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Musical haps NYC
I’m glad to be back in the New York mix, as overwhelming as it is, and wanted to mention some shows I’ve seen: Jason Rigby at Cornelia Street Café, Oct. 17: With Russ Johnson on trumpet, Mike Holober on Rhodes, Cameron Brown on bass, Gerald Cleaver on drums. Rigby has a deep, resonant tenor sax sound and an effortless command
Zimbabwe’s nightmare continues
In this week’s New Yorker, Jon Lee Anderson makes the important point that Robert Mugabe, supposed anti-colonial liberator, is by now indistinguishable from a colonial emperor. The piece makes for painful, infuriating reading: In 2005, Mugabe and his wife moved into a new twenty-five-bedroom mansion in Borrowdale Brook, a Harare suburb, which cost a reported ten million U.S. dollars to build.
Ron Paul’s values
During primary season, some progressive-minded people flocked to Ron Paul, not only failing to note his extreme right-wing views, but greeting reports of those views with anger and ostrich-like denial. So it’s worth a mention that Paul has endorsed Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party for president. Baldwin is a militantly anti-choice, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-feminist, pro-gun nut. Again, Ron Paul has
Three articles
I have three articles in new/recent issues of Jazz Times: “Doubled Up” [pdf], on Chicago drummer Mike Reed. “Post-Pop” [pdf], on singer-songwriter Rebecca Martin. “Earn Your Keep: Jazz and the Lost Art of Apprenticeship” [pdf], in the 2008/09 Jazz Times Education Guide.
Roy’s purity
Novelist and activist Arundhati Roy, easily one of the world’s most overrated political thinkers, has no problem supporting the Iraqi insurgency, Maoist thugs in jungles of India, and Pakistan-backed militants in Kashmir. But she cannot bring herself to support Barack Obama. Somehow, some way, the Obama campaign will crawl on without her help.
On Message: Afghanistan
As I’ve remarked twice, the McCain-Palin camp has launched specious attacks on Obama for allegedly impugning American troops in Afghanistan, when Obama was in fact calling for increased American troops in Afghanistan. Palin went so far as to call Obama’s comments on civilian casualties “untrue.” So it’s interesting to read John Burns’s account of Afghan war policy in today’s NY
American racism today
John McCain: “I’m proud of the people who come to our rallies.”