Face of the Bass

Do you consider it a good poem? Not really. It's obviously more intended as spoken word than as written literature...I think parts of it are good and parts of it are bad.

The whole poem? Or just those words? Yes, but it works both ways. Anti-Semitic people sometimes try to take cover by claiming they are only anti-Zionist, and at the same time pro-Israeli people sometimes try to paint people who have legitimate disagreements with Israeli policy (or with Zionism in general) as anti-Semites. It may be a fine line between the two that gets abused on all sides all the time, but it does exist.

I don't think Amiri Baraka is anti-Semitic. I think he's anti-Zionist and also a conspiracy nut, and in this particular case (the belief that 4,000 Israelis were told to stay home that day) those two things combined to cause him to write something very stupid.

1. Anita O'Day 2. Billie Holiday 3. Patricia Barber

Coincidentally enough, this week I've been reading a book of Baraka's essays from the 1960s, Home. The more I read of his work the more I like him. What I like is that he's rough around the edges, somewhat unpredictable, with an amazing grasp for language but always a little bit off from what you might expect. Some of the essays are forgettable but a few of them burn with a ferocity that is rarely found in American literature. I also love the way he tears into the black middle classes and other black writers of that time, especially James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. I also don't really have any problem with "Somebody Blew Up America." I think the charges of anti-Semitism are vastly overstated. I think he's incorrect to dabble in 9/11 conspiracy theories but that doesn't bother me so much. Most of the stuff chronicled in the Controversies section of his Wikipedia page strikes me as much ado about not very much. But that's just me.

I just want all that research and passion that he put into the topic to come through more clearly in his writing, which is why I wish he had allowed for greater editorial intervention. I get that he has strong opinions on his writing, but as a writer and editor myself I find myself trying to "clean up" parts of the book as I'm reading it, which makes it more difficult for me to really immerse myself in the writing.

Here is a video of Baraka reading the infamous "Somebody Blew Up America" with Rob Brown on saxophone.

From what I've read so far it has the makings of a very good biography. I just wish it had had more editorial intervention to cut out the neologisms and some of the extraneous material that gets in the way of the flow of the narrative. But the research is top notch and much of the writing is very good.

Exactly, saying Euram and Afram doesn't change anything...it's just putting different labels on the exact same categories. It does nothing to challenge the categories themselves.

So does that mean that, for instance, when describing the Khoikhoi people of Southern Africa we should call them "Hottentots" when referring to the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries? Language is about power, most precisely the power to define. If we were to follow your proposed rule then we would have to define subjugated peoples by the words picked by the people that were oppressing them.

The refusal of the university press he had a contract with to accept those coinages was among the chief reasons he left them and decided to publish to book himself. Pullman would say (indeed, IIRC, has said) that his desire to change common usage (or at least make it clear where he himself stands politically on this topic) was essential to the whole project. He does, after all, again IIRC, see prevailing racial assumptions-attitudes, etc. impinging directly and perniciously on Powell's life throughout, and no doubt feels that it would be morally wrong for him to step back from the present-day consequences-implications of that view, as though that socio-political "story" effectively ended with Powell's death. Rather, he wants to make those connections to the present unavoidable. Yeah, that was a disastrous error, I'd say. When reading, all the use of afram or euram does is require me to make the necessary substitution. It's a bit like saying "the n-word" instead of "nigger," as Louis C.K. has pointed out in a brilliant sketch.

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

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.

Why do people consider this to be one of Mosaic's best sets? Isn't most of this music available elsewhere? My problem is that I've come to learn that I'm just not a big Count Basie fan. I tried to be, but I'm just not. And that's the way it is. Oh well.

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Man, if only people would get this worked up about things that actually matter in this world. What a difference it would make.

Not necessarily.

That would disqualify pretty much every kind of African American music there is, including hip hop, funk, soul jazz, free jazz and on and on and on.

Sure it does. In 1963, Cecil & Ornette had already been around long enough to have made an impact past being "novelties", Albert Ayler's name was beginning to get out there (and his music heard a little), Trane & Elvin were really beginning to get in gear, lots of things that had been fermenting were starting to come to the surface, none of which had too much to do with putting on a suit & tie, running the changes with a "bluesy" virtuosity, and saying "We sincerely hope you do enjoy". And that's just in the music... You gotta remember, Baraka was a "radical", musically and socially. His patience for the status quo was next to nil, and having real, viable options at hand just made it more so. No, I don't think the timing explains it. Sorry. If Blues People had been written in 1959 I think he would have been just as dismissive of the genre. Even before the free jazz era, Baraka was looking for musical rebels, and the hard boppers definitely weren't that. Sorry, but read his 1959 essay about his homeboy Wayne Shorter in Black Music. or, in the same book, his near-ecstatic review of the Monk/Rouse/Warren/Dunlop group. For that matter, read the book in chronological, rather than as-published, order. From 1959 to 1967, the "militancy" makes almost exponential leaps, as it did in the real world. Now, you can say that neither Monk nor Shorter were ever typical "hard bop", and that is correct. But that also goes to the point that Jones' discomfort was not so much with the music of Hard Bop as it was the relative lack of truly original thinking in most of that music, not the basic stylistic elements of it. And that lack was much more glaring in 1963 than it was in 1959. The jazz "landscape" in 1963 was quite different than it was in 1959. Hell, in 1959, Cecil was still playing "tunes" for the most part, Ornette had just come to New York, and Trane had just begun to look at modal playing (and that thanks to Miles - Trane was still very much into changes and all their permutations). If you were going to look for "rebels" in the jazz world of 1959, it would have been in the general milieu of Hard Bop (or else in a few other places that were not relevant to LeRoi Jones' world). Where else and what else where the hip players playing? But in 1963...whole 'nother world. Fundamentally, profoundly different. And truthfully, I don't even know if LeRoi Jones even writes Blues People in 1959. I don't know if his mind is even in that place yet. Think about that! I think the ideas for Blues People had been percolating for him for some time. And his earlier championing of Monk certainly says nothing about hard bop, because Monk is not hard bop, never was hard bop, and if anything probably has more in common with Cecil than with most hard bop pianists. I mean, if we are talking about hard bop, then the big names in the late 1950s are Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Jimmy Smith, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, and so forth. Not Monk. Not Shorter. There's no denying that Baraka's politics changed in the early 1960s (and changed radically) from affiliation with the Beats to an emerging Black Nationalism, but that journey is not one away from hard bop, because it was never associated with hard bop to begin with. Oh, I don't think anyone's questioning the wisdom of reading what he has to say. I'd merely suggest that he has very, very 'strong opinions' (it's a long time since I read the book so I'm working off vague memory). And, in my experience, people who promote one cause by denigrating another tend to be working from an ideology which they then make the facts fit. Given the turbulent times he was living in, that's hardly unexpected. We don't live in those times (though many of the issues remain unresolved) and can thus be a bit more detached about things he felt the need to man the barricades over. It's just a case of reading the past with caution and an awareness of wider context. I respect Richard Wagner intellectually - doesn't mean I accept a lot of what he argued in his polemics. The other thing to remember about Baraka is that he was very mercurial at times. Something he might denounce one day he might feel differently about another day. He's a very restless writer (which is part of what makes him a great writer, I think), but it also means that the statements he makes one year he might refute a few years later. Just something to keep in mind. It would be interesting to know what Baraka thinks about hard bop today.

Sure it does. In 1963, Cecil & Ornette had already been around long enough to have made an impact past being "novelties", Albert Ayler's name was beginning to get out there (and his music heard a little), Trane & Elvin were really beginning to get in gear, lots of things that had been fermenting were starting to come to the surface, none of which had too much to do with putting on a suit & tie, running the changes with a "bluesy" virtuosity, and saying "We sincerely hope you do enjoy". And that's just in the music... You gotta remember, Baraka was a "radical", musically and socially. His patience for the status quo was next to nil, and having real, viable options at hand just made it more so. No, I don't think the timing explains it. Sorry. If Blues People had been written in 1959 I think he would have been just as dismissive of the genre. Even before the free jazz era, Baraka was looking for musical rebels, and the hard boppers definitely weren't that. Look at it closely .. I am not being any more reductionist than you are. In your above statement as well as in the one preceding it, you subdivide "all of jazz into various sub-genres" yourself. Which is a statement of fact because there ARE different styles of jazz so nothing wrong about that, no matter who makes that statement. And good and not so good jazz was made in all styles through the histroy of jazz. As for hard bop being the artistically most successful style of jazz, that would be a matter of personal preferences and can indeed be contested but depends on what criteria you would consider essential for "artistic success". ANY style preceding hard bop can make that claim depending on whether you are willing to accept to see each style of jazz on the terms of its time and depending on whether you value the groundwork or later embellishments higher . It may be argued that most hard boppers by and large were technically more proficient than most 20s jazzmen (though in order to prove that they would have had to show they were able to play 20s jazz just as well as or in fact even better than 20s jazzmen, assuming this earlier jazz is technically and artistically more simple ) and they may have accomplished musically more advanced feats than 20s and 30s jazzmen, but does this alone make them "artistically more successful"? Not by a long shot if one is willing to judge music on the terms of the time the music was actually made FIRST. So IMHO it again boils down to personal preferences and therefore is pointless to try to debate. And let's face it - while I would not dare to judge what made Jones/Baraka write what he did in 1963, by that year hard bop had already become an also-ran in the field of jazz. By that time contemporary jazz hard been split wide open into soul jazz and free jazz, to name just two which were apart from hard bop. 1963 was to hard bop what 1947/48 was to big band jazz. It was still around but was it still the pacesetting form of jazz? I actually think one of the main reasons that I prefer hard bop over earlier styles has to do with technological change. Hard bop was really the first jazz movement that didn't have to restrict itself to a 3 or 3 1/2 minute performance on record. And as a listener that makes a huge difference for me, as most swing, big band and early jazz recordings sound pinched to me. I know that in some cases technological limitations can produce superior art (the silent movie era is testament to this) but for me the shorter times of early jazz recordings just don't work. (And yes, I've heard the argument about economy of expression many times. I don't buy it.)

well put. "During its prime" is the operative phrase here. During their prime, iambic pentameter, royal masques and epic poetry were pretty cool too. But art forms evolve, and artists move on. Unfortunately, not so with the school of hard bop. Miles knew he had to, Coltrane knew he had to, Ornette knew it too. However, lesser luminaries continue to flog this musical form decade after decade after decade, long after its artistic life has fled. Right but Baraka was writing against hard bop when it was arguably either still in its prime or very nearly past its prime. Blues People was written in 1963, not 1993. I agree that hard bop played itself out by the mid-1960s, but that doesn't explain the animosity Baraka felt for it in 1963. During its prime hard bop produced a lot of repetitive music, but also a lot of wonderful music. Just as free jazz produced some wonderful music in its time, a lot of uninspired music, and has arguably been flogging itself to death for decade after decade after decade as well. But couldn't that be said about ANY style of music (jazz style, in particular) so does this statement advance this "debate"? Well if you wanted to be extremely reductionist and group all of jazz into various sub-genres, I would say hard bop has been one of the most artistically successful areas in jazz history. I'd take it over all the genres of music from before the Second World War, over bebop (which had become repetitive within a handful of years of its first recordings) and fusion. I'd probably take free jazz over hard bop, but those would probably be my top two. Again, this is all personal opinion but I spend way more time listening to hard bop records than I do to swing records or early jazz records.

There's a lot of truth to what Baraka says in the quote that started off this thread, but there's also a lot of great hard bop music. Like all genres (including free jazz) it could easily fall into repetitive cliche, but during its prime it was responsible for some of the best music in jazz history.

Well, I already have a Kindle so I got the book and started reading it yesterday. I'm only one chapter in but I think it's going to be good. I also think (and no disrespect intended) the book could have used some heavier editorial intervention. There are some sections that are really not necessary at all to the narrative, some clunky sentence constructions, and his insistence on using neologisms like "afram" and "euram" to refer to blacks and whites is distracting. That said, I expect this to be a good book, if a bit long.

I've had a Kindle for a year now. I still like to read scholarly books on real paper so I can make notes more easily, but when it comes to regular reading of jazz biographies or novels or whatever, I much prefer to read them on a Kindle. Books take up way too much space. I'm not a big fan of digital music at all but for me the digital era is tailor made for EBooks. Now if I have the option between buying the book or buying the Kindle version, I get the Kindle version about 85-90 percent of the time. Also, if you lost your Kindle that would not mean that you had lost your entire library. Your library is stored in multiple places...on your Kindle, yes, but also in your Amazon.com account. So in the case where you lost your Kindle, you would just need to replace the Kindle in order to access your library again. That said, the Kindle is not easily lost and I'd be rather astonished if someone managed to destroy theirs by dropping it in a toilet.

Don't understand the resistance to Kindles and the like. I want this book to be great. Not merely good or serviceable.