Can California sustain its recycling program? Also, linguists try to break down the SoCal accent, and the Marciano Art Foundation opens its doors.
After tragic stabbing in Portland, alt-right rally looms
Portland, Oregon, dominated headlines this weekend after a vicious stabbing Friday night left two dead and one hospitalized.
The man who is believed to be at the center of the killings is 35 year-old Jeremy Christian. He'll be arraigned Tuesday.
It all started on a train. Witnesses say Christian targeted two girls in an anti-Muslim rant. Bystanders stepped in. That's when they say Christian pulled a knife and attacked.
Emotions are running high in Portland now, but there could be more tension to come. That's because there are two alt-right rallies scheduled for early next month.
Take Two talked with Maxine Bernstein, a reporter for The Oregonian.
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
Is California's recycling system in a sustainability crisis?
Now that the holiday weekend is over, your garbage bin might be overflowing with empty bottles and cans.
Most of it will be recycled.
To give you an idea: Last year, Californians bought 23 billion bottles and cans. Over 18 billion were recycled. That's a recycling rate of 78 percent.
The state’s system, CalRecycle, is one of the most successful in the country, yet it's processing more than it can actually afford to and this is putting the agency in something of a sustainability crisis.
Last summer, we spoke with Susan Collins about this phenomenon, and now she gives us an update. She’s the executive director of a research organization called The Container Recycling Institute.
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
Is there such a thing as a Southern California accent?
As part of our new initiative "SoCal. So Curious," we opened up the newsroom to you, our listeners, and asked: What do you want to know?
At the top of the list of curiosities? The Southern California accent.
Listener Bruce Kinley wanted to know: What makes it unique?
And in case you need a reminder, here are some on screen examples of the California accent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKrpl-KBTzQ
We searched far and wide to find the answer to this question and ... Well, Professor Penelope Eckert explained it best:
"I don't know if there's such a thing as a Southern California accent. I actually doubt it. I think that it's possible that what we think of as a California accent may be actually stronger in the south."
Eckert is a professor of linguistics at Stanford University and hands down, the expert on the Golden State accent. Yes, there's an expert for this.
That California sound she's talking about is really what most of us think of as Valley Girl-speak:
"What seems to have triggered a lot of the changes in California and throughout the west is a merger between the vowels cot (c-o-t) and caught (c-a-u-g-h-t)."
Basically, she says that in different parts of the country 'cot' and 'caught' are pronounced in such a way that you can actually distinguish them.
Not so in California.
It's part of what Prof. Eckert calls the "The California Shift" and, really, it's about how we rotate our vowels:
"Bit sounds more like bet. And bet sounds a little more like bat. And bat sounds more like bought."
So you take that, then add in the elongating or breaking up of vowel sounds, also known as diphthongizing, which goes a little something like this:
Moovies, so the vowel "oo" becoming "ew". And then we have the vowel in boat going to things like 'bowt' so people say things like "she gows" rather than, "she goes."
And there you have it! The recipe for a stereotypical California accent. This mix, however, calls to mind a very specific type of resident …
So, when people talk about the California accent they're acting as if California were ... Basically a white state. The shift that I describe, this sort of California vowel shift, is really associated with Anglo speech.
But wait a minute – Southern California is made up of so many different people and cultures. That's bound to influence our accent, right?
Enter Norma Mendoza-Denton, a professor of anthropology at UCLA and associate dean of the graduate division. When Norma spoke to us, she was working on a study to prove a unique Southern California accent might actually exist.
Most researchers would agree that up until now, the public research shows that there's a sort of overarching California dialect and that possibly Southern California is just a part of that. But I think that, increasingly our pilot data suggests that we may be looking at a different accent, but that's still to be determined. We're very excited about finding it.
So, how did Norma go about searching for the SoCal accent? By dispatching 300 graduate students to the LA area and arming them with a map.
Different neighborhoods of Los Angeles have a little bit of a different ratio of mixing with different varieties that are present. So, depending on the ethnic composition of your neighborhood and its class distribution and all kinds of different social factors, you're going to have a different variety of Los Angeles English.
Back to our listener Bruce, who asked the question, "What makes the Southern California accent unique?"
The answer is .... Not quite clear -- yet.
Mendoza-Denton is working to prove that there is an accent specific to our region, but it might take another year or so.
When that happens Bruce, we promise to get back to you!
Submit your questions about Southern California – anything that piques your curiosity. Community members vote on the questions they want to be answered. Then, KPCC reporters and producers will help track down the answers – with your help.
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
California rates 4th in film production despite being industry center
California may be home to Hollywood. But that doesn't mean all movies are filmed on the locations we have to offer.
Out of the top 100 highest-grossing movies of 2016, only 12 were mostly filmed in California. This puts the state in fourth place for movie-making locales around the globe.
That's according to a recently released report from FilmL.A., a local production permitting office.
For more on what all of this means for Los Angeles, Take Two's A Martinez spoke with FilmL.A.'s president Paul Audley.
To hear the interview with Paul Audley, click on the blue Media Player above.
The Marciano Art Foundation is LA's latest donor-owned museum
Los Angeles is a great town for museumgoers. In fact, LA has more museums per capita than anywhere else in the country, and now there's a brand new one.
Housed in the old Masonic Temple on Wilshire Boulevard, and established by two of the founders of Guess Jeans, the Marciano Art Foundation opened its doors last week.
It follows a growing trend of wealthy individuals opening their own museums to share their private art collections with the public -- instead of donating works of art to established, public institutions.
While museums have been synonymous with private art collections for a long time (think J. Paul Getty), the new wave of private arts institutions is reshaping the entire industry.
For more on the pros and cons of the private donor influence in the museum world, Take Two's A Martinez spoke with Mike Scutari. He's written about this for Inside Philanthropy.
To hear the interview with Mike Scutari, click on the blue Media Player above.
More reports of lavish spending by the UC Board of Regents
The University of California Board of Regents has been in the spotlight for lavish spending– a reality hard to swallow for students bearing the brunt of tuition hikes.
The San Francisco Chronicle has been looking hard at the story. Their recent coverage details the cost of multiple luxury hotel dinners that ranged in the neighborhood of $8,000 - $18,000 for around two dozen people.
Now, the Board has responded by saying they're going to reverse course and foot the bill for dinners themselves.
For more, Take Two's A Martinez spoke with San Francisco Chronicle reporter Melody Gutierrez.
To hear the full interview with Melody Gutierrez, click on the blue Media Player.
Tuesday Reviewsday: Lila Downs, Omar Souleyman and Chuck Berry's final album
Tuesday means it's time for Tuesday Reviewsday, our weekly new music segment. This week music journalist Steve Hochman joins A Martinez in the studio with releases from around the world.
Here are his picks:
Chuck Berry
Album: “Chuck”
Some of the guitar parts on the new Chuck Berry album, “Chuck,” are played by people other than Chuck Berry — Tom Morello and Gary Clark Jr. among them. And sometimes you can’t tell exactly who is playing. That’s okay. Berry’s monumental presence and influence is so deeply encoded into the DNA of rock ’n’ roll guitar, that when anyone is playing this stuff, it is Chuck Berry.
That DNA part is literally true on a lot of this album, released just months after Berry died in March at age 90, his first of new recordings since 1979 — 38 years! Some of the time when you hear those licks, it’s from the hands of his son, Chuck Berry Jr. And on two songs, his grandson Chuck Berry III chimes in. But this is no mere tribute, nor is it just a valedictory turn. “Chuck” is a worthy cap to the six-plus decades of delights from one of the key architects of rock.
There’s no need for us to go back over the history here — either the singular, essential achievements or the sometimes troubling elements in his personal life. But in the material on this album, Berry himself made pointed, and often playful, references to the past. “Lady B. Goode,” obviously, is a play on his landmark “Johnny B. Goode.” “Jamaica Moon” is a geographic revision of his “Havana Moon,” one of the most distinctive songs in his classic catalog.
But most profound and moving are the moments in which he reaches back before even his early success, reminiscing on or drawing from his youth. It’s explicit in the joyful “Big Boys,” with Morello on guitar and Nathaniel Rateliff on vocals, the singer in his advanced years still fully embodying himself as a boy who just wants to be in the middle of the party. A video, posthumously produced and billed as Berry’s first music video, captures that elated feeling in full. In some of the album’s best songs, though, Berry’s enduring debt to and affection for the music that reached his ears in his St. Louis youth is fully on display — the sounds of Tin Pan Alley, jump blues, early country, western swing and the pop crooners of the 1920s-‘30s-‘40s among the streams here.
There’s a sweetness throughout, and where Berry was often seen as guarded and combative, an open heart marks “Chuck,” no more openly than in “Wonderful Woman,” a love song to Themetta “Toddy” Berry, his wife of 68 years, and “Darlin’,” heartfelt perspective from his advanced years addressed to daughter Ingrid Berry-Clay, who also sings and plays harmonica on the album.
And, as always, his turns of phrase have the ability to charm and delight. It’s not for nothing that Bob Dylan called him the Shakespeare of rock. No one has ever been better at getting such a vivid scene in a single line, few have reached his heights in the pure musicality of alliterative wordplay. And in that, here as in his best, are some profound perspectives. The album, tellingly, ends with “Eyes of a Man,” a spoken-blues “Ozymandias,” in which he sees the monuments of men crumble to dust, seemingly his own works included. But, he sings, the temples built by a woman “in her own child’s heart and soul” endure eternally. Presumably, in these poignant last words, he included what he built in rock ’n’ roll among the things that will fade. But he also had to know that it will be around for a long time, every time someone plays one of his licks.
Lila Downs
Album: “Salón, Lágrimas y Deseo”
Lila Downs’ last album, a year and a half ago, was “Balas y Chocolate,” bullets and chocolate. This time it’s “Salón Lágrimas y Deseo,” tears and desire. The last one looked at her native Mexico today, the oft-times tragic hardships and the enduring hope.
And where the last one had a mix of rural expanse and urban grit, this, as the “Salón” part of the title indicates, is more about the dancehall or, intimately, a parlor setting, as she draws on the rhythms and sounds of the cumbia, danzón, Cuban son, among others. To some extent it’s a look to the past, with seven of the songs associated with classic Latin American composers and performers. Among them is a soaring version of revered Agustín Lara’s 1940s-vintage bolero, “Palabras de Mujer” (“Woman’s Words”), a steamy testament of yearning, given new meaning as sung by a woman, particularly a woman of great strength. José Alfredo Jiménez’s mid-20th century ranchera “Uno Mundo Raro” (“A Strange World”) also portrays that landscape of longing from two sides, Downs in torchy duet with Spanish flamenco singer Diego el Cigala.
But Downs, as we’ve come to expect over a rich, wide-ranging career, draws on that past for strength and inspiration as she looks to the present and future, including other duets with Argentine rocker Andres Colamaro, Baja California pop star Carla Morrison, the lively Banda Tierra Mojada from Oaxaca (Downs’ birthplace). The first single, “Peligrosa” (“Dangerous”), written by Downs and partner Paul Cohen, crosses ranchera balladry with somber ‘50s pop for a statement of courage, an anthemic pep-talk as she rises above sorrow and heartbreak to stand tall. (The song is here in two versions, one Downs solo, the other also featuring Chilean singer-songwriter Mon Laferte.)
On that same note, “Envidia” (“Envy”), a duet with Argentine rocker Andres Calamaro, takes a tough stance, first seemingly against a disrespectful, oppressive ex-lover, and then on behalf of disrespected, oppressed cultural heritages, summed in a fierce chorus: “Tú me tienes mucha envidia, proque soy todas las cosas que tú quieres para ti” — “You are very jealous of me, because I am all things that you want for yourself.” And she’s shedding no tears there.
Omar Souleyman
Album: “To Syria, With Love”
Omar Souleyman, now in his 50s, continues to be one of the more interesting stories in world music. He’s gone from successful wedding singer in his Syrian homeland to unlikely sensation on the festival and club circuit, from Glastonbury to Coachella to even the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize concert. It’s easy to hear the appeal, his heavily rhythmic electronic variations on the pan-Arabia dabke dance style, the staple of weddings and other celebrations, is hard to resist. And it’s easy to see it too, he in his keffiyeh, robe and sunglasses, pacing the stage and clapping in time with the beats, chanting Arabic poetry over the frenzied electronic music crafted by his musical partner Hasan Alo. For many outside of the Middle East, it’s nothing if not exotic.
Over time he’s added elements from Kurdish and Turkish music, and increasingly the compatible aesthetics of the EDM scene he’d encountered. His last album, “Bahdeni Nami,” featured work with Four Tet and Gilles Peterson.
Two years later, those sounds seem fully integrated into, and balanced with, the dabke pulse.
The pulse of the emotions has also changed some. As the situation in Syria worsened into war (sending him into exile in 2011), he brought politics into his words, complementing the standard common tales of love and heartbreak, not that most of the people bopping to the sounds would know that.
For “To Syria, With Love,” the romance kind of love is still there (“Girl oh girl, you’re a professional thief, you stole my heart away,” go the translated lyrics of “Ya Bnayya” — “Girl”) but added to this is the greater love and heartache for home, where conditions have deteriorated, and suffering has increased, dramatically. With words co-written with another regular partner, Shawa Al Ahmad, Souleyman laments his distance from Syria and the death and horror happening there. Once again, of course, not knowing the meaning of the words, the meaning might be lost in the largely frantic beats. But knowing at least the sense of them, the music takes on a cathartic, pained and perhaps angered tone.
The one exception, where the sorrow is evident from the sound alone, is “Mawai,” a slow, somber, even mournful piece. “My soul is wounded… the pain is oh so deep.” And the album ends on a note of despair, in “Chobi,” its English title being given as “Missing Al-Jazira” — that being the region of his home town. “Our wounds are too many, and every wound calls out: I am missing Al-Jazira.” So if you’re bopping to the beats, maybe you can have that in mind too.