certainly not a cover of ‘bird’, aka, charlie parker, but nonetheless a very moving tribute to him:
no doubt in any case a great, compositional tribute by the viking of 6th ave… “the blind busker,” louis thomas harlan, who remains one of the all time great jazz musicians.
supplemented, in decon terms, by alice contrane, equally indeterminate… as no kind of cover of her father… as brilliant as moondog’s non-cover of Bird.
for SB of brunswick:
some, many, even perhaps most, seem to think of music as merely entertainment, something one listens to in order to escape, as a side track from what’s most important, work… that view has things entirely upside down. in utopia, work wouldn’t exist, and we’d spend all our time listening to music, looking at art, reading great literature, going to the theater. yes, of course, this view can be dismissed as merely utopian. an unattainable dream and fantasy. still, it’s not wrong. what would ‘art’ do in world free of capitalist enslavement of workers? wouldn’t it have no subjects? no, it wouldn’t. it would celebrate, what? it would celebrate ‘life’, the ‘life’ of the everyday, of everydayness, that aspect of life 99.9% percent of those living live and suffer. there would be no lack of material to sing about, in a utopian. only a demented and barren imaginary whose only ‘subject’ is the politics of capitalism and it’s intentionally manufactured suffering for the greatest number of people, could ‘imagine’ that humans evolved to be workers for the rich who spend their time, not working, but buying art to hang on the walls of their super-yachts and hire art historian consultants to give lessons to their crews so that they don’t use a scrubby to clean vomit off a picasso.
neither does life imitate art; nor art imitate life; art IS life; life IS art. those who don’t live art as life, and, life as art, are dead; today, those who don’t understand this are most exemplified by the ‘businessman’, the ‘accountant’, those for whom ‘value’ is ONLY conceived as monetary, as credits to their balance sheets at the cost of ALL workers, lives. capitalists are truly, barbarian animals who only ‘value’ their own pocketbooks and have no problem with slaughtering anyone, literally, anyone, who gets in the way of that.
sorry, back to the alternative possibility: pure joy as expressed by one of the most robust of the world’s oppressed populations: far more than jews in fact, the gypsies. whose skepticism, cynicism, distrust of others, dignity and resistance, has produced one of the world’s greatest bodies of musical joy of the greatest intelligence. personally, as a committed atheist, i’ve often imagined, if i were forced to chose a religion, what religion would i choose? i’ve often imagined that i would become a zen sufi. but i’ve realized that ‘zen’ and ‘sufi’ are redundant terms, theologically speaking. musically speaking, they are quite different. i don’t think zen has a dance tradition. and any culture that doesn’t dance is moribund. therefore, i would elect to be a sufi, for whom art and the imagination and the body are inextricably linked. for them, there is no ‘worship’ with dance, and therfore with a body. zen would be happy to do without the body, or, the mind. but in sufism, the body and the mind are so intertwined they are inseparable. but… if gypsy-ism were a theology, it would be my first choice. perhaps it might be conceived as a political-theology, and therefore, a practice, that is, a practice, a practice, of secular spirituality based entirely in/on/about, human being, existential being, as a self-conscious and self-reflective art, in practice. thus i’m a fan of the composer/muscian goran bregovic, a non-gypsie, who gained the respect of gypsies enough so that they would not only play with him, but absorbed his compositions into their own musical tranditions, as he did theirs. now, that, IS, living art as life and life as art, across boundaries. Bregovic is a paradigm of the sociopolitical artist for whom is life can become an artist practice, even utopian, in practice.
and no, i don’t intend to speak here of ‘style’ or ‘genre’. i intend to speak of an artistic practice that grabs hold of everyday life. of an artistic practice that remarkably ‘feels’ and ‘expresses’, human existence as it is, as exactly as possible, without a trace of the market’s demand for branding.
it’s not only the gypsies who do this, of course. though they may have been at it longer than most absorbed into the western musical canon… deep waters here. so i stop here. with armstrong’s ‘black face’ pose… and his great ‘gypsy’ music.
this truly fab and unfortunately short lived french band of the 80s, Les Rita Mitsouko, so obviously inspired by the amor between it founders, guitarist Fred Chichin and singer/dancer Catherine Ringer, would be driven from the stage today by the rabid catcalls of the jeering crowds of ID political fanatics. COLONIALIST APPROPRIATERS!! they would scream. That is, if they even noticed the fact that neither Fred nor Catherine were neither japanese nor indian. it’s likely that they wouldn’t. they would merely boo because of what they would perceive as poor visual quality, mistaking great wit and great musical quality for kitsch while lamenting that it wasn’t available on their dumb smart phones and hadn’t been delivered to them through facelessbook. it’s doubtful that they would even know what a ‘book’ is.
yes, perhaps i’m being particularly narrow minded myself and over-generalizing. perhaps. am i being mean-spirited? a bit. with good reason? some. do i have many close friends committed to social media and in particular, facebook? yes. will i offend them? no because they love me despite my polemic views. still, i doubt in the land of trump and adele and beiber that i’m that far off. i’m far from the only one condemning facebook. but how many of those i condemn here have heard of the latest american banjo sensation: songs of our native daughters? or rhiannon giddens? let alone Les Rita Mitsouko?
but back to Les Rita Mitsouko: what happened to humor? humor is not an human pathos devoid of politics, necessarily. what’s happened to the intelligent musical use of the kazoo? last heard with zappa?
and by the way: as reported by the ‘female’ brain scientist, Gina Rippon:
The idea of the male brain and the female brain suggests that each is a characteristically homogenous thing and that whoever has got a male brain, say, will have the same kind of aptitudes, preferences and personalities as everyone else with that ‘type’ of brain. We now know that is not the case. We are at the point where we need to say, ‘Forget the male and female brain; it’s a distraction, it’s inaccurate.’ It’s possibly harmful, too, because it’s used as a hook to say, well, there’s no point girls doing science because they haven’t got a science brain, or boys shouldn’t be emotional or should want to lead.
so much for identity politics. and yes, i realize that brain science doesn’t automatically obviate systemic gender, race and other ID’s that are culturally, socially constructed and maintained. but it’s a start to move away from tribalism and libertarian, socially constructed individualism that only fractures and fragments the social cohesion absolutely necessary to rebuild a viable public human and humanity, and even extend that to include all other animals, and of course, the environment and the planet. the problem is not that men treat women badly, or that white people treat black people badly. it’s that treating non-males and non-whites badly, is not okay, period. that female people and black people share the same problem. that male white people have more power than non-male and non-white people, is the problem. that’s an ethical problem that can summed up as, treating anyone badly is not okay. so the social strategy is not to empower women and non-white people; but to disempower non-women and non-colored people. the problem with the strategy of empowerment of non-males and non-whites, is that it seeks only to level the playing field on the terms of those who are already powerful; so that power doesn’t change –it’s only, in theory, more equitably distributed. more non-whites and non-males are allowed into the white boys club, while the club remains the same. the implication of this analysis is that class is indeed the primary locus for political change toward social and economic justice; because, disparity in wealth is ultimately, the gate keeper of power. obama didn’t become president because he was black at a time when the electors were tired of a white ruling class; it was because he had access to power; and he had access to power because he had access to wealth. that’s a bit over-simplified, but not by much. my point being that obama wasn’t elected because of his identity, but because he had transcended it, through access to power = wealth. because of his class, derived in part from his elite standing as a graduate of harvard law school and all the power and wealth that comes from that, because it allowed him access to the brand of higher class social status. remember, that the longer he was in power, the more his support from the black constituency diminished.
obama’s post-presidential vacation on branson’s boat off the shore of the latter’s caribbean home depicting the mock conflict between races and – the mock conflict between corporate and political power. at that level of power, no conflict exists. not even between Trump and Muslims: power and wealth dissolves all ID politics. similarly, the only form of political resistance to racism and genderism etc., is through class alliances. if you’re not a millionaire, then you’re lower class, no matter who you are. the ‘middle class’ no longer exists. if you’re not a multi-millionaire, then you’re merely a wage earning worker. so, worker’s must unite!
Contacted by the Guardian, a spokesperson for the artist said the banknote had been donated by “someone who runs Banksy’s currency exchange”.
As well as showing Diana’s face instead of the Queen’s, the note has been altered to read “Banksy of England” and the motto: “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the ultimate price.”
a notebook of epic reflections by mark bartlett 