Category: Arts & culture

Jake or young kid

One of my favorite Youtube videos is titled “Guess: JAKE or Young KID? — Ukulele Challenge.”

If you know anything about the current ukulele scene, you’ll immediately figure out that “Jake” refers to Jake Shimabukuro, a ukulele virtuoso who is probably best known for his ukulele versions of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” But his range as a musician goes far beyond rock and pop music. He has arranged jazz, classical, funk, and bluegrass music for the ukulele, and written his own compositions. He is known for playing complex music requiring amazing feats with both left and right hands.

The point of “JAKE or Young KID?” is simple: a panel of professional ukulele players listen to only the audio portion of a Youtube video of one of Jake’s arrangements or compositions. Sometimes it will be Jake playing, but sometimes it will be a child or young teen playing. The panelists have to figure out which it is. Given what a virtuoso player Jake is, this should be no problem, right?

Actually, the panelists regularly mistake Jake for the Young Kid, and the Young Kid for Jake. This says a lot for the high level of playing in the rising generation of ukulele players (it also says a lot about the popularity of the ukulele these days, that kids are willing to spend so much time learning the instrument). But it also makes us confront one of the nagging questions of our time: how do we know what is true and what is false? If a ten year old kid can play like Jake Shimabukuro, then what?

But the video doesn’t get into existential questions like that. It’s just hilarious. Although panelist Kalei Gamaio easily beats panelists Abe Lagrimas, Jr., and Aldrine Guerrero, each of the panelists makes hilarious mistakes.

Screen grab from the video
L-R: Abe Lagrimas, Kalei Gamaio, and Aldrine Guerrero — Kalei was the only one who figured out this player was NOT Jake, but a little kid

Not ready for prime time

A Star Trek musical is in the works. Called “Khan!!! The Musical!: A Parody Trek-tacular,” it will premiere Off-Broadway in early May.

The premise? Data the android, while learning about human culture, finds out about Broadway musicals, and programs his own holographic musical. Which features things like Vulcan tap dancing… and “mutant space-chickens.”

They lost me at mutant space-chickens. It makes it sound like they’re trying too hard to be funny. Singing tribbles might be funny. Mutant space-chickens… meh.

Another who’s leaving social media

Science fiction author (and former librarian) Karl Drinkwater is leaving social media:

“…I’m going to close my social media accounts. They tie you in by becoming a habit. They tie you in by making you think you need continuous reinforcement. They tie you in with follower counts, and the implicit threat that if you walk away you’ll lose thousands of followers gathered over a decade. The last one isn’t true. As in, you don’t lose anything….” Plus, he adds, commercial social media sites like Twitter and Facebook spy on you, make money from your content, own your content, don’t actually show your followers your content, and do many other evil things.

Drinkwater is no Luddite. He details how he’s been an early adopter many times in the past. And maybe he’s being an early adopter now — we’re seeing the beginnings of a trend of tech-savvy people realizing the full horrors of commercial social media, and getting rid of it. Realizing the full horrors of Amazon, and withdrawing all support from it. Realizing the full horrors of Microsoft and Apple, of any smartphone made, and finding alternatives.

He’s fortunate that he can withdraw from all those things. I pretty much have to have a smartphone for my job. Given the press of demands from my job, I don’t have the time to make the switch to LibreOffice. Similarly, I don’t have time to switch to Linux — a switch that would entail too many hours of learning Linux, finding replacement software, learning how to use it.

On the other hand, Drinkwater says he’s done this as a gradual changeover. You don’t have to do it overnight. I’ve already pretty much stopped using social media. My laptop has about two more years of life left in it; maybe I should think about buying a new laptop now, one that I can install Linux on. Maybe it’s time to start researching dumb phones, ones without GPS or other spying capabilities built into them.

But I will definitely remain here at this blog. This blog is what social media used to look like. I use open source software to power this blog, and host it with an ISP that uses renewable energy. No one steals your data. No one owns my content (except me). This is what the web could be….

Aaron Bash Windom

Following up on yesterday’s post, I decided to draft a brief biography of gospel composer A. B. Windom — just in time for the last few days of Black History Month.

Aaron Bash Windom, better known as A. B. Windom, was born on September 11, 1910, in Missouri. Nothing is known about his early years. By 1941, he was publishing his own compositions in St. Louis, often under the imprint “Studio of A. B. Windom.” In addition to being a gospel composer, he taught music, and his students called him Professor A. B. Windom. He was also a performer, and both sang and played piano. At one time, he was accompanist for Willie Mae Ford “Mother” Smith (Horace Clarence Boyer, The Golden Age of Gospel [Univ. Ill Press, 2000], p. 138).

On February 17, 1949, he married Selma B. Hurd. Born c. 1903, Selma was from East St. Louis, Ill., across the river from St. Louis, and was the daughter of Baptist minister Rev. B. M. Hurd.

Although all his published compositions were gospel music, Windom taught classical piano. As one of his students remembers, “He was very well versed in music theory as well. Gospel music is not all he knew. He was a light-skinned Black man, [and] eccentric. I still miss him.” At least one of his students went on to become a professional musician, the gospel composer Rev. Robert Mayes (1942-1992).

Windom served for forty years as the minister of music at Christ Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church in St. Louis, circa 1940 until his death. In 1966, he served on the Devotional Literature Commission of the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

His gospel compositions were recorded most notably by Mahalia Jackson, and also by less well-known performers such as Martha Bass, the Golden Harmoneers, the Clara Ward Singers, etc. His 1948 composition “Let Us Sing Till the Power of the Lord Come Down” (a.k.a. “Now Let Us Sing”) has been recorded a number of times and is widely sung by church choirs. This song has even entered the folk tradition to the point where “Now Let Us Sing” has entered the oral tradition, passed on from singer to singer; unfortunately in the process Windom’s authorship has sometimes been forgotten.

Windom died on February 28, 1981. He had previously turned over his school at 3905 Evans Ave., St. Louis, to Professor Lee Cochran, Jr., who continued to teach music there. Selma, A. B.’s wife, died on February 26, 1994. They are buried together in St. Peter’s Cemetery, Normandy, St. Louis County, Missouri.

(If you want references, they’re at the original post. Updated 12 March 2024 with info about Mother Smith.)

More on A.B. Windom

In 2016, I wrote a post about gospel composer A. B. Windom, giving what little information I then had, and asking if anyone knew more. One or two people commented who actually knew Windom, and one or two others have added little tidbits of information.

Windom is the person who composed “Now Let Us Sing,” one of the great gospel hymns. It’s hard to believe that there’s so little information out there about him. I realized today that if you search Google for “A. B. Windom,” my post now appears as the top result. That’s how little information there is about Windom online.

So I thought I should do a little more research and try to add to that 2016 post. I did what I should have done from the start — researched Windom on one of the genealogy sites. And in fact I did find a little more information, including the name of his wife. What I found in three hours of online research today had been added to the original post. If you’re looking for a research project, maybe you could go to that original post, see what little information is there, then go see if you can find more!

Post script: Singing the Living Tradition, the 1993 UU hymnal, attributes “Now Let Us Sing” to “anonymous.” Nope, it was written and copyrighted by A. B. Windom. And predominantly white churches that sing this song by an African American composer without crediting him, while changing the words to remove the God from this gospel song? … Mmm, the phrase that comes to my mind is “cultural misappropriation.”

Legal personhood

Natalia Harrell shot and killed someone in Florida. She was six weeks pregnant. She was apprehended and put in prison. Now she has filed a petition with the Florida courts saying lack of prenatal care in prison is endangering the life of her fetus — or, to use Florida’s term for a fetus, her “unborn child.” In an interview, Harrell’s lawyer stated: “An unborn child has rights independent of its mother, even though it’s still in the womb. The unborn child has been deprived of due process of law in this incarceration.”

This is a logical outcome of the conservative Christian insistence that a fetus has rights. Of course we know what’s going to happen. The courts are going to twist things around so Florida does not have to provide prenatal care, nor in any way honor any putative rights the fetus has. In this conservative Christian ideology, a fetus is only considered a person when that serves to stop a woman’s right to abortion; but a fetus is not a person for any other purpose.

This makes me wonder if there are carpool lanes on some Florida highways. Because if there are, some pregnant woman should drive solo in a carpool lane, and if apprehended claim that there are actually two legal persons in the car: the woman herself, and the fetus. Of course, once again we know the Florida courts would rule that a fetus is not a person when it comes to carpool lanes. But I’m sure a lot of us would happily chip in to pay that woman’s traffic ticket and court costs, just to show up the hypocrisy of lawmakers who claim a fetus is an “unborn child” with full legal rights.

Song

Best song I’ve ever heard about domestic violence: “Johnny’s Girl” by Spirit Artis. The music is not complex: mostly Artis’s expressive voice, with her understated guitar accompaniment, and a touch of overdubbed harmony singing. The song is powerful enough that it doesn’t need any more than that.

In a podcast, Artis said this is a song about toxic relationships as viewed by a third party. She had seen relationships where one partner subsumes themselves in the dominant partner, so that person isn’t even known by their own name; they’re just known as “Johnny’s girl,” or “Gwyneth’s boy,” or whatever. I’ve done a little bit of work with people in domestic violence situations, and Artis’s lyrics get at some uncomfortable truths:

“Johnny’s girl, she’s lost herself again,
She said, ‘He’s different, you don’t know him like I do,’
But Johnny-boy’s abusing on our friend,
She said, ‘He’ll change, just give him time, this bruise will fade’….”

In the same podcast, Artis added that she sang this song to someone she knew who needed to hear it, and that person got out of the toxic relationship that they were in. So I’m linking to this song on my blog — in case there’s someone else out there who needs to hear it.

Screen grab from the video podcast mentioned in the post, showing Spirit Artis singing and playing guitar
Screen grab from the podcast mentioned in the post

Online tools for finding religious diversity

Yelp.com used to be my go-to online source for finding religious communities in a given area. In the San Francisco Bay area, I could type in my location, plus the search term “Religious organizations,” and I’d get a fairly complete list of religious communities, including communities that had no other web presence.

But here in southeastern Massachusetts, Yelp has been failing me. A Yelp search for “Religious organizations” seems to miss a good many religious communities, and has incorrect or outdated information for quite a few others. I won’t say it’s useless, but it’s almost not worth looking at. YP.com, the “real Yellow Pages,” turns out to be somewhat better than Yelp, though you have to use search terms for specific religious groups.

Not sure what the significance of this is. It may simply be that Yelp’s user community in this area simply doesn’t pay much attention to religion. But I also think Yelp pays little attention to religious organizations these days. I claimed the Yelp page for First Parish in Cohasset, and have tried a number of times to get Yelp to change the name of our congregation from “Unitarian Church” to “First Parish in Cohasset,” but they just ignore me. I’m guessing Yelp gets no revenue from hosting religious organizations, so they just ignore us.

Long distance uke

I’ve picked up the ukulele again, but there’s not a lot of live ukulele happening in southeastern Massachusetts. So I’ve been getting my uke fix watching the weekly video podcast of Hawaii Music Supply, which you can find on their YouTube channel. Yes, they promote their high-end ukuleles. Yes, there’s a lot of pointless chit-chat, as on every podcast. But there’s also plenty of music, with some of the best of the newer ukulele players, sometimes playing songs and compositions they haven’t yet recorded. Players like Honoka, Neil Chin, Taimane Gardner, and many others, appear on the podcast and jam with regulars Corey Fujimoto and Kalei Gamaio.

For someone like me who’s trying to pick up the uke again, it’s really helpful to hear what really good ukulele playing sounds like. Plus ukulele players tend to be welcoming friendly people, and the ukulele itself is a gentle happy instrument. I put this podcast on while I’m cleaning the floor or doing laundry, and it cheers me right up even on a rainy windy winter day.

Separating the art from the artist

Science fiction author Charlie Jane Anders takes on the J.K. Rowling brouhaha in a post to her Buttondown newsletter. Anders asks, can we separate the art from the artist? Or, to be more specific, can we separate Hogwarts from notorious transphobe J.K. Rowling?

Anders reminds us that not every artists gets to have their art separated from the artist:

“…I don’t think marginalized creators, including trans creators, ever quite get that luxury. Our identities are always going to be bound up with the stuff we create, even if we aren’t explicitly writing about our own marginalizations, and we’re highly dependent on our own communities to support us. Someone like Rowling has a lot more leeway to behave like a jerk in public, because she belongs to most of the default categories: white, cis, straight, abled. If you are not viewed immediately as a ‘mainstream’ creator, your life is going to be scrutinized a lot more no matter what you do….”

Anders also points out that part of the problem with J.K. Rowling is that she’s been turned into a celebrity:

“We really need to stop turning authors into celebrities, y’all. It’s toxic and shitty, and leads to bad behavior at least some of the time. One of the many problems besetting the publishing industry is this star system, which turns a handful of authors into supergods, and keeps everyone else, even pretty successful authors, in a lesser category. Even if someone wrote books that are really, really good and they’re selling like hotcakes, let’s resist the impulse to turn this person into the One True Author To Rule Them All.”

Anders has a good point. If J.K. Rowling hadn’t been turned into a celebrity (acknowledging that she herself was eager to turn herself into a celebrity), we would not care what she thought about transgender people. Nobody pays much attention to Jane Yolen’s opinion about much of anything, even though she’s a successful writer who’s written a successful book about a wizard’s school (Wizard’s Hall), along with some 350 other books. While Yolen gets to check off the same identity boxes that Rowling checks off — white, cis, straight, abled — she’s not a celebrity like Rowling. (Parenthetical note admitting my bias: I love some of Jane Yolen’s books, and in my opinion, she’s a better writer than Rowling.)

So yeah. Maybe we really do need to separate the art from the artist.