LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Thursday, June 7, 2007

John Boutté





If you have an interest in New Orleans, New Orleans music and all goes with it, this is what we experienced last night.

But when so much of the audience, especially from Asia, laughed, I wept.

I wept through John's rendition of "The Train They Call The City of New Orleans." He brought me entire new levels of experience out of that song, that once, when I was very young, just seemed weird and -- What????

Our popular music is one of the few places that provides popular access to American history, it seems, in these days since the neocons declared the end of history and changed our language. Wiping out real instruments, real skill at the instruments and knowing music, and substituting computer programs for musicians, and thus the end of rhythmic sophistication and knowledge (which is a real discipline, and why there are no jokes about stupid drummers in Latin and Indian and African music, like there are in Rock 'n Roll) has played an enormous role in destroying this nation's ability to consider history. New Orleans is filled with music and musicians who are as much the keepers of our national history as is the architecture and the archives. This goes a very long way toward explaining to the bewildered just why so many people insist that New Orleans matters and must continue to exist.

But now I know, oh, right down to the bottom of my soles and my soul, what the train they call the City of New Orleans is about.This artist, John Boutté, comes across kinda simple, coz that's what the consumers like to believe is going on with musicians, especially from New Orleans. But he started his life in the banking industry. He gave it up to follow his gift, which is both expression, and the most solid landing on key and being in tune you can find, even within opera. When he does that Sahellian push for crescendo and ornamentation of a note, you don't sit there mesmerized for fear he may fall off, but because you are relaxed in the delight of knowledge -- that he's so solid in his voice placement that he will stay and not lose, drop or fall.

He is very good at representing what's going on down home too, right now, to his ecstatic audiences:""You need to know that Katrina didn't hit New Orleans. The levees failed, and we got flooded. The shingles on the house my father built are fine. But the place filled with water. And the place sat in water. For weeks and weeks and weeks."

Most of the people in that audience last night at Joe's Pub, part of the Public Theater Complex, had seen John play in his little usual gig room in NO -- where sometimes there were very few audience members. Our best friends in NO love him, and his gig is their favorite night out, hang. Which is, why, of course, I / we know him and his work and call him by his first name.It was an emotionally complex artistic experience. Art is emotionally complex as well as intellectually complex. But this one was more than so usually, due to so much personal baggage.

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