Day: May 27, 2017

Southern rock legend Gregg Allman has died in Savannah, Georgia, at age 69, according to his family.

Allman, whose blues guitar and vocals became representative of an entire genre of country-and-blues-tinged rock music, had been in poor health. He announced in March 2017 that he was canceling all performances for the rest of the year.

The family said in a statement that Allman “passed away peacefully” in his home near the southeastern U.S. coast Saturday.

The Nashville-born musician, known for his long, blond hair, originally began playing music with his brother, Duane, when the two were teenagers. Legend has it that the two boys, close in age, initially shared a guitar bought at Sears.

After years of playing together in various groups, the self-titled Allman Brothers Band had just begun to achieve mainstream success in 1971 when Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident at age 24.

Gregg Allman carried on with the Allman Brothers Band for decades afterward, releasing such famous Southern rock tunes as “Whipping Post,” “Ramblin’ Man” and “Midnight Rider,” and influencing untold numbers of Southern songwriters who followed.

In 1995, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It won a Grammy for the instrumental “Jessica” the following year.

Allman abused drugs and alcohol until the mid-1990s. While he spent the final two decades of his life sober, his health was affected by the excess of his earlier years. He underwent a liver transplant in 2010.

Music was essential

Throughout his recovery and later health problems, Allman maintained that playing music was essential to his survival. The year after his liver transplant, he released a solo album called “Low Country Blues.”

During his  five-decade career Allman worked with many of the greats of American blues and rock ‘n’ roll, including Wilson Pickett, Neil Young, Clarence Carter, Eric Clapton and T-Bone Burnett. The band established a tradition of playing a multinight residency at New York City’s Beacon Theater once a year for most of two decades. Their final residency at the Beacon ended in October 2014.

He was married several times, including one famous but brief pairing with pop superstar Cher. He had five children.

Allman was the most famous face of a band that saw more than its share of tragedy.

In addition to the death of brother Duane, the Allman Brothers Band lost its bassist, Berry Oakley, to a motorcycle accident in 1972. In January of this year, another founding member of the band, Butch Trucks, committed suicide. Like Allman, he was 69.
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Two new documentaries have shed light on the plight of Syria’s refugees and how they are regarded by the world around them.

Apo Bazidi’s “Resistance is Life” chronicles the siege of Kobane, a primarily Kurdish town in northern Syria that Islamic State militants seized in 2014, forcing many of its inhabitants to flee. During the monthslong siege, thousands escaped to Turkey, including a family of five that moved into a refugee camp in Suruc.

Eight-year-old Evlin is the eldest of the children. Smart and engaging, she is the main character of this documentary. Using a small camera, Evlin trains her eye on scenes around the refugee camp.

“I take pictures of the pain around me,” she says.

Her high intellect and her voraciousness for learning seem wasted in a barren refugee camp. Yet Evlin seems to derive wisdom from her personal experiences and the experiences of others around her.

She appreciates the welcome the people of Suruc have extended to the refugees, but she confesses that sometimes her expressed appreciation is more for the sake of the giver.

In her young, perceptive mind, she has weighed the few options she and her family have.

“I have not given up on my homeland,” she says. With adult composure, she describes how many opt for making a treacherous trek to Europe. “They get on a boat. They ask each other who knows how to operate it. One says, ‘Me.’ Then people go in the water. Little children drown, and they die,” she says.

Key role of women

In April 2015, Kurdish fighters were able to liberate the villages of the Kobane canton. Enwer Muslim, prime minister of the canton, says women led a major part of the resistance.

“Young women fought to prevent even a single braid falling into the hands of ISIS,” he says, using an Islamic State acronym. “It may hurt some male fighters to hear this, but believe me, 70 percent to 80 percent of our victory was led by women.”

But the city lies in ruins.

Many have returned to their destroyed homes, but tens of thousands, including Evlin and her family, remain in a refugee camp.

The threat of the extremists is still palpable in the region, and life is far from returning to normal. The documentary is a reminder that these people need help from the international community.

Tonislav Hristov’s “The Good Postman” focuses on a dying Bulgarian village as its elderly inhabitants face refugees crossing into their lands from Turkey.

As the electoral campaign of three mayoral candidates heats up, the debate over Syrian refugees, who cross illegally into their village daily, intensifies.

The current mayor is a young woman who brings little hope for relief to the poverty-ridden villagers.

An unemployed self-styled revolutionary is a populist candidate, who longs for the older communist times and mixes utopian socialism with bigotry and xenophobia. During a lackluster campaign gathering, he promises “internet for all” to the sparse octogenarian electorate that has huddled around, waiting for a ration of sausages and beer, and in the same breath he declares his objection to Syrian refugees settling in his village.

Ivan, a postman and the liberal candidate in the race, offers a different proposal: Let the refugees settle in the village and revitalize it.

Mayor re-elected

In the end, neither Ivan nor the revolutionary wins. The existing mayor, who has not campaigned, wins again amid the poverty and malaise of her dying constituents.

Kaarle Aho, the documentary producer, says the Bulgarian village is reflective of the Western world.

“It’s sort of like a microcosm. You have these people everywhere in Europe and also here. You don’t have to go to a small Bulgarian village in order to find these characters. The same kind of politicians you have in Finland and Sweden, everywhere in Europe,” he says, “but also probably the United States. … There is like a small-time populist politician there who’s just promising anything and who’s trying to raise fears among people, to make people be afraid of everything new. And then, funnily enough, the liberal guy is the postman of the village.”

As for the populist candidate who ran against the settlement of Syrian refugees in the village, Aho says “he has a son living in Ukraine, which means that his son is an immigrant. Yet he doesn’t want to have immigrants in his own country,” underscoring his hypocrisy.

“The Good Postman” is as heartbreaking as it is funny, a searing satire of today’s world.
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Take a seat, “Thor.”

Scattered plans among Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas to host women-only screenings of the upcoming “Wonder Woman” movie have produced both support and some grumbling about gender discrimination.

Various locations have taken to social media in response, including the operators of the Brooklyn theater promising on Twitter to funnel proceeds from women-only screenings in early June to Planned Parenthood. And by women only, they mean staff, too.

Some of the screenings were already selling out despite social media haters, many of whom are men, and several have been added.

The offer of special screenings began recently in Austin, Texas, where Alamo has held specialty screenings in the past for military veterans and others. As for “Wonder Woman,” the Alamo in Brooklyn posted a statement online saying what better way to celebrate the most iconic superheroine than with “an all-female screening?”

“Apologies, gentlemen, but we’re embracing our girl power and saying `No Guys Allowed’ for several special shows at the Alamo Downtown Brooklyn. And when we say `Women (and people who identify as women)only,’ we mean it. So lasso your geeky girlfriends together and grab your tickets to this celebration of one of the most enduring and inspiring characters ever created.”

The movie opens June 2 based on the DC Comics character. It was directed by Patty Jenkins and stars Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman/Diana Prince.
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Two documentaries shed light on the hardships Syrian refugees and how they’re regarded by the world. One tells the story of a town in northern Syria seized by Islamic State militants in 2014, turning its inhabitants into refugees. Another focuses on a Bulgarian village’s debate over what to do with the refugees crossing into their lands from Turkey. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more.
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The fabled World War II bomber Memphis Belle will finally go on public display next spring at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force alongside John F. Kennedy’s presidential plane, an early Wright Brothers flyer and other national treasures.

The journey from the flak-ridden skies over occupied France and Germany to restoration and display in the Ohio museum has been long for one of the most celebrated American planes to survive the war.

The B-17F “Flying Fortress,” feted as one of the first to make it through the required 25 bombing missions, arrived at the museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in pieces a dozen years ago. It was in rough shape, having been on display outside for decades in its namesake city where it deteriorated from weather and vandalism.

Restoration work by an army of volunteers has continued for years, delayed by a major expansion at the sprawling museum near Dayton and other restoration projects vying for attention. An unveiling of the restored warbird now is scheduled for May 17, 2018 — the 75th anniversary of the crew’s 25th and final mission. The Memphis Belle will be displayed as the centerpiece of an exhibit on the strategic bombing campaign that broke the back of Germany’s wartime production.

“This is an American icon,” said Jeff Duford, curator of the Memphis Belle exhibit. “It’s like the flag that flew at Iwo Jima or the USS Arizona. This is one of those things that’s truly legendary and represents America and our spirit.”

Since B-17 parts are no longer manufactured, volunteers have worked long, painstaking hours fabricating them from scratch and reassembling the plane inside a cavernous restoration hangar at the museum. The wing tips just went on, but the fuselage skin is still being riveted on. And it’s still missing the plastic nose cone, tail section and an authentic paint job.

Greg Hassler, who is supervising the restoration, knows the clock is now ticking.

“We will have it done,” Hassler vowed. “The airplane will look like it did on its 25th mission on 17 May of next year.”

The four-engine bomber bristling with .50-caliber machine guns was piloted by then-Lt. Robert Morgan and had its famous name before it left the U.S. mainland. Morgan, who died in 2004, said it was inspired by his sweetheart, 19-year-old Memphis resident Margaret Polk. The actual moniker came from a riverboat in a John Wayne movie called “Lady for a Night” that Morgan and his co-pilot saw the night before the crew voted on a name.

Before heading for Europe, Morgan flew the bomber to Memphis, where Polk christened it with a bottle of champagne amid much fanfare.

The Memphis Belle, with the leggy Esquire magazine pinup girl painted on the nose, survived six months of punishing air combat in 1942-43 during missions to bomb factories and submarine pens. In doing so, the airplane and its crew beat the odds in a big way. Two out of three young men — their average age was 20 — who flew on those B-17 missions from airfields in England did not survive the war. One out of every 18 planes was lost to combat. 

Because the plane’s crew members sometimes flew in other planes, they actually completed their requisite 25th mission two days before the Belle, which flew its 25th on May 19, 1943, making it one of the first B-17s to do so.

After being honored by the Army brass and the king and queen of England, most of the original crew and plane were reunited for a highly publicized tour of the U.S. to help sell war bonds in the summer of 1943, including a stop at the same Ohio Air Force base where it will now reside permanently.

A 1944 William Wyler documentary added to the lore of the Belle, while younger generations were introduced to it in a 1990 hit movie that was a fictionalized account of the final mission.

Despite the Memphis Belle’s installation at the Air Force museum, the legislature in Tennessee earlier this year designated it as that state’s official airplane.
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In a new book, “Amina’s Voice,” a Pakistani Muslim pre-teen girl deals with middle school and Islamophobia. VOA’s Yahya Albarznji spoke with young American students, teachers and the award-winning author about this book and the hope that it will help people understand Islam.
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