Blown Away On Christmas Day

Coro y Orq. Via Magna. Beethoven. Misa en Do M. Gloria

Kwela and the Pennywhistle

Image Credit: Unknown
Kwela is a happy, often pennywhistle-based, street music from southern Africa with jazzy underpinnings and a distinctive, skiffle-like beat. It evolved from the marabi sound and brought South African music to international prominence in the 1950s.

The music has its roots in southern Africa but later adaptations of this and many other African folk idioms have permeated Western music (listen to Graceland by Paul Simon) and give modern South African music, particularly jazz, much of its distinctive sound and lilting swagger.


Image Credit: Tretchikoff
One reason for the use of the pennywhistle is that it is cheap and portable, but it also lends itself as a solo or an ensemble instrument.

The popularity of the pennywhistle may have been based on the fact that flutes of different kinds have long been traditional instruments among the peoples of the more northerly parts of South Africa, and the pennywhistle thus enabled the swift adaptation of folk tunes into the new marabi-influenced music.


Image Credit: Unknown
I remember, as a kid in the early 60's, being entranced by Kwela buskers playing on the streets of mid-town Johannesburg - the groups usually consisted of three people; a pennywhistler, an acoustic guitarist and a bassist playing a bass constructed from an old upturned tea-box which had only one string ...

Here's an example of the Kwela and the pennywhistle by Spokes Mashiyane:


I hope it makes your day a little brighter ... :)

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Mango Groove - Southern Sky

Mango Groove - Southern Sky



I want to be with you under a Southern Sky
Feel the earth move as I see you walking by
I want to take you to the moon and back tonight
Sleep with angels in the shelter of a perfect Southern Sky
In the stillness and forgiveness of a perfect Southern Sky
This song makes my eyes all watery - I must be getting soft in my old-age ... :)


Image Credits: UnknownMango Groove is an 11 piece Afropop group formed in 1983 in Johannesburg, South Africa and fronted by lead singer Claire Johnston.

Here's something more upbeat from them if you feel like getting your feet moving ... Dance Sum More:


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Pentangle - Light Flight

Pentangle
Light Flight
Let's get away, you say, find a better place,
Miles and miles away from the city's race,
Look around for someone lying in the sunshine
Marking time, hear the sighs, close your eyes...


My favorite track from one of my favorite albums. There are a few live versions on YouTube but I chose this one because the sound quality is better.

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Are You Experienced?

Credit: John Dominis./Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Get In Where You Fit In

A scruffy young man perches with his guitar.

At Woodstock, wrote LIFE, the hippies created "dwellings of every description - geodosic domes covered with plastic, tepees, lean-tos tossed together with dead branches and straps of clothing, and even a tree house."


I was growing up in an ultra-conservative South Africa at the time, where longhairs were vilified and sometimes beaten-up and their heads shaved ... we were envious of the perceived 'freedoms' that Americans and Europeans enjoyed.

When the movie arrived, many went to see it tripping ... Freaks would defiantly light-up joints during the show ...

... but, when you cut through all the hype - wherever you were in the world then, whether you did drugs or not, the thread that bound us together was the MUSIC ... it still binds us today ...

Music is our common shared Experience.






If you can just get your mind together
Uh-then come on across to me
We'll hold hands and then we'll watch the sunrise
From the bottom of the sea
But first, are you experienced?

Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful

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