I Will follow You - Nenad Bach

Nenad Bach and Nenad Bach Band
"I Will Follow You" from the album "Everything is Forever"
copyright Nenad Bach
The Fractalated Bach Images copyright Canovals 2016
Editorial Assistant - tb

tekst:
Too many leaders no one to follow
Too many clouds not enough rain
Too many words and promises, too hard to swallow
Too many innocent die in vain

I can tell you how it used to be
Let me write another melody
I can tell you how it used to feel
When we stood up for what we believed

So, I will follow you. I will follow you.

Too many bankers not enough money
If it wasn’t serious, it would be funny
Too many artists not enough art
Too much marketing not enough heart.

I can tell you how it used to be
Let me write another melody
I can tell you how it used to feel
When artists stood up for what we believed

So, I will follow you. I will follow you.

Too many children not enough fathers
Too many clowns not enough laughter
Too many people, not enough souls
Not enough windows too many walls.

I can tell you how it used to be
Let me write another melody
I can tell you how it used to feel
When we stood up for what we believed

So, I will follow you. I will follow you.

Music and Lyrics by Nenad Bach ©2009 Nenad Bach Music Ltd. BMI

At the White House ...

part III of a series
(part I of this adventure is at dorucak na granici , 
part II is at Boom and there will be yet more to follow)

By now in this narrative you have probably concluded that I am a member of two minorities in the United States.  I am a hyphenated - American, Croatian-American to be exact and I am somewhat physically disabled.  My doctors tend to think the later is due to late arriving aftereffects of polio long ago.   That puts me in an elite group because there aren't many of us polio survivors.  The former may be a mystery to some readers who know my more famous shirt sleeve relative Eric Byler who is Asian-American.  Eric is the creator of  "Charlotte Sometimes," which if you haven't seen, you simply must because its a masterpiece.   

                             I got to meet Nenad Bach in person for the first time!

In Washington, the Croatian - American group passed through the second check point at the White House in spite of the fact that all we had was State issued driver's licenses and that the White House had urgently emailed us that out identification had to be "US Government issued."  

On the Texas border with Mexico when the authorities want to see US Government issued documents, they want to see a passport or a border crossing card.  Your Texas driver's license or other State issued ID will not do at all in those cases.  You look around and see tall fences surmounted with concertina wire and armed men everywhere and you produce your passport.  We know what "US Government issued" means. Apparently the White House officials do not.   English.  Perhaps some ill feeling and confusion could be averted if Federal officials learned to write on english.

I was exhausted by the time we reached that second check point.  My back was announcing to me in no uncertain terms that it wanted no part of the excursion we were about to embark upon. When I relayed that information to the security people they were quick to furnish me with a wheel chair.  Chach was kind enough to volunteer to push me around and so off we went.

Around the corner, to our consternation, there were concrete steps.  We couldn't see any way around them but suddenly out of the bushes, in a flash like something from a James Bond movie, there appeared a Secret Service type fellow who guided us through a hole in those bushes we had not seen.   As we passed through a gate which reminded me of gates in various prisons where I have visited parishioners (yes, even Lutherans sometimes run afoul of the law), the thought occurred to me that we might be on our way to Guantanamo never to be seen again.   Blessedly, our adventure was not quite that eventful.

In a few moments we were actually in the White House, a wonderfully appointed place - which has within it more steps, beautiful steps, but steps.  Another splendidly uniformed Secret Service fellow appeared and led us on the tour of a lifetime. Chach and I were whisked through store rooms and work rooms and cloak rooms and finally we passed the highlight of our whole tour - the kitchen.  I could see the spotless stainless steel appointments of the room and that there were leeks on the table, all sized exactly alike.  We saw some finely appointed rooms and such but nothing compared to the kitchen.

At that moment I was elated. First of all, I do like cooking and seeing such a kitchen was a fantastic delight.  All these years since 1959 I thought the "Kitchen Debates" took place in that kitchen of the White House and I thought I was seeing the very place where East met West.  Sigh, this morning I learned that those debates took place in an entirely different venue.  Still, it was a tour which, according to our Secret Service guide, only one in about 600 ever gets to have.  That is special.

We rested a while afterward and took some photos outside.  Nenad has most of these photos and when he makes them available I will attach more of them here or over on Crown Croatia somewhere so you can find them and see them later if you like.   As we left the grounds, the officers retrieved the wheel chair and I faced the walk to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building unaided.  

      L-R:  Dragan Chach Cacinovic, David Byler, Steve Rukavina, Anne Pavlich and Nenad Bach

It was a long and painful walk during which my back complained vociferously, but as it turned out,  we Croatian - Americans had brought along  with us our own nurse, Anne Pavlich, who made sure I stopped and rested sufficiently along the way so I didn't hurt myself.  According to the intern assigned to our meeting, the Secret Service had a wheel chair available but it was not released to us until I had made the trek to our designated entrance around the corner about three impressively  large Washington DC blocks away and was seated inside the auditorium where the White House had planned a briefing for us.  At sixty, none of this would have been a difficulty.  

Perhaps the White House needs a reminder that some of us actually do live past sixty and that disabilities occur to some of us.  All the politicians in Washington from the President down yammer on and on about how disabled folk should have open access to everything everywhere but there in Washington DC itself, the Capitol of the United States, at the White House, this was my experience.  

I was determined to attend the briefing and Anne was determined to help me so at last we rejoined the others at our entrance.  I was out of breath and in pain as I looked for a seat.  A Serbian gentleman graciously yielded his seat at the end of a row to me.  I know, I know, for a Croatian to use Serbian and 

gentleman in the same breath is anathema to some of my Croatian brothers but I'm just reporting the facts as they lay on the ground in that room on that day in that place.  I did not catch his name, but he was a gentleman and I am appreciative of him.  

That moment would not be the last time during that meeting that Slav - Americans of various sorts demonstrated a measure of solidarity. That would not be the last moment that immigrant Americans and hyphenated  Americans of various kinds demonstrated solidarity.

More on this next time ...

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,
David Byler a.k.a. Canovals
14. veljače 2014

"BOOOOOM!!!"

Part II of a series

(part I of this adventure is at dorucak na granici , there will more to follow)

"BOOOOOM!!!" My eyes were instantly open.  Instinct propelled me to drop and roll.  Of course dropping and rolling from a prone sleeping position placed me on the safety of the floor between the bed and the wall. My brain wasn't on yet.  I couldn't get it on.  My brain doesn't reboot from my sleep any faster than my computer reboots from its sleep.  

After that one single "BOOOOM!" everything was silent.  No dogs were barking. No cats were miauing.  No possums (we call them tlacuatches here) were rustling.  No night birds were clucking.  No bat wings were flapping.  I listened intently for the soft sound of my tarantulas scuttling through the grass.  Nothing.  Not a sound. 

No sound even of a truck on the freeway not far away.  Odd, even at that hour. I kept my head low as I eased over to the computers near the foot of my bed.  One was black.  The other had just rebooted.  The computer's clock told me that it was 0300.

I concluded that the "BOOOOOM" was not mortar fire.  By this time I was awake just enough to decide that it wasn't a shell from a cannon. I couldn't hear any AK47s firing and heaven knows there are plenty of those around here which people fire off on Christmas, New Years, Fourth of July and whenever else they get drunk.  Anyway, we weren't being invaded and it wasn't the sound of a border drug war like we hear the sounds from all too often  from just three or four miles away.  It was still silent as a graveyard.  It couldn't have been a katyuska - who on earth in their right mind fires off just one of those things and expects to do any damage?  

I was still groggy when I remembered that the Iranians were sending warships toward the coast somewhere. Maybe they had lobbed an atomic bomb at us.  People have always said that it would take an atomic bomb to wake me up in the night after I have gone to sleep.  That seemed logical then.  The Iranians must have bombed the Port of Brownsville.  I was way too sleepy to handle that, so I went back to bed and slipped back into a sound sleep from which I didn't awaken until late this morning.

A few weeks ago, Nenad Bach called me.  He was so apologetic and concerned that he had awakened me.  Nenad is a kind and considerate man.  I assured him that if I had been asleep, I wouldn't have heard the phone.  That was the truth of course -since it takes an atomic bomb to wake me up (see above).  Actually, that was not an atomic bomb last night.  I can't blame the Iranians.  Even so, the noise was so loud it was heard all over the city.  This morning on Facebook Brownsvillians were trying to triangulate the source of the sound until the weather service explained that we had some unusual lightening along with an inversion layer which amplified the sound.

Gotta learn more about how this works.  Imagine getting control of this phenomenon somehow and placing a rock band in the middle of it someway so the sound would go out over a whole city.  Awesome thought.  Someone should work on this sometime.  

Anyway, that night a few weeks ago, Nenad told me about "Ethnic Day" at the White House in Washington DC.  He wondered if I might be interested in being part of the Croatian - American delegation.  Of course I wanted to go.  There were a few details to work out and all that went well.  While I was in Houston for Ambassador Paro's presentation at the Holocaust Museum we planned for the delegates to meet with him at the Embassy while we were there, so everything was set. Washington DC here we come!

We have all heard stories about how the TSA sometimes gives people a hard time during their screenings.  I'm an old guy so too much hassle could be a problem.  I picked up the phone and called the TSA to find out what to expect and what to do.  The man explained everything to me and told me to be sure and let the agents at the airport know that I am partly disabled.  

At the airport, I was received with great dignity.  Security found a way to check me and my luggage out without any hassle at all.  I like the idea of flying safely and I like the idea of being treated with some decorum.  The TSA accomplished both.  I was so impressed that I called the TSA help line again today just to say "thank you" because somehow I doubt they hear a "thank you" very often.  Soon I was on the airplane traveling to Houston and on to the capitol city. 

There was one detail I learned after I was in the hotel in Washington.  The White House was insisting on two things:  1. That we present identification which matched the identification which we had sent in earlier and 2. That this identification be US Government issued.   

I was depressed.  I've been around the block a few times, in the US military and so forth.  I know that there is exactly such a thing as US Government issued identification.  There are military driver's licenses, passports, and border crossing cards.  I had given my Texas Driver's license number.  Texas is Texas and not the US Government.  There is a difference.  Here on the Texas border we are acutely aware that this is an important difference.

It wouldn't have mattered a lot really if the White House had refused my identification. Somehow seeing where the President lives was not nearly so important as meeting one of the greatest musicians of our time. Nenad Bach was live and in person there at the rendezvous point.  My purpose in being there was accomplished.  It was good to meet my friend for the first time in the flesh.  The rest of the adventure would be icing on the cake. 

The rest of the delegation are all especially fine people too - the sort that make a person extra proud to be a Croat.  We will talk more about them as we go along.

The Croatian - American delegation approached the first White House check point and it seems that our state driver's licenses were quite acceptable after all.  Apparently what the White House had meant to say was that we had to have identification issued by an official entity of the United States, such as one of our respective states.

One observation on this experience so far:  All of us hyphenated - Americans speak on english pretty darn good (except perhaps when I write miau instead of meow for sound cat makes) but it really might be helpful if the Americans would learn to speak on english also.    

There is more to this adventure, so do please stay tuned .......


do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,
David Byler a.k.a. Canovals
12. veljače 2014

Radio, Television, and YouTube

I have informally extended a project about Croatian internet radio in which I was invited to participate by Nenad Bach and which we talked about on the last post. There is a lot of information floating around which suggests that many people are moving away from traditional radio / television to the internet. Google's whole business model is based on the notion that this move has already been underway and is substantial.

 

Over the years, I've had a few modest experiences with broadcasting on radio/television in Southern Illinois, Central Tennessee and in South Texas.  In each case the population within the reception area amounted to about three million and the stations presumed from their studies that the audience might be around 300,000.  The fact is that for any particular broadcast we didn't know how many listened.  We knew that some people tuned in because they wrote letters.

It is difficult to compare "traditional" transmissions to internet transmissions where we can have hard data. On YouTube for example - we know how many times a video was clicked and we know in the aggregate how many minutes people stayed on that video.  The algorithm which YouTube currently uses to "rank" a particular video takes into account "engagement" which includes "comments","like / dislike", and now its important to somehow keep the viewer on the video all the way through.

 

On YouTube we do not actually know where someone is located.  We know only where they say they are located so I did not take location into account.  My specifications were simple:  channels which broadcast a fair amount of music by Croatian performers were included.  In this group were channels operated by what appear to be Croatians in the same five continents where we found internet radio, as well as Slovenia and Serbia.  A few I know to be operating from France, Germany, and Sweden.

 

A few channels have dropped out in the last few years.  A few more have been hit with DCMA complaints and have been dropped from YouTube.  If memory serves, those may have amounted to as many as forty million views between them.  I did not take into consideration channels with under a hundred thousand views. 

 

Among the remaining top seventy Croatian/Croatian friendly channels the views amount to about 300,000,000 since 2006.  I've informally kept up with the top 20 or so channels for several years and I'm aware that the vast majority of those views have come in the last twenty-four to thirty months. 

 

This sounds impressive until you realize one Korean fellow made one video with one song which has gone over a billion views.  If you discount that one as a fluke it still sounds impressive until you look around just a little.  As a "group" we've accomplished a lot but we have a long long way to go.

 

There was a time when all one needed was a killer song to get a lot of views.  That's still important, but now it works best with a video which keeps the viewer "engaged" throughout the song.  It is no longer sufficient just to have a lot of music on a channel and it is no longer sufficient to have a wonderful piece of music and a killer video although all that is important. Now it requires that the broadcaster continually "engage" the audience and it requires that we find ways to find and engage our potential audience.  It also requires that we engage the performers and that we engage the companies which distribute the music.

 

Can I tell you how to do any of this?  No I can't.  I am still learning, but there is plenty of help.  Lisa Irby  has information on YouTube for us.   You will have to follow your nose among her extensive information and you will have to adapt it to suit your style but her information is solid and a good place to start. Lisa  also has a blog with a world of information on it for us.  This isn't about promoting Lisa, this is about learning how to promote us and our performers.  YouTube  provides us some help also. 

 

We have to out perform radio.  We have to out perform Television.  We may have to use FaceBook, Twitter, blogging of some sort, or whatever is available to us.  Oh yes, we might even have to somehow use some radio and television along the way. We have to use every legitimate means at our disposal to accomplish this task. 

 

We are broadcasters. We are DJ's at the party. We have a product to sell.  That product is the music of our beloved Homeland and her singers where ever they are in the world.  Its our job to sell this product and not the job of the performers and it is not the job of the Record Houses.  The performers task is to compose and perform.  The record companies job is to make the records and count the sales. We are the sales people.

 

We are closer to the people, we are closer to the market than anyone else could ever hope to be at this time.  If we want to keep our jobs and continue to have access to the product, then we must succeed at our task.  We must  engage as many Croatians in Croatia and in the diaspora as we can.  We must engage other people as well. The Japanese already know "U boj, U boj," so we have a good start on this project. 

 

Along the way we must discover and help our performers know how to make a little money on the work we do to promote their efforts.  The record houses must see an upswing in sales.  We must put the music out there so people of  all kinds want to hear it and want to buy it.  That's the task.

 

Yes, we are competitors but we also have a common goal - our Homeland, our culture.   We can either play around with this or we can get after it and have a great time doing it. Are you ready?

 

Za Dom, Spremni!!

 

 

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac

14 svibanj 2013

Music from Home

Sixty-five years ago our music from Home was at home in our house.  Sometimes on a Friday night, Mama and Tata would take out their harmonike from the closet and they would play and sing to us.  Sometimes they teach me to sing along with them. Tata made puppets from wood and plaster and mother made clothes for them.  They presented little shows for people as a hobby. To dramatize the shows, Tata would play music the way he liked to play it.

 

I remember when the leather broke on Tata's harmonika how he cried.  Tata did not cry very often.  Mama had already tried to fix hers with artificial leather. Leatherette they called it - it was a good covering for chairs but not for use in Harmonike so it had not worked very well. They cried together  because sister needed money for piano lessons and so at that time we did not have the money to buy the material to repair any harmonike.

 

Now there was no music anymore that could go around places with the puppets and soon they went away in the closet forever.  Mama and Tata are gone now but I still have two or three of their puppets.

 

Sister wanted now to go to college so Mama and Tata had to sell her piano for the money for college.  Some years later when Tata had more money and he bought piano for mother, sister became angry and she would not sing anymore with us.  Too bad for her, we sang anyway when she was not around.

 

In High School I played clarinet.  Sometimes then we had a clarinet / piano duo playing while Mama and Tata would sing.  We had a little record player which would play big records.  We owned a few good records and when people came  from Home many times they would bring new records.  We would share records with other families we knew and they would share with us.  Mama controlled the record player.  When it was time to listen to music she would say to me what she wanted to hear and I was the "disk jockey."

 

In those years I bought a little radio.  Mama and Tata were afraid at first about what kind of music I would play on this radio.  When they discovered  that I tuned into KFRD Rosenburg and KULP in El Campo they were pleased.   These stations had early morning shows which were for all kinds of Slavic people.  One of the Disk Jockeys at KFRD was Croatian man so we heard good music now in the morning. 

 

I went away a long time to college, to the military, to work.  When I came back, KFRD is gone from the air. But KULP is there still in the morning with a Polka Show but for many years I was too far away to get even their broadcast. Lots of years went by when I was busy just trying to make a living.  I missed the old ways and the old music but there wasn't much time to do anything about that except just miss it in my heart - until I was at the end of the earth down here in Brownsville where the only radio or TV is Spanish or
English.

 

Then I had a terminally ill wife on my hands who dearly wanted to hear the old music.  Somehow it was comfort to her - and to me. We had a few cassette tapes and then we bought a few CDs from Home but with all the medical  expense we did not have money to buy very many. 

 

I set out to discover what to do.  On the internet I found Dennis Svatek. He is not Croatian but he plays a lot of good music and he makes it freely available to download and listen to it. 

 

Then I discoved Radio Narodna on the internet.  On Easter after Carole died, they played on croatian a song same as in Lutheran Hymnal "Jesus Christ is Risen Today."  I shall not forget that Easter.  I stayed awake all night for Easter Vigil and was rewarded at the top of every hour with the recording of those wonderful women singing that song.  Someday I will find that recording -
I want it.

 

Along the way, I discovered many other internet radio stations with croatian language broadcasts.  Most of these stations are based in Croatia but many  are or were based also in North America. 

 

I discovered YouTube and the world of croatian music to be found there. The ladies at Croatia Gifts in Ohio once asked me how I choose the music I buy and I answered that I go to YouTube and listen to a singer first. If I like the sound, then, when I have the money, I buy the CD so I can hear the music in my car when I am away from my house. Eventually I learned a  little about making videos and I am now a "broadcaster" on YouTube. I am grateful that almost all of the Croatian performers are friendly about the promotion of their material I try to give them there. 

 

If the performers can figure out how to do it, they could even run
advertising on my videos with their music and make a little extra money for themselves.  Right now the Germans are trying to claim their material and make this money but I keep chasing them away.

 

The learning curve on YouTube is interesting.  I've had an account on YouTube since 1999 but it was a couple of years before I understood the potential there.  Now I'm getting over 3,000 views each day and that number is growing rapidly.  I've been learning and experimenting with various things and I expect that number to be over 10,000 views a day by the end of next year.  So, in fact, I am broadcasting to a fairly large and growing community.

 

Recently, Nenad Bach asked me to work on a project with him. What an honor to be asked to do this!! The project was to discover all the Croatian language radio stations in the world outside of Croatia.

 

I discovered there are some broadcasts I knew nothing about before.  There is even a broadcast from China on croatian language.  There are internet broadcasts from Australia and New Zealand, and from Argentina.  In fact, there are broadcasts from every continent except Africa and Antarctica.

 

I discovered some changes in North America which surprised me, although I should not have been surprised at all.  These changes reflect the lives of  Croatian Americans and the changing realities of an interconnected world. Radio Stations like my old KFRD are gone now from the air because we all grew up and went away somewhere else.  I remember broadcasts in the southern Wisconsin area.  There was a "Radio Club" there, organized to raise the money to see to it that Croatians had at least a little sound from Home.

In Ohio there are still broadcasts but they are mostly one hour  "packages" from Home.  One is carried by a mostly Afro-American station which views us as a "minority," which of course we are, I suppose.  I would guess that over the next five  years most of these one hour a week broadcasts will disappear.

 

I found nothing at all in Seattle where there is a sizable Croatian community.  There is a station from Vancouver however, and one in Toronto and Ottawa.  Down in California where there is a large Croatian population, there are no longer any broadcasts. St Anthony's Croatian Catholic Church used to broadcast their mass on a Sunday, but no longer.  I spoke to a priest from  there and he was not interested in the idea even that I could help him either broadcast or rebroadcast the service for free on YouTube.

 

On the Gulf Coast region of the USA there are no stations that I can find broadcasting either on the air or on the internet in Croatian even though Croatians can be found strung out all along the coast line in various  communities.

 

When I put out an appeal on both YouTube and FaceBook to help me locate Croatian Radio Stations around the world, Marijan sent me a list of Croatian radio stations accessible in Germany - all are based in Croatia.  Ana wrote "David every Monday at 14:00 your time on Radio 105 songs on request and calls live from around the world for the Croats at Radio 105! [Selnica]"

 

Does the diminishing presence of North American croatian radio indicate a lack of demand for croatian language material?  As Croatians are assimilated into an english speaking world do we want less material on croatian?  I think that these would be incorrect conclusions. The demand may be higher than ever before. The fact is that now we are connected around the world via Facebook, YouTube and other media.  The radio stations, and some TV broadcasts, from the Homeland and various locations are only a few clicks away on the internet and the streams are usually reliable. At this very moment I'm connected to Vox Croatica down in Argentina, FaceBook, and YouTube simultaneously and my cellphone is right beside me so I can talk or text anyone anywhere.  I don't need a broadcaster located in my backyard anymore.

 

That leaves open the questions surrounding the unique needs concerning Croats in the diaspora.  I don't have an answer except that as always we shall make good advantage of all the tools which come available and keep on scrambling like we always have. There are new tools just now available on YouTube and G+.  Other technology will come along.  Mama and Tata's harmonike went away years ago, but we have what we have and we shall find how to make our way somehow.

 

If you don't mind, keep your ears and your eyes open for croatian language broadcasts of any kind outside of Croatia,  and let me know what you hear and see. Also, let me know what you would like to hear and see.  There are a lot of us Croats out here in the world away from Home.  What do we want available to us?  Talk to me.  

 

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac

 

9 svibanj 2013