It’s the most extraordinary few minutes, a minuet of death. Letterman affects to laugh, the audience laughs, Kanye laughs. But behind the smiles and the apparent bonhomie, a vicious duel is taking place and Kanye is winning hands down. I can’t think of a single other celebrity in the world who would have had the balls to do what Kanye does in this interview: challenge the entertainment industry’s oppressive left-liberal consensus; speak out for Donald Trump; rail against the stifling constraints on freedom of speech that is rendering so much unsayable. Maybe you need to be a huge rap star to get away with such things. But how many other huge rap stars would have had the originality of thought even to try?As you have undoubtedly noticed, I have found Kanye West to be one of the most genuinely creative musicians in the contemporary pop world.
UPDATE: Afterwards I took the time to watch the Letterman interview and I think Delingpole really overstates the case. Sure, there was a little tension around the #metoo discussion, but it wasn't so fraught and was followed by a little film of Kanye's Sunday Services which are sort-of like a musical church with a lot of improvisation. So really, no hard feelings, no "minuet of death." Who comes up with this stuff? I think my favorite part of the interview was when Kanye dresses Dave up in a new wardrobe. Most talk shows I can't watch and that includes the old Letterman shows. But this was very watchable. Dave is better interviewer than he used to be. Mind you, I like Craig Ferguson, so bear that in mind and take my comments with a grain of salt!
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I have been catching a few of composer David Bruce's videos lately--he is quite prolific. I go back and forth on them. He seems quite hip and cool, using terms like "negative rhythm" and "gateway drug" to pique our interest. He covers a lot of interesting topics. "Gateway drug" comes from this video about ten pieces of contemporary classical music that might get you hooked:
And then he kills my interest right off the bat by picking that dreary sludge of virtue-signalling, Become Ocean by John Luther Adams. Then a piece by Osvaldo Golijov, whose name he consistently mispronounces. Then John Adams and another landscape piece consisting of characterless washes of sound, remarkably similar to the John Luther Adams one. He then almost redeems himself by choosing two excellent pieces by Steve Reich: Different Trains and Music for 18 Musicians. Next is a weird choice of a weird piece: Les Noces by Stravinsky. Yes, interesting piece, but I very much doubt it is going to be anyone's choice of a gateway drug into contemporary music! The very obvious choice would have been The Rite. Then a really inspired choice, almost winning me over: the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Messiaen. Unfortunately he immediately says Messiaen is like Prince, which may be hip, but is remarkably unfair to both! Other picks are Thomas Adès, sure, why not, and Kevin Volans, another inspired choice. All right, let's give him a gold star for putting in Conlon Nancarrow and maybe half a star for his last pick, a piece by Ligeti with an absolutely unpronounceable name: Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüve!
Two things that turn me off about his videos are the interjections of little snippets of pop culture from time to time just to show us he is actually cool and not a boring old classical composer, and his re-naming of long-familiar musical techniques. "Negative rhythm," it turns out is just a fancy new name for, wait for it, hocket!
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I'll tell you right off the bat that if you have the gall to turn your back on a truncated, bleeding chunk from the last movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, you will get nothing but disdain and disgust from The Guardian:
Yesterday, Brexit party MEPs led by Nigel Farage turned their backs while the anthem of the European Union played at a ceremony to mark the opening of the European Parliament. Their behaviour has been met with disdain by many, with #notinmyname trending on Twitter. This was an emotionally provocative act at a time of political sensitivity, and there is something about the shunning of the anthem itself, an instrumental arrangement of the Ode to Joy from the final movement of Beethoven’s iconic Ninth Symphony, that makes the demonstration particularly inflammatory.Read on for a recounting of how the symphony has been used as propaganda by both the right and the left over the last couple of centuries. Perhaps the best thing ever written about the symphony was the essay "Resisting the Ninth" by Richard Taruskin. Look, for various reasons, musical and non-musical, the piece has become a warhorse of utilitarian propaganda. As such, I think that anyone would have the right to resist its use in a political context.
The image of the Ninth as a powerful symbol of European unity was perhaps claimed in most iconic fashion on Christmas day in 1989 when Leonard Bernstein conducted the last movement of the Ninth to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall with an orchestra consisting of members from East and West Germany as well as the four allied powers: France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the US.However, as a matter of fact, Europe is not now and never has been a "nation" in the sense of a geographic, linguistic, ethnic, cultural and economic unity and the very fact of Brexit demonstrates that.
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Let's have a little musical palate-cleanser. Here is a movement from Kevin Volans White Man Sleeps played by the Kronos Quartet:
You can find the other movements on YouTube, but Blogger won't embed for some reason.
"Pieces of Africa" was always a favorite Kronos Quartet disc for me.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the ubiquitous politics discussions I see everywhere insinuating itself into music (and food and clothing and work and consumerism, etc), I grew so tired of it and have been attempting to retreat away by going deeper into music, only to find it wherever I read about music (but luckily not where/with whom I endeavor to learn and play it). Perhaps politics is unavoidable because we are such a eusocial species (see "The Social Conquest of Earth" by Edward O. Wilson, for example) and as human nature is to frictiously (I made that word up, judging by how the blogger software underlines it as a mistake...but it sounds a lot better than "frictionously" --apparently also not a word) combine our hive species nature with our cognitive individualism. In other words, we each think for ourselves AND we also inherit and share cultural practices and concepts that evolved practically out of the larger social forces in play through past generations.
What am I even saying anymore? Just that politics seem to be inescapable, even if I no longer want to fight or convince anybody of my own point of view...still we must ponder the controversies because they express real differences of perspective and interest in a complex network (of smaller, connected networks) of which we are all connected. But why I want to dodge the fights now (mostly, until something seems existential) is because reflecting on historically past controversies, where the circumstances and cultural forms have since morphed enough to make these fights now seem remote, I see the validity to be found in all sides, at least when trying to understand their position at the time. We need the arch-conservatives to preserve and venerate those values and rituals that are old and won through long experience through vicissitudes of time and fortune as functional (and comforting) on a deep level...yet we also need the radicals to explore new ways of thinking and seeing that will open opportunities as our economic and social conditions develop over time. My approach is to consider all the radical ideas and try to glean whatever portion may be useful and promising while still revering and conserving the time-tested traditions and conventions that give the stability and shelter from disasters that could come from unbounded adventurism.
I wonder how any of that relates to your "Weekend Ruminations" above? No longer a literal and concrete analyst, I am content to feel much cognition is outside the direct attention of the ego and that these ruminations of mine were still definitely provoked by reading those ruminations of yours Bryan.
Wise as always, Will. I want to thank you again for taking time to add your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteRegarding how we need both the conservative and the radical elements in politics, yes, that is so very true. Sometimes I don't know which is which, though!
I read an excerpt of that Delingpole article at Instapundit this morning but didn't go on to read the entire thing. Don't try to sort through the entire 'fake news' business in any thorough-going, strictly analytical sort of way but it's true enough that there are writers, websites, and so forth to whom or to which I give the benefit of the doubt, and others that I discount from the outset, to a greater or lesser degree. Sometimes that attitude 'works' and sometimes it doesn't. But there's only so much time in the day, and there's no way I was ever going to view the video, so thank you for watching so that I don't need to.
ReplyDeletePeople commenting on the Euro anthem back-turning at Slipped Disc some of them need to be cautioned by the bartender before they punch the pro-Brexit drinkers ('an ignorant army of chavs and knuckledraggers, this coterie of loonies and beer-swillers').
Am having my first listen to Handel's Siroe later on but you and Will have persuaded me to interrupt Il Giardino Armonico's La Morte della ragione (the title is from Petrarch, 'the senses rule and reason's dead', more or less) and listen to Volans's White Man Sleeps.
Have been listening to Alexander Agricola's song De tous biens plaine (based on Hayne van Ghizegham's song of the same name) in its four iterations since last evening, trying to figure out what is going on. Was on the verge of investigating to see if the score is available and so am, honestly, glad of the relief provided by Volans.
I've returned to the practice of trying to remember to check in at Slipped Disc every day & notice that those wacky Canadian practitioners of 'new music' have been getting up to nonsense: they didn't appreciate old white woman composer Mary Jane Leach's use of the word 'nig-er' in her presentation of the work of Julius Eastman, about whom I know you've posted; which is all of it bound to be 'fraught with controversy' because she is one of the principals to have 'rescued' Eastman's musical remains from the figurative dustbin (as I understand it). My own take (and I'd never heard of OBEY or of Leach, although maybe I've seen the name if e.g. it came up in your post or posts about Eastman-- maybe she is a nasty old witch, for all I know) is that the rude children discovered yet more specious justification for their rudeness, and Lord of the Flies too. (But judging from the photographs at the convention website, they don't appear all of them to be children after all, more's the pity.)
ReplyDeleteYes, I have written a couple of times about Julius Eastman. As I understand it, a Canadian composer and advocate of the work of Eastman, who was black and gay and gave as title to one piece two derogatory slang terms for black and gay, apparently gave the title of this work in her talk and therefore became the target of a great deal of complaints. So, for actually saying aloud the actual title of a piece by Eastman, her music was removed from the subsequent concert. Madness!
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of something that Kanye West said in the Letterman interview (which is worth watching). He said that when he received negative criticism it gave him energy to do more. The Canadian administrative bureaucracy, like the university administrators in the US, responds with embarrassing apologies and complete submission to the PC madness.