Inauguration Special! Songs of Hope & Change Part 2

I started writing this post last night, but really couldn’t find the words. I was in that middle realm, waiting for the end of Bush’s regime and the excited for the something bigger, something brighter. So this playlist is half “We’ve had eight years of crap and I’d really like this to be over with, thankyouverymuch” and half “Things can get better…things WILL get better.” So yeah, it’s probably not as cohesive as Elizabeth’s playlist and I didn’t give thorough descriptions of each song, but I pulled a quote from each song that hammers home why I chose that song.

Crime in Stereo – “I, Stateside”
God please save these troubled states.

Embrace – “No More Pain”
No more petty love/No more petty hate/No more pettiness/No more pain

Against Me! – “From Her Lips To God’s Ears (The Energizer)”
After all this death and destruction/Do you really think your actions advocate freedom?

Black Flag – “Rise Above”
We’re gonna rise above

Comeback Kid – “Wake the Dead”
Don’t lose hope/Don’t let it happen to you/Which side are you gonna choose?/Because I believe, I believe it’s in you.

The Decemberists – “Sons & Daughters”
Here all the bombs fade away

Also, I made an imeem playlist of the songs but couldn’t embed it into the blog. So, yeah, get with the clicky here to listen to the songs: Ryan’s Songs of Change and Hope.
So, what’s on your Inauguration Day playlist?

Inauguration Special! Songs of Hope & Change

For today’s very special event, Ryan and I thought we’d post some songs that would apply to the grand changing of the guard.  Some time ago, when it looked less likely that Obama would make it this far, I posted a list of songs that gave me hope.

Here are the songs I’m feelin’ for this moment:

First, some change (i.e. songs that were not blasted at President Bush as he left the building, but were on my internal playlist):

1. “Hit the Road, Jack,” Ray Charles.  While, overall, it’s about an unfaithful dude, I think it can easily apply to our dear ex-President (Oh, how it warms my heart to write that prefix!).  Regardless of one’s political position in general, it’s impossible to think he left the country in better shape than when he found it.  It’s like he was a louche who was unfaithful to the entire country by ignoring things at home in favor of messing around abroad, and then screwing it up with both ladies.  Er, I mean countries.

2. “Valerie Plame,” The Decemberists.  It’s a great song.  And also a great reminder at just how low the Bush administration stooped during its tenure.  Your husband lets the world know that there was no validity to the claim that Niger was selling uranium cake to Iraq?  Well, kiss your cover goodbye!  And your career!  And perhaps your safety!  Oh, what a class act, that Bush team!  Still, it’s a catchy little tune.

And now for some hope:

1.  “This Land Is Your Land,” the version with Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen at the pre-Inauguration concert on MLK Day.  OK, there’s just something heart-warming about an 89-year-old man in a silly ski cap, jeans, and workshirt singing his heart out in front of the Lincoln Memorial.  There’s something awesome about seeing a man who has given his life to folk music and politics look so darned happy.  He could have been just another Harvard dropout, but instead he dedicated his life to promoting progressive politics, from the 1930s labor movement to the Civil Rights movement to protests against the Vietnam War.  Remember, Pete Seeger loves this country, even if he was blacklisted as a dirty commie pinko in the 1950s.

2. Aretha Franklin, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at the Inauguration.  Soul music was integrally tied to the Civil Rights movement.  Though Aretha sang songs of a more personal nature than, say, James Brown, she and her family were heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement (her father, preacher C.L. Franklin, brought Martin Luther King, Jr. to Detroit).  Aretha’s voice may not be the divine instrument it was 40 years ago, but I love seeing her there, with her giant felt bow on her hat, singing about letting freedom ring.  This song gives me hope that we can look back in 40 more years and see that today is both a culmination of one struggle and a starting point for another push toward equality for all people.

P.S. Oh noes!  Why did John Williams do an arrangement of “Simple Gifts”?  Ain’t that the job of Aaron Copland?  I guess that would be “change,” but JOHN WILLIAMS?  I love Star Wars as much as the next person, but Copland is synonymous with American music.  Sigh.

Stay tuned for Ryan’s additions to this list!

What Is Up with Damon Albarn? The New David Byrne or Just a World-Music Lovin,’ Appropriatin’ Jerk?

Once upon a time, Damon Albarn had a little English band called Blur.  This band made its fame in the 1990s through an keenly timed synthesis of British pop history, from the Beatles and the Kinks to the Jam to the Smiths.  When Blur chose to imitate a style, it wasn’t because they weren’t original, but because they had a thorough mastery of each of the styles: sharp, biting, Ray Davies-esque lyrics in “Country House” or “Ballad of a Charmless Man;” the Beatles in the heroin-slow-yet-completely-apropos “Beatlebum;” Johnny Marr-inspired guitar licks…well, in a lot of places.

In image, too, the band explored and exploited the visual stylings of British subcultures past: check out the rolled-up skinhead pants and slightly dirty mod jackets (No mod would be dressed in a dirty jacket, mind you) in the band’s infamous “British Image #1″ promo shot:

Blur, pimping out subcultures British

I won’t get into what Blur, and Britpop more generally, did for reinvigorating a sense of “Cool Britannia,” or setting up a path to make it OK to wear the English flag across your boobies a la Geri Halliwell, or how they were middle-class kids slumming it and made it OK for middle-class kids to be slumming it until Oasis came along, or anything like that.  Really, that’s not the point of this post.  The example to the left serves just to remind us that Damon Albarn was willing to use his own people before he got to the present day, when he generally likes to collaborate with world music stars and force them into his own stylistic world.

In recent years, Albarn has worked with hip-hop fiends on his Gorillaz albums, wherein Jamie Hewlitt’s simian cartoon characters problematically replace real people; recorded musicians in Mali on a project called Mali Music (2002); added superawesome Nigerian funky drummer Tony Allen to The Good, the Bad, and the Queen (2007); and collaborated with Hewlitt again on the Chinese opera, Monkey: Journey to the West (2008), based on a 16th-century folktale; and produced Amadou and Mariam’s well regarded single, “Sambali” (2008).

As a fan of Blur, I kind of want to say, “Well, as long as the music is good…” and dismiss my hesitation about these projects.   As a fan of music more generally, I tend to think that collaboration is a good thing, and that exposing audiences to really great music from other cultures is a definite plus.  As an ethnomusicologist, though, something about these collaborations really bugs me.  In the courses I’ve taken on world music, I’ve read articles that have gone over the problems of appropriation, inequality in production, and difficulties in collaboration in these kinds of projects.  I’ve read David Byrne talk about how he “hates world music” as a term for good reasons and then contradict himself in his practices.  I’ve read numerous ethnomusicologists take on Paul Simon’s rather inappropriate appropriation of various musical styles on Graceland, where he gets sole songwriting credit on songs that clearly are much more the product of other people’s labor.

And so, listening to Damon Albarn’s post-Blur work certainly troubles me.  Below, a list of a few of those things and why they bug me:

1. Mali Music (2002).  Albarn went to Mali, hung out with good musicians, recorded them, edited it down, and came up with an album that many people called “authentic.”  Aside from the strange issue of some English pop musician determining authenticity in Malian music, I have heard that his own collaborators thought he was a bit of a joke.  That, at least, makes me feel better.

I haven’t really listened to this album that much, but I will say this: the thing that bugs me the most is the sticker on the cover.  Among other quotes, Paul Weller extolls, “Brilliant… a perfect way in to the music of Mali.”  OK, so I love Paul Weller, but I don’t really care if he thinks its a great intro to the music of Mali because I doubt he knows anything about said music.  It reminds me of a quote in John Harris’s Britpop Bible, The Last Party, regarding Weller’s involvement in Labour Party politics via the Red Wedge: “You would have Paul Weller waxing lyrical about Labour’s employment policy.  Well, franky, who cares what Paul Weller thinks?”

2. The Good, the Bad, and the Queen (2007).  Aside from being the most boring album I purchased in 2007, the entire project seemed a waste of Tony Allen’s talents.  A paean to London, it once again called on the musical styles of Albarn’s native land.  As a collaboration, though, it had a lot of promise, pulling in Paul Simonon and Simon Tong, as well as the aforementioned Tony Allen.  The other two worked quite well in the English milieu, but Allen became a regular, dull four-on-the-floor kind of drummer.  So, you go and recruit the best Nigerian funk drummer ever, and you make him play really boring beats?  What is the point of that?

3. Monkey: Journey to the East (2008).  Albarn went to China, recorded the sounds of the streets, and then had an instrument built that he calls a “klaxophone,” which reproduces said sounds.  He uses pentatonic scales.  And this, my friends, is China.  (I say sarcastically.)  At first, when I listened to it, I thought, “This isn’t as bad as it could be.”  And some of it is, in fact, great pop music.  It’s when Albarn tries to ape (sorry for the pun) the Chinese musical styles that it becomes a sigh-worthy production.

4. “Sambali,” Amadou and Mariam (2008).  When I first heard this song, I thought, “How does anyone who’s heard ‘Monkey Bee’ not recognize that this is the same thing?” OK, that’s a little facile.  Here’s what I mean: both songs employ Victrola-esque female vocals somewhat divorced from any other musical context.  Each song then employs a variety of synthesized sounds recalling the minimalist stylings of Philip Glass, as well as string sections that are inserted into the song to greater or lesser degree.  The only thing separating them is that “Sambali” features a sparser texture and no interacting male voice.  It’s as though Mariam Doumbia’s voice is an isolated, disembodied departure point, rather than a source of collaboration.

And, that, I think is what bothers me the most.  Collaboration implies equal footing, and that simply isn’t here in any of this music.  It’s especially galling to hear Mariam Doumbia as a heavily electronified, distant voice, essentially unengaged with the musical setting below, since this is the extreme version of the way that many women are presented in “world music”: disembodied voices, signifying the “Other.”

What It Means to Be a Diva: Patti LuPone in Gypsy

For those of you who expect this blog to deliver on topics of pop music, today’s post marks a short diversion into Broadway show tunes, without which the popular music industry would not exist.*

I love live music.  I love live theater.  I even love live musical theater.  Within that genre, I especially love Sondheim; among performers, I love Patti LuPone.   That’s why, when I heard that Gypsy was closing–in less than a week!–I had to get tickets.  I called up Agent Taco, asked if we had plans for Saturday, and then bought the cheapest available tickets (I *don’t* love Broadway pricing.)

Patti LuPone is a diva, in every sense of the word, and she was my real motivation for attending the show.  As I explain to my students in my music history class, the term “diva” was not new when VH1 applied it to “Divas LIVE” in the mid-1990s. Before we get to the divine Patti, a little background on the diva.

Surprisingly, the word’s implications have remained somewhat consistent throughout its history.  Starting in the early 1800s, with the rise of bel canto opera in Italy, women singers received a new emphasis: most often, a soprano would perform the lead role, sometimes inserting her signature songs from other operas into each performance, and always, always demonstrating a virtuosity that would overwhelm and enchant the audience.

On the flip side, the diva often makes more demands than your average female performer.  She is not known for quietly settling into a role, or for taking affronts from the audience or other performers in stride and unruffled.  No, a diva makes demands.  And she can make demands because she is just that good.

Of course, we have added a lot of gendered aspects to the diva (no one really talks about “il divo” anymore, though he did exist in bel canto), but the two important sides remain: she has a lot of talent, and, because of that talent, she can be demanding.

Patti Lupone’s show-stopping performance on Saturday night brought that out.  As Mama Rose, her brassy, wide-ranging, full-chested voice finds a perfect characterization.  And I could definitely call her a diva for that alone, since the character herself is also somewhat of a diva, a pushy stage mother who desperately wants her children to succeed in vaudeville.

But LuPone’s performance was more than this.  It was, in fact, show stopping.  As in, the show stopped.  In the second to last scene, a tense scene between Gypsy (Laure Benanti)  and Mama Rose, a cell phone rang. Both performers visibly cringed, and a piece of the drama of the moment disappeared.

This tense scene leads directly into “Rose’s Turn,” Mama Rose’s “I-coulda-been-great” moment.  The performer, whether LuPone or anyone else, has to put everything into this moment.  In the New York Times review of the show in March 2008, Ben Brantley wrote of this scene: “In “Rose’s Turn,” in particular, Ms. LuPone takes you on a guided tour of all Rose’s inner demons, from sexual succubus to shivering infant. (Be warned: they will live in your head for a while.)”

Nothing, however, prepared me or anyone else for what did happen.  LuPone entered the stage, began the song, took off the grubby smock, revealing her more form-fitting red dress, and then…

“STOP!  Stop the music!”  The orchestra stopped.  “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”  A pause, confusion.  “I saw you take a photo THREE TIMES!  You heard the announcement before the show and at intermission.  Who do you think you are?”  LuPone stood stubbornly on the stage, refusing to continue until the offending party had been removed.

By now, most of the audience was in LuPone’s court.  I certainly was–who did that person think he/she was?

Finally, after a tense minute or so, a voice came over the loudspeaker, saying that the offending party was no longer in the theater; cheers erupted throughout the theater.  LuPone addressed the audience, stating that there had been an erosion of manners in the country, but that she would do the song from the top.

… And it was amazing, filled with the swirl of emotions that someone truly angry (as Mama Rose is with Gypsy/Louise at that point in the show) and disappointed and egotistical and regretful would bring to it.  I’m sure it would have been wonderful to see uninterrupted, but, you know, I wouldn’t trade what I saw for a run-of-the-mill, paint-by-numbers Broadway show. Instead of being perfection, it was an unforgettable experience.

Cheers to you, Patti LuPone, for demanding what you do deserve.

*One could argue that the constituent elements of rock n roll were more “of the people,”  i.e. hillbilly and race records.  However, the music industry prior to the advent of rock n roll largely depended upon the popularization of Tin Pan Alley novelty songs and show tunes.  The structure that this industry created later allowed for the genre of rock n roll to flourish.

Record Collecting for Fun and Profit: The Compact Disc Store

Okay, well, maybe not for profit, but hitting a kickass record shop to rifle through their bins of vinyl records? That’s some A-plus fun, folks. We recently went down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Elizabeth took me to The Compact Disc Store, a local record shop she’s quite fond of. In fact, she wrote about the store back in August, more or less proclaiming it dead!

Luckily enough for us, the store’s still alive and kickin’ and we gave it a healthy cash injection. She picked up some cool import CDs, but I made out like a bandit and scored an armful of magnificent vinyl. Sure the music’ll be good, but these 12″ sleeves must be displayed like the works of art they really are.

The Decemberists "Picaresque" LP

Chic "Le Freak" 7" Single

Lionel Richie "Dancing on the Ceiling" LP back

Lionel Richie "Dancing on the Ceiling" LP back

Ashford & Simpson "Street Opera" LP

Ashford & Simpson "Street Opera" LP back

Neil Diamond "Moods" LP

Neil Diamond "Moods" LP back

Roberta Sherwood "Country Songs for City People" LP

Steve Perry "Street Talk" LP

Neil Diamond "Headed for the Future" 12" LP

As you can see, it was like finding sunken treasure.

Hopefully Elizabeth will jump back into the fray soon and raise the IQ of this blog back to where it belongs.