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African Jazz and A Legacy of Sound Activism

 

Julian Bahula, Gold honor of the Order of Ikhamanga recipient, died at 85, leaving his life of sound in a world dominated by images

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This is not the face of someone who waits— Bahula was an instrumentalist of action. 

 

What’s more compelling than an Instagram story? Saturated in distracting images and visual minutiae, an emerging landscape of emotionless barely noticed soundbytes backlining what meets the eye persistently detracts from the potential for aural engagement. A haunted consequence of concise content packaging: seven seconds isn’t enough to engage meaningfully with human emotions through sound.

Music thrives on its awesome power to resonate with a listener both in its physical qualities and its conveyed meaning ; sound moves people, and not just physically. The attention we give to emotions when connecting with a song is beyond what visual persuasions afford an experience. With tonal roots of feeling, music is a facet of unity. In jamming to a tune together, listeners feel as one, reverberating simultaneously in the argument of a sound, or a collection of sounds. Manipulating sounds into order isn’t only pretty, it is particular; as anything with power, music is political. Musical emotions aren’t trite when they touch down on real issues in society. They surge with mana, arousing the spirit against injustice. Music as a baseline: what it means to be human. While music can be dangerous in many ways, music in civilizations that struggle can advocate for amendment. Protest music launches with far more power than an instagram. 

In the US, Billie Holiday’s 1939 “Strange Fruit” depicting Southern lynchings of African Americans is remembered as one of the most famous and far reaching protest songs. More recently, Childish Gambino struck tempestuous chords with his 2018 song and music video “This Is America.” For consumers of popular culture, it is songs like these that frame how the general public considers the nation, and the world’s overarching issues; in the 79 years between the two works, the world of image has bloated to cut out some of the sanctity of sound’s standalone argument. 

On October 1st 2023, Julian Bahula departed from our spheres of sound and color, having spanned a tremendous eight-and-a-half decades of protest music, and the chief missions of many songs being achieved— his lifetime spans past the two aforementioned songs. Born in Eersterust, South Africa in 1938, Bahula was intimately familiar with protest. The Group Areas Act of 1950 declared ‘separateness’ between people of white and black racial groups in partitioned systems of development, and so Bahula’s family was forcibly extracted  from their home, and plopped in Mamelodi, five miles east. The displacement sent Bahula skipping, like a rock out to the ocean, into music. He began drumming and was soon formulating jazz groups. Playing on a traditional western drum kit, he also ventured into traditional African drums, using pedi malopo drums, traditionally used in gathering and healing. Credited with being one of the first to introduce African drums to jazz music, it was here in Pretoria that he formed one of his first bands, called the Molombo Jazzmen.

Bahula insisted on the healing nature of the music he made, describing the tradition of the drums: “Malombo means spirit – the spirit of our people, our gods and our ancestors. The drums speak. When people weren’t feeling well, they would be healed by these drums.” Combined with the traditionally black American form of Jazz, which has its own type of mourning and uplifting through musical tradition, Bahula wrought this alleviative drum-power in fusion. Represented through name and practice, the activist-drummer fostered a life-long mission of fighting for black freedom in South Africa. Long live Jazz Afrika (a group which Bahula later started, but arguably a unique musical style).

Carrying this mission Southern Africa with jazz and remedial malombo conviction, the drummer and his band broke laws, performing with the white psychedelic rock band Freedom’s Children, painting their skin fluorescent colors and playing in the dark. The musician took major risks for his causes, not only in his music, but with his instruments. “I smuggled ANC documents into Botswana using the body of a malombo. ‘Here he comes again with his stinking drums!’ the border police would say. They didn’t ask questions. When I look back I was brave.” Inside this healing vessel that usually was smacked for sound, Bahula’s carrying of secret messages engages in a vivid crossroads between musical aspirations and activist actualizations. Carrying letters for the African National Congress probably played a huge role in the guerilla schematics of the battle against apartheid. Bahula’s music, instruments and safety were devoted to and endangered for the sake of activism. “But we weren’t thinking about risk, only of freedom.” 

In this instance,  Bahula at the border, the drum serves as a shield and a disguise, a protector and a misdirecting force. The image of music is a distraction, but it is meaningful, it is in the pursuit of activism and change. And after delivering letters, Bahula would play gigs abroad. Unlike a social media post packaged with a clipping of music, the image the activist provides us here is whole in its intention and connection for the cause. An instagram is more likely to detract and divide, screech and get scrolled past. If there is sound present, it barely gets any of the attention of the viewer. Concerts, like the ones Bahula traveled to in Botswana, are where people rallied around the fight for political liberation, connecting with each other and their mutual goals. When he traveled he was not alone, Steve Biko often spoke at his performances, doubtless putting the Malombo Jazzmen’s music in conversation with the goals of equality.

Neither was the jazz drummer alone in flight. Escaping South Africa for London using a fake passport in 1973, with his bandmates following, proved to be the only way to avoid imprisonment. Bahula did not leave his pursuit of equality with South Africa’s borderline. Arriving in an exciting new city, he pounced upon the music scene, creating a label for other African musicians called Tsafrika. He promoted a weekly African jazz  night on Fridays at the 100 Club, “featuring many musicians who were political refugees isolated from their South African homeland because of the apartheid laws and who were members of the outlawed ANC.” 

Bahula impressively organized and promoted a 65th birthday concert for Nelson Mandela, who continued to be imprisoned, surging a wave of support against the around-apartheid movement. The Festival of African Sounds bursted at the Alexandra Palace in London on July 17th 1983, bringing about 3,000 people. This was one of the first events to bring about a more widespread concern for Mandela’s wrongful imprisonment, and helped surge a worldwide movement to end South African Apartheid. Bahula’s group at the time, Jazz Africa played their song Mandela, inspiring Jerry Dammers to write “Free Nelson Mandela.” On July 17th 1988, a 70th birthday celebration was held for Nelson Mandela. In a packed Wembley stadium, Dammers performed the protest song, along with acts from the Dire Straits, Simple Minds, and the Bee Gees. It was broadcast to more than 67 countries and 600 million people tuned in.

This is the ripple of Julian Bahula’s cymbal. An admirer of great drummers, I tried to uncover videos of Bahula playing the drums online. They are unfathomably hard to find. A resident of the 21st century, I expect a video of anything I want to materialize at my fingertips, the regularity of a drumbeat. I finally came upon a taped performance, a blurred figure of Bahula bangin’ on the pedi malopo drums at the Louis Moholo African Drum Ensemble at the Camden Jazz Festival in October ‘81, London. He’s one of six or seven African guys onstage, bangin’ with urgency. In his broad v-neck baggy armholed traditional shirt, he seems skinny, arms seem to multiply. He levitates inside that shirt. The recording is about 50 minutes long, and his eyes are almost always on Moholo, who is sitting at a western drum set six or seven feet to his right; he is watching for the rhythm with both his vision and his hearing. Bahula’s gaze is intense, with sudden swivels back and forth from his drums to the higher frequencies coming from the hi-hat and the ride. At one point, about 35 minutes in, Julian’s head and body shift their full intimate focus towards his drums. He’s not doing anything technically special, it’s not his first time in the performance leading the groove, and for a while everything else melts away, it’s just Julian and the pedi malopo drums, his arms shifting in slow motion with a graceful swing, his beat emboldens, his lips purse in an inaudible chant; the camera zooms in on his face, brows crouched over his eyes in focus. Performing his own derivative healing ritual in sound. The camera shot switches back to Moholo smiling.

Bahula’s eyes and what his sight must have been display how essential the gaze is in creation and connection. The flickering belief that I have, certainly along with Bahula, is that the aural outweighs the visual. Unity lessens the isolation of visuality. Sound assembles us to create deeper human connection— the legendary activist’s legacy undoubtably argues for this. He is survived by three grandchildren, and ten great grandchildren. Sound unites us, images are a mere aid or crutch. The bowels of Bahula’s drums live on, carrying the hope for equality around the world into the future.

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Wenner’s Misguided Masters

Jann Wenner Stands Still But The Times They Are A Changin’ 

Bob Dylan pictured with Wenner in 1995. He recently called for Wenner to be reinstated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

 

REVIEWS
Aryaman A. Thareja
Nov. 30th, 2o23

Media mogul Jann Wenner does not shy away from controversy. The Founder of the Rolling Stone, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (whose board he was recently booted off) and Men’s Journal Magazine dropped out of Berkeley effusing rebellious Teen Spirit, to work at muckraker mag Ramparts in the stormy sixties, under the tutelage of long-time mentor, pioneering jazz/rock critic (and, later, co-founder) Ralph Gleason. The subsequent half-century saw him literally Rockin’ (in) the Free World, employing some of the greats of rock, pop and cultural journalism, including the legendary and the infamous Greil Marcus and Hunter S. Thompson (whose biography he co-wrote in 2007).

Time’s been kind to Mr. Wenner, establishing him as a cultural custodian and shrewd businessman. But he hasn’t come all this way scot-free, the blood stains of business embossed in the numerous controversies he frequently finds himself (or gets himself) embrangled in. His influence in the world of Hollywood, heroin and hegemons is unparalleled, his reach extending to Presidents Obama and Clinton, Coldplay’s front-man Chris Martin, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Former VP Al Gore among countless others.

The mag itself was born at a transitory stage in the cultural understanding of Rock and Roll. Rock wasn’t designed for the mainstream. It ran parallel but underground, a riptide of counter-culture, cutting against the grain of the norm. Naturally then, it is predisposed to polemics, to prohibition, to puritanical repudiations and moral panic. The Rolling Stone sought to elevate the genre to the domain of the intellectual, the creative, the extraordinary, the mystical – into ‘art’.

Far from fame, fortune and frenzied festivity, the trek to the top was, at times, treacherous. Once Rolling Stone contributor and critical novelist Tom Wolfe described him as “pretty much immune to guilt.” His father called him a “pain in the ass”, his mother “the worst child she had ever met.” Some call him a narcissist and sycophant, others label him dishonest or cruel. Joe Hagan, the author of Mr. Wenner’s biography Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine, went through 500 boxes of notes, correspondence, recordings and other material that Wenner had been saving from an early age in anticipation of his own success. No biography could live up to the one written in Wenner’s imagination; The rage that followed the biography’s publication paints a spite-pattered picture of this disillusionment.

His latest book, The Masters: Conversations with Dylan, Lennon, Jagger, Townshend, Garcia, Bono, and Springsteen, promptly propelled him back into the spotlight, and for all the wrong reasons. The book itself is a collection of colloquies; bright, shiny trophies that adorn the walls inside Wenner’s mind. On the surface, it’s harmless. These are old interviews. They’ve been published before, read by thousands, edited carefully. What could possibly go wrong? True to style, they’ve even been altered and proofread by their respective interviewees, and approved before final print. The only additions are introductory remarks and a set of commentaries before each interview. This is where the problem arises.

In the introduction he explains, “That there are no Black musicians in this collection is reflective of the prejudices and practices of the times. As a white middle-class kid in the Fifties and Sixties, and as a more aware college student, I didn’t hear such songs as Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” (1964) as part of my zeitgeist.” Arguably, it is truthful to admit that certain musicians are out of our sphere of understanding, of the realm of our discovery. But there’s two reasons that argument could not apply here. The first, that as the founder of the Rolling Stone, you would undoubtedly come into contact with musicians, artists, creatives from around the world, you’d have to listen, to analyse, to think. You’d have to read what the magazine you started said precisely on those out of your “zeitgeist” (Sam Cooke’s album ‘Portrait of a Legend’ is ranked 307/500 on RS’s 500 greatest albums of all time). Second, when talking about something as foundational and fundamental as the defining traits of a genre as broad as Rock & Roll, making a deliberate choice not to include Black musicians, is blatantly contradictory.

In an interview with the New York Times, he doesn’t back down. “Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.” He remarks, “Of Black artists…. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.” It seems unlikely that a writer with a past as illustrious as Wenner would make such callous remarks. Some freudian slips can be revelatory. Some facts are revelatory too; For years, there was only one female contributing editor (Robin Green) at the magazine. Jim DeRogatis, a former Rolling Stones writer, was fired in 1996 after publishing a negative review about genre-bending 90s band Hootie and the Blowfish. DeRogatis, in response to being asked if Wenner was a fan of the band, suggestively jibes “No, I think he’s just a fan of bands which sell eight and a half million million copies.” And I think he’s right. The review was pulled before being published. Masters seems to follow the pattern of Wenner publicising work he did with those he was friendly with – not those that fit the label.

There are other instances of delicate discrimination. At another point in the foreword, he explains, “Rock embraced the open sexuality of the Black rhythm. The body found expression and freedom, the ecstasy and abandon of the tribal and the primal as well as the slow dance, with its invitation to intimacy.” Troubling racist tropes leave a bitter taste when you flip through the remaining pages, especially when fiercely defended. Especially when some of these interviews (Townshend in ‘68, Dylan in ‘69, Lennon in ‘70) took place a sock-hop away from the Civil Rights Movement.

The perils of cancel culture lie in its one-sided narratives. To express a pinch of Sympathy For The Devil, I believe his latest statements were particularly ill-chosen, dishonest and ironically, not well articulated. Wenner would perhaps receive criticism for admitting to choosing this batch for their obvious closeness and friendship. Unfamiliarity always pushes one toward discomfort. He himself admits that his book “was not meant to represent the whole of music and its diverse and important originators” but rather to “reflect the high points” of his career. The book affirms that position.

The criticism cannot be invalidated that easily; Wenner’s position is a symbolic one. It speaks to the lengths that radio stations, recording studios, national press, government officials, religious leaders, and white parents sought to prevent the pervasiveness (and alleged perversion) of Rock, a genre that brought down barriers, especially racial. Even more so, it speaks to their success. Wenner’s decision to delineate Rock, deliberately enshrining white musicians as stewards of the genre, while simultaneously and willfully eradicating the influence, identities and music of Black musicians (who helped define and invent it), is not just discrimination. It echoes the sentiments of the de facto regulators of music consumption.

The Stones have a complicated relationship with and to Black Music. Jack Hamilton, author of Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination, asks the question: “How did rock-and-roll music—a genre rooted in black traditions, and many of whose earliest stars were black—come to be understood as the natural province of whites?” One of the interviews in Wenner’s Masters is with magnetic maestro Mick Jagger, the frontman of The Rolling Stones, and the androgynous symbol of Rock’s rebelliousness and liberation. Wenner (and many more) call the Stones the “the greatest rock and roll band in the world.” Obvious adulation aside, Wenner asks Jagger to define Rock and Roll (227). He’s proud of the genre’s evident blues influence, amongst philosophical sprinklings of “energy, anger, angst” and other youthful dalliances that yield Rock that adolescent “languor.” Hamilton points out that for most of their careers, they “never set out to be a rock-and-roll band at all.” They revered their R&B contemporaries, they broadcasted the blues across Britain, openly acknowledging their inspirations, heroes, idols as Black musicians.

“This transition—from the Rolling Stones being heard as a white band authenticated by their reverence for and fluency within black music, to the Rolling Stones simply being heard as a new sort of authentic themselves—is among the most significant turns in the history of rock.”

Wenner (and his co-founder Ralph Gleason), are enamoured with what the Rolling Stones became, not with what (and who) got them there. The Rolling Stone published an oral history of segregation at Rock concerts in the Jim Crow era. It recalls that “the Beatles refused to play segregated venues on their 1965 U.S. tour” – five full years before Wenner’s interview with Lennon. Despite the clear acknowledgment that Rock rejects racial discrimination, and even further, the blatant fact that Rock originated with Black musicians, the genre has become synonymous with primarily white musicians. As tempting as it may be, Wenner is not the only guilty party. Pulitzer prize winning critic Margo Jefferson declares historical plundering, black-and-white (white-from-black). Deliberate or not, it sustained the narrative that first, there was a difference in black Rock and white Rock and second, that white rock was better. Margo Jefferson felt it before Jimi Hendrix died, and perhaps Jann Wenner felt the same thing differently in 1967, when the Rolling Stone was fresh off the press.

By 1979, classic “Rock” was already white. Now, it was disco’s turn for subjugation. Disco Demolition Night (1979), the mass public burning of Disco records and subsequent riot by thousands of white Rock fans at a MLB game, is often viewed as homophobic, anti-black, and sexist. Disco was seen as “product of homosexuals, blacks and Latins”, and it becomes clear that the barrier-bending salvation, the liberation from labels, (to quote Wenner) “the rebellious spirit, social commentary…undaunted sexuality” was all now at risk of extinction. Disco, like Rock, was (yet again) challenging the American identity. Seemingly, the pendulum had swung too far out, and it was now brazenly making its way back. Events like these shifted the sonority of rock, making it milder, more digestible for a mass (white-male) audience. The records brought to Disco Demolition Night affirm this specific zeitgeist, a deliberate upset to the balance on which Rock (and Disco) lay.

The volume is Wenner’s vanity project. A final hurrah, a midnight indulgence, a divisive attempt to reclaim centre stage and leave behind a legacy. The book is filled with mastery, the Lennon interview is filled with candid remarks, closely following the break-up of the Beatles. The Dylan interview captures the humorous evasiveness of this monumental figure. However, the legacy of Rock today is troubled. Hanif Abduraqib writes about a Springsteen concert he attended in 2016, observing that the only other black people at the show were performing labour in some capacity. Margo Jefferson wrote in 1972, “The night Jimi [Hendrix] died I dreamed this was the latest step in a plot being designed to eliminate blacks from rock music so that it may be recorded in history as a creation of whites.” It is fortunate that Wenner’s latest comments colour this legacy to more accurately reflect the deep prejudices that lay behind the glistening facades of the magazine, and the genre as a whole.

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An Ode to Cornell Professor Steven Pond

The Beloved Tailor-Turned-Teacher Reflects on his Life, Legacy, and Learnings

Steve in front of a “Surdo” , a Brazilian drum used for Deixa Sambar

PROFILES

Aryaman A. Thareja 

Nov, 8th, 2023

7:30 PM on a Thursday is a strange time to meander through Cornell’s Arts Quad. Occasionally, you may encounter the devoted academic, sifting through the organized chaos of formula sheets and incomplete problem sets. Seasonally, you’ll spot a line of students making their way to an exam, clutching their notes, hoping (in vain) to extract some reservoir of information on an ink-filled page. One dimly lit corner of the quad is daubed with trees, cloaking the faded blue pediments and burnt red bricks of Lincoln Hall, home to the University’s Music Department. Every Thursday, Rio De Janeiro’s coastal rhythms surface far above Cayuga’s waters, weaving worlds of difference into a unified sound. 

Deixa Sambar, Portuguese for “Let it Samba”, started in the early 2000s as a group of Ithacans interested in Brazilian Music. Initially composed of mostly Biologists (the group was called Samba de Biología), the group has seen many iterations over the years. As a sophomore music minor, I struggled to find a course that would both meet the requirements of the department (which required an ensemble/collaborative performance course) given my rather limited level of experience with more traditional classical instruments, as well as the lack of time on my busy engineering schedule. Through this search, I encountered the 1-credit Deixa Sambar where I was first introduced to Professor Steve Pond. 

The eclectic ethnomusicologist’s entry into academia has been wholly unconventional. After graduating from high school in 1968, he planned to become a choral conductor. He dropped out of college during his sophomore year to move with his high school sweetheart to Michigan. When they discovered she was pregnant, he got a job doing menswear retail, which he ended up doing for the next 30 years. Evidently, his passion for music persisted throughout, as he found himself at informational interviews with Bonnie Wade, an ethnomusicologist and Professor at UC Berkeley, grappling with the decision to return back to school. 

At this point, Steve ponders for a minute and considers himself all those years ago. Those who know him recognise that moment of self-indulgence that manifests as a knowing smile, when he reflects on the absurd or trivial. “Gosh I was so naïve then”, he remarks. Now divorced with two children, Steve had bills to pay. His conversations with Dr. Wade had illuminated him to the scope of his interest in ethnomusicology, an interest that stemmed from his desire to bridge his training in choral music, which was tied to the classical western music tradition and his “other” life as a percussionist and drummer, especially in Rock, R&B and small-group Jazz. Dr. Wade candidly snaps him out of the misconception that there are avenues in ethnomusicology without a Phd, and that going back to school was a 10-year long commitment. At least. 

Steve proceeds to point out that he had to take prerequisite classes, and enroll in a certain number of credits. A part-time student and full-time employee, his nonchalant descriptions of those years juggling kids, school and work likely undermine the immense amount of work he was doing all at once. On top of that, he meets a girl he knew from Junior high and they get married. He recounts this all to me in one densely-packed sentence. Information rolls off his tongue in cleverly constructed licks, humbly twisting and turning your expectations, casually subverting expectations and covertly displaying the remarkable power of his determination. 

He described the next four years as “7 days a week of something”, earning his undergraduate degree and getting accepted into graduate school. His routine switched from working retail full-time to a hustling academic, and started to develop his dissertation under the pioneering composer Olly Wilson, who was interested in understanding aesthetics from an African diasporic point-of-view. Interactions with figures like Wilson proved influential, for they helped mold Steve’s understanding of ethnomusicology entirely; this transformation allowed him to pursue the specific field which he was really interested in – American Jazz Fusion music. 

While developing his dissertation, Steve scored an interview with Pat Gleeson, credited with teaching Jazz giant Herbie Hancock the techniques of the synthesizer. Before being turned on to Electronic Music, Gleeson was an English Professor at San Francisco State and though not involved himself, he paved the way for Steve to be able to interview virtually everyone involved in the production of Head Hunters, a seminal album in the proliferation of Jazz-funk fusion. These interviews eventually turned into Steve’s dissertation, which was framed through concepts of ethnomusicology he learnt with Olly Wilson. 

Extraordinarily, while writing the first chapter of his dissertation, he received a call from Judith Peraino, his TA at Berkeley who was now at Cornell. At age 50, with just a chapter of his dissertation completed, he was hired at Cornell as one of the only researchers of Fusion at the time. He humbly jokes that if “this hadn’t worked, I didn’t even have the training to lead a high school jazz band.” The following years saw him in an array of roles. Serving as a professor of music courses, an advisor to his grad students, in various capacities in the administration of the Music Department, a student of Samba Batacuda as a member of the Deixa Sambar, and ultimately as its benevolent leader. 

As Chair of the Music Department, Steve’s philosophy permeated into the curriculum, into the structure of both the Music Major and Minor for undergraduates. What was once a program which aimed to rigorously prepare students within a western classical framework, turned into an expansive, inclusive space that redefined the notion of music itself. Taking it from the academic study of certain musics to the academy study of the phenomenon, the active nature of organized sound. It was now available to someone with limited experience like me. Perhaps, more available to someone like Steve himself. 

This topic gave me an opportunity to prod at the inner workings, the mechanisms deployed to integrate the Department of Music and the rest of the Cornell community, and further, to play the role of the expert curator, the literal voice of the creative community. What responsibilities, considerations, meditations, decisions guided the programming? Where does the DofM stand today? Steve’s nimble response elucidated to me that he had thought about this before. Instantly he begins a recitation of facts and figures, softly serving up the extensive selection of guest concerts, student recitals and informal gatherings that the department hosts every year. The department is involved in the production of more than 400 musical gatherings a year, all of which are available to the inquisitive Cornellian, faculty and at times, even the general public. Most of these are free of charge. The department is a trailblazer at Cornell, holding high the torch of flexibility in academia, of opportunity in the arts, and of true interdisciplinary study. 

Today, it is possible for someone who doesn’t play an instrument to graduate with a Music major. Contemplation of this fact reveals clear-eyed acuity; no other major requires you to arrive armed with information, or pre-requisite skill. At most, it would require demonstrated interest and a zeal to learn. The argument that in order for your education to be useful or rigorous, you must already possess a great deal of knowledge is a contradictory one. A move like this opens up possibilities to those who did not have access to the resources that are required to learn an instrument at a high level. It allows for the receptiveness of music whose entire systems function differently. It invites us to redefine, reenergize, refocus, refine our preconceived notions about sound and music, and compels us to confront unfamiliarity, driving innovation. It’s a paradigm shift from a paradigm-shifter. 

 As Steve prepares to retire next year, I asked him about what he’s taking with him as well as leaving behind when he departs Cornell. In an almost absent-mindedly profound tone he replies:

“I see my job as a professor as having basically just two parts: one is to find out stuff, to learn stuff. The second part is sharing. One way sharing happens is writing books, articles, teaching grad students to do similar things. The impact of that is really kind of small. An academic book has a readership in the 100s. The impact on society is not so wide. All these things in the long run are fairly confined. Where the change in society happens is in the classroom with students who may never have anything to do with this class professionally. Through a sensibility of how to live within the world, that’s where real transformation happens. That’s my legacy. My biggest impact may end up being Deixa Sambar.” 

His involvement within Deixa Sambar is analogous to his journey to and through Cornell. He proudly recounts the history of the group, from the foundation funding made available by now-retired Cornell ethnomusicologist Prof. Martin Hatch to Brazilian computer scientist Cleibe Souza’s foundational leadership of the group, his journey to the helm is suffused with stories, both of his own and that of the collective. Having known him for a brief year, I sense he’s downplaying his own accomplishments when he talks about learning all the instruments that he now teaches us to play, as well as his own instrumental position in knitting the fabric of the group as it stands today. 

There’s too many proverbs and too few people living them. Socrates described education as ‘the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel’ or perhaps the more fitting choice of a Portuguese idiom “quem vê cara não vê coração” (which roughly translates to those who see face don’t see heart). Steve breathes life into those proverbs. It’s not all just recounting facts, figures and graphs. Sometimes, it’s the feel, the groove, the sway, the walk, the dance. He knows better than most that learning is a never-ending process, that creativity is the child of opportunity, and he creates that space for every one of his students.Don’t believe me? Come by Lincoln Hall at 7:30 and you’ll catch him marching to the beats of Rio’s Samba Batucada, or messing around with a Pandeiro, or teaching one of us to play an instrument we’ve never seen or heard before. 

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Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Book Review so We Wouldn’t Get Sued

Chris Payne’s Oral History of Emo’s Mainstream finds itself in the company of my various Fall Out Boy records.

Where Are Your Boys Tonight: An Oral History of Emo’s Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008 by Chris Payne

Having never spent a summer at the Vans Warped Tour or spent time ironing my hair to be a MySpace queen, I still find myself entranced by the eruption of emo subculture during the early 2000s. It seems like I’m not the only one stuck in time.  Festivals like When We Were Young and My Chemical Romance’s reunion tour selling out arenas worldwide. The third wave of Emo is still profitable and on your mind. 

Not many genres are defined through waves, but emo was born from the tides of the DC hardcore scene in the 1980s with bands like Rites of Spring. Full of punk rock influences and confessional lyrics, the ripples of emo began to be felt in the Midwest during the 90s with quintessential acts like American Football and Cap’n Jazz. Nowadays, it’s full of twinkly math rock riffs and maybe too many lines about weed. But for a select few years in the 2000s, emo was in the limelight.

It was about time a book like “Where Are Your Boys Tonight” was published. We are already like three more waves of emo in by now. Chris Payne became the writer to pick up the gauntlet. 

Payne is a music journalist from Brooklyn that has written for major publications like Stereogum and Alternative Press and currently hosts an indie music podcast. For Payne’s first book, it amassed quite a bit of attention on social media before its release, from both people excited to relive their Hot Topic glory days and those like me who were still learning their multiplication tables. 

One might be inclined to compare this firsthand account to Lizzy Goodman’s Meet Me in the Bathroom, which is similarly a very direct Q&A oral history style observation of a time period in music. There was an undeniable overlap in these scenes during the 2000s, I’m even typing this listening to Kimya Dawson’s The Moldy Peaches, one of the bands featured in Meet Me in the Bathroom. “Where Are Your Boys Tonight?” doesn’t shy away from this comparison and even modeled the back cover exactly after its predecessor. One more companion piece of literature braiding together the oral history of a scene long gone. 

Payne’s cast of characters is broad—almost to the edge of failure—and includes guitarists, journalists, and promoters. From Hanif Abdurraqib to Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy, it seems Payne touched every part of the scene, at least in New Jersey and New York. With over 150 characters throughout, the picture he paints can become clouded by incessant flipping back to recall who’s who. 

This book caters mostly to those whose arms sported dozens of rubber wristbands and eyes rubbed thoroughly with eyeliner. At the very least, it’s definitely helpful to be familiar with the bands and names of artists involved as be conversant with information about general pop culture from back then. Don’t expect Payne to hold your hand through your first foray into these bands or even your second. 

The book seeks to answer how and why third wave emo became mainstream during the mid-2000s, how the bands erupted from smaller local scenes and how the popularity of the genre eventually went back to being the favorite of only a few guys at a basement show. He succeeds in engaging with the reader thanks to his breadth and depth of interviews and its chronological order works to his advantage. Even as someone well versed in the history of these artists, most of the stories featured are brand new to me and provide much needed context for the growth of the scene. 

We are finally far enough away from studded belts and striped arm warmers confront the third wave demons, mostly comprised of sexual predators and sexist pigs. Payne does some part in pointing them out where he can, paying most of his attention to Brand New’s Jesse Lacey. But how long must we wait for a book to be written about emo’s current missteps? It seems for now, the scene has become faster at recognizing its moldy spots and cuts them out at a faster pace such as with McCafferty and JANK.

Emo has continued to grow as a space for queer people, women, and people of color. Female fronted acts, which were mostly missing from Payne’s retelling, like Pool Kids, Home is Where, and Sincere Engineer fill the scene with salient lyrics and revitalizing energy. Emo has also become broader in its influences, with newer bands like Glass Beach drawing in synths and Broadway-esque qualities. My hopes are that if someone in the future like Payne chooses to write about the current state of emo, I’ll feel like the story has included people beyond some guy with high top converse. 

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Embracing the Singularity of Lady Gaga

An in-depth look into the ever changing uniqueness of the pop star’s career.

The book’s cover, showcasing the singer’s chic boldness, 2022.

Lady Gaga: Applause

There are only a finite number of words to describe the unconventionality of Lady Gaga, and music journalist Annie Zaleski uses them all. Behind the seemingly unsuspecting black and white cover holds a treasure trove of vibrant, rich colors and chic patterns that perfectly encapsulates the flamboyant career of pop star sensation, Lady Gaga.

Zaleski’s approach to Gaga’s life takes on a rich musical stance, showcasing Gaga’s inspirations from the late 70s-90s such as David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, Blondie, and the Beatles. Starting with a rundown of the childhood of Lady Gaga, née Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, Zaleski emphasizes the way music played a large role in her hobbies and interests, shaping her into the pop star sensation she is today, from her father’s encouragement to learn rock songs on the piano that he played along the Jersey Shore to the influence of MTV upon the 90s generation. 

It explores the early start for the musician that began with her dislike for school (but not learning, as Gaga makes clear) and her strong desire to make music and work. While her parents were not thrilled with her decision to pursue music rather than continue her studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Gaga was given their blessing to bring her ambitions to fruition. She had one year starting in September 2005 to “make things happen and land a record deal”– a timeline that for some may have been too ambitious, but not for Gaga. Within weeks, she had a band put together and they debuted in October of 2005, marking the beginning of Gaga’s career. Her passion for music only grew, and soon enough she was writing her first hit song “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich.” Zaleski notes that during this time, Gaga was entrenched in the drug scene, but it is not a point that lingered. 

While the book explores the details of Gaga’s career, Zaleski skillfully frames some of the singer’s not-so-classy actions in a graceful, elegant way, allowing the audience to appreciate the star’s somewhat questionable choices in a new light. Gaga was particularly demanding of her audience to pay attention to her and the work that she was bursting to share, to the point where she would strip on stage, but her actions were not something to look down upon, but rather admire, as Zaleski makes clear in stating, “[Gaga] poured her heart and soul into music and creativity– and pushed herself to embrace the kind of fearlessness needed for pop stardom.”

This creativity is what fuels Gaga’s career further, as Zaleski notes that Gaga’s first album, The Fame, is “diverse” and “fresh,” allowing for Gaga’s music to stand out in the 2008 pop scene. Zaleski embraces Gaga’s “provocative stances about fame and celebrity,” analyzing the ways in which the individual tracks of the album twists the typical narrative of what life of the famous is like. 

Throughout the book, Zaleski continuously stresses the importance of art in Gaga’s life, and how the star was predisposed to viewing art in a grandiose way due to her childhood. Gaga often used artists such as Andy Warhol as a guiding light, devouring his paintings and books on the artist, fueling her creativity, and allowing her uniqueness to shine through her dazzling hairstyles and signature outfits. She emulates many artists through her looks, such as the lightning bolt under her right eye as a homage to Bowie in the low-budget music video of her worldwide hit, “Just Dance.” 

The book is teeming with electrifying shots of the star’s performances, from her (literal) explosive performance in the 2009 MuchMusic Video Awards to her questionably pandemic safe, but adamantly chic lit-up COVID mask that she donned alongside fellow singer Ariana Grande’s plain black mask during the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards. Staying true to Gaga’s stylistic nature, Zaleski dedicates full pages to some of Gaga’s most eccentric outfits, from her controversial, yet legendary 2010 meat dress to a spread just for her wackiest hats.

There is a chapter for every album that highlights not only the tracks but also the mindset of the star at the time, showing the shifting nature of Lady Gaga as she matured and her fame rose around the world. Zaleski begins the chapter “Born This Way” with a comparison of the “superhuman-superstar” in 2010 that didn’t even drink water on stage out of fear that it would draw the audience away from the fantastical performance to only a year later when she began to write deeply emotional songs such as “Speechless” and her open-natured interviews where she paired “her usual sassy, savvy soundbites with earnest political and social activism.” This shift in Gaga’s mindset is also represented in the aesthetics of the book itself, as it goes from the highly saturated, sparkling colors of her 2014 “Paws up!” performance, her ARTPOP Ball tour outfits, and her vampiric performance with “EMMA” (an instrument incorporating bass guitar, synthesizer, and a drum machine) to more muted, yet powerful, stills of Gaga at military rallies, standing with his Holiness the Dalai Lama, and embracing cherished actress and singer, Julie Andrews.

It is during this transition that Zaleski strays from the pop star’s musical career and highlights the political and social activism that Gaga takes on, using her superstar platform in an effort to “make the world a better place,” as cliché as that may seem. In the chapter “Giving Back,” Zaleski brings back Gaga’s childhood in a new light, showcasing some of the traumatic bullying in which Gaga was a victim that led to her establishment of the Born This Way Foundation in 2012. Zaleski is firm in Gaga’s stance on “the culture of love” and her belief that the key to a better world is kindness, kindness, kindness. 

Gaga’s third album ARTPOP is “dialed back in seriousness”, according to Zaleski and Gaga herself, ushering in a new era of an unhinged Lady Gaga that the world had not seen before. From the realistic sculpture of a naked Gaga cupping her breasts on the cover of the album to her outfits that represented the “birth of Gaga-as-Venus,” ARTPOP was not a hit sensation as the other albums were, perhaps due to its rawness and rarity that was novel, even for Gaga, at the time. The tracks were sex-centric– “MANiCURE,” “Sexxx Dreams,” and “G.U.Y” all filled with both humorous innuendos and explicit descriptions. Despite some of the harsh criticisms that the album received, stating it lacked “impression” and that it “didn’t have much to say,” there were also praises for the music, as Exclaim! dubbed it as “reveal[ing] a performer who finally sounds as invested in her art as she is in her image,” as well as “dynamic” and “memorable.”

Zaleski makes it clear that the ARTPOP era not only brought forth a side of Gaga that was normally hidden from the public, but also allowed the pop star to embrace her individuality and uniqueness in a way that she had not before. After the album’s release, Gaga was more open in interviews about her bisexuality, her tortured past with sexual assault, and her escapism vibe. By opening up about her challenges to the public, Gaga unveiled a rawness that drew her fans in closer, harboring a newfound support from her Little Monsters. 

Following the release of her third album, Gaga dove into acting, appearing in hit TV show American Horror Story: Hotel and French film, Machete Kills. However, her most significant role to date is in the 2018 remake of A Star Is Born, acting alongside The Hangover star, Bradley Cooper. Some of the filming took place at Gaga’s performance at Coachella in 2017, allowing Gaga to blend both the performer and actress identities. Zaleski praises Gaga for her ability to “disappear fully into the role of Ally,” rather than incorporating a “thinly veiled version of [her] real self…as many musicians are when they switch to movies.” The box office success also featured a hit soundtrack that only drove Gaga’s fame further, as she was only the second person to receive Oscar nominations for both acting and songwriting in the same film. Zaleski is proud to note that, “when all was said and done, Gaga became the first woman ever to win an Oscar, Grammy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA in the same year,” a testament to the true talent that the artist holds. 

Zaleski ends the book with two short chapters, “Chromatica” and “Re-Born This Way,” both highlighting Gaga’s return to the spotlight as a singer with the release of her fourth album as well as her performance of the National Anthem for the 59th Presidential Inauguration. While her tour dates for Chromatica have been postponed due to the pandemic, Gaga is still in her prime, as she balances movie and music careers. Zaleski transforms her love for the pop star sensation into an intriguing, motivating tale that leaves the audience wondering how Lady Gaga will evolve from here.

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Chasing the Narratives in Rock Music

Jessica Hopper’s latest book spotlights her writing on the biggest names in rock to the smallest up and comers from her beloved Chicago.

The book’s revised and expanded edition pops with sharpness and color

The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

More than a critic, Jessica Hopper is a storyteller. The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic displays this time and time again. She dives into her pieces not only as a journalist, but as a fan, making it clear even in the introduction–her 2002 essay “I Have a Strange Relationship with Music”–that she’s not impartial. Hopper has a voice that demands to be heard. Music is everything to her, and not in the typical way. “It is strange by virtue of what I need from it,” the journalist confesses, “having developed such a desperate belief in the power of music to salve and heal me, I ask big, over and over again.” This piece begins as an analysis of Van Morrison’s T.B. Sheets. Hopper professes her love for the album and then dives into an illustration of the miraculous power of rock music. She shows her devotion to exploring its meaning through her work as a critic: “the exhaustive chronicling of what it is that artists possess that we mere mortals do not.” 

This job description is a gutsy and possibly over-the-top statement from her earliest days. But even then Hopper was doing far more than just chronicling. She started conversations about the treatment of women in underground rock scenes through her piece “Emo: Where the Girls Aren’t.” She tackled harrowing tales that weren’t getting enough attention in “The “Stomach-Churning” Sexual Assault Accusations Against R. Kelly.” She even disclosed stories from her teenage years about the journey to her musical awakening through Bikini Kill in her essay “Louder Than Love: My Teenage Grunge Poserdom.”

The latter showcases Hopper’s greatest strength: putting herself in the narrative. Personal anecdotes and opinions saturate the pages, somehow in a way that adds to her credibility. She grew up in the world of punk and rock and she is just as dedicated as ever to uncovering the stories inside it, especially those of women who weren’t always given a voice. “It Was Us Against Those Guys” tells the story of the six women who formed the first Copy and Research Department for Rolling Stone in the 70s, led by Marianne Partridge. “A galvanizing feminist force, Partridge deputized these ambitious young women to turn Rolling Stone into a true journalistic endeavor: a credible music magazine.” Hopper blended their interviews in order to tell their important and often overlooked story. Her resolve to bestow their long overdue credit flowed into an empowering chronicle of determination in the face of sexism.

Hopper also fights to give a voice to the modern woman. “Cat Power is Doing Just Fine” deconstructs the idea that an artist’s well-being should be measured by their ability to entertain and perform. “Kacey Musgraves, Janelle Monae, and the Year of the Woman… Again” applauds the female artists who were able to control the top of the charts in 2019. “A Woman Every Hour” questions why there aren’t more women in country music; it’s certainly not for lack of talent. Radio stations don’t play female country, so record labels don’t sign them, and then festivals can’t book them because there isn’t enough fame attached to their names. “All of this, as both artists and activists attest, has created an environment in which women are locked out of opportunities and subject to systemic discrimination and barriers, and one in which a growing pool of talented young women are pitted against one another,” Hopper reports with an appetite for change.

She has no patience for those who maintain or defend the status quo. This is even more prominent in “The Silver Lining Myth.” After the 2016 presidential election, many people were desperate to find a bright side to the dismal reality. One misguided mindset involved the idea that Trump’s presidency would somehow improve the production of music during that time. “Punk will rise up and ‘be good again,’ pop will get ‘real,’ gain meaning, become explicitly political.” Hopper shut this down in no uncertain terms, calling out the perspective for what it really is: “indifference to the plight of others and to the many possible ways by which Trump’s presidency threatens to ruin lives.” She isn’t afraid of getting political. Hopper follows her sense of justice to every corner of the music industry.

Another topic she tackles the merits of numerous times is selling-out. She shoots down re-releases put out by Fleetwood Mac, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and Nirvana because they reek of a thinly veiled cash-grab. She demolishes Sonic Youth, avowing that “buying the whole new Daydream Nation nostalgia package, and the late-’80s/early-’90s nostalgia-fest in general, feels pathetic–as if the only way to sandbag against encroaching obsolescence is with our wallets.” She similarly shuts down the twentieth-anniversary box set of Nevermind, asking ““Does anyone imagine that kids deafened by two decades of increasingly shitty mastering and overcompression will even be able to hear the difference…”? Hopper’s realness and wit combine to form engaging reads that attempt to hold artists accountable to their fans. Her evocative vocabulary and industry insight allow her to unmask those she deems to be aging frauds.

She isn’t afraid to attack larger institutions either. “Punk Is Dead! Long Live Punk!” gives an account of her summer following the Vans Warped tour in 2004. From its secretive set-times to its menacingly methodical layout, the Warped tour was always meant to squeeze every penny it could from the expendable income of its teenage attendees. Hopper wasted no time breaking down the corporate practices poorly hidden under the guise of a purely punk festival. And she made sure to put a spotlight on the few bands with a true rock-and-roll essence, namely Juliette & the Licks and Mean Reds, while she was at it. Hopper is always on a mission to find music that moves her.

As a result she was quite adamant about boycotting Lollapalooza despite it taking place in her hometown, publishing a retort titled “Not Lollapalooza.” The whimsical festival grounds may elicit feelings of excitement and community at first, “but the idea that mega-festivals somehow create ad hoc communities out of their mega-crowds–an idea likely owed to Woodstock–is ridiculous. The only thing everybody at Lollapalooza has in common is the willingness to be painfully gouged for a ticket.” Not at all worth it when Chicago has so much else to offer. Hopper recalled some of the most moving shows by no-name artists that she had attended. Rollin Hunt, Screaming Females, and Abe Vigoda had given her far more meaningful experiences than a festival full of drunk teens ever would. The underground scene breeds connection, “in the basement, you can feel the band’s humanity as well as your own.”

Reading Hopper’s compilation in succession certainly gave way to larger themes and ideas. Her articles work together to put rock music on display: its culture, contributors, and concerns. But despite this, there are certainly weaknesses in the book’s structure. Each individual piece comes across as thought out and captivating, but they fit together like a puzzle that was jammed into place. The book is broken up into nine different sections, each with four to eight articles that span numerous lengths, publishers, and decades. The themes of each section range from places to feelings to juxtaposing ideologies. Certainly more creative than laying out her articles chronologically but not all of the fifty-six articles feel quite in the right place. 

The first section, Chicago, left me hopeful. The deep love and understanding that Hopper has of her city is engaging and leads to passionate writing. But so much of her writing centers around Chicago it begs the question of why those articles were chosen to represent the city and others were swept into broader categories like Strictly Business or Personal/Political. A similar argument could be made for the final section of the book, She Said, given that a large portion of her writing also focuses on empowering female artists.

That being said, The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic is overall an engrossing and informative read. It aptly achieves its goal of highlighting the best so far of Jessica Hopper. Her journalism goes above and beyond, covering superstars to up-and-comers and treating them all with the same level of care and respect. Whether she’s writing Sufjan Stevens a letter on his misconceptions of the state of Illinois or analyzing a photograph of Lady Gaga in the airport, she can make a compelling story out of anything. The structure of the book can be overlooked. Besides, with a career as long and fruitful as she’s had, Hopper can’t be blamed for having too much work to organize neatly and nicely. She’s far too busy tackling the patriarchy and moshing in Chicago basements to worry about playing by the rules.

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The New Non-Fiction: Performance of the Written Word

In “A Little Devil In America,” Hanif Abdurraqib compiles a wealth of intimately told and sporadically selected stories. 

The book’s cover, featuring Willa Mae Ricker & Leon James performing the Lindy Hop in 1943.

A Little Devil In America: In Praise of Black Performance

Performance isn’t only a spectacle to critique at the theater. It doesn’t only reside in the spaces where we intend to tell stories or create meaning. Performance is everywhere: the way we listen to music, the way we clench our fists at bigotry, the way we laugh at movies next to the friends we love on the couch—it’s the experience of being alive itself. Indeed, spectatorship is a performative occupation. Shakespeare brought this idea to life in his play As You Like It; the famous speech goes “all the worlds a stage, all the men and women merely players.” For Hanif Abdurraqib, the stage is a book, the interpretation of media is his flourish.

The sprawled time range of Black American performances discussed in his latest book A Little Devil In America: In Praise of Black Performance emphasizes the agency that Black Americans have taken through their ability to create and use their bodies. Over the past 175 years, they’ve monumentalized their personae. The cultural analysis applauds acts from William Henry Lane, an 1840s Black minstrel dancer by the stage name of Master Juba, to Beyonce’s 2016 Super Bowl appearance, and far beyond. Oftentimes Black performance is situated in relation to dominant white society as a comparative method, and to surge the sentiment of  Black beauty and capacity in spite of continued subjugation by their oppressors. Charles Dickens’ review of Lane is included, and Abdurraqib subsequently dives into the famed and unmatched dancer’s in a cross-race rivalry with Irish Clog dancer John Diamond. Lane’s moves are far superior to Diamond’s, Beyonce nabs headlines from Coldplay’s headlining super bowl performance. Black performance isn’t only praised; it’s raised above all others. 

Tending towards the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the book sprinkles a few historical anecdotes, helping it to completely derail any dedication to chronology. Time is liquid in A Little Devil In America: Abdurraqib takes joy in his own temporal twists, spins and cross-steps. His sections move through groupings of semi-related topics; the book synchronously breathes and moves as a performative story of African Americans. This decade-hopping is most clearly outlined in the section entitled “On the Performance of Softness,” which begins with a crushing reflection on the death of his mother, simultaneously detailing members of Wu-Tang Clan intimacy. It’s the only part of the book that breaks up subsections with yearstamps hopscotching back and forth along a ridge spanning from the early 90s to the late 2010s. Multiple narratives blend together. Threads like Wu-Tang’s suffering from fame, autobiographical struggle with the death of his mother and relationship with his brother, and a dive bar in 2017 woven together to form one cloth, a collage of stories elucidating the poet-author’s vision of softness. 

The entire book could be outlined by varying dates – the book moves from story to story irrespective of the timeframe. This style of writing challenges non-fiction habits as a genre, and while it takes time to get used to, it’s a valuable exercise in challenging our conventional ways of knowing. As readers and thinkers, we can take in an array of a timeline’s information at once, holding them together. Emboldening performances from different times ties together the continuity of the Black American experience.

A chronic resident of Columbus, Ohio, Abdurraqib firmly grounds his worldview in his Black subjectivity. What does it mean to be a Black person in America, and what has it meant? The roots of identity allow him to cover ground on Black American history, exploring healing and reckoning with oppression through performance. One particularly striking moment in this elucidation is a description of  the experience at his second Fuck U Pay Us concert in Los Angeles. They are a Black band, wearing their politics and identities with their faces, words and performances, that he wishes he could have had when he grew up in too-white punk scenes of the midwest. He tiles rage with release in the sweat-screamscape of Punk Rock: describing a chant that breaks out in the song “Burn Ye Old White Male Patriarchy,” he emotionally details the experience as “all at once mesmerizing, rage inducing, and empowering.” He continues, illuminating the performative acts of the concert ticket holders turned participants, “The people around me, in different tones and timings, all shouting ‘burn,’ intoxicated by the understanding that this is a kind of space where one could call for such a burning and remain unscathed.” The Black experience of Black performance is an act of performance too—Abdurraqib further expands the universe of this type of expression through his careful eye towards the perception of performance.

The release from the problem of myriad societal and systematic problems at a concert is one thing, but where do we go from there? Abdurraqib offers a few tenuous answers on how we might grow, relating that he feels that a government based on holding power over others can never succeed, but ultimately admits that he doesn’t know, and he’s scared, too. This is something that most writers would refuse, and I must commend the act. His poet instincts magnetize him towards love and understanding, finding hope through pain. His voice sears through the words towards the reader, his style unelegant and unique.

Abdurraqib wields moments, intimate and cultural, individuals, monolithic and personal to their most tangible display. He is a Black muslim renaissance painter: the portraits he spins are hilarious and cunning, lamenting and shattering. For example, Josephine Baker, whose 1963 homecoming performance and speech is the book’s namesake, is described as a captivating singer and songwriter who was able to find solace in her new home country of France. Abdurraqib underscores how this is an impressive performance of Blackness, venturing to an unknown place that “treated [her] in a manner that [her] home country never could.” He grounds this in further historical details like her participation in World War II espionage on behalf of France and her marriage to a French Jew. He brings Don Cornelius, the host of the Black dance show Soul Train, to palpable intimacy along with the platform for performance he allowed. The TV personality’s introductions are included in full, “Cornelius was a poet speaker,” Abdurraqib writes, he “saw promise in Black people beyond their pain.” The story of a man who gave agency for thousands to dance and express in a way that felt right to them ends in his 2012 suicide. The words he gives about Aretha Franklin are a post-mortem temperature of Black memory. The section “An Epilogue for Aretha” cover’s Abdurraqib’s experience viewing and thoughts on the documentary Amazing Grace, featuring a never before seen live recording of the album. He details how Aretha’s voice and recordings have the ability to bring a whole theater of “skinfolk” to tears, touching them with joy. Simple truths hit like a train: “It is good for a person to be remembered for the songs they chose to sing when they could’ve sung anything else.” All the book’s rich textures of people are an enlivened formulation of the Black American experience; they’re an understanding of the self through the ability to perform, and to witness that performance.

The poet-essayist boasts a varied and original craft. The 283 page book is structured in five “Movements”—Performing Miracles, Suspending Disbelief, On Matters of Country / Provenance, Anatomy of Closeness / / Chasing Blood, and Callings to Remember. The book’s transcendence of time calls for a rough thematic organization; the whiplash of time-hopping is cushioned by the strands of content that bind the sections together. Each section starts with a chapter called “On Times I Have Forced Myself To Dance,” the first three are courageous run-on sentences in which you can absolutely channel his vivacious voice, thousands of butterflies bursting with energy. The final Section departs with its complete sentences and periods, “On Times I Have Forced Myself Not To Dance,” displaying the calm possibility that stillness is growth with its healthy companion of regular movement. Abdurraqib’s performance is packed tight in the book, but it’s not vacuum sealed: he takes all liberties with language, boosting his supplementation of creative writership in the work. Like myself, Abdurraqib is a poet; his language ventures into the surreal at times, chasing one chapter through a fearful examination of bees, a common poetic image, he fingers with run on sentences to sharpen his voice towards the approachable. Like us here at Ezra’s Ear, he’s wildly playful: an entire section uses the exquisite corpse technique, a prosaic steering method akin to Jericho Brown’s “Duplex” form. He sprinkles in African American Vernacular, serving to further the textuality of the lived Black experience, providing an elevated and altered state of emotional voice. Of course, Abdurraqib is a king of repetitions. A many faced accomplishment, he deals anaphora, loops back to words and phrases paralleling two moments far apart in the text. Repetition is his bridge across time and page.

Yes, the text is inexorably powerful in its language. However, it has some key weaknesses. The lyrical pirouettes and theoretical backflips Abdurraqib performs with the English language are sometimes lost on the reader. The poet mistakenly writes in a way that might not be understood by readers without his experience: his sentimental ventures into the abstract sometimes don’t come back down to earth, his poetic fun can come at the expense of the reader’s comprehension or the text’s scrutability. Despite this, it feels that the indecipherable is a vital facet of this book. The thought formatting and variance in style are a challenge to Western non-fiction writership at large; the book’s vigorous sense of self is a challenge to our conventional modes of thinking. I love this engagement with style and edging into a new way of processing facts, but it frightens me little. Part of it is a challenge to whole, logical thoughts. Indeed it is poetic, far reaching. But can these bits really be called nonfiction?

When I turned the first supple page of A Little Devil In America, I was in Sacred Root Kava Bar, downtown Ithaca New York. I was there to see a show that would feature Black performance itself. Sitting on an embroidered cushion in the gaga hippie dim lit basement of The Cornell Daily Sun, I struggled in awe to get past the first “On Times I Have Forced Myself To Dance.” Its immense voice, use of African American Vernacular, stylization of and as “&” to shuffle together the run-on sentence were striking to me; it was tough but exciting to crack it open. Once I gave myself over to the text I was giddy. The book forces a reader to get to know it in its difficult singularity, by the end, it’s like eating with a refined palette.

And that’s what Abdurraqib, and this book are best at. His most opulent strength, and what I think is of utmost importance about any work: the endings. Abdurraqib presses into the feelings he has been massaging over the course of the book, reaching their most effective coalescence once he has taught the reader to appreciate his new, alternative style. Each section ending digs into the reader, coercing the book closed for a moment of reflection.

Hanif Abdurraqib awakens the stories of Black American performers alongside his own daily-life, devastating and endearing readers. Worldview is his plot, conjuring demands for a new future through music. Some people think that poetry is necessarily spoken, an aural and verbal art, that it must penetrate through the ears. Abdurraqib’s grounding as a poet vitalizes the reading aloud of some of his sentences, paragraphs even. A commentary on the Black positioning in America throughout its history through the lens of performance, this continues a long tradition of Black performance, and furthers the new and changing one.

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Steve Reich’s Conversations: A Humanist’s Guide to Minimalism

The avant-garde composer’s book of conversations shares ruminations on life, spirituality, and music

Reich, recently turned 87

Conversations by Steve Reich (2022)

When worshiping the transcendent and euphoric pedagogy of music, time is ever-present. Off-beat clave rhythms contort bodies in expected intervals; canonic textures layer pieces with feverish counterpoints; prayers float freely in time, bouncing off intricately stained windows. Impactful music—music overflowing with humanity—changes time’s objective qualities to subjective ones. It’s with this knowledge and conviction about the elements of spiritually awakened music that New York native (and Cornell alum!) Steve Reich entered the ‘60s classical music scene. Now a veteran composer, Reich’s six decades of fostering and pushing classical minimalism’s development forward has left him with a legacy of his commitment to musical exploration. Marked by precise and hypnotically repetitive canons, his compositions stand as a modern-day landmark to the fact that music is a tool for us to explore both ourselves and our perceptions of the world. In a celebration of this, Reich wrote Conversations in 2022: a biography of his career which is explored and dissected through 19 chapters neatly divided by conversations conducted with 19 fellow luminaries.

The conversationalists span from Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood to Reich’s own wife, video artist Beryl Korot. Though the range of people brought into the book is staggering, Reich’s candor in talking with these figures helps makes chapters cogent and incredibly approachable for those less acquainted with his compositions. However, despite this general approachability, the book is clearly designed for Reich superfans. Nearly all of his works are explored (spanning from 1965 to 2019) and at times musical jargon can obfuscate themes and ideas that rear their philosophical roots. Luckily, these moments are few and far between. For those interested in learning more about his works or wanting to gain further insight into the broad field of minimalism and its implications, this is an important read.

In discussing Reich’s transformative contributions to the world of music, it’s inevitable to draw comparisons to other classical music trailblazers. The most prominent one being Stravinsky, which Reich himself notes in the forward of Conversations. Both of their most enduring compositions were perturbing enough to induce actual riots at performances (which renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas’s comments in Conversations delightfully underscored), and there’s the obvious comparison between Conversations and Stravinsky’s 1959 book of conversations. Fortunately, it’s the paradigm-shifting parts of Stravinsky that manifest in Reich through Conversations. Compared to Stravinsky’s cluttered narrative in his book of conversations, Reich’s discussions are at their best illuminating and help to create an easily accessible roadmap of his career. And it’s through inroads in this map, like with Kronos Quartet’s director David Harrington, that we glean bits of knowledge into Reich’s inspirations, whether that be waitresses clapping as an inspiration for his aptly named Clapping Music (1972) or Stravinsky’s tonal serial technique rearing its head in Traveler’s Prayer’s (2019) baroque melodic structure.

The first half of the book focuses on Reich’s coming of age as a composer and 1965 seminal pieces (Come Out and It’s Going to Rain) but does so in a way that elucidates more than just these composition’s experimental phasing technique (though artist Richard Serra’s cross-discipline discussion on these techniques is fascinating). We learn through a question on the nature of language in music from the late domineering composer Stephen Soundheim that Reich was drawn to Come Out’s C minor speech melody because of the simple humanist observation that “when we speak, we sometimes sing.” Considering the political implications of Come Out’s sample—a looping vocal clip of a black man who was wrongfully imprisoned and beaten—layers are added onto how to perceive this piece and Reich’s later works which rely heavily on spliced vocal samples as canons.

Observations like these do more than just inform the content of the compositions Reich created. For Thomas, Reich’s minimalist harmonically grounded works were a “spiritual antidote” that countered the complicated hyper intellectual compositions that were common in the ‘80s avant-garde classical scene. Elizabeth Lim-Dutton, violin player for the Steve Reich Ensemble, later echoes this same sentiment in how the contemporary difference in violin performance for Different Trains—a piece where the violin matches both figuratively and literally spoken words of Holocaust survivors—added a level of emotional resonance not previously achievable.

If sections like these sound like a Reich pander-fest, it’s because they kind of are. However, Reich generally does a good job of steering the conversations away from these moments and towards the unique insight’s conversationalists offer into Reich’s works. Dutton’s thoughtful takeaways on Reich’s pieces—which come from a career’s worth of avant-garde performances—are their conversation’s bread and butter. Personally noteworthy, was her cultural detachment from the biblical story of Abraham which is explored through interviews with Palestinian Muslims and Israeli Jews in Reich and Korot’s opera The Cave (1993). This detachment helped to stress and add to the innovative beauty in the ending melody which highlights the shared beliefs between both groups despite the West’s growing secularization.

Reich doesn’t typically write political pieces so when he does, there’s an incredibly precision and delicateness he approaches these works with. Dutton hits it on the nose here. What makes The Cave so special is the beauty and exactness that it uses when approaching such a sensitive topic. Made (in my eyes) somewhat in response to post-minimalist composer John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), an opera about Palestinian terrorists murdering a disabled Jewish man, Reich chose to design an opera highlighting both group’s similarities in cultural/religious thought through three movements. Reich’s most political work, Daniel Variations (2016), takes it a step further in a commemoration of journalist Daniel Pearl’s life who was killed by Pakistani Islamic fundamentalists. What Reich calls his strongest writing for strings in Conversations is a truly transcendent piece that celebrates the life and Judaic implications behind the name Daniel, rather than the uproar that was left in the wake of Pearl’s stolen life.

One thing undoubtably missing in Conversations, however, is any evaluative discussion about Reich’s works. Concerns about cultural appropriation in Drumming (1970) aren’t present and considering the growing academic discussion on the removal of people of color, women, and queer voices in the field of minimalism (coming to a spearhead in the recently published On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement) a conversation on this by one of the “founding fathers” of the movement would especially be welcomed. Certainly, the influence studying drumming in Ghana and Balinese gamelan in Seattle had on Reich is worth more than just a passing mention!

What is discussed luckily, is Reich’s take on modern music and how he interprets popular music that his works have by and large influenced. As a Radiohead aficionado, I was floored to read that Reich was inspired by Radiohead’s Everything in its Right Place and Jigsaw Falling into Place to compose Radio Rewrite (2012). A composer in touch with players so far out of their own niche—and generation—is rare. During Reich’s talk with Greenwood, they briefly discuss Reich’s direct inspirations for the work and what spurred their friendship (both are Jewish and share the same love for romantic classical music). Unique connections like these help make conversations feel even more personal; it’s easy for the reader to feel physically in the room with the speakers (though this did make awkward moments a little more painful, there were a few with Greenwood!).

Two thirds through Conversations, dance choreographer Anne Keersmaeker introduces the term “cold school” to describe minimalism’s use of formal mechanics to reject the ego and intimate expression. Indeed, Reich makes it clear that a part of minimalism’s appeal for him is in the loss of the individual during performance. Music for 18 Musicians (1976) has performers set the tempo themselves and decide when to move through the piece in an intuitive way—like a chamber ensemble—allowing it to become a living composition that’s deeply in-touch with not only performers but also the audience. Making this composition bigger than one life (one performer) allows for the expression of ambient intimacy. Joy and passion that’s present around us every day but needs to be intensely focused on to reveal itself. In the development of mathematically precise compositions that are rigidly supported by fundamental beliefs on human expression, Reich’s works reject the term “cold school.”

There is nothing warmer than listening to a composition so entrancing it makes your head spin; the camaraderie in moving and listening as a practiced ensemble; a conversation shared with a close friend. Reich’s career is fueled by a passion for discovering and exploring humanist touchstones in uncanny places. Conversations is a well-worth salute to this ideal. L’Chaim!

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In Memory of Wayne Shorter

The enigmatic jazz titan passed away at 89 years in March 2023

The cover of Shorter’s youthful and sci-fi infused comic book, included with the purchase of his quartet’s final album Emanon

Wayne Shorter always talked in terms that were bigger than life. Everything was a lesson for Shorter, and he made everything a lesson for those around him. A practicing Buddhist, he described the tragic death of his late wife Ana Maria Patricio in a plane crash as an opportunity to learn to be happier. Shorter spoke of the same lesson after the passing of his daughter. Despite these and many other losses, Shorter’s outlook on life was of stark optimism. Friends and colleagues describe him as an uplifting soul, whose indirect yet poetically clear “Wayne-isms” were avenues of introspection. “You can’t rehearse the unknown,” Shorter famously replied after being simply asked what they were going to rehearse. Michelle Mercer—author of Shorter’s biography Footprints—asserts that Wayne chose to speak in this unconventional way because it’s truest to his imagination, to his mind, and to the Buddhist tradition. Whether it was in his virtuosic playing or his philosophical ruminations, his whole spirit bent towards this self-identifying truth. The forward-thinking musician passed away at the age of 89 in the city of angels.

Shorter was born in the industrial district of Newark, New Jersey in 1933. Growing up, his father worked as a welder while his mother was a seamstress. Wayne discovered his passion for the arts early on: both Wayne and his older brother Alan would consume comic books, science fiction stories, and music at extreme rates. Having picked up the clarinet at the age of 16, he encountered many teachers at the Newark Arts High School who helped to cultivate a passion for the performing arts. A year after the clarinet, he picked up the tenor saxophone in reaction to the bebop greats who were flourishing. Wasting no time, both Wayne and Alan formed a bebop combo with Wayne on tenor saxophone and Alan on trumpet. Respectively nicknamed “Doc Strange” and “Mr. Weird,” they quickly made a name for themselves–dressing in colorful, flamboyant outfits at their gigs. At the end of his high school career, bebop behemoth Sonny Sitt famously asked Wayne to join him on tour, to which Shorter declined instead pursuing studying composition at NYU. Even at a young age, Shorter’s spirit was inclined to the academic.

During his time at NYU, Wayne entrenched himself in bebop, turning heads in the New York scene. Following his graduation, Shorter joined the army, where he made the weekend 60-mile trip to NYC to gig, still managing to practice relentlessly. After two years in the army, Shorter was discharged and promptly recruited by both trumpet behemoth Maynard Ferguson (whose later rendition of Weather Report’s Birdland is just about as euphorically funky jazz can get) and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Making the unsurprising call, Shorter joined the Jazz Messengers in 1959, where he gained international acclaim through his virtuosic playing and compositional style. Children of the Night, one of Shorter’s earlier compositions with the Messengers, stands out with its prominent tenor-heavy melody that playfully dances around bop-infused chords.  

After four years with the Messengers, Shorter was poached again. Now joining the ranks of jazz nobility, Shorter was welcomed to Miles Davis’s Quintet, putting a stop in the revolving tenor saxophone seat. With the Second Great Quintet complete, the group’s sound and compositions, as Miles put it, was “time, no changes.” Though this style of free jazz fell under bop, it leaned on the more cosmic and avant-garde side of jazz.  Shorter’s first contribution to the Quintet was with the early 1965 E.S.P (Extra Sensory Perception), whose title track was one of his compositions. A frenetic track, the Quintet soars over Shorter’s disjointed chords, exploding and receding appropriately to let the soloists shine. Critical reception was high, with cultural critic Stanley Crouch’s infamous lens praising the album. Shorter later became the band’s primary composer.

Shorter stayed with the Quintet from 1964-1970 while he recorded his compositions for the Blue Note Records as well. In 1969 Shorter notably recorded In a Silent Way with Davis and Super Nova, his album, on the soprano saxophone. Shorter’s playing is nothing short of self-prescribed elusiveness, but with the soprano saxophone, his tenor’s dark timbre transforms into a brighter and more euphoric tone. This transformation of sound fit In a Silent Way’s electronic sonic soundscape beautifully. Grand pianos were replaced by electric pianos, and bright guitars entered the composition, creating a forward-thinking melding of rock and jazz. Its free-flowing sound and minimalist texture gave clear roots for the beginning of post-rock (which Talk Talk pocketed and revisited almost 18 years later). Music critic Lester Bangs wrote as much in his rave review for the album as well: “It is part of a transcendental new music which flushes categories away and, while using musical devices from all styles and cultures, is defined mainly by its deep emotion and unaffected originality.” Shorter’s intro solo on the title track is content with floating between space and time, letting the piano and guitar outline the composition’s formless structure.

Following 1970, Shorter helped form the jazz fusion band Weather Report as a response to the public’s growing desire for rock-influenced music. Helmed by keyboardist Joe Zawinul and Shorter initially, the band began as a free-improvising jazz group that freely incorporated elements of funk and R&B. Their first album Weather Report (1971) took what made In a Silent Way so enigmatic and ran with it. Redefining the boundary between rock and jazz, Weather Report pushed works at this intersection forward. In Shorter’s 15 years with the band, he acted as the primary instrumental voice and helped to compose many of the group’s genre bending tracks, from eclectic funk to smooth Latin jazz.

Shorter also continued to expand his own solo career. His worldly album Native Dancer (1975) liberally featured Herbie Hancock (the two of whom met playing in Davis’ Quintet) and blended Brazilian rhythms with jazz and funk’s freewheeling intensity. Shorter and Hancock’s friendship continued to flourish later in their careers with the creation of their Grammy winning 1+1 album in 1997. Both Wayne and Hancock were fervent Nichiren Buddhists which arguably helped enable them to channel their own spirituality through the music they were playing. The religion calls for the repeated chanting of the phrase Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, a commitment to nurturing Buddha inside of yourself.

Spiritually fitting, Shorter’s final musical group he piloted was one that prioritized exploring humanity over accessibility. The Wayne Shorter Quartet formed in 2000 with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade. Though the group made countless recordings (primarily of new and old Shorter compositions), one stands out in particular. Emanon is a monster project, giving the undertaker a small glimpse into Shorter’s “artistic multiverse.” A triple album, accompanied by an 84-paged graphic novel (developed by the futuristic loving Shorter), it truly puts Shorter’s spry spirit on full display. At the age of 85, nothing could stifle his enchanting musical outlook.

In his last years of life, Shorter returned to an opera he began designing at the age of 19. “Buddhism taught me that anything we promise to do, we must follow through with,” he declared when asked why it was that project he decided to pursue. The jazz opera, titled, Ipheigenia, tells the epic story of Greek figure who’s sacrificed to help mobilize an army for war. Working closely with Esperanza Spalding, a vocalist he played with in Weather Report, the two of them helmed the creation of this mammoth project. Fielding health crises after health crises, it was unclear whether Shorter would live to see the end of this project. Spalding worked full-time with Shorter to make the opera happen, and after eight years in the making it was complete. Not a culmination of Shorter’s work, but rather a continuation of his pursuit of impenetrable knowledge, the opera was at war with itself in its first performances. Both Shorter and Spalding described the work as being a “work in progress,” but perhaps it is fitting for Shorter’s immediate legacy to be that of a still-evolving performance. His pursuit of knowledge was so insatiable that even the turning of time couldn’t stop it.

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Demystifying Scriabin

Over 100 years since his death, the world still struggles to understand Scriabin.

Alexander Scriabin Songs, Albums, Reviews, Bio & More | AllMusic

The Russian composer poses at his desk. 

Demystifying Scriabin

Mystery and mysticism shroud Alexander Scriabin’s life, acting as both an impenetrable veil and all-encompassing motif. Barely five feet tall, effeminate, and with a mustache to rival that of Nietschze, the Russian composer’s unassuming appearance cloaked an obsession with art that surpassed the boundaries of sanity. His beliefs and music were unparalleled in every aspect. Composition was more than a career, more than a passion, more than the results of artistic mania; it was the means through which he could bring salvation to the planet.

His followers’ cult-like fanaticism impose even more obscurity onto his life. “Cult-like” is perhaps too generous of a term; “cultic” is more fitting. After all, what other composers dubbed themselves “God?” Who else attempted to end the world through their music? Even his death is interpreted as an act of God, who struck the artist down to prevent fulfillment of his musical vision. His followers view him not just as a lover of art, but as its martyr.

In honor of his 150th birthday, Demystifying Scriabin attempts to shed light on the all-too-enigmatic composer’s life, beliefs, and music. Edited by music theorists Kenneth Smith and Vasilis Kallis and published by Boydell Press in 2022, the book is a collection of essays by musicologists and musicians who have dedicated their careers to Scriabin. Smith and Kallis open the introduction by posing the question, “How do you solve a problem like Scriabin?” In between inconsistent spellings of his name, they assert that doing so is a lost cause: he didn’t understand himself and was hell-bent on making sure no one else did either. His writings and beliefs are riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions, and making sense of the senseless is a pointless endeavor. However, investigating his music, philosophy, mysticism, performance, religion, synaesthesia, and cultural legacy can, at the very least, blow away a portion of the haze obscuring his life.

The essays are divided into three sections: Shaping Creativity, The Music as Prism, and Reception and Tradition. Shaping Creativity attempts to demystify by exploring Russia’s impact on Scriabin’s music, a force “represented by the frontiers of disparate musical and cultural trends.” The Music as Prism “offers us a musical way of working through the metaphysical ideas about identity, philosophy, time, and space.” It analyzes his music in relation to his beliefs and life, offering us new perspectives on both specific compositions and his overall body of work. Lastly, Reception and Tradition outlines Scriabin’s influence and “the waves of tradition that passed through him.” Written by a diverse group of Scriabinists, each section aims to both explain the composer and initiate new discussions for this end.

Unfortunately, Demystifying Scriabin is riddled with almost as many issues as the man himself. The book’s divisions appear arbitrary, as the first and third sections both focus on historical influences. Beyond this, the organization of chapters within sections seems random. The first chapter discusses Scriabin’s mystic chord, a recurring device most famously used in Prometheus, and its connection to the Russian Silver Age – yet it’s not until the second chapter, “Scriabin and the Russian Silver Age,” that an adequate description of the era is provided.

While occupying an odd place structurally, the first chapter serves as an intriguing opening. Author Simon Morrison argues that the mystic chord represents the Silver Age through its symbolism. The chord is theorized to represent Satan, and a pentagram can be found through analyzing the relationships between the notes, thereby “becoming the equivalent of a Ouija board.” While this chapter would be better served as an immediate sequel to “Scriabin and the Russian Silver Age,” or perhaps in The Music as Prism, it effectively introduces readers to the mysticism surrounding the composer.

After outlining his writing and compositional influences in the third and fourth chapters, the section concludes with “Studying Scriabin’s Autographs: Reflections of the Creative Process.” The chapter uses the Alexander Scriabin Collected Works to “glimpse a deeper understanding of Scriabin’s creative process.” In the first half, its author, Pavel Shatskiy, thoroughly analyzes the history of the composer’s publishers and the potential errors in original printings and manuscripts. The chapter’s second half uses this information to establish a chronology of when his pieces were written, as opposed to when they were published. This chapter is both out-of-place in the section and unnecessary to the larger goal of the book. There’s no discussion of historical influences, and whether or not Scriabin’s publishers omitted an accent here or there is superfluous to the act of demystifying him. While this is important in other discussions regarding the composer, it brings little to the table in Demystifying Scriabin.

The structure of The Music as Prism is more cohesive. The first chapter, “Scriabin’s Miniaturism,” describes his love for miniaturism, a love influenced by Chopin. This is followed by “The Scriabin Tremor and Its Role in His Oeuvre.” The music theorist Inessa Bazayev argues that analyzing him through the lens of disability studies allows listeners to understand a musical sigh that acts as a motif throughout several of his pieces. She claims that this tremor represents a hand injury Scriabin suffered in his early twenties. While an interesting argument, the essay is purely speculative as she fails to provide evidence that he intentionally based the tremor off of his injury. However, it does bring attention to an under-discussed, widely-used motif in his music.

Editor Kallis reintroduces the mystic chord, this time expanding on the analysis started by Morrison. He argues that the chord is influenced by counterpoint and reflects Scriabin’s reverence for classical traditions of composition. Antonio Grande moves away from pitch analysis in “Temporal Perspectives in Scriabin’s Late Music,” instead opting to approach the body of work from a temporal angle. He defends Scriabin’s surprisingly conventional sonatas, arguing that under a closer investigation, their temporal evolution is avant-garde. Kenneth Smith continues these sonata analyses in “Scriabin’s Multi-Dimensional Accelerative Sonata Forms.” He explains Scriabin’s two-dimensional (and sometimes three-dimensional) sonata form was a trail-blazing innovation, one misunderstood and overlooked by theorists for decades. Ross Edwards wraps up part two in “Setting Mystical Forces in Motion: The Dialectics of Scale-Type Integration in Three Late Works.” He argues that Scriabin’s reliance on the conservative sonata form “set Scriabin’s most radical and ‘mystical’ forces in motion.” While it would have been interesting to read about a wider array of Scriabin’s compositions, the section does a wonderful job of resolving the conservative features of his music with the radical, demystifying him with one analysis at a time.

The third and final section, Reception and Tradition, opens with “Scriabin’s Synaesthesia: The Legend, the Evidence, and Its Implications for Multimedia Counterpoint.” Anna Gawboy does away with the myth of Scriabin’s synaesthesia by examining sources claiming his color system was thoroughly designed and thought out, rather than a psychological condition. The color system was an attempt to access the Theosophical astral plane, “a transcendent realm of spiritual existence that generated life, energy, creativity, and metaphysical knowledge.” He believed it could only be achieved through “clairvoyance, which was characterized by multisensory perception.” Gawboy concludes by stating discussions of Scriabin are unproductive when his music is viewed in isolation from his beliefs – an argument that calls out many of the essays in the book’s second part. However, after reading Kallis and Smith’s introduction, one can’t help but wonder if this goes against the earlier assertion that his beliefs were intentionally designed as meaningless and contradictory. 

Marina Frolova-Walker pivots in “Playing Scriabin: Reality and Enchantment” by treating him not as a composer, but as a pianist. The essay begins by compiling accounts of Scriabin’s playing, accounts partially disproven by his existing piano rolls. She then compares these renditions of his playing and argues that none capture what he intended – even those performed by himself. 

Kallis and Smith return to provide a general overview of scholarship regarding Scriabin’s music system. Like the concluding chapter of section one, this essay establishes an important timeline, but one that’s generally unnecessary for the purposes of the book. Perhaps it would make sense as a preface to the second section. But as a stand-alone chapter, it doesn’t bolster other information or contribute to the demystification of Scriabin.

The penultimate chapter, Ildar Khannanov’s “Scriabin and the Classical Tradition,” similarly deviates from the book’s theme. He analyzes Scriabin’s compositions in order to determine just how revolutionary he truly was. While Reception and Tradition aims to discuss tradition, Khannanov is the only author to tackle this concept. The chapter feels out of place in relation to its neighbors, all of which discuss his reception. The section seems to have “Tradition” in its title for this chapter alone, a chapter that would belong in either of the previous sections.

James Kreiling ends the book with “Scriabin’s Critical Reception: Genius or Madman?” Kreiling compiles first-hand accounts of Scriabin’s playing, compositions, and personality, contradictory accounts that are unable to answer this question of his sanity. He concludes by speculating that “Scriabin will most likely always be a composer who divides opinions” (319). Only by performing his work with the utmost imagination can his works be understood, and only through approaching him with the greatest openness can his music be loved.

Demystifying Scriabin doesn’t claim to solve or explain the composer – just to demystify and create new dialogue among Scriabinists. Unfortunately, few of its chapters make headway on these fronts. Several, most of which are found within The Music as Prism, are original, interesting, and provide new valuable insights. The remaining majority only contains rehashed information. The world doesn’t need another essay about the dubiousness of his synaesthesia, the influences of the era on his music, or a timeline of his music. Structural issues aside, these remaining problems would evaporate had the book been marketed as a general crash course on Scriabin – but this was not the goal put forth by its editors. However, its failure to demystify speaks volumes of Scriabin. If he truly didn’t want to be understood, this book serves as a monument to his success in that mission.