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Wayne Shorter - Devil's island

The Blues and Gospel Train created a similarly exoticized theatre for white British audiences – engendering, through its representational matrix, the very cultural differences it claimed to portray. The anachronistic use of frontier motifs, including a steam locomotive, wanted posters and hardware alluding to a western saloon, a historically combined with southern paraphernalia including sacks of cotton, a surrey wagon and a rocking chair, constructed a scenario rich in pastoral myth. This setting, however, paid no attention to the presence of de jure segregation, constructing a factitious southern past free from violent Jim Crow divisions. Providing a more palatable substitute for British audiences indicative of a desire to reconceive history, this portrayal erased disagreeable yet defining aspects of African American history... Once again, this fantasy scenario made some artists look absurdly out of place , such as Tharpe, dressed in high heels and a sumptuous coat, while supporting the rugged, down home personae of others, notably McGhee, Terry and Waters. As established professional entertainers, these musicians were nonetheless consummate actors, adopting roles that demonstrated intimate access to the codes of blues expression. The unfortunate effect of such astute personification, however, was a restriction of their creative compass.

Barthes memorably grounds his analysis of myth in a photograph from Paris Match in which a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour... we witness an equivalent motion whereby blues revivalism condemns black performers to be instrumental signifiers of racial alterity while simultaneously using them to establish and justify the very racialized ontology upon which blues revivalism rests... using black performers as props to signify a paradigm of cultural validity untarnished by mainstream pop and interracial contact... those who participated in the revival, he notes, believed they had discovered an object called blues... proved to be an ideal surrogate thanks to his skill in creating the illusion of deep, artless immersion in song, Waters, in contrast, faltered due to his persistent self fashioning, a position that, for purists, revealed the intolerable truth about such performative fictions. The racialized logic of blues spectatorship, in short, sought to keep those Others under its gaze, supreme witnesses to the exploitative malice of modern capital, both disciplined and premodern.


Wayne Shorter - Devil's island
  • Written by: Wayne Shorter
  • Released on: Wayning Moments album
  • Released in: 1962

"Wayne Shorter was almost another player entirely, his lovely tone attuned more to lyrical thoughts, his choice of notes more spare. He co founded Weather Report in 1970 and through 1986 released Grammy winning albums."

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