Justice for Jazz Artists! (J4JA!) is a campaign started by jazz musicians at AFM, Local 802 to bring benefits to musicians who work in jazz clubs in NY State. In 2006, the NY State Legislature repealed the sales tax on admission to small venues. At the time of the laws passing, many of the major NYC jazz clubs supported it. But when those same club owners were asked to divert forgiven tax dollars towards musicians benefits programs, they balked. Join the effort to convince NY State club owners to do the right thing.
This video documents a live concert of J4JA! Artists at AFM, Local 802 in NYC on August 17, 2009 and interviews with some of the musicians. Musicians who performed in support of J4JA! included: Jimmy Owens, Bob Cranshaw, Bernard Purdie, Reggie Workman, Randy Weston, Benny Powell, Junior Mance, Bertha Hope, Keisha St. Joan, Rudy Lawless, Marion Cowings, Vinnie Knight, Andy Schwartz, and Pedro G. Libert.
New York City jazz musicians deserve a retirement like anyone else. Sign our petition to help them earn pension payments from NYC jazz clubs — at no cost to the clubs or musicians.
Last September in Chicago, I saw a play called “Amor de Lejos,” which is Spanish for “love from afar.” It was performed by a theater company of high school students, and offered a few short but vivid slices from the grueling lives of Mexican and Central American day laborers in Chicago.
Watching it was one of the most moving and provocative experiences I’ve had in some time. Not simply because the performances themselves were so wonderful. Not just because these 14, 15, and 16 year-old students had conceived, researched and written the play themselves. And not even only because the real stories the students told were so compelling.
No, the piece made such an impression on me in large part because I realized in watching that I had so rarely seen anything like it in any format -- the lives of poor, mostly undocumented, Latino immigrants, rendered holistically and with compassion.
What these student-actors brought home that night was that these men -– all the narrators were men -- have histories, aspirations, people they’ve left behind, people they long to see again. These would seem to be obvious points, no? But the truth is that our national context for discussions of immigration over the last several years -- the national “immigration debate” -- typically abstracts away from the textures of the lives and decisions of those at its core. The stories made clear that the day laborers sacrificed a great deal to get to the United States and accepted the terrible risks of doing so with eyes wide open. Surely it’s incumbent on us to better understand why.
The popular “bottom line” argument that undocumented immigrants are, by definition, “criminals who must be treated accordingly” must ring at least somewhat hollow when assessed against the deeply humanistic testimony to which these Chicago students gave voice. It is both remarkable and shameful that such testimony plays so small a part in our national dialogue.
Michael Moore's "Capitalism, A Love Story" had its U.S. premiere last night in Pittsburgh, drawing its audience from the AFL-CIO convention here. It was given at least an unofficial AFL-CIO endorsement and a wild reception by labor and health care advocates. And for good reason: it's Moore's best film.
A brilliantly plotted and executed indictment of U.S.-style capitalism, the movie pulls riveting interviews, action reportage, history and Moore's usual brand of stunts. He drives an armored truck around Lower Manhattan demanding taxpayer money back from the various banks and brokerages that looted the country and then profited so handsomely from the $700 billion bailout.
But there's a curious omission from Capitalism's wide-ranging analysis: race.
That's them on the right. I turned on 'Show Related Videos' to prove that this is a real song.
Das Racist are an NYC post-post-ironic rap duo, notable for infectious melodies and stupid-cum-Dada lyrics. And unlike most avant-novelty rap acts, they're not two smirking white guys; they're a smirking Indian guy, Himanshu, and a smirking half-white-half-Black-Cuban guy, Victor. From what I can tell, their race comes up much more in their music journalism coverage than in their music; judging from the bait-laden band name, they knew that would happen from the start.
I first heard of Das Racist back in May, when Abhi at Sepia Mutiny predicted that their internet hit "Combination Pizzahut Tacobell" was "going to become a favorite of desis of all ages." (I'll leave it to you to decide if I'm hipsterly noting my familiarity with the band, or if I'm hipsterly noting my readership of Sepia Mutiny.) And then I forgot about them for a while, until I came across this interview with them in the Village Voice.
There's a lot of gems that point to an understanding of bohemia's conflicted relationship with race -- unwarranted discussion of whether NYC hipster enclave Williamsburg lacks diversity or is just segregated; Victor's 'good hair'; the noting of how fortunate it is that 'Hindi' and 'hipster' share an initial letter, rendering unpronounceable a pejorative portmanteau equivalent to 'blipster', followed by mention of the sociopolitical context of Indian hipsters wearing hipster clothes made in sweatshops in India.
The real meat of the article, though, shows up when the guys are questioned alternately on their authenticity — first framed as 'sociopolitical context,' and then as 'street cred,' something always in contention for those rappers deemed 'ironic.' Instead of buckling under and cracking a joke (much), Victor and Himanshu take an opportunity to strike a blow against artist authenticity itself, alluding to its roots in race roles.
Did you immediately conceive of it as having a sociopolitical context? Are you commenting on American over-consumerism and corporate proliferation? Is this a joke that everyone thinks is a graduate thesis, or vice versa?
H: EVERYTHING WE DO HAS A SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT. THIS IS THE BURDEN OF THE MINORITY MAN. DID YOU KNOW THAT 1/3 OF ALL THREE-YEAR-OLDS IN URBAN AREAS ARE OBESE? I'M ALMOST POSITIVE I READ THAT ON THE INTERNET.
V: WHY ARE YOU VALIDATING THE FALSE DICHOTOMY OF JOKES VS. SERIOUS SHIT? WHY ARE WE TYPING IN CAPITAL LETTERS?
and:
Your PR materials insist that you "have a great deal of street cred." I am frankly skeptical. Can you elaborate?
H: Rick Ross was a corrections officer, Ice Cube was the son of two college professors, Tupac was a theater kid in high school, Drake was on Degrassi, De La Soul are from the suburbs. The Clipse, Andre 3000, and Kanye have written and spoken openly about not having street cred, etc. I just mentioned like a dozen people with one biographical note about each of them that goes against the archetypal understanding of them, but I still didn't actually describe who they were. These were all real people with long and complex lives who made/make real and effective art that has had an impact on black people and white people, rich people and poor people, Americans and the rest of the world.
Bob Dylan was a college-educated Jewish man singing like a dustbowl sharecropper, and he got booed offstage when he went electric for sullying his folk purity, as if he had any to begin with. Do people get mad at Martin Scorsese for making gangster movies even though he hasn't "lived the lifestyle"? I'm not arguing that context is useless for understanding art—on the contrary, there is no way to understand anything without context. My argument is for a less static and qualified idea of what "purity" is.
Das Racist doesn't lay it out in so many syllables, but they're in a unique position to point out how the questions represent two sides of the same race-role coin.
Last September in Chicago, I saw a play called “