Music is our witness, and our ally. The ‘beat’ is the confession which recognises, changes, and conquers time. Then, history becomes a garment we can wear, and share, and not a cloak in which to hide; and time becomes a friend.
James Baldwin, Of the Sorrow Songs: The Cross of Redemption
To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group–a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. This kind of critical and democratic sensibility flies in the face of any policing of borders and boundaries of “blackness”, “maleness”, “femaleness”, or “whiteness”.
Cornel West, Race Matters
It was the music. […] It made you do unwise disorderly things. Just hearing it was like violating the law.
Toni Morrison, Jazz
Chick Corea’s music speaks for itself. We can only humbly celebrate its beauty. Often described as “jazz fusion”, its improvisational freedom resonates – or can we say, should resonate -, with the same improvisational freedom that is anarchism as a form of life.
The concept of “jazz fusion” perhaps masks more than it reveals, especially with Corea. He was part of a generation of jazz musicians who borrowed freely from other popular musics of his time (rock, r&b, soul, funk, and so on). But Corea always “borrowed”, because as he so often said, he was an permanent student of other musicians and diverse musical traditions, and his almost child-like joy in sharing what he learned and created is every in his music and his playing.
Without any pretense to sharing a “best of” Corea’s music, what follows is a personal choice among so much more.
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Mutual Aid in Puerto Rico
Mutual aid works within the fissures and cracks of state and corporate management; it develops within spaces partially outside the reach of their power. It has the capacity to weave relations of support and autonomy, thereby generating new subjectivities and forms of life. If an anti-capitalism is to gain roots beyond moments of explicit insurrection, it is at this level.
We share the latest article (08/02/2021) in the CrimethInc. collective’s series exploring mutual aid projects around the world in the age of COVID-19, including profiles of efforts in New York City, Poland, and Brazil. You can read more about anarchist hurricane relief efforts here.
Puerto Rico: The Road to Decolonization
Disaster Relief, Mutual Aid, and Revolt
Throughout the tumultuous year of 2020, people in many parts of the world were jolted into rediscovering the importance of relying on one another. The people of Puerto Rico, however, have long understood the power of mutual aid as a means of both survival and resistance. After Hurricane Maria devastated the island in September 2017—inflicting nearly 3000 deaths, robbing thousands of shelter, and leaving millions without electricity, tap water, and phone service—Puerto Ricans self-organized at the grassroots level to meet each other’s immediate needs in view of the grossly inadequate responses of both local and federal government.
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