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Diwali, one of the most popular Hindu festivals, is celebrated by devotees all over the world. Also known as the festival of lights, it symbolises the victory of good over evil and commemorates Lord Ram’s return to the Ayodhya kingdom after a 14-year exile.
WR 134 is a variable Wolf-Rayet star located around 6,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus, surrounded by a faint bubble nebula blown by the intense radiation and fast wind from the star.
This nebula is surrounded by Halpha emission, giving that red background to the Oiii blue bubble.
Baaba Maal (Fula: , born 13 June 1953) is a Senegalese singer and guitarist born in Podor, on the Senegal River. In addition to acoustic guitar, he also plays percussion. He has released several albums, both for independent and major labels. In July 2003, he was made a UNDP Youth Emissary.
Maal sings primarily in Pulaar and promotes the traditions of the Pulaar-speaking people, who live on either side of the Senegal River in the ancient Senegalese kingdom of Futa Tooro.
Maal was expected to follow in his father’s profession and become a fisherman. However, under the influence of his lifelong friend and family gawlo, blind guitarist Mansour Seck, Maal devoted himself to learning music from his mother and his school’s headmaster. He went on to study music at the university in Dakar before leaving for a three month stay in Paris to learn musical notation. In the event, he stayed for three years in the French capital, where he took courses at the Conservatoire de Paris, had private tuition and was taken with Mozart.
more...Neil Percival Young OC OM (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian and American singer and songwriter. After embarking on a music career in Winnipeg in the 1960s, Young moved to Los Angeles, joining the folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield. Since the beginning of his solo career, often with backing by the band Crazy Horse, he has released critically acclaimed albums such as Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), After the Gold Rush (1970), Harvest (1972), On the Beach (1974), and Rust Never Sleeps(1979). He was also a part-time member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, with whom he recorded the chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu.
His guitar work, deeply personal lyrics and signature high tenor singing voice define his long career. Young also plays piano and harmonica on many albums, which frequently combine folk, rock, countryand other musical genres. His often distorted electric guitar playing, especially with Crazy Horse, earned him the nickname “Godfather of Grunge“ and led to his 1995 album Mirror Ball with Pearl Jam. More recently he has been backed by Promise of the Real.
Young directed (or co-directed) films using the pseudonym “Bernard Shakey”, including Journey Through the Past (1973), Rust Never Sleeps (1979), Human Highway (1982), Greendale (2003), CSNY/Déjà Vu (2008), and Harvest Time (2022). He also contributed to the soundtracks of the films Philadelphia (1993) and Dead Man (1995).
Young has received several Grammy and Juno Awards. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him twice: in 1995 as a solo artist and in 1997 as a member of Buffalo Springfield. In 2023, Rolling Stone named Young No. 30 on their list of 250 greatest guitarists of all time. Young is also on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 greatest musical artists. According to Acclaimed Music, he is the seventh most celebrated artist in popular music history. 21 of his albums and singles have been certified Gold and Platinum in U.S. by RIAA certification. Young was awarded the Order of Manitoba in 2006 and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2009.
more...Samuel Jones (November 12, 1924 – December 15, 1981) was an American jazz double bassist, cellist, and composer.
Sam Jones was born in Jacksonville, Florida, United States, to a musical family. His father played piano and drums and his aunt played organ in church. In 1955, he moved to New York City and began his recording career with Tiny Bradshaw, before working with Bill Evans, Bobby Timmons, Les Jazz Modes, Kenny Dorham, Illinois Jacquet, Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie (1958–59), and Thelonious Monk. He is probably best known for his work with Cannonball Adderley, performing in his quintet from 1955 to 1956 and then again from 1959 to 1964, and recording extensively for Riverside Records as both a leader and sideman. He later spent several years working with Oscar Peterson (1966-1970) and Cedar Walton (1972-1977). In the 1970s, Jones recorded several albums as a bandleader for the Xanadu and SteepleChaselabels. Jones wrote the jazz standards “Del Sasser” and “Unit 7” while working with Adderley. Other compositions include “Blue Funk”, “O.P.”, “Bittersweet”, and “Seven Minds”. He died of lung cancer in 1981 at the age of 57.
more...Booker T. Washington “Bukka” White (born on November 12, between 1900 and 1909; died February 26, 1977) was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer.
Booker T. Washington White was born on a farm south of Houston, in northeastern Mississippi. He was born on November 12; various years between 1900 and 1909 are recorded – census data suggests 1904. Bukka is a phonetic spelling of White’s first name; he was named after the African-American educator and civil rights activist Booker T. Washington. White was a first cousin of B.B. King‘s mother (White’s mother and King’s maternal grandmother were sisters). His father John White was a railroad worker, and also a musician who performed locally, primarily playing the fiddle, but also mandolin, guitar and piano. He gave Booker a guitar for his ninth birthday. White started his career playing the fiddle at square dances. He got married at 16 years old, with his father giving him a new Stella guitar as a wedding present. He and his wife lived at Houston, but after a few years she died of a burst appendix.
more...Honoring my dad Mike Labriola a WWII US Army veteran stationed in his homeland of Italy. Devastated & traumatized. Praying for Peace for Ukraine, Palestine and Israel. In addition to the total of 32 ongoing conflicts in the world right now, ranging from drug wars, terrorist insurgencies, ethnic conflicts, and civil wars. When will this stop?
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This broad, luminous red arc was a surprising visitor to partly cloudy evening skies over northern France. Captured extending toward the zenith in a west-to-east mosaic of images from November 5, the faint atmospheric ribbon of light is an example of a Stable Auroral Red (SAR) arc. The rare night sky phenomenon was also spotted at unusually low latitudes around world, along with more dynamic auroral displays during an intense geomagnetic storm. SAR arcs and their relation to auroral emission have been explored by citizen science and satellite investigations. From altitudes substantially above the normal auroral glow, the deep red SAR emission is thought to be caused by strong heating due to currents flowing in planet Earth’s inner magnetosphere. Beyond this SAR, the Milky Way arcs above the cloud banks along the horizon, a regular visitor to night skies over northern France.
Mario Pavone (November 11, 1940 – May 15, 2021) was an American jazz bassist, composer and bandleader. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead offers that Pavone was not only “great bass player [but also a] big-hearted mensch.”
Pavone was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. Pavone attended B. W. Tinker grammar school, Leavenworth High School, and the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where he graduated with a B.S. in engineering. When his Town Plot neighbor, world-renowned guitarist Joe Diorio, recognized him as an unrealized musician Mario was inspired to take up the bass. Primarily self-taught, he was a natural on his instrument. Pavone began playing bass soon after witnessing John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard in 1961.
more...Ernestine Anderson (November 11, 1928 – March 10, 2016 Houston, TX) was an American jazz and blues singer. In a career spanning more than six decades, she recorded over 30 albums. She was nominated four times for a Grammy Award. She sang at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Monterey Jazz Festival (six times over a 33-year span), as well as at jazz festivals all over the world. In the early 1990s she joined Qwest Records, the label founded by fellow Garfield High School graduate Quincy Jones.
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Delores LaVern Baker (November 11, 1929 – March 10, 1997) was an American R&B singer who had several hit records on the pop chart in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her most successful records were “Tweedle Dee” (1955), “Jim Dandy” (1956), and “I Cried a Tear” (1958).
Baker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. The Hall remarked that her “fiery fusion of blues, jazz and R&B showcased her alluring vocals and set the stage for the rock and roll surge of the Fifties”. From 1955 to 1965, 20 of her songs made the R&B charts. Over the years, Elvis Presley recorded eight Baker songs.
Baker was born Delores Evans in Chicago. She was raised in Calumet City, Illinois. Under her mother’s new surname, McMurley, Delores – on December 23, 1948, at age nineteen, in Cook County, Illinois – married Eugene Williams.
more...Mose John Allison Jr. (November 11, 1927 – November 15, 2016 Tallahatchie County, Mississippi) was an American jazz and blues pianist, singer, and songwriter. He became notable for playing a unique mix of blues and modern jazz, both singing and playing piano. After moving to New York in 1956, he worked primarily in jazz settings, playing with jazz musicians like Stan Getz, Al Cohn, and Zoot Sims, along with producing numerous recordings.
He is described as having been “one of the finest songwriters in 20th-century blues.” His songs were strongly dependent on evoking moods, with his individualistic, “quirky”, and subtle ironic humor. His writing influence on R&B had well-known fans recording his songs, among them Pete Townshend, who recorded his “Young Man Blues” for the Who‘s Live at Leeds album in 1970. John Mayall was one of dozens who recorded his classic, “Parchman Farm“, and Georgie Fame used many of Allison’s songs. Others who recorded his songs included Leon Russell (“I’m Smashed”) and Bonnie Raitt (“Everybody’s Cryin’ Mercy”).
The 1980s saw an increase in his popularity with new fans drawn to his unique blend of modern jazz. In the 1990s he began recording more consistently. Van Morrison, Georgie Fame and Ben Sidran collaborated with him on a tribute album, Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison. The Pixies wrote the song “Allison” as a tribute.
Allison’s music had an important influence on other artists, such as Jimi Hendrix, J. J. Cale, the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, and Pete Townshend. He was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006.
more...Dominated by dark matter, massive cluster of galaxies Abell 2744 is known to some as Pandora’s Cluster. It lies 3.5 billion light-years away toward the constellation Sculptor. Using the galaxy cluster’s enormous mass as a gravitational lens to warp spacetime and magnify even more distant objects directly behind it, astronomers have found a background galaxy, UHZ1, at a remarkable redshift of Z=10.1. That puts UHZ1 far beyond Abell 2744, at a distance of 13.2 billion light-years, seen when our universe was about 3 percent of its current age. UHZ1 is identified in the insets of this composited image combining X-rays (purple hues) from the spacebased Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared light from the James Webb Space Telescope. The X-ray emission from UHZ1 detected in the Chandra data is the telltale signature of a growing supermassive black hole at the center of the ultra high redshift galaxy. That makes UHZ1’s growing black hole the most distant black hole ever detected in X-rays, a result that now hints at how and when the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed.
Hubert Laws (born November 10, 1939) is an American flutist and saxophonist with a career spanning over 40 years in jazz, classical, and other music genres. Laws is one of the few classical artists who has also mastered jazz, pop, and rhythm-and-blues genres, moving effortlessly from one repertory to another. He has three Grammy nominations.
Hubert Laws, Jr. was born November 10, 1939, in the Studewood section of Houston, Texas, the second of eight children to Hubert Laws, Sr. and Miola Luverta Donahue. Many of his siblings also entered the music industry, including saxophonist Ronnie and vocalists Eloise, Debra, and Johnnie Laws. He began playing flute in high school after volunteering to substitute for the school orchestra’s regular flutist. He became adept at jazz improvisation by playing in the Houston-area jazz group the Swingsters, which eventually evolved into the Modern Jazz Sextet, the Night Hawks, and The Crusaders. At the age of 15, he was a member of the early Jazz Crusaders while in Texas (1954–60), and also played classical music during those years.
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