Herb:
In defense of Efran, I can only advise you to spend an afternoon with Frank London before you dismiss his (Efran's) assessment of the RJC presentation. Because Efran's questioning of the presentation is not unreasonable if you take in the attitudes of several people who purport to represent RJC. I won't name names other than Frank's, and Frank's only because he's espoused atiitudes ON FILM that seem to be what Efran is pointing to.
sh
Skip & all, I'm not trying to defend the all-too-often one-dimensional nature of most identity politics, & I'm not denying there are lots of fools who'll believe just about anything somewhere. But I'm also not writing about Frank London (who wasn't mentioned in the post I was replying to). Zorn just seems to have a lot more complex agenda re: RJC than a merely essentialist political "movement." If he didn't, there's really very little explanation for many of the more abstract CDs to be included in the series. (& if he didn't, it MIGHT make sense to assume that he thinks the discs he's released in this series should be the backbone of a new book for bar mitzvah bands). But that really doesn't seem to be a plausible explanation for the full range of what he's presented under the rubric of RJC. I can think of plenty of reasons to criticize aspects of what Zorn has tried to do over the years, but this analysis puts far too much emphasis on one possible reading of a single word, ignoring a lot of what he's done & reductively lumping him together with musicians (& others) who have a far less nuanced sense of what they're up to. Bests, Herb -- Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Fort Worth, TX 76147 herb@eskimo.com