Miles underground

A strange quote from the 1989 autobiography of the great jazz legend Miles Dewey Davis III:

I did some weird shit back in those days, too many weird things to describe. But I’ll tell you a couple. I remember one day when I was really paranoid from snorting [cocaine] and staying up all the time. I was driving my Ferrari up West End Avenue and I passed these police-men sitting in a patrol car. They knew me - all of them knew me in my neighbourhood - so they spoke to me. When I got about two blocks away from them, I became paranoid and thought that there was a conspiracy to get me, bust me for some drugs. I look down in the compartment on the door and see this white powder. I never took coke out of the house with me. It’s winter and snowing and some snow got inside the car. But I didn’t realise that; I thought it was some coke that someone had planted in the car just so I could get busted. I panicked, stopped the car in the middle of the street, ran into a building on West End Avenue, looked for the doorman, but he wasn’t there. I ran to the elevator and got on and went up to the seventh floor and hid in the trash room. I stayed up there for hours with my Ferrari parked in the middle of West End Avenue with the keys in it. After a while I came to my senses. The car was still sitting where I had left it.

I did that another time just like that and a woman was on the elevator. I thought that I was still in my Ferrari, so I told her, “Bitch, what are you doing in my goddamn car!” And then I slapped her and ran out of the building. That’s the kind of weird sick shit that a lot of drugs will make you do. She called the police and they arrested me and put me in the nut ward at Roosevelt Hospital for a few days before letting me out“.

From 1975 until 1980, Davis was a self-confessed hermit, living without any meaningful contact with the outside world. He spent his days drinking Heineken and brandy, and taking heroin, cocaine, or injecting speedballs into his legs. A speedball is the lethal combination of cocaine and heroin that killed John Belushi and River Phoenix. Davis also says he “fucked all the women I could get into my house” (p. 325). And through it all, he never once picked up his horn throughout more than four years.

Another one bites the dust

Another essay falls before the might of my academic endeavours!! Just handed in my first assignment of the semester. The task was based around an imaginary scenario in North Africa. We had to imagine that there were upcoming negotiations on reform of the constitution, and each student had to give advice to one of the various delegations to the conference. I had to write a policy brief advising the nationalist and conservative party of Morocco, Istiqlal. The other participants included the EU, the socialists, the hardcore Islamists, the more moderate Islamists, and last but not least, the top dog and key holder of political power, the defender of the faith, and personal owner of 60% of all the shares on Morocco's stock exchange, ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for his majesty the king, Mohamed VI!!! (known as M6 to his buddies).

King Mohamed VI

It seems to me that the king would only agree to democratisation to the extent that it makes his rule look more legitimate. Although there is an elected parliament in Morocco, most of the power rests outside this system. The government's decision-making powers are constrained by the fact that many other members of parliament are indirectly appointed, and the key ministries are given to confidants of the king who may not even be a member of a political party. Indeed, the current prime minister, Driss Jettou, isn't in any party. So I reckon that M6 would like to throw in some superficial reforms to make it look like he is liberalising, without actually devolving meaningful power outside of the palace.

The increasing popularity of the Islamist movements are putting pressure on the more established political actors in Morocco, so I'm confident that my nationalist/conservative colleagues can do a deal with the king to gain some power and marginalise the Islamists.

Great to get one assignment out of the way. As usual, I was up all night last night putting on the finishing touches. I didn't get to bed till after 0600. And the next deadline is just three days away!! But it's all under control. I've done plenty of groundwork for this next one during the week. Roll on Monday...

Reem Kelani

This is a review of a Reem Kelani gig I saw at a festival last August. Reem Kelani is a Palestinian singer who sings a mix of songs from Palestine and the Palestinian Diaspora. Her father comes from Jenin, and her mother from Nazareth. She has an incredible vocal range, and her vocal style incorporates Arabic chanting and ululations as well as conventional singing. I really enjoyed this music, which was a new kind of sound for me, as it’s not a style of music I’m familiar with. As well as loving the music in its own right, the concert was interesting because Kelani talked quite a bit about the origins and meanings of many of the songs.

There seemed to be a certain formlessness to some of the music, which left a lot of freedom for the different musicians to breathe within the structure of the songs. Kelani on vocals was backed by a bass clarinet, Egyptian violin, drums, and double bass (which was both plucked and played with a bow), but the first number was backed only with syncopated handclaps. This first song was a wedding song from Acre on the Mediterranean, and is about the bride taking the mickey out of her new husband’s family. Her family are saying that they will make their new son-in-law a shepherd or an Arabian king depending on how he treats their daughter. The song is in 6/4 time, which is a very old Palestinian rhythm, apparently.

Next was a song from Gallilee originating from the period of Ottoman rule. It is a slow, sad song, sung by the women when the men are going off to fight in a war. The music is based around a drone in E flat, I think it was – this was the tonic, and Kelani invited the audience to hum the tonic. The singing is in the tradition of the Greek orthodox church, and comes from the influence of Byzantine chanting.

The next song was about a group of women crossing the desert who are refused a lift by a convoy of caravans. They show their resilience by singing to the drivers. The tempo here was a bit faster, with the percussion more in the foreground, with Kelani playing a kind of bodhrán. She clearly still has a love and enthusiasm for this music. It was clear that she was enjoying herself on stage, dancing and communicating with her sidemen.

The next song was the highlight of the concert for me. It was called ‘Baker’s Dozen’ because of the time signature, which is a cycle of thirteen beats. Kelani described it as 12+1 beats, but to me it sounded like 3 measures of 3/4 time followed by a measure of 4/4 time. The song began with a double bass solo and then went into the 13 beat rhythm. This time signature comes from a folk tradition common to Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

In this tradition, even in the middle of a happy song like this one, there is a middle section where people sing of a longing for their homeland. In this way, even a wedding song can become a song of resistance (according to Kelani). This section takes the form of a dialogue between the vocalist and an instrumentalist (in this case, the bass clarinet). The singing is similar to the Spanish ‘deep singing’/canta chondo, apparently – this was an influence that the Arab influence introduced to Spain. (Kelani compared this to a scene in a Bollywood movie, where people can start singing and dancing in the middle of a battle scene, saying that this kind of mix of emotions was part of a similar tradition.)

Kelani was a mine of information, and the music itself was excellent. Very evocative. They finished up with a more conventional Western song, for which they were joined on stage by a guitar-slinging Christian minister dude named Garth Hewitt. He’s a campaigner for Palestinian human rights and so forth. This song, which I think is one of Hewitt’s, was called ‘The Death of Trees’, and is about the removal of a million olive trees since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967. These trees were sold, destroyed, or replanted in illegal Israeli settlements, and in the song they symbolise the death of a culture. This is all very well, but the music wasn’t a patch on what had gone before. Kelani’s own music really stood out from anything else at the festival, and I bought her debut album, Sprinting Gazelle, on the strength of her performance. Kelani’s vocal range is very impressive, and the instrumentation was great as well. This is great stuff.