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RE: Closing of the American Mind (still fairly off topic...)
by billashline＠netscape.net 02 Sep '02

02 Sep '02

"Arthur Gadney" <a_gadney(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >>Bloom wasn't wrong in his criticism of the deteriorating, collective >> >academic American "mind," but his assessment of causes was often >rather >>convenient as well as elitist and self-serving. > >Just curious: Did he suggest any way to solve this problem? Well as I recall (I no longer own the book), Bloom promotes a return to classical education--a reading of the "great" books as part of the educational system and the necessity of "cultural literacy" a la his contemporary E.D. Hirsch, who were bothered by the newer emphases in American academia. -- His face is turned towards the past. Where we preceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. --Walter Benjamin on the Angel of History You can always rely on America to do the right thing, once it has exhausted the alternatives. --Winston Churchill __________________________________________________________________ The NEW Netscape 7.0 browser is now available. Upgrade now! http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/

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NYTimes.com Article: In the Macho World of Jazz, Don't Ask, Don't Tell
by f.fuchs＠gmx.net 02 Sep '02

02 Sep '02

This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by f.fuchs(a)gmx.net. In the Macho World of Jazz, Don't Ask, Don't Tell September 1, 2002 By FRANCIS DAVIS I have been asked what it's like being white in a field of music that's considered African-American," the vibraphonist Gary Burton says. "I think it would be equally valid to ask me what it's like being gay and playing a form of music that's seen as macho. It's interesting that the subject never seems to come up." Although white jazz fans in particular like to think of themselves as color-blind, it often seems that race is all they ever talk about when the subject is music. There is even a kind of reverse racial profiling that goes on in jazz: white players are pulled over and ticketed for reckless introspection. But whereas race is visible, even if it is becoming less so all the time, sexual orientation usually is not. Within jazz, race is considered a fit topic for public discourse, while a gay sexual orientation is regarded as private, a potential source of embarrassment for performer and audiences alike. It is practically gospel in jazz that a player taking an improvised solo is coming clean, baring his soul, telling us who he is in no uncertain terms. But what if the player is gay? Isn't that as much a clue to his identity as race? Mr. Burton's comments came during a panel discussion about homosexuality in jazz at the Village Vanguard in April, which I moderated. It was presented by the National Arts Journalism Program and Columbia University, and along with the writer Grover Sales, the other panelists were the pianist Fred Hersch, the saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase and the singer and pianist Andy Bey. There appears to be a growing acceptance of homosexuality among the general public. Yet the panel was the first public discussion that anyone could recall to address the topic of homosexuality in jazz. In jazz the rule remains "Don't ask, don't tell." This attitude is ironic because the jazz subculture has been notoriously free and easy, ahead of the beat on most social issues. Safety in numbers may have as much to do as sensibility with drawing gay men to certain professions, like hairdressing and floristry. In general, the performing arts are another area in which the news that someone is gay hardly comes as a shock. But there are ways in which jazz and all of popular music have more in common with baseball than with theater or dance. (Jazz even has its own body of statistics, in the form of discographies, recording dates and musical lineups.) Despite a growing number of female instrumentalists, the audience for jazz remains overwhelmingly male, which perhaps explains why jazz itself remains an enclave of machismo. There was a time when all jazz musicians were straight, as far as anyone knew. The composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn was a notable exception, but he was perfectly happy to spend his career in Duke Ellington's shadow, which was the same as being in the closet. It was only in 1996, with the publication of David Hajdu's Strayhorn biography, "Lush Life," that nonmusicians learned of Strayhorn's homosexuality. A common objection to Mr. Hajdu's book was that Strayhorn's sexual orientation had no bearing on his music. Mr. Burton has been "out" to his friends and associates since the late 1980's, when he took a male date to a party at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he has taught since 1971 and is now an executive vice president. "My decision to come out resulted from the end of my second marriage," he said. "I was in my 40's and finally came to the conclusion that I was more gay than straight. The deciding factor was that I got a crush on someone who was very out, and in the course of dating him, I had to be out as well. It didn't last, but I was out by then." Even so, Mr. Burton didn't go public, as it were, until 1994, when he discussed being gay in an interview on National Public Radio. Whatever repercussions he feared, an apparent lack of notice on the part of the jazz press (and by extension, the jazz community) left him more puzzled than relieved. Given his standing in jazz (he has been a consistent Downbeat poll-winner on vibes since the late 60's), it was as if the guest of honor at a formal dinner had noisily slurped his soup or blurted out an off-color remark - best to look the other way. Except for an article about Mr. Burton and other gay musicians in JazzTimes magazine last year, which elicited an angry letter that accused gay musicians of not swinging (long a white stereotype), the jazz press has continued to shy away from the subject, despite his willingness to speak frankly about being that supposedly rarest of creatures, a gay jazz musician. In avoiding questioning Mr. Burton about his sexual orientation, jazz journalists may be guilty of nothing more than trying to guard his privacy, or they might feel it's a nonissue. But this reticence seems disingenuous in light of the role that Miles Davis's reputed prowess with the opposite sex played in defining his appeal to many of his male fans. (Never mind the persistent rumors that Davis was bisexual.) And discretion can be an unintended form of homophobia, said Mr. Hersch. "There are several phases to coming out, and I think most of us went through one when we first told another human being that we were gay," Mr. Hersch said. "We were nervous and looking for the perfect way to put it. Then, over time, we get to where we assume everyone knows and nobody really cares. But the third phase is that in the same way that somebody else might talk about his wife or girlfriend, you want to be able to talk about your boyfriend or lack thereof." Jazz and gay culture may be antithetical. Although the musicians on the panel didn't feel that they had been ostracized since coming out, only Mr. Bey has attracted a sizable gay following since declaring his sexuality. "Once you've found out who you are, you can express your feminine side, your masculine side, you're not afraid to let it all out, and I think a lot of gay people want to hear that," Mr. Bey said. But he is a singer, and there have always been jazz singers like Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae with a gay appeal, regardless of their own sexual orientation. Mr. Burton's experience seems more typical of those on the panel. "One of the surprises for me in coming out was that nobody had ever heard of me and nobody had ever heard of the vibraphone," Mr. Burton said. "I had finally connected with `my people,' and they didn't care. The kinds of music that are popular in gay culture have a high degree of glamour, and jazz is the opposite." In a 1984 article for the magazine The Jazzletter, Mr. Sales noted the scarcity of gay jazz musicians relative to the overall gay population and speculated that the reason for this might be traced to jazz's earliest days, when it gave black men an outlet for expressing an assertive masculinity that they were otherwise forbidden to give voice to. Mr. Sales said jazz offered a similar outlet for the first white jazz musicians, who were likewise discouraged from expressing their masculinity as offspring of a genteel society in which music and the arts in general had become overrefined and, in Mr. Sales's word, "feminized." This is a reasonable enough theory, but it hardly explains why the jazz world - liberal on most issues - finds itself at this late date so far behind the rest of the population on issues relating to gender and sexuality. Except for a crack that if Mr. Hersch wanted to be asked about his love life, he should call a tune on his next album "something like, `For My Lover, Irving,' " there were no hostile comments from the floor during the question-and-answer period that followed the panel. But the Vanguard audience of 100 or so seemed far more comfortable participating in the two discussions that followed, which addressed the economic hardships of playing jazz and the proper roles of critics and scholars - the usual shop talk at jazz get-togethers. My lack of success in putting together a more racially balanced panel (Mr. Bey was the only black participant) raised for me the troubling question of whether gay black musicians face more difficulty in coming out than their white counterparts as a result of greater homophobia in black culture. (Some black denominations have a spotty record on gay issues, and hip-hop's preoccupation with thuggery has set an impossibly high standard of masculinity for young black men.) Despite my best efforts, there were no lesbians on the panel, but women may have a greater disincentive in coming out, because they already have so much going against them as female intruders in a music ruled by men. (To some men, a female drummer or horn player is automatically butch, even if she happens to be straight.) "I know certain gay musicians who are not out who I feel overcompensate by trying to be even more macho than straight musicians," Mr. Hersch said. "And unfortunately, certain women players have also been pressured into higher and louder and faster, with more chops." Whether being gay makes a difference in playing jazz was a question left hanging by Mr. Hersch and the other panelists, and none of the gay musicians I've spoken to in the months since have quite been able to answer it, either. But this doesn't mean that the question is irrelevant, just that gay musicians are still trying to figure it out for themselves. "I usually leave the interviewing up to the interviewer," Mr. Burton said, explaining that journalists typically ask him about his latest recording, his equipment and the trials of balancing teaching and performing. "But this undiscussed area of being a gay man, being part of the gay community - has that affected me creatively? That would be a very interesting thing to explore. But interviewers, maybe because they're not sure how to write about it, stay away from it." Like the others on the panel, Mr. Bey feels the issue warrants discussion. "You have to deal with the issue of who you are, and it can be a difficult issue if you're living a so-called abnormal life," he said. "It needs to be talked about in order to liberate yourself." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/01/arts/music/01DAVI.html?ex=1031985251&ei=1… HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales(a)nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help(a)nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

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BOREDOMS FUSHITSUSHA MELT BANANA RUINS
by Michael Gillham 02 Sep '02

02 Sep '02

TOKYO INVASION. VOLUME 1 : COSMIC KURUSHI MONSTERS" 2 x CD (Virgin, TOKYO1, 1996). Simply put, this is an absolutely incredible compilation compiled by Tony Herrington (then editor of THE WIRE magazine) documenting the "Japanese Underground". All of Virgin's releases such as this were formally OOP in 1999 and this really has become very scarce and sought after. Artists featured : (DISC ONE) MUSICA TRANSONIC, OMOIDE HATOBA, SPACE STREAKINGS, KYOJI SAWADA'S BASE OF FICTION, RUINS, DEMI SEMI QUAVER, KEIJI HAINO, MASAKI BATOH, BASS ARMY, HIRIHITO, OPTICAL*8 (DISC TWO) SHIZUKA, KATO HIDEKI, KAZAYUKI K NULL (KK NULL) & ICHIRO AGATA, FUSHITSUSHA, MELT BANANA, BOREDOMS, VAJRA, GROUND ZERO, ALTERED STATES, HIGH RISE, MAGICAL POWER MAKO. All tracks featured have been released elsewhere prior to this release or since. However, some of those releases are now long OOP also. FULL COLOUR SAVAGE PENCIL ARTWORK. The RESERVE PRICE is Â£19.99 which is very fair considering that this has sold for up to $150 on eBay! In Overall EX+ condition with no major defects, if any. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=903857358 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

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Re: SPK samples used on JOHN ZORN releases, etc
by francko.lamerikx＠philips.com 02 Sep '02

02 Sep '02

On the subject of Zorn sampling SPK: > I don't know if any other sharp-eared people noticed > that the start of SPK's "Ground Zero : Infinity Dose" > (from "Information Overload Unit") was sampled on > "Propolution" (track 9 of "Nani Nani"). > John Zorn also used the same sample (albeit more of) > on "Artemisia Absinthium", track 5 of Naked City's > "Absinthe" album. > SPK are named in the list of influences, etc, on the > inlay of Naked City's "Radio" album. There is also a sample of an SPK track in the "A Lot of Fun for the Evil One" track on "Filmworks IV". I don't know the name of the track, but it's on "Information Overload Unit". Come to think of it, has anyone recognized any other samples used in "A Lot of Fun...", since this track is constructed completely from sampled material? Frankco np: Nile "In Their Darkened Shrines" nr: Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen "Figments of Reality"

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Re: Ken Vandermark
by Paul Escamilla 02 Sep '02

02 Sep '02

Any fans of Ken Vandermark here? Thoughts? Opinions? Anyone going to his show in NYC this week?

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RE: Closing of the American Mind (still fairly off topic...)
by Arthur Gadney 02 Sep '02

02 Sep '02

>Bloom wasn't wrong in his criticism of the deteriorating, collective > >academic American "mind," but his assessment of causes was often >rather >convenient as well as elitist and self-serving. Just curious: Did he suggest any way to solve this problem? _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

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RE: Closing of the American Mind
by billashline＠netscape.net 02 Sep '02

02 Sep '02

>From: "Zachary Steiner" <zsteiner(a)butler.edu> >To: "'Zornlist'" <zorn-list(a)mailman.xmission.com> >Subject: Closing of the American Mind > >A friend of mine (a guitarist who has forsaken rock for classical in the >past year) has been telling me quite a bit about a book by Allan Bloom >called The Closing of the American Mind, specifically the section >pertaining to music. In this section he is very critical of rock music >and pretty much any music that doesn't fit under the broad classical >nomenclature, at least this is the impression that I get from my friend >and some of the quotes he's used. I wanted some z-listers' opinions on >this book and its views. I have not had the time to pick the book up, >so I'm going on what my friend has told me. Is this book as hard lined >as my friend is making it out to be, that Bloom has no tolerance for (or >worse believes in the inherit evilness of) any non-classical music, >especially rock? If so that's a very frustrating view to me as I know >of a great many non-classical works that have enriched my life in a way >many classical pieces have failed. Mozart is nice, but I can only >listen for so long (the Requiem is another story, though). I'll endorse most of what Herb said. This book came out in the late 80's and was one of the first volleys in what become the "culture wars" in American universities. Bloom was influenced heavily by classical political theorist Leo Strauss in Chicago. I don't find much of what Bloom says very interesting. It's a tendentious book prone to dumb caricatures like "the leftistization of Nietszche and vice versa" to describe the impact of French poststructuralism on humanities departments. Grad students found it an easy target for elementary deconstructive readings, like the title for instance. Bloom wasn't wrong in his criticism of the deteriorating, collective academic American "mind," but his assessment of causes was often rather convenient as well as elitist and self-serving. As a whole, the book hasn't had much longlasting value. He indeed has an argument about music, but it's nostalgic and I don't take it seriously. Unlike Marcin, I find Adorno far more interesting, especially his stuff on mass culture, though his comments on jazz are best ignored (we've been here before). NP: Ginger Baker, "East Timor", Going Back Home (just came back home myself from East Timor, a lovely country that I hope can survive). -- His face is turned towards the past. Where we preceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. --Walter Benjamin on the Angel of History You can always rely on America to do the right thing, once it has exhausted the alternatives. --Winston Churchill __________________________________________________________________ The NEW Netscape 7.0 browser is now available. Upgrade now! http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/

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Re: Odp: Closing of the American Mind
by Arthur Gadney 02 Sep '02

02 Sep '02

Hello. > > I just finsihsed reading a book by Noam Chomsky where he stated that he > > thinks Bloom's book is "incredibly stupid". So that's also a view. > >What book was it in? "Understanding Power". I think it's the newest one. I heartly recommend it, even for people who disagree with or just generally dislike Chomsky. It a collection of interviews, very funny and thought provocing. And, the main reason for getting this book, it has 500 pages of footnotes which are available for free. Not just normal references, but almost a small additional article about every point with extensive qoutes from the original sources Chomsky refers to. It's really quite spetacular, and make sit an extremely valuable source for futher reference on a long number of topics. Anyway, Chomsky talks about Bloom's book for a few pages. He mentions that he read the book in 15 minutes while standing on the line in the supermarket! _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com

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Re: Closing of the American Mind
by Arthur Gadney 02 Sep '02

02 Sep '02

I just finsihsed reading a book by Noam Chomsky where he stated that he thinks Bloom's book is "incredibly stupid". So that's also a view. _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

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Re: Closing of the American Mind
by Herb Levy 02 Sep '02

02 Sep '02

"Zachary Steiner" <zsteiner(a)butler.edu> wrote: >A friend of mine (a guitarist who has forsaken rock for classical in the >past year) has been telling me quite a bit about a book by Allan Bloom >called The Closing of the American Mind, specifically the section >pertaining to music. In this section he is very critical of rock music >and pretty much any music that doesn't fit under the broad classical >nomenclature, at least this is the impression that I get from my friend >and some of the quotes he's used. I wanted some z-listers' opinions on >this book and its views. I have not had the time to pick the book up, >so I'm going on what my friend has told me. Is this book as hard lined >as my friend is making it out to be, that Bloom has no tolerance for (or >worse believes in the inherit evilness of) any non-classical music, >especially rock? If so that's a very frustrating view to me as I know >of a great many non-classical works that have enriched my life in a way >many classical pieces have failed. Mozart is nice, but I can only >listen for so long (the Requiem is another story, though). I have a lot of problems with Bloom's view of what counts as useful cultural artifacts, which goes far beyond a criticism of rock versus classical music. He's got a complex analysis with roots deep in classical philosophy about how people in the US don't think through the implications of their core beliefs & tastes. Oversimplifying his argument, he thinks that the general culture seen in the US doesn't exemplify the founding ideas & ideals behind the country as the culmination, so far, of Western civilization. Despite my disagreements with many of his ideas and much of his taste, I've got to point out that boiling his complex argument down to "does he really think rock sucks?", coupled with a statement like >I have not had the time to pick the book up, so I'm going on what my >friend has told me. is symptomatic of what he considered to be an overly shallow approach to culture on the part of many people living under the influence of the US. -- Herb Levy Mappings: new music in RealAudio P O Box 9369 Forth Wort, TX 76147 USA http://antennaradio.com/mappings/show.htm mappings(a)antennaradio.com

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