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Frank Foster in Buffalo

28 Jul

Frank Foster in Buffalo

At first glance this wouldn’t seem to be about politics. It’s about a musician who was also my teacher. Which is to say, it is very much about politics in the deepest sense. Music is about community, and so is politics. Teaching is about passing knowledge from one generation  to the next, as politics requires. Like politics at its best, it’s about truth and tradition. One of my teachers just died. A great musician, Frank Foster. This is about, and for, him. He knew truth, respected tradition, and made beautiful music, of his time and for the future.

I headed off to the State University of NY at Buffalo (aka UB) in the Fall of 1973. While I was going for my Ph.D. in English Literature, I was also interested in their music offerings—the school’s, not the English Department’s. I’d just gotten my trumpet out of “storage,” as it were, a year or so ago and I decided I wanted to sharpen my jazz chops. So, I looked through the UB catalogue and noticed they had some guy named Frank Foster teaching jazz improv. I’d never heard of him. But, hey, I looked him up anyhow, you never know—played and arranged with Basie, Elvin Jones, Sarah Vaughan, “hmmm,” says I to my little-too-smart self, “maybe he’ll do.”

He did.

I forget just how I made my way into his improv workshop. While I was registered in the English Department and took courses there, there was no problem about showing up in Frank’s class and just hanging out. I didn’t even register for credit. Just showed up. (Maybe I officially audited the course, as it’s called, but I don’t really remember the arrangement.)

Frank had no problem with that. Neither did anyone else.

So, anyhow, I show up in the room. Other folks came in. We got out our horns and warmed up in that “checkin’ everyone out” way that musicians have. Then Frank comes in—he must’ve, because that’s how it had to be, no? But I don’t actually remember that first day. I remember other days, but not that one. So I’m just makin’ it up about that first day.

Improvising, you might say.

Frank comes in, says ‘hi’ to folks he recognizes. Does some administrative crap, and gets down to business. He goes to the chalk board, writes out the head and changes to a tune, say, “Blue Bossa,” explains a thing or two about “harmonic relevance” (his term) and we’re blowing. The rhythm section has it, we all play the head with Frank. Then Frank takes a chorus or two and then sends it around the room. Everyone took a turn. Continue reading →

Change the World

26 Jul

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.

—Margaret Mead

Tradition: Band Shell in the Park

25 Jun

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Spirit

12 Jun

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Rose

1 Jun

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Truth and Traditions Defined

12 May

What do we mean by Truth with a capital T?

The Republican Party is based on a growing cluster of denials, distortions and outright lies that some of us will not forgive or forget. Dennis Kucinich put together a list of 35 impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors that included the particulars of lies that pushed us into very costly (in innocents killed and a trillion borrowed dollars) and unwinnable wars. Both the admitted and the unconfessed spying activities which invaded the privacy of millions of Americans, plus the manipulation of intelligence and intelligence gathering agents — go read the list of 35 articles and weep for the shredded Constitution and Bill of Rights, the lost 9th Amendment rights to privacy and to a clean conscience as a citizen. The Declaration of Independence was trashed too. In 8 years of Bush/Cheyny building up their personal wealth with war operations, we lost everything of quality, every virtue, that America ever stood for: morality, integrity, honesty, humility, rule of law., freedom, justice — all out the window.

That’s one inconvenient truth: our loss of everything good we ever stood for.

The inconvenient truth of climate change is another. The inconvenient truths of peak oil now, peak drinkable water now, peak everything on the horizon, as far as the eye can see. The many, many ugly truths of war and waste have been systematically unexamined by our corporate owned mass media who stand to profit by ignoring news unfit for them to print or speak.

Continue reading →

In Transition

7 May

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Why the TNT Party WILL Make a Difference

6 May

The Truth and Traditions Party will make a difference because it stands on the side of history. A simple claim, but true. We do not claim we’re alone in standing on the side of history, not at all. But we do claim that, in their allegiance to Big Money, the Democrats and Republicans have consigned themselves to the dust bins of history.

In a searching and imaginative examination of American history from colonial times to the present, William Robert Fogel, economic historian and Nobel Laureate, has argued that our history is driven by periodic revivals asserting egalitarian claims over against social hierarchy that creates increasing gaps between the rich and the poor. His book, The Fourth Great Awakening & the Future of Egalitarianism (Chicago 1999), is built on anthropological work on revivalism and on religious history.

From the publisher’s blurb:

To understand what is taking place today, we need to understand the nature of the recurring political-religious cycles called “Great Awakenings.” Each lasting about 100 years, Great Awakenings consist of three phases, each about a generation long.

A cycle begins with a phase of religious revival, propelled by the tendency of new technological advances to outpace the human capacity to cope with ethical and practical complexities that those new technologies entail. The phase of religious revival is followed by one of rising political effect and reform, followed by a phase in which the new ethics and politics of the religious awakening come under increasing challenge and the political coalition promoted by the awakening goes into decline. These cycles overlap, the end of one cycle coinciding with the beginning of the next.

Here’s the four cycles laid out in brief form. As the blurb has notes each cycle of revivalist activity lasts a century or more and goes through three phases. The American Revolution happened during the second phase of the first revival cycle and the Civil War happened during the second phase of the second revival cycle. The third cycle gave us the labor reforms, civil rights, and women’s rights movements of mid-20th century America.

Continue reading →

Amazing Grace

1 May

We’re here: The Truth and Traditions Party on the world-wide web in the 21st Century CE.

The tune is one of them old time good ones, as Louis Armstrong used to call ’em: “Amazing Grace.” Amazing it will be when American is transformed by a politics of truth and tradition. And, yes, it will require acts of grace.

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Hymn of Gratitude

24 Apr

From Charlie’s Facebook page.

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Hymn of Gratitude for the Catholic Worker Vol. LXXVII, No. 5 August-September, 2010


price 1 cent (can't find the sign for 'cent' very easily on this computer,
sign of the times)


these front page headlines:

Joseph Takami of Nagasaki                              Our Lady the Hibakusha


plus an excellent review of BOMBING CIVILIANS: A TWENTIETH CENTURY HISTORY.
Edited by Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young. The New Press, New York and London, 2009.
Reviewed by Bill Griffin.

who titles his review Bombs Do Not Save Lives

Here it is 2011 and May 1 coming up

Truth & Traditions Party mobilizing people 1 x 1

to bring some sanity each day into politics USA

a tar pit full of failing flailing dinosaurs

desperate on the very brink of extinction

us modest milky warmblooded mammals

nipping at their gigantic achilles heels

I know the blog box is not set up in a way that favors poets who may be fussy about

space, wanting air and the aura of ether around the penumbra of each word, each line,
and especially around each unspoken thot. Plodding traditional prose will have to serve.

Continue reading →

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