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Our hotel is in Wan Chai, close to central Hong Kong. The rooms have amazing views looking towards Kowloon and the New Territories. Everywhere, except on the steepest hills, there are almost identical tall condos and office buildings. A forest. We passed one such grouping on the way in from the airport that was like Co-op City in the Bronx times two. Most are unremarkable; though the new convention center on the waterfront looks like a giant sea turtle, and across the water I can see the distinctive curve of a performing arts center. In central HK, the Norman Foster bank building that looks like a vertical Beaubourg is dwarfed by the higher office buildings around it. Ferries and merchant ships move back and forth across the water; as the day advances the haze builds up. 
The evening of our arrival, a group of us walk to a nearby restaurant — an unremarkable place specializing in local (Cantonese) food. 12 of us sit around a table and gobble down veggies, dumplings, abalone, crab and delicious shrimp. The place is a bit like the brightly lit joints in NY’s Chinatown — nothing to get too excited about. Daria, an acquaintance of Paul and Mauro’s from our previous trip to Perth, lives here now, and she offers to take us to a more interesting place the next evening. C and I walk back to the hotel along the main street of the neighborhood. Beautiful old neon signs advertise hostess bars, seafood restaurants, rock and roll discos and Irish bars — where soldiers serving in Nam would sometimes get their R&R. It’s a pretty sleazy area, and it’s surprising that only a few blocks away is the sterile and lifeless zone of hotels, mirrored office buildings and the convention center. 
The next morning C and I decide to try our luck sightseeing on bikes. A pretty crazy idea for this town, but we decide to see how hard it really is. Turns out to be pretty hard; not only are there no bike lanes — which is not a big deal, as lots of cities don’t have bike lanes — but sometimes there aren’t even sidewalks, not to mention parks, promenades or public amenities. We negotiate a road crossing under a flyover (underpass), and encounter a group of women gathered in the shade under a concrete column, huddled together singing hymns. We ride mostly on the sidewalks when we can find them — most of which are not crowded, until we get to Central where the shoppers are out in force. Near the HSBC bank building and the ferry terminal we use an underground passageway to cross the street — there is no other way to get across. In the shade and semi-darkness under the street, hundreds of women are arranged, most on tarpaulins, sitting with bags of food, picnic-style, talking to each other and to distant friends and family on phones. When we reach the concrete plaza at the base of the bank building, there are hundreds more. They don’t look destitute — they’re passing snacks around and smiling as they chat — but what are they doing here? They don’t look Chinese, though they’re Asian — Malaysian maybe? Indonesian? Later it’s revealed that they’re all Filipino maids, and today (Sunday) is their one day off. They gather to exchange news of home and socialize, but HK being HK, there are no shady parks, esplanades or plazas where the public can mingle and hang out. I’m not talking about a Central Park, Tiergarten or Hyde Park— here in HK there is nothing at all. They have nowhere to meet but in the shade of an underground passageway or around the entrance plaza for the HSBC bank, which of course is closed today. It presents the strange sight of citizenry improvising when their city government doesn’t provide for them. C and I bike — slowly, carefully — along the glitzy shopping crowds in Central. I’ve heard that there may be a wet market open today; they’re “wet” because the stall owners regularly hose down their fish and vegetables. First, we check out a discount clothing market where the stalls are squeezed into the space between two high rises. There’s barely space to walk, but everyone makes room. With the good real estate around here in the hands of big corporations and brand name chain stores, the local merchants improvise and squeeze themselves into the cracks where they can. 
Further down the road we lock up and head into the Graham St Market, still somewhat busy even though it’s Sunday and already early afternoon — and too late for the really fresh fish. The market is elongated, the stalls strung out in a long line between taller buildings. There are vegetables we’ve never seen, fruits arranged especially for the upcoming New Year celebrations, and Styrofoam containers of shrimp and fish swimming about. A system of hoses pouring into the containers keeps their water fresh. At one point we see a fish successfully flop right out of its Styrofoam tank and land on the concrete sidewalk right in front of us. The poor thing began to slither along the ground pretty rapidly, using its front fins for propulsion — as if the sea might be just a few feet away. 
We run into my friend Andrew Corner, who lives here — I’d tried to contact him earlier, so this is fortuitous. Andrew is doing some vegetable shopping at his wife’s favorite stall. He says this market is due to be vacated (torn down) soon. At present it’s hemmed in by six-story old-style apartment buildings with clothing lines strung outside the balconies, but the local real estate developers (and the government) see financial opportunities, and plan to tear down the funky buildings on either side and erect much higher condos to squeeze the vendors out. Like many other places, the old, the handmade, the social, are all vanishing quickly — this is the last wet market in all of Hong Kong Island. Old colonial or deco buildings — many pre-air conditioning, with verandas and window vents — are almost a memory. Andrew shows us a charming street nearby. Balconies and birdcages. He volunteers that traditional Chinese society doesn’t have a place for what he refers to as civics. He suggests that traditional Chinese social decisions came from two sources — the top down, via the legendary Confucian beauracracy, and from within one’s extended family. Any sense of community was therefore non-existent. You obeyed the Emperor and took care of your own, and the rest was none of your concern. His implication is that those attitudes are deep-rooted, and the Communists simply inherited those social structures — which is a way of explaining both the general lack of public amenities and lack of a sense of community or of neighborhoods here. This city is truly all about business. Yes, there are undeveloped areas along the steep hillsides where one could conceivably enjoy fresh air (if you can get high enough above the smog) or take a walk or picnic with some friends, but those hard to reach areas aren’t much use in anyone’s daily life. They’re useless to the Filipino maids. It does seem that the idea of community-oriented institutions and events — like culture, for example— is simply not on the Chinese radar. Andrew says some small groups are becoming active in trying to preserve green spaces, old buildings, places that have some charm — but it’s a new idea, and runs counter to the “It’s Glorious to Make Money” ideology that has overrun China for the last few decades. If that attitude, the disdain for civic life, seems rampant to me here in Hong Kong — where the British influence is still slightly felt — I can only imagine how it must be in Shanghai and Beijing. The future, as represented by the Chinese powerhouse, will be merciless, tasteless and heartless, but the food will be tasty if you can afford it. It’s fitting that the US Republicans and the Chinese Communists — sworn enemies in the past — actually have a lot in common that way. They both could care less about public amenities and public good. Houston, Texas, a town dominated by oil money and the good old boys that profit from it, is in some ways like Hong Kong — a merciless machine for making money, but not a very good place to live if you’re not already rich or obsessed with scrambling up the ladder. There don’t seem to be many cultural institutions here either. Not that Asian cities should necessarily be like European cities, with opera houses, art museums, theaters and symphony halls announcing their membership in the culture club. But some equivalent maybe? Someplace where people can get together besides a big round restaurant dinner table? Maybe someplace where issues are gently aired, social mores symbolically examined, or cathartic humor or common humanity let loose? Aren’t social institutions how we discover who we are as people? I’ve seen one performing arts center here and one in Kowloon, across the bay — and as far as I can see, that’s it. Our concert is in a sectioned off area of the convention center. It’s a beautiful and weird modern place — and the acoustics weren’t even that bad — but it’s typically cold and businesslike. Maybe shopping and haggling at the traditional markets fulfilled that social role here at one time, but they’re rapidly disappearing. I’ve never seen a society (except in Houston or LA) so hell-bent on erasing every vestige of culture or history as this one. There’s a fury and determination to it. They can’t wipe the slate clean fast enough. C and I take our bikes on the Star Ferry over to Kowloon. Besides the wet market, I suggested that she see a temple, and if we’re lucky, the shops that make paper funerary items. Having been here a couple of times before, that’s my itinerary for her. On the Kowloon side, we ride along the water until a gated apartment complex halts our progress. We retreat and head inland, past another forest of towering condos — each one simply numbered so you know when you’re home. There is no street life in this zone, but at least there are sidewalks. We could be in some big Middle American city with similarly vaporized street life, but here it’s more concentrated, with more towers — denser and more vertical. Eventually we turn onto a street with shops and street-level activity — and luckily, the funeral supplies are there right in front of us. We see coffins and wreaths — but more interesting are the paper objects created to be burnt with the deceased. Symbolically, the burning sends the objects to the deceased wherever they are. There is money — Bank of Hell notes usually, but also more symbolic currency that is simply a blob of orange and gold leaf on a piece of paper (kind of like miniature Rothkos) — and material goods that the deceased might covet. There are mansions (below) filled with paper furniture, full-size paper refrigerators, soccer balls, Adidas shoes and paper Rolexes. Paper boom boxes and neatly folded paper dress shirts. On the sidewalk, a paper Mercedes, turned on its side. 
In the above picture, there are paper Louis Vuitton shoes in a bag, a full-size aqua-colored refrigerator and a few other luxury items you might need when you’re dead. Beautiful stuff, eh?
So, that's it. We keep riding in Kowloon, get on an expressway ramp, and eventually make it to the ferry back to Hong Kong. It was a real struggle. I would like to congratulate Hong Kong for being the worst city for cyclists that I have encountered in the whole world. That's saying a lot. Worse than Napoli, worse than Istanbul. Worse than Manila! Hong Kong takes the prize.
In the late morning C and I walk around, buy CDs at a local shop, and stroll down a street selling wallpaper and fake wood floor coverings until we reach Cidade Baixa, the lower city. This area, which used to be called Commerciao, is a strange lifeless zone on a Saturday. It used to be filled with warehouses, trading companies, mercantile banks, and all the other businesses that had to do with the nearby port, but now it is mostly filled with charmless modern office buildings that house banks.
There are remnants of the old commercial spaces and buildings on some streets, scattered here and there, some in good shape but many decrepit and falling into disrepair.
At Caetano’s house C flips through a book of Pierre Verger’s photos of Bahia and Salvador from mid 20th century, and I am taken by a shot of this commercial district taken from Cidade Alta (the upper city). In this shot one can see the same grid of commercial buildings, but when the picture was taken they were all of moderate height, and all beautiful colonial edifices. “What a shame what has happened here,” I say.
Caetano agrees, and says that this legacy of incredible architecture — which existed in numerous places all over Latin America — should have been treated “like a European City.” I think he means that many European cities — London, Milano, Torino, Brussels, Lyon — also have what were once commercial centers that emerged during a historical era, but no one would have dreamt of razing those centers and replacing them with steel, glass and concrete office towers. But in the Americas, North and South, that’s what mostly happened — except in a few isolated spots.
I’ve been reading a book, “The Brazilian People,” by Darcy Ribeiro. He points out that while history may be written by the victors, and therefore what is often taught might contradict what he says, the fact is that most North American cities were slight and impermanent during the initial settlement, while Latin American colonial cities were substantial, grand, ostentatious, and built to last; for example, the churches that dot Salvador, its Pelorinho district, Old Cartajena in Columbia, the Zocalo and surroundings of Mexico City, Old San Juan, and Havana. Compare those with the clapboard houses, lean-to structures and log cabins of many of the early North American settlements. The Latins, though they may have claimed otherwise, were there to stay. They made mirrors of their European capitals in the New World while the Puritans were eking by in pathetic villages of wooden houses.
It would have appeared that the North Americans weren’t planning on putting down permanent roots. They didn’t build cities — not at first — but settlements. Except for a few exceptions — New York and Chicago come to mind — this impermanent way of building continued and continues in North America. There was apparently no need to build cities that announced “now, you are in it,” as Caetano put it. LA might be the apogee of that attitude, but all over North America you find cities and settlements so spaced out that you have little sense of being located — being in — anywhere.
Racism and Rainbows
C and I go for a ride on rented bikes heading north up the beach from the Ameralina neighborhood. There is a dedicated bike path along the beach that goes for at least 10km. We pass a zone of little cabanas in the sand with plastic chairs in front; later, a grassy area with massage tables dotted here and there; then an area where big men are flying little kites (competitively, I suspect); and, further on, larger cabanas that bordered on being actual restaurants (they take credit cards). There are kiosks with men pressing sugar cane, adolescents playing football (soccer), joggers and folks out for a Saturday early evening stroll.
C comments on the difference between the ride along this beach and the bike rides we took in Miami — one ride there took us from South Beach, with its bars, restaurants, boutique hotels and hotties, further up past the towering condos of Miami Beach proper. Mile after mile of almost identical, immense beachfront condos. There, as she said, one tended to presume that the joggers were all fairly well-to-do and probably lived in the nearby glittering edifices, whereas here the folks jogging or at the cabanas were middle class at very best, while the vast majority seemed fairly poor. They might be from the surrounding neighborhoods, but just as many may have walked or come by bus. It’s beautifully funky, relaxed and casual. People don’t consider the beach a luxury holiday spot here — it’s a place to meet friends, hang out, socialize, get a massage, eat, drink, kick a ball around, take a sunset stroll or get some exercise. In some ways it’s an outdoor living room or a communal backyard.
Most of the joggers, casual strollers and folks hanging out are black, as Afro-Brazilians make up the vast majority of this town. The rest feature a mixture of skin tones, which is typical of Brazil. Racism here is not exactly like it is up north. Everyone here is fairly comfortable with folks with lighter or darker skin tones than their own. Miscegenation has been going on so long and is so ingrained here that everyone, just about, by US standards, would be considered black. Here they might not consider Colin Powell black, for example. He’s way too light.
Here there are a myriad of words and phrases for the many gradations of skin color. Caboclo means a mix of European and Indian; Mamelucas are the 1st generation of this mixture. Mulattoes are a mixture of African and European, and pardo means brown, preto means black and branco means white. Moreno can mean simply mixed. There are pure Africans and of course remnants of the myriad Indian tribes who once covered the continent. There are pure Italians and Germans; and, in São Paulo, the largest settlement of Japanese outside of Japan. It’s definitely not just black or white. In some ways — like at the beach, on the street of the jogging path — everyone is comfortable mixing together, though it’s not exactly the post-racism utopia that some claim.
The racism is there, in other ways. In politics and on TV, for example, almost everyone is white, or very light. There is definitely a hierarchy based on color — a “light” person very often will act superior to a person with slightly darker skin. A branco might have a mulatta for a girlfriend, for example, but more than likely he wouldn’t marry her. Most “help” have darker skin tones. Nonetheless, the difference in attitude from the States is palpable. Since slavery was abolished here there was no legacy of overtly racist laws, as there continued to be in the States.
At Paulinha’s party and at Gilberto Gil's the next day the full rainbow of folks were present — dancing, drinking and chatting. C mentioned that she would make eye contact and say "hi" and "welcome" to guests of every hue and they smiled and responded in kind. Sad to say, this is not the usual situation in the States. Here everyone is just a little more relaxed around everyone else, whereas in the States when races meet there is always a slight tension, some fear, suspicion; and, from the Afro-American side, anger, envy, and resentment that colors everything. I’m generalizing, of course. We musicians don’t behave that way — at least in my dreams we don’t. The separation of worlds and the ghetto-ization of peoples — distinct music, food and culture — that exists up North and that poisons everything, is to a large extent much less prevalent here — but the racism still can’t be denied.
Here in Salvador there is also Afro-tourism. This city is so known for its strong African culture and its pride in that culture that it draws people from all over the world who savor a taste of that affirmation and positive outlook. Up North there are celebrations of sports heroes and great musicians, but here everything is celebrated, the whole culture. That acceptance and pride in Afro-Brazilian culture is evident everywhere — statues of the Orixas (Afro Atlantic deities) in the city park fountain, the Pelorinho paintings (as tacky as they are) the tourist ads that focus on Afro-Atlantic culture — the blocos, afoxes, the Baianas, and the syncretized Candomble rituals — all say that this city is more than proud of this element in its culture — this is its culture. For some Afro-Americans this might come as a bit of a shock — not being forced to the outside of society might be initially traumatic if one has, for one’s whole life, defined oneself and one’s identity as oppositional. Maybe Obama will help us Northerners edge away from that just a bit. A visit here reveals what is possible.
Why is it different? I gather it’s not exactly an accident. When the first Europeans arrived they were hell-bent on making money and getting rich quick, but they also felt that heaven had sent them to enlighten the local savages. Their interests may have been in gold and lumber, but they justified it by claiming that they were bringing the heathens to God and to Civilization (substitute “democracy and freedom” and you have the last 8 years in a nutshell).
The early European settlers found that if they married a local Amerindian they immediately had a large set of kinship relationships. They might acquire 80 relatives all of a sudden — many of which were extremely willing and able to help and assist their new relative, due to the elaborate and strong kinship rules among the tribespeople. The Europeans took full economic, practical and financial advantage of this — they could get their new relatives to help them hauling lumber and everything else. It became evident that there was a huge financial incentive to intermarry, and intermarry they did, unlike the Protestants up North.
So, within a generation or so the racial boundaries were already blurring and becoming fuzzy. It would be little harder to be racist towards one’s own children, for example. A few more generations and you have the rainbow in formation — though the Indians were fast dying off from European diseases.
Schopenhauer and the Tropics
In the evening a small group heads over to Gilberto Gil’s house where his daughter is having a birthday party. Gil and Caetano and I are talking and Caetano goes off on one of his riffs — this one about how the German philosopher Schopenhauer made some surprising statements about the tropics and race. According to Cae, the philosopher claimed that humanity was originally black — as we emerged from the tropics in Africa. This is hard to dispute. Of course we were. Schopes continued to follow this line of reasoning, saying that black is therefore our default skin color, the “true” color of humanity, and that other colors or non-colors are therefore marginal — notably, and especially, white. He claimed that from a global perspective whites, especially blonde blue-eyed ones, are a fringe group that somehow managed to survive in the chilly and forbidding Northern climate. This didn’t go down all that well at the time with his countrymen.
Not sure if it was Schopes or Cae doing the extrapolating from there — moving on, it was reasoned that such a harsh Northern clime would therefore foster an ethos that would necessarily evolve strict rules and behavior limitations. To stray from the norm — to be lax regarding time, sloppy, relaxed, indecisive or simply to be too flexible — would mean either death or turbulence in the social pond, which would be seriously frowned on. The inference is that the Northern ethos and character is what it is because it’s a survival mechanism.
This all came up because I asked Gil (and Caetano) where they wrote. (I didn’t see what one might call a music writing or project room at Caetano’s house). They both say they write anywhere — sporadically, every now and then, the place doesn’t matter. Caetano says he’s even written during a party such as the one we’re at. He’ll pick up his guitar and quietly work out some bits — with the party going on all around him — sometimes a whole song will get written, so he says.
This would maybe not be impossible but would be pretty unlikely for me. I offer that my “Protestant” character makes me more disciplined — I “go to work” in a specifically designated writing space (a room in my loft)… but of course that discipline and formality comes with drawbacks and limitations as well. I don’t write songs on the road, for example. “Pros and cons” says Gil.
However, I did write this.
The next day a small group of us goes for a bike ride — a bike ride in Salvador! It turns out there is a nature reserve on the northern edge of town — more or less a raw jungle — situated around a lake just inland from the sea; a 17km bike path circles it. It’s quiet and idyllic. There is a bike rental place at the park entrance, so we are all set. A few kilometers along the path we come upon a man selling fresh coco (coconut milk) from coconuts he probably gathered locally. I go off to pee and see this old guy with leathery skin, who has most of his possessions stashed a few meters away in the undergrowth.
As we suck on the coconut milk, up ride Margareth Menezes and her husband. I invited Margareth to join me in the early 90s on my Rei Momo tour. She sang backup and had two or three Bahian tunes that she did as part of the show, accompanied by my band. She was a ball of fire on stage and reportedly still is — you have to see her live. She was Queen of Carnival for some years, and her shows here are legendary. We haven’t seen one another for about 15 years — so it’s a lovely surprise to see her — and on a bicycle!
An older man, a childhood friend of Caetano’s from their little town of Santo Amaro, pedals along with us. He wears only a floppy hat, a pair of shorts and some flip-flops and his tan (he’s white) is deep deep brown. I’m told he’s a great guitarist — ah yes, I saw him on Marisa Monte’s tour a couple of years back. He continually gets offered studio gigs in Rio or elsewhere, or offers to tour, but says he hates travel, as “then I’d have to wear shoes.”
We head by car to Nossa Senor da Bomfim ("our father of the good end") church at the other end of town. It’s the first Friday of the month and therefore there will be a mass there tonight, but it seems like most people will be converging there because this particular Jesus is syncretized with Oxala, the cool white God of Candomblé. So, while it might appear that thousands are turning out for an early evening mass, they are really showing their respect for Oxala.
We arrive and the mass is still in progress. Thousands mill about and gather outside — almost all of them dressed in white — the color of Candomblé and especially of Oxala. Candomblé priests and priestesses gather outside, blessing the faithful with bunches of herbs, Baianas sell acarajé (fried bean cakes) and street vendors sell the famous ribbons that get tied around your wrist. I had a “reading” years ago by a Candomblé priest and a great artist named Mestre Didi when I was in town, and he said that Oxala was my saint — "the Orixa that 'rules' my head."
Tonight everyone claims that this is why I kept suggesting we come here, and also why, in retrospect, our visit went so smoothly. Some even claim that this explains why we didn’t hit a traffic jam arriving here.
We can’t get into the church yet to see the amazing room filled with ex-votos (votive offerings to a saint or divinity), so I head to a nearby religious articles shop to see if they have some for sale. They do. I buy a stomach and C buys a bunch of other body parts, all made of wax. The shop is lined with statues of Catholic saints, Candomblé beads and busts of Anastasia, the slave girl who stood her ground. A woman comes in and asks for a statue of Santa Barbara, but we all know that that is merely a stand in for Yansan, the Goddess who don’t take no shit. So, though it might vaguely look like a typical religious article shop, like many shops here this one serves multiple clienteles.
The mass is over and a procession carries Jesus around the outside of the church while everyone sings the Hino ao Senhor Do Bonfum Da Bahia, a hymn sung by Caetano featured somewhat ironically on the first Tropicalia record. We duck through the procession and head for the ex-voto room near the back. Body parts dangle like stalagmites from the ceiling and the walls are plastered with photos of the grateful who survived a disease or car crash.
Caetano says the church has tried to forbid attendees from wearing white — the implication being that by wearing white they’re blatantly here for Oxala and not Jesus — but I think if the church ever enforced that, attendance would be so skimpy that they’d be shamed into admitting the truth. Besides — the essence of syncretism isn’t either/or — it’s both/and.
Paulinha throws a party at the house in the evening. There is a room with rotating fans set up for dancing (I do) and 2 Baianas on a patio making acarajé and abara (the steamed rather than deep fried version of the bean cake). A bartender makes caipirinhas and batidas out of fresh maracuja (passion fruit).
Arto Lindsay is here with his wife. I haven’t seen him in years. He’s been in Salvador for a number of years, but now he’s moving to Rio as there will be more work there. Good to see him.
We leave around two and we hear that, at four AM, just as the party was winding down, Seu Jorge and Beth Carvalho (the singers) show up — both of them with their entourages. The bartenders rolled their eyes as if to say “now the party will start all over again.”
New Year's Eve
On the road into town from the airport we pass favelas with their orange bricks; shopping malls; a giant Santa hat on top of a local Home-Depot-type box store; and numerous billboards for local singers, drum ensembles and bands who are performing during the holiday season and on up to Carnival. They often refer to these performances as “rehearsals,” but they are in fact completely worked-out shows. The rehearsal reference implies that it’s all a lead up to the “real” performance — the one during Carnival. I see a billboard for Olodum, the famous percussion group, and one for Chiclete Com Banana (Banana Chewing Gum), a local pop band that has been around here since forever. Every big intersection has more music billboards. These are all local acts, proof that Salvador continues as a breeding ground for music.
In a way this town is like New Orleans, another place where European Catholic culture met Africans, and where a new musical and cultural hybrid was born. Also like New Orleans, many of these acts tend to remain local — their appeal is limited to either Carnival crowds up here, or to the Afrocentric culture that flourishes here much more than in Rio or São Paulo. This is, after all, the westernmost African city.
Paulinha, Caetano Veloso’s wife and a serious movie producer, invites us to join them on a friend’s boat which is going out into the harbor to view the fireworks at midnight. We stop by their house overlooking the beach and rock at Rio Vermelho. The house is modern, clean and uncluttered, with a few abstract paintings on the walls. A wall by a stairway has a kind of Mondrian 3D arrangement of white shelf-like projections upon which various souvenirs and items of personal significance have been draped and placed: some Candomblé beads, a Filhos de Gandhi turban, a traditional Northwestern cowboy hat, bottles of dende. Large balconies overlook rocks down below where waves crash in the darkness. There’s a cool breeze from the sea despite the fact that it's summertime here.
We have some dinner and drinks, and drive to a tall apartment building in the well-to-do Vitoria district where we head to the rear of the building, and take a four-person gondola down the steep forested cliff face to a tiny dock. The gondola is a little ball that dangles and sways, with 60's modernist styling that makes it seem like a remnant from an imaginary future. The ball descends into the darkness through a miniscule trace of the once-great Atlantic forests that covered the coasts here and in much of Brasil.
We end up on a little dock where others appear and eventually board a sizable motorized sailboat that heads for the lighthouse point where the fireworks will go off at midnight. Almost everyone is dressed in white (C and me included) — a reference to Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion, whose Goddess of the sea, Yemanja, is honored tonight in many parts of Brasil. In Salvador the larger seaside event for her occurs at the beginning of February, when thousands place offerings into the sea, but tonight most pay their respects simply by dressing in white and offering a few flowers to the sea. The fireworks go off in other parts of town at the same time. It’s a long display — my favorite firework is one I can best describe as a twinkly blob or cloud. This one wasn’t a blossoming globe like most of the others, but an amoeboid shape that hung in the sky, almost stationary, and sparkled. We throw flowers into the water. Some people jump into the dark waves as well — a symbolic clean start. Feliz Ano Novo. The husband of the boat owner acts as DJ; he plays some incredible Brazilian recordings I am unfamiliar with, and he also mixes in a hilarious recording of Charro singing “Let’s Spend The Night Together” with the Salsoul Orchestra. Cuchi cuchi!
There are bands playing in tents and outdoors on the various beaches and beachfront areas tonight.
Jesus on Board
I mentioned a religious procession C and I hope to see tomorrow on the 1st and Paulinha, producer that she is, arranges another boat trip. In the morning we head to a spot just inside the breakwater in front of the Nossa Senora Da Conceiçao church, near the base of the iconic elevator that has become the symbol of Salvador. This is where Our Lady’s son (Jesus) has been visiting for about a month. Today, via a small boat, he will return to his own church further down the coast at the Boa Viagem neighborhood. This particular Jesus is Senhor Bom Jesus dos Navegante, the patron saint of Navegantes (sailors and fishermen), so a large floating contingent has turned out to accompany him on his return trip.
Some of these are basically rowboats with motors, some are cabin cruisers, and some are old wooden boats configured to hold a bunch of passengers. Some of the last have been hired by various groups of worshiper/supporters, who all wear matching T-shirts. One of these boats has a brass band gathered around the prow that energetically blasts out samba-ized versions of anything in their repertoire, including a raucous version of Neal Sedaka’s song “Diana.”
[Link to video]
Another boat has an Afro-Brazilian drum group on board; we can feel their grooves and see the dancers gyrating. A few boats have DJs on board with keyboards, playing and singing along with programmed tracks. A fireboat squirts a fume of water into the air and the tiny little boat that will carry the saint (the Jesus statue) arrives at the shore. The statue is surrounded by revelers on land, many of them dressed in white. He is transferred to his boat, nestled amongst a large pile of yellow flowers. A group of men in sailor outfits begins to row the saint to his home church. A blast of firecrackers goes off as they depart.
Now all the boats point towards the peninsula where this Jesus is headed. After a few minutes, the rowing of Jesus’ boat is replaced by a rope that allows the little craft to be towed most of the way by a police boat. People wave at one of our passengers, Lazaro, who is a young movie actor. He waves back and gives everyone the thumbs up.
At Boa Viagem the rowing recommences as the little boat with Jesus on board passes inside the breakwater close to the shore. The beach is packed with people, many of whom haven’t gone to sleep. From the nearby church emerges his mom, also nestled in yellow flowers. The two statues meet on the beach and a whole lot more fireworks go off — pow pow pow, all bangers — which gives their meeting a slightly sexual overtone. This is the highpoint of the procession, the climax, and now the two of them, mother and son reunited, go off together back to their home for the next 11 months. The flotilla begins to disperse.
Our boat now heads across the Bay of All Saints towards some tiny islands next to the larger island of Itaparica. We rendezvous with the larger boat that we were on last night, where more folks are waiting, and head off for an idyllic lunch in a beautiful old house on a tiny island owned by the family who has the large boat. This house is the only house on that particular island; the rest is a kind of nature reserve. Naturally, we have moquequa da piexe, a local fish stew flavored with coconut and dende (palm oil), which is delicious.
Rather than take another 5-hour car ride and then a ferry to Salvador, this time we opt for the small plane that leaves from a neighboring island owned by Fabio Perini, the man who holds the patent on the machines that perforate toilet paper. We are told he owns quite a bit of the island we stayed on as well, but so far he is content to not develop it — which, it turns out, is a blessing. It is pointed out that if someone less wealthy were to have purchased some of the acreage they would most likely have sold off some of the land for beach houses or development.
We load our luggage on to a dugout canoe:
Because it’s sort of low tide the canoe is needed to ferry us to a larger boat that takes us to the neighboring island, where there is a small runway amongst the palms. There is one man there, and no one asks for our tickets. Needless to say, there is no check in or security whatsoever. 
A restaurant where we have a moquequa (a seafood stew with coconut milk and dende-palm oil — Mauro refers to this area as Moquequaland) has a TV on playing music DVDs. One is a live show by Lucky Dube, the African singer, another is a compilation of local MTV unplugged shows featuring some artists I know and many I don’t. Among the familiar ones are Rita Lee, Gal Costa and Paralamas — but the rest (they excerpt one song each) I don’t know. The visual format (and to some extent the music as well) is repetitive. The colors and patterns of the sets change with each act, but the singers and guitar players always sit – either on a stool or on a chair — and there are lots of steel string acoustic guitars around them being strummed. I say to C that I think the seated gag is meant to reference a casual get together amongst musicians in someone’s living room or at a corner bar among friends — as often does happen here in Brasil. It’s meant to signify “informality” — though in this context it's anything but informal. Informality formalized.
I’ve seen some of these acts as shows where one artist does a whole set — Gilberto Gil’s and Zeca Pagodinho’s for example — that are funny (in Pagodinho’s case), moving and great-sounding. Sometimes the forced abandonment of full-on production and duplication of the recorded instrumentation lets the essence of some songs be better heard. Sometimes some artists' songs sound even better stripped bare, but for some of the more standard pop artists, it’s more like they simply don’t have any clothes on.
The owners of our pousada tell us that there is a lovely small terreiro (Candomblé temple) in a small town located inland. They all come out for the February 2nd water offerings to Yemanja — when drums accompany boatloads of adherents out into the sea where offerings are placed into the sea for that Goddess. There are often folks going into trance states as well.
A couple of weeks ago an archeological discovery was made between that village and an extremely isolated one on the southern end of the island. There had been interminably slow and incremental progress on putting in a fresh water pipe to that distant town when the diggers hit a large ceramic urn that contained a skeleton. The urn was broken, but not too badly. The owner of our pousada saw it and realized it was probably of archeaological value — and was possibly pre-Tupi (the tribal group that controlled most of the Brazilian coast when the Portuguese arrived). It was too substantial, he reasoned, for the Tupi, who kept small villages and didn’t accumulate stuff.
He put the pieces together and went off in search of professional help, which I can’t imagine would be anywhere local. Sadly, by the time he got back to the site the digging had continued and both the urn and its contents had disappeared.
On the plane to Salvador, Brasil, with Cindy. It takes us a full 24 hours of straight travel to reach this remote place that Mauro had recommended. An island at the mouth of a river a few hours' drive south of the Bay of All Saints. It’s worth the long travel day. There are no cars on this island — just two small fishing villages, the larger of which mainly caters to local tourists at this time of year. After a 4+ hour taxi and ferry trip we arrive at a tiny settlement at the end of a dirt road, and from there we head by speedboat with our bags to the smaller of the two island villages. The boat lurches over the waves and swells, heaving up, and then slamming down as it passes through a narrow gap in the reef. We arrive during high tide, and at this hour the boat can get relatively close to the shore. There is no dock, so the pilot gets as close as he can, and then we and the pilot’s assistant carry our bags and backpacks to the shore by hand, wading through the thigh-high water. I've been traveling from New York in long pants and shoes which I quickly remove and stuff in a bag, jumping into the water in my briefs and a shirt. The pilot watches and comments, "Preparado!" ("You were prepared!")
Manguebeat — from the mud to chaos (a translation of the title of the 1st Naçao Zumbi record)
From the water the mangroves look completely forbidding and impenetrable — their spidery legs make passage all but impossible. The ground that supports these trees, being flooded with every high tide, is almost completely composed of thick gooey mud that can suck hikers' shoes off. The mud swarms with crabs that also scamper and cling to the endless network of spidery mangrove legs. There are no visible openings in these thickets, at least none I could see from the boat. So, when Simona at our pousada suggests that Marco, a young man, might show us the way through the mangrove forest to an isolated beach on the southern tip of the island we said, “Yes, of course.”
We have to leave in the morning, when the tide is approaching its low point, as passage through the mangroves — and across a river that separates them from that faraway beach — is only possible at low tide. Return by the way we came will be impossible, so Simona has arranged that Antonio will bring his boat around to meet us at the beach in several hours.
After passing alongside some farms, ending with the one where Marco’s dad lives, we cross a kind of small desert that leads to the mangrove forest.
[Link to video]
A couple who had been walking 40 paces behind us now catches up, and the guy says, in English, “Do you mind if we join you?” He had recognized me but says he didn’t want to say anything because that would be “boring”. I invite them to join us and assure them that we will find room for them on the boat back to the village. He looks like a taller Sean Lennon — dark hair held up in a clasp and dark-rimmed glasses. She is pale and quite pretty. A somewhat unlikely couple, I think to myself, as he seems fairly nerdy. He says he’s a big Tom Zé fan (which is a nice surprise) and that he's seen Zé perform a few times, the latest in this guy’s home town — Acaju. The two of them traveled to the island mostly in a series of bus trips from that town in Bahia, which took them 15 hours. They are camping. We are grateful for the translator, as Marco doesn’t speak any English and my Portuguese is pathetic.
In the mangrove forest Marco finds the narrow winding track and hundreds of crabs scurry to hide ahead of us. The path begins to follow a muddy stream bed that I guess drains part of the mangrove at low tide. We have to take off our jellies and flip-flops (Marco doesn’t wear any footwear) as the mud is now deep enough that it will suck them off.
Needless to say, for some people this would be a vision of hell — the mud, the impenetrable forest and the scurrying crabs. Marco slices into the muddy stream bank with his machete and yanks out a clam (lambreta, it is called)…a minute later he produces a few more, and I happen to have a plastic deli bag in my backpack, so he tosses them in there and says we can eat them later.
He grabs a male crab (leo, or lion, it is appropriately called, as the male has yellow-golden markings on its upper shell) and that goes in another bag. A female crab, carrying eggs, gets tossed back. Later, we are told that the crabs here used to be much much larger. The local villages could live on them easily and sell some as well. Why the crabs have diminished in size is slightly hard to pinpoint — it’s not simply over-fishing. There are industries upriver and other changes in the water ecology that might be too subtle for us to notice at first, but the crabs, though still numerous as a nightmare, are getting smaller.
Likewise, the local fishermen are returning with smaller and fewer fish. Octopi used to be plentiful and large, and the smaller ones would always get thrown back. More recently they started keeping the small ones, as that was all there was, but that meant that there were no octopi around to grow into larger ones.
Larger fishing boats, some from the town of Valença, use drag nets, which scoop up everything on the bottom. Besides denuding that area of the sea of edible fish, that method scoops up all the babies and most of the rest of the food chain. An unsustainable way of fishing, they are now slowly coming to realize as the stocks have dwindled quickly.
The mangrove path gets progressively muddier and deeper. When the tide comes in the water level will rise to the tops of the mangrove “roots” — we’d be up to our necks at least.
Now there’s a little creek that we walk in, squish squish, and eventually, after a couple of hours of all of this, the path empties into a wider muddy area and then into a river — a river we will need to cross if we are to get to the beach and Antonio’s boat.
I’d been given the impression that the river (or estuary) would be lower at this time of day and that we might wade across — but that doesn’t seem possible now. Marco tries to holler to any boats or folks on the distant beach. No luck. He wades to the left and tries to signal with his yellow shirt — but no one sees him. I ask if it’s possible to swim across and he’s not sure...he tries it and soon disappears in the forest that leads to the beach on the other shore. Presumably he’ll return with a boat. C and I decide to try swimming it ourselves...we leave our bags and sandals with our new friends from Acaju. The first half is pretty muddy and it does get deep enough to require swimming — but the current isn’t strong as the tide has yet to really begin coming in earnest, so we make it across and follow in Marco’s footsteps.
A few minutes later he appears on a boat and we are all picked up and carried to a sandy area at the mouth of the river where there is a beach and a couple of makeshift shacks, one of which is floating and has a little kitchen where they offer fresh fish. It’s delicious. We share some with a family from Sao Paulo who soon arrive on Antonio’s boat. After a bit some Brazilian tourists arrive by boat and head for the other thatched hut, where they hang out and drink cervejas. There’s no town here — no electricity either, of course. It’s a pretty isolated and idyllic spot. The beach is quiet and some of the Brazilians stroll out to a sandy spit and lie in the shallow tepid water with their girlfriends.
That night the lights in our cabana flicker a few times and then go out. Electricity arrived at this village about 5 years ago, and it is never a sure thing — especially if a bunch of locals or pousada guests take showers at the same time (the on-demand water warmers use a lot of electricity).
It’s totally black out. The moon hasn’t risen yet. C improvises a wind guard for a candle out of a cut-in-half water bottle. The bottoms of other water bottles serve as glasses. We sit in front of our cabana and wait to see if the electricity will come back on.
The next day we are taken out to a “pool” where it’s possible to snorkel and see some fish. These “pools” — shallow areas protected by the reefs — are accessible at low tide. It’s so shallow around them that we can only get there by dugout canoe, the kind used by Indians and others around the world for thousands of years. The dugout navigates the swells and waves with less aggravation than the speedboat. This one has two tiny sails made of the fabric also used for bags all over the third world.
A lackadaisical breeze carries us out around the point and towards the reef at a relaxed Bahian pace. So relaxed that the owner of the dugout opts to paddle now and again.
Returning to the village in the dugout in the early afternoon we see there is now a floating bar anchored offshore in the shallow bay. It’s made of some oil drums strapped under boards with a rudimentary thatched hut on one side. There are some plastic tables and chairs on the tilting platform and a few burly guys hoist cervejas. We continue to drift towards shore past a steady stream of men and women either wading out to the bar or simply standing in the waist high water in bunches with friends, some with drinks in hand, chatting as if at a huge cocktail party. “Ciao, Alberto!” someone calls out to our fellow passenger on the dugout. We continue to drift shore-wards. It’s like a Fellini movie, a long dolly shot of partygoers scattered in a landscape. In this case they’re all waist-deep in warm water. We pass a group of ladies in wide-brimmed hats, a couple necking and a fat woman stretched out with some foam rod-shaped floats sticking up around her, their centers suppressed by her girth, the ends poking up on either side.
Tractor to Town
We take the only means of land transport — a tractor that pulls a cart outfitted with benches — to the larger town on the north end of the island for dinner. The tractor lurches and heaves over the sandy track, following the higher land in the center of the island. Occasionally at this hour one can sense a valley to the left or a swamp to the right, but mostly we struggle on through the forest/jungle. Some of the steeper hills on the track are strewn with coconut husks, as these give a little more traction. A car, even a 4x4, obviously wouldn’t make it through this “road”.
We arrive in the dark and walk through this tiny town’s favela. It's a part of town consisting of tiny unpainted brick houses or others made of sticks and thatch, though sometimes even these had strands of random hanging Christmas lights — completely incongruous and out of place.
When we visited during the day this town seemed fairly quiet and sleepy...
(albeit with some pousadas on the beaches that were filled with Brazilian tourists nursing drinks). However at night it was, as C said, like the vision of Bedford Falls gone bad in “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Stalls had appeared selling cheap jewelry, T-shirts and snack foods, and bars were cranking up the music or had a TV blasting with a music program on, or both.
We pass by a small house, two rooms by the look of it, and Simona points to three large bones lying by the door — “balena” (whale) a man says. They look like hefty biomorphic boulders, hardly recognizable as bones.
She says we have to see inside, do we want to? Some don’t want to disturb the owner, but she persists and knocks at his door and shouts through the crack in the door. I hear the lock turning and the door opens and Simona says a warm familiar "boa noite" to a man with a crazy lopsided Afro. Behind him his front room is filled, floor to ceiling, with fish bones of all types — some even dangle on fishing wire from the roof. All of it found on the beaches. There are giant whale ribs, a dolphin skull (oddly human-shaped except for the jutting “beak”), necklaces of fish vertebra and a giant dried blowfish.
The room behind, also filled to the roof (but not with bones) is obviously where he lives.
Flesh and Peter Pan
Further down the road we pass another tiny 2-room house, this one, like many of the others at this hour, with lights on and windows and doors wide open to the street. In many houses there is a chair of some sort and a television blaring, a picture of Jesus adorns the wall of many and sometimes the inhabitants sit on the doorstep facing the street, saying “Oi” or “boa noite” as people pass by.
One house — a two-room shack really — has a painted mural that completely fills one wall — a naked reclining women, with fairly light skin and protruding breasts, floating against a blue background. Below her a live naked dark-skinned body lies asleep, turned to the wall, on a small mattress on the floor, shiny smooth flesh only partially covered by a sheet. In the other room I first catch a glimpse of a fragment of a large painted boot that turns out, as we pass the window, to belong to Captain Hook. Another wall-sized mural fills the second room of the house, this one depicting Peter Pan and Captain Hook sword-fighting. It’s the sort of thing one might expect to see in a crèche or on the wall of a day care center, but juxtaposed with the Playboy Goddess in the other room it makes for a surreal combination. That’s one of the things I like about Brazil.
The ride back to our village is in a sort of truck with a wooden exterior — wooden radiator grill and wooden engine housing. One of our party says this is not quite legal, as cars are not allowed on the island, and this is not a tractor — there is some kind of pickup truck chassis underneath the wood.
We head back in the dark, more lurching and gear grinding. This vehicle doesn’t have the power or massive grooved wheels that the tractors do, so the driver has trouble with some of the steeper hills. At one point the vehicle stops with a loud nasty sounding clank, and we’re off again. The driver's assistant rides shotgun and holds what looks like a vacuum cleaner pipe which he points out the right side of the vehicle — it’s the exhaust, which explains that smell.
The man who rescued Tom Zé
Last night C and I were sitting on the little patio of our cabana and out of the darkness, somewhere nearer the beach, we could hear the bass line of "Psycho Killer" booming. I guess they know I’m here. Earlier at dinner a young man approached me and asked if I was DB — he then thanked me for “resurrecting” Tom Zé. Others have said the same thing here; I seem to be known as the man who revived Tom Zé’s career as much as for my own work. That’s fine — Tom Zé certainly deserves to be recognized and one young guy (Zé’s new fans tend to be younger than I) said that Tom Zé always mentions me as the guy who brought him back out of obscurity at all of his live shows. It’s a good thing to be known for.
The NY promoter has urged that we add a second Radio City date (February 28th) and I have agreed. I had to think about it for a few days, as it’s a big place and the possibility of playing to a half-filled hall on the second night would be both depressing and bad for my rep. There’s something about the proximity of bodies in a theater that generates excitement and energy. Granted the top balconies could be empty and no one would know, but empty seats scattered here and there in the orchestra and lower balconies generally makes it harder for an audience to achieve release, to let go and enjoy themselves. Marc Geiger, my booking agent, says that “playing your hometown is like having a pimple on your forehead — everyone can see it.” Very funny, but I’d like to think my show is more enjoyable than a pimple. Both to myself and to the audience. We’re looking into using the Mighty Wurlitzer that rises up out of the side of the stage — the largest in the world that's still in its original location, I believe. Also looking into the Rockettes, but I think they go elsewhere after the Xmas show.
The first show is almost sold out after being on sale for only a couple of weeks and with only one significant ad — so that was an argument in favor of adding the second show. With more ads and posters around town, more people will know about the event; many friends I meet have no idea when I’m playing NYC. “Oh, you’re on tour! When will you be playing New York?” — so if we can reach those folks there is a chance the second show will do OK. Maybe even better than OK. (There is also the small matter of the economic meltdown, but Geiger says there has been less impact on “quality” acts, which I guess he means includes me.)
Anyway, I had an idea for a poster, and maybe an ad, that would include a lot of the snaps taken by fans and journalists of the tour so far. I talked to Danielle about culling the sources for that material and about a design idea — so that is in the works.
The deluxe CD version designed by Sagmeister Inc. is reaching people. BB e-mailed me that she got a copy and that her daughter thinks it’s cool. My daughter thinks the audio chip recording of footsteps that ends with a door squeaking and slamming shut is creepy. There are more songs on the 2nd disk, so I wonder if any of those will get reviewed or blogged about.
The Tribune Company owns the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Cubs, a bunch of TV stations and some other regional newspapers. They’re just barely holding on since being acquired in a takeover a year and a half ago by Sam Zell, a real estate billionaire. After the buyout, the Tribune’s editor left, as did a lot of its journalists and columnists. They reportedly weren’t happy with some of the changes that Zell had instituted. The paper had also acquired a relatively large debt. My guess is that after Zell bought the paper, his purchase price saddled the paper with debt; or rather, the paper’s employees — since its board members, like Zell, managed to avoid any personal debt. I saw similar things happen in the music business in the early 80’s, as record companies merged and were taken over by other companies (Warner Bros. was absorbed by Time and then later, AOL). The result was that the companies suddenly ended up in debt, and, in order to show a profit every quarter, had to forget about their standards and musical instincts. Long-term thinking became a thing of the past. They had to cut back here and there, which often meant cutting out middle-level employees. Bosses weren’t likely to thin their own ranks, and from their perspective, losing middle-level employees who had accrued decent salaries would help shore up the bottom line — temporarily, at least. New middle-level people could be hired at lower pay, or lower-level employees could be bumped up. The thing is, it was the middle-level people who actually knew and essentially ran the businesses. “‘From an informed public standpoint, it’s alarming,’ said Representative Kevin Brady, a Republican from the Houston area, who has seen The Houston Chronicle’s team in Washington drop to three people, from nine, in two years. ‘They’re letting go those with the most institutional knowledge, which helps reporters hold elected officials accountable.’” [ Link to NY Times article] The Houston Chronicle is not alone. Almost every newspaper in the US, except the Times and the Wall Street Journal, has drastically cut, or in many cases entirely eliminated, their Washington contingent. “‘We used to cover the Pentagon, combing through defense contracts, and we’re covering some of that out of Dallas now, but basically we don’t do it anymore,’ said Carl Leubsdorf, chief of The Dallas Morning News bureau, which had 11 people four years ago, and now has four. ‘We had someone at the Justice Department, but no longer. We can’t free someone up for a long time to do a major project.’” [ Link] As one of the Baltimore Sun reporters, who appeared in the HBO show The Wire, mentioned, you just can’t cover with 4 people what you used to with 11 — or 30. Despite management trying to squeeze more blood out of that stone, it’s just not possible. Less gets reported. Likewise, these newspapers have dumped most of their foreign bureaus, food critics, and film critics, and are loathe to assign reporters to stories that will take months to research and write. In doing so, they are eviscerating that which makes newspapers different from online reviews, blogs and websites. When papers end up like USA Today, there will be no reason to read them. “The much greater loss, the journalists say, is the decline of Washington reporting on local matters — the foibles of a hometown congressman or a public works project in the paper’s backyard. One after another, they cited the example of the San Diego paper’s Washington bureau for exposing the corruption of Representative Randall Cunningham, who is known as Duke. In accepting a Pulitzer Prize for that work in 2006, ‘we were bold enough to hope that it would be the first of many, but it turned out to be the high point,’ said George E. Condon Jr., the last bureau chief. ‘No matter how much great journalism is done by national organizations, they’re simply not geared to monitor closely a member of Congress from, say, San Diego, who’s not a national leader.’” [ Link] Second to the NY Times, the Tribune Company owns some of the country’s most widely circulated newspapers. Though I tend to think of the LA Times as more a community paper than a national one — a paper that covers mainly the intrigues and dramas of their local industry (movies, music and TV mixed in with coverage of local politics and crime) — there’s nothing wrong with in-depth reporting of one’s own city. TV sure ain’t gonna do it. Do we really need in-depth reporting, investigative journalism and foreign news desks? Can we manage without them? I am as guilty as most in that I often (though not always) read the morning papers online, for free. I jump between different publications, as their angles, points of view and interests are varied. Yeah, sometimes it’s the wacky human-interest story that grabs my attention — the sort of thing fit for web reporting — but just as often, it’s a story that is thoroughly researched and gives background and context on the topic. How does a democracy work without (in-depth) news? It doesn’t. While most of the population will not care about access to high-quality news, there are always some who read to find out what’s really going on, and why. Dictatorships, totalitarian regimes and underdeveloped countries don’t have the luxury of investigative journalism, and the news-as-entertainment in highly capitalist regimes isn’t really informative either — it’s bread and circuses. An informed citizenry, said Jefferson, is necessary for a democracy to function. He also said: “Advertisements... contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.”
and
“I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.” [ Link] TJ may have presumed we’d get our information from other sources, or maybe, like many politicians, he simply distrusted the press. It wouldn’t be surprising if he did — imagine if the press reported heavily on his taste for Brown Sugar. Politicians are held in check by the press, for better or worse; that too is one of the ways in which the press allows a democracy to function. Without the threat of public exposure, well… you can imagine. Anyway, it will be strange if the USA becomes a large industrialized country with only one or two newspapers — the NY Times and The Wall Street Journal — practicing in-depth coverage; the latter, now owned by Murdoch, may find itself eviscerated, assuming its fate follows those of his other newspaper purchases around the world. There is no way the Times can afford all the foreign desks, local reporters and journalists that a country of this size requires. What will happen when most of the country has nothing but entertainment, gossip and sports as sources of information? It’s a country ripe for takeover, if you ask me. A place where public opinion can be easily manipulated, as long as the consumers keep buying. Blogs and Internet news sites can’t fill the gap, as they don’t have the resources to sustain a team of reporters working and digging into a story — sometimes for months before anything sees the light of day. They don’t have African or Southeast Asian bureaus either. Besides, most Internet news sites like Google News are aggregates of traditional print and wire service news gatherers. Without sources they’d be pretty much nothing. Local sites like Gothamist and national ones like The Smoking Gun are cool and up-to-the-minute, but they don’t assign staff to conduct long-term investigations into the how and why of a scandal or news item. They break stuff, it’s true, but mostly they rely on others to feed them information. I have plenty of beefs with the arts and culture coverage of many newspapers; I can easily spot the biases and lack of research. I’m of that world, so I have my own personal biases as well — which sometimes match those of the critics, and sometimes don’t. I myself have gone in and out of favor a few times, so I regard their reviews and reporting with what I feel is healthy skepticism. News, though, is another story. I imagine that cops, thugs, hedge fund dudes, politicians and bureaucrats all have their own beefs with the press, but from my point of view, I’d much prefer some seriously researched coverage in those areas — with a little bias — to nothing of any depth. I’ve been trying to imagine what this country would be like without a serious news source. Like Cuba with only Granma, the organ of the party — that and bootleg satellite TV broadcasts of American Idol. Or Russia, pre-Gorbachev, when the choice was between Pravda and some samizdat mimeographed publications. Iran under the Ayatollah or the Shah. The Philippines under martial law — when all press critical of the Marcos regime was silenced. We tend to get all holier-than-thou when we look at countries without free press. We think their lives must somehow be more pathetic or sad. Needless to say, this attitude makes us feel better. But people go on. They know, or at least suspect, that they are being denied something, but they maintain hope and optimism. They don’t go around moping. They get on with their lives, and sometimes, at least now and then, feel like maybe the censorship doesn’t matter all that much. There are still reasons to be cheerful. We might like to think of life in an oppressive regime as sheer misery, but from what I can tell, it’s rarely viewed that way. Life goes on and people make do with what they have, and they fall in love and get drunk and sing and dance. It takes a lot — a whole lot — to bring them to the flash point, like what just happened in Greece. Mostly, people adapt to the way things are — and to feel miserable about it is fruitless. And that’s what we will do when there are only two serious newspapers left in the USA.
A man in the audience in Wilmington, Delaware shouted out, “You rock like geology!”
Mattel, Bratz and creative rights
The toy giant Mattel has won its lawsuit against the makers of Bratz dolls, the slightly slutty “ethnic” dolls that have been selling well while sales of Mattel’s Barbie line have been dropping. The ruling states that since the designer of the Bratz line did the initial doll drawings while employed by Mattel, the rights to the Bratz line now belong to Mattel — whomph, the competition is eliminated in one fell swoop. 
Jeff Harris [Source]
I seem to remember reading about the Bratz dolls a year or so ago — the designer tried to get Mattel interested in the line, but with their traditional and long-standing emphasis on the All American Breasts of Barbie, they passed. So, the designer went elsewhere, and despite some initial resistance, the line of dolls caught fire and began to threaten Miss Barbie herself. The Bratz dolls, who look to be of indeterminate ethnic origin — but definitely not Anglo-Saxon — started to crowd out the tall white chick with pointy tits. Do we have a metaphor for immigration attitudes (and policies) here or what? The designer should have gotten Mattel to sign away their rights after passing on his idea, though I suspect Mattel would not have done so unless they had to. Just like record companies will often pass on an artist’s record and then prohibit anyone else from releasing it, they are scared of both being shown up and possible competition. Forget the lip service that competition is good for business — business will squash any competition if it has half a chance. Maybe the designer got a verbal go-ahead from someone at Mattel to seek interest elsewhere; maybe he thought they’d forget about his drawings; or maybe he thought they wouldn’t go so far as to claim the rights based on the drawings — but he didn’t get a proper release, so legally he’s fucked. Though it doesn’t seem fair. It seems to me that it would be nice if there were a fairer attitude towards passed-over creations. What if the law said this: if a company like Mattel turned down his drawings, then they would automatically revert back to him after some period of time — a couple of years, for example. Long enough for Mattel to reconsider, given an always-changing marketplace, but short enough that the creation, whatever it is, might still be relevant. This could apply to recording artists, screenwriters, designers, authors and photographers — where the same kind of proprietary nastiness happens all the time.
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