...was Beethoven black, as Anthony Braxton brilliantly asserts?
I don't see the brilliance in that assertion, personally.
whether or not Braxton actually believes it, I think it shows a great sense of humor. I find it brilliant because it goes straight for the godhead of white civilized culture and, instead of taking the angle that Beethoven only made structural additions to a phallocentric, heirarchical tradition, it undermines his very identity and position in that culture. Cultural purists who vehemently deny Beethoven was 'of Moorish descent' only reveal their own racism in attempting to preserve the whiteness of their cultural giants from the dark forces of historical revisionism. Or is it a case of 'reverse revisionism'? who gives a fuck really if he was black or white or somewhere on the gray scale, ultimately, aside from the Purists? I just think it's brilliant because it 'puts a black-gloved fist up the diz of all conservative musical architects', to paraphrase someone claiming to be Thomas Pynchon.
From: "Steve Smith"<ssmith36@sprynet.com> Reply-To: ssmith36@sprynet.com To: Efrén del Valle <efrendv@yahoo.es> CC: zorn-list@lists.xmission.com Subject: Re: No Subject Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 11:33:35 -0500
On Tue, 19 Nov 2002 13:16:57 +0100 (CET) =?iso-8859-1?q?Efr=E9n=20del=20Valle?= <efrendv@yahoo.es> wrote:
...was Beethoven black, as Anthony Braxton brilliantly asserts?
I don't see the brilliance in that assertion, personally.
I also thought Braxton was smarter!!
It's not Braxton's theory. And it was widely promulgated and perpetuated amongst certain factions of the classical music and African studies worlds not so long ago.
Recent theory and scholarship continues to suggest that Beethoven was of a decidedly ruddy complexion, but that there is no genuine indication that Beethoven was in fact black... which didn't stop an announcer on L.A.'s KUSC-FM to rather notoriously refer to him once as a "noted Moorish composer."
Steve Smith ssmith36@sprynet.com NP - Michael Torke, 'An American Abroad' - RSNO/Alsop (Naxos)
_______________________________________________ zorn-list mailing list zorn-list@mailman.xmission.com To UNSUBSCRIBE or Change Your Subscription Options, go to the webpage below http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/zorn-list
_________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail