May 30, 2008

Satire

It's Friday, May 30th.

Barack Obama says he expects to clinch the Democratic Presidential nomination next Tuesday and turn his attention to his run for the Presidency.

Currently, his supporters are devestated. They thought he was running to be God.
This is The Current.

The State of Jazz in Canada


Music

Artist: Maynard Ferguson Sextet
Cut: #1 - To and Fro
Album: Just a Memory
Spine # JAS 9503


Panel Discussion

Canadian trumpet icon Maynard Ferguson and his sextet recorded a tune called To And Fro for the CBC in 1967. But for decades, music critics and jazz purists have been singing the same song: jazz is dead or dying.

Swing lovers said it when bebop stirred up the scene.

Beboppers said it about free jazz.

We assessed the state of jazz in Canada. Some say Canadian jazz is cooking, thanks to the mushrooming number of festivals and the rise of superstars like Michael Buble and of course, Diana Krall, one of the best-selling jazz artists of all time.

But others are more downbeat about the situation. They look at the same phenomena and see fickle, fair-weather fans sipping lattes at Starbucks, not fervent hipsters going wild in sweaty jazz clubs.

For their thoughts on the state of jazz in Canada, we were joined by Jane Bunnett, a Juno-award-winning musician and the Artistic Director of the Art of Jazz Festival in Toronto; by Ross Porter, President and CEO of Jazz FM and the author of The Essential Jazz Recordings; and Mark Miller, who was the jazz critic for the Globe and Mail for nearly 30 years and is the author of eight books on jazz. All three were in our Toronto studio.


Listen to Part One:

Art and Anti-Depressants


Opponent

During his short life, Ian Curtis wrote and sung some spectacularly depressing music, including Joy Division's hit song, Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Had he lived in the early 21st Century, Ian Curtis would probably have been prescribed anti-depressants, something that might have helped him reign in a depression of epic proportions. But what would that have done to his songwriting?

There has long been speculation that if Prozac had been available, Vincent Van Gogh might have painted placid, decorative landscapes and Franz Kafka might never have imagined a man transformed into a bug.

Of course, high rates of depression are a major cause for concern among mental health experts. But others are equally alarmed by the increasing number of people being prescribed antidepressants.

In his book Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, Eric Wilson, a professor of English at Wake Forest University, argues that we're too fixated on making everyone happy all the time, and that this obsession might have awful consequences for art. Eric Wilson joined us from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.


Proponent

In Western culture, the quintessential image of the artist is a lonely, brooding and possibly tormented soul at odds with society. But whether that's someone with a more profound appreciation of life or someone who could be helped by medication is a matter of perspective.

For more on this, we were joined by Peter Kramer, a clinical psychiatrist who teaches at Brown University but who is best known for his books, Listening To Prozac and Against Depression and he joined us from Providence, Rhode Island.


Music

Artist: Jane Bunnett
Cut: #1 - Donna Lee
Album: Alma De Santiago
Label: EMI
Spine # 72435 34273

Listen to Part Two:

Whale Music


David Rothenberg

We heard the sound of a humpback whale, recorded by a whale enthusiast in the waters around the Virgin Islands in February, 1992.

Whales are capable of producing an incredible range of sounds, some of which can travel hundreds of kilometres underwater. The sounds are part means of communication, part biological mystery, and part pure beauty.

Until the late sixties few people knew that whales made any sound at all. They were primarily thought of as a source of meat and heating oil.

But when the first underwater recording of whales was made it had a profound effect on the world. Some even credit it with kicking off the 20th century's environmental movement.

David Rothenberg has spent the better part of a year on boats around the world, listening to whales' songs and piping his clarinet music into the waves below.

He's a philosopher and a musician and he wrote a book about his musical journey called Thousand Mile Song: Whale Music in a Sea of Sound. It comes with an audio CD with his musical collaborators -- the whales.

David Rothenberg joined us from New York City.

Last Word - "Berniergate" in the Foreign Press

After a few days of dominating the headlines here, the Maxime Bernier affair finally caught the attention of the foreign press.

Of course the international media have tended to focus less on the ex-cabinet minister and more on Julie Couillard -- specifically that revealing dress of hers.

It seems the only time Canada is deemed newsworthy is when there's a hint of sex in the story, and that got our friends at The Comedy Factory wondering how other Canadian news stories might be reported by the foreign press.

We closed this episode with their imagined newscast. And we apologize for the ridiculous accent.

Listen to Part Three: