Sibiri Samaké's Trance-Like Magic

SIBIRI SAMAKÉ

Dambe Foli: Bamana Hunters Music

KSK CD

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Sibiri Samaké is a man who wears many headdresses. In his native Mali he is known as a griot, a traditional healer, a son of nobility, a hunter, and offspring of a musical family. Hunting societies confer great status in Mali, but Samaké would have attracted notice for his music if nothing else. He brings to bear all of his influences on this, his second album. Call it where tradition meets the present. You will hear hints of African blues and of Western drum and bass records, but mainly you will hear Samaké’s pastiche homage to his roots. There is, first of all, the instrumentation–a few which could be plugged in, but mostly assorted wooden stringed instruments, scrappers, and shakers. The album is more than 66 minutes long, yet it contains just four tracks. On each, Samaké uses the instruments to evoke the natural world and his voice to command the center around which band mates and backing vocalists rally. His leads set the table for call-and-response singing, but of the sort that conjures a shaman leading supplicants. His voice is strong and bold; those that respond are often short syllables, moans, and vocalizations. The pacing is deliberate and chant-like, as if Samaké is conducting a healing ceremony.

This one may take some getting used to for Westerners whose bodies and psyches do the double-time boogie, but patience is rewarded for those who surrender and go with the flow. It’s the sort of album that’s sublime for intent listening or for background ambience. But if you’re in the midst of a busy task and start playing this one, don’t be surprised if you drift away and the task lies undone. --Rob Weir   

Here's a short (for Samaké) YouTube clip that will give you an idea of style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdHdLJIXjAY 

Man Who Never Died the New Standard on Joe Hill

The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon, By William Adler. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. 349 pp. + sources, bibliography, index. ISBN: 978-1-59691-696-8

In the annals of labor history, the 1915 execution of troubadour Joe Hill ranks with cases such as those of the hanging of the Haymarket martyrs (1887) and the electrocution of Sacco and Vanzetti (1927) as among the great legal injustices of all time. Hill is equally vital in music history, both for the songs he wrote in support of the anarcho-syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (“Wobblies”), and for songs written in his honor by luminaries such as Ralph Chaplin, Phil Ochs, Steve Earle and, of course, Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson (“I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night”). William Adler’s new book is the most through treatment of Hill to date, and is destined to displace Gibbs Smith’s 1969 biography as the definitive work on the subject.

In the usual telling, Hill–born in Sweden as Joel Emanuel Hägglund and also known as Joseph Hillström–emigrated to America around 1902, and struggled in obscurity for several years before joining the IWW around 1909, where he quickly gained renown for his sharp wit and songwriting skills. In 1914, however, he was arrested for the murder of John Morrison, a Salt Lake City grocer, was found guilty and sentenced to die by a kangaroo court more intent on looking at Hill’s radical beliefs than the evidence. Adler agrees that Hill’s judgment was unjust, but he goes much further than most other researchers; he fingers the man he thinks to be the real culprit: a career criminal who known as Frank Z. Wilson, who was actually a Norwegian immigrant who bore an uncanny resemblance to Hill and bore a grudge toward Morrison. The main piece of evidence against Hill was a bullet wound for which was treated the night of Morrison’s murder. Adler also names the man who shot Hill the same night, traveling partner Otto Appelquist, and exposes the woman over whom they quarreled, Hilda Erickson.  

Adler’s best sleuthing is the depth he gives to Hill’s sketchy pre-1909 biography. He provides rich details of Hägglund’s/Hill’s life in Sweden, a plausible reconstruction of his life between 1902 and 1909, and a rare telling of Hill’s participation in the IWW’s raid on Baja, California during the Mexican Revolution. (The latter event earned the enmity of rabid IWW foe Harrison Gray Otis, who owned land in Baja, edited the Los Angeles Times, and spearheaded the anti-clemency movement.) Adler is equally vivid in taking us inside the mind, struggles, and character of West Coast Wobblies–their lumber camps and dockside shapeups, their free speech battles, the hard knocks of itinerancy, and the vitriol of capital/labor strife.

Does Adler solve the Hill case? As a labor historian, I have looked at a lot of the same evidence as Adler. I’m simply not convinced that Hill was the innocent of legend. Hill’s willingness to don the martyr’s mantle seems abrupt, and there’s not much past evidence of a Victorian temperament that would accept death rather than besmirch a lady’s reputation. (And why would Erickson, who was present throughout the drama, remain silent as her lover went before the firing squad?) West Coast Wobblies were a rough-and-tumble lot with no love for capitalists. Put bluntly, I think it’s quite possible that Hill and Appelquist, who absconded, actually did kill Morrison. Having said that, the standard of American justice is supposed to beyond a reasonable doubt, not possibility. By that criterion, Hill’s execution is indeed the stain upon American jurisprudence that Adler insists that is. Bottom line: even if you don’t buy into the Hill-as-martyr image, Adler’s is still the best book ever written on Joe Hill. 

Rupert Murdoch Unfit to Head Media Outlet? Who Knew?

Page-three girls--the sort of outstanding journalism we've come to expect from Rpuert Murdoch. 

A new British Parliamentary report on the phone hacking scandals involving Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World operation concluded that Murdoch is “not a fit person” to head media conglomerates and news agencies. Wow! Who would have guessed? In related news, scientists have offered conclusive proof that grass is green and the sky is blue.

The Parliamentary report is as outmoded as the monarchy. Where have they been since 1969? That’s the year Murdoch landed in the UK and took over a decent-but-troubled newspaper called the Sun, converted it into a tabloid, kicked out its vaguely left-oriented staff, and made the “page-three girl” part of the British lexicon. (For those who’ve never seen a page-three girl, think Playboy in newsprint.) Murdoch was a Thatcherite during the 1980s, though he admired the Iron Lady from abroad, having moved to the United States and taken citizenship there in 1985.

His first big U.S. venture is another milestone for creative journalism–he took over the Star, that staple of bored patrons standing in supermarket checkout lines across the nation and the major faux news rival of the National Enquirer. In 1986, Murdoch launched the Fox Broadcasting Company. Need I say more?

Well, yes, I should. In 1995, the Federal Communications Commission investigated Murdoch for violation of media antitrust laws. Once upon a time, media mogulship was controlled in this country–one was not allowed to own multiple news outlets in the same market. There was a quaint idea circulating that competition prevented manipulation of information, ensured that multiple viewpoints and ideologies would be aired, and gave consumers a silly old thing called “choice.” That great “liberal” Bill Clinton scuttled that rule. (If Clinton’s a liberal, I’m the schizophrenic reincarnation of both Marx and Engels!) Thanks to Bonkin’ Bill–whom Murdoch repaid by running several fundraisers for Hillary, though he generally channels about $1 million per year to Republicans–Murdoch was able to launch a new venture in 1996: Fox News. That outlet is to objective news what a gallon of Jack Daniels is to sobriety. I’m sure that America’s squeamishness about sex is the only thing between anchor Patti Ann Browne and a video version of the page-three girl on Fox News Live.

Murdoch’s record has been tawdry and sleazy everywhere he’s set up shop, and that includes Italy. My lord! What does it say when a country that produced the Borgias and whose major media player is Silvio Berlusconi finds Rupert Murdoch’s behavior questionable? Is there anyone on the planet who thinks Murdoch is fit to run a media empire? Probably not, but the better question to ask is whether there’s anyone in the United States that cares enough about the public to strip Murdoch of his power, overturn Clinton’s foolish ruling, and restore competition to the North American media.   

Arab Spring Springs Major Leaks

The new "democrats" in Egypt fear this guy? 71-year-old actor Abel Imam

There’s not much in life that gives less satisfaction than saying, “I told you so.” Readers of this blog know that I have routinely inveighed against getting too excited about “Arab Spring,” that series of upheavals that convulsed the Middle East in early 2010. Its Western defenders hailed it as an outbreak of democracy that promised to empower the masses and bring an end to regional strife. I can forgive the magical thinking of average Americans whose ignorance was a product of ahistoricism and altruism. Our leaders and intellectuals should have known better.

At the time I was among the few observers that cautioned that we ought not to throw around terms such as democracy, elections, and mass participation with such cavalier recklessness. My own take on the Middle East history is tempered by familiarity with seven decades of Islamic state policies on Israel, gender equity, and multiculturalism. I have seen lots of anti-Semitism, misogyny, and cultural intolerance; I have not seen much that passes for democracy, nor do I hear it gurgling up from those groups likely to replace deposed governments. I also know that theocratic states have been much worse on the aforementioned issues than those authoritarian regimes the West reflexively revile. Surely only a fool would equate leaders such as Mubarak, Saddam, or Assad with social justice, but Egypt, Iraq, and pre-civil war Syria under those tyrants surpassed the social justice record of theocracies such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or the Taliban. Lest we forget, pre-revolutionary Egypt was the first Arab nation to recognize Israel’s right to exist. (Jordan is the only other.)

The 1979 Camp David Accords will be in serious jeopardy under an Egypt ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood. Lately I’ve been hearing people say that the Brotherhood has to be given a chance—that it contains “moderate” elements. More magical thinking, say I.  Why are well-intentioned people so reluctant to call out bad behavior? Why are the same people–Noam Chomsky, who is Jewish, leaps to mind–so intent on tolerating those who wouldn’t tolerate them? Mention “values clash” and you get accused of being anti-Muslim. Applied to individuals, I agree, but there is a fundamental values clash between Muslim theocracies and Western nation-states. I’m all for letting Muslim nations work out their destinies independent of U.S. interference. We have no business in dictating their paths, and Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan graphically indicate that we’re no damn good at nation building. Step aside, and in doing so, let’s stop kidding ourselves: in cultural and political terms, these are not our people. Those who wield power simply don’t believe in multiculturalism, Israel, empowering women, the rule of civil law, or most of the precepts Americans enshrine in the Bill of Rights.

The latest case in point is the jailing of Egyptian comedian Adel Imam. He’s serving a three-month prison sentence for “insulting Islam” in roles in films such as “The Terrorist” and “Morgan Ahmed Morgan.” At this point I should mention that Imam is 71-years-old and that his first “offense” occurred in a 1994 film, the second in 2007. Mubarak deemed neither film worthy of prosecution, but the conservative Salafi Muslims now running the (soon-to-be-sinking) ship in Cairo somehow deem Imam a threat.  (Gee--it couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Imam supported Mubarak, could it?) Still think the new Egypt is on the road to democracy? Free speech? It sounds more like something out of Orwell to me.  And, yes, I told you so.

Steep Canyon Rangers Latest a Bluegrass Treasure

STEEP CANYON RANGERS

Nobody Knows You

Rounder 1166-0649-2

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Remember when bluegrass songs were often just an excuse for instrumental breakouts? Today’s bands pay a lot more attention to the melodic and lyrical hooks of their songs, but few do so with the skill of the North Carolina-based quintet Steep Canyon Rangers. Not that there’s anything wrong with those breakouts. Mike Guggino and Graham Sharp can pick the mando and banjo with the best of them, Charles Humphrey knows how it slap the stand-up bass, Woody Platt can dazzle with his flat-picking, and Nicky Sanders adds soulful depth on fiddle. But what will linger after the instrumentals fade are the catchy tunes, the clever word play, the tight harmonies, and meaty melodies that bore themselves into your brain. The memorable banjo riff of “Rescue Me” will replay itself like the song’s chorus. Ditto the line “I always tried to do my best/I’ve mostly done the opposite,” a quiet opening prelude to some jaw-dropping breakdown banjo, mando, and fiddle. Many of the arrangements are dramatic and enigmatic, two adjectives not generally attached to bluegrass songs, a characteristic heard to great execution on “Easy to Love.” And then there’s “Natural Disaster,” a song that’s as catchy as anything on the pop charts. (”Love is a natural disaster/never get what I’m after…”) This well-produced album is one of many moods: the classic bluegrass style of “Ungrateful One,” the old-time flair of “Open Country,” the jazzy undertones of “Knob Creek,” the swingy backbeat of “Between Midnight and the Dawn,” and the pop-laced “Reputation,” which sounds like a bluegrass variant of The Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride.” These guys have been riding high on the bluegrass charts, have shared bills the Dixie Chicks and Steve Martin, and were the 2011 International Blue Music Association’s “Entertainers of the Year.” It’s easy to hear why. 

Vermonters Wrong on Vaccine Choice

It makes no public health sense to run the risk of new outbreaks of rubella and other preventable diseases.

I’m usually on the frontline when it comes to defending Vermont and its unique (and generally more humane and freer) way of life. This time, though, I must take issue with my Green Mountain friends pushing the idea of allowing parents to opt out of having their children immunized. Vermont needs to play Big Brother on this one and tell parents they cannot, in the name of small risks, expose their children and the public to much larger dangers.

This will make some people furious with me, but I’ve looked at the data and, though I agree that Big Pharma is not to be trusted, I think the books have been cooked on the claim that it’s a bigger threat than homeopathy and that adverse drug effects kill over 800,000 Americans per year. (One big way the data is cooked is to blame chemo poisoning for the deaths of already-terminal cancer patients. Another way is to quote data from the medical dark ages. Quite a few websites say, for example, that 6,000 people died from smallpox vaccines. Scary until you read the fine print; those numbers come from a 1921 study!)

Homeopathy has its benefits, but a lot of it is simply magical thinking. One takes a risk when anything is added to the human diet. I looked into red rice yeast as a substitute for Statins when my cholesterol went up. Guess what? This natural product has a higher risk of liver damage than Lipitor. Lots of people take St. John’s wort instead of Prozac, but it has so many side effects that France has banned it. Heck, when it comes right down to it, food is more dangerous than most drugs; one of six Americans gets food poisoning each year and about 5,000 die from it. 

The anti-drug drumbeat comes from an unlikely coalition of alt-lifestyle devotees and anti-government paranoia. It would be facile to argue that nobody has adverse, even deadly, reactions to drugs. Big Pharma is at its worst when a new drug comes to market; that’s when the drive for immediate profit bypasses safety valves. But this isn’t the case for most of the vaccines under question, especially the two most under the Vermont microscope: the ones for measles and for pertussis (whooping cough). Some kids don’t react well to either vaccine. But we have data–very strong data collected over decades–that tells us what difference the vaccines make. About 450 children per year died of measles before vaccines came into effect in the 1960s; when the rubella strain (“German measles”) was present, death rates soared; according to the Center for Disease Control, it killed at least 11,000 babies in the United States between 1963 and 1965. Do the math; a rubella vaccine has saved the lives of more than a quarter-million infants since then. Vaccines have nearly eradicated measles of all varieties; since 2000 there have been about five dozen cases per year and no deaths.

A major reason for the reduction in deaths is that most new measles cases are isolated; that is to say, it’s no longer a public infectious disease that weakens public health overall (especially in those little disease incubators we call “public schools”). Whooping cough is even more dramatic; before a vaccine became widely available after World War II, about 175,000 Americans (disproportionately children) got whooping cough each year and an average of 700 died. By the 1990s there were just several thousand cases per year. Alas, anti-vaccine forces have contributed to dramatic rise and there are now more than 25,000 whooping cough victims per year.

Let us imagine a world without vaccines. Do we want a repeat of Spanish influenza like the one that killed 100 million people in 1918 (675,000 in the USA–three times the number of U.S. soldiers killed in World War I)? Do we want a return to pre-vaccine smallpox epidemics, polio outbreaks, bubonic plague and cholera endemics? I wish a mumps vaccine had been available when I was a kid; my bout left me with hearing loss. 

Parents, naturally, think they should have the right to make vaccine decisions. Christian Scientists say the same thing! I say that fear is just as bad a foundation for public policy as loony beliefs. We must view health as a public issue, not a private decision. 93% of Vermont children were immunized for whooping cough in 2005; now it’s just 83% and the disease is on the rise (102 cases in then first four months of 2012). This is fair neither to other Vermonters, nor to the children catching the disease.

Vaccines can indeed cause negative reactions, but the decision to immunize should be made by doctors, not frightened parents. By all means have children tested before immunization, but let those with expertise make life-and-death decisions. If I might put it crudely, if a doctor makes the wrong call, that individual is culpable. But who would want to be the parent who said “no” to the vaccine that would have saved their child’s life? 

Comes a Time: Affirmative Action Outmoded?

Could affirmative action actually reduce the number of women entering college?

The U.S. Supreme Court is about to hear a California case that could determine the fate of affirmative action in college admissions and, by extension, in all of American society. The kneejerk liberal response is one of alarm and disgust–just another backdoor assault on multiculturalism and a way for rich white boys from the Power Elite to assure their entrances to Harvard and Yale. Allow me to commit liberal heresy by saying that this liberal male thinks it may be a good thing for multiculturalism if the court trashes affirmative action. It’s an ideal that’s long past its sell-by date.

“What!?” you cry. Let’s start with this. If the court upholds that ideal that race can be used as an admissions criterion in California, the immediate effect will be that qualified Asian students will be wait-listed and lesser-qualified white students will take their place. Asian-heritage individuals constitute just 5.6% of the U.S. population, but they will make up 46% of next fall’s incoming class at UCal Berkeley (as opposed to just 30% Caucasian). Taking fewer Asians would have some effect on black and Latino admissions, but California data shows that only 15% of African Americans and 13% of Latinos obtain a bachelors degree. (The graduation rate for whites is 31%; it’s 62% for Asians.) Put another way, there simply aren’t enough qualified black and Latino students to make up the gap if California were to halve the number of Asian students it accepts. It couldn’t even fill the classrooms with good students if it was truly “diverse” and dropped the acceptance rate to something close to Asian Americans’ overall representation in society.

To evoke the title of a Neil Young song, comes a time–and this may be it for affirmative action. Not because inequity has been erased from American society, but because affirmative action is no longer the proper vehicle for addressing it. Consider another angle. Affirmative action was also designed to protect women and it has certainly helped them knock down social barriers (though it’s only dented the glass ceiling). Liberals too often view the present through the eyes of the past when it comes to correcting historic patterns of injustice. Here’s a modern reality: by nearly every educational standard, girls outperform boys in American schools. It’s not even close–girls are kicking male butt! What this means is that if affirmative action were to be replaced by race- and gender-blind admissions, way more women would be in college and far fewer males would be admitted. That wouldn’t be a bad thing. They already outnumber males 57% to 43%, but they also continue their performance dominance. (Just over half of students entering college earn a degree within six years, but the degree obtainment rate is 10% higher for women.) This is to say that affirmative action targets may be doing more to protect Ivy League slots for the male offspring of the Power Elite than blind admissions would yield.

Liberals need to consider that well-intended affirmative action policies may actually being perpetuating the slowness by which multiculturalism and social justice intersect. Perhaps we have spent too much time worrying about making places like Harvard and Yale “look like America.” This is a distraction; one generally goes to places such as these because one has little interest in being part of the hoi polloi. We can bemoan it from here to Sunday, but after decades of affirmative action we’re still left with this: it’s the Ivy League for the rich, state colleges for the middle class, and community colleges for the poor. Affirmative action too often addresses problems hard to solve because–to evoke an old slogan–the horse has already left the barn. It does nothing to tackle the question of why there are, relatively speaking, so few qualified students among African Americans, Latinos and, yes, white males.

Comes a time. Liberals should consider giving up an outmoded concept (affirmative action) and embracing some things that would really matter: a new war on poverty, equal funding for all school districts, state-mandated curriculums, tighter high school graduation requirements, an end to college legacy admissions, caps on college tuition, and increased public funding for colleges.

As unpalatable as it may sound, it may also be time for liberals to stop excusing  the inexcusable and get on board with some cultural issues that would improve educational achievement. Bill Cosby has long been vocal in asserting that hip-hop culture often promotes violence, sexism, irresponsibility, and oppression psychosis among black males and has the net effect of producing Stepin’ Fetchits rather than George Washington Carvers. I’ll let him speak for the black community, but I’ll say that white American males are also in trouble if we continue to accept the idea that, in high school,  books are for girls and sports are for boys. Don’t get me started on the myriad ways in which popular culture and partisan politics make stupidity a badge of honor! That’s a whole other rant.

To return to the issue at hand, although I’m sure that many of my fellow liberals will disagree, I’ll say it again–affirmative action was a noble idea that has outlived its original purpose. It’s time for new strategies. Comes a time.