On Music Criticism

Writer's Note: I have been reading the new books by Toni Morrison and Henry Louis Gates Jr., enjoying films such as A Dangerous Method and Tree of Life, and diverse music.  However, this internet log, originally intended to focus on visual art, particularly on gallery reviews, is on hiatus...


In March some of the films I screened are: The Art of Getting By, The Contract, Cowboys & Aliens, Dream House, 50/50, The Guard, Harry Potter (Deathly Hallows, 1 & 2), Hell and Back Again, The Hunters, The Ides of March, Melancholia, as well as the first two seasons of Luther, featuring Idris Elba, and Todd Haynes’ Mildred Pierce, with Kate Winslet.  I know George Clooney’s The Ides of March, based on the play Farragut North, has been called cynical, but I thought it was good at explaining how some of the regrettable compromises occur in politics: that financial, personal, and professional, as well as political, pressures exist and work on politicians, distracting them from high ideals.  Many people do not understand why things are as they are, and this is one of the films that help to explain that. 

Time moves quickly; and it is hard to believe that it is only days away from being April.  The year has had its tumult.  I have been focused on writing some music commentary, and have an idea for writing focused on significant African-American films, as well as a slow-growing fiction project—but have felt frustration regarding the professional reception of a completed work.  The larger world has not been still or serene: the accidental death of singer Whitney Houston, the contentious and mind-dimming Republican primaries, the ongoing violence in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the street murder of a young black man Trayvon Martin are facts in the news, facts that trouble the heart.

I have just read Rick Moody’s On Celestial Music, his collection of rather long-winded, thoughtful, and impressively sensitive and wide-ranging music essays (he discusses Meredith Monk, the Magnetic Fields, Wilco, the Lounge Lizards, and Pete Townsend, as well as experimental music, spirituality, music standards, computers in music, and more).  As well, I have begun reading Blackness in Opera, an essay anthology on classical, folk, and popular music, on opera, racial politics, and public ethics and image, edited by Naomi Andre, Karen Bryan, and Eric Saylor…I had wondered, at different times over a period of years, about the history of black music criticism, and recently passed on a query about this to the Center for Black Music Research, and received a response from a librarian there (Thank you, Ms. Flandreau); a useful list of references:  

Historiography

Dougan, John M. “Two steps from the blues: creating discourse and constructing canons in blues criticism.” (Thesis: College of William and Mary, 2001)

Floyd, Samuel a., Jr. “Black music and writing black music history: American music and narrative strategies.” Black Music Research Journal 28:1 (2008) p. 111-121.

Garabedian, Steven Patrick. “Reds, whites, and blues: blues music, white scholarship, and American cultural politics.” (Thesis: University of Minnesota, 2004).

Maultsby, Portia K., Burnim, Mellonee V., and Oehler, Susan E. “Intellectual history,” In: African American Music: An Introduction. (New York: Routledge, 2006) pp. 7-32.

Radano, Ronald Michael. “Narrating black music’s past.” Radical History Review 84 (2002) p. 115-

Ramsey, Guthrie P., Jr. “Cosmopolitan of provincial? Ideology in early black music historiography, 1867-1940.” Black Music Rsearch Journal 16 (1996) p. 11-42.

Ramsey, Guthrie P., Jr. “The pot liquor principle: developing a black music criticism in American music studies.” American Music 22 (2004) p. 284-295.

Ramsey, Guthrie P. “Secrets, lies and transcriptions: revisions on race, black music and culture.” In: Western music and race, ed. Brown, Julie. (Cambridge: Cambrdge University Press, 2007). Pp. 24-36.

Ramsey, Guthrie P., Jr., and  Angermueller, Rudolph. “Who hears here? Black music, critical bias, and the musicological skin trade.” The Musical Quarterly 85 (2001) p. 1-52.

Strong, Willie F. “Philosophies of African American Music History.” (Thesis: UCLA, 1994).

Wilkinson, Christopher. “A new master narrative of Western musical history: an American perspective.” In: De-canonizing music history. (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009) p. 37-48.

Anthologies:

Brackett, David, ed. The pop, rock and soul reader. 2^nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Clark, Andrew, ed. Riffs and choruses: a new jazz anthology. New York: Continuum, 2001.

Conyers, James L., Jr. ed. African American jazz and rap: social and philosophical examinations of black expressive behavior. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001.

Koenig, Karl, ed. Jazz in print (1856-1929): an anthology of selected early readings. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2002.

Lornell, Kip, ed. From jubilee to hip hop: readings in African American music. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2010.

O’Meally, Robert G., ed. The jazz cadence of American culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Perkins, William Eric, ed. Droppin’ science: critical essays on rap music and hip hop culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.

Tracy, Steven C., ed. Write me a few of your lines: a blues reader. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.  

An African-American Film Canon

...If one wants to consider modern life, one can look at Antwone Fisher, Boomerang, Claudine, Eve’s Bayou, One Night Stand, Paris Blues, Sidewalk Stories, To Sleep with Anger, and A Warm December.  If one wants to examine work issues, Blue Collar and Edge of the City and Red Violin and Matewan can be screened.  The arts, including the dangerous temptations surrounding the struggle to survive as an artist, form the tableaux for Basquiat, Bird, The Five Heartbeats, Lady Sings the Blues, and Round Midnight.  Romance and sex are the focus of Love Jones and Jumping the Broom.  Spiritual heritage is a theme of Daughters of the Dust.  It is now an exciting prospect to think about films featuring or by African-Americans, or focused on African-American subjects and themes, and their relation to standards of originality, creativity, depth, insight, formal structure, beauty, elegance, accessibility, durability, use as models, translatability, and entertainment value...Films that have been made by and star African-Americans that are worthy of being in a canon include: Antwone Fisher, Boomerang, Chameleon Street, Daughters of the Dust, Devil in a Blue Dress, Eve’s Bayou, Ganja and Hess, Get on the Bus, The Great Debaters, Jumping the Broom, Losing Ground, Sankofa, and Sidewalk Stories.   

(Excerpt: Notes on an African-American Canon in Cinema

On Sidewalk Stories, Daughters of the Dust, Eve’s Bayou and other films)

Notes on Looking

I think that when I first began to visit galleries and museums regularly, I would spend as much time reading as looking at the art: the art descriptions, whether in sheets of descriptions and lists or wall labels, were read for whatever information or insight they might give.  I could spend three hours or more at a museum, seeing each thing, reading about each thing, and leave exhausted, my eyes red, my legs stiff.  It took time—maybe years—for me to begin to relax, and just look at the art, allowing what was interesting to hold my attention, and what was not as something I could pass quickly and guiltlessly.  If I wanted more information than what was on the canvas—if I had an additional question—then I would read what was available.  What caught my attention during one visit might be the same thing that attracted me during the next visit—or not.  My visits became much shorter, more frequent, more entertaining, more intellectually engaging.  I thought more about what I was seeing, and I felt a greater transmission of energy from the work to me: the work of Rembrandt, Cezanne, Monet, Thomas Eakins, Gaugin, John Singer Sargent, Picasso, Edward Hopper, Wilfredo Lam, Larry Rivers, Jasper Johns, Eric Fischl, many others.  I could be held by a small detail or a large vision, a face, a figure, a landscape, a color or a form, an atmosphere or a mood.  Finally, seeing art became as much a spiritual as aesthetic experience.  It can be hard to convey that to people for whom art is an alien enterprise.  When you recommend art, they can respond as if you are advocating education, pretension, or tedium, rather than pleasure.  That is very sad, but understandable.  Looking at art can be a strange experience, whether or not you have taken classes in art.  Each piece is different, each thing may be telling you something unique; and so many of our responses are conditioned by habit.  Being open is key.

There are artists I like but would like to know more about: among others, Jan Van Eyck, Paulo Uccello, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Albrecht Durer, Antonia da Corregio, Paolo Veronese, Annibale Carraci, Diego Velazquez, Claude Lorraine, Canaletto, Joshua Reynolds, Goya, Jacques-Louis David, J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Theo Gericault, Eugene Delacroix, Adolph Menzel, Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Gwen John, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, Robert Delauney, Max Ernst, Rufino Tamayo, David Smith, Sigmar Polke, Chris Ofili, Jenny Saville, and Shirana Shahbazi.

Green Lantern vs. Captain America

It seems that Ryan Reynolds is directed as Hal, on whom special cosmic duties are thrust, by Martin Campbell, in the movie Green Lantern to hit expected heroic and sentimental notes, one key to the more formulaic aspects of the movie (the early childhood trauma of a pilot father’s death producing obvious, sustained moments of professional and personal paralysis; and the assurances of safety and stability given to a young boy, a nephew).  Reynolds has shown himself able to evade those predictable moments with fresh acting in other movies; among them, Definitely, Maybe and The Proposal and The Change-Up.  Yet, Reynolds remains likable enough for the viewer to tolerate these instances of bland stiffness.  Chris Evans, good in Push and The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond and another hero film franchise, seems to be allowed by Joe Johnston in Captain America both sensitivity and intelligence as well as heroic resources, and that seems the key to a more fluid, satisfying movie (as a physical weakling given a new body to fulfill his desire to serve his country, Evans thinks idiosyncratically and responds emotionally and maintains purpose; for instance, jumping on a grenade to protect others while more muscular men hide).  Both movies are entertaining, and the sensuous Blake Lively as a pilot and manager is vivid in Green Lantern and Peter Sarsgaard as a beleaguered scientist has some good moments (his quietly spoken welcome to the alien may be the sweetest thing in the movie).  Hayley Atwell as a woman military officer and friend and Stanley Tucci as a doctor, and other actors, Tommy Lee Jones, Dominic Cooper, and Derek Luke among them, fill out the effective cast in Captain America.

Francis Coppola's The Godfather

The Godfather, Parts I and II

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Paramount, 1972 and 1974

Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, based on Mario Puzo’s novel, is a masterpiece, and its deep engagement is one of both style and content: its story is not only about the induction of one young man into a crime family—there is something more elemental beneath that, something about innocence and experience, idealism and pragmatism.  The Godfather is one story featuring an Italian crime family, told in two parts (two films that can be screened or seen as one), with three main narrative sections; and it is about the inevitable discovery of the deep cruelty and violence of the world, and accepting and mastering those realities.  A young Italian man chooses what is over what could be: he betrays his best self and his love and even members of his family to survive in a cruel, violent world.  He becomes the cruelty, the violence.  Everything is done in the name of family, but it is hard to see or know what private family life is worth—that seems small and mundane in relation to family as a business enterprise, in relation to money and power, with much remaining unspoken (well, not exactly unspoken: spoken and ignored).

In light of the fact that little could be said to be at stake—the son of a major criminal becomes a criminal, and he and other criminals try to kill each other, one would think that the story would have less grasp of the imagination of the viewer, but its grasp is secure thanks to the attitude, atmosphere, and tone of The Godfather.  The film’s language, its style of telling its story, are compelling, satisfying; and the film makes the viewer comfortable in a volatile world.  The locations, whether in New York or Italy, high life or low, seem historically accurate, and vivid, and the acting is confident, earthy, and the often slow pace natural.  A sense of reality is created, and of drama within that reality.  As well, seeing some people outwitting other people remains exciting: often what makes a film intriguing is the strategic use of intelligence, though that is not necessarily what we are thinking about as we watch.  One writer that I admire, Pauline Kael, liked the film; and another, James Baldwin, disdained it, seeing in its violence a betrayal of human nobility.

Part I is focused on an old, powerful criminal, a don, and his granting of favors before his daughter’s wedding, the wedding activities, and the don’s subsequent rejection of a business proposition, a rejection that produces a violent reaction that leads to his war-hero son, for whom there had been high hopes, becoming involved in the criminal world.  Part II is about the childhood and early life of the old criminal, and also about what happens after the old criminal’s promising son becomes part of the criminal world.  Marlon Brando is, of course, impressive as the old don, Vito, Don Corleone, a father of three sons (Santino, Fredo, and Michael), a man who has achieved his own kind of wisdom, though his bit of buffoonery before his final demise is trademark (was Brando’s insistence on humor a way of giving a character more life, or a way of mocking everything—or both?).  James Caan as Santino, called Sonny, is good too, intense, tough, humorous, though his body being torn apart by bullets—the jerky gestures—have become inspiration for both actors and satirists.  It was Al Pacino as Vito’s son, the young then aging, more lethal Michael, and Robert DeNiro as young Vito, the struggling immigrant who becomes the young don, who were most impressive—uniquely attractive men and greatly resourceful actors.  Their intensity and ability to suggest movement from morality to immorality, with its physical and spiritual effects, are remarkable: depth and strength accrue to their intelligence and masculinity, while lights go out in whatever areas in their personality house sensitivity or spontaneity.  However DeNiro as Vito is able to suggest some amusement and sympathy that Pacino’s Michael seems too cold and too shrewd, really too small, for: the new don, Vito’s son Michael, is a more inventive criminal than his father and a smaller man.  The Godfather is a great story, about an Italian family and the creation of American monsters.

The women—Michael’s sister Connie (Talia Shire) and Michael’s wife Kay (Diane Keaton)—who are aware and have some emotional or spiritual life are the ones who suffer: they cannot quite make themselves small or simple enough to fit into the boxes made by others for them.  Individual wants or needs are ignored if they do not fit into family business plans.  The girlish Connie is introduced to a young man by her brother Sonny, and after her marriage she is a mousey wife with a rebellious temper, and following her husband’s death, enacted by the family in vengeance, she is glittering, driven, wild, and then when her mother dies she accepts regret and responsibility.  Diane Keaton as Kay is very pretty, prettier and possibly more traditionally sensuous than usual, and her voice is mostly controlled, not fluttering or flighty, but that voice does not have as much energy as I imagine it should (I wonder if Keaton and Woody Allen, for whom Keaton portrayed an eccentric Annie Hall, had a rapport built on recognized depression).  Kay cannot accept a compromised life, and the constant threat of violence.  When she faces Michael late in the story, Kay’s face is full of awareness and apprehension, and the viewer intuits affection, before Michael closes the door against her.  Family business could be an allegory for business everywhere, only more bloody.  The Godfather was violent for its time, but its violence does not feel as painful or seem as gruesome as some of the excruciating violence we see now in film.  It did raise the level and believability of film violence, and remains echoed in current films (it seems as if the tolerance for violence, as well as vulgarity, is always being broadened). 

The Godfather dramatizes the fact of act and consequence: one family does something, and another family reacts.  It is survival won and lost with amoral intelligence and assaultive force on a brutal level.  One watches the two parts of The Godfather entertained by its story, and feeling as if something more significant is being touched.

Art & Trash

How much reality can art hold?  The late sixteenth-century Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio drew from life and painted that, even included known figures in mythological scenes, with some of his work getting disapproval for its realism.  Gustave Courbet painted peasants at a country funeral, A Burial at Ornans (1849), a scene of surprising and simple dignity.  Marcel Duchamp, in the early twentieth century, signed a readymade urinal R. Mutt, and called it art.  Robert Rauschenberg put pieces together, some of which might have been considered garbage, in what were called “combine” pictures or sculptures.  In the quest for beauty, is what used to be left out of art, the mundane and the trashy, what is real, what is true?  Or is the essence, the ideal, the accomplishment of virtue against ordinary and great odds, the true?  Is the presence of what had been absent in previous times the content that makes modern art real, and true?  Is the garbage now perceptible in art—whether painting and sculpture, film, music, or literature—what makes art more recognizable and relevant, or much less meaningful?  

Serious art, often made for a selected few rather than a large mass, has often struggled with how much fact, or truth, to let in.  It can be interesting to note what happens when revelations reach a popular level.  Watching The Change-Up (2011), a movie with Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds, directed by David Dobkin, I was compelled to think again about comic vulgarity in popular film.  In the movie, two friends, one a businessman married with children, and the other a drug-using most unemployed actor, envy the stability or freedom in the other’s lives, and after a quirk of magic, each man’s personality or spirit wake up in each other’s bodies.  Bateman has mastered the ordinary part of a capable and professional, middle-class man who is not particularly self-assertive, and Reynolds, often an attractive go-getter, is proving himself able to take on an increasing range of roles, as here, as a dopey, flaky man.  The film, which contains some realism about adult responsibility and immature laziness, contains a lot of humor regarding the body, not only in terms of sexual references but with what used to be called toilet humor (there are several toilet scenes in this movie).  Of course, I thought of other films with a similar sensibility, in which what used to be unsayable now seems a great reason for, or strategy in, doing a film: Seth Gordon’s Horrible Bosses (2011), in which Jennifer Aniston plays a dentist that harasses her assistant with graphic sexual language; and the Farrelly Brothers’ Hall Pass (2011), in which wives give their husbands permission for short-term cheating (during the course of the film we are presented with contrasting full-frontal male nudity—showing male genitals used to be taboo).  All three films allow a certain slippage, a certain ambiguity, in how the men relate to each other’s bodies (in Horrible Bosses, there is a brief talk about whom would be the most rape-worthy in prison; and in The Change-Up, after the men change bodies, each notices intimate things about the other’s body, and one says he is tempted to kiss his own male member, and later the other masturbates while inhabiting his friend’s body).  It is the kind of consciousness that would not exist without feminism and the gay liberation movement, but, while absorbing the rewards and mining the humor, pays no significant regard to political consciousness.  The thing is, these movies offer scenarios that many people can relate to: they are situation comedies of work and love focused on attractive people entering middle age and confronting the choices they have made; and they cannot be said to be merely superficial or exploitative—but the vulgar humor in them is a great part of their power and appeal.

While allowing for the use of waste in art and entertainment, what are we giving up?  While applauding or laughing at all this shit, what are we doing without?