BYRON BAY 2007 BLUES & ROOTS FESTIVAL

BYRON BAY 2007 BLUES & ROOTS FESTIVAL by Enemy Combatant

Byron Bay is a town on the easternmost tip of continental Australia two and a half hours by car south of Brisbane.

The Pacific Ocean first meets the almost sheer cliffs of Cape Byron before spreading to lap onto golden, sandy beaches. Lush sub-tropical coastal plains reach west through hinterland to the mountains of the Great Dividing Range, many miles inland. Byron Bay has no high rise buildings, zippo traffic control lights and if Maccas and KFC are in town, I sure didn’t notice them. A majority of voting locals like it that way.

They’re a weird mob. I feel comfortable in Byron Bay.

The Arakwal people have “Native Title” to many of their sacred sites and traditional hunting grounds.

Board surfers “discovered” Byron, a former whaling port, after the huge success of ‘The Endless Summer” and other American surf movies in the Sixties. Now their grandkids are dolphins. Old hippies mix easily with retired city professionals in cafes that serve outstanding espresso and food. Jumbo U-Choose organic fruit juice made before your eyes, $6. Far fucken out, man! The farmers, mainly dairy and sugar cane, shrug and mosey on by without so much as a sideways glance at the legions of international backpackers. Mercifully Club Med were thwarted in a tight Shire Council vote recently, when they tried to weasel in on the potentially huge yuppie tourist action.

The festival began 18 years ago at a local juke joint called The Piggery. Johnny Winter headlined. These days it is held at a football ground, a couple of miles south of Byron. Two large circus tents separately house the Mojo and Crossroads stages , The Jambalaya stage lies beneath a third, smaller tent. Another enclosed bar stage caters for those with a taste for pressure cooker action. Originally a Bluesfest, it’s now a Blues & Roots fest, which gives promoters a lot a scope in bringing musicians and music lovers of many persuasions shoulder to shoulder.

Ben Zweller meet Bo Diddly. Paolo Nuttini, this is Lee “Scratch” Perry. Bela Fleck, say hi to Mojo Webb. The music plays Thursday through Monday of Easter with performances from early afternoon till midnight.

One has to pace oneself to make the most of such a feast. The line up is too long to list. Check it out on http://www.bluesfest.com.au

Standouts were The Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars. They performed a superb repertoire of reggae and West African numbers.

These guys and one lady are the real deal. Bona fide refugees five short years ago, they are infused with joie de vivre such that they can barely believe their change in fortunes. Their music compels all within earshot to dance and smile.

Ziggy Marley: A fully-fledged top shelf Jamaican musician. His band is in the same league as the original Wailers. Although Ziggy’s voice has less of Bob’s embellishments, it is honeyed and true. Every now and then a flick of his dreads or an on-the-spot hop underlines his immediate heritage. Brilliant hour of beautifully mixed reggae music, mon.

The Brownian motion of the passing parade as you move from venue to venue facilitates human interaction. No social barriers. Anyone will talk to you about the music. There was absolutely no aggro or violence. Orderly lines for booze. Very low-key unarmed security. Many punters discreetly puffed reefer, the pleasant aroma was all pervading.

Nobody said boo, sparse heat pointed their snouts the other way. Very civilised. Just thousands of happy people from teens to sixties gettin’ down together with good vibes and quality live music.

Tony Joe White: Dug the guy since I first heard him growl his way through Polk Salad Radio on AM radio all those years ago.

It took a lot of courage for a Southern white boy in the sixties to sing about (in Willie and Laura May Jones);

“When you work in the fields,
You don’t have the time,
To worry about another man’s colour.”

Backed only by a session drummer, he purred his way through many an old favourite.

From Tunica Motel:

“I find myself at midnight
Moving to the back porch blues
the guitar cries, telling me
About the hard times

Something moves in the shadows
Giving me a little chill
I thought I saw Robert Johnson
Walking out across the field.”

Tony Joe has lost a little of his top register but has found a rasping Neil Young-like buzz in his trusty sky blue Fender. He uses this to magnificent effect in “Closer To The Truth” - sung in 1991 in a gently prophetic tone on CD but here, live at Byron, as an angry call to action:

“The eagle watches from the mountain
As the warriors turn into fools
And the dice are thrown on sacred ground
And they move closer to the truth

And who's gonna tell the children
How the rivers used to flow crystal blue

And we keep leaving scars on Mother Earth
And moving closer to the truth"

Other impressive performers were Chris Smither: one golden baritone, one amplified
acoustic guitar, one stomp box, a wicked wit and brilliantly timed patter.

The McClymonts: three sisters with harmonies to match The Dixie Chicks but apolitical. Should take Nashville by storm in the manner of Kasey Chambers.

Taj Mahal Trio: After thirty years together they play as one, live. Much more fun than his recordings. Taj cake-walked, hollered chants and demanded responses and made everyone happy. First time I’ve seen him perform without his shades. His eyes twinkle when he hits it.

Thursday teased us with brilliant sunshine, but rolling showers for the next three days pushed many campers to the limit after four days, so I missed Bonnie Raitt who closed the fest on Monday night with a set that “reliable sources” claim was top order. Can’t win ‘em all but a hot bath and fresh-sheeted bed were blissful after the three hour drive home.

I do have reservations about the East Coast Blues and Roots festival. They need a much bigger venue like, for example like Jazzfest at New Orleans, to prevent sounds overlapping from venue to venue. The food choices are appalling compared to what’s on offer in town. Finally, there is a creeping commercialism about the festival that on the one hand I understand, but on the other, is the antithesis of the essence of roots music. The celebration of the human spirit is not about turning a buck.

After 18 years the festival has progressed from a ragin’ roadhouse to an almost-slick House of Blues event. Don’t misconstrue me, I’ll jump at the chance to see great performers play at any corporate House of Blues, anywhere I’m passin’ through, but I know where the real deal went down.

It is practically impossible to get the stuff no more.

It went down on porches and juke joints and clubs like the Checkerboard Lounge on Chicago’s Southside and on Maxwell Street, both long gone tabernacles of the Blues. Before that it went down on plantations and levee bank and railroad camps of the South where Jim Crow perpetually threatened to break out The Klan. On Parchman Farm and Angola Prison, systematically oppressed people reached to their African roots and sang the blues to lift their spirits.

In doing so they kept themselves and their culture alive.

When it comes right down to it, Sam “Lightnin’ ” Hopkins once sang:

“The Blues…….The Blues is a feelin’ ”. Couldn’t agree more

Another First Amendment Right

I've had a great time with Blog Against Theocracy Weekend, which for me was extended for a couple of days of reading terrific, provocative posts spanning the gamut of First Freedoms First issues. Now, back to blogging, but we're not going to stray too far from the nest for our first post-swarm post. Here's how the first amendment reads,

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The blogswarm has been all about the first 16 words of the amendment, known as the establishment clause. This post is about the next 10 words, which guarantee freedom of speech, and of the press. A number of things converged to compel me to address this subject. The one you're most likely familiar with is the controversy surrounding Don Imus' on-air idiocy. On top of that are a couple of items in my inbox, the first from Blue Gal,

"Thought you would want to see this and maybe even linky.
Ben Heine Silenced by DKos
Ben Heine is a Belgian Cartoonist. A Cartoonist, folks.
Where has this kinda censorship happened before? Huh?"

That's my private inbox. I got this from comments, which I think of as kind of my public inbox.

"hey sbt,
sorry to be off topic, but check this out:
(Link)"

The link goes to an Amy Goodman article in TruthDig called Take Back the Airwaves.

"As the TV pundits on the networks gab about the tens of millions of dollars raised by the top presidential candidates, what they don’t talk about is where that money is going: to their own networks.

Money is now considered the single most important factor in our electoral process. Ideas and issues take a back seat to the bottom line. This prostitution of our electoral process has one key culprit: television advertising."

These three items converge onto an issue so full of complexities that I hesitate to even approach it. Hopefully I can bring out some aspects that will provoke everyone to think it through themselves a bit. I'll start with my off-the cuff response to the TruthDig link, from comments, "The TruthDig article is right on the money, one of my top concerns - actually two - the overbearing influence of money on American politics, and the conflict of interest that DOES exist in a medium that accepts advertising dollars from the candidates."

To continue in that vein, most broadcasting facilities in America are owned by corporate interests who have other fish to fry than just the revenues they make from politicians on a cyclic basis. (meaning those revenues dry up when there is no pending election) They pay taxes, and face various forms of regulations, so it is in their interest to promote politicians that reduce any associated costs. In many cases the broadcast companies are in turn owned by larger corporations. An example of this is NBC, owned by General Electric. (I learned that from Dave Letterman) GE is a huge corporation, with major revenues coming from such things as supplying equipment to the military - guidance packages for smart bombs, that sort of thing. On balance, these concerns could far outweigh something as trivial as a few million dollars in advertising every couple of years. They might even be tempted to side with politicians who were pro-military, interventionist, and in favor of lower taxes, even if their opponents spent twice as much on campaign ads.

These circumstances apply to all the media; television, radio and print - to varying degrees from entity to entity. You might think the truth would stand as much chance in this environment as an elderly lawyer facing Cheney with a shotgun in his hands. There use to be something called the fairness doctrine, which required overtly political opinions expressed over the air to be balanced by someone with a differing view. That died in 1987.

Now we depend on broadcasters to be fair and balanced due to their respect for the fine traditions of journalistic integrity. The problem is, people like Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly etc. don't even pretend to be journalists, but most of their audience assumes that they are anyway. They self-identify as entertainers, commenters, editorialists, or that old standby, pundits. I don't think that word even existed in the days of real journalists like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, or Huntley and Brinkley.

[There is a lot of difference between the legislative control that can be exerted over on-air broadcasting and cable or satellite broadcasting. The former is subject to regulation because of its dependency on a limited electronic spectrum or bandwidth - you can't have two Channel 5's in the same geographical area after all, their signals would interfere with one another. This makes bandwidth a precious commodity which has always been construed as belonging to the public and doled out to the broadcasters as a sacred trust. Cable and satellite can get around this technical restriction, and in so doing escape most of the government's regulative authority. This explains why you see so much of Janet Jackson's nipple on cable.]

Back to Imus. To me the biggest effect of this story has been that it has given the rest of the media an excuse to conduct their own senseless swarm over a relative non-issue. I can't believe how much airtime has been devoted to this over the last couple of days. Oh, yes I can. On top of the questions of who's Anna Nicole's baby's daddy and who has a chance to advance on American Idol, it's helping the Corporate Owned Media (COM) to push the real news (like White House illegal emails, for instance) off the headlines. And flash to CNN et. al. - it only takes 30 seconds to announce that charges have been dropped in the Duke lacrosse rape allegation case, not 25% of total airtime for 48 hours. How about mentioning the recently released scathing report on Walter Reed Hospital? Oh, right - that one makes Bu$hCo™ look bad. Or how about this story that totally yanks the rug out from under the DoJ's reasoning for firing David Iglesias? Oh, right...

What we have here is a failure to communicate the truth to the American people. That is serious business. Listen to Abe Lincoln on this one,

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts."
-- Abraham Lincoln --
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
-- Abraham Lincoln --

The thing is, the COM are trying to fool all of the people - by not bringing them the real facts. At least not the relevant facts. I would support Don Imus's right to spew whatever idiotic diatribe he likes. It is after all his First Amendment right to do so, and the best way to deal with an abuse of free speech really is with more free speech. But there's a problem with that.

More and more, free speech in America is being defined as 'money talks.' After Nixon was brought down, not by the FBI, not by Congress, not by the Department of Justice, but by the media, the right wing responded in a predictably slimy way. First, they bought up as much of the media as they could. Second, Reagan appointed head of the FCC Mark S. Fowler worked to abolish the fairness doctrine. Third, FOX "news" and a number of right-wing news consortia spent a lot of money and time on a relatively unknown Florida case to establish as a matter of law that they had a RIGHT under the first amendment to LIE to their audiences. That's right. No, that's very, very wrong. Sad, but true. PLEASE click the last three links - herein lies the oh-so-sad truth of how the first amendment is being interpreted in modern America. Lincoln would weep.

The complexity of this issue derives from the tension between First Amendment free speech guarantees and the necessity in a democracy, recognized by Lincoln, of the electorate being informed by the truth. As the Third link shows, the right wing are exploiting the first amendment in order to manipulate the American political arena. Swiftboat Veterans For Truth cynically relied on the First Amendment to get their message out, for instance. FOX "news" regularly exploits their position to act as a blatant propaganda arm of the GOP. How much of this form of freedom of speech can America stand before democracy itself falls?

As American journalist A. J. Liebling of the New Yorker magazine pointed out, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." In modern times, the impact of YOUR freedom of speech can only be meaningfully measured against that of those who own, not just a newspaper, which is expensive enough - not even a chain of newspapers, but a freaking television network. Think about that. Here are a few more talking points for discussion.

"Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."
-- Hugo L Black --
"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."
-- George Orwell --
"All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values."
-- Marshall McLuhan --
"Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless."
-- Sinclair Lewis --
"The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
-- Henry A. Wallace, Vice President to FDR, 1944 --
The Danger of American Fascism

Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org

TAGS: First Amendment, Free Speech, Freedom of the Press, Propaganda

Supreme Court Jesters

...And Obscene Court Gestures

Perhaps one should be a little pleased with the Supreme Court's recent decision to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to actually, ahem, protect the freakin' environment. On balance I would give that up to have them rule on the constitutionality of the odious Military Commissions Act. As the BBC reports, they have recently decided not to decide this vital issue.

The US Supreme Court has said it will not decide whether detainees held at Guantanamo have the right to challenge their detention in US federal courts.

The decision means the court will not rule on the constitutionality of an anti-terror law pushed through Congress by President George W Bush last year.

The provision in question states that Guantanamo Bay inmates cannot challenge their detention in US civil courts.

Many of the 385 detainees at the camp have been held for five years or more.

None has yet been able to challenge their detention in a US civil court.

The provision stripping detainees of their right to mount a legal challenge to their confinement was upheld by a federal appeals court in Washington in February.

The court's majority opinion was that "the will of Congress" should prevail and that habeas corpus did not apply to foreign nationals being held at Guantanamo Bay because it is not US soil.

Now, I don't have a law degree or anything, but it seems a simple enough task to interpret the clear language of Article 1, section 9 of the Constitution with regard to the Military Commissions Act passed on Sept. 28, 2006. (NYT news story), (Amnesty International response)

"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."

Since what we're dealing with here is in fact a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and an ex post facto law (one that purports to take effect before it was passed), the matter seems to have been settled back in 1787. So that only leaves one issue as far as I can see, "that habeas corpus did not apply to foreign nationals being held at Guantanamo Bay because it is not US soil." And once again, I'm not at all impressed with the validity of this argument. What they're saying in effect is that US jurisdiction does not apply in this case - but wait, what they're REALLY saying is that jurisdiction applies so far as the government is concerned, but not so far as the detainees' rights are concerned.

This is a continuation of a trend in BushAmerika towards an institutionally asymmetrical application of legal principle, just as in the comparison I recently made between Monica Goodling's rights and those of detainee David Hicks. This abomination of a government continues to rely on the most tissue-thin of specious arguments, proffered by a gaggle of cronies similar to Alberto Gonzales - who recently testified in the Senate that the Constitutional guarantee not to suspend habeas corpus does not indicate that habeas corpus is a guaranteed right. This kind of reasoning should be met with an instant response of, "whoo boy, what the heck are YOU on?"

As far as the court's unusual respect for "the will of Congress" is concerned, I'm quite certain that Congress does NOT have the authority to amend the Constitution. So who are these clowns that Bushie and his father have appointed to the US Supreme Court? Bozos in expensive Italian suits, they should all be sent to a circus stuffed into the same Austin Mini. At least that would yield a laugh for the kiddies. They sure aren't looking anything like qualified lawyers from where I'm standing.

One other thing I think is really important and likely to be skipped over. The court is claiming that they are not making a decision here, but from a practical standpoint I can hardly imagine anything more deceptive. The detainees are not being released, nor are they being afforded an appearance before the court, so a de facto decision has been reached - from the point of view of the detainees, very emphatically so.

Clinton appointees Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer were joined by George H. W. Bush pick David Souter in dissenting this decision, Breyer writing, "I believe these questions deserve this court's immediate attention." The rest of the court, ALL REPUBLICAN APPOINTEES (Roberts and Alito by Junior, Kennedy by Reagan, Stevens by Ford and Clarence Thomas by Poppy) join with Reagan appointee Antonin Scalia in collectively making an obscene gesture towards the rule of law that can be interpreted to mean, "Go F#@k Yourself!"

One other thing. The court could have accepted this case and then ruled in the government's favor. There are two reasons this did not happen, both of them as sinister as they are cynical. The first is obvious. They are reluctant for political reasons to signal to the public that a police state has fully entrenched itself on American soil. The second is even more disturbing. By withholding final judgement on this issue the court gives a level of authority to President Bush that it can later deny to any Democratic successor.

I can hardly imagine anything more partisan than that, nor any more grievous example of the asymmetrical application of the law that I lamented above. The really sad thing is, recent history has shown that the administration is probably even now hatching something even worse. When someone respects the law as a concept, they see it as the glue that holds civilized society together. When someone like Bush, Gonzales, Scalia, or these other Republican-appointed toadies thinks of the law, they only see an armed thug in a uniform, willing to do their bidding.

TAGS: Supreme Court, Detainees, Constitution, Police State