Roots drummer and hip-hop philosopher extraordinaire, Ahmir ‘Questlove‘ Thompson, has finally decided to put his musical journey down on paper and release a memoir entitled Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According To Questlove. The book will explore the development of hip-hop music combined with the tales of Quest’s life story. And if you’re wondering if Quest can really string prose together? Well, no need to worry, he’s employed the help of journalist and New Yorker critic Ben Greenman to co-author the book.
Read the details below:
The collection is a punch-drunk memoir in which everyone’s favorite Questlove tells his own story while tackling some of the lates, the greats, the fakes and the true originals of the music world. He digs deep into the album cuts of his life, and unearths some pivotal moments in Black music and pop culture. But more than just a series of remembrances Mo’ Meta Blues is a book that also questions the nature of memory and the idea of a post modern Black man saddled with some post-modern Blues. It’s the side wind of a one-of-a-kind mind. It’s a rare gift that gives as well as takes.
In 1955, Peter Mangone was 14 years old–a skinny boy from the Bronx with a Marilyn Monroe fixation, like so many teenagers of his generation. What distinguished Mangone was that he got to meet his idol. For several months, he had played truant from school to stake out the Gladstone Hotel on Manhattan’s East 52nd Street, where the 29-year-old Monroe was staying after her unhappy divorce from Joe DiMaggio and her dismissal from the Twentieth-Century Fox studios.
One morning, Mangone borrowed an eight-millimeter Kodak camera from his brother, headed down to the Gladstone and met Monroe as she was on her way out shopping with her friend Milton Greene. Mangone’s dream came true: she waved, winked and invited him along. Over the course of the afternoon, he filmed her intermittently, without sound, later developing the film and viewing it at home. When Mangone left home, the footage went missing, and was thought to be lost–until 2002, when his brother found it among their father’s possessions, virtually in mint condition. “It was like refinding my high school sweetheart,” he said. “She was just the way I remembered her.”
This book of stills from Mangone’s five-minute movie shows the great screen siren in wonderful moments of unguardedness, against the Chevys and Checker cabs of 1950s midtown Manhattan. The great charm of Mangone’s images lies at the opposite end of familiar portraits by Cecil Beaton, Elliott Erwitt and co.: in his 14-year-old hands, through the grainy Kodak film, with its erratic lighting, Marilyn remains every inch the icon.
An eminent former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary covertly deleted thousands of words because of their foreign origins and bizarrely blamed previous editors, according to claims in a book published this week.
Robert Burchfield’s efforts to rewrite the dictionary have been uncovered by Sarah Ogilvie, a linguist, lexicographer and former editor on the OED.
Ogilvie worked for 11 years to research and write Words of the World, published by Cambridge University Press, which challenges the widely held belief that editors of the OED between 1884 and 1933 were Anglocentric Oxford dons obsessed with preserving the Queen’s English, and that it was not until Robert Burchfield’s four supplements, produced between 1972 and 1986, that the dictionary was opened up to the wider world.
“I observed a pattern, that actually it was the earlier editors who were dealing with words in a really enlightened way. They certainly weren’t these Anglocentric, judging kind of editors – they were very sensitive to cultural differences and they seemed to be putting in a lot of foreign words and a lot of words from different varieties of English, which must have been amazing for that day when colonial varieties of English were just emerging,” said Ogilvie.
She undertook a detailed analysis of Burchfield’s supplement, comparing it with the 1933 supplement by Charles Onions and William Craigie. She found that, far from opening up the OED to foreign linguistic influences, Burchfield had deleted 17% of the “loanwords” and world English words that had been included by Onions, who included 45% more foreign words than Burchfield.
Examples of Burchfield’s deleted words include balisaur, an Indian badger-like animal; the American English wake-up, a golden-winged woodpecker; boviander, the name in British Guyana for a person of mixed race living on the river banks; and danchi, a Bengali shrub. The OED is now re-evaluating words expunged by Burchfield, who died in 2004, aged 81.
“This is really shocking. If a word gets into the OED, it never leaves. If it becomes obsolete, we put a dagger beside it, but it never leaves,” Ogilvie said.
In tracing the discrepancy back to its origins, she found that the dictionary’s first editor, James Murray, in the 19th century, was harshly criticised for including contributions by correspondents from as far away as Ceylon, Mexico, and New Zealand. One reviewer wrote: “There is no surer or more fatal sign of the decay of a language than in the interpolation of barbarous terms and foreign words.”
But Murray pressed on, as, later, did Onions, helped by readers from around the world.
As well as Americanisms and other regional variations in English, there were also those which entered English globally, such as typhoon, okra, abattoir, svelte and bamboo, or those restricted to a particular region, for example pak pai in Hong Kong, which is a car used illegally as a taxi.
The first version of the OED, released in 1884, contained words from all round the world, from aard-vark and aard-wolf to acacia. Murray also included the rodent, the agouti; the South American howling monkey, the alouatte; and the Philippine textile, abaca.
“If a word was used in an English context, it qualified as an English word. After all, from the OED’s beginnings, it was considered to be a dictionary of the English language, not merely a dictionary written by and for the people of England,” said Ogilvie. Murray actually put out a public appeal for English speakers around the world to send him quotations including exotic varieties of English.The myth that the dictionary’s early editors were Anglocentric originates, believes Ogilvie, with Burchfield himself.
“I traced it back and it all started in the early 1970s with Burchfield. If a dictionary editor says this to journalists and scholars, they will believe him. But no one checked either dictionary,” she said. “He said he opened up the dictionary, and put in swearwords for the first time. The swearwords claim is true. In that sense he was the first to bring the dictionary into the 21st century. But this stuff about world English wasn’t true. The only way I can explain him doing it is that, in the scholarly word of linguistics, the 1970s was when the first work on varieties of English started to come about. Maybe he wanted to be seen as part of all that.”
A spokesperson for the OED’s publisher Oxford University Press said one of the dictionary’s current policies was “to re-evaluate any terms which were left out of the supplement by Burchfield” and it was constantly adding new words “from every corner of the English-speaking world”.
“Decisions on which words to include in the OED have changed over the course of its 180-year history,” said the spokesperson. “This includes choices on which words ‘borrowed’ from other languages should be included, and where quotations should be taken from. These decisions have been influenced by a range of factors, including space constraints in print editions.”
The spokesperson added that Burchfield “was insistent that the dictionary should expand its coverage of international words in English and, although he omitted minor terms from the supplement which he was revising and extending, he added many thousands of more fully researched international entries”.
Examples of words with foreign origins deleted by Burchfield
Shape A Tibetan councillor
chancer A verb from American English meaning “to tax”
Calabazilla A wild Mexican squash
wading-place Used to refer to a ford
swamp fuchsia Common name in Australian English for Eremophilia maculata, a species found in Queensland
Bodies of Subversion was the first history of women’s tattoo art when it was released in 1997, providing a fascinating excursion to a subculture that dates back to the nineteenth-century and including many never-before-seen photos of tattooed women from the last century. Newly revised and expanded, it remains the only book to chronicle the history of both tattooed women and women tattooists. As the primary reference source on the subject, it contains information from the original edition, including documentation of:
Clarks in Jamaica is the latest book by DJ and designer Al Fingers which provides a interesting take and history on Clarks’s celebrated status on the island – where for decades they have ruled as the “champion shoes.”
On the creation of the book Al Fingers says: “Being from England, I have always been intrigued by the Jamaican fascination with Clark’s shoes and the way they are referenced within Jamaican music. Whilst Vybz Kartel’s song ‘Clarks’ brought the phenomenon to many people’s attention in 2010, the relationship goes back way further, and in compiling this book I wanted to bring attention to that, highlighting the work of artists such as Dillinger and Little John who had sung about Clarks many years before.”
Featuring current and historic photographs, interviews and never-before-seen archival material, there is particular focus on the Jamaican singers, producers and musicians who have worn and sung about Clarks shoes throughout the years. Written and designed by Al Fingers and featuring new photographs by Mark Read, Clarks in Jamaica is available at select bookshops on November 19 for £30 GBP (approximately $47 USD).
Fresh off the release of Places and Spaces I’ve Been, Pharrell Williams sat down with his online enterprise iamOTHER to talk about his book of memoirs. Speaking on the vision he had for the book as well as referring to an interview he had with Jay-Z while writing it, the clip continues with Pharrell as he heads to the BOOK MARC store in Los Angeles, California where he met up with fans for a book signing. Watch the clip above. Places and Spaces I’ve Been is available to buy on Amazon.
Wyclef Jean has announced that he’ll be publishing a new book (Purpose: an Immigrant’s Story) and releasing a video for his new song “Amadeus.” The biggest headline-grabber however, may be revelations contained in the book about his relationship with Lauryn Hill and what really broke The Fugees, specifically stating that things began to unravel when Lauryn became pregnant by Rohan Marley even though still involved in an affair with ‘Clef, creating some confusion over the child’s paternity:
“I was married and Lauryn and I were having an affair, but she led me to believe that the baby [Zion] was mine, and I couldn’t forgive that… in that moment something died between us.”
With that bombshell out there, the Marley in question had some comments of his own on his relationship with Lauryn–who has borne him 5 children–telling the UK Voice:
“[Our relationship] is good as in… in terms of being a mother and father to our children, it’s good,” says Marley, who is now engaged to Brazilian supermodel Isabeli Fontana. “It’s not as perfect as one might want it to be. It’s just the way the road went.”
Speaking of their highly publicized break-up, the 40-year-old co-founder of gourmet coffee company Marley Coffee, added: “As a man, there are certain things I don’t accept, and it just so happened that I didn’t accept certain things [in the relationship].”
“It doesn’t mean she’s [Hill] a bad person or I’m a bad person. It just didn’t work out.”
Michael Jackson gave the world 50 years of his life and decades of record-breaking and heartfelt music. During Jackson’s career, he donned some pretty awesome jackets and outfits. In the 1980s, the formative era of music videos with MTV leading the way, Michael’s dazzling visual presentation changed the world unlike any performer, before or since.
This is the first art-driven book about the costumes, apparel, shoes, and accessories worn by Michael Jackson. With longtime costume designer Michael Bush as your guide, The King Of Style: Dressing Michael Jackson takes you behind the seams of cultivating the aesthetic of this international superstar trendsetter. This treasure features hundreds of lavish photographs of the striking fashions worn by Michael at the height of his career, and never before published pictures depicting wonderful private moments of creative collaboration. It also includes revelatory commentary about the carefully planned construction of Michael’s clothes to accommodate his unique dance moves by designers Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins. In the poignant forward, Michael’s former attorney, and current executor of the Michael Jackson Estate, John Branca, reflects about his time with Michael. Overall, it’s a stunning and fascinatingly comprehensive look at the intersection of music and fashion, as well as an homage to Michael Jackson’s epically enduring image.
Night Fever 3 presents 129 interiors – restaurants, bars and clubs, and hotels offering a detailed look at the cutting-edge approach of their creators. Today, designers distil a venue’s essence – be it the flavors of its menu or the ambiance of its party scene – and incorporate it in the interior, often working with aspects of its setting to create a certain atmosphere.
Presented on 600 pages is a varied selection of successful designs, from subtle to stunning, monochromatic to vibrant, and budget to exorbitant. The selected venues, all opened in the past three years, were created by young studios and world-renowned design firms, including Alfredo Häberli, Concrete Architectural Associates, Estudio Campana, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office and Wonderwall.
Since 1939, the Batmobile has been immortalized in nearly every imaginable entertainment medium. Tearing through the streets of Gotham City in pursuit of criminals for more than seven decades, it has remained an iconic crime-fighting vehicle for generations of Batman fans. In Christopher Nolan’s extraordinary film trilogy, it was given breathtaking new life-and incredible capabilities-as the “Tumbler”. Now, in anticipation of The Dark Knight Rises, the epic conclusion to The Dark Knight trilogy,the entire history of the Batman’s trademark ride is captured for the first time in BATMOBILE: The Complete History from Insight Editions.
BATMOBILE: The Complete History is the story of the distinct, sophisticated, incomparable car. From its evolution in the pages of Detective Comics, to its unforgettable appearances on the big screen, this book explores each incarnation of the Batmobile with the detail such an extraordinary automobile warrants.
Author Mark Cotta Vaz uncovers insights and stories from creators and conceptualists that reveal the nuts and bolts of putting these dream machines together and explains the philosophies behind each design. With stunning gatefolds-including a large-scale panorama of the Batmobiles featured in film and television-and detailed specs, blueprints, and historical comparisons, BATMOBILE: The Complete History is an informational and visual delight for automotive and Batman fans alike.
This article titled “Former OED editor covertly deleted thousands of words, book claims” was written by Alison Flood, for The Guardian on Monday 26th November 2012 20.17 UTC
