Notes on Blues Machine Meaning & January Festivals of Resistance
Hello friends and comrades. 2 things:
1) January 16th, Blues Machine 7p at City of Asylum & Tough Pill 8:30p at Government Center Thursday, will both be a part of "Festivals of Resistance: A Call for Gatherings the Weekend Before Trump Takes Office." Along with creative music, we will be distributing info on various local anti-repression, mutual aid, and other organizing efforts.
(Festivals of Resistance link)
(Blues Machine free tickets and live stream)
https://cityofasylum.org/program/thursday-night-jazz-blues-machine/
2) I want to be clear about the meaning of this promo photo for Blues Machine, and connect this to some bigger picture themes. Although indeed meant to be a bit jocular, I wish to express a serious concern. In this photo, by holding bread in one hand (a material means of subsistence), contrasting with money in the other (an abstract symbol through which social domination is carried out), I hope that Hugo, Mark, and I draw attention to a simple observation: The basic necessities of life are gate-kept by access to money. In order to have money, we have to sell our labor, which is variously valued along essentialized lines of race, ethnicity, gender, geography, social/cultural capital, etc. Money is a means of hoarding wealth, concealing relations of social domination, maintaining precarity among the vast majority, and (along with brute violence) money is the symbolic medium through which material dependence on systems that destroy people and planet is perpetuated.
Cultural and musical practices are shaped by this situation in such a way that economic valuation and standardization highly discourages (if not outright prohibits) participation. A situation where some people's creative expression is valued over others, again, often along lines of race, ethnicity, gender, geography, and also level of musical training, physical ability, neurodivergence, etc. As capitalism is predicated on a violent enclosure of the geographic commons, so is it predicated on an enclosure of the cultural commons. This is the breaking up, and severe limitation of practices that produce and reproduce truly participatory, communal life. This dynamic is in no small part a strategy to prevent the cultivation of solidarity through communal cultural practice. Practices, which if left alone to flourish, pose a threat to hegemonic power. It is one of many 'divide, traumatize, and conquer' strategies. This greatly saddens me.
There are indeed inspiring examples of communal cultural practices alive and well, such as myriad creative / DIY cultural communities; non-dogmatic, liberation minded spiritual communities; as well as cultures that develop in the context of community and labor organizing. But, these are not immune to elite capture and the general crisis of care endemic to capitalism. Neither are they immune to various socio-psychological stumbling blocks to ethical and effective solidarity such as dogmatism, in-group/out-group dynamics, & hyper-active fear & aggression responses (all exacerbated by the traumatizing dynamics of our current world). How might we continue to advocate, and open up space for truly participatory cultural life? How might we encourage, inspire, and hold space for healing and expressive creative play? What is the meaningful role of this kind of creative cultural work in liberation movements? How might a materialist and socio-psychological analysis help cultivate cultures of solidarity?
Blues Machine is a musical exploration of some of these questions. A critical reflection on the standardization of improvisatory music practices that originally emerged from communalist, 'eco-social' ethics present in Black Atlantic liberation struggles; as well as an affirmation of the healing power of creative cultural play, even (maybe especially), in the face of brutal social domination and existential catastrophe.
Material organizing is required beyond the cultural. We will be distributing literature on some options for organizing efforts here in Pittsburgh, including:
Pittsburgh Prison Book Project
https://thebigideapgh.com/pittsburgh-prison-book-project/
Let's Get Free
Bukit Bail Fund
https://www.bukitbailfund.org/home
Food Not Bombs
https://www.pghfoodnotbombs.org/
Hearing Voices Collective Pittsburgh
https://www.hearingvoicesusa.org/hvn-usa-groups-list/details/1/224-hearing-voices-network-pittsburgh
Otherwise, organize your workplace, etc.!!!