WORDS AND MUSIC

WORDS AND MUSIC owes its inception to an unlikely pairing: the work of Hannah Arendt , and salsa . In 1989 I had the summer off from the French-American School in San Francisco , and salved my guilty conscience by devoting a couple of hours every day to reading "The Origins of Totalitarianism". It felt like work . It was only many years later that I resolved to undertake a systematic approach to understanding and fleshing out a text that sets a very high bar for most readers . My "Reader's Guide to 'Antisemitism' " (Vol. i of 'Origins...') more than digests the original ; it offers references to books , and on-line lectures , I have found indispensable to an independent reading of a work published in 1951.

For a while in the early '90s I frequented the Cafe Du Nord . Every Tuesday after my acting class I would check out the salsa bands , and it was there that I experienced the clave beat that is at the heart of Afro-Caribbean music . I learned that dance is music , and that rhythm beats all . CHIRIMBA has evolved out of those basic truths.

The other essays you'll find on the site deal with education , health and politics . A space for comments will soon be available .