I frequently drive by the Colfax Avenue concert venues, old theaters like the Bluebird, and see names of bands on the marquee. I don't know most of them, but I read the names, anyway. When I think about going to a concert I start thinking about the volume, the crowds, and the fact that I'd rather be home anyway. The music I grew up with was all classic rock, folk, folk-rock, Beatles and Stones and San Francisco and top 40 from the 50's forward. And there was James Brown on my list as well. My father loved jazz from the swing era and played stride piano with ease. He gave me an ear for jazz but I took to Thelonius Monk and Bill Evans, who were more modern at the time. Since I was trained for years as a classical musician I've got all of that music in my head as well. I'm hardly alone in that and as I've gotten older more and more young musicians experience music in that sort of eclectic way. One form seems to feed another and the forms are endless, especially with world music easily available.
Some think that this way of experiencing music, either as a listener or as a professional musician is a sign of some kind of cultural decline. I get where that comes from. If training is what others teach you, than that will be what you think is true. I was told endlessly that I was supposed to like and play certain kinds of music, all of it European. All I can say is, it didn't take.
So to the newer stuff, at least to me. The music sound track from the film Amelie by Yann Tierson was really interesting. I even liked Eddie Veder's soundtrack for Into the Wilderness. Apparently there were others who found it, well, distracting. Paul Simon's new album, which I've only heard in small segments, seems fresh and interesting. I saw Coldplay doing Fix It on a cable TV concert the other day and was drawn in completely. Their post-modern angst was almost mesmerizing, as if they've absorbed too early the pain of the world and want to release it back to the world again in a catharsis of rhythm, melancholic lyricism and fanatical physical energy. It was pretty cool.
The sort of improvising on the piano I do these days borrows from Brad Mehldau, a kind of expressionist jazz pianist when he's letting go. He's found a way in to the pop sound world and recycles it through through the acoustic grand piano, still a powerful medium. He's got a left hand that plays a little like Bach and a little like Chopin and sometimes like Scriabin, with some Bud Powell thrown in along the way. I love his music, especially when he stretches out of bounds and goes who knows where. I suppose he's got his own version of post-modern expressionistic angst going, but that's not all he does. He's a bit like Keith Jarrett but thankfully he doesn't scream like Jerry Lewis in heat when he plays. Sorry Keith.
But the latest music that I've liked is from Finland, a piano concerto with wonderful harmonic sonorities and virtuosic piano writing. The composer's name is Einojuhani and the piece is his Piano Concerto # 3 played by Vladimir Ashkenazy. It's consistently good throughout all three movements, one of the better modern classical works I've ever heard.
You never know when something new will grab you and this one got to me, a random visit to the library and there it was. I never would have found it on iTunes or Pandora or anywhere in cyber-media. It was sitting in a bin, just like the old days before Tower Records went under with all the other CD stores. Thankfully there are some bins left to cull and consider.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
Micky Hart
Planet Drum is an older CD now, but Micky Hart has been continuing his fascinating explorations into world music and rhythm since then. I've never been a Grateful Dead follower, but I admire what they were doing and am really excited by Micky Hart's work. World music is nothing new nor is the idea of fusing foreign cultural elements together with familiar styles. Something new always comes out, not "pure" (not that this is possible) but interesting. Western music was built on the combination of different styles and aesthetics. Otherwise we would still be singing Gregorian Chant, itself the result of stylistic combination and revision. The music of medieval villages eventually made it into early instrumental and orchestral music and continued its development from there with 18th and 19th century music in Europe. In addition to what became known as tonal harmony, it was rhythm that really transformed music from the otherworldly quality of chant and vocal polyphony to more earthy and dance-related styles. It was a re-discovery of the body, distrusted by a neo-Platonic church culture where spirit trumped flesh as an ultimate value. That, at least, is the broad narrative. There is a deeper narrative in the details.
When jazz first came on the scene in the south it was distrusted by hegemonic white, Christian culture still stuck in the idea of disembodied spirit moving towards heaven (away from the body and earth). The problem of acceptance was two-fold: the music used drums and powerful rhythms; and it was performed and composed by people of color. American and European pop music and certainly religious music was not subtle rhythmically. It was 2/4, 4/4 and 3/4 time-two beats, four beats or three beats to a measure of musical time, predictable and lacking in serious counter-rhythms or rhythmic layering. This lack of rhythmic subtlety was eventually called "square." The shapes seemed simple and even a bit boring compared to the interesting cross-rhythms in jazz or blues. Drums were the driving force articulating the interesting dynamics of rhythm in this music, carried forward in the solo and rhythm instruments on top (the harmonies/changes, melodies and solos that developed the melodic material). All of this came from Africa, Cuba, Latin America, the Caribbean-all places where the underside of American culture had come from during that era's practice of cheap labor known as slavery. White Christian culture was embedded in another worldview and economic reality and wasn't initially able to absorb or understand this other way of seeing the world. It looked uneducated, unsophisticated, dirty, poor, and unsavory. It was corrupting for anyone from a more genteel background. Keep your daughters away!
Of course, it was racist to the core. It was tied to economic elitism and colonialism, to the superiority of white culture and values, to a deep fear of the savage world ("deepest darkest Africa" sort of thing) and to a deep distrust of the body and human sexuality, which had to be controlled within rigid social expectations. White preachers felt compelled to condemn it for its corrupting influence.
Young people, at least a good number of them, saw it differently. It was liberating. It embraced what the churches rejected in strong moral terms. It felt good. It was fun. And for many the music was profound, a new way of human expression. White players joined the music, performing scandalously with black and brown musicians in public and eventually on recordings. And it wasn't European! It was American with roots in the rhythms and aesthetics of Latin America and Africa, an explosion and fusing of cultures and styles and sounds. It changed the sound and face of American pop music. "Daisy, Daisy give me your answer, do" gave way to "I Got Rhythm," "St. Louis Blues," "Kansas City," and a host of classic American tunes. Kids danced to them, played them, listened to them. They became the new cultural soundtrack. It hasn't stopped since.
By the time we reach Micky Hart there is a long history of musicians studying, performing and integrating musics from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, not to mention other cultures from around the world. What even three decades ago was called "Latin" rhythm has become Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, and other sub-headings with specific characteristics. The knowledge base of a musician like Hart is vast, global and detailed. It is as specific and "learned" as any classical musician, say a specialist in Romantic piano literature or French Baroque music. It was always so, but it was unrecognized for decades by the majority of people, certainly by the classical and European-trained musicians of the first half of the twentieth century.
Sometimes, as I seek out what to listen to from the digital library I've accumulated, I like to hear music by Bruckner or Bach. But then I put on Planet Drum and find it equally if not even more compelling. It is different, to be sure. But it is also equally "good." The old pyramid with the German Three (Bach, Beethoven and Brahms) on the top has been flattened for good. They are no less wonderful, no less important, but they have been joined by the rest of the world.
When jazz first came on the scene in the south it was distrusted by hegemonic white, Christian culture still stuck in the idea of disembodied spirit moving towards heaven (away from the body and earth). The problem of acceptance was two-fold: the music used drums and powerful rhythms; and it was performed and composed by people of color. American and European pop music and certainly religious music was not subtle rhythmically. It was 2/4, 4/4 and 3/4 time-two beats, four beats or three beats to a measure of musical time, predictable and lacking in serious counter-rhythms or rhythmic layering. This lack of rhythmic subtlety was eventually called "square." The shapes seemed simple and even a bit boring compared to the interesting cross-rhythms in jazz or blues. Drums were the driving force articulating the interesting dynamics of rhythm in this music, carried forward in the solo and rhythm instruments on top (the harmonies/changes, melodies and solos that developed the melodic material). All of this came from Africa, Cuba, Latin America, the Caribbean-all places where the underside of American culture had come from during that era's practice of cheap labor known as slavery. White Christian culture was embedded in another worldview and economic reality and wasn't initially able to absorb or understand this other way of seeing the world. It looked uneducated, unsophisticated, dirty, poor, and unsavory. It was corrupting for anyone from a more genteel background. Keep your daughters away!
Of course, it was racist to the core. It was tied to economic elitism and colonialism, to the superiority of white culture and values, to a deep fear of the savage world ("deepest darkest Africa" sort of thing) and to a deep distrust of the body and human sexuality, which had to be controlled within rigid social expectations. White preachers felt compelled to condemn it for its corrupting influence.
Young people, at least a good number of them, saw it differently. It was liberating. It embraced what the churches rejected in strong moral terms. It felt good. It was fun. And for many the music was profound, a new way of human expression. White players joined the music, performing scandalously with black and brown musicians in public and eventually on recordings. And it wasn't European! It was American with roots in the rhythms and aesthetics of Latin America and Africa, an explosion and fusing of cultures and styles and sounds. It changed the sound and face of American pop music. "Daisy, Daisy give me your answer, do" gave way to "I Got Rhythm," "St. Louis Blues," "Kansas City," and a host of classic American tunes. Kids danced to them, played them, listened to them. They became the new cultural soundtrack. It hasn't stopped since.
By the time we reach Micky Hart there is a long history of musicians studying, performing and integrating musics from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, not to mention other cultures from around the world. What even three decades ago was called "Latin" rhythm has become Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, and other sub-headings with specific characteristics. The knowledge base of a musician like Hart is vast, global and detailed. It is as specific and "learned" as any classical musician, say a specialist in Romantic piano literature or French Baroque music. It was always so, but it was unrecognized for decades by the majority of people, certainly by the classical and European-trained musicians of the first half of the twentieth century.
Sometimes, as I seek out what to listen to from the digital library I've accumulated, I like to hear music by Bruckner or Bach. But then I put on Planet Drum and find it equally if not even more compelling. It is different, to be sure. But it is also equally "good." The old pyramid with the German Three (Bach, Beethoven and Brahms) on the top has been flattened for good. They are no less wonderful, no less important, but they have been joined by the rest of the world.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
August Wilson was a playwright who explored the African American experience in 10 plays, including Gem of the Ocean and Fences. I'm trying to get through them all. Once I begin a one of these plays I'm hooked to the end. The language is rich and the undercurrent of feeling and context is profound. In an amazing brief essay introducing Fences he speaks of New York as a place devouring endless ethnicities but spitting out the black community. African Americans end up on the margins, by the rivers and railroad tracks, trying to eke out an existence. The stories are written with a poetry of pain, joy, survival and hope. The lives of the characters cry out with desire for life and wholeness, even as they struggle with addictions and poor choices and the reality of racism and classism. In spite of everything there is never actual despair. Hope survives, even amidst death and betrayal.
Reading these plays, I am a white visitor to black culture. I feel like a fly on the wall, overhearing words that were always there but unheard before. All I ever had growing up were stereotypes and imagined ideas about being black in America. Jazz helped bridge that gap over time and the civil rights movement brought some of the reality home through TV and media images. I learned from literature and music and by reading Raisin in the Sun, and by knowing superficially a black family at my high school. No matter, I will always be a visitor.
Yet I know that my life has been affected deeply by black culture and friends and acquaintances over the years. I was in a class with jazz pianist Billy Taylor once at Amherst College in which he criticized Clint Eastwood's Bird about the life of Charlie Parker. For him it was just another story of a black man being helped by a white savior-figure. In the film Charlie Parker's own inner strength and intelligence were absent, overtaken by his drug addiction. The character in the film could not have produced the music that the real Parker gave the world. You wonder if Eastwood's Parker could even read a book. The real Parker studied scores, knew music well and was well informed and intelligent. To this day musicians study the jazz solos and recordings of Parker the way classical musicians study Bach. You'd never know that from the film.
It sounds overly romantic to say it, but I have been touched by a deep spiritual intelligence in African American culture. It shines through the music, literature, dance and much else. I can't even imagine American cultural life without the presence of the black community. Our popular music at the turn of the century was somewhere between sentimental and ridiculous. A Bicycle Built for Two is a typical example. That was before ragtime and jazz became well known. Despite the racist and classist reactionary rhetoric from churches and elsewhere this music took root in the hearts and minds of many in the white community, who embraced its rhythms and even its soul enthusiastically. It allowed for a vital and significant popular music to develop in this country, music which remains at the core of American life. In real ways it was taken, perhaps stolen, from the black community, but by now we are aware of the origins of the music and give due credit, mostly. There were plenty of injustices along the way and too many musicians were left behind financially or prevented from rising as far as they might have (black big bands, as one example, and much of their music has been lost to history, unrecorded). History is making the necessary corrections, so the story is being told increasingly as it actually happened. The white swing bands, as popular as they were, have receded in significance as Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams and countless others have risen in significance.
Though it is fair to talk about black history, in fact we have to, the larger picture for me is the relationship of one culture to another. Black culture grew in relationship to white culture, from slavery to the racist realities of post-Civil War America to civil rights and beyond. The same is true for Chinese, Japanese, Native American and all other ethnicities in this country. We still live in a culture of white hegemony. But what we call "white" is continually being influenced by the cultures that feed it. Our art, our music, our dance, our theater, our politics and so much else are in no manner purely "white," whatever that designation may mean. It would be nice if white culture would more graciously acknowledge its debt to the world it has taken from. But that would be another world, not the one we live in.
For those who retreat into European culture, largely of the past, it may seem like a safe haven. For that group things were fairly good until the turn of the 20th century. What has come since, in the last 100 years and more, is problematic. If only we could get back to a world of tonal music, unregulated capitalism, dogmatic religion and morality, a largely white world that could look down on other ethnicities and pity the poor, a world before the labor movement, a world without communism and a world that had no problem with the Western hemisphere colonizing the entire "other than white" globe. It was so good to be unchallenged!
It's nothing but a fantasy, an imagined world that no longer exists if it ever truly did. I opt for due acknowledgment of that past for its real accomplishments but I don't want to live there. If I wanted to live in that world I wouldn't bother with August Wilson and his plays. They would be irrelevant to me. Better to read Shakespeare or Victorian literature. Better to listen to European classical music. Better to watch classical ballet. Better to dance the waltz, for that matter. No reason to bother with the 20th, let alone the 21st, century with its complications, many of them brought on by the very attitudes that characterized the old world.
What is clear as I read August Wilson is that the realities of the world will not just go away. Just because we imagine a people to be invisible doesn't mean they are not there. It doesn't mean that they don't have a voice or a point of view. It doesn't mean they don't cry out from the margins and make us uncomfortable in our false security. And it doesn't mean, despite everything else, that we are not enriched by their presence, acknowledged or not.
Reading these plays, I am a white visitor to black culture. I feel like a fly on the wall, overhearing words that were always there but unheard before. All I ever had growing up were stereotypes and imagined ideas about being black in America. Jazz helped bridge that gap over time and the civil rights movement brought some of the reality home through TV and media images. I learned from literature and music and by reading Raisin in the Sun, and by knowing superficially a black family at my high school. No matter, I will always be a visitor.
Yet I know that my life has been affected deeply by black culture and friends and acquaintances over the years. I was in a class with jazz pianist Billy Taylor once at Amherst College in which he criticized Clint Eastwood's Bird about the life of Charlie Parker. For him it was just another story of a black man being helped by a white savior-figure. In the film Charlie Parker's own inner strength and intelligence were absent, overtaken by his drug addiction. The character in the film could not have produced the music that the real Parker gave the world. You wonder if Eastwood's Parker could even read a book. The real Parker studied scores, knew music well and was well informed and intelligent. To this day musicians study the jazz solos and recordings of Parker the way classical musicians study Bach. You'd never know that from the film.
It sounds overly romantic to say it, but I have been touched by a deep spiritual intelligence in African American culture. It shines through the music, literature, dance and much else. I can't even imagine American cultural life without the presence of the black community. Our popular music at the turn of the century was somewhere between sentimental and ridiculous. A Bicycle Built for Two is a typical example. That was before ragtime and jazz became well known. Despite the racist and classist reactionary rhetoric from churches and elsewhere this music took root in the hearts and minds of many in the white community, who embraced its rhythms and even its soul enthusiastically. It allowed for a vital and significant popular music to develop in this country, music which remains at the core of American life. In real ways it was taken, perhaps stolen, from the black community, but by now we are aware of the origins of the music and give due credit, mostly. There were plenty of injustices along the way and too many musicians were left behind financially or prevented from rising as far as they might have (black big bands, as one example, and much of their music has been lost to history, unrecorded). History is making the necessary corrections, so the story is being told increasingly as it actually happened. The white swing bands, as popular as they were, have receded in significance as Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams and countless others have risen in significance.
Though it is fair to talk about black history, in fact we have to, the larger picture for me is the relationship of one culture to another. Black culture grew in relationship to white culture, from slavery to the racist realities of post-Civil War America to civil rights and beyond. The same is true for Chinese, Japanese, Native American and all other ethnicities in this country. We still live in a culture of white hegemony. But what we call "white" is continually being influenced by the cultures that feed it. Our art, our music, our dance, our theater, our politics and so much else are in no manner purely "white," whatever that designation may mean. It would be nice if white culture would more graciously acknowledge its debt to the world it has taken from. But that would be another world, not the one we live in.
For those who retreat into European culture, largely of the past, it may seem like a safe haven. For that group things were fairly good until the turn of the 20th century. What has come since, in the last 100 years and more, is problematic. If only we could get back to a world of tonal music, unregulated capitalism, dogmatic religion and morality, a largely white world that could look down on other ethnicities and pity the poor, a world before the labor movement, a world without communism and a world that had no problem with the Western hemisphere colonizing the entire "other than white" globe. It was so good to be unchallenged!
It's nothing but a fantasy, an imagined world that no longer exists if it ever truly did. I opt for due acknowledgment of that past for its real accomplishments but I don't want to live there. If I wanted to live in that world I wouldn't bother with August Wilson and his plays. They would be irrelevant to me. Better to read Shakespeare or Victorian literature. Better to listen to European classical music. Better to watch classical ballet. Better to dance the waltz, for that matter. No reason to bother with the 20th, let alone the 21st, century with its complications, many of them brought on by the very attitudes that characterized the old world.
What is clear as I read August Wilson is that the realities of the world will not just go away. Just because we imagine a people to be invisible doesn't mean they are not there. It doesn't mean that they don't have a voice or a point of view. It doesn't mean they don't cry out from the margins and make us uncomfortable in our false security. And it doesn't mean, despite everything else, that we are not enriched by their presence, acknowledged or not.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Recovering Old Music
My long term project-recording old vinyl LP's (old enough to be called "long playing") keeps me in contact with music I have either grown up with or have known for 20 or more years. Old Beatles records still have life in them; recently I listened again to Rubber Soul from my old monaural LP (for those who have no idea what that is, there was a time when music was not recorded in "stereo," something we take for granted). The Lennon-McCartney songs still sound well (the lyrics seem to seek rhyme over sense; they don't reach too far) but more interesting are George Harrison's songs. Think for Yourself stretches lyrically and musically, at least to my ears. I suppose I like his more introverted and reflective personality and his tendency to reach beyond the moment in his life. He never really carried an entire album on his own, but somehow he always has something unique to say.
Then there is Graceland by Paul Simon. Simon has always looked for new ways to create music. He brought a great gift to music by featuring other musicians who worked in other genres of music. Cajun musicians, African musicians, jazz musicians, gospel musicians-he would work around their music and incorporate what they were doing with his own musical concepts. He had done it before Graceland, but this was a major project and done on larger scale. By now the music is well known. At the time it was fresh and opened new sound worlds, certainly for me. The township music of South Africa was totally new to me and many others. Ladysmith Black Mambazo, now famous, were a Western discovery. The lyricism of Simon's music blended with that music and produced appealing melodies and harmonies. Throughout the album the rhythms come from world music, the songs themselves are influenced by world music and the whole project seems like an international music festival. This fusion of musical styles is as old as music itself. Sometimes it's more intentional and Simon's album is one of those moments. But early Christian chant derived from Jewish chant, Bach and other Germans of his time learned from and borrowed Italian music, Brahms studied the polyphony of the Renaissance, and jazz is rooted in African, Latin American and sacred American music. Joplin rags, as one example, use hymn-like harmonies to undergird the syncopation. 20th century European music broadened its influences to include Balinese gamelan (Debussy), not to mention Indian rhythms and even birdsong (Messiaen). It's a pretty exhaustive list if all were included. Simon did it in a new way and in a new genre.
I also recently recorded Wagner's Parsifal (with von Karajan conducting) and find it beautiful, pretentious and exhausting. It's hard not to be drawn in to this music, yet it also repulses. It's like a musical tsunami. You see it coming, you run as fast as you can and it overwhelms you in the end. Some people just don't live close enough to be affected, I guess. I once allowed myself to be baptized with Wagner's Ring cycle in a week long performance of the four operas. That was about enough. It was Romanticism on steroids. I have a hard time not feeling a good deal of megolomania in Wagner's music. His music seems to want to overwhelm everything around it, just devour it, like music with a personality disorder. I can't seem to ignore it but I want it to go away. I suppose it fits the story of his life, a history of using others for his own artistic ends. He is the artist as god-like, mating irresponsibly with humankind and producing semi-divine progeny. By the way, my Wagnerian baptism didn't take. I keep him around but I won't be visiting often. He won't leave the house.
Then there is Graceland by Paul Simon. Simon has always looked for new ways to create music. He brought a great gift to music by featuring other musicians who worked in other genres of music. Cajun musicians, African musicians, jazz musicians, gospel musicians-he would work around their music and incorporate what they were doing with his own musical concepts. He had done it before Graceland, but this was a major project and done on larger scale. By now the music is well known. At the time it was fresh and opened new sound worlds, certainly for me. The township music of South Africa was totally new to me and many others. Ladysmith Black Mambazo, now famous, were a Western discovery. The lyricism of Simon's music blended with that music and produced appealing melodies and harmonies. Throughout the album the rhythms come from world music, the songs themselves are influenced by world music and the whole project seems like an international music festival. This fusion of musical styles is as old as music itself. Sometimes it's more intentional and Simon's album is one of those moments. But early Christian chant derived from Jewish chant, Bach and other Germans of his time learned from and borrowed Italian music, Brahms studied the polyphony of the Renaissance, and jazz is rooted in African, Latin American and sacred American music. Joplin rags, as one example, use hymn-like harmonies to undergird the syncopation. 20th century European music broadened its influences to include Balinese gamelan (Debussy), not to mention Indian rhythms and even birdsong (Messiaen). It's a pretty exhaustive list if all were included. Simon did it in a new way and in a new genre.
I also recently recorded Wagner's Parsifal (with von Karajan conducting) and find it beautiful, pretentious and exhausting. It's hard not to be drawn in to this music, yet it also repulses. It's like a musical tsunami. You see it coming, you run as fast as you can and it overwhelms you in the end. Some people just don't live close enough to be affected, I guess. I once allowed myself to be baptized with Wagner's Ring cycle in a week long performance of the four operas. That was about enough. It was Romanticism on steroids. I have a hard time not feeling a good deal of megolomania in Wagner's music. His music seems to want to overwhelm everything around it, just devour it, like music with a personality disorder. I can't seem to ignore it but I want it to go away. I suppose it fits the story of his life, a history of using others for his own artistic ends. He is the artist as god-like, mating irresponsibly with humankind and producing semi-divine progeny. By the way, my Wagnerian baptism didn't take. I keep him around but I won't be visiting often. He won't leave the house.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Nonviolence
It's now several days away from the tragedy in Arizona. The memorial services are running their course and Congresswoman Gifford is recovering rather miraculously. Jared Loughner is in solitary confinement, for the moment and for the likely long term no longer a threat to society and the well-being of others. We will be hearing more about his mental state and motivation down the road, but for now we have to be content with the knowledge that his brain chemistry was imbalanced and had been bothering him since at least the age of 16. Clearly his family life plays a role in all of this, but when it comes to mental illness even the most well-adjusted families can produce troubled children. The sad thing is that he did not get the help he needed and it doesn't seem that he was going to anytime soon. Will he now?
Still, it was a violent act. On Martin Luther King Day it is appropriate to consider nonviolence in a culture that seems to embrace violence, justified with terms like constitutional rights, liberty, righteous war, and personal or national defense. King had serious questions to ask about the necessity and the pragmatic consequences of violence. He could not have been more adamant on any issue than he was about this. His philosophy was rooted in the New Testament letter known as I John. Here love is key and is grounded in the nature of God with implications for the entire cosmos. "God is love," it says and King saw everything else flowing from that reality. For King it was built in to the basic structure of creation. It allowed him to trust in the future, the goodness of God sustained over the long haul, and even in humanity created in God's image. He appealed at all points to the higher nature of human beings and refused to be pulled in to name calling, hateful or divisive rhetoric of any kind (including the "Black Power" slogan, though not the content of the movement's analysis), or physical violence, even in retaliation to unjust acts. This he learned from Gandhi and from Jesus' words and actions in the gospels. He was against war on the grounds of love, for love cannot harm another person for any reason. He was sensitive to the way people are exploited and used and advocated for the dignity of fair wages for honest work. He saw the exploitation of labor in his time and he saw the way economic power diminished the value of workers for greater profit. But he would not, and could not, respond to even the most extreme injustice with violence and hate. He learned from Gandhi that the goal of resistance to injustice is the redemption of the one(s) who is inflicting the injustice. This is also rooted in the meaning of the death of Christ at the hands of his enemies, the Christ who answered his enemies with forgiveness rather than hatred and judgment.
King's nonviolence was an active resistance to evil, defined as the diminishment of the integrity and beauty of those created in the image of God. Had he lived, he would have extended this to creation itself. Love does not know limits. Of course he was criticized harshly when he seemed on the surface to abandon a clear focus on racism alone. But as he says himself his calling was always broader and deeper than that. Segregation and racism were first on the agenda, for their time had come to be challenged. For Martin, that was the beginning of his ministry. But there was always much to do to bring in a just society. He was committed to doing God's will (and one can hear his voice in those words) for God's will was to see justice fulfilled in the world (not legalistic justice, but justice as redemption and reconciliation).
I was once asked, as part of a group of students in an anthropology class, if the United States was a violent culture. No one wanted to speak up on that one, perhaps because the answer could implicate us. We struggled to say anything, mumbled some avoidance sounds, until the teacher called us on it. Of course we are! The Revolutionary War, the Civil War, slavery, our treatment of Native Americans, our participation in international wars and colonialism, our attitude towards guns and the right to guns. our armed police, and so forth. We are not self-reflective about this, but King was not ambivalent about it at all. He knew the violence of American society; he'd seen it up close, and experienced it himself. He had seen cruelty to children and women and young men and old men at the hands of white police in the south. In a culture steeped in violence there could be no answer in a violent response, except to deepen it and expand it. If peace was going to be achieved at all, it would be by peaceful means and that alone. The alternative was unthinkable and also unsustainable in the long run. It was a choice: to choose nonviolence or not. The future would be built upon that answer.
It would be good if King's clear philosophy were to be enacted again in our society. Our current reaction to outrageous hate rhetoric is to throw it back. Hate for hate. An eye for an eye. The so-called left is rightly criticized for jumping quickly into blaming rhetoric almost moments after the Arizona shootings. The call for a more civilized conversation and society seems to begin with, "Shut up!" Not a good start, nor in the spirit of nonviolence. King would have words to say along the lines of President Obama's speech the other day in Arizona, though King would extend the nonviolent call to our (and others) international wars and turmoil. But he would not answer any hateful or name calling rhetoric with more of the same. He was always looking to redeem his enemies so they would travel with him. He was looking for disciples of nonviolence, for people to answer a higher calling given to them by their creation in the image of God.
I believe that King's entry into the arena of history sets a new standard for social transformation movements. Gandhi, likewise, opens up another way for history to move. It is a way superior on all counts to the Civil War and even the Revolutionary War. It is superior, certainly, to all violent revolutionary movements. It is superior to the segment of the violent left of the 60's and the more recent Tea Party movement with its insulting rhetoric about government and of people who disagree with them. It lives brightly in the Truth and Reconciliation commissions of recent history and in the work of people like Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea). It lives in the movement for restorative justice in our judicial system. I think we can say that it has become a valid moral option for anyone choosing to adopt it. There is historical precedent and a background of success. We can question and argue about it, but I don't think we can honestly say that it can't be done (though that is the argument people use to discredit it). A cabinet level Department of Peace, anyone, to explore and study alternatives to war? Or is that just too much to consider?
We may have to come to grips with the death penalty for Jared Loughner. After his violent rampage, would that be a just punishment? Would that solve something? Would that deal with our need to forsake violence in our culture? An eye for an eye? Is that the way into our shared future and that of our children?
Still, it was a violent act. On Martin Luther King Day it is appropriate to consider nonviolence in a culture that seems to embrace violence, justified with terms like constitutional rights, liberty, righteous war, and personal or national defense. King had serious questions to ask about the necessity and the pragmatic consequences of violence. He could not have been more adamant on any issue than he was about this. His philosophy was rooted in the New Testament letter known as I John. Here love is key and is grounded in the nature of God with implications for the entire cosmos. "God is love," it says and King saw everything else flowing from that reality. For King it was built in to the basic structure of creation. It allowed him to trust in the future, the goodness of God sustained over the long haul, and even in humanity created in God's image. He appealed at all points to the higher nature of human beings and refused to be pulled in to name calling, hateful or divisive rhetoric of any kind (including the "Black Power" slogan, though not the content of the movement's analysis), or physical violence, even in retaliation to unjust acts. This he learned from Gandhi and from Jesus' words and actions in the gospels. He was against war on the grounds of love, for love cannot harm another person for any reason. He was sensitive to the way people are exploited and used and advocated for the dignity of fair wages for honest work. He saw the exploitation of labor in his time and he saw the way economic power diminished the value of workers for greater profit. But he would not, and could not, respond to even the most extreme injustice with violence and hate. He learned from Gandhi that the goal of resistance to injustice is the redemption of the one(s) who is inflicting the injustice. This is also rooted in the meaning of the death of Christ at the hands of his enemies, the Christ who answered his enemies with forgiveness rather than hatred and judgment.
King's nonviolence was an active resistance to evil, defined as the diminishment of the integrity and beauty of those created in the image of God. Had he lived, he would have extended this to creation itself. Love does not know limits. Of course he was criticized harshly when he seemed on the surface to abandon a clear focus on racism alone. But as he says himself his calling was always broader and deeper than that. Segregation and racism were first on the agenda, for their time had come to be challenged. For Martin, that was the beginning of his ministry. But there was always much to do to bring in a just society. He was committed to doing God's will (and one can hear his voice in those words) for God's will was to see justice fulfilled in the world (not legalistic justice, but justice as redemption and reconciliation).
I was once asked, as part of a group of students in an anthropology class, if the United States was a violent culture. No one wanted to speak up on that one, perhaps because the answer could implicate us. We struggled to say anything, mumbled some avoidance sounds, until the teacher called us on it. Of course we are! The Revolutionary War, the Civil War, slavery, our treatment of Native Americans, our participation in international wars and colonialism, our attitude towards guns and the right to guns. our armed police, and so forth. We are not self-reflective about this, but King was not ambivalent about it at all. He knew the violence of American society; he'd seen it up close, and experienced it himself. He had seen cruelty to children and women and young men and old men at the hands of white police in the south. In a culture steeped in violence there could be no answer in a violent response, except to deepen it and expand it. If peace was going to be achieved at all, it would be by peaceful means and that alone. The alternative was unthinkable and also unsustainable in the long run. It was a choice: to choose nonviolence or not. The future would be built upon that answer.
It would be good if King's clear philosophy were to be enacted again in our society. Our current reaction to outrageous hate rhetoric is to throw it back. Hate for hate. An eye for an eye. The so-called left is rightly criticized for jumping quickly into blaming rhetoric almost moments after the Arizona shootings. The call for a more civilized conversation and society seems to begin with, "Shut up!" Not a good start, nor in the spirit of nonviolence. King would have words to say along the lines of President Obama's speech the other day in Arizona, though King would extend the nonviolent call to our (and others) international wars and turmoil. But he would not answer any hateful or name calling rhetoric with more of the same. He was always looking to redeem his enemies so they would travel with him. He was looking for disciples of nonviolence, for people to answer a higher calling given to them by their creation in the image of God.
I believe that King's entry into the arena of history sets a new standard for social transformation movements. Gandhi, likewise, opens up another way for history to move. It is a way superior on all counts to the Civil War and even the Revolutionary War. It is superior, certainly, to all violent revolutionary movements. It is superior to the segment of the violent left of the 60's and the more recent Tea Party movement with its insulting rhetoric about government and of people who disagree with them. It lives brightly in the Truth and Reconciliation commissions of recent history and in the work of people like Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea). It lives in the movement for restorative justice in our judicial system. I think we can say that it has become a valid moral option for anyone choosing to adopt it. There is historical precedent and a background of success. We can question and argue about it, but I don't think we can honestly say that it can't be done (though that is the argument people use to discredit it). A cabinet level Department of Peace, anyone, to explore and study alternatives to war? Or is that just too much to consider?
We may have to come to grips with the death penalty for Jared Loughner. After his violent rampage, would that be a just punishment? Would that solve something? Would that deal with our need to forsake violence in our culture? An eye for an eye? Is that the way into our shared future and that of our children?
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Back to A Love Supreme
I've been absent from the blog for some time (last post: June, 2010) and it's time to return. Lately I've been recording old vinyl LP's and downloading them into my iTunes library. I can't actually remember the last time I purchased an LP, but I'm sure it was in the 1980's as CD's were just beginning to be popular and affordable. There was some Oregon, Joni Mitchell (Mingus, Wild Things Run Fast, Dog Eat Dog, Shadows and Light), a fusion group with Michael Brecker called Steps Ahead, a Paul Winter United Nations concert, some classical recordings of minimalists Steve Reich and John Adams. I was still buying non-digital records: Cage, Lou Harrison, and other off-label artists.
I'm still discovering the collection again. So far I've recorded two very early folk albums from the 1960's: one by Judy Collins (Golden Apples of the Sun) and what I believe is Joan Baez's first album. That music is still good and the voices young and strong. Judy Collins was always an alto, but as she matured she kept insisting that she could sing soprano. Her range becomes too thin in the upper register for me, but that's only my ears. On this early album she is a strong alto with occasional lovely moments in her upper register. She set the title song to a poem by William Butler Yeats, Golden Apples of Sun, and for me it is a stunning success. Simple, but beautiful, guitar and voice and the poetry of Yeats set to a gorgeous melody and harmony. It has to be one of the best songs of that year, much more sophisticated than anything Dylan and others were doing at the time, with the exception of Joni Mitchell. I was in love with that music from the beginning and followed it as it became part of the larger musical pop culture of the time. Baez was all folk, nothing of her own, but her voice is strong on songs like All My Trials and House of the Rising Sun (long before The Animals and Eric Burdon took Dylan's version, who had basically stolen it, I understand, from Dave Van Ronk). All of that 60's earnestness is touching, if a bit sad, today.
The idealism was lost along the way and the simplicity and hope was overwhelmed by drugs, rock 'n roll and the Vietnam war. Too much death: assassinations of the era's heroes and leaders and the final blow in Chicago with the Democratic National Convention, the nomination of Humphrey under Johnson's war shadow, and the carefully controlled and ballooned Republican National Convention with Nixon that became the model for future conventions: a spectacle, a moment of careful propaganda, cued music, and all the rest. The culture became noisy and angry, it seems to me, and the young crowd eventually discovered money. So to go back and listen to that relative innocence was refreshing.
When I was 18 I went with a friend one evening to have some awful 3.2 beer in Denver in a club that used to book Judy Collins and other popular folk acts, who were too popular for that venue in 1968-9. It was quiet, only a few people there, and it seemed nearly closed. All of that history and excitement had moved on. But it's still recorded and though the cultural context is gone, the music still captures the time in many ways, at least for me. These two albums, at least, are moody, poetic, idealistic, innocent, fresh, and the big plus is that the liner notes are full of history about each song and its origins. We've moved on, for sure, and certainly these artists moved on fairly quickly from these albums and started doing contemporary songs by Dylan and others, but the records are still there and it was fun to go back.
I'm still discovering the collection again. So far I've recorded two very early folk albums from the 1960's: one by Judy Collins (Golden Apples of the Sun) and what I believe is Joan Baez's first album. That music is still good and the voices young and strong. Judy Collins was always an alto, but as she matured she kept insisting that she could sing soprano. Her range becomes too thin in the upper register for me, but that's only my ears. On this early album she is a strong alto with occasional lovely moments in her upper register. She set the title song to a poem by William Butler Yeats, Golden Apples of Sun, and for me it is a stunning success. Simple, but beautiful, guitar and voice and the poetry of Yeats set to a gorgeous melody and harmony. It has to be one of the best songs of that year, much more sophisticated than anything Dylan and others were doing at the time, with the exception of Joni Mitchell. I was in love with that music from the beginning and followed it as it became part of the larger musical pop culture of the time. Baez was all folk, nothing of her own, but her voice is strong on songs like All My Trials and House of the Rising Sun (long before The Animals and Eric Burdon took Dylan's version, who had basically stolen it, I understand, from Dave Van Ronk). All of that 60's earnestness is touching, if a bit sad, today.
The idealism was lost along the way and the simplicity and hope was overwhelmed by drugs, rock 'n roll and the Vietnam war. Too much death: assassinations of the era's heroes and leaders and the final blow in Chicago with the Democratic National Convention, the nomination of Humphrey under Johnson's war shadow, and the carefully controlled and ballooned Republican National Convention with Nixon that became the model for future conventions: a spectacle, a moment of careful propaganda, cued music, and all the rest. The culture became noisy and angry, it seems to me, and the young crowd eventually discovered money. So to go back and listen to that relative innocence was refreshing.
When I was 18 I went with a friend one evening to have some awful 3.2 beer in Denver in a club that used to book Judy Collins and other popular folk acts, who were too popular for that venue in 1968-9. It was quiet, only a few people there, and it seemed nearly closed. All of that history and excitement had moved on. But it's still recorded and though the cultural context is gone, the music still captures the time in many ways, at least for me. These two albums, at least, are moody, poetic, idealistic, innocent, fresh, and the big plus is that the liner notes are full of history about each song and its origins. We've moved on, for sure, and certainly these artists moved on fairly quickly from these albums and started doing contemporary songs by Dylan and others, but the records are still there and it was fun to go back.
Monday, June 7, 2010
City of God Urban Ministry Conference June 7 2010
This afternoon Sr Joan Chittester spoke to the 30+ people at the City of God Urban Ministry Conference in Washington DC. I took it all in from the front row and sat amazed for a couple of hours as Sr Joan laid out a prophetic program for the church in the 21st century. Today she was speaking largely to clergy, who make up the largest portion of the group here. I didn't know that Sr Joan was trained as a social psychologist in addition to her vocation as a Benedictine Sister. The range of her learning is broad and her knowledge of modern culture is deep. For those who have not had the pleasure to hear in person, she is down to earth, very energetic, blunt, funny, and slightly irreverent. She is also incredibly smart and exudes a practical spirituality that is at once compassionate, authentic, and cuts like a spear. She spoke fast and with intensity and gave her all for the two hours she was with us. It was very intense, demanding, and prophetic.
Her fundamental message to us, the clergy present, was not to minister in a vacuum. We live in a time of social collapse, but also of social renewal, she told us. This is obvious, of course, but she is firm that what is dying is simply making room for what will be born. She referenced Anthony F.C. Wallace on four stages of cultural renewal: 1) first there is individual stress; here individuals start questioning basic assumptions, in this case church teachings and rules, but do not share these thoughts in public; there is no community of questioning, just a kind of dis-ease; 2) the stress then becomes more widespread and the questioning becomes public in nature; groups form of like-minded people; in one study she worked on with church historian Martin Marty there was a point where liberal Lutherans were finding more in common with liberal Roman Catholics than with conservative Lutherans; this was an indicator many years ago that the uniformity of the church was breaking down; people were starting to listen in to televangelists and preferring them to their own local pastor or priest; 3) now people agree broadly that there is indeed a problem, but there is no consensus on what to do about it; some propose a hyper-traditionalism or a kind of nativism that looks back to a golden age, assuming that if we can do that we can hold on to the past that seems to be receding before us; the fault lies somewhere, probably in authority, perhaps the pastor or the council or other governing body (the national church, for example, or the national Bishop); 4) finally we begin the reconstruction of the new worldview, which is essentially a restructuring of the old institution in a new and vital form; we shed light on the old recognizing that it is the same Spirit at work taking on a new shape.
And who will finally arrive at the answer(s) to this dilemma (and drama) of social collapse? Those of us who are older but who also desire to help the church make this transition are the ones who ask the right questions and allow others to ask them as well. The problem with someone like myself and others like me is that I and others were initially formed in the old institution(s); therefore we carry lots of the old baggage. That puts us in the position of understanding the institution's problems but not in the best place to give the answers. The answers will come from the younger generations, who have left the old institution behind and are free of those forms and thought patterns. Someone like myself becomes a transitional figure, preparing the way for new and vital work ahead. The church is changing and it is sometimes painful. There is no doubt that our church socialization makes it difficult to see the future. Many of us still see the church as the place where spiritual things happen. We haven't always seen the larger world as the real parish. A "church" which, for example, doesn't have a building and all the adornments that a building gives us, including all the paraments, organ, etc. is next to impossible to imagine. We don't understand "church" without all of that. But at least part of the future may look somewhat like that. As far back as World War II Bonhoeffer wondered about such things after he considered the total failure of the institutional church under the Reich to fulfill its calling. Such are the ideas that Sr Joan asks us to think about.
I love the idea of "seeding the questions." I do see that as important, that and trying to breathe new life into old forms and rethink old images and stories of the faith. One thing I can say about Sr Joan. When it comes to thinking about older images and stories she is more than ready to relate them to the modern world with its injustice, greed, and violence. Our priorities are skewed with more money going to pet food than to the poor. I flinched a little, knowing how important pets are to people, and rightly so in many cases. But it does tell a tale of priorities in an age when the military is the most trusted institution and most of our foreign aid is military, when feminism is considered over in America while women worldwide are struggling for the most basic rights, when our national obsession with instant gratification leads to exploitation of land, children, third world nations and precious gifts like the Gulf of Mexico, and when poverty falls most severely on women and children in the so-called "feminization of poverty."
I feel privileged to have experienced a modern day prophet, which she certainly is. But her call to all of us, not only to clergy, is to become the prophets we are called to be. Holiness, she said today, is about virtue, not visions; being there for others; focusing on something greater than oneself; and being present to the Presence, where it is and where it is not. Holiness as a private vision and experience is an old, very old, model that no longer applies. Times have changed and so has our understanding of holiness and spirituality. Our inner spiritual life has to inform our outer expression of it, but it is not complete if it is merely an ascetic discipline. Privatized religion must make its way out of that ghetto to the arena of public responsibility. A new age is forming right under our noses and we are a part of its creation. It is a difficult process, but "everything we do changes the future." There are many emotions that emerge out of this process but I like what Sr Joan says about anger: "If we had been holier we would have been angrier" as we face the injustices in the world and the clear need to realize the vision of the gospel, the reign of God, in the world today.
Her fundamental message to us, the clergy present, was not to minister in a vacuum. We live in a time of social collapse, but also of social renewal, she told us. This is obvious, of course, but she is firm that what is dying is simply making room for what will be born. She referenced Anthony F.C. Wallace on four stages of cultural renewal: 1) first there is individual stress; here individuals start questioning basic assumptions, in this case church teachings and rules, but do not share these thoughts in public; there is no community of questioning, just a kind of dis-ease; 2) the stress then becomes more widespread and the questioning becomes public in nature; groups form of like-minded people; in one study she worked on with church historian Martin Marty there was a point where liberal Lutherans were finding more in common with liberal Roman Catholics than with conservative Lutherans; this was an indicator many years ago that the uniformity of the church was breaking down; people were starting to listen in to televangelists and preferring them to their own local pastor or priest; 3) now people agree broadly that there is indeed a problem, but there is no consensus on what to do about it; some propose a hyper-traditionalism or a kind of nativism that looks back to a golden age, assuming that if we can do that we can hold on to the past that seems to be receding before us; the fault lies somewhere, probably in authority, perhaps the pastor or the council or other governing body (the national church, for example, or the national Bishop); 4) finally we begin the reconstruction of the new worldview, which is essentially a restructuring of the old institution in a new and vital form; we shed light on the old recognizing that it is the same Spirit at work taking on a new shape.
And who will finally arrive at the answer(s) to this dilemma (and drama) of social collapse? Those of us who are older but who also desire to help the church make this transition are the ones who ask the right questions and allow others to ask them as well. The problem with someone like myself and others like me is that I and others were initially formed in the old institution(s); therefore we carry lots of the old baggage. That puts us in the position of understanding the institution's problems but not in the best place to give the answers. The answers will come from the younger generations, who have left the old institution behind and are free of those forms and thought patterns. Someone like myself becomes a transitional figure, preparing the way for new and vital work ahead. The church is changing and it is sometimes painful. There is no doubt that our church socialization makes it difficult to see the future. Many of us still see the church as the place where spiritual things happen. We haven't always seen the larger world as the real parish. A "church" which, for example, doesn't have a building and all the adornments that a building gives us, including all the paraments, organ, etc. is next to impossible to imagine. We don't understand "church" without all of that. But at least part of the future may look somewhat like that. As far back as World War II Bonhoeffer wondered about such things after he considered the total failure of the institutional church under the Reich to fulfill its calling. Such are the ideas that Sr Joan asks us to think about.
I love the idea of "seeding the questions." I do see that as important, that and trying to breathe new life into old forms and rethink old images and stories of the faith. One thing I can say about Sr Joan. When it comes to thinking about older images and stories she is more than ready to relate them to the modern world with its injustice, greed, and violence. Our priorities are skewed with more money going to pet food than to the poor. I flinched a little, knowing how important pets are to people, and rightly so in many cases. But it does tell a tale of priorities in an age when the military is the most trusted institution and most of our foreign aid is military, when feminism is considered over in America while women worldwide are struggling for the most basic rights, when our national obsession with instant gratification leads to exploitation of land, children, third world nations and precious gifts like the Gulf of Mexico, and when poverty falls most severely on women and children in the so-called "feminization of poverty."
I feel privileged to have experienced a modern day prophet, which she certainly is. But her call to all of us, not only to clergy, is to become the prophets we are called to be. Holiness, she said today, is about virtue, not visions; being there for others; focusing on something greater than oneself; and being present to the Presence, where it is and where it is not. Holiness as a private vision and experience is an old, very old, model that no longer applies. Times have changed and so has our understanding of holiness and spirituality. Our inner spiritual life has to inform our outer expression of it, but it is not complete if it is merely an ascetic discipline. Privatized religion must make its way out of that ghetto to the arena of public responsibility. A new age is forming right under our noses and we are a part of its creation. It is a difficult process, but "everything we do changes the future." There are many emotions that emerge out of this process but I like what Sr Joan says about anger: "If we had been holier we would have been angrier" as we face the injustices in the world and the clear need to realize the vision of the gospel, the reign of God, in the world today.
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