Alternate Vision

My first time playing IM soccer. Its a perfect distraction from nerdom. We lost out first, won our second and drew our third game. I didn't realize until today how diverse our team was. Two Romanians, one Portuguese, one Mexican, one Australian, a Russian keeper, one German, two Americans and me. The good ol cuss in your mother tongue (as long as its not English) to avoid the yellow cards works wonders on our team. Our next game is against 'Istanbul'. The Turks I'm told are the defending champions....

For the first time yesterday, I heard a Nobel laureate speak in person. Wangari Maathai returned to her alma mater to recieve an honorary doctoral degree. Her message is a simple one (paraphrase):

we have one planet with limited resources..whether your an individual consumer or a politician..we must realize the importance of managing the earth's limited resources, and it is only through education and in a democratic space can this be achieved sustainably.

Every now and then we need a healthy dose of raw, infectious inspiration and who better to provide it than a prophetic, nobel peace prize winner. I also learned that:

Each one of us needs about ten trees for the amount of carbon dioxide we exhale in our lifetime.


Why wait to plant your ten trees? I got to walk my talk...I need to find a place to plant my ten trees.

Global Beat Fusion: The History of the Future of Music

"Derek Beres is part reporter and part prophet standing in the middle of the eye of the World Music storm that is raining new musical genres on the Earth today, each one fused by the love of song and spirit." - Krishna Das

The dark scent of cigarettes mingles with fragrant apple tobacco. A mist hovering over the crowd, one can barely notice the array of characters comprising the scene. Inside the candle-lit walls of the Lower East Side’s Kush, the colors and names are as vast as the New York City outside: dreadlocked Rastas concealing herbs with incense, turbaned Sikhs laying back layers of cocktails, Indian vixens prancing poetically from table to table, native Brooklynites sizing up newfound Manhattanites as the DJ plays a soundtrack familiar to everyone, keeping time in a time where time seems to stop mattering.

There’s a new mythology being lived outside the sourcebooks of scholars and halls of history. Every day around the world musicians are taking their cultural sounds and layering them into computers, splicing, slicing and redefining the parameters of their ancestors. An endless opportunity is being taken advantage of by DJs and classical musicians alike, sitting on the edge of music’s digital revolution. This is where the sacred meets the profane in unbridled harmony, a sonic commonplace for countries to stop wars and begin war dances. For the beat being created is blind to difference, accepting all sound.

Global Beat Fusion is tracing this electronic evolution. For the past three years I’ve covered the emerging sound of global electronica for dozens of magazines, spending two-and-a-half editing America’s largest international music publication. During the same period I’ve toured internationally as a DJ, exposing the newest sounds to audiences in clubs, lounges, living rooms, bars and multi-day festivals. For the past year, as a resident DJ at New York’s Kush and Nublu, I’ve played for thousands of people all asking the same question: “What is this music?”

Radio hasn’t caught on; television is scanning the perimeter. Yet for musicians worldwide, the digital age is allowing them to take traditional and sacred instruments and place them into an electronic rhythm, which can then be downloaded by anyone, anywhere. Better still, these same artists are touring globally, taking their sonic mission directly into the hearts and ears of eclectic venues. In the center of this movement, I’ve been DJing weekly, all who come for the music they won’t hear anywhere else. Yet, as is becoming obvious, that won’t be the case much longer. The fringe is becoming the center." Foreword by Ajay Naidu

Music is the weapon

Happy Birthday to the late Fela. Here's to the man who immortalized afrobeat in his struggle to edify the masses.

My dad is lucky enough that work takes him to quite exotic, off-beat locations including Norway, Iceland and this week Poland and the Faroe Islands. I didn't even know where the latter was. Try looking it up on a world map and its like a tiny archipelago on there somewhere northwest of Scotland and southwest of Iceland. I've always wanted to explore one of those "can't be seen on a world map" type of places. For now I will have to live vicariously through him.... Note to self: if all else fails in my endeavors to travel the globe then start a fish business in West Africa.

His diplomacy skills may not surpass those of his opponent, but if words alone could sway masses, end wars and give hope to the world where it is needed most, then I think Shashi Tharoor would have made a smashing Secretary General. Or maybe I am just biased because he is Indian, or could it be that I am mesmerized by the fact that he recieved two masters and a PhD by the age of 22. To be honest, I didn't know a whole lot about him prior to the build up to the SG race. But now I am huge fan.

I will leave you with a snippet from an article he wrote titled 'The Idea of India' -

It is the idea of an ever-ever land – emerging from an ancient civilisation, united by a shared history, sustained by pluralist democracy. India’s democracy imposes no narrow conformities on its citizens. The whole point of Indian pluralism is you can be many things and one thing: you can be a good Muslim, a good Keralite and a good Indian all at once. The Indian idea is the opposite of what Freudians call ‘the narcissism of minor differences’; in India we celebrate the commonality of major differences. If America is a melting-pot, then to me India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.

So the idea of India, as Rabindranath Tagore and, more recently, Amartya Sen have insisted, is of one land embracing many. It is the idea that a nation may endure differences of caste, creed, colour, conviction, culture, cuisine, costume and custom, and still rally around a consensus. And that consensus is about the simple idea that in a democracy you don’t really need to agree – except on the ground rules of how you will disagree.