It's at least one step closer to being official; the class that I've been spending the past few months developing will be available to UCLA students for the Spring Quarter of 2011, pending that I don't die or become horribly disfigured/imprisoned between now and then, or that I don't somehow manage to miserably fail the pedagogy course I'm required to take beforehand.
The course will be an attempt to provide a cross-cultural analysis of the role of both folk and popular music paradigms in social and political organizing in the developing world, paying particular attention to music's function as a vehicle for criticism of post-colonial regimes in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and South Asia.
Needless to say, the course will have a lot of this:
and of course some of this:
and quite a bit of this:
and oh yeah, lots of this:
While the curriculum is predominantly oriented towards historical movements, it will also be paired with some real-life "laboratory" elements, wherein we will be working in direct contact with contemporary artists who have been subjected to politically-motivated censorship, marginal representation in the western-dominated market, and minimized protection of intellectual property rights. If done right, the establishment of consistent communication between us (the resourced few in academia) and them (the systemically resource-deprived in the real world) could be a small step towards a transnational collaborative platform in which politically conscious artists in post-colonial societies could gain access to a more stable footing in order for them to keep doing what they do best. We would also gain a great deal from this, as it would give us access to some amazing music that has never been available in the United States.
I'll be teaching the course along with Anthony Seeger, an Ethnomusicology professor most noted for being the executive producer of 250 recordings on the Smithsonian Folkways label between 1988 and 2000. He also did a mind-blowingly amazing amount of other stuff, which you can read about by googling him. Oh, and his last name is no coincidence, as he is part of one of the most important families in the history of folk music (including Pete Seeger, Charles Seeger and the like). It should be incredibly rad to work with such an amazing guy. I've heard stories of him teaching entire lectures while playing banjo.
Anyway, if anyone is interested in the course, I'll be posting updates semi-regularly on facebook and the blog and such. There are some other aspects to this project that I can't really fully talk about right now because they aren't set in stone, but hopefully they will be fleshed out a little more as the process goes on. =)
10.30.2010
Revenge of Juju: Halloween 2010!
Hey everyone!
Happy Halloween! As many of you know, this is my favorite time of year. This very special annual rite of reversal allows us a time to get away with insane shennanigans that we wouldn't normally be able to do any other time. For instance, just yesterday, I walked outside of my room and saw one of the ghosts from Pac Man run right past me, only to be immediately followed by Pac Man. I was the only one to witness this beautifully intimate event, and I felt cosmically fulfilled by its sheer simplicity.
I generally like to share these positive feelings I have this time of year with you (the interwebs) in a multitude of ways, but mostly through music. It's not fair that christmas gets so much music and halloween doesn't. In fact, every holiday should have a canon of music that is proportional to the monolithically epic back catalogue of christmas jams. It is for this reason that I began the holiday album project, which I plan on continuing in the years to come. You can expect my Valentine's Day record, "For Lovers", to come out in 2011.
Anyway, in terms of Halloween I was initially planning on doing a re-recorded version of my classic sex wave album entitled "The Halloween Album!", but fate chose instead to give me midterms and a ridiculous fever/sore throat, so that was deemed impossible. Fans of the record will have to wait for next year for the official Halloween Album Redux (with more tracks, better mixing and vocal redubs, special guest stars, etc). But I couldn't just settle for not doing anything at all this year... I mean, Halloween is a great time!
It is for this reason that I have decided on this glorious Hallows Eve to assemble a 19-track gift from me to you entitled "Revenge of Juju: Halloween 2010". The title is a reference to a juju that I got when I was in The Gambia that caused me a great deal of grief (a story which you may read about in the upcoming issue of Illiterature Magazine). The album art is an appropriated image from a piece of Russian propaganda from the first decade of the 20th century (artist unknown). The mix itself is a smattering of various tracks that I enjoy playing around this time of year. There is no particular stylistic cohesion so much as a thematic cohesion, so hopefully there's a little something in here for everyone. You can just delete whatever tracks you don't like and mix them in with tracks you like and then it will be like you made your own mix! No matter what you do, I hope you enjoy these spooky little gems. If you like any of the artists, look into them and maybe buy some records if you still do that sort of thing. So yeah, without further ado, here it is!
Your friend on the internet,
Andrew
Happy Halloween! As many of you know, this is my favorite time of year. This very special annual rite of reversal allows us a time to get away with insane shennanigans that we wouldn't normally be able to do any other time. For instance, just yesterday, I walked outside of my room and saw one of the ghosts from Pac Man run right past me, only to be immediately followed by Pac Man. I was the only one to witness this beautifully intimate event, and I felt cosmically fulfilled by its sheer simplicity.
I generally like to share these positive feelings I have this time of year with you (the interwebs) in a multitude of ways, but mostly through music. It's not fair that christmas gets so much music and halloween doesn't. In fact, every holiday should have a canon of music that is proportional to the monolithically epic back catalogue of christmas jams. It is for this reason that I began the holiday album project, which I plan on continuing in the years to come. You can expect my Valentine's Day record, "For Lovers", to come out in 2011.
Anyway, in terms of Halloween I was initially planning on doing a re-recorded version of my classic sex wave album entitled "The Halloween Album!", but fate chose instead to give me midterms and a ridiculous fever/sore throat, so that was deemed impossible. Fans of the record will have to wait for next year for the official Halloween Album Redux (with more tracks, better mixing and vocal redubs, special guest stars, etc). But I couldn't just settle for not doing anything at all this year... I mean, Halloween is a great time!
It is for this reason that I have decided on this glorious Hallows Eve to assemble a 19-track gift from me to you entitled "Revenge of Juju: Halloween 2010". The title is a reference to a juju that I got when I was in The Gambia that caused me a great deal of grief (a story which you may read about in the upcoming issue of Illiterature Magazine). The album art is an appropriated image from a piece of Russian propaganda from the first decade of the 20th century (artist unknown). The mix itself is a smattering of various tracks that I enjoy playing around this time of year. There is no particular stylistic cohesion so much as a thematic cohesion, so hopefully there's a little something in here for everyone. You can just delete whatever tracks you don't like and mix them in with tracks you like and then it will be like you made your own mix! No matter what you do, I hope you enjoy these spooky little gems. If you like any of the artists, look into them and maybe buy some records if you still do that sort of thing. So yeah, without further ado, here it is!
Your friend on the internet,
Andrew
10.24.2010
The Genius of Arturo Escobar
So since my last post, I've floated all around Africa and started going to UCLA to for International Development Studies. Most of the work I've been reading has been lots of the same kind of stuff that I was expecting, which is ok and all, but nothing particularly life-changing. But last week I started reading this genius dude named Arturo Escobar, who I'd never heard of prior to reading. It's basically like Foucault meets Gandhi. Amazing shit. I think I've officially been won over by post-structuralism, which prior to this point I always kind of suspected of being ideological wanking.
Watch in awe as he lays out pretty much every problem I've ever seen with development (both theory and practice) in a few paragraphs, saying what I've been trying to say this whole time in much more succinct and beautiful words and actually somehow managing to lay out a framework for how we can start re-conceptualizing efforts in the Third World
- Arturo Escobar, from "Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World"
Watch in awe as he lays out pretty much every problem I've ever seen with development (both theory and practice) in a few paragraphs, saying what I've been trying to say this whole time in much more succinct and beautiful words and actually somehow managing to lay out a framework for how we can start re-conceptualizing efforts in the Third World
Development fostered a way of conceiving of social life as a technical problem, as a matter of rational decision and management to be entrusted to that group of people - the development professionals - whose specialized knowledge allegedly qualified them for the task. Instead of seeing change as a process rooted in the interpretation of each society's history and cultural tradition - as a number of intellectuals in various parts of the Third World had attempted to do in the 1920's and 1930's (Gandhi being the best known of them) - these professionals sought to devise mechanisms and procedures to make societies fit a preexisting model that embodied the structures and functions of modernity. Like sorcerers' apprentices, the development professionals awakened once again the dream of reasons that, in their hands, as in earlier instances, produced a troubling reality.
At times, development grew to be so important for Third World countries that it became acceptable for their rulers to subject their populations to an infinite variety of interventions, to more encompassing forms of power and systems of control; so important that First and Third World elites accepted the price of massive impoverishment, of selling Third World resources to the most convenient bidder, of degrading their physical and human ecologies, of killing and torturing, of condemning their indigenous populations to near extinction; so important that many in the Third World began to think of themselves as inferior, underdeveloped, and ignorant and to doubt the value of their own culture, deciding instead to pledge allegiance to the banners of reason and progress; so important, finally, that the achievement of development clouded the awareness of the impossibility of fulfilling the promises that development seemed to be making.
After four decades of discourse, most forms of understanding and representing the Third World are still dictated by the same basic tenets. The forms of power that have appeared act not so much by repression but by normalization; not by ignorance but by controlled knowledge; not by humanitarian concern but by bureaucratization of social action. As the conditions that gave rise to development became more pressing, it could only increase its hold, refine its methods, and extend its reach even further. That the materiality of these conditions is not conjured up by an "objective" body of knowledge but is charted out by the rational discourses of economists, politicians, and development experts of all types should already be clear. What has been achieved is a specific configuration of factors and forces in which the new language of development finds support. As a discourse, development is thus a very real historical formation, albeit articulated around an artificial construct (underdevelopment) and upon a certain materiality (the conditions baptized as underdevelopment), which must be conceptualized in different ways if the power of the development discourse is to be challenged or displaced.
To be sure, there is a situation of economic exploitation that must be recognized and dealt with. Power is too cynical at the level of exploitation and should be resisted on its own terms. There is also a certain materiality of life conditions that is extremely preoccupying and that requires great effort and attention. But those seeking to understand the Third World through development have long lost sight of its materiality by building upon it a reality that like a castle in the air has haunted us for decades. Understanding the history of the investment of the Third World by Western forms of knowledge and power is a way to shift the ground somewhat so we can start to look at the materiality with different eyes in different categories.
The coherence of effects that the development achieved is key to its success as a hegemonic form of representation; the construction of the poor and underdeveloped as universal, preconstituted subjects, based on the privilege of the representers; the exercise of power over the Third World made possible by this discursive homogenization (which entails the erasure of the complexity and diversity of Third World peoples, so that a squatter in Mexico City, a Nepalese peasant, and a Tuareg nomad become equivalent to each other as poor and underdeveloped); and the colonization and domination of the natural and human ecologies and economies of the Third World.
Development assumes a teleology to the extent that it proposes the "natives" will sooner or later be reformed; at the same time, however, it reproduces endlessly the separation between reformers and those to be reformed by keeping alive the premise of the Third World as different and inferior, as having a limited humanity in relation to the accomplished European. Development relies on perpetual recognition and disavowal of difference, a feature identified by Bhabha as inherent to discrimination. The signifiers of "poverty", "illiteracy", "hunger" and so forth have already achieved a fixity as signifieds of "underdevelopment" which seems impossible to sunder. Perhaps no other factor has contributed to cementing the association of "poverty" with "underdevelopment" as the discourse of economists.
- Arturo Escobar, from "Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World"
4.14.2010
Tropicalia Wisdom
Sei que quem rouba um, é moleque
Aos dez, promovido a ladrão
Se rouba 100 já passou de doutor
E 10 mil, é figura nacional
E se rouba 80 milhões...
É a diplomacia internacional
(I know that he who robs another is a waif
after ten, he's promoted to thief
if he robs a hundred, he becomes a respected expert
and ten thousand, he's a national celebrity
and if he robs eighty million...
it's international diplomacy)
- Tom Ze, "Profissão de Ladrão"
1.26.2010
Some Totally Late Thoughts on Avatar
I guess now is as good a time as ever to do what many bloggers have been doing over the past few months and throw in my thoughts on the crazy phenomenon of a multi bazillion dollar movie known as Avatar. I wasn't initially planning on writing anything about it, but it seems like people get in such a fuss over this stuff and get all Roger Ebert about shit, so I suppose I'm writing just to vent my frustrations about the fact that I don't think it's really that shitty. I don't really understand what pisses people off about this movie, but I imagine a lot of it has to do with anticipation or hype or whatever, which is something I was completely not privy to at all going into the theater (I didn't even see a goddamn billboard anywhere, so I don't know where people were getting the hype thing from). So anyway, here are my impressions after seeing the movie twice and hearing what people had to say about it.
First off, of course it's visually brilliant and technically revolutionary and those are great reasons to like the movie... that's pretty much a given. I don't really feel the need to talk about that because it's been talked about elsewhere and much more eloquently than I could ever try. What I don't understand, and what I'd like to share my thoughts on, is the backlash this movie has been getting for not having a 'complex' enough storyline. This seems sort of off base to me, as it's pretty clear that James Cameron is going for something more akin to Joseph Campbell's monomyth than a really nuanced, character-driven story. Like all variants of the monomyth, it puts together the fundamental building blocks of a story in a specific way that says something about us as a culture at this given point in history. This particular manifestation of the myth provides us with an opportunity to assess something fundamentally messed up about ourselves and our way of life: the current trajectory of our civilization is unsustainable and it hinges on the exploitation and virtual eradication of subaltern populations in order to continue. It's an incredibly simple, universally understandable explanation of why corporate imperialism is bullshit, and it doesn't aim to be much more than that plot-wise.
Yes, there's an obvious irony that this was produced by 20th Century Fox, a subsidiary of one of the corporations most responsible for propagating the very same bullshit that the film overtly rallies against, but chances are that Rupert Murdoch and the Fox team couldn't care less about this irony, seeing as it's made them money and that's pretty much what they were in it for. For all I know, that's what James Cameron was in it for too... but one thing I do know is that we as an audience can understand this film as more than a marketable product and actually start to look at where it connects with what's going on in the world. If people are complaining that the film is too preachy, then lets do the simple task of actually backing up the preaching with history.
As the rights of indigenous peoples are being continually violated for corporate gain, there develops a fundamental necessity to create some kind of dialogue in the mainstream about the injustices our culture is responsible for. There is no better medium for this dialogue than film, as it is the art form for the masses. As the imagined J. Edgar Hoover said in the 1992 Charlie Chaplin biopic said, "I have to wonder if you people realize the level of responsibility you carry. From my way of thinking, Motion Pictures are potentially the most influential form of communication ever invented. And there's no control over it. Your message reaches everyone, everywhere." So what films have been made thus far that carry this message? I've heard a lot of people comparing this movie to the ever-so-lovable 90's animation, Fern Gully. So one of the most significant causes of the past 100 years gets to be championed by 90's faeries voiced by Christian Slater? As far as I see it, Avatar is basically filling the void of having a cultural reference point that can be taken more seriously and seen by way more people than Fern Gully while still remaining in that same realm of simple communication that people (families, kids, people who aren't self-made internet film critics) can understand.
Sure, the plot and dialogue are nothing original and the message is delivered in a completely blatant way, but I guess my point is that the message wasn't delivered in a way that doesn't ring true to people who actually concern themselves with this kinda shit in real life. The fact that 10 languages die each year, and with them an entire culture's worth of stories, customs, and subtleties is one of the greatest unsung tragedies of our time. Beyond that, there are even more perceptible manifestations of environmental racism being faced by the indigenous peoples of Peru, the Ogoni people of Nigeria, Puerto Ricans on the Island of Vieques, and Native Americans living on reservations in the United States (all of which can be discovered through a nice and easy google search). So while also being an entertaining film, Avatar is also an opportunity to bring a lot of these issues to light. This blog has already done a much better job at that than I could, and anyone who can read Spanish should definitely check it out, because it's worth your time.
The fact that someone had to make a film with an invented culture of imaginary blue people and throw in a white "everyman" into the mix just to draw attention to the continuous threat of ethnocide is sort of depressing in its own right, but this wasn't the first time and it definitely won't be the last time that a sci-fi/fantasy story has established that sort of narrative structure to develop interest in what's going on in our current reality. They just did it a few months prior to Avatar with District 9 and nobody seemed to have any complaints. Or maybe American's want their political critiques to be so understated or layered that average consumers don't understand it or care about it. When I think about more complex stories that address the same kind of exploitation addressed in Avatar, I'm reminded of films like Fernando Meirelles' artful but somewhat hard to follow adaptation of John Le Carre's "The Constant Gardener", which ended up getting viewed by a marginal audience, and out of those who did see it, many were left feeling confused and ultimately sort of disinterested. Is the intricate arthouse film the only artistic paradigm that progressive ideas need to be confined to, even in such a widely varied medium? I dunno.
What I personally think is that stripping the story down to address the basic premise of what is wrong with globalization (displacing indigenous populations,
shooting people out of helicopters, etc) and taking these ideas to an unspeakably huge audience is pretty much one of the steps that needs to be made to start moving shit in the right direction, even if it doesn't capture all of the subtleties of the human condition. If it is to be understood universally, then make it simple. I hate to mention Charlie Chaplin again, but isn't that pretty much how he did things? "Modern Times" didn't wow us with its character depth, it just laid out some shit that was goin down for an audience that it could mean something to.
I dunno... maybe I'm just losing my cool leftie points, and it's only a matter of time before I'll be kicked out of the league of academic progressives. Given my current chances of getting accepted into a decent college, I'd say it's a definite likelihood.
.jpg){kind=avatar}
First off, of course it's visually brilliant and technically revolutionary and those are great reasons to like the movie... that's pretty much a given. I don't really feel the need to talk about that because it's been talked about elsewhere and much more eloquently than I could ever try. What I don't understand, and what I'd like to share my thoughts on, is the backlash this movie has been getting for not having a 'complex' enough storyline. This seems sort of off base to me, as it's pretty clear that James Cameron is going for something more akin to Joseph Campbell's monomyth than a really nuanced, character-driven story. Like all variants of the monomyth, it puts together the fundamental building blocks of a story in a specific way that says something about us as a culture at this given point in history. This particular manifestation of the myth provides us with an opportunity to assess something fundamentally messed up about ourselves and our way of life: the current trajectory of our civilization is unsustainable and it hinges on the exploitation and virtual eradication of subaltern populations in order to continue. It's an incredibly simple, universally understandable explanation of why corporate imperialism is bullshit, and it doesn't aim to be much more than that plot-wise.
Yes, there's an obvious irony that this was produced by 20th Century Fox, a subsidiary of one of the corporations most responsible for propagating the very same bullshit that the film overtly rallies against, but chances are that Rupert Murdoch and the Fox team couldn't care less about this irony, seeing as it's made them money and that's pretty much what they were in it for. For all I know, that's what James Cameron was in it for too... but one thing I do know is that we as an audience can understand this film as more than a marketable product and actually start to look at where it connects with what's going on in the world. If people are complaining that the film is too preachy, then lets do the simple task of actually backing up the preaching with history.
As the rights of indigenous peoples are being continually violated for corporate gain, there develops a fundamental necessity to create some kind of dialogue in the mainstream about the injustices our culture is responsible for. There is no better medium for this dialogue than film, as it is the art form for the masses. As the imagined J. Edgar Hoover said in the 1992 Charlie Chaplin biopic said, "I have to wonder if you people realize the level of responsibility you carry. From my way of thinking, Motion Pictures are potentially the most influential form of communication ever invented. And there's no control over it. Your message reaches everyone, everywhere." So what films have been made thus far that carry this message? I've heard a lot of people comparing this movie to the ever-so-lovable 90's animation, Fern Gully. So one of the most significant causes of the past 100 years gets to be championed by 90's faeries voiced by Christian Slater? As far as I see it, Avatar is basically filling the void of having a cultural reference point that can be taken more seriously and seen by way more people than Fern Gully while still remaining in that same realm of simple communication that people (families, kids, people who aren't self-made internet film critics) can understand.
Sure, the plot and dialogue are nothing original and the message is delivered in a completely blatant way, but I guess my point is that the message wasn't delivered in a way that doesn't ring true to people who actually concern themselves with this kinda shit in real life. The fact that 10 languages die each year, and with them an entire culture's worth of stories, customs, and subtleties is one of the greatest unsung tragedies of our time. Beyond that, there are even more perceptible manifestations of environmental racism being faced by the indigenous peoples of Peru, the Ogoni people of Nigeria, Puerto Ricans on the Island of Vieques, and Native Americans living on reservations in the United States (all of which can be discovered through a nice and easy google search). So while also being an entertaining film, Avatar is also an opportunity to bring a lot of these issues to light. This blog has already done a much better job at that than I could, and anyone who can read Spanish should definitely check it out, because it's worth your time.
The fact that someone had to make a film with an invented culture of imaginary blue people and throw in a white "everyman" into the mix just to draw attention to the continuous threat of ethnocide is sort of depressing in its own right, but this wasn't the first time and it definitely won't be the last time that a sci-fi/fantasy story has established that sort of narrative structure to develop interest in what's going on in our current reality. They just did it a few months prior to Avatar with District 9 and nobody seemed to have any complaints. Or maybe American's want their political critiques to be so understated or layered that average consumers don't understand it or care about it. When I think about more complex stories that address the same kind of exploitation addressed in Avatar, I'm reminded of films like Fernando Meirelles' artful but somewhat hard to follow adaptation of John Le Carre's "The Constant Gardener", which ended up getting viewed by a marginal audience, and out of those who did see it, many were left feeling confused and ultimately sort of disinterested. Is the intricate arthouse film the only artistic paradigm that progressive ideas need to be confined to, even in such a widely varied medium? I dunno.
What I personally think is that stripping the story down to address the basic premise of what is wrong with globalization (displacing indigenous populations,
shooting people out of helicopters, etc) and taking these ideas to an unspeakably huge audience is pretty much one of the steps that needs to be made to start moving shit in the right direction, even if it doesn't capture all of the subtleties of the human condition. If it is to be understood universally, then make it simple. I hate to mention Charlie Chaplin again, but isn't that pretty much how he did things? "Modern Times" didn't wow us with its character depth, it just laid out some shit that was goin down for an audience that it could mean something to.
I dunno... maybe I'm just losing my cool leftie points, and it's only a matter of time before I'll be kicked out of the league of academic progressives. Given my current chances of getting accepted into a decent college, I'd say it's a definite likelihood.
11.30.2009
Friends of Coal (Ladies Auxiliary!)
Honestly, I've seen a lot of funny videos on youtube in my day, but this one takes the cake. I love the part where they send the kids into the coal mine! and Mr. Coal!! MR. COAL!
(that's Mr. Coal, apparently)
U-S-A!
11.18.2009
Bola
Bola Sete - Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival
99 percent of the reason I'm uploading this is for my homeboy Braeden, who is auditioning to UCLA for ethnomusicology and looking for some inspiration. I figured I'd share it with y'all as well because we could all use a little bit of Bola Sete in our lives... and what better place to start than here? His other stuff just gets pretty new age from this point on, but there's some badass playing on this.
By the way, this was originally posted at Loronix, one of the greatest blogs on the internet and hands-down the place to go for any rare or out of print Brasilian Samba/Bossa/MPB/Tropicalia. Go check it out and you won't regret it.
11.09.2009
William Bratton
I don't really personally despise anyone in politics, but if I did, it would be former LAPD Chief William Bratton. Every time I hear his name mentioned or see his face, I want to die, or better, for him to die. After all, I tell myself, he probably thinks on some level that what he's done in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles was somehow for the better of humanity. As time goes by, this really does get harder and harder for me to believe.
My first test of faith came from when I personally interacted him in May of 2008 in order to calmly and peacefully express how deeply impacted my life was after this happened and I was beaten and shot with "non-lethal*" ammunition for expressing my first amendment rights at a legally permitted protest. I kept my cool and stayed very succinct and respectful as he pretended to listen, then once I was done, he refused to address me directly, instead telling his fellow officers to "get this kid out of my face" so he could moments later literally participate in a photo shoot with a baby. I more or less shrugged it off and didn't take it personally, because after all that's what any number of other politicians in Los Angeles would have done, and I'm sure he already knew that what those officers did was fucked up.
I thought I had pretty much come to terms with him being the way he is, until he had an interview on a recent episode of The Colbert Report that honestly made my stomach turn (and that's saying a lot cus' I can even have a laugh or two when imperialist fucks like Henry Kissinger go on that show and I can at least empathize with most people and understand where they're coming from politically).
After watching that video and reading the sycophantic article written in the LA times after his departure, I really feel like people's admiration of Bratton makes less sense to me than ever. His justification for the systematic repression of the homeless as getting rid of "squeegee pests" and "aggressive beggars" to make the streets a better place is completely dehumanizing, and I would expect most self-proclaimed liberals (i.e. most of the constituents of Los Angeles) to see right through it. But his rhetoric is pretty deceptive, and in practically every interview he evokes the "broken windows" approach to policing, which makes all of the crap he does seem like he's somehow healing us in this holistic new age-y way. Unfortunately, that's really not what he's about, and his interpretation of broken windows has just proven to be a nice flowery pseudo-scientific image given to the public in order to make them feel comfortable with passing inhumane policies like the Safer Cities Initiative. His efforts to supposedly clean up crime have ultimately stigmatized the unemployed and mentally ill and made it practically illegal to be homeless.
James Q. Wilson, George L. Kelling and Catherine Coles all came the school of thought that crime could be reduced by environmental design, and that is what the broken windows theory is supposed to be about. On the surface level, it's really a great idea that serves as a poetic testament to the power of context; removing graffiti, cleaning up trash and planting trees clearly does make the general quality of life better. Whether or not it actually prevents crime is still up in the air depending on what research you're reading, but he idea is pretty rad when you stop and think about it. So yeah, it sounds cool, but is this really what they were all about? Is this really what Bratton did? Take a walk through Skid Row and assess the situation yourself... the murals done by local artists are still covered in graffiti from however many years ago, the streets are still littered with trash that overflows into open storm drains, there really aren't that many green spaces than there used to be (with the exception of the commendable tree planting endeavor that the DLANC sustainability committee just accomplished). The biggest difference is that there just aren't as many people as there used to be. Bratton's interpretation of environmental design must have meant designing an environment without homeless people.
If he really believed in his whole thing about tending to the garden, he would be an advocate for permanent supportive housing, programs that get eligible people set up with jobs, and actually embracing projects that literally involve building gardens. He would get his officers to respond to actual calls put out by the homeless in Skid Row when they're in need of help instead of largely ignoring them in favor of handing out copious tickets for minor quality of life crimes. It's no wonder that National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless recently determined that this city is the "meanest city toward the homeless in America".
So yeah, crime went down for a little while, but what are the long-term ramifications of this approach to policing? The poor, who have frequently getting arrested for crimes that rich people commit every day and go unpunished for, and the homeless who are committing some crimes out of sheer necessity, are getting shipped off to prisons. The wave of arrests during Bratton's tenure as LA's police chief has significantly thinned out the population of Skid Row, effectually distancing LA's homeless from the facilities that can actually help them. Some people might look at that and say "that's not my problem", but unfortunately it's the problem of everyone in the state of California.
When 19,000 tickets are issued in Skid Row for jaywalking, then you're likely to end up ticketing a lot of people who can't afford to pay for it. When people accumulate enough tickets for bullshit crimes, then they are eventually imprisoned. Now all of the pressure is going to the state because they can't afford to sustain that kind of over-inflated prison population. Because our state is in its worst financial crisis in history and the governator refuses to cut from prisons, he instead decides to cut from schools instead. Then we raise a generation of people with limited access to largely inadequate academic resources, and because they can't ascertain a quality education, they end up getting shittier jobs. This of course inhibits socioeconomic mobility makes them statistically more susceptible to harrassment by the LAPD, and then the cycle continues ad infinitum. Is this really broken windows theory or is it straight up prison industrial complex? BUILD A FUCKING GARDEN! (p.s. not a metaphorical one)
As someone who has seen quite a bit of heinous shit down in Skid Row and has been personally subjected to police brutality at the hands of Bratton's LAPD on more than one occasion, I'm glad to see him out of LA. But as someone who is deeply invested in promoting social justice in the developing world, I'm even more sickened by what he's setting out to do now. His final line on Colbert, "For the Right Price, I Think Even You Could Be Helped" is one of the most haunting jokes I've ever heard someone say... if only because it's disgustingly true. The privatization of police forces in the developing world seems to take its roots back to the School of the Americas in Panama (now known as WHINESEC at Fort Benning, GA), in which we trained Latin American military police from various pro-capitalist juntas to torture school teachers, protesters, union organizers, and political dissidents. Knowing Bratton's philosophy, he's likely to continue this trend in a more subtle way by collaborating with whichever regime will pay top dollar and implementing zero-tolerance policies on communities of political unrest. And he's going to make a killing doing it. Just spin the globe and you can see any number of prospects: the tribalist post-colonial regimes of Africa, the openly anti-indigenous corporate-friendly regimes of Latin America, and Haiti, which has been called by many sources the flat-out "most corrupt country in the world". So now, instead of wiping out the black poor in Los Angeles or New York, he'll wipe out the communities in states of political oppression and poverty that are even more dire, more life-threatening. I imagine they don't have to use rubber bullets to shoot protesters in whatever countries he sells his bullshit to next.
As for this new police chief, Charlie Beck, he's got a clean slate and I can go back to practicing my satyagraha in peace. So far, he's actually looking slightly better than Bratton if only for his efforts to make police officers publicly accountable for their actions, which was something that Bratton did nothing to stop from happening in 2006. I'm not sure what his stance on policing in Skid Row is going to be, but I have hope that he'll have more compassion and a deeper understanding of the bigger picture than Bratton ever did. Here's hoping for a better future...
Sorry if this entry seemed a bit unfocused. I'll be writing a more detailed article on the Safer Cities Initiative with proper citations and such for the first issue of the Amar Collective magazine, which should come out either later this month or (at the rate it's going now) sometime in December. Hopefully I'll be in a better state of mind when I write that =)
My first test of faith came from when I personally interacted him in May of 2008 in order to calmly and peacefully express how deeply impacted my life was after this happened and I was beaten and shot with "non-lethal*" ammunition for expressing my first amendment rights at a legally permitted protest. I kept my cool and stayed very succinct and respectful as he pretended to listen, then once I was done, he refused to address me directly, instead telling his fellow officers to "get this kid out of my face" so he could moments later literally participate in a photo shoot with a baby. I more or less shrugged it off and didn't take it personally, because after all that's what any number of other politicians in Los Angeles would have done, and I'm sure he already knew that what those officers did was fucked up.
I thought I had pretty much come to terms with him being the way he is, until he had an interview on a recent episode of The Colbert Report that honestly made my stomach turn (and that's saying a lot cus' I can even have a laugh or two when imperialist fucks like Henry Kissinger go on that show and I can at least empathize with most people and understand where they're coming from politically).
After watching that video and reading the sycophantic article written in the LA times after his departure, I really feel like people's admiration of Bratton makes less sense to me than ever. His justification for the systematic repression of the homeless as getting rid of "squeegee pests" and "aggressive beggars" to make the streets a better place is completely dehumanizing, and I would expect most self-proclaimed liberals (i.e. most of the constituents of Los Angeles) to see right through it. But his rhetoric is pretty deceptive, and in practically every interview he evokes the "broken windows" approach to policing, which makes all of the crap he does seem like he's somehow healing us in this holistic new age-y way. Unfortunately, that's really not what he's about, and his interpretation of broken windows has just proven to be a nice flowery pseudo-scientific image given to the public in order to make them feel comfortable with passing inhumane policies like the Safer Cities Initiative. His efforts to supposedly clean up crime have ultimately stigmatized the unemployed and mentally ill and made it practically illegal to be homeless.
James Q. Wilson, George L. Kelling and Catherine Coles all came the school of thought that crime could be reduced by environmental design, and that is what the broken windows theory is supposed to be about. On the surface level, it's really a great idea that serves as a poetic testament to the power of context; removing graffiti, cleaning up trash and planting trees clearly does make the general quality of life better. Whether or not it actually prevents crime is still up in the air depending on what research you're reading, but he idea is pretty rad when you stop and think about it. So yeah, it sounds cool, but is this really what they were all about? Is this really what Bratton did? Take a walk through Skid Row and assess the situation yourself... the murals done by local artists are still covered in graffiti from however many years ago, the streets are still littered with trash that overflows into open storm drains, there really aren't that many green spaces than there used to be (with the exception of the commendable tree planting endeavor that the DLANC sustainability committee just accomplished). The biggest difference is that there just aren't as many people as there used to be. Bratton's interpretation of environmental design must have meant designing an environment without homeless people.
If he really believed in his whole thing about tending to the garden, he would be an advocate for permanent supportive housing, programs that get eligible people set up with jobs, and actually embracing projects that literally involve building gardens. He would get his officers to respond to actual calls put out by the homeless in Skid Row when they're in need of help instead of largely ignoring them in favor of handing out copious tickets for minor quality of life crimes. It's no wonder that National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless recently determined that this city is the "meanest city toward the homeless in America".
So yeah, crime went down for a little while, but what are the long-term ramifications of this approach to policing? The poor, who have frequently getting arrested for crimes that rich people commit every day and go unpunished for, and the homeless who are committing some crimes out of sheer necessity, are getting shipped off to prisons. The wave of arrests during Bratton's tenure as LA's police chief has significantly thinned out the population of Skid Row, effectually distancing LA's homeless from the facilities that can actually help them. Some people might look at that and say "that's not my problem", but unfortunately it's the problem of everyone in the state of California.
When 19,000 tickets are issued in Skid Row for jaywalking, then you're likely to end up ticketing a lot of people who can't afford to pay for it. When people accumulate enough tickets for bullshit crimes, then they are eventually imprisoned. Now all of the pressure is going to the state because they can't afford to sustain that kind of over-inflated prison population. Because our state is in its worst financial crisis in history and the governator refuses to cut from prisons, he instead decides to cut from schools instead. Then we raise a generation of people with limited access to largely inadequate academic resources, and because they can't ascertain a quality education, they end up getting shittier jobs. This of course inhibits socioeconomic mobility makes them statistically more susceptible to harrassment by the LAPD, and then the cycle continues ad infinitum. Is this really broken windows theory or is it straight up prison industrial complex? BUILD A FUCKING GARDEN! (p.s. not a metaphorical one)
As someone who has seen quite a bit of heinous shit down in Skid Row and has been personally subjected to police brutality at the hands of Bratton's LAPD on more than one occasion, I'm glad to see him out of LA. But as someone who is deeply invested in promoting social justice in the developing world, I'm even more sickened by what he's setting out to do now. His final line on Colbert, "For the Right Price, I Think Even You Could Be Helped" is one of the most haunting jokes I've ever heard someone say... if only because it's disgustingly true. The privatization of police forces in the developing world seems to take its roots back to the School of the Americas in Panama (now known as WHINESEC at Fort Benning, GA), in which we trained Latin American military police from various pro-capitalist juntas to torture school teachers, protesters, union organizers, and political dissidents. Knowing Bratton's philosophy, he's likely to continue this trend in a more subtle way by collaborating with whichever regime will pay top dollar and implementing zero-tolerance policies on communities of political unrest. And he's going to make a killing doing it. Just spin the globe and you can see any number of prospects: the tribalist post-colonial regimes of Africa, the openly anti-indigenous corporate-friendly regimes of Latin America, and Haiti, which has been called by many sources the flat-out "most corrupt country in the world". So now, instead of wiping out the black poor in Los Angeles or New York, he'll wipe out the communities in states of political oppression and poverty that are even more dire, more life-threatening. I imagine they don't have to use rubber bullets to shoot protesters in whatever countries he sells his bullshit to next.
As for this new police chief, Charlie Beck, he's got a clean slate and I can go back to practicing my satyagraha in peace. So far, he's actually looking slightly better than Bratton if only for his efforts to make police officers publicly accountable for their actions, which was something that Bratton did nothing to stop from happening in 2006. I'm not sure what his stance on policing in Skid Row is going to be, but I have hope that he'll have more compassion and a deeper understanding of the bigger picture than Bratton ever did. Here's hoping for a better future...
----------------------------------
Sorry if this entry seemed a bit unfocused. I'll be writing a more detailed article on the Safer Cities Initiative with proper citations and such for the first issue of the Amar Collective magazine, which should come out either later this month or (at the rate it's going now) sometime in December. Hopefully I'll be in a better state of mind when I write that =)
10.31.2009
I Walk on Guilded Splinters
Dr. John the Night Tripper - Gris-Gris
Anyone who managed to catch my guest stint on KSCR the other night probably caught a little bit of this album, which is (in my most humble opinion) the freakin coolest record ever to play on Halloween night... and if you listen to it, you'll understand why. This is some crazy vooodoo psych-funk business, murky and sinister like the darkest swamps of the bayou. Coming from one of the most prominent figures in New Orleans' historically vibrant music scene, I wouldn't expect any less. I only wish he spent the rest of his career doing crazy shit like this, but instead he went for a more straightforward blues/r&b approach with each subsequent release. Still, we'll always have this to bump every October 31st. Happy Halloween everyone! (p.s. come to my party! starts at 7:30!)
Highlights: Gris Gris Gumbo Ya Ya, Danse Fambeaux, I Walk on Guilded Splinters
10.26.2009
Some Olatunji and Thoughts on "World Music" Monoculture
Babatunde Olatunji - Drums of Passion
Olatunji's first release is probably one of the most important albums in African music, if only because it generated a lot of interest in the continent amongst western audiences and opened a dialogue between African and American musicians (John Coltrane, Carlos Santana, The Greatful Dead, Bob Dylan, and Dizzy Gillespie were all avid fans of his). It's also an important album because it pretty much kicks ass. Most of the recordings on this album are traditional Yoruba rhythms from either social or ceremonial contexts. While he did take some creative liberties with some of the material (many of the performers aren't actually African and it kind of shows with the singing), none of it was so out of the frame of reference from its culture of origin that it couldn't be considered authentic. For anyone interested in hearing some OG West African jams, it won't disappoint.
Highlights: Oya, Shango, Jin Go Lo Ba (listen to Santana's "Jingo" and you'll hear where he got it from)
Babatunde Olatunji - Drums of Passion: The Beat
Unfortunately for him and for a lot of international musicians, the commercial success of his first record was what gave labels the bright idea to come up with the "world music" genre, which has marginalized a lot of cultural traditions and put a lot more pressure on performers to westernize their sound to make it more marketable. Just as a reference point, I've also uploaded this as a sampling of his later albums, where you can already see he was being heavily pushed by his label to produce less authentic material just to satisfy the growing demands in America for "exotic" music. What that basically meant was throwing in a mess of western instruments, singing more in English, and buying into all the silly studio trickery the 80's had to offer. The end result kinda sounds like misguided highlife with some sorta afro-celtic tinge and way way too much reverb. It's fairly docile and soccer mom friendly, as opposed to the fire of his first album. I find this sadly ironic because his influence on people like Coltrane produced some of the most challenging and passionate work that's ever come out of American music, and yet his own material kinda fizzled out over the years.
Highlights: Ife L'Olju L'Aiye is pretty decent.
So I've been finding his career in particular interesting as of late because it is sort of a perfect summation of the pitfalls of being a non-western musician trying to penetrate a western market, while almost contradictorily serving as a testament to how this kind of cross-cultural contact can produce amazing shit. As more and more languages and cultural traditions disappear in the face of the almighty beast that is global capital, I can't help but think that each of those cultures has its own Babatunde Olatunji... but would they ever be able to even make it today and have their traditions intact? Why is it that practically the only authentic music from pre-colonial traditions that you can find these days are field recordings by anthropologists and ethnomusicologists? Are we just not interested? Why were we interested in the 50's, when Olatunji's first record came out? Was it just the time and the place, the new-found afro-centrism of black America, or was it just that it was damn good music that people had no exposure to? I'd like to think that a record like this could come out again and really work in the mainstream, but I have a feeling it won't. To quote a customer that once came into the record store I used to work at: "I already have an African record! Have you heard Paul Simon's Graceland?". Oh well... regardless of my own thoughts on Olatunji's career trajectory and "world music" as a genre in general, nobody can deny the original "Drums of Passion" is undeniably freakin' rad, so check it out.
10.14.2009
The Official Announcement That I'll Be Reviving This Blog!
So as many of you may have noticed, I've taken a bit of a break from coming up with any substantive blog posts over the past few months due to being really ridiculously freakin swamped. Well, I'm still just as busy as I was then (if not more busy), but now I need new reasons to procrastinate from dreaded college applications, so I decided I'm going to start writing more interesting things here again. So yeah, expect to see some stuff here from me over the next 2 weeks or so. Until then, stay gorgeous Detroit.
-Andrew
-Andrew
8.15.2009
AMAR FEST!
Hey everyone!
I am really really happy to be sharing this with you at 8 in the morning after yet another night of insane work. This is pretty much what I've been spending 100% of my free time on lately. Not only is this going to be The Amar Collective's biggest show in our 3-year history as a group, but it will also be to be the most reflective of what our collective is really about. Not only that, but it's already really brought in a whole new era of my life as an individual.
Over the past few months our collective has been working with artists and community organizers in Skid Row, and those of us who have gotten to spend enough time down there have been truly inspired by what some of these people are doing. This is a neighborhood with some of the greatest artistic and musical talent I've ever seen and some of the sharpest and most dedicated social activists I've ever worked with, and yet the vast majority of people in LA don't know what Skid Row residents are capable of because the community is culturally under-represented, systematically oppressed, and thoroughly misconstrued by the mainstream media (most recently in that incredibly shoddy and unnecessary front page article in the LA Times). We're sick of seeing one-dimensional depictions of a community that is more nuanced and ever-changing than possibly any area in the United States. We want to show the rest of LA that Skid Row is alive and and they can't sweep the problem of homelessness away by pushing out the homeless. As artists and activists, our way of doing this is showing that their community is creating works of art that are of genuine cultural and aesthetic value, and that their art can even confront a lot of the issues that the homeless community is facing from their own perspective.
Our collective, along with a mess of other cultural groups in Skid Row (most notably The CHAC, is working to provide a hub for artists and activists in Skid Row by converting a mostly abandoned firehouse near the corner of 5th and Los Angeles and into a fully functional community center. This is definitely an ambitious and difficult project, but we're going to try it, and the first step to doing that is Amar Fest. We've been working on this show for quite some time, and hopefully it will turn out as wonderful as we think it's going to.
This is the time and this is the place.
So yeah, that's Amar Fest. Hopefully you think it's as cool as we do. If you do think it's cool, then we need as much help as we can with promoting the event! Every person attending is another chance for us to get people to sign our petition, volunteer in skid row, and raise money and awareness for some damn good causes, so we want to get the place packed and keep the energy positive!
We would like to think that utopia will be built by the hands of the community that dreams it. This is a dream that is held not only by the Skid Row community, but by anyone who believes that the freedom to create art and share ideas should not be inhibited by class, race, gender, or social status. Amar is built on the idea that art should be by the people and for the people, and if we are to consider ourselves socially conscious artists, it's on us to make that a reality.
For anyone interested in participating, we're having a meeting tonight on the second floor of Philippe's at 6pm! It's our last collective meeting before the show, so try to come by if you can! Philippe's is located at 1001 N. Alameda, Los Angeles, CA, 90012. If you're interested in volunteering but can't make it to the meeting, message us or e-mail info@amarcollective.com. We'll take it from there!
Peace and justice
- Andrew from the Amar Collective
I am really really happy to be sharing this with you at 8 in the morning after yet another night of insane work. This is pretty much what I've been spending 100% of my free time on lately. Not only is this going to be The Amar Collective's biggest show in our 3-year history as a group, but it will also be to be the most reflective of what our collective is really about. Not only that, but it's already really brought in a whole new era of my life as an individual.
Over the past few months our collective has been working with artists and community organizers in Skid Row, and those of us who have gotten to spend enough time down there have been truly inspired by what some of these people are doing. This is a neighborhood with some of the greatest artistic and musical talent I've ever seen and some of the sharpest and most dedicated social activists I've ever worked with, and yet the vast majority of people in LA don't know what Skid Row residents are capable of because the community is culturally under-represented, systematically oppressed, and thoroughly misconstrued by the mainstream media (most recently in that incredibly shoddy and unnecessary front page article in the LA Times). We're sick of seeing one-dimensional depictions of a community that is more nuanced and ever-changing than possibly any area in the United States. We want to show the rest of LA that Skid Row is alive and and they can't sweep the problem of homelessness away by pushing out the homeless. As artists and activists, our way of doing this is showing that their community is creating works of art that are of genuine cultural and aesthetic value, and that their art can even confront a lot of the issues that the homeless community is facing from their own perspective.
Our collective, along with a mess of other cultural groups in Skid Row (most notably The CHAC, is working to provide a hub for artists and activists in Skid Row by converting a mostly abandoned firehouse near the corner of 5th and Los Angeles and into a fully functional community center. This is definitely an ambitious and difficult project, but we're going to try it, and the first step to doing that is Amar Fest. We've been working on this show for quite some time, and hopefully it will turn out as wonderful as we think it's going to.
This is the time and this is the place.
So yeah, that's Amar Fest. Hopefully you think it's as cool as we do. If you do think it's cool, then we need as much help as we can with promoting the event! Every person attending is another chance for us to get people to sign our petition, volunteer in skid row, and raise money and awareness for some damn good causes, so we want to get the place packed and keep the energy positive!
We would like to think that utopia will be built by the hands of the community that dreams it. This is a dream that is held not only by the Skid Row community, but by anyone who believes that the freedom to create art and share ideas should not be inhibited by class, race, gender, or social status. Amar is built on the idea that art should be by the people and for the people, and if we are to consider ourselves socially conscious artists, it's on us to make that a reality.
For anyone interested in participating, we're having a meeting tonight on the second floor of Philippe's at 6pm! It's our last collective meeting before the show, so try to come by if you can! Philippe's is located at 1001 N. Alameda, Los Angeles, CA, 90012. If you're interested in volunteering but can't make it to the meeting, message us or e-mail info@amarcollective.com. We'll take it from there!
Peace and justice
- Andrew from the Amar Collective
7.17.2009
Chales Eames: High Modernist?
"There's sort of a parable I'd like to . . . In India . . . I guess it's a parable: In India, sort of the lowest, the poorest, the, those, those without and the lowest in caste, eat very often--particularly in southern India--they eat off of a banana leaf. And those a little bit up the scale, eat off of a sort of a un . . . a low-fired ceramic dish. And a little bit higher, why, they have a glaze on--a thing they call a "tali"--they use a banana leaf and then the ceramic as a tali upon which they put all the food. And there get to be some fairly elegant glazed talis, but it graduates to--if you're up the scale a little bit more--why, a brass tali, and a bell-bronze tali is absolutely marvelous, it has a sort of a ring to it. And then things get to be a little questionable. There are things like silver-plated talis and there are solid silver talis and I suppose some nut has had a gold tali that he's eaten off of, but I've never seen one. But you can go beyond that and the guys that have not only means, but a certain amount of knowledge and understanding, go the next step and they eat off of a banana leaf."
learn more.
7.13.2009
Chevron
Despite a few superfluous jabs at everyone from Condi Rice to Fareed Zakaria that didn't do much but provide some unnecessary ire, this article does have some interesting tidbits about the seemingly ever-present conflict of interest between big oil and those wonderful people in our government that determine foreign policy. It is kind of to be expected that companies like Chevron will spend millions of dollars giving to charity and then spend 20 times that much advertising the fact that they've given to charity, but it's another thing when an organization that is deeply connected with Obama's af/pak envoy gives them an award for their "achievements" in public health programs despite the fact that those programs are and have always been PR stunts or "greenwashing". Add to this the massive environmental destruction and human rights violations still being perpetrated by the company, and the fact that the award happens to be named after Holbrooke himself, and you have yourself a good picture of how things could go down in Afghanistan and Pakistan if this dude has any say in it.
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