Its very bad for a girl to be too pretty. It stops her developing a sense of humor, or even a personality.
The truth is, I now don't travel back at all.
Not even for the day.
I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day
to enjoy it as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.
I'd only give one piece of advice to anyone marrying. We're all quite
similar in the end. We all get old and tell the same tales too many
times. But try and marry someone kind. And this is a kind man with a
good heart.
No, I never said we could fix things. I specifically never said that.
Life's a mixed bag, no matter who you are. Look at Jesus: he was the son
of a God, for God's sake and look how that turned out.
Filloi te kendonte vone, kur ishte ne te tridhjetat, por dasem pas dasme u be nder me te famshit fale nje tastiere-mixer. Zona (jo e luftes!) ishte ajo ndermjet Turqise dhe Irakut, Jazeera; nje lloj toke e askujt, 12-ore me autobus per te shkuar ne Damask. Ketu te vetmit turiste jane ca arkeologe dhe puna e vetme qe mund te gjesh eshte ne agrikulture...
Omar Souleyman. Nje personazh mitik (me callmen/keffiyeh tipike mbi koke e syzet e detyrueshme!), jo vetem ne boten arabe e ne Lindje e Mesme. Po, sepse kohet e fundit ne web gjehet nje remix unik i tij me Bjork ('Crystalline') dhe kanadezi Caribou e fton regullisht per hapjen e seksioneve te tij elektronike dhe ne Berlin ka marre pjese disa here ne festivale elektrobeat. Adhurohet nga San Francisko e deri ne Frankfurt.
E te mendosh se nuk ka te beje shume me muziken syrian-pop te Sirise (jo ate tradicionale apo elite, te pakten). Eshte e shpejte ('Weli Weli'), mbani mend kete! Mjaft e shpejte, ritmika te kercyeshme, trupi pergjigjet gati ne gjendje vibracionesh trance, free-style per te rinjte perendimore... Punk i eger nga vendlindja!
E megjthate, te shoqeruarit e muzikes me mikrofon direkt nga Mr. Omar (kaseta prej dylekesh, cilesi low-cost), perjetesisht live, i jep nje ndjesi mjaft origjinale albumeve dhe show-eve te tij neper sheshe e klube. Te kercesh (techno-naiv?) behet automatizem i pelqyeshem...
'Eshte edhe seksi', - ka thene njehere nje mikesha ime!
Nuk numerohen regjistrimet e tij, edhe pse, per arsye copyright, ne Lindjen e Mesme nuk ka rregulla qe respektohen. Por zor se gjen ndonje, i cili e degjon dhe nuk i vjen per te kercyer keto mid-oriental beats. [Sfidoj cilindo te rri ulur ne vend pasi degjon edhe per nje minute Omar-in!].
Ritme aq te kerkueshme e te rralla ne skenat e Perendimit!
Pa me kufijte, jemi te barabarte.
Dhe 'tjetri, i panjohuri' ekziston.
...//...
(...) Young dudes in football shirts, fat middle-aged men in suits and
ties, prim traditional dance troupes in the threads of yesteryear, old
men and women in jellabiyas and head-dresses, young girls in skin-tight
jeans or multi-coloured robes, Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese,
Jordanians and Egyptians, all dancing the dabke, in a line, holding
hands, laughing, together...
FROM AN INTERVIEW:
What about your sound? It’s not really a sound you would file under Syrian pop music. It’s a mix. But a mix which is pretty often heard in the eastern region of Syria. Added with Turkish, Lebanese and Iraq influences. Not European. We call it fast dabke.
I’ve heard of it, but…
Dabke is an expression of love for us in eastern Syria, also of happiness and sympathy with others. Music and dancing are the traditions from generations ago. In eastern Syria we are fast and the whole world likes fast dancing. But it differs in every area from Aleppo to Homs to Deir ez-Zour and every area has its own style and tempo...
PRESERVING ASPECTS OF COMMUNITY'S LIFE
One of the hardest tasks facing any small cultural group surrounded by bigger and more influential societies is preserving their own identity. In these days of mass transmission of information you can't isolate yourself from what surrounds you anymore in order to maintain your traditions.
Instead you have to come up with ways that will interest the younger generations enough so they will want to take part in helping preserve aspects of their community's life.
SMALL MINORITIES WHO FACED PERSECUTION
It has been especially difficult for small minorities who have also faced persecution over the years. In the countries of Eastern Europe, few communities, aside from the Jewish population in World War II, have faced as severe a persecution as the Roma, or gypsies. They were rounded up and exterminated in numbers equivalent on a per capita basis as the Jewish people during the Nazi pogrom of the 1940's, depleting their small numbers even further.
Post war Europe, especially in the East under the Communist Bloc rule, found them not much better off than they were under the rule of the Nazis. If they were no longer being rounded up and killed, they still faced persecution and continued treatment as a second-class people. Like Jewish people, the closed nature of their society has them looked upon with suspicion by majority populations.
PLAYING FOR THEMSELVES: A PASSION FOR LIFE, LOVE AND DEATH
They have also faced a threat to their culture in another way — the dilution of its essence to something more palatable to the mainstream. The music played by so-called gypsy bands in restaurants or other tourist attractions has been augmented with instruments that were not utilized by the people themselves when playing for themselves.
Like all Roma music, it has a certain raw vitality; a passion for life, love, and death that is missing from so much contemporary music. This is enhanced by the minimalist nature of this style: predominantly vocal, with only guitar, mandolin, and accordion as melodic accompaniment; in place of drums and such for percussion, spoons and sticks are utilized along with vocalizations to pick out a rhythm.
BELA LAKATOS AND THE GYPSY YOUTH PROJECT
Like a lot of rural folk music, the world over the subject matter of the songs is about the stuff of their reality: cabbage cooking, grinding poverty, blood feuds between families, unlooked for good fortune found on the road, and love. Introducing Bela Lakatos and The Gypsy Youth Project is the band's first international recording and it shows off the music and their abilities to the utmost...[continues here]
