Michael Miles Takes the Banjo to Unexpected Places

MICHAEL J. MILES

Collage

www.milesmusic.org

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Just what you’ve all been waiting for: a solo banjo album. You scoff? Be gone, unbeliever. The subtitle of Michael Miles’s fifth release is “Timbres of Unlikely Juxtaposition,” and it doesn’t even begin to describe what’s in store on this recording. It’s just like every other banjo recording you’ve ever heard, assuming the ones you’ve heard have tracks arranged for the banjo to share aural space with trumpet, flugehorn, the vibes, Brazilian hand percussion, a string quartet, and vocals from the Sons of the Never Wrong! This CD is more Dave Brubeck Quartet than Blue Ridge Mountains and more Robert Johnson than “Rocky Top.” Miles, who teaches at Chicago’s Old School of Folk Music, is often compared to Bela Fleck, but even that parallel falls short. Know any other banjo players who have covered Bach’s “Gavotte en Rondeau” and “Sleepers Awake?” Remember “All That You Dream” by Little Feat? Miles covers that one too, as well as Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads.” Okay—Eric Clapton has covered that classic, as has Alvin Lee, Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, Alex Van Halen, Trey Anastacio, and a host of other guitar heroes. But “Crossroads” on the banjo? Hell, yes! Miles also busts out four originals, and they too break the mold as each is played in conjunction with Chicago’s Chamber Blues String Quartet. When he finally slips in a mountain standard, “The Cuckoo,” you almost have to pinch yourself to realize that it’s on the same record as the rest. This album is a triumph of boldness, panache, and genius.

Check out his "New Century Suite."

The Unaccountable Monstrousness of Catholic Bishops Report

Need further proof that it would take Dan Brown to unearth the Roman Catholic Church’s moral compass? Catholic bishops released their five-year study on clerical abuse yesterday and named what caused priests to abuse hundreds of children: the sexual revolution. In the therapeutic language of apology and faux concern that now passes for “justice” these days, the report portrays priests as the victims. It seems the poor pedophiles were ill prepared for the sexually frank and libertine ways of Flower Children. The report admits that the Church erred in not monitoring priests better during this sexually open time, but if you believe this load of whitened hogwash--and you should not--what happened was akin to round-eyed unsupervised children let loose in a candy shop: alas, some of them overindulged.

Let’s not mince words. This report is an abomination. If the Rapture does happen this weekend, no one associated it with it, the US Conference of Bishops, the Vatican, or BishopAccountability.org will be heavenly bound. Are we to applaud because the report oh-so-carefully did not blame homosexuality? Or should we laugh because it so definitely asserted that celibacy vows had nothing to do with the spike in gay priests and sexual abuse? Perhaps we should demand an investigation of the investigators. After all, most of the money for the $1.8 million study conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice came from--you guessed it--Catholic organizations. What next, a major research project on the health benefits of tobacco underwritten by R.J. Reynolds? (Can we at least have a list of the John Jay researchers so we can make sure to toss their applications, should they apply for jobs at universiies with ethical standards?)

People of faith should react with outrage to this. It is, simply put, one of the most monstrous lies ever put forth in the name of religion. At least rightwing evangelicals have the grace to blame Satan when they get caught in sexual scandals. But hippies? Jesus, Mary, and the love beads! “Next up on The Jerry Springer Show--How the Merry Pranksters Primed Priestly Pedophilia.” I am reminded of Joseph Welch’s 1954 attack on Senator Joseph McCarthy when he blurted out, “Have you no sense of decency… at long last?” Later in the exchange an exasperated Welch turned away from McCarthy and said to him, “I will not discuss this with you further…. If there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further.”

That sums up how I feel about the Catholic Church these days. The Church continues to behave as if this is the Middle Ages and it can use its wealth and power to sweep scandal under a brocaded tapestry. But I note another thing here in my town--three of the city’s four Catholic churches are closing and being consolidated into one. Some parishioners call this tragic; I call it “justice.”

Justice Not Done in Phoebe Prince Case

Is six months probation appropriate compensation for Phoebe Prince's death?

It began with a thunderclap and ended in crocodile tears. Even if you don’t live in Western Massachusetts you’ve probably heard of Phoebe Prince (pictured). She was the fifteen-year-old Irish émigré who hanged herself after brutal bouts of bullying from six teens at South Hadley High School, one of whom was an eighteen-year-old football player with whom she had sex, and another of whom was his erstwhile girlfriend. The case more than consumed South Hadley--it totally devoured it. It touched off torrents of tears, months of anguished handwringing, and bitter recrimination against the teens involved, teachers who turned a blind eye, and school administrators who failed to act upon information that some teachers and parents did provide. Former District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel did the right thing and brought criminal charges against the teens involved.

So how did it all end? New Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan accepted plea bargains that, in essence, wiped the record clean and left the school district off the hook. The bullies involved showed up in court--attorneys in tow--apologized, shed a few tears, and were handed sentenced to probation periods of six months to a year, after which their records will be wiped clean and charges expunged. Sullivan vigorously defended himself against charges that the sentences were a “mere slap on the wrist,” and insisted the kids had “punished in other ways,” including media scrutiny, soul searching, and community ostracism. In what was surely the triumph of rhetoric over reality, Sullivan declared an end to the era of turning a “blind eye to bullying.”

At this point I should confess that I voted for Sullivan when Scheibel retired. But his ham-handed handling of the Phoebe Prince case he inherited gives me pause and I doubt I’ll cast a vote for reelection. No one wanted to see the kids involved tossed away on a fiery heap of vengeance; not Anne O'Brien, Prince’s mother, wanted that. Place me in the camp that says we don’t want to hold someone accountable forever for something awful done as an impulsive adolescent. I’m also glad the statutory rape charge was dropped against the eighteen-year-old--that law is a relic completely out of synch with the way real teens behave. Message to moralists: If you don’t want kids to have sex, put an end to the culture that begins sexualizing girls when they’re prepubescent “beauty queens.”

But I do recall an axiom from my own days as a social worker--If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. I’m sorry, but probation and a clean record is a wrist slap, no matter how Sullivan dissects it. In lieu of an aggressive look into the school district, I’m also leery of end-to-bullying nostrums. From where I sit, the message sent in the Prince case is simply another chapter in the “apology” culture that’s rampant in our society--do what you want until you get caught, and then act really, really sorry. Do lawyers still practice law these days, or have they become drama coaches who teach method acting to defendants?

Let me run a scenario. Let’s say that the kids who bullied Phoebe Prince were not middle-class teens from middle-class South Hadley. Let’s cross the Connecticut River and make them public housing kids from Holyoke. Let’s make them black and Hispanic rather than white. And let’s give each of them the public defender, not privately retained lawyers. Do those kids get six months probation and dropped charges? I suspect that the community reaction to that would be analogous to old horror films where we see the villagers marching on the castle with fiery torches in one hand and pitchforks in the other.

A more appropriate actionwould have been a suspended jail sentence of six months to a year. Let’s take stock here. The six teens involved will, at some point, get on with their lives, their stain and shame notwithstanding. Phoebe Prince won’t get that chance and these six are at least partially to blame for that. Probation without consequence is simply not an appropriate punishment. The county where I used to work often used a modified “Scared Straight” tactic where kids in their late teens were arraigned on Friday afternoon, bail was set high, and they spent the weekend in jail until parents could arrange bond on Monday. (The jail housed them away from the general population.) Maybe that’s overly harsh, but it’s not too harsh to say that the burden is on the teens involved in the Prince case need to prove that theirs was a horrifying one-time mistake and that the tears and apologies are sincere, not rehearsed. My bare minimum--and one I would have advocated in my days as a juvenile probation officer--would have been a stipulation of three-to-five years of non-criminal behavior as a prerequisite for sealing the charges. I would have also encouraged a thorough investigation of the school district. Phoebe Prince is dead, six teens have some serious redemption to do, and District Attorney Sullivan dropped the ball.

Peter Bradley Adams New CD Pleasant but Lacks Diversity

PETER BRADLEY ADAMS

Between Us

Mishara Music

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Peter Bradley Adams has a voice that’s David Wilcox-like sweet and soothing. The former front man of Eastmountainsouth, a duo signed by Robbie Robertson, is back with his fourth solo album. Like the previous three, is impresses with its gentleness and is nearly retro in the manner in which it highlights songwriting and voice without a lot of extraneous production and noise. The arrangements often reminded me of Daniel Lanois, especially the way in which various electric guitar guest musicians used their instruments for sonic soundscaping. The album’s quietness is both its strength and its weakness in the sense that it’s a balm for frenzied minds, but doesn’t work so well when you’re bombing down the highway in an upbeat mood. It consists of eleven songs, all of which are mid-tempo. This gives the album a distinct identity, but it also lists toward monochromatic. Adams’ voice could use a bit of controlled grit in order to add emphasis to his poetic lyrics. Ditto the need to explore a broader range of time signatures.

I enjoyed this CD, but my enthusiasm waxed and waned according to my mood. I did find that it required close concentration lest it become aural wallpaper. I also found myself listening hard for small adornments that broke the tone a bit. Some of this was achieved by the gorgeous backing vocals of Aoife O’Donovan on songs such as “My Love is My Love” and “Waltz for the Faithless.” Even more came when I just sat down and listened, without outward distractions. That said, Adams has been labeled a “promising” artist for several years now and this album will not be a game-changer. It’s pleasant and well worth purchasing, but Adams needs to expand his repertoire and musical palette before he’ll shed his old label and become a consistent headliner.

Check out this lovely YouTube clip.

Pakistan: The Bitter Fruit of Ali Jinnah

Pakistan's Effort to Locate Osama bin Laden?

And now the bullshit begins. Pakistan is busy backpedaling from the Osama bin Laden hit that took place on its soil. After the requisite saber rattling by its military, which warned the U.S. not to conduct any more raids on its soil, Pakistani government, military, and intelligence officials have announced they were shocked--shocked I tell you--to find that bin Laden was living near Islamabad. Why none of the military officers stationed just 200 meters away had the slightest idea he was there! The Pakistanis have even--get this--hired a U.S. lobby firm, Locke Lord Strategies 5, to shore up its reputation among U.S. officials.

Absurd? Of course it is. But here’s something even more unbelievable--it might just work! Cautious word is already trickling out of Washington that the United States can’t afford to allow Pakistan to become a failed state and that we need to work with Pakistani officials to repair the breach in relations and continue the war against terror. With all due respect to the Pakistani people, the majority of whom we should carefully separate from the den of vipers that misrule them, let’s enumerate some of the reasons why further involvement with Pakistan is wrongheaded.

Pakistan isn’t in “danger” of being a failed state; it is a failed state. It’s never been anything other than a failed state. Today’s Pakistan is the rotten fruit of a withered tree planted by its misguided founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948) in 1947. A short history lesson: Jinnah was originally a member of the Indian National Congress (INC), the group seeking to oust British imperialists from the Indian subcontinent. He split from the INC in 1920, when Mahatma Gandhi launched his non-cooperation program against the British. (Gandhi going “native” offended the Western-trained and Western-cultured Ali Jinnah.) In the 1930s, Ali Jinnah began to insist on a two-nations solution once the British were supplanted. In his mind, Muslims and Hindus could not live in the same nation. To be sure, there had been tension among the groups, as one might expect given that Muslim Mughals conquered India in 1526 and relegated Hindus to second-class citizenship. The Mughals were outsiders as surely as were the British, who kicked out the Mughals in 1804.

Fact Check Time 1: Ali Jinnah was full of himself and a few other substances. He got his way, though Gandhi and Nehru pleaded with him not to split India. In 1947, West Pakistan was created from Muslim majority lands in Punjab, and East Pakistan from lands in Bengal. Now there’s a solid basis for a new nation, one bifurcated by a thousand miles of India between its two halves! Pakistan was a basket case from day one. Thirteen million people were displaced and angry riots led to the deaths of up to half a million souls. So was Ali Jinnah right that Muslims and Hindus cannot live in peace? Not really. Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation (203 million) and Pakistan is second (174 million). Want to guess who’s third? That would be India, with 161 million--roughly 13% of its population.

Pakistan became an unstable nation prone to coup governments (1955-71, 1977-88, 1999-2008), failed coups (1949, 1980, 1995), wars with India (1947, 1965, 1971, and 1995), and a devastating civil war in 1971 in which East Pakistan went its separate way and became Bangladesh, chronically among the poorest nations on earth. Throw in a penchant for assassination during Pakistan’s sixty-four-year history and it’s hard to see it as anything other than a stillborn state. Were it not for the fact that it’s also (alas!) a nuclear power, Pakistan would be as irrelevant as a global power as, say Tajikistan.

Fact Check 2: Do not be deceived into thinking that severing relations with Pakistan will hurt the Pakistani people. Since 2002 Pakistan has gotten $12.3 billion of US aid, but only about a quarter of it has gone to economic development. Most has gone to--yep--military and intelligence spending; in fact, quite a bit of it has gone to security forces that have suppressed Pakistani dissident movements.

Fact Check 3: Pakistan has never been an ally in the war on terror. Counting bin Laden, exactly four high-profile terrorists have been arrested on Pakistani soil since 2002; in three cases the raids were initiated and led by U.S. forces. Want to bet on how many Afghani Taliban leaders are in Pakistan right now?

The U.S. relationship with Pakistan is a Cold War relic whose day has passed. In 1955, India had the unmitigated gall to champion a “Third Way” program that rejected both U.S. and the Soviet Union. In the bipolar thinking of the day, that made them “pro-Soviet,” so the U.S. snuggled up to Pakistan to keep the dominos from tumbling. That was rubbish during the Cold War and it’s positively archaic in the post-Soviet world. There is, simply, no good reason to continue pumping billions into Pakistani coffers. It is time for Pakistanis to take a hard look at the bitter fruit Ali Jinnah planted, and it needs to do so without American interference. While we’re at it, it’s time for the U.S. to lift the operating licenses of lobby firms whose profit margins are healthier than their sense of patriotism. Locke Lord Strategies 5 would be a good place to start.

Waste Land a Film about Beauty and Hope

Waste Land (2010)

Directed by Lucy Walker, Karen Harley, and Joao Jardim

O2 Films, 99 mins. in English and Portuguese

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On the surface, this is a film most Americans would avoid--it’s a documentary with no star power, its subject matter sounds depressing, and part of the dialogue is in Portuguese and is subtitled. The film follows the lives of Rio de Janeiro dwellers from the favelas, the drug-infested, crime-ridden slums that climb Rio’s hillside like a plague of kudzu. The subjects in this film make their living in a stomach-churning fashion: they hang out in the Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill. There they spend twelve-hour days sifting through the garbage in search of materials they can sell. In a good week they earn the equivalent of about $25, but every day they prevent several tons of material from being plowed under.

This may sound like a huge turnoff, but it’s actually one of the most uplifting films I’ve seen in quite some time. It centers on a project spearheaded by Brazilian-born, New York-based artist Vik Muniz. If the name doesn’t ring bells for you, rest assured that they peal quite a few at art auctions; Muniz is among the world’s most successful living artists. He’s done well, in fact, that he decides to return to Brazil for two years, hang out in the dangerous favela, make art with the pickers, and donate any profits that result. He finds many things he did not expect, including a pickers’ association led by the idealistic Tiao, as gentle and sweet a young man who has ever graced the planet. None of Muniz’s subjects are what you’d anticipate. There is Zumbi, the organic intellectual who reads Machiavelli books he finds amidst the trash; Irma, the landfill cook, who looks like a Walker Evans photo; Suelem, 19, and the mother of two, who ends up in a Dorothea Lange-like tableau; the strong-willed and striking Magna; fashion-conscious Isis; and Valter, who has spent decades on the trash heap, but is as cheerful as a character conjured by Dickens. And don’t call them trash pickers; they definitely see themselves as engaged in grassroots recycling.

Muniz and his team worry about and debate whether their presence can help, or if they’re just another link in a chain of broken dreams. I’m not spoiling a thing to say that Muniz orchestrates stunning art and that lives are transformed. Orchestrates is the correct word; Muniz is not necessarily the center of the art that ensues. This is a moving portrait of hope amidst conditions that would induce despair in most people. It is also one of the beauty to be found in an unlikely place. In sum, it’s a film that might make you believe that humankind might just manage to save itself. It’s now available on video, and Netflix subscribers can view it as an instant download. I’d recommend you do so now and move it to the top of your queue.

Bin Laden Is Dead: Now the Hard Part

Enough with the flag waving and chest-thumping already! Osama bin Laden is dead and the world is a decidedly better place without him. Be glad, but don’t rejoice, because his death will also make the world a more dangerous place in the near future. The last thing the planet needs is a group of yahoo provocateurs to make it worse.

Let’s start with the obvious. Was Osama holed up in a mountain cave shivering, raged, and subsisting on tinned food? He was not. He was hidden in plain view--in a luxury compound. And where was that compound? Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital city. It was located in an affluent neighborhood less than half a mile from a large military academy. Uh oh. President Barack Obama did not inform Pakistan’s President Arif Zardari of the raid until it was over and with good reason. We have known for a long time that bin Laden was in Pakistan, that he enjoyed great support from factions there, and that he was receiving logistical support from officials high up in the Pakistani government. President Obama’s intelligence sources no doubt told him that informing Zardari in advance would have led to U.S. Navy Seals storming an empty compound. Score one for Obama, who managed to do something his inept predecessor George W. Bush never managed to do--keep his mouth shut instead of bragging and swaggering.

Again, though, let’s take stock of the plain facts. Pakistan is, simply, part of the problem, not an ally in the war on terrorism. The Al-Qaida network is in bed with elements of Pakistan’s government, its middle class, and parts of its military hierarchy and officer class. We have but to step next door to Afghanistan to see how widespread the problem is. There we find another erstwhile ally, President Hamad Karzai, who also plays terrorist-seeker, but is believed to be secretly chummy with Al-Qaida. He’s also as crooked as a U-turn. Would anyone be surprised to see former Taliban head Mullah Mohammed Omar turn up in Kabul? To make matters worse, Al-Qaida is probably stronger in Yemen (and maybe Indonesia) than it is in either Pakistan or Afghanistan.

There was no “mission accomplished!” nonsense from President Barack Obama when he announced bin Laden’s death. He knows full well that there are dozens of future bin Ladens ready to step into his now-martyred shoes. He also wisely warned that revenge attacks are likely to ensue. Look for quite a few of them to occur in places Fox-watching Americans have foolishly allowed themselves to think are in the midst of “reforms” that will bring “democracy”--Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Tunisia…. (Americans use the word ‘democracy’ like it’s a Harry Potter-like magical incantation even though most of them can’t be bothered to exercise it at home!) Count on the fact that both Palestine and Saudi Arabia will come into play in a negative way, and it goes without saying that U.S. targets must be hyper-vigilant in the days to come.

Long term? Several things suggest themselves:

1. Quiet but persistent military and financial disengagement from both Pakistan and Afghanistan; the first is simply the second without the war damage. Every dime spent in aid to either nation is a subsidy for corruption and anti-Americanism. The United States should get out of the imposed “democracy” business. It will probably mean a return of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the rise of an overtly theocratic government in Pakistan. To be blunt about it, it’s simply none of our business. To be even more frank, who cares? Change must come internally, not through U.S. bombs and dollars. While we’re at it, pull back from the treacherous Saudis as well.

2. Increased rapprochement with India and China. I’ve never understood why the U.S. viewed Pakistan as its natural ally in the region, when India--though it has myriad problems of its own--has been far more stable, powerful, and open to the Western world. Southern Asia is likely to be tense for some time; hence the U.S. should cozy up to the two powers least likely to be affected by upheaval. But let India and China emerge as regional powers and end the nonsense that Washington-based think tanks can direct the region like a symphonic conductor.

3. Turn off the oil taps. This is more than thirty years overdue, largely because another fool, Ronald Reagan, convinced Americans there was plenty of oil. There isn’t, and what does exist is in the hands of people who don’t like us. We need a national energy policy, now. (We needed it when Jimmy Carter called for it in á1978!) Let’s take the cash currently propping up tyrants and pump it into a Manhattan Project for Energy. This would allow for slow disengagement from both Southern Asia and the Middle East that would be good for everyone involved. Curtailing OPEC blackmail that sends the economy into periodic paroxysms would be a boon to Americans, but there’s also a potential geopolitical gain. If the United States ended oil diplomacy, would it correspond with rising credibility among regional leaders? It’s a premise worth testing.

Osama bin Laden is dead. Now comes the hard part.