When I teach about the American Fifties, I watch the videos carefully for non-verbal information. Yesterday's showing of the BBC's Arthur Miller and the Crucible, struck me hard. As the great playwright testified, he caressed a pipe, and took long, thoughtful drags on it. Each time he finished, he gave a brilliant answer to the torturous questions.
My father smoked a pipe. I love to look at a man smoking a pipe. I will write a PhD on the cultural significance of the pipe, and its disappearance from North American society. (Hash pipes excluded, or maybe they have disappeared too).
Pipes have no place in a nanosecond world. Cigarettes can't replace them. Pipes take time. Pipes buy time. Compared and contrasted to cigars, pipes win on all points. The smell of cigars drives women away (which is why men used to retreat for brandy and cigars?) The smell of pipe brings only joy to women's hearts.
Men used to baby their pipes, which they bought with loving attention. Even smoking a pipe called for loving attention. You had to tend a pipe the way you do a fire's hearth. Maybe a pipe was a portable fireplace, bringing comfort to the smoker and to those around him.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Patterns in Music
icons
contain or represent a pattern
entire course reveals patterns
music itself contains patterns,within songs, between songs.
Are musicians themselves instruments of culture?
contain or represent a pattern
entire course reveals patterns
music itself contains patterns,within songs, between songs.
Are musicians themselves instruments of culture?
Everybody gets the blues
Two summers ago, I fell head over heels for a 84 year old bachata genius named Puerto Plata. Until I met, heard and witnessed his concert I had written off the culture of my birthplace, the Dominican Republic. But Puerto Plata, born Jose Cobles, played music that resonated with me even more than my beloved American blues, which Ken Burns had convinced me was a purely American art form.
Now 86, Puerto Plata has released a second album, and distracted me again, this time from my sabbatical focus on Ethel Waters. If Waters is the mother of all great female popular singers, I want Puerto Plata to be their father. Like Waters, he started off playing "low life" music, bachata, in the melting pots of the local brothels. He described them to me as "entertainment halls". If I were to talk to him again, I'd know to ask him if he had had to "clean up" his music for the popular audience. I know Ethel Waters did.
Every generation has rules for what is "proper" or "decent". Every generation has musicians breaking those rules. In PP's day he had to play in the whore houses and streets. The streets were a battleground for troubadors carving out their corners and territories. Again this was on the streets of Santiago, not the streets of Chicago or New York.
When music is forbidden, I suspect it takes deeper root in its culture, not shallower. The implications for hip hop are obvious. In a time anything goes musically, there's nothing to rebel against, no one to challenge. I've been interested in the rise of Christian rock and pop music, but I shouldn 't be. How better to challenge the status quo?
The deeper the root, the more enduring the music. Music of the civil rights movement sunk its roots back to the chants, spirituals and gospel songs of African music in the U.S. What we often forget is that African roots are also present in Cuban, Dominican, Haitian, and even South American music.
I also wonder whether the deeper the root, the more endearing the music. The music of the 1920s has deep roots in its cultures, and seems to have found its way into our hearts (and feet to judge by the love of dance in that era). The whole world seemed to be dancing. Shallower roots don't provide the foundation for quantum leaps.
What happens when a music rooted in one culture crosses over into another? Waters left her suggestive double entendres behind; Puerto Plata's Spanish eases his crossover. Let's look at Elvis Presley, then for a clear example of a white artist singing black music.
sources:
http://www.colonialzone-dr.com/music-musica_tipica-bachata.html
Now 86, Puerto Plata has released a second album, and distracted me again, this time from my sabbatical focus on Ethel Waters. If Waters is the mother of all great female popular singers, I want Puerto Plata to be their father. Like Waters, he started off playing "low life" music, bachata, in the melting pots of the local brothels. He described them to me as "entertainment halls". If I were to talk to him again, I'd know to ask him if he had had to "clean up" his music for the popular audience. I know Ethel Waters did.
Every generation has rules for what is "proper" or "decent". Every generation has musicians breaking those rules. In PP's day he had to play in the whore houses and streets. The streets were a battleground for troubadors carving out their corners and territories. Again this was on the streets of Santiago, not the streets of Chicago or New York.
When music is forbidden, I suspect it takes deeper root in its culture, not shallower. The implications for hip hop are obvious. In a time anything goes musically, there's nothing to rebel against, no one to challenge. I've been interested in the rise of Christian rock and pop music, but I shouldn 't be. How better to challenge the status quo?
The deeper the root, the more enduring the music. Music of the civil rights movement sunk its roots back to the chants, spirituals and gospel songs of African music in the U.S. What we often forget is that African roots are also present in Cuban, Dominican, Haitian, and even South American music.
I also wonder whether the deeper the root, the more endearing the music. The music of the 1920s has deep roots in its cultures, and seems to have found its way into our hearts (and feet to judge by the love of dance in that era). The whole world seemed to be dancing. Shallower roots don't provide the foundation for quantum leaps.
What happens when a music rooted in one culture crosses over into another? Waters left her suggestive double entendres behind; Puerto Plata's Spanish eases his crossover. Let's look at Elvis Presley, then for a clear example of a white artist singing black music.
sources:
http://www.colonialzone-dr.com/music-musica_tipica-bachata.html
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Many Paths; Many Journeys
By the time I signed in here, I'd forgot what I wanted to write. Was it
1) The domestication of women and dogs: similarities and differences?
2) Music as the sound of a generation vs. music as the indoctrination of a generation
3) Sold down the river: New Orleans as the brothel capital of the South--great for music; shitty for women
4) Voluntary slavery
5) The Happy Slave. All that great music.
6) Black and White and all shades in between.
7) Is music a universal language or a reflection of the language of a culture?
8) White Niggers of North America Revisited
9) History vs English Studies. Why you don't have to study history to enjoy it
1) The domestication of women and dogs: similarities and differences?
2) Music as the sound of a generation vs. music as the indoctrination of a generation
3) Sold down the river: New Orleans as the brothel capital of the South--great for music; shitty for women
4) Voluntary slavery
5) The Happy Slave. All that great music.
6) Black and White and all shades in between.
7) Is music a universal language or a reflection of the language of a culture?
8) White Niggers of North America Revisited
9) History vs English Studies. Why you don't have to study history to enjoy it
Friday, November 27, 2009
Material Culture
Instead of investigating artifacts from the past, I propose investigating artifacts in the present. We are in a privileged position; we can see these artifacts in use. For example, say that scholars in future years find an old iPhone. If we assume they can get it to work, they'll find a phone, an iPod, camera, digital recorder and probaby hundreds of ancient apps. But (we hope) people will have stopped walking and driving around with their hands held up to their ears. Only today, could we see the actual impact of the cellphone. In cities, anyway, an alien visitor would probably assume that all North Americans (research note: check use in rural areas) have at least one hand permanently affixed to their ear. It's really too bad Kurt Vonnegut is dead.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Welcome
Like the dinosaurs, educational institutions will eventually become extinct. Already, they have been reduced to sorting machines where different classes of workers mingle and marry. However, as the price of education escalates, few students will have time for social activities. They'll rush in and out to their paying jobs. Universities where students live in residence will become boarding schools where the very rich can park their adolescent children while they go about making the huge sums of money required to maintain their lifestyle. Community colleges will continue to attract the daughters of both rich and poor families, and their underachieving sons. At the end of the day, however, they will question why their sons and daughters are working at Walmart, or as call centre employees. Parents will begin to question whether their 3 year olds should be in school rather than at home. Teachers are teachers. No one can love your child as well as you can. Young women will drop out of the workforce to homeschool their children. Community college students will realize that job skills are best learned on the job. Only the children of the well to do will receive an education in the classic sense. Welcome to the New Dark Ages.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)