Sunday, September 9, 2007

Yes! Canonized by iTunes!


Awards are all very well ... even the notoriety of having the Thai authories attempt to censor me is all very well ... but let's face it, real fame only comes from iTunes.

Which is why I was jolly pleased to discover that the iTunes shop has put a series of albums called "Essentials" ... collections of pieces considered vital to an understanding of every genre. The collections come in four sections: "The basics", which is 25 pieces of music you absolutely MUST have; and then there's "next step", an unjustly neglected section, and so on. So one of the essentials collections is called "Classical World" ... the non-Eurocentric classical music collection. And right there, in "the basics" along with people I have heard of, like Ravi Shankar, Takemitsu, et al, there's an aria from "Madana," an opera composed by "Modesty Prevents Me." So it seems that iTunes has magically determined I'm one of the 25 must-have "world classical" composers.

Of course, no one in Thailand will ever be aware of this because the iTunes store, the world's bestselling source of digital music and so on ... is inaccessible to people with Thai addresses. Too much credit card fraud or something. It's only because my credit card is on my L.A. address that I happened to run into this ... so once again, absolutely no impact on my Life as a Dog.

Perhaps I should add that during the Thailand ban on Youtube, which lasted 3 or 4 months, the Bangkok Opera's Youtube channel was visited almost 400,000 times. Not, of course, by any of the law-abiding Thai citizens who wouldn't dream of flouting a ban from our beloved military authorities ... so, it must have been those pesky foreigners ... when will they ever learn ... oh, whoops, I forgot, I'm a pesky foreigner myself ... where did I hide that U.S. passport? Better not tell iTunes or I'll be kicked off the "essential non-Western western music composer" list.

1 comment:

  1. Dear Somtow,

    I tried to contact you through email several times and got no reply. I wonder there is something wrong with my email account that you can't read my message.
    The new season of my choir just started. And I wanna disucss the details of the joint concert with you! Could you leave me an email? (leonchu@hotmail.com / s006221@gmail.com)
    Thank you very much!

    Leon

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