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Today's
Stories
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
Weekend
Edition
October 11 / 13, 2003
The
Door Is Open
Scorsese's
Blues 2
By WILLIAM BENZON
"No one but you could gain admittance
through this door, since this door was intended only for you."
Franz Kafka, "Before the Law"
With "Red, White, and Blues," in which
Mike Figgis tells the story of British blues, and "Piano
Blues," by Clint Eastwood, Scorsese's series came to an
ending that is as strong at its beginning was weak. Eastwood
was more generous with the music itself than any of the other
directors, though some of his own comments were more sentimental
than sage, while Figgis gave us the most artful collection of
interviews in the series and some disarmingly powerful blues
from one of the masters of the Las Vegas supper circuit.
British Blues Cruise
Figgis anchored his story in a jam session
that included Jeff Beck, a logical choice, along with Van "Moondance"
Morrison, Lulu ("To Sir With Love"), and Tom "What's
New Pussycat" Jones. The segment opened and closed on this
session and returned to it between sequences of interviews and
of archival footage.
Figgis began sly and dramatic. Here you
are in front of the TV ready for a documentary on the British
blues scene. You've read the story a thousand times, young British
lads listen to blues records, fall in love with the music and
BAM!, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Cream and all invade the
USofA in the 1960s and change the history of rock and roll. So
who does Figgis put in the first shot, all big and beefy in his
leather jacket? Tom Jones. We get a few seconds of him singing
along with a recording and Figgis cuts to Van Morrison, who sings
a few good choruses and hands it to Peter King, an alto player.
That alto did not come floating up the Thames by way of the Mississippi
Delta. It came by way of Kansas City and New York City, from
the school of Charlie "Yardbird" Parker.
We're into it. Whatever preconceptions
were spinning in your brain when this thing opened have now been
shattered and you're wondering whether or not Tom Jones can sing
the blues. It turns out that he can sing the blues like Sean
Connery can act James Bond. But Figgis makes us wait to find
that out.
It was all good. All those talking heads.
Well framed, expressive faces saying interesting things. Lots
of music. And well edited.
I liked the sense of being in the thick
of it all. All this music flowed through and into and around
Britain in the 1950s, big band, traditional jazz, skiffle, folk
and music hall. Then those blues recordings come ashore. Figgis
presents the scene through archival footage and through interviews
with musicians who were there at the time. The material is edited
so as to create the sense of a conversation between the musicians,
a feel for how they found the music and one another back in the
fifties. Figgis shows us a community at work, gathering itself
into being through music.
Imagine for a minute, now, that none
of these musicians were around any more and that we'd lost all
the relevant recordings of British pop made before 1960 and all
the American blues before then. But we have recordings of the
Stones and Cream and the Beatles. Where did THAT music came from?
It would be a complete mystery.
That is the situation we face with the
blues itself. A great variety of music circulated in the United
States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, high
culture, low culture, middle culture, horns, guitars, vocals,
strings, and piano, big groups, small groups, and soloists. Things
didn't move as fast as they did in Britain in the fifties because
we didn't have recordings back then, nor airplanes or radios
or TV. But the music nonetheless got around; here and there things
fell along certain lines. W. C. Handy heard it and transcribed
and published some of it, scholars and journalists heard it and
wrote it up, and so forth. Though the time, pace, and place were
different, the process was similar to what Figgis shows us in
this episode.
I particularly liked the footage showing
jammers listening to recordings and playing along. That has been
happening ever since recordings have been cheap and plentiful.
The literature is full of anecdotes about it, but it was good
to see and hear it. It is one thing to hear Tom Jones deliver
a full-throated blues, and another to see him work the words
along with a recording while Jeff Beck picks up guitar lines.
Beyond the music itself, I was touched
by the moral tone Figgis established when he played clips of
these musicians telling how moved they were when black musicians
told them how good their music was. It is one thing for these
British musicians to acknowledge their debt to African American
musicians, as they have been doing for years. When you confess
to being moved by the approval of those same musicians, however,
you also admit that you are especially vulnerable to their judgment.
If their approval is especially sweet, then their disapproval
would likely be devastating. Where else have you seen and heard
important white people acknowledge this vulnerability?
While it was nice to hear B. B. King
acknowledge the role the British bluesmen played in reviving
the careers of American bluesman, that's not news. That sentiment
is in print in a thousand places.
But the glow on Mick Fleetword's face
as he told of his pleasure in black acknowledgement, the ever
so slight hitch in his voice_that cannot be put into words. Like
the conversational stand-off between Sam Phillips and Ike Turner
in episode three, these moments reveal a profound and delicate
truth about the complex dance of black and white that has given
us so much beautiful music. These documents allow us to see and
even comprehend that dance in ways that elude reasoned analysis.
As if this isn't enough, Figgis wraps
it up by having an achingly slow performance of "Crying
In My Own Tears" materialize from the pink cheeks and blonde
hair of a Scotswoman. This, the slow blues, is the inner sanctum,
the center of the blues universe, and a technical challenge too.
The virtuoso guitarist must make his blinding licks as delicate
as Irish lace, then show that he can tease a single note until
pigs grow wings, or for a couple of bars anyhow, whichever is
longer. A vocalist must align shoulders, spine, and pelvis to
support the sound so that she can ease it up and down by microtones.
That Lulu did, giving us a blues more authentic than tartan plaid--though
that's not much of a standard, as scholars have demonstrated
that clan plaids are a relatively recent innovation in the manufacture
of tradition.
Figgis has done it again, forced us to
pass an ethical test if we are to enjoy the musical goodies.
If you really believe that the content of a woman's soul is more
important than the color of her skin, then you can take pleasure
in Lulu's blues. Neither Tom Jones nor Lulu played a significant
role in the British blues, nor the blues at large, but their
singing delivers testimony that they indeed know the blues. If
you deny Lulu's blues because she hit the pop charts back in
the 1960s, if you deny Jones' blues for the Las Vegas glitz,
then you have marginalized your own blues and enslaved your soul
to a century's worth of earnest mythologizing.
I'm reminded of a situation comedy that
was popular a few years ago. Each episode featured a bit of wisdom
delivered over the back fence by a man named Wilson. But we never
ever saw Wilson's full face. So it is with the blues mythologist.
He stands in the alley behind the club and is entranced by the
music. But he never goes through the front door to look the blues
in the eye. Figgis opened the door.
Eastwood's Piano Friends
Eastwood's episode was almost as good
as Pearce's ("The Road to Memphis") and Figgis's. The
music was good and there was a lot of it. The sentimental close,
Ray Charles singing "America the Beautiful," was a
bit much, but did no real harm. The song itself is so obviously
not the blues--no matter how expressively Charles sings it--and
the patriotic appeal is so blatant that one can sigh in exasperation
or bask in warm national-feeling as one remembers those little
munchkins who peddled macaroni and cheese to blues melodies in
those TV commercials. But there are other, more subtle, problems.
I liked all of the piano music Eastwood
gave us, but it was a wildly varied lot that might better have
been gathered under a looser rubric: Some of Clint Eastwood's
Favorite Vernacular Pianists. It would be misleading, however,
to dismiss Eastwood's selection as mere personal whimsy, albeit
whimsy guided by good musical judgment. The problem is inherent
in the way piano traditions evolved in this country, especially
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
As I indicated above, in those days there
was a lot of hot and funky music floating around under various
names, ragtime, blues, stride, and jass or jazz. The distinctions
between those forms were not so clear at the time as they became
in mid-twentieth century retrospect.
Because it was often used as a solo instrument,
and because it so often served as a tool for composers in a wide
variety of both vernacular and high art styles, the piano stood
somewhat apart from those styles even as it partook of them.
Keyboard facility was at once a vehicle for stylistic intermingling
and a source of ideas beholden to no particular style. This is
implicit in the range of musicians Eastwood showed us. Jay McShann,
Pinetop Perkins, Dorothy Donegan, Art Tatum, Ray Charles, Duke
Ellington, Dr. John, Prof. Longhair, Otis Spann, Fats Domino,
Count Basie, and others. Such catholicity is typical of many
musicians, with Ray Charles--who served as Eastwood's anchor
point--being a good example. The individual musicians approach
their craft through the variety of styles available to them.
But that doesn't elide the differences
between musical styles. Without those differences there would
be little point in listening to lots of music. Somehow styles
are maintained in overlapping communities of musicians and fans.
And it is the tensions within and between those communities that
drives the long-term drift of musical styles.
The music itself cannot say these things.
Someone has to point them out, either in the voice-over or through
interviews. The well-read and experienced viewer knows this,
but the novice is likely to come away with the impression that
blues piano is whatever Uncle Clint says it is, and that seems
to be most everything.
Eastwood could have laid the groundwork
for such a discussion if, for example, he had pushed Dave Brubeck
just a little. Early in the episode Eastwood showed Brubeck playing
a stately piece that had gorgeous bluesy resonance in its thick
chords. But blues it was not. Had Eastwood asked, "Dave,
just how does that relate to the blues of, say, Fats Waller?"
Brubeck could have demonstrated a few things at the keyboard
and we would have had a few minutes of footage that made some
useful connections. Similarly, when Marcia Ball demonstrated
her debt to the polyrhythms of Prof. Longhair, Cousin Eastwood
could have prodded her, "polyrhythm, what's that?"
That demonstration would have linked back to the fife-and-drum
music that otherwise inexplicably framed Scorsese's opening episode.
With a few more such questions asked of other pianists and some
voice-over guided by an astute historian--such as John Storm
Roberts (Black Music of Two Worlds)--the connections would have
been made, and painlessly.
That being said, Eastwood made good use
of shots of piano-playing hands and feet--a technique used by
Charlotte Zwerin in her superb documentary, "Thelonius Monk
Straight, No Chaser," for which Eastwood was executive producer.
There was some sensitive and effective editing as well: for example,
cutting seamlessly from a Fats Domino blues to a somewhat different
Prof. Longhair blues without dropping a beat. Toward the end
Eastwood had a montage that reprised short bits from many of
the pianists he had featured. Some might have thought this redundant,
but I found it delightful and effective, creating as it did a
rich sense of all this music pouring out of those 88 keys.
Thus Eastwood allowed life in music to
shine forth as did Pearce ("The Road to Memphis") and
Figgis. But their subjects were narrower in musical, if not ethical,
scope than was his. Yes, the piano is but one instrument among
many, but it is an instrument as protean in its expressions as
the human voice. In being content merely to show us that variety,
Eastwood missed an opportunity to tell us something about how
that variety has been achieved and maintained only to be mixed,
transcended, and transmuted into ever more variety.
What Hath Scorsese
Wrought?
Steve Rosenbaum, a very good producer
I knew when I lived in up-state New York, liked to repeat a simple
observation, that some stories are best told in prose while others
are best told through film or video. By that criterion I think
that, on the whole, Scorsese did better by the blues than Burns
did by jazz. Burns for the most part took existing documents
and rearranged them to tell a standard story. The kind of story
he told--a conventional history--is better told in prose than
video. To be sure, prose cannot present the music itself, but
it can tell the who, what, when, where, and why more effectively.
Nor, in the end, did Burns present the music itself very well.
He gave us many short fragments, but unlike some of the Scorsese
episodes, Burns gave us no whole performances. Where Scorsese
has given us some new documents of considerable value--I'm thinking
particular of the B. B. King-Memphis episode by Richard Pearce
the Eastwood and Figgis episodes--Burns did not produce any original
documents of comparable value.
Thus on a dollar-and-cents basis, Scorsese
has served us better than Burns. Crass though it is, this accounting
is important. The nation-wide budget for such documentaries is
quite thin. Both Burns and Scorsese have spent at least a decade's
worth of money in their respective categories. We aren't going
to see further efforts of this scale anytime soon.
Burns gave us glossy museum exhibits
while Scorsese gave us living music. I bought Burns' series so
I could get the archival footage; I'm buying Scorsese's, not
only for the archival footage, but for the stories told by Pearson,
Figgis, and Eastwood, for Burnett's valiant attempt at setting
blues in the life of its people, and even for Marc Levin's generous
bow to hip-hop--a music that is anathema to the jazz traditionalists
who guided Burns on his way.
What is worse, Burns' whole presentation
was plastered over with the sort of mythologizing sentimentality
that, with few exceptions, disappeared from Scorsese's series
after the first two episodes. And some of the exhibits in Burns'
museum are as phony as Wim Wender's old-timey depiction of myths
about Willie Johnson and Skip James. Thus, in one of his early
episodes Burns had Wynton Marsalis telling stories about Buddy
Bolden as though he'd seen him only yesterday when in fact Bolden
had ceased playing over fifty years before Marsalis was born.
Beyond even that indignity, the soundtrack music during the Buddy
Bolden segment included old-sounding jazz that was, in fact,
performed by <Marsalis.You> wouldn't know that unless you
paid close attention to the end-credits. Even if you had done
that, you wouldn't know that Marsalis was just guessing about
that music because we don't have any recordings of Buddy Bolden's
playing nor of any jazz whatsoever from that era (the first decade
of the twentieth century).
Not only is Burns a sentimentalist, he's
a true blue patriot as well. Had Burns been more studious he
could have consulted historian David Stowe (Swing Changes, 1994)
who would have told him that the now-standard identification
of jazz with America was invented in the nineteen-thirties as
a part of anti-Nazi propaganda. Yes, jazz originated in America,
as did the blues. But so did rock and roll and hip hop and many
styles in the rich stew that is country and western. I do not
believe that any of these musics is more or less typically American
than any of the others. Is any good purpose served by pretending
that Wynton Marsalis is closer to the American bone than Bill
Monroe, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, or Johnny Cash? None at all.
Levin, Figgis, and Eastwood each opened the blues to other musics
while Burns worked hard to insulate jazz from outside influence.
Burns presented a self-absorbed America while Scorsese presented
an America both generous and welcoming.
Even where Scorsese's episodes faltered
they offered useful examples for further work. The only work
that can come from Ken Burns is more Ken Burns. Not only did
Burns examine music from the past, but he was always looking
to the past, never the present or the future. At their best,
Scorsese's episodes summoned the past as a source of raw materials
for a new and different future. Scorsese managed to display a
life and a moral truth that could only be displayed in this medium
of moving images and manifest sound. Burns only used the medium
to present documents framed in a sepia-toned glow.
It's no contest. Forget the Yankee Doodle
dandy. I'm with the son of Sicily.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
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