WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE MUSIC?

In the words of ex-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volker: "I don't remember any time, maybe even the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast." He was speaking of the “global financial meltdown.” Strong words coming from the guy who is supposed to keep the American people sold on free market capitalism.

My question is: what will happen to the music when the harsh reality of the global economic collapse finally reaches the front porches of all Americans, not just us broke musicians who have been in a “depression” for far too long, but EVERYONE. Let me be clear when I say my question is not necessarily about the musicians, it is about the music. What will happen to the music?

In order to answer that question, we need to take a little trip back to the last Depression, that nasty time during the 1930s. On one hand we had boundary breaking, style creating merchants of swing like Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Fletcher Henderson, as well as the famous white bands led by Tommy Dorsey (the “ghost band” of which I have myself played in) and Benny Goodman, among others. And then on the other hand, you had the radical leftist folk singers hitting the road in support of labor unions and the growing Socialist alternative, headed up by none other than the great Woody Guthrie.

The 1920s was a boom time for big band music, often referred to as the “big band era”. It was also the beginning of the film industry and at that time music was expected to play a central role in every film. Bands, primarily big bands, often provided the soundtracks live.

So, we go from the “roaring twenties”, where both Black and White musicians could find decent paying work in the north, either in the mainstream clubs or on the underground, to the devastating crash of 1929. That’s when it all changed. But, how exactly it changed is up for debate. Clearly, musicians and artists of all kinds dealt with the brunt of the economic hardships of those first few years of the Depression. But again, I ask what happened to the music? I mean, everyone was immediately broke. Sure, there were a few robber barons that had most of the money, just like any other time in American history, but for the most part everyone was in the same leaky boat, financially.

When the Depression hit hard at the end of the 1920s, going into the 1930s, there was a dramatic decrease in the amount of paid work any musician could find, much less Black musicians. The really popular bands, like Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington and the like could still stay afloat, because they could pack the big auditoriums and clubs in Harlem and across the country. For the smaller, lesser known bands, it was a very different reality. But I would argue that the music itself became stronger than ever as a result of the massive and sudden reality check that everyone was put into. It simply had to become all about the music; only the best was going to get booked anywhere. Of course, this was the case because the actual musical talent of a particular artist or band was in the forefront of the decision to promote them. That has definitely changed in the mainstream music business in recent decades.

The record business was hit really hard too. Record sales went down from the high of 104 million in 1927 to just 6 million in 1932. Add to that the reality that young people, definitely making up the bulk of album sales, were not going out to shows in an effort to save money; you’ve got quite a cocktail of disaster for an industry that was laced in gold for the previous ten years. But here’s the silver lining: Radio stepped up to save the day. Radio was the first free form of entertainment the country had ever seen!

Radio was no saint of course. Many jazz musicians in these days claimed that the commercialization of jazz was going to kill the art form. There are many who still hold that opinion. And let’s face it; much of the best music of the Depression didn’t make the radio, just like it doesn’t make the radio today. All that considered though, music via radio did actually find a way to get out there to the public at large without musicians having to find a way to pedal it across the country, one live show at a time. Still, many musicians who went on the radio claimed they did so out of desperation and/or starvation. The same could be said today about the need to get into licensing one’s music for mainstream television and radio spots. It’s not what we would really want to do, but it’s damn near the only other way to make real money. Now hold on, I’m leading somewhere with this!

Here we are in the year 2009. We are on the verge of not just an American, but a global economic meltdown, something many – including the above cited Paul Volker – say could be worse than the Great Depression. That is not only scary as hell because of the visions of bread lines, government cheese, and the overwhelming amount of under-educated and frightened people who own guns in this country, but because radio sucks terribly, nobody sees the need to buy CD’s anymore, and the over-commercialization of music is so ingrained in the American psyche that we all have to fear what the traditional thinkers in the music industry might have up their sleeve.

All that said, there still is the music, and there is a conundrum at hand. That is, while CD sales have been taking a steady dive for quite some time, partially as a result of the many free forms of musical access via the Internet – legally and otherwise – and partially as a result of CD’s just kind being a sucky form of physical distribution by historical standards, sales of vinyl have gone up dramatically! Furthermore, as a percentage of money earned by musicians, the live performance has now far surpassed that of record sales of any kind. This has rarely been the case in past decades.

So, as the member of a band that has just signed a recording contract, albeit a very small one, I ask a simple question: What will happen to the music when the music is all we have? I mean, clearly, when the shit really hits the fan, buying a CD – which you are just going to dump onto your computer and ultimately your iPod or some such device – is going to be the last thing on my mind, and I am a damn musician! How can I expect the fans of the band I play with to think any different?

Let me just cut to the chase. When the Great Depression hit, it took with it a whole lot of bullshit, dig? A lot of music that had no business being recorded in the first place was wiped off the planet and out of people’s conscience. Sure, it was damn hard for musicians to make a living, but life has always been hard for musicians, because we don’t do something that has real market value, unless our music is attached to something that does. That brings me to the point: Bring on the collapse! Why do I say that? I say it because there is so much shit out there, totally unworthy of crossing the path of anyone’s ears that it will be a welcomed change to see it suddenly disappear from the radio, the television and so on. Let the good music prevail I say! But let’s be real about this. If we, the musicians and the public that respects them, want good music to prevail, we have to be willing to rebuild the music world; to revolutionize it from the inside out by making decision that make sense.

During times of economic depression, money doesn’t only become scarcer, it becomes more precious. This is both a blessing and a curse. People have less of it to spend on things like music and the live shows that ought to come along with it. But, when people do spend it on music, they tend to want to really get what they pay for, as they should right?

So, with the looming collapse haunting our thoughts, I ask you, the listener, the musician, the critic, the whatever: What do you think will happen to the music? Will it get better because there will simply be less of it dumped into the public’s lap? Or will it suffer because of lack of financial interest from the purveyors of American uber-capitalism? It’s something we should watch closely, and we should do everything we can to inform the monsters of the recording industry that in times like these, they better bring us some damn good music if they want us to pay for it.

What we buy with the dollar is much more important than the dollar itself, and for that very reason, we must move away from the notion that the quality of music can be derived from the amount of money it fetches on the rabid free market.

- Christopher Robin Cox

A Few Thoughts on Obama from a Trombonist

Okay, trombone really has nothing to do with this. However, I just might find a way to work it in, so bear with me.

I have a worrying concern about Barack Obama. My concern is that the political economics of America today are such that he will only have one real opportunity to truly challenge the status quo, in a way that can include "the people" in a positive and uplifting way, versus a very divisive and ugly way. The positive and uplifting way will involve a love affair between idealism and realism, the way politics works best. The divisive way is by hedging his bets on either side of the spectrum so that no matter what he comes out looking slick and confident.

Barack Obama is now being given a golden opportunity. Very few American Presidents have ever been provided with such a canvass on which to paint. He has the opportunity to reawaken in Americans a curiosity about how the financial system works; how it has systematically bombarded our souls over the past several decades; how it institutionally favors the rich over the poor, and how it clearly considers the human being nothing more than the proverbial widget, to be sold to the highest bidder. People are genuinely upset with the system, and you can see them preparing for it to come crashing down.

The problem of the free market will be dealt with, in great measure, very soon. I can feel it in my bones. But here's the rub, we don't manufacture anything in the United States anymore, other than cars really. Sure, we manufacture a few things, but they all pale in comparison the auto industry, which is one that directly or indirectly employs approximately one in ten people in the US. And if Barack Obama allows the Big 3 to take a dive - which they of course by all market standards deserve to take - without a genuine revival of the grand discussion of "can free market capitalism truly exist in a real democracy?", we will most certainly be screwing ourselves out of a much less violent transition to a more sustainable economic platform from which to operate in America.

In more direct terms, my concern about Obama is that his propensity to take a centrist view on things, or to work very hard to please both the left and the right by hanging out in the middle, is genuinely flawed. The Buddhists have what they call "the middle way", but it is nothing like political centrism, even though centrists like Barack Obama tend to speak about it as such. The middle way is a place of grand practicality, idealism, and never going too far or getting too deeply into any one thing or idea; have goals, but do not let them run your life, and so on. Political centrism is much more about being neither this nor that, so folks on either side of the spectrum cannot paint you as being left or right. If there were a kind of political middle way (in the Buddhist sense), one would not care whether he or she was perceived as favoring the left or the right. He or she would be only concerned with making the most logical and meaningful decisions for each and every problem faced. Neither would he or she feel the need to show non-attachment to either side of the spectrum. Part of taking the middle way is developing the courage to take a stand on something, because you know - not from a gut feeling, but from deep thought and study - it is the stand that you must take in order to not sacrifice your self worth. For example, there was a certain point in time when I made the decision - as a trombone player - to leave the straight ahead jazz world behind. I'd had enough of always trying to sound like somebody else, which is a rampant disease in the jazz world. I needed to find a new kind of music to play; a kind of music where I could be who I really am, play to the best of my ability, and never feel like I am shutting down the inner artist. For me, that was free-form improvisational music and now underground live-band hip-hop. I am a better man for making that decision, even though it routinely pisses of straight ahead jazzers when I tell them what I think of songs like All the Things You Are. My band mates are laughing it up right now, and it looks like I worked in the trombone after all.

Well, my point is, I am a little uncertain of Obama's ability to step out of his centrism and into his middle way-ness if you will. I'm not ready, like so many of my fellow progressives (for lack of a better term), to paint Obama as just another do-nothing politician who won't challenge any of the institutions that keep us subservient to an unjust system. But, I'm ready to question his motives.

He needs to understand that the free-market capitalist system has failed in every way. It has failed the Earth, our political system, our culture, and our arts. It is the single most destructive force on Earth. If he does not listen to the most suffering of the world and really take on this debate, he will have missed the opportunity to truly be a transformational figure in American and for that matter world history. The rest of the industrialized world has already at least begun to tackle the problem of the tyranny of the bottom line. President Obama, the first Black President of the United States, needs - for the good of the world - to be the one who stares sternly into the scarred and pockmarked face of the free market and makes a decision that is neither left, nor right, nor centrist; a decision that is arrived at from pure truth, introspection, investigation, and realism.

Never mind the right, the left, and the center. Instead, mind the society and culture in which you live; and be mindful of how they are affected by the system you defend.

-Christopher Robin Cox

Epistemology, Biculturism, and Globalization in 600 words or less

The Epistemological Privilege of Biculturalism

In the post-imperialist society of which we find ourselves inhabiting, the rise of globalization and consequent international awareness of impacts and concerns is inevitable. This is particularly evident with the current global financial crisis. We occupy a point in history in which the economic stability of each sovereign nation is directly dependent on the overall stability of the global economy. The ideology of entitlement and subsequent propagation of a “manifest destiny” has extended the imperialists’ notion of globalization not limited to the expansion of national boundaries but toward international economic trade – i.e. the globalization of capitalism. In “Biculturalism and Community: A Transformative Model for Design Education” Anthony Ward insists that this current international market economy directly threatens the pedagogy of institutional thought and design education.

The notion of power and privilege and the determination of their entitlement lie at the forefront of imperialist thought. Wherever the concept of privilege is utilized – and as we find in the globalization of capitalism, worshiped – there is inevitably the creation of a substantial dichotomy between those who receive privilege and those considered unworthy of privilege. This separation of privilege manifests itself prominently throughout education systems – where the cultural identity and thus voice of the privileged is given superiority over the underprivileged - and is most apparent to Ward in colonial settings.

“It is in the postmodern discourse on voice that the connections between education and power become finally clear. In the last fifteen years all of these arguments have been nurtured through postmodern (and deconstructivist) discourse that has challenged notions of value, legitimation, and authorship – the issue of power and voice. These discourses take on a particular poignancy in colonial settings, such as New Zealand where culture, class, race, and ethnicity congeal into a multiple oppression, and where the educational process play a prominent role in the processes of subjugating subordinate cultures and colonizing indigenous peoples.” [Ward, 92]

We must not put aside and ignore history but rather admit that the United States is fundamentally a colonial society. Our educational systems and political tendencies suffer from the same oppressions and subjugations that Ward finds prevalent throughout New Zealand. Our privileged Eurocentric cultures are reinforced through taught dominance and unquestioned veritability. In this way, the dominant Eurocentric cultures engulf any opposition of their superiority, attaining a hegemonic imposition over subordinate cultures through the globalization of capitalism and, in effect, have achieved an international economic colonization.

“Recorded history (which we normally assume to be the history) is invariably the history of the winners, of the hegemonically successful dominant culture. In design, our built history tends to be that of the dominant Eurocentric culture. The histories of minority cultures are rarely, if ever, valorized in the contested space of the urban landscape.” [Ward, 93]

Our design schools are experiencing an increasing awareness of the wealth inherent through the incorporation of multicultural perspectives. It is now widely believed that there exists an “epistemological privilege” of the oppressed. This privilege resides in an ability (or the necessity) of the oppressed to have knowledge systems based on both the dominant and oppressed cultural norms and contexts.

“Oppressed people have a kind of epistemological privilege insofar as they have easier access to this standpoint and therefore a better chance of ascertaining the beginnings of a society in which all could thrive. For this reason I would claim that the emotional responses of oppressed people in general, and often of women in particular are more likely to be appropriate than the emotional responses of the dominant class.” [Jagger, 162]

We are beginning to see this shift in attitude away from the supreme superiority of the dominant culture by the implementation of cultural studies within design curriculum. An example especially relative to North America is the increased attention being paid by design schools to the study of Native American structural responses and solutions that embrace the local climate while retaining a humble footprint upon the environmental impact of habitation.

Those contributing to this school of thought are beginning to understand the wealth of knowledge inherent in cultures that have primal rather than colonial experience with the site. This movement represents an awareness of the faults embedded in an entitlement-biased globalized society. The collapse of any elitist global institution is caused by the unstable dichotomy of a dominant cultural ignorance coupled with increased global awareness. We are starting to observe – and necessarily so in order for international progressivism - the reduction of cultural ignorance and its hegemonical system and an increased global awareness of the epistemological advantage of bicultural insights and thus a shift toward, at very least increasing, academic integrity.



Citations

A.M. Jagger, “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology.” In Gender/Body/Knowledge.

Ward, Anthony, “Biculturalism and Community: A transformative Model for Design Education.” The Journal of Architectural Education, February, 1991.

- b.berry

Independance Day: Independence from what?

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!! Oh, but what are we actually independent of? Britain. Well, there is that. What else is there, really, that we are independent of? What are we actually celebrating?

As an alternative to what Independence Day has come to mean for our governmental leaders - independence from responsibility to the effects of our policies around the world; independence from responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians; independence from prosecution by the thieves and thugs in the Executive Branch; independence from the responsibility to provide for the basic health, education, and protection of our citizens; independence of all outside influence on the American empire - we will playing a couple of sets tonight at the Bullpen (formerly Fatso's) from about 8pm-10pm tonight.

We, as a band, declare our independence from all things associated with America empire, American fascistic tendencies, American corporatocracy, American hegemony, American exceptionalism, American "free market" capitalism, American racism, American sexism, American chauvinism, American greed, and all the other pointless anti-humanistic tendencies that America has bestowed on the world since our country was taken over by right wing, fascist ideologues!

Tonight, we will drink beer, do shots, smoke a little pot maybe, eat hamburgers and hotdogs, and hang out with our brothers and sisters to watch the fireworks, just like everyone else. And we will declare our liberation from the need to feel inferior or unpatriotic because we dare to question the authority of the United States of America.

8pm @ the Bullpen (formerly Fatso's)
119 North 4th St.
Downtown Minneapolis
2 for 1 drinks!!