Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 326

March 24, 2015: American Epidemics: The Measles

[Inspired both by the recent events I’ll include in Monday’s and Tuesday’s posts and the historical anniversary on which I’ll focus in Friday’s, a series AmericanStudying epidemics, past and present.] On three telling stages in the history of a frustratingly persistent disease.In the mid to late 19th century, outbreaks of the measles devastated two different South Pacific paradises. Beginning with a series of deadly epidemics in 1848-1849 (including whooping cough and influenza as well as measles), and continuing through much of the next decade, the disease took roughly one-fifth of Hawaii’s population. In 1875, the disease was introduced to the tropical island of Fiji by King Cakobau, upon his return from a diplomatic trip to Australia, and before it was contained it had killed 40,000 Fijians, roughly one-third of the small nation’s population. As these and many other outbreaks make clear, measles, often perceived here in the United States as nothing more than a potential childhood annoyance, has been as deadly a worldwide epidemic as any, and remains so: it is estimated to have killed roughly 200 million people between 1855 and 2005, and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 158,000 were killed in 2011 alone.The fact that the disease has come to be perceived so differently in late 20th century America (and beyond) is due directly to two interconnected individuals. In 1954, medical study of David Edmonston, a 13 year old infected with the disease (one of many affected by an outbreak at a Boston private school), allowed for the virus that causes it to be isolated for the first time; the efforts of one young researcher, Dr. Thomas Peebles, were instrumental in achieving this success. Subsequent work over the next decade to develop a vaccine culminated in the 1963 successful creation of one by Maurice Hilleman, a researcher and vaccination specialist working at Merck; Hilleman’s vaccine (eventually folded into what is now known as the MMR [Measles Mumps Rubella] shot) has been estimated to prevent up to 1 million deaths each year. To my mind, few developments capture the best of the 20th century better than vaccines, and their combination of science, technology, research and collaboration, and international efforts to improve lives and communities; by any measure, Hilleman and the MMR certainly have to occupy prominent spots on that list.Which brings us to now, and a particularly frustrating 21st century trend. As those WHO estimates indicate, measles has never been eradicated; but it has nonetheless made a striking recent return to our conversations, thanks in no small measure to a new American community: the anti-vaccinaters. This community has been around and making its controversial case for nearly two decades, aided and abetted by a fraudulent researcher and his hoax of a scientific study, but a recent outbreak of measles, caused it seems by the presence of unvaccinated and infected individuals at California’s Disneyland, has brought the community and the disease together in our collective consciousness. There are lots of ways to argue against this extreme and dangerous perspective, but to my mind chief among them would have to be a better understanding of each of these prior two stages: the long-term history and effects of measles, and the hugely destructive force of outbreaks such as those in Hawaii and Fiji; and the vital breakthroughs and successes of the vaccines, and the way they have turned measles into something manageable instead. It’s difficult for me to imagine anyone who would want a return to that earlier stage in the arc of this epidemic.Next epidemic tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think?

March 23, 2015: American Epidemics: Influenza and Ebola

[Inspired both by the recent events I’ll include in Monday’s and Tuesday’s posts and the historical anniversary on which I’ll focus in Friday’s, a series AmericanStudying epidemics, past and present.] Contextualizing and analyzing two of the worst epidemics in modern history.A widespread international pandemic that crosses the ocean to the United States in the blink of an eye, threatening American lives and communities. Health and relief workers and soldiers infected, and many more quarantined, with nations desperately seeking to prevent the further spread of the deadly virus. Yet despite such measures, hundreds of millions around the world are infected and tens of millions die, including more than half a million American casualties. Right up until that last clause, it might have seemed that I was writing about the current Ebola crisis—but as deadly as that crisis has been for the African nations most affected, it has to date taken the lives of only two Americans; whereas the 1918 influenza pandemic (colloquially known as the Spanish Flu, due to that nation’s more straightforward reporting about the disease’s presence and effects) killed more than 500,000 Americans and nearly 100 million people across the globe before it finally was contained.Contextualizing the influenza pandemic requires extended attention to two distinct but related globalizing trends. Most obviously, the crisis overlapped—not only in time, but in both cause and effect—with the final year of World War I (known then as The Great War); some historians have argued that it began in the war’s trenches or camps, but even if that wasn’t the case, it certainly spread and lingered in direct relation to the war (if, as many have noted, its casualty numbers far exceeded the war’s devastating effects). More subtly, the pandemic’s truly global spread—it reached even the world’s most remote locations, such as the Arctic—has to be linked to the ways in which advancements in technology and travel had made the early 20th century world far more interconnected than ever before; from the increasing ease of steamship travel to the rise of new technologies such as the automobile and airplanes, such developments allowed for international movement and connections in evolving, unprecedented ways. And as that linked Arctic story illustrates, another, linked international trend—the rise in imperialistic endeavors around the world—likewise facilitated the pandemic’s spread.Both of these international contexts might seem equally relevant to analyzing our contemporary Ebola epidemic. Many of the African nations most affected by the disease have been and remain war-torn, and those conditions have no doubt contributed to the epidemic’s spread and effects. And the many American politicians and pundits who called for the suspension of all trips to and flights from those nations during the crisis’s early moments were quite explicitly arguing for international travel as both a contributing factor and a threat. But since, despite the absence of such drastic measures and the presence of various returning health workers, the epidemic has not spread to the United States (again, only two Americans have died from Ebola to date, and only a handful more have been affected), I would have to contexualize and analyze this current epidemic’s American story quite differently. To my mind, the American response to the Ebola epidemic has been driven by irrational or at least exaggerated fears—of globalization and its effects, of dangerous “others” (from terroriststo illegal immigrants), even of our fellow citizens. The Ebola epidemic remains quite real and horrific in West Africa, and requires continued attention—but here in the U.S., comparisons to the influenza pandemic reveal more about our current political and psychological state than our health. Next epidemic tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think?

March 21-22, 2015: AmericanThaws: Cuba

[After a mild start, it ended up being a long, cold, wintry winter. But all winters end, metaphorically as well as seasonally, and in this week’s series I’ve AmericanStudied a few cultural and historical such American thaws—leading up to this weekend post on one of our most recent warmings.]Two posts of mine to contextualize a recent warming—and a request for more perspectives!In December, President Obama announced a striking shift in America’s foreign policy, one not quite as stunning as Nixon’s visit to China but in the same conversation: a thawing of our half-century-long coldness toward our island neighbor of Cuba. In response to this action, and more exactly to many of the over-simplified and inaccurate critiques it received from American politicans and pundits, I wrote a piece for my biweekly Talking Points Memo column, highlighting the 150 years of Cuban-American relations and history that such simplistic responses forget or ignore. In that piece I engaged briefly with perhaps the single most important figure in both Cuban and Cuban American history, José Martí; I would thus argue that engaging more fully with his individual life and story, as I tried to in this post, also offers important contexts and connections for understanding the longstanding and unfolding relationship between these two nations.So those are two places I would begin to contextualize and deepen our conversations about this recent thaw and the relationship and history to which it connects. But what about you? I would love to get more perspectives and voices, to hear other ways that you would contextualize, analyze, understand, critique, and so on Obama’s decision, our narratives of this neighboring nation, and any other relevant issues you’d bring into the mix. So I’m going to cut this post short, in a symbolic but genuine attempt to leave room for your own comments and responses. What do you think?Next series starts Monday,Ben
PS. You know what to do!

March 20, 2015: AmericanThaws: Nixon Goes to China

[After a mild start, it ended up being a long, cold, wintry winter. But all winters end, metaphorically as well as seasonally, and in this week’s series I’ll be AmericanStudying a few cultural and historical such American thaws—leading up to a weekend post on one of our most recent warmings.]On two ways to better contextualize and AmericanStudy an undeniable turning point.By any measure, President Richard Nixon’s February 1972 trip to the People’s Republic of China was a stunning moment in American and international history. It wasn’t just that no prior president had visited the PRC since its 1949 founding, but more that the two nations had barely recognized each other’s existence over that quarter century, at least outside of stereotypical narratives of evil enemies and occasional wartime foes. Moreover, the broader Cold War contexts add at least two more layers of stunning to the mix: the U.S. was still entrenched in a prolonged Southeast Asian war against “Communism” at the time; and that political concept, one tied nearly as strongly to the PRC as it was to the USSR, remained the nation’s most significant and terrifying boogeyman (and would for at least another decade and a half). For a leader who had come to prominence as a crusader against Communism, and one who had recently deepened the war in Vietnam to boot, to make this historic trip was, again, nothing short of stunning.Yet we can recognize a moment’s truly unexpected nature and still find ways to contextualize it, to connect it to longstanding and ongoing histories and narratives. For one thing, if for the quarter century leading up to Nixon’s visit the U.S. had had no diplomatic relations with China, that period marked a turning point from the prior century’s worth of exchanges and encounters between the two nations. The individual identity and story of Yung Wing, the 19th century Chinese American student, diplomat, soldier, and educator about whom I’ve written at length in multiple places, offers a particularly salient starting point for engaging with those long-term US-China relationships. Over the course of the nearly eight decades between Yung’s 1840s arrival to the United States and his 1912 death “at his home in Hartford” (as his New York Times obituary put it), Yung experienced and exemplified numerous stages and shifts in those diplomatic and political relationships: from the most friendly, as illustrated by his Civil War-era mission to secure American arms for Chinese military needs; to the most hostile, as illustrated by his exclusion from the United States after the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the concurrent threats to his life he faced in China because of his prior American activities. To treat Nixon in China as a starting point for a relationship would be to forget these prior centuries of history.Across the same centuries that those histories were unfolding, however, a longstanding and multi-layered narrative of bigotry and discrimination toward the Chinese was also developing in America. That narrative is best summed up by the phrase “Yellow Peril,” as it consistently depicted the Chinese as a threat to the United States in a variety of ways: physically, through diseases, drug addictions and other vices, rape and sexual dangers; economically, through everything from low-wage workers to the destruction of communal businesses and neighborhoods; internationally, through the image of an alien foreign power hell-bent on taking over the world; and more. (I imagine that China had its own, perhaps parallel developing narratives and stereotypes about America over the same years—I just am not familiar with them, and would welcome any thoughts in comments.) It’s important to note that the Cold War fears of “Red China,” despite the color shift, strongly echoed and extended the Yellow Peril narratives—and that those fears and narratives continued after Nixon’s visit, and indeed have endured into our present moment in many ways. Which is to say, stunning and transformative as Nixon’s trip was, there are longer histories to which it must be connected, contexts that help us understand the moment and the two nations far more fully.Special post this weekend,Ben
PS. What do you think? Other thaws you’d highlight?

March 19, 2015: AmericanThaws: Humanity in War

[After a mild start, it ended up being a long, cold, wintry winter. But all winters end, metaphorically as well as seasonally, and in this week’s series I’ll be AmericanStudying a few cultural and historical such American thaws—leading up to a weekend post on one of our most recent warmings.]On an amazing moment of wartime humanity.I’ve written many times here about the toll that war takes on all who fight and encounter it, and most especially about the way it requires a loss of humanity that is as damaging to those who lose it as it is to those they attack or destroy. Earlier this year, I had a similar response to Clint Eastwood’s new film American Sniper, and specifically to the bigoted and hateful perpectives of the real soldier, Chris Kyle, on whose autobiography that film was based (and in which he expressed those perspectives clearly and proudly). Without excusing Kyle’s individual responsibility for his own perspective and words, that is, it seems clear to me, as I wrote in a Facebook post on Kyle and the film, that he was, in those perspectives as much as in his talents as a killer, “perfect for war. Which makes a perfect image for how horrible war is and always will be.”I would stand by that perspective, on the film and its subject and more importantly on war overall. Which makes this unbelievable and unbelievably moving story, of a moment of shared humanity during World War II and all that followed it, even more striking and worth remembering and sharing. Honestly, I don’t want to take up any more of your reading time with this post, when I can ask you to read that story instead. If there’s a better example of the possibility of warmth, empathy, and even love, amidst the coldest, darkest kinds of human conflict and brutality, I don’t know it.Last thaw tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Other thaws you’d highlight?

March 18, 2015: AmericanThaws: William Mahone

[After a mild start, it ended up being a long, cold, wintry winter. But all winters end, metaphorically as well as seasonally, and in this week’s series I’ll be AmericanStudying a few cultural and historical such American thaws—leading up to a weekend post on one of our most recent warmings.]On late-in-life evolutions that don’t impress me much, and those that do.In a footnote to this post nominating Nathan Bedford Forrest for an American Hall of Shame, I mentioned Forrest’s apparent, late-in-life reversals in perspective on issues like race. In that footnote, I called Forrest’s shifts “far too little and too late,” and I would stand by that assessment. Of course I’m glad that Forrest seems to have seen the error of his ways before the end, but unlike (for example) Ben Franklin, whose late-in-life change in perspective on immigration was accompanied by extensive writings and efforts, Forrest’s shifts seem to have been mostly in personal relationships, which are nice but don’t leave nearly the same legacy or influence. And thus, Forrest’s enduring legacies can and should still be defined by the worst of what he did: as a slave trader who designed a particularly “successful” system for such transactions; a Civil War general responsible for one of the war’s most brutal massacres; and, most of all, the creator of one of America’s most longstanding terrorist organizations.Just because Forrest’s thaws don’t strike me as historically significant, however, doesn’t mean I would say the same for all Confederate veterans. I’ve elsewhere made the case, for example, for why and how we should better remember James Longstreet’s impressive post-war evolutions. Even more striking, and to my mind even more impressive, were the second-act shifts of another Confederate general, William Mahone. My fellow blogger and scholar Kevin Levin tells Mahone’s story (in the article linked at Mahone’s name) much better than I can here, but the sweep of it can be summed up in two details: the former railroad engineer Mahone rose to prominence leading the Confederates to victory in the Battle of the Crater, another of the Civil War’s bloodiest and most brutal battles; and yet in the post-war era he became a leader instead of Virginia’s Readjuster Party, a political coalition of African Americans, Republicans, and Democrats that offered a profoundly different vision of Southern politics and identity than most of the period’s trends and narratives. In 1881 Mahone helped the Readjusters elect both a new Virginia governor (William Cameron) and himself as a US Senator.There are lots of reasons why I find Mahone’s shifts as impressive and inspiring as I do, but I would highlight two in particular here. For one thing, I can’t imagine a better example of going against the popular trend—not only in Virginia and the South, which by 1881 were well on their way to the dominance of Jim Crow and all its accompanying histories; but throughout the nation, which likewise was well on the way to becoming “distinctly Confederate in sympathy” (as Albion Tourgée famously put it in an 1888 essay). And for another, related thing, Mahone’s post-war choices and actions exposed him to unrelenting criticism and hatred from many throughout the state that had been and would remain his lifelong home (and in the 19th century development of which he had served a key role). To do something unpopular, at great personal cost, seems to me one of the most difficult and most admirable choices a person can make. The Readjuster Party may have faded in the century’s final years, but Mahone’s efforts, and the personal, political, and historical shifts they exemplified, have left a far longer and deeper legacy for us to remember and respect.Next thaw tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Other thaws you’d highlight?

March 17, 2015: AmericanThaws: The US and the UK

[After a mild start, it ended up being a long, cold, wintry winter. But all winters end, metaphorically as well as seasonally, and in this week’s series I’ll be AmericanStudying a few cultural and historical such American thaws—leading up to a weekend post on one of our most recent warmings.]On how a longstanding animosity began to change, and why the specifics matter.Thanks to popular cultural texts from Paul Revere’s ride to Mel Gibson’s Revolution, it seems to me that even the most history-phobic Americans are likely to have a sense that our nation began through hostile conflict with the British. Thanks to a burning White House and a flag that was still there, many Americans might even know that we fought another significant war with the same British foe only a few decades after the Revolution. And the animosity between the new United States and its former colonial mother country didn’t end with the War of 1812—from the anti-European import of the Monroe Doctrineto border disputes between the two countries in Maineand Oregon, and through the extended British flirtations with allying with the Confederacy during the Civil War, the 19th century was marked by consistent diplomatic chilliness punctuated by occasional wintry storms.Yet by the mid-20th century, of course, the two nations were staunch allies, fighting together in the two World Wars (yes, the US began each war officially neutral, but in each case we were aiding the UK’scause long before we militarily joined it) and subsequently enjoying a so-called “special relationship” that has continued to this day. The late 19th and early 20th century shift that led to this new and enduring relationship has been studied by historians of both nations for many years, and has come to be known as The Great Rapprochement (a term perhaps first coined by historian Bradford Perkins in his 1968 book of the same name). As the many cartoons, lithographs, and other primary documents collected at this site illustrate, the shift was recognized on both sides of the Atlantic while it was happening, and was folded into many other narratives of the two nations’ expanding turn of the century identities, concurrent imperialistic ventures, and other social and cultural trends.There was no single factor in that multi-decade rapprochement, but I would argue that tying it to those imperialistic endeavors is of particular importance. The first test of the two nations’ newfound friendship, after all, came during the Spanish American War; most European nations sided with their fellow colonial power, but England opted for their new ally, a choice that certainly contributed to the eventual American triumph in that conflict. Perhaps as a quid pro quo, and perhaps as just another reflection of the new relationship, the U.S. likewise sided with the U.K. during the bloody and controversial Second Boer War. It’s tempting, and not I would argue inaccurate, to tie these turn of the 20th century imperial alliances to the two nations’ leading roles in the early 21st century Iraq War, as well as the effects of both British and American influences on and presences in a nation like Afghanistan. But even leaving such contemporary connections aside, the role that imperialism played in bringing together the US and the UK is hugely telling of how the nations moved together into their 20th century and ongoing identities and roles.Next thaw tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Other thaws you’d highlight?

March 16, 2015: AmericanThaws: Eliot and Williams

[After a mild start, it ended up being a long, cold, wintry winter. But all winters end, metaphorically as well as seasonally, and in this week’s series I’ll be AmericanStudying a few cultural and historical such American thaws—leading up to a weekend post on one of our most recent warmings.]On the two modernist poems that exemplify alternative, contrasting, yet ultimately complementary narratives of spring and hope.When it comes to literary images of spring, the first work that (pardon me) springs to mind is William Carlos Williams’ poem “Spring and All”(1923). Created at least in part in response to Williams’ work as a doctor (hence the “contagious hospital” in the opening line), and more exactly his experiences dealing with at-risk young patients whose very existence and future were in doubt, the poem transcends any specific contexts to become both a realistic and yet an idealistic depiction of spring itself: of what it means for new life to make its struggling, haphazard, threatened, perennial, inspiring journey to the surface of a world that had been cold and lifeless (in terms of blooming things, anyway) only days before. Making the best use of an unpunctuated last line since Emily Dickinson, Williams’ closing line captures perfectly the precise moment of “awaken[ing],” as both an uncertain transition to whatever comes next yet also a miraculous achievement in its own right.Williams at times consciously positioned himself and his poetry in contrast to high modernist contemporaries such as T.S. Eliot, and it’s difficult to imagine a more direct contrast to “Spring and All” than the opening lines of Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). “April is the cruelest month,” Eliot’s poem begins, and in case the reader thinks he’s upset about Tax Day or something, the speaker goes on to make clear that it is precisely spring’s rebirths to which he refers: “Breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain. / Winter kept us warm, covering / Earth in forgetful snow, feeding / A little life with dried tubers.” Where Williams’ poem focuses on the season’s partial and uncertain but still powerful moves toward a future, Eliot’s thus looks back at a past, one that would be better left buried yet that is instead brought back with every new blossom. And where Williams creates images of awakening new life, of spring as birth, Eliot portrays the season as a painful re-awakening, back into identities already (it seems) too much in the world.Those contrasts are genuine, and again reflect more overarching distinctions between these two poets as well. Yet I think in at least one significant way the two poems (particularly when we take all of Eliot’s into consideration, not just his opening line) complement rather than contrast each other. After all, one clear way to describe the modernist literary project is as an attempt to represent life in the aftermath of disaster, destruction, death, doubt, all those characteristics so amplified within a post-WWI world. To that end, we can see both poems’ speakers as struggling with that question, and trying to imagine whether and how new life and possibilities can or should emerge into such an inhospitable world (whether represented through a contagious hospital or a barren wasteland). The poems do differ greatly in tone, but it’s possible to argue that the very act of writing is in both cases a hopeful one, a pushing through the wintry ground into some evolving new form. “These fragments I have shored against my ruins,” Eliot writes in his poem’s final lines—and what is spring (he said at the tail end of a New England winter) but a fragmentary yet inspiring annual rebirth of a ruined world?Next thaw tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Other thaws you’d highlight?

March 14-15, 2015: All That Crowd-sourced Jazz

[Inspired by the anniversary of Charlie Parker’s death—on which more in Thursday’s post—this week I’ve been AmericanStudying some figures and issues related to the very American musical genre of jazz. This swinging crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses and recommndations of fellow JazzStudiers—add yours in comments, please!]First, I just have to put in my strongest possible plug for David Simon’s Treme, a show very much about jazz (among many other topics). As of this writing I’ve watched through Season 2 (of 4), and while it’s different in almost every way from The Wire , it’s also both a wonderful complement to that show and an incredibly successful work of American art in its own right. If, like me, you hadn’t gotten around to watching it yet, I give it my strongest possible AmericanStudier recommendation!Second, I have to mention another cultural representation of jazz I had the chance to check out this past week, Whiplash . Interestingly, Whiplash takes almost the exact opposite tack on jazz than Treme—for the latter, jazz is one of the most affirming and inspiring parts of a world that can be bleak and painful so much of the time; whereas in Damien Chazelle’s film, jazz itself is literally and figuratively painful, pain that might well be necessary in order to produce great art. And it uses the subject of my Thursday post, Charlie Parker, to make that case!On Monday’s Scott Joplin post, commenter sunshine_247 writes, “I studied Scott Joplin at a very young age … I even learned ‘The Maple Leaf Rap’ when I was 12 … he is amazing!”Robert Greene II follows up Friday’s request for contemporary artists by highlighting:“1. Robert Glasper--who I would argue is most pertinent to your post. His most recent albums, Black Radio and Black Radio 2 have been attempts to fuse together jazz with contemporary genres of hip hop, soul, and R&B. He worked with some well known mainstream artists on both albums. 

2. Esperanza Spalding--a prodigy out of Portland who has also done some great work. 

3. Trombone Shorty--this artist has kept up the fantastic jazz tradition of New Orleans.”Michael Rifenburg goes with “Sun Ra!”Andrea Grenadier adds, “I love jazz, and this reminds me I'd better start updating myself, since I'm a purist, and have always loved the wild roots of jazz, until the late 1940s. Although never a fan of fusion, I love when the traditional collides with the present. To me, Marcus Roberts is a genius, and not only because he focuses for the most part on those pre-1950s riffs. I love great trio work, and hey! Here's a shout-out to bassist Larry Grenadier, who plays with Brad Mehldau's Trio, and Fly.”Next series starts Monday,Ben
PS. What do you think? Other jazzy connections or recommendations you’d share?

March 13, 2015: Jazzy Connections: Jazz in the 21st Century

[Inspired by the anniversary of Charlie Parker’s death—on which more in yesterday’s post—this week I’ll be AmericanStudying some figures and issues related to the very American musical genre of jazz. Please share your own responses and thoughts for a swinging crowd-sourced weekend post!]On three ways to argue for the genre’s continued contemporary relevance.First and foremost, I’m quite sure that the quantity and quality of new jazz being made and recorded in 2015 equals any and every other musical genre. The sad but important-to-admit truth is that I just don’t know about it yet (I try to be the most all-encompassing and knowledgable AmericanStudier I can be, but, y’know, the realities of time and the choices they require get in the way sometimes), and thus can’t make the case myself for listening to these contemporary artists. I have to think that at least some of the folks reading this post will have far broader and deeper such knowledge than me, however, so I ask—nay, I implore!—you to share your recommendations and tips in comments. I’ll put them right into the crowd-sourced weekend post, and together we can help get the word out about 21st century jazz artists and works. Deal? Excellent.Yet such contemporary talents aren’t the only way to frame jazz’s 21stcentury presence and role, and I would stress two others in any case. For one thing, as I hope this week’s posts and topics have all illustrated, there’s the genre’s historical, social, and cultural significance. To put it simply, you can’t tell the story of 20th century America without including jazz in a prominent role—and I would concurrently argue that you can’t include jazz in that role without, y’know, listening to and engaging with many of its artists and works, moments and movements. There’s much to be said, of course, for listening to music for the aesthetic and emotional effects and enjoyment it can produce—but it’s not an either/or proposition, and I’m far too analytical not to consider all that the music can also contribute to our perspectives on these historical and cultural topics. Take Miles Davis’s landmark recording Kind of Blue (1959), for example—seriously fun to listen to, but also an amazing embodiment of how American culture was changing as the 50s became the 60s.And then there are jazz’s places. I’ve written elsewhere in this space about the unique and profoundly American identity of New Orleans, and I can think of no better way to represent and engage with that city’s culture and history than through jazz (a point made consistently, it seems, by the #1 TV show on my must-watch list, David Simon’s Treme). The same case can be made for other complex American cities and spaces, from Kansas City to Memphis to Houston; to know their jazz is to know them, and vice versa. (Is it a coincidence that many of the best jazz cities are also among the best bbq cities? I have to say it’s not, but more research into this hypothesis will no doubt be required.) While I’m sure the same case could be made for rock ‘n roll, or country, or even different cities’ symphonies, it seems to me that there’s something distinctly local and live about jazz—a phenomenon exemplified by the unique experiences offered by every jazz club and corner of New Orleans. If we want to connect with these American places—and we should—I can’t think of a better way to do so than through jazz.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,Ben
PS. So one more time: what do you think? Responses or other jazzy connections you’d share for that post?