Why I still love music

Yes, ANOTHER youtube video!!



All this digging around the net for old Congolese music made me wonder if there was much Gospel from either 'then' or now. Well, I didn't get a clear answer, but I found out about Makoma, this awesome group of 7 (6 brothers and sisters), formerly known as Nouveau Testament, began in the DRC and later moved to the Netherlands. The lead signer went on to release a slew of solo material, and later appear on the TV show Dutch Idol. All of that is rather trivial compared to this overly saccharine, happy, fun music; the stuff I listen to to smile and realize that trees and people and sunsets really are beautiful. Corny? Perhaps. But if you don't like it you are only 1
click away from a million other angrier artists.

This rather dated video give you that impression of some sort of fantasy-land Europe that existed prior to the riots in France in 2005 and Fortress Europe The Dutch aren't exactly in love with immigration either, but this is the 21st Century and building walls will not help any of us.

Then again, simply listening to music by those around us might not help either. Who knows. I just know that this song makes me happy, and makes me remember why I like music.

Perhaps I have found that elusive pot of gold

Having just 'discovered' Israel Kamakawiwo'ole for myself, I feel like Rip van Winkle emerging from his epic nap. How did I ignore this guy for so long? Those years wasted listening to esoteric Spanish Ska bands and 2nd rate power-pop are haunting me. Now that I have finally heard IZ, a man with an incredibly beautiful voice, over a decade after his death, I am beginning to wonder where I was getting my music news from, what rock I was living under, and what sick and evil persons out there set-out to hide such a talent from all of us. Perhaps there is an evil conspiracy afoot. Either that or musically I was lost in a sea of youthful ignorance. Whatever the case may be, I am happy to have shed the talentless and elitist Maximum Rock+Roll and other subcultural clutter from my life and allowed my ears to be opened to something so lovely.

IZ is no stranger yuppie cultural excavators such as myself, often still charting high among 'world' music sales. so there is a good chance you've heard him or heard of him. Whether you have or have not, I recommend you take (another) break from that long day of "work" (ie. net surfing) to listen to IZ.

Perhaps Joy is Still Alive

You've all heard the song "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" once or thrice. Granted there are other things that might truly 'save you', but often times music can be incredibly healing, I think that is why we are all so obsessed (or just plain bored).

Lately, to cure my own doldrums, not really all that bad by the world's or even my own standards, I've stumbled upon a few old-skool Congolese Rumba records that are blowing my mind. The rumba was the precursor to another Congolese form, soukous. I don't claim to know much about soukous, and really can't comment intelligibly on any African music. However, I can claim that the soukous and rumbas I've heard make me very happy in a way that nothing else is! (musically I mean)

This concept is not new and travel writer Frank Bures wrote on soukous' joyful qualities in an article titled The Sound of Sunshine, an excerpt:

It was a dark time, and looking back on it now,sometimes I think the only thing that saved me was soukous, a sound I had brought home with me from Tanzania. On bad days in that room, when I hadn’t seen sunlight for what felt like days, I would put my headphones on, put on Dalle Kimoko, or Kanda Bongo Man, or Pepe Kalle and be lifted up to a place where the sun was shining, a place that was green, a place where people were laughing.

Perhaps my enjoyment of such retro-genres is some sort of romanticized Afro-escapism, and it very well may be. And this time, for once, I do not care. Everyone else is into such romantic escapism; they dream of early 80s NYC, Havana in the 50s, or some glamorous hip-hop life. I don't wish to be living in a 1950s Congo or to live in a hippie fantasy of global harmony (though that'd be nice). I just like good music, music that might be very foreign to me and my upbringing and which isn't played much anymore. I don't care.

There's been a dearth of musical reissues as of late, primarily non-Western, now that all the classic rock and soul records have been reissued. However, there remains thousands of old albums from across the globe that are still new to our ears. Haven't you noticed all the compilations of Nigerian Funk from the 1970s, 1960s Thai Go-Go, or Ethiopian Jazz? So far I've been very resistant to these reissues because they seem kind of absurd and nostalgic. But, I realized that I might be absurd and listening to old esoteric recordings from some far flung place I may never go to maybe isn't all that bad. If I can truly enjoy the music for the music and not some 'escape' into a palm tree and exotic girl laden fantasy, then it is a-okay. In fact, maybe, just maybe, listening to 'world music', current or not, will open minds and foster dialogue and understanding across borders. Again, I'm being idealistic here. Maybe music can heal, or maybe it is just going to further slanted National Geographic-esque exotic fantasies. What I do know, is that this stuff is very joyful, something lacking in most music (across the globe) today. ENJOY this video from Kekele, a super group of classic rumba players. These are the cats that laid the groundwork for soukous, and the rest is history. Enjoy!

CIVILIZATION'S DYING!

The more I read about anything, the more I feel like this title is true. Did anyone see Paul Krugman's Opinion piece today? Well, it should anger you too.

To make me feel better (or worse) I keep playing this old Zero Boys track, old-school Indy Hardcore! This is an old song that first came to love during those poser rebellious days when I was 16, but it still rings true.

But what makes me hopeful is SANTOGOLD!!! Yes, me, and every other person on the planet are going crazy for this new album, But her music is so good, fun, and chaotic enough to resonate w/our mad times.

...so bittersweet

The other day a friend, who works with 'at-risk' youth in Wilmington, DE, and I were driving around listening to Tupac. We both can't stand the derogatory stuff Tupac had to say about women and his lust for violence. However, there is no way to ignore the urgency and prophetic nature of his music. I am not suggesting that anyone glorify Tupac's rather insane, and perhaps underutilized, life. But we'd all be stupid to ignore what he had to say. Some of the urgent cries for help and change in his music speak directly to our brokenness. I often think that his music is some of the most direct messages of man's 'fallen nature' that there is. Unfortunately, I don't think Tupac had enough answers as to how things could change and he (like most of us) chose death (in behaviors not exactly literally) as an alternative to the world's evil. And you and I can do the same, we are given the choice to pick between life and death each day. Seeing the pain out there in and around us and continuing to live in (and even embrace) that evil as an escape is no escape at all. But it is often the only option that we see.

This brought up an earlier blog idea I'd not yet posted. Many moons ago (October) I set out on my own personal odyssey from Los Angeles to San Francisco via the arid Central Valley and spent a night in the tourist haven of Fresno. Fresno is somewhat of a backwater and the Central Valley is considered the back alley or at least 'armpit' of the magical and mythical California. Having lived 4 years in Jersey I wasn't too worried about this, in fact I was embracing it in order to see where all of our food comes from and see something beyond the surfing fantasy of The OC or The Hills. Whilst driving, somewhere past Bakersfield in an incredibly arid, smoggy and flat terrain surrounded by agriculture on all sides-I heard a new(er) Wyclef song and it hit me, hard. Now I don't care too much for Mr. Jean or the rest of the crew on this cut (Lil Wayne, Akon, Nia) but that isn't the point, I can rag on them later. Despite not being a big fan, they did a heck of job with the track "Sweetest Girl" from Wyclef's new cd Carnival II: Memoirs of an Immigrant. The song deals with a girl's struggle and decline and sonically is very cinemeatic. The singing and production on this great track is perfect for going 80 through the desert.

Having spent the earlier part of my day driving aimlessly through LA and thinking too much about what 'it' (SoCal, America, suburban, multiculti life) means, hearing this track touched me. "Sweetest Girl" is such a great song to the point where it makes you joyful, but in such a tragic way. Here is a track about something so beautiful and so damaged that it hurts so much it almost makes you feel better.

Like some earlier Tupac work, "Sweetest Girl" is again speaking to the brokenness of the human experience. Akon's re-singing of the old Wu-Tang line 'Cash rules everything around me' from the classic song C.R.E.A.M. is a little derivative, but it speaks a rather nihilistic point that our lives are completely controlled by money and this drive for cash causes us to do all sorts of debased things. In essence it is true, though I don't think it is just money that is 'the root of all evil' as Massive Attack once claimed. Money can surely be evil, but sin in man is the root of it, and man did not start to perform evil once money was invented or capitalism was coined. No, it all goes much much deeper than that.

This song speaks about our contemporary world. And driving through California, the so-called bell-weather for American culture in all its decadent glory was an interesting place to imagine this tune. As I listened to the lyrics, driving through a bleak landscape and imagining teenagers of all shades growing up in a suburban California where who you are is defined but how you dress and the money you have and the car you drive, the song came alive. Sure it's about hookers, but the message of life being defined by money is the essence of the American experience. Sadly 'Clef and company had no new answers for us as to how we should get out of this truly American dilemma, but I feel like he or I or God should give some alternatives to these teenagers in California or wherever they might be. Our life on earth DOESN'T have to be defined by these material things and such superficial pursuits. We can have a different life here on earth.

As the Bible states in Deuteronomy 30:19, "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him."

This is the alternative; we can have another life, there can be heaven on earth. This song doesn't need to ring so true. There is hope!

The video below isn't anything official as the real one by Wyclef is some stupid thing about refugees that doesn't seem to go with the song, I like this homemade thing.

Just listen to it and think about our country, our young people, our future, and what an alternative can be and IS.

...the only band that matters.

Yes, it is winter here in Mil-town. Cold as, snowy as, and I, like everyone else, am pining for sunny climes. But there is relief, even if it is merely in the form of another musical offering. Who is that you ask? The supremely talented, but highly under-rated group, Los Lobos. I've been meaning to blog on them for a while, not merely about their musical prowess, but about how they really are a talented group that might justify musical 'escapism'. I'm sad to report that not one of my peers is interested in this magical group. Maybe it's the Chicano roots (we're all prejudiced in one way or another) or maybe it is the link to La Bamba way back in 1987, or maybe they're all too swayed by this hipster/pitchfork/indie nonsense and can't see the light beaming from a group of 50 year old guys who have been at this game for 30+ years and seem to hardly loose any steam, in fact, they continue to grow. On top of that Los Lobos (the Wolves) are perhaps one of the finest live bands around. I hate to evoke the term "jam band" but they are the quintessential jam band, though lacking any of the annoying suburban trustafarian hippy elements. Point is they can groove with the best of them and do it with a maddeningly refreshing mix of R&B, rockabilly, blues, funk, reggae, norteno, cumbia, soul, rock, and anything else they feel like throwing in the mix. Their meshing of so many styles and evocation of the American Southwest, makes me want to proclaim that if they are not the best, they are at least the MOST American band ever; and I'm not using "American" as an insult as I normally would. I mean they celebrate the American experience for the beauty that it is (despite our flaws).

A reviewer somewhere called Los Lobos a 'living repository' for all forms of American music. I think that may be a true statement. If you want to know where the hell all of your music came from, you must listen. The best part about Los Lobos is that, despite this slew of musical styles, it is all filtered through backyard parties and bar-band roots making their music some of the most accessible stuff around. They have the power to keep you up at night thinking about your lover, crying, dancing with abandon, or simply nodding along to hypnotic grooves. Some folks out there say that David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas are better than Lennon and McCartney

But on to the substance of this blog. How it relates to me, and the mini sun that I am to myself? Living through what are increasingly long and dark and depressing winters I wonder how the hell I am going to stay afloat. This band is one way. Repeatedly they come back to my attention in the depths of the winter and have the ability, both musically and poetically, to take me from my dreary surroundings. Yes, I would probably negatively call this 'escapism' but it isn't just that. This is a band that is so positively engaging that it is easy enough to not dwell on your problems and to just listen. They evoke place and time in a way that few novels can even do, and their at-times heartbreaking lyrics can sooth you and move you in almost any situation you might be in. Again I hate escapism, to the point where my friend Anto and I dismissed world music because it became more about evoking some exotic island vibe than having anything to do with appreciating the music. But not with Los Lobos, they do help you escape, but not to a fantasy world, more towards reality.

Case(s) in point. Many years back in mid-February I was in a very down state for reasons I'll not go into. A friend had an extra Lobos ticket and I went just for fun having always heard they were that good. They did not disappoint! That 2 hour show blending every genre I mentioned, jamming at length, and getting all of us to dance the whole show and even back to car was something else-perhaps the best live show I've seen. It was then that I realized WHY I love music again, that joy it gives is like nothing else.

I went on during that dark time to find a copy of Kiko, unbenownced to me, their finest album to date, a heady, groovtastic and experimental record to which songs like "When the Circus Comes to Town" and "Two Trains" takes me back in time. In a sense that record, by both taking me away from my surroundings and making me embrace them (good and bad) got me through a dark time.

Later I found a copy of the prior lp, The Neighborhood, again it was January, in Wisconsin this time, but the grooves and lyrics of hope sustained a flame inside of me that few bands or forms of art ever do. This, I think, is why I need to preach about Los Lobos. They are so good, and even in their sad songs, they evoke the fragile depths of humanity and still keep you clinging to hope. Now, they aren't all the melodrama I'm talking about, like I said before, this is a party band, and you must see them live to understand what I'm saying.

All this came about because the new lp The Town and The City came out about 18 month ago but I didn't bother to find it till this winter, and again...yeah you know it, repeat: I'm down, this lp lifts me up. Yes! I won't review it for you, but I'll recommend it and anything they've done, it is all brilliant.

What it takes to restore the city...

A change from my negativity, here is 'something that works'. I particularly enjoy the comment that the "I feel the hand of the Lord here all the time", screw religious free schools, if this is what works, I'm cool with it!

In Bronx School, Culture Shock, Then Revival

James Estrin/The New York Times

Another school day starts: Shimon Waronker, the principal of Junior High School 22, on station outside school, which is overwhelmingly black and Hispanic. Attending to the details Mr. Waronker was greeted with near disbelief when he arrived in 2004 after his training in the Leadership Academy. In the classroom Mr. Waronker has helped attendance rise to 93 percent.

Published: February 8, 2008

Junior High School 22, in the South Bronx, had run through six principals in just over two years when Shimon Waronker was named the seventh.

A Bronx School Revives

On his first visit, in October 2004, he found a police officer arresting a student and calling for backup to handle the swelling crowd. Students roamed the hallways with abandon; in one class of 30, only 5 students had bothered to show up. “It was chaos,” Mr. Waronker recalled. “I was like, this can’t be real.”

Teachers, parents and students at the school, which is mostly Hispanic and black, were equally taken aback by the sight of their new leader: A member of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism with a beard, a black hat and a velvet yarmulke.

“The talk was, ‘You’re not going to believe who’s running the show,’ ” said Lisa DeBonis, now an assistant principal.

At a time when the Bloomberg administration has put principals at the center of its efforts to overhaul schools, making the search for great school leaders more pressing than ever, the tale of Mr. Waronker shows that sometimes, the most unlikely of candidates can produce surprising results.

Despite warnings from some in the school system that Mr. Waronker was a cultural mismatch for a predominantly minority school, he has outlasted his predecessors, and test scores have risen enough to earn J.H.S. 22 an A on its new school report card. The school, once on the city’s list of the 12 most dangerous, has since been removed.

Attendance among the 670 students is above 93 percent, and some of the offerings seem positively elite, like a new French dual-language program, one of only three in the city.

“It’s an entirely different place,” Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said in a recent interview. “If I could clone Shimon Waronker, I would do that immediately.”

Not everyone would.

Mr. Waronker has replaced half the school’s teachers, and some of his fiercest critics are teachers who say he interprets healthy dissent as disloyalty and is more concerned with creating flashy new programs than with ensuring they survive. Critics note that the school is far from perfect; it is one of 32 in the city that the state lists as failing and at risk of closing. Even his critics, though, acknowledge the scope of his challenge.

“I don’t agree with a lot of what he’s done, but I actually recognize that he has a beast in front of him,” said Lauren Bassi, a teacher who has since left. “I’m not sure there’s enough money in the world you could pay me to tackle this job.”

Mr. Waronker, 39, a former public school teacher, was in the first graduating class of the New York City Leadership Academy, which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg created in 2003 to groom promising principal candidates. Considered one of the stars, he was among the last to get a job, as school officials deemed him “not a fit” in a city where the tensions between blacks and Hasidic Jews that erupted in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991 are not forgotten.

“They just said he may be terrific, but not the right person for that school,” Chancellor Klein said.

Some parents at J.H.S. 22, also called Jordan L. Mott, were suspicious, viewing Mr. Waronker as too much an outsider. In fact, one parent, Angie Vazquez, 37, acknowledged that her upbringing had led her to wonder: “Wow, we’re going to have a Jewish person, what’s going to happen? Are the kids going to have to pay for lunch?”

Ms. Vazquez was won over by Mr. Waronker’s swift response after her daughter was bullied, saying, “I never had no principal tell me, ‘Let’s file a report, let’s call the other student’s parent and have a meeting.’ ”

For many students and parents, the real surprise was that like them, Mr. Waronker speaks Spanish; he grew up in South America, the son of a Chilean mother and an American father, and when he moved to Maryland at age 11, he spoke no English.

“I was like, ‘You speak Spanish?’ ” recalled Nathalie Reyes, 12, dropping her jaw at the memory.

He also has a background in the military. Mr. Waronker joined R.O.T.C. during college and served on active duty for two years, including six months studying tactical intelligence. After becoming an increasingly observant Jew, he began studying at a yeshiva, thinking he was leaving his military training behind.

“You become a Hasid, you don’t think, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to suppress revolutions,’ ” Mr. Waronker said. But, he said, he drew on his military training as he tackled a school where a cluster of girls identifying themselves as Bloods stormed the main office one day looking for a classmate, calling, “We’re going to get you, you Crip.”

He focused relentlessly on hallway patrols, labeling one rowdy passageway the “fall of Saigon.” In an effort to eliminate gang colors, he instituted a student uniform policy.

He even tried to send home the students who flouted it, a violation of city policy that drew television news cameras. In his first year, he suspended so many students that a deputy chancellor whispered in his ear, “You’d better cool it.”

In trying times — when a seventh grader was beaten so badly that he nearly lost his eyesight, when another student’s arm was broken in an attack in the school gym, when the state listed J.H.S. 22 as a failing school — Mr. Waronker gathered his teachers and had them hold hands and pray. Some teachers winced with discomfort.

At first Mr. Waronker worked such long hours that his wife, a lawyer, gently suggested he get a cot at school to save himself the commute from their home in Crown Heights.

He also asked a lot from his teachers, and often they delivered. One longtime teacher, Roy Naraine, said, “I like people who are visionaries.”

Sometimes teachers balked, as when Mr. Waronker asked them to take to rooftops with walkie-talkies before Halloween in 2006. He wanted to avoid a repetition of the previous year’s troubles, when students had been pelted with potatoes and frozen eggs.

“You control the heights, you control the terrain,” he explained.

“I said, if you go on a roof, you’re not covered,” said Jacqueline Williams, the leader of the teachers’ union chapter, referring to teachers’ insurance coverage.

Mr. Waronker has also courted his teachers; one of his first acts as principal was to meet with each individually, inviting them to discuss their perspective and goals. He says he was inspired by a story of how the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitch spiritual leader, met with an Army general, then inquired after his driver.

“That’s leadership,” he said, “when you’re sensitive about the driver.”

Lynne Bourke-Johnson, now an assistant principal, said: “His first question was, ‘Well, how can I help you, Lynne?’ I’m like, ‘Excuse me?’ No principal had ever asked me that.”

The principal enlisted teachers in an effort to “take back the hallways” from students who seemed to have no fear of authority. He enlisted the students, too, by creating a democratically elected student congress.

“It’s just textbook counterinsurgency,” he said. “The first thing you have to do is you have to invite the insurgents into the government.” He added, “I wanted to have influence over the popular kids.”

These days, the congress gathers in Mr. Waronker’s office for leadership lessons. One recent afternoon, two dozen students listened intently as Mr. Waronker played President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s address after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, then opened a discussion on leadership and responsibility.

When an etiquette expert, Lyudmila Bloch, first approached principals about training sessions she runs at a Manhattan restaurant, most declined to send students. Mr. Waronker, who happened to be reading her book, “The Golden Rules of Etiquette at the Plaza,” to his own children (he has six), has since dispatched most of the school for training at a cost of $40 a head.

Flipper Bautista, 10, loved the trip, saying, “It’s this place where you go and eat, and they teach you how to be first-class.”

In a school where many children lack basic reading and math skills, though, such programs are not universally applauded. When Mr. Waronker spent $8,000 in school money to give students a copy of “The Code: The 5 Secrets of Teen Success” and to invite the writer to give a motivational speech, it outraged Marietta Synodis, a teacher who has since left.

“My kids could much better benefit from math workbooks,” Ms. Synodis said.

Mr. Waronker counters that key elements of his leadership are dreaming big and offering children a taste of worlds beyond their own. “Those experiences can be life-transforming,” he said.

So when Emmanuel Bruntson, 14, a cut-up in whom Mr. Waronker saw potential, started getting into fights, he met with him daily and gave him a copy of Jane Austen’s “Emma.”

“I wanted to get him out of his environment so he could see a different world,” Mr. Waronker said.

Mr. Waronker has divided the school into eight academies, a process that has led to some venomous staff meetings, as teachers sparred over who got what resources and which students. The new system has allowed for more personalized environments and pockets of excellence, like an honors program that one parent, Nadine Rosado, whose daughter graduated last year, called “wonderful.”

“It was always said that the children are the ones that run that school,” she said, “so it was very shocking all the changes he put in place, that they actually went along with it.” Students agree, if sometimes grudgingly, that the school is now a different place.

“It’s like they figured out our game,” groused Brian Roman, 15, an eighth grader with a ponytail.

Back in Crown Heights, Mr. Waronker says he occasionally finds himself on the other side of a quizzical look, with his Hasidic neighbors wondering why he is devoting himself to a Bronx public school instead of a Brooklyn yeshiva.

“We’re all connected,” he responds.

Gesturing in his school at a class full of students, he said, “I feel the hand of the Lord here all the time.”

last night a dj saved my life

Yes, once again (look at March 07) I was 'saved' by the much maligned reggaeton. Instead of a dance floor I was driving from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee. During some point of boredom and exhaustion and just plain not paying attention I missed not only the toll road through Gary, but also 94 through downtown Chicago! So I was stuck trawling around the city on the slow and costly 294. This is a boring route through 'hillbilly hell'-like suburbs as well as the usual strip malls, airports, and nowheresville that Chicagoland is to me. This was the final leg of my trip and that extra hour through the suburbs just sucked.

I was also sick of my music and growing tired of the stale stuff I heard on Chicago-area Quiet Storm shows, though I do like the fact that there are around 3 or 4 R&B stations to choose from in Chi-town. I happened to come across a good reggaeton cut and just stayed on the station out of curiosity. To my luck it was a nationwide broadcast of a reggaeton mix spliced w/house, techno, and some merengue. Some dj bloggers think that famous DJ Kazzanova on 103.1FM sucks, but hey, to my Anglo ears it was nice, and it did a heck of a job keeping me awake to the Wisconsin border. I almost crashed a few times paying the ever-changing toll rates, 80cents, to $1 to $1.50. Just when I narrowly avoided crashing into a barrier counting out my 80cents for the toll, the rate changed! But hey, the music was still good.

And what intrigued me was the periodic between tune shout-outs in Spanglish. Granted, I missed half of em, but could at least hear the names and cities. What is interesting about reggaeton is that it really is a 'pan-Latin' thing and you get the props going to Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Salvadorians, etc. And then it got me thinking about the intense immigration networks going on here that exist 'below the surface' to most of our eyes. Those of us not somehow connected to the Latino community can live our lives wholly oblivious to this huge part of our country, though just below 'the surface' of our lives exists a huge sub-culture, if it is even sub. And then you have these migration networks scattering families all over the place with kids in Arizona shouting out their friends in Oregon, girls in Chi-town giving big-ups to the crew in Jersey City and Atlanta, and on and on. Someone should probably walk a couple miles with these kids. It is a trip some cultural anthropologist or sociologist should undertake, though they'd probably render fascinating cultural insights into academic babble that makes me want to burn the book and fire all the professors. Why is that when dealing with something as fascinating and relatively accessible as Latino youth culture, academics have to make the entire study entirely unreadable to anyone without a PhD in Sociology. Oh well, I'll go look for this treatise on reggaeton, probably published by University of California Press or worse yet, some tiny East Coast liberal arts school. We'll see and I'll let you know. Interesting stuff happening in this country, interesting stuff.

The gods will not save you

I'm going to go against all my 'positivity' from Monday's post. I hope you heeded my advice.

At any rate, I found an interesting story from another person trying to fix up my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. This is another example of an artist working to save his or her hometown. I love the arts, I really do, despite my deconstructionist tendencies which say that art is 'decadent' and self-serving. I think the arts, in particular the public arts, are valuable resources of any healthy democracy. So in one sense I commend the gentleman in this article who is working to change Pittsburgh through the arts. Yet at the same time, I caution those who think that ART will change a city in decline. It is as weak of an argument as the one claiming that stadiums and convention centers will 'revitalize' a city. The arts are cool and even necessary, but will not save us. People in dead-end neighborhoods with high unemployment and the other associated problems need one thing, jobs! You can have all the art in the world, but it is worthless without gainfully employed individuals to enjoy it.

Please tell me a city that is defined by art? Perhaps in the distant past a city or 3 could eek out an existence as manufacturers of a particular craft or form of artwork. Maybe an city in the Renaissance existed solely to produce violins or something. But this was a niche and used for export. The problem with America is that we don't make anything, and you can fill as many offices as you want with 'high-tech' workers and coffee shop programmers and boutique clothing store operators and what not, but you will never replace manufacturing jobs. People say our economy 'advanced'. Did it? Or did those jobs just move elsewhere and people were left behind? It isn't like our world isn't manufacturing things anymore, we still buy cars and clothes and tvs, but that stuff is made in China or Mexico or wherever else the cheapest wages and environmental standards are at the moment.

So back to art. If a city isn't making anything (which few American cities are) then it is successful by at least managing the money used to make stuff. This is one reason artists are in NYC or LA or SF. Those cities are big into the arts because they are huge population centers because they once MADE STUFF (yes, even LA!--it beat out Detroit's manufacturing prowess in the 50s!) and those cities now have enough money to manage investments elsewhere, and the money made can then be used to buy art.

My long winded point is this, good luck to you who try and save the city through art or nightclubs, or a dining scene. Unfortunately, that is all window dressing. If you don't have good jobs to employ people who will waste their leisure time and money on those things, then the city falls. And fall it will. I love vibrant cities with entertainment and clean streets, but I also like places with an employed population. I would rather we all have jobs in some boring city than 10% of us living it up in the artist district while the rest of the city sinks in poverty. Enjoy America as it crumbles and becomes irrelevant and I guess use art to save someone because the other options (drugs, gangs, boredom) are far worse. But remember, you can't save your city, though you might be able to save each other.

BTW, if I haven't destroyed all your hope, here is the article that started this
http://americancity.org/article.php?id_article=318

America Must Change

It's winter and I'm super cold-my coat was stealthily removed from me at a bar last nite as the temperature hovered 'round -10. The Packers lost, New England will win the Super Bowl, and I'm starting to think this whole thing is as staged as WWF or as fixed as boxing. But www-wwait it gets worse! There is a presidential race!! A race w/a bunch of morons talking about nothing. Hmmm, have we heard ANYTHING about the massive trade deficit? No. About the dollar being worthless!? About our shitty infrastructure? Our debt and the looming recession? No. Our cities are shameful places ignored by everyone who can afford to. And we have no energy policy of value, no plan to deal with real issues facing our country. No, of course not. But there are plenty of poised and driven men and a woman who claim to have answers. Granted none of us know what the answers are, but they have them, if we only vote for them.

This presidential ignorance to our problems angers me, but negativity is of no use to me right now-I've had enough. Today is the day to celebrate Dr. King's life and work, however you do it. You might volunteer, listen to a speech, attend an event, or simply clean your kitchen on this day off (for the lucky). Frankly, I don't care what you do, but you really need to think about the state of this country and the direction it is in. Do more than bash the "other's" stupid and obtuse behaviors. You (and surely I) need to think about what we're doing and not doing and how we can actually try and impact this country in a positive way. Yeah this IS elementary school type stuff I'm suggesting, but to DO something different is much harder than the movies make it seem. So think long and hard, pray if your inclined, and look around and try to realize that if we keep going down this road as a nation things will only get worse. While China, Korea, Saudi Arabia and others build grand new cities, America continues to decay. This needs to stop.

I have no answer as to what you or I should do. But if we simply zone out into our computers, music, tv, and entertainment-maybe even laced w/a chemical additive, nothing will get better. Toss away the distracting amenities for a minute and think. I'll get back to you later.

For now and because this is a part-time music blog check out this old Raheem Devaughn track that speaks to this conundrum: "Who"-by Raheem Devaughn-'The Love Experience'
and asks us:
"Who's gonna really care? Who's gonna take us there?
Who's gonna change their life? Who's gonna pay the price?
Who's gonna take a stand? Who's gonna live for love?"

I wonder and I also think I know the answer.