Blues for Sayyid Qutb
The defense of the free world against jihad and Islamic supremacism is a war for joy, a war for happiness, against regimentation that stomps on the human spirit — just as unmistakably as was the war against National Socialist Germany. That makes it also a war for music.
Take it from none other than the Ayatollah Khomeini, who once declared:
Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.
This kind of attitude, not unexpectedly, leads Islamic supremacists to take a dim view of music, and particularly joyful music. The renowned Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb shared the disdain for jazz that was brutally manifested by the Nazis with whom so many Islamic supremacists collaborated. That disdain was wonderfully satirized in the Schickelgruber Lambeth Walk, a wartime-era film short (made during the days when one could still mock the enemy) that provoked in Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels a towering rage. The devil, as Thomas More noted, cannot endure to be mocked.
I was lucky enough to experience many years of a piano player called Billy Marcus, who played several clubs around the Miami Intl. Airport in the 70's and 80's. He played in the same fashion as Jaki Byard in that last video, and wrecked many a piano pounding out his music, which always brought raucous applause and calls for more.
I wish there were some way to influence and inspire more black jazz musicians to play this style again.
When you get right down to Brass Tacks, Islam is a guideline for living your life as if you were an amoral freaking animal, and the Quran gives you a free pass for your aberrant behavior.