Thursday, October 29. 2009
Kapil Komireddi: Indian Winter: A little bit about the prospects of turning Alex von Tunzelmann's Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire into a movie. I can't really see Hugh Grant in the role of Lord Louis Mountbatten, last viceroy and first governor-general of India -- Clive Owen maybe. Hard to improve on Cate Blanchett as Lady Mountbatten. Still, the bigger problem is that it will be all but impossible for a movie based on the principal characters not to compound the book's most serious weakness, which is that it makes so much history turn on the actions of a small number of larger-than-life figures: the Mountbattens, Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Churchill. The book tends to fall into the Great Man bag, even if the greatest figure on that list is the Lady. This approach isn't without its insights. In particular, the intense personal dislike between Louis Mountbatten and Jinnah seems to have preceded the prejudice that Mountbatten showed against Pakistan in dividing the empire. On the other hand, it reduces Pakistan to a personal delusion of Jinnah, as if there was nothing more behind it than the ambitions of one determined politician. And it leaves the eruptions of violence mostly unexplained, since they don't much figure into the actions or programs of the principal figures. I finished the book grateful for what I learned but with so many residual questions I wanted to read further.
The "secret history" has much to do with the Mountbattens, but remains rather discreet about Edwina's romance with Nehru. The movie, of course, even if they don't take liberties with the record will inevitably render the affair so explicit as to be undeniable -- and needless to say, the cash register bets that they will go further. And there's the rub. I've seen a dozen or more major movies about India over the last couple of decades, and all ultimately portrayed India in positively glowing terms. I hadn't realized that this is to some extent a consequence of the censorship rights the Indian government demands as part of the price to film there. Despite its much ballyhooed boast to be the world's largest democracy, India is tightly controlled by Nehru's direct heirs, who don't take kindly to publicizing Nehru's dalliance with a foreign woman -- something Nehru himself was very circumspect about. Komireddi does a good job of explaining how this works. Indeed, his notes on the proliferation of Nehru-Gandhi names reminds me of the Ronald Reagan sanctification project here.
For much more from the book, look here.
Wednesday, October 28. 2009
Got some spam from Cadence/North Country today where they announced they're setting up a "Friends of Cadence" program where overly flush donors can underwrite Cadence magazine subscriptions for unspecified but presumably worthy recipients. I subscribed to Cadence for many years, accumulating large boxes of them mostly unread, unorganized, and increasingly inaccessible. When they bumped the price up and cut the frequency down to quarterly my subscription lapsed. In fairness, the interviews are valuable, and the reviews are numerous even if few are reliable and most are only marginally readable -- they do at least provide lots of raw data for jazz prospecting. Sometimes I think I should break down and subscribe, but then I remember how difficult they've always been to do business with -- the only way I know of that works is the phone -- and let it slide. Last time I had such an inkling I offered to trade them a column for a subscription, but got turned down by Bob Rusch -- rather rudely, I thought, although it's hard to tell what he really meant to say. Cadence/North County used to be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in avant-garde or just plain out-of-the-mainstream jazz, but these days they can almost always be avoided. Their Cadence Jazz and CIMP labels used to be very productive (although CIMP insisted on some audiophile standard that was often hard to follow on my ordinary stereo equipment). I haven't gotten anything from them since the last time I renewed my sub, so I'm way out of date. (Rusch offered to send records for review in the Village Voice, which I can't guarantee. What I can assert is that if I don't hear them they won't make it to the Voice Jazz Consumer Guide.)
The links for the Friends of Cadence is here. Note: it's a PDF file, presumably so you can print it out and fax or snail mail in -- told you this wouldn't be easy. I have no idea how they plan on deciding who the recipients should be, but if you think it's worthwhile to support them in this way, I wouldn't mind getting back on their subscription list, and a subscription wouldn't be totally wasted on me. On the other hand, if I really thought it was worthwhile (and could figure out how) I'd subscribe to it myself. This really is an example of what economists call the principle of indifference: the price point where buying something promises so little in return that one no longer cares.
The sad thing is that Cadence's review and interview archives would actually be a nice thing to have up on the web, properly indexed and handily searchable. It would greatly add to the world's store of information on a lot of jazz that remains way under most folks' radar. You'd also think it would benefit companies that sell obscure jazz records, not least Cadence/North Country. It would also be a project that could legitimately attract contributors, because it would involve giving something back to the community. I've brought this up in the past, and even offered to work on it. Their response has always been that doing so wouldn't make them any money, which is true as far as it goes. I wouldn't bring this up except every now and then they make a pitch for help from their friends. They may even deserve it. But like everything else, they make it awfully difficult.
Dexter Filkins/Mark Mazzetti/James Risen: Brother of Afghan leader is said to be on CIA payroll: That would be Ahmed Wali Karzai, widely regarded as one of Afghanistan's heroin kingpins. The CIA's legacy in drug runners is so long and deep that the only surprise here is that it took eight years for the NY Times to add one plus one. Still, it's worth pointing out that this is not just a case of bad taste and corruption. Any organization that works clandestinely will soon find itself in the company of drug runners because those are the people who know how to move guns and money around without getting audited. Two simple fixes are obvious. One is to legalize the drug trade to bring the industry aboveboard and dry up the corruption that it feeds. The other is to abolish the CIA, at least the operations branch. The CIA got a new lease on life when Bush approved their scheme to go first into Afghanistan. They jumped in with suitcases full of money to hire warlords, renting the sort of allies who would sell their mothers for bags of cash -- not that they'd always deliver, as shown by the great Al Qaeda getaway. Now we see that the fatal flaw in the Afghan government is its endemic corruption. Well, guess who paved the way? The history of the CIA in the Global War on Terror years has yet to be written. Most likely it will turn into volume 2 of Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes.
Huge attacks today both in downtown Kabul and in Peshawar, helping to close out an October that has seen more US casualties than any month ever in Afghanistan. I'm not sure what to make of them strategically: it's almost like they're daring Obama to send more troops in, while at the same time proving that a retreat to protecting the cities will not work. But it does make you wonder: if the 20,000 extra troops that Obama already sent to Afghanistan have helped stabilize the country (as compared to some hypothetically worse scenario had Obama not sent those troops), the number it would take to make a practical difference must be astronomical. The other possibility is that the extra troops already sent have made the security situation worse (resulting in what we see today), and more will make it even worse. I think the latter, but that doesn't mean that fewer troops are a secret recipe for US success. It means acknowledging that we don't have the answer, and it starts to take us out of the equation. The conflict won't wind down until that happens. While the prospects are grim, failure sooner would be better.
Tuesday, October 27. 2009
Jason Zengerle: Recessional: Rory Stewart gets a lot of credit for thinking outside the box on Afghanistan, but it may just be because his box is hard for us to conceive of. A Scotsman born 1973 in British Hong Kong, raised in Malaysia, he's one of the last of a breed, those born into the civil service of British imperialism, aware of the follies of empire yet unable to conceive of a world that doesn't need them. Stewart's book on walking across Afghanistan, The Places In Between, wasn't very deep, but was sympathetic and humble, watchwords of the latest fad in counterinsurgency -- talking like you understand and relate to the people, as opposed to the old fad of insisting that the people only understand force and you're going to shock and awe them into submission. Stewart offers profound doubts about the US mission in Afghanistan, yet urges us to muddle on -- just try to wreck a little less of the country, and don't expect to be thanked for the effort. Consider this quote:
It wasn't the humanitarians who got us into this war, but by getting involved in the cleanup they keep the war going. Stewart hasn't wised up to his own counsel: he's running for Parliament with an eye toward influencing UK policy in Afghanistan. You'd think he'd know better by now than to get wrapped upon such a hopeless operation, but as the scion of the British empire, he still feels compelled to civilise the world, so to speak.
Steve Coll: The Case for Humility in Afghanistan: He's right that humility is called for. But he hasn't internalized his lesson. He's still committed to further US intervention, despite a constant record of failure. It's pure arrogance to think that we hold all the answers, especially after proving that we don't have a clue to the questions. This attitude persists because no one involved can bear to admit that they just don't know, even when it's obvious all around.
George Packer: Why Rufus Phillips Matters: Packer nominates another Vietnam book for the Afghanistan analogy sweepstakes: Rufus Phillips: Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned (2008, Naval Institute Press). Phillips, a protege of Edward Lansdale, saw how the "strategic hamlet" program was already failing in 1963, and made an unusually candid report on this to President Kennedy. His book was written late enough that the author could draw analogies between Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Packer includes a long letter from Phillips that is even more explicit. Note that the book's introduction was written by Richard Holbrooke, who got his first big war break by working for Phillips in Vietnam. (Packer's long piece on Holbrooke, The Last Mission, is also online. I couldn't hack my way through the Vietnam jungle sections, but there's probably something of note in it. I figure it'll turn into a book, which despite the bad tastes of both author and subject will be worth reading, especially after Packer has had more time to reflect on how it all went so horribly wrong.)
Eric Margolis: America pulls strings in Afghan election: I don't know whether Margolis is in the ballpark or not, but this piece gives you a sense of how ignorant we are about Afghanistan, and correspondingly how flimsy the factual basis is that so many pundits and prognosticators are basing their convictions on. It is interesting, for instance, how utterly different the political systems we installed in Afghanistan and Iraq are: the former has a "strong" president and weak parliament, with no political party affiliations; the latter is a parliamentary system where party slates don't even have to disclose the candidate names. In other words, both systems are far removed from the systems in every functioning democracy in the world, so no wonder they don't come close to working. The idea of putting all your eggs in Karzai's basket seems particularly stupid now, but even Margolis seems to buy the notion that the top dog has to be Pashtun. The US, Bush least of all, just couldn't leave democracy to chance: the last thing they wanted was for the Afghans to elect a government that would tell us to take our war somewhere else, even if that would have been the best thing that could have happened. So here we are, with all Washington wanting (as Margolis puts it)to reprimand Karzai: "Bad puppet! Bad puppet!"
Stephen M Walt: High Cost, Low Odds: The warmongers are satisfied to greatly inflate the risks of giving up while ignoring the costs of staying in and implying that success is just a matter of sticking with it, although you have to suspect that anything that keeps the war going is success enough for them. That's certainly true of the right, which knows from years of practice that guns trump butter. But it's hard to get any war through a realistic cost-benefit analysis, and as Walt shows Afghanistan isn't even close. That's why even the generals are trying to cast themselves off as humanitarians these days, sensitive to the people they've routinely been bombing, sympathetic to their hopes for anything but peace, anxious to camouflage their war in haughty moral tones. That's why it's so important to sucker real humanitarians into their cause.
The Nation is accumulating a lot of links on Afghanistan. Most recently, Robert Dreyfus: Obama's Afghan Compromise? speculates that Obama will escalate part way (another 10,000-20,000 troops), something that won't cover his ass with McChrystal or even acknowledge the many people who voted for him to find a way out of Bush's wars.
Then there is Tom Hayden: Kilcullen's Long War, where Australian counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen relishes keeping the war going for another 100 years -- Zina Saunders' illustration (above) captures this nonsensical future. (For proof that this prospect isn't so far fetched, see Nick Turse: What the US Military Can't Do, which starts out by pointing out that US soldiers are still in the Philippines fighting Muslim separatists in a war the US originally joined by taking the Philippines as booty in the Spanish-American War back in 1898.) Kilcullen makes sense sometimes, as when he recognizes that guerrilla wars happen in response to foreign invasion. Still, he doesn't draw the obvious conclusion: don't invade and occupy other people's lands. He seeks control through "population-centric" schemes, but also through a program of carefully targeted murder such as the Phoenix operation in Vietnam, or McChrystal's feats in Iraq. At best, these schemes protract wars. But then that's pretty much all a counterinsurgency entrepreneur like Kilcullen can hope for.
Hayden points out how unpopular US efforts are, especially in Pakistan:
That 95% figure should remind us that no matter how much apologists for the war talk the talk about population protection and rebuilding, the war is fundamentally a make-work project for the military and its domestic fan club, a piece of Keynesian stimulus meant both to feather the profits of the Complex and to goose up right-wing patriotic fervor. It is, however, wearing thin, in large part because the returns -- even on this cynical level -- are so paltry.
Paul Woodward: A letter from Afghanistan that every American should read: The letter in question is the resignation missive from Matthew P Hoh, formerly Senior Civilian Representative, Zabul Province, Afghanistan.
That's as apt a note as any to close this post on.
Monday, October 26. 2009
Jazz Consumer Guide has been packed up and shipped to the Village Voice. Word is they'll publish it late November, maybe the 25th. Glad that's done. Just been playing a little bit from here and there, trying to focus a little bit on the end-of-month Recycled Goods, but also just to move some of the unplayed records so I don't fall too far behind. Main thing I didn't work on much was culling the surplus. That still involves unpacking July's travel cases. One thing I did find there was the Ersatzmusika CD. Not jazz, but good news can be hard to find, so I thought I'd slip it in.
Gary Burton/Chick Corea: Crystal Silence: The ECM Recordings 1972-79 (1972-79 , ECM, 4CD): Hot on the heels of a 35th anniversary reunion tour documented as The New Crystal Silence, ECM repacks the original album along with two subsequent duet performances. I wish I could extoll the original as a legend, but vibes-piano duets offer a limited palette with similar dynamics -- at best (e.g., Milt Jackson and Thelonious Monk) you get an intriguing solo piano record with a cloud of bright accents. Corea's piano is similarly dominant here, especially on the original album, which despite name order Burton's vibes add very little to. Six years later, Duet is thicker, with Corea more dramatic and Burton more frenzied -- often too much so. The following year's live album finds both players slipping into their comfort zones. Spread out over two discs (combined length 83:11) they are the most evenly matched and generally pleasing, although the piano on the first album makes a stronger impression. B+(*)
Tyshawn Sorey: Koan (2009, 482 Music): Drummer, b. 1980, has made a big impression everywhere he's played (mostly Vijay Iyer and Steve Lehman groups). Second record; his first, That/Not, a double of his compositions including a lot of material he didn't play on, got a lot of critics poll support. This is a trio with Todd Neufeld on guitar and Thomas Morgan on bass (and sometimes guitar). Morgan's shown up on a few albums recently (Scott DuBois' Banshees is the best), but I don't recall running into Neufeld before. Hard to get much of a sense of Neufeld here: the pieces are slow, spare, fragmentary; too enigmatic to reveal much of a point, which given the Zen title may be the point. B+(**)
Komeda Project: Requiem (2009, WM): Komeda is Krzysztof Komeda (1931-69), a Polish pianist-composer who is mostly remembered here for his soundtrack work, especially for Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. He may also be recalled as the subject of Tomasz Stanko's Litania. He has a dozen or so albums out on obscure Polish labels. I was hugely impressed by the only one I've sprung for, Astigmatic (1965). Second album, after Crazy Girl in 2006. The group is a quintet. I figure Andrzej Winnicki as the leader: he plays piano and slips his own compositions into what's otherwise an all-Komeda program. Closely allied is saxophonist (tenor, soprano) Krzysztof Medyna. The two grew up in Poland but seem to be based in New York now, which makes it easier to recruit the supporting cast: Russ Johnson (trumpet, flugelhorn) is on both records; Scott Colley (bass) and Nasheet Waits (drums) are new this time. The three-part "Night-time, Daytime Requiem" that leads off has a nasty habit of playing a motif then stopping with a collective squawk. Some pieces get a bit soundtracky, but there is also some powerfully orchestrated jazz here, including strong solos by Medyna and Johnson. [B+(**)]
Gary Peacock/Marc Copland: Insight (2005-07 , Pirouet): Bass-piano duo, the bassist getting top billing most likely because he's more famous -- Keith Jarrett has something to do with that -- but also 13-years older and has a slight edge in writing credits. Although it also strikes me that the bass is more often than not in the lead, an interesting effect. B+(***)
Loren Stillman: Winter Fruits (2008 , Pirouet): Alto saxophonist, b. 1980 in London, on his 9th album since 1998, a quartet with Nate Radley (guitar), Gary Versace (organ), and Ted Poor (drums; also writes 2 of 8 songs, the rest Stillman's). Likes the upper range of the horn, giving him a mostly sweet but sometimes tart tone. Few surprises here. B+(*)
Randy Brecker: Nostalgic Journey: Tykocin Jazz Suite/The Music of Wlodek Pawlik (2008 , Summit): Pawlik is a Polish pianist, b. 1958. His website claims 18 albums starting from 1987. I'm not sure that AMG knows about any of them -- even a 1995 album called Turtles which featured Brecker. This one was cut in Bialystok with the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic conducted by Marcin Nalecz-Niesiolowski, Pawlik's piano trio, and the headline trumpet player. That doesn't sound like much promise, especially given how lousy Brecker's recent records have been (cf. Some Skunk Funk and Randy in Brasil), but this is quite a surprise. Pawlik's jazz suite emphasizes bebop rhythm, and the strings follow suit, shaping the background without spoiling it. Brecker's is the sole horn, just the right voice to cap it all off. I'm not sure that I believe it all yet. [A-]
Ted Kooshian's Standard Orbit Quartet: Underdog, and Other Stories . . . (2008 , Summit): Pianist, b. 1961 in San Jose, CA; attended San Jose State; played on cruise ships; moved to New York in 1987. Third album since 2004; second under this group name, which aligns him with saxophonist Jeff Lederer, bassist Tom Hubbard, and either Warren Odze or Scott Neumann on drums. Most of the songs here are recognizable as TV or movie themes. "Underdog" was a cartoon show I recall from my youth, done with a Latin twist here, while "Sanford and Son" and "The Odd Couple" were sitcoms; "Popeye" goes back even further. Not sure where to place Raymond Scott and Duke Ellington, but Steely Dan's "Aja" is an outlier. While some of the themes are cartoonishly obvious, most of them amount to more than laughs. B+(**)
Quartet Offensive: Carnivore (2008 , Quartet Offensive): Baltimore group, not a quartet -- five members, of whom three write; not especially offensive in any obvious sense; not even sure how carnivorous they are, although the bunny on the back cover looks nervous. The writers are Adam Hopkins (bass), Matt Frazăo (guitar, electronics), and Eric Trudel (tenor sax); the others are John Dierker (bass clarinet) and Nathan Ellman-Bell (drums). (OK, they were a quartet before Trudel joined). They like to play off rock riffs, although I wouldn't tag them as fusion. Just seems to be the way they're wired, a good example of a broader generational trend. B+(**)
Wayne Escoffery: Uptown (2008 , Posi-Tone): Tenor saxophonist, b. 1975 in England, moved to Connecticut at age 11, studied with Jackie McLean. Fifth album. Has a big tone, impressive chops, tends to make conservative musical choices. (Labels: Nagel Heyer, Savant, now Posi-Tone.) This is an old-fashioned soul jazz configuration -- guitar (Avi Rothbard), organ (Gary Versace), and drums (Jason Brown) -- although no one here quite risks sounding old-fashioned. B+(*)
Beat Kaestli: Far From Home: A Tribute to European Song (2009, B+B): Vocalist, from Switzerland, based in New York since 1993, looks like his third album. Nine of 14 songs list Kaestli as co-writer; most likely he adds lyrics to others' songs. Album credits are confusing, although Gregoire Maret needs no introduction. Liner notes are by Jon Hendricks; not much help either. The European songs include Bizet and Weill and trad. The words are all in English. The singer is sauve and elegant, precise and stylish, something of a drag. B
Terry Waldo's Gutbucket Syncopators: The Ohio Theatre Concert (1974 , Delmark): A trad jazz pianist, b. 1944 in Ohio, which has remained his stomping ground. Has close to 20 albums since 1970's Hot Jazz, Vol. 1, many on Stomp Off, which is a pretty consistent label for that sort of thing. This archival tape came from a concert originally intended to feature ragtime pianist Eubie Blake, who took ill and didn't show. The band then had to scramble around to fill in, reflected here in a rather scattershot set of points of interest. The middle section features Edith Wilson on seven songs -- billed here as "the third black woman to make phonograph records, recording for Columbia nearly a year and a half before Bessie Smith." She was 77 at this point (1896-1981), favoring Louis Armstrong's songbook -- all the way to "Black and Blue." Waldo sang one song earlier, the sly "How Could Red Riding Hood?" Toward the end there's a 3:16 piece of speechmaking, by a guy reminiscing about his long history as a ragtime/trad jazz fan. Turns out this is William Saxbe, an Ohio Republican politician who at the time was US Attorney General, appointed to restore some integrity to the post-Watergate White House. I remember Saxbe more as a dovish pro-civil rights Senator -- as I recall, he evenleaned toward marijuana decriminalization. They don't make Republicans like him any more. B+(**)
Keith Jarrett: Paris/London: Testament (2008 , ECM, 3CD): Solo piano -- stop me if you've heard this one before. Jarrett had 20+ discs of solo piano out already, which I guess is what the world deserves for buying five million copies of The Köln Concert. The landmark album stands out for its roiling rhythmic energy, which is all the more compelling on a single CD than broken up on its original 3-sided LP. Beyond that I haven't found much to favor any solo Jarrett over any other -- 1999's The Melody at Night, With You and 2005's Radiance are typically fine -- although I was turned off by 2006's widely praised The Carnegie Hall Concert. This has elements of most of the recent ones. The Paris concert runs 69:23, filling the first disc. The next week's London concert ran longer, now split between the 49:32 second and 43:28 third discs. The latter turned out quite nice, maybe becuase he seemed to be winding down. He can't really crank it up like he used to, but he still finds interesting things to play. B+(**)
Kristina: Offshore Echoes (2009, Patois): Vocalist. No last name, not even on hype sheet or on her website (which, by the way, wasn't on hype sheet either). AMG lists 8 artists known solely as Kristina plus 38 Kristina Somethings plus one more with Kristina as a last name plus a Kristina & Laura, none of which look like likely matches. This one is from the Bay Area, home of the world's worst world music. Ten songs are labelled by country treatment rather than source, so you get "Cherokee" representing Cuba and Paul Simon for Jamaica. The band would prefer playing everything with a Cuban twist, except for the starchy strings representing USA ("Tenderly"). The credits laborously label the percussion instruments, then chalk the horns off as, well, horns. Voice is on the sweet side, and her jazz phrasing is average, but the songs leave a lot to be desired. Could use a corporate makeover -- she's certainly not going to become a Madonna, a Joyce, or even an Eldar. C+
Saltman Knowles: Yesterday's Man (2009 , Pacific Coast Jazz): Bassist Mark Saltman, pianist William Knowles, based in DC, both write, 10 songs split 5-to-5. Third record together. Their songs have a nice tight feel to them, flowing easily, and they rotate various horns expertly, as well as employ a drummer and a soprano steel pan player. The point I keep sticking on is vocalist Lori Williams-Chisholm, who isn't bad (least of all in the good-bad sense) but always seems to be in the way. B- [Jan. 26]
Anna Estrada: Obsesión (2009, Feral Flight): Singer, from Bay Area, second album, mostly in Spanish (I think), with some Brazilian tunes slipped in, plus two in English done with nice samba beats. The latter two are inspired choices: "Nature Boy" and "Always Something There to Remind Me." Nice album cover art. B+(**)
Here Comes . . . the Nice Guy Trio(2009, Porto Franco): San Francisco group, first record together: Darren Johnston on trumpet, Rob Reich on accordion, Daniel Fabricant on bass. Johnston has a couple of good records out recently, including one in my latest JCG A-list, The Edge of the Forest. Reich is on Johnston's record too; also on Andrea Fultz's German Projekt. Don't know about Fabricant, but you can always use a bass player. Most recognizable song is "Fables of Faubus," which the accordion center gave an air of Kurt Weill. Half a dozen guests drop in for a cut or two, nothing that takes over but nice touches -- clarinet (Ben Goldberg), tabla, dumek, pedal steel. Nice guys. B+(***)
Phoenix Ensemble/Mark Lieb: Clarinet Quintets (2007-08 , Innova): Lieb plays clarinet. The rest of the New York-based Phoenix Ensemble is a string quartet, with a couple of slots changing between the two sessions here. One session plays Morton Feldman's "Clarinet and String Quartet" (39:10). The other is Milton Babbitt's "Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet." Feldman's gentle repetition works nicely here. Babbitt unsurprisingly is somewhat dicier, with some squeak and discord. B+(**)
Gene Segal: Hypnotic (2009, Innova): Guitarist; born in Moscow, Russia; based in Brooklyn; first album. Mostly a trio with Sam Barsh on organ, Matt Kane on drums, running more toward funk than soul jazz. A couple cuts add some horns, which adds substantially to the groove -- Jonathan Powell's trumpet is most memorable. B+(*)
Mahala Rai Banda: Ghetto Blasters (2009, Asphalt Tango): Touted as "the Balkan equivalent of the Memphis Horns with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section," a rowdy Romanian brass band inching into the age of electronica. Like their analogues, they're at their best when they stick to time-tested verities, and crank up the volume and velocity until they become self-evident. B+(***)
Ersatzmusika: Songs Unrecantable (2009, Asphalt Tango): A group of six Russians based in Berlin, the most critical being keyboard-accordion player and singer Irina Doubrovskaja. The Russian lyrics have been translated into English by seventh wheel Thomas Cooper who sings two of them with as little voice as possible. Doubrovskaja as a speechy voice as well -- I've seen her likened to Marlene Dietrich, which at least give you a picture of the effect -- with an accent so heavy she turns the English words back into Russian pidgin. What's ersatz is the folk-rock with a cabaret twist. Group also has an earlier album, sans Cooper, called Voice Letter, which is even truer to the concept. [PS: I don't normally put any stock in a musician's MySpace friends list, even I was impressed by this group's combo: Moondog, Brian Eno, and Manu Chao. PPS: I think those are fan pages rather than artist pages.] A-
These are some even quicker notes based on downloading or streaming records. I don't have the packaging here, don't have the official hype, often don't have much information to go on. I have a couple of extra rules here: everything gets reviewed/graded in one shot (sometimes with a second play), even when I'm still guessing on a grade; the records go into my flush file (i.e., no Jazz CG entry, unless I make an exception for an obvious dud). If/when I get an actual copy I'll reconsider the record.
Ben Goldberg: Speech Communication (2009, Tzadik): Clarinetist, has 8 albums since 1992, plus three more by his New Klezmer Trio group (1990-2000). This is another trio, in Tzadik's Radical Jewish Culture series, so there's some suggestion that this is a New Klezmer Trio reunion -- drummer Kenny Wollesen is shared, bassist Greg Cohen is new. With all original tunes, doesn't sound very klezmerish, but isn't far removed either. Starts solo, but picks up nicely with bass and drums. The deep-sounding clarinet on a couple of pieces is a contra alto. B+(***) [Rhapsody]
Guy Klucevsek: Dancing on the Volcano (2009, Tzadik): Accordion player, b. 1947, a major figure on the instrument since the late 1980s, covering a wide range of styles -- AMG lists his genre as Avant-Garde and his styles as including World Fusion, Klezmer, and European Folk. He's not a jazz musician in the bebop sense, but most other senses will do. Group is normally a quartet with Steve Elson (clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano sax), Pete Donovan (bass), and John Hollenbeck (drums, percussion); on a couple of tracks Alex Meixner's accordion replaces Elson. A couple of waltzes, some dancing, not a lot of volcano. B+(**) [Rhapsody]
David Taylor: Red Sea (2009, Tzadik): Taylor is billed as "one of the world's greatest virtuosos on the bass trombone." While most 16-18 player big bands have a bass bone alongside three standard ones, I've never heard of one touted as a virtuoso before. It's hard to tell here: the dominant vibe is slow and ugly, inspired by and borrowing from Cantor Pierre Pinchik. But Taylor gets help in that department: Scott Robinson is credited with nine instruments, mostly down deep as well -- bass sax, contrabass clarinet, contrabass sarrusophone, tenor rothophone, bass flute, like that, plus something called a treme-terra I can't find any info on. Some toy piano and other sounds, some vocals, a lot of Warren Smith percussion. Hard to figure but oddly intriguing. B+(*) [Rhapsody]
On Ka'a Davis: Djoukoujou! (2009, Tzadik): Guitarist, joined up with Sun Ra near the end of the latter's career, manages an unruly mob here, long on bass and percussion, with horn credits, like vocal credits, merely divided into "fronting" and "backing." Davis has another new record out this year, Seed of Djuke, which I picked as an HM. It had pretty much the same group, more vocals, a bit more generic funk. This is rougher, dirtier, like he's finally getting some mileage out of his Sun Ra channel. Especially vivid is a squeaky sax solo early on -- I figure it's probably Saco Yasuma. B+(***) [Rhapsody]
No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further listening the first time around.
Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:
Walt follows this with a 6-point list, starting with Israel/Palestine. Obama's election signalled a new will in America to try to solve some problems in the Middle East, as opposed to his predecessor's favored tactic of dousing them with gasoline. Even before Obama took office, Israel responded to installing their No Team, a governmnent dedicated to never giving up an inch of ground especially if it might in turn result in a moment of peace. For Netanyahu that's not just a promise; that's a proven track record, as he set up the vastly popular Oslo Peace Process for a final takedown by his tag team buddy, Ariel Sharon. It's easy now to say that Obama never stood a chance in Netanyahu's ring, but that's mostly because Obama felt the political need to cede points on Hamas and Iran. But it's also because the one plank that Obama did attempt to walk -- the insistence on reining in Israel's West Bank settlement expansion -- was something of a sideshow, and not the fight that he should have fought.
It's true that the purpose of the settlements is to make any sort if Israeli withdrawal politically impossible. I can think of several ways to deal with the settlements problem, but the best way to deal with it now is to ignore it. If you look realistically at all of the land that ultimately should be turned into a Palestinian state, the settlements (especially the big, close ones) will be seen as the last parcels to be returned. The real question right now is whether any land can be turned over to the Palestinians. The fact is that there is a lot of land that can be turned over immediately, starting with the whole of Gaza. The position Obama should take is that every Palestinian is entitled to full, first-class citizenship, at least in the country where he or she currently lives. If that abode is in Israel or under Israeli control, then that citizenship must be citizenship in Israel. If Israel doesn't like that, Israel should renounce the territory, and turn it back to the UN so that it can be incorporated into an independent Palestinian state. That's a simple point, and it's hard to see how any American or European can disagree with it when stated in those terms.
There are a bunch of objections Israel will raise, basically revolving around an endless circle of security demands and final borders that have to be negotiated with a Palestinian responsible party that as far as Israel can tell doesn't exist. This is all bullshit, but Obama is going to have to make a couple of points clear to get past it. The first is that because there is no free and independent Palestine, there is no responsible Palestinian party that Israel can negotiate with. The only way that Israel can negotiate with anyone -- and such negotiations will be needed over borders, water rights, travel, extradition, all sorts of things -- Palestine must first be free and sovereign. If that isn't the case, then Palestine isn't free to negotiate, because they won't have the power and leverage to ever say no. It should be easy to explain this point, even though no one seems to get it yet.
The way this would work is that Israel would give up a parcel of land to the UN. The UN would then organize government institutions and elections to direct those institutions. That parcel and those institutions would constitute an initial Palestinian nation, which would be recognized as having the same rights and responsibilities as every other nation (including Israel). As time goes on, Israel may decide to give up further parcels, which the UN would then integrate into Palestine according to procedures that ensure that each citizen of Palestine has equal rights and representation. The resulting government could negotiate with Israel, or not. It could, for instance, assert that Israel should turn over more territory, including its illegal settlements. It could take such a case to the World Court. The main thing it could not do is to threaten or attack Israel -- a violation of international law. On the other hand, once Israel gives up parcels of land, they can no longer threaten or attack the nation representing the people living on that land.
There are some more bells and whistles that can be added to this scheme to help ensure that it would work, but the key is that Obama and any allies he can round up -- Europe should be more proactive on this -- have to insist that Israel moves to ensuring that everyone in the region has full and equal rights, whether within Israel or in two states. Israel has managed to make the whole problem insurmountable. But parts of the problem can be picked off and resolved simply. And once you do that with, say, Gaza, then you will have broken the logjam. Israel's central preoccupation ever since Ben-Gurion sent Golda Meir to negotiate Transjordan's stake in the West Bank with King Abdullah has been to prevent the Palestinians from ever having the legal status of a state. But all through history they've hardly ever put it in those terms. They've avoided the subject because deep down they've taken a position that is indefensible. If Obama wants to solve this problem he has to hit Israel at its weak spot, and that isn't the settlements; it's the denial of the most basic civil and human rights to millions of Palestinians.
Sunday, October 25. 2009
I haven't had much to say about Israel lately. Part of this is "same old, same old": the Goldstone report merely confirmed the obvious about Israel's criminal siege of Gaza; the Obama focus on curtailing settlements has been inept and, I think, misses the point; on the other hand, Netanyahu's far right regime continues to make enemies and revulse friends, with Turkey an interesting example; and the Iran focus continues to be a distraction, which is exactly the way Netanyahu wanted to play Obama. But another part is that I've pretty much given up on what used to be my best source for intelligence on Israel, Mondoweiss, and that I blame on a website redesign that limits posts to 80-100 words after which you have to click to read further. The theory there most likely has to do with forcing page hits up, but in my case it's having the opposite effect.
One reason I mention this is that Salon has a redesign to make it look more like, well, a bunch of websites I don't recall because I never look at them -- Daily Beast, Huffington Post, stuff like that. The visual clutter on their home page is worse than the norm, but the thing that's most annoying is that they've propagated the design to their blogs. I've lately been keeping How the World Works, War Room, and Glenn Greenwald open in tabs, but their usefulness is declining: not only are the posts getting chopped up to force extra clicks, the number of active posts is being cut back (except for Greenwald).
I suppose advertising has something to do with this, but I don't see a lot of advertising on either site, and increasingly advertising only counts for something if you actually click it. But as likely as not the root cause is bureaucratic self-deception. The easy way to prove that a given site or feature is popular is hit counts, so they start to turn into a fetish. And like most arbitrary measures, if you can't beat 'em, scam 'em. Something like this happened at MSN to drive the redesign of Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide, breaking up a column that we normally run on one page at robertchristgau.com into more than a dozen separate clicks. (User guide hint: look for the Next links.) I have no idea whether that redesign resulted in more page hits, let alone whether more page hits were a good thing for the publisher. It certainly meant more work for everyone else.
The other driving force is likely to be the designer mafia, who need frequent redesigns for career practice. Sometimes I think I should put more effort into design than I do, but in the end I'd rather put the work into content. The design of robertchristgau.com hasn't changed since the prototype I threw together in an hour or two back in September 2001. It certainly could be improved, but I've never had a complaint from Christgau, who appreciates that it leaves the focus clearly on his writing, and doesn't feel compelled to change for change's sake. Don't recall when I put my current design in -- the blog dates back to Jan. 2005, at which point I adapted a somewhat older design that I had started using (and still haven't propagated throughout the whole website). In principle, I'm not opposed to putting some effort into website design. I just think it should enhance the content -- not bury it, nor substitute for it, which has been happening way too often.
Saturday, October 24. 2009
Thomas L Markey/Jean-Claude Muller: Afghanistan seen through the Wakhan Corridor: One of the more perceptive background pieces about Afghanistan, focusing on an area that is mostly isolated from and unaffected by the US occupation, its Afghan face, and the Taliban resistance. A couple of good ideas here:
Cantonization seems like an especially good idea for a country which has seen 30 straight years of what amounts to civil war between Kabul and the countryside. Even if some provinces reproduce those same problems on a smaller scale, that may still be an improvement. At least it provides many laboratories for developing democratic institutions on a more personal level. The GBAO the authors talk about is an autonomous region in neighboring Tajikistan which seems to have gotten its shit together after a nasty civil war there.
Of course, the cantons could turn into warlord fiefdoms, but it should be possible to bias them differently. One could start with a development bank that all outside resources would go through. The bank would have various guidelines to determine whether to invest or not, including transparent elections and justice systems, as well as basic standards of security. As it is now, a lot of money goes into Kabul but little goes out to where most Afghans live, and what does usually inefficiently follows the military around. Places like the Hazara regions get no support even though they are relatively secure, and could certainly use the help. Doing so would start to give Afghans a sense that constructive behavior will result in progress. As it stands, they have damn little reason to imagine such a thing.
Matthew Yglesias: The Great Gamble. Gregory Feifer's The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan provides numerous points showing that it isn't surprising that the US War in Afghanistan is as ill-fated, but as Yglesias points out, it also shows that the "all out" doesn't guarantee a Taliban triumph. The Soviet-backed Najibullah regime held on for three years after all Soviet military forces withdrew, and would likely have lasted longer with continued aid. Same thing seems likely if the US/NATO military forces, which are symbols of occupation and major irritants, went away. In some ways, the odds would be even better this time: Karzai's government should be widely viewed as more legitimate than Najibullah's; it certainly holds more territory; US military aid should be more effective than what the Soviets were able to provide; the present Taliban lacks international support, whereas the anti-Najibullah mujahideen was still backed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the US. The odds could be further improved further by making Karzai's government more democratic, responsible, and transparent -- perhaps by shipping Karzai out with the US troops. The argument that the US had to stay in order to prevent a Taliban takeover is certainly false.
Tuesday, October 20. 2009
Matthew Yglesias: Reading Material: Some pushback on the Vietnam War analogies for and against General McChrystal's pleas for further troop level escalation in Afghanistan. The Wall Street Journal reported that doves were reading Gordon Goldstein's Lessons in Disaster while hawks were touting Lewis Sorley's A Better War -- the titles themselves do a nice job of buttressing positions. The New York Times took this story seriously enough to have Goldstein and Sorley write opinion columns for last Sunday's "Week in Review" section. Yglesias doesn't link to the columns, which is just as well given that both were embarrassing rehashes. Whether the Vietnam War has any useful analogies depends a lot on the question you wish to ask. I can give you several points where there are similarities: both are about the same problematic size: too large and populous to easily subdue, especially given an overwhelmingly rural population and difficult terrain; neither was ever effectively governed by central authorities (unlike Iraq, for instance); both have long, multi-generational resistance forces, which can refer back to substantive victories, and both are well grounded ideologically as well as united by nationality; both have fought against a series of foreign invaders, of which the US is the latest and mightiest; but the US is also the furthest away, with few real interests in the region or real reasons to continue fighting (other than the self-esteem of its military and political elites); in both cases the US has attempted to put a local face on its forces, but that strategy has fared poorly because the quisling governments are seen by their people as foreign agents and by the US as corrupt and ineffective; both have borders that permit the resistance safe havens but which prove problematical to the US. That's a pretty hefty list. There are dissimilarities, but they pale in comparison. The Taliban, for instance, does not have anything approaching the depth of foreign support that the NLF had. The Taliban seems unlikely to break out of its ethnic stronghold, which makes it unlikely to overwhelm Afghanistan and impossible to overturn Pakistan. Those factors might offer more time for a more legitimate US-supported Afghan government to emerge, but the demand for such a government would have to come from the Afghan people and not be obstructed by the US and its perception of self-interests (killing Al Qaeda, disrupting the drug trade). On the other hand, most of these points look like sure losers for the US, and many of them get tougher the more the US tries to fight them. (For comparison, recall that the US went from 20,000 advisers to 600,000 troops in a couple of years, during which if anything the US lost ground. The main effect of that escalation was to Americanize the war, making it a colonialist war, further uniting the resistance, discrediting and therefore weakening the puppet government.)
Still, the dispute isn't really about whether the Afghanistan and Vietnam Wars are analogous. More important is what lessons, if any, we learned from Vietnam. There are those, especially on the Republican (neoconservative) right, who maintain that the Vietnam War was lost not on the battlefield but at home when a traitorous Congress pulled the plug on the efforts of freedom fighters. Sorley's book gives such people comfort, but only as long as they ignore the real reasons why the US lost. Goldstein's book offers just such a reason: we lost because the Vietnamese refused to give up. That was true in 1965 when McGeorge Bundy was misadvising President Johnson. That was no less true in 1973 when Nixon pulled the last US troops out. The rump regime in Saigon held on two more years. With more aid they might have held on longer, but no amount of aid would have convinced the Vietnamese to give up their struggle. As long as the Vietnamese keep fighting, Sorley's "victories" add up to bupkiss.
There's no reason to think that the Taliban will knuckle under to US force any more readily. Their senior commanders have survived various onslaughts for more than 30 years now. They will fight on until they win, or die, or make peace with an Afghan government that is not under some foreign thumb. The irony here is that if you're actually committed to Afghanistan -- which, by the way, the American people aren't, no matter what the political pundits and military elites think -- the only way to salvage anything is to unwind the military adventure while encouraging a legitimate Afghan democracy as a forum where Taliban partisans can participate without bullets or bombs. Unwinding the military presence is necessary because the US military inevitably does two poisonous things: one is it kills and injures a lot of people that many-to-all Afghans regard as innocent; the other is that it makes Afghans feel that their government is powerless, owing its existence and allegiance not to the people but to the occupiers. So the US is left with a conundrum here: the military has to go, but there is no guarantee that the Afghans will step up to the task of running a legitimate government. In fact, they have no experience whatsoever at doing so. (Certainly not back as far as Zahir Shah, whose monarchy was what you might call "normally corrupt.")
Basically, the US has three options at this point. One is to keep fighting more or less the way we've been fighting, defining this as an American war against Afghans (and the occasional stray Arab mujahideen), in which case we'll get more or less what we've been getting. Another is to try to salvage a peaceable Afghanistan by freeing it from our military and political yoke, channeling as much help as is prudent through the UN under complete direction of a democratic republic of Afghanistan. The third is to recognize how little Afghanistan really matters to most Americans and pull out completely. The first and third are basically the two sides of the Vietnam War coin: we fight and fight and fight until we are exhausted, then we duck out and never look back. Both options are based on the self-obsessed sense of national interests we for the most part pride ourselves in. We fight for our interests, and when our interests aren't worth the fight, we quit. The middle road, on the other hand, runs against all of our instincts. It involves giving up the conviction that if we want something bad enough we can get it. In other words, it says, first we must give up control. Then we have to behave honorably, responsibly, generously. We have to help Afghanistan when they want our help, in ways they want, with no strings attached, nothing for us in return. One way to do this might be to enter a plea bargain in the World Court, where we accept blame and fines of billions of dollars for the damage we have caused in Afghanistan. We might also encourge several other nations who also have reason to feel guilty to do the same: a few names that come readily to mind are Britain, Russia, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia, China, Iran. Put this money in an escrow account to be drawn by a legitimately elected and reputable Afghan government as needed.
One blessing here is that it would finally break the Vietnam analogy. Kissinger never attempted to negotiate any sort of peace and reconciliation and redevelopment in Vietnam. All he sought was a face-saving way to extricate US troops from a war that had gone on too long and cost too much, and he did so in the worst way imaginable -- much as he and Nixon had protracted the war. The one thing they steadfastly refused to do was to surrender any measure of legitimacy to communism. If he had cared one whit about the Vietnamese, he would have attempted to negotiate some kind of amnesty so that US collaborators could stay safe in their homes in Vietnam. Instead, he consigned them to reeducation camps, to boats, and to exile, just to preserve the maxim of "better dead than red." Same thing for the negotiations that led to the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, ensuring decades of civil war including the rise of the Taliban.
If you want to bone up on a Vietnam book, you could do worse than check out Tom Bissell's The Father of All Things. He has a fairly long section on the various arguments over whether the US could or could not have won the war if the political will had held up. But other details are just as telling. Bissell takes his father, a Marine in the late 1960s, to Vietnam, where he asks him "how the hell did you guys manage to lose?":
Or this little bit of military wisdom:
This contrast is at least as true in Afghanistan. But it has to be like that, otherwise no Americans would sign up for this fight. Still, those who do know they'll wind up going home eventually -- possibly dead, maybe maimed, but most likely alive. The Afghans (and not just the Taliban) know this too: just as the short-term soldiers will go home, sooner or later all Americans will leave. The only reason we're in Afghanistan is to satisfy our arrogant delusions, and sooner or later they will give way. Maybe not the arrogance or the delusions, but certainly the sense of satisfaction. You can see that waning already, which is why the warmongers are so feverishly pressing Obama to keep digging in deeper. Still, when they start parading arguments like "had we only tried a bit harder we could have won in Vietnam" you can be sure they're running out of ammo.
Monday, October 19. 2009
As promised, or at least hoped, last week, my 21st Jazz Consumer Guide column is complete. I still need to make an edit pass before handing it in, and I have some paperwork to do moving forward. I'll take the next week or two knocking the surplus down. (Done file currently numbers 76, which actually isn't huge historically.) I came into this round with nearly a column's worth of material left over, and leave it even further backlogged. The current draft has 45 albums (14 main reviews, 28 HM, 3 duds), 1683 words. Leftover has 54 albums (14 main reviews, 39 HM, 1 dud), 1709 words. Would be a big help if the Voice would run a followup column in quick succession. Otherwise I just keep slipping further behind, even when I do things like sneak A- records into the Honorable Mentions list (6 this time, probably a record; 6 more in leftover). This column has more 2009 releases than ever (21), but they are still slightly short of a majority (18 from 2008 and 6 from 2007). The final Jazz Prospecting file is here. The prospect count came to 224 records, the lowest total I have handy numbers for (the last six columns) but only down 2 from last time. The relatively short period, plus a couple of breaks, are to blame. The fall off would have been greater had I not sampled a couple dozen records on Rhapsody -- still an idiosyncratic and very limited source for jazz, by the way. (Or the count could have been much higher had I counted the Verve Originals I listened to for Recycled Goods but didn't report here.) The pending queue is currently at 184 (including a couple dozen records I've at least played and sometimes first-pass prospected), so I've been remiss there.
No idea when this will run -- hopefully by end of November. After a couple of relatively mainstream columns, this one is significantly more avant-garde than usual. I sort of like to cluster related albums together, and several of them came due this time (much like Satoko Fujii's 6-album run last time). The two pick hits are A- records -- probably the most difficult things I've picked thus far. Overall I'm getting plenty of low A- records but very few I can get really excited about. Don't know whether that's objective or subjective. Guess I need to do some more prospecting.
Ari Roland: New Songs (2009, Smalls): Bassist, says here that he's been playing every week with Chris Byars and Sacha Perry for 22 years now. I figure that makes him 15 when he started that gig. Byars, a saxophonist who mostly plays alto here but tenor elsewhere, and Perry, a pianist, are two years older. Quartet is filled out by drummer Keith Balla. Tight group, trying to find new angles on old bebop and mostly succeeding. B+(**)
Barney McAll: Flashbacks (2009, Extra Celestial Arts): Australian pianist, b. 1966, moved to New York in 1997, fifth album since 1996 (or sixth since 2001, depending on your source). Plays keyboards and something called a Chucky here. Musicians come and go, but most tracks include Jay Rodriguez (tenor sax), Josh Roseman (trombone), Kurt Rosenwinkel (guitar), Drew Gress (bass), Obed Calvaire (drums), with Pedrito Martinez (bata drums, percussion) on half. That's quite a lot of fire power, with Rosenwinkel's guitar especially prominent. Quiet spots featuring piano are quite nice; the louder runs powerful. Maybe a bit too rich for my taste, but impressive postbop. B+(**)
Mika Pohjola: Northern Sunrise (2008 , Blue Music Group): Finnish pianist, b. 1972, studied in Boston, settled in New York. Has a long list of records since 1996 -- AMG lists 7 for 2009 alone, but this is the only one I've heard. Postbop quintet, with Steve Wilson ("saxophones"; presumably alto and soprano), Ben Monder (guitar), Massimo Biolcati (bass), and Mark Ferber (drums). A wide range of stuff, including a bit of Grieg, some Ellington channeled through Mingus, some bop, some fusion, some pastorale. B+(*)
Dan Aran: Breathing (2009, Smalls): Israeli drummer, b. 1977, based in New York. First record, another postbop thing with a broad range of nice moves -- a slow take of "I Concentrate on You" with a long piano intro followed by gentle horns is particularly lovely. Uses various combinations of Avishai Cohen (trumpet), Eli Degibri (tenor sax), Jonathan Voltzok (trombone), Art Hirahara or Uri Sharlin (piano), Matt Brewer or Tal Ronen (bass), as well as a couple of others -- Gilli Sharett's bassoon is the aforementioned horn on "I Concentrate on You." B+(**)
Roberta Gambarini: So in Love (2008 , Emarcy): Italian singer, moved to US in 1998, with three albums albums since 2006; touchy about her age but has an album on Splasc(h) from 1991. I missed her first album, heard the second on Rhapsody way after the fact, and only got this lousy promo after the June release. She has a remarkable voice which sounds serious and unmannered on even the plainest ballad, but she can also scat and bite into vocalese. Side credits include James Moody on tenor sax, Roy Hargrove on trumpet and flugelhorn, a bunch of piano-bass-drums players. Song selection seems a problem here: "Crazy" and "That Old Black Magic" remind me of other, better versions. Promo ends strong with her words on top of a Johnny Griffin riff, but the final release fades away with a medley from "Cinema Paradiso" and "Over the Rainbow." B+(*) [advance]
Chris Potter Underground: Ultrahang (2009, ArtistShare): After years of complaining about Potter's postbop moves, he blew me away with two live Village Vanguard albums and impressed me nearly as much with Underground, a bass-less group powered by Craig Taborn's Fender Rhodes and Adam Rogers' guitar. These are contexts where he can loosen up and blow, as he does here. (Nate Smith squares off the quartet on drums.) Electrified, he quickens the pace and pumps up the volume. B+(***)
Ben Neill: Night Science (2009, Thirsty Ear): Trumpeter, b. 1957, has ten or more records since 1991. AMG classifies him under Avant-Garde Music, but the genres are pure electronica: trance, ambient, jungle/drum 'n' bass. This is the first I've heard, a set where he evidently multitracks and mixes everything himself, using programmed beats, electronics, and a contraption he calls the mutantrumpet: looks like a trumpet with three bells (one muted), some extra valves, and a PC board to control multiple MIDI channels and interface to a computer. The result sounds a lot like Nils Petter Molvaer, a wee bit cooler because there is no pretense of living in the jazz moment. B+(**)
Jessica Williams: The Art of the Piano (2009, Origin): Pianist, b. 1948, has a long list of albums including a large subset of solo piano, which this adds to. Wrote 6 of 8 originals, adding one each by Coltrane and Satie. Writes a lot about Glenn Gould in the liner notes. I've sampled her here and there; always been impressed and pleased, rarely had much to say. B+(**)
Ted Sirota's Rebel Souls: Seize the Time (2008 , Naim): Chicago drummer, formed his Rebel Souls group in 1996, with a number of Chicago notables passing through. Likes political themes, although most are no more obvious or in the way than his Mingus pick, "Free Cell Block F, 'Tis Nazi U.S.A." Pieces from Miriam Makeba, Caetano Veloso, and the Clash are done with great care. Group now is a quintet, with two saxes (Geof Bradfield and Greg Ward), guitar (Dave Miller), and bass (Jake Vinsel). B+(***)
Bug: The Gadfly (2008 , Origin): Quintet, principally the work of brothers Jeff and James Miley (guitar and piano/rhodes, respectively), with Peter Epstein a token horn on alto sax. Postbop, further indication of how the guitar has pushed the trumpet out of jazz's standard quintet configuration. B+(*)
George Benson: Songs and Stories (2009, Concord/Monster Music): Listenable enough for a while, as long as he keeps his soft soul personable, but by the end Marcus Miller's programming gets the best of him. Not sure whether Lamont Dozier's "Living in High Definition" is intended as funk, samba, or disco, but it fails on all three counts. C+
Carlos Franzetti: Mambo Tango (2009, Sunnyside): Argentine pianist, b. 1948, has a dozen or so albums since 1993. This one is solo piano, three originals including the title cut, plus standards ending with Bill Evans and Duke Ellington. Does very little for me one way or the other -- a victim, no doubt, of casual listening, a bad habit I expect superior records to kick me out of. This one is merely very nice. B
Eldar: Virtue (2008 , Masterworks Jazz): Russian whiz kid, b. 1987 in Kirgizstan; not sure when he moved to US, but he lived in Kansas City for a while before landing in New York. Eight record since 2001; first since turning 21. He's a powerhouse pianist; likes to jam thick chords together at oblique angles, but it still strikes me that his models are classical like Rachmaninoff rather than jazz, like Tatum or Taylor. Mostly trio, with extra sax on four tracks -- Joshua Redman on one, Felipe Lamoglia on three, with Nicholas Payton chiming in on one of those. The horns are put to good use on "Long Passage," the one cut written by bassist Armando Gola, where Eldar switches to electric. Follows that up with a soft touch ballad that is quite nice. I tend to be real skeptical of prodigy claims, but this is the third album I've heard, and they've been improving. He should turn out OK. B+(**)
Robert Glasper: Double Booked (2009, Blue Note): He got a huge PR boost in signing with Blue Note, whose previous discoveries had included Jason Moran and Bill Charlap. Certainly attractive is the idea of a young whiz who can incorporate hip-hop influences into the jazz lexicon. However, he's yet to deliver the goods. Here he keeps his two sides separate. The first half trio tracks show him making nice progress as a postbop pianist. Nothing really stands out, but it all comes off as fundamentally sound. Second half is his Robert Glasper Experiment, where he plays more electric piano, adds Casey Benjamin on sax and vocoder, and works in some turntables and voices and -- well, I don't have the details. Benjamin's sax charge carries one piece, but other experiments, as can happen, turn into stink bombs. I think Bilal is involved in one of the worst. B-
Eyal Maoz's Edom: Hope and Destruction (2009, Tzadik): Guitarist, born in Israel, based in New York. Has a previous Tzadik record called Edom, elevated here to band name despite a couple of personnel changes, and a new duo with Asaf Sirkis, Elementary Dialogues (Ayler). This is a quartet with Brian Marsella on keybs, Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz on bass (pictured electric), and Yuval Lion on drums. Fusion, more than halfway to prog rock, what "radical Jewish culture" there is largely washed out -- "Two" is a partial exception. B+(*) [advance]
Anouar Brahem: The Astounding Eyes of Rita (2008 , ECM): Oud player, from Tunisia, b. 1957, eighth album since 1991, all on ECM. He's generally struck me as the milder, blander alternative to Lebanese oudist Rabih Abou-Khalil, but he's settled into such a seductive groove here one can hardly complain. Group is a quartet with Klaus Gesing on bass clarinet, Björn Meyer on bass, and Khaled Yassine on percussion (darbouka and bendir). The bass clarinet adds depth without standing out on its own. Album is dedicated to the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, whose poem "Rita and the Rifle" is featured in the booklet. B+(***)
Luis Bonilla: I Talking Now! (2008 , NJCO/Planet Arts): Trombonist, b. 1965 in Los Angeles, has a couple of previous albums on Candid (1992 and 2000), a lot of side credits -- mostly Latin groups, but also Lester Bowie, Gerry Mulligan, Matt Catingub, Toshiko Akiyoshi, George Gruntz, Gerald Wilson, Dave Douglas Brass Ecstasy. Quintet, with Ivan Renta on sax, Arturo O'Farrill on piano, Andy McKee on bass, John Riley on drums. Some of this gets into the radical shifts of Afro-Cuban jazz, which the trombone lead gives a distinct aroma to. On the other hand, a lot of it strikes me as rather ordinary postbop. B+(*)
Ryan Blotnick: Everything Forgets (2008 , Songlines): Guitarist, b. 1983 in Maine, spent some time studying in Copenhagen, based in New York. Second album. First was an HM here. This one is relatively slow and atmospheric, harder to get a grip on. Joachim Badenhorst's reeds are subdued, and acoustic bassist Perry Wortman is joined by electric bassist Simon Jermyn, leaving much of the album rounding the basses. B+(*)
Joris Teepe Big Band: We Take No Prisoners (2008 , Challenge): Dutch bassist, b. 1962, based in New York (or, as his MySpace page puts it, New Rochelle, NY). AMG lists eight albums since 1993. Big band is loud, brassy, has some strong sax soloists. B
These are some even quicker notes based on downloading or streaming records. I don't have the packaging here, don't have the official hype, often don't have much information to go on. I have a couple of extra rules here: everything gets reviewed/graded in one shot (sometimes with a second play), even when I'm still guessing on a grade; the records go into my flush file (i.e., no Jazz CG entry, unless I make an exception for an obvious dud). If/when I get an actual copy I'll reconsider the record.
Ken Vandermark/Barry Guy/Mark Sanders: Fox Fire (2008 , Maya, 2CD): Two sets recorded in Birmingham and Leeds, more or less home turf to bassist Guy and drummer Sanders. Vandermark plays tenor sax and clarinet; sounds magnificent on the former, fierce on the latter. Don't know whether the pieces are group improvs, come from Guy's stash, or are more mixed. Doesn't make a lot of difference. Guy has an interesting bag of tricks, and Vandermark fleshes them out admirably. A lot to listen to in one shot; wish I had this. B+(***) [Rhapsody]
C.O.D.E.: Play the Music of Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy (2008, Cracked Anegg): I guess the artist credit is a trivial cipher for "Coleman, Ornette; Dolphy, Eric." The group consists of Ken Vandermark (clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor sax), Max Nagl (alto sax), Clayton Thomas (bass), and Wolfgang Reisinger (drums). The nine tunes are from Coleman and Dolphy (two medleyed together), each member arranging. Nagl has been on my shopping list a long time, but I hadn't managed to find anything by him before. Similar to the Vandermark 5's Free Jazz Classics, both in the assured command of tricky music and their willingness to run with it. B+(***) [Rhapsody]
Revolutionary Ensemble: Beyond the Boundary of Time (2005 , Mutable Music): A live set cut on a tour in Poland, effectively a last hurrah before pioneering violinist Leroy Jenkins died in 2007. The trio with bassist Sirone and drummer Jerome Cooper worked together from 1971-78, then regrouped for a remarkable album in 2004, And Now . . . (Pi). So this promises more, but they come out uncertain and despite various characteristically intriguing moments never really get their sound together. They come closest in the two closing improvs, even when Cooper switches to synth. B [Rhapsody]
Revolutionary Ensemble: Vietnam (1972 , ESP-Disk): The latest reissue of the periodically reissued debut disk of the Leroy Jenkins-Sirone-Jerome Cooper trio. Nothing specific about Vietnam, but it was in the air in revolutionary circles of the time. Jenkins single-handedly invented a new path for violin in avant-jazz, scratched raw, searching the ins and outs of his comrades' rhythms. B+(**) [Rhapsody]
Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton: Imaginary Values (1993 , Maya): Cautionary tale: I thought I'd check to see if I could find anything recent and unheard by Parker on Rhapsody, given that I have a lot of his material written up for the CG. Rhapsody listed this as 2008 -- their dates are often useless, but they're the first ones I see. AMG and Amazon have it as 2007; not too far out of date. AMG gives the label as TCB, but almost everyone else agrees on Maya. So I play it and research some more. It shows up in discographies as recorded in 1993 at the Red Rose Club in London. Penguin Guide, which only lists recording dates, has it as a 4-star, rating it one of the trio's best efforts. Hard for me to tell. Rhapsody won't play the 3rd cut or the 6th. I jump to the 8th ("Invariance"), which PG singled out, but I don't really get it. This is difficult music, abstract, lots of oblique angles, prickly spines sticking out every which way. Parker plays more soprano sax than tenor, which makes this wobblier than usual, and Guy and Lytton are always difficult. And it's way too late to keep pursuing a line that isn't going to produce anything. So for now, but I'm not scratching it off the shopping list. B+(**) [Rhapsody]
The Neil Cowley Trio: Loud Louder Stop (2008, Cake): British pianist, leading a trio with Richard Sadler on bass and Evan Jenkins on drums. First record, Dis-Placed, won a BBC Jazz Album of the Year poll; I liked it enough to include it in a Jazz CG. Similar stuff this: bright acoustic (and some electric) piano; sharp chords, often repeating, always keenly rhythmic. They get compared to E.S.T. a lot -- there seems to be a certain pop cachet to that in Europe, but they strike me as both brighter and more mainstream, a bit like Ramsey Lewis at his very best. Except that Lewis was almost never at his best, and these guys always are. B+(***) [Rhapsody]
Luciana Souza: Tide (2009, Verve): Brazilian singer, has a nice clean tone in the main line of Brazilian pop and jazz singers, a bit higher pitched. Three Brazilian songs strike me as exceptional, but none of six in English piqued my interest. Larry Klein wrote five of the latter, so he's suspect; the sixth was from Paul Simon, not someone I'm particularly fond of. B [Rhapsody]
Melody Gardot: My One and Only Thrill (2009, Verve): Singer-songwriter from New Jersey; second album, evidently some kind of bestseller. Wrote 9 songs, co-wrote 2, and picked one cover, "Over the Rainbow." Her voice has unobvious appeal, and most of the songs work in unpredictable ways. Six are swathed in strings, which sound awful at first but quickly recover -- another burden she manages to slough off. Name sounds French; not sure how that works, but the one song she wrote in French is a choice cut. B+(*) [Rhapsody]
Harry Connick, Jr.: Your Songs (2009, Columbia): Searching the top of the bestseller list for a dud, but this isn't it -- just can't bring myself to dislike it. A long list of stellar credits (don't have song-by-song breakdowns) are almost impossible to recognize: Wayne Bergeron, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Ernie Watts. The music is almost totally dominated by anonymous string orchestration, more Nelson Riddle than Billy May, and not Riddle -- but then Connick isn't Sinatra either, so the downsizing works surprisingly well. Half the standards come from the rock era, with obvious lemons from Elton John, Billy Joel, Bacharach and David, even the Beatles, turning into bright spots. At worst, a little dull. B+(*) [Rhapsody]
Benny Reid: Escaping Shadows (2008 , Concord): Alto saxophonist, b. 1980, second album; filed it under pop jazz, which has much more to do with the saxophone, which could fit nicely in any postbop context -- he has a sweet tone on the ballads and can romp on the fast ones. Worse than the keybs-guitar-bass is the scat slung by Jeff Taylor. B [Rhapsody]
Tim Sparks: Sidewalk Blues (2009, Tonewood): Solo guitar, not sure what "fingerstyle" means -- guessing, I substituted "fingerpicked" in my review of Sparks' Little Princess. This is a bit less intriguing, probably because the old blues, gospels, rags, and jazz tunes (Fats Waller the most recent) have mostly been fingerpicked over before. B+(**) [Rhapsody]
Béla Fleck/Zakir Hussain/Edgar Meyer: The Melody of Rhythm: Triple Concerto & Music for Trio (2009, Koch): Banjo, tabla, bass for the principals. Their trio pieces are modestly exotic, the strings in sharp contrast, the percussion balancing them in tone and shifting the music. The three movement concerto is fortified by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Slatkin. The trio still stands out there, making you wonder why they need the semiclassical backdrop anyway. Probably some institutional money and prestige riding on it. B+(*) [Rhapsody]
The Hashem Assadullahi Quintet: Strange Neighbor (2009, 8Bells): Saxophonist, plays alto and soprano, b. 1981, studied in Texas and Oregon, based in Eugene, OR, although he seems to have some kind of deal going in Thailand. First album, with Ron Miles (trumpet), Justin Morell (guitar), Josh Tower (bass), and Jason Palmer (drums). This has sort of a suite feel to it, not just in the first five linked pieces: the instruments tend to fold together in neat bundles with few attempts to break out and solo. Reminds me a bit of Mingus, only mellower, the guitar sweeter and tighter than a piano would be. B+(**) [Rhapsody]
And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further listening the first time around.
Mike DiRubbo: Repercussion (2008 , Posi-Tone): An impressive alto sax quartet -- big sound, bold moves, still well inside the postbop tent -- with vibraphonist Steve Nelson the fourth leg, a contrast in the rhythm section more than a second solo option. Dedicated to drummer Tony Reedus, who died five months after the record was cut. B+(**)
Joe Lovano Us Five: Folk Art (2008 , Blue Note): With a very young band, the reigning saxophonist of his generation feels free to indulge his idiosyncrasies: aulochrome, straight alto sax, taragato, why not two at once? Sounds like he's entering his Rahsaan Roland Kirk phase. B+(***)
Fire Room: Broken Music (2005 , Atavistic): Trio, with Ken Vandermark on tenor and baritone sax, Paal Nilssen-Love on drums, and Lasse Marhaug doing something ugly with electronics. Vandermark and Nilssen-Love have a couple of good duo albums, and more small group albums, so the delta here is Marhaug. Loud static, low warbling, hard to see how what he does helps out, even though there are short stretches when the energy pays off. B
Miroslav Vitous Group w/Michel Portal: Remembering Weather Report (2006-07 , ECM): Strange thing, memory, blotting out not just Joe Zawinul's fusion but all keyboards, substituting bass clarinet for Shorter's soprano, orchestrating a set of strange and intriguing Dvorak variations on not just Miles Davis but on Ornette Coleman to boot. B+(***)
Charles Tolliver Big Band: Emperor March (2008 , High Note): Same big band as on the widely touted 2007 album With Love, but much sharper live, especially when the saxophonists get some elbow room. If only they held it all together more consistently. When they do this is a rich and powerful experience; otherwise it's just loud, or something else. B+(**)
Blink.: The Epidemic of Ideas (2007 , Thirsty Ear): Chicago freebop group. I don't get the period in the band name, but they certainly have a lot of ideas. Greg Ward (alto sax) and Dave Miller (guitar) also show up in the latest version of Ted Sirota's Rebel Souls. Bassist Jeff Greene and drummer Quin Kirchner evidently have some background in rockish grooves. Fast, slow, up, down, all sorts of ideas. B+(***)
Tribecastan: Strange Cousin (2008 , Evergreene Music): Cosmopolitan exotica from the New York melting pot, with Jeff Greene and John Kruth playing a long list of instruments, rarely any one for more than a couple of songs -- Kruth leans toward mandolins and flutes, Greene more often percussive. Supplemented by a short list of guests: Dave Dreiwitz's bass is the most frequent instrument here; Matt Darriau on sax and clarinet, gaida and kaval; Brahim Fribgane on darbuka and riq; Jolie Holland does a song each on box fiddle and voice; Steve Turre on trombone and shells. Sometimes this takes on a jazz vibe -- Don Cherry and Sonny Sharrock provide two reference covers -- but mostly it is something else. B+(**)
John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble: Eternal Interlude (2009, Sunnyside): Dazzling at times, annoying at others; full of thick, luminous sheets of sound, but the potential solo power, including Tony Malaby and Ellery Eskelin on tenor sax, rarely pokes through; not much interest in the rhythm section, even though that's where the leader resides. Theo Bleckman speaks an intro, and adds some verbal mush elsewhere. B+(*)
Fernando Benadon: Intuitivo (2009, Innova): Not exactly a string quartet -- 2 violins, viola, bass, plus clarinet and percussion; not exactly chamber music either -- edgy, abstract postmodern. B+(**)
David Berkman Quartet: Live at Smoke (2006 , Challenge): Very solid, perhaps exemplary, mainstream postbop quartet, the pianist-leader always cogent, Jimmy Greene a pleasant surprise on tenor sax, even making a strong showing on soprano. Not sure why I don't rate this higher; probably because after a half-dozen plays I'm short for words. B+(***)
Edmar Castaneda: Entre Cuerdas (2009, ArtistShare): Harp player, originally from Colombia, based in New York, leading a trio with trombone and drums and occasional guests. The complex stringiness of the harp sound is unusual and distinctive. A couple of cuts have a tango feel. Didn't much care for Andrea Tierra's rather diva-ish guest vocal. An interesting talent. B+(**)
Some more re-grades as I've gone through trying to sort out the surplus:
Avram Fefer Trio: Ritual (2008 , Clean Feed): [formerly B+(**)] B+(***)
Arve Henriksen: Cartography (2006-08 , ECM): [formerly B+(***)] B+(**)
Ruslan Khain: For Medicinal Purposes Only (2008, Smalls): [formerly B+(***)] B+(**)
Larry Ochs/Miya Masaoka/Peggy Lee: Spiller Alley (2006 , RogueArt): [formerly B+(***)] B+(**)
The October Trio/Brad Turner: Looks Like It's Going to Snow (2008 , Songlines): [formerly B+(***)] B+(**)
For this cycle's collected Jazz Prospecting notes, look here.
Unpacking: Found in the mail the last two weeks:
Friday, October 16. 2009
I notice that I have a bunch of book pages typed up that I haven't posted anything on here in the blog. These are books that I got from the library, read quickly, typing up more or less extensive quotes as I went through them, but in most cases not a lot of comments. One could, in theory, go back and annotate them further. I like having the quotes accessible, especially since the books aren't. And typing is something I have a lot of practice doing, having spent a good chunk of my worklife in typesetting shops. I think there's even a sort of cognitive advantage in not just reading but typing.
There are a couple more books I'll try to get to soon.
Thursday, October 15. 2009
Jon Krakauer: Gen. McChrystal's Credibility Problem: This focuses on a rather narrow point, which is McChrystal's role in the political coverup of footballer-turned-9/11-soldier Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan. Tillman was killed by "friendly fire" in April 2004. McChrystal was a Brigadier General at the time, in charge of the JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command), responsible for Tillman. McChrystal immediately nominated Tillman for a Silver Star, a symbol of Tillman's political value to the war effort at a time when Bush was campaigning for election as president. McChrystal is now a four-star general in charge of the whole Afghanistan theater. He is currently lobbying for an additional 60,000 troops -- a huge escalation in an eight-year-old war that is going worse and worse for the US. Krakauer has written a whole book on Tillman, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, so it's fair to say he knows the ins and outs of this story, and raises an interesting question about McChrystal's credibility (or alternatively, his political sense). Reminds me of Colin Powell, whose critical 2002 presentation to the UN about Saddam Hussein's WMD activities was nothing more than a crock of lies. Powell was at the time held in sufficient esteem that he mostly got away with his scam. On the other hand, it would have behooved us then to have remembered that early on in his career Powell learned the art of deceit as the officer responsible for burying the My Lai massacre.
Wednesday, October 14. 2009
William Astore: Apocalypse Then, Afghanistan Now: Within a year of the US invasion, Iraq was reminding Americans of a certain age of a certain familiar quagmire in southeast Asia. Any such historical comparison is bound to have as many variances as similarities, which makes for fruitless debate as the apples and oranges glide by in their own quantum orbits. The real question isn't whether the whole comparison fits. It's whether we've learned lessons from the past experience. The Iraq-Vietnam analogies wound up fading, mostly for two reasons: one is that the anti-American forces were never able to unite over a Sunni-Shiite divide that the US actually did much to exacerbate; the other is that the Shiite-dominated government was able to consolidate a power base that the puppets in Saigon never managed. As such, the US military, with its penchant to turn everywhere it bombs into Vietnams, faded into the background, taking its quagmire with it.
On the other hand, Vietnam-Afghanistan analogies are booming. Of course, there are differences, but one similarity stands out, and it is the one that McGeorge Bundy singled out as the single most important (and by the US unexpected) characteristic of the Vietnam War: the endurance and persistence of the enemy, even in the face of extraordinary losses sustained over long periods of time -- longer timespans than the American people could stomach. Even if nothing else in the analogy holds up (and I wouldn't go that far) the main reason the US lost the Vietnam War looks like the main reason the US is likely to lose out in Afghanistan.
Tom Engelhardt points out in his introduction that Washington these days is torn between two Vietnam books: Gordon Goldstein's Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam, and Lewis Sorley's A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. I've read the former. You can read all you need to know on my book page. I haven't bothered with Sorley. I don't find his book credible, for a couple of reasons. One is that throughout the whole history of the war there were always metrics to show that the US was winning. It eventually became a commonplace that the US won every battle and still lost the war. So intuitively I don't believe Sorley's victories. That doesn't mean they're not worth examining, but I'd be real surprised if examination doesn't reveal that they are illusions or irrelevancies. Another reason is that the US had already lost the war in 1964-65. Before the US had hopes of propping up a friendly Vietnamese regime against a Vietnamese insurgency, but the desperate coup against Diem and insertion of US soldiers discredited the Saigon government and turned the war into a colonialist venture. No power since WWII had pulled that off, and Vietnam was too large, militant, resilient, and patient to allow an exception. So even if Sorley could point to tactical victories, turning that into anything more than an extension of an already shamefully extended war would be very hard to believe. One more point is that I believe that a US military victory -- whatever that means -- would have been a bad thing, certainly for the US and most likely for Vietnam. A "victory" in Vietnam would have bolstered the militarist right, leading to more wars -- much like the evident victory in Afghanistan in 2001 led to the Iraq invasion in 2003. Or like the US victory in WWII put us on a path of 60+ years of more/less constant war, where defeated powers like Germany and Japan have managed to mind their own business.
In 1965 McGeorge Bundy was looking at analyses showing that the US could never win anything in Vietnam and urging Johnson to Americanize the war -- to send massive ground troops and to launch enormous waves of bombing -- for no reason other than to save face by postponing the inevitable. Thirty years later he, like Robert McNamara, realized that his advice was disastrous, but he was trapped inside a bubble where everyone thought the world would end if even one domino flipped communist. Astore contrasts the simultaneous views of others not inside the imperial bubble -- specifically Norman Mailer. One striking point Astore makes, citing Mailer:
Of course, with television there are Americans who can picture Afghan faces, but they are few and far between. Some sympathize with Afghanistan, a sentiment hawks readily prey upon, although you'll be hard pressed to find those same hawks actually caring about America much less Afghanistan. The real reason they insist on fighting in Afghanistan is that they like to fight. They worry if the US ducks out of a fight even in a place that otherwise matters not one whit to the people who run the country, much less the people who merely work here. If you look back to hawks like Bundy you find the same indifference and disregard of Vietnamese people our modern hawks have for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the you find the same callow reasons for slogging on.
Tuesday, October 13. 2009
My first reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize committee selecting Barack Obama for this year's award was that it was way premature: he has yet to disengage from Iraq and Afghanistan (indeed, he's in deeper in the latter than Bush was); his Israel/Palestine efforts have stalled behind Israeli stonewalling; he has yet to make any significant progress in breaking down a long list of American blacklisting efforts (especially North Korea, Iran, Cuba) that rarely amount to anything more than juvenile superpower tantrums; he's submitted record large Defense Department appropriations, and skewed his minor shifts toward more small-scale intervention. His performance hasn't all been negative -- he's given some nice speeches, and he's backed away from the most offensive aspects of a still-insane anti-missile defense system -- but unless you give him a lot of credit for not being George Bush/Dick Cheney he hasn't actually accomplished much. Indeed, a lot of Bush-era programs that Obama himself had criticized are still intact and functional -- Guantanamo one obvious example. Gary Wills wrote a recent piece in the New York Review of Books detailing the continuities between Bush and Obama. He called his piece Entangled Giant, but "Déjŕ Vu" would have worked as well. A taste:
I don't doubt that Obama's reticence to tackle past abuses has more to do with pragmatic politics than with personal convictions. He certainly would not be in the position he is if he lacked sense of where and when he should fight for a principle. Still, nearly a year after his dramatic election, we have yet to identify any of his red lines because he has yet to stake out any principles he is willing to risk losing for. That doesn't mean that he won't eventually succeed at any number of worthwhile efforts, but it doesn't give us sound expectations. If, for instance, he's not willing to fight his own government bureaucracy and the largely discredited and numerically marginal opposition, does he really offer much hope of turning the rest of the world around?
The Nobel Peace Prizes have a very checkered history. While a number of prizes have gone to individuals (and by association, to groups) that have genuinely embraced the principles of putting a just end to war, prizes have also been given to figures who built their careers on war and whose contributions to peace have been tenuous at best. Part of this problem is structural: the short cut to getting into a position to end a war is to start one -- pairs like Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho or Anwar al-Sadat and Menachem Begin are obvious examples. Part seems to be a desire on the part of the prize committee to rub elbows with the powerful. It would be so much easier to award an anti-prize for war, and it's telling that some of the same people would have ranked on that list as well (e.g., Kissinger, who extended the Vietnam War and expanded it to Cambodia leading to millions of extra deaths, and Begin, who was responsible for the worst atrocities of Israel's 1948 War of Independence, and who later celebrated his Peace Prize by invading Lebanon).
Obama is something of an enigma on this list. Defenders of the prize have pointed out that Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the prize early in his reform process, but it seems very unlikely that Obama will follow Gorbachev in dissolving his empire -- Obama hasn't even withdrawn from Afghanistan yet, which Gorbachev had already done before receiving his prize. Obama has already ordered one escalation in Afghanistan, and is contemplating another, much larger one. We could very well wind up with more blood on his hands than any other Nobel winner since, well, Woodrow Wilson -- who engineered the US entry into WWI after practicing numerous invasions of Latin America.
With so little track record, most commenters argue the prize on conjecture. Will the prize inspire Obama to realize the peaceful goals he has eloquently advocated? Will the prize inhibit Obama from acting belligerently, the one option that American presidents always like to keep on the table? The idea that the prize might work as some kind of prophylactic has no historical basis or internal logic. If you want to ensure future peaceful activities, you should start with someone who has a past record for embracing and advocating peace.
The other problem with the prize is opportunity cost. With the Israel/Palestine efforts stalled, I'd be tempted to pick an Israeli, a Palestinian, and an American who dependably worked toward peace and understanding of this issue: some names that immediately come to mind are Jeff Halper, Raja Shehadeh, and Helena Cobban. (I'm sure many more would pop up if I gave it a bit of thought. Halper was actually nominated, along with Ghassan Andoni, another good candidate.) Or if you wanted to look at what the US has done more globally, you could recognize the most consistently distinguished critic of US foreign policy since the Vietnam era: Noam Chomsky.
The truth is there are lots of good candidates doing noteworthy work. They just aren't likely to be high government officials, especially of countries that find themselves constantly in the grip of war.
Helena Cobban: Obama's Nobel: Similar reservations, a little more generously stated.
Tariq Ali: Ahmed Rashid's War: I thought about including Ali on my own Nobel shortlist. He is one person who never gets fooled by the promise of power. It's curious that besides Rashid the other person The New York Review of Books depends on for analysis in the Centcom theater is Peter Galbraith, who in the last couple of weeks was fired from a UN job in Afghanistan and shown to have conflict-of-interest investments in the Kurdish oil industry. (For more on this, see Helena Cobban.)
Matthew Yglesias: Rich on McCain: Starts with a long list of wars McCain has supported: pretty much every one that seemed hot, with an occasional respite for some countries when hotter prospects emerged. Obama may effectively remain under the hegemony of America's war mentality, but McCain, even more so than Bush, is bound to it at a third-grade emotional level. As an American, I think that McCain and Bush are anomalous here, that most Americans are nowhere near so warlike, and that Obama is dangerously in the middle, legitimizing hawks by not standing up to them, even when he clearly knows better. But what the Nobel Prize suggests is that Europeans, taking the likes of McCain and Bush as American norms, see Obama as blessed relief, and desperately want to support him. They may be right. While I would rather support people who genuinely believe in peace, Obama may be the last best chance to stave off nutcases like McCain. He clearly was in the 2008 election.
Monday, October 12. 2009
Not really. There's enough to publish, but I'm in the middle of a two-week column wrap-up and a lot of things are up in the air. What I'm holding back here: six new records, four relistens, a bunch of Rhapsody things I checked out (some looking for possible duds). I spent most of the week listening to previously rated but unreviewed albums. Managed to write a bunch of them up, although a couple of A- records got knocked down to honorable mentions. Draft currently has 75 albums (26 A-list, 47 HM, 2 duds), 2804 words. This adds up to a little more than two columns worth of material. The next big job will be to partition what I have. Still not sure about pick hits: don't have any straight A records on tap, so I need to pick a pair of relatively strong and interesting A- entries. Looks like I'll need to go back to the flush files to pick out a third dud. There must be something there. Also need to kick a lot of deserving honorable mentions into the surplus file. I didn't do a cull last time, so it's overdue now. The unrated file is deeper than ever right now: 190 records. Got my first 2010 advances this week, so those at least can be ignored for a while.