＃３：サーフィン

生まれた時から海が近い所に住んでいるのでサーフィンを始まるきっかけは自然だ。でも、八歳の時サーフィンを始めたが嫌いだった。十二歳の時、中学の友達とたくさんサーフィンをした。その時からサーフィンの興味が深くなった。

そして、その時から毎日サーフィンをしてほかのスポーツあまりしっていなかった。サーフィンのビーチと波がないビーチはぜんぜん違うと思う。実際に波がないビーチに行きたくない。例えば、日焼けすることとかビーチで何もしないこととかが好きじゃない。ビーチに行ったらいつもサーフィンをする。

サンタバーバラはきれいで、しかも海がちかいけれども、あまり波がない。波があったらサンタバーバラは最高だが普通海が湖みたいだ。リンコンというビーチはとても有名な場所だ。しかし、有名なサーファはサンタバーバラに住んでいる。あまり、波がないのでそれはちょっと変だと思う。

サーフィんは一番楽しいこと。サーフィンの感じは言い表せない。

＃２。５−今の感情

本当に。。。

＃２−興味の一つ

私は色々な興味があるんで興味の一つは音楽を聴くことだ。もう、ピアノとギたーを弾くことが好きだ。アナログで聴くことは最高だと思うけれども、CDとかMP3とかのほうが便利だ。LPの音のほうがいいし、LP のアートを見やすいし、レコードが大好きだ。毎回、サンデイゴに帰ったら、ハリウッドのアミーバ(Amoeba)という店でレコードを買う。レコードを収集することは中毒かもしれない。

本当に色々な種類が好きだ。ロークとかラップとかジャズとかソールとかよくて、何でもいいだ。

とりえあず、最近ビートルズのPlease Please Meというレコードを聞きました。ビートルズが好きじゃない人は人間じゃないと思う。全部のビートルズのレコードはちょーいいと思うけれどもPlease Please Meの歌はとても聞きやすくて、しかも簡単なメロデイーがある。



メイヤー・ホーソーンの音楽はモータウンとヒップホップの影響される。二回メイヤーホーソーンのコンサートに行ったことがある。東京とLAのコンサートに行った。彼はちょっと人気があるけれどもアメリカのほうが人気があると思う。



そのうえ、リミックスする。


セロニアスモンクとゴルドパンダの音楽はちょっと似ていると思う。両方はアブソトラクトに深い感じを表すが両方のタイプはぜんぜん違う。もう、両方が好きだ。







音楽は深い興味だ。いつも、新しい音楽を聴くことができてそれぞれの歌 は違う感じを表すことができる 。音楽は生活のことを表現する。

＃１ー日本に留学

去年、一月から七月まで日本に留学した。山梨県の都留文科大学で日本語と日本の社会を勉強した。もちろん日本と日本語が大好きだ。

山梨県はとても良くて面白い所だと思う。富士山とか青木ヶ原とか富士Qハイランドとかがある。山梨県に自然がいっぱいだ。もう村上春樹の海辺のカフカに山梨県で子供が意識を失ってた。すべての留学生と富士山に登った。日本人は生活の中に富士山に登るべきだけどバカなひとしか富士山に登らないと言われている。山頂から雲海しか見られんかったのは残念だった。

日本料理はちょーやばいよね。ほうとうと吉田うどんという名物は最高だよ。吉田うどんとアメリカのうどんは全然違うんだ。なんとか日本に帰ったら、ほうとうか吉田うどんをすぐ食べる。

日本の家はかっこよくて、しかもきれいだと思う。一番好きな事はお風呂に入ることだ。まあ、冬だったら、ずっとお風呂に入るとか温泉に行く。でも、夏だったら、お風呂と温泉はだめだと思う。温泉で皆は裸体打ので、最初に、ちょっと変な事になった。しかし、どんどん裸体の人は面倒くさくになる。

都留文科大学から写真。温泉の天気だね。

毎日留学のことについて考えている。僕の生活に最高のことは留学することかもしらない。

ユニクロのT−シャツ

I took this class because I liked and enjoyed jazz but did not know much about it. While I am hardly a jazz expert, I know more about jazz than I did three months ago, but more importantly, I am more interested in the history of jazz and inspired to dig deeper, to learn more about jazz.

My scope of jazz was relatively limited, spanning from 1940 to the present. While I enjoyed listening to jazz, I viewed each artist as an entity in himself. I did not make the connection between say Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. I did not make the connection between Miles Davis and John Coltrane. I did not realize that jazz is very much a hierarchical art and the music of today is influenced by the music of the past. I now can hear the James P. Johnson in Thelonious Monk or the Louis Armstrong in Charlie Parker. I have seen that all jazz music is connected in some way; none of it stands alone.

I realized that jazz has a number of influences. Jazz in New Orleans drew influence from Africa, Europe, and the blues. New Orleans jazz influenced Chicago jazz, and Chicago jazz influenced New York jazz. New York also had an endemic style of jazz influenced by ragtime and European classical music. Thelonious Monk was influenced by Egyptian scales and Miles Davis was influenced by Spanish guitar. Cities, people, culture, and art all influenced jazz. The more I learn about jazz, the blurrier the boundaries of jazz become.

Now, I no longer see jazz as a relic of the past; I no longer view jazz as stagnant. After tracing jazz through its history, I can feel the emotion of both a Billie Holiday song and a Bessie Smith song. Jazz was created to speak to the people, and while time progresses, people still have the same emotions, the same problems. With that in mind, I realize that jazz is still progressing and developing. Like it always has, jazz is appealing to the conditions of the time.

For whatever reason, I never realized how much work jazz musicians dedicated to their craft. I thought that one day, Monk sat down in front of a piano or John Coltrane picked up a saxophone and the music came right out. I now realize that these musicians were both supremely talented and supremely studious. These musicians dedicated their entire lives to the creation and expression of jazz, and what I perceived as a free-form music was truly the culmination of their indefatigable spirit.

Jazz is cool. I knew this before I took the class, and I definitely know it now. The class only reinforced this. From here on, I know I will listen to more jazz, read about more jazz, and think about more jazz.

Monk

Thelonious Monk was very much a product of the community that raised him. The community of San Juan Hill was extremely diverse and composed of southern blacks, West Indians, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans. As a result, distinct sub-communities were formed along racial lines, and race was often the stimulus for violence. San Juan Hill was “one of the ‘busiest crime areas in NYC (p.19),’” and residents had to be strong and rely on each other to survive. For example, in order to protect themselves from racial violence, black children walked to school in groups. Monk walked to school in a group, safe from other gangs, and saw firsthand the collective power that comes in numbers. The community of San Juan Hill instilled a strong sense of unity in Monk, and in order to survive the violence of San Juan Hill, Monk learned to rely and depend on others.

The community of San Juan Hill also shaped Monk’s opinions and feelings toward racism. Racism was prevalent in everyday life, manifesting itself at school where racial slurs flowed freely from teachers’ mouths and on the streets where fights between blacks and whites were commonplace. Yet San Juan Hill had another side to it, a positive, empowering side. Throughout San Juan Hill were testaments to black success. Walking through San Juan Hill, Monk could see black businesses and black establishments in which blacks were able to make their livings, independent from whites. Monk had successful black musicians like Freddy Johnson, “Bubber” Miley, and Russell Procope (p.27) as musical role models. Throughout the community, Monk saw examples of black success, and as a result, Thelonious saw racism as more of a troubling annoyance than a hindrance to success. To Monk, race would never prevent him from reaching his goals. To Monk, race “ain’t no drag (p.417).”

In the same light, Thelonious’ arrest in Delaware can be seen as a sort of bump in the road. Monk, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, and Charlie Rouse were all traveling to a gig in Baltimore, but they stopped in Delaware so Monk could get a drink. The attendant refused to serve him as Jim Crow laws were still prevalent and Monk was eventually arrested for a number of charges, including assault, battery and breach of peace. Monk’s cabaret card was revoked and he was facing jail time for the charges against him. However, the sense of kinship, fostered by San Juan Hill, manifested itself once more in Theophilus Nix and Harry Colomby. Nix was Monk’s defense attorney, who settled Monk’s legal troubles, and Colomby was his manager, that got Monk back on stage. Again, Monk was reminded of the power that comes in numbers. When Monk creates a community around him, he can overcome anything that comes his way.

This sentiment is further expressed in Monk’s music and his treatment of his musicians. Monk had his own musical direction and surround himself with musicians that could think instead of merely follow musical patterns (p.230). He took great pride in his ensembles and encouraged them not to be afraid to try anything so long as they feel it (p. 231). This ideal, initially instilled by his mother, defined the ensembles Monk created. Monk’s mother trusted him to make the right decisions and granted Monk a great degree of freedom. This sort of trust between Monk and his mother is mirrored in Monk’s trust in his ensembles. The unique, dissonant music that came from these ensembles created a unique community of listeners. These listeners were not seeking accessible, catchy melodies, but sought to be challenged by Monk’s art. The collective, unsupervised improvisation (p.231) of Monk’s music demanded more from the listener and created a new artistic following. Together, Monk and his ensembles elevated jazz to a new artistic acceptance. Collectively, Monk and his ensembles created a new musical community that gravitated toward their progressive artistry.

Note: all page references to Thelonious Monk by Robin D.G. Kelley

Race and Swing

By the 1930s, an era referred to as “The Swing Era,” jazz had reached a peak in popularity. Swing music, the newest amalgamation of jazz, was sweeping the nation. It was a fun, lively, danceable style of music with universal appeal, yet beneath this façade of joy and happiness were deep racial tensions, embedded into jazz culture. The newfound acceptance and establishment of jazz as a major entertainment form created a new market for jazz related media. Jazz publications such as Down Beat and Metronome provided a forum for musicians, critics and enthusiasts to voice opinions and ideas on the current state of jazz. And with controversial, racially charged events like The Scottsboro Case of 1931 and the emerging Popular Front movement, racial tensions were brought to the forefront of Americans’ consciousness. A certain tension between race and jazz had always existed, but events of the 1930s reignited the issues and conflicts between race and jazz.

Blacks in the 1930s experienced a new kind of unity with whites. Industrialization required a large labor force, yet working conditions were dismal. White workers would strike, protesting the abysmal conditions and black workers would be brought in to fill the white workers’ positions. However, with the union movement, in which blacks and whites united to fight American corporations, the Popular Front gained traction as a reprieve from the overbearing racial and social discrimination in America. The Popular Front movement and swing music were complementary entities, each becoming relevant in the 1930s. The Popular Front movement, with a community ethos and emphasis on unity, was a response to fascism, and swing music “moved its audience to liberating self-expression…free of hierarchical distinctions (Swing Changes).” The popularity of swing music and the increasingly powerful Popular Front brought race issues to the forefront of the American psyche. As a result, a number of media outlets weighed in on the issue.

One of the prominent voices of The Swing Era was John Hammond, an ardent proponent of jazz and civil rights. Coming from the Vanderbilt family and endowed with an annual trust fund, Hammond seemed an unlikely jazz advocate. A testament to the popularity of swing, Hammond managed and promoted the biggest stars in jazz such as Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday. Additionally, he was deeply involved in the Popular Front, so much so that he was under investigation by J. Edgar Hoover in the 1940s (Swing Changes). Further, Hammond held a concert that raised funds to defend the nine Scottsboro boys accused of raping two white women. Hammond represented a newly emerging, socially conscious, jazz aficionado.

Such political and musical affiliations put Hammond in a unique position of journalistic power. Writing for Down Beat, Hammond had a means of expression in the “journal that did the most to shape critical and popular opinion on jazz” (Swing Changes). Through Down Beat, Hammond criticized Duke Ellington for “shut[ting] his eyes to the abuses being heaped upon his race and his original class (Down Beat).” Ellington performed nightly at the Cotton Club in which blacks were prohibited. Hammond’s comments were indicative of his perceived role with respect to race and jazz. Ironically, he felt that he had transcended racism and was in a position to criticize Ellington although he believed that and blacks were innately superior jazz musicians (Swing Changes).

Hammond’s polarizing opinions were important, not so much in their veracity, but in their very expression. They forced thought and internalization of the complexity of race. The events of the time brought race to the forefront of the public eye, and critics like Hammond were able to express their opinions through various media outlets. After all, equality can only progress if injustices and inconsistencies are on the minds of the people.

It is interesting to note that there were varying degrees of racial engagement between black and white musicians. Benny Goodman, for example, played in one of the most popular racially integrated bands, yet he was more motivated by “zeal for musical excellence than any desire to be a social crusader (Gioia p. 144).” Whereas Ellington, chided for his racial apathy, confronted this tension in works such as “Black and Tan Fantasy” and “Harlem Speaks.” These examples shine light on the complexity of race, and indicate that not all jazz musicians were united under one front.