Hal "Raindrops Are Falling on my Head" David, 89, sings at the Grammy Museum ... Homeless in Hard Times ... CyberFrequencies ... the Philippines' national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal.
89-year old Hal David sings his songwriting hits at the Grammy Museum
UPDATE: Hal David died Saturday, September 1, 2012. He was 91.
A few weeks ago, the Grammy Museum at LA Live unveiled its new Songwriters Hall of Fame gallery, which celebrates the men and women who wrote the soundtrack of our lives. To mark the occasion, they brought in some of the most famous living songwriters to sing and explain their hits. The event was MC'd by songwriter Paul Williams.
Through a special collaboration with the Grammy Museum, Off-Ramp presents excerpts from that concert, starting with the dean of American pop songwriters, Hal David, Burt Bacharach's longtime collaborator on hits like "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again."
The legendary team, in younger years. Bacharach (L) is now 82, and David is 89.
OCMA's 2010 California Biennial
Off-Ramp went to the opening of the Orange County Museum of Art's Biennial to interview many of the up-and-coming artists highlighted. This week, a conversation with curator Sarah Bancroft (audio #1 above) - who made 150 studio visits to find the artists - and artist Taravat Talapasand (audio #2).
CLICK THROUGH for our special coverage, including the long versions of interviews with more than a dozen of the Biennial artists, and more art from Talapasand.
Here’s the complete Off-Ramp coverage of the Biennial.
Hard Times: Gregory Crosby, 62
In another installment of Off-Ramp's Hard Times series--where we look at those in the area left behind by our economic "recovery"--Kevin Ferguson talks to Gregory Crosby, a California native.
Gregory lost his job after an accident. He's been unemployed ever since and is currently living in a friend's garage. Salvation Army's Homeless Connect Day on a rainy day in October hoping to find housing, and maybe a new pair of glasses.
Haefele: Meet Filipinos' #1 Cultural Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal
Each of LA’s ethnic groups has its cultural hero. Mexican Angelinos have Benito Juarez. Cubans have Jose Marti. The Chinese can point with pride to the Tiananmen Square martyrs. And, as Off-Ramp literary commentator Marc Haefele tells us, LA’s quarter-million Filipinos – in fact the largest Asian group in the city proper – have Dr. Jose Rizal. His sweeping chronicle of Philippine society just before the dawn of independence was so scathingly accurate that not only was it suppressed, but the author died for its truth.
Marc writes:
It’s confusing, the Philippines: a Spanish-named place with Spanish-named people but with a mostly Pacific Asian language and culture -- and a sometimes bloody history deeply entangled with America’s … a history some would rather forget.
Enter Dr. Jose Rizal, a brilliant scholar, poet, writer and eye surgeon, whose astounding books and whose 1896 death by a Spanish firing squad kicked off his country’s wars of national liberation. His book, “Noli mi Tangere,” is the most acclaimed Filipino novel of all time. It’s an action novel set in a marvelous lost and fantastic land, and the story of a rich young man who returns there to claim his bride and birthright and reluctantly declares himself a revolutionary.
It is also a dialogue on colonialism’s innate cruelty, racism and pillage. In an era where our president is castigated for alleged anti-colonial attitudes, Rizal brings us back to the fundamental evils of the exploitation of poor nations by rich nations. One of his characters says, “Here, one must bow one’s head or lose it … The people do not complain because they have no voice; do not move because they are lethargic, and you say they do not suffer only because you have not seen their hearts bleed … When the light of day shows the monster of the shadows, the terrible reaction will come.” Such statements doomed their author.
Rizal himself was nobody’s revolutionary. Of middle-class Malay, Chinese, and Spanish ancestry, he went for his higher education to Spain and then Germany, where he wrote his incendiary novel, banned in Spain and its possessions. Like Hamlet, he was deeply conflicted. He personally wanted an impossible dream, for his beloved homeland to become a Spanish province, neither independent nor a colony. When he returned to Manila, he was sentenced to death by a colonial kangaroo court. The night before he died, he wrote his farewell to his land:
“Dear Philippines, to my last goodbye, oh listen, here I leave all: my parents, loves of mine, I'll go where there are no slaves, tyrants or hangmen. Where faith does not kill and where God alone does reign.”
Now he’s more important as a national hero than ever. When Filipino WW II veterans in Los Angeles and San Francisco recently demanded their long- promised veterans’ benefits, they cited Rizal as their perennial national ideal. They said, “We dare not stay silent in the midst of injustice. Dr. Rizal was outrageous against injustice. To honor Jose Rizal in today’s time is to honor the men and women — living or dead Filipino veterans -- who demand recognition, compensation, benefits and above all honor and dignity.”
LA Museum of the Holocaust Board Member Marie Kaufman
The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust recently opened at it's brand new location in Pan Pacific Park, right next to the Grove. Rachel Abrams talked to LAMH board member Marie Kaufman about her own harrowing story, starting in Poland around 1939.
From the LAMH website:
Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMH) is the oldest Holocaust museum in the United States. In 1961 at Hollywood High School, a group of Survivors taking English as a Second Language classes found one another and shared their experiences. They discovered that each of them had a photograph, concentration camp uniform, or other precious primary source object from the Holocaust era. They decided that these artifacts needed a permanent home where they could be displayed safely and in perpetuity. They also wanted a place to memorialize their dead and help to educate the world so that no one would ever forget. Some of these founding Survivors remain active on the LAMH Board of Directors today.
LAMH is always free because the founding Survivors insisted that no visitors ever be turned away from learning about the Holocaust for lack of an entry fee.
With a small and dedicated staff, the Museum fulfills its mission to commemorate and educate.
Mark Peel's 3-Minute Kitchen Tour
Mark Peel, Off-Ramp contributor and chef-owner of Campanile, Tar Pit, and The Point, gives us a tour of Campanile at 11am, just before it opens for lunch. CLICK THROUGH for Mark's movie about Lobster Mushrooms.
How Will Your Life Change because of the election?
KPCC's Frank Stoltze ponders John's big question: so what? And Frank offers a musical surprise from Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.
CyberFrequencies Cubed!
This week CyberFrequencies goes behind the scenes with Pezzi -- the star of Fox Sports' web show Cubed.