Our advanced detection devices (OK, so they’re not THAT advanced) registered (OK, someone called me up and mentioned it) that more and more of you are visiting us (thanks to all of Vernon’s extended family! and thanks to Vernon for buying them all laptops so they could visit!). Some of the comment threads were pretty interesting this week. The Portland theater community was IN THE HOUSE. And the Portland Jazz Festival, among others, linked to the Wisdom of Ornette post.
Our first weekly Cultural Hero award goes to jazz writer Howard Mandel. After managing the feat of interviewing Ornette Coleman in a productive way, he then had to deal with alto sax magician Tim Berne on a couple of panels. I saw half of the first of those, and it was enough.
The first question was about the reception Coleman’s music received when he started playing his free jazz at the Five Spot in New York in 1959. Berne piped in early on that he didn’t know anything about that (a perfectly fine response) and was dismissive of the question (a little less fine), but the rest of the panel dug in, cited the scholarship on the matter (notably David Lee’s The Battle of the Five Spot) and sketched for the audience the rough way he was treated.
Cool. Berne then piped up again and disputed this account. Not that he had any competing information about the period to offer (he’d already professed his ignorance), and he was too young to BE there. But based on the musicians he knows now in NY, he just couldn’t imagine that musicians then behaving that way. Musicians jealous of another’s success? A concept foreign to Berne, apparently. Even if we believed him about the utopia known as the NY jazz scene now, it would have no bearing on the NY jazz scene then. “It’s all bullshit,” he muttered.
Later on, according to Tim DuRoche (Portland jazz drummer, cultural theorist and about the busiest guy I know), who moderated a second panel, Berne argued (or ranted) that writing about the arts was actually harmful to artists and audiences. Which managed to get under Mandel’s skin, since he’s dedicated his life to the proposition that such writing is actually useful to both. And he fired back. With both barrels. And things got heated.
You KNOW where we stand. But it’s not a philosophical position, really. It’s just an observation: Thinking about art improves its appreciation more often than not; the thinking of others can add to the pleasure of our own thoughts (using “pleasure” broadly); language is faulty in this regard, inevitably incomplete, but it’s what we have.
So. Three cheers for Mr. Mandel, the winner of our first Cultural Hero award, for standing up for the idea of historical evidence, reasonable argument and the creative act of listening (in this case).
Get even with the nasty Mr. Berne and read Howard’s work! There’s his book Miles Ornette Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz available through your favorite bookstore or online purveyor. And there are his websites, his personal site and the blog he does for one of our favorite arts news sites, Arts Journal. Full disclosure: Mr. Mandel said nice things about Art Scatter’s account of the Ornette lecture below AND he linked to us from his blog. He’s a nice guy!