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Music

The Meaning of the Village

The answer is simple, really—so obvious that the harder you look for it, the more you work the problem, the easier it is for it to pass by unnoticed, hiding in plain sight. In the midst of a country that labels and commodifies every banal feeling and notion and sells it as culture, it is common to overlook the fact that music, every moment of intentional sound and listening, has meaning

SILENT MUSIC:
Craig Shepard’s “On Foot: Brooklyn” Project

When asked to describe his music, composer and musician Craig Shepard often answers with this question: “Have you ever heard snow falling outside at night?”

Bond’s Last Bandstand

It was a busy weekend for Mx Justin Vivian Bond. Saturday afternoon, like most well-read queers, Mx Bond was shuffling about the Center on West 13 Street.

EARLY MUSIC: That Other Music Revival

Today New York has a flourishing early-music scene, but just 60 years ago that was not the case.

MIRACULOUS AGITATION
Scroungings Toward a New Acoustic Synthesis

In an age when so much experimental music is concerned with seizing upon exciting new effects of appropriate novelty and timelessness, it is heartening to hear the old “infinite world of the real” occasionally proffering impressive acoustic gurgles of its own, often in the dirtiest of places.

Outtakes

To continue with the subject of rock lit (see my April article): There were all these young poets/singer-songwriters who worked at the old Knitting Factory on Houston Street in the ’80s, many of whom eventually went on to achieve stardom.

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The Brooklyn Rail

MAY 2012

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