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Self-Determination Music (Part 1) |
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Features
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Saturday, 28 January 2006 23:44 |
Self-Determination Music
By John Sinclair
What I would like to see is artists
owning as much of themselves as possible
. &.Or most people.
George Russell, Jazz & Pop, April 1970
[The records under discussion in this piece include:]
Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre: Humility in the Light of the Creator (Delmark 419): Maurice McIntyre (ts, cl, bells, tambourine); Malachi Favors (b); Mchaka Uba (b); Thurman Barker (d); Ajaramu (d); George Hines (vo): Suite: Ensemble Love (Kcab Emoh, Pluto Calling, Life Force); Humility in the Light of the Creator. Hines out; add John Stubblefield (ss); Claudine Myers (p), Leo Smith (tp, flh): Suite: Ensemble Fate (Family Tree; Say a Prayer For; Out There [If Anyone Should Call]; Melissa; Bishmillah)
. Sun Ra & His Astro-Infinity Arkestra: Atlantis (Saturn Research 507): Sun Ra (solar sound organ, solar sound instrument); John Gilmore (ts, perc.); Bob Patrick (bs, fl); Marshall Allen (as, o); Danny Davis (as); Danny Thompson (as, fl); Bob Barry (d, lightning drums); Wayne Harris (tp); Aktal Ebah (tp); Carl Nimrod (space drums); James Jacson (log drums); Robert Cummins (b cl); Ali Hassan (tb). Mu; Lemuna; Yucatan; Bimini; Atlantis.
Sun Ra & His Astro-Infinity Arkestra: Strange Strings (Saturn Research 502): Sun Ra (electric piano, lightning drums, tympani); Thlan Aldridge (space voice); Clifford Jarvis (tympani, perc.); Marshall Allen (as, o); Pat Patrick (bs, fl); Danny Davis (as); Robert Cummins (b cl); Ali Hassan (tb); John Gilmore (ts); Ronnie Boykins (b); James Jacson (log drums). Worlds Approaching; Strings Strange; Strange Strange.
Liberation Music Orchestra (Impulse 9183): Charlie Haden (b, leader); Carla Bley (p); Mike Mantler (tp); Perry Robinson (cl); Gato Barbieri (ts, cl); Dewey Redman (as, ts); Don Cherry (co, fl); Sam Brown (g); Paul Motian (d): The Introduction; Song of the United Front (El Quinto Regimiento, Los Cuatro Generales, Viva La Quince Brigada); The Ending to the First Side; Song for Che; War Orphans; The Interlude (Drinking Music). Add Andrew Cyrille (d): Circus 68 69; We Shall Overcome.
Horace Tapscott Quintet: The Giant Is Awakened (Flying Dutchman FDS 107): Horace Tapscott (p); Black Arthur Blythe (as); David Bryant (b); Walter Savage, Jr. (b); Everett Brown, Jr. (d). The Giant Is Awakened; For Fats; The Dark Tree; Niger's Theme.
Stanley Crouch: Ain t No Ambulances for No Nigguhs Tonight (Flying Dutchman FDS 105): Stanley Crouch rapping and reading from his poetry and prose for the Black Students Union in Los Angeles.
Elaine Brown: Seize the Time (Vault 131): Elaine Brown, voice, composer, with orchestra arranged and conducted by Horace Tapscott: Seize the Time; The End of Silence; Very Black Man; Poppa's Come Home; Take It Away; The Panther; All Stood By; Assassination; The Meeting (Black Panther Party Anthem).
A Night at Santa Rita (Flying Dutchman FDS 111): Rosko, recitation; James Spaulding (fl); Ron Carter (b); text written by Robert Scheer.
Sonny Sharrock: Black Woman (Vortex 2014): Sonny Sharrock (g); Linda Sharrock (vo); Dave Burrell (p); Norris Jones (b); Milford Graves (d): Peanut. Add Gary Sharrock (bells): Black Woman. Gary Sharrock out, add Teddy Daniel (tp); Richard Pierce (g): Bialero; Blind Willy; Portrait of Linda in Three Colors, All Black.
Roy Ayers: Daddy Bug (Atlantic 1528): Roy Ayers (v); Herbie Hancock (p); Buster Williams (b): Mickey Roker (d): Daddy Bug; Bonita; Shadows; It Could Only Happen to You. Ayers; Hancock; Ron Carter (b); Freddie Waits (d); This Guy's in Love with You; I Love You; Michelle; Look to the Sky. Ayers; Sonny Sharrock (g); Hancock; Carter; Bruno Carr (d): Emmie. String quartet on all selections conducted by Gene Orloff; woodwinds conducted by Jerome Richardson; produced by Herbie Mann.
I really can t see much need for reviewing these records, at least not until enough people are listening to this music these musics that we can carry on an intelligent and knowledgeable discussion of the specific records. That is, until enough people are thoroughly familiar with the body of music, or musics, of which these records are part. Familiar, as in, family.
So I have to see my task as creating or producing some effective propaganda for this music, or again, these musics, and these specific records, in the hopes that people can read what I write here and be moved somehow to procure copies of these records, take them home with them, introduce the music to their families and let it become part of their lives. Because people are going to have to get to this music sooner or later, and the sooner the better not only for the individual musicians and ensembles involved, but for the good of the whole people, if you can relate to that.
Because this is liberation music, self-determination music, music that will help you, that can inspire you to transform yourself (yourselves) and begin to work to bring about the transformation of the social order which keeps so many of us and so many more of our brothers and sisters oppressed, hungry and.beaten down.
Now, I could talk about the music, but I want you to listen to it for yourselves, so I d like to talk about the context in which the music is made, the extramusical aspects of the music but extramusical only in the sense that you will not be able to hear what I m talking about here on the records when you listen to them, although these things in fact fully inform the music and are what make the music possible you dig?
What I m here to talk about, then, is the human context of the music the social and political realities which shape the music and which, equally, are shaped by the music. Because the music cannot be separated, must not be separated, except at the peril of the musicians and their audience and at the peril of the whole social order finally.
The music may be strong in itself, it may hold, it may charge the listener, sure, but once the musician is separated from the music, once the music becomes less than the first term of his life (her life), once the listener becomes less than the first (equal) term of the music and the musicians, then what the people get is less than what they deserve, and there is something wrong with the whole situation, something wrong with the whole structure of that society in which the music is produced it becomes, or comes to be, less than what it was meant to be.
Because music is the thing that gives us breath and strength, that sustains us and keeps us alive, and we live for the music, it lives and breathes for us, and when something else happens in there, when something disrupts the flow of the music through the musicians to the people, when those relations (that relation, really) are disrupted or corrupted, then the people are being cheated, and the musicians are being cheated, and the natural balance of the life of the people is destroyed.
As it is so much today, anyway, which is what we are trying to put a stop to now which is what this music and these words, and the musicians lives and our lives too, are dedicated and committed to stopping, this destruction of the balance of our lives. And what I want to say is that we have to start with the first things, the primary things, like our breath, our daily acts and gestures, and we have to integrate ourselves with the universe from our cells on out.
We can t separate ourselves from our words, acts, or gestures, or from our music, or we are doomed. It has to start there, inside the skin, and the relations have to be maintained all the way out, through whatever other bodies or things that come into our lives.
Because if we are going to talk about liberation, we have to talk about liberation in the total sense, and we have to see that
* (1) there is no freedom that does not start at the root to grow out free or you can t talk about being free, or sing about being free, without being free, and without manifesting that freedom throughout your activity equally; and
* (2) one person can t be free until all people are free.
We have to learn these things as we can, because we are quite purposefully taught differently, but what is important is that we are learning, and the music is helping us learn about freedom. Liberation music, self-determination music, the two terms are coterminous, they define each other and they help us define ourselves, as the music does.
This music is meant to liberate us, just as it liberates the musicians as they play it, just as their own personal and collective liberation is the productive force of the music itself these are free musicians, and they can make free music, and they can get this music to you to help you free yourselves so you can join with them then to help free the rest of the people.
Now, as we have been taught by other liberation fighters, we cannot deal with personal or cultural freedom without talking about and dealing with economic freedom, or the people's control of the means of production. And that's what makes these records even more interesting for me, because all of the records under review here are products of economic self-determination programs as well as musical self-determination programs. These records are truly exemplary, and must be seen as such. We can learn a lot from these records not only from the music, but from the whole setting of the music, from the musicians lives, and from their economic and productive relations.
Both of these conditions are instructive. The musicians lives and their economic work (not just their musical work) offer much which is of use to us in all we do. Because we have to change this world, and it is most important for us that we learn how to move how to do that which we know must be done, that which we ourselves must do. And we can learn that from these artists, we can learn varying approaches to the problem of self-determination for the artist and for all people.
These approaches move from the way in which Herbie Mann, an individual artist who is probably more interested in his own welfare than in wide social issues, has created his own production company so he can produce and market recordings of his own (and of Roy Ayers in this instance) and retain maximum control over the ultimate product; all the way over to the wholly unique thing that Sun Ra has made of his original impulse for musical creation how he has kept a band together for 20 years, produced and issued his own recordings on his own label, kept full control of the music and everything associated with it in his own hands, and all of this with only the most minimal sort of remuneration!
There is an entire range of activity demonstrated and manifested in these records in these musics and musicians but all of it merely amounts to the barest beginning of the way of the future, which must and will be characterized by self-determination for all people and all activity on every level. These artists are beautiful and persuasive harbingers of the New Order, and their activity points a way for all of us to explore. They have solved, or have at least begun to solve, the problem of separation of the musicians separation from the music, of the music's separation from the people it is meant for, and of the musicians separation from the means of production.
One of the most wonderful things about the music exemplified by these albums is the way the music is so close to the lives of the musicians, so close that it can t really be separated, so close that it can help destroy separation everywhere. Stanley Crouch says it best in his liner notes for the Horace Tapscott album:
But the most important thing to understand is that these men are as new as this music, their lives and their music are not separate. They don t, like so many others, stop being warm as soon as they get from behind their instruments, don t rein up all the strength and knowledge they play with some cracker style shuck corny super hip attitude off the bandstand. And that's the message, as Walter Lowe would say, A way to live. Or as Horace says: The relationship between you and me as men is the first thing, the piano is something else: I just use it for certain things.
Right on, Horace. But that's not all of it, either there's one more thing I have to get in here: These musicians are making revolutionary music, music of the highest and most positive potential to effect CHANGE. It is the highest energy music, the free-est, the most natural, the most inspirational music there is not just these records, I mean, but the music or musics of which these recordings are just a small and representative part.
Because we have to talk about Cecil Taylor, we have to talk about Pharaoh Sanders, we have to talk about Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp and Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell and Marion Brown and Sunny Murray. We have to talk about Muhal Richard Abrams and Alice Coltrane and Charles Moore and Gato Barbieri and Gunter Hampel, we have to talk about the Jazz Composers Orchestra, we have to talk about the whole range and scope of this music (these musics).
Finally, we have to see that the whole thing is more than just the music. We have to talk about self-determination for all peoples, we have to talk about the Black Panther Party, and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, and the People's Republic of China, and the Cuban Living Revolution, and the rising Youth Nation in Amerika and throughout the post-industrial world.
We have to talk about the incredible force of high-energy rock and roll. We have to talk about the killer blues that gave birth to all these musics in this land. We have to talk about oppressed people and their total human liberation, and we have to talk about what Stanley Crouch says:
Human closeness, Natural Intimacy, the Natural Closeness of Human Beings, the Spiritual Principle beyond machines and madness is what playing [like this] teaches you, is what listening [to this music] to learn will let you know.... You can learn from the music because it's there to teach you, to put everybody close to himself or herself and every other self worth being close to.
Which is all selves, when you get down to it. We have to deal with everything in its natural context and destroy separation on every level, and what I am trying to say is that this music and I am not claiming too much for it this music wlll drive us to do that if we let it.
Yes it will. There is no separation, unless we will it, or unless it is forced on us, and if we will give our will and spirit over to Sun Ra, say, or Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, or some of these other brothers and sisters, they will take care of us. They will breathe into us, inspire us, that is, and make us whole again, make us whole with our own selves and with the rest of our people.
I don t mean to say that the music will do it all there's a life's work ahead for all of us, and we had better make ourselves aware of that, but the music here will give us a start if we let it. It will keep us going too, no matter what our privations it will keep us committed to our struggle and inspire us in our work, and it will help to show us the way.
I said once, MUSIC IS REVOLUTION, but we have to live the music, we have to make use of it, we have to take it as inspiration and live up to it, give back what it gives us, take the charge of the music and transform it into action, just as the musicians transform that original breath-charge into music and give that music to us to use.
This is revolutionary music, then; it is what we need for our transformation; and our transformation is what is needed to remake the world we live in. But the music is only revolutionary as long as we make it that, as long as we let it move us into action, as long as we let it transform us from consumers to makers, as long as we don t just suck up all the energy in the music and keep it all in and just shit it out, like a consumer does, because this music is good only as long as it is used and converted into other forms of energy. If you try to swallow it all and keep it down, hold on to it, hoard it, use it for yourself only, it will probably make you sick, and you won t be able to stand to hear it at all.
It's no accident of fate that this music is not being presented at the palaces of pop culture and the big entertainment buck; it's not being hyped by the big time record companies; the underground deejays aren t playing it; the rock magazines and daily papers aren t hip to it; it's not sweeping the underground as the latest sub-cultural sensation; it's not being packaged and sold like a hot new commodity. No, this music is a whole nother thing, and it has a life of its own above and beyond the entertainment industry and its gigantic record contracts and star-making booking agencies and sensational stories in Cosmopolitan and the New York Times.
This is something different. You can t shuck and jive with this music, because this is music that exists for itself, by and for its makers and for all the people, not in any order but all-three-at-once. This is music that exists because it has to exist, because the people need it, because the musicians need in their cells to make the music happen. That's the reality that so fully informs the records under discussion here, and that's one of the things that always makes them so beautiful, and so strong.
It's not really my pleasure to discuss this music (these musics) in terms of some other (more popular) musics and Muzaks, but in this context, since this is a pop magazine now and since we have to have some common frame of reference if we re going to talk about this shit, I have to do it this way. And I have to tell you that I know about the pop business, have taken part in it, know the possibilities and limitations of that scene inside and out, and it is an ugly fucking scene based on greed and exploitation on all levels, even though (as is usually the case in exploitative situations) the people who are producing the music, the raw labor force, aren t yet fully aware of what's happening to them. They re swept up in the phony glamour and amphetamine excitement of the whole S*T*A*R scene and don t realize that they re being bled for everything they re worth bled and sucked dry and used against their own people at the same time, which is the ugliest part of the whole ugly picture.
Self-determination is not what's happening on the pop scene, except in the most harmless sense harmless to the controllers, that is, not to the people who are managed by it whereby certain extremely popular artists are given the power to determine the shape and sound of their own recordings and performances and the opportunity to rake in a bigger percentage of the take for themselves to use to buy their Rolls Royces and Victorian mansions and shit like they re supposed to do.
They stay entirely within the mold that's been made for them by the owners, the avaricious pigs who run the music industry, and what freedom they re given is theirs only so long as they use it against their own people, that is, as opposed to the humanlstic end of stirring up the masses and leading them in striking down the rule of the owners, moving the people to change themselves from consumers into total life-actors, to change themselves and the conditions in which they live and work and buy buy buy, to deal once and for all with the ownership class which controls and manipulates the music industry and the mass communications industry and the munitions and death industry and the educational industry and the whole massive industry of consumer society that is all tied inextricably together under corporate capitalism today.
I ll get back to that, but I want to make sure I m clear on a couple of things first. There are two major questions here, and I want to make sure I keep the distinction clear: there is the contradiction between the freedom of the music and the anti-freedom of the conditions in which it is made, packaged, and sold; and there is the contradiction between musics (and musicians) which are free on all levels, which are born of freedom, and which breathe freedom into their listeners, and those musics which are not free in that term no matter how freely they are created or produced, those musics whose real productive life ends in the recording studio, whose musicians separate themselves from the music they create and send forth into the world.
A lot of pop music, including some of the most powerful rock & roll music, however strong it is and however freely produced and controlled by its makers, is still not free in the total sense that I am concerned with in this essay that is, its freedom as music does not extend to the whole context out of which it is made, the musicians lives and actions which are previous to and go beyond the music itself.
The Rolling Stones is the best example I can think of. Now, their music is so beautiful sometimes, and some of it ( Sympathy for the Devil, or Street Fightin Man, or Jumpin Jack Flash, for openers) is so powerful, but they are not and cannot rightly be called free musicians, because prior to and beyond the act of the music itself we are led back into their totally bourgeois lives, the uses to which they put their music (to make the big buck), their money (to consume conspicuously and to make more money only), and their lives (of utter luxury).
They could be using themselves and their capital to deal with the needs of the people there are bands and musicians on a much much lower economic level who do that, who put themselves entirely at the service of the people but the Stones are satisfied to remain wholly in the bourgeois camp, and that has to be dealt with.
Now, this is something that pisses a lot of people off, but I have to deal with it, because it is absolutely central to the records here, to the music and the musicians under discussion here as well as to my own life and work. I know people don t like to hear this too much, but it is a fact that the artist has a greater responsibility to his or her people than just making the art available to them at a price.
He, and she, has the responsibility of using all the advantages which accrue to the artist in this weirdo economic system, for the benefit of all the people and especially in our culture, in the new youth culture which exists and struggles for new life in the belly of the monster white beast of consumer capitalism, in the bowels of the imperialist beast itself, in the stinking caskets of the death culture, especially in our Youth-Life culture where the musicians and popular entertainers have the only access our people get to the mass information media, and they have the only access we get to the capital which is needed in a capitalist society to fund self-determination programs for our people especially in this situation is it important that the artists of our culture start using their personal advantages for the benefit of their people, which is finally for the benefit of all people, just because this monster beast is the perpetrator and guarantor of slavery all over the world, from South America to South Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos, from Watts to Washington, D.C.
These musicians and popular performers of our culture, these powerful brothers and sisters who can reach millions of people every time they open their mouths, these young geniuses who have millions of dollars at their command, are going to have to start relating to the problems of their people and putting themselves and their powers at the disposal of their people they are going to have to relate to the people's needs and they are going to have to start leading the people toward self-determination on ail levels.
Now, I m not putting them down, because I realize and I know that most of them don t know yet that this is what they have to do, and that's why I m trying to get all of this down, so people might be able to relate to it this way, but what I m saying is that they have to deal with this problem, they have to start relating to their people and start putting themselves wholly in the service of their people, or else they are finally no more than what? Than Lawrence Welk, or Pat Boone, you dig, or Spiro T. Agnew finally. Bob Hope. Or else they are just pigs like the rest of their fellow entertainers, pigs and class traitors and deniers of the people, and their music will be no more than the force which will inspire the people to rise up against them and destroy them along with the rest of the exploiters and perverters of the people.
Okay, I had to get that in there, and like I say, I know a lot of people will be pissed off when they read this, especially some of the musicians of our culture who don t like to be bothered with awful things like politics and prison sentences and the people's needs and problems and unpleasant things like that. They are meditating and counting their money and watching themselves on television in the back seats of their limousines, and they don t want to hear about this mundane shit it messes up the good vibes, don t you know? Why, we have to play these tremendous rock operas and shit, we re playing at Philharmonic Hall or on the IT&T Hour on interstellar television, this is the most important shit in the Western world, man, and we don t wanna hear about Bobby Seale and the Vietnamese peasants and power to the people and all that stuff. Tim Leary is doing ten years for some weed? Shit, that's a drag, man, wish I could do something. But you get your ass off- stage now, you fucking scumbag radical, before we call the police we ve had enough politics, man, and all we are saying is give peace a chance. Peace/ love, baby, send Tim my regards, and maybe we can play a benefit in a couple months, after we get back off our tour. If our manager will let us, I mean.
But there's more to it than that, no matter how much or how many of you all want to throw all of that out of your minds and just have a good time, getting high and rockin and rollin and carryin on. There's a lot more to it than that, the shit is coming down all over the world, and you are going to sound awfully fucking stupid trying to tell the heroic Vietnamese people that the war is over if you want it while they are being burned and bombed and blown out of their pitiful little huts and fields; you are going to sound awfully goddamn dumb telling that to Huey P. Newton, or to Bobby Seale, who they are trying to ease into the electric chair in Connecticut right now; or to Fred Hampton's widow and his baby son; or to Lee Otis Johnson, who is doing 30 years for giving one joint to an undercover pig in Texas; you know what I mean?
These people are not going to look on you as their friends when the people's inevitable response to the crushing repression of domestic imperialism starts; they are not going to be persuaded by a joint and a V-sign, you know? And they are going to have to look at you as just a bunch of silly freaks who are essentially no more far out than your fathers and Big Brothers, who they know are the real enemy. And they are going to blow your head off, groovy as it might seem to you (your head, that is).
And they will finally be right, because they know that the owners, the people who control our lives and our destinies for the time being (but not for much longer!) are not going to be moved to give up their insane control and greed by a bunch of long-haired people sticking two fingers in the air and moaning give peace a chance, no matter how groovy or how right these freaks are. These owners are too sick for that; it's going to take an organized effort by the people moving for their liberation to get the pigs off the stage of history; they are not going to be talked into capitulating they are going to have to be pushed off that stage. Period. And either the people, the masses of the oppressed peoples of all the national minorities in the mother country the youth, the black people, chicano people, native Americans, Puerto Rican-Americans and their class allies the postindustrial working classes, either the people will be led by their natural vanguard, the musicians, poets, and artists, or they are going to go on for themselves and properly classify these creators as class traitors and fellow travelers of the pig, and deal with them as such. It's as simple as that, and as inevitable.
Because there is a war going on in this country right now, there is a war going on throughout the world, whether we like it or not, and there is no middle ground any more, for any of us. If you are not actively committed to the cause of freedom and self-determination for all peoples, which means that if you are not actively engaged in the struggle for freedom and self-deterrnination by your own people, if your life itself is not dedicated to the people's struggle, if you do not live and breathe and struggle for freedom not just for yourself, but for all people everywhere then the people who are wholly involved in this struggle are forced to deal with you as part of the problem, no matter how distasteful this may seem to you. Because these people are not playing, we are not playing, this is as real as it gets, and if you can t relate to it, you will have to do like those other millionaires the Beatles, and get back, and pray that this sad song will get better, and hope that the people themselves will let it be. And you might as well know it right now they won t.
And the alternative is more than the Stones will have you believe, too there's a lot more to our struggle than fighting in the streets or letting it bleed. There is the immense task of creative construction to be done, the task of building the new order in the standing ruins of the old, the task of building the life culture up from the ground and all the way out into the universe and as Sun Ra has shown us, you don t need a rocket ship to get out there, you need discipline and commitment and determination, you need unity and dedication and power, you need an undying love for your people and for all people everywhere. You need what Sun Ra has made, has held up to us for almost 20 years in the incarnation of his mighty Arkestra and his incredible music, and you need this on the same every-day, day-after-day basis that Sun Ra has demonstrated it.
--Marquette Prison
1970/
Detroit
July-August 2003
(c) 1970, 2003, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Continued in Part 2> Click Here: Self-Determination Music, Part 23.1.6110]]> |
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