Stir It Up: Musical Mixes from Roots to Jazz

202 Pages·1997·9.751 MB·English

by  Gene Santoro

STIR
IT
UP
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S T IR
Musical Mixes from Roots to Jazz
IT
G E NE S A N T O RO
U P
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press / 1997
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay
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and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1997 by Gene Santoro
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Santoro, Gene.
Stir it up : musical mixes from roots to jazz / Gene Santoro.
p. cm. Includes index.
ISBN 0-19-509869-2
1. Popular music—History and criticism.
2. Jazz—History and criticism. I. Title.
ML3470.S28 1997 781.64'09—DC20 96-42930
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 42
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Preface vViIIii
Me and Julio Paul Simon 3
Arc of a Diver Steve Winwood 9
Hippie Preacher Jackson Browne 14
Every Breath You Take Sting 19
Buck Naked David Byrne 25
This Year's Model Elvis Costello 29
50-Foot Queenie PJ Harvey 34
Who's The Boss Bruce Springsteen 39
Punk Repunked Television 43
Bird on a Wire Curlew 46
Voodoo Child Jimi Hendrix 51
Mr. Soul Sam Cooke 59
R-E-S-P-E-C-T Aretha Franklin 66
Blues Walkin' Like a Man Willie Dixon 71
The Black Liberace James Booker 76
Master of Space Thelonious Monk 80
Chasin' the Answer John Coltrane 84
Harmolodic Philosopher Ornette Coleman 91
The Turtle Abbey Lincoln 99
Portrait in Three Colors Charles Mingus 103
The Bulldog Ray Drummond 111
The Two of Us Tom Harrell 123
Across the Great Divide Don Pullen and
Joe Lovano 127
vi Contents
Out of the Tradition Julius Hemphill 133
I Have a Dream Marty Ehrlich 138
La Cucaracha A Survey off Cuban Music 144
Stir It Up Bob Marley 150
Voodoo Rock Boukman Eksperyans 156
The Man from Bahia Gilberto Gil 164
Afropop's Avatar Manu Dibango 170
The Lion of Zimbabwe Thomas Mapfumo 176
Lilt A Survey of Hawaiian Music 183
Index 191
PREFACE
MMusic not only captures time; it mimics time. The ebb and flow
that shapes the emotional tension between sound and space,
spiked by dynamics and tonal colors, creates a rhythm analogous to
the way we pass through history. Or can, anyway, when it's at its best.
And when it does, music's language becomes an abstract mirror of
human culture's passage at a given set of moments—a trail, sometimes
of hope, sometimes of tears, but always in motion.
Hence these essays, all of which first appeared in some form else-
where: The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, DoubleTake, The Village
Voice, Fi, and Pulse. If this book has a mission, it's to track some of
the branches of that trail, uncover a few of the forks that got us where
we seem to find ourselves. In that sense, Stir It Up is archeological, the
kind of intellectual detective work that is part oral history and part
informed intuition and part dissassembled teleology, part Studs Terkel
and part Dashiell Hammett and part Michel Foucault.
But, above all, it's a reminder that if politics is what we do to each
other, culture is the way we talk to each other. As the info age accel-
erates the fractionation of communities back into tribal groups with
less and less allegiance to overarching traditions, languages, beliefs, or
dreams, the importance of music's syncretic global interactions, its
transformation of them into multiplying dialects that can function as
something like common languages, and its role as a nexus for art and
commerce will continue to help us plot, however roughly, where we
are. That won't save us from each other, or ourselves. But along with
post-Einsteinian physics and chaos theory, it may be one of our best
shots at understanding the age we're leaving and the age we're entering.
Or, at least, enjoying the ride.
Shokan/New York City Gene Santoro
October 1996
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STIR
IT
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