Indian men by default have a special, elevated status, simply by being born male. We could be lazy good-for-nothings, ignorant fools, crooks, wife-beaters, or worse…
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Manohar Lal Prasanna plays a hypnotic flute, and comes from a long line of classical musicians of the Banarasi Gharana, which also also includes the master of shehnai, Bismillah Khan.
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It’s with exhilaration but also sobriety I return from Africa. It’s a continent of limitless potential and beauty but also riddled with cruel injustices.
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In my wanderings in Africa I've discovered the continent itself is an electric, ever-morphing, seething, burning, cooling, evolving work of art.
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It’s a joy for me to see black people en masse. But also White Africans, Indian Africans, Afrikaner, coloreds, Cape Malays, Chinese, Muslims, Arabs- the entire spectrum of humanity rubbing against each other.
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My first visit to the Mother City is colored with deep sadness at the passing of Anthony Bourdain, one of the few truly inspiring personalities in media.
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I remember a childhood story in which zebras roamed the streets of cities that were paved with gold, along with flamingoes and tortoises and penguins and tigers and sheep and peacocks.
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This improbable country is blessed with surreal beauty but has a painful history of colonialism and apartheid. Miraculously, it has retained its innocence and sweetness and is the only nation which has the conservation and protection of its natural heritage written in its constitution.
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The fiery Herero tribe of southern Namibia, along with the Nama, rebelled against their German oppressors during 1904-1907.
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In this photo, I am getting “anointed” by my European friends at the end of three adrenalized days at the Elevate Festival in Graz, the annual hard-core gathering of activists, musicians and artists in this sweet little Austrian city at the foot of the Alps.
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On my first trip to Austria, I arrived from rain-drenched Paris to snow-covered Graz and of course KLM lost my bag so I’ve been walking around jetlagged, surrounded by beauty but freezing my ass and in the same outfit for 3 days.
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(The Magical Music of “Shithole” Countries that Our President and Other Clueless Americans Have Not Heard and Never Should)
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Momentarily sad to leave this extraordinary place. While Indonesia has its troubles like any other country, it also has some of the last remaining pieces of heaven on earth.
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Bali seems like a lost paradise for an infinite number of reasons including its stark contrast to the crudeness and plasticity of some other Asian cities and the instant pleasure and sugar high of the West.
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After 21 planes, 7 trains, 18 taxis and 55 variations of sky I'm back to the slow magic infuriating inequity, illogical reality stranger than any fiction, the too-loud airport music with its many flavors of the same endless nightmare Bollywood-lite song…
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Antoine is everything good about Corsica- a lover of humanity who thinks the plants he distills wine from are alive, a patriot who believes in peace and tolerance and gay rights and rock n roll, and that the Greek brought wine to his country in 500 BC.
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Fortunate to listen to a beloved singer of traditional Corsican music, the 85 year old Antoine Ciosi, recording a new track in a studio near Ajaccio. Delivered in a melodic, all-encompassing boom, he rails against the plastic modernization threatening the Corsican way of life. Magic.
— at La Source
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On the highway to Ajaccio, the skeletons of trees remain from a fire accidentally started by the French Military during exercises. Black, bare and torched by sorrow, they still stand resolutely like Japanese widows...
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I'm returning to Calcutta after decades and there's something strange and sad about it. There's a big, modern airport, eerily empty in a city so massive, but the traffic is insane. The heart of the city is wrapped up in blue and white Christmas lights, the colors of Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee's party.
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Beth Orton played an ecstatic set with local Rajasthani band "Josh" elevating her songs to a whole new level and jamming on some Sufi music last night at the Jaipur Literary Festival. Her "Galaxy of Emptiness" is in my top 100 songs on ITunes. Thank God for music.
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