Capitol Ideas/Renaissance Weakened
Bethell, Tom
Renaissance Weakened by Tom Bethell / don't bother much with the newsweeklies anymore. Jazzy graphics and ever-larger photographs try to disguise their predictable rehash of the conventional...
...Soloists and skilled musicians have dazzled those attempting to worship by the flamboyancy and intricacy of their rhythms...
...As far as we know, jazz, ragtime, and the blues all started up in different places at the same time...
...That's okay, then...
...I distinctly remember the change—I think it was in 1966 or 1967...
...In the realm of American music, the treasures of the last seventy years have been engraved compactly on silicon, whole libraries and eras of music miniaturized, Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...They knew nothing about "art" and wouldn't have wanted to talk about it even if they did...
...He was called an "intellectual leader," and a man of "exceptional intelligence...
...In Hole in Our Soul, Martha Bayles describes "the loss of beauty and meaning in American popular music...
...One unfashionable statement I am prepared to make is that black music, pre–civil rights, was artistically greatly superior to what came later...
...A grumbling editorial in Human Events, after all, is a small price to pay for an admiring article in the Washington Post's "Style" section...
...But that was for Art's sake...
...First, there was Quotapoet Maya Angelou at the inauguration, then Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for literature...
...But it turned out to be a Bobby Bland oldie, circa 1962...
...But in 1962 there was still some pretty good music around...
...The rap group Public Enemy is on another plane entirely, and I am not sure it counts as music...
...He is in the business of shocking people, Time reassured—"trying to test the boundaries of propriety...
...John Lee Hooker was playing in Chicago at or near his peak...
...Is there no hope...
...It's enough to make you wonder if we are preparing for our own Dark Age...
...Now there's much more, including choreographer Bill T. Jones's "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin," depicting the evils of slavery...
...This impression is strengthened in the classical-music departments of large stores today, where the shelves are filled with Gregorian chant, and new recordings on old instruments more precisely capture the performance standards of earlier centuries...
...Jazzy graphics and ever-larger photographs try to disguise their predictable rehash of the conventional wisdom, and to compete with television...
...Time's team (themselves all black, judging from the photograph) had found that black artists were embarking "on one of the most astonishing outbursts of creativity in the nation's history...
...Those who succumb to the temptations of betrayal are looked upon with what in Washington is called a "strange new respect...
...They are right...
...In a companion essay, Henry Louis Gates, Jr...
...no recordings, and hardly anything written down...
...I was intrigued that the European classical tradition had petered out in the nineteenth century (discounting the avant-garde stuff as a muse-sick corpse, kept going by grants, governments, and music departments), and that something new and "democratic" had magically reappeared in the United States...
...But she recommended two groups, one called Boyz II Men, the other Public Enemy...
...The cultural power of liberalism?he ideology of those who seek to centralize decision-making to the maximum extent possible?till far exceeds that of conservatism...
...It could happen, but it will take a miracle...
...I arrived in 1962—too late...
...I made some recordings of the old-timers myself in those years, and I was looking for a particular musician...
...If in the future people wonder about life in our inner cities, rap recordings will convey the flavor accurately enough...
...Vocalist Shawn Stockman hopes that "artists worldwide from rap to metal keep revolutionizing and diversifying the music art form...
...This is now destroying family life in the inner cities...
...The old drummer Cie Frazier, then playing at Preservation Hall, told me that my man lived in the Desire housing project...
...At that point you could walk around the black neighborhoods of cities like New Orleans in the middle of the night if you wanted to...
...The congregation itself does most of the singing, and the notes include this intelligent comment from one Bishop Charles Blake: Over the past five or six decades, church congregations have gradually delegated singing to specialists and professionals...
...Recently, Justice David Souter was so recognized...
...The result has been non-participative worship services, a spectator mentality, and a songless people...
...Here was no bad news about the inner city...
...at times the meaning is skillfully conveyed...
...shrink-wrapped, and stored in racks...
...The latter album was illustrated with a skeleton holding a pistol to its head, and was entitled Muse Sick-NHour Mess Age...
...I can only say that the social decline and sheer physical destruction that has taken place in the thirty-odd years since I first walked through black neighborhoods in my naive search is fantastic and almost unbelievable, and rap musicians seem to feel that somebody is to blame...
...The music just plain declined...
...I f I may be permitted a personal digression: in a way it was black culture that drew me to America...
...I went to a record store in Georgetown in search of this new outburst of creativity...
...To say that record stores have become venues of nostalgia is putting it mildly...
...f_71 Strange New Respect Award In his Planned Parenthood v. Casey dissent (1992), Justice Antonin Scalia noted that the Supreme Court's temptation is always to "eliminate checks upon its own power...
...But in recognition of his malleability, one of liberalism's highest rewards was recently bestowed upon him: a worshipful profile in the New York Times Magazine...
...Melody and lyricism have been expunged in favor of crooned modernisticdissonances and sibilant microphone-whispering...
...of Harvard's Afro-American Studies Department concluded that "today's may truly be the renaissance to end all renaissances...
...But this only accentuates their irrelevance...
...As I entered, something not too bad at all was coming over the loudspeaker...
...Repetitive phrases turn over and haunt us as in a bad dream...
...It really did cheer me up, because it was much the same old sound, seemingly unaffected by the surrounding turmoil (I hope the church wasn't burned in the riots...
...imps squeak and tease from the multi-track electronic inferno...
...Some of the old timers were still alive, even playing, in New Orleans, but they couldn't tell you much...
...Three years earlier I had been out there many times...
...I made one more trip to the music store, and picked up a CD called "Saints in Praise," made at the West Angeles Church of God in Christ in 1990...
...18 The American Spectator December 1994...
...The music specifically...
...In his most embarrassing public appearance, at the time of Thurgood Marshall's funeral, he was photographed holding hands with retired Justice William Brennan on the steps of the Supreme Court...
...In that sense they are meaningful indeed...
...Explaining the cultural dynamics of this change 16 The American Spectator December 1994 would be a critical feat, but today it might also count as a hate crime...
...There was a peak at some point in the first half of the twentieth century—no one quite knows when, exactly...
...Quoting from the small-print rap sheet that comes with the album (their spelling): The only good niga iz a dead niga Dats what they used to say Can't understand why a man Gotta use a trigga On his own, suppose to act grown Cracka in da back Watcha brother pull a trigga on another brother Couldn't shoot and shot a mother Four kids alone home Ungrown, & now they on they own...
...It's not that voting and political rights are incompatible with artistic expression...
...He was admired above all for adhering to the doctrine of stare decisis when considering liberal precedents and showing growth and compassion when ruling on conservative ones...
...B oyz II Men turned out to be a not very interesting male quartet...
...I'm told that such dedications are standard on the liner notes of black groups now...
...She gave me an odd look—something about my request didn't quite "compute," evidently...
...The crucial early years, c. 1895-1915, are a blank...
...Now, if only you can take back the culture more generally from your political soloists and specialists and professionals, there might be a renaissance indeed...
...Unless armored with strong personal integrity and a political philosophy, newcomers are apt to find that the benefits of betraying those who appointed or elected them are far greater than the costs...
...Temptations include the adoring gaze of the Washington press corps, the prospect of flattering profiles in major newspapers, a relaxed standard of investigative scrutiny (that's how Ted Kennedy survived), invitations to fashionable dinner parties, and much more...
...catastrophe greater than disenfranchisement...
...Hey, that's not bad: Music and our Message: The Muse is sick in our messy age...
...It's Bedlam, or worse...
...In the notes, by the way, it acknowledges "All praises Due to Allah (God)," family and friends not listed...
...All we have are a few recollections and hazy photographs...
...Right on, Bishop...
...Just about all the best musicians throughout this period were black...
...The other day, nonetheless, a Time cover story really did catch my eye: "Black Renaissance: African-American Artists Are Truly Free at Last...
...We know less about the origins of jazz and the blues than we do about the life of Shakespeare...
...I asked the shop assistant, a young black woman, if she could help me find one or two of the best black popular groups...
...You may well have heard Public Enemy without knowing it...
...With politics came welfare, don't forget...
...Well, look at Justice Clarence Thomas's press coverage...
...Tonally it's "progressive," which means it's painful listening for me...
...But he told me not to go there because it was unsafe—"worse than a gang of rattlesnakes...
...I suspect, all the same, that politics does sicken the Muses...
...Music in the black churches was often outstanding, and what a pity more recordings were not made in the churches, as opposed to studios...
...In World War II, recordings were made in New Orleansdance halls of black bands nonchalantly playing a three-or four-part counterpoint as complex as the Brandenburg Concerti, and similar to them in other respects...
...A Justice Evolves," was the headline inside...
...She's right about the beauty, but listening to Public Enemy's Chuck D, I'm not so sure about the meaning...
...The liner notes include surprising dedications from each singer: "All praises are due H my Lord God Almighty and my Savior Jesus Christ," says Stockman, who adds a list of family and friends...
...The headline on the cover read: "Justice Souter: A Surprising Kind of Conservative...
...Lyrics" have turned into harangue, and the overall tone is one of accusation and defiance...
...For those who don't go along...
...Or renaissance to end all renaissances...
...the year of renaissance being almost exactly 1900...
...The problem is, they haven't figured out who the culprits are, beyond whites in general, mainly because they have been so misled by their own leadership...
...There's a veneer of irony, and political radicalism, which seems to mask an underlying nihilism...
...He wins the Strange New Respect Award for 1994...
...On the hit parade: Esther Phillips's "Release Me," which today evokes a golden age...
...something current, something that everyone was listening to, admiring, talking about...
...One is reminded obscurely of the monastic scriptoria, in which monks assiduously copied the wisdom of the ancients onto parchment, even as the Dark Ages approached...
...In the same way, officials in Washington, whether elected or appointed, find themselves under constant pressure to continue the long-term trend toward the centralization of power in the capital...
...Admittedly, during a performance last summer, Jones "dropped his pants and exposed himself while standing near two children...
...Nonetheless, Mahalia Jackson's gospel recordings in the 1950s are far superior to the sentimental stuff she issued after becoming a mascot of the civil rights movement, and there is simply no modern counterpart to Bessie Griffin's "Too Close to Heaven," recorded in a "Sanctified" church in Memphis in 1953...
...Recently this was issued on CD—check out Bunk Johnson and George Lewis on the American Music label...
Vol. 27 • December 1994 • No. 12
