jason hirschhorn's @MusicREDEF: 03/28/2023 - Guns & Drag & Dolly, Bracing for a TikTok Ban, Artists on the Border, Arooj Aftab, Jimmy Carter...

If we don't sing or write important songs, what's the point? It's just noise and static. If you are scared about what people are going to ask you about something that you feel passionately about, this art, you are going to write fluff.
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Tuesday March 28, 2023
REDEF
Carrie Underwood at Nissan Stadium, Nashville, June 11, 2022.
(Terry Wyatt/WireImage/Getty Images)
quote of the day
"If we don't sing or write important songs, what's the point? It's just noise and static. If you are scared about what people are going to ask you about something that you feel passionately about, this art, you are going to write fluff."
- Carrie Underwood
rantnrave://
Visions but Only Illusions

Nashville musicians react to the horror at the COVENANT SCHOOL.

There's really nothing else worth discussing on this awful day, except maybe this short list of what governments in Tennessee and elsewhere are doing to protect schoolchildren from dangerous music and the people who perform it:

In Tennessee, it will be illegal as of April 1 for male or female impersonators to perform in the presence of children or within 1,000 feet or schools, parks or places of worship. This would include, for example, any male DOLLY PARTON impersonator who "appeals to a prurient interest," as plenty of the Tennessee country queen's songs do. The distance from the law, as written, to a ban on any male singer covering Dolly Parton at an all-ages show in Nashville or Knoxville—or a female singer covering KANE BROWN—is less than 1,000 metaphorical feet.

It's legal, on the other hand, for most people over the age of 21 to open-carry handguns without a permit almost anywhere in Tennessee, and a bill that recently passed a state House subcommittee—over the objections of state police and safety officials—would expand that right to all firearms.

Dolly Parton herself remains legal in Tennessee as of this writing. But in Waukesha, Wis., elementary school kids have been told they can't sing the 2017 song "RAINBOWLAND" by Parton and her goddaughter, MILEY CYRUS. The song's chorus dangerously declares, "We are rainbows, me and you / Every color, every hue / Let's shine through / Together we can start livin' in a rainbowland." The same school district also banned the KERMIT THE FROG classic "THE RAINBOW CONNECTION" until parents—some of whom probably grew up with it—revolted. This happened last week.

"The Rainbow Connection" was co-written by the great PAUL WILLIAMS, who is currently president of ASCAP. One wonders, thinking out loud here, if Williams and his counterparts at BMI and SESAC could step in and prevent any song by anybody from being performed in any Wisconsin school setting until the school board, and the entire state, relents.

Open carrying rifles is widely permitted in Wisconsin.

Rest in Peace

Contemporary classical composer and guitarist SCOTT JOHNSON, a key figure in New York's downtown new music scene beginning in the late 1970s. In works like 1982's "John Somebody," he "mixed the structural rigor of classical composition with the ebullient sound and attitude of rock," Steve Smith wrote in the New York Times. His collaborators included Laurie Anderson, Rhys Chatham and Arthur Russell... Johnson, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer in 2021, died Friday from complications of pneumonia. The Times reported that his wife, classical music publicist MARLISA MONROE, apparently died the same day... EMAHOY TSEGUÉ-MARYAM GUÈBROU, an Ethiopian nun, pianist and composer acclaimed for the albums she recorded while living most of her life in monasteries. Her music, which freely mixed classical, religious and pop traditions, raised money for impoverished Ethiopian children, and she established a foundation that helps children in need study music. She was 99... TOM LEADON, guitarist in Tom Petty's pre-fame band Mudcrutch. He also played with Linda Ronstadt, co-founded the LA country-rock group Silver and co-wrote the song "Hollywood Waltz" for his brother Bernie's band, the Eagles... TV, film and theater composer NICHOLAS LLOYD WEBBER, son of Andrew Lloyd Webber... JOHNNY TEAGLE, guitarist for Akron, Ohio, rockabilly band the Walking Clampetts.

- Matty Karas, curator
cry pretty
The Washington Post
Hollywood, music industry brace for a TikTok ban
By Taylor Lorenz
The entertainment industry has become so reliant on TikTok that banning the app could hurt business, industry insiders say.
Reuters
How drag was pushed back into the shadows in Tennessee
By Jonathan Allen
"We are being forced back into the closet. We are being told we have to go back into the shadows."
Los Angeles Times
Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus' 'Rainbowland' was banned from a first-grade spring concert
By Emily St. Martin
Sarah Schindler's first-grade daughter came home from school last week, eager to show her mom the songs she'd be performing in the spring concert: Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," Kermit the Frog's "Rainbow Connection" from "The Muppet Movie," and a song she'd never heard before — "Rainbowland," by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus.
Variety
Coachella's Lineup Is Half International Artists -- Why Is U.S. Border Policy So Hostile Toward Them?
By Piers Henwood
The Department of Homeland Security inexplicably treats foreign musicians like a potential threat to the republic, while the Internal Revenue Service treats foreign musicians like a slush fund. And this has been true for decades, regardless of the political party in power.
The New Yorker
Jimmy Carter's Rock-and-Roll Legacy
By Charles Bethea
The former President has a surprisingly long list of musician friends, some of whom, in the past days and weeks, have been reflecting on the time they've had with him.
Music Ally
Funding for generative AI startups is picking up pace rapidly
By Stuart Dredge
Generative AI startups raised $5.9bn of funding in 2022, up from $1.5bn in 2020, according to figures from investors' database Pitchbook.
Slate
A.I. Is Sucking the Entire Internet In. What If You Could Yank Some of It Back Out?
By Heather Tal Murphy
Two musicians brokered a deal to save 80 million images from Stable Diffusion. Are they enablers or heroes?
NPR
How Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily conjured Love In Exile
By Nate Chinen
Contributor Nate Chinen interviews the three musicians behind the new improvisational supergroup Love In Exile about their new album, the mysteries of how songs emerge from improvisation and most crucially, how the music they create is an expression of how they listen to each other.
Africa is a Country
The broader conversation about Afrobeats
By Wayne Marshall
Is Afrobeats more directly derivative of continental currents than diasporic contexts?
POLITICO Magazine
RETRO READ: How Las Vegas Shattered Country Music's Consensus on Guns
By Marissa R. Moss
Nobody expects country stars to become anti-gun activists. But a younger generation of artists is starting a debate that never would have happened before this week's massacre.
some hearts
Decential
The Music Industry Is a Slowly Sinking Ship Beset By Complexity. Water & Music Guides Web3 to an Alternative
By MacEagon Voyce
A primer from the latest Water & Music academy on global music rights.
Los Angeles Times
Taylor Swift fans rally in L.A. for Ticketmaster hearing: 'We put everything on pause'
By Jonah Valdez
About a dozen Taylor Swift fans who are suing Ticketmaster spoke at a hearing at an L.A. federal courthouse.
Consequence
Sorry, There's No Such Thing as a 'Fair' Ticket Price in an Age of Income Inequality
By Wren Graves
Concerts have gone from student entertainment to luxury experience, a pizza and some beers to a Gucci clutch.
No Bells
And that day gave me some hope I think (an ode to Babyxsosa)
By milo t-m
An essay about the angel voice of Babyxsosa.
Stereogum
Sargent House Owner "Stepping Away" Following Artist's Abuse Allegations
By Rachel Brodsky
Cathy Pellow, the owner of LA hard-rock label and management company Sargent House, is "stepping away from" her company and closing its management side after Henry Kohen of Mylets made a series of detailed allegations around the venue's culture.
Billboard
A Lost Operatic Masterpiece Written By White Men For An All-Black Cast Was Found And Restored. Can It Be Produced Without Controversy?
By Fredric Dannen
Supporters say Blues Opera, authored by two Great American Songbook icons and reconstructed by the music adviser for Tár, should be staged in a post-George Floyd world.
The Daily Beast
Can Dave Brubeck's Cantata Bring Black and Jewish Communities Together?
By Larry Blumenfeld
"The Gates of Justice," Brubeck's 1969 masterwork, gets revived with his sons in tow, and reopens a conversation Americans need to have.
DownBeat
At Home with Keith Jarrett
By Michael Jackson
Since a couple of cataclysmic strokes in 2018, then returning from two years in rehab, Jarrett jams with his one functional hand in this room, about twice a month, he reckons. That's how ECM label manager Caroline Fontanieu and this writer were able to experience a rare concert during a visit to Jarrett's Dutch colonial home in rural New Jersey.
Culture Notes of an Honest Broker
How an IBM Computer Learned to Sing (1961)
By Ted Gioia
The IBM 7094 anticipated the future of music--and also sounded like the Auto-Tuned pop stars of today.
Vulture
Replicating Rosalía
By Jennifer Zhan
When the Spanish singer's tour didn't come to Peru, a YouTuber spent six figures recreating it.
what we're into
Music of the day
"The Bullet"
Carrie Underwood
"The grass grows back around the stone / And friends stop checkin' in on the phone / The camera crews have all moved on / But the wound's still open / The bullet keeps on goin'."
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