Latest
Prices are available @ CollectTime: Floaters and Spinners on 32′s, sucked into blackness
from “The Ship I Came Here on Vanished”
Astronomers think most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, host super massive black holes in their centers. Once mass, or even light, passes within the event horizon of a black hole, it cannot escape the black hole’s gravitational clutches.
Click image to learn more
Leaked study from the Migration Project
Click image, Learn more here
Shabazz Palaces – Belhaven Meridian
More visual and audio Inspiration.Shabazz Palaces – Belhaven Meridian
Lifting me from what was…And returning me into my Myths and Magic.
..
Be Good
Gregory Porter , Another inspiring song and video…
Black up
Black up – Shabazz Palaces
The most inspiring video in my brain vault…
The MekoGroup Vigilante Vigilante Panel discussion
photo Fred Radtke aka The Gray Ghost
Greetings all, Wednesday 14 th and Friday 16th The Meko Group will be part of a Panel discussion that will be questioning whether street art/graffiti is a valid form of self-expression or a vandalization of public property. We will also speak to those individuals who have made it their life’s work to eradicate street art in all forms. We will briefly explore how public spaces are used by both street artists and advertisers as a communication platform with different motivations.
Preview the film here http://www.vigilantefilm.com/
Wednesday, March 14th
3 pm: Free GSU Screening at Cinefest Theater(panel following at around 4:30 pm)
66 Courtland Street SE, Suite 240 Atlanta, GA 30303
Friday, March 16th
7:30 pm: Atlanta Premiere Screening at The Plaza Theatre (panel following at around 9 pm)
1049 Ponce De Leon Ave NE, Atlanta, GA (404) 873-1939
The Threat to Identity:Cognitive Dissonance and Fear of The Big Payback…
This is a series of screen shots that I have been collecting over time as a photo documentary of certain attitudes and headlines that occur daily online in the news,on blogs and in comments. I became interested in this idea after hearing the slogan “We want Our Country Back”. I began study and try to understand what this really meant psychologically to those that felt as if they had lost “their” country.Over time the pattern became clear and is continuing to come into focus. These shots were all on the same day just clicks, seconds, and minutes apart 3/1/2012 This content is to be heard and viewed in order as presented. Please click the James Brown video and quickly click the Idiot video both should play together.Turn Idiot video to top volume and James Brown payback half way for full sonic understanding. Thanks The Meko Group Research Lab.
Meko’s Gourds
Just a small clip from the interview I did with FreeHand Productions.
This was a fun interview and studio visit. This Clip explains some of the reasoning and fascination with gourds in my work.
The Meko style bottle gourd is also a common symbol for longevity as well as good luck.It is said that gourds contain the elixir of immortality. Gourds displayed in the home to ward off harmful energies – thus promoting long life.
The Cultural Functions of Gourds from wiki
The Caribbean
Calabash is primarily used for utensils, such as cups, bowls, and basins in rural areas. It can be used for carrying water, or can be made for carrying items, such as fish, when fishing. In some Caribbean countries, it is worked, painted and decorated as shoulder bags or other items by artisans, and sold to tourists. In Jamaica, it is also a reference to the natural lifestyle of Rastafarians. As a cup, bowl, or even water-pipe or “bong“, the calabash is considered consistent with the “Ital” or vital lifestyle of not using refined products such as table salt, or using modern cooking methods, such as microwaves. In Haiti, the plant is called kalbas kouran, literally “running calabash”, and is used to make the sacred rattle emblematic of the Vodou priesthood, called an asson. As such, the plant is highly respected. It is also the national tree of St. Lucia.
Africa
Calabashes (nkalu in Kikongo) are used to collect and store palm wine in Bandundu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Hollowed out and dried calabashes are a very typical utensil in households across West Africa. They are used to clean rice, carry water and as food containers. Smaller sizes are used as bowls to drink palm wine.
Calabashes are used in making the West African kora (a harp-lute), xalam/ngoni (a lute) and the goje (a traditional fiddle). They also serve as resonators underneath the balafon (West African marimba). The calabash is also used in making the shegureh (a Sierra Leonean women’s rattle)[14] and balangi (a Sierra Leonean type of balafon) musical instruments. Sometimes, large calabashes are simply hollowed, dried and used as percussion instruments, especially by Fulani, Songhai, Gur-speaking and Hausa peoples. In Nigeria, the calabash has been used to avoid a law requiring the wearing of a helmet on a motorcycle.[15] In South Africa, it is commonly used as a drinking vessel by tribes such as the Zulus. Ebore tribe children in Ethiopia wear hats made from the calabash to protect them from the sun. Recently, the Soccer City stadium which hosted the FIFA World Cup has been completed and its shape takes inspiration from the calabash.
Mexico
In many rural parts of Mexico, the calabash is dried and carved hollow to create a bule or a guaje, a gourd used to carry water around like a canteen. The gourd cut in half, called jícara, gave the parallel name to a clay cup jícara.
Costa Rica
The Costa Rican town of Santa Bárbara de Santa Cruz holds a traditional annual dance of the calabashes (baile de los guacales). Since 2000, the activity has been considered of cultural interest to the community, and all participants receive a hand-painted calabash vessel to thank them for their economic contribution (which they paid in the form of an entrance ticket).[16]
Aboriginals throughout the country traditionally serve chicha in calabash vessels to the participants of special events such as the baile de los diablitos (dance of the little fiends).[17]
South America
In Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, calabash gourds are dried and carved into mates, the traditional container for the popular caffeinated tea-like drink brewed from the yerba mate plant. In Brazil, this container is called cuia, porongo or cabaça. Gourds also commonly used as the resonator for the berimbau, the signature instrument of capoeira, a martial art/dance developed in Brazilian plantations by African slaves. The calabash gourd is possibly mankind’s oldest instrument resonator.
In Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, calabash gourds are known to have been used for medicinal purposes for over a thousand years by Andean cultures. The Inca culture applied folklore symbology to gourds to pass down from one generation to another, and this practice is still familiar and valued.
Bowls made of calabash were used by Indigenous Brazilians as utensils made to serve food, and the practice is still retained in some remote areas of Brazil (originally by populations of various ethnicities, origins and regions, but nowadays mainly the indigenes themselves).
Venezuela
The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has suggested Venezuelans avoid showers longer than three minutes.[18][19] Critics of Chavez have ridiculed this (reductio ad incommodum) by ironically suggesting the use of a totuma to bathe (although Chavez himself did not suggest this).[20][21] The inference is that Chavez’s bathing suggestion is an unwelcome intrusion into Venezuelans’ daily lives, and further, that bathing with a gourd is shamefully primitive. Compare U.S. President Jimmy Carter‘s speech urging Americans to conserve energy during the US 1979 energy crisis and negative reaction by his critics.[22]
China
The hulu is an ancient symbol for health.
In the old days, the doctors would carry medicine inside it, so it has fabled properties for healing. The hulu is believed to absorb negative earth-based qi (energy) that would otherwise affect health, and is a traditional Chinese medicine cure. Dried calabash is also used as containers of liquids, often liquors or medicine. Calabash gourds were also grown in earthen molds to form different shapes with imprinted floral or arabesque design, and dried to house pet crickets, which were kept for their song and fighting abilities. The texture of the gourd lends itself nicely to the sound of the animal, much like a musical instrument. It is a symbol of the Xian immortals.
India
Hindu ascetics (sadhu) traditionally use a dried gourd vessel called the kamandalu. The juice of lauki is considered to have many medicinal properties and to be very good for health. The Baul singers of Bengal have their musical instruments made out of it. The practice is also common among Buddhist and Jain sages.
Hawaii
In Hawaii, a calabash is a large serving bowl, usually made from a hardwood rather than from the calabash gourd as in Maroon cultures. It is used on a buffet table or in the middle of the dining table. The use of the calabash in Hawaii has led to terms like “calabash family” or “calabash cousins”, indicating an extended family grown up around shared meals and close friendships. Food is very important in modern Hawaiian culture. The expression “e komo mai – Come, let’s eat” was the standard welcome to anyone approaching a home.
This gourd is often dried when ripe and used as a percussion instrument in contemporary and ancient hula.
A few gourd links
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1497969
http://pathways.thinkport.org/secrets/gourd1.cfm
