Before getting into the usual business, it’s worth talking about the tragic events that unfolded in Paris last week. What takes place partway around the world might not seem to have have much to do with what goes on music-wise here in Taipei, but it’s all related.
The extremists who laid siege to Le Bataclan didn’t attack a target that was of military or religious significance — not in the traditional sense. They sought to level as much death as their automatic weapons would allow upon the progressive, liberal and by and large youthful heart of Paris.
They attempted to pierce the very essence of the City of Light in the hope that it would bleed out all over Boulevard Voltaire and disappear down into the sewer they wrongly believe it was born out of.
Photo courtesy of Craig Ferguson
Though they may not have intended it, those Islamist extremists attacked an altar. Our altar. One at which we often worship more regularly than those who purport to be actual followers of one of the world’s major or minor faiths.
It was an attack meant to strike fear into the West, and by extension the hearts of the global family of music. It will fail.
It would be alarmist and incorrect to say music fans in Taipei or elsewhere in Taiwan are under direct threat. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be a part of a symbolic act of defiance against tyranny.
Photo courtesy of Thomas Konig
What can be done in Taipei? A show of solidarity beyond merely changing Facebook profile pictures to include an opaque curtain of the French flag. A return en masse to the altar.
In short, don’t take the privilege of being able to go out and see live music for granted. In so many places around the world the ability to see a concert and know for an incontrovertible fact that you will return home safely simply does not exist.
Prior to last week the people of Paris could say for the most part that there was no real danger in a night of music. Now they cannot. This is to say nothing of places such as Iraq and Syria, in parts of which simply playing an instrument or listening to music in your own home can be enough to get you killed.
In Taiwan we have freedom. In spite of the ever looming threat of the missile-bound colossus to the west that is China we have security to the tune of being named one of the safest countries on the planet.
So go out to concerts. Wave the French flag there. Wave the Lebanese flag, the Syrian, the Iraqi, the Nigerian, the Kenyan. It doesn’t much matter which. Brandish them together. Turn these symbols of division into ones of unity.
Or wave no flags at all. The point is to gather together to show the people of Paris or anywhere persecution, death and fear currently reign that the music community stands with them. It’s just a gesture, yes, but gestures have the power to inspire actions and courage, as does music. Don’t ever underestimate it.
One of the first chances to come out in force, albeit in an intimate sort of setting, is tonight at the lovely Cafe Vergissmeinnicht, where Terry “T-Bone” Engel and Jack Conqueroo will share the bill.
Jack Conqueroo plays that form of blues both low down and dirty. Mouth on the harmonica, a foot stomping down on a tambourine, he’s a one-man force to be reckoned with, heavy on the sludgy distortion born of the Louisiana bayou, or the junction of Interstate 49 and US Route 190, otherwise known as the town of Opelousas.
As for T-Bone, what can you say about a guy who was reared on a steady diet of Black Sabbath and Rush before he was out of grammar school? The man, also known for his work with his Zappa-inspired progressive rock outfit Soup Mother, has some of the most intriguingly eclectic taste in music to be found anywhere, and he’ll have the full gamut on aural display tonight, from blues, to rock, to pop.
So get up. Go out and be with people. Spend some time with those foolish enough to believe that if we get together to see a show, even if we do get a bit too drunk and say stuff we don’t mean or talk about things that may never have happened, we still might come to understand one another a little better. And maybe we’ll fend off Armageddon for another few weeks. Even if it does come, at least it’ll have a nice soundtrack.
■ Terry “T-Bone” Engel and Jack Conqueroo play tonight at Cafe Vergissmeinnicht, 92, Aiguo E Rd, Taipei City (台北市愛國東路92號).Entrance is free though there is an NT$150 minimum charge per person in effect for walk-ins, NT$450 per person with a dinner reservation. The show begins at 7pm.
Private conversations with corporate insiders and ex-government officials that cost upwards of US$10,000 an hour. Coded language and blurred regulatory lines. For hedge funds and other global investors, China’s vast web of “expert networks” has become a key tool for navigating an opaque but potentially lucrative economic powerhouse. For Xi Jinping’s (習近平) Communist Party, the secretive industry represents something far more ominous: a threat to national security that must be reined in. That contradiction is now sending shockwaves through the financial world as China’s government cracks down on the expert networks it had showered in praise less than a decade ago during
When Jerome Eisenberg enrolled his daughter at the Brentwood School in Los Angeles, where Adam Levine met some of his Maroon 5 bandmates, the investment manager says he expected her to get a traditional liberal arts education. But after the murder of George Floyd, the US$50,000-a-year school said it was reimagining its purpose “with an eye toward anti-racism” and diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. In Eisenberg’s view, Brentwood was pulling a “bait and switch” on parents. He sued the school last year for breach of contract, civil rights violations and emotional distress. “The curriculum change shifted away from teaching students critical
May 28 to June 3 Taiwan provincial governor Chen Cheng (陳誠) was adamantly opposed to the state-run Central Daily News (中央日報) moving from Nanjing to Taipei in 1949. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) already had a mouthpiece in Taiwan, the China Daily News (中華日報), and he argued that the relocation of the Central Daily News “would have absolutely no function besides affecting the morale of the people,” according to the book 1949: An Earth-Shattering Year (1949: 石破天驚的一年) by Lin Po-wen (林博文). Chen likely had a grudge against the paper too. Despite editor-in-chief Tao Hsi-sheng’s (陶希聖) “central first, then daily” policy prioritizing the
The 24 bright green baby parrots began chirping and bobbing their heads the second anyone neared the large cages that have been their homes since hatching in March. The Central American natives, seized from a smuggler at Miami International Airport, are being raised by the Rare Species Conservatory Foundation — a round-the-clock effort that includes five hand feedings a day in a room filled with large cages. At just 9 weeks old, these parrots have already survived a harrowing journey after being snatched from their nests in a forest. They are almost fully feathered now and the staff has started transitioning them
RSS