The sixties in America were uncertain. Civil unrest and the threat of nuclear annihilation made for a rough time. However, out of the sixties, we got a lot of great things. Space travel, computers. Civil rights. So much music!
The past decade and change has also been a time of great uncertainty. Terroists, financial crises, dissatisfaction with the government. To complete the analogy, we have yielded pervasive mobile phones, better connectedness through social networks, and amazing logistical feats. Tons of great storytelling through television and books!
That said, what is our time's moonshot, our time's movement for civil rights. Do we even have the mettle for this anymore? I hope so. The part of me that likes big, nasty, interconnected problems would love to tackle something that is even a hundredth of the complexity of a moonshot.
Oliver Stone's Untold History of America aims to illuminate the ways in which we haven't understood our presidents and generals over the past seventy-five years. It is focused entirely on war and foreign policy, seeking to explain the events that led to the Cold War and how the major events of the Cold War happened. It is at times sensational, casting great assertions about what a president, senator, or general was really trying to do. Sometimes it is more modest, simply pointing out actions and consequences.
If there's a central thesis of the series so far, it's that power (i.e. the executive branch) loves power and has, over the past several decades, learned to use the military and quasi-military segments of the government to achieve great power abroad. While it's true that the president has little power to rule-by-decree domestically, the extent to which the president can unilaterally make policy decisions and implement them, especially when aligned with the interests of military leaders, is pretty astonishing. The degree to which the leaders of the military have sometimes been war-hungry and oblivious to the ramifications of that hunger is also pretty surprising.
Note: you probably don't want to watch this show if you can't take a fair share of disappointing news. That's why I like to call it "Oliver Stone's Downer Hour."
Charles Mingus was a jazz composer and bassist, one of the best known (at least, amongst musicians) of both sorts. There's a lot to say about Mingus music, but I want to highlight my favorite thing about his music: the shape it often takes.
Let's take "Better Git Hit In Your Soul" as an example. It starts with the sounds of a band warming up. Almost imperceptibly, the song starts. The melody is picked up by one, two, three instruments, then the whole band. The soundscape has gracefully transitioned from a jam to a structured song.
The melody goes on for a bit, and then we come to the thing that comes after the melody in jazz: the solos. A few of the musicians get their turn to show off their improvisational and technical skills. The rhythm section plays on, the rest of the band plays chord hits to keep things interesting.
After this we return to the melody, the hook. Its played through a couple times. After a few plays through, the band seems to disband. One, then two, then multiple instruments are sort of playing their own thing. Out of that, there's one final note in unison and the song is over.
All of this is a lot of words to describe a structure common in Mingus' music: alternating between order and chaos. I don't know of any other composers that use this spectrum in their music. It is so delightful to recognize and listen to.
Have a fun week!
Your internet friend,
~akk