Spoils of War

Perhaps taking my cue from the jazz world, riffing off one another’s postings I take note of Mr. Rifftides latest post re our “conversation” about music being used as a weapon or punishment, a dispatch wherein he has included words penned by the esteemed Gene Lees. While Gene’s words were prompted by a prior Rifftides post in which Kenny Drew held forth on the subject of rap music (here), they are nonetheless right on target vis a vis my query.

You may remember that a few days ago I asked anyone who knew of any such stories to please share them with me. I made that request because for some time now I’ve been percolating an idea for a book about the myriad ways in which the America uses music to further policy objectives. My book proposal is making the rounds; here’s an excerpt:

While it is true that technological advances have made it no longer necessary to use musical instruments to command and control the troops in battle, music still has many wartime uses. Sometimes the employment of music seems heart-warming, such as when it serves to soothe and help heal the wounded, or even inspire perseverance in the face of adversity. Uplifting stories of entertaining troops on the front lines have always been fodder for fictional movies and factual newsreels. Troop morale is crucial, and while the world might think Bob Hope and the USO handled it all by themselves, the truth is that there are places that Bob could not go – places where the danger was too great, the need even greater….

Marching bands always stir up patriotic feelings; everybody loves a parade…. Music is used in ceremonial events, presidential funerals, state dinners, and official events galore. In towns large and small, all across the country, military buglers play taps, and military bands of all types and sizes march in parades to pay tribute to homecoming soldiers and honor those left behind.

But music can be applied and exploited for purposes that may be depressing, distressing, or to some, even despicable. One who finds beauty in music will likely be appalled to hear a young American soldier fighting in Iraq describe how he and his buddies patch rock music into the headphones in their tank in order to pump themselves up for the fight. While employing music to whip soldiers into a fighting frenzy may seldom be discussed, it is not uncommon. Nor is it unusual to use music as a weapon. As seen in the capture of Manuel Noriega and the Siege of the Church of Nativity in Israel, music has been an effective tool for soldiers in PsyOps (Psychological Operations)….

A friend, now retired from the US Air Force, once told me that music money is “miniscule in terms of the overall defense budget, but the payback is so huge, you can’t even begin to calculate how important it is.” Hmmmm….

Up To The Challenge

Hats off and many thanks to Mr. Rifftides. I asked for the whole story about punishing high-school kids by making them listen to Sinatra records and Mr. R has delivered, posting it here on his blog.

At the end he wonders whether Sinatra might have known about this and what he might have said or felt. I know one or two folks who knew Ol’ Blue Eyes fairly well so I am going to ask. (Had this been a few years ago I might have persuaded Joe Williams to call Frank directly and ask him for me.) I probably won’t get much of a respose, but we’ll see. One never knows, do one?

Supposed News That’s Not Fit To Print (or Air)

I have been waiting to hear someone in the media say this:

The reappearance of the JonBenet Ramsey story on the media radar made my heart sink.

Thank you, Joe Carroll (San Francisco Chronicle). Every night my husband and I talk back to the news readers on telelvision…often we yell at the politicians and pundits too. Lately, we just shake our heads at all the JonBenet coverage. I guess the media must believe that a little soft porn in the guise of “breaking news” will raise the ratings. That alone is a shame. Add to that the fact that there are no real facts and certainly no real news in this current flurry of re-hash and you have the making of another journalism travesty. Here’s a graf from Carroll’s column:

Even before the story about the guy who didn’t kill JonBenet Ramsey broke, I had been thinking about people trusting the media, or rather not trusting the media. Of course, sensible people don’t trust politicians either, or large corporations, or advertising — one feature of modern life is how untrustworthy everything is. No wonder we’re crazy; we have no idea what the truth is, and we need at least an approximation of the truth in order to make intelligent decisions.

But how does anyone know to trust anyone else?

Read the whole column here

Music, War, Human Nature…

In response to my mention of the Army’s PsyOps division having used music as a weapon, Mr.Rifftides sent this message:

I remember that a few years ago there was quite a ruckus about the high school principal who punished his misbehaving inner-city students by making them listen to Frank Sinatra recordings. It may have been Chicago. If I turn up details, I’ll let you know.

I hope he does turn up the details; thats a story I’d like to hear.

In yesterday’s The New York Times there was an article (Harmony Across a Divide) by Alan Riding.

IT was an immensely appealing experiment, both in its idealism and in its simplicity: Let young Israeli and Arab musicians play together in an orchestra to show that communication and cooperation were possible between peoples who had long fought each other.

Conceived by Argentine-born Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, the project began in 1999 as an annual event, and despite even the more recent outbreaks of violence, the orchestra is still performing.

Still, with the orchestra touring 13 cities in Spain, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Turkey, Mr. Barenboim believes that this latest crisis merely underlines the venture’s importance.

“From the beginning it took a lot of courage to participate in this project, but all the more so this year, while this war is going on, and the friends and relatives of some are being hurt by the friends and relatives of others.” Mr. Barenboim said in an interview the day after starting the tour with the first classical concert ever in Seville’s historic bullring. “In that sense this is a very small reply to the terrible horrors of war.”

I have begun to collect similar stories of music used in service of diplomacy and/or as a humanizing force. Colonel Gabriel once told me a story of taking a German town by force in 1944 as an infantryman, and returning years later as Commander of the US Air Force Band, capturing that same town with music. In 1944 he left with their flag, and later they gave him their key. Another story is that of the joint concert performed by our National Symphony and the Iraq National Symphony, described by The Lehrer Newshour as “an attempt at literal harmony out of the confusion and sometimes violent aftermath of the Iraq war.”

If anyone knows of any such stories, please share them with me.

And….

Speaking of jazz classics, I just saw a press release reminding me that it has been 50 years since Paul Gonsalves’ six minute solo on “Diminuendo and Crescendo In Blue” brought the proverbial house down at the Newport Jazz Festival.

Tonight, on the radio, Columbia record producer George Avakian, Newport Jazz impresario George Wein, and critic Stanley Crouch will be savoring the memory of Duke Ellington and His Orchestra’s historic performance — the program is Open Source, it airs from Boston (89.7 on the dial) at 7 PM and can be heard online here.

I’ve Got Mail: Another Perspective

As you know, I’ve been embroiled in the online discussions with my classmates about the wars, and more specifically about human nature and whether we are wired to be violent, an inherency tempered only by our intellect and consciousness (and/or perhaps conscience). It was with that in mind that I posted the quote from Carl Jung (see yesterday’s post just below). Bill Crow writes in response:

Re your posted quote from Jung: He must have been talking about himself. I personally have come to consciousness many times with joy and pleasure, as when I first heard Louis Armstrong’s recording of West End Blues, when I first heard Duke Ellington’s recording of Creole Love Call, when I first heard Lester Young’s recording of I Got Rhythm, and when I first heard Charlie Parker’s recording of Ko Ko. Such moments of revelation have carried me happily through a life in music, without pain.
(The pain came later on, in my fingers, from struggling to transfer the consciousness of the music onto my instrument.)

Thanks, Bill, for providing a ballast, accentuating the positive, and reminding us of the power of music. I’m don’t know which specific renditions you have in mind (these guys having recorded these songs more than once) but I hope the above links to sound clips will give DDW readers a little sample.

Did you all know that the Army’s PsyOps division has used music as a weapon? I’ve been meaning to research the details, but I remember something about driving Noriega out of hiding by bombarding him with heavy metal music. No joke. I wonder what would happen if we were to fill the air in warring territories with great music. Now there’s a secret weapon I could support. Hmmm…

Kill Or Be Killed

If you saw my post about the murder of Eyal and about my elementary school reunion then you know that I have friends (male and female fraternal twins) living in Israel. These are close friends, people for whom I feel love and about whom I worry more each passing day of this “conflict.” This is all very foreign to me — no pun intended. For starters, we have not maintained consistent communications throughout the years: I have never met her children, and while I have met and like very much his wife and sons, I can’t claim to really know them. Truth is, I don’t really know the twins at all as adults, having not had any deep or lengthy sustained interactions over time. Our bond is one that was forged in our youth, and therein lies its strength, perhaps a little like that of siblings who grow up and go their very separate ways.

The class reunion is ongoing online, and the latest communications have been about the war; I’ve been reading them avidly, but silently. I have yet to speak. Much of the “discussion” has been about pacifism vs. violence. Does violence only beget more violence? Is killing always wrong? Was it wrong to kill Nazis? Is it wrong to protect oneself and one’s family? Right or wrong, the reality on the ground seems to be “kill or be killed.”

Personally, morally, I am probably a pacifist. I don’t “believe” anyone ought to take a life. I don’t believe in capital punishment either. But if attacked, would I fight back? I can’t say for sure, but I suspect that my reaction would be chemically induced — either I would freeze (and perhaps be killed) or I would fight (and perhaps be killed). Whichever choice, and whatever the outcome, I truly doubt that my reaction in-the-moment would be based on moral or intellectual grounds.

War is not waged by a people, it is declared by a handful of men maneuvering for more power and money. I don’t believe that people are born knowing how to hate or kill — they are taught, or perhaps a more appropriate word is manipulated. You can’t teach an intelligent person that 2+2=5 because they know better, but you can convince them that it is to their benefit to embrace that erroneous conclusion. Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Global warming doesn’t exist? Or you can use religion, faith in the unseen, belief in the glorious hereafter, to give credence to that which cannot be proven. Religion is an especially effective weapon used on people who have nothing — nothing to live for, nothing to hope for, except perhaps the glories in the next life, and perhaps the notion that they are providing for their families. Did you know that the families of suicide bombers are well-provided for financially? Isn’t it interesting that none of the terrorist “leaders” or their family members have themselves been suicide bombers?

“Leader” is an interesting word. Heads of state may once have been leaders, representatives of the people. Now they are abusers and oppressors. Most of you will readily agree, looking at some of the foreign lands and rulers. But I think it has become the truth everywhere, even here in the good ol’ USA. No one in American government is looking out for my best interests, or yours either. Many of the laws we had that were intended to protect us, the people, are now overlooked, ignored, repealed… What happened to anti-trust, the Sherman Act? Every day the consolidation of wealth and power increases, as does the divide between the haves and the have-nots. Look at all the people grasping at straws, praying for a miracle, living vicariously. How else would you describe the popularity of the lottery or reality/contest tv shows? A handful of people control the media, and that has a direct impact on both entertainment and information…or should I say mis-information. [A friend and fellow blogger talks often about the value of blogdom and the empowerment of people to have a voice via the Internet. I agree, but how can one know who or what to believe? That’s a discussion for another day.]

Have my thoughts strayed too far from the Arab-Israeli conflict? I don’t think that World War III (that’s what we’re now in) has much of anything to do with Arab-Israeli disputes over territory. “We were here first” and “they attacked us first” — sounds to me like children’s arguments; who hit whom first, who instigated what, and when, is now long beside the point, if it was ever really the point. These are “reasons” used to manipulate people, to incite hatred, to make them fight seemingly for themselves but really for the benefit of the powers that be.

Getting back to my friends — our online discussion began when one member asked us to read and comment on a speech by Haim Harari that though given in 2004, could have well been uttered just yesterday.

“The problem is that the vast silent majority of these Moslems are not part of the terror and of the incitement but, they also do not stand up against it. They become accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders, intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.”

My first reaction was to wonder ‘why they are afraid?’ Is there not power in numbers? Naive, I know. My second, more considered reaction is that what Harari said about the Moslems is true of all of us. We, too, are silent accomplices. From where do you think these warring factions are getting their weapons? Hasn’t our economy, and the Republican Party, always benefited from war? So why do we stay silent? Some might say *that* doesn’t have anything to do with us. Okay, so why do we remain silent while our government runs roughshod over the poor, the elderly, and now even the middle class? My husband says that one day average Americans will take the streets and revolt. I’m not so sure we have it in us. What will it take to make us take a stand?

Harari points out that suicide bombings, horrific though they are, have quantitatively less impact, cause fewer deaths, than say car accidents or earthquakes. It’s effectiveness as a weapon lies not in the body count, but in the economic impact of the aftermath, destroying a country’s tourism, airlines in bankruptcy… The World Trade Center took a lot of lives, but the greater cost was in the aftermath, the disruption of a major business center and the escalation of people’s fear and how that alters people’s behavior, particularly economically, in the long run.

There is so much that we simply cannot understand having not had the horrific experiences ourselves (9/11 not withstanding), but as several have opined, that is all too soon to change. Maybe then we, too, will take a stand.

If after reading this you are wondering which side I am on, do I support Israel’s actions, do I feel bad for the Palestinians….the answer is that I am on the side of the people, the average people in all countries, the people who should band together, live together and share the planet, and not allow a handful of power-hungry elite to divide us and conquer.

In the words of Nelson Mandela: “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”

But again I have strayed back to the intellectual and moral approach. Harari said “The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions about the rule of law in a totally lawless environment.” I can see the sad truth of this statement. Hospitals and places of worship, civilians and especially children, are being used as shields. The rules of engagement have been abandoned…by both sides. A decision has been made to fight fire with fire, and I cannot stand in judgment of those on the front lines or in the cross-fire. But there will be a price to pay, for as Ghandi once said, “An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

What, When and Where

So the other day I raised the question of what to watch, movie-wise. As I was hoping she would, Just Muttering has weighed in with some suggested flicks to see, augmented by a comment suggesting “Collateral” and “Mystic River.”

Another DevraDoWrite reader, after concurring with the preach-to-the-choir quality of “An Inconvenient Truth” and adding “Besides, it wasn’t as good as the hype — though it was good and I’m very glad it was made and is getting exposure,” pointed me to an article in The Los Angeles Times that gives rise to the questions of where to watch, and when. John Horn’s August 8 article, “Far Removed From the Multiplex” includes the following:

With an array of devices at their fingertips, youths don’t always think of theaters as the place to see a flick.

For decades, the movie business has followed an inflexible formula: Produce features, show them first in theaters, release them on video, then broadcast them on television. But what Gale observed — and what a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll of teens and young adults has found — is that Hollywood’s rickety model is poised to be torn apart.

With an array of devices competing to fill their leisure time, today’s teens and young adults show diminishing interest in adhering to Hollywood tradition. They’re willing to watch brand-new movies at home rather than in theaters, are starting to use their PCs as their entertainment gateway and are slowly turning to their iPods and cell phones for video programming.

They still crave to be entertained, but not necessarily inside a movie theater.

Now you know that I’m tired of the “youth market” usurping all the resources, and I’m not likely to want to watch a movie on my cell phone or iPod, but there are some ramifications of this that might bode well for the grownups…and some that might not.

Chris Anderson is getting a lot of press these days about “The Long Tail” and how technology has altered the marketplace from one with limited physical storage/display space to one with unlimited virtual shelf space, lowering the cost of distribution and making viable gazillions of niche markets. That’s good news for those of us outside the mainstream. Do I feel badly for brick and mortar operations struggling to combat this? No. I remember a MBA marketing class I took at Fordham some decades ago, the gist of which was keep looking ahead because what works today will be old-hat tomorrow and someone else is already thinking about the next best thing. This is not news, it’s life…it’s evolution.

But potential downsides also lurk around every corner. Technology has fostered a “give it away” mentality about which I am truly conflicted. I like free stuff and I like the ideas behind “open source” — sharing and collaborating are good things. I also like surfing over to YouTube and watching cool videos. But shouldn’t people get paid for their work? Why should you (or I) be able to watch my dad play at Montreux with Petrucianni and Shorter for free while others paid to attend the show or buy the DVD, which in turn, at least theoretically, enabled the promoters to pay the artists.

I know one of the arguments — sometimes known as The Grateful Dead argument — is that free goodies have promotional value and can lead to greater sales or larger attendance at live shows. “Ticket sales have doubled,” is a frequent refrain. That may be true in the short run, but as already mentioned, consumers are beginning to change their where and when demands.

Earlier this week I read a press release announcing a deal between MSN(R) Videoand the JVC Jazz Festival (Newport R.I.) “to give jazz lovers the chance to catch this year’s great lineup online starting Sunday, Aug. 13, at http://video.msn.com/newportjazz . Whether fans attended the festival and want immediate access to their favorite performances again or couldn’t make it to Newport’s historic Fort Adams to experience the acts firsthand, MSN will offer them the “best seats in the house” for America’s oldest jazz festival.”

I haven’t investigated this yet, but I’m betting that this potentially vast increase in ‘attendance’ is not reflected in the fees being paid to the performers. Let’s hope that I’m wrong.

Another potential downside has to do with quality. Competition on non-economic grounds has given rise to the amateur, greatly skewed the signal-to-noise ratio, and proliferated a lot of garbage. Whether or not you believe that the audiences appreciate the difference (and I am not one who thinks we should aim for the lowest common denominator), the net result is also lowering the value of a professional’s work in the marketplace. This is not solely a product of technology (actors aren’t happy about reality TV either), but it doesn’t help.

Somewhere I read that the average book sells only 500 copies a year, and with that fact comes the advice that writers should not quit their day jobs. Needless to say I bristle at the notion that writing, painting, making music and such are not full-time jobs worthy of compensation. I might even argue that artists’ income should be in the same realm as that of doctors’ in that they are just as vital, if not more so, to our overall well-being.

Of A Certain Age

About a month or so ago, Just Muttering was talking about her friend’s annual “film festival” birthday celebration (Two Thumbs Up ). I had seen only two of this year’s five screenings (Being Julia and Mrs Hendersen Presents) and liked both very much. Not long ago, I saw another movie that fits in well with this list: Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. I hadn’t heard of it, just found a local listing online, but went on the strength of it’s leading lady, Joan Plowright, and a description I don’t remember verbatim but the gist of which was that this was one of those movies the type of which seldom gets made anymore.

And all of this reminded me of an article about movie makers realizing that there is a viable “older” audience who craves mature entertainment. I believe this to be true of music as well, but when most of America’s radio stations are owned by a single conglomerate, one that owns and controls the major concert venues, I rather feel that we are tilting at windmills.

I haven’t blogged about movies since late last September when I mentioned Calendar Girls with Helen Mirren and Ladies In Lavender (two sisters befriend a mysterious foreigner who washes up on the beach of their 1930’s Cornish seaside village) starring Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. I tend to prefer English films and English actors. I have no use for movie stars/pretty people Julia Roberts et al, but America’s got some real actors too — Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Freeman, and I’ll even include pretty boy Leonardo DiCaprio who I must concede did a masterful acting job in Aviator.

So what’s playing for us old folks now? Nada much. I like Meryl Streep so I’ll probably go to see The Devil Wears Prada. John likes Meryl Streep too, but I’m betting he would probably prefer to see Miami Vice. John also likes Johnny Depp and was curious about the hype around Pirates of the Caribbean, so he stolled into the movie theater one day a week or so ago to see for himself. (No, he did not sit through the whole two and a half hours.) I suppose we could see An Inconvenient Truth, but I’m already a believer and I’d rather be entertained than depressed.

Any recommendations?