The Objectives of Objectivism

I'm not normally pointing out political opinion blogs, the world of culture and the cultural arts are my usual balliwick, but this recent essay really struck a chord with me.

Stranger still it was penned by Michael Gerson, a former GW Bush speechwriter and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, who's conservative bonafides are iron-clad and not the guy I'd be apt to agree with. But here he is, distilling for me just what it was about Ayn Rand's philosophies that troubled me so. I couldn't put a finger on it, but Objectivism and the fast-paced trend to resurrect it, just seemed plain wrong. But when debated on the point, and you'd be surprised how many normally sensible people have fallen into the Galt cult, I would get flustered and inarticulate. I literally couldn't believe anyone would support such an obviously selfish and self loathing philosophy.

Hooray however for Mr. Gerson, who has so simply and plainly encapsulated the crux of my distress. In this opinion peice for the Washington Post, he likens Rand's fantasies of the worthy elite as boring as and and as predictable as a petulant teenager's adolescence. He further summarizes Objectivism's "principles," in his words, "on the back of a napkin."

He notes:
"Reason is everything. Religion is a fraud. Selfishness is a virtue. Altruism is a crime against human excellence. Self-sacrifice is weakness. Weakness is contemptible.

“The Objectivist ethics, in essence,” said Rand, “hold that man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.”

Gerson is, like myself, bewildered at the promotion of Rand's ideas especially given her hatred of the Everyman (the little guy that Reagan claimed to champion,) and of the religious, who she thought were idiots.

He concludes:
"Conservatives have been generally suspicious of all ideologies, preferring long practice and moral tradition to Utopian schemes of left or right. And Rand is nothing if not Utopian. In “Atlas Shrugged,” she refers to her libertarian valley of the blessed as Atlantis.

It is an attractive place, which does not exist, and those who seek it drown."

I'll drink to that.

Atomic Duo @ Folk Alliance Conference, 2011

The Atomic Duo, aka my old pal Silas and I, traveled north to Memphis to attend the Folk Alliance Conference. Our goal was to come meet some folks, pun intended, and see if anybody else likes what we do as much as we do.

As it turns out, lots of folks do! Had a wonderful meeting with Si Kahn, who has been an inspiration for many years, and picked up quite a few pointers from him. Saw lots of truly amazing and talented acts; Jerron Paxton, Two Man Gentleman Band, Betse Ellis and every single band who performed at the Steam Powered Preservation Society's informal showcases, (follow the link to hear two live tunes from us.) Got quite a bit of jamming in with friends old and new. And saw soooo much good music being made by genuinely nice people that it puts to lie the tired yarn that "there's no good music today."

Here's a few little highlights:

First up, from a "Rooted Traditions" showcase hosted by roots guitar maestro Andy Cohen, we were asked to perform only tunes by our "masters." We chose Gil Scott Herron (w/ our jugband rendition of "Whitey On The Moon") and this lovely little Scott Joplin gem, "Scott Joplin's New Rag."

And here's the first tune from our formal showcase, the world debut of Silas' new composition "Trickle Down."

Here's the lyrics (all rights reserved, c Silas Lowe.):

Verse
My mother raised me up alone
working three jobs at a time
Barely made enough each week
to put away a dime
So I don’t want to hear about
the wealthy’s pain and woes
Cause they ain’t trickled nothing down
to help the working poor

Chorus
They talk about trickle down
but I ain’t seen a drop
They say they worked the hardest
for all the things they got
But they don’t know the pain to raise a
failing dust bowl crop
It’s time things started flowing
from the bottom to the top

Verse
They trickled all the money
to banks in Switzerland
They trickled all our children
to fight Afghanistan
They trickled all the good jobs
down to Mexico
But they ain’t trickled nothing down
to help the working poor

They talk about trickle down
but I ain’t seen a drop
They say they worked the hardest
for all the things they got
They ain’t lived a lifetime pushing
round a dusty mop
It’s time things started flowing
from the bottom to the top

Verse
The pressure sure is building
and something’s gonna crash
the credit cards are all maxed out
and no one uses cash
Things had best start changing soon
cause the bottoms gonna blow
and they won’t like what boils up
from the starving poor

They talk about trickle down
but I ain’t seen a drop
They say they worked the hardest
for all the things they got
But they don’t hungry child whose
crying just won’t stop
It’s time things started flowing
from the bottom to the top

78 RPMs, Lots of them, and I'd like you to have them.

It really is true, the best things in life are not in fact things at all. And as I cycle through new chapters in my own story, I note that the values I held as a younger person don't seem to apply too well to the life I wish to live now. "A Time for all Seasons," I think the great poets like to say and there was a time when I valued having possession of lots of things. Recently, however I've run into lots of folks who share the same obsessions that I used to occupy a lot of my time with and the recognition has been startling. At some point the person disappears and only the frightenly obtuse "collection" or "archive" (or let's speak frankly, a "hoard") of things takes over. That said, I'd like to announce that I am divesting myself of the 78rpm platters that I have amassed over the years.

The reason why I collected them in the first place was that that's where a lot of the "good stuff" lived. Distribution of re-issued music was sketchy and in many cases non-existant. If you wanted to hear real honest to goodness Western Swing, you weren't gonna find it on the radio or even in a modern acts recordings, you were going to have to do the work and find the music and then struggle to listen to it. My old roomate Mark Hays sat me down one day and played me 4 different version of a Bob Wills 78, all with different lyrics and lead breaks, it was revelatory and set me off on a nearly 20 year path of collection.

It many ways it was my "adult "version of how I consumed music during the American Hardcore Punk rock movement, the similarities were many. You had to be proactive to find good music, and collecting 78s for me was the natural progression to buying Necros 45's from a mail order catalog in the back of a 'zine, or a Bad Brains cassette from a little independent label you never heard of. All of this was in the pre-Internet and pre-digital age, a study in musical archeology and it prepared me well for my life bent over on my knees in antiques store across the US and Canada while Bad Livers were at their touring zenith.

But then I started meeting the fetishists. We all know who they are, guys to whom the possession of the platter is FAR more important that the information contained in it. Those to whom "rarity" was more important than "quality." They can sit for hours and tell you every detail of every little obscure recording label and all the artists on them, in many casing even taking to expertly mimicking these recordings, mistakes, false starts and all. It's actually very impressive this track that so many collectors I know find themselves on. They extend it to their lives and even professions, becoming living Re-Enactors for a a period of history (that frankly I think is best left forgotten, other than the wonderful art that was created at that time.)

But more and more I see that as a trap, a "death trip" as we used to call it in Bad Livers and the weight both allegorically and actually is a burden I no longer wish to carry. The truth is that the vast majority of music I possess now, and the format it arrives in to me is frankly less than meaningless as that is simply how my personal relationship with music has developed, I could listen to it all and die an old man by the time I got back to the start. I'm sitting here now with a hard drive loaded with 15 gigs of Moldovan and Romanian music that I suspect will take a decade to properly digest.

These records brought me lots of pleasure and joy in my life and I will forever cherish not only the music contained in them, but in the places in which I found them and the journeys made to locate them. That I will have always. So cut to the chase, big boy.

If you would like them, I would be pleased for you to have them. I do not wish to sell them, but I will offer them, all of them, to anyone who would like them. All I ask in return, is that you leave me something that was meaningful to you; maybe a book, a work of art, home made cookies, whatever. I'll even accept nothing at but your thanks, if that's all you have to give. I even have a couple play back machines which I would let go as well, even a lovely Cherrywood RCA Victor console, which my TV lives upon currently, which I'd sell for mighty cheap.

Y'all know how to get me and I hope to have everything divested by Carnival time, so I can enter the Mardi Gras season with a little less baggage.

Cheers and much love to you all.

(PS: no shipping, gotta come by in person, ok? )

Personal confusion over the term "Folk."

(I wrote this essay in January or 2011. Not sure why I didn't publish, but whatever, here ya go:)

I was recalling when I was a last minute replacement speaker on a panel at the Folk Alliance conference was held in Austin in 2006. The panel was called "What is Folk" and it was the opening session. When it came around to my turn after hearing all the music professionals; artists, presenters, writers and a DJ, my definition was greeted with quite a bit less enthusiasm as I had hoped.

Brian Marshall at the Houston Polish Fest

I proffered the opinion that the definition of "folk music" was music played by people who didn't want to be left out of the party going on. Music of community functions and families traditions. Its a voice of a living culture, often times filtered and some times entirely drowned out by the consumerist narrative. It's a concept my pal Tex-Polish fiddler Brian Marshall laid on me years ago, and ultimately it's as good a definition as I have yet encountered: "I didn't want to be left out of the fun, so I joined in."
There was an audible and awkward silence amongst the assembled. From the best I can gather, this description didn't sit too well with many "performing songwriters" in attendance, who I have since come to find hold a much different opinion from a vastly different world view. What I came to find that day was that we are talking about two very different narratives and concepts that today share the same public moniker. Confusion and hurt feelings can mount up quite a bit when you realize that you use the same term to describe different things, especially when they exist at such odds with one another.
 
From my possibly limited experience, a "folk" artist is in fact a cultural craftsman who's only attachment to music is serving a function of his/her culture as a whole, music only being a slight fraction of the equation; language, faith, dance, cuisine are all intertwined and carried along by music which is definitely not the myopic focus. It appears that the narrative a great many people who describe themselves as "Folk" artists as if "Folk" was simply a slot they hope to fill in a record shop, or a radio format. For short hand we can use the brilliant parody film "A Mighty Wind" as an example of this perspective.

The "Folk singer" in the consumer narrative is in many respects no different that a Pop singer, save for their setting and instrumentation which appears to "acoustic." Ironically it is

always a guitar made to look like an acoustic model, but in fact must be plugged in electronically to function, much the same way that the "folk" aspects of the presentation (costume, instrumentation, etc.)  is simply a conceit to give the visual image of "traditional" folk craftsmen. Often time what you in fact encounter in this milieu is a pop songwriter who is not yet financially prosperous to field a rock band onstage, and uses the "folk" niche to simply mark time until they can climb the ladder of the music business and "make it big." They embark on a commercial career and if they don't make their dreams come true, they eventually stop and go back to whatever "Plan B" they have in their back pocket, no harm no foul back into the warm comfy waters of the dominant narrative. 

Conversely, the traditional folk musician is way too busy living a life inside a culture, and just happens to play music and most likely will for all of their lives, whether or not they are every examined outside of their community. They couldn't care less in most cases. I learned this by shepherding tradition bearer fiddlers up from Texas to the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes. Rather than help curate and teach with the instructors, I spent most of my time out of class sitting on the porches of our housing trying to explain the motivations of the our students to the confused fiddlers. "Um, again tell me why it is these people want to know this music? Are they Catholic? Do they play dances where they'll need to learn this stuff?" Time and time again we encountered students who desperately wanted to learn a new tune, but seemed entirely uninterested, oft even hostile to the suggestion, that the fiddle tune went with a dance, which went with a party which went with a Church that went with pirogi's and vodka that went with conservative political values, etc... It got ugly on more than one occasion, as these misunderstandings tend to get. In the search for "authenticity," you must take the baby with the bathwater however, weather or not it suits your personal views. The people who taught me Bluegrass in Oklahoma were oft times Klansmen, but that didn't stop me from enjoining in a jam session. You take what you find and do the best you can with it.

In my most jaundiced moments I've felt that when you scratch a "Folk" performer, you tend  to find someone who has either wittingly (or unwittingly) rejected their own culture's narratives and traditions only to then cleave to a some bubbling proto-culture that doesn't challenge their personal values and shares their world view to fill the void. The Jam band scene, bluegrass clubs and the communities that spring up around Festivals are good examples of this expression for culture and traditions. And to be sure, over time this eventually creates it's own "culture," of a sort. For many, it becomes how the define themselves every day and contributes their self image. Far be it for me to rain on anybodies parade. As I go further down this track, I get a lot my forgiving and compassionate for what I find distasteful. I do draw a line pretty clearly however.

It's my feeling that all too often we encounter what are essentially crude burlesques of other peoples cultures. Really no different from a Coon Show in intent, uniformly populated by by the advantaged playfully adopting only the music of the disadvantaged without any understanding or even interest in what makes the music that way in the first place. George Carlin famously noted about why white men had no right in his opinion to play blues "not because its about what are the right notes to play. Its WHY those are the right notes." Time and again it seems and the participants of such imitation versions cheerfully identify themselves as dilettantes, which not a pejorative to the dominant consumer culture with its impenetrable bubble of privilege. As I know from experience, if you presented working traditional musician to this tribe, they uniformly recoil in terror. Possibly recognizing that deep down they actually do not much care for the culture from which the music was born and is a part of, they're far more interested in supporting fellow dilettantes, keeping the savage at arms length.  Danny Barnes' essay on "I know why you're not into music" points out that there's "plenty of music for people who hate music, books for people who hate books, etc." I realize for a great many people my own band Bad Livers fulfilled this same role. While we were trying to get people to check out Stanley Bros. or Don Stover, time and again the kids said they liked us better than the people who inspired us. I recall an interview with Jerry Garcia bemoaning his fans not ever picking up on the great American songbook they were simply trying to expose to a new audience, relating only instead to his clumsy renditions. Could drive a sensitive person to heroin, no?

Danny also told me years ago in reference to the explosion of "we started as a punk band but now we're traditional C &W" bands that overran Austin in the late 80's:

 "All these cats are all hot to play "country music," but none of 'em would dare go out into the country have to deal with the people who like country music. They do alright with the hipsters in town, but I'd like to see them deal with the drunks at the Satin Sabre in LaGrange for instance." 

Truthfully, all they ever really did was create a self referential "scene" where out-of-work musicians play for other out-of-work musicians and the waitresses who support them. I should know, as I've participated tangentially performing in the local "blues" and "country" clubs that African American and blue collar WASP's can scarcely be found.  If anyone describes a "scene," this is most likely what they are talking about; a fully inward looking proto-culture, with it's own customs and code of conduct. "Scenes." Like "Rock-a-Billy," or "jazz" or whatever self imposed social club a group of people tend to create for themselves. And it's important to note that if you gather any group together long enough, and they share enough of a world view and "viola'!" you have a safely contained, consumer manufactured proto-culture, no less as genuine as any other. The Juggalos come to mind, as do other cult-like followers of bands and even habitual music festival attendees. No less authentic, truly, they are however more akin to GMO and hydroponic vegetables removed from Mother Earth and natural world.
To further confuse the matter, there have been periods of American history where authentic culture as also been "popular" and thus

commercially successful. Flatt and Scruggs were chart toppers in the wake the "Bonnie and Clyde" soundtrack and Beverly Hillbillies. Ever since "Bluegrass" music, the musical innovation of a single artist, has waxed and waned in the American public consciousness between a vocational and avocational pursuit . 

There was the sweet yet brief moment when Jewish "klezmer" music was elevated by
violinist Itzak Perelman's single album and subsequent tour, which was forgotten as easily as it came on the radar, dashing the aspirations of a whole generation of artists who thought they had finally broke through to be counted as a American culture and not simply a marginalized corner of an even more marginalized community. Any folk musician likes to be appreciated and "hitting the big time" (whatever that means to every individual) is certainly understandable and even laudable, especially when it exposes the musicians greater culture in hopes of not just financial, but hopefully some measure of acceptance by the dominant narrative. But then again, they may only dress you up in Klan outfit when you sing your signature song....

I had this whole conversation with a fellow who's been trying to force fit an instrument from one tradition into another tradition's dance music for decades now with only an embarrassing admixture to show for it. As a "folkie,"and lets be honest here we are talking about people with white skin who speak English almost entirely, he's fully empowered by his wealth and his privilege to see culture as a smorgasbord; where he can pick and choose what elements suit his personal musical vision. How could he see it any way really, having had only consumerism and advertising as a cultural legacy? It is often argued that it's just these sort of people that propel traditions forward and there is indeed some truth in that line of thinking.

However, the important element, missing in this performers thesis,  is how does this change come to a tradition? From within a community with its own internal standards? Is there a community of like minded, language, custom and faith connected people who within their own experience accepted change from within? Or is it the outlander who imposes their concept onto a culture he stumbles across, or is the natural curiosity of the tradition bearer feuling the innovation? The steel guitar entered French speaking "Cajun" music many years ago, as did the accordion before it, naturally and from internal experimentation. Same for the arrival of the Greek bouzouki in Ireland and the button accordion to the Spanish speaking south west US. Revolutionary as their introductions may have been, they arose as a reaction of a community well versed in their own traditions and as a community welcome to internal innovations. I'm a traditionalist personally, but even I must accept the adoption of American instrumentation in Yiddish music and I foresee a lexicon of authentic Yiddish guitar in my lifetime. That's a conversation from inside our community, and thus is nobodies business but ours.

Done their homework

My pal Henry Sapoznik has a litmus test for who's coming from inside the music and who haven't done their homework. It's really easy: walk up to a band playing "klezmer-punk" or "klezmer-jazz" or some other clumsy fusion, hold a Colt 1911 .45 up against the band leaders temple and say "Play me an old fashioned Yiddish Bulgar, one my zayde would recognize." 9 times out of 10, sadly, the test doesn't end well. But within communities there are indeed master musicians who have imbibed the totality of their own cultures, assuming a collective voice and then and only then are capable of making truly revolutionary music that would in fact speak to the aspirations of a people while propelling them forward. 

To reach back to the opening paragraph, there was an earnest young Folk singer who responded to my definition at that Folk Alliance panel with the plea, "But I'm a white middle class American, raised without attachment to any of the heritages that make up my family's story. What am I to do with your definition then?" That knocked me back on my heels. I didn't have an answer for him, nor did I have one. Maybe I'm lucky that my identity was clearly identified for me so early on that I possibly don't even possess the tools to understand why folks don't see it my way. Just as I can't understand why they treat culture and it's byproducts as nothing more than a commodity. I'll allow further that I may be the only human on the face of the Earth that these issues seem to bother, and I'll be working to let it bother me less, seeing as I am in the great minority in these views. 

Rolf & Beate Sieker

But even my thesis falls apart in the complexities of everyday life it seems. There's a really great banjo player living in Texas named Rolf Sieker. When I say really good, I mean you have maybe heard different, but you won't hear better. I met Rolf in 1991 when he drove down from Hamburg to see Bad Livers play in a club in what formerly housed the Gestapo HQ in Berlin. Many years later we reconnected when he moved to the US, naturalized and set out to play bluegrass professionally with his wife Beate as the Seiker Band. (Check 'em out, I love them.) Rolf is so good, playing American music from the inside, not like a tourist but with real old school feel, I had to ask a) why did he play banjo and b) why not German music? I'm not going to bore you with the details, because Rolf's story should be his own, but he really couldn't enjoin with his family's long tradition of music making. Rolf told me that his father, and his father before him were all Bards from the Thurnigen Forest, singing songs passed down generation to generation, accompanied upon the Waldzither. 

But by 1933 the National Socialists had co-opted these songs and traditions and had perverted them for their own purposes. After the war, simply whistling the melodies was an indication that you preferred the Third Reich. Papa put his instrument under the bed and never sang those songs again. But Rolf was lucky. His mother listened to Armed Forced Radio and became (like many post war Germans strangely) a HUGE Johnny Cash fan. In hopes of hearing the Man in Black, Momma Sieker kept the radio on, and that's when Flatt & Scruggs came blaring through the ether. Young Sieker was entranced, so much so that he eventually founded arguably Germany's only decent Bluegrass band, going on to tour with Bill Monroe (even sleeping in the same bed, but like I said Rolf should tell these tales himself!) Brutally disconnected from his own traditions, he cleaved to this foreign one and made it fully his own, following his passions from Hamburg to Nashville and eventually Texas today. Is it any coincidence that his father's instrument, has five courses and is tuned to an open G chord? I think not.

To close, let me share this one anecdote from my childhood. My family was very close with a group of young Native American artists who were engaged in complete re-examination about what was "Native" art? They took all the tools of classical western art and focused it back onto their own cultural narrative in a bold and exciting new way, unbound by what outsiders considered "traditional." My family would host shows form them when the non-Native owed galleries pronounced their output at "not Indian" enough. They established themselves by word of mouth and hard work driving all over the country showing their canvases to whoever would look at them. The "Indian" Art  world came around to accept them finally, we would go to their showings quite a bit, sometimes all the way out to Santa Fe the big art fair. I saw my buddy Ben Harjo Jr. setting up a few new prints.

Ben Harjo, Jr. at work

I was struck with one, a figure of a woman enveloped in a swarm of yellow honey bees. I knew that Ben's art almost always related to a story of a legend. He said "It's a story about a spirit who wants to visit the world, so she becomes a beautiful woman. But men come upon her and rape her. Confused and angry, she turns herself into a swarm of bees and kills the men. It's a story about medicine and women and how you should always honor them." "But Ben, " I inquired, "what is medicine. I hear you talk about it all the time, but what is it?" He gave me a big smile, patted me on the head and said "Oh, this is our medicine, it is not meant for you. You have your own medicine, with your people. Go and study that."

What am I getting at? All I recommend is that when you enter some ones home, you try and do like your parents taught you to and be respectful. Every human on Earth has their own medicine. Go and study yours. It could very well be staring you in the face right now. You may be surprised what treasures you will find.

PS:

Oh, I guess I should make a pitch for Hank Bradley's ground breaking essay on this very subject called "Counterfeiting, Stealing, and Cultural Plundering: a manual for applied ethnomusicologists with 12 tunes for fiddle composed by the author" 1989. Available from the author. It was very helpful me in understanding motivations when I was just starting out searching and engaging in cultures other than my own.

Troubled thoughts on a trip to Trenchin Slovakia, July 2007

(Note: I wrote this essay 3 years ago but have hesitated to publish it, until now. Why, I have no idea? I had written quite a bit about my trip to rural Slovakia on this very blog here and here. From reading those postings, you could never imagine the kind of conflict the experience awoke in me. Over 3 years later, I'm still sorting through it.)


This week finds me headed to the Slovakia to perform with Frank London’s Klezmer Brass All Stars. We’re slated to perform at the “ethno” music stage of the massive Pohoda music festival along with Boban and Marko Markovic’s amazing brass orchestra. The concept of this stage show is based around a joint recording project we made a few years ago called the “Brotherhood of Brass,” exploring the legion similarities between the Jewish and Rroma musical traditions and the ability of music making to create connection beyond any cultural boundaries. The resulting CD was a minor hit on the World Music scene in Europe, which unlike the States they actually have a World Music scene supported by a eager fan base and media infrastructure. We have toured this show for several summers and working and traveling with these amazing bandsmen has been the experience of a lifetime, let me tell you. From the highest peaks in musical performance and camaraderie to the deepest depths of witnessing anti-Gypsy racism. Quite a ride at any rate, and I always look forward to playing with these cats one more time.

It’s nearly 40 degrees Celsius (well over 100 Fahrenheit) when the taxi driver drops me off at the hotel in Trencin, fully an hour and a half’s drive from the Bratislava airport. I’m feeling ill from lack of sleep and probably the gamey tuna salad served on the Czech Airways flight over, and I actually utilized the airsickness bag provided in the seat pockets for the first time in my life. Now at the “Sport Hotel ostrov Zamarovce” I’m shown my room, which for Eastern standards is quite all right, with a recently renovated and thus fully operative bathroom. But like most of Europe there is no air conditioning like we are quite used to in Texas. The heat is familiar, and with the hotel facing the gently flowing River Van, there are quite a few mosquitoes as well to remind me of summer at home. I make plans to take a short nap and then head into the city center in search of a table fan so that I will be able to sleep in this heat.
After walking for what seems like hours, I locate a supermarket on a major road on the outskirts of town, purchase a nice fan and then head back to the hotel, making note to cut through the old city center to see what I can see. So I’m walking along the central pedestrian zone when I spy one of those handy-for-the-tourists sign posts that says things like “” and "Synogoga>"  Hmmm. Well, by golly, it is Friday evening, shabbes, and all. How cool would it be to daven with the locals in little ol’ Trencin Slovakia?
It has been a long-standing custom of mine that when time in the touring schedule allows, I’ll seek out the local schul and at least get inside it and look around. On the odd occasion, and depending on the Jewish calendar, I have actually been able to daven (pray) with the local Yidn. Like the time in Utrecht Holland where the rabbi there knows my local own Chababd rebbe well and even lived at the Chabad House in Austin for a time. Every now and again I have in fact been the 10th man required for a minyan (a religious quorum,) like at the amazing Sephardic temple in downtown Bordeaux France. Such an occurrence is quite an honor among my tribe, and at the very least you’ll be sure to meet some interesting new folks.

No doubt my Rebbe back home will chuckle aloud when he reads this, as getting me into his services usually require a bribe of paying gig or some such, but even he will know what I mean when I say that I am often more at home with strangers, especially when they are Jewish strangers. Moreover it our collective practice of Jewish ness is all that is required to bind us together. My feeling is that my job after all, out on the road as a traveling Jewish musician from Texas, is to represent Jewish culture and I came quite a long way to do so. The very least I can do is at least behave like a Jew while I’m doing it. Thus, I trot off in the direction of the helpful sign, hoping in my mind they have a siddur (Jewish prayer book) I can make sense of.

Quickly I locate a large white Moorish building at the end of the small triangular public square. From it’s position and layout in relation to the square one can imagine that was the center for the Jewish district of this little provincial town. Viewed from a distance, it is beautiful; but there is no indication that this is a Jewish house of worship. No stars of David, no menorah, no nothing really. There is one little spot high up where you can see the outline of the traditional tablets of the Ten Commandments, and there is a lovely Tree of Life bas relief above one door way. But you get the feeling that there was once so much more adornment. It appears to have had a fresh if slap dash white wash in recent years, but the doors are all shut and looking in, it seems to be completely empty. Some of the windows are broken as well. All I can find is a Soviet era looking block letter plaque attached to the wall that from my clumsy translations refers to the “White Synagogue of Trencin” and notes simply its “historic oriental architecture.”

There indeed is a fine synagogue in Trencin, but there will be no shabbes here. There are no Jews here. The stark, sudden and complete realization that though this building may still stand and from the outside is beautiful and all, there are no Jews here to pray with. Not tonight, and probably never again I imagine. A wave of depression and sadness flushes over me. I mean what was I thinking? Jews must have prospered here, I mean why else would you have such a grand house of worship? Sure, as if after all the pogroms, the harassment by fascists from within and without, and then the gentle graces of the Soviets and their labor camps that there would be anyone left? These are the kind of things I see every time I head into the Eastern parts of Europe and this is just the sort of internal conversation I have with myself nearly every time. Much like a child finding out over and over again that there is no Santa Claus, I have to tell myself yet again; “Jews used to live here.”

Where many of them have gone was laid out perfectly clearly for me in a confirmation class years ago at Temple Emmanuel in Oklahoma City. In our Bar Mitzvah year our teachers decided that by then we were old enough to be introduced to the grim business of Holocaust studies. We started with the notorious documentary “Night and Fog,” a French collection of Nazi state archive footage of the Final Solution in vivid action. As I stare up at the plaque bolted to the side of this abandoned schul, situated just yards away from a strip of lively cafes filled with noisy patrons all safe and secure in their surroundings, all I can think of are the flickering grainy images of open pits filled with naked, lifeless bodies presented to me in that small darkened class room. It was hard not to actually. Just today on the plane to Bratislava I read in the English language newspaper the Prague Post that the new Jewish cemetery there has once again been abused and vandalized. “Authorities are considering installing video cameras and other security measures” it reports. No Jews left around to kick it seems, so a tombstone will have to suffice I guess. On my walk back to my hotel I make special note of the “White Power” spray painted on the side of the dilapidated, but still utilized, old Soviet era soccer stadium. It’s written in English, in my guess so that foreign travelers like myself will be perfectly clear of the message. “Just so you know, you (insert gypsy, Jew, any brown skinned person, ect..) are still not welcome. Have a nice day!”

It’s strolling the rustic cobblestones of these streets I think about Native Americans and Israel strangely enough. I mean as a young Okie Jew it was mighty hard to wrap your head around the concept of people locked in a seemingly never ending death grip, even taking to killing each other over a lousy strip of land actually smaller than the entire county I grew up in. A window to my perspective: Every Sunday we’d load up the car and the family would make the 100 mile trek down I-35 from Stillwater to OKC so I could get at least a modicum of Jewish education at the conservative schul there. The temples in Tulsa were a much a shorter distance, but as the old Jewish joke about the man stranded on a desert island that built two synagogues: one to pray in and one I wouldn’t set foot in, my dad insisted we make the longer car ride south every week. Truthfully I was never fully integrated into this community either, these “big city” Jews (only the start of a long, seemingly never ending pattern of outsider status for me as it turns out) as I was singled early out as the country bumpkin who spoke with a drawl and didn’t show up for Hebrew School on Tuesdays after regular school like everybody else. Thus, my Hebrew is still appalling and I still don’t feel too comfortable around city folk.

Passing by to the right of the windshield of the old VW van were mile after mile of gently rolling open Oklahoma country side, famed for it’s deep rich soil that produced corn, wheat, alfalfa and all manner of fresh foods. As well as vast areas open to grazing for sheep and cattle. It was hard to reconcile the experience of my weekly journey through great patches of open farmland with the instruction in my Sunday school noting the small Israeli Army’s taking of relatively tiny patches of arid desert like the Gaza Strip as great victories for the Jewish People. A Jewish People which as was made very clear meant me too.
But here’s another window of perspective: all that prime land that I admired from my car seat was actually at one time a reservation for the Iowa, Sac and Fox, Pottawatomie, and Shawnee peoples, “Civilized” Tribes who were given their “Indian Territory” in perpetuity by the Bureau of Indian Affairs after they had renounced violence, abandoned their native religions, acquiesced to the introduction of enforced Christianity and “proper” western morals and education, sending their children off to “Indian Schools” where any semblance of their culture was systematically and quite literally beaten out of them. 

Really?

 

But even after playing ball to such indignities from1889 to1906 the US government decided to rip up their contracts with the locals (again.) It was easy work to kick out the last remnants of a beaten down brown people now entirely debilitated by cheap whisky and small pox infected blankets, and then gleefully give out their land free to whatever freebooting white person decided to “stake his claim.” “Boomer Sooner” is the battle cry of the University of Oklahoma I was taught in college in homage of these “settlers.” But take some time to look it up and see just what kind of person these “Sooners” (creeps who snuck across the borders early to steal claims) and "Boomers" (big money financiers of poorer, soon-to-be-indentured white folks) actually were. And then consider carefully about how much honor we should bestow to such ilk. The history books trumpet this event as the “Great Land Run of Oklahoma,” but it looks like yet another wildly successful round of ethnic cleansing to me, no matter how rosy the victors wish to paint it.

I was raised in up close proximity to the decedents of this extra-special and long running New World Holocaust (1690 to present.) And thus I had been witness to the myriad levels of degradation and devastation that these actions had wrought. And how tragically and heart achingly they manifest themselves even today. To my pre-adolescent way of thinking, Jews and Native peoples seemed to have quite a bit in common; disempowered underdogs who only ever wanted to left alone to live in peaceful co-existence and who are still around despite everyone’s attempts to destroy us utterly simply for being unlike them. It was the very image that Israel worked to present to the world when I was a kid as well. This became one of the cornerstones of my personal Jewish identity in many ways.

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While writing all this down, I recall the experience of being dis-invited from a youth exchange program when I was 14. My father had wrangled hard for me a chance to spend a semester in South Africa with a family from his Rotary Club sister city. But I was yanked out of the running during the lengthy interview process; I’m pretty sure, all because I proffered the opinion that it was a terrible idea to have an oppressive and authoritarian White minority rule over so many un-empowered native people. And that I wasn’t interested in changing my opinion, no matter how fun an overseas journey might be. Mandela was still imprisoned and the nightly news showed scenes of the savage beating of protestors who only simply wanted a voice in their own affairs. It all looked too much like Kristalnacht to me, and I readily identified with the folks on the business end of the Police truncheon, rather than the well-fed white man clad in black riot gear. “You here can’t possibly understand the situation, it’s so much more complex as you imagine, I mean, the blacks are in no position to rule today.” I remember the young Afrikaner-Rotarian saying quite clearly in his genuinely honest attempts to dissuade me of such notions. “Yes, I’m not there and I can’t possibly know all the details.” I recall telling my advisor “But Apartheid is wrong. Period. It’s just wrong.” Needless to say, some less politically informed son of an Oklahoman Rotarian had a blissful few months outside Johannesburg away from his family, tucked in a safe white enclave far from the troublesome Blacks. Meanwhile, I stayed put and went noodling for Catfish with my Boy Scout troop in Lake Thunderbird instead.
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It was much later that I came to a very troublesome juncture in my though process about identity both personal and collective. When people wanted to debate things Israeli, and boy do American Jews like talking about Israel, I slowly began to realize that I as a Jew had more in common with a displaced and disempowered Palestinian than with an Israeli. You know, the un-empowered and disenfranchised folks, the people getting their doors kicked in and pulled out into the street at gunpoint. I could not, and can not, cotton the idea that a Jew could ever be the one in the riot gear, wielding a truncheon or leveling a weapon at a kid throwing rocks. And this, friends, is a very strange and uncomfortable place to be. (I take no joy in sharing the notion, though it will most likely outrage a great many folks I know. I only pray they will be able to see the situation from the filter of my own experience.)
Those who know me well understand that I have my whole life struggled greatly with the romantic notion of a “Jewish State” contrasted with the messy realities that the living, breathing, politically and socially complex place like what Israel has become. I was raised in a fairly Israel centric household for an Okie. Long ago, my mother had been a kibbutznik, picking oranges and working on her tan for a summer before she even met my father and often said she had the time of her life even though she wasn’t herself Jewish. As the Hillel director at the University of Oklahoma my father was a 24/7-full time Israel booster, a professional Zionist if you will, and seriously considered an Aliyah (the act of returning to the ancestral homeland) with the whole family in fact, though the constant threat of everyday violence in the Holy Land eventually nixed it the notion.

But the dichotomy of political realities of Nationhood mixed with the practice of a particular religion is a tough road to hoe as we say on the farm. And it’s made all the more complex when framed by the horrors of the Holocaust and the entire world’s collective shame in allowing such to happen, by golly, it all makes for a often sordid and mostly confusing conversation. It’s not a conversation many people, Jews especially, like to be open about in fact. Through my experience and and over time I have formed an opinion that the mostly assimilated Jews of America have in many ways made the idea of Israel their new "Temple," and by extension the repository of their own Jewish identity. Any conversation that includes an unfavorable review of that country’s day to day political policies then can be read as an attack against the core of one’s faith, rather than say, a respectful interest in world affairs and the struggle of Human Rights worldwide. It’s especially troubling when those policies seem from a distance appear to run contrary with the very practice of Judaism that someone like myself was raised with.

Trust me on this one non-Jewish readers, it’s a very prickly path to tread upon. I learned this the hard way once. In a lively post performance conversation on a long country drive with a completely assimilated, non- identified Jewish fiddler colleague of mine, I tried to debate as the devil’s advocate by criticizing a particularly churlish internal Israeli policy that I had read in the paper that day involving the bulldozing of Palestinian suicide bomber’s family homes, which sounded like an awful idea to me no matter how you sliced it. So upset by this stance of “betrayal” of “our people” they actually haven’t spoken a word to me this day. In an ironic twist that illustrates I think the complexity often involved with Jewish identity today, this very musician recently even changed her professional last name to be more palatable to the goyische market (and to be gentlemanly I won’t out them here.) To me this is a sign of ashamedness of not only personal family history but a clear signifier of the deepest level of Jewish self-loathing. But should you hold something other than the party line on absolute correctness the Jewish State and suddenly you’re “against us.” In the question that is Israel, even the conflicted and deeply self-loathing can magically answer as a Jew.
Ok, I must add that it’s all fine and well for a thoroughly assimilated Galutnik like me, make that an unreconstructed, tattooed, married goyische, happy-as-the-proverbial-Pig-in-a-Slop-trough Galutnik in fact, to sit in my air conditioned central Texas home and come up with my comfortable notions about what is and what should be is mighty easy, if not cowardly. But neighbors, let me tell you that a night walking the hot streets of Trencin Slovakia gave me yet a new perspective on what it really means to be Jewish in place where you are very much not welcome and makes me deeply reconsider a lot of the notions I have formed for myself up to this point.

I live in Texas and I truly believe that its been Gan Eden for me. It’s a wide-open land where anything has been possible. That there among these goyim, my culture and creed have never stood in the way, long enough albeit, of any opportunity that I ever desired. Bare in mind that last sentence was written by a man born into Payne County, Oklahoma: the shinny silver Rodeo buckle of the Southern Baptist Bible belt. I had been refused entrance into a public swimming pool on one occasion, black balled unceremoniously from a popular Fraternity (DeMolay,) and subjected to direct proselytizing nearly daily in the course of my public school education, all simply because I was a Jew, and maybe even more threateningly, quite comfortable in owning up to it. I have run the barbed gauntlet of small town, dumb as dirt and proud of it, cracker-dom my whole life (Toby Keith lived right up the road from me to give only one obvious example.) But I did it so effectively I might add that today I am faintly nostalgic for the attention it brought. That in a strange sort of Stockholm Syndrome, I am completely protective of my bygone hillbilly tormentors and will defend them, quite loudly, and speak to the nobler aspects of their (and to a great extent my own) culture of family, God, honor, respect, good fiddling, proper BBQ, hot biscuits, ect., against my Jewish Yankee buddies who would dare disparage my beloved South.

What I realize quite depressingly in my walk tonight is that I’ll bet there was a guy just like me right here in Trencin who said pretty much the same thing about his little hick hometown. Like me, I’ll reckon he couldn’t even conceive of living anywhere else, so rooted to his happy life surrounded the goyim who for the most part left him alone. “Sure, they don’t let us in all the way, and true enough sometimes around Easter some of the lummoxes will get hopped up on Jesus and vodka and beat somebody up” he would tell his buds in some other village ‘But business is good here, and we make a good life.” But almost imperceptibly one fine day, his situation started a downhill slide. The beatings got a bit more regular and a bit more vicious; the public indignities began to pile up, and the business not so good anymore. But it was better than someplace else, he kept telling himself. Much like a frog that is set into a pot of water doesn’t jump out, you can keep adding fire to the pot little by little until the water is completely boiling and the frog is then dead, completely unaware of its impending doom. So on one not so fine day, the trucks rolled in, the locals pointed out his apartment and that was that. He’s not around anymore to defend the positive aspects of Slovakian country living; of its jaunty brass bands, the beer halls filled with fine Pilsners, and of the rugged country folk who were his neighbors. Jews used to live here.
Israel, I note on a map, is a whole lot closer to Trencin than Texas. And with all its issues and complexities I reckon it would have looked like Gan Eden from that cat’s perspective. 

“History” as a wise man once said, “is a bitch.”

So here I am now, playing with a Gypsy brass band from Serbia in conjunction with a Jewish ensemble from NYC at a music festival held on the grounds of an old Soviet era airfield. Not without being painfully aware the irony, for the last few years the only paying work I have had a musician has been over here, in those places where we used to live. The only way I’ve been able to explain why so called “klezmer” music is so marketable to Europeans, and even East Europeans in fact, is to think of myself like an act in Bill Cody’s touring Wild West Show. I actually have to visualize myself as a musical Sitting Bull if you will, propped up in my native finery and prancing across the concert stage singing my Sacred Chants for a public that is only fascinated by the appearance of the proverbial “ones that got away”. I like to call it the “hospitality of the return ticket,” you can be nice just about anybody if you’re certain they aren’t here to stay. The vibe on the street is Happy, dancing Jews onstage, fine and dandy. But less than happy Jews coming back and asking for their families’ apartment and business, not so much.

Germany, which until recently was the biggest market for this music, never ever had this music there in the first place. But the collective guilt of the butcher’s children and grand children has brow beaten a public acceptance of, even a demand for, Jewish music such to the point where most performers there today aren’t even Jewish. (This is a whole other conversation actually, which gets it’s own muddled essay later.)

But here, like Krakow and Budapest and Beograd, I am now presented much like my Cherokee and Seminole classmates as the “noble savage” that can be accepted now up to a point simply because I no longer pose any threat. Lucky for the local toughs, they still have gypsies here that they can safely kick around, so finally the heat is off us Jews for once.

I’m chatting about these various observations with my good friend Brighton based clarinetist Merlin Shepherd who is on the bandstand with me tonight. Beating the heat, we stroll into the city square and find a seat at a pleasant café under the shadow of the great Orthodox Church. Speaking maybe a little too loudly in English, and being the only men with any facial hair that we have seen anywhere in town, we are certainly not from around here. Our young waitress brings us our coffee and inquires in her best English if we were here for the big festival. We said yes and that in fact we were performers, which seemed to excite her a great deal. “What do you play”” she inquires. Merlin responds matter-of-factly “Jewish and Gypsy Music.” To which our waitress literally recoils, whipping her hand over her mouth to cover her obvious shock. I can’t make this stuff up. “Is that a bad thing?” Merlin asks. “Oh no…” she says as she hurriedly shuffles away. “Was it the Jew thing or the Gypsy thing that got her?” I asked Merlin. We agree. It doesn’t really matter, does it?
Jews used to live here.

Blogging for some other Blog...

It's a funny world now.

I used to contribute articles for publications (Old Time Herald, Bass Player, Austin Chronicle, Sing OUT!, No Depression, ect..) Now I just write of my Facebook page all the time and don't really add much here.

That's why I was so surprised when I got an email out of the blue asking if I'd be interested in blogging for the Arty Semite, an arts and culture blog on the Forward website. The Forward, the English wing of the Yiddish Forverts and is the oldest continuously published paper in America, has gotten into new media big-time and they seem hungry for content. Even from writers like me, way far away from the Jewish cultural main steam.


Okie doke then, the Okie Kike is here to oblige (for the right price!)

Follow this link to my report on the International Accordion Festival and my performance there with Montreal based Yiddish-Hip-Hop phemom Josh Dolgin aka SoCalled.

Enjoy!

The Other Europeans on YouTube

Here's a collection of videos of the "Other Europeans" project which took up a big chunk of my last 3 summers. Watching these videos, I can hardly believe I was actually there when this all happened.


I'll start with this snippet of the documentary film that has been following the project over several continents.

(Additionally, I guess I should mention that they are still shy of funds to complete and release. Contact me offline if you'd like information on how you could help.)

Here's the band in Furth Germany, March 2010.

Same show, different angle:

Here's a smaller version of the band at KlezKanada, August 2010.

This is a shockingly great performance from Marin Bunea and Petar Ralchev. It was my birthday that night and after his solo, Petar leaned back to me and said "For you, happy birthday!" Happy indeed!!

Here's the cats jamming backstage (with guest Sergui Popa.) They just can't stop playing.

There is talk of this band coming back to the States next year and if it does happen, you all here will be the first to know!

From the Jewish Outlook (Austin TX:)

Not my best interview, and edited a tad clumsily. I'm usually a little more politic in my thoughts, but for some reason I took the gloves off here and am making no apologies; I spoke from the heart. If I seem disappointed in the lack of support my efforts have received in my own community, is is simply because it so starkly contrasts my experience as a guest in other cultures.

(Can't wait to see how this article compares to my good pal Robbi Sherwin's interview next month. She comes from a much different place than I do, but she encounters the same lack of enthusiasm for her music as well.)

Embarking on a new Adventure (Bassists take note!!)

A new adventure begins...

I honestly cannot recall when it struck me, but I leapt out of my hotel room bed and wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget it. I was once again out on tour, this time across Europe, schlepping a BBb tuba and my Eminence Bass. I was headed to the airport in the morning and I’d had a flash of an idea.

It had been almost 15 years since I’d responded to some guy named Gary’s posting that I had put up on a bass players chat list. I’d asked if anybody had come across a travel electric upright bass that was really worth a damn. My band had reached the sort of level where air travel was going to be the mode of transport and I had nothing but expensive horror stories shipping my $600 bass in a $3G flight case and paying extra for the pleasure of having it arrive damaged. Gary noted from my tour schedule that I was passing by a shop that had one of his basses for sale and bade me to check it out. I did, and I was completely knocked out by it. (And if you are reading this, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) I gladly bought it and made it my main traveling ax. However, I was still getting hit with oversize and overweight charges, which kind of nullified the very reason you get a travel instrument. From talking to baggage porters and airline counter folks, I realized that the only way to get your gear on a plane safely was to not stick out - to have it look just like the normal kind of bags they see every day. I found that golf bags fly with no oversize charges. If the Eminence could be made to fold up somehow, it would handily fit in a stock hard sided golf bag carrier.

I shared these ideas with Gary who was, as it turns out, very happy to get feedback from actual touring musicians and recognized the problem immediately. After batting back wacky ideas and much independent brainstorming, Gary came up with the detachable dove-tail joint neck block that makes the detachable Eminence possible. Now the bass flies for free and incognito. I played the hand built prototype for many years and then was lucky to beta test the production models manufactured by Christopher. After quite a bit of initial static (and quite a few snickers), the sound, playability and ease of transport of the detachable Eminence won over nearly every serious bassist I ran into. Bluegrass legend Marshall Wilborn played mine at IBMA’s conference and promptly put in an order, as did globe-trotting Stu Brotman of Brave Old World who commissioned a 5 string model. The detachable neck Eminence Bass is now ubiquitous on stages around the world and in every imaginable style of music where a string bass is found. It is the most influential product, besides my music, that I have ever been lucky to be involved with and it literally swells my heart every time I see one onstage.

That brings me back to my jumping up out of bed. You see, it’s many years later and the nature of air transport has changed here in America quite a bit, becoming less musician friendly all the while. Further cash strapped airlines are looking for any way to boost the bottom line. It would just be a matter of time before they started charging oversize on the golf bag carriers too. And I had heard anecdotally about guys getting charged when TSA inspectors revealed, right in front of the ticket counter, that there was something other than golf clubs in the case. It was time to think proactively.

Was it possible, dare I even think it, that the Eminence could fold up even smaller? Small enough to fit in a standard hard-sided piece of luggage? Can the - it’s hard to even write - can the fingerboard come off? That’s what I wrote down on the hotel envelope. When I called Gary, he didn’t even blink. “Let me think on this.” Which is, not coincidently, precisely what he said to me when I commissioned a detachable neck. Just recently he called me to say “I’ve got it.” I can’t wait to see what he came up with.

Details to follow soon, so check back often.

Old Jews Telling Jokes

My cousin Freddy used to earn his coin as a gag writer for TV sitcoms, and this particular website is known to me. But I had no idea that he actually got a joke in, and I still can't think of him as "old." Here goes:

The Miracle of Mardi Gras...

...and of modern technology.

I'm very lucky to be a member of the Carnival Season brass agregation, the Panorama Brass Band. Essentially a enlarged version of the amazing Panorama Jazz Band with some wacko out-of-town ringers (like me.) This year's parade season was the best yet, in my opinion and this particular version of the band has a really wonderful and sweet vibe all week long. I produced a CD for the Jazz Band just a few months prior to Katrina hitting, and you should try and find yourself a copy.

What's also amazing is the fact that cell phone technology has advanced to the point where nearly every moment of parade is available for viewing on YouTube. So, I have compiled here quite a few little snippets of the parades, up to and including rolling with the St. Anthony Ramblers on Mardi Gras day.

I must say one of the most moving and tender moments I've had all year was performing a chorale in honor of one of the Rambler's who passed over to glory in the last year, while we were introduced to brand new Rambler's who just recently came into this world. All on a Mardi Gras Day, in the Marginy in New Orleans. (Makes a big boy like me pretty weepy. And yes the sound is awful, but I hope you get the spirit that was created in the moment.)

We actually took a couple days off between rolls and recorded a CD, which I hope will be all wrapped up and out soon. The 2010 version of the Panorama Brass Band was:

Patty Farrel, alto horn

Don Godwin & Mark Rubin, tenor horns

Charlie Halloran, slide trombone

Ben Schenck, clarinet

Aurora Nealan, alto sax

JR Hankins, truba

Jack Pritchett

, trumpet

Dan Oestreicher, bari sax

John Gross, sousaphone

Boyana Travanova, spinning drum

Greg Mervine, bass drum

Sean Clark & Ritchie Barshay, percussion

Bon Mardi Gras, y'all. See you next year, for sho!!