Posts by Andy Wagstaff

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that Library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview tracks for each. Just click on the titles to be taken to the catalog.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that Library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview tracks for each. Just click on the titles to be taken to the catalog.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that Library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview tracks for each. Just click on the titles to be taken to the catalog.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that Library users have suggested we acquire!

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that  Library users have suggested we acquire!

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest. This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that library users have suggested we acquire!

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that library users have suggested we acquire!

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that library users have suggested we acquire!

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview tracks for each. Just click on the titles to be taken to the Catalog.

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest.

I have the pleasure of fielding those requests for music and have been introduced to some great new music this way… music I would not have known about otherwise. This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of this great music your fellow library users have suggested the Library acquire!

Years have passed since my younger self first had his heart broken and thought for sure the world itself would never survive the trauma. It did, yet I am still amazed at just how intensely the heart can feel. I don't know how that works, that palpable knot you can get in your chest when experiencing emotion. There must be some biological explanation. The other internal organs don’t feel much if at all, unless something is seriously wrong with them. But emotions can manifest as an actual physical sensation, one that we acknowledge when we say something is "heartfelt." And I suppose this is how the heart came to be symbolic of love, because that is where you feel it; 

I’ve had a long-standing fascination with bands that go through dramatic style shifts, bands whose evolutionary stages must be discovered by digging through their back catalog like some fossil-rich strata of sedimentary rock, revealing forms very different from what is more currently known.

Here are some more learning templates you, or your favorite parent or teacher can download and use multiple times for educating your future Einsteins. Part 1 of this entry included some fun drawing and writing templates in Word for younger kids.

The other day, I had a John Denver song stuck in my head, and I kept singing this one line over and over. My 6-year-old son remarked, "Oh, THAT'S not annoying!" Ah, the sarcastic little punk apple doesn't fall far from the tree: a good thing to keep in mind as we parents want to make sure we inspire our kids to develop good learning habits. So when my son asked me if I could print out a page like his teacher had in school, one with a box for drawing at the top and some writing lines underneath, of course I wanted to oblige. I surfed around the web and found a few things here and there, but not exactly what I needed. I whipped something up on Word, but I felt like 

Konono No.1's sound is shockingly infectious and amazingly unique. The revolving-member group spent the last few decades playing traditional Bazombo trance music in the capitol city of the Congo: Kinshasa. Equal parts tradition, innovation, and accident, their sound centers on three Likembe (better known as the Mbira, or thumb organ) players, a rhythm section, three singers, and three dancers. Oh, but that is so not all of the story!...

As I listen to Block Ice & Propane, I recall the other possible uniform title I considered for this blog thread: “Prone to Hyperbole”; because this collection of songs may be the most evocative set of music the universe has ever heard!

In every corner of the world, as far back in history as the time machines of archaeology and anthropology can take us, music has been used by humans to communicate with the gods. It’s hard to remember in our world today, steeped as it is in the bubblegum profanity of pop culture; but Mongo Santamaria’s album, Afro-Roots, reminds us. It is a gateway into the spirit-world. The conga drum itself is our metaphysical guide, bridging the gap between the visible and invisible worlds, and thus bringing us into direct contact with all those psychic forces that control the destinies of humankind (Adegbite).

The Cave, by wife and husband team Beryl Korot (video artist) and Steve Reich (composer), is an experimental multimedia piece featuring recorded interviews set to live music. Palestinians, Israelis, and Americans are all asked about the significance of the story of Abraham and his burial place, The Cave of Machpelah, which is held sacred by Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, for fans and critics alike, marks the point in Springsteen's songwriting where the barren landscapes of the American Dream are laid most bare.