Feeling the same yucky feeling that SM's folks felt beholding Nike Woman's latest foray into the "desihood", we went and had ourself a serving of moves and grooves by the human rubberband Prabhudeva. There are simply many better ways to, you know, just do it:

One of the types of music I listen to, usually on nights when sleep is difficult but comfort of the familiar is not desired, is Persian Classical. I have posted on this at least once before. The first encounter I have had with this stream of music was back in the Napster dark ages when I hit upon tracks from Kayan Kalhor's album "Night Silence Desert". This music sounded deeply familiar but also somewhat removed, as if I was looking at a woman standing behind a screen; a woman who appears familiar, as if I have seen her somewhere before and held her in a long-ish gaze but at the same time who is not traceable in my memory. This encounter also lead me to write this sequence.

Subsequent to this meeting, I have eagerly borrowed all the Persian Classical music I could lay my hands on at the public library, and the most notable of all these albums would be "Without You", featuring three excellent Persian masters: Mohammad Reza Shajarian (on voice), Hossein Alizadeh (on tar or the guitar like lute), and the previously mentioned kamancheh (spike fiddle) mastero, Kayan Kalhor. Thus, great was my joy when I discovered the following recording of a concert given by these musicians on YouTube. You take delight too! Oh, this is a pdf file that contains liner notes of of the CD "Without You", providing an intro to Persian Classical Music and these musicians. And from what I could gather from the comments at YouTube, it is the sublime poetry of Hafez (it shimmers and dances even in the bad English translations I have read) which is being sung in Part 1.

I don't feel all that hot today, so I am chillin (or attempting to) by listening to Brazilian music. Here is a version of the ever famous "The Girl from Ipanema"; here is the trailer of a great movie "Black Orpheus"; and here is Richard Feynman's mad narrative on his experience of playing samba in Rio, taken from his memoir "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"*.

*You should go here and grab the complete copy of this book if you haven't read it already; it will inspire you to go out and do something crazy.