Letter from Tallahassee: Election Day Hangover
I woke up today feeling wretched and I didn’t even bother to drink too much last night.
For the first time since 1972, I went to bed early on Election Night. The statewide results in Florida were too painful to bear, and the chirpy happy talk from the MSNBC/CNN yapping heads was doing nothing to make it go down easier. Yeah, flip the house, lots of ponies in that stable full of dung, but dammit, if I go to sleep and never wake up, I will never have to face a world in which the idea of Senator Rick Scott and Governor Ron DeSantis is a real thing.
Alas, I woke up, and it’s all I can do not to go back to bed and stay there.
Florida is, in a word, fucked. Our governor elect is a man of few ideas beyond sycophantic devotion to Trump and simmering resentment at liberals who, evidently, wish to turn Florida into Venezuela. Naturally, he makes no sense beyond the fevered imaginations of Fox News inmates, which is DeSantis’ prime and only true base. He is a pure bred Fox hothouse flower, anointed by Trump and carried to victory by his partisans. He ran a terrible, inept campaign. He appealed to the ingrained racism and resentment that may be this state’s number one cash crop, painting a decent and good man as a crazed, soft on crime socialist who wants to destroy “our” jobs and economy. You know, the black guy, nudge wink say no more amirite?
And he won.
The man DeSantis will replace is widely known for shady ethics, crony favoritism, a “blind trust” with surprisingly good eyesight, and a multi-billion dollar Medicare swindle. Rick Scott plunked down $51M of his own money to buy a U.S. Senate seat, much as he bought the Governor’s office. Keep in mind that he walked away from the Medicare scam with around $350M in severance. That means that Rick Scott has bought his political career with your money. Nice work if you can get it.
Scott will represent Florida alongside the Emptiest Suit in Florida Politics, Marco Rubio, a man notable for his earnest conversion from Trump critic to Trump taint licker. Scott’s addition to the absurdly labeled “world’s greatest deliberative body” provides him a broad range of platforms upon which to ply his habitual grift and graft.
Other depressing news? The Agriculture Commissioner, Chief Financial Officer, and Attorney General are all dyed in the wool Trump-fondlers. The A.G. outcome is especially dispiriting, her campaign largely financed by outfits like GEO and Core Civic, private prison corporations who make money hand over fist based on the policies of people like AG-elect Ashley Moody. Anyone hoping for a glimmer of criminal justice reform in this aggressively carceral state has got another thing coming.
The Florida electorate also engaged in an orgy of Constitutional amendment passage. Among the bright spots: the gradual elimination of Greyhound racing in the state, a barbaric holdover from yesteryear. Amendment 9, which bans offshore drilling in state waters, also bans vaping in most workplaces. It’s a bizarre conflation of unrelated issues.
Among the lesser lights: passage of several measures that require super-majorities to raise taxes and educational fees, exactly the kinds of policies that all but crippled California in the decades following Proposition 13. Along with a couple of mandated caps on property tax valuations, these GOP-pushed policies are designed to ensure that funding levels for government programs, specifically education, continue to wither. As Grover Norquist has longed advocated, the GOP is intent on shrinking government to the size where they can “drown it in the bathtub.”
Then there is passage of Amendment 6, aka Marsy’s Law. This pander-heavy “victim’s rights” measure received massive national backing from law and order groups. In short, it attempts to circumvent defendant rights in favor of emotional appeals to stricter “justice” for victims. It remains unclear how this might differ from good old fashioned vengeance aside from the fact that victims will not be allowed to administer corporal or capital punishments themselves. For now.
Expect this one to face legal challenges for its overreach, though hopes for winning those challenges is diminished by the ongoing right wing takeover of the Federal and State judiciary under Trump and DeSantis, whose first official action will be appointment of three State Supreme Court Justices on his first day in office. This is in fact the one and only specific policy DeSantis articulated during the campaign. One wonders what he will do to occupy himself for the remaining 3 years and 364 days.
The brightest spot on the statewide ballot was the overwhelming approval for Amendment 4, which restores voting rights to most formerly incarcerated felons who have served their sentences, roughly a million voters, predominantly minorities. This is a huge progressive win, though anybody who thinks a DeSantis administration will not go out of its way to undermine this initiative has not been paying attention to the GOP’s near-religious devotion to voter disenfranchisement over the past four decades. But here’s a real puzzler. Amendment 4 took about 64% of the vote. DeSantis and Scott each took closer to 50%. Who are the 13-14% who voted yes on reinstating the vote for returning felons while simultaneously voting for two guys (and their party) who are staunchly opposed to that outcome?
Bright spots? Sure, there are a few. Democrats managed to flip a couple of U.S. House seats and a handful of state house slots. But despite its popular image as a purple or swing state, the political leverage in Florida remains firmly in the hands of the Tea Party GOP. The vote margins might be thin, but their grip on power is decidedly strong.
The next four years are not going to be pretty for progressives in Florida. The enthusiasm behind Andrew Gillum’s race has been huge, especially among the traditionally underserved communities across the state. Can that energy form the basis for an ongoing progressive movement in Florida? Can Beto’s almost victory in Texas do the same there? These are two superb and charismatic campaigners. How might their personal appeal translate to support for a progressive movement writ large? Is it dependent upon a savior figure? Or will scores of first-time political enthusiasts now sink back into their non-participatory torpor, proven right once again that political engagement just isn’t worth the candle?
It’s a tough call. The Trump base craves a movement that feeds its sense of resentment, and in that they are more than served by the current regime. Their prevailing desire is to somehow “stick it to the libs”, even if that means undermining their own interests. The progressive base craves policy change, an often dull and incremental process that is far less emotionally satisfying than laser-focused rage.
But not even I can miss the bright spots. The fact that Gillum and O’Rourke came as close as they did in traditional hotbeds of reactionary and racist attitudes is indeed a sign of hope. The slim reed of Stacy Abrams’s campaign in Georgia, still alive as of this writing, is another enormously encouraging sign of a populace (perhaps) awakening from complacency.
Victories and activism by dozens of progressive women, people of color, and LBGTQ figures were essential to the Democrats taking control of the U.S. House and a big handful of governor’s races. We are rid of such perennially toxic figures as Scott Walker and Dana Rohrbacher. (Alas, Tennessee has delivered upon us the latest version of Michele Bachmann in the guise of Senator Blackburn, yet another in a tragically long line of “godly” Stepford candidates who reliably view the world through an “I got mine” lens.)
The brightest spot? A Democratic majority in Congress poses a legitimate barrier to Trump’s rampaging authoritarianism and violation of law. A number of superbly qualified Democrats will take up the gavel across the House committees, bodies that will be empowered to investigate and subpoena the Trump administration in ways that quisling toadies like Devin Nunes and Jim “Gym” Jordan would never allow. This is a huge improvement over the current condition, no question.
Nancy Pelosi will once again be Speaker of the House. I have little patience with the ‘dump Pelosi’ faction among the Dems. She has been the most effective legislative leader over the past 30-40 years. Granted, I also have little patience with some of her statements, such as this one in the hours after last night’s results became known.
“We will have accountability and strive for bipartisanship. We must try. We have a bipartisan marketplace of ideas that makes our democracy strong. We have all had enough with division.”
Well excuse me and all, but, fuck, no. There is no hope for bipartisanship in this political moment. The GOP leadership has made that clear since Obama nominated Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court. I can only hope that Pelosi is playing the formal game here and that she has no intention of looking for points of compromise in the coming fight.
And make no mistake. This is the fight of our political lives. Two years of Trump, and the GOP’s slavish submission to his toddler whims, have degraded our civic society to a low level not seen in 160 years. The sick irony is that it is fueled by the same questions of power and racial animus that powered the drive to secession.
What would civil war look like in America today? There is no neat geographic division between North and South to demarcate who would remove themselves from the larger whole, to delineate where hostilities might be generally contained. Civil war would be more a Beirut or Belfast model, bitter foes living next door to one another with the norm looking like recent spasms of violence in Kentucky or Pittsburgh or Charleston, or even the recent yoga studio shooting here in Tallahassee.
We may have already arrived. Did Fort Sumter happen and we just didn’t notice?
For now, the civil war is asymmetric, one side predominant in the hostilities. There remains a hope that our fabled democratic norms and institutions will offer a path away from complete social disintegration. It is my hope, and the reason I will continue to pursue – and even believe in – the imperfect ideal of creating an enlightened self-governing republic. I admit that I find the prospect bleak.
And yet, we persist. To do otherwise is even bleaker. Funkentelechy in the Panhandle
Hey kids. Only 5 months since the last post. Mea culpa.
I been busy with many things, not the least of them being a novel that is currently at around 50,000 words and may in fact be an unprecedented work of confounding genius. Or maybe a load of shite. YMMV
Also, too, I got to spend a long afternoon with the one true Dr. Funkenstein, George Clinton, for a feature article in Flamingo Magazine‘s Arts and Culture issue.
That steak was big as your face.
As you might imagine, several hours in the Mothership orbit is pretty heady business. The man can tell stories.
I submitted my first draft, full of piss and vinegar and with dreams of Pulitzer dancing in my head. Three days later, an email arrived from the Editor to the effect that my article was “wildly creative” and “very conceptual.”
This is the editorial equivalent of “Bless your heart.”
So I rewrote. And in the end, I think the final product turned out great, especially after the editor asked for more detail about George’s kind of fiercely incredible wife, Carlon. All’s well &c.
Tonight, I was part of a Flamingo Magazine panel at our most excellent local bookstore, Midtown Reader. I was asked to read something. So I went back and re-read my first draft and found some things I still really like about it. So for my reading, I read the parts that were “wildly creative” and so forth. And I promised the crowd (SRO, packed to the rafters, riots on par with Sacre du Printemps) that I would post the full first draft here.
Compare and contrast the warty version with the published piece (which, I must say, looks better in print, due in large part to the fine photography of Mark Wallheiser). Bonus points for your exegesis of the transformative effects of the writer/editor grapplings.
Funkentelechy & the Trickster Principle
By Rob Rushin
Every culture across (inter)planetary time and space recognizes The Trickster. This mischievous demigod roams the world in many guises, joking, provoking – maybe even smoking – mere mortals into confusion and creative discord. Dynamos of misdirection and sleight of hand trickeration, they may appear as different entities simultaneously, your perception/reaction crosswise with your neighbor. Did you find a glide in your step and a dip in your hip, or do you remain utterly devoid of funk? Do you see the Star Child or Sir Nose, or do you only have eyes for Dr. Funkenstein?
Costumes, personae, masks, altered voices: The Trickster’s repertoire of contrivance is deep and wide, wielded to disrupt habitual thinking and lead you to synthesis, amalgamation, and integration. To freedom. To the Mothership.
When the disruptive paradigm shakers of the trans-Atlantic slave trade chained their cargo in the bowels of their Middle Passage transports, they shipped more than saleable human capital. The myths of Africa – especially from the Slave Coast – came with them. In the 20th Century, the Trickster lineage from Eshu through Br’er Rabbit and Signifyin(g) Monkey found outlet in the bodies of such characters as Little Richard, Sun Ra, Richard Pryor, and, of course, our illuminatorial visitating interlocutor of the moment, George Edward Clinton.
Born July 22, 1941, in Kannapolis, North Carolina, Clinton was raised on the doo wop streets of Plainfield, New Jersey. Variously resident of Philadelphia, Detroit, Toronto, and Los Angeles, the one true Doctor Funkenstein – shape shifting Trickster Supreme – has for 20 years worn the mask of Florida Man. A living bridge across seven decades – from Jersey corner singer to staff writer for the pop music machines of the Brill Building to Godfather of funk and hip hop – he remains among the most influential figures in American popular music. In 1997, the Parliament Funkadelic gang was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2014, a replica of the Mothership, central to funkentelechal performance and cosmology, went on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, bearing the label “A Gift of Love to the Planet.”
Clinton, age 77, remains a vital force, his imprint on rock, funk, soul, hip hop, and certain gauzy corners of jazz as extensive as any musician of his time. Aside from being the most sampled musician on the planet – hip hop and its variants are literally unimaginable without Clinton’s influence – the P Funk mélange spawned a cosmology that more or less established the recognizable tenets of Afrofuturism and a philosophical ethos that boils down to a bold declaration of psycho-physical liberation: “Free your mind, and your ass will follow.”
Last Spring, Clinton announced a global farewell tour ahead of a 2019 retirement. Then he set the internet on fire with the surprise release of Medicaid Fraud Dogg, the first Parliament album in 38 years. He might be retiring, but the old Atomic Dog can still bark. And bite.
There’s nothing that the proper attitude won’t render…funkable
Do you promise the funk, the whole funk, and nothin’ but the funk?
How the founding father of One Nation Under a Groove came to live under the oak trees in a remote and superficially unfunky outpost in the Florida Panhandle is a rags-to-riches-to-rags- to-redemption tale. Clinton tells all in his 2014 memoir, Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You?, a raucous fable of grittier detail than we can manage in a family-style magazine. Suffice to say that customary depredations of devious management, drug use, and a somewhat devil-may-care lifestyle had left George with limited options when he arrived for a 1996 date at The Moon in Tallahassee.
“It was a mess, but I’m not gonna boo hoo about it because nobody wants to hear that shit.”
Clinton set up shop in Tallahassee in 1997, finally settling five years ago on an 8-acre countryside spread a few miles from his private recording studio.
“I used to think I had to be up and out, all the time,” Clinton mused beneath his personal oak tree canopy. “But when I got here, I realized I could just sit down and be. I used to stay up til dawn. Now I like to go to bed at 8 o’clock and get up at dawn to listen to the birds singing.”
Clinton has countless children and grandchildren, many of them hard at work in the P-Funk empire – some playing and singing, some running media relations and office functions, some keeping a steady stream of treats coming off the grill. The situation clearly suits him.
In 2014, he dropped the first Funkadelic album in 33 years, the 33-song first ya gotta SHAKE THE GATE. This year brought Medicaid Fraud Dogg, a 23-song epic about the disastrous state of health care in an over-prescribed society. This fall, Clinton promises another couple dozen tracks under the P Funk All-Stars banner, tentatively titledOne Nation Under Sedation. All this while taking a planetary victory lap. The well has not run dry.
Tallahassee also gives Clinton access to talent from the local universities. Florida State University ethnomusicology Professor Michael Bakan got to know Clinton after featuring him as guest artist at FSU’s annual Rainbow Concert showcasing the school’s world music program. That collaboration – peaking with a wild version of “Atomic Dog” arranged for Gamelan ensemble – led to Bakan cutting tracks for Fraud Dogg. It was a session to remember.
“It seemed like he wasn’t really paying attention, so I figured I’ll just try some things out. It was like he’s looking off in space, or doesn’t seem like he knows I’m doing anything, and suddenly he says, ‘That.’ So I started again and he says, ‘No, no, no. Wait. Now. Now stop. Now keep going. Stop.’ As the day unfolded, I realized that essentially when you’re in the studio with George, you’re his hands. He’s not a percussionist so he doesn’t have the chops, but he knows exactly what he wants. Once he hears the sound, it’s like he immediately has an entire roadmap of where that sound is going to be.”
Bakan laughs and says, “I’ve worked with John Cage, and the strange thing is that you would think there couldn’t be two more different kinds of musical artists than John Cage and George Clinton. But that’s the closest I’ve ever experienced.”
Along with the local talent, Clinton holds long-term P Funk family close, guys like bassist Lige Curry and Dewayne “Blackbyrd” McKnight – a genuine guitar hero in the mold of predecessor legends Eddie Hazel and Michael Hampton – who keep the original Mothership Connection alive and vital. Drummer Benzel Cowan, son of original and current P Funk trumpeter Bennie Cowan, was dandled on the knee of Bootsy Collins as an infant; the man was born to funk. People who come into George’s orbit tend to stay there.
Case in point: As we wandered the property surveying the garden and dozens of birdhouses, George pointed at the house.
“See that apartment there? Overton lives there. He’s still living with us.”
Overton Loyd created the comic book insert for the Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome album. It depicts the epic battle between Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk and Starchild. (If you find an original copy for sale, you can’t afford it.) He also designed the cover for the Motor Booty Affair album, the Atomic Dog video, and the artwork for Fraud Dogg.
“P Funk is a family thing,” Clinton says, not for the first or last time during our afternoon together.
Clinton’s recent collaborations with Sly Stone and his ongoing association with ex-James Brown horn players Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, and Pee Wee Ellis connect current P Funk to its deeper historic roots. Common wisdom holds that James Brown, Sly Stone, and George Clinton deserve credit as the creators of modern funk. Too simple to be the whole story, sure. But also: inarguably true.
Combine all this history with grandchildren keeping George attuned to a new generation’s eyes and ears and you have a recipe for authentic multigenerationalfunkentelechy , a concept derivative of Aristotle’sentelechy that means, roughly, the ongoing actualization of the true funk.
Then there is Camp Clinton’s secret weapon, George’s wife Carlon, a savvy administrator, promoter, and self-taught legal eagle who hovers above the overall organization. She also manages the endless requests for interviews and favors that stalk Clinton like Atomic Dog chasing the cat.
Today, that dog was me. All for you, dear reader. All for you.
“…I’m still hard as steel.”
Friends, inquisitive friends Are asking what’s come over me
The opening lines from The Parliaments first hit, 1968’s “(I Wanna) Testify”, about a man transformed by love, resonate in George Clinton, c. 2018. For all the wild stage antics and ferocious mountains of sound he has delivered, the man we visited is at peace with himself and his legacy, surrounded by family and proudly unburdened by any medication beyond doctor- prescribed marijuana. Even as Clinton prepares to leave touring to the younger P Funk generation – “I am setting it up for the kids to take it over.” – he still plans to work the studio “hard as steel. Started hard as steel and I’m still hard as steel.”
And still sharp as a razor. He is a mesmerizing storyteller with an astonishing recall of detail, though with the Trickster one never knows where the line between factoration and trickeration falls. For example: shortly after “Testify” hit the charts, it became clear that the music world – hell, the whole damned world – was changing. George knew he needed to change with it. But how?
“I’m just thinking about this today. I went and saw Fantasia and 2001 on the same show. 1968. You know, you’re talking about Disney’s animated visual concepts showing primordial ooze with classical music, and then you got 2001, Arthur C Clarke you know, past the primordial and out the other end into that star baby.”
So that’s where Star Child comes from?
“I got a whole bunch of stuff too, you know, I must have just got loaded with all the information to whatever was going on through that period of time.”
Clinton has always been a cultural omnivore. Our conversation covered Smokey Robinson, Hendrix, Iron Butterfly, Blade Runner and Chariot of the Gods, King Crimson, Zappa, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, who he calls “the P Funk of jazz.”
Even Kanye West. Asked whether Kanye might be turning into Sir Nose, Clinton laughs, a beautiful deep chortle up from the belly.
“That’s the best way to say it. Sir Nose, yeah. His nose is definitely kind of growing. He gonna have to watch his nose, gonna have to check his nose out.”
We talked about Clinton’s fellow astral traveler Sun Ra, legendary leader of the Solar Myth Arkestra. When they met in the 80s, Clinton realized they were basically up to the same thing.
“They were doing what we do – the costumes, the space travel – just doing it in jazz. It’s beautiful.”
Reminded of their shared background in doo wop, Clinton demonstrates the encyclopedic mind that informs his musical imagination.
“Yeah, he was in Chicago then. Those harmonies he was after were deep, that five-part shit. Nobody was doing that kind of thing except maybe Smokey. We were all singing unisons and octaves, nothing like that.”
Younger Clintons keep him hip to new trends and talent, leading him to collaborations with the likes of Scarface, Thundercat, and recently-minted Pulitzer winner Kendrick Lamar.
“I was telling Kendrick jazz was going to be the next thing in hip hop, not knowing that his record was all in that. I don’t know if he already had it like that, but there’s lots of jazz in his ammo. I use a lot of that flavor on this Medicaid Fraud Dogg.”
“You know that kind of music gives it an elevation. It’s still hip hop, still storytelling, but he actually had some arrangement. You can’t just call it making beats, you know, just making a beat on the computer. That shit had to be written. Somebody went to school for a lot of that stuff he’s putting down. You didn’t get that from no Casio.”
Other talent on his radar includes Cardi B, Flying Lotus, and Childish Gambino. “Gambino, he’s really got it. Lots of information, and clever. That video? Man, that’s some shit!”
It was time for a photo shoot. Carlon live-streamed the proceedings on Periscope, so you can verify: Clinton styling a stunning, gold sequin ensemble while singing along with Sinatra.
That’s the beginning, just one of the clues You’ve had your first lesson, in learnin’ the blues.
Funky Ba Da Bing, sweetheart.
Dropping Beats, Dropping Knowledge
Music is designed to free your funky mind We have come to help you cope
Clinton agrees he fits the Trickster mold, but insists he does not really think about it all that much.
“See, I got so much history, so many things I know, that I just go ahead and do it. I’m responding to things around me, things that are happening. That’s why Medicaid Fraud Dogg gets to what it’s about. It’s the thing happening now.”
Thus does Florida Man concoct Medicaid Fraud Dogg with no consideration of the fact that our sitting governor was CEO of a company dinged for the largest Medicare fraud penalty in history. Informed that Spotify was running ads for the governor’s U.S. Senate campaign during the Fraud Dogg stream, he rumbled that deep laugh while denying any funkentelechal trickeration.
“Ain’t that some shit? Somebody having some fun.”
A happy accident? Maybe so, but hearing “I’m Rick Scott, and I approve this message” hard on the heels of “Medicated Creep” or “I’m Gon Make U Sick O’me” will never be anything but comedy gold.
I’m gon make u sick I’m gon make u sick o’me Then I’m gonna give you the antidote Somethin’ to make ya feel better
For all the humor, Clinton is dead serious about the themes behind the new album. Looking at addiction through the lens of someone who has been there, he compares Big Pharma to street dealers.
“Drugs are really more dangerous now. I quit, but I can still see all the people my age walking around, you know, that same dazed look like it was street drugs. And most of them got prescriptions. Now it’s legal. So the pharmaceutical companies, same as though it was still street drugs, they get people hooked on stuff, but now they got a legal way of doing it with prescriptions and stuff, people don’t have a chance. If you stop taking them, you’re in trouble. So they get a captive audience and they can advertise that shit on the radio and TV and internet. They give you the cure for the pill they gave you for something else and that happens three or four times before you realize you taking meds for other meds.”
No need to read the label warning Just take two of me
“I’m glad when I got out of it I still had enough energy and inspiration to write all this. That was my energy for fighting harder again, along with my life, you know, family and everything. It was fun just building up the energy to get going again.”
It’s George doing what he has done for 60 years: absorbing the culture around him and refracting it through his unique sensibility. Is There Life After Funk?
Once upon a time called Now Somebody say, “Is there funk after death?”
The indisputable creative peak for Parliament Funkadelic remains their string of 70s masterpieces, but the new music coming out of Camp Clinton is lighting up a new, international generation of listeners. Just as important, the organization is healthier than ever. With extended family handling both creative and administrative duties, this framework can keep funking after George is gone, much like the Ellington, Basie, and Sun Ra organizations have kept those torches burning. If we – and they – are lucky, our kid’s grandkids will be shouting “Make my funk the P Funk” while fourth- and fifth- generation Clintons navigate the Mothership.
Then again: King Lear had only three daughters, and we know how that turned out. Over 60 years, George Clinton emerged as Keeper of the Funk and one of the most recognizable front men in pop music. So what about succession? Who will fill the Dr. Funkenstein shoes?
“They all know they’re doing it as a group and the group has been set up to function as a group. They’ll find the focal point. They can figure out how they want to keep it going forward because the group is the group. Long as they don’t get it twisted and think it is them individually, don’t let those trivial things that usually get in the way of groups…some of those excuses be good as hell, but you ain’t really thinking about the big picture.”
Clinton passes the baton with a clear mandate to keep eyes on the prize: Maintain the funk, the whole funk, and nothing but the funk. It’s an awesome task with and immense payoff.
“Ain’t nothing better than when that music is coming together on stage. There is comradery you developed, whether you know it or not. Despite the bullshit, that tightness you got supersedes everything.”
But what will George do when he hangs up his road shoes?
“Man, I’ma go fishing, like every day. And I’m gonna write another book. I’m thinking about calling it Stupid Shit I Did On Drugs. I’ll get all my friends to tell me about all the stupid stuff we did and collect it all in a book.”
He laughs again, that same up-from-the-roots-of-his-soul laugh we have been digging all afternoon. He might be serious. Maybe. With this Trickster, you never know until the funk comes down.
Fantasy is reality in the world today I’ll keep hanging in there That’s the only way
De mortuis nil nisi bonum Does Not Rhyme With Rich
I posted this on the Twitter machine last night and took a little bit of grief for it. De mortuis nil nisi bonum goes the ancient admonition – Of the dead, speak nothing but good – and it was suggested that my comment was disrespectful and in poor taste.
On the other hand, I also got a ton of likes and retweets, with several commenters taking things farther and offering some truly savage comments about the late Mrs. Bush.
Respectfully, both reactions miss the point. I come neither to praise or bury Barbara Bush. In many ways, her passing is but a blip in the larger landscape of our rippling human drama. To her family and friends, certainly, this is a sad moment, a time for reflection and remembrance and mutual support. They deserve the space and respect to handle this however they see fit within their own circle.
But the lionization of Barbara Bush, a woman who is, at best, a footnote in history, does nobody any good. All the misty- eyed reminiscences have thoroughly ignored the complexity of this flesh and blood creature. It doesn’t take much googling to discover that Barbara Bush was prone to say things that were, if not downright nasty and cruel, at the very least oblivious and callous towards real human suffering.
Her thoughts after her wastrel son launched an unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq:
But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it’s going to happen, and how many this and what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And here, in the wake of Dubya’s incompetent response to Katrina:
What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.
Oh, those lucky poors. They never had it so good.
Again, not to pick on Babs: we are all of us, at times, oblivious and cruel, some of us more than others, some of us more intentionally than inadvertent. On this score we are all certainly guilty to one extent or another.
But our society’s penchant for painting rosy pictures of the dead is part and parcel of our unwillingness to face squarely the prevailing assumptions and privileges that are hurtling our nation headlong into third world debasement. Nobody wants to point out the Snicker bar floating in the swimming pool might not actually be a piece of candy. Nobody wants to be thought callous or unkind at someone’s passing.
But we are a nation asleep, and telling comforting bedtime stories about a person, living or dead, does nothing to rouse our dulled sense of engagement. At my passing, I hope to be remembered fondly for things I have done that are worthy of endearment. I also hope that I can count on my closest friends to speak some hard truths about what went along with that. The story only partially told does the listener – and the storyteller – a grave disservice. I have some exceptional warts that are well worth the telling.
A few weeks back, writing about the JC Superstar production, I noted that depictions of the Christ as a flawed, deeply human character “do more to imbue the myth with the kind of layered meanings that encourage considered reflection and exploration than do the Sunday school bromides of my youth.” I admit that the Barbara Bush story has some elements to it that are pretty admirable, amazing even. But presenting her as just this side of saintly only sets up the inevitable tension between discovering the heel of clay or turning ourselves inside out to maintain illusion. The first encourages cynicism; the latter, dishonesty. Both are corrosive.
The full Didion quote I reference in the tweet is “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” It’s the opening line in her legendary essay The White Album. It is one of my favorite lines in all of literature: When I feel like not writing, I think of that quote. It emphasizes our need to craft a narrative, to strive to make sense of our world and ourselves. It is – like the first line in this blog’s manifesto – a continual source of inspiration and strength for me. But it’s worth noting that as The White Album essay unfolds we discover that Didion is exploring whether the utility we find in telling ourselves stories may be more to do with our ability to fool ourselves about what is really going on.
The Didion of The White Album is in serious psychic distress about a society that was every bit as fractious and self- destructive as is our current civis. In the final sentence, she laments that “writing has not yet helped me to see what it means”. Perhaps as 40 years have passed, as she has grappled with telling herself (and us) these stories, grappled with – and wherever possible, resisted – the temptation to sugar coat the harder truths, she has glimpsed more accurately “what it means”. I like to think so, but that may be just another comforting bedtime tale. Only she knows for sure.
Didion’s is an exemplary path, a hard path. Her striving to understand “what it means” is a beacon for me. At the same time, I would be a fool to ignore the aspects of Didion that are less than admirable.
So enough with the fairy tales about Barbara Bush. She was by all accounts a tough cookie. She can stand the harsh light of decent honesty.
Better South
I don’t really know where to begin to talk about this year’s Word of South Festival. I could begin at the beginning, that moment when I had my photo taken with legendary Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood, creator of what is arguably the coolest bass part in the history of pop music. Both these gents can play the bass part from I’ll Take You There. Only one of them created that masterpiece.
Go on and check that endless groove behind Mavis Staples. Set it on repeat. Mercy.
Alright. Ain’t nobody crying. Come on now, David. Little David.
Or I could begin at the end, when David’s son Patterson, founder of the Drive By Truckers, laid us all flat with his invocation of Patti Smith during his solo performance of “What It Means”, his no-holds barred response to the ongoing series of assassinations of Black men by law enforcement.
“Love each other, motherfuckers!”
It was all I could do to not dissolve in tears, but there’s no sobbing on a bar stool, motherfuckers, so I did what everybody else did and damn near yelled myself hoarse in assent.
Either beginning works, so I’ll go ahead and start in the middle of last year’s festival.
Anybody who knows me knows that I love The Bitter Southerner. And you also know I pretty much love my now-and-future hometown of Tallahassee – especially the Word of South festival, our yearly mashup of music and literature. About a year ago, over breakfast with BS editor Chuck Reece and WoS founder Mark Mustian, I watched an agreement take shape that made Bitter Southerner the host for a stage at the 2018 shindig. A full weekend of whatever Chuck and his crew could cook up. I had no idea what was coming. A year later, the Bitter Southerner Stage was the center of gravity at a festival that had no shortage of crackerjack talent. Whether it was sax killer Darius Jones trading verses with novelist Catherine Lacey, or novelist (and Lacey’s husband) Jesse Ball reading his austere prose from his latest novel, Census; or maybe a two-hour presentation from Guggenheim Fellow filmmaker Bill Morrison, or John T. Edge holding forth on the social and political implications of Southern Foodways, or civil rights activist and lawyer Ben Crump laying out harsh reality for the (lamentably) mostly white audience.
Maybe your high point came when 80s pop star Suzanne Vega lit up the night with her radiant voice and presence on the big stage. I sat down with a pal to “watch for one song” and move on, and one song became one more, and one more again until I had watched the whole show, amazed at the sheer beauty of Vega’s language and sound.
When I stood up after Suzanne Vega, this is what I saw. Our town cleans up right nice.
It would be ridiculous to try and pin down my favorite moment, much less the best moment of the festival. Because like any good fest, I missed more than I could possibly fit in, and you just know that FOMO feeling you have is justified.
But still, I’ll give center of gravity status to the Bitter stage, and not just because I love that crew like I love breathing. It’s because Chuck and team put together the kind of cogently thematic program that makes a festival more than just a collection of cool events. It’s the kind of thing that makes a statement, delivers a manifesto. BS teamed up with friend-of-the-publication Patterson Hood
The festival began with White, Hood pere and fils, and another Muscle Shoals legend, Funky Donnie Fritts in a panel discussion with editor Reece. Tales of how it all began, what it was like to hang and play with folks like Aretha and Percy Sledge and Wilson Pickett and Mick and Rhymin Simon and, and. And how the tiny towns of the Shoals somehow became one of the most prized places to make a record (remember those) in the 60s and 70s. And then came guitarist Cedric Burnside, grandson of the legendary RL Burnside, with a set of deep in the groove blues from the Mississippi hill country. Serious roots. Then it was set by John Paul White and a tribute to the great Muscle Shoals songwriter Arthur Alexander, and I had to miss them both and endure the looks on friends’ faces when they said, “Dude, how did you miss that? It was amazing.”, which it most surely was, and which would have crushed me had I not been getting my gob smacked by Jesse Ball, or Jeff and Ann VanderMeer and their trusty bird sidekicks. And that led to Vega, which led to a kind of amazing after-party event featuring Charlie Crockett playing some ass-kick Texas roadhouse music. The threat of overnight storms – the same line of storms that flat out shut down the French Quarter Fest in NOLA – led organizers to scramble to find indoor spaces for Sunday. Word of South has had its share of weather woes, and the danger of losing the energy of a festival by dispersing around town is very real. Our Sunday began with the Morrison film program – well attended despite the rain – an absolutely captivating overview of his career that led me to immediately subscribe to the FilmStruck streaming service so I can watch his stuff over and over again. You can get a 14-day free trial. Go ahead and sign up and watch Morrison’s Decasia. You can thank me later.
Then it was time to get back to the Bitter South, which had moved indoors to 5th & Thomas, a fine listening room that was just barely big enough to hold the crowd. I missed the all- star tribute to guitarist/songwriter Eddie Hinton, who wrote the second sexiest song of all time, “Breakfast in Bed”
But I was in place for Patterson’s solo set. Now here’s where I drop a mea culpa and admit that I have never, not even once, listened to the Drive by Truckers before.
I was fortunate to be able to share this thought with Patterson later: He had taken my heart and shown me what was inside, a direct challenge delivered with love and compassion. And when he invoked Patti with “Love each other, motherfuckers”, I was rendered paralyzed with hope and fear and resolve to maintain my own small engagement with the larger world in vain hope that I can change something, even if it is only my own limited understanding of how we thrive and suffer together.
And that has been the mission of Bitter South from the jump: to show us where we connect, where we are all the same even while we honor and embrace our (and your) difference. The programming of the Muscle Shoals crew – hell, of Muscle Shoals as an ideal to live up to – delivers the kind of thematic resonance that can take a good festival and move it towards greatness. Most of these musicians could have made a much better paycheck doing another gig elsewhere, but they chose this weekend to make a statement and take a stand. They made the world a better place for the several hundreds of people in their orbit, and their work went to support my pal Chuck and my hometown – and Word of South itself. I love all these things fiercely, and as such, I love my new friends Patterson and David, John Paul and Reed and Adam and Ben. Thank you gentlemen.
Word of South stands at a hinge point. Four years down, it faces the question of “what are we going to be when we grow up?” From the first time I heard about Mustian’s idea, well before the first festival took place, I had a sense that this was the kind of event that could put Tallahassee on the cultural map, an event that would make people say, “We have got to go to Word of South this year”. It has been a very good festival, with year after year improvement. And I take nothing away from the rest of the talent at the 2018 fest: it was loaded and fabulous. I elevate the Bitter South contribution because it has the internal logic and structure that, as I said before, can make a good festival great.
There is rumor of BS returning next year. Let’s hope so. There is rumor of other collaborations of this sort. Bravo! As WoS celebrates its fifth birthday next Spring, I want my friends from Atlanta and NOLA and Knoxville, from Seattle and London and New York to look at the lineup, mark the dates and say, “Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away”.
The challenge is drawn, WoS. It won’t be easy, but I’m with you 100 percent. Your Electric Picture Radio Box Matters #3: The Critical Importance of Myth (#BlackJesusMatters)
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live” – Joan Didion
“We tell each other stories in order to live together” – i2b
People accuse the i2b team of elitist snobbery, of being blind and deaf to the kinds of entertainment that “real people” might enjoy. P’tah, saith the team: The i2b brow covers the full range, from low to high and all points in between.
In that spirit: NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert was just about perfect in every way.
The sets and staging, the costuming, the direction: all of this was as good as it gets. The cast was superb, especially the Broadway pros. Better: the cast was determinedly multi- culti and scruffy as hell, all angular haircuts and tattoos.
The expected troll backlash from the religious right never really materialized. A fair number of theologically inclined folks complained that JCS does not include the actual stone- rolling-aside episode, a resurrection
Of note: as Jesus ascended, every member of the cast Took. A. Knee.
The Christ myth may indeed be the Greatest Story Ever Told. I write this as a fully convinced atheist, but that really isn’t germane, any more than are my thoughts about the reality of Hogwarts or Mordor. This is strictly about the narrative, and this story has it all: rebellion, romance, social justice, and brutal oppression. It’s about class division and capital punishment and the mechanics of social movements. And crucially, it is about betrayal.
When the original JCS album came out in 1970, I damn near wore the grooves flat. Raised in church, indentured as an altar boy until such time as I could effectively object, I was taken by the representation of Jesus as a man, a mortal product of time and circumstance. Divine? Maybe, maybe not.
Die if you want to, you innocent puppet. – Pontius Pilate to Jesus
And what about Judas? History’s greatest villain, condemned by Dante to the 9th Circle, he remains by far the most complex and interesting character in the myth. But I, like many others, was raised with a black and white conception of Jesus- good-Judas-bad, a stance that pointedly ignores the fact that without Judas, there is no arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection. No Judas? No Christianity. This was one of our earliest lessons in ambiguity, and it remains perhaps the most prevalent.
Through many a dark hour I’ve been thinkin’ about this That Jesus Christ was Betrayed by a kiss But I can’t think for you You’ll have to decide Whether Judas Iscariot Had God on his side. – Bob Dylan, “With God On Our Side”
As good as Legend was as Jesus, Brandon Victor Dixon’s Judas stole the show. Already a Broadway giant, most recently as Aaron Burr in Hamilton, Dixon can write his ticket to any destination as of last night.
You’d have managed better if you’d had it planned. Why’d you choose such a backward time in such a strange land? If you’d come today you could have reached a whole nation. Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.
The depiction of the crowd as a gaggle of media hounds after the arrest of Jesus was a clever twist (as was the wide use of cellphones among the cast) that framed the events in relation to current movements like #NeverAgain and #BlackLivesMatter. The production may not have been conceived with these in mind, but you would have to deliberately choose to not see the echoes.
Every word you say today. Gets twisted ’round some other way. And they’ll hurt you if they think you‘ve lied.
Judas, famously, betrays Jesus with a kiss. In the JCS depiction, Jesus gathers Judas in a tight embrace, a clear display of affection for his old friend who, like himself, finds himself a pawn of forces beyond their reckoning. Is Judas, the universal symbol for betrayal and damnation, forgiven here by Jesus, the singular emblem of mercy and redemption in our canon? God, I hope so. Dante be damned.
I’ll go toe-to-toe with anyone to defend the premise that re- tellings like JCS – and Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ – do more to imbue the myth with the kind of layered meanings that encourage considered reflection and exploration than do the Sunday school bromides of my youth. Is Judas a man beyond redemption? Perhaps, although it’s hard to imagine a more vibrant redemption than Judas returning from the grave in a sequined tank top to tear the roof off the joint with the anthemic title song. When I come back from the grave, I want to be this fabulous.
I have not listened to JCS in more than 20 years, not since the Atlanta music community
The diversity of casting and the representation of the apostles as scruffy misfits alone made the NBC production a statement. The presentation of Jesus as a Black man, and his female companion a White woman, could fairly be interpreted as a poke in the eye of America’s conservative culture warriors. For centuries, Western culture has insisted on depicting Jesus as some kind of Nordic or Aryan icon. Not this night. I’ll say it again: Black Jesus Matters, and the fact that NBC presented a depiction of the Christ myth that leaned hard on inclusion and diversity, and on the holiest day of the Christian calendar no less, is no small incident in the current climate.
Or maybe I’m wrong, and this is all about nostalgia and the willingness of a corporate behemoth like NBC/Comcast to manipulate us all for profit. It is certainly possible. No doubt, nostalgia plays a large part in my emotional response to JCS. A big part of my childhood, I know the lyrics and music to this show inside and out. Judging from Twitter, I am one among many. It is as firmly imprinted as any cultural artifact can be.
But it has to be more than that. The score, not astonishing by any measure, is filled with earworms and memorable lyrics, and the libretto is filled with doses of sly humor. King Herod’s song is campishly funny, made even more so by the stunt casting of Alice Cooper. (How Legend managed to kneel in front of Alice Freaking Cooper through that piece without cracking up is beyond me.)
My favorite gibe comes during the Last Supper, when most of the apostles are drunk with wine and enthusiasm for a movement they do not fully comprehend.
Always hoped that I’d be an apostle Knew that I would make it if I tried Then when we retire we can write the gospels So they’ll all talk about us when we die.
Perhaps the Gospels were the first tell-all memoirs, the Apostles the creators of the genre. Scores of ex-White House staffers offer their thanks.
There was a ton of energy surrounding the performance, and the decision to have a live audience served JCS well where other recent broadcast musicals fell short. There was an apparent emotional connection at work in the venue, and that spilled over to the broadcast, even where it created technical issues with sound balance and such. But quibbling over mix problems is as beside-the-point as griping about commercial interruptions. Success for such a production comes down to a central concern: can the viewer emotionally connect?
So?
I admit it. I spent most of the evening with my cheeks wet. Mary doesn’t know how to love him. Judas doesn’t either. Jesus has galvanized a movement that is spinning out of his control. He recognizes too late that his followers are not up to the tasks of the movement, aside from Judas, perhaps, a man who is destined to betray Jesus to death. Jesus confronts the money changers and runs them from the Temple. For his trouble, Jesus is swarmed by lepers and other afflicted supplicants; pulling and tearing at him, everybody wants a piece for themselves no matter the cost to their saviour. The devoted dozen fall asleep as Jesus fairly begs someone to stay awake with him in his last night of freedom. Then comes Peter’s betrayal, three times, and Magdalene’s comment, “You’ve gone and cut him dead.” Then there is the agonized death of Judas, the man who made Christianity possible, recognizing that he is, indeed, damned for all time.
And finally, most of all, the Crucifixion, Jesus ascending and drifting into the mist on his tiny cross – “My God, my God, why have you forgotten me?” – framed by a giant cross, backlit until he disappears into pure light? As powerful and moving as it gets. Michelangelo can only shake his head and say, “Damn, that was fine.”
Despite the insistence of the devout that Jesus is indeed a manifestation of the one, true God
All of which means that when a major teevee network devotes millions of dollars to a star-studded presentation of the Christ myth – on Easter Sunday, no less – it is worth paying attention to how this story is being told. Which Jesus, or whose, is always a question worth asking. Is this the Jesus of Harriet Tubman or Robert E Lee? Is this blond and blue-eyed Jesus or Jesus with dark skin and napped hair? Is this Jesus divine or mortal? JCS does unbelievers the service of offering a Jesus that can belong to anyone.
If your slate is clean, then you can throw stones. If your slate is not, then leave her alone.
These are stories we tell ourselves, in order to live. They belong to everyone.
The Embiggening: Day 4
The i2b team of one continues their coverage of the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN. Please share widely. And if you are feeling generous, click that DONATE button over there so we can buy gas and go home.
Day 4 began with some drama for the i2b team. We had hoped to be through with the excitements once we bailed out the photographer, but alas, no. We don’t know how the copy editor actually got to Dollywood, not the exact nature of the alleged unpleasantness that so alarmed the Pigeon Forge constabulary, but on behalf of the entire i2b team, we offer our regrets and apologies. However, any restitution for damages shall be the sole responsibility of the copy editor, who we had conveniently sacked several hours before whatever unpleasantness may or may not have occurred at whatever time – past or future – the alleged acts may or may not have etc and so forth. There will be no further comment on this matter.
We finished our Day 3 summary just in time to scamper to the Mill & Mine for the highly anticipated Tyshawn Sorey Trio performance at noon. Aside from being named a 2017 MacArthur Genius, Sorey has a rich discography as both leader and sideman. Fantastically talented on drums, piano, and trombone, Sorey has also been making his mark as a composer.
But not every event can live up to expectation, even at Big Ears. Beginning with a long, pensive introduction by Cory Smythe – a terrific pianist who we saw several times with the International Contemporary Ensemble – every section of this 75 minute, single composition performance seemed to go too long. Multiple apparent endings would come and go, a comma appearing where a period would have provided much needed respite for the audience. Still, moments of the set were thrilling. Smythe is a remarkably inventive pianist and Sorey’s reputation as a percussionist is well deserved. It was not a bad show, but it certainly was not great. Combine the need for editing with the fact that we were a standing audience in the over-sized (for this show) Mill & Mine: the overall effect was to add to the exhaustion that three full days of music-chasing had created.
This sense of exhaustion hung over the final day of the festival. You could see it in the faces of the listeners, the festival staff, the security guards, the good people vending the beverages and the snacks. But kudos to Knoxville and the event attenders: even with this pervasive fatigue, everyone remained friendly and patient. We are just glad that the all- day rain of Saturday had drifted away.
A quick note on weather: it was not good for the festival until Sunday afternoon, when the sun came out and the winds died down. Aside from forcing a relocation of the epic fiddler jam, the weather had little impact on the festival programming. Venues were full and lines for food and drink around town were formidable. The price we paid for bad weather lies in the diminishment of the street scene. Where last year found the plazas and sidewalk cafes jammed with scores of people speaking a dozen or more languages, this year saw people huddled indoors, always taking the most direct line between venues to limit exposure to the elements. For a town as charming as Knoxville, this was indeed something to lament.
But you can ask Memphis Minnie about the weather: crying won’t help you and praying won’t do you no good. Plus, the Sunday schedule somehow seemed less packed than the first three days, not that it was free of desire conflicts. With a glimpse of the sun, we settled into a seat on the square in front of coffee and pastry, happy to watch the lovers stroll and the children frolic, bemused that the strolling lovers were, many of them, destined to become the parents chasing children in frolic. An older gentleman busked with his violin, playing some Eastern European pieces that spurred our research assistant to drop a few bills in the fiddler’s open case.
Fortified by this interlude, we shook off our lethargy and ambled over to catch the set by guzheng maestro
We were wrong. This show was the quirky surprise event of the weekend. Abigail and Fei, it turns out, have been friends for years. The songs in the set were developed on the front porch during afternoons spent watching their children frolic. (They both live in Nashville and have kids around the same age.) What could have been a corny commingling of cultures turned out to be one of the most generous and refreshing things we’ve witnessed in a long time.
Turns out they have been gigging this material in coffee shops and open mic nights around Nashville; this was perhaps their first proper concert; Fei expressed her gratitude at playing someplace where nobody thought they were weird. They began standing back to back, each singing into the soundhole of a guzheng stood on end. The harmonies and resonances matched anything heard all weekend. Okay, then, one more tune. And then one more, and one more, until the hour had passed by.
One piece they examined was a Chinese Communist anthem that was used to spur worker productivity. Turns out it began as an old time farmer’s tune about chickens,. They paired that with the Appalachian traditional “Old Cluck Hen”. They are, it seems, the same dang tune, and the effect of harmonized English and Chinese lyrics is literally tear inducing. Another song about a dutiful daughter from the countryside, sent to the city to earn a living at the mill or factory – only to be turned into an escort for a well-heeled man – took a fine turn when the destination city turned out to be Shanghai.
Throughout, Fei and Abigail demonstrated a solid social conscience. The two pieces described above convey a solid awareness of the commonality of their rural working class backgrounds, and later, their performance of a piece about the (true) historical figure Mulan was prefaced with a comment about strong women and “douchebags in power”.
Washburn, who at seven months pregnant assured us that her doctor had given her clearance to clog dance her heart out, is a natural born comic and story teller. Fei is her straight person, a dry as toast foil to Abigail’s good humored jokester. Dang, we love these women, and cannot wait to hear the album they promised is coming this fall. Just a little while later – long enough for another cup of joe in the sunshine – the trio Bangs took to the Bijou stage. Pianist Jason Moran announced that Bangs – with guitarist Mary Halvorson and cornetist Ron Miles – had been together for six years and four gigs. It was beautiful, dreamy music, with a solid balance of composition and improvisation, swinging tunes and outside abstractions. The i2b team has loved all of these musicians over the years, but this was the first time catching this rare combination. They offered a CD for sale that was sold out before we could get to them, but rumor suggests copies are available online. We’ll be listening as soon as we think we can absorb more music.
We were at a critical juncture. We could have called it a weekend, succumbed to the temptations of one or the other of Knoxville’s fine taverns, secure in the knowledge we had done our best to hear as much as humanly possible. But that would have been a lie, so onward to the Tennessee Theater for a transition from Bangs to Banging on a Can.
Local heroes nief norf presented Steve Reich’s 2013 composition “Quartet” for two pianos and two marimbas. We usually expect the interlocking melody lines from Reich. Here, the polyrhythms played out in muscular block chords. Just the thing to boost flagging energies and to prepare us for what came next. During the Reich, we noticed music stands and microphones set up around the audience, so we made sure to get a central seat for the Bang on a Can All Stars 30th Anniversary blowout. With a little help from nief norf, BoaC began with Michael Gordon’s “Big Space” for thirty musicians: 15 on stage, 9 in the balcony, and 3each in orchestra seating right and left. Gordon is quickly shaping up as one of our favorite composers. Just as with “Rushes” for 7 bassoons – and “Timbers” from last year’s fest, for six 2×4 boards – Gordon aims to fill the space with repetitions that layer to create sound cascades through the performance space, and while this may appear merely “Reichian”, Gordon has developed his own spin on things. The surround sound effect was miraculous, aside from Electric Ascension and Godspeed, nothing we heard approached this level of sonic envelopment. (Granted, we missed Lightning Bolt; reports from that front described volumetric heights that triggered scientific instruments out at Oak Ridge. Or so we heard.)
Paring down to 6 musicians, the All Stars followed up with Julia Wolfe’s “Big, Beautiful, Dark & Scary” and David Lang’s “Cheating, Lying, Stealing”.
And it was then, when we wandered into the gentle evening air, that we knew we were done. Apologies to Craig Taborn, who turned in what we heard was a fine performance, but we had nothing left. Our ears proved not quite big enough.
But we were well beyond happy, both with the music we heard and the conversations and new friends that bubbled up. We wandered down to Old City, where we saw the entrances to several more Big Ears venues that we had never made it to, and found our way to Pretentious Beer & Glass Company for some post-show replenishment of essential bodily fluids. An amazing place, where everything you see was made by hand: tables, stools, the bar, the beer, and most incredibly, the glasses themselves. One side of the joint is a glass-blowing studio where our pals Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel had performed to accompany some glass making. So very cool.
We are sorry to have missed that performance – along with our inability to be eight places at once to catch Anna & Elizabeth, Jon Gibson, Peter Evans a few times, Diamanda Galas, and Anoushka Shankar. Sure, it hurts to miss something you know you would have loved – especially when your friends tell you, “Dude, I can’t believe you missed *that*. It was so awesome.” But on the other hand, there is something comforting in knowing that you literally stuffed yourself to the gills with music most excellent, and still there is a surfeit out there just waiting to fill your ears for the first, or five hundredth, time.
Last year, some smart-ass writing for the Bitter Southerner offered that Big Ears is “arguably the best festival pound- for-pound in the United States.” I ran into that guy, who insisted I take his picture. He wants you to know that he stands by that assessment.
The Embiggening: Day 3
The i2b team of one continues their coverage of the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN. Please share widely. And if you are feeling generous, click that DONATE button over the so we can bail out the photographer. Don’t ask.
It’s a safe bet that Day 3 of the 2018 Big Ears Festival reached the highest concentration of sheer ecstatic power we will witness this year, and perhaps in the history of the festival. As Day 2 had managed to slip over into the wee hours of Day 3, so too did Day 3 roll right into Day 4. As of this writing, Day 3 may even still be in process for the hardcore attendees of the 13 hour overnight Drone Flight, the world’s coolest slumber party. But let’s begin at the beginning.
Our day began with an hour or so chat with guitar icon Nels Cline. We talked mostly about Coltrane changed his life. Cline, aside from being one of the great creative guitarists around today
Other topics included his gig with Jenny Scheinman (“that felt really great”) and his frank assessment of his popup gig with Cup (“really terrible”, due to TSA removing a critical cable for his wife’s electronics rig, “but it was a great crowd”). He spoke of his love for the music of Ralph Towner and John Abercrombie. And we got geeky together over our enthusiasm for the music of the late Jimmy Giuffre. More on this in the future as we transcribe the interview. Suffice to say that we were off to a great start for the day.
Wandered over to Jenny Scheinman’s Appalachian ode, Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait. Commissioned by Duke University to create a soundtrack for recently discovered Depression era film footage of the region. Joined by Robbie Fulks and Robbie Gjersoe on a smattering of string instruments and vocals, this was traditionalist Scheinman. Her voice is pure and her fiddle playing strong.
Honestly, we thought we would dip into Kannapolis for a few minutes on our way to hear Rhiannon Giddens’ keynote address, but the combination of the music and the imagery kept us in our seat for the duration. Aside from the generosity of spirit in both the music and the footage, the film’s concentration on so many young people could not help but evoke the March for our Lives kids who were at that moment leading a movement in something like 800 cities. Kids playing catch and hopscotch, riding bikes, preening for each other in mating ritual. Kids goofing off and making funny faces for the camera. It was just sweet, y’all. We won’t falsely romanticize the era, or the place; this was the heart of Jim Crow segregation, and the Depression hit areas like the Kannapolis region especially hard. The contrast between watching kids being kids then versus watching kids today remind us that they are the mass shooting generation is stark and more than just a little sad. And it’s a reminder that as awesome as Big Ears is, the real action in our world today was set in motion by a group of kids who are fed up with the shitshow we’ve handed them.
It was a damp cold day, suitable for a leisurely stroll to the next venue, thoughts of the Parkland kids filling our hearts. Good fortune smiled, and the perfect music for our mental and emotional state was waiting for us at the Knoxville Museum of Art. The Rushes Ensemble was formed to play one specific piece of music. Michael Gordon’s Rushes, an hour-long piece for seven bassoons, found its perfect setting in the hands of this group in the atrium of this lovely and richly resonant museum. Against a backdrop of the city skyline – complete with Sundome looming – we were invited to move freely though the atrium during the performance to “experience the different overtones that can build up in different parts of the space”.
It began as a faint glimmer, layers of 8th and 16th notes in the upper register of the bassoon. Slowly, range expanded, and volume increased as the layers and echoes began to commingle to create ghost images of instruments that were not there. Voices, organs, chimes, violins: all were present in a room where none were present. Wandering around revealed strange sound quirks, and standing in a corner v. under a curving staircase offered striking sonic contrasts. But in the end, we decided that this was music for sitting still. With rain streaking the windows and a raw wind moving the trees, we were warm inside this music. It eventually filled the room so completely as to constitute a physical manifestation, which is of course absurd because nothing could form out of a bunch of vibrating air molecules, right? Crazy talk. It never got loud, per se, but the music occupied every available space, both inside and outside our bodies. As we approached the fifty minute mark, we had to close our eyes.
And then, suddenly, it stopped. The massive roar of Silence was so stunning that we reactively looked up and around to see what had come into the room. For around a minute, there was pure Silence. The genius of this piece lies in its creation of a sound structure so enveloping and gorgeous that it emphasizes the stark beauty of Silence itself.
Onward through the rain to hear the Evan Parker Electro- Acoustic Ensemble. Again, we were presented with music that leads us to consider the relationships between sound and space and time and space. The chapel was full. WhereRushes suggested we treasure Silence by taking it away completely, albeit gently, Parker’s team parceled Silence out in fragments, a brilliantly executed piece of group improvisation.
We finally found a minute for food before the highly anticipated Milford Graves – Jason Moran duo show. Hundreds were standng in line, in the rain, for admit to the Bijou Theater. We were among the lucky ones; many more were turned away. Moran is one of the music’s great young leaders, a masterful pianist with a deep knowledge of musical history. Graves is, well, a legend, one of the creators of free jazz, and a revered elder. They carried on an intergenerational conversation, at turns dense and foreboding or puckish and playful. The audience was with them at every turn, and nobody left their seat until it was over.
The team was exhausted by this time, so we huddled over a steam vent under an awning and took a nap to gird ourselves for the eagerly anticipate Roscoe Mitchell Trios performance, again at the Bijou. We entered to a stage filled to capacity: two pianos, three drum kits, two percussionists, and an array of wind instruments and electronics gear. Nine musicians, who manifest as 4 distinct Mitchell trios, among other combinations, took the stage. The place was buzzed,
Again, the watchwords here were time and space. On the leaders cue, a resounding chord shaped by all nine players tuned the room. It was a thunderclap, but for the longest time, it was to be the only really “loud” sound we would hear. Under Mitchell’s direction, each player – or some subset combination of players – took their turns defining certain sectors of the soundscape. Following a set of coded gestures by Mitchell – gestures which correspond to various “cards” and motifs – a slowly developing landscape unfolded. Over time, the subsets became larger, the sound began to gather density and weight, until the group achieved a critical mass condition and embarked on what the Art Ensemble used to call an “intensity structure”.
Oh and mercy, it was intense. Thunderous, waves crashing, Mitchell and fellow reed player James Fei blistering their horns, the five (!) drummers and percussionists exploring every manner of coaxing apocalyptic din from their respective batteria. Perhaps the most alarming character was pianist Craig Taborn. We had seen him earlier with the Parker ensemble, where he had come across as thoughtful in the context of less cacophony. Here, he was sheer power unleashed, one of the most exciting and free-roaming piano performances we’ve seen since Cecil Taylor.
The overwhelming energy pressed the audience back in their seats. We were absorbed and surrounded by a sonic tsunami. And then, on a dime, the group dropped into Mitchell’s Odwalla, the Art Ensemble classic that signals the end of the show. Mitchell is a dry person, very serious but with a great sense of humor just underneath. His introductions of the band members were quietly funny. And then we were done.
The faces around us were rapt. Big Ears promoter Ashley Capps looked to have achieved nirvana. Rova member Steve Adams wondered aloud what they might be able to do in this same space a few hours later. How do you follow an elemental force of nature?
We had thought to nap before the midnight show, but instead found ourselves in the hotel lounge with Roscoe Mitchell, legendary record producer Chuck Nessa, and most of the Mitchell bands. Roscoe was very happy with the event, and the musicians themselves had the aspect of battle-weary warriors just off the field.
A few talked about some of Mitchell’s instructions such as “Silence is your friend” and “We have all the time in the world. Don’t be in a hurry.” with the kind of reverence Henry V spurred at Agincourt. For his part, Mitchell, sitting with old friend Nessa, spoke expansively of past glories, future projects, and funny escapades. It is rare in life that we have an opportunity to enjoy the company of people who literally changed the course of our lives. This was one of those moments.
Narrator with Heroes
But the game is afoot. No time for modest stillness and humility. Once more unto the breach!
Back to the Bijou forRova Channels Coltrane: Electric Ascension. Thirteen musicians, including Cline on guitar and effects; Jenny Scheinman and Mazz Swift on violin; Okkyung Lee (who still wishes to inform you that everything you think you know about the cello is wrong); Ikue Mori and Yuka Honda on electronics; Chess Smith and Cyro Batista on drums and percussion; and the Rova boys. The ROVA String section
Christ almighty, what a blast of sound. In its day, Ascension was iconoclastic, a point of argument between Coltrane classicists and those who embraced his forays outside the norm. But 50 years on, listening to Ascension is almost tame in comparison to much of what has come since. Rova’s spark of inspiration is re-telling the tale with a completely different instrumentation. And it works, you see. It works. Rova’s Larry Ochs was beaming. “I told you, didn’t I?” Yes, he did. Cline spotted us and with a big smile asked, “Well? Did we do it?” Well, yes, dammit, you did, and then some.
By now it was 1.15 a.m., and we had one more stop before bed. The Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel was holding forth at the all-night Drone Flight, joined by guest saxophonist Jeff Crompton. Just as it is rare to spend time with your inspirational heroes, it is equally rare to watch good friends spotlighted at an event as significant as Big Ears. Surrounded by 100 or so people, most of them laid out on the floor of The Standard with pillows and sleeping bags, D4TaLS plus Cromp delivered a perfectly gorgeous meditation amid a kaleidoscope of lights and abstract projections. It was the perfect end to an astonishing day. The Embiggening: Day Two
The i2b team of one continues their coverage of the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN. Please share widely. And if you are feeling generous, click that DONATE button over the so we can feed the copy editor.
Day Two started off with a bang. The Roscoe Mitchell Trio Five, featuring Vincent Davis on drums and Junius Paul on bass. Mitchell began on alto, angular intervallic leaps with lots of space, the rhythm section responding to his prompt. Then it began to build, the phrases getting longer until the circular breathing kicked in. That’s when things got really compelling and the legend of Roscoe Mitchell manifested. There’s a reason he has been one of the most important musicians in the so-called “jazz” world for more than 50 years.
Beautiful and occasionally terrifying, the cascades of notes became by turns molten and solid, a dense wall of sound that explored everything the alto had to offer for around 20 minutes. After a bass/drum interlude, Mitchell picked up the sopranino. Again, circular breathing set the stage for a vigorous exploration of the highest ranges of this high- register instrument. Fifteen to twenty minutes later, another rhythm section feature and a switch to soprano. Finally, a switch back to alto and the Trio brings it home with Mitchell’s “Odwalla”, a the classic Art Ensemble of Chicago walk off music since the 70s.
This was creative music of the highest order. Mitchell is, simply, a master musician, with prodigious technique backed by a theoretical and philosophical framework that allows him to engage in the improvisation he describes as “in the moment composition. It is never random.” “Look, it is exactly the same a composing, you just have to make decisions faster. If I’m working on a score, I can make the decision today or next week, whenever. But when we improvise, we make exactly the same kinds of decisions. We just do it right now.”
The place was packed. Friends of mine bailed on trying to get in after pictures of the lines outside circulated on the internet machines. Inside was jammed with one of the best audiences you can imagine. Mitchell remarked later that the crowd was especially good: Rapt, deep listening people who stood patiently for the hour-plus set. Honestly, there were times when out team thought someone had slipped some psychedelics into their coffee, closing our eyes from time to time to protect against sensory overload. The thought occurred that we were witnessing something akin to the late Coltrane, with the relentless sheets of sound that became something other than simply notes through a saxophone. Music is a peculiar thing. The best musicians spend a lifetime cultivating an ability to excite the air molecules around us in specific ways, and somehow, those bouncing molecules can become transformational, something near-solid that transmits intelligence, intention, and impact.
A quick word on bassist Junius Paul. We talked before the set, and he mentioned how awe-inspiring it is to be the bassist in the re-formed Art Ensemble of Chicago, filling the role held by the late and great Malachi Favors. He can stop worrying. The Malachi chair is in more than capable hands as Mitchell readies the group for an AEC 50th Anniversary tour in 2019. Rejoice, people!
Onward, sort of. We found it hard to settle into the next couple of events after the Roscoe onslaught. We dipped in and out of a few well-attended events, finally coming to rest in front of the collage films of Lewis Klahr at the UT Downtown Gallery. It was just the tonic, something to embiggen the eyes and let the ears reconstitute themselves in the new world Roscoe created.
We made it to the International Contemporary Ensemble performance at the Church Street Methodist Church, another truly lovely venue undergoing some expansion construction. As the group settled into their chairs, the construction crew arrived back from lunch and set to work with their jackhammers. It actually sounded very cool, but they were offered another lunch hour so the music could continue. Various combinations of percussion, cello, harp, oboe, flute, voice, and piano took shape to explore compositions by Pauline Oliveros, Anna Thorvoldsdottir, Ellen Reid, and others. Gorgeous and very spacious music that resonated wonderfully in the church space.
Next up, the legendary (that word again) percussionist Milford Graves. Graves, like Mitchell, has been part of the jazz world since the 60s. He played with Albert Ayler at Coltrane’s funeral and recorded with Sonny Sharrock, Pharaoh Sanders, Paul Bley and a gazillion more. At the Bijou Theater, Graves sat alone behind a drum kit with only one cymbal, a hi hat. He proceeded to drum and chant, calling down the Elders and Ancestors and keeping a capacity crowd on the edge of their seats.
Finally, a gap for food, though it was a gap that meant missing Arto Lindsay, Aine O’Dwyer, and Ned Rothenberg. Hey, the team’s gotta eat.
Reinforced, we dove into violinist Jenny Scheinman’s Mischief and Mayhem quartet, featuring Nels Cline on guitar. Scheinman is a radiant presence and a remarkably good improviser. Her compositions gave the band plenty of room to stretch and explore, and while the focus was largely on the melodic instruments, the rhythm section was tight and playful, kicking the front line players up a notch. Cline demonstrated why he is considered one of the world’s great guitar players, his mastery of effects matched by a strong melodic sense and a penchant for creating souuuuund. Way cool. A long walk across town gave us a chance to catch the last 15 minutes of Evan Parker’s solo soprano sax performance at St John’s Cathedral. Parker, a contemporary and occasional collaborator with Mitchell, has made a science of the circular breathing technique, and the richly resonant Cathedral was perfect for him.
Again, attention was flagging and more fuel was necessary to continue. Ran into some pals who convinced me to check out Norwegian singer Susanna at the Bijou. It was a quiet revelation. Backed by a trio of harp, accordion, and violin – and guest singer Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Susanna’s high, clear voice and spare arrangements are hypnotic. Song selections like the American folk standard “Rye Whiskey” and Leonard Cohen’s “You Know Who I Am” were recast as haunting Nordic laments. Exceptionally Beautiful.
A quick dash to Mill & Mine to check out Tal National, a guitar-driven quintet from Niger. Think a stripped down King Sunny Ade show: heavy on the syncopation and interlocking guitar parts, this was shake your moneymaker music from the jump.
Then down the street to hear The Thing, a Scandanavian free jazz trio featuring saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. This was pure energy, muscular free improv among three players who know each other – and their instruments – very well. It was a fitting bookend to a day that began with Roscoe Mitchell mining the same vein in his own way, and a demonstration of the range that is on offer in the free improv world.
We could have quit, but pianist Jason Moran was about to begin just down the street, so we stopped in to catch his Fats Waller Dance Party. Moran is one of the music’s great players, and he can hit it in any style, even with an enormous Fats Waller mask over his head. But his introductory segments to “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Ain’t Misbehavin” raised expectations beyond what Waller’s catalog re-imagined as hip-hop could support, at least to these old man ears. Get off my damn lawn. Staggered, the team fell abed soon after, and no amount of flogging could induce the writer to write until this morning. Day Three dawns with an embarrassment of riches on offer, a series of impossible decisions, and rain on the horizon.
If this ain’t living good, ain’t nothing that is.
Ears Embiggened: Seven Bassoons. No, Really. Follow @immunetoboredom on Twitter or check back here for updates throughout the festival. Share this widely if you please.
Last year, Big Ears kicked off with nief norf (more on them soon) performing Michael Gordon’s composition “Timber”, a piece for six percussionists playing amplified 2×4 pieces of wood with mallets. It was one of the great surprises and thrills of the festival. It’s a terrific piece, hypnotizing and thrilling at the same time.
This year, nief norf is back (they are based in Knoxville at UT) and Bang on a Can is bringing it as well. But that’s for another post.
Hidden among the riches in the 2018 Big Ears schedule is the Rushes Ensemble on Saturday from 2-3 p.m. at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Now strangely, there is no mention of Rushes Ensemble on the festival lineup page, so they might be easy to miss.
Don’t. Miss them, I mean.
Rushes is a group of seven of the best bassoon players in the world. That alone is enough to pique interest, but their entire raison d’etre derives from a commission that led Michael Gordon to write a piece specifically for…yep…seven daggum bassoons.
It is hard to describe. The music takes much from Steve Reich’s pulsation methods, and while the overall effect is of something like a Fripp Soundscape – all washes and gorgeous drone – the ensemble is playing to a click track to ensure that the pulsations are overlapping precisely. Eventually, overtones begin to build that create illusions of instruments that are not actually there. I’ve experienced this effect before as both a musician and an audient. It is one of the rare and wondrous physical manifestations of music. The impact on deep listeners can be profound and emotional. It is both gentle and not for the faint of heart.
You can dig around on YouTube and find a performance of this piece by this group. I say, don’t do it. Just turn up Saturday afternoon and experience this for yourself in the acoustically lively atrium of the museum. This could well be the hidden gem of the whole danged festival.
You heard it here first. i2b never sleeps.
Ears Embiggened: The Fine Vibrations of the Well Plucked String
Another in a series of 2018 Big Ears Festival previews courtesy of the i2b staff. All one of us. Share this widely if you please.
A passel of soul-thieving tempters in disguise; Pythagoras was fascinated by them, developed several laws of physics by observing them, and found his way to proposing a cosmology based on those laws. The well plucked string is a slippery damn slope, no question. Ask anyone who has a bottomless guitar collecting habit. Or ask their significant other.
There’s something irresistible about an exquisitely excited string. Acoustic or electric, nylon or steel or gut, strung taut over wood or gourd or some kind of animal skin – or even an old cigar box or tin can. Cleanly replicated or tormented beyond recognition by tubes, transistors, and unholy volumes. Plucked, strummed, bowed or otherwise placed in motion, the string is the elemental sound of life, of sex, of sadness and joy, mourning and loss and ecstasy on a strand of molecular vibration. If recent physics theory is to be believed, the string is essence of all existence.
Pythagoras was no fool.
So the old guy he would have been beside himself at the prospect of the string ticklers scheduled at this year’s Big Ears. You’ve got banjos (Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn chief among many) and dobro (Jerry Douglas is as good as any musician on the planet). A highlight of the 2017 fest, Wu Fei returns with her gezheng in duet with Washburn and as the leader of a massive “improvisation game” at the Knoxville Museum of art. Deep-dive folk archivers Anna & Elizabeth might wield any manner of stringy thingy as serendipity demands.
There’s a string quartet – Brooklyn Rider in full and in collab with Fleck, and their violinist will present a concert of the entire Bach solo violin repertoire – and the string sections of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, together, apart, re-configured, hell, hanging upside down from a chandelier, even. Anything is possible.
Cellist Okkyung Lee draws sounds out of her instrument that are surprising and soothing and sometimes disturbing. Violinist Jenny Scheinman brings her distinctive jazz/folk/rock voicings in multiple contexts, from trad with silent films (Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait) to a paint- peeling Coltrane-ish howl for Rova’s Electric Ascension. (Trust me, you’ve heard her, either with Bill Frisell or Norah Jones or Lucinda Williams or too many others to list. You’ve heard her. And she is fantastic.) Aine O’Dwyer is certain to play the harp – the proper harp, the thing that looks like the inside of a piano – though tbh, I am hoping she plays her Music for Church Cleaners for pipe organ.
Pedal steel player Susan Alcorn takes her instrument way outside the expected mainstream suggested by its history. She can shift on a dime, from dreamy twang to terrifying yowls, but always with a connection to the instrument’s traditional heritage. Lap steel player Frank Schultz – half of the aptly named Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel – tends to a more gentle approach, coaxing dream tones and reverberations that compliment Scott Burlands oddball sci-fi doohickey clouds.
From Africa, Tal National and Innov Gnawa blend electric guitars and traditional instruments like the sintir to induce trance with an interlocking sound that will drag even the most doubly-left footed lunk onto the dance floor. Be prepared. You will dance and you will sweat.
Then there are your basic, run of the mill guitar players. Right. The guitarists at Big Ears this year are a veritable hero gallery. Nels Cline, Arto Lindsay, Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo, and Mary Halvorson – a lineup akin to the 1927 Yankees, heavy hitters every one of them – are on hand to demonstrate pretty much the full range of what a guitar has to offer. And no slouch herself, Anoushka Shankar, daughter of Ravi and established sitar master in her own right, brings her poignant piece about immigration, “Land of Gold”, to the Historic Tennessee Theater. One of the festival’s must-see events, you can expect a big crowd for this one, so go early if you want a good seat.
Have I missed anyone? You bet. Godspeed You Black Emperor fields a trio of guitarists as part of their sonic onslaught, and Atlanta-based Algiers thrashes with the best of them. And we haven’t even begun to talk about the broad array of bluegrass/traditional pickers that will be literally all over downtown Knoxville throughout the festival.
We could go on, yes, we could. And we will, with coverage throughout the weekend from our crack team. i2b never sleeps.