June 28, 2015

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Fort’s July 4 entertainment schedule set

Teen vocalists in a noon sing-off will raise the curtain on 10 hours of July 4 entertainment at Independence Day at Fort Vancouver. The annual Sing Fourth competition will feature 10 Clark County high school…


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Greece Tries To Stanch Bank Run Ahead Of Looming Default

A security worker brings money to a National Bank branch in Athens, Greece, on Sunday. Greeks have been withdrawing euros in anticipation of a possible default on the country's debt payments early next week.

A security worker brings money to a National Bank branch in Athens, Greece, on Sunday. Greeks have been withdrawing euros in anticipation of a possible default on the country’s debt payments early next week. Marko Djurica/Reuters/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Marko Djurica/Reuters/Landov

As Greeks rush to withdraw cash ahead of a looming default on the country’s international debt payments and a possible exit from the Eurozone, Greece is considering closing its banks on Monday in an effort to stave off a total financial collapse.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis tells the BBC that his government is weighing the option at an emergency meeting today.

.@yanisvaroufakis tells @BBCMarkMardell: Greek Govt will be looking overnight at imposing capital controls & closing banks on Monday. #tw2

— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) June 28, 2015

Meanwhile, Germany’s Foreign Ministry has advised travelers to Greece to make sure they have enough euros on hand before they arrive in the country.

The drama comes as the European Central Bank is in heated discussions about whether to extend Greece’s financial lifeline.

As Joanna Kakissis reports from Athens for NPR, “Some European leaders say the Greek government closed the door on negotiations by calling a referendum. Others are pushing for a compromise to preserve the euro.”

As The New York Times reports:

“The central bank’s 25-member governing council, convened by conference call, was discussing how and whether to extend an emergency line of credit — currently worth more than 85 billion euros, or $95 billion — that in recent weeks has kept Greek banks from collapsing.

“Analysts say that without these funds, Greek banks would not have sufficient money to provide to panicky savers if they opened on Monday. Without a continued flow of money to consumers and businesses, Greece’s struggling economy would probably lapse deeper into recession.”

Greeks began lining up at ATM machines on Saturday, after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced a nationwide referendum for July 5 on an international bailout for Athens – a move roundly criticized by Greece’s creditors as a delay tactic. The deadline for a 1.6 billion euro ($1.9 billion) payment to the International Monetary Fund is Tuesday. But Greece and its lenders have already walked away from the bargaining table.

Reuters says that while some ATMs in Greece were spitting out their last euros, other machines were being replenished. It says a top Greek financial official urged people on Sunday to remain calm and not withdraw all their savings.

Civil engineer Dimitris Kostoulas says he fears bank withdrawals will be limited on Monday. “I believe that everyone is nervous. Not only us. We’ll see what happens,” he tells NPR.

“We are very very close to the edge. What was sometimes seen as scaremongering is something that could happen over the next few days,” economist Platon Tinios says.

If Athens misses its payment, it would likely be forced out of the Eurozone and revert to its previous currency, the drachma. High inflation and years of financial instability would result.

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In A Kenyan Village, A 65-Year-Old Recording Comes Home

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Philip Cheruiyot (second from left) leans in to read the song titles on the CD booklet brought by Diane Thram. Cheruiyot’s grandfather sang on Hugh Tracey’s recording of “Chemirocha II.” Ryan Kailath hide caption

itoggle caption Ryan Kailath

From Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads to Odysseus outwitting the sirens, the history of music is filled with myth and legend. Music loves a good story, and a certain recording from a Kenyan village definitely has one — one that’s 65 years old.

At the center of that story is a recording of a song called “Chemirocha,” sung by a group of little girls from the Kipsigis tribe. Their voices are high-pitched, dancing around the same notes like a chant, and they sing over the strums of a stringed instrument called a kibugandet.

The cover of the exhibition book For Future Generations, produced by the International Library of African Music.

The cover of the exhibition book For Future Generations, produced by the International Library of African Music. Courtesy of the International Library of African Music hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of the International Library of African Music

According to the legend, British missionaries came through the Kipsigis’ village during World War II. They played gramophone records of American country music for the tribe, and the villagers loved one singer in particular. Hugh Tracey, a 20th century ethnomusicologist, said the girls of the village called this singer “a faun, half-man and half-antelope.”

That faun was the father of country music, Jimmie Rodgers — a name which, according to Tracey, the villagers pronounced “Chemirocha.” Tracey, a British South African, made thousands of field recordings in Africa at the time, but the backstory of “Chemirocha” made it one of his most famous.

In 1954, Tracey founded the International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. Diane Thram took over ILAM in 2006, and she made it a project to catalog Tracey’s collection.

“I remember having this realization one day that, now that we know what we have, it’s time to give it back,” Thram says of the collected music.

So, Thram teamed up with Tabu Osusa, who runs a Kenyan non-profit called Ketebul Music that archives tribal songs. Together, they set out to bring the recorded music to the people it first came from, finding the “Chemirocha” singers in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley and giving them copies of Tracey’s recordings.

“It’s not fair for them, actually, that their music was recorded, and they have no idea that music exists!” Osusa says. “So, I think this is the right thing to do. Take the music back to the people. So from then on they know — this was ours.”

Their mission set, the team drives from Nairobi to Bombet, about a 230-kilometer trip, with performers’ names and locations from the late Tracey’s notes in tow. After asking around for days, they catch the trail and find Elizabeth Betts.

Elizabeth Betts (right) was a little girl the day Hugh Tracey recorded 30 songs in her village in 1950. Despite having never heard the recordings, Betts can remember and sing each song by heart.

Elizabeth Betts (right) was a little girl the day Hugh Tracey recorded 30 songs in her village in 1950. Despite having never heard the recordings, Betts can remember and sing each song by heart. Ryan Kailath hide caption

itoggle caption Ryan Kailath

Betts was a little girl when Tracey came to town. He recorded 30 songs that day, and 65 years later, she still knows all the songs by heart.

“Where did those songs go to?” Betts wonders aloud, speaking through an interpreter in the Kipsigis language. “I would be happy if they could go back to singing like these days.”

This nostalgia is everywhere, but different people have conflicting opinions about what chemirocha actually means to people in the villages. Patricia Lasoi, the chief minister of the district of Bomet, pins the meaning on Jimmie Rogers. But what about the half-man, half-animal thing Tracey originally spoke of?

Josiah Arapsang, whose father organized the local singers for Hugh Tracey, has his own theory. He describes the colonial days, when missionaries preached about literally eating the body and blood of Christ — and how, during World War II, the Kipsigis were rounded up to give blood for wounded soldiers.

Hugh Tracey’s original field notes for “Chemirocha I.” They read: “The main theme of this song is affection for the Kipsigis country. He also asks ‘why the white man should have taken over the country’ which incidentally, they themselves took from others in the past…” Courtesy of and copyright International Library of African Music hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of and copyright International Library of African Music

“They will just collect you, put you into a vehicle, rush you to the hospital. They remove blood just to assist the people who were in the military,” Arapsang explains. “So they say ‘Aha, these people — they are man-eaters.'”

Man-eaters — half-man, half-beast chemirochas. The irony is delicious: the Africans thought the Europeans were savages.

After two weeks in the field, the team finds one living musician who performed on “Chemirocha,” a man named Cheriyot Arap Kuri who is now 88 years old. Thram is thrilled.

“It’s like a dream come true, to find someone who’s still alive, who played this music on that day,” Thram says to him, proudly presenting him with a CD. “This is you on this recording! This is for you.”

The man turns it over in his hands and regards it carefully, and then he asks how to play it. Thram wonders if anybody had a CD player, and she asks around. Nobody has one.

Instead, the villagers wonder, could Thram somehow just send the songs to their mobile phones?

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Produced by Hunter Allen, Patrick Ondiek, Steve Kivutia, and Will Baxley. Additional footage courtesy of Ryan Kailath. Edited by Hunter Allen. Funded by Singing Wells and Abubilla Music Foundation in partnership with Ketebul Music and the International Library of African Music.

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Dance classes and camps available

Entertainment briefs: June 26July 2 By Staff Friday, June 26, 2015 Dance classes and camps available Revolution Dance will have a new session of dance classes beginning Monday, June 29, at 835 N. 26th St….