Viva Charlie Haden!
– from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

Charlie Haden has died.
The liberals have Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder (You can tell liberal political music because its fuzzy message is always easily expropriated by corporate commercialism and even conservatives.)
But the authentic left had Charlie Haden. A man who defined earnestness, Haden was a key figure in the last wave of innovation in the African American-inspired art form, jazz. Concurrent with political stirrings in the 1960s, a musically radical group of musicians pushed improvisational music to its limits. Liberating times produced liberating music. Charlie Haden was an important part of it.
On the economic side, Haden was a charter member of the Jazz Composers’ Orchestra Association, a group dedicated to overturning the greed of club owners and record companies.
On the political side, he founded the Liberation Music Orchestra, a project paying homage to leftist music, ranging from the Spanish Civil War to the South African Liberation movement. A sampling of the LMO can be found here.
Haden’s unassuming manner belied an iron resolve. In 1971, despite warnings, he publicly performed his Song for Che in fascist Portugal, dedicating it to the liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies. Caetano’s political police were not amused, detaining him until US officials intervened. A performance of Song for Che can be heard here.
Charlie Haden, paraphrasing Brecht, was essential…. TO READ MORE, GO TO http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/