Music infuses everything in the universe, from the rotational beat of a pulsar in space to the rhythm of the heart. Is it possible that music is the essence of the universe itself? My newly released ebook
Song of Fire is a journey to discover this fundamental truth. The interconnected, real-life stories are a rhapsody on the elements that constitute how we experience the world: the moments of humor, sorrow, passion and revelation that give significance to our origins and endings.
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Tags: culture, nature, religion by Jon O
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Today in Washington, DC (Saturday, July 9, 2011), a new record qualified for the Guinness Book of World Records: the largest angklung orchestra performance. In the shadow of the Washington Monument, 5,180 participants gathered to play angklungs that had been especially made in Indonesia for the occasion. The performance was conducted by noted angklung ensemble leader Daeng Udjo. 
Politico reports that the music industry is in an uproar about the approval of a new “.music” domain last month by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit organization that oversees the Internet addressing system). The fear is that a proliferation of such domain names will facilitate piracy by giving the appearance of legitimacy. For example, www.toriamos.com is the official website for Tori Amos. An unaffiliated entity could register www.toriamos.music, either holding the URL hostage for a big payoff or offering illegal downloads. This is already something of a problem with permutations of .com, .org, .net, etc., but specifically linking the domain name to the category “music” exacerbates the problem. 
I only recently came across the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Winter 2010 “Intelligence Report,” which details anti-gay murder lyrics in Jamaican dancehall music. Apparently there is a long history stretching back to 1988 with a track titled “Boom Bye Bye” by Buju Banton about killing a fag. One YouTube video posted in 2007 of Banton performing the song has been viewed over 3 million times. In 2001, another song about killing and burning gay men was the Jamaican Labour Party’s theme song. In 2002, another political party adopted the slogan “Log On to Progress” taken from violent anti-gay lyrics in a song by Elephant Man. 
