At The Mead Muse, reviews of a different Pagan musician or group each day for 28 days during February.
First came Sharon Knight and Pandemonaeon, a solid choice.
Tag Archives: music
Abstract Expressionism, Cool Jazz, and the CIA
No. 5, 1948, by Jackson Pollock (Wikipedia)
This is not a new topic, but many people still do not realize how much the Central Intelligence Agency, through various fronts (cooperative or fake foundations, for example), influenced the artistic movements during the peak of the Cold War years—the 1950s and 1960s.
For example, Abstract Expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock got huge boosts through important exhibitions and other patronage.
Why? The Soviet Union, like Nazi Germany before it, officially disapproved of non-representational art. In that government’s view, non-representational art was morally degenerate—in other words, insufficiently propagandistic.
But we in the freedom-loving United States championed Abstract Expressionism and made it almost official in our towers of government and commerce, to the point where even people who did not like the style knew that it was High Art and above criticism.
Likewise jazz. There was no point in competing with the Soviet Union in the realm of classical music—their system identified talented musicians and ballet dancers young and trained them rigorously. They sent the best of the best on international tours, and the only problem was that sometimes the talent ran away (see, e.g., Mikhail Baryshnikov).
Soviet dissidents listened to jazz, so it was programmed on the Voice of America. And sending top American jazz musicians on world tours showed that we valued free artistic expression, etc. etc. and also, incidentally, that not all American Negroes were oppressed, an accusation frequently made by Soviet critics. We did also play up composers whom the Soviets did not like, such as Shostakovich.
It’s not exactly The Da Vinci Code, but sometimes there are indeed conspiracies behind world events.
It has always seemed to me that modern jazz began to lose its coolness cachet in the 1980s, and I cannot but think that such a loss was connected to the “winning” of the Cold War and the loss of secret funding. Abstract Expressionism has faded too, although whether the loss of secret support matters as much as the faddishness of the art world, I cannot say.
Who You Calling ‘Digressive’?
A review from the July 11-18, 2011, issue of The New Yorker. The Waterstons, in particular, should get more credit as early Pagan-friendly (or Pagan-inspiring) musicians.
Bollywood versus Desert Monotheism
A discussion (with lots of music and dancing) about why Bollywood movies are a devastating weapon against the more radical desert-father monotheisms.
There is some deeper resonance that [these movies] have, which is why people want them. . . . Young people in the Middle East are just lapping up Bollywood.
As I said earlier, Aphrodite will not be denied. Fight fire with hotness.
Gallimaufry with Book Porn
• “Interview, Chaos, Spiritual Machines, Circles, Readings, and Book Porn” at Plutonica.
• A Heathen-metal concert review at The Movement of Sound. (That is one genre you won’t hear on A Darker Shade of Pagan.)
• Anticipating a movie based on Neil Gaiman’s American Gods at The Witching Hour.
• Bo at The Cantos of Mvtabilitie lists favorite blogs, which must pass tests of both stylishness and spirituality.
This is Indo-European Music
Delhi 2 Dublin, playing and explaining panj-ab / Keltoi fusion music.
Wild Child, Full of Grace
Just watched Tom DiCillo’s documentary When You’re Strange.
Dionysos is a tough patron, and he leaves you, as the cowboys would say, “Rode hard and put up wet.”
Or dead.
But no one ever uses your music to sell cars.
Gallimaufry in Eden
• At the Religion in American History blog: What Puritans, Shakers, beer, and running shoes have in common.
• Is The Decembrists’ The King is Dead their most Pagan-friendly album? Laura at The Juggler thinks so.
• It is true that religion scholars go on and on about “the sacred.” So why is “the paranormal” not given equivalent attention?
• If I did not have the Interwebz available for checking, I would never have thought that these were actual book titles.
Quick Review: ‘Pagan Metal’
M. and I watched Pagan Metal: A Documentary (dir. Bill Zebub, 2009) Saturday night. It was flaccid. We gave up on it midway through. (Netflix has it.)
What we saw was primarily rambling interviews with members of three bands: Alan Averill of Primordial (Ireland), and musicians from Korpiklaani and Finntroll, both Finnish groups.
From these we gathered that what makes this latest subdivision of heavy metal music “Pagan” is that it incorporates (sometimes) folk tunes and folk instruments, although the interviewer seemed uninterested in discussing instrumentation or in discussing any folkish origins of the music in any detail. (A menber of Korpiklaani is quoted on Wikipedia as saying that they play “old people’s music with heavy metal guitars.”)
The term “Pagan metal” was also left unexamined as to any religious or political connotations that it might carry.
A person might think that a metal band augmented with a skin drum or bagpipes and some fur on the stage costumes was therefore performing “Pagan metal.”
Nor did Pagan Metal function well as a concert film, as much of it as we saw, as it provided only brief clips of live performances without much context.
This video is only for hardcore fans who want everything about Primordial, for instance.
The 14th Thing to Love about Pagans
Writing at Pantheon, “the Pagan blog at Patheos.com,” Star Foster lists “13 Things I LOVE about Pagans,” for example, “Smaller is Better” and “Many Gods, Few Masters.”
I agree with all of them. But I could add one more: “Borrowing” with both hands. Mad eclecticism.
It is illustrated by her embedded video of the “Celtic rock” band Coyote Run (American name, post-18th-century Scottish kilts) performing a musical version of Rudyard Kipling’s “A Tree Song” with no credit to him at all. (Maybe there is a credit in the printed liner notes—I hope so.)
Witches have been using that poem ritually since the 1960s, at least. You will find it in the Internet Book of Shadows.
As a newcomer to the Craft, I actually thought it was indeed old lore—a Pagan survivall! oral tradition!—instead of having been written by the India-born Kipling in the early 1900s, after he finally moved “home” to England. It was published in Puck of Pook’s Hill in 1906.
Because of this 14th characteristic, I just laugh when some earnest Pagan starts lecturing about “cultural appropriation.”