January 2015 archive

Rap had it’s origins in an African-American form of poetic competition called Dozens which consists of the exchange of elaborate rhymed insults

The first academic study was in 1939, but it’s certainly much older than that with some attributing it to Zulu combat traditions or various Nigerian and Ghanan “games”.  Like Scrabble it can be played for sport or for blood (my Grandmother was a fierce Scrabble player and practically had tantrums when I hit her with words like rhythm or phlox, particularly when triple letter scores were involved).  The loser is the one who can’t find a come back or gets angry.

Kind of like blogging.

Lest you think pre-combat boasting and call-outs a particularly African tradition, it was a common practice in many classical cultures to muster “armies” to face each other and engage in taunting and then send forth a champion (or several) for individual duels to decide the victory.

Successful empires like the Egyptians, Macedonians, and Romans were decidedly unsentimental about things like that and would generally just slaughter the lot of you where you stood no matter how hard you sang or witty you were, but the Bronze Age Greeks indulged- read the Iliad.

Anyway it certainly goes back much farther than 1939. In 1929 Speckled Red recorded a song called “The Dirty Dozen”-

Hmm…

Hip-Hop developed out of a branch of early techno-funk from Detroit (other off shoots were Techno which I like and Disco which is evil anti-music).

The early center was the South Bronx where the movement got a boost from equipment looted during the New York City Blackout of 1977 (kind of like capturing a Carillon or an Organ and using it to make music instead of cannons and cannon balls).  I had thought for many years that Debbie Harry’s Rapture was simply another Elvis-type rip off but as it turns out she was simply an early adopter who happened to be white and female.

During the mid to late 80s the Los Angeles ‘Gangsta Rap’ scene emerged and by the early 90s it was the dominant movement in Hip Hop.

Now when we say ‘Gangsta’ we mean that many of these artists had affiliations with the Crips and the Bloods and boasted in their songs about street violence and drug use and dealing.  Eric Wright (Eazy-E) founded the seminal ‘Gangsta’ label, Ruthless, probably out of crack income.

Just keeping it 100 folks.

Now as everyone on the right coast knows, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere (and in fact many of the most prominent West Coast artists were originally from New York or Philadelphia) and by 1991 we have the rumblings (when you’re a Jet you’re a Jet, from your first cigarette, to your last dying day) of discontent from those left behind in the person of the otherwise unremarkable Tim Dog in a song about Compton.

Yeah.

So anyway by 1994 the East Coast has seen a resurgence and the hot new labels are ‘Bad Boy’ (based in the South Bronx, run by A&R Records and ‘Puff Daddy’ Sean Combs and ‘Death Row’ (based in LA and run by Suge Knight).  Their most prominent artists were Christopher Wallace (The Notorious B.I.G.) from Queens and Tupac Shakur a New York ex-pat.

Tupac accused Combs, Wallace, and Andre Harrell of participation in a robbery where Shakur was shot 5 times.  They denied it.  Knight took a dig at Combs and Wallace during an awards show and a friend was fatally shot.  Knight bailed out Tupac from 5 counts of sexual abuse and he signed with Death Row.

In 1995 – 96 Tupac wrote numerous songs aimed at Combs and Wallace and in September of 96 he was killed in a drive by shooting in Las Vegas hours after beating up a Crip.  Wallace was shot dead in another drive by in Los Angeles in early 1997.  No one was charged in either murder though it was widely suspected tha Knight was involved in both.

And with the death of Sonny and Sollozo the great Rap War sputtered out.

But ek you say, what does this have to do with 19th Century Art Music?

I told you, these guys were Rock Stars.  Back in the day when I was into QXR our Bando lingo for that was MozartBachandBrahms as in “Did you hear about (latest scandlously gyrating pop icon)?”, “No, I only listen to long haired music, MozartBachandBrahms.”

Now Mozart and Bach are easily justified (though listed in the wrong order) as being representative of the Classical and Barouque periods of Art Music.  Brahms on the other hand, is no Beethoven nor even a Wagner.

He was, however a leader of the older and more conservative school of Romanticism that arose after Beethoven which focused more on Beethoven’s more traditional elements rather than his raw theatricality.  Liszt and Wagner were all about the pyrotechnics.

So in the mid-1800s this petty and pointless feud broke out between musicians and composers who were overwhelming German called The War of the Romantics.  It was hardly noticed by anyone else in the Art Music world because they were working out their own nationalistic, emotive, and programmatic aspirations.

Personally I find the music of Neudeutsche Schule earnest and overweening to the point of self-parody and am interested only in the ironic sense of its inherent contradictions and influence on broader historical movements (the rise of Fascism for instance).  The Leipzig school is much easier and more restful if a bit boring and derivative.  It’s not without its own sophisticated charm however.

The first piece for your consideration today was written by Brahms in response to a pointed request from the University of Breslau, which had awarded him an Honorary Doctorate, that some form of dedicated musical reciprocation was expected.  So he wrote a compilation of collegiate drinking songs titled the Academic Festival Overture which he deliberately overscored and stylized as a musical pie in the face.

F#@k You Breslau.  It remains a great hit among student musicians to this very day and is among his most performed works.

A companion piece from the same year is the Tragic Overture.  It emphasizes the Romantic detachment from narrative and a complicated formalism and allusion to other composers, Beethoven in particular.

A German Requiem is considered his masterwork (it’s certainly the longest and most orchestrated) and is controversial only in the sense that it’s based on the Lutheran Bible, concentrates more on the comfort of the living than the pitiable condition of the dead, and contrasts with his disinterest in organized religion at all.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Fancy a cuppa? We explore the UK’s unusual takes on Japanese green tea

 evie lund

In the UK, where I’m from, people get really passionate about tea. It’s the first thing you offer someone who is a visitor to your home, and remembering how someone likes their tea made is one way of showing that you care about them. We’re also fussy about the ritual behind making tea (you should see what happens in my house when someone puts the milk in first). In this way, we’re kinda like the Japanese.

In Japan, they drink green tea rather than black tea, but their attitude towards it matches ours. It’s both something for all-day long refreshment, and for special occasions. They’re also really into the ceremony behind it, with chadou, or tea ceremony, being a celebrated art in Japan.

Hollow 3

Each day I can watch him trudging home from wherever he has been.  Fortunately it is downhill from the bus stop to where he lives.  He never smiles, eyes focused on the ground a few feet in front of his pace.

Beaten down.

The world so heavy that he can’t even look up.

Shoulders sagging under the weight of the last straw, and the last straw before that… and the one before that.  A succession of so many minor beatings to the ego that he flinches reflexively at anything, everything, expecting the worst

Back bent from too many sorrows.

And you want him to rise up?

Transcript

Europe’s Lapse of Reason

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Project Syndicate

JAN 8, 2015

Across the Atlantic, there are few signs of even a modest US-style recovery: The gap between where Europe is and where it would have been in the absence of the crisis continues to grow. In most European Union countries, per capita GDP is less than it was before the crisis. A lost half-decade is quickly turning into a whole one. Behind the cold statistics, lives are being ruined, dreams are being dashed, and families are falling apart (or not being formed) as stagnation – depression in some places – runs on year after year.

…

The current mess stems partly from adherence to a long-discredited belief in well-functioning markets without imperfections of information and competition. Hubris has also played a role. How else to explain the fact that, year after year, European officials’ forecasts of their policies’ consequences have been consistently wrong?

These forecasts have been wrong not because EU countries failed to implement the prescribed policies, but because the models upon which those policies relied were so badly flawed. In Greece, for example, measures intended to lower the debt burden have in fact left the country more burdened than it was in 2010: the debt-to-GDP ratio has increased, owing to the bruising impact of fiscal austerity on output. At least the International Monetary Fund has owned up to these intellectual and policy failures.

Europe’s leaders remain convinced that structural reform must be their top priority. But the problems they point to were apparent in the years before the crisis, and they were not stopping growth then. What Europe needs more than structural reform within member countries is reform of the structure of the eurozone itself, and a reversal of austerity policies, which have failed time and again to reignite economic growth.

…

Now Greece is posing yet another test for Europe. The decline in the Greek economy since the start of the crisis is in many ways worse than that which confronted America during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Youth unemployment is over 50%. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s government has failed, and now, owing to the parliament’s inability to choose a new Greek president, an early general election will be held on January 25.

The left opposition Syriza party, which is committed to renegotiating the terms of Greece’s EU bailout, is ahead in opinion polls. If Syriza wins but does not take power, a principal reason will be fear of how the EU will respond. Fear is not the noblest of emotions, and it will not give rise to the kind of national consensus that Greece needs in order to move forward.

The issue is not Greece. It is Europe. If Europe does not change its ways – if it does not reform the eurozone and repeal austerity – a popular backlash will become inevitable. Greece may stay the course this time. But this economic madness cannot continue forever. Democracy will not permit it. But how much more pain will Europe have to endure before reason is restored?

On Verge of Victory, Europe’s Ascendant Left Declares “Subservience is Over”

by Jon Queally, Common Dream

Friday, January 23, 2015

Syriza and Podemos have become the mouthpiece of the anti-austerity movement in southern Europe while Tsipras and Iglesias have emerged as key political leaders who emerged from the grassroots, street-level protest movements which rose in opposition to the severe economic policies imposted by elite forces following the financial crisis that began in 2008. In relatively short time, both Syriza and Podemos went from being non-existent political entities to standing on the doorstep of taking power.

With national elections in Greece just days away, and Syriza’s polling numbers only improving, Alexis Tsipras announced that his party is prepared to “overthrow” the status quo and vowed to implement swift changes to undo the austerity policies-imposed at the behest of foreign creditors and attached to a bailout package offered by the European Central Bank and the IMF-that have left the Greek economy in tatters. Standing before the large crowd, Tsipras announced that by Monday, “[Greece’s] national humiliation will be over. We will finish with orders from abroad.”

Syriza’s answer to austerity, he continued, would be this: “The bailout is over. Blackmail is over. Subservience is over.”

…

Taking the podium to address the thousands gathered, Iglesias indicated the fate of the Greek and Spanish people-both crushed by unemployment and the gutting of the public sector-were intimately tied. But, Iglesias declared, “The wind of democratic change is blowing in Europe.” Less than one year since its inception, Podemos is now polling ahead of Spain’s ruling party. Though national elections in Spain could happen later this year, they have not yet been scheduled.

…

Ahead of the Greek election on Sunday, the latest polling in the country shows Syriza has built on its previous lead over the ruling New Democracy party, now led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.

…

Though Prime Minister Samaras has tried to counter the rise of Syriza by telling Greek voters that its leftwing policies will lead the nation to ruin, experts and economists argue that it has been the austerity policies  imposed across Europe, though most severely imposed in nations like Greece and Spain, that have been the clearest culprits of economic ruin.

Syriza stretches poll lead as Greek election campaign ends

Helena Smith, The Guardian

Friday 23 January 2015 06.06 EST

Greece’s anti-austerity party of the left, Syriza, has stretched its election lead to six points, putting it on course for a historic victory in Sunday’s crucial elections.

With the incumbent prime minister, Antonis Samaras, warning of economic catastrophe if Syriza prevails, and Europe looking on nervously, the shortest election campaign in Greek postwar history concludes on Friday.

Barely four weeks after the failure of parliament to elect a president, triggering the ballot, Greece’s fate now lies in the hands of 9.8 million voters. All the polls show, with growing conviction, that victory will go to Syriza. A poll released by GPO for Mega TV late on Thursday gave the far leftists a six-percentage-point lead over Samaras’s centre-right New Democracy, the dominant force in a coalition government that has held power since June 2012. A week earlier, GPO had the lead at four percentage points.

…

Syriza has threatened to “cancel austerity” and stop interest payments on Athens’ monumental debt – moves that will almost certainly put it on a collision course with the international creditors that have injected €240bn into Greece since its brush with bankruptcy five years ago.

…

Analysts maintain that Syriza’s ability to attain an outright majority will be difficult. With pressure mounting from the EU and IMF to “respect” the commitments made as the price of aid, speculation has been rife that the party might prefer to enter a coalition government that would enable it to forge ahead with the structural reforms and budget cuts demanded in exchange for the biggest financial assistance programme in global history.

But Tsipras put paid to that. The leftists, who have never held office in the near 200 years of the Modern Greek state – and who, after a bloody civil war, were hounded and imprisoned for decades – wanted to win an absolute majority that would allow them to govern unimpeded, he insisted.

“We are asking for a clear mandate, crystal clear, undiluted, indisputable,” he told the crowd. “The time of the left has come.”

…

If there was any question about whether the anti-establishment rebels had ambitions of plotting a similar course elsewhere in Europe, it was firmly dispelled when Tsipras was joined on the podium by Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Spain’s anti-austerity Podemos movement. To the strains of Leonard Cohen’s First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin, the duo punched the air and Tsipras, putting his arm around Iglesias, announced that the anti-austerians were poised to challenge the old order across the continent.