Arts & Entertainment
Eat chocolate and be happy? Eat dark chocolate and be healthy? If the science is right, Islanders will have a chance to get happy and healthy by tasting some very special chocolates on Sunday, June 1, from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center.
There will be Vosges chocolates, Mirabelle hot chocolate items, Champlain and Tasse bars, sauces, organic cacao beans (“the new red wine”), and giant chocolate bars. Other snacks and beverages will be served, and there will be live music.
Summer may still be weeks away, but the music is already hot and spicy at Che’s Lounge in Vineyard Haven. Singer-songwriter Bella and her musical partner Daniel Waters have created a show of bossa nova and samba that opens Tuesday night, June 3, at 7 p.m., and will return (with musical friends and variations of repertoire) every Tuesday throughout the summer.
Folksinger, storyteller and all-around funny guy Rabbi David Shneyer gave a coffeehouse performance Monday evening at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center. Fingerpicking his Guild guitar, accompanying his tunes on harmonica too, donning different hats — literally a cowboy hat or yarmulke or Greek sailor’s cap as the song demanded — the rabbi demonstrated for Islanders just how he has drawn a following within and well beyond the Jewish community.
The lines sprang into Jemima James’ head, complete with melody, sometime in the 1970s: “Raised in a home, his back got no bone.” The rest of the song, Billy Baloo, soon followed.
“I just liked the way it sounded,” she said, sitting in the wind outside the Scottish Bakehouse in Vineyard Haven this week. Though the story didn’t pair with reality, she found that changing the words messed with the tune. And she trusts the songs that arrive this way.
What happens to the 705 people of tiny Crawford, Tex. when George W. Bush moves to town?
Entrain is back — not that the high-voltage global rhythm percussion band (you really can’t pin it down to one genre) actually disappeared. Just that, having veered away from producing new albums, Entrain is back with an album of all new songs, a new lead singer, new take on old philosophies, and new phase of what band founder Tom Major calls “prolific creativity.” Released in March by Dolphin Safe Records, Just A Matter of Time is the first album of new songs Entrain has put out in seven years.
