Re: Ernst Bloch on Jazz

["Ralph Dumain" <rdumain@xxxxxxx>]

One matter that can be easily cleared up: I am physically separated from my
sources at the moment, but as soon as I am able I shall be happy to provide
full bibliographical references for all the material I have on Adorno and
jazz.

Otherwise, I am unimpressed by the unimaginative European cultural snobbery
displayed by William Winstead.  The nerve of me, who didn't study with Alban
Berg or Sigfried Kracauer, who knows little Latin and less German, to dare
to criticize the great Adorno.  This is just too sickening.  The fact is, I
have great admiration for both Bloch and Adorno, but they were not gods,
they were fully products of European high culture, which is not the whole
world.  I would love to see scholars here use their methodologies and
recreate them for original work in cultural environments quite different
from those in which they were originally deployed.  But is this what is
really being done in academia, or just mechanical footnote-whoring that
beefs up the academic knowledge industry rather than vitally addressing the
cultural problems of our time as the great pioneers of the Frankfurt School
and related figures actually did for theirs?   The mentality I see here is
just shilling for intellectual elitism which means ass-kissing European high
culture.

My statement about cultural presuppositions and the traditions upon which we
now draw is not so mysterious.  I was absolutely frank about the difficulty
of putting myself or anyone from a comparable background into the shoes of
these old Europeans.  I can barely imagine what it must have been like for
the inheritors of European bourgeois culture to strain against the
limitations of their own culture and grope for something beyond their own
boundaries.  How else can one explain Picasso chasing after African art,
Stravinsky's turn to primitivism, Shoenberg's tortured efforts to escape the
heritage of tonal art music, etc.?  These struggles represent a particular
cultural trajectory.  This is not the same cultural trajectory of struggle
that produced the spirituals, the blues, Robert Johnson, Duke Ellington,
Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, the cakewalk, the jitterbug,
and a million other cultural manifestations of the USA, sepaking of black
culture alone as its most original ingredient, not even to mention the
cultural innovations of the Caribbean or Latin America.  The fact is,
Adorno, Bloch, and the rest did not understand shit about New World cultures
and arbitrarily misconstrued them.  For them, Europe was all that existed.
We are in a much better position now, because we can look back and
appreciate what they produced under the conditions under which they worked,
but we are not subject to the same limitations, and we have a broader
context in which to interpret their cultural experience as well as cultural
experiences outside of their orbit.  What truth could be plainer?

-----Original Message-----
From: William Winstead <stimmung@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: frankfurt-school@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<frankfurt-school@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, May 03, 1999 8:56 PM
Subject: Re: Ernst Bloch on Jazz
>......
>Furthermore, I simply have no idea what you could possibly be referring
>to when you write: "What we assume about music, art, poetry, dance,
>dress, and all forms of cultural expression is rather different, as we
>have more cultural experience to draw upon, theirs plus ours." You have
>more to draw on than Adorno or Bloch? Did you have music lessons with
>Alban Berg? Do you know who he is? Do you even know German? Just how
>broad is your cultural experience? As broad as "theirs plus ours"? What
>is, to put the question *seriously*, "experience, Erfahrung? Since you
>have their experience (and ours!! - which is not mine, I might add),
>then you must have had the *experience* of studying Kant's first
>_Critique_ with Siegfried Kracauer. Adorno had this experience. Since
>Kant discusses how experience is possible there, and since yours is so
>very broad, perhaps you could enlighten us? But then again, maybe you
>never met Kracauer?