[Trombone-l] Lassus again, what were the chances?

[sabutin]

Well...here is what I am coming to in ALL things.

You either get it or you don't.

Q: Mr. Waller,...what is swing?

Fats Waller: If you don't know...I can't tell you.

Yup.

Those who do not "get" the significance of the content...and INTENT 
as well...of a piece of racist trash like "Lassus" simply do not get 
it. The vast majority of them will NEVER get it.

Racism is a shallow way of looking at things, espoused by shallow 
people. "Why...I didn't MEAN nuthin' by it!!! Jes' funnin'. YOU 
know..." And I am sure that Mr. Fillmore would have said exactly 
that. And thought that he MEANT it.

Shallow people write shallow music for OTHER shallow people to play and enjoy.

It's not only bad societal politics, that music.

It's bad MUSIC.

And so it goes.

Right up to the present.

The present...where racial stereotypes STILL abound among the 
shallow. Racial stereotypes the weight of which result in the 
continuing ruin of millions of young lives in the ghettoes of this 
country. Racial stereotypes that allow us to go to war with countries 
full of brownish people and kill them almost indiscriminately. Racial 
stereotypes that allow our government to strand hundreds of thousands 
in the Katrina debacle while paying incompetent corporate executives 
and crooked politicians...white almost to a man, if you have not 
noticed... trillions in unearned graft .Just as it's always been, 
from the original sins of genocide and slavery that kick-started this 
great country right on through to the easily foreseeable day after 
tomorrow, at LEAST.

So all of you fine people who have tried (once again) to make this 
point about "Lassus"...good on you. Keep trying. Every time you make 
this kind of effort there is a chance that one young mind will go 
"OHHHHHH!!!! THAT'S what they are talking about!!!", and one less 
unconscious racist will populate the face of the earth.

And as far as the rest of you...

If you don't know...we can't tell you.

Keep on truckin'.

So it goes.

S.