All Blog Posts (240)

Book: The Map as Art - Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography

How many of you use a map while seeking to "explore" on your travels? If you have read some of my previous blog postings you know that I have mixed feelings towards maps (see psychogeography). Basically, I don't always want to know where I am going. Despite these feelings I will often spend several hours on the weekend reading through an atlas imagining where I would like… Continue

Added by Create Culture on December 28, 2009 at 6:00am — No Comments

Video: A Brief History of Tango - a gift from Create Culture to you

My wife had one wish this year. She wished for it over and over again. She would watch "Dancing with the Stars" and "So You Think You Can Dance" night after night. Afterwards, she would swoop into the room (where I was diligently working on this site) and plead with me. "John, will you take dancing lessons with me?" And over and over… Continue

Added by Create Culture on December 24, 2009 at 6:00am — 2 Comments

Book: Dancing Out of Bali, by John Coast

Dancing Out of Bali. John Coast. Periplus Books. 1954. Reprinted in 2004, with a foreword by Sir David Attenborough.

I read this book on my way back to New York from Bali in summer 2008 after spending three weeks at the Cudamani Summer Institute with my wife. I have been reminded of it by our friends at Cudamani who have just notified us of their… Continue

Added by Create Culture on December 21, 2009 at 9:00am — No Comments

New Orleans Jazz and Caribbean Music

There seems to be a close similarity between the body of music known as New Orleans Jazz and what is known as West Indian, Caribbean and/or Calypso music, but which represents musical characteristics associated with Creole culture in the Caribbean. The melodic and harmonic ties are there, but the strongest ties are reflected in the use of the same rhythmic patterns in both geographic areas - in fact, exactly the same rhythmic patterns, and combinations of rhythmic patterns.

John… Continue

Added by Razz'm Jazz'm on December 19, 2009 at 10:43pm — No Comments

Film: Throw Down Your Heart

"Throw Down Your Heart" follows American banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck on his journey to Africa to explore the little known African roots of the banjo and record an album. I was turned on to this film when Culturalist@s Jeremy and Linda Beck attended the red carpet premiere as guests of Béla… Continue

Added by Create Culture on December 17, 2009 at 6:00am — 1 Comment

Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel, by Edward Bruner

I read this book for my extraordinary "Tourist Performances" class with the eminent Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett at New York University's Performance Studies program a couple of years back, and have fished it out recently to re-read some of the fun and really unusual stories. This is a must-read for anyone interested in looking deeper at what can happen- or what happens… Continue

Added by Create Culture on December 14, 2009 at 12:41pm — No Comments

Blogs: "Awesome Tapes from Africa" and "African Music Treasures" - Who's Up for a Road Trip?

If you are planning a trip to Africa and/or just want to increase your familiarity with the continent's music and culture we suggest two sites that we have recently become fans of. Voice of America's "African Music Treasure" goes to great lengths to provide cultural context with its music samples. This we greatly appreciate. For example, below is the opening of a recent posting from… Continue

Added by Create Culture on December 10, 2009 at 6:00am — No Comments

Film: Genghis Blues - not your mama's throat singing contest

In 2005 for the World Festival of Sacred Music-LA, we brought Chirgilchin, a group of throat singing musicians, to Los Angeles. They performed at the opening concert, outdoors, under the fall equinox moon. It was extraordinary... and made me want to learn more about throat singing and the culture of Tuva. The film… Continue

Added by Create Culture on December 7, 2009 at 9:10am — 2 Comments

Article: Opening Arms and Ears to Cuban Music

This article, published on November 18th in the New York Times, examines cultural exchanges with Cuba. I was in Havana and Santiago in 2002 with Global Exchange and had mixed feelings about the trip. We want to know what you think about the article and Cuba. Have you visited the country? Were you part of a "cultural exchange"? Is it time for the U.S. to allow visitors? Or is the embargo working and necessary? See excerpts from the… Continue

Added by Create Culture on December 3, 2009 at 6:00am — No Comments

What New Orleans Taught Me About Havana

New Orleans played a large part in why I wrote a book on the greatest figure in all of Cuban music. It was something of an accident that sent me on the search for Benny Moré, a chance hearing of Qué Bueno Baila Usted, one of the best songs to come from any recording studio on the island of Cuba. Throughout her history, New Orleans had lots of cultural contact with her old penpal, Havana. Trading between these Caribbean sister cities included French opera, brass band instruments left over from… Continue

Added by John Radanovich on October 25, 2009 at 12:38pm — 1 Comment

Dancing My Way to West Africa

My mother taught me from the time I was a little girl that sometimes shutting out the world and letting the rhythm of a great song move your spirit is a sure way to heal the soul. Think about it, even if you’re in a horrible mood, you can put on your favorite tune, dance your heart out, and feel much better afterwards.

I have been dancing professionally for ten years with a traditional West African dance group called Iwa Lewa Heritage Dance Ensemble. We perform mostly in New Jersey… Continue

Added by Metra Lundy on August 10, 2009 at 8:12am — 4 Comments

Psychogeography

flip a coin 25 times to determine your path. take the subway to chinatown in whatever town you are in and begin exploring. if you flipped heads take a right and proceed one block before either taking a right (heads) or a left (tails). write down the names of the streets you turn on and your stream of conscious observations as you explore. post them in a reply to this discussion and i will use them in my next art show (with your permission). to read more about my experience with psychogeography… Continue

Added by John Rouse on June 3, 2009 at 11:25pm — 3 Comments

CC Interview with Ruud Matthes - Finding the essence of art in the transfer of emotions.

Tell us about yourself.

I was born in 1948 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. As a child I already wanted to become an artist, but I lost this confidence when I was getting older. Being an artist seemed a very insecure position so I tried something close to it: going into advertising. This didn’t work because I have no commercial talent. Then in 1972 I decided to study Social Pedagogy with the idea to specialize for becoming a… Continue

Added by John Rouse on May 8, 2009 at 9:30pm — 5 Comments

A Man Who Works The Land

Don Maya asks me one simple question as I stand on the other side of a volcanic stone wall that separates us and our two worlds, “ What is it you want to know from me?” He is a direct, no-nonsense type of man, very real. I had come to Mexico to learn from those who lived life here, those who were connected to the land and were a part of the “handed-down knowledge” I had read about. Up until now, all my learning and education came from books. I read about the culture and the people of Mexico. It… Continue

Added by Michael Heralda on May 6, 2009 at 11:00am — 2 Comments

CC Interview with Artist Josefina Baez: Performing the Self

Create Culture interview with:

Josefina Baez

La Romana, Dominican Republic

Writer, actor, theatre director, educator, & Director of Ay Ombe Theatre since April 1986.

CC: Tell us a little bit about yourself

JB: A bit of me…ummmm.

Could be

M

But that’s half of ME

I was Born and raised in La Romana, Dominican Republic. I moved to New York in the early 70s and I… Continue

Added by Nico Daswani on April 8, 2009 at 9:00pm — No Comments

blog entry #3: a random walk through manhattan and other experiments with psychogeography – NY, NY February 2009

every day, i go to my day job. i never call in sick and i rarely take vacation. for better, and probably worse, it’s what i do…it’s how i was raised. and, every day that i go to the day job, i go the same way….i take the same route almost every single time. once i’m at the train station, i almost always get on the first car….and i always get out at the same train station and trudge the same path to work, where i sit at the same cubicle....day in and day out.

however, when my wife… Continue

Added by John Rouse on March 1, 2009 at 8:09pm — 2 Comments

a poem I wrote at the Cape of Good Hope, Jan. 18, 2009

poem for Cape Town. white

cottony waves (like fluffy cash

crop your cousins gleaned from southern

American

plantations), they crash

against untamable

extremities of Earth, so glad

not to be

mutilated and reformed

by toughened brown

hands into bricks (subjugated

people suffer alongside desecrated

land unless settler capital

decrees a national park, meaning (for nations

of Capital, that is (not-brown nations), living

in… Continue

Added by rachsig on February 9, 2009 at 8:30pm — 2 Comments

blog entry #2: there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like pollo rico.......... - Washington, D.C./Arlington, VA January 2009

I spent last saturday at home in the d.c. area with my parents. i hitched a ride down 95 with my old friend sean. it was the kind of ride where springsteen’s “glory days” was relevant and played on the radio as we talked about the good times we had growing up. i swear, many a classic car from our youth (ford ltd classic, ford taurus classic, honda accord classic-i lived in a fancy neighborhood) drove by as the song blared. the drivers let their cigarettes burn as their voices sang at the top of… Continue

Added by John Rouse on February 5, 2009 at 10:00pm — 1 Comment

May 7, 2007

This is something I wrote in a stream of consciousness a while back and that I just found...

---

May 7, 2007

A day after voting in the French presidential election (by proxy), I took and passed my US citizenship test today. Within 24 hours, I managed to demonstrate my singular national allegiance to two countries. This is besides the fact that my current status in the US is as an Indian-named British citizen…

7.45am. Downtown Manhattan. Sitting on the… Continue

Added by Nico Daswani on January 30, 2009 at 7:00pm — 1 Comment

blog entry #1: stuff my face with culture – London, January 2009

i've recently returned from a short trip to london with amy. we spent 4 days determined to pack as much “culture” into the trip as possible. i wanted to stuff my face with local delicacies, drink ale until it came out of my nose, then walk it off all over the city while talking to people, exploring the parks, pubs, markets, music, and museums.

day 1: first stop the tate modern via the thames south bank river walk. fresh off the red eye, i took the spanish waitresses advice and went… Continue

Added by John Rouse on January 24, 2009 at 11:00pm — 2 Comments