Latest Articles by Sarah Canice Funke
Part of me just busts out laughing at the sheer preposterousness of this psuedo-Austro-German: he is quite "sincerely" trying to "fix" Thelonius Monk's music. Adorno rises again!! But upon further reflection, I realize that jazz musicians do the same all the time: take a tune, play around with it, spice it up, move it around, and generally just spit it back out in a semi-recognizable guise. And I realize that the bottom line, the acceptability factor, the crux of the matter is simply an issue of race. (PS See comment thread for further explanations of this entry....)
The handicap ramp.
Speaking of funny videos, this cover of Iron Maiden's song "The Trooper" is totally rockin' my world. I told Luke I fully expect any/all of his future children to be doing that someday. Train up a child in head-banging and when she is old she will become rich and famous. But besides just being too cute, these guys are actually pretty good. Thanks, Josiah.
Posted by funke at 14.04.07 2:29 | TrackBack | Posted to Music | Music History | Random Funthe bottom line, the acceptability factor, the crux of the matter is that this guy is JOKING!!!
Posted by: lowen at 14.04.07 2:50Yeah, but what makes it funny is that the guy is white!!
Posted by: funke at 14.04.07 7:57I mean, okay, so I like to overanalyze my own sense of humor and destroy it, but would this video have been half as funny if the guy had been black trying to "fix" Mozart? Maybe. But the joke wouldn't have played into nearly a century of "white" reactions to "black" music.
Posted by: funke at 14.04.07 13:22the shocking thing is that i like the sound of this blasphemer's music. (is that a wig?)
Posted by: damien at 16.04.07 7:14Sarah, for a while there, I was confused, and thought that you actually bought into the video and believed that the guy was serious. It would've been funnier if I'd expected him to be joking. You set me up! :)
Posted by: Evan Donovan at 16.04.07 10:10If you look at the time stamp on the entry, I first watched and posted this video at 2:30am (after the Buxtehude concert no less). So I have to admit that at first I was a bit dense. Or rather, I thought that the video was hilarious but then started thinking "Why do we have to make fun of 'white' appropriations of 'black' music?" Because even though the guy himself is joking, he is imitating some very sincere people. And so I turned a silly video into a serious question. Sorry for all of the confusion. Maybe I should use more quotation marks to indicate facetiousness.
And Mr. Howard, my metalhead friend Luke agrees with you: he likes the white version of Monk better. In fact, he noted that heavy metal is really the same principle operating in this video: take jazz/blues inflected rock and infuse it with such a heavy classical music-based ethos that the "black" roots are largely obscured.
Posted by: funke at 16.04.07 10:46