Valse de Balfa

Another song that's been haunting me recently is Valse de Balfa, another song written by the Balfa Brothers. I was first struck by its plaintive power while listening to the Red Stick Ramblers' version from their eponymous debut. Their version, which unfortunately is not available online for listening, is driven by big propulsive drums. In contrast, the Balfa Brothers version from The Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music lacks drums, not uncommon at the time, but carries that droning fiddle lines and more of an urgency in the vocals.

Here are the lyrics in French and the translation, again by Ann Savoy. Most poignant is verse 2, a common experience for most of us, I think.

Valse de Balfa (Balfa Waltz)
1. Quand j´ai parti de la maison
J´avais fait mon idée
J´étais parti pour te chercher, cher,
Où mourir au bout de mon sang.
When I left the house
I had made up my mind
I left to go find you, dear,
Or to end my own life.

2. Quand j´ai arrivé à ta maison
J´en ai trouvé -z-un autre avec toi
Ça, ça a cassé mon cœur, cher,
J´aimerais mieux mourir que voir ça.
2. When I got to your house
I found you with another.
that broke my heart.
I would rather die than see that.

3. Si j´aurais cinq jours dans ma vie
J´en donnerais trois dans les cinq
Pour passer las deux autres avec toi
J´aimerais mourir dans tes bras.
3. If I had five days in my life
I’d give three of the five
To stay the other two with you
I would like to die in your arms.

I had never seen the idiomatic phrase Où mourir au bout de mon sang but the construction with the verb mortir + au bout de mon sang is pretty well attested in Standard French, although I am sans my good French dictionary.

Another Cajun classic that goes a long way in explaining certain Cajun attitudes.

Port Arthur Blues

Since I haven't been able to resolve some of the vocabulary issues of Valse de Port Arthur, I thought I'd give the lyrics and translation of another Cajun song about Port Arthur, Port Arthur Blues. This one was written originally by the Balfa Brothers, and it's short but poignant. Transcription and translation is courtesy of Ann Allen Savoy from her wonderful book, Cajun Music: A Reflection of the People, Vol. I.

1. Tu m'as dit hier au soir / tu pouvais plus rev'nir
plus t'en revenir pour me rejoindre à la maison
ô ya-yaïe!
1. You told me last night
You couldn't love me anymore
You couldn't come back to meet me
At the house anymore, oh it hurts!

2. Mon, je vois pas / Qui je t'ai fait
Quo' faire donc, tu veux pas / T'en revenir au Port Arthur?
ô ya-yaïe!
2. Me, I don't see what I did
So why don't you want to anymore
Come home to Port Arthur?
Oh, it hurts!

Not much to comment on, 'cept that quo' faire is Cajun French for 'Why?'. I do believe the translation of the first verse is a bit off since it looks like it should read:
You told me last night
You couldn't come back
You couldn't come back to meet me
At the house anymore, oh ya-yaïe!

Valse de Port Arthur, Part I

Since my last entry ended up being about Port Arthur, I present to you one of the Cajun songs about Port Arthur. It is a waltz called Valse de Port Arthur:

1. Oh, bébé, moi j'm'en vais au Port Arthur,
Oui, 'tit' fill', c'est toi la seul' qu'moi j'aimerai,
Oh, 'tit' fill', tu es si loin de moi,
J'reviendrai pour te r'joindr' au Port Arthur.

2. Eh, 'tit' fill', t'as trouvé qu' tu m'aimais plus,
Ouais, 'tit' mom', aujourd'hui tu veux plus m'voir,
Oh, ya-yaïe, ça fait d'la pein' de te voir,
Ouais, tout l'temps j'vais m'en aller au Port Arthur.
*Transcription of the lyrics is courtesy of http://membres.lycos.fr/breric/cajun.htm.

As you can see, there is quite a bit of slurring which utterly defeats my French transcription skills so I must rely on the kindness of les étrangers. I won't offer a translation now, but I will comment on a few peculiarly Cajun French lexical items.
'tit' fill' = 'tit' is a common abbreviation for petite, sometimes shortened all the way just to 't', especially in nicknames. My cousin Anthony was referred to by my grandfather as 'T-Ton'. Somewhat obscurely, my other cousin (and we ran long on cousins, thank you) Robert was termed 'Boscoe'. This is a long-winded way of saying that 'tit' fill' is 'little girl', a term of endearment.
ya-yaïe = "oh it hurts", a very common exclamation of pain in Cajun music. Sometimes spelled yé yaille. Cajun French transcription can be non-standardized.
'tit' mom' = I suspect that this might be le môme which is a derogatory term meaning 'lad, kid'. I'll have to check and discuss it further in Part II.

Buddhism in Southeast Texas

Here's a recent article about a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in my hometown, Port Arthur. I visited this temple many years ago, and the lotus ponds were beautiful then. Next time I go home I'll have to take pictures.

I really like this.
"Buu Mon" means priceless gate and sounds similar to Beaumont, which is why it was chosen, according to the archives.

Here is their homepage. I wonder how large the Vietnamese population is in Port Arthur? There is also a large garden with statue of the Virgin Mary on the other side of Port Arthur that was sponsored by a Vietnamese association. I didn't have a camera the last time I visited, but I suspect she bore a striking resemblance to Kuan-yin. Ah, there was one picture of it via google images but the link was broken. There is this image from flickr. Not like Kuan-yin at all.

It is called Hoa Binh Park and was built by the parishioners of the Queen of Vietnamese Martyr's Catholic Church in gratitude to the city that welcomed them upon their arrival from Asia. Here is another nice photo.

That's my hometown. A smidge of cultural diversity.

The Origin of "Laissez la Roue de la Loi roulez"

My last post was my 50th, so I thought I'd celebrate that mild milestone by explaining the title of my blog.

"Laissez les bons temps roulez" is a Cajun expression, and according to the Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture, it "strongly conveys the "joie de vivre" ("joy of living") attitude that pervades south Louisiana." Amen, but I'd amend that slightly to include Southeast Texas since there is a high concentration of Cajuns there. There will be another post about that later.

In fact, you can almost declare about 10 square yards around any Cajun extraterritorial Acadiana because that joie de vivre can be infectious, particularly under the influence of good cooking and other less salubrious substances.

Now I modified this hoary but perspicacious truism by replacing the phrase "les bons temps" with "la Roue de la Loi" which in French refers to the dharmacakra, the Wheel of the Law. The term dharma is extremely multivalent in Indian religions, but here it refers to the teaching of the Buddha. The dharmacakra is the metaphorical wheel that the historical Buddha first turned at Sarnath outside of Varansi when he gave his first teaching. The dharmacakra is also a symbol of the universal emperor, and you can see the original sculpture of such a wheel that adorned the pillar of the Mauryan emperor Aśoka here. This capital of this pillar ended up on the national flag of India.

There is also an excellent sculpture of the Buddha giving the first teaching in the museum at Sarnath. You can see it here.

Obviously, my ability to pun in French is limited by my meager francophone abilities, but that's my attempt to capture two of my preoccupations when I started this blog: my Cajun heritage and Buddhism. I hope to up the Cajun content in coming days, but no promises.

Onward to 100 posts!

Yelping all the Way Back to Boston

It's pretty amazing how I can scout out my new neighborhood in East Cambridge through yelp.com. I have a good idea where to get Greek food (at the end of the block), where to pick up a few things grocery-wise (up on Cambridge St.), and go sit in a coffee shop (looks like Starbucks... argh). The coffee shops really are sub-par in the Cambridge/Somerville area. Most of that is due to lack of space in retail settings. Everything is so cramped that there is no space for armchairs or couches. Or free wi-fi, apparently. Oh, The Golden Roast, how I long for your comfy seating!

I'm in the Kendall/MIT Square neighborhood, and it looks alright. I know it's very industrial-parkesque down there from the occasional jaunt to the movie theater, but that means I'll be close to MIT for free classical music concerts. Perhaps I can find a nice quiet place to study at MIT as well.

Grand Tasso

It's rare, but it does happen on occasion that a song affects me deeply. Last night I was listening to the Red Stick Ramblers, one of those young and upcoming bands that is preserving Cajun music, and I was dumbstruck by the song Grand Tasso. You can listen to it for free here, it's under their 2002 album "The Red Stick Ramblers." I can't stop listening to it.

Apparently it's a traditional song with additional lyrics by two of the band members, and I'm frantic that I can't find the lyrics to the song anywhere since I'd love to learn it. My French isn't good enough to decipher it, and although I can make out some of the lyrics (mixed with some English), I imagine the dialectical differences would defeat me.

In Cajun country, there is a food called tasso--a highly spiced and dried pork sausage that is an essential ingredient in gumbo and other gastronomical delights. There is a community called Tasso, by Bayou Mallet, near Eunice, deep in an area of road houses where Cajuns come to dance at the fais do do's each Saturday. The place figures in many a traditional song.

Well, there you go! The Red Stick Ramblers not only play traditional Cajun music, but they incorporate Western swing and jazz influences from folks like Bob Wills and Django Reinhardt, and they cover some of their songs as well.

Great stuff. I know Michael Doucet also recorded Grand Tasso, but the droning fiddle of the Red Stick Rambler's version gives it a touch of melancholy that fits so perfectly and the vocalist has that touch of world-weariness that carries it home. Anyone who covers That's What I Like About The South has got my admiration.

Kill!

Based on the same source material as Kurosawa's Sanjuro, but much funnier, I saw Kill! a couple of days back. It was a relief, actually, since the last couple of samurai films had been heavy going with all the tension and unhappy endings. Kill! is rather goofy in its humor, and bless the director, Kihachi Okamoto, for that. I imagine in 1968 it was time to back down from the strident anti-authoritarianism of films earlier in the decade.

Tatsuya Nakadai, a former samurai who is now a yakuza, and Etsushi Takahashi, a ridiculously strong yet goofy farmer who wants to become a samurai, form a hilarious Felix and Oscar Odd Couple as Nakadai susses out the situation and manipulates it to a fine resolution. Nakadai, last seen in Harakiri, with his deadpan face turns in a great performance.

Recommended.

Hiroshi Sugimoto at the de Young

I finally got out to see the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit last night at the de Young since they are open to 8:45 pm on Friday nights. The new de Young museum itself I wasn't very impressed with at first, since it looks like the painted backdrop of a Star Trek: The Next Generation city from afar, but it grew on me as I went throughout the museum. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an example of such a backdrop from TNG so my google-fu must be weak today. I don't think the metal cladding on the building was a particularly felicitous choice. It seemed too sterile, and the texture was off putting. Perhaps as it ages and acquires more of a patina it will soften.

Whoever funded the entry court should get their money back. It's cold and uninviting and does not welcome lingering. However, the built-in fern court was a nice touch, and there could have been more warm touches such as that to lessen the monolithic dread of the rest of the building.

The view of San Francisco, however, from the Harmon Tower is magnificent and truly itself worth a visit to the museum. There is a small Ruth Asawa exhibit at the entrance to the elevator to visit the top of the tower, and that was nice to see since I missed the big exhibition they had early this year or last.

The Sugimoto exhibit itself was very dimly lit with the photos lit from behind. I suppose I enjoyed it, although it struck me that anything tastefully photographed and reproduced in monumental size would be impressive. Perhaps my expectations were too high. I found his compositional skills somewhat too frontal and centered. There were a number of series, and of course the seascape series was my favorite. That must've been anticipated by the curators since that's where they put the benches for folks to linger. I wasn't impressed at all by the temple photo, since it was stitched together from many photos and the joins were not seamless. That seems just careless in this day and age.

His abstract forms were good, but again, they would fall prey to the criticism of being interesting simply due to their size. I wasn't and haven't been very interested in his photos of dioramas and wax statues, but they are also compelling in an odd removed from reality twice sort of way. The series of drive-in theaters is very good and more complex visually due to jet-trails flying overhead than the similar set from theaters. I also liked his architectural photos, blurry yet still preserving some of the abstract majesty of the famous buildings that he photographed.

I also enjoyed the landscapes by Shi Guorui, a photographer in residence who is from Beijing. I found them terrifying in a nightmarish way, reminiscent of the old Twilight Zone black and white episodes. The series of photos of the 19th-century hand tools I found much less compelling. They are simply Ray-o-graphs, or photograms if you like, and disappointing compositionally, presented in a highly formal and flat way. I think they are to be linked with 19th-century Chinese immigrant labor, and if so, they did not serve that notion well.

The rest of the collection I zipped through, sparing a glance here and there since I suffer eye-fatigue at a museum fairly quickly. The Friday Nights at the de Young series is an excellent idea, and there seemed to be a crowd of people enjoying that under a massive Gerhard Richter.

Harry Callahan

Magnificent. I don't like all of his stuff, but he comes the closest to the aesthetic I've been lazily striving for in his photos of buildings. I love that he focused on the daily life of where he lived in his early work, photographing the mundane and making it beautiful, like this, the last photo that is of a building wall in Chicago. He experimented like mad, but his abstract photos were so tasteful.

Look at the composition of this. So fortuitous, but apparently he worked hard to get a handful of photos a year, photographing more in a weekend than others did in a year.

I love the barrenness of this. Mies Van Der Rohe was a big influence on him, great portrait.

Look how it abstracted and simplified this through contrast. Lovely.

Another beautiful winter scene from Chicago. Inspiring. I'll have to look for more books on him. It's becoming obvious that I need to take a history of photography class.

Hall and Oatesmeal

Look, I think, despite all evidence to the contrary, that I am still a pretty hip guy. With it. You know, on top of trends, despite my vastly outdated slang in that first sentence.

I try and do keep up, but you know, glancing at pitchforkmedia.com every so often just doesn't cut it. I straddle that grup line, but it's starting to wear thin. Either the line or my straddle.

Anyway, I feel entirely vindicated today because in this week's SF Weekly in an article entitled "I Can Go For That: The Web 2.0 Generation recharges Hall & Oates Hits" I learned that Hall & Oates (H & O) are back. And if you check my lastfm profile, you'll see that H & O are my third most played artist. Again, I'm just ahead of the curve. Here's an interview with Oates in the SF Weekly.

Actually, I played H & O obsessively while grinding out two draft chapters of my dissertation in January and February. For some reason, the extremely well-crafted pop allowed me to hack my way through about 100 pages. I used to buy a CD when I had to write a paper. I'd just play that sucker over and over again, and I suppose H & O got me through the hump this past winter, although others suffered my enthusiasm for Messers Hall and Oates. My apologies again, J., but a boy's gotta compulsively blast his brain sometime.

Iceland in Hot Springs, Arkansas

Sometimes the cognitive dissonance gets a wee bit too much. But here's a point for the South. According to pitchfork media, Sigur Rós' Jón "Jónsi" Birgisson and Parachutes' Alex Somers have been coming together for the sake of art under the name Riceboy Sleeps and they are having an exhibit in Hot Springs, Arkansas at Gallery 801. What a coup for Gallery 801 based on the attention that they are getting. Riceboy Sleeps does paper and book art, it seems, and I think they did at least one album cover (ok, CD cover) for Sigur Rós.

Now, I've been a huge Sigur Rós fan since pretty much the beginning. I flew out to the Bay Area to see them on their first American tour in 2001 since they were only touring the Coasts. Well, I snuck in a night at Nickies to see DJ Cheb i Sabbah too. I even wrote a review about the show, which has been removed from their official site, and my encounter with three members of Metallica at the show. Metallica? Sigur Rós? Say it ain't so, Hall! I actually thought that the lead guitarist for Metallica at first was Dave Navarro and almost said so. That would've been funny.

I'm also a big fan of Hot Springs, Arkansas. Why? Well, I've taken two long weekend-type vacations in that area, and when I lived briefly in Dallas, not exactly a nature preserve, trips up to Lake Ouachita (one of the cleanest lakes in the nation because you cannot build on the lakefront) were balm to my humidity-flayed soul. Hot Springs has, of course, old spas from the late 19th-early 20th century, which are a kick to visit, and the scenery is quite nice. You can rent a boat and go out on Lake Ouachita, which I've done twice, and there are some great swimming holes in the area.

But how did Riceboy Sleeps get a show there? There were a ton of little galleries the last time I was there in the mid-90s, but most of it was Western-oriented. They were a few galleries a bit out of the ordinary. I remember one that sold welded sculptures of hockey players dressed as samurai swordsmen, but still. Not exactly the most avant-garde place, Hot Springs. Or is it? Great story about how the exhibit came about here. It never hurts to ask.

Just don't eat at the Thai restaurant in downtown Hot Springs.

With a Samurai Rebel Yell!

Samurai Rebellion. 1967.

Ah, Toshirō Mifune. I have a great idea for a book based on you.

Yōko Tsukasa as his best friend. Masaki Kobayashi as the director. Another long slow boil until the film finally erupts into violence. Don't watch the trailer, it gives away too much. Masaki-san claims that Mifune was distracted in this movie because he had just started his own production company, but who'd have guessed?

Mifune finally starts showing his age, looking haggard with bags starting to form under his eyes, and he plays the henpecked father who retires quietly but is stirred back to life when his daimyo makes outrageous demands on his son and daughter-in-law. It's an odd romantic triangle in a sense, but it works. You have to love the Japanese sense of politeness, at least in the subtitling, when a character apologizes profusely while dying from multiple musket wounds, saying, "I can't take you to Tokyo! I am sorry. It can't be helped."

Another best of samurai film in the bag. One of the better ones for building up psychological tension.

Bhangra, Sitar, and Tabla at the Stern Grove on a Sunday

What a disappointment. I've liked Karsh Kale since his first album, Realize, and I suspected that I was not going to enjoy the concert yesterday at Stern Grove after previewing some of the music online and sadly, I was proven correct.

I suppose there are several factors to account for this:
1) Somewhere in the past two years, I've gotten burnt out on Asian Underground, Asian Massive, Ethnotechno (my favorite generic tag since it's more... generic and allows for music from Africa, especially North Africa) or whatever you want to call it. I used to love this stuff, but now most of it sounds... bland.
2) The Karsh Kale/Anoushka Shankar 'Breathing Under Water' project, which played yesterday, has impeccable credentials, but sadly, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. I'd expect that Karsh, Anoushka, and members from MIDIval Punditz would add up to something grand, but it was the aural equivalent of slightly pleasant and vaguely ethnic wallpaper from Pier 1. Perhaps I just don't get the 'rich orchestral textures' that seems to be an increasing part of this genre by Indian musicians. I know it's from Bollywood film music, but it makes it sound... syrupy. I thought that this element really weakened the last Badmarsh & Shri album, Signs.
3) The mix was horrible. There was no balance. In fact, given the intimacy of sitar and tabla, perhaps a smaller venue would have provided the intimacy to set the proper mood for appreciation of the music, but I doubt that it would've help.
4) Finally, arriving at 1:30 assured that I was perched precariously and uncomfortably on the hillside just to get a glimpse of the performers on stage. I have no idea why that they have put in tables in the main Stern Grove area. It seems to be a terrible waste of space and only allows a certain amount of people to actually be able to see the concert. And the number of folks in attendance yesterday far outnumbered that small space. Would felling trees actually be a bad iea in this instance to landscape the side of the hill into, I don't know, a proper amphitheater?

Random Thoughts from a Sunday

First:
If you are an Asian woman with attitude to burn, wearing this shirt should provide maximum deterrence against the would-be fetishists who seem to be endemic to the Bay Area. I saw this shirt on the MUNI, and that woman had attitude to ignite a fusion reactor.

Second:
The new movie Underdog has on its promotional poster at bus stops the following:
Underdog. One Nation Under Dog.
However, I initially read it as One Nation Under a Woof, riffing on the classic by Funkadelic, One Nation Under a Groove. Seriously. This is how my mind works. I actually like my slogan better since the original by Disney could be construed as blasphemous.

I suppose if you were Irish, you might read it as One Nation Built on a Bog. One Nation Under Bog would be the Clockwork Orange slang (nadsat) version.

Besides, I'm enough of a Gen-Xer (wincing) that I can't believe they are shot the new movie as a live-action film, abandoning the classic cartoon Underdog. Sad, the continuing regurgitation of the pop culture of my childhood. This ranks alongside with the new Bionic Woman, sheesh.

Third:
I've added some new elements to the blog. I have no expectations about the Google AdSense button. I hardly expect to make any money, but I was curious to see what kind of ads they'd run. Very similar so far to what I get in gmail. Ho ho ho.