Martin Lubenov Orkestar

At the age of only 27 years, Martin Lubenov is already among the top Balkan-accordionists. Comparable to his famous colleague Peter Ralchev, Martin Lubenov very early found his own style. With breathtaking virtuosity and playful elegance he combines Balkan Roma music with shades of swing, modern jazz, tango nuevo, salsa and musette and, doing so, pays honour to it like Astor Piazzolla did to tango and Richard Galliano did to musette. In Vienna, his adopted hometown, he follows up this approach with his unorthodox Balkan quartet Orfej. With ideas for composition and arrangement prepared for a long time past, he returned to Sofia last autumn in order to form his “crack group”.
The Martin Lubenov Orkestar is recruited from the most famous Roma musicians in Bulgaria whose reputation partly well exceeds the Roma scene. Mainly thanks to bands from the north of Spain / the south of France like the Gypsy Kings the Roma songs’ unmistakable soul became world-famous. In the case of the Martin Lubenov Orkestar it never topples over to kitsch and complaisance – using weird arrangements full of experimental jazzlines, powerful brass sounds, marrying salsa to Balkan brass in an unpretentious way, with Lubenov’s frisky tango and gypsy-swing quotations as well as Nikolai Antov’s and Nenad Vasilic’s brilliant guitar- and bass-backings and soli.


Martin studied classical music and jazz in Sofia and Vienna. His roots in the vibrating ground of balkan wedding music kept him from becoming an “academic” musician. And fortunately his musical education helped him quite soon to outgrow popular music, to which a lot of Roma musicians on the Balkans are confined.
Five years ago Martin Lubenov moved to Vienna in order to study and soon became a link between the music of Yugoslav and Macedonian communities and the Central-European folk and world music scene. Fast his talent got around and numerous musicians and bands invited him to collaborate, like for example the Sandy Lopicic crkestar. In addition to this, he has been instrumentalist and arranger for the Jony Iliev Band in Bulgaria.

Floating Neutrino - First Scrap Raft to Cross the North Atlantic Ocean

If you see a large, funky raft made of scrap plywood and recycled styrofoam floating on the water don't be alarmed, it's only the Floating Neutrinos, originally a family of street musicians. In 1998 Floating Neutrinos have managed to cross the Atlantic in a raft made from recycled materials recovered from dumpsters and docks in New York city. Their next project is an Orphanage Raft, "for street orphans from third world countries such as Brazil, African countries, and India. The children will be those who are living in and surviving on the streets, with literally no one looking out for them or taking responsibility for them. We will get to know them and their situation thoroughly before they ever come to the raft. We are not looking to pick up runaways or anyone who has responsible adults in their picture...Once onboard, if they choose to stay, they will be given a floating, travelling home, and an education."

The Son of Town Hall

In the case of all the Neutrino rafts, they used mainly recycled wood, logs, styrofoam and polyurethane foam. Other floatables thy've used include empty plastic jugs and bottles, cork, and basically anything that floats. A Floating Neutrino raft is "self steering"and "self-righting" floating object. See the Faq section. And, yes - you can Join the Crew, too.

The World's 10 Worst Dictators

The past year was a good one for dictators -- unfortunately. None of the most serious offenders lost his job. Competition for the Top 10 Worst of the Worst was so heated that two dictators who made last year's list were nudged off -- Fidel Castro of Cuba and King Mswati III of Swaziland -- even though their actions were as harsh as the year before.

Sudan's Omar al-Bashir (shown here) jumped from #7 into first place.

Pavement Drawings

Julian Beever has made pavement drawings for over ten years. He has worked in the U.K., Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, the USA and Australia.
3D Illusion

KITKA - Women's vocal ensemble

Today i received two cd's from this group of good looking women equipped with extraordinary beautiful vocals. Libra Radio's policy for such cases is gratefulness and as we would love to do something in return for generosity, there is going to happen our DAY OF THE MUSICIAN, this time dedicated to KITKA Women's vocal ensemble. Starting today at 19.00 Central European time.

Kitka is a professional women’s vocal ensemble dedicated to producing concerts, recordings, and educational programs that develop new audiences for music rooted in Eastern European women’s vocal traditions.

Kitka
Now approaching its 25th Anniversary season, Kitka was founded in 1979 as an offshoot of the Westwind International Folk Ensemble. Kitka began as a grassroots group of amateur singers from diverse ethnic and musical backgrounds who met regularly to share their passion for the stunning dissonances, asymmetric rhythms, intricate ornamentation, lush harmonies, and resonant strength of Eastern European women’s vocal music. Under the artistic direction of vocalist, composer, and conductor Bon Brown Singer from 1981 to 1996, Kitka blossomed into a refined professional ensemble earning international renown for its artistry, versatility, and mastery of the demanding techniques of Balkan and Slavic vocal styling.
Many of Kitka’s singers create original choral arrangements of folkloric material that they have gathered in the field. These works add a unique contemporary sensibility —distilled from centuries-old vocal traditions—to KITKA’s concert presentations. In addition, in the last four seasons, the group has presented premieres of new music by nineteen Eastern European, American, and international composers as part of the New Folksongs Commissioning Project.
In addition to live performances, KITKA’s voices reach a large broadcast audience through local and national radio appearances. The ensemble has been featured on a variety of nationally syndicated radio programs. A frequently occurring symbolic word in Balkan women’s folksong lyrics, "Kitka" means "bouquet" in Bulgarian and Macedonian.
From today also at Libra Radio.
Thank you for the music, KITKA!

Milton Glaser: 10 Things I Have Learned

Designer Milton Glaser presented a speech titled "10 Things I have Learned" at the AIGA Voice Conference in 2002. The things he talked about apply to anyone, not just designers.

Number 2: IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB.
One night I was sitting in my car outside Columbia University where my wife Shirley was studying Anthropology. While I was waiting I was listening to the radio and heard an interviewer ask ‘Now that you have reached 75 have you any advice for our audience about how to prepare for your old age?’ An irritated voice said ‘Why is everyone asking me about old age these days?’ I recognised the voice as John Cage. I am sure that many of you know who he was – the composer and philosopher who influenced people like Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham as well as the music world in general. I knew him slightly and admired his contribution to our times. ‘You know, I do know how to prepare for old age’ he said. ‘Never have a job, because if you have a job someday someone will take it away from you and then you will be unprepared for your old age. For me, it has always been the same every since the age of 12. I wake up in the morning and I try to figure out how am I going to put bread on the table today? It is the same at 75, I wake up every morning and I think how am I going to put bread on the table today? I am exceeding well prepared for my old age’ he said.

Melanie Gould-Iditarod Dog Musher

Dear Friends, Family, and Dog Lovers,

As my team and I prepare for our 5th Iditarod Race, I’ve been thinking about why I’m driven to mush 1200 miles through the Alaskan Wilderness once again. I find myself in constant pursuit of truth and understanding, trying to figure out how I fit into a changing world. It seems that as society progresses, we have gradually left behind the natural order of things. On a global level, we have trouble recognizing our simple commonality as human beings. The thing is, while we focus on our differences, our basic needs remain the same. Throughout time, the goals of basic survival and some kind of inner peace have been superseded by our attachment to power and material possessions. And so we forget the symbiotic relation between nature and man. That’s why I mush to Nome; I don’t want to forget…


iditarod

James Nachtwey Photos

Very powerful photography from James Nachtwey. This shot was taken in South Africa, 1992 - Xhosa young men in rite of passage.

Great Bulat Okudzhava (1924 - 1997)

Bulat Okudjava was born in 1924 in Moscow. Graduated the Tbilisi (Georgia) State University Philological Department in 1950. One of the founders of the Russian artist's song genre. Wrote his first well known song in 1946. Bulat Okudzhava died on June 12, 1997 in Paris. He renowned Russian poet-bard, has written four historical novels since the 1960s: Bednyi Avrosimov (1969), Pokhozhdeniia Shipova (1971), Puteshestvie diletantov (1977), and Svidanie s Bonapartom (1983). All four novels in their historical settings allegorically reflect the tense political climate of the Soviet Union, specifically in terms of the liberal intelligentsia. The first two novels, Bednyi Avrosimov and Pokhozhdeniia Shipova, are of particular interest when examined together. What makes the novels especially interesting, and the interpretation of a political allegory of the tense climate of the Soviet Union of the 1960s so fruitful, is this filtration of historic subjects through phantasmagoric imagery.

His father, a high Communist Party member from Georgia, was arrested during the Great Purge by Stalin and executed as a German spy. His mother spent 18 years in a Gulag (1937-1955), years that Bulat spent at his grandmother's house.

In 1941, at the age of 17, he volunteered for the Red Army as infantry. This background with war and the government persecution was a primary influence for his poetry and songs, especially at this early stage. Such poetry was illegal at the time, and Okudjava was at great risk of persecution.
Okudjava started the bard movement when he decided to start singing his poems while playing the guitar. Despite the fact that he only knew a few chords and was no composer, his songs were praised by his friends and were soon recorded. They spread across the country where other young people picked up guitars and started singing them.

He once said:"' Once I had the desire to accompany one of my satirical verses with music. I only knew three cords, now, 27 years later , I know seven cords, then I knew three. I sang, my friends liked it, and I liked it. Then I sang a second poem and a third... Tape recorders have just come out then. I sang to my friends, and recorded it , then someone else made a copy of that recording, it started going around... Every evening I would get a call from someone inviting me to a house I've never visited before, and that is how I went around Moscow for a year, singing. Gradually a scandal began. The compositors hated me. The singers detested me. The guitarists were terrified by me. And that is how it went on, until a very well known poet of ours announced: "Calm down, these are not songs. This is just another way of presenting poetry." And everyone has indeed calmed down. Everyone went about their own business... Eventually I matured, eventually I grew old... Why don't I just sing you a song - that first one... Just for keepsake...You'll remember it later..."Why did you bother Vanka Morozov? It wasn't his fault..."
In the later years journalists have asked Okudzhava, as if he were a prophet: "Say, what is the meaning of life? " But he simply did not talk about it."
You can hear a lot of his songs at our Libra Radio.
35 translated songs
lyrics in Russian
lyrics in text format with chords
Russian lyrics and English translations