THE GIG

Race is the Place

The topic of race, in jazz as elsewhere, has often been framed as a binary: literally a matter of black and white. We saw this in many of our intraweb debates last year, though of course the issue goes farther back than any of us can recall. The implicit dualism is understandable, and there's obviously still much work to be done along that divide. I stand with both Nicholas Payton and Ethan Iverson, among others, in the conviction that we can gain something vital by talking about it.

In that spirit, I've been thinking a lot this week about what doesn't fit into the binary, and how we might enrich our jazz-and-race conversation by acknowledging it. Before we proceed, two quick homework assignments. First, watch the clip above -- one of the smarter, subtler pieces of sketch writing we've seen from Saturday Night Live in ages. And while I'm assuming that you need no briefing on the subject of Jeremy Lin, "Linsanity," or sports-media Foot in Mouth Syndrome, I'm also going to insist that you spent a few moments with this excellent essay by Jay Caspian Kang. 

OK, done? Now bear with me; this will get a little personal.

Cut Me Some Slack

Dear Grammy, Is It Hawaiian Enough?

Uke Joint

Jake Shimabukuro

Brooklyn Bowl, Jan. 20

Programming Note: IZ Edition

This Thursday at the HousingWorks Bookstore Café in SoHo, I’ll be discussing the life and legacy of Israel Kamakawiwo`ole with Dan Kois, who literally wrote the book on Facing Future.

The talk, which will also include live music by Jason Poole (ukulele) and Andy Wang (slack-key guitar), was recommended by New York magazine and the New York Times. But don’t take their word for it -- take mine. I know Kois to be a really good talker, and I have my own perspective on Kamakawiwo`ole’s music.

My essay “Rainbow Warrior: Israel Kamakawiwo`ole and Another Kind of Somewhere” is due to appear in the forthcoming EMP Pop Conference anthology Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music and Conflict. (You may have seen a version of the essay right here.) Thursday’s event is free; if you’re in the New York area and in need of some Aloha, you know where you ought to be.

Many Happy Returns

 File under Reasons for Blog Hiatus: I’m just back from a weeklong teaching fellowship at my old alma mater in Honolulu. The picture above was taken from the lanai of my hotel room at dawn, my standard wake-up time there. It was a blur of a week, extremely busy and incredibly rewarding, and I’m grateful to my friends and colleagues at Iolani for extending such a warm welcome. I’m also glad the students were willing to let me invade their turf for a spell. 

So now, here comes the catch-up. Below, find some thoughts on Kurt Elling and the new JazzTimes. Tomorrow: a bonus-feature postscript for Sunday’s Henry Threadgill feature.

Exotica: It Takes a Village

Continuing my commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Statehood, here’s a new YouTube find (new to me, anyway) featuring pianist-bandleader Martin Denny on the long-running local program Hawaii Calls. This apparently dates to 1956, a few years before entry to the Union, which partly accounts for the perfumed air. Note how host Webley Edwards hails Denny as “a man who’s both modern and native in his approach to music,” before the band sidles into “Quiet Village,” the definitive anthem of exotica. The camera trains first on the musicians, with their tropical birdcalls, before a languid (and staged) montage that’s part National Geographic, part South Pacific.

Exotica was by definition a mongrel genre, hovering not only between “modern” and “native” but also between the West and the Orient, between honor and exploitation, between shrewdness and kitsch. (I might add art and commerce, but the scales were pretty far tipped, in that case, all along.) Because it was an instrumental pop music during the era when jazz was pop, there’s quite a bit of overlap in terms of style and repertoire. Musicians like Denny came from a similar school of thought as George Shearing, though their arranging strategies actually fell more in line, at the end of the day, with Sun Ra.

Rainbow Warrior

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Statehood -- Hawaii’s official admission to the Union. My father was a senior in high school then (McKinley, for all you locals), and he remembers it fondly. But from our current vantage, commemoration is bittersweet, as even a casual student of Hawaiian culture can attest. Here’s a version of a paper I presented at a recent EMP Pop Conference, which covers some of this ground through the lens of popular music (one song in particular).

This is the lilting solo version of “Over the Rainbow” recorded by Israel Kamakawiwo`ole, the Hawaiian music legend also known as Bruddah Iz. There’s a decent chance that you’ve heard it somewhere. On the soundtrack to a Hollywood star vehicle like Meet Joe Black, Finding Forrester or 50 First Dates, perhaps. Or during a pair of emotionally charged scenes in the NBC series ER and Scrubs. Or in one of untold thousands of earnest YouTube montages. Or during the seventh season of “American Idol,” when it was performed by a popular contender, complete with ukulele.

In any case, the ballad reaches straight for the heartstrings, as it was clearly intended to do.

But Kamakawiwo`ole, the Hawaiian music legend also known as Bruddah IZ, brought some coded context to the song that most listeners don’t begin to recognize. As an outspoken advocate of Hawaiian sovereignty, he knew the deeper shading of a song about longing for another place, where skies are still blue. His “Over the Rainbow” is a hymn of exile as well as longing, rich in metaphorical suggestion. Its impact has reached far and wide, eclipsing its veiled intentions. But those intentions tell us much about the world in which Kamakawiwo`ole lived, and the one that he never lived to see.