The Musique.laclasse CD was the result of numerous workshops Lionel Marchetti conducted in schools with children from 12 to 16 years old. The composer helped the kids record source material then process it themselves with effects and montage. The 2007 CD was a selection of some musique concrète tracks and was meant to be played on shuffle mode with the silent tracks popping up here and there. Some of Marchetti’s own technique would spring up occasionally but with a fresh and naive take on musique concrète.

I was told of the Musique.laclasse CD, but was unable to find out how to purchase it or even if it was still available, so I set out to create my own version which is what you can hear above. I have no idea if mine is even close to the original, but it’s not really intended to be – just a fun exploration of the soundfiles made available from the site. It was done in one uninterrupted 50 minute take.

Uppalapu Srinivas

Lately, I’ve been making too many playlists honoring musicians who’ve recently died,
but whether it’s been Joe Sample, Jackie Cain or Kenny Wheeler, they’ve lived
a pretty good long life – 75 to 86 years old. Now, I’m coming to terms with the
death of a master musician who was only 45 years old – a man who just kept
getting more amazing and whom I expected to be able to give the world at
least 40 more years of his amazing musicianship.

In the eighties, I remember sitting in a favorite Indian restaurant and being
gobsmacked by what I was hearing over their sound system. Who was this
seasoned professional player of this stringed instrument? When I was shown
the cover of the cassette, I wondered why this child was featured on its cover.
Was this the performer’s young son? …and why would he feature the child over
himself. My quest began to find more recordings – going to every Indian food
and/or video store I could find to grab up more of this wonderful food for the soul.
Since those days, I’ve had the chance to see Uppalapu “Mandolin” Srinivas –
simply known as U. Srinivas – a couple of times in concert. When he last
arrived in town in May of last year, I couldn’t make it to the show (and figured
that he’d be back again in a couple of years – he was only 44, so yes, he was
bound to come back, right?), but I had told a friend who was a member of the
local Indian music society that he really should go see him for his first time.
You may know his work with Remember Shakti and Michael Brook
plus various wonderful soundtracks. He made nearly 50 recordings and now
Srinivas is gone – complications that arose from a liver transplant the day before.

YouTube is filled with his work, and here‘s a Spotify link to start
you off on your journey if you haven’t yet discovered him.

(photos: Hindustan Times)

I’m spending quite a bit of time with him now:

1900

1789

The Marquis de Sade is moved from the Bastille prison to Charenton, days before French revolutionaries storm it and set fire to his writings there.
“No act of possession can ever be perpetrated on a free being; it is as unjust to own a wife monogamously as it is to own slaves.”

1840

1917

Founding of the Liberty League, the first organization of the “New Negro Movement,” founded by Hubert Harrison,
a black intellectual and labor leader who immigrated to the US from the US Virgin Islands.

1892

1894

1872

1919

Chinese students demonstrate in Beijing, sparking the anti-Confucian New Culture Movement. “Wanting to eat men, at the same time afraid of being eaten themselves,
they all eye each other with the deepest suspicion.”