A terrific song and compilation. In memory of Palestinian children murdered by the hafrada regime.
Category: Music
Welcome to the Machine
One of Roger Waters’s many masterpieces from Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here.
Utopia as Alibi: Said, Barenboim and the Divan Orchestra
by Raymond Deane
As a classical musician involved in pro-Palestinian activism, I frequently encounter the assumption that I am an unconditional admirer of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (WEDO). My reservations on this score tend to produce shocked disapproval: How could I not enthuse about such an idealistic project, particularly since it was co-founded by the late Edward Said, a figure for whom I have frequently expressed respect and admiration?
In truth, I have always been a little wary of Said’s veneration for the eighteenth/nineteenth century canon of European classical music. I look in vain in his writings on the subject[1] for a historical and political contextualisation of music comparable of that to which he so perceptively subjected literature in his indispensable Culture and Imperialism.[2]
In his 2002 speech accepting the Principe de Asturias Prize, Said claimed that he and his friend the Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim founded the WEDO “for humanistic rather than political reasons”. This surprising dualism implies that music belongs to a utopian sphere somehow removed from the dialectical hurly-burly of hegemony and resistance.
The paradoxes of Said’s position have been ably dissected by the British musicologist Rachel Beckles Willson.[3] She quotes her colleague Ben Etherington’s critique of Said’s tendency “to assert the intrinsic value of Western elite music without really exploring how that tradition escapes mediation.” Paraphrasing Said’s critique of literary scholars in his Humanism and Democratic Criticism[4] she convincingly claims that he “omitted to make ‘a radical examination of the ideology of the [musical performance] field itself.’” (Willson’s chain brackets).
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Indigenous Youth Delegation to Palestine
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Once again, the wonderful Laura Flanders:
Ora Wise of the Palestine Education Project, Ras K’Dee of SNAG Magazine, and hip-hop activists Invincible of Detroit and the Narcicyst join us in the studio to talk about their experiences organizing across borders, creating solidarity between communities of struggle, and being part of a new generation of activists forming their own connections.
The Persecution of Michael Jackson
Ishmael Reed ruminates on race, the mad dog DA and the mad dog media in the death of Michael Jackson.
Last Thursday, while working on some writing deadlines, I was switching channels on cable. On CNN they were promoting “Black In America”, an exercise meant to boost ratings by making whites feel good by making blacks look bad, the marketing strategy of the mass media since the 1830s, according to a useful book entitled The Showman and the Slave, by Benjamin Reiss. The early penny press sold a “whiteness” upgrade to newly arriving immigrants by depicting blacks in illicit situations. By doing so they were marketing an early version of a self-esteem boosting product. One of the initial sensational stories was about the autopsy of a black woman named Joice Heth, who claimed to be George Washington’s nurse and over one hundred years old. It was the O. J. story of the time. Circus master, P. T. Barnum, charged admission to her autopsy, which attracted the perverted in droves. And so, if the people broadcasting cable news appear to be inmates of a carnival, there is a connection since the early days of the mass media to that form of show business. According to Reiss, early newspapers were not only influenced by P. T. Barnum, but actually cooperated with him on some hoaxes and stunts.
Michael Jackson, R.I.P
He cared about them, and we all care about him. R.I.P brother.
Tell me what has become of my rights
Am I invisible because you ignore me?
Your proclamation promised me free liberty, now
I’m tired of bein’ the victim of shame…
I can’t believe this is the land from which I came
You know I do really hate to say it
The government don’t wanna see
But if Martin Luther was livin’
He wouldn’t let this be, no, no
It’s a Miracle
Roger Waters is a prophet. This is from Amused to Death, an album that was inspired by Neil Postman’s classic book Amusing Ourselves to Death. (gracias Judith)
It’s A Miracle — by Roger Waters
Ausländer
Before Rage Against the Machine there was Living Colour, an all black comprising of four virtuoso musicians who recorded some of the most politically charged music of the late 80s and early 90s. The vocalist Corey Glover appeared in Oliver Stone’s Platoon (and contrary to what I wrote earlier based on an old Circus magazine article, has no relation to Danny Glover) and the guitarist Vernon Reid I’m told has divine relations. The bassist Doug Wimbish went on to play with guitar legend Joe Satriani and the drummer Will Calhoun was likewise an honored graduate of the Berkeley School of Music.
This anti-Fascist classic was inspired by the rampant anti-immigrant violence against Turks in Germany.
The Ghost of Tom Joad
This will blow you away. Tom Morello joins Bruce Springsteen for this classic, inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and shows why he ranks with Hendrix and Page as one of the mad geniuses of guitar playing.
“Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there’s a fight ‘gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I’ll be there
Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin’ hand
Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you’ll see me.”The highway is alive tonight
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes
I’m sittin’ downhere in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad
P U L S E 