❧❧❧ Whatever you can do or dream, you can BEGIN IT. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Goethe ❧❧❧
❧❧❧ You were born whole, not broken. Sandra Hammel ❧❧❧
I don't know if I will ever change, probably not, but before I can get
myself to get moving toward bed, I want a feeling, I feeling that
something moving has touched me, it can be music, mine or others, it can
be writing down some of my own heartfelt
feelings, thoughts, reading someone else's words that touch me. It is
like the day can't end even though it is very late until I feel a
connection to something deep, beautiful, soulful....So, on that search, I
found myself listening to Tom Waits (on youtube) give a speech, sing a
few songs. What I love about Tom Waits, is that there is absolutely
nothing polished about his "singing" and he apparently has no hesitation
to sing - so many of us, me included, sing and think we are not good
enough. But if we want to sing, that is all that is important. Tom
gives us permission to sing.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some; it is in everyone.
And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give
other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson
Every time I am going to sing and play piano in public, I go through this "dialogue" with myself. I don't know why I do it so relaxed at home with my spirit doing the singing, not so much my voice....the voice is the vehicle, but the spirit does the "driving". So tomorrow I am singing. I would like just once - to get this right - to sing and be able to relax into the music's soul. Serve the sound.
For inspiration .........................................................
......................................................... Uploaded by PinkVEVO
"Glitter In The Air"
Have you ever fed a lover with just your hands? Closed your eyes and trusted, just trusted? Have you ever thrown a fist full of glitter in the air? Have you ever looked fear in the face and said, "I just don't care"?
It's only half past the point of no return The tip of the iceberg The sun before the burn The thunder before the lightning The breath before the phrase Have you ever felt this way?
Have you ever hated yourself for staring at the phone? You're whole life waiting on the ring to prove you're not alone Have you ever been touched so gently you had to cry? Have you ever invited a stranger to come inside?
It's only half past the point of oblivion The hourglass on the table The walk before the run The breath before the kiss And the fear before the flames Have you ever felt this way?
La La La La La La La La
There you are, sitting in the garden Clutching my coffee, Calling me sugar You called me sugar
Have you ever wished for an endless night? Lassoed the moon and the stars and pulled that rope tight? Have you ever held your breath and asked yourself will it ever get better than tonight? Tonight
A 57 minute version of the feature length documentary film, "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music," is going to air nationally on PBS throughout August-- click here for the schedule! Over the course of this film, you will not only have the chance to see and hear new amazing performances from around the world, but you will also get to meet the musicians who make them so special.
Additional screenings are being scheduled by PBS daily, so for the most up to date listing check with your local station. Updating of the screening schedule linked above will be at their website -- this schedule is current as of July 30th right now.
There is no better way to introduce your friends and family to Playing For Change than through this film, so please share this information with your loved ones!
And then, on Wednesday, August 12, Mark will be joined by Grandpa Elliott, Peter Bunetta, Reggie McBride, and David Sancious (former keyboardist and guitarist of the E Street Band) on the Colbert Report! I hope you'll join me in tuning in to Comedy Central at 11:30pm / 10:30c to see Mark and the guys with Stephen Colbert!
There's lots more exciting news coming up soon, so be sure to check back frequently-- or Join the Movement for regular updates!
Our guide while filming in Durban, South Africa and in the township of Umlazi outside of Durban was Bekhani Mamela. Bekhani turned out to be one of the most pivotal people we collaborated with during our journey. He is the choir director and founder of Sinamuva who is featured in all but one of Playing for Change’s songs around the world. His arrangement on these songs brought us to tears. He, along with Sinamuva, is a pure representation of hope for all South Africans persevering darkness with music.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Rafa lost the final to Roger Federer on Sunday, May 17, 2009 6-4, 6-4 Next is the French Open www.rolandgarros.com French Open - May 24 - June 7
Then.....
Nadal Confirms for Grasscout Title Defense at Queens Club
World No. 1 Rafael Nadal will defend his grasscourt title at the Queen's Club, the Aegon Championships, which he won last year fresh off the French Open title on clay.
"It was amazing," Nadal told the tournament website. "It was totally unexpected for me to win after winning in Roland Garros. I arrived and all I had was one day to adapt to grass. But I played really, really good tennis. I played relaxed, without pressure and I played really well."
Andy Roddick is another early committal for the first grasscourt event of the season after the run on red clay.
"It is nice to come back to a place where you are the last champion," Nadal said. "To arrive as the last champion is going to be a really nice experience."
Nadal became the first player to win the French Open, Queen's and Wimbledon in the same year.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wimbledon is June 22 - July 5, 2009
Pictures from May 17, 2009 in Madrid, Spain Spanish Rafael Nadal reacts during the final match of the ATP Madrid Open claycourt tournament against Swiss Roger Federer on May 17, 2009 in Madrid. Federer won 6-4,6-4. Photo credit: PEDRO ARMESTRE/AFP/Getty Images
Spanish Rafael Nadal reacts during the final match of the ATP Madrid Open claycourt tournament against Swiss Roger Federer on May 17, 2009 in Madrid. Federer won 6-4,6-4. Photo credit: PEDRO ARMESTRE/AFP/Getty Images
Spanish Rafael Nadal reacts during the final match of the ATP Madrid Open claycourt tournament against Swiss Roger Federer on May 17, 2009 in Madrid. Federer won 6-4,6-4. Photo credit: PEDRO ARMESTRE/AFP/Getty Images
(L to R) Spanish Rafael Nadal Swiss Roger Federer, Russian Dinara Safina and Danish Caroline Wozniacki celebrate after the final matches of the ATP Madrid Open claycourt tournament on May 17, 2009 in Madrid. Swiss Roger Federer won against Spanish Rafael Nadal 6-4, 6-4. Russian Dinara Safina won against Danish Caroline Wozniacki 6-2, 6-4. Photo credit: JAVIER SORIANO/AFP/Getty Images
There are presently 200 pictures of Rafa at the Madrid Open at this link sports.yahoo.com
................................................... Madrid Open Final Highlights Nadal vs. Federer May 17, 2009 Uploaded by ATP Watch in high quality at http://www.tennistv.com
Rest In Peace Odetta December 31, 1930 - December 2, 2008 When someone you don't know personally can leave a hole in you ~ you know there is something magic in the connection of our human spirits. At my post ~Failing a Child Becomes Legacy I have a video ~ Odetta which includes...
Odetta speaking from the words of the quote I have included here:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you, not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson in Return to Love I saw Odetta sing in small venues here in Newport, Rhode Island She offered her uniqueness with fearlessness. I only own one of Odetta's CDs ~ Blues Everywhere I Go and I bought it mostly for Hear Me Talkin to Ya
Odetta arrives to the 'Salute to the Blues' concert at Radio City Music Hall in this Friday, Feb. 7, 2003 file photo taken in New York. Odetta, the folk singer with the powerful voice who moved audiences and influenced fellow musicians for a half-century, died Tuesday Dec. 2, 2008. She was 77. (AP Photo/Stuart Ramson)
"They were liberation songs", Odetta described her folk and spirituals. "You're walking down life's road, society's foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can't get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die, or insist upon your life."
She had hoped to sing at President-elect Obama's inauguration, but on December 2, 2008 she passed away at age 77.
I will hear her liberation songs on that day; and I know I will not be alone.
December 31, 1930 - December 2, 2008
This Spadecaller Video is a tribute to Odetta, her music, and the many gifts that she contributed to the world during her vibrant lifetime. Odetta, the African-American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and human rights activists passed away on Monday. Often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement," her musical repertoire consists largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and '60s, she was a formative influence on dozens of artists, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Janis Joplin.
Odetta sings 'Jim Crow Blues' at New York's Radio City Music Hall in a 2003 photo. Odetta, the deep-voiced folk singer whose ballads and songs became for many a soundtrack to the American civil rights movement, has died at age 77, her manager said on Wednesday.
Text by visionaryproject In honor of Odetta, the National Visionary Leadership Project offers this clip where Odetta speaks about her life as an activist. To see more oral history interview clips with Odetta, visit: http://www.visionaryproject.org/gordonodetta/
Odetta Gordon performs in her native home of Birmingham, Alabama, during the City Stages Music Festival, June 11, 2000.
(Photo and caption submitted by M. J. M de Oliveira)
Folk music, civil rights legend Odetta dies at 77
By POLLY ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer Polly Anderson, Associated Press Writer – Wed Dec 3, 1:50 pm ET
NEW YORK – Odetta's monumental voice rang out in August 1963 when she sang "I'm on My Way" at the historic March on Washington, where Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech.
She had hoped to perform again in Washington next month when Barack Obama is inaugurated as the nation's first black president. But the acclaimed folk singer, who influenced generations of musicians and was an icon in the civil rights struggle, died Tuesday after battling heart disease. She was 77.
In spite of failing health, Odetta performed 60 concerts in the last two years, and her singing ability never diminished, manager Doug Yeager said.
"The power would just come out of her like people wouldn't believe," he said.
She was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital with kidney failure about three weeks ago, Yeager said in confirming her death.
With her classically trained voice and spare guitar, Odetta gave life to the songs by workingmen and slaves, farmers and miners, housewives and washerwomen, blacks and whites.
First coming to prominence in the 1950s, she influenced Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and other superstars of the folk music boom.
An Odetta record on the turntable, listeners could close their eyes and imagine themselves hearing the sounds of spirituals and blues as they rang out from a weathered back porch or around a long-vanished campfire a century before.
"What distinguished her from the start was the meticulous care with which she tried to re-create the feeling of her folk songs; to understand the emotions of a convict in a convict ditty, she once tried breaking up rocks with a sledge hammer," Time magazine wrote in 1960.
"She is a keening Irishwoman in `Foggy Dew,' a chain-gang convict in `Take This Hammer,' a deserted lover in `Lass from the Low Country,'" Time wrote.
Odetta called on her fellow blacks to "take pride in the history of the American Negro." When she sang at the March on Washington — along with Baez, Dylan, Josh White and Peter, Paul and Mary — "Odetta's great, full-throated voice carried almost to Capitol Hill," The New York Times said.
"I'm not a real folk singer," she told The Washington Post in 1983. "I don't mind people calling me that, but I'm a musical historian. I'm a city kid who has admired an area and who got into it. I've been fortunate. With folk music, I can do my teaching and preaching, my propagandizing."
While she hoped to sing at Obama's inauguration, she had not been officially invited, Yeager said. Her last big concert was on Oct. 4 at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, where she performed in front of tens of thousands at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. She also performed Oct. 25-26 in Toronto.
In 1999, she was honored with a National Medal of the Arts. Then-President Bill Clinton said her career showed "us all that songs have the power to change the heart and change the world."
She was nominated for a 1963 Grammy awards for best folk recording for "Odetta Sings Folk Songs." Two more Grammy nominations came in recent years, for her 1999 "Blues Everywhere I Go" and her 2005 album "Gonna Let It Shine."
Among her notable early works were her 1956 album "Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues," which included such songs as "Muleskinner Blues" and "Jack O' Diamonds"; and her 1957 "At the Gate of Horn," which featured the popular spiritual "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands."
Her 1965 album "Odetta Sings Dylan" included such standards as "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Masters of War" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'."
In a 1978 Playboy interview, Dylan said, "the first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta." He said he found "just something vital and personal" when he heard an early album of hers in a record store as a teenager. "Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar," he said.
Belafonte also cited her as a key influence on his hugely successful recording career, and she was a guest singer on his 1960 album, "Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall."
She continued to record in recent years; her 2001 album "Looking for a Home (Thanks to Leadbelly)" paid tribute to the great blues singer to whom she was sometimes compared.
Born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Ala., in 1930, she moved with her family to Los Angeles at age 6. Her father had died when she was young and she took her stepfather's last name, Felious. Hearing her in glee club, a junior high teacher made sure she got music lessons, but Odetta became interested in folk music in her late teens and turned away from classical studies.
She got much of her early experience at the Turnabout Theatre in Los Angeles, where she sang and played occasional stage roles in the early 1950s.
"What power of characterization and projection of mood are hers, even though plainly clad and sitting or standing in half light!" a Los Angeles Times critic wrote in 1955.
Over the years, she picked up occasional acting roles. None other than famed Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper reported in 1961 that she "comes through beautifully" in the film "Sanctuary."
In The Washington Post interview, Odetta theorized that humans developed music and dance because of fear, "fear of God, fear that the sun would not come back, many things. I think it developed as a way of worship or to appease something. ... The world hasn't improved, and so there's always something to sing about."
Odetta is survived by a daughter, Michelle Esrick of New York City, and a son, Boots Jaffre, of Fort Collins, Colo. She was divorced about 40 years ago and never remarried, her manager said.
A memorial service was planned for next month, Yeager said.
Associated Press writer Cristian Salazar contributed to this report.
The video below of Odetta singing Leadbelly’s widely-known song “The Midnight Special” is remarkable because of its closeness to the original Leadbelly lyric. The popularization of “The Midnight Special” — as with the fame of Leadbelly’s “Goodnight Irene” — was due to covers created by pop groups like Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Weavers. Odetta is a bridge figure, one of those marvellous artists who does not merely do everything right, but who also imbibes in a visceral way the very essence of the original.
In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that -- to help people see themselves in others -- through the power of film.
Pangea Day taps the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion while uniting millions of people to build a better future. Pangea is the name of the original super-continent which contained all the world's land mass before the continents started splitting apart 250 million years ago. We're launching Pangea Day with the vision that the people of the world can begin to overcome their divisions, and that the power of film can help make it possible. On May 10, 2008 -- Pangea Day -- sites in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked to produce a 4-hour program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music. The program will be broadcast live to the world through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones. Of course, movies alone can't change the world. But the people who watch them can. So following May 10, 2008, Pangea Day organizers will facilitate community-building activities around the world by connecting inspired viewers with numerous organizations which are already doing groundbreaking work.
On May 10, we want the whole world to be watching the Pangea Day program. Join an extraordinary community of people who are coming together to do just that by hosting an event.
You can host a Pangea Day event in your home, school, town square, or wherever you want to gather your friends, family, and community.
Visit www.pangeaday.org and plot your event on our map today! And check out the website for more information. .......................................................................
Pangea Day taps the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion while uniting millions of people to build a better future. .......................................................................
....................................................................... ....................................................................... Imagine! Kenya sings for India Here, set against the backdrops of Nairobi city and the beautiful landscape of Uhuru Park (Maasai country), a Kenyan choir sings the Indian national anthem.
The director has chosen the Indian anthem because Kenya is home to a sizeable Hindu population (including Sikhs & Jains also) of approximately 2.5 million, most of them descendants of the East African Railways labourers who were brought over by the British during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the British colonialists ruled Kenya and the rest of the East African region. Credits: concept: JOHANNES LEONARDO PRODUCTION HOUSE Blue Sky Films (EPZ) Ltd Producer Mario Zvan Producer Jim Shamoon Director Bob Nyanja
I love my life. I love where I live. And I am passionate about my passions. I love to dance. Necessary to live: music, piano, singing, writing, acting, painting.
I have been fighting for and supporting the arts all my adult life. Since 2004, I have been working with other activists to end the Darfur genocide.
I have traveled to Europe many times since my early twenties. Places I have been: many USA states including Hawaii, Montreal, Canada, Barbados, France, Spain, Luxembourg, England, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Germany - and have wonderful memories.
My last trip was in May - June 2013 to Spain.
I would like to travel to Europe and Kyoto, Japan.
I love the southwest where I have visited Hopi, Navajo, Zia and San Idlefonso potters.
Life is exciting and I intend to live it full-out to the end.
B.S. and M.M., both in music
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Khartoum, Sudan Stop Genocide Time
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Melbourne Time
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RAFA NADAL -BRING BACK LONG PANTS - SLEEVELESS TOPS
Double Click on Videos to Enlarge
Darfur - The Abandoned Genocide - a video by Sandra Hammel
Want to help? Call 1~800~GENOCIDE
"May I Suggest" by Susan Werner
Satchita - Playing for Change
Stand By Me ~ Playing for Change
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Genocide is not only a word,
it is crying of the whole human race.
There is nothing redeeming about being silent
when speaking up is the humane thing to do.
The honor and integrity of the human race is at stake.
