A Night in Tunisia
by Andrew Loewen on January 19, 20114 comments
Activist, political science professor, and jazz fan David McNally begins his analysis of the spreading Tunisian intifada–the first revolution in the Arabic world in more than three decades–with ruminations on Dizzy Gillespie’s border-crossing composition, “A Night in Tunisia”:
Popular upheavals always carry a distinct sonic resonance. The cascading chants that reverberate through the streets, the roar of the crowd as it drives back the riot police and seizes the city square – all this and more produces an unmistakable acoustic effect. The rhythm of revolt pulsates through society, freedom music fills the air.
Ruminating about this as I watched rebellion flow from Tunisia to Algeria, Jordan and beyond, I was brought back to Dizzy Gillespie’s jazz anthem, Night in Tunisia. Gillespie’s tune emerged as part of a musical upheaval known as the bebop revolution. And its unique blend of Afro-Cuban rhythms and bebop idioms makes it an early experiment in “world music,” a border-crossing mixing of genres. And so it has been with the freedom music emanating from Tunisia. It too is hopping boundaries and echoing far and wide.
Continue reading over at David’s new blog, hosted by the merry cast of malcontents at PM Press.
[Update: Spectacular series of photos from the Tunisian intifada here. ]
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4 comments
Malcolm Parker on January 19, 2011 at 5:25 pm. #
Thanks. The Big Picture photo gallery is, as usual, fantastic. Unfortunately, the editor of that gallery, who did it all on his own time, has left for a job at…The Atlantic? Fortunately, though, he will continue his excellent work there.
So update your RSS feeds, I guess.
Andrew Loewen on January 19, 2011 at 8:50 pm. #
A friend described it as “riot porn.” I dunno.
Malcolm Parker on January 20, 2011 at 12:43 am. #
All photography on the net can belong to some porn subset, except, oddly, porn itself. It all stems from Sontag’s “Suffering of others’ and such and the idea of the aesthetisation and fetishisation of the repellent. But Eugene Smith, and Natchwey and Salgado have done great things and I think the term is so people can justify their emotional distance. However, I think there is a legitimate concern since there were photographer trips to Haiti and such in which photographers who aren’t but aspire to be fill their harddrives without being engaged. That’s ugly. This gallery wasn’t that.
Andrew Loewen on January 20, 2011 at 7:08 am. #
Excellent points. I think my friend was just being flip.