Reader Feedback 12.24.02

Dobbins ‘stuck’

I was very disappointed with Bill Dobbins and his comments
on popular music (“Keeping his Standards,” December 4). Mr. Dobbins
seems to feel that everything before 1940 is good, and everything after is bad.

                  Stevie
Wonder, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, Randy Newman: These
are just a few of the hundreds of great songwriters who’ve done their work
since 1940. If Mr. Dobbins is so enamored of Duke Ellington, perhaps he should
remember Mr. Ellington’s dictum: “There are two kinds of music. Good
music, and the other kind.” If Mr. Dobbins can honestly listen to the work
of the composers mentioned above and lump it into the latter category, then I
feel sorry for his students at Eastman.

                  Clarence Washington, Flanders Street,
Rochester

For love of music

Often when people fall in love with a particular style of music
or art or literature, they have a tendency to (unfairly) judge other styles
based on the features that make their style what it is. A great example of this
type of judgment can be found in City’s interview with Bill Dobbins
(“Keeping his Standards,” December 4).

                  Singing
the praises of Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Alec Wilder, and (albeit a
few things by) Stephen Sondheim is one thing. (In fact, it’s a great thing;
they all deserve many kind words.) However, speaking poorly about the Beatles’ harmonic
sense, rock ‘n’ roll and r&b’s “simplicity,” Herbie Hancock’s
attempt to bring more modern pop music into his already vast repertoire, and
Coltrane’s exploration of various styles of music is another thing entirely.

                  Through
all of his talk of “musical objectivity,” Mr. Dobbins seems to forget
that music means different things to different people; that the music of the
Beatles or Peter Gabriel or Don Henly or Stevie Wonder or Prince or Kurt Cobain
(all of whose compositions are represented on Herbie Hancock’s “The New
Standard”) can be, and is, very powerful to many people (including myself
and many other Eastman students) who could care less how many chords are
involved.

                  There
is a very simplistic, and consequently easy to digest, view of music that
professes that it contains three elements: melody, rhythm, and harmony. I would
argue that there is more to music than that; however, the other aspects are
less tangible and therefore get swept under the rug of the academic who tries
to keep things as neat and tidy as possible.

                  Texture,
emotion, intensity, social comment, silence, orchestration: these pervade such
fantastic recordings as Peter Brotzmann’s Fuck De Boere, John Cage’s Indeterminacy,
Frank Zappa’s We’re Only in It for the Money, Steve Reich’s “Come
Out,” The ICP Orchestra’s Oh, My Dog, Bob Ostertag’s All The
Rage, John Oswald’s Plunderphonics, De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and
Rising, Mats Gustafsson’s Impropositions — the list goes on.

                  Unfortunately
for all who wish to make things easy, these recordings cannot be compared with
each other without understanding from where and by whom they were created. It
would certainly be in bad form to make judgments about the quality of these
recordings from the perspective of “The Great American Songbook.” They
are not worse or better, just different.

                  If
you hear some music that doesn’t appeal to you right away, ask someone who
takes pleasure in listening to that style what about it appeals to them. If you
still don’t like what you hear, by all means dismiss it if you wish (realizing
that other people enjoy it), and listen to something else, or better yet, put
out your own record. Music is truly subjective and it stands a better chance of
lasting and growing if it stays that way.

                  Josh Rutner, Rochester (Rutner is a
senior at the Eastman School of Music)

Color blind?

Hey, Jack Doyle! Did you not
expect a reaction when you uttered that filth? And… uh, Jack: what color
is Republican? I don’t think anyone is to blame but you; you said it, and you
knew that it was subject to inference, whether you meant it or not.

                  Read
my lips, Jack: I want to hear you make your statement accurate in more than
five sentences. How are you going to get Monroe County to believe that it is
not a racially charged statement? Step up, Sunshine, and make me think that we
do not have a Trent Lott in our midst.

                  Tom
Catalano, Rochester

Fear and feeling

I’m well into my 40s and have lived through the bra-burning
years in New York City, the years of hunching and covering my breasts with baggy
clothes because I happen to have a D-cup breast on a petite frame and couldn’t
handle the male stares, and the pain and joy of breast-feeding two babies.

                  Through
it all, I loved and hated my breasts just as I have loved and hated the rest of
my body. Why? Because this crazy culture of ours is so hung up on attitudes of
female perfection, sex, and emotional expression, and I fell right into the
deep well of it all.

                  The
reason people found your cover art so distressing? I think it is essentially
because we’re all so hungry for life, but so darn afraid to taste of it. Our
bodies are just a means to express and experience each other and all of life.
If we accept our bodies and other peoples’ bodies, that makes us
“feel,” and then we’re vulnerable. And, lord, no, we don’t want to be
vulnerable!

                  Finally,
after all these years, I’m comfortable enough with myself to acknowledge that I
have needs and fears and am closer than ever to viewing my body honestly and
welcoming others to do so as well. I say I am closer, because I still have a
way to go.

                  In my
growth toward fuller self-acceptance (which goes hand in hand with acceptance
of others, of course), I recently discovered running and the wonderful things
that does for my body. Lo and behold: The breasts aren’t quite as plump as they
used to be. What a shock! And sadly for me, I have considered regaining fat in
order to make my breasts huge again, but I take some comfort in the fact that I
still fit into my D-cup bras!

                  Gosh…
when will I grow up?

                  Thanks
for City! It’s the best.

                  Jean Sica-Lieber, Manorshire Drive,
Fairport

Conservative? Us?

Maybe it’s the liberal in me, but I usually cringe when I
see the conservative label broadly applied to this community, as City editor Mary Anna Towler did in her column
on reader reaction to the November 27 story on women’s breasts (“Why We Ran
that Cover,” December 11).

                  Towler
suggested that one of the reasons City took some flak for putting a shot of a woman’s bare breasts on the cover is
that this is a conservative county in a conservative region of the state. The
inference, to me at least, is that Rochester is more conservative, and more
uptight about public displays of bare breasts, than the rest of New York State.
I don’t know about that. Once you get out of Greenwich Village and some other
sections of Manhattan and Brooklyn, where are the liberal areas of New York
State, other than maybe Ithaca or Woodstock?

                  Westchester
County and Long Island, which are as close as you’ll get to New York City
unless you’re across the river in New Jersey, are bastions of conservatism. I’d
bet City’s cover would have drawn
heat in many parts of New York City.

                  It
pains me to even think about this, but outside of a few oases, such as San
Francisco and some college towns, there’s slim pickins when it comes to liberal
communities in America. As with most things in life, it’s all relative, and as
a native Rochesterian who moved back home after living in Ohio and Virginia for
nearly 15 years, I see at worst a moderate community out my front window.

                  Rochester
no doubt at one time deserved the Smugtown label that the late newspaperman
Curt Gerling gave it, but I don’t think that is so true anymore. There are many
freethinkers in this community and many examples of progressiveness:

                  A strong,
long-standing spirit of neighborhood; community and social activism in many
areas; Rochester City Councilman Tim Mains as the first openly gay elected
public official in New York State; a sizable, highly visible, and active gay
and lesbian community; the community’s embrace of Father Jim Callan and the
Rev. Mary Ramerman of Spiritus Christi church after their break from Corpus
Christi Church; the All May Freely Serve movement that began here after
Presbyterian Church officials rejected Downtown United Presbyterian Church’s
decision to hire lesbian Pastor Jane Spahr; a marvelously diverse and rich art
and cultural community; and on and on.

                  I
also wouldn’t accept the negative feedback on the breast cover as indicative of
the prevailing public attitude. Feedback in any business usually is negative.
People generally take the time to call or write only when they want to
complain. That, love it or leave it, is human nature. Probably even in San
Francisco.

                  Richard Zitrin, South Goodman Street,
Rochester

Topic, please

What’s all this stuff about breasts? I though the article
was about people’s attitudes!

                  Jeff Marinelli, Chapin Street, Canandaigua

Freedom, abused

Has anybody else had it up to here with the mainstreaming of
vulgarity? I’m not suggesting censorship; I’m talking about the constant,
in-your-face sounds and images that contaminate the common marketplace, the
areas that should be the wide, peaceful waters of most people’s everyday lives.
I’m talking about everything from the sex-silly stupidity of Cosmopolitan covers
to the grating excess of profanity in movies that might otherwise be good. I’m
talking about the loud-mouthed rap screaming at you from passing cars and the
stomach-turning nonsense of shock radio and television.

                  The
no-holds-barred permissiveness of American “pop culture” ensures the
bombardment of sights and sounds that, although they have a right to exist,
should not have the right to saturate the general, daily environment.

                  Even
hardcore pornography has a certain integrity. It doesn’t pretend to be anything
other than what it is — pure sex — and it confines itself to spaces not
easily trod by the person not looking for it. If you want it, you should be
able to get it. If you don’t want it, you should not have it blasted in your
face at every turn.

                  America’s
right to free speech has become America’s right to be ugly. I have to remind
myself constantly that America is infinitely more than what is seen in its
cheapest displays — sex pandering, trashy manners, foul-mouthed arrogance.

                  Not
long ago, I was on a bus where one of the passengers was wearing a T-shirt that
prominently displayed the F word. The First Amendment allowed this young man to
wear his obnoxious shirt in public. To this day, I am angry with myself for not
exercising my own right to tell the smirky young punk what I thought of him and
his doltish shirt.

                  The
point is, don’t put up with it. Get angry. This is your space, too. I have my
own version of this idea posted on my bulletin board at work. It reads:

                  Do
two things every chance you get: 1) Thank God for our precious freedom of
speech. 2) Speak out against the offenses and stupidities permitted in its
name.

                  Harold
Jewell, Alexander Street, Rochester

This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2002.