Month: October 2009

The British National Party On Stage, Ctd

Byan Appleyard comments on the Nick Griffin spectacle:

I'm interested in his fondness for the idea of the racial purity of the English. Racial purity is a laughable concept to anybody who knows anything about genetics, almost as laughable, in fact, as that creepy obsession with ancestry. Go back a few hundred years and everybody is descended from everybody else. Family trees are a joke and I reckon I should be King, but so, probably, should you. Anyway, claiming racial purity for the English is more than just laughable, it's insane. We are such hopeless mongrels, as Daniel Defoe pointed out with riotous good humour…

Still More Than Believe In Evolution

Dave Roberts confronts the new Pew poll showing a decline in the number of Americas who believe in global warming:

It should be noted, of course, that 57% ain’t bad, given the public’s generally low level of scientific knowledge. About 79% of people know the earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa, while 80% believe prayer accelerates healing. Some 75% believe in angels but just 39% believe in evolution. Public opinion on matters of science is of great interest for a great many reasons, but it is a poor guide for public policy. Everyone deserves to have their voice heard on how we might best respond to what’s happening, but what’s happening is happening and we can’t change it by not acknowledging it.

Whose Country? Ctd

A reader writes:

The reader who wrote about the banjo should check out the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a string band out of North Carolina that formed after meeting at the 2005 Black Banjo Conference. They gave a rousing concert for a (mostly-white) Minneapolis audience, and also pitched this book, which tells the story of how "Dixie", the anthem of the South, was originally written by a pair of African-American brothers born to slave parents. (NPR summary here.)

If that makes "Dixie" a sort of flagship for what the multicultural string-band tradition became, then it's no surprise that,

"For the past fifty years, with precious few exceptions – Leon Bibb, Josh White and Taj Mahal come to mind -, African American musicians have paid very little attention to the formidable wealth of multiracial culture which permeated the South between the Civil War period and the Civil Rights era, ata crucial time when poor Blacks and poor Whites had every reason to share a similar vision of life." (Sebastian Danchin, in the liner notes to "Heritage" by the Carolina Chocolate Drops.)

The Carolina Chocolate Drops say their first commitment is to making music they enjoy; "It is an added bonus that it is a part of our culture that we are spearheading new interest in Black string band music."

Here they are with a fantastic cover of "Hit 'Em Up Style".