Category: miscellaneous

Morocco & Andalucia: “characteristic” (#17 in series: flamenco..with musical bonus)

Published December 19, 2025 by Pelidoug

Morocco & Andalucia: “characteristic” (#17 in series: flamenco..with musical bonus)

In 2010 UNESCO inscribed flamenco on its “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”:

(Gnawa was added to that list in 2019)

A lot of mostly-awful, so-called “flamenco” is not remotely actual flamenco,

Outside Spain, most recordings marketed as flamenco are merely “flamenco”-flavoured pap; their makers & marketers know little about the real thing, and have no passion for it.

Virtuosic dancing, singing and playing (hands & feet are key instruments too – not just guitars), in-the-moment interplay, and improvisatory flair are equally key elements …as is duende.

Without duende – an “untranslatable” word that denotes an abundance of intent/spirit/heart/presence-in-the-moment – flamenco has no raison d’être.

It is no small miracle that genuine flamenco continues to thrive in its “cradle”: Andalucia.

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Morocco & Andalucia: “characteristic” (#16 in series: Gnawa)

Published December 9, 2025 by Pelidoug

Morocco & Andalucia: “characteristic” (#16 in series: Gnawa)

“Gnawa” is the most common of various transliterations into English.

The word refers to a so-called “ethnic group” (albeit one whose members’ ethnicity is not in fact singular), a member thereof, the Sufi brotherhood to which many Gnawa men belong, and – most especially – to a musical genre which is distinctive, mesmeric and usually (simultaneously) both “devotional” and “funky”.

As “Flamenco” is to the global perception of Spanish music, “Gnawa” is to how the world perceives Morocco’s: “emblematic”.

For many foreigners, flamenco is the only Spanish musical form that rings a “bell”.

Most foreigners cannot name any Moroccan genre; if they can, chances are it will be Gnawa music.

In each case, the genre’s emblematic national status is highly paradoxical.

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Signage & Signification (#4 in series: Calabrian “cosmic” + musical bonus)

Published November 3, 2025 by Pelidoug

Signage & Signification (#4 in series: Calabrian “cosmic” + musical bonus)

Ganesha (aka Ganesh) is the elephant-headed Hindu deity.

Perhaps the best-loved of Hindu gods, Ganesha is the “remover of obstacles”, and is associated with good fortune, wisdom and prosperity.

Q: what on earth is he doing in a decidedly “touristic” street in a southern Italian seaport/resort city?

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Winter 2025, South West WA (#18 in series: looking west from Redgate Beach)

Published September 28, 2025 by Pelidoug

Winter 2025, South West WA (#18 in series: looking west from Redgate Beach)

This post includes both musical and “word power” bonuses.

The afternoon of 21 August 2025 was not “stormy” in the Margaret River region, but local waters were turbulent.

In 1876 this was also true, as November transitioned to December…and the SS Georgette developed an irreparable leak

Over the ensuing hours a lifeboat was smashed, several people drowned, and several others were successfully transferred to the captain’s gig (ship’s boat/tender) which then managed to reach another Margaret River beach.

Meanwhile, the other fifty or so passengers and crew were heading south, on a sinking ship.

Its captain then attempted to strand the Georgette on Calgardup Bay’s Redgate Beach.

Here, a “miraculous”/“heroic” rescue was undertaken by two equally courageous local people.

The white one’s heroism was hailed, worldwide.

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Vale Sheila Jordan (1928-2025)

Published August 13, 2025 by Pelidoug

Vale Sheila Jordan (1928-2025)

As “The New York Times” once opined:

Her ballad performances are simply beyond the emotional and expressive capabilities of most other vocalists.

Among the many “notable” jazz vocalists I have experienced “live” and/or have actually met (I interviewed her when she first toured Australia, and saw her here on two other occasions) Sheila Jordan was certainly the most remarkable, musically.

I strongly suspect that she was also the most remarkable and admirable, personally.

Aged 96, whilst listening to music, and in the presence of her daughter, and friends, Sheila Jordan died this week at her home in Manhattan.

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“Old city”, Lahore (#22 in series: different drum, with musical bonus)

Published August 1, 2025 by Pelidoug

“Old city”, Lahore (#22 in series: different drum, with musical bonus)

In the “western” world most drums are made from metal, wood and “skin” (although that “skin” is now usually synthetic) and they are usually played with sticks, mallets, or brushes.

In Asia and Africa, however, many drummers hold no stick or mallet, and their instrument is a clay pot or a vegetable gourd.

Doubtless, some “westerners” imagine that music played by a hand drummer on a clay pot is necessarily simple, crude, “unrefined”.

That assumption is dead wrong…as is strikingly illustrated by this post’s “musical bonus”.

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“Old city”, Lahore (#3 in series: let there be drums + musical bonus)

Published June 23, 2025 by Pelidoug

“Old city”, Lahore (#3 in series: let there be drums + musical bonus)

(The musical bonus features a man who was very possibly the greatest tabla player in recorded history. It is hard to imagine that there has ever been a more prodigiously gifted player of any drum. I am around 99% certain that you have never heard of him, let alone heard him. For the final 49 of his 66 years he lived in Lahore)

Immediately after our more “formal” welcome, we were made even more welcome, more personally, in a courtyard adjacent to Delhi Gate.

Drums and garlands were involved.

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Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#29 in series: living on the edge + musical bonus)

Published June 18, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#29 in series: living on the edge + musical bonus)

As highlighted in this series, Flnders Island’s shorelines are both beautiful and very demanding – especially for plants.

I imagine that not a few visitors perceive a place such as the one pictured above as “unspoilt”, “wild”, “pristine”.

The above adjectives are “wildly” inaccurate!

(I took the photo on the southern half of Flinders Island’s west coast at 10.08 am on March 2025. I love such places, where things “hard” and “soft”, “massive” and “petite”, “inanimate” and “living” all coexist, near terra firma’s edge)

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Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#24 in series: Mount Chappell Island “3” + musical bonus)

Published June 9, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#24 in series: Mount Chappell Island “3” + musical bonus)

A bit less than 30 minutes after I took the previous post’s photo, we had walked a little further north, along Flinders’ western shoreline.

By 10.16 am the “face” of Hummocky/ Mount Chappell Island looked very different, albeit still unmistakably-itself.

Mount Chappell is remarkably imposing, given the peak’s modest (198 metres) altitude.

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Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#23 in series: Mount Chappell Island “2” + musical bonus)

Published June 7, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#23 in series: Mount Chappell Island “2” + musical bonus)

This post’s photo was taken just a few minutes further into our morning walk on 18 March 2025.

When clouds move along in a dappled sky, they can swiftly and dramatically change a landscape’s/seascape’s appearance.

A few minutes earlier – as pictured in this series’ preceding chapter – the “darkly forbidding”, low-lying island in front of Hummocky/Mt Chappell Island was an “inviting” isle, bathed in golden light.

Matthew Flinders named Mount Chappell in 1798, after the maiden name of the woman he would marry in 1801.

Flinders Island, is named after him, as are more than 100 other Australian places; Flinders was the first person to map the entire Australian continent’s shoreline – mostly, with astonishing precision.

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