Recently in Music Category

Apparently the piece I wrote about ABC No Rio has been picked up by THE NATION for their Jan 28 web edition!

The story of ABC No Rio has always been one about creative engagement with the politics of space. It began on New Year's Eve in 1979 when a group of artists invaded a vacant storefront on Delancey Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side. At the time, the neighborhood was blighted by widespread arson and a culture of drug addiction.

During the 1970s, thousands of buildings in New York City had been abandoned by their landlords, became property of the city through foreclosure, and sat vacant and neglected. The art exhibition on Delancey Street entitled "The Real Estate Show" was a provocation: why should these spaces sit idle? Watching the grainy black and white video footage that documented the event, there's a palpable sense of indignant playfulness as trash was cleared away and art crudely taped to walls. Neighborhood kids joined in the fun, drawing on the walls and interacting with the sculptures.

The city authorities were not amused. Police padlocked the building and the artwork was rudely confiscated and shipped to a warehouse across town. As one reviewer noted at the time, "the show's basic ideological premise--that artists, working people, and the poor are systematically screwed out of decent places to exist in--could not have been brought home with more brutal irony."

The story could have ended there, had the artists conceded defeat--instead they chose to fight.

This is an excerpt from a spotlight chapter I wrote for the All-Ages Movement Project's forthcoming book.

This month, I'm helping run mailorder for my friends' label while they're on tour in Japan. This "company story" manifesto thing is from their forthcoming company catalog.

Our company was formed when we decided to have one name and address for all things we made and all the makers. It is an imaginary general store from a time before figuring out all aspects of one's work became a novelty. In 2003 we started writing the brand name on our projects in order to unify our various objects and to jokingly participate on the uneasy commerce that we all live in, but in the simplest, most direct way we could think of.

Not knowing how to best be useful in a world that increasingly seems to need SOMETHING, some kind of massive sweeping broom and warm embrace, and finding ourselves with enough money to live, we are producing frivolous booklets and records and posters.

It is an uneasy life, living in the dark belly of the modern megastate with any kind of awareness, so we sing and write to keep ourselves and our customers aware and uneasy, not too comfy and not too guilty, awake.

No amount of well-intentioned song-products would be enough work, no matter how home-made or deliberately done. We must encourage each other constantly to nurture our literacies, leave our bubbles, increase our knowledge, refuse to accept stupidity, offer love in gentle ways everywhere. We must participate in real life.

I love this statement, and the way it points us to a mature, nuanced theory of the role of culture in this troubled age. Key ideas:
• Culture matters; it's not just about celebrity, commerce, entertainment, or even self-expression, or art for art's sake.
• Choices about methods of production, manufacture, and distribution are as much a potential space of resistance as the work itself. The way the CD or the book or whatever is made and the way it reaches its audience is as important as the information it contains.
• At the same time, cultural products are not enough. Participation in cultures of resistance is best understood as one component of a broader strategy of mindful living.
• We can be self-aware about the limitations of music-making/book-making/art-making/film-making without falling into cynicism or knee-jerk irony. We just have to remember that admonition from the Upanisads, that this cultural stuff we make is "the finger pointing at the moon, and those whose gaze is fixed upon the pointer will never see beyond."

iTunes is currently offering a free download of Dolly Parton's Oscar-nominated song "Travelin' Thru". It's not my favorite thing she's done--pretty well-worn territory lyrically--but significant because of its context in a movie about an MTF transsexual. Oddly enough, this is one of her more overtly religious songs, drawing a connection between the traditional born-again experience and the experience of claiming one's gender identity. Maybe a little cutesy, but very much in line with Dolly's history of using the language of her Baptist upbringing to talk about progressive Christian theology.

Questions I have many, answers but a few
But we're here to learn, the spirit burns to know the greater truth
We've all been crucified and they nailed Jesus to the tree
And when I'm born again, you're gonna see a change in me

God made me for a reason and nothing is in vain
Redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain
Oh sweet Jesus if you're listening, keep me ever close to you
As I'm stumblin', tumblin', wonderin', as I'm travelin' thru

Download it while you can from

Celtic Christianity often makes reference to "thin places", a concept that has its home in a particular kind of thinking about God, as Marcus Borg explains:

This way of thinking sees God, "the More," as the encompassing Spirit in which everything is....In words attributed to Paul in the Book of Acts, God is "the one in whom we live and move and have our being." God is a nonmaterial layer of reality all around us, "right here" as well as "more than right here." This way of thinking thus affirms that there are minimally two layers or dimensions of reality, the visible world of our ordinary experience and God, the sacred Spirit.

"Thin places" are places where the fog is lifted and we see things as they really are. The universe is shown. Christmastime is thought to be one of those "thin places." It's a story about God becoming human, about word becoming flesh, about the division between different layers of existence being bridged. It's a time when "joy and wonder is in the air," blah blah blah.

Oh, hi, if you're arriving here via Jessica.

For an account of Jars Of Clay's progressive evangelicalism, see this article in the often-excellent Sojourners.

And for aural evidence of the Sufjan similarity, listen to "Hymn" from the 1997 album Much Afraid at iTunes.

You can get the general idea just from the 30 second sample. The production is totally Nashville CCM (ie everything compressed to death) but the arrangements, the measured diction and polite vocal phrasing totally sounds Sufjany to me. $5 to any interviewer who asks him if the Jars were an influence.

Via the reliably weird WFMU:
"Lil' Markie" is the creation of evangelist Mark Fox, who uses his ability to sing in a terrifying "childlike" falsetto to sing cautionary Christian tales.

Start with "Diary of an Unborn Child" (8.0 mb MP3). If you can handle that, go here to download the entire 17 song album. Don't miss the video clips; the voice is even more surreal when you see it being produced by a jolly mulleted man.

edit: Usually I avoid posting this sort of thing. Though often accurate, the whole "What did they do now? Gosh those evangelical christians sure are nutty!" trope is trite and not particularly productive. I made an exception because this was just too crazy to keep to myself.

I was reading Michael Lerner's Passover Seder again, and came across this:

There is a tradition that the matzah miraculously tasted just like the manna which the Israelites ate in the desert, food they had to gather each day and which could not be saved or accumulated because it went sour each night. The manna taught the Israelites to overcome their belief that they had to compete with one another—and to trust that there would be enough for everyone. Only once they had let go of their terror of scarcity and their hard-hearted competitiveness could they learn to open their hearts to one another in empathy. Here is a central spiritual message: There is enough. We are enough. Dayenu.

I immediately thought of Mirah's song "Apples In The Trees" (MP3, 1.8 mb) which explores this idea that our needs can be met in abundance and our hope restored, even in the face of a long struggle. Mirah's songwriting distinctly expresses her Jewish heritage yet can speak to anyone, connecting personal, spiritual, and political realms.

See there's food for me
There's food for you
There's gold that's in the air
There's oceans deep and wide
And there is love beyond compare

There's apple in the trees
Let's take all that we need
We know what we believe
There's hope for you and me
My eyes can almost see
If you fight 'til you're free
You don't have to wait until you die

Buy the record from K mailorder or from