Music of a Distant Drum

Music of a Distant Drum PDF Author:
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691150109
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The 132 poems, most of which here make their English-language debut, represent the three major languages of medieval Islam--Arabic, Persian, and Turkish--with the remainder from Hebrew. They span more than a thousand years, from the seventh to the early eighteenth century, when poetry, like so much else, was shattered and reshaped by the impact of the West. They range from panegyric and satire to religious poetry and lyrics about wine, women, and love. Lewis begins with an introduction on the place of poets and poetry in Middle Eastern history and concludes with biographical notes on all the poets.

Music of a Distant Drum

Music of a Distant Drum PDF Author:
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691150109
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book Here

Book Description
The 132 poems, most of which here make their English-language debut, represent the three major languages of medieval Islam--Arabic, Persian, and Turkish--with the remainder from Hebrew. They span more than a thousand years, from the seventh to the early eighteenth century, when poetry, like so much else, was shattered and reshaped by the impact of the West. They range from panegyric and satire to religious poetry and lyrics about wine, women, and love. Lewis begins with an introduction on the place of poets and poetry in Middle Eastern history and concludes with biographical notes on all the poets.

Music of a Distant Drum

Music of a Distant Drum PDF Author:
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837901
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Music of a Distant Drum marks a literary milestone. It collects 129 poems from the four leading literary traditions of the Middle East, all masterfully translated into English by Bernard Lewis, many for the first time. These poems come from diverse languages and traditions--Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew--and span more than a thousand years. Together they provide a fascinating and unusual window into Middle Eastern history. Lewis, one of the world's greatest authorities on the region's culture and history, reveals verses of startling beauty, ranging from panegyric and satire to religious poetry and lyrics about wine, women, and love. Bernard Lewis, one of the world's greatest authorities on the region's culture and history, offers a work of startling beauty that leaves no doubt as to why such poets were courted by kings in their day. Like those in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the poems here--as ensured by Lewis's mastery of all the source languages and his impeccable style and taste--come fully alive in English. They are surprising and sensuous, disarmingly witty and frank. They provide a fascinating and unusual glimpse into Middle Eastern history. Above all, they are a pleasure to read.They range from panegyric and satire to religious poetry and lyrics about wine, women, and love. Lewis begins with an introduction on the place of poets and poetry in Middle Eastern history and concludes with biographical notes on all the poets. This treasure trove of verse is aptly summed up by a quote from the ninth-century Arab author Ibn Qutayba: "Poetry is the mine of knowledge of the Arabs, the book of their wisdom, the muster roll of their history, the repository of their great days, the rampart protecting their heritage, the trench defending their glories, the truthful witness on the day of dispute, the final proof at the time of argument.? In one hand the Qur'vn, in the other a wineglass, Sometimes keeping the rules, sometimes breaking them. Here we are in this world, unripe and raw, Not outright heathens, not quite Muslims. --Mujir (12th century)

Brave Music of a Distant Drum

Brave Music of a Distant Drum PDF Author: Manu Herbstein
Publisher: Moritz HERBSTEIN
ISBN: 1508044996
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Ama is an enslaved African. In Brazil, near the end of her life, she is determined that her story shall survive for future generations. Her story is one of violence and heartache, but also of courage, hope, determination, and ultimately, love. Since Ama is blind, she has to dictate to her long separated only son, Kwame Zumbi. As his mother’s history is revealed to him, Kwame’s world changes forever.

Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade PDF Author: Manu Herbstein
Publisher: Moritz HERBSTEIN
ISBN: 150804080X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
"I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, here and here, I am still a free woman." During a period of four hundred years, European slave traders ferried some 12 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. In the Americas, teaching a slave to read and write was a criminal offense. When the last slaves gained their freedom in Brazil, barely a thousand of them were literate. Hardly any stories of the enslaved and transported Africans have survived. This novel is an attempt to recreate just one of those stories, one story of a possible 12 million or more.Lawrence Hill created another in The Book of Negroes (Someone Knows my Name in the U.S.) and, more recently, Yaa Gyasi has done the same in Homegoing. Ama occupies center stage throughout this novel. As the story opens, she is sixteen. Distant drums announce the death of her grandfather. Her family departs to attend the funeral, leaving her alone to tend her ailing baby brother. It is 1775. Asante has conquered its northern neighbor and exacted an annual tribute of 500 slaves. The ruler of Dagbon dispatches a raiding party into the lands of the neighboring Bekpokpam. They capture Ama. That night, her lover, Itsho, leads an attack on the raiders’ camp. The rescue bid fails. Sent to collect water from a stream, Ama comes across Itsho’s mangled corpse. For the rest of her life she will call upon his spirit in time of need. In Kumase, the Asante capital, Ama is given as a gift to the Queen-mother. When the adolescent monarch, Osei Kwame, conceives a passion for her, the regents dispatch her to the coast for sale to the Dutch at Elmina Castle. There the governor, Pieter de Bruyn, selects her as his concubine, dressing her in the elegant clothes of his late Dutch wife and instructing the obese chaplain to teach her to read and write English. De Bruyn plans to marry Ama and take her with him to Europe. He makes a last trip to the Dutch coastal outstations and returns infected with yellow fever. On his death, his successor rapes Ama and sends her back to the female dungeon. Traumatized, her mind goes blank. She comes to her senses in the canoe which takes her and other women out to the slave ship, The Love of Liberty. Before the ship leaves the coast of Africa, Ama instigates a slave rebellion. It fails and a brutal whipping leaves her blind in one eye. The ship is becalmed in mid-Atlantic. Then a fierce storm cripples it and drives it into the port of Salvador, capital of Brazil. Ama finds herself working in the fields and the mill on a sugar estate. She is absorbed into slave society and begins to adapt, learning Portuguese. Years pass. Ama is now totally blind. Clutching the cloth which is her only material link with Africa, she reminisces, dozes, falls asleep. A short epilogue brings the story up to date. The consequences of the slave trade and slavery are still with us. Brazilians of African descent remain entrenched in the lower reaches of society, enmeshed in poverty. “This is story telling on a grand scale,” writes Tony Simões da Silva. “In Ama, Herbstein creates a work of literature that celebrates the resilience of human beings while denouncing the inscrutable nature of their cruelty. By focusing on the brutalization of Ama's body, and on the psychological scars of her experiences, Herbstein dramatizes the collective trauma of slavery through the story of a single African woman. Ama echoes the views of writers, historians and philosophers of the African diaspora who have argued that the phenomenon of slavery is inextricable from the deepest foundations of contemporary western civilization.” Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Book.

When The Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm

When The Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm PDF Author: Layne Redmond
Publisher: Echo Point Books & Media, LLC
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 582

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Book Description
For millennia, the sacred drummers of pre-Christian Mediterranean and western Asia were women. In this inspiring book, Layne Redmond, herself a renowned drummer, tells their history. Artistic representations reveal that female frame drummers carried the spiritual traditions of many of the earliest recorded civilizations. During those ancient times, the drummer-priestesses held the keys to experience of the divine through rhythm. They were at the center of the goddess worship of matriarchal societies until the ascendance of patriarchal cultures and the loss of drumming as a spiritual technology. With wisdom and passion, Redmond chronicles our species’ deep connection to the drum, our rich heritage of inseparable spirituality and music, and the modern-day women reclaiming it. This book encourages readers—both women and men—to reestablish rhythmic links with themselves, nature, and other people through the power of drumming. Redmond illustrates her message with an extensive collection of images gathered during ten years of research and travel. Woven throughout the book are strands of ancient ritual and mythology, personal stories, and scientific evidence of the benefits of drumming. It is at once a history, a memoir, and a resounding call for spiritual and social renewal.

Field Music

Field Music PDF Author: Alexandria Hall
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063008394
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 91

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Book Description
A collection of poetry from the 2019 winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Rosanna Warren In her remarkable and assured debut, Alexandria Hall explores the boundaries and limits of language, place, and the self, as well as the complicated space between safety and danger, intimacy and isolation, playfulness and seriousness, home and away. With a keen eye for the importance of place, Hall shows us daily life in rural Vermont, illuminating the beauty and difficulty inherent in the dichotomies of human language and experience. Incisive and tender, Field Music is a thoughtful and alert collection from a major emerging voice.

Planet Drum

Planet Drum PDF Author: Mickey Hart
Publisher: Harper San Francisco
ISBN: 9780062504142
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Mickey Hart's dazzling companion to his bestselling Drumming at the Edge of Magic is a captivating chronicle of our global fascination with drums and the primal rhythms and spells of percussion, dramatically illustrated with 350 photographs and illustrations, 200 in full color.ra tour.

Gustav Mahler's Symphonic Landscapes

Gustav Mahler's Symphonic Landscapes PDF Author: Thomas Peattie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108456548
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The relationship between Gustav Mahler's career as conductor and his symphonic writing has remained largely unexplored territory with respect to his provocative re-invention of the Austro-German symphony at the turn of the twentieth century. This study offers a new account of these works by allowing Mahler's decisive contribution to the genre to emerge in light of his sustained engagement with the musical, theatrical, and aesthetic traditions of the Austrian fin de siècle. Appealing to ideas of landscape, mobility, and theatricality, Thomas Peattie elaborates a richly interdisciplinary framework that draws attention to the composer's unique symphonic idiom in terms of its radical attitude toward the presentation and ordering of musical events. The identification of a fundamental tension between the music's episodic nature and its often-noted narrative impulse in turn suggests a highly original symphonic dramaturgy, one that is ultimately characterized by an abstract theatricality.

The Walking Drum

The Walking Drum PDF Author: Louis L'Amour
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553900161
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Louis L’Amour has been best known for his ability to capture the spirit and drama of the authentic American West. Now he guides his readers to an even more distant frontier—the enthralling lands of the twelfth century. Warrior, lover, and scholar, Kerbouchard is a daring seeker of knowledge and fortune bound on a journey of enormous challenge, danger, and revenge. Across Europe, over the Russian steppes, and through the Byzantine wonders of Constantinople, Kerbouchard is thrust into the treacheries, passions, violence, and dazzling wonders of a magnificent time. From castle to slave galley, from sword-racked battlefields to a princess’s secret chamber, and ultimately, to the impregnable fortress of the Valley of Assassins, The Walking Drum is a powerful adventure in an ancient world that you will find every bit as riveting as Louis L’Amour’s stories of the American West.

No Walls and the Recurring Dream

No Walls and the Recurring Dream PDF Author: Ani DiFranco
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735225184
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A memoir as fierce, freewheeling, and passionate as her music." --O, the Oprah magazine A memoir by the celebrated singer-songwriter and social activist Ani DiFranco In her new memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, Ani DiFranco recounts her early life from a place of hard-won wisdom, combining personal expression, the power of music, feminism, political activism, storytelling, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and much more into an inspiring whole. In these frank, honest, passionate, and often funny pages is the tale of one woman's eventful and radical journey to the age of thirty. Ani's coming of age story is defined by her ethos of fierce independence--from being an emancipated minor sleeping in a Buffalo bus station, to unwaveringly building a career through appearances at small clubs and festivals, to releasing her first album at the age of 18, to consciously rejecting the mainstream recording industry and creating her own label, Righteous Babe Records. In these pages, as in life, she never hesitates to question established rules and expectations, maintaining a level of artistic integrity that has inspired and challenged more than a few. Ani continues to be a major touring and recording artist as well as a celebrated activist and feminist, standing as living proof that you can overcome all personal and societal obstacles to be who you are and to follow your dreams.