#The Jazz Epistles

[soulmusicsongs]

Vary-Oo-Vum - The Jazz Epistles (Jazz Epistle - Verse 1, 1960)

[alchemisoul]

Christopher Hitchens and his wife Carol Blue at a Washington Correspondents Dinner in 1995 (Photo by Dafydd Jones)

"I miss his perfect voice. I heard it day and night, night and day. I miss the first happy trills when he woke; the low octaves of “his morning voice” as he read me snippets from the newspaper that outraged or amused him; the delighted and irritated (mostly irritated) registers as I interrupted him while he read; the jazz-tone riffs of him “talking down the line” to a radio station from the kitchen phone as he cooked lunch; his chirping, high-note greeting when our daughter came home from school; and his last soothing, pianissimo chatterings on retiring late at night.

I miss, as his readers must, his writer’s voice, his voice on the page. I miss the unpublished Hitch: the countless notes he left for me in the entryway, on my pillow, the emails he would send while we sat in different rooms in our apartment or in our place in California and the emails he sent when he was on the road. And I miss his handwritten communiqués: his innumerable letters and postcards (we date back to the time of the epistle) and his faxes, the thrill of receiving Christopher’s instant dispatches as he checked-in from a dicey spot on some other continent.

The first time Christopher went public and wrote about his illness for Vanity Fair, he was ambivalent about it. He was intent on protecting our family’s privacy. He was living the topic and he didn’t want it to become all-encompassing, he didn’t want to be defined by it. He wanted to think and write in a sphere apart from sickness. He had made a pact with his editor and chum, Graydon Carter, that he would write about anything except sports, and he kept that promise. He had often put himself in the frame, but now he was the ultimate subject of the story.

His last, unfinished, fragmentary jottings may seem to trail off, but in fact they were written on his computer in bursts of energy and enthusiasm as he sat in the hospital using his food tray for a desk.

When he was admitted to the hospital for the last time, we thought it would be for a brief stay. He thought – we all thought – he’d have the chance to write the longer book that was forming in his mind. His intellectual curiosity was sparked by genomics and the cutting-edge proton radiation treatments he underwent, and he was encouraged by the prospect that his case could contribute to future medical breakthroughs. He told an editor friend waiting for an article, “Sorry for the delay, I’ll be back home soon.” He told me he couldn’t wait to catch up on all the movies he had missed and to see the King Tut exhibition in Houston, our temporary residence.

The end was unexpected.

At home in Washington, I pull books off the shelves, out of the book towers on the floor, off the stacks of volumes on tables. Inside the back covers are notes written in his hand that he took for reviews and for himself. Piles of his papers and notes lie on surfaces all around the apartment, some of which were taken from his suitcase that I brought back from Houston. At any time I can peruse our library or his notes and rediscover and recover him.

When I do, I hear him, and he has the last word. Time after time, Christopher has the last word."

- From an edited version of Carol Blue’s afterword to Mortality by her husband Christopher Hitchens

[wherethefoolsgather]

Congrats on the first ask, ill just recommend some of my favourites then, hope youll enjoy them ^^

[alternative] [rock] Anything by jeff buckley but specifically “Lover you shouldve come over”

[rock] “Vitamin C” by can

[alternative] [rock] Anything by o terno but specifically “morto”

[bossa nova] “A felicidade” by antônio carlos jobim

[electronic] “Dsco” by sweet trip

[electronic] “Angel” by massive attack

[hard rock] “Eye flys” by melvins

[instrumental] “Epistle to the faithful” parts I II & III by chris christoudoulou

[jazz] “You must believe in spring” by bill evans

[metal] “Zero nowhere” by eyehategod

[psychedelic] “nazo nazo” by kikagaku moyo

[classical] string quartet no.8 in c minor op.110 2: allegro molto by dmitri shostakovich

[classical] lacme, the flower duet

[classical] barcarolle

OOOO... SO MANY...

I'll make sure we check these out! Thank you!! :)

[theloniousbach]

COUCH TOUR: CYRUS CHESTNUT with Freddie Hendrix, Mark Lewandowski, and Willie Jones III, SMOKE JAZZ CLUB, 8 OCTOBER 2022

This band, save Dezron Douglas in place of Mark Lewandowski, recorded the album Soul Brother Cool in 2013, so this was a reunion of sorts with at least two tunes (probably more during the second half of the set when Chestnut didn’t mention song titles) from the album.

I think the world of CYRUS CHESTNUT and it was interesting to see him with a horn player. Chesnut lived up to my high expectations with his usual gamut of taste, power, technique, fluidity, and invention, all with warmth and amiability. I try not to miss him.

The addition of Freddie Hendrix, whom I saw taking the huge shoes of Hugh Masekala in a tour with Abdullah Ibrahim to celebrate their South African band the Jazz Epistles. He stood out in that gig that itself stood out for how Ibrahim led the band more than played piano. Hendrix is a strong, almost brash player. And that brashness, expressed in a tendency to go too quickly to flurries of upper register notes and therefore the trumpet equivalent of guitar shredding, is not my thing. I get happy, probably disproportionately, when a trumpter like Jeremy Pelt is lyrical in the mid-range. Hendrix didn’t resist those temptations but at least had some ideas early in his solos and was quite charming on the two fluegelhorn tunes.

In his defense, he came up playing in big bands, especially the legacy Count Basie ensemble. So he has to blow and with significant swagger too. In further fairness, Chestnut is a big big player and he can support such a player.

But I’d rather just hear Chestnut who can roar and purr. He plays big but listens even bigger and there’s always a grace. Willie Jones III was a rock throughout behind the kit. A rock but full of taste and restraint. Similarly Mark Lewandowski cooked and insinuated, particularly with the signature bass line of Soul Brother Cool.

I am glad to hear Chestnut play with a horn but, nah/yeah, I’d rather have hear him alone with that rhythm section.

[jminter]

The sounds of The Jazz Epistles coming to The Chan Centre This weekend experience a moment of jazz history as the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts presents…

[ellenya]

Bruce (@rabbruad1) wrote:

‘As a skilled whistle blower, Elle has a variety of whistles from which to choose.. Whether a particular situation calls for rock, pop, classical, folk, jazz...you name it - she can whistle it.’

I’ve a collection of whistles, but my best is the thistle whistle- it’s made of milk-thistle, with bristles to draw out the sound. Then there’s the mistletoe whistle- if you like Christmas, this’ll be your favorite. It’s hand blessed by an apostle, with written epistle on fissile instruments. The abyssal dismissal whistle’s another great example- it’s made of gristle and launches a missile if you misplay a note. Best leave that one for someone else, right Bru?

[authorofdreams]

Sunday Sharing 2020/09/20

Today is the the Sunday after the Elevation of the Holy Cross and the feast day of Greatmartyr Eustathius Placidas, with his wife and children, of Rome. Today’s Epistle is Galatians (2:16–20) Today’s Gospel is The the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark (8:34–9:1) D4: Source code for mortals Unlike Ken Thompson, I like to see the state of the file I’m editing. His not worrying about seeing the state as well as the cryptic commands for ed lead George Coulouris to write em or, editors for mortals, whose source is on the net. D6: Cultures need one truth Perhaps a search for objective truth is a fool’s errand, but if we abandon it we can only get along with people who have the same subjective truth as us. D8: I need lots of essay collection Where your goal is to read one essay per day most collections last a month or two at best. In looking for new ones I came across this list. D12: We have lost a great with the death of Stanley Crouch There are a lot of articles on the great jazz critic, although it seems reductionist to call him that. He was so much more. If you are unfamiliar with Crouch’s writing, get out there and read. D20: Mass extinction is more common than you think It looks like the Triassic was a very volatile period, begging with largest mass extinction and ending with another. Now we find one in the middle. I wonder if the period will be divided in two. Book of the Week Ghost stories are an interesting genre. One of the two creators was M. R. James. Read the full article

[jmarksthespots]

[#JAZZ #CONCERT] In The Community: Jazz Epistles featuring Abdullah Ibrahim & Ekaya and Hugh Masekela Thursday, April 27 | 8pm The Town Hall | 123 West 43rd Street, New York, NY Admission: $35 / $55 / $65 / $75 / $125 (VIP, includes reception with the artists) Tickets here

Legends of South African music reunite for a historic concert to tell the story of The Jazz Epistles, arguably the most important jazz album ever recorded in its country’s history. Abdullah Ibrahim welcomes special guest musicians from his youth, and from the original Jazz Epistles band — superstar trumpeter Hugh Masekela — to reimagine music for his Ekaya Chamber Ensemble. This music was almost lost forever -- only 500 copies were made in 1959, buried, and rediscovered decades later after the tyranny of apartheid. These giants of South African jazz tell their story at this extremely rare concert at The Town Hall in New York City. 

Ensemble Abdullah Ibrahim – piano Hugh Masekela – flugelhorn, trumpet, vocals Noah Jackson - bass, cello Will Terrill – drums Cleave Guyton Jr.– alto saxophone, flute, clarinet, piccolo Lance Bryant – tenor saxophone Andrae Murchison -  trombone, trumpet Marshall McDonald – baritone saxophone

[seeselfblack]

Happy BornDsy Abdullah Ibrahim - Ishmael...

Nelson Mandela has referred to Abdullah Ibrahim as "South Africa's Mozart," and few would disagree. Born in 1934 in Cape Town, Abdullah Ibrahim's journey to becoming a conduit of beautiful music began at the age of seven with formal piano lessons at his mother's church.

As a young boy, his musical influences ranged from spiritual hymns, traditional African music, carnival and minstrel music, and of course American jazz, swing, and boogie woogie. He earned the nickname "Dollar" from American sailors for his spirited efforts to buy American LPs which could be found for one dollar. This nickname stuck and he would later earn renown as "Dollar Brand."

Alongside Hugh Masekela, he performed and recorded with South Africa's first premiere jazz group, the Jazz Epistles. In exile in Europe in 1963, destiny would call when Duke Ellington discovered him in a jazz café in Zurich, which led to the recording Duke Ellington presents the Dollar Brand Trio (Reprise). Following his mentor to New York where he would later convert to Islam, Abdullah Ibrahim would record prolifically and become one of the leading pianists, composers, and figures in modern jazz.

In the 1970s, his songs "Mannenberg" and "Soweto" would be embraced as anthems of protest against Aparthaid South Africa. In the 1980s he would form the septet Ekaya, which would become one of the few successful acoustic jazz groups of this era. The 1990s would see collaborations with big bands and classical string orchestras. A documentary film, A Struggle for Love, about Abdullah Ibrahim's life journey was made in 2004. His latest recording, Sotho Blue (Sunnyside), is a joyful and swinging performance by his current incarnation of Ekaya.

[bigblackbailey]

HUGH MASEKELA

Biography

Hugh Masekela was a world-renowned flugelhornist, trumpeter, bandleader, composer, singer and defiant political voice who remained deeply connected at home, while his international career sparkled. He was born in the town of Witbank, South Africa in 1939. At the age of 14, the deeply respected advocator of equal rights in South Africa, Father Trevor Huddleston, provided Masekela with a trumpet and, soon after, the Huddleston Jazz Band was formed. Masekela began to hone his, now signature, Afro-Jazz sound in the late 1950s during a period of intense creative collaboration, most notably performing in the 1959 musical King Kong, written by Todd Matshikiza, and, soon thereafter, as a member of the now legendary South African group, the Jazz Epistles (featuring the classic line up of Kippie Moeketsi, Abdullah Ibrahim and Jonas Gwangwa).

In 1960, at the age of 21 he left South Africa to begin what would be 30 years in exile from the land of his birth. On arrival in New York he enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music. This coincided with a golden era of jazz music and the young Masekela immersed himself in the New York jazz scene where nightly he watched greats like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Mingus and Max Roach. Under the tutelage of Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, Hugh was encouraged to develop his own unique style, feeding off African rather than American influences – his debut album, released in 1963, was entitled Trumpet Africaine.

In the late 1960s Hugh moved to Los Angeles in the heat of the ‘Summer of Love’, where he was befriended by hippie icons like David Crosby, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. In 1967 Hugh performed at the Monterey Pop Festival alongside Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, The Who and Jimi Hendrix. In 1968, his instrumental single ‘Grazin’ in the Grass’ went to Number One on the American pop charts and was a worldwide smash, elevating Hugh onto the international stage.

His subsequent solo career has spanned 5 decades, during which time he has released over 40 albums (and been featured on countless more) and has worked with such diverse artists as Harry Belafonte, Dizzy Gillespie, The Byrds, Fela Kuti, Marvin Gaye, Herb Alpert, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and the late Miriam Makeba.

In 1990 Hugh returned home, following the unbanning of the ANC and the release of Nelson Mandela – an event anticipated in Hugh’s anti-apartheid anthem ‘Bring Home Nelson Mandela’ (1986) which had been a rallying cry around the world.

In 2004 Masekela published his compelling autobiography, Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela (co-authored with D. Michael Cheers), which Vanity Fair described thus: ‘…you’ll be in awe of the many lives packed into one.’

In June 2010 he opened the FIFA Soccer World Cup Kick-Off Concert to a global audience and performed at the event’s Opening Ceremony in Soweto’s Soccer City. Later that year he created the mesmerizing musical, Songs of Migration with director, James Ngcobo, which drew critical acclaim and played to packed houses.

That same year, President Zuma honoured him with the highest order in South Africa: The Order of Ikhamanga. 2011 saw Masekela receive a Lifetime Achievement award at the WOMEX World Music Expo in Copenhagen, the first of many. Numerous universities, including the University of York and the University of the Witwatersrand have awarded him honorary doctorates. The US Virgin Islands proclaimed ‘Hugh Masekela Day’ in March 2011, not long after Hugh joined U2 on stage during the Johannesburg leg of their 360 World Tour. U2 frontman Bono described meeting and playing with Hugh as one of the highlights of his career.

Never one to slow down, Bra Hugh toured Europe with Paul Simon on the Graceland 25th Anniversary Tour and opening his own studio and record label, House of Masekela at the age of 75. His final album, No Borders, picked up a SAMA for Best Adult Contemporary in 2017.

Continuing a busy international tour schedule, Hugh used his global reach to spread the word about heritage restoration in Africa – a topic that remained very close to his heart. He founded the Hugh Masekela Heritage Foundation in 2015 to continue this work for generations to come.

“My biggest obsession is to show Africans and the world who the people of Africa really are,”

Masekela confided – It was this commitment to his home continent that propelled him forward since he first began playing the trumpet.

[soulmusicsongs]

Scullery Department - The Jazz Epistles (Jazz Epistle - Verse 1, 1960) South Africa

[theartofindie]

The Unforgettable Roots of Jazz Music: South Africa 🇿🇦

A tap from our foot, the base of our heels feeling the rough earth, hot heat on our skin. In the air is undeniable, unmistakably joyful music, the type where punks and corporates can dance and start a conversation whilst sipping coffee and clapping their sweaty hands. The beautiful culture warming our veins, the African sunset is just over Table mountain and it’s glorious. We don’t really talk about jazz anymore but when we do, the talk goes back to America, back to where it started from the staple of blues and oppression. Rightfully so, it’s a topic widely discussed between muso’s and enthusiasts that we acknowledge where it all began but thus, we forget about the other roots, the warm roots of South African jazz music.

 Not only was the genre popular in the States but it exploded in South Africa. Apartheid was ruling and ruining lives but somehow, black music was stronger than ever. Through unity and oppression, through loss and pain, African jazz became the beauty of the nation. Jazz musicians met up and performed in local nightclubs, bars and venues, imitating popular music, using different percussive sounds and unique, unforgettable melodies. There were smiles in such a disruptive time.

 Bepop Jazz whistled its way into South Africa by the Jazz Epistles, bringing United States Bepop Jazz to the nation. Trombones, trumpets, rhythmic drumming patterns similar to its origin except made into their own. The pioneers brought this genre into Cape Town, during apartheid, starting a revolutionary change in jazz music, popularising a genre that’s so widely appreciated, even today in our modernised music approach. So can we say that jazz music’s origins can be rooted to South Africa?

 Jazz music took a turn in my country, when the Sharpeville massacre occurred, where politicians wanted to hide the murder of many people, leaving jazz clubs to close, musicians out of work. They fled around the world to keep jazz alive and to bring African Jazz worldwide, where it’s still known. The genre was and is never forgotten thanks to our musicians spreading the word, playing the beauty of African music worldwide, inspiring listeners about their stories even just through a flute solo. 

 Step onto the warm ground, the orange dirt and seek the pink skies above you, the Marula tree besides you, the hot air hugging you, mahewu beer in one hand and an mbira in the other. Listen to African Jazz with a different point of view, let it take you back home, back to where it started, back to a place you’ll never forget. Ngiyanemukela.

(Picture does not belong to me. Used for visual context. All rights belong to original owner)

References: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3IhJmobbZ4wC&redir_esc=y

https://web.archive.org/web/20061114034101/http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/worldmusic/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/south_african_jazz_791

[caltropspress]

FEEDBACK LOOP #8: Aesop Rock & Blockhead’s “Jazz Hands”

In a city of garbage trying to reap the harvest. —from Float’s “Garbage” (2000)

...the scum, the leavings, the refuse of all classes… —from Karl Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

My work is made of reworked and transformed found objects…. These objects, the bones, the tiles, the tiny specks and leftovers from day-to-day living, are poetic archaeological elements that I see as part of a conceptual vocabulary of impermanence and memory. —Kevin Sampson

...all run to riot… —from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927)  

1.

“Jazz Hands” is an epistle, a “love note to the whole fuck show,” because a shit show doesn’t go far enough. The letter is “postmarked from a lighthouse in the blunt smoke,” which reads like a beacon of despair. This communiqué is something dismal, from Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse, if anything—and there’s a dead seagull in the cistern. Aesop crosses out and scraps the draft. Crumpled paper ball tossed to the wastebasket, misses. He puts pen to paper again, starting anew: “Dear Motherfuckers, I’m teetering if you must know.” Teeter is fulcrum talk—he’s pivoting, on a precipice, plank-walkin’. In a confessional mode. It’s the skunk hour as he channels Robert Lowell: My mind’s not right...I myself am hell. This is a love letter from despondency.

2.

Carol Hanisch's the personal is political slogan has been gutted over the years—it’s become a flimsy fucking platitude in the same way “abolish the police” has been reduced and defanged to “defund the police.” But that doesn’t negate the truth that the personal is political. The personal can also speak to the political. Aesop’s been introspective, sure. The Sorrows of Young Ian, if you will. Recall him divulging his mental health struggles in documentary footage from 2002: “Sometimes I end up stressing myself out to the point where I can’t do anything.” But he’s always looked outward. On “Basic Cable,” it wasn’t just his brain that was in thrall to “the monstrous Panasonic,” it was all of ours, synapses dulled to death. “9-5ers Anthem” didn’t just chronicle his labor woes; it spoke to “we the American working population [who] hate the fact that eight hours a day is wasted on chasing the dream of someone that isn’t us.” Aesop was concerned for everyone on “Babies with Guns,” knowing the fear he had of “diaper snipers” was a shared one. Aesop Rock’s anxieties and depressive episodes—his struggle, in short—speak to our collective struggle.  

3.  

Aesop’s got few reasons to reenter the fray, but the innocence of a child just might compel him to do so: “Niece on the phone saying, ‘Ian you should visit more. / We could build forts while the pigs court civil war.’” A fort made of couch cushions, afghans, and clothespins might not cut it, but it’s adequate practice for the newspaper boxes, trashcans, and dumpsters she’ll spread across the city street as a barricade. Riots are rehearsals for revolution, right right? Right, right.

Aesop’s words—his incessant stacking of syllables, his breaths like mortar—in the spirit of garbology, build a sort of Bakunin’s Barricade (2015-2018). Turkish artist Ahmet Öğüt’s art “represents, inter alia, a materialization of a proposal by Mikhail Bakunin to place art works from the national museum’s collection in front of barricades.” Öğüt’s barricades are built from objects like car tires, metal tubes, plywood, police fences, and wooden stakes.

The announcement of the album Garbology arrived with something of an artist’s statement from Aesop:

Garbology is defined as the study of the material discarded by a society to learn what it reveals about social or cultural patterns. I find a lot of parallels between that and the idea of picking up the pieces after a loss or period of intense unrest…

Bakunin’s Barricade is exhibited with a loan contract that stipulates the component parts of the installation can be used to create an actual barricade “in the context of extreme economic, social, political, transformative moments and movements which engender high levels of public concern relating to fundamental human rights.” Weaponize the art, that is.

4.

Aesop appears to decline his niece’s invitation as he signs the message with cute-speak: “Miss you, miss you more.” “See you on the far side,” he adds. The Pharcyde? As the niece ages, she’ll learn that the police aren’t friends but threats. To quote Slimkid3, the blue coat billy-goats will leave her discomboburated… discomboburated… malfunctionated faded. She’ll be left with a “couple new scars in the archive.”

5.

When you take to the streets—to build barricades, to protest police violence—you’re fighting the system and the spectacle. Guy Debord told us that modern market-driven life is an “accumulation of spectacles,” and that includes the very demonstrations against such a life. “The spectacle,” he says, “is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.” Images of pussyhats and punny signs. Images that can go viral, mine data, bait clicks, and suck selves into screens. Images that sell, sell, sell.

It’s a magic trick, really. That invisible hand that sniffs out profit with a glistening pig snout. But Aesop Rock, that Ted Kaczynski-cum-Kool Keith cenobite, is “not here to pull scarves out” of his sleeve. He’s not “here to pick tumblers underwater with his arms bound”—none of those Houdini steez. And he’s not down for the histrionics either—the “where art thou’s” of Shakespeare’s stage. No trap doors or illusions. “We don’t do smoke and mirrors,” he swears.

6.  

Aesop Rock knows what needs to be done. He’s “down to throw a grapnel at a guard tower, / Down to spray piss on a cop car.” What is the role of the artist, though, in the age of a militarized police presence? Is the composition of a song a substitute for direct action? Resistance takes many forms. During the Holocaust, you could stab a Nazi in the jugular with a dull steak knife or hum a Hebrew song under your breath. Art can transgress and rile and rancor the right people. Andres Serrano can submerge Christ in piss. Dash Snow can smear semen across tabloid front pages bearing the image of yesterday’s politician. Rappers can reflect a reality too readily denied: “This pig he killed my homeboy”—word to B-Real, wee wee wee.

On “Jazz Hands,” Aesop tests the limits. His words might be “rage in the form of Renaissance art.” His song might “wake a giant” or “poke a bear.” What he can’t do, apparently, is treat this rap thing “like a job at the stockyard / And feign shock when they turn the block to a pock mark.” Aesop’s agitation then goes sci-fi. Even with “stock parts” he’s “knocking on Mach 1.” Camp Lo bumps in the system, but Aesop decides against killin’ ’em softly. He’s a limelighter—not gonna fade to black comfortably. In fact, he’s “amped up, [his] eyes glowing unknown pantones.” Colors swirl at this speed, and the scene “feels like a Van Gogh.”  

7.

What happens next is something like a spiraling  acid trip or a dizzying fever dream, so “bring acetaminophen.” A widening gyre that engulfs; a world turning circles. Not an innocuous or inoculating nursery rhyme. Not the fall-down descent of “Ring Around the Rosie,” but “ring around the king of pain,” which stings like  a black-spotted sun, alluding perhaps to “King of Pain” by—you guessed it—The Police (as in, Fuck the). Dyslexically, the sequence of “[king of pain, / Bring]” leads us to Method Man, so let’s go inside the astral plane.

Adrenaline-fueled, Aesop possesses a “new super power that [he] picked up in the frenzy.” He’s able to manifest phenomena with only his mental: he “could draw a roof on fire from memory”; “each and every sketch another bloodletting.” Drawing the fire; sketching the bloodletting. The art acts up—it agitates.  

This isn’t solitary work, though—it’s an invitation to collective action. RSVP has two box options to checkmark: “either you see the vision or dinner demolition men.” And he asks without a Stallone slur, so you know where he stands. The dual meaning of “demo,” too: the activists who organize a demo[nstration], and the cops whose actions incite the demo[lition] of a downtown.

8.  “I had to do something to let them...know I still exist.” —Cornbread

Is there nothing more pathetic than cleaning up graffiti? In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May of 2020, residents in Minneapolis volunteered their labor to the likes of Chase Bank. They scrubbed away the “vandalism” which had come to adorn the windows and walls of the financial institution. Performative community care for the masses. The revolution will not have jazz hands. Don’t they know Chase Bank accepted slaves as collateral on loans to plantation owners? Don’t they know JPMorgan Chase targeted Black homebuyers and sold them on garbage loans in the aughts?

9.  “Dwellin’ in the rotten apple, you get...caught by the devil’s lasso, / Shit is a hassle.” —Nas, “The World is Yours” (1994)

I step into the room, split an arrow with an arrow. The first trick shot is just to show ’em that I dabble. I will not be aiming for the apple.

Aesop Rock angles in as a folklorist. Less William Burroughs; more William Tell. Appleseeds burst with a cyanide splash. Thanks for nothing, lowlife. We sometimes forget the rapper’s namesake. “Long Legged Larry” seems innocent enough, but even Aesop’s Fables includes one about a “treacherous Frog” who ties a mouse’s leg to his own with a “tough reed” and drowns the rodent.

Counterrevolutionaries, a.k.a. Little Ed Kochs, will buff the trains and put “razor-wire fences and guard dogs” in the yard, according to Jeff Chang. Koch fantasized of worse: “If I had my way, I wouldn’t put in dogs, but wolves.” Is that a dog at the front door barking at the air or a “wolf at the door like a bug to the fructose”? Who the fuck knows? But that wolf will soften his voice, don grandmother’s bed-clothes, and swallow that Little Red Riding Hood whole.

10.  “The idea of digging through old, neglected music from another time with an ear tuned for taking in that data in a different way...is exactly what Block does.”  —Aesop Rock

Blockhead digging through record crates is like A.J. Weberman fanatically rummaging through Dylan’s trash cans in Greenwich Village. Block conjures the spirit of a junk sculptor for his assemblage of swirling sonics. “Waste makers provide the conditions for scavenger art,” Donald Clark Hodges wrote in Artforum in 1962.

Blockhead has been a web crawler for decades now, collecting the detritus whether it’s dope or dum-dum, compiling a cache of useless images and temporary internet files—meme litter. As Joseph G. Schloss has pointed out, beat diggers “seem to be predisposed to collecting things in general.”  If you dig in crates, you get dusty. Dusty connotes not only the dinge of the external world but also the cloistered sedentary life of computerized time—the dedicated tinkering upon monastic musical machinery—that creates a layer of dust only to be countered by cans of compressed air. If you’re a digger, you find yourself in storage facilities: garages and thrift shops and swap meets and hoarderific record stores. What’s beatmaking if not woolgathering? The production on “Jazz Hands” sounds like someone caught in a looping meditation.

“The idea to go with no drums over the verse was Aesop’s,” Block says. Liberated from percussion, Aesop’s flow is irregular, slowing and accelerating according to attitude, not time. “It’s very much a regular 4/4 beat,” but the vagabond variability of Aesop’s voice makes it seem otherwise. Blockhead describes the production as possessing “this feeling of swelling waves...as the layers weave in and out of it.” I can’t help but Google image search photos of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a trash vortex of marine debris, of horizonless plastic waste broken down into small particles, like a 2.5 second loop, like the 12-bits and 10.07-seconds of an SP sample.

11.

Comfort can be found in confrontation, in “going from being chased to playing chicken.” You don’t need healing crystals and a zodiac chart to “treat every interaction as a living wake.” That’s just good common sense. Look around, one might say, “before the photo pixelate,” before the seas rise, before the horns blow. You’re liable to “get your whole road map Pac-Man’d.” Moral compass gone zany.

12.  Black mask.

The black mask is likely a balaclava. Slip the surveillance state. Scramble the facial recognition software. The black mask is a skeleton key, a vortex to meaning. Aesop's “Dear Motherfucker” greeting might just be an address to Ben Morea. After all, Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, or UAW/MF, or simply “The Motherfuckers,” began as Black Mask. They havocked the streets of New York in the 1960s with Situationist-inspired antics and exploits.

One such action involved gathering the city’s refuse as sanitation workers went on strike for better wages and safer conditions. (“We may handle garbage, but we’re not garbage,” as one Local 831 sanitation worker put it.) The Motherfuckers plotted. They hauled the rotting garbage from the Lower East Side to the philharmonic, operatic, bourgeois steps and fountain of Lincoln Center, to its gala-goers and elite society sirs and madams in their tuxes and ball gowns. The filthiest rich. The Motherfuckers, to paraphrase Hodge, “[exposed] this waste to public view by focusing attention upon it instead of hiding and disguising it…. exploding the illusion that ‘dirt’ no longer exists.”

The action was documented in 1968’s Newsreel short film. We throw garbage on them. We puke on them. We say fuck you to them, the narration says, symphonically.

The anarchists leafletted, too. WE PROPOSE A CULTURE EXCHANGE: (garbage for garbage), the title read. “America takes all that is edible,” it continues, “exchangeable, investable, and leaves the rest.” Like space junk. Like Gargantua and Pantagruel’s table scraps. (Aesop Rock really is rap’s Rabelais, what with his excess of words, philosophical slants, lurid folklore, and undiluted fun.) “The world is our garbage,” the Motherfuckers explain. Music and art—“Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Shakespeare”—only function to “cover the sound of our garbage making.” They sum it up in a sordid sort of haiku:

A cultural revolution garbage fertilizes discovers itself

13.  “The revolution will not be jazz hands.”

In this percussionless mode, Aesop is proto-rap—a conduit that channels Gil Scott-Heron and Gary Byrd. We need to know revolution is not Pepsi can handoffs to riot cops. “It’s not an ad, hashtag, or a tap dance.” Revolution is not an IG influencer posing for a planned and premeditated photo opp curbside during a BLM protest.  An “influencer” who wouldn’t know an anxiety of influence if it panic attacked them in a comments section. Such gestures are “alien to matters of the heart and mind.” Meanwhile, the rest of us “park the car and scream into the dark of night.”

“Jazz Hands” argues you can both be on the barricades and planning an escape. When Aesop Rock talks of taking “a rocket to the Kármán line” and proceeds to the countdown, it’s not some billionaire blastoff. He’s talking of tearing the roof off the sucker, a P-Funk diasporic trajectory. An extraterrestrial alternative to the lifeless landfills of Earth. Some space shuttle orbiter with a Sun Ra rattle. A soulsonic blast with excessive force.  

Images:

“Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” Ethan Daniels/Shutterstock.com | Bakunin’s Barricade (Istanbul) 2016, Ahmet Öğüt | “The entrance of Lycee Dorian high school in Paris was blocked with rubbish bins during the protests,” Geoffroy van der Hasselt/AFP/Getty Images | Harry Houdini Jumps from Harvard Bridge in Boston, Massachusetts, John H. Thurston (1908) | Demolition Man, 1993, dir. Marco Brambilla (screenshot) | Citizens of Minneapolis cleaning up graffiti off Chase Bank (screenshot) | Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, Berkeley Barb, courtesy of Sean Stewart | Newsreel, 1968 (screenshot) | Parliament, Mothership Connection, 1975 (detail)

[briefnewschannel]

Kippie Moeketsi and Hal Singer: Blue Stompin’ — a South African and American fusion

Kippie Moeketsi and Hal Singer: Blue Stompin’ — a South African and American fusion

The alto saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi (the misspelling of his surname on this release is a symptom of how far his star had fallen) would be famous as a star of South African jazz had he not failed to leave the country. His peers and protégés — Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela — went into exile in the early 1960s, bringing to an end the Jazz Epistles, the supergroup that Moeketsi had…

[jminter]

Join a Free Conversation with Abdullah Ibrahim Tonight

Join a Free Conversation with Abdullah Ibrahim Tonight

Abdullah Ibrahim Sunday night, The Chan Centre for Performing Arts welcomed The Jazz Epistles : Abdullah Ibrahim with Terrance Blanchard, an evening with the jazz greats plus the band Ekaya. The Chan Centre was filled with fans ready to get lost the smooth sounds of the eight performers gracing the stage; Ibrahim on piano and Blanchard on Trumpet.  The Ekaya sextet features; Noah Jackson…

[americanmysticom]

THE ESSENTIAL RELATIONSHIP FOR YOU, AS A CHILD OF G-D, TO YOUR LOVING PARENT WHO BIRTHED YOU THROUGH LABORIOUS PROCESS

SHOULD LIKEWISE BE CONSIDERED A PROCESS REQUIRING CAREFUL NURTURING AND ATTENTIVE EFFORT, THE SONG OF PRAYER IS A COMPOSITION OF LIGHT 

A PRIORITY OF GREAT MAGNITUDE IS THE CROWN OF G-DS LIGHT UPON YOUR HEAD

SOMETIMES THERE IS OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE QUICK PROGRESS,

BY AND LARGE, THE LONG-SHORT ROAD IS WHAT IS REQUIRED

WHY BE IN SUCH A HURRY

THE WHOLE POINT IS THE CONNECTION THAT THE RELATIONSHIP PRODUCES

SPEND SOME TIME

SHE IS WORTH IT

SHE WANTS THE WATERS OF LIFE TO FLOW,

SO LET IT FLOW

Daily Study  Daily Tanya Iggeret HaKodesh, end of Epistle 1 Wednesday, 5 Av 5781 / July 14, 2021

https://www.chabad.org/dailystudy/tanya.asp?tdate=7/14/2021&auto=audio#auto=audio&author=13568&index=1

download audio; https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/filedownload_cdo/aid/952961

Sacred Hebrew music | subtitles -  The secret, Yamma Ensemble

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp03zcuTA6E

EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT JEWISH, YOU ARE A CHILD OF G-D, EQUAL IN G-DS SIGHT, EACH INDIVIDUAL NO LESS EACH PART OF THE FLOCK THAT IS PAID ATTENTION TO

LONGINGLY AND WITH GREAT ATTENTIONS CARED FOR WITH GREAT POWER AND MIGHT

SO I RECOMMEND THAT EVERYONE OF EVERY LAND CONSIDER FOR YOURSELF THESE OLD WARTIME PRAYER BOOKS TO READ EVERY MORNING. THE TOUNGUE IS KING-JAMES, WITH THE HEBREW NEXT TO IT, I DON’T KNOW HEBREW YET BUT THE SCRIPT IS IMPORTANT IF ONLY ONLY TO VIEW, YOUR SOUL KNOWS WHAT THE LETTERS MEANS

AND SO IT RESONATES WITHIN YOUR HEART, THE PLACE OF YOUR TRUE MIND

NOT THE VOLATILE MIND OF INTERPRETATION, THAT IS FREQUENTLY ILLUSION UNLESS YOU HAVE BETTER PROGRAMMING

NOT THE COARSE PROGRAMMING OF CCP CONTROL

YOUR HEART IS CLOSEST TO THE REAL NATURE THAT IS CLOSEST A PART OF G-D

YOUR UNCONSCIOUS LAYER IS CONNECTED TO THE WHOLE

AS IF AN UMBILICUS, A TETHER TO YOUR PARENT 

1941 ABRIDGED PRAYER BOOK https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u0kAXSB4Ppf37zIyCwDqyQCIYSEyZMkZ/view?usp=sharing

1915 PSALMS PRAYER BOOK https://drive.google.com/file/d/15z1eDhNTymRuSycnKLee33IN0NfKZLQj/view?usp=sharing

READ THEM WITH YOUR NORMAL BIBLE STUDY

WHILE THE SHOFAR IS IMPORTANT, THE CALL TO PRAYER

THE PRAYER PERIOD IS NOT JUST EXTEMPORANEOUS MUSICAL JAZZ

IT IS MEANT AS G-DLY PROGRAMMING SO THAT YOUR LIFE CAN BE GOOD

SO LET IT BE GOOD

OTHERWISE YOUR PARENT IS VERY CLOSE TO LOSING HER TEMPER

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

A LOVING PARENT WHO IS GUIDING YOU ATTENTIVELY IN LOVING RELATIONSHIP

OR DO YOU WANT THE TEMPER?

[SO I BOUGHT A DJI IPHONE TRIPOD AND TWO DJI DRONES TO HELP ME PROVIDE A VIDEO PRESENTATION OF TEKNA AND PANZERKUDST

THEY WILL GO UP ON VIMEO AND RUMBLE, BOTH FREE AND DONATION WILL BE POSTED EQUALLY

HOME SPUN - AN ARCHIVE WILL BE MADE AS INSPIRED AND WITH TIME]

https://tekna.co/ 

THERE ARE TEKNA RUMBLE AND VIMEO ACCOUNTS, AND I SUPPOSE IN YOUTUBE UNDER THE TEKNA TUBE CHANNEL