The Algerian singer Matoub Lounes at my favourite tv program ever, “Bouillon de culture”. Such a beautiful traditional Berber song:
(watch tones of extracts of “Bouillon de culture” here)

and a short fragment from Charles Bukowsky’s presence at “Apostrophes”. The most amusing/embarrassing moments of this interview were shown in the last edition of the program).

Don’t miss the INA website – French TV archives – lots of interviews and programs featuring the most famous figures of the French culture (and not only), even if you get to watch only a few minutes for free (prices for downloading the whole programs between 1 and 5 EU, great value).

(image: “Hadith Bayad wa Riyad” (History of Bayad and Riyad), Spain, XIIIth century, Vatican Library – Ms Ar. 368. This volume is a unique example illustrating a love story and one of the few painted Arabic manuscripts that were conserved. Its 14 miniatures tell the story that develops in the palaces and gardens were the aristocratic characters come from.)

This year’s Enesco Festival was the best in terms of Medieval and Baroque Music. Apart from the inturders – Bucharest Philharmonics (a predictable disaster) and Munchen Baroque Solists (although they played on modern instruments their director had some musical sense and the musicians enjoyed playing and were technically very good) – we enjoyed the wonderful performances of Jordi Savall et co (apart from the tiring solos of his wife, a beautiful Medieval Music Diva, who’s singing style is very original and interesting, but not for more than 7 songs in a row), Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante and Freiburger Baroque Orchestra. Each of them performed two concerts, a real treat!
A few days ago we received a package from a friend in UK. Among the “winners” – Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories” (his version of “8 and 1/2 Women”) and “Say it again Sam”, Heinrich Boll’s “The Clown”, Thomas Berhard’s “Old Masters” etc. etc. (i.e. a few CD’s and DVD’s of Rick Wakeman) and “Orient Occident”, a small “anthology of music” which gathers together instruments and music of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim Medieval world. An interesting surprise – four songs are compositions of the Moldavian Dimitrie Cantemir (his name in Turkish is Kantemiroglu) from his compilation called “Kitabu ilmi’l musiki ala vechi’l hurufat” (“The book of the science of music with notations), which contains 365 instrumental and vocal pieces (some are original compositions, other are pieces from the Turkish popular tradition, written down in a system of notation invented by him). Also feteared on this CD are Italian (trecento), Judeo-Irakian, Afghan, Sephard, Spanish (three are by Alfonso el Sabio), Maroccan songs. Only Pedro Estevan (the charismatic drummer) was involved in this project from the usual entourage of Savall, the others are exceptionally talented musicians from Turkey, Israel, Afghanistan and Marrocco: Khaled Araman, Siar Hashimi, Osman Arman, Yair Dalal and Dris El Maloumi.
I have found some good videos of these extraordinary players:

Kabul Ensamble:

Khaled Arman & Siar Hashimi:

Dris El Maloumi:

Instead of the usual hard-hitting examination of guilt, responsibility and existential despair, I thought I’d do a post all about our window ledges. Up to a few weeks ago, our ledges would have not merited a post anywhere, as they were completely uninteresting and merely served the purpose of allowing us to reach the window through a gap in the wall. But now they look like this…

This is all Tia’s doing. She’d wanted to make the window ledges more interesting for some time and hit on the idea of making mosaics. So she checked about and discovered that small colored tiles come by the bag and are relatively cheap. She chose the colors and spent hours lining up the squares on small pads of glue before grouting everything off with a colored paste. But, this being Tia, she also added in some mirrored tiles which she had salvaged from an Indian styled blanket. The great thing about the mirror tiles is that they reflect the sky – so the ledges have fragments of blue or gold in them, or maybe gray, depending on the time of day.

I bought the plant for Tia’s birthday. It’s a small capsicum pepper bush. Not the most romantic of plants, perhaps, but it does have the nice side effect of capsicums.