Black birds break the stillness with a rackety bray, and the wind squalls through the timbers with a chilling drone… It emanates from deep within the woods. Some say it’s the sound of cicadas, but everyone knows they sing in the key of C#. After checking on my harmonica, I put this somewhere between B […]
Author Archives: jonathaneennewton
We are very bad at scale. The things that live in the soil are too small to care about; climate change too large to imagine. We are bad at time, too. We cannot remember what lived here before we did; we cannot love what is not. Nor can we imagine what will be different when […]
After two-and-a-half years of work we’ve launched the official website for the Irv Teibel Archive.
Hey, it’s been a while. I recorded some weird cello improvisations. Here they are.
What appeals to us in being near to nature is nature’s music, and nature’s music is more perfect than that of art. It gives us a sense of exaltation to be moving about in the woods, to be looking at the green, to be standing neat the running water which has it’s rhythm, its tone […]
I’m looking forward to this documentary on Minnesota naturalist Sigurd F. Olson. I discovered his work through two beautiful editions of his books The Singing Wilderness (1956) and Listening Point (1958). Olson writes elegantly about nature without romanticizing it–not an easy task!
I recently came across two films worth mentioning here. Transes follows the Moroccan group Nass el Ghiwane during a tour in the early 1980s. Nass performs Moraccan chaabi music influenced by the heavily hypnotic Gnawa genre, hence the titular “trances.” They play with the frenetic energy of early Stones to their rapturous crowds. Director Ahmed El Maanouni captures spectacular live performances […]
