Leeway

Teacher, intellectual and l'honnete homme, Oidili, contests personally and politically with corrupt and rapacious government minister, M.A. Manga, for personal and political integrity. Predecessor (1967) to "Anthills of the Savannah," which also concerns itself with fighting corrupt power. Achebe's innate geniality, reasonableness and personable literary style make it a good read but perhaps keeps it from the ranks of the strongest political novels.

THE MIMIC MEN - 1967 - V.S. Naipul A difficult book, mostly due to the quite unpleasant first-person narrator, "Ralph" SIngh, a self-styled dandy, which here I suppose means snob, dilettante, and monumentally disaffected person. I suppose he can be considered something of an existentialist anti-hero. I would not e surprised to find that this novel served as Naipul's apologia pro vita sua in breaking with Trinidad and becoming an English ex-pat. If the lead character is a bit hard to tolerate, the writing itself is marvelous.

I have "The Arrival of Bobby Jones," IIRC it's somewhat better than average, but that's about it for me.

Thanks for the recollection, Chuck. Inclined to assume that all those record stories mentioned are history as well (?). Another lamentable fact.

KARL MARX: A NINETEENTH CENTURY LIFE - Jonathan Sperber Read a chapter here and there while following more literary lines, satisfying an historical/biographical interest in Marx. Came away from this very even-handed work with not much regard for Marx as a person or, surprisingly, as a contemporary political thinker (he was often wrong on such key developments as Indian uprising, Italian unification, and the Franco-Prussian war, just to cite some examples). He was a formidable theoretician though.

It is indeed a beautiful cathedral. Just to be precise, it is/was a synagogue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Orensanz_Center

At the moment when it counted most for many musicians, he provided a vehicle for great art. It would be very hard to imagine not having ESP-Disk. Thank you Mr. Stollman, RIP.

Generally it hasn't, but opening night and "big nights" have sold out (or pretty close) in some cases. The question is how many will the new venue hold and will that meet the demand. I'm sure that Patricia Nicholson Parker and WIlliam Parker have given their serious attention to this matter and taken the measure of the new space. It would be nice to know, though, more about what the new venue should be like for VF. BTW, I agree that Tuesday and Saturday are the strongest nights, which raises some tactical considerations for attendance.

DR. CHICAGO - Clifford Jordan, Red Rodney, Jaki Byard, Ed Howard, Vernel Fournier. Beehive LP. What tipped me to buy the album was the cool map of Chicago music venues circa 1984 on the cover.

One of the questions I have is how well Judson will hold up as a concert venue. When they've used it for Winter JazzFest, audience members stood or sat on the bare floor, and the noise from the back of the room was quite noticeable. I assume they will put folding seats in, but then there is not that much space IIRC. It kind of reminds me of the unlamented (at least by me) Clemente Soto Velez space, where the VF was once held. OTOH, I like being on Washington Square and in the Village. I wonder why they left Roulette? And changed the dates to July? Interesting.

The double LP set. Vinyl sounds good and surfaces are quiet. Brilliant playing here. Roscoe still out in front of the avant.

SHORT WAVE & SET SAIL FOR THE SUN - Karlheinz Stockhausen, comp. Performed by The Negative Band. Finnadar LP. 1975 I believe Braxton has expressed his appreciation for Stockhausen, and one can hear some Braxtonian elements in this earlier recording, for example, the musicians each have a radio in "Short Wave" that they may play in lieu of their instrument. The musical notation for direction of the players somewhat resembles Braxton's method at times. BTW, Earl Howard plays alto sax in the Band.

MOUNTAINSCAPES - Barre Phillips, John Surman, John Abercrombie, Stu Martin, Dieter Feichtner.

Some posts by Sangrey about "Light" Henry Huff got me checking the shelves again and lo and behold:

ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH - 1987 - Chinua Achebe Uneven but nevertheless interesting novel of political corruption and how governments slide ineluctably towards one-man rule and dictatorship.

I have that Ethnic Heritage Ensemble album, "Impressions," on Red Records with Huff, Wilkerson, and Kahil El'Zabar. Worth checking out.

KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST - Adam Hochschild Decided to read some history related to the African fiction I've mostly been reading. This is a horrifying account of the brutal exploitation of Congo-Central Africa resources and people by King Leopold and his minions. Leopold pretty much owned it and ran it as his personal fiefdom. Forced labor, mutilation, murder--all part of Leopold's system for extracting the maximum amount of ivory and rubber. A chapter on Conrad, who spent 6 months there, whose Kurtz expressed the state of things, "The horror! The horror"!

Me too! First read 1984 at the age of 16 and am still fascinated by it. Joyce has always been my literary lodestar: "Dubliners," "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and "Ulysses." Never got far with "Finnegan's Wake" though.

ONITSHA - 1991- J.M.G. LeClezio Another reading in Africana fiction. I came across this book on the shelves of the local library (which are pretty threadbare) purely by happenstance. Never heard of the book or the author, who it turns out is a Nobel Prize winner in Literature. The story of a young boy and his Italo-French mother who leave France shortly after WWII to rejoin father, an Englishman who has taken up a trading position in Onitsha, a trading port on the banks of the Niger river. Exposure to the remnants of colonial life leaves a bitter impression on the boy and his mother, and they become increasingly sympathetic to the natives. The Nobel prize refers to Le Clezio's "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" and that is certainly the nature of this book.

Got a chance to listen to this one, coming out shortly on Relative Pitch. The duo format will likely remind one of "And Other Desert Towns" with Laubrock and Rainey, but this album is several degrees heavier, with Mette and Corsano dropping bombs all over the place. Some of Corsano's heaviest drumming in quite a while, and Mette there every step of the way. A good one.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER - Graham Greene Based on Greene's time in Freetown, Sierra Leone, the novel only ostensibly is an African novel. It has the usual tropical tropes: heat, rain, bugs, "boys," etc. But Greene's type of portable (and potable, considering the among of alcohol drunk) misery could be set anywhere from Asia to Mexico and the Caribbean, and has. The absence of any real African life might be more telling than what is here. Anyway, still a great novel, even if at times I hear the apparatus of religion clunking too noisily away. I read Dos Passos trilogy back in grad school. It always felt quite cinematic to me, as if Dos Passos took Sergei Eisenstein as a model. Although I have an allergy to most SF, I'll give Okorafor's "Lagoon" a try if you recommend it.

ARROW OF GOD - Chinua Achebe. 3rd volume in the African Trilogy. The story of a high priest whose pride and arrogance makes him lose his followers and his own mind. Situated temporally between "Things Fall Apart" and "No Longer at Ease," this is probably the most difficult volume in the trilogy. The mass of folklore, custom and religious belief, while interesting, often overwhelm the narrative.

I picked up Urbani's Easy to Love recently, as well as a Giovanni Tommaso Quintet disc featuring Urbani, need to give them a spin.

With Ben Shahn cover illustration