If you had to name the most influential drummer in contemporary music, who would you pick? If you’re a rock fan, you might go with Ringo Starr, John Bonham, or Keith Moon. A jazz fan might choose Max Roach, Elvin Jones, or Tony Williams. You probably wouldn’t think to name Gregory Cylvester Coleman. But he’s …
Category Archives: Politics
Jay-Z and Alan Lomax
Why does folk music collector Alan Lomax have a copyright interest in “Takeover” by Jay-Z? I learned the answer from Creative License: The Law And Culture Of Digital Sampling by Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola. It’s a companion book to the invaluable documentary Copyright Criminals. The story of Jay-Z and Alan Lomax isn’t quite as …
Reggie Watts
Back in June we went to see the incomparable Reggie Watts perform at Central Park Summerstage. I think Reggie is one of the most exciting artists of our time, but it’s difficult to verbalize exactly what he does. His performances combine improvisational music and absurdist standup comedy into a free-associative yet oddly coherent and impactful …
How can you give an effective talk on a depressing topic without depressing your audience?
Here’s what works for me. Focus on solutions. What immediate steps can people take right now? What are bigger steps that governments and corporations need to take, and what can we do to push them in the right direction? Don’t judge. Assigning blame is gratifying but counterproductive; it heightens tensions and closes minds. Instead, take …
Interviewing Leo Ferguson
My friend and sometime musical collaborater Leo Ferguson is releasing an album of his adventurous jazz compositions and arrangements. Leo Ferguson Ensemble (2011) by Leo Ferguson As part of the album’s extended liner notes, I interviewed Leo on May 5, 2011. Here’s an edited transcript; you can also hear the audio on Leo’s site.
Bach and Paul Simon
Since it was Easter yesterday, Anna wanted to listen to Bach’s St Matthew Passion while we did stuff around the house. A certain passage grabbed my ear, a hymn called “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” — in English, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.” This beautiful tune was immediately familiar to me, but I couldn’t …
Facebook and multiple identites
Here’s an alarming Mark Zuckerberg quote from The Facebook Effect by David Kirpatrick: You have one identity… The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly… Having two identities for yourself is an example of …
The Facebook Effect
Last night I caught a lecture by David Kirkpatrick on his book The Facebook Effect. This post is going to be about Kirkpatrick’s discussion of the book, not the book itself, since I just got it last night and haven’t started reading it yet. But his talk certainly conveyed the flavor. Kirkpatrick had one significant …
White people and hip-hop
A little while back I went to a screening and discussion at NYU of Blacking Up: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity, a documentary about the wigger phenomenon by Robert Clift. I’m a very white person who has been heavily involved with “black” music over the years, like for example rapping an Ice Cube song …
Blues for the Jews
December is always a complex month for half-Jewish mutts like me. When pressured to self-identify, I usually just go with “Jewish” for the sake of simplicity, but this is in spite of not having being bar mitzvahed, not knowing any Hebrew, having only the vaguest idea what all the holidays and rituals mean, and having …