The Trouble with Music... tomorrow night at AK Press (plus more!)

May 2005 Events

Fri., May 27th — THE TROUBLE WITH MUSIC with Mat Callahan
Mon., May 30th — THE WAY THE WIND BLEW: A History of the Weather Underground
Tues., May 31st — GLOBALIZE LIBERATION: How to Uproot the System & Build a Better World
Mon., June 6th — FREE WOMEN OF SPAIN: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women with Martha Ackelsberg

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Friday, May 27th — 7 PM
THE TROUBLE WITH MUSIC WITH MAT CALLAHAN
At the AK Press Warehouse — the Oakland stop of his national tour

Callahan, a member of the music industry for over 30 years, will discuss his new book, which argues there is a crisis facing music. Positing that the signs are everywhere, from the saturation of public space by tuneful trivia to the digital downloading controversy. Quantity has replaced quality. The number of units sold is now the criteria by which music is judged and high-gloss, mass-produced, low-content music is everywhere. You can’t shop, eat, ride a bus or see a movie without hearing it as each day you are inundated with enticements to buy it. Like the replacement of essential nutriment by junk food, music lovers are expected to surrender their critical faculties and consume the phony McMusic that can be more effectively controlled and profitably sold than the genuine article.

Callahan unravels and elucidates the crises facing music as well as its liberatory potential. The Trouble with Music includes discussions of technology and its effects on music making and listening; superabundance and the absense of critical thought; the development of radio; music criticism; copyright; the digital domain and the internet; labor and music making; and the special relationships between words, dance, politics, and music. A large segment of the general public seeks a relationship to music, which turns an exceptional profit for those who own and control it. Callahan provides a means of evaluating music and a powerful critique of the music industry. Whether you whistle at work, sing in the shower or conduct concertos, Callahan and ,The Trouble with Music will challenge and enhance how you think about music.

MAT CALLAHAN has been involved in the music industry for over 30 years. He was the founder of the legendary San Francisco performance space / venue / recording studio / audio magazine Komotion, and founder / singer / songwriter / guitarist of Island recording artists The Looters, who in 1980, were instrumental in creating “world” music. He has worked as an engineer, manager and producer. He currently lives in Switzerland, where he works full-time as a producer, and continues to perform his own material as a solo artist. Callahan has just released a new CD on Broken Arrow records called “A Wild Bouquet”.

ADVANCE PRAISE
“Yes—let’s break the grip of Stars and Hits. Music could change the world. Read this book.” —Pete Seeger

"The Trouble with Music isn't anything like most books about music. Those other books start by assuming that today's music world looked just the same yesterday and will be the same tomorrow. Mat Callahan understands that today's music world is a product of the past, struggling to bear the future. His story begins with reexamining what all music fundamentally shares, then sets about showing the ways in which those fundamentals have been distorted, all the while insisting we can free the music-and ourselves-to achieve a future worth celebrating. This isn't just a theory: Callahan, a working musician, crams his book with as much detail as opinion-and there's a LOT of ideas.

"Making music is a process as old as the human species,which means that if the music's in trouble because humanity as a whole is in trouble. The Trouble with Music speaks to those troubles and it maps a way out. It's invaluable." —Dave Marsh, Rock & Rap Confidential

“Author Mat Callahan swings a big stick at the inflated piñata that is the corporate music industry in his new book The Trouble With Music. He puts forth a theory that the music business has created a culture of anti-music (in the same way that McDonald’s would be anti-food), and as a result has removed it from music-making’s crucial community-based functions. Drawing on a wide variety of informational sources, Callahan’s argument is a cogent one that needs to be heard…” —Exclaim! Magazine

"If your most pressing concern with today's music is whether Justin Timerlake's acting career will detract from his pop sensibilities, go ahead and skip this book... 'cause you're part of the problem." —Giant Magazine

"...a highly accessible, surprisingly optimistic essay that will change the way you think about music." —Zink Magazine

“…This book will change the way you think about music forever. The world needs more thinkers like Mat Callahan..” —Slug Magazine

“Written by an intellectual with over thirty years of experience in the music field, this book chronicles exactly what is wrong with music today… If you have an interest in the direction pop music is going, this is a must read…” —Heartland Reviews

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Monday, May 30th – 7 PM
THE WAY THE WIND BLEW & OUTLAWS OF AMERICA
AN EVENING LOOKING AT THE HISTORY, POLITICS, & LESSONS OF THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND
Featuring Authors and Historians: Ron Jacobs & Dan Berger
Plus Special Appearances by Ex-Weather Underground Members

At the AK Press Warehouse.

Co-sponsored by AK Press, the Catalyst Project, and the Freedom Archives

This historic evening features both participants and historians looking at the history of the group, which at the height of 60s radicalism, initiated a bombing campaign to fight racism, war, imperialism, and capitalism. For the first time we will be given an in depth look into the organization's politics, history, and an open, honest critical look at lessons which can be drawn from its experiences.

RON JACOBS is an author and library worker at the Bailey-Howe Library at the University of Vermont in Burlington. He writes for the alternative monthly Works in Progress, and CounterPunch. His book, The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground is a gripping account of these 1960s radicals who took up arms against the state. The first comprehensive history of the Weathermen, Jacobs narrates the origins, development and ultimate demise of the organization: its emergence from the Students for a Democratic Society; its role in the famous Days of Rage in Chicago during October 1969; its decision to go underground; the various actions it staged - and in some cases bungled -- during the 1970s; its role as goad to other left organizations to sustain the struggle against racism and imperialism; and finally its disintegration, as various members were either captured or surrendered. Jacobs weaves a gripping tale, by turns inspiring and hair-raising - a fitting testimony to the serried adventures of Weatherman itself. The Way the Wind Blew fuses the excitement of a thriller with an objective assessment of US 1960s radicalism. It is an indispensable resource for comprehending the recent history of the US left.

DAN BERGER is a writer, long-time anti-racism activist, and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. His book, Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground & the Politics of Solidarity (AK Press, forthcoming winter 2005), brings to life the motivations and actions of America's most famous renegades, who bombed their way into history. Through detailed and original research, Berger offers a nuanced and compelling portrait of the group that risked everything in opposition to war and racism. Culled from dozens of in-depth interviews with former Weather Underground members, as well as with civil rights activists, Black Panthers, Young Lords, and others — many of whom speak about their experiences publicly here for the first time. This explosive, engaging, and timely book uncovers the untold story of the Weather Underground, from its incendiary beginning to its tumultuous ending-never sparing a critical analysis of the group. Berger, a young activist organizer himself, draws rich, vital, and critical lessons for today's generation of radicals.

Ex-Weather Underground Organization members to be announced...

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Tuesday, May 31st – 7 PM
How Do We Uproot the System and Build a Better World?
An Evening of Ideas and Inspiration with contributors to Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Better World
Featuring:
Marina Sitrin, Elizabeth "Betita" Martinez, Patrick Reinsborough, Ramsey Kanaan, Rachel Neumann, Chris Crass, Jennifer Whitney, and David Solnit

MARINA SITRIN is the editor of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina, an oral account of the recent autonomous social movements in Argentina. Marina lived in Argentina for parts of the last two years, working closely with Argentine activists to create and distribute the book. Marina is a New York City-based activist, writer, popular educator, lawyer and dreamer. She is a cofounder of the People’s Law Collective and currently works with Woomera, a no borders immigrants rights group.

ELIZABETH "BETITA" MARTINEZ is an inspiring and engaging organizer, activist, thinker who has been key to chicana/o, women of color and multiracial stuggles. She was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizer during the civil rights movement, a pioneer in the women's liberation movement, and has worked as community organizer in New Mexico and California. cofounded and works with the Institute for MultiRacial Justice and is the author of "500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures," "Viva La Causa" and "De Colores Means All Of Us."

PATRICK REINSBOROUGH is the cofounder of smaetMeme training and Strategy Project, spent four years as the organizing director of the Rainforest Action Network and is a longtime grassroots organizer, campaigner and media strategist who has worked on issues including forest protection, police brutality, peace in Northern Ireland, indigenous rights, and numerous local and global environmental justice struggles.

RAMSEY KANAAN was a working class community organizer in Scotland who helped initiate and organize the successful Poll Tax Rebellion (which was key in toppling Margaret Thatcher), and is the founder and a collective member of AK Press.

RACHEL NEUMANN is an activist who has worked in Palestine with International Solidarity Movement, the Rights & Liberties editor of AlterNet, a writer, a mother and the editor of "Anti-Capitalism: A Field Guide to the Global Justice Movement."

CHRIS CRASS is an organizer with Catalyst Project, a center for political education and movement Building that focuses on anti-racist strategies based in left/radical leadership development, strengthening grassroots fighting organizations and multiracial alliance building.

JENNIFER WHITNEY is a journalist who has covered the popular rebellions in Bolivia and Argentina and is the co-editor of "We Are Everywhere; the Irresistable Rise of Anti-Capitalism." She is musician (with Infernal Noise Brigade for years), activist, firedancer, health care worker, and organizes clinics and street medic teams for direct actions, often with the Black Cross Health Collective in Portland.

DAVID SOLNIT is the editor of "Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World," both an organizing-inspiration manual and an articulation of the new radicalism (www.globalizeliberation.org), which went into second printing after the first six months. David is a puppeteer and co-founder of Art and Revolution, and a longtime activist in direct action, global justice, anti-war, environmental justice and community struggles. He is currently organizing with the People Powered Strategy Project, Courage to Resist and the Popular Education Action CollectivE (PEACE).

A benefit to reprint and distribute "Horizontalism: Popular Power in Argentina" to social movements in Argentina and Latin America.

The book, "Horizontalism," was printed in Argentina at a re-occupied worker controlled printshop and has been used widely across Argentina and Latin America for popular education about "horizontalidad," the hopefull new radicalism that has emerged in Argentina and across the globe. It is an oral account by on-the-ground activists and thinkers involved in the ongoing popular rebellion that toppled the goverment, forced the non-payment of their IMF debt and has changed day-to-day life for millions of Argentines. The english version will be published in English in the coming year. Horizontalism in Argentina, an article drawn from the book, can be read at: http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=447&type=w

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Monday, June 6th - 7 PM
FREE WOMEN OF SPAIN: ANARCHISM AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN with author Martha Ackelsberg
at the AK Press Warehouse

Martha Ackelsberg, will discuss her newly reissued book Free Women of Spain (AK Press, 2004), which explores the Spanish anarchist women's organization, Mujeres Libres, active in Spain during the Civil War, 1936-39. Mujeres Libres engaged over 20,000 working-class women in programs of education and empowerment, designed to overcome women's "triple enslavement" to capitalism, to the state, and as women. The talk will also attempt to draw some lessons from Mujeres Libres' experience for contemporary activism.

Martha Ackelsberg is a Professor of Government and a member of the Women's Studies Program Committee at Smith College, where she teaches courses in political theory, urban politics, political activism, and feminist theory. She has contributed to a variety of anthologies on women's political activism in the United States.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Cowards don't make history; and the women of Mujeres Libres (Free Women) were no cowards. Courageous enough to create revolutionary change in their daily lives, these women mobilized over 20,000 women into an organized network during the Spanish Revolution to strive for community, education, and equality for women and the emancipation of all. Militants in the anarcho-syndicalist CNT union, Mujeres Libres struggled both against fascism, the state, and reaction; and the less than supportive attitudes and concerns of their male comrades. Martha Ackelsberg writes a comprehensive study of Mujeres Libres, intertwining interviews with the women themselves and analysis connecting them with modern feminist movements. This new edition includes additional research Ackelsberg carried out for the Spanish language edition, together with a brand new introduction written in the light of the new social movements, and resurgence of anarchism, post-Seattle.



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ALL EVENT AT THE AK PRESS WAREHOUSE, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED.
AK Press 674-A 23rd. St Oakland, CA
b/t MLK and San Pablo - near 19th St. BART and West Grand Exit of 80/980
For more info contact:
AK Press at 510.208.1700, akpress@akpress.org or visit www.akpress.org
All events at AK Press are wheelchair accessible.
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