The ill State of a State

I grew up in North Carolina.  I never really thought much about it, until I began to travel playing gigs.
Seeing the Piedmont of North Carolina I was not impressed.  Tobacco mills.  Hoo Ha.  Interstate driving between cities on crowded multi-lanes roads.  North Carolina it seems always been held in high esteem as a tourist destination, because the state contains both the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean.  These geographic locations are enjoyable, but the rest of it....  Sandhills?  Coastal Plains?  Scrub.  Topography aside the more important issues are the governmental infrastructure and business base.  What is startling to me is having returned to the state is how it has traveled back in time.  When Jim Hunt was governor back in the l980's North Carolina seemed like a progressive state.  He changed the "DUI" to "DWI" and put in place a law that required two nights in jail for an arrest for drunk driving.  Ouch.  That one move changed Chapel Hill forever.  Speed limits were double nickels, the fine for littering was around $1,000.00, and otherwise law enforcement was proactive.  What a change.  Today in Fayetteville nary do you ever see a policeman.  It is common knowledge the government is strapped for cash just like the state.  Behind those closed office doors North Carolina agencies continue to "manipulate" data for their own gain.  Why should the tax value of a used Toyota Sienna van be $1,200.00 one year and $2,300.00 the next?  How can a used vehicle appreciate in value?  It is because they won't you to pay more property tax.  The same applies to the value of your home.  North Carolina governmental agencies such as PWC constantly manipulate their bills trying to draw more of your money.  Who or what should be responsible for watchdogging these practices?  The Attorney General?  The Governor.  The reason why I left South Carolin in the late l980's soley was because of governmental corruption.  Ron Cobb and his cronies were handing out bribes at a hotel in downtown Columbia on Gervias St. to state house officials.  I remember that feeling well realizing your elected officials didn't have your back.  The myth of "By the people for the people" was so off base.  Who were these people?  I grew up in a vacuum of music artistry and romance.  No where was I ever taught the real components of life in the United States.  Business, laws, marketing, socialization.  I am embarrassed it took me fifty-one years to open my eyes and see what really is around me.  Money.  Fayetteville is such an anomaly.  Few places could have such  strata of elite rich and miserable poor.  I digress.  Isn't this the way the Old South has operated beginning with plantation owners and slaves?  American entrepreneurs J.P Morgan,  John D. Rockefeller,  Thomas Edison,  and Andrew Carnegie all crafted their dreams.  The history of the United States is one of wealth, but always there has been a working class.  A few times there has been a middle class.  What has changed?  Upon further examination of this concept of an elite rich and a slave-like poor, one could go so far  to say it is probable that America's only indigenous art form was a consequence.  As a purveyor of this art form myself, this notion demands further study.  Personally I always have believed pain was responsible for great art.  Without heartache and the resultant soul searching to find anodynes, whence does the art come?  Of course there are those who do not use this process for catharsis and continue to suffer the rest of their lives.  I always believed that is for what art is meant.  It can lead by example.  It can encapsulate situations.  It can provide beauty and order.  It can expose.  As an artist myself always it has been engrained in me to use creativity as solutions for social disorder.  This is why I compose.  Of course there can be artful material or what has become fashion calling "artisan" without this process.  Unfortunately is is devoid of the one thing that ensures art will stand the test of time.  Art deals with universal humanities that cross many human boundaries.  It is universal.  It is spiritual.  In the current form of American jazz, it seems to me these things are not present.  Instead jazz musicians like other musicians have become more concerned about the holy dollar.  They would rather "sell out" and make a fruitful living than carry the torch for what could become a lost art form.  If swing doesn't resurface somewhere in the near future, it is quite probable it may go wayward.  What is the difference between swing music and pop music?  No one really seems to let on they know the difference, but the musicians have stepped to the other side of the street in droves.  Could it be they don't know the difference and what they are doing?  In one interview the prestigious Marsalis clan admitted they could not play the music the traditional way.  They had to change with the times.  A very simple qualification can be made as to what is artistic.  An artistic song in my opinion begins with a human beings need to express themselves.  It is a calling.  Expressing one's self is a road to discovery and enlightenment.  This expression can be intellectual or affective.  It is nice when it is a blend of the two.  When an artist expresses they are voicing innermost ideas through a metaphor.  That metaphor could be visual art, a painting or sculpture, or it could be musical sounds organized in time.  It could be prose or poetry.  I use three of these, prose, poetry, and music to satisfy my mind and soul.  Simply if the movement is not an earnest, honest, expression of an innermost thought or feeling, it is not art.  There is pop art which relies upon technique and commerciality.  It may not stand the test of time.  There once was a viable commercial music industry in the United States.  It was a large part of our Gross National Product.  It sold millions of records.  It reaped great rewards through concert revenue.  It was because the music was artistic.  Today artists are persecuted for being good by the masses of musical marauders.  Cleverly like the Republicans have done, the tables have been turned changing the rules of art and religion.  If there were no slavery, would there be jazz?  It is a complicated lineage.  European based orchestra music fused with Sousa marches, work songs, field hollers, and gospel created jazz.  I have a simple definition.  Jazz is swing-based improvisational music that relied upon the twelve bar blues and thirty-two bar AABA American popular songs or Tin Pan Alley.  It further was developed by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman.  Miles is credited with creating three separate and distinct styles of jazz.  They are "Cool Jazz," "Modal Jazz,"  and "Fusion Jazz."  Eerily when I turn on the local "jazz" radio station there is no Big Band music.  There is no Count Basie, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Claude Thornhill, That Jones/Mel Lewis, Maynard Ferguson, or Duke Ellington.  How can this category of jazz be eliminated?  Because the American people have become so uneducated by the public schools, they don't know the difference.  This is the way some like it.

A Blast of American Reality. The Army's Soldier's Show

I had no idea America could change so drastically in only a few short years.  It is plausible that the geographic region where I grew up itself is responsible for the change I am seeing.  Other places in America may not have experienced the change I am seeing.  One thing is for certain in my mind.  As a college graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a holder of a Bachelor of Music Education degree, the change I am seeing only could be prompted by a decline in America's public education system.  It like most of America's other commercial institutions has succumbed to a numbing corruption of ethical content perhaps having begun with  the attempted abolition of Christianity as a religion.  In more simple terms the movement was the removal of God from human existence.  Ethical and moral judgements are instilled by this religion and no where else.  While it could be possible that an isolated human being could develop their own sense of right and wrong, it is much more supportable to deduce these judgements from the lessons presented in Biblical scripture.  Therefore removing these requirements will allow commercial and governmental institutions to succumb to corrupt practices.  We are not safe anymore.  The movement has gotten started, and it is frightening to me largely having been abroad for twelve years.  I can barely believe what I see, hear, and read.  This was reinforced last night after attending the United States Army's Soldier's Show.  As a professional musician gainfully employed as a keyboardist for the last twelve years, what I witnessed merely substantiated the fight with which I have been presented as an artist.  Artistry is all but absent in the current American music industry.  It like other institutions also has succumbed to corruption.  The traditional tenants of American cultural history have been eradicated in lieu of Musica Reservata.  No longer it seems is art appreciated or needed to be the guiding ethical and moral conscience of humanity.  While America's attempt to eliminate God from His own planet, quickly commercial music is headed in that direction.  The show I witnessed was so bad, I could not watch its performers.  The ultimate reality must be that the concept of the show, much like cruise shows have begun to do, is to play down to its audience.  Why must they play down?  The obvious answer came to me last night.  The neglect and subsequent failure of our public education system has created such a low level of awareness.  The movement to eliminate God is synonymous with the movement to fail to educate America.  The steadfast philosophy of empowering America's next generation changed instead to a philosophy of exploiting America's youth.  What I see around me is a generation that does not even appear human.  I had no idea what I was watching in the Army's presentation.  The performers could not dance, and this blatantly was obvious because their rather highly choreographed moves were not in sync with the music.  As I well understand from the music production in the cruise industry, a discernible "beat" is not the goal.  The goal is undefined, sexually ambiguous, puffs of un-opinionated air.  It takes no stand, it speaks no truth, and fails to be defined as music.  It is something else, and I could not watch it.  It was too painful.  While I do think some of the performers did possess some musical talent, their role in this propaganda was not to excel.  It was to appear to its uneducated audience as themselves.  The Army's acceptance of such a low level of behavior only solidifies in my mind that the reversal of "Don't ask, don't tell" was a grievous mistake.  While I don't openly oppose homosexuality, having worked in the confined environments of cruise ships exposed me to its exploitation.  I only can imagine the environment of a mostly male conglomerate would also succumb to the same type of exploitation.  Vehemently I disagree with open homosexuality in the military.  How in any way does this personal private choice have any place in the public of what is supposed to be America's representative fighting force?  It seems on all fronts in modern day America our institutions have succumbed to a vigilant controlling of America's citizens.  It is obvious when you are stupid you are unable to tell the difference.