"Amazing Grace"

AI with "maternal instincts"... What does that even mean?!?

Having taught “late romanticism” in class today – or rather, the “classical” problem of “modernism in music history," with discussions on Mahler and Wagner, I’ve ended my day by watching Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Parsifal (from 1982). I’m not sure I can get much more German in a single day than this.

My late night music is Cannonball Adderley Quintet's 1969 album Country Preacher. Those who know knows. Good night. Jesse Jackson, R.I.P.

Norway has sent 80 athletes to the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milano and Cortina. So far, they’ve won 31 medals. There are 5 more days of competitions. My G-d it must be irritating to be around Norwegians these days!

OpenAI ”acknowledged in its own research that LLMs will always produce hallucinations due to fundamental mathematical constraints that cannot be solved through better engineering, marking a significant admission from one of the AI industry’s leading companies.” You can’t trust chatbots.

This is an interesting piece about some of the religious thinking behind the current US administration.

"Almost paradoxically, Sequoyah’s numerals could not succeed because they had not yet succeeded, and came into existence in a social context where a prestigious, common notation had been adopted almost universally."

Two Rice University undergrads (freshmen!) built a digital mapping tool to track ICE activity. Students are OK. www.thenation.com/article/acti...

The one and only @robinjames.bsky.social at the University of Copenhagen on April 28th, a talk co-sponsored by the Musicology division, and the Digital Culture and Art & Health research clusters! Wine and beer reception to follow. Not to be missed! ✨ artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/research/sou...

AOC with the zinger of the week.

"Will You Love Me Tomorrow" - Rufus Wainwright doing Carole King. Carole King turns 84 today. Happy birthday!

You can listen to Olga Neuwirth's new opera Monster's Paradise (libretto by Elfriede Jelinek) from Staatoper Hamburg at this link. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to go to Hamburg to see it.

Bad Bunny’s performance began in the plantation, featured broken electric poles, and ended by centering a hemispheric understanding of “América”—among many other things—and some Anglo journalists are like “his performance wasn’t political.” This is why we need to be telling our stories.

Something tells me that The Washington Post doesn't quite know what a performance as political commentary looks - and sounds - like.

The Hendrix-line of music history... #ScuseMe

Today it is 10 years since the release of Beyoncé's "Formation."

Lihkku beivviin! Læhkoeh biejjine! Vuorbbe biejvijn!

Great piece by Jonathan Rée - although I think you can safely assume that he's not a fan of Boris Groys, and not really of Alexandre Kojève either.

According to Routledge’s website, the release day for The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song: Vivid Versions and Musical Subjectivities – edited by Mike Alleyne and Lori Burns – is July 28. I have a chapter in there on Nina Simone and Meshell Ndegeocello' versions of “Four Women."

Lars Erslev Andersen, 1956-2026. R.I.P.

Billy Bass Nelson, 1951-2026. R.I.P.

Colleagues are organizing this conference - Global Music History and Northern Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries - here in Copenhagen in May. Deadline for proposals February 1. You should consider joining.

«What historians call the ‹perpetrator perspective,› evident in many Nazi photos and films, simply cannot be generated by AI. Instead, these images reveal the prompt behind them: visualizations of generic descriptions.» #GenericPastness www.jpost.com/opinion/arti...

"In the winter of ’26 We’ll remember the names of those who died On the streets of Minneapolis"

Sly Dunbar, 1952-2026. R.I.P.

I'm on site where a federal agent shot a Minneapolis man this morning. It's bad. Dozens of federal agents are facing off with hundreds of outraged residents. People being tear gassed, helicopters above, I keep hearing pops, and lots of loud BANGS. This smoke is from tear gas:

DM Hotep - Sun Ra Arkestra & Jupiter Blue (Tone Scientist / Guitar) - 22 Jan Earth Day - Happy Arrival day with space age greetings.

UPDATE: After refueling in Romania, the ICE deportation flight (OAE3919) stopped in Armenia, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The flight may carry out additional deportations in the region.

An ICE Air flight (OAE3919) is likely to make multiple deportation stops across Central and South Asia. The flight departed El Paso, TX this morning, refueled in Portsmouth, NH, and is currently en route to Romania for an additional fuel stop.

"It's after the end of the world, don't you know that yet?"

it's bizarre to see both CNN and CNBC run with chyrons reporting that Trump said he won't "use force" to take Greenland, when the comments in question were clearly a threat to take Greenland by force. How naive are we at this point?

Listening to Trump rambling from Davos, and cannot help thinking about this song in particular.

Today on the podcast, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Quinn Slobodian on his latest book, “Hayek's Bastards." From Murray Rothbard to Javier Milei, Slobodian looks to "Hayek's bastards" to show the ties between neoliberalism and today's Far Right. @quinnslobodian.com web.sas.upenn.edu/jhiblog/2026...

Without America, "right now, you'd all be speaking German" Trump tells an audience in Switzerland.

“Trump is the first president not to issue an official proclamation recognizing Martin Luther King, Jr. Day since President Reagan made it a holiday.”

Vínland hit góða, Garðaríki, Miklagarðr. Those old Vikings sure got around!

Maybe for some it is easier to communicate with visuals rather than written documents. So, here is both Hans Dahl’s and Christian Krohg’s paintings of Leif Erikson discovering America, which, in his case, was L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada, but I’ll go for “America” for Vinland right now.

The message of Trump’s letter to the prime minister of Norway signals that the president “genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him,” @anneapplebaum.bsky.social argues. theatln.tc/U0fviLiM

Ralph Towner, 1940-2026. R.I.P. I am currently listening to his album Anthem (recorded 2000).

Nice piece on László Krasznahorkai by Nyuol Lueth Tong in @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social

See the current reality clearly. #Minnesota

Decisions concerning Denmark and Greenland belong to Denmark and Greenland alone. Yesterday, European Parliament group leaders expressed Parliament's unequivocal support to Greenland and Denmark and called to uphold EU principles and law, international law and the NATO Charter.

I have a story in this as well: "The Vanishing at Neltjeberg." Not my first TOC with the great @tobiasbuckell.bsky.social, but certainly going to be one for the ages. This will be a tough one. We lost a radiant VI voice before this could come out. I'm so looking forward to reading her story.

Anyone knows what's up with those weird capitalizations in the Truth Social messages?

In March, 4000 US soldiers are supposed to participate in “Cold Response 2026” tougher with 21000 other NATO soldiers practicing for winter warfare near Bodø, Norway. Given the current situation - with Trump threatening NATO-allies for supporting Greenland - this will be "awkward"...

The 12th Nordic Jazz Conference will take place October 16-17, 2026. The topic is “Jazz Movements” (broadly understood). Deadline for abstract to one of my colleagues, February 1, 2026.

Tomorrow morning I’m bringing Afrofuturism to the people, or, more exactly, I will be teaching 3 hours about Afrofuturism at the Copenhagen Folk University. Here is the trailer for John Akomfrah’s The Last Angel of History (1996), a fabulous films, that I would describe as speculative documentary.

I cannot wait for the conversation around AI to become like the current conversation around NFTs. And the conversation around AI in education like the current conversation around MOOCs (remember those?!?).

Today it is 100 years since Morton Feldman was born. Here is Trio (from 1980), for violin, cello, and piano.