Pete C

Mr. Sloane Joe Orton Gary Oldman

All right, I'll grant you a multitasking exception.

We shouldn't, but in this thread he deserves our undivided attention.

When one is finished with examples of Baraka's antisemitism, one can move on to his sexism...

A few years ago at the Chicago Jazz Festival Baraka and his wife went to sit in the VIP section. A security guard, a young African American woman, went to check their credentials, which they didn't have, and told them they couldn't sit there. Howard Mandel, who was nearby, went over to her and lectured her about who Baraka was, how important he was to her people, and that she should know her history and show him respect. She wasn't impressed, and got her supervisor. Ultimately they were allowed to stay in the VIP section. Still, I found it amusing watching this white guy lecturing this black woman on what history she should know, not to mention the assumption that by dint of who he was he was automatically entitled to preferred seating (though I'm sure he would have gotten the credentials if he had asked).

Nonetheless, I wouldn't call Elis Regina a jazz singer. Leny Andrade, yes.

Unfortunately. Is that a Baraka poem or is it the poem by a young African American girl that the Julius Lester uproar was about?

I was making a compressed statement about the assumptions and agendas underlying all aesthetics. Were you familiar with Baraka's work in your earlier right-wing Roman Catholic extremist incarnation, and if so, how did you view it then?

That's good, because if you felt otherwise it might jeopardize your standing in the post-colonialist academic left.

If it's the same Joe Christmas as on Jazz Corner (Al), I recently asked after him of someone who keeps in touch and he's doing quite well from what I hear.

I wondered whether the Duberman reference quoted above was some homophobic thing, but apparently Duberman called him out in the sixties for being a boring lunatic.

Perhaps there would have been no controversy if Baraka had been named the Ranter Laureate of New Jersey...

I suppose Howl is a rant too, but it can be judged as poetry.

Do you consider it a good poem?

Irving Caesar Saladin Leroy Vinnegar

The Grim Reaper Max Von Sydow Mad Max

Jeannie with the light brown hair Barbara Eden Satan

For its craft? Its use of language? Its aesthetics? Or its polemic?

Johnny Cash A Boy Named Sue Shel Silverstein

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silence_%28The_Twilight_Zone%29

Nancy Sinatra Boots Randolph Lady Randolph Churchill

Muhal Richard Abrams Roscoe Mitchell Anthony Braxton

While I don't think her Decca recordings generally rate among her best studio dates (with some notable exceptions, especially the versions with trio of I Loves You Porgy & My Man from 1948), I think Billie Holiday was in her best form in this period, having passed through youthful insouciance into gravitas before time and the "elements" took their toll. The Summer of '49 airchecks are among my favorites http://product.half.ebay.com/Summer-of-49-by-Billie-Holiday-CD-Dec-1995-Band-Stand-import/3362380&tg=info as well as the JATP recordings http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Philharmonic-Billie-Holiday-Story/dp/B0000046SY

Candy Darling John Candy Harry "Sweets" Edison