Tag Archive for "Piotr Szyhalski"
If you have visited with the Empty Words (so that we can do our living) performance during the Northern Spark festival on June 4-5, chances are you have walked away with one of the “We Are Working All The Time!” posters. These posters were printed during the performance and distributed to the audience. I am writing to ask you a simple favor:
Storytelling is a time-honored way to ward off the evil spirits at night – or just plain drowsiness. Laurie Hertzel has a nice blog post in On Books about the Bedtime Stories project, which is organized by the Rain Taxi Review of Books as part of the Walker Art Center’s Nightshift program for Northern Spark.
There are many other opportunities for storytelling at Northern Spark.
Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930. via Wikipedia
The words of the song “Strange Fruit” were originally penned in 1936 under the name Lewis Allan by Bronx schoolteacher Abel Meeropol in reaction to a photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to Billie Holiday’s memorable rendition of Strange Fruit the same again after viewing this photograph, which is part of the point of Piotr Szyhalski’s Labor Camp Orchestra, including its “cover” of Strange Fruit – to make visceral the Iraq war. To take us beyond the blaring headlines, patriotic jingoism, and national security fervor to a place that is literally unforgettable.
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