{"id":49615,"date":"2016-04-10T19:20:59","date_gmt":"2016-04-10T19:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=49615"},"modified":"2016-04-10T19:22:08","modified_gmt":"2016-04-10T19:22:08","slug":"of-blood-and-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=49615","title":{"rendered":"Of blood and song"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; what carves memory? blood is spilled, song carries grief and anger across centuries ]<br \/>\n,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yaS3vaNUYgs\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One hundred years ago, Irish blood was spilled in the <strong>Easter Uprising of 1916<\/strong>, as <strong>Sin\u00e9ad O&#8217;Connor &#038; The Chieftains<\/strong> call us to remember in The Foggy Dew:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As down the glen one Easter morn to a city fair rode I<br \/>\nThere armed lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by<br \/>\nNo pipe did hum no battle drum did sound it&#8217;s loud tattoo<br \/>\nBut the Angelus bell o&#8217;er the Liffey swell rang out through the foggy dew<\/p>\n<p>The bravest fell, and the Requiem bell rang mournfully and clear<br \/>\nFor those who died that Easter-tide in the spring of the year<br \/>\nWhile the world did gaze in deep amaze at those fearless men but few<br \/>\nWho bore the fight that freedom&#8217;s light might shine through the foggy dew\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While some may see in the Uprising a merely political fight, in song the religious element &#8212; Easter morn, the Angelus bell, the Requiem bell &#8212; add Catholic poignancy to memory.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>One hundred years.  <\/p>\n<p>Memory can linger long past a hundred years, as we in our rush to be the first into the future may forget. Let the <strong>Chieftains<\/strong> again remind us, with <strong>O&#8217;Sullivan&#8217;s March<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yvDtHbPcsXU\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Donal Cam O&#8217;Sullivan Beare<\/strong> marched in 1602 &#8212; as <strong>Shakespeare<\/strong> was penning <strong>All&#8217;s Well That Ends Well<\/strong> and <strong>Othello<\/strong>?<\/p>\n<p>A doff of the cap is due here to blog-friend <strong>Pundita <\/strong>, who pointed me in the direction of this post with her own <a href=\"http:\/\/pundita.blogspot.com\/2016\/04\/dont-ask-why-because-i-dont-know.html\">Don&#8217;t ask me why, because..<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Ah, but <strong>Pundita<\/strong> also deerves a bow for her most recent post, <a href=\"http:\/\/pundita.blogspot.com\/2016\/04\/can-griots-lead-us-home-whereupuon-we.html\">Can the griots lead us home?<\/a> &#8212; wherein she pointed me to a music of great joy, that of <strong>Oumou Sangar\u00e9<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>If you watch enough videos of Oumou singing (there must be a zillion of them posted to YouTube) you&#8217;ll see that in many of her performances she has a highly conversational way of singing. You feel as if she&#8217;s talking directly to you. Sometimes it&#8217;s as if she&#8217;s talking to you in the manner of a defense attorney making an argument to a judge; others as if she&#8217;s chatting about something over lunch with you.  <\/p>\n<p>Here is a hunting song:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/L0_b9-u2D5A\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Pundita notes:   <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I think the ability to set up a very personal communication through song is the mark of a real griot, although after watching about 50 of her videos I think Oumou represents a tradition that I suspect goes back much earlier even than the griot clans &#8212; to a time when certain people in a tribe were interlocutors between humans and natural forces and helped settle disputes between members of tribes, and did so through the power of their voices to project a wide range of emotions. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Mali, at a time of violent upheaval &#8212; yet such joy in dance and song:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1UHGwJN1548\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>We have statistics for which nations suffer the most losses in war and terror, which export the most weapons, which nations invade, and which are invaded &#8212; but what of joy?<\/p>\n<p>Years ago, in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Thank-God-its-Monday-Satisfaction\/dp\/0852235798\">a book that sank like a stone<\/a>, I suggested the concept of a <strong>Subtle National Product<\/strong>. King Jigme Singye Wangchuck of Bhutan apparently beat me to it, when he declared in the 1970s:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>His Majesty came up with the idea first, I now see and gladly admit &#8212; but I still prefer my own pohrasing!<\/p>\n<p>Joy, it seems to me, isn;t easily quantified, although Bhutan does have an Index:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Bhiutan-Gross-Natiuonal-Happiness.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-49628\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Bhiutan-Gross-Natiuonal-Happiness.png\" alt=\"Bhiutan Gross Natiuonal Happiness\" width=\"600\" height=\"355\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-49628\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Bhiutan-Gross-Natiuonal-Happiness.png 600w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Bhiutan-Gross-Natiuonal-Happiness-300x178.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here are some conparative stats across nations, ethnicities and faiths I&#8217;d be interested in:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li>deaths in warfare, civilian, irregular, and military\n<li>numbers of children pressed into war\n<li>numbers of those maimed, displaced and or grossly mentally disturbed by war\n<li>depth of grief, as meaaured in forms of keening and ululation\n<li>degree of exuberance, as found in music and dance, popular and professional\n<li>ritual solemnity and grandeur, on religious and state occasions\n<li>quantity of written poetry bought or borrowed from libraries\n<li>size of audiences for spoken poetry readings\n<li>number of poets (in particular) imprisoned for their writings<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Qualitative equivalents of these values would also be of interest, though even harder to obtain and verify in any objective manner..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; what carves memory? blood is spilled, song carries grief and anger across centuries ] , One hundred years ago, Irish blood was spilled in the Easter Uprising of 1916, as Sin\u00e9ad O&#8217;Connor &#038; The Chieftains call us to remember in The Foggy Dew: As down the glen one Easter morn [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1328,329,1334,662,526,497,893,480,441,758,853,946,1,259],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1328","category-africa","category-bhutan","category-blog-friends","category-charles-cameron","category-christianity","category-ireland","category-music","category-pundita","category-quant-qualit","category-statistics","category-sunday-surprise","category-uncategorized","category-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49615"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49632,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49615\/revisions\/49632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}