Everyone Should Know Enough History…
…that they’re not doomed to repeat it. Here’s some important history for us:
…that they’re not doomed to repeat it. Here’s some important history for us:
While there are plenty of raw materials for instrument-making which have come under threat from climate change and environmental destruction (tropical hardwoods, to offer just one example), at least one type of instrument seems safe. Arundo Donax, the “giant reed” which provides the vibrating material for saxophonists & clarinetists worldwide, is not only critical for […]
Berne Krause has been recording the natural world for decades. His book “The Great Animal Orchestra” is one of the most important things you can read — both for insight into the ways we humans evolved as a species in a world saturated with music, and for (mostly very depressing) insights into just how badly […]
I remember reading that a natural ecosystem that had taken thousands of years to develop can be destroyed in ten minutes by a guy driving a bulldozer. That seems true enough; horrifying and depressing, but true. All evolution’s gradual work, building a wonderfully complex interdependent structure — turned into undifferentiated rubble in less time than […]
I learned this song at summer camp — a camp which was, not coincidentally, run by Pete’s elder brother John Seeger, who died last year at age 95. At Camp Killooleet, community singing was a regular feature, and one of the musicians who led the kids was a guy named George Ward; I learned this […]