tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365920522024-02-20T20:47:11.823+11:00opɯdʒɯlɯklɑropoudjis his blog / τὸ τοῦ ὁπουτζοῦ ἱστολόγιονopoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.comBlogger177125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-38979987951468163842017-09-12T14:20:00.004+10:002017-09-12T14:20:51.877+10:00Blog moved<span class="fullpost">I'm back.
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<span class="fullpost">This is going to all sorts of audiences, so I now need to spell out where I'm back to, and where I'm back from.
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<span class="fullpost">I maintained two blogs up until 2011. <a href="http://hellenisteukontos.blogspot.com.au/">hellenisteukontos.blogspot.com</a> was a blog about Greek linguistics, and <a href="https://opuculuk.blogspot.com.au/">opuculuk.blogspot.com</a> was a blog about everything else. Hellenisteukontos in particular developed quite a following, and was even cited in print a few times.
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<span class="fullpost">I resumed writing online in 2015 at <a href="https://www.quora.com/">Quora</a> (see my <a href="https://www.quora.com/profile/Nick-Nicholas-5">profile</a> there), and I continued doing so until it became untenable for me to (see <a href="http://necrologue.opoudjis.net/2017/09/04/2017-08-31-bis-statement-translation/">my statement</a>). I dare say I developed a following there too.
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<span class="fullpost">One thing I did relearn during my stay on Quora was that I can write both about stuff I do know about, and stuff I actually don't know about—but with enough insight that I can make a reasoned argument. That's something I enjoyed doing greatly, and I hope to keep doing it. Just as I hope to keep sharing the expertise I have on things I am an expert in.
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<span class="fullpost">When I decamped from Quora, I followed an exodus of users to <a href="https://medium.com=/">Medium</a> (see my <a href="https://medium.com/@nicknicholas_32843">profile</a> there), and I may have provoked a few others to join me. For all Quora's grotesqueries (and they are legion), Quora was a more congenial place to me than Medium: compared to my Quora feed (admittedly after two years of curation), Medium was a lot more clickbait, a lot more superficial, and a lot more full of sterile political posturing. I will continue to check in there with the <a href="https://medium.com/quora-extension">Quora Diaspora</a>, but I won't be making it my home.
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<span class="fullpost">So I'm coming home to the blogs I had left six years ago, but I am relocating them to Wordpress instances: <a href="http://hellenisteukontos.opoudjis.net/">http://hellenisteukontos.opoudjis.net</a> and <a href="http://opuculuk.opoudjis.net/">http://opuculuk.opoudjis.net</a>. I encourage you to update any links you have to the prior blogs; I will not be updating them. I have migrated both my blogspot and my relevant Quora content to those two new instances on my website. Quora makes it very difficult to get your content out of its honeytrap, and none of the topics or comments export. I've spent a couple of days categorising the Quora posts; you'll pardon me if I don't manually retag them as well.
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<span class="fullpost">I have also broadened the scope of Hellenisteukontos: moving forward it will cover not the Set Intersection of Greek and Linguistics, but the Set Union. Greek culture, music, literature and history are in scope of it now; so is general linguistics and linguistics of other languages.
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<span class="fullpost">I won't be posting with the same level of frequency I did on Quora, a frequency that was clearly unsustainable. I aim to be doing larger essays, although I did plenty of essay writing on Quora anyway. But I will welcome people suggesting Quora questions for me to answer here. I will not be posting anything to Quora; my friends from Quora are free to do with my content what they will on Quora (so long as they link back here.)
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<span class="fullpost">I look forward to reconnecting with old friends and new, and I look forward to thinking out loud and posting what strikes my fancy, in a forum that I find more congenial.
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<span class="fullpost">I'm back.
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<br />opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-13777428671035402492017-04-03T09:12:00.006+10:002017-04-03T09:12:32.440+10:00Rolandina RonchaiaCross-posted from <a href="https://opuculuk.quora.com/Rolandina-Roncaglia">https://opuculuk.quora.com/Rolandina-Roncaglia</a><br />
<br />
In 1355, Rolandino Ronchaia was burned alive in Venice for sodomy.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lords_of_the_Night">The Lords of the Night</a> (Signori della Notte), the magistrates who condemned Rolandino, kept meticulous notes, and those notes proved a rich quarry for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_Ruggiero">Guido Ruggiero</a>, when he wrote one of his first books, <a href="https://www.librarything.com/work/615356">The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice</a>. An enjoyable and challenging book.<br />
<br />
The sex crimes prosecuted in Venice—fornication and adultery and sodomy—tell us a lot about how Venetians saw the proper role of gender and sex and sexuality in a society. They tells us a lot about the clash between the traditional enforcement of norms in a mediaeval village, and the new government structures using the rule of law to enforce public morality (hesitantly). And they tell us a lot about how homosexuality, then as later, was seen as a threat to social stability, and was the reason for a moral panic in the 15th century, when prosecution of sodomy passed from the Lords of the Night to the feared <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Ten">Council of Ten</a>.<br />
<br />
But Ruggiero’s book was written in 1985. And it doesn’t tell us that much about gender fluidity, because that was not Ruggiero’s particular concern. In fact, he brings up Rolandino’s case as an aside, to make an argument I didn’t even find convincing.<br />
<br />
If you google, you’ll find that Rolandino’s case has attracted a lot of scholarly attention since. But don’t google <i>Rolandino</i>. Google <i>Rolandina</i>. Because she passed as female for seven years, before being arrested and executed.<br />
<br />
The secondary literature draws on Ruggiero’s summary treatment of Rolandina’s case, and the secondary literature situates Rolandina as an antecedent of contemporary struggles of transgender and intersex people. In fact, I learned of Rolandina from Shiri—to whom my thanks—who is herself transgender (tweet embedded, with Ruggiero’s passage as picture). (Shiri’s twitter feed is NSFW.)<br />
<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/shiritrap/status/786257115778121728">https://twitter.com/shiritrap/status/786257115778121728</a><br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
<img alt="CulXv9iWAAAn_tZ.jpg" height="640" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CulXv9iWAAAn_tZ.jpg" width="604" /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.27000001072883606px; white-space: pre-wrap;">In my research I also found this account of a trans or intersex person in Venice the 1350s. Medieval traps confirmed! </span><a class="twitter-hashtag pretty-link js-nav" data-query-source="hashtag_click" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/spoiler?src=hash" style="color: #d71098; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.27000001072883606px; text-decoration: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">#spoiler</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.27000001072883606px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> sad ending...</span></blockquote>
<br />
Ruggiero’s conclusion was that the flourishing gay underground in the 15th century (which the records point to—hence the moral panic) could have shielded Rolandina better as a transvestite prostitute. I was not convinced by his conclusion. But what particularly struck me was how little attention Ruggiero paid to her gender fluidity, how it was incidental to him. It wasn’t a hot topic in 1985, it’s fair to say.<br />
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That did not remain the case. As early as 1999, Rolandina inspired a queer-theory analysis of the parallel case in 1394 of John/Eleanor Rykener: <a href="http://www.illinoismedieval.org/ems/VOL16/dinshaw.html">Queer Relations Carolyn Dinshaw</a>. But note that in the bibliography, the source she draws on, written in 1995, speaks of both Rykener and Rolandina as <i>transvestites</i>: the language and the distinctions in how to talk about gender fluidity were clearly still evolving.<br />
<ul>
<li>David Lorenzo Boyd and Ruth Mazo Karras, "The Interrogation of a Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fourteenth-Century London," <i>GLQ</i> 1 (1995), 459-65.</li>
<li>Ruth Mazo Karras and David Lorenzo Boyd, "'Ut cum muliere': A Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fourteenth-Century London," <i>Premodern Sexualities</i>, ed. Louise Fradenburg and Carla Freccero (New York and London, 1996), pp. 101-16.</li>
</ul>
I have my own misgivings about activist history, which Dinshaw is doing:<br />
<blockquote>
I want to think with you about what we can <i>do</i> with this information. What kinds of histories, and what kinds of communities, can we create with it? […] My most general concern here will be to argue for a use of historical relations in our current projects of queer self-fashioning and community building. […] let's imagine the widest possible usable field of others with whom to make such relations and fashion selves and communities. I want to imagine relational processes that engage many kinds of cultural differences (though not all in the same ways): racial, ethnic, national, sexual, gender, class differences, and even (I'm arguing) temporal differences. Thus the medieval, as well as other dank stretches of time, becomes itself--in all its incommensurability--a resource for self- and community formation.</blockquote>
Are those communities Rolandina would have recognised herself in? Presumably not. But then, it’s not really about her, is it. It’s about the living.<br />
<br />
But the living have an agenda; and in fashioning community with Rolandina, they’ll enhance the bits about Rolandina that resonate with them, and efface the bits that don’t. It was ever thus in history writing, true. It still makes me uneasy.<br />
<br />
I’m not accusing Shiri of such appropriation; Shiri’s winking description of Rolandina as a “medieval trap” is pretty accurate in the original slang meaning of “trap” [<a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/traps">Traps</a>]. It’s likely also accurate in the contemporary reappropriation of the term (which Shiri herself uses): as Shiri reminds me, “there are contemporary traps that are intersex too”.<br />
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But is Rolandina part of Shiri’s history? How closesly did Boyd & Karras read Ruggiero, if they concluded Rolandina was a transvestite and not intersex (or, as they would likely have written at the time, hermaphrodite)? There are differences as well as commonalities to be traced in history, not least between realisations of gender.<br />
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It’s best to let people speak for themselves. We will never know more about Rolandina than what her executioners wrote; but that’s more than Ruggiero says, and much more than secondary literature cites from Ruggiero. Ruggiero cites the case from the records of the Lords of the Night; it turns out that the case was published in Italian, around the time Ruggiero would have been poring through the archives in Venice.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Carlo Marcandalli & Giovanni Dall’Orto: Arsi finché morte ne segua, <i>Lotta Continua</i>, April 10, 1982, pp. 11-13.</li>
</ul>
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That does not look like the kind of periodical it would be easy to get hold of; fortunately, Dall’Orto put a translation up on his Facebook page much more recently, with commentary. I’m pasting it here, and then appending my own comments, so that people can make up their own minds about her—and so that people can Google everything we know about her, rather than just rely on Ruggiero’s summary. Translation from Italian my own.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/dallortogiovanni/posts/601815799830768">Giovanni Dall'Orto</a><br />
<blockquote>
A transsexual of 1354.(1)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I have neither the time nor the desire to go about putting up a page for my site about this Venetian case which I've just discarded from my book (TOO MUCH material!). Therefore I offer it here to anyone who could possibly be interested / curious. (From the series: Never throw anything away!).</blockquote>
<blockquote>
1354, (2) seventh indiction, on 20 March. (3)<br />
Rolandino Roncaglia, who went around the Rialto selling this and that (4), suspected of the sin of sodomy, was brought in before the Lords of Night in the torture chamber and questioned in order to tell the truth about the evils committed by him with regard to performing that sin, did at once, without any torture, say and confess that it has been ten years and more that he took to his wife and married a young woman with whom he stayed for a while, and yet he never knew her (neither her nor any other woman) carnally, because he has never had any carnal appetite and was never able to have an erection of his male organ; and that his wife left him, and she died at the time of the plague. (5)<br />
He went to live in Padua, hosted by his relative Massone, and because he had the looks, voice and gestures of a woman (though admittedly he did not have a female orifice and he has member and testicles in the fashion of men), many believed him to be female, from what appears outwardly, and he often heard many saying: "this one is female," making mention of the same Rolandino.<br />
Finally, on a certain night, while he was in bed at the home of the same Massone, a man who was staying in the same house, believing that he was female, got into bed next to him with the intention of knowing him carnally as a female, embracing him, and he started to kiss and hug and squeeze his breasts (which he has in the manner of women) and mounted his body.<br />
Then Rolandino, assuming the role of the female, and wanting to be considered female, hid his member and took the member of that man and placed it in his posterior, where the said man ejaculated sperm and, this being done, let him go. And in the same way in Padua he went with two other men, who took him for a female.<br />
After that he came to Venice and, as he had already been with men like a female, taking on the role of the female, the rumour spread abroad that everybody believed that he was female, including through outwardly apparent female gestures, and many called him Rolandina.<br />
And he always frequented the prostitutes of the Rialto in bed and went to the public baths with them, and he hid his member on both sides so that none ever saw it and all very clearly thought he was female.<br />
And because of this fact he was requested for carnal acts by many and countless men here in Venice, and lay with many for carnal acts at home, and with many elsewhere at their request who thought he was female.<br />
He deceived them as follows: when they had mounted his body, he would conceal his member as far as he could, and he would take the member of the man who lay with him and place it in his posterior, and would be with them until they ejaculated sperm, granting them all pleasure as the prostitutes do with men, and he persisted in this sin for seven years, more or less.<br />
Asked if anyone, being with him in the act, saw his member, he said no.<br />
Asked if his member became erect while he was with them, he said no.<br />
Asked about the reason why he committed this sin, he said to earn a little money.<br />
After that, the said Rolandino was put to the torture on the orders of the same lords and interrogated in order to tell the truth better, and not saying anything other than what he had said above, he was given a sackful [?], and that is why he did not say anything but the things that they are spoken and written above.<br />
Then on March 28 the said Rolandino was presented to the illustrious lords, and here after they were read in his presence, everything written above, he persevered in his confession, ratifying what he had said, as said above and is written.<br />
Note that in 1354, (6) the seventh indiction, on March 28, by Master Giovan-Nicola Rosso, and Master Daniele Cornaro Judges of Justice, in the absence of the third judge, the said Rolandino was condemned to be burned to death. (7)<br />
---<br />
NOTES<br />
1. Archivo di Stato di Venezia, Lords of the Night criminal, register 6, page 64r.<br />
A transsexual: well then! But haven't American Gay Historians "taught" us, that before the nineteenth century, no personal identity could be based on a sexual practice? Yet here he is, a man who based on his sexual predilections defined himself as a woman, as blatant as a whale sideways on a highway. Isn't that a perfect reversal, anticipating by half a millennium those doctors who, according to academic theses currently all the rage, claim to have "invented" homosexuality in 1869 (sic)? Maybe those fashionable arguments won't last long.<br />
I do not want to say, mind you, that everything Rolandina says needs to be taken at face value. It is not credible that she has "deceived" hundreds of people for years simply by hiding her genitals, mincing and taking on the look of a "perfect" woman: the experience with transsexuals of today teaches us that in their self-perception the "femininity" of their body is usually overstated. The deception of Rolandina would therefore not have worked if those around her had not wanted to be deceived: Rolandina herself tells us that it was others who start calling her feminine, that is, to treat her as a woman.<br />
If for seven years shameless Rolandina managed to get away with it, it is clear that some space of social tolerance towards transsexuality must have existed.<br />
2) By the Venetian Calendar, ie 1355.<br />
3) This case, together with that in Nicoletto Marmagna and Giovanni Braganza (on which see below), has already been published by Carlo Marcandalli and myself as: Arsi finché morte ne segua, "Lotta Continua", April 10, 1982, pp. 11-13. The translation was Marcandalli's But here I have retranslated the texts to make it linguistically uniform with other cases.<br />
4) In Latin: <i>vendendo ona et alia</i>.<br />
5) Probably of the Black Death of 1348.<br />
6) By the Venetian Calendar, i.e. 1355.<br />
7) The last line is faded, but will have contained the usual closing: "And Master ..... did carry out the sentence."</blockquote>
My own remarks:<br />
<br />
Burning to death was the prescribed punishment in 14th century Venice for sodomy, which was understood to include anal sex with women, anal or intercrural sex with men, and bestiality. In Venice, unlike many other parts of the world, the condemnation was of tops rather than bottoms: as Ruggiero argues, this was because Venetians had just developed a notion of criminal intent, and criminal intent was clear from the actions of a top. A bottom could be considered a victim, especially if they were a minor or a woman. In fact, Ruggiero records at least one instance where female prostitutes arrested for sodomy were let go.<br />
<br />
Rolandina speaks about her circumstances willingly, before there is any need for torture. I don’t know how common that was for those accused of sodomy and hauled before the Lords of the Night; but I suspect that Rolandina expected to be treated as another female prostitute, and let go. The Lords of the Night, of course, had no such flexibility in their views of either gender or sexuality.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-82299588823319978472016-07-09T15:12:00.002+10:002016-07-09T15:12:50.213+10:00To my wife, on our five-year anniversary<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc4vu24Ieyhv5eh1pEWjhXihiEIpY-N5OSmLscB001ogXmNWkfTBbOBdG5memd7wruO8ArtSDyfu63nCUrFM-Xt-T_bo7klrK5VN7RJKMctV-qMUND1NMpKavhMccJk__h2UjS/s1600/%25CE%25A3%25CE%25B1%25CC%2581%25CF%2581%25CF%2589%25CF%2583%25CE%25B7+8.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc4vu24Ieyhv5eh1pEWjhXihiEIpY-N5OSmLscB001ogXmNWkfTBbOBdG5memd7wruO8ArtSDyfu63nCUrFM-Xt-T_bo7klrK5VN7RJKMctV-qMUND1NMpKavhMccJk__h2UjS/s400/%25CE%25A3%25CE%25B1%25CC%2581%25CF%2581%25CF%2589%25CF%2583%25CE%25B7+8.png" width="337" /></a><br />
My love, whose smile is wide enough to clasp<br />
the heavens in; whose sorrow can expend<br />
the deep-dug wells of earth; whose anger's grasp<br />
no whisper can unravel; whose amend<br />
<br />
no benison of rainbows can surpass;<br />
whose passion strides where armies never went,<br />
and lays what claims it pleases; and whose glass<br />
flashes with all the sunrays it has bent,<br />
<br />
much like a crystal: Love, on this our day<br />
of memory of cycles run complete<br />
and cycles yet to be, our eyes will meet<br />
<br />
and recognise once more the subtle play<br />
of light and night. We'll laugh through dreary weather,<br />
and toast another year of us together.<br />
<br />opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-85840285344095570402011-02-02T12:10:00.002+11:002011-02-02T12:14:28.587+11:00Epictetus, Discourses I 1Well, I don't know if this is a good idea at all. But this is one of my favourite passages of Ancient Greek. Rendered in GoAnimate, with pseudo-Laurence Olivier Text-To-Speech. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus">Epictetus</a>, <i>Discourses</i> I 1, in the Loeb <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/epictetusdiscour01epicuoft">Oldfather translation</a> from 1925. <br /><br /><object width="640" height="390"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gHU-1XVsURM&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gHU-1XVsURM&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></embed></object><br /><br /><iframe src='http://www.archive.org/stream/epictetusdiscour01epicuoft?ui=embed#mode/1up' width='480px' height='430px' frameborder='0' ></iframe>opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-8949092836786810932011-01-24T17:53:00.002+11:002011-01-24T18:25:06.447+11:00Vamvakaris: The floodIn the previous post, I <a href="http://opuculuk.blogspot.com/2011/01/raid-on-hashish-den.html">wrote about</a> the 1933 recording <i>A raid on the hashish den</i>, a comedy sketch with music, featuring one of the earliest recordings of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markos_Vamvakaris">Markos Vamvakaris</a>. In the process, I got the bug for <a href="http://goanimate.com/">GoAnimate</a>, and so I created an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRD6IsEdgiA">animated music video</a> for the song. (Now with subtitles.)<br /><br />My second such attempt involves Vamvakaris' <a href="http://rebetiko.sealabs.net/wiki/mediawiki/index.php/%CE%97_%CF%80%CE%BB%CE%B7%CE%BC%CE%BC%CF%8D%CF%81%CE%B1">Η Πλημμύρα (<span style="font-style:italic;">The Flood</span>)</a>, recorded in 1935:<br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FeIBJyncLXs" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen></iframe><br />(You'll need to watch on YouTube to get the subtitles through Captions.)<br /><br />I had not heard the song before buying the box set of Vamvakaris 1933–1937; in fact, I hadn't heard many of the songs, because early Vamvakaris is not radio-friendly. <span style="font-style:italic;">The Flood</span> stood out for me—even before <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Queensland_floods">recent</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Victorian_floods">events</a> in Australia made it topical. <br /><br />The song presents direct, chilling vignettes of hardship after an urban flood; there is some filler in the lyric ("Mother's, it's no lie"), but in all it's brutally effective. And while Markos' more usual vignettes of lowlife posturing are also brutally effective in their own way, this is a surprising change of topic for him. The musical form of the song is also distinct: it's more relentlessly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strophic_form">strophic</a> than is usual for Markos—all A A A A instead of his typical AB BA A′B′ B′A′. He's presenting direct vignettes, and he uses a relentlessly straightforward style to do it. <br /><br />He does so with a sparing number of notes, and with a hypnotic jangling (I think it's hand cymbals) in the break between verses. The sessions Markos recorded in, early on, each had their own mix of instruments and collaborators, and there are a few more songs from the '35 session with the hand cymbals in uses. Here though, they really come to the fore as a grim punctuation.<br /><br />I was wondering whether the formulaic online animation packages for the masses that have recently come forth, like GoAnimate and <a href="http://www.xtranormal.com/">XtraNormal</a>, really can be suited to artistic expression more serious than tirades against mobile phones. <br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FL7yD-0pqZg" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen></iframe><br />I don't think my animation of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Flood</span> proves that it can; not least because I've got a lot to learn about cinematography—and about making the most of a very restricted repertoire. (XtraNormal As <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki">Kabuki</a>: I can see the inflexibility of the packages turning into a codified convention for gestures.) But this has captured my interest.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-8563875635390477122011-01-20T02:22:00.005+11:002011-01-20T03:27:53.535+11:00A raid on the hashish denAmong <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markos_Vamvakaris">Markos Vamvakaris'</a> 1933 recordings—among his very earliest, that is—is Έφοδος στον τεκέ, "A raid on the hashish den". This was a musical revue number by Giannis Kamvysis and <a href="http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%A0%CE%AD%CF%84%CF%81%CE%BF%CF%82_%CE%9A%CF%85%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%B1%CE%BA%CF%8C%CF%82">Petros Kyriakos</a>. Kyriakos was a musical theatre actor, and the underworld that gave rise to rebetiko music was part of what he documented in song. With all the attentiveness of an anthropologist. Or of a linguist, to judge from his "Dictionary of the mangas", recorded the previous year:<br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sJqpyb1pBoI" frameborder="0"></iframe><br />(Inevitably, the song is analysed at length in <a href="http://www.slang.gr/lemma/show/to_leksiko_tou_magka_16165#lemma_17969">slang.gr</a>)<br /><br />The transcription below of Έφοδος στον τεκέ may not be perfect, and if anyone's ears of Greek are better than mine, I'll be grateful for corrections. It's substantially improved by the fact that the <a href="http://www.freeforum-gr.net/index.php?topic=3608.55;wap2">first verse has already been posted online</a>, in a collection of rebetiko songs about hashish.<br /><br /><table><tr><td>—Μπούρδα μπούρδα! Μάζεψε ασβέλτα τα συμπράγκαλα και καήκαμε.<br />—Γιατί ρε Τσικρικόνη;<br />—Ρε την κορόιδα παρισταίνεις ρε ή θέλεις να πα να κοιμάσαι στον Ωρωπό στον άσφαλτο;<br />—Ναι γιά ρε. Μαζέψτε ρε λεχρίτες τους τζουράδες και ξηγηθήτε τους ζούλα<br />—Μα τι τρέχει ρε Τσικρικόνια;<br />—Ρε είσαι μεγάλο χάπι εσύ ρε κύριε, και μια που δεν αντιλήβεσαι δια ζώσης, άκου το πεντάγραμμο και έχεις το δικαίωμα της αναίρεσης, α δε σου γουστάρει.<br />—Μπράβο<br /><br />Αδερφάκι κάνε μόκο<br />Μαύροι πλάκωσαν για μπλόκο<br />Τώρα στη γωνιά τους είδα<br />Κάνε ζούλα την καρύδα<br />Θα μαγκώσουν τα δερβίσα<br />Θα μας πάρουν τα χασίσα<br />Τα καλάμια θα μας βρούνε<br />και τις ζούλες θ' ανθιστούνε<br /><br />—Μην κουνηθεί κανένας. Στον τόπο γιατί θα σας κάψω<br />—Μπράβο κύριε μόλισμαν μπράβο. Τέτοια αναθροφή σε μάθανε ρε στην Κέρκυρα ρε στη σχολή;<br />—Ρε άσε τις εξυπνάδες εσύ ρε Τσικρικόνη και ο άλλος ο Μπάτης, και να μου πείτε τώρα αμέσως που έχετε κρυμμένο το μαύρο και τους λουλάδες. Ακούτε;<br />—Τι λες μωρ' αδερφέ; Λοιπόν κύριε μόλισμαν, έχεις πέσει όξω εχτρά [= οικτρά]. Μα την Αγία Ανάσταση έχεις πέσει όξω. Μα τι θα πει «μαύρο», κύριε μόλισμαν; <br /><br />Ένα μαύρο μόνο ξέρω<br />Δεν μπορώ να σας το φέρω<br />Η ψυχή μου τού σπαράζει<br />Μα εγώ τη λέω μαράζι<br />Τι ντουμάνι δεν γνωρίζω<br />Την καρδιά μου δεν ορίζω<br />Μ' έπιασε μεγάλη ζάλη<br />Έκανα βαρύ κεφάλι<br /><br />—Τώρα τραβάτε κάτω στο τίμημα [= τμήμα], και κει ξηγιόσαστε με τον αστυνόμο.<br />—Μπράβο! Δεν πάμε πουθενά κύριε μόλισμαν.<br />—Έλα μέσα ρε, που δεν πας πουθενά, α;<br />—Δεν πάμε πουθενά είπαμε! Είμαστε έντιμοι επαγγελματίαι<br />—Κάτσε παραπέρα ρε κορόιδο εσύ<br />—Μωρέ πάψε μωρέ αδερφάκι Μάρκο! Είμαστε έντιμοι επαγγελματίαι και έχουμε τον καφενέ μας το νταραβέρι μας τουτέτιξ δηλαδή και στρίβε με το καλό που σου λέω κύριε μόλισμαν.<br />—Μωρέ τράβα μέσω θα βγάλω το γκλομπ ρε.<br />—Ποιο γκλομπ να βγάλεις;<br />—Ναι το γκλομπ θα βγάλω<br />—Ρε, μάγκες! Βουρ ρε μπλόκο! Βουρ ρε Μπάτη! Βουρ ρε Μπάτη!<br />—Πάει το καφενείο... <br /><td>—[??] Gather up the gear quickly, 'cause we're ruined!<br />—How come, Tsikrokonis?<br />—Are you playing dumb, then, or would you rather go sleep on the ashphalt of <a href="http://mpotsis.gr/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10&Itemid=15&lang=en">Oropos jail</a>?<br />—Yeah, scumbags, gather up the <a href="http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%A4%CE%B6%CE%BF%CF%85%CF%81%CE%AC%CF%82">tzouras</a> [musical instruments] and stash them away.<br />—What's the matter, Tsikrikonis?<br />—You, sir, are a major dimwit. And since you don't get my meaning <i>viva voce</i>, have a listen to these dulcet tones; and you have the right of refutation, if you don't dig it.<br />—Good work!<br /><br />Brother, keep it quiet.<br />The blackguards are swarming for a raid<br />I've just seen them around the corner<br />Hide that bong away<br />They'll snatch us dervishes<br />They'll take our hash<br />They'll find our pipes<br />And they'll get wind of our stash<br /><br />—Nobody move! Freeze, or I'll do you in!<br />—Good show, Mr Shmoliceman. Is that how they brought you up in the academy in Corfu, is it?<br />—Cut the smart talk Tsikrikonis, you and that Batis guy, and tell me immediately where you've hidden the hash and the pipes. Do you hear me?<br />—What are you talking about, brother? Now Mr Shmoliceman, you are egregiently mistaken. By the Holy Resurrection, you are mistaken. What do you mean, hash?<br /><br />I only know one hash<br />And I can't bring it to you<br />My soul breaks because of it<br />But I call it the blues<br />What's that smoke? I can't tell<br />I cannot keep my heart in check<br />I've gone mighty dizzy,<br />And my head feels heavy.<br /><br />—Right, you can get down to the station now, and you can explain yourselves to the sergeant.<br />—Oh, good show! We're not going anywhere Mr Shmoliceman.<br />—Get inside! "Not going anywhere", he says!<br />—I'm telling you, we're not going anywhere! We are honourable businessmen—<br />—Cool it you fool<br />—Oh keep quiet brother Markos! We are honourable businessmen, and we have our café, our commerce and the like, I mean; so I'm asking you nicely, Mr Shmoliceman, you'd better get lost.<br />—Get inside, damn it, or I'll use my baton.<br />—Baton? What baton?<br />—That's right, I'll use my baton.<br />—Dudes! It's a raid! Get him, Batis! Get him, Batis!<br />—… Well, there goes the café...<br /></table><br /><br />The song has been uploaded onto YouTube once already:<br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pJa5kuF63Tk" frameborder="0"></iframe><br />... And now, courtesy of <a href="http://goanimate.com/">GoAnimate</a> and <a href="http://www.opoudjis.net">Yr Obt Svt</a>, it has been uploaded a second time:<br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hRD6IsEdgiA" frameborder="0"></iframe>opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-72776614672714500842011-01-09T20:02:00.003+11:002017-02-26T16:02:38.712+11:00Markos Vamvakaris: Είσαι μελαχρινό και νόστιμο<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebetiko">Rebetiko</a> music was a fusion of styles, and the fusion can be seen in progress through the '30s. The antecedents of rebetiko are murky, but the most visible antecedent is Smyrneika, the music of Anatolian cafés, which came with the Anatolian refugees to Greece in the '20s, and was taken up as the emblem of the dispossessed in the underworld.<br /><br />A tidy narrative, but there are more currents in Rebetiko than that. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markos_Vamvakaris">Markos Vamvakaris</a>, who is deservedly termed the patriarch of rebetiko, promoted a Piraeus Sound that was at some distance from Smyrneika. He shared a musical vocabulary with them, and recorded a few tracks with Smyrneika singers; but the Piraeus Sound was more rhythmical, more upbeat, more Western. He only infrequently uses the <a href="http://www.maqamworld.com/maqamat/saba.html">Maqam Saba</a>—the bluest of modes in rebetiko music, so blue it even has a blue IV note. <br /><br />(That's nothing; the <a href="http://www.maqamworld.com/maqamat/saba.html">Arabo-Persian original</a> even has a blue VIII note. Yes, you read right. But I digress.) <br /><br />The refugees from Anatolia recorded plenty of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanes"><i>Amanes</i></a>—the slow, chromatic laments that were emblematic of Smyrneika, and which <a href="http://opuculuk.blogspot.com/2009/09/authenticities-and-cretan-musics.html">I've looked at before</a>, in the context of Muslim Cretan music. Vamvakaris on the other hand recorded just one <i>amanes</i>, and made a point of binding it with Peiraeus rather than Anatolia: Πειραιώτικος Μανές, The Peiraeus Amanes.<br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Icyw7M5uy3A" frameborder="0"></iframe><br />But Markos' path took him westward rather than eastward—not without some heavy shoving by the censors of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_of_August_Regime">Greek government</a>. By 1937, his style had matured into what is recognisably the classical style of rebetiko; it had foregone much of the raw impact of early recordings, but it had gained in musicianship and smoothness.<br /><br />Not that Vamvakaris in 1937 was completely consistent; some songs are too trivially cantabile, some are powerful riffs reminiscent of his earlier music. One song in particular though, Είσαι μελαχρινό και νόστιμο, "You're dark and cute", is incoherent in a way surprising for Vamvakaris, early or late.<br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XLJpUC93kmc" frameborder="0"></iframe><br />The song starts out with the Classic Peiraeus sound. A two beats to the bar, jaunty riff on the accordion followed by the bouzouki. The riff is in the Peiraiotikos Dromos scale—a variant of the <a href="http://www.maqamworld.com/maqamat/hijaz.html">Maqam Hijaz</a>, and Vamvakaris' favourite: it too, after all, is named for Peiraeus:<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/2011-01-09/peiraiotikos.gif"/><br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YFH4myutwjo" frameborder="0"></iframe><br />But in the introduction to the song, the exotic intervals of the Peiraiotikos are defused:<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/2011-01-09/melaxrino1.gif" width="90%"/><br />The flattened II and sharpened IV are glossed over as passing notes; the riff is solidly anchored on the major triad. The riff wears its tonality on its sleeve.<br /><br />Then Markos starts singing (0:22). And what he starts singing has nothing to do with the riff:<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/2011-01-09/melaxrino2.gif" width="90%"/><br />Where the riff was straightforwardly tonic-anchored, all I and III and V, the song is lost far from the tonic: V at best, and more VII and II. That doesn't translate to a simple Dominant chord, which wouldn't be a problem in Western music: the band is still on the tonic, and these are Hijaz VII and II, not Major key. With a tonic of A, the voice gravitates to B♭ and G♯: it teases the listener, with a leading tone a semitone below the tonic, and another leading tone above, outright dodging the tonic in bar 18. So while the riff has defanged the Peiraiotikos' exotic notes, the voice has let the exotic notes take over, and has undermined the scale's tonic.<br /><br />Where the riff has jaunty sixteenth notes, the voice drags in slow quarter notes—even more so in later verses. Where the riff hops up and down the triad, the voice moseys up and down the scale, a third each bar, adrift. Where the riff has a tonic triad note twice a bar, the voice holds off landing back on the tonic until the very final bar in the phrase. And that's in the first verse: with each subsequent verse (0:33), the voice adds a bar to the eight-bar phrase (bar 29):<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/2011-01-09/melaxrino3.gif" width="90%"/><br />—so where the riff was foursquare to the bar, the voice ends up on the tonic one bar too late, in a nine-bar phrase that sounds like it forgot to keep count. And the riffs and verse keep alternating through the song, establishing and dismantling and establishing once more two different kinds of musical order.<br /><br />It took me a little while to work out what on earth Markos was doing, until I realised that what the voice is doing—slow-moving, metrically free, stepping by thirds, untethered from the tonic—was the antithesis of the Peiraeus sound. In Είσαι μελαχρινό και νόστιμο, Markos is singing an amanes.<br /><br />It's unsurprising for an amanes to dodge the tonic like that, or to ignore metre; that's what an amanes does. What is startling about Είσαι μελαχρινό και νόστιμο is that Markos is singing an amanes with a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasapiko">hasapiko</a> introduction, to a hasapiko beat, in a hasapiko tempo, with a hasapiko sensibility, and against a hasapiko tonality. He is singing an amanes in the context of the Peiraeus Sound, which utterly clashes with the amanes. I may not be excused the anachronism, but Markos is here committing a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(music)">mashup</a>. <br /><br />And the incongruity of the combination makes it startling, it isolates what was commonplace within its native context. The tonic-dodging and metrical freedom become a statement, rather than a convention; a dialectic rather than a recitation. I don't know what made Markos experiment this way, and it's not a path he went further on, either. But it foregrounds, as nothing else Markos did, how hybrid rebetiko music is; how the one Peiraiotikos Dromos could have two quite different interpretations, before they were blended in the Peiraeus Sound.<br /><br />I haven't mentioned the lyrics, btw, because by this stage, the lyrics aren't particularly notable—Markos is done singing in praise of getting stoned and beating girlfriends up. But, in case you're interested:<br /><table><tr><td><i><a href="http://rebetiko.sealabs.net/wiki/mediawiki/index.php/%CE%95%CE%AF%CF%83%CE%B1%CE%B9_%CE%BC%CE%B5%CE%BB%CE%B1%CF%87%CF%81%CE%BF%CE%B9%CE%BD%CF%8C_%CE%BA%CE%B1%CE%B9_%CE%BD%CF%8C%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%BC%CE%BF">Είσαι μελαχροινό και νόστιμο</a></i><br /><p>Είσαι μικρό μελαχρινό τσαχπίνικο τα δυο σου μαύρα μάτια<br/><br />Όποιον θα δούνε μόρτικα μελαχρινό τον κάνουνε κομμάτια<br /><p>Είσαι παραπονιάρικο μελαχροινό κανένα δεν κοιτάζεις<br/><br />Κι όλοι με σένα τα’χουνε μελαχροινό γιατί δεν τους πειράζεις<br /><p>—Γεια σου Μάρκο<br /><p>Τα τρυφερά χειλάκια σου μελαχροινό και τ’άσπρο σου χεράκι<br/><br />Όλα αυτά μικρούλα μου μελαχροινό λυώνουν κι έχω μεράκι<br /><p>—Να ζήσουν τα μελαχροινά! <br /><p>Περνάς και δε με χαιρετάς μελαχροινό γιατί δε με γνωρίζεις<br/><br />Και ντρέπομαι να σου το ειπώ μελαχροινό γιατί έμαθα πως βρίζεις<br /><td><i>You're dark and cute</i><br /><p>You're petite, dark, flirty; your two brown eyes<br/><br />make whoever they look on saucily—oh dark one—fall to pieces.<br /><p>You're a grumbler—oh dark one—you don't look at anyone<br/><br />And everyone's annoyed at you—oh dark one—because you won't tease them.<br /><p>—Go Markos!<br /><p>Your tender lips—oh dark one—and your white hand<br/><br />All these make me melt—my little dark one—and I'm lovesick.<br /><p>—Long live dark chicks!<br /><p>You go by and don't say hello—oh dark one—because you don't know me<br/><br />And I'm too shy to tell you—oh dark one—because I've found out that you curse.</td></tr></table>opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-47017687516051437232010-11-14T14:00:00.002+11:002010-11-14T14:03:17.558+11:00While I was away<div align="center">I: May</div><br /><br />As if I was the first<br />To sail beyond the west,<br />Fall off the end of Earth,<br />Sink, swim, and gasp for breath.<br /><br />As if no man knew thirst,<br />Before I stopped to rest<br />Beside the spring; or birth,<br />Before I heard of death.<br /><br />Beyond the west: each day<br />A year, each step a road.<br />Winding to the unknown.<br /><br />Roads trod by mortal clay<br />A thousandfold. A ride<br />I've hitched now. By your side.<br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="center">II: May</div><br /><br />This fulsomeness, this loveliness, this care,<br />This playfulness, this trust and troth laid bare,<br />This passion, this impulsiveness, this shock,<br />This pressing—this inexorable lock,<br /><br />These waves and curves, this storm of skin and hair,<br />This push and pull and pause, this fear and dare,<br />These shades, dim monochrome, that sway and rock,<br />This stillness, lulled at by the ticking clock,<br /><br />All this you teach me. All of this you hold.<br />All this I witness with you. Watch it flow,<br />Like mercury, like phlogiston, like gold.<br /><br />This Here-and-Now, this Hence, this Old Made New,<br />This secret that not even we can know,<br />This you and I have claimed.<br /> It's half past two.<br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="center">III: May</div><br /><br />So, there's this girl. Unruly, quite the knave.<br />Will not stay put. Does what she damn well will.<br />Frets that she'll fall asleep if she stands still.<br />Makes mirth of solemn stuff. Derides the grave.<br /><br />So there's this girl. Can't take her anyplace.<br />Won't talk on tragedy. Will not wear frills.<br />Talk French cuisine, she's running for the hills.<br />And laughs at me about it to my face.<br /><br />So there's this girl, who's got me all worked out,<br />piercing my artifices and my doubt.<br />And still stays put, and won't go anywhere.<br /><br />What do I do with her? What has she done,<br />To make my reason and my pomp go dumb?<br />How have I come to earn reproof so fair?<br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="center">IV: August</div><br /><br />Grace pooling from above. Grace trickling down.<br />Grace mingling with the common and the base,<br />Granted unbidden, and divulged unbound.<br />Grace that suffuses all, for gain or waste.<br /><br />Grace filling puddles, muddying the ground,<br />In which the errant wretch begrudged his haste:<br />Splashed past his shins, only to end up drowned<br />In startling, blinding, and uncalled for Grace.<br /><br />Thy grace, thy charm, thy steadfastness, thy blithe<br />And easy gait: I, far from thee and these<br />Behold and cannot fathom. Where these thrive,<br /><br />Where thou hast joy, I hear of now and then:<br />Reports of floods and mud that boil and freeze<br />And thaw, and bring this world to grace, and mend.<br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="center">V: October</div><br /><br />Each year Adonis dies, pierced by the boar.<br />Each year the maidens bear him, singing dirges,<br />To a tomb. Adonis each new year emerges<br />To live again, eager to hunt once more.<br /><br />Each year the black earth, bound in snow, and sore<br />With grief, bewails its loss in crystal churches.<br />Each year, Lent breaks: up from the ground life surges<br />Anew, to bloom, to fade, to exult, to mourn.<br /><br />Each week, each day, we dance, and draw apart,<br />And back again; we stop, we spin, we start,<br />We try anew. It works, it fails, it muddles.<br /><br />Each time, we don't know that the Spring will come.<br />Each time, we know that soon the frost will numb<br />Our hands. Yet still a flame glows, where we've huddled.<br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="center">VI: November</div><br /><br />The cold has come. The stony showers flood<br />Blurred memories of one-time warmth, as brusque<br />As Melbourne weather. Now a bleary dusk<br />Alone recalls the sun, in faded blood,<br /><br />Soon to grow dark. These feet pass through the mud,<br />Their pace agnostic, doubting. A boar's tusk,<br />They'd wailed, has struck. But pilfered myths won't mask<br />That chill that numbs its prey, and binds it shut.<br /><br />Now stories leech away. I never sailed<br />Beyond the west; the storm at half past two<br />Was merely rain, and bore no grace. I failed<br /><br />To hear their music. Now they've fallen dumb,<br />Too drained to praise a summer that was due<br />to pass. And so it sets. The cold has come.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-42634687557002287462010-07-04T13:45:00.004+10:002010-07-05T00:35:38.489+10:00The ashes of SukhumiThis story picks through the ashes.<br /><br />When I was finishing my undergrad and moving through to linguistics in 1993, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Abkhazia_(1992–1993)">war in Abkhazia</a> was underway. There was plenty of grubby conduct on both sides, and Abkhazia was in the end thoroughly ethnically cleansed; but outsiders with no stake in the Caucasus had sympathies for the most superficial of reasons. As a linguist, I wished the bizarre consonants of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhaz_language">Abkhaz</a> well. Yes, it was that superficial—though I did also know someone who knew <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/viacheslav-chirikba/18/70a/b6">Viacheslav Chirikba</a>, Abkhaz specialist on Abkhaz, linguistics lecturer in Leiden (and now in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhumi">Sukhumi</a>), and representative of Abkhazia to Europe for years.<br /><br />Robert Haupt was the Soviet Union/Russian correspondent at the time for the <a href="http://www.fairfax.com.au/">Fairfax</a> newspaper group (<i>The Age</I>, Melbourne, and the <i>Sydney Morning Herald</i>). This was a pre-Web age, and his dispatches, which I consumed with pre-Web leisure, alternated between leisurely whimsy and urgency, from a correspondent in the midst of the disruptions shaking the Soviet Empire. When he finished his five year stint, Haupt published a memoir of his time in Russia, <a href="http://www.usedtravelbooks.com.au/last-boat-to-astrakhan-a-russian-memoir-1990-1996-by-robert-haupt.html"><i>Last Boat to Astrakhan</i></a> (see <a href="http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2007/12/reading-the-play-by-roger-underwood/">review 1</a>, <a href="http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/DecJan99/sol.html">review 2</a>). <br /><img src="http://www.usedtravelbooks.com.au/images/D/2010-3-22-2%20514.jpg" width="30%"/><br />Halfway through his time in Russia, Haupt wrote an <a href="http://newsstore.theage.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac?page=1&sy=age&kw=+abkhaz&pb=all_ffx&dt=enterRange&dr=1month&sd=1%2F1%2F1991&ed=1%2F1%2F1994&so=date&sf=text&sf=author&sf=headline&rc=200&rm=200&sp=adv&clsPage=1&docID=news930924_0041_7874">editorial on the Abkhazian War</a>. My sympathies were with the Abkhaz consonants; his sympathies were with a sustainably-sized polity, which meant Georgia, and he treated Abkhazian independence as "a sort of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruritania">Ruritanian</a> joke". His sympathies led him to diss Abkhaz consonants:<br /><blockquote>The amazing thing is that even in Abkhazia the Abkhazians are a minority. In fact, they constitute 17.1 per cent of the region's population, Georgians making up 43.9 per cent. The total number of Abkhazians anywhere is just over 90,000. Put together, they are a football crowd. About half the Abkhazians are Sunni Muslims, but judging from my meetings with some of them before the civil war it was a lightly-worn faith, with few mosques and veils and with the prohibition on alcohol honoured not so much in the breach as by the barrel.<br />The Abkhazian language is an issue. A strange tongue, apparently related to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_language">Circassian</a>, it sounds like the noise a Chinese speaker might make on the point of being strangled. When the Soviet Union existed, mandatory Russian obscured the problem of whether the official language here was to be Abkhazian or Georgian. As Moscow's grip slackened, disputes arose, particularly over what was to be the language used at Sukhumi University. Georgians point out that their language, having a written literature going back to the 5th century BC, has some claims to precedence as a means of instruction over a tongue that achieved a fully written form only in 1928.</blockquote><br />I've said worse a decade later about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montenegrin_language">Montenegrin</a>, but I was scandalised at the time. Given the practicalities of bureaucracy and business and scholarship, Georgian does have more of a claim as an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausbausprache,_Abstandsprache_and_Dachsprache#Ausbausprache">Ausbausprache</a> than Abkhaz—spoken by only two thirds of that "football crowd"; the current moves to make it the language of government business in Abkhazia are not meeting with success, and the business of Abkhazia is being conducted in Russian.<br /><br />But what had happened at the start of the Abkhaz war was no Ruritanian joke. Abkhaz would have had more Ausbau in place, if Georgian paramilitaries had not torched the Abkhaz national library and national archives.<br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7lcNIQ6fhcU&hl=en_US&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7lcNIQ6fhcU&hl=en_US&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br />Abkhaz is a small language, with a small written footprint—much smaller than Georgian. Burning down the place where all books in Abkhaz were deposited made it even smaller, and was intended to. The National Library has since <a href ="http://www.abkhazworld.com/headlines/408-issues-points-memo-boris-cholaria.html">managed to restore a lot of the 40% of books burned</a>—in no small part because Soviet Abkhazia had made sure a copy of every Abkhaz book also went to Moscow. The library is still damaged and scaled down, but <a href="http://www.scrapsofmoscow.org/2009/10/abkhazian-national-library-thank-you.html">basically functioning</a>.<br /><br />It is otherwise with the National Archives (<a href="http://www.hrono.ru/organ/ukazatel/cgaa.php">account in Russian</a>). Its fate is heartbreakingly documented by Thomas de Waal:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-caucasus/abkhazia_archive_4018.jsp">Abkhazia's archive: fire of war, ashes of history</a><br /><li><a href="http://www.iwpr.net/report-news/abkhazia-cultural-tragedy-revisited">Abkhazia: Cultural Tragedy Revisited</a></ul><br />Of the 176,000 archival documents in Abkhazia, 168,000 are estimated to have been destroyed. What the Georgian paramilitary did not burn in the National Archives (despite the efforts of both Abkhaz and Georgian neighbours), was in the archives stored in the Communist Party Archives. Georgian and then Abkhaz troops did away with those archives as the war went on.<br /><br />There is a Greek component to this blotting out. Abkhazia had a substantial Pontic community before the Stalinist purges and deportations, as <a href="http://abkhazworld.com/Pdf/d.muller.pdf">documented by Daniel Müller</a>: 7% of the population in 1926, 10% in 1939 (as ethnic Abkhaz started to leave the region), but just 2% in 1959. As I <a href="http://hellenisteukontos.blogspot.com/2010/03/soviet-orthography-of-greek.html">noted in the Other Place</a>, the historian <a href="http://kars1918.wordpress.com/">Vlasis Agtzidis</a> has recently published his <a href="http://kars1918.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/kokinos-kapnas/">doctoral dissertation on the Greek press of the Soviet Union</a>. His focus is Κόκινος Καπνας, <i>Red Tobacco-Worker</I>, the Greek newspaper of Sukhumi. <br /><br />The entire print run of the <i>Red Tobacco-Worker</I> was one of the many items to go up in flames in October 1992, after Agtzidis had already been to Sukhumi—though as the <a href="http://kanali.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/kokkinos_kapnas_np/">introduction notes</a>, the print run had been microfilmed in Moscow just in time. The newspaper was of course only one of thousands of testimonies of the Greek history of Abkhazia that was destroyed. <br /><br />As de Waal's accounts tell, the archive's last custodian was himself half-Greek (and spared deportation in 1949 through his German mother): Nikolai Ioannidi. Ioannidi was the director (or deputy director) of the archive, and was working on a history of the Greeks of Abkhazia. He published the first volume of Греки в Абхазий in 1990, the first published account of the Stalinist purges of Greeks (<a href="http://pontosandaristera.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/14-2-2009/">see comment #15, Pontus and the Left</a>). The manuscript of the second volume turned to ash in his office safe, before his eyes. <br /><br />And Ioannidi spent his last days in an empty room in the University of Sukhumi, drinking Greek coffee and brooding over the remnants of the National Archive, uncatalogued, unrestored, unrecognisable. De Waal <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/thomas-de-waal">reports Ioannidi's death on 1 July 2007</a>, eight months after he had interviewed him.<br /><br />De Waal paints a tragic picture of Ioannidi, but I will take his epitaph instead from the Pontus and the Left blog, in the discussion about the historiography of the purges of Greeks. Ioannidi did manage a second book shortly before he died, about the exile of the Abkhazian Greeks to Central Asia in 1949; the discussion on the blog was about the opinion of some historians that the exile was connected to the defeat of the Communists in the Greek Civil War. Commenter M-P (one of the blog owners) attributes the opinion to Ioannidi in his first book (<a href="http://pontosandaristera.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/14-2-2009/">comment #20</a>). (Agtzidis also mentions that as Ioannidi's position in <a href="http://www.anixneuseis.gr/?p=1734">an article on the purges</a>, fn. 188). Commenter Dimitris (comment #21) retorts that Ioannidi was merely posing it as a question, and rejected it in his second book. <br /><br />Yet even while disagreeing with Ioannidi, M-P paid him tribute—the kind of tribute Ioannidi would have welcomed:<br /><blockquote>Ioannidi was a Soviet historian. He wrote during the Soviet era, relied on Soviet archives, and because of his age and circumstances, he was not influenced by post-Soviet ideological trends. Until the end of his life he struggled with other comrades of all ethnicities against the nationalisms sweeping through Abkhazia.</blockquote><br /><br />Robert Haupt died on his way back to Australia in 1996, just before his memoirs were published. A few years later, the columnist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ryan_(columnist)">Peter Ryan</a> was writing a told-you-so piece about the scandal surrounding <a href="http://australian-news.com.au/Keating090798.htm">Prime Minister Keating's investment in a piggery while in office</a>. The <a href="http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-56906708.html">teaser starts with:</a><br /><blockquote>IT IS A STRANGE SENSATION when you feel that a dead man is trying to send you a message, but it happened to me a couple of weeks ago, shortly after Australia's Attorney-General announced that no further inquiries would be pursued into the circumstances of Paul Keating's piggery. The dead man was Robert Haupt, one of the ablest and most respected journalists in recent Australian media history.</blockquote><br />From the teaser, it looks like Haupt had written something prescient about the scandal. Haupt's analysis about Russia is challenged in <a href="http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2007/12/reading-the-play-by-roger-underwood/">Jennifer Marohasy's blog</a>, just as Ioannidi's analysis was challenged in Pontus and the Left's blog. But the dead do still send us messages, through what they have left behind; and they do not ask that they be right all the time, merely that they be remembered.<br /><br />The fires in Sukhumi denied others their rememberance. Haupt and Ioannidi have not been so denied. Requiescant.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-36751595630606047872010-05-10T21:24:00.003+10:002010-05-10T22:06:18.313+10:00… "We're talking about people's lives!"<i>I have been wanting to write, since reading of it, about the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2010_Greek_protests#May_5_strike_and_demonstrations">deaths in Athens</a>. And unhealthily (because of such recursion is our society enmeshed), I have been wanting to write about the reactions to the deaths. What I would write would be reactionary, and vindictive, and uninformed. I don't particularly want to say I'm not entitled to my own opinions about what happened, or that I cannot identify with class struggle because I am, after all, the class enemy. But the dead deserve more respect than that, and better reasoning than I can come up with on the other side of the planet. It is as offensive to make them a departure point for my sloganeering, as it is for the parties that I took offence to.<br /><br />Instead, I wanted to post what someone else has said: someone who has a stake in the country, and the protest march, and the struggle on the streets of Athens. Someone whose response—I admit it—I could make sense of, but would still challenge my complacent notions.<br /><br />The following article by Stratis Bournazos, which I am translating with permission, appeared in the Sunday issue of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgi">Avgi</a> [Dawn], the newspaper affiliated with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYRIZA">Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA)</a>, on May 9, and is republished in <a href="http://enthemata.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/εμείς-μιλάμε-γι-ανθρώπινες-ζωές/">the column's blog</a>.</i><br /><br /><blockquote>"What is a diamond worth<br />when people's souls are coal.<br />Once you're in Dante's Hell,<br />there's no way back to Earth."</blockquote><br />It's Wednesday night, and I'm listening to the <a href="http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Χειμερινοί_Κολυμβητές">Winter Swimmers (Χειμερινοί Κολυμβητές)</a>. They wrote that piece for another reason and another time, but I'm thinking: what are words worth, when three people have burned? So our souls don't turn to coal as well: that's what they're worth. That's why I'm writing this, with an unbearable sense of burden. For the dead. But also, and mainly, for us.<br /><br />A lot happened on Wednesday, a whole lot. We could say even more. On the huge crowd that deluged Athens. On the rage. On the savage joy. On people's laughter. On the gas that choked us. On the crowd surging, shouting "burn the whorehouse, burn the Parliament" (a harbinger of an uprising? or the prelude to a dangerous backlash against representative government?) On the fluidity of things. On how we got from the sadness of the First of May to the enthusiasm of Wednesday. On that, and a lot more. Until we learned of the dead. From that moment, nothing is the same. For all of us, the three dead have haunted our day. Their names: Paraskevi Zoulia. Angeliki Papathanasopoulou. Epaminondas Tsakalis.<br /><br />It is a horror that three people found such a death. Because it was no accident, it was the result of a process of blind violence, of a conscious indifference for human life. It was going to happen. It was almost predictable—just as it is predictable that we will in the future mourn deaths from the indiscriminate use of tear gas. In protest marches for the past few years, a certain party has exalted and exercised violence for violence's sake—sometimes to the protesters' reproof, sometimes with the protesters standing aside. They have done so without caring whether there are people in danger—inside, next door, upstairs, further down.<br /><br />So for the first time in our entire recent history, people have died in a demonstration not because of State violence (the <a href="http://www.tovima.gr/default.asp?pid=2&artid=329835&ct=32&dt=06/05/2010">case of the K. Marousis store in 1991</a> remains controversial), but because of anti-State violence, because of the actions of people who took part in the march, who were part of it in a way—however marginal, and who acted in its name. The Molotov cocktails and fires had a pretext: they were an act of protestation, an act of anti-State, anti-capitalist, anti-government violence. We can disagree with them, but how can we deny it?<br /><br />A little after the news was confirmed, various items started circulating. That the bank had no emergency exit. That there was no fire security. That the employers forced the workers not to strike. That the door was locked. Even if all that is completely true, it is politically and morally shameful to resort to it as an alibi, to claim that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Vgenopoulos">Vgenopoulos</a> [the bank owner] is ultimately at fault, or to adopt the statements of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rizospastis">Rizospastis</a> [the Communist newspaper], enraging in their ridiculousness, that "the three employees were killed by the urban class, whatever sheepskin their instruments may have been disguised with." Let our judgement not be clouded: this time the ongoing scandal of employer irresponsibility is not what matters. It wasn't a lightning bolt or a cigarette butt that started the fire.<br /><br />Thousands of stores throughout Greece lack fire security and emergency exits. It's illegal, and it's terribly wrong. But if it was the riot police that had thrown tear gas into one of them, or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysi_Avyi">Golden Dawn</a> [neo-fascists] had thrown in an incendiary device, and we were now mourning the dead—would we be blaming the lack of emergency safeguards then? We should not trample on our common sense or our decency.<br /><br />And as for the other opinion heard—that the bank should have shut down beforehand because it was a "target": public opinion can say that, but we don't get to say it. We, who have been shouting "To the street, to the street, break the terror of the State"—we don't get to say that stores should close down, barricade, become impregnable forts, or else they will turn into deathtraps. We certainly don't get to blame the owners responsible, because they failed to regard the protest march like an earthquake, a hurricane, a looming storm, a mortal peril. If we think like that, we have fully capitulated to a perversion of the meaning of protest: we have yielded to the dominion of fear and terror.<br /><br />We left-wingers of all shades, anti-government, anarchist, libertarians, we are all struggling for social emancipation, for the spread of freedom, against the capitalist barbarism which crushes peoples' lives and dreams, against the exploitation of people by people. Aren't we? So what do our values have in common with the fetishisation of violence, violence which is raised to an utmost and unitary goal in itself, and—most terrifying of all—has contempt for human life? In dismissing human life, there is no emancipation: there is no service done to the struggle for freedom, justice, and a better life. We cannot but stand face to face against this, making no excuses.<br /><br />We. I'm talking about us. Each of us, wherever we have staked our ground. Representatives of the government and the establishment can see the dead as an opportunity to get out an awkward spot. Investors can fear for the consequences in tourism. Scholars and scientists have to analyse the sociological, psychological, and other causes of the phenomenon. But the question is, what do <i>we</i> do. All of us, who have protested worker "accidents", army suicides, the <a href="http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article12454">attack against Kouneva</a>, the violence of the riot police, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Greek_riots">murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos</a>, the deaths of immigrants, and so much else, all with the common theme of defending human life and dignity: we don't get to forget the three dead, or offload the blame anywhere we can, as quickly as we can—on Vgenopoulos, on the State, on "agents provocateurs". We don't get to speak cynically of collateral damage, and we don't get to tally them up against the other dead. And that is nothing to do with bourgeois niceties: it touches on the core of our stance, in politics and in values. After all, what were we shouting in the march on Wednesday? "You're talking about market dives, we're talking about people's lives!"<br /><br />If we have a sense of how tragic what happened was, if we feel contrition, if we allow ourselves to mourn without looking to drown our sorrow in a sea of analyses and excuses—that would be a start. Even if it is belated, because many of us—and I include myself—should have thought of all this much earlier. Even now, we must convert this tragic experience into both individual and collective thought; each of us must acknowledge their responsibilities, different though they may be. We must try to understand. We must speak with honour. We must stand up where we ought to, morally and politically. Without trying to deceive the Others—or above all, ourselves.<br /><br />PS: of the many texts circulating online, I'd like to refer readers to two: Kostas Svolis' (<a href="indy.gr/analysis/tria-fantasmata-planioyntai-pano-apo-to-kinima ">indy.gr/analysis/tria-fantasmata-planioyntai-pano-apo-to-kinima</a>), and Radical Desire's (<a href="radicaldesire.blogspot.com/2010/05/greques-encore-un-effort-si-vous-voulez.html ">radicaldesire.blogspot.com/2010/05/greques-encore-un-effort-si-vous-voulez.html</a>).opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-74802747019078937252010-04-17T13:33:00.003+10:002010-04-17T21:24:59.385+10:00Jottings of New YorkI'm leaving New York. I haven't been leisurely blogging for the twenty-four hours I've been here; I've been too busy talking with my regular commenter John Cowan (6 hrs, finishing 2:30 AM—good to know I can still do that kind of thing, though jet lag helps), and my friend Genevieve (1 hr, and we had to be efficient about it—bon voyage à Angleterre!)<br /><br />There have been past <a href="http://www.taynet.co.uk/users/mcgon/jottings.htm">Jottings of New York</a>, and I have been to New York several times before; this was a lightning visit, and I'll just quickly note the following:<br /><ul><li>My dinner was around the corner from the Polish consulate, which had an improvised shrine to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash">dead president</a>. That kind of improvised shrine is now common in the West, which doesn't have the institutionalised religious channels to commemorate death that it used to. I'm assuming you won't see that kind of improvised shrine in Greece, for example, because people until recently built actual shrines by the roadside, with icons and oil lamps.<br /><li>The restaurant was <a href="http://www.morganshotel.com/morgans-asia-de-cuba.aspx">Asia de Cuba</a>, and I'm impressed that it impressed Genevieve. It is fusion Chinese–Cuban. The fusion is organic and not self-consciously experimental as much fusion is (Chinese people did move to Cuba). The food was certainly worth the money: the Shanghai noodles were correct, the pork honeyed and melt-in-mouth, the kind Greeks exclaim "Turkish Delight!" over. Pity I can no longer put away the quantities I could.<br /><li>New York now, and always, strikes me with its urbanity: the dressed up young things talking over drinks or noodling with their Crackberries, jostling for drinks—this was familiar, this was how the world should be. I don't know that I would last if I actually lived here, but the switch-on, fashion-savvy, over-caffeinated New Yorker is a plane of experience to aspire to.<br /><li>That, and its no-prisoners, no-nonsense purposefulness, that comes of wedging a gajillion businesspeople in a couple of square km. My anecdote of choice when I used to live in California: after two years of toothy, insincerely grinned "Hey, how ya doin'" from random strangers in the street, I got to New York, where the random strangers would shove me out of the way as they went to where they had to be—and it was heaven. This time around, the contrast was the casual jaywalking, right in front of the cops, who after all have better things to do in NYC than prosecute jaywalkers. Genevieve tells me the cops get a "hey, how ya doin'" from the jaywalkers for their trouble.<br /><ul><li>I interrupt this transmission to thank the Qantas staff in Premium Economy for resolving my power supply issues to my laptop, and for the complimentary champers on top of it. The station to which I shall have been accustomed, indeed...</ul><br /><li>There is a beauty to this subjugated, engineered, piled on landscape of towers of brick and concrete. My friend Jana, whose idea of beauty is the Central Australian desert, gets antsy when she comes here. I grin. And it's not all unrelieved gauche glass towers, like Brisbane is (or least would have been, if Joh had demolished everything he saught to). It's Art Deco sky-piecers Midtown, lots of more squat and humane brick uptown (because, as John informed me, the soil outside Midtown can only support so much weight), and plenty of trees still, welcoming and verdant and tamed. Like in DC.<br /><li>Coincidentally, when I got to my hotel at 2:30 AM, the History Channel was playing a show on <a href="http://blog.nj.com/parentalguidance/2008/09/a_look_back_way_way_back_at_th.html">reconstructing the pre-urban landscape of NYC</a>. It was overwrought like all History Channel shows are—though at least this show didn't feature Hitler, as is the channel's default. But the reconstruction isn't that amazing a feat: we do have a British map, and pristine woodland still left on the northern tip of the island: unlike Greece, America gets that parks matter, and keeps them inviolable. Still, I wasn't expecting that Times Sq was originally a beaver pond. <br /><li>And a tree-strewn Manhattan with beavers and porpoises and just the occasional Amerindian wandering down what would become Broadway: that's not "a green paradise". Chill out, History Channel. It was a tree-strewn island with beavers and porpoises. I'm not saying all of North America should be terraformed and levelled and piled with buildings and packed with a gajillion businesspeople per square km; but I'm glad this bit was.<br /><li>The pile of buildings looks wondrous from New Jersey, and it was an excellent suggestion of Genevieve's to take the ferry across to see it. A giant's playblocks scattered into the sea.<br /><li>The gajillion people make NYC have microcultures, just like the hills it used to have would have made it have microclimates. This time I confined myself to Midtown–Upper West Side; but Upper West Side isn't Midtown, which isn't Chelsea, which isn't The Village, and you can see it. In Melbourne, none of my friends go any further south than St Kilda; so it's rare they visit Oakleigh. (Or even, by God, South Yarra—which is as New York urbane as Melbourne gets.) I take that as cowardly parochialism. Here at least, I don't begrudge the locals who never bother to venture north—or south—of 14th Street. Their Village is world enough; and so is the next one up.<br /><li>Thank you btw Genevieve for translating for me "Upper West Side = Malvern". And "they still think Asian fusion is exotic here, when we in Melbourne did that 15 years ago." It's good to have Rosetta Stones.<br /><li>And thank you John for a seminar I cannot summarise or reproduce, but which was as always rollicking good fun. The comparison between the clout in their homelands of the Greek and Jewish diasporas is not one that would have occurred to me; but it gave me the opportunity to lambast Greek morning TV host & pontificator <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/FUN-CLUB-GIORGOU-PAPADAKE/53423661458">Giorgos Papadakis</a> once again, which is a good thing. <ul><li>(Israel cares what the Jewish diaspora thinks, because that's where the money comes from. Greece remembers its diaspora when it's expedient to raise it to a nationalist frenzy over a National Issue; otherwise, they ignore them, and I'll never get over Papadakis' patronising tone when Greek-Americans rang in over the Iraq war, indignant about the Greek take on events. I'm not saying I wouldn't patronise them either. I'm saying that's dissing a whole lot of your fellow Grecophones, with unearned arrogance.)</ul><br /><li>Oh, and I know about food servers saying "To have here or to go?": "To go?" is starting to displace "Have here or take away?" in Australia. (Or maybe that's just me.) But have people been saying "To go or <i>to stay</i>?" for a while? It was new to me, but not to Genevieve.</ul>opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-3551106459794675972010-04-14T07:22:00.000+10:002017-02-26T16:03:46.526+11:00The green highways of Northern VirginiaI'm in a hotel in Northern Virginia this time, and am negotiating its large highways on foot; ten years ago, I was visiting a residence, and not really going anywhere much. So I had not been subjected to its large highways any way other than how God intended them to be encountered—out the car window.<br /><br />So I'm warming less to the place than I had on previous visits; this is a work visit, and on the perfunctory side. <br /><br />Still, especially around the grounds I am at, there is an delightsome orgy of green, of trees that are not threatening and peeling, but soothing and sensible. The gaps in the concrete in Irvine make it look like the scrubland is threateningly poised to take back over. The gaps in the concrete here make it look as if the forest has already staked out its niche, and is more at ease with its urban neighbours—more humane.<br /><iframe width="425" height="350" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1901+N+Beauregard+St,+Alexandria,+VA+22311&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=44.793449,72.070313&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=1901+N+Beauregard+St,+Alexandria,+Virginia+22311&z=16&ll=38.833289,-77.120333&output=embed"></iframe><br /><small><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=1901+N+Beauregard+St,+Alexandria,+VA+22311&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=44.793449,72.070313&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=1901+N+Beauregard+St,+Alexandria,+Virginia+22311&z=16&ll=38.833289,-77.120333" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left">View Larger Map</a></small><br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/2010-04-13/IMG_1040.jpg"/><br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/2010-04-13/IMG_1043.jpg"/><br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/2010-04-13/IMG_1042.jpg"/><br />At least, that's what it looks like from N. Beauregard; walking down S. King, it was as much a jumble of big buildings out of place as anywhere else.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-55978011502124171422010-04-13T13:17:00.001+10:002010-04-13T13:19:16.371+10:00US, so farYou'll have noticed even more extended radio silence than is usual for me on a trip overseas. I've spent three days in Irvine CA, and am now heading to DC, on a plane four hours delayed.<br /><br />Which brings thoughts of decaying infrastructure. An unsustainably greened Orange County, with the same gargantuan buildings and brobdignanian freeways (just as <a href="http://opuculuk.blogspot.com/2009/10/redwood-city-1.html">I'd bemoaned here</a> about Oracle HQ), a vista which will host tumbleweeds in my lifetime. Airline fleets with bits falling apart as I type. Western Civilisation, throwing out its books for PDFs, to leave behind neither. <br /><br />Well, no, I'm not happy I'm missing my dinner out in DC, and my Monday has been killed in waiting lounges and overnarrow seats. I'm never happy to be anywhere near an American airport, and even less so an American domestic flight, whose desperate piling on of carry-on luggage is not a million miles away from the chickens and farm implements piled onto a bus in the Third World. <br /><br />I had a great time of it nonetheless in Irvine, great enough to make a point of staying offline. Not because it is Irvine. I lived in Irvine for three years, and never reconciled to it, never got it or tried to. Irvine's hex on me has by now been broken, I don't have the feeling of dread and emptiness I used to (except when I contemplate its infrastructure); but I still find little in the landscape to detain me. Except the bookstore monopolies, though even those are starting to be shut down by the internets, and nudge towards eBooks. <br /><br />But what detained me in Irvine was who was in it. I spent three days of chatting with old friends, and that was a glory. (Well, two and a half days chatting, and half a day photocopying references—another of my Luddite hangups.) The chatting wasn't consistently profound—I use <i>chatting</i> advisedly; but it wide-ranging, familiar, and lots of fun.<br /><br />The kind of chat, I am not ashamed to admit, that led us to giggle for a quarter of an hour over this confluence of YouTube memes:<br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eqxIZD4phJw&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eqxIZD4phJw&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object> <br />*Why* this confluence of memes is so knee-debilitatingly funny to my culture is a topic that deserves at least one post. (You can start here for an <a href="http://www.jehsmith.com/1/2010/02/edward-anatolevich-hill.html">intelligent take on the Russian song</a>, and some good comments taking it further—not least my own.)<br /><br />The fate of a society that spends more time on Bread And Memes than infrastructure deserves another post, but I think it would get too depressing to write.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-64633174446738118742010-04-07T22:19:00.004+10:002010-04-08T02:11:34.495+10:00Greeks speaking the wrong languageThe <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariupol#Demographics">Mariupolitans</a> are a distinct group of ethnic Greeks living in the Ukraine, who formerly lived in Crimea. Like I <a href="http://hellenisteukontos.blogspot.com/2010/04/demotic-in-soviet-union.html">explained in the Other Place</a>, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urums#North_Azovian_Urums">minority of Mariupolitans</a> speak not Greek, but a variant of Crimean Tatar they call Greek: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urum_language">Urum</a>.<br /><br />They are not the only people who consider themselves Greek but speak a Turkic language. As the Wikipedia article notes, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontic_Greeks">Pontians</a> of Tsalka in Georgia who speak Turkish are also called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urums#Tsalka_Urums">(Tsalka) Urums</a>; and a large number of the refugees from the 1922 population exchange were <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karamanlides">Karamanlides</a>, who spoke <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karamanli_Turkish">Karamanli Turkish</a> (and wrote it in Greek characters). When the refugees of Salonica waxed sentimental about their football team <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAOK">PAOK</a>, they didn't just say ο ΠΑΟΚ μας in Standard Greek. They also said τεμέτερον ΠΑΟΚ in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontic_Greek">Pontic</a>—and <i>bizim PAOK</i> in Turkish. <a href="http://www.skroutz.gr/books/a.2722.%CE%9A%CE%BF%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%83%CF%8C%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%BB%CE%BF%CF%82-%CE%9D%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%8C%CE%BB%CE%B1%CE%BF%CF%82-%CE%93.html">Nikolaos Contossopoulos</a> is the foremost researcher on Cretan dialect of the 20th century; but his folk were Turkish-speakers. He concluded, he told me once, that Pontic has undergone syntactic influence from Turkish (an obvious but not necessarily a popular conclusion), because Pontic syntax sounded just like his elderly relatives trying to speak Greek.<br /><br />Which goes to show something blindingly obvious, but lost in the modern East European process of nation-building: language is not the same as ethnicity (and neither is the same as nationality).<br /><br />Turkic languages are the languages of Muslims, as far as everyone in the region is concerned, and a Christian speaking Turkic violates the easy dichotomies of nation-building. Which means that if Turkic-speakers internalise an ideology of being ethnically Greek—or indeed, of being <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Greeks">Rum, Christian</a>, as an ethnicity—then they won't take nationalist pride in speaking Turkic. They will see themselves as speaking the "wrong" language. That's not untenable in an Ottoman or Russian context: after all, the Turkic-speaking Greeks did continue speaking Turkic for centuries. But if they find themselves in a majority Greek-speaking context, they will be pressured to drop Turkic for Greek, and they won't have much of a motive not to.<br /><br />And indeed, that's what happened with the Karamanlides in Greece. Greece was never well-disposed to minority languages to begin with, and the Turkish that used to be spoken by the refugees is barely mentioned in scholarship: it never became an emblem like Pontic, or even a bugbear like Macedonian Slavonic. It was quietly, and efficiently, dropped.<br /><br />The Turkish of the Karamanlides passed unlamented—and unrecorded. Greek linguistics had its own priorities, being practiced after all by Greeks who saw the world in a particular way. Contossopoulos spent his career on someone else's dialect—which is after all what most linguists do; but working on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karamanli_Turkish">his own family's dialect</a> was not an option. Nor, I venture to say, would he have been dismayed that it was not.<br /><br />Karamanlides speaking Turkish was a paradox to nationally-minded Greeks; Karamanlides dropping Turkish might seem a paradox to cosmopolitan-minded non-Greeks. The mother tongue, we assume by default, is the driver of identity and its rallying point and its emotional centre: how sad it must be to hate your own mother tongue.<br /><br />And I admit to being troubled at the notion of hating one's mother tongue. Yet loving one's mother tongue, chosing to value it as identity, is as much a construct as valuing religion or culture, or what Greeks nebulously call ethnic consciousness, εθνική συνείδηση. It's innate to seek out one's own, but who one's own are is something learned, and acquired.<br /><br />And engineered. The Christians of the Ottoman Empire had to be taught they were Bulgarians, or Greeks, or Macedonians, or Albanians. What the people of village X thought they were 500 years ago is different to what they thought they were 100 years ago, and often what they think they are now. And the change was often enough initiated, because someone from Athens or Sofia came to town, and told them so; or because the local landlord made a choice, and his villagers followed suit.<br /><br />But the question of what people "really" are, of how their language or quirks or DNA contradict their current self-identification, is pointless. If for whatever reason the villagers of X or Y now consider themselves Greek, well, they're Greek; telling them a hundred years on they've been brainwashed means nothing. (The same goes for the search for <a href="http://northmacedonians.blogspot.com/">Greeks in FYROM</a>, it should be said: the Vlachs there in particular have changed their minds too.) Telling the Karamanlides they should have held on to a Turkish-speaking identity in Greece means even less. They suffered for being Christian in Turkey, they suffered for being aliens and speaking the wrong language when they fled to Greece: if they've come to hate their mother tongue, they aren't obligated to hold on to it for my linguistic edification.<br /><br />That's problematic for me to say: the Karamanlides have had to jettison their linguistic heritage, because they were told to, and they found themselves in the coercive linguistic context of a monolingual nation-state. All Other Things being equal, maybe they shouldn't have had to make that choice. But All Other Things were not equal; and it's hard to know how much of an attachment they'd formed to Turkish while in Turkey. Love Of Mother Tongue, like everything else, is taught, and they wouldn't have found many such teachers.<br /><br />And that's all terribly confused, because on the one hand I don't seek to be an apologist for nationalism, let alone to presume how the Karamanlides felt at the time; but on the other what the (former) speakers themselves now think should not be dismissed either. On the one hand, I can't get over the notion that hating your mother tongue is dysfunctional; on the other, it's as dysfunctional to expect Greeks in Greece to speak Turkish. The essentialism of nationalism—or at least, of unreflective, pitchfork-yielding nationalism, is not just hateful, it's counterproductive; and not just counterproductive, but obscuring. There's a reason linguists don't want to hear about the political dimensions behind what counts as a separate language: the flags get in the way of seeing the isoglosses.<br /><br />Yet flags matter too, and "Nationalism Bad" is itself an unreflective stance. People are invested in their identities. No less genuinely so, because the identity is changeable, and engineerable. I <a href="http://sarantakos.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/pargakarystos/#comment-28412">responded negatively</a> to the commenter at Sarantakos' who was happy that the Muslim Greeks had to leave Greece, because they had a <a href="http://sarantakos.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/pargakarystos/#comment-28403">family tradition of national fickleness</a>, having converted in the first place. There was enough fickleness in the other direction, or alternating between the two, to make such atavistic purity tests contrary to the national interest—and not merely inhumane. Patriotism is not a matter of genetics, it is cultural, acquired, and contingent. That doesn't mean it's not real; and it doesn't mean either that the descendants of the Karamanlides are somehow lesser Greeks, or that their Greekness doesn't matter to them.<br /><br />I got started on this post because I'm posting at The Other Place about the Urum. The Urum, like the Karamanlides, are Greeks Speaking The Wrong Language. As I'll explore there, they seem to have sensed in the '20s that they Spoke The Wrong Language: so they didn't pursue <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausbausprache,_Abstandsprache_and_Dachsprache#Ausbausprache">Ausbau</a> like every other minority in the USSR did. That may be a pity and brainwashing; or it may be redressing an historical anomaly (as <a href="http://sarantakos.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/dizikirik/#comment-27923">Pontus And The Left put it</a>). But it was real. Now, there are signs at least some of them are taking pride in their language after all—with the support of the Greeks Speaking The Right Language. That's real too. Both groups are now turning into Ukrainians Speaking Neither Of The Above (Russian): the Greeks there, Greek-speaking and Tatar-speaking, now have different Otherness and different threats to their identity to deal with.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-33929219810167121872010-04-07T17:11:00.002+10:002010-04-07T17:21:08.618+10:00Will be Stateside next weekThings have continued to be odd around here, to the extent that I haven't given my tuthree readers adequate notice of this: on Friday, I'm going to the US for a week. I'm spending the weekend in Irvine; then I'm travelling to DC for the <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/registry-and-repository-summit">ADL Learning Content Registries and Repositories Summit</a> (see my <a href="http://blog.linkaffiliates.net.au/2010/04/07/position-paper-adl-learning-content-registries-and-repositories-summit/">position paper</a>, if you're that way inclined); then I'm spending 24 hours in New York.<br /><br />Which may mean a blog post or two here, since I only seem to blog at <i>opɯcɯlɯklɑr</i> when I travel.<br /><br />Also letting readers know that I've accepted an offer to work at the <a href="http://ands.org.au/">Australian National Data Service</a> out at Monash in July, when my current contract with <a href="http://linkaffiliates.net.au/">Link Affiliates</a> expires. I was melancholy enough when I left the University of Melbourne for Monash <a href="http://opuculuk.blogspot.com/2006/10/to-alexandria-you-are-losing.html">the first time, in 2006</a>. Since then, I've changed, Melbourne's changed, and Monash's changed. Or at least, I know more people at Monash, and it's a five minute drive away.<br /><br />I still won't find <a href="http://opuculuk.blogspot.com/2006/10/to-alexandria-you-are-losing.html">buskers playing the Chaconne</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton,_Victoria">Clayton</a>, though.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-15020120620515217542010-03-26T23:08:00.004+11:002010-03-27T03:07:51.343+11:00Ioannis Kondylakis: How the village turned ChristianI've had an odd week, and as revenge against the elements, I've done a slightly odd thing.<br /><br />It's Greek National Day, and Greek bloggers turn their thoughts to debates on nationalism. The <a href="http://sarantakos.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/pargakarystos/">Magnificent Nikos Sarantakos' Blog</a> was no exception, and during the discussion that developed, I made <a href="http://sarantakos.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/pargakarystos/#comment-28412">a glancing mention</a> of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretan_Turks#History">Cretan Muslims</a>, a topic I've already <a href="http://opuculuk.blogspot.com/2009/08/al-hamidiyah.html">brought up on this blog</a>. My reference was to the apparent conversion of some Cretan Muslims to Christianity in the 19th century; Nikos responded by pointing to a short story by <a href="http://www.cretanvista.com/goodreading7.htm">Ioannis Kondylakis</a> on his site, <a href="http://www.sarantakos.com/kibwtos/mazi/eromiepse.htm">"How the village turned Christian"</a> (although it does not refer to conversion, but to Muslims abandoning villages for the cities).<br /><br />The story is cute in a way; it's not quite the multi-culti, Why Can't We All Get Along story that our century would look on with favour, but given the sentiments of its time and place, it does a nice little subversion of the old narratives. (And the figure of the wine-drinking bon vivant Muslim is familiar enough from Kazantzakis' <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Michalis"><i>Freedom and Death</i></a>.) It turns out the <a href="http://www.platanias.gr/city/modi/modi.html">village the story is set in</a>, Modi, is the village Kondylakis was a schoolteacher in, at the end of the Ottoman Empire; but I wouldn't assume this is exactly newspaper reporting. Still, if you read it attentively, you can see the harassment payback being described.<br /><br />I decided to translate it, and I decided to be slightly odd about it. The story is of its time and place, and I'm of mine, and I decided not to translate τούρκος and ρωμιός as "Turk" and "Greek". That's the dichotomy we know now, but the dichotomy in the Ottoman Empire was credal, and not ethnic as we now understand it: the Cretan Muslims spoke Greek, and translating τούρκος as "Turk" leads to the absurdity of "Turkish–Albanian" instead of "Muslim Albanian". (The insistence on calling Muslim Albanians Muslim had a simple reason: there were Christian Albanians too, and the common creed they shared with Greeks was more important than the common ethnicity they shared with the Muslims.) Kondylakis has his characters speak of "Romioi", but the narrator knows what they meant by that, and calls them "Christians". I've gone the next step, and called the Tourkoi "Muslims". (If that makes the story sound like it's set in Bosnia and not Crete, well, there's a reason for that.)<br /><br />That's not the odd thing I've done. Maybe ideological, but not odd. The odd thing is, I wanted to render the occasional code switches into Turkish of the Muslims with some English equivalent: a language familiar to English-speakers, but clearly foreign. <br /><br />So my Muslim Cretans lapse into French.<br /><br />You don't approve, well, <i>tant pis</i>.<br /><br />***<br /><br />He had often heard from his father the story of why he had to sell up in Modi and move to the mountain village of Akaranou. The reason was "a Muslim—begging your pardon—and a pig—by your leave"; that's how he would speak to express his hatred of that Muslim in particular, and of Muslims in general. Modi back then was still a Muslim village. There were a few Christians, but they were humble lowlanders, "thirders"—that is to say, they cultivated Muslim farms against a percentage of the income. Serfs, almost. The only one who had some measure of human dignity and pride, because he had enough property not to have to work for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agha_(Ottoman_Empire)">aghas</a>, was his father Mikhalis Alefouzos. But precisely because he had an independent spirit, and his spine did not bend readily, he drew the dislike of Kerim Agha, the richest and most powerful Muslim in Modi, a fanatical and tyrannical man, who wanted Christians to feel that they lived only through the sufferance of the Muslims. For that reason, whenever Alefouzos passed him by and greeted him with a simple "Good evening, Kerim Agha", he'd shake his head and stare at him with a threatening glance, as he went on his way. One day, he said to another Muslim present:<br /><br />"That man there, <i>par Dieu</i>, Alefouzos: he's a <i>revolté</i>; he dares look us in the eye, he's no <i>soumis</i>."<br /><br />When the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giritli_Mustafa_Naili_Pasha">period of Egyptian rule</a> brought some relief to the standing of Cretan Christians, Alefouzos was encouraged enough to commit an act of great daring. He bought a pig and fed him for the Christmas feast. A pig, in Modi! A pig in Kerim Agha's village, and right next to his villa! A pox on it! <i>Qu'on foute sa mère</i>, the <i>infidèle</I>!<br /><br />The first squealing of the pig spread horror in the Muslim village, and the hair of many a Muslim stood on end. There was a council of the aghas at Kerim Agha's, and they decided the rebel Alefouzos should be expelled from the village or murdered. But before everything else, the pig had to be killed. This was intolerable. The past day, while Kerim Agha was smoking on his pipe in his courtyard, he saw its filthy snout poke through his half-closed courtyard door. A pox on it! <I>Nique ton grand-père!</i><br /><br />"One day, <i>par Dieu</i>, it'll come up to the mosque and bid us good day!" another agha said. "It pokes its way wherever it finds an opening, oink oink!"<br /><br />"I must I kill, My Aghas, the <i>cochon</i>", said the Muslim-Albanian <i>bulbashi</i>, a kind of police sergeant, who represented all authority in the village. And he fully approved of the decisions taken in the meeting.<br /><br />The following day, as he passed in front of Alefouzos' house, he drew his gun and killed the pig.<br /><br />"Why you no tie up, Lady, the <i>bête</i> inside, pox on it, <i>que Dieu le damne</i>, but you let it poke among our feet?" he said to Alefouzos' wife, who had heard the gunshot and appeared worrying at the gate.<br /><br />Alefouzos was stubborn, and in a week's time he brought another, bigger pig, from Platania.<br /><br />"For God's sake, are you looking to get killed, Mikhalis?" one of the fellow Christians in the village asked him. "Don't get up their noses, they'll murder you!"<br /><br />"They're not killing me", Alefouzos replied calmly. "The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissary">Janissaries'</a> time is past."<br /><br />But the time of the Janissaries was not as past as he supposed. The <i>bulbashi</i> killed the other pig too, now with the excuse that it up-ended his hookah pipe. And Alefouzos concluded that, if he kept insisting on buying pigs, he would be helping the Muslim Albanian at target practice.<br /><br />But Karim Agha, who was livid, finally got his release one day, when he met Alefouzos in the street:<br /><br />"What is this <i>effronterie</i> you're doing! Pigs, you <i>infidèle</i>, is that what you're bringing to the village!"<br /><br />"It's no <i>effronterie</i>, Kerim Agha", Alefouzos said with a respectful but steady tone. "Our faith tells us to eat pork, begging your pardon…"<br /><br />"Your faith! F… your faith!"<br /><br />And at the same time he lifted up his pipe and struck it down at Alefouzos. But he avoided the strike and held the agha's hand.<br /><br />"You raise your hand at me, dog-worshipper!" Kerim Agha cried and started hitting him rabidly. Other Muslims ran to him, and Alefouzos was soon led to his house, unconscious and blood-drenched. After a month, as he went out one night to feed his oxen, he was shot by parties unknown and wounded in the shoulder; he came close to dying, and was bed-ridden for a long time. Certain that the Muslims had decided to do him in, he was forced to sell up and seek refuge in the mountain village of Akaranou.<br /><br />His son Stamatis had often heard this story from his father, and from childhood he built up in his soul hatred of Muslims, and of the Modians in particular, and he dreamed of vengeance. Kerim had died, old man Alefouzos had died too; let both of them fare well in the Netherworld, where they assuredly took their hatred with them. But just as Alefouzos had left a son behind, so had Kerim left behind a son, Arif Agha. The two of them would settle their families' accounts. But Arif was completely different to his father. A kindhearted man, who loved wine and entertainment, he was on good terms with Christians and Muslims, and split his time between Modi, where he had a wife and children, and Chania, where he had lovers and drinking buddies. His only care was to have fun and to borrow or sell, when his income was insufficient for his needs. <br /><br />Stamatis had inherited his father's industriousness and his particular vindictiveness against the Muslims of Modi. He was of around the same age as Arif, a young man of thirty-five, of Herculean build, with a rough blond beard, and eyes full of spark and cunning.<br /><br />One day the Modians suddenly discovered that Stamatis Alefouzos had bought back his father's property, and in a few days he settled in his father's house next to Arif's villa. One of the first things he did was to bring from Akaranou a sow with six or seven piglets, so noisy and incessantly moving, that you'd think the whole village was full of pigs. And indeed it was, for whichever Christian Modians didn't already have pigs bought some, and whoever had pigs tied up let them free to wander in the village and the surrounding farms, to visit the Muslim café, to enter Muslim courtyards to the houseladies' great distress and horror, and to destroy the aghas' vegetable gardens.<br /><br />Now there was no more <i>bulbashi</i>, and the time of the Janissaries was so distant it was almost forgotten. Modi was turning from a Muslim into a Christian village, because during the latest rebellion many Muslims were killed or stayed back in Chania. The Muslims were succeeded by Christians from the mountain villages, following Stamatis' example and buying the farms the Muslims were selling. As he saw the Christian population of the village growing and the Muslim population falling, Stamatis exulted. And one day he said to Arif, with a mocking smile:<br /><br />"Hey, Arif Agha, if only your <i>père décédé</i> was alive to see what has happened to the village!"<br /><br />Arif frowned.<br /><br />"And what has happened to the village?", he said in a choked voice.<br /><br />"Why, it's turned Christian, I tell you! Look, look!"<br /><br />And with a triumphant gesture he pointed to a herd of piglets going past, following their slow-moving mother. But Arif observed the piglets without spitting or swearing, as his father would have.<br /><br />"If your <i>père</i> was alive," Stamatis added, "he'd be fit to burst."<br /><br />But as he saw that Arif was not getting angry, but instead was saddened by his mockery, Stamatis' stubbornness abated. And he abandoned the act of vengeance he had planned long ago—to send Kerim Agha's son his best piglet as a present for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_ul-Fitr">Eid ul-Fitr</a>.<br /><br />But Stamatis' soul must never have rejoiced so much as on Christmas Eve, when Modi echoed with the sound of pigs being slaughtered. To bolster his rejoicing, he kept repeating, grinning from ear to ear as the saying goes:<br /><br />"For the first time today I can see that Modi has turned Christian!"<br /><br />And he always had the notion that, despite the apathy Arif displayed, he must have been devastated within. It was no small thing, to kill two pigs right in front of their door! But after a few days Arif, returning from Chania, stopped <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=lKaL3_dfFJAC&lpg=PA23&ots=mjoNsiUyXQ&dq=horse%20muslim%20christian%20ride&pg=PA23#v=onepage&q=%22freedom%20to%20ride%20a%20horse%22&f=false">on horseback</a> before Stamatis' door.<br /><br />"Good evening, neighbour," he said to Stamatis as he appeared. "Bring me wine to drink as your guest. I'm in a good mood tonight."<br /><br />Stamatis went to bring wine, but Arif stopped him.<br /><br />"And something good to nibble on."<br /><br />Then he learned down from the horse, and said quietly:<br /><br />"A nice piece of… pork sausage."opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-68513991035095828182010-03-13T23:50:00.002+11:002017-02-26T16:04:25.152+11:00Solage: Le basile<i>Le basile</i>, like <i>Pluseurs gens voy</i>, counts as Ars Nova rather than Ars Subtilior, and there aren't the rhythmic games hallowed in Subtilior. The rhythms are still wackier than <i>Pluseurs gens</i>: there is enough syncopation across barlines to justify the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensurstrich">Mensurstich notation</a>, and there is confusion about whether voices are off by half a bar or not, which the score indicates with alternative barline arrows.<br /><br />This rendering also doesn't sound quite as smooth, because of clashes in accidentals: the score needs more <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_ficta"><i>ficta</i></a> accidentals than the source transcription shows, but I didn't want to take over with my own editing. And some of the jarring intervals look to be in the source, unrelated to accidentals.<br /><br />I can't say <i>Le basile</i> has grabbed me in the way the Subtilior pieces have, or even <i>Pluseurs gens</i>: it's not as tight as the latter, and not as funky as the former. But the more musically cluey may think differently.<br /><br />This piece has broken LilyPond, btw, even more than the previous ones: the combination of Mensurstich, changing metres, and syncopation across bars has proven too much for the software, although I haven't been able to replicate the error in a score snippet. So you'll see a couple of barlines within the staff that shouldn't be there—bar 2, for starters.<br /><br />This is the last of the transcriptions in my friend Christina's Honours thesis. The other pieces definitely by Solage don't present the same rhythmic challenges; so she did not feel it necessary to retranscribe them from the four-square existing score published by Apel. That means I don't get to put <i>Fumeux fume par fumée</i> up; but Daniel Buxeda Rodriguez <a href="http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Solage">already has</a>. I think the <a href="http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/ChoralWiki:CPDL">license</a> allows me to put it up on YouTube as I have the others; I'm checking.<br /><br />So, if you'll pardon a few wrong notes, and a synthesised French Horn, here is Solage's song on the basilisk:<br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/u-uiNnbHqCk&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/u-uiNnbHqCk&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />The scores, midis and so forth are all linked to at my <a href="http://www.opoudjis.net/Play/solage.html">Solage page</a>.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-67461940225199807342010-03-08T23:50:00.001+11:002010-03-09T00:01:07.586+11:00Solage: Pluseurs gens voyWith <i>Pluseurs gens voy</i>, we're backing away from the crazy of Ars Subtilior, going back to what the Ars Subtilior was a mutant offshoot of: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_nova">Ars Nova</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_de_Machaut">Machaut</a>. Accordingly, there is less weirdness about the notation in this ballade; the one exception is in the middle section, where the Cantus, and possibly the Tenor, are half a bar off from the Triplum and Countertenor, which in turn are half a bar off from the first section of the piece. This is noticeable, because it is punctuated by rests in the Cantus; but having the first beat of a bar as a rest does not presuppose metrical shift. So it doesn't sound implausible the way the Ars Subtilior shifts do.<br /><br />Because <i>Pluseurs gens voy</i> is more musically conservative, it isn't as attention-grabbing as the preceding pieces. I don't even remember hearing it in the <a href="http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=147617">Gothic Voices recording</a>—it sounded like the Machaut pieces they alternated with Solage's. But apart from what looks to be one complete blunder, it is a tight, smooth block of part-writing, the four voices interweaving at close range, without drawing undue attention to themselves—and not marking time between syncopations as obviously as in the Subtilior balldes. Now that the Cantus has a descant, and there is less rhythmic complexity to deal with, the two top voices are freed up to imitate each other.<br /><br />(You'll hear the blunder btw: bar 18, the Cantus is c♯, the Countertenor is d. At least that's what my source transcription has.)<br /><br />In all, it's a serious-sounding, earnest piece—though the lyrics are playful: "I see many people who clothe their thoughts in nice dress; one wears an embroidered <i>cote</i>, the other a <i>villain</i> lined in gray, they wear coats great and small—to each their own: a <i>Jaquette</i> is good enough for me." Where Jaquette was some member of the nobility or other.<br /><br />Herewith then:<br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7NSFyv5Cp8g&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7NSFyv5Cp8g&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-4508392082809004502010-03-04T23:35:00.007+11:002017-02-26T16:05:10.470+11:00Solage: S'aincy estoitThis is the third of the Solage ballades, and the tricks of notation get worse and worse. We have one voice in a different metre than the other two (6/8 vs. 9/8, 3/4 vs. 2/2)—and not with the same measure length either; so the bars in the three voices coincide only every three or four bars. Of the two voices that do coincide, one is written twice as fast as the other (6/8 vs. 6/4). We have routine interruptions of bars by other bars, some interruptions running for a dozen bars. We have several runs of 2:3 duplets.<br /><br />We have interruption a 3/2 bar interrupted by a 6/4 bar, and the next 6/4 bar interrupted by the completion of the first 3/2 bar:<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/calixto/saincy1.gif" width="500"/><br />We have a 6/8 bar interrupted halfway by 11 bars of 6/8; its completion is another half bar of 6/8, which is itself interrupted by a new bar, one eighth note in:<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/calixto/saincy2.gif" width="500"/><br />And Solage saves the best till last: the 9/4 cantus runs into... this:<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/calixto/saincy3.gif" width="500"/><br /><br />Which is... well, I'm not sure what it is.<br /><table border="1" style='font-size:xx-small;'><tr><td bgcolor="#009999"><b>1</b><td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">2<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">3<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999"><b>2</b><td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">2<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">3<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999"><b>3</b><td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">2<td bgcolor="#009999"> <br /><td bgcolor="#009999">3<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#00eeee"><b>1</b><td bgcolor="#00eeee"> <td bgcolor="#00eeee">2<td bgcolor="#00eeee"> <td bgcolor="#00eeee">3<td bgcolor="#00eeee"> <td bgcolor="#00eeee"><b>2</b><td bgcolor="#00eeee"> <td bgcolor="#00eeee">2<td bgcolor="#00eeee"> <td bgcolor="#00eeee">3<td bgcolor="#00eeee"> <td bgcolor="#00eeee"><b>3</b><td bgcolor="#00eeee"> <td bgcolor="#00eeee">2<td bgcolor="#00eeee"> <td bgcolor="#00eeee">3<td bgcolor="#00eeee"> <td bgcolor="#009999"><b>1</b><td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">2<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">3<td bgcolor="#009999"> <br /><td bgcolor="#009999"><b>2</b><td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">2<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">3<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999"><b>3</b><td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">2<td bgcolor="#009999"> <br /><td bgcolor="#009999">3<td bgcolor="#009999"> </tr><br /><tr><td colspan=2 bgcolor="#ee00ee">2<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#ee00ee">e2:<td colspan=3 bgcolor="#eeee00">f3<td colspan=3 bgcolor="#eeee00">a3<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#eeee00">g4<td colspan=3 bgcolor="#eeee00">f3<td colspan=3 bgcolor="#eeee00">e3<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#eeee00">e2<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#eeee00">d4<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#eeee00">d2<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#eeee00">c2:<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#ffff99">d4<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#ffff99">2<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#ffff99">f2<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#ffff99">a2<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#ffff99">g2<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#ffff99">e2<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#ffff99">f2:<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#ee00ee">e2<td colspan=6 bgcolor="#ee00ee">d6</tr><br /><tr><td colspan=12 rowspan=2 bgcolor="#cccccc">group<td colspan=12 rowspan=2 bgcolor="#cccccc">group<td colspan=6 rowspan=2 bgcolor="#cccccc">group<td colspan=6 rowspan=2 bgcolor="#cccccc">group<td colspan=10 bgcolor="#cccccc">group<td colspan=2><td colspan=8 rowspan=2 bgcolor="#cccccc">group<tr><td colspan=2><td colspan=10 bgcolor="#cccccc">group</table><br />Um. OK.<br /><br />And what does it sound like? Brassy and fanfaring—as befits its subject matter. (<a href="http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/medievalstudies/staff/yolanda.shtml">Yolanda Plumley</a> has <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=_-ahQh2MNJoC&lpg=PA152&pg=PA152">written on the politics of</a> the song, extolling the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John,_Duke_of_Berry">Duke of Berry</a>, including echos in its lyrics from other songs in his honour.) Each of the three metre changes sounds like a new landscape opening up before you. The bar interruptions are mostly mid-bar, and don't sound particularly untethered like <i>Corps feminin's</i>—at least until that passage I've tabulated above, which sounds stumbling, because of the alternation of eighth, dotted eighth, and quarter notes. As for the mismatch of metres, the music is slow-moving enough that that passes unnoticed—one of the particularities of Ars Subtilior that's more Gedanken than real.<br /><br />Here it is; <a href="http://www.opoudjis.net/Play/solage.html">downloads</a> as in the previous posts.<br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vxhYPodhOz8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vxhYPodhOz8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-92094267942519983732010-02-27T03:16:00.004+11:002017-02-26T16:05:33.411+11:00Solage: Corps femininin<a href="http://opuculuk.blogspot.com/2010/02/calextone-qui-fut-dame-terrouse.html"><i>Calextone</i></a> has some polyrhythm going on, but the disruptions are localised—they resync after a couple of bars, and the metres are displaced by a beat or a third of a beat, which makes for some very pleasant syncopation. <i>Calextone</i> also has some interrupted half bars, but blink and you'll miss 'em: there's only a couple. So <i>Calextone</i> is a little complex in notation, and sounds recognisable to us.<br /><br />Things with <i>Corps feminin</i> are different. The top voice is passionate and melismatic—and again, mostly well-behaved metrically. The one beat interruptions from <i>Calextone</i> show up again in the cantus, and syncopate it forward as well. But there are also a lot more interrupting half bars, in all voices; so the disruption of the beat in different voices is greater, and lasts longer. Just three bars in, in fact, you get a double interruption in the countertenor, vs. a single interruption in the tenor. Let me illustrate:<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/calixto/corps_ex1.gif" width="80%"/><br />The cantus is going along with five melismatic bars of 6/8. The tenor does half a bar of 6/8—then switches to three bars of 3/4, and then finishes its initial bar of 6/8. I've inserted <b><i>"1…" </i></b>and <b><i>"…2"</i></b> to indicate these half bars; Christina had a bracket notation, but that was clashing with the bars used as ligatures, and the point of this notation is to make the original more accessible, not less.<br /><br />The countertenor, like the tenor, does half a bar of 6/8—<i><b>"1…"</b></i>, then switches to 3/4. After just one beat of 3/4—<i><b>"(1…"</b></i>, it gets bored of that, and switches back to 6/8 for three bars. What undermines the double switch to our ears is, his three bars of 6/8 𝄾 𝅘𝅥 𝅘𝅥 𝅘𝅥𝅮 sound like syncopated 3/4 to us now; but switching metres was a way of doing syncopation back then anyway. After that, the countertenor has to sync back up with the other two voices. That means first finishing off the other two beats of his 3/4 bar—<i><b>"…2 …3)"</b></i>, and then finishing off his original 6/8 bar—<b><i>"…2"</i></b>—one measure after the tenor finished his.<br /><br />I don't know if graphics will make this any clearer, but:<br /><table><br /><tr><th>C<td bgcolor="#00cccc">1<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc">2<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#009999">1<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">2<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc">1<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc">2<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#009999">1<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">2<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc">1<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc">2<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <br /><tr><th>Ct<td bgcolor="#999900">1<td bgcolor="#999900"> <td bgcolor="#999900"> <td bgcolor="#cc00cc">1<td bgcolor="#cc00cc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc">1<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc">2<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#009999">1<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999">2<td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#009999"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc">1<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc">2<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#cc00cc">2<td bgcolor="#cc00cc"> <td bgcolor="#cc00cc">3<td bgcolor="#cc00cc"> <td bgcolor="#999900">2<td bgcolor="#999900"> <td bgcolor="#999900"> <br /><tr><th>T<td bgcolor="#999900">1<td bgcolor="#999900"> <td bgcolor="#999900"> <td bgcolor="#cc00cc">1<td bgcolor="#cc00cc"> <td bgcolor="#cc00cc">2<td bgcolor="#cc00cc"> <td bgcolor="#cc00cc">3<td bgcolor="#cc00cc"> <td bgcolor="#ff66ff">1<td bgcolor="#ff66ff"> <td bgcolor="#ff66ff">2<td bgcolor="#ff66ff"> <td bgcolor="#ff66ff">3<td bgcolor="#ff66ff"> <td bgcolor="#cc00cc">1<td bgcolor="#cc00cc"> <td bgcolor="#cc00cc">2<td bgcolor="#cc00cc"> <td bgcolor="#cc00cc">3<td bgcolor="#cc00cc"> <td bgcolor="#999900">2<td bgcolor="#999900"> <td bgcolor="#999900"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc">1<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc">2<td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <td bgcolor="#00cccc"> <br /></table><br />Why on earth is Solage doing all this? Because he can, of course. And also because the notation made it easy. If you wanted to change from 6/8 to 3/4, all you had to do was change ink colour, from black to red. If it was that easy, and if you were in an experimental phase already, then of course you'd switch ink after one note, just to see what would happen.<br /><br />And what does it sound like? Like I said, the cantus is impassioned, and its syncopations work. The other voices sound—well, random. They're too displaced to sound syncopated, so they just sound like they're from somewhere else. Not unpleasant, at times effective—but untethered.<br /><br />The Taruskin Challenge bloggers have a <a href="http://taruskinchallenge.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/ars-subtilior-and-the-problem-of-chunking/">great post</a> on why music historians view the Ars Subtilior innovations with distaste, though in general they approve of innovation. Their take: historians are unsettled by old art that comes too close to contemporary art, and doesn't stay in its historical box. Historians don't like stuff that resists fitting into historical boxes to begin with. There is a lot to this: we can't make sense of music that sounds mediaeval, but is also more adventuresome than Richard Strauss—it disrupts our notion of lineal progress. We're frustrated because we don't see the progress leading somewhere; but where we expect 14th century progress to lead to is madrigals (or, as the Taruskin Challenge say more knowledgeably, John Dunstable before we get to the madrigals); not Stockhausen or Babbitt. <br /><br />To be fair to ourselves, though, we're also frustrated by the things Solage does, because we can't hear them make any difference. What performance of <i>Corps feminin</i> will bring out the fact that the Countertenor has 6/8 interrupted by 3/4 interrupted by 6/8, and make sure the catch-up half-bars sound like the completions they are? Given that it's just an accompanying voice, what performance *should* bring it out? The syncopation will come through alright; but our ears are ears molded through the path that led away from Solage: can we hear the bar resumption business at all? For that matter, could Solage's audience hear it, as opposed to seeing it? Or to use a fairer example: the first bar of the cantus is in 6/8, the second in 3/4. There's supposed to be a world of difference between <i>Dum-dee-dee Dum-dee-dee</i> and <i>Dum-dee Dum-dee Dum-dee</i>. Can you hear it in the recordings that have ended up in YouTube?<br /><br />Perhaps, but it's work to bring out the subtleties, even more work to hear them; and these guys are obscure. As the Taruskin Challenge puts it, "a new breed of composers—none of whom are known today outside of the academy". (And these are musicologists to whom Machaut and Dunstable are old hat.)<br /><br />It's work to transcribe these guys too. I got quite lost in the line above, and that was not as bad as it got; by the second page, I was obligated to break a couple of lines mid-bar. Lilypond was valiantly avoiding it, but it was making its staves a soup of dots; the alternative of course has made its staves a rather thinner broth. The MIDI this time is a prog rock combo: guitar, flute and bass. The default instruments in GarageBand are embarrassing enough that I've forked out the money for the Symphony Jam Pack. So the arrangements from now on will still sound embarrassing, but embarrassing in different ways.<br /><br />The PDF is available for download <a href="http://www.tlg.uci.edu.au/~opoudjis/Play/solage.html">at my site</a>, and also at <a href="http://imslp.org/wiki/Corps_feminin_(Solage)">IMSLP</a>.<br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/53c7X35oUMI&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/53c7X35oUMI&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-25708499594827447272010-02-22T14:04:00.005+11:002017-02-26T16:06:06.863+11:00Solage: Calextone qui fut dame terrouseThe <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_subtilior"><i>Ars Subtilior</i></a> was a brief period in the end of the 14th century, when composers went nuts. The Ars Subtilior composers wrote music that was more complex that anything heard before—and often anything heard centuries since in Western music: more modulations, more polyrhythms, more music scores shaped as eye music.<br /><br />It was a short-lived movement, and even its name was bestowed it by a twentieth-century musicologist: the 15th century backed away from its experimentation. Likewise it was a geographically restricted movement: basically the antipope's entourage in Avignon, although one of the Ars Subtilior manuscripts is from <a href="http://www.cypnet.co.uk/ncyprus/culture/music/medieval/index.html">the court of the French kings of Cyprus</a>. And it has remained a bit of a niche even in contemporary recordings. CDs are few, and <a href="http://www.linnrecords.com/recording-ars-subtilior-cd.aspx">the first CD I knew of</a> played down the intellectual stuff in its selection, in favour of the imitations of birdsong.<br /><br />I was introduced to the Ars Subtilior by my friend Christina Eira, who I did my linguistics PhD with. Christina had done her Music Honours thesis on a new transcription of Solage's music. <br /><br />[McCarthy, Eira. 1986. <i>An analysis and alternative system of edition of the seven ballades of Solage, MS Chantilly</i>. BA (Hons) Thesis. University of Melbourne, Department of Music.]<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solage">Solage</a> was one of the main composers in the Ars Subtilior school; Christina's transcription aimed to reflect more closely what Solage had originally written, rather than fitting to the expectations of later classical music.<br /><br />The piece Solage is best known for is <i>Fumeux fume par fumee</i>, "The smokers smoke through smoke", which involves a dizzying series of low-pitched modulations. Annoyingly, it gets more attention for people trying to work out what kind of weed you could get hold of to smoke in the 14th century, so as to write that kind of trippy music, man. <br /><br />But the piece where the clash between notations is most obvious is <a href="http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/MMDB/composer/H0441005.htm"><i>Calextone qui fut dame terrouse</i></a>, "Callisto, who was a mortal lady". The lyrics aren't really the point of Ars Subtilior, but two trends converge in Solage's lyrics: the notion of courtly, romantic love which the troubadours invented, and a proto-Renaissance fascination with Greek mythology. Of course, the actual Zeus did no such thing as make Callisto his <i>vrai epouse</i> "true spouse"; but Zeus' "love-'em-and-convert-them-into-a-constellation" tactics were not much of a topic for a troubadour anyway. <br /><br /><i>Calextone</i> is in 6/8, and the tenor is mostly slow-moving bass notes. But the cantus strays off from normal 6/8, and the countertenor strays off even more. <br />Beyond the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hocket">hockets</a> you'd expect in this era of music, there is a middle section where the counterenor is playing 2/2 to the cantus' 6/8. That's a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyrhythm">hendiadys</a> (two against three) which isn't that unusual in Western music; but Solage ends up with four beats against three—and syncopation in the four beats, at that. The bass also slips into 3/4 on occasion.<br /><br />What stands out even more, though, is the cantus and countertenor both interrupting their 6/8, interspersing another new bar off one beat. This happens in the very first bar of the piece:<br /><ul><li>The cantus starts a 6/8 bar—<br /><li>gets one eighth note in (1)<br /><li>then starts a new triplet (1+3)<br /><li>and another two, adding up to one and a half bars of 6/8 (1+3+3+3)<br /><li>and then closes off its initial triplet, and catching up with the remaining voices, by adding two more eighth notes (1+3+3+3+2)</ul><br />So the way it is notated—and Christina's transcription tries to capture—instead of two bars of 6/8, you have half a bar of 6/8, interrupted by one and a half bars of 6/8.<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/calixto/Ex1.gif"/><br />This is not as bad as it gets, either. As bad as it gets is further down, when the countertenor does this series of stunts:<br /><ul><li>gets half a bar in (3)<br /><li>then switches to a new 3/4 bar (3+2+4)<br /><li>then starts another bar of 6/8,<br /><li>gets one eighth note in (3+2+4+1)<br /><li>then starts two bars of 6/8 from scratch (3+2+4+6+6)<br /><li>and catches up with the other voices again by filling out two more beats in the interrupted triplet from before (3+2+4+6+6+2)<br /><li>—while the other voices are not holding dotted half notes, like at the start, but doing their own merry hocketting 6/8 thing, on the beat instead of off it.</ul><br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/calixto/Ex2.gif"/><br />This is, like, mindblowing stuff. It's mindblowing enough that the previous editor of Solage, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=0yUnQwAACAAJ">Willi Apel</a>, had no patience for it. I can't scan it in to show you, because the Melbourne Uni Library's copy has gone missing some time in the past ten years. But just as editors don't care about scores being arranged in the shape of hearts or harps, Apel didn't care about this business of interrupting triplets. This is just syncopation, he decided, and that's how he notated it.<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/calixto/Ex3.gif"/><br />Which is not doing as much violence to the text as you might think: it *is* syncopation. The new barlines are merely putting into the top voices the metrical context set by the tenor, and it's not like Solage could notate syncopation as syncopation, with the notation he used. And when you hear the music performed, it doesn't sound like bizarre interruptions of bars: it just sounds like 6/8 syncopation. Solage actually gives his game away by starting his off-beat syncopation half a bar before one of his runs of interrupted bars (countertenor, second bar):<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/calixto/Ex4.gif"/><br />Or, in a less experimental notation:<br /><img src="http://www.opoudjis.net/nicjpgs/calixto/Ex5.gif"/><br />But the original, polymetric orgy of Solage's Calextone deserves to be seen, so I've put Christina's transcription into <a href="http://lilypond.org/">LilyPond</a>, and put up a video of the transcription along with the music. LilyPond coped with what I threw at it, although not without some scars. There is no way I could get the final bar to be right justified, and MIDI generation conked out before the end (so there is one countertenor note in the wrong octave). <br /><br />The lyrics make for unseemly gaps too: the manuscript did not line syllables up with notes, but just dumped one phrase at a time over the music. That's why different performances of Calextone distribute the syllables differently. (<a href="http://www.classicalarchives.com/work/75017.html">Gothic Voices sample</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SolageCalextone.ogg">Capilla Flamenca sample</a>.) I tried to reproduce that in Lilypond, which should allow it at least for expressive marks; but that proved beyond me too. <br /><br />(That lax treatment of text makes for a bad combination with Solange's melismatic runs, and composers at the time were not fastidious about what vowels to do melismata on. /y/ is not melisma-friendly.) <br /><br />And after repeated frustrations with GarageBand and iMovie, I couldn't be bothered fixing the bar misalignments to the music at the very end. Nor do I feel that apologetic in rendering the three voices as guitar, sax, and bass. I wasn't left with much choice in iMovie 09, which doesn't read MIDI natively, leaving me at the mercy of GarageBand's default instrument selection. (iMovie 09's Precision Editor looks to me a step backward from iMovie 08 anyway, but I get stubborn about things like that.)<br /><br />After all that, I've put Calextone up on YouTube. It's not as smooth an experience as I'd have liked, and I'd rather you <a href="http://www.opoudjis.net/Play/solage.html">downloaded the PDF</a>, and followed along to a professional recording. Like <a href="http://www.classicalarchives.com/album/822252208924.html">Gothic Voices'</a>, who have recorded all of Solage's works. As of this writing, their recording has been slipped into YouTube as well; but because I'm happy to have forked out the money to buy the CD, I'm refraining from linking to it.<br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vXJg_rcZRZE&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vXJg_rcZRZE&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />If you do find a vocal recording—like, oh, say, on the Related Clips window of YouTube—it's worth it just to hear the archaic pronunciation of <i>joieux</i>, as [ʒwɛˈjø]. Yes, Solage spoke <a href="http://opuculuk.blogspot.com/2009/07/montreal-vi-joual-4-nicholas-1.html">Joual</a>.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-72015036544061962072010-01-11T19:55:00.002+11:002010-01-11T19:57:49.098+11:00NZ #16: An Australian's History of New ZealandAs I gaze across the grey waters of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wakatipu">Lake Wakatipu</a>, and the soggy car park in between, I think I wouldn't mind right now being in the 43°C weather of Melbourne. I'm wrong: I'd be cursing my lack of effective air conditioning; but I'm bummed out anyway at Nature's air conditioning here, of three days straight of rain.<br /><br />Ten days ago <a href="http://opuculuk.blogspot.com/2010/01/nz-7-musket-wars.html">I'd finished off</a> Michael King's <i>Penguin History of New Zealand</i>. The book has saved me from interacting with any locals to learn more about this place: I can do armchair tourism, with an <i>in situ</i> armchair. That may be dysfunctional—as dysfunctional as being bored in Queenstown, Adrenaline Capital Of The World. But then, if I was functional, I wouldn't be blogging while on holidays in the first place.<br /><br />So what did I learn from my reading?<br /><br />New Zealand in King's account has had contradictions in its history, contradictions that I don't know what to make of. It was a colony better to its indigenous people than the others; but that still made for paternalism and dismissal. It disengaged from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZUS">ANZUS alliance</a> after the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior"><i>Rainbow Warrior</i> bombing</a>; but before that its troops had been the foremost in the British Empire's wars. It was a laboratory of progressivism, introducing universal male suffrage, women's suffrage, and the machinery of the welfare state when they were still a gleam in the eye of European social-democrats. But it was also a drab monoculture, which punished people for being different. Gays were closeted and prosecuted decades longer than elsewhere; the meagre Chinese population was still large enough to provoke White New Zealand activism; and Wellington was not a safe place to speak Norwegian. <br /><br />Seriously, Norwegian. King tells the tale of a New Zealand poet as a child in the '20s, hanging on the straps with his father in a Wellington tram, and chatting in their native Norwegian. A stalwart of New Zealand monoculture goes up to the father, and punches him to the floor, yelling "Speak English, damn you!"<br /><br />Norwegian, of all things. But then, Australia was hardly better in the '20s.<br /><br />New Zealand is not that place any more. The controversy that greeted the new, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Kapa_O_Pango_controversy">slit-the-throat haka of the All Blacks</a> was greeted by a local sports columnist's chortle: anything that got the Poms that riled up had to be a good thing. The Kiwis have found their anti-Pom moxie, they can pronounce statements that are positively Australianesque in their contempt of the mother country.<br /><br />But it took Australia a long time to move away from the mother country, and it took New Zealand even longer. Australia at least had the leaven of convicts and the Irish, and some strands of republicanism articulated in the 1890s. It was a long national sleep after that, and through to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Menzies">Menzies'</a> last cry of loyalism; but there were still spots of autonomy: the hatred engendered by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodyline">Bodyline tests</a> in cricket; the national myth of egalitarianism and comradeship (things that were never British virtues); the realisation during World War II that Britain was not going to defend the Pacific, and Australian troops had more pressing terrain to defend than North Africa.<br /><br />Not so in New Zealand. Its laboratory of progressivism bought in to egalitarianism, and the attempt to reproduce English class structure in Canterbury did not prosper. And unlike Australia, sectarianism did not take hold here, even if the Anglican church had primacy (so much so, the Maori for Anglican is <i>Mihinare</i>: Missionary). New Zealand elected Catholics to be Premiers far earlier than elsewhere.<br /><br />But notwithstanding, the New Zealand experiment was articulated as an aspiration towards Better Britons. And in King's account, I didn't see any competing aspiration to be other-than-Britons, nor a defining date for putting together a new polity, like Australia had. The Australian Commonwealth can hoist its flag to 1901, when Federation was enacted—though in truth, Australia was not much less British afterwards than before. But in New Zealand, premiers changed into prime ministers imperceptibly in 1902: there was no landmark date as in Canada and Australia, to declare this was now a new country. <br /><br />The negotiations leading up to 1901 did make their own declaration, however: New Zealand ultimately declined to join the Australian federation. Whatever New Zealand was to be, it would not be run out of Melbourne. <br /><br />The United Kingdom gave New Zealand the legal grounds to be its own country with the 1931 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Westminster_1931">Statute of Westminster</a>, which granted its dominions (its white colonies) autonomy in foreign and domestic affairs, and made their parliaments the equal of London's. Australians don't commemorate 1931, and the last tie to British jurisprudence was severed only in 1986. Australia accepted the Statute, but only in 1942, when it was turning to the US for its defence. New Zealand refused to ratify the Statute until 1947. (Newfoundland became Canadian rather than be independent, in 1949.) And while the Japanese were bombing Darwin, and sending submarines to Sydney, New Zealand kept its troops in the European theatre.<br /><br />From my vantage point, in a post–British Empire world, I cannot comprehend that. At all. The closest I can come is to picture New Zealand as a bright and diligent student, more prudent and more with it than its elder, loutish brother—but refusing to move out of home, even after Mum had already arranged alternate accommodation.<br /><br />What figure of mid-century advertising kitsch does Australian nostalgia define itself as? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesty_Bond">Chesty Bond</a>, the ludicrously Aryan 1930s undergarment model? <br /><img src="http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/2936/chestybonduv4.jpg"/><br />Maybe not, but it was an archetype with a certain traction. Kiwiana kitsch is never far away from the <a href="http://www.mrfoursquare.co.nz/">Four Square Supermarket</a> cartoon. Perky, short, and very very 1950s. <br /><img src="http://kiwinana.cagorabiz.com/files/2009/12/Mr4Square.jpg"/><br />He gets reinvented in bookstore iconography as a Maori, as a bungee jumper, as a guitarist, as any of the current manifestations of New Zealand identity. He's beloved by the iconographers of this country, despite looking nothing like Chesty Bond. In fact, he looks kinda dorky. Kinda like that bright and diligent student not moving out of home.<br /><br />It speaks very well of a people when they choose Mr Four Square, instead of Chesty Bond, as the vehicle for their identities: dorks are far more interesting than larrikins. It speaks even better for that people, when they actively reinvent their vehicle, to convey how their identities have diversified. It says their identities have diversified, and that they recognise it, and that they still have an anchor or virtuous dorkiness. Chesty Bond is not so malleable.<br /><br />New Zealand is not the '50s Four Square Supermarket kind of country any more, of course, and its mascot has moved out of home: he's not such a dork, any more. New Zealand's nostalgia for Kiwiana still has a much more British tinge than the equivalent Australian assertions of identity, and they're nowhere near as strident or mythologised as Australia's nationalism has become. But New Zealand is its own country: it doesn't feel like England, and it doesn't feel like Australia. <br /><br />I still haven't worked out what makes it different, much more than when I was <a href="http://opuculuk.blogspot.com/2009/12/nz-2-wellington-not-written-in.html">sniffing the air in Cuba St</a> two weeks ago. I think part of the difficulty is that ultimately it's nowhere near as different from home as the UK or the US is. (Part of it too of course is my general obtuseness, and failing to actually talk to enough people.) The most I've worked out it, it's gentler and more subdued, it's quirkier and more ironic, it's more at home in the Pacific, and it's allowed the People of the Land a greater role in forming its identity.<br /><br />And as Younger Sibling countries everywhere, it defines itself against the Big Lug Next Door. I've been staying in tourist traps in tourist season, and introducing myself as being from Across The Ditch apologetically, the few times I have interacted with the locals. So I haven't given myself the chance to sample those definitions first-hand. I may have a few more resources now, though, to try those definitions out with the New Zealanders I know back home.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-26920852654189896652010-01-11T00:36:00.002+11:002010-01-11T00:51:30.205+11:00NZ #15: Queenstown, and HakaI was struck with awe—in fact, terror—when I pulled up at 6 PM to Queenstown, tourist haven of the South Island, to be greeted by a young man impersonating a moose in front of a moving bus. <br /><br />It wasn't Janet Frame's awe at the big smoke's granite and bustle. It's an altogether more dysfunctional awe, at a town full of people younger than me, noisier than me, and drunker than me.<br /><br />And that other business that twenty-year olds tend to get up to on holiday more than me; but this pretends to be a family-oriented blog. It doesn't particularly succeed at it, but I might spare you the psychosexual drama for this post anyway.<br /><br />The rains took care of the <i>élan vital</i> of the twenty-year olds, I daresay. The party crowds were in merry mood out and about last night; but Queenstown woke up soggy enough this morning for people to keep their party indoors.<br /><br />Queenstown is impossibly beautiful, even more postcard-bespoke than Akaroa: a comity of mountains and lake and trees right out of a Swiss chalet. There was gold here in the 19th century; but the area now lives on the tourist's dime alone, as the local taxi drivers assure me.<br /><br />And the tourists still come, both the lowly and the high. That makes it a less Slow News Day here than you'd expect for a place this size. The current headline in the local paper: Muammar Gaddafi's son was in town New Year's Eve, and wanted to party. <br /><br />The beat reporters were hot on the story, and somehow I suspect this isn't the biggest story they've had to track. They talked to the hoteliers who had to bump another booking for Gaddafi <i>fils</i> and his people. They talked to two of the dozen blondes sourced locally by Gaddafi <i>fils</i>' men to join in their festivities. ("No fat ones", the order specified.) The blondes reported that the visitors were gentlemen, their identities unknown, and they left the vistors after a couple of hours to rejoin their friends, who had not been invited to the party.<br /><br />I'm not speculating about their friends' weight or hair colour.<br /><br />The beat reporters got paparazzo shots of the man himself, watching performers doing a haka for him on the tarmac of Queenstown airport. A last minute whim, apparently: Gaddafi <i>fils</i> couldn't leave town without partaking of the local culture. Though not partaking *too* closely: as the bemused <a href="http://www.skyline.co.nz/queenstown/kiwihaka/"><i>Kiwi Haka</i></a> troupe told the beat reporter, they issued the traditional Pōwhiri challenge to the visitors, but did not drop the fern for the visiting headman to pick up, and prove his good intentions. The headman's security detail wasn't letting anyone get that close.<br /><br />All very odd. That wasn't the deal when Abel Tasman failed to acknowledge the local tribe's challenge. And there's the whiff of something unsavoury about Maori ritual performed on demand for visiting headmen.<br /><br />But New Zealand has a long tradition of that, whether the visiting headmen are from Libya or England, or tourists from Across The Ditch. No, of course it's not the same—the Treaty of Waitangi does mean something, after all. But it's convenient romanticism to say the troupes should stay virtuous and poor. The same happens Across The Ditch, when every culturally sensitive conference feels entitled to demand an Aboriginal Welcome To Country—and then are surprised the elders demand remuneration. <br /><br />But of course they should: it's not like the elders had invited the conference as their guests in the first place (or the 18 million other non-indigenous inhabitants). If the visitors are willing to buy what they're offering, who's to begrudge them asking a fair price?<br /><br />I don't have a wide standard of comparison for Maori cultural performers: I've only watched half an hour's worth on Maori TV, and the last three hotels I've been in don't carry Maori TV. But I went and saw Kiwi Haka perform tonight, and I was very impressed. The women's singing was excellent. (The men's doesn't have to be, because the men do more chanting and punctuating shouts.) The weapons display was instructive: if the Maori haven't already branched out into martial arts, they should. <br /><br />The banter was well worked through as well. I was startled at the matter-of-fact acknowledgement of after-battle cannibalism:<blockquote>"This blow separated the crown of the skull, allowing the warrior to feast on the brains. Mmm! ... But today, like everyone else, Maori prefer McDonalds and KFC."</blockquote>In a roundabout way, though, it speaks to the resurgence of Maori identity. The <i>mihinare</i>, the missionaries, successfully made the Maori abandon that kind of warfare, and (less successfully) sought to make them abandon the rituals and weapons to go with it. Noone would joke about cannibalism fifty years ago. The Maori now don't do what they did; but neither are they ashamed of their forebears that did. And if it unsettles the tourist, so much the better.<br /><br />But it was the Pōwhiri, the welcoming ritual, that transfixes. It was explained to us, but it still was alien and confounding: all in <i>te Reo</i>, threatening and solemn and aloof, the peace token of a fern thrown down and jabbed at for the visitor to pick up. The <i>karanga</i>, the call and response of women, from the two sides, only went on for a few seconds; but it too sounded like it was from another realm. Vaguely like Bulgarian polyphony.<br /><br />All of it is drastically abbreviated of course: no spears were thrown past the visitors, and we did not chase the spearmen or kneel on one knee grasping our muskets, as happened of old. The singers of the <i>karanga</i> were not past childrearing age, as used to happen back then—because an encounter between tribes could still go awry, and old women were deemed more expendable. We didn't exchange oratory or touch noses or feast together, as actually happens to this day in the marae. It wasn't a "real" pōwhiri—of course, we'd hardly earned one. <br /><br />And it's not authentic, in a narrow sense; but as I keep learning, that's not the kind of authenticity that matters. I'm not sure I got it right, but I gather the <i>poi</i> was traditionally the men's domain, and has become a women's dance for this kind of cultural exhibition. But if all Maoris growing up see women doing the <i>poi</i>, then that's what's real. <br /><br />Just as they've all been told Aotearoa is the Maori name of New Zealand, and not originally a less common name for just the North Island: it's the name of the whole country now, and that's the new authenticity. The old authenticity was that the very notion of the North and the South Island being the same country was a Pakeha notion, and got a Pakeha name, <i>Niu Tireni</i>. But that's an historical footnote, overtaken by new circumstances, and new constructions of nationhood.<br /><br />Kiwi Haka did also perform a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haka">haka</a>—they hardly couldn't. Though not *that* haka (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka_Mate"><i>Ka mate</i></a>, the one you all know from rugby); that haka is not welcome on the South Island, because of the devastations its composer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Rauparaha">Te Rauparaha</a> brought to the South Island in the Musket Wars. The haka has even more layers of authenticity wrapped around it, being the most emblematic feature of Maori culture, and appropriated by the Pakeha in ways of their own. <br /><br />The role of women in the haka is under contention, for example, and the historical evidence for or against is being conscripted to the debate. Tradition (in at least one construal) limited women in the haka to <i>pūkana</i>, dilating the eyes: glowering. But if the haka is a living tradition and not a museum piece, then it will reflect how Maori women fit into their culture now. And from what pūkana I've already seen, I don't see Maori women taking a back seat anyway.<br /><br />The souvenir shop had a book that went into several of these debates on authenticities of the haka, with good humour and encyclopaedic coverage. (Wira Gardiner. 2007. <a href="http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/haka-living-tradition-wira-gardiner.html"><i>Haka: A Living Tradition</i></a>. 2nd ed. Auckland: Hodder Moa.) Not everyone is as sanguine about reinventions of the haka: the All Blacks are notoriously touchy about their opponents not standing at reverent attention while the team <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haka_of_the_All_Blacks#.22Kapa_o_Pango.22_2005">gestures they'll slit their throats</a>. <br /><br />There's a haka Gardiner missed in his survey, which <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haka_of_the_All_Blacks#.22Tena_Koe_Kangaroo.22_1903">Wikipedia mentions</a>, and I'd love to see the return of: a 1903 challenge to my countrymen, from Across The Ditch.<br /><blockquote><table><tr><td>Tena koe, Kangaroo<td>How do you do, Kangaroo!<tr><td>Tupoto koe, Kangaroo!<td>You look out, Kangaroo!<tr><td>Niu Tireni tenei haere nei<td>New Zealand is invading you<tr><td>Au Au Aue a!<td>Woe woe woe to you!</table></blockquote><br />As you'll notice, in 1903, it wasn't yet Aotearoa. But Australia has indeed been successfully <a href="http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/kiwis-overseas/4">invaded by New Zealanders</a>. Including enough Maori to establish the <a href="http://maoriperformingartsaustralia.com/">Nga Kapa Taumata Teitei</a>, with a competition to judge performances nationally.<br /><br />They should give serious thought to that 1903 haka, I reckon.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-29330842053747495762010-01-10T08:52:00.001+11:002010-01-10T08:53:39.039+11:00NZ #14: DunedinThe rains caught me at Dunedin, and I didn't walk around much. Even if the rains hadn't caught me, I wouldn't have walked around much. Dunedin is the one New Zealand city that the Lonely Planet does not include a walking tour for, and there's good reason for that. Dunedin is absurdly hilly. I had pleaded hilliness hardship for Auckland; but Dunedin is hilly enough to claim a place in the Guinness Book of Records for Baldwin St, a residential street with a 1:1.286 incline. That's 52°. What's fearsome is, Baldwin St is only first among peers: there are plenty of other residential streets next to it, with only slightly less incline. And from a safe distance at the bottom of the hill, they look like nothing so much as concrete ski slopes, with cars precariously parked on them.<br /><br />I succumbed to going on a bus tour of the city: I scarcely had the option not to. The droll tour guide noted that the urban poor used to live on the bottom of the hill, and the rich on the hill inclines, with the commanding views of the city. As the bus wheezed its way up a 30° incline, I could not fathom why people would pay extra money to slide off the floor of their houses. Horses would have found those ascents even more challenging than motor vehicles did. <br /><br />Cable cars didn't; but like just about everywhere else in the world, Dunedin scrapped its cable car system long ago. God speed the enthusiasts trying to bring it back: it would get use.<br /><br />Inside a bus was a good place to be in Dunedin, both when the InterCity bus rocked up from Oamaru via Palmerston, and in the Town Belt of parkland around the city; because both times we got hit with hail. That's right, hail. In early January. In the *Southern* hemisphere. I have told my astonishment in Wellington at realising <i>42 Below</i> vodka meant 42°S. (That's actually Marlborough's latitude; Wellington is closer to 41°S.) But Dunedin is around 46°S. During the bus tour (in *early January*), the temperature dropped to 4°C. In Winter, they get to down –5°C. And this is a coastal city.<br /><br />As an Australian, whose coastal cities have never known snow, this just plain does not compute. It's like this is a different country or something.<br /><br />I'd like to report on how the North European weather here turns folk into hardy Southern Men, fearless and stoic. But I'll have to take the guidebooks' word for it: I'm not interacting with the locals as much as I should be, especially not while I'm being rained out.<br /><br />Dunedin is a college town: 20% of its inhabitants attend the University of Otago. This is said to give the city a liveliness and inventiveness out of proportion to a place of 110,000 people. But at least some of the students are home for the holidays, or rained out as well; so I didn't get to see that side of things. Bath St, next to the central Octagon, is meant to be the local funky café street, like Vulcan Lane and Cuba St and South of Lichfield elsewhere. Maybe it was unfair to survey Bath St on a rainy Saturday morning, but... nah. Bath St was thoroughly empty. And the time of day is no excuse.<br /><br />The bus tour went past many grand houses of Dunedin's affluent past, and the sprawling grounds of the university, at least somewhat visible through the rain. But on foot, all I had access to was the immediate surrounds of the Octagon, the central square of Dunedin. (Well, OK, the central regular geometric shape of Dunedin.) The central octagon hasn't worked out how to impress the tourists, like Cathedral Sq in Christchurch has: even the Tourist Centre has moved around the corner. <br /><br />But the north of the Octagon has its portion of monumental buildings. The place that was housing the Tourist Centre looks imposing enough to have been a General Post Office, but I can't confirm that from the tourist pamphlets. Next to it St Paul's Cathedral, angular and slender and striving towards heaven. And in front of them both, the testimonial of Dunedin's Scottishness, the statue of Robbie Burns, looking vaguely bored.<br /><br />There's something missing to the Octagon, though. Too many of the imposing buildings of Dunedin are not there, but are spread around Moray Place, the ring around the Octagon (which is truly octagonal in layout). That includes the Town Hall, the Courthouse, and the First Church. The placement of the First Church hints that the Octagon was an afterthought—though it can't have been, as everything converges on it. Dunedin was built to be a Presbyterian city, and was designed in Presbyterian Edinburgh; but its First Presbyterian Church is not the centrepiece: it is off to one side of Moray Place. St Paul's is not Presbyterian: Scottish Dunedin is presided over by an Anglican church.<br /><br />There's sure to be a rich story behind all that which I'm missing, and can't google at the moment. Thankfully, the two churches look cut from the same heavenward-striving cloth.<br /><br />The crown of Dunedin, though, is not St Pauls' and Robbie Burns, at the north side of the Octagon. The crown of Dunedin faces St Pauls' and Robbie Burns, down Stuart St, on the other side of the Octagon. The crown is not the Cadbury Chocolate factory—at least, not in my estimation, although it too faces St Pauls' and Robbie Burns, and Dunedin is certainly quite chuffed to have a centre of chocolate excellence downtown.<br /><br />I took the Cadbury tour, I'm embarrassed to admit. I am a chocolate snob, and while Cadbury is better than the horrors of U.S. chocolate ("Hershey's Kisses: Would you like some chocolate with your paraffin?"), it's no Lindt, and no Leonidas. The New Zealand specialties of Cadbury-coated marshmallow did nothing to change my opinion of the product. But Dunedin is credited with giving the world white chocolate. For that alone, they deserve a crown.<br /><br />But the crown I have in mind—and this cannot surprise anyone who's been to Dunedin—is Dunedin Railway Station, across the road from Cadbury's. A glorious assembly of Oamaru limestone and Dunedin volcanic stone and Edinburgh granite, of Dalton tiled walls and mosaic floors and and stained glass windows, depicting the Passion of Thomas The Tank Engine. The most photographed building in the southern... something or other, the locals proclaim, and it deserves to be.<br /><br />That's an instance of "the most X in the Southern Hemisphere" trope, btw, which the Lonely Planet derides. ("How do you measure such things?") It's a way for Australia or New Zealand to claim primacy in something, without looking too closely at, say, Argentina or South Africa. I hope Argentina and South Africa don't suffer from similar compulsions.<br /><br />Back when Dunedin was the financial capital of New Zealand, it raised temples to commerce like Oamaru did. Its temples did not limit themselves to limestone, so they are more dour than Oamaru's—befitting a city intended as a carbon copy of Edinburgh. The money left Dunedin for Auckland in the '50s, and the main source of income for Dunedin now is the University of Otago. The tour guide approvingly mentioned that the downturn resulted in more of the temples being spared the wrecker's ball than elsewhere: there was no call to build metal and glass replacements. But some temples did get levelled; looking around the Octagon, too many of them were in the centre of town.<br /><br />The Railway Station fell victim to that decline too; it narrowly missed levelling when the railways were sold off. Trains still depart the station, and they go a lot further than at Oamaru; but just as at Oamaru, they are tourist trains, not trains for freight or passengers. And the railway station now hosts art galleries, wedding receptions, and tourists with cameras. It doesn't look as forlorn as the warehouses at Oamaru harbour, but it still is not what it was.<br /><br />There is a plaque at the entranceway of Dunedin Railway Station, with a sentence from Janet Frame, the novelist from Oamaru. It is her recollection, in a 1982 novel, of her arrival at the station in 1945, the first time she came to a city. She was in awe and terror of the bustle of the station—which wasn't even as busy as it got when the cargo came in.<br /><br />I might have grown to like dour, wet Dunedin, and I was delighted by the station. But awe is not what I felt.<br /><br />Queenstown, where I am typing these lines with my poorest internet access to date, is an altogether different matter. And a quite different kind of awe...opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36592052.post-51639575407532287582010-01-08T12:31:00.002+11:002010-01-08T12:36:02.940+11:00NZ #13: OamaruOamaru is small and flat, like Nelson. But where Nelson is sunny and cheery, Oamaru is windy, with a chill that flies in out of the bowels of Antarctica. Where the tourists around Nelson are ambling hippies in broadshorts, the tourists around Oamaru wear layers of wool, and huddle. <br /><br />Where Nelson looks forward, past the decline of the timber trade, to a future of winemaking and tourism, Oamaru—also looks forward, to a future of tourism, but it's a tourism that trades on its past.<br /><br />Oamaru is where New Zealanders worked out how to refrigerate shipments of meat and dairy to Britain, and Oamaru boomed because of it in the 1880s. Oamaru celebrated its affluence in a binge of cream-coloured temples to capitalism, built from the limestone quarried here. It had enough limestone to spare for a couple of harbourside temples in Auckland as well.<br /><br />As a proudly Victorian town, Oamaru's streets are named for rivers in England; the main drag is of course Thames St, and its gaudiest temple, easily outshining its Christian churches, is the then Bank of New South Wales: a creamier, grander version of the Parthenon. The buildings where the wealth actually was generated, at the harbour, lack the Corinthian flourishes of the Thames St buildings; but they too are proud and cream-coloured and cavernous Places of Business.<br /><br />The harbour declined since, as many a harbour has; and unlike Nelson again, Oamaru is no longer a functioning port city: the harbour here closed in 1975. The harbour and its cavernous storehouses are now the Oamaru historical precinct, hosting tourists in a display of Victoriana. The building next to the restored steam railway even announces itself as Steampunk HQ. But the abandoned ironware beside it isn't gleaming enough for a steampunk novel.<br /><br />And "abandoned" is what the harbour precinct looks like. Certainly at night, when the only human habitation are the two pubs, well sealed off from the empty street running past them. But even in daytime, when the artisans and period photographers and bakers and souvenir stalls take up residence in the old Places of Business, they look dwarfed and out of place. Not all the warehouses are even half-occupied by artisans and stalls; and we are not sure what some of the warehouses were originally for. The cavernous warehouses are still in truth empty and abandoned, they are no longer Places of Business. <br /><br />Then again, the one warehouse that was still fulfilling its original purpose is a woolshed, and has the surprisingly familiar stench of sheep dung. That's the thing about nostalgia: the authenticity it yearns for didn't really smell as rosy.<br /><br />The New Zealand novelist Janet Frame, the Lonely Planet tells me, grew up here, and mythologised the town in her books. I haven't read her books and am unlikely to, but I wonder if her mythology was haunted by the cream-coloured and emptying temples to capitalism. Possibly not: she started publishing in the '50s, and Oamaru was still a functioning port then. But even when the temples were open for business, there must have been something otherworldy about them: a serene cream stone out of place in a small windswept dairy town.<br /><br />The old limestone quarry is where the cream stone came from: it too is now closed, and its red sheds serve only as the terminus of the restored Steampunk train. Just beyond it though is the visitor's centre for the other commodity Oamaru now trades in: the blue penguin colony.<br /><br />What New Zealanders term blue penguins, Victorians term fairy penguins, and I've already been to a viewing of fairy penguins on Philip Island. The penguins are just as adorable here: adorable enough to persevere with, as they hesitantly clamber onto land, shake off the water from their feathers, wait to gather enough numbers, and frantically waddle to their nests, a dozen at a time. <br /><br />We find them adorable, of course, because they are bipeds like us; such a colony involving arthropods would be a much harder sell to visiting tourists. Especially after sundown, in as windy a place as this, at the bottom of the globe.<br /><br />Well, not quite the bottom of the globe: I'm typing this on the Devil's Galley, just past Palmerston, on the way to Dunedin. Palmerston is a small Otago town, most famous for forcing the much larger Palmerston, on the North Island, to be renamed Palmerston North. The countryside here, like on the way down from Christchurch, is dotted with sheep and cows; but the grassland and trees are more lush here, the coloured less faded. Then again, I've been either faking sleep, or blogging while on the Devil's Galley, so my impressions of the landscape cannot be trusted.<br /><br />Next stop Dunedin. Where the rains finally catch up with me.opoudjishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02106433476518749382noreply@blogger.com0