The program has been taken off the air. Thank you all for your great support over these years. However, you can still watch 9/11 Truth documentaries on the program I produce through the cable access channels 27 and 73 from Community TV of Santa Cruz County. The program "Rave On About 9/11" (from May 4, 2009) is now called "The Rave On Revue,"and will cover a wider range of topics. It's still cablecast on Mondays at 8 p.m. For Community TV schedule information, click link:
( a.k.a. Minister of Information & Culture for the Anarchist "Party of Eros." For more information, scroll below.)
The
office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise and to guide men by showing
them facts amid appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid
task of observation. –Emerson
Airs weekly on KUSP 88.9 FM and streams live on kusp.org, from 12 to 2 a. m. Mondays.
Program originally aired from 2 - 5 a.m. , hence the "... Till Dawn".
The RAVE ON program has three pages dedicated to
it: (1) "Rave On Till Dawn," (2) "Rave On About 9/11," (3) "Rave On
About Religion & Politics." This is the main page, which gives an
overview of the program concept. For the second and third pages, hold
mouse over "Rave On" (page 9) on index of pages to the left and the
page boxes will appear--click. The "Rave On About 9/11" page can also
be accessed by clicking the link in the bottom corner of this box. The "Rave On About Religion & Politics" page can also
be accessed by clicking on the "Net of Religion" image further down
below.
Rave on ... rave on thy Holy fool Down through the weeks of ages In the moss borne dark dank pools Rave on, down through the industrial revolution Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age Rave on down through time and space down through the corridors Rave on words on printed page Rave on, Rave one, Rave on, Rave On . . .
The Gypsy Scholar's radio program is appropriately named RAVE ON . . . "which I assume is simply permission to Rave about whatever comes to mind ...." (T.M.)
Re-Vision Radio's RAVE ON TILL DAWN Program is hosted by the GypsyScholar,with
flower in one hand (or name) and sword in the other. Thus, Everybody
Knows, it's "flower-power" radio--with the philosophic power of Blakean
"Staminal Virtue." Because it's Re-Vision Radio, the
program re-views--looks once again in-depth at--ideas, books, issues,
people in the news, religion and politics, movements and movies.
The format of Re-Vision Radio's RAVE ON TILL DAWN Program consists in either the Gypsy Scholar's "rave on words on printed page," or the raving on by other speakers through the pre-recorded medium--throwing down a 'rough music'. Given that the Gypsy Scholar believes in the transformational power of radio, the purpose of the program is to broadcast alternative views that
are not heard on mainstream media, in order to help listeners think
outside-the-box on the important issues facing us today and, therefore,
to help establish a more informed citizenry and to empower (yes,
"knowledge is power") the people to imagine and struggle for a
different world. Why? Well, because . . .
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows that the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That's how it goes Everybody knows...
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking Everybody knows that the captain lied Everybody got this broken feeling Like their father or their dog just died.... Everybody knows the deal is rotten Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton For your ribbons and bows And everybody knows....
Oh everybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows, Everybody knows, Everybody knows ....
(L. Cohen, 'Everybody Knows')
And
because it's a kind of
current events ("news and information") program with a mythopoetic twist, Everybody Knows, when listening to the "Rave On" program, we not only Rave
On--we (through 'rough music') Rock On!
(For description of 'rough music' see section below, "Music & Revolution".)
And Everybody Knows (who listens to the Rave On program), ever since the Sixties, Music & Revolution cannot be separated (which is why the freedom-fighting musicians against the apartheid regime of South Africa called their cause a "Revolution In Four-Part Harmony"). Therefore, the Rave On program, with "songs of freedom" in mind, would sing its revolutionary manifesto about the "beauty of our weapons."
Once more, since the Sixties, Everybody Knows that for Rave On Radio the term "Revolution" means not strictly political revolution, but the wider and deeper Anarchist cultural/spiritual revolution that is the "evolution of the mind"--the r/evolution that brings poetry and politics, activists and mystics, together (but not in the current new-age sense) in the great struggle for hearts and minds.
There may be times when what
is most needed is, not so much a new discovery or a new idea as a
different "slant;" I mean a comparatively slight readjustment in our
way of looking at the things and ideas on which attention is already
fixed. --Owen Barfield
By approaching the familiar from a different angle, we see the shape of the subject change dramatically. --William Irwin Thompson
We
are not contributing curiosities, but observations which no one has
doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always
before our eyes. --Ludwig Wittgenstein
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answer. --James Baldwin
The
trick of being a visionary is to slightly alter your vision as to
what's going on. The clue is to slightly change your perspective. --Terence McKenna
a vision of the Ideal World
Re-Vision Radio's RAVE ON TILL DAWN Program is dedicated to the (Anarchist) 1968 revolutionary proposition #1:
"All Power to the Imagination."
Thus, because "Everybody Knows that the good guys lost" (in the archetypal sense of history's "Beautiful Losers"), the Gypsy Scholar--in re-visioning radio--presents an alternative radio program that, in a medium so full of distracting noise, gives its listeners "time to think"--and, if deeply enough, time to . . . dream . . . to imagine.
Loneliness, tenderness, high society, notoriety.
You fight for the throne and you travel alone
Unknown as you slowly sink
And there's no time to think....
Memory, ecstasy, tyranny, hypocrisy
Betrayed by a kiss on a cool night of bliss
In the valley of the missing link
And you have no time to think....
Paradise, sacrifice, mortality, reality.
But the magician is quicker and his game
Is much thicker than blood and blacker than ink
And there's no time to think....
Equality, liberty, humility, simplicity.
You glance through the mirror and there's eyes staring clear
At the back of your head as you drink
And there's no time to think....
Warlords of sorrow and queens of tomorrow
Will offer their heads for a prayer.
You can't find no salvation, you have no expectations
Anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
Mercury, gravity, nobility, humility.
You know you can't keep her and the water gets deeper
That is leading you onto the brink
But there's no time to think....
Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism.
Fools making laws for the breaking of jaws
And the sound of the keys as they clink
But there's no time to think....
No time to choose when the truth must die,
No time to lose or say goodbye,
No time to prepare for the victim that's there,
No time to suffer or blink
And no time to think.
(Bob Dylan, 'No Time To Think')
the power of knowledge--"Staminal Virture"
"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought." (Emma Goldman)
"Now that we've spent twenty years getting in touch with our feelings, isn't about time we got in touch with our thoughts?" --J. Hillman
The Gypsy Scholar would remind listeners that in a milieu of new-age mystification, there's still a spiritual quest in the art of questioning.
“Ever since I can remember I wanted to be clever. Some people are born clever, the same way some people are born beautiful. I’m not one of those people. I’m going to have to work at it, put in the effort. And if I mess it up, I’ll learn from it. Besides, sometimes it’s not about knowing the right answer. Sometimes it’s about asking the right question.” (Brian Jackson, Starter For Ten, 2007. Set in the mid-Eighties, a romantic comedy about a working-class kid, struggling to make his way in the rarified world of an upper-class university.)
Mario Savio: Sicilian-American Saint of Free Speech
Re-Vision Radio's Rave On proposition #2: "The most beautiful thing in the world is free speech."
After you've had "time to think," there comes a time when you have tospeak out. You have to Rave On! The flower of thought becomes to sword of action. Therefore, Re-Vision Radio's Rave On program is dedicated to that ancient, democratic principle of "free speech," to which the Greek natural philosopher, Diogenes of Apollonia (c. 460 BC), gave the original concept, and to which Mario Savio (the patron saint of Raving On) gave new life in the Sixties as the principle of the Free Speech Movement
And Everybody Knows that in the civil life of a society there comes a "time" when . . .
Prophets, in the modern sense of the word, have never existed. . . . Every honest man is a Prophet; he utters his opinion both of private & public matters. . . . A Prophet is a Seer, not an Arbitrary Dictator.
… the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and the base man will avoid you.
If you account it Wisdom when you are angry to be silent and / Not to show it, I do not account that Wisdom, but Folly. / Every Man's Wisdom is peculiar to his own Individuality. —Blake
This Duty of forming and propagating one's opinions about the state of one's country we should exert at all times, but with particular ardor in seasons of public Calamity…. —Coleridge
Know that when all words are said / And a man is fighting mad, / Something drops from eyes long blind, / He completes his partial mind, / For an instant stands at ease / Laughs aloud, his heart at peace. —Yeats
On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure. —Oscar Wilde
The true revolutionary is motivated by great feelings of love. —Che Guevara
There comes a time when only anger is love. —Denise Levertov
To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards out of men. —Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I believe we have to be warriors. And whether it's writers or actors or rock-in-roll players or teachers or politicians, warriors are what interest me and what I aspire to. Talent is not as important as being a warrior, working to fight your battle. —Ken Kesey
"The problem is not civil disobedience, but civil obedience." —Howard Zinn
Perhaps the best a radio program host can hope to accomplish with free speech—especially when that program is RAVE ON—is to know that “something you heard on Monday changed the way you think about things on Tuesday.”
TOPICS & ISSUES
Covered on Program
Prometheus Unbound - the archetypal rebel
The Gypsy Scholar's favorite program topic:
Religion & Politics
"Are not Religion & Politics the same thing?" --William Blake
There
are those who say: "You seem to have taken sides" (in the political
struggle). The Gypsy Scholar replies: "Well, yes and no." The deeper politics makes one a spiritual revolutionary, and then one's party is not strictly partisan--neither "left" or "right"--but the para-political "Party of Eros," which is at once a political and a spiritual party. Thus the Party of Eros is part of the Eternal Underground Counter-culture in opposition to the dominator culture of Western civilization. "The underground is a lifestyle and subculture undergird with and sustained by psychic imagery." The
rallying cry for the Anarchist "Party of Eros" actually was the 1960's "All power
to the Imagination." As it invokes the Imaginatiion, it is also associated
with Blake's mythopoetic "Devil's Party:" "Note: The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's Party without knowing it." ( The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
This is why Allen Ginsberg has put it best: "Stand
up against governments, against God--the monotheist domination of
consciousness that insists on its own party line." (As
Ginsberg was a student of Blake, it must be Blake who influenced his
thoughts on this subject, for the "prophet against empire" condemned
what he called in his day--19th century--the conspiracy of church and
state: "The Abomination that maketh desolate, i.e. State Religion,
which is the source of all Cruelty.")
In this sense, yes, the Gypsy Scholar has indeed taken sides:
I'm on the side of the "Beautiful Losers," who are "always lost"--from
the Titans, (Milton's) Satan, the Romantics, to the Beats and Flower
Children--, since history is always told by the winners.
"The Titans were, by Orphic tradition, our sinful and perpetually defeated ancestors. The most cunning of them, Prometheus, whose name means 'prophetic,' separated mankind from the gods and then atoned for this dark gift by stealing fire from heaven and so ensuring man's survival. . . . The Promethean fire, in Blake and Shelley, comes naturally to represent the creating fire of the poet's shaping imagination."
Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions In music's most serene dominions ... (Shelley, "Prometheus Unbound")
Ophis et Ovum Mundanum
I'm on the side of Always Lost Against the side of heaven; I'm on the side of Snake-Eyes Tossed against the side of seven.
The Theocrats (since the beginning of empire) have now completely highjacked the only human institution that served the people for both a source of power and a means of escape (if not solace). After thousands of years, what was originally the Poetic Imagination became "Priesthood" and no longer served the spiritual needs (of what historians of religion call) the archaic "homo religiosos." From a weapon and solace against authoritarian oppression, it has become a weapon for that oppression.
William Blake's painting, "The Web of Religion," depicts his view of religion as the primary form of authoritarian control and oppression. In fact, in keeping with the Gypsy Scholar's view of Christianism as a spiritual disease (of the soul), Blake alternatively referred to religion as "the dark net of infection."
"Those who are cast out are All Those who, having no Passions of their own because No Intellect, Have spent their lives in Curbing & Governing other People's by the Various arts of Poverty & Cruelty of all kinds. Wo, Wo, Wo to you Hypocrites" --Blake, A Vision of the last Judgment
"It can be understood why Blake often used 'religion' as a smear word. The Orc [archetypal revolutionary] in him would 'scatter religion abroad to the four winds as a torn book, & none shall gather the leaves.' The Los [archetypal poet] in him declared: 'their God I will not worship in their Churches, nor King in their Theatres'; he would 'overthrow their cup, their bread, their altar-table, their incense & their oath, their marriage & their baptism, their burial & consecration', for their rituals have lost all meaning and are Antichrist' .... [Blake] thought that they [the Churches] had become corrupted almost past hope. Only the Divine Imagination, operating through the poet, could save them." (Damon, A Blake Dictionary)
William Blake's "The Web of Religion"
What Is The Party of Eros?
"We stand in the midst of an ancient war ... For the hearts, minds and souls of the sons of men. . . ."
In every age the political struggle for truth and justice requires an organized resistance to the tyranny of church and state. In our age, when the two-party system serves the oppressors, the people long for an alternative, "third party." The Gypsy Scholar has discovered the ideal "third party"--The Party of Eros.Though the Party of Eros has never been an officially recognized literal political party, it nonetheless exists in a virtual world of philosophico-political thought that informs any alternative real "party of ideas." In this sense, the Party of Eros manifests the best (19th-century) Anarchist principles, which bring together socialist and mystico-Romantic ideas.
Furthermore, in every struggle for truth and justice--and for an ideal society--there is a need not only for direct action (praxis) but also for theory and debate. Thus the need for intellectual workers on the front lines of the "Intellectual Battle" (Blake), since the deeper level of the political struggle is the one for hearts and minds. The Gypsy Scholar finds his political vocation here, with William Blake 's call to arms in the "Mental Fight." The Gypsy Scholar has "set ... [his] forehead[s] against the ignorant Hirelings" of the post-sixties counter-revolution, since he has recognized that in the arena of warfare, the counter-revolutionary's "spiritual warfare" is the more lethal. Hence, the Gypsy Scholar's assertion that the ultimate revolutionary is the Intellectual Revolutionary, who is about changing mind-sets; i.e., the attitudes and ideas that manifest, empower, and maintain the oppressive socio-political power structures. (As written of Nietzsche: "His warrior virtue applied more to the spirit than to the battlefield, and his heroes tended to be writers and artists rather than military or political leaders." In Blakean terms, the poet-prophet or warrior. Or in Ken Kesy's counter-culture terms: "I believe we have to be warriors. And whether it's writers or actors or rock-in-roll players or teachers or politicians, warriors are what interest me and what I aspire to. Talent is not as important as being a warrior, working to fight your battle.")
Historically speaking, the "Party of Eros" was that cadre of radical--anarchistic--political
theorists who were the architects of the 1960's Cultural Revolution.
(And the real political struggle comes down to the one about "culture." Hence it is no accident that the full force of the post-sixties counter-revolution is directed against the "counter-culture." The counter-revolutionaries on the Right know who or what the enemy is--and they go after it with a vengeance.) Therefore, the real political fight--i.e., "Mental Fight"--continues in the post-sixties "culture wars.") Thus, what has been called the "Party of Eros," the Gypsy Scholar re-visions as the only party that could fill the void of a viable "third party " in the American political landscape. However, it would be simultaneously a political and a spiritual party, one dedicated to visionary ideas--bringing together the poets and politicos, the mystics and the activists. (This is because of the largely unnoticed legacy of the 19th-century socialist- and mystic0-anarchists.) Thus the "Party of Eros" would be exactly the desired "party of ideas" (R. Nader) and the "new paradigm party" (D. Sheehan) of the postmodern period. If the "Party of Eros" were such, The Gypsy Scholar (as its Minister of Information & Culture) re-visions it as a revival of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Idealist Party" (of Soul):
In Emersonian terms, the "Dreamers" made up the "Idealist party” of the 1830's election, only party that had gained ground in the panic of those years; for the established political parties and their platforms had failed, exposing the fiction of the American commitment to a practical world that ruled affairs by discernable laws. The silver lining to the dark could of pessimism with American pragmatism was that it made possible for this “American Platonist” to construct a philosophical rainbow bridge back to his brothers-in-arms, Socrates & Plato, in order to create “a new metaphysic for democracy.” In other words, Plato's idea of innate ideas and the autonomy of soul proved that the “Assertions of the primacy of inborn values and affirmations of the individual's ability to control his destiny rather than submit to it could, in the breakdown of the economy, no longer dismissed as crackpot.” (Emerson) That Emerson's party of “idealists” were Plato's idealists of soul—that is, those who claimed the inseparability of philosophy and love (eros)—is supported by his notebook entry of the same year, in which he proclaims that “those who jeered and chirped and were so well pleased with themselves and made merry with the dream as they termed it of philosophy & love:
Behold they are all flat and here is the Soul erect and unconquered still!"
"Ah, the Dreamers ride against the men of action / Oh see the men of action falling back!" [Leonard Cohen]
Romantic Total Revolution
Hey, y'all, these are serious times we're livin' in G And the New World Order is about to begin-- Ya know what I'm sayin'. Now the question is: Are you ready for the real revolution, Which is the evolution of the Mind?
('He Got Game/For What It's Worth,' Public Enemy & Stephen Stills)
"Satan in His Original Glory" (Blake-1805). The original/archetypal revolutionary
"Romantic Total Revolution"
It was the German Romantic philosopher Schiller who first coined the term “total revolution,” in an effort to give a name to the flashpoint where art/poetry and politics fuse. Thus it was an aesthetic revolution in the widest sense of that term: “The construction of true political freedom,” declared Schiller, represents “the most perfect of all works achieved by the art of man.” (Marcuse brings Schiller’s thesis of “play” as an epistemological concept into 1960s political theory.) "Total Revolution" was also the synergy of the political and the religious (i.e., metaphysical or spiritual, but in a more mythopoetic way than envisioned by the religious Left today). The Romantics embodied this “total revolution” in a “new mythus” (Carlyle) or overarching worldview. This “new mythus” created a “synergy between politics and the new religion.” Blake, however, was more outspoken: “Are not Religion & Politics the Same thing!”
Thus, this Romantic "total revolution" is what the sixties counter-cultural Left called "cultural revolution" (or r/evolution), as opposed to a strictly "political" revolution. And it is this Cultural Revolution that is the real r/evolution or, to put it another way, that is the highest form of political revolution. This being so, the "culture wars," which the reactionary Right (since everything post-sixties is simply the counter-revolution) is so dead-set on winning, are (for the Party of Eros) the continuation of politics by other means--the means of the Imagination. ("All Power to the Imagination!"). Thus the "culture wars" are where real revolution is happening. And the only party that is about this is The Party of Eros, which Emerson called "The Idealist Party"--the only party that represented the American Soul.
A note about the Gypsy Scholar's radio essay (previously broadcast for the 4th of July), to inform listeners as to the origin and nature of the "Party of Eros" (to which the GS has been appointed "Minister of Culture & Information")
"Romantic Total Revolution: the Democracy of Soul & the Goddess of Liberty"
The Arts & Sciences of Imagination are the Destruction of Tyrannies or Bad Governments. Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Governed the Nations. –Blake
Prophets, in the modern sense of the word, have never existed. . . . Every honest individual is a Prophet; he or she utters their opinion both of private & public matters. . . . A Prophet is a Seer, not an Arbitrary Dictator. –Blake
This Duty [of forming and propagating one's opinions about the state of one's country] we should exert at all times, but with particular ardor in seasons of public Calamity, when there exists an Evil of such incalculable magnitude as the present war. –Coleridge
The Gypsy Scholar's essay, "Romantic Total Revolution: the Democracy of Soul & the Goddess of Liberty," wove together the ancient Neoplatonic tradition of polis and eros, the modern Romantic tradition of the democratized poet-prophet and magical politics, and the anarcho-romantic spirit of the 1960s that united the political and sexual revolution, as expressed in the comingling of protest song with love song. The main concern of the essay, given the desperate state of our “democracy” today, was to outline a neglected "metaphysic of democracy" by recalling, through Romantic dreamers such as Emerson and Whitman, the archaic, visionary, and ecstatic roots of American democracy--a democracy of soul. Once more, the essay envisioned the reunion of poetry and politics—that is, the poetic tradition of imagination with the political tradition of democracy. This bringing together of poetry and politics (mythopoetics and political theory), or mysticism and activism, is and is not what some of the religious-minded on the Left are envisioning when they call for a "politics informed by religious values" or "a more spiritual politics." Therefore, in these dark
times of crisis and despair, the essay attempted, by picking up the fallen
standard of the historical lost cause of the Romantics—“Beautiful
Losers”—, the same project as the Romantic Essay of the nineteenth
century: “to revive in the reader the original passionate response of
hope and conviction of justice,” and the “human passion for justice and
for faith in the victory of the good.” In this dark time, then, the essay took seriously the Romantic notion that "”the great instrument of moral good is the imagination,” hence “a man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively” —and, since the poet is the man or woman who has more Imagination than others, “the poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Thus, in these dark times, the essay attempted to remind Re-Vision
Radio listerners that Blake declared the function of the poet is to
keep “the Divine Vision in time of trouble.”
Here's the Gypsy Scholar's conclusion to that essay--one that coincides with the Sixties "Party of Eros" and its vision of the union of politics and love--the sexual- and the political revolution ("make love not war"); expressed in comingling protest song with love song:
It’s coming through a hole in the air, / from those nights in Tiananmen Square… // It’s coming to America first, / the cradle of the best and of the worst. / It's here they got the range / and the machinery for change / and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst. / It's here the family's broken / and it’s here the lonely say / that the heart has got to open / in a fundamental way. / Democracy is coming to the U.S.A… // It's coming from the woman and the men. / O baby, we'll be making love again. / We'll be going down so deep /that the river's going to weep, /and the mountain's going to shout Amen! / Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. / It’s coming like the tidal flood / beneath the lunar sway, / imperial, mysterious, / in amorous array: / Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. ––Leonard Cohen, ‘Democracy’
Therefore, if "democracy is coming to the U.S.A.," but "coming . . . in amorous array," then the political/spiritual party which will facilitate this democratic/amorous comingling will be the Sixties Party of Eros.
A Note on The Party of Eros and the Principle of Joy: Putting the Party Back Into Party-Politics
The next generation needs to be told that the real fight is not the political fight, but to put an end to politics. From politics to meta-politics. From politics to poetry. Legislation is not politics, nor philosophy, but poetry. Poetry, art, is not an epiphenomenal reflection of some other (political, economic) realm which is the “real thing”. . . . Poetry, art, imagination, the creator spirit is life itself; the real revolutionary power to change the world; to change the human body. . . . To begin to dance; who can tell the dancer from the dance; it is the impossible unity and union of everything. (N. O. Brown)
The Gypsy Scholar—as mythopoetic-activist for the 1960s Party of Eros—is dedicated to "putting the "putting the party back into party-politics," since the Party of Eros is
a philosophical- and political party, and a all-night party all in one.
(The Party of Eros has its origins (1) in that all-night
erato-philosophical discussion-party held in ancient Greece
(symposium), (2) Blake's Devil's Party," and (3) Emerson's
transcendentalist "Idealist Party." It is the real "Party of Ideas," of
which Nader's defunct campaign party was a cheap imitiation). If the
Gypsy Scholar's idea of "putting the party back into party-politics" sounds too silly to be any part of the serious business our
political struggle, think again. Let us consider one prominent
political activist's serious proposition.
Giving the keynote
address of the annual 2004 Mario Salvio Memorial Lecture in celebration
of the Free Speech Movement’s 40th anniversary, Ms. Molly Ivins had
this important message to pass on to today’s college activists before she passed on:
“You people need to work harder at having fun. You are fun-challenged.”
Thus,
by "putting the party back in party-politics,” is meant the advocating of the unabashed necessity
for art, poetry, and music in dark times—especially in dark times. If
the Gypsy Scholar needs historical precedent for Ms. Ivans’ notion of
politics—what he terms as a “joyous politics"—, it can be found in the
tradition of Romantic anarcho-socialism. (We can certainly see the
incorporation of the principle of eros in the
spirit Sixties, because it can be traced to the
19th-century Romantic anarchists, who seem to be the first to have a
comprehensive and consistent doctrine of the unity of art and politics.
William Blake and William Morris are the outstanding exemplars of this
view.) It is here—in the interface between revolution, art, poetry, and
music—that can be found an ignored tradition. The spirit of the
sixties owes much to it, if not in a theoretical way, then directly by
temperament, since that spirit is essentially anarchic in the best
sense of the term. And the anarchist persona who most stands out as
embodying a proto-sixties spirit in early twentieth-century America,
even as far as advocating “free-love,” is, of course, Emma Goldman. Her
poem, “To Hell With The Revolution If I Can't Dance,” perfectly fits
"putting the party back into party-politics."
Out of wild pockets through spiraling light into ardent worlds she searches for him, humming
I am your match, your mate, your other self, the dark inside where sight fails.
They meet, he invites her to the dance and their myth begins. . . .
For a model of the "politics of joy," then, we can look back to that
blend of the New Left politics and Counter-Culture consciousness that
coalesced in the Sixties, which used music, poetry, art, street
theater, and do-it-yourself spirituality to effect social change. One recalls the
outrageous fun some counter-cultural revolutionaries—like the Yippies—had in doing politics.
But it isn't just the sixties Yippies of another political era, or even
the Marx Brothers-like pie-throwing Pastry Partisans of our political
moment, who embody the principle of "joyous politics." Indeed, we can
look to a serious Marxist school of political theorists advocating the
unabashed necessity for art, poetry, and music. The Gypsy Scholar's
call for the reunion of politics, love, and poetry/music—and thus for a
parapolitics of imagination and joy—has it point of departure in what
one sociologist calls the group of visionary political theorists of the
sixties—the “Party of Eros.” It has been said that “If fear and
destructiveness are the major emotional sources for fascism, then eros belongs
mainly to democracy.” Of course, to the traditional Marxist theorist,
this spirit is naïve, utopian, and, ultimately, counter-revolutionary.
However, not all Marxists think dogmatically alike, especially if they are from the "Party of Eros." Thus, by "putting the party back in party-politics,” is meant the advocating of the unabashed necessity for art, poetry, and music in dark times—especially in dark times. "Putting the party back in party-politics" means what Marcuse meant he he advocated replacing the dominant reality-principle ruling socio-political relations with the values of the pleasure-principle—"play, enjoyment, sensuousness, beauty, contemplation, spiritual liberation." (These values go back to the Romantic notion of "Total Revolution" and its engine of aesthetic joy as a philosophical principle.)
Therefore, the Gypsy Scholar-—in re-visioning the relationship between poetry and politics through the Romantic “total revolution"—is here to tell his listening audience on the Left that real social/spiritual transformation is inspired not exclusively by the spirit of Marx, but primarily by the archetype of Orpheus—“the image of joy and fulfillment; the voice which does not command but sings.” The Gypsy Scholar has seen the return of Orpheus, the repressed culture-hero; returning to establish a new politics; a parapolitics that unites the friendly foes of the sixties—those of the New Left, on one side, and those of the hippy counter-culture, on the other, bringing together spirituality and social activism in a more imaginative way than has, by and large, been advocted by the new-age spiritual community.
In conclusion, if "putting the party back in party-politics" is essentially a reunion of imagination, art, and politics (in the Blakean sense: "The Arts & Sciences of Imagination are the Destruction of Tyrannies or Bad Governments. Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Governed the Nations"), then we should leave it to an art historian to identify the enduring potency this Romantic spirit of the Sixties:
Yesterday
the poltergeist was throwing plates in the kitchen, tomorrow it may
turn up in the hall—you don't know. It's a very durable spirit, and
it’s hard to exorcise. But it loves everything that is contrary,
extravagant, and free. And its very cussedness, its perversity, is a
form of innocence—declaration of hope. (Robert Hughes)
"Freedom or Death" (Regnault-1794)
"The Glad Day-Albion" (Blake-1794)
Re-Vision Radio's Rave On Spiritual/Political Manifesto
The Arts & Sciences of Imagination are the Destruction of Tyrannies or Bad Governments. Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Governed the Nations. –William Blake
Appear to the Americans upon the cloudy night. . . . And so the Princes fade from earth, scare seen by souls of men, / But tho’ obscur’d, this is the form of the Angelic land. –William Blake, America: A Prophecy
Bringing to apperception all music, all literature, all art, and everthing--all high and popular culture--to manifest the Soul--"Soul-making"--, we of the anarcho-mystical (in the anarchist tradition of Gustav Landauer)Party of Eros (part of the Eternal Underground Romantic Opposition to Western dominator civilization) propose to unite all mytho-mystical traditions into one synchronistic, rhythmic, orgasmic and synergistic whole, using the Orphic-Linguistic- PoeticGenuis-Psychotropic Imaginal Mind. With this Neo-Anarcho-Romantic transcendental vision--the "Beautiful Vision"--, we who are on the side of the "Beautiful Losers" of history ("on the side of Always Lost") further propose to engage in the Blakean "Mental Fight" to overthrow the two-headed monster of church-and- state (the Magisterium of the New World Order) and in its place establish the community or City of Art, which is the total (spiritual) form of all human culture. This will come to pass when all imaginative and creative acts in time reach such a novel pitch of intensity that they build a permanent structure above time and, when complete, its scaffolding (nature) will be knocked away and a transformed humanity (Albion) will live in it. This, according to ancient, esoteric writings, will be the emanation or total created achievement of Albion. To this anarcho-utopian end, we vow to support our "visionary company" of Romantic poet-prophets (or "Romantic Outsiders") who reside in the Watchtower of Art--the Tower of Song--where they "hear those funny voices" as they muse upon the imaginative vision of human life. Hence, we of the Party of Eros --we who claim to be both mystics and polticos--view all revolutionary struggles as necessary preludes to the ultimate revolution (the "Romantic Total Revolution")--the (r)evolution of the mind and its transformation in a utopian society free of both exploiters and the exploited. Therefore, we of theParty of Eros (a para-political party) see its function in this dark time as keeping the faith of all the Dreamers of the human family, with its "Singers and Keepers of the Dream." Those 19th-century Romantic “wild-eyed social philosophers" are the inspiration of the Gypsy Scholar, who would echo the desire of Edgar Allen Poe: ". . . I would like to surrender myself to the dreamers . . ."
In other words, the Gypsy Scholar strives to keep faith with the archaic and modern Poet-Shamans; for, as William Blake (poet-prophet extraordinaire) declared, the function of the poet-prophet is to keep “the Divine Vision in time of trouble.” And since we of the Party of Eros incorporate the philosophy of Anarcho-Primitivism, we recognize our own poet-prophet, Walt Whitman, who saw America as the most poetical of all countries ("The Americans of all nations at any time on the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature"), as expressing the Anarcho-Primitivist ideal. For Whitman, democracy is mystical and primeval: “I speak the pass-word primeval—I give the sign of democracy.” Whitman’s “Democratic Vistas” is evidence of this in its advocation of a new brotherhood of man in terms of the mystic unity of all creation: “the divine central idea of All.” With this vision of democracy as primitive mystic unity, Whitman made his poetic intention to sing “the true song of the Soul.” And Whitman's fellow visionaries, Emerson and Thoreau, also had a philosophical and mystical sense of democracy. For example, Emerson’s ideal government is a democracy of soul, which was the positive side of his anarchist sense of the best American government as "no-government." Therefore, we of theParty of Eroskeep the faith in the utopian, Anarcho-Romantic Dream:
"But, as man has locked within him, hidden from the public gaze, this diviner part, it is true that human society has within itself concealed from our common view a nobler part composed of the idealists and dreamers of all ages and of all races who have been bound together by their common vision of man's necessity. This is the secret empire of the poets, this is the order of the Unknown Philosophers, this is the Brotherhood of the Quest. And never will these dreamers cease their silent working until that dream is perfected in our daily life. They are resolved that the Word made flesh shall become the Word made Soul."
"The dreamers and idealists of all ages and all races," then, would include Martin Luther King Jr. in our time, who declared that "America is a dream . . ."
And if the "Dream" is a "World made Soul," then, the ideal goes back to Emerson and his "Idealist Party" (the Gypsy Scholar's "Party of Eros") of the 1830s; the "dream of philosophy and love," which was jeered at and ridiculed by the men of action in Emerson's time. Yet, in the end, Emerson's dream had its moment of glory, and the founder of America's "Idealist Party" got the last laugh:
"Behold they are all flat and here is the Soul erect and unconquered still!"
And just when the tyranny of political realism seems to have erased all memory of that moment of poetic justice and won the day in America, it resurfaces today:
"Ah, the Dreamers ride against the men of action Oh see the men of action falling back!" [Leonard Cohen] Thus, we of theParty of Eros (both a spiritual and political party), in anticipation of a democratic Anarcho-Primitive "archaic revival," hear "the true song of the soul;" the "Song of Liberty" that Blake (of "The Devil's Party") sang: "EMPIRE is No More!"
"The Sword For Justice"
"Joan of Arc Kisses the Sword of Liberation"
Music & Revolution
Music as a Social & Political Force
Revolution In Four-Part Harmony
Revolution in Four-Part Harmony
Music was so essential to the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa that the freedom fighters called their struggle "revolution in four-part harmony." Among the famous South African musicians who took part in the freedom struggle were Miriam Makeba, Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masakela, Vusi Mahlasela and others. It is also important to know the primary role reggie music played in the freedom struggle. Thus Bob Marley (who wanted to use the anti-virus of music and love to heal social ills like racism) and other reggie musicians were an inspiration to the anti-Apartheid activist musicians of the 80s and 90s, like Lucky Phillip Dube. The power of these musicians for revolutionary change is attested to in their being banned during Apartheid.
"The thing that saved us was music," says one of the many activists interviewed in director Lee Hirsh's Amandla!, "it was part of liberating ourselves". Ten years in development, this fascinating and compelling documentary tells the story of South Africa's apartheid regime from the perspective of the musicians who composed, played and sang songs of freedom, revolution and change.
The Singing Revolution
"The Singing Revolution" is a commonly used name for events between 1987 and 1990 that led to the restoration of the independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The term was coined by an Estonian activist and artist, Heinz Valk, in an article published a week after the June 10-11 1988 spontaneous mass night-singing demonstrations at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds.
After World War II the Baltic States had been fully incorporated into the USSR after military occupation and annexation in 1940. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev introduced "glasnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (restructuring). Glasnost rescinded limitations on political freedoms in the Soviet Union, which led to problems within the non-Russian nations occupied unlawfully in the build-up to war in the 1940s. Hitherto unrecognized issues previously kept secret by the Moscow government were admitted to in public, causing dissatisfaction within the Baltic States. Towards the end of the 1980s, massive demonstrations against the Soviet regime began after widespread liberalization of the regime to take into account national sensitivities.
On 14 May 1988, the first expression of national feeling occurred during the Tartu Pop Music Festival. "Five patriotic songs" were first performed during this festival. People linked their hands together and a tradition had begun. In June the Old Town Festival was held in Tallinn, and after the official part of the festival, the participants moved to the Song Festival Grounds and similarly started to sing patriotic songs together spontaneously. On 26-28 August 1988, the Rock Summer Festival was held, and patriotic songs, composed by Alo Mattiisen, were played. On 11 September 1988, a massive song festival, called "Song of Estonia", was held at the Tallinn Song Festival Arena. This time nearly 300,000 people came together, more than a quarter of all Estonians. On that day political leaders were participating actively, and were for the first time insisting on the restoration of independence.
On 16 November the legislative body of Estonia issued the Declaration of Sovereignty. From 1987, a cycle of mass demonstrations featuring spontaneous singing eventually collected 300,000 Estonians in Tallinn to sing national songs and hymns that were strictly forbidden during the years of the Soviet occupation, as Estonian rock musicians played. The Singing Revolution lasted over four years, with various protests and acts of defiance. In 1991, as Soviet tanks attempted to stop the progress towards independence, the Estonian Supreme Soviet together with the Congress of Estonia proclaimed the restoration of the independent state of Estonia and repudiated Soviet legislation. People acted as human shields to protect radio and TV stations from the Soviet tanks. Through these actions Estonia regained its independence without any bloodshed. Independence was declared on the late evening of August 20 1991, after an agreement between different political parties was reached. In the next morning Soviet troops, according to Estonian TV, attempted to storm Tallinn TV Tower but were not successful. The Communist hardliners' coup attempt failed amid mass pro-democracy demonstrations in Moscow led by Boris Yeltsin.
________________________
The Estonian rock music scene saw its beginnings in the mid-sixties during Khruschev's thaw in the Soviet Union and the rise of British bands all over the world. The first Estonian rock-groups were primarily high-school bands playing cover versions of the current UK Top 10. Despite the lack of official support from Soviet authorities (rock music was seen as undesirable Western influence) some of these groups, posing as dance music bands in various clubs, gained a large underground following. Some groups managed to make proper studio recordings and appear a couple of times on television. During the late sixties and early seventies, as both rock and roll and the young Estonian musicians aged, the music became much more complex. Progressive rock, with hard rock influences, began to become more prevalent in Estonia. Musicians from the sixties, who continued their musical career either became established pop-stars or became interested in progressive rock. So-called progressive or intellectual rock was a way to prove to the Soviet authorities that rock music could have a deeper meaning. During the seventies Estonian bands began touring in the Soviet Union, some of them becoming quite popular. The early eighties saw the rise of punk rock in Estonia. This rise could be described as back to the basics. Much like early Estonian rock music was a copy of the UK Top 10 back in the sixties, the new Estonian punk music was highly influenced by UK77 and UK82 raw punk rock. American bands were unreachable. And like rock music in the sixties punk rock was highly disliked by the Soviet authorities. Besides punk rock, the Estonian rock scene in the eighties had its own answer to everything that was going on in the free world—heavy metal, new romantics, and synthpop. However there was a few years of delay between the Estonian scene and the rest of the world. Despite this, Estonia remained a step ahead of the rest of the Soviet Union.
The Velvet Revolution & The Plastic People of the Universe
The "Velvet Revolution" (November 16 – December 29, 1989) refers to a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that saw the overthrow of the Communist government. It is seen as one of the most important of the Revolutions of 1989. And it was a rock band that was the catalyst for the peaceful overthrow of the communist regime.
The term “Velvet Revolution” was coined by a journalist after the first events and it caught on in world media and eventually in Czechoslovakia. The media, riding on an infotainment wave, saw this success and started the tradition of inventing and assigning a poetic name to similar events. It is believed that the term originated from the various communist opposition groups which met in theaters such as the Laterna Magika, velvet referring to the velvet ropes found in all these theaters. Another, but less popular theory, is that the revolution took its name from The Velvet Underground, an influential American rock and roll band. Václav Havel is great fan of the Velvet Underground, and is a friend of Lou Reed, who was the principal singer-songwriter of the group. This theory carries some merit as Frank Zappa (whom Havel was also a lifelong fan of), was asked by Havel to serve as consultant for the government on trade, cultural matters and tourism.
The Plastic People of the Universe was the name of perhaps the greatest obscure rock band of all time and their incredible story ranks as one of the truest examples of artistic perseverance and art imitating life in the entire history of Rock and Roll. Formed in 1968 following the Soviet invasion of their beloved Czechoslovakia, the Plastic People of the Universe suffered immeasurably for their simple desire to make their own music. The band's repertoire drew heavily on songs by the Velvet Underground and the Fugs.
The story of the Velvet Revolution begins, of course, with the Beatles and 1964. It is imperative to understand that Beatlemania was not an isolated event limited to America and the United Kingdom. Young people throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had their lives changed by John Lennon and the Beatles. Since the beginning of the Cold War, kids from the eastern side of the Iron Curtain had hungered for all things American as an escape from their cultural isolation. American jazz had served this purpose in the late 1940's through the fifties. The gates were then kicked open by Elvis and Bill Haley, but it was the Beatles who brought down the wall.
The early to mid-sixties were undoubtedly an exciting time in Czechoslovakia. And now, boring, predictable socialist life under Communist rule was suddenly injected with a jolt of democracy in its purest form: rock and roll! Thousands of "garage" bands were born in Czechoslovakia in the mid-sixties; hundreds in Prague alone. The kids went nuts in response to the Beatles, and the Big Beat, or "bigbit" as the Czechs called it, era began.
Though John Lennon never visited Prague, he was a hero of the underground rock subculture and a symbol for the city's youth in their pacifistic revolt that brought down the Communist state. Beatles music will continue to be heard under the iron boot of neo-Stalinism despite the threat of imprisonment. In 1974 The Plastic People of the Universe illegally distribute tapes of their own avant-garde music in a self-made album titled "Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned." Copies are smuggled to London and the group starts to gain notoriety in the west as a "dissident" rock group. Back home, Plastic People play mostly for their friends at secret parties. In Autumn, 1976 at the height of the darkest period of "normalization," The Plastic People of the Universe are arrested by the Communist secret police for performing at a private party. They are charged with "subversive activities against the state." More arrests are made of the band's followers. Stimulated by the trial and persecution of The Plastic People camp, young dissidents write a petition titled "Charter 77" to protest the lack of human rights in their country. The leaders of the Charter 77 movement include a dissident playwright named Vaclav Havel, who will go on to lead his country's non-violent revolution against Communism in 1989 and become the first post-Communist president in Prague. Havel describes himself as an enormous fan of Lennon, the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and The Plastic People of the Universe. In January 1, 1977 ”Charter 77” published in western newspapers. Crackdown against signatories launched by authorities in Prague. Havel is among those who are imprisoned. He spends more than five years in prison. In March, 1977 Jan Patocka, a leading dissident philosopher in the Charter 77 movement, dies during an interrogation by the secret police. The Plastic People of the Universe credit Patocka as one of their "artistic directors."
The Plastic People would "demonstrate" the songs of the Velvet Underground for a couple of hours. Eventually, the government caught on and these shows were canceled. The Plastics remained Prague's leading psychedelic band until January 1970 when their nonconformity led to the government revoking their professional license. Authorities claimed their music was "morbid" and
would have a "negative social impact", and they were totally banned
from playing for the public. The band was forced underground until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Unable to perform openly, an entire underground cultural movement formed around the band during the 1970s.
Three days before the end of the decade, on December 29, 1989, Vaclav Havel became President of Czechoslovakia and began replacing the Communist officials in his office with his friends including other Czech dissidents and rock musicians. In January of 1990, just as the new democracy had begun, Frank Zappa flew to Prague at the invitation of Havel, one of his greatest fans. Another historic meeting was that between Havel and Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed, who had traveled to Prague in 1990 to interview Havel. In Prague Castle, Reed presented Havel with a copy of his latest album as Havel unfolded the incredible story of the Plastic People to an awed Lou Reed, explaining how influential the Velvet Underground and rock music had been in the Velvet Revolution. Later that night, Reed was taken to a club where a band was playing. As Reed recalled, "I suddenly realized the music sounded familiar. They were playing Velvet Underground songs, beautiful, heartfelt, impeccable versions of my songs. To say I was moved would be an understatement." The band was Pulnoc. Reed joined them on stage as they performed for Havel and 300 of his friends. After the concert, an ecstatic Havel introduced Reed to his friends, most of them former dissidents, as they recalled reciting Reed's lyrics in prison for comfort and inspiration.
In late 1977 an essay written in English accompanies a western release of a Plastic People's tape smuggled to London. The essay reveals the intellectual nature of the group to western audiences. "For making music and playing for their fans and friends at small, usually private concerts, the band along with others in the Czech underground movement, are treated by their own government as criminals and subversives out to undermine the morals of young people and hasten the collapse of socialism in Czechoslovakia. Because of the political nature of the repression directed against them, The Plastic People of the Universe are referred to in western media as 'dissident.' But unlike most eastern European dissident movements, the group feel that any dialogue with a totalitarian regime is doomed from the start, so they turn their back on it. Instead of trying to talk to the regime to ask for more freedom, they simply behave as though they already are free." The essay downplays "excessive claims of revolutionary power within rock," but admits that the music "as an aesthetic art form does have the power to alter consciousness and create a new type of mentality."
The rock band from Prague, The Plastic People of the Universe (PPU), was the foremost representative of Prague's underground culture (1968-1989). This avant-garde group went against the grain of the Communist regime, and due to its non-conformism was forced underground and eventually imprisoned. The Plastic People were ultimately a major catalyst to the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe. The poets, artists, writers, and intellectuals around Havel began their insurgency in defending The Plastic People of the Universe and ended up overthrowing the communist regime. History would most surely have been very different without them. Apart from the aforementioned Beatles and the Velvet Underground, there's not a lot of rock and roll bands you can say that about.
"You start out defending a rock band and you end
up bringing down a dictatorship—and who could have predicted it?" –Paul
Loeb (on Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia)
Music & Social Change
These quotations demonstrate the 1960's convergence of rock music and revolutionary rhetoric.
I thought I was going to change the world and get everyone to think the way I thought—and music was the way to do it! —Cynthia Weil (Tin Pan Alley songwriting partner of Barry Man)
The fact is that you need hard times for the best music to come out. —Keith Richards (Rolling Stones)
I think that in times of great unrest music becomes a more important thing, you know. —Charlie Hunter (Jazz musician)
These are singing movements. They have songbooks; Earth First, just like the Wobblies. —Utah Phillips
It was then I realized that a song could change people's minds more than hours of political speeches. –Edsel Matthews (Concepts Arts S.F.)
Music has always gone along with great movements; there are no great movements that do not have music. Even as early as this song was, it was helping to create the music for a movement. (Introduction to documentary, Strange Fruit, from song of same name.)
No account of the role the imagination played in the civil rights community can exclude music. It lifted people’s spirits, connected them to something larger than themselves, and helped them withstand the constant threat of violence and terror. (Black Civil Rights Organizer)
When we look closely at jazz, or the blues, foe example, we see a profound sense of the tragic linked to human agency. This music does not wallow in a cynicism or a paralyzing pessimism, but it also is realistic enough not to project excessive utopia. It responds in an improvisational, undogmatic, creative way to circumstances, helping people to survive and thrive. –Cornel West
These are terrible times and it’s hard to make it without music and poetry." (Programmer on a community radio station introducing the following song:) "Find your strength my brothers and sisters in this song . . . . / And when the storm rages mighty all around you, / And you want to give up / Open up your heart and let it sing.
We know that you cannot win the revolution without music as well. (Programmer on a community radio station)
Our generation secretly knew that music and political revolution were inextricably connected, and how we believed that music could change the world. (NPR radio essayist reminiscing about 1960s)
You can’t be a ghost, you’ve got to be a spirit. And when the Spirit comes it will descend in song. (The poet to the politician in movie Bulworth)
JS: So what is essentially the Song of the Sixties, tell me? JC: The Song of the Sixties is really the liberation of the individual from the overwhelming confines or power of society to mold you into an artificial person to fit into an artificial role. That’s what you have to do: You have to find yourself, and to find yourself you have to break free from—and first of all you have to identify what’s holding you back—and then you have to break free from those forces that are trying to turn you into an artificial person. JS: And it’s the choice always of love over power. JC: Yes, it’s always that choice. Like Albrecht has to foreswear love to dive down and steal the ring, you see. You have to foreswear power and seek for love and genuineness. JS: “The Eternal Feminine leads us on,” as Goethe says. (From radio interview with James Clark, The Spirit of Revolt and the Quest for Freedom in the Cinema of the 60’s)
I wanted to take time to meditate and honor the dead. I went to the Zen Center yesterday meditated for some time, and I’ve just been in a period of mourning. And I feel that its really important that we pause . . . staying with those feelings that are going to be our guide in the days and weeks and months to come. And so the events that we have planned are events that are in that mold. . . . The concert will be to honor, to celebrate, to stand, to dance, and to sing our love to those who have lost their lives to terrorism all over the planet, and in multicultural solidarity against hatred. We’re going to be taking this step of action to express our commitment to our ancestors and to the generations to come, and to work towards finding new roads for peace and justice in the world. And today, this afternoon, we’re going to be playing songs. I’m going through our memory banks of songs and trying to select songs of unity, songs that bring people together, to acknowledge or diversity, our humanity, our strengths, songs of patience and spirituality. And, of course part of that spirituality is being able to move your body and getting up and dance. And so we’ll be playing some songs that are joyful. And we decided to use this time as a time to try to center ourselves, and we know that as the weeks and months ahead come there will be much time to look at things and examine the political aspects of it. But we want to make sure that whatever political means we use is coming from our heart, and respectful of the seven generations before us and is respectful generations to come. —Michael Franti (Spearhead)
Rough Music & Revolution
Because the Gypsy Scholar would Rave On not "without a melody to sing," he also does Rant & Roll to the tune of a "Rough Music."
What is Rough Music?
“‘Rough music’ is the term which has been generally used in England since the end of the seventeenth century to denote a rude cacophany, with or without more elaborate ritual, which usually directed mockery or hostility against individuals who offended against certain community norms.” --E. P. Thompson, Customs In Common
"Rough music" is an old Sussex (English) term for expressing popular outrage. Under a variety of local names and differing methods, rough music was the main customary way in which members of a community expressed displeasure at transgressions of societal norms. The term "rough music” reflects the almost universal element of noise—participants would bang on old kettles, saucepans, or shovels, blow on whistles, cow-horns, wave rattles, shout and bawl—anything to make a loud and discordant noise. The other regular feature of “rough music” was the parading of effigies of the guilty parties through the streets (an occasion providing the opportunity for much ribald humor), after which these effigies would usually be burnt. Examples are recorded regularly from the 16th century onwards. These proceedings could be seen as great fun or highly frightening mob behavior, depending on whether you were on the performing side or receiving end. Coined in the late 17th century, the phrase is the British equivalent of the French charivari, the Italian scampanate and the German haberfeld-treiben, thierjagen and katzenmusik. "Rough music" is clearly related to continental customs, of which the French Charivari is probably the best known. Charivari is one of the many names (which vary from country to country and region to region) for an ancient and widely diffused act of popular justice, which occurred everywhere in similar, if not identical forms. A closer analysis shows that what at first sight seemed to simply to rough and wild acts of harassment are in truth well-defined traditional customs and legal forms, by means of which, from time immemorial, the ban and proscription were carried out.
Rough Music & Politics: from the Anarchic Band to Rock ‘n’ Roll
“A highly evocative phrase, ‘rough music’ doesn't sound difficult to figure out. It must refer to a kind of music, right?--a form of music that is noisy, raucous, impolite, crude, coarse, unrefined, unpolished or harsh to the ear. Rough music must be another name for certain forms of American popular music (the blues, gospel, free jazz, rock 'n' roll in all its forms, etc. etc.), right? . . . . Significantly, ‘rough music’--at least as the term is used in folklore, ethnography, dictionaries of regional dialects and social histories of England in the 18th and 19th centuries--has nothing to do with music at all. According to E. P. Thompson, who published a landmark essay in 1972 called ‘Rough Music: Le Charivari anglais,’ rough music is a generic term for a wide variety of popular rituals in which an embarrassing punishment (we might call it ‘naming and shaming’) is meted out in public to an individual, couple or group of people who have offended the community as a whole, not simply members of it. In 18th and 19th century America, performances of rough music were called ‘shivarees’ and sometimes included tar-and-feathering or riding someone out of town on a rail or pole. . . . Thompson writes, ‘certain basic properties can be found: raucous, ear-shattering noise, unpitying laughter, and the mimicking of obscenities.’ Elsewhere in his chapter on the subject, Thompson defines rough music as ‘noise, lampoons, [and] obscenities,’ ‘noisy, masked demonstrations with effigies and obscene verses,’ and ‘noise and ridicule.’ To generate the noise, all kinds of instruments (musical and otherwise) were used: pots and pans, marrowbones and cleavers, tongs, tambourines, kits, crouds, humstrums, chains, ram's horns, empty or stone-filled kettles, whistles, rattles, bells, guns and, of course, the human voice, which can be used to yell, scream, howl, grunt, hiss, boo, chant, etc. etc. . . .
As a result, Thompson left the musicians among his readers with at least two unanswered questions. 1) What is the relationship between what Thompson calls the ‘conscious antiphony’ of rough music and the self-conscious beauty of the classical symphony? Despite the fact that both were products of the 18th and 19th centuries, rough music and the classical symphony were very, very different from each other. Unlike the classical orchestra, the ‘rough band’ made extensive use of both tuned and untuned percussion instruments, and so bore a certain similarity to bands of African drummers and other musical groups from ‘primitive’ or ‘rough cultures.’ Unlike the classical orchestra, the rough band had no ‘conductor’ or leader, no specialization of roles, and no internal hierarchy. It didn't play or interpret an already composed song or score: it improvised, collectively, under its own direction, as it went, in the manner of a situationist symphony. And, unlike the classical orchestra, which (merely) appeared and sounded very ‘respectable,’ the ‘anarchic’ band of roving musicians had the force of morality (the judgment of the community) behind its performances. 2) What is the relationship between rough music's use of deliberate noise and the deliberate noise ‘played’ by a variety of contemporary musicians, including avant-garde composers such as John Cage, jazz musicians such as Sun Ra, and rock musicians such as Lou Reed? Unlike the performers of rough music, who presumably had no fans or musical admirers at all, these contemporary musicians attract people, not repel them, by playing (recording and releasing) unlistenable noise. Some of this modern noise is made by all-percussion bands (see, for example, Public Image Ltd's album, The Flowers of Romance, released in 1980). Can we attribute this apparent reversal to the possibility that there is no longer a social stigma attached to noise? Or to the simple fact that--with the possible exception of the English punk band the Sex Pistols, which set after the Queen on a boat during Jubilee Week in 1977--bands of contemporary ‘noise’ musicians generally do not camp out in front of houses occupied by people the community has judged to be in the wrong?
At issue in these questions is the value or utility of ‘harmony.’ In the classical symphony, harmony and the dramatic resolution of tension are the most important musical concerns. But in both ‘traditional’ rough music and modern-day noise, tension is created but never resolved or dissipated, and harmony is replaced by (a) rhythmic repetition. Indeed, the very desirability and ‘naturalness’ of harmony is gleefully trashed. And so, to the extent that music ‘itself’ is a metaphor for, model of and ideological force within society as a whole--in other words, to the extent that the political order depends upon ‘music’ to provide a natural analogy for a ‘social harmony’ that is in fact totally artificial and constantly called into question--both traditional rough music and modern-day noise are deeply subversive. They show that society without ‘harmony’ is possible.
It seems that, with the possible exception of John Cage, contemporary ‘noise musicians’ are aware of the political significance of their work and see themselves as working in open opposition to the criminal justice system. . . . See, for example, Clifford Odets' classic Broadway play from the mid-1950s entitled Sweet Smell of Success, which draws upon the efforts of Harry Anslinger's Federal Bureau of Narcotics (predecessor to the Drug Enforcement Administration) to round up thousands of American jazz musicians who smoked marijuana. In response to such targeting, some of these ‘roughed-up’ musicians have given their noise an overtly oppositional dimension, or have emphasized those elements in it that were already oppositional. And so we have ‘rough music by and for rough people,’ a growing awareness of the subversive powers of noise. . . .” --Not Bored
Because "music itself is a metaphor for, model of and ideological force within society," the Gypsy Scholar would Rave On/Rant & Roll to a subversive rough music, and, therefore, would dispense a rough justice to those of the neo-fascist New World Order.
And because the Gypsy Scholar agrees that this kind of traditional rough music has been reborn in Rock 'n' Roll in the Sixties, he especially favors the novel hybrid of of Sixties love song with protest song. (The genre, going back to the 12th-century Troubadours, is inextricably mixed. Is the quintessential Sixties song the love song with a social message, or a protest song with an erotic message?)
(For samples of rough music, as applied to the foremost political issue of the American 21st century, see "Rave On About 9/11" page.)
You can't stop us on the road to freedom You can't keep us 'cause our eyes can see Men with insight, men in granite Knights in armor bent on chivalry She's as sweet as tupelo honey She's an angel of the first degree She's as sweet as tupelo honey Just like honey from the bee
('Tupelo Honey', Van Morrison)
On the road with my sword And my shield in my hand Pressing on to the new day This love will surely last forever This love will surely last always
In the valley I see horsemen pass Baby, baby, baby they don't want this love to last There's a battle for the throne And it's raging down in your soul It says this love will surely last forever This love will surely last always
('Here Comes the Knight', Van Morrison)
Now you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor And there's a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong You see, you hear these funny voices In the Tower of Song
I see you standing on the other side I don't know how the river got so wide I loved you baby, way back when And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed But I feel so close to everything that we lost We'll never have to lose it again
('Tower of Song', Leonard Cohen)
It’s coming through a hole in the air, from those nights in Tiananmen Square… It’s coming to America first, the cradle of the best and of the worst. It's here they got the range and the machinery for change and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst. It's here the family's broken and it’s here the lonely say that the heart has got to open in a fundamental way. Democracy is coming to the U.S.A…
It's coming from the woman and the men. O baby, we'll be making love again. We'll be going down so deep that the river's going to weep and the mountain's going to shout Amen! Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It’s coming like the tidal flood beneath the lunar sway, imperial, mysterious, in amorous array: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
(‘Democracy,’ Leonard Cohen)
As the program Manifesto states:
Re-Vision Radio's RAVE ON TILL DAWN Program is hosted by the GypsyScholar,with
flower in one hand (or name) and sword in the other. Thus, Everybody
Knows, because it's Re-Vision Radio, the
program re-views--looks once again in-depth at--ideas, books, issues,
people in the news, religion and politics, movements and movies.The format of Re-Vision Radio's RAVE ON TILL DAWN Program sometimes consists in the Gypsy Scholar's "rave on words on printed page."
Therefore, the Gypsy Scholar's writings--"rave on words on printed page"--on the various topics listed above can be accessed by clicking on image >>>
