The Times' Live Review - London Jazz Festival

John Bungey

 November 25 2013

"This year’s epic of 280 shows around the capital may have been a celebration of jazz music, but it was an old rocker who provided one of the most poignant moments. The saxophonist Gilad Atzmon, joshing his way through a fine show marking his 20 years of playing in Britain, introduced a surprise guest: “He’s a man who definitely defies every law of biology and physics . . . He’s better to play with than John Coltrane . . .” And on stage walked Wilko Johnson, the former Dr Feelgood guitarist who announced his terminal cancer to the world in January and whom medical experts confidently predicted would be dead by last month.

Johnson, very much alive and doubtless surprised to be compared with an American saxophone shaman, proceeded to rattle out some searing rhythm’n’blues with Atzmon’s Orient House Ensemble as the evening reached a climax. Johnson says it could become embarrassing if his bookings continue into next year..."

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Les Visible On The Seek-Speak and Spread Truth Conference.

http://www.visibleorigami.com/2013/11/the-seek-speak-and-spread-truth.html

Dog Poet Transmitting........

May your noses always be cold and wet.

Wow! What can I say? By any standards, the Seek-Speak-Spread Truth conference was a rousing success. For this, massive kudos must go to Tahra with the able assistance of Tyler Vincent, James and Steven along with Tom Fry and Anthony doing the video which you will see shortly somewhere. I'll link it when possible.


We'll forget about my presentation. It's not my place to comment on it. Someone or several someone's will come around with their two pence at some point.


Alan Hart started it off and was lucid and very well informed. After that the day took off and never stopped. Ken Shott came up and did a slideshow about his amazing work in Sweden. The amount of work and industry put out by himself and his associates is impressive. There are a lot of good things going on on this planet.


I had an epiphany of sorts at the conference where my former perceptions about someone did a big 180. In keeping with Visble's Full Disclosure Act of 2003, I'm left with no choice. I'd had certain reservations about Gilad Atzmon, on the publicity end and Litmus Test end and what I found in real life was a larger than life personality, which canceled out my concern on the first concern and made moot my second concern. Gilad is, as best I can tell, a social philosopher. That's the best definition I can come up with. He's also an, off the charts, jazz musician. He's a consummate showman as well as a very articulate and subtle speaker. I was impressed and I am not easily impressed. He's also a generous soul who came over to me and laid his books and a musical CD on me, following my moments on the dais.

I missed David Messenger, I'm sorry to say but... it was 12 hours of non-stop action, except for lunch and there were all kinds of people I was supposed to speak to; had no choice but to speak to (grin) and this is just how it wound up. I came and went without thinking about who was or wasn't coming next because it was a terrifically high energy scene, still, I managed to catch most everyone.

Ken O'Keefe followed Gilad and continued in the spirit of the extemporaneous, which seemed to be the order of the day for nearly all of us. You hardly ever see anyone speaking off the cuff anymore. They're either reading directly from a script or a teleprompter and it's also usually nothing but lies. Ken was as lucid as anyone I've ever seen in my life; clear and sustained power of precisely organized thought. That's how it comes to my mind now, on reflectio

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Gilad Atzmon on Press TV: World tired of Israel war policy on Iran

http://www.presstv.ir/

Political activist Gilad Atzmon says there is a growing international fatigue of Israel’s war-mongering policy and its effort to discredit a nuclear deal with Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he plans to send his national security advisor to the United States to discuss the interim deal with Iran on its nuclear program.

“Netanyahu and his cabinet are not yet used to the idea that there is a growing international fatigue of Israeli and Jewish lobby belligerence and war mongering,” Atzmon told Press TV on Tuesday.

He said that Israel and its powerful lobby in the United States “fail to understand that the world is telling them ‘enough is enough’.”

“We don’t want to fight anymore Jewish wars… we are not going to bomb Iran for you,” he added.

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Meet The New Israeli Pioneers

The following is a comment  made in September  by my favorite Palestinian poet Nahida Izzat*:

A reflection on the implication of politicisation of sexual behaviour/ orientation and its infringement on children’s rights, all this in relation to the Palestinian cause

Now, is the issue of promoting and celebrating homosexuality (again, I reiterate, a private act which should not be anyone’s business)  related to the Palestinian struggle for Liberation?

Are we obliged to start teaching our young Palestinian boys and girls about homosexual and LGBT “persecution” and “abuse of human rights” in order to be “accepted” as “progressive” society worthy of support?

Are we obliged to start competing with”Israel” which prides itself of being gay heaven in order for our supporters to be satisfied?

Just like attempting to tie our Palestinian struggle for liberation with causes which only distracts us from focusing on our goals and deplete our energies, like fighting “antisemitism”, “holocaust denial”, or “conspiracy theories”, pretending that this is the way for Palestine liberation, we refuse the imposition and the premises that the issue of “homosexuality is central to our cause”.

We refuse to consider sexual orientation issues as primal or urgent issues to be dealt with immediately, or that it the most burning issue in our quest for justice and freedom, when we have not yet achieved the most basic and fundamental human right ever, the right of SURVIVAL,

We do not accept to see our Palestinian struggle for freedom hijacked and used by some campaign groups who try to piggy-back on the Palestine cause in order to promote their own agenda and campaigns for “sexual freedom”, which would only distract, complicate and skew the essense of Palestine issues.

Moreover, this issue should be left to the Palestinians and other societies to examine, discuss and deal with, in its own time and in accordance with its own ethics and what is best for those societies.

We refuse to be distracted and our aims obscured by side issues while we struggle for survival facing threats of genocidal magnitude.

* Nahida added to her article the following disclaimer:

This article is not a condonation or justification of any form of discrimination or persecution against people with various sexual orientations or disorders, it is a mere expression of an opinion and sharing of concerns associated with promoting explicit sexual education amongst children and pressurising other societies to change their codes of ethics, thus destroying the cradle of child-protection, the family unit being the foundation of these societies.

Concerts, Master-Classes and Talks

November

29^th With The Blockheads  St Paul's, Worthing

30^th With The Blockheads Arts Centre, Aberystwith

 December

3^rd Amina Figarova & Gilad Atzmon @ The 606 Jazz Club

4^th Amina Figarova & Gilad Atzmon – House Concert, North West  London, for details please contact info@pinemail.co.uk

 6^th With The Blockheads  Arts Centre, Norwich

 7^th Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble @ Arena Theatre at University of Wolverhampton + Workshop during the day

8^th With The Blockheads ABC, Glasgow with From The Jam

9^th Master Class @ EJMA - Ecole de Jazz et de Musique Actuelle, Lausanne, Switzerland

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Israeli-Ukrainian soldier admits she killed Palestinians on TV

By Abir Kopty 

https://www.oximity.com/article/Israeli-Ukrainian-soldier-admits-she-k-1

Elena Zakusilo, an Ukrainian young women, decided at her young age to leave Ukraine and go to serve in the Israeli military. On November 4th, she participated in Ukrainian TV game show, “Lie detector” The Ukrainian version of “The moment of truth”. Contestants (connected to a truth detector) answer a series of personal and embarrassing questions to receive cash prizes. During the show she reveals horrible information on her military service.

Zakusilo admits killing Palestinians including Palestinian children. She answers the question “did you kill people” with “yes”.. she explains “we had to fire, had to kill, because it was either they [get] us, or we – them.”

Host: Did you happen to shoot at children?

Elena: Yes.

Host: How many people did you kill?

Elena: I don’t know.

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GOLIATH; Life and Loathing in Greater Israel

Book Review By Eugene Schulman

As most of you know, I have been following events in the Israel/Palestine conflict for years.  I have built up a library over those years of hundreds of books, both pro and con on the issues.  This is the first one I have read that has turned my stomach.  Not because it is untruthful or poorly written, rather, whether you believe the author or not, the tale he describes is one of unrelenting cruelty.  Have a gander at the Amazon link below for a description of what I would say is the most important book on contemporary Israel I have read.  Don't forget to read the customer reviews.

Of all the reviews I had read prior to reading the book: Chris Hedges at Truthdig; Larry Gross, also at Truthdig; Tablet, a magazine of Jewish writing, which laughably calls it a novel, the best one is Gilad Atzmon at Common Dreams who, after praising the book, asks the most important question of all - WHY is Israel the way it is?  Of course, anyone who has read his "Wandering Who?" will know the answer.  It is a Jewish identity crisis.

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Amina Figarova & Gilad Atzmon in London

A special opportunity to listen to legendary New York based pianist Amina Figarova, originally from Azerbaijan and London based virtuoso saxophonist Gilad Atzmon. These two masters will be playing together in the USA in 2014 but you can listen to their incredible duo next week in London at the 606 Jazz Club on 3^rd December  8:00 PM and also in a house concert in Mill Hill, NW London (contact info@pinemail.co.uk) on 4^th December.

On Figarova:

"...With this rewarding date, Amina Figarova makes her case as an important composer of her generation..."  www.allmusic.com

"... Figarova is among the most important composers to come into jazz in the new millennium..."
Thomas Conrad, Jazztimes

"... She is a major artist..." London Evening Standard

On Atzmon:

“A formidable improvisational array...a jazz giant steadily drawing himself up to his full height.” The Guardian.

 “The best musician living in the world today” Robert Wyatt, The Guardian

“One of the most charismatic and focused reedsmen on the planet.” Chris Parker LondonJazz

Alan Hart: Are we stupid?

The following is the text of the address I made to the Seek, Speak and Spread Truth Conference in London yesterday, 23 November.  Its main thrust is about the need for citizens to become politically engaged to make democracy work (before it’s as dead as the two-state solution for Israel-Palestine) in order for our children and grandchildren to have the real prospect of a future worth having.

I want to start with a promise. I won’t be disturbed and you won’t be disturbed by my mobile ‘phone because I don’t have one. I have thrown mine away because I am trying to stay human.

That said I’ll give you my one-sentence overview of the state of affairs on our small, fragile, endangered planet. Modern life is a de-humanizing process which has reduced us, most of us, to units of consumption, digits in corporate computers, figures on accountants’ balance sheets.

What this suggests to me is that the prime task for each and every one of us is to claim back our humanity. I’ll be offering some thoughts on how we can do this, but first of all we have to address what I consider to be THE most important of all questions - the question of human nature.

What, really, is the quality of it?

There are, broadly speaking, two views.

One, the pessimistic view, which is more or less an article of faith for most politicians and mainstream media people and many corporate executives, bankers especially, is that we human beings are inherently and unchangeably short-sighted, selfish and greedy, preferring to live for today at the expense of tomorrow and are, on balance, more “bad” than “good”. In other words, we are really quite stupid. And that, our so-called leaders tell themselves, is why they can’t tell us the truth about real choices and options for the future.

If the pessimistic view is the correct one, it seems to me that nothing matters because the end, catastrophe for all, was inevitable from the beginning; in which case we would all be well advised, as individuals, as communities and as nations, to go on screwing each other for all we can get. Praising the lord and passing the ammunition.

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Iranian Jews rally in support of nation's nuclear program

Haartetz reported last week that “hundreds of Iranians, including university students and members of the country's Jewish community, rallied Tuesday in support of the Islamic Republic's disputed nuclear program on the eve of the resumption of talks with world powers.” Unlike the so-called ‘progressive’  and ‘cosmopolitan’ Jews who, for some reason, occasionally support Zionist interventionist wars, Iranian Jews are actually patriotic and authentic.  

“Iranian state TV showed students gathered at the gate of Fordo enrichment facility, carved into a mountain south of Tehran. They formed a human chain, chanted "Fordo is in our hearts" and denounced the West, which has put pressure on Iran to curb enrichment activity which can be a step toward weapons development.

In Tehran, meanwhile, several dozen people identifying themselves as Iranian Jews gathered outside a UN building. It was a rare public display by the community, which tends to keep a low profile despite being the largest in the region outside Israel and Turkey.”