Blog

Richard Fariña

March 8, 2025

Richard George Fariña ( March 8, 1937 – April 30, 1966) was an American folksinger, songwriter, poet and novelist. On returning to Manhattan, Fariña became a regular patron of the White Horse Tavern, the well-known Greenwich Village tavern frequented by poets, artists, and folksingers, where he befriended Tommy Makem. It was there that he met Carolyn Hester, a successful folk singer. They married 18 days later. Fariña appointed himself Hester’s agent; they toured worldwide while Fariña worked on his novel and Carolyn performed gigs. Fariña was present when Hester recorded her third album at Columbia studios during September 1961, where a then-little-known Bob Dylan played the harmonica on several tracks. Fariña became a good friend of Dylan; their friendship is a major topic of David Hajdu‘s book, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña.

Fariña saw a guest with a motorcycle, who later gave Fariña a ride up Carmel Valley Road, heading east toward the rural Cachagua area of Carmel Valley.

At an S-turn the driver lost control. The motorcycle tipped over on the right side of the road, came back to the other side, and tore through a barbed wire fence into a field where a small vineyard now exists. The driver survived, but Fariña was killed instantly.

 

more...

Johnny Ventura

March 8, 2025

Juan de Dios Ventura Soriano (8 March 1940 – 28 July 2021), better known as Johnny Ventura nicknamed El Caballo Mayor, was a Dominican singer and band leader of merengue and salsa.

In 2004, he received the Latin Grammy Award for Best Merengue/Bachata Album for his album Sin Desperdicio; also, he was nominated for Best Merengue Album (2006), Best Contemporary Tropical Album (2010) and Best Salsa Album (2016) categories. In 2006, he received the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2022, he entered the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The merengue legend was a legislator of the Lower House between 1982 and 1986. He also served as vicemayor of Santo Domingo from 1994 to 1998, and as mayor of Santo Domingo from 1998 to 2002.

more...

Gábor Szabó

March 8, 2025

Gábor István Szabó (March 8, 1936 – February 26, 1982) was a Hungarian-American guitarist whose style incorporated jazz, pop, rock, and Hungarian music. While visiting family in Budapest during the Christmas holiday, Szabó was admitted to the hospital and finally succumbed to the liver and kidney ailments he suffered from as a consequence of his drug habit. He died on February 26, 1982, shortly before his 46th birthday.

more...

George Coleman

March 8, 2025

George Edward Coleman (born March 8, 1935 Memphis) is an American jazz saxophonist known for his work with Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock in the 1960s. In 2015, he was named an NEA Jazz Master.

more...

Ina Boyle

March 8, 2025

Ina Boyle (8 March 1889 – 10 March 1967) was an Irish composer. Her compositions encompass a broad spectrum of genres and include choral, chamber and orchestral works as well as opera, ballet and vocal music. While a number of her works, including The Magic Harp (1919), Colin Clout (1921), Gaelic Hymns (1923–24), Glencree (1924-27) and Wildgeese (1942), received acknowledgement and first performances, the majority of her compositions remained unpublished and unperformed during her lifetime.

more...

World Music Andalucious

March 8, 2025

more...

Daily Roots Sly and the Revolutionaries

March 8, 2025

more...

Al Green Stands Up

March 7, 2025

Al Green Stands Up
A Real Patriot
Democrats Need to Speak Out Now

 

more...

Support Ukraine

March 7, 2025

3-4-2025

Neil Young is taking his music to a place that needs it most. The iconic musician has revealed plans to perform a free concert in Ukraine, offering a moment of unity and resilience through song. While the exact date and location remain under wraps, the commitment is clear.

Announced through his website, the upcoming show will bring Young’s signature sound to a country still grappling with the realities of war. It’s a bold move that aligns with his decades-long dedication to music as a force for change, echoing the themes of hope and resistance that have defined much of his career.

With details still to come, anticipation is already building. A performance of this scale—both musically and symbolically—underscores the power of art in difficult times. For now, fans and supporters alike await more news on when and where Young will take the stage in solidarity with Ukraine.

A Clear Stand On The War

Neil Young isn’t swayed by revisionist narratives. While the Trump administration has attempted to shift blame onto Ukraine, falsely claiming it provoked Russia’s 2022 invasion, Young has been outspoken about where responsibility truly lies. He refuses to entertain distortions of history, instead focusing on the reality of an unprovoked war that has left countless lives shattered.

He previously condemned Russia’s aggression, calling it “the crazy war of an old dying guy” driven by a desperate attempt to rewrite history. In his view, Vladimir Putin isn’t leading—he’s retreating into his own delusions, grasping for a legacy that serves only himself. Young paints a picture of a leader lost in nostalgia, using destruction as a means to correct what he sees as past mistakes, regardless of the human cost.

Young’s words cut through political distortions, framing the war for what it is: an act of self-serving destruction. His stance isn’t just about pointing fingers—it’s about standing with those who are fighting for their survival. By speaking out, he aligns himself with those who refuse to let history be rewritten by those who wield power without accountability.

more...

The First March From Selma 3-7-1965

March 7, 2025
The First March From Selma
March 7, 1965
When about 600 people started a planned march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on Sunday March 7, 1965, it was called a demonstration. When state troopers met the demonstrators at the edge of the city by the Edmund Pettus Bridge, that day became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Why were the people marching?
One hundred years after the end of the Civil War, many African Americans were still facing barriers which either prevented or made it very difficult for them to register to vote. In Selma, African Americans made up almost half the population, but only two percent were registered voters. Discrimination and intimidation tactics aimed at blacks kept them from registering and voting. The demonstrators marched to demand fairness in voter registration.
more...

Echos of Freedom George Orwell

March 7, 2025

more...

Echos of Freedom George Bernard Shaw

March 7, 2025

“If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.” George Bernard Shaw

more...

Temple Israel Erev Shabbat Service

March 7, 2025

Friday March 7th 2025 6pm Music with Inbal Sharett-Singer, Jayson Rodovsky, Jeff Bailey, Pete Whitman and mick laBriola.

 

more...

Cosmo Abell 7

March 7, 2025

Very faint planetary nebula Abell 7 is about 1,800 light-years distant. It lies just south of Orion in planet Earth’s skies toward the constellation Lepus, The Hare. Surrounded by Milky Way stars and near the line-of-sight to distant background galaxies its generallysimple spherical shape, about 8 light-years in diameter, is revealed in this deep telescopic image. Within the cosmic cloud are beautiful and complex structures though, enhanced by the use of long exposures and narrowband filters that capture emission from hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms. Otherwise Abell 7 would be much too faint to be appreciated by eye. A planetary nebula represents a very brief final phase in stellar evolution that our own Sun will experience 5 billion years hence, as the nebula’s central, once sun-like star shrugs off its outer layers. Abell 7 itself is estimated to be 20,000 years old. But its central star, seen here as a fading white dwarf, is some 10 billion years old.

 

more...

Paddy Clancy

March 7, 2025

Patrick Michael Clancy (7 March 1922 – 11 November 1998), usually called Paddy Clancy or Pat Clancy, was an Irish folk singer best known as a member of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. In addition to singing and storytelling, Clancy played the harmonica with the group, which is widely credited with popularizing Irish traditional music in the United States and revitalizing it in Ireland. He also started and ran the folk music label Tradition Records, which recorded many of the key figures of the American folk music revival.

more...

Alcide Pavageau

March 7, 2025

Alcide LouisSlow DragPavageau (March 7, 1888 – January 19, 1969) was an American jazz double bassist and guitarist.

more...

Maurice Ravel

March 7, 2025

Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France’s greatest living composer.

Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France’s premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire, Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity and incorporating elements of modernism, baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. Renowned for his abilities in orchestration, Ravel made some orchestral arrangements of other composers’ piano music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky‘s Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known.

A slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies or church music. Many of his works exist in two versions: first, a piano score and later an orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in performance.

Ravel was among the first composers to recognise the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public. From the 1920s, despite limited technique as a pianist or conductor, he took part in recordings of several of his works; others were made under his supervision.

 

more...

Flamenco Fridays Camarón

March 7, 2025

It was originated in the late 19th century. In “Sinfonía Virtual” magazine Guillermo Castro documented that the term “bulería” was used for the first time in the 17th century, but it didn’t acquire its flamenco meaning until the early 20th century.

more...

Daily Roots King Tubby & the Aggrovators

March 7, 2025

more...

Furry Lewis

March 6, 2025

Walter E. “Furry” Lewis (March 6, 1893 or 1899 – September 14, 1981) was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. He was one of the earliest of the blues musicians active in the 1920s to be brought out of retirement and given new opportunities to record during the folk blues revival of the 1960s.

more...