Jazzy D's Soul Notes

Eric Hobsbawm "Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz" (Abacus)




Uncommon People is a collection of Eric Hobsbawm’s essays spanning the majority of his long career, from the 1950s to the mid-1990s. It brings together a wide range of topics, collected under four headings: The Radical Tradition, Country People, Contemporary History and Jazz.

Under “The Radical Tradition”, essays address Thomas Paine, the Luddites, the radicalism of shoemakers, the difference between labour traditions in France and Britain, the development of a distinctive working-class culture, the skilled manual wage worker in Victorian moral frameworks, the iconography of male and female representations in labour movements, the origins and history of May Day as a working-class celebration, the relationship between socialism and the avant-garde, and Labour Party stalwart Harold Laski.

“Country People” includes two longer essays, one providing a general overview of peasant politics, and a second study of land occupations, as well as an essay on the Sicilian Mafia.

The rubric “Contemporary History” features pieces Hobsbawm wrote while the embers were still hot, with pieces on Vietnam and guerilla warfare, May 1968, and sexual liberation. As a result, they tend to feel dated, though as contemporary reports are still of interest for this very reason.

Finally, the “Jazz” section contains half a dozen reviews and short writings on Sidney Bechet, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, jazz in Europe, jazz after 1960, and jazz’s relationship with blues and rock. A final essay, slotted under this Jazz heading, was written on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in America, and highlights the oft-forgotten benefits and advances this event brought about, from the notion of a Utopia to the development of a theory of evolution, and the spread of staple foodstuffs like potatoes and maize.

The problem with this collection is that being of such a broad spectrum, only a handful of the essays are likely to appeal to the reader. Some of the pieces, particularly the shorter jazz reviews and essays, are written in an easy, affable manner, whilst many of the essays on peasant and working-class movements are far more technical and heavily footnoted, and really require a background understanding to get anything from them. Nevertheless, there are plenty of gems here: the essay on the Luddites amongst other machine-breaking groups highlights how the word inherited has little to do with the motivations of those people; his coverage of the development of a distinctive working-class culture highlights the symbolism of something as mundane as the flat cap; whilst the essay on the Vietnam war and guerilla warfare has interesting implications for modern day conflicts such as in Palestine and Israel.

I watched another fascinating Arena arts program on BBC iPlayer. It was called
B. Catling: Where Does It All Come From?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011v76/arena-b-catling-where-does-it-all-come-from?xtor=ES-211-[48792_PANUK_DIV_47_IPL_Editorial2021_RET_ABC]-20211127-[bbcfour_arenabcatlingwheredoesitallcomefrom_factualarts]



An eye-popping insight into the extraordinary, late-flourishing career of the maverick artist, teacher, and performer Brian Catling RA, whose unique vision and imagination are celebrated through a shifting narrative of newly restored archive material, exclusive interviews, and specially shot footage.

Brian Catling was born in 1948, a foundling adopted and raised in tenements on the Old Kent Road in postwar south London. He is an internationally exhibited and lauded sculptor and, as B. Catling, the author of The Vorrh Trilogy, a vast work of untrammelled imagination, and the novel Earwig, which provided the inspiration for Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s 2021 film of the same name. Catling is also a professor at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at the University of Oxford, a royal academician and a Cholmondeley Award-winning poet. He is also the erstwhile impresario of the legendarily disreputable Cabaret Melancholique and an occasional sinister cinematic presence, both in front of and behind the camera.

Where Does It All Come From is a window into Catling’s world that, like Catling himself, defies categorization. It is shaped through a stitching-together of rediscovered archive material with newly shot interviews, fragments of previously unseen filmworks, interjections and interactions, ghosts and revenants. Important locations in Catling’s life and work – south London and Whitechapel, museums, churches, dives, Gozo, Leipzig, Copenhagen – are interwoven with imaginary landscapes and revisited, explored or recreated. Interviews and long-lost performances are remade and repurposed, seances held, dead or vagrant voices resuscitated. Characters, symbols and strange beings – some of whom then reveal their role and purpose – are glimpsed or merely spoken of, sometimes without explanation. At times, fiction hijacks fact to reveal other, deeper truths.

We see Catling at work, in the past and the present, in public performance, on stage, conjuring uncanny presences in galleries, abandoned rooms and in his studio. His histories are told, including childhood obsessions with outsiders and monsters, the early days of art school and labouring jobs at Truman’s Brewery, becoming an artist, a sculptor and maker of installations, and his decision to retreat from the London art world.

A host of writers, artists, musicians, curators and former students, including actor Ray Winstone recollecting a terrifying encounter in London’s Whitechapel, are also called upon to bear witness to a creative spirit who defies definition and is capable of endless self-reinvention.

Fascinating program.

Also, check out the Delia Derbyshire one -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000w6tr/arena-delia-derbyshire-the-myths-and-the-legendary-tapes

Many many years ago when i did Open University one of the second level courses i took was on The Enlightenment. A fascinating area of history and arts. One of my favourite painters from that period is Caspar David Friedrich whom was an 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter and generally considered the most important German artist of his generation.

His forte was the contemplation of nature, in which he seeked to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension"

So here are a couple of my favourites -




Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
c. 1818
Medium Oil-on-canvas
Dimensions 98.4 cm × 74.8 cm (37.3 in × 29.4 in)
Location Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany




Two Men Contemplating the Moon, Galerie Neue Meister, 1819/20

I shall be reading more about the Italian Renaissance today, as i picked this book up for fifty pence in Faversham on Monday, and will be taking it along with me on my visits.



and thus will complement this book -

A trip to Tunbridge Wells yesterday to do three visits. Also had enough time to peruse Halls Bookshop again , and picked up a few bargains , particularly this one for 50 pence -



"Culture and Society in Britain 1850-1890" ed by J.M Golby (Oxford University Press)


 plus "The Renaissance In Europe, Courts Patrons And Poets" ed by David Mater (Yale University Press)

Both have been used as  textbooks for Open University arts courses.



On the way back had a few moments drinking beer at the Wetherspoons pub in Tonbridge. A pint of Thornbridge Jaipur ale (5.9 % ABV).

Missed the last 333 bus back from Maidstone by a minute due to the previous bus driver stopping five minutes at various bus stops to stay within his schedule , so it was much later than expected that I arrived back in the village. Arriva is one bus company i really do hate!

An excellent day in Eastbourne. The weather turned out to be gloriously sunny, and to be frank, what other better way could you have than imbibing in some real ales at a beer festival.

I met my brother and his friend, Brian, outside the Winter Gardens where the Eastbourne Beer Festival was being held. Cheers went round the queue when the doors opened up to let us in.

Two halls were filled with stands of regional, local and national brewers, plus a perry and cider stand ,and one for international beers, that is, the type of beers you get from Belgium.



I decided not to muck about with a weak beer to start with, and then move up# on gravity. I went both feet forward and started at the five per cent level before going upwards.

These are the beers I tried -

Brewsters Stilton Porter (5.0 % ABV)
Frog Island Croak And Stagger (5.6 % ABV)
Phoenix Wobbly Bob (6.0 % ABV)
Orkney Skull Splitter (8. 5 % ABV)
Burton Bridge Thomas Sykes (10% ABV)

Finished off with a very strong cider -

Chafford Hellishly Strong (13% ABV)


coming42 enjoying a beer

Music came via two bands, a duo called Band of Two and the other called Pocketsize. The latter played folk towards bluegrass and country style.





We soaked up the beer with a slice of pizza, whilst Brian had a lamb dish which he couldn't finish ending up with me hoovering up the rest. Yum yum!

Damn sniffling cold again. I was going to start a "no alcohol" regime this month but due to the fact that i have this cold i might postpone the regime til a bit later in the month.

I cannot understand the reasons why ITV has cancelled the excellent South Bank Show. It was a shining beacon for the arts on the commercial channel, and it seems philistine not to  renew it.  Where does Melvin Bragg go now?

The BBC still has plenty of arts related programmes and its BBC 4 channel is generally  essential viewing. Last Friday was the first part of a four week documnetary "Latin Music USA" which looks at the influence of latin music on American jazz and pop. The next instalment looks at the rise of salsa in the seventies and i for one cannot wait to see it,as i have quite a large selection of salsa LP's in my collection.