From: mingus@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (Damballah Wedo)
Subject: Re: On Drugs, Bebop and The Wire
Organization: The Poto Mitan in the Houmfor
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 07:38:34 GMT

> rshapiro@bbn.com (Richard Shapiro):
> Some of the earlier responses to the articles in The Wire seem to be
> premissed on the assumption that drug use is intrinsically "evil" (or
> whatever -- any morally negative term will work as well). If you start
> with that assumption, you already contribute to the propagation of
> this second myth. Living outside the bounds of conventional morality
> is a crucial part of what it means to be "hip".  This moralistic
> association of drug use with social deviance, which has now become
> very nearly the only acceptable discourse in the mainstream domestic
> press, can't help but increase the appeal of drugs in communities
> whose very identity is defined by their distance from the mainstream.
> That's why any non-moralistic, non-judgemental article on drugs,
> especially an article that appears in a jazz journal, is ok by me.

One assumption here is that jazz musicians are all about hip. Reading
interviews (and ignoring special cases like the wonderful Slim Gaillard),
most of them are about getting deeper into the music, developing their
own sound, etc. It's a fair (and rational) question, then, to ask why
young musician, having  a wealth of unassailable data (the testimony
and actions or nonactions of their peers) available to them, would
nonetheless choose narcotics.

Note my emphasis on narcotics. The word 'drugs' is meaningless.
Is the guy who takes 15 vitamin supplements a day on drugs? I also
explictly exclude things like marijuana and its derivatives, because
available evidence is that they are not harmful (well, not more than
your basic smoky airless jazz club). After all, Louis Armstrong
smoked pot from the age of 14, nightly before going to bed; didn't
affect him much. I do include alcohol, a drug almost as harmful
as heroin; it claimed Bix Beiderbecke (at 31), Bunny Berigan (at 34),
Lester Young, Bud Powell, Coleman Hawkins ("I get to feel hungry,
and I'll start to cook something, but by the time it's ready, I've
lost my apetite from this whiskey." -- Hawkins wound up so weak
that a he had to drag himself to open his apartment door for a visitor,
circa 1968 -- he died in 1969, a shadow of himself, as human or as
musician)...

Finally, Richard, you can be non-moralistic and non-judgemental and not
be light and airy about heroin. For instance, the business about
most musicians growing out of their addiction is complete bullshit.
Why did Lewis not consider how could some brilliant jazz musicians
(Dizzy, Clifford Brown...) never get involved with drugs? Why did
Lewis not consider the ambivalence some felt toward their addictions?
The celebrated sabbaticals Sonny Rollins took from the music were
attempts to clean up, for example.

It is possible to examine the topics of heroin and jazz and conclude
that heroin has been a bad thing for both jazz and jazz musicians, without
being a drugs-are-evil fool. It is not possible to do so and conclude
that heroin is something one grows out of, or that it was a phase
over by the 60s. Why talk of the Prestige label and its reputation as
a haven for junkies and not spend a couple sentences on the motivation
and cynicism of Bob Weinstock for building his label on that foundation
rather than on music?

Why (in another article) give prominence to proudly potsmoking rappers
but barely mention that rappers are for the most part sworn enemies
of the drug dealers that have destroyed the community the rappers
give voice to? Why equate pot on the one hand with crack and heroin
on the other?
-- 
Marcel-Franck Simon             	mingus@usl.com, usl!mingus

	" Papa Loko, ou se' van, ou-a pouse'-n ale'
	  Nou se' papiyon, n'a pote' nouvel bay Agwe' "