It’s been an age since I posted, mostly because I was on Maui over New Years, unplugged for the most part and not at all inclined to blog. So I’ll ease back into it, with some music to start of your new year. While on Maui I bought a bunch of slack key guitar records by the likes of Sonny Lim and George Kahumoku Jr. Slack key guitar is a Hawai’ian style that originated with the Mexican paniolo cowboys that helped establish ranching in the early 20th century across the Hawai’ian islands. These dudes brought their Mexican cowboy guitar styles, …
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Getting near Christmas, and I love the sacred music that gets sung at this time of year. Although this track isn’t Christmas music, it is from the Ukranian Orthodox Christian tradition, and is a haunting and meditative chant. This is from a fine site of russian orthodox music and information. This is an Antiphon, chanted text that is sung in a servics, often in a planisong setting. mp3: Brethern of the Valaam Monestary – First Antiphon of the THE Valaam Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
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I just had lunch with Jessie Sutherland from Worldview Strategies. It was one of those encounters that was a long time in coming: we both seem to run in circles that intersect and I’ve known about her work for about a year but until today we had never met. I first became aware of Jessie’s work through an email inviting me to join a conference call on residential school reconciliation. Following the links, I found her website and her company, Worldview Strategies. Jessie’s life and work is about reconciliation and peacemaking and it intersects with my work on a number …
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It’s hard to get enough of Ricardo Semler, the CEO of Brazil’s Semco. In a new article from Strategy+Business he talks about participatory management: Asked why true participative management is still such a rarity, Mr. Semler cites two elements that he says are in sadly short supply: “One, the people in charge wanting to give up control. This tends to eliminate some 80 percent of business people. Two, a profound belief that humankind will work toward its best version, given freedom; that would eliminate the other 20 percent,” he says. The only reason there aren’t more people like Ricardo Semler …
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Friday, and time for another mp3 posting. This one is in honour of the fact that yesterday I was promoted to brown belt, which in my tae kwon do training is two belts below black. So to celebrate, here is a solo track played on a Korean flute called a Dae Geum. I love the way this instrument cracks like a trumpet or a sax. I don’t know if there is a reed involved or how the mechanics of it work, but it adds to the despairing feel of the piece. It reminds me of how much martial arts there …