Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Darius Campbell Danesh, Former Pop Idol Star, Dies Aged 41

THE GUARDIAN: Singer and actor found dead in Minnesota, US, on 11 August but cause of death remains unknown

Darius Campbell Danesh in the talent show Popstars. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

The former Pop Idol contestant and theatre star Darius Campbell Danesh has been found dead in his US apartment at the age of 41, his family announced.

The singer and actor was found in Rochester, Minnesota, on 11 August. The cause of death is as yet unknown.

A statement said: “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Darius Campbell Danesh. Darius was found unresponsive in bed in his apartment room in Rochester, Minnesota, on August 11 and was pronounced dead in the afternoon by the local medical examiners’ office.

“The local police department have confirmed that there were no signs of intent or suspicious circumstances. The cause of his sudden death is unknown at this stage while medical examinations continue. » | PA Media | Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Friday, June 18, 2021

Enid Blyton (« Le Club des cinq ») accusée de racisme

LE POINT : L'autrice de livres pour enfants a été épinglée par l'association britannique du patrimoine pour des écrits jugés racistes et xénophobes.

Pour des générations d'enfants du monde entier, l'écrivaine Enid Blyton évoque les aventures bon enfant du Club des cinq. Pour autant, l'association britannique chargée du patrimoine rappelle désormais dans sa documentation que l'autrice britannique a été critiquée pour « son racisme et sa xénophobie ». Dans une déclaration transmise à l'Agence France-Presse, l'association English Heritage, chargée de commémorer de célèbres personnalités, a déclaré avoir mis à jour l'entrée sur son site web concernant Enid Blyton pour y inclure « une référence » au fait que l'œuvre de l'autrice a été critiquée pour son racisme. » | Source AFP | jeudi 17 juin 2021

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Daniel Barenboim Brings 'Solace and Pleasure' to Gaza with Mozart Concert

THE GUARDIAN: Israeli conductor voices support for non-violence and Palestinian state during performance for schoolchildren and NGO workers

The orchestra arrived with the impact of a presidential motorcade, in armoured cars, with sirens wailing and flanked by dozens of armed men.

It was an unusual overture to a rendition of Mozart. But then, the arrival in Gaza of Daniel Barenboim, the world-famous Israeli conductor and his Orchestra for Gaza – featuring musicians from Paris, Milan, Berlin and Vienna - to play for an audience of schoolchildren and NGO workers was itself far from usual.

The orchestra set off from Berlin on Monday, stopped at Vienna and then landed at El Arish, close to the Egyptian side of the Gaza Strip, on a plane chartered by Barenboim himself.

As an Israeli citizen it is illegal for Barenboim to enter Gaza without a permit, and, as if that wasn't enough, the recent murder of an Italian peace activist and fears that pro-Osama bin Laden groups in Gaza might seek revenge on western targets meant that the UN security team was on high alert.

Barenboim has previously played in Ramallah and holds an honorary Palestinian passport, and is widely praised for his attempts to reach out across the divide. In Israel, meanwhile, he has been attacked for promoting the work of Wagner.

He told his audience on Tuesday that the people of Gaza "have been blockaded for many years and this blockade has affected all of your lives."

The aim of his orchestra, he said, was to bring "solace and pleasure" through music to the people of Gaza and to let them know that people all over the world care for them. » | Conal Urquhart | Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Israel: Andrea Bocelli to Sing at Masada

YNET NEWS: Famed Italian tenor to take part in one time performance in June. All proceeds dedicated to support of Galilee, Negev residents

Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli has accepted an invitation from the Israeli Opera to come to Israel in June for a unique concert which will be held at the foothills of the famous Masada landmark. The concert will mark the closing of the Opera Festival which will include performances of "Aida" at the Masada and Jerusalem at the Sultan's Pool.

Proceeds from the concert, which will be held June 12 in cooperation with the Or Association, will be dedicated to the support of residents of the Negev and the Galilee.

Bocelli will be accompanied by musicians from the Rishon Lezion Symphonic Orchestra and the opera choir. The famous tenor will sing famous arias from popular operas together Neapolitan songs. Choir and orchestra pieces will also be preformed during the concert. >>> Merav Yudlilovitch | Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Time To Say Goodbye: Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman

Friday, November 23, 2007

In Search of Lost Time

TIME: The days grow short. A cold wind stirs the fallen leaves, and some mornings the vineyards are daubed with frost. Yet all across France, life has begun anew: the 2007 harvest is in. And what a harvest it has been. At least 727 new novels, up from 683 for last autumn's literary rentrée. Hundreds of new music albums and dozens of new films. Blockbuster art exhibitions at all the big museums. Fresh programs of concerts, operas and plays in the elegant halls and salles that grace French cities. Autumn means many things in many countries, but in France it signals the dawn of a new cultural year.

And nobody takes culture more seriously than the French. They subsidize it generously; they cosset it with quotas and tax breaks. French media give it vast amounts of airtime and column inches. Even fashion magazines carry serious book reviews, and the Nov. 5 announcement of the Prix Goncourt — one of more than 900 French literary prizes — was front-page news across the country. (It went to Gilles Leroy's novel Alabama Song.) Every French town of any size has its annual opera or theater festival, nearly every church its weekend organ or chamber-music recital.

There is one problem. All of these mighty oaks being felled in France's cultural forest make barely a sound in the wider world. Once admired for the dominating excellence of its writers, artists and musicians, France today is a wilting power in the global cultural marketplace. That is an especially sensitive issue right now, as a forceful new President, Nicolas Sarkozy, sets out to restore French standing in the world. When it comes to culture, he will have his work cut out for him. In Search of Lost Time (more) By Don Morrison, Paris

Mark Alexander

Sunday, November 04, 2007

The Pretence, Stupidity, Naïveté, and Idiocy of Multicultural Thinking

THE SUNDAY TIMES: Following the national news can be bad for the blood pressure. According to a press leak, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) - Labour’s favourite think tank and one which has the ear of power - is to publish a report saying Christmas should be downgraded to improve race relations.

In the interests of "evenhandedness", the report says, and "if we are going to continue as a nation to mark Christmas - it would be very hard to expunge it from our national life, even if we wanted to - then public organisations should mark other religious festivals too". Presumably that means marking them equally, because "we can no longer define ourselves as a Christian nation, nor an especially religious one".

This all sounds familiar, of course. We have become used to absurd stories of British Christmases being renamed Winterval, or children’s carols being stopped for fear of offending minorities - many of them true. We all know that the Christian Tony Blair and most top politicians send "season’s greetings" instead of Christmas cards. It is unabashed, yet guilt-ridden, decadent multiculturalism.

Sure enough, Ben Rogers and Rick Muir, the authors, do indeed call on the government to launch an "urgent and upfront campaign" to promote "a multicultural understanding of Britishness". They rehearse the old arguments: different communities should not be expected to integrate but should be allowed to maintain their own cultures and identities; immigrants should learn some English and something of British culture, "if - but only if - the settled population is willing to open up national institutions and practices to newcomers and give a more inclusive cast to national narratives and symbols".

Meanwhile, national ceremonies, civic oaths, parliament and the monarchy must be recast in a more multi-religious or secular form. Parents should be made to attend a public state ritual of citizenship for their new babies when registering their birth; "parents, their friends and family and the state [would] agree to work in partnership to support and bring up their child". Presumably this would include an undertaking not to celebrate Christmas "inappropriately or exclusively". Let’s stop pretending all faiths are equal (more) By Minnette Marrin

Mark Alexander

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Wanted: A National Culture

TIMESONLINE: Multiculturalism has run its course, and it is time to move on. It was a fine, even noble idea in its time. It was designed to make ethnic and religious minorities feel more at home, more appreciated and respected, and therefore better able to mesh with the larger society. It affirmed their culture. It gave dignity to difference. And in many ways it achieved its aims. Britain is a more open, diverse, energising, cosmopolitan environment than it was when I was growing up.

But there has been a price to pay, and it grows year by year. Multiculturalism has led not to integration but to segregation. It has allowed groups to live separately, with no incentive to integrate and every incentive not to. It was intended to promote tolerance. Instead the result has been, in countries where it has been tried, societies more abrasive, fractured and intolerant than they once were.

Liberal democracy is in danger. Britain is becoming a place where free speech is at risk, non-political institutions are becoming politicised, and a combination of political correctness and ethnic-religious separatism is eroding the graciousness of civil society. Religious groups are becoming pressure groups. Boycotts and political campaigns are infecting professional bodies. Culture is fragmenting into systems of belief in which civil discourse ends and reasoned argument becomes impossible. The political process is in danger of being abandoned in favour of the media-attention-grabbing gesture. The politics of freedom risks descending into the politics of fear.

Multiculturalism emerged, more as a fact than a value, in the 1970s in the wake of mass migration from nonWestern to Western nations. It found a supportive environment in the intellectual mood of the time. The idea of one nation, one culture had come to seem dangerous and wrong.

But there was something else happening at the same time, of great consequence: the slow demise of morality itself, conceived as the moral bond linking individuals in the shared project of society.

In 1961, suicide ceased to be a crime. This might seem a minor and obviously humane measure, but it was the beginning of the end of England as a Christian country; that is, one in which Christian ethics was reflected in law. It was a prelude to other and more significant reforms. In 1967 abortion was legalised, as was homosexual behaviour.

Collectively these changes represented a decisive move away from the idea that society had, or was entitled to have, a moral code at its base, covering many areas of life that might otherwise be regarded as private. Society was no longer conceived of in terms of a moral consensus. The law would intervene only to prevent individuals from harming one another.

What happens when we lose moral consensus? Morality is reduced to taste. “Good” and “bad” become like yum and yugh: I like this; I don’t like that. Imagine two people, one of whom says: “I like ice cream”; the other: “I don’t”. They are not arguing. Each is simply declaring his or her taste.

We have lost the basis of morality as a shared set of values holding society together. We are living “after virtue”; that is to say, in an age in which people no longer have roles and duties within a stable social structure. When that happens, morality becomes a mere façade. Arguments become interminable and intolerable. The only adequate answer to an opposing viewpoint is: “Says who?” In a debate in which there are no shared standards, the loudest voice wins. The only way to defeat opponents is to ridicule them. Wanted: a national culture: Multiculturalism is a disaster By Jonathan Sacks

THE GUARDIAN:
Riven by class and no social mobility - Britain in 2007 By Julian Glover

Mark Alexander