RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
America’s Most Successful Communist
Howard Husock
Americans Are Not A “Folk” And Bob Dylan Is Not Our Poet
Pete Seeger as the politicizer of music (not just pop/folk but also classical since music of all kinds is tied together) in the direction of communism? Hardly a news flash … he said wryly.
That has been obvious at least since the ’50s and actually from before that. And, along with Seeger, the deed was done as much and as well by Pacifica Radio in New York, Los Angeles and Berkeley.
And then there is Joannie Baez, who kept Dillon’s needles clean for a time.
And Mario Savio and the FSM at Berkeley, who/which in my estimate were the most vital expression of communism/Seeger/Baez in the political realm, utterly partisanizing/politicizing our system of education for decades to come.
Now we have the Muslim Student Union, which is the Taliban (Arabic for student) in Europe and the Americas, as certainly vital but to the end of re-systematizing Europe and the Americas, not directing their cultural, religious and moral systems to a supposed “higher order,” as was the goal of communism.
Communism is intrinsic to Euro-American Civilization, not extrinsic to it, as is that violent tutti-frutti of Middle Eastern Tribalism which passes for civilization there and aims to pass for civilization, religion and sole nation everywhere.
Peter O’Toole acting the person of T. E. Lawrence in the movie Lawrence of Arabia: “Sherif Ali. So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe … so long will they be a little people … a silly people. Greedy, barbarous and cruel, as you are.”
Even in Seattle, the locals who are really communists but style themselves as multi-culturalists (to others) and tribalists (to themselves) were fired about a year ago from control of the local alternative press and their replacements have been trying to style themselves as, let us say, second opinion members of the establishment rather than as an alternative (meaning, further evolved and therefore higher and better) establishment.
Neither the blacks (Langston Hughes, etc.) nor the workers (mostly trade unions) had enough vitality to carry the communist cause in this country. But the students, loosed by The Pill, did and they applied that vitality in the communist direction, flying on songs of Seeger, Baez and Dillon and later, with the victory of drugs, Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, etc.
Seeger behind them all, but, in my opinion, Baez, from Baghdad, Redlands, Palo Alto, Newport, Berkeley and Cambridge, brought communism onto the main runway and made it fly. Then Dillon and the Beattles throttled up the engines with powerful verbal and melodic phrases.
The plane is only recently throttling back recognizably — as shown by the WSJ Opinion Journal article by Senator Bob Kerrey — although in my opinion the craft has been descending, mostly from gravity, due to its drug-induced in-fecundity, for at least three decades.
I think communism is over as a vital phenomenon anywhere, although it is still an active one. But it is not vital. It is remaking, not making song. By using students as its carrying wave, communism drugged itself into impotence. They are not mature enough — we then were not mature enough — to bear responsibility for affairs of government and state.
The Anti-Caliphism Movement needs some singable songs! And it needs to be a Pro-Reason/Common Sense Movement, defined by the needs of universal linked life, not by the names and manners of the currently most vigorous rejectors of reality.
The only songs on the horizon I see that are this — and they are not widely employed and so are not recognizably propelling a movement — are Bhajans. No reason there could not be other kinds, other than the suggestive phenomenon that there are not any because none are being created.
Looks like Howard Husock is born circa 1950, so I would expect him to have known Seeger’s seminal power long since, the others’ derivative and original power too. Maybe he just saved news of it to pop on new generations as a revelation of supreme truth?
The phenomenon of popular, especially singable, song carrying a movement is original with Adam and common as tea. One thinks of Protestantism flying on the German Chorale in the north and Bourgeois and Watt in the south and west. Every Army flies on its cadences, instrumental airs and marches.
The church today is demonstrably non-vital by the phenomenon that it is not making popular, singable songs. It is remaking old forms — jazz, especially jazz ballads, Belle Epoque, scat, heavy metal, folk, Broadway, etc. — as performance pieces. It is not making new forms as irresistible, common-use singing songs, which only can upwell from the Spirit in a large population of the inspired.
Update 1: Pete Seeger is dead.
Update 2: Confessions Of A Public Defender
Update 3: Race Relations And Law Enforcement
Update 4: The Question Of Campaign 2016: Where Have All The Fascists Gone?
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
