A Precocious Autobiography (Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1962)

I read a Swedish translation, with the title “Bekännelser av ett sovjetseklets barn” (“Confessions of a Child of the Soviet Century”) from 1963.

It is fascinating to read Yevtushenko’s reminiscing and anecdoting in this slim volume intended for Western readers. He was a poet in a country and time where poetry was taken very seriously, which is impressive to be reminded of. He describes important turning points in his development and in his life as a poet, along with meetings with Boris Pasternak and Semyon Kirsanov. He maintains his reverence for the simple man, and argues about the hypocrisy found in the hearts of most men. One gets the feeling that it is a quite pure-hearted human being who wrote these lines. A powerful section of the book describes the writing and first recital of his famous poem Babiy Yar, about a brutal pogrom outside Kiev in 1941. Yevtushenko lived for over half a century after this memoir was written, spending his most latterly years in the US, teaching at a college in Oklahoma. Reading this inspired me to read more Russian and Soviet autobiographies, like those of Kropotkin and Gorky. 

Going in to the Music (Peter Bastian, 1987)

Peter Bastian (1943-2017) was a Danish genius-type person who has devoted his life to music. This is a compressed version of his thoughts on music, full of examples of his experiences and meetings with various musical luminaries of the 20th century. Sometimes quite meandering, the book is still effective in activating thinking on music and musicianship.

I had better mention this going in, as it affects my reading of this book: I see myself as a musician. I don’t make a living off it, I’ve never even tried, but I’ve nurtured a loving relationship with musicality ever since childhood. I think that’s wherein the proverbial “rub” lies; if you see yourself as a musician. For me, it has always been evident because of my talent for and love of playing music (I started out playing the piano, then guitar, bass, drums, and a few other instruments). This self-proclaimed identity (ability?) of musician, paired with my proclivity for science, scholarship and learning, made me naturally gravitate toward the ill-defined world of “music psychology”, and read a book on it as a young adult. I later signed up for a course while at university too. Since then, I haven’t really gone particularly much into music scholarship – that is, until now.

I did learn the musical modes (on my own), explore tonality (I remember jazz musician George Russell constructing his own Lydian scale) and try my luck in Indian Carnatic music traditions (I was a bass player for an Indian group for a while) and some arabic hijaz and maqam stuff. I kind of lost my appetite for music learning when there was so many other things to learn (mostly philosophy, history, science). I have recently got hold of Richard Taruskins series Oxford History of Western Music, but it would require a lot of time to read through!

When I saw wiz kid piano player Jacob Collier talk about the concept of “negative harmony” I figured I had to find out what that was. But I haven’t. Yet. Another moving encounter was a video of guitarist Allan Holdsworth explaining his mathematical view of the guitar fretboard and his totally out of left-field approach to scales. But what am I to do with all this music learning? It’s not like I play with anyone, where that knowledge might be useful… I guess I’ll have to start playing or stop learning. I can’t do both.

Ok – now that we’ve gotten that mild fit of self-flagellation out of the way, let’s continue with the actual review.

Bastian is a physicist and bassoon player (uncomfortable appellations on their own and in combination) who has an infinite curiosity for music. Reading his thoughts on the ins and outs of performing and listening to music is quite interesting. He starts the first chapter with an episode from his period of infatuation with Balkan music. He tries to track down a certain musician in a remote village on the Yugoslavian countryside.

He goes in to a lot of theory – some of it pretty impenetrable for a non-classical player. He seems inspired by Buddhism and Indian religious perspectives in his thoughts on music. He played in a Danish “prog” band in the 70’s and 80’s – Bazaar – that was quite inspired by a lot of Eastern and Turkish musical traditions. Sometimes the writing is a little unfocussed, but I see it as a way to initiate thoughts and try out different ideas, which can be fun if you’ve even taken music seriously. Bastian is pretty well-known in his native Denmark, but I think his name remains quite unfamiliar in the rest of the world. I read a Swedish translation, published at the Gothenburg publisher Bo Ejeby förlag.

There is an impressive video of Peter Bastian playing a regular plastic drinking straw like a medieval flute, proving that music can be found everywhere, if you know how to look. Click the picture to view the clip.

Mr. Bastian going in to the music (with a plastic straw!).

Resor utan mål (Harry Martinson, 1932)

Harry Martinson – Travels without a destination (1932)

This short book by Swedish folk writer Harry Martinson is about his time traveling the world as a sailor. He writes about his nautical hoboing from Stockholm to Antwerp to Rio to New York and beyond. He is quite a poetic writer, and opens the book with a long paean to nomadic life (reminding me of Bruce Chatwin’s idealization of the nomad) and then continues to describe various incidents from his rambling years. He writes a lot about love, and of “eros” as he calls it. His perspective on race relations in the South was interesting. I noticed that he likes to use the word “electrons” to describe inner states; a curious but inspiring choice of word. I wish I could quote more from the book, as it really was peppered with funny expressions and turns of phrase, but my notes got lost in the mail. Martinson continues the travel writing in the subsequent volume Cape Farewell in 1933, which was translated into English and received positive reviews in the TLS. Resor utan mål, however, was never translated. 

How to be an Anti-Racist (Ibram X. Kendi, 2019)

Part memoir, part tract, this is an engaging read about combating racism. It touches on themes that open up thoughts I’ve never even considered. I chose to read this book because I want to form an idea of the shape of different discourses on racism in different countries. This is the book I chose to represent to take part of an African-American perspective. Another I’ve chosen is a book by British-Ghanaian scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah. Books on the same topic that I’ve recently read include works by Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun and one by Swedish racism scholar Tobias Hübinette. A French candidate I’m considering is La Force du préjugé – essai sur le racisme et ses doubles by Pierre-André Taguieff. (Close to this topic is the topic of identity, an old-hat theme, but I envisage a shallow dive in that pool as well. Books I consider are works by Albert Memmi, Amin Maalouf, Leon Wieseltier, Amartya Sen, Alain Finkielkraut and possibly the recently deceased Nathan Glazer. An interesting point about these topics is that the conversation changes so quickly, and arguments and books quickly become dated.)

Kendi’s book reminds me of the Ta-Nehisi Coates book I read two years ago. It dawns on me that I’ve been “keeping up” with Black America mainly through rap music and Spike Lee films – a realisation which makes me feel quite uneasy.
This book is structured in 18 chapters, each delving into a theme, e.g. “power”, “biology”, “survival”. The chapter goes back and forth between a personal anecdote and historical facts, putting Kendi’s personal experiences in a broader context. It starts off with Kendi reminiscing over his participation in a debating contest at his school where the content of the speech is that African-Americans don’t take themselves seriously enough. It is generally well-received by the mostly Black audience. Kendi was proud of his speech at the time, but now looks back on it and regrets it. Now older and more learned, he won’t accept putting the blame on African-Americans for something that was done to them by others. The book goes in and out of themes like that, blacks complaining on other blacks, so-called “black-on-black crime”, racism against Africans by African-Americans (as witnessed in Kendi’s childhood movie “Prince of Africa” with actor Eddie Murphy). These are topics I’ve not really thought all that much about, but find interesting. It is an insight into how a young black man (Kendi is born 1982) becomes aware of his own place in the racial imaginary of post-boom America. He mentions the apt expression “racial puberty” and describes his foray into Pan-Africanist thinking and the whole area of “Black Psychoanalysis”. In the book he describes it thusly:

“My journey to being an antiracist first recognized the intersectionality of my ethnic racism, and then my bodily racism, and then my cultural racism, and then my color racism, and then my class racism, and, when I entered graduate school, my gender racism and queer racism.”

He goes through all of these in due course. He makes a variation on W.E.B. DuBois famous concept of “Double consciousness” but calls it “dueling consciousnesses”, which captures an as of yet quite unacknowledged aspect of the doubleness. Another expression that he tweaks is structural or systemic racism. He suggests rather to call it clearly just racist, as in “a racist policy”, instead of “structural racism informs these policies”. A lot of ideas are contained within this book, and it really exposed me to unfamiliar areas of thinking. I was fascinated to read that in 1988 an African-American medical researcher suggested Black Americans suffer unevenly from high blood pressure because their ancestors suffered through enslavement. Another highlight was the work of researcher Ellyn Kaschak, who made a study of racism among people of color who are blind.

All in all, a laudable effort by Ibram X. Kendi. He tries to launch a new conception of racism which I suspect differs a bit from the common one.