Marcel Khalife On Canada Live Tonight

Very exciting to see that tonight Canada Live will be broadcasting a concert by Marcel Khalife, the virtuosic Lebanese oud player who is also a hugely influential figure in the Middle East, culturally speaking.

This concert, recorded in Edmonton, is from the same tour that came through my burg -- and the show here was was pretty great, so I can only imagine this one will be as well. The concert was an interesting combination of the boundary-pushing instrumental side of Khalife, and the older songs, songs that have galvanized people since the days he performed them in abandoned Beirut concert halls during the Lebanese Civil war.

And a second concert on Can Live tonight -- Edmonton acoustic blues artist Mark Sterling performs original compositions and blues classics with his trio, bass player and singer Ron Rault and harpist/singer Dave 'Crawdad' Canterra, under the moniker, Come On In My Kitchen.

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What Caetano Veloso Listens To

I mentioned earlier in the week having gone to hear Caetano Veloso's Toronto debut -- incredible that the 65-year-old Veloso should not have played the city before now, given he, along with Gilberto Gil, are arguably the most famous Brazilian musicians in the world. (Maybe Milton Nascimento and all the Gilbertos should be added to that shortlist.)

Veloso, if you aren't familiar with his significance in Brazilian music, was one of the leaders of tropicalismo, which merged rock with modernist art, theatre, and Brazilian music styles, forever changing not only Brazilian music, but a lot of North American music as well -- influencing people like David Byrne, for example. And Veloso and Gil were perceived as such symbols (and threats) that they were jailed and sent into exile -- this was in the late 1960s.

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Mahler Owes Her Ten Bucks

Studio Sparks' Mahler Wednesdays continue today, with excerpts from Mahler's Symphony N.4, from the new budget-priced re-issued set featuring the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Chailly.

And since it is Mahler Wednesday, I feel compelled to share some Mahler Trivia. No, not that his wife, pianist and composer Alma later married famous architect Walter Gropius, although I believe that to be true, but that there is, in this world of portmanteaux of Web and Log, a delightfully named music blog called Mahler Owes Me Ten Bucks. (Even more delightfully subtitled: "But It's OK, He Doesn't Have To Pay Me Back.")

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The Radio Two Portmanteau

I make it a practice, here on the R2 blog, of never linking to Wikipedia. (There's your exception to everything.) This is not because I think Wiki is inherently evil and the enemy of researchers everywhere. In fact I recall reading not long ago about a study that showed the inaccuracy rate of Wiki did not exceed the inaccuracy rate of the more traditional, supposedly reputable sources to the degree one might imagine. But Wiki is in constant flux, which does, to my mind, make it less reliable.

I like certain things about Wiki though, for instance the unexpected ways in which they sometimes define or describe things. Case in point: "A blog," they say, " is "a portmanteau." Of course it is. When I think "blog" the first thing to come to mind is some nanny in an early 20th century British children's novel struggling to pack one, whilst the children are off riding ponies and yelling "yoiks!"

But no, of course Wiki intends us to think of the Lewis Carroll sense of the word. As in slithy, which is "two meanings packed into one word" (formerly lithe and slimy). Or, to cite the by now obvious example this is leading up to, blog, from web and log.

Anyway, if you are still reading this, and believe me, I am chuffed if that is the case, now I come to the real point. Blogging is an entirely inelegant sounding term for what I am happy to spend some of my time doing, here on CBC's Radio Two's website. And the other day I realized that I have been writing upon this blog ("this portmanteau of web and log") for almost six months.

I hope that you find it helpful or informative, or at the very least useful as a habitual form of procrastination. As in, "I know, I won't start sorting my tax receipts, I'll see what's doing on that CBC R2 blog." So in honor of the six months-ish mark, a virtual toast to the portmanteau!

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