{"id":8616,"date":"2017-08-29T23:52:40","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T06:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=8616"},"modified":"2017-08-30T00:10:57","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T07:10:57","slug":"whats-in-a-name-cuneiform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2017\/08\/whats-in-a-name-cuneiform\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s In A Name: Cuneiform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Curious about the name of a small, imaginative jazz record company called Cuneiform, I asked Joyce Feigenbaum, the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s publicist, who is married to the owner, how the label\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name came about. This is her reply:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I&#8217;m actually an art historian by academic training (B.A. &amp; M.A.), not an archeologist, a modernist. BUT I&#8217;m not the one who came up with the name &#8211; Steve Feigenbaum, Cuneiform&#8217;s owner and founder, did. Here&#8217;s how it happened. Steve wanted a different, a distinctive, name\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnot something typical. Cuneiform is certainly not typical. (In retrospect, maybe an &#8220;easier&#8221; one-syllable name would have been better. \ud83d\ude42 We both admired ancient Middle Eastern art.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8617\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Cuneiform-Script.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"335\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Cuneiform-Script.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Cuneiform-Script-300x201.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><br \/>\nCuneiform is one of the earliest systems of writing, or of recording information. It was developed by the Sumerians in Ancient Mesopotamia around 3500 BC, and was a radical innovation in the ancient world. Unlike pictorial languages, it was phonetic and semantic and thus capable of expressing abstract concepts. Music is recorded information. And we wanted our label to record radically innovative music. So, naming the label after Cuneiform seemed fitting.<\/p>\n<p>It broke my heart that most people did not know what the word Cuneiform referred to until Iraq was in the news following the US invasion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Cuneiform\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s artists tend toward the adventurous, to say the least. Tend toward, hell; they <em>are<\/em> adventurous. Among those who have recorded for the label are trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, pianist Vijay Iyer, guitarist Mary Halvorson and John Hollenbeck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Claudia Quartet. Here is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Crops\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from a Cuneiform album by the quartet called Ideal Bread, reinterpreting the music of the late soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. The musicians are Josh Sinton, baritone saxophone; Kirk Knuffke, cornet; Adam Hopkins, bass; and Tomas Fujiwara, drums.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ideal Bread - Crops\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FYBH8eMl4fw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">For more about the label, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cuneiformrecords.com\">go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">For more about the history of Cuneiform writing, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cuneiform_script\">go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Curious about the name of a small, imaginative jazz record company called Cuneiform, I asked Joyce Feigenbaum, the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s publicist, who is married to the owner, how the label\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name came about. This is her reply: I&#8217;m actually an art historian by academic training (B.A. &amp; M.A.), not an archeologist, a modernist. BUT I&#8217;m not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}