I 0 4A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, September 29, 2003 OP/ED 4w I*r able firogm jDtfdu 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 letters@michigandaily.com EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 LOUIE MEIZLISH Editor in Chief AUBREY HENRETTY ZAC PESKOWITZ Editorial Page Editors NOTABLE QUOTABLE 'We came to play with Chinese girls!" Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. SA M B U T ER '-w SOAPBOX N L o +U9 , U~ h0' u , espnJOL. biO v ~5Mn - An unidentified Japanese tourist, who traveled to China with 400 other men to have sexual intercourse with prostitutes, as reported by the BBC. The escapade has caused widespread controversy in China. The Blues STEVE COTNER My BACK PAGES 14 was in Starbucks the other night scamming free coffee from a friend (you think I would pay those people?), when I noticed the CDs on sale at the counter: Johnny Cash's "Artist's Choice" collection and a compila- tion,"Got a Feeling Called the Blues." I was sad to see Cash's ghost next to a Grande double caramel mocha latte, but I was inconsolable about the blues. The album cover looked like a bubble bath ad, though the artists on the back looked like a good sampling of old blues music, and the paradox plunged me into a fog of uncer- tainty from which I have only recently emerged. Why are trendy coffeemakers recommend- ing old Delta blues to trendy coffee drinkers? Should I protest the loss of authenticity to corpo- rate compilations, the corruption of the music's spirit by sharply dressed aesthetic taste-makers? The Ann Arbor Blues Fest and Martin Scorcese's PBS series "The Blues" (airs all this week, 9 p.m.) are floating around me, and I can't tell what is up or down Li the music world. I am worried about Starbucks because the compilation/reissue trend really affects how we perceive music. The Rolling Stones have given arm-chair afficionados Super Audio CD ver- sions of old songs, making every home theater system that much cooler. The living room is becoming an acceptable substitute for the con- cert hall or the bar room stage. Scorcese says in his film that blues music is "everybody's music," and as we get further into consumer technology, we see he is right: Anyone can own it. But the blues was never for the espresso set, and if you only know it for B.B. King's Whop- per ads, it's not for you. There used to be a time when the blues did not exist in white people's living rooms. It was the sound of dusty front porches and stomping bare feet. It came from old men and women who sang about the devil and drinking alone, and it existed for its own sake. In the mid 1930s, a young guy named Alan Lomax went into the deep south and made the first recordings of peo- ple like Leadbelly and Muddy Waters. He cap- tured the intimacy of those artists, the intensity of feeling they had in person and the deeply affecting sound of whole families and towns singing work songs together. Since then, white people have been discover- ing the blues over and over again, including the hip college students of the '60s and the studied imitators of the British invasion, but none ever learned more than what Lomax found in those legendary days in the '30s. Beyond that point, you might say, history is shrouded in darkness. As time passes, the blues will seem more and more irrelevant to most Americans. The model of the ascetic bluesman, sitting on his steps with an acoustic guitar and harmonica, will mean less and less to a culture that only validates the products of high technology and neat packaging. It will mean even less to the coffee drinkers who will buy up these compila- tions thinking they had sprung from a vacuum, or worse yet, from the corporations that sell them. The real artists and their life experiences will seem irrelevant in a world so aesthetically driven. So I have qualms when Scorcese calls the blues "everybody's music," but it would still do a body good to watch his film. And as I sit through the hours of unearthed footage, I'm sure I will think back often to my own Lomax moment... It was this past summer, when I spent time traveling through southern Africa and on a few occasions was fortunate enough to hear the music of local people. I had brought a handheld tape recorder to capture the sounds of busy city centers, of village life along the Zambezi River and animal noises in the Game Parks. I soon found myself trying to capture the music too, and though I was discrete, I was as enthusiastic about it as Alan Lomax ever could have been. Somewhere in my room now is a plastic tape of Zulu schoolchildren singing and clapping together; it does not contain the great welcoming hymn the whole school sang - hundreds of stu- dents in unison with a little girl singing up and down over them all. But it will be enough to remember what it was like. And I did not think to bring the recorder one night to a village on Lake Malawi, where the people treated us all to a huge meal and sang harmonies next to a camp- fire, the women shuffling their feet to a drum and all of us laughing together. There are a few photos, and I tried to write about it in my jour- nal, but some experiences are not translatable. In a few years, I might still have the tape of the Zulu children, but it will be much harder to remember the scene at Lake Malawi. At some point, I may completely forget it. But I was there for it, and the tapes were never the point. They were just a poor effort to hold on to something good. I imagine that, for all the Leadbellies that Lomax brought out, he must have had his share of Lake Malawis as well - the places, artists and songs that always existed but never found their way to tape. And in some ways it is a shame that history passed them by without men- tion. But they were not for us to see in the first place. The blues did not exist for the archives - no real music does - and none of us today will ever really understand. Cotner can be reached at cotners@umich.edu. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Said will be mourned, but his writings will live on TO THE DAILY: Edward W. Said, one of the most coura- geous and fiercely independent intellectuals of our time, passed away in New York last week at the age of 67 after a long struggle with leukemia. A world-renowned cultural critic, pro- fessor of comparative literature at Columbia University and the author of numerous scholarly books, Said received an honorary degree from the University in 1997. Said was born in Jerusalem when Palestine was under British mandate. In 1948, when the State of Israel was created and over 700,000 Palestinians became displaced into refugee camps, he left Jerusalem with his family to Egypt, and later moved to the United States, where he earned his bachelor's degree at Princeton and master's and doctorate degrees at Harvard. Said is the author of over 20 books and countless articles and speeches. His most semi- nal work, "Orientalism," established his acade- mic reputation and forged new grounds in post-colonial studies in the humanities. In the book, Said maintains that reductionist represen- tations of the East in literature reflected and rein- forced Western imperialist enterprises of the time. Orientalist discourse seeks to transform the East into an alien other that is inferior and unen- lightened, a situation in which the West, by virtue of the misrepresentation of the East, emerges as enlightened and progressive, and jus- tified in its imperial endeavor. Said continued expanding and elaborating on this thesis throughout his life in works such as "The Ques- tion of Palestine," "Covering Islam" and "Cul- ture and Imperialism." After Sept. 11, Said spoke passionately against the heightened vilifi- cation and "othering" of Islam and Muslims in America, while at the same time uncompromis- ingly condemning terrorism in all its forms. One would need pages to list all of Said's scholarly publications, honorary degrees, and professional awards. What propelled Said into prominence as a popular and organic intellectu- al, however, was his steadfastness in advocating for social justice causes and speaking truth to power at all cost. Said was one of the most vocal and eloquent advocate of the Palestinian cause and a staunch critic of Israeli state terrorism. He passion and conviction against lies and half- truths presented as knowledge by those in posi- tions of power. His scholarship and his unwavering commitment to social justice inspire generations of Muslim- and Arab-American scholar-activists. While we, as Muslim and Arab American students at the University, mourn the loss of Said, we are consoled by the fact that his life-long accomplishments arm us with a new paradigm to contribute to a universal intellectual tradition that incorporates our empowered voic- es and narratives. SAWSAN ABDULRAHIM School of Public Health Coordinator, Muslim Graduate Student Association CARMEL SALHI LSA junior Chair, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality OMAR KHALIL Rackham President, Muslim Student Association Detroit Project allows students to reject stereotypes To THE DAILY: I would like to thank Tim Reed for his let- ter to the editor, Article damages view of volun- teerism; students lazy, hold wrong views on service (09/26/03). Reed raises many excellent points, but I would like to clarify the position of the Detroit Project for the benefit of the Daily readers. It is an unfortunate problem that many stu- dents hold negative stereotypes about Detroit as truths. At the DP, we feel that the best way to break down these stereotypes and participate in change is to get people to Detroit and see for themselves what this great city is all about - the communities. As anybody who has partici- pated in one of our service projects can attest to, our projects always involve dialogue with a community member and educational activities throughout the experience aimed at helping volunteers understand root causes of urban issues. We strongly believe that this aids in the process of creating social change. A fact we have come to understand is that many students are extremely busy already, and when they want to get involved in ser- vice, whatever the impetus, we want to pro- vide them an opportunity to do so and get are committed for more than one project, many of them making weekly commitments. To close, I would like to reaffirm my belief that even a student participating only once can make a difference. As an example, many community members that we are in dia- logue with inform us that abandoned houses are a blight on their communities. They fre- quently refer to them as "negative energy zones" because absolutely nothing positive can happen around them. They want to tear them down, and ask for our help. If one per- son signs up, shows up, and participates in the demolition, they have helped that community by participating in creating change. We know that greater structural inequalities will not be changed in just one day, but by participating in these projects we believe that students can gain a greater understanding of the communi- ty they enter. JONATHAN GLEICHR Business senior Executive director, Detroit Project Gephardt, not Dean, is the right choice for workers To THE DAILY: America's working people and labor unions are strongholds of America's progress, and pros- perity and constitute the main backbone of the Democratic Party. I am insulted and offended when someone like former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean not only claims to be from the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," but does it in front of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, one of the strongest voices for working Americans (Dean makes Michigan campaign stop, 09/26/03). In actuality, Dean does not have the support of America's labor unions and has a terrible track record on worker's rights. The only major labor union in the state of Vermont, the teacher's union, refused to endorse him in any election after Dean borrowed money from the union and not only forgot the return the money, but then cut the education budget and initiatives for new teachers. Dean also supported free trade policies that sent American jobs abroad and exploited millions of low-wage foreign workers. There is one good thing coming out of this Dean fraud: E 1 it ~n~nt~r~itVffrgInfQ n nnSfl rm tactics trawarmaaverycommun