I learned square dancing as a kid. And I can't prove this but I suspect it's why I was given a trombone in band class and then no one ever mentioned that jazz trombone was a thing, so I was stuck playing the worst parts of classical arrangements.
I can't stand Jazz because nobody knows what's going on. Moreover the snob appeal of Jazz is a big turn-off too. Dave Matthews Band fans can die in a fire.
that's evil. like bordering on pedagogical malpractice.
Is there some merit in subverting that with jazz demonstrations? Like some sort of cheesy musical movie?
jesus fucking christ, this is like a case study for the most verbose reinterpretation possible of the statement "slavery good"
Owners just get outraged when the working class have good lives, don't they?
It is a deep and righteous anger. It is the knowlege that something is direly wrong, and in immediate need of fixing. If the workers are winning, the owners must be losing, is what I think it is. They've got to restore balance to the force and put the workers in their place. Suffering, miserable, in pain. Then things are well.
I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this:
‘We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don't expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.’
Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon's poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line ‘Ne pain ne voyent qu'aux fenestres’ by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man's experience.
From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. ‘Anything,’ he thinks, 'any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.’ He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and — in the shape of rich men — is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as ‘smart’ hotels.
To sum up. A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him. I say this of the plongeur because it is his case I have been considering; it would apply equally to numberless other types of worker. These are only my own ideas about the basic facts of a plongeur's life, made without reference to immediate economic questions, and no doubt largely platitudes. I present them as a sample of the thoughts that are put into one's head by working in an hotel.
-- George Orwell, Down and out in Paris and London
(1) By reducing the worker’s need to the barest and most miserable level of physical subsistence, and by reducing his activity to the most abstract mechanical movement; thus he says: Man has no other need either of activity or of enjoyment. For he declares that this life, too, is human life and existence.
(2) By counting the most meagre form of life (existence) as the standard, indeed, as the general standard – general because it is applicable to the mass of men. He turns the worker into an insensible being lacking all needs, just as he changes his activity into a pure abstraction from all activity. To him, therefore, every luxury of the worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the most abstract need – be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a manifestation of activity – seems to him a luxury. Political economy, this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of renunciation, of want, of saving and it actually reaches the point where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise. This science of marvellous industry is simultaneously the science of asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the ascetic but productive slave. Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part of his wages to the savings-bank, and it has even found ready-made a servile art which embodies this pet idea: it has been presented, bathed in sentimentality, on the stage. Thus political economy – despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance – is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm
Sounds like farmers should read Basic Economics and understand supply and demand.
it appears that slavery is particularly cross elastic with the enjoyment of smooth brassy tones
qed bumpkins
How did jazz music go from being black devil music to sophisticated, bougie, high class music? Was it because white academics realized the musical complexities of the genre and decided it was more impressive than what its labelled?
It went through the process of subculture evolution, as detailed in this very insightful piece: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
Before there is a subculture, there is a scene. A scene is a small group of creators who invent an exciting New Thing—a musical genre, a religious sect, a film animation technique, a political theory. Riffing off each other, they produce examples and variants, and share them for mutual enjoyment, generating positive energy.
The new scene draws fanatics. Fanatics don’t create, but they contribute energy (time, money, adulation, organization, analysis) to support the creators.
If the scene is unusually exciting, and the New Thing can be appreciated without having to get utterly geeky about details, it draws mops. (members of the public) Mops are fans, but not rabid fans like the fanatics. They show up to have a good time, and contribute as little as they reasonably can in exchange.
Interesting answer. to add to this Adorno's description of the evolution of Jazz: “even yesterday’s music must first be rendered harmless by jazz, must be released from its historical element, before it is ready for the market. Jazz may have its roots in African music, but any forms of authentic African expression must be attenuated or removed so that the music can be a mass-produced. "
any forms of authentic African expression must be attenuated or removed so that the music can be a mass-produced.
Yup. Fits the theory perfectly. The fanatics are being invaded by the mops, and the mops don't like the fanatics version of The Thing, so they demand it be watered down. Enter the sociopaths, who do exactly that and make a ton of money, leaving the fanatics high and dry.
March 31st 1920, in the Lincoln Journal Star. I was able to find the whole thing on newspapers.com:
https://imgur.com/a/d440wAv
That was a fun read. Tactics really haven't changed much in a century.
Related, you should see some of the early red scare stuff I've been reading. Maybe this weekend I'll collect some articles and make a post.
:geordi-yes: :jazz-passion: :geordi-yes: :jazz-ecstacy: :geordi-no: :corn-man-khrush:
