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Zorn List Digest         Sunday, March 8 1998         Volume 02 : Number 257



In this issue:
-
       Re: bass question
       Re: masada
       Gainsbourg
       Re: The Wire  (and)  Cadence
       Re: AEC, was re: bass albums
       RE: Masada
       Bobby Previte/Uz Jsme Doma

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 12:04:19 -0800 (PST)
From: "m. rizzi" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: bass question

>has nothing to do with size.

    In my experience, it really has to do with individual tastes.



    oops, wrong mailing list.

    m:)



- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:37:21 -0500 (EST)
From: ia zha nah er vesen <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: masada

> C E DANGELO wrote:
> > doesn't it have something
> > to do with the expression of Jewish culture, which by definition will
>                                               =========================
> > entail the use of previously used material? And will it not, because  =============================================
>
> the way i understand masada it is based on traditional jewish tone
> scales which IMO doesn't necessarily mean the use of previously used
> material. but a lot of the masada melodies do sound familiar, because a
> lot of us have heard stuff based on jewish tone scales, and can
> therefore easily relate to it. also, the jewish tone scales have sthg
> very easily likeable, a "friendliness" for the ear, i think...

Although Bar Kokhbah played 'kol nidre' (SP?) when i saw them in TO...

- -jascha


- -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 06:42:17 -0800
From: Herb Levy <[e-mail]>
Subject: Gainsbourg

This e-mail just showed up on digest, tw0 months after it's posted date.  I
don't know whether it showed up earlier for those of you who get the
messages individually.

While I'm not sure I want to start up this whole discussion again
(especially cause this is a particularly busy time for me & I'm only
reading non-work-related e-mail about once a week), let me briefly point
you in a couple of directions that may help you with the points you raise.

First, I'm assuming that Zorn simply sees things in Gainsbourg's work that
he wants to claim as a kind of precursor to contemporary work that does a
more specifically jewish content. In general, precursors don't have to
consciously foresee their role (& usually don't), they merely have to be
recognized by later artists who feel an affinity with what they did.

As to  the Coleman text you had trouble getting anything useful out of.
There's a short book/long essay by DeLeuze & Guattari about Kafka that
describes in a far less colloquial manner, some of the ideas surrounding
the concept of "self-hating jews", as well as the concept of how someone
who specifically rejects identifying as a jew can be seen within a strong
tradition of jewish culture.  In english this book is called (I think)
Kafka: toward a minor literature.  I don't own it, haven't read it in a
while, & don't know what the title might be in french.  I just hope it
turns out to be the essay I think it is.

I hope also that these brief comments help you to see the point I was making.

Bests,

Herb



>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 16:42:14 +0100
>From: Nuno BARREIRO <[e-mail]>
>Subject: Gainsbourg
>
>> Herb Levy wrote:
>>
>> Zorn's project in re: Radical Jewish Culture (& the Great Jewish Music
>> discs are just a part of the Tzadik subset called Radical Jewish Culture)
>> seems to be about expanding what is recognized as "Jewish" culturally
>> betond just the religious realm.  So the lengthy discussion of whether
>> Gainsbourg & his music are "really" Jewish, speaks directly to the point.
>>
>> Most of the work presented as Radical Jewish Culture, both on CD or as part
>> of the several festivals with this title that Zorn has curated, has little
>> or no relationship to Judaism as a religion, but rather to a broader range
>> of experiences shared by some if not all Jews.
>
>We knew all this from the begining of the discussion. It is precisely what it
>is all about. The point is that one should be able to decide whether or not to
>belong to such a movement (which Gainsbourg didn't). And to decide for the
>dead
>has never been a reasonable practice (there have been cases, in history, of
>elections in which the dead have voted, but usually nobody is proud of such
>things).
>
>> I've cited these before, but let me reiterate the quote from Gershom
>> Scholem that's on the packaging for all of the Masada CDs & the notes by
>> Anthony Coleman for his disc called "Selfhaters".  Taken together these
>> help to place the concept of Radical Jewish Culture outside the religious
>> tradition & what might commonly be considered "Jewish music."  In fact,
>> taken together, they posit a kind of culture that is rooted in how any
>> people live, rather than on any traditions may have been passed down (see
>> my comments on Black music below).
>>
>> Gershom Scholem:  "There is a life of tradition that does not merely
>> consist of consertvative preservation, the constant continuation of the
>> spoiritual and cultural possessions of a community.  There is such a thing
>> as a treasure hunt within tradition which creates a living relationship to
>> tradition and to which much of what is best in current jewish consciousness
>> is indebted, even where it was - and is - expressed outside the framework
>> of orthodoxy."
>
>This certainly applies to Zorn... but in the case of Gainsbourg what
>tradition are we talking about? He certainly belonged to the jewish
>community (as, for instance, Michel Droit - a journalist of the
>right-wing newspaper Figaro - didn't forget to mention when criticizing
>Gainsbourg's reggae version of the french hymn, in 1979). But, in 1958, when
>he played the guitar and the piano at the Milord d'Arsouville (where he has
>been sideman of Boris Vian, amongst others), he would often present
>himself in
>a most provocative way: "Bonsoir, je suis le gigolo youpin!" Perhaps you
>don't know it, but, in french, the word "youpin" is to "jew" what, in
>english,
>the word "nigger" is to "black"... This clearly shows the relation he had
>to his jewishness!
>
>> Anthony Coleman:  'Selfhater.  It describes a way of seeing.  A perception.
>> True?  Diengaged.  Disinterested?  Are slefhaters traitors or secret
>> agents?  For which side?  Do they show the rest of the world the picture
>> that they believe anyway, or do they strip away an element of false
>> consciousness implicit in a sense of "belonging" to a "culture."  And which
>> culture?  Jerusalem, Belz, the Lower east Side, or Rockland County? Or the
>> culture of wandering, the culture of acquisitiveness, of
>> having-no-voice-of-one's-own, of mauscheling in any & all languages.  Well,
>> this disc doesn't puport to answer.  Some say that's Jewish, too..."
>
>This I don't understand... doesn't make any sense. It is perhaps bad poetry.
>Gershom Scholem is clearly much more gifted for writing than A. Coleman,
>who should stick to musisc.
>
>> While I don't know many of the details of Gainsboutg's life, at least some
>> aspects as repoorted here seem to relate to Coleman's evocation of
>> assimilated Jews as participants in a specifically Jewish cultural
>> tradition.  Which seems to be part of Zorn's point.
>>
>> Rather than taking the tradition of cantorial & klezmer musics as the
>> limits of what constitutes "Jewish music", Zorn is calling into question
>> the pigeonholes often used to hold things in place.  Compare this to, say,
>> Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra & others who insist that their work
>> comes out of a Black tradition, despite the fact that much of what they
>> create doesn't sound much like the most commonly recognized styles of
>> "Black music."
>
>That is the point where you get it all wrong! Their work come from a black
>tradition indeed... but a MUSICAL one, which is deeply and strongly connected
>to black culture and isn't arbitrary at all.
>
>Steve Coleman has created a black musical movement called M-BASE, which
>you may
>decide to belong to (or not). That corresponds to the Radical Jewish
>Culture of
>John Zorn. It's a movement, a fight for something, a cultural identity, or
>whatever you may want to call it. I've always liked it (in both Coleman and
>Zorn cases) and I wish there could be lots of such movements.
>
>But Zorn can't create "Great Jewish Music" just because he decided to. It's
>not because there is a Radical Jewish Culture movement that any jew is forced
>to agree and participate. Specially when it's Gainsbourg... who certainly
>doesn't fit in any "pigeon hole".
>
>Best wishes,
>
>                Nuno
>
>
>


Herb Levy
[e-mail]









- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 16:26:27 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Caleb Deupree)
Subject: Re: The Wire  (and)  Cadence

>>>>> "Doug" == Doug McKay <[e-mail]> writes:

    Doug> Boy, do I feel like I've been living in a cave. I've just
    Doug> been paging through my first issue (Jan '98) of THE WIRE. So
    Doug> this is where you guys have been coming from. It shows.

Hint: subscribe.  It might be worth while waiting for a nice special
CD offer you like, but if you like one issue, sooner or later you'll
want them all.  I just got the March issue yesterday, so you also get
them a lot sooner if you subscribe.

    Doug> Now how is CADENCE? I haven't found it here in the Twin
    Doug> Cities yet.

You'll almost certainly have to subscribe to this -- I don't think
I've ever seen it in a store.  I find this as indispensible as the
Wire, although for different reasons.  The music and interviews focus
much more on 'jazz'.  As wide ranging as this genre is, except for a
limited amount of Zorn output (Masada, News for Lulu, etc.), it really
doesn't apply to much of the music discussed here.  Most Cadence
reviewers are not very favorable to the genre bending experiments that
the Wire likes so much.  However, Cadence does have a wide view of
'jazz', so they will review Brotzmann, Vandermark, Crispell,
Hemingway, etc., favorably and often.  The more you like all forms of
creative improvised music, the more you'll like Cadence.

The best part of Cadence, however, is their mail order catalog.  It is
the only reliable source I know for Hat, FMP, Okka, BVHaast, Leo, and
lots of other jazz labels, and they stock the non-jazz releases (my
most recent Cadence purchase included Morton Feldman's opera Neither,
a limited edition on Hat Art).  And even when Cadence isn't the only
source, they're still pretty cheap, discounted for subscribers, and
very quick delivery.  They are also very knowledgeable if you're
looking for a starting point, as I was a few years ago when I was
curious about Willem Breuker (they recommended Heibel, a great album).


- ---
Caleb T. Deupree
;; Opinions are not necessarily shared by management

Computers are useless.  They can only give you answers.
(Pablo Picasso)








- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 03 Mar 1998 02:04:18 -0500
From: Steve Smith <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: AEC, was re: bass albums

Brian Olewnick wrote:

> > Malachi Favors has a solo disc on the Art Ensemble's little label AECO[snip]
>
> I think it was 'The Natural and the Spiritual', if I recall correctly;
> it's the one issue of the initial three (the others being Jarman's
> 'Sunbound' and Moye's 'Sun Percussion') that I don't have. I'd guess
> that there's more than solo bass going on there, though...

You're right about the title, but I'm very nearly positive that it was solo bass or at
most bass augmented with "little instruments," as there were no other musicians listed
on the disc.

> [Re: Art Ensemble]
>
> So, whadja think? I went with a couple of misgivings: 1) I hadn't seen
> or heard them in Jarman-less form and thought it might hurt. 2) I share
> the common view that their best days are way behind them and a certain
> rut-like quality had entered the live shows (though, I'd be the first to
> admit, it's a pretty high rut).

I can see both of your points and in fact didn't actually make the decision to attend
this concert until the morning of the day it was held.  I sort of saw them last summer
at the Texaco Festival but since I was "working" that gig I wasn't actually giving my
full attention to the band.  What I remembered was that the first half was flat and
dull, the second half lively and swinging.  Since that's exactly what every critic in
town wrote, I guess I must have been a bit in tune with the room.  And while I also
think their glory days may be past, I heard them play a show back in 1989 that is still
one of the two or three most powerful shows I've ever witnessed in any genre or idiom,
so they still had it in them after I thought their time had past at least one time
before...

> The first half
> was largely percussive and quiet, Roscoe spending a lot of time in his
> percussion arsenal, Bowie quite plaintive.

This is precisely right, and very little else happened of note in the first half.  I
was almost ready to believe that the group was down to less than one sax player, and
wondered if Roscoe was limiting his playing for some reason related to his illness last
year (I can't remember its nature but remember quite clearly that the group played a
prominent date... Bumbershoot, perhaps?... as a trio).  But the second half would prove
that Roscoe didn't play too much sax in the first half because the music was drawing
him elsewhere.  Not such a bad thing since everything he played on tenor seemed to be
pretty badly out of tune...

I must also point out here that Roscoe's percussion set-up was something out of a
percussionist's wet dream... a four-sided cage of things to be hit, blown through or
otherwise manipulated in unorthodox ways.  There were game calls, ethnic drums, alarms
and telephone bells, wooden and metal blocks and surfaces, gongs and others tubes and
sheets to be struck, even what sounded like the components of Henry Threadgill's old
Hubkaphone.  It was incredible, and so densely packed that Roscoe had to walk around
the back of the thing and *get down on the floor and crawl into it!*  Now *that's*
entertainment.

> The second set was more straight ahead, beginning with a piece in the
> style of Bowie's 'Charlie M', including another reminiscent of 'Walking
> in the Moonlight' and concluding with the obligatory (and, by now, kinda
> perfunctory) 'Odwalla' (Sorry, but nothing will ever surpass the
> 'Bap-tizum' version for sheer drama and power)

That may be, but I was actually happy to hear this newly-sambafied version... it was a
cute way to avoid absolute retread, and I would most likely be as disappointed not to
hear a version of "Odwalla" at the end of an AECO show as a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan would've
been to not hear "Free Bird."

I think one of the tunes on the second half may have been "Whatever Happens" from the
best of the DIW records, "The Alternative Express," which I'm listening to right now.
I was really happy to hear Favors and Moye engage in the old-style vocal shenanigans
that seemed to have left the band with Jarman, the most theatrical of the bunch.  I
also noticed the obligatory loud gongs piece, but it didn't bother me a bit.  It just
seemed like something that ought to be present in an Art Ensemble show.  Maybe it is
that very sense of expectation, and of knowing what I'll be hearing, that I should most
fear when it comes to hearing this band, but I suppose ultimately I'm as comfortable
hearing this band now as others would be at a Billy Joel concert at Nassau Colisseum.

> Mitchell had two
> extraordinary back-to-back solos on soprano and alto, the former coming
> out of his work on that horn since 'The Flow of Things', the latter one
> of his patented gnarly, snorting efforts. I always enjoy the almost
> perverse pleasure he seems to take in playing _against_ the strong
> grooves that Moye and Favors set up.

Mitchell's still got it, alright... he just saves most of it for the Note Factory these
days.  I'm still eagerly awaiting that ECM release later this year... Mitchell, Hugh
Ragin, George Lewis, Craig Taborn, Jaribu Shahid, Tani Tabbal, Matt Shipp, William
Parker and another drummer I can't remember right this minute.

> They encored with a fine, ferocious and funky number that was new to me.

Perhaps something written for their upcoming release on Atlantic?

> I did miss Jarman and thought the group sounded noticeably thinner
> without him and I still think I'm unlikely to hear from them anything to
> really compare with their incredible achievements from 1968-73. That
> said, I'd rather hear them than 90% of other bands around today and was
> glad I went.

Agreed on both counts.  Even if the Art Ensemble sounds almost completely predictable
to me in most ways now, I still find them fresher and more capable of surprise than
many others of their generation or later (although Anthony Braxton remains the
benchmark of mercurial genius).  And I'm very glad I went.  It was also fun to go to
Tower afterwards and watch the newcomers trying to decide which disc to buy.  And it
was nice to see the 1100 seat venue very nearly full.  It was a big, appreciative crowd
that gave the group two standing ovations and called them out for an encore and a
curtain call.  It's about time.  Just wish Jarman could've been there to share in the
adulation.

Steve Smith
[e-mail]








- -

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 04:52:43 -0300
From: Gabriel Lichtmann <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Masada

    Well, I can=B4t believe this whole argument about the originality of Zorn's
music. I'm jewish, and I've been educated as a jew since childhood, and
Masada's music sure rings a bell; I know I've heard those melodies before
but I'm not sure where, they belong to the jewish tradition, and remember
that "there is such a thing as a treasure hunt within tradition which
creates a living relationship to tradition" (Gerschom Sholem, as cited in
the back of the Masada cd's). Zorn's music has never been about
originality, but about playing with the notion of it, that's why he
continously names his influences (like in the Naked City records) and is so
interested in someone like Carl Stalling. =BFRemember Post-Modernism? Let's
not forget that if he stands alone in contemporary music is because he can
combine this with an amazing musicianship and a wicked sense of humour. =20


- -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 01:37:34 -0500 (EST)
From: ia zha nah er vesen <[e-mail]>
Subject: Bobby Previte/Uz Jsme Doma

Thanks to all (patrice) who recomended 'too close to the pole'...what a
brilliant album.  It reminds me, in spots, of this other band, a 'czech
puck opera jazz' band called Uz Jsme Doma.  Has anyone else heard them?

I'd very much recomend them to all out there...they're very much a rock
band, but they're very tight, and their sound tends towards the
sort of frantic virtuosity which the title track of 'too close to the
pole' has going.  Lineup: drums, keys, guitars, bass, sax, basoon, other
wind instruments, and they all sing, as well.  Neat-o.

They have a web page with samples, if anyone's curiosity is piqued.

- -jascha




- -

------------------------------

End of Zorn List Digest V2 #257
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