Tsarist-era Socialist-Temperament Bayan, c1902.
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Tsarist-era Socialist-Temperament Bayan, c1902. An instrument imposed by the Ministry of Folklore and Propagandistic Peasant Re-Education, which attempted to replace the folkloric gaita (bagpipe), with what was termed "anti-primitive-yet-undecadent-Great-Leap-Forward" intonation and standardization. The instrument replaced the traditional and flexible folkloric intonation of bagpipe reeds with the semitonal system of the keyboard bayan (accordion), adding a Stroh-style acoustical horn for amplification. The hill-country musicians referred to it, in a play on the gaita's name, as "El Gadjo" ("the foreigner" or "infidel"), and a microtonal tune, unplayable except on the indigenous gaita, came to be called "the Great Horror."
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Arnold Genthe photograph, the Eagles' Heart Sisters modern dance company: Terésa-Marie Szabo, Śamū'ēla Jaṅgalī, Federica Rozhkov, Kristina Olenev, Lisle Goncharov. A still from the short experimental choreographic film entitled The Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus (1949-50), based upon the sutra of "The Cosmic Dance," alleged to have been contained within the larger sacred text of the Bassandayana.
Miriam Smythe Habjar-Lawrence,circa January 1922 Washington DC, in a hot-rodded Custer "Cooter Car" (originally built for amusement parks and private use) Here heavily modified by her young half-sister, the mechanical "boffin" and engineering savant Anthea Habjar-Lawrence. More information on these vehicles can be found here, but family anecdote has it that Miss Smythe Habjar-Lawrence typically used this vehicle, suitably adapted with wider-treaded and lugged rubber tires, to pursue and break up fox hunts on the large family estates in New England--a legacy of the fortune made by her grandfather Captain John Smith, founder of the Smith shipping line of fast tea packet ships. Miss Smythe was a well-known animal rights activist who was not above deployed a special "hot pepper spray" of her own concoction--whose principle ingredient was Bassanda peach brandy, a drink of almost 160-proof, and south Bassandan hot chile-paprika sauce. Neither hounds, horses, or riders ever forgot the experience of a face-ful of "Miriam's Mixture," and it was not uncommon for erstwhile fox-hunters to "see the error of their ways"--when their eyesight returned at all.
Echoes of Bassanda: Symphonic Folk from a Lost World 1.26.14 Photos by Cifani Dhoma.
Premiere of Xlbt. Op. 16, "The Bassandan Rite of Spring", choreography by Madame Bronislava Nijinska, to music by the Rev. Col. R.E.C. Thompson, formerly thought to be of The Army of the Confederacy (ret), "Out in the Sticks." Conducted by Yezget Nas1lsinez (reincarnated), with the Elegant Savages Orchestra and the Eagle's Heart Sisters modern dance company: Terésa-Marie Szabo, Śamū'ēla Jaṅgalī, Federica Rozhkov, Kristina Olenev, Lisle Goncharov. Photography by BNRO / ESO staff photographer, photo-archivist, documentarian Cifani Dhoma.
Szabo's Bassandan Liberation Flag,photographed c1975, Dolphu Village, Nepal
(collection of Jackson Habjar-Lawrence)
Bassandan Liberation Front Flag
Madame Szabo's prototype for the Bassandan Liberation Front Flag, sewn by her in the 1940s during collecting expeditions with the People's Liberation Orchestra's early personnel (see elsewhere in the Correspondence). It is not known precisely when or for what purposes the prototype was created, but it has been suggested that perhaps the flag was shown (and clandestinely flown) when the PLO found themselves in remote back-country and at risk of being mistaken for Soviet or Nazi intelligence agents or scouts. The green, yellow and white colors are associated with the ancient Iliot shamanic sky religion, while the (modified) star and crescent originate with the worship of the sky god Mithra throughout the eastern Mediterranean as early as the 5th century BCE. The green-white-green horizontal stripes reflect the shamanic belief in the unit of earth (green), consciousness (white) and universal Mind (green).
Madame Szabo's prototype for the Bassandan Liberation Front Flag, sewn by her in the 1940s during collecting expeditions with the People's Liberation Orchestra's early personnel (see elsewhere in the Correspondence). It is not known precisely when or for what purposes the prototype was created, but it has been suggested that perhaps the flag was shown (and clandestinely flown) when the PLO found themselves in remote back-country and at risk of being mistaken for Soviet or Nazi intelligence agents or scouts. The green, yellow and white colors are associated with the ancient Iliot shamanic sky religion, while the (modified) star and crescent originate with the worship of the sky god Mithra throughout the eastern Mediterranean as early as the 5th century BCE. The green-white-green horizontal stripes reflect the shamanic belief in the unit of earth (green), consciousness (white) and universal Mind (green).
1877 photograph of recruiting sergeantsat Westminster.
1877 photograph of recruiting sergeants at Westminster. The tall figure in profile in the left foreground may be S. Owsley-Smythe, 1-2 years prior to his departure from London for points east. It is not known precisely how or when Smythe entered the Army, or the precise duration of his tenure, but certainly, in the '70s, a posting with H.M. Forces provided an entree to travel, experiences, and cultural immersion available in few other occupations.
Ezra Pound, (unknown), Algeria Main-Smith,Yezget Nas1lsinez, (unknown)
Algeria Main-Smith (1862-1947) and Yezget Nas1lsinez (1899-1985), conversing outside Café De La Paix, Paris c1926.
At this time, Nas1lsinez (in profile, seated right rear) had already been trained at the Moscow Conservatory, lived through at least part of the fires of the Bolshevik Revolution, and knew Paris as well, having met James Reese Europe there in late 1918, just after the Armistice. Main-Smith (with the cigarette), on the other hand, who appears almost unnervingly youthful for a woman of 64, already had extensive Central Asian adventures behind her, also including liaisons with Big Bill Haywood (IWW), Jacob Riis, and Eugene O'Neill; and a meeting with the young J.R.R. Tolkien in London in November 1916 when he was invalided home from the Western Front: Miss Main-Smith's accounts of Bassandan steppe culture may have informed Tolkien's early sketches of Horsemen of Hithlum.
By '26, however, Main-Smith was working with the African American dancer/singer Josephine Baker (1906-75) as she made her European debut, and serving as consultant and book-buyer for the legendary bookshop Shakespeare & Company in the 6th arrondissement; her knowledge of obscure Central Asian and Bassandan folklore, music, myth, and languages was invaluable and much respected by the Parisian and international community of Oriental scholars.
The figure in the near left foreground may be Ezra Pound, to whom Main-Smith introduced the classical T'ang Dynasty poets.
At this time, Nas1lsinez (in profile, seated right rear) had already been trained at the Moscow Conservatory, lived through at least part of the fires of the Bolshevik Revolution, and knew Paris as well, having met James Reese Europe there in late 1918, just after the Armistice. Main-Smith (with the cigarette), on the other hand, who appears almost unnervingly youthful for a woman of 64, already had extensive Central Asian adventures behind her, also including liaisons with Big Bill Haywood (IWW), Jacob Riis, and Eugene O'Neill; and a meeting with the young J.R.R. Tolkien in London in November 1916 when he was invalided home from the Western Front: Miss Main-Smith's accounts of Bassandan steppe culture may have informed Tolkien's early sketches of Horsemen of Hithlum.
By '26, however, Main-Smith was working with the African American dancer/singer Josephine Baker (1906-75) as she made her European debut, and serving as consultant and book-buyer for the legendary bookshop Shakespeare & Company in the 6th arrondissement; her knowledge of obscure Central Asian and Bassandan folklore, music, myth, and languages was invaluable and much respected by the Parisian and international community of Oriental scholars.
The figure in the near left foreground may be Ezra Pound, to whom Main-Smith introduced the classical T'ang Dynasty poets.
Postcard of 1905 Krewe of Rex, NOLA. Elsewhere in the Archive, there is a glass-plate negative of Rex in 1906 or '07. It has been alleged that Habjar-Lawrence Nasilsinez might have visited New Orleans some time in these years. There were certainly direct family connections elsewhere in the Caribbean--notably Trinidad and Tobago, and certainly Bassandan masking and festival behaviors would have been consistent with NOLA aesthetics.
Brief snippet of unsourced silent film which appears to date from visit by Algeria Main-Smith, Big Bill Haywood, Jacob Riis, Iliot shaman Anakan Imir, and A.C. "Pappy" Lilt to South Side Chicago nightclub to hear Scott Joplin's ragtime orchestra. Summer 1892. Click on image to animate.
Incredible find in the Archives: BNRO classic lineup, c1952. A *few* members have been identified, including Yezget-Bey himself, Madame Terese-Marie Szabo (and baby Szabo), and the Srcetovredi Brothers. Other identifications & annotations most gratefully included and appreciated. Photo recovered and reconstructed from the Archive by http://galleries.tifholmes.com/
Self-portrait of Cifani дома w/ Bassandan marmot, northern alps, around 1965?
Reproduction of a fresco, now in the People's State Museum at Xblit, which appears to reference the esoteric Bassandan training called “The Twenty-Six Fezzes,” through which adepts’ wisdom and insight were said to pass through 26 colors within the spectrum, finally arriving at the “white fez”, which connoted dropping of the body and attainment of group mind.
Members of the Bassanda Young Men's Pennyfarthing Expedition Club, c1900. An extremely short-lived organization, formed by members of Bassanda's (relatively miniscule) petit-bourgeois classes. While bicycles were a valued and extremely common form of practical transportation in many echelons of society, the pennyfarthing (which, prior to the invention of the cogged gear and gear-shifter, attempted to increase speed by greatly increasing the ratio of wheel circumference to crank) was almost comically ill-suited to Bassanda's mountainous terrain: unstable, prone to crashes, conducive to significant injury in the case of falls, and so forth. The BYMPEC became a kind of catch-phrase in Bassanda for impracticality and the foolishness of privilege; hence the folk-proverb for such spoiled naivete: onun pahalı bisiklet düşme ("falling off his expensive bicycle").
Alexei Andreevitch Boyar (1922-2010), Bassanda recruit to US Army 101st Airborne paratroop regiment, at the folding organ for non-denominational worship service prior to D-Day landings. Boyar, an inheritor of the Bassanda pipe organ tradition through his mother (b1880), an informant of Bela Bartok c1906, had fought with Bassanda partisans during the Anschluss of 1939, when Nazis blitzkrieg forces drove into Bassanda after overrunning Czechoslovakia. Boyar fought with the partisans (he is credited with at least a half-dozen tank kills, using hang-glider tactics and "sticky bombs" against armor), but by January 1940 he had escaped to Britain and was endeavoring to enlist in the Allied Forces. The RAF was skeptical of hang glider tactics and the teenage pilot who had flown them, and eventually Boyar jumped ship on a Bassanda-crewed frieghter to Canada, where he trained US and Dominion pilots and paratroopers. In addition to his skill as pilot and hand-to-hand combat expert, he continued to play the Bassanda and sacred repertoires on pump organ for worship and relaxation. There exists an instrument, in a Canadian museum, which appears to have belonged to him: it has been modified and its reeds re-pitched to play quarter-tones. Boyar dropped with Canadian forces during Operation Overlord, and was with the Screaming Eagles during the breakout from Omaha Beach.
After the war, he returned to Bassanda, where he devoted much of the rest of his life to teaching the pipe organ and to collecting and cataloging old manuscripts and oral-tradition tunes. His materials are still held in the State archive at Xlbt and scholars are only beginning to discover the fascinating treasure trove that is both the MSS collection and Sergeant Boyar's biography.
After the war, he returned to Bassanda, where he devoted much of the rest of his life to teaching the pipe organ and to collecting and cataloging old manuscripts and oral-tradition tunes. His materials are still held in the State archive at Xlbt and scholars are only beginning to discover the fascinating treasure trove that is both the MSS collection and Sergeant Boyar's biography.
Col. Thompson, image taken (most likely) immediately after the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1863.
The Colonel had engaged multiple roles with the Army of the Potomac as Gen. Meade sought to turn back the incursion into Pennsylvania of Gen. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Daguerreotype taken by the great Civil War artist John Coffer.
(minutes from Archives Correspondents follow)
The General: This may be the earliest photograph of the then new scientific fretting used on a banjo.
10 hours ago · Edited · Like · 3
Craig Harbauer Forget all that... I wanna know where he got those pants...! What 1950's (er...1850's) couch made the ultimate sacrifice in support of the union cause!
3 hours ago via mobile · Like · 1
Winesap "I am told they provide the new scientific intonation." As regards pants: it's been established the Colonel learned to play the banjo from mixed-race individuals living on the Tennessee; he may have added military snare drumming during a brief ((perhaps "abortive") enlistment at the Chattanooga Depot. It is known for a fact that he met Joel Walker Sweeney around 1840 in Appomattox County, Sweeney's home; it may be the case that there the Colonel (then a teenager) acquired from Sweeney the idea of an added string (Sweeney had added a fifth string to the banjo)--the Colonel's instrument here appears to have TWO added strings--while Sweeney may have got from Thompson the idea of the "scientific frets" which he later had built in the more conventional wire-based method.
2 hours ago · Like · 1
Gen.: Indeed, the Colonel is reported to have said to Sweeney, "I see your fifth and raise you a sixth AND a seventh!" Sweeney 'folded' and thus the matter was closed.
2 hours ago · Like · 1
Winesap Ah, of course.
2 hours ago · Like · 1
Col. Thompson Actually, gentlemen, that ban jar-like construction would be VanHagen's patent of 1859 (see "America's Instrument") and that would be... ahem... "TROUSERS."
6 minutes ago · Like
Winesap Colonel: as ever, the Bassanda Archives appreciate your erudition and contribution to the ongoing Work. We do recognize that locutions and descriptions have significantly evolved (or "devolved") since your day
The Colonel had engaged multiple roles with the Army of the Potomac as Gen. Meade sought to turn back the incursion into Pennsylvania of Gen. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Daguerreotype taken by the great Civil War artist John Coffer.
(minutes from Archives Correspondents follow)
The General: This may be the earliest photograph of the then new scientific fretting used on a banjo.
10 hours ago · Edited · Like · 3
Craig Harbauer Forget all that... I wanna know where he got those pants...! What 1950's (er...1850's) couch made the ultimate sacrifice in support of the union cause!
3 hours ago via mobile · Like · 1
Winesap "I am told they provide the new scientific intonation." As regards pants: it's been established the Colonel learned to play the banjo from mixed-race individuals living on the Tennessee; he may have added military snare drumming during a brief ((perhaps "abortive") enlistment at the Chattanooga Depot. It is known for a fact that he met Joel Walker Sweeney around 1840 in Appomattox County, Sweeney's home; it may be the case that there the Colonel (then a teenager) acquired from Sweeney the idea of an added string (Sweeney had added a fifth string to the banjo)--the Colonel's instrument here appears to have TWO added strings--while Sweeney may have got from Thompson the idea of the "scientific frets" which he later had built in the more conventional wire-based method.
2 hours ago · Like · 1
Gen.: Indeed, the Colonel is reported to have said to Sweeney, "I see your fifth and raise you a sixth AND a seventh!" Sweeney 'folded' and thus the matter was closed.
2 hours ago · Like · 1
Winesap Ah, of course.
2 hours ago · Like · 1
Col. Thompson Actually, gentlemen, that ban jar-like construction would be VanHagen's patent of 1859 (see "America's Instrument") and that would be... ahem... "TROUSERS."
6 minutes ago · Like
Winesap Colonel: as ever, the Bassanda Archives appreciate your erudition and contribution to the ongoing Work. We do recognize that locutions and descriptions have significantly evolved (or "devolved") since your day
Members of the Trinidad Banjo, Mandolin & Guitar Orchestra, c1912.
It is at least remotely possible that the mandolinist on the far left of the middle row is Jefferson Washington Habjar-Lawrence (born Boston Massachusetts, 1888), elder brother of Dianthe and Anthea, though there is no documentation to accompany or substantiate the inferences implicit in this photograph. Family histories tend to omit J.W., as he was called, for he largely eschewed the cause of Bassanda in favor of playing plucked-string instruments in Caribbean contexts. On the other hand, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited Trinidad in 1936, the then middle-aged J.W. appears to have made a passionate appeal to the 32nd President of the United States in favor of a "global t'ing, man...lahk, GLOBALL conscience." FDR appears to have been quite struck at receiving sophisticated geopolitical insight from an obviously transracial individual playing mandolin in a Port au Prince society band, but it appears to be from the same period that we can date Roosevelt's significantly enhanced communications with British, French, and Bassanda diplomats wary of the rise of Fascism. It is possible that the "disreputable" JWH-L thus performed a significantly greater service on behalf of Bassanda than family lore conventionally understood.
JWH-L may also have been a significant conduit of the Bassanda banjo tradition, later cited by Habjar-Lawrence Nas1lsinez in conversation with David Lindley in Southern California in the early 1960s.
It is at least remotely possible that the mandolinist on the far left of the middle row is Jefferson Washington Habjar-Lawrence (born Boston Massachusetts, 1888), elder brother of Dianthe and Anthea, though there is no documentation to accompany or substantiate the inferences implicit in this photograph. Family histories tend to omit J.W., as he was called, for he largely eschewed the cause of Bassanda in favor of playing plucked-string instruments in Caribbean contexts. On the other hand, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited Trinidad in 1936, the then middle-aged J.W. appears to have made a passionate appeal to the 32nd President of the United States in favor of a "global t'ing, man...lahk, GLOBALL conscience." FDR appears to have been quite struck at receiving sophisticated geopolitical insight from an obviously transracial individual playing mandolin in a Port au Prince society band, but it appears to be from the same period that we can date Roosevelt's significantly enhanced communications with British, French, and Bassanda diplomats wary of the rise of Fascism. It is possible that the "disreputable" JWH-L thus performed a significantly greater service on behalf of Bassanda than family lore conventionally understood.
JWH-L may also have been a significant conduit of the Bassanda banjo tradition, later cited by Habjar-Lawrence Nas1lsinez in conversation with David Lindley in Southern California in the early 1960s.
Anthea Habjar-Lawrence, daughter of Habjar-Lawrence Nas1lsinez, younger sister of Dianthe Habjar-Lawrence.
Born in 1892, she was, like her elder sister and father, a fervent supporter of Bassandan independence, having become radicalized in the nation's defense after reports of Leninist repression in the Socialist Republic from 1917. While her elder sister Dianthe was a noted horsewoman, and had recruited US Cavalry veterans to export western mounts and cavalry tactics to Bassanda from the 'Oughts onward, younger sister Anthea was an early devotee of motorcars. Schooled in New England and a competent mechanic from the age of 14, she was a noted competitor in rallies and cross-country races; she had served as co-pilot to her father in the 1907 Peking-to-Paris race, in which they did not place but their finish of which her father credited to her ability to improvise mechanical solutions in wild and desolate country.
This photograph, taken around 1928 by André Kertész, shows her behind the wheel of a Bugatti just before the start of a road race. She was a fierce competitor and, in the male-dominated world of Grand Prix, her rivals treated her with great respect and considerable circumspection; there was a saying among the French- and Italian-dominated racing fraternity: "Non sono in concorrenza con Habjar-Lawrence: lo prenderà la vostra virilità" ("Don't compete with Habjar-Lawrence: she'll take your (untranslatable)".
Commanders of Soviet occupation forces in Bassanda in the late '20s learned the same hard lesson: from 1929 onward, there are reports and correspondence of Anthea in Bassanda itself, teaching local bicycle copers how to adapt captured Soviet staff cars into super-charged, 4-wheel-drive, independent suspension mountain vehicles, capable of fording rivers and climbing 30-40deg grades, mounting Vickers or Bofors guns. These "Antheas" were so feared by occupying troops that they became proverbial: "Антея сука имеет острый укус" ("The bitch Anthea has a sharp bite").
Anthea appears to have been an important liaison between local partisans, in the period 1943-45, and the folkloric collecting and reconstruction spearheaded by Yezget Nas1lsinez. The long family connections between cousins, and their shared interest in Bassanda's reconstruction and recovery, made them natural allies. They are still revered as "Bassandans deeper than blood" among the itinerant mountain people there.
She ended her days in the hills of 1950s northern California, teaching young bohemians how to adapt the light, strong, durable air-cooled Volkswagen mini-bus into a mobile dispensary, clinic, library, or educational-radio broadcast studio. It is thought that her advocacy of these economical, adaptable vehicles for humanitarian purposes represents both a significant influence upon their ubiquity in the 1960s counterculture, and her own late-life therapeutic embrace of non-violent means and goals.
Born in 1892, she was, like her elder sister and father, a fervent supporter of Bassandan independence, having become radicalized in the nation's defense after reports of Leninist repression in the Socialist Republic from 1917. While her elder sister Dianthe was a noted horsewoman, and had recruited US Cavalry veterans to export western mounts and cavalry tactics to Bassanda from the 'Oughts onward, younger sister Anthea was an early devotee of motorcars. Schooled in New England and a competent mechanic from the age of 14, she was a noted competitor in rallies and cross-country races; she had served as co-pilot to her father in the 1907 Peking-to-Paris race, in which they did not place but their finish of which her father credited to her ability to improvise mechanical solutions in wild and desolate country.
This photograph, taken around 1928 by André Kertész, shows her behind the wheel of a Bugatti just before the start of a road race. She was a fierce competitor and, in the male-dominated world of Grand Prix, her rivals treated her with great respect and considerable circumspection; there was a saying among the French- and Italian-dominated racing fraternity: "Non sono in concorrenza con Habjar-Lawrence: lo prenderà la vostra virilità" ("Don't compete with Habjar-Lawrence: she'll take your (untranslatable)".
Commanders of Soviet occupation forces in Bassanda in the late '20s learned the same hard lesson: from 1929 onward, there are reports and correspondence of Anthea in Bassanda itself, teaching local bicycle copers how to adapt captured Soviet staff cars into super-charged, 4-wheel-drive, independent suspension mountain vehicles, capable of fording rivers and climbing 30-40deg grades, mounting Vickers or Bofors guns. These "Antheas" were so feared by occupying troops that they became proverbial: "Антея сука имеет острый укус" ("The bitch Anthea has a sharp bite").
Anthea appears to have been an important liaison between local partisans, in the period 1943-45, and the folkloric collecting and reconstruction spearheaded by Yezget Nas1lsinez. The long family connections between cousins, and their shared interest in Bassanda's reconstruction and recovery, made them natural allies. They are still revered as "Bassandans deeper than blood" among the itinerant mountain people there.
She ended her days in the hills of 1950s northern California, teaching young bohemians how to adapt the light, strong, durable air-cooled Volkswagen mini-bus into a mobile dispensary, clinic, library, or educational-radio broadcast studio. It is thought that her advocacy of these economical, adaptable vehicles for humanitarian purposes represents both a significant influence upon their ubiquity in the 1960s counterculture, and her own late-life therapeutic embrace of non-violent means and goals.
per reddit: ""Kyūdōka 弓道家 Japanese Archers c.1860"
Colourisation from a black and white photo
c.1860-1900, Japan, photographer unknown
Magnificent colorization work by
https://www.facebook.com/photochopshop
"Meiji era. Kyūdō (the way of the bow) - had evolved from a near redundant form of weapons practice from the Samurai class into its modern incarnation of part martial art, and part individual physical and moral development."
The Bassanda connection: Col. Thompson was a practitioner of several forms of Japanese martial/spiritual arts; he may actually have encountered these arts in Japan, which he visited throughout the '80s and '90s through connections with West Coast arts aficionados. It is also confirmed, via extant correspondence, that the Colonel had known the Irish/Greek journalist Lafcadio Hearn, a/k/a Koizumi Yakumo (1850-1904), who had been born in Ireland, reported on music and folkways from Cincinnati and New Orleans, and finally took citizenship in Japan, where he ended his life as a collector and publisher of translations from Japanese ghost stories. The Colonel may likewise have been a mentor for the young Li Bao, bodyguard and traveling companion to Algeria Main-Smyth: Li and Miss Main-Smyth, after their 1882-84 adventures with Colette St Jacques in Central Asia, had taken ship from Quindao on China's Pacific Coast, traveling east from San Francisco to return to New England.
It is possible that Main-Smyth, St Jacques, and Li detoured to visit the pueblos of New Mexico or southern Colorado--she was extremely interested in the Central Asian prophecy that Buddhism would come to North America via "the Land of the Red Man." It seems likely that this detour was in part inspired by the prior meeting of Li Bao and Colonel Thompson, who by '84 was living in a remote hacienda in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It is said that all manner of visitors came from both East, West, and Uttermost West to the Colonel's landhold. The Colonel practiced music and Kyudo there, and is reputed to have otherwise renounced the world beyond the mountains.
Colourisation from a black and white photo
c.1860-1900, Japan, photographer unknown
Magnificent colorization work by
https://www.facebook.com/photochopshop
"Meiji era. Kyūdō (the way of the bow) - had evolved from a near redundant form of weapons practice from the Samurai class into its modern incarnation of part martial art, and part individual physical and moral development."
The Bassanda connection: Col. Thompson was a practitioner of several forms of Japanese martial/spiritual arts; he may actually have encountered these arts in Japan, which he visited throughout the '80s and '90s through connections with West Coast arts aficionados. It is also confirmed, via extant correspondence, that the Colonel had known the Irish/Greek journalist Lafcadio Hearn, a/k/a Koizumi Yakumo (1850-1904), who had been born in Ireland, reported on music and folkways from Cincinnati and New Orleans, and finally took citizenship in Japan, where he ended his life as a collector and publisher of translations from Japanese ghost stories. The Colonel may likewise have been a mentor for the young Li Bao, bodyguard and traveling companion to Algeria Main-Smyth: Li and Miss Main-Smyth, after their 1882-84 adventures with Colette St Jacques in Central Asia, had taken ship from Quindao on China's Pacific Coast, traveling east from San Francisco to return to New England.
It is possible that Main-Smyth, St Jacques, and Li detoured to visit the pueblos of New Mexico or southern Colorado--she was extremely interested in the Central Asian prophecy that Buddhism would come to North America via "the Land of the Red Man." It seems likely that this detour was in part inspired by the prior meeting of Li Bao and Colonel Thompson, who by '84 was living in a remote hacienda in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It is said that all manner of visitors came from both East, West, and Uttermost West to the Colonel's landhold. The Colonel practiced music and Kyudo there, and is reputed to have otherwise renounced the world beyond the mountains.
Bassandan toll-collector, late Tsarist period (from Obscure & Romantic Nations of the Exotic East, Oxford 1922)
Though Bassanda’s mountainous terrain and rocky coast largely precluded the construction or maintenance of major highways, there was a sub-culture of toll-collectors, most often living in small cottages near bridges and mountain passes. The absence of any centralized government meant that these individuals were essentially private enterprisers, who charged modest fees of travelers in return for the not-inconsiderable work they put in maintaining the bridges, ferries, rope walks and narrow-gauge railway trestles. Though they wore a “uniform” of sorts (greatcoats suitable for high-altitude cold and an official-looking peaked cap), they were more commonly recognizable and distinguishable by to aspects of personal habit: their elaborate and meticulous cultivation of facial hair (a Bassandan proverb says “as lonely as a toll-collector’s mustache”), and their hobby of whittling complex and unique smoking pipes. The individual in this image is smoking a pipe with a bowl-cover (very common in windy mountains or spume-tossed maritime situations), carved in the elaborate form of a seated, nude woman. Toll-collectors’ home regions could be identified by their individualized pipe patterns (see folklorist Henry Glassie’s By Their Bowls You will Know Them: Pipe-makers and Potters in Old Bassanda, Indiana, 2007) . (redacted) The merits of the particular mixtures they preferred were topics of heated, though genial, debate.
(redacted from the 1922 edition:)
“...Pipe-makers and Potters in Old Bassanda, Indiana, 2007). Bassanda’s remarkably complex meteorological weather patterns yielded a number of quite divergent micro-climates, and in some of the steep valleys, temperate rain-forest conditions made the growing of Cannabis sativa quite feasible. As a result, toll-collectors became a network for the growth, harvest, and trade of a range of psycho-active smoked herbs, which significantly nuances and complicates our understanding both of toll-collector culture and the symbolism of their hand-carved pipes. The merits of the particular mixtures they preferred were topics of heated, though genial, debate.”
Though Bassanda’s mountainous terrain and rocky coast largely precluded the construction or maintenance of major highways, there was a sub-culture of toll-collectors, most often living in small cottages near bridges and mountain passes. The absence of any centralized government meant that these individuals were essentially private enterprisers, who charged modest fees of travelers in return for the not-inconsiderable work they put in maintaining the bridges, ferries, rope walks and narrow-gauge railway trestles. Though they wore a “uniform” of sorts (greatcoats suitable for high-altitude cold and an official-looking peaked cap), they were more commonly recognizable and distinguishable by to aspects of personal habit: their elaborate and meticulous cultivation of facial hair (a Bassandan proverb says “as lonely as a toll-collector’s mustache”), and their hobby of whittling complex and unique smoking pipes. The individual in this image is smoking a pipe with a bowl-cover (very common in windy mountains or spume-tossed maritime situations), carved in the elaborate form of a seated, nude woman. Toll-collectors’ home regions could be identified by their individualized pipe patterns (see folklorist Henry Glassie’s By Their Bowls You will Know Them: Pipe-makers and Potters in Old Bassanda, Indiana, 2007) . (redacted) The merits of the particular mixtures they preferred were topics of heated, though genial, debate.
(redacted from the 1922 edition:)
“...Pipe-makers and Potters in Old Bassanda, Indiana, 2007). Bassanda’s remarkably complex meteorological weather patterns yielded a number of quite divergent micro-climates, and in some of the steep valleys, temperate rain-forest conditions made the growing of Cannabis sativa quite feasible. As a result, toll-collectors became a network for the growth, harvest, and trade of a range of psycho-active smoked herbs, which significantly nuances and complicates our understanding both of toll-collector culture and the symbolism of their hand-carved pipes. The merits of the particular mixtures they preferred were topics of heated, though genial, debate.”
Habjar-Lawrence Nas1lsinez in Janissary costume
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The Young Men's Oriental Society of Talpa, c1892.
Left-Right: C. Thompson, Esq; M. Browne, DVM; H.M. S. Owsley Smythe; A. Salamone;Lt. Paddy League, The General. Grrnnnnnndull.
A collection of rather mysterious individuals. All have been identified, but in several cases their life details remain unclear or contradictory.
Thompson, still active in the Society, had served in the U.S. Army in the New Mexico territories during the War Between the States; though it is difficult to explain how, in this image from c1892, he appears to be several decades younger than in the more extensive collection of images we have from the c1850s (see elsewhere on this site). Browne, a multi-instrumentalist, Orientalist scholar/linguist, and devotee of Eastern religion, appears to have moved between different geographical and experiential zones with remarkable facility and fluidity.
The central figure, who like all others wears the fez symbolic of the pilgrimage to Mecca, is the mysterious H.M. S. Owsley-Smyth, whose movement after the 1890s has become quite obscured, but who appears to have pioneered the adaptation of the Eastern saz to Bassanda instrumental design aesthetics; he is thus a central contributor to the remarkable collection of Bassandan folkloric music styles found on The Janissary Stomp. Little is known of Salamone, though he appears to have been the technical wizard responsible for the capture of the Stomp recordings on wax cylinder; his only recorded commentary is "That young Edison, he had a good idea, but he was in too much of a hurry to patent. If he'd just hot-rodded this thing the way he could have, THIS could have been the result!"
Lt. League, obviously much the junior of the others in this photographer, was a musical/linguistic savant, whose name crops up in literally hundreds of recordings in a wide diversity of styles and upon dozens of instruments. Of mixed Celtic/Greco/Bassandan ancestry, he moved very easily into, out of, and through widely diverse ethnic environments. General Landes, like Colonel Thompson a central figure in the Stomp recordings, in contrast to the Colonel appears mysteriously much older in this image than in more recent correspondences. It seems clear that the phenomenon of aging in Bassanda simply operates on a different--perhaps reversed??--time-scale.
The four-legged beast at ease in the foreground (as opposed to the two-legged beasts posed stiffly in the background) is a Bassandan wolfhound--a mixture of western terrier and Bassandan wolf--a breed notoriously difficult to domesticate but fiercely loyal; it is said that the breed is the reason that Don Cossacks, legendarily ferocious and brutal cavalry, refused to serve in Bassanda. The animal's name is unknown, but may have been some phonetic equivalent of "Grrnnnnnndull", as that name is scrawled in pencil on the back of the image: "Chpp, Mase, Steve, Andi, Pad, Rog, Grnn."
No more is currently known about the image or the individuals depicted (beyond the above) but it is hoped that the General and the Colonel might respond with additional information formerly unrecalled.
Thompson, still active in the Society, had served in the U.S. Army in the New Mexico territories during the War Between the States; though it is difficult to explain how, in this image from c1892, he appears to be several decades younger than in the more extensive collection of images we have from the c1850s (see elsewhere on this site). Browne, a multi-instrumentalist, Orientalist scholar/linguist, and devotee of Eastern religion, appears to have moved between different geographical and experiential zones with remarkable facility and fluidity.
The central figure, who like all others wears the fez symbolic of the pilgrimage to Mecca, is the mysterious H.M. S. Owsley-Smyth, whose movement after the 1890s has become quite obscured, but who appears to have pioneered the adaptation of the Eastern saz to Bassanda instrumental design aesthetics; he is thus a central contributor to the remarkable collection of Bassandan folkloric music styles found on The Janissary Stomp. Little is known of Salamone, though he appears to have been the technical wizard responsible for the capture of the Stomp recordings on wax cylinder; his only recorded commentary is "That young Edison, he had a good idea, but he was in too much of a hurry to patent. If he'd just hot-rodded this thing the way he could have, THIS could have been the result!"
Lt. League, obviously much the junior of the others in this photographer, was a musical/linguistic savant, whose name crops up in literally hundreds of recordings in a wide diversity of styles and upon dozens of instruments. Of mixed Celtic/Greco/Bassandan ancestry, he moved very easily into, out of, and through widely diverse ethnic environments. General Landes, like Colonel Thompson a central figure in the Stomp recordings, in contrast to the Colonel appears mysteriously much older in this image than in more recent correspondences. It seems clear that the phenomenon of aging in Bassanda simply operates on a different--perhaps reversed??--time-scale.
The four-legged beast at ease in the foreground (as opposed to the two-legged beasts posed stiffly in the background) is a Bassandan wolfhound--a mixture of western terrier and Bassandan wolf--a breed notoriously difficult to domesticate but fiercely loyal; it is said that the breed is the reason that Don Cossacks, legendarily ferocious and brutal cavalry, refused to serve in Bassanda. The animal's name is unknown, but may have been some phonetic equivalent of "Grrnnnnnndull", as that name is scrawled in pencil on the back of the image: "Chpp, Mase, Steve, Andi, Pad, Rog, Grnn."
No more is currently known about the image or the individuals depicted (beyond the above) but it is hoped that the General and the Colonel might respond with additional information formerly unrecalled.
1907 Krewe of Rex, NOLA. Corner of Canal and Royal St. This glass-plate negative resides in the US Library of Congress archives. It has been alleged that Habjar-Lawrence Nasilsinez might have been present at this, or possibly the 1906 Carnival. Certainly Bassandan masking and festival behaviors would have been consistent with NOLA aesthetics; H-L's presence in 1907 may help to account for use of clave & related rhythms in some Edison cylinders recorded c1914-18 in Bassanca.
The General (US Army, ret.).
Photograph (detail), c1892. Appears to date from the period shortly after The General departed the East for the Mountains of New Mexico, largely repudiating western ways. It's alleged that, in addition, he took a new name; this possibly accounting for the disappearance of his name from subsequent US Army rolls.
Ephemera from the Bassandan Banjo Tradition
Images pertaining to Bicycle culture and the Royal Bassanda Bicycle Corps
