School of Americas

This deserves a second post.

This past weekend (Thursday-Monday) I went on a trip to Ft. Benning, Georgia to go to protest the School of Americas. It was probably one of the coolest experiences of my life. For those of you who don't know, the School of Americas is a military combat training facility to train the latin american military. (www.soaw.org is a helpful website) The school trains Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics, and thousands of civilians, union leaders, religious workers and students in Latin America have been murdered, tortured, raped and assassinated by soldiers trained at the school. I went to the protest with a bus from CSB/SJU.

Music and dancing was a huge part of the protest. On Sunday there was a funeral procession for the people who have been killed. Every one of the 22,000 people at the protest held a white cross with the name of a person killed by the soldiers, and people on stage sang the names of just some of the people killed more recently. After each name (and sometimes age), the thousands of people in the crowd sang, "Presente" It was incredibly moving to hear the names. "Eugina Claros seventeen years old" and "Eduardo Alvarez, 76 years old" and "unnamed child of Domingo Parez, two days old." After the procession a parade of drummers and puppetismos came and everyone danced to celebrate life.
Another moving experience was on Sunday morning when people came and gave facts and testimonies about killings going on, and after each testimony the crowd sang, "No mas! no more! we must stop this dirty war, companeros companeros, we cry out, no mas no more!"
Most of Saturday was simply singing and dancing, but there were also speakers who gave first hand testimonies. Many people had witnessed their families being killed or raped or both. a lot of the songs were very folky, and quite a few were in spanish.

Here are a few pictures from the whole thing, if you'd like to see more go on my facebook (this is Christina Newman by the way) and I have an album called SOA watch.




some of the music going on at the SOA (a lot of old ex-hippies sang at their own booths or in front of trailers)



during the funeral procession everyone walked toward the fence of the SOA and hung their crosses on. This is at the very beginning, but after 22,000 crosses, you can imagine what the fence looked like- the entire thing was so covered in crosses you couldn't see the fence hardly.



dancing! some of the people I went with from CSB/SJU (and my friend Cass from here)



During the funeral procession, everyone raising their crosses and singing "Presente"


The first day during the Puppetismas, people singing "Viva! Life! Viva! Life!"

month late blog summary. ooooops.

Somehow I thought my blog discussion was at the end of November, but it turns out I missed it...oops. I'm really sorry about my lack of blogging in general. :( I'm not at all used to doing blogging like this and it never occurs to me just to go write a post unless it's an assignment...and unfortunately I missed the one big assignment I had. I went back and looked at all the blogs between November 7th and the 13th and there was only one, by Jweb. Apparently more people than just myself are having troubles blogging regularly. I'm not sure what to sum up so since I missed so much, I'll sum up the 14th-present.

Many people blogged on the gospel music list, several saying it was easy listening and others saying it was hard. One person mentioned that they expected the gospel music to be uplifting, but quite contrary it was rather depressing and dismal. People commented mostly on how the songs were sung (many a capella, large choirs, cool rhythms, etc.) Several people mentioned the sermons. Liz said that the preacher was passionate and broke into song at times which sounded like a positive remark, while others seemed to think that his style was annoying and hard to listen to. in another blog, Liz asked the question does he really feel passionate about what he's preaching or is he just doing that to get audience approval? Good question I thought. Overall, people seemed to like the gospel listenings.
Little Red Rabbit observed that most people don't blog much at all (including me). I think a blog is a sort of hard way to do a class...it's natural for some people to blog and not for others.
Stephanie finally got the folkways chapter 4 to work, Go Stephanie!
Kelsey said she went to swing club (she did, I was there!) with Dan and she enjoyed it. I'm glad she went, and I hope more people go...except now it's kind of late to still learn for the Jamboree. Still, I think everyone should check it out.
Kat also mentioned seeing the Decemberists in concert and going to the movie The Fountain, and someone else mentioned going to see the RHCP. cool beans.

Since I haven't blogged much on my own I'll do a little more than just the summary.
I've felt sort of frustrated with the jamboree. I feel like I have responsibility since only mary beth and I know how to swing dance, and yet I don't have any more power than anyone else in the class. I feel expected to teach everyone how to dance, but I'm not really in charge of the class. I didn't thinmk we had really talked about swing dancing for the jamboree except that everyone liked my presentation with mary beth at the last minute so suddenly we were doing swing dancing instead of a movie. I will be glad to have the jamboree over with.

Sorry again that this is so late in coming...have a good day, all

swing dancing presentation

I hope everyone enjoyed my presentation with Mary Beth on swing dancing...I had a ton of fun, and am glad Zach was able to come in and help out. thanks so much for participating, everyone, i was really nervous that no one would want to dance and I don't know what I would have done. so...feedback would be nice. if you missed it or are in the afternoon session...sorry I think you really missed out!

episodes 4 and 5

I couldn't get episodes 4 and 5 to play at all. it stopped after the introduction every time...so I listened to that for a long time, over and over again and hoped that would suffice.
I'll try again on my roommates computer if i can later

Episode 3

A few thoughts on my favorite parts of the folkway episode 3

I loved listening to all of the different types of music that folkway produced. for example, the difference between Goodnight Irene by Leadbelly and the Motown Rag to Pete Seeger and the childrens songs in spanish.
I loved the poem by Nikki Geovani (sp?)

"The women gather because it is not unusual to seek comfort in our hours of stress
a man must be buried. it is not unusual that old bury the young, though it is an abomination.
it is not strange that the unwise and the ungentle carry the banner of humaneness though it is a castration of the spirit.
it no longer shadows the intellect that those who make war call themselves diplomats
we are no longer surprised that the unfaithful pray loudest every sunday in every church..."
I would put more but its really hard to write what she's saying because I had to pause after every line and its hard to move backwards very precisely. I could probably write a whole blog just on that poem and what I thought of it...I'll just say the line about the unfaithful praying the loudest is often so true.

I loved the song What Side are You On? by the almanac singers. I grew up listening to Pete Seeger as a kid and still do sometimes, so I recognized his voice. the song sort of reminded me of Bob Dylan's "you've gotta serve somebody"

I also liked the Ella Jenkins song lyric "you can travel in a song" which is so true. songs are often a way for me to sort of escape from reality and travel in my mind to somewhere else.

I didn't know Bob Dylan went under the name Blind Boy Grunt. the name fits his voice well!

Jamming the jamboree

Sorry about the lack of posts on my part...like most people I've been really busy with midterms and papers the last couple weeks but it looks like things are finally settling down...a little bit.
I liked the idea we had of doing a Mockumentary on a junk band and then performing as the same band. it would be kind of like A Mighty Wind i think...we could play the video in Oyate and then point people to the performance in Edson. Not everyone would ahve to be in the band I don't think, some people could be other characters in the mockumentary or be doing filming/editing and hang out in Oyate during the Jamboree. The basic plot of the mockumentary would probably be about a junk band or hillbilly band and how they're performing in Edson. we could also have a couple smaller junk bands who would take turns performing, which might be a little less chaotic.
Anywho...I'll try to post more soon and much more often than I have before.

my song of choice

Well, I must admit, I completely forgot to blog on what song I'm going to research and write about. So, better late than never I suppose. I'm planning on "Man of Constant Sorrow" by many artists, including Bob Dylan, the Stanley Brothers and the fictitious Soggy Bottom Boys in O Brother Where Art Thou.