bonglonglong

Bela Fleck is currently touring China with three other muscians under the name of Sparrow Quartet. An English language blog about China called Danwei recently did an interview with the group. The video shows the quartet jaming with two members of a Tibeten band. Bela Fleck gives up the banjo for a brief moment to try his hand at a traditional Tibetan instrument. The quartet was sponsored by a cultural program to do a tour of Tibet. This apparently is the first cultural exchange from a foreign country into Tibet. They also discuss how some of the folk songs that both bands play are very similar. We're not so different after all.

Now I'm not one of those people with the "Free Tibet" stickers everywhere. I do think that the traditional Tibetan culture is being threatened and the Tibetan culture is changing. Whether this is due to the Chinese government's "invasion" or the recent tourist "invasion" that is unclear. I have read that the residential population in Lhasa is only 30% Tibetan. There are diverse view from within Tibet as to whether this change is for the better. On the one hand you loose some of the tradition herding nomadic life style, on the other we now get to read blogs from and about Tibetan life. Yes, Tibet should be free, free to choose.

I was just listening to a song on my iPod. I have a lot of them, so I really only hear things when I listen on shuffle. The song Breathe (2AM) by Anna Nalick came on. It's a good song. Anna has a little ways to go before she's Tori Amos or Sarah McLaughlin, but she's moving in that direction. The thing that jumped out at me was the third verse (the one after the bridge - standard pop structure, you know.)

2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me,
Threatening the life it belongs to
And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them, however you want to

It seems like just another song about a songwriter writing songs. And it is. It's not a manifesto on modern copyright law or economics. Except that to me it sums up my side of the argument just fine. The powers that be tell us that without strong copywright protection in the form of DRM and content control, the industry will fold and we will be without new art to enjoy. But Anna betrays the real truth in her song. She's writing the song (ostensibly, if we believe what she says) because she has to. Internally, she has no choice but to write the song. By singing it in front of a crowd of people, she feels totally open and naked - she's baring her soul... Then the kicker - she recognizes that our relationship to the song is not hers to control. No matter what she does, we will interact with the song in our own way. It may be meaningful, we may hate it - we may turn it in to an essay on the evils of DRM.

Will a lack of content control hurt the production of art? No. Not at all. Will it make artists less rich? Probably. So what. The law doesn't and shouldn't exist to ensure that certain individuals get wealthy. That's for the free market to decide. It's also not for a corporation to decide how I interact with art. It's not for the artist to decide. It's not for the playwright to decide how the play is directed. It's not for the musician to decide how my soul is moved. Of course, the people in charge of corporations have no idea about any of this, because there probably isn't anything they do because something welling up from the bottom of their soul forces them to. They would have to have a sould first.

Yahoo! Video
If Fellini's "8 1/2" were released today, this is what the trailer would look like if Hollywood got their mitts on it first...