The inspirational Prof Norm
Above: “I tried to talk them out of it -so much work- but they insisted” – Norm
I don’t always agree with Norm, but there can be no doubting his integrity, wit and wisdom. His long-running blog is a must-read for anyone who values rigorous, original thinking from a critical-Marxist and always vigorously humanist standpoint. Like me, he also enjoys jazz and Westerns.
So it was with great concern that I read this, yesterday:
From a window on Nine Wells
Since starting this blog in late July 2003, I have tried to update it regularly, my aim being to have something new most days and, ideally, more than one post a day. I have succeeded in meeting this objective for much of the time, though with exceptions: when following the Ashes in Australia during the 2006-7 series (a wonderful lifetime experience); on infrequent holidays; during the odd weekend busy seeing family or friends; and some days just because I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to blog about. However, a different obstacle has lately arisen for me, which explains some of the falling off readers may have noticed, and I’ve decided to make the reason for it public because I can no longer guarantee the same frequency of posting as before.
Since March of this year I have become ill. I was first diagnosed with early prostate cancer at the beginning of 2003, not long before starting normblog. Though my initial treatment failed to cure the condition, I have remained asymptomatic and in good health for 10 years under the first-rate care of Christie Hospital in Manchester and the treatments recommended and implemented there. But this decade of good fortune ran out for me at the end of February this year when I learned that the cancer had now spread and, simultaneously, I started to suffer the effects of that. For the last few days I’ve been not only ill but also in hospital – though I hope it won’t be for very long. I am now under the outstanding medical eye and hand of Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge. I will just say here, in passing, that my own personal experience of cancer and the treatment of it (as also of my diabetic condition, which is a more longstanding one still) have shown me nothing but the excellence of the NHS.
This is what I see from the window of my ward at Addenbrooke’s. Just before the sky begins, in the centre ground of the picture (courtesy of Adèle, about whom no words of loving gratitude for her support in every sense could be adequate to what I owe her) is a place called Nine Wells, not far from where we now live…
… I mean to carry on blogging to the best of my ability for as long as I can. Blogging has become part of the work – or a kind of adjunct to it – and also of the play that are important in my life. But I can’t promise the same regularity as before. Sometimes I may manage it, but it will depend on the outcome of the treatments still available to me.
So for now, all of us at Shiraz join with Yer Man from Brockley in sending Norm our very best wishes, and via Bob, direct readers to two other admirers, who make their choices of the best of Norm’s blogging:
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David Hirsh at Engage has posted a list of favourite Normblog links, all of which bear re-reading. The Soupy One posted a list of his favroutes on Twitter, which I reproduce below. I’m sure others are doing the same.
Norman Geras – a pioneer of political blogging (and therefore influential in opening up on-line audiences to left-wing cranks and crackpots like me), but also a profound thinker of Marxism and its limits, and an inspiration to those of us who like to think that left-wing values of justice and freedom are compatible with moral sense.
Bob from Brockley has tagged me, among others, for the exercise of suggesting five ideas for the left that are a good influence, five that are a bad influence, and five that aren’t influential enough. I plead the season and the need to do some late Christmas shopping this afternoon as my reason for chickening out. As a token of goodwill towards the project, however, I comment below on one each of Bob’s own suggestions.
National sovereignty Bob has down as a bad influence, and he has no trouble alluding to bad usages of that concept, such as the notion of a ‘clerical-fascist’s right to use his country as a personal fiefdom’. However, I disagree with Bob that the idea of sovereignty is a bad influence. Pending the discovery of some better way for groups of people to band together for mutual protection, the sharing of other social aims, resources and facilities, and the voluntary pursuit of common cultural ways, states based on national (or sometimes multi-national) collectivities are the best way we have. Maybe one day they will be replaced by a more effective global community, but that doesn’t look like happening any time soon. Maybe some different institutions than the state will in due course take over its functions. Meanwhile statelessness threatens those afflicted by it with a nightmare. Bob’s opening implication that the idea of sovereignty presupposes some metaphysical national ‘self’ doesn’t have to be accepted. All that sovereignty requires is some reality to the idea of a community of individuals sharing a common territory.
Class analysis, Bob says, from once having been too all-encompassing on the left, at the expense of other types of identity, is now not influential enough. Without it the notion of social justice ‘goes adrift’. I agree.
The one-state solution... Bob gives it the thumbs-up. But, to my mind, he does so on the basis of a misplaced premise; which is (as I read him between the lines) that the idea could come to be accepted voluntarily by Israelis and Palestinians and thereby become consensual. If so, then well and good. But the two-state solution rests on the assumption that this consensus does not obtain, or obtain yet. While it doesn’t, a one-state solution can only be coercive and therefore violate the right to self-determination of one or both peoples. We need influential ideas for different possible states of affairs and not only for ones that look out of reach at the moment.
Norm always makes me think again.
Sandor Racz, 1956 Hungarian workers’ leader, dies
By Pablo Gorondi, Associated Press, Budapest
Sandor Racz (above), a labor activist and leading figure during Hungary’s anti-Soviet Revolution of 1956, died Tuesday at age 80.
The World Federation of Hungarians, of which Racz was honorary president, confirmed that he died while receiving treatment for an undisclosed illness at the National Institute of Oncology in Budapest.
The 1956 uprising broke out on Oct. 23 and was crushed by the Soviet army in early November. But as president of the Budapest central workers’ council, Racz and other labor leaders pressed ahead with the objectives of the movement for several more weeks, negotiating with pro-Soviet Prime Minister Janos Kadar and top Soviet military officers.
“For me, the revolution was so unambiguous, that I could not even imagine a Hungarian who does not feel that the Hungarian people are 1,000 percent right when they want to free themselves from an unacceptable foreign, murderous and pillaging system,” Racz wrote in memoirs published in 2005.
Even as the crackdown on those who took part in the revolution was under way — at least 225 people would be executed by 1958— the workers’ councils held two nationwide strikes in November and December.
Racz, then a 23-year-old a tool maker at an electronics factory, was arrested on Dec. 11, 1956, after being lured to Parliament with the excuse of holding talks with Kadar, who ruled Hungary until a few years before the end of the communist regime in 1990. Racz was sentenced to life in prison in 1958 but released under a 1963 general amnesty.
After his release, he returned to work as a tool maker and participated in secret meetings with students, telling them about the events of 1956. He retired due to poor health in 1987 and spent the rest of his life keeping alive the memory of the 1956 events.
“The workers’ councils were very important but they tend to be forgotten because most of the attention is given to the armed aspects of the revolution,” said British writer Bob Dent, author of a book about the revolution. “The councils were unofficial trade unions representing workers during and after the uprising.”
Racz was born on March 17, 1933 near the city of Hodmezovasarhely in southeast Hungary. He is survived by his wife, Aniko Damasdi, and two children.
Two powerful voices of decency on marriage equality
Christiane Taubira, the French Minister for Justice on 29th January this year (click on “subtitles” icon for English translation):
…and, a few days ago in the New Zealand House of Representatives, the witty Maurice Williamson:
H/t (for Williamson): Serge Paul
Derek Watkins – trumpet hero
An unsung hero of British music has died:
Derek Watkins, the British trumpet player who played on every James Bond film soundtrack from Dr No to Skyfall, has died aged 68.
He died at home in Esher, Surrey, on Friday after a lengthy illness – Philip Biggs, editor of the Brass Herald said.
Watkins was “widely considered to be the foremost British Big Band trumpet player” of all time, said Mr Biggs.
The trumpeter, who turned professional aged 17, is survived by his wife Wendy and their three children.
He was born into a brass band family and was taught to play the cornet at the age of four by his father.
Watkins then played in the band his father conducted – the Spring Gardens Brass Band in Reading – of which his grandfather was also conductor and a founder member.
He honed his skills as a both a “reader” and an “improviser” with his father’s dance band before turning professional.
Watkins was described as “Mr Lead” by Dizzy Gillespie; as well as the Bond films he played with the Beatles, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Frank Sinatra, the London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra during his lengthy career.
He also played with the BBC Big Band and worked for band leaders Johnny Dankworth, Maynard Ferguson and Benny Goodman, all of whom who recognised his underrated jazz ability.
Mr Biggs described his friend as “a people’s person – no side, no ego, a fun loving musician who couldn’t get enough of life, who loved his family”.
[Adapted from the BBC Entertainment & Arts website]
Recommended listening: ‘Warren Vaché meets Derek Watkins with the Brian Lemon Quartet, Stardust’, Zephyr CD ZECD9 (1996) – ignore the unenthusiastic review, here.
Details here of Derek’s Sarcoma charity – buy the t-shirt!
Abandoned in Afghanistan
From Abdul M via Avaaz.com
Dear friends across the UK,
The Taliban called me, saying I’m “an infidel spy”, they know where I live and will “punish” me. My crime? To work as a translator for British troops and journalists here in Afghanistan. But together we can get Britain to save me and a few hundred others who have risked everything!
Right now, Foreign Secretary William Hague is wondering whether to give me and other Afghan translators asylum, as the UK did for Iraqi translators — and we’re worried he’ll say no. We’ve worked with the British to help set our country free, and we’ve saved many British lives. But now my family and many others have had to go into hiding: every day we stay here it gets more dangerous.
Hague could decide whether to save or snub us any day now. If enough people call on him, he may grant us asylum. In days it’s the 10 year anniversary of the war in Iraq, and former British servicemen are ready to go to the media then to grab Hague’s attention on this. Let’s demand he does the right thing — sign and share our petition with everyone:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Abandoned_in_Afghanistan/?bTDuoeb&v=23132
There are roughly 600 translators doing this dangerous work in Afghanistan – not just helping the army, but also helping journalists and aid workers. Many of us have already been killed or injured just for doing our jobs – a few years ago my brother was blown up on a patrol, and was left with horrific scars and 163 stitches. Many more of us have received death threats from the Taliban — and we all desperately fear what will happen when British troops leave soon.
When I went to the British authorities in Afghanistan about the death threats, they told me to go to my local police — the same police force that has a fearsome reputation for corruption, kidnapping and worse! Now, the UK government has said it is reviewing its policy and will assess asylum applications on a case by case basis, but this is a lengthy and difficult process with no guarantee of success – and in that time, I could be dead.
Our situation is desperate. I am the sole provider for my family — my parents are old and I have three young children. They have no way of supporting themselves if something were to happen to me. We’ve already had to go into hiding, and it’s harder and harder for us each day.
Our fate lies in the British government’s hands. Please join our call to William Hague now to free us from the terror that plagues us every day:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Abandoned_in_Afghanistan/?bTDuoeb&v=23132
For years, my colleagues and I have stood shoulder to shoulder with British soldiers, journalists and aid workers. We’ve risked everything for them, and for our country’s freedom. Please don’t abandon us now, in our hour of need.
In peace and hope,
Abdul
More information:
Is the UK abandoning its Afghan interpreters?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21406826
Afghans who served Britain ‘should be allowed to settle like Iraqi interpreters’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9754924/Afghans-who-served-Britain-should-be-allowed-to-settle-like-Iraqi-interpreters.html
Louis Armstrong’s greetings to the Irish
On St Patrick’s Day, we bring you perhaps the most bizarre lyric ever sung by Louis Armstrong: “I was born in Ireland (Ha, Ha)”…
Louis Armstrong And His Hot Five, November 1926: Irish Black Bottom
Louis’s tireless biographer Ricky Riccardi writes:
Admittedly, this is not songwriting as its finest but as a novelty, it’s good fun. The “black bottom” was a popular dance of the 1920s so this tune humorously pretends that it’s also taken Ireland by storm. If Louis had to record something so silly in the 1950s, critics would scream at the producers for forcing it on him. But “Irish Black Bottom” was written by the aforementioned Percy Venable so more than likely, it was a staple of Louis’s act at the Sunset. And can’t you imagine Louis bringing down the house with that vocal? That “ha, ha” he gives after singing “And I was born in Ireland,” breaks me up every time. I can only imagine what it did to the audiences who heard him do it live.
The song begins with the funny sound of Louis and his Hot Five swinging through a sample of the Irish classic “Where the River Shannon Flows” before Louis swings out with the main melody, which is predominantly in a minor mode until the end. Louis’s lead sounds great and Dodds is bouncing around as usual but trombonist Hy Clark, a substitute for Kid Ory, sounds hesitant and doesn’t add much. After a chorus and an interlude by pianist Lil Armstrong, Louis takes the vocal. If you can’t make it out, here’s what he says:
All you heard for years in Ireland,
was the “Wearin’ Of The Green”,
but the biggest change that’s come in Ireland
I have ever seen.
All the laddies and the cooies
laid aside their Irish reels,
and I was born in Ireland
(Ha, Ha), so imagine how I feels.
Now Ireland’s gone Black Bottom crazy,
see them dance,
you ought to see them dance.
Folks supposed to be related, even dance,
I mean they dance.
They play that strain,
works right on their brain.
Now it goes Black Bottom,
a new rhythm’s drivin’ the folks insane.
I hand you no Blarney, when I say
that song really goes,
and they put it over with a wow,
I mean now.
All over Ireland
you can see the people dancin’ it,
’cause Ireland’s gone Black Bottom crazy now
I don’t know how you can’t get swept up in that offering. Armstrong doesn’t so much sing it as shout it, or talk it, but his spirit sure gets the message across (though sometimes, he’s so far from the written melody, it sounds like he’s singing a different song on top of Lil’s chording on the piano). After the vocal, Clark and Dodds take forgettable short solos and breaks before Louis carries the troops home with brio. Louis’s lip trill towards the end is particularly violent and right before his closing breaks, he dips into his bag for a favorite phrases, one that ended both “You’re Next” and “Big Fat Ma and Skinny Pa.” The concluding break is so perfect in its phrasing and choice of notes that I believe it might have already been set in stone by Pops during his live performances of the tune at the Sunset. Either way, that’s no reason to criticize him; it’s a perfect ending and puts an emphatic stamp on a very entertaining record.
That’s all for now. Have a happy St. Patrick’s day and don’t forget to mix in a little Louis with your Guiness. I hand you no blarney, it’s a great combination…
Tom Good’s political legacy
Richard Briers (who died today) was a wonderful farceur, light-comedy actor and occasional Shakespearian. He was also a definitive Bertie Wooster on the radio.
It’s almost a pity that he will forever be remembered for one particular role:
No question, of course, of which party the well-meaning, but deluded and self-righteous middle class prat Tom Good would have been founder-member.
Wilko Johnson: “I’m alive!”
Former Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson is preparing for a short farewell tour in March. This really will be ‘farewell’: he’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer and, having turned down chemo, has less than a year to live. He’s just given this interview to Radio 4′s ‘Front Row’ and if you didn’t hear it when it went out yesterday I must INSIST that you listen, NOW.
It reminds me of Dennis Potter’s incredible 1994 interview conducted by Melvyn Bragg, but might just be even more powerful and moving, with its humour, philosophy and complete lack of self-pity:
“When the doctor told me, I walked out of there and felt an elation…I looked at the trees and sky and thought, ‘wow!’…
“…I’m a feather for each wind that blows. Why didn’t I work that out before? It’s just the moment that matters. Imminent death…makes you feel alive. Every cold breeze against your face, every brick in the road, makes you think ‘I’m alive’…
“…I’m a miserable person but that has all lifted…I’ve had a fantastic life. Anybody that asked for anything more would just be being greedy.”
He also talks a whole lot of sense about music and recording.
Below; Wilko on guitar, with vocalist Lee Brilleaux:
Now what the hell will we do for a reed player?
Norman Field at Whitley Bay, October 2012:
Here are a number of jazz heroes and a heroine (Emma Fisk on violin). Hark well, because this could be the last time reedman (on clarinet here) Norman Field will be seen blowing a horn. Norman says he’s decided to stop playing, so this appearance at the Whitley Bay Classic Jazz Party in October may well be his swansong.
Norman is a very profound guy: a witty, sophisticated working-class autodidact who also happens to be a master clarinet and sax player specialising in the “hot” styles of players from the late twenties and early-to-mid-thirties. I’ve heard him “do” Jimmie Noone, Johnny Dodds, Omar Simeon, Frank Teschmacher, Jimmy Dorsey and Benny Goodman – and on one memorable occasion, all of the above, and more, in the course of a single gig (with Keith Nichols, entitled something like “history of jazz clarinet”). But Norman is most emphatically not some sort of musical impressionist, merely copying earlier pioneers: he’s an original, whose playing always bears the mark of his own individualism, even when he’s referencing someone else. In the clip above, for instance, Norman’s brilliant obligatos (to Duke Heitger’s trumpet) and solo spots contain more than a hint of Pee Wee Russell, but it’s a number Pee Wee himself never recorded (as far as I know), and Norman’s playing is 100 per cent original.
When I last met up with Norman we spoke of many things: the Princess Eugenie, Napoleon III and the Franco-Prussian war, the scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla and the ‘mad scientist’ in literature and film, and the possible uses that British intelligence may have made of 78rpm records during WW2. I did not ask him about his decision to stop playing.
A little later I met Tom ‘Spats’ Langham (the guitarist and singer in the clip) and we found we’d both had the same reaction to Norman’s announcement: it was a tragedy and an incalculable loss to classic jazz, but we had no right and no authority to challenge Norman or to try to persuade him to change his mind. Norman has had quite a difficult time of it, one way and the other, over the years and all we can do now is respect his decision and wish him well.
Still, I can’t help thinking of the (alleged) words of Wild Bill Davison, on hearing of the death of Frank Teschmacher back in 1932: “Now what the hell am I going to do for a sax man?”
NB: the Whitley Bay clip was filmed and made available by Michael Steinman, whose great blog Jazz Lives is a brilliant diary of classic and mainstream jazz activity in the US and (occasionally, when he visits) Britain.
Malala: Person Of The Year
There can be no doubt who wins Person Of The Year as far as I’m concerned: Malala Yousafza , anti-fascist heroine whose courageous stand for human rights against the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) nearly cost her her life.
A Pakistani writer, Saroop Ijaz, put the feelings of all civilised people into words:
There are those who are trying to inject complexity into the debate and some of them unwittingly are becoming apologists for this mindset of murder and blowing up girls’ schools. Yet, there remains very little room for complexity. It can either be Malala’s Pakistan or TTP’s Pakistan, it cannot be both. This should not be a choice. A Pakistan without Malala and her other fellow girls fighting for education will not be worth living in. I know binaries are supposed to be lazy and not nuanced enough, however, a 14-year-old child is shot in the head for “promoting secularism”. There is no provision for nuance. One has to set one’s face against this and summon all resources to fight. The debate on drone attacks can and should continue. However it has no bearing on our responsibility to fight these medievalists. They should be fought and eliminated — not negotiated with or mollycoddled. Firstly, negotiation is not possible. Secondly, and more importantly, negotiation with them is immoral. An attack on our children is as direct and frontal as an assault can be. This is not a question of politics; it has become a question of survival. The fight should begin by naming the enemy loud and clear, i.e., the TTP and their ideology of hate.
It is of some consolation to see the army chief condemning the assassination attempt on Malala. However, mere condemnation is not enough. The Pakistan Army has to stop the policy of considering the terrorist, any faction or network as “strategic assets”. The mindset has to be fought and fought as a whole and conclusively. It is now a choice between our children and these “strategic assets”. The Pakistan Army has, the over the past three decades, contributed to this ideology of jihad. For this reason, it also has the additional responsibility of erasing this misdeed and fighting these monsters.
George Orwell, writing about a young soldier of the Spanish War, wrote: “But the thing I saw in your face, No Power can disinherit; No Bomb that ever burst; Shatters the Crystal Spirit.” To understand Orwell’s words, have a look at the face of that child and the sparkle and resolve in her eyes. We are not Malala, but we should be, we can try. Let us hope Malala lives long enough to see her Pakistan.
Read the full article here
