Polynesia

Polynesia (, ; from "polys" "many" and "nēsos" "island") (; ; ; ; ; ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in common, including language relatedness, cultural practices, and traditional beliefs. In centuries past, they had a strong shared tradition of sailing and using stars to navigate at night. The largest country in Polynesia is New Zealand.
The term "Polynésie" was first used in 1756 by the French writer Charles de Brosses, who originally applied it to all the islands of the Pacific. In 1831, Jules Dumont d'Urville proposed a narrower definition during a lecture at the Geographical Society of Paris. By tradition, the islands located in the southern Pacific have also often been called the South Sea Islands, and their inhabitants have been called South Sea Islanders. The Hawaiian Islands have often been considered to be part of the South Sea Islands because of their relative proximity to the southern Pacific islands, even though they are in fact located in the North Pacific. Another term in use, which avoids this inconsistency, is “the Polynesian Triangle” (from the shape created by the layout of the islands in the Pacific Ocean). This term makes clear that the grouping includes the Hawaiian Islands, which are located at the northern vertex of the referenced “triangle.”
Geography.
Geology.
Polynesia is characterized by a small amount of land spread over a very large portion of the mid- and southern Pacific Ocean. It comprises approximately of land, of which more than are within New Zealand. The Hawaiian archipelago comprises about half the remainder.
Most Polynesian islands and archipelagos, including the Hawaiian Islands and Samoa, are composed of volcanic islands built by hotspots (volcanoes). The other land masses in Polynesia — New Zealand, Norfolk Island, and Ouvéa, the Polynesian outlier near New Caledonia - are the unsubmerged portions of the largely sunken continent of Zealandia.
Zealandia is believed to have mostly sunk below sea level 23 million years ago, and recently partially resurfaced due to a change in the movements of the Pacific Plate in relation to the Indo-Australian plate. The Pacific plate had previously been subducted under the Australian plate. When that changed, it had the effect of uplifting the portion of the continent that is modern New Zealand.
The convergent plate boundary that runs northwards from New Zealand’s North Island is called the Kermadec-Tonga Subduction Zone. This subduction zone is associated with the volcanism that gave rise to the Kermadec and Tongan island archipelagos.
There is a transform fault that currently traverses New Zealand’s South Island, known as the Alpine Fault.
Zealandia’s continental shelf has a total area of approximately .
The oldest rocks in Polynesia are found in New Zealand and are believed to be about 510 million years old. The oldest Polynesian rocks outside Zealandia are to be found in the Hawaiian Emperor Seamount Chain and are 80 million years old.
Geographic area.
Polynesia is generally defined as the islands within the Polynesian Triangle, although some islands inhabited by Polynesian people are situated outside the Polynesian Triangle. Geographically, the Polynesian Triangle is drawn by connecting the points of Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island. The other main island groups located within the Polynesian Triangle are Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Niue, Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia.
Also, small Polynesian settlements are in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the Caroline Islands and Vanuatu. An island group with strong Polynesian cultural traits outside of this great triangle is Rotuma, situated north of Fiji. The people of Rotuma have many common Polynesian traits, but speak a non-Polynesian language. Some of the Lau Islands to the southeast of Fiji have strong historic and cultural links with Tonga. However, in essence, Polynesia remains a cultural term referring to one of the three parts of Oceania (the others being Micronesia and Melanesia).
Island groups.
The following are the islands and island groups, either nations or overseas territories of former colonial powers, that are of native Polynesian culture or where archaeological evidence indicates Polynesian settlement in the past. Some islands of Polynesian origin are outside the general triangle that geographically defines the region.
Core area.
The Phoenix Islands and the Line Islands, most of which are part of Kiribati, had no permanent settlements until European colonization, but are often considered to be part of the Polynesian Triangle.
Polynesians once inhabited the Kermadec Islands, the Auckland Islands and Norfolk Island in pre-colonial times, but these islands were uninhabited by the time European explorers arrived.
History.
Origins and expansion.
The Polynesian people are considered, by linguistic, archaeological and human genetic evidence, a subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people. Tracing Polynesian languages places their prehistoric origins in Island Melanesia, Island Southeast Asia, and ultimately, in Taiwan.
Between about 3000 and 1000 BCE speakers of Austronesian languages began spreading from Taiwan into Island Southeast Asia.
There are three theories regarding the spread of humans across the Pacific to Polynesia. These are outlined well by Kayser "et al." (2000) and are as follows:
In the archaeological record there are well-defined traces of this expansion which allow the path it took to be followed and dated with some certainty. It is thought that by roughly 1400 BCE, "Lapita Peoples", so-named after their pottery tradition, appeared in the Bismarck Archipelago of northwest Melanesia. This culture is seen as having adapted and evolved through time and space since its emergence "Out of Taiwan". They had given up rice production, for instance, which required paddy field agriculture unsuitable for small islands. However, they still cultivated other ancestral Austronesian staple cultigens like "Dioscorea" yams and taro (the latter are still grown with smaller-scale paddy field technology), as well as adopting new ones like breadfruit and sweet potato.
The results of research at the Teouma Lapita site (Efate Island, Vanuatu) and the Talasiu Lapita site (near Nuku'alofa, Tonga) published in 2016 supports the Express Train model; although with the qualification that the migration bypassed New Guinea and Island Melanesia. The conclusion from research published in 2016 is that the initial population of those two sites appears to come directly from Taiwan or the northern Philippines and did not mix with the ‘AustraloPapuans’ of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. The preliminary analysis of skulls found at the Teouma and Talasiu Lapita sites is that they lack Australian or Papuan affinities and instead have affinities to mainland Asian populations.
A 2017 DNA analysis of modern Polynesians indicates that there has been intermarriage resulting in a mixed Austronesian-Papuan ancestry of the Polynesians (as with other modern Austronesians, with the exception of Taiwanese aborigines). Research at the Teouma and Talasiu Lapita sites implies that the migration and intermarriage, which resulted in the mixed Austronesian-Papuan ancestry of the Polynesians, occurred after the first initial migration to Vanuatu and Tonga.
A complete mtDNA and genome-wide SNP comparison (Pugach "et al.", 2020) of the remains of early settlers of the Mariana Islands and early Lapita individuals from Vanuatu and Tonga also suggest that both migrations originated directly from the same ancient Austronesian source population from the Philippines. The complete absence of "Papuan" admixture in the early samples indicates that these early voyages bypassed eastern Indonesia and the rest of New Guinea. The authors have also suggested a possibility that the early Lapita Austronesians were direct descendants of the early colonists of the Marianas (which preceded them by about 150 years), which is also supported by pottery evidence.
The most eastern site for Lapita archaeological remains recovered so far is at Mulifanua on Upolu. The Mulifanua site, where 4,288 pottery shards have been found and studied, has a "true" age of based on radiocarbon dating and is the oldest site yet discovered in Polynesia. This is mirrored by a 2010 study also placing the beginning of the human archaeological sequences of Polynesia in Tonga at 900 BCE.
Within a mere three or four centuries, between 1300 and 900 BCE, the Lapita archaeological culture spread 6,000 km further to the east from the Bismarck Archipelago, until reaching as far as Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa which were first populated around 3,000 years ago as previously mentioned. A cultural divide began to develop between Fiji to the west, and the distinctive Polynesian language and culture emerging on Tonga and Samoa to the east. Where there was once faint evidence of uniquely shared developments in Fijian and Polynesian speech, most of this is now called "borrowing" and is thought to have occurred in those and later years more than as a result of continuing unity of their earliest dialects on those far-flung lands. Contacts were mediated especially through the eastern Lau Islands of Fiji. This is where most Fijian-Polynesian linguistic interactions occurred.
In the chronology of the exploration and first peopling of Polynesia, there is a gap commonly referred to as the long pause between the first peopling of Western Polynesia including Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa among others and the settlement of the rest of the region. In general this gap is considered to have lasted roughly 1000 years. The cause of this gap in voyaging is contentious among archaeologists with a number of competing theories presented including climate shifts, the need for the development of new voyaging techniques, and cultural shifts.
After the long pause, dispersion of populations into central and eastern Polynesia began. Although the exact timing of when each island group was settled is debated, it is widely accepted that the island groups in the geographic center of the region (i.e. the Cook Islands, Society Islands, Marquesas Islands, etc.) were settled initially between 1000 to 1150 CE and ending with more far flung island groups such as Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island settled between 1200 and 1300 CE.
Tiny populations may have been involved in the initial settlement of individual islands; although Professor Matisoo-Smith of the Otago study said that the founding Māori population of New Zealand must have been in the hundreds, much larger than previously thought. The Polynesian population experienced a founder effect and genetic drift. The Polynesian may be distinctively different both genotypically and phenotypically from the parent population from which it is derived. This is due to new population being established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population which also causes a loss of genetic variation.
Atholl Anderson wrote that analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA, female) and Y chromosome (male) concluded that the ancestors of Polynesian women came from Taiwan while those of Polynesian men came from New Guinea. Subsequently, it was found that 96% (or 93.8%) of Polynesian mtDNA has an Asian origin, as does one-third of Polynesian Y chromosomes; the remaining two-thirds from New Guinea and nearby islands; this is consistent with matrilocal residence patterns. Polynesians existed from the intermixing of few ancient Austronesian-Melanesian founders, genetically they belong almost entirely to the Haplogroup B (mtDNA), which is the marker of Austronesian expansions. The high frequencies of mtDNA Haplogroup B in the Polynesians are the result of founder effect and represents the descendants of a few Austronesian females who intermixed with Papuan males.
Culture.
The Polynesians were matrilineal and matrilocal Stone Age societies upon arrival in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, after having been through at least some time in the Bismarck Archipelago. The modern Polynesians still show human genetic results of a Melanesian culture which allowed indigenous men, but not women, to "marry in" – useful evidence for matrilocality.
Although matrilocality and matrilineality receded at some early time, Polynesians and most other Austronesian speakers in the Pacific Islands, were/are still highly "matricentric" in their traditional jurisprudence. The Lapita pottery for which the general archaeological complex of the earliest "Oceanic" Austronesian speakers in the Pacific Islands are named also went away in Western Polynesia. Language, social life and material culture were very distinctly "Polynesian" by 1000 BCE.
Linguistically, there are five sub-groups of the Polynesian language group. Each represents a region within Polynesia and the categorization of these language groups by Green in 1966 helped to confirm Polynesian settlement took place west to east. There is a very distinct "East Polynesian" subgroup with many shared innovations not seen in other Polynesian languages. The Marquesas dialects are perhaps the source of the oldest Hawaiian speech which is overlaid by Tahitian variety speech, as Hawaiian oral histories would suggest. The earliest varieties of New Zealand Maori speech may have had multiple sources from around central Eastern Polynesia as Maori oral histories would suggest.
Political history.
Samoa.
In the 9th century, the Tui Manu'a controlled a vast maritime empire comprising most of the settled islands of Polynesia. The Tui Manu'a is one of the oldest Samoan titles in Samoa. Traditional oral literature of Samoa and Manu'a talks of a widespread Polynesian network or confederacy (or "empire") that was prehistorically ruled by the successive Tui Manu'a dynasties. Manuan genealogies and religious oral literature also suggest that the Tui Manu'a had long been one of the most prestigious and powerful paramount of Samoa. Oral history suggests that the Tui Manu'a kings governed a confederacy of far-flung islands which included Fiji, Tonga as well as smaller western Pacific chiefdoms and Polynesian outliers such as Uvea, Futuna, Tokelau, and Tuvalu. Commerce and exchange routes between the western Polynesian societies are well documented and it is speculated that the Tui Manu'a dynasty grew through its success in obtaining control over the oceanic trade of currency goods such as finely woven ceremonial mats, whale ivory "tabua", obsidian and basalt tools, chiefly red feathers, and seashells reserved for royalty (such as polished nautilus and the egg cowry).
Samoa's long history of various ruling families continued until well after the decline of the Tui Manua's power, with the western isles of Savaii and Upolu rising to prominence in the post-Tongan occupation period and the establishment of the Tafa'ifa system that dominated Samoan politics well into the 20th century. This was disrupted in the early 1900s due to colonial intervention, with East-West division by Tripartite Convention (1899) and subsequent annexation by the German Empire and the United States. The German-controlled Western portion of Samoa (consisting of the bulk of Samoan territory – Savai'i, Apolima, Manono and Upolu) was occupied by New Zealand in WWI, and administered by it under a Class C League of Nations Mandate. After repeated efforts by the Samoan independence movement, the New Zealand Western Samoa Act 1961 of 24 November 1961 granted Samoa independence, effective on January 1, 1962, upon which the Trusteeship Agreement terminated. The new Independent State of Samoa was not a monarchy, though the Malietoa title-holder remained very influential. It officially ended, however with the death of Malietoa Tanumafili II on May 11, 2007.
Tonga.
In the 10th century, the Tu'i Tonga Empire was established in Tonga, and most of the Western Pacific came within its sphere of influence, up to parts of the Solomon Islands. The Tongan influence brought Polynesian customs and language throughout most of Polynesia. The empire began to decline in the 13th century.
After a bloody civil war, political power in Tonga eventually fell under the Tu'i Kanokupolu dynasty in the 16th century.
In 1845 the ambitious young warrior, strategist, and orator Tāufaʻāhau united Tonga into a more Western-style kingdom. He held the chiefly title of Tuʻi Kanokupolu, but had been baptised with the name Jiaoji ("George") in 1831. In 1875, with the help of the missionary Shirley Waldemar Baker, he declared Tonga a constitutional monarchy, formally adopted the western royal style, emancipated the "serfs", enshrined a code of law, land tenure, and freedom of the press, and limited the power of the chiefs.
Tonga became a British-protected state under a Treaty of Friendship on 18 May 1900, when European settlers and rival Tongan chiefs tried to oust the second king. Within the British Empire, which posted no higher permanent representative on Tonga than a British Consul (1901–1970), Tonga formed part of the British Western Pacific Territories (under a colonial High Commissioner, residing in Fiji) from 1901 until 1952. Despite being under the protectorate, Tonga retained its monarchy without interruption.
On June 4, 1970 the Kingdom of Tonga received independence from the British protectorate.
New Zealand Māori.
On October 28, 1835 members of the Ngāpuhi and surrounding Māori tribes (iwi) issued a "declaration of independence", as a "confederation of tribes" to resist potential French colonization efforts and to prevent the ships and cargo of Māori merchants from being seized at foreign ports. They received recognition from the British monarch in 1836. (See United Tribes of New Zealand, New Zealand Declaration of Independence, James Busby.)
Using the Treaty of Waitangi and right of discovery as a basis, the United Kingdom annexed New Zealand as a part of New South Wales in 1840.
In response to the actions of the colonial government, Māori looked to form a monarchy inclusive of all Māori tribes in order to reduce vulnerability to the British divide-and-conquer strategy. Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, high priest and chief of the Ngāti Mahuta tribe of the Waikato iwi, was crowned as the Māori king in 1858. The king's territory consisted primarily of the lands in the center of the North Island, and the iwi constituted the most powerful non-signatories of the Treaty of Waitangi, with Te Wherowhero also never having signed it. (See Kingitanga.)
All tribes were incorporated into rule under the colonial government by the late 19th century. Although Māori were given the privilege of being legally enfranchised subjects of the British Empire under the Treaty, Māori culture and language (te reo Māori) were actively suppressed by the colonial government and by economic and social pressures from the Pakeha society. Efforts were made to preserve indigenous culture starting in the late 1950s and culminating in the Waitangi Tribunal's interpretation of language and culture being included in the treasures set to be preserved under the Treaty of Waitangi. Moving from a low point of 15,000 speakers in the 1970s, there are now over 157,000 people who have some proficiency in the standard Māori language according to the 2006 census in New Zealand, due in large part to government recognition and promotion of the language. They also compromise the largest Polynesian population.
Fiji.
The Lau islands were subject to periods of Tongan rulership and then Fijian control until their eventual conquest by Seru Epenisa Cakobau of the Kingdom of Fiji by 1871. In around 1855 a Tongan prince, Enele Ma'afu, proclaimed the Lau islands as his kingdom, and took the title Tui Lau.
Fiji had been ruled by numerous divided chieftains until Cakobau unified the landmass. The Lapita culture, the ancestors of the Polynesians, existed in Fiji from about 3500 BCE until they were displaced by the Melanesians about a thousand years later. (Both Samoans and subsequent Polynesian cultures adopted Melanesian painting and tattoo methods.)
In 1873, Cakobau ceded a Fiji heavily indebted to foreign creditors to the United Kingdom. It became independent on 10 October 1970 and a republic on 28 September 1987.
Fiji is now classified as both Polynesian and Melanesian.
Cook Islands.
The Cook Islands is made up of 15 islands comprising the Northern and Southern groups. The islands are spread out across many kilometers of a vast ocean. The largest of these islands is called Rarotonga, which is also the political and economic capital of the nation.
The Cook Islands were formerly known as the Hervey Islands, but this name refers only to the Northern Groups. It is unknown when this name was changed to reflect the current name. It is thought that the Cook Islands were settled in two periods: the Tahitian Period, when the country was settled between 900 – 1300 AD. The second settlement, the Maui Settlement, occurred in 1600 AD, when a large contingent from Tahiti settled in Rarotonga, in the Takitumu district.
The first contact between Europeans and the native inhabitants of the Cook Islands took place in 1595 with the arrival of Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña in Pukapuka, who called it "San Bernardo" (Saint Bernard). A decade later, navigator Pedro Fernández de Quirós made the first European landing in the islands when he set foot on Rakahanga in 1606, calling it "Gente Hermosa" (Beautiful People).
Cook Islanders are ethnically Polynesians or Eastern Polynesia. They are culturally associated with Tahiti, Eastern Islands, NZ Maori and Hawaii. Early in the 17th century, became the first race to settle in New Zealand.
Tuvalu.
The reef islands and atolls of Tuvalu are identified as being part of West Polynesia. During pre-European-contact times there was frequent canoe voyaging between the islands as Polynesian navigation skills are recognised to have allowed deliberate journeys on double-hull sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited; thus the name, Tuvalu, means "eight standing together" in Tuvaluan. The pattern of settlement that is believed to have occurred is that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, with Tuvalu providing a stepping stone for migration into the Polynesian Outlier communities in Melanesia and Micronesia.
Stories as to the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa; whereas on Nanumea the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.
The extent of influence of the Tuʻi Tonga line of Tongan kings, which originated in the 10th century, is understood to have extended to some of the islands of Tuvalu in the 11th to mid-13th century. The oral history of Niutao recalls that in the 15th century Tongan warriors were defeated in a battle on the reef of Niutao. Tongan warriors also invaded Niutao later in the 15th century and again were repelled. A third and fourth Tongan invasion of Niutao occurred in the late 16th century, again with the Tongans being defeated.
Tuvalu was first sighted by Europeans in January 1568 during the voyage of Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira who sailed past the island of Nui, and charted it as "Isla de Jesús" (Spanish for "Island of Jesus") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Mendaña made contact with the islanders but did not land. During Mendaña's second voyage across the Pacific he passed Niulakita in August 1595, which he named "La Solitaria", meaning "the solitary one".
Fishing was the primary source of protein, with the cuisine of Tuvalu reflecting food that could be grown on low-lying atolls. Navigation between the islands of Tuvalu was carried out using outrigger canoes. The population levels of the low-lying islands of Tuvalu had to be managed because of the effects of periodic droughts and the risk of severe famine if the gardens were poisoned by salt from the storm surge of a tropical cyclone.
Links to the Americas.
The sweet potato, called in Māori and in Quechua, is native to the Americas and was widespread in Polynesia when Europeans first reached the Pacific. Remains of the plant in the Cook Islands have been radiocarbon-dated to 1000, and the present scholarly consensus is that it was brought to central Polynesia by Polynesians who had traveled to South America and back, from where it spread across the region. Some genetic evidence suggests that sweet potatoes may have reached Polynesia via seeds at least 100,000 years ago, pre-dating human arrival; however, this hypothesis fails to account for the similarity of names.
There are also other possible material and cultural evidence of Pre-Columbian contact by Polynesia with the Americas with varying levels of plausibility. These include chickens, coconuts, and bottle gourds. The question of whether Polynesians reached the Americas and the extent of cultural and material influences resulting from such a contact remains highly contentious among anthropologists.
One of the most enduring misconceptions about Polynesians was that they originated from the Americas. This was due to Thor Heyerdahl's proposals in the mid-20th century that the Polynesians had migrated in two waves of migrations: one by Native Americans from the northwest coast of Canada by large whale-hunting dugouts; and the other from South America by "bearded white men" with "reddish to blond hair" and "blue-grey eyes" led by a high priest and sun-king named "Kon-Tiki" on balsa-log rafts. He claimed the "white men" then "civilized" the dark-skinned natives in Polynesia. He set out to prove this by embarking on a highly publicized "Kon-Tiki" expedition on a primitive raft with a Scandinavian crew. It captured the public's attention, making the "Kon-Tiki" a household name.
None of Heyerdahl's proposals have been accepted in the scientific community. The anthropologist Wade Davis in his book "The Wayfinders", criticized Heyerdahl as having "ignored the overwhelming body of linguistic, ethnographic, and ethnobotanical evidence, augmented today by genetic and archaeological data, indicating that he was patently wrong." Anthropologist Robert Carl Suggs included a chapter titled "The Kon-Tiki Myth" in his 1960 book on Polynesia, concluding that "The "Kon-Tiki" theory is about as plausible as the tales of Atlantis, Mu, and 'Children of the Sun'. Like most such theories, it makes exciting light reading, but as an example of scientific method it fares quite poorly." Other authors have also criticized Heyerdahl's hypothesis for its implicit racism in attributing advances in Polynesian society to "white people", at the same time ignoring relatively advanced Austronesian maritime technology in favor of a primitive balsa raft.
In July 2020, a novel high-density genome-wide DNA analysis of Polynesians and Native South Americans claimed that there has been intermingling between Polynesian people and pre-Colombian Zenú people in a period dated between 1150 and 1380 CE. Whether this happened because of indigenous American people reaching eastern Polynesia or because the northern coast of South America was visited by Polynesians is not clear yet.
Cultures.
Polynesia divides into two distinct cultural groups, East Polynesia and West Polynesia. The culture of West Polynesia is conditioned to high populations. It has strong institutions of marriage and well-developed judicial, monetary and trading traditions. West Polynesia comprises the groups of Tonga, Samoa and Fiji. The pattern of settlement to East Polynesia began from Samoan Islands into the Tuvaluan atolls, with Tuvalu providing a stepping stone to migration into the Polynesian Outlier communities in Melanesia and Micronesia.
Eastern Polynesian cultures are highly adapted to smaller islands and atolls, principally Niue, the Cook Islands, Tahiti, the Tuamotus, the Marquesas, Hawaii, Rapa Nui and smaller central-pacific groups. The large islands of New Zealand were first settled by Eastern Polynesians who adapted their culture to a non-tropical environment.
Unlike Melanesia, leaders were chosen in Polynesia based on their hereditary bloodline. Samoa, however, had another system of government that combines elements of heredity and real-world skills to choose leaders. This system is called Fa'amatai. According to Ben R. Finney and Eric M. Jones, "On Tahiti, for example, the 35,000 Polynesians living there at the time of European discovery were divided between high-status persons with full access to food and other resources, and low-status persons with limited access."
Religion, farming, fishing, weather prediction, out-rigger canoe (similar to modern catamarans) construction and navigation were highly developed skills because the population of an entire island depended on them. Trading of both luxuries and mundane items was important to all groups. Periodic droughts and subsequent famines often led to war. Many low-lying islands could suffer severe famine if their gardens were poisoned by the salt from the storm surge of a tropical cyclone. In these cases fishing, the primary source of protein, would not ease the loss of food energy. Navigators, in particular, were highly respected and each island maintained a house of navigation with a canoe-building area.
Settlements by the Polynesians were of two categories: the hamlet and the village. The size of the island inhabited determined whether or not a hamlet would be built. The larger volcanic islands usually had hamlets because of the many zones that could be divided across the island. Food and resources were more plentiful. These settlements of four to five houses (usually with gardens) were established so that there would be no overlap between the zones. Villages, on the other hand, were built on the coasts of smaller islands and consisted of thirty or more houses—in the case of atolls, on only one of the group so that food cultivation was on the others. Usually, these villages were fortified with walls and palisades made of stone and wood.
However, New Zealand demonstrates the opposite: large volcanic islands with fortified villages.
As well as being great navigators, these people were artists and artisans of great skill. Simple objects, such as fish-hooks would be manufactured to exacting standards for different catches and decorated even when the decoration was not part of the function. Stone and wooden weapons were considered to be more powerful the better they were made and decorated. In some island groups weaving was a strong part of the culture and gifting woven articles was an ingrained practice. Dwellings were imbued with character by the skill of their building. Body decoration and jewelry is of an international standard to this day.
The religious attributes of Polynesians were common over the whole Pacific region. While there are some differences in their spoken languages they largely have the same explanation for the creation of the earth and sky, for the gods that rule aspects of life and for the religious practices of everyday life. People traveled thousands of miles to celebrations that they all owned communally.
Beginning in the 1820s large numbers of missionaries worked in the islands, converting many groups to Christianity. Polynesia, argues Ian Breward, is now "one of the most strongly Christian regions in the world...Christianity was rapidly and successfully incorporated into Polynesian culture. War and slavery disappeared."
Languages.
Polynesian languages are all members of the family of Oceanic languages, a sub-branch of the Austronesian language family. Polynesian languages show a considerable degree of similarity. The vowels are generally the same—a, e, i, o, and u, pronounced as in Italian, Spanish, and German—and the consonants are always followed by a vowel. The languages of various island groups show changes in consonants. "R" and "v" are used in central and eastern Polynesia whereas "l" and "v" are used in western Polynesia. The glottal stop is increasingly represented by an inverted comma or ‘okina. In the Society Islands, the original Proto-Polynesian *"k" and *"ng" have merged as glottal stop; so the name for the ancestral homeland, deriving from Proto-Nuclear Polynesian "*sawaiki", becomes Havai'i. In New Zealand, where the original *"w" is used instead of "v", the ancient home is Hawaiki. In the Cook Islands, where the glottal stop replaces the original *"s" (with a likely intermediate stage of *"h"), it is ‘Avaiki. In the Hawaiian islands, where the glottal stop replaces the original "k", the largest island of the group is named Hawai‘i. In Samoa, where the original "s" is used instead of "h", "v" replaces "w", and the glottal stop replaces the original "k", the largest island is called Savai'i.
Economy.
With the exception of New Zealand, the majority of independent Polynesian islands derive much of their income from foreign aid and remittances from those who live in other countries. Some encourage their young people to go where they can earn good money to remit to their stay-at-home relatives. Many Polynesian locations, such as Easter Island, supplement this with tourism income. Some have more unusual sources of income, such as Tuvalu which marketed its '.tv' internet top-level domain name or the Cooks that relied on postage stamp sales.
Aside from New Zealand, another focus area of economic dependence regarding tourism is Hawaii. Hawaii is one of the most visited areas within the Polynesian Triangle, entertaining more than ten million visitors annually, excluding 2020. The economy of Hawaii, like that of New Zealand, is steadily dependent on annual tourists and financial counseling or aid from other countries or states. "The rate of tourist growth has made the economy overly dependent on this one sector, leaving Hawaii extremely vulnerable to external economic forces." By keeping this in mind, island states and nations similar to Hawaii are paying closer attention to other avenues that can positively affect their economy by practicing more independence and less emphasis on tourist entertainment.
Inter-Polynesian cooperation.
The first major attempt at uniting the Polynesian islands was by Imperial Japan in the 1930s, when various theorists (chiefly Hachirō Arita) began promulgating the idea of what would soon become known as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Under the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, all nations stretching from Southeast and Northeast Asia to Oceania would be united under one, large, cultural and economic bloc which would be free from Western imperialism. The policy theorists who conceived it, along with the Japanese public, largely saw it as a pan-Asian movement driven by ideals of freedom and independence from Western colonial oppression. In practice, however, it was frequently corrupted by militarists who saw it as an effective policy vehicle through which to strengthen Japan's position and advance its dominance within Asia. At its greatest extent, it stretched from Japanese occupied Indochina in the west to the Gilbert Islands in the east, although it was originally planned to stretch as far east as Hawai'i and Easter Island and as far west as India. This never came to fruition, however, as Japan was defeated during World War II and subsequently lost all power and influence it had.
After several years of discussing a potential regional grouping, three sovereign states (Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu) and five self-governing but non-sovereign territories formally launched, in November 2011, the Polynesian Leaders Group, intended to cooperate on a variety of issues including culture and language, education, responses to climate change, and trade and investment. It does not, however, constitute a political or monetary union.
Navigation.
Polynesia comprised islands diffused throughout a triangular area with sides of four thousand miles. The area from the Hawaiian Islands in the north, to Easter Island in the east and to New Zealand in the south were all settled by Polynesians.
Navigators traveled to small inhabited islands using only their own senses and knowledge passed by oral tradition from navigator to apprentice. In order to locate directions at various times of day and year, navigators in Eastern Polynesia memorized important facts: the motion of specific stars, and where they would rise on the horizon of the ocean; weather; times of travel; wildlife species (which congregate at particular positions); directions of swells on the ocean, and how the crew would feel their motion; colors of the sea and sky, especially how clouds would cluster at the locations of some islands; and angles for approaching harbors.
These wayfinding techniques, along with outrigger canoe construction methods, were kept as guild secrets. Generally, each island maintained a guild of navigators who had very high status; in times of famine or difficulty these navigators could trade for aid or evacuate people to neighboring islands. On his first voyage of Pacific exploration Cook had the services of a Polynesian navigator, Tupaia, who drew a hand-drawn chart of the islands within radius (to the north and west) of his home island of Ra'iatea. Tupaia had knowledge of 130 islands and named 74 on his chart. Tupaia had navigated from Ra'iatea in short voyages to 13 islands. He had not visited western Polynesia, as since his grandfather's time the extent of voyaging by Raiateans has diminished to the islands of eastern Polynesia. His grandfather and father had passed to Tupaia the knowledge as to the location of the major islands of western Polynesia and the navigation information necessary to voyage to Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. As the Admiralty orders directed Cook to search for the “Great Southern Continent”, Cook ignored Tupaia's chart and his skills as a navigator. To this day, original traditional methods of Polynesian Navigation are still taught in the Polynesian outlier of Taumako Island in the Solomon Islands.
From a single chicken bone recovered from the archaeological site of El Arenal-1, on the Arauco Peninsula, Chile, a 2007 research report looking at radiocarbon dating and an ancient DNA sequence indicate that Polynesian navigators may have reached the Americas at least 100 years before Columbus (who arrived 1492 AD), introducing chickens to South America. A later report looking at the same specimens concluded:
A published, apparently pre-Columbian, Chilean specimen and six pre-European Polynesian specimens also cluster with the same European/Indian subcontinental/Southeast Asian sequences, providing no support for a Polynesian introduction of chickens to South America. In contrast, sequences from two archaeological sites on Easter Island group with an uncommon haplogroup from Indonesia, Japan, and China and may represent a genetic signature of an early Polynesian dispersal. Modeling of the potential marine carbon contribution to the Chilean archaeological specimen casts further doubt on claims for pre-Columbian chickens, and definitive proof will require further analyses of ancient DNA sequences and radiocarbon and stable isotope data from archaeological excavations within both Chile and Polynesia.
Knowledge of the traditional Polynesian methods of navigation was largely lost after contact with and colonization by Europeans. This left the problem of accounting for the presence of the Polynesians in such isolated and scattered parts of the Pacific. By the late 19th century to the early 20th century, a more generous view of Polynesian navigation had come into favor, perhaps creating a romantic picture of their canoes, seamanship and navigational expertise.
In the mid to late 1960s, scholars began testing sailing and paddling experiments related to Polynesian navigation: David Lewis sailed his catamaran from Tahiti to New Zealand using stellar navigation without instruments and Ben Finney built a 12-meter (40-foot) replica of a Hawaiian double canoe "Nalehia" and tested it in Hawaii. Meanwhile, Micronesian ethnographic research in the Caroline Islands revealed that traditional stellar navigational methods were still in everyday use. Recent re-creations of Polynesian voyaging have used methods based largely on Micronesian methods and the teachings of a Micronesian navigator, Mau Piailug.
It is probable that the Polynesian navigators employed a whole range of techniques including use of the stars, the movement of ocean currents and wave patterns, the air and sea interference patterns caused by islands and atolls, the flight of birds, the winds and the weather. Scientists think that long-distance Polynesian voyaging followed the seasonal paths of birds. There are some references in their oral traditions to the flight of birds and some say that there were range marks onshore pointing to distant islands in line with these flyways. One theory is that they would have taken a frigatebird with them. These birds refuse to land on the water as their feathers will become waterlogged making it impossible to fly. When the voyagers thought they were close to land they may have released the bird, which would either fly towards land or else return to the canoe. It is likely that the Polynesians also used wave and swell formations to navigate. It is thought that the Polynesian navigators may have measured the time it took to sail between islands in "canoe-days’’ or a similar type of expression.
Another navigational technique may have involved following sea turtle migrations. While other navigational techniques may have been sufficient to reach known islands, some research finds only sea turtles could have helped Polynesian navigators reach new islands. Sea turtle migrations are feasible for canoes to follow, at shallow depths, slower speeds, and in large groups. This could explain how Polynesians were able to find and settle the majority of Pacific Islands.
Also, people of the Marshall Islands used special devices called stick charts, showing the places and directions of swells and wave-breaks, with tiny seashells affixed to them to mark the positions of islands along the way. Materials for these maps were readily available on beaches, and their making was simple; however, their effective use needed years and years of study.


Contact (musical)

Contact is a musical "dance play" that was developed by Susan Stroman and John Weidman, with its "book" by Weidman and both choreography and direction by Stroman. It ran both off-Broadway and on Broadway in 1999–2002. It consists of three separate one-act dance plays.
Productions.
"Contact" premiered at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, on September 9, 1999 (after 1999 workshop productions of parts of the show), then moved to Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, on March 30, 2000 and played for 1,010 performances there.
The show was received with critical acclaim and won the 2000 Tony Award for Best Musical (among others). The award was controversial because "Contact" contains no original music or live singing, and in response, a new award for Best Special Theatrical Event was introduced the following year.
A West End production opened at the Queen's Theatre in October 2002, and closed on May 10, 2003. The
musical toured from May 2001 to June 2002, and started again in November 2002 in Toronto.
The original cast album was released on March 6, 2001. PBS included the show's final performance in its program Live from Lincoln Center on September 1, 2002. It won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Classical Music-Dance Program.
Regional productions.
Among regional productions, the musical was presented by the Virginia Stage Company (Norfolk, Virginia) in April 2006. This was the first regional theater in the US to present "Contact" after the Broadway, national tour and London productions and was directed by Tome Cousin, an original cast member (who was chosen by Stroman to direct).
The show was produced at the North Shore Music Theatre (Beverly, Massachusetts) in June 2008, with Jarrod Emick and Naomi Hubert and directed by Tomé Cousin. In conjunction with the Sarasota Ballet, the Asolo Repertory Theatre's October 23 – November 22, 2009 at the Mertz Theatre in Sarasota, Florida starred Shannon Lewis, Feltcher McTaggart, Sean Ewing, Nadine Isenegger, Ariel Shepley, Steven Sofia, and Wilson Mendieta. Directed by Tome' Cousin
The featured SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE section was presented February 28, 2011 during the Vineyard Theatre's Susan Stroman Gala "STRO" at the Hudson Theatre NYC. Directed / staged by Tome' Cousin
The featured SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE section was presented numerous times by the American Dance Machine For The 21st Century at New York City's City Center and also during its Joyce Theater November 11 – 16, 2014 engagement.
International productions.
The musical was produced by Mupa Budapest at the Madách Theatre in Budapest, Hungary in 2009, with choreography by Tome Cousin, and featured leading ballet dancers of the Hungarian State Opera and members of KFKI Chamber Ballet.
The show was produced in the West End at the Queen's Theatre starting on October 3, 2002 (previews) and officially on October 23. It closed on May 10, 2003.
The musical was produced in Lodz, Poland at the Opera Lodz in 2010. Directed / Choreographed by Tome' Cousin
The Musical Theater Academy of Shanghai, China presented the musical on December 19, 2014 and a revival in April 2015 Directed / Choreographed by Tome' Cousin
In 2010/2011 and again in 2017 the musical was produced in Seoul, Korea by the OD Musical Company. Both versions starred Joo Won Kim, Homin Kim, Kyoung Hoon Choi, Ji Sun Kim, Dong Ju Kang, and Sam Jin Lee. Directed by Tome' Cousin
Background.
The idea that "Contact" was initially developed, researched, and written by Mike Ockrent's (Stroman's husband) development executive and assistants during his brief production deal at Warner Bros, is more than likely untrue. According to "Playbill" in a 1999 article, the musical was inspired by an experience that Stroman had "... when she visited a dance club in the Meat Market district. There she witnessed a fascinating woman in a yellow dress who took turns dancing with different partners throughout the night. Watching from the sidelines, Stroman thought, 'she's going to change someone's life tonight' ."
Robin Pogrebin wrote in "The New York Times" in 1999 of Stroman visiting a swing club and noticing a dancer in a yellow dress. "The woman would step up to the dance floor as a song was beginning and nod or shake her head at the various men asking to be her partner. Then, after holding everyone's attention with her nervy grace, she would disappear into the crowd. What came out of this was "Contact..." "
The same origin was related in an article in "The New Yorker", written by John Lahr in 2014: “ 'Into this sea of dark fashion stepped a girl in a yellow dress,' Stroman recalled. 'You couldn’t help but notice her: it was a very bold color to wear at night—lemon yellow—the same color you find on a traffic light. When she wanted to dance, she would step away from the bar and some man would ask her to dance.'"
Structure, music and story.
"Contact" is made up of three separate dance pieces, each set to pre-recorded music, including from Tchaikovsky, Stéphane Grappelli, the Squirrel Nut Zippers, Royal Crown Revue, and The Beach Boys. In each story, the central character expresses a longing to make a romantic connection.
All three stories concern "contact", or its lack.
Musical numbers.
Sources:Amazon.com;
Internet Broadway Database
Casts.
Original Broadway cast and replacements.
Source: Internet Broadway Database
Mary Ann Lamb (replacement)
Critical response.
Ben Brantley, in his review in "The New York Times" of the production at the Newhouse, wrote: "...Stroman... aided by the dramatist John Weidman and a dream ensemble of dancing actors and acting dancers, has created the unthinkable: a new musical throbbing with wit, sex appeal and a perfectionist's polish. Brimming with a sophistication that is untainted by the usual fin-de-siecle cynicism, "Contact" restores the pleasure principle to the American musical. It's the kinetic equivalent of Rodgers and Hart."


Neliska Ann Briscoe

Neliska Ann Briscoe (April 7, 1914 – August 25, 1994) was an American dancer, jazz band leader, and businesswoman.
Background.
The daughter of Eddie Briscoe, a meatpacker, and Neliska Thomas, a cook and housekeeper from Mexico, Neliska Ann Briscoe was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. She had two half brothers and a sister who died young. Briscoe's career as an entertainer began at about the age of nine when she performed in a club where her uncle, Escaliere Thomas, was employed part-time in the evenings. She got the nickname "Baby" (sometimes "Babe"), which she retained in her entertainment career as an adult.
Early career.
As a child, Briscoe performed in New Orleans at the St. Bernard Alley Cabaret as an acrobatic dancer in a floor show in which she was the sole child performer. A natural on the stage, Briscoe continued to perform as an acrobatic dancer and singer in such New Orleans cabarets as the Astoria, Entertainers, and the Owl in her early teenage years, often mentioned in newspaper articles as a cabaret's main draw.
In February 1931, at the age of seventeen, Briscoe moved to New York City to pursue a career as a dancer. She was employed by Small's Paradise Club.
She was out of work for at least several weeks during her recovery. In 1933 she returned to her native New Orleans to rise to such renown in the local jazz scene that she gained the title "the Sweetheart of New Orleans." Pianist Joe Robichaux hired her to lead his band, the New Orleans Rhythm Boys, a group consisting at times of up to fifteen members, including three women: Briscoe, Joan Lunceford (singer), and Ann Cooper (trumpet). Dressed in what became her trademark tuxedo, Briscoe worked as a tap dancer, entertaining the crowd in front of Robichaux's band during and between musical sets.
Briscoe worked with Robichaux for nearly five years before joining another group, the Harlem Playgirls, in early 1938. Based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, this African American all-woman band toured the country to popular and critical acclaim. From 1938 to 1940 Briscoe, in her tuxedo and a baton in hand, led the band when it performed at the Apollo Theater in New York City on Thanksgiving Day in 1938 and at smaller venues in Frederick, Maryland; Cleveland, Ohio; Youngstown, Ohio; and Jackson, Tennessee. The Harlem Playgirls made numerous appearances at the Tick Tock Tavern in New Orleans. By this time Briscoe was not just a "front" for the band but a true band leader.
Personal life.
Following her two-year tour with the Harlem Playgirls, Briscoe returned to New Orleans, where she met a merchant mariner named David "Val" Mouton. At the peak of her success she left her career in show business to marry Mouton in 1942. They had two daughters, Avon ("Vonnie") and Debra. Briscoe, a strong advocate for the right to vote, became a registered voter in New Orleans in 1948.
Briscoe divorced her husband in 1950 due to domestic abuse. After the divorce she and her daughters lived with her mother on North Tonti Street in New Orleans, and Briscoe became a successful businesswoman. She studied cosmetology, operated a gift boutique named Avon and Debra's Gift Shop after her daughters, owned a small restaurant, and worked as a seamstress, making ball gowns for Mardi Gras.
In 1957 Briscoe married Clarence Casimire, whom she had known from her youth. The marriage ceremony was performed by Briscoe's half brother Joseph Mitchell at the Christian Mission Baptist Church he co-founded in New Orleans. Shortly after their marriage the couple moved to Cleveland with Briscoe's daughters and Casimire's daughter from a previous marriage. They had one son. Despite her retirement from the stage, Briscoe continued to perform. She started to learn saxophone in her sixties, did splits on her seventy-fifth birthday, and danced on her eightieth birthday.
In 1994 Briscoe was hospitalized with bone cancer at St. Alexis Hospital. A nun at the hospital told one of Briscoe's daughters that Briscoe "had talked of being a famous dancer...about wearing a satin tuxedo and conducting an orchestra. The nun added quickly that it was surely the morphine". She died four months after her 80th birthday, on August 25, 1994.
Awards and honors.
In 2004, Briscoe was included in a feature exhibition celebrating the Women of Jazz at the National Historic Jazz Park in New Orleans. To commemorate the tenth anniversary of her death, her daughters set up the Baby Briscoe Scholarship Fund at Tulane University.


Herbert Ihering

Herbert Ihering (also sometimes Herbert Jhering: 29 February 1888 - 15 January 1977) was seen by many contemporaries as one of the leading German theatre critics during and after the Weimar years.
He was one of the earliest supporters in print of Bertolt Brecht, which formed one basis for a long period of very public disagreement - which sometimes degenerating into journalistic feuding - with Alfred Kerr. Later Ihering incurred the enmity of the dramatist Klaus Mann, who was widely believed to have incorporated Ihering in his novel "Mephisto" as the opportunistic theatre critic and gossip Dr Ihrig (in later editions Dr. Radig).
Although chiefly remembered for his work as a theatre (and film) critic, Ihering also published other forms of writing, and took jobs inside the theatre, working as a dramaturge and in other supportive positions.
Life.
Herbert Georg Albrecht Gustav Ihering was born in Springe, a small town just outside Hanover. His father was an Assessor (junior magistrate) at the local court. His career as a critic began in 1909 when he started to work for "Die Schaubühne" ("The Theatre Stage"), a weekly newspaper owned by Siegfried Jacobsohn. Over the next few years he became established as a critic with contributions to a range of newspapers. Between 1914 and 1917 he worked as a dramaturge at the in Vienna.
He had already contributed to the Berliner Börsen-Courier before the war, and after 1918 he became a regular freelance contributor to it. Between 1918 and 1920 he also worked as a reviewer for the theatrical publishing house. In 1919 he succeeded Alfred Kerr as the theatre critic on "Der Tag", the mass circulation daily paper produced by August Scherl.
Between 1922 and 1933 at the Berliner Börsen-Courier, under the leadership of Emil Faktor, Ihering built his reputation as one of the most important film and theatre critics in Germany.
"Compared to other critics of the time he applied a completely different style. His writing was much more factual, but with a clear mission. In his articles, criticisms and critiques he argued powerfully and sometimes at considerable length. His articles targeted the theatre bosses, from whom he demanded consistent multi-faceted and imaginative scheduling, and directors, dramaturges and set designers on whom he urged - both formally and informally - closer and smarter collaboration."
In 1922 Ihering was mandated by the Kleist Foundation to nominate a recipient for their annual writers' prize. He recommended the young Bertolt Brecht. At the end of 1927 Ihering relocated to a newly built three floor storey house in Berlin-Zehlendorf, where he would live out the final fifty years of his life.
In 1934 he again received an appointment in succession to his longstanding rival Alfred Kerr, from whom on this occasion he took on the critic's seat at the Berliner Tageblatt when Kerr, who was of Jewish provenance, fled with his family into exile, ending up in London a year later. The political backdrop had changed savagely with the Nazi power seizure of January 1933. Ihering was not Jewish and he was not a political activist, but his liberal left-leaning politics were nevertheless very different from those of the government, and in 1936 he was excluded from the established by the Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda under the auspices of the National Arts Chamber. In the words of one commentator, "Goebbels forbade him from being an active artist ("Kunstbetrachter"). [But] Ihering was never an artists: he always remained a critic". He now took an uncharacteristically low-profile job as a head of casting with the Tobis Film company, where his principal tasks involved "preparatory work" for films produced by Emil Jannings. From 1941 Ihering was able to publish several actors' biographies in Germany. In 1942 he was summoned to Vienna to work with Lothar Müthel at the Burgtheater. Ihering's published work and his activities as a dramaturge during the Nazi years have damaged his reputation considerably. After the war ended in May 1945 he moved the focus of his work to the Soviet occupation zone (after 1949 the German Democratic Republic), attracting condemnation from some who made different choices: the theatre critic Hans Sahl wrote of him as "zweimal gleichgeschalteten Ihering" (loosely: "two times similarly connected Ihering").
In 1945 Ihering took a job as Chief Dramaturge at Berlin's Deutsches Theater, then under the direction of the actor turned theatre director Gustav von Wangenheim. However, von Wangenheim moved on in 1946. In the end, following increasingly public "differences" with Wangenheim's successor, Wolfgang Langhoff, Ihering had to resign from this post in 1953.
From the early 1950 he was a founder member of the Visual Arts section at the Academy of Arts in (East) Berlin. In 1955 he received a blow when his longstanding partner, Lisette Königshof, died. In 1956 he was appointed permanent secretary of the Visual Arts section at the Academy of Arts, remaining in post till 1962. Between 1955 and 1960 Ihering contributed as a theatre critic to , the weekly newspaper of the East German Cultural Association. During his final years he was the recipient of numerous honours. His last piece of theatre criticism was published in 1974.


Arnold Loxam

Arnold Loxam was a professional concert organist. He was a native of Bradford, Yorkshire and gave his first broadcast there as a child pianist in 1925. Loxam made his first appearance on the keyboard of the Wurlitzer theatre organ at the then New Victoria cinema in Bradford. Arnold Loxam first visited the New Victoria Cinema, Bradford, which later became the Odeon, when he was a 14-year-old member of the audience on the opening night of the theatre on 22 September 1930.
In 1946 he began playing regularly for New Victoria audiences and broadcasting from the theatre for BBC Radio. He was appointed deputy organist playing every Sunday and deputised for Norman Briggs until 1948. From December 1948 Arnold also played full weeks or odd days as well as Sundays. He was famous for his bouncey style. He gave his first solo broadcast on the BBC Theatre Organ on 29 November 1947. The association with Bradford continued until 1962 when the BBC switched its broadcasts to the Leeds Odeon. Dr Loxam was invited back in 1968 to make a final broadcast from what had by then become the Gaumont before the Wurlitzer organ was taken to the North East Theatre Organ's headquarters in Howden-le-Wear, County Durham.
Loxam met his future wife in 1948 when she was working at the New Victoria as an usherette. Mrs Audrey Loxam was his driver for 25 years, chauffeuring him around to fulfil a busy schedule of engagements in this country and overseas. He has appeared in concert almost everywhere that it is possible to play in England, and has also played concerts in the Netherlands, Canada and the United States. North American audiences remember the Union Jack socks that he proudly wore at his concerts. In 1996 Arnold Loxam was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Bradford for his musical achievements. Arnold Loxam died, aged 93, on 14 March 2010.
Discography.
His performances include:


JTOL


Martin Ellis

Martin Ellis is an American church, concert and theatre organist. He is currently the organist for Rose City Park Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon. He was Principal Organist and Assistant Music Director at North United Methodist Church, and Senior Staff Pianist/Organist, Staff Arranger and Orchestrator for the Indianapolis Children's Choir and Youth Chorale in Indianapolis, Indiana until August, 2014. He works with Gresham High School's Theatre Arts Department as their resident piano accompanist.
Training and early career.
Ellis began organ studies in the 6th grade, and at 15 began studying with R. Gary Deavel at Manchester University in North Manchester, Indiana.
At DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, Ellis majored in keyboard performance and composition. The Central Indiana Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society (ATOS) was extremely supportive, engaging Martin in performances regionally throughout his college years. Ellis was also head accompanist for the DePauw Choirs, touring to Carnegie Hall and Williamsburg, Virginia. He was active as a vocal coach to the voice department and assistant conductor for three opera/musical theatre productions produced by the DePauw School of Music. He graduated from Depauw in 1990.
Church Organist/Music Director.
Before accepting the position playing for Rose City Park Presbyterian in 2014, Martin was Assistant Organist/Choirmaster at Second Presbyterian Church (Indiana's largest church) under Robert Shepfer, playing the 4m/81r Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ from 1990–1998. He then moved to Portland, Oregon, serving as Music Director/Organist at St. James Lutheran Church in downtown Portland. In 2004, Martin was appointed the Assistant Director of Music and Organist at North United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, playing the restored 4m/76r Kimball orchestral pipe organ and two other organs. He also directed the Cathedral Ringers Handbell Ensemble and coordinated the Handbell program.
Theatre organist.
Ellis' initial exposure to the theatre organ occurred at the Paramount Music Palace in Indianapolis when he was 7 years old. During his senior year, he served as the weekend artist at Milwaukee's Piper Music Palace, as an alternate organist at the Pipes and Pizza in Lansing, Illinois, and performed concerts in and around the Chicago area. Ellis is now an active featured theatre organist for ATOS and has been a regular theatre organ soloist in both the Chicago and Indianapolis areas for the last twenty years. After his move to Portland, Theatre organ came into play again as he served as an associate organist at Uncle Milt's Pipe Organ Pizza in Vancouver, Washington and played for the local organ clubs. He has appeared on the Ohio Theatre's summer movie series for several years. Mr. Ellis has been a featured artist at conventions of The American Guild of Organists, The Organ Historical Society, and The American Theatre Organ Society.
Concert organist.
Ellis has appeared with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, playing Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 and featured in recent Yuletide Celebrations, and also played the Poulenc Organ Concerto for the Carmel Symphony Orchestra.
Hilbert Circle Theatre.
Ellis was named the house organist for Hilbert Circle Theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana in 2009. "The 15 rank Wurlitzer with 9 additional classical ranks has truly turned out to be a stunning theatre installation that I am enjoying playing and proud to present to the public", commented Ellis.
This historic theatre has not had a house organist since the first Wurlitzer was removed in the 1930s; Ellis is the first house organist in over seventy years. Carlton Smith of Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations was responsible for the rebuild and reinstallation of the theatre's Wurlitzer.
"My biggest goal in this business of being a theatre organ artist is to reach out to the general public and perpetuate the theatre organ art form", said Martin. "With the 28 Yuletide Christmas shows coming up in December which will feature the Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ this year, this becomes a reality."
Yuletide.
"A vintage theatre pipe organ is giving the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra some new sounds", heralded the Indianapolis Star newspaper." The addition of the organ increases the symphony's repertoire", said Simon Crookall, President and CEO of the ISO. Those were just a few of the comments about the Yuletide Celebration concerts—27 in all, which saw the debut of the newly installed 3m/24r Wuritzer theatre pipe organ by house organist, Martin Ellis, and colleague, Donna Parker.
Opening the second half of the concert, the house lights dimmed as the Wurlitzer and organist were introduced to the audience while the symphony played the beginning strains of the well-loved holiday hit "Silver Bells". With the organ console center stage surrounded by the symphony, the curtain rose, the organist quickly took his place on the bench, and both organ and orchestra joined together for "Joy to the World", played in classic toccata fashion, before taking the instrument in a completely different direction with a rhythmic, energetic Brazilian "Sleigh Bells". The organ arrangement was written by Ellis, with the orchestral arrangement by conductor Jack Everly, carefully fitted around it.
The Yuletide Celebration concert series is the second largest Christmas concert series in the United States—second only in ticket sales to the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall with The Rockettes.
Pacific Rim Children's Choir Festival.
For seven years, Martin has also served as Artistic Assistant/Pianist for the Pacific Rim Children's Choir Festival in Honolulu, Hawaii.
International performances and 2010 tour.
Ellis has performed at Westminster Abbey in London and toured much of Canada and Europe, including playing an organ concert on the Tambourini organ at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome during tours with the ICC. Most recently, Ellis toured Australia in November 2010, performing for the Organ Society of Western Australia on the Karrinyup Wurlitzer Organ in the Sterling Theatre Concert Season. Ellis was interviewed by John Crook of ATW Travel Radio Australia during his tour. Another highlight of the tour was the Pops on Pipes concert in Auckland, New Zealand.
Trio con Brio.
With extraordinary sight-reading skills and the ability to musically adapt to a variety of situations, Martin was invited to be the fourth member of "Trio con Brio" by Donna Parker, Jonas Nordwall and Tom Hazleton. TCB uses three separate organs played simultaneously for grand orchestral effects and interesting concert programs. He performed for the Dickinson Theatre Organ Society and Fort Wayne's Embassy Theatre when Hazleton was unable to perform, and was ready to step in and play any of the other member's parts as the understudy. He became the third permanent member upon Hazleton's passing. Ellis is featured on three CDs from the group.
Review.
In a 2007 issue of the "Vox Humana" newsletter, from the Incorporated Society of Organ Builders, Mark Dresden writes about a recent Trio con Brio concert: "The players are excellent musicians, well versed in their knowledge of the theater organ in general and of the Dickinson Kimball in particular. They are also well versed in the art of playing together with creative, original and exciting arrangements. It was also exciting to see and hear for the first time the two Dickinson consoles on stage. But there was more. Also on stage with the Dickinson consoles were two grand pianos and a third organ which was an Allen Organ. All in all, it was a visually exciting prelude to that which was about to follow. Whether playing together as the Trio or playing individually, their music was clean, crisp and imaginative. As a trio however, we were treated to sounds that were quite special. Six hands, thirty fingers and six feet can and did produce wonderful arrangements just not possible by a single organist."
Recordings.
Mr. Ellis has a solo CD, "Martin on the Morton", featuring the Wheaton Fox Studio 4/26 Robert Morton Pipe Organ, and "In the Key of Three", the Trio's most recent recording. Other TCB CDs with Ellis include "Tales from the Chambers", and "A Change of Seasons.". Ellis is featured on the Reynolds Associates Pipe Organ Builders, Inc. website, playing music on two different Reynolds organs.
A solo theatre organ CD was recorded in Spring 2011, and the next Trio Con Brio recording using the 5 manual 108 rank Midmer-Losh organ at the Adrian Phillips Music Studio in Phoenix, Arizona.
Organ Innovation.
Ellis, Parker and Nordwall worked for Rodgers Instrument Corporation, spearheading MIDI implementation with church music.
Arranger.
Ellis has many published choral and orchestra arrangements with Hal Leonard and Colla Voce publishing companies. He recently orchestrated 15 pieces that were performed and recorded with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and ICC. Novello and Co. Ltd published Ellis' arrangement of three organ pieces by Samuel Wesley. In 2012, his arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner was performed by Kelly Clarkson, the Indianapolis Children's Choir and percussion for Super Bowl XLVI at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
Ellis customized handbell music to benefit from the expanded octaves including chimes available at NUMC. Handbell ringers coined the term 'martinizing' to define Ellis' ability.
Editor.
Ellis selected and edited works for "By Babylon's Streams, Organ Music of the English Romantic School". The book description from Boosey: "This music book presents some of the finest & most ambitious works written by English organ composers active between the late-Victorian period & the years following the First World War. Its contents include the "Scherzoso" of Walter Battison Haynes, the "Nunc Dimittis" of Charles Wood, "the Fantasy on the Tune 'Babylon's Streams" by William Harris, the "Impromptu No. 2" by Sidney Nicholson, and the "Lament"."
Teacher.
Ellis taught privately in Indianapolis while working there. He was a featured instructor at the ATOS Summer Youth Camp in Eastern Massachusetts in June 2011, which provided young enthusiasts the opportunity to study and learn the art of the theatre pipe organ through lectures, master classes, and private instruction. Ellis currently works with Gresham High School (Oregon)'s Theatre Arts Department, accompanying their musical performances and student's competition pieces.
Awards.
After becoming the first winner of the ATOS Young Organists Competition in 1986, Ellis premiered with Rex Koury at the Chicago Theatre Wurlitzer and was featured in concert at the ATOS National Convention the following year in Richmond, Virginia. After winning the local American Guild of Organists competition, he was the runner-up in the AGO Region V competition. He also placed first in the Arts Council of Indianapolis' Young Artist Competition.
Personal.
Ellis has trained and cares for his six exotic parrots, and restores and collects large antique reed organs. He lives in Portland, Oregon.


Moral clarity

Moral clarity is a catchphrase associated with American political conservatives. Popularized by William J. Bennett's "Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism", the phrase was first used in its current context during the 1980s, in reference to the politics of Ronald Reagan.
The phrase "moral clarity" encodes a complex political argument that includes all of the following claims:
Opposing views.
For opponents of the notion of "moral clarity", dividing the world into good and evil does not lend itself to a workable foreign policy. For example, if Iraq was invaded for reasons of "moral clarity", it follows that other "rogue states" (like North Korea) would also be similarly attacked. This apparent contradiction is used to argue that proponents of "moral clarity" are guilty of hypocrisy or special pleading, and that the slogan "moral clarity" masks less exalted reasons for military intervention, particularly economic motives.
Opponents of the notion of "moral clarity" also note that organizations such as al Qaida and neo-Nazis also believe that their own point of view is one of "moral clarity", which justifies them to take whatever action they feel necessary against what they see as the "forces of evil". Thus, opponents of the notion of "moral clarity" assert that, but for the accident of their country and culture of birth, the proponents of "moral clarity" might well be on the opposite side, holding the same views. Proponents of this view argue that understanding the motivations and values of other cultures, rather than labeling them "evil", is a better first step in eliminating violence.
Critics also argue that "moral clarity" promotes a dangerous view expressed in the famous phrase "My country, right or wrong". The idea that the United States is always "good" is actually an argument of moral relativism, they say, since it makes no distinction between right and wrong actions. Furthermore, it is argued that "moral clarity" is used to discredit those want to hold the United States to a higher moral standard than "My country, right or wrong", a standard expressed by U.S. Brigadier General Carl Schurz: "Our country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right."


Buy NZ Made

Buy NZ Made is a campaign promoting and encouraging people to buy New Zealand made products. It is run by BusinessNZ, a business advocacy body made up of New Zealand employers and manufacturers.
New Zealand manufacturers, retailers and government have been involved at times in promoting local buying since the "New Zealand Industries Week" of 1908, but the current campaign started in 1988 with Buy New Zealand Made Campaign Ltd formed to license the use of the "kiwi in a triangle" logo. In April 2008 Buy Kiwi Made celebrated 100 years of buying Kiwi made, referring back to the earliest efforts.
"Buy Kiwi Made".
A short-lived government programme, "Buy Kiwi Made" came out of negotiations between the Green Party and New Zealand's Labour Party that resulted in the formation of the government after the 2005 elections. Rod Donald was appointed as the Government's spokesperson for the programme which used the slogan "Buy Kiwi and We've Got it Made". Within a couple of months of the election, and after Rod Donald's death, the Labour government refused a joint Australian-New Zealand initiative to mandate country of origin labeling for food and although the www.buykiwimade.govt.nz/ website was launched on 2 March 2007 it has since been disconnected and the media campaign was concluded by 30 June 2009.


Dark Feed

Dark Feed is a 2013 horror film written and directed by Shawn and Michael Rasmussen. It was first released on March 18, 2013 and centers upon a group of filmmakers that decide to cut costs by filming in an abandoned psychiatric hospital, only to end up slowly turning insane. Filming took place in New England using some of the buildings seen in "Shutter Island". The Rasmussens came up with the idea for "Dark Feed" while visiting the set of another film, "Long Distance", which was filming in an abandoned psychiatric hospital.
Synopsis.
The movie follows a film crew that decides to film a low budget horror film in an abandoned psychiatric hospital. They're already exhausted and overworked, making them eager to finish the project and move on. Unfortunately their presence seems to bring new life to the hospital, and it starts to exert a strange influence over the cast and crew, causing them to act in increasingly bizarre ways. The remaining crew members must find a way to escape from the hospital before they also end up becoming its victims.
Reception.
Critical reception for "Dark Feed" was mixed. "Shock Till You Drop" gave a predominantly negative review, criticizing it as "a boring and unoriginal film unworthy of watching." In contrast, "Fearnet's" review was more positive and Weinberg commented that although the film had "a lot of stuff you've seen before", the movie "re-heated and reconfigured into a crafty little creeper that actually works". "Starburst" gave the film a score of 5/10, saying that the movie was "utterly unmemorable but not otherwise bad".


Temple Hauptfleisch

Temple Hauptfleisch is a South African playwright and academic, a professor emeritus of drama at Stellenbosch University.
Haupfleisch did his undergraduate studies at the University of the Orange Free State, graduating in 1966, and then went on to graduate studies at the University of South Africa, earning a master's degree in 1972 and a doctorate in 1978. At Stellenbosch, he chaired the drama department from 1995 to 2005. He is a co-founder (in 1987) and editor-in-chief of the "South African Theatre Journal".
He is the author of the book "Theatre and Society in South Africa: Reflections in a Fractured Mirror" (Pretoria: J. L. van Schaik, 1997).


Headlong (Frayn novel)

Headlong () is a novel by Michael Frayn, published in 1999.
The plot centres on the discovery of a long-lost painting from Pieter Bruegel's series "The Months". The story is essentially a farce, but contains a large amount of scholarship about the painter.
Frayn distinguishes between the iconology and iconography of the paintings and suggests that rather than simply being a series of pastoral images they symbolise a Dutch populace undergoing great suffering as a result of Spanish rule.
The novel was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize. An abridged version by Paul Kent and read by Martin Jarvis was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1999. A dramatized radio play directed by Clive Brill and produced by Ann Scott was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.
Plot.
Martin, the main character, is supposed to be writing a book. He finds himself invited to dinner at the house of a repellent and warring couple, on whom the land and property they own seems entirely wasted. Martin happens on a painting which he takes to be by Brueghel. Painstaking research leads him (via a full scale reassessment of the interpretation of the five surviving pictures in Brueghel's "The Months") to identify the picture as the missing sixth picture of Brueghel's famous book of hours. Meantime his wife, (an actual art historian whereas he is only peripherally connected with the scholarly art world), and their baby live in a cottage and he fears his wife eyes him with increasing disdain as, instead of working on his book, he pursues the Breughel data.
Martin has to fake the promise of an affair with the woman of the house to get hold of the picture, and indulge in a series of implausible transactions in other pictures to keep his access to the Brueghel open. Once he gets it, his troubles have only begun. Finally, as he is about to succeed in taking it to a safe place and secure his fortune, he crashes the old Landrover and the picture goes up in smoke. We never do find out if it was a Breughel or not.


Navtej Johar

Navtej Singh Johar (born 8 August 1959) is an Indian Sangeet Natak Akademi award-winning Bharatnatyam exponent and choreographer. He is also an LGBTQ activist.
Life and career.
Johar is faculty at Ashoka University, Sonipat. He is trained in Bharatanatyam at Kalakshetra, a dance school of Rukmini Arundale at Chennai, and with Leela Samson at the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra in New Delhi. He also studied later at the Department of Performance Studies, New York University. He has received numerous fellowships for his research such as Times of India Fellowship (1995), the Charles Wallace Fellowship (1999).
Johar has collaborated with composers Stephen Rush, Shubha Mudgal and installation artist Sheba Chhachhi among others. He has also acted in "Earth" by Deepa Mehta and "Khamosh Pani" by Sabiha Sumar.
He is among the few male dancers of classical form in India and first Sikh to have taken to the art form.
Activism.
In June 2016, Johar and five others, all members of the LGBT community themselves, filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court of India challenging Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This resulted in the 2018 landmark judgment in "Navtej Singh Johar and others v. Union of India" in which the Supreme Court unanimously declared the law unconstitutional "in so far as it criminalizes consensual sexual conduct between adults of the same sex".


Patrice Pavis

Patrice Pavis (born 1947) was Professor for Theatre Studies at the University of Kent in Canterbury (UK), where he retired at the end of the academic year 2015/16. He has written extensively about performance, focusing his study and research mainly in semiology and interculturalism in theatre. He was awarded the Georges Jamati Prize in 1986.
Academic Positions.
Patrice Pavis was previously Professor of Theatre Studies at Paris VIII University.
Concept of "verbo-corps".
In 1987, Pavis suggested a new theory regarding the translation of dramatic works. The idea of 'verbo-corps' has been described as "highly theoretical" and criticized for leaving "a gap between theory and translatory practice which cannot be closed". The theory suggests a culture-specific union between language and gesture used subconsciously by every writer. Pavis suggested that the translator needed to be able to comprehend the union in the original and reconstruct it in the translation.
"Mahābhārata".
When director Peter Brook produced his collaboration of "Mahābhārata" with Jean-Claude Carrière, Pavis criticized the adaptation of the Indian epic for promoting a cultural "Disney homogenization and uniformity".


Segoe UI


Stay thirsty, my friends


The Carpenters...Space Encounters

The Carpenters...Space Encounters is a television special featuring the American pop duo The Carpenters. It was first shown on ABC on May 17, 1978.
Synopsis.
"Space Encounters" begins with Richard and Karen Carpenter performing "Sweet, Sweet Smile" in their recording studio, assisted by Charlie Callas. As they are performing, we see that they are being observed by the occupants of an alien spaceship (John Davidson and Suzanne Somers) who are on their way to Earth to meet The Carpenters. After Richard and Karen finish the song, the lights in the studio begin to flicker uncontrollably and musical instruments begin to move and play by themselves. At that moment, John teleports down to the studio and tells Richard and Karen how the people from his planet lack the ability to make music and he requests their help. Richard and Karen tell John about their earlier days in music and John uses his hi-tech pocket video screen to show The Carpenters performing "Fun Fun Fun" and "Dancing in the Street". After watching them, John tells them he wants to try singing himself and teleports to a more romantic setting to perform "Just the Way You Are".
The Carpenters continue to reminisce about their earlier recordings and they perform "Goofus" in an old garage, similar to the one in which they recorded their first record.
Richard, on piano, then performs the Space Encounters Medley, which includes the themes to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Star Wars", on stage with a full orchestra, complete with laser and starlight effects.
Back in the recording studio, Karen and John continue to reminisce about her early days in music and she performs "Little Girl Blue". Afterwards, everybody teleports up to the spaceship's own nightclub, "The Galaxy Room", where Richard plays "Piano Picker", and Karen and Suzanne perform "Man Smart, Woman Smarter". Karen and John then perform "The Old-Fashioned Way" and then the whole cast (complete with dancers) perform a disco-medley including "The Hustle", "Boogie Nights" and "I Could Have Danced All Night".
The Carpenters then perform "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" and the show ends with an instrumental version of "We've Only Just Begun".


Zebo Aminzoda

Zebo Muhiddinovna Aminzoda () (born October 3, 1948) is a Tajikistani ballet dancer and choreographer, active during the Soviet period and after.
Life and career.
Aminzoda is a native of Dushanbe, then called Stalinabad. She was born into an artistic family; her father was the poet Muhiddin Aminzoda, while she learned dance from her mother and grandmother. She studied dance under E. N. Zhemchuzhina at the Institute of Choreography at the Great Theater of the Soviet Union from 1958 until 1962; in that year she went to Tashkent, to work with Kunduz Mirkarimova at the division of popular dance at the Tashkent Institute of Choreography.
She remained at that institution until 1965, when she took a position with the company of the Pushkin Music and Comedy Theater in Khujand, then called Leninabad. In 1978 she left to become head of the Zebo Ensemble, a dance ensemble under the purview of the Committee for Tajik Radio and Television.
She was a vice-chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of Tajikistan in 1993 and 1994; in the latter year she became her country's permanent representative at the Mir International Radio and Television Company in Moscow.
Aminzoda's choreography combines traditional elements with more modern staging and design. Her most notable dances included works with titles such as "Jonan", "Party", "Bell", "Sanam", "On the Meadow", "Midnight Prayer", and "Meeting". She also appeared in a number of plays during her career, including "Tartuffe" by Molière; a dramatization of the "Ramayana" by Natalya Guseva; and "The Gypsies" by Alexander Pushkin.
She traveled widely during her career, and received a number of prizes, including the Lenin Komsomol Prize for Tajikistan in 1968, the Order of Lenin in 1970, the Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin", and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. With her ensemble she was awarded the Lenin Komsomol Prize for the Soviet Union in 1982, and she was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1986.


John Roesch

John Roesch is an American Foley artist. Roesch is the head Foley artist at Lucasfilm's Skywalker Ranch.
Roesch had provided Foley sound effects for more than 400 films, including "The Dark Knight", "The Dark Knight Rises", the Matrix trilogy, "The Green Mile" and "E.T." . Roesch received a 2013 career achievement award during the Motion Picture Sound Editors’ 60th Golden Reel Awards ceremony.
Career.
John Roesch is a professional foley artist with over 40 years of experience in the film business. Spending 23 years in Warner Bros, he now is the lead foley artist at Skywalker Ranch. His IMDb page is a monolith of titles, including every blockbuster since the 1980s. Exclusively represented by the Mollie Plotkin Group, John Roesch speaks to any audience about his art and the role he plays on the greater team of Hollywood filmmaking.


Cosa Brava

Cosa Brava is an experimental rock and free improvisation group formed in March 2008 in Oakland, California by multi-instrumentalist and composer Fred Frith (Henry Cow, Skeleton Crew, Keep the Dog). The band comprises Frith on guitar, Zeena Parkins (Skeleton Crew, Keep the Dog) on keyboards and accordion, Carla Kihlstedt (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) on violin, Matthias Bossi (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) on drums, and The Norman Conquest on sound manipulation. All About Jazz described their music as "somewhere between folk, Celtic, modern chamber, Latin, funk, Eastern, and prog-rock".
Cosa Brava's first performance was in Oakland, California on March 20, 2008. They then went on to tour Europe in April 2008, playing in France, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. In May 2008 they performed at the 25th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada, and in December 2008 at the Knitting Factory in New York City and the ICA in Boston.
Cosa Brava recorded their first album, "Ragged Atlas" in San Francisco in December 2008, which was released in March 2010. John Kelman in a review at All About Jazz said that the album "transcends time and genre" and is "one of 2010's most auspicious debuts". A second album entitled "The Letter" was released in March 2012.
Background.
Fred Frith's career began as a "rock musician" with Henry Cow in 1968, but has since diversified into a number of different genres, from avant-garde jazz to contemporary classical music. He has written scores for film and dance, and music for orchestras and string quartets. He became Professor of Composition the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California in 1999. The motivation behind the formation of Cosa Brava arose out of Frith's nostalgia for rock music. He said, "I really miss what you can do with a rock band. I miss developing material through the push and pull of cooperative rehearsals, I miss what happens when you move away from 'the parts' and start formulating things with a collective ear, I miss the single-minded commitment to a group identity."
Frith had previously worked with Zeena Parkins in Skeleton Crew and Keep the Dog, and had collaborated with Carla Kihlstedt on several albums. The Norman Conquest had been a student of Frith's at Mills College.


Du pain, du vin, du Boursin


Paint Your Dragon

Paint Your Dragon is a humorous novel by Tom Holt first published in the UK in 1996 by Orbit and in paper back a year later by St. Martin's Press. It was also made available in electronic format by Hachette Digital in 2009. This was the author's twelfth humorous book and his eighteenth overall. It has been republished as part of Tom Holt's "Omnibus No'7: Saints and Sinners". Inspired by the legend of St. George and the Dragon, the book tells the story of a sculptor, Bianca Wilson, who creates statues of St. George and the Dragon. These statues come to life and carry on their battle where they left off. The story is intertwined with other minor plots that supplement the main theme and ultimately aid it to its conclusion.
Synopsis.
The story is set in a contemporary Britain to the date of writing. It seems to start as the classic "Good versus Evil" tale, but as the characters are developed, the reader finds this view challenged. George is portrayed as far from Saintly, the Dragon elicits sympathy. The notions of good and evil are portrayed as the bureaucracy and legislation found in Heaven and Hell. Alongside this, time itself has commercial value and can be mined, exploited and traded like any other commodity. When George finds he isn't winning he enlists the aid of some minor Demons, who are on a holiday from Hell and left behind after a stop in Nashville.
The Dragon was defeated in the original battle, but knows he was cheated by George and now wants to set the record straight. They carry on the battle by animating stolen statues. One of Holt's recurring characters from other novels makes an appearance in the form of Kurt Lindquist, an assassin. Various minor characters, such as clergymen who can't tell who side who is on, an animated statue of "David" and policemen that have the characteristics of the Keystone Cops.
The main protagonist, albeit reluctant, Bianca Wilson has been commissioned by Birmingham City Council. She isn't given any direction and by luck she produces a sculpture of St George and the Dragon backed by money from Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits. One morning she finds the dragon has disappeared from her sculpture. Throughout the story Bianca displays a disinterest for getting involved in the dispute between George and the Dragon.
Analysis.
A common theme to reviews of Tom Holt's works are that his style is comparable to that of Robert Rankin or Terry Pratchett. The pace is fast and contains a lot of ideas within its twenty chapters.
Tom Knapp of online review site, "Rambles", said:
"Paint Your Dragon is perhaps the most confusing of Holt's numerous novels, but don't assume that makes this any less of a dandy ride. Holt juggles dozens of characters and several diverging plot lines with mad abandon, maintaining throughout the book a wild, frenetic pace which makes it hard to put down. While he doesn't develop any of this book's characters to the same depth as his usual comedic and lore-saturated protagonists, he flings so many different characters into this one that they achieve an odd sort of shared depth."


Temple of Art

Temple of Art is a documentary film created and directed by Allan Amato and Olga Nunes. The film follows over 50 artists' creative process and philosophies, asking each of them the question, “Why do you make art?”.
The artists and musicians include: Grant Morrison, Bill Sienkiewicz, Brian Thies, Barron Storey, Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, Olga Nunes, David Mack, Dave McKean and others, each sharing their stories of their creations, influences and philosophies.
The film provides a look at the industry of art as it continues to change and evolve.
"Temple of Art" has been slated for international distribution on DVD.