Ornette Coleman's Sadness

Ethereal 1962 recording of Ornette Coleman. What I love about Ornette Coleman is his blues roots. He never forgot his Texas R&B roots, which really imbues this lament with more tragedy. The effective incorporation of various strings only enhances Coleman's penchant for multi-layered textures of sound. Truly an excellent paean for an all-too familiar human condition, and key to the blues.

The Divine Invasion

The Divine Invasion is a roller coaster ride through Philip K. Dick's alleged theophany in the 1970s, Valis. Weaving together elements of Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and science fiction (space travel, parallel universes, flying cars, robots, you know, typical Dick science fiction), the story is essentially about the triumph of light over darkness. Yah/God, or Emmanuel, is born to a woman on one of the distant inhospitable colonies and must return to Earth in order to defeat Belilal. My thoughts on this one are all over the place, but it's fascinating to see how Dick's own experiences influenced this work and his approach to Christianity in an intriguing way, particularly in his use of Zoroastrian and Jewish themes and ideas to buttress his "theological moonshine" of a novel. The conclusion is perfect, as well, for its depiction of salvation. 

Shepp's Body And Soul

A particularly rousing rendition of one of my favorite jazz standards, "Body and Soul." Archie Shepp is usually not my cup of tea for free jazz, but this is heavenly. Shepp's approach is reminiscent of Coleman Hawkins in the best sense, yet still utterly his own unique voice. Although free jazz is not my area of expertise, there's always something new to discover in free jazz interpretations of standards. Another great example: Ornette Coleman tackling "Embraceable You."

Dr. Futurity

Philip K. Dick's Dr. Futurity is an early novel in his oeuvre but quite interesting. Written in the 1950s and published in 1960, Dick's novel is clearly inspired by decolonisation in Asia and Africa as well as confronting the history of white supremacy and colonialism throughout the Americas. Dick always struck me as one of the more progressive white 'fathers' of science fiction, despite some of his issues with women and perhaps inappropriate "racial humor" in A Scanner Darkly, Ubik and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. In this tale, Parson, a doctor, in the early 21st century is transported to the 2400s, a world dominated by mixed-race people organized in tribes. Whites are no longer around (everyone is "amalgamated"), death is accepted to maintain society and keep population levels lower, and there are small prison colonies on Mars. Parsons, finding out that medicine is illegal in this civilization, finds out things are far more complicated than they should be and has to, through more time travel, ensure history doesn't change. Despite its anticolonial and antiracist stance, the novel does not, ultimately, rewrite history and kill the explorers and conquistadors, but the novel's attention to details of ethics, life and death, cultural relativism, and exploration of timelines are interesting to compare to his future work. For example, time travel in Now Wait For Last Year is employed in a more compelling and intriguing setting (time travel through drugs) but never explained in this novel. The plot is, compared to his later great works in the 1960s, underdeveloped, too. In the end, we're treated to a liberal retelling of the Pocohantas myth in which the white man and the "Indian," Loris, actually do feel for each other. 

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Philip K. Dick's The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is definitely worth a read. Telling a fictionalized story inspired by James Pike, only Dick could get away with writing a novel from a first-person female narrator and juxtapose transmigration of souls and theology themes with Berkeley "professional students," the drug subculture, mental illness and the death of John Lennon. Poking fun at the Bay Area "scene," Dick successfully weaves together these seemingly disparate themes to tell a story of Angel Archer, the daughter-in-law of Bishop Archer, as she experiences the deaths of her loved ones and struggles to move on. Since James Pike is the inspiration for Timothy Archer, and, of course, the author is Philip K. Dick, there's a religious conspiracy at the heart of the novel (Zabokites predating Christ by two centuries, anokhi mushrooms) and the ultimate question of life after death, theophany-type experiences (Dick experienced this in the 1970s, and his literature was forever changed). Although this is, to my knowledge, the only Dick novel with a female narrator, Angel is not too different from what one relative tells me is the typical profile of Dick's characters: people on the lower socioeconomic scale, working basic or lower level jobs, but thrust into situations of immense importance. Angel is the epitome of this trend, and is forever tied to the university and struggling to escape, never willing to go so far as to take that leap of faith, that will to believe in the impossible because it is impossible. In that regard, she is not like the character in A Maze of Death who is willing to take the chance and believe in the impossible. Naturally, Dick leaves things rather ambiguous and up for the reader to decide on their own on how to interpret Archer's character and transmigration...

Lies, Inc. (The Unteleported Man)

Lies, Inc. is the first dud I have encountered in the many novels of Philip K. Dick. An expanded form of a novella from his burst in the 1960s, Lies, Inc is not too dissimilar from typical Dick: drugs, ethics, metaphysics, one-dimensional women characters (yet a surprisingly complex black pilot, Al Dusker?), but this was too jarring in its narrative structure and lacked sufficient "flow" to aid the reader. Of course, Germany and the specter of World War II and fascism linger in this 21st century envisioned by Dick, and there are some strange things Dick kinda got right. For example, he's only off by a few years for the reunification of Germany, and he takes a shockingly critical stance on the US use of the atomic bomb in Japan, going so far as to compare it with the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. Remember, Dick first wrote the short story that formed the basis of this novel in the 1960s, not too long since the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, which explains why dystopias are so prevalent in his work. FOr the hardcore fans of Dick's oeuvre, this is required reading. For those of us who have perused his work and appreciate his genius, I think this is skippable. The confusing narrative and very difficult hallucination sequences are much more taxing than they should be when one compares this novel with other "difficult" works by Dick. 

Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History

Wilson J. Moses's Afrotopia should be required reading for any cursory study of Afrocentrism and African American cultural mythology, intellectual thought and history. As someone who shares the author's sympathy with some Afrocentrists, Moses does an excellent job of placing various African-American (and white) black nationalists, Pan-Africanists, abolitionists, and intellectuals in a centuries-long development of history, anthropology, discourse of teleological history, and race. The Egyptocentrism of some brands of Afrocentrism, other forms of Afrocentrism (including the civilizationist model encapsulated by so much of black nationalist thought, examined in earlier works by Moses) and the competing historiography's of decline and progress as it relates to Afrocentrism and Black America's thoughts on its future and past are eloquently laid out for the reader. Moreover, as always with Moses, African-American writers are not confined to some intellectual ghetto of history but thoroughly integrated within larger debates and shifts in European and American disciplines. For instance, the alleged progressiveness of Booker T. Washington is compared to Dewey and Montessori, while the interests of the "New Negro" black intellectuals and their primitivism is tied with other notions of the decline of the West. Of course, one finds some retreading of old ground from previous works on black nationalism by the author, Moses more than adequately demolishes the rather misguided, insensitive and wrongheaded anti-Afrocentrist writings of Lefkowitz while simultaneously discussing the weaknesses and contradictions of Afrocentrists from Crummell to Diop. 

Ishmael Reed Reading from Japanese By Spring

One of my favorite satirists reading from his novel, Japanese By Spring, and answering questions at the Cambridge Public Library. After recently reading George Schuyler, my interest in black satire has been rekindled. I have also blogged about this novel, accessible here. 

Black No More

"Getting the Negro leaders together for any purpose except boasting of each other's accomplishments had previously been impossible."

As a fan of Ishmael Reed's early novels, George Schuyler's Black No More, an excellent piece of satire in a 1930s America where blacks can become white, shows some of the brilliant tradition of satirical fiction by black writers before Reed. Schuyler, who, at the time of Black No More was not a "total" conservative, had spent time with socialists, mainstream black civil rights organizations, and reveals an astute understanding of the racial and class politics of the 1930s. Indeed, much of the novel consists of Schuyler's acerbic one-liners on the ignorance of the white working-class, the vanity of the black misleadership class (including humorous satirical versions of Du Bois, Walter White, and Garvey), the horrid obsession with race and status in a society in which most whites lack the power and privilege of the tiny "pure" Anglo-Saxon elite, and a jolly good science fiction story of how race-obsessed we are. Indeed, the scientist responsible for inventing the process of artificially inducing vitiligo to turn Negroes white, Crookman, is a proud Race Man who believes in the black race's potential, yet has no problem turning the black race white for our benefit...these kinds of contradictions on race, from blacks and whites, are at the heart of this rather hilarious novel, which concludes in a rather intriguing way that reminds one of the "cosmic race" theory of Vasconcelos or Frederick Douglass's belief in amalgamation as the solution to the "Negro problem."

Despite its science fiction premise, as Dr. Buggerie makes clear, quite a few white Americans are tarnished by the taint of Ham and "passing" has been ongoing since 17th century Virginia, but to posit a world in which the vast majority of African-Americans can "pass" into whiteness while tying it together with the general farce of American politics, intellectuals, white supremacist lynch mobs and Knights of Nordica, co-founded by an ex-colored man, labor, and religion was too much. One cannot read this novel without rolling over in laughter. Even if one finds the critique of the NAACP and Garvey too harsh, I suspect black leftists of today will find it resonates with the persistence of race relations administration or management class of African-Americans, and white America's obsession with its darker-hued neighbors. Any fans of Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, Japanese by Spring or Reckless Eyeballing will appreciate this, although Reed, from my memory, is not so scathing on the race men and civil rights leadership class for their arrogance, colorism, and corruption as Schuyler.