Bert Jansch- One for Jo

Bert Jansch's music has been accompanying me on recent long walks through the city. Usually, I'm not quite high enough to deal with Pentangle but Jansch's finger style guitar playing and creative amalgamation of various genres is very welcoming to me.

Fela Kuti- Black President

Here is a six part documentary on brilliant and sometimes problematic Nigerian activist/musician Fela Kuti. The documentary traces in broad strokes the events in Kuti's life that led up to his 1983 bid for Nigerian presidency. There is lots of great live footage of Kuti with the Nigeria 70 and overall, the film does a good job at rendering the music and the political vision as inseparable. The film is not segmented in the best way possible and there is a little material missing from part to part. Still, it is a great introduction to one of Africa's most famous musicians whose life will continue to inspire others for some time to come.



part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6

Kraken

The museum of New Zealand Te Papa has been thawing and preparing the dissection of a colossal squid. And they are kind enough to share it with the world through live and retransmitted web casts and a most excellent blog with brief and fascinating synopses of their work. Reading and watching this really puts the imagination to work and gives a bit of new perspective on that time they made us read "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" in high school. This is my favorite way to kill time right now.