No person, no organization, is without its paradoxes and contradictions. In fact, these often make the person, the organization, more interesting and intriguing. By this standard—though our President and his party have plenty of paradox and contradiction about them—few persons and organizations in 2012 are more interesting and intriguing than the Republican Party and its recent major nominees, especially as we approach the so-called Fiscal Cliff.
“Top Republicans rushed to do damage control last week,” read a news item a couple of weeks ago, “after Mitt Romney blamed his election loss on what he called an Obama strategy of giving ‘gifts’ to blacks, Latinos and young voters—groups instrumental to the President’s re-election victory.” Several of his post-election pronouncements reinforce his belief—it wasn’t just a mis- or “inelegant” statement—that 47% of Americans are takers, a sentiment echoed by Paul Ryan’s division of Americans into Takers and Makers—the former being “Republican people,” evidently, the latter being those other guys.
But viewed state by state, this is simply not so.
The picture I used for this post is of a chart published by U.S. News and World Report showing that the top ten states producing more tax revenue than consuming it all voted Democratic, while, paradoxically, all but two of the top ten states that consume—that is take—more tax revenue than they produce voted Republican. This in an article whose title sums up the paradox pretty well: “Obama Supporters Subsidize Romney Supporters.” (I had to shrink this chart, so in case it’s impossible to read, the top ten tax-producing states are: New Jersey, Nevada, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Illinois, Delaware, California, New York, and Colorado. The ten most tax-dependent: New Mexico, Mississippi, Alaska, Louisiana, West Virginia, North Dakota, Alabama, South Dakota, Kentucky, Virginia. Of these only New Mexico and Virginia voted Democrat. Texas is the only net payer of federal taxes among “Red States.”)
The Republican Party is just beginning to show signs of comprehending the fact that the country is growing more diverse, though its first really serious efforts at reaching out to diverse populations (including all women) is being met with understandable suspicion. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, recently warned that the party could not broaden its appeal unless it stopped insulting the very voters its was trying to reach. But it’s even more intriguing than that. It’s insulting its very base. One could say that Romney and Ryan had it exactly backwards: Takers supported them more than Makers did. This is part of a phenomenon that’s old hat to political scientists who, many years ago, named it the Red State-Blue State paradox. It’s complex. Columbia University’s Andrew Gelman and his colleagues even called this paradox into question in their 2008 Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State. (I’d recommend the article of much the same name, and focused on Connecticut, out of which the book grew.)
Still, imminent danger—going over a cliff, for example—has a way of wonderfully clarifying issues. Most people, it seems, would lose if the current Washington stalemate continues. To the degree that the Red State-Blue State paradox holds, the Blue States would certainly have to give much more, but the Red ones would certainly lose much more as well. Perhaps the ultimate paradox is that Republican law makers aren’t just insulting the very voters they’re trying to reach, they’re taking away from most of the very voters who already support them. If these supporters ever got wise—questionable if they keep listening to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh—it would be an even bigger lose-lose proposition for the GOP politically. Economically, it would be lose-lose for everyone.
Un-Blue Jazz: Remembering Dave Brubeck
Jazz, many say, is rooted in the blues, and many jazz greats were also great blues players with an innate sense of blues form and tone. But the bluesiness of “Take Five” comes from Brubeck’s great alto saxist Paul Desmond, not Brubeck himself, who wasn’t a great blues player. “Conscious of how easily the listener can lose his way in a quintuple rhythm, Dave plays a constant vamp figure throughout,” says Steve Race in the liner notes to the famous Time Out album which contained Brubeck’s biggest hit. He doesn’t solo at all on “Take Five.” And when he did solo, his rhythms often got chunky and he tended to hammer away at things. Brubeck leaned not towards the blues but towards that often suspect project of combining jazz and “classical” music. Taught by the likes of Darius Milhaud, Brubeck’s piano forebear is as much—probably more—Chopin as Jelly Roll Morton or any other of the great jazz pianists. That Brubeck became the face of jazz in the 50’s and 60’s, landing on the cover of Time magazine in November 1954, caused chagrin on the part of many jazz officionados—especially those who loved blues. But Americans have always had a problematic relationship with the blues, tangled as that music is in issues of race. We’d rather talk about anything but race, and it took the Brits to help us even begin acknowledging the greatness of our blues heritage.
It’s no wonder, then, that Brubeck’s non-blues jazz took the nation by storm, and it’s fair to say that Brubeck still might be the face of jazz for many Americans. His “experiments” in odd time signatures—though these weren’t as complex as other things going on in jazz, and people never did “lose their way” in the 5/4 lilt of “Take Five”—did refresh the public’s taste for jazz. Also, as it turned out, his sledgehammer piano style formed a perfect counterpoint to Paul Desmond, one of the most fluid, lyrical, floating saxophone players in jazz history. The contrast often proved transcendingly exciting. Brubeck’s Carnegie Hall concert remains one of the great live albums in all jazz.
Much as I love “Take Five,” though, the Brubeck piece I listen to most—almost once every other week for the past 40 years—is his “There’ll Be No Tomorrow” from his Bossa Nova USA album. Unbelievably beautiful and serious to me, it also summarizes the central strengths of his music and each member of his classic quartet. A middle tempo ballad, it starts with Brubeck hammering out—but with delicate staccato, if that makes sense—the haunting melody before Paul Desmond delivers one of his most beautiful solos. Joe Morello uses brushes throughout, swirling and tapping accents as Gene Wright anchors everyone onto his deep bass foundation. At 2:20 into the piece Brubeck softly plays a dissonant chord into a silent space in Desmond’s solo. My wife thinks I’m such a nerd for waiting so reverently for this moment and reacting so strongly when it comes and goes. Then it’s Brubeck’s turn to solo. He begins gently enough, but, of course, he’s soon hammering away, though he’s spreading out the melody and deconstructing the tune’s chord structure beautifully. Then shades of his classicism enter. Morello drops out, and Brubeck continues with only Gene Wright’s deep notes guiding him as he slows down the pace more, then more. Then as Wright drops out Brubeck begins to go as liquid as Desmond. “Most jazz ballads owe a debt to Chopin, another influence from outside jazz that has become deeply entrenched in its language,” Brubeck himself writes in the liner notes to Bossa Nova USA (1963). Now he’s flowing in his own way, where he’s most at home, creating something as beautiful, to my own mind, as anything Chopin ever did. Over smoothly rippling eighth-note arpeggios in his left hand, the tune’s melody sings once again, interspersed with 32nd-note arpeggios, sparkling and precise. The music rides to a quiet, profound end, for me the very definition of how sadness, beauty, and hope entwine.
But enough words, almost.
I’m ending this post with an excerpt from “There’ll Be No Tomorrow” to give you a brief taste of what I was trying to describe. Click the video button below and enjoy. Then I invite you to hear my jazz trio. I’m around 17, so this recording is like 45 years old! My piano influences are mainly people like Ray Charles, as I said, and Ahmad Jamal, but here, while Jamal peeps through, it’s almost 100% Brubeck—at least a 17-year-old’s poor, halting tribute to one of his musical idols.