 So, Fumi, tell us a little bit about yourself. I'm from London, as you can tell from my accent, I hope. I hope I still have my London accent. A little bit, yeah. Oh, don't say that a little bit. My parents came over to the UK in the early 70s, but from Nigeria, the Europe or Southwest of Nigeria. So that kind of first wave from West Africa. And they settled in Hackney. First of all, Lower Clapton and then Dallston. That's where my dad still lives. So, yeah, I mean, in terms of sort of music that I grew up with, my parents were really committed Christians, like Pentecostal Christians. And so that was kind of the first sort of what you might call performance or like sustained engagement with a musical practice that I had. It was in church on a Sunday. And then also as part of the music group, because it really wasn't big enough to have a choir, the music group that I was a part of for many years as I was growing up. And I mean, my childhood was really kind of quite sheltered. And so, you know, I didn't really kind of discover all the lights of London until I was in my late teens. Was this your parents protecting you from the potentially dangerous environment? Exactly. I mean, they were very Europa. What does that mean? They were quite resistant to the sort of inevitable encroachment of Western values. And, you know, I think they tried as hard as possible to kind of keep us as Europa as we could be in this kind of foreign land. It didn't work, obviously, but I tried. So I mean, I didn't really, I mean, some of my, so I guess growing up, it was very much, you know, a lot of Nigerian pop music. So a lot of Fela and Afrobeat and Apala, Highlight and Juju, you know, that sort of stuff. Alongside, my parents were like pop fans. Alongside sort of like Jackson, Vi, they're all Motown really, Stevie Wonder. I think my mum had like a soft spot for like Barry Manilow. So, you know, there was like Abba, they really loved Abba. And so it's very much like pop. They weren't into jazz very much. I mean, apart from like, if you can account that sort of early Fela as like jazz, maybe some people do, some people don't. So it was just like, you know, party music. And that's what I grew up with. And it really was, it wasn't until I guess my mid-teens where I started to listen to sort of my own music. And I don't know how I got into him, but I started listening in that obsessive way that, you know, you only can do that as a team because you got all this time and you just, you know, you become obsessed with things. I would start listening to Jimi Hendrix. And I had a general interest in like 60's psychedelia for some reason. How did you get hold of it? I mean, what was your... Exactly. I do not know. And I've been thinking about it, you know, because I knew it on the radio. You didn't see it on top of the pops? No. Well, maybe you did. Maybe, yeah, maybe it was on the, you know, because sometimes I'd like slip in an old tune. So maybe it was something like that. Because otherwise I don't know. I don't know how'd you come across Jimi Hendrix. But so, yeah, so, you know, I started off with the experience stuff and then sort of graduated to the band of gypsies. And that really got me into the blues. That was like my introduction to the blues, Jimi Hendrix. And then the blues was like this hop, step and jump to jazz. Are you doing this journey on your own or with like your peers? No, this was just me in my bedroom with my record player and my cassette player, you know. And it was all, you know, it was really unsophisticated. It wasn't sort of like proper albums. It was like all compilation, you know. Oh, yeah, the kind of, yeah, greatest hits, kind of. Greatest hits of, you know, early Delta. I really loved early Delta stuff. So it's like sort of compilations of like Sunhouse and Robert Johnson and Skip James and those sorts of people. And then it was like your own kind of diasporic journey around. Exactly. It's so weird, isn't it? Because you just don't know that. I mean, when you're, when you're young, you just, you know, you're just, you just like what you hear. And so there was no, there was nothing intellectual about the choices at all. But anyway, so that was how I got into listening to jazz and very like quickly, really soon after that, I mean, I became, and I became sort of slightly obsessed with the sound. And I just felt that I really wanted to be involved in whatever was going on there. So I found this like weekend workshop. It was like, it was like kind of advertised as a jazz workshop. And it was run by this trumpeter called. Ian Kahn. No, it was, it was Jim. Yeah. And it turned out that it was like this kind of almost like a free jazz, like, you know, That's quite an early that's quite a strong introduction. And it was, we was based on like, like the tells Mingus is jazz workshop. So there were sort of tunes songs and then lots of like, improvisation. Cause there was. improvisation because there was this whole range of people with ability. So like me, having no sort of experience of jazz and then people who have been playing free music for a long time. And it was just like this kind of multi-instrumental, like that like mismatch of instruments just coming together and playing together. And that was like my first, very first taste of Mingus. But were you a musician at this point? At that point, no. At that point, I'm like, you know, 15-year-old who just thinks, oh my god, I need to be involved in this. You know, of course I was singing it at church, but that was it. And it was just like, if you were, your instrument was going to be your voice. My instrument was my voice. Yeah, I mean, I did, I did do grade one and two violin, but you know, that was it. That didn't stick, obviously. It didn't stick. It's not a great jazz instrument, although I shouldn't say my, Michael White, and there's a few others. My partners are jazz cellists, actually, so I didn't say that. But anyway, what would you encourage to do with your voice then in this in this kind of almost free environment of experimentation? Yes, a good question. I mean, to be honest, okay, so the sort of the biggest lesson was like what you do with your ears, right? It was all about space and all about sort of listening to one another and just finding different ways to be in this space together, right? And so I guess I was, you know, with my voice, I was encouraged to, you know, just vocalize. There wasn't any, of course, we were like singing tunes and there were a few lyrics. It was mingas, so there were a few lyrics to some of the tunes, but it was mainly just vocalizing and you know, I didn't really know anything about scales. And so I was, it was, it was was that head top is what the rappers say. Oh, really? Is that what it, what does that mean? Off the top of your head. Okay, exactly. I like that. Were you aware of other jazz singers? Did you have any that you were, you know, particularly interested in or were you not being guided by the relationship with other with Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Bourne or No, I mean, like Billie Holiday was my introduction to jazz. That was like, you know, I kind of, she was the first person that I really listened to a lot and I still love Billie Holiday, you know, to this day. So I was really, really into jazz singers. I was really into Ella, you know, I just couldn't believe her voice, you know, for a long time it was just like shocking, you know. And so yeah, I was listening to, I knew about jazz singing at that point. I knew what it was and I knew what I could do. And I think I was going to this workshop initially thinking that's what I was going to get, you know, because it was like a jazz workshop, right? Yeah. But it was, it was something much more, I, to be honest, I feel very, very lucky that I, you know, that I had this really early education of the opportunities of improvisation, you know, this kind of community and the spirituality as well of jazz. It wasn't a matter of you kind of going through the process of learning the standards, learning the chords, learning the scales and then later down the line, being told that you could improvise, improvisation was there at the very start. Exactly. Yeah. That's, you know, and, but, and interestingly, it was right up. It was sort of concurrent with me learning standards, right? So I was like listening to lots of standards and then, but that was my first experience of actually singing with other people was this free, free jazz. So tell me, how did you kind of move from the class, you know, 15 year old in the class to like, where did you go? Did you, did you get up onto a stage at some point? Where did you go? Oh, well, how did it, how did you transition? Yeah, I mean, you know, things get very fuzzy after some time has passed. But I know that that after doing that workshop, I knew that I wanted more. I knew I wanted to like kind of perform. We had a few gigs, but it really was mainly like a, you know, a weekly get together. So I, you know, I don't really know exactly how I kind of ended up say, you know, been able to perform at the vortex or having, having a band. I guess, you know, you start to meet people, you go to gigs, you start to meet people, you know, I was kind of associated or had friends that were in the fire collective. So a lot of the people who I kind of ended up playing with were like in the fire collective. That's Steve Williamson. Hi, Steve Williamson. Oh, no, I don't know. He had another kind of another associated band. Sorry, I'm getting them confused now. Yeah. No, I don't know. I did, I did play with, I think of that generation, like Pat Thomas and Orphi Robinson and Clevelyn Watkiss. I, you know, I was a guest on Blacktop, you know, just after they'd moved to a caviotto. Right. So this is the kind of, this is the improvisation band that Clevelyn and some of these other guys who play, who've done quite a lot of different, I mean, they've had fingers in lots of different plays from more sort of danceable music to more experimental, but the Blacktop is their experimental side, isn't it? Yeah, Blacktop is great. I mean, I think it's such a, I mean, I don't know if they're still, I'm sure it is still. I saw them about four years ago. I think it's a kind of every now and then they re-coalesce and the point is they don't have to rehearse because they're making it up as they go along anyway. So, well, I don't have to rehearse. Anyway, and how long, for how long were you a kind of working jazz musician in London or? Well, you know, you kind of move into it gradually, but I guess like for, there were probably like seven years where it was the main thing that I was doing alongside finishing up my masters and, you know, just starting my PhD. So you're doing academia in parallel to that? Yeah, exactly. And in some sense, obviously, academia won that tussle in one sense. In other sense, the book brings things together. So maybe we should, let's sort of introduce our main character other than you and Charlie Mungus, Theodore Adorno. I mean, let me ask you, in the crudeest possible way, why should we care what Theodore Adorno thinks about anything, let alone about jazz? But, you know, who is he? And why should we care? Why should we care? Why is he worth writing a book about? Okay, so Adorno, well, Adorno, who was he? Adorno was part of Frankfort School. And Frankfort School was this group of critical theorists associated with the Institute of Social Research at Goethe University in Frankfurt. And they started writing together and thinking together in the interwar period. So like 1930s, 1940s, across disciplines, sociology, history, philosophy, literary studies, I think, musicology, theology, you know, they were connected broadly through this sort of Marxian foundation to their insights and also this kind of collective despair concerning the encroachment of, on personal life and social life by capitalist values and just like the demands of this capitalist system on all areas of human existence. But they were also really critical of like the Soviet adaptation of Marxist theory. They were like kind of, they didn't really blindly follow sort of the Eastern Bloc. So they were kind of caught between these various big things. There's the Soviet Union model, capitalism, and of course, the Nazis are encroaching. I mean, it starts in the late 20s and by the mid 30s, the Nazis are clearly on the rise. So, and many of these intellectuals are Jewish. Right. Is Adorno himself Jewish? Yeah, Adorno was Jewish, but he assimilated into Catholicism. Yeah, I think he's, I think his, his mother was not Jewish, but his father was. So he took his mother's last name. Adorno is his mother's maiden name. Last name because I think his name is Wiesenkund, wasn't it? That's right. Yeah. Okay. So here is this, now why Adorno out of all the players, because there's quite a few of different players within the Frankfurt School, you know, nation, isn't there? Yeah. Well, I think the thing about Adorno, I mean, apart from the obvious, which we're going to get at is, which is that he wrote about jazz. I think the thing that kind of is important about Adorno, who, and he was one of the main sort of players of the Frankfurt School, was he was so incisive about sort of the inadequacies of modernity in general. So even going past like this kind of this political choice between capitalism and Eastern Bloc Soviet Soviet communism, yeah, he was really all about pointing out that modernity, okay, was enabled so many technological advances, able us to do so many things. But at the same time, it was this document of barbarism, you know, that it had to all, you know, with every kind of advancement, there was also this threat of violence. And he was able to sort of to narrate this, and to formulate this in various ways, you know, across many, many disciplines. I think in a really compelling, in a compelling way. There was obviously, you know, a real blind spot in his work, and in the work of the Frankfurt School in general, that, you know, they kind of talk about sort of like domination and enslavement of the bourgeois individual without ever really addressing the mass enslavement of Africans or the consequences of that as it played out modernity. And that seems very material to what we're going to talk about that that that blind spot. So to summarize, and I'm only I hope I'm not putting words into your mouth because no words I would use well, which is that Adorno's arguments are worth our time. Even now, there's some there's things in there, you know, in the dialectic of enlightenment in his work on aesthetics, which we'll talk about, even in his work on popular culture and pop music, although we might want we might want to argue with it as you do very strongly in relation to, you know, something that you want to, as it were, recover from that. Hard not to think that he's not right when we're faced with a wall of mediocre Netflix films, Netflix films and, you know, reality TV, and an overall sense of kind of oversupply of the same stuff, which appears to be pacifying, and, you know, preventing people who are, you know, in in an oppressed situation, which in their estimation is almost everyone, I'm waking up to that reality and doing something about it. And he kind of like a failed not affected. He's a disappointed romantic or disappointed. You know, he's actually like most pessimists. You know, he really you get this strong feeling that he would like and is frustrated by the fact the world is the world isn't a much better place. Right. I mean, he makes a comment I often tell my students when they because you can move quite easily to sort of say, well, he's a bourgeois or bloke and he didn't think much about gender or race. And it is true. And he was slightly, you know, his attitude to the student revolts of the 60s is rather hilarious and rather cowardly in a way. And he's offended that anyone might want to, you know, protest against him. But, you know, he says say something along the lines of, you know, all of the resources which have been devoted to the culture industry, imagine if we devoted them to curing hunger in the world, something like that, something that actually reveals the heart, as it were, of someone with a passionate, although maybe a little bit, I mean, he's maybe one of those people who's got a passionate love for humanity, but wasn't that great with people? I don't know if he appears to be. Yeah, I think you get that you get that idea. You get that sense, don't you? Yeah, I think it's spot on. I think, you know, you know, you want to you want to read Adorno because, you know, he has, you know, it has got heart, as you're saying, he really does. Because it's all, it's not just for the sake of being an elitist or, you know, No, although it can appear like that. And sometimes language can be like that. Right. It really is about like the individual and, you know, and sort of the lack of sociality, you know, in, there is this kind of, there is a need for kind of relentlessness as well. I mean, another piece of footage which I always show my students in my Adorno lecture, I think if you've seen it, it's on YouTube is when someone asked them about, well, you're very dismissive of pop music, but what about this great folk music, which is protesting Vietnam? And he just goes, that's the worst stuff of all, because that's taking a good political point and commodifying it. You know, it's disgusting. I mean, he, you know, poor old Buffy Samurai and Bob Dylan and all of these people, you know. And, but in a way, that's the kind of critique that we needed of, for example, the black square moment after Black Lives Matter when corporations were rushing to, you know, present themselves. And someone like Adorno kind of encourages you not to be taken in by that kind of thing or, you know, the sports washing going on in Qatar or any of these examples where people are appearing to do good things, but in fact, in the end, they're just feeding the beast. I mean, one of the reasons why he was, he was so ambivalent or against like the protests in the 60s, the student protests and the disruption to his lectures and stuff was the fact that, you know, he just, he just sees the performance, the performativity of political commitment as at best ineffective, but at worst, just like kind of covering over the actual issues at hand. And so, you know, I mean, I don't know if that excuses him, but I think this is, I can, I can understand where he's coming from. Yeah. And clearly, I mean, I don't know about you. It sounds like you might have encountered Adorno in your graduate studies, which is where it happened to me as well when I was at Goldsmiths. Where were you doing your PhD? At Goldsmiths, actually. Communications, Culture and Society. Yeah. Well, all right, so we, you know, we had a similar exposure to that stuff. And, you know, I always feel like you never forget it. What I tell my students is, you know, I feel like you, I almost want to haunt them with Adorno, like Adorno sitting on their shoulder every time they find themselves, you know, insufficiently critical of, you know, the cultural landscape of the moment. Let's drill in a little bit then, because we're narrowing in on Adorno on jazz, but let's start with Adorno on popular music. So there is a general critique of the culture industry as laid out in that brilliant chapter that he wrote with Max Halkenheimer in The Dialect of Enlightenment. And popular music is the, because he's a music guy, I mean, Adorno is a composer, isn't he? Yeah. And quite a, well, I don't know about good, I can't judge myself. He was in grade. Yeah, he was a company. You know, it's pleasant. He wouldn't like me to say that, I'm sure, but it sounded very, it's, he likes this kind of Viennese modernism of the 20th century, doesn't need a burg and boom. Anyway, he's a musician. He could, I think it's true to say, he could perhaps have been a concert pianist. If he'd have gone that route, he was a, I don't know, he was a talented enough musician. But anyway, he cared passionately about music. And consequently, he abhorred pop music. Tell us what he said. Why did he dislike it? And what did he say about it? What was his argument? Yeah. But Adorno, the thing about pop music and the culture industry in general, was that the sort of the guiding characteristic of these genres and forms was standardization, right? And like, like efficiency of production and efficiency of reproduction and distribution and even consumption. So like standardization as a way to make, to make these forms efficient. And, you know, how it sort of pervades the whole process or all of its processes. You know, the idea of like, you have, I always have this image of like assembly line, like factory assembly line, whenever I'm reading him on like the culture industry. So there's this assembly line of character to the operations of the culture industry. So this is like, this is the big critique. It's like kind of pure functionality. You can't really look at the musical merits of this music, because actually it's not really about the music. It's much more about like, you know, what it's used for in the culture industry, what it's used for in society. And for him, this was like, it was just the worst thing, you know, that because art and music particularly, but were areas of life, a few areas of life, which still managed to have some sort of autonomy from the cultural and mainstream and the economic mainstream. So these are the areas where we might find the critical potential, we might find sort of, you know, I mean, he never really spoke in utopian terms, well, he did occasionally, but he, you know, he kind of drew away from that. So these are the areas where we might find alternatives, alternative ways to be in the world. But when we come to pop music and jazz was like kind of one of the, his most important examples of this, you know, he felt that you couldn't do that, you couldn't find these moments of critical potential. They weren't there because it was just all wrapped up in, you know, what this music could do for the industry. And it's worth saying, most, a lot of this work was written once Adorno had left Germany, I think he came to the UK and then he was living in America. So he was looking around at the American cultural world and he's not wrong in certain ways about the industrialization or the sort of factoryization of music production. I mean, famously, you know, his places like the Brill Building in New York, which was a whole building full of songwriters knocking out songs in order that they could be moved on to whoever was going to perform them, which would be decided by the executives quite possibly, even Motown has that kind of industrial structure that, which there must be arguments that we can, ways of saving Motown, I would hope, from his argument. But why does he think then, because it seems counterintuitive almost, doesn't it? I was surprised when I found that he didn't like jazz because jazz seemed different to pop music and also because of jazz's connection to kind of black expression as the argument that you make. But he is very resistant to that. And he almost is cross with people who, you know, might try and save jazz, a bit like trying to save Bob Dylan, it's like this is just as bad if not worse. So what does he actually say about jazz? What does he write about jazz, first of all? What are the things that he actually wrote? So, you know, jazz, as I say, was an example of for him popular music. So a jazz piece, for instance, we're thinking about a jazz piece, but we don't know, just has no sort of internal logic, has no driving point to it. You know, all its components, the sections, you know, all its musical characteristics can be kind of detached from the piece and rearranged at will without affecting the logic of the piece, you know. Unlike a great piece of a Beethoven piece. Exactly, unlike Schoenberg, where everything makes sense only in its relation. Every little note. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, and, and I don't think that I think he goes too far, but I think that he has got a point. Yeah, I think like, you know, the pieces in jazz can be rearranged, and it still they can just turn out to be a jazz piece, right. But what was particularly insidious for Adorno about jazz was the fact that, you know, while it did this sort of adherence and to the industry through this standardization, it also would pretend or take on the character on the surface level of being this sort of bastion of freedom, being this music of like, like pure spontaneity and democracy. And so it's able to do that, while remaining exactly the same, was able to sort of seem new, and like fresh, and, you know, out there, but it was actually just exactly the same kind of a contract. And if you're a contract is being conned into believing, and he makes this point. I mean, this is where the hinge bit maybe where we can get on to his blind spot, which is, I can't remember exactly which he has an essay called on jazz, I think it might be in that where he talks about the effects of jazz, you know, he talks about the, the coloristic effect of the sort of shiny saxophone, which into his mind is of a piece with the shiny skin of the of the person playing. Now clearly he's talking about a black musician, but he's sort of implying that the whole thing is, is done for show or performance. How, how could he be so is he really that unaware of the larger wider structure of race, racism, white supremacy, you know, which was all around him, I mean, might not have been around him immediately in Germany, but certainly was in America when he would have gone there. And what do you think about that? I mean, does he ever say anything about race or no, not really. I mean, you know, there's the authoritarian personality at which he kind of pointed to he was in a debate with someone I can't remember who it was another German about jazz, particularly, and this other person said, hey, you know, what's up? You haven't like kind of why, why, why can you not? Why have you not thought or written about race, you know, and racism and white supremacy? And he says, well, you know, I wrote this book authoritarian personality, which deals with, you know, in group prejudice. But, you know, the book really is about fascism, fascism and sort of anti somatic behaviours in America and in America. So, and it's weird that there really is very little said or hardly anything or nothing really said about sort of the black experience. So I would say that, you know, he must have been aware, you know, he must have been aware, but I think it would have been, it would have been too difficult for him to really take on sort of the black social history, the black experience of modernity. I think that it would have, it would have, it would have had to have changed so much or, you know, deepened or broadened his project in ways which would really be disruptive. Do you think it would have ever read Du Bois or even noticed him? I mean, they were contemporary. I have, I don't think he, he read Du Bois. I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, that's also the fact that he, you know, he was a racist and, you know, he kind of just didn't, I mean, you read like the on jazz, you read the jazz essays and, you know, he really goes out of his way to try and put some distance between the music and sort of black social history. And I think that that dismissal of the black experience in itself is like a really kind of racist move, you know. So he created as if it's pure commodity and it's the product of an industry, not for people or of a, you know, of a sentiment or revealing something about what it's like. Yeah, or he sees everything and it doesn't only, it's not only limited to sort of black music forms, it would also be the same with proletariat, working class music forms. He sees everything through the eyes of the bourgeois individual. So there's no need actually in his like formulations, there really isn't a need to take to take blackness into consideration because, you know, even if it did have some bearing, or if it was the foundations of this music, because it's a subordinate position, it could always be argued through that of the bourgeois individual. So this was like, this is a big problem in his work. This is a big problem. I'm gonna just, I just want to say, and I'm talking here to the audience for a moment, thank you for listening so patiently and that's lovely. If you feel like you've got anything to say, please do put things in the chat. It would be lovely to get a sense that it's not, we're not talking completely into a vacuum. So just anything, comments, queries, questions, things you don't understand, things you think are great, things you think are not so great, whatever it is, feel free to be actively involved as well as, you know, chilling on your sofa with your cup of tea or whatever you're doing. So let's get on to the really clever move, the thing I really love about this book. And I should say that, you know, one of the things about teaching the culture industry essay is it's really hard to tell what kind of thing Adorno would approve of he tells you so much about what he doesn't like and you can only tell what he kind of approved of by taking the opposite. If he doesn't like standardization, he must like something else, you know, he so one thing that you have done, you do is, is you take Adorno seriously on the basis of his sort of aesthetic theory and you say, look, Harry Adorno, you have misunderstood jazz, I think is what you're saying, because jazz rather than being the example of the thing that you are, you despise in popular music might be considered to be actually an example of the kind of thing that of which you approve in art, what the kind of reason why you like art. Is that a fair, you know, point? And if so, what is it? How do you do that move? What is it that you're saying to Adorno or to the reader by Adorno that jazz has that illustrates or records to the kinds of things that Adorno thinks art should be for? Okay, so I think it's like, I mean, there's probably like more than one route to that in the book. I think one of them is definitely, so going off what we were just talking about, is definitely about this rejection of certain narratives of jazz as this music of democracy, of democracy as music of like freedom. And these narratives were, were, you know, very current around the time that Adorno was started writing about jazz. So other people were arguing about the occupation of democracy. It's, I suppose, it's the American music, America's home of democracy, music goes with that. So he was right. So he was so, so you might say that what he was rejecting was actually these kind of narratives of jazz as, you know, as freedom, because who can be free in this world, you know, as it stands, you know, who can, who can be free in this capitalist system. And so one of the things that I'm doing is to show that actually there is a different way of narrating jazz practice, which doesn't kind of go through the bourgeois individual, but actually takes seriously, you know, the black basis of, of jazz. And this is not to say that, you know, no, none, it's practitioners are only black. You know, anyone can play jazz. In an Andondonian move, I really do focus very much on the, the work itself, and kind of, and the practice. And so I'm thinking about the structures, the principles of structuration in the work itself, or in the practice rather than the bodies that does this practice. So we might say that rather than music of freedom and spontaneity and all of that, what structures jazz is a subject, you know, a subject of modernity, or positionality in modernity, in which one has to hold contradictory positions. And I'm thinking of like the black experience of enslavement in the new world where, and you know, you I think you spoke at the beginning of sort of this double consciousness. And I think it, you know, it really gets to that, you know, where you're having to both hold the position of like the dehumanized, but then also of a human, because, you know, you might well be judged under human laws. Or another way of putting it is to you having to take the position, the contradictory position of both seeing yourself as the stereotypes of the black, you know, as the stereotypes that come out in the general social field, and then also just going about living your everyday life, right. And, you know, what happens is that you're living a life, you know, people who are actually, you know, they live black life, you know, they identify as black or they are seen rather, maybe more importantly, they are seen as black, are constantly having to negotiate this, and it happens still today, right, it's like kind of it hasn't gone away, we still haven't to do this, right. But it makes you very kind of aware, it makes you very aware, it makes you kind of it gives you a certain insight, I think that is a unique sort of take on modernity. And I think that is how that's what's distinctive about the music, I think, I think, what's distinctive about the music comes from that experience of contradiction and having to sort of deform certain stereotypes, you know, and it's sort of coming together in difference from all these kind of these ways in which those stereotypes are deformed and played with and worked with. So it reminds me a bit of what Mary Baraka said in Black Music and the White Critic, where he says that the black music is the expression of a philosophy, you know, of life in a way, or a particular positionality. And at one point, you use, you brilliantly kind of use Adorno's language against him in a way, you might can put it like that, or at least suggest that, I mean, one of the things that we know from Adorno is the necessity of critique, and, you know, negative dialectics he talked about. And at one point, I'm just, you have a line which is black life cannot help but be lived as critical reflection. So you're sort of making the connection between this kind of double consciousness that you and many others obviously in Du Bois say is characteristic of black life in the West. I mean, it's not black life anywhere at any time, right, specifically in a particular context, which is denigrated or dehumanized and systematically exploited, particularly in music, obviously as well, you know, the whole music industry is built on that logic. And that's, so there's something about critical reflection, which is there already in the nature of jazz music. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think that, you know, Adorno wants to think of, say, like the standard as just, you know, the composition that you find in the real book, right? And then, you know, all these performances as these really bad copies of the original. But I think that, you know, jazz really is about it's about this kind of gathering sort of cacophony of disquiet, you know, where it's like constantly sort of deforming and reforming and like punching out of place and then putting together, you know, it's like this kind of like effigy really of overwork, you know, it's like always being kind of, what's the word, sort of tinkled with, you know, it's always been like kind of, so, yeah. And, and I think that also is, you know, I think that's reflected in the experience of being Black in the West for sure. I think that it's definitely linked to that. And then, as I say, it's in the music itself and it's in the practice. And so, you know, anyone who's playing jazz, you know, Scandinavian jazz, if it's like jazz, I feel like it takes on this principle of construction. Does this apply to all jazz? I mean, you say Scandinavian jazz or perhaps let me ask you in another way, what do you mean by jazz practice? What are the basic elements of that? Very broadly. Yeah, broadly construed. And of course, I'm not like, you know, I have a very kind of broad and open understanding of what jazz is. And I also feel like, you know, conflicted and ambivalent about the term jazz. And also I feel ambivalent about like the cordoning off of the music from other sorts of music. But I would say that, you know, the sort of practice of jazz must involve listening. You know, it has to involve a listening practice, like a really intense listening practice. You can't like kind of, you know, you might have someone who just plays like a, and there are these like really awful groups, I don't know, I don't know the names of the groups where, you know, they kind of learn Miles Davis solos. And then reproduce them. Just to be clear, the listening that you're talking about, we'll get on to records in a minute, by the way, but you're talking about listening in real time. You're talking about listening to each other. No, I'm talking about listening in general. I mean, I'm definitely talking about listening of records and like kind of the education and sort of knowing the tradition. And I know we're going to get to this at some point, but it's, you know, it's an oral tradition. You know, it's like, it really is. So there's that. And I think, yeah, I think like there is definitely a sociality in jazz, which is central to it in ways that, you know, and of course it's central to like, you know, rock music. And, but it, you know, it's really very central to the experience of making jazz music. So there's, you know, there's that. I think what you were trying to get, what you were getting at in your comment, you know, about this, like, kind of real time conversation, this real time sort of interaction is obvious, is like most obviously fundamental to the music, you know, just like kind of being in that space together and just like kind of seeing what happens and sort of, you know, being responsive to one another. Yeah, that's kind of, you know, a jazz practice. Do you think, I mean, I always, when I think about Adorno writing about music, or about any kind of cultural product, I always say to my students, and I always feel like we all think that Adorno is completely right about the stuff we don't like, but not about the stuff we do like. It is possible to go to a jazz gig. And as you say, just see people even who are improvising, who are just paying a bunch of licks, right, that they have played a million times before, or they borrow from someone else. Yeah, kind of. So, I mean, are you, is there, because Adorno, one of the refreshing things about him is he's quite happy to be quite sweeping and talk about, you know, good music and bad music basically. Right, yeah. Are you prepared to go that route as well? I mean, are you prepared to talk? I think you have to be sweeping. I mean, like, I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, in this, when you're talking about things in this manner, of course, if you were doing like a detailed history of a particular place, or, you know, genre, maybe, or style, let's say style, then, yeah, I think you'd be more particular. You might say that, you know, a certain group may be displayed the principles of construction in a less than ideal way, right? But I think, like you, but I think, you know, I think we're talking in general, and I think that you have to, you have to follow Adorno on that, you know, you have to. Can I ask you this then, given what you've just said about jazz, which is that this is this articulation of a kind of, or an expression which emerges from, you know, the lived experience, the Black lived experience, and it's complicated, and it's also traumatic, and it's dense, is, does this mean that jazz is inevitably challenging, difficult? I mean, a lot of people who don't like jazz, I don't know how many there are in the audience, we'll see, you know, just don't like the service too difficult, it's too like, you know, like a French film, it's too complicated, or it's, I can't, you know, it's not fun to listen to. And that is true of a lot of jazz, isn't it? Um, no, it depends on who's listening. I mean, I know what you mean. I think, yeah, people, I mean, there's so many types of jazz that it's really hard for me to say, to like, say, you know, yeah, I can't quite agree with it, but I do get what you're talking about. I think it is more, you know, it is more challenging than listening to, say, a lot of pop music. And that's surely related to the fact that it's connected to what you've described as the kind of, you know, the lived experience, which is also such a, you know, traumatic and overpowered thing. Yes, yeah, yeah, for sure. I think that's true. But I think there's also, and I think that is true, I think that this sort of critical edge of, of jazz definitely, you know, it has a critical edge and it does come from that experience. But I think there's also really kind of, in some forms, a very sort of punk energy almost about jazz, which you can just immediately get a handle on, you know, that you just feel, you just feel it. You might not like it, you might not sort of want to sort of sit in it for very long, but you, but it just hits you and you don't, and you're not really called on to sort of think it through. To be over complicated. Yeah, this always reminds me of, you know, the sort of New York loft jazz scene of the kind of 80s, which was very non-commercial, lots of people who was too difficult, but people like Wilford Graves and others were like, well, we're making music for the people, right? And the people like it, you know, untrained, supposedly unsophisticated, ordinary people will come and dig what we're doing. It's just the kind of, you know, the critics really, or the kind of market who don't like it. And you would, you would imagine that Adorno would approve of that, quite, you know, music that you can't actually commodify because nobody wants to buy it. So it would please him. But the thing is, like, you know, Adorno, I mean, it depends on where you're reading him from. If you're reading him from like his cultural, his like sociological works, then that makes sense. But, you know, it's not, it's not only or not so much that it's because the music is, you're not able to commodify it. It's more to do with what the music does internally, and it being adhering to it's an internal logic, you know, and sort of the musical aspects of it, well, you know, or the aesthetic aspects of it, which make it a critical form or not. Rather than, you know, whether it's, you know, it's, it's like, you know, one wants to know what no one wants to like sell it because it's too, talking about the commodity. Thank you, by the way, those who've been posting in the chat, and there's some questions in there and some comments. And that's great. And we'll get to you very soon. I just want to get to another issue, which which really raises as a kind of coder in the book. And it touched me quite a lot, because there are many people like myself, I think who have got into jazz or their orientation towards jazz is to do with records. They're record collectors, you know, vinyl collectors digging the crates, proud of what they can find in their special blue note rock, whatnot. I found that bit really fun, in a way, but quite challenging. So tell me, I mean, you say, I mean, in fact, the title of that section is why jazz records are inadequate and indispensable. Can you just explain why you think that? What's inadequate about them? Well, I think the jazz tradition, which I really said is like this is all tradition is really unthinkable about the record industry that it matured alongside, you know. And I think it's impossible for me anyway to imagine like a jazz tradition without records. And I'm using the term record standing for audio formats, by the way. And I think I think this technology is what makes jazz very distinct from other all traditions. Well, all traditions that came before it, I should say, because I think since then, you know, there have been probably comparable uses of the technology. So what makes it distinctive is that, you know, the players are able to kind of alongside their own actual tutors and the players that they, you know, they see in the jam sessions and the people that they have access to and in a geographical and their temporal surroundings, they're able to sort of delve into like a catalogue of records, give them the suggestions and lessons and interpretations and like problems like musical problems that, you know, haven't, you know, that sort of remain current or feel like they haven't been sold or whatever, however you want to think about that. So, you know, and of course, there's some similarity there with the modern European tradition, you know, with scores, you know, it means that we've got like, you know, a record of things so we can go back, we can be students, we can be independent students. But I, you know, I really do think it's, it's really important to see jazz as an oral tradition rather than in the mold of the, that you find in the Western tradition. So, you know, they're indispensable in that way. But on the other hand, because the way that most record studio, studio recordings come to us, you know, by way of decisions from sort of executives, like music executives, constraints, financial constraints of the studio. And just like, just it being a really contained, kind of stressful, usually environment in which to perform, you know, constraints by, by time, and also being constrained by this idea that you're, you're going to, you're going to have to live with this recording that you've done. It's one thing. People are going to go back to it again and again and you're going to go back to it again and again, it's not just like kind of out there in the ether after you've played it, right? Because of that, I feel like jazz records are not that, you know, they don't really represent all of what, or even maybe most of what jazz work is about, you know. So it's okay to have them, right? It's okay. Oh my God, you, it's not okay. It's indispensable. Okay, indispensable to have them, to listen to them, to pay attention to them, even to be kind of addicted to certain passages and solos. Yeah, yeah. But don't assume that that's the whole of jazz. There is jazz. Right, right. But I mean, I guess like, I think this is, I think that this is true, but I think also, I think I stopped the, this dialectical conversation I have in that chapter at a point where I say that actually it's the, the record collection, and you know, having a good record collection, you know, and being able to sort of, you know, think across records because of that, you know, is, you know, almost as good as like having access to all that jazz is. So, you know, all the different areas in which, in which, you know. Well, I'm so happy to hear that. I mean, the other thing I would add to that, just because I'm, I'm one of these collectors who doesn't really care about the quality. I don't want to pay a lot of money for records and I don't really care about the quality. I actually enjoy the fact that all my Don Miles Davis records have been very well played because I want, I'm thinking about who else was listening back in 1972, where I bought most of them in California. And, you know, I, I just find that a really rich, you know, and sometimes they have people's names on them or the name of the radio station that chucked it away at a certain point. So it's a kind of palimpsist or a record of, of the work, not just the work in the studio on that day, but all the hand pass through and the kind of virtual community, which I find quite emotionally satisfying while I'm listening to it. Anyway, great, great questions here. And a couple of people, in fact, or one, one person in particular asked a question and I will ask him if he feels like turning on his camera and his mic and asking it directly. And that is Richard Martin. Richard, like, yeah, there's Richard. How you doing? Someone else sort of joined in. This is a question which often comes up in relation to Adorno. So please do ask it. Ask for me. Hi, Casper. Hi, this is fantastic evening. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I was just kind of trying to orientate myself a little bit in the nature of the jazz that we're talking about here because I have to confess that my listening doesn't even really go back as far as Bob. I mean, most of my listening kind of only really goes back as far as kind of Coltrane and Miles Davis. So I'm conscious that Adorno must have been writing about a time kind of long before that if we're talking about the 30s. So what jazz is he really commenting on? What is forming his opinions when he talks about jazz? That's kind of my question really. Great question. Thank you, Richard. Okay, so a lot of people claim or argue and they don't really look at the archive on this, but they sort of argue that Adorno didn't really know true jazz. I mean, he definitely hadn't written about Coltrane. He maybe hadn't heard Coltrane. I think that there is evidence that he'd heard that Miles Davis, but he didn't really engage with these players and that he really was talking about poor white men, white swing bands. And I think while he does specifically talk about the smooth jazz of his age, definitely there is a specific focus on that. He's also very aware of what he calls the hot jazz musician, who would be in the 1930s, I guess, would be like Louis Armstrong. And separately he also mentions Duke Ellington. There are some jazz fans who would say this isn't proper jazz or this was before jazz found itself, but I would argue that that's not true. I think that these are really important points and moments in jazz. So Adorno was aware of that music. He was aware of black bands when he was in Oxford. I think there's stories of him in Oxford playing the piano and playing the music of these bands. From close reading of those essays on jazz, you do see that he is thinking about all sorts of jazz of that time. I think as Casper pointed out, maybe he's even slightly harsher to the hot jazz musicians in some ways, because it's like people will say, yeah, but what about these? I think for me, I can imagine that there are two things about this, which I've always wondered about. One is, okay, it may well be true that he's not just talking about the bad white bands, but he clearly is deeply irritated by and would have been deeply irritated by the fast young things that he would have seen or Oxford sort of dashing around in their sports cars and going on to jazz clubs and jitterbugging. I mean, he is never more scornful than about anything that he is about the jitterbug. But I wonder if he ever saw black audiences. Did he ever see jazz in front of a black audience? And that is something I slightly doubt, because that wouldn't have happened in Oxford. And in America, the audiences are segregated largely. So even if they're black bands, I really wonder if he would have seen... Do you think that would have mattered? I don't know. Probably not. I think you're right that he kind of, once he's painted himself into a corner and he's not... He doesn't give one inch, just like in the culture industry essay, right? There's not even one inch where you could squeeze in the Simpsons or whatever. It's like, no, the moment it's been made in this way by this system, it's a bad thing for everyone. So I don't think he would have done, but it's just interesting to, you know, if he'd gone to a Duke joint somewhere in New Orleans and seen that jazz was actually a living folk tradition, which wasn't just about the people playing the music, it was also about the way the audience were involved in that. I'm sure... I think the one writer of the time that he kind of respected the Sergeant Winthrop, I think his name was, or maybe Winthrop Sergeant, I can't remember which way around that is. And, you know, his main argument is that there was this living kind of black folk tradition, you know? So I mean, but that still wasn't enough. He doesn't take that from the book at all. He doesn't like folk either. And of course, the Nazis would have put him off any suggestion. Exactly. Yes, yes, that's true. Although, although, you know, I think he has a little bit of nuance about that. For instance, you know, he talks about, like, Bartok's been influenced by what he calls music of the South Eastern Europe folk music. So, you know, he doesn't like folk yet because of, like, fascism. He was scornful of Stravinsky using folk motifs, though, isn't he? Say it once more. He was scornful of Stravinsky using folk motifs. He didn't like folk motifs. So I think that there is, and I can't... I mean, I wouldn't be able to put my finger and pinpoint exactly what, you know, why, you know, Bartok is okay and Stravinsky not. But I think there is a bit of nuance about, like, folk or maybe the word folk is just too tainted, but music that kind of goes on with the people, you know, outside of popular culture. Yeah, we've got a couple of other questions. Nick, I can see you've got your hand up and I will come to you. Thank you for putting your hand up there. I think... Can I just ask... Gary, yeah, I think he probably did had listened to the Hot Fives and Sevenths from what he writes. It does seem that way. Yeah, and didn't like him. I think he would have hated Rhapsody in Blue as well, because he'd loved... He hated the sort of boulderization of classical music, didn't he? Yeah, yeah, he would have hated that. Yeah. So, but I want to invite Gianna, if you're there, Gianna, to ask the question that you have put into the chat. Are you there and able to? Oh, lovely. Welcome. Hello. Oh, we can't hear you. You got... It looks like you're not muted, but maybe your mic's not working. That's not... I don't know why that's happening. I'm sorry about that. I was hoping to hear your voice, but I can read out your question. Hang on. Try it now. I've seen you've muted now, but press it again. Hi, can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Yeah, I can hear you. So, sorry about that. So, as someone a bit unfamiliar with, I mean, relatively little exposure to Adorno and jazz music, my question is coming from a place of just wanting to get inside his head a little bit. So, my question is, would you say that his taste in music is inherently a function of culture as mass deception, which is the idea he critiques in his essay? So, just to elaborate on that bit more, is he so attuned to the high-brow culture of... Or just the cultural in general of European art and music that he fails to acknowledge and really properly understand other cultures, musics and mediums. And, yeah, apologies if you've already addressed this point as well. Great question, Gianna. We have a... Thank you so much. I mean, on the first reading, you think, okay, this is just a dude who just doesn't like... He likes what he likes, right? And so, it does seem very much to do with taste. And his taste is for a very particular section of modern European, early 20th century music. If we dig a little bit further, and I'm not saying that sort of taste thing isn't true, I think it's definitely there. There's no denying it. When you dig a little bit further, you find that there's also more structural, like musicologically structural concerns. It's very much to do with musics which are able to be autonomous and follow their own laws of construction and are able to sort of maybe come up with something which is, not ever going to be a commodity or no one wants to listen to, maybe. But importantly, that it kind of develops without the input of an industry, input of thinking about distribution and all these other aspects. So, while, yeah, there's definitely a taste thing involved, I think that it is slightly deeper than that. I think there's other things going on. On that subject, Fumi, I always wonder how, maybe, I don't know if you've ever discovered an answer to this question, is how does a door-no-thing artist should get paid? Through what mechanism? Oh, no. I mean, I don't know. There's an assumption that art will be produced by people who are independently wealthy, almost. Yeah, I think there's definitely that there's an assumption that, I mean, there's an assumption that you can't really, you don't really have the headspace, the time to make music or to make art if you're having to work. There is that assumption. You're not allowed to sell your commodity either because, you know, it's like you're in a bit of a bind. Yeah, interesting. We've got another question here from Dadoosy. Do you want to turn on Dadoosy and ask that question? It's about Stuart Hall. Hey, good to see you. Hello. Unmute yourself. Sorry, sorry. You yanked me out. I was trying to hide. For me, thanks. Thanks. I mean, as you were talking about the, what's this, when you were talking about Adona's racial, I guess, blind spot in relation to jazz, I actually immediately thought about Stuart Hall's notion of identity, like how identity moves and reformulates depending on where you are. So to the extent that your creativity can also be a reference point for what you create. So jazz has got obviously these many moving parts. There's the South African jazz, there's land and jazz. I mean, it's got these different flow and there's Latino jazz, there's Cuban jazz. And at him not acknowledging all those innovations that keep on changing, it kind of like, that's where she, I think in a way he's like, he's negating the idea of how identity formulates new ideas, where it's not the same kind of standard norm thing, but it keeps on constantly changing. But it's changing within, obviously, I guess, I guess we, I mean, probably partly agree with him is like this idea of, you know, a 145 frame of everything, but classical music, which he sort of likes, if I think he likes, has a frame, but I think where he's just completely dismissive of this idea that like, there's no sense of identity that it's infused in the music and it in a way has got a much more broader feel. And which I think is what jazz, I don't know what your thoughts are, it's not a question to say, it's just something as you were talking, it just came to mind about what gets created out of what the space of jazz allows the bandstand to create, depending on the, one of the musicians that I like to talk about the umbilical chord of each musician, that some people, they're born in the square camps, some people, they're born in, you know, and then we all now come to this band stage and we'll give some big difference to the sound. And yeah, something like that. Anyways, I just thought of. Thank you. No, no, so some pretty interesting thoughts and views. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that was really, it's really interesting. I mean, for a start, this idea of like the modern European tradition, sort of lacking an anthropological object or not being an anthropological object, the way that say jazz is, I think is very true and I don't know, you know, there's like, completely transparent, you know, you don't, you don't, you don't see it as being connected to the white male. You just see it as, you know, being what it is, right, or being autonomous, autonomous music. So I appreciate, I really do appreciate that comment. I would say that this idea of identity is kind of tricky in a way. I think like, so I would say that, you know, maybe one of the ways to sort of make sure we sort of maintain the sort of structural understanding of jazz aside from maybe what is its content, which would be like the different types of jazz or where it comes from or where the people who are playing it come from, you know, is to maybe just to think of those two things apart, you know, just to think about like the fact that it is a black American music. It is structured by this very particular way or experience of modernity. But even so, you know, as you were saying, you know, it allows this kind of gathering indifference, right, it allows this like kind of bringing together of different peoples, different experiences in this one place, which kind of, you know, provides this what I think of as, you know, a non-identical space, a space which kind of pushes back against identity in some ways, you know, and really focuses in on how it is that we might be together in difference, you know, how it is we can do that. Yeah. But some of those questions, it would seem to me that Dorneau wouldn't even have the kind of vocabulary or the right to understand. I mean, you talked earlier about his kind of obsessive bourgeois individualism, this unitary idea of the person, which and then the artist is somehow a special being who can, you know, use their great talent or whatever to kind of, it none of this seems to account, you know, to account for the identity and motion that Stuart Hall talks about or the kind of multiple identity idea, or that music can be a way of articulating, you know, things above and beyond sort of aesthetic, especially aesthetic questions. I just wonder if he that wasn't really something he'd want to talk about. I don't think so. Although I think there is a desire for, you find in his later work, like on music, that there is this kind of desire, even though it can never be between sort of flesh and blood people for a sociality in music. It really is like wanting to, like this idea of aesthetic form is really about, you know, trying to come into communion or allowing the the composer or author or the listener to come into sort of a closer communion with the work. Through the work. It's always about the work, right? It's not about the place or, as you say. Exactly. Exactly. Going on up here. Right. Yeah. I can imagine he's one of those people who doesn't like to hug at parties or whatever. I don't know. The thing is, I mean, I'm probably completely wrong about it, but he really lives with me as a character. He's got a very strong character, isn't he, in his writing? I mean, I personally think he's a really good writer as well. I mean, I don't read the German, so I'm reading the translation, but there's some, it's very rigorous and precise and he's coins, so many wonderful terms, the bloated pleasure apparatus. I mean, it's, you know, it's wonderful poetry. But listen, I never pass up a chance to discuss Schoenberg. I know nothing about Schoenberg, but we've got a question about Schoenberg from Travis Clarke. And he may know something about Schoenberg. I don't know if you know anything about it, but I know that Adorno liked Schoenberg. Travis, are you there? I don't know if he is there. Hey, yeah, just be a mic. Brilliant. Just a mic. Great. Thank you for joining, and thanks for your, tell us what you know about Schoenberg or your usual question. Yeah. No, it was just, for me, it's just super interesting because Schoenberg basically, yeah, he creates this method of composing, which uses all the 12 notes in a chromatic scale. And it's quite like, you know, if you would just hear the music, it would sound like free jazz in a way, but via orchestral works, perhaps. So it was just interesting. And I guess you have, I guess, answered this question already slightly, because I think you're basically saying that he prefers the process of things and not the image. But I was just wondering, like, you know, for me, there's like some, some very, very vague similarities in like aesthetic of the music and like the sound of it. Just wondering if you knew why he liked someone like Schoenberg, or if you knew anything about why he was, he considered them like a really progressive composer and musician. Thanks. Yeah, it's a really great question, actually. My mind was going off in lots of different directions. I mean, one of the things people automatically go to is that, you know, post-culturing developments in jazz, you know, it sounds a lot like Schoenberg, you know, free jazz, particularly, you know, maybe if maybe if he'd like, listen to more free jazz, he would have liked jazz. I would say that couldn't be the case, because I think like, as I've sort of said again and again, what is really important to Adorno is this kind of internal logic of a piece, like this idea that it kind of has its own logic, it unfolds in this really particular way. And it doesn't really have much interaction outside of the form of the piece, you know. So this kind of socio-musical interaction that we find in jazz, which is like so fundamental to jazz, would to him be a corruption, you know, wouldn't be able to reach the heights of that autonomous form. Saying that he's very, very late writing on music, you know, he starts to look for, he's really kind of become very disillusioned with the developments of serialism, you know, as it kind of expands out to all the different aspects of music. And also disillusionment with like chance-based music of like Cage. And so he's like wanting to see like this, or he's hoping for his writing about this type of new music that might emerge from this, which he calls Music Informal, which very, and he only describes it obviously because it's a utopian idea, but it sounds very, very much like free jazz, right? You know, it's like kind of this idea that sort of like bottom-up forms, forms that are like made off the cuff, forms that come about as, as, you know, I mean, obviously he's talking about composition, so like, you know, I can't quite get inside his head and understand what he's talking about. But for me, it's a very clear, you know, forms that are made as people are actually performing, they come together for the moment and then they fall apart, you know, this kind of, it's very, it sounds a lot like free jazz to me. And so I do feel, and this is kind of work that I'm doing at the moment, actually, I do feel that there is like definitely a way of engaging Adorno, you know, very, very late Adorno in free jazz, in free jazz as like this, a form of music or a mode of the form of music that he really wants to see, that he feels will be, that will save modern European tradition. Maybe if it had lived a bit longer, he would have come right around. But then you wouldn't have written the book. Thank you for your questions, everyone. And just before we let you go for me, you mentioned, you made a little reference there to what you're working on now. I was intrigued by at least the working type of your new book or the book you're working on, which is something to do with Billy Holiday's elbow, I think, if I've got that right, is that right? Yeah, Billy's bent elbow. The Billy's bent elbow. Tell us what the title means and also what the book's about. I mean, it's rough. It's about black music. It's about jazz in some sort of way. But yeah, I don't know what's going on. I don't know if it's going to be, I mean, it's definitely going to involve some jazz and black music for sure. I can tell you what the title means and what I was thinking about. So Billy's bent elbow is a little phrase from Cecil Taylor, Liner Notes, that he wrote for Unit Structures album. And it's really, this is an essay that he wrote, and it's like a poem, but it's an essay. Cecil Taylor is the American pianist who's widely regarded. I'm just, I think for my students, I don't know. He's widely regarded as one of the greatest. I'm not quite sure why, because he's not just technique, right? It's also his. Yeah, he was just, I don't know. I mean, I love so many musicians, but Cecil Taylor is, yeah, he just had an amazing technique. He had a very idiosyncratic style. He recorded a lot, and he recorded a lot alone. He recorded a lot of solo works. But he also had this, so he was very, very free, but he also had these characters which would re-emerge all the time, come up all the time in his work. He's very much a jazz player, but he just doesn't sound like anyone else. Anyway, so he had this, he had that phrase in Billy's Ben Elbow. He loved Billie Holiday too. And I was just thinking about how the Ben Elbow is a way of talking about sort of getting drunk, you know, bending an elbow. Yeah. And so the other side of the title is revolutionary, the standard as revolutionary intoxication. And I guess with that, I'm really kind of expanding the idea of the standard to something which is kind of completely unrecognizable now, even to me, right? I'm really thinking about the standard as this thing that a donor called ascetic form, which Don Cherry might call like complete communion. So this idea that jazz is always working towards just trying to get to that moment where things are just right. And I think that is like in free jazz, that really comes to the head, you know, that really comes to the fore rather that's like kind of the most important thing, you know, we kind of, we still might be playing with harmony, but we might not, you know, we might still have a rhythm, we might not, but what is maintained and what is like kind of encouraged and sort of comes to the fore, is this notion of just trying to get to a place where it just is right, you know, and the language isn't quite there yet, but I think you can get a sense of what I'm... I can. And who, I mean, you're not engaging in a kind of one-on-one debate with an adorno here. Who else is playing, who features on the, not of the jazz musicians, but on the theoretical side? I'm just interested, who you're... I'm really, well, I started off with Walter Benjamin, who is another critical theorist and friend of Adorno. And I really am thinking with his notion of what he calls non-sensuous similarities. So he's kind of like non-identical or similarities, which cannot really be easily compared, but they're there, you feel that they kind of go together, these correspondences that go together in a way which can't be explained by saying, oh, that looks like that. Well, that sounds like that. So I started off there, and I still am in that. But to be honest, I always seem to have to come back to Adorno. So I mean, I don't... You can make a cameo appearance, is it? Well, more than the cameo appearance, but yeah, you know, he's definitely in there. When can we expect... I know this is a terrible question to ask a writer in the middle of writing something, but how soon will we be able to see to read that? I don't know. We'll see, like, a few years now. I mean, I'm going to get some essays out, I'll get some essays out, and then, you know, the book will come much later. Well, I want to thank you so much on behalf of our lovely audience, and thank you, audience, as well, for listening and for your comments and questions. It's been a real pleasure. Like I said, your book is great. Everyone should buy it, by the way. There is a copy in the library. There's an e-copy in our SOAS library, but you should go out and get it. It's a really good read. It's the kind of book you can read over and over again, because it's full of very rich stuff. There's lots of lovely descriptions of actual jazz. Thank you so much for me. It's been great. And I hope if you are paying a visit to the UK, you will come and visit us at SOAS, and we'll do it all again, or we'll find something to do. Thank you very much, everyone, for listening and for your comments. Thank you. I can see these lovely comments, and Fumi can as well. Can you see those comments? Yeah, I can. Thank you, guys. It's been a great pleasure having you and having Fumi. And I will see you all soon. And those of you who are still coming to the Festival of Ideas events, Thursday, we've got a DJ summit, so we'll be talking about the art and craft and scholarship of DJing on Thursday live, face-to-face. Bye, everyone. Thanks so much. Thank you very much. Bye.