Category: Orientalism

  • Butterfly Resources, part I

    Read the complete libretto in English translation here. Orientalism: “La Japonaise (Mme. Monet in Kimono” (Claude Monet, 1875). Photo from Operation Babylift, Saigon, 1975: a U.S. Naval officer about to take a Vietnamese orphan, one of thousands, onboard a plane to be adopted in America. For more on Operation Babylift, go here: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/museum/exhibits/babylift/# A French…

  • Gypsy Kings

    The verbunkos, a Hungarian Roma dance. The musician is playing a gajda, a free-reed pipes made from goatskin (the goat’s head is still attached!). The third movement of Brahms’s Violin Concerto in D Major. The young Brahms first heard Roma music as a boy in Hamburg, which, as a major port on the North Sea, was a way-station…

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