This was absolutely incredible.

Reactionary weirdos: Keep your politics out of my Music! Marxist: No

The most political thing you can do in music is focus on EXCELLENCE, which is extremely difficult in itself, because we have no timenergy in TechnoCapitalism. Good music inspires us to think about the horizon of possibilities that are open to humans, including those that might open up if we overcame the rule of capital. I think that is all we can ask of it.

@scribewolfmusic

2 ай бұрын

Howdy & thanks for the thoughtful replies! I'll respond to a few of them here. I mostly agree with this! I realize I must be approaching this in a circumlocutory way at times in the interview, but it was the main point of the story about "sofferte" (it's gratifying to hear the Nono recognition, by the way) in the sense that what's at stake in a politics of music is the primacy of the craft of sound, irrespective of the political "linguistic-matter" as I put it. RE: jazz...I feel there's a fundamental disagreement on what I sense is an antiessentialism/racism question, and that's a whole 'nother debate. So let me approach it this way: I don't believe spontaneity is the primary concern in jazz, nor do I believe spontaneity & improvisation are interchangeable terms. If I suggested or said that, that was purely sloppiness & error on my part! Vis-a-vis the first error, of course there are many other considerations; just one isolated personal example is that I've been enrapt with the problematic of jazz composition since I was a teen such that at one point I was on my way to studying under Braxton. You might consider that institutionalized jazz as well, and I understand there are historical concerns about a racist discourse of the exotic Other. Yet at a certain point, there is a reductio ad absurdum to be made, and I think it'd be difficult to make a robust case that emphases on particular rudimentary aspects of jazz are *essentially* white. Ultimately, if they are, I guess I don't particularly care especially as someone who is not. Maybe this amounts to a perspectival difference, but I guess then for what it's worth as a queer Asian country musician in Appalachia I believe thinking music through communist politics behooves thinking genres beyond their capitalist circumscriptions; and jazz might be the universalism par excellence. As for the latter error, spontaneity is not the totality of improvisation, no, but it is one of the primary elements that definitionally distinguishes it from completely predeterminate music, as it would for example in delineating figured bass from a fully notated Bach keyboard accompaniment. Concerning the question of free jazz qua event, I'd suggest that 1. we are perhaps referring to two different definitions of "event" here and 2. in characterizing the import of free jazz I'd caution against overemphasizing the side of capitalist recuperation. Now, I'm strictly talking about the Badiouian event, which especially in the later Badiou does not even so much as necessarily connote punctualness/suddenness nor does it preclude a "forcing" into the linguistic Symbolic of the "situation"--to the contrary it often denotes an incremental process ending in the latter. It would often be the case then that this would lead to consumerist recuperation under late capitalism, or potentially even some Thermidorian political reaction. My second point is similar to the above argument about the supposed whiteness of certain emphases, and in this case I think too much focus on the cynical corporate expression of free jazz as an object of exchange might do some work to eclipse ironically what you excellently remind us about the genealogies & traditions of technique & discipline that lead into something like a free jazz. I'll leave it at that...I've said quite a bit, haha! Ultimately I think we share many concerns about music, and I appreciate your comments. :)

I used to listen to Luigi Nono all the time... Il Canto Sospeso and La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura. Good stuff! Very surprised to hear him brought up here; today's leftists are not exactly knowledgeable or interested in music often. As for Attalli -- my memory of this text is that it promotes an outlook that is fairly congruent with neoliberalism, but it's been many years since I read it...

As a jazz musician I would STRONGLY contest the idea of spontaneity as being the primary question raised by jazz, this really relates to the reception of jazz by primarily white listeners who read their own concerns into the music. This was true of not only the beats but the Greenwich Village avant garde painters who embraced Monk, etc... Obviously improvisation includes spontaneity, but what is crucial is that this is mediated by a lifetime of practice, practice opens up various pathways and spontaneous decisions are mostly limited to pathways that have been developed over long periods of time. At the heart of jazz are forms of APPRENTICESHIP and TRAINING that are multigenerational and extend a living open ended tradition. It's political in its expression of Otium by people who were denied freedom by the wider society, and by the way that otium provides images of what could be possible in a society where capital and wage labor are overcome.

@Garrett1240

2 ай бұрын

Surely greater training and apprenticeship would lead to less spontaneity and more endeavoring within a rule set.

@TheCyborgk

2 ай бұрын

​@@Garrett1240 This is a function of HOW you practice -- not all practice is the same. Think of it like an infant learning words: an infant might spontaneously scream but they cannot tell a story until they learn actual words, and the more words a person knows, the more choices they have available in the story telling, allowing them more options to tell the story in different ways. Knowledge of vocabulary is a prerequisite for learning to tell stories in a spontaneous way. The same thing applies for music. A beginning pianist can't be spontaneous, because they barely have any patterns under their fingers. If they manage to figure out one thing that works, they will only be able to play one thing. And if they learn two or five tricks, they still won't be very spontaneous because they will have limited choices. An experienced improvisor, on the other hand, has trained their fingers to do thousands of different things. That musician will be able to be as spontaneous as they want. Training makes you more spontaneous, if you develop the skill to be able to use and combine any of those thousand things in different ways--at this point, you get the possibility of spontaneity. It is not possible to "spontaneously" play jazz patterns without training because human fingers are not born with the ability to play music, that requires training. By the way, even people like Charlie Parker often worked out versions of things they liked for particular songs; and that's an important reminder that spontaneity isn't valued in itself or the supreme value in jazz. What really matters in jazz, according to Thelonious Monk is being able to "make the bandstand levitate" every time the band plays -- that is, creating a collective ritual spiritual experience. This element of jazz comes out of the black church actually, and Monk himself toured with a holy roller preacher at one point in his younger days.

@scribewolfmusic

2 ай бұрын

Hey, I wanted to come back to this after considering it seriously for a few days. I don't really know how KZread works and dunno if you'll ever see it, but I appreciate the time & thought you put into your responses and wanted to at least try to return it. :) I do agree of course with the notion that improvisation doesn't manifest entirely in spontaneity, that it consists through often hyper-rigorous routines of practice & experience that occur in contexts of tradition. I can speak to this in fact as someone whose wheelhouse is improvisation (on guitar if I had to choose one instrument, but really, on anything from piano to drums to banjo). I play through many idioms--country, rock, free improv, &c.--so it's not lost on me how frustrating it is to be met with the response that "my five-year-old could do that." I think it was in another comment you mentioned that you read hundreds of interviews with jazz musicians. While I can't claim to have done that, I have read (& of course played) quite a bit, and vis-a-vis this particular issue, I wanted to get some other perspectives so I did ask some of my (free) jazz musician pals about this--Downtown & otherwise. None of them had heard this particular thesis, nor the one about free jazz as epistemological break qua corporate narrative. I extend you the benefit of the doubt and would be interested in sources for these arguments. But this is to say those theses are far from consensus among free jazz musicians. In my estimation on the upside it all goes to show that jazz is one of those supreme idioms that requires no conservative circumscription & indeed always bursts through the seams of any such attempt. Let me give you one of my favorite examples. Take Albert Ayler. In many ways he still eludes hypostatization according to rigid music criticism categorics. The precise combination--so early on in the history of avant-garde jazz--of focusing so much of that radical energy into what was nearly impossible to notate--i.e., timbre--while concomitantly performing a repertory that was so firmly grounded in historical referent--not just standards, but often Negro spirituals--is the sort of uncanny experimentalism that so intransigiently slides away from capture. Yet the main point is that his music was dolefully, divinely, even excruciatingly beautiful. And this beauty was only possible exactly because of its relentless recursion to the traditional-musical, traditional-spiritual, and even traditional-political theories & practices it was grounded in--and exceeded! That is why I believe someone like Ayler, who even directly referred to the musical & communitarian tradition of the Negro spiritual, must not be confined to a category of racial practice lest we risk reproducing a racist fantasy of exotic Otherness. Ayler's legacy lived on in some of my favorites, like Paul Flaherty & Peter Brotzmann, both white, and this ought to be celebrated if nothing else. I probably need not tell you that on the personal register those two musicians regularly collaborated with black jazz musicians from older generations; I myself am not white; the free jazz pals I consulted about this were of a multiracial cross-section; and so in the individual unfolding of musicianship history additionally then, I'm not sure there's any constructive political import in racializing particular concerns as such within the idiom.

@TheCyborgk

2 ай бұрын

​@@scribewolfmusic Context: I popped that comment off in the middle of the video, as a response to your citing the beats. I was talking about the discourse specifically from the 1950's, the era of the Beats and the abstract painting scene in Greenwich Village. The phrase "white listeners" was only meant to apply to people like Kerouac, or the audience for Monk during the time when he was considered to be the "high priest of bebop." (see his bio by Robin D G Kelley) I was talking really about 1950's white hipster subcultures specifically. Not trying to make any claim specifically related to race at all. In other words, what I'm saying is that I don't think beat poetry actually has that much to do with jazz, and I don't think NYC abstract expressionist painting did either, and I think that jazz had a different meaning for those artists, then it had for the jazz musicians making the music. And the value which spontaneity has varies for different musicians--as evidenced by the facts that jazz musicians have often worked out versions of solos and played variations on it multiple times, and this includes those renowned for their spontaneity. What I was trying to get at is the way that jazz could have one meaning for those who create it, but can be interpreted quite differently (for instance) by so called "jazz critics." A classic example would be the kind of misunderstanding that led one critic to call Coltrane's music "antijazz." So if there is some kind of simplistic binary implied in my statement, think of it as more "musician vs critic," or even "insider vs outsider." And from this level, you can't draw conclusions--we absolutely can't assume that the author or creator knows best. Thus, one might plausibly argue that the beats understood jazz BETTER than jazz musicians themselves! And maybe you could come up with good arguments. BUT--personally I think they misunderstood it. Kerouac said, "I want to be considered a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday." And this is the kind of statement I can't stand, because I see very little connection between Kerouac's writing practice and the practice of jazz musicians. But the most important point is that I am a jazz musician, therefore I cannot make neutral claims. If I reject what I perceive as an ideology of spontaneity, this is an existential ethical judgment I am making about how we SHOULD think about jazz, not primarily a historical claim. I just think we can just take for granted that improvisation involves spontaneity, and not belabor the point, and worry about other things. And improvisation is "normal" in music, it is a historical exception that European art music developed the written form of music in a way that caused improv to die out. But Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert etc were all great improvisors. Granted some jazz musicians are more obsessed with spontaneity than others, but I think such an obsession is an expression of an individual's singular style. Another way to put it: Jazz is like a conversation. When you talk to a friend, you don't have to make a big deal about your conversation being "spontaneous," that just happens. It would be really weird if before you met up with a friend, you carefully rehearsed everything you were going to say. But to me, it would also be a bit strange if you were constantly obsessing about whether your conversation was spontaneous enough. FLUENCY in an idiom (spoken or musical) naturally includes the ability to spontaneously express what you need to express within the idiom.

@scribewolfmusic

2 ай бұрын

​@@TheCyborgk OK, yeah, this really clarifies for me what you were getting at, and I think it is utterly fair! For what it's worth--and this might come down to an authorial perspective as you mentioned, so take it with a grain of salt--I believe it was Daniel who brought up liking the Beats as a kid, and I've never had that much love for that movement either--indeed speaking as a poet too--beyond a youthful flirtation. So in the way that Kerouac quote you mentioned makes a knowledgeable blues or jazz musician shake his head, I'd grimace & turn the other way were I to hear that sort of thing in one of those white-cube gallery-spaces (if I ever were invited to one, lol!). In that historical sense there is a class & racial liberal exotification of the Other that has been enacted, and this probably persists tenaciously--albeit it might manifest in slightly different language in today's white-cubes, though given my interaction with Ivy-heeled art kids, it's hardly any more sophisticated. I resonate with the umbrage here. And too, if there is any trans-generic (as in "genre") conversation to be had, I think it would be at best a lazy error of impressionable music criticism to relate free jazz most saliently to the Beats or Abstract Expressionism--in poetry, in the very least, some Black Arts Movement poets come to mind first. When I think of the most famous proponents of Abstract Expressionism, and if I'm to isolate the processual fetish of "spontaneity" (a problem in itself which you elucidate nicely), in the musical domain I'd first bring up John Cage instead of free jazz. But considering AE as a whole movement, if I were to choose one musical doyen to homologously illuminate all the wondrous qualities of Abstract Expressionism, not wrested out of dialectical conversation with each other, that would be Morton Feldman--from his earlier indeterminate works that emphasized the primacy of the performer, through the meditative-immersive sound-fields of Rothko Chapel, to his late & great period, with those glacial monuments to quietude & verticality. And certainly, in terms of poetry--though I'm aware the name doesn't have as much nominal coherence as it does in other genres--I am much more given to the New York School over the Beats as well. John Ashbery...GOAT.

Wasn’t expecting a sleaford mods reference

@scribewolfmusic

2 ай бұрын

I realize they're a fairly "random" example of defanged "political music" to bring up considering the others mentioned, haha! I am personally not a fan but admittedly not too familiar either. I think the only thing that caused that name to slip out was my recalling of their reputation as a postmodern "protest" band as it were, and then their defensive response to the hubbub caused by a fan (in Spain I believe) throwing a Palestine flag on stage.

I learned more things.

A key text that nobody reads in relation to music is Henri Lefebvvre, "Rhythmanalysis" -- I suspect that eurhythmia is a more useful category than catharsis in talking about what music does.

35:17 modern music critics have nothing on that. lol

Artistic breakthrough matters even if it happens less and less. Without which we would have no special place for art and the relationship it creates between society and artists. But an ever increasing obsession with technology, procedures and methods, also cuts down or impairs potentiality, to think and act independently. Blocks out the irrational and rebellious instincts within us. The artist is “a transmitter of orders and a performer of calculations” (Jaques Ellul - Empire of Nonsense). Even as that sounds utterly hard-line, as opinion it does resonate when we observe the ‘producers of art’ engaged in various seemingly creative acts. An electronic music producer is most often “transmitting” her or his creativity into machines, real or virtual, via software which consequently performs the necessary “calculations” to generate the desired sound (and music). Or many times just mindless garbage. Ironic that they constantly remind us, that this stuff is ‘State Of The Art’ However this so called expert, has little to say about the overall impact and rule of technology on modern music, instead the same old David Bowie cult worship trash has to prevail. So bogus.

@scribewolfmusic

13 күн бұрын

Howdy, I'm the so-called "so-called expert" in the interview. I believe I made two passing mentions of David Bowie, both of them in reference to examples of periodization in specific books (Heroes by "Bifo" Berardi and Noise by Jacques Attali). These mentions weren't endorsements; I certainly don't belong to any cult & funny enough I'm actually not much of a fan of Bowie...not that there's anything wrong with that! :-) Contra the claim that I failed to take up the question of technology & music--which was not even within the stated purview of this interview, so I'm a bit thrown by the bellicose tone!--I notably began my discussion by illuminating an electroacoustic piece by Luigi Nono. It's a beautiful piece indeed! Additionally, insofar as the centerpiece of our discussion, Attali's Noise, is a kind of transposed historical materialist genealogy of music, we actually touched on--quite a bit--the question of technology, what mediatizes the artistic truth-procedure (Badiou) in the diachronic-Symbolic unfolding of music history. I do remember while babbling about the new problems facing improvisation in the era of communicative capitalist isolation in relation to my own new free improv project, I even discussed processual asynchronicity a la digital multitracking as a distinct element interjecting into the improvisational record, and I believe I made reference to Benjamin's famous essay at that time. Nonetheless, I apologize that this video, which has nothing to do with your comment, didn't include anything having to do with your comment--including the Bowie stuff--but I'm confident that you already know exactly what you're gonna put in the excellent video you'll make on the topic, whatever that is! :-)

at 39:00 yea the beat generation and bebop.... for sure. however, i think Burroughs was not so much into jazz... as instead, he and Bryion Gyson were all about the Pan Pipes of Jourjouka! a lot dift orientation 🎉

@mandys1505

2 ай бұрын

The pan like god of the farmers and shepherds of Moroccan Joujouka... is pre-Islamic... i suppose that communists would suppress it...because it believes in a diety...and uses the mythological story...along with the trance like pipe music. As for bebop...i think that was very pro- Socialist! ...all about power to the people....

...i think of the giant balalaika and pipa statue in Khabarovsk, very beautiful, actually! / its to celebrate the folk music of both china and russia... i personally think that one of thd political reasons for china to reintroduce the qin...pipa... xun... was to establish a continuity with the past...but now that they had erased most but not all of the actual music... it is presented as a new identity and for the people... so... yes, very nuanced indeed! i believe that the past 2000 years of music should not be destroyed... i DO want equality for all people..but i don't want the price of that to be all arts and music destroyed...and then if not entirely destroyed..then monitired and censored. // check out a photo of the sculpture:::: the russian balalaika also has quite a history!

oh.. this question goes to the heart of it for me, because the chinese cultural revolution tried to eliminate the 1000s years old classical chinese music ... it was because the aristocracy/ nobilty saw themselves as the elite due to their ancestors being supernatural, and so they claimed superiority by performing the rites...sacrifices to the supernatural anscestors, which also gave them powers. So, the Guqin was one of the targeted instruments by the communists, because the literati, the governmental elite class, played it...and especially used it to communicate with the numinous. /// Also, the far right 20th century person, Julius Evola, expressed the same tradition in the Nordic? peoples... that they did not have religion or gods, but had supernatural ancestors for the elite ruling class... he was also in the DADA avant garde movement as a painter..... anyway, the solution of communists to destroy all of the musical instruments and persecute the makers and players... to me... i can't get on board with communism, because of that~ though i can see their logic.

@mandys1505

2 ай бұрын

that was from Julius Evola'z book, Revolt against the Modern World... so by eliminating rites...the supernatural, and the music and art which was used to communicate with the numinous....the communists hope to prevent any elitism.

@gluehfunke1547

2 ай бұрын

The communist revolutionaries were just ordinary people with common prejudices, and they often fostered a petty anger at things that didn’t really deserve it. Unfortunately that’s what popular revolution often looks like. Anything associated with the elite can get put on the chopping block.

@scribewolfmusic

2 ай бұрын

Howdy & thanks for the reply (this is Daniel's guest). This is way too large a topic to get into here, but certainly a valid concern I wish we'd had more time to discuss: how can the notion of a socialist aesthetic sovereignty subtract from the State in the sense of the latter's tendency to capture art in the form of "ideology"? In other words, how can an art-form like music radically pass through the history of so-called "totalitarian" music while maintaining its autonomous tradition AND future? I'd strongly aver the actual history is more varied than you suggest, while acknowledging that there have been legitimate horrors enacted upon art under capital-C Communism. I'd recommend checkin' out the art theorist Boris Groys, who has a unique perspective on this, and a doggedly & dazzlingly dialectical approach--however not without its flaws! Perhaps this would be a great topic for another episode...

@zainmudassir2964

2 ай бұрын

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was impressive attempt to rid Chinese society of backward belief. At least China after Mao didn't backslide culturally like Eastern Europe where Ethnic Nationalism and fascist movements are thriving in Ukraine,Poland ,Hungary and many others

@mandys1505

2 ай бұрын

​@@scribewolfmusicyes it would be great for a secind episode...are there books on this topic specifically? communism removing art music myth... etc. im sure it is nuanced...im here to learn more

This narrative about free jazz as an event is absolutely false; I have read hundreds of interviews by jazz musicians from the years when this was happening, and it grew as a logical extension of existing practices; there was never really any single huge break. In fact the idea of Free Jazz as representing a major break was absolutely created in part by corporate marketing, at a time when rock was outperforming jazz and they needed a way to sell jazz records to a young hip audience who liked rock. And, for example, John Coltrane (who was an absolute musical genius) did in fact sell a lot of records by breaking through into this cross over audience, but everything he did was deeply rooted in a lifetime of musical practice and mastery of the whole existing tradition. So Free jazz emerged organically and developed certain implied possibilities within the jazz framework. And, free jazz faced the same contradictions related to capitalism that other genres face. Many free jazz musicians had record deals with major labels. What free jazz artists often complained about, frankly, is that they wanted the same level of support for their projects as major European composers like Stockhausen, and they wanted to be taken as seriously as the European modernist and avant garde composers generally. And now those free jazz legends who are still around are quite happy when they have received various government grants along with elite college teaching positions. And I don't blame them because being "noncommercial" just means you lack the institutional support to actually develop your art fully.