Jazz for aficionados

orpheus10,

With all due respect you cannot compare the homelessness situation here in America which is horrific but compared to Haiti, which I have been to and saw with my own eyes, its not even in the same ballpark.

I suggest you read your previous link which states the following:

"Between 1911 and 1915, Haiti was politically unstable: a series of political assassinations and forced exiles resulted in six presidents holding office during this period. Various revolutionary armies carried out the coups. Each was formed by cacos, or peasant militia from the mountains of the north, or who invaded along the porous Dominican border. They were enlisted by rival political factions under the promises of money, which would be paid after a successful revolution, and the opportunity to plunder."


Haiti has been a corrupt, unstable, oppressive country for centuries and it sure was not the fault of the American occupation. Remember Papa Doc....err…...François Duvalier?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Duvalier

BTW, Wiki is a quick way to explore and share a subject matter but the best sources are always scholarly books written by respected and proven historians using the best source material available.


Again - Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Its not the same as "living below the poverty level" in our nation America. I have to agree with rok on this one. The opportunities are there you just have to go get them.

"Between 1911 and 1915, Haiti was politically unstable"


In February 1915, Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, son of a former Haitian president, established a dictatorship. Five months later, facing a new anti-American revolt, he ordered the massacre of 167 political prisoners. All of the victims were from prominent families, mostly members of the better educated and wealthier mixed-race population with German connections. "President" Sam was lynched by an enraged mob in Port-au-Prince as soon as they learned of the executions.

It seems that "President" Sam was a dictator for the USA, which is why;

The United States regarded the anti-American revolt against Sam as a threat to American business interests in the country, especially the Haitian American Sugar Company (HASCO). When the caco-supported anti-American Rosalvo Bobo emerged as the next president of Haiti, the United States government decided to act quickly to preserve its economic dominance.

Every since Black slaves took over Haiti, the US has been involved to the detriment of those people. That fact is very well documented.

My concern is right here, I do not wish to debate Haiti.

"The opportunities are there you just have to go get them." That sounds good to me; maybe all those homeless people would rather sleep on the sidewalk without "running water" than go get those opportunities.

**** Two agendas are in play here: Not the agenda of The Frogman, but the people who write the stuff he reads. ****

Well, gee, thanks so much for explaining to me why I make the comments that I do. I really had no idea until you enlightened me.

Rok, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. The only agenda in play here is the one that you and our OP obviously have as concerns this topic. The only obsession in play here is the obsessive need to demean any formal research, analysis or education on this topic and others. Then, to use this as a smokescreen to hide your resistance to learning something new or to even consider a different viewpoint.

There is no agenda to take any credit away from American blacks. Quite the contrary. The only agenda is your insistence on not giving any credit to blacks in Africa; a place that you have often gone out of your way to demean and trivialize.

The criticism of “agenda driven elite institutions” of higher learning is an old and lame argument here. As concerns this topic your fallback position is always to delegitimize their value as an excuse for your myopic viewpoints on this topic.

What you miss is that the viewpoint I expressed is not agenda driven or the result of agenda driven textbooks, but that it is all there to be heard. Of course, this assumes that the listener is capable of hearing it, or open to hearing it. You dismiss the evidence driven viewpoint on the subject of the Blues while asking for explanations of some of the very things that define it.

I have pointed this out several times previously. Just about everyone who is considered to be authoritative on the subject and just about every Jazz musician past and present supports the idea that the Blues as we know it have a very important African component. By extension, Jazz does a well. (Remember, “no Blues, no Jazz”?). But, yours is the lone voice out there with the real truth.....right.....