That doesn't mean they supplant Valarie's potato tacos though, I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't eat one of those ever again.  Part of their appeal is that they're only available on Valarie's whim.  Which I suppose is really just clever marketing on her part.

On Ruby's Chicky Boil-Ups this week we're paying a visit to Him Upstairs...
Download this episode

Gospel Train - Sunbury Junior Singers of the Salvation Army
Heaven's Radio - Molly o'Day and the Cumberland Mountain Folks
Female Jesus - Men in Gray Suits
Dominique - The Singing Nun
Saved - Lavern Baker
Jesus in His Pomp - The Chimps
Six and Seven Books of Moses - The Maytals as The Vikings
Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho - Paul Robeson
Soul Train - Judith
Angels Laid Him Away - Mississippi John Hurt
Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet - Gavin Bryars

"Rules for 'Insight To My Heart':

Post the song that just gets to you every time you hear it."

Simple, huh? One song. But these days, asking me to list one song that "gets to me" is like asking me which grain of sand on the beach I like the most. It's impossible. Let's face it, I'm perimenopausal, I'm a hormonal mess, and if you've read this blog with any regularity, you know that even getting my oil changed can reduce me to tears these days. I listened to the B-52's Rock Lobster last week, and by the time Cindy Wilson started asking, "Why don't you dance with me? I'm not no limburger!" I was sobbing.

So I got all sidetracked with this one. I think Wendy wanted a song that told something about me,  something that touched my heart, a choice that may not make sense to others unless there was a little explanation. Simple, right? But once I started thinking about songs that made me sad, I got all ADD and just went all over the place with it.

I trimmed, cut, hacked, and I still ended up with thirty-one songs. Thirty-one.

One day, I'll come to terms with the fact that I'm a bad meme-er. I had a brain waft and changed the rules. Here are the videos for my top three songs, and below them a playlist of other songs that are the cause of a lot of tear shedding.

#1: Old Man River, Paul Robeson: I had a slight dilemma with this. I sing the short version of it all the time. It reminds me of so many things-- Memphis (where I grew up), the mighty Mississippi, heartache and racism, and the sound of Paul Robeson's voice is absolutely beautiful. But this video is the longer, original version, and includes some very non-PC lyrics. If you want to avoid hearing that part, you can stop after 2:05,  (Robeson later changed a lot of those lyrics).

By the way, Paul Robeson was a fascinating man. You can learn more about him here.

#2: Everybody Hurts, REM. This one was an easy pick. If you can listen to this song without crying, your heart may be made of cement. I was going through YouTube videos trying to find a decent one, and had to have a box of Kleenex on standby. I finally settled on the following video, because the lyrics were included.

Step away from the ledge!

#3:Rainbow Connection, Kermit the Frog: The sweetness of this one never fails to make me boohoo. This version is a duet with Debbie Harry, whose voice can also make me cry, so it's a double whammy.

That Kermit. So manly-- er, frogly.

A friend of mine used to call these "gas oven songs," because often, when you listen to them, you want to put your head in one. So here's my partial gas oven list. You can also listen to them here. I don't know why some of these make me cry. Sometimes it's a voice, an association with a person or period of my life, or beautiful lyrics. Sometimes it's Tuesday.

Blondie, Sunday Girl

Johnny Cash, Hurt

Thirteen, Big Star

Patti Smith, Because the Night

Paul Robeson, Old Man River

REM, Everybody Hurts

Jeff Buckley, Hallelujah

Elvis Costello, Alison

Joni Mitchell, Rainy Night House

Cowboy Junkies, Sweet Jane

Elliott Smith, Waltz #2

Cat Stevens, Father and Son

Fleetwood Mac, Dixie Chicks: Landslide

Don McLean, Vincent

Kermit the Frog, The Rainbow Connection

Roy Orbison, She's a Mystery to Me & Anything you Want

Jackson Browne Joan Baez, Fountain of Sorrow, I used to love the Jackson Brown version, but he hits women, so I like the Joan Baez version better now.

Cyndi Lauper, Time After Time

Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World. This one reminds me of my grandmother, who listened to it all the time.

Gary Jules, Mad World

Tracy Chapman, Fast Car

Linda Ronstadt, Long, Long Time & Black Roses, White Rhythm and Blues

Langley Schools Music Project, Desperado (NOT the Eagles version)

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Mr. Bojangles

Mahalia Jackson or almost anyone else (except for the crackhead version that Wendy links to at the bottom of this post): Amazing Grace

Etta James, At Last

Traveling Wilburys, Handle Me With Care

Kevin Kline, La Mer

John Mayer, Daughters. Not a fan of John Mayer, but I am a big fan of my daughter, and I miss her.This song makes me lose it. I wish they'd stop playing it at the grocery store.

I'm completely embarrassed about the length of this post, and the fact that I couldn't do my assignment properly. I'm tagging no one and everyone for this. Mostly, I'd just like to know one or two or ten of your own gas oven songs. What songs do you in? Can you name just one?

Oh, and about Dance this Mess Around. I decided not to include it. I wanted to end this with something that didn't make me cry, so here's a fun Rock Lobster video for you. It made me cry too, but they were happy tears, because it came out during a period of my life that I look back on so fondly.

(Hey, Botmo, let's go to the Antenna Club!)

This is the latest in a series of essays titled "Man Has Premonition of Own Death."

Just read a book called “The American Resting Place: Four hundred years of history through our cemeteries,” written by Marilyn Yalom with photos by Reid S. Yalom. It got me thinking about my two favorite cemeteries.

 One is Sleepy Hollow in Tarrytown, New York, near the Tappan Zee, where Washington Irving’s famous “Legend” takes place and the writer himself is buried. The other is Oakland in my old hometown of Yonkers, New York, where my grandparents are buried as well as various others in the Nash and Crooks families (on my mother’s side).

 The book also got me thinking about Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York, where my father and his parents, my Italian grandparents, occupy shelves in sprawling, chapel-like mausoleum with stained glass windows and creepy piped-in music.

 Harold Arlen, who wrote “Over the Rainbow”

Novelist James Baldwin

Composer Bella Bartok

Actor Yul Brynner (cremated at Ferncliff)

Tom Carvel, founder of Carvel Ice Cream (which started, of course, in Yonkers).

Actress Joan Crawford

DJ and “Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll” Alan Freed

Judy Garland

Muppets creator Jim Henson

Blues singer Alberta Hunter

Composer Jerome Kern

Black radical activist Malcolm X

John Lennon (cremated at Ferncliff).

Jazz great Thelonius Monk

Christopher Reeve (cremated at Ferncliff).

Nelson Rockefeller

“Sherlock Holmes’’ actor Basil Rathbone.

Athlete, singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson.

Broadway restaurateur “Toots” Shor

Literary critic Lionel Trilling

Ed Sullivan (yes, of the “Ed Sullivan Show”)

My father detested John Lennon and Malcolm X. He would have dismissed Monk’s music as “noise.” But he would have been thrilled to share a graveyard with Basil Rathbone – he loved those old “Sherlock Holmes” movies with Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as loyal Watson, and one of my good memories of my father is watching television with him on rainy weekends when Yankees games got canceled and the local station would show old Sherlock Homes, Charlie Chan and Bowery Boys movies.

Here’s a link to the Ferncliff Cemetery’s creepy Web site: www.ferncliff.com

BRATTLEBORO — Folk legend Pete Seeger will perform with his grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger and blues musician Guy Davis at 7 p.m. on Sept. 13 at the Latchis Theater in a fundraising concert to provide microloans to farmers.

The event is co-produced by Strolling of the Heifers and the microloan program will be a cooperative project between them and the Carrot Project, a not-for-profit organization based in Somerville, Mass., dedicated to providing financial assistance to small and midsize farms and those using ecologically friendly practices.

The Strolling of the Heifers — best known for the parade of the same name that takes place in Brattleboro the first Saturday in June — promotes awareness of agriculture and raises money for youth agricultural programs.

"The idea came from asking farmers what we could do to help them," said Orly Munzing, Strolling's executive director, of the microloan program. "The young farmers, especially, can't get loans, and that's difficult in an emergency."

Munzing said the Carrot Project will handle the financial end of the program and will match farmers with lenders.

For decades, microloans have been far more common in Third World countries than the United States. In 2006, Muhammad Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering the practice in his native Bangladesh.

"It's easier for farmers in India to borrow money than in the United States," Munzing said. "These small farmers in the Northeast need the most help."

At 89 years old, Seeger has spent the last seven decades as a folk singer and political activist. He performed with Woody Guthrie in the 1940s, testified before the House un-American Activities Committee in 1955 and participated in civil rights marches in the 1960s.

Along the way, he composed, "If I had a Hammer," "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season)" and "Where Have all the Flowers Gone?"

Today, Seeger devotes most of his time to his environmental activism group Clearwater.

Rodriguez-Seeger first performed with his grandfather in 1986 and has released five albums with his band the Mammals. Guy Davis has released 12 albums since 1978 and his 2004 CD "Legacy" was chosen as one of the best of the year by National Public Radio.

Tickets range from $30 to $50 and for an extra $15 concertgoers can attend a post-show reception with the artists. Tickets are available at the Latchis Hotel and Vermont Artisan Designs in Brattleboro, Dynamite Records in Northampton, Mass., or at www.brattleborotix.com.

Years ago, I met Pete when I interviewed him for a magazine article looking back at the violence that erupted when the legendary Paul Robeson gave an outdoor concert in 1949 in Peekskill, New York.

In the late 1990s, Pete kindly agreed to perform a benefit concert for a small, local charity I had started in western New Jersey to help local families with food and heating oil and to buy Christmas gifts for children in those families. One of Pete's favorite slogans is "Think globally, act locally," and this effort -- unpaid volunteers helping their neghbors -- fit the idea perfectly.

His first concert (which also featured Pete's talented grandson Tao) sold out a 650-seat high school auditorium (with every cent raised going to the charity, as Pete declined any kind of compensation). And Pete had such a good time, and thought it was such a good cause, that he came back two years later and headlined another benefit concert, this one held outdoors at a park along the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. (Both of those concerts also featured performances by local singers who donated their time and talent and got on stage with Pete -- including my good friend and great novelist Christian Bauman, who dueted with Pete on a Woody Guthrie song called "Do-Re-Mi").

Anyway, that's when I really got to know Pete and his amazing wife, Toshi, and that's my real excuse for writing this -- to help publicize his latest benefit show for his latest cause but also to declare that just being able to say I know Pete Seeger is an honor and that getting to meet him and talk with him and work him will always rank as one of the highlights of my life. The man is an American hero, a true American hero, and how could I keep from singing his praises?

Pete Seeger always held a special place in my heart and was tickled pink to find that he is still alive and well. He talks with environmental activist Majora Carter over a myriad of topics such as social justice, the environment, their histories...and yes, a little banjo music Seeger style to liven things up.

From This Brave Nation.

External Link.

 To buy on Amazon.com click here

Book Review by Dan Tres Omi

In the last several years, there have been quite a few healthy tomes written about hip hop culture. Unfortunately, a large portion of that bunch tends to place hip hop culture outside of Black culture. Much of what is written about hip hop culture seems to remove it from the context of Black history particularly. Of course they point out how hip hop is a Black and Latino manifestation of an oppressed creativity but they leave it at that. There is no connection made to the Black Arts movement or the Black Freedom Rights struggle of the fifties, sixties, and the seventies. Dax Devlon Ross, a prolific and independent writer, brings it all home in The Nightmare and the Dream.

In one book, Ross summarizes points made in Harold Cruse's classic The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, W.E.B. DuBois' Souls of Black Folk, and Dean E. Robinson's Black Nationalism in American Politics. What makes The Nightmare... stand out is how Ross connects the dots to Black Nationalism and hip hop culture. Using the Hegelian dialectic, Ross uses Nas and Jay Z as his subjects when discussing the internal conflict in Black America between Black Nationalism and assimilation. Like Robinson, Ross does a careful deconstruction of Black leadership in the United States. He does a wonderful job of explaining DuBois' double consciousness, but Ross does not stop there.

Ross begins with a hardy overview of the history of Black leadership in the United States. He begins with Frederick Douglass and his public beef with Alexander Crummel. Ross explains how Douglass enjoyed the spotlight and refused to allow anyone else to share the stage. While Douglass felt that fully embracing American culture is the key to Black Liberation, Crummel preached a more radical Black Nationalism. Ross breaks it down from that point on. In the final chapters, Ross brings it home by using the conflict between Biggie and Tupac and later Nas and Jay Z.

The book will force the reader to peruse the books mentioned above and requires a great amount of meditation. Like any hip hop purist or Black intellectual, I questioned Ross' choice of subjects in Nas and Jay Z. After putting down the book, I must admit that Ross did a thorough job of stating his position. What I enjoyed about The Nightmare... is the author's call for us to really look at our culture critically. We often complain that those outside of our culture have no respect of it. However, we are just as guilty as our detractors since we refuse to really analyze the impact our culture has on politics and economics in the United States. We refuse to see hip hop culture as a subculture of Black culture. We refuse to approach hip hop music from an intellectual perspective. Ross urges us to do just that. From this mindset, one can understand the author's use of Jay Z and Nas. Like the Black leaders discussed in The Nightmare... Ross points out how during the time that many of them lived, they were vilified, disregarded by mainstream voices, and at times under appreciated by the very same people they attempted to help. Many participants of hip hop culture do the same thing when it comes to our icons.

For a short book, Ross covers so much. As stated before, it will force readers to seek out other books. I think this is Ross' intent. We should challenge ourselves. We should broaden our horizons. We should connect the dots since we will be the ones writing the history. It will not be too far fetched to say that The Nightmare... is an important book. Ross places a huge magnifying glass on what has happened within hip hop culture in the last ten years. What makes the book special is that Ross is one of our voices. He is one of us. This makes his voice much more authentic. He not only knows what he is talking about, but he is a fan of the music and a participant in the culture.

To buy on Amazon click here

"The Nightmare and the Dream charts new ground in analyzing the impact of hip-hop on African-American political culture.  By going beyond a mere inquiry into the dynamics of hip-hop in the post-Civil Right era-a limiting perspective that a majority of contemporary hip-hop works fall prey to-Ross goes back in time to the nineteenth-century and locates a recurring phenomenon that has continued into the twenty-first century.  The Dyad Syndrome of dual conflicting political leaders has plagued black communities from the era of Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany to the life and times of W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, and Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan.  According to Ross, this syndrome haunts the Weltgeist, or world-spirit, of hip-hop as well, whether we talk of the tensions between Notorious BIG and Tupac Shakur, East Coast and West Coast rappers, or artists such as Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown.  Ross provides a moving narrative that weaves in and out of well-known black figures in addition to musicians and politicians whose lives have been disavowed in historical memory.  Select figures represent archetypes of a "Dream" vision full of the Horatio Alger story in blackface, while others embrace a nihilistic conception of the "Nightmare" reflecting the realities of rampant injustices facing black agents since the founding of the American republic.  So where do we go from here?  With Du Bois's ideas of double-consciousness and second sight serving a mediating role, Ross details the tensions and ultimate public reconciliation between Jay-Z and Nas as a prime example of how hip-hop, like black politics, can progress forward positively, in solidarity, despite the obstacles.  Ross's final tale is not a nihilistic one such as that of the mythical Sisyphus, bound forever to repeatedly push rocks up a hill only eventually to fall down.  The Nightmare and the Dream uniquely spells out a radical existential injunction made famous recently by Toni Morrison, Cornel West, and Barack Obama: hope can result after we come to terms with the dialectics of partisan conflict.  Dax-Devlon Ross's brilliant textual achievement is a must read for anyone concerned with the future of hip-hop, African-Americans, and new directions in late modern America as a whole."

 -Neil Roberts, Williams College

 Co-Editor of the CAS Working Papers Series in Africana Studies

"What's America's heirloom tomato favorite? Coming in at No. 1: the Paul Robeson. The popularity of dusky, purple-black varieties like this winner is on the rise at produce markets and with home gardeners..."

Okay. Note also that this bit of info comes under the headline "IN THE BLACK."

Get it?

Paul Robeson was a black civil rights hero and performer. And the tomato is purply-black! Isn't that fucking poignant?

This tomato also does an unforgettable "Ol' Man River." And it's a big pinko commie. So watch out!

To the unknowing, "Show business" can be an illusive invalid as well as a glamorous occupation. There was a time, however, when for the black performer, it was not too illusive nor was it an invalid. For many years, being in show business was fabulous and most times glamorous. It was fabulous in 1821 when the African Company, with John Hewlett as its star, presented the classics at Brown's Theatre on Bleecker and Mercer Sts., in what was later to become Greenwich Village. The company was so successful that they graciously made a partition in the back of the house to accommodate the whites. It was fabulous when Ira Aldridge was world famous for his portrayals of Othello and the Moor in "Titus Andronicus"; when the black performer decided to make some of the big money being made by the minstrel shows that imitated him by imitating the imitators; and when the Lafayette Players sent two acting companies a season with such stars as Laura Bowman, Abbie Mitchell, Clarence Brooks, Frank Wilson, Rose McClendon and many others.

When Harlem had little theatre groups like the Allied Re players, the Rose McClendon Players, The American Negro Theatre, The Suitcase Theatre and various church groups -- these groups were the proving grounds for Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Frederick O'Neal, Earle Hyman, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Alice Childress and on and on -- these were more of the fabulous days! It was fabulous when Williams and Walker captured the crowned heads of Europe with their production of "In Dahomey," and when Broadway would present at least two major black productions a year, such as "Shuffle Along," "Liza," "Africana," "Running Wild," "Chocolate Dandies," "Blackbirds," "7 Come 11," plus large touring musicals like "The Models," and "Desires." The glamor was evident when we had not two but many film stars like Clarence Muse, Nina Mae McKinney, Daniel Haynes and matinée idol, Lorenzo Tucker.

It was fabulous when Oscar Micheaux, Toddy and Million Dollar Films produced rather good films without using the trite racial conflicts so overworked by Hollywood. I might add that Oscar Micheaux produced, wrote, directed and edited his films and we haven't had one black person or company attempt to take his place in this lucrative field that has a ready market hungry for such a product. No, the films were not all fabulous, nor were the stage productions, but the artists were great and they were able to learn and practice their trade in the only way possible...by working at it.

It was fabulous when every social gathering hired a black band and the choices were Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Noble Sissle, Eddie South, Chick Webb, or one of many small singing and playing combos all over the country; when Harlem was peppered with night spots like the Cotton Club, Dickie Wells', Connie's 101 Ranch, and the Plantation, with full stage shows and not just weekend combos; when Harlem had not just one theatre with stage presentations, but the Lafayette, the Odeon, the Lincoln and the Alhambra with full stage shows every night in the week; when variety theatres over the country didn't feel that they had a good "bill" unless there was a black act starred; when the performer could be certain of at least fifty weeks a year on tour, with shows managed, written and staged by blacks; and when there were scores of chorus girls and show girls plus many singing and dancing novelty acts.

From these opportunities came the stars like Florence Mills, George Walker, Josephine Baker, Bessie Smith, Ada Ward, Ethel Waters, Bob Cole and Bert Williams. It was fabulous when we had serious singers like Caterina Jarboro, Marian Anderson, Etta Moten, Roland Hayes, Hall Johnson Choir, Paul Robeson, and Black Patti and when we had the Helmsley Winfield Dancers, the Van Grona Negro Ballet and the always working and touring Katherine Dunham group. It was fabulous when we had comics like Tim Moore, and a host of fine straight men like Slick Chester. These performers would be tops today without the aid of the black face make-up that was their stock in trade.

I don't want to convey the notion that we don't have great artists today, for we well know that we have. I am saying, however, that we have too few in some fields and none at all in others. Sadder still is the fact that we have few places for our talented young people to get their feet wet and few producres to give them the opportunity to prove their talent. If you look into the backgrounds of the stars of today, such as Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Sammy Davis, Jr., you will find that they all started in small bistros, churches, and experimental theatres in Harlem or in their hometowns where their own people had faith in their ability and gave them the initial help and chance of exposure to eventually make the grade. Believe me when I tell you the big Broadway agents didn't snap them up for the big money jobs until they were well on their way to stardom. I have said all this to express that, if the old invalid of black show business would throw away the crutch of the white producer, director, writer and agent and would crawl backward, black performers just might once again become fabulous and success not so illusive.

The names in this Directory are those show biz folk who have achieved recognition in some way and who serve as building blocks to inspire those who are still unknown in the performing arts

Kenn Freeman, Historian

Negro Actors Guild

Through my singing and acting and speaking, I want to make freedom ring. Maybe I can touch people's hearts better than I can their minds, with the common struggle of the common man. - Paul Robeson

Yaad Bwoy Intergalactica:

Globalization of Race: Marxism, Garveyism, & Rasta

Paul Robeson was a great man whose talents and reach extended beyond the realm of political activism.

The rest of this documentary can be found on youtube.

Avui estava pensant de que calia parlar, quan he rebut un comentari de la Irene.

A la Irene la vaig conèixer el diumenge a la tarda al Liceu. L'Elvira em va dir la setmana passada que em volia presentar a una amiga (crec que em va dir amiga o una persona, per fer-ho més misteriós) que li agradaven molt els baixos. Qui anava a pensar que la persona o l'amiga seria la seva filla Irene, una preciositat de nena, que amb nou anys, un somriure encisador i amb una timidesa pròpia de les grans personalitats, es disposava a escoltar un liederabend de Schuman i Xostakóvitx. És clar que els antecedents familiars i la seva formació musical no és qualsevol cosa i ella habituada a fer els seus pinyols, com a soprano primera en el cor infantil del Orfeó Català, tenia ja molt de guanyat, però molts habituals liceistes del diumenge van fugir i en canvi la Irene, m'hagués agradat que la haguéssiu vist durant la segona part, atenta i immòbil a la seva cadira, va decidir acompanyar a la seva mare fruint de la música i de la veu d'un baix. Bé teva, teva, no era la cadira, però guardaré el secret, no t’amoïnis. Un goig, creieu-me.

Si ahir em va deixar de pedra, avui quan he llegit el seu comentari en el post del concert de Robert Holl, m'ha emocionat. La Inferlendaire més petita, la dolçor feta música, ha deixat la seva opinió del concert que varem compartir. És clar que n'estic orgullós, no em digueu que no és per estar-ho.

Doncs bé Irene, avui he decidit que el post era per a tu. Cercant un baix ne trobat un que no canta ni òpera, ni lied. És deia Paul Robeson i canta Ol'Man River de Jerome Kern.

Ol'Man River és una ària del musical Show Boat. D'aquest musical s'han fet vàries versions pel cinema, una a l'any 1936, quan les pel·lícules encara es feien en blanc i negre, i és d'aquesta versió que et posaré la interpretació antològica que va fer el gran cantant i actor.

Segurament la coneixeràs i sobretot espero que t'agradi tant com m'agrada a mi.

Un petó Irene i moltes gràcies per somriure d'aquesta manera tan dolça i per fer-nos pensar i creure, que res està perdut, que tot està per fer i tot és possible.

Ask the old river what he thinks
He knows all about them, boys
He knows all about everything

Dare's an ol' man cal'd de Mississipi
Dat's de ol' man dat I'd lek to be
Whot does he care
iv de world gets trauble
Whot does he care iv de land lev's free.

Ol' man river,
Dat ol' man river
He mus'know sumpin'
But don't say nuthin',
He jes'keeps rollin'
He keeps on rollin' along.

He don' plant taters/tators,
He don't plant cotton,
An' dem dat plants'em
is soon forgotten,
But ol'man river,
He jes keeps rollin'along.

You an'me, we sweat an' strain,
Body all achin' an' racket wid pain,
Tote dat barge!
Lif' dat bale!
Git a little drunk
An' you land in jail.

Ah gits weary
An' sick of tryin'
Ah'm tired of livin'
An' skeered of dyin',
But ol' man river,
He jes'keeps rolling' along.

[Colored folks work on de Mississippi,
Colored folks work while de white folks play,
Pullin' dose boats from de dawn to sunset,
Gittin' no rest till de judgement day.

Don't look up
An' don't look down,
You don' dast make
De white boss frown.
Bend your knees
An'bow your head,
An' pull date rope
Until you' dead.)

Let me go 'way from the Mississippi,
Let me go 'way from de white man boss;
Show me dat stream called de river Jordan,
Dat's de ol' stream dat I long to cross.

O' man river,
Dat ol' man river,
He mus'know sumpin'
But don't say nuthin'
He jes' keeps rollin'
He keeps on rollin' along.
Long ol' river forever keeps rollin' on...

He don' plant tater,
He don' plant cotton,
An' dem dat plants 'em
Is soon forgotten,
but ol' man river,
He jes' keeps rollin' along.
Long ol' river keeps hearing dat song.

You an' me, we sweat an' strain,
Body all achin an' racked wid pain.
Tote dat barge!
Lif' dat bale!
Git a little drunk
An' you land in jail.

Ah, gits weary
An' sick of tryin'
Ah'm tired of livin'
An' skeered of dyin',
But ol' man river,
He jes'keeps rollin' along!

Okay, here we go -- note for everyone unfamiliar with EMP: there are currently four panels presented at any one time, so by default I can only attend a quarter of the entire whole. If I miss something that sounds up your alley, sorry! The full day's schedule can be reviewed here.

These notes are VERY rough and I am skipping over tons of things. If any of the paper's authors notice this and want me to clarify/touch up, please let me know!

---

David Novak, “Experiments with World Music, Vol. 2: The Sublime Frequencies of Cultural Difference” -- discussing world music as collision of cultural appropriation -- not the Folkways style but the Sublime Frequencies model and ambivalence in its approach, sieves from cultural detritus. What happens when we hear the music this way? "drawing from unknown sources" SF represents an experimental approach to curating and presenting. Part of the legacy of ethnomusicology but breaks from it in compiling rather than recording, willfully confusing blends -- "curious listeners" will be left in the dark still, with ironic touches. The effect is to represent in a media mix -- evanescent media. Not a Lomaxian loss but the cylical media loss. Sun City Girls history is discussed including presentation and packaging and the breakdown of barriers, but SF is a "blind encounter" rather than a documentation. Individual transcendence needs to avoid "respect" and simple recreation. Compensation is not a factor and is a controversy. Fan discussion covers this and the idea of reacting against slickness but also a bit concerned with the mix disc approach. Approach is an ongoing thing but is not simply gonzo, reflecting what is out there such as Phnom Penh remixes (a bit like dub?) Media is not passively created but resistance to interpretation is important -- consider the loss of copyright vs the advantage of distance and piracy as aesthetic with interference.

(The next couple of presentations I caught were...dull. Skipping along!)

Franklin Bruno, “Nobody Who Was Anybody: How to Listen to 'Ballad For Americans.'” -- "this is the sound of Paul Robeson holding back" but the results still have artifice. Notes differences between versions and wants to explore which is the most authentic. "Ballad" is a patriotic cantata as officially described. Exchange between voice and others is broad and a bit goofy but hey -- "nobody who was anybody" built the nation. Ethnicities and professions and more...the device of personification plus Robeson as singer makes for the charge while its stirring approach still comes off too mannered to many (middlebrow?) and too accepting of official history. Still it lies in a selfconciously radical tradition via the preWWII left and the authors (John La Touche and Earl Robinson) came out of that. (WPA Federal Theatre Project discussed.) Family roots and political backgrounds discussed...detailed but too much to say here. More on the radical left and suspicion of FDR and the New Deal, while Sing For Your Supper provided an initial context but the song was auditioned for CBS Radio and became a mid-1940 omnipresent claimed by all smash, even the GOP, but the left critics were askance and the right critics were annoyed. Lots of infighting! Song eventually became a war standard thanks to recontextualization -- Bing Crosby film clip from Star Spangled Rhythm of knockoff song "Old Glory" is a mindblower and very WTF! Further thoughts on meaningof "nobody" and NYC settings while Robeson was not a nobody in the end. To achieve its effects it needs a singularity, a tension not resolved and how could it be?

Jim Mendiola, “Girl in a Coma: Straight Outta Tejas. And England. And All Points In Between” -- entered while speaking showing a video "Clumsy Sky" setting in a Tejano bar, signifiers everywhere classic country into punk/emp/pop thrash, continuity from the Tex Mex past via older border bands. Three bandmembers all VERY badass. Perfect follow-on from the panel, what is identity? Tattoos and hairstyles and more! I am annoyed to have missed this presentation! Album sales up and the description in iTunes was driven by context and name.

Robert Christgau, “Waiting on the World to Change” -- entered in progress, on a tear, TV on the Radio into John Mayer -- drug bust story! Mayer trashings sought via blogs and the like. Continuum via Marc Hogan! Well this is a further tear -- Mayer's publicist contacts and drops so bits are scrounged up that unsurprisingly sound more sane and thoughtful than the song itself. "Light Green" and all! Opening a dialogue went better, mild progressivism in discussion but still it is something. Xgau might be too on balance but hey. Called Hogan on Sunday and he got tongue-tied with the question and with change but does work with discussion against formalism. Political music audience share as a metric. Change as mantra for a generation, but it's something -- have the John Mayer fans as there are more of them.

Lauren Onkey, “'No Carnival in Britain': Black Immigration and the Rise of Rock & Blues in 1950s England” -- re British black and musical experiences in the 1950s. Visible only as such and as the outsiders. Beatles photo with Lord Woodbine, a contextual dissonance via the construction of the UK as white. Idea of not being able to "see" color (used to integrated bands?), but plenty of slurs abounded in the press (Josephine Baker in psych). Labor shortages prompted the immigration...new changes in port towns but left outside of accountings of rock and roll. A way to avoid confronting changes at home? Liverpool made by the slave trade, integrated communities via intermarriage and shipping employment, as well as distinctions in generations. Record exchanges via black GIs and other connections, mixing in clubs. Beatles not really asked about something that "didn't exist" but should have been aware of it. Alan Williams ran a club that the band played at as well as a steel band that Woodbine played in and ran another club, and the two helped get the Beatles going to Hamburg. Still bitterness among the generation who was there, Woodbine's death dismissed. Derry Wilkie went to Hamburg first, a showman who made the Beatles step up some. Chants band noted, contemporaries but not lover by Epstein.

Peter Scholtes, “Hi Yo Silver, Purple Rain: The Color of Minneapolis Rock and Roll, From Integrated Bands to Segregated Clubs” -- rhetorically: "what's so cool about racial integration" among a younger generation is different from the past, where older musicians saw "comfort" in the integration against the problems of the past. Three scenes in Minn: r'nb prePrince postPrince and hiphop. 1st Ave audience versus other audiences -- Purple Rain audience is the early eighties one, the Dirty Mind audience, where race is not an issue in comparison to the clubs now but which can be felt in moments. "HiYo Silver" as first Minn rock and roll single, a mix of influences and backgrounds with Augie Garcia as showman, then "Surfin' Bird" as the pop explosion to bring a scene into being. The Ravens moved but it must have seemed like a closed shop. Only integrated room -- the Bathroom of the Flame. But things started to semigel though dealing with white fright. Black groups kept dealing with stereotypes and fears of too much blackness so integration happened by the desire to play within this limit while black bands played outside the downtown. Prince transcended this by kicking against this and 1st Ave opened it further thanks to the owners and bookers. But hiphop and violence still exist in tension while Slug gets an overwhemingly white audience. But hiphop and skateboarding brought the younger kids together now...

Barry Long, “'We Insist!' Popular Music, the Civil Rights Movement, and King’s 'Urgency of Now'” -- King and civil rights, the urgency of now -- straightforward but good enough. Jazz as motivator -- a dialogue and engaged. Dizzy Gillespie: jazz "the only thing we have to offer the world" But also had an integrationist core and a music of freedom (thus Sonny Rollins). King in Berlin 1964 on jazz as conveying a more complicated existence. Bebop as composite, also dominated by blacks at the time, but seen as a meritocracy. In combination with civil rights, the results were strong, noting Max Roach's work and King's approval. "We Insist" as representative work. Noting the beats and its variations and how they move and transform. Mingus noted, further connections back to King, a bit technical. Softens a bit towards the end, oh well!

Mike McGonigal, “Freedom Highway” -- about the original 1965 Staple Singers vinyl album (NOT the 1991 CD reissue) of the same name. Starts with a twang of guitar and a breakdown of gospel styles in the "golden age." Staples were a hybrid of styles , country blues guitar mixing with the floating vocals. Notes the changes in style over the years but thinks that the early fifties sides capture "gospel in space." Dylan and the Staples are discussed, with the latter covering "The Death of Emmett Till." Notes the use of code in slave culture and the tension of Christian belief, with recorded gospel bringing these elements together. Civil rights in gospel from the start, Mahalia Jackson as supporter of King and part of the myth. Pops Staples as being inspired by an encounter with King to write protest songs -- "Freedom Highway" then played, produced by Billy Sherill! Says Pops was a "cool guy." It is recorded in a rudimentary but clear style and ties it all together. Highlight is "We Shall Overcome" which with the gospel choir finally making it work after all the grime and bad covers. Various freedom songs were takes of gospel traditionals, then more Staples stories. The 1991 reissue is not the same album and while it does make researching an adventure it is indicative of a poor treatment of gospel by the industries.

Jesse Fuchs, “The Record That Eats Itself: Form, Content, and Subversive Recursion” -- locked grooves and endless songs and hidden tracks! Too quick to sum up here, but brilliantly shifting all over the place. Song and object as various combinations, recursive and wonderful. You had to be here!

Debra Rae Cohen & Michael Coyle, “'The Only Band that Matters'?: Citation as Struggle in the Punk Cover Song” -- the Clash covers Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves" and while I still can't care about the band it's a good breakdown of the song's production and interplay of meaning between the versions.

Regina Arnold, “Rock Crowds and Power: The Early Years.” -- 2nd Lollapalooza, Ministry played and the place was destroyed, big mosh pit and Chris Cornell asked "You look like some kind of army...whose army are you going to be?" So what is the gap between crowd rhetoric and reality? The goal here is to look at pre-Woodstock festivals and how they are more fraught with conflict as well as a place catering to an elite. Raced and gendered attendees have their own contexts. Aquarian Family Festival near Stanford is the focus and the archive is slim. Three months before Woodstock, held at SJSU and near another festival, the 2nd Northern California Folk Rock Festival, half a mile away (with Hendrix). Big week for news and San Jose is in its own media world. Lots of snarky press coverage but no mention of an underlying dispute, and lots of oral history that is up in the air. Festival was a near spontaneous response to annoyance with the folk guys and misrepresented band bills. So Hendrix was on the folk bill but the Aquarian festival goes on because the PCP carers were peeved with high handed treatment. Bills were identical but Aquarian was for free -- bread baked, place to sleep. Music had to be continuous, lots of area bands. Hells Angels as security! Lots of ego bruising. Free and paid tensions still plays out while lots of Angels were causing some nasty crime, the fuckers. Yet it was called "peaceful" though the festival was banned for decibels and lovemaking. Black performers were made the other while two black attendees were killed. Women also objectified (all the men remember the naked women there, no women attendees yet found for an interview). Social violence around, festival was not peace and love. Bias in social histories since...

John Street, “Performing Politics: from Rock Against Racism to Live8” -- Rock Against Racism to Live8 was part of a study of nongovernmental political action in the UK -- how are these stories written, how do we give an account? What do musicians contribute, can the movements be explained without music, and if music is important, how do we explain it? Quotations shown to illustrate these questions and tensions -- accounting in different ways. RAR has its background in the Powell 'rivers of blood' speech and the Clapton comment plus Reading fan actions attacking reggae bands. Letters to the music press propose a musical movement against the "poison" culminating in 1978 with 300 gigs and festivals. Live8 grows out of struggling debt relief campaigns with Bono providing the initial spark in music following with Live Aid Trust coming on with the concerts. RAR is written out of musical histories -- various what ifs are discussed, concluding with the Thatcher effect. Live8 gets many critics of Geldof's hijacking and the writing out of African voices. How to assess competing stories?How to frame it? Music matters in what contexts? A list of "music as..." options are discussed, from organizer to source of moral energy, followed by a summary of means of retelling the stories. Final slide notes how RAR gave new bands a chance in a new context yet not without controversy. But there's notes from Live8 attendees showing that passions on issues can and do occur -- infrapolitics in James C Scott's sense.

Jennifer Stoever-Ackerman, “'Lollapalooza Every Day, Every Year': Music, Multiculturalism, and Whiteness in the 1990s” -- Lollapalooza 2008 seems to have a brand name and a middle-class audience to share with the past. Reclaiming an urban space for families with a certain nostalgia yes, but this is a critique of how it was first understood in a 1991 and on context in terms of multiculturalism and giving many white kids a "safe" context for it. Multiculturalism was a then powerful buzzword and there was much marketing at play -- and most of the attendees were targeted by race as well as monetarily. A spectacle for mass consumption and semiotic significance at play (photos and discussion of the Sly cover by Perry and IceT follows -- mocks or reestablishes boundaries, not to mention the audience). Lots of comments about Perry as core figure and leader as such from the press, who in turn marginalizes Ice-T and barely discusses women. 1992 brought the LA riots and a fantasy of the happy metropolis being trashed. Lollapalooza was frequently called a "riot" and its represented self got more elevated and inflated as well as the "big summer throwdown" for a surging audience, a sanctioned and contained example of "power to the people" (thus the handwritten Spin story plus the various crowd stories, a wash of whiteness and masculinity, the tolerant and the tolerated). Crossings are fraught and limited as Ice Cube and Michelle Ceros (?) noted...

Laurel Westrup, “When Subcultures Collide: The New Travellers at Glastonbury 1978-2005” -- Glastonbury has been around for a long while and has survived at balancing out capitalism with counterculture. Julian Cope stuff piles on...anyway this attracts "alternative types" and has so in the sixties the ley lines crowd goes nuts. 1971 and the free 1972 festivals provides town/gown tensions... tuned out here, I was just too tired!

The piece opens with an account of the Old Vic’s 1946 American tour, starting with Henry IV parts one and two in New York. I was in the audience for part two and have a few memories of the event. This recollection got me to thinking about a number of my theater experiences, many of them Shakespeare performances, which had some significance derived either from the presentation or from some coincident event.

In part two as presented in New York, Ralph Richardson played Falstaff and Olivier played Justice Shallow. The theater was very large and my seat was very far back so that I could barely make out what was being said and mostly remember the consistent roar of laughter following Falstaff’s lines. It must have been a hell of a performance by Richardson – I wish I had heard it. I have added as an appendix Woolcott Gibbs’ review from the May 18, 1946 issue of The New Yorker. (I trust they will not object. I have this due to the thoughtful generosity of my stepson, Rex Ruthman, who gave me the Complete New Yorker on DVDs.) I must say that I am in almost perfect agreement with Gibbs on both the play itself and the performance as far as I was able to make it out.

In 1982 I saw Henry IV, parts one and two on a rather auspicious occasion. I arrived in London on one of my frequent business trips on Sunday, June 6 (D-Day for those of you old enough to remember). The pattern of these trips was that I would land at Heathrow around noon and right after checking into my hotel (usually the Park Court on Bayswater between Lancaster Gate and Queensway) would buy a copy of What’s On in London, which was a very good listing of all the upcoming week’s events of interest. This issue said that there was to be an opening of the Henry IV sequence at The Barbican, which I knew nothing about at the time. I had a hard time finding the place from the Moorgate station in the City of London, which was listed as the nearby Underground station in What’s On. It turned out to be nearly adjacent to one of my favorite haunts, the Museum of London. I went there late afternoon Monday and found myself walking immense corridors which were completely empty – I felt like I was wandering in some de Chirico landscape. When I finally found the ticket office I told the young woman I needed to see Henry IV parts one and two, preferably in that order. She asked, “Are your free Wednesday the ninth?” I said yes and she asked “And Thursday the tenth?” Yes. “I have two reviewers’ tickets which are unused.” So I had two tickets in the first row of the stalls, to me the best seats in the house, for about six pounds each. Wonderful.

I went early Wednesday evening to have dinner at the café in the Barbican, a buffet service (the Brits say “buffy”) with acceptable food and an outdoor dining area next to the artificial pond which makes up the core of the Center. The place is overrun by some of the boldest pigeons I have ever encountered. While I was having my meal and fending off pigeons some unusual people started arriving. The women were all done up in brocade gowns, dripping jewelry, and the men in tuxedos, which seemed out of place in the bright afternoon sun. When we entered the theater the program that was handed out said it was a Royal Gala honoring Prince and Princess Michael of Kent – this was the Grand Opening of the Royal Shakespeare’s tenancy at The Barbican (The Barbican Center itself had only been open since March 3 when the Queen did the honors). After we had taken our seats, suddenly everyone stood up and, not wanting to be out of step, so did I. Then the royal couple entered their box which was about thirty feet to my left at the same level. The Princess had one of the longest necks I have seen gracing a woman – she was wearing a four strand pearl choker (big pearls of course) and looked to have room for a couple more. (Her father was German and a Nazi and there was something of a scandal years later about allegations that he had been an SS officer.)

I thought the Trevor Nunn productions were abysmal. Patrick Stewart’s Henry was pedestrian at best. The Irish ingénue playing Hal was so puerile that I thought that he should have stamped his feet in the argument scene in part two. The worst thing, however, was the set and scene changes for Part Two. There was a big framework representation of The Boar’s Head and neighboring structures which were on tracks that allowed them to be turned this way and that. The stage hands were deliberately visible in the half-light between scenes and one found oneself more interested in the scene shifting than the actors’ performances. (I found this to be a common failing with Royal Shakespeare, overwhelming the performance with elaborate or tricky sets or other “clever” devices.)

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I saw Ralph Richardson just once more, about a year or so before his death, probably in 1981, in an arena style presentation of The Wild Duck in a small studio theater – the Cottesloe in the National, I think (it was too early to be the Pit in the Barbican). I have been unable to find any reference to this production on the Web, which is quite maddening. Richardson played Old Ekdal. His costume included a cap which he held in his hand much of the time. At one point he dropped the cap – and everyone in the place froze, actors and audience alike. He was rather rickety at this time and as he stood for several seconds staring at the cap absolutely no-one was breathing. He slowly, teeteringly, bent over and retrieved the hat and slowly, teeteringly, straightened up. Then the old ham looked around the house sporting an ear-to-ear grin and the audience and cast exploded with laughter, partly in relief and partly acknowledging the masterful bit of scene thievery.

I have seen Patrick Stewart just one other time as well. He was in a production of The Merchant of Venice at the Donmar Warehouse another studio theater used by the Royal Shakespeare Company as a training camp for its young actors. This place really was a warehouse and the seating was a done-on-the-cheap framework of iron plumbing pipes with boards laid across them, which were damned uncomfortable. The audience surrounded the performance space, so it was arena style staging, without sets. The productions always included one RS regular, probably with an eye to increasing attendance and, perhaps, to be an additional level of instruction for the student cast. Stewart played Shylock and resorted to the cheap trick of using a (bad) lower east side Yiddish accent which suggested Borscht Belt stand-up comics rather than the evil usurer. His whole performance seemed downright lazy and I have never been able to muster any respect for him since.

(A note on performing Shylock: When I was performing in the University of Chicago’s University Theater we did Oedipus translated by David Grene, a popular (!) professor of Greek and classics, who sat in on some of our rehearsals and provided advice, stories and good conversation. Grene professed to be such a Shakespeare nut that he was willing to drive hundreds of miles just to see a small college performance of any Shakespeare play.

In his youth he had been a hanger-on at the Abbey in Dublin – it was said that, asked about Grene, Barry Fitzgerald said, “Was he that little red-headed bastard that was always climbing over the seats during our rehearsals?” Grene said that the problem with most performances of Shylock is that out of the natural desire to be loved the actor tends to soften him, taken in by the “do we not bleed” argument. He said that he had seen a performance of Merchant in Ireland where the actor played Shylock as pure evil, like Barabas in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, and that this provided the most effective Merchant he had ever seen.)

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In 1943 I saw the famous Margaret Webster and Eva Le Gallienne production of Othello featuring Paul Robeson, Jose Ferrer, Uta Hagen and Webster herself. Although I am about to do bit of caviling, let me say at the outset that I think this was the most magnificent Shakespeare production I have ever seen – it stands out in my memory all by itself and still gives me pleasure just in the recollection.

Robeson had been performing and perfecting his Othello for several years in England but there was trepidation about showing a coupling of a real black man with a white woman in 1930s and 40s racist America. Robeson’s performance received universal acclaim (still does) on both sides of the Atlantic. While many reviewers of other performances of Othello fault the lead actor for not being regal enough, that certainly wasn’t the problem with Robeson.

As I recall, his entry in scene two was preceded by some of the initial dialog with Iago offstage right. You could hear the audience almost gasp in response to the booming bass voice. Onstage he was a head taller and much more massive than any of the other players – and very regal in bearing. Therein lay several problems. Robeson’s “regalness” was just this side of appearing wooden and his majestic bass voice, with only one dynamic, reduced volume, became monotonous, literally, and was on the verge of being tiresome.

It is difficult for the actor portraying Othello to maintain control, to remain central, in the face of the very lively and active Iago. In this case Ferrer, mustering an absolutely brilliant performance, took command of the stage and the drama. It was a great pleasure to watch him but it did upset the balance of the play. Lewis Nichols' New York Times review makes a shrewd observation about Ferrer’s performance, “Mr. Ferrer also is excellent as Iago, his interpretation taking no sides in the long quarrel as to whether the Moor's "ancient" had been inspired by thoughts of Cassio's gaining a position he wished, or his wife's having yielded to the Moor. By taking no sides, Mr. Ferrer follows the track that Iago is unexplained evil, and he holds that throughout.” Note the parallel to ‘David Grene’s’ Shylock. All of this seems to me to be just another paragraph in the long Coquelin vs Stanislavski (or its various Method offshoots) debate. I’ll come back to this later.

Uta Hagen (then Ferrer’s wife) was an engaging and melting Desdemona. In later years she conducted a very well known and respected acting academy. I found out only recently that my college friend and acting colleague, Fritz Weaver, studied with her. Margaret Webster not only did a great directing job but she was also was an excellent hot-blooded Emilia. Cassio, whoever he was, looked like a window dummy amongst this crew of firecrackers.

I have seen only one other stage presentation of Othello. That was in 1980 at the Olivier Theatre (Royal National Theatre, South Bank) with Paul Scofield playing the lead. It was in all respects but one a run-of-the-mill production. Scofield’s Othello was another matter altogether. I detected two technical details that were interesting and, to me at least, very effective. One was a hint of a Jamaican accent which not only was consistent with the fact that Othello was not a Venetian but, to a Brit, subtly evoked racial feelings. (This was very different in intensity and intention from Stewart’s Lower East Side mistake.) The second was that he delivered several speeches, most especially the final one, in a manner that suggested military officialese. The final speech sounded almost like a recitation of a military resume. You might not think that this was an effective ploy but I can tell you that at the curtain the audience stood while it applauded and when the lights came up I saw tears streaming down the cheeks of those veteran, hardened Shakespeare watchers.

(This just in: the current New Yorker (Jan 21, 2008 ) has a review by John Lahr of a new production of Othello with a Nigerian-Englishman playing the lead role. It is in the Donmar no less which I believe is no longer a Royal Shakespeare venue. I trust the seating has been improved. It also sounds like it now has a more conventional stage because the sets are mentioned. Lahr restates the arguments about Iago’s motivation and does mention the evil-for-evil’s sake theory.)

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One can’t get through this life without seeing a number of Hamlets (I often think T. S. Eliot wasn’t much off the mark when he said Hamlet is the Mona Lisa of the stage). Since it is Shakespeare’s longest play, more than 3900 lines, it can often turn into an endurance contest. Two performances stick in my memory for almost extraneous reasons. I saw Maurice Evans in a truncated version called “The GI Hamlet” which he performed for the troops during WW II. Evans was the prince of the “elecutionists” mentioned in Pierpont’s New Yorker piece. The way they popped their “p”s must have given the first row a bath. (I heard a recording of Barrymore doing the main soliloquies (“To be …“ and “What a rogue …”) and he was just as bad.) As far as I could make out, the whole purpose of this production was to glorify Evans.

I saw a Korean kid from Hawaii play the lead in a production at the Tyrone Guthrie in Minneapolis. It was a very entertaining evening. He got more laughs for Hamlet’s jokes than any other actor I have seen. He got one gratuitous laugh for the line that contains “with heavy lidded eyes …” when he paused and looked around the house, seeking a response. Nonetheless it was a pleasant evening.

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Woolcott Gibbs reviewed three plays in the April 19, 1949 issue of The New Yorker, the first was the opening of Death of a Salesman, which I will come back to in a while, and the second was a production of the Boston Repertory Association, Richard III. Richard Whorf produced, directed, performed the lead and designed the costumes and the sets for this remarkable performance.

The costumes were made of a stiff material, probably a thick felt, the main body being black and the whole costume being very geometrical looking with large triangular lapels and wide cuffs on the sleeves the color of the character’s house badge, red for the Lancastrians and white for the Yorkists. The whole appearance reminded one of the figures on playing cards. Aside from being visually striking and appealing, the costumes helped the audience identify affiliations in the confusing jumble of participants. The sets were abstract, very tall flats of a dark textured color, suggesting stone, placed in various offsets to provide paths for entrance and exit. The lighting only illuminated the lower areas and the dark looming walls disappeared in the darkness as they rose into the flies.

Whorf’s performance as Richard was just as striking as his design. He really played up the deformity of both body and motion (which is not that unusual) and his speech would rise almost to falsetto when a line indicating one of Richard’s evil intentions was spoken. The whole effect reminded me of German expressionist film performances (Conrad Veidt in Caligari or Max Schreck in Nosferatu come to mind) and was impressively effective. Clearly, Richard Whorf was firmly in the Coquelin camp.

This might be the best place to very briefly discuss the Stanislavsky v. Coquelin disputes. Roughly, very roughly, Coquelin’s approach to acting was for the actor to consciously and deliberately employ mechanisms to evoke responses from the audience. He called the mechanisms “conventions” even though they may have been invented in the performance rather than arising from any cultural context. (Some theater is entirely determined by cultural conventions – Kabuki for example.) Constant Coquelin’s exposition of his theories, Art and the Actor, is available via Google books (this is one of their digitized books from the Stanford Library – it would be gross understatement to say that I was surprised and pleased to find this book available – without cost no less! Google is to be praised and thanked for this wonderful contribution to our intellectual resources.)

Just as roughly, Stanislavsky methods (he had several and his various descendants have several) are based on the actor psychologically merging with the portrayed character. The ways of doing that are many. Sometimes the actor is told to identify aspects of his own personality in that of the character and others do the reverse, find aspects of the character’s personality in himself – it all comes out about the same. The idea is that if the actor and the character become one then the behavior of the actor will be the character’s and the visible and audible manifestations will empathetically evoke the “right” responses in the audience. These methods seem more appropriate for modern, “realistic” plays, with their heavy emphasis on character as the driving force for the events of the drama. Whether it is appropriate or helpful in portraying Richard III, Iago or Shylock is doubtful. Also doubtful is whether theories have any real consequence for the actor – they may be just props (in both senses).

In any event, Richard Whorf’s production and performance were very unusual and unusually effective, deserving more attention than Woolcott Gibbs afforded them.

In 1979 I saw a RSC production of Richard III featuring John Wood in the Royal National Theatre’s Olivier Theatre. This was the first time I had been to that auditorium. It is very large and has the largest staging area I have ever seen. When opened all the way the backstage area appears to reach the vanishing point and this production used every available inch of the space producing some very impressive scenes.

This performance was quite the opposite of the Whorf Richard, brightly lit, big and noisy and filled with vibrancy. The set was semi-abstract; in particular there was a wall-like structure stage left that had an irregularly shaped opening cut into it about waist high. When Richard becomes king there is a series of mimed executions where the victims’ heads were projected through the opening and a swordsman swings his blade. After that had gone on for awhile I noticed that running along the edge of the stage (which was at floor level) was a gutter which was (audibly!) running with a red liquid. I felt like jumping up and cheering. This sort of uninhibited theatricality was just right for this particular Shakespearean drama and one occasion where RSC’s “cleverness” paid off.

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As I mentioned above, the April 19, 1949 New Yorker also had a review of the first production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman which I also saw during the early weeks of this initial run. When the final curtain came down I remarked to my companion that Lee Cobb should have been given credit for writing the play. What I meant was that Cobb accomplished more with beautifully timed silences than Miller did with his ham fisted dialog. That “attention must be paid” speech Willie’s wife delivers in the graveyard is the work of a dramaturgical lummox. Mildred Dunnock should have walked downstage, plunked her rear end down on the apron, legs dangling into the pit, and delivered it directly to the audience. It certainly doesn’t fit into the context of the play.

There was an interesting example of a Coquelin convention developed by Cobb. There is a well known Jewish gesture used to indicate resignation, submission to fate, the futility of resistance. The shoulders are shrugged, both hands, palms up, are raised almost to shoulder height – well, whadda ya gonna do? In the course of the performance Cobb created a modified form of this gesture, raising only one hand half way with a sort of half-shrug. He used it every time fate handed Willie a new insult: when the refrigerator breaks right after the last payment, when he’s fired and so on. In Willie’s final scene Cobb stands alone in the middle of the stage looking like a bull after the picador is through with it and he stands there and he stands there and then the shrug and very slowly the hand floats up. It was far and away the most powerful line in the whole play.

Lee J. Cobb came from the Group Theater of Stella Adler (studied under Stanislavsky), the empress of the actors, who influenced Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner and all the other Methodists.

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Macbeth is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, partly because it is the least polished, the least reworked and, therefore, most spontaneous of all his works. Rather like David Grene, I would go to see any production of Macbeth under the belief that any reading of it is at least acceptable. I did see one amateur performance at the Bear Gardens Museum in Southwark which proved the above generalization, like all others, not to be true. The hard seats and the dreary performance and the late hour proved to be too much and I left in the middle of the performance.

I don’t think I could have seen the Judith Anderson performance in 1941. I was only 12 at the time and have no recollection of the play. But I do recall seeing her do the sleepwalking scene, with sets and costume, so it must have been on television, perhaps the Ed Sullivan show. It was not unlike her portrayal of Medea, Robinson Jeffers’ take-off of his own Tower Beyond Tragedy, which was a take-off of Euripedes’ Medea, which I did see. She gave scenery-chewing a good name.

The best Macbeth I have ever seen, another performance for which I can find no record, was presented in a reworked, undistinguished nineteenth century church in Islington, a working class enclave on London’s northeast. I believe the troupe was called The Shakespeare Repertory Company and one of its founding board members was Tyrone Guthrie. Across the street was a large group of multistoried residences that we in the US would call Projects and in Britain are modern forms of Council Housing. On the walk from the nearest Underground station, crossing under railroad trestles with ads for brake pads attached, I passed a number of food shops selling an age-old poor Englishman’s staple, boiled eels. Unfortunately, I had just had supper was not able to consider having some – I like very much some other eel preparations that I have had over the years.

In the church there was an excellent modified form of the hypothetical stage in Shakespeare’s Globe. All that was missing was the upper level stage over the inner stage to the rear of the main one. Lady Macbeth was played by Sarah Miles and I believe that, without qualification, she was the best I have ever seen. I don’t remember who played Macbeth but, for some unexplained reason, I keep thinking it may have been Jeremy Brett – I have absolutely no evidence to support that belief.

This was in all regards an excellent production. As far as I could make out the only text removed was that nonsense by Hecate in Act IV Scene 1 which is universally credited to someone other than Shakespeare, probably Middleton. In particular, the handling of the Witches was straightforward, avoiding any hint of self-consciousness, embarrassment or hokiness. This is important because, in a sense, the change in the Witches’ relationship to Macbeth is the very heart of the drama.

Miles made the motivation for Macbeth’s submission to her believable by making her sexy, as unlikely as that sounds. Most performances of Macbeth err in making Lady Macbeth the main, or even only, villain. At worst, she only gets him started on his evil course, thereafter his villainy is entirely self-generated. By act four he is a devil incarnate, a witch.

To explain that last remark I need to go on a long circuitous digression, so please bear with me.

Among Victorians, especially Shakespeare critics, there was something like a parlor game posing hypothetical questions such as ‘what courses did Hamlet take at Wittenberg and what were his grades?’ One of the most popular of these was ‘how many children did Lady Macbeth have?’ (One cannot start such a discussion without the obligatory quotation of Sir Thomas Browne’s famous line from the introduction to Hydriotaphia (Urn Burial) “What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.” I should also point out that Robert Graves did, in fact, provide such conjectures.) In the early fifties, while I was living at the foot of MacDougal Street (see the post about Mama Savarese), I wrote a long paper to answer the question about Lady Macbeth which was really about the interesting things that came to mind along the way.

The strongest possible answer to the question is indicated in two passages: Lady MacBeth’s “I have given suck …” and MacBeth’s “… whilst I hold a barren scepter in my grip … To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings” The answer is at least one but none by MacBeth.

In the process of trying to extract a stronger answer I found myself more and more examining the symbolism in Act IV, Scene 1, especially the contents of the Witches’ cauldron which is a seething pot of emasculation symbols (“…Eye of newt, and toe of frog, … tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg … Nose of Turk, and …
Finger of birth-strangl'd babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab … sow's blood, that hath eaten Her nine farrow). The theme of emasculation and sterility is symbolically carried throughout the play from the hypothetical baby whose brains Lady MacBeth would dash out to the “abjuration” wherein Macbeth compels the witches to answer his questions, to the bloody babe, MacDuff, ripped from the womb. It is a leitmotif.

Then I got to wondering about the rest of the dumb-show in that scene. The armed head probably means nothing more than battle and the bloody child is MacDuff and the crowned child with branch is Malcolm but who are the eight kings followed by Banquo and why does the eighth hold a mirror in his hand?

At about this point I tried to find out something about the “real” Macbeth, the history behind the play. Fortuitously an article appeared in a Sunday newspaper magazine at about this time giving these “facts”: Lady MacBeth’s name was Gruoch; she was married to Gillecomgain who fathered her son Lulach; Gillecomgain was killed in the Viking fashion, his house and grounds with their staff surrounded and burned (the Sicilian Mafia also inherited this technique from the Vikings), perhaps by MacBeth; Duncan was the usurper, Gruoch had a rightful claim to the throne; Lulach died with MacBeth in the battle on Dunsinane and the hill is now called Lewis Height; Fleance ran to Wales where he became the royal steward to the Prince of Wales; his son, Walter Steward became the royal steward to Scotland; a long line of Stuart kings in Scotland descended from Walter right up to James VI of Scotland, James I of England.

A lot of this is speculation or surmise but the basics are pretty close. Lulach probably died years after MacBeth and I don’t know about Lewis Height. Lady MacBeth had some claim on the throne but it is a complicated business. It is unlikely MacBeth had anything to do with the death of his cousin Gillecomgain. There is an excellent explanation of the culture and history of the Scottish succession practices and a more accurate account of the facts as far as they are known, in “What Do We Really Know About MacBeth?”

There were more than eight kings in the succession – I found this in a forum on the web:

DESCENDANCY OF KING JAMES

Banquo
Fleance [married a daughter of the Prince of Wales]
Walter Steward [Lord Steward of Scotland]
Alane Steward
Alexander Steward
John Steward
Walter Steward [married Margaret, descendant of David I]
Robert II 1371-1390 King of Scotland
Robert III 1390-1406 King of Scotland
James I 1406-1437 King of Scotland
James II 1437-1460 King of Scotland
James III 1460-1488 King of Scotland
James IV 1488-1513 King of Scotland
James V 1513-1542 King of Scotland
Mary Queen of Scots 1542-1567 Queen of Scotland
James VI of Scotland 1567-1625 King of Scotland

James IV married Margaret, daughter of Henry VII
James VI became James I of England 1603-1625

I believe this play was written in considerable haste in response to a royal command from the new king of England a year or more before the customary date assigned, 1605, presented at Whitehall on an “arena” stage as described by the remarkable literary detective, Leslie Hotson (Shakespeare’s Arena - Sewanee Review, Summer, 1953), and that it is blatant political pandering to further the cause of Shakespeare’s performing group. The last king in the apparition is holding a mirror up so that James would see his own face - the last king in the line.

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On one of my many business trips to London I was surprised by a language oddity from the news readers on BBC regarding the pronunciation of “controversy”. Instead of saying con’-tro-ver”-sy (primary accent on the third syllable, secondary on the first) they said con-trov”-er-sy (with perhaps a slight secondary accent on the last syllable). I had never heard the word pronounced that way and had hard time believing it was acceptable. In any event, it seemed like a BBC affectation to me.

At some later time, I was in London with my wife, Barbara, and by coincidence our San Francisco friend and lawyer John Burke was also there. We all decided to see the Royal Shakespeare production of Coriolanus, directed by Terry Hand, at the Aldwych. The theme of the play is controversy and the word is used over and over and it was pronounced in the customary fashion.

We were in the third row of the stalls and when the first intermission lights came up I leaned across Barbara and said to John in my usual loud voice and distinctly New York accent “The British can’t speak English and I can prove it!” You should have seen the backs of the people around us stiffen! “On the BBC they say con-trov”-er-sy” The backs relaxed and the man in front of me turned around and said “You wouldn’t believe how many letters to the editor of The London Times have been printed about that!”

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Appendix

Woolcot Gibbs' review of Old Vic's Henry IV

It seems likely that more dismal critical nonsense has been visited on Shakespeare than any other topic in the theatre, and the reasons for this aren't especially hard to find. 'The Works are part of the early cultural equipment of every reviewer, with the exception of the occasional happy illiterate who has entered drama criticism by way of the sports desk or the night-club beat; the body of scholarly comment on them has been enormous, celebrated, and practically required reading for any-conscientious student of the stage; it is still growing and the temptation to add to it, to ally oneself cozily with the best thought of three hundred years, is nearly irresistible; and, finally, the actual composition of an article on Shakespeare needs to involve none of the usual hazards of trying to determine whether the play itself is any damn good-it is simply a matter of comparing interpretations, and in this, since one lay opinion about acting is just about as useful, or perhaps just about as preposterous, as the next, the writer is limited only by the richness of his vocabulary and the ingenuity of his syntax. The resulting prose was once discussed by Max Beerbohm, who has usually said whatever it is that I am trying to a great deal better, and generally about fifty years earlier. In this case, he was writing in 1898 about the dangers attending a revival of "Julius Caesar":
"The thing will become a classic in the drama, and one will be able to regard it only as a vehicle for acting.... Its interest will be merely histrionic:-"Is M r.* so powerful as **? ... You never saw **? Ah, what a performance! Not so subtle as ***'s perhaps-but oh! the way he said, ‘Was this ambition?' He just put his hand in his toga and-why, * holds his hand straight in front of him-misses the whole point of it. For my own part, I always thought that, in some respects, ***vs idea-'',.. Nothing could be drearier than this kind of comparative criticism; yet a classic play makes it quite inevitable. The play is dead. The stage is crowded with ghosts. Every head in the audience is a heavy casket of reminiscence. Play they never so wisely, the players cannot lay those circumambient ghosts nor charm those well-packed caskets to emptiness."

Being in cheerful agreement with all these remarks, I will try