Results tagged “worldmusic”

We love it when events combine movies and music! So check out , a documentary about the creation of a multi-ethnic world music orchestra from Italy. Diverse residents of the Piazza Vittorio neighborhood in Rome banded together and created the multi-ethnic world music orchestra in an attempt to save a historic movie theater from destruction. The movie then follows the orchestra's unlikely rise to success and the various musicians' stories.

. Plays start at 9:30, have a lunch break, and start again at 3 and go probably until 9 or so? The performance, at the Project Artaud Theater (450 Florida, x 17th and Mariposa) is free and probably oversubscribed, but you should stop by and see if you can get yourself in.

with readings from the book, music, and a special Bloomsday feast at the Mechanics' Institute. 57 Post Street (x Market), $15, saloon opens 6:30, readings begin at 7:30.

Lotta stuff going on today, a lot of which we've mentioned before: Another Hole In The Head continues and the Black Film Festival gets started! Also, it's the Berkeley Edge Fest. Here's some other stuff too.

You've still got the Berkeley World Music Festival today, and Indiefest's Hole in the Head fantasy/sci-fi/horror film fest is in full swing! Your other options include:

Pick your poison -- it's either flyering for Gavin Newsom or going to the Progressive Convention this afternoon. If politics isn't your game, here's some other options for today and tonight:

Ever misplaced a grocery or to-do list? Your lost note could appear in Lost and Found in the Mission, a play based on true stories salvaged from scraps of papers found around the Mission District. The production, by Boathouse & Co., includes songs, dancing, beat-boxing and mass hallucinations. Tickets are available on a sliding scale ($15-$25), here, show starts at 8pm. Mama Calizo's Voice Factory in the Jon Sims Center for Performing Arts, 1519 Mission St.,SF.

After the jump: the San Jose Metro and the SF Weekly, the Weekly of the Week, and the YTD!

Last Wednesday, we told you our quick take on Juno Baby's line of educational entertainment products for kids (the long and short: cute, cool, and engaging). Adam Adleman, one of the founders of Juno Baby, took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to answer some questions:

Monday is our favorite day to do laundry, thus we are thrilled by the possibility of satisfying our dire needs for both clean socks and weird live music at once at the Brainwash Café (1122 Folsom St. @ 7th). The Jardin Noir Dark Circus Radio Project blends psychedelic jazz improv and world music with strange and compelling results for free. (7-10pm)

"AnTEAcipation" screens at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (701 Mission St. @ 3rd) as part of the SF World Music Festival. This documentary takes a gradual, personal approach to the role of tea growing on the Laz people of Turkey. The 8pm screening is preceded by a lecture on the Laz that starts at 7pm.

One Wednesday you're in, and the next you're .... out. Tonight: Independent bookstores all over town are closing left and right. Help the one on the left stay open at a benefit for Modern Times tonight. Local musicians, artists, and performers like Solidad diCosta, Ghost Family, Bahiyyih Maroon, Seeley Quest, Grant Donnelly and Joolie Geldner are donating their time and talent. Plus -- food and drink! Valencia x 20th, 7-9 p.m.

Hayes Valley has turned into a friendly neighborhood. They have a perky positive attitude, with banners saying haYESvalley. See: YOU are in the neighborhood with the YES inside, thus YOU are the affirmation of what is possible. We'll put little +++ signs around you. That is instant karma shining right on you. Take that, mariNO. Plus, they did get rid of some seriously bad feng shui, with a freeway off-ramp like a wart on the nose. Once that was gone, and cute little Hayes Greens set up instead, all of a sudden you find yourself with a family friendly, almost suburban neighborhood.

Who saw Pearl Jam this week? With three sold out shows at Bill Graham Civic Center, at least a few of you must have been there. We braved the packed, sweaty, drunken crowd on Sunday night to remind ourselves why we’re really no fan of large venues. It was hard to see from any vantage point on the floor if you weren’t over six feet tall, and even if you found yourself a decent sight line to the stage, you were inevitably bumped, tripped over or in the worst cases groped every few minutes as people either lumbered toward the stage or away from it. We thought the band’s performance was great; Eddie Vedder has one of the strongest, most distinctive voices of our generation and he sounds fantastic both live and on record. A highlight to the nearly three-hour set was when Eddie and Stone talked about some of the old punk songs they’d been covering because the political messages were still current and meaningful. They called Penelope and Greg up from The Avengers to play their song "The American in Me" with the band. We found this photo of Eddie and Penelope from Phil H's site, but it's also part of the show download from the official Pearl Jam bootleg site. If you went to any of the shows, please tell us about your show experience in the comments!

Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells: 58

The Iranian New Year is traditionally celebrated on the vernal equinox, which was this Monday. San Francisco, though, always fashionably late, is throwing its Norooz party tonight at City Hall. Iranian-American Ross Mirkarimi is hosting the city's first annual Norooz party, along with Gavin Newsom and the local Iranian-American community. In honor of the day, performers from the Nejad World Music Center and Ballet Afsaneh will perform. The festivities kick off at 6:15 in the City Hall Rotunda. Civic Center, we can't wait to see the pictures you'll get of the event!

Put a brimful of Asha on your iPod ride! The Asha Bhosle who's name-checked by the Brit band Cornershop and is renown as the voice of Bollywood, has released a CD with San Francisco's best arbiters of new music tastes, the Kronos Quartet. Kronos has always sought to redefine classical chamber music from Viennese ladies doing the minuet to encompass all types of sonic sensation -- from contemporary pieces by Philip Glass and John Adams to Hendrix covers, Latin jazz, Argentinean tangoes, and African world music. Their latest record, You've Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman's Bollywood, features string quartet arrangements of songs from Bollywood films. Bollywood films are famous for their extended musical numbers, many of which were written by Asha Bhosle's late husband, R.D. Burman and performed by Ms. Bhosle, to be lip-synched by famous actresses in the actual movie. Burman and Bhosle are said to have sold more records than Elvis and the Beatles combined. And the album's a lot of fun! It's basically a Burman/Bhosle greatest hits collection -- Kronos and their posse of world musicians basically fade into the background and Bhosle lets it fly (check out the audio samples). The tunes are insanely catchy and -- well, we don't approve of listening to world music to feel exotic, but we did find ourselves hankering for something cardamom-flavored as we listened through. Kronos will be performing with Asha Bhosle on September 22 and 23 at the Yerba Buena Center. We hope they'll synch up some movies with the songs!

Our concert picks for the week of 7/28-8/3.

It's black history month and we're ashamed to admit that all we've done is buy James Baldwin stamps and curse Condoleezza Rice. So we were glad to receive a tip from a reader about what looks like a fascinating world music concert. The Abayudaya Jewish tribe of Uganda have a rich choral tradition of African religious songs, sung in both Hebrew and Luganda (a local Ugandan dialect), and their most recent album was nominated for a Grammy this year. (They were beaten by Maroon 5. Kidding, kidding -- Ladysmith Black Mambazo took home the Best Traditional World Music title this year.) As part of their Be-chol Lashon (In Every Voice) Think Tank to promote Jewish racial and ethnic diversity, the Institute for Jewish and Community Research is sponsoring a concert with the Abauyudaya Jewish singing group and the Temple Bethel Choir, an African-American Jewish group from Philadelphia. The Temple Bethel Choir is known for their "foot-stomping celebration" of Jewish music, so this should be a slightly different world music experience than, say, a "Putomayo presents: The Beauty of the Didgeridoo" concert. The concert is at 7 p.m. in the Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel, and tickets are $10.

For those of you who like your ethnomusicology less with the pan flutes and more with the non-Western modalities, the San Francisco World Music Festival is presenting a number of innovative programs for the next two weeks. Headlining the festivitires is San Francisco's own Kronos Quartet, who are playing a special local show, sandwiched in between their European tour and their upcoming BAM Next Wave performance in New York.