The Versailles menagerie during the reign of Louis XIV.

A menagerie is/was a form of keeping common and exotic animals in captivity that preceded the modern zoological garden. The term was first used in seventeenth century France in reference to the management of household or domestic stock. Later, it came to be used primarily in reference to aristocratic or royal animal collections. The French-language "Methodical Encyclopaedia" of 1782 defines a menagerie as an "establishment of luxury and curiosity." Later on, the term referred also to travelling animal collections that exhibited wild animals at fairs across Europe and the Americas.

Aristocratic menageries[link]

The Tower of London housed England's royal menagerie for several centuries (Picture from the 15th century, British Library).

A menagerie was mostly connected with an aristocratic or royal court and it was thus situated within a garden or park of a palace. The aristocratic menageries have to be distinguished from the later zoological gardens since they were founded and owned by aristocrats whose intentions were not primarily of scientific and educational interest. These aristocrats wanted to illustrate their power and wealth, because exotic animals, alive and active, were less common, more difficult to acquire, and more expensive to maintain.

Medieval period and Renaissance[link]

Already within the Middle Ages, several sovereigns across Europe maintained menageries at their royal courts.

An early example is that of the Emperor Charlemagne in the 8th century. His three menageries, at Aachen, Nijmegen and Ingelheim, located in present-day Netherlands and Germany, housed elephants (the first seen in Europe since the Roman Empire), monkeys, lions, bears, camels, falcons, and many exotic birds. Charlemagne received exotic animals for his collection as gifts from important rulers of Africa and Asia.^[1] In 797, the caliph of Baghdad, Harun al-Rashid, presented Charlemagne with an Asian elephant named Abul-Abbas. The pachyderm arrived on July 1, 802 to the Emperor's residence in Aachen. He died in June 810.^[2]

Even William the Conqueror had a small royal menagerie. At his manor, Woodstock, he began a collection of exotic animals. About 1100 his son, Henry I, enclosed Woodstock and enlarged the collection. At the beginning of the 12th century, Henry I of England is known to have kept a collection of animals at his palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, reportedly including lions, leopards, lynxes, camels, owls and a porcupine.^[3]
The most prominent animal collection in medieval England was the Tower Menagerie in London that began as early as 1204. It was established by King John, who reigned in England from 1199–1216, and is known to have held lions and bears.^[4] Henry III received a wedding gift in 1235 of three leopards from Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. The most spectacular arrivals in the early years were a white bear and an elephant, gifts from the kings of Norway and France in 1251 and in 1254 respectively. In 1264, the animals were moved to the Bulwark, which was renamed the Lion Tower, near the main western entrance of the Tower.^[3] This building was constituted by rows of cages with arched entrances, enclosed behind grilles. They were set in two storeys, and it appears that the animals used the upper cages during the day and were moved to the lower storey at night.^[5] It was opened to the public during the reign of Elizabeth I in the 16th century. During the 18th century, the price of admission was three half-pence or the supply of a cat or dog for feeding to the lions.^[3] Animals listed here at the end of the 18th century include lions, tigers, hyaenas and bears. Most of the animals were transferred in 1831 to the newly-opened London Zoo at Regent's Park.^[5] London Zoo did not receive all the animals but rather shared them with Dublin Zoo.^[6] The Tower Menagerie was finally closed in 1835, on the orders of the Duke of Wellington.^[4] In effect, the Tower Menagerie in London was the royal menagerie of England for six centuries.

In the first half of the thirteenth century, Emperor Frederick II had three permanent menageries in Italy, at Melfi in Basilicata, at Lucera in Apulia and at Palermo in Sicily.^[7] In 1235, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II established at his court in southern Italy the "first great menagerie" in western Europe. An elephant, a white bear, a giraffe, a leopard, hyenas, lions, cheetahs, camels and monkeys were all exhibited; but the emperor was particularly interested in birds, and studied them sufficiently to write a number of authoritative books on them.^[8]

By the end of the fifteenth century, during the Renaissance period, the Italian aristocracy, wealthy patricians and clergymen, what eventually began to collect exotic animals at their residences on the outskirts of the cities. The role played by animals within the gardens of Italian villas expanded at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, for which a remarkable sign was the Villa Borghese built 1608-1628 at Rome.^[9]

Versailles and its legacy[link]

The Pavilion constructed by Jean-Nicolas Jadot de Ville-Issey in 1759 at the Habsburg menagerie, the contemporary Tiergarten Schönbrunn.

During the seventeenth century, exotic birds and small animals provided diverting ornaments for the court of France; lions and other large animals were kept primarily to be brought out for staged fight. The collecting grew and attained more permanent lodgings in the 1660s, when Louis XIV constructed two new menageries: one at Vincennes, next to a palace on the eastern edge of Paris, and a more elaborate one, which became a model for menageries throughout Europe, at Versailles, the site of a royal hunting lodge two hours (by carriage) west of Paris.^[10]
Around 1661, he had a menagerie of "ferocious" beasts built at Vincennes for the organization of fights. Surrounding a rectangular courtyard, a two-storey building with balconies allowed spectators to view the scene. The animals were housed on the ground floor in cells bordering the courtyard, with small yards on the outside where they could take a bit of exercise.^[11] At Vincennes, lions, tigers, and leopards were kept in cages around an amphitheater where the king could entertain courtiers and visiting dignitaries with bloody battles. In 1682, for instance, the ambassador of Persia enjoyed the spectacle of a fight to the death between a royal tiger and an elephant.^[10]
When the palace of Versailles was built, Louis XIV of France also erected a menagerie within the palace’s park.^[12] The menagerie at Versailles was to be something very different from the one at Vincennes.^[10] Most of it was constructed in 1664 when the first animals were introduced, although the interior fittings were not finished until 1668-70. Situated in the south-west of the park, it was Louis XIV’s first major project at Versailles and one of several pleasure houses that were gradually assembled around the palace.^[12] It represented the first menagerie according to Baroque style. The prominent feature of Baroque menageries was the circular layout, in the middle of which stood a beautiful pavilion. Around this pavilion was a walking path and outside this path were the enclosures and cages. Each enclosure had a house or stable at the far end for the animals and was bounded on three sides with walls. There were bars only in the direction of the pavilion.^[13]
Animal fights were halted at Vincennes around 1700, the site fell into disuse, and the animals were installed at Versailles with the others.^[11] At about this time, the lions, leopards, and tigers from the menagerie at Vincennes were transferred to Versailles, where they were housed in newly built enclosures fronted with irons bars.^[10]

This particular enterprise marked a decisive step in the creation of menageries of curiosities and was imitated to some extent throughout Europe after the late seventeenth century. Monarchs, princes and important lords built them in France (Chantilly from 1663), England (Kew, Osterley), the United Provinces (Het Loo from 1748), Portugal (Belém in 1726, Quelez around 1780), Spain (Madrid in 1774) and Austria (Belvedere in 1716, Schönbrunn in 1752) as well in the Germanic lands following the ravages of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and the ensuing reconstruction. Frederick William, Elector of Prussia, equipped Potsdam with a menagerie around 1680. The Palatine Elector, the Prince Regent of Westphalia and many others followed suit.^[11]

This design was adopted particularly by the Habsburg monarchy in Austria. In 1752 Francis I erected his famous Baroque menagerie in the park of Schönbrunn Palace near Vienna. Being at first a courtly menagerie with private character it was opened to the general public in 1779. Initially, it was only open for "respectably dressed persons".

Another aristocratic menagerie was founded in 1774 by Charles III of Spain on grounds which were part of the gardens of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid. During two centuries, it was a predecessor institution of the modern facilities of the Madrid Zoo Aquarium, moved in 1972 to the Casa de Campo.^[14]

In the nineteenth century the aristocratic menageries were displaced by the modern zoological gardens with their scientific and educational approach. Today, the only remaining menagerie is that of Tiergarten Schönbrunn, but in the twentieth century the Tiergarten ("animal garden"), known officially by the French loan-word Menagerie until 1924, evolved into a modern zoological garden with a scientific, educational and conservationist orientation. Due to its local continuity, the Vienna Zoo, the former menagerie established in the medieval through baroque tradition of private wild-animal collections of princes and kings, is often seen as the oldest remaining zoo in the world. Although many of the old Baroque enclosures have been changed, one can still obtain a good impression of the symmetrical ensemble of the formerly imperial menagerie.

Travelling menageries[link]

In England travelling menageries had first appeared at the turn of the eighteenth century. In contrast to the aristocratic menageries, these travelling animal collections were run by showmen who met the craving for sensation of the ordinary population. These animal shows ranged in size but the largest was George Wombwell's. The earliest record of a fatality at one such travelling menagerie was the death of Hannah Twynnoy in 1703 who was killed by a tiger in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. Also in North America travelling menageries became ever more popular during that time.

The first exotic animal known to have been exhibited in America was a lion, in Boston in 1716, followed five years later in the same city by a camel.^[15] A sailor arrived in Philadelphia in August 1727 with another lion, which he exhibited in the city and surrounding towns for eight years.^[16] The first elephant was imported from India to America by a ship’s captain, Jacob Crowninshield, in 1796. It was first displayed in New York City and travelled extensively up and down the East Coast.^[15] In 1834 James and William Howes’ New York Menagerie toured New England with an elephant, a rhinoceros, a camel, zebra, gnu, two tigers, a polar bear, and several parrots and monkeys.^[17]

America’s touring menageries slowed to a crawl under the weight of the depression of the 1840s and then to a halt with the outbreak of the Civil War. Only one travelling menagerie of any size existed after the war: The Van Amburgh menagerie travelled the United States for nearly forty years. Unlike their European counterparts, America’s menageries and circuses had combined as single travelling shows, with one ticket to see both. This increased the size and the diversity of their collections. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus advertised their shows as the “World’s Greatest Menagerie”.^[16]

Uses in media[link]

Music[link]

A song entitled "Vanamburgh's Menagerie" was composed by Dr. W.J. Wetmore in 1865. The song consisted of five verses, each followed by the chorus.

Television[link]

In the television show Fringe, the character Walter Bishop (portrayed by John Noble) sings a partial verse from "Vanamburgh's Menagerie," though the lyrics have been slightly altered from those of the original, perhaps due to modernization or the character's faulty memory. The verse he sings is:

"Vanamburgh is the man/Who goes to all the shows/He steps into the lion's cage/And tells them all he knows./He puts his head in the lion's mouth--" (he is then cut off)

He sings an additional verse not present in the original song, perhaps one of his own creation:

"The hyena in the next cage/Most terrible to relate/Got awfully hungry the other night/And ate up his female mate./A most ferocious beast/Don't go near him little boys/For when he's mad he swings his tail/And makes an awful noise."

Theatre[link]

A play, by Tennessee Williams, was written entitled The Glass Menagerie.

In Alban Berg's opera "Lulu" a circus director introduces the opera's characters and in special the main character as animals in a menagerie.

The historic Tower of London menagerie is described in some detail by Julia Stuart in her 2010 novel, "The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise" -- which portrays the installation of a new menagerie on the Tower grounds.

See also[link]

• Anthrozoology

References[link]

• Hahn, Daniel (2003). The Tower Menagerie. London: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-2081-1. 
• Baratay, Eric; Hardouin-Fugier, Elisabeth (2002). Zoo: a History of the Zoological Gardens of the West. London: Reaktion. ISBN 1-86189-111-3. 

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Look up menagerie in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Vienna Zoo
• La Ménagerie de Versailles (French)

Billy Cobham
Cobham performing at WOMAD, July, 2005
Background information
Birth name	William E. Cobham
Born	(1944-05-16) 16 May 1944 (age 68) Panama
Genres	Jazz, jazz fusion, post-bop, jazz funk, rock music
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, bandleader, instructor
Instruments	Drums, percussion
Years active	1968–present
Labels	Atlantic, Columbia, CTI, Elektra, GRP
Associated acts	Miles Davis, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jack Bruce, New York Jazz Quartet, Jazz Is Dead, Bobby and the Midnites, Mark-Almond
Website	www.billycobham.com

William C. Cobham (born May 16, 1944 in Panama) is a Panamanian American jazz drummer, composer and bandleader, who permanently relocated to Switzerland during the late 1970s.^[1]

Coming to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s with trumpeter Miles Davis and then with Mahavishnu Orchestra, Allmusic's reviewer claims Cobham is "generally acclaimed as fusion's greatest drummer with an influential style that combines explosive power and exacting precision.^[1]

Biography[link]

Early life and career[link]

Born in Panama, Cobham's family moved to New York City during his early childhood. A drummer from his youth, Cobham attended New York's High School of Music and Art, graduating in 1962.^[1]

He played in a U.S. Army Band from 1965 to 1968. Following his discharge, Cobham joined an ensemble led by pianist Horace Silver for about a year, also playing or recording with saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, organist Shirley Scott, and guitarist George Benson.^[1]

Jazz fusion work[link]

Cobham branched out to jazz fusion, which blended elements of jazz, rock and roll and funk, playing and recording with the Brecker Brothers (notably in their 1970-founded group Dreams), and guitarist John Abercrombie, before recording and touring extensively with trumpeter Miles Davis. Cobham's work with Davis appears on A Tribute to Jack Johnson, among other recordings. Cobham is also one of the first drummers to play open-handed lead: a drummer that plays on a right-handed set but leads with his left hand on the hi-hat instead of crossing over with his right (and also has his ride cymbal on the left side, instead of the traditional right). He typically plays with multiple toms and double bass drums and was well known in the '70s for his large drum kits.

In 1971, Cobham worked on guitarist John McLaughlin's album My Goal's Beyond.^[1] McLaughlin and Cobham co-founded Mahavishnu Orchestra, a definitive jazz fusion ensemble. Cobham toured extensively from 1971 to 1973 with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, who released two studio albums and one live album. The original studio versions of tunes on the live album were later released as The Lost Trident Sessions in 1999.

In May 1973, while still with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Cobham recorded his first solo album, Spectrum with keyboardist Jan Hammer, from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, guitarist Tommy Bolin, who later played with hard rock band Deep Purple, and bassist Lee Sklar. Just before the Mahavishnu Orchestra's last touring leg, in late 1973, Cobham recorded and toured with guitarists Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin, in concerts which featured material from their album Love Devotion Surrender, and Cobham's own material. As bandleader and composer, Cobham recorded a number of other ground-breaking fusion records during the '70s, Total Eclipse, A Funky Thide of Sings, and Crosswinds. You can also hear his '70s playing well represented on George Duke and Billy Cobham European Tour Live. It was on this tour that Billy reported (in a Down Beat interview) experiencing astral projection during shows, wherein he found himself hovering above and in front of his drums, watching himself play in ways he'd never thought of or executed previously.

In the 1970s, Cobham recorded extensively for the fusion-oriented CTI Records, founded by producer Creed Taylor. Also during that period he was a member of the New York Jazz Quartet.^{[citation needed]}

In 1976 Cobham played drums on the album To the Heart by Mark-Almond (Jon Mark, Johnny Almond).^{[citation needed]}

1980s work and later[link]

In 1980, he worked with Jack Bruce, in a band named Jack Bruce & Friends. In 1984 he played with Dave Garland and Bobby Cochran in the band Bobby and the Midnites (which was the primary side project for Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead). Last, Cobham recruited Kenny Gradney (of Little Feat) and together recorded the album Where the Beat Meets the Street. In 1998, he joined up with Grateful Dead cover band Jazz Is Dead.^{[citation needed]}

In 1994, he joined an all-star cast at the Los Angeles Greek Theatre and the results appeared on Stanley Clarke, Larry Carlton, Billy Cobham, Najee and Deron Johnson Live at the Greek. The concert was predominantly Clarke's music but all the musicians contributed material. A number of solo albums followed (as of July 2005, Cobham has released over 30 recordings under his own name), and continues to record, perform and teach.

In 2006, Cobham released Drum n voice 2. This was a return to the 1970s jazz-funk sound, with guests including Jan Hammer, Buddy Miles, John Patitucci, Jeff Berlin, Dominic Miller, Mike Lindup, Airto Moreira, Frank Gambale, Brian Auger, Guy Barker and the band Novecento. The CD was produced and arranged by Pino and Lino Nicolosi for Nicolosi productions.^[2][3]

Cobham was announced as a patron and visiting artist of top London drum college Drumtech in June 2008.^[4]

Billy Cobham performing on Réunion in October 2006

In 2009, Cobham released Drum n voice 3. Guests included Chaka Khan, Gino Vannelli, George Duke, Alex Acuna, Bob Mintzer, Brian Auger, John Scofield and Novecento. The CD was produced and arranged by Pino and Lino Nicolosi for Nicolosi productions.

Billy Cobham performed with John McLaughlin at the 44th Montreux Jazz Festival, in Montreux, Switzerland, on Friday, July 2, 2010, for the first time since the band split up.

As of March 2010, Cobham had begun working on a new project with acclaimed Jordanian guitarist Kamal Musallam.^[5]

In August 2011 the album Rock the Tabla was released. Featuring Billy Cobham, A.R. Rahman, Hossam Ramzy, Omar Faruk Tekbilek & Manu Katché.^[6]

In December 2011, Cobham began teaching drums online at the Billy Cobham School of Drums, a school within the ArtistWorks Drum Academy.

Sampling[link]

He has been sampled by Massive Attack in their tune "Safe from Harm", centered on the beat and bassline of Cobham's "Stratus", from his debut album Spectrum; by Souls of Mischief's "93 'til Infinity", based on the bassline and keyboards of "Heather", from 1974's Crosswinds, and by DJ Shadow on "Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain",^[7] which uses elements of "A Funky Kind of Thing" from 1975's A Funky Thide of Sings. Cobham is also covered extensively by "hyperfunk" jam-band RAQ.

Discography[link]

Filmography[link]

• 2002: Glass Menagerie
• 2004: Live Palais des Festivals Hall Cannes 1989
• 2005: Billy Cobham - Culturemix: New Morning Paris Concert
• 2005: Billy Cobham - Drums for the Soul - Solo Concert - Drums and Percussion Paderborn
• 2005: Billy Cobham's Glass Menagerie: Live in Riazzino
• 2007: Billy Cobham Live At 60
• 2007: Cobham Meets Bellson
• 2007: Cobham: Crosswinds
• 2009: Live in Cannes

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Billy Cobham

• Billy Cobham homepage
• Billy Cobham management
• Interview with Billy Cobham
• Billy Cobham Drummerworld.com page
• Billy Cobham Interview about working with A.R. Rahman and Hossam Ramzy
• Billy Cobham School of Drums

Paul Frederic Bowles (December 30, 1910 – November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris in the 1930s. He studied music with Aaron Copland, and in New York wrote music for various theatrical productions, as well as other compositions. He achieved critical and popular success with the publication in 1949 of his first novel The Sheltering Sky, set in what was known as French North Africa, which he had visited in 1931.

In 1947 Bowles settled in Tangier, Morocco, and his wife, Jane Bowles followed in 1948. Except for winters spent in Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) during the early 1950s, Tangier was his home for the next fifty-two years, the remainder of his life.

Paul Bowles died in 1999 at the age of 88. His ashes are buried in Lakemont Cemetery in upstate New York.

Life[link]

1910–1930: Family and education[link]

Paul Bowles was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York City as the only child of Rena (née Rennewisser) and Claude Dietz Bowles, a dentist. His childhood was materially comfortable, but his father was a cold and domineering parent, opposed to any form of play or entertainment, feared by both his son and wife. According to family legend, he had tried to kill his newborn son by leaving him exposed on a window-ledge during a snowstorm; the story may not be true, but Bowles believed it was, and it encapsulates his relationship with his father.^[1] Such warmth as there was in his life as a child came from his mother, who read Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe to him – it was to the latter that he later attributed his own desire to write stories such as "The Delicate Prey", "A Distant Episode", and "Pages from Cold Point"^[2]

Bowles could read by the time he was three and within the year was writing stories. Soon, he wrote surrealistic poetry and music.^[3] In 1922, at age eleven, he bought his first book of poetry, Arthur Waley's A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, and at age seventeen one of his poems, "Spire Song", was accepted for publication in the twelfth volume of Transition, a literary journal based in Paris that served as a forum for some of the greatest proponents of modernism — Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, Paul Éluard, Gertrude Stein and others.^[4] His interest in music also dated from his childhood, when his father bought a phonograph and classical records (Bowles was interested in jazz but such records were forbidden in the house). His family bought a piano and the young Bowles studied musical theory, singing, and piano. When he was 15 a performance of Stravinsky's The Firebird at Carnegie Hall made a profound impression: "Hearing The Firebird made me determined to continue improvising on the piano when my father was out of the house, and to notate my own music with an increasing degree of knowing that I had happened upon a new and exciting mode of expression."^[2]

Bowles entered the University of Virginia in 1928, where his interests included T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Prokofiev, Duke Ellington, Gregorian chants, and the blues. He also heard music by George Antheil and Henry Cowell. In April 1929 he dropped out without informing his parents and sailed with a one-way ticket for Paris and no intention of ever returning – not, he said later, running away, but "running toward something, although I didn't know what at the time."^[3] Nevertheless, by July he returned to New York and took a job at Duttons Bookshop in Manhattan, where he began work on an unfinished book of fiction, Without Stopping (not to be confused with his later autobiography of the same title). At the insistence of his parents he returned to the University of Virginia, but left after one semester to go back to Paris with Aaron Copland, with whom he had been studying composition in New York.^[3] It was during the autumn of 1930 in Paris that Bowles began work on his own first musical composition, the "Sonata for Oboe and Clarinet", which he finished the following year and which premiered in New York at the Aeolian Hall on Wigmore St, 16 December 1931, the whole concert (which also included work by Copland and Virgil Thomson) was "panned" by New York critics.^[5] (Bowles' first-known, completed compositional work was a translation of some Kurt Schwitters vocal pieces to piano music in Berlin).^[6]

1931–1946: France and New York[link]

In France, Bowles became a part of Gertrude Stein's literary and artistic circle. On her advice he made his first visit to Tangier with Aaron Copland in the summer of 1931.^[7] They took a house on the Mountain above Tangier Bay. Morocco was later to become the home of Bowles (and the inspiration for many of his short stories).^[8] From there he traveled back to Berlin, where he met Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood (Isherwood being so taken with him that he named his character Sally Bowles for him), before returning to North Africa the next year to travel throughout other parts of Morocco, the Sahara, Algeria and Tunisia.

In 1937 he returned to New York, and over the next decade established a solid reputation as a composer, collaborating with Orson Welles, Tennessee Williams and others on music for stage productions as well as orchestral pieces. In 1938 he married the author and playwright Jane Auer. It was an unconventional marriage: their intimate relationships were with people of their own sex, but they maintained close ties to each other,^[9] and despite being frequently anthologised as a gay writer Bowles always regarded such typecasting as both absurd and irrelevant.^[10] After a brief sojourn in France they were prominent among the literary figures of New York throughout the 1940s, with Paul working under Virgil Thomson as a music critic at the New York Herald Tribune. His light opera The Wind Remains, based on a poem by García Lorca, was performed in 1943 with choreography by Merce Cunningham and conducted by Leonard Bernstein. His translation of Sartre's play Huis Clos ("No Exit"), directed by John Huston, won a Drama Critic's Award in 1943.

In 1945 he began writing prose again, beginning with a few short stories including A Distant Episode. His wife Jane, he said, was the main influence upon his taking up fiction as an adult, through the publication of her first novel, Two Serious Ladies (1943).^[11]

1947–1956: Early years in Tangier[link]

In 1947 Paul Bowles received a contract for a novel from Doubleday and moved permanently to Tangier, where Jane joined him in 1948. Bowles commented

I was a composer for as long as I've been a writer. I came here because I wanted to write a novel. I had a commission to do it. I was sick of writing music for other people — Joseph Losey, Orson Welles, a whole lot of other people, endless.^[12]

Bowles traveled alone into the Algerian Sahara to work on the novel. Bowles commented: "I wrote in bed in hotels in the desert."^[13] The Sheltering Sky — the title came from a song, "Down Among the Sheltering Palms", which Bowles had heard every summer as a child^[14] — was first published by John Lehmann in England in September 1949 after Doubleday rejected the manuscript.^[15] Bowles commented "I sent it out to Doubleday and they refused it. They said "We asked for a novel." They didn't consider it a novel. I had to give back my advance. My agent told me later they called the editor on the carpet for having refused the book — only after they saw that it was selling fast. It only had to do with sales. They didn't bother to read it."^[16] A belated first American edition by New Directions appeared the following month. The plot follows three Americans, Port, his wife Kit and their friend, Tunner, as they journey through the Algerian desert, culminating in the death of one (Port) and the descent into madness of another (Kit). The reviewer for Time magazine commented that the ends visited upon the two main characters "seem appropriate but by no means tragic", but that "Bowles scores cleanly with his minor characters: Arab pimps and prostitutes, French officers in garrison towns, [and] a stupidly tiresome pair of tourists—mother & son."^[17] Tennessee Williams, in The New York Times, was far more positive, commenting that the book was like a summer thunderstorm, "pulsing with interior flashes of fire".^[18] The book quickly rose to the New York Times best-seller list, going through three printings in two months.^[19]

The Sheltering Sky was followed in 1950 by a first collection of short stories. Titled A Little Stone (John Lehmann, London, August 1950), which excluded two of Bowles' most famous short stories, "Pages From Cold Point" and "The Delicate Prey", on the advice of Cyril Connolly and Somerset Maugham, that if they were included in the collection distribution and/or censorship difficulties might ensue.^[19]:22 The American edition by Random House, The Delicate Prey and Other Stories, followed later in November 1950 and contained the two stories that had been excluded from the UK edition. When responding to the claim that almost all of the characters in "The Delicate Prey" were victimized by either physical or psychological violence,^[20] Bowles responded: "Yes, I suppose. The violence served a therapeutic purpose. It's unsettling to think that at any moment life can flare up into senseless violence. But it can and does, and people need to be ready for it. What you make for others is first of all what you make for yourself. If I’m persuaded that our life is predicated upon violence, that the entire structure of what we call civilization, the scaffolding that we’ve built up over the millennia, can collapse at any moment, then whatever I write is going to be affected by that assumption. The process of life presupposes violence, in the plant world the same as the animal world. But among the animals only man can conceptualize violence. Only man can enjoy the idea of destruction."^[21]

A second novel, Let It Come Down (John Lehmann, London, February 1952), like The Sheltering Sky, was set in North Africa (this time explicitly Tangier) and dealt with the disintegration of an American (Nelson Dyar), who was unprepared for the encounter with an alien culture. The first American edition by Random House followed later in the month.

A third novel, The Spider's House, (Random House, New York, November 1955) was set in Fez (immediately prior to Morocco's independence and sovereignty in 1956, away from the French Protectorate) and charted the relationships among three expatriates and a young Moroccan: John Stenham, Alain Moss, Lee Veyron and Omar.^[22] Reviewers noted that it marked a departure from Bowles' earlier fiction in that it introduced a contemporary political theme, the conflict between Moroccan nationalism and French colonialism. The UK edition (Macdonald) followed in January 1957.

While Bowles was now concentrating on his career as a writer, he composed incidental music for nine plays presented by the American School of Tangier. The Bowleses became fixtures of the American and European expatriate scene in Tangier. Visitors included Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. The Beat writers Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso followed in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. In 1951, Bowles was introduced to the Master Musicians of Jajouka, having first heard the musicians when he and Brion Gysin attended a festival or moussem at Sidi Kacem. Bowles' continued association with the Master Musicians of Jajouka and their hereditary leader Bachir Attar is described in Paul Bowles' book, a diary entitled Days: A Tangier Journal. In 1952, Bowles bought the tiny island of Taprobane, off the coast of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he wrote much of his novel The Spider's House, returning to Tangier in the warmer months.

1957–1973: Moroccan music and translation[link]

In 1957 Jane Bowles suffered a mild stroke, which marked the beginning of a long and painful decline in her health which was to preoccupy Paul Bowles until Jane's death in 1973. This period also saw the first years of full Moroccan independence and Bowles, with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and sponsorship from the US Library of Congress, spent the months of August to September 1959 traveling throughout Morocco with Christopher Wanklyn and Mohammed Larbi recording traditional Moroccan music.^[23]

From 1959–1961, Paul Bowles recorded in Morocco a wide variety of music from the different ethnic groups of that country, including the Jewish communities of Meknes and Essaouira.^[24] The majority of these recordings are currently being transferred to the digital medium at George Blood Audio and Video in Philadelphia.

Another major project of these years was translating Moroccan authors and story-tellers including Mohamed Choukri, Ahmed Yacoubi, Larbi Layachi (under the pseudonym Driss ben Hamed Charhadi), and Mohammed Mrabet.

In the autumn of 1968, at the invitation of his friend Oliver Evans, Bowles spent one semester at the English Department of the San Fernando Valley State College, (now California State University, Northridge), teaching "Advanced Narrative Writing and the Modern European Novel."^[25]

In 1970 Bowles and Daniel Halpern started the Tangier literary magazine Antaeus which was to feature many new authors, such as Lee Prosser, as well as more established authors such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his own work, such as "Afternoon with Antaeus", some fragments of an unfinished novel by his wife Jane Bowles along with excerpts from "The Summer House", and works by Daniel Halpern and others. Antaeus was published until 1994.

1974–1999: Later years[link]

After the death of Jane Bowles on 4 May 1973 in Málaga, Spain, Bowles continued to live in Tangier, writing and receiving visitors to his modest apartment. In 1985 he published his translated version of one short story "The Circular Ruins" of Jorge Luis Borges which was published in a book of sixteen story translations (all by Bowles) called "She Woke Me Up So I Killed Her". This Borges story had already been translated and published by the three main Borges translators: Anthony Kerrigan, Anthony Bonner and James E. Irby and it is interesting to note the difference of styles amongst these four different translations. Bowles's version is in typical Bowles prose style form and is readily distinguishable from the other three, which have a more conservative idiomatic form of translation.

In the summers of 1980 and 1982, Paul Bowles conducted Writing Workshops in Morocco, (under the auspices of the School of Visual Arts in New York) at the American School of Tangier which were both very successful, so much so that several of his former students including Rodrigo Rey Rosa^[26] who was the 2004 Winner of the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature and who is also the literary heir of the estate of Paul Bowles^[27] and Mark Terrill^[28] went on to become successful authors.

In 1988, when Bowles was asked what his social life was like, he replied "I don't know what a social life is... My social life is restricted to those who serve me and give me meals, and those who want to interview me", and in the same interview when asked how he would summarize his achievement, replied "I've written some books and some music. That's what I've achieved."^[29]

Bowles made a cameo appearance at the beginning and end of Bernardo Bertolucci's film version of The Sheltering Sky in 1990. Bowles music was mostly forgotten until the 1990s when a new generation of American musicians and singers became interested in this work again. These charming, witty pieces are a treasure to be savored by art song enthusiasts.^[30]

In 1995, Paul Bowles made a rare and final return to New York for a special Paul Bowles Festival celebrating his music at Lincoln Center under the conductorship of Jonathan Sheffer with the Eos Orchestra^[31] and later a symposium and interview held at the New School for Social Research.

Bowles was interviewed by Paul Theroux in 1994, documented in the last chapter of Theroux's travel book, The Pillars of Hercules.

In 1998, Bowles' wit and intellect remained as sharp as ever. He continued to welcome whomever turned up at his door into his apartment near the old American consulate in Tangier. However, on the advice of his doctors and friends, he began to limit interviews. One of his final reminiscences about his literary life occurred during an interview with Stephen Morison, Jr., a frequent visitor and friend who was teaching at the American School of Tangier at the time. The interview was conducted on July 8, 1998 and appeared in the July/August 1999 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. His final formal interview took place on June 6, 1999; it was conducted by Irene Herrmann, the executrix of the Paul Bowles Music Estate, focused on his musical career, and was published in September 2003.^[32]

Bowles died of heart failure at the Italian Hospital in Tangier on November 18, 1999 at the age of 88. He had been ill for some time with respiratory problems. His ashes were buried in Lakemont, New York, next to the graves of his parents and grandparents.

Paul Bowles and Tangier[link]

Paul Bowles lived for 52 of his 88 years in Tangier. Not surprisingly, he became identified with the city: during his life visitors would seek him out, and on his death obituary-writers without fail linked his life to his residency: he became a symbolic American expatriate, and the city became the symbol of his expatriate status.

At the time of his first visit with Aaron Copland in 1931 Tangier had an anomalous status, a Moroccan city which was not Moroccan, with a population at once Berber, Arab, Spanish, and European, speaking Spanish, French, Berber and Arabic, under the control of a consortium of foreign powers, one of them the United States. Paul Bowles was entranced. On his return in 1947 the city had already changed, but not enough to rob it of its aura of strangeness and wonder. In 1955 there were anti-European riots, and in 1956 the city was returned to full Moroccan control.

Music[link]

Paul Bowles' reputation as a composer was ultimately overshadowed by his writing. He studied with Aaron Copland. He wrote chamber music and incidental music for the stage. The score of his 1955 opera Yerma is especially memorable and gets much radio-play. He collected Moroccan folk music. His compositions are being re-released.

Bowles' recording of Moroccan music[link]

Bowles was a pioneer in the field of North African ethnomusicology with his field recordings from 1959 to 1961 of traditional Moroccan music for the US Library of Congress.^[33] The collection includes dance music, secular music, music for Ramadan and other festivals, and music for animistic rituals. The motivation for the recordings was Bowles' realisation that modern culture would inevitably have an impact on traditional music. There was also a political element to his work, with Bowles commenting: "Instrumentalists and singers have come into being in lieu of chroniclers and poets, and even during the most recent chapter in the country's evolution – the war for independence and the setting up of the present regime – each phase of the struggle has been celebrated in song."^[34] The total collection of this recorded music is known as "The Paul Bowles Collection" and is archived in the US Library of Congress, Reference No. 72-750123. The Archival Manuscript Material (Collection) contains 97 x 2 track 7" reel-to-reel tapes, containing approximately sixty hours of traditional folk, art and popular music, one two box of manuscripts, 18 photographs and a map along with the 2 LP recordings called 'Music of Morocco' (AFS L63-64).^[35]

Bowles' translation of Moroccan authors and others[link]

In the 1960s Bowles began translating stories from the oral tradition of native Moroccan storytellers. His most noteworthy collaborations included Mohammed Mrabet, Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi (Larbi Layachi), Mohamed Choukri, Abdeslam Boulaich, and Ahmed Yacoubi.

He also translated Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Jorge Luis Borges, Jean-Paul Sartre, Isabelle Eberhardt, Guy Frison-Roche, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Ramon Gomez de la Serna, Giorgio de Chirico, Si Lakhdar, E. Laoust, Ramon Beteta, Gabino Chan, Bertrand Flornoy, Jean Ferry, Denise Moran, Paul Colinet, Paul Magritte, Popul Buj, Francis Ponge, Bluet d'Acheres and Ramon Sender

Achievement and legacy[link]

Paul Bowles was one of the artists whose work has shaped 20th century literature and music.^[36] In the Introduction to Bowles's "Collected Stories" (1979) Gore Vidal ranked his short stories "among the best ever written by an American", writing: the floor to this ramshackle civilization that we have built cannot bear much longer our weight. It was Bowles's genius to suggest the horrors which lie beneath that floor, as fragile, in its way, as the sky that shelters us from a devouring vastness".^[37]

His music, in contrast, is "as full of light as the fiction [is] of dark...almost as if the composer were a totally different person from the writer."^[38] During the early 1930s he studied composition (intermittently) with Aaron Copland; his music from this period "is reminiscent of Satie and Poulenc." Returning to New York in the mid-30s, he became one of the preeminent composers of American theater music, producing works for William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, and others,^[39] "show[ing] exceptional skill and imagination in capturing the mood, emotion, and ambience of each play to which he was assigned." In his own words, incidental music allowed Bowles to present "climaxless music, hypnotic music in one of the exact senses of the word, in that it makes its effect without the spectator being made aware of it." At the same time he continued to write concert music, his style assimilating some of the melodic, rhythmic, and other stylistic elements of African, Mexican, and Central American music.^[40]

In 1991 Paul Bowles was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story, an award that is made annually "to a writer who has made a significant contribution to the short story as an art form". The jury gave the following citation: "Paul Bowles is a storyteller of the utmost purity and integrity. He writes of a world before God became man; a world in which men and women in extremis are seen as components in a larger, more elemental drama. His prose is crystalline and his voice unique. Among living American masters of the short story, Paul Bowles is sui generis."^[41] His works were added to the Library of America (aimed at preparing scholarly editions of American literary classics and keeping them permanently in print) in 2002.

Notable works[link]

In addition to his chamber and stage compositions, Bowles published fourteen short story collections, three volumes of poetry, numerous translations, numerous travel articles, and an autobiography.

Music[link]

Fiction[link]

Translations[link]

Travel, autobiography and letters[link]

• 1957 – Yallah, text by Paul Bowles, photos by Peter W. Haeberlin (travel)
• 1963 – Their Heads are Green and Their Hands Are Blue (travel)
• 1972 – Without stopping (autobiography)
• 1990 – Two Years Beside The Strait (autobiography)
• 1991 – Days: Tangier Journal (autobiography)
• 1993 – 17, Quai Voltaire (autobiography of Paris, 1931,1932)
• 1994 – Photographs – "How Could I Send a Picture into the Desert?" (Paul Bowles & Simon Bischoff)
• 1995 – In Touch – The Letters of Paul Bowles (edited by Jeffrey Miller)

Editions[link]

Film appearances and interviews[link]

• Paul Bowles in Morocco (1970), produced and directed by Gary Conklin 57 minutes
• Paul Bowles": South Bank Show London Studios (1988), produced by ITV, directed by Melvyn Bragg, 54 minutes
• In 1990 Bernardo Bertolucci adapted The Sheltering Sky into a film in which Bowles has a cameo role and provides partial narration. 132 minutes
• "Things Gone and Things Still Here" 1991, Directed by award winning BBC Filmmaker 'Clement Barclay. This film tries to decode the world of Paul Bowles in a one hour documentary. Chicago Film festival winner.
• "Paul Bowles The Complete Outsider" 1993, by Catherine Hiller Marnow and Regina Weinreich 57 minutes.
• "Halfmoon" 1995, four stories by Paul Bowles, Frieder Schlaich and Irenve von Alberti. First Run Features, 91 minutes
• "Halbmond" 1995, German version of "Halfmoon", Frieder Schlaich and Irenve von Alberti. First Run Features, 90 minutes
• "Let It Come Down" 1998, Requisite Productions, Zeitgeist Films, pub. 72 minutes, not rated. – this film is likely the definitive portrait of the author late in life. Directed by Jennifer Baichwal, includes footage of the final meeting between Bowles, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg which took place in 1995 in New York. 72 minutes
• "Night Waltz" 2002, Owsley Brown Film of the music of Paul Bowles, with Phillip Ramey and an Interview with Jonathan Sheffer, conductor of the Eos Orchestra. 77 minutes

Notes[link]

References/further reading[link]

Biographies and memoirs[link]

• Paul Bowles: 2117 Tanger Socco, Robert Briatte (1989), ISBN 2-259-02007-0 The first biography of Paul Bowles (in French)
• An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles, Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno (1989)
• You Are Not I: A Portrait of Paul Bowles, Millicent Dillon (1998)
• Paul Bowles: A Life, Virginia Spencer Carr (2004), ISBN 0-684-19657-3
• Isherwood, Bowles, Vedanta, Wicca, and Me, Lee Prosser (2001), ISBN 0-595-20284-5
• Paul Bowles, Magic and Morocco, Allan Hibbard (2004), ISBN 978-0-932274-61-8
• February House, Sherill Tippins (2005), ISBN 0-618-41911-X
• Paul Bowles by his Friends, Gary Pulsifer (1992), ISBN 0-7206-0866-X
• Second Son, David Herbert (1972), ISBN 07206002726
• The Sheltering Sky, (movie edition) Bertolucci and Bowles (1990), ISBN 0-356-19579-1
• Here to Learn, Mark Terrill (2002), ISBN 1-891408-29-1
• Yesterday's Perfume,Cherie Nutting with Paul Bowles (2000), ISBN 0-609-60573-9

Literary criticism of Paul Bowles[link]

• Paul Bowles: Romantic Savage, Gena Dagel Caponi (1994), ISBN 0-8093-1923-3
• Paul Bowles: The Inner Geography, Wayne Pounds (1985), ISBN 0-8204-0192-7
• Paul Bowles: The Illumination of North Africa, Lawrence D. Stewart (1974), ISBN 0-8093-0651-4
• Paul Bowles: Twayne's Authors Series, Gena Dagel Caponi (1998), ISBN 0-8057-4560-2
• The Fiction of Paul Bowles: The Soul is the Weariest Part of the Body, Hans Bertens (1979), ISBN 90-6203-992-8

Published interviews with Paul Bowles[link]

• Conversations with Paul Bowles, Gena Dagel Caponi (1993), ISBN 0-87805-650-5
• Desultory Correspondence, Florian Vetsch (1997), ISBN 3-9520497-7-8

Catalog and archive editions on Paul Bowles[link]

• Paul Bowles: A Descriptive Bibliography, Jeffrey Miller (1986), ISBN 0-87685-610-5
• Paul Bowles on Music, edited by Timothy Mangan and Irene Herrmann (2003), ISBN 0-520-23655-6

Other References[link]

• The Dream at the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades in Tangier, Michelle Green (1991) ISBN 0-06-016571-5
• Paul Bowles: Le Reclus de Tanger", Mohamed Choukri (1997)
• Stars in the Firmament: Tangier Characters 1660–1960", David Woolman (1998) ISBN 1-57889-068-3
• The Tangier Diaries", John Hopkins (1998) ISBN 93-227-4501-0

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Paul Bowles

Official website[link]

• paulbowles.org: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site

Writing and music[link]

• Works by or about Paul Bowles in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Paul Bowles Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• Paul Bowles Online Exhibit, University of Delaware
• Paul Bowles audio and music web published on the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine project archive at Ubuweb

Interviews with Paul Bowles[link]

More interviews on the official Paul Bowles website

• Jeffrey Bailey (Fall 1981). "Paul Bowles, The Art of Fiction No. 67". Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3208/the-art-of-fiction-no-67-paul-bowles. 
• “A Distant Episode: In Tangier with Paul Bowles.” Poets & Writers Magazine. July/August 1999: 36–39.
• Clips of interviews with Bowles from the documentary Paul Bowles in Morocco
• "Paul Bowles, A Conversation with Bruce Duffie" (Bruce Duffie, May 1992)
• Paul Bowles Meets with Ken Smith and Frank J. Oteri (January 1, 1998, published on NewMusicBox December 1999)
• "Stranger on a Strange Shore" (Gaither Stewart, Critique magazine, October 2000).

Assessments[link]

• Paul Bowles’ Tangier and Fez, Mohamed Elkouche (from “Paul Bowles' Tangier and Fez: The Agony of Transition from Colonial to Post-colonial Times,” in Urban Generations: Post-Colonial Cities, Mohamed V University, Rabat, 2005.

Reviews and obituaries[link]

• Review of "The Sheltering Sky", TIME magazine, 5 December, 1945
• Review of "Let It Come Down", "Critique" magazine.
• Review of "The Spider's House", New York Times, 1955
• Review of "Up Above the World", New York Times, 1966
• New York Times obituary, 19 November 1999
• Manchester Guardian obituary, 19 November 1999
• BBC World obituary, 19 November 1999