Wordless Protest Songs:
Charlie Haden's Liberation Orchestra
http://www.utne.com/2008-09-30/Arts/Wordless-Protest-Songs-Charlie-Hadens-Liberation-Orchestra.aspx?blogid=32
9/30/2008
by Jeff Severns Guntzel
Charlie Haden , a legend of American jazz music, has been detained in
Portugal, followed by the FBI in Manhattan, and embraced as a hero by
a South African parliamentarian who had been jailed during apartheid.
All of this for his legacy of protest songs without words.
The bassist will bring his decades-old and ever-changing Liberation
Music Orchestra to New York City's Blue Note jazz club in early
November, the same week Americans vote for George W. Bush's
successor. At a show in Minneapolis last week, the longtime radical
told audience members he's sure the results will warrant celebration.
"He feels strongly that we're at a critical moment here," says Philip
Bither, performing arts curator at the Walker Art Center and the
person responsible for bringing Haden to Minneapolis. "He's
completely convinced that the McCain camp represents a continuation
of the Bush policies that have been an utter catastrophe for the
United States and the world at large."
Haden, whose contribution to jazz can be traced back to his bass
playing on three seminal records by saxophonist Ornette Coleman,
convenes his Liberation Music Orchestra only during Republican
administrations as a soundtrack of resistance. The group's
self-titled 1969 debut was a reaction to Richard Nixon and the
Vietnam War his administration inherited. Ballad of the Fallen,
released in 1982, was a statement against Reagan's policies in Latin
America. George H.W. Bush was president when Dream Catchers was
pressed in 1990; a comment on the tragedies and struggles of Latin
America (again) and South Africa.
The militarism of George W. Bush inspired the Liberation Orchestra's
2005 release, Not in Our Name. Haden chose the title while touring
through Europe in the early stages of the invasion and occupation of
Iraq. "We were walking down streets in different cities, and we would
see unfurled from balconies of the apartment houses: 'Not In Our
Name' … the people in Europe really cared … that stuck with me," he
recalled in a 2006 interview.
"Touring jazz musicians," Bither says, "have a unique vantage point
on how America is viewed in the world."
In Minneapolis last week, Haden and his 11-member orchestra responded
to what America has become by reclaiming it. A rambling medley
anchored in "America the Beautiful" was equal parts somber,
sentimental, joyful, and subversively discordanta formula the group
has held to since its inception.
Traditionally, the Liberation Music Orchestraaided by brilliant
pianist and composer Carla Bley, Haden's collaborator since 1968has
appropriated songs of liberation and protest mostly from other
nations. On Not in Our Name, Haden decided to play music only by
American composershis own form of patriotism. "I wanted to do
'America the Beautiful,'" he said in an interview shortly after the
album's release, "to show that there's a lot of work that needs to be
done in this country."
Here's a video of Haden and Bley and the Liberation Music Orchestra
performing in 2003convened in response to the prospect of a second
term for George W. Bush.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK2O1kVeFH4
.
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