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Wed, Oct. 1st offers a way to hear swinging music and help boost Obama's chances. (see below)

But first, a brief history of the presidency since 1980, via music:

Reagan     pretend cowboy           country music

Bush 1      oilman                        country music

Clinton      pretend saxophonist     jazz

Bush 2      pretend cowboy/          sound of bombs dropping

                failed oilman

McCain?   pretend maverick         sounds of bombs dropping/drills drilling?

Obama?    real maverick              jazz?

(the following from my forthcoming Blu Notes column in Jazziz):

When I called up pianist Aaron Goldberg, he'd just returned from touring in Brazil. In between studio sessions with his trio, he was busy planning "A Concert of America's Future" -- a benefit for Barack Obama's campaign with an impressive lineup of musicians.

Goldberg remembers feeling similarly inspired in 2004. "I saw my progressive-leaning friends, especially the musicians, getting apathetic," he said. "They didn't realize that, despite everything that had gone on, despite the Iraq war, it was quite possible that George Bush might be re-elected." He felt like his community of musicians had to do something. He decided to organize a fundraiser for John Kerry's campaign, and began making calls.

Monday, 9/22, 7pm: 

The Public Theater asked me to moderate a panel discussion on post-Katrina New Orleans, to follow a FREE reading from the "The Breach," a new play by Catherine Fillloux, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Joe Sutton, that interweaves three flood-related tales. I've yet to read the play but have heard only good things about it. And I'm happy that it will serve as a springboard for a larger discussion. My panelists include: New York Daily News journalist Nicole Bode, who covered Katrina and its aftermath; Robert Carey, Vice President of the International Rescue Committee's Resettlement Department; and academic Lee Clarke, author of Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination.

For more on the play and the panel, look here.

RESERVATIONS: thebreach@publictheater.org; or call 212-539-8597; first-come, first-serve basis

Monday, 10/6, 7pm: 

I'll be among the readers at a release party for the new book, Best Music Writing 2008. I'm honored to have my story, "Band on the Run in New Orleans" in there, tucked between the writing of some brilliant colleagues. (Especially to have a piece on New Orleans selected.) I'll read an excerpt. Fellow readers include: Nelson George (the book's guest editor); Gary Giddins; Jody Rosen; and Sam Kashner.

The Half King Pub

505 W 23RD ST

NEW YORK, NY 10011

TEL: 212.462.4300

http://www.thehalfking.com/

http://www.funboring.com/bestmusicwriting

Sunday night, when Allen Toussaint played "Yes We Can Can" for Democratic convention delegates in Denver, the song sounded tailor-made for the Obama campaign. But he wrote it in New Orleans, in 1970, inspired by a different era of change.

No wonder. New Orleans musicians have for more than a century anticipated and articulated just what this country needs. Now, three years past the floods that followed Katrina, Mr. Toussaint and other bearers of the city's unique (and uniquely American) culture -- jazz musicians, brass-band members, Social Aid & Pleasure Club second-liners, and Mardi Gras Indians --call on the country to respond to their needs, for the good of us all. We must recognize this culture as essential to New Orleans recovery, not to mention the restoration of our damaged national identity.

It's almost time for the Deer Isle Jazz Festival in Stonington, Maine. For eight years, I've helped bring great jazz to this tiny Down East Maine island. In that time, both the fest and I have grown. This year's event is a New Orleans blowout (more on that in my next post). Here's a recent piece I wrote for Jazziz, about my experiences as volunteer producer.

MAINE ATTRACTION

by Larry Blumenfeld

"Condoms. Tampons. Excess hair. SMALL AN-I-MALS!"

So sang the dozen folks forming a circle within a tiny cabin last July, holding that last syllable until Arturo O'Farrill dropped his right hand with a conductor's authority. I'd just made the nine-hour drive from Brooklyn, New York, to Deer Isle, Maine, but my bleary eyes found strength to widen. I laughed.

I'd walked in on a rehearsal for Haystack, The Opera: An Afro-Cuban Jazz Odyssey -- and it was no joke. O'Farrill's wife, Alison, sat at a keyboard, his eldest son, Zack, before a set of conga drums. His youngest, Adam, held a trumpet, awaiting his cue. Soon various rhythm instruments -- hand drums, cowbells, guiros, clavés -- were handed out.

Before long, O'Farrill had these painters and potters and sculptors, all of whom had come to the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts for a summer session, creating four layers of rhythm and sounding pretty damn in-sync.

O'Farrill had come to Maine to headline at the annual Deer Isle Jazz Festival, for which I've been volunteer producer since its inception, in 2001. Each summer, one festival musician serves as artist-in-residence at the Haystack School. O'Farrill, a celebrated pianist and bandleader, the son of a legendary Cuban composer, met this challenge by bringing his whole family and creating an opera, with lyrics drawn from Haystack Director Stuart Kestenbaum's work -- not his celebrated poetry, but his school manual, the part about "what not to flush down the toilet."

Politics were in the air during jazzfest -- literally. While the Neville Brothers closed the event on the Acura stage, a plane circled above the Fair Grounds towing a banner that read: "Shell, Hear the Music. Fix the Coast You Broke." Not all the commentary was so overt, and none as visible, but it was there if you kept your eyes and ears open. Mind you, it's too easy in New Orleans these days to read meaning and purpose into every lyric or song choice -- was Sheryl Crow making a statement by covering "Gimme Shelter," or was she just doing a Stones tune? -- yet some of the messages were timely, pointed, and worth remembering.

Here's my reflection on all that in a piece for the website Truthdig.