White Supremacy and the History Of Jazz in America: An Unruly but Successful Partnering of Strange Bedfellows

Responding to the article linked here:
https://truthout.org/articles/white-supremacy-tried-to-kill-jazz-the-music-triumphed/ Jazz has been my musical heart and soul from age 14 and onward.. It took me abut 16 years of trial and error hard core personalized study to master my craft after 8 years of semi-formal piano lessons in the home based on learning the rudiments not of jazz, but of playing the piano using classical techniques, Without the contribution of white aficionados, sponsors, and supporters of the music, it would never have gotten 0ff the ground. Therefore, I take issue with the character of this book (not yet read by me) but can agree with most of the ground floor contentions connecting it to the kind of America it grew up in. From the review: "Why was the international reception of jazz so markedly different from the way it was received domestically, particularly by white audiences in the U.S.?"

"Your query is harder to answer than it appears at first glance. My previous work has argued that contrary to consensus opinion, the formation of the U.S. in 1776 occurred not least because of a fervent desire to evade the logic of abolition that was growing in London (the 1619 Project just published by mostly Black journalists in the New York Times echoes this thesis). As such, slavery and its complement — hysterically hyperbolic “anti-Negro sentiment” — flourished in the republic and was hardly squashed by the Civil War. Dexter Gordon in Copenhagen; Art Farmer in Vienna; Randy Weston in Morocco; Yusef Lateef in Nigeria; Miles Davis in Paris; Ron Carter in Tokyo — all found more receptive audiences than what they encountered in their homeland, along with more respect for their artistry. The tangled history of the U.S. complicated the republic’s ability to emulate these global trends." My continuing commentary: There is much controversy as to when the "Birth of Jazz" occured in America, but there is no doubt that established white musicians performing the music in an official context were an indelible part of the history. The legendary Paul Whitman Concert of 1924 introducing George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" has been crowned as the Birth of Jazz in America because of the strong white support and attendance as well as media coverage. I can't share this article without acknowledging the legitimate artistic and theoretical contributions of white musicians as well as blacks. If anything, the races were brought together in the creation and establishment of the music as it continues today, to be a collaboration of Black, White, Oriental, and European musicians extending to musicians from all over the world. This article is more focused on the ofttimes unruly business of jazz handled, of course, mostly by white entrepreneurs above and below the table of human decency and normalcy. I reject the title used but understand its meaning. There is no need now to demonize the music by confusing it with the ongoing drama of white supremacy currently sweeping the media.

A Post Christian Culture Torments America

A Response to the Lament of  Post Christian Acculturation found in this article:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2019/august/what-missionaries-can-teach-us-in-post-christian-america.html?fbclid=IwAR17mG6rOI8jk0kdQ8DsFP-0KooUfa4k2OQkmLYtvdd607EE8ZS8jZEPhh4

Interesting article. I'd go back as far as Rome taking the lead in making Christian belief the focal faith of the world. If secularization had an official beginning, I'd place it somewhere in that 1-3rd century AD when the warring expressions of the faith were brought to a head by Constantine, in 313 AD, embracing Christianity with the Edict of Milan. Setting the tone with the Nicene Creed, he went on to confess Christianity on his deathbed in 337 AD, still trying to ensure the survival of the Roman Empire at a time when its fall was inevitable. The grand string of magnificent cathedrals that have grown up to enhance the world of architecture and splendor followed, setting in concrete, steel, and glass, the worldly permanence of an other-worldly religion.

The history is something all Christians and non-Christians should read. It seems that early secularization was followed by disagreements from the Anabaptists, to Martin Luther, all the way to the US colonies breaking away from King George and The Anglican Church of Great Britain. The onset of "freedom of religion" included the allowance of freedom FROM Religion, so I can't say when and if America was EVER a Christian Nation. During slavery? The Civil War? The nuclear bombing of Japan? When?

The arguments have persisted pretty much from day one back in the time of disputes between Peter and Paul (Galatians 1). Gabriel Vahanian, A college professor of mine, wrote The Death Of God: The Culture of our Post-Christian Era in 1961. (He was Religion Professor Emeritus at Syracuse University. I took a basic course in religion from him in 1967. He passed away at 85 in August of 2010.).

Vahanian's book set off a cascade of reactions from bad to good and still continues to rock the nation of professed Christianity to its core. That the "post-Christian culture" was upon us so extraordinarily that such a book might have been written and received by a college professor was more evidence that the faith was retreating than any believers could comprehend or accept.. I dare say this Post-Christian Culture, therefore, is nothing new in America or the world at large.

What's interesting is, the article reaching out to venues of repair and re-configuring without even asking if this culture is a good thing or a bad thing. That, in a nutshell, is the reason for it. Presuming that it's the onset of a global nightmare that America has rejected God, feeds the ongoing and failing effort to restrain the plummet as if that's what is supposed to be the response of what's left of Christianity in the Post-Christian Culture. 

Maybe we're just growing up. Maybe the post Christian culture has emerged because our human culture has learned so much about the world, the universe, the timing, science, etc. etc. that the ancient-ness of the Christian faith simply has no trough to feed on and could be the problem, not the solution. We are living in an extended disbelief of the Copernican-Galilean revolution of the early 1600's when the world was discovered to be round, not the center of the universe, but just a planet among others, orbiting a star in a universe of unfathomable numbers of such stars.

If I were to advance a "fix" for what even I am not sure a fix is what is needed, I would advise all Christians to re-examine THEMSELVES, discover just how sincere they are in their claim of faith, and continue to pray to a God they believe is the final arbiter of what will happen to a world that has rejected (Him) in so many ways. Find a personal, private channel with which to link to this oftentimes, "why hast thou forsaken me?" God, and enlarge faith to become the sole, valid indicator of truth in (His) existence. Adding works to justify and exemplify that faith should pretty much complete the contribution Christians need to make in a "Post-Christian Culture" whose ultimate judge will act at a time not chosen by those seeking to repair things on earth.

A Dog Story

I live in an apartment complex of two-story units attached.  Front door access is to the courtyard outside leading to the cars and the streets, etc.  OK.  I come in last night from my rounds, park my car, go inside and start to warm up my homemade taco meat to make two tacos.  It's about 9:30pm.  I finish the tacos, clean up, and sit down in my high-back- arm-chair-that-tilts, grab the remote and turn on the TV.  As I begin watching and surfing the channels, I hear the most God-Awful screaming coming from outside.  It's a reasonably quiet living place with a rare bit a drama from time to time.  I figure it's probably some fighting going on and it's best I don't get into it.  Ya never know these days.

Well, the screaming gets louder as I turn down the TV volume.  It's hi-pitched but throaty on the bottom, characteristic of female screams when the scent of death and injury is in the air.  It's loud and urgent and sounds like four or more women screaming at once.  I carefully open my door to look out, mindful to watch for bullets (who watches for bullets?).  I see diagonally through the night, across the courtyard, a bunch of people and somebody is mercilessly beating someone or something on the ground hard like they were trying to kill whoever or whatever they were beating.  I thought it was a man beating a woman on the ground and the women around them were just too scared to interfere, but screaming like crazy.  Other unit doors were opening as residents started to view from a distance.

I felt I HAD to go and try to put a stop to this.  I cannot stand by and watch a woman be beat by a man with a club.  Or without a club. I just can't.  As I get closer hurrying over, I see that the beater is a woman that lives there, and the beat-tee is a medium sized dog bent over a small dog it has in its mouth at the neck, trying to KILL it.  The big dog is a husky Pit Bull and the woman beating on him (yes, it was a woman, not a man) was having no effect at all.  Two women were trying to get the pit's head off the little dog while screaming and yelling.  More were standing around just yelling like crazy while the little dog's head and neck was being shaken and torn.  The Pit was growling like a wild bear in heat.

Bobby H. to the rescue!?  What was I to do?  Just stand there and watch?  I decide to give  the Pit a good kick in the ribs.  I did so with all available strength and accuracy.  I kicked that dog harder that I have ever kicked anything or anybody, and I never kicked anybody in all my 71 years on the planet.  I instinctively knew I was going to have to try to get that Pit off the little dog with one kick, cause if it turned on me, I was going to need my other leg to start the #turnandhaulASS maneuver..  The Pit didn't even  react.  It just kept growling, salivating, snooting, and using its teeth to tear into the little dog's flesh while the screams got louder. I felt like I had hard-kicked a brick wall.

Meanwhile, the woman who was beating the Pit was now resting her head on the pole she was using pointed down on the ground. She was relieved SOMEONE had come in to take over. She was breathing like she was going to pass out, and crying her eyes out while still screaming.  How do you women manage that?  The noise was deafening now.  There were other guys around but keeping their distance.  I got it in my mind to do one more truly healthy, deadly kick but decided upon a different area. A softer target. The infamous "ballzone" that shows itself under the tail when the tail is curled up as it was in this Pit Bull's case.  The bull had large and healthy thighs so, being a man myself, I decided to give it a break and aim my kick toward the inner thigh, still hitting the ball-zone but not so directly.  Maybe it's a breeder, you know?

I take a full breath, circle around to the rear end of the Pit Bull, bring back my leg (the one with the new artificial hip joint) and let my foot fly with ALL my strength into the meat of the target.  BAP!  I kicked that dog so hard, I KNEW if it failed, I was in the wind for sure!  The pit instantly let go of the  little dog and turned to see who threw the ping pong ball at its leg.  Right.  That second kick didn't phase him much more than the first one did.  Either of those kicks on a human being would have caused serious damage depending on where it landed.  Either one of those kicks would have killed the average child.

The Pit turned and looked at me briefly, but now the little dog, having been set free, was hi-tailing it into  the open unit door where it lived, its owner chasing after it.  I guess that Pit Bull said, the hell with me and ran towards that apt door going after the little dog.  Now it's got two people on its back end and the owner of the little dog trying to grab the pit around the sides to keep it from getting into the open apartment.  I helped close the door after she entered and the bull got pushed and pulled outside.  Somebody showed up with a dog harness and someone was saying "it got out of it's harness".

The Pit was now standing and panting while the people were trying to put its harness back on.  It was cooperating, probably feeling a little sore in the right inner hind leg at the ballzone wondering if it was ever going to have sex again.  They got him into the harness and I turned to go back into the apt of the lady whose dog it was that had been attacked.  She had two such dogs in that one-room studio unit she shared with her husband who was at work at the time.  She stood crying, panting, and screaming, holding her hands out, pacing slowly around the room.  She had blood on both her hands and blood was on the floor.  The tiny dog was no where to be found.  I figured it was under the bed being quiet or dead. I asked if she was ok, but all I got back were sobs, muffled screams, pacing and untargeted staring.

At this point as the screams were beginning to dissipate, as the drama was winding down, as the peripheral screams were morphing into talking and speaking drama-review narratives, I took one last look at that Pit Bull who was still looking straight ahead, still standing, still cooperating with its owner (one of the women screamers), and decided my work was done here.  I made it back across the courtyard to the quiet of my own unit, shut the door, and crossed over to my raised-back, tilting leather armchair to resume watching TV and digesting my Tacos.

Addendum:

People, DON'T GET A PIT BULL.  There are other kinds of dogs.  FORGET the Pit Bull!  If you MUST own a Pit Bull that is temperamental enough that you have to harness it to walk it, be strong enough to keep it in its harness.  I know what happened.  That damn Pit Bull saw that little dog.  The little dog (unleashed), started that yip yip yip yip barking that little dogs do, and took off onto it, pulling the harness leash right out of the woman's hands.  By the time she recovered the leash, the harness had come off the Pit as it took the little dog's neck into its mouth to teach it to never bark at Pit bulls 5 times its size..  Strength is what is required to walk a Pit Bull with a harness.  The harness won't do it for you.  If you are not strong enough to handle a harnessed Pit Bull, don't walk a Pit Bull in a harness. DUH!!!!!!

The lady that owned the little dog eventually went to the hospital, got her hands taped up and took the little dog with her.  That's the last I heard.  I haven't inquired yet, but I'm sure she's a bit shocked, but ok.  The little dog is probably back under the bed cursing her dog god for having made it so small but thinking it was big like the wolves and bears she evolved from.

Thank you for letting me share.

Robert W Hamilton 6-13-2019