music review: Boards of Canada, DJ Shadow and Beethoven?

• electronic music in working class culture
  or six degrees of separation in
  electronic music and Lenin; it's closer than you think
  
  Part 1
  
  On the cultural left-wing, folk, hip hop and hardcore punk are the usual genres that convey working class sentiment about life under capitalism. Rebelling against the status quo through music usually produces powerful lyrics that can stand on their own merits as poetry.
  
  One genre that often doesn't come to mind is electronic music.
  Electronic music has branched into many different types itself....
  
  What if music has no words? How does it relate to working class culture? It can. The story of Lenin's love for Beethoven's music is telling of its power. In Georg Lukács Lenin – Theoretician of Practice:
  
  '...Gorky recorded Lenin’s very characteristic words spoken after he listened to Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata*: “I know the Appassionata inside out and yet I am willing to listen to it every day. It is wonderful, ethereal music. On hearing it I proudly, maybe somewhat naively, think: See! people are able to produce such marvels!” He then winked, laughed and added sadly: “I’m often unable to listen to music, it gets on my nerves, I would like to stroke my fellow beings and whisper sweet nothings in their ears for being able to produce such beautiful things in spite of the abominable hell they are living in....”'
  
  Lenin was refering to his being distracted by music so much that he would rather not listen to it. Being lost in music can be a good thing too. It may help to concentrate. So called "study music" used by students is an example of using music to meditate, think or study.
  
  *(Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, opus 57)
  
  Lenin was also interested in an electronic musical instrument called a theremin, the grandfather of electronic musical instruments, invented in the former Soviet Union. Lenin even requested to have a lesson on the theremin from its inventor.
  
  So how does instrumental music fit in? With no words, music invokes images to the listener. We are often told about a composer's life and times to give context to classical pieces. To a worker in a feudal, capitalist, or socialist society, a piece of music may invoke different images but maybe a common meaning.
  
  Music can of course be used together with images. Movie scores are testament to that concept. So even a piece of music without words can be given a real deliberate leftist message when used together with a progressive film. The film “Dark Days” is an example, scored by DJ Shadow.
  
  
  
  above: the music process described
  
  
  
  music specific to the film
  
  BOARDS OF CANADA AND GOVERNMENT CUTBACKS
  
  Boards of Canada (BOC) are not from Canada but hail from Scotland. How are they related to Canada? The duo get inspiration for their music from movies from the National Film Board of Canada, in particular documentaries. I wonder at the far reaching effects of government budget cuts of the NFB to arts and culture down the road. The question arises: If the NFB was cut years ago like is has been recently, would the group Boards of Canada even exist?
  
  Speaking of the NFB, it should be noted that the Film Board's first commissioner, John Grierson was also a Scotsman and was dismissed in 1945 according to wikipedia after "allegations of communist sympathy regarding several of the films the Board had produced during the war."
  
  links: (note this post was edited 5/25/09 to include the links below)

• official site
• wikipedia entry
• myspace profile

The three clips above have not much in terms of conveying leftist ideas, but combined with the silent movie in the post below, you can be the judge.
(if you do we suggest letting the players load up first to help with streaming problems for those with low bandwidth)

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Video review: “The Prologue” from the Passaic textile strike

this is the first in a series of video reviews on films about strikes.







This film was made in 1926 and is silent. This video only shows the opening prologue. It is a melodrama explaining conditions of the workers at the struck woolen mills. The rest of the movie contains documentary footage of the picket lines, police beatings and other aspects of the labour actions. According to the IMDB website, the cast played themselves and the production crew were made up of members of the communist party. (Ironically the IMDB site had sponsored links to union busting outfits).


You will see in the title sequence “An International Worker's Aid Picture.” Affiliated to that was the Workers Film and Photo League. Two reels were thought lost to time. However, in 2006, the Communist Party USA donated a vast collection to New York University and among the collection were reels and reels of film. Two of them included the lost footage which at present is in the process of restoration.


Passaic by the way, is in New Jersey. And sadly, the strike was lost due to various problems like an attack by the at that time racist craft unionism of the AFL and red-baiting. It did have a silver lining of, breaking the company unions then in place, and forcing the hand of the AFL. These lessons were remembered in the 1930s

more on the strike: http://www.weisbord.org/Passaic.htm

http://www.weisbord.org/BulletinsTwo.htm

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New Issue of Rebel Youth on Sale

(The following article is from the April 16-30, 2009, issue of People's Voice)
People’s Voice is proud to announce that the latest issue of Rebel Youth, the magazine of the Young Communist League of Canada, has just rolled off the press. Printed by union labour, this issue features unique content found in few other English-language publications of the Canadian left, let alone youth and student publications - articles by high school students about local fight-backs, discussion on the Quebec elections, and an interview with Omar Khadr’s sister, Zaynab Khadr. Several articles are in French. As the main editorial says, issue number seven (counting back from when the magazine began republishing in 2004) comes at an extraordinary critical moment for the youth movement in Canada, and globally. We are happy to reprint the editorial:

The economic crisis young workers and students are confronting today is casting a dark shadow onto the future of our generation. The crisis has been made worse by decades of social blood-letting - cutbacks, privatization, and general impoverishment of our class. User fees, such as tuition fees, have appeared like a like a plague of boils across the face of society.

This is outlined in articles like H. Abdul’s piece about the privatization of education in Alberta, “Winnipeg’s Injustice System” about police brutality in the North End by RY Manitoba, and Betsy MacDonald’s story about violence against women. It is also reflected in our accounts of aboriginal student resistance, as David Tymoshchuk’s “Lift the Cap” discusses, and Jamie Campbell’s reporting on the high school Drop Fees struggle. And with Zig Zag’s and Javier Davila’s features (two articles we’re pleased to reprint with permission) the capitalist state’s idea of a solution is exposed: money-wasting corporate mega-projects - or joining the military. Any glance at the news headlines says “welcome to rough times.” Some may turn to “get rich quick” schemes like that which Primerica corporation offers and Tony Marcy contrasts with a union drive. Still more may be seduced by the most vile currents in Canadian society, racist or homophobic ideology - see Jeff Tomlinson’s “Fighting Hate in Durham.” What do we do about it? In the final analysis, we think it comes down to fight or flight.

Flight? Well, we mean the idea that working people, youth and students should just “suck it up.” Try to ride out the recession. It is one thing to be forced to take concessions, but this outlook supports adopting a line of concession. Mr. Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party, recently said it’s the “courage of the Canadian people which makes our country strong” and that kind of courage “workers will need to take a pay cut so your friends at the plant can keep their job” (Toronto Star, Jan. 23). He courageously chose the Toronto Board of Trade, an association of the foremost bodies of monopolists, bankers and financiers in Canada, to deliver this message to workers. We think however that there is a demonstrated willingness by youth and students to voice loud and noisy opposition to the direction we’re headed. Take the massive Palestinian solidarity protests against Zionist Israeli and Israeli Apartheid Week. This different approach is also discussed with Chevy Philip’s article about youth joining the Communist Party in Japan, the commentary on the BC election, and the page two photograph from Greece. YCL General Secretary Johan Boyden’s article on the economic crisis calls for a youth alliance that can shift the power of big business by unifying all students and young people who are suffering the consequences. “We didn’t make this crisis, and we’re not going to pay for it!” should be our slogan.

No matter how great and ferocious our opposition from the capitalist class, fight-back is the way forward. We can’t be tired now, as campaigners, as youth activists, as the left and progressive movement.
In closing, we are very happy to present here an interview with the sister of Omar Khadr, who has been misrepresented and vilified by the capitalist media in Canada and internationally. There is considerable optimism that Omar can come home because of the election of US president Obama, about whom we present two opinions by S.J. Bracken and T. Walkom for debate and discussion. And, of course, our usual culture section continues with Soul, Hip Hop, lots of Punk reviews - and even Bilal Awami's way to kill time with music on your call-centre phone.

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Bolivian President on hunger strike

From The Morning Star Online

BOLIVIAN President Evo Morales has announced he is going on hunger strike to put pressure on Congress to set a firm date for general elections that are likely to return him to power.

Bolivia's opposition-led Senate has failed to approve a law to handle the elections, which are mandated by a Morales-backed constitutional reform approved by voters in January.

The socialist president, who took office in 2006, has suggested that opposition leaders are trying to block the planned December elections with delaying tactics.

He said on Thursday he was starting the strike "to defend the vote of the people."

Fourteen leaders of labour and social groups said they were joining Mr Morales on the hunger strike.

They did not say how rigorous it would be, but such protests in Bolivia usually involve taking water and chewing coca leaves, which help ward off hunger pangs. Mr Morales rose to prominence as leader of a coca-growers' union.

The election Bill has been held up by demands for an updated voter registry, by arguments over whether Bolivians living outside the country should be able to vote and over a dispute about the number of seats in Congress that should be assigned to indigenous groups.

Under the new constitution that took effect in January and aims to further empower Bolivia's long-suppressed indigenous majority, Congress was supposed to have enacted the elections law by Thursday.

Bolivians are to vote for president and a new Congress.

Mr Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, is the favourite to win re-election over a fractured opposition.

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