Hero of the day

“The internet has changed politics – changed it utterly and forever. Twenty-four hours ago, I made a three-minute speech in the European Parliament, aimed at Gordon Brown. I tipped off the BBC and some of the newspaper correspondents but, unsurprisingly, they ignored me: I am, after all, simply a backbench MEP.”
Nevertheless the video clip of Daniel Hannan‘s speech went viral on YouTube that evening, attracting more than 630,000 views in 24 hours. It became the ‘most viewed today’ YouTube video worldwide two consecutive days.
In an American TV program, Hannan stated he would have voted for Ron Paul if he could.

Peyman and his Tonbak …

… Drums not Bombs!

” … Following the Islamic Revolution, the tonbak gained popularity as Iranian pop music was banned and replaced by instrumental classical music. Today, the tonbak is a serious concert instrument as well as a party favorite among the people of Iran… Modern players are expanding the technique of playing the tonbak exponentially … ” Wiki

Tonbak solo in Austrian “colors of percussion” festival 2004

Peyman Nasehpour, born in 1974 comes from another family of musicians: his father is the recognized vocalist Ostad Nasrollah Nasehpour, and his grandfather, Agha Shakour, a famed garmon-player.

Peyman was acquainted with Azerbaijani and Persian music since childhood; he started playing the tonbak at the age of nine. He also studied ghaval and daf – Azerbaijani and Kurdish frame drums – with renowned masters. Since, he has also added the indian tabla to his repertoir. Peyman holds a Master of Science in Mathematics and is an avid student of philosophy.

The Nasehpour Ensemble includes Peyman, his father and his two younger brothers Pooyan, a santur player and Parham, tar, setar and kamancheh player.

Beside his excellence as an instumentalist, Peyman is a very active promoter of music on the internet: along his English website, blog and Persian blog, he contributes to other websites such as the Persion Mirror, Drum Journey, Rhytmweb …, see his internet page.

You can find Peyman on almost all online discussion groups about percussion.

“Why Internet? Because Internet connects people to each other and brings peace, love, respect and understanding.”

Peyman, an avid researcher, has many articles and interviews available on the net. The previous post about Ostad Tehrani was mostly based on his writings. To name a few of his articles: Ghaval, the Azerbaijani frame drum, Sufi rhythms for the daf… here is a summary of his articles.

No War in Iran
by Peyman

To desire peace, to have freedom, justice and democracy, to respect to human rights, to wish for the happiness of one’s family, to seek secure and safe life, these are all the shared sentiments of people everywhere…

… the following question rises: How, then, can we transform enmity to empathy, conflict to coexistence?

The only answer that I always find is: to respect our cultures and civilizations, to learn from each other, to understand our common sentiments and spread the love among all nations. Therefore, it depends on every culture’s ambassadors (particularly artists) how to promote peace, love, mutual respect and understanding …

The children of Adam are limbs of each other
Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time afflicts one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
If thou hast no sympathy for the troubles of others
Thou art unworthy to be called by the name of a man.

… I, as a member of Artists Without Frontiers, invite all artists of the world to join us and start a new peace campaign before it is so late!

Sincerely yours, Peyman Nasehpour
The original text

Links: One World Beat, The Musicians Alliance for Peace

I wish all the success for Peyman in his career and his effort in promoting Persian music and culture.

The Upside Of Down

Today I came across The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon, and two interviews with the writer at Tyee Books: Embrace The Collapse and The Internet Idea Army

This book [... paints a grim picture of our not-too-distant future… But Thomas Homer-Dixon says there’s hope. Not that global warming isn’t upon us, or that terrorists won’t explode a nuclear device in the near future, or that the growing gap between rich and poor won’t result in deeply destructive conflict, or that our social, political and economic systems aren’t deeply vulnerable to collapse.…Homer-Dixon …wants us to learn from ecology… Systems grow, mature, become rigid, and break down. If we accept that this is true for human systems, we will be better able to create less rigid, less dangerously interdependent systems … we will learn to plan for renewal when things do break down…[he] places a great deal of faith in individuals, in their ability to collaborate, create consensus … He’s fascinated by Wikipedia’s ability to create an enormous, resilient document of human accomplishment through a collaborative, voluntaristic process where ego and experts aren’t given much sway. And he wants to apply that model to key global challenges…”People have enormous analytical power available to them. Much more information … as citizens, we are more competent and powerful. Power has moved down the social hierarchy from institutions to individuals. But along with power comes commensurate responsibility. People aren’t taking on the responsibilities that come with our increasing role in governance — self-governance…we usually don’t bother. We are disastrously incapable of taking a very long view, personally or institutionally. Politics and business are in many ways biased against our long-term future.

We won’t solve our problems one by one by shouting about them. We’ll solve them by reducing existing stresses, creating more resilient systems, and planning to ensure that good things emerge from bad events.

“… I honestly think there are deeper causes of our malaise — the architecture that institutionalizes competition and conflict between political actors. What you get in question period is people shouting at each other. It becomes institutionally required for an opposition party to oppose. Its identity is as an oppositional party, instead of trying to constructively solve the problems we have…maybe we need to develop some parallel democratic institutions that are grounded in a more voluntaristic and collaborative approach to problem solving…” Let’s all get together and save the world:

“We need a place where people can go that is less egocentric, where people can focus on solving the problem rather than accumulating power. I think that you could create, as we’ve found with Wikipedia, institutional architectures that encourage that kind of thing. You can kind of socialize people into that…what happens with Wikipedia …is that people as they participate in the process adopt the norms, they become socialized into the culture and the assumptions of the place. There is an ethic and an etiquette to doing this.”… and more

Internet

The end of internet as we know it?