Why Did Lenin and Muhammad Hate Music?
For jazz is not jazz if it doesn’t contain a considerable element of improvisation, and improvisation is an expression of the individual soul par excellence. A musician who is improvising has nothing to fall back on except his own inner reservoir, and that is why jazz at its best is so immediate, so personal, and so affecting. Miles Davis and John Coltrane improvising on the same piece couldn’t sound more different from one another, not just because one plays trumpet and the other tenor sax, but because they are so very different from one another as human beings, and in their improvisations, one can hear into their very hearts and souls. One may learn their solos note-for-note (as I did back in the pre-9/11 days when I played a bit of saxophone myself), but this is just a musical exercise; the music itself can be copied but never replicated, for their individual expression is inherent and essential to it.
Totalitarian collectivists hate that individual expression. They are only interested in the individual not for the expression of his own soul, but as a cog to fit into their great machine that is marching toward the worker’s paradise, or the Sharia state, or whatever the outcome of their reign of terror is called today. As such, jazz music, a unique product of the nation that has enabled a flowering of the individual spirit unparalleled in human history, is a rebuke to collectivism, and a defiant and joyful reassertion of the one thing that totalitarians fear most: the individual.
Now wait a minute, you will say: what about all those Muslim jazz musicians? There have certainly been a lot of them. The formidable drummer and bandleader Art Blakey was known to his friends as “Bu,” short for Abdullah ibn Buhaina, his Muslim name. Ahmad Jamal, Sahib Shihab, Idrees Suleiman, Yusef Lateef, Rashied Ali – the list goes on and on. The tenor and soprano saxophonist Pharoah Sanders actually titled his marvelous album Summun Bukmun Umyun after passages of the Qur’an that say that the unbelievers are “deaf, dumb and blind” (summun, bukmun, umyun, 2:18 and 2:171). The liner notes say that the album’s purpose is pure dawah (Islamic proselytizing): “This album is predicated on spiritual truths and to the future enlightenment of El-Kafirun or The Rejectors of Faith (non-believers).”
It’s a common theme of utopian statists that dates back to Plato. In The Republic, Plato argues that the Guardians (as the central planners of the state) control all forms of music and art in the state, banning all non-approved works. The reasoning was that “undesirable” ideas that would affect the lower classes could be spread through music and/or poetry.
When I saw the headline I thought it was referring to John Lenin. As big of a liberal as he was (until the later years apparently), he still seemed to like music. Or at leas the kabillions of dollars he made from his music.
When John Lennon died he was a conservative family man who liked Ronald Reagan and argued with communists.
Whether that’s true (and I have reason to doubt it, since all we have to go on are second-hand remembrances of what Lennon once said to so-and-so, like Islam’s chain of isnads) the fact remains that John Lennon wrote the single most annoying, most repetative and most infuriatingly naive-but-self-righteous song in human history — the execrable “Imagine.”
Louis Armstrong > J. Lennon. Here endeth the discussion.
Couldn’t agree more. Execrable is exactly right. “Imagine no religion; it isn’t hard to do.” That’s true. We’re living now in that world, and it’s a bleak, cold,dismal, world devoid of spirituality, compassion, and love. Love for our neighbors, and love of God. It’s an appalling song with appalling and repugnant ideas.
Lenin probably didn’t want anything to interfere with the “immiseration” of the working class under capitalism. Music makes people feel better IN their situation. He wanted them to get OUT of their situation. Evidently, he saw music as a distraction from the serious work of Revolution. Obsessive guy. No fun. And his quote from the article makes it sound like he had issues that were not connected with politics. Seems like he loathed the people he was trying to liberate.
Mohammed may have made the mistake that some religious zealots do – confusing self-denial as a tool of spiritual growth with self-denial as a virtue in and of itself. Eliminating the distraction of things like music can be helpful for some people who want to concentrate on spiritual matters. Living in denial because someone threatens you with punishment in this world or the next accomplishes little – it’s just going through the motions. You can’t starve yourself into Heaven.
Bugs has got it right……
The essential struggle of today and the entire spirit of modernism is the love of life, the body and its passions or its repudiation. Aspects of this struggle like, ‘collectivism vs. individualism’ may be informative, but they are not the essential parts of this conflict……..
I have just started getting into jazz (and especially swing) over the past year or two, so I certainly understand how uniquely expressive it is of the individual. One of the great things I’ve discovered is how different performers or singers present the same piece of music in vastly different ways, whether it’s an instrumentalist (as you noted in your column) – or a singer. After all, vocalists as diverse as Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney, and Lee Wiley (an all-but forgotten one I like a lot) often mined the same catalog…but that doesn’t mean their individual versions of a particular song are as disposable as your average rock band doing a “cover” of someone else’s material.
That said, it’s not just jazz’s celebration of individuality that could threaten the state and the despot’s power. Rock – at its best – is rebellious and celebratory of the individual, as well, even if today (sadly), the vast majority of its artists seem to love the centralized state and the monochrome tones of socialism: one-size-fits-all dictats imposed from above, equality of outcomes, and trickle-down poverty – things that deserve to be rebelled against.
On the other hand, I can’t see the current regime having much love for country’s small town values of self-reliance and patriotism – unless it’s for the trailer-park variety of food stamps, disability, and living off the state.
Come to think of it, if modern music were anything but slavish to the state, I could see American progressives wanting to regulate it for our own good.
I look forward to reading more of your columns.
I think rock ceased being rebellious many years ago – not sure exactly when. Want to know where the real rebellion is? Find out what white, middle-class kids’ moms and dads are scared of. They used to be scared of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Are they scared of anybody today? Rock – you might as well just call it pop music – is well within the safety zone. I’m not even sure it exists anymore except as an historical artifact.
And in our society, very little is off limits anymore. In that sense, rock won. But how can you be a rebel when there are no rules?
Scru Lenin and fuh-tock Mo-mo; kick out the jams!
Interesting article. I love all pre-war jazz — particularly swing — but I have to confess I never cared for Pharaoh Sanders, Art Blakey, Yusef Lateef, et. al. They seemed too hell-bent on creating “serious” music to engender any sense of fun.
I’ll stick to Louis Armstrong, Joe “King” Oliver, Count Basie, Gene Krupa, Bunny Berrigan and Muggsy Spanier. You can dance to ‘em and you don’t have to wade through the po-faced righteous Muslim rebop.
As usual, the Muslims are hypocrites about this, too. They claim to detest music, but they sing their calls to prayer.
Tyrants (especially ideological ones) have no sense of humor/fun.
Some music is spiritually uplifting like gospel and classical.
Other drags us down like some rap (nothing more than sexual rythems) and death metal.
Islam is opposed to magic, the manipulation of the supernatural forces to intercede in human affairs. Music is magical, isn’t it?
Islam is propitiary magic.
The Eids and Halal slaughter are all blood sacrifice to a demonic entity.
The requirement of prayer five times daily is conditional in its effectiveness– if you touch a dog or woman before your prayers, then they are nullified.
A man is more sacred by his very nature, and a woman more profane by her very nature.
Jihad is a type of blood-sacrifice of the infidel human being– all humanity resides in the Ummah, no non-Muslim is viewed as human.
All of this is propitiary magic, and unworthy of being called religion in any Western sense of the word.
Read Psalm 50– that is the Christian case against magic, and it’s very clear in its condemnation of those who engage in blood sacrifice and speak the words of God with no intent to obey them.
Christians do not sacrifice animals.
Kosher butchery is not sacrificed to God. It is the worldly thing made clean for the people of God.
The Muslim Allah demands blood.
The God of our fathers has given us gifts through the world, which are made clean.
The difference is night and day.
Hitler was something of an exception to this rule, he actually liked music and approved of it, although to be fair, he only approved of certain types of music, music that fed the narrative. He despised jazz music and any music that allowed for individual expression. I don’t know what he thought of klezmer but I would safely guess that he detested it.
Mohammed ,on the other hand, probably had no ear for music. He often loathed things that he was incapable of enjoying himself and in typical Muslim ‘sour grapes’ fashion did not want others to enjoy either. Singing however, is permitted in Islam but only as long as the words and music fit the jihadist narrative.
As for Muslim jazz musicians, they don’t count. Neither Blakey nor other converts probably understood what real Islam is. They were fed a false version of Islam, (the sort of stuff that ‘moderates’ practise), being deluded victims of taqiyya and wishful thinking.
In a nutshell, music symbolises a free spirit. Tyrants, despots and religious zealots all hate free spirits!
Said Qutb had this to say about jazz:Jazz is his preferred music, and it is created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires…
“Those who constructed the legends of the prophet of Islam…”.
I see what you did there!
You misunderstand the nature of improvisation in jazz. Yes, each musician moves to his own muse, so to speak, but they do so within fairly strict rules of music theory. For example, they stay within the key the music was written in. (The trained ear would know immediately that the musican had moved into a different key.) They also stay within rules for rythym.
So, no, jazz is not total freedom from the contraints of formal music. Indeed, you have to know the rules before you can bend them, and the best jazz musicians have formal training in music theory.