Once more for Michael

I was never that big a fan of Michael Jackson, post-1960s, because, at the time that he and Quincy Jones (and the mind-boggling virtuosi who made up Q's session crew) were redefining the sound of 1980s pop music, I was listening to other music that I thought grooved harder and was about six times funkier: from Toots & the Maytals to Juluka to the Neville Brothers. And the fey nature of Michael's personality even then--the degree to which his stage presentations, like Baroque opera, were more about a deeply Mannerist abstraction of the traditions of black music than "the thing itself"--left me cold (best line in Chris Rock's "Blacker than Ever" special: "remember those arguments we used to have in the '80s about who was better, Prince or Michael Jackson?" [beat] "Well, Prince *won*!"). I thought then and still think that Prince Rogers Nelson was about six times as creative a genius, a far better singer, as good a dancer, and a WAY more commanding musical imagination.

But there were a couple of things you had to give Michael. He was there first. And maybe some part of the transcendence that he was able to create and evoke onstage for his audiences made it that much harder for him to come back to anything resembling anybody else's Earth.

So, herewith a few defining moments:

the pop perfection of "I Want You Back," when the Motown rhythm section, the compositional genius of The Corporation, and the astonishing invention of Wilton Felder's contrapuntal bass line all came together as if fore-ordained;

the titanic guitar solo in "Beat It", where, in one invitation and a 30 second musical interlude, Michael and Eddie Van Halen between them (and with a little help from the great Aerosmith/Run D.M.C. "Walk This Way") smashed down the Berlin Wall that fascist white radio programmers had tried to erect between black and white musics;

the creepy "Thriller", which I never really liked as a piece of music, and whose portentiously-anticipated "long-form video" was maybe the strongest, earliest hint I got of just how weird, unsettling, and potentially abusive Michael's child-man persona could be; you wanted to say "Jesus, Michael, is that what's inside your head? Is that cadaverous, angry, threatening Zombie-of-the-Undead central character how you actually see yourself?" And, of course, it's what he *became* in the long sad drug-fuddled twilight of the following two decades. One of the great tragedies of Michael Jackson's life--and the lives he fucked up around him--is that the early abuse by his father and by the record business turned him *into* the zombie that he warned us, in "Thriller", was inside him;

and finally, a late flowering, long after he'd begun the final downhill slide:

the beautiful, joyously-retro "The Way You Make Me Feel," whose boy-girl, innocent sexuality was light years away from Michael's own twisted psyche, but whose music and video both reached back to the most beautiful aspects of Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, and Michael's own, momentarily-happier past.

Mystic Seaport: "Music of the Sea"

Mystic Seaport and the "Music of the Sea" Symposium.



Museum people are pretty fun to hang around, not least because they understand that scholarship without accessibility--without translation to some kind of wider audience--is essentially self-indulgence. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as George Costanza would say, but there's no denying that scholarship which speaks only to other scholars has a strong tendency toward isolation and questionable relevancy. If, as I've blogged before, you can't help non-specialists see the value of the research you're doing--if you fail at the task of advocacy on behalf of your research--then your days as a subsidized ivory towered Olympian (or at least Parthenonian) intellect are probably numbered.

That said, the museum people *do* tend to understand the need for accessibility, translation, and advocacy. Adding to that fundamental soundness is their tendency to be deeply, personally and professionally interested in the topics they're working on, and excited about being in a situation that lets them do that work: why wouldn't you be? spending your working days surrounded by artifacts, information, and environments that are your own personal avocation? So they're pretty much infectiously excited about their work, and, hell, excitement and some personal commitment is three-quarters of accessibility anyway.

So it's been pleasant to spend a couple of days here at the Mystic Seaport, a living-history museum that sprawls along the east side of the Mystic River as it debouches out toward the Atlantic. A place I've never been: yesterday, a couple of locals, after inquiring how a Texan could wind up giving a paper in Connecticut, and discovering I was originally from the North Shore of Massachusetts, were gobsmacked that I'd "never been to Mystic before." I don't have any particularly good excuse for that: 50 years on, childhood on the Atlantic, work on lobster boats and in sail lofts, and I'd never been here. But, as I said to my interrogators (in my best Nawth Shoah accent) "well, y'know growin' up in Mahbulhead like I did, we din't exactly need no Mystic Seapawt", and they laughed and agreed.

You get the feeling that a lot of these folks, born between, say 1945 and 1965, found their way into traditional musics during the Great Folk Scare of the early '60s: the college kids who went to the Club 47 in Cambridge and the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island and started out playing Woody Guthrie and Bill Monroe tunes. Some of these folks, realizing the cultural disconnect between their own urban, post-WWII, university-educated, often Jewish or Catholic backgrounds and those of their heroes, in response turned toward either more immediate-from-their-own-heritage musics--the klezmer revival, for example, was sparked when Tommy Jarrell said to Hank Sapoznik "don't Jews have their own music?"--or more specific/less-catchall repertoires:the blues revivalists I knew in the '70s, the Irish trad types who I joined myself, or--in the case of Mystic--the "sea music" (mostly unaccompanied chanteys) of our own region.

And there is a slightly twee feeling about this place: about every third of the historic houses is some kind of tourist Gifte Shoppe or "Inne", and there's an awfully high incidence of sack-dresses and luxuriant muttonchop sideburns amongst the sea-music types.

But the whiff of cordage and seaweed, the calls of the gulls, the calluses in the handshakes even of the scholars and museum types, and the particular opalescent quality of the sky's light over the ocean, aren't faked and can't be. For my first half-century, when I would go "home" to visit aged parents, I would always know I was "home" when I woke up that first morning to the call of the gulls: an absolutely unmistakable sound and one redolent of my childhood. Now, in my second half-century, that's gone: with aged parents in managed care facilities, and with the last mementos and the house of my childhood long since jettisoned, the truth of the Buddhist teaching that the only "home" any of us truly has is the ground under our feet is really learned. But the teaching says nothing about abandoning memory. And memory, here, is still really strong.

So returning to the Atlantic coast, and the sounds and smells of my childhood, and spending 36 hours with people whose passion for the stories, history, people, and artifacts of the sea reminds me likewise, is not an unwelcome recollection.

RIP Michael

The greatest tragedy in his life? That, like all the truly great soul singers (Otis Redding, Mahalia Jackson, Wilson Pickett, my God! Aretha, Prince), he could embody and act out the most intense, transcendent, transformative passion onstage, because that's the nature of the gig.

And couldn't make it happen for himself.

One of the late flowerings: "Man in the Mirror."

By their boots you shall know them

In traditional music culture in Ireland, if you're a stranger, it's inadvisable to walk into a pub session carrying an instrument case. If they don't know you, and you walk in with a fiddle (or, worse still, a guitar) over your shoulder, then you've put the locals in an awkward position: they either have to totally ignore your existence, or feel obligated to invite you to play. Particularly given the fact that (a) they're there mostly to play with each other, and (b) they don't know you, in west-of-Ireland social aesthetics, this is pushy.

So instead, you leave the instrument in the car, and you wait for the time to come when one of the locals comes to say hello. It may take a while, but sooner or later, in their own (not your) good time), someone will introduce themselves. That's when you can say, "well, yes, I do play a bit," which in turn gives them the option of saying "well, have you an instrument with you?", at which point you say "well, it's in the boot." then they'll invite you; then you'll find your way in.

So, what's in the boot--or the back seat--can reveal more than a little bit of who you are.

No blasphemy intended, but it occurs to me, as I'm leaving the county-line booze store, home of the (soon to be eradicated because Lubbock has finally entered the 20th-century as regards liquor laws) monopolizing corporations, that looking into the back seat of my car actually paints a reasonably complete picture. In mine:

Item: 2 big cardboard boxes, empty, with bags of those horrible little styrofoam packing peanuts: to be given to senior student packing frantically for a year at Oxford.

Item: six long-overdue university library books on African-American vernacular dance: fruit of one day's research foray for minstrelsy project which the travel in first half of summer has effectively prevented me from even touching--but which I'm going to have to crank up in the next two weeks, as there's a paper on the topic to give in London second weekend of May.

Item: beautiful, now-worn wooden sign reading "Music Tonight," painted by same senior student five years ago when we first started up our current pub session in new digs.

Item: a fistful of "green" avoid-the-plastic recyclable grocery bags.

Item: crumpled, supposedly "no-wrinkle" suit jacket worn, in an attempt to respectablize oneself the slightest bit, at three different Master's and Doctoral defenses this week--all three of which sailed through with flying colors, making me very proud.

Item(s): a half-dozen bottles of a light white called Gruene Weltliner, which Dharmonia and I first had in Vienna, where you can blow the whole afternoon at a cafe on a carafe that costs about 4 Euro, and which I just found at a ridiculously low price (score! guess the West Texans can't read the label); 4 of Murphy's, my favorite Irish stout; a half-case of Mexican beer to replenish the cooler at buddy Coop's little music shebeen where the pub session happens tonight.

Item (in the boot): six boxes of CDs I appear on, never yet migrated out of the car from whatever was the last gig where we needed them for the merchandise table.

Item (in the boot): leftover programs from the Seventh Annual Celtic Christmas, a fundraiser for the vernacular music scholarship I founded here.

Item(s) (in the boot): various mix stands,music stands, rucksacks of gear, etc, et al.

I love my life.

The heart of the matter

As Rafi Zabor said, in the first article I ever read about Watazumido Shuso Roshi, shakuhachi master, Rinzai Zen teacher, and martial arts master, at least 20 years ago in the magnificent, much-missed Musician: Player & Listener, "there's nothing like a good standup mystic". He would practice in the middle of the busiest intersection during Tokyo's rush hour, to work on his concentration. He'd go out to the railroad yards and practice screaming louder than the trains, to work on his focus and breath control. And every few years he'd change his name and location, figuring that those students who found him after such a shift would be the students who really wanted to do the work.

It's fine that you are all deep into music. But there's something deeper and if you would go deeper, if you go to the source of where the music is being made, you'll find something even more interesting. At the source, everyone's individual music is made. If you ask what the deep place is, it's your own life and it's knowing your own life, that own way that you live.

Making a sound, you try to make various different sounds that imitate various different sounds of the universe, but what you are finally making is your own sound, the sound of yourself.

Gassho.

One more receipted and filed

One more semester into the history books: all grades for Spring 2009 entered and "rolled" (gone into the database, now irretrievable in the absence of special paperwork). 4am in the States, 10amm in Eire: maybe I won't receive quite so many tear-stained emails pleading special causes/cases.

Nine hours of undergraduate trad music senior recitals yesterday: frightening level of technical facility in a lot of them, but the same old durable criteria hold true: what's the point? Why did you choose to play this tune rather than than, in this key rather than that, with these accompanists rather than those (or none)?

Youth is the time to acquire your chops--and certainly these youngsters have those, in spades--but artistry comes only rarely to the young. Artistry comes from deciding what not to do--and that usually requires a little (chronological and/or emotional) maturity.

Off for another 9 hours of it today. And tomorrow.

Ground zero

I'm home--except for Dharmonia's absence.

Blogger sign-in

Made it. End of semester yesterday--the first time in my life that it's happened on both May Day (ancient springtime holiday), May Day (International workers' day--One Big Union!) and my anniversary (26 big ones, baby).

The end of this semester, as I have told several, is like being shot out of a cannon: because the Uni is on a very, atypically early schedule, we both started back early in January and finished remarkably early: last couple days of April. It meant that I gave two 2.5 hour finals on Thursday (and graded them), had end-of-semester meetings and consultations most of the day on Friday, gave a 2.5 hour final Friday late afternoon, and then graded 50-some rewritten undergraduate research papers: fortunately, we use a fairly detailed first draft + reviewer comments + final draft + corrections tracking-sheet (so that the student has to tell us "here are all the things I was supposed to fix, and here is how I fixed each") sequence, so the re-grade goes really quick.

Still, I was up late grading.

Then I got up at 5am, to (not) make a 7:36am flight--because I'm so fucking stupid I grabbed the wrong person's passport as I left the house in the dark, and had to have the right passport brought to me--rescheduled for a 10:40am flight with a real photo-finish connection in Houston for Newark, where--if I make all the connections that, in my disorganization, I've done my best to screw up--I'll get on an overnight flight to Shannon.

In Ireland.

For a month.

With my treasured students and my gem of a wife, of 26 years.

[...crickets...]

This is the sound of me not complaining.

Fuzzy banjos

Receipted and filed

Last day of the semester. Tomorrow is "Dead Day" (unfortunate verbal shorthand), then it's 2 finals to give (and grade) on Thursday, 1 on Friday, and get on a plane for Ireland--for a month!--on Saturday.

Hit 'n' run blogging for the next couple of days. Big Ups to all the students who made it.

The complex metrics of leadership

I've served in a leadership role in a lot of different situations, but most of them have been within the complex dynamics of creative collaborations. I've blogged before about the differing (and complementary) satisfactions that emerge from engaging in a diverse yet integrated set of collaborative situations: for me as a musician, having one gig where I'm the leader, another where I'm more-or-less music director, another that's a straightahead collaborative democracy--plus whatever peculiar one-off's that may come up on the horizon--allows me to play different roles.

And even more importantly, to keep those roles separate: when I'm in the sideman role, to accept and be comfortable with that, avoid trying to take over or shape the direction, because I know that there is another complementary situation in which I can call the shots. It's also incredibly valuable (I am discovering in my dotage), for someone who spends most of his professional time telling other, younger people what to do, to be put back in the situation of being a beginner, a subordinate, or a cog. Hubris is a ready trap for anybody who has a lot of training in one or another specialized skill, and it's doubly or triply tempting if you hold over someone the power of a grade or a degree.

But, you begin to get your shit together, and you get enough years in within the organization, and new possibilities arise. From my admired boss I am coming to learn more about the art of administration. As I say, I've understood people management for years, in the context of bands and classrooms, but it's an interesting challenge when you are leading the thinly-disguised middle-school recess that is a tenured faculty.

I have also come to understand that there are upper-administrative roles I could occupy constructively and others not. Currently, I work well as a sort of emissary from the Dark Side: the tenured Chair of Musicology who still looks like a tattooed ex-biker and -bouncer, but who can talk in a comparatively erudite and articulate fashion (albeit one sprinkled with four-letter words and their polysyllabic ilk, principle among them "motherfucker") to folks who may not be familiar with just how dark the Dark Side can get. It's charming and titillating but at the same time it's a challenge: I have to be reasonably honest to (and about) myself but I also have to try to reach out to people who are radically different than myself. These days, I spend a surprising amount of time talking/promoting to people with whom I share very little (politics, experience, leisure activities, choice of tipple, religious affiliation) except for the crucial point that they like music and I can talk about music.

No, I could never be the Director or Dean of a School of Music, at least not in this part of the country. Because in contrast to the pet-Bear persona I'm describing above, the Director/Dean has to feel enough like a banker that the blue-haired ladies feel the return on their investment (in infrastructure, in scholarship money, in buildings, or--most immediately AND rewardingly--in talented young people with good attitudes) is guaranteed. Somebody who looks and acts like a banker--cheery, optimistic, energetic, and never ever ever condescending or intimidating--feels like a safe investment. Some wild-eyed hippie--positive, energized, but also aggressive and demonstrably/visibly different from them--is never going to feel so safe.

That's why I'm better in a subordinate role, trotted out when the Boss needs to up the exoticism quotient.

I reckon I'm OK with that.

Prayers of thanks

Thank you, Tara/Avalokiteshvara/Brigid. I am happy to know that optical hard drives are also under the control of the Buddhas and saints of compassion and the natural world. Thanks to all for prayers and good thoughts.

Long one

Work day started at 6am (5am alarm). Ended about 20 minutes ago. Can't sustain this much longer. 11 days until I get on a plane for Ireland. For a month.

Now, any decent person, any person leading a realistic life, anybody with the remotest sense of a realistic sense of values, would feel pure gratitude for the chance to take a group of students on a 2-week field trip to some of the places I love best in the world, preceded by a week as outside examiner for a Bachelor's in Traditional Music program, followed by a weekend conferencing in Dublin, right? Any realistic person with a rational view of reality?

All I can think about is how much work I'm afraid I won't be able to get through before I get on that plane.

"This is where the soul of man never dies" - Sam Phillips

Ed Young (quills) and Hobart Smith (banjo).


Look at the command in those faces: the absolute, bedrock conviction in the power and validity of one's own musical and cultural expression. Currently reading Halberstam's The Children, a history of the fight to integrate schools in Nashville in 1959-60, and this, this right here, is precisely what those mush-mouthed bow-tie-wearing cynical Southern Democrat pols and "good folks" in the Jim Crow South feared:

that the poor black folks and the poor white folks would get together, realize that the skin color that divided them was a hell of a lot less important than the class-exploitation that united them, and would fucking rise up.

Class warfare? You bet your ass that's what the "good folks" with a vested interest in the exploitative status quo feared. That's why they riled up the poor, low-information crackers: to do their dirty work and to keep them from making common cause with other minorities.

That's still why.

One time when Alan Lomax got it right.

Two heroes

Bill Moyers talks to David Simon, creator of the greatest, bravest, most truthful narrative programming ever heard on American television.

DETECTIVE KIMA GREGGS: Let's say goodnight to everybody. Goodnight moon. You say it.

CHILD: Goodnight moon.

DETECTIVE KIMA GREGGS: There you go. Goodnight stars.

CHILD: Goodnight stars.

DETECTIVE KIMA GREGGS: Goodnight po-po's.

CHILD: Goodnight po-po's.

DETECTIVE KIMA GREGGS: Goodnight fiends.

CHILD: Goodnight fiends.

DETECTIVE KIMA GREGGS: Goodnight hoppers.

CHILD: Goodnight hoppers.

DETECTIVE KIMA GREGGS: Goodnight hustlers.

CHILD: Goodnight hustlers.

DETECTIVE KIMA GREGGS: Goodnight scammers.

CHILD: Goodnight scammers.

DETECTIVE KIMA GREGGS: Goodnight to everybody.

CHILD: Goodnight to everybody.

DETECTIVE KIMA GREGGS: Goodnight to one and all.

CHILD: Goodnight to one and all.

h/t to the General.

Good peasant food

Dr Coyote's mock Ma-Po Tofu.

Was reminded of this by an article on a China Ex-pat blog I've been following since last spring's tour. Hadn't had Ma-Po Tofu in years--since Bloomington, anyway, but it certainly is dead-easy, and thus maintains my highest priority for a recipe: that I don't have to follow it, but can more-or-less make it up out of my head.

Start a pot of brown rice. Once at a boil, reduce to low simmer, cover tightly, and leave it alone, for at least 30 minutes.

Meantime, dice 1 block extra-firm tofu into 1/2-inch cubes. Fry over high-heat in 2-3 tablespoons of vegetable oil (olive oil will burn over high heat) with a splash of toasted sesame oil added. Continue until brown and crisped on the outside. About mid-way through the frying process, add a good splash of tamari--but have a cover handy, as at this temperature the tamari will sizzle and splash. Scrape the pan occasionally with a spatula to keep the tofu from burning onto the bottom. You can also add sliced celery, bamboo shoots, asparagus, pepper, or other crunchy soft vegetable.

Whisk together in a mixing bowl some combination of the following: 2 tablespoons tamari, 3 tbs of white wine, 2 tbs white or cider vinegar, at least 1 tbs brown sugar, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp ginger, a good dose of chili powder, and at least 1 rounded tablespoon of cornstarch. You'll have to whisk hard to get and keep the cornstarch in solution.

Add the liquid to the tofu, stir well, and reduce heat to a simmer. Leave the lid cracked so the liquid can reduce. When cooked down to a thickened gravy texture, you're ready to serve the tofu over the rice. Garnish with ground almonds or peanuts.

Low trans-fats, relatively low-cal, relatively well-balanced (though you may experience a craving for dairy and/or sweets afterward), cheap as hell.

Good peasant food.

Celebrate excellence

If, as a teacher, you're going to insist upon it, if you're going to model, if you're going to break your neck trying to find ever-newer and -more nuanced ways of instilling it, if you're going to refuse to settle (or allow the students to settle) for anything less than the absolute peak of feasible excellence, then you also oughtta damned-well celebrate it when it appears:

Out of a class of eighty-seven, we had six late paper submissions. And every one of those six had an admissible excuse.

Eighty-seven out of eighty-seven who met their deadlines and did what they needed to do. That's 100% success.

So we collected the papers, explained (again, because damned near all of them are running on one, two, or three nights without any sleep at all) the criteria that were required to be met in order for an individual paper to be permitted review and rewrite upon initial return, and then, just before I cut 'em loose--because I knew that, after one/two/three nights without sleep, once the paper was out of their hands (required to be stapled and submitted in hard-copy, as well as submitted electronically by a deadline 10:00 minutes prior to class time, so that nobody would show up late), they weren't going to be able to concentrate at all, full stop, I said:

This is what success feels like.

They cheered.

Old-school TX weather-reporting

Just heard during tornado coverage, the storm chasers:

Well, we got us a wall-cloud that's rotating like a big ol' wagon-wheel in the sky...

Fuzzy people 54: head-explodingly cute

Even cuter than "Kitten on the Keys":

"There's certain sounds that you make, when you partici-PATE in Irish traditional music..."

Frankie Gavin, Dermot Byrne, Steve Cooney, Carl Hession.

Up ya boya!