Once again, thank you for chiming in and as usually I have no disagreement with what you have laid out. I respect the authorâs right to focus on those aspects of a given subject they choose to focus on, but in someway, on a subject about which I do know something, that tells me quite a bit about that person. Thanks again!
Sorry but I canât resist this: âAll of meeee, why not take all of meeeeeâŚâ
mybutbeautiful asked: Hey Yo⌠Truth be told, I enjoy reading most things I read about Jazz regardless of who writes them, especially if it sharpens my awareness of what I know about Jazz. I have learned to smell a rat in jazz literature due to that kind of openness regardless of the political bent of the individual writer. I can always learn things anecdotally by being open since a lot of the growth of Jazz occurred before I arrived on the planet, but it also sharpens my instincts for BS. Thanks for sharing that link with me and weighing in. The smugness of a Teachout and his ilk permeates their work and the Ella omission to me was a stark one. Ta ta!
randomberlinchick replied:Yo! Great points my Dear and I hear where youâre coming from. I read ataneâs comments, too, which were also spot on as usual. There is a point, though, that I think needs addressing, and it is this question of âbias.â I remember being at an event in Austin a long time ago, where one of Spikeâs films was being screened and he took questions from the audience. A black woman asked him when he was going to do a serious film about black women. His answer was that perhaps that was her film and she needed to do it. Of course his answer was a bit more eloquent than the abbreviated version Iâm offering, but that was the point: I canât write that, and if itâs important to you, then you need to write it.
All work is biased. The bias begins with the selection of the subject matter. If itâs biographical work, then selecting those elements of a life that may have spanned close to a hundred years is bound to piss someone off. Thatâs just the way it is. I struggled with this when I had to cut years of field work, interviews, participant observation, crazy-ass stories, etc. into the word count demanded by the university. For each story that got told, there were five that didnât. It sucked and at times I felt like I let down the people who had shared their lives with me, but later I came to realize that that wasnât the case.
Now, from what Iâve read about Teachout and what I know personally about the Ella/Louis collaborations, Iâd say he made a poor choice. His choice to make, however. And thatâs where an excellent review, like the one you wrote, makes this clear and gives him perhaps something to think about.
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