Hi Charlie: Actually I was honestly a bit surprised as to just how many comments the little 'brief book comment' seemed to have spurred. I found the conversations intriguing and interesting, with many strands. I try to address a couple of your comments here.
Truly - it was only meant to be simply a 'good read' tip. I see Charles King as a very good 'story-teller'. One able to connect lots of strands around a topic to give it some depth. He is certainly not a Marxist, though he is as you'd expect from professor of international relations at Georgetown - quite well versed academic. Elsewhere in ''Gods of the Upper Air" New York 2019 - as he outlines the school developed by Franz Boas, he does explicitly notes the clear links to Lewis Morgan, Marx, Engels. (That is also a rattling good yarn as King writes it). I believe about a month ago I sent a link to an excellent lecture he gave on the links of racism, anthropology and the supposed justification for race. So to your query here namely - "what is the practical political point today?" As I say - King is a story-teller. I know a number of people (of both musical and non-musical ilk) who are decent non-political types. They would be startled with the linkages between Handel and slavery. In England, as they sit in the Royal Albert Hall - they might be spurred to think anew. They may not be interested in 'tracts' (seems like they are bread-and-butter to us here) but they would be likely - able to read with enjoyment this book. It might even give rise to some 'conversations'. I guess I shall find out! That was all my note meant to suggest, nothing more! The word I had used was ' enmeshed '. As King writes: ". . Slavery was so woven into British politics and society that its sheer ordinariness could render it invisible. Issac Newton owned shares in the South Sea C, John Locke owned stock in the Royal African Company. . ." etc (Ibid p. 135). That sort of speaks to the author you cited above - Ellen T Harris; "Critical Exchanges: Handel and Slave-Trading Companies: Handel, a Salaried Composer: A Response to David Hunter." Her point seemed to be the dividends to Handel via the Royal African C and the SS Co were simply a ' routine ' payment method. Indeed - 'enmeshed'. That is one of the points I think, that King is making. One thing more might be worth saying. (Although almost as sure as ' eggs is eggs' - finger-pointing will follow, of which I have had more than my fill to be frank). That is the link between 'materialism', 'reductionism' and unwarranted extrapolation into fields that cannot be delineated with exactitude. I had something to say on this in regards to genetics - although that is rapidly becoming more 'precise' in the fine-tuning between environment and genome, as I tried to show in that piece. But actually I think that this linkage (or perhaps I mean lack of linkage ) applies in especial to fields such as music. I am put in the mind of Engels' famous letters, including: "According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence. . . " Marx-Engels Correspondence 1890; Engels to J. Bloch In Königsberg; London, September 21, 1890; at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm At the risk of even further torrents of abuse - the musical example that I have in mind is not Handel. The naive forays into the "materialist basis" of music include the attempts to rewrite Shostakovich's entire oeuvre - but most mystically the String Quartets - as being an entire reflection of the thoughts, practice and entire 'regime' of J.V.Stalin. This follows the line of the infamous " Testimony " that was forged by Solomon Volkov. That is not my assessment, but that of musicologists from Elizabeth Wilson, ( 'Shostakovich - A life remembered'; London 1994 ); through to many modern scholars, such as Pauline Fairclough (Prof Music Bristol U UK). Fairclough for eg, writes "the most powerful influence upon S's Western image was not music education or the media: it was the Cold War itself. No one has had a a bigger stake in this than his self-styled amanuensis, Solomon Volkov.. with a Ms. that he claimed was the dictated memoirs of the recently deceased composer, held out the promise of something ineffably precious to the Western side of the Cold War..." etc. ( P.Fairclough, 'Dmitry Shostakovich"; London 2019. p.9 ). You never quite hear that spin from the BBC 3 or the Canadian BC commentators, nor indeed from the NPR commentators. Nonetheless, there is a very good example in my view, of trying to mesh the intricacies of music and its social context - really as you call for Charlie. That is I think in: John Eliot Gardiner; "Bach - Music in the castle of Heaven"; New York 2013. Although to the end it descends into at times a listing of each and every cantata. But it still works, with some fortitude. Gardiner is not a boiled down good rattling story-teller as is King. Besides as he develops dementia or something, he does smack his singers it seems. Anyway, Be well, H -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#33870): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/33870 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/109886990/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
