From: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (Zorn List Digest) To: zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: Zorn List Digest V3 #619 Reply-To: zorn-list Sender: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Zorn List Digest Saturday, November 17 2001 Volume 03 : Number 619 In this issue: - Re: zorn/zionism Re: radicalism Re: zorn/zionism Re: zorn/zionism 7/16ths Serbo-Pashtun Re: Yahowa 13 Review Request: Insignificance by Jim O'Rourke Re: Review Request: Insignificance by Jim O'Rourke Re: Radical, man, really radical Re: Radical, man, really radical Re: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) Re: 7/16ths Serbo-Pashtun Re: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) Re: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 12:32:57 -0600 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: zorn/zionism On Sat, Nov 17, 2001 at 03:48:47PM +0100, duncan youngerman wrote: > Let other people judge whether Zorn's music is "radical" or not. It's > not something for the artist to decrete, unless he wants to sound > pretentious. "decrete"? > (can you imagine Moderate Celtic Dance Culture Riverdance, , or Middle-of-the-road > Hutu Photographic Culture? Perhaps, if one knows any middle of the road Hutus with cameras and the resources to develop one's craft. > As for jewishness, do we really need ethnic labeling at this point in > human history? Do we really need to deny that common cultural vocabularies exist among s= ome artists in shared ethnic/religious communities and are useful in thei= r work? > Who cares if Johann Strauss, George Gershwin, Dimitri Shostakovitch, > Gy=F6rgy Ligeti, Elliott Sharp or Barbra Streisand were or are "jewish"= , > what does it have to do with their work, and what do they have to do > with each other? Often these things are important to the members of minority groups, in ways that people who are not members of such groups seem to have trouble understanding. Look at the way that many black artists, gay artists, Estonian artists, etc, group together (though not exclusively) around their common experiential and artistic vocabularies. > Are half-jewish musicians allowed in the club?Are one-fifth jews? The error is in seeing it as a "club" into which people are "allowed". The other error is in whatever calculation could lead describing someone as "one fifth Jewish". Would that be someone who had one Jewish greatgrandmother and another greatgrandmother who had two Jewish arms and one Jewish leg, but whose other leg was Methodist? > Are non-ethnic jewish followers of the Torah? What do you mean by "non-ethnic Jewish"? > Are ethnic jewish > followers of Thor? I suppose the rule of thumb would be whether someone considers himself to be Jewish. (Though there are boundary cases, like the wacky Jews for Jesus.) > Is Ariel Sharon a member of the fan-club? I don't know what music he listens to. > What's it got to do with music? Much music is a human expression and can only with difficulty be divorced from the background, influences, and vocabulary of the musician. - --=20 |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CDs: Collaborations/ All Souls http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 10:21:30 -0800 (PST) From: Thomas Choate Subject: Re: radicalism the last radical a nihilist eh? that would correspond the supposed theme of modern american movie (meaning, that it takes movies 21 yrs to go where the ...____ (punk? radical?) have gone). antiglobalization protest... practical or radical? nologo.org adbusters.org nothing dies right? (and we all live happily ever..) it speaks with a different voice to a different audience. our cream filling culture (US) usurps the radical, or ...well maybe not the reactionary...(if only they really cared What Jesus Would (have) Do(ne). thats all, and thanks for the NC info.. amor fati, sq thomas - --- duncan youngerman wrote: > 6O's radicalism was vital in questioning of the US > military-industrial > complex and autistic consummer society, but faced > with time and reality > it disolved into 2 paths : integration (Jerry Rubin > on Wall Street , the > German govt.Greens supporting US bombings, Dylan > singing for the Pope, > etc.), or mass murder/suicide (Charles Manson, > Symbionese Liberation > Army, Jones Town, Pol Pot, Luminous Path, etc.). > Times and values have changed. > Radicalism is dubious now. > Naïve, dogmatic, nihilistic, dumb. > Things are no longer felt or expressed in black and > white. > Johnny Rotten was the last radical. > > DY. > > > - > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Find the one for you at Yahoo! Personals http://personals.yahoo.com - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 13:22:46 -0500 (EST) From: Ken Waxman Subject: Re: zorn/zionism Duncan: It doesn't have much to do with music except sociologically. That is the group in power always defines "others" in terms of their separateness. Below you wonder about musiscians who are one-half and/or one-fifth Jewish are members of the club. No, the ruler's club has merely be given anothger reason to exclude them from the more important club. When the last time you heard a person referred to as half-Christian or one-fifth Christian, or half-White or one-fifth White. It all depends on who is making the club rules. Ken Waxman - --- duncan youngerman wrote: > Let other people judge whether Zorn's music is > "radical" or not. It's > not something for the artist to decrete, unless he > wants to sound > pretentious. > (can you imagine Moderate Celtic Dance Culture, or > Middle-of-the-road > Hutu Photographic Culture?) > > As for jewishness, do we really need ethnic labeling > at this point in > human history? > Who cares if Johann Strauss, George Gershwin, > Dimitri Shostakovitch, > György Ligeti, Elliott Sharp or Barbra Streisand > were or are "jewish", > what does it have to do with their work, and what do > they have to do > with each other? > > Are half-jewish musicians allowed in the club?Are > one-fifth jews? > Are non-ethnic jewish followers of the Torah? Are > ethnic jewish > followers of Thor? > Is Ariel Sharon a member of the fan-club? > What's it got to do with music? > > DY. > > > - > _______________________________________________________ Build your own website in minutes and for free at http://ca.geocities.com - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 12:26:40 -0800 From: Skip Heller Subject: Re: zorn/zionism This whole thread reminds me of the occasion where Groucho Marx joined the Beverly Hills Country Club. He did not know it was restricted, and they didn't know he was Jewish. They found out soon enough, and called him into the office and apologized about having to revoke his membership. "My wife's not Jewish", Groucho replied, "and so my kids are only half Jewish." "So?" the club chairman asked. "Well," said Groucho, "since the kids are only half Jewish, you agree to let them stay, but they're only allowed in the pool up to their waist." skip h - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 21:26:20 +0100 From: duncan youngerman Subject: 7/16ths Serbo-Pashtun What is admirable about Richard Wagner is his music. What is lousy about Richard Wagner is his ethno-socio-obsession. Sure, every artist grows out of specific cultural backgrounds and often needs to refer to them for him or herself. The problem arises when the music itself becomes secondary to this cultural identity. You are then dealing with politics. Narcissistic politics. Most often making neither good music nor good politics. D.Y. > > > - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 16:06:35 EST From: JonAbbey2@aol.com Subject: Re: Yahowa 13 In a message dated 11/17/01 9:48:09 AM, jerzym@dom.zabrze.pl writes: << I've just purchesed the copy of CD "Golden Sunrise" of the Yahowa 13. Could You give more info 'bout this outfit >> Yahowha 13 were an early seventies hippie collective led by a guy named Father Yod (which is where Byron Coley's Massachusetts store/label got its name from, Ecstatic Yod). they have a couple of quite inspired records, I'm Gonna Take You Home and Penetration: An Aquarian Symphony, but most of the rest isn't quite up to snuff. Sky Saxon also appears on a few of their records. the Japanese label Captain Trip released a 13 CD box compiling their complete recordings a couple of years ago, but needless to say, it's for completists only. the spirit of Yahowha 13 lives on in NYC's No Neck Blues Band, who have a new disc out on Revenant this week I'm looking forward to hearing. has anyone else heard Polwechsel 3 or Otomo's Anode yet? very curious to hear people's opinions on these... Jon www.erstwhilerecords.com - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 17:57:40 -0500 From: David Keffer Subject: Review Request: Insignificance by Jim O'Rourke I have seen that the new cd "Insignificance" by Jim O'Rourke is out on Drag City. If anybody on the list has heard it, let's hear a review. I am interested but have reservations. By my reckoning, this is the fourth "pop" record that O'Rourke has released on Drag City, the first three being: Bad Timing (1997) Eureka (1999) Halfway to a Threeway (1999) Each release in this series has been progressively worse (less original, more redundant). Does the new record, Insignificance continue this downward trend, or is it something different? Thanks. David K. np: Pleistozaen Mit Wasser - Cecil Taylor & Derek Bailey (FMP, 1989) - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 15:04:29 -0800 From: "s~Z" Subject: Re: Review Request: Insignificance by Jim O'Rourke Is it my imagination or all of those titles Nicholas Roeg films? - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 00:23:12 +0000 From: "Bill Ashline" Subject: Re: Radical, man, really radical >From: Joseph Zitt >Good stuff! The definitions all do come from a common jargon of >academic/post-Marxist concepts, but they present well a debunking of >the idea that all radicalism is toward the right. (There are also >points there that use the term 'liberal' in the European rather than >the American sense, which may lead to some confusion, but it always >does.) Yes, that's right. My reason for posting it was simply to cure the tendency to play just a bit too fast and loose with language on the Z-list. Actually I've always seen "radical" in the political sense from a rather Hegelian view of the spectrum, with radical on the left side, reactionary on the right side, and liberal, moderate, and conservative in the middle. Of course this perspective has the limit of suggesting that "radical" is always an extreme position that can never be substantiated. That's why it's good to see it's etymology in a proper way and see other uses of the word. You may have also noted the definition of "religion," which from an etymological sense, simply means community: Religion: From the Latin, ligio: I bind; religio; I bind back, I bind fast [together]. Religion thus refers to any set of beliefs and/or practices which bind a people together. As most use the word, it refers to a theistic religion [see theology] but there are billions who live in solidarity with each other and with nature absent a god concept. Buddhism, secular humanism, socialist humanism and many forms of paganism sanctify but do not deify. [See Sanctification, as well as Sacred/Profane]. In marxian terms, religion is usually alienated self-consciousness. It is a situation in which people assign to a god or to a devil their own power for creating or destroying. More generally, religion is a set of principles by which human beings bring purpose and meaning into their own individual lives while guaranteeing (a sometimes limited) solidarity between individuals. One can see from this definition that a person like bin Laden suffers from alienated self-consciousness, in assigning to god his own power of destruction. The same goes for those on the religious right in the U.S. who justify the American bombing in Afghanistan for similar religious reasons. So, getting all this back to Zorn, it would be a mistake to see the idea of "radical Jewish culture" as in some way endorsing a sectarian religious practice. What it suggests is a very deep rethinking of what it means to be Jewish from the standpoint of personal identity, Jewishness being ethnicity as much as religion. BTW, Marx, Freud, a lot of the great thinkers, were themselves Jewish. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 00:43:57 +0000 From: "Bill Ashline" Subject: Re: Radical, man, really radical >From: Ken Waxman >Just as a matter of interest is there Radical Social >Anthropology? Unfortunately, the dictionary does not list any but certainly there are, Ken. Eric Wolf comes immediately to mind ("Europe and the People without History," "Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century") and Michael Taussig ("Mimesis and Alterity"). One could probably call Levi-Strauss' structural anthropology "radical" but obviously not in a Marxist sense. Eric Wolf is one of the better cases, fusing anthropology and history from an intellectually Marxist perspective. Then of course there's the anthro dept at the New School in NYC, the university in exile founded by left academics fleeing Nazi Germany. Most of the more well-known people, like Abu-Lughod, are retired now. Then of course, there's "radical history" with E.P Thompson and Christopher Hill being the principals there. I believe both are quite dead now. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 01:23:23 +0000 From: "Bill Ashline" Subject: Re: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) >From: Joseph Zitt >Subject: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) > >Which also goes to show that looking to a physicist for views on >religion is about as trustworthy as, say, looking to a linguist for >views on politics. Or basing your taste in music on what Linus >Torvalds listens to. Pretty crudely essentialist, pal. Fields don't have walls. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 22:25:11 -0600 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: 7/16ths Serbo-Pashtun On Sat, Nov 17, 2001 at 09:26:20PM +0100, duncan youngerman wrote: > > What is admirable about Richard Wagner is his music. > > What is lousy about Richard Wagner is his ethno-socio-obsession. > > Sure, every artist grows out of specific cultural backgrounds and often needs to refer to them for him or herself. > > The problem arises when the music itself becomes secondary to this cultural identity. > > You are then dealing with politics. > > Narcissistic politics. > > Most often making neither good music nor good politics. Lousy music + politics = lousy music + politics. Good music + politics = good music + politics. I don't think anyone is saying that adding politics makes bad music good (skipping for the moment what good and bad music are). But when the music starts off as good, it can resonate in other areas, so that both the music and the subject benefits. Not that I care much for Wagner's music -- I thought the scripts to the Ring cycle were quite good, and that it was unfortunate that the leaden music got in the way of enjoying them. - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CDs: Collaborations/ All Souls http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 22:49:21 -0600 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) On Sun, Nov 18, 2001 at 01:23:23AM +0000, Bill Ashline wrote: > >From: Joseph Zitt > >Subject: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) > > > >Which also goes to show that looking to a physicist for views on > >religion is about as trustworthy as, say, looking to a linguist for > >views on politics. Or basing your taste in music on what Linus > >Torvalds listens to. > > Pretty crudely essentialist, pal. Fields don't have walls. Sure: but I do see a goofy tendency in people to assume that someone who excels in one field is automatically equally expert in others. "Why are we listening to this guy?" "He won a Nobel Prize in something or other!" "Oh, then he must know what he's talking about here!" Thus people get their politics from pop stars and role modeling from boxers. - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CDs: Collaborations/ All Souls http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 05:24:47 +0000 From: "Bill Ashline" Subject: Re: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) >From: Joseph Zitt >Sure: but I do see a goofy tendency in people to assume that someone who >excels in one field is automatically equally expert in others. > >"Why are we listening to this guy?" >"He won a Nobel Prize in something or other!" >"Oh, then he must know what he's talking about here!" > >Thus people get their politics from pop stars and role modeling from >boxers. It's fame's cruel joke to be certain, but it's also a problem with those who take their information at face value and don't pursue things further. I got my politics initially by listening to a lot of early punk and of course a lot of sixties stuff. If it had stopped with that, the politics would have likely disappeared from my concerns. I was just reading a statement from various Nobel Prize winners and well-known philosophers criticizing the war in Afghanistan. Seems to me like a worthy application of one's "fame." Better than just cranking out another fame-enhancing book. (This statement will no doubt play well with a certain sector of the list that likes to wear its anti-intellectualism on its sleeves.) People should use the efforts of famous people to become "alert." After becoming alert, they should wake up on their own. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp - - ------------------------------ End of Zorn List Digest V3 #619 ******************************* To unsubscribe from zorn-list-digest, send an email to "majordomo@lists.xmission.com" with "unsubscribe zorn-list-digest" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message. A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "zorn-list-digest" in the commands above with "zorn-list". Back issues are available for anonymous FTP from ftp.xmission.com, in pub/lists/zorn-list/archive. These are organized by date. Problems? Email the list owner at zorn-list-owner@lists.xmission.com