Spring in Bavaria

Asa

(Listen to it at my youtube)

From soul to funky guitar chords and bittersweet ingredients of r&b to surprising reggae twists, Asa (pronounced Asha) carries rich musical heritage and intensely spiritual strength. Asa was born in Paris and raised in Lagos, south-western Nigeria, where absorbing influences of jazz and African music, transforming it into a fresh sound, she constantly craved for singing her heart out. As her first eponymous album flows with ease, groovy rhythms and emotion, Asa projects positive values and her honest point of view on today’s realities.

Those of you who’ve been getting into Ayo in recent months will love the sultry tones of Asa, another talented young singer-guitarist from Nigeria who is at her sublime vocal best solo. Like Ayo, Asa grew up listening to her father’s record collection, soaking up the heady sounds of soul, reggae and folk-jazz via Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley and classics from the Gold Coast. The budding young talent was later inspired by the likes of Macy Gray, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill, but the artist young Asa has most frequently been compared to is the dreadlocked queen of Afro-folk, Tracy Chapman.

Like Ayo and her American counterparts, Asa shares a certain taste for musical sophistication and ‘protest’ songwriting. And, like Ayo, Bukola Elemide - now better known by her stage name Asa ("falcon" in Yoruba) - made her debut signing to a French record label. Asa, currently using Paris as a springboard for a budding international career, was actually born in the French capital in September 1982 and spent just over two years there, her father working at the Nigerian embassy in Paris. "I kept all the photos and the memories my parents gave me and I vowed I’d go back to Paris one day!" she says.

Twenty years on, Asa fulfilled that dream in style. "At the beginning of 2004, I sent off a cassette to the ‘Visa’ programme run by the AFAA, the cultural section of the French foreign ministry. It was like throwing a bottle into the sea. But I was lucky because somehow I got my message heard." In fact, Asa did more than that. She ended up doing a music course in France which helped her turn professional and allowed her to stay in the country three months, during which precious time she met the likes of Manu Dibango, Richard Bona, Daby Touré, Tony Allen and sisterly double act Les Nubians.

Profiting from her newly-acquired experience, Asa returned to Lagos and concentrated on developing her own musical style there. At the beginning of 2007, the young singer went into the studio and spent six weeks recording with Cobhams Emmanuel Asuquo, a blind multi-instrumentalist she has worked with for three years now. Her debut 11-track album is simply called Asa, "because all the songs on it are pieces of the puzzle that make up my personality." Featuring impeccable percussion, a funky Hammond organ, reggae-infused bass and contributions from celebrity flautist Magic Malik, Asa’s debut album contains two stand-out tracks: Jailer, a song about "the irony of oppression, not just political or racial oppression, but the kind that operates in everyday life" and Fire In The Mountain - a melody which has every bit as much chart-topping potential as anything by her Afro-folk sister Ayo!

 

 

posted by: Moosecow at 00:47 | link | comments |
africa, music

Concentration Camp Terezín - Theresienstadt (Czech Republic)

Terezín (IPA: [ˈtɛrɛzi:n]; German: Theresienstadt) is the name of a former military fortress and garrison town in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic.

Early history

In the late 18th century the Habsburg Monarchy erected the fortress near the confluence of the Labe and Ohře Rivers, and named it after Empress Maria Theresa.

Construction started in 1780 and lasted ten years. The total area of the fortress was 3.89 km². The fortification was designed in the tradition of Sébastian le Prestre de Vauban. In peacetime it held 5,655 soldiers, and in wartime around 11,000 soldiers could be placed here, and neighbouring areas could be inundated. Fortress Josefov in eastern Bohemia was built at the same time and had a similar purpose.

The fortress was never under direct siege. During the Austro-Prussian War, on 28th July 1866, part of the garrison attacked and destroyed an important railway bridge near Neratovice (rail line Turnov - Kralupy nad Vltavou) that was shortly before repaired by the Prussians.

During the second half of the 19th century the fortress was also used as a prison.

During World War I, the fortress was used as a prisoner-of-war camp. Many thousand supporters of Russia (Russophiles from Galicia and Bukovina) were placed by Austro-Hungarian authorities in the fortress. Gavrilo Princip, who assassinated Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife, starting the war, died there of tuberculosis in 1918.

Terezín During World War II

On June 10, 1940, the Gestapo took control of Terezín and set up prison in the Small Fortress (kleine Festung), see below. By 24 November 1941, the Main Fortress (große Festung, i.e. the town Theresienstadt) was turned into a walled ghetto. The function of Theresienstadt was to provide a front for the extermination operation of Jews. To the outside it was presented by the Nazis as a model Jewish settlement, but in reality it was a concentration camp. Theresienstadt was also used as a transit camp for European Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.

Dr. Siegfried Seidl, an SS-Hauptsturmführer, served as the first camp commandant in 1941. Seidl oversaw the labor of 342 young men, known as the Aufbaukommando, who converted the fortress into a concentration camp. Although the Aufbaukommando were promised that they and their families would be spared transport, eventually all were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943, for Sonderbehandlung, or "special treatment", i.e. immediate gassing of all upon arrival.

As in other European ghettos, a Jewish Council nominally ruled over the ghetto. The first of the Jewish Elders of Theresienstadt was Jakob Edelstein, a Polish-born Zionist and former head of the Prague Jewish community. In 1943, he was deported to Auschwitz, where he was shot together with his family. The second was Paul Eppstein, a sociologist originally from Mannheim, Germany. Earlier, Eppstein was the speaker of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland, the central organization of Jews in Nazi Germany. In the course of the liquidation transports in autumn 1944, when some two thirds of the ghetto population were deported to Auschwitz, Eppstein was shot in the Small Fortress. He died on Yom kippur, the holiest day in the Hebrew calendar, after he informed the deported people what was awaiting them in the "East". Benjamin Murmelstein, a Lvov-born Vienna rabbi succeeded Eppstein. His popularity in the ghetto was similar with the one of the SS command. In the last days of existence of the ghetto, rabbi Leo Baeck served as the Elder. In 1943 to 1945, he was the speaker of the Council of Elders of Theresienstadt, after being deported from Berlin, where he served as the head of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland.

This camp was established by the head of the RSHA and Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich. It soon became the "home" for a great number of Jews from occupied Czechoslovakia. The 7,000 non-Jewish Czechs living in Terezín were expelled by the Nazis in the spring 1942. As a consequence, the Jewish community became a closed environment.

On 1 May 1945 control of the camp was transferred from the Germans to the Red Cross. A week later, on 8 May 1945 Terezín was liberated by Soviet troops.

Many of the 80,000 Czech Jews who died in the Holocaust were killed in Theresienstadt, where the conditions were extremely difficult. In a space previously inhabited by 7,000 Czechs, now over 50,000 Jews were gathered. Food was scarce and in 1942 almost 16,000 people died, including Esther Adolphine (a sister of Sigmund Freud) who died on September 29, 1942; Friedrich Münzer (a German classicist), who died on October 20, 1942. Medicine and tobacco were strictly prohibited; possession could be punished by hard labor or death. Men and women were officially forbidden to meet, or to communicate with a Gentile without German permission.

Theresienstadt supplied the German war effort with a source of Jewish slave labor. Their major contribution was the splitting of mica mined from local Czechoslovakia. Blind prisoners were often spared deportation by assignment to this task. Others manufactured boxes or coffins. Others sprayed military uniforms with a white dye to provide camouflage for Nazi soldiers on the Russian front.

456 Jews from Denmark were sent to Theresienstadt in 1943 . These were Jews who had not escaped to Sweden before the arrival of the Nazis. Included also in the transports were some of the European Jewish children whom Danish organizations had been attempting to conceal in foster homes. The arrival of the Danes is of great significance as the Danes insisted on the Red Cross having access to the ghetto. This was a rare move, given that most European governments did not insist on their fellow Jewish citizens being treated according to some fundamental principles. The Danish king, Christian X, later secured the release of the Danish internees on April 15, 1945. The White Buses, in cooperation with the Danish Red Cross, collected the 413 who had survived.

On February 5, 1945, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler allowed a transport of 1,210 Jews from Theresienstadt, most of them originating from the Netherlands, to Switzerland. According to an agreement between Himmler and Jean-Marie Musy, a pro-Nazi former Swiss president, the group was released after $1.25 million were placed in Swiss banks by Jewish organizations working in Switzerland.

After the victory of the Allies in 1945, Theresienstadt was used by Czech partisans and former inmates to hold German SS personnel and civilians as retaliation for their atrocities.

Used as propaganda tool

To minimize the appearance of overcrowding in Theresienstadt, the Nazis deported many Jews to Auschwitz. Also deported in these actions were most of the Czechoslovakian workers assigned to 'Operation Embellishment.' They also erected fake shops and cafés to imply that the Jews lived in relative comfort. The Danes whom the Red Cross visited lived in freshly painted rooms, not more than three in a room. The guests enjoyed the performance of a children's opera, Brundibar, which was written by inmate Hans Krása.

The hoax against the Red Cross was so successful for the Nazis that they went on to make a propaganda film at Theresienstadt. Production of the film began on February 26 , 1944. Directed by Jewish prisoner Kurt Gerron (a director, cabaret performer, and actor who appeared with Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel), it was meant to show how well the Jews lived under the "benevolent" protection of the Third Reich. After the shooting most of the cast, and even the filmmaker himself, were deported to Auschwitz. Gerron and his wife were executed in the gas chambers on October 28, 1944. The film was not released at the time, but was edited into pieces that served their purpose, and only segments of it have remained.

Statistics

posted by: Moosecow at 14:26 | link | comments |
holocaust, towns i visited

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