Hello friends and comrades. 2 things:

1) January 16th, Blues Machine 7p at City of Asylum & Tough Pill 8:30p at Government Center Thursday, will both be a part of "Festivals of Resistance: A Call for Gatherings the Weekend Before Trump Takes Office." Along with creative music, we will be distributing info on various local anti-repression, mutual aid, and other organizing efforts.

(Festivals of Resistance link)

https://crimethinc.com/2024/12/03/festivals-of-resistance-a-call-to-gather-the-weekend-before-trump-takes-office

(Blues Machine free tickets and live stream)

https://cityofasylum.org/program/thursday-night-jazz-blues-machine/

2) I want to be clear about the meaning of this promo photo for Blues Machine, and connect this to some bigger picture themes. Although indeed meant to be a bit jocular, I wish to express a serious concern. In this photo, by holding bread in one hand (a material means of subsistence), contrasting with money in the other (an abstract symbol through which social domination is carried out), I hope that Hugo, Mark, and I draw attention to a simple observation: The basic necessities of life are gate-kept by access to money. In order to have money, we have to sell our labor, which is variously valued along essentialized lines of race, ethnicity, gender, geography, social/cultural capital, etc. Money is a means of hoarding wealth, concealing relations of social domination, maintaining precarity among the vast majority, and (along with brute violence) money is the symbolic medium through which material dependence on systems that destroy people and planet is perpetuated.

Cultural and musical practices are shaped by this situation in such a way that economic valuation and standardization highly discourages (if not outright prohibits) participation. A situation where some people's creative expression is valued over others, again, often along lines of race, ethnicity, gender, geography, and also level of musical training, physical ability, neurodivergence, etc. As capitalism is predicated on a violent enclosure of the geographic commons, so is it predicated on an enclosure of the cultural commons. This is the breaking up, and severe limitation of practices that produce and reproduce truly participatory, communal life. This dynamic is in no small part a strategy to prevent the cultivation of solidarity through communal cultural practice. Practices, which if left alone to flourish, pose a threat to hegemonic power. It is one of many 'divide, traumatize, and conquer' strategies. This greatly saddens me.

There are indeed inspiring examples of communal cultural practices alive and well, such as myriad creative / DIY cultural communities; non-dogmatic, liberation minded spiritual communities; as well as cultures that develop in the context of community and labor organizing. But, these are not immune to elite capture and the general crisis of care endemic to capitalism. Neither are they immune to various socio-psychological stumbling blocks to ethical and effective solidarity such as dogmatism, in-group/out-group dynamics, & hyper-active fear & aggression responses (all exacerbated by the traumatizing dynamics of our current world). How might we continue to advocate, and open up space for truly participatory cultural life? How might we encourage, inspire, and hold space for healing and expressive creative play? What is the meaningful role of this kind of creative cultural work in liberation movements? How might a materialist and socio-psychological analysis help cultivate cultures of solidarity?

Blues Machine is a musical exploration of some of these questions. A critical reflection on the standardization of improvisatory music practices that originally emerged from communalist, 'eco-social' ethics present in Black Atlantic liberation struggles; as well as an affirmation of the healing power of creative cultural play, even (maybe especially), in the face of brutal social domination and existential catastrophe.

Material organizing is required beyond the cultural. We will be distributing literature on some options for organizing efforts here in Pittsburgh, including:

Pittsburgh Prison Book Project

https://thebigideapgh.com/pittsburgh-prison-book-project/

Let's Get Free

https://letsgetfree.info/

Bukit Bail Fund

https://www.bukitbailfund.org/home

Food Not Bombs

https://www.pghfoodnotbombs.org/

Hearing Voices Collective Pittsburgh

https://www.hearingvoicesusa.org/hvn-usa-groups-list/details/1/224-hearing-voices-network-pittsburgh

Otherwise, organize your workplace, etc.!!!

I use tags on this website to help folks navigate my creative output. There are two types of tags used here: genre & personnel. Personnel is self explanatory, but genre could use a little unpacking.

My practice is centered on emphasizing the intertwined nature of various music traditions. While genre can be helpful in in our communication, it can also reinforce a fragmented, alienated cultural world view. Genre classification can obscure important, but less easily observable cultural dynamics, reduce the complexity of history, and it can reinforce various reified notions of value—e.g., commodified value, nationalist value, etc.

I intentionally play with cultural symbols. Sometimes I blow them apart or ignore them, and other times I sit well within their boundaries. My study and practice spans a wide array of traditions, and certain parts of my output may lean more in one direction or another genre or tradition wise. I want to be explicit about this in my presentation to help folks navigate the documentation of my work present here. My use of genre in the tagging system that you see on this website should be understood in this light. To compensate for the downside of using genres, I often use two or three genre tags to help better communicate, as well as push back against any notion of these categories as isolated.

Here are some notes about specific genre tags that I use:

“New Music”: Anything that uses ideas that connect with the European avant-garde and/or was made in a context associated with “New Music.”

Composition: Setting aside debates on the difference between composition and improvisation, I use composition here only when there was explicit musical planning when there may not seem to have been any. Composition or planning of various sorts is of course embedded in other genre tags.

Electronics: Anything in which electronics of any kind play a central role in actively shaping sounds, beyond amplification or pre-dialed-in synthesized sounds.

Free Jazz: Anything in which open-ended improvisation is central. I’m using this instead of (and have decided not to supplement it with) “improvised music,” in order to honor the centrality of Black musicians in organizing and struggling to open up space for creative improvised music in this country and around the world. This is even though many of these folks do not like either the genres constituent terms: “free” / “jazz.” I also take issue with both terms, but I think this is best given our current historical moment. I’m using free jazz of the presence or absence of what might (stereotypically? reductionistically?) be considered “Black” musical elements. Like Miles, I’d really just prefer to just say “call it anything”... but, here we find ourselves.

Jazz: Anything that explicitly uses aesthetic musical or surface level relational elements consistent with those present in the jazz tradition—e.g., head / solo arrangements, “swing,” jazz harmony, etc.
Performance Art: Anything that heavily centers extra musical conceptual elements expressed performatively.

Notes on Blues Machine Meaning & January Festivals of Resistance

A Note About the Use of Genres as Tags on this Website