It’s Just Begun (Going Way Back)

commentary and criticism, music


Jimmy Castor’s death this week brought me back to the early days when hip hop first came to town. People breaking, popping and locking on street corners to that 808 sound, but also to old tunes that held great mystery to us kids. Later we would learn their names: “Apache,” “Dance to the Drummer’s Beat”, and “The Grunt” were among the perennials, as was — of course — “It’s Just Begun” with the Jimmy Castor Bunch (1972).

It’s an epic song, dropping you in media res. The groove seems like it was always there, and yet the refrain tells you that it’s just begun, again and again. Castor’s sax theme breaks it off and returns with variations throughout — I love how it swerves off into a long push at the end of each section, and how Castor mirrors it in his vocals “it just beguuuaaiinnn!” All the while the percussion builds through the song into that amazing cacophony at the end where it merges with Harry Jensen’s guitar to sound like something out the primordial mists.

Which was the intention — as opener to the album which carries its name, it introduces the notion of rhythm as an almost cthonic expression of our drives (informing that great, roughhousing lark “Troglodyte”, which follows it). The words appropriately describe man as “on the run” without knowing from what, “day or night/black or white”. And then comes that exhilarating bridge, build on that simple bass chord: “peace will come, the world will rest/once we have togetherness!” — it’s a rousing, empowering song with a political edge rooted in the troubled, disilliusioned decade in which originated.

Like any good dance tune, it moves you on a fundamental level, rocking you awake, not to sleep. A rightstarter at the beginnings of hip hop, promising a world to come.


The Rocksteady Crew in the movie Flashdance (1983).

Ping Resurrected!

comics and cartooning, hype & linkage

Ping, by Storm P.

In collaboration with the Danish Comics Council the festival Komiks.dk and the Storm P. Museum, the Danish comics site Nummer9 is now resurrecting the Danish comics award, The Ping, named after the great cartoonist Storm P.’s famous sidekick character.

The Ping in its original iteration was awarded between 1986 and 1996 and was given to an individual for his or her contribution to Danish comics. The new Ping is rather different — it’s a set of awards given in multiple categories, much like the Eisners in the US or the Fauves in Angoulême, France. Nominees in six categories have been selected by the staff of Nummer9 with their votes tallied by Nummer9 editor-in-chief Erik Barkman, Comics Council president Thomas Thorhauge, and myself who therefore couldn’t nominate works ourselves. The winners will be selected by a jury, the members of which will be announced on 1 February and will be presented at an awards ceremony in Lille Vega, Copenhagen 28 February.

Among the nominees are some of the remarkable Danish comics published this past year, several of which are of such high quality that one might hope for international editions in the near future. You will also find nominated in two different categories a number of the best non-Danish comics of 2011. The full list can be seen here.

We’re very happy to announce the inauguration of Ping Resurrected, which would not have happened without the hard work of the great, hard-working organizing committee. Read more about them here. And do show up for the show — it’s going to be a great party!

2011: The Year in Hip Hop at Rapspot

hype & linkage, music


As annual procedure dictates, the Rapspot crew have once again pooled our resources in order to present for your edification a qualified proposal as to the best (and worst) in hip hop music in the year that went. Check it out here, and take a minute to (re)watch Tyler going bi-polar in Yonkers above.

Open Sesame. Habibi and its Critics

comics and cartooning, hype & linkage


I used to write a regular column at Hooded Utilitarian called DWYCK. Then stuff happened. And the column didn’t happen, for way too long. But now I’m back! Er, at least for the moment. No, I’ll really make an effort!

Anyway, the essay I have up now is on Craig Thompson’s remarkable new comic Habibi and on its discouraging reception by comics critics. I touch upon several of what I perceive to be key issues in the criticism and analysis of comics and hope it will stimulate some discussion. Go, read.

The Week

comics and cartooning, current affairs, history, hype & linkage, journal, music

The Week in Review

So, the US and its allies finally left Iraq. It seems they’ve been there forever. Whether the country will eventually become a better place to live than it was during the terrible decades of war, tyranny and crippling sanctions remains to be seen, though one might at least hope. I suspect that was also what led to the most conspicuous blindside of this week’s celebrity passee, Christopher Hitchens’ career, namely his unswerving support of the 2003 invasion. Besides old-fashioned stubbornness, his stance always seemed to me fueled at least in part by the hope shared by many at that time — even people who largely opposed the war — that it might at least eventually lead to a better life for Iraqis.

Perhaps I’m being too charitable, but it’s a motivation I understand, because I remember seriously entertaining it myself back when the war was brewing, even if it was clear that it would not be fought primarily or even secondarily for that reason, and that our governments were obviously lying to us about their rationale for invasion. Today, after at least 150.000 people have died and several Western democracies (including Denmark) have compromised themselves, all of this may seem moot, of course. Still, our armies leaving Iraq was a necessary step to for things to improve for everyone.

Links!

  • Hitchens. Sudhir Hazareesingh’s critical take on the the writer’s career in this TLS review of his autobiography from last year, Hitch-22, is a fine corrective to those (of us) who tended to overlook the bad in favor of the good in his work. Supplement with Jonathan Freedland’s critique of his and Martin Amis’ stances on Iraq and the so-called War on Terror from the NYRB. D.D. Guttenplan in his Nation review of Hitch-22 provides a more sympathetic and comprehensive overview of Hitchens’ life. Most importantly, and lest we forget that Hitchens was an inquisitive and sensitive writer, read his last column for Vanity Fair, published last week. It’s a killer.
  • Mohammed el Gorani’s Guantánamo Diary. The LRB offers extracts of this, the youngest former prisoner at Camp X-Ray. I don’t know how verifiable it is, but it is hair-raising reading.
  • Robinson and Simon. Two notable figures of the American so-called Golden Age of comics, Jerry Robinson and Joe Simon died within a week of each other. Revisit their remarkable careers in Gary Groth’s in-depth interviews with them here and here. His magazine, The Comics Journal, also has a couple of obituaries up: Robinson, Simon.
  • Danske læsere: Ralf Christensen har besøgt Red Bull Music Academy og øjner nogle musikalske fremtidsperspektiver.

    • Erik Fischer 1920-2011

    articles and essays, pictorial arts

    Yesterday I received the sad news that the great oak of Danish art history Erik Fischer has died. More thorough obituaries will surely be forthcoming, so I just want to note briefly how important his work and example has been to myself as an art historian.

    Fischer’s distinctions and honors are many: among other things, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Copenhagen in 1991, became an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2000, and, already a knight of the Order of Dannebrog, was awarded its special Cross of Honor in 1997. This is because he, arguably more than anybody else of his generation, put Danish art history on the international map as a great humanist, scholar and teacher of the old school.

    Never particularly prolific in terms of publications — he seemed perpetually plagued by a perfectionist writer’s block — the work he did publish is exemplary, both for its erudition, its sensitivity and its originality. His explication of the scientific worldview of Danish Golden Age painter C. W. Eckersberg (1783-1853) was the first really to begin explaining that painter’s remarkable approach to a nature in which he saw the divine, and his analyses of the painter’s almost obsessive geometric approach to composition application of perspective are eye-opening; even if somewhat hard fully to believe, they lay bare the deliberation of a highly reflexive artist, and suggested how, in this, some of the most rational image-making conceivable, lies a rare surreal poetry.

    The Cabinet of Mabuse

    commentary and criticism, pictorial arts

    Portrait of a Merchant (Jan Jacobsz. Snoek?), c. 1530, oil on panel, 63.6 x 47.5 cm. Washington DC, National Gallery of Art


    Flemish Renaissance painting is known for its sharp focus on reality. The first great master of oil painting, Jan van Eyck (active 1422, died 1441), was widely admired in his day for his ability illusionistically to reproduce the seen.

    The Week

    current affairs, letters, music

    The Week in Review

    Amidst the turmoil in Brussels, which I’ve found rather hard to make sense of, one piece of less equivocally positive news emerged this week, namely that Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has spent thirty years on death row in Pennsylvania has finally had his death sentence revoked in favor of life behind bars. This is a major symbolic victory in the struggle against the death penalty and in his personal efforts to prove his innocence. Convicted in 1981 for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner on the basis of highly dubious evidence and testimonies, his has become something of a cause celèbre for opponents of the death penalty and critics of the American penal system, a speaking, highly-articulate symbol of all that’s wrong with both (hear him talking about the “prison-industrial complex” in the clip above).

    Abu-Jamal has faced execution several times in his three decades as a prisoner and each time he and his counsel succeeded in postponing what seemed inevitable for the longest time. To have the sentence deferred this way, especially after the disgraceful recent execution of the similarly dubiously convicted Troy Davis, is a victory for human rights. Abu-Jamal may be guilty, but he hasn’t been given a fair trial. The Philadelphia District Attorney didn’t seem disposed toward giving him one anytime soon when he announced the news, but we may still hope that it will happen eventually. For him and the many other people who share his fate in the American penal system.

    This week’s links:

  • Peter Mandelson on Britain’s Euro veto. Excellent analysis of Britain’s predicament.
  • For Danish readers: Georg Metz om lækagesagen. Som altid er pennen skarp og som ofte er tonen tæt på det skingre, men sagen kalder ligesom på det.
  • Christopher Tayler on Murakami. A review of the new novel, 1Q84, taken as an opportunity incisively to examine the oeuvre. Good reading!
  • Ligeledes for danskerne: Rhymesayers MC og troende muslim Brother Ali snakker om Muhammedtegningerne i et interview fra Roskilde sidste år.