Grit your teeth world; Danny Baker is going in dry! 'Death In The Key Of Life' is like a long sustained Coltrane saxophone solo. It caresses, it brutalises, it honks and bleats (in)articulately, it pleads for meaning, it spits on the world. Often all on the same page. Many have tried to give expression to the inexpressible - Joyce, Artaud, Beckett. Danny Baker is the first person who might just have pulled it off.
This book is about life, love, and living. Every single poem, thought, and prayer came to me through a particular happening in my life, something that moved me to write it down in my own voice.
“Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand.” —Stevie Wonder, “Sir Duke” In 2003, young professor Ferentz LaFargue traveled to Paris, where his fiancée, Tricia, declared she wasn’t happy with their relationship, ending what he thought was a wonderful engagement. After days of “craying”—“that sorrow-laden blend of crying and praying delivered in perfect pitch by those in mourning”—Ferentz happened upon Stevie Wonder’s 1976 classic double album Songs in the Key of Life. Listening to it anew was a healing, spiritual trip down memory lane, helping him to come to terms with his breakup and reflect on how songs in general have been linked to his life. In this book, Ferentz invites us to get cozy and listen as he hits PLAY on meaningful tracks from Wonder and others, including Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, LL Cool J, Beenie Man, Sheryl Crow, Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway, and Black Sabbath. He recalls: How the fusion of rock and rap in the breakthrough Run-D.M.C./Aerosmith video “Walk This Way” helped to change an adolescent Ferentz from outcast to authority figure How Michael Jackson’s Thriller brought back a traumatic childhood experience How Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks” speaks to the tension between his Christian beliefs and his need to rip it up in clubs as a hip-hop head In the tradition of Nick Hornby’s Songbook¸ these words paint a portrait of a life framed by sounds, allowing all of us to think about what songs have been key in our own lives.
A poet’s audio obsession, from collecting his earliest vinyl to his quest for the ideal vacuum tubes. A captivating book that “ingeniously mixes personal memoir with cultural history and offers us an indispensable guide for the search of acoustic truth” (Yunte Huang, author of Charlie Chan). Garrett Hongo’s passion for audio dates back to the Empire 398 turntable his father paired with a Dynakit tube amplifier in their modest tract home in Los Angeles in the early 1960s. But his adult quest begins in the CD-changer era, as he seeks out speakers and amps both powerful and refined enough to honor the top notes of the greatest opera sopranos. In recounting this search, he describes a journey of identity where meaning, fulfillment, and even liberation were often most available to him through music and its astonishingly varied delivery systems. Hongo writes about the sound of surf being his first music as a kid in Hawai‘i, about doo-wop and soul reaching out to him while growing up among Black and Asian classmates in L.A., about Rilke and Joni Mitchell as the twin poets of his adolescence, and about feeling the pulse of John Coltrane’s jazz and the rhythmic chords of Billy Joel’s piano from his car radio while driving the freeways as a young man trying to become a poet. Journeying further, he visits devoted collectors of decades-old audio gear as well as designers of the latest tube equipment, listens to sublime arias performed at La Scala, hears a ghostly lute at the grave of English Romantic poet John Keats in Rome, drinks in wisdom from blues musicians and a diversity of poetic elders while turning his ear toward the memory-rich strains of the music that has shaped him: Hawaiian steel guitar and canefield songs; Bach and the Band; Mingus, Puccini, and Duke Ellington. And in the decades-long process of perfecting his stereo setup, Hongo also discovers his own now-celebrated poetic voice.
For a world so out of tune, this treatise intends to correlate from various instruments of learning, a new sound--a sound of hope. This sound will be heard as each truth from key areas of knowledge will be played in a synthesis of theology, psychology, and philosophy, all in the context of a valid cosmology. To listen and read the key concepts and predictions of the secular authorities, our earth is either destined for a massive freeze or one ending in conflagration. Thus the concern of the author is that all too often each area of study is playing its own sound and, valid as it may be, is not listening or seeing what could be if these sounds became part of a symphony. In Sounds of Hope, Robert N. Janacek contends that, when these sounds are truly heard and projected in our anticipated symphony, a new and harmonious world will be enacted. At a time when there are almost constant sounds of hate, death, and hopelessness, a world awaits, one for us to hear and attend as a new concert, a concert playing a score of harmony and hope.
Resul Pookutty, India’s best-known sound designer and audiographer, won an Oscar for his work in Slumdog Millionaire. Sounding Off, his autobiography, is the amazing odyssey of a village boy from Kerela whose resilience and conviction took him to the very cutting edge of cinematic sound technology---from struggling in the ruthless film world of Mumbai to winning international glory. Already a huge bestseller in Malayalam, this definitive translation is a celebration of both cinema and life.
This book is the perfect handbook for all aspiring healers, containing easy to follow exercises and meditations to help cultivate the healing skills. The book explores the scientific as well as the metaphysical facts, with a detailed analysis of the different types of healing methods, ranging from magnetic and pranic healing, to spiritual and mental healing. Through antiquity, gifted individuals have administered healing to the sick, from the Biblical accounts of Jesus, to the more radical practises of Rasputin the so-called Mad Monk. Why do some people possess that certain something that they are able to impart to others? What is personal magnetism, and why is that a powerful healing force? Apart from the exercises to help with the development of healing skill, So You Want To Be A Healer analyses the actual process, with a detailed look at the chakra system and the subtle anatomy. Eastern masters used the term Prana to describe all energy in the universe; this book explains how this energy may be harnessed to be used to heal others at a great distance. ,
Kaedrian Barker finds himself thrown into an unexpected situation by the destruction of the space station Demetrius when he and a young man named Trog are the only two survivors of the disaster, in a galaxy where the Cosmic Regime is gaining control by force, fear, and terror. Its counterpart, the Galactic Guard, is trying to maintain peace and order. Kaedrian and the boy Trog's future will lead them all on a quest for a secret key, revealing a prophecy and unraveling a truth that could alter history and the origins of mankind. Kaedrian must enlist his friend Lowden in the Galactic Guard for help while Janos and the Cosmic Regime try to thwart the prophecy and snuff out the boy Trog, the mysterious key, and the Galactic Guard under the orders of Lord Enid. What is Trog's connection to the prophecy and to the mysterious key? Why do Lord Enid and the Cosmic Regime want to stop this quest and the boy? Where will the quest lead them all? Only time will reveal all secrets. The quest awaits!
As seen on public television stations nationwide, a revolutionary new approach to playing non-classical music on the piano. Have you ever wished you could play the piano Well, now you can! Scott "The Piano Guy" Houston teaches you to play the way the pros play, in a style enormously simpler than traditional classical piano and with an absolute minimum of note-reading. By focusing on playing the melody with the right hand (one note at a time) and simple chords with the left hand, Houston gives you the tools you need for a lifetime of musical enjoyment. Best of all, your tour guide to this adventure forces you to have fun along the way!
