{"id":267,"date":"2016-01-26T19:46:17","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T19:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oortcloudreviews.wordpress.com\/?p=267"},"modified":"2019-05-14T11:58:11","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T15:58:11","slug":"africa-angel-city-chorale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/africa-angel-city-chorale\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa &#8211; Angel City Chorale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-c9-poC5HGw\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">This is amazing! Very innovative and very well done. I&#8217;d love to see these guys live. However, as I am a critical kind of person, it makes me think of some not necessarily important, yet still pesky issues. The song <em>Africa<\/em> was written by a couple of white boys and performed by Toto, an all-white band who had a big hit with it in 1982. I saw the video and they had one black girl in it. I mean is that enough? <!--more-->Likewise here is this really good choir singing this song and there are very few African looking members. Is that enough? So the big question for me is: who decides the racial composition of a given group? I mean if black people boycott the Oscars because there are not enough black nominees do we kowtow to them and include some mediocre performances of black actors and directors?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">I am not racist nor am I a bigot of any kind (at least I&#8217;d like to think so.) I am also not implying that are no stellar black performances and\/or directing feats. I wouldn&#8217;t know as I think the selection process is secret. Also, I&nbsp;couldn&#8217;t&nbsp;possibly have seen all the available films. So, I never really liked Toto and I find any kind of merit awards distasteful. On the matter of <em>Africa<\/em> (the song) let me just say that the Angel City Chorale&#8217;s performance was rousing, inspiring and &nbsp;I would have never imagined that I could actually like that schmaltzy song, but I do now. As for the Oscars well, there is no measuring stick for the fine arts. so if we introduce a race component into the works it just makes it so much more ridiculous. I agree that there should be no racial bias, but I am not sure how we can achieve that in today&#8217;s society. We could break the awards down into race categories&#8221; Best black actor in such and such a role, best Indian actor &#8230; , best Chinese &#8230; and so on. That will actually be quite racist I think. We could also break them down demographically. Meaning that if X is the ratio of black people to the general US population, there should an X% of black nominees in each category and an X% of winners in each category. And then we might have to have a percent of Jews in there which might need to be further broken down into white Jews, black Jews, Indian Jews. And then, we might start to realize how meaningless these distinctions are. We&#8217;d have situations in which a really bad movie might win in its category because it was needed to fulfill some kind of quota.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Sometime&nbsp;ago I used to be a civil servant and once in a while, they would have questionnaires about this or that that I would need to fill out. Whenever there was a race choice, I would pick Asian even though I do not think that is how&nbsp;they would have&nbsp;classified me. I was however not lying, I am Jewish and our home is in Asia.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">So, if you have read this far, I will actually answer the implied question. We should not break our human race down into separate components. We just need to work on teaching everyone else this tenet. People with skin colors, cultures, religions and customs that differ from yours, are here to provide variety. If I was to walk out of my home and meet myself over and over, there would actually be no point in going out the door. Encountering people who are different looking, who have&nbsp;different&nbsp;customs, etc., is what makes going out into the world an exciting event. Personally, I an a xenophile meaning that I love the strange and other&nbsp;worldly, yes most certainly Sci-Fi.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is amazing! Very innovative and very well done. I&#8217;d love to see these guys live. However, as I am a critical kind of person, it makes me think of some not necessarily important, yet still pesky issues. The song &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/africa-angel-city-chorale\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":633,"url":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/black-panther\/","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":0},"title":"Black Panther","date":"February 23, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Two thumbs down! I went to a movie theater to see this one. The teaser or trailer as they sometimes call it had Gil-Scott Heron\u2019s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised in it. I did not know anything about the comic and I was wondering if it had anything to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Movies&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/black-panther-200x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":82,"url":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/elp-1st\/","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":1},"title":"Emerson, Lake &amp; Palmer","date":"August 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VFsCuj_dVsY&w=300&h=183 Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP for you all) were a great supergoup that got together in 1970. Most people had no idea what hit them, but they liked it a lot. I used that as a secret trivia question and still do sometimes. The internet made it easy to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Music&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/VFsCuj_dVsY\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":336,"url":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/grandma-did-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":2},"title":"Grandma Did It","date":"February 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"There are many great bloggers on tumbler. There are a lot more who are not that great, but I try to avoid those ones. Anyway, I ran across Grandma Did It\u00a0\u00a0and there is something about it that grabbed my attention\u00a0I mean there are all these pictures of beautiful women from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Web&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/milana-b-nude-trumpet-femjoy-03-209x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":155,"url":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/velvett-fogg\/","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":3},"title":"Velvett Fogg","date":"September 30, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In 1969 I started spinning platters at an Israeli Disco in Haifa. The place was known only as 120 after its number on Panorama Street on Mount Carmel. Actually it was quite popular and I was developing a reputation especially among the non-English speaking crowd. They would request a song\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Music&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":322,"url":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/uzziah-the-general\/","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":4},"title":"Uzziah &amp; the General","date":"November 6, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I am not sure exactly how I can express what I feel every time I hear this kid sing this song. There are hard things that come to mind, so before I say them, let me start by saying that I have only respect and the best of wishes for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Music&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":521,"url":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/bionic-lover\/","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":5},"title":"Bionic Lover","date":"July 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Christian\u2019s Bionic Lover sucked me right into the narrative with the very first paragraph. A very well thought out introduction to the events that were to follow. Since the subtitle had introduced it as an Erotic Lesbian Romance, I had a good idea about some of the things to follow\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Books&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":695,"href":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/llimeworks.com\/oortcloudreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}