Junkyard Ball an Eclectic Delight

TERO HYVÄLUOMA

Junkyard Ball

Lusti Music and Arts 009

It’s a Celtic music ensemble? No, wait, it’s a small jazz combo. Or is it a Finnish traditional music? I’m sorry; I meant to say this is an album of experimental music. If there’s an award for truth in musical advertising, wrap it and ship to Finland’s Tero Hyvälouma–the music contained on this CD’s eight peripatetic tracks covers so much musical turf that junkyard is as good a classification as any. Pretty fancy junk, though. Hyvälouma is the latest innovative musician to emerge from the Sibelius Academy, where he concentrated on violin. Let’s just say that the academy didn’t sidetrack Hyvälouma’s eclecticism. He is clearly in command of the fiddle, but he also showcases his talents on bouzouki, harmonium, and glockenspiel. (Glockenspiel! Who plays that any more? Glad he does.) Hyvälouma fronts a five-piece band that’s supplemented with 11 guest musicians, so you can add occasional forays into symphonic sounds to the list of influences you’ll hear on this CD. But I pity any retail clerk that has to pick a category into which to stock this CD. The record company calls it “Finnish folk music,” but the album’s sole traditional song, “Läksin mina kesäyonä,” welcomes three female singers into a arrangement that has the feel of ancient music backed by jazz piano. The title track opens with loud accordion and fiddle soaked in enough funk to evoke stride jazz, sans the piano. And when the piano does emerge in the mix, we’re decidedly into progressive jazz territory, complete with Nika Votkin’s bridging drum solo. A bit of scat and double bass and, before you know it, you’re in a place where meaty blues licks intersect with discordance. How about if we just label it eight tracks of intrigue and skillful musicianship? 

Rob Weir

A Trio of World Jazz Recordings

-->

African Americans invented jazz, but it’s been a global phenomenon since its earliest days. Three new recordings sample current jazz trends in South Africa and Brazil.

The most exciting of the three by far is Kheswa & Her Martians, whose Meadowlands, Stolen Jazz (Xippi Phonorecords 32740) is a four-star delight. Nonhlanhla Kheswa hails from Soweto and is a worthy heiress to the legendary Miriam Makeba. Like the latter she possesses a powerful and supple voice that is anything but a classical jazz set of pipes. She can growl and grunt, but her voice naturally gravitates to upper palette  higher tones usually associated with pop singers. All of this is to say that if you like your jazz sultry and smoky, steer clear–Kheswa favors bright, bold, muscular, and sassy. The album’s name is a triple pun in that the music presented was once forbidden and played on the sly in South Africa’s black townships, some of the music has been “stolen” in the sense that it’s been recorded before (including the 1955 title track song), and that which hasn’t been borrowed has been lifted from its original context. Kheswa fronts a seven-piece band that contains two killer saxophonists (Jovan Alexandre and Karim Rome) and a pianist (Taber Gable) who doesn’t merely back the songs, he shapes and orchestrates them. At times Kheswa is swingy, at others as hep as Ella Fitzgerald, and at still others a jazzy version of Angélique Kidjo. I would yield to purists that insist that Kheswa is more of a popularizer than a classic jazz singer, but that’s why I like her so much!

And it’s probably why I found two new offerings from Brazil rather tepid. Of the two, Mario Adnet’s Villa Lobos (Boranda 0020 **) is the more interesting and the more eclectic offering. It also benefits from the addition from really topnotch musicians. This is a theme album dedicated to the songs of Heitor Villa-Lobos (1897-1959), an important Brazilian modernist composer. The repertoire is a plus and a minus. Like many modernists, Villa-Lobos borrowed freely from other sources (chamber music, movie scores, tango, even some faintly Celtic material). As is also the case, some of the Stravinsky-influenced experimental flights are more impressive than riveting.

Too much introspection bored me when listening to Antonio Loureiro’s Só (Boranda 0015 *). This is piano-based jazz that veers into soundscaping by breaking melodies, drifting into improv, and descending into shapelessness. It feels soulful in its own way, but I often wondered if Loureiro had any audience in mind other than himself and the musicians on stage. In Portuguese só means “under” or “who,” but I often found myself leaving off the accent and reacting in English with a simple interrogative: so?

James Connolly Gets Rebellious Treatment

THE JAMES CONNOLLY SONGS OF FREEDOM BAND

Songs of Freedom

PM Press A-017-2

Until World War One, the labor movement, Irish nationalism, and socialism knew no national boundaries and a figure such as politician/rebel/songwriter James Connolly (1868-1916) was as famous in North America as in Ireland or the British Isles. His death at the hands of a British firing squad in the wake of the failed Easter Uprising was mourned across the globe. A new recording and accompanying songbook takes us inside of Connolly’s life, causes, and the protest songs he and others penned and cherished. It’s more than a nostalgia piece, although it evokes the sort of movement songs that dominated the pages of Sing Out! during its early years. The project is the brainchild of Mat Callahan, a San Francisco-based activist and musician who honed his teeth on political rock. This album, for the most part, has a folksier feel. It features nine songs written by Connolly, including “Human Freedom,” “When Labor Calls,” and “Watchword of Labor,” which were known to North American members of the Industrial Workers of the World. (Connolly joined the IWW when lived in America.) The remaining four songs are three in Connolly’s honor, including Irish poet Patrick Galvin’s moving “Where is James Connolly?” and Jim Connell’s internationally famous “The Red Flag.” The last is one of the few tracks that doesn’t quite work, as it is given an agit-rock treatment in which the music overwhelms the lyrics–the latter being the point of social protest music. Aside from this slip, the 13 musicians of the Songs of Freedom Band evoke the community exuberance of comrades singing in support of unions, socialism, and Irish freedom. Callahan’s edited edition of the 1907 The James Connolly Songbook is the sort of historical artifact that’s didactic, but which also makes you think that modern movements could learn a few lessons by delving into it. In Connolly’s spirit, both the CD and the book are borders-defying projects assembled and funded in Ireland, Switzerland, and the United States. 

Rob Weir

Rhymes with Yokel: Why Small Government is No Substitute for the Feds

Bankrupt this guy and....

The current financial mess and Congressional hissy fit have revived the grandest of American sports: ranting over taxes. It is the ultimate Straw Man debate, though. Nobody, and I mean nobody, actually likes to pay taxes. Lefties want to keep their dough just as much as the tempests from the Tea Party. As one of the former, let me make it clear that this lefty doesn’t like paying income tax, sales tax, excise tax, or backdoor levies such as vehicle registration fees, phone surcharges, or turnpike tolls. A particularly loathsome fee is the $1.40 I have to shell out for 14 miles of New Hampshire I drive on I-95 on my way to Ogunquit, Maine. Live free or die my ass–more like live like a freeloader off of money gouged from the Bay State.

That 14 miles is partly what this essay is about. Every time any sort of financial crunch hits, the collective reflex is to start ranting over federal taxes–as if these exist in a vacuum. The tax system is a big daisy chain–every dime you remove from the federal part of it is going to be assessed further down the line. If there are fewer dollars for the feds to give out for colleges, for example, state governments are pressured to come up with the scratch. If they can’t, they tell schools they have to raise their tuitions to erect new facilities, pay profs, or dole out financial aid. Students and their parents then go back to the feds and seek grants, but there are fewer of them, so they seek federal loans instead, only to find out that there’s less money for these as well. So they borrow money from banks, and what are interest rates but a tax under a different name? If you can’t relate to that example, look at what has happened to highway funding over the years. The interstates are rutted because the feds don’t have the money to rebuild them, the bridges are unsafe because cash-strapped states defer maintenance, and your street is filled with potholes because local government isn’t getting any help from the feds or the state. They only get money from one place: you! I now pay almost as much per month in property taxes as I paid for principle when I had a mortgage. My state sales tax has gone up 40%. I hate paying those things!

At the end of the day, though, it boils down to a single question: Which master do you wish to pay? And that’s where the most naïve of all tax debates takes place. Even the Tea Party thinks we need some services, so how do we fund them? This question is where the Loony Right and the Batshit Crazy Left meet–they both think small-is-beautiful decentralization is the way to go. In the abstract, rightwing libertarianism and leftwing anarchism sound really good. Let’s depend upon ourselves, or voluntarily associate with likeminded radically free individuals and live in a society beyond government. The first problem is that it’s all a bunch of romantic twaddle when put into practice, and the second is that it ignores the reality that we need big government more than we need small government.

...you're at this guy's mercy!

Spend enough time observing grassroots government and you’ll come to appreciate why local and yokel rhyme. I lost my romance for localism by observing the institution often upheld as the very model of democracy: town meetings. You have no idea how seriously out-of-touch people can be until you watch two grown men literally come to blows over whether or not to spend town money to dump a load of gravel on a washed out back road! Nor can you appreciate the depths of pettiness until you see half of a town vote to fire two reading teachers, put buckets under a leaky roof, and defund art, music, and all non-sports extracurricular activities rather than raise property taxes by .5%. Think I exaggerate? Look at local schools–firmly under the thumb of local control. To maintain certification, public schools must meet (ridiculously low) state standards and the rest of a child’s educational experience is at the mercy of local school boards and taxpayers. In the 1980s I taught in a Vermont district in which texts were expected to last 15-20 years. (Try teaching anthropology with a book printed in 1964!) Five miles away, in IBM-enriched Essex Junction, schools spent more each year on videotapes than my district spent in five for textbooks. Come to Massachusetts and walk the halls of the new school in tony Newton. Then take a drive to Holyoke High. Still think local control is a wonderfully democratic ideal?

Education is a big job–too big to be left to the whims, budgets, and vendettas of locals. We really hate Big Government, right? Tell me how well local government and private charities handled the Great Depression. Anyone who wants to paint Franklin Roosevelt as a communist had better be prepared to explain how the nation was better off under Hoover than under New Deal. But let’s forget ancient history. Tell me what would have happened without federal presence during the Deepwater Horizon spill, Hurricane Katrina, or Hurricane Sandy. Each of those could/should have been handled better, but while you’re spilling anti-FEMA bile, tell me who else had the resources even to attempt tackling problems of this magnitude. While you’re at it, convince me that the last recession wouldn’t have been much, much worse had it not been for the American Recovery and Investment Act. Though I didn’t care for the bailouts, many economists argue that the Troubled Asset Relief Program staved off a serious depression. We should debate how tax money gets spent, but we again come back to scale. Who was going to take on the collapsing economy, your local bank? If not the feds, who will fund vet hospitals, elder care, energy development, the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control, consumer safety, or the military? (The very thought of the military makes the tax-hating right giddy!) Let’s face it, without the feds, local governments would sell every inch of the National Park System to developers.

We all hate taxes, but don’t confuse what you like with what you need to do. And don’t be a yokel.  

Dan Brown's Inferno: Half-Baked More of the Same

Inferno (2013)

Dan Brown

Knopf, ISBN: 9780385537859

* *

Dan Brown is a terrific storyteller and a terrible writer. There, I’ve said it. I’m sort of okay with that. If I had to choose, I’d rather read a good story told clumsily than wade through ostentatious prose that goes nowhere. In my adult life I’ve given myself permission not to read authors who make my head hurt from an overdose of style–Joyce, Pynchon, Proust, Shakespeare, Joyce Carol Oates. I don’t want to impress anyone with my erudition; I just want to curl up with a good read.

Therein lies my Dan Brown dilemma. Is he a good read? Not any more. Inferno is like the cheap, sweet wine one consumes as a college first-year–delicious until you get sick on it and never again wish to imbibe. Brown’s 2003 blockbuster The Da Vinci Code was a great romp and rode high on everyone’s guilty pleasures list. In it, most readers met Robert Langdon for the first time–a dashing world-famous Harvard art historian and symbologist. Maybe that should have tipped us off. There simply aren’t many famous art historians and dashing people don’t come from Harvard!

Okay, that was a cheap shot. On a more substantive level, what we subsequently discovered is that Brown’s earlier novels were just lead ups to The Da Vinci Code and that he’s been rewriting it ever since. His formula is always the same. Something horrible has happened (or is about to occur) that coincidentally involves a trail of clues encoded in symbols that only Langdon can unravel. He’s already an international academic star who routinely lectures on archaic symbolism embedded in art works before engrossed audiences that number in the thousands, so it’s natural that the world’s law enforcement agencies, museums, and NGOs would seek him out and jet him to exotic foreign locations. (Has Dan Brown ever been to an academic conference? Most art history lectures are attended by tens, not thousands!) Along the way, Langdon meets up, James Bond-like, with a whip smart young woman who will help him solve the mystery (or not) and to whom he’ll be physically attracted (or not). The novel will then unfurl at the pace of a high-speed car chase with death being cheated every five pages or so. In between, Langdon demonstrates his ability to make intuitive leaps that no one ever makes, and a penchant for delivering mini art history lessons as he does so.

Inferno is more of the same, though its prose is even more clunky than usual. This time Langdon’s off to Florence, Venice, and Istanbul to help (or is it hinder?) the World Health Organization and perhaps save humankind. His sidekick is Dr. Sienna Brooks, who gets sucked into his symbolist vortex after treating a gunshot wound to his head that leaves him unable to recall having left Cambridge, Massachusetts, let alone being shot in Florence. Then it’s Da Vinci Code all over again, except this time the clues lie in Dante’s Inferno and in paintings by Botticelli and Vasari. It’s a good thing Langdon is a quick thinker and his amnesia effects only his short-term memory; otherwise he and Sienna wouldn’t be able to elude Italian police, a professional assassin, or the trained forces of a shadowy group called the Consortium, which reminded me more of Kaos from Get Smart than anything really sinister. In case you’re wondering how Langdon can solve complex puzzles so quickly when it comes to obscure symbolism, we’re told (numerous times in several books) that he has eidetic memory, which means: (a) photographic recall, and (b) that Dan Brown uses a thesaurus.  

This time, Brown’s story is (even more) absurd and he simply doesn’t have enough material to sustain 465 pages. Moreover, Langdon is a little slow this time around as I was able to follow Brown’s well-marked trail and solve most of the book’s riddles several chapters ahead of the eidetic professor. Brown’s padding also shows in the prose. The book’s structure is something like this: dialog, Wikipedia-like art entry, chase scene, repeat. It is to literature what Thomas Kinkade is to art: a knock-off of a knock-off of a knock-off. It’s so ham-handedly written that it’s hard to imagine any publisher would touch it if hadn’t come from an author who had previously sold a gadzillion books.

I’m glad I borrowed Inferno from the public library rather than padding Knopf’s coffers. (Let this be a lesson to all who wonder if libraries still fulfill important social roles!) I ripped through the book, but mostly because I reached a point where I had gone too far to turn back. I’m cured, though. T’is time to silkscreen a Dan Brown book cover and emblazon the t-shirt with: “Been there. Done that.” I don’t want to choose any more–give me a good story and good writing.

Rob Weir

A Free Market Solution to the Redskins Dilemma

-->

This might work! 

Congratulations to the Washington Redskins. They made me do something I’ve not done in decades: pay nominal attention to the National Football League. I’m on record as hating football. But the ‘Skins have sent me to the morning paper to look at the NFL standings for the first time in years. (Jacksonville has a team? Why?) I receive great delight when I find that the Redskins have lost and, lucky for me, they seem to do that almost all the time.

Those who read this blog know that I recently posted about how the Redskins name is an archaic racist holdover from the days in which white cultural hegemony passed unchallenged–an embarrassment in the present-day reality of multiculturalism. I hope the Redskins lose every game until the name is changed, and I was similarly happy to see baseball’s Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians lose. In the original post I sought to illustrate just how wrong those names are.

I now realize the error of my ways in appealing to morality and fair play. This is America after all, a place where the word ‘justice’ is often invoked and too seldom practiced. The moment one appeals to abstract principles other than individualism, one is subject to being called a liberal PC wuss at best or a flag-burning communist at worst. So I’m with the capitalist program now. Here’s the solution to ‘Skins controversy: let the free market private sector fix it.

The Redskins can pave the way as they appear to be so horrendous as to invite a radical change in direction. From what I read, they’re so stinky that even their most ardent fans would probably welcome a chance to disassociate with a name synonymous with losing. I propose that, starting with the Redskins, teams with socially awkward nicknames sell naming rights. We already do this for stadia and Bowl Games, so why not team names? It might even provide a large enough revenue stream for Washington to buy a few professional-quality players whilst shedding its troubling nickname. Win-win, baby!

A very mild dose of market constraint may be needed, though I suppose that won’t be a problem as antitrust exempt professional sports leagues are already the most socialist organizations in America. The NFL can’t be as desperate as National Public Radio and take backing from anyone who offers. It’s a matter of logistics, not ethics. The Washington Archer-Daniels-Midland: ADM Supermarket to the World simply wouldn’t fit onto uniforms–it’s too long even for the steroid-inflated bodies of football players. But I’m sure other compnaies would come forth. The team could try to divert attention away from steroids by calling themselves the Washington Ruth’s Chris Steak Houses. How about the Washington Quicken Loans.coms? Or maybe appeal to all those suburbanites who attend megachurches by becoming the Washington Hobby Lobbies? Or get some serious capital into the Capitol with the Washington JPMorgan Chase? (Singular names are all the rage in sports these days!) The Washington Bristol-Myers Squibb Kicks, anyone? Maybe the team could advance its standing with women via the Washington Pottery Barns. Does the team leave a bad taste in your mouth? How does the Washington Budweisers sound? Maybe Washington could piggyback on the idea of a big comeback and call itself the Washington Twinkies. Well… maybe not!

I’m sure some of you have ideas on the subject. As of this moment, though, I’m pushing for a total makeover. A new name means new uniforms, right? I’m thinking the Washington Armanis. New team motto: We Suck, but Boy Do We Look Good.

Zansa Debut Dances but Doesn't Sizzle

-->

ZANSA

Djansa

Zansa Music

* * *

He lives in North Carolina, but Zansa front man Adama Dembele has deep roots in the Ivory Coast. To put a point on it, he represents the 33^rd generation of musicians from his family! But one also hears American influences on this Afropop album, not all of them good. Djansa means “dance” and this is a party album. Dembele handles lead vocals and, as in most African music, writes songs in which percussion (djembe, shakers, and various other hand drums) is the lead instrumental voice. It indeed makes for great dance music, which is, after all, rooted more in rhythm than in melody. Dembele sings in French, English, Bambara and Baoule. He’s a decent singer, not a great one. The same can be said about the songs. Most find a groove and stay in it, which is fine for dance music, but both the arrangements and the instrumentation from his four white sidemen sounds smooth and safe (though the electric fiddle is a nice touch). In short, this album feels “American” in many ways and lacks the raw and passionate spark that makes West African music sizzle. I liked this record, but I didn’t love it. But check out this promo video–you might feel differently.

Rob Weir