SOUNDTRACK: BETSAYDA MACHADO Y PARRANDA EL CLAVO-Tiny Desk Concert #707 (February 16, 2018).
How can you not love a band that is decked out in wonderful colors and whose only instruments are percussion?
I love the first song, “Santa Rosa.” The chorus is super catchy and when they raise the note in the chorus on the “Oh! Santa Rosa” the song just soars. Although Betsayda Machado sings most of the songs, this one opens with one of the men (in yellow) singing and I really like his voice, too. I could even figure out the gist of the words.
And the percussion? Two floor drums, 2 hands drums, shakers and that friction drum. So cool.
So who are these folks?
The roots of the music of Betsayda Machado y Parranda El Clavo extend to the Venezuelan slave trade, and while the vocals are in Spanish and not an African dialect, the instruments the group plays date back more than 500 years.
The large bamboo cylinders, the djembe-like drums and the large friction drum together create a symphony of interlocking polyrhythms that was unlike anything I’d heard. Machado’s vocals soar over the unrelenting rhythms, and when she harmonizes with the other singers, it creates a choir-like display of African call-and-response vocals.
When discussing African-influenced music from the southern hemisphere, we often focus on countries like Brazil and Cuba, places where the folk music eventually made its way into popular music. Afro-Venezuelan culture and music is rarely featured or even acknowledged outside of the country. As you’ll see in this video, that should change once music fans take in the beauty of Machado’s voice and the power of her historical message.
“Alaé Alaó” is much more somber, but the percussion is incredible–three men playing bamboo sticks against bricks–the details of what they do are fascinating. The song starts to pick up with bongos and other hand drums as the guy starts singing again. During the middle of the song one of the women goes out dancing on the main floor with some of the crew. This can only lead to more dancing.
“Sentimiento” The guy in yellow sings the beginning of the song and then Betsayda comes in. The friction drum is back along with all the shakers and percussion. I love the way they all stop perfectly at the end.
The band includes: Betsayda Machado, Nereida Machado, Youse Cardozo, Blanca Castilo, Adrian “Ote” Gomez, Jose Gomez, Oscar Ruiz.
[READ: November 20, 2017] Science Comics: Dogs
I have enjoyed every Science Comic that has come out, but this might have been my favorite.
In addition to being about a great topic: dogs, it was also updated with a ton of new information that I had no awareness of. On top of that there’s a ton of scientific information about genetics, evolution and natural selection. To top it off, it’s narrated by an adorable pup named Rudy who loves a tennis ball.
Once Rudy drags his owner to the dog park, Rudy can tell us all about dogs.
He explains that all dogs are from the species lupus, and yet look at how different all of the breeds are. So Rudy rushed back to 25000 BP (before present).
We see a human trying to tame a wolf, which isn’t easy.
There’s a brief explanation about genetics (and a fairly easy and clear one, I might add) in which we see why some dogs with the same parents might have spots while others don’t, There’s even an introduction to stratigraphy and carbon dating in fossils. And finally a section about natural selection (how white wolves will blend better than dark ones in the arctic (sorry bunnies). Rudy explains that evolution is based a lot by adaptation…speed, smarts, good-singingness (for birds, not dogs).
He also explains that wolves with the genes to become friendlier were rewarded in certain ways which created a naturally occurring population of wolves who didn’t mind humans,
Rudy then takes us to Siberia in 1959 to watch Dmitry Belyaev do some experiments with foxes. He was supposed to be growing then for the fur trade, but he decided to pair up docile foxes (and a control group) and after a few generations of offspring the docile ones became friendlier and even playful with humans. Foxes and dogs and wolves became domesticated and hung around with human and became, after humans, the most widespread mammal on earth.
About 50 pages in, Rudy starts talking about traits of dogs and what make them great–endurance, strong vision (despite what people previously believed, they are not fully color blind, just red-green colorblind). He also explains why dogs eyes glow in photos.
But it’s the nose that is most impressive–the slits on the side is where they exhale while inhaling so they don’t lose the smell of what’s there. There’s also a vomeronasal organ in the roof of their mouths–they get a sense of smell from their tongues. There’s even a joke about them being able to pick out a fart in an airplane hangar (see it’s not all genetics and big words).
Rudy also tell us that dogs can communicate in rather sophisticated ways–they can learn words (or at least sounds) for thousands of things. However, dogs define things by use: sittable, playable, eatable. Dogs are not afraid of eye contact with humans while wolves loathe it. (There’s a funny drawing of a dog whining because its toy fell off the couch–sounds familiar).
A fascinating story is the history of the golden retriever–all goldens can be traced to one ancestor! Baron Tweedmouth loved the color and decided to breed them.
Then we learn a bit more about dog breeding as a hobby. Because of insecurity about social standing and family lineage, English middle class bred pigs and chickens and even dogs. In 1859 there was first formal dog show with sixty breeds. Within 4 years there were 1000 entrants and breeders began artificially selecting traits to enhance the features of particular dogs Compare the 19th century bulldog to the current one; the sloped back of the German Shepherd; the wedge-shaped head of the bull terrier.
Yorkshire terriers were originally great ratters but they were bred to be smaller and smaller to become ladies companions. However, their hair didn’t get shorter as their bodies did. And they didn’t lose their love of chasing rats, either.
There also a fascinating story of the Carolina dog who managed to survive unknown to man for hundreds of years before being discovered in the 1970s (the picture of them playing poker is awesome ).
The book also disabuses us of the myth of 7 year dog year, too.
If you like dogs, this book is awesome. I can;t get over how much has changed about our knowledge of dogs since the 1980s. It’s also a great primer on generics, natural selection and inherited traits.
Not bad for a book narrated by a dog.
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