Peron, the Media, a Folk Song, Friedman on the TPP, a Letter, a Pig, a Frog and the Hip-Hop Revolution

We Write Letters

Here's the text of a letter I wrote last week to the Palm Beach Post.  It appeard in today's (7/3/17) paper.  Let me share it with you.   Do you agree with me?  What are your ideas?

Recently, a letter touted a “free-market system” being best for health care, and looked forward to our getting “the opportunity to see how well a free-market system works in the coming years.”  We already have had that opportunity, and the nation was not satisfied with what it produced.  

That’s why Medicare was instituted for seniors in 1965, and finally, the Affordable Care Act, with all its of shortcomings, was passed in 2010.  

Even that is better than the free-market system for many millions of Americans.  

Insofar as health care is concerned, the free-market system is a proven  failure.  

Sooner or later there will be Medicare for all.  All we need do is lower the age of eligibility.  There is nothing magical about age 65 any longer.   

Jack Lippman

La Prensa, Peron and a Pete Seegar Tune

Politics in Latin America has always been tumultuous, often with our southern neighbors failing to, or not even trying to, emulate the democratic principles upon which the United States is based.  Argentina is an example of this.  When Juan Peron became that country’s dictator in the middle of the last century, one of the first things he attacked was La Prensa, the Buenos Aires newspaper which had a long and respected history of objectivity and of standing up for democratic principles. 

His authoritarian government and such a newspaper could not co-exist. Peron’s attacks on La Prensa grew and finally, the government took over the newspaper, making it into its own propaganda mouthpiece.  After the fall of the Peron regime, La Prensa returned to a more normal operation, continuing to survive as Argentina went through some terrible times, including the domestic terror of the “Dirty War” period of the 1980s.  It is still published today and the Encyclopedia Brittanica refers to it as being “widely regarded as the finest Spanish-language newspaper in the world.” 

During the Peron regime, its exiled editor, Alberto Gainza Paz, was quoted by an upstate New York newspaper as saying, “I am not saying that what happened in my country might someday happen here, but I will warn you that it is much easier to fight to keep the freedoms you have than to fight to regain the freedoms you have lost."

So when “government” attacks a nation’s media, which once was just ‘the press’ but is now more widely defined, it is time for great vigilance. I am reminded of the wonderful lyrics of the folk song written by Lee Hays and Pete Seegar a couple of generations ago, and popularized by Peter, Paul and Mary, whom some of you I hope still remember.  They are pertinent today, particularly in the light of what happened to La Prensa in 1951 and some of the threatening words coming out of Washington today. 

If I Had a Hammer

If I had a hammer
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening
All over this land
I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between
My brothers and my sisters
All over this land, oh …

If I had a bell
I'd ring it in the morning
I'd ring it in the evening
All over this land
I'd ring out danger
I'd ring out a warning
I'd ring out love between
My brothers and my sisters
All over this land, oh …

If I had a song
I'd sing it in the morning
I'd sing it in the evening
All over this land
I'd sing out danger
I'd sing out a warning

I'd sing out love between

My brothers and my sisters
All over this land, oh …

Well, I've got a hammer
And I've got a bell
And I've got a song to sing
All over this land
It's the hammer of justice
It's the bell of freedom
It's a song about love between
My brothers and my sisters
All over this land
It's a hammer of justice
It's a bell of freedom
It's a song about love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land.

Lyrics © T.R.O. Inc.

And that’s what this blog, more or less, is trying to do.    

Enjoy your Fourth of July holiday, and perhaps recall what it stands for:  the hammer of justice, the bell of freedom and love between all of us ... all over this land!

Jack Lippman

Friedman on Trump, the Chump!

Last Wednesday’s New York Times carried a column by Thomas Friedman, admittedly an ardent globalist, in which he called our President, Donald Trump, a “chump.”  It’s about the ramifications of his pulling the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).   tRump campaigned vigorously against the TPP claiming that such trade agreements cost Americans jobs. 

Actually, the opposite is true. (Hillary Clinton, belatedly, took the same position saying that the TPP had to be modified, but she only did this to counteract the effect tRump’s opposition to it was having on an unbelievably gullible electorate, which didn’t like her anyway.)   

Beyond calling the president a “chump,” Friedman contends that the Chinese consider him a “sucker,” easily flattered and are capitalizing greatly on our withdrawal from the TPP.   What is most unbelievable is that somewhere in the administration there is not a trade expert willing to point these things to the “chump,” “sucker” or whatever you want to call the sleazy real-estate developer who occupies the White House.  But enough of me. Read Friedman's column now by clicking here.  Afterwards, pass it on to any Republican friends you may have left and see if they can disagree with it using intelligent arguments.

JL

Popular Music, Hip-Hop and "Hamilton"

Over the past century, popular music in this country has gone through many stages.  As with the life cycle of creatures such as butterflies, they seem to be part of a continuum, one stage growing out of another into a new more developed stage.

 

American popular music has been derived from the sorrowful laments of the Black people brought to this country as slaves, the more cheerful tunes they developed to brighten their lives as well as the songs of the immigrants to this country, Irish, Italian but primarily Jewish who settled in New York.  Out of this, aided by the development of the recording industry and radio, and the parallel growth of the musical theatre, arose the successive and overlapping eras of swing, jazz, rhythm and blues, country music, rock and most recently, hip-hop.  All of these styles still have their loyal adherents who are satisfied to pay little heed to what may have evolved after their favorite style’s heyday.

 

It’s hard to believe that the latest fashion in music, hip-hop, has been around since the 1980s.  Derived from rhythm and blues and rock and roll, hip-hop draws heavily upon the sometimes coarse language and life styles of urban dwellers of Latino background as well as Blacks with whom they often share neighborhoods. (or should I, using their language, say “hoods”?)  This is not unlike the role earlier immigrants played in the development of swing and jazz.  

During its forty-year lifetime, hip-hop has been ignored by many followers of earlier styles of American music.  It was left to and for the Black and Latino minorities, and the young people of all races, to enjoy.  As these fans grew up, it has come to dominate the music heard on radio and available to all through the electronic media which appeared over the past few decades.  It is achieving respectability in the minds of those who hadn’t previously bothered to even listen to it.  

Acclaimed hip-hop artist Jay-Z has sold over 100 million records!  He has been around for years and he is the dominant hip-hop performer of this century in the eyes of many.

Hip-hop consists of a strong rhythmic percussion “back-beat’ over which meaningful rhyming lyrics, often based on street language, are rapidly recited.  There’s a tune, alright, but it is secondary to the words and the beat.  Because a lot of this music is played as well as developed by DJs, their skills in electronic mixing, blending and supplementing sounds, are part of the mix which ends up as hip-hop.  The way a song is recorded, and the way a DJ (sometimes also a recording artist) plays it is just as much a part of it as the words and music.  The person twirling the buttons in the control room is part of the artistry of hip-hop as much as the vocalists and musicians. Hence, one artist rarely will perform an actual hip-hop piece originated by another, although they are not reluctant to borrow techniques from one another. Some enthusiasts go a bit further and cannot fully disconnect hip-hop from street break dancing  and grafitti. 

Why am I writing about this, a subject I really know relatively little about, you might ask?  The answer is simple.  Hamilton!  Hamilton!  Hamilton!

The Tony award-winning musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda is mostly hip-hop. It also reminds me of the "recitatifs" one hears in opera between arias. But instead of dealing with what happens on the streets of an urban ghetto, (as did Miranda’s earlier hip-hop musical, “In the Heights), it is about the American Revolution, the founding of our nation and the role that Alexander Hamilton played in it.   Not incidental to the plot is that Hamilton was an immigrant, subject to the same pressures that immigrants and blacks, mentioned above, felt. This is also the background of Miranda’s family and of hip-hop.

                                                                        Lin-Manuel Miranda

Alelxander Hamilton was a revolutionary, but the use of hip-hop as the medium for “Hamilton” is in itself revolutionary. The rise of hip-hop itself, hip-hop artists and techniques to the top of our popular music pyramid may also be part of a revolution.  “Hamilton” puts all of this together.  If "Hamilton" had been done in the style of a 1950s or 1960s musical, it would have dealt with the Revolutionary War, but it in itself would not have been "revolutionary" in the ways that Lin-Manuel Miranda's production and hip-hop itself is.  And it probably would have closed after a run of six or seven months.

Sure, Gershwin, Rogers, Hammerstein and Berlin were great ... and please continue to enjoy them … but today’s music, undeniably, is hip-hop.  If you have an open and active mind, you should venture into its world.  Gingerly at first, ready to retreat, but please, taste of it!   Incidentally, one might ask what will come next?

Here's a taste of "Hamilton." This particular bit takes place at the end of the Revolutionary War, the victory at Yorktown.  There's a lot of hip-hop in these lyrics, more than in some of the other songs in the show, but it is representative of what a theatregoer sees and hears at "Hamilton."  CLICK HERE TO SEE AND HEAR IT SUNG ON THE BROADWAY STAGE.   

You will find other excerpts from "Hamilton" on Youtube if you search diligently. Some are not from the Broadway stage performance, but the important thing is what you will hear.

Tickets to "Hamilton" are very expensive.  If you plan on seeing it, I suggest you first get yourself a libretto to study so that you are at least familiar with the words that they are singing.  It's a fast moving show!  And hip-hop is sung "fast."  

(For practice in listening to hip-hop, try listening to one of the many radio stations carrying it.  Ignore the commercials and the obvious orientation toward minority listeners and the emphasis on sex and violence which earlier popular music styles have skipped over. They won't be playing "Hamilton" but  what they play will help attune your ears, and mind, to what is dominant in American popular music today. Don't ignore it.)
JL

Boiled Frog

The other night, I heard two TV “pundits’ commenting on the current state of politics in this country allude to the story of the frog and the pot of boiling water.  They seemed to know what they were talking about, but I didn’t so I checked it out. 

It seems this legend explains that if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, he will immediately recognize the danger he faces and leap out of the pot.  If, however, you throw a frog into a pot of merely tepid water, and slowly, over a period of time, increase the heat under it until it comes to a boil, the frog won’t recognize the growing danger he faces until it is too late, and consequently, the frog dies.

JL

Further Defining the President

In the previous posting on this blog, I pointed out that Donald tRump is more to be pitied than to be hated.  I explained that “he is what he is.”  Now, however, after reading his recent vile tweeting about an MSNBC host who has been critical of him and recalling his comment of a few years ago regarding starlets whom he could paw, wherever he wanted, it looks like “what he is” can now be much more specifically defined. 

Nevertheless, this pathetic, ignorant and blustery little man, far out of his depth in the presidency, is still more to pitied than to be scorned.  Save that for the high tax bracket conservatives his election has greatly pleased and the legislators who take their money and who take advantage of him and care little for the rest of America. 

Neither are the gullible people out there, still under his spell and who continue to support him, to be scorned.  Pity them as well for, as the biblical quote goes,  "they know not what they do."

JL

             

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