Radio Head. Beginning in April, Pacifica-affiliate WPFW (89.3fm, Washington, DC) revamped its program schedule for the first time in a long while. As part of this reshuffling, I was asked to rejoin the regular schedule as a volunteer music programmer. I took myself out of the line-up sometime in the mid-nineties after hosting two programs in the midnight-dawn bracket that reflected my best attempt at what things might sound like were radio truly free. Since then, I’ve done a handful of special programs when asked and have been a standby on the sub list. At the time that I started volunteering in the mid-eighties, WPFW had established an international reputation as a vanguard of progressive political commentary and an outpost for visionary musical programming that embraced the molten leading edge of jazz and Black music. Shortly after my resignation (but hardly because of it), the station went through some difficult internal struggles, and in that same time frame, DC’s other jazz channel was purchased by CSPAN and converted to talk. In the years that followed, WPFW’s leadership in jazz programming fell victim to a kind of musical populism that moved in to fill the vacuum caused by the loss of the city’s straight ahead FM option.

Recent changes in staffing at the 31-year-old listener-funded broadcast entity, sometimes affectionately called Radio Free Washington, have gone a long way in restoring WPFW’s commitment to musical culture that is as revolutionary as the politics often championed on our airwaves. Bobby Hill – a tireless advocate of creative avant music – was appointed program director a year ago and Katea Stitt has come on as music director. Both have a well-grounded understanding of the value of musical experiences that don’t necessarily conform to standardized definitions of “jazz”. I think they both also understand how music without a text, i.e., instrumental music, can be fully revolutionary in intent and effect. How this might be the case is a discussion that is urgently needed on the left, where discussions of matters of music and culture are often as dogma-choked as they are on the right.

In this supportive environment, I am proud to be heard in alternation with Bobby Hill, every other Thursday from 11pm – 1am, holding down 120 minutes that are innocuously titled "Late Night Jazz". It’s the first time that I’ve ever been able to play what I hear without having to first filter it through a bunch of presumed institutional norms about what’s jazz-enough, black-enough, etcetera-enough to be played. So, I just be bangin’ up in here, playing the sounded expressions of planet earth and her many people, playing those sounds across geography and history without much regard at all for any of the competing critical discourses that seek to organize our musical experience around a non-musical narrative. I’ve done five shows and the response has been very good. The emphasis is always on the music as it presents itself. I try to keep the intrusive DJ voice to a minimum and cover as much ground as is sonically possible in the allotted time. Our listeners are astute and with their feedback via phone and e-mail it really feels like a partnership in building a way of conceiving musical radio that is strictly impossible on the commercial airwaves. I don’t think anyone would argue that there is more good music being made now than previously, but it is certainly easier to access what exists and THAT’S WHAT FREE RADIO SHOULD DO FOR ITS LISTENERS – PROVIDE ACCESS TO WHAT EXISTS. So, if you’re in or near Washington, D.C. on a Thursday night check us out at 89.3fm or anywhere there’s internet at wpfw.org.

Obama Watch. My mother says she sat in the backyard of her suburban Maryland home and watched the sun rise the morning after Obama accepted the mantle of putative democratic party nominee. My mother who just turned eighty and will still, if asked, vividly describe the clerk who stamped her plane ticket “colored” when she was trying to fly home from New Orleans to attend my grandfather’s funeral, said that as she sat there in the dawn's growing light, she felt as if the whole world had shifted.

Later that afternoon, Brother Barack stood before AIPAC and in his first public address since winning the nomination gave away Jerusalem, asserting that it must remain Israel’s undivided capital. It was a statement as unambiguously offensive to Arabs and Palestinians as Ronald Reagan’s choice of launching his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi with a speech couched in the rhetoric of states rights was a clear dis to Black folk. After seizing East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel destroyed its ancient Maghribi quarter to clear access to the wailing wall and since 1991 has steadily restricted use of Muslim and Christian Holy sites by West Bank Palestinians. The disposition of the status of Jerusalem is at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and arguably the stickiest single item on the tar-covered negotiating table. In subsequent interviews, his O-ness did attempt to walk back this rather Bush-like gaffe, returning the matter to the diplomatic process.

And why is dude suddenly wearing that lapel pin? Is this transparent late concession to the gratuitous writ of nationalist fashion sense going to win back some votes in the bitter-belt? What, so he thinks they’re stupid, too?

Site Updates. I continue to move stuff around in the sounds section. Not sure how to best use this space to reflect what these different projects are doing. I did recently add a piece of solo piano music from Leo Svirsky. In addition to This Bag is Not a Toy, Leo is the piano half of the duo Baby Killer Estelle. We recorded the piano piece in his living room.

There are now YouTube links on the Andy Palacio, Butch Morris and Jean-Paul Bourelly pages that are well worth checking out.

There is also an archive of unBlog entries.

I’m still hopeful that folks will use the donation bar to the left as a means of underwriting my research. Every little bit helps.

Thank you,
Thomas

There's no place for you to go, but in or out. Try the out.
-- Sun Ra