The New Classism

Yesterday I met two guys who work for the Montana Department of Corrections. I figured they'd be "lock 'em up and throw away the key" types, but actually as we started talking about what they do, one of them said, "Correction is the one thing we don't do in the prison system. The only difference between those guys and me is those guys got caught." He said that 80% of the women and 60% of the men are non-violent, and these people aren't getting better inside, they're getting worse. I said that sometimes in California you're walking in the countryside and you see some gorgeously architected, brand-new building with spires and interesting colors. You think it's a school until you see the high fence and the gun towers and you realize that the only brand new buildings we have in California are prisons, not schools.

But anyway, the point we agreed on was this: I think that racism is subsiding, slowly to be sure, in the U.S., but it's being replaced by classism. Increasingly, we feel that poor people are deservedly poor, we're buying into the concept of bootstrapping. All the rich corporated interests and lobbyists and politicians in power like to pretend that they're self-made, when indeed the bulk of them (at least the ones who most strenuously pretend to be ranchers and entrepreneurs)are endowed with old money. It's the great myth. I told these guys that my feeling about politics today is not entirely driven by party lines or liberalism, it's about the erosion of true representative government. That's what happening with globalization--it's the next stage. No longer are the maquiladoras and migrant workers and blue-collar folks the only ones who have no voice in the global business machine, now it's gone to the next level: professionals, writers and software programmers and transcriptionists and accountants and lawyers. These are the people who took it for granted that their government represented them. These are the ones who must wake up.

The question is, how do you get through to them? I think subtlety, or brilliance, must be the answer. I saw part of the Matin Scorcese documentary on Bob Dylan the other night. It's interesting how good he was at capturing the essence of pacifism and civil rights and injustice in America. Yet according to the TV show, he really was not a political person at all, even though political activists seized him as their poster boy. Apparently, he was incredibly naive about socialism and the various doctrines that were swirling around the left--or, as one of the interviewees said, incredibly wise.

I guess it just shows once again that some artists have a gift for communication that is so powerful because it's so universal, simple and clear. It speaks to people, even if the artist himself meant something entirely different. It's transcendence.

Singing in Boston

I flew in to Boston Sunday and hopped in a cab and went over to Cambridge to rehearse at Richard's house. In a bit of overlap between my day and night jobs, Richard is a speaker at a conference that the magazine I work for puts on, but he's also a bass player and knows some other musicians. We played last year in Boston and this year he put together a slightly bigger band. The rehearsal went well, and I left feeling so good about another facet of living my dream: Meeting and jamming with musicians where ever I go.

Then, Tuesday I had an appointment with Peter Spellman, a professor at Berklee School of Music, about promotion and career planning and how much more marketing to do for my CD before I get started on the next one. He was very impressed with the packaging, quality and eclecticism of Jazzmerica. He felt that that was a strength, so he wouldn't give the traditional advice of doing another follow-up album that was highly focused (say, only salsa). He had a really cool idea: Find a company (not a music company) that I feel an affinity for and see if they want to partner in promoting my music. Some company or charity or organization that focuses on uniting the Americas, bridging the gap between North and South America, or across the languages. I'll have to do some brainstorming on that. So his focus is non-traditional marketing, since, as he says, the record companies are hurting and the usual pipelines are clogged with CDs. "Just because everybody can put out a CD doesn't mean everybody should," he says. "Today, every company wants to be a music company. Look at Apple."

He had some advice for my press kit, radio promotion in 2006, finding corporate gigs (that is a must-do!). I left feeling so happy and refreshed. And it was fun to go into a music school, I always love walking past the practice rooms and hearing people whaling on their instruments, oblivious to the outside world.

So then, last night, we had our little gig here at the Sheraton for the conference folks. I had fun--every gig is another learning experience. We had excellent turnout. I didn't count, but perhaps 40-50? I sold 6 CDs at the end--by normal gig standards, that's above average!

Earth Abides

From http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/
nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html

Ant balls not an urban myth

In addition to all of the other horrors befalling New Orleanians during the flood was the creepy discovery that red ants form themselves into floating clusters to avoid drowning. As Dante Ramos and I paddled along Carrollton Avenue on Wednesday, I saw two glittering, golf ball-sized masses of ants floating beside our canoe.

- Doug MacCash

New Creative Journey

The sky is gray. The news from New Orleans is an incessant throbbing. This storm has washed away the vestiges of deceit that have covered our country, and I hope a sudden bloom of art and music will surge up in response to all the surrealism that surrounds us. How easy it could be to make small changes for the better of all, but instead we wear blinders while the powerful pump the air with messages of greed and hate, artfully changing the terms and targets so that we stay confused enough to play along. But for a moment all this has been wiped away. Former First Lady Barbara Bush makes a "let them eat cake" statement about the storm victims being better off huddled in shelters that reveals how much a myth of "just plain folks" her family has perpetrated.

Despite all this I feel good. The sun is behind the fog, making everything a brighter white. The homeless man I passed this morning was not dead, only dead drunk, a lunchtime walk reveals. And I am about to embark on a new effort, a tremendous creative launch.

It's scary. The fear is that the effort will subsume everything else. I can't go into much detail, and maybe it will become obvious what I'm talking about, but it's bigger than a CD, bigger than a movie even. OK, I'm being silly here. It's something I've done before, but I'm thrilled to do again... It's a creative force far bigger than myself, one that makes me stronger, one that purifies and forges me as a channel for divine inspiration. But there is still the nagging question: Will any of the old me be left, will I be derailed, will I manage the new pressures?

That's enough hinting for today...

Back from California Brazil Camp

I have returned from a week of music among majestic redwoods, clear waters and warm summer air of Cazadero. I’d gone two years ago, when my CD was just a glimmer of possibility, and it was nice to be back with a few accomplishments under my belt. Of course, getting ready to go up was a bitch and I was complaining, but as soon as I reached Cazadero all my cares evaporated and I was enveloped by choro, samba, frevo, bossa nova, jazz, forró, samba reggae and so many other beautiful Brazilian styles. Sitting in Marcos Silva’s ensemble, learning tricky lines along with the horn section and dancing samba during the solos, I felt a sudden wave of happiness wash over me. Ever since I was a child, nothing makes me quite as happy as the sound of a band tuning up and rehearsing. I took several dance classes, some drumming with Mark Lamson, and learned a bit more about playing pandeiro (unfortunately, as John Santos himself told me, it was in conflict with the other way I’d been taught).

Perhaps the most inspiring class was every afternoon with Guinga, the stellar Brazilian composer who speaks so humbly and philosophically about his art. I sang my tune Down in the Everglades for him with Vince Mansel on guitar and Robert Kyle on sax, and he adored it and loved my voice. Then I spent two days shedding his song Orassamba and performed it for the student concert Friday night with the marvelous Capital on guitar and Rebecca Kleinman on flute. I tried to make it my own, realizing that in doing so I bring my American style into the equation—I don’t sound like Elis Regina, that’s for sure. The audience loved it, and I think Guinga liked it, but later he told me in Portuguese that I should translate it to English, that my Portuguese was a little strange. But some other Brazilians complimented me on it, one saying that even Brazilians can’t sing that song. Who knows how much I butchered the language, but I certainly learned what every word meant and tried to interpret it. I’ve been thinking of how to translate it. It would be quite a feat. I also want to find a recording of it to see how other singers have done it.

I met some awesome musicians along with many old friends. Some of the new folks include a wonderfully rich-sounding tenor sax player named Robert Kyle from So. Cal., a percussionist originally from Santos, Brazil but now in San Diego named Marquinhos Pereira, the hilarious percussionist Bobby Wallace, saxophonist Zach Pitt-Smith from the Bay Area, and the incredible rockin’ mandolinist Hamilton from Brazil.

I feel so refreshed. For a week music was all, there was no world, no tragedy, no time, no phone, no computer, no work, no newspaper, no car, no television, no radio. The primary form of communication was music, spontaneously being created in jams and classes, on the “favela” deck, in tents, on paths, in dancing bodies, by the river.

Someone said on the last day, “wouldn’t it be great if we could live here all year, and form our own society?” I said, “Yeah, but eventually we’d have to form a government, and councils, and laws, and bureaucracy, and pretty soon we’d be condemning people to death by stoning…” Ah yes, back to reality. Goodbye, Cazadero!