{"id":4180,"date":"2014-08-06T19:04:58","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T19:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=4180"},"modified":"2014-08-06T19:04:58","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T19:04:58","slug":"sonnygate-redux-the-new-yorker-and-rollins-own-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2014\/08\/06\/sonnygate-redux-the-new-yorker-and-rollins-own-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonnygate Redux: The New Yorker, and Rollins' Own Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ll admit to some ambivalence about turning our attention to this matter, especially since it\u2019s no longer breaking news. Yet here goes:
\nBy now you may be aware of a \u201cDaily Shouts\u201d column at The New Yorker magazine\u2019s website, posted last Thursday under the title \u201cSonny Rollins: In His Own Words<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0and bylined to Django Gold, who is a senior writer at the news-satire outlet, The Onion.
\nIn 11 brief paragraphs, the celebrated 83-year-old tenor saxophonist made confessions such as these:<\/p>\n

I really don\u2019t know why I keep doing this. Inertia, I guess. Once you get stuck in a rut, it\u2019s difficult to pull yourself out, even if you hate every minute of it. Maybe I\u2019m just a coward.
\nI released fifty-odd albums, wrote hundreds of songs, and played on God knows how many session dates. Some of my recordings are in the Library of Congress. That\u2019s idiotic. They ought to burn that building to the ground. I hate music. I wasted my life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Only these weren\u2019t Rollins\u2019 words. They were Gold\u2019s.
\nNew Yorker readers might not have known this, since the website made no mention of the fact that Gold made the stuff up in a now-apparent effort to by funny.\u00a0I happened to be in Maine, with little access to the internet or even cell service when I caught wind of all this. At the time, I\u2019d read only the first three paragraphs on my phone, which ended like this:<\/p>\n

Jazz might be the stupidest thing anyone ever came up with. The band starts a song, but then everything falls apart and the musicians just play whatever they want for as long they can stand it. People take turns noodling around, and once they run out of ideas and have to stop, the audience claps. I\u2019m getting angry just thinking about it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019d considered the idea that this really was Rollins, and that once I had a chance to read on, the text would pay off. After all, Rollins has a playful sense of humor; his statements sometimes do begin with a dodge, followed by a weave, only to make his point stronger (same is true of some of his wondrous extended tenor-saxophone solos).
\nBut once I read the whole column, nothing like that happened. No dodge, no weave, no payoff. Just more of the same: flat, foolish, and obviously not Rollins.
\nI knew so, but many who were drawn to the New Yorker site by this promotional Twitter feed from the magazine might not have been so clear.
\n\"\"<\/a>A wave of online confusion followed. Facebook posts, tweets, and online posts wondered: Was this Rollins speaking? Was he misquoted and taken wildly out of context? Who is Django Gold, and did he ever actually meet Rollins? If it was a gag, was Rollins in on it? What did Rollins think?According to Terri Hinte, Rollins\u2019 longtime publicist, Rollins didn\u2019t pay much attention to the column until the swirl of online concern grew. Though he was reluctant at first to reply, by Friday night Rollins had posted a comment stating:
\n\u201cFolks, it’s just some guy’s idea of a joke!”
\nAccording to Hinte, after Rollins’ attorney spoke with a New Yorker representative, a line appeared at the bottom of the column online, at first with a typo: “This is a work a satire,\u201d and then as “This is a work of satire.” Soon after, the disclaimer was moved to the top of the piece, where it remains, now stating: “Editor\u2019s note: This article, which is part of our Shouts & Murmurs humor blog, is a work of\u00a0satire.”
\nBy Aug. 4, The New Yorker\u2019s Culture Desk Twitter feed issued this:\u00a0Dear Readers: The \u202a@sonnyrollins<\/a> “interview” was satire published on our humor blog. Our apologies to anyone who thought it was real.
\nThat evening, Rollins spoke in live webcast in response to the New Yorker piece and its aftermath, as interviewed by Bret Primack (also known online as Jazz Video Guy, who has long collaborated with Rollins).\u00a0You can find that video here<\/a>.
\nYet by then a wave of online indignance had been let loose. Marc Myers wrote a long and emphatic post at his Jazzwax <\/a>site,\u00a0in which he compared the breach of \u201ccustodial issues relating to their editorial content and the public trust\u201d to what happens \u201cwhen executives at chemical plants fail to inspect their facilities, standards grow lax, things crack and toxic substances wind up leaking into rivers and polluting the water supply.\u201d
\nIndeed, Myers was far from the only online commentator to note that these quotes, under Rollins\u2019 name \u201cis now in the Internet’s blood stream, which means that somewhere down the line someone is going to assume that Sonny actually said one or more of them.\u201d Years from now, a term paper or magazine article may quote Rollins as faked by Gold.
\nAt Howard Mandel\u2019s \u201cJazz Beyond Jazz\u201d blog, it\u2019s worth scrolling through both Mandel\u2019s impressions and the many comments that followed, including one from Gold himself, who implied that his name is not a pseudonym, and who stated:<\/p>\n

As has been correctly speculated, Sonny Rollins was chosen more-or-less at random as the \u201csubject\u201d of this piece. I believe the other top candidates were Ornette Coleman and Jim Hall, but I figured Rollins had the name recognition. What I wrote has nothing to do with Rollins personally; it is clearly more about the popular conception of jazz and its history. Given the feedback I have read thus far, I suppose \u201cclearly\u201d may not be the right word to use here.
\nFor what it\u2019s worth, I am a huge fan of both Sonny Rollins\u2019 work and jazz in general. Anyone who knows me will tell you that. The music he made and is making has enriched my life over the years, and for that I am grateful. If Sonny was offended by what I wrote, I sincerely apologize to him for that; given all the joy his music has produced for me, this would be a hell of a way to repay him. No apologies for anyone else, though\u2014all this humorlessness and tedious moral posturing only reinforces the worst stereotypes about jazz fans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That last part touches upon one of the constellation of problems presented by Gold\u2019s piece\u2014the idea that jazz is alien or out-of-touch enough to make such satire rewarding in the first place, and that the offense taken by Rollins\u2019 fans signals a humorless and defensive sense of heightened seriousness within the jazz community\u2014that jazz fans ought better to \u201clighten up\u201d and take a joke.
\nHere\u2019s the thing, or things:
\n1) What Rollins does as well or better than any other living person\u2014improvising for a living based on songs and on a long musical legacy\u2014is a bit of a high-wire act. If it didn\u2019t work, it would fall flat with an ugly thud.
\nHumor, and maybe especially satire, is much like that. Had Gold demonstrated the talent and craftsmanship to pull of what he intended\u2014to be funny\u2014the discussion that folllowed might have taken a different course. But the \u201cfunny\u201d here seemed more like imitating the walk of old woman crossing the street, and working on the assumption that we all think it\u2019s humorous, right? Or like laughing out loud when an opera star sings because we all can agree that such vocalizing is utterly ridiculous, no?
\nYou might say that comes down to simply immaturity and, yes, that\u2019s part of it. But really it comes down to what makes for humor. To me, Gold\u2019s piece was more of an insult to the tradition of The New Yorker\u2019s \u201cShouts & Murmurs\u201d than to Rollins or to jazz. (One recent example of that New Yorker tradition is Simon Rich\u2019s \u201cGuy Walks Into a Bar<\/a>,\u201d from the Nov. 18, 2013 issue.)
\nLots of people can pick up a tenor saxophone and wail. To do so with purpose and meaning is far harder.
\nNearly anyone can make you look by posting made-up quotes from a famous guy in an attempt to poke easy fun. Actual humor, let alone real satire, is a good deal more difficult.
\n2) If there is any special senstivity within jazz\u2019s ranks, it may be in lament of the fact that although The New Yorker, under the editorship of David Remnick, has achieved a tone and substance that is inarguably wise, current and compelling, it has also largely abandoned the focus given in past to jazz, most notably through Whitney Balliett\u2019s writing. (Somewhat ironically, one of the magazine\u2019s longest pieces on jazz in the past decade was Stanley Crouch\u2019s 2005 profile<\/a> of Sonny Rollins.\u00a0Also, some jazz-attuned New Yorker readers may also still be smarting a bit from Adam Gopnik\u2019s assertion in a piece last year, based on his reading of Terry Teachout\u2019s Duke Ellington biography<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Ellington was a dance-band impresario who played no better than O.K. piano, got trapped for years playing \u201cjungle music\u201d in gangster night clubs, and at his height produced mostly tinny, brief recordings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Sadly, that statement wasn\u2019t meant as satire.)
\n3) Lastly, there\u2019s this awful sense\u2014I suspect you share it\u2014that websites, even ones hosted by esteemed newspapers and magazines, are stepchildren built on speed and fueled by little more than attracting eyeballs; that despite the brand-name banner the reduced pay scale, fast schedules, and tendency toward snark and away from careful editing and fact-checking are at odds with the very values and processes that exalted publications like The New Yorker in the first place.\u00a0I don\u2019t know who did or did not edit and approve of Gold\u2019s piece, and what the logic behind those decisions was. Yet I do know from my own experience as both writer and reader that websites thrive on stirring up controversy above all else. Some of us felt The New Yorker and Rollins, sliding down that slippery slope into something less than elegance and ethics.
\nNo one and no thing\u2014not Sonny Rollins nor jazz\u2014exists beyond the reach of satire. Funny is funny.
\nYet simply \u201cmaking me look\u201d is never enough to make me laugh. And it often makes me angry that I looked in the first place.
\nThat a bunch of us were disappointed, maybe even upset, isn\u2019t so much about protecting Rollins or his art form as sacred.\u00a0Rollins is still very much able to express him himself through his music and his words. (There\u2019s a wealth of Rollins really in his own words<\/em> posted online by Primack<\/a>; and here\u2019s a 2010 Village Voice piece<\/a> for which Rollins shared with me his thoughts about the 9\/11 attacks and their aftermath.)
\nWhat struck the deepest chord of disapproval was, I think, based on a sense of of allegiance to The New Yorker (whose readers are well-represented, I’d guess, among Rollins’ fans)\u2014what the magazine demands and upholds. In its pages, it aspires to and so often achieves something not far from what Rollins does with his horn: lengthy, thoughtful expressions graceful enough to conceal the tediousness of craftsmanship required; urgent or timely expressions based in historical research and of lasting value; stuff that comes off as utterly original and, yes, sometimes, deeply funny.
\nWith this online column, Django Gold and the The New Yorker hit a sour and weak note that missed its mark. They also broke one rule Rollins never does in his playing: they came off as dishonest.
\nPhoto: AFP\/Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll admit to some ambivalence about turning our attention to this matter, especially since it\u2019s no longer breaking news. Yet here goes: By now you may be aware of a \u201cDaily Shouts\u201d column at The New Yorker magazine\u2019s website, posted last Thursday under the title \u201cSonny Rollins: In His Own Words,\u201d\u00a0and bylined to Django Gold, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Sonnygate Redux: The New Yorker, and Rollins' Own Words”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[25,11,181,182,12,183,14,184,185,186],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4180"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}