The Fredösphere

A new angle found by SciFi Scanner, and a perfect topic for the Fredösphere:  Ancient Christian Paintings Give Evidence of Space Alien Visitation.  It sounded kooky, but then I saw the painting first cited:  The Baptism of Christ by Aert de Gelder.  I'm not sure who, but somebody's phoning home in that painting.

Meanwhile...

My son is enjoying a Boychoir retreat this week, and I was privileged to observe a special educational demonstration given to the boys by John Churchville, a local expert in classical Indian drumming.  It's amazing what just one hour of explanation can do to greatly increase one's appreciation of an art form.  Hey, here's an idea:  we could introduce music education into the public schools and effect an explosion in classical music interest among the general population!

Anyway, John's demo was info-packed and conducted with grace, even when the boys in the front row fidgeted or experienced gastric indiscretions thanks to the meal of tacos and refried beans consumed just minutes before.  Oh, and then there was the "please back up; I can feel your breath on the back of my hands" moment.

John showed us a video of his teacher, pandit (i.e., pundit, sort of like the Indian equivalent of a Ph.D.) Swapan Chaudhuri.  I found the following video which seems to be the clearest picture of the master employing the one-handed roll characteristic of his region's style of drumming.  See it for the first time at about 1' 30"; in most videos the hand moves too fast to see that he's flapping the right hand in a left-to-right movement, using the thumb and forefinger as one "drumstick" and the other three fingers as the other. 



Am I the only person who sees a bit of Harlan Ellison in Chaudhuri's face and posture?

Boychoir conductor Tom Strode mentioned the influence of Indian Music upon Olivier Messiaen.  If only Messiaen had Youtube, think of how much more he could have achieved!  Although, in that case, we may have had the Messiaenification of the following--which is too disturbing to contemplate!

Labels: Culture, Religion, Renaissance, sci-fi, VideoClip