Face of the Bass

I traded in my order for the seemingly permanently delayed Hawkins set and got the Johnny Smith one instead. I'm happy with that choice after listening a few times to all eight discs. Very enjoyable music.

I read through this thread last night and found it very useful. I am currently writing my dissertation on African history, based on field research I did in Namibia. The topic is corporal punishment, a gloomy subject to say the least. As I've been thinking ahead to where I want to take my career after this chapter is finished, I've been thinking a lot about using music as a way to understand cultural exchanges on the continent. I got this idea after listening to some of the truly haunting music (Chemirocha comes to mind) found in the Hugh Tracey recording series released by SWP records. I've been incorporating more African music into the way I teach African history, and lately I've been listening a lot to the four-disc Dust-to-Digital set, and more recently some of the offerings on Strut Records and on Analog Africa. The Mbaqangwa music found on the Next Stop-Soweto set is fantastic stuff. I've also been listening to a lot of West African, Afrobeat music, but it seems to me that the reissues we are seeing now perhaps focus too heavily on West Africa and especially on the music from the 1970s. I think I'd like to see more releases from the colonial period, and probably more releases of music collected by ethnographers rather than popular releases.

What I like about music is finding ways to connect the work to the context from which it emerged. In another medium, Leni Riefenstahl is actually a perfect example of this. Watching Triumph of the Will or even looking at some of her African photographs from after the War are great ways to try and understand the relationship between fascism and art. I "enjoy" consuming that kind of art just as much as any other kind, because it makes me think, and that is what I want art to do. But then again, I'm a historian, so I'm always trying to find ways into understanding the past, and one of those ways is through art and music, unquestionably. Now, there is also art that I think has a moral dimension that I am receptive to as well, and so that adds perhaps another dimension to how I appreciate the actual content of the thing in question.

I've a feeling that this is one area where the discussion can quickly get over-academicised (no idea if this word exists but you get the idea, right? ) to death. Not that this angle would be without interest but somehow I fear there will be too much that will be projected into it from today's point of view to prove a point valid to TODAY'S "scholars" but not necessarily relevant to those who were around back then. I'd hate to see more "Swing Shifts" being written on that subject by more Sherrie Tuckers. All scholarship, whether it comes dressed in academic jargon or not, is concerned with the problems of the present. The idea of "objective" history is a fantasy. And Allen, I don't believe it is possible to write a history that "just focuses on the music," as if the music exists independently from the social context within which it emerged. It's not about having an ax to grind, it's about trying to understand the relationship between jazz and the cultures in which it has developed, both American and elsewhere. Well I think it would depend on how you define middle class. But even if what you say is true, then certainly a history that looks at the relationship between jazz and the middle class would be very interesting indeed. I would much rather read that than yet another regurgitation of jazz and race.

Once we get beyond the concept in the abstract, just what do you think the contours of a class-based look at jazz would be? Do you see class distinctions, apart from race, as central to the trajectory of jazz history? I can't say for sure, but I think it's possible. One thing that you see in jazz history--and this is probably an oversimplification--but it seems like the music moves from the streets, and, as it becomes more accepted as an art form, into the academy. At the same time, jazz at its peak was not entirely a working or poor man's music. Miles came from the middle class, etc. And many white jazz musicians came from poor backgrounds or broken homes. So there's something there as well. And then you also have the long-standing reality that many jazz musicians were black but that the audience for the music becomes increasingly white. This would involve a significant class dynamic in and of itself, since during the postwar era the average black person was significantly poorer than the average white person. There's also a strong argument to be made for a gendered analysis of jazz history, not just because the instrumentalists are overwhelmingly men, but also because of the kind of masculinity they project--especially within the black community. Obviously, the discourses on race, class, and gender all intersect in various ways. And as should be clear from this response I haven't myself fully thought through how these dynamics play themselves out in the history of jazz. But I wish someone would do that, instead of regurgitating the tired arguments about jazz as a black music, about the forgotten white contributions to jazz, etc. That seems like a field that has been played out and I don't think I've heard anything original on jazz and race in a long time.

Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. I don't know what that means, but what I mean is that the discussions usually end up being very, very predictable, with the same fault lines, same rhetoric, etc. I'd like to see someone write a history of jazz with class rather than race as the primary framework.

American discussions of race sometimes feel very claustrophobic, or rather, like we are all working with a kind of generally accepted shorthand that probably should not be accepted at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjSEVSvDkhw

So what were the Spanish, Portuguese, English, Dutch, French etc doing in the 16th and 17thC? The Enlightenment was not purely an 18th century phenomenon, though that is when it reached its zenith. But more to the point, the colonialism of the 19th century, inspired by nationalism and by scientific racism, was of a different nature than the colonialism of earlier centuries. Also, Pete, I'm putting you on Ignore. I've never liked you much, and it has absolutely nothing to do with politics.

Really? Is there a special code in the pixels that lets you tell the race of members? Yes. "Post-colonial theory" gives him special powers... (nb: I used to piss him off from the left when he was a pre-grad-school right winger. Now I can piss him off from a different corner of the left than his, i.e. the one that still cherishes those corny old European enlightenment values.) You're not a racist, you just happen to think that the cultural and intellectual heritage of Europe is superior. It's funny because it was the Enlightenment that led to colonialism in the first place.

The most "inbred" part of this thread right now seems to be that almost everybody here is white.

Baraka is a better writer than anyone in this thread. I don't think the poem is especially good, but aside from the conspiratorial nonsense, I don't think it is bad either. But again, it works better as spoken word than on the printed page. That's an impossible question to answer unless you provide an example of a right-wing rant. Of course, part of the problem is that there is more truth to left-wing rants than right-wing ones.

The other thing about those anti-Jewish poems of Baraka's is that he's clearly trying to provoke a response there. He was probably feeling empowered by radical, violent imagery at that time. My only point in this thread is that those poems should not define his whole output, and that he later repudiated them. Whether people want to say that his lines in Somebody Blew Up America show he's still an anti-Semite at heart is up for them to decide. I don't think he is.

Sorry, I thought I remembered your extremist anti-choice stance of some years ago as coming from an R.C. perspective (the same era as your support for the Iraq war). Ah, no more extremist than your anti-theism.

I was making a compressed statement about the assumptions and agendas underlying all aesthetics. Were you familiar with Baraka's work in your earlier right-wing Roman Catholic extremist incarnation, and if so, how did you view it then? I have never in my life been a "Roman Catholic extremist." Despite a childhood's worth of indoctrination, I've never been a devout Christian of any kind. I first became aware of Amiri Baraka's poetry in the 1990s, when I was studying poetry as an undergraduate at George Washington University. I was ambivalent on his work at that time. Like everybody else paying attention, I followed the 2002 controversy over Somebody Blew Up America and thought his conspiratorial musings were embarrassing, although I don't recall thinking it was anti-Semitic. Not long after that, around 2003 or so, I read Blues People and loved it, and started reading his jazz criticism. I was also vaguely familiar with the Dutchman though had not read it or seen it performed. It is only in the last year or so that I've thought about him seriously, after coming across a book of his selected poems at a used book store in Georgetown. In the last week I've read Home (the essay Cuba Libre is fantastic), and in the last two days I've started reading his autobiography. The first chapter, on his childhood, is very well written. IMO anyone who calls him a mediocre writer, regardless of their political orientation, doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about. What I most admire about Jones is that he is very mercurial...it's all out there in the public record at this point. Allen can continue posting anti-Jewish poems he wrote in the 1960s to his heart's content, but those don't necessarily describe at all where he is at now. The man has been a public intellectual for the last 50 years...his journey is far more fascinating than all the nice, refined boring poetry that usually gets championed by the literary classes.

"Another important aspect of the anti-Semite tag is my opposition to Zionism. In my view...Zionism is a form of racism. It is a political ideology that hides behind the Jewish religion and the Jewish people, while performing its negative tasks for imperialism. A favorite game of Zionists is to drop the label "anti-Semitic" on anyone who opposes Zionism or upholds the Palestinians' right of self determination....For here is a people with the murders of millions of their brothers and sisters still fresh in their memories who now function as imperialist watchdogs in the Middle East." --Amiri Baraka, in 1980, over 30 years ago.

That's good, because if you felt otherwise it might jeopardize your standing in the post-colonialist academic left. Fuck off. The next time you come up with an original thought, trying writing a post longer than one sentence.

Also, anybody who wants to figure out what's in Baraka's mercurial soul when it comes to Jews had best read his 1980 essay, "Confessions of a Former Anti-Semite."

I'm reading his autobiography right now...the first chapter is brilliant. In the spirit of some above, I say fuck anybody who says fuck him. So yeah, fuck off. My understanding is that Baraka later repudiated the anti-Semitism found in his black Nationalist period, after he became a Communist. In my book he's one of the best American writers of the last half-century, when you take in his whole output, from the Beat period to the Dutchman and the Slave to Cuba Libre and the Home essays to his autobiography and of course, his writings on jazz. Other writers could only dream of being so versatile and influential in so many areas. Also, dismissing the historical animosities that have existed between African Americans and Jews by comparing them to Nazis and Jews is repulsive. But again, that's just me, and as the spirit of this thread now says, fuck everybody who disagrees with me.

Do you consider it a good poem? Not really. It's obviously more intended as spoken word than as written literature...I think parts of it are good and parts of it are bad.

The whole poem? Or just those words? Yes, but it works both ways. Anti-Semitic people sometimes try to take cover by claiming they are only anti-Zionist, and at the same time pro-Israeli people sometimes try to paint people who have legitimate disagreements with Israeli policy (or with Zionism in general) as anti-Semites. It may be a fine line between the two that gets abused on all sides all the time, but it does exist.

I don't think Amiri Baraka is anti-Semitic. I think he's anti-Zionist and also a conspiracy nut, and in this particular case (the belief that 4,000 Israelis were told to stay home that day) those two things combined to cause him to write something very stupid.

1. Anita O'Day 2. Billie Holiday 3. Patricia Barber

Coincidentally enough, this week I've been reading a book of Baraka's essays from the 1960s, Home. The more I read of his work the more I like him. What I like is that he's rough around the edges, somewhat unpredictable, with an amazing grasp for language but always a little bit off from what you might expect. Some of the essays are forgettable but a few of them burn with a ferocity that is rarely found in American literature. I also love the way he tears into the black middle classes and other black writers of that time, especially James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. I also don't really have any problem with "Somebody Blew Up America." I think the charges of anti-Semitism are vastly overstated. I think he's incorrect to dabble in 9/11 conspiracy theories but that doesn't bother me so much. Most of the stuff chronicled in the Controversies section of his Wikipedia page strikes me as much ado about not very much. But that's just me.

I just want all that research and passion that he put into the topic to come through more clearly in his writing, which is why I wish he had allowed for greater editorial intervention. I get that he has strong opinions on his writing, but as a writer and editor myself I find myself trying to "clean up" parts of the book as I'm reading it, which makes it more difficult for me to really immerse myself in the writing.