TOM’S PODCAST #57: LIBERTE, LIBERTAD, FREIHEIT—THREE LINGUISTIC PATHWAYS TO FREEDOM

In today's podcast, I focus on  examples of loss of liberty.  The first is JS Bach being imprisoned for having the effrontery of asking his employer to let him go so he could seek a more lucrative employment elsewhere.  It’s shocking that one of the world’s greatest musicians was considered to be property.  Of course NO ONE should be considered to be property!  A friend of his, a mere horn player, was hung for a similar infraction.

120 years later, Chopin spent a honeymoon on the island of Majorca with his new wife, George Sand.  Both of them were combining a honeymoon with holding good on promises to publishers—she on a book in progress and he on a collection of 24 preludes.  They spent several months living in a scary monastery high in the mountains partly because Chopin was suffering from TB, which the locals interpreted as an example of how sin leads to disease, the result being a loss of liberty for Chopin and Sand.

The third example of loss of liberty deals with how cacao symbolized power in the four Central American societies—of the Olmecs, the Toltecs, the Mayans and the Aztecs.  Later, when Cortez brought cacao back to Spain, it came to symbolize power there as well with a loss of liberty for the Jewish doctors living in Bayonne, France, where they established cacao as an important local industry.  During the Industrial Revolution, cacao became an important foodstuff for factory workers and in order to provide it, the colonial powers forced West Africans to provide them with inexpensive beans.  The result was the use of child labor, five forms of which are described.

I start the podcast with Bach’s Prelude number 8 in E-Flat Minor and I finish with Chopin’s Prelude #14 in the same key.  Bach’s prelude was written in a prison cell.  Chopin’s was written in a monastery cell.  Both are examples of a loss of liberty.

As always, we are looking to help African cocoa farmers become African chocolate makers.  Join the revolution by donating to the cause!

1.   Go to www.projecthopeandfairness.org and click on the Donate button.     -OR- 

2.  Send a check to: Donations, PH&F, 1298 Warren Road, Cambria, CA 93428. 

Write to me at tom@projecthopeandfairness.org

To learn more, visit www.projecthopeandfairness.org