Category Archives: Rock on-Peace Out

Quotations from Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton, Terebess Asia Online (TAO)

Being humble

If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his own skiff,

even though he be a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry.

But if he sees a man in the boat, he will shout at him to steer clear.

If the shout is not heard, he will shout again, and yet again, and begin cursing.

And all because there is somebody in the boat.

Yet if the boat were empty, he would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world,

no one will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you….

Who can free himself from achievement, and from fame, descend and be lost amid the masses of men?

He will flow like Tao, unseen, he will go about like Life itself with no name and no home.

Simple is he, without distinction. To all appearances he is a fool.

His steps leave no trace. He has no power. He achieves nothing, has no reputation.

Since he judges no one, no one judges him.

Such is the perfect man:

His boat is empty.

(20:2, 4, pp. 168-171)

via Quotations from Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton, Terebess Asia Online (TAO).

Research Center Bye bye baby boogie

:: Title :: Bye Bye Baby

:: Genre :: blues, boogie woogie

:: Performers & Instruments ::

Sanders, Robert (Yancey) [guitar]

Stewart, W. D. (Bama) [guitar, vocal]

:: Setting :: Camp B, Parchman Farm (Mississippi State Penitentiary)

:: Location :: Lambert (Quitman County), Mississippi (United States)

:: Language :: English

:: Culture :: Southern U.S., African American, Mississippi

:: Session :: Parchman 12/47

via Research Center.

Research Center – Vera Hall I’ll Fly Away

This session of recordings represents the only time that Vera Ward Hall left the state of Alabama. She was invited to New York by Alan Lomax to perform in the Fourth Annual Festival of Contemporary American Music at Columbia University in the City of New York, May 10th through May 16th, 1948, sponsored by the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University. Vera performed on Saturday, May 15th, 8:30pm, at the McMillin Theater. The concert was entitled Ballads, Hoe-Downs, Spirituals (White and Negro), and Blues, with performances by Texas Gladden, Hobart Smith, Jean Ritchie, Brownie Mcghee, Vera Hall, Dan Burley, Pete Seeger, and narrations by Alan Lomax. These recordings were made not at the concert, but during the remainder of Vera Hall?s stay in New York with Alan Lomax.

via Research Center.

Research Center Alan Lomax Folk Recordings Free 17,400.

The Sound Recordings catalog comprises over 17,400 digital audio files, beginning with Lomax’s first recordings onto (newly invented) tape in 1946 and tracing his career into the 1990s. In addition to a wide spectrum of musical performances from around the world, it includes stories, jokes, sermons, personal narratives, interviews conducted by Lomax and his associates, and unique ambient artifacts captured in transit from radio broadcasts, sometimes inadvertently, when Alan left the tape machine running. Not a single piece of recorded sound in Lomax’s audio archive has been omitted: meaning that microphone checks, partial performances, and false starts are also included.

This material from Alan Lomax’s independent archive, begun in 1946, which has been digitized and preserved by the Association for Cultural Equity, is distinct from the thousands of earlier recordings on acetate and aluminum discs he made from 1933 to 1942 under the auspices of the Library of Congress. This earlier collection — which includes the famous Jelly Roll Morton, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Muddy Waters sessions, as well as Lomax’s prodigious collections made in Haiti and Eastern Kentucky (1937) — is the provenance of the American Folklife Center at the Library. Attempts are being made, however, to digitize some of this rarer material, such as the Haitian recordings, and to make it available in the Sound Recordings catalog. Please check in periodically for updates.

via Research Center.

Death Penalty Focus : Pope Francis Condemns the Death Penalty

Capital punishment “is cruel, inhuman and degrading, as is the anxiety that precedes the moment of execution and the terrible wait between the sentence and the application of the punishment, a ‘torture’ which, in the name of a just process, usually lasts many years and, in awaiting death, leads to sickness and insanity.”

via Death Penalty Focus : Pope Francis Condemns the Death Penalty.