Why does LeRoi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka) hate Hard bop?

[JSngry]

It sounds to me like Baraka has agenda'd himself right out of enjoying music for how it sounds. Better him than me.

I think "how music sounds" to most people is a direct result of their agenda (which is really nothing more than their forward reaction to past experiences).

In other words, you get out of it what you want/need to get our of it.

[Noj]

That makes sense. My agenda is to hear sounds I like to hear, and I don't interrupt the enjoyment with politics or racism or any of that crap others clog their ears with.

[paul secor]

I don't live in a utopian world so, unfortunately, race, politics, and other crap get mixed in with my listening.

Edited March 1, 2012 by paul secor

[Face of the Bass]

Baraka is one of my favorite writers. The fact that he and I disagree on some aspects of music doesn't impact that at all. If I wanted someone who always agreed with me, I'd just dictate my opinions into a tape recorder and then play it back while driving.

Edited March 1, 2012 by Face of the Bass

[AllenLowe]

well, the problem is his ideology - his contempt, for example, for Gil Evans, his numerous historical distortions in Blues people, his racialist views.

[Brad]

I think most of us don't have agendas. Life's too short for that. Agendas get in the way of that.

[spangalang]

Many a time I've allowed myself a wry, knowing smile as I recognised the contradictory attitude in his doleful delivery, as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion. Indeed, blues is dripping with Irony I believe.

"Mama get your hatchet : kill the fly on your baby's head"

some are born ironic, some achieve ironic, and others have ironic thrust upon them

Agreed...and couldn't it be argued that all humor is based on irony in some form or another?

[Face of the Bass]

well, the problem is his ideology - his contempt, for example, for Gil Evans, his numerous historical distortions in Blues people, his racialist views.

His racialist views are part of what makes him a great writer.

[JSngry]

He's not always right...but he's not always wrong.

Just like most people.

I think most of us don't have agendas. Life's too short for that. Agendas get in the way of that.

So...your agenda for getting through life is to avoid agendas?

[Noj]

I don't live in a utopian world so, unfortunately, race, politics, and other crap get mixed in with my listening.

I don't live in a utopian world either, but I tend to think of politics as secondary to my appreciation of the audio arts. The politics have to be specifically expressed in a way that offends me in order to get in the way of my appreciation of music. For example, there are some lyrics which offend me, particularly in rap music. Lyrics that infuriate me--and it's actually that I'm mad that they "wasted the beat" with some idiotic opinion.

Otherwise, if we're talking about jazz expressing the anger of racial strife, then I find myself a sympathizer, in which case I'm totally along for the ride. If we're talking about blues expressing similar grief, I'm following along. Maybe others will opine that I don't have the right to, but I have people I love of every color. I have lived the majority of my life loving those people. I am not a typical white racist, and I'll be damned if I let the established opinions tell me that's the way I have to listen or that I have no right to sympathize. Fuck that. I will not bow to racism's attempt to re-affirm itself and tell me how to listen. If I did, then there would just be this endless cycle of racism and reverse racism.

And it's not that I'm saying I can totally understand what oppressed people have had to deal with. But I can sympathize. And the music moves me to the very core of my empathic feelings. I can only feel so much, and the depth of it is limited to my experience. But I will NOT be dictated how I must interpret the music by racism. To me there's one life, one love, one people, and I view it all from a global perspective. I am not limited to my genetic ancestors, and I am more sympathetic toward the immediate social connections I have which are of every imaginable culture.

I will NOT be told how to listen. Not by Amiri Baraka. Not by anyone.

[MomsMobley]

how about some of ya'll actually catching up with Jones/Baraka, if you're going to get so irritated by his pip-squeaking 50 years ago?

it isn't too difficult--

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520265820

and while Baraka ain't 100% right-- far from it sometimes-- he's a writer who has done excellent work in poetry, prose, drama and criticism. yes, his HISTORY was and still can be lacking but rarely moreso than other knuckleheads the jazz polis tolerates from insipid Whitney Balliett (who writes as if social history barely existed, a huge lie of omission) onward.

the excellent How I Became Hettie Jones

http://www.amazon.com/How-I-Became-Hettie-Jones/dp/0802134963

explains a lot as

as Professor Allen Lowe noted, though I thought he dropped out of class with Trummy Young!!

Edited March 1, 2012 by MomsMobley

[robertoart]

I don't believe the 'aesthetics' of Jazz can ever be separated from its 'cultural politics'. Not at this time.

Maybe in the future.

Also are these views best understood as racialist as opposed to 'culturalist'.

Edited March 1, 2012 by freelancer

[paul secor]

I don't live in a utopian world so, unfortunately, race, politics, and other crap get mixed in with my listening.

I don't live in a utopian world either, but I tend to think of politics as secondary to my appreciation of the audio arts. The politics have to be specifically expressed in a way that offends me in order to get in the way of my appreciation of music. For example, there are some lyrics which offend me, particularly in rap music. Lyrics that infuriate me--and it's actually that I'm mad that they "wasted the beat" with some idiotic opinion.

Otherwise, if we're talking about jazz expressing the anger of racial strife, then I find myself a sympathizer, in which case I'm totally along for the ride. If we're talking about blues expressing similar grief, I'm following along. Maybe others will opine that I don't have the right to, but I have people I love of every color. I have lived the majority of my life loving those people. I am not a typical white racist, and I'll be damned if I let the established opinions tell me that's the way I have to listen or that I have no right to sympathize. Fuck that. I will not bow to racism's attempt to re-affirm itself and tell me how to listen. If I did, then there would just be this endless cycle of racism and reverse racism.

And it's not that I'm saying I can totally understand what oppressed people have had to deal with. But I can sympathize. And the music moves me to the very core of my empathic feelings. I can only feel so much, and the depth of it is limited to my experience. But I will NOT be dictated how I must interpret the music by racism. To me there's one life, one love, one people, and I view it all from a global perspective. I am not limited to my genetic ancestors, and I am more sympathetic toward the immediate social connections I have which are of every imaginable culture.

I will NOT be told how to listen. Not by Amiri Baraka. Not by anyone.

I agree with your last sentence - at least to a degree. However, one can learn and be changed by other people's thoughts and ideas.

What I meant in my previous post is that race and racism play a big role in American society.

As a person living in America, I can't help but be affected by that. I don't/can't separate my listening from the rest of my life. So, like it or not, race, culture, politics, and the rest of it are there to some extent when I listen to music.

Edited March 1, 2012 by paul secor

[JSngry]

I'll not be told how to listen either.

But I don't mind being told what other people hear, and why.

[Larry Kart]

how about some of ya'll actually catching up with Jones/Baraka, if you're going to get so irritated by his pip-squeaking 50 years ago?

it isn't too difficult--

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520265820

and while Baraka ain't 100% right-- far from it sometimes-- he's a writer who has done excellent work in poetry, prose, drama and criticism. yes, his HISTORY was and still can be lacking but rarely moreso than other knuckleheads the jazz polis tolerates from insipid Whitney Balliett (who writes as if social history barely existed, a huge lie of omission) onward.

the excellent How I Became Hettie Jones

http://www.amazon.com/How-I-Became-Hettie-Jones/dp/0802134963

explains a lot as

as Professor Allen Lowe noted, though I thought he dropped out of class with Trummy Young!!

I'm far from a Jones/Baraka scholar, but my memory is that the best of what he said 50 years ago -- his poetry of that vintage, his fiction, his frequently excellent record reviews and other essays for Kulchur magazine and the Jazz Review, etc. (I'll never forget, for one, his insightful praise of Ellington's "All American" album) -- made a lot more sense than just about anything he's written since.

P.S. If I were a Jones/Baraka scholar, I might have had to kill myself ... or at least conceal my plot to engineer 9/11.

[Noj]

So' date=' like it or not, race, culture, politics, and the rest of it are there to some extent when I listen to music.[/quote']

Sure, but to what "extent?" For me the experience is: if I love the rhythm and melody, that's really enough. Anything above and beyond that just furthers the enjoyment (ei. a really terrific solo). When does "race, culture, politics, and the rest of it" factor in?

Maybe it's just that my political/racial/cultural perspective represents a desire for peacemaking, friendship, understanding, tolerance, optimism, and unconditional love for good, kind people. Am I "supposed" to be referencing the historical or current state of race relations in America while I listen?

I'd sooner filter my coffee through civet droppings than filter my musical enjoyment through racialism.

Edited March 1, 2012 by Noj

[cih]

...and couldn't it be argued that all humor is based on irony in some form or another?

Maybe both offer a fork in the road, a negation... Personally I find it hard to get through the working day without being almost pathologically ironic.

MomsMobley-

how about some of ya'll actually catching up with Jones/Baraka, if you're going to get so irritated by his pip-squeaking 50 years ago?

it isn't too difficult--

Some of the chapters can be read online - My link

[JSngry]

He's got a poem on the India Navigation New Jazz, New Poetry album (backed by the duo of David Murray & Steve McCall) that cracks on the then-popular White Shadow TV show in a way that is just wicked funny.

I mean, yeah, sure, the guy's an ideologue. Or so he presents himself. That's his prerogative, and I dig that he rolls like that, even if it makes for some bullshit sometimes. Being an ideologue doesn't automatically preclude having wit, wisdom, and insight sometimes, even if it does mean putting it out there in a rigid-ass way.

And for those who find Baraka's more strident proclamations off-putting, tell me who it was (not Baraka) who wrote this in the liner notes of an album:

...and we joined the mau-mau to cut honkie throats, kill their children and claim the soil - it was a love movement seeking peace

It was 1969. Things were edgy.

[Pete C]

I'm far from a Jones/Baraka scholar, but my memory is that the best of what he said 50 years ago -- his poetry of that vintage, his fiction, his frequently excellent record reviews and other essays for Kulchur magazine and the Jazz Review, etc. (I'll never forget, for one, his insightful praise of Ellington's "All American" album) -- made a lot more sense than just about anything he's written since.

I'd generally agree with that, but I'm not sure even back then he was a great as many made him out to be. In more recent years he's become, IMO, a laughable mediocrity.

[Larry Kart]

He's got a poem on the India Navigation New Jazz, New Poetry album (backed by the duo of David Murray & Steve McCall) that cracks on the then-popular White Shadow TV show in a way that is just wicked funny.

I mean, yeah, sure, the guy's an ideologue. Or so he presents himself. That's his prerogative, and I dig that he rolls like that, even if it makes for some bullshit sometimes. Being an ideologue doesn't automatically preclude having wit, wisdom, and insight sometimes, even if it does mean putting it out there in a rigid-ass way.

And for those who find Baraka's more strident proclamations off-putting, tell me who it was (not Baraka) who wrote this in the liner notes of an album:

...and we joined the mau-mau to cut honkie throats, kill their children and claim the soil - it was a love movement seeking peace

It was 1969. Things were edgy.

Stanley Crouch?

[JSngry]

Not even close, sorry.

It was one of the players on the album, and the album was originally a "European" issue.

[Pete C]

Shepp?

[JSngry]

Nope. Not Shepp.

Not a NYC or LA based individual, but somebody who became relatively well-known and, actually, beloved by relatively many.

[Larry Kart]

Quoting ( believe accurately) from the late novelist-poet Gilbert Sorrentino: "People always think that artists have complicated personal motives for doing what they do, when in fact they have complicated artistic motives."

Substitute "political" or "racial" or whatever for "personal," as you wish.

He's got a poem on the India Navigation New Jazz, New Poetry album (backed by the duo of David Murray & Steve McCall) that cracks on the then-popular White Shadow TV show in a way that is just wicked funny.

I mean, yeah, sure, the guy's an ideologue. Or so he presents himself. That's his prerogative, and I dig that he rolls like that, even if it makes for some bullshit sometimes. Being an ideologue doesn't automatically preclude having wit, wisdom, and insight sometimes, even if it does mean putting it out there in a rigid-ass way.

And for those who find Baraka's more strident proclamations off-putting, tell me who it was (not Baraka) who wrote this in the liner notes of an album:

...and we joined the mau-mau to cut honkie throats, kill their children and claim the soil - it was a love movement seeking peace

It was 1969. Things were edgy.

Joseph Jarman? Has the rhythm of some of his pronouncements, plus the little shrug at the end is rather Jarman-like.

[JSngry]

Joseph Jarman it is, from the BYG notes to Message To Our Folks.

Quoting ( believe accurately) from the late novelist-poet Gilbert Sorrentino: "People always think that artists have complicated personal motives for doing what they do, when in fact they have complicated artistic motives."

Substitute "political" or "racial" or whatever for "personal," as you wish.

And if/when there is a line to be drawn, whose ultimate prerogative is it as to where/when/why it gets drawn?