peter jaques: clarinetist &c.

the best damn chili anyone ever did make. and it's f'in vegan.

2011-12-03T20:41:00.000-08:00

ok here's what i just did, you should do it too:

1. Saute one big, roughly diced onion over medium heat in a decent amount of olive oil, maybe 3 tablespoons.
2. While sauteeing, add 2 tablespoons of whole cumin and as much New Mexico red chili powder as you can manage. I probably used 5 tablespoons, but I like things really hot.
3. Keep stirring — as the onions caramelize, they'll stick slightly, so keep em from burning
4. When onions are decently browned, add one can black beans, with their water, 2 bay leaves, a teaspoon of turmeric, and 1 teaspoon of salt.
5. Simmer over medium-low heat, while it amalgamates. About 10 minutes.
6. Add half of a *drained* can of tomatoes (save the tomato juice in case you have to add liquid later). Let this simmer & amalgamate. If you like you can also add a diced zucchini now.
7. After well-amalgamated, and when the zucchini is barely done, add 1/2 pound finely chopped greens of your choice to the top, but DON'T stir them in. We want them to steam. I used mustard, collard, and kale mixed — anything that doesn't turn to mush when cooked. (I.e. maybe not spinach or chard.)
8. When the greens are perfectly cooked — not tough, but not mushy — stir them in, add salt and lemon if necessary, and eat it with bread while it's piping hot!

Dabravine

2010-04-15T16:10:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone...

Week one of my & Behida's Bosnia travels winds down with us on an overnight bus to Sarajevo with Elvira (no not the Mistress of the Dark, the other one, whose family fed B almost every day after B's parents died). We'll be there probably about a week, before heading back north here to Dabravine/Velika Kladusa/Polje (the latter of which may ring a bell if you've seen the actually-really-good Richard Gere movie, The Hunting Party -- it's where Gere dropped off war criminal Karadzic, leaving him to the mob of survivors of his crimes).

First off, I have an announcement: Turkish coffee has no right to be called that. Turks drink tea, constantly. Nor can Greeks, obsessed with Nestle's abomination, whipped no less, justly claim the boiled bean in the tiny cup. I can truly hereby proclaim that it is country Bosnians who craft all social situations around the centerpiece of the half liter long handled froth crowned pot. Most days I've had no less than 8 cups of the stuff. Ok, they *are* tiny, but they're equally strong & plentiful. So be it known: It's flippin Bosnian coffee.

So. Every day here has had a caffeinated common thread. And I'm always glad to be back in a land where you hear god's greatness proclaimed in five different makams (musical modes) over the course of a day, presuming you're awake at 4am for the early one. Other than those things, the only daily similarities have been a heckload of chitchat, and dangit everyone's talkin Bosanski all the damn time. I'm finally starting to understand a little, and I'm learning a very specialized vocabulary, specific to this particular place. Word number one:

Sjedi: sit! For four days I was forbidden to do anything whatsoever useful. My sole provenance was to drink coffee, try to understand Bosnian gossip, and eat (a *lot* of meat, nice to not be vegetarian for once, so I'm not dizzy from lack of protein, but damn that's a lot of meat, which brings me to the next pair of words:

Jagnje & ovdca: lamb & sheep. Notice that I know the words for both the young & mature animal. That's because professional shepherding is still alive & well here, and because when someone who got out to America comes back after 12 years, she better buy a sheep to roast up for all her friends & family (and the strangers who smell the roasted sheep). And if she comes in April, all the adult sheep *may* be pregnant, or may not, but they all get a reprieve until it's known. The lambs, however, do not, poor little morsels. I must say, there's no way to forget the facts of what you're eating when you've watched its glazed eyes rotate on a spit for three hours. Out of respect, I ate a few bites, but was grateful for more gentle fare, like tomatoes ("paradajs", pronounces like heaven, which they are around here; I wish americans could grow tomatoes like these), & more abstract fare, like sausages.

Word three: sram, ashamed or embarrassed. A big thing around here. See reference to gossip above. It's a tiny town, and everyone knows your business, and has an opinion about it. And Behida's family -- mostly related in convoluted ways, such as being children of people adopted by the same other family, there being a long tradition of orphans round here -- tends towards the outcast end of the scale.

For example, her beloved uncle (accounting for two intermediary adoptions) Nurko would, I suspect, be considered a holy sadu in India, but here he's a crazy, mythologically-scary-to-kids wildhaired old poor man who lives in the abandoned Dolic house with all the broken windows & all the junk. Except now:

1. Behida got all the windows fixed
2. He cut his hair, first time in years, for the lamb roast
3. Seven of us cleaned out his entire house today, over the course of six hours of dragging, hauling, breaking, and unfortunately, burning. Behida couldn't bear her childhood house being in such a state, and while she didn't want to tear Nurko's life apart, this paricular collection of stuff was (kindly put) not particularly useful, nor doing him any good.

Next word(s): sjecam se, I remember. Bluntly put, so many people have died -- the war was literally just up the hill -- & continue to die -- murders, cancer; and unused landmines lurk in the woods -- here, so many more have left, and now even the houses are torn down & rebuilt. There are tiny graveyards everywhere; Behida's parents are buried 100 meters downhill from Nurko's house. And while folks are less poor, and have more creature comforts (when Behida left, they didn't have electricity; now everyone's addicted to Facebook), the resulting optimisim is not so deep. I think it's only the classic Muslim fatalism -- if that's what God wants, what can we say? -- that allows folks to carry on without giant stones around their necks. (Compared, for example, to El Salvador, where the despair was ever present.) (Also NB: I'm not implying that folks here are particularly religious; in fact I'd say less so here than San Francisco, even. I just have noticed this "acceptance of fate" as a strong undercurrent in several culturally Muslim areas -- Turkey, Egypt, and Java so far. Palestine was a more mixed bag, as you may have heard.)

Next word: lingespir, ferris wheel. (Sorry, can't type the right "s," but say "lingashpeer." Anyone: is that German? My innerlinguist wants to know.) Straight outta Kusturica, Behida's neighbor Dano is not only a bootlegger with a sideline making honey out of sugar; he's also suddenly fulfilling a childhood dream, erecting a ferris wheel in his backyard (aka Nurko's front yard, aka Zejna & Zlatka & Sedija's side yard, aka halfway up a hill in the middle of nowhere) hoping to attract paying riders (perhaps also hoping to sell his sugar honey and sugar brandy to his sugar suckers). So Sunday he had a friend with a bulldozer level said yard, just in time for the rain which turned it promptly into a mudpit. We'll see how long it takes to get the concession running, and how long before Zejna tears it down in frustration with the throng of patrons parking on her potatoes.

(Krompir, next word, potato. We were supposed to help plant before heading to Sarajevo, but I guess we got overwhelmed with all the coffee we had to drink.)

So there's your linguistic introduction to Behida's hometown. Thanks for reading this far, now you know how to say,
"sit down & drink your coffee, little lamb, on the ferris wheel. I remember potatoes." in broken Bosnian. I'm so proud of you!

Next report will come from the place the Great War started (yet failed to end all wars).

Love p

Peter Jaques, clarinetist & trumpeter ~ www.huzzam.com
Director, Brass Menazeri ~ www.brassmenazeri.com

more props: pro tools plugins

2010-01-11T22:02:00.000-08:00

Prop #1 goes to McDSP, which makes some great Pro Tools plugins, and specifically their Project Studio bundle. This bundle consists of limited versions of their most useful plugins (including compressors, EQ, reverb, limiter, saturation, amp simulation, and a seems-to-me-useless synth), but the limitations are not at all crippling. Best $229 I ever spent. Plus you can upgrade any of the plugins to full versions for $69 each; I recommend upgrading at least Analog Channel so you can get the console emulation. With this bundle, and nothing more (aside from Pro Tools LE) you can actually make professional mixes. Unfortunately, they're all ugly. Oh well.

Prop #2 goes to 112 db's Redline Reverb, which is the best in-the-box reverb I've used. Pretty light on your CPU cycles too...

a few props

2009-04-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

there are two things i want to tell everyone about, because they rock outright.

1. Bicycle Tutor: bicycletutor.com has free videos on how to fix almost everything on your bike. Which makes you realize it's not that hard. Which gives you the power & confidence to be self-sufficient with your transportation. Which rocks outright.

2. Open source software: I always feel like a schmuck when a friend drops $200 on Microsoft Office, or $900 on Adobe Creative Suite. Because, you know what? Microsoft Office has a nearly perfect, free drop in replacement: Open Office (if you're on a Mac, I recommend the NeoOffice branch). There's a word processor which has almost every Word feature, including file compatibility. There's a spreadsheet which equals Excel, a presentation program like Powerpoint, drawing like whatever MS's drawing program is... Really. Just try it. It's basically 99% compatible, & I bet you won't need Microsoft at all. Really!

And as for Adobe: while it's not as powerful or amazing as Photoshop, the Gimp (yep, really) is a pretty good image editor. I'd guess, unless you're a professional photographer, that it does what you need. As for Illustrator, you might wanna try out Inkscape, which I now actually prefer.

Now I know, you can probably find ways of getting all this stuff for free. Me, I prefer to use stuff that is SUPPOSED to be free, meaning it won't eat my computer if it finds out how I got it, I'll be able to update it to the latest version anytime, and it's developed by people who want to make the best software they can, rather than selling you more unnecessary features.

The Story of Stuff

2008-08-05T01:59:00.001-07:00

I hope everyone will watch this video: The Story of Stuff

Stolen bike!

2008-07-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

While I & the Black Olive Babes were playing at Ashkenaz in Berkeley last night (July 24), my three-month-old blue Trek bike was stolen from *directly in front of the club*. And I want it the *&#^@$ back. I'm quite fond of that bike, and it's my only means of transport. So I'm asking y'all to keep an eye out for it, especially if you find yourself at any of the flea markets that are renowned as fencing locales (Ashby, Coliseum).

Here's a description:
blue Trek frame, thin steel tubing, probably about 10 years old
tan handlebar grip tape
blue aluminum toe clips on the pedals
zafiro tires (presta valve)
shimano brake-lever type shifters, shimano derailleurs
nice aluminum rims
blackburn type rack (not sure of the brand)
"I Love Oakland" sticker on the top tube

I just spent $750 on it three months ago (rebuilt very nicely with great components by Pedal Revolution in SF) as an investment in getting around gaslessly, and as I said it's my only transport aside from the bus. If you see it anywhere, please call me at 415-867-9260 and let me know! If it's for sale somewhere, and you can't reach me, I'll guarantee to repay you whatever price they're asking up to $300, if you have the means to buy it.

Constantinople's Gypsies Not Welcome in Istanbul - TIME

2008-06-18T01:56:00.000-07:00

Constantinople's Gypsies Not Welcome in Istanbul - TIME

Looks like Sulukule's on the chopping block. This is one of the oldest Roma ("Gypsy") communities in the world, and they need our support.

Briana Waters convicted

2008-03-07T12:32:00.001-08:00

1. She didn't do it.
2. She is being torn away from her three year old amazing daughter.
3. Help.

www.supportbriana.org
Seattle PI article

Technorati Tags: briana, bullshit, waters

Scientific group calls for 50 percent reduction in CO2 emissions

2008-01-24T11:27:00.001-08:00

Even though awareness is rising, I think most folks don't realize how absolutely critical the situation has become. In ten years we will be looking at cataclysmic change, unless we act now. Like, right now.

The earth is getting warmed by carbon dioxide, warns the American Geophysical Union. We've got to crank down on the emissions.

from News.com

One (final) solution fits all

2008-01-12T16:05:00.001-08:00

"We should have bombed it."

--George W. Bush to Condoleeza Rice, on seeing an aerial photo of Auschwitz at the Holocaust Museum, Jan. 11, 2008.

Screw the collateral damage.

(From SF Chronicle: Bush vows to return for Israel's anniversary, Jan. 12, 2008.)

Sunday afternoon in San Francisco

2007-11-18T16:46:00.000-08:00

The view over late afternoon coffee & chocolate pudding, at Tartine.

Blinky, 2007-2007. R.i.P.

2007-10-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

The story is starting to come together.

The facts:

On the night of October 6, 2007, I wasn't home at dusk (as often happens) to put the chickens away. Alexis, my housemate & the backup chicken-putter-away, arrived home after dark, noticed the henhouse door open, and locked them in.

That night, Alessa, another housemate, awoke in the middle of the night to the sounds of chicken ultraviolence. Chose neither to investigate, nor to mention it to anyone the next day. Alexis heard nothing, and I still wasn't home.

The morning of October 7, Alexis let them out again, fed em, watered em. No one noticed anything until I went to lock them up at dusk. As I usually do when it's still light out (or even when dark, using a flashlight), I counted the chickens in the coop. I only counted four: Chicken, Inky, Pinky, & Terminator X. Searched the neighborhood, no sign of Blinky.

Blinky, the black & white one who loved me, could fly.

The theory:

I posit that Blinky flew over the fence during the day on the 6th, perhaps even just hanging out in our yard, or the neighbor's side passage. Alexis didn't notice her absence, given the dark, and locked her out of the coop. In the night, a raccoon or hungry neighbor ate her.

Waah. What's this world coming to? Raccoons eating Chickens???

I miss ya, Blink.

le jardin

2007-10-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

Photos from my lovely backyard in East Oakland, featuring Chickens & a Spider!!! OOOH.

Told you Oakland was best.

Click to visit le jardin at Picasa.

Morning sun in the window

2007-09-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

Sun in the East, for once

2007-09-30T07:07:00.000-07:00

Photos from Maria's wedding, Bulgaria, Aug. 2007

2007-09-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

Click to visit the album at Picasa.

Zurnaji Samir video

2007-08-27T17:52:00.000-07:00

Sure wish I spoke better Turkish

2007-08-22T14:51:00.000-07:00

I was greeted at the Gotse Delchev bus station by Rumen, Aya, & Alan in the immaculate black Mercedes given by the German ambassador to Rumen's daughter Stefka, complete with mid-90s style in-dash car phone. Rolling through the mahala thusly in style, soon pulling up in front of one of the few houses faced in plaster (rather than nude poorly mortared brick), my offer to stay in a hotel flatly dismissed, we climbed the four concrete flights to the top floor, which Rumen built largely himself.

No one actually lives there now, as son Angel (Ali) is in conservatory in Plovdiv & ex-wife Svetla works in Ioannina (Greece), though Stefka lives downstairs with her husband Ali ("Professor Ali," since he's the one with all the answers, & since in a manner worthy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, names are eagerly recycled in these parts, necessitating personality-reflective nicknames for almost everyone) & magnetic daughters Arolina & Salina. (Aliah, you would have devoured so many kids here, you'd have everlasting heartburn.)

After one of many lovely dinners prepared by Svetla, we descended again to the front stoop (which includes the first few meters of roadway as well) where were arranged plastic tables & all available chairs. There we remained, with what seemed (I was wrong) to be most of the neighborhood, drinking the homemade Serbian plum brandy Zeljko had sent with me, speaking slightly archaic Turkish (most of that neighborhood being Turkish Roma who left Turkey 3-4 generations ago, shortly before Atatürk's language reforms). Rumen introduced me as speaking Turkish, which is a stretch even with the Istanbul dialect. One by one I met enthusiastic new friends with incomplete comprehension, and it wasn't until very late that someone (yet another Ali, older brother of Sali "Salcho" the beautiful clarinetist) persisted in his efforts to reach me. In fact, Ali either ignored or missed my bewilderment, & my lack of response must have seemed an invitation to expound further. Which he did. Way further. Until Rumen intervened, instructing him to let me listen to Salcho's clarinet. Even then, every few seconds he'd lean in to speak, & then stop himself, apparently deferring to his inner voice's quickly forgotten reminder to Sus.

Slight knowledge of a language, incidentally, can be worse than none at all. Folks are tempted to try it, and when met dimly, to easily give up. If there's no obvious linguistic avenue, however, people tend to be more creative with their initial attempts to connect with new people. In any case, by far my two most lucid conversations all weekend were in Greek & Spanish. Simultaneously at that. (So many people here work abroad, that in one night we employed Turkish, Bulgarian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, German, & English in our efforts. I'm frankly surprised no one took up Aya on her offer of Japanese.)

The next day, Samir (Sali), the best zurna player I've ever heard, probably the best in the Balkans, arrived for the real beginning of the wedding festivities. When I get home I'll send out some photos & videos, because words fail. After three hours playing casually at the stoop, Samir, with his two intrepid backup zurnacis & entranced drummer who plays as an Evangelical speaks in tongues, processed the few blocks to the house of the groom, who in turn led us, under the eyes of what I now realize to be the actual whole neighborhood, a few more blocks to the bride's house. There the groom was met by the defiant father, who demanded five million leva before he'd turn over his daughter. Yet after a not very fierce confrontation, he settled for 50, and out came Maria, dressed completely inappropriately for the 102 degree weather in a lovely but heavy Indian maroon dress, one of two brought for her (along with little ones for the granddaughters) by Rumen from University Ave. in Berkeley. More processing, dancing in the streets, leva & euros & dollars slapped onto Samir's forehead every few meters, playing directly into revelers' ecstatic faces, weaving through the streets, all the previous onlookers now joining (well except for a few too cool teenagers).

Back in front of Rumen's house the dancing continued, occasionally talking form as a serpentine line, for at least two more hours, though time had quickly become irrelevant. Went upstairs to eat something, and on returning was informed that we'd missed something traditional, very interesting, and indescribable. Guess I'll wait for the video.

Don't remember anything else that night. Not sure why.

Anyway that was all the day *before* the wedding. The next day, Saturday, Rumen said the party would start by 10:30am. Turned out to be 4 in the afternoon, which was fine for me and my head. We, 500 of us, took over the restaurant at the Hotel Valentino. This includes close family & friends & colleagues, and, by tradition, almost as many uninvited guests, eating, videotaping (a new yet now primary tradition), & lurking behind the band stealing licks.

A slow beginning as we waited for the band to arrive two hours late. Two keyboards (one of which accomplished convincing-to-my-plugged-against-the-unconscionable-(as in, what *is* that internal organ that's rumbling so, deep inside of me?)-volume ears kanun & violin imitations), electronic drum kit (played by an excellent live player, but wow what corny drum sounds), darabuka, phased guitar, an excellent, tiny-with-one-notable-exception lady singer, and a hotshot clarinetist who never entirely turned off his octave pedal, not that I minded.

The ceremony eventually took place accompanied by this band, with a woman officiant speaking Bulgarian, toasting with silver glasses joined by a long silver, champagne poured from a silver painted bottle, rings installed by the best man & maid of honor. After the first few dances, the floor cleared, and a parade of food, led by a lamb roast in an aluminum pan borne by Angel & another cousin whose name I forget, sashayed around the dancefloor, then up to the bridal table, where three kids danced on the table over the meat. We ate (small when the waiter insisted, in front of a soon-to-be-indignant Rumen, that there was nothing vegetarian to feed me) & drank & danced & the band, in over six hours of playing, took one 15 minute break.

Once again the sheer length of this email makes me despair as to whether anyone will read this far. Let me know if you do. I'll send you a longer one next time.

One thing remains which I would be unforgivably remiss to omit: Rumen's family, and literally all the other people I met there, exuded generosity & warmth. Beyond that, the neighborhood is truly a community in a way which I think we really lack in the U.S. I'm sure there are difficult aspects, some of which I saw (notably the sadly unsurprising fact that the women sure do a lot of work while the men sit around drinking & laughing) & some of which I was undoubtedly oblivious to. But the way in which families & friends took care of each other, & the way that literally the entire neighborhood participated in the celebration (& I sense they participate as well in the sorrows), were unlike anything I've seen anywhere. I see now part of why it's so hard for many folks who leave places like this, even if now they're making more money & some things are easier.

Anyway what do I know.

By now I'm sweating profusely on the overnight train from Thessaloniki to Athens, where I'll hang out with Erin Kurtz & likely Aya & Alan again, perhaps Dimitri the oud maker as well, who knows maybe I'll revisit the Parthenon, before flying home Friday.

I'm not so sure of the wisdom of spending the extra eight euros on the unventilated sleeper car in the Greek late August.

Love p

Samir the zurnaci

2007-08-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

Yugoslavia

2007-08-17T04:49:00.000-07:00

Last night I rolled into Sofia, Bulgaria, where I now await the bus to Goce Delcev, for my friend Rumen's niece's wedding. (for those who don't know, Rumen aka Sali is a great Rom musician & also one of the most generous & loving people in the world). The wedding's on Sunday, and afterwards I'll cross the spittin-distance Greek border & work my way to Athens to fly out on the 24th.

Meanwhile, since my last email, I've visited Skopje, Macedonia, & then in Serbia: Vranje, the Guca Brass Band Festival, & my friend Zeljko's family home in Zavlaka, near Valjevo. Some highlights:

Skopje seems kinda sleepy, but something about the place--perhaps the mostly dormant Slavic-Albanian-Rom tension, perhaps just the longstanding crossroads quality, perhaps something else entirely--lends a sense of something always bubbling just beneath the surface. The Carsija (Turkish style covered market) is mostly dominated by Albanians selling music (largely plastic pop stars, the covers garish & surely designed with the intent to induce seizures in anyone thus prone), cheap clothes, and expensive headscarves & formalwear. I bought a shortwave radio, always wanted one, for five euros. Each band has a subtext, unfortunately: a continuous, underlying extra radio station no matter where you tune the dial.

Just across the Vardar river on the western bank awaits a kilometer stretch dedicated to the very Balkan evening custom of made-up young Macedonian (I.e. Slavic-identified) women parading past seated, amply-perfumed young Macedonian men sipping Nescafe & smoking so so much. (Macedonia is second only to Greece, apparently, in per capita cigarette consumption. Don't tell the Serbs that, though, as they'll surely fight for the title.) Below, the banks of the river are teeming with Rom kids, continuously ogled by the Macedonians on the bridge above.

After a couple of uneventful days there (couldn't connect with a friend in Bitola because he was too busy performing at private parties), I headed north to Vranje, where I studied last year with Vranjski Biseri, more on them later). Again failed to connect with friends there (seems folks in Serbia tend to change their mobile numbers whenever a better deal comes along), so I set off for Cacak, the closest major town to Guca. Somehow, as seems to be my destiny, I found the slowest bus in the country, and the trip took nine hours; woulda been about four by car.

In Cacak I was immediately befriended by a somewhat haggard older man who promised to show me how to catch the bus to Guca. This wasn't all that difficult, as it was the bus 200 other people, the only folks at the bus station at 11pm anyway, also hoped to take. Actually I think we DID all take that bus. Never since Cairo have I been on transit that crowded.

Arrived in Guca. Now just imagine: reportedly 600,000 people converge yearly on this town nominally of 50,000, and create a decidedly unholy lovechild of county fair, smokehouse (meat & tobacco both), fraternity party, nationalist fiesta, and brass band competition. Brass bands rove the streets, playing for paying diners (or more commonly paying drinkers); a sea of trinket seekers combs booths for cds, trumpet keychains, & of course t-shirts ranging from the innocuous (Guca 2007) to the mildly obnoxious (f*ck the country that doesn't have a Guca) to the faces of nationalist butchers of the last 10 years & old royalist heroes evoking a Greater Serbia.

There was, of course, great music, mostly in the restaurants, and also in the Saturday evening concert (though there the experience was much less immediate, given the sound system & 100 meter distance from the bands). I also had the pleasure of sharing sleeping quarters in the back of a big old diesel truck (much more on that truck later) with some friends from San Francisco: Joe Mama & Kate from the humanitarian circus which goes every year to Kosovo to teach valuable life skills to refugee kids; Zeljko of Kafana Balkan (myspace.com/kafanabalkan) & his dad; & Shane of Extra Action, who is very sweet sober & unfortunately doesn't stay sober much.

For those wondering, Vranjski Biseri, who I studied with last year, won Best Band (kinda 2nd place); Nenad Mladenovic (heir to the Bakija Bakic legacy) won First Trumpet; and a racist from the west won the newly inaugurated Golden Trumpet, which is decided by the crowd vote, as submitted by text message from mobile phones.

Joe Mama invited me to Kosovo with them to help with their circus, & Zeljko invited me for a couple of days to the Serbian countryside, so I abandoned my plan of returning to Greece for the Panageia (the festival of Mother Mary's deathless ascension), and went instead with Zeljko & his father in the big truck. (spoiler alert: This was to be the last uneventful trip I'd make in that truck.)

Beautiful land up there in Zavlaka: rolling hills, undeveloped in any post-19th century way, giant haystacks, sheep & goats & plums & my god the tomatoes & clay tiled rooves & narrow gravel roads seldom travelled without at least couple of stops to go share a coffee or slivovica with a neighbor.

The 2nd day Dad decided we (dad, Zeljko, sister Jasmina, & I) should go visit the old fortress & monastery at Sokol Grad. After a lovely visit filled with lots of photo ops, and seemingly completed with some homemade slivovica & bread & kajmak (salty creamy cow cheese) courtesy of the nice man who lives all the way up there, we piled back into the truck (why had dad driven up on those crazy roads? He said it would be faster when we were ready to leave.) to take the dirt road short cut home. At dusk, as the rain started, third day in a row. Short version: six hours of four guys (luckily Zeljko had met a distant cousin & his friend, Zeljko, at the kajmak stand, who'd agreed to lead is down the treacherous road in their old Yugo) heaving the truck & car both out of mud pits, punctuated with life-flashing dashes, sitting in the truck bed for added weight & traction, hoping our momentum would enable us to fly over all the other mud pits in the way. I'm convinced the reason I survived was because I decided to. And because we kept laughing.

Also made a trip to Valjevo, to send my new used trumpet home along with some other unnecessary weight. The truck's tire blew. (It's a miracle only one did, after inspecting them.) The Valjevo post office taught me one thing: the bureaucratic legacy lives on in the public services here. After trips to three windows & back again, paying small fees at each, we're told that if the package is refused at customs, they can't send it back to Zeljko's house in Zavlaka. Why the postal service can't deliver a returned package, I still have no idea. So we took the package back (visiting the other windows for refunds), since I'd be more than a little sad to have my new old trumpet end up in the dead letter office.

Anyway, we had a nice lunch while Zeljko eyed the ladies (I swear I didn't notice any beautiful women; it was all Zeljko).

For the sake of brevity (why do I suddenly consider brevity, you may ask), my failed connections on this trip total 7: Ismail in Macedonia, Dalibor & Sanje in Vranje, Demiran & Bojana in Guca, Dusan Ristic in Valjevo, & the entire Kosovo circus. Does this happen to everyone here, or what?

Truck failures are 4: stuck in the mud by Sokol Grad, blown tire to Valjevo, empty gas on the way to catch the bus to Nis, and (in my absence) broken axle on their way home from the bus depot. Times I was in the truck: 4. Again, am I somehow to blame?

I think that's all I can manage to say for now. Next update will likely be after the wedding!

Grease

2007-08-07T04:12:00.000-07:00

Here I sit in a park above an ancient Roman agora in Thessaloniki, waiting the 10 hours for the train north, first to Skopje, then a day or two later to Belgrade & the Guca brass band festival!

I missed the morning train by 20 minutes due to trusting the blasted Lonely Planet, so thanks to the Misinformation-Industrial Complex, I have time to send the very email which you now hold in your grubby little paws. I mean glittering massive inbox.

So yeah I landed in Athens nine days ago and booked it out to the overnight ferry to Crete, whereupon I slept upon the deck under the Mediterranean almost full moon. Well I didn't actually particularly sleep, given the almost full moon and the Mediterranean and the fact that it was too lovely to close my eyes. Anyway on with our story.

Landed at 6am, and in trying to figure out where to catch the bus to Houdetsi (home of the Labyrinth Music Workshop, founded & run by Ross Daly, which presents three or four intensive seminars weekly during the summer in instruments ranging from Afghan rebab, through both the Cretan & Istanbul lyras, making stops at klarino & Arabic violin en route to Malian kora), I saw a young longhair with an oddly shaped instrument case who seemed self-assured that he knew what he was doing. Indeed he did, and I'd hereby made the acquaintance of George #1, the very nice lavta player with very nice hair who spoke very nice English, much to my relief (and his, unknowingly, since he never had to hear my Greek).

So a busload of mostly bohemian Greeks, peppered with an Lebanese-Antillean, an Italian, a trio of very sweet Serbs, and one weary American, boards the bus, chatters mostly incomprehensibly for a half hour, and dismounts in front of the taverna in Houdetsi where we would henceforth pass roughly 7 hours out of every 24, mostly nocturnally, playing, eating, smoking (whether first or second hand), and drinking shall we say excessively.

A half block down and through a wooden door one is greeted by three slightly overzealous but sweet dogs on one's way to the instrument museum (or perhaps petting zoo, as all the cases are unlocked to encourage playing of the worldly collection), where eight of us daily gathered to listen to Alexandros Arkadopoulos demonstrate how easy it is to play what we all wished we could play on the klarino, amidst a flood of evidently very amusing tales. (The one I understood involved a pristine young lady santouri player & a mischievous bouzouki player touring with Dalaras, and a remote controlled electronic whoopee device. I'll leave it to you to imagine how I deciphered that one.)

Anyway, yeah, six hours a day, divided by a siesta, a light meal, a beer or two, and of course the everpresent all-you-can-inhale buffet of the world's favorite carcinogen.

Given the eminently relaxed pace, it's either surprising or not at all that I found very little time to woodshed the influx of notes & inflections. We did, however, rock the house (taverna) pretty much nightly, which hopefully counts for something.

Ok so I've been writing this now for almost two hours, so I'm gonna step on the gas.

Went one night to an incredible concert by Ross Daly, Kelly Thoma, Stelios Petrakis, and, well, a lot of gorgeous musicians, set against the wall of an old fortress on the east end of Crete. Somehow I've now formulated some ideas for Cretan & Pontic style brass band tunes.

My friends Aya (violinist) & her dad Alan (laouto & violin etc) appeared for a couple of days. All the 24 year old Greek guys fell in love with Aya, of course. I was hoping to convince them to stay for the laouto workshop this week, but they've run off to Amorgos, seeking, apparently successfully, great violinists. Might see them again this side of the prime meridian, if I change my return ticket to go to Bulgaria for Rumen's niece's wedding on the 19th!

Spent yesterday in Serres with George #2, a fellow clarinetist from the seminar (who I met mere minutes after the aforementioned George #1, but #1 still is entitled to his birthright), who drove me from Athens, put me up for two nights, and is hatching a plan for a three-clarinet band with Dionysios from Arta & me, called Rom Royale (I did suggest we might actually need at least one Rom member to be merit the name), certain to tour the world next year!

Oh yeah, there was, one afternoon in Houdetsi, a slightly heated (lukewarm?), still unresolved discussion of the etymologies of the words Greece, grease, Ellada (the Greek word for Greece), and el-lado (a possible juxtaposition from the ancient Greek meaning something like "with oil") or perhaps elaiolado ("olive oil"). Could the name of this country, where it's true that I've consumed pounds, yea kilos of the nectar of the hardy Mediterranean fruit (did I actually just write that? Oh, I'm hungry. Just noticed.), actually be related, in both languages at that, to olive oil & the historic bounty of said delight round these parts? I, the minority, am quite skeptical, and have many unjustified yet certainly logical & most likely true arguments against the theory, which I won't spell out here because I wanna go stretch my legs & eat something greecy before the train comes.

Hope everyone's doing well, see you when I see you!

Love p

Sweet home

2007-07-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

The view from my new back porch.

Margot Quan Knight

2007-05-30T21:26:00.001-07:00

These are some incredible photographs.

Margot Quan Knight

Technorati Tags: oh shit, whoa

Seeking artists & musicians to do valuable work for free so I can make money!

2007-05-29T17:21:00.000-07:00

This is not my rant, but I wanted to keep track of it, in case I need to use it. It's amazing how often I need to explain exactly this...

This came from here:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/com/268825945.html

via here:
http://people.tribe.net/cynfulgurl

Every day, there are more and more Craigs List posts seeking “artists” for everything from auto graphics to comic books to corporate logo designs. More people are finding themselves in need of some form of illustrative service.

But what they’re NOT doing, unfortunately, is realizing how rare someone with these particular talents can be.

To those who are “seeking artists”, let me ask you; How many people do you know, personally, with the talent and skill to perform the services you need? A dozen? Five? One? …none?

More than likely, you don’t know any. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be posting on craigslist to find them.

And this is not really a surprise.

In this country, there are almost twice as many neurosurgeons as there are professional illustrators. There are eleven times as many certified mechanics. There are SEVENTY times as many people in the IT field.

So, given that they are less rare, and therefore less in demand, would it make sense to ask your mechanic to work on your car for free? Would you look him in the eye, with a straight face, and tell him that his compensation would be the ability to have his work shown to others as you drive down the street?

Would you offer a neurosurgeon the “opportunity” to add your name to his resume as payment for removing that pesky tumor? (Maybe you could offer him “a few bucks” for “materials”. What a deal!)

Would you be able to seriously even CONSIDER offering your web hosting service the chance to have people see their work, by viewing your website, as their payment for hosting you?

If you answered “yes” to ANY of the above, you’re obviously insane. If you answered “no”, then kudos to you for living in the real world.

But then tell me… why would you think it is okay to live out the same, delusional, ridiculous fantasy when seeking someone whose abilities are even less in supply than these folks?

Graphic artists, illustrators, painters, etc., are skilled tradesmen. As such, to consider them as, or deal with them as, anything less than professionals fully deserving of your respect is both insulting and a bad reflection on you as a sane, reasonable person. In short, it makes you look like a twit.

A few things you need to know;

1. It is not a “great opportunity” for an artist to have his work seen on your car/’zine/website/bedroom wall, etc. It IS a “great opportunity” for YOU to have their work there.

2. It is not clever to seek a “student” or “beginner” in an attempt to get work for free. It’s ignorant and insulting. They may be “students”, but that does not mean they don’t deserve to be paid for their hard work. You were a “student” once, too. Would you have taken that job at McDonalds with no pay, because you were learning essential job skills for the real world? Yes, your proposition it JUST as stupid.

3. The chance to have their name on something that is going to be seen by other people, whether it’s one or one million, is NOT a valid enticement. Neither is the right to add that work to their “portfolio”. They get to do those things ANYWAY, after being paid as they should. It’s not compensation. It’s their right, and it’s a given.

4. Stop thinking that you’re giving them some great chance to work. Once they skip over your silly ad, as they should, the next ad is usually for someone who lives in the real world, and as such, will pay them. There are far more jobs needing these skills than there are people who possess these skills.

5. Students DO need “experience”. But they do NOT need to get it by giving their work away. In fact, this does not even offer them the experience they need. Anyone who will not/can not pay them is obviously the type of person or business they should be ashamed to have on their resume anyway. Do you think professional contractors list the “experience” they got while nailing down a loose step at their grandmother’s house when they were seventeen?

If you your company or gig was worth listing as desired experience, it would be able to pay for the services it received. The only experience they will get doing free work for you is a lesson learned in what kinds of scrubs they should not lower themselves to deal with.

6. (This one is FOR the artists out there, please pay attention.) Some will ask you to “submit work for consideration”. They may even be posing as some sort of “contest”. These are almost always scams. They will take the work submitted by many artists seeking to win the “contest”, or be “chosen” for the gig, and find what they like most. They will then usually have someone who works for them, or someone who works incredibly cheap because they have no originality or talent of their own, reproduce that same work, or even just make slight modifications to it, and claim it as their own. You will NOT be paid, you will NOT win the contest. The only people who win, here, are the underhanded folks who run these ads. This is speculative, or “spec”, work. It’s risky at best, and a complete scam at worst. I urge you to avoid it, completely. For more information on this subject, please visit www.no-spec.com.

So to artists/designers/illustrators looking for work, do everyone a favor, ESPECIALLY yourselves, and avoid people who do not intend to pay you. Whether they are “spec” gigs, or just some guy who wants a free mural on his living room walls. They need you. You do NOT need them.

And for those who are looking for someone to do work for free… please wake up and join the real world. The only thing you’re accomplishing is to insult those with the skills you need. Get a clue.

Brazen CD Release Parties!!! 4/29 Amnesia & 5/1 Ashkenaz

2007-04-27T21:38:00.001-07:00

It took a while, but some brilliant engineer has finally invented microphones strong enough, shiny enough, and yes, fun enough, with the mettle to record the Brass Menažeri Balkan Brass Band! Yes, we had to wait a long time for space age metallurgical, alchemical, vacuum tube, & burnishment technology to become sufficiently advanced--six long years we waited--but at last, in a cryogenic lab hidden high in the Arctic Alps, the one true microphone to rule them all was born. Don't ask who the mother was. & don't ask why or how we painstakingly maintained it at -217° Fahrenheit during the entire recording process.

Just enjoy the results.

We have just taken shipment of one HUNDRED hermetically sealed advance copies of BRAZEN, the pinnacle of the recording industry's art & evolution. Now it's time we started pimping these treasures like the Americans we are.

* * * * * COME BUY OUR CDS!!!!! * * * * *

(How was that? It'll probably go straight to the spam box for half the people on the list now....)

Anyway, you'll have two chances in the next four days to ***BUY OUR CDS***.

Sunday 4/29 at Amnesia
853 Valencia @19th St., San Francisco
9pm, $10

:: with Disciples of Markos Rebetika Band
:: & Dan Cantrell & friends, with Liz Strong dancing
:: & DJ Željko of Kafana Balkan spinning Balkan dance!!!

Tuesday 5/1 at Ashkenaz
1317 San Pablo @Gilman, Berkeley
7:30pm, $10

:: dance lesson with Rikki Nicolae
:: with Gamelan X Hybrid Processional Orchestra

Come on. We're broke now & wee neeed your moneey. Pleeeaseee?

Also on the horizon:

* 5/5 Herdeljezi Festival in Sebastopol. www.voiceofroma.com
* 5/26 Berkeley JCC
* 6/2 Berkeley World Music Fest, People's Park (afternoon)
* 6/2 Kafana Balkan, Rickshaw Stop, SF (evening)

love,
peeeter

director, trumpeter, clarinetist
Brass Menažeri Balkan Brass Band :: www.brassmenazeri.com

New Brass Menazeri CD: Brazen!

2007-04-26T23:30:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, well after years I'm finally on an entire cd. The Brass Menažeri ("Menagerie") Balkan Brass Band (which I direct) has its first cd out, titled "Brazen." We're having cd release parties Sunday 4/29 at Amnesia in SF, & 5/1 at Ashkenaz in Berkeley. You can get em on CD Baby starting next week, and soon after that they should be on iTunes as well. Or get em from our website, brassmenazeri.com.

Yay!

love p

Cell phones are killing bees on a massive scale. This matters.

2007-04-20T00:57:00.001-07:00

From the Independent UK

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

Continue reading

Digits

2007-03-23T17:41:00.001-07:00

Well I've rejoined the digital age, having just bought a new macbook & protools LE/mbox 2 system. Trying to mix the Brass Menažeri recording long distance to LA was proving too ridiculously cumbersome...

Wish me luck keeping my focus under the onslaught of pixels & bits, oh my.

growth ain't always a good word

2007-03-18T17:25:00.000-07:00

Just found out that my cousin, three years younger than me, has a brain tumor hanging out by the cerebellum. It's probably benign & all that, & yet the fact that it's the size of a fist is enough to rattle me awake... Surgery this week hopefully.

It's time

2007-03-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

Eo informs me that he'd like to see me start kickin ass more.

So here it comes. Don't be afraid.

New clarinet pickup

2007-03-08T00:36:00.000-08:00

I really love this clarinet pickup. I've been raving about it. I've had two other pickups of similar design (in the barrel), one from a maker in Athens, one from Istanbul. Both were only barely passable in their sound quality, and both died within months. This one actually sounds pretty close to an acoustic clarinet sound (although I do have to roll the bass almost entirely off in the eq, due to a frequency response bump around low A/Bb/G), and yet has a really "close," present sound that drives the music hard. And it works beautifully going direct into my effects too...

Aww yeah, gimme those double octaves, the overdrive, finally I can sound like the Kramer guitar I used to play in high school!

how

2007-03-07T02:32:00.000-08:00

How is it possible, when I have so much inspiring, exciting musical work to do, that I've found so much time to futz with getting my blog working right?

Mysteries.

If anyone can explain how to set DNS to forward properly, please let me know. I'm trying to use CNAME to send www.peterjaques.com to peterjaques.blogspot.com, and have the former url stay in the location bar. (I know I can do it with a masked forward, but that supposedly nukes your search engine ranking, which would, you know, suck. And the DNS way just seems right.)

Anyway this is all an attempt to separate my personal site stuff from my professional site, www.huzzam.com.

Big

2007-03-05T04:01:00.001-08:00

These are lemons the size of NYC subway rats.

SoCal scares me.