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Best Music of 2021- Leo Genovese

 

As sometimes does an artist escapes your notice and years down the line you realize that you missed something quite important. Genovese is that person. Already with a solid resume several excellent albums of his have come out in the last 18 months that have caught my attention for their musicality and sophistication. Check anything out by this incredibly interesting musician who also manages to play on a number of other peoples musical projects.

From Downbeat:

Since moving from his native Argentina to the States to study in 2001, keyboardist Leo Genovese has been an inveterate collaborator, most famously working in a band led by bassist Esperanza Spalding, while also working with the likes of Tom Rainey, Oscar Feldman and Jason Palmer. He’s made a couple of recordings as a leader, too. But this new trio grouping with bassist Mariano Otero and drummer Sergio Verdinelli—old chums from his homeland who’ve played with major South American pop-rock stars in addition to extensive work in jazz—is firmly in the collective mode. Otero wrote all but two of the compositions here, but the real focus is the finely tuned rapport among the players, who routinely ratchet up and resolve tension like it’s the most enjoyable gambit possible.

On Genovese’s “Blues,” the trio plays with rhythm like a cat does a helpless mouse. Over a sleek yet herky-jerk groove—with a walking bass line quickly morphing into a shadow rhythm to the fractured swing of the drums—Genovese unspools an infectious soul-jazz feel. “3 Grooves,” one of several performances spiked by the pianist’s Monk-ish stabs, almost feels like a video game, with new settings emerging as if they were on a conveyor belt, forcing the musicians to adapt. The impressionistic exploration of “El Mar” might seem like a Debussy homage, but as the piece develops, it cuts off abruptly—intentionally—as if the tape ran out, generating a different kind of tension. The entire session conveys an attractive looseness in which even the most elegant themes are grist for the improvisational mill. There’s a trust and conviviality here that allows the musicians to pull against the grain, alter the rhythmic thrust and snap back into place.

From Australian Jazz an interview with Leo:

How would you describe your music to someone not familiar with it?

My music is influenced by everything that influences me and my life, [from the] things I learnt on my trips around the world. I grew up in Argentina, so many folkloric elements can be felt in my songs.

When did you discover your own voice as an artist?

When I learnt how to really listen. when I was comfortable being in silence for a long time. When I learnt to accept and to not judge the music.

Is it true that you have disowned your first albums? Why?

Music comes and goes. [It] is not property, it doesn’t have an owner. It is air moving. It is magic, it is medicine. Even if you compose something, it is not yours, it is patrimony of every human. I know the law works different, but the cosmic law is another thing.

What has your trajectory in music been so far?

I have been playing with lots of different bands in NYC and around the world, [with musicians coming] from lots of different backgrounds and musical styles. This year I have already travelled to all the continents on the planet. It’s a blessing to be able to discover the world doing what you love. The challenge is always to stay out of the way and serve the music.

What does it mean, being an Argentinian in the jazz world today? How has your identity shaped your life as an artist?

I have a deep connection with Argentinian music, poetry and other art forms. I think I became more Argentinian when I left the country and I rediscover the beauty of the land, the music and peoples traditions and their untold stories.

Is improvisation a life skill?

Life is improvised. Everybody does it on a daily basis, we are just not fully aware all the time.

Who are your heroes?

The people who give everything in what they do. The people who never give up. The people who challenge everybody with their art. There are too many names to mention.

How did you get into jazz?

I heard some cassettes in my hometown, Venado Tuerto, Argentina. I didn’t understand, I still don’t understand, but I followed a dream and here I am.

Which tune best describes your current state of mind?

I don’t know. The mind is infinite, tunes tend to start and end. I can’t pick one right now, but the spirit of Bud Powell is always there to help.

From Nate Chinen at the NYT:

Among the myriad ways that a youngish jazz musician can signal his or her readiness as a solo artist, a few, at a glance, might seem contradictory. Start with the shedding of historical emulation or the unabashed embrace of it: each a good option, if handled well. Consider, too, an air of self-sufficiency versus a spirit of communion. Then there are the various expressions of leadership initiative, from take charge to anything goes.

“Seeds” is technically the third album by Leo Genovese, a 34-year-old Argentine pianist, but it has the momentous urgency of a debut — and, in its own way, meets every qualification noted above. Mr. Genovese, whose most prominent work up to now has been with the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding, brings opposing forces into harmony. That the album bounces all over the place doesn’t feel like a problem for him.

Ms. Spalding appears on “Seeds,” but only on vocals, and on fewer than half of the tracks. The album’s core personnel, sometimes known as the Chromatic Gauchos, consists of another virtuoso peer, the saxophonist Dan Blake, and a pair of wise elders, the bassist John Lockwood and the drummer Bob Gullotti.

The album, which Mr. Genovese produced himself, was recorded almost entirely in a day, though it doesn’t sound like a rush job: its range and sprawl feel well considered. Several tunes here, especially “Father of Spectralism” and “Let’s Get High,” recall the enlightened swagger of Keith Jarrett’s so-called American quartet of the 1970s. “Posterior Mode” suggests McCoy Tyner’s late-1960s quartet with Joe Henderson. “Letter From Wayne” is a homage to Wayne Shorter, whose compositional signature has rarely been forged with such loving precision.

Mr. Genovese doesn’t get lost in these evocations, if only because he has such an untroubled sense of self. Playing acoustic and Fender Rhodes pianos, Hammond and Farfisa organs, and occasionally the melodica or Melodian — none of which he approaches as a lark — he exudes a busy composure. And by refusing to privilege one historical style over another, he strengthens his claim as a polyglot. The only cover is a song by the Argentine folk hero Atahualpa Yupanqui, offered as a solo piano hymn.

Another piece that incorporates Latin American folkloric elements is “Portuguese Mirror,” with lyrics by Ms. Spalding, and a guest turn by the Brazilian guitarist Ricardo Vogt. It seems a likely highlight of Mr. Genovese’s concert on Wednesday at Subculture in NoHo, which will feature those collaborators, as well as J. P. Jofre on bandonéon, and Brian Landrus on bass saxophone. Whatever “Seeds” represents, we clearly haven’t heard the end of it.

Tom Wood Interview

From Paper Journal, interview with photographer Tom Wood:

When you were shooting most of your work, were you working at the time? How did you spend your days?

Up until 1998 I used to teach two days a week, around the corner from where I lived, and five days a week I used to take photographs. I had just enough money to live simply.

I did photography as well and what I like about your work is the aspect that it’s close to home. A lot of photographers tend to find stuff in other places and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I really like that element of finding interesting things close to home and being close to the people and the characters around you.

The Photie Man book was called that because that’s what the kids used to call me. I shot video all my life as well, so when I took my kids to the park with the video camera and I used to video them, as well as what was going on in the park, you could see peoples relationship with me, it was very clear. One time I left the video recorder in the park and these three lads bought it back to me.

Really! Well I guess there’s a trust there, they’re familiar with you…

That’s right. I used to give everyone pictures. There’s a funny story, about some of the more toughish lads I used to photograph. One of the them, I guess he was the leader of the gang; actually there’s a picture in the book, they were part of the ‘New Brighton Outlaws’ – anyway, they were sitting on top of a car and some girls were walking by and they just turned around and were looking at them. One of these lads used to like me, you know, I used to go round his house and have a coffee and stuff and he would sit there and smoke a joint, a normal guy you know? So this lad rode a scooter and one day he went to work early in the morning and where he lived was very quiet and it was 5 o’clock in the morning. He was at an intersection and went through the red light and he was killed. So there’s a picture of him in Photie Man, leading a gang of lads towards this girl infront of the Waltzer, I’m not sure if you know that picture; he’s from there, Mark, and I had that in the Last Resort exhibition at the Open Eye, a joint show with Martin Parr back in 1985; a very famous show from which Martin kind of made his career on. So that picture was on the wall and it was stolen! And guess what? It’s on the wall of Mark’s mother living room! You know, other people that you’d photograph and you’d see them 10 years later and they’re getting married and asking me to take their pictures. So it’s like an exchange, you know? They tolerate me and I try to give something back.

Do you think it’s changed much – I mean, nowadays there’s a lot more suspicion of people. Do you think if you were to be doing this now, you’d have the same response from the community?

I just don’t know, I mean I still photograph people, I still look at people but not as much. In those days you were fed up with kids pestering you, you used to take someone’s photo just to shut them up. Believe it or not in the early days, people used to call me David because the only photographer that people knew was David Bailey. And then I got the Photie Man tag… but as I said, you used to photograph someone just to shut them up. So six months later you’d make a print and you’d have a big box of prints always there by the door, so you’d see someone and tell them to go round the house to pick up a print.

It’s really nice, that element of your work. I mean people think you take a photograph and you’re taking something from someone else but you’re actually giving them something and there is a real exchange going on in your work. What is it about you as a character that makes you able to do that?

I just felt that I never had the right to exploit them in any way. On the cover of Looking for Love, it was my first book (in 1988), it was about nightclubbing. So the two girls on the front cover saw themselves in the book shop and they thought I was making loads of money and they came around to the house; I showed them the accounts and how I was making a loss every year, so I gave them a print and they were happy, you know?

When I went to the women’s market every Saturday morning for all those years, and I finally got a book out called People, there were a couple of pictures in there from the market. The market traders bought a couple of books off me to help me along, cause they were pleased. I would never sell any of the pictures for advertising, I mean I was offered lots of money for some of the nightclub pictures… it wasn’t easy walking down the Dock road and taking those pictures; I felt guilty anyway, I didn’t want to exploit the people… those doing car boot sales selling pornographic tapes; I didn’t know that. One week I’m not there and they’re raided by Trading Standards. So they’d see me the next week and they think I’m connected with the raid.

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Best Music of 2021- Miguel Zenon & Luis Perdomo

 

An album dripping in personal history for anyone of Latin descent. These boleros are of late nights with your partner or sitting with the family and getting down to that portion of the reunion when you put these legendary original songs on the turntable. Caribbean memories for me. Zenon and Perdomo are masters at squeezing all the meaning out of these classics.

From The Art Fuse:

As I write, it is alto saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón’s 44th birthday. He’s a MacArthur Fellow, has won a Guggenheim and, more important, has earned the admiration of his peers and a wide listening audience. Often drawn from his Puerto Rican heritage, his repertoire is unique, his writing wide-ranging. He has arranged Puerto Rican songs for orchestra, (on Alma Adentro) and written for alto saxophone and string quartet (on Sonero). He’s a founding member of the SF Jazz Collective and is currently working on a disc dedicated to the music of Ornette Coleman (Law Years: The Music of Ornette Coleman). I think that El Arte del Bolero — its bare-faced duets featuring the saxophonist with his longtime colleague, pianist Luis Perdomo — is in its way just as ambitious as the Coleman homage. When the touching title melody on Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook is played, it seems to be reaching for something just out of reach, surrounded by a large orchestra punctuated by drums and cymbals. The large ensemble approach drives Zenón toward ever more effectively impassioned statements. On his new collection, which was recorded as a concert on September 28, Zenón begins “Alma Adentro” on his own and at a slightly slower tempo. He sounds exposed, even when Perdomo comes in quietly behind him.

In his notes to El Arte del Bolero, Zenón explains his affection for “Alma Adentro”: “Sylvia Rexach, the composer of this piece, is a favorite of my mother’s, and I was exposed to her music as a young child. This is a song that always brings back feelings of longing and deep nostalgia, a yearning for things no longer there.”  It seems that Puerto Rican songs, recorded by singers like Rexach, Benny Moré, and Cheo Feliciano, have a special meaning to Zenón and perhaps to his generation. About this recording, he says “we chose compositions from the Bolero era that we could just play right away, without giving it a second thought: songs from the times of our parents and grandparents…. When we play these songs, we can hear the lyrics in the back of our minds — something that provides a very deep connection, one that is hard to replicate in any other situation. It really is almost beyond familiar. These songs are part of us.”

From Lament for a Straight Line:

You can be seduced by the lines an improviser plays, or you can be seduced by the sound of their instrument itself. Virtuosity has marked saxophonist Miguel Zenón’s work for the last two decades – the Puerto Rico native with the genius grant, Guggenheims and Grammy noms in his pocket has sounded like a prodigy from the get-go. Back in 2002, the solos on his first album made critics’ jaws drop; no one has ever questioned his skills as a soloist. 

Those talents are front and center on this duet with longtime piano partner Luis Perdomo, but it’s the sound of Zenón’s horn that has made me continually return to this record. Working through a book of poignant boleros (a trad Latin form with folkish origins that’s occasionally been deemed “ballads with black beans on the side”), Zenón dedicates himself to the art of expression. Key to that tack is his instrument’s timbre. As ballads by Benny Moré, Aresnio Rodriguez and Bobby Capo float by with heart on sleeve, Zenón’s luminescence amplifies their romance. Aching trills, sentimental phrases, motifs that blow kiss after kiss – recorded live at New York’s Jazz Gallery last fall, the duo captures a warmth that has always been hinted at in the saxophonist’s work, but never presented so revealingly. Here, his playing is prettier than ever; each of his notes feels like it’s being vocalized. This is family music, tunes hummed and sung and played on guitars and parlor pianos by abuelas and tíos during informal family gatherings. In the liner notes, Zenón calls the tunes “beyond familiar.” Live with El Arte Del Bolero for a stretch, and they’ll become the same for you.

From Ask Audio:

Zenon writes in the liner notes to the album: “As an instrumentalist, I spend a lot of my time working on making the saxophone an extension of my creative process. This process is always filtered through interpretation and expressiveness, and more often than not I find myself looking up to some of my favorite singers (people like Ismael Rivera, Cheo Feliciano and Andy Montañez) as sources of inspiration. In their individual voices I can hear a reflection of their unique personalities, all manifested at the highest level through their interpretation of songs. These melodies become vehicles for their creativity—a canvas on which they’ll portray their feelings and states of mind.”

These six selections are most familiar to both players, akin to doing an album of jazz standards but instead these are compositions from the Bolero era that they could just play right away, songs handed down from generations as essential to their development as the music of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, or Thelonious Monk, but perhaps even more familiar. The artists claim that they hear the lyrics in these tunes as they play them, that they are as natural as breathing or hopping on that bicycle one hasn’t ridden in several years. It all comes back right away. Zenon again comments, “We recorded this music as a live show, all in one take, without much preparation other than discussing tonalities and some basic elements on form. We were more than pleasantly surprised with the results and decided that they deserved to be shared. There is nothing like making music with someone else, finding a common language we can grab onto and then just going and exploring that together. We hope this comes across here, and that you enjoy the music.”  Th music is gorgeously relaxed and even for those unfamiliar with the Bolero form, it should evoke a similar mood as Coltrane’s Ballads or Charlie Parker’s Charlie Parker with Strings.  Perdomo’s sensitive, delicate playing is the perfect accompaniment for Zenon’s floating, ever sweet lyricism.

Here’s a brief synopsis of each selection.  “Como Fue” was popularized by the great Benny Moré and has long become a Latin-American standard. Although the duo usually plays it in the key of Eb, they decided to play it in Db here, mainly inspired by a recent immersion into the music of Billy Strayhorn. “Alma Adentro” was previously recorded with a larger ensemble on a 2012 album of the same name. Sylvia Rexach, the composer of this piece, is a favorite of Zenon’s mother that he was exposed to as a young child and thereby brings back feelings of longing and deep nostalgia.  “Ese Hastío” owes to Ray Barreto who recorded this under the title of “Piensa En Mi” on his legendary 1979 album Rican-Struction. Zenon had never played the song before, but Perdomo suggested it since he had recorded the piece as an instrumental on his album Pathways.

“La Vida Es Un Sueño” was written by Cuban Arsenio Rodriguez, a revolutionary artist who changed the course of Latin-American music forever. Blinded by a tragic accident as a child, Arsenio moved to the United States later in life in hope that doctors there could find a cure to his condition. Legend has it that, shortly after finding out from his doctors that this would not be the case, he wrote this song. The last verse says it all: “La realidad es nacer y morir / Porque llenarnos de tanta ansiedad / Todo no es mas que un eterno sufrir / El mundo esta hecho de infelicidad.” (“Reality is to be born and die / Because to fill us with so much anxiety / Everything is but an eternal suffering / The world is made of unhappiness.

Best Music of 2021- Kimbrough

Pianist, composer, teacher Frank Kimbrough died last year and due to the Covid frenzy I missed his passing and felt bad I did not do anything to mark the passing of this impactful musician. His colleagues and students, however, were a step ahead and they put this album full of music for him and his memory. He will grow in stature as time goes by.

From the NYTimes:

A couple of months ago, as the long, lean era of pandemic stillness was just beginning to open to new possibilities, some of the finest jazz musicians in New York could be found shuffling in and out of a Lower East Side recording studio as if through a revolving door. At one point, several of them — including the saxophonist Donny McCaslin, the trumpeter Ron Horton and the pianist Craig Taborn — delved into a wistful composition titled “Regeneration,” giving it all the supple dynamism of a banner rippling in the breeze.

Along one wall of the studio was a framed photograph of the song’s composer, the pianist Frank Kimbrough, who died suddenly at the end of last year, at 64. His sly smile in the portrait, conveying a benevolent skepticism, felt well suited to the project underway: an elaborate tribute featuring nearly 60 of his pieces interpreted by more than 65 of his associates, including former students and distinguished peers. Amounting to more than five and a half hours of music, this ambitious release is available on Friday digitally and on streaming services from Newvelle Records, which usually focuses exclusively on premium vinyl.

Within a musical landscape defined by relationships, Kimbrough operated as both a connector and an outlier. “He just had a 360 view of things, and a completely open mind on the scene,” said the alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, who took part in the sessions. “The folks who knew him really loved him,” he added, “but even among musicians, there are a lot of people who don’t know his name.”

A grand gesture on behalf of an underrecognized figure, “Kimbrough” looks from one angle like the culmination of a lifetime’s accumulated good will. As a pianist, Kimbrough was prolific and widely admired but best known for a lasting tenure with the Maria Schneider Orchestra; his precise, perceptive accompaniment helped shape that ensemble’s expressive sound, up to and including “Data Lords,” the most critically acclaimed jazz album of 2020. As an educator, Kimbrough left behind a deep legacy of mentorship, most recently in the prestigious Jazz Studies program at the Juilliard School. All About Jazz

 

From All About Jazz remembrances from his bandmates and students, here is one of many:

It's difficult to put into words what Frank Kimbrough meant to me. When we first met in 1990, I was new to the scene and struggling to connect with other musicians. Introduced to each other by a drummer whom we each barely knew, we hit it off immediately, both socially and musically. This began a period of music-making and friendship that stretched over three decades.

In the early years, we played duo gigs around town (often at a restaurant in New York City's theater district called Sophia's), where we worked out hundreds of tunes by artists such as Herbie Nichols, Thelonious Monk, Andrew Hill, Carla Bley, Annette Peacock, and Hampton Hawes. We also brought in our own tunes to try out.

At that time, I was teaching guitar lessons to children at a music school in the East Village. Frank and I regularly got together there with other musicians to work on new music. Anyone was welcome, as long as they brought in something new to play. Out of these early sessions, the idea for forming the Jazz Composers Collective, our non-profit presenting and commissioning organization that ran from 1992 to 2005, began to take shape.

When I first pitched the idea to Frank of formalizing our sessions into something more structured, his initial response was, "I'm not really a joiner." He was fiercely independent by nature—a free thinker who was not a fan of anything that even remotely smacked of "institutionalism." But as we got the Collective up and running, presenting concerts, publishing our newsletter, workshopping and premiering new works, and building a community around original music, Frank turned out to be most engaged and committed. He had zero tolerance for bullshit, but he recognized the benefits of organizing if it was done right. This is one of the things I loved about him. Once he was in, he was in. His long-running affiliations with The Maria Schneider Big Band and The Juilliard School reflect a similar, deep commitment.

Frank had a demeanor at times that might be described by someone who didn't know him as gruff. But underneath, Frank was one of the most giving musicians I've ever known. It's hard to explain to people who don't play improvised music what it means to play with a giving musician. Improvising music is very much like having a conversation. It always feels good when the person you're speaking with is listening to you and is hearing what you're saying. They can show they are doing this by acknowledging you with simple nods or feedback. It's even more meaningful when they take in what you said, consider it, and respond with a new thought that's a product of your ideas and theirs. This sets up a deeper kind of conversation, where beliefs and opinions are shaped, and minds are changed. It leads to an understanding that transcends words. This happened thousands of times over the many years that we played together—multiple moments of in depth communication. I know many musicians who enjoyed a similar experience playing with Frank. 

Frank Kimbrough's Last Solo Recording.

 

Seizure, Exhaustion and Partial Abandonment

 

George Mombiot on our current predicament with a system run by very rich people:

Whenever there’s a leak of documents from the remote islands and obscure jurisdictions where rich people hide their money, like this week’s release of the Pandora papers, we ask ourselves how such things could happen. How did we end up with a global system that enables great wealth to be transferred offshore, untaxed and hidden from public view? Politicians condemn it as “the unacceptable face of capitalism”. But it’s not. It’s the face of capitalism.

Capitalism was arguably born on a remote island. A few decades after the Portuguese colonised Madeira, in 1420, they developed a system that differed in some respects from anything that had gone before. By felling the forests after which they named the island (madeira is Portuguese for wood), they created, in this uninhabited sphere, a blank slate – a terra nullius – in which a new economy could be built. Financed by bankers in Genoa and Flanders, they transported slaves from Africa to plant and process sugar. They developed an economy in which land, labour and money lost their prior social meaning and became tradable commodities.

As the geographer Jason Moore points out in the journal Review, a small amount of capital could be used, in these circumstances, to grab a vast amount of natural wealth. On Madeira’s rich soil, using the abundant wood as fuel, slave labour achieved a previously unimaginable productivity. In the 1470s, this tiny island became the world’s biggest producer of sugar.

Madeira’s economy had another characteristic, that also distinguished it from what had gone before: the astonishing speed with which it worked through the island’s natural wealth. Sugar production peaked in 1506. By 1525, it had fallen by almost 80%. The major reason, Moore believes, was the exhaustion of accessible supplies of wood: Madeira ran out of madeira. Sixty kilogrammes of wood were needed to refine one kilogramme of sugar. As wood had to be cut from ever steeper and more remote parts of the island, more slave labour was needed to produce the same amount of sugar. In other words, the productivity of labour collapsed, falling roughly fourfold in 20 years. Around the same time, the forest clearing drove several endemic species to extinction.

In what was to become the classic boom-bust-quit cycle of capitalism, the Portuguese shifted their capital to new frontiers: establishing sugar plantations first on São Tomé, then in Brazil, then in the Caribbean, in each case depleting resources before moving on. As Moore points out, the seizure, exhaustion and partial abandonment of new geographical frontiers is central to the model of accumulation we call capitalism. Ecological and productivity crises like Madeira’s are not perverse outcomes of the system. They are the system.

Madeira soon moved on to other commodities, principally wine. It should come as no surprise that the island is now accused of functioning as a tax haven, and was mentioned in this week’s reporting of the Pandora papers. What else is an ecologically-exhausted island, whose economy depended on looting, to do?

Privitazation of Hope

 

From Ian Walsh some truthful riffing on Capitalism:

The UK is experiencing some of the worst shortages of oil. One contributing factor is that the old strategic reserve of oil was privatized, then when it was considered unprofitable to keep it running (repairs and maintainence were needed) most of it was gotten rid of.

A totalizing principle, or system, reduces every part of society to one value, or relationship.

In capitalism, the principle is profit.

In capitalism the assumption is that if something is making a profit, it’s also providing value. You should only do things that provide value and the more money something makes the more value it has. So, the strategic reserve wasn’t providing profits, and had to go, since it provided no value.

The next piece of logic is that someone who is making a profit obviously knows how to provide value. The more money someone has, the more control they have, and the more money they should have. The tendency of capitalism to lead to money concentrating in a few hands is good: those are the people who know how to create money and thus value.

Capitalism, like other totalizing systems, works best when it’s kept in check by something else: religious values, democratic values, enlightenment values, or whatever, backed up by forces powerful enough to resist totalization: governments or churches, for example.

When it doesn’t it tends to destroy the conditions for its own functioning: all the wealth goes to the top, for example, and you get a Great Depression due to a demand crash, as happened in the 30s.

Or capitalism makes massive profits based on damaging the environment, and you have an environmental collapse — ongoing and upcoming.

Capitalism tries to reduce all relationships to monetary ones. When you privatize trains, or healthcare, you’re following the profit motive. When you make everyone work, then have their childrens raised by strangers (daycare, and to an extent school) you’re totalizing it. When people say domestic and emotional work should be paid, they’ve bought into a totalizing system: since they’re creating value, money should pass hands.

Capitalism thus reduces everything to money: if it has value it should involve money, and if it pays little or nothing it obviously doesn’t have value. So if you’re low paid, and you want to be seen as valued, you want money.

Even when we try to fix the problems of capitalism we try to do so thru money: so we have carbon offsets (paid), and there is a movement for a carbon tax, and so on.

Nation-Building Fuckups

From Fintan O'toole in the NYRB on two books recently written about the US and Afghanistan:

The overlap between the failures of America’s own democracy and of its mission in Afghanistan is nowhere clearer than in the creation of a kleptocracy. One of the most basic functions of a democratic system is ensuring accountability for the use of public money. The Americans knew when they entered Afghanistan that corruption was already widespread. Their main response was to feed it with billions of taxpayers’ dollars. This was not naive or innocent. It too was policy. It was based on an article of faith for conservative Americans: trickle-down economics. If, in the US, you believed that it did not matter if some people became filthy rich by dubious means because some of their wealth would leak out to ordinary folk, why not apply that to Afghanistan?

In his SIGAR interview, Boucher said that it was better to funnel the vast sums of US aid to Afghan power brokers who “would probably take 20 percent for personal use” than to give it to “a bunch of expensive American experts.” He said, “I want it to disappear in Afghanistan, rather than in the Beltway. Probably in the end it is going to make sure that more of the money gets to some villager, maybe through five layers of corrupt officials, but still gets to some villager.”

Particularly striking here is Boucher’s assumption that genteel corruption is as endemic in Washington as the more flagrant kind is in Afghanistan. A democracy that cannot create accountability for the use of public money at home could not do so in a faraway society. This was also, for the entire project of building an Afghan democracy, ruinous. The villager who gets the last drops of aid after most of it has been filtered through five layers of corrupt officials knows all too well that he or she is not an equal citizen.

What was corrupted in all of this was the sense of an ending. “What,” as Major Joseph Claburn rather plaintively asked in 2011, “does it look like when it comes time for us to leave?” Because the ends being pursued were so ill-defined, the idea of an ending could not be fixed either. Twice—in 2003 and in 2014—the US officially declared an “end to combat operations” in Afghanistan. On neither occasion was this real or truthful or reflected on the ground. Finality, for the US, was something to be declared, not to be accomplished. Those who do not know what the last stage of their mission is will be outlasted, as America has been by the Taliban. It is an iron law that what cannot be concluded will be abandoned. That has been Afghanistan’s bitter fate.

Biden’s fate is to be the one who gave up the pretense of endless progress. It fell to the mournful man of compassion and empathy to deliver a heartless coup de grace. And even that parting shot was botched. It is a bleak commentary on the whole twenty-year episode that the US, on its departure, was almost as much in the dark as it had been on arrival, and no less concerned to keep up appearances. On July 23 Biden told his Afghan counterpart Ashraf Ghani that the critical question was the “perception” that “things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban.” He suggested that “there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”

Less than a month before Ghani fled from Kabul, the US could not break the long-established habit of valuing a positive story more than the realities revealed by its own intelligence reports. This attitude extended even to the plight of Afghans whose lives were known to be in danger because they had worked with the Americans. The White House delayed for months the process of getting them to safety because it wanted to maintain the fiction that Afghan government forces would hold out against the Taliban. The great cloud of unknowing enveloped even the obvious truth that the circular progression of the war was about to close in on itself, forming a great hollow 0.

What is also unknown is how much this failure of American democracy will recoil on the politics of the homeland. Defeat in war has been, for some nations, the beginning of radical political change. It prompts reflection on the nature of the political order that has failed so badly. But the problem with the defeat in Afghanistan may be that, for America, it does not matter enough to make such self-examination imperative. Malkasian concludes that “the bigger story is probably how little the war featured in national life. Failure or success, Afghanistan was unimportant. Less than 0.3 percent of the population, including diplomats and contractors, served there.”

This is not a national trauma like Vietnam. There will be no great Maya Lin memorial to the Americans who gave their lives, still less to the 200,000 or so Afghans and Pakistanis who died. (Whitlock writes that the US started to count Afghan civilian deaths only in 2005, but then abandoned the database “for unspecified reasons.”) The shame and terror of the botched withdrawal has already become mere fodder for the tribal warfare of American politics, with Donald Trump recasting his own abject surrender to the Taliban—when he went over the heads of the supposedly sovereign Afghan government to negotiate an unhindered withdrawal—as Biden’s fault, and moreover as the “dumbest move ever made in US history.”

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What is Bomba

Vallejo Nocturno 2021- Bomba en Loiza

From a three year old article in the NYT on Bomba:

For generations of Afro-Boricua workers and families, bomba has remained central to community, with the drum acting as an instrument of political power, entertainment and spiritual release. Some may even call bomba the soundtrack of Puerto Rican resistance. At this year’s May Day march in San Juan, its lyrics and drumbeats echoed through the crowds airing their opposition to austerity measures, including school closures and university tuition hikes, before police fired pepper spray and tear gas to end the protest.

Bomba’s resilient spirit has become more pronounced in the face of the island’s economic crisis and the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria.

At La Terraza de Bonanza, any given bomba night is bound to be packed with young people. Some dance with exaggerated technique, their faces pinched tight with discipline. Traditionalists flick a fan or a skirt to mark their control over the physical space. Others are more avant-garde and incorporate acrobatic moves, or an arrhythmic dance known as flossing.

These nights began with just a few friends getting together to play drums, said Otura Mun, the frontman of the Afro-Caribbean electronic band ÌFÉ, and grew through social media and word of mouth. Attendance really swelled after Hurricane Maria in September 2017; because Bonanza had a generator still on hand from Hurricane Irma, the no-frills, open-air bar was one of few places in the neighborhood with power. It opened for business just two days after the storm.

The resurgence of bomba owes something to formal experimentation. La Tribu de Abrante, a high-energy, 12-piece fusion orchestra, has blended the sounds of bomba with reggaeton, reggae and hip-hop. The openness to new sounds has helped expand bomba’s audience locally, through live performance and radio, and globally, by associating it with popular genres.

“When I traveled to other countries, people would say reggaeton is the traditional music of Puerto Rico,” recalled Hiram Abrante, the band’s frontman, who is from Loíza. “I’d say, ‘What? It’s bomba.’”

His goal has always been to make bomba more accessible to listeners around the world while maintaining respect for its traditions and history. At the recent Festival del Apio in Barranquitas, Mr. Abrante acknowledged bomba’s heritage by closing La Tribu’s set with a salute to two of San Juan’s oldest bomba families: the Cepedas and the Ayalas.

“With evolution, there is responsibility,” said Victor Emmanuelli, 41, a member of the musical group Bomba Evolución and a historian of the genre. “It’s important for young people to have the fundamentals in order for the genre to evolve.” He started playing bomba at age 8 in Carolina, a town between San Juan and Loíza.

Jerry Ferrao, who played with the Cepedas for 20 years, has noticed that some younger players seem overly concerned with playing fast, favoring the rhythm of the dance over the poetry of the songs.

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Wicked Algorithms

From Technology Review, some elucidation on the wicked Facebook algorithms in clear English:

How does Facebook’s algorithm work?

Colloquially, we use the term “Facebook’s algorithm” as though there’s only one. In fact, Facebook decides how to target ads and rank content based on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of algorithms. Some of those algorithms tease out a user’s preferences and boost that kind of content up the user’s news feed. Others are for detecting specific types of bad content, like nudity, spam, or clickbait headlines, and deleting or pushing them down the feed.

All of these algorithms are known as machine-learning algorithms. As I wrote earlier this year:

Unlike traditional algorithms, which are hard-coded by engineers, machine-learning algorithms “train” on input data to learn the correlations within it. The trained algorithm, known as a machine-learning model, can then automate future decisions. An algorithm trained on ad click data, for example, might learn that women click on ads for yoga leggings more often than men. The resultant model will then serve more of those ads to women.

And because of Facebook’s enormous amounts of user data, it can

develop models that learned to infer the existence not only of broad categories like “women” and “men,” but of very fine-grained categories like “women between 25 and 34 who liked Facebook pages related to yoga,” and [target] ads to them. The finer-grained the targeting, the better the chance of a click, which would give advertisers more bang for their buck.

The same principles apply for ranking content in news feed:

Just as algorithms [can] be trained to predict who would click what ad, they [can] also be trained to predict who would like or share what post, and then give those posts more prominence. If the model determined that a person really liked dogs, for instance, friends’ posts about dogs would appear higher up on that user’s news feed.

Before Facebook began using machine-learning algorithms, teams used design tactics to increase engagement. They’d experiment with things like the color of a button or the frequency of notifications to keep users coming back to the platform. But machine-learning algorithms create a much more powerful feedback loop. Not only can they personalize what each user sees, they will also continue to evolve with a user’s shifting preferences, perpetually showing each person what will keep them most engaged.

AT &T Bad Actor

 

From an investigative newsletter I pay to receive weekly, pertinent information, Popular Information:

 

One America News (OAN), a right-wing propaganda network that promotes unhinged conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, COVID, and other topics, relies almost exclusively on funding from AT&T. Court records first obtained by Reuters reveal that AT&T is responsible for 90% of OAN's revenue. 

In sworn testimony, OAN CEO Robert Herring Sr. said that without OAN's contract with AT&T — which carries OAN on DirecTV and other television platforms — OAN's value "would be zero."

Popular Information first reported on AT&T's relationship with OAN in February, when OAN repeatedly ran a two-hour movie created by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, "Absolute Proof," that uses discredited conspiracy theories to claim that Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election. “Absolute Proof" aired thirteen times from February 5 to 8 — encompassing 26 hours of OAN's programming over four days.   

Lindell's film promoted lies about Dominion, a voting machine company. For example, lawyer Matt DePerno claims that files "were deleted from the Dominion system in Antrim County. We know that for a fact." Lindell responds, "wow." Although a clerical error briefly showed a landslide for Biden in the county, it was corrected. There is absolutely no evidence of any vote manipulation in the county and the results were confirmed by a hand recount of the votes. 

While "Absolute Proof" was technically a paid advertisement, OAN promoted it as a news program. In a tweet, OAN billed it as an "exclusive report" about "[g]rowing evidence of election fraud reveal[ing] that the presidency of the United States has been stolen from the American people."

Lindell's movie was not out of place on OAN. In July 2020, OAN described QAnon, the conspiracy theory that Democrats are part of a Satanic cult operating a child sex ring, as "the new mainstream." OAN host Kristian Rouz said that QAnon "is becoming a widely accepted system of beliefs" and is "immensely popular." She described efforts to ban QAnon adherents from social media sites as the "deep state… fighting back." Rion said that Q, the fictional character sending coded messages about the child sex ring, was "anonymous for a reason" and "people need to respect that." 

After Trump lost the election, OAN declared that Trump won and Democrats were just delaying the results in an effort to steal it. "Donald Trump won a second term last night. Democrats are tossing Republican ballots, harvesting fake ballots, and delaying the results to create confusion," host Christina Bobb said.

While Bobb was appearing as a "journalist" on OAN, she "also worked part-time for the Trump recount legal team, according to a recent deposition by Trump’s then-lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani." In recent months, "OAN allowed two reporters to raise $605,000 to help fund a 'private' audit of the presidential vote in Arizona."