Archive for the ‘Culture Wars’ Category

Trumps Empty Culture Wars – The New York Times

The N.F.L.-national anthem controversy, the latest Trump-stoked social conflagration, is a quintessential bad culture war. It was trending that way already before Trump, because the act of protest Colin Kaepernick chose to call attention to police shootings of unarmed black men sitting and then kneeling for The Star-Spangled Banner was clearer in the calculated offense it gave than in the specific cause it sought to further, clearer in its swipe at a Racist America than its prescription for redress. (That Kaepernick sported Fidel Castro T-shirts and socks depicting cops as pigs did not exactly help.)

But in his usual bullying and race-baiting way, Trump has made it much, much worse, by multiplying the reasons one might reasonably kneel for solidarity with teammates, as a protest against the presidents behavior, as a gesture in favor of free speech, as an act of racial pride and then encouraging his own partisans to interpret the kneeling as a broad affront to their own patriotism and politics. So now were arguing (I use the term loosely) about everything from the free-speech rights of pro athletes to whether the national anthem is right-wing political correctness to LeBron Jamess punditry on the miseducation of Trump voters and the specific issue that Kaepernick intended to raise, police misconduct, is buried seven layers of controversy deep.

You could say, its always thus with culture wars and racial battles, but in fact it isnt and doesnt need to be. Arguments about race were often toxic in the 1970s and 1980s, but there were core policy issues that could be argued and ultimately compromised over crime and welfare and affirmative action and across the 1990s they were, to some extent, and as they were overt racial tensions eased considerably. In 2001, two-thirds of Americans (and more blacks than whites) described race relations as somewhat good or very good, and while the white view was usually slightly rosier thereafter, the two-thirds pattern held for more than a decade until Ferguson, Mo., and Black Lives Matter and the other controversies of the late Obama years, followed by the rise of Trump, sent racial optimism into a tailspin.

For hope to resurface, we need specific issues and potential compromises to re-emerge. In particular, we need a public argument clearly tethered to the two big policy questions raised by police misconduct and the broader crime and incarceration debate.

First, can we have the greater accountability for cops that activists reasonably demand, in which juries convict more trigger-happy officers and police departments establish a less adversarial relationship to the communities they police, without the surge of violence thats accompanied the apparent retreat of the police in cities like Baltimore and Chicago?

Second, can we continue the move toward de-incarceration supported, not that long ago, by Republicans as well as Democrats without reversing the gains that have made many of our cities safe?

These are hard questions that can be answered only gradually, through trial-and-error and with various false starts. But they are questions that could have answers, that could point to a stable policy consensus around race and criminal justice, in a way that our present Make America Great Again versus Youre All White Supremacists culture war does not.

For those answers to matter, for them to depolarize our country, we need a social and cultural debate focused on the substance that Colin Kaepernicks choice of protest unfortunately obscured, and Donald Trumps flagsploitation has deliberately buried. Not an end to culture war, but a better culture war in which victory and defeat can be defined, and peace becomes a possibility.

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Trumps Empty Culture Wars - The New York Times

November 2nd, 2017
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Meet Culture Wars: Rising alt-rock band adopts new name and edgier direction – CultureMap Houston

Other than Nickelback, whose trajectory no good music writer can explain, its pretty obvious early on whether a new band has the goods to convert the music into an actual career. Austin electro-rock act Culture Wars is one group with the potential to hit the big time. The band is set to make an impact with its self-titled EP, released this month.

While only five songs, each one could sit comfortably on alternative rock radio charts. From the soaring Imagine Dragons riffs of Hideaway, to the Alt-J via Depeche Mode styling of Bones, and the Nine Inch Nails-meets-T. Rex stomp of standout Money (Gimme Gimme), theres not a dud among them.

Culture Wars hits White Oak Music Hall Thursday night after a long gestation period in the studio, ready to ply their hard work into a live experience the band promises to be special. Be there to say you knew them before they blew up.

The band's guitarist MicVrendenburghrecently checked in with CultureMapfollowing a studio session where the band is working on new songs for a future full length.

Five things to know about Culture Wars:

Culture Wars rose out of defunct Austin five-piece The Vanity and all three members have been playing music for years. Fun fact:Vrendenburghholds a graduate degree in cello from University of Texas.

Mic Vrendenburgh: The three core members came together after the demise of The Vanity. That band phased out sometime last year and we started writing music that was very different from that, which we decided to call Culture Wars at some point. The other two band members have known each other for a little longer than theyve known me, but Ive known them for about three years now.I got really close to them and when the time came to start a new band, I was very happy to keep going with them because they had become my best buds.

The name Culture Wars came from a long list of names, ultimately decided on because it fit the new direction of the music.

MV: It had a bit of an edge to it when a lot of other names didnt and we felt it represented the new music better, its a little more aggressive and experimental. As far as the political ideology that comes to mind with the term "culture wars," there wasnt really anything like that in creating the name. But that being said, we do like to draw from a lot of different places when we write music, so it kind of works that way too.

The bands EP, produced by Rob Sewell, features a cache of tracks with the ability to get into your head, including first single,Money (Gimmie, Gimmie).

MV:(After The Vanity), we had the conscious thought that we still wanted to write really great music but we wanted to give every song the chance of being someones favorite song on the radio, not something experimental song structure-wise. I think it takes a certain discipline to really make something with the fat trimmed off, that has that pop sensibility and still keep your own character in the sound. Thats really what we were going for.

The EP was mixed and mastered by Alan Moulder who has worked on a ton of classic albums by artists you love, including Nine Inch Nails, The Killers, Depeche Mode and Interpol, and Manny Marroquin, who worked on albums by Kanye West and Imagine Dragons.

MV: Its a dream come true. We have a great manager, Kevin Womack, here in Austin that has helped us out through the whole process in creating a new band. He had a good relationship with Manny and made it happen. It wasnt a sure thing but we thought, "Why not?" It worked out and ended up being really cool.

Not surprisingly, Culture Wars is influenced by those bands and others that incorporate electronics into their rock sound.

MV: Depeche Mode is definitely a big influence. Tears for Fears too. A lot of them are what you would call synth-pop bands. We used a lot of synthesizers on this EP, which is different for us because we were guitar-based before and now we combine everything and pull out all the stops.

Culture Wars performs at White Oak Music Hall on Thursday, Aug. 24 with Houston act Deep Cuts and Austin DJ Charles Mxxn. Doors open at 8 pm.Tickets are $10.

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Meet Culture Wars: Rising alt-rock band adopts new name and edgier direction - CultureMap Houston

August 23rd, 2017
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Culture wars distract from nation’s real problems – Washington Times – Washington Times

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.

Friedrich Hegel

We will learn even less from history if we wipe it clean, as some are trying to do by removing statues of Confederate leaders whose beliefs about slavery and race most, including me, find offensive. Conversation beats censorship.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been in relative obscurity since the loss of his MSNBC program, vaulted back into this three-ring political circus recently when he suggested to Charlie Rose that federal subsidies for the Thomas Jefferson Memorial should end, because Jefferson owned slaves.

People like Mr. Sharpton fan the flames they claim need extinguishing. Some even start the fires, like those characters from a bad B-movie who confronted each other in Charlottesville, Va., causing death and destruction, not only to individuals and property, but to the links that have traditionally held us together as a nation, in spite of our differences.

As usual, the media have contributed to the cultural fracturing by elevating tiny groups of bigots and leftists to center stage. Drivers slow down and pay attention to car wrecks and cultural collisions.

Part of this chaos comes from governments inability, or unwillingness, to solve, or even address, major challenges. We arent winning wars in Afghanistan or against ISIS, which has taken credit for the vehicle attack in Barcelona that killed 15 people and wounded scores more.

We arent winning battles over health care, taxes or much else in Washington, where gridlocked rush-hour traffic could serve as a metaphor for a gridlocked Congress. President Trump promised during the campaign he would win so much the rest of us would grow tired of winning. We have yet to reach anything approaching exhaustion.

There is an effort by some on the left, not just to rewrite history, which would be bad enough, but to expunge it, as happens in totalitarian states. George Orwell foresaw the danger in such an approach when he created the memory hole in his classic novel, 1984.

For those who never read the book, the memory hole was for destroying all historical documents that could remind, or inform, citizens of the way things were in a time before they were born. History would then be rewritten to match the evolving propaganda of the state. An agency with the euphemistic name The Ministry of Truth handled such things.

A similar effort to delete history was the Nazis public book burning in Berlin in 1933.

The focus on statues by people whose education level likely wouldnt pass the Jeopardy test is a distraction designed to keep our minds on things other than solving real problems and to pit us against each other for the cultural, political and fundraising benefit and goals of various groups on the left and right.

I like what former NBA star and current sports commentator Charles Barkley said about the removal of Confederate statues: Im not going to waste my time worrying about these Confederate statues thats wasted energy. You know what Im gonna do? Im gonna keep doing great things. Im gonna keep trying to make a difference number one, in the black community because Im black but Im also going to try to do good things in the world.

Mr. Barkley has the right attitude, and if more of us followed his example we might actually achieve something of value for ourselves and the nation. Future generations would then find a history worth studying and emulating.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist. His latest book is What Works: Common Sense Solutions for a Stronger America (Zondervan, 2014).

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Culture wars distract from nation's real problems - Washington Times - Washington Times

August 23rd, 2017
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Russian culture wars take centre stage – The Economist

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Russian culture wars take centre stage - The Economist

August 22nd, 2017
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Culture, Not Culture Wars – City Journal

Dennis Prager conducted the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra last Wednesday night, and what had threatened to become another dispiriting episode in the culture wars turned instead into an evening of passionate advocacy for high culture and classical music. Santa Monica is one of the most liberal cities in California, so it was not wholly surprising that when the orchestras conductor invited Prager, a conservative talk radio host, to conduct a Haydn symphony for an orchestral fundraiser, a rebellion broke out among some musicians and the citys political class. Two violinists in the ensemble, both UCLA professors, penned a letter suggesting that their fellow musicians boycott the upcoming performance. A concert with Dennis Prager would normalize hatred and bigotry, wrote Professors Andrew Apter and Michael Chwe in their March 27, 2017, letter. A webpage asked readers to urge their friends not to attend the concert, since attending would help normalize bigotry in our community. Local politicians weighed in. Councilman Kevin McKeown warned that the orchestras decision to invite Prager may affect future community support for the Symphony. Mayor Ted Winterer sniffed that he had certainly . . . not encouraged anyone to attend.

Fortunately for the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra, the boycott attempt, despite sympathetic coverage in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, was a dud. And the concert was a rousing success that ideally won new converts to classical music and to the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra itself.

On Wednesday evening, no protesters showed up outside or inside Disney Hall, Frank Gehrys famed curvilinear eruption of steel designed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The orchestras affable full-time conductor Guido Lamell polled the house, virtually full, before the music began. How many audience members were Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra attendees? he asked. A good number of people clapped in affirmation, leading Lamell to offer his sympathies for their having made the cross-country trip from Los Angeless Westside to downtown. How many were attending their first classical concert? Another burst of applause. Then came the key demographic question: Are there any fans of Dennis Prager here? The response was thunderous. OK, I get the message, Lamell laughed. I wont keep you away from him for too long.

Lamell opened the program with a lively reading of Mozarts Le Nozze di Figaro overture, which he rightly introduced as one of the greatest opera overtures of all time (actually, its only competitor for first place is the Don Giovanni overture). Then he turned over the podium to Prager. Two string players joined the welcome, clapping with their free hand on their knee. Prager told the audience about attending his first classical music concert, which brought him to tears and led to a lifelong love affair with Haydn. The Classical period, he said, represents controlled passion, in contrast with the Romantics, who did not control theirsyet passion will break out in the fourth movement of this Haydn symphony as well, Prager explained. Wonderfully, Prager had chosen a work from the criminally underperformed middle period of Haydns prodigious symphonic output. These so-called Sturm und Drang symphonies contain some of Haydns most pathos-filled, dramatic writing, and the Symphony No. 51 in B-flat major, composed in 1771, was no exception. It opens innocently enough with a brief, quizzical exchange between frisky strings and mournful horns before bursting forth into agonizingly poignant and dark harmonies. Cleverly syncopated passages in the first movement make the rhythm tricky. Major and minor keys interweave, adumbrating Schuberts bittersweet longing.

Prager conducted ably enough, keeping the ensemble together and pacing the fourth movement in accordance with Haydns Allegro marking, unlike the late Christopher Hogwood, who took the movement at a quixotically stately pace. Readingand leading froman orchestral score, one of the most complex architectures of the human mind, is a prodigious challenge. But Prager seemed to have the basics down, undoubtedly helped by the caliber of the musicians themselves. Boycott organizer Michael Chwe reported to the Los Angeles Times afterwards that over a dozen players had stayed away, but such a rate of attrition was normal for this volunteer orchestra, Lamell had earlier said. The absences were not noticeable, and most critically, the woodwind and brass sections contained the full complement of musicians called for in the score. Indeed, not only were the orchestras two hornists in attendance, they were also supplemented by a flugelhorn not even written into the piece. This addition of a higher-register brass instrument presumably served as insurance for the symphonys fiendishly difficult and exposed horn writing, which takes the instrument into its highest (and lowest) registers, sometimes through demanding triplet arpeggiation. The oboes are key in the second movement, floating languorously above a string pulse to create the same time-suspended melodic beauty as Cos fan tuttes dream-like ensembles.

After the symphony concluded, Prager, breathless and patting himself down with a handkerchief, provided a brief demonstration of Haydns genius, in the tradition of Leonard Bernsteins Young Peoples Concerts. He asked the basses and celli to play the agitated G minor section in the rondo finale movement. Then the orchestra played that same passage without the basses and celli. Finally, Prager put the instruments back together again, eliciting delighted applause from the audience, whose ears had been primed to hear the layering of voices.

Prager bantered with the musicians, asking a few when and why they took up their instruments. The principal cellist, Niall Ferguson, said that he started at four because his best friend was already playing the cello. Youre not normal! Prager exclaimed. Not only did you want to play the cello at age four, but your friend did, too. Where are you from? Cleveland, Ferguson answered. That explains it, Prager said. The ribbing went both ways. Prager asked the principal bassist, Jack Cousin, if he felt ignored because conductors dont even look at the basses. Actually, the best conductors do look at us, Cousin said, slyly adding after a pause, and you did as well.

Lamell, who plays violin with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, joined in for the Haydn. Afterward, Prager quizzed him, too, about his early instrumental experience. Lamell rebelled at age eight from his violin lessons, he said, but his parents kept up the pressure. Its hard for a parent to push; I, as a parent, have not been that strong. Im grateful that my own parents did, so, thank you Dad! Memo to parents: give your children music lessons and make them persist. They wont regret it.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Prager returned to the stage at the end of the evening, after Lamell had conducted Beethovens Fifth Symphony. Whether intentionally or not, the concert at that point took on a historical cast, imitating the bizarre potpourri of high and low that characterized nineteenth-century concerts. Beethovens Violin Concerto, for example, was interrupted after its first movement at its Viennese premiere so that the violinist could play one of his own compositionson one string, while holding his violin upside down. Only after this parlor trick concluded did Beethovens new concerto proceed to its second movement. At the Disney Hall encore, Lamell and Prager led the audience in America the Beautifulwith Lamell on musical saw and Prager on accordion.

Lamell and the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestras board are to be congratulated for standing by Prager against the opposition. In the program notes, Lamell offered a thoughtful response to the boycott controversy. Prager loves music with every fiber of his being, the conductor wrote. He is also an outspoken political commentator and some of his views are controversial. However, politics changes constantly, ideas evolve. Music, in contrast, is eternal. I believe Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven will be celebrated forever while the politics of our day will change with the wind.

But Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven will be celebrated only if there is an audience. Audience-building is the biggest challenge facing classical music today. While the supply of astoundingly accomplished musicians keeps expanding, lackluster public demand for classical music threatens this monumental expression of the human soul. The Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra is already performing an invaluable service by playing most of its concerts for free. But if Prager can bring more listeners to classical music, any orchestra should get down on its knees in gratitude. There was no normalization of hatred and bigotry at Disney Hall on Wednesday night, just a celebration of greatness that, one hopes, will be infectious.

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor ofCity Journal.

Photo Courtesy of Santa Monica Symphony

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Culture, Not Culture Wars - City Journal

August 22nd, 2017
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