The Old Ways of Jim Crow

 I was fortunate to be hired as a pianist for the cruise industry.  The  perception of my job was a paid vacation.  It was not.  It was difficult and challenging .  In retrospect uncontrollable variables made it more difficult.  Other people making your life and job more difficult?  Welcome to politics!  I never thought much about, because I wanted to keep the job.  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, so they say.  There were many obstacles.  Most were human.  Music can be difficult, and it can cause neurosis.  The adage became, "Do the best  you can," and they would fix it in the mix.  I didn't understand this until later, and the rest of the musicians were floundering.  They depended upon the pianist to provide the foundation, as they do in most musical settings.  The pianists accompanies in church, in the theater, and in jazz.  Oscar Peterson commonly is cited as a diligent pianist, but most don't possess his technique.  Art Tatum, Erroll Garner, and Fats Waller had formidable command of the piano.  The concept was to make the piano sound like an orchestra.  You needed to be heard.  This is not the only approach to the piano.  Listen to Claude Thornhill and his orchestra, and you will understand.  The piano has many faces, and many sounds can be made from this dynamic hammer action instrument.  In jazz the desire is to get away from the roots of the chords.  If a pianist wants to be "hip," then he doesn't play the "shell" with his left hand.  (the root of the chord and the seventh)  Instead you voice the chord, or change, in a hipper inversion with varying internal intervals.  Playing this way over the bassist's "root" of the chord creates a spacious and more interesting sound.  There is more space in between the notes of the chord, instead of a dense cluster of notes.  Everyone for which I ever have played wants Oscar Peterson or Count Basie.   Neither was my chosen aesthetic.  I admired Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, and Wynton Kelly.  By the end of Bill Basie's career, he was too feeble to play anything.  This is why Sammie Nestico wrote his arrangements the way he did.  Less was more, and the Count sat for most of the tune mugging at the audience.  Never in my lifetime, until I learned to produce my own accompaniment tracks, have I ever been able to play the piano in jazz the way I wanted.  This is when the bassist plays a foundation of solid roots of chords, and the set drummer plays a solid swinging rhythm.  You, the pianist, could play on top of their groove.  Rarely it happens anymore.  With the passing of most  jazz greats drummers, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Philly Joe Jones, and Max Roach, those who understood the music waned.  Consequently on the ship gig, rarely did I ever play anything that  was enjoyable.  It was rote work providing accompaniment for pop singers.  Little did I know that pop doesn't swing at all, and it was its beat was small and repetitive.  The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, Elvis, and Jacko all swung.  It was not until the late 1990's that this new style of pop emerged when soul, physical exertion, and mojo were not necessary.  It became a kind of ploy, where the microphone capsule became the audience, and the P.A. system did the work.  Separating the body and soul from the music was foreign to me, and still I am not interested.  There is cool jazz, and there is relaxed distant playing, but creating music with your mind purely as a cognitive product is fake.  Music originates from your body including your "ID."  This was more of the challenge playing music on cruise ships, not the music itself.  Production shows were challenging, but only because the arranger tried to make the music seem difficult.  Often the score extractions were rife with mistakes, misspellings, and pure bullshit.  They tried to make it difficult for you instead of making it palatable.  When you understood this, you could begin to exert a small amount of personal interpretation.  You created other musical outlets to satisfy your musical soul, because the gig didn't satisify.  None of this is about what I wanted to blog, but other people making your life more difficult is.  Without the government, there is no one to enforce the United States Constitution.  When the government becomes compromised, democracy is at risk.  I cannot fathom who or what motivated Americans to be virtuous.  Normally it would be our judicial system, its laws, and oversight from law enforcement.  All of these things have become eroded in American life, and injustice and oppression have escalated.  It is occurring from within by favoritism, nepotism, discrimination, white supremacy, and more.  Our system of governance has been attacked, and Super PACs and lobby groups are controlling most of the government.  Corporate America has taken control and doing what they please.  The general consensus is they want to "thin out" the population.  Donald Trump said this in plain English many times during his Presidency.  He wanted to lessen burdens on the federal financial system by eliminating entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare.  Specifically he targeted the elderly and immigrants.  This is not a democratic philosophy, so it appears as if Mr. Trump wants to himself change the core of American life.  Now we must assume that those who continue to support him support his new agenda for America.  This of itself is a catalyst for civil war, because no one has asked the public if we want to abolish our free society, free market system and instead implement Authoritarianism, Communism, or Socialism.  His desire has no relevance at all.  First because the President is elected by the people, for the people, and second because he no longer holds any power over the American people.  Everything he says or purports to know is useless rhetoric meant to incite the population.  It is not dissimilar to Adolph Hitler's methodology first seducing the people, then committing genocide.  He killed millions of Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.  The parallels are tangible, and the American people need to understand the danger of this man.