Song of the Day - Runnin' - The Pharcyde

I came back to this one in a funny way. I was looking for a good cover of Mystic Brew by Ronnie Foster for a class playlist, and came across this cover by The Visioneers that I really really like. I'll write a post about that later. As I was scrolling through the discography of The Visioneers, I realized they did other covers of songs covered by hip hop artists (like Smilin' Billy Suite which was used by Nas on the Illmatic track, One Love). I also saw they did a cover of Runnin', which makes sense given the samba-like instrumentation (I can't say that with authority--I really don't know samba music) but I didn't like it as much. I'm surprised they didn't cover the source of the sample, as in their other songs, which in this case would be Saudade Vem Correndo by Stan Getz and Luiz Bonfa. Maybe the sample was too small a portion, or the song just not of interest. 

Anyway, feeling like I remembered the original "Runnin'"  having something that this cover didn't I  pulled it up and gave it a listen. Man. The drums are so strong. And there's just so many layers, between the scratching, the throwing of voices, the actual hook ("Can't keep runnin' awayyyyyyy"), and the rapping--the song is amazing. I love trying to listen to only the kick drums--it feels rhythmic and unpredictable at once. And the way it blends with the base when it drops, melts into the rest of the track, but is still operating its polyrhythmic heartbeat. 

Listening to it again this morning I was overwhelmed by the composition. Everything I named above, and the guitar, the shaker that sounds like a pant-during-running together are just so powerful. It is truly incredible that human beings were able to make this. 

Amid so much uncertainty in the world, and as I grow older and just appreciate how much I don't know, the music comes to me with complete reality and immediacy. It just is. It's a fact. And the way it animates me--it makes me feel in touch with some kind of concreteness about myself. Not unchanging, or rigid, but some actuality. Something that's not an abstraction, not an opinion, something about me that is, and is alive. Listening to it, I thought of the Kurt Vonnegut quote “Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God." Amen. And to extend it, let's be grateful to the prophets past and present who let us hear that existence (if that's how we understand it), particularly in this case, J Dilla, producer and composer, a 20 year old black man from a musical family in Detroit. 

Here's Runnin' by The Pharcyde 

Retrospective -- The Ghost of Tom Joad

I recently picked up a CD copy of The Ghost of Tom Joad someone left in a free pile outside their house. I had always loved the track (the Jose Gonzales / Junip version was particularly memorable and electric for me) and wanted to see what the rest of the album was like. Listening to it with my eyes closed at the end of a winter day in my living room, I was really surprised at how current some of the tracks felt. While the titular tracks lyrics had always felt a little vague or canned to me at points (maybe contributing to how the song continues to be covered and upheld across countries and nationalities) I was surprised at how, after almost 30 years, how relevant the song material was. Covering difficulties with homelessness (Tom Joad), prison re-entry (Straight Time), rust-belt towns (Youngstown), refugees, migrants, seasonal laborers, America for Americans nationalism (Sinaloa Cowboys, Balboa Park, The New Timer, and Galveston Bay), and border crossings (The Line, Across the Border) the album touches on many important social struggles of the 2020s. 

In this small performance of the Ghost of Tom Joad in 2010, Springsteen talks about how "you had a sense where California was in the mid 90s was where the country was going, and it really has." Indeed.  

And also, the same reservations I had about the titular track I also have for the album as a whole. As one example, "The Line" describes in some detail a veteran turned US Border Patrol officer who falls in love with "Louisa" who's been detained "in the holding pen." That line really made me cringe, suspicious of the abuse of women that takes place at the hand of Border Patrol agents, and how the song uses Louisa as a foil to explore an individual mans lost love felt saccharine and to miss the point of protest. Yet, these same things that make me cringe may also be highlighting other truths to be kept in mind: the troubling psychology of saviorship and the way it interacts with race, borders, and gender; or  how one persons existential struggle can be ignored and held instead as the object of another persons pining muse. 

I am reminded of lessons I read in poetry classes that art is not communication, and although it can be a window into the lives of others, it can also at the same time be a mirror into ourselves and a doorway to other experiences (thank you ParentChild+ for introducing me to the terminology of Rudine Simms Bishop, Black scholar, and regarded as the mother of multi-cultural children's literature in the United States). As I consider Tom Joad in this framework, I am compelled to ask "how is this work a window? How is it a mirror? How is it a door?" Taking "The Line" as just one example again, I see a window to some of the analysis I offer above, and a mirror into myself, someone with power, distance, who considers themselves and artist, and in their non-artist work is imperfectly trying to alleviate or prevent suffering in the world, likely doing so along with all the baggage of myself. I also see a door, to go beyond the song and consider more deeply what the experiences (plural) of migrants might be, to question the understanding I think I have of their experience, and to better understand how the reality of border crossings has drastically changed since 1996 and continues to change.   

In this way, I find resonance with the continued life of the titular track--I imagine it continues to be sung and played not because it summarizes all that is to be said about poverty or struggle, but because (even in its imperfection--and perhaps in some part because of its mix of specificity and vagueness) people continue to find it a powerful medium for feeling, and insight, interpersonally and personally. I hold the album in much the same way, and in that way respond to Bruce's own search for meaning which resulted in the album, by making the album a location for and a jumping off point for my own reflections and feelings. 

Thanks Dad -- Jim Hall -- Concierto de Aranjuez

On a long care ride that took me through NYC yesterday I heard an iconic piece of music Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo II. I couldn't immediately place it, and realized eventually that I was hearing the original and orchestral version of a song that my father had introduced me to: Jim Halls jazz interpretation. The way the song descends into itself after a faithful interpretation of the opening motif is an absolute delight. That it's Ron Carter on bass only deepens my gratitude. Thanks Dad. 

Song here.