Americans For Financial Reform web site exhorts you to “sing your displeasure.” Here’s a sample:
Click here for more lyrics.
And on a more serious note, check out what else you can do at Showdown America: The American People vs Wall Street Banks.
Is Michael Jackson really THAT important? More important than protestors in Iran? Famine? What about the millions of AIDs deaths in Africa? OK, music provides a soundtrack for our lives and Michael’s music has touched many millions of lives, and yes, death is sad for those of us still here, especially when death comes early in life. But really, can any one person be so important as to obliterate all other concerns?
At first I was sickened by the overabundance of Michael everywhere I turned, and admittedly, to some extent I still cringe, but reading Sarah Weinman’s June 25th post on Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, I found her perspective to be more in keeping with my thoughts, and the comments from her readers gave me hope as well. Readers commented on his “troubled life” and hoped that in death he would be at peace. “The guy only seemed to come fully alive onstage,” wrote J.D. Rhoades. “In front of a crowd, he was damn near superhuman. But you can’t live life onstage 24/7, and he could ever seem to adjust to life on Earth.”
Weinmn saves her greatest appreciation for his dancing, writing that Jackson
“represented the ultimate American narrative, reared from an early age to work hard and produce, to support a family rife with internal tensions and jealousies and to appease the hangers-on, trapped by his penchant for excess and flaws tragic and monstrous….But when it comes right down to it, what brings me back to MJ’s classic songs, his groundbreaking videos and those breathtaking live performances is the way he moved, his total command over space, the upward slope of his arch and downturn onto the balls of his feet.”
For many years now, when I hear Michael’s name his music is the last thing to come to my mind. Media attention has focused on his private life more than his music, and the videos that capture his dancing prowess are somehow overshadowed in my memories by his crotch-grabbing. But last night, Johnny Pate called and mentioned a beautiful song by Michael that he heard at the end of Ann Curry’s NBC report. The song was Gone Too Soon from his Dangerous album. I don’t own any MJ recordings, but I do remember this beautiful song in the context of Michael dedicating it to Ryan White and shining a spotlight the importance of AIDs research. (It also garnered a lot of attention when Princess Diana died and was on a compilation CD titled Diana Princess of Wales Tribute.)
It’s sad that Michael lived such a tortured life, and it is sad that he died, but even sadder to me is the current state of our culture that feeds more on celebrity-gawking and not enough on arts appreciation.
Update: Interesting article in The New York Times – His Moves Expressed as Much as His Music
I often watch Bill Moyer’s Journal but I missed the April 17 episode with producer David Simon:
The executive producer of HBO’s critically-acclaimed show THE WIRE, David Simon talks with Bill Moyers about inner-city crime and politics, storytelling and the future of journalism today. After a dozen years covering crime for the BALTIMORE SUN, David Simon left journalism to write books and tell stories for NBC and HBO, including his Peabody-winning cop show THE WIRE, which looked at the drug wars and the gritty underbelly of the inner-city. Simon is now producing the pilot for a series about musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans, called TREME.
Though not an avid watcher of The Wire, I have appreciated Simon’s past work at the Baltimore Sun, and am now intrigued by this potential new series.
Also worth noting is his testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee kindly reposted here by ReclaimTheMedia
Thanks, Ken, for bringing these links to my attention.
While I much lament what I feel is the demise of essential elements of journalism – shoe-leather and insightful reporting – I will not lament the loss of physical newspapers, should that eventuality come to pass. I remember my grandfather showing me how to fold The New York Times so as to manage the size and page turns, but I never learned to like the feel of newsprint nor the ink it left on my hands.
What I am enjoying these days is the online incarnation of some newspapers, particularly those that employ multimedia and narrative writing. One of my mentors, Tom French, has done several huge serial reports for the St Petersburg Times*, but the one-off stories such as the March 8th New York Times article Riding The Rails are just as inspiring and more easily consumable when pressed for time. 
This piece is an interesting short-form narrative, well-reported with occasional first-person interjections for that being-there-with-you feel. The multimedia portion includes images of the amazing landscapes seen while rolling across country and short video clips that allow us to meet some fellow travelers. Is it really just coincidental that only a few days ago I spoke of wanting to travel cross country by train?
* Series by Tom include A Cry in the Night and Zoo Story
Of course multimedia need not be reserved only for narratives. It is not surprising that art reviews are greatly enchanced by visuals. I still refer friends to the slides accompanying a review of Calder works at the Whitney — Calder at Play: Finding Whimsy in Simple Wire (October 2008).
More recently a March 5th New York Times article “The Unheralded Pieces in the American Puzzle” caught my attention, perhaps because last weekend I went to The Getty Museum for the first time in eons and found myself wondering how I might manage to visit there much more often (but that rumination is for another blog post). While the slides with this particular article are fewer and less intriguing to me than those of Calder, I did “discover” artists unfamiliar to me. My favorite is slide number 5, a 1911 painting by George Bellows titled “New York” with this description: “crowded with buildings, vehicles and people in the street, it is thought to depict Union Square in the snow, slightly reimagined and looking west toward the Sixth Avenue El.” 
Apparently Bellows died young (age 42). His wikipedia entry says “Bellows’ urban New York scenes depicted the crudity and chaos of working-class people and neighborhoods, and also satirized the upper classes.” Had he been of our generations, I wonder what his canvases would portray of life today.
A Violinist in the Metro is the subject of a viral email that I received just this week. The story it tells, of renowned concert violinist playing in a Washington D.C. subway during rush hour who goes unrecognized and unappreciated, is true. The violinist was Joshua Bell and it was widely reported, by the Washington Post and NPR among others…two years ago. The event took place on on January 12, 2007 and I don’t know why this email is circulating now but it bears re-telling for it gives rise to questions that are worth considering.
The email concludes with this question:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments …. how many other things are we missing?
It’s a good question, but I would also have to ask whether the adults, who probably had no arts education or even exposure to the arts, would have had the ability to discern quality and beauty even if they did have the time to stop and listen. Some might argue that art has the power to touch all, and I might agree, but I also think that those who grew up in recent times may have had the innate ability with which we are born sucked out of them by adulthood. (The children in this story wanted to stop and listen, but the grownups pulled them away.)
It reminds me of a story I read some time ago about people are born with the ability to taste color or see musical notes as colors and shapes but the ability fades away from disuse, lack of encouragement, lack of adult understanding… It’s called synesthesia (“a rare neurological condition in which two or more of the senses entwine”) and while I am not a scientist, I do believe that we are born with way more abilities and talents than we ever imagine, let alone nurture.
What do you think?
The issues are no longer clear cut. Maybe they never were, but now, I think, less so than ever. For example, are unions good or bad? There was a time when unions did a tremendous service, fighting for the rights of commenfolk. But today we seem to be in an age of me, me, me, and I wonder if the demands being made to supposedly protect the worker are out of line with common sense. Don’t get me wrong, I am not an advocate of corporate greed, and I would be the first to confiscate the obscene bonuses and out-sized salaries of the suits at the top. But take a look at this video report about Ford’s manufacturing plant in Brazil and tell me what you think. Is Ford doing “the right thing”?
And yes, we did.
My husband, who until recently thought he’d never live to see this day, has been predicting a revolution. He felt that as the divide between the haves and the have-nots continued to widen, that there would come a moment when ordinary people would revolt and take to the streets in protest. Whenever he said this I envisioned scenes from history books and movies of the French Revolution.
This morning I remembered that the revolution has long been underway (I was, after all, a child of the sixties who supported Dr. King and protested the Vietnam War and marched on Washington) and I realized that the struggle became vibrant once again the day Obama declared his candidacy. It’s been a true grassroots revolution, and last night people around the world took to the streets…in celebration. Tears flowed, but no blood.
I was struck not only by the grace and honesty of Obama’s acceptance speech (transcript), which I expected, but also by the decency and generosity of McCain’s concession speech (transcript). He said what his supporters needed to hear, despite their unwillingness to hear it.
Now the really hard work begins. Can we do it? Yes, we can.
Barack Obama accepts:
John McCain concedes:
Means do not justify the ends. It is important to determine the veracity of one’s arguments lest an inaccuracy undermine the credibility of the point you are trying to make. I really detest Sarah Palin for more reasons than I can count, but in these days of ‘spin’ and ‘at-any-cost’ I am not so quick to take political emails at face value, even one from a friend. The email I received began:
Let’s spend a few moments browsing the list of books Mayor Sarah Palin tried to get town librarian Mary Ellen Baker to ban in the lovely, all-American town of Wasilla, Alaska. When Baker refused to remove the books from the shelves, Palin threatened to fire her. The story was reported in Time Magazine and the list comes from the librarian.net website.
and it continued with another paragraph and a long list of books. So I did some checking.
First I went to the original Time magazine piece and found that it said only:
Over the past few years, a growing number of Evangelicals have been consciously distancing themselves from the more extreme stands of the Christian right. They live in the suburbs, hold graduate degrees, and while they might not want their children reading certain novels, would be embarrassed by attempts to ban certain books from libraries, as Palin is reported to have briefly considered while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
the caveat being “reported to have briefly considered.”
Then I checked out the post on librarian.net, not an organization web site, but one personal librarian’s blog on which she slams Palin (yes, I don’t like her either) and links to the list that was actually posted by one of her readers as a comment. The librarian/blogger also writes:
there’s some buzz being generated that says that this post contains a comment that lists the books that Palin supposedly wanted banned. The list is here, but there appears to be no truth to the claim made by the commenter, and no further documentation or support for this has turned up.
Another commenter on the blog pointed out:
The list of banned books is inaccurate. Several of the titles listed above, most notably the Harry Potter books, had not been published yet in 1996 when Sarah Palin attempted to fire the librarian.
I kept reading the comments and perseverance paid off when I came across reference to a New York Times article, Palin’s Start in Alaska: Not Politics As Usual (sept. 3, 2008):
“Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.
Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.
The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.
In 1996, Ms. Palin suggested to the local paper, The Frontiersman, that the conversations about banning books were “rhetorical.”
Ms. Emmons was not the only employee to leave. During her campaign, Ms. Palin appealed to voters who felt that city employees under Mr. Stein, who was not from Wasilla and had earned a degree in public administration at the University of Oregon, had been unresponsive and rigid regarding a new comprehensive development plan. In turn, some city employees expressed support for Mr. Stein in a campaign advertisement.
Once in office, Ms. Palin asked many of Mr. Stein’s backers to resign — something virtually unheard of in Wasilla in past elections. The public works director, city planner, museum director and others were forced out. The police chief, Irl Stambaugh, was later fired outright.”
So the book list is probably bogus, but where there’s smoke…. The is one scary lady!
There are myriad posts online about Palin, but one that caught my attention evoked the ghost of Bella Abzug. (If you’re not of a certain age you might not know that she was a formidable congresswoman representing New York and a leader in the woman’s movement when I was a kid.)
Bella Abzug…once remarked that we would only have true gender equality when an incompetent woman could go as far as an incompetent man. That milestone appears to have been achieved with the nomination of Sarah Palin for Vice President.
Hmmmm….
For those of you looking to read about Gerald Wiggins, the bio/obit is just below this brief postscript (or click here).
There’s no more powerful reminder of the fleetingness of life, than the death of someone close to you. Well, maybe a brush with death yourself, but my own firsthand experience proves even that message can wear off over time. DevraDoWrite has been silent for nearly three months, and perhaps it would amuse Wig that his death has spurred me back into action. We became close friends almost 38 years ago; he was on the road playing for Helen Humes and we met in Nice, France at Le Grand Parade du Jazz. We continued our friendship in New York where Helen would play long engagements at The Cookery in Greenwich Village. In those early years that followed, Wig was a long-term house guest in the apartment I shared with our mutual friend, Ernie who also played piano and worked for the Musicians’ Union. We had two pianos in the apartment and many wonderful parties populated with friends and neighbors including Helen Humes, Tommy Flanagan, Norman Simmons, Richard Wyands, Jerry Dodgion… wonderful music and memories that I will always cherish.
Wig taught me a lot of cool chord changes back when I was still playing piano, but more important was what I learned from his example through the years:
“My name is Joe and I don’t know.” — never speak ill of anyone;
“My name is Jess, it’s not my mess.” — never meddle in someone else’s business;
“My name is Sam, don’t give a damn” — don’t let anyone get you down.
And I watched Wig fight his own demons and win.
Plagued by health problems, these last few years were really hard on him, but he kept rebounding, returning time and again to his family, his friends, and to the piano to create more live and recorded musical memories for his fans. He was well loved and will be sorely missed.
Come birthday time people often look in the rear-view mirror, and my husband is no exception. John Levy is just a few days shy of celebrating his 96th birthday. Happy as he is to awake each day, to drive about town (and out of town, too), to listen to live music (Sonny Rollins at Cerritos Center this past Saturday was especially wonderful), I am aware that it must be fairly depressing for him to consider the vast numbers of people he has outlived, including one son and almost all of his best friends, Joe Williams and Cannonball Adderley among them. The collection of obituaries that we cut out from the newspaper grows way too quickly. Yet I think there is something that saddens him even more — having lived all these years hoping to see some change, when little if any change has occurred.
I can think of two interrelated areas of concern, things about which he might even have prayed for change. The first is racism, inextricably linked to the social class-ism from which our culture suffers as we watch the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class all but disappear. The second cause for lament is the state of jazz – which maybe alive, but is not well. The music survives almost against the odds. The media prefers “smooth jazz” and supports amateur contests in lieu of paying talented professionals who have honed their craft. And let’s not even discuss the launch of white pop singers under the guise of jazz . (We call them ‘chanteusees’.) Jazz clubs that once existed all across the country have vanished, jazz promoters have limited budgets requiring artists to fly around the country on multi-leg journeys, and even the jazz organizations want the artists to appear for nominal sums, if not for free — “it’s good exposure” or “you’ll sell your CDs” being the all-to-familiar pitch. Even worse is the pay-to-play syndrome, which is pretty much the scenario even at the IAJE convention (International Association of Jazz Educators). And speaking of that particular organization, today we read a piece online (Woe is IAJE) about what appears to be the organization’s demise. After reading it, John shook his head and said, “Nothing’s changed.”
Both issues are rooted in struggles over race, power, and money. Here’s an account of one of John’s many attempts to “organize” the jazz people; this particular episode (excerpted from “Men, Women, and Girl Singers”) took place 33 years ago this month.
On
April 6, 1975 , the World Jazz Association met for the first time. Our goal was to promote jazz music and musicians on a global scale. Jazz seemed to be the only genre without a national organization. The first bone of contention was who would run such an organization—the businessmen or the musicians? A compromise was reached with the selection of Paul Tanner as president. He had been a professional musician and was now a jazz educator at UCLA. I too fit the description of both musician and businessman and I was officially elected as chairman of the board.The next challenge was to build alliances with other existing organizations. I can’t speak for any other WJA members, but it was never my plan to actually merge with any other group on an operational level, or even to take over a function that another organization was fulfilling. On a trip to
New York the following month I met with someNew York jazz organizers. It was a fiasco. They were convinced we were trying to upstage them and get our hands on whatever funding sources they had. They had fought hard to build their organizations and raise the funds to support their salaries and programs. The fear of losing their positions blinded them to the possibilities that might be afforded to a larger coalition, a coalition whose size would command recognition. When I left that meeting I had serious doubts about our prospects for success, but it was too soon to give up.Not so much because I was the chairman of the board but because of my experience working with artists and producing shows, it was up to me to supervise the arrangements for WJA’s first in what was supposed to be a series of national fund-raising projects. The first major event was the November 14 concert at the Shrine Auditorium in
Los Angeles . I was the hands-on producer of this concert that featured Stan Getz, Les McCann, Bob James, Quincy Jones’ Big Band, and Randy Crawford singing “Everything Must Change,” a song written by Benard Ighner with an arrangement by Quincy. Joe Williams was supposed to appear as well but got snowbound inLondon . The show was recorded live and paid for by Bob Krasnow at Warner Brothers.The proceeds from the recording were to go to WJA, but during the sound check on the day of the concert Stan Getz and Bob James reneged on their agreement. They refused to sign the recording contract, and the record couldn’t be released. Sometimes that’s what you get when you trust someone’s word. I probably could have taken them to court and won because they had “received consideration,” from our verbal contract. By that I mean that we had already paid for them to fly to
Los Angeles to participate in the project. But I didn’t think the fight would be worth the cost or effort. Luckily, the box-office receipts alone spelled success for the concert itself, and the fund-raiser came out ahead on the financial balance sheet.Unfortunately the WJA, as an organization, was not a success. For some reason, the jazz community has never been able to pull together for a common goal. There are a multitude of little jazz societies sprinkled across the country that advance the status of jazz, but they are mostly at a local level. True jazz lovers run them, but these people lack any real industry experience outside their own local landscape. Then there are a few more professional organizations, such as the International Association of Jazz Educators that helps preserve the history and perpetuate the jazz art form. But to this day, what doesn’t exist is a professionally run national organization to promote jazz, jazz musicians, jazz education, and jazz awareness on a national if not global level—something on a par with the Country Music Association.
Throughout the years there have been a few serious attempts to form an organization, and WJA was one attempt. But these groups fail continually. Why is it that other genres—country music, classical music, even gospel music—have been able to get it together and we haven’t? Sadly, I think the answer is a matter of racial conflict and power. Country and classical performers are mostly white and gospel musicians are mostly black; consensus is easier to come by. The world of jazz artists, on the other hand, is completely mixed. Add to that difficulty the fact that the business of jazz—the record companies, radio stations, distribution companies and the like—is controlled by whites. Those that have the money have the power, and they aren’t going to share it. Even among smaller organizations that enjoy some degree of success, black or white, you won’t find much cooperation for fear they’ll lose whatever it is (usually funding) that they’ve gained to this point.
