[Dixielandjazz] How not to perform our National Anthem

[Nancy Giffin]

Well dad-blame-it Charlie and Jim,
You guys confuse the hell out of me as I try and try to understand and learn
about jazz and freedom of expression and creativity. Could you gentlemen
please tell me where we're supposed to draw the line? What songs are
touchable vs. untouchable? Why do we have arrangers? At what point should
they have left "Stardust" alone (before or after it was slowed to a ballad)?
Help! I guess I really don't get it at all!!!
Love and hugs,
Nancykins

> From: Charlie Hooks <charliehooks@earthlink.net>
> Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 21:34:07 -0500
> To: DJML Dixieland Jazz <dixielandjazz@ml.islandnet.com>
> Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] How not to perform our National Anthem
> 
> on 10/23/02 8:25 PM, JimDBB@aol.com at JimDBB@aol.com wrote:
> 
>> Soul singers and Country singers have befouled these treasures almost beyond
>> recognition.  How can we protest this and stop it?
> 
> Why, you can't stop it, Jim!  No way to.  We have now approached and
> then passed the point where rational thought is considered.  It is now
> condemned as "racist," as "bigoted,"  as "hate speech,"  as--hell, you know
> the drill.. Everyone knows.
> 
> Sheer idiocy can now prevail, so long as it is black, or Muslim, or
> blessed with some "minority" label.  This entire business has far far passed
> sanity.  We now have so many "victims" of live white males that almost no
> one is excluded!   Dead white males, who built this country that everyone
> wants to sneak into and then condemn, are the Great Oppressors of Humanity!
> 
> You can't--we can't, none of us can--prevent this process from going
> forward.  Thank God for the scientists--the chemists and physicists--who
> just don't give a damn what color you are or where you came from and cannot
> sing H2SO4 (for the non-chemical: sulfuric acid) into a beneficent-liquid
> political statement.
> 
> Saving the music?  Well, maybe the music will have to save itself.
> Those who love Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, and Bix ("the 4 Great Bs") will just
> have to keep on listening and playing and hope for the best.  I, personally,
> think that the music is well capable of saving itself!  The Yahoos have come
> and gone for years, although not, I'm aware, formerly supported by TV.
> 
> There is now no silence for the young to experience.  Think about that.
> For all of human existence, silence was the norm.  You walked along and
> looked at the landscape and heard the silence. Intelligence and peace...
> 
> No more.
> 
> "The faces along the bar
> Reflect the average day:
> The lights must never go out,
> The music must always play..."
> 
> --quoted from Auden's poem, "1939"
> 
> How can you ever yearn for, say, a sound like Mendelsson's "Spring
> Song"?  For Vivaldi's "Spring" from the Four Seasons?   You can't.  Not even
> Vivaldi could.  He couldn't have HEARD it in Chicago, 2002!
> 
> So how can we stop Yahoos crooning politically correct idiocy from the
> ballpark?  We can't, man.  We can't.
> 
> But maybe the music is down there, like the green shoots after the
> forest fire, and is somehow perennial.  I hope it is.
> 
> Charlie
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Dixielandjazz mailing list
> Dixielandjazz@ml.islandnet.com
> http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz
>