2024 has once again been a particularly cruel year, what with the appalling suffering and genocide taking place in Gaza. At times, the news cycle has been simply overwhelming.Thousands are dead, it's heartbreaking, demoralizing and devastating. Musing about the year in music feels hollow.
However as we consider these tumultuous times, lets be reminded about music’s ability to stir us, allowing us to forge further connections to ourselves and each other. Music reflects society and is often influenced by the political climate. Music can help us to get through the day and stop us falling completely into a pit of total depression and can help transform the heaviest of days.
However you spend or celebrate this time of year, power to the music and the people that make it. Lets try and support local music venues and appreciate their intrinsic value.Music and the places where it is performed can be balms that can brings us together as we face the challenges ahead. Am very fortunate to have a wonderful musical venue called the Cellar Bar based in my hometown of Aberteifi/Cardigan, which is always a pleasure to visit, and well worth a visit if you happen to be in the neighbourhood..
In a year of deep reflection, music stretched and relocated in often unpredictable ways. Bandcamp an artist-focussed platform continues to allow us to support our favorite musicians and labels that enrich our lives and is a good place to discover new music.
In no particular order here are my musical highlights of the year that I have really enjoyed which have managed to lift me, give me strength. The continued silence of Radiohead and Nick Cave in the face of ongoing genocide means none of their music shows up in my list. I urge people though to support numerous international artists and musicians who have united in support of Palestine, prioritizing their principles over potential career risks. Anyway here's to better days ahead, an end to genocide, and a free Palestine. Happy yule. Winter solstice. Heddwch/Peace :-
22. Merciless Accelerating Rhythms - Artists United for a Free Palestine - Various Artists
Based on anti-apartheid artist, leader and poet, June Jordan’s poem, “I Must Become A Menace to MyEnemies,” dedicated by Jordan to Agostinho Neto, former President of The People’s Republic of Angola, the album’s title “Merciless Accelerating Rhythms” encapsulates a form of political organizing beyond “walking politely on the pavements,” and emphasizes “becom[ing] the action of [our] fate,” acting in a form of “retaliation.”
Christmas lights, shimmering and sparkling The smell of food, enticing on tongue Another world lingers though A different reality resides In the corner of our eyes. Beyond the tragedy of hunger The waste of consumerism Austerity that daily bites.
For some now the air drips with sadness As the cold season blows again People on long and tiresome journeys
Drifting among thrift stores Food banks and charity shops As the sky above turns dark and grey Citizens left wanting, running on empty Struggling on, feeding on misery and decay.
Genocide and torture, fucking others lands
The horrors and massacres daily now unfurled
War crimes that can't be disputed
Political enablers, pouring petrol on the fire
Extreme weather, drowning coastlines
Sweet winter, dusted with calamity
Despite it all, Christmas songs play on
People find illusion to escape the bleakness.
Perhaps some small acts of kindness
will be sufficient to keep some gladness alight Against buffeting winds, strength can grow
Stop the endless bombing, a land dripping with blood Allow people of gaza to decorate hearts with hope Fill glasses full of compassion instead of fear With little things, perhaps time will heal
Abandon the past, infiltrate the future Share some sustenance of survival.
Irish American. revolutionary working class poet Lola Ridge was born Rose Emily Ridge on December. 12, 1873, in Dublin, Ireland.Her medical student father died when she was three, so her mother
emigrated to Australia, before moving on to Aotearoa/New Zealand when Lola was 13. Her mother
remarried in 1880 to a Scottish miner and the family lived in a
three-roomed shack on the Hokitikagold fields, among Maori and European
and Chinese immigrants.
At 22, Ridge married a gold-mine manager in Kanieri, Hokitika. Their
first son, born in 1896, died of bronchitis in infancy; their second,
Keith, was born in 1900. In 1901 and 1902, under the name 'Lola’, she
published her first poems, ‘A Deserted Diggings, Maoriland’ and ‘Driving
the Cattle Home’ in Bulletin and Otago Witness. This was a crossroads
moment, when she decided to break with social convention to become an
artist.
In 1903, she left her husband and took her son to her mother in
Sydney, where she studied art at the Académie Julienne and wrote her
first book, Verses. In 1907, her mother and stepfather both died, and
she left for San Francisco at the age of 34.
After making a name for
herself there, she moved on to New York City’s Greenwich Village,in 1908 after she left her son in an orphanage.The move to New York saw the birth of Lola Ridge, modernist poet,
utopian anarchist and labour activist, claiming to be ten years younger
than she was. To support herself, she worked as an illustrator, factory
worker, poet, and model.
She quickly became the center of the thriving radical scene and the modernist literary movement, contributing to and editing a number of “little” magazines. She was heavily involved
in various leftist causes, and her radical politics were easily
discernible in both her actions and her words.
In New York by 1908, she became Emma Goldman's confidante. By then Ridge had become the chief organizer of
anarchists at the Ferrer Center in Manhattan, a task which honed her
progressive New Zealand radicalism into a love of Kropotkin-style
anarchy. She heard passionate speeches by the most prominent
free-thinkers and immigrants in the country and organized classes in
everything from Esperanto to music appreciation. When describing.what
America had to offer the immigrant, Ridge wrote: “On my board are bitter
apples/And honey served on thorns.” She felt very deeply about the
stinting of its promised freedom."
In 1916 she supported the cause of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings,
convicted (and much later pardoned) after having been framed as "usual
suspects" for the Preparedness Day Bombing; and she was arrested in the 1920s for protesting against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti (Italian
anarchists who were charged with a bank robbery in which two guards were
killed, convicted in a ludicrous trial and sentenced to death. A
worldwide campaign and a full confession by the real robber failed to
prevent this sentence being carried out. who didn't get a fair deal from a highly prejudiced court at a
time of terrorism hysteria - one critic compared the chances
of an Italian getting a fair trial in Boston to a black person getting
one in the American South).In 1916 she supported the cause of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings,
convicted (and much later pardoned) outside the Massachusetts State House, after facing down a rearing police horse
She published poems
in Emma Goldman’s radical journal Mother Earth and in The New Republic. Some of these poems were collected in The Ghetto and Other Poems (1918), a vivid collection of works evoking the brutal life of the working classes of New York City.The title poem celebrates the Jewish immigrants of the Lower East Side.
Rooted in early 20th-century New York City, The Ghetto and other Poems anticipates
much of what was to emerge amongst the “objectivists,” apparent in
Ridge’s focus on the working poor and their intrinsic role in the
composition and machinations of the city. Everywhere the city, its
people, and their conditions are conjoined, as in “Faces” where “A late
snow beats/ with cold white fists upon the tenements.” The conditions
and exploitation of the working poor engaged with in this book carry an
intense consciousness of the ongoing Great War and its implications, a
tone that tempers every atmosphere in the collection :
Ridge soon began publishing poems in other journals, including the Dial, Poetry, and the Literary Digest.
She became involved in a circle of poets that included William Carlos
Williams, Marianne Moore, and Waldo Frank, and she worked as associate
editor of the journal Others.
Ridge was an anarchist concerned with the larger political picture but
concerned as well with intimate life. Well ahead of her time, she
supported the rights of women, laborers, blacks, Jews, immigrants, and
homosexuals (she identified and was identified as bisexual). She
advocated individual liberty as well as social justice.
A year after the publication of The Ghetto and Other Poems,
Ridge gave a speech in Chicago entitled “Women and the Creative Will,” in
which she argued that sexually constructed gender roles hindered female
identity development. This was at least a decade before such ideas were
popular, even among women’s rights advocates, making her a model for us
today as we struggle in a world beset by ever more sophisticated
versions of the sexist, racist, heterosexist, and xenophobic threats
that face each new generation.
Ridge worked on an expanded version of her speech for years until
Viking, her publisher, told her it wouldn’t sell. The title poem of her
second book, Sun-up and Other Poems, which was a huge success is told in the voice of a
bad girl who beats her doll, bites her nurse, wonders “if God has
spoiled Jimmy” after he exposes himself, and intimates that her
imaginary friend is her bisexual half.
She
modelled a practice of engagement in her personal life by actively
participating in rallies and protests against injustice with ferocious spirit, and living in
poverty in solidarity with the poor, giving her work an authenticity
worth investigating.
Solo and broke in the next decade, she traveled to Baghdad and Mexico
– and took a lover at sixty-one. Her five books of poetry contain poems
about lynching, execution, race riots, and imprisonment. Her writing is vigorous and electric, and of great power and intensity.,
“Anything that burns you” was the advice she gave English critic
Alice Hunt Bartlett when she asked what poets should be writing in 1925.
“I write about something that I feel intensely. How can you help writing about something you feel intensely?”
Always an active social protester, Ridge participated in protests, marches, and pickets with ferocious spirit.She was very committed in her beliefs, leading a life of poverty even though she didn’t have to. Her writing is vigorous and electric, her Red Flag
(1927) was a collection of poems celebrating the Russian Revolution.
Ridge’s strongly emotional, almost mystical work became somewhat out of
fashion as radical social realism gave way to modernist avant-garde in
the art world.
Her later collections included Firehead (1930) a long poetic allegory on the execution of the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, and Dance of Fire (1935), the latter written after her trip to Mexico on a Guggenheim Fellowship.Her reputation as a poet developed, and she was twice awarded the
Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry (1935, 1936) and was awarded a
Guggenheim Poetry Fellowship (1935).
Throughout her life, Ridge grappled with a variety of ills, ranging from
an eating disorder and moments of severe economic insecurity, to the
threat of political repression during the 1919 – 1920 Palmer raids on
leftists and anarchists, and what may have been a nervous breakdown. She
weathered them all,until she died in Brooklyn, NYC, of pulmonary tuberculosis on March 19th 1941 aged 67. Shortly before her death she wrote, “Nice is the one adjective in the world that is laughable applied to any single thing I have ever written.”
The New York Times declared her “one of America’s best poets”
when she died, and in their obituary describe her as “one of the leading contemporary poets” who “found in the meeting of many races in America the hope of a new world " but her interest in radicalism, feminism, and
experimental poetry wrote her out of literary history,possibly in part due to the inhospitality of mid-twentieth century America towards socialists and communists,. but she remains a trailblazer for women, poetry, and human rights who was far ahead of her time.
Few today may have heard of Ridge, but her impact on America society cannot
be denied, a poet whose work brought
real, tangible change. Ridge’s poem about Sacco and Vanzetti, for
instance, was duplicated by the thousands, passed hand-to-hand among
activists, and would help free the labor activist Tom Mooney from unjust
incarceration.and she remains significant for the courage with which she addressed social
issues in her writing and for her pivotal position among the modernist
and women writers of twentieth-century America. I would strongly recommend the book Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet, by Terese Svoboda, Schaffner Press, 2016. for a further insight into this revolutionary poet's life.
Dream - Lola Ridge
I have a dream to fill the golden sheath of a remembered day…. (Air heavy and massed and blue as the vapor of opium… domes fired in sulphurous mist… sea quiescent as a gray seal… and the emerging sun spurting up gold over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay….) But the day is an up-turned cup and its sun a junk of red iron guttering in sluggish-green water – where shall I pour my dream?
Freedom- Lola Ridge
Let men be free! All violence is but the agony Of caged things fighting blindly for the right To be and breathe and burn their little hour. Bare spirits—not debight In smooth-set garments of philosophy; But near earth forces, elemental, crude, Scarce knowing their invicible, rude power; Within the close of their primeval servitude Half comatose.
Who, ravening for their depleted dower Of so much sun and air and warmth and food, And the same right to procreate and love As the beasts have and the birds, Strike wild—not having words To parry with—at the cold force above.
Let men be free! Hate is the price Of servitude, paid covertly; and vice But the unclean recoil of tortured flesh Whipped through the centuries within a mesh Spun out of priestly art. Oh men, arise, be free!—Who breaks one bar Of tyranny in this so bitter star Has cleansed its bitterness in part.
To the Others - Lola Ridge
I see you, refulgent ones, Burning so steadily Like big white arc lights… There are so many of you. I like to watch you weaving— Altogether and with precision Each his ray— Your tracery of light, Making a shining way about America.
I note your infinite reactions— In glassware And sequin And puddles And bits of jet— And here and there a diamond…
But you do not yet see me, Who am a torch blown along the wind, Flickering to a spark But never out.
Secrets- Lola Ridge
Secrets
infesting my half-sleep…
did you enter my wound from another wound
brushing mine in a crowd…
or did I snare you on my sharper edges
as a bird flying through cobwebbed trees at sun-up
carries off spiders on its wings?
Secrets,
running over my soul without sound,
only when dawn comes tip-toeing
ushered by a suave wind,
and dreams disintegrate
like breath shapes in frosty air,
I shall overhear you, bare-foot,
scatting off into the darkness….
I shall know you, secrets
by the litter you have left
and by your bloody foot-prints.
Submerged - Lola Ridge
I have known only my own shallows— Safe, plumbed places, Where I was wont to preen myself.
But for the abyss I wanted a plank beneath And horizons...
I was afraid of the silence And the slipping toe-hold...
Oh, could I now dive Into the unexplored deeps of me— Delve and bring up and give All that is submerged, encased, unfolded, That is yet the best.
Reveille - Lola Ridge
Come forth, you workers!
Let the fires go cold—
Let the iron spill out, out of the troughs—
Let the iron run wild Like a red bramble on the floors—
76 years ago today, on December 10 1948, the UN formally adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights .Conceived after the horrors of the Second World War, this document was the first of its kind to enshrine the rights and freedoms of all human beings into international law.
The Declaration set out, for the first time in history, those fundamental human rights that Governments all over the world undertook to respect, protect and promote. .In 1950, the Assembly passed resolution 423 (V), inviting all States and interested organizations to observe 10 December of each year as Human Rights Day.
And ever since that auspicious day it has stood as the first major stride forward in ensuring that the rights of every human across the globe are protected. From the most basic human needs such as food, shelter, and water, all the way up to access to free and uncensored information, such has been the goals and ambitions laid out that day.
The Declaration proclaims a simple, yet powerful idea :
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights," "They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."
These rights are the birthright of all people: it does not matter, what country we live in and even who we are. Because we are human, we have these rights; and Governments are bound to protect them. They are not a reward for good behaviour, nor they are optional or the privilege of a few- they are inalienable entitlements of all people, at all times- regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. And because they are universal, they are also matters of legitimate concern; and standing up for them is a responsibility that binds us all.
It is the most translated document in the world, available in more than 500 languages. When the General Assembly adopted the Declaration, with 48 states in favor and eight abstentions, it was proclaimed as a "common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations", towards which individuals and societies should "strive by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance".
Although the Declaration with its broad range of political, civil, social, cultural and economic rights is not a binding document, it inspired more than 60 human rights instruments which together constitute an international standard of human rights. It has helped shape human rights all over the world.
Today the general consent of all United Nations Member States on the basic Human Rights laid down in the Declaration makes it even stronger and emphasizes the relevance of Human Rights in our daily lives.The High Commissioner for Human Rights, as the main United Nations rights official, plays a major role in coordinating efforts for the yearly observation of Human Rights Day.
Sadly in 2024, powerful nations call upon human rights to justify sanctions, coups and wars, while ignoring, or even systematically violating, human rights of the powerless when it serves their political purpose. Critical voices are under attack and the backlash against human rights is growing. Legitimate protests are curbed, repression is rising, and public space is shrinking.The principles of the UDHR are constantly under threat. Right now, people around the world are being oppressed, silenced and abused, and their human rights violated, Today ons Human Rights the world allows the state of Israel to lock 2.2 million people into a strip of land less than a third the size of London and bomb them at will.
Human Rights Day reminds us that there is much to be done around the world to protect those who cannot voice or respond to perpetrated discrimination and violence caused by governments, vigilantes, and individual actors. In many instances, those who seek to divide people for subjective means and for totalitarian reasons do so around the globe without fear of retribution. Violence, or the threat of violence, perpetrated because of differences in a host of physical and demographic contrasts and dissimilarities is a blight on our collective humanity now and a danger for our human future.
Human Rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person in the world, from birth until death. They apply regardless of where you are from, what you believe or how you choose to live your life. They should never be taken away, these basic rights are based on values such as dignity, fairness, equality, respect and independence. But human rights are not just abstract concepts, they are defined and protected by law.
The aim of of Human Rights Day is to raise awareness around the world of our inalienable rights – rights to basic needs such as water, food, shelter and decent working conditions. In the UK we are protected by the Human Rights Act 1998, that sets out the fundamental rights and freedoms that everyone in the UK is entitled to. But we have seen it threatened by successive governments. They don’t like having their authority questioned and their power challenged.
Meanwhile in other countries, especially developing countries, the laws are not in place to protect people and to ensure that their basic needs are met.
For millions of people, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is still just a dream. Many people around the world are still denied the most basic of human rights on a daily basis. Women’s rights are still repeatedly denied and marginalised throughout the globe, despite 76 years of the milestone declaration on human rights. Confronted with widespread gender-based violence, hate and discrimination, women’s well-being and ability to live full and active lives in society are being seriously challenged.
This year the theme for Human Rights Day is “Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now,”
"Human rights have a tangible positive impact and offer practical solutions. By embracing the full power of human rights as the path to the future we want, the world can become more peaceful and equal," the UN said announcing the theme.
A call to acknowledge the importance and relevance of human rights in our everyday lives. We have an opportunity to change perceptions by speaking up against hate speech, correcting misinformation, and countering disinformation. Now is the moment to rally together and breathe new life into the global movement for human rights.
This year’s focus encourages people to come together to address pressing issues such as inequality, discrimination, and the need for justice and dignity for all. The theme inspires us to create a world where everyone’s rights are respected, regardless of race, gender, religion, or economic status.
Equality is a concept that’s hard to pin down, yet at its core, we can agree that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and in rights. No matter of religion, race, colour, sex, language, sexual orientation, age, or status. These characteristics are mere surface differences. Reducing inequality requires tackling discrimination and biases deeply engrained in our society.
As we commemorate Human Rights Day, lets reflect on how we can contribute to this global effort. Whether through advocacy, education, or simply standing up against injustice in our communities, every action counts. Together, we can make a difference and move closer to a world where human rights are truly universal.
Human rights are not just lofty ideals. They are practical tools that empower individuals and communities. Let’s use this day to inspire change and to remind ourselves of the power we hold to create a more just and equitable world for all. “Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now” is not just a theme—it’s a call to action for each of us to play our part in protecting and promoting human rights today and for the future.
Racism, xenophobia and intolerance are still problems prevalent in all societies, and discriminatory practices are widespread, particularly regarding the targeting of migrants and refugees. including in rich countries where men, women and children who have committed no crime are often held in detention for prolonged periods. They are frequently discriminated against by landlords, employers and state-run authorities, and stereotyped and vilified by some political parties, media organizations and members of the public.
Many other groups face discrimination to a greater or lesser degree. Some of them are easily definable such as persons with disabilities, stateless people, gays and lesbians, members of particular castes and the elderly. Others may span several different groups and find themselves discriminated against on several different levels as a result.
Those who are not discriminated against often find it hard to comprehend the suffering and humiliation that discrimination imposes on their fellow individual human beings. Nor do they always understand the deeply corrosive effect it has on society at large.
Nearly a billion people do not have enough food to eat, and even in wealthier countries like the UK and the US where there is an increasing growth in food banks. Poverty is a leading factor in the failure to protect the economic and social rights of many individuals around the world. For the half of the world population living on less than $2.50 a day, human rights lack any practical meaning.
For this Human Rights Day we must continue to stand with all people targeted for giving expression to the vision and values embodied in the declaration. Every day must be Human Rights Day, as every person in the world is entitled to the full and indivisible range of human rights every day of his or her life.Global human rights are not selective in their value or meaning, nor are they limited to a day or time of year. Until all people have access to these human rights we must stand up, advocate for, and insist that more must be done.
The right to security, the right to dignity, the right to be free from violence , the right to be free from displacement, the right Right to access to adequate food, water, sanitation, clothing, housing, The rights denied to Palestinians in Gaza are not privileges. Human Rights Day should serve as a reminder to act for those lacking basic rights each and everyday.
It’s important to acknowledge that human rights, have rarely been gifted to us through benevolent leaders. Rather, they have been won after long fought battles and collective struggle. We need to recognize and pay tribute to human rights defenders the world over, putting their lives on the line for others, our voice must be their voice.
As thousands of struggles have proved, human rights are a vital lever in the quest for equality and social justice. If governments will no longer protect human rights it will be up to us, the people to keep on fighting for them and ensure our human right are always upheld.
Lets work to achieve a better life for all. And more importantly, to continue to take a stand for people whose human rights are still not being met across the globe, find a way to use our voices for those who may not have an opportunity to advocate for themselves. At the same time strengthening international law and justice in order to end impunity, and bring to justice those guilty of violations of human rights and offer protection to their victims.
Today is an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of human rights in rebuilding the world we want, the need for global solidarity as well as our interconnectedness and shared humanity. A future of cooperation among citizens, peoples and between nations. It is a a prerequisite for a more peaceful future where disputes are solved through negotiation and diplomacy.
Stand up against injustices when you see them. Support organisations and engage in conversations that foster understanding and respect. Human rights are everyone’s business. Each of us has a role in promoting and protecting them. By doing so, we contribute to a world where everyone can live with dignity and freedom.
"If your neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor, "- Desmond Tutu
Today marks the International day of the Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the General Assembly on December 9th 1948 one day before the adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined the responsibility of states to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, which weighed heavily on the world's conscience in the aftermath of the Second World War, which claimed the lives of some 70 million people.
The purpose of adopting these documents at the global level was to ensure that following the horrors of the Holocaust, the convention outlined the international community’s commitment to say ‘never again’. Both documents raised hopes for a better post-war order, but in 2024 we find that unfortunately they have not been sufficiently realised for all people, as many armed conflicts continue to take place around the world, with civilians, especially the most vulnerable such as children, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities, suffering the most.
The slogan Never Again symbolised the determination of anti-fascists and the labour movement that after the Holocaust, genocide must never happen again - that no one should be annihilated because of an accident of birth and who they are.
“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”
These are the words of Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He, along with 1.3 million other Jews, was held prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, and he was also one of only 200,000 (approx) Jews who survived it.
Elie went on to write a number of books about his own personal story and that of the Holocaust (also known as 'the Shoah’ in Hebrew) in general, and his works — along with the likes of Primo Levi (author of If This Is A Man) and Anne Frank, whose diary is famous across the world — are some of the most defining stories of that era. They are books I would implore everyone to read, especially as a 2021 study found that over half of Britons did not know that six million Jewish people were murdered during the Holocaust, and less than a quarter thought that two million or fewer were killed.
And though it is easy to leave history in the past, events like The Holocaust must be remembered out of respect for those who lost their lives, for those who overcame the most severe form of persecution and went on to become productive members of the communities in which they settled and for those who are yet to even step foot on this planet. We must, as Elie Wiesel says, “bear witness” to these events, and pass their stories and their lessons onto the next generation, so that we can avoid such horrors happening again.
The Genocide Convention (article 2) defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group … ", including: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The Convention confirms that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or war, is a crime under international law which parties to the Convention undertake “to prevent and to punish” (article 1). The primary responsibility to prevent and stop genocide lies with the State.
The principles of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide are inextricably linked to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) against genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In 2005, states undertook to take appropriate measures to protect populations within their territory from processes that may, in certain circumstances, lead to mass atrocities.
The word “genocide” did not exist prior to World War II. It is a specific term coined in 1942 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) and first used in print in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. After the Holocaust, the word “genocide” was established as a legal term for a specifically defined international crime. to commit. After the Holocaust, this convention represented an international commitment to prevent the killing of innocent individuals because of their group identity.
The International day of the Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime was declared in 2015 by the UN on the initiative of Armenia.
The primary goal of the day is the fight against genocide, reminding people about the irreversible loss of the humanity caused by genocide. Commemoration of the memory of genocide victims is an important step for preserving historical memory which is one of the means to ensure the genocide prevention. However, Genocides continued throughout the twentieth century in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. The international community failed to prevent these crimes.
Today is also the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention which was the first international human rights treaty that not only provided the definition of genocide but also raised issues of elimination of impunity and justice towards the victims. The Convention was ratified by 153 UN member states.
On this day, we remember the victims of Genocide and encourage people around the world to learn from the past, and take action to prevent future atrocities. Genocide is not over. The crime that took place in the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur continues as you read this today. Today, other groups of people continue to live in a constant state of fear from genocidal violence, this is happening to Tutsi people from North and South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rohingya people in Myanmar, and the people of Palestine, along with several other countries.
On 5th December, 2024 the world’s largest human rights organization, Amnesty International, added its voice to states, UN experts, and thousands of legal scholars and historians who have reached the same conclusion. Amnesty found that, based on policies, actions, and omissions since 7 October, 2023, Israel is committing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in besieged and occupied Gaza. It called on states to impose targeted and lawful sanctions on apartheid Israel
Let's not forget on this day that it's been over a year since the far-right Israeli government began its current ongoing genocide against Palestinian people, displacing and killing thousands of Palestinians.
Widespread abuse is currently being carried out by Israeli army of genocide against civilians in northern Gaza after forcing them out of shelters. Yet the world watches in silence.
The ongoing suffering in Gaza reminds us that states must fulfil their duty to protect civilians, ensure accountability, and prevent atrocity crimes including genocide. Today, on the International Day of Genocide Prevention we must stand united in our commitment to protect human dignity and prevent atrocities around the world.
Genocide doesn’t start overnight,it begins with hate, dehumanization, and silence.Genocide can be prevented. Every single person has both the opportunity and the responsibility to treat others with respect and dignity. Each person is a factor in deciding what kind of world we all live in and everyone can choose what kind of impact to make.
Never has so little been requested of all those who see/know to act against genocide. Never has so small a 'peaceful' gesture offered such potentially large impacts.Together, we can break the cycle.
Every day of Israel's genocide is a new rubicon crossed. A new level of horror adding to a world-shifting trauma that will pass from generation to generation. The Palestinian people cannot be obliterated but our collective humanity can be and is being erased. No human deserves death in the name of politics or power. Peace not war is the only solution for humanity.
In short, International Day of Genocide Prevention 2024 is arriving just as Israel are literally being judged on the world stage for an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. It is all the more critical for us to speak out and name a genocide that is literally unfolding before us in real time. No matter how uncomfortable or painful the prospect.
On International Day of Genocide Prevention we must remember all those who lost their innocent and precious lives in the past. Remember, it didn’t start with gas chambers. It started with politicians dividing the people with ‘us vs. them.’ It started with intolerance and hate speech, and when people stopped caring, became desensitized, and turned a blind eye.
“Never Again” was always meant to mean never again for all regardless of skin colour, religion or ethnicity.We are all human. We all bleed the same colour, red. When we say 'Never Again', we have to mean it.
“Never again” means we must never see the slaughter that we saw during the Holocaust again. And it doesn’t matter who these crimes are being committed against, just as it doesn’t matter who the perpetrators of the crimes are.
The utter mayhem and cruelty unleashed by the Netanyahu regime in Gaza forces us to ask the question, "What is the value of a human life?" At what point does humanity end and barbarism begin?
This International Day of Genocide Prevention let us find the courage to speak the words that must be spoken.No more genocide. Take action now! Together, let’s end this! https://loom.ly/XQFQLgk
November 29 marks the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.This year, it arrives at the darkest moment in Palestinian history as Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues unabated.
For the international community, this day is a yearly reminder to mark the anniversary of the UN General Assembly mandates contained in resolutions 32/40 B of 2 December 1977, 34/65 D of 12 December 1979, and subsequent resolutions adopted under agenda item “Question of Palestine.”
On that day in 1947, the General Assembly adopted resolution 181 (II), which came to be known as the Partition Resolution.That resolution provided for the establishment in Palestine of a “Jewish State” and an “Arab State”. Of the two States to be created under this resolution, only one, Israel, has so far come into being.
As early as December 1948, the UN General Assembly also called for refugee return, property restitution and compensation.and has also said that the Nakba serves as a reminder that close to 6 million Palestinians remain refugees to this day, scattered throughout the region.
The International Day of Solidarity is an opportunity for the international community to focus its attention on the fact that the question of Palestine remains unresolved and that the Palestinian people have yet to attain their inalienable rights as defined by the General Assembly, namely, the right to self-determination without external interference, the right to national independence and sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property, from which they have been displaced.
In response to the call of the United Nations, various activities are undertaken annually by Governments and civil society in observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. These activities include the issuance of special messages of solidarity with the Palestinian people.Resolution 181 and to recall its efforts to grant the Palestinians their sovereignty and independence from Israeli occupation.
The day reaffirms solidarity with the steadfast people of Palestine and helps keeping the Palestinian cause live and present in the international events and the global conscience,For the Palestinian people, however, this day is more likely a yearly reminder of one thing only: how the international community has failed and continues to fail them.
Whether it’s the ongoing system of apartheid, the ethnic cleansing and other acts of genocide, or Israel’s impunity and ongoing support from its European and global allies, the crisis of international law and accountability is currently not illustrated any clearer and more tragically than in the shameful mistreatment of the Palestinian people.
For over two decades, Gaza has suffered a suffocating siege, pushing Gaza into severe poverty. Lately and since October 7, 2023, the genocide inflicted by the Israeli Occupation, which has been recognized by the ICJ as such, has led to an alarming rise in the death toll in Gaza which demands immediate and urgent global action.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and wounded.Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes-but nowhere is safe in Gaza. Most of them have no home to return to, since they have been intentionally destroyed or damaged beyond repair. In addition to all universities, the majority of the schools and hospitals, as well as places of worship have been destroyed. Diseases and famine, due to severe deprivation of food and essential medication, are striking fear in the hearts of an exhausted population. All these collective punishment measures imposed on the Palestinian people, is causing civilians to live with overwhelmed pain, anguish and heartache.
This dire humanitarian and socio-economic situation in Palestine in general, and refugee camps in particular, place additional burdens on international community to meet basic needs and fulfil their commitments to supporting Palestine refugees.
A recent law passed by the Israeli Knesset seeks to ban the UNRWA’s operations within areas deemed under “Israeli sovereignty,” specifically in Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank. The new legislation prohibits UNRWA from operating any offices, providing any services, or conducting any activities in the territory it occupies, effectively aiming to force the agency out of the region it has served for decades.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) “concluded that it is plausible that Israel’s actions in Gaza Strip could amount to genocide and issued provisional measures, in which it ordered Israel to take all measures to prevent any acts contrary to the 1948 Genocide Convention”.
Furthermore, on 19 July 2024, the ICJ reminded all states of their responsibilities. Its advisory opinion concluded that Israel’s continued occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful and needs to end as soon as possible, including the cessation of any new settlement activities.
This reality in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, urges the international community, including not only States but also non-state actors such as businesses, to do everything they can to implement all these resolutions to end the Israeli apartheid and occupation of the Palestinian territory.
At at a time when the Palestinians have endured over 400 days of an ongoing genocidal war, which has led to more than 150,000 casualties, the majority of them being children, women and the elderly, killed and maimed by the Israeli occupying forces, who are deliberately and systematically targeting civilians, in a repetition of what happened in the Nakba of 1948 and tragedy of 1967, aimed at displacing our people and seizing their land and the resources.
Israel has reduced Gaza to a living hell, its murderous actions backed by material and diplomatic support from the most powerful governments in the world. Τhe massacre in Palestine, the brutal and unacceptable bombing of the hospitals, the killing of a child every 10 minutes, are crimes which are committed with the provocative tolerance and support that Israel receives from the USA, the UK the European Union and the rest of their allies.
The root cause of this situation is the occupation and illegal settlement of the occupied Palestinian territories by Israel and the continuous, daily crimes and the blockades of Gaza that have been committed against the Palestinian people for decades.
Although the circumstances of Palestinians have changed over the years, their core demands for liberation and return. and the need for resistance and solidarity to achieve this have not.The tenacity of Palestinians in struggling for their most basic of rights, and the continued solidarity of people across the world in response, offer a ray of hope that neither alarming rightward drift of Israeli politics nor the bleak geopolitical landscape can diminish.
The ongoing challenge for Palestinians, and those engaged in their struggle, this 29 November, is to translate this sentiment of hope into tangible structures capable of moving towards a different political reality. Today and everyday lets re-affirm our solidarity with all Palestinians in historic Palestine and their right to self-determination' with Palestinian political prisoners (women, men and children) in Apartheid Israel's jails, and with the millions of refugees struggling to make their legally guaranteed right of Return a reality.
The massacre of Gazans, as well as their steadfast resistance to occupation, has generated a global movement in solidarity with Palestine,with millions around the world organising to show they reject this mass murder and challenge the complicity of our governments and institutions in the Israeli war machine and the apartheid regime which powers it. Forcing governments to row back their unconditional support for Israel; the UK and others have suspended some arms sales to Israel.
But with the bombs still raining on Gaza and Israeli politicians making plans to annex more Palestinian land, far more is needed. An urgent international intervention is needed to stop this tragedy that is taking place before the eyes and ears of the world
In drawing attention to the struggle of the Palestinian people we cannot but remember the firm stand that the United Nations took against racism, against the evil of Apartheid and supported the liberation struggle of the people of South Africa.
At the time his people were liberated, the celebrated leader of the liberation struggle for South Africa Nelson Mandela made a profound statement, which resonates around the world to this day. He said: “For many years the United Nations stood firm against racism. Because of that a worldwide consensus was built against this unfair system. We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Today on International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People wherever you are in the world you can activate your solidarity by joining and sharing existing campaigns that can put an end to Israel;s impunity. Apartheid is still a crime against humanity.
Even if you’ve already emailed your MP, now is a good time to follow up and hold them to account. If you live outside the UK you can use MAP’s email as a template to write to your representatives where you live.
If you post on social media use your platform, no matter its size, to raise awareness of what the Israeli military is doing to the Palestinians, it can be a powerful way to mobilise those around you and show the world you stand with the Palestinian people.
The international community must take serious and decisive action to stop the grave Israeli violations against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the entire occupied Palestinian territory and work on lifting the injustice and suffering of the Palestinian people.
We must keep demanding from our governments that they take immediate action to end the Genocide in Gaza, protecting civilian lives and ensuring unrestricted humanitarian aid. End the Israeli Occupation of all Palestinian Territories and work towards a sustainable solution that offers the Palestinians the right to establish their own sovereign State with secured borders. Hold Israel accountable for violations of international law and human rights and institute justice. Justice with accountability through legal measures, such as those of the International Criminal Court and the ICJ. Stop military aid to Israel and institute economic measures to pressure Israel to retaliate
We must Implore the United Nations to enforce its own resolutions on Palestine, and governments to act on all the UN resolutions related to Palestine and enforce the full realisation of economic, political, social and cultural rights for Palestinians.
There can be no peace with Occupation.Today and every day, let us stand in solidarity with the aspirations of the Palestinian people to achieve their inalienable rights and support them to build a future of peace, justice, security and dignity. The occupation will end and Palestinian rights will prevail, no matter how long it takes. From the rivers to the sea, Free Palestine!
Harry Everett Smith anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, abstract painter, experimental filmmaker, full-time eccentric, counter-cultural magus and collector as well as a radical nonconformist and one of the most original, influential artists of the mid-century American avant-garde.whose work defies categorization. was born on May 29, 1923, in Portland, Oregon, but spent most of his childhood in Whatcom County.
Smith’s father, Robert James, first brought the family to Bellingham, where he took a job at Pacific American Fisheries, a cannery founded by his own father shortly after the turn of the century. At the same time, Smith’s mother, Mary Louise, took a teaching position on the Lummi Indian reservation, where she would work from 1925 to 1932.
In the late 1930s, Robert Smith lost his job at Pacific American and the family relocated to Anacortes, where he became night watchman for another cannery. Eventually the Smiths would return to Bellingham in the 1940s, when Harry Smith was in high school.
Although the Smiths had characteristic Northwest jobs, they were far from the characteristic Northwest family. For a start they lived in seperate houses and both Robert and Mary were believers in the occult and self-proclaimed Pantheist Theosophists, and interested in the work of Madame Blavatsky.
Theosophists,were a nineteenth-century offshoot of Hindu and Buddhist teachings which held that the search for the Divine was an individual one. In that sense, Theosophists believed that all organized religion held some measure of truth, since each laid a pathway for the individual to become closer to God.
If the family’s spiritual beliefs didn’t set them apart from others, their living arrangements certainly did. Robert was frequently absent from home (sometimes due to work, sometimes to avoid family duties), and Mary was frequently in the company of other men. Harry Smith himself would remember many days in which he was plunked down at the local movie theater while Mary entertained her male friends. In fact, one of the men Mary may have seen (albeit before Harry was born) was the occultist/mystic Aleister Crowley who spent some time in the United States.
Although Mary may have been acquainted with Crowley, there is no evidence of any romantic relationship between the two. Nonetheless, later in life Harry Smith would sometimes claim that he was Crowley’s illegitimate son, one of many myths and exaggerations he was prone to tell.
Another was that Mary Louise was actually the Grand Duchess Anastasia who escaped the Russian Revolution in 1918 after being spirited through Siberia and sailing across the Bering Strait to Alaska.
Stemming in part from his mother’s work on the Lummi reservation, as a young man Harry Smith became interested in tribal languages and customs, in particular those of the Lummi, Swinomish, and Samish.
By age 15, in 1938, he was a frequent visitor amongst these tribes while working on a dictionary of local tribal dialects, it was remarkable that such a young boy could get access to these closed societies where white contact had been very limited.
He also recorded their songs and dances, the beginning of a lifelong fascination with capturing the language and art of others on audio, film, or canvas. Virtually all of Smith’s early Indian recordings are now lost, and the few surviving pieces were recorded with such crude equipment that they are now difficult to decipher.
Even before he was out of high school, Harry Smith had learned Kiowa sign language, spoke the Kwakiutl language, and was in regular correspondence with academics from the University of Washington’s newly founded anthropology department.
UW professor Melville Jacobs once noted that, at the mere age of 19, Harry Smith was “years ahead ofhis chronological age, in mental attainment” In 1943 his work was even featured in AmericanMagazine; the article, reprinted in Darrin Daniel’s Harry Smith: Fragments of a Northwest Life, shows a bespectacled young Harry recording a Lummi spirit dance on a portable phonograph-recording machine.
The residents allowed the earnest boy to study their customs and take down genealogies, snap photographs, make sketches and paintings, and record songs, stories, activities and sacred events on a 78-rpm disc-cutting machine.
In the case of the Lummi, this was the first time they had been recorded by anyone. To this day, his time with the Native American nations remains a miraculous phenomenon; Smith and his like-minded peer Bill Hohn were given access to ceremonies even professional anthropologists had never witnessed. By all accounts, this relationship with Northwest Coast indigenous cultures was a respectful, creative collaboration.
It was also during his teenage years that Harry Smith began collecting, first Pacific Northwest Indian artifacts (many of which he donated to the Burke Museum at the University of Washington), then early American folk records.
However, in spite of his careful observation and recognized work as an anthropologist with the Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest, Smith was at the same time a notoriously unreliable source of information about his own life. The various myths he created and encouraged about his childhood and life before 1946 do little to render many of his claims to be credible.
Although Mary may have been acquainted with Aleister Crowley, there is no evidence of any romantic relationship between the two. Nonetheless, over the course of many years he claimed, variously: to be the mystic Aleister Crowley’s illegitimate son; that his mother was the “missing” Grand Duchess Anastasia who escaped the Russian Revolution in 1918 after being spirited through Siberia and sailing across the Bering Strait to Alaska that he smoked marijuana for the first time with Woodie Guthrie in the back of the Sun studios in Memphis, Tennessee, none of which were true, all just a few of the many myths and exaggerations he was prone to tell over the years
All his false biographical claims share a certain self-aggrandizing feature; when considered in this context,alongside his claim that he began making his first abstract films in 1939 when he was 16.
However what is indisputable is Smith’s obsessive appetite for objects that fascinated him, which over the years included the world's largest assortment of paper airplanes (later donated to the Smithsonian) paper airplanes, string art, Seminole Indian textiles, and Ukrainian Easter eggs, that would become a major part of his life..
Smith like his parents was also a Thelemite who had a lifelong interest in the occult and esoteric fields of knowledge, leading him to speak of his art in alchemical and cosmological terms.In the late Forties he began work with Charles Stansfeld Jones and Albert Handel. Smith also created a set of irregularly-shaped Tarot cards, one of which was adapted for the color Ordo Templi Orientis degree certificates, and used with several others for the paperback "HolyBooks of Thelema" which Harry designed.
He also studied the Enochian system in depth, compiling the only known concordance of the Enochian language with the aid of Khem Caigan, his assistant throughout much of the 70s and early 80s. Harry was a familiar figure in the New York Ordo Templi Orientis, or O.T.O., from the late 1970s and, although he was never a member of the O.T.O, however in 1986 he was consecrated a bishop in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.
After graduating from high school, Harry Smith entered the University of Washington in 1943 to pursue his anthropology studies full-time. He had already done impressive work even before entering the University, but although his courses mirrored his personal interests at the time, he was eventually to abandon them.
In 1944 Smith took a short trip to California, where he was introduced to the Berkeley and San Francisco areas, and smoked marijuana for the first time. It was a visit that would change his life.
Convinced that he could not return to his studies, Smith dropped out of the University, did a brief stint on the Boeing assembly line at the tail end of World War II, and in 1947, moved to the Bay Area.
When Harry Smith returned to Washington in 1949 for his mother’s funeral, it would be his last known visit to the Pacific Northwest. Yet in later years he often spoke of his upbringing here and in his work frequently returned, in various ways, to the anthropological studies he began in Anacortes and Bellingham.
After settling near San Francisco, Smith took a job as an anthropologist’s assistant and began circulating amongst the area’s Bohemian set. Here he also began to flex his creative muscles, first by experimenting with film.
Smith was a slow worker, but eventually some of his films were presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the late 1940s as part of its Art in Cinema programs.This led to contact with other experimental filmmakers, including Jordan Belson and later Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage.
As a filmmaker, Harry Smith pioneered extravagant techniques in abstract animation, creating visual effects that were often painted or manipulated by hand directly on the celluloid. His experimental body of work commonly contains themes of mysticism, surrealism, and dada.
Smith’s early filmmaking style involved a painstaking, laborious process of primitive animation. His first film (today known as No. 1, A Strange Dream) took two years to complete and consisted of Smith drawing patterns of circles and rectangles directly onto the film stock, frame by frame, no camera, therefore, was required.
Silent, and running a little over two minutes, No. 1 told no formal story, offering instead a series of abstract colors and shapes. This was not necessarily a new form of filmmaking, similar types of abstract films had been done as far back as the 1920s), but it wasn’t a method particularly familiar to artists in the United States.
Smith’s made his next two films by batiking, a method in which he coated the filmstrip with multiple layers of dye and, using masking and scratching techniques, was able to depict his abstract shapes in more colorful and complex ways.
No. 2 -- A Message from the Sun also took two years to make (1946-1948), and was to be screened in synch with Dizzy Gillespie's recording “Guacha Guero.” No. 3- Interwoven (1947-1949) was much along the same lines.
Harry Smith would eventually graduate from hand-drawn animation to stop-action and collage in his films, but nonetheless these techniques kept him from being prolific. All of his films from the 1940s and 1950s were under 10 minutes in length, and frequently took several years to complete, particularly because he planned such complex visuals on little to no budget.
As a result, he had no choice but to plug away, little by little, to create his films, which he sometimes claimed were never really finished, they became what they were simply because he ran out of time, money, or interest.
The results, however, were groundbreaking. Harry Smith’s early films had much in common with the type of paintings he was beginning to make during this period, which used imagery, color, and collage and in the case of Smith’s later films, sound to create new sensory effects.
It was this characteristic of the artist’s work that brought Rani Signh, of the Harry Smith Archives, to call Smith a " 'proto-psychedelic ... who saw the world through a grand schema of alchemical connections that was this all-inclusive aesthetic -- the desire to show that everything connects -- that he felt best revealed the elemental structure of human existence” (quoted in “Harry Smith: Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular”).
On the West Coast, Harry Smith’s films got him noticed; on the East Coast it was his accomplishments in abstract painting. Smith, in fact, was always more interested in his painting than in his other artistic endeavors, his initial work in film was more of an effort to use the film stock as his canvas.
Although he had no formal training in art, Smith claimed to have known several artists during his boyhood who taught him some of their techniques. Smith applied similar artistic principles to both film and canvas.
He painted large freeform abstractions intended to visually represent notes, measures, beats and riffs of the beatnik era jazz music that inspired him. His painting Manteca (ca. 1950), for instance, was inspired by a Dizzy Gillespie song of the same name, with each brush stroke representing a specific note from the song.
Such was the “alchemical” characteristic of Smith’s work, painting a song, or creating screen images to enhance particular piece of music , that found him making unique connections between seemingly disparate concepts.
It was work like Manteca that helped Smith win a grant in the early 1950s through the help of Hilla Rebay, director of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later renamed the Guggenheim Museum). The award prompted Smith to move to New York in 1951 with the intention of meeting Marcel Duchamp and remained there for most of the rest of his life.
He worked for Lionel Ziprin’s companies Inkweed Studios and Qor Corporation, conducted research for inventor and philosopher Arthur Young, and throughout his life continued collecting mountains of books, records, and a variety of different kinds of anthropological items, all the while also continuing to produce art, films, and recordings. Amazingly, all of his activities were conducted while regularly living an unstable and usually heavily intoxicated life, scrounging or asking for money wherever he could, including from surprisingly wealthy patrons such as Peggy Guggenheim and established organizations such as the Anthology Film Archives (and its predecessor the Film-Makers’ Cooperative), all the while living in various hotels throughout the city.
Harry Smith is not well remembered today as a painter, perhaps only because of the casual approach he took to his work. As is the case with many artists and writers, critical acclaim never pays the bills, and he was constantly in need of money. As a result, he would often sell or trade his artwork (or portions of his collections) to stay afloat, and depending on his growing drug and alcohol intake, would sometimes destroy his creations in fits of rage.
“Well, most of my paintings are lost,” Smith once told an interviewer, “but I assume that life in the universe will continue to the point that anything can be recreated. It’s only an illusion anyhow. There isn’t anything here except some kind of weak magnetic field”
Ironically, it was one of Harry Smith’s fundraising efforts that inadvertently led to what may have been his most important contribution to the arts. Reportedly short on cash in early 1952, Smith went to visit Folkways Records president Moses Asch in order to sell some of his early American folk records from the 1920s and 1930s.
Smith had long been a collector of early jazz and folk music 78s, scouring shops in Seattle, San Francisco, and New York, and occasionally advertising in record magazines for particularly hard-to-find discs.
He was also known to swoop in on shops that were going out of business, almost all his available cash to buy up rare selections at rock bottom prices. Material drives during World War II, as well, found thousands of records being abandoned in piles, so Smith was able to bolster his collection for free with selections that had been discarded. At any given point, Harry Smith’s vintage record collection numbered in the thousands, perhaps more.
Moses Asch was indeed interested in the collection, but had a much better idea: Instead of selling his records, Asch persuaded Smith to assemble a compilation album providing an overview of the genre and period, with liner notes and background material to be researched and written by Smith himself. Smith contracted with Folkways in May 1952 and threw himself into the project, which was eventually released as the three volume (six record) set Anthology of American Folk Music (Folkways, 1952). Anthology concentrated on music made between 1927 and 1932, with 84 separate tracks by artists who had seemingly vanished from the American scene.
His inclusion of often highly unusual examples of Hillbilly Music, Bluegrass, African-American Blues, Ragtime, Gospel and Cajun music willfully disregarded the arbitrary boundaries of race and genres commonly imposed at the time. Harry’s song selection helped introduce the larger public to these (until then) forgotten artists, which included cuts from performers such as Buell Kazee, Blind Lemon Jefferson,the Carter Family,DockBoggs, and Mississippi John Hurt.
Interestingly, his method for selecting these tracks was unusual, it wasn’t always the best version of a song that Smith chose, but rather an early performance or a song in which he felt the singer brought something “extra” to the track that distinguished it from other versions.
Songs were selected to be ones that would be popular among musicologists, or possibly with people who would want to sing them or maybe improve the version, Smith would later remark.
Although never a big seller, this highly influential project’s importance cannot be overstated,it inspired a new generation of folk artists in the 1950s, including a rising young singer named Bob Dylan. Dylan, in fact, covered several tracks from Anthology on his 1961 self-titled debut album, and was still drawing on this material for albums released during the 1990s and this seminal collection was attributed by many to have brought about the folk music revival of the 60’s and even to have changed the entire direction of American popular, or vernacular music,while allowing the world to hear long-forgotten and buried blues, gospel, hillbilly and various folk musics.
Smith became an important figure in the Beat Generation scene in New York City, and his activities, such as his use of mind-altering substances and interest in esoteric spirituality, anticipated aspects of the Hippie movement. Smith’s position as an outsider to the art and experimental worlds in New York changed when he met the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1960; it was through Ginsberg that Jonas Mekas became aware of Smith’s films and began to program and promotion them as part of the New American Cinema.
Although much of Harry Smith’s later career found him concentrating on visual artwork, the world of music and recording never seemed far away. In the mid-1960s, Smith helped record and produced the first album by the Fugs, and began to experiment with ambient and spoken-word recordings, such as capturing works of Beat poetry on tape. For example, he worked with his friend Allen Ginsberg on recordings of the poet’s work.
Smith brought more to Folkways than his famous anthology. In the ’60s, he returned to anthropology, traveling to Oklahoma to record the Peyote-inspired music of the Kiowa Indians. Their songs were anthologized in 1973 in a boxed set of three LPS with the unwieldy title The Kiowa Peyote Meeting: Songs and Narratives by Members of a Tribe That Was Fundamental in Popularizing the Native American Church.
Smith had become acquainted with the Kiowa while serving as an advisor on the experimental film Chappaqua (1966), starring William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, which was shot in Anadarko, Oklahoma.
Smith was arrested on charges of public drunkenness in the middle of the shoot and eventually struck up a friendship with two Kiowa men who shared the same cell. While studying the culture of peyote, Smith freely partook of it. He also liked amphetamines, marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol. His favorite lunch: soup and a Black Russian. Doing his projects, he was often high or drunk. He was usually in terrible physical shape, eating junk, not taking care of himself at all.
He moved about like a vagrant, carrying what he could of his massive collections from place to place. No surprise, he spent some years at the Chelsea Hotel, befriending there Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. Then he skipped out into the night, owing management $7,000. :
John Szwed the Grammy Award-winning music scholar and celebrated biographer and author of the brilliant 2023 book, “Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith,” the first comprehensive biography of this Harry Smith said “One of the mysteries of Harry’s life is how he was able to live in New York for thirty-six years, never held a job, almost never paid rent.”
Although Smith was on many accounts a royal pain in the ass, cranky and obnoxious, he got by with the aid of his friends. Jonas Mekas regularly lent him money and gave him an office to store his things, and Mekas repeatedly wrote Village Voice articles proclaiming Smith’s filmic genius.
In 1962 Harry Smith took a huge leap forward with his 12th film, commonly known today as Heaven and Earth Magic.
The loosely structured film follows a woman who has visions after receiving an anesthetic from her dentist. As noted by film historian Jamie Sexton, the setup provides Smith with a unique opportunity to incorporate his particular visual style, with specific references to such diverse sources as medical texts, Jewish mysticism, and the London sewer system, not to mention a recurring oval motif.
Viewed by many as Smith’s greatest film achievement, Heaven and Earth Magic was shot in black and white but designed to be shown using a special projector equipped with colored filters and masking slides to alter the screen visuals.
Harry Smith followed up Heaven and Earth Magic by getting investor backing for a new film version of The Wizard of Oz, although much of the budget was squandered and only a handful of scenes were ever completed.
Beginning in 1970, however, he embarked on an ambitious epic called Mahoganny, loosely based on the Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht dark, political, and satirical opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogonny. Described by Jamie Sexton as a picture in which “autobiographical film, animation, street symbols and images of nature are combined into a sensual, fluctuating flow,” the picture would occupy Smith’s creative endeavors for a full decade.
Mahagonny can best be described as abstract cinematic poetry that was made to be displayed with four separate 16 mm projectors onto a single screen or onto two billiard tables suspended over a boxing ring. Smith took years to dissect and study.
It was one of Smith’s most rarely screened films due to the complexity of its timing and sequencing. It took two very patient and skilled projectionists to carry out the complicated presentation. It was only screened six times in 1980 at the Anthology Film Archives. The time-consuming and heroic effort to restore the film was spearheaded by the Harry Smith Archives. It had to be painstakingly pieced together and synchronized following complex notes and ephemeral materials left behind by Smith.
Smith himself had high hopes for Mahogonny, as he boasted to an interviewer in 1972. "It's going to be so beautiful that no one can brush it aside," he stated. "It's going to be a miracle of motion pictures. It'll get people interested in motion pictures again and I'll have enough money to buy a studio and really make some spectacular things with, you know, enormous sets and beautiful actresses and handsome actors, gymnasts and things"
At nearly two and a half hours in length, Mahoganny has been viewed by many as a challenging film that did not live up to the earlier success of Heaven and Earth Magic, and although dividing the screen into separate images made for some interesting relationships, such moments seem few and far between. Its most noteworthy characteristic, in fact, may be that the picture shot largely in and around New York captures glimpses of the city throughout the 1970s.
All the actors in the film were friends of Harry’s that happened to be in the Chelsea Hotel. It is easy to identify Allen Ginsberg sitting in a chair, reading, while bathed in New York early-1970s sunlight, Mekas as a younger man, and a youthful and innocent-looking Patti Smith. These are epic cameos. The film also shows reoccurring faces who can perhaps be stand-ins for the characters in the Mahogonny opera:
Fatty the Bookkeeper, Trinity Moses, Leocadia Begbick, Bank AccountBilly, and Alaska Wolf Joe, or they represent numeric equations referencing The Large Glass.
Mahagonny can be watched while considering that Smith was perhaps constructing a precise mathematical and poetic analysis of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny that he believed to be the most important piece of music and cultural criticism of the twentieth century.
By the time he completed Mahoganny in 1980, Harry Smith’s careless lifestyle began to catch up with him. This slight, dishevelled, cantankerous genius with poor eyesight and with a lifelong relationship with alcohol, marijuana, whose income had always been negligible, who typically made ends meet only through the generosity of friends, had also spent most of his life in a series of cheap New York hotels.
Money came and went, and often Smith would use what little he could come across on his various collections, or on drugs or alcohol, with scant concern for rent, food, or to his own health and well-being. .
"I don’t know how I’ve supported myself," Smith told interviewer Gary Kenton in 1983. "It’s one of the things that gives me a belief in some creative energy beyond that of human hands ..." Smith was in such a state by the late 1980s that Allen Ginsberg intervened, in part to help a friend, but also to stop the constant requests for money.
Ginsberg helped secure a place for Smith at the The Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, founded by Tibetan meditation master and teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. There he was anointed Shaman-in-Residence and treated with respect. At the Naropa Institute, Smith taught classes on alchemy, Native American cosmologies, and the rationality of namelessness, and was supported by a grant provided to him by the Grateful Dead organization. But Smith, incurably self-destructive, abandoned Boulder for a return to New York supposedly for a dentist who could pull his rotten teeth. The dangerously rotten teeth remained.
Despite his painting, filmmaking, or anthropological studies, it was his early contribution to music with Anthology of American Folk Music, that secured his legacy. Harry Smith earned a Lifetime Achievement Grammy at the 1991 ceremonies, an honor he received shortly before his death.
Smith was uneasy before the large industry crowd that evening, but remarked in his speech, "I’m glad to say my dreams came true. I saw America changed by music"
Anthology was reissued in 1997, this time with additional tracks that had been cut from the original 1952 release, and again received strong critical praise almost 50 years after its debut.
Shortly after receiving his Grammy, time finally caught up with the incredible Harry Smith. On November 27, 1991, at the age of 68, Smith died of heart failure at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, which for years had been his familiar haunt.
Harry Smith was neglected during his life but, as more details about his work emerged since his death he is now recognised as one of the great visionary outsiders of American art. Although his films and paintings have remained largely inaccessible to the public (in contrast to Anthology, which remains in circulation thanks to reissues), this has begun to change in the years since his death.
Five years after Smith's death, his friend the poet Paola Igliori began conducting intimate interviews with the filmmakers, musicians, poets, and artists who knew him best. The result, American Magus Harry Smith, offers a look not only into Smith's life and artistic practice, but also into his era and the informal economy of influence that operated during that time. It provides invaluable insight into the mind of one of the twentieth century's most enigmatic polymaths.
The video. Includes clips from Smith's films, drawings, paintings, rare archive footage and interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Lionel Ziprin, Robert Frank, Jonas Mekas, John Cohen, James Wasserman, M. Henry Jones, Percy Heath, Grateful Dead, Patti Smith, DJ Spooky, Khem Caigan, Harvey Bialy and Rosebud Feliu-Pettet.
American Magus Harry Smith, Directed by Paola Igliori
Smith’s impact on American culture continues, and the total works of this talented and incredible artist are starting to undergo a major critical reevaluation, in part due to the efforts of Rani Singh, curator of the Harry Smith Archives alongside numerous books, including “Sounding forHarry Smith: Early Pacific Northwest Influences” by Bret Lunsford and the fine biography mentioned earlier by John Szwed, Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith thatpatches together, for the first time, the life of one of the twentieth century’s most overlooked cultural figures. It stands as a fine testemant to this outsider and visionary American Magus and icon.
Last year this also saw the first fully dedicated retrospective exhibition dedicated to his work, “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith,” that was on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art from 4 October 2023 through to 28 January 2022,This despite the curators were hampered by the fact that much of Harry’s work was lost over the years, for a variety of reasons.
The most famous example was a time in 1964 when a landlord threw all his possessions away during an eviction for lack of paying rent. In response, Harry spent several weeks going every day to the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island to try to find and salvage his items, but to no avail.
This episode has been identified as the moment when Smith’s mental health deteriorated badly and his subsequent drinking and other drug use became overtly and troublesomely problematic. This led to a habitually unstable state during which he was prone to destroying even more new works, film equipment, or other items such as books in fits of uncontrollable rage.
Though he rejected and resisted social norms, he is now finally becoming publicly remembered, and revered, He is celebrated as a neurodiverse polymathic genius whose knowledge was vast, who pursued his interests passionately, while keenly attuned to changing technology, Smith embraced innovation and used whatever was new and of the moment, whose impact on art, music and film resound from studies of place to beat improvisation.
Throughout his life, from his time recording the customs of Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Florida to his life in Greenwich Village in its heyday, Smith was consumed by an unceasing desire to create a unified theory of culture drawn from his lifelong interest in abstract art, ancient traditions, metaphysics, spiritualism, folk art, and world music he sought to find universal patterns.
Compiling a folk music anthology, collecting string figures from around the world, and conducting ethnographic research were some of the ways he attempted to identify common connections across people and cultures which make Smith's work feel increasingly prescient as collecting and sharing come into view as creative acts that are necessary for drawing meaning from the glut of images and juxtaposition of cultures we encounter every day. .
Despite being an insufferable and destructive eccentric who was unable to survive in regular society, or keep himself healthy or sober, he produced an exceedingly eclectic and powerful body of work, over the span of five decades: films, paintings, poetry, sound recordings, photographs, and collections of items, some of which are currently on display at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.
Even with much of his output disappearing, Smith’s impact on the world is nonetheless profound and continues to inspire reconsideration and interpretation.
Harry Smith: American Magus. Paola Igliori (Editor). Semiotext(e). (2022)
Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music: America Changed Through Music. Ross Hair and Thomas Ruys Smith (Editors). Routledge. (2017). Including Kurt Gegenhuber, “Smith’s Amnesia Theater: ‘Moonshiner’s Dance’ in Minnesota.”
Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular. Andrew Perchuk and Rani Singh (Editors). Getty Research Institute. (2010)
Harry Smith: Cosmographies, The Naropa Lectures. Raymond Foye (Editor). Naropa Institute. (2023)
Harry Smith: Think of the Self Speaking: Selected Interviews. Rani Singh (Editor), Allen Ginsberg (Introduction). Cityful Pr. (1998)
Sounding forHarry Smith: Early Pacific Northwest Influences. Bret Lunsford
John Szwed. Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith, the Filmmaker, Folklorist, and Mystic Who Transformed American Art. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. (2023)
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