etnobofin

English is a most versatile and precocious beast, existing in many hundreds of species around the world, interbreeding and adapting to local conditions. If English is not yet quite ubiquitous, it’s omniverous. The locust of languages.

Oxford has a Dictionary and a punctuation mark named after it, and it’s also home to the oldest English-speaking university in the world. Thousands of foreign students come to town each year to learn English as a second language at one of the many private schools in the city that peddle 4-week intensive courses and TOEFL exams.

So it might be expected that some kind of perfect English is heard on Oxford streets, or at least in the tutorial rooms.

But Oxfordlish – as it’s spoken by locals – is rich and varied, whether by accident or design. In New College chapel, there’s a memorial to Thomas Spooner, for whose stumbling speech the word “spoonerism” was coined. And down the road at Magdalen, Tolkein even invented his own language – Elvish.

Oxford, a city of just 100,000 people, is such a melting pot for language that even my kiwi inflections go largely unremarked. (Sweet, bro.)

First of all, there’s no “Oxford accent”. There are several.

In suburban Headington and Cowley, the Estuary accent dominates… you could be in any medium-sized city in southeast England, with it’s broad agglomeration of home counties vowels and Cockney dropped consonants, punctuated among the young by the Essexy “Know wa’ I mean, ya?”.

Beyond the ring road lie Abingdon, Witney and the dozens of villages that make up the greater conurbation of Oxford. It’s here that you’ll hear evidence of the Cotswolds, a mere 15 miles distant, and the West Country an easy return day trip by car. The r’s start to gently burr, the i’s drift towards “oi”.

And in the city centre itself, some undergraduates wear their particular dialect like tribal marker. The undergrad accent is unmistakable – long, drawly open aah’s and a slightly superior precision of delivery, perfect for making echoes in the fog on Christ Church meadow as you jog down to the Isis for winter rowing practice.

It doesn’t seem to matter if you’re from Liverpool, Guilford or Rawalpindi – undergrads pick up their annointed accent within weeks of arrival. If you can’t tell an undergrad by the careful way she counts her remaining coins as she pays for a Sunday sandwich in Morton’s, then you can definitely tell when she opens her mouth to speak.

But, like all youthful affectations, the shimmering of undergrad English fades rapidly. With a first degree under your belt, if you stay in Oxford, you can resume the accent of your origins. No postgrad, doctoral student or Fellow I’ve heard ever sounds like they were born here. You’ll detect in their voices all the marks of home – whether that’s Manchester, Sydney, South Carolina or Copenhagen. And so the melting pot boils onwards.

Next time… a shorter Oxford glossary.

For Unto Us A Child is Born (from Messiah) G.F. Handel
Messiah (1751 Version): Choir of New College Oxford/Edward Higginbottom/Academy of Ancient Music [Buy]

It’s Christmas Eve my dogzz, and it seems a good time to wish everyone who reads etnobofin a safe and happy Christmas, and all the best for a successful 2008, whatever it might bring!

It means a lot to have people who persevere with this blog, despite its modest content and occasional technical issues. (Thanks to Rushan especially for his advice and help!)

It’s an old-skool music choice for Christmas, (not kung-fu), with an Oxford connection in this outing by the Choir of New College… George Frederic Handel‘s setting of the words from Isaiah (Ch.9 v.6) which many believe fortell the birth of Christ.

Dig the voice control required to sing the long and intricate semiquaver line on “bo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-rn”. Handel’s arrangement ensures that every section of the choir has to sing it sometime during the piece. Now that’s technique!

Nativity – Chapel of Harris Manchester College, Oxford. Photo by Lawrence OP

Some readers of this blog know that I was in a band back in New Zealand. We recorded an album, it got released in Europe in 2004. A few years later, a high school band in Hungary called “Ice Monkeys” covers one of the songs, and puts the video on Youtube. They play all the horn lines on keyboard, which is just too cool.

It’s strange to think that somewhere in Eastern Europe, a bunch of teenagers heard our album and decided one of the songs was worth learning and putting on their set list alongside Simply Red, Lenny Kravitz and the Doobie Brothers. Globalisation, anyone?

Here’s the original recording and video of Who You Are, for comparison – the video was filmed in Auckland, upstairs at Galatos and on Stephanie’s back lawn in Takapuna, overlooking Rangitoto.

The Golden Compass tries valiantly to work as a film, but doesn’t quite make the grade. It has to pack a lot of action into a family Christmas feature, and so we are not allowed to linger over any particular aspect.

In its haste to recreate the broad sweep of Philip Pullman‘s novel, the narrative dashes breakneck from Oxford to London to Norway to Svalbard, via airships, horseless carriages, gypsy paddlesteamers and the back of a talking polar bear.

There is little time to contemplate the themes of the trilogy, let alone the magnificence and strangeness of Lyra’s parallel universe. This is a pity, because it is thematic and inter-textual depth, coupled with extraordinary leaps of Pullman’s imagination, that make the books such a joy.

The actors are pretty good, and make a fair fist of a spartan script. Nicole Kidman‘s Mrs Coulter is magnificent in gold lamé, slinky and seductive, although at times her charm is so oily that it seems incredible that anyone could ever trust her with responsibilities at the General Oblation Board.

Sam Elliott is pitch-perfect as Lee Scoresby, the six-shooter packing, Twain-esque balloonist (apparently Samuel L. Jackson was suggested for this role… now THAT would have been something to see!).

Even Christopher Lee drops by to play Saruman- oh sorry, Count Dooku – or some other slightly anonymous evil dude lurking in the corridors of power. I was left wondering if the Magisterium was trying to cut its budget by subcontracting villains from the Sith and subletting office space in the tower at Isengard.

But Dakota Blue Richards manages to carry the film. Her Lyra seems to provide a perfect mix of stubborness, curiosity and vulnerability that allows the rest of the Pullman universe to revolve. If they do film The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, one wonders how they will find a young male actor to match her in the equally demanding role of Will Parry.

The Oxford scenes were fun to watch, simply for all the location spotting. The kids get to run across parts of Christ Church meadow that are closed to the public in our universe. The fictional Jordan College is an interesting amalgam of Exeter (Pullman’s old college), Queen’s and Christ Church – Cardinal Wolsey proving his prescience by building Tom Quad large enough to allow the docking of airships, even if the fountain of Mercury (made famous in Brideshead Revisited) had to be removed.

So overall, it’s a fun movie to watch, although I’m not sure how much you’d understand if you haven’t read the books. We’re left with a film that looks magnificent, but provides little more that a thumbnail sketch of the original story, with a few set-piece action scenes to tie it all together. Not disappointed, just moderately let down.

Three in One
The 5th Power: Lester Bowie [Buy]

Every few months, I get a magazine from my primary school. It contains a bunch of news, and well as writing and art by current pupils. I thought this poem was great – written by Joshua in year 7, the equivalent of first year of junior high…

The Hidden Notes

Inside this trumpet

Float notes that have never been revealed
Never been played
Never been seen

They’re camouflaged
They’ve never been awoken
Deep down inside listening
But they won’t come out
Not for people
Not for freedom

Even when the insides are being fulilled
But still they lay there soundless
Hiding beneath…
A school of fish with a jazz band
Will conquer it
Forcing it to come out
But still it holds on

What music can it be
That wont reveal itself
For what country?
Is it my country?
Would I be able to recognize it?
Could I name the notes of everything?

Maybe they have differents notes for this trumpet
Maybe only one note
And that’s all we need
It’s here inside this trumpet
Every trumpet in the world is like this.

Ow!
Trombone Heaven: Frank Rosolino and Carl Fontana [Buy]

Dawn, with trombone jetstreams running through the brain

The annoying tune in my head this week is Ow!, a live version performed by Frank Rosolino and Carl Fontana in Vancouver, just 13 days after I was born. It’s one of those many Gillespie-Parker reworkings of I’ve Got Rhythm, the single tune that makes George Gershwin one of the great pop writers ever.

It’s probably because the tune uses the I’ve Got Rhythm changes that makes Ow! particularly sticky inside my slightly-lethargic-in-the-leadup-to-Christmas brain. You can sing Moose the Mooch and Oleo to it, even if you don’t want to. Darn that teenage spongiform bebopilitis.

Fontana and Rosolino were two of those instrumentalists who were deeply respected by musicians but never quite had the star quality to become household names. They worked together a few times, but this Vancouver live date (recorded on the spur of the moment) is probably the only recorded document of them playing together.

The recording will be released for the first time ever in January 2008 as Trombone Heaven, perhaps an appropriate title given that both trombonists have now joined the great jam session in the sky. It’s one of those unpretentious jazz releases that does exactly what it says on the label – bop trombone titans, playing standards, nailing it every inch of the way, swinging their asses off. The liner notes are unusually informative too.

And just for kicks, on Youtube, Frank Rosolino as a cool cat on Jazz Scene USA in 1962.

O magnum mysterium (Morten Lauridsen)
Twentieth Century Masters Vol. 3: Choir of New College Oxford/Edward Higginbottom [Buy]

Personent hodie (from Piae Cantiones, 15th Century)
Let Voices Resound: Oxford Camerata/Jeremy Summerly [Buy] [emusic]

Cloisters, New College

OK, choral music geek time.

Sunday was the last day of Michaelmas Term at the university, and somehow I wangled myself a ticket to the service of lessons and carols for Christmas at New College. Tickets to the New College service are often hard to obtain if you’re not a member of the college, so I was pretty chuffed.

The music, was of course, magnificent – right from the organ opening up with the spiky Les Bergers by Messiaen. Malcolm Hayes’ Mirabile misterium was sung by the choir from the antechapel – an absolutely stunning arrangement (a new commission?) with solo themes weaving in and out of the ensemble – unseen voices rising ethereal to the wooden angels carved in the ceiling.

There were motets and carols by Rachmaninov, JCF Bach and Holst‘s arrangement of Personent Hodie. A few of the usual suspects cropped up in appealing guises (In dulci jubilo enunciated in impeccable German and David Wilcock’s arrangement of Sussex carol). They even let the congregation sing a few…

One of the highlights was O magnum mysterium, by American composer Morten Lauridsen, serene and expansive like a Rothko canvas. It was recorded just a couple of years ago by the choir on a disc of 20th Century American composers.

Ah, what a gift music is. I probably go on too much about the New College Choir in this blog. But in their best moments this choir do (to my ears at least) represent something close to perfection in musical achievement, and to share a Christmas service with them is an experience I will never, ever forget.

O magnum mysterium et admirabile sacramentum, ut animalia viderunt Dominum natum, jacentem in praesipio!

O great mystery, and wondrous sacrament, that animals should see the new-born Lord, lying in their manger!

Right, I’m tired of trying to migrate my old content, so the blogging is going to continue in the midst of the chaotic rubble of the demolition-cum-building site, and I’ll see how it all pans out…

We’re still not sure which technical gremlin made etnobofin die after more than two years, but it might have looked like this:

Back soon with some block-rocking beats.