Celebrating the Birth of Bud Powell

Today (September 27, 2009) I want to celebrate the birth of a towering figure in BeBop (Jazz) who I would venture to say is scarcely known in the United States outside a small coterie of musicians (and not necessarily US musicians). This is a very sad fact when one realizes that the music often referred to as "Jazz" is considered America's true Classical music.

Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell was a formidable pianist and a composer, having contributed not an insignificant number of pieces to the Classical American repertoire [Listen to his "Dance of the Infidels"]. Literary critic Harold Bloom included Powell's 1951 recording of his composition Un Poco Loco for Blue Note Records among the greatest works of twentieth-century American art. The following extract from Powell's official web-site gives us an idea of this man's true stature:

Bud Powell is generally considered to be the most important pianist in the history of jazz. Noted jazz writer and critic Gary Giddins, in Visions of Jazz, goes even further, saying that "Powell will be recognized as one of the most formidable creators of piano music in any time or idiom."

It should be noted that Bud Powell's life was a tragic one as well; a tragedy all too well known to people of African American descent during the post-war years. This nevertheless did not detract one bit from the man's enormous talents:

From 1940 Bud Powell took part in informal jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse, New York, where he came under the tutelage and protection of Thelonious Monk and contributed to the emerging bop style. By 1942--44, when he played in the band of his guardian Cootie Williams, he had already developed his individual style in most of its essentials. After sustaining a head injury during a racial incident in 1945, he suffered the first of many nervous collapses, which were to confine him to sanatoriums for much of his adult life.

Precious little is known about the enigmatic figure of Bud Powell. Some of what we do know is thanks to a French man that befriended Powell in his waning years. However, there can be no doubt that his music constitutes a towering legacy, testimony to which can be found in such recordings as Jazz Giant, and The Amazing Bud Powell.

My favorite (living) pianist?

Original; Talented; Chops; Has feeling and emotion; Like Oscar Peterson, he can tear apart a concert grand, but can also play a ballad so tenderly that it will soften the hardest heart. Plus, he knows the canon: Diz, Bird, Bud...

Problem? His originality makes him inaccessible to a lot of people (kind of like Thelonious Monk)

Thoughts on the Persistent Racial Divide in America

It is enough to make one sick. After hearing the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs of this country carry on ad nauseum about "reverse racism" and "hatred" of whites, the common illusion that is desperately being peddled is that America (white America) has solved the race problem and moved on. We have a black president, right? Why are you (blacks) complaining? According to this narrative, any individual that continues to talk about discrimination or racism is talking about a past that no longer exists in the present, and has a chip on their shoulder, refusing to let go of his or her victim-hood for some nefarious reason. This, my friends, is a big lie that not only ignores the fact that the civil rights of black people were granted to us after we fought tooth and nail for them (they were not given to us gratuitously nor out of good faith but begrudgingly and are not by any means guaranteed into perpetuity), but dismisses a number of unresolved and festering issues.

It is precisely one of these unresolved issues that I want to touch on briefly: There is a dirty little secret harbored by a not insignificant population of our Americas (and not only in the United States, but everywhere that black slavery was practiced) that is rarely discussed by either side in this unresolved black/white divide, and that haunts this land to this day. It is a story that goes to the heart of why the race question has not yet been fully resolved and will not be resolved until perhaps something like a South African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission is constituted to deal with it. It has to do with the de facto mixture of the races throughout the history of the United States (in particular) and its implications (legal and otherwise) for the "family trees" of many of today's US citizens of mixed African-European ancestry.

If the mixing of the races in many of the states of the United States was against the law up to the nineteen fifties, then what explains the existence of a significant population of mulattoes (interestingly that term derives from "mule" which is no innocuous term in and of itself) at the time? The dirty little secret is that during slavery, many slave owners either fell in love with or took advantage of their black slave women thereby giving rise to a "phenomenon" of interracial concubinage that produced a not insignificant population of "mixed race" offspring. It should be noted that one-eighth black parentage remained sufficient for disenfranchisement for many years.

Note: The true nature of these relationships has been subject to historical interpretation, discussion and, in the worst case, to simple conjecture. In the scholarly treatment of such a contentious and often taboo subject, I would adopt the position of Dorothy Denneen Volo and James M. Volo, authors of Daily Life in Civil War America:

There is considerable disagreement over the level of true affection found between such (mixed race) couples. Noted Civil War historian Eugene D. Genovese claims that many slaves fell in love with their masters and vice versa. In The Plantation Mistress: Woman's World in the Old South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), Catherine Clinton finds such a conclusion lacking in sensitivity with regard to the dynamics of sexual exploitation. The authors have decided to defer to Clinton's view. {footnote # 40, page 80}

The vast majority of the offspring of these relationships, whether they were sincere relationships based on "true love" or not, or a product of rape were never recognized and ended up leaving many "mulattoes" with truncated family trees. Now please step back and consider this for a moment. This is not some minor detail or insignificant fact to be conveniently swept underneath the rug and forgotten, although that is precisely what happened in the vast majority of cases by the white side and in some cases the black side as well. It was done for many reasons but initially for the basic reason that miscegenation and intermarriage were deemed illegal well into the post emancipation period. Even after intermarriage between blacks and whites became legal and Jim Crow became a thing of the past, many of these relationships were still not acknowledged.

Since such relations were "taboo" for so long, one can only speculate on the nature and motivations behind the "original act" and the possible reasons for them not being acknowledged, even after the passage of time. Racism undoubtedly played a role in many, if not the vast majority of cases. Even in the case of an acknowledged and legal union, as Volo and Volo describe in their text:

...some white Southerners demonstrated a long commitment to their black mistresses, recognized their mixed-race offspring, and attempted to provide for their upkeep and well-being. Often this took the form of a public admission after death, and many interracial alliances were recognized in a planter's will. The white children of such masters often went to great lengths to undo those parts of their father's will favorable to their biracial siblings. {Daily life in Civil War America, page 77.}

Nevertheless, each case would require its own independent investigation and the circumstances surrounding each would undoubtedly turn out to be as diverse and unique as any individual family experience in the history of a people. It shouldn't take the detached observer long to deduce that at the root of many problems of non-recognition lie legal problems involving possible property claims and inheritance. It's hard not to imagine many former slave owners watching with regret as their former slaves obtained equal legal status as citizens of the nation... Or with terror in the case of a slaveholder that had fathered progeny with a black "concubine". What would prevent a slew of legal claims on the property of such a former slave holder?

We have seen recently how some black individuals (primarily celebrities like Chris Rock, Al Sharpton and Oprah) have begun to uncover some long buried "secrets" within their own family histories, with some discovering ties in the process to sometimes prominent white individuals. Clearly the wounds in America have not healed, and to express that it is truly unfortunate to see certain people pressing the wider society to move on as if everything has been resolved is, in my opinion, an understatement.

THROW THE MODEL OUT!

The following was published today in the Puerto Rico Daily Sun [Year 1, No. 198: p. 13]

It is way past the time we in the Caribbean and Central America should have abandoned once and for all the export based economic model that was more or less thrust upon us by our principle trading partner to the North. Unfortunately, much of Central America and a dwindling number of insular Caribbean states continue their fruitless pursuit of assembly industries for export to the US market. The assembly process is known in the US as 'production sharing' and the topic has been, until recently, a fixture of sorts among researchers at the US International Trade Commission (USITC). They regularly published lengthy reports ostensibly for members of the US Congress intent on maintaining as much employment as possible from their quondam industrial base within the borders of the United States. I am familiar with these publications because I used them frequently in my own research.

Hence, I am very familiar with the volatile nature of production sharing in the Caribbean Basin from its inception in the late sixties and early seventies to its virtual institutionalization in the eighties via the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) and its many incarnations or reincarnations thereafter up to and into the new millennium. Once the import substitution model of yore was abandoned and countries slowly began to buy into the new outward oriented export paradigm, opportunities arose for entry into the largest and most lucrative market in the hemisphere (that of the U. S.). I won't go into the geopolitical forces behind this new “paradigm” other that to draw people's attention to the fact that the CBI was enacted “for” our region under the Reagan Administration shortly after the US invasion of Grenada, a period in history which also saw the rise of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and several other insurgencies throughout Central America.

Preferential access schemes such as Section 807 of the US Tariff Schedule (subsequently replaced by Section 9802.00.80 of the new Harmonized Tariff System) linked with the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, as the CBI was more formally called, stimulated the garment assembly industry, which has historically been the largest sector by far in export processing zones throughout our region. A recent World Bank study [PDF] notes the region has witnessed 30 years of unilateral preferential access to the United States for certain products under the CBI and subsequently through the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA), enacted in 2000. It correctly asserts that these preferential agreements have shaped the Caribbean external trade structure.

For example the garment/textile sector I refer to above grew from less that 1% of Nicaragua's exports to the United States in 1990 to close to 63% by the year 2003, according to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America [CEPAL-Mexico, May, 2006: pp. 29 - 30; PDF]. Although not as dramatic, a similar trend occurred throughout much of the rest of the region with garment/textile exports from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic going from 26%, 29%, 24% and 39% respectively of exports to the US in 1990 to 60%, 87%, 78% and 49% in 2003. It should be noted that the Caribbean Basin carries out the vast majority of its external trade precisely with the United States. By all measures, this data should be viewed as a success story from the point of view of proponents of the export paradigm. As a matter of fact, the recently enacted Central American, Dominican Republic Free Trade Area, CAFTA-DR was crafted to a large degree to solidify those gains and provide for further growth into the future.

The problem is that the crafters of this policy ignored a glaring but simple truth that a beginning student of international economics is capable of explaining to anyone with an ability to listen. The truth revolves around a concept known as “trade diversion”. Anyone even remotely familiar with the ins and outs of worldwide garment commerce would have been aware that there was a gradual process of trade liberalization going on that straddled the turn of the century and that would profoundly impact importers like the United Sates. Added to that was the fact that the garment/textile powerhouse of China would be joining the free trade club, so to speak, and would consequently overwhelm any other exporter within the US and other markets, if free trade were to prevail.

What is disheartening, not to say thoroughly outrageous, is that US authorities were well aware of it, judging by the voluminous output on the topic produced prior to the fact by researchers at the USITC, not to mention half a dozen or so other non-government think tanks. Yet, US authorities perpetuated the preferential access schemes that “shotgun married” the Caribbean Basin's garment assemblers to their own moribund textile mills via the CBTPA. William C. Gruben of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank was succinct when he described several years ago the outcome of the identical phenomenon in the case of Mexican textile/garment exports to the US:

“By their very nature, regional accords lower tariffs and regulatory burdens for members, giving them an edge over nonmembers. Trade diversion occurs when these preferential trade agreements encourage higher-cost imports of member countries to replace the lower-cost imports of nonmembers. Where trade diversion exists, economic theory suggests that all good things must end—at least for those that have benefited from the trade preferences. ... When the importing countries extend preferential trade benefits to more nations, the boom from the original diversion may be followed by a bust as new trading patterns emerge and the world’s low-cost producer regains its advantage. This may not always occur, but it’s exactly what happened with Mexico’s textiles and apparel. With the erosion of Mexico’s NAFTA edge, China increased U.S. sales. Mexico lost market share—and as a result, employment fell in the textile and apparel maquiladoras.”

And this is the exact same thing that occurred with the Caribbean Basin's US based export model! We bought into the orthodoxy, acquiescing ever so eagerly to the US marketing ploy like a herd of oblivious lemmings plunging trans-like over the perennial cliff. As if to rub salt into the wounds, the World Bank now tells us, as we founder in the throes of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, that although preferential trading schemes were established as a development tool to stimulate and diversify our exports, the prevailing consensus is that“…trade preferences have not delivered expected results...they have not helped overall trade performance”.

We have now come full circle. Can anyone honestly blame the region if some member countries are seeking out alternatives to US policy prescriptions, no matter how wrongheaded or erroneous they might be perceived as being from the US side? Who is going to want to follow a US economic strategy for the region if we have obediently been following them for the last thirty odd years only to end in the situation so aptly described by the latest World Bank report? President Obama rose to the US presidency on a promise for change. He was also given a rousing reception at the recent Summit of the Americas from a region reeling from economic decline. Is this really a new beginning or will we be left to eat merely words?

Remembering Freddie Thomas

I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing of musician Fred Thomas, who I got to know when I had the privilege of teaching at the University of the Virgin Islands' St. Croix campus for two years. He was a wonderful bassist and could play the piano professionally as well. He was known to my uncles Marvin and Neal, and joins them in that pantheon of Virgin Islander jazz musicians in the sky. Of particular fascination to me was the fact that Freddie had played bass with the original band of Puerto Rican icon Rafael Cortijo. Before I left St. Croix to return to Puerto Rico, he gave me these copies of photographs of Cortijo y su Combo. In this first one, you can see Uncle Freddie at the far left with his characteristic lit cigarette in his right hand.

In the next photo (below) you can see Freddie in the front row with the legendary Sonero Ismael Rivera's right hand on his right shoulder and Maestro Cortijo's right hand on Freddie's left shoulder.

Finally you have the band with a number of other musicians and singers. I would be grateful to anybody out there that could help me identify them individually.

The last picture is of a Jazz quintet which belonged to renown drummer Monchito Muñoz. Legendary trumpeter Juancito Torres was on trumpet and of course Uncle Freddie played the bass. I wish I could have heard them play if even on a recording. Juancito could really hit those high notes, almost like Dizzy Gillespie.

When in St. Croix, I always went to see Freddie play at the Blue Moon in Fredriksted. He was ailing then and despite suffering from emphysema, he continued to smoke. Maybe I was imagining things, but he always seemed to perk up when I arrived and would then proceed to play his heart out. I gave him my electric keyboard when I left, cognisant of the fact that he didn't have much more time to live. Rest In Peace Uncle Freddie. I know you're up there playing a mambo for St. Peter.

The End of an Error

FLYING SHOE

While initially reluctant to make any mention of this, I feel I must if for no other reason than to exercise catharsis: The earth and all its inhabitants will breathe a sigh of relief at the departure today of what some consider [I include myself among these opinion holders] one of the worst presidencies in US history. Although not a card-carrying member of the US Democratic Party, I find myself in total agreement with the words of George McGovern, published in the Washington Post just over a year ago:

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.

From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation. In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion -- by far the highest in our national history.

If I were to decide on a metaphor for the Bush presidency, I would probably choose “wrecking ball” or “bull in a china shop”. Undoubtedly, some of the former allies of said presidency would agree with me on that. ...And as for the fiction of Bush being the “decider”, well this ought to put that one to rest! Good riddance, GWB, and be sure to take your few remaining followers with you on your way out!

The one main chilling lesson that I take away from this horrible administration of the last eight years is the utter fragility of the US governing system. Please make no mistake: The fact that the US was able to sweep aside this mess and in its best democratic tradition elect someone that apparently represents a significant departure from the previous administration is a testament to the strength and resilience of the US democracy and I applaud that. However, that doesn't negate the fact that the system can at times become quite fragile and under certain extraordinary circumstances come very close to self destruction. This is not a good sign. I hope that future generations will recognize what the country has just been through at the beginning of this new century and therefore be vigilant; working hard to preserve the best of what the United States has to offer the rest of the world.