The man pictured above is DJ Premier, legendary hip hop producer and DJ. From about 1992-1995 this man provided the soundtrack to my life. I realize that I’m somewhat prone to overstatement, and maybe I big up people too much on this blog, but in this case no superlative can capture the love I had for this man’s music as a teen or the hold it possessed over my adolescent eardrums. Perhaps only a barrage of statistics will do it: As of 1994, DJ Premier comprised 50% of my favorite group Gangstarr, had been responsible for about 50% of my favorite album Illmatic, and was 50% co-author of my favorite song Come clean. That is a triple crown championship, never to be matched again.

I bring all that up, because SEM my friend from those days just sent me a link to a great feature put together by Derezon & Tre two DJs from Berlin for their show Sound Scan Radio. It’s called 14 Deadly Secrets and in it Premier tells the stories behind 14 of his greatest productions. If you enjoy his music, this is a MUST…

DOWNLOAD
right-click + ’save link as’ (mac) / ’save target as’ (windows)

At one point, Premier tells the story of how he came up with the sample for ‘Nas is like’, one of his most loved (and played out) songs. It’s a pretty funny story (’I found this old record that I was gonna throw away. It was an old 10 inch record from a Lutheran church, and it was pink with a black fish on it…’) but it’s way funnier if you hear the original song he’s talking about. Here it is…

John Rydgren - Cantata of New Life

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(I wish I had the digging skills to have come up with that on my own, but I definitely do not. I got it from Kevin Nottingham’s great site.)

Anyway, if you doubt Premier’s genius or that sampling is in fact an artform, check that sample track against what it eventually became - the 5 star, Mount Olympus, still played at almost every hip hop party in The Netherlands to this very day jam Nas Is Like…

DOWNLOAD

A couple months ago, my homey Jeroen started a blog called stupidtelligent. This fact is exciting to me because, for all the nymphomaniac groupies and corporate endorsement deals that it has brought me, blogging is in my estimation some lonely shit. But it seems a little less so when you have friends to link with. Jeroen and I have worked together many times in the past and, though he does not share my neo-conservative political views, on issues of culture we share much in common. So now that he’s officially blogmatic, it might be cool every once in a while to split a topic between our sites. Who knows how or if that will work, but fuck it these are uncertain times…

Anyway, a couple of days ago he posted up some info and a bunch of awesome songs by Tim Maia, the legendary musician who helped bring soul music to Brazil in the late ’60s. The focus of the post was on a period in the mid ’70s when Tim was overwhelmed by, what is stupidtelligently described as ‘an infatuation with the religious/philosophical sect called Cultura Rational (Rational Culture)’. So anyway, the post is mostly about the (amazing) music he made during that period, but I figured to support I’d provide a little of the back story. Here’s what I found in an old issue of The Fader magazine:

Following a particularly heartbreaking parting with a girlfriend, Maia’s lyricist friend Tiberio Gaspar introduced him to Rational Culture, a marginal religious sect with beliefs that involve UFOs, extraterrestrials and more. His conversion was nearly instantaneous. Maia gave up his personal possessions, cut his Afro and stopped partaking in drugs and booze–an impressive move considering his talents as a world-class abuser. Nelson Motta, music impresario and friend, recalled the results on Tim Maia Vol 1 & 2 to Brazilian magazine Trip, “Tim was at the top of his game as a singer. Strong and healthy, without smoke in his lungs, nor cocaine or alcohol in his blood, he was colossal! His vocal performances on these two albums are some of the best of his career (and of Brazilian pop music).”

WTF is Rational Culture (bka Cultura Racional) you ask? In a review of Racional Vol 1, the first of 3 albums Tim made about Rational Culture, I found this little rundown:

Cultura Racional was founded by Manoel Jacinto Coelho. He was born in 1903 in the Tijuca quarter of Rio, and it is said that at the moment of his birth, a comet or cosmic mass landed in his neighborhood and entered his body, thus supplying him with knowledge heretofore hidden from the rest of mankind.

Despite his many messianic qualities, he never claimed that Cultura Racional was a religion or that he was a god, he was simply a bringer of the truth of truths which he outlined in his series of books, The Universe in Disenchantment. Among some of the truths he elucidated was that human beings are parasites and that the arrival of an extraterrestrial race of creatures on Earth was imminent. To that end he even built a motel for their lodging at his estate in the suburbs of Rio.

It all fell apart eventually - rumor is that after a couple of years watching the skies for aliens and after having converted his entire band to Cultural Racional Tim left the sect and never performed any of the songs he recorded about them ever again. They only started to see re-release after he died in 1998.

So there it is, for whatever it’s worth, a footnote to THIS POST that you should immediately check because it has many many great songs in it.

Here’s a sample to groove to:
Imunizacao Racional

Also, you can download all the Racional albums from Música pra quê?, an admirably random music blog from which I jacked the above photo. I strongly recommend this. I’ve been bumping Vol 1 all day. Haven’t even been able to get through to Vols 2 & 3….

It’s my fault, obviously, but I also think the difficulty stems from the poor quality of coverage. Generally, in the US at least, you get two forms - hyper-technical jargon from trade sources like CNBC or sappy human interest stories from CNN and most of the major new publications. To try to get a handle on things I spent a few hours today looking for different sorts of coverage. I found some interesting, helpful things formatted in ways that I find it easier to rock with. So here’s a little inventory (accounting by Arthur Anderson LLP):

1. A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis
I’ve spent enough time around Dutch architects to know that their is no single element of the human tragedy that can not be represented a multi-colored diagram. For me, this little gem crafted by the online money management company Mint is the first case I’ve found of a player in the financial industry communicating itself to the public without talking up themselves or talking down to us. [click to enlarge]

I can imagine that some would accuse this sort of diagram of putting a friendly face on behavior that was reckless, destructive, and above all STOOPID. So I also think it’s useful to take a look at exactly how full of shit the designers of the financial and real estates bubbles were (probably still are). Here’s a couple tragic-comic pieces of evidence for the prosecution.

2. The End by Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is a former bonds trader turned author who’s spent a lot of the past 20 years chronicling the excesses of America’s bubble-based economy in books like Liar’s Poker and The New New Thing. In this piece for portfolio.com he writes that the crotch-grabbing Wall Street culture that he hoped to expose in the 80s is finally dead, just 20 years later than he expected.

Six months after Liar’s Poker was published, I was knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share about Wall Street. They’d read my book as a how-to manual.

In the two decades since then, I had been waiting for the end of Wall Street. The outrageous bonuses, the slender returns to shareholders, the never-ending scandals, the bursting of the internet bubble, the crisis following the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management: Over and over again, the big Wall Street investment banks would be, in some narrow way, discredited. Yet they just kept on growing, along with the sums of money that they doled out to 26-year-olds to perform tasks of no obvious social utility. The rebellion by American youth against the money culture never happened. Why bother to overturn your parents’ world when you can buy it, slice it up into tranches, and sell off the pieces?

At some point, I gave up waiting for the end. There was no scandal or reversal, I assumed, that could sink the system.

Very long, but very good.

If you’re looking to put a human face to the greedy jocks he describes in the piece check out these clips of Peter Schiff, the president of Europ Pacific Capital, speaking what we now know are undeniable truths about the US economy and being openly mocked by a bunch of bridge&tunnel meat heads who, one would hope, are currently in fear for their lives due to the enormous debts they owe to their coke dealers.

3. The Giant Pool of Money

If you don’t have the time/interest to read a long article, check out this very on point radio program created by my favorite radio show This American Life. It covers many of the essential features of the crisis with the intelligent, gentle firmness that defines that program. Here’s a little breakdown.

A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money.

DL the transcript here.

Observation 1: I have a picture of myself at a St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1986 sporting the exact same sweater that Nas is wearing.

Observation 2: I miss the Mos Def seen on this clip - the Mos Def of the late 20th century, before he launched his campaign of making bad albums and worse movies.

Observation 3: I could have done with some more De La.

Observation 4: My heart goes out to the DJ. Your vibe killing, record skipping flake out I know only too well. I am cringing with you, not at you.

Observation 5: Who is Damon Albarn?

(Just kidding… That one was just to piss off English people.)

via Very Friend nahright

As you probably already know the legendary South African singer Miriam Makeba passed away this week. I am an enormous fan, and it’s times like this that I wish I had more time to really work on this blog, because there are many things I’d like to say about Ms Makeba and what her music has added to my life. But for now at least I’ll have to keep it brief and unoriginal. For some background, here’s a selection from the New York Times obituary:

Widely known as “Mama Africa,” Ms. Makeba was a prominent exiled opponent of apartheid since the South African authorities revoked her passport in 1960 and refused to allow her to return after she traveled abroad. She was prevented from attending her mother’s funeral after touring in the United States…

As a singer, Ms. Makeba merged the ancient and the modern, tradition and individualism. Her 1960s hits “Qongqothwane,” known in English as “The Click Song,” and the dance song “Pata Pata,” which would be remade by many other performers in the next decades, used the tongue-clicking sound that is part of the Xhosa language her family spoke. Traditional African ululation was also one of her many vocal techniques.

But Ms. Makeba was also familiar with jazz and international pop and folk songs, and while South African songs would always be the core of her repertory, she built an ever-expanding repertory in many languages. Her voice was supremely flexible, and she could sound like a young girl or a craggy grandmother within the same song.

With tenderness, righteousness and playfulness, Ms. Makeba sang love songs, advice songs, spiritual songs, anti-apartheid songs and calls for unity. In bringing African music to other continents, she was a pioneer of what would be called world music, reworking her own heritage for listeners who might never hear it otherwise while creating fusions of her own.

Yet for all her internationalist hybrids, and through three decades as an exile, her music always made it clear that South Africa was her home.

As an exile Ms. Makeba lived variously in the United States, France, Guinea and Belgium. South Africa’s state broadcasters banned her music after she spoke out against apartheid at the United Nations.

“I never understood why I couldn’t come home,” Ms. Makeba said, as quoted by The Associated Press, during an emotional homecoming in Johannesburg in 1990 as the apartheid system began to crumble. “I never committed any crime.”

Here’s the earliest and latest clip I could find on youtube. This one is taken from Lionel Rogosin’s film Come Back, Africa:
Click here to view the embedded video.
This is from her performance on November 5, five days before her death:
Click here to view the embedded video.

Wouldn’t be right without some songs…

The first is Miriam’s first international hit and still probably her best known. Covered and sampled like crazy. This is the original…

Pata Pata (OG Version)

DOWNLOAD

Next is a wicked live version of maybe my favorite MM song…

Malaika (Live)

DOWNLOAD

Last here’s a more recent song made together with her countryman and husband Hugh Masekela. This one has a lot of sentimental value to me and I hope the person with whom I shared this song sees this post…

Vukani

DOWNLOAD

But this is a weak selection really. If someone puts up a mix somewhere please let me know and I’ll include it.

UPDATE: Check this amazing interview conducted by Roger Steffens in 1988 to coincide with the release of Sangoma. (Thanks to Robin for hook up. XX)

Rest In Peace MM

A few months ago I mentioned a trip I made with my friend Josh to the great city of New Orleans. He was putting the finishing touches on the fourth issue of his magazine Habitus and I was tagging along. (Wrote a post about, want to hear it, here it go…)

The issue is out now and it’s very good, probably my second favorite so far. (Issue 02: Sarajevo is still holding down #1) Here’s a little blurb on the content…

Our edition features some of the leading writers and thinkers from the city and beyond: including Rodger Kamenetz, Andrei Codrescu, Nancy Lemann, and others. In addition to our usual array of terrific fiction and poetry, we have a meditation on disaster and memory from Ari Kelman, a celebrated environmental historian, a photo essay documenting the city’s unique and exuberant street culture from photographer L.J. Goldstein; an extraordinary memoir of the intersection of African-American and Jewish roots in one New Orleans family from Ronne Hartfield; interviews with musician-historian Ned Sublette and the Brazilian urban-planning innovator Jamie Lerner; and many more exciting features.

Regardless of the fact that’s its my friend’s project, Habitus really is a unique and constantly edutaining publication. Order a copy yesterday or better yet subscribe…

To celebrate the issue I want to post up a conversation that I sat in on while I was down in NO. It was between Josh and Ronald Lewis, an advocate and spokesperson for the city’s Lower Ninth Ward and the founder of The House of Dance and Feathers , a museum that honors the cultural traditions of the Mardi Gras Indians and Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs of New Orleans. The conversation provides as much background as you’ll need, so I’m just gonna get to it. VERY good read for anyone interested in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, parade culture, or hearing a southern black man describe the horrors of eating Gefilte fish…

Joshua Harry Ellison: How did this place get started?

Ronald Lewis: Well, you know, I started this before Katrina. I had a little building called The House of Dance and Feathers…

JHE: Here?

RL: Yeah. But it was a smaller building that faced the street. That picture in front of you there, that’s how the interior of the original building looked. And Katrina took all of that. And I remember, right after the storm, me and LJ [Goldstein] made contact with each other, and he came out with his little club - the 69 Social and Pleasure Club, Krewe du Jieux, and everybody - and got me some help to clean out my house and get my life back started.

Then I spoke at a conference called Reinhabiting NOLA at Loyola University, with Rachel [Breunlin]’s husband Dan Etheridge and Dr Helen Regis. I spoke and told them that I needed help to rebuild to show that this could happen after all of this devastation. And the help came, and out of that came this: the new House of Dance & Feathers - a living story out of all this pain and suffering and misery.

JHE: What did you do before the storm?

RL: Well, I was retired. I’d been working for the transit system for 31 years. I was a streetcar track repairman, and I retired in 2002 at 51 years old. And from that time on, I dedicated my life to the community and our culture.

JHE: Did you grow up in the Ninth Ward?

RL: Right here in the Lower Ninth Ward, right where the breech in the levee was at, at 1911 Deslonde Street. So my entire life has been in this community. And the rest of my life is committed to watching it come back.

JHE: How many of your neighbors are back now?

RL: You can’t count by seeing them physically, you count by seeing the reconstruction work that’s going on, you see. They’re still in different places, but they’ve found ways to get back here and start the process of rebuilding.

JHE: Who is doing the construction? Are they hiring people?

RL: They’re hiring people, they’re finding family… Really it comes down to by whatever means necessary, yeah. See, the government here ain’t did like the government in Asia when they had the tsunami. Months after the tsunami, they started building houses for those people. Because I spoke at a conference last year at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte where this fellow that spoke before me to this group of architects showed where they were building these little houses, like 600 square feet or whatever, and making these people whole again.

Here, you’re talking about America, right? Richest and most technologically skilled country in the world, and going on three years later, nothing happening. Look what’s happening. You know? So that tells you something about neglect of the people. Anytime they can bomb up Iraq and automatically start the rebuilding process, what about an American city like New Orleans? You’ve seen, outside of the Central Business District, nothing. We’re still struggling. We’re still begging. We’re still saying, “We need to be whole. We need our lives put back together.” Just give us some honest help, and we can get it done.

JHE: So are you still waiting for Road Home money?

RL: Well, I got my Road Home money, so I’m whole, you understand. But it’s more than about me being whole. It’s about my community, it’s about my neighbors, it’s about the children being back on the street. It’s about community, viability. Yeah.

JHE: So what’s happening in the community right now?

RL: It’s one house and one family at a time. That’s a crux of this thing. When the people of New Orleans evacuated from this city, everyone of us thought that in two or three days, we’d be back home in our houses. Nobody expected for 80 percent of this city to be flooded. Now, since it happened, people left out in an exodus, and they couldn’t come back the same way they left out. So here it is - actually being in exile from the city that we love, that we want to come back to.

And really we maintain the viability of our city through our culture, through feel-good, you know? We get together on those given Sundays and give those street parades and all of that, knowing that come that Monday morning, we’re back to this pain and suffering.

JHE: So are you with a club right now?

RL: Yeah, my club is the Big Nine Social & Pleasure Club. And I’m involved with LJ and them in Krewe du Jieux. I was king this year of the Krewe du Vieux parade, and stuff. But our social activities is our teflon coating for this pain that we’re dealing with, this suffering that we’re dealing with. That’s our medicine.

JHE: So who’s coming to see the museum now? You’ve got a lot of groups coming in now?

RL: I’ve had people coming here from before the completion of this building til… everyday. You name it, they’ve come through here. Two days ago, they had a US Senator from Michigan came through here. Because this here is a living story. There’s been many projects done here in New Orleans since Katrina, but very few of them are living stories, because some of the things they’ve done, once they were completed they had nobody to tell the story about them. They’re just done. This here is whole different thing - besides being a uniquely designed building, it has me to tell the story.

JHE: Absolutely. How did the building happen? Who built it?

RL: This fellow named Patrick Rhodes, a professor from Kansas State University School of Architecture, heard about me. And he contacted me, he was up at the University of Arkansas, in early 2006. He contacted me and said he would help me. And this is the group of people who came together and committed their summer of 2006 to designing and building this building, to make it happen.

JHE: They were all architecture students?

RL: Yeah, and some were educators. Because it was the hot thing. I was one of the first in the rebuilding process. When you look at those newspaper articles that are on the wall, that’s how the Ninth Ward was looking when I first started my project. Yeah.

JHE: So when people come down and say they want to help, and ask you what you need, what do you say? Is it money or people to volunteer?

RL: Well, when they was coming, we needed everything.

JHE: But today…

RL: Today, well for me, it’s money. Because I operate as a non-profit, but I’m a non-profit non-profit, see, because I don’t have any major funding or anything. You see that little donation box that’s sitting over there? That’s how I function. And, just like recently, this rabbi from Austin Texas named Rabbi Susan Lippe came by. This was her third time coming over, so I told I wanted to do a workshop with some children related to the culture. So she sent out an email to people requesting some money, and what you see in this container is for the workshop where I’m gonna get some kids together and let me do some parade umbrellas. You know? And this is what I need money for.

Unless you can come up with about three or four hundred thousand dollars and then I can tell my neighor, “Oh, I can buy you a hundred sheets or sheetrock.” Or “I can buy you the materials to have your house rewired.” Until then the only thing I can do is continue accepting small donations to do what I do about cultural education.

JHE: Do you do anything with the schools around here?

RL: Well, I done did work with the schools and things. But I prefer working out of here, where I don’t have to answer to anyone, you know. Yeah. Because when I was working at the schools, I had a project that I really wanted to do. But then they would say, “Oh this is coming up, you can’t come this week.” And then, “Oh, this conference is coming up” and all that. So that put me off for like a month, and after that I told them “Forget it!” Because I do have another life besides the service I’m trying to give to the schools. So I’d rather work out of here and develop my little program through the House of Dance & Feathers.

JHE: Do you still have a lot of family in the neighorhood?

RL: Yeah, especially my wife’s family. They’re all back in the city. My two sons are back in the city. My immediate family, my sisters, they both live out of town now. Since the storm. One of my sisters lives in our family hometown of Thibodeaux, Louisiana and my other sister lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, about 200 miles away. But our family home got washed away, where the breech in the levee was at.

BM: Do they plan to come back?

RL: Nah. One is 66 and one is 71 or 72 and they both done found their comfort zone. My oldest sister, where she’s at is just like being here in the city, because that’s where all our relatives are. They’re one house there, one house there, one house there. So, she’s in a spot where she’s being taken care of, where she doesn’t really have to miss home, like a lot of seniors. It isn’t like she went to a place where you haven’t had contact with relatives in 20 or 30 years and you’ve got to get to know them. These are relatives that in the city at time and went back to our hometown.

JHE: Do you guys have basic stuff in the neighborhood now? Like supermarkets or…

RL: Well, we lost our neighorhood supermarket before Katrina. So our supermarket is right across the Parish line in St. Bernard. But we got our corner groceries back, right there on Tupelo and Claiborne. We got two gas stations, a dentist office. We got a little health care clinic. We’ve got two of our local bars back, and so that’s part of the new beginning of our community.

But I always tell people who come here and visit, I say, “Remember, when you look at this empty lot and these empty houses, that was families at one time.” You know? And when they have bus tours, I tell them I don’t want nothing to do with that. And they say, “How can you pass it up? You could connect with them and they could pay you so much for coming here.” I don’t want to get paid for my community’s pain and suffering. Then I wouldn’t be no better than them. I’d rather live off that little box right there and know that the people appreciate what I’m doing, besides bringing 30 or 40 people here and talking to them for about ten minutes and the only thing that they done did is visit the House of Dance & Feathers.

BM: So there’s really bus tours that come down here and just drive around the Lower Ninth Ward?

RL: We call them “misery bus tours”. Everyday. 40 or 50 people to a bus coming from the hotels down here. Paying 40, 50 dollars to go on these tours. Yeah.

BM: All these things - getting the bars back, dentist office, gas stations - this is all done with no government help…

RL: It’s just people who done spent their life in this community. Like our bar, Mickey Bee’s right there on St. Claude [Avenue]… The Morris family has been in business in this community for well over thirty years. So Mike Morris decided to rebuild the neighorhood bar - not because he needed the money, because this is part of the institution of our community.

And I gotta say that the Arabs opened the Magnolia store in the early going. Then they opened the big gas station on St. Claude and Mazant. But I gotta bitter taste for the Vietnamese community. Because their livelihood came from our community. They dominated the corner grocery market here in the city of New Orleans. The Arabs came in later. They dominated, but once Katrina came, they didn’t come back into the community that they blood sucked the money out of. Because they gave nothing back to our community before Katrina. You couldn’t get them to sponsor no baseball team or donate to nothing. But they blood sucked our community for every penny. You know, one store I went in one day, the child was a couple nickels short and they pitched a bitch. They wouldn’t let that child have that item off that marked up shit. For a nickel or a dime they wouldn’t let that child go. So I went in my pocket, I threw the money on the table, and I said, “Now give that child what they need!” Then I started my own personal boycott of that store. I would not go back in there, because one thing Dr. King taught us: trying to get something resolved physically, gets no resolve, but when you do it financially people come to the table and talk.

JHE: That’s right.

RL: Yeah. Because you think about it - when the people marched in the streets with Dr. King they got beat down, they got killed and everything else, bit by dogs and all that. But the process went on. As soon as Dr. King told them, “Don’t ride their buses. Don’t go in their 10 cent stores…” they said, “Come on, let’s sit down at the table and talk.” Because then it affected their livelihoods. So that’s the way I feel. And I’ll tell you, before the storm, Magnolia [grocery] had put a little window out so that people could come by that window and buy their stuff. I protested that. I started telling people, “They want to sell you their products, but leave out there unprotected. But they still want your money.” That’s that same Jim Crow window that they had down south where the blacks could go to the window and buy their products, but they couldn’t come in. So when I seen that window, it reminded of that old south attitude - we want your money but we don’t want you around us. So I started telling people, “Understand, they are putting you at risk. You go to that window 8, 9, 10 o’clock at night and those predators out there know that you got some type of money in your pocket, because you’re at that window buying something. So, you’re at risk and they’re safe in there. So if they want you to buy something, then let them have a built-in safety mechanism for them with their doors open. Not have outside on the street with the doors locked, no!” And as I started putting that on people’s minds, they started saying, “You’re right.” And you know what happened? They closed that window. Yeah.

JHE: Did you evacuate during the storm?

RL: I evacuated the city the day after the storm. I was in a little hotel on Magazine Street Goddamn little place fell apart. Anarchy was going on in the streets, because I was just a few blocks from where Harrah’s Casino is at, and my little car was in the parking lot of the Sheraton Hotel. And shit man, I got in my old car and told my wife, “Look, we’re going to Thibodeaux,” which is 80 miles from New Orleans. And some friends of ours followed me up there. And I stayed up there for a year.

JHE: A year?

RL: Yeah. And I commuted back and forth in the process of working on my house.

BM: So how is it to be part of a Jewish social club?

RL: The past Passover, they had the Seder dinner here down here at my house. Over 40 people here, and from the house to here everything was opened up for their use.

JHE: Was that the first Seder in the Lower Ninth Ward?

RL: I think so. Yeah, I really do.

JHE: I think you made some history there.

RL: Yeah, and when I tell people that I’m part of Krew du Jieux, and I say it’s a Jewish marching krew, most the Jewish people say, ‘Oh that’s so funny…’ Then I tell them how I got involved, and you know, about cross cultures and the food and that horrible stuff called Gefilte fish…

JHE: Terrible. Digusting.

RL: And that I’m just part this clan. Eventhough I’m a Gentile, I’m part of this clan. That’s like me and LJ [Goldstein] went to New York back in Februrary. We went to the Ramah school up in Manhattan and just spoke about culture between blacks and Jews in the city of New Orleans. And there was an opportunity at this orthodox Jewish school to talk about life in the city of New Orleans and how culture brings us together. And most recently, we have a large Baptist congregation here, which is Paul Morton’s church, Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel. A couple of weeks ago the church got burned up. Well, Rabbi Cohn of the synagogue on St. Charles Avenue invited them to have service at the synagogue for a month. That’s historical. You know, after Katrina, people are making ‘people churches’. Not ‘color churches’ or anything like that. Bad things are happening, but somebody is there to embrace somebody. And that’s making a difference. And for me rolling with Krew de Jieux, you know, our little krew is rough little bunch, you know?

JHE: [laughs] Yeah.

RL: But for me it’s that I’m part of this family. If I walk in the door, everybody says, ‘Hey Ronald, how are you doing? How’s your family?’ You know? Embrace. And this is what it’s about. That’s what this building is about: I have stuff from Africa in here, from Belize, you notice my little set up in homage of my Jewish krew… This a people’s place. Yeah.

Since the election, I’ve avoided talking much about my reaction. Being abroad, I’ve sort of missed out on the communal catharsis that my ride-or-die Obama supporting friends back home have enjoyed. I wasn’t sure what to do about that, then last night my friend Jeremy suggested that I make a mix to express the joy of the moment. So I went ahead and did that and contrary to my initial plan, it ended up being nothing but house. Uplifting, joyful, soul cleansing house. So this is how I feel. As they say, a mix is worth a thousands words.

Expensive Jewelry - The Obama Victory Ecstatic House Mix

DOWNLOAD
right-click + save link as (mac) / save target as (windows)

Or DL it here.

VICTORY

How sweet it is…

UPDATE: As I mentioned before, I’m in China these days and I can report that the citizens of Beijing give exactly 0% of a fuck about Obama’s victory. Things are very different in America of course. Based on the conversations I’ve had with my friends there, the mood is jubilant. If you’re looking for a visual, this seems about right…

Well November 4 is finally here. I’ve sent in my absentee ballot, hassled my unregistered friends, written a few respectful, pleading emails to my undecided relatives, I even attempted to bribe my on-the-fence Grandma with a free lunch at Pizzeria Uno. All there is left to do now is wait.

This is by far the most important election in my lifetime. The stakes have never been higher or the choice clearer. I’ll be watching the results from Beijing, where I’ll be working for the next couple months. In some ways I’d rather be back in the USofA tightly snuggled into a pro-Obama pocket somewhere, surrounded by kindred citizens in whose company I can celebrate/mourn tomorrow. But I spent most of this election cycle abroad, monitoring obsessively online so I guess it’s appropriate that I end it that way.

I’m not a religious man, but I may even pray tonight. In addition, I may have a nervous breakdown. Such are the wages of hope. But before I tune in and drop out, I want to post up one final artifact from the election. My friend Josh put me on to this and I actually consider it a powerful argument in defense of America’s much maligned democratic process. It’s a clip of students from Ron Clark Academy in ATL performing (with gusto) their song ‘You can vote however you like’ at a UN event. This was bit of a sensation in the US last week and I think it speaks volumes to the pride, energy, and (corny as it sounds) hope that the Obama campaign has inspired within a country that’s been running on empty. It also indisputably supports my theory (first arrived at on the dance floor at the opening of ‘Rio Cruzeiro’ last week) that human beings grow progressively less interesting as they age.

In case you’re wondering, the song is an interpolation of this song, which is ubiquitous in America at the moment. Enthusiasm trumps clarity at a few points there, but it’s worth reading the lyrics. Check em out after the jump…

Obama on the left
McCain on the right
We can talk politics all night
And you can vote however you like
You can vote however you like, yeah

Democratic left
Republican right
November 4th we decide
And you can vote however you like
You can vote however you like, yeah

(McCain supporters)
McCain is the man
Fought for us in Vietnam
You know if anyone can
Help our country he can
Taxes droppin low
Dont you know oils gonna flow
Drill it low
I’ll show our economy will grow

McCain’s the best candidate
With Palin as his running mate
They’ll fight for gun rights, pro life,
The conservative right
Our future is bright
Better economy in site
And all the world will feel our military might

(Obama supporters)
But McCain and Bush are real close right
They vote alike and keep it tight
Obama’s new, he’s younger too
The Middle Class he will help you
He’ll bring a change, he’s got the brains
McCain and Bush are just the same
You are to blame, Iraq’s a shame
Four more years would be insane

Lower your Taxes - you know Obama Won’t
PROTECT THE LOWER CLASS - You know McCain won’t!
Have enough experience - you know that they don’t
STOP GLOBAL WARMING - you know that you won’t

I want Obama
FORGET OBAMA
Stick with McCain and you’re going to have some drama
We need it
HE’LL BRING IT
He’ll be it
YOU’LL SEE IT
We’ll do it
GET TO IT
Let’s move it
DO IT!

Obama on the left
McCain on the right
We can talk politics all night
And you can vote however you like
You can vote however you like, yeah

Democratic left
Republican right
November 4th we decide
And you can vote however you like, I said
You can vote however you like, yeah

I’m talking big pipe lines, and low gas prices
Below $2.00 that would be nice

But to do it right we gotta start today
Finding renewable ways that are here to stay

I want Obama
FORGET OBAMA,
Stick wit McCain you gone have some drama
MORE WAR IN IRAQ
Iran he will attack
CAN’T BRING OUR TROOPS BACK
We gotta vote Barack!

Obama on the left
McCain on the right
We can talk politics all night
And you can vote however you like, I said
You can vote however you like, yeah

Democratic left
Republican right
November 4th we decide
And you can vote however you like, I said
You can vote however you like, yeah

This weekend Studs Terkel, a giant of American literature and a personal hero of mine, passed away at the ripe old age of 96. Over the course of his 6-decade career Studs played a lot of roles - from script writer to actor to host (radio then TV then radio again), but these titles don’t even provide elementary sense of the man. To quote from the Guardian’s obituary “to register him as “writer and broadcaster” would be like calling Louis Armstrong a “trumpeter” or the Empire State Building an “office block”. For many (including me), Studs Terkel is best described by the title given him by the writer Calvin Trillin - “America’s preeminent listener”.

Studs was an oral historian who over five decades interviewed more than 9000 people from all stations of life about life. He didn’t achieve literary fame until well into his fifties, when he released his first masterpiece Division Street, a transcript of 70 conversations he had with citizens from his adopted hometown of Chicago. Although over his career Studs interviewed many famous people - from Bertrand Russel to Bob Dylan to Marget Mead to Arnold Schwarzenegger - he spent most of his time in discussion with the Z-List, providing a venue for the voiceless and insisting on the importance of every person’s story.

And so, over the years, a 10-year-old immigrant girl found the courage to tell him “I may not live to grow up; my life was not promised to me.” Another interviewee described being black in America as “like wearing ill-fitting shoes”. A US serviceman, speaking of Hiroshima, recalled: “We were sitting on the pier, sharpening our bayonets, when Harry dropped that beautiful bomb. The greatest thing that ever happened. Anybody sitting at the pier at that time would have agreed.”

My favorite Turkel book is Working (I’m not alone in that feeling, he won a Pulitzer Prize for it). It’s full title ‘People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do’ sums up the basic premise. The book brings together all sorts of people - from Lovin’ Al the parking valet, to Dolores the waitress, to Babe Secoli the supermarket checker - and bonds them in a shared discussion of labor with its myriad irritants and salves. It was published in 1974, at the heart of what Tom Wolfe described as “the Me decade” and in that era of psychoanalysis and self-finding Studs work heroically denied the zeitgeist by insisting that the most important question to ask is not ‘Who am I?’ but ‘Who are you?’.

He was an interviewer of enormous curiosity and subtlety and an understanding (even loving) editor. In an age in which many journalists smother their subjects’ voices with their own simplifying personal commentary, the generosity and discretion shown by Terkel seem like more than virtues, they’re almost super powers. Particularly as we head toward ‘the worst economic crisis since the Depression’ I can’t help but feel the world is much, much poorer without him, but immensely richer for the body of work that he leaves behind.

One of the highlights of Studs radio career was ‘Born to Live’, a program of interviews, spoken word and musical responses to the nuclear age. Listen to it here

Here’s also a lot of good material at the site of WFMT, Studs radio station for over 40 years.

Not to mention at his site, studsterkel.org

Thank you ST.