from Photographers Blog:
Signs of hope through music in Iran
For some people, here is the end of the world, but for some who live here, it is paradise.
The Kahrizak Charity Foundation in southern Tehran, is home to hundreds of mentally and physically impaired people who range in age from young and old. In this place, you can feel life and death, joy and woe, and people who love each other. For these people music is the only positive thing.
The first time I went to Kahrizak, I expected to meet people who didn’t know what they wanted in their life and were just waiting for the angel of death to arrive but it was not as I had presumed.
Two or three days a week they gather at a hall to learn music and sing songs. Sometimes someone, even a woman, dances in front of the others. In Iran a woman cannot sing or dance in public. At the charity, they are happy because a man has asked them to leave their room and spend time at his music therapy session.
Music therapists shake off Islamic clerics’ taboo to heal disabled Iranians
As Sadeq Jafari switched on his electric piano, his students shunted their wheelchairs enthusiastically around him to rehearse new songs. Music therapy, a common practice in large parts of the world, is extremely rare in Iran, where conservative clerics outlawed pop music after the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution. Jafari, 33, is one of a handful of therapists in the Islamic state who use music to help severely disabled people find their voices, risking the ire of his conservative family and censure from religious authorities.
Kahrizak Charity Foundation, in a leafy campus on the outskirts of the capital Tehran, is home to hundreds of physically handicapped people, young and old, who lack financial support. Each Monday, dozens wait impatiently for Jafari to walk through the door.
“I haven’t learned music in an academy, but through practice and experience,” Jafari told Reuters in an interview. “My initial goal was to make them get out of bed.”
Jafari grew up in a religious family which found all forms of music unacceptable. His relatives initially cut ties with him, but their stance softened when they saw the impact of his work on the lives of his patients.
Iran’s musical restrictions have eased over the past decade and pop music has become increasingly common in some parts of society. But the idea of female artists singing or dancing in front of male audiences is still completely taboo.
“We have been told that music is haram (not religiously acceptable) … I used to be so depressed, but now I have high morale,” said 35-year old Masoumeh Salim Sediqi.
Morocco resists Islamist calls to ban Elton John from music festival
Elton John will headline Morocco’s biggest music festival this week despite calls by religious conservatives for the gay singer to be turned away. Allowing the British singer and songwriter to perform at the Mawazine World Rhythms festival in the capital Rabat would tarnish the image of the north African kingdom, say powerful opposition Islamists.
“Elton John is one of the best artists in the world. He is great and extraordinary when he appears on stage. That’s why we invite him and welcome him to the Mawazine festival,” festival director Aziz Daki told Reuters. “The private life of a singer is not our business. We do not invite singers and artists after assessing their private lives.”
The festival, backed by Morocco’s King Mohammed, brings together musicians from 50 countries and has drawn criticism from Islamists who say such events encourage promiscuity and alcohol consumption, corrupting Islamic values.
Japanese monk gets down with the beat for Buddhism
He raps. He chants. And this month, Japan’s famed hip-hop loving monk, better known as MC Happiness, will tap dance on stage, in the name of Buddhism.
Kansho Tagai heads the 400-year-old Kyoouji Temple in central Tokyo, offering softly chanted prayers throughout the day amid traditional bell chimes and wafts of incense.
But once in a while, he raises the volume, and the tempo, of these prayers, going before an audience to rap Buddhist sutra, or teachings, to hip hop beats and in modern Japanese.
“When I listened to rap music for the first time, it was in English so I couldn’t understand a word,” Tagai told Reuters.
“I realised that the same can be said for Buddhist sutras because most people can’t understand a word. And the thing is, listening to rap music makes you feel good even though it may be incomprehensible.”
All of creation is music. And rhythm is your guide. The monk gets it.
Did Jesus headline Glastonbury before Springsteen?
Jesus Christ may have visited an English town now renowned for a raucous modern-day music festival to meet ancient druids, a new film argues. “And Did Those Feet” explores the theory that Jesus accompanied Joseph of Arimathea on a visit to the area around the southern English town of Glastonbury.
The Glastonbury Festival held on a farm near the town draws some of the 21st century’s biggest music stars such as Bruce Springsteen, Jay-Z, Neil Young and U2 to the world’s largest open air music and arts festival.
Church of Scotland Minister and researcher for the film Gordon Strachan argues that Jesus may have come to Britain to further his education because the area was a stronghold of the ancient druids, then associated with ancient wisdom.
“There’s no reason why Jesus shouldn’t have come,” Strachan told Reuters. “Glastonbury was very important in the ancient times, the tradition goes back to pre-Christian times … He probably came by boat with the traders. He had plenty of time and nobody knows what he did before he was 30.”
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There is little evidence Jesus even existed. Let alone visited Glastonbury.Which means that as far as baseless claims go, both are equally possible.
Vatican daily proclaims Michael Jackson immortal – for his fans
It’s not every day that the Vatican newspaper suggests that a man accused of paedophilia and said to have converted to Islam might be immortal. But that’s what L’Osservatore Romano did today. In a tribute to Michael Jackson — itself another sign of the “new look” that editor-in-chief Giovanni Maria Vian has given it — the paper included him in a pop music heaven at an unusually earthly location:
“But will he really be dead? It wouldn’t be surprising if, in a few years, he was spotted in a gas station in Memphis, perhaps with his former father-in-law Elvis Presley, another of those myths – like Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon – that never die in the imagination of their fans. And Michael Jackson, who died yesterday at the age of fifty, is definitely a pop music legend.”
The tribute reviews Jackson’s career, from the time “when he was still black” through his “humanly difficult … crossover” to “new genres not entirely attributable to any specific area, where one cannot distinguish between black and white.” It praises his mega-album Thriller “which is known also to those who do not frequent these musical worlds” and calls him a “great dancer” (grande ballerino).
The article ends on the delicate issue of accusations of paedophilia, a cloud that hung over Jackson’s later years and has dogged the Catholic Church as well. The singer hit his artistic peak with Thriller, it said, but always stayed enormously popular. “Not always, unfortunately, for artistic reasons,” it wrote. “His judicial ups and downs following allegations of paedophilia are well known. But no charge, even as bad and shameful, was sufficient to diminish his legend among the millions of fans around the world. The proof of the emotional reactions aroused by the news of his death. News many don’t believe. Maybe someone in Memphis has already seen him.”
May God give you the happiness, peace and joy you never found in this life dear angel. I miss you so very much but find comfort in knowing that nobody can hurt you now. You walked with God all of your life and lived you life to please others, to help the needy, lonely and sick, and to bring joy and happiness to others. Now it’s your turn. I love you Michael xxx
The scientist who leaves room for spirituality
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant once wrote that he “had to deny knowledge to make room for faith.” The French physicist Bernard d’Espagnat hasn’t denied knowledge in his long career developing the philosophy that won him this year’s $1.42 million Templeton Prize. He was pursuing knowledge to better understand what we can know about the ultimate reality of the world. But just like his philosophy echoes that of Kant’s with its conviction that there are limits on knowing reality, his work leaves some room — he would say for spirituality — by saying that human intuitions like art, music and spirituality can help us go further when science searching to understand the world reaches the end of its tether.
D’Espagnat’s prize was announced at UNESCO in Paris on Monday. The quantum physics at the core of his work presents baffling insights about reality, but his philosophical conclusions from them sound like common sense. Science is an amazing discipline that opens vast areas of knowledge but cannot go all the way to explaining ultimate reality. There’s a mystery at the core of our existence that we can get a little closer to through the untestable but undeniable intuitions we have. That “little closer” still leaves a large black hole in our knowledge, but it is more than we have if we only rely on empirical science.
As often happens in cases like this, d’Espagnat was available for embargoed interviews several days before the prize was announced. I had the pleasure of meeting him on Friday at the Lutetia, a five-star hotel only a short bike ride from my more modest digs in Paris. Now 87 years old, d’Espagnat can look back on a long and illustrious career as a senior physicist at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, professor at the University of Paris (at its science hub in the suburb of Orsay) and guest lecturer at universities and conferences abroad. His latest book in English, On Physics and Philosophy, came out in the United States in 2006.
At the end, I asked what he would do with his prize money. After paying the taxes on it, he stressed as he started his answer, he would divide it into three equal parts. One would go to promote the study of “negative theology,” a theology that he says fits his spiritualist outlook and conviction that we can only describe God by concepts that say what God is not. The second part would go to associations helping the homeless. And the last third he and his wife would use to make their home more senior-friendly. “My wife is handicapped and she would very much like to remain at home as long as possible,” he said.
You can read our story here or consult the prize website for more information and an extensive collection of links about his work. Some excerpts from my interview with d’Espagnat are on the next page. Taking a page from Paul Krugman’s economics blog, let me put a health warning on it right away — (wonkish).
At points in the history of the western world, science has been viewed as an opposition to the religious establishment, and people with new ideas censored. An example being Galileo, who was put under house arrest for reasserting previous claims that the earth went around the sun.
Another German scientist, Nietzsche also commented upon similar affects upon thought and the scientific community in “Beyond good and Evil”.
Science is observation, and being able to make accurate predictions based upon what is learned. A healthy curiosity and desire to learn exists no matter what a person believes, but in that frame of reference beliefs would evolve and change with time as more is learned.
Militants killing laughter and music in Pakistan region
It’s hard to write about the Taliban on a religion blog without giving the impression that this militant movement in Afghanistan and Pakistan is basically religious. It’s certainly Islamist, i.e. it uses Islam for political ends. But it’s hard to find much religion in what they’re doing, while there’s a lot of power politics, Pashtun nationalism and insurrection against the Kabul and Islamabad governments there.
It’s often difficult to separate religion and politics in groups like this, but President Barack Obama gave a basic rule of thumb in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington last week:
“Far too often, we have seen faith wielded as a tool to divide us from one another – as an excuse for prejudice and intolerance. Wars have been waged. Innocents have been slaughtered. For centuries, entire religions have been persecuted, all in the name of perceived righteousness…
“No matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know.”
Zeeshan Haider, senior correspondent in our Islamabad bureau, clearly makes these distinctions in his feature “Militants killing laughter and music in Pakistan region” about the intimidation of musicians and comedians in Peshawar. The blame lies not with “Muslim militants” or “medieval Islam” — broad terms often heard when the Taliban first emerged as a force in nearby Afghanistan in the 1990s — but “Islamist vigilantes hell-bent on imposing Taliban-style values.”
Haider also makes a distinction between the Islamist political parties in Pakistan, who banned music on public buses and movie posters featuring women, and the militants who went further and used murder and bombings to intimidate the population.
our world peace friends should look and digest the photos that accompany this article.the suggestion that president obama just needs to have a chat with the likes of these, and they will have an immediate change of heart is nonsensical, these people have been conditioned with hatred since they were children,any fragment of any compassion is not even an ember.
Canadians fill YouTube with “Amazing Grace” videos
If “Amazing Grace” is not already the most widely sung hymn in Christianity — and cyberlists, for what they’re worth, say it is — it should be by the time the Amazing Grace Project is finished. The Anglican Church of Canada invited all its congregations to sing John Newton‘s iconic hymn last Sunday and upload a video of their efforts to the church’s national office. The plan is to edit them into “one big, amazing “Amazing Grace” video and put it up on the web for all to enjoy by Christmas,” as the project website explains.
The uploads are piling up on YouTube (here’s the playlist) and it seems some congregations in U.S. states close to the Canadian border have joined in. There are a few entries from South Africa and a clip of bishops at the Lambeth Conference (see video above) enjoying the opportunity to sing from the same songsheet. If you want to be part of the final product, upload your video here by Dec. 1.
I first realised how widely known “Amazing Grace” was in 1999, at the end of the Yugoslav wars, when I was reporting from the Kosovo town of Prizren. The Serbian army had just left the town and NATO forces controlled the province. My Muslim interpreter and I happened to pass a Catholic Church one day and we went in for a look. To my surprise, a Mass was being said and the congregation was belting out a familiar tune. When I finally realised it was “Amazing Grace” in Albanian translation, I sang along softly in English. On leaving, the interpreter asked me “How do you know an Albanian hymn?”
How about you? Have you heard this famous hymn in languages other than English? If we get enough different examples, I’ll pass them on to the Amazing Grace Project.
Thanks for this post – interesting project. I’ve heard Amazing Grace in Czech alongside what a friend we have in Jesus.
However this youtube with Wintley Phipps also provides some interesting background to Amazing Grace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMF_24cQq T0
Rocking in Pennsylvania at “Christian Woodstock”
MOUNT UNION, Pa. – It was muddy, it was loud and there were a lot of smiling, happy people offering free hugs and praising Jesus.
The Creation Festival drew around 70,000 people to rural Pennsylvania last month to listen to Christian music, ranging from hard rock to R&B, hip-hop and punk.
Check out the Reuters story on the festival along with an audio slideshow of pictures by Mike Segar, who got his feet wet to catch the moment when nearly 200 people were baptized in a pond.
Now in its 30th year and growing bigger every year, the festival is in many ways like any secular summer music festival — thousands of young people camping out, getting muddy in the rain and eagerly hunting down their heroes for autographs.
But these music fans wore T-shirts with slogans such as “Virginity Rocks” and “Mosh for Jesus.” To read more about the unusual merchandise on offer, click here.
PICTURES: Reuters/Mike Segar.
I’ve never been to a Creation Festival but it looks awesome.
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