Forest Grove Bloomsday Festival 2012: the 90th anniversary of the publication of "Ulysses"

[Marilyn Monroe reading Molly Bloom's great feminist soliloquy
in Ulysses.]

The program for the Forest Grove Bloomsday Festival 2012 appears below.  We are especially honored that this year's invocation will be offered by a special last-minute guest: the formidable Molly Bloom herself. Late this afternoon Ms Bloom replied via email to our invitation, sent in March, with an unequivocal: "...yes I said yes I will Yes."

FOREST GROVE BLOOMSDAY FESTIVAL 2012
SHATTERDAY - JUNE 16, 2012

- PROGRAM -

12:00-2:00:  Honored guest Ms. Molly Bloom, with selected readings on Moorish walls and mountain flowers (from "Ulysses").

1:00-5:00 p.m.:  Keynote address by Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocentgeneralhistoryspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein

6:30-9:30 p.m.:  International panel discussion on "The Nameless Barbarity which we have been called upon to witness"  Panelists include:

Hiram Y. Bomboost
Countess Marha Virdga Kisászony Putrápesthi
Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone
Monsieur Pierrepaul Petitépatant
Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff
Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler

 10:00-11:00 p.m.: Readings from "Ulysses" by:

Count Athanatos Karamelopulos
Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch,
Herr Hurhausdirektorprasident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli

11:00 p.m.-3:00 a.m.:  Dramatic reenactments by:

Olaf Kobberkeddelsen
Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch
Señor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria
Mynheer Trik van Trumps
Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky 

3:00 a.m.-4:00 a.m.:  Dissertion by Stephen Dedalus entitled "I fear those big words that make us so unhappy."

4:00 a.m.-5:00 a.m.:  Concluding remarks by Leopold Bloom on the following theme: "I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint."

5:00 a.m.-noon:  Traditional Irish breakfast (by special request of Leopold Bloom), including the inner organs of beasts and fowls with thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes and grilled mutton kidneys which give to the palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Security provided by Constable MacFadden of Booterstown.

Location:  Uncertain as of this writing due to the arbitrary denial of the required permits.

______________________________________________________

This slideshow, first posted in 2009, is Runes' tribute to James Joyce, with kora accompaniment by the great Toumani Diabaté of Mali. (You may need to pause the show to read some of the longer text entries.)

Happy Bloomsday 2012!

[Note:  All persons named above are either major or minor characters in Ulysses.]

Blues break: Toumani Diabate and Ali Farka Touré - "Debe"

A joyful collaboration by two of Mali's, and the planet's, finest musicians.

And another, "Kala Djula," from Ali and Toumani (2010):



Ali Farka Touré was no 1%er.  He was elected mayor of Niafunké, his impoverished Malian village, in 2004 and paid the costs of a generator, sewage canals and paving projects out of his own pocket. He died in 2006.

The great Toumani Diabaté, now 47 years old, has a family heritage of kora musicians that has been traced back 71 generations. Repeat: 71. His performances have appeared regularly on these pages.

Blues Break x 2: Toumani Diabate - 'Cantalowes' and Bassekou Kouyate with Ngoni Ba

Toumani Diabate in a solo kora performance described as follows:

This performance of 'Cantelowes' is from the recent live World Premiere of "The Mandé Variations" at the prestigious El Real Alcazar de Sevilla in Spain which left the audience spellbound and was described by the The Independent as "a performance that surpasses anything....for sheer scale of ambition and technical achievement."

This is my favorite piece on Mandé Variations, Diabate's most recent album.

Toumani Diabate will perform in Portland on May 1, 2009, at 8:00 p.m. at the Performing Arts Center.

[For more online performances by Diabate,
visit here and here (includes an interview).]

As further proof, if it were necessary, that Mali is producing some of the world's finest musicians, we offer a second piece for this week's Blues Break. I was planning to save this amazing performance by Bassekou Kouyate on the ngoni (West African lute) for a future installment, but I can't resist embedding it now. He is accompanied by Amy Sacko, his spouse, and Ngoni ba, his new band (Rostock, Germany - June, 2007).

Kouyate and Diabate have been frequent collaborators throughout their careers. Many ethnomusicologists are convinced that the origins of the blues can be traced back to Segu, the region where Kouyate was born. The blues as you may not have heard it before...