Vijay Iyer and Indian American (not American Indian) Jazz

When I hear about what Asian Indians are up to, I'm usually curious. Not because their people and my people both call themselves Indians but because I'm thinking that any culture that produced chess, Buddhism, and yoga must be on to something.

I recently read a Gary Giddins article about some Asian Indians who are playing jazz. Actually, they're Indian Americans: They are of Indian descent and have Indian names, but they were born in the U.S. and, as Giddins puts it, are "as American as apple pie, or Barack Obama".

Giddins is a good critic and he wrote convincingly about these guys so I wanted to check them out. I YouTubed Rudresh Mahanthappa, the saxophonist who is the predominant subject of the article. The video above is literally the first one that comes up, and it's heat.

It's actually the Vijay Iyer Quartet, the leader and namesake of which is a pianist also discussed in the article, but that's just as well. Giddins describes the division of labor for the first collaboration between Iyer and Mahanthappa as "Iyer focussed on rhythm and Mahanthappa on melody", and I'm much more into the rhythm thing anyway. The drums in particular sound incredible on this video, though I think the reverb is a happy accident of having been recorded live outdoors. I think what you hear are the actual drums followed closely by the amplification of the drums through the PA. In any case, and whatever you want to call them, these cats can lay it down.

Dark Side of the Rainbow?

If you've even met anyone who has ever smoked pot, you know the urban legend about how [inhale] if you synch up The Wizard of Oz and The Dark Side of the Moon [exhale] they totally go together perfectly. Well, the internet is a wonderful thing. You no longer have to track down your buddy's cousin's fiance's brother, who has a projector and some mean Cali green -- and seems to magically always be at work when you show up at his apartment -- to check it out. Above is the first part, for your viewing pleasure.

Gotta be honest, I'm not really seeing it, but judge for yourself. Pink Floyd themselves deny that it was done on purpose (though, dude, of course they would) and, as Robert Altman (RIP) has pointed out, you can take a random piece of audio and a random piece of film and get some happy accidents. But hey, whatever's clever.

Go Stillerz!

Rooting against the Cardinals goes against some general principles of mine. I love the Southwest. When my team isn't playing, I tend to root for the underdog. And I have an affinity for teams that have gone a long time without a title (like the Red Sox and the Cubs, but not that race-baiting Cleveland team). But I can't help it -- I like the Steelers. And, as a fan of the Cowboys and the Patriots, I know how un-fun it can be to root against them. (The Steelers don't just win -- they demoralize -- which is great ... as long as it's not happening to your team.)

One reason to support Pittsburg is Troy Polamalu. Did you see his interception for a touchdown at the end of the AFC championship game?! It pretty much sums up every kid's fantasy about playing football ... except it actually happened.

And then there's Hines Ward, who is the exciting playmaker on the offensive side of the ball. In addition to being incredibly talented and competitive, he seems like a stand-up guy. How do I know this just from watching him on the field? I don't but, for me, the video above confirms it. It's about Ward's struggle -- in the US and in the country of his birth, Korea -- with his biracial identity and what he's doing to help biracial kids get through it. This struggle is tremendous in mostly homogeneous countries like Korea -- and, as Ward points out, being biracial in the US isn't exactly a cakewalk, either. I think he's got a chance to really make a difference. I'll be rooting for him on Super Bowl Sunday for sure.

MuttMusic: Tejano

On NPR a while back, there was a brief piece on the history of icehouses in Texas. I just tracked it down on mp3. (FYI, the bit about music starts about 4:30. Also, the content stops at 6:40, though the music goes on.)

Before the advent of electric refrigeration, you had an icebox, and you bought a big chunk of ice for your icebox at an icehouse. In addition, you could stock up on typical items that needed refrigeration (beer, milk, eggs) at the icehouse. Eventually, these stores extended their hours -- to, say, 7 am to 11 pm -- so that, conveniently, you could go before or after work (thus one became 7-Eleven). One icehouse owner put a totem pole in the front of his store, and it became known as the totem store. "Totem" became "tote'm" because you could tote your items home with you. (The dominant chain of convenience stores in my hometown of Amarillo is called Toot'n Totum. Perhaps in the old days you had to drive up and honk so they would open the door for you.)

Unlike convenience stores of today, icehouses also served a social function, not unlike a pub, as a gathering place for working people. At that time, working people in Texas largely consisted of Germans, Czechs, and Mexicans. They would hang out after work and play music together, the Europeans providing the instrumentation and the Mexicans singing stories over the music. Thus Tejano music was born. (The NPR piece mentions this collaboration as the root of Conjunto/Northern Mexico music, but clearly the same is true of Tejano/Southern Texas music.) So if you've ever wondered, like I have, why Tejano can sound so much like polka, there's your answer.

I've gotta be honest -- I've never developed a taste for Tejano myself, but I know Tejano is a big deal to a whole lot of people. (I lived in Amarillo -- about as far from South Texas as you can get and still be in Texas -- when Selena died, and I've never witnessed such an outpouring of grief before or since.) The history of this music is fascinating, and I am always proud to learn of fruitful collaborations among the cultures of my home state.

Friday Night Video

In case you missed any of the top 25 hits of 2008 (I know I missed most of them), you can now get them all mashed into one song. This is amazingly listenable and, as always with Earworm, impeccably produced. I liked the 2007 one just fine, but this is way better. Maybe he just had better material to work with this year? Or maybe mashing up 25 songs just takes a little practice.

DJ Earworm

Quote of the Day

"May I kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses?"

"No, it did lots of other things too."

--an admirer to James Joyce and Joyce's reply

Spike is trying to break your heart

So my place of work supposedly honors MLK Day (more on that later), but as usual, I had to use a personal day to take the day off. We always try to have a "learning moment" on MLK day, so we chose to watch When the Levees Broke. We're still working on it (it's four hours long), but I am not exaggerating when I say that it is your duty as a citizen to watch this film.

I know, this isn't exactly breaking news -- the film came out in '06 -- but I'd been putting it off. I knew it would be heartbreaking. (I also put off reading about the Trail of Tears until last year, which is kind of shameful for a Cherokee. As a Jewish friend put it to me once, "I'm not really in the mood for a novel about the Holocaust right now, but I'll let you know." Yes, it's our duty to learn and think about these events but... you've got to be in the right state of mind to do it.) And it is.

New Orleans is the center of mutt life in America. It's known for every kind of mixing you can imagine -- racial, musical, culinary. (Need I mention that the ultimate mutt music -- certainly the greatest American music, possibly the greatest music anywhere -- jazz music, was invented there.) The result is a truly unique and wonderful place. So what happened there during and after Katrina is all the more terrible.

I'm still in the afterglow of the inauguration myself, so believe it or not, I'm trying to keep it light, but it's difficult. If you think that Obama's election means that a civil-rights movement in America is now irrelevant, or if you think that we're all "post-racial" now, please watch this film. We're not there yet. But, if you've waited this long to see this film, here's the bright side. You can use the following mantra, as we have, to keep your spirits up as you watch it:

President Obama would never let this happen.
President Obama would never let this happen.
President Obama would never let this happen.