Brother Ludwig

This blog entry is not about jazz, but in the landscape of western music and ithe issue of dentity perceptions and blindspots of convenience related to that topic, I believe this is pertinent, seeing how jazz flies ion the face of any and all self-delusions pop culture attempts to impose.

In the recent past, there was a lot of talk about Beethoven, Ol’ Ludwig just keeps affecting the general zeitgeist and the barometer. His most recent ressurection, at least for those who don’t realize his music has always been ubiquitous, was a resurfacing of specilation about his race. Seems ol’ LB (uh, relevance today seems to only be valid if one uses acronyms) is thought by some, to be imbued of Negritude. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, popular culture’s notoriously exiteable and seldom accurate court of opinion used dark-skinned looking portraits and hair texture n those portraits as conclusive evidence that Beethoven was writing while Black. And suddenly, Beethoven was relevant to the 21st Century, according to those who only know he was deaf, and are almost certain he lived before the invention of the phonograph.