Stanley Crouch Parker biography reviewed

[fasstrack]

Ordered it from the library. We shall see what we shall see.

[BillF]

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/20/kansas-city-lightning-stanley-crouch-review

[medjuck]

And here's his boy Wynton on The Tony Brown Journal:

"

"Blacks have been held back by people, because the music business is controlled by people who read the Torah..."

Where'd you find this quote?

[jazzbo]

I think I remember reading that in "Cats of Any Color," as something Wynton said on TV.

[AllenLowe]

I actually somewhere have a cassette tape of him saying that.

[Larry Kart]

Link to "Cats of Any Color" page with the Wynton quote:

http://books.google.com/books?id=IIxc_9CKtPMC&pg=PA195&lpg=PA195&dq=Wynton+marsalis+anti-semitic&source=bl&ots=hDcGH93tuX&sig=BUzh4O2-o80P-aEBZlDSurTKjIU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YneOUpCwHMrqyQHXrIDwAQ&ved=0CFUQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Wynton%20marsalis%20anti-semitic&f=false

On the same page there's one from Joe Zawinul in a similar vein.

[colinmce]

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/11/20/the-flair-and-flash-of-charlie-parkers-lightning

Crouch was on On Point yesterday talking about the book.

[robertoart]

Not this old shit again. The poor be trodden marginalised White Jazz Identity (ie anyone who isn't Black).

Wynton says Black people are in a war. Name me one Black or Indigenous person who doesn't know they're still in a war. Seems what Wynton is talking about is Colonisation. Replace the Jazz context with 'stolen land', the opressed body' or any other Black or Indigenous struggle - and the anti-semiticism with the more generalised White and his statement is transferable to every other human rights struggle across the board. And he is identifying Jewish people as historical and contemporary Jazz Colonisers.. Take it or leave it.

He may have moderated his sensibilities since the time of this statement but I guarantee he knows he is still in an identity war. And it's his music.

Remember Muhummad Ali saying White people were the devil? Parkinson's couldn't understand why he would say that.

Wonder what Wynton thinks of The Italian Jazz Identity?

I might research my own book.

'How To Record, Stage and Promote Black American Music for Profit and Pleasure'

Edited November 22, 2013 by freelancer

[Chuck Nessa]

Why pay any attention to these folks? I can't refuse Stanley's calls but otherwise.

[JSngry]

Here's a list of the board of JALC: http://jalc.org/about/leadership/board

Find me one of those motherfuckers - just one - that you'd care to fight a war with, or, especially, for.

So, like, yeah, fuck that war. They're givin' it and I ain't comin'.

[paul secor]

Wynton and Stan don't want to fight a war with them. They just want the $. Looks like there's a lot of that there.

[robertoart]

You can compartmentalise the issues all you want and say that because Marsalis and Crouch are involved with ordinary Mannerisms that the greater truth they express is not a universal Black truth. But it is. If the same message is coming from Gary Bartz or someone else with artistic and/or real street cache is it still a misreading of reality. Lester Bowie spoke of much the same things. Especially in regard to the 'de-Blackening' of Jazz. Every Black musician with a mind to speak out says the same things. They all aren't deluded, paranoid, jealous or money and power hungry which seems to be the standard riposte to anyone that asserts their right to intellectual property and how they choose to represent it.

[robertoart]

And Lester Bowie did say if he had Wynton's chops to combine with his (Bowies) conceptual mind, you'd actually have a kind of super musician who'd be too good for this world!

[JSngry]

Every Black musician with a mind to speak out says the same things. They all aren't deluded, paranoid, jealous or money and power hungry...

Of course not. But the ones who are fuck it up so much for the ones who aren't, not the least because they do what they do with who they do it, sleeping with the enemy and making the babies for each other to play with, and all that.

[AllenLowe]

freelancer; I'm not sure I understand your point, and I am going to sleep so will check back tomorrow - but what exactly is your position?

[Larry Kart]

You can compartmentalise the issues all you want and say that because Marsalis and Crouch are involved with ordinary Mannerisms that the greater truth they express is not a universal Black truth. But it is. If the same message is coming from Gary Bartz or someone else with artistic and/or real street cache is it still a misreading of reality. Lester Bowie spoke of much the same things. Especially in regard to the 'de-Blackening' of Jazz. Every Black musician with a mind to speak out says the same things. They all aren't deluded, paranoid, jealous or money and power hungry which seems to be the standard riposte to anyone that asserts their right to intellectual property and how they choose to represent it.

If by you "controlled by people who read the Torah" is an "ordinary mannerism," you must hang out in some interesting places.

[Teasing the Korean]

Here's one of Crouch's anti-semitic quotes from the liner notes of his boy Wynton's "Majesty of the Blues LP:

"The moneylenders of the marketplace have never ever known the difference between the office and the auction block and a Temple.

They've never known that there was an idea to anything, other than a scam, hustle, schuck game..."

And here's his boy Wynton on The Tony Brown Journal:

"

"Blacks have been held back by people, because the music business is controlled by people who read the Torah..."

Nice to see that boring jazz musicians/writers can agree with the tea party on something. Maybe this is a new untapped jazz audience.

[Larry Kart]

If Wynton had said "Blacks have been held back by people, because the music business is controlled by money-grubbing Jews," that statement, ugly as it is, would have been an "ordinary" expression in many quarters. (BTW, what's with that distancing term "mannerism"? Makes it sound like something that's more or less beyond or below control -- like , "Hey, it's just a mannerism.") In any case, with "controlled by people who read the Torah," one enters a whole new world IMO, for several reasons.

First, while "money-grubbing Jews" or the like certainly implies that all Jews are that way, it could be taken to mean that it's only Jews of that sort -- perhaps they are even taught to be that way and thus are not expressing their innate inner nature? -- who are the problem. Again, ugly enough. But "controlled by people who read the Torah" links the supposed vileness of the Jews with their reading of the religion's sacred book, which is Judaism's regular essential act. It is thus IMO not another ordinary or familiar complaint or expression of anger against Jews but a novel (at least in my fairly extensive experience) act of would-be defilement. It says, in effect, that what is sacred to the Jews is inseparable from (even the source of?) what is worst in them.

I'm hard-pressed to think of an equivalent act of defilement that could be aimed at another religion. Perhaps if the supposed blanket bad guys were Catholics, some statement about the Virgin Mary that I leave to your imagination.

[paul secor]

Just going by some of the names, it seems that Wynton doesn't have a problem associating with "people who read the Torah" as long as he can collect his one million plus $ salary.

[fasstrack]

It's making me sick to read this.

[JSngry]

I'll always go to war for and with the men (and women) of the people. But these guys are the People Of The Man. Fundamental difference there!

New faces, but the same tired old game - manufacturing heroes.

Don't be fooled by nobility/rightness of cause. Any cause is only as noble/right as the people who bring it about, not the people whom it is purported to benefit.

At one level, I get, I really do, the visceral satisfaction that one of "our" fuckheads is better than one of "their" fuckheads, just because it's refreshing and new and the "tone" will be different, and yes, all that does matter.

But at the end of the day (or week, month, year, whatever) you still got fuckheads doing what it is that fuckheads do. So the question of who do you want being the fuckhead is just a diversionary tactic designed to keep all the fuckheads in the game. And fuckheads love nothing more than having themselves a game to be in, you can sure believe that!

How about this question - kill (figuratively, of course) ALL the fuckheads, and let's see what happens then. Just let people be.

This notion that replacing colonialism with "xenophobia" (perhaps not the best word, sorry, but I'm in a hurry) is neither enlightened nor practical, nor, truthfully, humane, not in the least. It's just shoveling the bullshit from one field to another.

[robertoart]

You can compartmentalise the issues all you want and say that because Marsalis and Crouch are involved with ordinary Mannerisms that the greater truth they express is not a universal Black truth. But it is. If the same message is coming from Gary Bartz or someone else with artistic and/or real street cache is it still a misreading of reality. Lester Bowie spoke of much the same things. Especially in regard to the 'de-Blackening' of Jazz. Every Black musician with a mind to speak out says the same things. They all aren't deluded, paranoid, jealous or money and power hungry which seems to be the standard riposte to anyone that asserts their right to intellectual property and how they choose to represent it.

If by you "controlled by people who read the Torah" is an "ordinary mannerism," you must hang out in some interesting places.

'ordinary mannerism' is obviously a reference to the MUSIC Marsalis makes, not the racism inherent in the WORDS attributed to them (Marsalis/Crouch).

As in -mannerism - in the manner of - or perhaps even an actual Jazz Mannerism as a specific movement, which it essentially was/is.

Funny how this board is peppered with people who vehemently respond to the heightened racist tones of Black musicians and writers who transgress the 'brotherhood of man', when assertively claiming the music for their own or highlighting the unequal or exploitative practices of the past (and their current modes of White-out), yet fail to register that their own assertions or support for the reverse racism - or it's all a part of a whole' whinging of a bunch of peripheral self centred egotists are just as 'racially' vile as the shit they are outraged by.

[robertoart]

It's making me sick to read this.

What's making you sick?

The fact that the two guys I have read you champion on these boards as 'good guys' (Marsalis and Crouch), were still prepared to use extreme racialised language in their own 'Corporate Black Power' ambitions.

[fasstrack]

It's making me sick to read this.

What's making you sick?

The fact that the two guys I have read you champion on these boards as 'good guys' (Marsalis and Crouch), were still prepared to use extreme racialised language in their own 'Corporate Black Power' ambitions.

Yes. And I defended them, not the same as championing them, when unfairly maligned. This is different, and sickening. Anyway, I may have changed my views from a Wynton-hater but it really doesn't matter to me much. Both those guys were nice to me when I met them, and the only thing I have to go on is experience. But this is indefensible and anyway I don't want to get into a whole thing on it---doubt that the rest of the board does either.

[AllenLowe]

freelance - since when has anyone on this board refused to stand up or protest against white racism? And as for African American culture and its socio-political position, I've been writing about this for 20+ years. Give it up with the straw man thing; answer actual and specific arguments instead of interjecting oddly innacurate generalizations.

Edited November 22, 2013 by AllenLowe