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News

Hot Times Was Great!

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It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Two Fridays back, we played a wonderful gig at Hot Times. Then, last Sunday, we shot for our new short docu-poem, “Target Practice”. I’ll talk about that real soon. Right now: Hot Times. Ten minutes before we went on, the tent was almost empty. Ten minutes later, The Governor struck his first note for a good small crowd. As we played, the crowd filled out inside and outside the tent in the beautiful evening air. It wasn’t stifling on the stage and the monitor mix was good. Everything clicked and the crowd knew......

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The Counter-Revolution WILL Be Televised

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Some appreciation has been coming in for sharing the words before this Friday’s show. So here’s another piece we’ll be performing at Hot Times. (This Friday, Sept 9, 6:45. Parsons and Main.) It’s based on Gil Scttt-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. We took off from that with our “The Repression Will Not Be Televised”. Then NOLA Resistance did “The Resistance Will Not Be Televised”. Now we’ve got: The Counter-Revolution WILL  Be Televised C#7 Racists will speak openly of “Replacement Theory” While they gang-rape critical race theory Or any race theory except the master race All on cable TV.......

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On Moral Decay in America: Role Models and Lack of Consequences

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Our newest piece (below) premiered at Comfest in June. Here’s why we play it. I got tired of hearing about how to stop violence and the dire danger of gay and books and color and blame the teachers and how bad or lazy or self-absorbed this or that generation is and and and. I got tired of sactimoniass religionists and criminalistic demagogues telling us what we can do with bed, bath, and body while themselves behaving in egregiously horrific ways that would put the rest of us in jail. I got especially tired that they don’t understand the behavior they......

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Being a Citizen Artist doesn’t get you a lot of gigs

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Make Jazz Not War! @ Comfest 2022 Saturday, June 25, 8:00 pm Goodale Street Stage Being a Citizen Artist doesn’t get you a lot of gigs. I can name most of them from Poets Against War to “Debbie Does Armageddon” at a ‘90s Hiroshima/Nagasaki memorial. In the last few years, being a Citizen Artist actually became a hindrance to getting gigs. Again. A lot of places stopped calling back. I understood. We didn’t stop. And now we’ve landed a great spot at Comfest! Our best festival spot ever! Saturday night @ 8:00. Now I’m not saying Citizen Artist content got us......

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Make Jazz Not War!

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That’s the JazzPoetry Ensemble’s new name! Our name is changing because we’ve changed. We’re not just a band anymore! We’re a (loose) affiliation of Citizen Artists, dedicated to using our arts for our community. We’re video and audio and productions and performance art. We’re not just musicians. We’re videographers and audio producers and graphic artists and editors and photographers and more. And we’re out to change the world! Make Jazz Not War! JazzPoetry Ensemble was a good descriptive name for its time. We were developing our art form and aesthetic, honing our style and sound. The poetry ranged widely from......

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Ukraine: Song for the Refugees

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My grandpa Ruby and Grandma Molly were both Ukrainian Jews. Ukraine was part of Imperial Russia then, so they were also Russian Jews. Molly’s family was from the Odesa area. Ruby’s family was from near the Polish border. Russian Jews had no rights. They couldn’t live anywhere except in the Pale of Jewish Settlement and they couldn’t own property. Employment and education were severely restricted. They had to be back in the shtetl (Jewish settlement) by sundown. And then there were the massacres and lynchings and rapes (pogroms). These were the Jew laws of Russia. Unsurprisingly, people ran. Became refugees.......

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