v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

La Verdad

From La Monde Diplomatique, an article on Peru:

‘Peru is the new epicentre of the confrontation between the free market and communism; between freedom of expression and state-controlled media.’ So said Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori and the losing conservative candidate to the Peruvian presidency on 12 June, as she repeated her claim of election fraud. Deprived of presidential immunity, Fujimori is facing a possible 30 years in jail for allegedly laundering money from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company. ‘Before you, the international media, I have a chance to tell the world what this battle means for our country,’ she continued. ’It is not simply a battle between two candidates, myself Keiko Fujimori and Pedro Castillo. It is also a battle against a party that calls itself Marxist-Leninist and which wants to turn our country into a new Venezuela.’

After the legal coup d’état in Brazil in 2016 and the military intervention that toppled the Bolivian president Evo Morales in 2019, the right is attempting a new coup in Peru, in the name of the anti-communist struggle. Back in 1973, the Chilean general Augusto Pinochet was already justifying his putsch by saying: ‘I have always respected and admired democracy as a political concept. But despite its virtues, without suitable adaptation it has shown itself to be completely unable to oppose communism.’

In Latin America, the question still stands: ‘how do you build democracy with non-democrats?’

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Cafe Terra Storm Session

Last Monday night's Terra Session hosted by Clarence Ward III in Baltimore was hit with a hard storm that ended up changing the direction of the evening. In a good and magical ways.

The Repubs and Critical Race Theory

From TPM, how the Right views and portrays critical race theory:

One of those talking points appears to be an assertion made by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) who declared in the GOP response to President Joe Biden’s address to Congress in April that “America is not a racist country.” 

Thomas, who is a co-founder and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture at Columbia Law School, has praised critical race theory for providing an alternative to assigning individual blame or guilt in discussions of racism and instead provide a bird’s eye view on how institutions put race to work in ways that reproduce inequality.

He does not recognize his field of study in the right-wing caricature, and said assertions like Scott’s have stunted the possibilities presented by critical race theory.

“What the approach offered by critical race theory gives us the opportunity to do is to ask ourselves what it would mean to imagine ourselves as an anti-racist country and then to act on that imagination in ways that allow us to see and address the colorblind racism that continues to shape and distort our society,” Thomas said. 

Thomas said that discussions under the guise of the theory have perhaps more than anything provided a closer look into what he called efforts by Republican lawmakers to weaponize what people don’t know and promote fear.

“This is a political project that is about stoking racial fear and racial distrust to distract Americans from the failures of people like Governor DeSantis,” he said. (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had insisted during a Board of Education vote in his state last week that critical race theory would teach children “the country is rotten and that our institutions are illegitimate.”)

“It’s crucial to pay attention to the threadbare motivations behind this — which are political marketing, self promotion and monetizing racism,” Thomas said. “This is a case where they’re trying to make money by selling racism under the guise of these anti-CRT initiatives.” 

While some GOP lawmakers who have cast critical race theory as liberal attempt to undermine American institutions, Thomas said it is in fact their efforts that put at risk some of the nation’s core values.

“I don’t think telling the truth has ever undermined American institutions,” Thomas said. “Critical race theory is inviting the country to participate in a conversation that the founders would very much recognize as being at the heart of our aspirations as a democratic republic. That’s the legacy they bequeathed to us.” 

Terra Cafe Jams

About a month ago I saw a video from Terra Cafe in Baltimore where about 8 different horn players-most from Baltimore or DC-were playing post-bop tunes in a lively, colorful setting and with the audience chiming in. I couldn't believe this was happening and I did not know it existed. I asked several musician friends and they all confirmed that the sessions were on Monday night and were hosted and led by Clarence Ward III, a local musician with a solid reputation who in my ignorance had not heard as of abouta month ago. I went and sat close up on the side where I could get a good look at the players-there was natural light as the patio structure had a plastic roof to let daylight in. But as it gets dark the light sources change and things get interesting. The music and the jam sessions were really exciting as all players who were participating are trying to build their improvising skills which on many are fairly advanced. The place is like a live workshop where artist experiment and the audience is in tune enough to be able to appreciate it and provide the necessary energy to keep building things on. On top of that many musicians had not played in front of a live audience for over a year. It has been quite an experience. I have had the luxury to build on my basic photography skills and its been productive. Clarence is an excellent leader and host and it feels like I've known for much longer than 5 weeks.

Here are some highlights from the first session I attended on May 10, 2021:

Vallejo Nocturno 2021 Copyright - Terra Cafe Session 5.10.21

Taming of the New World

 

From The Guardian, a review of the most excellent and profound film Zama by Lucrecia Martel:

orror and despair hover just out of the frame, or below the surface, or behind the curtain, of Lucrecia Martel’s mysterious and dreamlike movie Zama. It’s a film that returns Martel to her themes of guilt, sex and shame – her first picture, in fact, since the enigmatic The Headless Woman 10 years ago. But Zama, with its eerie andante tempo and period setting, gives her ideas a new exalted platform, a new theatrical and formal grandeur.

It’s the story of Diego de Zama, an 18th-century administrator in the service of imperial Spain, whose courageous exploits in battle long ago won him a sinecure as a magistrate in the brutally remote outpost of what is now Asunción, on the Paraguay River. Now he waits endlessly, frantically, desperately for news of the more glamorous and prestigious posting he once assumed would quickly follow and that would reunite him with his wife and children, left behind years before in Buenos Aires.

Zama is played by Daniel Giménez Cacho with a perplexed hauteur, like a caged eagle. He is utterly alone, with a mediocre stipend, and nothing to do but cultivate a gloomy sexual fascination with the local women and capricious white aristocratic ladies of his own circle; his sexual brooding is a kind of anaesthetic for the panic that would otherwise overwhelm him. Zama must also participate – jadedly, diffidently – in the official duties of state violence and racism: enforcing the enslavement of the indigenous peoples. As an Americano – that is, someone born in the Americas and not Spain – Zama suspects that he himself is regarded as a second-rater in the service. Is this why he has been forgotten, left behind in this burning swamp? He doesn’t know, and has no way of finding out.

Zama is played by Daniel Giménez Cacho with a perplexed hauteur, like a caged eagle. He is utterly alone, with a mediocre stipend, and nothing to do but cultivate a gloomy sexual fascination with the local women and capricious white aristocratic ladies of his own circle; his sexual brooding is a kind of anaesthetic for the panic that would otherwise overwhelm him. Zama must also participate – jadedly, diffidently – in the official duties of state violence and racism: enforcing the enslavement of the indigenous peoples. As an Americano – that is, someone born in the Americas and not Spain – Zama suspects that he himself is regarded as a second-rater in the service. Is this why he has been forgotten, left behind in this burning swamp? He doesn’t know, and has no way of finding out.It’s a waking nightmare that is part existential paralysis, part erotic reverie. Martel has adapted the 1956 novel by the Argentinian author Antonio di Benedetto, who has been rediscovered in the English-speaking world since Esther Allen published her translation for the NYRB Classics edition in 2000, with a fascinating introduction wondering whether the book’s languorous evocation of official cruelty foreshadowed Di Benedetto’s own imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Argentinian junta 20 years later, in the 70s.

Ptah El Daoud, A Masterpiece

From Grammy Awards, an excellent article on one of my favorite albums of all time by Alice Coltrane: 

By all accounts, Coltrane conceived Ptah, The El Daoud, and its predecessors, A Monastic Trio(opens in a new tab) (1968) and Huntington Ashram Monastery(opens in a new tab) (1969), during a period of grief and spiritual evolution. In the years after her husband, John, died of liver cancer in 1967, she experienced physical, mental and metaphysical phenomena, as documented in her 1977 spiritual memoir, "Monument Eternal." 

"Sometimes, my heartbeat shifted to the right side of my body. All of the hair on my head would stand on end as if it were electrically charged," Coltrane wrote, citing the "extensive mental and physical austerities" she underwent during this time.

As evidenced by the track titles from this period, like "Lord Help Me To Be(opens in a new tab)" and "IHS(opens in a new tab)" (or, "I Have Suffered"), she interfaced with her traumas and pushed past them into a transcendent space. "My meaning here was to express and bring out a feeling of purification," Coltrane stated in Leonard Feather's liner notes to Ptah, The El Daoud. "Sometimes on Earth, we don't have to wait for death to go through a sort of purging, a purification."

"A lot of those tracks [on A Monastic Trio], like 'I Want to See You(opens in a new tab)' and 'Gospel Trane(opens in a new tab),' I think of them as mourning because she'd suffered that loss," harpist Brandee Younger tells GRAMMY.com. "And by the time we get to Huntington Ashram Monastery, you know, that title speaks volumes. So then we have Ptah, The El Daoud: 'This is my next phase, and it's more than what you got before.'"

"You know what I think is cool about this album, but also [about] just her in general?" pianist Cat Toren asks GRAMMY.com. "She had four young kids, and she had lost the love of her life. I think that's huge. It speaks to her power as a woman, to go forth no matter the adversity of what else is going on in her life. I would be interested to know her support network and how she was able to produce this incredible work under such challenging conditions."

Vijay Iyer, a pianist, composer and Harvard professor, is careful to note that Coltrane's spiritual quest was more far-reaching than her husband's loss. "She was in public life from 1960 until [her death in] 2007, and for four of those years, she was married to John Coltrane," he says. "Yes, she was grieving, but there was something else she went through in those years that was the beginning of a much larger transformation. Not to reduce her role in the family or her relationship to [John] or anything like that, but she was on her own journey, too."

"When [John] passed, it's not just his passing; it's the combination of his passing, plus mothering, plus careering, plus the world is in unrest," Younger says. "I feel it would be impossible not to be affected by that combination of factors. In the big picture, she went through a serious transition, and there's no question about that because it's written in the book."

"I mean, think about it," she adds. "That happened in that house, where she recorded that record. How could one not affect the other?"

As with A Monastic Trio and Huntington Ashram Monastery, Alice Coltrane recorded Ptah, The El Daoud in the basement of her ranch-style house at 247 Candlewood Path in Dix Hills on Long Island, New York, which she and John shared from 1964 until his death; she remained there until 1973. Tenor saxophonists and flutists Joe Henderson and Pharoah Sanders, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Ben Riley accompanied her on the recording.

"When I hear that record, the first thing I hear is the room," saxophonist-clarinetist Jeff Lederer tells GRAMMY.com, describing the rich, boomy atmosphere of Ptah, The El Daoud as "comforting." "It's not a [Rudy] Van Gelder sound or anything, but you can feel [like], 'Wow! She was making this record in her house.' It's not the kind of sound you'd expect."

In that regard, Steve Holtje, a keyboardist, writer and the manager and producer of the long-running, Bernard Stollman-founded label, ESP-Disk'(opens in a new tab), views Ptah as something of a landmark. 

"It's not the first time anybody ever did this—it's not even the first time she did it—but I have a certain fondness of placing this album in the lineage of DIY recording," he says. "It happens that Ed Michel at [jazz label] Impulse! got the producer credit on this, but I'm not sure how much a producer he was in terms of influencing the music." 

"Was she a Billie Eilish in the making?" Ashley Kahn, the author of "A Love Supreme: The Story Of John Coltrane's Signature Album(opens in a new tab)" and "The House That Trane Built: The Story Of Impulse Records(opens in a new tab)," asks GRAMMY.com. "The self-produced, self-sufficient musician idea has been around for many, many years and expressed in many different ways." 

"It's a Black female artist taking control of her music," Holtje states. "That's really important."

"It may be that that sensibility was in the air at that time," Iyer adds. "A sense of self-determination to make this work for you on your terms, rather than a transaction with a corporation, which doesn't necessarily have your best interests at heart. Particularly for Black artists in the 1960s and '70s, that was a movement."

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