Mark O'Connor Sidewalk Performance 3/24/13

The inimitable Mark O'Connor.  There are some musicians out there for whom I have no adequate words because no words will do them justice.  Legendary fiddler/violinist and composer Mark O'Connor is one of those musicians. Here he is playing on the sidewalk outside of the Balboa Theater in San Diego with guitarist Tony Ludiker.   Thanks to joyoffiddling for sharing the video.

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.” 

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Shirtless Mark Twain

                                Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, 1883. 
                                (Public domain image Courtesy of NPR)
                                 
 Just because.

James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket (PBS Documentary)

A truly beautiful revolutionary spirit, James Baldwin has been a powerful inspiration to me and many others.  Here is a recent PBS documentary about his life and work.

Food for Thought: Chipotle's New Ad for The Scarecrow

So a lot of folks have been raving about Chipotle's new ad for its iOS app-based game "The Scarecrow".  The ad features a dystopia of unsustainably produced and chemically saturated corporate fast food products, complete with high-budget emotionally loaded 3-D animation and a hauntingly seductive soundtrack featuring Fiona Apple singing "Pure Imagination", a song off of the 1971 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film soundtrack.   The protagonist of the ad, The Scarecrow, leads the viewer into and out of this morbid and darkly bleak world and into what appears to be the initial stirrings of the groundbreaking emergence of a utopian promised land that is of course made possible by Chipotle's comparably uplifting style of (presumably) ethical and sustainable corporate food worlding.  Chipotle parted ways with McDonald's back in 2006 and ever since has been trying to brand itself as a corporation committed to "Food With Integrity".  As part of this branding effort, in July 2013 Chipotle became the first corporate fast food chain in the U.S. to attempt to completely rid their menu of GMO products.

                              

Chipotle's new ad has received a lot of positive feedback from viewers.  Indeed, there is no denying that this is a very innovative ad that is, to a certain extent, far more truthful and ethically ambitious than most global corporate food chain ads.  No other global fast food chain in history has ever publicly presented this kind of unapologetically critical portrayal of the cruel, unhealthy, unethical and completely unsustainable global food system that the mainstream fast food industry actively maintains, and for this I applaud Chipotle.  However, while I am impressed by some of the critical content featured in the ad, I nonetheless have very mixed feelings about it.  For all of its captivatingly emotional hooks, bells, and whistles, this creative ad is at bottom a corporate branding strategy designed to increase consumption of multiple commodities controlled by large global corporations like Apple and Chipotle.  Part of the genius of this ad is its ability to market the Chipotle brand in ways that initially appear potentially subversive to corporate branding as such. The Chipotle logo itself actually has a very subtle and limited visual presence in this 3-D animated ad.  Indeed, it is only towards the very end of the ad that we see any explicit reference to Chipotle.   However, the effect is arguably an even more profound branding dynamic that simultaneously replaces and reinforces a corporate brand with an entire way of life, in a way that seems to both echo and exceed the prototypical 'life style marketing' strategy of global corporations that investigative journalist Naomi Klein brilliantly showcased in her powerful 1999 documentary 'No Logo'.  In addition, I couldn't help but notice the conspicuous absence of any coherent reference to farm workers in the ad.  How does/will Chipotle ensure sustainable and socially just labor and living practices for farm worker families in its corporatized vision of "food with integrity"?  Another question that concerns me is how does/will Chipotle, a giant global corporate food chain, impact local and regional sustainable food restaurants and eateries that are not global fast food chains? These are just a few of the concerns that struck me as I watched the now viral ad.

Happy Birthday to Donna J. Haraway: Reflections on Situated Knowledges

Today, in honor of the birth of biologist and feminist philosopher of science Donna J. Haraway, I am very briefly reflecting on her notion of partial perspective as laid out in her famous essay Situated Knowledges, in the context of colonialism and academic knowledge making.  I have been revisiting the writings of Franz Fanon in preparation for a course I am currently designing to be taught later this year, and Fanon has me thinking very intensely about colonialism as of late.  Admittedly, what follows is my own uptake of one general theme I sensed in the essay and I wanted to apply this theme to a general idea of colonialism and the notion of an ever lingering colonial gaze that continues to haunt much of traditional Western academic thought like some kind of imperial phantom.  I do not claim to offer a succinct 'revelation' of what Haraway was actually thinking or believing when she wrote the essay in 1988.  Nor do I advocate any kind of 'pure' standpoint or offer any close-ended exclusive assessment of Haraway as a certain 'type' of intellectual.  I am only speaking for myself about some of my own current reflections about what I gleaned from this deep, rich, and very thought-provoking essay.  Here I am thinking with Haraway's concept of Situated Knowledges in contexts of colonialism and accountability.

I am writing in the first person, not because I see myself as a colonizer, but because I recognize the pollution of the colonizer inside of me, and inside of much of the knowledge and knowledge practices that have surrounded and shaped me within institutional academia for so many years.  This is not the first time I have been conscious of this.  Historically, as academics and public professionals ritually subjugated by the Eurocolonial Western world, we have too often sought to escape history and subjectivity--indeed our own humanity--in the pursuit of certified knowledge.  We are literally trained to do this, as well as rewarded for it.  However, this feat is not only impossible but ethically irresponsible. We are limited and partial forever. The world is not ours.  Nobody gave it to us.  The universe is bigger than any human--or any human capacity for knowing--will ever be. We see everything through conditioned eyes, forever.  We are situated, we are located, we are materially and ontologically constrained as knowing subjects.  Our visions are not pure or absolute.  We are polluted, interested, and conflicted, and subject to waves of unquenchable desire, in spite of everything we know.  This applies not only to the colonial gaze but also to various subjects of the colonial gaze, including historical 'underdogs' that are often rendered unaccountably pure, innocent, primitive and/or naive simply because they represent that which is not the colonizer. The violence of subtraction and rarefaction in the colonial gaze is both real and multidimensional.  There is no truly innocent standpoint.  However, while there is no truly innocent standpoint, we can assume that the narratives of historically marginalized subjugated standpoints beneath "the brilliant space platforms of the powerful" (Haraway 1988) generally offer more grounded and ultimately transformative accounts of the world.  Recognizing the reality of situated knowledges does not in any way, shape, or form call for the obliteration of objectivity or the fetishizing of relativism.  On the contrary,  far from it.  Rather, it is about holding oneself and one's material practices of seeing and doing more accountable when making knowledge.   Indeed, it is a reason to make our objectivities stronger and more meaningful, and therefore less arbitrary, violent, and unaccountable.

                                      Diffraction

The Jimi Hendrix Experience Interview 9/7/68

Terry David Mulligan interviews The Jimi Hendrix Experience on September 7, 1968 in Vancouver, BC. 

Michael Hedges: Aerial Boundaries

I like to think of Michael Hedges as an acoustic revolutionary.  He was truly one of a kind, and his music speaks for itself.  Here is a clip taken from a currently discontinued DVD that features his July 1986 performance at the SIR Sound Stage in Los Angeles.

Throw Down Your Heart

I recently watched the wonderful 2008 documentary "Throw Down Your Heart" starring American banjo extraordinaire Béla Fleck.  In this documentary Béla sets out to explore and experience the African roots of the banjo while making some beautiful music in the process.  This is truly one of the most amazingly beautiful documentaries I have ever seen.  As an African-American, longtime banjo music lover, and newbie banjo player, I found this film deeply touching and inspirational.  If you have any kind of love for music in your heart, do yourself a favor and go see this documentary.  Below I have linked a short YouTube clip from the documentary. 

Revolutionizing Bluegrass: The Infamous Stringdusters

The Infamous Stringdusters

 

Earlier this month I had the chance to see two live performances by my favorite bluegrass band—the Infamous Stringdusters.  The Infamous Stringdusters are an award-winning bluegrass fusion band hailing from Charlottesville, Virginia.  These guys are known for their radically experimental yet firmly grounded performances within the bluegrass genre.   The Stringdusters are Jeremy Garrett (fiddle), Andy Falco (guitar), Chris Pandolfi (banjo), Travis Book (upright bass), and Andy Hall (slide guitar).  The band's groundbreaking sound is rooted in a solid bluegrass platform that they have taken to a new level, mixing all sorts of creative influences into their compositions as well as their infamously intense live performances while staying true to the roots of the genre.  These guys have a truly revolutionary sound.  I saw the Stringdusters play the Greenfield Lake Amphitheatre in Wilmington, North Carolina and the Bondurant Auditorium at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.   I enjoyed both shows, but I was especially impressed by the Wilmington show.   

Wilmington is a fun, quirky little beach town located at the mouth of the Cape Fear River on the southern coast of North Carolina.   In addition to being a very important historical site for the American Civil War, the Wilmington region is also the original home of the Venus Flytrap, among other things.  Greenfield Lake Amphitheatre is an amazing outdoor venue located in Greenfield Lake Park in Wilmington, and is regarded as one of the city's local gems.   In Wilmington, on the day of the show, bursts of immaculate sunlight in the morning were followed by light overcast cloud cover through the afternoon hours.   There were sporadic light rain showers on and off during the afternoon. The local forecast had called for thunderstorms that night.  Although the light intermittent rain showers had subsided by the time the show started, and local newscasts were predicting the storm to arrive fairly late in the evening, it was still uncertain whether or not the encroaching storm would hold off long enough for the Stringdusters to perform their show.  Indeed, the band announced early on during the show that they would play until the rain arrived, and throughout much of the show it looked as though the skies might burst open and rain down on us at any moment.  The pre-storm low-pressure atmosphere provided an ominously pleasant breeze throughout the show, which added to the already giddy energy of the venue.  However, to everyone's delight the rain held off for the entire show.  In fact, oddly enough, towards the end of the show I noticed that the sky above had actually become relatively clear, which kind of tripped me out at the time.  Nonetheless, it did rain pretty hard later in the evening, when I was hanging out at a local pub with my friends Burt and Courtney, and their wonderful dog Floyd. 

The Stringdusters are very loyal to their fans, and one way they demonstrate this loyalty is by posting nearly all of their live performances online to their 'Show Hive' for their fans to enjoy, usually within hours of leaving the stage.   You can stream a high quality soundboard recording of the entire 4/19/13 Wilmington show below.  I enjoyed the whole show, but a personal highlight of the show for me was the band's performance of "Like I Do" (begins at 42:32), a track off of their latest album, Silver Sky.

Greenfield Lake Amphitheater
(Photo courtesy of John Sawyer Architects)

Uncle Remus and the Politics of Authenticity

Recently I have been thinking about the politics of authenticity and the cultural, political, and racial complexity of the Antebellum and Civil War periods in the American South, namely through an examination of the production, performance, and dissemination of the infamous Uncle Remus tales originally published by a controversial White Southern folklorist named Joel Chandler Harris.  Harris had spent years working as an apprentice on a southern plantation in Georgia where he routinely experienced the performance of oral narratives by enslaved African-Americans.  Harris wanted to preserve the folklore of African-American slavery, including the everyday story-telling language and speech of African-Americans living in bondage, as he experienced it firsthand, in all of its intricately complex perfomative detail.  He was said to have had an impeccable ear for listening.  Accordingly, he mobilized his talent for listening in his commitment to preserving the original voices of African-American slave narratives, in their raw, authentic form as he experienced them while working on the plantation. Harris was very much a product of his times.  Indeed, he has been rightly criticized for harboring many of the overtly racist and even pro-slavery views that were common in the Southern U.S. at the time.  Harris was neither an abolitionist nor a critical historian, nor did he claim to be.  His literary passion was for the cultural preservation of the folklore of enslaved African-Americans as he directly experienced it, especially animal trickster tales.

In the video below Youtube singer and performer Todd Carpenter reads Uncle Remus's original "Wonderful Tar Baby Story" by Joel Chandler Harris.  I find Carpenter's historical contextualizing of Uncle Remus in the video below quite inadequate.  I also don't think I completely agree with his choice of language concerning so-called 'political correctness'.   Finally, I think Carpenter should be a bit more explicit about the politics of performing a specific kind of African-American Southern dialect ('Southern' alone is an inadequate description of the dialect he appropriates), including the fact that this particular dialect is based on the voices of African-American slaves as experienced and documented by Joel Chandler Harris.  Nonetheless, I think Carpenter does a wonderful job performing the story, and in so doing sheds important light on the politics of authenticity in the history of the American South.  I believe performances such as the one featured in this video are 'good to think with' as Donna Haraway would say, so I am sharing it here.

Thinking Critically About Gay Marriage

As the U.S. Supreme Court once again ponders the constitutionality of gay marriage, it is quite clear that more people than ever before are now hopping on the gay marriage train (obviously there is still significant resistance to gay marriage in the U.S., particularly in certain geographic regions, but you'd have to be blind not to notice the gradual mainstreaming of the Gay Marriage Movement as of late).  I think this unprecedented display of support for marriage equality is wonderful to a certain extent (not to mention ridiculously overdue).  It signals wider acceptance of homosexuality and growing recognition that homophobia is in fact HATE and should not be tolerated in this day and age.  This non-trivial social progress deserves to be recognized and appreciated.

Nonetheless, marriage itself--including gay marriage--can be effectively understood as a socially oppressive heteropatriarchal institution that should be critically engaged and questioned rather than passively accepted as some kind of universal ideal.  Let me be clear: I agree 100% that same-sex couples who wish to enjoy and exploit the social and economic advantages of legally recognized marriage should not be denied that right simply because they are same-sex couples.  That seems like a no-brainer to me.  However, I also support critical consciousness and Queer Liberation, and I do not support or tolerate the silencing of critical queer and feminist voices that seek to challenge and critically engage marriage as a social institution.  That being said, I invite readers to check out  a very insightful piece written by Yasmin Nair on how the Gay Marriage Movement functions to reinscribe conservative social values. 

                           Queer Liberation NOW!

A 1995 video clip featuring a brief historical overview of Minamata Disease in Japan (Mercury poisoning).

Angela Davis prison interview, 1970

Great Haraway lecture from 2000 at the European Graduate School.

Here's to love, solidarity, and freedom in 2013.  I'm starting off this year with an electro house vid from the very lovable German duo, Digitalism.  I'm already feeling like 2013 is a good year to bring things full circle. ♥

"Gay liberation is a radical movement that advocates a radical change in society--its social structures, power structures, its racism and sexual dogmas.  We have a commitment not just to homosexual liberation but to total human liberation."

--Len Richmond & Gary Noguera
   Mill Valley, California 1972

Excerpt from The Gay Liberation Book (1972)

#Samsung Workers and the Struggle for Corporate Accountability in South Korea

Thinking about getting the latest Samsung #Galaxy smartphone that everyone has been yipping and yapping about?  Please watch this video before you do anything else.  I am so proud of my colleagues in South Korea who are doing such important work right now to hold Samsung Electronics accountable for the occupational illness epidemic currently afflicting its semiconductor manufacturing workforce.  This particular video was filmed in 2010 but the struggle of Samsung victims is ongoing.  Samsung workers and their families deserve answers, dignity and justice!

The high tech industry is NOT clean.  It relies on a vast array of exotic toxic chemicals, many of which are known or suspected human carcinogens.  We do NOT live in a postindustrial world.  We need to hold the global electronics industry accountable for its ongoing dependency on toxic chemical use and its general historic disregard for the health and safety of its manufacturing workforce. 

Read more about worker health struggles at Samsung

YMSB

Yonder Mountain String Band.  I have been listening to this #Colorado-based bluegrass fusion band since 2001.  I am a fan.  This clip features YMSB performing  'On The Run'-->'Steep Grade' live w/ Danny Barnes and Drew Emmitt at the Northwest String Summit, Horning's Hideout July 24, 2011. Thanks to Steve Holmes for sharing the video.

#Banksy