Okay, really quick. So let's go ahead and get going. Folks, keep adding yourselves to the meeting minutes as participants, apologies for being a little flaky this morning on the agenda. Let me go ahead and share the agenda so we can talk to one unified thing. Okay, so always first up is agenda bashing. So quick review of where we're going. We'll review action items. We've got some of those that carried forward from last week. Review of development activity with Frederick and Kyle. Review of use case mapping. I think, John, you're leading this this week because Prem is actively flying right now. Sorry. Yep, probably not much, but we'll do it quickly. Cool, cool. Then we've still got the open thing about meeting time planning and then action plans for the coming week. And then with any remaining time, there's conceptual review stuff we can do. So, awesome. Anyone else want to add something to the agenda that's not already there? I'm gonna volunteer Kyle to talk about CRDs since there was a lot of work done on that. Okay, so that's under code activity. Yep. Yeah, there was a ton of stuff happening. A lot of it very cool. So anything else folks would like to add? Awesome, cool. So, let's go ahead and dive right in then. So from action items that we had from last week on code activity, Frederick, have you thought anymore on the in cluster off stuff? Yeah, so there were two things I ended up looking at. The first one was, so I ran a few tests and in order to work out the in cluster off. So, since we're writing and go, Kubernetes provides a very nice way to grab a configuration. So basically you can call in cluster config method in the go client and that configuration has everything you need in order to access the API. The second thing that we need to do from there is the default service account that it gives us has almost no privileges. You can do version and that's about it. So what I added into it was, so I created a new service account and I gave it access to a limited set of APIs that I enumerated and that worked out well. So I think what we'll need to do is we'll probably need to create at least one, maybe two service accounts with different, depending on the roles that we want, which will monitor the new pods that are being created, new nodes that are being created. We have to work out if we want to modify any of this. For example, do we need the ability to create new pod or do we need the ability to create to add containers or so on? So if we do then we can add these privileges to the network service manager pods. So that was pretty easy. The second thing that we can add in is we can actually add through the pod spec capabilities. So for example, one capability that we will almost certainly need for certain STNs is the net admin capability. So we can actually inject. So all these capabilities are dropped by the container runtime by default. And we can opt to not drop things like cap net admin or so on. And that gives us the ability to manipulate the network interfaces and so on. Of course, we'll still have to, we'll still recommend that users test and make sure that things work because there's other things besides capabilities that may block a user from being able to work. So for example, if SE Linux is active, it's possible that it can be configured to deny despite the fact that you have a net admin account access. Same thing with the Ubuntu side as well. They have their own SE Linux. It will say it's equivalent in terms of functionality that can block these type of requests. And actually, if a user wants to go all out, they can actually fine tune the request. So it only allows certain types of requests that match the network service manager use case and block others as well. So there's a way they can do that. But generally, we wanna make sure that they have, the test that I ran did not have SE Linux block them, but it's something to keep in mind if you see things fail. So anyways, so the two things are service accounts, add a service account, bind a pod to the service account on creation and the ability to retain capabilities through the pod spec, which we'll likely need for adding things like adding interfaces. Awesome, cool. This is good. I haven't added these to a document yet. So I'm actually gonna see about enabling the network service manager wiki and adding some of this information in because it doesn't really feel like it belongs in a repository, but it's still information that we need. And so if we enable the wiki, assuming it hasn't been enabled yet, then we can document all of this kind of stuff inside of it for people to reference. And another option is we could document on in some document directory as well. So that way it lives along with the GitHub repo, but I mean, for this kind of information, it's true regardless as to the state of the container system itself. So I think the wiki is a good approach here. Awesome, cool. Thank you. It's something you've dug a lot into that. And I see we were getting some talks about not being a privileged container having well-defined capabilities. I think it's generally good practice to be able to do precisely what you need and no more. Yeah, I have a little bit of experience regarding this. I did it for some other project also, and I was playing with the same thing which you just described in the last few minutes. So last night I was playing with the service accounts for the network service mesh. So I created one comment and I pasted the link in the chat just to give a little bit of perspective what you were talking about right now. So folks can go over and see. I'll try and create a poll request later today with this. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Excellent, cool. So then next up we had Kyle talking about CRDs. Yeah, right. So I think we reviewed this on the last call. So CRDs are custom resource definitions and it's kind of the way that we've decided to expose. Essentially it allows us a way to use the standard Kubernetes, they'll essentially act as a database for us, they'll set up, we'll be able to use kubectl and everything like that for all of our resources essentially. So over the last couple of weeks, I was able to figure out a way to essentially take our protobuf file. And from that, obviously we can generate go code that has a bunch of structures inside of it. Essentially then I was able to create a types.go file that references those structures as the spec and then use all of the Kubernetes code generation tools to generate everything we need kind of stitch it all together. And so Frederick and I spent a bunch of time last week reviewing that and he merged that this week as well. Right now there is one problem with what was merged that I'm still looking into and that is issue number 59. So deletion doesn't quite work as expected right now. So I won't bore everyone with the details on that but if you wanna go look at that issue you can take a look at that as well. I also opened 58 and 57, those aren't really issues but more things that Frederick and I during the review were like, yeah, we should look into that as well. Those aren't really bugs. So basically what's in there should work now. I also opened and Pratik, this is what I referenced in the issue that you opened as well. I opened PR60 which actually includes a bunch of sample configuration and scripts and updates the file that kind of documents how you might wanna try this out with Minikube as well. So that was pushed out as well. And then I do have PR61 open which fixes a few bugs just in our in-former factory usage as well. So I know that was a lot, so. Awesome. And another thing last night while trying, I figured out was there are no Docker images in the Docker Hub repo. So I had to create my own image and try it out. So it would be great if we can push those images. So Pratik, I feel terrible if you had just come in after 60 merged, everything that you hit was all the things that are incidental.   So I was able to build it easily. So that's not a problem. So then I put it into my repo and then from my repo I put it. So that worked. Well, that would be great. And definitely eyeball 60 as someone who recently tried to use this, your feedback on there would be excellent. Sure, thanks. Cool. Awesome. Very cool. So anything else on the CRD front then Kyle? Not really. And I'm looking, I don't see Chris Metz on the call, but Chris and I talked yesterday. I know he was working on kind of a day in the life of a packet thing, but he also much like critique was interested in kind of getting this up and running and he wanted to try it with mini cube. So I was, I wasn't sure if he'd have time to take a look at it because our meeting that he and I, we kind of spoke later in the day, but I thought he might have had some feedback on number 60 as well as another person who went and tried to get this all up and running, at least with what we have now. Okay, cool. Yeah, one other thing I actually did notice from the CRD is, and this is probably a worth discussion because I don't really know what the right answer is here. So in all the presentations I've been giving, I've been talking about a network service potentially exposing multiple channels. So we have service definition, it can have multiple channels, each of them with their own name and payload. Now, this was done basically 100% because I was sort of imitating as closely as possible services from Kubernetes. I noticed that in the stuff that you currently have in there, you only have essentially a service equals one channel. Now honestly, in the examples I've tried to work with this, damned if I've actually found a good example for multiple channels, right? So I'm in no way complaining. I'm simply saying at some point we should probably talk about whether or not we can think of cases where we would need more than one service per channel. Yeah, that's a good point. And this is actually another area where I wish that Chris was here because he has some, I think he has some feedback on that as well. Yeah, the only one that comes immediately to mind is, so let's say for example that I have a network service and I expose a channel that handles a payload IPv4 and a channel that handles payload IPv6. That's the one example that comes to mind, right? It's the same logical service, but you're getting L3 payloads in both cases, but you handle v6 and v4 often quite differently. Yeah, and I agree with that. My only concern is, and obviously it seems like we might wanna solve some of these simple cases at first, but I guess the thing would be, it doesn't seem so far like it's a lot of work to carry multiple channels at this point from a code perspective. So as long as that maintains, maybe we should leave that flexibility open for down the road, rather than closing it down now and then having to later change the model and everything. One other thing we may wanna do is we may actually wanna loop in SIG networking for a little bit of wisdom here, because my understanding is that historically, services did not start out as multi-port things. And so they went multi-port for a reason and it would be good for us to have a clearer understanding of why and what their feeling is about whether that turned out to be a good decision. Makes sense. Because on the one hand, I like making things as simple as possible for developers. On the other, this is not a huge overhead and it does introduce additional flexibility. So I'm really curious other people's thoughts. I'd probably go with Kyle. I mean, leaving it in is easy of taking it out. And as you stumble across use cases, rub up against. Right. I think, I mean, Ed does have a valid point, but I guess before we remove it, I think we should just talk with, talking with the SIG network folks to see if they have some use cases as well or just kind of circling back to really ensure. Well, I mean, it was sort of what their experience is and how they feel about their own decision. I mean, I'm sure we've all been there where somebody is sort of copying something that you were responsible for. And you're like, don't do that. That was a bad idea. I can't get out of it yet anymore because it's already set in stone. But if I had to do it again, I'd never do that, right? We've all been there. So probably. The thing I thought about last night, we need to think about a little bit is how we integrate with Service Mesh. Because we open up new channels. I mean, Service Mesh is trying to have a data plane and a control plane. The Service Mesh data plane is on the Kubernetes network. We're opening channels in a different network. And I want to apply security or policy from Istio. There's now this invisible network running around. That is actually something we should think about as well. And I think you actually ended up thinking about it. I think you brought up two things. One is you're put about the invisible network piece. The other one is that we may have some use cases where the thing you're working via is not the Kubernetes network, it's some other network. So imagine for a moment that I've got a box that has a physical mic that's connected to some magic network like my radio network. And I want to reach a network service that is only reachable via the radio network. That may be something we have to think about as well. I would say definitely the default should be via the Kubernetes network. But there will be cases where that's not going to be quite the thing. So we definitely need to think through some of those. Would you be willing to put together a crisp statement of those problems for either the mailing list or the meeting next week, John? You see how that works, John? Yeah. Now you see the oppression inherent to the system.  It's amazing how little is agreed when I get into the system. Sure, give me an AI. Okay. Awesome. I shall stop having these thoughts in the middle of the night again. Yeah, I wish you better luck with that than I have. Awesome, cool. Anything else on developer activity? Cool, we've had a pretty full week. Awesome. Shall we move on to review of the use case mapping stuff? We can, there's probably not much there. Prem said he did something on the distributed bridge, but I don't see, I mean, I see one diagram he's added. Just one, keep going, keep going. There, there. I'm not sure if it was different for one last week, but there's not much more. I think he's traveling, so. Yeah, I know he's actively traveling. He's gonna be out for, he's gonna be on vacation for the next few weeks, traveling to India. Although he's, first, he's gonna still show up to the calls when he's in the air. And so, you know, my expectation was he was frantically trying to get everything squared away so he could go. So, I mean, just in general for these cases, it'd be useful if people would comment about things that are missing or not clear. I would give an AI to everybody and just, you know, add some annotations and document. And I'm sure Prem and I and everybody else can, you know, help add more clarity. Yep. That's a good idea.  Yeah. Yeah, I tend to agree with you. When someone is criticizing things, for me at least personally, it means either A, I need to rethink them or B, I'm expressing them poorly and I need to improve that expression of the idea. Yep. Correct. So, cool. Awesome. So, we're moving right along. The meeting time planning stuff. So, there was an AI last week that Prem was supposed to send out a new poll or Google form for this. I don't think that actually happened. Do we have Mike on the call? Cause I think the other one, the other sort of thing that came up was, if he had any concrete people who were actually having the problem with this being on Friday. I don't think we heard back on that and I don't see him on the call. Does anyone else want to speak to this or should we move it forward next week again? Yeah. I think we should give this one more week and then just remove it and keep this slide personally. Totally fair. Totally fair. Cool. Now for the really fun part. Action planning for next week. So, in action planning for next week, code activity, what are folks looking to do for next week? Well, I'm going to still try to, I'm going to be trying to tackle 59, I think. Okay. The other thing that I'm going to do that's tangentially related to this that Frederick and I talked about, I'm going to come up with kind of a, almost a refreshed example of how to do CRDs as well. Frederick and I were going to kind of co-write a blog post on this as well. Yes, some context behind that. There was a bunch of blog posts that half implement CRDs and we weren't able to find any that show in full how to make them work, which tells us that the people who wrote the post just see the things before they work. So we thought it would be a good area to write them out. Real quick, what is issue 59? So I can get the poll. Issue 59 is the deletion problem with the current CRD code. Yeah. Okay. Cool. So here's a half blog post from, I think reddit folks about CRDs, how to generate the code of the CRDs. There's that one. There's like a, there's a half one there. There's another gentleman that last year had an example of repository and took it most of the way, but yeah, it'd be nice to get like one concise here it is fully, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Including writing the controller side using the informers and actually implementing some business logic and stuff like that. Yeah. That part is a little confusing for the first timers, the informers listed. The first time I tried, it took me like a while just to understand those lists, informers and everything. That part is especially tricky. Yep. That sounds like a very useful thing then. Cool. Anything else Kyle before I move on to Pastry and Frederick? That's, I think that's about it to me. And I also, I mean, for anyone else pushing pull requests, I'll dedicate some time for reviewing things next week as well. Excellent. Many thanks. Cool. Frederick, any ambitions for next week? Well, I was going to also take a look at what example, like we need to work out sort of like a hello world story that others can use for the network service mesh. And so, and see if we can start working towards that. So, I mean, it could be simple if something like, chain these multiple things together and have one of them respond or echo or so on. But, yeah, I think we, from a coding perspective, I don't know what that means just yet. So I need to work on that. I'm suddenly struck with the evil desire to put together the ping network service. It responds. Yeah, well, that's what I was thinking is it needs to be something that we can get through in both directions. And so even just working out what do we want to demonstrate as a starting point. And eventually it may turn into a boilerplate for people who want to build out their first chain so they can learn about it. Yeah, one thing that comes immediately to mind that shouldn't be so hard, I think, would just be doing a quick tunnel. So I have something that talks VXLan and it needs to talk to something that talks GRE. What do I do? Maybe just sort of brainstorming a little bit here. Simple transforms like that. So. Yeah, and the other thing that I want to do that's aiming towards this as well is to start loading these things up as services, as demon sets and so on. So, and to get some Kubernetes config files to check into the repo so people can start applying that. So that's a whole multiple set of tasks which range from creating the ammo files to creating the images. We have to work out how do we want to get the images onto some repository somewhere and which means we have to build images somewhere. So I think that we need to start working that particular path out so that we can have a deployment story as well. And this will help as well with the long-term goal of getting integration tests in place for network service mesh. So like the use case that we just talked about earlier, whatever use case that ends up being, we'll be able to take that particular use case and turn it into an integration test that tests it from end to end. And so I'm thinking that we need to start working in that particular direction just to act as an anchor and simultaneously validate our design choices. Like while we're working through it, we may find problems with the design that we may need to tackle. And I think that the best way to work these things out is to actually come up with a concrete example and work towards it. Well, the next thing about doing it with the Hello World case is effectively then we can turn use cases into integration tests. And I like that a lot. Yeah, it would be so along these lines, if you all wanna take a look at PR 60, that was kind of my intent was that moves us kind of into that direction a bit because from just the CRD perspective, that has enough logic to almost be like a super simple integration test of, hey, we've got it up and running, network service mesh is running as a demon set, we can go and create the CRDs, then we can actually create CRD objects and verify they're all still there and they came up. Perfect. So I would echo what Ed's saying is like, can we start tying use cases into code? Because I think as we go through, that will sharpen up the use cases because we actually say this is how you implement them. And I think to Fred's point, we'll identify gaps. Yeah, definitely. I definitely think so. And I think we almost, I think we have enough of the plumbing implemented now to get to that point of doing the actual use case and stuff. Cool, awesome. So not to put you on the spot, Pratik, it sounds like you may have ambitions this week as well. I'm sorry? You may have ambitions this week as well. Yeah, I haven't looked through the whole code yet. I found some of the issues, so I was just trying to tackle them. So whatever I find across, I'll try to add PRs accordingly. And if you guys have any particular tasks, I can take a little help to help. Cool. I know that Kyle, you made an attempt to get some issues that would bring in our friendly in the GitHub repo. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And so Pratik, take a look at the issues there. And some of that stuff is relatively simple and some of them are a little bit more complex, but definitely. And if you're, I don't know if you're on IRC or not, but jump on IRC and get on the Network Service Mesh channel as well, because that's another great way. Sure, I'll try and join today. Cool. There's a ton of discussion that happens there. Yeah. Cool, awesome. And the other thing I just wanted to just get at some thoughts around it was, what was the rationale of not running the demon set for the Network Service Mesh on all the nodes? Like we have to label the node specifically for it to get scheduled on that node. So I was just trying to know, is there any specific reason behind it? I don't think there is any at all, really. That was just a simple way to get it going. And I guess the other way is, and actually this is probably a good discussion point, by doing it that way, at least initially, we're not requiring people to run it on every node. We don't come in as being onerous that we have to run everywhere. So I mean, what are the ways to approach that just to make people's lives easier? In the ML file you're building, you effectively have it just applied the demon set everywhere and then comment out the stuff with, put a comment in section with the PC would uncomment and instructions if you want to run on a subset. That way it's really clear, okay, if you don't want to run it everywhere, this is how you do it. But I suspect like for the kicking tires put of you, most people are just going to spin up a cluster and try it at this stage. Because when I just tried, I saw it's a demon set, it should just go on each node. Then I saw, okay, I have to put a label because there is a selector. So then I was a little confused. Is there any rationale behind putting it on specific nodes or it can come up on all nodes that you're talking about? No, it can definitely come up on all nodes. If you wanna submit a patch or pull request for that, that's fine too. Okay, sure. Cool, thank you. Yeah, that's my opinion. It should be a demon set and we should have at least, well, we should have one running on every node that has a cubelet, so. Okay, cool. Cool. Awesome. Anyone else have any ambitions around code for next week? Cool, use cases. Anyone have use case ambitions for next week? That's not surprising given that Prem is in the air right now. So when I spoke to him yesterday, he had quite a lot of ambitions that he was excited about, but I'll leave it to him to sort those out. I will try and take a look at the code and use case and see if I can draw a line between the two. I'll probably paint Fred and Kyle. Cool. I can get some cycles, but my next week is kind of a little. We know how that goes. But the questions are ambitions, not commitments. Awesome. Cool. So anything else that folks have in terms of action planning for next week? They think we should capture here. Other things that people are planning on doing? Excellent. So we now have a couple of things that we're gonna do for the next week. People are planning on doing. Excellent. So we now sort of get to the section of our meeting where we've got open space to talk about some of the conceptual issues here. I don't know how many of you folks were there. I did give a presentation to SIG Networking yesterday. And in that presentation, there was an amazing conceptual breakthrough in how I'm explaining this. And that conceptual breakthrough was, I remembered to explain what the data plane is doing, which I'd previously not done, which I feel a little bit silly about. So, we can sort of walk through conceptually any sort of stuff that folks have they wanna go through. Any sort of unanswered questions, areas we need to explore, et cetera. You don't have a lot to speak at once. And I'm perfectly happy, by the way, to conclude the meeting early if we've run through the business that folks have. I just wanted to make sure, I always wanna make sure I leave the door open because every time people come with questions, the way the explanations get clearer to other people, right? So, those questions end up being intensely valuable. So, maybe one thing, I was in the meeting while listening in. What are the next steps, are it? I mean, we've done a good presentation. I think most people got it. How do we follow up to a line? Yes, I think there are sort of two things. And in some sense, when Tim asked that question yesterday, I was having such a good time, I borked it. So, I've, because it really comes down to if you decide, I think we're on a really good path in terms of actually getting shit done. On a formalism point of view, we need to figure out whether it makes sense to seek to be a working group under SIG networking or a CNCF working group. And my sense is that it's probably in part a question that should be posed to SIG networking to see what their opinion is about where they'd like us to be because you could look at it one of two ways. You can either say, I mean, in fact, I think you heard Tim on the call, look at it one of two ways. You can either say, this is completely orthogonal from what SIG networking is doing in Kubernetes, which is actually a good thing, in which case we might want to be a CNCF working group, or you could sort of say, well, that's true and it's a good thing, but it's also true that SIG networking could gain benefit from building some things on top of this when we get there. And both are, I think, are valid points of view. It's just sort of a matter of what that community wants. Does that make sense? Regardless of which way it goes, there still has to be, so I think fairly close working between the two groups because I don't think it's, they're not ships in the night. They definitely have to have at least awareness. Minimum, maybe common tomology. Well, I do probably dispel service function chain, God damn it. Hey, Ed, do you, I might have missed this because I was out and traveling yesterday, but do you have a link to your presentation sort of saying that's the connect? Yeah, it's actually, it's picking up now on the Legato Network Service Mesh GitHub. So if you go to the repository, it should be listed there in the readme.md. All right, thank you. And as I said, I feel silly that that was the first time I actually explained the entire data playing part of the story. Ed, this is George. I have a question. Yeah, actually, John mentioned earlier, what's the relationship with the Network Service Mesh with Service Mesh? Well, so think about it. Hang on, I actually have, I think a good slide that helps with visualizing this. Let me see if I can take it out. It's really an issue of layers. Load, load, load, load, load. Hang on. Okay. So, let me see if I can find the slide I'm looking for. Here's the slide I'm looking for. It's really a matter of layers, right? So, what Service Mesh is working with is primarily L4 through L7, right? So it's the, how do I proxy TCP ports around? How do I route HTTP two messages across a variety of available TCP connections? That kind of stuff. And it does that really nicely. And then what we're looking at in Network Service Mesh is primarily things that L2 and L3. So I have ethernet frames that I need to treat as payloads or IP packets, that kind of thing. Yeah, I understand this part. So does that mean Network Service Mesh will extend Service Mesh, which basically inheritance everything we had in Service Mesh or you basically select one or the other? Oh, they should be utterly compatible. Now, Modulo, a couple of comments that John had made where if he wants Istio to be able to operate over some network service that's been plugged in by Network Service Mesh that Istio doesn't understand, there could be an understanding mismatch there, but I think that should be rectifiable because the Istio guys do have ambitions of not solely being tied to Kubernetes and being able to do Istio service meshes across multiple clusters like that. I don't think it's the Istio control plane that's the issue because it has pluggable modules. It's the data plane piece if, because Istio can plug into NGX, Envoy, a bunch of others. It's a question, how do you get the information from the data plane into Istio? So the data plane is now Network Service Mesh, how does it talk to Istio and how does Istio apply policy into? Well, and I would also say the question. I'll shoot it, I'll shoot it. I'll even shoot it. I mean. I'll shoot it because the thing is, I don't think Istio naturally understands very well issues at layer two and layer three and neither do I expect us in Network Service Mesh to have the first clue about stuff that happens at L7, right? So, you know, there's an interesting open question to think about of whether Istio should be aware of Network Service Mesh at all and if so, in what manner? But I think clearly the goal, George, is let the Service Mesh boys handle L4 through L7 and Network Service Mesh handle L2 and L3 and then we get a nice traditional layering scheme the way we all know and love the networking. Yeah, yeah, that's why we need a Network Service Mesh because we're missing the L2, L3 layers. The question I have is does everything moving on in the Service Mesh will automatically pick up by Network Service Mesh? Yeah, and I think that's what John was getting at is what does Istio need to know to operate over the Network Service Mesh? So, think of it from a layer point of view. I think you have the Network Service Mesh and then you have the Service Mesh that you would like to be able to work over the Network Service Mesh but that doesn't really know as you understand what's about what's happening there. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, cool. Pardon me. Anything else folks want to talk about before we conclude for the day? All right, cool. I will see you guys next week. Thank you. Thank you.


Zionists do not believe in human rights at all. They believe in the rights of, and Zionist rights. That's why they're entirely content to commit genocide on the people of Palestine and for the people of Palestine, the indigenous people, to have no human rights at all. So unless we, the people, all of us who are represented by you and to some extent by me, my audiences, for instance, join together and raise their voices in a unified choir, we will never convince one another that we have to get rid of this system. Absolutely lock, stop, and barrel. You can't change the thing that they mistakenly describe as democracy in the United States of America. You have to replace it with something that actually is. And to do that, you have to rest the power away from the very rich and give it back to the people. Hello. Welcome to People's Dispatch in Globetrotter. We're coming on to a new year 2024. It's very important, I think, that we recognize that 2023 has been one of the hardest years that many of us have lived through for a range of reasons, not least of which, of course, the brutal, brutal attack on the Palestinian people. There's no person better on the planet that I can think of that I'd like to talk to about some of these issues than Roger Waters. Roger has just completed a very, very, very long tour. This is not a drill. The first final tour, as he sometimes says, quite amusingly, Roger, welcome to People's Dispatch in Globetrotter. Thanks for your time. I saw your show two nights in Santiago, extraordinary explanation of the situation we live in now, a defense of human rights, a sonic defense of human rights, not just what you were saying, but also in the music. You were right through the tour from Germany to the UK to Argentina to Brazil, you were attacked at each point by the voices of those who are war makers and not peacemakers. Reflect a little bit for our viewers about the tour and about the nature of these attacks. Oh, my goodness. Well, let's always call this is not a drill. And so it's actually, it's a reflection, if you like, on a song that I wrote in 1972 called Time. And when I was 29 years old, and I had suddenly had a realization that I had thought it had been dined into me by my mother that I was in the process of preparing for a life that was going to happen at some point, I suddenly realized that no, no, we're in it right now. And it's strange, isn't it? How as we grow up, there's the faintest feeling that there might be something outside ourselves when we're a tiny baby. And then we eventually identified that as mother and maybe father depends how many of your parents are still alive, speaking of Gaza, which is, you know, in terms of Gaza is precious view. But anyway, so I'm going to ramble because that's the only way I know how to speak.  Well, I realized that when I was 29 years old, I better get on with this and I've been getting on with it for the 50 years since. And my tour is still me getting on with it. But the reason for the title of the tour, this is not a drill, is trying to din this into everybody who comes to any one of my shows to say, this is not a drill, this is it. This is the attack. We are now under the attack of you were talking about Modi earlier attacking you personally. And you know, I'm under attack from Rishi Senak.  And it's not theirs to destroy. It's all of ours. It collectives. And it maybe it's not if we want to get kind of philosophical and zoological about it. Maybe it belongs to some of the animals as well. Maybe even the plant make who all living things we don't know. Because we don't completely understand the universe. We understand a lot more than Socrates did, you know, or Galileo or some of the people they locked up for being scientific and wanting to know answers to question. So who knows. So where so we are 2023 is the most dangerous year that there's ever been in the whole history of homo sapiens. And we can we can we know quite a lot about homo sapiens that for the last couple of hundred thousand years anyway, in terms of how we've developed our societies and gone from nomadic to agrarian to industrialization to this that and the other. And unfortunately, we have been overtaken by commerce. To the extent that the decision makers in the world, including Modi and Biden and all the others that we've known to that make the decisions and their decisions are all based upon the profit motive, literally, literally. And when you allow that motive to define the way that you make decisions, it is inevitable that you will destroy the planet and everything on it. Because because that is the logical end to the possibilities that the putter provides, because the globe is finite, you know. So if you're constantly trying to steal everything on the globe, and anything precious that's on it, today it's lithium. Who knows what it might be tomorrow? It has been oiled for the last hundred years or so.  Even if they even if you pay them a pittance to clean the ash trades or whatever it is that you need doing because you don't want to do it yourself, you know, or look after the swim. I don't know what. But once you decide that that is the that is correct, well, then what you're doing is you're providing for the emergence of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and all, and Zuckerberg and all the other asshole lollipops who own everything.  So you never take any note, don't have to take any notice of the people ever. That is why the job that you do is so important, why globe trotter and the people's dispatch and all the other repositories of the will of the people in terms of the written and spoken word line. That's why it's so important. Because unless we the people, all of us who are represented by you and to some extent by me, my audiences, for instance, join together and raise their voices in a unified choir, we will never convince one another that we have to get rid of this system. Absolutely lock, stop and barrel. You can't change the thing that they mistakenly describe as democracy in the United States of America. You have to replace it with something that actually is. And to do that, you have to rest the power away from the very rich and give it back to the people. But first of all, in order to do that, and this is where you and I come in, is we have to persuade the people that their voice has been stolen from them and that they are meaningless. There is no way that they can affect. And yet today, everyone can see that the Nazi government of the state of Israel is committing genocide, completely open and proudly, they're proud of it. And their soldiers and all and journalists are dancing around on the beach in Glasgow and going, look, now we have a beat.  Even people as old as I'm 80 years old, I've never seen anything like the bombing of Laos and, obviously, all of those wars, Iraq, Libya, all of those things were heinous, but nothing like this. This is the absolute triumph of the Nazi idea of supremacy. In their case, it was Aryans, you know, blonde Germans from the North, blah, blah. In this case, it's Ashkenazi Jews, Northern European Jews who come and settled and colonized Palestine. And they're going, we are special. How do you know that? Because it's written in the Bible. God told us we are special. Everybody else is irrelevant, particularly these people who have committed the appalling, atrocious crime of living here on land that we want for the greater glory of Eretz Israel, which we will spread all over Jordan all over Lebanon, probably all over Egypt, probably they would probably want to expand all over everywhere. They've talked about Jordan, Trans Jordan, blah, blah, blah. So it's happening all day. It's happening today. It's happening all day today, the 27th of December.   So there's not a single one left. And then they don't have whatever they and they can't have it because we will not allow it. And I'm so happy to see the world, the whole world is rising in demonstration against them all over the world. What was it in the Yemen the other day, a million people over a million people in the street. It's all over a video I put out a few days ago. I'm quite right. So certainly the Yemeni people, the Houthis, who now represent the whole of the Yemen, now that they haven't got the Saudi Arabians and the Americans bombing them to death every day, raising their voice. And they're saying, no, you can't do this. And they are next to the Red Sea.  They're going to close down the ports in Vancouver and in San Francisco and in San Diego and in Southampton and in Delhi. I don't know if you have a port, but it's or in Mumbai, you know, they're going to close all the ports as we you cannot have a ship here. You cannot do business with anybody because you're Nazis and we won't allow it. I mean, I know we were late coming to the party in the late 1930s and the early 1940s. But eventually we did all come together. I know the Russians had already defeated the Wehrmacht by the time that some of us got into the war. But nevertheless, we did see off Goebbels and Göring and Eichmann and Hitler. We saw them off. We said, no, no. And we had tried. Well, we're going to see off Netanyahu and Ben Gavir and all the rest of the Nazis who are in control of the state of Israel. We will see them off. What we all have to hope is it doesn't turn into the Third World War. Unfortunately, they have nuclear weapons, thanks to the French and the Brits and the Americans and a few other imperialist nations. Because we have to say, like, I'm an Englishman, I have to accept the fact that we did a lot of the groundwork for this when we discovered how to make hearts of oak, big boats. So did the Portuguese and the Spanish, more or less the same term, and the Germans and the Dutch and the Belgians. Let's not forget the Conga.  And it was, it was, it were the great colonial times. And we were proud of it for a while. We're not proud of it anymore. We're disgusted by it. Unless we're the right wing elements of the Australian, you know, powers that be, who maybe are not yet ashamed of their genocide of the indigenous people of Australasia, or the Americans, obviously, or the Europeans, the English and the French, and, and the Germans, and all European families who all settled North America and killed the Native Americans, committed genocide and all the Native Americans. So this is, this is a question that we haven't really looked at until now. Now we're repeating itself in the Holy Land. So that's why we're all coming together to stop it. Yeah, one of the most puzzling things for me, Roger, and I don't mean to sound naive about this because I will understand why the city of Frankfurt went after you. I will understand why British parliamentarian called for your shows to be cancelled in the UK. I'm well aware and understand why the right wing press in Brazil went after you when you were doing your concerts there, or that you couldn't get a hotel room in Buenos Aires. I will understand why that is. On the other hand, I do want, you know, I want this question to be asked of you because I also fear that sometimes because we know the answer to the question we get cynical and we think, well, you know, that's, that's how it is. In fact, I've seen a number of your shows, I've listened to all your music, you know, I read a lot of things that you say, and at the bottom of everything are two words, human rights. At the show in Santiago, during this is not a drill on the stage, the beautiful, beautiful stage in enormous letters, human rights, human rights, the phrase seized fire, you're not calling for a war, you're not calling for extermination, you're not calling for annihilation, you talk about human rights and end war. And yet it is your voice that they're trying to close down, reflect a little bit for people about the complete irrationality of the attempt to silence Roger Waters. Well, it's not irrational at all. It's entirely rational. It's because of those things. It's because I believe in human rights that they want to shut me down and silence me. Because if I, when I get up on my hand, let hind legs and start talking about the Palestinians and how they should have it, for instance, the guy who wouldn't let me stand is well, there were lots of them got together. They're all, they're all, but let me say this, and this is not anti-Semitic. They're all owned by Jewish people. Some Jewish people are Zionists. Okay, so let's not, let's make that absolutely clear before we start talking about this. We know, you know, it's ridiculous to say, but some of our best friends are Jewish people, and they're lovely, and they believe in human rights to every, to the very depths and core of their being. It's part of their religion. Zionists do not believe in human rights at all. They believe in the rights of, and Zionist rights. That's why they're entirely content to commit genocide on the people of Palestine and for the people of Palestine, the indigenous people to have no human rights at all. That is why over the last 20 years or so that I've been involved in the struggle for Palestinian human rights, I've finally managed to winnow away all the chaff and come down to the platform upon which I stand. And it is exactly what you say. And that's what I always say. Paris, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the fledgling United Nations after the Second World. Boom, there it is. Finally enough, it's December. So it's a few months after the Nachba, which was in May 1948. But nevertheless, it's the same. So that is why they attack me. And I stood on stage and said that, look, here's this bloke. What's his name? Kopolsky or something or other. He owns every four seasons hotel in the world. I had his name written out and left on the piano so I could remember. This is the man who won't let me stay in any four seasons hotel anywhere in the world ever because he claims I'm an anti-Semite. Right? He claims that. Well, good luck. I say good for you. And I threw his name on the floor where it belongs because he's lying. This is a lie because I am not an anti-Semite. As I said to Glenn Greenwald in a fairly famous now interview I did with him in the November in Rio de Janeiro where I said there was something fishy about the Israeli narrative of October the 7th and the Hamas attack on their military installations and a music festival and some kibbutzi. And so I said there's something very fishy about the stories coming out of that. And for that, that was when it all happened again. There was a huge furore about it, suggesting that I was an anti-Semite. That's why I'm lying about the Israeli version of what happened. No, it's not. It's because I care about the truth and there was something fishy about it and I was right to be curious about it. And now the evidence is coming out showing that I was absolutely right to be fishy and they were lying about it and they've gone on lying about it ever since. Everything that they say is a lie.  The people who won't let me stay in their hotels and me. There's a difference between me and them. And the difference is I believe in human rights for all my brothers and sisters all over the world irrespective of their ethnicity or their nationality or their religion. That's all and they don't. And it's the truth. And what they cannot abide is the truth. And my show, this is not a drill, is telling the truth about the tactics of the powers that they and the oligarchs and the people with money and how they operate and how they manage to do it and how it is that there is no no almost no democracy anywhere in the world. There are a few countries in the world where there's at least an attempt to see if it might work like for instance Chile. Now the barrage is in charge or Venezuela under Maduro but certainly not in the United States of America. There hasn't been a single idea or even question that there might be something democratic about this since well certainly since the Second World War maybe maybe Roosevelt has one or two good intentions in the New Deal. But since then it's been completely controlled and we all know it. That's why you are being banned from returning to your homeland and that is why they are trying to silence me. They haven't quite cut off my Instagram account yet or my what's the thing that used to be called Twitter ex or whether or not post things or not but they will. I'm sure they will. They'll get round to it. They go no this guy is actually too dangerous because he does speak the truth and we know he speaks the truth but we need our lies to trump his truth. Well that's going to be difficult for them.  I don't know but thank you for coming to the shows and I'm so happy I did them because I am the only one out there in rock and roll and doing anything political in the rock and roll arena which is pretty weird because they always have that sort of reputation you know going back to Barry McGuire you know what was what was that famous song Eve of Destruction. I forget nouns all the time now so if I pause occasionally you must forgive me but here we are on the eve of destruction yet again and we've all known it all long and we'll we'll know why profit profit profit profit let's make the rich even richer but now there's so countless about it and they're so comfortable in the seats of power they think they can do it without us and don't you see well hang on when people get to the end of the month and they realize that their credit card bill has gone up if they have a credit card and that they can't afford a loaf of bread or to put a couple of gallons of fuel in the car or pay the electricity bill or keep up with the rent or anything and suddenly they're homeless and what did they do they worked hard all their life you know the the powers that be try and spread the lie that the reason poor people are poor is because they haven't worked hard enough or applied themselves they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop sponging off the state this is the lie that they sell now they don't they work their asses off many of them in two or three jobs they work all day and then go and do another job at night because they're being squeezed so hard by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk that there's fuck all left for them to buy the children have crossed a fucking bread with so so so so yeah it's a global struggle and I think I thank you for for globetrotter and for the tricontinental and for all the writing that you do and whatever and all my other friends who were doing the same thing over and we shall overcome that's amazing Roger while you were in Brazil in Sao Paulo on the 13th of November you sat down and wrote something quite moving about the US presidential election which comes in 2025 well presidential election presidential selection who knows what it is it's certainly not much about democracy I wonder if you'd read to help us close out this segment at least the last section of that really beautiful text um written in Brazil in November all right I will well it was the 13th November blah blah blah and I said all the things that we believe in and then I mentioned a whole new cabinet for you know as you say Cornel West obviously is the president and John Miersheimer and Jeffrey Sachs and Ray McGovern and a lot of people and there are 17 more members of the cabinet I won't go through it all um here we go this is the end a cabinet that believes in those two cornerstones of a moral legal high ground could change US foreign policy in ways that would willy-nilly erase the United States of its complicity in the war crime that is the genocide of the Palestinian people and might even ensure that the US would never be complicit in such unconscionable savagery again should such a thing come to pass I can almost feel the giant sweet breath of a smile that would sweep across our beautiful planet as the huge global choir of like-minded souls who also believe in human rights breathes out its long end-up joyful exhalation of relief may God forgive them the dealers in death have been retired to the loony bin where they belong the world finally woke up now we can open our loving arms now we can stop killing the children now we can go home love Roger that's why well well now we can go home Roger Waters thanks a lot you're very very welcome Vijay for sure thank you a lot


Hey y'all, what's up? My name is Sonali. Today I'm going to be filming another princess polyhull.  I got so many good things and we do have some pops of color here. So not all neutrals. I'm really excited to just like add a little bit of color back into my wardrobe piece by piece. Not too crazy. Still love my neutrals though. But if you guys are interested in anything in this video, I'll have all the links down below and you can also get 20% off with the code Sonali 20. So definitely make sure to use that code to save that coin. What's great about Princess Poly is that they ship from within the United States and they give you free express shipping on orders over $50. They also offer afterpay, which is great if you have like an event coming up super soon. You only get paid the next week. So I'm really excited to show you guys what I got this time around. Let's just get into it. We're going to be starting off with dresses and rompers. So this one is actually a romper. As you can tell it kind of looks a little bit short, but don't worry because you're covered right here, which is great. I really like this because it's adjustable. So you know, it is a little bit booby for me, but it can like hold them in place. I don't have to wear a bra or anything. I also love that it's just snatched on my waist right now. And the details on this dress are really, really pretty. There's like ties right here. You tie both of them. It's not too adjustable right here, but like I said, these got you covered. Like I said, I wanted to add a little bit more color to my wardrobe. And you guys know green is my color. It's been my color of the year. I feel like this one is a man green dress and it has this like really cute bow thing. I will say that this like boob cup area is just like really horizontal. I wish it was just like a little bit more up here for reference. I'm a 36 double D and I mean it still fits. And of course we got the adjustable straps up here. Always a win. Here's the next dress. I'm obsessed with the fit of it. And I actually wore it to a winery day yesterday. So you'll be seeing it in a vlog shortly. Not sure which one's going up first. This dress has like a really cute little daisy print with like red dots in the middle. And it's super basic, like from far away just looks like a white dress. But there we go. You can see it kind of now. It really just looks like a polka dot dress from far away. But I love like a good basic with like a little pop of color. And what Sony is that I ordered the two other dresses thinking like, okay, these are going to be bangers. This one was really cute. I just didn't like it as much as the other ones. But this is actually the winner of all the dresses I think recently I've been really into like chic workwear and make it like every day wear.  But you get it. I love when people like pair trouser pants with like cute crop tops and just like make it like super casual. And I feel like this is a very like business e outfit like at least these pants or shorts. I feel like this outfit definitely reminds me of something like that. And I wish I had like a matching blazer to go with these pants because that would look so cute. Starting off with the top, it is a crop top and it has this like super interesting texture. I wish they had this in a dress. I feel like it would be so flattering because it would like hide every little like roll and stuff. And then they have these super romantic like little ties at the top. And I love like the material of this. It kind of reminds me of those like really pretty like wedding dresses with the big bows. Then we have these shorts. They're very breathable, very light, which I was kind of worried about because I didn't want anything too stiff or like too thick for the summer, you know? The shorts obviously have pockets in them. And I think these are going to be my new go to shorts for the summer just because they are so breathable. It's going to get real hot and awesome very soon. Next we have this little outfit. And oh my goodness, I really need to check to see if they have more of these tanks in different colors because I would buy like three more. This is so cute. It's literally like a bra because it has this like little underwire, not really a wire, but it's very supportive so you can like just wear this without a bra. I love that seriously for the summer. It's just like the less layers, the better. It does have that ribbed texture that I feel like I always talk about, but it just is great for us big boob girls. Moving down to the bottom of this outfit. These are like super intriguing. I kind of just like had to try them out, especially because they are like two toned. As you can see this side is a little bit darker than this one.  I wonder what the back looks like. Also, I totally forgot to tell you guys all the sizing, but pretty much I always get like a large and everything. And then bottoms, I'm a size 10 or a size 31.  Like they're actually pretty stretchy. I do have those asymmetrical jeans from them and they're like full on jeans and those are a little bit stiffer, but this is definitely like a more comfy like lounge material. I mean, not really like a lounge material, but you could definitely lounge with them if you wanted to because they're so comfy. Let me know in the comments how you feel about like these Bermuda shorts coming back into style. Next up, we have this white halter bodysuit and I love anything super adjustable. So this strap right here is adjustable. You could really tie it like a couple different ways. When I got it in the mail, I was like, what the heck is this? Like I didn't even know what I like ordered because it was like tied together. These two were tied together like in a weird way. So I was like, how do you even wear this? But I looked on the princess polysite and there was actually two different ways that you could tie this one. So I just tie it in the back and then I also tried tying it in the front. But I feel like the bow was just like a little bit too big and you couldn't really see like the details of the cutout. I definitely like it this way better and I'm just so excited to finally have a couple more like bodysuits that aren't like super basic because I feel like if I go out, I am just feeling like I'm wearing the same thing every single time. But this is definitely more of a unique bodysuit. So I'm really excited about it. I got another unique bodysuit. So this one has like a little ring over here. I feel like that's definitely a big trend. Like this just ring detail kind of thing and then it has cutouts on the side. I feel like it makes me look snatched because it's really accentuating my waist and I just love this little muted green color. It is a little bit more green in person than on camera. But then this skirt is the pretty sure it's called the Lola skirt. They have a bunch of different colors. I had the Omeo one but it was a little bit too big. So I wanted to get another one and just like try out a different color. This is the white one and it is a little bit thicker than the Omeo one. So this is like more of a denim kind of like thickness to the skirt, which is awesome because the Omeo one is a little bit thinner. So if it was like a white thin skirt, it probably would show your underwear. But since this one is so thick, you really shouldn't have that problem. I think the skirt is just so flattering like a little slit at the end. I just love it. Last but not least, you can't tell me this shirt doesn't give you like Lizzie McGuire movie vibes. Like I feel like this could definitely be used as a costume, but I think it's so cute. The color is beautiful. And then it has this really unique thing. I haven't really ever seen this, but I'm not really sure if you have to like tie it to like secure it, but it feels like fine. It doesn't really feel like it's going anywhere. And plus they have like buttons right here. So I feel like I should be good. I think I want to wear this with like straight leg jeans or just like denim shorts, like just normal denim shorts. Like a white skirt looks really good with it, but I also feel like blue denim would just like add a little bit more color. So I think I'd probably do that. That's a wrap on this princess polyhaw. Let me know which piece was your favorite. And if you guys are interested in anything that I showed in this video, all the links will be down below. Don't forget to use my codes not only 20% for 20% off and I will see y'all in my next video. Bye.


We deal with a lot of heat, so burns and slips, the next one would probably be spillages, so obviously it's quite a wet environment. We do roast our own coffee, so we do a lot of manual handling. We move quite large volumes, tons of coffee a week, so really it's just trip hazards. Customers leaving things in odd spots obviously is a big one, so people will leave their bag maybe at the bottom of the table. So we've got a couple steps within the cafe, and we've got some tape on that, some yellow tapes. So just any time you deal with a high volume of people, you're going to be presented with some risks that are not prepared for it. It is quite a fast-paced environment, which tends to mean that you're quite aware of what's around you at the time, but the repetitiveness of making a thousand coffees a day, the biggest thing that we notice is ISI and baristas getting injuries within their wrists and stuff, so it's more or less just rotating them in and out of those positions to make sure that they're not doing that same motion day in, day out every single day. The number one hazard I would say in any workplace is the people you're working with and knowing where they are and around them. I think if you go into any bar or cafe you'll notice everyone says backs as they walk behind you.  I guess the main thing here is so when we don't stop and communicate, make sure you talk into the people around you. October is National Safe Work Month. Visit the website to find out how you can get involved. Safety is everyone's business and your knowledge and experiences are worth sharing.


Hello, everyone. Over the last few months, our countries have faced a global pandemic that threatens the safety and safety of our citizens. This crisis has also had impacts on our economies, especially those of increasing inequalities within our societies and between countries. We must take lessons if we want to create a better and more just world for all of us. Job 1 remains defeating COVID-19. And to end this pandemic anywhere, we have to end it everywhere. We need a united, global effort that ensures that everyone has equitable access to a potential vaccine. Canada understands this, and it's why we joined many of you in launching and supporting the ACT initiative, as well as providing significant funding for COVAX. With this assistance, we're making sure that low- and middle-income countries will have access to a vaccine when it's available. This is a part of Canada's contribution to help others, while we also ensure that we're procuring vaccines for our own citizens. Of course, our collaboration can't end at distributing a vaccine. The pandemic has taught us difficult lessons about inequality, both at home and between countries. So far, advanced economies have spent over 20 percent of their GDP to support their citizens during the pandemic. Developing economies, though, could only afford 8 percent in spending, while for the poorest economies that number was just 2 percent. These inequities must be addressed. That's why Canada has been working together with UN Secretary-General Guterres and Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness to find new ways of financing for development. We stand ready to work with our partners and to help countries deal with unsustainable debt, recover and rebuild from this global crisis. We cannot let the most vulnerable be left behind. The pandemic has widened inequities and exacerbated humanitarian situations. Canada is stepping up by increasing our international assistance, and we're making a special effort to respond to humanitarian crises. We remain committed to working through institutions like the UN Peace Building Commission to help prevent conflicts. I spoke about the fact that we must work together to win COVID-19 and the way we can create a more just world.  As part of our economic recovery, we must invest to reduce emissions, to start more clean economies and to create good jobs for the average class. Here in Canada, we stand up for this challenge. That's why our measures to fight COVID-19 are taking into account climate change. We have also united our efforts in southern Argentina to proceed with a joint test of fossil fuel subsidies, and last month, we presented a new ambitious law on carbon neutrality in 2050. These are just a few of the measures we take to ensure that we can all live on a healthy planet where our children will be safe. Right now, we all need to recognize the role we play in building a better global community. Canada believes that the United Nations can continue to be a driving force in fostering stronger multilateralism within the international community. Together, we can defeat COVID-19 and tackle climate change. We can address global inequities and build a better world where no one is left behind. Merci.


What is the most painful thing you have been told? Painful thing? I think the loss of my grandpa. That my son died? That's the most painful thing. Would you like to share with us what kind of emotion did you experience when you heard about that? Shock, anger, grief, fear, terror. I can't think of anything that's really stood out as like ouch. Nothing that's like hurting me. From a close friend, they said you're not as funny as you think you are. And the reason why that hurts so much is because I'm often told the opposite by people that I don't know. And it's one of my career pursuits is to become a filmmaker and actor. I use humor a lot when I'm nervous or upset.  So I guess the short of it is you will not be taken seriously.  Egotistical? I think that has been... Who told you that? My mom was. At some point, yeah. And how did you feel when she told you that? Hurt?


I never knew we can travel in the OECS Economic Union. With any government ID, cox, cox, cox coming. The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States OECS in celebration of the 40th anniversary presents OECS Pour Me, a special check-up-ish production. I got all your shopping.  But I forgot the bread. There's $500 to buy your bread a glass here. But I am traveling tomorrow for a meeting in Antigua. I knew this! You're not going to Antigua without me. I am going by sick wanting to get some suitcases in your dreams. I am checking your passport. Saturday, June 12th at 7pm on the OECS YouTube channel. I love Antigua. Antigua has good food. And Sunday, June 13th at 3pm on the OECS Facebook page. So my partner and I share a table with you? Sure. This production is co-funded by the 11th European Development Fund Regional Integration through Growth Harmonization and Technology Right Project.


Several weeks ago, Koichi Sugiyama passed away. He was well known as the music composer for the entire Dragon Quest saga, starting all the way from the very first entry in 1986 up until the latest entry, Dragon Quest XI. The three key players in Dragon Quest have always been Yuji Hori, the writer, Akira Toriyama, the artist, and Koichi Sugiyama, the composer, Dragon Quest Dream Team. Dragon Quest is one of the few franchises that has kept the same core team together for so long, so this came as somewhat of a shock to fans of the series who have been listening to his melodies for years, and many are wondering what this means for the future of the franchise. Well, I think that conversation is one that should be had on another day. We'll discuss that later, I promise. I definitely have a lot to say on that particular topic, but for today I have a different topic I want to discuss. Today I want to talk about Sugiyama's work on the Dragon Quest series, analyzing the creative process behind some of the iconic soundtracks of the series and how it has impacted the world of video game music and inspired others. Let's begin. Yuichi Sugiyama was born on April 11th, 1934 in Tokyo, Japan. He was the eldest son of a family raised by music loving parents which guided his career path. Though he already knew he had a profound interest in music, his father used to trade unused clothes to a record store in exchange for classical music albums, including Ludwig von Beethoven's 6th and 7th symphony, which really kickstarted his love for classical music. When Sugiyama went to high school as one of the first students in Japan's then new limb implemented high school system, he started his school's music club. In his junior year of high school, Yuichi Sugiyama reorganized the school orchestra which had been inactive since the war, acting as his conductor and arranger. On the side he played in a fusion jazz band, showing his proficiency in various genres of music. Before graduating, he was approached by the Momokotani Ballet Company to compose a ballet for children entitled The Lost Caterpillar, which was performed many times over the years. Sugiyama eventually went to Tokyo University, graduating in 1958 with full honors. Before moving on to become a full-time composer, he did various jobs in the media, including being a reporter for the Nippon Cultural Broadcasting Incorporate, one of Japan's flagship radio stations. The director of the NCB was a fan of the ballet he composed and offered him a job. He later went to work as a director for Fuji TV afterwards, directing various shows while acting as a music composer on the side. He retired from his position at Fuji TV to focus on his compositions and as the years went by, up until the mid-1980s, Sugiyama became a legend among Japanese composers. His compositions ranged from classical music to variety, with Sugiyama creating some of Japan's most memorable advertising and pop song jingles, working with popular groups at the time such as the Tigers. While he worked on advertisements, anime, films and more, his music became ingrained into the minds of a whole generation when he composed the Ultraman theme song. He even did the music for the space runaway idian movie and Godzilla vs Biolante. The man was a celebrity music artist. Fast forward to the mid-1980s, Yuji Hori and his cobbled together team at Enix were hard at work creating the very first Japanese role-playing game, Dragon Quest. It was a long process and the pieces were neatly fallen together with one key element missing up until the last minute, the music. This is where Sugiyama fit in via a chance encounter. Sugiyama was a gamer. He loved video games. It was one of his biggest passions aside from photography. The dude had a collection of over 2,000 vintage cameras by the way, that's crazy. But yeah, Sugiyama was no stranger to gaming. He loved all sorts of games. When he was young, he played mahjong, backgammon, Dungeon the Dragons and even Monopoly. When the advent of video games arrived, he was quick on the latest trends. He enjoyed playing Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Load Runner and of course Morita Shogi for the PC-88 by the Enix Corporation. It was like a video chess game. Back in the day, video games came with these little postcard feedback questionnaires that you could fill out and mail to the game studio. Well, Sugiyama mailed in the Shogi card and Yukinobu Chida, the producer of Dragon Quest, who put the whole team together, saw it. He could hardly believe it was the Koichi Sugiyama who was a fan of his company's games and so the perfect opportunity presented itself. Dragon Quest was almost finished with Hori and Nakamura hard at work towards the approaching deadline and there was no music. The game was missing its key feature that would give it life. Shibu organized a meeting with Sugiyama several days later and proposed that he work on the soundtrack for Dragon Quest, which he happily accepted. Here was the hard part. With the deadline so close in sight and Sugiyama being recruited late into the dev cycle, he had only one week to compose the entire soundtrack for Dragon Quest. Sugiyama recalls that it took two whole days for him to convert the sheet music to game audio files. So that really left him with four days to write eight songs for the various scenes and locations in the game. A seemingly impossible task for your average musician. However, Sugiyama was a trained composer with decades of experience and he managed to pull off the impossible while giving us the most iconic video game theme song of all time. The Dragon Quest Overture, the theme song of the series that will play at the beginning of each and every game for over 30 years. The iconic theme that would open up the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. And how long did this epic piece of music take to write? According to Sugiyama, it took five minutes to write the Dragon Quest theme song. Five minutes to create a song that would define a generation of Japanese role-playing games. Though Sugiyama often adds that it took him 54 years and five minutes. Being the culmination of a lifetime of musical experience. He called upon years of experience working with TV and orchestras to come up with town tunes, spooky cave music, epic battle themes, and he even created the little jingles when you level up. The effects that would stick with the series for decades to come. The music of Dragon Quest is one of the most important elements of the experience. You're listening to these songs for hours as you battle your way through Elif Guard, so they had to be good. And boy were they good. Game music was never as meticulously crafted as this. These pieces of music were designed to be played in a concert by an entire orchestra. These songs would define and set Dragon Quest apart. Sugiyama chose to make the music of Dragon Quest classical as opposed to pop for numerous reasons. Even though he was skilled in both areas, classical music won due to the memorability and longevity of classical as well as the ability to listen for hours without getting tired. Classical music has persisted for hundreds of years and has a quality of being memorable and something people do not get tired of. For a game where people would be exploring for hours on end listening to the tracks, this was a perfect fit and it complemented the medieval aesthetic of Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest music was inspired by the great masters Ludwig von Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Claude Debussy. Dragon Quest soundtrack was distinctly Baroque in its influence. This choice also complemented the limitations of NES hardware. Sound effects on the Famicom sound chip couldn't linger for too long, so that meant compromising while staying true to the original vision. Instruments using compositions during the Baroque period didn't linger on a single note for too long, so the Baroque style of music fit the Famicom hardware perfectly. The Famicom limited Sugiyama's work such that he had to come up with clever ways to bypass the memory limitations of the Famicom cartridge. Of course the Famicom could only make three sounds at a time, which was severely limiting for our vision of this magnitude. Notably the overture was written on a harmonic progression called horn fifths, which can be clearly heard in the opening notes. Horn fifths are hidden consecutive, in layman's terms it's when two independent parts of a song approach a perfect octave. This can be heard in the opening notes of the overture to this very day. Horn fifths are used when working with the limitations of valueless brass instruments, hence the name. The five sound channels of the Famicom were pushed to their limits to produce songs Sugiyama envisioned, and using nothing but blips and beeps he managed to make distinct sounds of trumpets and percussion instruments when one listens closely. Of course this wouldn't be an issue in the Super Famicom, would release with its expanded and improved sound chip, allowing for synthetic instrument sound effects. Dragon Quest music was also unique in its orchestration. Modern video game music is often biased towards horizontal association straying away from verticality with an emphasis on safe, straightforward melodies. In opposition, Sugiyama's compositions don't adhere strictly towards either. His compositions consist of many different harmonies overlapping with melodies that sometimes break into loud dissonance during intense battle sequences. It's almost like he was in full control of the tempo, flow, and fluidity of the songs. The sounds of Dragon Quest are based on traditional classical music, but it doesn't strictly conform itself to the standards of the time. Sugiyama clearly displays this mastery of music theory and how he brings his clashing approaches together to great songs that convey emotion through various scenes. Dragon Quest I had eight different songs. The Overture, Tentacle Castle, Aleph Guard, The Town Theme, The Battle Theme, The Dungeon Theme, The Final Boss Theme, and finally The Credits. Each of these pieces perfectly captures the mood of the scene they take place in. Overture Castle has this grand feeling that evokes being in the presence of a king. It's made of various phrases popularized in the 18th and 19th centuries, starting with the sentence. And we can see comparisons to pieces such as Beethoven's Sonata No. 2 and F Minor, which has major similarities to the opening of the theme. It's a structure consisting of a basic idea, followed by a higher reputation, followed by a double time. The second part of the song is characteristic of a period, with a question and answer form to this section. It goes to show how complex each piece is when you dive deep into it, with a careful use of traditional form to seamlessly transition between various moods through the execution of these phrases. These basic structures you set in the very first game would be used in later games with a new take, keeping the same basic ideas fresh every time. Aleph Guard's theme, titled Unknown World, has a mysterious feeling to it as if you're discovering an unknown land, which is exactly what players are doing throughout their hours of playtime. This melody is slower and relies on the use of woodwind instruments and soft violin, while the battle theme in comparison is much faster and more intense with the heavy use of brass, which breaks the ease players feel to raise the tension of a fight. The battle themes also had to be designed to not get old after potentially thousands of battles, so they often begin with a few dramatic notes of a cymbal or drum to announce a threat, while the songs get more hopeful and upbeat as they progress. Similarly, the final boss theme has an even more urgent and desperate feel to it. The songs or Dragon Quest have a clear purpose and are made with the game's scenario in mind. Sugiyama has said that Akira Toriyama's art largely inspires the direction he goes with his music. In the case of character themes like in Dragon Quest 4, he would have the character's picture in hand while composing the theme, and he would ask horrid questions about the character to better understand them. Listen to Tornako Talun's theme for example. The use of double bass is prominent and it really gives you this feeling like you're falling around a lovable rotund merchant on a big adventure. Themes such as this one would then come to him suddenly out of the blue like a flash of inspiration. He's mentioned that he would look at Toriyama's drawings and the music would just come to him in his mind. Sugiyama said that once an idea hit him right when he was about to go to sleep, leading him to jump out of his bed and right down. He said that his work on the series is primarily influenced by the DQ Slime. While enemies in Western games are usually scary, the Slime in Dragon Quest is cute and friendly looking, so the music Sugiyama composed is typically upbeat, even the battle themes. The cuteness of Dragon Quest is a major contributing factor in Sugiyama's music direction. Over the years, Dragon Quest's music has evolved and taken advantage of newer hardware with more modern entries, including harp, piano and brass, giving rise to more epic themes. And his work would define a generation. Sugiyama was the first of his kind, a prestigious composer who dedicated the remainder of his career to video game music. He made video game music seem legitimate. He was the first video game composer to hold a public concert of his songs. A tradition he would continue to the end of his days. Dragon Quest's symphonic suite was being sold on vinyl, cassette and CD. His music was a huge sensation, and he did not rise alone. Sugiyama used his platform to elevate other video game composers as well. Sugiyama started the orchestral game concert in 1991, a yearly event where different game conductors would present their works. These performances included many people who are now well known in the world of game music, such as Koji Kondo, Keiichi Suzuki, Nobuo Urimatsu and Yoko Kano. These concerts featured many iconic games. Sugiyama used his platform to spread the love of video game music far and wide. Countless video game composers throughout the industry, including many I have just mentioned, have cited Sugiyama as a major influence on them entering the industry and even a teacher to some. Keiichi Sugiyama was an icon, a mentor, and an inspiration to many. He was an extremely important figure in the world of video game music, often referred to as the father of game music. His decades of experience with hundreds of albums and concerts led to widespread respect in the gaming industry. In the aftermath of his passing, many of his fellow colleagues from across the gaming industry displayed their sadness for this loss. His two partners, Akira Toriyama and Yuji Hori, are among the frontrunners of those who released their heart-wrenching statements. To close this tribute out, I'd like to share with you some of these statements. Dragon Quest series creator Yuji Hori wrote, I'm really sorry to hear of Sugiyama Sensei's sudden passing. For 35 years after making the first Dragon Quest, Sugiyama Sensei has brought the spirit of his music to the world. As a master composer, he wrote a lot of really great songs. Dragon Quest will continue to be played with his music. Such a master should continue to live in the hearts of all players. Sugiyama Sensei, thank you very much for being here for such a long time. Dragon Quest character artist Akira Toriyama wrote, I was surprised to hear about the death of Sugiyama Sensei. From the impression I had when I met him just a few years ago, I thought of him as a sorcerer with eternal life, in a good way. The overall image of Dragon Quest was determined by a number of wonderful impressive masterpieces by Sugiyama Sensei, who has loved games since way back then. It is no exaggeration to call him that. It was a great honor to work with you for a long time. I pray for your soul from the bottom of my heart. Sugiyama has passed on. However, his contributions to the world of music will always remain and his work will be experienced by Dragon Quest fans for generations to come. He knew this day would one day come and being the oldest out of the trio, he would likely be the first to leave this world. His motivation that kept him going for so many years was his love for the Dragon Quest series and his desire to leave behind something that he could be proud of, music that would be used in future entries to come. As long as the iconic overture plays at the beginning of each game, Sugiyama's legacy will be everlasting. I hope this video helped you learn a little bit about the life of Sugiyama and the inspiration behind his music. I've wanted to talk about the music of Dragon Quest for a long time and I felt that the right time was now. We'll be talking more about the future of Dragon Quest soon, so until then, I'll leave you with comments from Sugiyama's many friends and colleagues followed by an excellent quote from him.