Topic: music
Loren Schoenberg, executive Director of The Jazz Museum in Harlem, came to our area a couple of months ago. I was privilege to hear him speak and make impromptu jazz on stage with people he'd never met! Fun.
And very educational. Plus related to my advocacy work, something I never expected!
Loren, the winner of two Grammy's performed in the White House, talked about the history of jazz, which you may know is the only truly American music.
His primary emphasis on the history had to do with the birth of jazz. First time I ever had anyone state clearly that it happened because of a lie. That had to cover a lie. Intended to cover another lie.
The first lie was that the Constitution of the United States wasn't for real about "all men created equal." The slave holders among the writers, in fact, argued among themselves as to whether the slaves should be freed in order to stop the hypocrisy that they recognized was going to be there! They decided that the nation would be divided if they did it. Plus it wouldn't be profitable. So the beloved institution of slavery was kept along with the idealism.
That's lesson one, leading up to the rest of what Loren had to say.
I was probably the only one in the audience that noticed the parallel to the Christian church. By adopting, from the beginning, cultural rules as "God's" rules, they instilled the ungodly and very un-Christian gender assignments that gave women very little voice. They brought a problem into the church that was in the world. And didn't seem to even notice!
