mick laBriola

Monday July 15th 2024 at 2pm Karibuni East African ensemble performing at Redeemer Health & Rehab Center for Seniors in south Minneapolis. African music styles of Rumba, baksimba, mutuashi, Cha Ka Cha and Zouk will be demonstrated and performed.

The galaxy featured in this week’s Hubble Picture of the Week is the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 5238, located 14.5 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. Its unexciting, blob-like appearance, resembling more an oversized star cluster than a galaxy, belies a complicated structure which has been the subject of much research by astronomers. Here, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is able to pick out the galaxy’s countless stars, as well as its associated globular clusters — the glowing spots both inside and around the galaxy that are swarmed by yet more stars.

NGC 5238 is theorised to have recently — here meaning no more than a billion years ago! — had a close encounter with another galaxy. The evidence for this is the tidal distortions of NGC 5238’s shape, the kind produced by two galaxies pulling on each other as they interact. There’s no nearby galaxy which could have caused this disturbance, so the hypothesis is that the culprit is a smaller satellite galaxy that was devoured by NGC 5238. Traces of the erstwhile galaxy might be found by closely examining the population of stars in NGC 5238, a task for which the Hubble Space Telescope is an astronomer’s best tool. Two tell-tale signs would be groups of stars with properties that look out of place compared to most of the galaxy’s other stars, indicating that they were originally formed in a separate galaxy, or stars that look to have all formed abruptly at around the same time, which would occur during a galactic merger. The data used to make this image will be put to use in testing these predictions.

Despite their small size and unremarkable appearance, it’s not unusual for dwarf galaxies like NGC 5238 to drive our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. One main theory of galaxy evolution is that galaxies formed ‘bottom-up’ in a hierarchical fashion: star clusters and small galaxies were the first to form out of gas and dark matter, and they gradually were assembled by gravity into galaxy clusters and superclusters, explaining the shape of the very largest structures in the Universe today. A dwarf irregular galaxy like NGC 5238 merging with an even smaller companion is just the type of event that might have begun this process of galaxy assembly in the early Universe. So, it turns out that this tiny galaxy may serve as a test of some of the most fundamental predictions in astrophysics!

[Image Description: A dwarf irregular galaxy. It appears as a cloud of bluish gas, filled with point-like stars that also spread beyond the edge of the gas. A few glowing red clouds sit near its centre. Many other objects can be seen around it: distant galaxies in the background, four-pointed stars in the foreground, and star clusters that are part of the galaxy – shining spots surrounded by more tiny stars.]

Linda Maria Ronstadt (born July 15, 1946) is an American singer who performed and recorded in diverse genres including rock, country, light opera, the Great American Songbook, and Latin music.

Ronstadt has earned 11 Grammy Awards, three American Music Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, and an ALMA Award. Many of her albums have been certified gold, platinum or multiplatinum in the United States and internationally. She has also earned nominations for a Tony Award and a Golden Globeaward. She was awarded the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by the Latin Recording Academy in 2011 and also awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by the Recording Academy in 2016. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2014. On July 28, 2014, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts and Humanities. In 2019, she received a star jointly with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for their work as the group Trio. Ronstadt was among five honorees who received the 2019 Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime artistic achievements.

Ronstadt has released 24 studio albums and 15 compilation or greatest hits albums. She charted 38 US Billboard Hot 100 singles. Twenty-one of those singles reached the top 40, ten reached the top 10, and one reached number one (“You’re No Good“). Ronstadt also charted in the UK as two of her duets, “Somewhere Out There” with James Ingram and “Don’t Know Much” with Aaron Neville, peaked at numbers 8 and 2 respectively and the single “Blue Bayou” reached number 35 on the UK Singles Chart. She has charted 36 albums, ten top-10 albums, and three number one albums on the US Billboard albums chart. Ronstadt has lent her voice to over 120 albums, collaborating with artists in many genres, including Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Bette Midler, Billy Eckstine,^[21] Frank Zappa, Carla Bley (Escalator Over the Hill), Rosemary Clooney, Flaco Jiménez, Philip Glass, Warren Zevon, Gram Parsons, Neil Young, Paul Simon, Earl Scruggs, Johnny Cash, and Nelson Riddle. Christopher Loudon, of Jazz Times, wrote in 2004 that Ronstadt is “blessed with arguably the most sterling set of pipes of her generation.

The attempted assassination was a result possibly of an unleashed bias to overthrow democracy via violence most recently. Which is the wrong direction and wrong message for a so called civilized society. We are better than this, and we obviously need to learn more about compassion and justice through common sense and good will. And Stop promoting violence and the indignation of human existence once and for all.

Show Three Saturday July 14th 2024 5pm running through July 21st; 6 shows at Caponi Art Park in Eagan. Music by Raymond Berg, Lyra Olson, Paul Fontara, Anthony Afful and mick laBriola.

Angélique Kpasseloko Hinto Hounsinou Kandjo Manta Zogbin Kidjo born July 14, 1960) is a Beninese–French singer-songwriter, actress and activist noted for her diverse musical influences and creative music videos. Kidjo was born into a family of performing artists. Her father was a musician, and her mother worked as a choreographer and theatre director. Kidjo has won five Grammy Awards. She is a 2023 Polar Music Prize laureate.

In 2007, Time magazine called her “Africa’s premier diva.” She performed at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony on July 23, 2021. On September 15, 2021, Time included her in their list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Angelique Kidjo has collaborated with many artists including Bono, Branford Marsalis, John Legend, Jimmy Buffett, Peter Gabriel, Alicia Keys, Carlos Santana, Josh Groban, Philip Glass, Sting, Ziggy Marley, Yemi Alade, Burna Boy, Johnny Clegg, Dave Matthews, Tina Turner, Alpha Blondy and Davido.

Her album Logozo is ranked number 37 in the Greatest Dance Albums of All Time list compiled by Vice magazine’s Thump website.

Kidjo is fluent in five languages: Fon, French, Yorùbá, Gen (Mina) and English. She sings in all of them, and she also has her own personal language, which includes words that serve as song titles such as “Batonga”. “Malaika” is a song sung in the Swahili language. Kidjo often uses Benin’s traditional Zilin vocal technique and vocalese.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie ( July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter and composer who was one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He inspired several generations both politically and musically with songs such as “This Land Is Your Land“.

Guthrie wrote hundreds of country, folk, and children’s songs, along with ballads and improvised works. Dust Bowl Ballads, Guthrie’s album of songs about the Dust Bowlperiod, was included on Mojo magazine’s list of 100 Records That Changed The World, and many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress.Songwriters who have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence on their work include Steve Earle, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Harry Chapin, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Andy Irvine, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Jeff Tweedy, Tom Paxton, Brian Fallon, Sean Bonnette, and Sixto Rodríguez. He frequently performed with the message “This machine kills fascists” displayed on his guitar.

At the Heart of IC 2948 the “Running Chicken Nebula” are large clouds of gas and dust as this region produces newborn stars in what we call a “ Star Factory.”  In the upper left corner are a series of Boc globules that remind us of many solar systems like our own, floating in interstellar space. It’s the brightest emission and reflection nebulae in the constellation of Centaurus and lies around 6,500 light-years away.