This'll be the day that I die..

If you like lipdubs, you will love this. And this is the first time I listened to the words of this song beyond the chorus. Rather melancholy, no?

Acapella at its best

The whole thing is pretty impressive, but if you don't want to watch the whole vid, the first minute and 50 seconds are the coolest...

A Moth is Not a Butterfly

Random-Noha-Fact #8, in my last post, is about songs with beautiful words. Here's one I loved:

By Hawksley Workman

A moth is not a butterfly
And I know why, I know why
It kind of makes you want to cry
That a moth is not a butterfly

But some are happy in the bluest sky
And others search in the dark of night
And sadness is a silent right
A moth is not a butterfly

A stone is not a grain of sand
It's hard, I guess, to understand
Both broken parts scatter the land
A stone is not a grain of sand

And one has lived for longer still
The other longs to break until
The wind can lift it in its hand
A stone is not a grain of sand

A desert's not a mountainside
And I know why, I know why
'cause one is vast and one divides
A desert's not a mountainside'

cause one has need for open space
The other simply in its place
It must be known far and wide
That a desert's not a mountainside

A moth is not a butterfly
And I know why, I know why
It kind of makes you want to cry
That a moth is not a butterfly

In the Spirit of Doing More

I love this song... Ironically, I've been thinking about making my life count for more than just me pre-the big contribution inauguration speech... But since I'm hoping it's on all our minds after Tuesday, enjoy this as more inspiration:

The Mom Song

This is for all the moms. Enjoy. I totally cracked up.


The Mom Song from Northland Video on Vimeo.

Minor Non-Joy of Summer

Have you ever had a great creative spurt interrupted by the incessant music your neighbour plays at full volume ON THEIR PATIO for the benefit of all around him? Musical taste is definitely in the ear of the beholder, and while "I love Rock and Roll" is not an unpleasant song, it certainly shuts off the creative juices for me, and so my lovely typing is now hampered by the fact that I can't hear myself think. Instead, I can hear a fantastic collection of 80's and 90's music. I'm too lazy/nice to actually go outside and figure out which neighbour this is, and then request a volume modification, but this is one of those things where you expect the courtesy of those who live nearby, is it not?
I'm reminded of a family that lived across the street from us growing up. We were good friends, playing constantly with their daughter at their house, having her over, riding our bikes up and down the street together. One thing though, her father decided to take up the clarinet one year, and he liked to practice with the windows open at 9:30 p.m. He was a novice. End of story.

A Great Cover

This song was first sang by the people of Medina to Prophet Muhammad, Peace be Upon Him, as a welcoming when he migrated from Mecca, fleeing religious persecution. I think it's safe to say that it's the most famous song in Islamic tradition. Countless Muslim artists have "covered" it over the years, and I've known it for as long as I can remember. My favourite version has always been the Yusuf Islam version. Today, my sister sent me the link to the Native Deen version. Also very very beautiful. Enjoy:

What it Takes

Do you love wordplay? If so, listen to this song by Jason Mraz. Just delightful and poetic in that light, fun way. Some of the lines are so simple, and yet very very true. Youtube video's pretty silly, but just try to enjoy the song.

Musical Warfare

I found this fascinating: an article in The New Yorker about how music is being used by the U.S. army as a breakdown tactic during interrogations. Though the rest of the article is serious, I couldn't help being amused by the fact that country music seemed to be the most effective - more than hip hop, even - at getting people to talk, effectively making it a tool of torture (so everyone really does hate country then, eh?)

Feather Fur and Fin

Have I mentioned recently how much I love cbc radio? Today I heard this absolutely lovely song by Danny Michel about nature, and I enjoyed it so much I had to look it up when I got home. Here are the lyrics. Do you ever feel like this is how the earth will end up if we don't change?

I went to the country
to escape the noise and lights
I laid there in the pine cones all night
I woke in the morning
and all the trees were gone
I got this sinking feeling
everything felt wrong

There were strip malls and dollar stores
and diesel in the air
So I slept in a row boat
and I anchored far from shore
Now I don't hear them chainsaws no more

I woke in the morning
when someone pulled the plug
I was stranded in the lake bottom sludge
With all the tires, paint cans and things

Well,

Every little critter
with feather, fur & fin
cried to Mother Nature
to come back for them
for every piece of litter
for every little sin
She cried for all of them
feather, fur & fin
She cried for all of them
feather, fur & fin

So I went to an island
down the Caribbean way
And I laid there in the sand all day
I turned on a radio
and I heard the DJ say:
Well, batten down the hatches
down Santa Elena way
I swam the ocean reef,
with coral all was gray

Every little critter
with feather, fur & fin
cried to Mother Nature
to come back for them
for every piece of litter
for every little sin
She cried for all of them
feather, fur & fin
She cried for all of them
feather, fur & fin

She saw the eagle's eye
weeping in the willow
She prayed to the mantis
and she cried into her pillow
for the salmon in the Fraser
and the salamander's kin

She cried for all of them
feather, fur & fin
She cried for all of them
feather, fur & fin

Well, I went to the city
when all the trees were gone
and I laid there on a asphalt lawn
And she cried out a thousand days
of hurricanes and floods
Her face ran with tears
and the streets ran with blood
Fur coats and sushi boats
and diesel in the air

Every little critter
with feather, fur & fin
cried to Mother Nature
to come back for them
for every piece of litter
for every little sin
She cried for all of them
feather, fur & fin
She cried for all of them
feather, fur & fin

Feather, fur & fin
she cried for all of them
for feather, fur & fin,
she cried for every fin

It's very very new, so If you want to listen to it, this is the only version I can find on the web so far. Go about halfway through the video before he starts singing.

Materialism

As the world around us gets geared up for the crazy shopping season, or is already somewhere in the midst of it, here's a reminder and a plea for sanity. Things won't make any of us happier, at least not material things. At least not for long.
More Jack Johnson. Enjoy:

Poetry of Social Awareness

One of the things I love so much about good songs and poems is that they say important things in a powerful, creative way, and rarely come off as a) boring or b) preachy as the same thing said in plain language. I've already posted the lyrics on here for "Waiting on the World to Change" by John Mayer, which I think speaks to the apathy of a lot "young" people these days and why they feel there's no point in trying to make things better.
I write some of my own poetry and music, but I've never had a good knack for writing good "social/political commentary" songs, so when I find one I love, I like to share it. Here's a song that says a lot of things, speaking generally about hypocrisy and obsession with money, weapons, and power. Like I said, expanding it all out in plain language will likely be a) boring, and b) preachy, so enjoy the song instead. It's by Jack Johnson. A lot of his other stuff is great too, discusses nature, the importance of focussing on non-material aspects of our life, etc, but this song, Symbol in my Driveway, is the one that packs the most punch to me...
Here's a YouTube link to it... Never mind the "eSocialist" picture; I couldn't find his original vid.

Ordinary Miracles

Beautiful. Just wanted to share...
Listen to the song and don't worry about the Charlotte's Web Video

Stealing (not plagiarizing) from a friend

I recently discovered an old friend who used to live in Ottawa out on the blogosphere, and am glad for her insightful words... To read what she's got to say, you can follow Sajda's link from my Favourite Blogs on the right. I am taking the liberty to copy in and give full credit for one post which I truly truly loved, relating to Islam and music. Being someone who loves music myself, and who struggles with just how much of it to listen to, and to avoid the negative messages in a lot of contemporary music, this post really really spoke to me.
Link to original, and my copy of the whole post:

To Nasheed or not to Nasheed…
January 16th, 2007
The first English nasheed I ever heard was “A’ is for Allah” sung in a clear tone by the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens. A cozy setting: it was just Yusuf Islam and the gawking small crowd at my mosque, a converted old church (just like in Little Mosque on the Prairie!) We young ones had been let out of Sunday school early to witness history in the making - Yusuf Islam was softening his stance against music - a little…The song went on to become #1 on mosque announcement boards across North America. (Right under the parking regulations - see comedian Azhar Usman’s take on that).
Until then, until Yusuf Islam opened his mouth and sang in ENGLISH, Islamic music was mostly sung in Arabic or your indigenous language if you happened to come from a part of the world that had a tradition of Islamizing the local culture and arts. My family fortunately came from a culture which had encountered and embraced Islam from the 7th century - our locale being prominent on the trade route; Muslim music has its own name there and on my visits “back home” as a child, the beauty and the meaning of the songs I heard my cousins singing stayed with me even though I wasn’t fluent by any means in the language. I particularly remember a hauntingly beautiful melody about a song-bird which awakens at the break of dawn to flitter around the minarets and rise, soaring into the dark sky as the souls rise to meet Allah for morning prayers. I still sing it to my daughter to sleep.
Music and the arts was so prominent a part of my background culture that it was commendable for children to master them. My teenage male cousins were just as likely to spontaneously sit around and sing together as my female cousins were. On my summer visits, hardly a night would go by without a nasheed-a-thon under the flickering lights of rationed electricity.
Back home in Canada, music to me meant stuff you listened to on your favourite alternative radio station, 102.1 CFNY, even though you had a vague idea your dad might not approve of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle. Back then, lyrics didn’t matter - just that your best friend kept going on and on about the Housemartins until you started singing Caravan of Love in the shower - with the vague idea that your dad might approve of a song with “my brother” and “my sister” in it. Your clique at school decided what kind of music you listened to - and for me that meant British invasion - New Order, Depeche Mode, the Cure, the Smiths - was the order of the day. (Though I secretly liked some of the top 40 hits; but, in the interests of keeping my ultra cool friends from fainting, I refrained from singing Phil Collins).
Later as I opened my eyes to the world beyond my high school halls, I started to actually listen to lyrics. The meanings of meaningless songs bothered me. Somebody singing Sunday Bloody Sunday about finding peace was more worth listening to, I felt, than someone singing Somebody about finding love. Meaning mattered to me and the meaning of a song like Mr. Wendel by Arrested Development - about a homeless man - was more my cupa’ tea now that I had become awakened to the realities of the world beyond suburban comfort. You guessed it, I was in university. My friends and I were going to save the world.
Now, the explosion in English Islamic/Muslim songs from around the globe is such that it’s hard to keep up with. We are witnessing the Islamizing of the arts and culture of a part of the world which until more recently we regarded as not “our” lands even if we were born and bred here. It’s like we just remembered that to God belongs the East and the West.
Consider whole websites devoted solely to nasheed artists and the huge interest in their products. And as many Muslim English musicians there are, there are the same number of opinions regarding them - from the view that they can only sing on Islam, they can only use voice, no - they can use the traditional duff, they have to market solely to Muslims etc. And then there’s the whole question posed out there - just what can be called nasheed and what can‘t? Is nasheed to be defined as “Islamic oriented music”?
My view has always been to support (through the purchase of original works) any Muslim musician who wishes to get across the message that Islam brings to the world - God-centeredness, peace, kindness, justice, brotherhood, remembrance of our role models (both Prophets and Islamic personalities) etc. And if they’re doing this in English, even better. Any Muslim musician who is able to get this message across in such a beautiful way that their songs actually travel across the bridges of faith, culture, identity and nationality is to be especially commended. I particularly think Yusuf Islam (I like his remake of Father and Son with Ronan Keating), Dawud Wharnsby (who actually is a formidable pioneer - the 2nd most I would say after Yusuf Islam - in Islamic music) and Kareem Salama (his work is one of the most well-written I’ve seen and the music and voice are especially bridge-crossing) are mention-worthy in this regard. By the way - the video for Midnight on Dawud Wharnsby’s site has got to be watched until the end - it’s very moving. With Zain Bhika’s latest CD, Allah Knows, he seems to be breaking ground as well.
That’s not to say groups like Native Deen (who I really enjoy listening to) don’t cut it. Their focus seems to be on the Muslim youth in our communities - a commendable goal in itself. Of course I’m not going to forget seven8six, Shaam, Sami Yusuf, Aa’shiq-al-Rasul et all who are doing the same sort of thing. Oh, and Raihan (the Malaysian group) with its feel-good, sway-to music (and am I ever glad that their latest offerings have had more English - my Malay and Arabic were getting confused). And one more, I’m not going to forget brother Mustaqiim Sahir (there’s a long wait for the link) from the early days of English Islamic music, who uses only his voice to make a range of instruments.
And Outlandish? They harken back to my university days: save the world while humming. Are they nasheeding? Well, do they promote Islamic ideals? I just think if everyone asks themselves that question each time they listen to a Muslim artist, they’d be able to ascertain who’s nasheeding and who isn’t. Just make sure you listen with the heart of faith yourself and not the heart of judgement based on a fortress of fear. Because, really, the amount of people who tsk tsk at Muslim musicians producing works with beautiful messages while back at home or with friends, they (the same people) bob their heads to songs with dubious content by non-Muslims is just too sad of a topic. Sad enough that I wish someone would make a nasheed on it.

Waiting on the World to Change

By John Mayer:

me and all my friends
we're all misunderstood
they say we stand for nothing and
there's no way we ever could
now we see everything that's going wrong
with the world and those who lead it
we just feel like we don't have the means
to rise above and beat it

so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

it's hard to beat the system
when we're standing at a distance
so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change

now if we had the power
to bring our neighbors home from war
they would have never missed a Christmas
no more ribbons on their door

and when you trust your television
what you get is what you got
cause when they own the information, oh
they can bend it all they want

that's why we're waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

it's not that we don't care,
we just know that the fight ain't fair
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

and we're still waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

one day our generation
is gonna rule the population
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

I think this song is the perfect reflection of how many twenty-somethings feel about the world right now. It just really captures the hopelessness, the apathy on politics and globalization and so much of the rest of it. Sad, but very very true.