Making Magic on Broadway

By Marc Williams

The Tony Awards are Broadway theatre’s version of an Oscar, recognizing the highest levels of achievement in commercial theatre. This year’s nominees include a revival of Pippin, a musical that premiered on Broadway in 1972 and hasn’t been seen on Broadway since that original production.

Pippin was conceived by composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz, who is best known Godspell and, more recently, the Broadway mega-hit Wicked. Schwartz began working on Pippin as an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University and after achieving a seemingly overnight success with Godspell in 1971, the 23-year old Schwartz and his collaborator, Roger O. Hirson, were able to find a producer willing to put Pippin on Broadway.

Like Schwartz’ earlier hit Godspell, Pippin had great popular appeal. The scores to these musicals contain pop/rock songs that became crossover hits on top-40 radio. The original Off-Broadway cast recording of Godspell’s “Day By Day” climbed to the #13 position on the Billboard Top Singles chart, while songs from Pippin were recorded by the Jackson 5, Michael Jackson (solo), the Supremes, and Petula Clark and Dusty Springfield. On stage, Pippin was a bona fide Broadway hit, running over 1900 performances–one of the longest runs in Broadway history. An interesting side note to Pippin’s successful run was its very effective marketing campaign; Pippin was the first Broadway musical to use clips from the production on a television advertisement. The famous “Manson Trio” dance number was featured in this minute-long television commercial that is credited for generating much of the musical’s early ticket sales (pardon the water mark):

Ben Vereen as the Leading Player in Bob Fosse’s 1972 production of Pippin.

While Pippin enjoyed popular success, the script and score were not embraced by the influential New York critics. In his New York Times review, Clive Barnes called Pippin a “trite and uninteresting story with aspirations to a seriousness it never for one moment fulfills.” He similarly wrote of Schwartz’s score, “It is a commonplace set to rock music, and I must say I found most of music somewhat characterless.” However, Barnes praised the production as a whole, noting its inventive staging and choreography, the work of the stage designers, and the triumphant performance by Ben Vereen as the Leading Player.

Bob Fosse.

Barnes and other critics took notice of Bob Fosse’s work in particular, which deemphasized the script’s naïve and passive title character and focused on the dark, dangerous agenda of the musical’s ringmaster, Vereen’s Leading Player.

Stephen Schwartz.

Rather than Schwartz’ story of a young man’s search for fulfillment, Fosse viewed Pippin’s plot as the story of a young man being seduced into self-destruction. In an effort to support the theme of seduction, the production visually evoked burlesque and carnival performance, highlighting themes of sexual exploration and discovery. The 24-year old Schwartz, whose musical influences were more James Taylor and less Jimi Hendrix, perhaps had not imagined his musical with such a seedy underbelly and as a result, the rehearsals for Pippin were famously contentious, with Fosse, Schwartz, and Hirson battling for control of the production’s tone. Eventually, Fosse banned Schwartz and Hirson from attending rehearsals!

Some criticism of Schwartz and Hirson’s work is warranted. The story is fragmented and the central action unclear. The musical’s original ending is among the most jarring and dissatisfying endings one is likely to find in a musical. Structurally, Pippin is incomplete and any production of Pippin seems to require additional directorial focus in order to hold the entire script and score together into a cohesive evening of theatre. Fosse seemingly knew this, and his work earned him a Tony Award in 1973 for Best Director of a Musical; Fosse also won a Tony Award for his iconic Pippin choreography.

Diane Paulus

Forty years after Fosse’s original production, a new production opened on Broadway April 25, 2013. Directed by Diane Paulus, the new production has been called a “natural extension” of Fosse’s, a Pippin for a 21st century audience. If Fosse’s production was suggestive, Paulus’ production seems to opt for excess. Fosse’s dancing ensemble, for instance, was conceived as a group of traveling burlesque clowns. Paulus’ vision for these traveling players is less burlesque, more Cirque du Soleil. In fact, Paulus’ production employs a troupe of Canadian acrobats that creates a sense of grand spectacle throughout the show. If Fosse’s production is a story of seduction, Paulus’ production seems a story of astonishment. Here is a glimpse of Paulus’ new production:

Much has changed on Broadway since Fosse’s Pippin opened in 1972. The 1980’s was an era of musical spectacles, lavish musicals like Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, and Miss Saigon that boasted some of the most eye-popping visual effects ever seen on stage. More recent musicals like Wicked and

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark have continued that tradition into the 21st century. In my BLS course, Eye Appeal: Spectacle on Stage and in Life, we discuss musical spectacles and how 21st century audiences have come to expect a certain degree of “eye appeal” at a Broadway musical. With many of these musical spectacles, the stage designs are frankly more impressive than the scripts the designs are attempting to support. Some of these productions could be called “style without substance,” in spite of their commercial success. In the case of Paulus’ Pippin, it seems the director is using the fad of musical spectacles not to distract from the script’s flaws but rather to enhance the script’s central action and deliver a story about amazement to an audience that demands to be amazed. Given the positive reviews and ten Tony Award nominations Paulus’ production received, one wonders if Pippin is poised to be a Broadway hit yet again.

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An interesting “Making of…” feature published on the New York Times’ website, demonstrating how Paulus and her collaborators conceptualized Pippin’s famous opening number, “Magic to Do.”

Do You Hear the People Sing?

By Marc Williams

On Christmas day, Hollywood’s newest movie musical will open at theatres nationwide. Les Misérables is based on Claude-Michel Schonberg, Alain Boublil, and Herbert Kretzmer’s hit stage musical, which of course was based on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel. The English version of the stage musical opened in London in 1985, on Broadway in 1987, and was eventually translated into twenty-one languages and performed in over forty countries. Along with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and the Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables can be considered among the most commercially successful stage musicals of all time.

Hit stage musicals have often been adapted for the screen. In recent years, Chicago, Hairspray, Rent, Dreamgirls, and The Producers were captured on film. It’s therefore no surprise that a mega-hit like Les Misérables was destined for the silver screen. However, one important aspect of this latest movie musical demonstrates a significant departure from most of its predecessors: the singing.

Historically, the vocal tracks for these movie musicals are recorded weeks or even months in advance of filming. This method gives the director, musical supervisor, sound editors and engineers a clean audio sample that sounds nearly perfect. Consider this clip from the 1944 musical Meet Me in St. Louis:

You’ll see that as Judy Garland dances, the heels on her shoes contact the wooden floor just beyond the rug. This dancing would surely create a “tapping” sound but of course we don’t hear this tapping in the clip because the audio was recorded long before the scene was filmed. Likewise, there are a number of actors in the shot; a single cough or sneeze from any of these actors would ruin the audio sample if it were recorded live. Additionally, if a musical number features an actor moving from place to place, the cameras also have to move–this means that the clanking of equipment or shuffling of feet could also destroy a live shot. Finally, it is physically difficult to sing and dance at the same time. Singers engaged in brisk physical activity, even light dancing, can easily find themselves out of breath. Recording the vocals in the studio eliminates all of these problems.

However, recording vocals in advance creates two important complications for the singing actor. First is the technical challenge of lip-synching. In the clip above, Garland must dance and engage with the other actors, all while she is attempting to flawlessly match the vocals she had recorded in a studio many weeks earlier. It’s difficult enough to sing, dance, and act at the same time–simultaneously lip-synching is a near-impossible challenge.

A more extreme example can be seen here, a dance number from High School Musical.  The choreography is more intense than the Judy Garland clip and the viewer can easily see the singers struggling to mimic their prerecorded vocals.

Notice also at the end of the first verse, sung by Zac Efron, that he is doubled over, getting a playful rub on the head from another actor. Amazingly, his singing is unaffected by this physical posture. This example introduces the second problem with prerecorded audio for musical films: lack of spontaneity. If the actors behave spontaneously on camera, their physical action almost certainly will not match the audio; this creates the dubbing issues seen in the clip from High School Musical. On the other end of the spectrum, actors attempting to perfectly match the prerecorded vocals will almost certainly disengage from the acting moment and may even have to adjust choreography in order to truly match the vocals–the audio might sound “pretty” but the song will look dull on the screen.

For these reasons, director Tom Hooper decided to record the songs for Les Misérables live on the set. It’s an incredibly innovative approach that eschews nearly a century of movie musical tradition. This “behind the scenes” video provides a look at the techniques used to capture live audio.

As I read about the film and how the audio was recorded, I thought about the audio presentations my students give in Shakespeare Off the Page, one of the courses I teach in the UNCG BLS program. I ask students to give online presentations by recording their voice and submitting that audio file for evaluation. When I first taught the course, I was most interested in evaluating 1) Is the student’s argument convincing? and 2) Can I hear and understand the student’s voice? But as I’ve continued teaching the course, I’ve started thinking more like Tom Hooper. What I really want to hear in a presentation is the speaker’s personality–their interest in the topic, their engagement with the material, and their willingness to be spontaneous rather than “perfect.” After all, if one is simply going to recite text, what’s the point of speaking aloud? It’s a wonder that it’s taken Hollywood so long to figure this out.

Spiders and Toads

By Marc Williams

Laurence Olivier as Richard III.

“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.”
~Richard III (Act 1, scene 1).

King Richard III is among Shakespeare’s greatest villains. Based on the real-life Richard of Glouster, Shakespeare’s title character murders his way to the throne, bragging about his deeds and ambitions to the audience in some of Shakespeare’s most delightful soliloquies. Shakespeare’s Richard is famously depicted as a hunchback, and uses his physical deformity as justification for his evil ambitions:

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

For stage actors, Richard III is a tremendously challenging role. On one hand, he is pure evil—but he must also be charming and likeable. If you aren’t familiar with the play, its second scene features Richard successfully wooing Lady Anne as she grieves over her husband’s corpse! And Richard is her husband’s killer! Shakespeare’s Richard is both evil and smooth.

Simon Russell Beale as Richard III.

Actors must also deal with the issue of Richard’s physical disability. For instance, Richard is described as a “poisonous bunch-back’d toad,” an image that inspired Simon Russell Beale’s 1992 performance at the Royal Shakespeare Company, while Antony Sher’s iconic 1984 interpretation was inspired by the phrase “bottled spider,” an insult hurled at Richard in Act I.

Anthony Sher’s “bottled spider” interpretation of  Richard III.

While much of the historical record disputes Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard as a maniacal mass-murderer, relatively little is known about Richard’s disability. According to the play, Richard is a hunchback with a shriveled arm. However, there is little evidence to support these claims.

This uncertainty may soon change. Archaeologists in Leicester, England have uncovered the remnants of a chapel that was demolished in the 16^th century. That chapel, according to historic accounts of Richard’s death at the Battle of Bosworth, was Richard’s burial site. Not only have researchers found the church, but they have also located the choir area, where Richard’s body was allegedly interred. And indeed, last week, the archaeologists uncovered bones in the choir area:

If the archeologists have indeed found the remains of Richard III, the famous king was definitely not a hunchback. It appears he suffered from scoliosis—a lateral curve or twist of the spine—but not from kyphosis, which is a different kind of spinal curvature that leads to a pronounced forward-leaning posture. As Dr. Richard Taylor explains in the video, the excavated remains suggest this person would have appeared to have one shoulder slightly higher than the other as a result of scoliosis.

Interestingly, Ian McKellen’s performance as Richard III, captured in Richard Loncraine’s 1996 film, seems to capture the kind of physical condition described by Dr. Taylor, with one shoulder slightly higher than the other. At the 6:45 mark in this video, one can see how McKellen dealt with Richard’s condition.

So it appears Shakespeare not only distorted historical details in Richard III, he also apparently distorted the title character’s shape. Of Shakespeare’s Richard, McKellen wrote:

Shakespeare’s stage version of Richard has erased the history of the real king, who was, by comparison, a model of probity. Canny Shakespeare may well have conformed to the propaganda of the Tudor Dynasty, Queen Elizabeth I’s grandfather having slain Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. Shakespeare was not writing nor rewriting history. He was building on his success as thee young playwright of the Henry VI trilogy, some of whose monstrously self-willed men and women recur in Richard III.

It seems likely that Shakespeare wanted Richard to seem as evil as possible in order to flatter Queen Elizabeth I, depicting her grandfather as England’s conquering hero. But why distort Richard’s physical disability as well?

In describing Richard’s body shape, it is difficult to ascertain what Shakespeare’s motives might have been and perhaps even more difficult to assess his attitudes toward physical difference in general. For example, in my “Big Plays, Big Ideas” class in the BLS program, we discuss the issue of race in Othello, even though we don’t know much about what Shakespeare thought about race. Many scholars have investigated the subject of physical difference in Shakespeare, of course: there are papers on Richard’s spine, naturally, but also Othello’s seizures, Lavinia’s marginalization in Titus Andronicus after her hands and feet are severed, the depiction of blindness in King Lear, and even Hermia’s height in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And just as one must ask, “is Othello about race,” we might also ask, “is Richard III about shape?” I doubt many would argue that physical difference is the primary focus of Shakespeare’s Richard III, but it will be interesting to observe how the apparent discovery of Richard’s body will affect future performances of the play. Will actors continue to twist their bodies into “bottled spiders,” or will they focus on the historical Richard’s scoliosis—and perhaps ask why such vicious language is used to describe such a minor difference?

Choose Your Own Adventure

By Carrie Levesque

Recently in the Russian Novel of Conscience course we have been discussing Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1921 dystopian novel We, about a highly mechanized and regimented totalitarian society (the One State) hundreds of years in the future where citizens have achieved the ultimate happiness: unfreedom.  Taking as our starting point Marx’s claim that machines, invented to help man, have become the symbols of his servitude, we debate the extent to which machines and technology have enslaved or liberated men in today’s world.

As a class, we’ve compiled a pretty good list of technology’s benefits (efficiency, convenience, online degree programs!) and costs (myriad media addictions, a privileging of online relationships at the expense of face-to-face ones).  At midterm, several students have written excellent papers on how we have created a sort of One State within the United States through certain government policies and technologies which reduce rather than foster our individuality and humanity.

Many of these discussions have stirred up nostalgia for simpler times, when it seems people had different values and a different relationship to one another.  They’ve made me think about a book I read recently on a more extreme response to this question, the Back to the land movement (which is a great deal more complex than just ‘living simply,’ but I’m limited to 800 words…).

I grew up in a remote area of northern Maine that has always attracted Back-to-the-landers.  What possesses these diehards who apparently find the southern Maine homesteads of the followers of Scott and Helen Nearing not austere or isolated enough, that they would haul their few remaining possessions to the place where the logging roads end and call it home, I can’t say for sure.

But I’ll admit to having a touch of that idealism myself- to unplug, to live off the land, to disconnect from our nonstop media and rampant consumerism of all the latest technology (though you’d have to be insane to choose the wilds of northern Maine, a place with two seasons: Brutal Winter and Rainy Black Fly Infestation).  Though I now prefer a more comfortable climate, I understand the appeal of living in a beautiful, natural setting, devoting most of one’s time to work in the outdoors without a care for whatever new technology or entertainment the rest of the world is enthralled with.

Coleman Family

And yet, through a closer examination of life ‘off the grid,’ I’ve also come to a greater appreciation of many benefits of our modern life. I recently read Melissa Coleman’s memoir This Life Is In Your Hands about growing up the daughter of famous homesteader and Nearing mentee Eliot Coleman. She chronicles the great strain that the demands of homesteading put on her family, resulting in her father’s ill health, her baby sister’s tragic death and her parents’ divorce.  (On a lighter note, she also reveals some of the purist Nearings’ well-kept secrets: Helen’s love of ice cream, mail order fruit and other delicacies.  Even the folks who wrote the (sometimes a tad righteous) book on living local and off the grid indulged a little on occasion).  Though there were certainly aspects of their lives on the homestead that were richly satisfying, some readers may come away wondering if their chosen cure for the ills of modern life wasn’t in some ways as harmful as the disease, physically as well as spiritually.

Another interesting look at the real-life struggles of those who lived in those idealized ‘simpler times’ is the PBS reality series Frontier House.   In 2001, three families (selected from among some 5,000 applicants!) lived off the land for six months on the simulated frontier of 1880s Montana.  The success of their venture was assessed by historians based on whether each family had put by enough food and fuel over the summer and fall to survive a Montana winter.  Though they labored admirably, through all sorts of drama, if memory serves it was decided all would have perished.  The simpler times were never as simple as they seem.   (Frontier House is available in UNCG’s Instructional Film Collection, but sadly, not on Netflix).

There are no easy answers to the question of man’s relationship to technology.  Most people I know lament their dependency on smart phones, social media and a food supply so highly engineered that many of us have no idea what we’re really eating half the time (pink slime, anyone?).   Yet we have so much to be grateful for.  We live in a time of amazing medical advances.  Whatever may plague or disappoint us in our lives, we have the freedom and resources at our fingertips to research alternatives and connect with like-minded people to find a solution.  For all our similarities, thankfully these United States are not the One State.  Our ultimate happiness is not to be found in our unfreedom, but in our freedom to negotiate these complex choices and relationships, to choose our own adventure.

Who is on First: Ambiguous and Loaded Language

By Wade Maki

“Who is on first? Yes, he is.” The classic comedy bit plays on ambiguity in language.  In this case the ambiguity is just the unfortunate result of the situation (people named “Who” and “What” are difficult to talk about).  A great many problems are caused by ambiguous language in which two or more meanings may be found in the same wording. Vast amounts of philosophical disputes revolve around language disputes. What exactly did you mean by X?

Do you believe in God? This seems a simple question, but what does it mean to “believe” in something? Does belief entail: that it is true, that it is likely true, that it is possibly true, that I just hope it true, or even that I just want to be true? The word is unclear and any question involving it invites answers aimed at one of these standards leaving great possibility for confusion between questioner and answerer.

Sometimes ambiguous language is just the unintended result of vague expression. In other cases it results from careless expression. As evidence, here is how a team of students recently reported on a conflict between two companies:

“Throughout the process, this firm created monetary problems for their company explaining why they decided not to provide their services to them.”

While the team knew to what the words “this, their, they, and them,” applied, there was no way for the reader to decipher this meaning given that there were at least two subjects that each word could refer to.

In other cases ambiguous language is a deliberate tool to deceive. Examples from politics and advertising are numerous where, by design, language is selected because it has dual meanings one, which is technically true, and the other which isn’t true but the speaker hopes the listener will accept as true. President Clinton’s famous legal defense about perjury included the curious claim “it depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”. You know language is in trouble when “is” becomes ambiguous.

Rather than focus on political ambiguity in language, a subject deserving of its own post, consider how advertisers utilize it. Below are two labels from the same product line called “ecosense” (in two shades of green). When you see this what do you think of? Once you’ve answered the question read the small print at the bottom. Then look at the second version, which represents the updated advertising language. Notice how they changed the small print to be even more ambiguous than the first.

What is going on with these ads is called “greenwashing” whereby an attempt is made to convey an environmental product when, in fact, it is not an environmental product. In the examples above the advertiser plays on both the ambiguity of the phrase “ecosense” and of the color green. The eco in ecosense could mean ecological and/or economical just as the green could mean environmentally friendly and/or affordable. As the small print indicates in the first ad (which was the original label) only the economical portions are true.  However, since the product would sell better if people thought it was environmental this original small print was altered to be more ambiguous. Now it tells you that ecosense means economical sense it leaves an open question as to the environmental impact of the product. People who don’t read the small print (a significant number) would reasonably conclude that the product was environmentally friendly and even those who read the second label may reach that same conclusion.

Thus far the examples have involved language which could have two or more meanings. There is another form of ambiguity in language where meanings are smuggled into language without actually being said.  What comes to mind when I tell you Jones is an environmentalist? For many people the word itself brings with it images of hippies, tree huggers, people diving atop whales to save them from harpoons, Prius owners, or a host of other behaviors. As a result a lot of people say “I’m not an environmentalist” before adding, “but I care about the environment.” This is as logical as the woman who says: “I believe in equal rights, but I’m not a feminist.”

Confusions in such cases come not from the words themselves, but from outside ideas the listener associates with the words. Thus, most conservatives don’t call themselves “environmentalists” as that says SUV burning, un-showered,  neo-hippie. Instead, conservatives are more likely to use the term “conservationist”.  What is the difference? Not a whole lot if you only look at the words and know that both seek to protect parks, air, water, and nature.  Of course the term conservationist also carries additional connotations to some listeners such as, in full Teddy Roosevelt tradition, enjoying nature by using an elephant gun to blow away every creature in the natural world for the trophy wall.

A lot of conflict, confusion, and deception occurs because of ambiguity in either the meaning of language or the smuggling in of additional notions. What one person says can be innocent to one listener but racist/homophobic/offensive to others. The solution isn’t easy. Being aware of ambiguity and smuggled notions goes a long way, but not far enough. If you were running for president and want to protect parks, air, water, and nature what word do you use? If environmentalist and conservationist each scare a third of America what word do you use? This helps explain the tortured use of language in politics.

Enrichment Online: The Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies at UNCG

By Tyler Steelman (BLS Class of 2012)

Facing the completion of my Associates in Arts in English, I was quite undecided on how I would continue my college career after leaving the community college I entered after high school.  Thanks to her wisdom and insight into my interests and character, my college adviser there introduced me to the BLS program at UNCG.

I have always had a deep interest in the fields described as humanities: literature, art, history, philosophy, and religion.  Thus, the BLS program was a great way to formally study subjects I have always loved.  The online learning environment was also a major factor in my choosing the BLS program.  Having completed my associate’s degree online, I had grown comfortable with the freedom and flexibility of online courses, so I knew I would be successful in the BLS program.  Furthermore, UNCG’s low tuition rates make it quite an affordable way to further your education.

While my focus in the program was on literature, to my delight I have been able to delve into the other branches of the humanities as well.  One of my favorite courses during my time in the program was Magic, Media, and Popular Imagination with Dr. Emily Edwards.  In this course we examined the effect the supernatural has had on popular media.  We watched several films with supernatural themes which we discussed in discussion forums.  For the final project we created a visual narrative blog, where we used photographs and narration to create a documentary or creative piece.  It was interesting to learn how profound an influence the occult has had on popular media, and the visual narrative project was an enjoyable experience.  To view my visual narrative project, click here.

In my time in the BLS program, I have been fortunate to also take three courses with Dr. Carrie Levesque.  In American Motherhood, I studied how the role of motherhood is perceived by our society and the different ethnicities and sub-cultures that it contains.  For that course I created a blog examining how motherhood is represented in popular media.  I also took Religious Resistance to Political Power, where I examined how various religions responded to oppressive measures by governments.  In Women, War, and Terror, we read three memoirs written by women during times of war, violence, and social upheaval.  Dr. Levesque is a very insightful instructor who provides a warm and informal atmosphere to discuss these often challenging and distressing issues.

Finally, I have also been able to explore the world of drama and theater with Professor Marc Williams.  In Big Plays, Big Ideas, I read numerous plays, analyzing how they portrayed various issues pertaining to society and the human condition.  In Eye Appeal, I learned how spectacle (costuming, lighting, set design, music, etc.) adds to or affects dramatic productions.  I wrote a review of a theatrical performance I attended, detailing how spectacle was utilized.  Professor Williams offers wonderful critiques on assignments that not only advise you on how to be a better student in that course, but also on how to be a better writer.

I am not the typical BLS student, as the program is geared to working adults and I am a full-time student who just graduated high school four years ago.  Thus, I do not have as much life experience as most students in the program.  However, the BLS program has in a sense opened up the world for me.  I have learned more about the various cultures, beliefs, conflicts, and arts that characterize humanity in the two years I have been in the BLS program than I believe most people my age or perhaps any age have.  I am confident that the insights about the human condition I have acquired in the BLS program will be invaluable in whatever direction life takes me.  I will be graduating with honors in May, and I am hoping to continue my liberal arts education at UNCG next fall with the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program.  If you want a quality liberal arts education that not only gives you freedom and flexibility but also enriches the way you see humanity and the world, I highly recommend looking into the BLS program at UNCG.

Just Squeeze

By Matt McKinnon

I have a secret:

I love the accordion.

It gets worse:

I play the accordion.

Years ago, this would not have been an issue.  There would have been no need for secrecy.  The accordion was one of the most popular instruments for kids all over the country to learn.  From the end of World War Two until the late fifties and early sixties, the accordion was king.

And then came Elvis Presley, Rock and Roll, and the electric guitar, which moved from being a percussion instrument playing rhythm accompaniment to the lead guitar of contemporary pop music.  (And the reason that “Guitar Hero” is a billion-dollar franchise and “Accordion Hero” a practical joke gone viral.)

It turns out, once your typical American kid got one look at the now iconic Elvis with his guitar, accordion sales plummeted, as did the instrument’s standing in popular music culture.

But the accordion didn’t just lose its popularity.  That would have been fine.  I rather enjoy having interests and hobbies that are not popular.  But the accordion is not just “not popular,” or even unpopular: it has taken on the persona of nerdiness, the epitome of square and boring, old fashioned, and lame.
It has spawned a minor industry of jokes:

What’s a gentleman?  Somebody who knows how to play the accordion, but doesn’t.

What’s the range of an accordion?  Twenty yards if you’ve got a good arm!

What’s the difference between an accordion player and a terrorist?  Terrorists have sympathizers.

What’s the difference between an onion and an accordion?   No one cries when you chop up an accordion.

What’s the difference between an accordion and a concertina?  The accordion takes longer to burn.

What do you call ten accordions at the bottom of the ocean?  A good start.

What’s the difference between a chainsaw and an accordion?  A chainsaw can be tuned.

What’s the difference between a dead skunk in the road and a dead accordion player in the road?  There are skid marks in front of the skunk.

You get the picture.

Or maybe you don’t.  So here’s a couple of pictures of “famous” accordion players from popular culture to help.

Not exactly an instrument that exudes “cool.”  Or anything other than disdain.

Or is it?

It turns out, the accordion is one of the most popular instruments in the world, and is well represented in musical styles as diverse as classical, traditional or folk, and even pop and rock.  Predominantly used in the traditional music of everyday people, the accordion is central not only to the polka-dominated styles of Central and Eastern Europe, French Bal-musette, various Italian folk styles, and traditional English (Morris), Scottish, and Irish music, but also to the  Klezmer sound of Ashkanazi Jews, French-derived Quebecois music, the Cajun music and blues-derived Zydeco of Louisiana and the Gulf coast, the conjunto sound of the Tejaň̃o and Norteno music of south and west Texas and northern Mexico, the Forró music of Brazil, Cumbia and Vallenato from Columbia, the Cueca of Chile, the Argentinean tango, the Merengue of the Dominican Republic, and even the Trot music of South Korea.

In fact, the country that not only produces the most accordions but also has the largest number of accordion players in the world is China.  Yes, China.

So I’ll see your Steve Urkel and raise you a Clifton Chenier.  You be the judge of if he’s cool or not.

The Clock is Ticking

By Claude Tate

I’ve been thinking lately about the problem of overpopulation.

WARNING:  I cannot verify the following story from my sociology professor is true. However, I can verify it got my attention.

My first encounter with the population problem came early in my college career. I had a sociology professor who told us of an effort in a rural village in India to help women use the rhythm method of contraception. The health workers gave each woman of childbearing age an abacus.  Each day they were to move another bead to one side. They were told how it was safe to have sex once all the beads of a certain color were on one side. The abacus experiment did work exactly as planned. The women did not move one bead a day as intended. They simply moved all the beads that indicated danger over at once, and went on their merry way.  Of course in America we believe in using more reliable methods of birth control…or do we?

Recently, the Obama Administration got into some political hot water in issuing a requirement that birth control pills be covered in the new health reform legislation.  Schools, hospitals, and other institutions supported by the Catholic Church felt the government had overstepped its authority in requiring them to offer birth control through the health insurance policies they offered.  For many Catholics, this was a matter of faith.  But unfortunately for many politicians, it was just an opportunity. President Obama thus sought an accommodation. The accommodation, that the insurance companies that cover the costs of birth control must assume the full cost, took some of the air out of the opposition, but it still may have a political impact.  Only time will tell.

And at the time of this writing, a bill is moving through the Arizona legislature that would require employers to ask women who take birth control pills if they are using it for birth control or a medical condition. It will allow an employer to refuse to cover a prescription used for contraception. And according to the American Civil Liberties Union, the law would make it easier to fire a woman if the employer found out she took birth control medication for the purpose of preventing pregnancy. In other words, the beliefs of the employer would take priority over the beliefs and needs of female employees. It has already been approved by the House, and as of this writing, is in the Senate Rules Committee. If approved there, it will be considered by the full Senate.  Whether it will pass or not or what the specifics of the final bill will be is still up in the air, but the fact that it is actually being considered by a state legislature is disturbing. I wonder if those opposed to medicine to prevent unwanted pregnancies would allow insurance companies to buy abacuses. Who knows, maybe they will work this time.

They call the time leading up to elections the silly season. But for this election cycle, we may need some new descriptors. I can see the arguments of the opponents of abortion.  But I find it difficult to believe that insurance coverage for medication to prevent pregnancy be denied, especially in a world whose human population has just passed 7 billion people and counting.

Our world is facing many problems.  In fact, their number is so daunting it’s simply hard to wrap one’s mind around them.  I may deal with some of the others in future contributions, but for this blog I thought I would focus on one problem, that of overpopulation. But as I thought about it, I realized it was simply too broad to deal with in such a limited format as overpopulation is a factor in one way or another in so many of the problems we face today. So, I decided to limit my discussion to only one aspect of the problem, the impact of our increasing population on the future of the biosphere. We are going forth and multiplying at an alarming rate.  And for the earth, that means we are running through its resources at exponential rates.  Mineral resources are growing more and more scarce, the problem of what to do with waste products is growing worse on land and on sea (there’s a major floating trash dump in the Pacific that we do not know how to deal with), fresh water is being depleted and is already running low in many areas, the demand for food is leading to deforestation on a massive scale, and plant and animal species are disappearing daily as natural habitats are destroyed or altered. And of course, regardless of what some still say, we are changing our climate.  If something is not done to rein that growth in, and rein it in soon, we will reach the point where the planet’s biosphere simply will not be able to support any more humans.  We will reach its “carrying capacity”.  And the entire biosphere will be impacted.  Life is tenacious. It will continue. Human life will even probably continue. But it will be different.

As you can see, even introducing the impact of overpopulation of the biosphere is simply too complex to adequately deal with within this space. So I searched for some websites that would introduce this issue to anyone who may be interested in the impact of overpopulation and the environment.  So I typed in ‘population growth and the environment’ and received 5,480,000 results. After closely reading 5,479, 999 websites, I settled on an essay from the website, 123helpme, called “The Population Explosion” .  It provides a nice, brief overview of some of the major environmental problems associated with the growing human population.

Note:  I was just kidding about reading ALL of those sites. I really read only a few hundred thousand or so before deciding on including “The Population Explosion”.

Obviously, we need to bring our population growth under control, but how to do that is still very much open to question. Any solution will involve among other things, something we deal with in the last unit of my BLS class, “Visions of Creation”; how we understand what it means to be human.  However, as with any problem, the ‘devil is in the details’.  And the details here will have implications for every human on the planet.  So any discussions of solutions must wait for another time and another place.

But I do know this… the clock is ticking.

Medici: Money, Murder, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and More!

By Wade Maki

Early in the 15^th century an ex-pirate enters a small shop in Florence. A visit to the shop is not his goal. In the back of the shop is a small family bank from which the ex-pirate hopes to gain a large loan. The man running the bank, Giovonni de’Medici, grants the loan. The ex-pirate uses the money to fund a new career in the church and within a few years he becomes Pope John XXIII. As a reward the Medici become the bankers to the church expanding Medici Bank’s reach across Europe.

Giovonni represents a successful business career. Of course, during this time in Florence business, family, and politics (including murder) were all interconnected. To promote and protect the family, more than just money was needed. To rise in social standing without noble blood required a different display than business success. The Medici began to fund the arts making themselves patrons of the Renaissance.

Giovonni’s son, Cosimo, had the luxury of a classical education in literature and philosophy. He also grew up in the banking business. Cosimo continued to run the bank, fund the arts, and collect classical texts which had been lost since the fall of the Roman Empire. The Medici became patrons to the architect Brunelleschi who would create the largest dome in the Christian world. In addition, Cosimo commissioned works from many artists such as Lippi, Donatello, Michelozzo and Gozzoli.  The Medici even took in a young boy and raised him with their own children because of his artistic aptitude. That boy was Michelangelo.

Santa Maria del Fiore - Brunelleshi

Late in the 15^th century, Lorenzo de’Medici, known as “the Magnificent”, would go on to run the city of Florence and commission work from Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo. All of the Medici successes, the Renaissance they helped create was not appreciated by all. In 1492 Lorenzo was murdered and the family driven out by religious fundamentalists who then held a “bonfire of the vanities” to publicly incinerate classical “pagan” literature and non-Christian artistic works.

Birth of Venus – Botticelli

Exiled from Florence, Lorenzo’s son Giovonni, a cardinal in the church, sought to reclaim Florence, which had become a republic. Giovonni found the Pope sympathetic and with papal support raised an army to march on Florence. One of the young advisors to the republic arranged a citizen army to defend the city. This defense would not succeed, as Giovonni’s tactics were so brutal (massacring an entire village) that the leaders of the republic surrendered rather than risk a more violent end. The young advisor who led the resistance to Giovonni de’Medici was arrested, tortured, and exiled. His name was Niccolo Machiavelli who went on to write a book, The Prince, dedicated to the Medici in the hopes of regaining a government job. This did not earn him a job, but the book has made him one of the most infamous political writers in history.

Macchiavelli

After retaking the city, Giovonni went on to become Pope Leo X by 1513. His financial mismanagement of church funds led to the selling of papal indulgences (you simply paid for a document forgiving various sins). Pope Leo’s actions caused a little known German priest to protest church corruption. The Priest’s name was Martin Luther who started a little thing called the Protestant Reformation (maybe you’ve heard of it).

The Creation of Adam – Michelangelo

During this period, Medici patronage allowed Michelangelo to complete the statue of David (which was damaged during an anti-Medici revolt in the city), paint the Sistine Chapel, and the Last Judgment (which included nude people, who the church had another artist paint undergarments on the exposed genitals).

The Last Judgment – Michelangelo

Other Medici ruled Florence as Duke, became Popes, and one even went on to rule France as Queen (with a belief in the writings of Nostradamus). In the 16^th century the Medici hired a tutor who taught three generations of Medici students. The tutor was especially skilled in science and astronomy. His name was Galileo and he remained with the Medici until the Pope sent the Inquisition after him for writing that the earth revolved around the sun. Not even the Medici could save Galileo from the Papal Inquisition.

We often talk about interconnectedness and complexity within the human experience. This is reflected well in the lives of the Medici. Their motivations were very human. They desired wealth, power, and status and found business, religion, and the arts useful methods to achieve those ends. They also had a sincere appreciation for history, philosophy, and the arts—especially for the classics—which had been lost since the fall of the Roman Empire. They were greedy bankers, ruthless rulers, corrupt Popes, patrons of the arts, promoters of science, preservers of culture and essential to the Renaissance. All of these things connect to a single family within a 200 year period. It doesn’t get much more human than that.

Resurgence of the American Right

By Claude Tate

In my BLS class, “Self, Society, and Salvation” we devote a unit to problems of society.  In that unit we look at three different approaches to organizing society.  Each approach is designed to promote what it believes to be the best society.  The focus of aristocratic theory is to create an orderly society. We next look at liberalism, which seeks to create a society as free as possible. Our final lesson is on socialism, which strives to create a society that is fair and just. In each discussion we examine how those three approaches are manifested in America.  In our lessons on liberalism and socialism in particular, I try to emphasize how we have struggled from the start over how to create a society that is not only as free as possible, but also fair and just. I also try to emphasize how we see that struggle played out in the news every day.  This post concerns that struggle; a struggle that will only grow more intense in the coming months as the 2012 elections near.  And that intensity will be due in large part to the resurgence of the American Right.

In 2008 our economy suffered, for want of a better term, a melt-down that impacted every area of the economy. The specifics of what caused the “Great Recession” will be argued over for years to come much like the specifics of what brought on the Great Depression. But it is safe to say that the cause of the 2008 collapse was ideologically driven.  The drive for lower taxes and less regulation of business, which began to gain traction in the ‘70s and steadily gained ground through the ‘80s and ‘90s, dominated policy under the administration of George W. Bush.  Taxes were reduced. Regulations that could be eliminated were, areas where new regulations were needed were ignored, and people were put in charge of our regulatory agencies that had spent much of their careers fighting the very agencies they now lead. Our yearly budget surplus was quickly turned into a yearly deficit as revenues coming into the government failed to keep up with our spending. And businesses from Main Street to Wall Street were allowed to conduct business as they saw fit.  The gap between the rich and the middle class which had begun decades earlier widened at an increasing rate.  And both the government and individual citizens were going deeper into debt. But the stock market was soaring. All was well.  And if we had any doubts, President Bush and the Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson assured us the economy’s fundamentals were strong.  In retrospect their statements sounded much like the statements the leaders of business were making in September and October of 1929, weeks before the crash that signaled the beginning of the Great Depression.

But just as with 1929, statements of reassurance could not stop what happened to the economy in the fall of 2008. Capitalism depends on a sound banking system, and our major banks were failing. Both Democrats and Republicans agreed the government had to help them survive.  The economy as a whole was beginning to go into a tailspin; a tailspin that was feared would end in another Depression if the banks failed.  Thus TARP was passed under President Bush. Taxpayer money flowed to the major banks to save them from a catastrophe of their own making.  And it should be noted that our actions were not unique. Other Western nations took similar actions.  The American public did not rise up in protest. In fact, Democrats dominated the election of 2008 as they not only won the Presidency, but also increased their majority in the House, and clearly took control of the Senate. Prior to the election Democrats had relied upon two independents with whom they caucused to control the Senate by a 51 to 49 margin.  Virtually everyone agreed, the American Right was dead.  But the banking situation had not stabilized when President Obama took office in January of 2009, so he continued TARP.  And within weeks the Right started to show signs of life.  The defibrillator was the policies enacted to help the nation recover.  TARP led the way. We began to hear of banks that were being given taxpayer money to survive handing our large bonuses to many top executives. Their justification was that they needed to hold onto their talent.  This was the same talent that had almost destroyed them. The American public began to grow restless. A movement was born, the Tea Party, which embraced the very ideology that had caused the collapse.  Anger that one would think should have directed at Wall Street and to the business practices that caused the collapse instead was being redirected at the government. A stimulus bill, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was passed, but due to Republican opposition, the final bill was too small to have a substantial impact on recovery.  It mitigated the impact of the economic downturn and saved many jobs, but it was not enough to pull us out. The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, designed to tighten regulations on banks and cover loopholes that had allowed for dangerous speculation passed, but with opposition and resentment. And to save the automobile industry, the government loaned money to General Motors and Chrysler.  What in the past would have been hailed as necessary now was condemned as government interference in the private sector. Both are paying their loans back and GM is once again number one in sales. Thousands of jobs were saved and both are hiring back workers. (But still, Mitt Romney maintains we should have let them fail.)  And finally, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an act very similar to a Republican proposal from the 1990’s, was vehemently opposed by Republicans and derided by the Tea Party and others as a government takeover of healthcare.  Misinformation was rampant. The government was not going to kill granny. (I loved a sign I saw a woman holding up at one of the “town meetings” which said, “Government, keep your hands off of my Medicare”.)

The anger against the government accelerated in the fall of 2010 leading to a Republican victory in the mid-term elections with Republicans not only taking over the House of Representatives, but many governorships and state legislatures. And many of those newly elected Republican officials vowed to reinstitute the policies that led to the collapse.  And that move to the right in the Republican Party has continued. Today we are even hearing of Social Security as we know it being dismantled, Medicare fundamentally altered, funding for our public schools and  universities being cut, and our universities called places where the “liberal elite” indoctrinate our young. (I refer to our indoctrination methods as “guerilla teaching”, but evidently the right has seen through us.) And that is the tip of the iceberg. How did this happen? How did an economic collapse that one would think should have opened a window of opportunity for the left instead lead to a resurgence of the right?

On January 9th my wife and I were coming home from the mountains, and as we normally do we were listening to NPR (otherwise known a propaganda tool for the liberal elite that should not be supported by taxpayers).  The guest on “The Diane Rehm Show” that day was Thomas Frank.  Mr. Frank, writer and former opinion columnist for “The Wall Street Journal”, had just published a new book, “Pity the Billionaire”, in which he explored the birth of the Tea Party phenomenon. I purchased the book at soon as we got home and read it immediately.  His is not the final word on the Tea Party and the rise of the Right, but the book does provide insight and in my view, is well worth reading.

From the bestselling author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?, a wonderfully insightful and sardonic look at why the worst economy since the 1930s has brought about the revival of conservatism

–From book description on Amazon.com

Economic catastrophe usually brings social protest and demands for change—or at least it’s supposed to. But when Thomas Frank set out in 2009 to look for expressions of American discontent, all he could find were loud demands that the economic system be made even harsher on the recession’s victims and that society’s traditional winners receive even grander prizes. The American Right, which had seemed moribund after the election of 2008, was strangely reinvigorated by the arrival of hard times. The Tea Party movement demanded not that we question the failed system but that we reaffirm our commitment to it. Republicans in Congress embarked on a bold strategy of total opposition to the liberal state. And TV phenom Glenn Beck demonstrated the commercial potential of heroic paranoia and the purest libertarian economics.
In Pity the Billionaire, Frank, the great chronicler of American paradox, examines the peculiar mechanism by which dire economic circumstances have delivered wildly unexpected political results. Using firsthand reporting, a deep knowledge of the American Right, and a wicked sense of humor, he gives us the first full diagnosis of the cultural malady that has transformed collapse into profit, reconceived the Founding Fathers as heroes from an Ayn Rand novel, and enlisted the powerless in a fan club for the prosperous. The understanding Frank reaches is at once startling, original, and profound.

–Click here to listen to the interview of Mr. Frank my wife and I listened to from The Diane Rehm Show