Thursday, April 9, 2009

Upcoming Blend Event!

May 7th will be the first Thursday in May and thus will be the evening of the Blend event series over at Blue Banana on South Street.

There are two amazing performers that evening (as well as the usual, solid open mic), Ashraf Osman and Brian Markley.

Ashraf Osman: Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, Ashraf Osman has been living in Philadelphia since 2002 where he works as an architect. Ashraf has been engaged in online poetry since 2002: in addition to his award-winning personal poetry blog, arch.memory, Ashraf hosts a website of Philadelphia poetry links and calendars called PhillyPoetry.com. His poetry has been featured in the Mad Poets Review, Comstock Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal and Islamica magazine, and has been selected for inclusion in several anthologies including Queering Language and The Other Voices International Project.

Brian Markley is an emerging song writer and musician from South Jersey. While being classically trained on the trumpet for over twenty years, Brian has studied and explored other instruments such as the guitar, mandolin, piano, and harmonica, as well as various tribal instruments such as the didgeridoo and wooden flute. His musical journey has taken him on both American and European tours and has afforded him opportunities to work with and learn from accomplished musicians such as Frank Foster, Dennis DeBlasio, Maynard Ferguson, Nathan Davis, Toby Lightman, and other rising South Jersey artists. These experiences have inspired him to pursue a very eclectic approach to music incorporating acoustic, funk, spoken word, bluegrass, political folk, hip-hop, reggae, rock, country, blues, and of course jazz.

Proud of his roots, Brian is the leader of the Pineland Medicine Band. Centered in a melting pot of musical genres, the Medicine Band reflects the sounds from Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and D.C., and is the essence of the South Jersey music scene.

Click here to go to our page of recordings from the previous Blend event.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Videos Being Uploaded and Issues Uploading Videos

Good evening folks!

I see that some people are watching the videos, which is a great thing. Keep it up! Show us you love us! New content is added daily. Well, almost-daily. Lately Youtube, and the greater Internet of greater Philadelphia has been going only semi-okay. But with patience, the good videos from the past event from last Thursday (Blend featuring Trapeta B. Mayson, at the Blue Banana) will all be up. In case you haven't been able to see them just yet, watch this one right here:

To see more videos from the Blend event, just click here to go to the Blend playlist page. That reminds me--now that there are so many videos being "archived" through a video hosting service like Youtube, it's important that PAPP stays organized. One way that I will be attempting this organization is through the playlist option, which basically lets anyone who goes onto the PAPP Youtube page (click here to access the main page) click on the playlists button and see folders where different types of videos can be found. I'm arranging all the folders into different events, and so far it seems to be working.

Also, I do not hesitate to record videos at the open-mics that we host, which has its ups and downs. If you do not want a video of you remaining on this wonderfully public thing we call the Internet, just pop me an email and I'll remove it, no questions asked.

In any case, we are always looking for better-quality equipment, so if you or someone you know has and wants to operate a video camera that can operate especially-well under lighting conditions the my camera finds horrible, please email us! Also, send us any comments or questions you might have.

Thanks,

Gregory Bem