Ted Sirota's Rebel Souls: BREEDING RESISTANCE

[JSngry]

This one came at me out of nowhere, and landed right in the sweet spot. Not keeping up with everything as I used to (and probably still should be), none of the players here were known to me, but there's some really good music being made by this band, fresh, interesting, and "accessable".

Sirota's politics and liner commentary are decidely leftist/liberationist, and if I didn't know any better, I'd swear that our own Johnny E was moonlighting in Chicago! But the music is largely not overtlly political, and is an attractive blend of straight-ahead, freebop, R&B, reggae/dub, African, and all the other "usual suspects" of players looking to play anything BUT traditional ii-V-I tunejazz w/o abandoning pulse/groove altogether. This "eclecticism", this "unpredictability", has become predictable in and of itself, but Sirota & Co. get around all that by employing the oldest (yet seemingly most difficult) trick in the book - they just play the shit out of the material with vim, vigah, and vitaliky, and never sound like they're revelling in their "difference". They're just having a blast playing the music, and I find their spirit most contagious.

With a front line of tenor/trombone, and the backing of guitar, bass, and drums, they've got an instrumentation that lends itself quite nicely to a variety of "styles" and colors, and they utilize this potential for variety most delightfully, never getting hung up in one bag, yet avoiding the "pastiche" effect that is always a danger when the style is "no style".

Forget about the political "messages" in the music if you can (or if you must - myself, I found the one overtly political cut, a tribute to Fred Hampton, replete w/ongoing samplings of his speeches to be a way-cool blast from the past, but that's just me) and check this one out. If you like music that ignores boundaries yet doesn't try to break them, if you like music that is "populist" w/o being "popular", if you like edge w/o edginess, and/or if you just like hearing some cats having a blast playing music that is jazz instead of self-consciously "playing jazz", then I think you might well enjoy this new release on Delmark. You can dance to most of it - in the house or in the street. The choice is yours.

AMG Review by Thom Jurek that for once is not particularly hyperbolic!

JimBobwe says check it out!

[Hank]

Am very interested in checking this one out. Thanks for posting this. I've just lately been listening to Rule of Three, which has Sirota with Geof Bradfield on saxes and Noel Kupersmith on droms--not guys I'm familiar with, but the music is real good and fits your description: fresh, interesting, and "accessible," while maintaining a pulse.

[sidewinder]

Sirota's previous releases on Naim are well worth a listen - I particularly like 'Propaganda' with its wide-open, sophisticated sounds and hint of Mingus influences throughout. Ted is also being featured on another board's forum (which shall be nameless here ) and offering to respond to questions posted. Cool stuff ! -_-

Edited March 11, 2004 by sidewinder

[relyles]

I have this one in the unheard box and will have to give it a listen. I am a fan of both Jeb Bishop and Jeff Parker from other recordings.

[Nate Dorward]

Hm....this one I find a bit of a curate's egg. I really wanted to like it as I thought Bradfield's Rule of Three was brilliant: it is simply one of the best jazz discs of 2003 (fans of Tony Malaby's Adobe, another tenor/bass/drums date, should check it out--to my ears the Bradfield's got the edge, because Geof's tunes are more interesting & the choice of covers is spot-on--Andrew Hill, Randy Weston, Ellington...). I'm glad someone else has heard it--I'd feared that besides me & Ben Ratliff no-one had noticed it! -- But the Sirota's a mild disappointment to me.... I suppose there's only two tracks I actually dislike on Breeding Resistance, the attempt at reggae & the Fred Hampton tribute. & there's some great stuff--my faith in Bradfield is repaid in his three very nice tunes (the "Elegy" in particular). But, hm.....other things I'm not so keen on. For instance, Jeb Bishop seems very underpowered here--doesn't it strike you that he's playing it very safe on his solo on his own "Knife" (his own tune!)? I suppose I shouldn't expect flash from Bishop, but there's a lot of lines which are the musical equivalent of groundhugging (moving in steps or thirds & constantly circling back to the same register). Compared to other work of his I've heard recently (e.g. his very good work on Kyle Bruckmann's Wrack) Bishop sounds like he's having an off-day. Anyway, the Sirota's worth hearing, but I suspect if I keep listening to it it'll be a burn of the disc minus about 3-4 tracks....like a lot of recent Delmarks this could have used a little shorter running time.

Jurek is the boy who cried wolf: eventually he's bound to be right, if you're still paying attention by then..... But I don't think he's right about this disc. Though at least it's a darn sight better than the inept Kalaparush & the Light disc released on Delmark at the same time, also reviewed positively by Jurek at the same time.

I do find Sirota's liner-notes well-intentioned but vague, self-contradictory & ridiculously out-of-touch--not too impressed with some young guy idolizing Chairman Mao & the Black Panthers, which looks to me just like it's trying to live in a 1960s/1970s radical-chic time-warp. I'm glad he hates Bush, I do too, but I still find the liner notes dodgy.

I'm off to see Joe McPhee Friday night & will be back Saturday or Sunday so excuse me if I take a while to reply to any comments here or elsewhere.

Edited March 12, 2004 by Nate Dorward

[Sundog]

These guys are quite good, I've seen them a couple of times live and have enjoyed them immensely. They actually opened the Chicago Jazz fest last year, had a 12:30 pm slot. Too bad they couldn't play at night. They deserve the exposure. A band worth watching.

[Tubby Haze]

Greetings,

My beloved Mother was scouring the Internet, in between games of online Blackjack, and turned me onto this message board.

Nate - I appreciate your enthusiasm regarding "Rule of Three". Although I didn't write any of the tunes on the CD, I was an equal contributor to the music, I facilitated the recording, and financed the release along with Geof. Mark Corrotto also wrote a very nice review of the CD, if I'm not mistaken, and Thom Jurek has praised it as well. Guess he didn't cry wolf on that one! Naim had an opportunity to release that CD but decided against it.

However, I'd like to respond to the more personal aspects of your post. Of course I don't expect everybody to love my music, or my politics, but I am certainly not living in a "time warp". If you recall, the protests that took place around the globe about a year ago were the biggest and broadest that the world has seen in about 30 years. I believe, along with a lot of other people these days, that the time for a radical change is even more pressing now than it was in the 60's. The stakes are getting higher- and voting Bush out ain't gonna do it. The oppression and living conditions for the masses of Black & Latino people here in the U.S. has only worsened since the 60's. I don't "idolize" Mao, but I am inspired by him as a revolutionary leader and I've read much of his writings. I only included one short, famous Mao quote in my liner notes, I'm not sure how you're twisting that into an "idolization". I don't "idolize" anybody.

I also am very much inspired by many of the former Black Panthers, especially Fred Hampton and Mumia Abu-Jamal, but also Huey P. Newton, Bobby Hutton, Bobby Seale, Geronimo Pratt and others. On my previous records I've written and recorded songs dedicated to Mumia and Geronimo. There's nothing "chic" about this to me, especially in the current Ashcroft era. I've put my body on the line on numerous occasions to back up my convictions. I've been jailed and I've faced serious charges that added up to years in prison for peaceful protests. I've been beat up by police and kicked in the ass by skin heads. I'm not that young. In fact I might be older than you. I'm 35 years old and I have two children (ages 10 & 5) to take care of. I don't take any of this stuff lightly. This is as "serious as my life" brother. Also, I wasn't trying to "impress" anyone - only trying to express myself as an artist and human being, and possibly inspire those who have been thinking along the same lines.

Of course there's only so much space on a CD for liner notes, so I had to narrow my thoughts down, but I don't think they are vague at all. I'm curious what you think is self-contradictory about them? Of course I'm a musician, not a writer, so I could definitely see a writer having some issues with my writing skills. But without knowing me personally how would you know if I'm contradicting myself?

I agree that a lot of Delmark CD's would be better over all if they were shorter, but you should understand that this is out of the control of the artist and should consider refraining from criticizing the recording artist for this in the future.

Ah yes, and an "attempt at reggae"? Ouch! I have to take issue with you on that my brother. You must not know reggae that well. I wasn't known as the "best white reggae drummer in Boston" for no reason! I think Jeff Parker would take issue with you as well on this one. You don't dig what he plays on that track? That shit is killin'!

I appreciate that you're a critic who is actually critical and speaks his mind - nothing wrong with that (!)- and thanks for the kind words in the past. Of course I disagree with you about "Breeding Resistance", but I always like a good debate. It's all in good fun. Just don't talk about my Mama.

Kind Regards,

Ted Sirota

[Chuck Nessa]

Good to see you here. Please participate as often as possible.

[relyles]

In the past week I have been able to audition both Rule of Three and Breeding Resistance. I enjoyed them both with the edge going to the trio recording - probably because I have a thing for a good saxophone trio recording.

[Nate Dorward]

Ted--thanks for the detailed reply. Glad to hear Rule of Three's got a few more writeups, even though one's from the pen of (shudder) Thom Jurek. It's a great disc & deserves all the press it gets.

Well, OK, sub in "is inspired by" for "idolizes" (too strong a word, true) & I still don't get it with the admiration for Mao Tse-Tung &c. I'm sure you know perfectly well the reasons why many would think him no sort of moral authority, so I guess we'll just have to disagree here.

I very much appreciate your own willingness to get involved in the protest movement. "Resistance", though....I'm not sure that the protests against invading Iraq last year yet qualify as that. I'd like to feel hopeful at that display of mass public protest (which wasn't going to stop anything of course--as we know, the Bush administration had long since made the decision to invade Iraq, even before 9/11--but was nonetheless very important); but I'm not sure whether it was a one-time-only event or whether it will lead to a more permanent culture of active political dissent (as opposed to just alienation, pained resignation, frustration, disenchantment, or--as you point to--the urge to debark for another country). Is there strong evidence for the latter alternative, or will/has that consensus/mass revulsion of a year ago just dissolve again?

I suppose what I distrust about the liner notes is the vagueness of the political aims. They're for "resistance" & "the struggle", they're against "oppression", they're for "martyrs". But the words are very slippery--they are words that are often used as much to justify violence & political reprisal as they are to genuinely defend a political good--so I'm distrustful of their use here without enough & consistent enough specification. (E.g. the invasion of Iraq was of course against "oppression" in the US adminstration's version of events. & for several millennia now the word "martyr" is often used to justify reprisals against those blamed for the martyrdom. That was the whole point of say a book like Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which justified several centuries' persecution of Catholics.) As a result there are sentences in the liner notes I would definitely look askance at, for instance this one which accidentally channels the exact diction & tone of voice of Bush's public statements: "Change doesn't happen because reckless rulers of ruthless regimes wake up one day and decide to turn over a new leaf." Isn't this uncomfortably close to justifications for enforced "regime change"? I know you don't intend it this way, but still it's language that's to be avoided for this reason.

I suppose, though the use of the word "attempt" about the reggae track was ungenerous (though I still don't like the track!), what I was trying to get at was the fact that the album simply seems to be going in a lot of directions at once. That's both a comment on the music & on the political content (the point where they coincide). Let me put it this way. Many (most?) of the classic political statements in the jazz canon came out of the Civil Rights Movement (Roach, Rollins' Freedom Suite, Coltrane's "Alabama", &c): that offered a coherent political movement & practical goal (I'm probably massively simplifying here but never mind), & a fairly focussed theme for the musicians to work with. Whereas on Breeding Resistance "resistance" is all over the map, touching on the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995, the police execution of Fred Hampton, "martyrs" in general, a Jamaican film depicting a quasi-revolutionary moment in a nightclub, "Resistance" in general with a shout-out to Mao's comment on paper tigers, a reminder of Bush's appetite for capital punishment, & a reference to the shamed coverup of Guernica during Powell's press conference. (Plus Geof's 3 tracks & the Bishop tune, which have different, more abstract or autobiographical sources, I gather.) Anyway, that's an admirable set of concerns but its sheer scatteredness--arbitrariness--leaches away my hope for serious political content & I find this reflected in the grab-bag quality of the music on the album. -- I suppose that the foregoing makes clear that I don't find this a very hopeful political moment right now, so some of the comments in the liner notes jar--though if you have evidence why I'm wrong, I'd be extremely glad to hear it. & my feeling is that many of the best political albums in jazz have a fairly concrete sense of hope somewhere in there--the last such instance for me being Dave Douglas's Witness, recorded just months after Seattle.

"Self-contradictory" doesn't mean contradicting what you've said on other occasions; it means that a single document contradicts itself internally.

Interesting to hear that the decisions about the running time & program on the disc are Delmark's rather than yours: is this to say you'd have preferred a shorter program yourself? I do think long CDs are the bane of the market--many reviewers I know find a surfeit of material annoying (it makes it more arduous to review) but even many regular nonreviewing jazzfans I know find 70-minute CDs too long.

& this note's pretty long too--my apologies. Time to get to work prepping the house for some guests' arrival so I'll sign off now.

[Tubby Haze]

Nate,

Let me start off by saying that I have always been a fan of the LP. Even after CD's came out I was still a fan of the LP in large part because of the time limit on a piece of vinyl (unless of course you put out a double record). In turn, I became a fan of the "short" CD. I don't want to get myself in any trouble here, so let me just say that I am generally not a a fan of the 65-74 minute CD.

Also, I put out this record so I expect to be judged and criticized by people, especially critics. But I think critics often times scrutinize too hard and don't fully contemplate the external factors that might apply when an artist is creating a work. As I also said in the liner notes, "Breeding Resistance" is not meant to be some musical masterpiece that is going to ignite revolutions the world over, but more like a couple of shots in the battle against reactionaries. In order to create my masterpiece I would have needed 1) more time to create it 2) a budget to sustain the endeavor 3) more time in the studio 4) complete artistic freedom 5) a Nanny. These are the things I can think of off the top of my head. The reality is I had none of these things.

I found out that I would be making a record for Delmark in mid-August. Before that I wasn't prepared to make a CD. That gave me just a little over a month to come up with a concept, write new music, solicit new material from the bandmembers and rehearse and prepare the band for the recording. All of this has to be done while trying to make steady gigs that pay my rent, teach, and take care of my family. If I had a major label budget and backing I believe I could have made something much closer to my ideal record... but of course I didn't.

Also, although I am the leader of the band, I run the band in a democratic fashion -or more like democratic centralism. Everybody has a say, but I have the right to make the final decisions because in the end it's my band. However, I do my best to let the other musicians express themselves and flourish through their own music. I could have written every song on the record and it probably would have been a more cohesive record, but I decided against that. The band members knew what the theme of the record would be and they responded to that to varying degrees. I didn't tell people what to name their songs, or what to write about specifically, nor did I reject what they brought to the table because I liked the music. I think the theme was tied together overall by the more overtly (politically) titled tracks. Jeff Parker called his track "For Martyrs". I didn't tell him to rename it because some critics might think that's vague! C'mon Nate, that track is preceded by tracks dedicated to Ken Saro-Wiwa and Fred Hampton. You can't figure out that I'm not talking about Mohammed Atta?

The "ruthless rulers" quote is followed by the explanation that real change happens when the PEOPLE fight back against reactionaries, not when reactionaries invade and conquer other sovereign nations. It's incredibly obvious that the kind of oppression that I'm talking about is the kind that is dished out by G.W Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney etc. I CALL THEM OUT BY NAME! "The invasion of Iraq was of course against "oppression" in the US adminstration's version of events" you say, but so what?! It couldn't be more obvious that I'm speaking from the opposite viewpoint. I think you are really nitpicking here.

Your argument against my record could be made even more easily against the "classic" protest records that you mentioned. Here is the list of songs on Sonny Rollins "Freedom Suite"

1. The Freedom Suite (Rollins) - 19:17

2. Someday I'll Find You (Coward) - 4:35

3. Will You Still Be Mine? (Adair/Dennis) - 2:54

4. Till There Was You [Take 4] (Willson) - 4:54

5. Till There Was You [*] (Willson) - 4:55

6. Shadow Waltz (Dubin/Warren) - 4:08

This is a cohesive record politically by your logic, and mine isn't???????? Unlike you, I understand what Sonny was going for and I accept it. I understand the different pressures that he might have faced when making the record and I accept and appreciate what he put forward as an artist. Another example you give...

Coltrane's "Live At Birdland"

1. Afro Blue (Santamaria) - 8:07

2. I Want to Talk About You (Eckstine) - 8:11

3. The Promise (Coltrane) - 8:06

4. Alabama (Coltrane) - 5:08

5. Your Lady (Coltrane) - 6:39

6. Vilia [*] (Lehar) - 4:36

The civil rights movement had all sorts of different lines within it. You had MLK and Bobby Kennedy and then you had H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael. That is NOT one unified movement. That is many different movements joining together in a united front. That united front eventually splintered more and more as the struggles sharpened up.

My record is NOT a "grab-bag". The theme is resisting oppression. This oppression manifests itself in many different ways. From the racist death penalty, to the murdering of revolutionaries, to imperialist wars, to the oppression of women, to the censorship of art. Much of this is coming down from a pack of Christian Facists that have their hands on the levers of power here in the U.S. That's like saying you can't follow baseball because in the Eastern Division the teams are all in different cities! "Well, we've got the Montreal Expos in this city, and the New York Mets in this city, and the Phillies in this city...it's just a mess - it's a grab bag!" Look man, they're all in the same league and they all play baseball. Most of the tunes on my record have to do with the same theme and those that don't are because I didn't censor the other people in my band because they didn't go along with my line completely.

Also, you're saying that you're concerned about a politcal record having a sense of hope, but it sounds like you have no hope in the masses of people. I think the music on my record is uplifiting. I think the message is uplifting. I'm saying look, don't be so depressed and freaked out by these global gangsters running the U.S. right now - the more they oppress the people the more the people will resist that oppression and fight back. That's uplifting. The harder they come the harder they fall. I'm not dealing with revolutionary tactics in this record. First things first - let's resist their oppression and fight back in all kinds of ways. Millions upon millions of people out in the streets, risking arrest or even just disrupting their daily routine - yes that is resistance! Me & my children were out with thousands of other people in Chicago yesterday in the streets resisting and saying NO to the global agenda of the U.S. Imperialists. Yes, things need to be taken to a much higher level in order for real change to occur, but this IS resistance. Get your cynical ass out in the streets and see what's going on. Get your head out of the sand Nate! Go out into the ghettos and barrios and speak with the people and hear what they have to say. Hear what they have to say about police brutality, racial profiling, job opportunities, la migra, health care, education, housing. These are the people that are going to be the backbone of a movement that makes real change.

Finally, you're missing the group sound, the spirit, the soulfulness, and the musicality of the band that ties our music together. I'm happy to say that you are one of the few people that doesn't get it. Who feels it knows it my brother, and you're not feeling it. However, I still think you're a good guy and when we're in Toronto I'll buy you a beer & put you on the guest list. Holy shit was this long!

-Ted

[Nate Dorward]

Toronto? Well, if you're here & I'm in town then yes I'll be there.

Quick hits--

I imagine much of the disagreement is semantic. I find it useful--important, actually--to distinguish between political disaffection, political protest, & political resistance. There's an important difference between those last two, which I wouldn't like to see erased.

I had the particular pieces of Rollins & Coltrane in mind, not the whole albums (indeed specifically named the Coltrane track, not the album).

Yes as I said I know what you're trying to say but one still needs to avoid using unscrutinized language that reproduces the habits of thought & rhetorical ploys of those one is opposing.