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Addressed comments by Crisco 1492

[edit]
  • humble means - Sounds like a bit of a euphemism. If they were poor, say it. Middle-class, say it.
  • Born in 1923 near the capital city of Antananarivo to a rural family of humble means, Rakoto Frah was regarded as the greatest player of the traditional sodina flute during his lifetime. - Your main and subordinate clauses aren't really related here. The fact of his birth has little to do with how he played the flute. Suggest moving the birth information (minus year of birth, which you have just above) to the second paragraph.
  • I'm trying to summarize how he managed to become famous despite having to combat the poverty and obscurity of his origins. For some reason I'm not finding the right words. Right now I've changed it to "Born in 1923 near the capital city of Antananarivo to a poor rural family, Rakoto Frah surmounted the challenges posed by his underprivileged origins to become the most acclaimed 20th century performer of the sodina flute, one of the oldest traditional instruments on the island." Thoughts? Lemurbaby (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • perform sodina - Perform sodina, or perform the sodina?
  • I'm now using "play the sodina" and "perform on the sodina" throughout (this would also seem to make sense if it were another instrument, like piano: play the piano, perform on the piano, not perform piano or perform the piano) - good catch Lemurbaby (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • His musical career declined in the 1970s but was re-launched beginning in the mid-1980s to include a series of internationally produced albums, the recording of over 800 original compositions, participation in numerous international concerts, collaborations with jazz and world music artists and a featured spot in two documentaries. - A little long, perhaps have the first clause with the preceding sentence?
  • Broken up: His popularity declined in the 1970s but underwent a revival that began in the mid-1980s and continued throughout the remainder of his life. Over the course of his career he released..." Lemurbaby (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • featured on a Malagasy banknote - May want to say which one
  • I think the article would look better if the references were at the end of sentences, but I don't think that's required.
  • The example above is the reason why I put the refs behind the piece of information they cite. With topics like this where the info has to be cobbled together from various sources, in order to keep it from being choppy I weave the pieces together in a way that putting the refs at the end would make it difficult to know what cite covers which piece of information. Lemurbaby (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • sodina - Why is it italicised here, when it wasn't in the lede?
  • village elders' sodina performances, - Is sodina required here? You were just talking about the instrument
  • burgeoning artist was orphaned, - Burgeoning seems a little POV. A year may be a good inclusion for this sentence (i.e. in 1935) Also, any information how his parents died?
  • I couldn't find info on how they died, most likely old age in combination with a common illness (life expectancy was pretty short in Madagascar back then). Added the year. Replaced "burgeoning artist" with "Rakoto". Lemurbaby (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Last we saw Madagascar was still a colony, and now it has its own president. Might want to mention independence, even as a throw-away line or a footnote.
  • through the capital city - of (city name)
  • International Festival of Algiers - Worth a red link?
  • was selected to receive the gold medal. - Why not just "won the gold medal"?
  • Through his exposure of global audiences to traditional sodina performance, Rakoto Frah became an ambassador of the instrument and the musical heritage of Madagascar. - Perhaps "By exposing global audiences to traditional sodina performances,"... also, he was almost certainly not a formal ambassador. This may have to be given in-text attribution to a source.
  • a young generation seeking to reconnect with the traditions of their elders. - Perhaps "the youth, who were seeking..."
  • Not really keen on the wording of this paragraph: "World Out of Time..." The focus is too heavily on the album, and it's kinda jolting since we've been focusing on Rakoto Frah. Also, you should mention the artist's name in the first sentence of this paragraph
  • Erick Manana - Worth a redlink? Solo Razafindrakoto - Another redlink? ...Either director worth a redlink?
  • his final album, - Sounds like you're talking about Razafindrakoto
  • into the pockets of pirates - Rather idiomatic, why not just "to pirates"?
  • These events could last up to seven days, often including performances throughout the night, and often required several days of travel to arrive at the performance site. - Repetition of "often"
  • hira gasy - if the article is at hiragasy, why do you have a space here?
  • Google gives 1.7 million hits for hira gasy and ~700K hits for hiragasy. The article should probably be renamed and moved, though I'll need to look into it a little further. Really the two terms are interchangeable depending on the context. Changed the other instance of hiragasy in the article to hira gasy Lemurbaby (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Should cut back on "celebrated", "famous" and so on. Those words aren't quite NPOV
  • Removed a couple of instances - let me know if you see any language that's particularly glaring. Most of the uses of "celebrate" literally do refer to celebrations (parties, commemorations etc). Lemurbaby (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The whole paragraphs starting "The sodina is..." might be better in the early life section
  • first printed in 1983 - If he was pretty much ignored from 1972 like the article says, why was he still considered representative of a Malagasy identity?
  • The article doesn't describe how it was decided that he should be invited to be on the banknote (the process wasn't transparent). Still, in Madagascar, musicians often align themselves with politicians, and then officially fall out of favor when the politician is sidelined - but without completely losing their fan base. Once the political situation loosens up, the artist experiences a resurgence in open popularity. 1983 was when the Ratsiraka socialist revolution had clearly failed and the World Bank was forcing structural readjustment, so the regime was weakened and people were getting nostalgic about Tsiranana's first republic (which had been a much better time economically and socially) - maybe the head of the national mint saw his chance to restore honor to a figure who was widely respected as an artist and associated with a better time in the past. At that point Rakoto Frah was getting on in years and in Madagascar being an elder gets you even more respect, so the head of the mint might have felt it was only right to give Rakoto Frah his due. But since an analysis hasn't been printed and original research isn't allowed, we have to leave the question unanswered for now. Lemurbaby (talk) 06:51, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • more than 500 times its original worth - Is this adjusted for inflation?
  • He received numerous awards and commendations from the Government of Madagascar over the course of his life. - Such as?
  • When was he married? How many children?
  • How did his albums perform? Did they sell well?
  • That kind of data isn't collected in Madagascar, and in general strictly traditional music doesn't move huge volumes in the music market, even within the small "world music" genre - that said, I haven't found any standout sales information for Madagascar's main overseas market, France. Lemurbaby (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Have you consulted either documentary? They could, theoretically, be used as sources.
  • His mother was born in Antananarivo - Why not "His mother was born there" or "Rakoto Frah was born in Antananarivo, his mother's hometown."
  • Tenaille writes that his year of birth is uncertain (between 1920 and 1923). He also gives 1000 ariatry, not 200.
  • Exactly, there are a number of errors in that article, and there is some uncertainty about his birth year and date expressed by several sources, although I suspect they are all copying an earlier source that lacked precision, because Rakoto Frah himself gives his birth year as 1923 in the first reference. I've now moved that reference to right after the birth year so it's clear where the reference is coming from. There's also an issue around incorrectly spelling Malagasy names (i.e. the name of the town where he was born) - often times English or French speaking interviewers jot down what the name they hear (which doesn't bear much resemblance to how Malagasy is written), so it comes out in the written materials looking like a different person/place, as is the case in the birthplace given in that same interview. Lemurbaby (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Both his parents were already aged at the time of his birth - You were just talking about his father, so this could be read as referring to the father. This goes for the sentences after this too
  • came of age - Which is how old in Madagascar? Here they don't consider you an adult until you're married.
  • Telofangady - What kind of traditional music?
  • In my experience, books printed in industrialized countries describing musicians in developing countries tend to focus more on those that have sold more albums internationally (no reflection of how popular the artist is at home) - and those that sell internationally are more often "fusion" artists that have a wider appeal to Western ears than highly traditional artists from countries with relatively little exposure in Western media and who perform on 2,000 year old instruments. I haven't seen any books written in Madagascar about local music. I've scoured the sources and I'm a bit surprised too (but not really) that there isn't more written about someone as monumentally important in Madagascar as Rakoto Frah Lemurbaby (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Even local Malagasy sources? Admittedly, when writing Chrisye I was helped enormously by the existence of a biography about him (in Indonesian, though). I did a quick look at WorldCat and saw nothing of the sort for Rakoto Frah, so I feel for you. However, I wonder if a lot of the information we're looking for may be in sources in Madagascar. Do any newspapers there have electronic databeses? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:17, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Many of the sources I cite in the article are from the online databases for Malagasy newspapers. There are a couple more books I could cite, but the content they contain doesn't go beyond the content of the sources I've already included. Lemurbaby (talk) 17:57, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was able to find two out of the three missing pieces on music vendor websites. I'm not sure how to cite that since I believe we're not allowed to link to retailers' sales pages. The last one I really haven't been able to find. Since we have all but one I'm reluctant to remove the column. What if, instead of "unknown", I just put two dashes or something else? Lemurbaby (talk) 04:18, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for spending the time to review this in detail. I truly appreciate it. Lemurbaby (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Kinda worried about the weight of that new paragraph. A mention, okay, but "The school intends to begin training a second cohort of sodina players in early 2013." isn't really pertinent to the article in question. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:12, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've shortened it and reframed the content so it makes it clearer that this is basically a school set up in his honor, to continue his work. Let me know if this works better now. Lemurbaby (talk) 04:18, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Addressed comments by Amakuru

[edit]

Lead:

  • When reading the lead I was left wondering what Rakoto did between 1958 and 1970 when he was in his first phase of popularity; what the article covers this but the lead doesn't really.
  • Similarly for the mid-1980s onward period. There is lots about what he did during his career in the latter part of the second paragraph, but it's not clear if this refers to both periods of popularity or just the second.

Early years:

  • "Both of Philibert's parents were already aged at the time of his birth" - the term "aged" seems a bit nonspecific; I know it means something like "old" but that could mean 35, 55 or 75!
  • "he was given the nickname Rakoto by an older brother of the same name" - which same name? Was the older brother also called Rakoto or Philibert? And why did he choose to give the same name to his younger brother as a nickname?
  • The reason wasn't given in the source, and neither was the specification of which name, although the phrasing implies the name of his brother was called Rakoto; do you have an idea on how I could rephrase that to make it clearer? Lemurbaby (talk) 18:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmm, not really. I've looked at the source and it's very unclear, as you say. The source seems to suggest that he "inherited" the stage name Rakoto, although it could even be that the brother was not actually called that himself, just that he was somehow the inspiration for it. Probably fine to leave it as it is anyway.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:55, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "One of the oldest and most iconic musical instruments in Madagascar" - the word iconic seems a little WP:WEASEL like.

National symbol:

  • "Tsiranana had previously seen the flutist perform" - where did he see him perform?
  • "was the first to refer to the artist as Rakoto Frah" - why did he refer to him as that? What does it mean?
  • That is also not explained in the sources - and the word Frah doesn't appear to be native to the Malagasy language (based on my admittedly limited personal knowledge of the language). Lemurbaby (talk) 18:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Rakoto Frah is considered one of the first musicians to have increased the visibility and popularity of traditional Malagasy music overseas" - two things here:
    1. it uses passive voice, which I believe is discouraged (see WP:WEASEL#Passive and middle voice). It would be better to say who considers him to be...
    1. the phrase "one of the first to have increased ..." sounds a bit odd - increased could mean taking it from 0% to 1%, or from 50% to 70%; so being one of the first to increase doesn't sound like you're saying very much, if that makes any sense.
  • That's true. I've changed it to more accurately capture the information in the source, which solves this problem. Lemurbaby (talk) 18:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Better now, although there still seems to be something slightly odd about the sentence "Because of his success in this event, Rakoto Frah is among the first musicians to perform traditional Malagasy music at music festivals and concerts outside of Madagascar" - at first I was going to suggest changing "is" to "was" but even then it didn't quite scan. How about tacking this onto the next sentence that details the performances, for example:
    Among the 80 competitors, hailing from a variety of countries, Rakoto Frah's troupe won the gold medal. This success was followed by performances in Japan, England, the United States, India, Germany, China, Norway, Finland, Australia and France, making Frah one of the first musicians to perform traditional Malagasy music at music festivals and concerts outside of Madagascar. At these performances, he was often accompanied by supporting musicians under the group name Orchestre Nationale.
     — Amakuru (talk) 23:26, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Ben Mandelson and Roger Armstrong" - who are they?
  • Ben Mandelson is wikilinked, but there is currently no article for Roger Armstrong. I've added that they are producers, since that's the only thing I can say about both with certainty. Lemurbaby (talk) 18:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    That's fine, no more needed than that. I tend to think that wikilinks are great but a small amount of context should be available within the article itself. In this case I printed the article out and read it on the train so there was no possibility of following the wikilink!  — Amakuru (talk) 23:26, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Rakoto Frah soon came to their attention" - how did this happen? At this point Rakoto had been out of the limelight for 15 years, if I understand correctly.
  • The article mentions that he was poor, which is in part due to weak enforcement of copyright laws. But he also did a lot of touring and sold albums internationally as well. Did he not get any revenue from that?
  • This is a typical problem for musicians in developing countries, and this question also came up in the Jaojoby FAC. The sources don't explain it, but I know from discussing the issue with the musicians themselves that musicians really don't get that much money from each album sold overseas, and world music is never enough of a hot seller internationally to earn the musicians loads of money. Tours overseas often barely break even, again because of the expense of touring coupled with relatively limited returns to the artists, whether because of small shows or being one small part of a larger festival where the profits are split among many. Local sales don't wind up being a source of income either because of bootlegging, so artists make most of their money from local gigs, and wind up having to domestically tour and perform pretty much constantly as a result. Lemurbaby (talk) 18:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Famadihana" - I know it is explained what this means in the lead, but should it also be explained in the body?

Style and legacy:

  • "Rakoto Frah would often perform personalized variations" - would this read better as simply "Rakoto Frah often performed personalized variations" ?
  • "as well as ones he created" - just wondering if that is suitably encyclopedic language
  • "widely respected for his musical virtuosity and his humane personality" - what does "humane personality" mean? I got pulled up on my Maraba coffee FAC for referring to it as an "ethical company" and this probably falls under the same category!
  • "when playing with others he would listen to determine the key of the song performed in order to accompany it" - something seems slightly contorted about the phrasing there, but that might be just me
  • "it became a rare collector's item valued in 2011 at over 100,000 ariary" - maybe include a USD equivalent for this? I personally have no idea how much an ariary is worth so can't immediately get the sense of this point.
  • That's tough since the exchange rates fluctuate... and before when I tried putting in some language about equivalencies it was flagged as not being indicative of inflation. I think I'd better just leave this for now and hope the readers get a sense that the increase is significant by comparing 200 and 100,000 - even allowing for inflation of some kind. But FYI 100,000 ariary is about $45, but I can't tell you how much 200 was worth back in 1983. Lemurbaby (talk) 19:21, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah OK - to be honest I didn't immediately connect the 100,000 with its face value of 200, I assumed it was meant to be just an absolute statement of its value. Would it maybe help to have a comment to that effect, e.g. "over 500 times its face value" or similar?  — Amakuru (talk) 23:26, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

General:

  • The word sodina is sometimes written with italics, and sometimes not.
  • That's the convention I've applied in all my FA articles on Madagascar, probably due to some feedback I got on early FAs or GAs when I first started doing this some years back. It's hard to know where to draw the line between "isolated" and non-isolated foreign words, so the rule of thumb I was taught is, if it's used once, italicize it, but if it's used again, don't. That's also the standard used in certain academic writing styles - italicizing is just a tool to point out to the reader that the word is indeed foreign and probably unfamiliar, but from that point on in the document - in principle - it is no longer unfamiliar and so shouldn't/doesn't need to be italicized.Lemurbaby (talk) 05:19, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Alright then!  — Amakuru (talk) 12:43, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Similarly famadihana is sometimes written with italics, and sometimes not.
  • Wondering if the paragraph structure could be modified; there is a paragraph called "style and legacy" but the last part of the "national symbol" paragraph (the famadihana etc.) is also really about his legacy. Might it make more sense to have "National symbol" (just the story of his life), "Death and legacy" (the famadihana and legacy stuff from the next paragraph) and "Style" as separate paragraphs?
  • Is there any more known about his family, wife, children etc.? The article mentions granddaughters and children a couple of times, but the information is not formally presented anywhere.

That's my lot for now. But the above minor points aside, it's definitely a great article and I really enjoyed reading it on my way home from work yesterday. Thanks!  — Amakuru (talk) 17:42, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • One other point I noticed - there seem to be quite a number of inline citations sitting in the middle of sentences, for example "His mother was born in Antananarivo[1] and his father, a herdsman and farmer[2] from Fianarantsoa". For readability reasons I tend to avoid these unless there is a very good reason, preferring to put cites (multiple if necessary) after the next available full stop, comma or semicolon. WP:INCITE kind of backs this point up:
    "If a word or phrase is particularly contentious, an inline citation may be added next to that word or phrase within the sentence, but it is usually sufficient to add the citation to the end of the sentence or paragraph, so long as it's clear which source supports which part of the text"
    Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 23:26, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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