My Mexican uncle Ted—for whom I was named—came from a poor family & never went to college. He was a sailor and died in a plane crash in his 20s. He was passionate about classical music and found liberation & transcendence in this music. To deny him this is ignorance & prejudice.
Before he died, my uncle bought a piano, and left it with my parents—neither of them went to college too. I learned music on that instrument. He also left behind a copy of this book at his death, which I studied as a teen. Without these I could have never pursued my vocation.
At his death, my Mexican uncle Ted also owned hundreds of scores by Mozart, Haydn, etc.—he scrupulously saved money from his tiny salary as a sailor to buy them & they gave him great solace. The patronizing experts who object to this should say what music they'd allow him to hear
Here's the newspaper account of my Uncle Ted's death at age 28—he never had a chance to go to college or develop his talents. I was born 23 months later, and named after him. And learned music on his piano.
My uncle was self-taught, but corresponded with Alfred Einstein, the great classical music scholar. He wrote liner notes for an album for music by Haydn's brother Michael (they asked him because he had read original sources in German). He was fluent in several languages....
I know this doesn't fit with people's stereotypes of a working-class Mexican sailor, but maybe people need to change the stereotypes...and stop making assumptions about who is allowed to listen to what music. Music should break down boundaries, not create them.
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People nowadays have a hard time imagining how much hostility jazz faced a hundred years ago. Many wanted a new Prohibition—and campaigned to close jazz dance halls the same way bars had been shut down in 1920. https://t.co/nhjf7Y16N4honest-broker.com/p/how-an-angry…
The author of this 1922 article "talked to the poor and innocent victims of jazz in their own homes. She has attended ‘hooch and harem’ parties...." https://t.co/Gptvml0JP9honest-broker.com/p/how-an-angry…
Microsoft’s AI is now threatening and bullying search engine users. stratechery.com/2023/from-bing… The harassment lawsuits will start coming in the next few days. This rush to commercialize a deeply flawed tech will be remembered as a bigger blunder than Edsel and New Coke combined.
NY Times writer changes his mind about AI after creepy conversations in which Bing’s chatbot declares its simmering love for him. nytimes.com/2023/02/16/tec…
Prediction: Microsoft will start facing harassment lawsuits over its AI within weeks. If I were a trial lawyer, I would already be soliciting clients for a class action case.
In this section from my new book 'Music to Raise the Dead' I share the results of many years of research into the most famous story in the history of the blues—namely guitarist Robert Johnson’s legendary deal with the Devil.
In the 1930s, researcher Harry Middleton Hyatt interviewed more than 1,500 African Americans in the Deep South—and uncovered extraordinary survivals of African religious belief systems.
Many told him stories about making a deal with the Devil at a crossroads.
Almost every day, the leading news stories can be viewed as unpaid advertisements for decentralized, blockhain-driven platforms. Today it's hedge funds shutting down apps, tomorrow it will be something else....
Prediction: Within 10 years we will have 2 different sources for historical documents: 1. a decentralized blockchain platform of documents that can't be altered. 2. Manipulated & edited-after-the-fact texts that may or may not be real (i.e. today's web). Internet Arch. is a start
Otherwise we will live in a world in which Jeff Bezos can change paragraphs in books, Spotify can alter the words in songs, etc.—all without consequences. That's not a colorful sci-fi prediction, merely a plausible extrapolation of current practices.
Even if you don't care about finance, the strange events moving GameStop stock from $19 to $340 in roughly 10 days make for interesting speculation (in both sense of the word). By all accounts, youngsters fought the hedge funds (who were short), and the youngsters won.
Here are the details—but, trust me, there will be a movie made about this. cnbc.com/2021/01/27/gam… It's like a cross between The Big Short and Ferris Bueller
This will go down as the biggest short squeeze of all time—even besting the famous 1978 Resorts International debacle that wreaked havoc with some high-powered investors (including George Soros). businessinsider.com/bob-wilson-res… But that's child's play compared to this GameStop shootout.