Some updates

I've awoken from my too long summer hibernation and included three more musicians into the Z-section of this encyclopedia. In case you're following this blog via RSS-feeds you might miss these new posts, as I date them back to appear in alphabetical order with the older posts.
These are the ones that are new: Drummer Mikhail Zhukov, keyboarder Bojan Zulfikarpasić and bassist/multi-instrumentalist Itibere Zwarg. Further updates are coming soon.

The Location of Culture

Dave Douglas has pointed to a report by New York's Center for Arts Education which is fighting for a good thing: It wants to improve arts education in New York's public schools. However, this report starts in a quite clumsy way:

In New York City, the cultural capital of the world, public school students do not enjoy equal access to an arts education. In fact, in schools with the lowest graduation rates—where the arts could have the greatest impact—students have the least opportunity to participate in arts learning.

What is the notion of culture and arts behind these opening words? In my opinion, there are quite a few disagreeable ideas behind these statements. The biggest flaw is the assumption that there could be something like a "cultural capital of the world", be it New York or any other place on earth, let's say, Ouagadougou, Alice Springs or Ürümqi. I beg for pardon for the following over-simplification, but I want to base my argument of on Homi Bhabha's groundbreaking work The Location of Culture. Culture is a process of negotiation between different centers. This negotiation can break up a hierarchic structure (e.g. center - periphery, colonizer - colonized, majority - minority or whatever dichotomy you might think of) and can give the weaker sides certain ways to react, interact, gain freedom to self-expression up to a certain extent. Therefore Bhabha sees the location of culture as a "third space", where socio-economic and political matters may have certain repercussions, but are not determinative of what is exactly negotiated in this third space called "culture". Now it is quite reasonable to think of the melting pot New York, where people from all the world bring their cultures to, as a meeting point for a lot of cultural and inter-cultural negotiations. But does that make it the world capital of culture? I think no. The negotiations necessary to form and create cultures have a floating nature. Culture can not only emulate different points of view, but also switch between them. Look for example at a great novel as William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! Different voices look at the story from different geographical points and that causes the reader's idea about the center of power to shift several times: While the action takes place in the USA's deep south, this area seems to be the center of what the novel describes. The fact that the protagonist, Sutpen, has spent some years in Haiti, supports this point of view: Haiti is the colonial periphery that supports and informs the plantation world of the southern USA. Yet we know that the main narrator of the story is telling it to a young man from Canada, while they're both a college dorm in New England. From this point the South seems to be quite peripheral now: The old pre-Civil War South is something doomed to disappear when being viewn from the Northeast.
My example might look a bit far-fetched, however, what I want to show here is the shifting nature of center- and periphery-structures when we enter the world of art and culture. Therefore the idea of a firm and steady center or even capital of culture seems quite ridiculous to me.

There is a second, though minor point that is a bit disturbing in the quote above. They say that arts "could have the greatest impact" among students with difficulties of graduating. That implies that the arts are a kind of medicine for educational, social or other problems. I don't deny that art could have these functions and I myself find this argument quite helpful when it comes to convincing politicians to invest in the arts. Nevertheless, if we put such a statement into such a prominent position, it becomes a bit smelly. From the point of view of the arts themselves, we must defend their autonomy, with Adorno, if you like. While in the mode of production, art can serve as a catalyst for an individual's or a group's experiences with society and as a catalyst for the perceiver's stance towards his/her own social situation. However, art is not (or rather: not necessarily) worthless if it doesn't fulfill these catalyzing effects, mediating between society and individual. Again: Art IS useful, but it is in the first place a usefulness of connecting an individual human being with its humanness. If you want to heal people with certain defects, try psychology, education or medicine. If you want to repair certain social defects, try education, social work or politics first. Don't expect art to be the most effective medicine to cure these problems. Art is rather a pre-condition, a necessity for experiencing one's humanness.

I just had a related discussion with my wife. She is a great writer, but she doesn't get her works published in any official medium, she doesn't get her creations paying off economically. But that's not the point. It's not even the point, if she has an audience right now or not. She felt that her art is minor as long as she doesn't get paid for it. But such an idea means subdueing art under economy. Certainly we can't measure art with its financial value - though art certainly does have a financial value as well, but that's not within the system of art, but within the system of economy. Before I get even more rambling, I better stop here. My dear wife and all the other artists out there: Keep going and only check, if your art could help, heal or pay off after you created it. If you only create art with the purpose of helping, healing or paying off, it would be detrimental to your art.

George Lewis' notion of the mutuality of creativity

In an interview at All About Jazz Mr. George Lewis came to speak of his understanding of creativity. He assumes a neuronal base of creativity in every person's brain, not only in those who are actually expressing themselves creatively. In his words:

But this is where I begin to depart from the anti-essentialists. I feel that there is an essence of creativity that is a human birthright that doesn't go away, and that we are all basically born with. It's not just the province of a few super-people. I feel that when people are listening to music, they can do it because of the sense of empathy that allows them to respond to the creativity of other people by feeling their own creativity. In other words, those neurons start firing and those experiences, those bodily feelings, start to resonate with the creativity that's coming from outside, because they've got it within them.

So a listener is as creative as a musician, but in a passive way? I like this thought. However, we should not oversimplify: Listening and making music are still quite different modes of creativity with a different potential for perception as Lewis exemplifies in an earlier part of this interview, where he spoke about his own experiences:

My period of greatest learning about this music [i.e. the avantgarde jazz of the 60's and 70's] was being a participant rather than being a listener first and then thinking, wow, I'd like to do this. Taking part in it helped me to understand it. I still remember the power of it, that energy, kind of hitting me at a certain point. And it may be that the experiences of the people who are listening to it and the people who are doing it are similar, but diverge at certain points.

Incus Label

There's a new short article about Incus at All About Jazz. Brief, yet interesting, at least to me, as I was aware of the label by name and some of their recordings, but didn't know anything about the background of it. Visit Incus website as well.

Discoveries

I've recently discovered a lot of interesting music that I wouldn't have ever heard of before if there was no internet and no web 2.0. I'd like to introduce some of the finest resources here:
There's a wonderful blog of Seattle trumpeter Jason Parker called One Working Musician. His main theme is by what means an artist can survive best in these days. I find this topic quite interesting already, even for people like me, who are "only" consuming music. However, what makes this blog really treasurable is his weekly posting series called "Making it Happen Friday" (as you can guess: there's a new article every Friday - well, sometimes Sunday ;-)), where Parker is introducing other independent musicians, mostly those from the US west coast. Parker has a very wide interest and scope, so the musicians he's introducing are not just from the jazz scene but ranging from alternative rock to modern composition. Just recently he's been interviewing Beth Fleenor, an artist whose work I am sure I'm going to explore further in the future, just like I want to with Michael Owcharuk. But last, not least I should mention, that Jason Parker himself is playing very creative, inventive and modern jazz music with his quartet - listen to his new album "No More, No Less" and you'll see.

Another great resource for discovering most interesting sounds is the New Music Box with a collaborative blog of young artists, composers, conductors and musicians. After their review of James Mulcro Drew's "Animating Degree Zero" I must get this album. This urge is even stronger in the recent case of a review of the new album of The Dirty Projectors: "Bitte Orca".

Last for today, I want to point out to Beck's Record Club. I don't remember how I found this site, it was recommended somewhere. The famous indie musician Beck has gathered friends to re-record updated versions of "The Velvet Underground & Nico", song by song. Very much recommended.

Besides finding new and interesting music on the internet in my leisure time, I've been thinking lately of writing some theory. I thought about starting out with a discussion of the current web 2.0 and blogging business in the terminology of Karl Marx. I think, I could really get something out of it, not as a definite statement, but as a starting point for a thread of thoughts. However, I haven't started yet and I'm not sure if I ever will. The problem is: Writing such a theory would require concentrated WORK, something that I'm somethow shying away from in my leisure time...

Toyohito Yoshikawa

Toyohito Yoshikawa (dr): [Boredoms: Onanie Bomb Meets the Sex Pistols tracks #2-10]

Yoshikawa was not a founding member of the Japanese noise-rock outfit Boredoms, but he joined in short after the take-off in the late 80's. He also occasionally appears as a vocalist of this and other groups. Other projects he's actively involved with are Happy Cowboys, Z-Rock Hawaii and Universe.

Mizanekristos Yohannes

Mizanekristos Yohannes (bg voc): [Gigi: Gigi]

The man with this beautiful name is an African backing vocalist on the Afro-pop album Bill Laswell produced featuring his Ethopian wife Gigi. No further info available (?).

Arnold "Arny" Young

Arnold "Arny" Young (dr): Club Foot Orchestra: "Clair"

We've just spoken about Dave Young, a trumpeter who was playing with Sun Ra. Now we're moving on from Sun Ra to Un Ra - a monicker which was chosen by "Un-Ra Arnold Young". He's a drummer, now based in Kansas City and running an Arny Young Quartet there.
During the 80's he's been a member of San Francisco's Club Foot Orchestra, which was the house band of the Club Foot, a place where art, punk and jazz could meet and intermingle. He also appeared with Kansas City based improv-group The Malachy Papers.
The piece "Clair" appeared on "Beets - a Collection of Jazz Songs".

Dave Young

David "Dave" Young (tp): [Sun Ra and His Arkestra: Sound of Joy]

Dave Young was a core member of Sun Ra's early Arkestra in 1955 and 1956.
"When Gilmore joined, the Arkestra was no more than a trio, but it quickly grew: Pat Patrick returned from a sojourn in Florida, Dave Young came in on trumpet, Julian Priester on trombone, Richard Evans on bass, Jim Herndon on tympani and timbales. And they got regular work at Cadillac Bob's Budland, in the basement of the Pershing Hotel. The only Chicago-period photo of the Arkestra that's been published shows the band as it stood in the Fall of 1955." (Robert L. Campbell)
Dave Young is said to have quit playing music and became a car salesman (source).

David Young

David Young (el-b): [Element of Crime: Mittelpunkt der Welt]

"Born on the 2nd of May, 1949, in London. He received a BA in philosophy after writing a thesis on Kant. While studying he was already playig with numerous bands, and worked as live-mixer with artists as diverse as Country Joe McDonald, The Incredible String Band, David Bowie and Duke Ellington.
The 1970s lead him via Munich and Los Angeles to New York, where he studies sound engineering and works as a recording engineer there, recording for example Bonnie Tyler, Jim Steinman, Bronski Beat, Elliot Randall and the remains of Steely Dan. He becomes a collaborator of former Velvet Underground member John Cale, plays in John Cale's band from 1980 to 1985, and co-produces four of his albums.
In 1987 he moves back to London, where he produces with John Cale the album "Try to be Mensch" by Berlin band Element of Crime. Since then, David Young collaborates with the band as producer, and since 1993 as live-guitarist. He also works as producer for other artists, such as Alexander Veljanow (Deine Lakaien) or Hector Zazou's project "La Nouvelle Polyphonie Corse". In 2002, he replaces Christian Hartje as permanent bass guitar player for Element of Crime." (Based on the short biography at Discogs, but modified according to the German version on the Element of Crime website)

Interlude: Support the Artists

When travelling through music blogs, one of the most often heard statement is: "Support the artists". Everyone of you knows how she/he can do this, yet I have a few little recommendations here:

A) Support Plushmusic!


"Plushmusic is a new company founded by the cellist Adrian Brendel and saxophonist Hayden Chisholm, in partnership with the technology entrepreneur Stephen Jelley. It is run almost exclusively by professional musicians. Its executive producer is former Radio 3 producer Lyndon Jones. The site is produced by Matt Jolly and edited by Simon Ings."
Plushmusic has recently organized a plushmusic festival - I found a few little snippets of it on Hayden Chisholm's blog website www.softspeakers.com, for example "Peninsula". They feature classical, jazz and world music, separately as well as interwoven, on the festival and on the Plushmusic website. You can watch a lot of wonderful live videos on www.plushmusic.tv and then... support the artists by buying video or audio downloads in high quality (i.e. flac). However, all this would probably only work, if you haven't disabled your browser's flash functions ;-)
As a starting point I highly recommend the short documentary on Simon Nabatov.


B) Support D.D. Jackson!

Sometime in mid-2007 the pianist D.D. Jackson left some message on Bumkun Cha's Pathway to Unknown Worlds. I took the hint and listened to all of Jackson's 22 podcasts. He's been a very talkative man (I can't tell if he still is, because he's not posted any new podcasts for a long time) and heavily advertised his own work, but also provided interesting thoughts and insights not only on jazz, but also on the current status of the music business.
From his website you'll quite a few of free content, just like in the case of plushmusic. You can watch him play with his hands looking like putty and producing wonderful sounds, you can download some live samples.
So and how to support Mr. Jackson? He's got his albums offered for downloading at Artistshare. An album costs between 10 and 14 US dollars, depending on the bitrate you choose. The clou is: If you pay for these downloads, you'll get a lot of extra materials, not available anywhere else, for example artist interviews, videos of the recordings session, and - the most interesting feature - sheet music of some of the pieces.
Jackson's playing is very eclectic: He's well aware of the whole history of jazz piano playing and incorporates it all into his own music. I personally prefer his rather wild, free, freak-out moments - his ballad playing is often a little bit toooo sweet. Besides the newer albums offered at his artistshare side you should also try his first album Peace-Song with David Murray and Jackson showing off their wonderful interplay: They're a perfect match.


C) Support David Binney!

If you don't have the chance to see David Binney play live, there's a way to compensate: He's often recording his gigs and offering them for download from his website at moderate prices. Right now his new CD is out, which you also get directly from there.

Timothy Young

Timothy Young (g,el-g): [Bob­by Pre­vite & Bump: Coun­ter­clock­wise track #9] [Ey­vind Kang: 7 Na­des tracks #1,2,4,5] [Way­ne Hor­vitz & Zony Mash: Upper Egypt] Way­ne Hor­vitz: „Close to You“ Zo­ny Mash: “Te­ku­fah”

"Timothy Young began playing guitar at age 5 under tutelage of Sister Margaruite of the Sacred Heart Convent in Menlo Park, CA. He currently lives in Los Angeles. He plays in The Youngs, THRUSTER!, Sweeter then the Day, Young and Moore and Re;Agent." (From his Myspace site) His playing is often making use of amplification feedback, slides and other sound deformations. At times this could sound quite dreamy and spacey (cf. "Close to You", "Theme from 1st Nade", links above), at times it can get rather noisy. With this he places himself somewhere between easy listening, (noise-)rock, jazz and country.

Richard Youngstein

Richard Youngstein (cb): [Carla Bley & Paul Haines: Escalator over the Hill] [Paul Bley & An­net­te Pea­cock: The Paul Bley Syn­the­si­zer Show tracks #2,6,7]

Richard Youngstein was the bass-player in the "Original Hotel Amateur Band" on Carla Bley's recording of her jazz opera Escalator over the Hill and collaborated with the Bley/Peacock Synthesizer Show. Despite that he seems not have recorded too much with internationally acclaimed groups: He's only credited on a few albums at Discogs or AMG. In the early 70's however, he's also been leading his own group (Richard Youngstein Ensemble), with notable musicians as Perry Robinson or James Fulkerson. Later he changed his name and became a psychotherapist, which he reveals in an Amazon review of Paul Bley's biography:

"From the years 1968-1976, I was working, playing acoustic bass, under the name of Richard Youngstein. In Paul's very hip, very open book, he refers to playing a cool gig in Boston at the (long defunct) Jazz Workshop for one week with his long time drummer, Barry Altschul (whom I went to high school with in the Bronx) and "some bass player." Obviously Paul didn't remember my name, even though I recorded half an album with him on Polydor, called "The Paul Bley Synthesizer Show," produced by Orin Keepnews, and another album with his ex-wife, Annette Peacock, for French Polydor, that I heard had two titles, "Blood," and "Revenge." If anyone has a copy of either LP PLEASE let me know - I never got one & never heard it! Anyway, I also recorded under that name with Carla Bley & JCOA on "Escalator Over The Hill." I was very active in those years, playing w/Ros Rudd, Bill Dixon, Robin Kenyetta, Karl Berger, etc. I moved to LA late in 1976 and switched careers kind of, and names. I got my doctorate and license in psychology (like my late mentor, the great bassist David Izenzon) and have been in the healing field ever since. I had a trio/quartet "Erotic Zone," for some years and played periodically. Anyway, I am the same person, whether the old Richard Youngstein or the more recent Dr. Noah Young. Just thought I'd give a name to "some bass player" on the Jazz Workshop gig with mssrs. Bley and Altschul. And....Paul's book is awesome. Truly one of the giants of jazz and a priviledge to have made music with. (Write me at: Noazarc22@aol.com)"


P.S.: Isn't it interesting to find some traces of such drop-outs of the musical world? And to see what different way their life took after they left the professional music business?

Yu Yang

Yu Yang (voc): [V.A.: Haikus Urbains tracks #10,34]

I couldn't find any information on Yu Yang, not even sure if the family name is Yu or Yang... This Yu Yang has recorded two short pieces with an ensemble organized by Fred Frith for the Swiss Haikus Urbains compilation.

Bill Yurkiewicz

Bill Yurkiewicz (voc,electr): [Lull: Moments] [Exit-13: Spare the Wrench, Surrender the Earth EP]

Bill Yurkiewicz is a grindcore vocalist who has also been co-founding the Relapse label, focussing on far-out metal and hardcore artists. After a while, he also incorporated the imprint Release Entertainment, publishing "post-industrial experimental music, electronic ambient and noise". As he is interested in these two worlds - extreme metal and noise as well as ambient and electronic music - it is not astonishing, that Yurkiewicz also did the electronic editing for Mick Harris' Lull album Moments.
Yurkiewicz's own band was Exit-13, a nowadays probably quite forgotten group which occasionally fumbled around with incorporating various elements from punk to jazz into their grind(ing) pieces - though Exit-13 didn't sound as much like a roller-coaster ride as Naked City did (actually, "Societally Provoked Genocidal Contemplation", a track from their Spare the Wrench, Surrender the Earth EP, was the very first song I ever heard, which was trying to mix a jazzy passage into a grindcore piece - I discovered that a while before Alboth! and long before Naked City. When reviewing it now, it seems a bit lame, but way back in the early 90s it was a revelation to me).

Thierry Zaboitzeff

Thierry Zaboitzeff (vc): [Univers Zero: Ceux du dehors track #6]

Thierry Zaboitzeff, a French multi-instrumentalist - mainly associated with the the electric bass - has been a member of the progressive rock group Art Zoyd from 1971 to 1997. He and his cello also appeared on the composition "La tête de corbeau" on Univers Zero's 1981 album Ceux du dehors.

Rolf Zacher

Rolf Zacher (voc): [Amon Düül II: Wolf City tracks # 3,6]

Basically known (in Germany) as an actor, Rolf Zacher has kept a life-long relationship with music, from occasionally singing with Amon Düül II in the early 70's to collaborating with some German rap artists in recent years. He's also often been leading his own bands.

Kostas Zafiris

Kostas Zafiris (voc): [Savina Yannatou: Musique des chambres]

"Kostas Zafiris was born in 1967 on the Island of Chios. He studied Politics at Panteion University of Athens and at the University of Bologna and Social Anthropology and History at the Aegean University in Lesbos. In 1998 he published a collection of poems titled The violence of the week. He lives and works on the Island of Chios." (Metaichmio)

Savina Yannatou has hired some of Greece's contemporary poets for some recitations on her "Musique des chambres" album - a wonderful collaboration evoking a magical world of word and sound.

Zahera

Zahera (voc, bendir, tairija): [Sapho: Digital Sheika]

"Zahera and her girls from Hallilifa, one of the most popular and famous Sheikha combos of Marrakech, were singing and jamming along with Sapho on six tracks, as if she (Sapho) had been a member of the bunch for ages. But what exactly is a Sheikha ? In Morocco or Algeria, it`s a kind of "woman of ill-repute" or outcast who sings at weddings and feasts, with heavy make up, gold teeth, who drinks a lot and smokes dope. They shake their hair to the beat, move their sensual bellies to please women and men; sing about love and other realistic themes from the daily life. At feasts, they are well accepted and admired for their freedom and independence acquired in an Islamic country; in their private lives however they seem to suffer a certain disgrace from societie`s attitude to them, which forces them to live often together and hidden, rejected by their families and relatives. " (liner notes)

Interlude Remix

I still couldn't get back to my encyclopedia entry posting (mainly because I enjoy practicing to play music by myself recently - after several years of silence in my trombone's cone), but in the meantime Lucky did a remix of my interlude which you can get here. Enjoy!