Jazz Icons

In my study of jazz music, which began officially in 1988 after I graduated from the University of South Carolina with a Master of Music degree in Jazz and Commercial Music, it has taken over three decades to get near a historical lineage of the evolution of Jazz.  When I took my General Exams at Ohio State University, Dr. Ted McDaniel asked me a question so complex about the evolution of jazz it has taken me thirty years just to come to understand the question.  Needless to say the art form of Jazz is complex and far reaching.  One must live it to understand from the inside out.  I learned the bulk of jazz history from my friend and geru Jay Knowles.  To this day he is the most exceptional jazz scholar ever I have encountered, and that is because he loved the music.  Two years with him as a guide, and I waded through the theoretical aspect of jazz music, meaning it was a study of jazz theory.  I all ready new most of it, because I was a Graduate Teaching Associate.  With the exception of the Lydian Chromatic Concept, a theoretical framework of jazz harmony based upon the Lydian Augmented scale or ascending melodic minor scale, I understood most concepts of jazz melody and harmony.  Completing the coursework for a doctorate of musical arts in composition rounded out my knowledge of music composition.  There were two things Ted McDaniel asked me in the doctoral exam.  One, was the evolution of jazz just a journey culminating in the Avant Garde, and two, talk about the jazz vocalists.  I knew the major figures in jazz, which were Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Joe Williams and a few more.  I never had done an exhaustive study of the vocalists like I had done for instrumental jazz with Jay Knowles.  As it turns out a thorough study of Miles Davis from his first recording with Rubberlegs Williams to the end was a solid base for understanding most jazz.  I did not pass these General Exams the first time I took them, and that was circa 1996.  After completing all of this coursework I had to stop at OSU to have cornea transplants in both eyes.  Only today do I feel I am getting close to the level of proficiency needed to be a jazz scholar.  It takes time, so it is a lifelong pursuit.  If I were teaching again, to make it interesting to students I would come up with unconventional references that would connect with a younger modern generation of students.  Once I was good at this, being "hip."  If we try to understand the music from within, it is rife with sorrow and disappointment.  We need a more light-hearted way to approach the music, understand it, and appreciate it for what it has to offer the human race.  It is substantial, but it is complicated.  I could start with a humorous aside that I got transferred off my first Carnival cruise ship orchestra position because I tried to talk to the bass player during a tune.  He was so surprised and offended, Kirwin Brown, that he stopped playing, put his bass down, yelled at me, and walked off the stage.  The band followed him and refused to finish the set saying I was an offensive homophobe.  I pleaded with them not do make this stand and finished the set solo piano playing bass with my left hand on a keyboard.  I got the written warning.  This is ship politics.  In my discussion with the Musical Director, I pointed out that everyone in the band that walked off the stage and refused to play also merited a written warning for refusing to perform their scheduled duties.  They were not happy about this, and for some reason it was a surprise.  All of this for trying to communicate verbally while playing a jazz set.  The drummer, Donald Brown, who often just stopped playing to let the piano player take the lead, said our jazz performance was sacred and no words should be required.  They highly were offended that I tried to talk to them as we played.  Can you imagine being on stage in the band, and not being able to talk to them?  Perhaps what is the next tune?  Shall we do a medley?  Let's cut this tune short.  Lets go to double time.  Tempers and egos were high on the Carnival Destiny, but with less than 24 hours notice I was told I was being transferred to the Carnival Paradise where I had to quit smoking cold turkey.  It wasn't much later that Mr. Brown blew his top again and was fired and put off the ship in Aruba to find his own way home.  Jazz is a lifelong study, and it is good that it is that way.  The Three B's, trumpeters that were put out of commission because of alcoholism.  Buddy Bolden, Bix Beiderbecke, and Bunny Berigan.  It is best not to be a BB in the Jazz Age.  You don't want your name beginning with B for your first and last name, and you don't talk to the bass player while playing during a set.  I made it a point in the last few years while looking after my mother to round out my incomplete knowledge of jazz vocalists, and I have with the help of Youtube.  In trying to answer the question put to Facebook users by my former student and doctor of music Robert Gardener, this is upon what I arrived.  1.  Louis Armstrong.  2.  Lester Young.  3.  Ella Fitzgerald.  4.  Miles Davis.  5.  Fats Waller.  Many would be alarmed and surprised I didn't include John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, or Count Basie, all of which who were extremely influential to the art of Jazz.  If you only could pick five artists who most shaped Jazz music over the course of a century, these are my picks.  The reason is, much like a college teacher, they do many things.  Louis Armstrong was the most substantial model of jazz being a virtuosic trumpet soloist and improviser, knowing and singing in his characteristic communicative tone almost the entirety of the Great American Songbook, and doing all of this without being able to read music.  He also transected Early Jazz and Swing smoothing out the earlier ricky tick style and codifying swing rhythm or feel.  The study of jazz saxophonists is almost as broad as the study of all jazz.  While Sydney Bechet is notable in the earlier years. the approach of Lester Young is phenomenally unique in its tender and expressive phrasing of melodies.  Many others used the same approach, but Lester was the original.  The Prez.  Ella Fitzgerald covered decades with her vocal prowess easily scat singing bebop, covering pop tunes with a girlish voice in her mid teens with Chick Webb, or belting Rock tunes with a dance band when necessary.  She did it all.  Miles can be credited with creating three distinct styles of jazz including Cool, Modal, and Fusion.  No other artist has this diversity as a band leader.  From the perspective of the keyboard, the study of jazz piano also is its own anthology.  While Art Tatum often is recognized as the progenitor of early jazz piano, Fats Waller was a prolific composer, vocalist, stride pianist, and entertainer.  He pioneered the vocal style of carrying on a conversation with multiple people while singing alone answering himself often in the opposite gender.  He covered all the bases alone.  While there are many more influential jazz artists who round out the aesthetic such as Eric Dolphy and Weather Report, if we are attempting to blanket the entirety of jazz and retain its most quintessential elements, these five artists are a good start.  

The Saxophone of King Curtis

 The suspense is tangible.  Why?  "Will they stay, will they go?"  The 82nd Airborne of course.  The news is... well honest.  It must be that in the history of American Popular Music, the guy with the biggest one wins.  Those who solicit and receive the recording rights to a particular song are more financially successful than others.  There are songs inherently that are more communicative and thus successful than others.  During the Era of Tin Pan Alley, something America does not remember or champion, songwriting was a highly regarded and lucrative craft.  This was when music was an everyday part of American life.  It was not that long ago the same was true.  When I was in high school music was still big.  That music scene was promulgated by radio play.  There was a need for good music, because music is what drew listeners to the dials of their radios.  It was not ads.  We would not tune it to listen to a company hawk its products at us.  We did tune in to hear successful bands play meaningful music.  Similarly we would tune into television to watch communicative programs, whether drama, comedy, or the news and humbly absorb sales pitches for various American products.  Geritol.  Flour.  These things did respond to human needs rather than excess, like fifty-thousand dollar pick up trucks.  I am listening to the artist King Curtis, who is a saxophonist from the mid 1900's.  I had never heard his name before, but I had heard his tracks or songs.  I am a jazz educator, although I do not actively teach anymore.  I continue to teach myself and broaden my knowledge base.  I have learned more about jazz in the last few years from the historical perspective because of Youtube.  King Curtis chose to play R&B and Soul as well as being a substantial jazz musician.  The radio airplay from the popular forms of American music meant more financial reward.  It makes me appreciate the great jazz saxophonist even more.  Most of them were not financially successful.  Instead they were artists who developed one of America's few true art forms, Jazz.  I have a former student who became a doctor of music and taught jazz studies in South Carolina.  He posted a challenge to name the top ten most influential jazz artists.  As I have learned this is an impossibility.  I have taken it upon myself to try to synthesize the history of American Popular Music.  Wow!  I have been successful with Jazz, and the culmination of this knowledge lies in four DVDs each covering different genres of jazz music.  They are grouped so to provide a pleasant and satisfying listening experience.  If music is not pleasant and listenable, no one will pay attention.  The substance of the history of American Popular Music is almost overwhelming.  It is like Donald Jay Grout trying to pack the history of Western Music into one volume.  It is impossible.  That book is useless, although it may still be in use in colleges and universities today.  There is so much diverse information that spans centuries and national boundaries, the Grout text only could serve as a broad outline of Western music history.  This is what it is.  Like American Popular Music there are so many genres, a different course is needed for each.  French Grand Opera.  Ballet.  The String Quartet.  It is absurd to try to pack it all into one study, but American Popular Music is only one country and one century.  There is music pre1900, and it is important.  If we had to discipline ourselves then 1900 is a logical place to pic up.  "The Jazz Age."  The absurdity all ready present itself.  What was happening in America was affected by Western music, or what I like to call European-based orchestral and chamber music.  Europe of itself is a rich pallet of musical culture, because all of these languages and customs were close together.  Italian, French, German, and Russian.  That is the tip of the iceberg.  Perhaps a study of each country would be best for music study.  I discovered King Curtis as being the prominent solo saxophone voice of American Popular Music.  Like much music I study, the most important and memorable for me is mined from Youtube with my own curiosity and sweat.  I am picky about my music.  The only way I can leave the television on is if I am ambulant in the house working on other things, and it is just background noise.  If I do try to watch TV, it is very difficult.  The main reason would be  I do not have a pay television service.  We have had both Spectrum and DirectTV.  DirectTV was a better product, but they raised their prices after two years and lost several important local stations.  WNCN, channel 17.  When my mother died I cancelled the Spectrum service and mailed in my boxes.  Never will I regret it.  Over-the-air television does provide quite a few channels, and the best of these broadcast old television shows.  These shows were professionally produced and had quality sound reproduction, costuming, and acting.  They were conceived during the Golden Age of Television.  Local television has become a different thing.  King Curtis, when I discovered him on Youtube, was what must have been the original Smooth Jazz saxophonist.  Grover Washington would be more well known, but King Curtis is earlier.  The recording I found was exemplary, because he was replacing the vocal on top ten songs.  One of these was "Ode to Billy Joe."  The backing tracks are almost the same as the originals, so his saxophone sound steps into the spotlight.  This supports my first premise, that those who solicit and acquire the rights to the best songs are the most successful.  I decided to buy a box set, because I liked him so much.  To my surprise the 4 CD box set is nothing like what I had discovered.  It is early Rock 'n' Roll, so the sophisticated backing tracks are missing.  No strings and no recognizable songs.  It is representative of the true task of the songwriting contingency.  There are hundreds of thousands of forgettable songs published, and you can find them in different genres.  The Great American Songbook is the pinnacle of songwriting, so only the best songs become "standards."  The King Curtis box set is like many blues artists trying for success.  There are songs galore, but you will remember none of them.  You will remember the successful ones which have made it to the top and have received distribution and airplay.  For an artist to become successful, it takes a variety of ingredients including marketing.  King Curtis will still remain noteworthy in my lineage, but most of the songs in this box set are novelty songs or selling the energy of early vocal Rock 'n' Roll.  Interestingly there is a genre of itself that defines these crossover saxophone instrumentals.  What is it?  Lounge music may be the closet title I can think of.  It makes notable use of the Hammond organ as a solo voice, not in the jazz style.  It is aggressive, percussive, and kitschy, kind of like a Las Vegas sign.  As for the news today there has been no room for false information.  Our reality is surreal enough.  In a nutshell consumer prices remain inflated, and because of the President's attack on Iran, our gas now costs $1.00 more a gallon.  That has been the interesting thing about Donald Trump's presidency, is that gas prices have remained steady at about $2.50 a gallon.  "No new wars!"  The American people are being fucked.  Donald Trump is a murderer.  The death toll has risen to 200 Americans, who would be alive if not for this ludicrous action of attacking Iran.  He is killing Americans and raising prices.  America now will enter the history books with its first murderous dictator.  The irony is we elected him. 

The Backpack Programmable Phased Array Radar Weapon

 A solid piece of milled aluminum is the skeleton of a Macbook Pro.  There is a reason why Apple is Apple, but Apple is not Apple anymore.  Apple now is run by the former leader of Hewlett Packard.  The visionary products that Apple is known for are gone, but they are not forgotten.  It takes a few steps back to get this into focus.  My life has been on another tangent for ten years, so the things that were important to me, and which I studied have taken a backseat.  Only now after the death of both parents, getting closure on the estate, and pulling my head above water are they returning, these things of interest.  It shows 90 degrees on my backyard thermometer, and it is March 11.  How is this possible, record breaking heat in Winter?  One of my past girlfriends used to call me "Dark Cloud."  It was because I drank too much bourbon at night, and had a hangover the next morning.  In Columbus bourbon was necessary.  I tried existing on the wagon for a short time, and it was miserable.  I would get up sober and try to approach the day like any other working citizen.  My eyes hurt, it was cold, and there was no life.  I would drive around in my Toyota Tercel wagon, and it felt like Halifax, Nova Scotia.  It was after a devoted study that I discovered why.  Once you understand you can't go back.  It will never evade you.  Always this insurmountable, invisible, antagonistic force will be with you, Luke.  It is not good.  Anything that usurps the needs of humans is bad.  There will be no Borg.  There will be no Tet.  There will be no cyber system that controls the world and tries to kill humans.  Instead the Earth will perish in hellfire flames as predicted in the Bible.  The rest is science fiction.  It is speculation.  It is a bubble.  It is hyperbole.  It by pure will is meant to manipulate the financial markets to earn money for the all ready wealthy.  Money only can be spent by humans.  Maybe they do think they can live on Mars.  Why would one want to?  This thing, this stealth destructive force that no one can overcome, has become the tool of evil.  I think perhaps it did not begin this way.  It began as an industry trying to reinvent itself after the verge of bankruptcy. "Breaker breaker, one nine!"  It  was forty years ago the trucking industry was the backbone of American commerce.  A culture arose, and the ambulant freedom of the open road proved lucrative.  It was one chapter of America, a rebellious, headstrong, cavalier Scot-Irish spirit that took no prisoners.  I am exaggerating, but trucking was for the individual.  It relied upon drivers with strong wills and a dedicated work ethic.  It was so effective, it nearly bankrupted railroads.  John Snow  resurrected freight rail by creating his CSX-T, the merger of the Chessie system with Seaboard Coastline.  The advent of AC traction around 1990 has been the Pandora's Box of railroading.  Most will say the invention of AC traction was the cornerstone of future freight wealth.  Specifically the ES44AC locomotive has been selected as one locomotive that changed railroading for the better.  The jury is  out on this one, but it proved financially rewarding for the railroads.  Over the last three decades Norfolk Southern tried to paint the use of these locomotives green. The paint job on a freight locomotive will not not minimize its inevitable effect on human physiology.  The GP-38 may be the best example of trying to paint a horse.  It may seem audibly quiet, but its 16 cylinder two stroke prime mover does not adhere to EPA tier standards and emits 90% more harmful micro particles than modern locomotives.  RJ Corman, like many smaller railroads not capable of spending millions on motive power, has embraced the SD-40 which has the same 645 engine.  All of these older and possibly rebuilt dinosaurs pollute at the levels they did when they were built in the 1960's; they are operating under the radar of a grossly downgraded environmental policy kneecapped by the Trump Administration.  It belies logic how this President is not helping the American people.  With his international business relationships comes an allegiance to foreign influences, who are his benefactors.  It may be surprising, but America no longer is not in the loop.  The implementation of AC traction has harmed many people in a way not dissimilar to phased array radar.  "Sixty Minutes" reported recently undercover Department of Homeland Security agents were able to purchase, for 15 million dollars, a Russian-made, portable, microwave weapon in 2024.  The details were scant, but this scenario lent itself to a more plausible conclusion.  How would it be possible to manufacture a miniature microwave weapon that would fit in a backpack?  The Double Jeopardy answer says, it all ready has been made.  Spotter.  The operative terminology that fuels most technology today, the touted holy grail, is phased array radar.  Like AC traction words won't mean much.  Phased Array Radar, like the HAARP facility in Alaska, is radar unlike any previous radar.  It relies upon arrays of transmitters rather than one and software to steer the beam of microwaves.  Software phase shifting the array steers transmitted microwave pencil beams, which can be aimed specifically at very small areas including people.  This all ready  exists in the United States as a commercial product.  Spotter's website specifically advertises broad range use of its mobile radar for other applications.  If undercover agents paid 15 million for a Russian product, they overpaid.  Because the Central Intelligence Agency has chosen to mock victims suffering from the effects of this technology, it must be discerned America all ready has a weapon.  It is no different than Covid.  The smoke and mirrors enveloping Washington, DC and our elected leaders is a nightmare.  Like  HAARP in Alaska (which covertly was developed for long range radio communications with Navy submarines) phased array radar may have been developed on the up and up.  With use and testing have the negative effects of this technology come to light.  The rail industry may not have known how invasive the remnants of AC traction were, but they should now.  Suddenly you have not only a money-making tool but a weapon that can control the masses.  This combination is evil, and America has proven we are not responsible enough to regulate and limit these capabilities.  If you give little George Washington an axe, he will cut down the cherry tree.  If you give industry and Washington control over the American economy and people, they will abuse it.  With God eliminated from the equation, Satan is free to devastate Earth.  

The Unfortunate Demise of Jeffrey Epstein

 If any one thing suggested psychiatric weakness it is irrationality or a lack of perspective.  When I was a child, there was one sure way I would learn.  If I made a mistake and was punished, then that punitive scenario where I was in the doghouse evoked an awareness in my consciousness that willed me never to let that happen again.  We could call it the paddle or the spanking.  This is a much contested action in our current climate of Political Correctness, an era where we have been willing to let our children stray to a point of self destruction.  Tough love is more a part of nostalgic or historic American life, when a child had to walk five miles to school and back each day.  Basically it was a moral lesson or kind of Aesop's Fable, a miniature Star Trek or Andy Griffith episode, that taught you something.  Then what it taught was a moral or ethical lesson about treating one's fellow man as yourself.  In a nutshell we were aware of a code of living, a Christian ethic or ethos shaped by the Ten Commandments, that attempted to make our lives better by tempering our animal instincts.  If we were going to live on this planet together in societies, then we needed to behave a particular way.  Abstractly politics once represented this same idea.  Diplomacy uses intellect and wisdom mined from experience to dispel human conflict.  The underlying premise is man needs or requires peace and serenity to survive.  Peace ensures that our planet and the human race may survive aside from a God-created cataclysmic disaster.  The crucial postulate is man desires peace rather than conflict or war.  Economics have changed that perspective, and the intense lure of wealth or the power of the dollar to disguise suffering and create a bubble of bliss has necessitated conflict and war.  It would seem we as a nation have lost the ability to create an economy based on human need.  Human need would in most circumstance not include murder, if we had souls.  The souls with which we are born and are nurtured in childhood have been undermined.  Without our own personal awareness we have succumbed to temptation, a universal vice described in the Bible and Jesus' teachings.  Temptation and addiction have consumed American life.  God forgives, and those who seek redemption can enter the kingdom of heaven.  We are weak, and a force as strong as God and perhaps more persuasive has consumed our lives.  It is call Evil.  Satan or the devil only manifests himself through human form, and the elected regime we have today in America clearly is an example of this Evil.  It is rife with the trappings of mental illness, irrational thought and behavior, and the most devastating, a serpent-like ability to speak and mold to any situation promoting one's own agenda whether ethical or not.  Examples of this have emerged in our current and recently elected leaders.  After having received punishment as a child, certain things have solidified in my own code of conduct.  For me it was trusting others' advice.  Anytime I chose to do this and made a decision based upon what someone else suggested, I was bitten in the arse.  The conscious decision to follow someone else's suggestion resulted in a failure.  I learned to follow my own instincts and reflective decisions.  You know yourself best.  As an adult I have learned a variant route.  I will listen to others' opinions and experiences, because often I will learn something I did not know; I must separate my personal choice and process from their opinion.  The most disturbing and disruptive example of Evil today, other than the recent unconstitutional attacks on Venezuela and Iran circumventing Congresses' approval, is the murder of Jeffrey Epstein.  It should become clear to us, the American people, that those in power and possibly our elected leaders, have committed murder.  Not murder under the cloak of war, casualties that can be ascribed to some greater cause (whether fraudulent or not), but murder to conceal one's own crimes akin to the slaying of Jamal Kashoggi.  The death of Jeffrey Epstein is an example of such an egregious act.  As evidence continues to surface exposing a much greater atrocity, a blackmail ring connecting Russia with the United States, the plausibility of a murder to disguise such a scheme arises.  Epstein's death in a prison cell is similar to Vladimir Putin's blatant assassinations of undesirable state participants or rebels.  In Communist nations, such as Russian, China, and Iran, dissent or protest is met with slaughter.  These totalitarian regimes do not allow personal freedom nor freedom of speech.  Disagreement and recalcitrance to the state results in death.  Jeffry Epstein was murdered to cover up these high crimes, and he was murdered by those in power.  In all probability he was murdered by Donald Trump himself.  One of Donald Trump's most impressive skills, not unlike Bill Clinton, is to slip and slide his way out of adversity.  Underneath it may consist of a ruthless, antagonistic, and zealot set of sychophantic lawyers, not unlike those who plotted the murder of John F. Kennedy, but on the surface Donald Trump's smooth melismatic drawl has convinced America to elect him the leader of the free world not once, but twice.  Try to imagine a human being in a jail cell deserving of due process, but instead he is murdered in cold blood by his cell mate to conceal crimes of a high magnitude.  Those in power sanctioned his murder, hired a hit man, and covered up his assassination.  Jeffrey Epstein was an evil man of prominence supported and engaged with other evil men of prominence.  When threatened with exposure he was killed.  It should be chilling to every American that your death could be next. 

The Missing Arts in American Society

 I wear gas permeable hard contact lenses.  They are a vast improvement over the PMMA lenses I received at Duke University Eye Clinic in the early 1980's for Keratoconus.  I am thankful for hard contact lenses, because they are the only solution for the eye disease Keratoconus.  Even after keratoplasty in both eyes (cornea transplants) I have corrected vision of 20/20.  My saga of flying contact lenses continues, and today was no different.  First as I attempted to extract my left lens from its case, it hid from me falling over backwards stuck between the edge of the case and the bathroom countertop.  For a minute I couldn't find it, but when I did feel it with my fingers and attempted to free it from its sticky nest, it decided to commit suicide and broke in half destroying itself.  Innately I new these lenses had made it past their half life.  It was not a huge surprise, but it was yet another inconvenience.  I had one spare left, but it was sitting dried out in its open case.  It took over an hour to finally coax it to settle on my left cornea and attempt to improve my legally blind vision without contact lens correction.  Secondly it felt like a huge dirty diaper in my eye.  My vision was blurred and it felt terrible like it was about to tiddly wink out at any moment.  It stayed in for a few minutes, but as soon as I started to do something productive in the house (rearrange some furniture) it popped out.  I heard it "dink" on my hardwood floor.  I tried not to panic or delve into a chronic depressive state.  Somehow the Creator had mercy on my now weeping eyes, and I placed my finger right on the bit of shiny plastic nestled next to the rocker on my Great Uncle Edwin's chair.  I reflected that these are gas permeable lenses and thus are meant to stay moist.  It had been sitting in a dry container, so I mused that I was to blame for not taking more time to clean and soak the lens before inserting it.  I did so, and it has stayed put so far.  I finished my furniture arranging long enough to realize that age 63 and after Covid repeatedly has racked my body, I no longer was capable of holding a full time job.  I have arthritis on the right side of my body, and recently it has worsened running from my right shoulder down my arm and into my piano playing fingers.  I take a lot of over-the-counter NSAIDs.  If I do not, I am in constant pain.  I have become a "Man of Constant Sorrow," but mentally and spiritually I am not depressed.  My environment does everything in its power to exert depression on me, but I resist.  Music is my salvation, and often I am denied it.  How and why am I denied music, and why would music seem so important?  As a true musician, a real musician, not a poser, or a talker, or a grandstander, but one who has committed to the vocation and art of musical expression, composition, and performance, music becomes part of your soul.  I feel most of us have some music in as at birth, and this has inspired both the Kodaly and Suzuki methods of early music education.  In these methods it is crucial to establish a connection with and understanding of the God's given gift of rhythm, melody, and eventually harmony.  Often it begins with just rhythm, because singing or actualizing pitch or melody is not necessary.  If it comes right down to it, the basic fundamental requirement for music is time.  While the concept of time as an organization of subdivisions of an established pulse or beat has evolved over time, and that development and abstraction can be heard in Jazz's Avant-garde and Classical's Abstract Expressionism or Second Viennese School, the feeling of a pulse, a steady hearbeat-like continuance also becomes synonymous with an emotional feeling.  The tempo of that pulse directly can influence these emotions in an almost crude and primitive way.  Major tonality often is deemed happy and minor sad.  A slow pulse or ballad usually equates to a feeling that is reflective, relaxing, or romantic.  These characterizations are subjective, but throughout history they have remained constant.  Fast paced music or a quick tempo takes more of a certain kind of energy.  The best example could be America's "Rock and Roll," which like every other tenant of music is a study of and unto itself.  I feel this sexualized, physically aggressive, and sometimes euphoric blues-based American popular music represents the impact of time on the human psyche, soul, and libido.  It is called "Groove."  Many will disagree, including Igor Stravinsky, that emotion and music are the same or entangled.  I have found increasingly over time that great musical artists often talk shit or reinforce false or erroneous concepts and ideas.  It is an interesting paradox that a composer as great as Stravinsky, who penned The Firebird, rife with emotional content, would say such a thing.  The same is true of Miles Davis, who touted his genetic lineage as the son of a prominent oral surgeon.  Specifically he said that he never suffered nor had the blues.  There could be no greater contradiction knowing full well that the bulk of Miles' musical output was the direct expression of his own ideas and feelings.  Much of it was pensive and melancholic.  Don't listen to your artists talk.  Listen to them play.  Music, if good, necessarily is intertwined with your soul.  I have discovered upon studying classical music (or more succinctly European orchestral and chamber music), which made its way across the pond, fused with other disparate nationalities, and became its own offering, that this music equally is representative of the human condition as newer American musics including Appalachian Roots Music, the Blues, Bluegrass, Gospel, and Jazz.  We are more familiar with these because they are closer to us.  I have enjoyed listening to the almost local classical radio station, WCPE, and learning from it.  My classical CD collection was stoked by program material on this completely privately funded FM radio station in Wake Forest, North Carolina.  It is unfortunate that even with a dedicated translator on Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville, Fort Bragg and CSX both assault this signal making it pleasing only about 80% of the time.  Upon scrutiny the roof of a diesel/electric heavy haul AC traction locomotive has every conceivable form of wireless communication including cell and WiFi frequencies.  When studied the antenna arrays built by GE were so complex with cross modulation, no results could be discerned.  They were a mish mash of EMF pollution.  Both FM and AM radio and over-the-air television have been sacrificed in lieu of the omnipotent Wireless Internet promulgated by Elon Musk and his Star Link satellite network.  In retrospect the original offerings of radio and television in America were and still are better.  Radio in particular before television evolved connected the nation, and disseminated American Popular Music to the masses, included extremely rural disconnected areas.   Early radio was a rich stew of musics which were meant to provide fulfillment to tattered American souls.  This included Southern preaching, the Blues, Country, and Swing.  The validity of music in the formation of America is strong and important.  It was out voice, and now we have none.  We are being told to what to listen, and this advice is coming from foreign streaming companies who have no place in the music industry.  Big Tech has hijacked American Popular Music for its own gain.  Film, television, and music, all huge components of America's economy, have been neutered.  The outbreak of Covid was nails in their coffins.  It is difficult not to realize the core constructs of American society have been attacked and are a shadow of their former selves.  While inclusive Real TV and social media have had their say, professional industries which provided opportunity, monetary reward, and viable united cultural expression are missing.  The reason it is so difficult for me to pursue the vocation and art of music, is because now it largely is missing in American society.  A few symphony concerts a year is not enough. 

When the Odds Are Against Us

They say those loosing both parents have a fifty percent chance of survival.  The mortality rate for children loosing both parents is fifty percent.  We can discern burying both parents, even if over a long period of time, is taxing to children.  Is it logical to assume children who have grown up, married, and established their on families have an easier time?  I think not.  I would think that children who have had little or negative interaction with their parents, or who have been separated from them, may have an easier time.  It means the emotional anguish all ready has developed, been internalized, and cast its spell over the offspring.  They may hate their parents for various reasons.  It is those children who were reared in a supportive and loving environment who have the most trouble.  It is called loss, and loss comes in several flavors.  When love is involved, no matter how tangible or abstract, it heightens the anguish.  Is it better to have loved and lost than never loved before?  I experienced my first grievous loss when I was in my twenties.  I was spared in adolescence, but I also realized early that you had to work for what you had.  If you wanted a better life and possibly love, it didn't come to you.  You had to pursue it, and it took work.  The equation for love is both complex and simple.  As a society America has lost track of many things, and love is one of them.  We can't even decide our gender, and we have learned to use love as a tool of manipulation.  This is one of the great torches of the American free market.  We learned to exploit humanity for profit, thus we sell love at the highest most achievable price.  Selling love is troublesome and problematic, but selling sex doesn't have to be.  Other nations have figured this out before America, and thus prostitution is legal, regulated, and safe.  It is for adults.  When is the last time we heard the words "adult content."  We, as an American society, no longer know who we are or what are our values.  Solidarity has slipped through our fingers at the polls.  We have been irresponsible in our choices of our elected leaders, and those leaders have forsaken us.  If we don't do the work, behave responsibly, and pay attention to human life, we will perish.  Perhaps we are too busy trying to make ends meet to have much chance to read, think, and observe.  It is no coincidence.  Our government, a malicious and self-centered regime, has aided our naivete.  They have passed and not passed legislation that has harmed us in many ways.  Our economic needs are not being met, nor are our health concerns.  We have been neglected.  Whether we want to admit it or not, America always has been reliant upon our governments.  It has leaned so far that way, that we have become clandestine socialist.  The government provides much for us in many ways.  If the economy was working efficiently and there was economic and social mobility (like there has been at other times in history) we would be more self sufficient.  Society being led by our federal, state, and local governments, must provide this canvas for American life.  It means all people must be involved (solidarity), and classism must be kept to a minimum.  The economic inequality we have allowed because of poor choices at the polls and poor leadership will be the death of American democracy.  We all ready have lost it, because the rich have hijacked America through a weak, subservient, incompetent Congress.  Lobby money has been the fuel for this hijacking.  It is just bribery.  You can have opportunity to provide for yourself, when you reap the benefits of your labors, or someone (a Communist or Socialist regime) can just pay you off.  Most Americans cherish their freedom to earn and mind for themselves.  This anachronistic, autocratic, and totalitarian vision of Donald Trump is so antiquated, harmful, and evil the entire world is cringing in disbelief.  I thought loosing both parents was going to be a challenge, but it pales to what is facing America today.  For me all of it is mixed up together in a house, and because I am a musician.  Musicians must make noise.  In most situations it is considered music and is pleasing, but in the wrong situation when America has been hijacked by fascists, music is the enemy.  It is the metaphor for American freedom.  How did music become arch enemy number one?  In the milieu of Donald Trump's political strategies, disguising real American history is paramount.  It is being called "Cancel Culture," but what it is is disguising or completely eliminating the greatest accomplishments of America.  It is like utterly destroying the West Bank, saying Palestine never existed, and building a resort where lay the smoldering remains of a viable (but possible unpopular) culture.  History is what creates that relevance.  History is and should be the framework for the future.  Wiping out large swaths of culture, people, and countries for personal gain.  What is this sin?  If society is to become compliant in this new reorganization or gentrification, they can't remember.  Understanding, preserving, and promulgating America's achievements is key.  With the total lack of care and nurturing of the American people, and with this newly forged blatant animosity of middle and lower class earners, it will not be long before America returns to slavery.  Jazz was a direct reaction to the freeing of slaves.  Its expression, its honesty, and its exuberance are the enemy of evil, fascist, and self-serving regimes.  That is because all of it is driven by spirituality and the acknowledgment of a Higher Being.  If life on earth all ready is Hell, then there must be a Heaven.  Music, in a nutshell, has become an enemy of the state clandestinely and at the behest of Donald Trump's aspirations.  For that reason, and because he is weak, if music decides to resurrect in a real way for the real reasons, Satan could be defeated.  My fight to mourn the loss of my parents, to continue to function as a musician, and to duck ensuing enslavement has become seemingly insurmountable.  At least it seems like the most difficult fight of my life, because it all comes to fruition at the same time. 

George Orwell Predicted Correctly

Thus far the direct result of Donald Trump's attack on Iran at the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia is inevitably higher gas prices for Americans and three dead soldiers in Kuwait.  "Thank you, Mr. President."  Before this Hegseth sanctioned war game, these soldiers were alive and well.  They were not in combat.  They were just pulling their time at an army base in Kuwait.  Like chess pieces in perverted tournament of power, distraction, and ego, these United States soldiers did nothing to deserve death.  It is called murder.  Upon listening to the Iranian Foreign Minister, he was stupefied that in the midst of what he called successful negotiations, the United States attacked Iran and killed their leader.  He also reiterated that Iran fully had cooperated with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action sought by President Barack Obama.  Trump withdrew the United States from this agreement in 2018 and viciously attacked Iran in February of 2026.  We have yet to know if the governing regime in Venezuela has changed, since Special Forces removed Nicolas Maduro from power.  It is easy to discern why President Trump has proceeded with both military actions.  It is because of their oil.  Both Venezuela and Iran have the largest oil reserves in the world.  It would seem the Bush Cartel influence still highly is active.  President Trump is using nonexistent money to the tune of 40 trillion dollars to fund a military that is engaging in war mongering to aid the wealthy.  Each and every day average Americans wake and rise, another blow is struck by our own President on the shrinking middle class and the growing lower class.  Inflation was not improved nor has any campaign promise been fulfilled since Donald Trump won his second term.  It is the opposite.  He seems to be working for another foreign interest whose goal is to destroy American democracy and her people.  It is not unusual globally to have a murderous tyrant as a president.  We have not seen it in America until now.  The proper procedure to remove corrupt and felonious leaders is what?  If we learn from example a foreign interest either kidnaps the President or bombs the White House killing the current administration.  This is Trump's example.  Trump has suggested that the Iranian populace should rise up and take control of their nation, but they are cowering in fear of bombs.  Sheltered in place and said to continue for a month, the arrangement all ready have been made.  Like in Venezuela, Iran may wallow in chaos publicly, but those who have taken control of these nations' assets have been planned for months if not years.  We never will see who, because Trump's major tool of conquering is controlling America's media.  It is Big Brother, and it is Donald Trump.  George Orwell's novel, "1984," should become a supportive citation of our Constitution.