Category: Blog Post

songs in 20/24 time

breaking stretch // patricia brennan septet

So glad I discovered this tour-de-force album only a few weeks before the end of the year. The drums on its opening track maintain just enough stability to keep everything from spinning out of control, and that controlled chaos sets the tone for the remaining eight. Not every track is relentless exuberance: “Sueños de Coral Azul” brakes to let Brennan’s swirling vibraphone (a bit like Mary Halvorson) come to the fore. Even though the album features just seven players, the sound is so big it sometimes reminds me of Darcy James Argue’s full jazz orchestra—”555” would fit right alongside the tracks on Argue’s Real Enemies.

diamond jubilee // cindy lee

Maybe it was just the nostalgic excitement of downloading an album as raw .wav files from GeoCities of all places … in 2024? But this unslick album isn’t just some forced exercise in retro, “lo-fi” aesthetics. Some tracks sound like The Jesus and Mary Chain cranked out a rockabilly album, others embrace the wordplay and narrative at the heart of the best country songwriting, others just goof around with guitar pedals within the productive constraints of Americana harmonies. A double album to listen to from start to finish.

slow burn // baby rose (with badbadnotgood)

I had never heard of BadBadNotGood before discovering this album, but they’ve apparently been in the hip-hop-meets-jazz-meets-something producer business for years. And the production on this little EP is solid, but the outstanding, deep vocals of Baby Rose are the real draw: sometimes her singing reminds me of the late Sharon Jones, elsewhere Baby Rose uses her contralto voice—with a lispy authenticity—to serve up the kind narrative development that shines on the best Cindy Lee tracks above. The analog instrumentation—jazz flute!—complements her vocals in just the right way.

orchestras // bill frisell

For decades Bill Frisell’s guitar work has pushed the boundaries of the instrument, especially in small-scale works and even solo reimaginings. And I’ve been lucky to see him play with regular collaborators like drummer Rudy Royston at up-close venues like the Village Vanguard and the Dakota here in Minneapolis—that’s all to say that hearing Frisell play with a 59-member orchestra is a new take. If you’ve come to think (erroneously!) that he has stagnated in staid “boomer soundscapes,” turn up the pulsing dissonance of Electricity and the noir harmonies of Strange Meeting for a Frisell you haven’t heard before.

take 3 // patricia kopatchinskaja

I first heard Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s great interpretations of Beethoven over a decade ago, but she has since championed “pieces from the borders of the current repertoire.” Sometimes she reaches pretty far beyond those borders. On Take 3, she strikes an interesting balance: familiar names like Poulenc, but also tracks that veer into a kind of Bacchic, inspired madness. In her telling, Kopatchinskaja doesn’t want a “perfectly polished and beautiful world,” one that would be “rather one-dimensional, and boringly kitsch.” Here she reminds us that disorder isn’t always destruction and that the outer reaches of creative freedom aren’t to be confused with absurdity.

December 31, 2024

weirdly inept

In the October issue of Commonweal, I consider the complexity surrounding “weird” in American political culture. On the one hand, “weird” is a favorite attack against bizarre MAGA Republicans. On the other, it’s the proud self-branding of diverse, liberal-leaning Austin. What separates the interestingly weird from the dangerously weird, especially when it comes to politics?

To answer this question, I turn to the rhetorical and political thought of Cicero and Machiavelli, both of whom take an interest in the “push and pull between individual conviction and social pressure” and warn against a kind of “obstinate weirdness”:

Instead of flattening Machiavelli into an apologist for thoughtless immorality, we should see him as a realist grappling with “necessity.” It’s a theme that resurfaces in his Discourses on Livy, where he argues that “the reason why men are sometimes unfortunate, sometimes fortunate, depends upon whether their behavior is in conformity with the times.” While the vocabulary is different, his arguments here should sound familiar even to those who just learned their first lessons of ancient rhetorical theory in the preceding paragraphs. Whether Machiavelli speaks of “necessity” or “the times” or “fortune,” he persistently urges rulers to adjust their political calculus—and their moral scruple—to fit their circumstances. In short, leaders need to abide by a realist politics of decorum.

To borrow a phrase from Kamala Harris, Machiavelli did not just fall out of a coconut tree. Specialists in the classical tradition have long noticed, as Michelle Zerba explains, “the essential affinity between the Machiavellian doctrine of princely fraud and the Ciceronian ethics of gentlemanly dissimulation.” The ideas of rhetorical “propriety”—attention to “circumstance,” a sense of the aptum, a knack for fitting the occasion—permeate his political and ethical maxims. When Machiavelli writes, “It is necessary that [a prince] should have a mind ready to turn itself according to the way the winds of fortune and the changing circumstances command him,” he has simply taken to heart Cicero’s “universal rule, in oratory as in life,” to consider the moment. Cicero, of course, was chiefly interested in an apt turn of phrase, while Machiavelli was also interested in the apt turn of a dagger.

Launching from this ancient tradition, I draw on Isaiah Berlin’s reading of Machiavelli as a theorist of democratic accommodation and negotiation. He explains how people and princes “gradually [come] to see merits in diversity, and so [become] sceptical about definitive solutions in human affairs.” We should not be surprised, I conclude, to see how “the very politician celebrated for his attacks on weirdness has also reminded us to ‘mind your own damn business.’”

Head over to Commonweal‘s site to read the rest.

September 27, 2024

learning to be fair

My book Learning to Be Fair: Equity from Classical Philosophy to Contemporary Politics will arrive on bookstore and library shelves on December 10, and it’s now available for pre-order at your favorite retailers, including Bookshop.org and Amazon. Here’s the jacket blurb for a quick overview:

The language of “equity” saturates our contemporary culture. Human-resources departments lead workshops on “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Progressive politicians advocate for “equity” in novel programs for housing and healthcare while their conservative counterparts decry “equity” as a revolutionary rejection of traditional notions of equality and freedom. By excavating texts from antiquity to the modern age, Learning to Be Fair undercuts the supposed novelty of “equity” and anchors it in the foundations of Western philosophy. Despite its newfound popularity (or infamy), in fact, the concept of equity stands as one of the oldest, most durable, and often most paradoxical principles of ethical and political thought. In Learning to Be Fair, Charles McNamara draws out the ancient origins of equity in classical Greek and Roman authors and traces their influence on lawyers, philosophers, America’s Founding Fathers, and even our contemporary culture. He shows how this history connects current debates about the role of equity to long-standing, unsettled questions about equality before the law and the possibility of teaching people to be good.

I’m happy to have had the opportunity to dig into this contentious terminology and provide some clarity about how and why we struggle with the ancient and modern ideas of fairness, equality, and the law. Here’s what some early readers have said:

This marvelously balanced, penetrating, and eminently readable interdisciplinary study of “equity” deftly grapples with the historical and linguistic complexity in the use of the word, and brings much-needed light into overheated contemporary debates about how to foster equity and equality in various cultural settings. The volume would be a welcome guide and companion not just for academics and students seeking to better understand the concept, but also for administrators, policymakers and legal professionals grappling with practical questions of when and how to bend the rules and for what purpose.
—Amy Uelmen, director for mission and ministry, Georgetown University Law Center, and lecturer in religion and professional life, Georgetown University

With impressive historical knowledge and moral insight, McNamara helps us move beyond the narrow confines of procedural justice to consider questions of substantive fairness. He shows us how the venerable concept of equity can provide guidance not only for today, but also for the future of our diverse and pluralistic societies.
—Cathleen Kaveny, Libby Professor of Law and Theology, Boston College

With Learning to Be Fair, Charles McNamara offers timely assistance to readers at every level who are struggling to understand the roots and sources of our present-day conversations about equity in the workplace, on our campuses, and in public life. Written in an accessible way that spares no effort to explore the richness of how our civilization came to understand and value equity, McNamara’s book belongs in the board room as much as the classroom. Every reader could profit from Learning to Be Fair as a guide to navigate these challenging conversations today–conversations McNamara assures us are as ancient as they are contemporary.
—Steven P. Millies, professor of public theology and director of the Bernardin Center, Catholic Theological Union

August 22, 2024