Adrian M. S. Piper - Rescuing Philosophy From Academic Philosophy

"The irony in the case of racism is that there is a substantial literature in biology and the social sciences that indicates that almost all purportedly white Americans have between five and twenty percent black ancestry and hence are, according to this country's entrenched 'just one trace' convention of racial classification, black." 

Adrian M. S. Piper - "Higher-Order Discrimination", page 308, fn 9.

"Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one)" Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (6.421)

Racialism (aka Racism) and Misogyny (defined as hatred of women) recently have been very much on my mind. I live (try to live) in America after all. And even after the most recent presidential campaign, and the election of Barak Obama to a second term in office, where two of the three, and only three, planks of the Republican Party's presidential campaign platform were framed in a language using the same thinly veiled racialist and misogynist code words: "unqualified" and "right to life" were and are favorites. Who knows what similar evils reside in the hearts of Democrats, liberals, and other 'do-gooders' before and after elections? The third plank in the Republican platform was the taxes warhorse. I call it a "warhorse" because "tax policy", "balanced budget", "entitlements", and "an assault rifle in every home" are code-words for perpetual war against the poor. In other words, the poor pay for perpetual war - Iraq and all that - with their earnings powerlessness at home and their lives on the battlefield. There are three ways for the poor to go: into the very profitable penal system (aka "prison"), hamburger university, or the military. Education? Education! What education?

Philosophy to the rescue? 

Quite by accident I was prompted to think again about the philosopher, conceptual artist, and feminist Adrian M. S. Piper. In 1998 I read an article by Adam Shatz in the November 1998 issue of Lingua Franca (now defunct). The article entitled "Black Like Me" (pps. 39-54) treats Adrian Piper's life growing up in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, her education at CCNY and Harvard, her performance art, and her travails as an academic philosopher at the University of Michigan (U. of M.), Wellesley, and Georgetown. Piper wrote her Ph.D. under the eminent philosopher John Rawls at Harvard. Rawls' subjects were ethics and political philosophy. Piper was denied tenure by U. of M., granted tenure by Georgetown and Wellesley, and banished by the latter without any retirement benefits. She has lived in Berlin in recent years. In the mean time, two volumes of her writings entitled Out Of Order, Out Of Sight I & II were published in 1996 by MIT Press.  In addition Ms. Piper has been working on a massive two volume work in ethics and meta-ethics: volume one treats David Hume and his notion(s) of the self; volume II treats Kant and his notions of the self and ethics. It should be added that these volumes treat much else besides. Full titles please: Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception and Volume II: A Kantian Conception. These two volumes were to have been published in the first instance by Oxford University Press. Then after Oxford withdrew as the publisher, Cambridge University Press agreed to publish Dr. Piper's volumes.  After Cambridge University Press's staff 'requested' 100 page excisions from each volume, Dr. Piper decided to publish both 2nd edition volumes on the internet - links are provided below.

The Introduction to Adrian Piper's first volume is well worth reading for the insights that she provides about the present state of academic analytic philosophy. While Socrates may be revered as a personality in academia today, his example as a gadfly has been lost and is seldom followed. Piper emphasizes how serious philosophical discussion is blunted for the sake of careerism - small fish living off the works of a few greats, providing streams footnotes as it were.

For Adrian M. S. Piper aesthetics and ethics are, if not one in Wittgenstein's sense, both vitally important. Reading her work via the link's below - and in print - has for me been richly rewarding. I'll continue my reading of her two volumes. I hope that you will too. By the way links to Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volumes I & II reside in her philosophy webpage below. The two MIT volumes, Out Of Order, Out Of Sight are well worth looking into. If one can locate Adam Shatz's article (referred to above), it's well worth reading too. The Wikipedia entry is quite thorough and it along with Piper's "Passing for White, Passing for Black" (link below) are very good introductions to her life and work. [Alas, the Wikipedia entry has been deleted.]





http://www.adrianpiper.com/
http://www.adrianpiper.com/philosophy.shtml
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~bgoldfarb/cocu108/data/texts/piper_pass1.pdf
http://141.213.232.243/bitstream/handle/2027.42/43399/11098_2004_Article_BF00356498.pdf;jsessionid=419B488225A6242F1047FA636D1CDDD5?sequence=1

          

Sunday of New York - WKCR.ORG

This afternoon - 2PM until 7PM - I'm spending with WKCR-FM's internet stream. I often listem to WKCR while I'm reading stuff from the internet. I've quite given up on the New York Times. The Guardian - both the US and UK editions - command my attention. Any newspaper that puts THIS music (fka "Jazz") in the Classical Music (aka "THAT music") section of its online paper - where THIS music deserves to be - deserves support. WKCR has been broadcasting the news about THIS and THAT music for 71 years. It's sublime hearing vinyl on the air-waves - CDs are on offer for the listener too. Take a listen and make a tax-deductible contribution to this National Treasure.

The other day, the great New York City radio station from Columbia University featured the music of Detroit's Donald Byrd, with of course Mr Byrd's runnin' buddy, Highland Park's Pepper Adams. The fabulous '60s. I always have Detroit and Highland Park on my mind. The music of both cities is always with me. Donald Byrd passed away very recently.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130207/NEWS08/130207102/Donald-Byrd-legendary-Detroit-jazz-man-dead-at-80

Jessica Williams & Others - Music Ecology

In her own time she

looks up, faces them

from her solitude.

 Bill Harris' Dark Shadows

In terms of THIS music (fka "jazz music") as contrasted with THAT music (aka "classical music") women instrumentalists have had a very difficult road to travel. As in so many areas of supposed creative life, women artists are very often overlooked and marginalized by critics and journalists. And critics and keepers of the flame who are women - Valerie Wilmer, certainly - are themselves marginalized. Please pay attention. There is no direct path to my point. Let's see:
  I overlooked the pianist, composer, musician Jessica Williams for years. I have expressed elsewhere my aversion to most guitar players as regards THIS music. Next in my aversion line are piano players. I can't stand Oscar Peterson as a soloist, Brad Mahldau, Herbie Handcock, most ECM pianists (including much of Keith Jarrett). I like the Detroit Greats: Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, and Barry Harris. Bud Powell, Monk, Errol Garner, and Eddie Costa are my favs naturally. I admire McCoy Tyner greatly. I rarely listen to Bill Evans anymore. Cecil Taylor? Of course! Duke Ellington, yes. Count Basie, of course. Mathew Shipp, not so much. Mal Waldron, yes. Junko Onishi with Jackie McLean, yes. I rarely buy THIS music's pianists without horns. OK?
  Most of my information about THIS music in recent years has come to me via the internet (see the links attached hereto), via the printed word, BBC3, and our National Treasure WKCR-FM streaming on the worldwide web from Columbia University in NYC. The 'news' provided by Amiri Baraka, Whitney Balliett, Gunther Schuller, Martin Williams, A. B. Spellman, Vallerie Wilmer, and even Stanley Crouch when he's not frontin' is still news.
  Jessica J. Williams. Since I didn't care about THIS music's pianists, by and large, when I came across Ms. Williams, I ignored her music. Also I had dismissed her before iTunes and Amazon - I guess this is my only excuse; I haven't ignored much music since. But Ms. Williams is a woman. And this may have contributed to my looking elsewhere for my pianists - for the few.
  My first hearing of Jessica Williams' piano virtuosity and soul happened earlier this week by accident. I was made aware of the vocalist Patty Waters many years ago (before iTunes). I knew that she had recorded for ESP - so her music was at least not post modern. Ms. Waters was mentioned in something I was reading on the internet. So I sampled a recent duo recording that she had made with Jessica Williams. I was totally captivated by this magnificent musical duo. So I listened into Jessica Williams' music. What a wonderful discovery! I'll attempt to make the foregoing more precise. So just wait.
  Locating Jessica Williams, pianist. First, she has her own sound. In terms of what I admire in a pianist of THIS music, my preferences are displayed above. But let's imagine a scale between Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk. Eddie Costa is the Bill Evans of "All About Rosie" (George Russell's composition) - a thumping Evans. Maybe Bill Evans was Eddie Costa without the thump on most days. Top of the thumping pianists: Errol Garner, Lennie Tristano, Monk, Eddie Costa, Jackie Byard, McCoy Tyner, Junko Onishi, and Jessica Williams. Can't forget Don Pullen or D.D. Jackson either.
Listen to her solo recording of Monk's tunes and her Misty - you'll get the idea. Her left hand is very strong and she's a melodist - listen to her with Patty Waters on Lady Day's Don't Explain. 
  Ms. Williams has recorded over sixty albums, mostly solo and trio efforts. She performs her own compositions and popular-song standards and the standard of THIS music, the compositions of Coltrane, Miles, Monk and Mingus. Jessica Williams isn't mentioned in the 1998 (4th) edition of Cook's & Morton's Guide to Jazz on CD. In the 2000 (5th) editions she is noted with condescension. Writing of Ms. Williams' Monk recording they remark,

The best of the album is in the opening ten minutes, with 'Bemsha Swing', 'Just A Gigolo'  and 'Reflections' rattled off with drive, swing and great charm. The rest is a touch laboured and will probably appear only only to devoted Williams fans. [1578]

I won't quote anymore from Cook & Morton; I ask the reader to compare their remarks on Brad Mahldau [1014 - 1015] with their remarks on Ms. Williams. Better yet compare Mr. Mahldau insipid music making with the inspired piano reflections of Ms. Williams. Cook & Morton write, "Mehldau continues to excite enormous interest." I heard him live (barely) in Ann Arbor a couple of years ago. He and his trio were enormously dull. A guy thing, I guess. Of course, these guys wouldn't describe a guy's music-making as charming! Right?
  Music Ecology. I used to tell people that my rôle, in scuffling around Columbus, Ohio begging funding sources for money and presenting organizations for space to present THIS and THAT music, was that of  music ecologist. I was trying to preserve living music, new and newer music; music that was un-heard and might never be heard. Someone asked Lee Konitz why he played standards; he said that they were the best tunes. It's also best to preserve the best music. Music without immediate commercial potential.
  ONCE FESTIVAL(S) and PROMUSICA(S). Yea.

www.jessicawilliams.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdL0hJjHkFU&playnext=1&list=PL55CEC7663FAED02A&feature=results_video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzycN9qmeXQ&list=PL55CEC7663FAED02A&index=10

Messrs. B - Billy Eckstine and Benny Carter

"The world of jazz is a stage on which it matters less what the actors say than the way they say it."

André Hodeir [156]

In a previous post - "Jam Session Aesthetic" - I wrote of Teddy Wilson's small group recordings. Many of Billie Holiday's best efforts took place in the context of Wilson's small groups. Sarah Vaughan's best recorded work also took place in small groups featuring such sensitive musicians as Clifford Brown, Herbie Mann, Miles Davis, Bud Johnson, Mundell Lowe, Jimmy Jones, and (of course with) Harry "Sweets" Edison. Benny Carter provided arrangements for one of The Divine One's fine LPs. He also provided exquisite alto saxophone solos on Lady Day's late small group recording, Music for Torching, on "Prelude to a Kiss" and "What's New" (oh my!). I wore out Torching in the '50s as a young record collector. I think it was in 1956 that I attended a concert at Masonic Temple in Detroit - The Birdland All Stars on Tour. The performing artists included Bud Powell, Count Basie & his Orchestra, Terry Gibbs' Quartet featuring Detroit's Terry Pollard on piano and vibes. Looking into data concerning the Birdland tour I found that the President, Lester Young was supposed to be on the Birdland program bill in Detroit. Perhaps Prez was too laid-back for a fifteen year old, since I don't recall seeing him. Chet Baker was supposed to be on the bill also, but my data indicated that he was in jail in Philly. Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine were also on the Birdland program. I remember quite vividly The Divine One and Mr B singing duets with Count Basie's band and B playing valve trombone - Damn! to have been underway in life only fifteen years and to have been involved in the musical magic of such greats. I don't remember which tunes Mis Vaughan and Mr B sang - most likely "I Apologize", "Dedicated to You" among others. Except for the thrill that I experienced then (and now when I think about that magical evening) I can't remember the tunes. This brings me to my music for today, Billy Eckstine Sings with Benny Carter  (with special guest Helen Merrill).
  Benny Carter was a master musician: a master of the alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet, trumpet; arranger (for movies, television and singers), composer and band leader. Carter fits into my pantheon of alto saxophone stars who played THIS music. In addition to Carter I include Johnny Hodges, Earl Bostic, Charlie Parker, Lee Konitz, Willie Smith and Tab Smith. I leave to one side the generation of alto saxophonists beginning with Jackie McLean.
  André Hodeir didn't care for Benny Carter's alto. He objected to his alto's timbre and tone (too whiney), Parker's and Konitz's instruments sounding better to Hodeir. In addition to being a musician, Hodeir was one of the best critics writing about THIS music. He also wrote a fine book on European 20th Century music [THAT music]. He is someone to enjoy reading for his insights into THIS and THAT music. But Hodeir couldn't abide French saxophone players from the Conservatoire, the disciples of Marcel Mule who made fun of Charlie Parker and admired Benny Carter. See Hodeir's very interesting book Toward Jazz and the chapter, "Benny Carter as I See Him" -  the quotation above was taken from the chapter on Thelonious Monk. I can understand Hodeir's Carter aversion given his diet in France of the tonal characteristics of Marcel Mule's style of saxophone playing.
  Benny Carter's playing, his tone and melodic inventiveness, is sublime. Billy Eckstine's singing is sublime also. And let us not forget that Eckstine's band was one of the absolute great bands playing THIS music. His under-recorded band included Lucky Thompson (ts), Sonny Stitt (as), Charlie Parker (as), Gene Ammons (ts), Dexter Gordon (ts) Leo Parker (bs), Benny Green (tb), Fats Navarro (t), Howard McGee (t), Dizzy Gillespie (t), Miles Davis (t),  Art Blakey (d), and Sarah Vaughan (v).
  The world stage for THIS music isn't what it used to be. As I've noted before WKCR has devoted itself to THIS music for over 71 years. The WKCR link appears below.

http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/wkcr/

David Murray Found Some Strings in Havana!

King David & Rayesti

This evening I'm listening to David Murray's 2006 recording on Justin Time Records - David Murray 4tet & Strings: Waltz Again. The music consists of Murray's compositions arranged for his 4Tet - David Murray: tenor saxophone & bass clarinet; Lafayette Gilchrist: piano; Jaribu Shahid: bass; Hamid Drake: drums; and 10 wonderful strings, musicians from the Havana Philharmonic.

  The tract entitled Pushkin Suite #1 lasts 26 minutes and features Murray on both bass clarinet and tenor saxophone. It is a very adventurous piece with all of the musicians performing like there was no shortage of rehearsal time. The result is stupendous. The playing throughout the recording is of the highest order. On Sparkle Murray and the strings create an intense Havana dance groove. 

  If you need to read something before getting into David Murray's 4tet & Strings CD try the link below, otherwise take my word and run out to your favorite record store (ha!) and buy it - it'll make your heart sing. 

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=20569#.USL60lrErMB  

Soul Stirrin' - THIS music - Benny Green, Babs Gonzales & Gene Ammons

Today's philosophers are similar to today's jazz musician in this important respect: There are so few major players contributing to either art form. Indeed there are too many technicians in both philosophy and jazz. I despair using the term "jazz" for the usual reasons. I came across a term that I like much better, a term coined by the late Bill Dixon, viz. "THIS music". Of course, Mr Dixon was a very creative musician. Let's try out an indexical, context sensitive term on philosophy. "THIS philosophy" doesn't work so well. A better term for philosophy today would, I suggest, be "THAT philosophy". This term in my idiolect refers to the few major players in philosophy. Whereas philosophy was termed by A. N. Whitehead to be a footnote to Plato, THIS music could be reckoned to be footnotes to greats such as line from Louis Armstrong through John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. So THAT philosophy line would be the usual greats - Plato, Aristotle, . . . , Descartes, ..., Hume, Kant, ..., Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, ..., Quine, Strawson, Dummett, Kripke, Davidson, Lewis, .... Beginning with Frege there have been a hell of a lot of footnotes by lesser lights flying around.
  I have been attending recently to two exciting recent works by co-authors Raymond Martin & John Barresi, the long titles of which are The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity (2006) and Naturalization of the Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the Eighteen Century (2000). If you're anxious (or willing) to face up to the formidable engineering problems associated with the transmigration of souls (Soul Stirrin'), these are the books for you. Talk of Heaven and Hell is easy; the engineering is quite hard.
  Personal Identity. In 1965 I became interested in the philosophical problem of personal identity via A. J. Ayer's The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, Chapter III, "The Egocentric Predicament". My interest in the problem of personal identity was a result of my reading for Professor Edmund Gettier's epistemology course. Gettier and Professor Richard Cartwright were my best teachers in philosophy at Wayne State University ("Fabulous 1960s!") Ayer's Foundations was a set text for Gettier's course. In the space of 35 pages, Ayer argued for 'his' Carnapian verificationist program for solving the egocentric predicament, whist treating the  problems of other minds, pain perception, privacy, and sense-data. At the same time I was very taken by P. F. Strawson's paper "Persons" that had appeared in the series Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. 
  Strawson in "Persons" and in his later publication, Individuals put forth a view of the self or (logical) subject that he terms the "no-ownership" or "no-subject" doctrine of the self. This view, according to Strawson could be found in a lecture of Wittgenstein's (as reported by G. E. Moore) and in a doctrine that Schlick attributes (but misunderstands) to Lichtenberg. In a long footnote (one of the few to be found in Individuals), Strawson writes, "Lichtenberg's anti-Cartesian dictum is ... one I endorse, if properly used; but it seems to have been repeated, without being understood by most of Descartes' critics."(p. 90) Strawson excepts Wittgenstein and Schlick from those misunderstanding Lichtenberg's dictum. I was very intrigued by the No-Ownership view of the self. P. F. Strawson's son Galen has recently published a book on these fascinating topics entitled Selves.
  Today I am persuaded that instead of a self, the self, an ego, the ego that (which) I fail to find upon introspection; what instead seems to make sense of me are selves - my selves which I do not own. This is a long story though. I'll have more to report on my reading - concerning soul, nous, selves, mind and the rest - at a later date. I'm certain that music, especially THIS music - has more to do with these matters that had been supposed or accounted for in our philosophy.
  Ah! "We wanna to cook" now! - In the Green, Gonzales, and Ammons sense of "cook" and THIS music.