Podcast

Jazz and Social Justice with Gerald Horne


Gerald Horne is the Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and author of several books including, Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music. He talks to Rob about the economics of jazz music and musicians, including financial tensions between primarily black artists and white producers.
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Transcript

Rob Johnson:

I’m here today with historian Gerald Horne to discuss his book Jazz and Justice, Racism and the Political Economy of the Music. My friend and advisor Cornell West once said to me, “This book, you’ve got to read if you’re into music. You’ve just got to read it now”. And that was very very good advice. And Gerald I want to thank you for joining us today and exploring your work.

Gerald Horne:

Well thank you for inviting me.

Rob Johnson:

I see many, you’ve written about so many facets of history and it’s relation to race and I’m curious what brought you, I’ve seen so many books on blues and spirituals and so forth, but the relationship of jazz to political economy where you might call that music of the mind, has always intrigued me. I guess in part because my father was a physician and a professional jazz pianist at the same time. So the mysteries in jazz lurked around within my home. And I’d like to understand from you, what brought you to this frontier to explore?

Gerald Horne:

Well first of all, my roots are in St. Louis, Missouri, which as you know is a hot bed of music generally. And in fact, my younger brother Marvin is a musician who has played with Elvin Jones the drummer, Chico Hamilton the drummer, Aretha Franklin’s last band, et cetera. And I grew up in a household where music was ever present. I grew up in a neighborhood where up the street resided the buoy brothers, Lester Buoy, the art ensemble in Chicago, Byron Buoy, Joseph Buoy, who of course is a trombonist who played in bands with my younger brother from the time they were about 11 or 12.

And so that helped to spark my early interest in music. And then I would say as well, that as you suggested in your introduction, I’ve been exploring various aspects of history, not least labor history. I’ve written for example about the National Maritime Union and I wrote a book about workers in the film industry for example. And in some ways, this book is an extension of those particular projects. That is to say dealing with musicians as workers or musicians oftentimes as independent contractors. That is to say how they were subjected to exploitation, adhesion contracts, racism, poor working conditions, et cetera.

And so if you mix all of those elements together, you get an idea of why I decided to tackle this particular project.

Rob Johnson:

Oh, I remember St. Louis first as the opponent of the Detroit Tigers in the 1968 world series. But in my own life music in St. Louis played a substantial role when I got involved in the comeback of Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm. We went back to that earlier period, which early 50’s, late 40’s in Saint Louis when Ike had left Clark Stale and gone there. So that is a powerful experience not just for baseball, but that was a spectacular music culture. I remember Chuck Berry was there, Fontella Bass and all kinds of people of extraordinary talent.

Early in the book, I believe as I recall you kind of start with New Orleans as the context and you start to build out from that place. What was unique about New Orleans in your mind?

Gerald Horne:

Well New Orleans claims that it is the birthplace of this music we call jazz, which develops as you know at the end of the 19th century going forward. And there is much to be said for New Orleans as the origins of this music. I mean after all, before the US Civil War, New Orleans was not only one of the richest cities in the United States, not least because it was the K Mart of the African slave trade as a concerned it pertained to North America. But also that helped to give rise to a vibrant and thriving opera house culture as well and a music culture.

And then New Orleans was occupied early on during the US Civil War by Union troops. And then after those Union troops abandoned New Orleans in succeeding years, the music, the army bands, the military bands left their instruments there to be picked up by the newly freed formally enslaved African population, particularly saxophones, which becomes a major instrument with regard to this new music. And so I should also say that New Orleans was also a home of a so called bordello culture. And in some ways, the bordellos were instrumental in so far as they were hiring musicians to play. And that is the traditional story about the city of New Orleans as the birthplace of this music.

But as I suggested, at least inferentially in these pages, there are other cities who claim that they in fact are the birthplace of the movement. And I would just not dismiss these charges are these allegations out of hand, even though it might get me in trouble with my friends in New Orleans. That is to say that I think one of the reasons why myself and other writers are attracted to New Orleans is that beginning in the 1950’s, Tulane University in New Orleans began to collect oral histories of various musicians. And of course the musicians were in New Orleans and then they talk about how this musician was formed and the crucible in which it was formed. And that helps to tip the scales in favor of New Orleans.

Now, if you had the archivists and oral historians and interviewers at what is now the University of Memphis, right up the Mississippi River, doing such interviews, perhaps we’d be talking about Memphis as the birthplace of this music because as we know, Memphis even to this day, has a thriving music culture. And this is nothing new, or my own hometown of Saint Louis, further up the Mississippi River. And of course if you look at the origins of the very term jazz, J-A-Z-Z, you’ll find that with a result of the search of databases, the term in some ways can be traced to newspapers in the San Francisco bay area, around the time leading up to the onset of World War I, 1914.

So, even though I am favorable to this idea of New Orleans as the birthplace of this music, after all it helped to give birth to Louis Armstrong, Buddy Bolden, the Marsalis family et al, one could possibly have a similar sort of thesis that would point to Memphis with Charles Lloyd and Jimmy Lumpford or point to my own hometown of St. Louis and Clark Terry and of course right across the Mississippi River, the great Miles Dewey Davis.

Rob Johnson:

And a little bit of Charlie Parker in that Kansas City mix as well.

Gerald Horne:

Well yes. Kansas City of course comes into this book early on and once again, it has some of the same elements that New Orleans has, particularly the night club culture. Which in many ways is the culture from which this music springs. And Kansas City is a very intriguing story because in some ways it’s like East St. Louis, where I started visiting from the time I was a teenager believe it or not. Which was a wide open city. Not only East St. Louis, but Brooklyn, Illinois and all those towns right across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. And Kansas City during the era of the Pendergast machine and the 1920’s and the 1930’s, likewise was a wide open city. Now I’m of course talking about Kansas City, Missouri, whereas Charlie Yardbird Parker is emerging from Kansas City, Kansas.

But of course, like St. Louis and East St. Louis, those two Kansas City towns are united and yolked together. And Kansas City of course attracted musicians from all over the country, not least the great Count Basie, band leader and pianist whose roots are actually in New Jersey, not to mention the so called territorial bands from southwest of Kansas City, in Oklahoma for example. So I think that there are many hotbeds of this music and then of course we can talk about Chicago and how after World War I, you have a migration of New Orleans musicians to places like Chicago for example. And then migrating from the south to New York City, which then as now is probably the epicenter of this music.

Rob Johnson:

I think in part New York was the magnet because it was the market for making money playing live that so many of the artists did not originate from New York but migrated to New York particularly as recorded music became a more important phenomena, in terms of, how we say, augmenting what one could learn in a live show. You talk a great deal through the book about the relationship of managers or label owners or whatever to the artist. And I was very interested to see how well and how vividly in many cases you could document what I call exploitation or dysfunction. Why do you think we were in a place where these people with this brilliant talent could be exploited in many different places and contexts?

Gerald Horne:

Well first of all, these musicians are creating great wealth, not least after the advent of radio approximately 100 years ago. And the advent of recorded music approximately 100 years ago as well. And so the great wealth is being created, but the great wealth is being created disproportionately by musicians of African descent in a society, in a culture where white supremacy is relevant. And that is a toxic brew that leads to a mass exploitation. And then you have the fact of organized crime, that is to say the so called crime families that sink their sharpened claws into jazz clubs early on. And jazz clubs and night clubs happen to be the venue where this music is being created, live music as you so well mentioned.

And then with regard to recorded music, I tell the story, which is not unique to my own telling, of the manager of Duke Ellington, the Washington, DC-born pianist and conductor and composer. And how some of his great tunes, early on in his career, that if you look at the record versions of these tunes, you’ll find the name of Irving Mills as one of the authors of this music, which of course is shall we say inaccurate. But what that suggests is that the manager was able to insert himself into the production process and what that also suggests is that to the extent that royalties are still being reaped in 2020, that the royalties are not necessarily being reaped by the descendants of Duke Ellington, they’re being reaped by the descendants of Irving Mills.

Now the same holds true, I’m afraid to say, with regard to certain record labels which as noted previously, assigned these musicians to what lawyers would call adhesion contracts, that is to say one sided contracts. And then there is the rather dastardly practice, basically pursued by certain labels and I mention them in the book and so I’ll spare their mention here, that are complicit in terms of trying to either further the drug habits of musicians or induce drug habits of musicians to make them more pliable to being exploited. And helping to induce the musicians to sign these adhesion contracts. Now, once again you really can’t talk about these kinds of corrupt practices without talking about the wider context of what’s going on, not only in the United States, but in the world.

Gerald Horne:

Now with regard to the United States itself, by dent of digging into the records of the NAACP, a massive collection cited at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, I was able to uncover the story of how there was objection to certain clubs in uptown Manhattan performing live music. And then having integrated audiences, where there would be dancing, heterosexual dancing, male, female dancing, across the gender line. That is to say male, female dancing, particularly black men, white women. And this leads to protests against this kind of mingling, shall we say. And this leads to a certain crackdown on this practice and you also begin to see the evolution of this music from being a kind of dancing music to a listening music, growing out of that particular highly charged context.

Likewise, post 1945, with the attack on Jim Crow, US apartheid, you begin to see certain doors being opened for these musicians that there to fore had been closed. And so you see the rise of the effort by the great bassist Charles Mingus out of Nogalize, Arizona via Los Angeles and his comrade and partner Max Roach, by way of Barbados, Brooklyn and the great dismal swamp of North Carolina. How they tried to create a record company in order to circumvent those kinds of corrupt practices traditionally engaged in by these record companies, so that the musicians could claim a larger share of the wealth that they had been creating. But as I point out, there’s a basic contradiction because some of these musicians feel it useful or necessary to practice, believe it or not, 12-13-14 hours a day.

And so it’s very difficult to practice your craft 12-13-14 hours a day and then run a record company on the side. I mean, that’s probably too much to ask. Not to mention the fact that they had unprincipled competitors who were not above trying to invoke the power of the state to drive these up and coming black musicians and their companies out of business. Yet having said that, it is fair to say that the retreat of Jim Crow, I should say the erosion of Jim Crow post 1945, opens up a new venues and horizons for these musicians and stands in some stark contrast to what had persisted and existed previously.

Rob Johnson:

I also have often heard stories that pertain to the origins of bebop, where the music became complex, I guess I would call this in an economists world protection of intellectual property rights. That people like Gillespie, Parker, Thelonious Monk could play things that couldn’t be imitated by their white counterparts and so then they had to book these guys downtown where the bigger money was. And that may have motivated some of the complexity of the music. Though I’d also say it was a beautiful demonstration of the quality of the mind of people of African descent. And I know there’s a young woman working for many years in New York with a program called Kids for Culturing. Kristine Passerela is her name. And what she has said to me is when you’re in a school, with lots of class difference and so forth, and people hear the sophistication of John Cultrane, wealthy white people’s children have etched into them respect for someone’s brilliance that is comparable to Bach or Beethoven.

And that does not leave ones spirit easily. So I think there’s so many beautiful dimensions, as you talked about this period at 1945 in relation to the commerce, but also in relation to the statement of the quality and the sophistication and the creativity of these artists.

Gerald Horne:

Well yes. I talk about, as you know, this whole question of what you termed as protection against intellectual property rights, that is to say trying to create music that would not and could not be easily copied or imitated. And this points up another issue, you might recall or some of your listeners might recall, that the musician and band leader known appropriately as Paul Whiteman, oftentimes was denoted as the “King of Jazz.” And this gets into the so called racial elements, that is to say that it became rather difficult for certain forces in this country to give credit to these black musicians for creating a new art form. A new art form that by the way spread globally. I mean there are jazz cultures transnationally. There’s a jazz culture in Cuba as a matter of fact. I say early on that my book is focused on the United States, but if you were to broaden your lens, you could also make an argument for this music being born in Havana for example.

And certainly I think it’s fair to say that because these musicians had fungible skills, that is to say skills that were easily transferrable, early on there was a kind of jazz diaspora. Recall Sidney Bechet, the great New Orleans horn man, a master of the soprano saxophone, which as any saxophonist will tell you is not the easiest instrument to master. He migrated early on to western Europe. Of course the tales of these black musicians in Paris is a book in and of itself, involving not least Miles Dewey Davis, but also because of the social democratic trends in western Europe, where art tends to receive subsidies from the state. This was an attractive magnet for many of these musicians, for example lanky Dexter Gordon, by way of Los Angeles to Denmark and of course from there starring in movies. Art Farmer from the west of the United States to Vienna.

You have many musicians who make a steady beeline to Japan, including my younger brother, because in some ways you could point to Japan and Tokyo in particular, as a kind of headquarters for this music. And certainly, in the inter war period. That is to say the period between the end of World War I, 1918 and the onset of war in Europe, 1939, you had Shanghai, China becoming an epicenter for this music as well. And interestingly enough, a descendant of Booker T. Washington, who was a premier black leader at the turn of the 20th century and I’m speaking of the horn man Booker Pitman, spends most of his time in Brazil, where in turn there’s also a thriving and a vibrant music culture and particularly jazz culture.

So, this is just part of the story of this music that we refer to as jazz.

Rob Johnson:

And as you move forward towards the 1960’s and jazz migrates from what I might call classic jazz through bee bop to model jazz and then towards what they call free jazz, which in my own reading years ago was many artists were talking about unlocking themselves from the western structure and cannon of music. How do you see the emergence of people like Ornette Coleman, Pharaoh Sanders, the transformation of John Coltrane in the context of all of these social issues?

Gerald Horne:

Well, first of all with regard to your latter point, social issues, we’re familiar for example with John Coltrane and his being inspired by the bombing of the Birmingham church in 1963, which causes him to make compositions in homage to the young girls who were killed there. We know about Ornette Coleman, who of course you made reference to, by way of Fort Worth, Texas and Los Angeles. And like many musicians of that era, I think that these musicians were trying to explore the various dimensions of their instruments, which then led them into a new level of what I would call creativity, although of course there were critics who disagreed. There is a scene from one of the chapters in this book where certain critics are literally fleeing from a club, as John Coltrane begins to emit what were called his sheets of sound for example.

But I think that history has been kinder to the creative flourishing of these musicians then some of the contemporaneous critics. That is to say that John Coltrane is now celebrated, there is in fact a church in San Francisco that pays a kind of religious homage to John Coltrane. And when, as I recall, when Ornette Coleman passed away, his obituary was on the front page of the New York Times, which is quite extraordinary for anybody, not least a black American musician.

Rob Johnson:

Yeah I remember they also had an enormous memorial service at the Riverside Church in New York when Coleman passed away. But I think what you say about his appearance in the front of the New York Times was even more profound. My friend and music writer Allen Light has made a number of audio interviews with Coleman in the last years of his life.

Well good.

Rob Johnson:

And I’ve gotten to know the man who was Coleman’s assistant, personal assistant for many years. And he’s actually from Bulgaria.

Gerald Horne:

Is that right?

Rob Johnson:

His sister was the wife of Dewey Redman.

Gerald Horne:

Oh is that right?

Rob Johnson:

But the stories that I hear, I mean about this period, probably emanate from the fact that for many years I lived in the West Village and my landlord was a man named Elliot Hoffman who was the lawyer for John Coltrane and Stan Getz and the rock band The Who. And he used to travel with his wife Nancy all over the world, and particularly the last Japan tour he went with Coltrane. And he, I guess my contract with him, I used to play tenor saxophone and we’d talk about all these things, but he said, “If I give you this lease to move in with me, you’ve got to come down here and have a single malt scotch with me and let me tell my war stories”.

And one night Elliot sat me down and told me the story on that tour in Japan that the first night they were there, he and his wife were at the dinner table and Coltrane asked him to come aside. And he said, “We are trying to free ourself from western tonality and as we prepare for performances at these dinners, we would like you and your wife to sit at a different table”. They were both Caucasians. And he said, “I love you, I will always work with you”, he would embrace them before and after the dinner. But to get their mind focused in the depth and the power that they were reaching for, he explicitly asked that of Elliot.

So I think there was, how we say so many dimensions here of what you might call turmoil and turbulence that it feels to me, I used to be a sailor, like I’m watching two weather systems come together and the lightning bolts, the thunderstorm that emerges is the tension. Like in weather between the cold front and the warm front. But here, this social injustice and the different ways in which people are acknowledged for their creative genius or not acknowledge I should say, plays an enormous role in this experience.

As you look at the jazz scene today, are the people who have carried the banner and carried the tradition into the present moment, that you would point to?

Gerald Horne:

Well before I answer that question, let me turn the beat around and suggest that you need to write a book. You need to write a memoir. You need to find some time in your schedule to start putting down these stories, because I think you’ll find an audience for them. Now, with regards, well I mean it’s obvious.

Now with regard to this music today, I mean as I point out in the book, this is a musical form that has been judged to be dead and buried and had the last rites performed more then once. But keeps rising somehow from the grave, which may lead to the conclusion as to why there are those who try to prematurely bury this art form. I think that this music will be alive and well as long as human beings continue to breathe, because in some ways this music expresses the best that is in human beings. And to the extent that we’ve been able to overcome the worst, not least these Jim Crow practices that we’re trying to strangle this music, it seems to me that this gave this music a new lease on life.

Now with regard to this point, I would not like to downplay at all the numerous barriers that continue to persist. That is to say, with the rise of new technologies and streaming and now I think we’re in a brave new world with regard to COVID-19, as we speak it’s unclear as of today whether or not there can be a live music scene as long as there’s social distancing, unless the architects come up with something that has escaped my mind and attention to this point. And then, with regard to streaming, which is this so called new financial source for musicians, it’s not as lucrative as some might think. And in any case, because of the ingenuity of other human beings that subject to various kinds of bootlegging practices, that then jeopardizes a stream of income and revenue to the musicians.

But on the other hand, as you well know, there are these jazz bands that are arising in high schools and in colleges in order to get a beat on the health of this music, it’s useful to track the sales of saxophones, trumpets, drums, pianos, bass fiddles for example to use that antiquated term. And I would say that in that context, you’re still seeing the proliferation of this music over the radio. I mean I listen on a regular basis to WKCR out of New York, KMHD out of Oregon, KCSM out of the San Francisco bay area, WRTI out of Philadelphia and checking the health of these particular outlets also gives you an idea of the continued vibrancy of this particular music.

Rob Johnson:

I see many many young artists, I mean one, I remember must’ve been gee almost 35 years ago, when a 19 year old named Roy Hargrove came in and blew down what was called Bradley’s with just tremendous vitality and various, I remember he had a sax player with him named Ron Blake and at other times Antonio Heart. And it was a revival, Joey De Francisco was a keyboard player, Greg Kaiser and Cyrus Chestnut, who I particularly enjoy. But I think the vitality is there but it is surrounded, like you said, not because of the virus, that’s a different dimension, but by a much more difficult climate and what some call a winner take all climate, where a group like The Weeknd or Drake has 235 million listeners. The royalties are very small but the volume is high and they make a lot of money.

A jazz artist with comparable skills, who say may pick up 150,000 or 200,000 followers does not extract anywhere near that kind of money. And the other I think very clear dimension is that streaming and various other forms of entertainment have made it much harder for clubs on weeknights to create what you might call a bridge for a touring artist. The Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you got to put your band up and it’s very hard to make money. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you can do a little bit better.

I once had a blues artist that worked with me who said that he thought his biggest enemy in life was Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And he was smiling, he said it’s a wonderful thing, it’s a wonderful thing but nobody is buying alcohol in clubs like they used to. And nobody’s attending clubs on weeknights like they used to. So it’s killing my career. But I think, I’m sorry go ahead.

Gerald Horne:

Well, I didn’t answer you question altogether. Your question invited me to single out certain musicians and groups and so let me take up the invitation. You mentioned Dewey Redman, well let me mention Josh Redman, of course comes out of San Francisco Bay Area and is a horn man and has created some wonderful music. I mentioned the Marsalis family previously. Not only Brantford, but Winton, Delphio, et cetera. Robert Glassber out of my own Houston, Texas. Jason Merane, there are just so many musicians.

And in fact, one of the themes that I pursue, it’s a thread throughout this book, is the women musicians that have arisen over the years. I’m talk at length about Mary Lou Williams, the great pianist and I talk about Dorothy Donogan, another pianist. And interestingly enough, many of these musicians I’m talking about are disproportionately pianists. And one of the critics, of course there’s a whole discourse in this book about the critics, mentions early on that he did not feel that women musicians were somehow capable of tackling say the bass fiddle for example. And this is something that it seems to me is a barrier that has yet to be overcome because basically what we’re talking about as we talk about in so many aspects of US life is the waste of human capital when you have categories of individuals and human beings who are deemed to be off limits or deemed to be incapable, which thereby and therefore helps to deprive humanity of a certain creativity and a certain beauty.

Rob Johnson:

I think when you and I had dinner when we first met through our mutual friend Charme, I gave you a copy of a manuscript on what was called The Battle of the Five Spot, man named David Neil Lee wrote this book about how the journalists and the culture that surrounds, what you might call the changing of the paradigm. This is interesting to me in the realm of economics, conform a source of what you might call acceleration or resistance. And that study was actually a Canadian sociologist who was, what you might call disciple of Pierre Bourdot, talking about how hard it was particularly in an austere or stressful commerce to change the paradigm because people fear losing their livelihood.

And I think right now it’s harder in that world of online and streaming for people to resist the change. Starting with Napster and the bootlegging becoming easier, it’s kind of been taken out of the artists hands. And most of the people I know that work at labels now say they watch how well the artists do on social media before they sign them to labels. In other words it isn’t the labels job to market them and establish their reputation, they’re supposed to do that to diminish the risk before the people signing them to make recorded music.

So I think there are a whole lot of things in play that do effect what we all can hear. And I’m hopeful there’s a young lady who I’ve heard sing in clubs a couple times, Cecile McLaren Salvant.

Gerald Horne:

Yes.

Rob Johnson:

Who I think is as good as anyone I’ve ever heard. I mean Sara Vaughn caliber, Ella Fitzgerald caliber. And perhaps some of the politics of gender might be moving in a direction to allow us to benefit from the musical talents of women more profoundly then has been the case in jazz in the past.

Gerald Horne:

Let me also give tips to future researchers and for further research projects, as the footnotes of my book suggest, there is a bounty of archival material on these musicians. For example the Library of Congress alone in Washington, DC, you have the papers of Billy Strayhorn, Duke Wellington Orchestra, both Max Roach and Mingus have their archive at the Library of Congress, not to mention Dexter Gordon. And interestingly enough, I’ve been saying this whenever a microphone is put before my face, that there is a wonderful book that has yet to be written about Max Roach. And the raw materials are all there at the Library of Congress, not only in terms of his correspondence and contracts and musical scores and all the rest, but also because the late writer Mary Barocha has started to do and has told to book with Max that was never finished but the fruits are all there. So it’s just a matter of fashioning it or re fashioning it.

And then at the University of Pittsburgh, there are the papers of Earl Garner, I’m sure you recall the opinionative pianist of the palm matted hair sitting on telephone books. And his archive is quite revealing and part of it’s reflected in the pages of my book, but as with any book I couldn’t include everything because the book wasn’t about Earl Garner. And so there’s a story yet to be told about Earl Garner.

Now also with regard to Dave Brubeck, a celebrated pianist of the 1950’s and there after, now when I looked at his archive it was at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. I understand that since that time, it’s no longer there, but I’m assured you’ll be able to trace it and track where it wound up. And then of course there are these wonderful oral histories that the Smithsonian in Washington, DC produced over the years, with just about every top flight musician and artist you can think of. And many of those are online, so you can do those in this post-COVID era for example. You can do the research quite easily with a sound internet connection.

I should also mention and I guess we’re sort of coming to a close, that right now I’m writing a book as we speak on boxing. And it involves many of the same themes that I pursued in this music book. That is to say, matter of fact it’s even more so, particularly in terms of the influence of organized crime on the sport, the fact that musicians like, excuse me, boxers like the great Jack Johnson, the heavyweight champion of the turn of the 20th century found it necessary to go into exile. Archie Moore, the light heavyweight champion of the 1950’s and there after, considered very strongly exiling himself in Argentina and Buenos Aires because he was lionized there so greatly and so deeply.

So I think that the work continues, the labor continues and fortunately the music continues.

Rob Johnson:

Well what I’m enjoying tremendously today is that I have always felt through my experience in music and the arts, a way in which the poetics communicate to people and move them in the ways that logic and debate sometimes do not inspire. But there is a tension in the relationship between art or athletic prowess, like a boxer, and commerce and the commodification of everything is a source of tension that can distort or refract or discourage or as you mentioned with regard to the jazz artists moving to Europe, enhance the experience that mankind gets through that art, as what I would call a public good.

And you have gone so deeply into the places where that commodification what you might call bites into the process and illuminated that, that I’m very grateful for what you have taught me. And this may be the end of this discussion, but that last series of suggestions on resources and on your future books on boxing and on Amiri Baraka’s unfinished manuscript, you actually gave us a beginning here at the end and I want to thank you for that too.

Gerald Horne:

My pleasure.

Rob Johnson:

Very good.

Gerald Horne:

Okay.

Rob Johnson:

Thanks very much.

Gerald Horne:

Thank you.

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About the Host

ROB JOHNSON serves as President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Johnson is an international investor and consultant to investment funds on issues of portfolio strategy. He recently served on the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz.

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About the Guest

GERALD HORNE holds the Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. He has also written extensively about the film industry. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University.

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