Here is a video of a people from Iran called Loris. They live in a place in Iran called Lorestan. They speak a language or languages closely related to Persian and one of the Kurdish languages. Apparently they are genetically related to both the Persians and Kurds.
There are some very interesting phenotypes in these men, though the hairdos seem like they are out of the 1970′s. The guys are dancing with each other, but that’s apparently their culture. As long as the guys don’t queer around with each other, I have nothing against men of other cultures showing physical affection, holding hands, dancing, whatever.
Some of these men look very standard European. Others look like Greeks. Still others have very interesting phenotypes that may be from the Caucasus. Others look like Gypsies. I was sent this video by a Lori friend of mine who refuses the “White” designation for some reason. He aid that his people, the Loris, are pure Aryan Iranids, with “no mountain nigger” in them. LOL, what’s “mountain nigger” in an Iranian context? What a funny term.
The music is interesting. I have heard some Pakistani music that sounds like this, and a lot of Punjabi music sounds like this.
This interesting music video is full of cameos by many of the world’s most famous rock stars and movie stars. See how many you can identify. I will start in the Comments section.
From the video: “Well, you know, Johnny always wore black. He wore black because he identified with the poor…and the downtrodden.”
Great cover of the Gordon Lightfoot song by Johnny Cash. The pain in his voice in these late covers is something to behold. I always liked the Lightfoot song, but Cash’s cover is something special. They are both great but in somewhat different ways.
My father could use a little mercy now
The fruits of his labor
Fall and rot slowly on the ground
His work is almost over
It won’t be long, and he won’t be around
I love my father, and he could use some mercy now
My brother could use a little mercy now
He’s a stranger to freedom
He’s shackled to his fears and doubts
The pain that he lives in is
Almost more than living will allow
I love my brother, and he could use some mercy now
My church and my country could use a little mercy now
As they sink into a poisoned pit
That’s going to take forever to climb out
They carry the weight of the faithful
Who follow them down
I love my church and country, and they could use some mercy now
Every living thing could use a little mercy now
Only the hand of grace can end the race
Towards another mushroom cloud
People in power, well
They’ll do anything to keep their crown
I love life, and life itself could use some mercy now
Yeah, we all could use a little mercy now
I know we don’t deserve it
But we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance
Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Let’s face it, the best folk music has always been leftwing. So has bluegrass. They’re both the music of the poor, the music of the people, both of which can never be anything but the music of the Left. Country music ought to be the music of the Left too, but for some odd reason, it’s the music of the Right.
It’s quite a romantic image, even though there wasn’t anything romantic about much of his life. He is known mainly for being a songwriter – particularly for This Land is Your Land – and for being a Communist sympathizer, the worst badge you could wear in this country next to “Communist.” Some of you may have seen photographs of him on stage, his guitar sporting a label that read, “This Machine Kills Fascists.”
He began his career performing traditional music on the radio in Los Angeles. The way he ended up in California was the same way many of his fellow Oklahomans had – escaping the Dust Bowl. These “Okie” migrants were the object of a lot of resentment and sometimes abuse from California locals.
Woody Guthrie’s music found a ready audience among California Okies. It was during his time in radio that he began writing protest songs, one of which got the attention of a newscaster named Ed Robbin. He brought Guthrie into contact with some of the socialists and communists in Southern California.
Although never a member of the Communist Party, Guthrie wrote a column for The Daily Worker, ensuring his status as a fellow traveler. Success found him, but his lifelong fondness for being on the road and his discomfort with the entertainment business kept his life unstable. But his legacy is intact: the outsider giving a voice to all the other outsiders looking in on the American dream.
The Woody Guthrie song I love the most is a protest song not against injustice or fascism but against grown-up seriousness. It’s about one of my favorite things to do as a child and even now – going for a ride in the car.
Really, is there anything better than homicidal music? I don’t mean better than anything. Of course homicide itself is way more fun than just listening to songs about it, but unfortunately, most of us lead sheltered lives and can’t let our darkest fantasies run wild.
This is a great song, “If I Had a Gun” by a great new singer. Her name is Diana Jones, and she’s 45 years old. She has an interesting history. She was adopted and never knew her real parents. Moved around the Northeast a lot as a kid, ran away from home at 15 and lived on the streets for a while, then to dead-end jobs, and finally she got accepted at a major university.
She got a degree, then went into an MFA program at another university. Later she wandered around Europe, the whole time painting and playing folk songs trying to sound like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.
Around 10 years ago, she decided to look up her birth parents. It was hard to do, but she finally found them in Tennessee. She went to visit them, and there they were, people who looked just like her, mountain people. Her grandfather took her to Great Smoky Mountains National Park where they have a redone old village.
There they bought an Alan Lomax album. Alan Lomax was an interesting guy. He was a professor at a university, a musicologist who wandered around recording “forgotten music,” especially folk music.
They were listening to the songs, called mountain music, on the way home, and to her surprise, her grandfather knew them all. Turns out he had been a mountain music musician. That got her interested in the genre, and she has been recording mountain music ever since. The phrase mountain music is hardly known, but this type of music is better known as “old-time music.”
This is is the original American folk music.
It goes back to the early 1800′s and possibly even prior. Its roots were generally in English, Scottish and Irish folk music, and you can hear some of that in this song. The banjo is an essential instrument in this genre, and it has an interesting history in the US.
Most of us think that the Black contribution to US music began at the latest in the early 1900′s with Ragtime. Not the case. The banjo in the US was originally a Black instrument, modeled after some sort of an instrument used in Africa.
In Appalachia, Black musicians introduced the banjo in the early 1800′s. There are not many Blacks in Appalachia now, but there were more back then. There were few if any slaves there, even though most of the Appalachian states were slave states. In the Appalachian parts of these states, there was no use for Black slaves.
Many Black slave runaways probably ended up there after taking off from plantations in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. Once you got into the mountains, probably nobody was going to find you anyway, and the mountain folk didn’t care about runaway slaves. These areas were very isolated. Many people never left their small Appalachian town in their lives, and most outsiders never went there.
Old-time music was biggest in Appalachia, but it was also present elsewhere, such as in New England, the Midwest, the South and the West. Since these other areas were less isolated, old-time music tended to go out as people were exposed to newer styles, but the remoteness of Appalachia allowed the music to continue on into the 20th Century relatively unchanged.
Old-time music is folk music, but it is not country or bluegrass music. But! Both country music and bluegrass music came out of old-time music. What’s fascinating is that we never think of all the all-White, redneck country and bluegrass music as being even remotely Black-influenced, but if they both came out of Black-influenced old-time music, there is even Black influence in the Whitest of American music.
I’m not too wild about folk proper, and a lot of bluegrass leaves me cold, but this song is killer! I’ve never heard a woman write a song about murdering her abusive husband before – what a great topic!
Further, it’s an excellent rejoinder to “Hey Joe,” the great song by Jimi Hendrix.
Another great homicidal song is “Violence” by Mott the Hoople. Mott was only one of the greatest rock bands of all time, but almost no one has heard of them these days. They were a pretty big underground band in the 1970′s, and their albums Mott and The Hoople were pretty big hits, but then they broke up. Ian Hunter later went solo.
Viiiii-o-lence, viiiii-o-lence, it’s the only thing that’ll make you see sense!
Well, of course. Once you’ve experienced violence up close and personal, you will respect if for the rest of your life. That’s how it makes you see sense.
I’m a missing link, poolroom stink, I can’t talk
(Well that’s too bad)
What’s going on, something’s wrong, I can’t work
Can’t go to school, the teacher’s a fool, the preacher’s a jerk
(Well that’s such a drag)
Got nothing to do, street-corner blues, and nowhere to walk
Violence, violence
It’s the only thing that’ll make you see sense
Gotta fight, nothing’s right, livin’ nowhere
(That’s so sad)
Watch out for the gun, snake on the run, hide in my hair
You keep your mouth shut, or you’ll get cut. Haha – I like to scare
(Bet you’re so mad)
I’m a battery louse, a superstar mouse, I don’t care
Get off my back or I’ll attack, ‘n I don’t owe you nothin’ (OK)
Head for your hole, you’re sick and you’re old
‘N I’m here to tell you something
Violence, violence
It’s the only thing that’ll make you see sense
From the punk era, there was “Homicide” by 999. Great song!
I believe…in homicide!
Resign to it…
Yo!
Sorry for this morbid post, but I was in a killer mood tonite and I could not resist.
A truly great video of Bruce Springsteen doing one of the greatest (or as Springsteen says, the greatest) songs about America ever written, This Land is Your Land. No matter what you think of Springsteen, I think you have to admit that this is one Hell of a killer rendition. I like it better than Guthrie’s original and a lot of the folkie renditions by Pete Seeger, Alto Guthrie and others.
The song was written by Leftist (Communist, really) Woody Guthrie in February 1940. This is one of those songs that really captures the essence of what America is really all about.
It’s a song that all real Americans, that means not only Whites but Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and any other assimilated groups, should embrace. If you can’t embrace this song because your heart is still stuck in Calcutta or Tijuana or Guatemala City or San Salvador or wherever, you’re not assimilated. That’s all there is to it.
Springsteen’s albums, especially from the 1980′s, really hearken back to a working class White American heartland that seems to be dead and gone.
Driving through California towns that have been turned by the 100′s into Tijuana or San Salvador, the last thing I want to sing is This Land is Your Land. If there was another version called This Land is Not Your Land, I would sing that instead. Increasingly, this feels like elegiac requiem from an America gone and never to return. Oh well, we still have memories, some of us do anyway.
It’s a beautiful song anyway, and it’s actually a very leftwing song (hardly anyone ever seems to recognize this), especially the “forgotten lyrics”, one stanza of which Springsteen revives for this rendition. Most Americans have never heard of the “forgotten stanzas” since they are never sung in the version taught to schoolkids.
Most people have not analyzed this song very well. In order to do so, you need to understand Guthrie’s life, for the song is actually autobiographical. It was written during WW2, but it is about events that took place 9 years earlier when he was 19 years old. Guthrie left Texas in the midst of the Dust Bowl that laid millions of acres of prime farmland to waste.
The refugees moved West to California, in particular the Central Valley farming region, where they became known as the “Okies.” There are still many White descendants of these Okies here in the Central Valley where I live. They are sort of “redneck” and working class, but I don’t mind them that much.
There is one that lives in my apartment complex and at first I did not like him too much. I complained to a Black female friend about him, and she said, “Oh, he’s an Okie! They’re worse than niggers!“
The movement of Okies to the Central Valley was not an easy one and it was memorialized for all time in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck is one of the all-time great California writers and Grapes is a fantastic American novel.
It was also made into a film but I never checked it out. But check out the book Grapes if you ever get a chance. Steinbeck also wrote some other acclaimed books, but I forget if I read them or not. They all dealt with California.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
This stanza is simply a paean to America and in particular its natural beauty.
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.
This stanza is about Guthrie and his young wife heading out from Oklahoma to California along the famous Highway 66, a great American highway long memorialized in many folk, country, country-rock, rockabilly, etc. songs. The golden valley was California’s Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions on Earth.
I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.
This stanza is again about the trek from Oklahoma to California. The “sparkling sands of her diamond deserts” refers to the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona that the highway passes through.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.
This part is a little hard to understand. “…The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling” must refer to the wheat fields of Oklahoma and the dust clouds of the Dust Bowl. But this line, “A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting” must refer to California. There’s a lot of fog in the Central Valley of California, and there is not much fog in Oklahoma, unless maybe you are near a lake.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
This is one of the famous “missing stanzas” that (with variations) is not often played, but sometimes it is, especially by the folkies. This is obviously a Commie dig at private property rights in the US. Such rights were particularly belligerently enforced in 1930′s America, when labor and environmental laws basically did not even exist.
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
This stanza is almost never heard, but it sounds pretty nice. The second half of it below is a lot more common.
In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I’d seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?
This is a very radical verse, apparently referring to the relief offices patronized by the Okies in Depression-era California. It’s interesting that almost no Americans have ever heard of these lines. This stanza is played by Springsteen, to his credit, above.
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