Friend of Mutable, the Debo Band, have been given the incredible opportunity to bring Ethiopian music for the first time to East Africa’s largest music festival: “Sauti za Busara” on the island of Zanzibar, February 11th-16th, 2010. The festival, now in its 7th year, draws over 18,000 attendees and showcases 30 performing groups from Africa and 10 groups from the rest of the world. They would bring with them 4 native Ethiopian musicians and dancers living in Addis Ababa. This is a major opportunity for them to reach a wider audience and make further connections and collaborations with music in Ethiopia and East Africa, while presenting Ethiopian music for the first time to this festival.

To pay for their upcoming African tour they’ve launched a fund-raising campaign, and now have 17 days to raise just under $6,000! They’d love you to watch their video and help spread the word. The success of this effort depends on this news reaching people far and wide.

Watch the video here.

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Arthur Miller, wherefore art thou? Very probably turning over in your grave at this minimalist interpretation of your classic play by Mutable’s own Gabriel Boyer, done in the same manner as it was done for Bedroom Theater some six years ago to an audience of two. This is the first of five installments of the Crucible, and the first of a series of Bedroom Theater re-enactments. Enjoy the antiquated language, the muppet-like voices, the Morton Feldman score, and general witchery with the knowledge that you are safe several centuries in the future of these dramatically reproduced historical events, a time when you can laugh, cry, and reproduce at your leisure.

You can download the first installment here or click below to listen.

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Podcast: Download

“The Pigeon Game” is a documentary on the disappearing culture of homing pigeon racing in New York City made by Mutable favorite, Annie Heringer. Unknown to most people, there are still men and women who raise birds on their rooftops and race them from distances up to 600 miles. The scenes of Marlon Brando at his pigeon loft in “On the Waterfront” may have secured the sport in the history of the city, but “The Pigeon Game” proves that the tradition still exists today among a small but dedicated group of fliers.

To view the trailer go here.

(The below manifesto is the earliest I’ve discovered yet, a founding document for the Rosicrucian faith, and a wopping good read. It was published anonymously and in latin in the seventeenth century and gave rise to a movement that Dame Frances Yates has called the “Rosicrucian Enlightenment.” Enjoy!)

Chapter I.

Whatsoever you have heard, O mortals, concerning our Fraternity by the trumpet sound of the Fama R.C., do not either believe it hastily, or willfully suspect it. It is Jehovah who, seeing how the world is falling to decay, and near its end, doth hasten it again to its beginning, inverting the course of Nature, and so what heretofore hath been sought with great pains and dayly labour He doth lay open now to those thinking of no such thing, offering it to the willing and thrusting it upon the reluctant, that it may become to the good that which will smooth the troubles of human life and break the violence of unexpected blows of Fortune, but to the ungodly that which will augment their sins and their punishments.

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