Sunday Jazz: Summertime

Be sure to put on your cans because this is just so, so sweet.

The Rosenberg Trio. Gypsy Jazz. Think Django Reinhart.

Stochelo Rosenberg is playing a beautiful Selmer Maccaferri Petit Bouche on lead, and don’t stop before the end because his ending is breathtaking. Stochelo’s cousin Nous’che is playing the Grand Bouche D-hole Sel/Mac and he’s like a swinging clock. And Nous’che’s brother Nonnie rounds everything out on a beautiful acoustic bass.

Three gifted musicians, three gorgeous instruments, and they look like they’re just having the best time, too.

Django is smiling, wherever he is.

Saturday Youssou: Mame Bamba

I’ve finished up the Youssou N’dour documentary that I’ve been working on recently and last night the whole crew was invited to see Youssou and his band perform at Joe’s Pub to benefit the Roll Back Malaria Partnership. It’s a very intimate setting, the place holds maybe 200 people tops. He performed this song along with the one I posted the other night and a host of others.

A beautiful show for a very worthy cause. The film is beautiful. The music is beautiful. I am still dancing.

Enjoy!

Late Night Music: Tommy Emmanuel

Guitar Boogie

Another lesson in humility.

Late Night Music: Youssou N’Dour – “Birima”

I’ve been blessed with the opportunity over the past couple of weeks to work on an exquisite film about this extraordinary artist. I’ve been rocking out to beautiful tunes like this one day after day.

One of the most popular singers in the world, and few here in America have ever heard his name.

Enjoy!

On the Eve of Destruction

by Stephen Fleischman

(with apologies to Barry McGuire)

“The eastern world it tis explodin’,
violence flarin’, bullets loadin’ …”

The surge in Iraq is working, says George W. Bush through his military mouthpiece, General David H. Petraeus, at recent Congressional hearings. The war goes on and Iraqis (and US GIs) are being killed daily although polls show the American people never wanted this war and want their troops out now.

The presidential candidates for both parties in the 2008 election—McCain, Clinton, Obama—are proposing timetables for troop withdrawal, anywhere from six months to one hundred years. No one has yet come up with a reason why we’re there, or a definition of victory, for that matter. To prevent chaos and bring democracy to the Middle East just doesn’t cut it.

In any war of occupation, if the occupied nation has strong leaders who are willing to unite and lead their people into a fight, they will eventually win.

You can safely wager that long before the 100 years are up, if we don’t willingly withdraw, the remnants of US forces in Iraq are likely to be evacuated from the roof of the American embassy building in Baghdad’s green zone by helicopter. When the Sunnis and the Kurds and the various Shia factions and militias get together, that will be the end of the little al-Maliki puppet government in Baghdad and the destruction of US power in Iraq; as happened in Vietnam when the Viet Cong and the Viet Minh came together in the Tet offensive and as happened to the French in Algeria when the resistance poured out of the Casbah in a great human wave…

“…but you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction…”

Economists, across the board, are telling us we’re heading into a recession, if we aren’t already in one; and some say we’ll be going deeper, into a depression. Well, what do you know? A war and a depression at the same time! In capitalist societies, war is frequently the antidote to depression; the cure worse than the malady. These days, economies are linked worldwide. Is there a world economic collapse in our future? Does anyone really know?

We know about the sub-prime mortgage disaster, the credit card crunch, the bail-out of Bear Stearns with taxpayer money and others yet to come (socialism for the capitalists) and things of that sort. And we’ve been hearing of mass layoffs of workers in manufacturing and service industries. Who needs a working class? The good paying jobs are mostly gone with the off-shoring and outsourcing of the hardware (factories) and the software (workers).

A free market system cannot exist without the purchasing power of the working class. But we’ve done away with all that; smashed the union movement that once gave trade unionists a living wage. We have to import the very commodities we used to make and pay more for them—unless you can shop at Walmart that has an inside track to cheap.

The government has been cooking the books for years. It’s been standard procedure. One administration after another has been addicted to “la vie en rose”.

We have three fundamental measurements on which we determine the state of our economy—the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI), an indicator of inflation—the quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which tracks the economy’s overall growth—and the monthly unemployment figure, an indicator of economic health. These statistics are vital to obtain a true picture of the economy. Important decisions for government and business depend on their accuracy.

Kevin Phillips, a noted commentator on economic issues and a former Republican Party strategist, charges, in the current issue of Harper’s Magazine (May ’08), that the economy is worse than we know, and he is able to make those charges stick.

“Since the 1960s,” he says, “Washington has been forced to gull its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics: the vital instruments with which the vigor and muscle of the American economy are measured.”

“How much angrier would the electorate be,” Phillips asks. “if the media, over the past five years, had been citing 8 percent unemployment (instead of 5 percent), 5 percent inflation (instead of 2 percent) and average annual growth in the 1 percent range (instead of the 3-4 percent range) … the corruption has tainted the very measures that most shape public perception of the economy.”

How much longer can this system survive playing those games, plunging its head in the sand and letting the lies roll over. We’ve built a world of distraction in the media, in academia, in arts and entertainment; in the gross distortions we call “news” to hide it all.

The ice caps are melting, the honey bees are dying, the oil is depleting, and food is being raised to go into your gas tank. And for the Bush Administration, life is just a bowl of cherries…

“…the pounding of the drums, the pride and disgrace,
you can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace,
hate your next-door-neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace.
and you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.”

Late Night Music: Are You The Viper?

Happy 4/20!

Late Night Music: Nataliya Gudziy

It’s a Bandura, a Ukrainian instrument. She’s Ukrainian, but the song she’s singing is Japanese.

Beautiful instrument, beautiful voice, beautiful song, beautiful woman.

Enjoy!

I Guess I Picked The Wrong Week To Start Playing Guitar

I’m not sure what to make of this. I find it vaguely unsettling, perhaps because it confuses me.

Am I the only one?

Late Night Music: Brazilian Nylon

I’ve been coming across some wonderful stuff lately. Tonight it’s Luiz Bonfa.

Fabuleux!

Fundamentals

by Stephen Fleischman

Let’s get down to fundamentals.

The two warring Democratic candidates in the presidential election have their slogans.

Obama wants change. Hillary wants solutions. Yes, they discuss all the issues that are fit to discuss. Even McCain talks about death and taxes.

But nobody wants to take on the fundamentals—the source of the status quo requiring change and the root cause of the problems for which Hillary wants solutions. It’s not just the economy, Stupid! It’s the system…to use a Clintonian euphemism.

A system based on greed, profit and exploitation of one class by another will eventually land it in the ditch. You don’t need Karl Marx to tell you that. He made a landmark analysis of Capitalism in the 19th Century and so far his predictions have been right on the money. Empires fall—from the Roman to the German. They dig their own graves.

Capitalism, by its name and nature supports the rich, propertied and corporate class. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a Marxist to see that. Competition between corporate entities, in various nations, leads to monopoly and war. When corporations control a government, it’s Corporatism. We’re in that stage of capitalism right now. Benito Mussolini, pre-World War II dictator of Italy, gave it a name. He called it Fascism.

For the capitalist system to survive—it must have constant economic growth and find new markets and sources of raw materials.

There are two ways to do this, the first, by going into countries, anywhere in the world, and taking what you want by military means (commerce follows the flag, as the British used to say), or it can be done by diplomacy and economic penetration. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an example of the second way, the war and occupation of Iraq, an example of the first. Of course, the natives of those countries don’t like either method. So, one way or another, they fight back.

Right now, we’re spilling blood for oil and heading into a recession at the same time. We have a new complication that ranks with global warming. Oil is peaking. Supplies can only diminish from here on. Are we going to fight for the last drop of oil on earth before putting maximum effort into looking for alternative forms of energy? Looks that way. Big oil still has clout.

Wealth produced by the working people of this country flows in only one direction, up. According to University of California statistics, the top 1% of Americans own 33.4% of the wealth while the bottom 80%, the overwhelming majority of wage and salaried workers, are left with a measly 16%.

Do the presidential candidates discuss any of this, and if not, why not?

The answer to that is easy. They’re all corporate candidates. The oligarchy can’t lose, whoever is elected. The American mainstream media, that molds popular perception, supports one or another of the corporate candidates. And why not? The same corporate entities own the mainstream media. So they keep the public distracted by endlessly debating the fine points of their choice, turning the election into an entertaining horse race. The average Joe would do better going to the track.

The presidential candidates are fighting for the votes of “We the people…”
So why isn’t it fair game to take on some of the faults and flaws of the capitalist system? Many of Obama’s needs for change and Hillary’s solutions to problems stem from capital’s depredations. But no candidate dares to mention the “C” word.

It was not always thus. In the depth of the last depression, Roosevelt saved capitalism with the New Deal—the NRA, the WPA, the TVA and the rest of FDR’s acronyms. Of course, the beginning of World War II helped. War frequently pulls capitalism’s chestnuts out of the fire.

But, in 1935, the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) was passed. This put government on the spot. It had to support the working class. Government supported unionization and collective bargaining that helped distribute the wealth more equitably. So, you see, workers rights can be protected even under capitalism. All it needs is a president and an administration to fight off the economic royalists.

If that doesn’t happen, there can be trouble in River City. Times change and conditions have a way of turning into their opposite. Marx’s historical materialism demonstrates that. There are nodal points in history, when quantitative changes leap to a qualitative change. Revolution is such a nodal point. All phenomena in the universe consist of “matter in motion”; all things are interdependent and interconnected.

We’re headed into the great unknown right now. Most economists agree a recession looms. Some pessimists see a deeper recession, some a depression rivaling that of the 1930s.

There are all kinds of ideas out there lying dormant. If understood more universally, they could be helpful in advancing the welfare of this country.

Why don’t our presidential candidates talk about them? Stand up to their corporate sponsors.