Playing For Change

Citizen K. recommends that you drop by Starbucks and get a copy of Playing For Change: Songs Around the World, which gathers musicians and singers from around the world as part of "a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music." The CD/DVD set is a project of the Playing For Change Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps bring music into the lives of disadvantaged youth. The "Stand By Me" video went viral last year; the album also features covers of "One Love," (video below)"War/No More Trouble," "Biko," "Talkin' 'Bout A Revolution," and "A Change Is Gonna Come." In short this is the best album of its kind since Steven Van Zandt led the Artists United Against Apartheid through Sun City back in 1985. Do a favor to your heart and your feet by adding Playng For Change to your music collection. For more information, see playingforchange.com.

Citizen K. has lately been availing himself of the considerable pleasures of straight ahead jazz. There's nothing innovative going on in any of these CDs, but all four make for great listening.

• Earfood, The Roy Hargrove Quintet. Trumpeter Hargrove leads his band through twelve compact compositions (and a cover of Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home To Me" that leave you asking "Who are these guys?" Just like the posse in Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, these keep coming at you.
• Present Tense, James Carter. Carter's wend their way through a set of ten covers and originals with precision and grace. No matter what the tempo, Carter's soloing remains one of the marvels of contemporary jazz.
• The Bright Mississippi, Allen Toussaint. Although the elegiac qualities give Mississippi its burnished glow, this is no mere exercise in nostalgia by the great New Orleans pianist, composer, and arranger. The inclusion of Mark Ribot's acoustic guitar allows Toussaint to explore his musical memory while simultaneously looking forward to the future.

Authors of the torture memos face backlash. That's not the only lash they should face...

Breaking News: Joe the Plumber quits the GOP. Whatever will they do now?...

Say it isn't so, Manny. The excuse that "I took something a doctor in Miami prescribed" has become flimsy, shopworn, and unbelievable. This is a great player whom no one accused of taking performance enhancing drugs, and now he's just another guy fumbling to explain himself...

NOLA Happenings: Just because Jazz Festival is over doesn't mean that the party is over. Dance to the music and learn about fire safety in Covington at the Stop, Drop, Rock 'n Roll...Don't want to leave town? Then check out the fourth annual 7th Ward Festival at the corner of Urquhart and Pauger...

Musicians and singers from around the world join Keb' Mo' in performing Bob Marley's great song, "One Love":

Eostre Sunday Funnies & Arts

Happy Eostre!

As always, click to enlarge. For more Doonesbury, Pat Oliphant, Mother Goose & Grimm, Tom Toles, Zippy the Pinhead, Tony Auth, and Tom Tomorrow, go here, here, here, here, here, here, and here...

Just A Song: Luka Bloom's "Diamond Mountain":

Unlike emigres from most other European countries, the Irish viewed leaving their homes as a form of exile, even amidst the starvation and disease of the Famine. In "Diamond Mountain" -- one of his best songs -- the Irish singer/songwriter Luka Bloom captures this sense of dislocation...

Opening Day at Fenway Park, Boston:

Ima Wizer reveals the Big Fat Idiot in all his malevolence and deceit:

Citizen K. can't wait to hear what the BFI makes of the rescue of the ship captain from the Somali pirates: Rushbo was on Obama's case about he so hilariously called "merchant marine organizers" all last week...

Vintage sugar...

Susanna Powers' close-up of Resurrection Ferns has an abstract quality...

Marcella's Cookery brings genuine New Orleans cooking to Seattle...

New Orleans (1947). D: Arthur Lubin. Arturo de Cordova, Dorothy Patrick, Richard Hagerman, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Woody Herman. By any definition a low-budget B movie with C-list Hollywood talent, New Orleans is nonetheless worth watching for the brilliant jazz performances of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday and for its tentative (and possibly subversive) treatment of race and art. Set against the backstory of the closing of Storyville, New Orleans tells the story of gambler Nick Duquesne (Cordova) and the WASP-ish Miralee Smith (Patrick), a classical music singer who falls in love with Nick and with jazz, both to her mother's (Irene Rich) consternation.

The direction of the film plods until Armstrong and Holiday appear, at which point it perks up considerably. Holiday's performances of "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans" and "Farewell to Storyville" are luminescent. There's an extraordinary sequence during which Armstrong introduces his band while prowling and slithering among them, the camera following and looking over his back the entire time.

At the same time, the film remains mired in 1940's attitudes toward race and music. Certainly, one must applaud it for Armstrong's and Holiday's performances and interesting scenes like the one in which Holiday takes Patrick slumming in Storyville. But jazz is finally acceptable only when Patrick, the white Woody Herman, and a classical musical orchestra perform "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans" in a Carnegie Hall knockoff. It's only then that Miralee's mother relents in her opposition to the romance with Duquesne the gambler turned jazz promoter. Jazz has become safe, acceptable to the middle- and upper-classes, perhaps even reinforcing their staidness.

Much of this rises not from any particular ideology on the film's part, but from the producer's interpretation of what the film needed to present in order to make money. The film's presentation of Armstong's and Holiday's material is so superior that it's possible that the actual message is more subversive: We're giving you this white bread because we have to, but make no mistake about where the nutrition is. Thus, it's to New Orleans' credit that it provides plenty of actual jazz even while bowing to the pressures of profit. It's said that no one can serve God and Mammon, but New Orleans makes a worthy attempt...

The credits and opening scene of the film telegraph its dilemma. A chorale group sings "Do You Know What It Means" over the opening credits. Upon their completion, the camera immediately cuts to a Storyville afternoon graced by Armstrong's "West End Blues":

Sunday Gospel Brunch: It's not exactly gospel, but this performance of "Stand By Me" assembled by Playing For Change sure has the feeling: