• About

Don Narey

~ Are you seeing what I'm seeing?

Don Narey

Monthly Archives: April 2015

You Don’t Have to be Spokesman to Speakout

27 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by djnarey in The Road to Equality

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Bruce Jenner, Bruce Jenner Transgendered, Kardashians, Transgendered Community

As far as brands go, Halliburton probably elicits more empathy than the Kardashians. It’s not so much that they’re terrible people; they’re just in a terrible business. It’s hard not to court contempt when your product is your own vacuous self-importance.

That may explain, if not excuse, at least some of the callousness directed at Bruce Jenner. I don’t mean just in the press either; anyone surprised by the ridicule and catcalls from the paparazzi should have better managed his expectations. I mean in real-life conversations, with people who know better in places I’d have never expected.

kardsBlogNormally, I’m pretty good at zoning out of celebrity chatter.  Any mention of which rapper dated which model and a switch is flipped; my mind’s searching out a melody, drafting an email, contemplating the universe’s first sound, anything, but hearing a word you’re saying.  But, when I heard a well-trained, demonstrably skillful, educator  “theorizing” that Jenner seemed to hate himself and may be “self-mutilating”, my instinct was to ask if he realized that he’d just said that out loud.

More to the point, I’m wondering why he thought he could.

After I had joined that conversation and said my piece, somebody raised the issue again. “I’m a very liberal person” she said, “but I just don’t get this…do you?” The truth is, I don’t know if I get it.  But I know that it doesn’t matter, it can’t matter.  Nobody has to sell me, or any of us, on the value of another person. You don’t have to get it.

Throughout history, people no worse than us, no less intelligent or conscientious watched terrible things happen to one another over differences we would barely notice today or transgressions we no longer recognize. I doubt they ever imagined how wrong it would seem in our time, any more how than we can imagine how it ever seemed right in theirs.  I think, certainly hope, that when we exercise such unflinching judgment, history returns the favor.

So, it seems that Bruce Jenner is sort of a P.R. nightmare. “The worst possible choice,” says  Zoey Tur in The Washington Post. CNN reports that activists are wary of the spectacle he’s causing.  The Post also says that “the transgendered experience will be swept up in the ultimate symbol of abnormality and dysfunction,” apparently referring to Kardashians.

I don’t know when the right transgendered role model will come along or exactly how we’ll know them when we see them. Outside the Washington Post, at least, abnormality and dysfunction are still hard to quantify. But, that doesn’t mean it’s open season while we wait; you don’t get a pass to point and talk about the most disenfranchised like carnival attractions.

Just for the record, I have said my share of stupid and insensitive things in my time. I suppose it happens when I failed to make a connection or know enough history.  It’s mostly because its so difficult to see beyond the prism of my own experience.  Unless, someone tells me, I can’t see what it looks like from where they’re standing. But it is my responsibility to try.

Advertisement

Billie Holiday at 100

07 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by djnarey in Girls on Vinyl

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Billie Holiday, Billie Holiday Centenial, Billie Holiday influence, Billie Holiday one hundred

Billie HolidayShe held court at Pod and Jerry’s on 133rd, The Ebony Club and Bop City on Broadway or The Alhambra Club up in Harlem. Much of it legend, memories lost in smoke and bourbon, lies that seemed fair enough, facts that were too hard to take.  If it seems like scene in a movie it was.

Out of total darkness she’d step into a small circle of light, tap out a beat in peek-toe stilettos only to be ignored by her own painted lips. Her trademark   stance, head cocked, eyes closed, she languishes half a beat, one beat, maybe five beats behind the band.  She’d “bend” a phrase like a rapper, clip an ending, draw-out syllables, on time, off time, studiously riding the melody then shaking it off when it failed to serve her message.  This was the house she owned and these were rules she made.

Before critical analysis became so dependent on the singer-songwriter, we celebrated vocal genius and Billie Holiday set the standard. She altered our sense of rhythm, took liberties with the melody and structured a phrase like no one ever had (save, perhaps, her hero Louis Armstrong).  If Armstrong was her patriarch, Sinatra was surely her prodigy. The term “standard” was virtually meaningless once Holiday worked a song into entirely new and personal entitiy.

And yet, her story remains as big as her sound, the story, important, irresistible and simplistic.  It’s a story of rape and abuse, poverty, racism, justice turned malignant, prosecution for sport, suffering, self-medicating and dying. It was best-selling book and a movie that earned 5 academy award nominations, more commercially successful than anything Holiday herself had ever done.

Stories though, in the pantheon American music, are made by men. Women are made by them. It’s hard to imagine anyone casting Hank Williams, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, or any of the legends who suffered, self-medicated and died in the process, as products of circumstance. Hardship, abject hardship, not withstanding, each demonstrated technique that was intentional, cultivated and crafted. No one looks beyond their own genius to explain their impact on American culture.

The Jazz Encyclopedia refers to the collision of art and tragedy in Holiday’s life as an immutable whole.  It goes to quote famous Jazz critics who, with the greatest affection, claim her failing pipes made her later recordings all more evocative. The long-standing take is that emotional authenticity more than cultivated technique solidified her status.  But this gives too much weight to circumstance and, for me, not enough respect to her true genius.

Cynthia Folio and Robert Weisberg at Temple University actually took on this issue a few years ago. In a complex destruction of Holiday’s timing and phrasing, they looked at multiple recordings of the same song.  In some cases, a song had been recorded five times including studio and live performances. They mapped out the timing, phrasing and melodic alterations from the earliest recordings (at her peak range and tone) through her final recordings.  The study demonstrated that very little was circumstantial in Holiday’s performances. Her technique was consistent and calculated throughout.

Today, on what would have been her 100th birthday, it’s worth considering that circumstance did not make Billie Holiday’s music important.  She did.

Categories

  • Girls on Vinyl (3)
  • Tales from the School Yard (2)
  • The Road to Equality (9)
  • Uncategorized (1)
  • What I'm Seeing (6)

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • The Revolution Bernie missed April 12, 2016
  • November 16 November 16, 2015
  • Who’s Watching When the Legitimate Press Legitimizes Hate May 19, 2015

Archives

  • April 2016 (1)
  • November 2015 (1)
  • May 2015 (3)
  • April 2015 (2)
  • March 2015 (1)
  • November 2014 (1)
  • September 2014 (1)
  • August 2014 (1)
  • April 2014 (2)
  • March 2014 (1)
  • January 2014 (1)
  • November 2013 (3)
  • October 2013 (3)

Blogs I’d Take on a desert island

  • Media Nation
  • TPM – Talking Points Memo
  • Informed Comment
  • Wonkette
  • the daily howler

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Media Nation

By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

TPM – Talking Points Memo

Are you seeing what I'm seeing?

Informed Comment

Are you seeing what I'm seeing?

Wonkette

Are you seeing what I'm seeing?

the daily howler

Are you seeing what I'm seeing?

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Don Narey
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Don Narey
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...