Marina Warner on NPR

Here is a downloadable audio link to an interview between National Public Radio's Tom Ashbrook and Marina Warner, who recently published Stranger Magic, a retelling of the Nights with some academic additions.

The interview on the whole is interesting but a bit general, but then again, what is "correct" is certainly debatable vis-a-vis the Nights.

Show: http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/03/30/the-arabian-nights

"The Arabian Nights

A new twist on the old magic in the tales of the Arabian Nights.

The Tales of a Thousand and One Nights – the Arabian Nights – start with a terrible premise. The great sultan has decided to marry a new virgin every night, and cut off her head in the morning. Candidates are running out.

Young Scheherazade volunteers for the job. And tells the sultan a story so compelling, every night, that when she leaves him hanging in the morning he can’t bear to kill her. Until finally, he falls in love. After a thousand and one stories of magic and genies, enchantment, pleasure and sin.

This hour, On Point: a new take, twist, on the old magic in the tales of the Arabian Nights.

-Tom Ashbrook"

Julie Harris reads Scheherazade

Here's a record I picked up on ebay recently:

From 1001 Nights

some details about it from musicstack.com

Condition: Vg

Label: Caedmon Records TC 1373

Genre: Spoken Word

Release Country: Usa

Release Date: 1957

Artist: JULIE HARRIS Album: THE ARABIAN NIGHTS / STORY OF SCHEHERAZADE Catalog Number: TC 1373 Vinyl Condition: VG  Year Pressed: 1957 Format/Size: 33 - 12" Additional features: 25-P-58

The Grateful Dead

From what I have found, The Grateful Dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grateful_Dead) have at least two songs with mentions of the Nights: "What's Become of the Baby?" and "Blues for Allah." Both songs interestingly, well perhaps not that interestingly, conflate the Nights with a Romanticized notion of Islam.

Here are the relevant song lyrics with links to a cool UC Santa Cruz academic website about the Dead and their songs:

"What's Become of the Baby?"

From the album: AOXOMOXOA (1969). Song: http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/baby.html

"Sheherazade gathering stories to tell
from primal gold fantasy petals that fall
But where is the child
who played with the sun chimes
and chased the cloud sheep
to the regions of rhyme?"

Here's a mix of the song (can you smell the patchouli?!):



-----------------------------

"Blues for Allah"

From the Album: Blues for Allah (1975)

http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/allah.html

"The thousand stories have
come round to one again
Arabian Night
our gods pursue their fight
What fatal flowers of
darkness spring from
seeds of light"

Historical Background of the Nights

Here is a recent (April 2011) lecture I just chanced upon while procrastinating online, it is by John Curry from the University of Nevada Reno and is on teaching the 1001 Nights, though it is largely a historical background of the end of the Sasanid Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad.

I tried to save the audio to my computer but haven't figured out how to yet. As for now the lecture is up on the digital commons page at UNLV:

http://digitalcommons.library.unlv.edu/english_lectures_events/11/

additional children's books on wax

JC passes on a couple of books on record (that come with books to read along with) from his collection:

Little Golden books. They produced a series of books that included a 45 rpm record. Ali Baba was part of the series. Narrated by Dave Teig.

A 1970 record of Sinbad the Sailor. Story by Jimmy Johnson.

children's records

I found this website that contains several Nights related children's records from the States in the 1950s and 1960s, they are great recordings and you can visit the site and download them yourself. If I ever figure out how to host them in an embedded player here I'll post them. There's all the usual stories plus one has the Physician Douban!

here's the website: http://www.artsreformation.com/records/

And some pictures of covers (these would make great t-shirts):