Benny Golson returns to Philadelphia

This week in North Philly Notes, we celebrate Benny Golson in images and interviews. Golson visited his hometown of Philadelphia last week to promote his autobiography, Whisper Not, co-authored with Jim Merod.

Benny Golson started his day at 91-FM, WHYY’s Radio Times, where he chatted with host Marty Moss-Coane.
There’s no stopping BENNY GOLSON. The internationally famous jazz composer, arranger, and saxophonist has recorded over 30 albums, and has composed and arranged music for John Coltrane, Miles Davies, Ella Fitzgerald, Quincy Jones and many others. This year, at the age of 87, he released a new album called “Horizon Ahead.” Golson was born in Philadelphia in 1929 and has played in the bands of Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey. He has composed not only jazz standards, including “Killer Joe” and “Along Came Betty,” but his songs have also appeared in tv shows and films including M*A*S*H and Mission Impossible. Marty talks with Golson about his life, his new autobiography Whisper Not, and what it’s like to be considered an “elder statesman of jazz.”

Benny was also interviewed with Brian Lockman, host of Pennsylvania Cable Network’s PA Books program. The show will air at a future date and be available as a free podcast on iTunes. 

During a stop at Temple University’s radio station, WRTI, Benny paused to pose with Art Kane’s 1958 photo, “A Great Day in Harlem.” Golson is one of the last two surviving members of the famous photograph.

Golson capped off the day with an appearance at the Free Library of Philadelphia, where he was interviewed by WRTI‘s Jeff Duperon. This video records their conversation.

Saxophonist and composer Benny Golson learned his instrument and the vocabulary of jazz while still in high school in Philadelphia. Over the course of an illustrious 60-year career, he has recorded more than 30 albums, written well over 300 compositions, and given hundreds of performances around the globe alongside dozens of jazz greats, including Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Earl Bostic, and Art Blakey. “A composer with an unusually brilliant melodic sense” (New York Times), his major contributions to the world of jazz include the standards Killer Joe, Along Came Betty, Whisper Not, and Five Spot After Dark. His new book, Whisper Not, is a collection of anecdotes and photographs that recount the high and low notes of a life dedicated to jazz.

As the night ended, Golson posed with and signed books and records(!) for his adoring fans. 

Brazilian Blues: Operation Carwash, The Oligarchs Strike Back

This week in North Philly Notes, Philip Evanson, co-author of Living in the Crossfire,  files another report from Brazil. 

The political crisis in Brazil has reached a climacteric. The oligarchs of the Brazilian congress came out from behind the scenes for all the world to see. The chiefs or caciques can no longer tolerate the “Carwash” investigations as they are being conducted. They see these investigations of venal politicians, with no one too prominent to be excluded, leading remorselessly to criminal charges, arrests, trials, and loss of political rights. One leader after another has been investigated and exposed to public scrutiny. Deeply wounded, they decided to have a go at trying to stop them. In fact, this was the plan from the beginning of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in which Vice President Michel Temer was a central player as he saw friends and colleagues of many years being investigated and showing signs of crumbling under the pressure.

First, Dilma had to be removed. She refused to use executive branch power to interfere in the investigations. Temer supported the impeachment, then as acting president he joined the effort to stop further investigations as least as currently practiced. When two ministers in his newly formed government were caught in phone taps plotting to obstruct justice, there was an enormous public outcry. Temer reluctantly bowed to it. He accepted their resignations, though his preference was to maintain them in their posts.

Then on Monday, June 6, Henrique Alves, Minister of Tourism was accused of corruption by Rodrigo Janot,  Prosecutor-General of the Republic (Procurador-Geral da Republica). This time Temer balked. He decided to keep Alves on the grounds that the accusations were old, that nothing new had been presented. The next day, Tuesday, June 7, Janot asked the Federal Supreme Court to order the arrest of former President José Sarney, Senate President Renan Calheiros, suspended Chamber of Deputies President Eduardo Cunha and Senator Romero Jucá for obstruction of justice in the Carwash investigations. The Federal Supreme Court has to decide whether to order the arrests since under the 1988 Constitution members of Congress, Ministers of State, the Pres and VP are all judged in the first instance by the Federal Supreme Court, a disposition which incidentally puts an intolerable burden on the Court.

Senate President Renan Calheiros quickly spoke up for the accused: “We ought not to worry ourselves about excesses committed against us.” What do the oligarchs want?   First, a different approach to plea bargains. The bargains are now made with individuals under arrest and sitting in jail. If they agree to a plea bargain, they get released. If not, they stay in jail. The change would require that bargains not be made with imprisoned persons. Such bargains have the quality of being coerced, and can be seen as examples of (light) torture. Second, that a new policy of leniency be extended to individuals who have been charged allowing them perhaps to plead guilty, cooperate, pay fines. Will they serve jail terms? If so, under what conditions and for how long? Will they lose their political rights, that is to hold elective office?  If so, and for how long?  These changes would complement the process already underway of making accords with representatives of big construction firms who paid bribes or “tips” (propinas) to politicians or political operatives, then recovered the money in overpriced government contracts. Under the accords, a firm would pay a fine for breaking the law, perhaps also their executives. The firm would then be allowed to resume signing government contracts in order to get on with the immense tasks of building Brazil’s infrastructure up to the level of a developed country.

More important than the fate of a politicians accused of various corrupt practices is the risk posed by impeachment to Brazil’s democratic institutions still undergoing the process of consolidation, and to social advances under the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores or Workers Party) governments of Presidents Lula, and Dilma Rousseff since 2003. In a June 4^th interview published online in the Mexican daily La Jornada,  writer and activist Leonardo Boff, member of the Franciscan order from 1959 to 1992 and a leading producer of liberation theology, remembered that 36 million Brazilians had risen out of poverty into the middle class during the Lula and Dilma presidencies. He pointed out that Brazil was also the country with the greatest number of popular organizations, and that they could stop the country from one day to the next. Earlier in March at the outset of the impeachment process, Boff had called on former president Lula in effect to return to active duty and assume leadership in saving Dilma’s mandate in order to preserve the social advances. In the June 4^th interview, he alluded to the possibility of violence if members of popular organizations were provoked or humiliated. Acting President Temer has repeatedly said he plans no assault on social programs.

The fear of popular violence needs to be set beside the fact that mass political protests in all the large Brazilian cities in 2015 and 2016 have been peaceful, not violent. No one has been killed, and property has been almost always respected. The same can be said, with certain exceptions, of the mass protests of 2013. It is true that the MST (Landless Workers Movement) and its urban affiliate MTST (Homeless Workers Movement) are large militant popular organizations. Lula has referred to the MST as the army of its leader João Pedro Stedile. However, Stedile is a greatly respected leader and intellectual of the social democratic Left, and he does not preach or threaten to use violence. The MST and its causes continue to be supported by the Catholic Church. Also, the MST has always kept its independence. It was never an annex of the PT. Lula himself largely abandoned the popular organizations as President. He preferred to work through the political system with governors and mayors, getting resources to them, even when they were his political opponents. Experts called this the politics of “governability.” Lula’s explanation was somewhat different. He said he did not care about his opponents, but he did care about the people they governed who needed money from the federal government. Under Lula, Rio de Janeiro for example received more money from the federal government than ever before even though Cesar Maia, the mayor of Rio was a political opponent, and used his blog to criticize Lula regularly.

The Brazilian elite is viewed by its critics as unable to accept the new and higher status attained by blacks, mulattos, and the poor, and also that a former auto worker (Lula) and woman (Dilma) have twice each been elected president. The presumed inability to accept these new developments is sometimes referred to as an example of upper class hatred for their social inferiors, and various expressions of disdain and worse aimed at the PT, its government, Lula and Dilma can be treated as class conflict. At the same time, the programs to reduce poverty were put in place without any noticeable political opposition expressed in debate or Congressional votes. The Law of Social Quotas of 2013 was affirmative action that reserved half the seats in public universities for public school graduates, blacks and native indigenous Brazilians. It passed the Senate with only one vote against out of 81. Earlier in 2004, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of racial quotas. Such actions suggest a politics not of hatred, but of ethical consensus to end poverty, and confront social class and race discrimination. In Brazil where the study of law is a serious, much practiced endeavor, these laws have been milestones in advances toward citizen equality before the law.

At present, Michel Temer himself and his government have little credibility. There is a chance that Dilma will not be found guilty as charged by the Senate and restored as President. But Temer is in power as acting president, and has come with a neo-liberal agenda to replace the social democratic  agenda of Lula, Dilma and the PT. Neo-liberalism was prominent in the two terms of Lula’s predecessor President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002). A neo-liberal agenda means less government involvement in advancing a social agenda that favors low wage earners. It also means greater internationalization or openness of the economy, and reducing the state’s entrepreneurial role. The process of trying to implement this agenda began quickly. On assuming his task, Ricardo Barros the new Minister of Health announced  that “some universal rights guaranteed by the Constitution will have to be rethought.” He identified one as the universal right to health care under SUS or the United Health System. Not everyone enrolled could receive medical attention. Barros pleaded insufficient resources, arguing that Brazil had fallen into a situation comparable to bankrupt Greece. This seems a curiously inapt comparison considering the relative sizes of the respective Brazilian and Greek economies and populations, also the higher standard of living prevailing in Greece, and the far greater need to extend, not retract health care in Brazil. The public has been demanding greater access to better health care, a demand emphatically expressed in the mass protests of 2013. In labor law, the Boff interview referred to certain changes favored by the Temer government such as negotiations between unions and employers to change some work place rules and benefits in the name of increasing productivity. Executives of foreign firm executives are said to have expressed exasperation with what they regard as excessively bureaucratic rules for the workplace. The new government is anxious to appease them and attract foreign capital. However, Dilma Rousseff’s government  was considering similar changes, but set them aside as too ambitious at a time of  economic (the great Brazilian recession now in its third year) and political (the crisis of impeachment) turmoil. Temer is also said to want to restore the right of foreigners to buy land in Brazil which Dilma prohibited in 2010 fearing a large scale Chinese entry into commercial agriculture and stock raising. Also announced are further privatizations of state owned enterprises. Privatization has always been a key policy of neo-liberal economics, much favored by former president Cardoso, but resisted by Lula, Dilma and the PT. Finally, foreign policy is being reoriented in favor of more commercial agreements with Europe, and less integration with South American countries, such integration now labeled the partisan policy of a political party (the PT).

Unlike the l990’s, a neo-liberal program in 2016 seems suddenly antiquated, having fallen out of favor even perhaps at the International Monetary Fund which had presided over its creation. Christine Legarde, IMF General Director since 2010, noted the great boom in commodities of the first decade of the 21^st century, having come to an end, would not return soon, perhaps never. Today’s IMF economists now admit that the benefits of neo-liberalism may have been oversold. The governments of Lula and Dilma never bought the neo-liberal package of policies, and neo-liberalism is now strongly questioned even in the United States as illustrated in the 2016 presidential primary elections. There may have been a neo-liberal heyday, but trying to resuscitate it in 2016 undermines even more the credibility of the Temer government. However, Leonardo Boff may be allowed the last word. He expects the solution to Brazil’s political crisis “will come from the street.” On June 10, there were anti-government protests in 24 cities. As of this writing, acting President Temer is under siege and cancelling public appearances.

Generational, Relational, and Transformational Explorations of Digital and Media Literacy

This week in North Philly Notes, Renee Hobbs, editor of Exploring the Roots of Digital and Media Literacy through Personal Narrative writes about how she and her contributors interpreted the significance and meaning of earlier authors who examined the relationship between communications media, technology, culture and education.   

As a young scholar, back in the early 1990s, I had the chance to visit the offices of the Center for Media Literacy in Los Angeles, where Elizabeth Thoman was publishing Media&Values, a media literacy magazine. Working on a lean budget, Liz’s non-profit organization was a busy place: there were always a couple of grad school interns from USC or UCLA and always a couple of very talented professional staff. Over its 15-year history, the magazine reached upwards of 10,000 readers each month and introduced people to key topics in media literacy, exploring issues including the changing role of journalism in society, television and film violence, gender stereotyping in media, and other topics.

What I remember most about my visit to Los Angeles was the Center for Media Literacy’s library: it was a treasure trove of media literacy books, VHS video tapes, sound cassettes, curriculum kits, photography and film production resources, everything a teacher might want if the aim was teaching about journalism, advertising, Hollywood film and popular culture. Simply put, it was a room full of media literacy “stuff” from all across the U.S. and Australia, England, Scotland and even Brazil. In that pre-Internet age, access to media literacy materials this diverse was mind-blowing: perusing the shelves, for the first time, I began to understand that media literacy was a global movement.

It was also obvious to me that media literacy was, even then, an unwieldy, difficult concept that meant a lot of different things to different people depending on their disciplinary backgrounds and professional identities, their political and social commitments, their attitudes towards media, and their life experiences. That’s partly what made the concept of media literacy so fascinating to me.

Twenty years later, when Elizabeth Thoman was packing up the contents of the Center for Media Literacy archive, I was lucky enough to acquire the collection and even more thrilled to be able to share it with my doctoral students at Temple University and the University of Rhode Island.

I was proud when Temple University’s Michael RobbGrieco applied his intellectual curiosity and generous heart into an examination of the archives, looking closely at the content, patterns and ideas of Media&Values magazine. He wondered: How did the magazine represent the voices and perspectives of the various stakeholders in the formative years of the U.S. media literacy movement?

Mike’s dissertation got me thinking about the generational, relational, and transformational spread of ideas about media literacy. Over the course of three generations, Liz, Mike and I, each of us in our own time, had wrestled with a unique, particular set of intellectual forces and flow of ideas. We each had attempted to understand media literacy in relation to the ever-changing state of media and technology, cultural politics, and education. In exploring how best to teach and learn about media, we used and built upon the ideas of scholars and thinkers from a variety of fields, including philosophy, education, communication and media studies, psychology, sociology and the arts and humanities.

But each of us had encountered these ideas through the prism of our own lives. Our personal life stories uniquely shaped the way we interpreted the significance and meaning of earlier authors who examined the relationship between communications media, technology, culture, and education.

To explore how life narratives may shape people’s understanding, I wanted to push even further back in time. What were the deep roots of digital and media literacy? How could I find creative ways to help undergraduate and graduate students to understand the historical legacy of media literacy’s interdisciplinary position at the intersection of media studies and education?

That’s why I invited 16 distinguished authors to respond to the question: “Who is your metaphorical grandparent? What writer has most influenced your thinking about digital and media literacy? I was delighted when distinguished authors including Henry Jenkins, Douglas Kellner, Dana Polan, David Weinberger, Lance Strate, Donna Alvermann and others agreed to contribute essays to this volume.

In Exploring the Roots of Digital and Media Literacy through Personal Narrative, these authors introduce readers to a particular scholar who influenced their thinking. Through their own personal narratives recounting their exposure to ideas, readers are introduced to some of the great minds of the 20^th century, including John Dewey, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Theodor Adorno, Marshall McLuhan, John Fiske, Roland Barthes and others.

Each chapter describes an individual whom the author considers to be a type of “grand­parent.” By weaving together two sets of personal stories—that of the contributing au­thor and that of the key ideas and life history of the historical figure under their scrutiny—major concepts of digital media and learning emerge.

The book shows how the theories and concepts that drive digital and media literacy educators have been shaped by people’s exposure to early 20^th century scholars and thinkers who:

• explored awareness of form, content and context in the meaning-making process;
• examined the social nature of representation and interpretation;
• unpacked the dialectic of empowerment and protection in relation to media influence;
• considered the role of art as a means of social transformation; and
• reflected on media’s contribution to personal and social identity.

For many readers, the book will recreate the experience I had when visiting the offices and library of the Center for Media Literacy so many years ago: a chance to marvel at and explore the writing and scholarship at the turn of the 20th century that continues to offer insights to contemporary scholars trying to understand the practices involved in accessing, analyzing, and reflecting on mass media, popular culture and digital media.

Today, with the rise of Internet and social media continuing to reshape our complex love-hate relationship with media and technology, it is my hope that by connecting the best ideas of the past to the challenges of the present and future, the next generation will be well-poised to carry on the important work of digital and media literacy education.

 

Why Another Book about Muhammad Ali?

This week, in North Philly Notes,  Michael Ezra, author of  Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon, writes:

Many people sent me their condolences about the passing of Muhammad Ali, but I told them all that they should be happy for him. For the past thirty years, almost every act Ali has done has been with getting into heaven in mind. Nobody I’ve ever known was more prepared for death than he was; I honestly believe he was looking forward to it. He suffers no longer, and his legacy will live on for many years. The introduction to my book Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon explains what the book is about and why I wrote it.

For almost thirty years, Muhammad Ali has held the Guinness World Record as the most written-about person in history. Although John Lennon once claimed that the Beatles had become bigger than Jesus, Ali is the one who really deserves such distinction, at least in a literary sense. Why, then, would anybody have the temerity to think that he could add something to this already overflowing mix? What makes this book worth reading? Though library shelves may buckle under the weight of the Muhammad Ali literature, there is surprisingly little written about key aspects of his life, such as his pre-championship boxing matches, the management of his career, and his current legacy. I concentrate on these three important themes.

Understanding Ali’s transformation from a controversial to a revered figure takes knowledge of his entire life in the public spotlight. To comprehend this phenomenon, one must look at Ali’s career holistically, from his appearance as an Olympic champion in 1960 to his present incarnation as an iconic international hero. The problem for readers is that so much is already written about Ali, and so much information is at hand, that one must wade through everything to find events and trends that have enough representative clout to get at key meanings without drowning in detail. Although this book spans nearly fifty years, from 1960 to the present, it is hardly a comprehensive account of Ali’s life. Instead, Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon is a distillation of crucial paradigm shifts in how Ali has been perceived by various segments of the public.

At the heart of this book is a study of the relationships between Muhammad Ali’s cultural image and its commercial manifestations. The central concept that I use to get at these meanings is what I call moral authority, a term I use throughout this book. My thesis has two parts. First, the most significant way people have made meaning of Muhammad Ali over the years has been through their understanding of him as a moral force, both positive and negative. Second, the crucial way many Americans have arrived at their moral understanding of Ali—his cultural image—has come from their perception of who is making money by associating with him—the commercial manifestations. This book traces the relationships between public perceptions of Ali, the economic entanglements  surrounding his career, and the cultural meanings that have emerged from such connections.

The idea that Ali’s moral authority is intimately bound to the economic consequences of his public life and career is a new one. The dominant interpretations of Ali usually tie his moral authority to his political or racial symbolism. The generic Ali Story explains his transformation from an oppositional to a mainstream figure as a product, among other things, of his stand against the Vietnam War or his being a member of the Nation of Islam. As these versions go, Ali’s moral authority and cultural image crumbled as he took an unpopular political stand in challenging the Vietnam War and turned toward black nationalism by joining the racially separatist Nation of Islam. But over time, the public began to reject the war, Ali renounced the Nation’s core tenets, and he became a morally authoritative cultural hero. There is much more to the process, however; namely, the economic aspects of these seemingly racial, political, and moral changes. My argument is that Ali’s relationships to the Vietnam War and the Nation of Islam, as barometers of his public moral authority, were important not primarily because of their political and racial content, but because they represented who had economic ownership of him. What brought Ali infamy during the 1960s was not necessarily that he was a politically oppositional force, but that he threatened to generate wealth for the wrong people. The public’s sense of Ali’s moral authority has always been a function of its perception of who has economic ownership of him.

I have divided this book into three parts, each of them a response to the ever-evolving question “Who owns Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali?” Part I, “Louisville Sponsoring Group,” details Clay’s rise as pugilism’s biggest box-office draw under the management of the millionaire boys’ club known as the Louisville Sponsoring Group. Part II, “Nation of Islam,” explores the difficulties he encountered as his cultural image and commercial viability plummeted when the black nationalist religious sect took control of his career. Part III, “Good People,” is a study of the fighter’s rebirth as an admired cultural icon representing corporate interests.

Before I begin the narrative, I want to make four points that will help readers understand my perspective and goals. First, you may have noticed that I treat the words Ali Story as a proper noun. The reason for the capitalization is that I consider history to be primarily art rather than science. The Ali Story, although certainly based upon fact, is a construct: part fact, part myth, part interpretation. Like all history, my version of the Ali Story leaves out far more than it includes. This book is neither definitive nor comprehensive. Instead, Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon is a plausible interpretation of how people have made meaning of Muhammad Ali’s life and times. The book is truthful but is not the truth. Second, this study bucks the trend of most Ali literature that insists upon making moral judgments about him. I view Ali as neither great nor wicked, but rather a person with both strengths and weaknesses. This book is neither a sentimental celebration of Ali nor an iconoclastic attempt to knock him off his pedestal. What I have tried to do instead is explain how people have come to invest or divest moral authority in the rich and multifaceted cultural symbol known as Muhammad Ali. I will leave the fool’s errand of identifying his true and essential nature to others. Third, my protagonist changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali shortly after winning the championship from Sonny Liston in February 1964. When I discuss the pre-championship man I refer to him as Cassius Clay. When I discuss the post-championship man I call him Muhammad Ali. Fourth, this book explores the economics behind the boxing matches of Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali. It is often difficult to figure out exactly how much money had been made and by whom. I relied on newspaper reports for the most part to do this work, but such reports are often conflicting and inconsistent. Whenever faced with contradictory information, I have done my best to honestly and accurately follow the money.

Temple University Press books and pets

This week in North Philly Notes, we present a slideshow of Temple University Press books and pets!

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