps to resolve the tension between the individual and the community, in Rasta poetics . . Historical memory . . clues to liberation in the present. Out of history and prophecy . . philosophy in Rastafari offers unaccustomed wide practical application." (Dr. Noel Erskine, Professor of Theology & Ethics, Emory University, USA). " . . deep understanding of world politics . . knowledge of the world's literary works whether fiction or treatise . . wide knowledge of music of all genres . . erudite . . encyclopedic . . for every and anyone." (Dr. Erna Brodber, sociologist-historian-novelist, University of the West Indies). "In his own thoroughly original way Tekla Mekfet evokes the largesse of spirit and innovative rhetorical performances of Walt Whitman . . Whitman opened up the space of the line in American verse; he had an agile poetic persona; he was chronicler, seer, prophet. In our time Ras Mekfet is accomplishing much the same through his vision and voice." (Michael Kuelker, Professor of English, St. Charles Community College, Rastafari-Reggae researcher, DJ, Missouri). Structure is as vocabulary item, social commentary, music of meaning, "Often, life is not nice neat sentences'. The index invites piece-mealing focus on such as The Word, Logic RHYTHM Household-Community, Reality, Freedom, Whiteness, or Oneness. Varied subjects are explored as symbiotic - as could be related to Spinoza's All is One and The One is Divine', to 'Selassie is The Chapel', to Hegel's 'God' dwelling within Humankind & permanently pervading the universe - related to shared African principles of an all-manifesting all-embracing 'NTU', or JAH of Rastrafari. Of Nature's Logic & Kant's 'Categorical Imperative' for universal oneness. Concept 'Babylon' de-constructed throughout, as is 'Zion'. Of 'Concrete Jungle', The City, Marketed 'God', Moral Relativity, "life-long insecurity." " . . the heavy and the weary weight / Of all this unintelligible world / Is lightened." Mekfet invites you to be free 'of being psychologically blind. For YOU, are living of some measure & mix of philosophy . . that you may be living unperceived." to be recognized "for sense of options for direction. ." - Mother Africa's Philosophy, Rastafari, The Bible, & cross-refs philosophy of West & East - Philosophy in Reggae, Jazz, Dancehall Music: Atavistic Appeal African Rhythms Worldwide - Culture of Politics, Mis-Education, Violence & Masculinity in 'Jamaica'/'Carry-beyond' - A Rastafari Journey, Jamaica & Social Prejudice - Animism & Literary Imagery. Multi-cultural imagery 'Christ'/Re-patria-tion/Ancestor Worship - 'Israel' & 'Jerusalem' not as geographical entities, but as universal concepts for social organization related to Rhythm of Ecology & Bio-diversity, the Cosmos as a single organism, & Bio-mimicry - all antithesis of concept of 'Babylon'
Successfully navigate the rich world of travel narratives and identify fiction and nonfiction read-alikes with this detailed and expertly constructed guide. Just as savvy travelers make use of guidebooks to help navigate the hundreds of countries around the globe, smart librarians need a guidebook that makes sense of the world of travel narratives. Going Places: A Reader's Guide to Travel Narratives meets that demand, helping librarians assist patrons in finding the nonfiction books that most interest them. It will also serve to help users better understand the genre and their own reading interests. The book examines the subgenres of the travel narrative genre in its seven chapters, categorizing and describing approximately 600 titles according to genres and broad reading interests, and identifying hundreds of other fiction and nonfiction titles as read-alikes and related reads by shared key topics. The author has also identified award-winning titles and spotlighted further resources on travel lit, making this work an ideal guide for readers' advisors as well a book general readers will enjoy browsing.
