Today's Stories

June 13 / 15, 2008

Douglas Valentine:
McCain: War Hero or Go-To Collaborator?

June 12, 2008

Judith Levine
As Cranes Fall and People Die

Patrick Cockburn
Amid Iraqi Fury, U.S. Offers Concessions on Military Bases

Saul Landau
The Iraq War Becomes Suicidal

Christopher Brauchli
Bush Bling-Bling: Government by Crony

Norman Solomon
Deadly Diplomacy

Helen Redmond
Why Can't We All Get KennedyCare?

Laura Carlsen
No Rest for the Working Poor

Jeremy R. Hammond
Threats Against Iran Escalate

Anne Landman
Pinkwashing: Can Shopping Cure Breast Cancer?

Website of the Day
Fire in Watts

June 11, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Oil Prices Are So High

Ralph Nader
Wall Street Gamblers

Joshua Frank
Why I Can't Support Barack Obama

Clifton Ross
Conversation in Miami: the Neoliberal Left and Socialism

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Whatever Happened to "Democracy Now?"

Stephen Lendman
Exposing Pentagon and CIA Corruption

Diane Farsetta
Talking Back to Bill O'Reilly

Ron Jacobs
The Sixties Painted Black

Deborah Rich
Hay Belly Nation: the FDA and the O-Word

Hop Wechsler
A Friend of Women? My Bill Clinton ... and Ours

Website of the Day
A New Path to the Waterfall

June 10, 2008

Alan Farago
John McCain and the Company He Keeps

James G. Abourezk
Deadly Fallout From Obama's Groveling Before Israel Lobby

Saree Makdisi
Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost)

Malini Johar Schueller
A Picture From Beirut

John Ross
Killing Foods, Killing People

Wajahat Ali
Rumi and Sufism

Peter Morici
Bernanke Aggravates Recession Risks

Jordan Flaherty
Inside Angola Prison, Louisiana's Last Slave Plantation

Gary Macfarlane
Collaboration on the Clearwater: Is It Legitimate?

Joanne Mariner
The Gitmo Trials: an Inglorious Start

Website of the Day
The End of the Clinton Machine?

June 9, 2008

Uri Avnery
No, I Can't: Obama, Israel and AIPAC

Nikolas Kozloff
McCain & the Republican Insitute: Promoting Iraqi Occupation for "a Million Years"

Allan Nairn
Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry

Dennis Loo
Threats on Iran and the "Batterer's Defense"

Harry Browne
Irish Euro Vote Comes Down to the Wire

C. Hand
U. S. Bid to Hike Iran's Gas Prices Seems Doomed

Peter Morici
An Unsustainable Trade Deficit

Kenneth Couesbouc
A Ripe Time for Inflation

Martha Rosenberg
The Inconvenient Senator Grassley

James L. Secor
Chinese Superstition or Unconscious Oracle?

Website of the Day
Pay Bo Diddley!

June 7 / 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Obama Goes Over the Top

Ishmael Reed
How Miles Davis Changed My Life

Jeffrey St. Clair
What a Miner's Life is Worth

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet the King the Beers: John McCain and Latin America

Dave Lindorff
The High Cost of a Single War-Like Remark: Oil Prices, Israel, Iran and the U.S.

Robert Fantina
When Truth is the Casualty

Conn Hallinan
Iran and Rumors of War

Neve Gordon
The Occupation and the Politics of Death

Tom Barry
The Deterrence Strategy of Homeland Security

Patrick Irelan
Raiding the Packing House

Tim Wise
Your Whiteness is Showing

David Ker Thomson
The Hard Question

Joshua Frank
"Socialist" Wins Republican Nomination in Montana

David Yearsley
Disaster Music

James T. Phillips
1968: Year of the Rat

Joe Allen
The Real Bobby Kennedy

P. Sainath
Making Life Brighter in Kondapur

David Macaray
Should Unions be More Democratic?

B.R. Gowani
Experience and the Two-for-One

Fred Gardner
What Happened (at the DA's Office)

Peter Harley
Technology to the Rescue? Kurzweil and the Human Machines

Michael Dickinson
Surrender the Bones of Geronimo!

Jen Roesch
Where are the Real Women in Sex and the City?

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Landau, and Buknatski

Website of the Day
Partying with the Waltons

June 6, 2008

Frank Barat
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky on the Future of Israel / Palestine

Patrick Cockburn
U.S. Extorts Iraq to Approve Military Deal

Gary Leupp
Cheney Enrages Iraqis Over Security Deal

James Abourezk
Name That Terrorist

Peter Morici
Recession Grips the Jobs Market

Faheem Hussain
What is NATO Doing in Afghanistan?

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Britons Go on Hunger Strike

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
How Will Musharraf Go? Impeachment or Safe Exit?

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs to Defend Itself

Website of the Day
Backstage with Bo Diddley

June 5, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq

Sharon Smith
Hillary's Wreckage

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Electoral Dilemma: Latinos or Reagan Democrats?

Linn Washington, Jr.
Police Brutality and Cover-Up in Philly

Omar Barghouti
60 Years of Nakba, 41 Years of Occupation ...

Scott Pellegrino
Jim Crow Radio: Bob Grant's Lifetime Achievement Award

John Walsh
Obama Woos AIPAC

Dan Bacher
The Parching of California

DC Larson
Nazi Rockers ... F-Off

Robert Jensen
Masculine, Feminine or Human?

Website of the Day
Ohio Cops Attack Long Walkers

June 4, 2008

Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban

Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie

Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth

Dave Lindorff
Of Whiners and Poor Losers

George Wuerthner
Farm Economics

Victor M. Rodriguez
The Puzzle of Race and Politics

Remi Kanazi
Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed

Stephane Luçon
Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended

Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement

Laray Polk
The Militarization of Space

Website of the Day
Red State Rebels

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy

Steve Early
San Juan Showdown

Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony

George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry

Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway

Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

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Sonny Rollins, Take One

The Colossus

By ISHMAEL REED

Bebop was my generation’s hip-hop. It was more than a pastime; it was an obsession. I used to play trombone with bebop groups. When I turned sixty, I enrolled in Berkeley’s Jazz School, where I studied with jazz pianist Susan Muscarella for nearly five years. I’ve continued with jazz pianist Mary Watkins. When I met Max Roach, I thanked him for keeping me out of reform school; we were too busy listening to bop to get into trouble. We’d spend hours at each others’ homes listening to the latest recordings. We dressed like beboppers. We were clean. We went around looking like Gregory Peck in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Our idea of a party was where they’d play “Moody’s Mood for Love.” We knew all the words.

Bebop musicians didn’t walk. They came at you, dancing. When Sonny Rollins descended from his studio after our interview, he was wearing this great greenish raincoat that hit him near the ankles. Rollins, who had turned sixty-six when this interview took place, said that when he was a teenager, he was impressed with the way an older trumpet player shined his shoes. Beboppers were sharp, and we were their acolytes.

Theodore Walter “Sonny” Rollins first picked up the sax in 1944 as a sophomore in high school. By the 1950s he had come into his own, playing tenor with a variety of all-time jazz greats, including Art Blakey, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis. When he left the Max Roach Quintet in 1957, Rollins created his own unique trio (sax, bass and drums) that spotlighted the versatility of his solos and hard bop style. Several years later, in an attempt to regain inspiration in his playing, he stopped recording and began practicing regularly while walking along New York’s Williamsburg Bridge; his triumphant return took place in 1962 with an album titled simply The Bridge.

Rollins’ early recording styles show him developing what would become the Rollins style: a broad repertoire including blues, standards and even spirituals and an intense devotion to melody. No matter how abstract his solos become, one is always mindful of the tune with which he started out—a trait he shares with Thelonious Monk.

Though jazz solos may sound spontaneous, many are rehearsed and memorized. Some musicians are still recycling solos originated by Charlie “Bird” Parker. Rollins, on the other hand, is known for pure improvision. He has a dedicated following but fame in the United States has been slow to come. For some of the white critics, who form the largest segment of the fraternity of jazz critics, Rollins has an attitude. He is recognized as one of the first artists to make reference to the growing militancy of the 1960s with his Freedom Suite.

Both the Yoruba and biblical traditions hold that sometimes your worst adversary is inside your family—in this case, American fans and critics. The prophet is no honored in his own country. Abroad, though, it’s different. Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus is a best-seller in Japan, which he has visited nineteen times and where he has appeared in computer commercials. At seventy-six, he still continues his vigorous touring.

But Rollins doesn’t have to go anywhere, if he doesn’t want to. He’s come a long way since his mother bought him that first Zephyr tenor. He can kick around his Germantown, New York farm and continue to develop his music.

Rollins has accumulated a catalogue of close to fifty albums. More importantly, he’s one of the only surviving icons left from an era in jazz when genius was the norm and musicians like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk were not only changing music but also affecting black culture and American society. When members of my generation tried to break away from the linear forms of novel writing, we did so because we were trying to keep up with the musicians and painters. How would it look if I did some refried Faulkner and Hemingway, when I lived in a community on the Lower East Side that included Joe Overstreet, Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor? Kenny Dorham and I used to drink together at a dive named the Port of Call, and Albert Ayler  and his brother were guests in my home. It’s appropriate that the central image of associated with Rollins is a bridge, because the beboppers, like the hip-hoppers, those who are not pushed into music that degrades by avaricious record producers, have established a bridge that reaches back thousands of years to the sound of the mother drum, the root of all black music. But sometimes it seems that in a white supremacist society, constantly on guard against minorities gaining the upper hand, even the creators of one form of homegrown music are denied credit for their invention. American Experience, on PBS, ran a program about the history of New Orleans. Based on the visuals, one would gain the impression that whites invented jazz. Photos of great black musicians like Jelly Roll Morton, Louis and Lil Armstrong, King Oliver and others roll by without the musicians being identified. All one has to do is notice the names associated with the production to realize the problem.

Reed: There aren’t many survivors from the great bebop revolution. Who is still left?

Rollins: Well, J.J. Johnson [who, since this interview, has died], Milt Jackson [died], Percy Heath [died], and his little brother Jimmy. There’s not many of us left. Art Farmer, who I guess would be about my age. Johnny Griffin. [Since the interview was conducted, bop pioneer Jackie MacLean also died.]

Reed: Do you guys have a survivor’s guild? (Laughter)

Rollins: No, we don’t have one. We should have something like that, ‘cause in the old days in Harlem, they used to have all these clubs and everyone would be together, to help guys. There should really be some kind of federation. But people just see each other now and then, you know.

Reed: You’ve said your mind is like a computer—you have different programs and you snatch from everyplace. Tin Pan Alley, country and western—very eclectic. Do you consider your music to be at all political or satirical, like poking fun at institutions that take themselves too seriously?

Rollins: Yeah, oh sure. Of course. I got a lot of criticism for The Freedom Suite, especially when I went down South on tour and we were playing mainly white colleges. A lot of people had me against the wall, asking, “What did you mean by that?”

Reed: We still get that with gangsta rap, and I remember the horrible things they used to say about bebop. When middle-class black people listened to bebop, they said the music was strange. They didn’t like the culture, they didn’t like the style; just a lot of hate.

Rollins: In a way, because of the guys in that day using drugs and stuff, they might have associated the music with that culture. So maybe I can cut them a little slack.

Reed: Let’s talk about the music here. One critic, Gunther Schuller, said that your method of playing, through melody rather than running harmonic changes, was a radical concept. What did he mean by that?

Rollins: I guess what he’s talking about is thematic improvisation. In other words, if I played “Mary Had a Little Lamb” [sings the melody], I might play for two hours from that same song, variations on that theme. What he meant was that I didn’t just play the melody of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and go into the chord changes. I kept it as a theme. I think that’s what he meant. But at the time he wrote that, I didn’t know what he meant. I might have understood it, but it was so strange to have someone tell me what I was doing that it sort of tricked me for a minute.

Reed: Describe your apprenticeship with Coleman Hawkins. I know he influenced you a great deal.

Rollins: I would say Monk was more like that. Coleman, he was sort of—I didn’t really work with him. He was just my adult. But I actually used to go to Monk’s house after school and rehearse with his band and stuff, so with him I would say it was more of a real apprenticeship. He was like my guru.  Monk would say, “Yeah, man, Sonny is bad. Cats have to work out what they play; Sonny just plays that shit out of the top of his head.”

Reed: In the old days, the players and the gangsters were the real patrons of the art. And if you had talent, they would get you gigs in their clubs. Then a new kind of drug came on the scene. What was the impact of heroin on the jazz scene?

Rollins: Devastating. Devastating.

Reed: When you got in trouble, was that peer group stuff?

Rollins: To an extent, but you know, Bird [Charlie Parker] was doing it, Billie Holiday was doing it, but especially Bird. That’s why Bird was such a distraught figure. Because cats were copying him, and he knew it was wrong but he couldn’t stop. So we figured, Yeah, man, Bird is doing it, let’s go and get high. And I got strung out. I got fucked up. I mean, that’s normal when you don’t know better.

Reed: But you overcame it.

Rollins: That was a rough one. The person that gave me pride to overcome it—besides Bird—was my mother, who stood by me after I had nobody. After I had ripped everybody off. People would see me coming down the street, they’d run. But my mother stayed with me all the way. And Charlie Parker.

Reed: You had a great reputation, but you went to Chicago and worked as a laborer. How did you feel about that?

Rollins: Well, I had messed myself up so bad and burned all these bridges, so when I went to Chicago, I went there to kick my habit.

Reed: And then you went to the government rehab center in Lexington, Kentucky. And afterward made your comeback.

Rollins: I came out and I was thinking about Bird, and what happened when I was in there. I thought, boy, wait till I come out. I’ma show Bird that I’m cool. And then he died while I was still in there. But anyway, I came out and still had to struggle with cats saying, “Hey, man, come on, let’s step out.” But I won that struggle. I wanted to work, and I had to come all the way back out myself. I knew how far down I’d been; I did janitor work and all of this—well, what else was there to really do?

Reed: What about your relationship with club owners?

Rollins: I was blackballed by a lot of these people.

Reed: Why?

Rollins: Because I was what you would call an uppity nigger or whatever. So a lot of these cats were keeping me from playing festivals and shit. This was for acting up and asking for money. Some cats be so glad to play that they don’t say nothing.

Reed: People are so happy to play that they lower the standards?

Rollins: It’s not just in the past, either. I’m going through this shit all the time. They just called me to do a commercial for this car, Infiniti. They wanted us to go to Czechoslovakia to shoot it. There were no speaking parts. It would be this actor and myself sitting down in a jazz club at a table, and there’ll be some Czech jazz musicians up there playing and then a voice-over about Infiniti. Something like that. So naturally I didn’t do it. I mean, for me to just be validating white jazz music. I’m not going to put myself in that position. I’m glad they still think I’m viable, but I’m not gonna do that shit, man.

I did one commercial some time ago, where I was playing on the bridge for Pioneer. They said, “Sonny Rollins really went to practice on the bridge and became excellent, like our product.” Something like that was cool, where I’m identified and the people know it’s me playing. But to sit down and validate someone else’s shit, it’s just not right. It would get me a lot of exposure, it would be cash, of course, but I reached  the conclusion a long time ago that I’m not rich. I’m not going to get rich, I just want to make enough to make it. Fuck trying to get into that race. I don’t want it; I don’t even want to speak to those people about it ‘cause I don’t like them.

Reed: Was that like a revelation—some sort of spiritual thing that led you to do that?

Rollins: It happened because I was getting a lot of publicity at the time. I had a band with Elvin Jones and I was playing these places, and I remember the place I played in Baltimore and people really didn’t get it, so I said, “Man, I’m not really doing it. I got to get myself together. First of all, I’ma go back to the woodshed.” That’s why I went on the bridge. Some cat, a writer, was up across the bridge one day and saw me playing, but nobody would have even known it if it hadn’t been for him. That’s how it happened. It didn’t have anything to do with trying to make it public.

Reed: Why are you so hard on yourself?

Rollins: I’m hard on myself because maybe I been around a lot great musicians, and I don’t think I’ll ever be at the level of some of the people I been around. So I’m trying to reach that level. I’m trying to reach a level of performance, and that’s what it’s about.

Reed: They used to hose something called the “Pat Juba” in slavery days: the white slave owners made two black guys beat each other up and one survives, and the masters stand around and watch. I think that still goes on. When it comes to blacks it always seems to be a competition, fighting to see who’s going to be the diva, like they’re having a diva war to see who’s going to be accepted. There can only be one dancer, one writer, one musician. They tried to do that with you and Coltrane, to play you against each other.

Rollins: We didn’t react to it. Coltrane was beautiful, a very spiritual person. He was like a minister. We were thinking about music. It was the writers who influenced the friends who….

Reed: Was it just a few writers who did this?

Rollins: Probably. Remember when Coltrane and I came out. I was popular before Coltrane. We used to be referred to as the angry young tenors—we were against, like, the Stan Getzes, the Birth of the Cool; we were sort of a reaction against that. That was still going on at that time, so we were the angry tenors and nobody was thinking about that shit. But I noticed that withour even realizing that’s what they were doing in slavery days. I noticed that you could never have more than one person up there at a time.

Reed: Let me ask you about gangsta rap.

Rollins: I like the content of rap because it’s the black experience; what they’re saying is the truth. Not everything—I’m talking about the political stuff, of course. We have to accept that ‘cause that’s what’s happening.

Reed: What about the style, all this mixing and sampling and stuff they do?

Rollins: Well, they sampled some of my stuff. This group Digable Planets did some of my stuff. I heard it in a store. I heard somebody playing some of my stuff.

Reed: How do you feel about that?

Rollins: It’s okay, it’s alright. I just don’t want to be ripped off. I need my money. So I like the political thing and I like some of the rhythms them cats are playing. I can use it. I’m not an old fogy. I think jazz has done so much to bring people together, but jazz is only an art form. You can’t change a society with jazz. The society is still backward on racial matters. I like to be democratic; I have a white boy playing in my band right at the moment. But it’s not a personal thing. I find people personally who are great, but the oppressive society just makes it impossible to be real with people. It always fucks everything up.

This essay is excerpted from Ishmael Reed's new collection, Mixing It Up: Taking On the Media Bullies and Other Reflections. It is reprinted with permission of the author.

Ishmael Reed is a poet, novelist and essayist who lives in Oakland. His novels  include, Mumbo Jumbo, the Freelance Pallbearers and The Last Days of Louisiana Red. 

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