cris

thanks for what you say on this, and thanks for
your thanks of my thank to g-d for Adorno having
a go at jazz. Had Adorno succeeded in getting
jazz banned (somehow) then I would be saying quite
the opposite. What I thank him for is not his
intention, but the place of the text signed Adorno
in our culture, on this list: and that place, to me,
is a "oh, so you like Adorno on this or this, or
Adorno's provocations on that and that, how about
Adorno on music?" I'm glad that part of his body
of work found (was designed to find) a place in an
institution which if it has a limited canon of 
theorists can at least be made to feel an obligation
to consider all the work of one theorist, otherwise
they'd have to admit the author is dead once the book
is published, and all books, and all lines in books
deserve attention, not only under the heading of
one author's body of work.
	I do think that Adorno's case would have
been greatly strengthened by praises for individual
records or performances of jazz, because there are
some fantastic ones. And I do think that your interests
in jazz, cris, from my knowledge of it through your kind
hospitality as my friend, are different from a lot
of jazz fans in the poetry/exp/poetry world, not least
because you also have so many other musical interests.
Adornos' assumption is all debate is between people
competing to have their music and no-one else's.
	His flaw was to want to have *one* "new musical 
language" *only* carrying the banner for a new musical 
awareness (which is not even Modernist of him; the 
Modernists each wanted to invent a new language, but
often respected each other's too). Thus Adorno interprets
any interest in any one music, as an interest *only* in
*that* one music. In this way, his critique is less
a critique of your approach to music, cris, than of that
of those who *do* by and large only listen to jazz, or
see jazz in everything else they hear, the history of
music having led to jazz, pop as debased jazz etc. It
is precisely to *those* listeners, those non-pluralists
that your ready accusation of

"anxiety which uses
> racist fears"

is music to the "ears". They may well do nothing to listen
to or think about all types of music, about music; they may
well do nothing to politicise about racism; but they listen
to jazz, so they don't need to. And anyone who doesn't share
their interest in jazz is an elitist racist, so no need for 
debate with them about music. It's exactly that they don't
place jazz in relation to other music, or to its history,
that they thus fail to honour the specific contributions
of specific performers of all races, and how they might
have been making a comment at the time about the specific
shape of racism (which is persistent) at the time. Only
by this kind of history do we make an exact response, and
continue to adapt and contest against racists. And about
what's ignored in music (not least, in a lot of music,
the role of the body; hurrah for some jazz for bringing
that back in; but where's the interest in the whole
history of for example African folk music that may have
preceded jazz; certain jazzters and certain jazz fans
can be just as guilty of fear of the other in wanting
to claim pristine self-invention-from-nowhere for jazz,
no longer extending the form to make its continuums 
still visible.)
	Are Stravinsky's uses of jazz interesting, or
Messiaen's? They certainly seem respectful; there is
still a way to go before just music gets beyond mere
exoticism, colonialist plundering and so on; although
this can be said too of the way that some jazz uses
some african folk but commodifies it into the new,
that it doesn't resist the western capitalist commodifying
environment as some african folk does; yet the very
act of doing this was to earn money as a black musician
and that's powerful, culturally, and also some of the
music is powerful, musically. I hope we are also all
supporting black musicians living broke to do the music
they want to, when they could earn money doing jazz,
options that were not possible, have been possible by
jazz, and to which the assumption that jazz is it will
be inimical, solidifying stereotypes. Is Stravinsky's
Rite of Spring's asian scales and textures to
distance Stravinsky from his Russian roots, no, or
not simplistically. It's partly to fund him while
he's struggling in Paris in exile from a brutal
totalitarian regime, and also is often powerful
musically. And is Messiaen's use of notated
bird song not a respect for the body making music?

Each wanted.

Ira


On Thu, 14 May 1998 15:02:40 +0000 cris cheek wrote:

> From: cris cheek <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 15:02:40 +0000
> Subject: Re: Adornoments
> To: british-poets <[log in to unmask]>
> 
> Hi,
> 
> since keston stalled the gauntlet,
> tossed Adorno's way in the pop-cult
> curtailment a few weeks back;
> i'll use Ira's (thanks Ira)
> >(tho g-d bless him for having
> a go at jazz)
> to cut to one chase and call his
> 'othering' of pop cult, in
> particular in the case of jazz,
> driven by anxiety which uses
> racist fears and employs reactionary,
> although eloquently crunched,
> teleologically - based (social-Darwinian)
> terms and turns to refuse to deal with what
> patently threatens his worldview.
> 
> Adorno is a Canute to those waves eroding
> the panoptically-implicated cliffs of the
> Enlightenment.
> 
> love and love
> cris
> 
> 





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