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Ray,
This is fascinating. I know that Carlos Nakai
has experimented with musical fusion, some Native American integrated
with European ensemble work (mainly string choir). "Kokopelli Wind" is a
good example of this. His "Creation Chant", composed for solo flute, is
more stereotypically pure, to my neophyte ears. The flute imitates the
natural sounds of Mother Earth. When I first heard this, I was washing
dishes and stopped, entranced by the novelty of the sounds. When I was a
child, in Muskoka, I often used to wander off into the woods, with my
dog, to read a book beside a brook, and the flute cadences
of Nakai were the natural sounds of my childhood, or a good
representation thereof. I had a sense of sonic deja vu.
As you know, I have an interest in film
music. There are some very informed young composers, immersed in Native
musicology, who are accurately representing the Native American musical heritage
in an authentic voice. I believe Nakai has also penned some film
scores. We are finally getting away from those ghastly strident
brass "danger" chords, with snare drumming, that used to
represent 'Indians' (stereotypical of the warrior culture you reference) in
early Hollywood films. It is also having an international impact. It
is interesting that Chinese director, Ang Lee, used a Native American flute to
musically open his film "The Ice Storm" - a film about White middle class angst,
alienation, and sprititual emptiness. The irony.
Your Jewish references also interest me, as I have
come across references to cultural contact and intermarriage between Jewish
people and Native culture, in the early days in Northern Ontario.
Thank you, Ray.
I suspect I am a long ways away from "futurework",
here, so I will attempt to temper my discursive responses.
Bob
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003 5:52
PM
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re:
[Futurework] David Ricardo, Ca vema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
Robert
The festivals are the same as the Jewish Holy Days which
are quite complicated. They can involve large groups of
people singing, dancing and playing instruments solo and in
ensemble. The rhythmic work especially is more complicated than
anything you find in the most complex modern music and makes the 19th century
European symphonic literature seem primitive by comparison.
But everyone sang, danced, composed poetry and worked in paint, beads,
quills etc.. In fact it was said that the definition of an
Indian was 1. an expert at agriculture and forestry and 2. an
artist. Today, all you hear about are the feats of stamina in
war. But those were more like the meditations of Tibetan monks
sleeping out of doors and bathing in frozen streams. In California
the Yarok meditated with night running. We went to the water at
sunrise no matter what the weather. It developed strong
bodies.
What I described was the base of a very full cultural
and artistic life as well as an attitude towards economics. Today
we are struggling to find our way back. So much of it is in shards
being surrounded by the aggressive proselytizing for the terrible
trashiness of the dominant society.
But we did have our own versions of orchestras but they
weren't European. Today we play world musics but are once
more bringing our own out since we can once again connect with our
spirituality without being jailed.
Me gwetch,
Ray
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003 4:00
PM
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re:
[Futurework] David Ricardo, Ca vema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
Ray,
I like the American Indian way the best!
I cannot imagine your culture generating the command and control structure
of a symphony orchestra (just as there is capitalist schooling, there
is capitalist music), but I can hear R. Carlos Nakai playing "Kokopelli
Wind" - and it is enchanting!!
Bob
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003
1:07 PM
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was
Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Ca vema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
Interesting Robert,
But where are the great towering human achievements
beyond the cows? You have to imagine both.
Can you imagine orchestras and great architecture from the stories
below?
But if we are just imagining a pastoral future, here
is mine.
The American Indian version:
You sell the dumb cows
Pool all of your land with your neighbors and
buy buffalo.
Develop a family system where the entire family
cares for the children.
Make the family responsible for infractions having
to do with death but
individuals responsible for infractions having to do
with property.
Teach that people are not good or bad but can do
good or bad things.
Develop the justice system around healing by
agreement of the community.
Plant corn, beans and squash near your house
and regularly burn the forest to incourage grass,
large trees and open prairies.
Encourage all of the animals to return.
Form a council to plan for a central grainery for
over production,
Study the complete plant and animal ecology of the
region.
Plan for both systemic and
individual balance as the ideal of the
culture.
Develop a time schedule that encorporates the cycles
of the rain.
Develop your spirituality around the truth of the
sacredness of all life,
balanced with the necessity to eat and clothe
yourself and your family.
Plan for the lives of all of the animals and plants
as members of the family network.
Develop taboos as teaching tools. Such
as incest, cannibalism, etc. Even though we are all life and
meat,
certain meat we won't eat. Not
because its special but because its taboo.
Study nature intently to understand the ways that
you should fit comfortably within it and florish.
Teach health as an alternative to
healing.
Consider that everyone must find their own vision
for their own life and that the community serves the facilitation of that
purpose.
Teach that without the community, the individual is
alone.
Develop an integration of the education of your
children with the cycles of the plants/animals so the children won't bust
the system,
Teach the relationships as a part of the
spirituality,
Develop status based upon who is strong enough to
give the most.
Develop a give back from the poor to the strong so
no neither strong or disadvantaged are enslaved.
Form all reality around the natural cycles of life
and existance.
Develop trade with your neighboring nation based
only upon excess production and political games.
Hold no more than you can acumulate in your house,
giving away the excess.
Work three of four hours a day and spend the rest of
the time with your families
and contemplating the nature
of the Great Mystery of life.
Give at least a couple of hours to communicating
with the rest of the world on the internet.
Ray Evans Harrell, Cherokee
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003
9:09 AM
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was
Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Ca vema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
As there is sometimes an ideological mix-up
going on, on the list, I thought you might be amused by this post from
the TOES list:
Those economic scenarios you sent were probably written by somewhat
callous Royalist Libertarians who think that non-regulated capitalism is
the best system. So I have written the following, comparing the RL
to the Geo-Libertarian, and modified the one on CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE.
Royalist Libertarian
You have two cows and
several acres of land.
Your neighbor is a single mom, has no cows, no
land and works a minimum wage job.
You tell your neighbor that if she
works longer and harder she could buy one of your cows and become an
enterprising capitalist.
Your neighbor takes on the night shift in
addition to her day job, leaving for work after the kids are in bed and
arriving home just in time to get them dressed for school. After a year
she has saved enough money to buy one of your cows. Realizing that she
needs some land for the cow she asks if you will lease her some of your
land which you are happy to do at the highest possible land rent.
She
pulls back to a regular 40 plus hours a week of work in order to take
care of the cow and market its milk, soon realizing that she has to feed
the cow steroids to produce more milk to pay the land rent to
you.
Your neighbor tries hard to become a successful cow milk
merchant, but in just a few months the cow dies of exhaustion and soon
thereafter she dies of a stress related illness, leaving her children to
fend for themselves in the streets because libertarians have dismantled
all social services including those for orphans.
Meanwhile you have
been earning dividends from the stocks you bought with the cash your
neighbor paid for your cow plus the land rent she had been paying to you
on a monthly basis. The milk from your cow is supplemental
income.
You buy four more cows, dupe another poor neighbor and
quadruple your wealth in one year,
Geo Libertarian
You have two cows and
several acres of land.
Your neighbor is a single mom, has no cows, no
land and works a minimum wage job.
You understand that there is a
deep structural injustice in the economic system, you know what to do
about it, so you become an activist.
You share your economic justice
knowledge with your neighbor and then get to work changing the tax laws
so that (1) your neighbor can keep all of her hard-earned income and
(2) those who have enclosed substantial amounts of land for
their own private domain now pay a fair land rent to society.
Your
tax bill arrives and you realize you have been holding more land than
you really need, so you put some of your land up for sale which your
neighbor buys with the additional income she has because of genuine tax
relief.
Your neighbor, whose "can-do" attitude is now fully operative
having acquired a secure place to stand on her own land, soon builds her
own home from the timber from the fast-growing species of trees she
planted. She then develops her talents as a visual artist painting
pictures of cows, much more to her liking than having to milk
them.
You realize that you have found true happiness and inner peace
by helping to build a world that works for everyone.
LIBERAL
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel
guilty for being successful.
Instead of giving your neighbor
one of your cows, you write to your congressman, demanding
that he pass legislation for more government programs to help your
neighbor get a cow. You hold a concert to raise awareness for the
cow-lessness. Barbara Streisand sings for the cow-less, who couldn't
attend because ticket prices are so expensive that only people with
3 or 4 cows can afford to attend. You wear a ribbon that signifies
that you care about cowless people, even though you really haven't
done anything to help them at all.
CONSERVATIVE
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?
SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government
takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative
to tell him how to manage his cow.
COMMUNIST
You
have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with
milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive
and sour.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE (The obscuring
myth)
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build
a herd of cows.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE (The real story)
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy
a bull, and build a herd of cows. You put your cows on
your previously acquired piece of choice real estate and take a tax
write-off for agricultural land. You sell some of your land (the
rest you keep for speculation) to middle class working people who
are now mortgaged for life and you put your profits into offshore
accounts, further avoiding taxes. You lobby for a bigger military
budget and a national policy of full spectrum dominance so that you
and other bullish elites can grab other peoples land all over the
planet.
DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You
have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to
sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one
cow, which was a gift from your government.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other,
pays you for the milk, and then pours t he milk down the drain.
AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You
sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are
surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the
analysts stating you have down sized and are reducing expenses. Your
stock goes up.
FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two
cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go
to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.
JAPANESE
CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are
one tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the
milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are
at the top of their class at cow school.
GERMAN
CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are
all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run
a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunat ely they also demand 13 weeks of
vacation per year.
ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have
two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling
around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life
is good.
RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have four
cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and
learn you have eight cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over
however many cows you really have.
TALIBAN
CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's
private parts. Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up
while they were in the hospital.
IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio
tapes of their mooing.
POLISH CORPORATION
You
have two bulls.
Employees are regularly m aimed and killed
attempting to milk them.
CALIFORNIAN
(
This is the Goodwin Special....RWN)
You have a cow and a bull.
The bull is depressed.
It has spent its life living a lie.
It goes away for two weeks.
It comes back after a
taxpayer-paid sex-change operation.
You now have two cows.
One makes milk; the other doesn't.
You try to sell the
transgender cow.
Its lawyer sues you for discrimination.
You
lose in court.
You sell the milk-generating cow to pay the
damages.
You now have one rich, transgender, non-milk-producing
cow.
You change your business to beef.
PETA pickets your
farm.
Jesse Jackson makes a speech in your driveway.
Cruz
Bustamante calls for higher farm taxes to help "working cows".
Hillary Clinton calls for the nationalization of 1/7 o f your
farm "for the children".
Gray Davis signs a law giving your farm
to Mexico.
The L.A. Times quotes five anonymous cows claiming
you groped their teats.
You declare bankruptcy and shut down all
operations.
The cow starves to death.
The L.A. Times' analysis shows your business
failure is Bush's fault.
bb
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