Jazzy D's Soul Notes

Barbara Demick "Nothing To Envy: Real Lives In North Korea" (Granta Books)







Barbara Demick gives us a rare glimpse into the day-to-day life of the people of North Korea. Through the tales of six people who managed to escape the "Hermit Kingdom", we are exposed to horrors that are all but unimaginable.

We read of the initial prosperity of t the 60's and 70's and the decline from there, which ended in the famines of the 1990s. We read of a country where the people are so malnourished the average height to be accepted into the army had to be lowered(to something like five feet). A country where if you were able to purchase a television set, you would need to register it with the government, which would then block all channels except the approved state television networks, and could then show up at your home to inspect the television.

As I read this book I had to stop and process the severity of the tales the author was telling us. People starving in such numbers you would stumble over dead people in the street. Arrests and deportations of 3 generations of a family for the most minor infractions.

This is a must-read for anyone interested in the Stalinist state, although it is at times hard to process due to the overwhelmingly depressing tales.

Warren Ellis "Nina Simone's Gum: A Memoir of Things Lost and Found" (Faber & Faber)





Inspiration can be highly particular. For Warren Ellis, the extraordinary musician in the band Dirty Three and long-time collaborator with Nick Cave, his musical journey may have begun on a night of clowns. He certainly followed a varied path from his Australian roots, across Europe, to eventually be in the audience when Nina Simone performed her last concert in London. It’s not surprising that Simone was one of Warren’s musical inspirations. But her gum? When he snagged it after the concert from where it had been stuck on the piano, he established a link with her that he would treasure for decades ahead. This says as much about Warren Ellis as it does about anything. But it also reveals a bit about how objects, even mundane objects, are transfigured by our associations.

This is a lovely, gentle book. It is just how his many fans think of Warren Ellis — a lovely, gentle man. He seems to be someone who throughout his life, has been compelled to travel the long road of the true artist, not fully knowing his destination other than it being at least one more step down the road. And what we find is that this too can be a good life. It’s not for everyone, but then nothing is. We can just be grateful that people like Warren are on his path.

Gently recommended to gentle souls everywhere.

Aaron J. Leonard "Whole World In An Uproar" (Repeater Books)





Whole World in an Uproar by Aaron Leonard is a fascinating look at countercultural music during the long 60s and how the various power structures sought to repress it.

This is less about any out-and-out censorship attempts and more about the attempts at repression as well as the monitoring, often unlawfully, of artists. Using declassified FBI files, memoirs, publications of the period and interviews, we get a view of just how willing the government was and still is, to impede citizens even if they aren't breaking any laws. Other institutions, from religious groups to media outlets, also readily did what they could to control people by labelling music as evil, whether for pointing out social ills or for bringing races together to enjoy music. Yes, having Blacks and whites enjoying music at the same venue was enough to get the government and the religious right all up in arms.

Reading this account is both entertaining and informative. In retrospect, some of the names under surveillance seem unfathomable from our current time and knowing how the rest of their lives played out. At the time, however, they were considered a threat just by representing change.

I highly recommend the book to those interested in social history and music history, especially where politics and religion intersect with popular culture.

John Higgs "Love and Let Die: Bond, the Beatles and the British Psyche" (Weidenfeld and Nicolson)






On the 5th October 1962 two events occurred which were to change the cultural landscape forever in both the UK and across the world: the Beatles released their first single Love Me Do and the first James Bond film, Dr No was also released in cinemas. The biggest band and the single greatest film character of all time exploded onto the scene and here we are sixty years later. The Beatles' legacy lives on and No Time to Die, the 25th Bond film, ‘saved’ the cinemas when it was eventually released post Covid-19 lockdowns.

To have one such an institution is rare for a country, to have two is a rich treasure, and to give birth to both on the same day is a very special day indeed. Jon Higgs has had fun comparing and contrasting the themes and similarities and the crossover points, and his observation that the Beatles were all about Love, and Bond about Death. The anecdotes and moments in history that coincided with their story are interesting. Some of the connections are a bit more tenuous than others—the chapter about Desmond Llewelyn, for example, links Bond and the Beatles by the thread of car crashes, but I suppose it works.

If you are a fan of both the Beatles and 007 movies, you are in for a treat.

Angela Y. Davis "Freedom Is A Constant Struggle" (Penguin)




Angela Davis is a leading and historical figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the USA, as well as an outspoken Communist and Feminist. She has inspired countless individuals to rise up and take action against injustice and in support of freedom for all. Her book, FREEDOM IS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE, is a collection of interviews, conversations, essays, and speeches that tackle the concept of freedom in different ways.

While there are many overlapping themes in these pieces, Davis spends a significant amount of time discussing oppression and its historical roots in colonialism, apartheid, classism, caste systems, and especially during Reconstruction after the American Civil War. She makes a convincing case that nothing, throughout the history of the world, ever happens in a vacuum. What happens "here" is influenced by, and in turn influences, what happens "there". In every case, she makes connections between the treatment of black bodies in the USA with the treatment of "others" elsewhere in the world by the dominant societal and governmental powers. She ultimately believes that, for the rights of marginalized groups to reach true equality with those of the dominant class, we all need to recognize the intersectionality of the issues at stake. Feminism is intrinsically linked with racism, sexism, and classism.

More importantly, the essays in this collection make the case for the connection between so many struggles that may not be immediately obvious to those not well-versed in history. Ms. Davis makes a compelling case for the ways so many of these struggles are connected, and how much we have to learn from each other.

Naomi Klein "The Battle For Paradise" (Haymarket Books)






Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in September of 2017.

And despite Puerto Rico’s status as a territory of the United States, the US government has done embarrassingly little to assist the American citizens of this beautiful island.

While the absence of US assistance has been bad enough, there is a more malicious contingent at work. Naomi Klein takes aim at them – disaster capitalists – in her new book, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists. In it, Klein makes a strong argument for fighting against selfish outside influences trying to make a buck on the backs of traumatized local Puerto Rican communities.

Does this situation sound familiar? It should be because it is essentially another colonization of Puerto Rico by the US.

In this 96-page book, Naomi Klein gives her reader a short history lesson as well as reasons why Puerto Ricans would (and should!) be skeptical of outside actors (pp. 25-32). While lifelong Puerto Rican residents dig out from under the wreck of Maria, the governor and other self-interested players court the rich from the mainland US by offering major tax breaks to move there – tax breaks that residents do not get to take advantage of (pp. 18-19).

Often referred to as “Puertopians,” these wealthy libertarians seek to live tax- (and care-) free in Puerto Rico, all the while seeing themselves as saviors of the embattled island and its residents (pp. 15-25). As Klein explains, “In February 2018, [the governor of Puerto Rico] told a business audience in New York that Maria had created a ‘blank canvas’ on which investors could paint their very own dream world” (p. 25); never mind the over three million people who already call it home.

Klein explains how Puerto Rico was in such a vulnerable position, even before Hurricane Maria hit, with importing a staggering amount of fossil fuels (pp. 5-7) and food (pp. 32-37) while also incurring an enormous debt after the global economic downturn of 2008 (47-51). These deficiencies are in large part due to the legacy of colonialism and the plantation economy.

In addition, situations and events in Puerto Rico over the last twelve years have made it particularly vulnerable to “shock doctrine” tactics. According to Klein, the phenomenon of the shock doctrine is the “deliberate exploitation of states of emergency to push through a radical pro-corporate agenda” (p. 45). Klein lays out how Puerto Rico is the most distinct example of this since Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 (pp. 43-53).

But Klein is also intentional in giving inspirational examples of how some local residents are harnessing collaborative partnerships, renewable energies (pp. 8-11), and innovative agricultural practices (pp. 37-43) to challenge existing inequities, untenable structures, and malignant outside influences.

It is this entrepreneurial spirit that Klein encourages in Puerto Rico as this is an opportunity for them to transform their home into the sustainable paradise that they themselves envision (p. 12). Through organization and strength, they will be able to overcome the “Puertopians” who seek to resettle the island (pp. 30-32).

While Klein’s book explores only one facet of the effects of Maria on Puerto Rico – disaster capitalists setting their sights on Puerto Rico in its vulnerable post-Maria state – it is an imperative issue to address. Only a brief (although necessary) introduction, the book offers a firm foundation to understanding disaster capitalism, the shock doctrine phenomenon, and how Puerto Rico was susceptible to more than just hurricane damage when Maria struck.

This is a quick and worthwhile read for anyone interested in Puerto Rico, the effects of colonialism and/or natural disasters, or the empowerment of local Puerto Ricans to lead the efforts of rebuilding how they see fit. It’s accessible information to most anyone, even those with no knowledge on any of these topics or the history of Puerto Rico.

Over the years I have found the idea of nuance to be disappearing from conversations and from how simplified language has become. In fact, as we have become more digitalised our grasp on nuance has become weaker. We get polarised into two different diametrically opposed factions. Take politics for example as being a prima facie aspect of this polarisation. Of course, vocabulary is an important fact of this situation and I do feel that the less we read and discover new words or different nuances the less tolerable we become. Digital culture has made us become less nuanced and more radical or recalcitrant against opposing views.

Social media, overall, is definitely cursed by this lack of nuance, except for a few places such as LiveJournal. When it comes to the written word itself, then the majority are caught in their own tribal proclivities except for the more balanced views of the Guardian newspaper. I must admit I do not know which American newspaper has a similar nuanced viewpoint of the world. Some may argue that such papers are elitist, and once again, we are caught in this tribalism. I even occasionally fall into that same trap and dismiss red top papers such as The Sun, and then must check myself for not understanding why readers of that rag have differing viewpoints. Oh, and there I go again calling it a “rag” in such dismissive terms.

And yes, I do love nuance and the discovery of words and meaning.

So dear reader, what are your thoughts and viewpoints? Concurring or opposing, all will be read and not cancelled.

Agnès Poirier "Left Bank: Art, Passion and the Rebirth of Paris 1940–1950" (Bloomsbury)







I have seldom enjoyed a book as heartily as I have done with this account of the extraordinary explosion of intellectual and artistic creativity that occurred, despite circumstances that could scarcely have been less convivial, during the 1940s around the Left Bank in Paris.

Put most simply, this is a marvelous book: informative, enlightening, well researched, and also highly entertaining. (Less importantly, perhaps, but certainly worthy of mention, it also has the most delightful cover, featuring lovely line drawings of several of the leading characters in the intellectual and literary café-based society that thrived around Paris’s fabled left bank throughout the 1940s, both during and after the German occupation.)

Around this time last year, I took a punt on buying Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails. That was a serendipitous purchase that pitched me into the lives of the Existentialists, a field in which I had been interested in ages. It was the unbridled joy that I derived from that chance purchase that prompted me to buy Agnès Poirier’s book, which proved to be equally felicitous.

I was intrigued by the dates cited in the subtitle. Knowing that Paris had been occupied by the Germans for the few years of that decade I had assumed that there had been very little intellectual, cultural, or political activity or progress. Nothing could be further from the truth. Certainly, the intellectual class was depleted, with members either having fled to Britain or America or signed up to fight the Germans. Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, had been drafted into the French army in 1939 and had served as a meteorologist before being taken as a prisoner. He escaped and returned to Paris where he resumed his former role teaching at the Lycée Pasteur. Back in Paris, and reunited with his life partner Simone de Beauvoir, he found a large circle of his former associates still living and writing, with the help of some judiciously turned blind eyes from various benign individuals within the Nazi administration. Their activity flourished around the cafes of the Left bank of the River Seine. Food and money were in short supply, but somehow, they always managed to find the means to visit a café, where in addition to holding lengthy tobacco- and alcohol-fuelled debates, most of their writing was undertaken. That is not to say that their synthesis and expression of ideas were always safe. Many of their circle were arrested, or simply vanished, but it still proved a period of immense fruitfulness.

That literary, philosophical and political fertility exploded after the Liberation, augmented by returning French writers and thinkers such as Albert Camus, and the influx of foreign artists and writers, and in particular a host of Americans such as Irwin Shaw, Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. Alongside them were Arthur Koestler and Samuel Beckett who had been based in Paris throughout.

Such a concentration of intellectual and artistic talent could not fail to yield durable riches. Not only did this group spawn existentialism as a philosophical concept, but it would facilitate the development of a brand of socialism wholly opposed to communism, and, in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, yield one of the first and most enduring feminist manifestos.

The proximity of oppression and relentless distillation of ideas proved a heady aphrodisiac, and one of the most telling aspects of the book was the interlaced relationships between the leading protagonists. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre enjoyed a long-term off-and-on relationship, though that in no way inhibited them from taking on other lovers in-between times. Similarly, Arthur Koestler seemed intent on sleeping with as many of his female associates as possible, while still wishing to retain almost proprietorial rights over Mamaine Paget, his long-time partner and eventually (if only briefly) his wife. Meanwhile, Saul Bellow was openly dismissive, almost disgusted, by the constant round of infidelity among his French writing colleagues, although that did not prevent him from embarking on his own affairs while his wife and son were kept out of the way. As Agnes Poirier points out, life on the Left bank came to resemble Arthur Schnitzler’s play La Ronde.

All this might lead one to expect a sombre and dense tome, but Ms. Poirier deploys an elegant and engaging lightness of touch and scatters the book with lovely pen portraits of these cultural giants.

Highly recommended!

Susan Sontag "On Photography" (Penguin Books)




Susan Sontag's original essays on the meaning of photography and the photographic image are challenging. She presents a wide range of ideas and discusses the work of some of the great photographers of the past century. Whether you agree with her views about the aggressive nature of photography or the essential "nonintervention" of the act of taking a picture, you can savour the intelligent arguments that she presents.

These essays are six meditations on the nature and implications of photography. Each essay pivots engagingly around a provocative theme: the “aesthetic consumerism” exemplified by taking and collecting photographs, the inherent surrealism of photographs, the incurable defensiveness of those who claim photography an art form, photography’s project of beautifying the world, the West as a “culture based on images”.


I was disappointed that there were no pictorial examples of the multitude of references made by Sontag. The book was nevertheless an excellent and invigorating read.

David Hajdu "Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture" (Da Capo)





The book jacket states that "Heroes and Villains is the first collection of essays by David Hajdu, the award-winning author of The Ten-Cent Plague, Positively 4th Street, and Lush Life. Eclectic and controversial, Hajdu's essays take on topics as varied as pop music, jazz, the avant-garde, comic books, and our downloading culture."

This describes the book very well in which he writes with enormous confidence and competence across various cultural byways. Not all the essays are in my sphere of interest such as Elvis Presley and The Colonel, but I did find the ones on Harry Partch, Anita O'Day, Elvis Costello, Abbey Lincoln, and John Zorn fascinating and illuminating.

A gift for readers who enjoy erudition seasoned with élan.