Poor Kokopelli — realty companies, restaurants, lodges, gyms, ice cream, bands, art galleries, software, wine, golf clubs… Whatever you can imagine, you can bet there’s a Kokopelli namesake somewhere.
The image of the hunched over flute player is likely the most reproduced image of the Southwest, and one of the most widespread images in Native American prehistoric sites of the Southwest. Although he is a god in the religion of the Pueblo people, his precise meaning varies from tribe to tribe: sometimes a healer, a prankster, or a story teller, sometimes associated with agriculture or fertility, he embodies the spirit of music. [Read more →]
Tags: culture by Jon O
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MeShell Ndegeocello gave an inspired performance yesterday at SF Pride in San Francisco, an hour-long set that included songs from The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams as well as a selection of unrecorded songs written by herself or others that so far can only be heard in live settings. One of those songs contains the lyrics “White girl, you said that you loved me.” I’ve heard her sing this song before, which includes a section that unleashes a torrent of invective and wild music that is startlingly powerful. But today she held back and didn’t go into that section — which I missed. Otherwise, it was a deeply satisfying performance, and she genuinely seemed to enjoy appearing before the crowd. [Read more →]
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders took brain scans of musicians and discovered that improvisation fires regions of the brain associated with activities that reveal individuality (such as telling a story about yourself) while shutting off areas responsible for planning and self-censorship. 
I came across a post with that title on the 
