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Kurt Vonnegut Sez:


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Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favourite writers. Most recently, I have been reading his "A Man Without A Country: a Memoir of Life in George W. Bush's America".

On the subject of "Music", Vonnegut says:

"No matter how corrupt, greedy and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful. If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

"THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC"

Now, during our catastrophically idiotic war in Vietnam, the music kept getting better and better. We lost that war, by the way. Order couldn't be restored in Indochina until the people kicked us out.

That war only made billionaires out of millionaires. Today's war is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.

And how come the people in countries we invade can't fight like ladies and gentlemen, in uniform and with tanks and helicopter gunships?

Back to music. It makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up. And I really like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today- jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock-and-roll, hip-hop, and on and on- is derived from the blues.

A gift to the world? One of the best rhythm-and-blues combos I ever heard was three guys and a girl from Finland playing in a club in Krakow, Poland.

The wonderful writer Albert Murray, who is a jazz historian and a friend of mine among other things, told me that during the era of slavery in this country- an atrocity from which we can never fully recover- the suicide rate per capita among slave-owners was much higher than the suicide rate among slaves.

Murray says he thinks this was because slaves had a way of dealing with depression, which their white owners did not: They could shoo away Old Man Suicide by playing and singing the Blues. He says something else which also sounds right to me. He says the blues can't drive depression clear out of a house, but can drive it into the corners of any room where it's being played. So please remember that.

Foreigners love us for our jazz. And they don't hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us now for our our arrogance."

What do SongFactors think?

N.B. I'm more focussed on his opinions about "music" here than the "political" points raised in the passage. I suppose I could have only quoted certain paragraphs- to the detriment of flow and continuity- but really, who am I to edit Kurt Vonnegut? :shades:

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Couldn´t agree more. America is the origin of nowadays music. (Among other things.) We wouldn´t have rock and roll, jazz or blues without it.

Politically? They hate us for far more than our arrogance. The arrogance is just the hook upon which they hang their hate. Let me count the ways....affluence, freedom, world reach, homogeniztion, etc., etc.

Now, couldn´t agree more once again, Joe... :bow:

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  • 2 weeks later...

Music as evidence of God is perfect; if that is what is needed to establish the fact. God invented it, afterall, and placed it throughout nature, long before man "invented" it (talk about arrogance ...)

As to KV's societal impressions; to rant cynically, yet offer no solutions, is akin to a screaming child latched to a candy bar in the stand before the checkout counter, while the mother worries how she will feed the rest of the family for a week on what she has bought.

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Wow! I didn't know he'd died even . R.I.P . The media is up to it's usual tricks going snakey on Don Imus these days ...

Still , I have never enjoyed his books and though I agree with much of what he has to say on and off the record - I'm not a fan .

Hmmm. Will that be all our own simple epitaths - Yeas or nays ? I guess it will be ...

FYI : On the Day Kennedy was shot C. S Lewis also died - with barely a note , given the circumstances .

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