This is the first track of the “Blac Buc” previews. “At The Grave of Albert Ayler“ was composed at EMS in Stockholm, Sweden during March /April of this year. The piece employs a few different synthesis methods. Of course there are the EMS Buchla 100 and 200e modular systems. The main NS Designs bass (which plays the arco melody) is processed through the EMS Serge modular synth. Additional processes and treatments were done in Csound. Have a listen, enjoy and leave comments please!
“Blac Buc” is a work that examines the difference in opinion between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois regarding “the Negro problem” during the post-Reconstruction era in the United States. DuBois was a Marxist who promoted a statist, trickle-down intellectualism as the solution to “…the problem of race and color…” in the US. He founded the NAACP and became the leader of what would become the template for the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s; until he emigrated to Ghana where he isolated himself from the movement he had started and was forced out of. Between 1895 and 1915, Booker T. Washington was one of the most powerful persons in the United States. His perspective on the matter of race relations and the future “Black America” made him a highly sought after and respected adviser to presidents as well as captains of industry. In alignment with the ideals of Ayn Rand, Washington advocated full laissez-faire capitalism for the post-Reconstructionist south as the way forward for both the rehabilitation of the South and also the advancement of Black people.
“… progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized…The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.” — Washington “The Atlanta Compromise”
W.E.B. DuBois was born free (to an affluent family) in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He advocated full social socio-political incorporation – to include voting rights and the abolition of segregation in all of its forms – and the implementation of racial quotas (what we now call “affirmative action”) over economic freedom and independence.
“… Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys.” –W.E.B. DuBois
Before emigrating to spend the remainder of his life in Ghana, Mr. DuBois also wrote:
“In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.”
The point of “Blac Buc” is a simple one: legislation is no substitute for self-determination and economic freedom.
More to come…
Going Outside 