John Janaro's Blog, page 132

On the Fortieth Day of Christmas...

Happy FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION of Jesus in the Temple. Forty Days after Christmas. "Candlemas Day" for blessing candles.


Today our Christmas decorations come down, but we pray that Jesus grows as the Light in our hearts and in our days as we prepare for the journey toward the Cross and Easter.

(But Lent doesn't start until the end of the month, sooo... for now it's "Carnevale season"!

On the Fortieth Day of Christmas...

Happy FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION of Jesus in the Temple. Forty Days after Christmas. "Candlemas Day" for blessing candles.


Today our Christmas decorations come down, but we pray that Jesus grows as the Light in our hearts and in our days as we prepare for the journey toward the Cross and Easter.

(But Lent doesn't start until the end of the month, sooo... for now it's "Carnevale season"!

On the Fortieth Day of Christmas...

Happy FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION of Jesus in the Temple. Forty Days after Christmas. "Candlemas Day" for blessing candles.


Today our Christmas decorations come down, but we pray that Jesus grows as the Light in our hearts and in our days as we prepare for the journey toward the Cross and Easter.

(But Lent doesn't start until the end of the month, sooo... for now it's "Carnevale season"!

On the Fortieth Day of Christmas...

Happy FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION of Jesus in the Temple. Forty Days after Christmas. "Candlemas Day" for blessing candles.


Today our Christmas decorations come down, but we pray that Jesus grows as the Light in our hearts and in our days as we prepare for the journey toward the Cross and Easter.

(But Lent doesn't start until the end of the month, sooo... for now it's "Carnevale season"!

On the Fortieth Day of Christmas...

Happy FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION of Jesus in the Temple. Forty Days after Christmas. "Candlemas Day" for blessing candles.


Today our Christmas decorations come down, but we pray that Jesus grows as the Light in our hearts and in our days as we prepare for the journey toward the Cross and Easter.

(But Lent doesn't start until the end of the month, sooo... for now it's "Carnevale season"!

On the Fortieth Day of Christmas...

Happy FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION of Jesus in the Temple. Forty Days after Christmas. "Candlemas Day" for blessing candles.


Today our Christmas decorations come down, but we pray that Jesus grows as the Light in our hearts and in our days as we prepare for the journey toward the Cross and Easter.

(But Lent doesn't start until the end of the month, sooo... for now it's "Carnevale season"!

On the Fortieth Day of Christmas...

Happy FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION of Jesus in the Temple. Forty Days after Christmas. "Candlemas Day" for blessing candles.


Today our Christmas decorations come down, but we pray that Jesus grows as the Light in our hearts and in our days as we prepare for the journey toward the Cross and Easter.

(But Lent doesn't start until the end of the month, sooo... for now it's "Carnevale season"!

On the Fortieth Day of Christmas...

Happy FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION of Jesus in the Temple. Forty Days after Christmas. "Candlemas Day" for blessing candles.


Today our Christmas decorations come down, but we pray that Jesus grows as the Light in our hearts and in our days as we prepare for the journey toward the Cross and Easter.

(But Lent doesn't start until the end of the month, sooo... for now it's "Carnevale season"!

Recorded Music Awards, Part 2

My last post was pretty theoretical, so let's get right to some real music and some real people. There is a lady playing the violin in the picture. I'll talk about her further along in this article.

First I should make some remarks about the big winners at last weekend's Grammy Awards — the O'Connell kids — even though I don't quite know what to say. Wait... who am I talking about? I'm talking about Finneas O'Connell, songwriter and producer, and his little sister (who gets all the attention, because she sings, has green hair, and is apparently willing to put large spiders in her mouth, among other strange things). "Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell" is the name her parents gave her — really, I'm not kidding. It certainly is an interesting name.

No, they are not from Ireland. They're from California.

What's the deal here? "Ocean Eyes" — the song (written by Finneas) that started it all a few years ago by going viral on SoundCloud — is a nice bit of music, especially considering that they recorded it in their parents' living room. None of the rest of their award-winning collection has made much of an aesthetic impression on me, except that there's overall something kinda morbid(?) about it.

Is that an understatement?

If there's humor, satire, parody, or some other kind of context for the "morbid" here, I'm not in on it. Morbid needs some kind of context if it's to be more than just fooling around or (more urgently) something "artistic" rather than a straightforward expression of pathologies that call for therapy rather than awards. If there's a context, I haven't picked it up.

To be fair, I haven't really tried. I don't know where to begin to get a grip on it. Frankly, I don't think it's "healthy entertainment" for adolescents, but it may tell us something about the haunted, alienated desert that is the "terrain" of the adolescent mind in our society. This is not "innocent fun," but it's also not the usual kind of in-your-face hypersexualism that attacks with wearying relentlessness in most pop music (though there are enough weird twisted allusions here too).

Dear young people, you are so unmoored, so lost in the cosmos that an old man like me doesn't know whether you're being silly or actually mentally disturbed. And that's not your fault — it's our generation's fault, and it's the-world-upside-down because of forces unleashed that we haven't even begun to understand. There is a lot of work to be done, and it begins with the essential questions about being human, about what we are really seeking in all our desires and aspirations, about what causes us to be so dissatisfied and even cynical sometimes, and what reawakens hope.

For regular readers of this blog, let me clarify: you know where I'm coming from regarding the kind of Christ-centered, constructively human environment — the pedagogy for genuine freedom — that you want to build in your homes and communities with your children. There is room for learning many things, at the right time and in the right place. But when I consider music on this blog, I am looking at it as a mature adult, searching for whatever aesthetic or human value, or whatever authentic expression of human desperation and need, can be found therein. This is a distinct consideration from the particular questions you want to address in the vigilance, concrete judgments, and boundaries you give to your kids in the music they listen to and in wider socialization.

Of course, this is 21st century "pop music," the trends of which I observe primarily for their illustrative value in displaying the (unnerving?) plasticity of our expanding communications media. But, with few exceptions, I don't like it much. I really need to get "hit over the head" to notice something musically important in today's world of mainstream pop-stardum (other than "talent-not-being-developed-to-its-potential" — and there's plenty of that).

Still, occasionally I do get hit in this way, even when I least expect it.

Really, I don't want always to sound like a party-pooper. There's lots of beautiful, intriguing, skillful, well-crafted music out there in many styles. I try to keep an ear on lots of things, but my preferences, prejudices, and just the-luck-of-things are always going to play a role in what I listen to and take time to appreciate.

Having won five Grammys this year, 18-year-old Billie Eilish can't be ignored. I'll have to keep an ear on how her career develops.

She doesn't seem nearly as bizarre in interviews and on late night television shows as the impression she gives in her songs. She can certainly sing, and she appears to be articulate and clever. There's potential, talent, creative personality, and intelligence in her. Finneas must have a good handle on what can be done with today's tech, given that he won the best production award from what was literally a "mom-and-pop" studio.

Is the Billie Eilish sweep actually a victory for greater opportunities and real diversification in music? Is it a sign of another crack in the wall of the music business model and the celebrity monoculture?

In any case, the wall remains standing, even if these outsiders were permitted in. Billie is a full-blown celebrity right now. Why is she suddenly Such A Big Thing? It feels like the fad of the moment. Perhaps there's hope that the O'Connell kids won't let it go to their heads, and that they'll go on honing their artistic skills. The industry has been too successful in commodifying and stagnating (if not suffocating) so much talent in the past. I really hope (even at the risk of being foolish) that this long-standing pattern is changing.

I want to move forward to a couple of other things that impressed me from last Sunday's big event.

I am very happy about another Grammy given much further down the list to a record involving two of my favorite musical people. It wouldn't be one's first intuition to associate these two artists, but they have more in common than one might think. Their fascinating collaboration on a musical recording that came out last year won the Grammy for "Best Classical Solo Performance." This one I already knew well, and I was rooting for it.

Wynton Marsalis has attained legendary status in American jazz (and he's only a couple of years older than me). He is also so many other things: in addition to his playing jazz and classical trumpet, directing the Jazz Orchestra at Lincoln Center, and dedicating himself to music education of current and upcoming generations, Wynton is a composer of both contemporary and classical-style music. Not only can this man jam the blues with Eric Clapton; he can also compose a Violin Concerto and a set of solo pieces specifically for one of the most brilliant young classical violinists in Europe, Nicola Benedetti.

This is one of the things I love about Wynton: He is knowledgeable about so many different kinds of music, and he cultivates a wide range of connections with musicians.

He is also a tireless and prolific composer, performer, and teacher. He loves weaving together diverse musical heritages and furthering them in new contexts, so that in effect he is fostering a deepening of musical traditions as they encounter one another. He knows well the many strains that have contributed to the rich music of North America — including Anglo-folk and Celtic traditions.

It's not surprising, therefore, that he is friends with the 32-year-old energetic virtuoso violinist Nicola Benedetti who — in addition to an impressive catalog of classical recordings including magnificent interpretations of the two breathtaking, "impossible" Russian concertos (the Tchaikovsky and the Shostakovich no.1) — also has great interest in the music of her native land... Scotland! (

Award Shows: The Art of Being a Celebrity

Once again I had the annual opportunity to NOT WATCH the Grammy Awards last weekend. And, I didn't watch them. On Monday, however, I read the whole list of winners and nominees with much interest.

I am not a snob. Really, I'm not!