It isn’t often said, but when I think about subscribers Bruce Ware and Earlston Ford, I remember that since the age of 14, I’ve been a part of the black American upper class. In that upper class, like any in any nation, membership has its privileges, but also its contentions. It’s an aspirational identity. There’s always a struggle for prestige and some bounders always want your spot. There are very few who can manage to keep their place over the decades and generations. There are equally those who are by various means, frozen in place.
What’s easier is to reference those greats and classic artifacts through which we all burnish our credentials whenever we bother to do so. Already if you know where the title of this piece comes from, you’re part of an in-group. Of course I’m referring to the lyrics of Teena Marie’s Square Biz. It’s more than just Old School to reference Lady T, it’s timeless. I’m talking horns and strings, orchestration in my love.
Wink Twyman and I will be closing out the year in review of some Old School subjects, but something in particular I talk about consistently over time is the difficulty in being organic - unleveraged by any particularly robust and influential institution in the American sphere. We will be talking about Nikki Giovanni, James Baldwin and who it is who gets to represent African America and why. One of the reasons I believe I understand the Wokish is that I understand what it is like to have the inside track to the way upper classes think and act and the consequences of brooking dissent. It’s always political, but it’s often impossible, when you’re not in direct proximity to the leadership to know if it’s personal too. If you haven’t seen the two of them speaking, here is a stellar moment in time with two minds going at it.
What does it mean, for example, to be the representative of a neighborhood where your classmates at Yale (and everybody they know but you) would never go? It’s somewhat different than being a sherpa because in the end they still don’t go. You get to be the arbiter of the experiences of your homies, and by extension, everyone wearing those duds. I remember this from growing up in West Adams, when the kids who we left behind when we went off to college were still mimicking our highschool senior style two years after we got our degrees. They were posing in the lowriders we designed, rather in the same ways some of us were wearing the album cover costumes of Curtis Mayfield long after Freddie was dead.
Crossover into the mass markets of American culture was a commercial blessing for retail blackness. But Teena Marie was left behind as were Ren Woods, Joan Armatrading, Phoebe Snow and Stephanie Mills. It would be a decade before we got a taste of Tracy Chapman. I’m thinking of these women in particular, but there hundreds of other points of light that illuminate the aesthetic heavens of highbrow culture. It’s facile to talk about how Black History(tm) built America’s soul through elevated curation of the ex-slave’s motherwit. It’s another thing to be nursed on it and live in the commercial reality of today’s mainstream cultural production commerce. It’s profoundly ironic that Chapman got to record her folk music reminding us that all that you have is your soul.
Sometimes I think that America’s Ruling class has no class whatsoever. Otherwise how could they let the lowbrow monetize in the way that it does? I have to keep reminding myself that Terrence Malik got to make films, as did Julie Dash. There are enough resources in the English speaking world for greatness and timelessness to be expressed. It’s just uncomfortable to have to hunker down with our audiophile speakers while Spotify rules the AI-generated shitstorm world beyond your door.
So who gets to represent black voices? In a way, it’s hardly a thing to get excited about. On the other hand, there’s that gap - that censorious handwringing gap between the ordinary Joe, and I mean our younger selves when we were that ordinary Joe and the edifying & timeless. I watch my millennial daughters double take Dua Lipa when hearing INXS. But I did the same thing, purposefully in 1987 with Malcolm McLaren’s Waltz Darling. This is the best of three videos of the song, and it reminds me of the snappy 80s that I enjoyed so much, with class and rare beauty. The best kind of fusion. The representation goes upstream and downstream and interpretations that recognize beauty remain true. But in the 80s it was hard to evade Newcleus. I suppose it will always be.
One of my favorite words around here is ‘edification’. Culture must edify, it must be the winning connection between the individual and success, but I don’t mean merely money, but the success associated with peace of mind and a deep appreciation for your being close to beauty and virtue. It’s the sophisticated version of baby and puppy love - you instantly recognize it as that ineffable human wonderful thing. It’s the carefree way Einstein wears his hair, wild in contrast with the transcendent ordering of his mind. It’s the knowing way Lauren Bacall raises an eyebrow instead of opening her mouth. It’s the precision of the slashing baton in the hand of Zubin Metha. It’s in implacable composure of Sade as she embraces the microphone. It’s written all over their faces, and you know you want to be like that.
Orchestra Volume
I haven’t been lamenting the dark days we live in much recently. I grumble about the time it takes to find the next film or book or restaurant worthy of my attention, but inevitably even if I don’t find some edifying diversion, I can still have a warm bowl of oatmeal at home and doze off in my leather chair. But I have been thinking about something rather profound, I think.
For some random reason I found myself going through notes, and noted an accounting of my audiophile setup, which suits me perfectly. So I headed over to that spot in my house called the Jazz Corner and I listened to Ravel’s Left Hander. (M.82). The interesting story was that Ravel composed this concerto for a pianist who had suffered what must be the ultimate tragedy for him, losing an arm. Several thoughts struck me at the moment I learned. One of my favorite pianists suffered a stroke and we lost a major talent. Branford Marsalis talked about the fact that one must dress up seriously when one respects their craft. I’ve always used the analogy of the lack of a symphony orchestra in Oklahoma in the 1800s.
So in thinking about the stupid things people want AIs to do for them, it occurred to me to remember what it takes to outfit a symphony orchestra and what an actually magnificent collaborative human effort that is. Ravel is in the public domain. So is so much great beauty accessible to us. I was 30 years old before I knew Romeo & Juliet in this specific way. Zubin Metha conducts the New York Phil as well as Israel’s Philharmonic Orchestra in renditions of Tchaikovsky and Bartok.
The version I have was of the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Herbert von Karajan, an individual who would be hard pressed to succeed in today’s America. Then again, here he is in my little corner and I can enjoy this old favorite. I commune with the timeless; I’m talking horns and strings, orchestration in my love.