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AFRICAN AMERICANS, AMERICAN JEWS & AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC: A CONVERSATION WITH BEN SIDRAN & REV. DWIGHT ANDREWS
Thursday, October 17 @ 7:15PM
Pianist, author and producer Ben Sidran and composer, musician, pastor and educator Dwight Andrews will come together to explore the depths, the confluences and co-operations, and the sometimes fraught conflicts and contradictions, of this significant cultural partnership that has shaped the history of American Popular Music from Jazz to Blues to Rock and Roll, from the Juke Box to Broadway, from the days of Tin Pan Alley to today’s Hip Hop explosions.
Presented by Atlanta Jewish Music Festival, The Breman Museum and First Congregational Church
TRANSCRIPT:
Dwight Andrews: Ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be a wonderful experiment because we are going to be asking some important questions and this is to be a bit of a dialogue but I hope it will be a group conversation about some of these important issues, about music and culture and value. I want to introduce the evening to you by saying that in some ways, Ben and I, I think we're kind of brothers from another mother. We were separated at birth because we found ourselves having so many similar points of contact and in some ways, Ben's book called Black Talk, I don't know if any of you have ever read his book Black Talk, raise your hand, none of you are old enough to have read that book but me, okay. When did you write that book Ben?
Ben Sidran: 1970.
Dwight Andrews: He wrote it in 1970 and I began my teaching career in 1974 and after Blues People by Leroi Jones, Black Talk was the next book that I read that really helped to shaped my thinking about black culture and black music and it was due to Ben Sidran who I never met until 40, 50 years later. We just met this past year but it's interesting he and I were thinking about the same kinds of things 50 years ago and to my great surprise, he got his doctorate in England but he wrote a dissertation on black music from over there. I wrote my dissertation on Igor Stravinsky and I wrote it in New Haven, Connecticut.
Ben Sidran: There it is.
Dwight Andrews: A lot of crossing of paths. We have many musicians and people in common but I think it's our interest in asking big question, not about just about how the music sounds but where does the music come from, what stories does it tell us, how does it help us to understand who we are and what's important in our lives, and how does music and culture reflect where we are Baraka once said that the music and the people is the same and so that if you listen to a black people in any generation, you'll get some sense of the times by the very music that they're singing and playing and making. Whether it's the spirituals in the 18th and 19th Century or whether it's the blues in the late 19th Century or whether it's early jazz, you get a chance to see a mirror of the people, what's going on in their lives, what's important. You can literally hear the text of the people by looking at the music. I think in some ways, this very important that Ben Sidran has written, there was a fire, it really just amplifies some things that I've been thinking about for a long time but he put it in print in a way that I think we should really share with one another. The idea tonight is just to get a chance to talk about some of the important things that we've been thinking about and talking about in playing and writing. I especially want you to hear from Ben Sidran around some of these issues about Jewish music and identity, American popular music which in some ways we enjoy the music so much, we stop asking the questions of where it all comes from and the complicated ways in which American popular music is also a mirror, I think of who we are. I wanted to ask Ben to get us started by telling us about the title of this book, There Was A Fire, where does that title come from?
Ben Sidran: There Was A Fire is an ... well not an expression. It's a saying that comes from a story, clearly an apocryphal story, about the great Jewish rabbi Baal Shem Tov, for the Baal Shem Tov hundreds of years ago, was the lead rabbi in the Pale of Settlement. The Pale of Settlement was this area in Eastern Europe that was set up essentially as a reservation for the Jews. The Jews were all put there, the Russians didn't want the Jews, the Germans, nobody wanted the Jews and they were not allowed in the major cities. They weren't allowed to vote, they weren't allowed citizenship and so in the Pale of Settlement, millions of Jews lived, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, whatever they are today. They lived in little towns, they called them Shtetls. They were not farm towns and such but they were very poor towns, the Jews weren't allowed to have businesses, they weren't allowed to vote but they were very engaged in the Jewish activities of learning and of getting on with the business of being a Jew because this was not new to them. They had been on this path for thousands of years. They became mystics, many of them became mystics and in any case, so there was this famous rabbi called Baal Shem Tov and the story goes. At one point, the community, where he was a rabbi was in trouble, there was a problem. He went into the forest to a very special place. He built a special fire and he said a special prayer and low and behold, the community was saved. The next generation, Baal Shem Tov has passed, also had a problem of course. That rabbi went into the forest. He no longer knew the special place but he knew how to build the special fire and say the special prayer and he felt, well, perhaps it's sufficient and it was and the community was saved. Another generation, another rabbi, the community is in trouble again, of course, the community is always in trouble. This rabbi goes into the forest, he no longer knows the special place, nor does he know how to build the special fire but he remembers the special prayer which he says and low and behold the community is saved. 1Well, you know where this is going. The next generation, the fourth generation, they're in trouble. The rabbi goes in to the forest, he no longer knows the special place, he no longer knows how to build the special fire and the special prayer is forgotten and he says, maybe just the memory that there was a fire will be sufficient and it was and the community is saved. The book is called There Was A Fire because essentially, it's about memory and it's about the Jews and memory and how popular music plays into this.
Dwight Andrews: It's fascinating because in some ways, the whole idea of memory as you present it, if you juxtapose that within the African-American experience, so much of the experience of African-Americans in this country was designed to destroy memory, to destroy any sense of identity, to destroy any sense of community and because slavery and one of its impacts was to dehumanize the very value of each slaves so that they only knew their reality as a slave which is in some ways very different from other way in which the Hebrew community dealt with, this idea of memory because African-Americans have long suffered under the oppression of trying to have every aspect of their humanity destroyed. That's why they couldn't practice African religions, that's why they couldn't practice African language, that's why they couldn't make musical instruments, because all of the things that knit the community together, the slave masters saw as a danger to their role as slaves. It's fascinating to see how memory could be a part of the fabric that holds a community together or perhaps the way in which the spirituals and the blues have evolved is an attempt to recapture or create a sense of memory and maybe that's enough.
Ben Sidran: Maybe that's sufficient. Well, the fact is that the memory survived because of the music, through the music. The music was in fact, not just a reflection of the culture but a way for the culture to go forward and this has been the case for the hundreds of years that the African-American community has existed. The African-American community is one of the first American communities. They were here first. People tend to think, that was later after America. No, the African-Americans are among the first Americans. Even though, the memory was ... the memory of the languages, the memory of the music specifically was erased, the fact that there was a way to ... let me see how I can phrase this. The music came out of the memory of the speech. The memory of their idea of time and the passing of events. For example, because there was no written culture and because they banned ... the slave owners banned every instrument including drums and the reason they banned the drums is because Africa has a tradition of talking drums and they were very concerned, they thought, the white population thought that the drums were beating out like a primitive Morse code and that messages to escape would be sent and so they banned the drums. Well, in New Orleans in a place called Congo Square they were allowed to play the drums and in fact, the drums were communicating but not through Morse code. The drums were beating out a phonetic version of the language itself. For example, today in Ghana for example, the history of the people exists in the drums. The drummers learned, it takes years and years the story of the people by playing the drums. Right away, this is a different approach, this is a different orientation toward communication, toward memory. It's a dramatic alternative to what European culture was all about. When the African population was brought to the United States. Yes, so much was erased and I think one of the reasons there is a bond is because of the commonality of slavery, and the commonality of being outsiders. The Jews have the written history and Africans did not have a written history so their experience is a profound well spring of information and identity for Americans throughout the American experience and to this day.
Dwight Andrews: Well, it's certainly true that perhaps one of the things that has bound the two groups together is this idea of being outsiders but then on a certain way kind of insiders. I found in your book that that was an interesting way to describe the ways in which Jews have always in a sense been seen or perceived as outsiders but then by being on the outside, you kind of flip it and make that the inside and I certainly think that that's true for African-American culture as it responds to it's experience in the sense that we wouldn't have the music as we understand it, were not for the peculiar ways in which African-Americans were allowed to participate and not participate at the very same time. I always teach my students then, when you look at black speech and when you look at language, the ways in which we kind of subvert meanings and term meanings on their head is really a part of the way in which African-Americans, very early on discovered a way to kind of create a group by understanding the signs that signify the meanings. Even when we take something as simple as he was really cool and we're not talking about a body temperature out here but when we say, he's really cool, what we really mean is what, he's really hot. I mean, he's really playing, he's burning, right?
Ben Sidran: He's burning.
Dwight Andrews: Right.
Ben Sidran: Well, and also the blues lyric, it hurts so nice, it hurts so nice and there's a parallel in Yiddish, in the Yiddish culture where if your mother says, your hands are clean, what she means is your hands are filthy, right? In Yiddish, there's this whole saying one thing meaning another that's one of the many touchstones of the two cultures.
Dwight Andrews: If you understand the signs and the symbols that makes you ... that ties you deeper into the culture because you understand what's being said and what's not being said and most importantly as you talk about what's being meant, what's being meant and so, is that why African-Americans and Jews have had this rather special connection? Is it because of this outsider versus insider of the American experience or is there something else or is there something deeper, I mean, we think we can long acknowledge that the connections between kind of racism and anti-Semitism are really cousins so we know how it works and why it works but is there a special reason why there seems to have been at least in the 20th Century as the cities evolve, a special relationship between African-Americans and Jews?
Ben Sidran: Well, yes and yes. Yes, there's something special and yes, it is part of our common experience. For example, the majority of the Jews came to the United States in the 1880s, two million Jews came to the United States between 1880 and 1920 more or less and they, by and large lived on the lower east side of New York. It was the biggest ghetto that ever existed, it was the largest concentration and you have to remember number one, the Jews were not considered white. When the Jews came to the United States, they were considered off ... oriental was an expression they would say, which I never understood. What is oriental, how does that ... but they weren't white. They weren't black but they weren't white. They were somewhere in between so they were not allowed for example in the Universities or in the law firms or any of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant institutions. They were very poor and they had ... and it's just on their pulse a memory of what they referred to as pogroms. Pogroms really were the Russian Cossacks coming through the Shtetls and just burning the houses down and murdering people. The reason was simple, because when there are economic problems the government has to blame somebody and the Jews have been blamed historically for trying to control the economies. I have to say this, this is funny. When I was a kid, when I was like 10 years old, my best friend who was not Jewish said to me, is it true that Jews drink the blood of Christian babies during their holidays and to this day I wish I had said yes. The fact is, these things have been passed down for so long when the Jews arrived in the United States. They identified with the African-Americans for many reasons. First of all, the Jews referred to the lynchings that were happening here as pogroms. They immediately identify it. Second of all, there's this issue of slavery. The Jews' self-identity is bound up with the idea of being slaves in Egypt and this is interesting, because there's a quite possibility it never happened, right? The slavery in Egypt story, it could be apocryphal but the story makes it real and this is something that I've said in the book about the whole Jewish situation. The Jewish situation is based on a narrative, it's based on a story, it's based on a one true God, it's based on monotheism at a time when there were multiple Gods and it was a revolution. In the revolution, this idea of monotheism developed a kind of social conscience among the Jews. For example, if there's only one God and I have the same relationship with the God that Dwight has, I mean, we all have the same relationship, then A equals C, B equals C, A equals B, we're all equal, there's a kind of ... I know it's not true but it works. The fact is the Jewish experience was revolutionary at some point and the idea of being cast out a couple of thousands years ago and wondering is kind of a metaphor for modern man, modern man, adrift in the modern world. The individualism, being on the outside, looking on the inside. When they came to the United States, they saw African-Americans as original Americans and original Americans who could teach them, who were accessible to them. At the time, the general culture of New York, the Irish, were very actively through minstrelsy and various things looking down on the black population because they assume there were competition for jobs or whatever. In some ways, the Jews identified up. They saw these people as being true Americans and they wanted to identify with true Americans. They wanted to be American. You have this sense of the Jews coming here being cast out, being a homeless, not having a home, can't go back to Europe, there's no way back and they come here and the story of slavery seems familiar to them. This idea of being a stranger in a strange land, appeals to them. As the experiences of black and Jews in America grows, they really do for the ... certainly the first half of the 20th Century grow together. It's an experience that they both gain currency and strength from each other.
Dwight Andrews: Does the oppression, does the anti-Semitism, does the Racism kind of forge a bond between these two groups to your way of thinking? I mean, is that a part of the fabric? That's one question and then another question, we'll probably have to talk about this over a glass of wine is if the exile really didn't happen, I mean ...
Ben Sidran: We don't know.
Dwight Andrews: These are questions that we Christians don't like ... I mean, Easter had to happen.
Ben Sidran: We don't know. We don't know but this is something else I'll point, I need to make and this is about the power of a story, because I think that's really at the bottom of what we're talking about here. I'd like to say, look, if God exists, it's a miracle. If there is an all knowing being out there who knows everything that's everywhere in the Universe and in our heads, that's a miracle. If God doesn't exist and the story of God has moved so much history, so many people have died so many people have been born, so much history has happened, because of this idea of God, of a deity, that's a miracle. You don't have to believe in any particular story to believe that our being here is a miracle, right? I mean, it doesn't have to be consistent with a particular catechism. Well, we're all searching for a way in the year 2019 to be in touch with the best of who we are and what makes us human. We talk about the music. Reverend Dwight said, the music reflects the society in it absolutely does, even down to the tempo of the songs. You can tell something about a culture by the rhythm, the kind of rhythm, even down to, whether the rhythm is strict or dotted eighth, I mean, you can extrapolate from that certain things. You can also look at it and see that the music created the culture, didn't just reflect it, certain aspects of music, particularly popular music, music that flies under the radar of intellectual activity really supports much of who we are. I have this thing I'd like to say about popular music in America, which without African-Americans and Jews, there would be no popular music in America. There simply wouldn't, there simply wouldn't. What was here before blacks and Jews was bad versions of European culture. The Americans wanted to be respected by the Europeans and so they imitated British Dancehall Music or Vienna's Waltzes or they were in love with Gilbert and Sullivan. It was all fine, it's okay but it wasn't specifically American, right? The American experience was unique in that we're a country of immigrants, the true Americans as we know are native Americans, everybody else is here on a Visa more or less, right? We're all on the outside, I'm talking about Jews on the outside, black is on the outside, we're all on the outside and the African-American experience, the Jewish experience are prototypical versions of this. This is why the culture that comes out of these experiences resonates not only with Americans but around the world because as modernism came along, as the 20s and 30s and the modern world happened, people all over started to feel the sense of alienation and dislocation and who am I? The heart of any religion, any religion, it doesn't matter what it is, is caring, is caring and being part of something larger than yourself. That's it we are individually like notes, but together, we're a symphony, we're music. We, by ourselves, we're a social animal, we're social species and here's something that's interesting specifically about black music in America. The blues didn't exist in Africa. If you look at African music, the blues as we know doesn't exist. Certain things existed, the Melisma, the ... what they call the blue notes, the flat at third, the seventh, fifth, they existed. The pentatonic scale, that has certainly existed. The blues is an American thing. The blues is the African experience brought to Western culture. It's really a kind of a little miracle. Here's something that I find so interesting and that is 40,000 years ago, in the caves in Lascaux, France, where they found the paintings on the wall, right, from primitive cultures, primitive, who knows how primitive they were, they also found musical instruments. They found flutes on the floor made out of bird's bones. To make a flute, you have to drill holes in a particular place so when you cover them, a certain scale can be played. The scale that was played on the flutes that were found is the pentatonic scale, the blue scale. What we considered contemporary is really part of a very long experience. What we know of as popular culture and popular music is probably been going on for thousands and thousands of years. Everything else quite frankly to me is a distraction. There is so much more that binds us together than what keeps us apart, that this conversation of blacks and Jews in America to me is so important because it represents the best of this idea of caring for one another in America.
Dwight Andrews: You've raised some wonderful aspects, yeah. Baraka talks about the blues as being the African-American's response to a world that had no understanding and no place for the African-American except as a slave so in a sense, the blues becomes an expression and an effort to make a space where there was no space and you create a space in a world that only understood you as a slave, it was in a sense of self-empowering statement and I think you're absolutely right. The blues only exists here. I mean, that's where it comes from. Jazz only exists here because in some ways, the peculiar Gumbo, to quote Winton is it's only America that all of the different elements come together in a particular way. That's why we don't have jazz evolving in South America. We have certainly African musics but jazz and blues really comes out of the unique kind of cultural history experience, the inside, outside relationships of all of the ingredients and I'd like the metaphor of the Gumbo for American music because if you've ever had good Gumbo, you don't know what's in it. It's like there's so many things in it and you just store it up and it tastes real good and so you don't try to ask all of the parts. You just want to taste and enjoy the flavor. I think in some ways, that's what our musical ... our American popular musical heritage is. It's really a Gumbo in which you need to take it as the whole and not just some of its parts, not where did the pentatonic come from, wherever it is. It's the sum of it that makes it so interesting.
Ben Sidran: That's so important because in intellectualizing the stuff we're talking about, we do it a disservice frankly, I mean, we do it anyway but we do it as a disservice and it seems to me it's like wanting to understand how a butterfly flies and pulling off its wings and maybe we understand eventually how it flies but it won't fly anymore and this is a difficulty. Max Roach once said, that the drum set is the most American musical instrument because you have the snare that comes out of the French culture and you have the Tom-toms that come out of Africa or the native American culture and you have the cymbals that come out of the middle east and that instrument itself is a metaphor for the American experience.
Dwight Andrews: The drum set is like a part of the Gumbo. Yeah.
Ben Sidran: The drum set is a major flavor in the Gumbo.
Dwight Andrews: Go ahead, go ahead.
Ben Sidran: No. Go ahead.
Dwight Andrews: Well, I was going to ask you, so if we were going to try to kind of distill American popular music, I mean, how do you think about it decade by decade, do you start in the 1920s and move up through Tin Pan Alley and Gershwin and the rest? I mean, how might a novice try to understand the evolution of American popular music?
Ben Sidran: There's a lot ways to go at that. I think the ground, the ground level, American popular music, you can get there by talking about Africanisms and Western culture and it's pretty simple. You have in the expression of African culture, the vocalized tone where it's considered more eloquent rather than to hit a note right on it to come up from under it or come up over it. That's considered the essence of style. Where in Western music, you hit the note precisely, A is 440 and you hit 440 and you're an excellent musician. The first thing is you have these two approaches to what literally is perception, oral perception and you know what, maybe they don't actually hear each other. Maybe what's considered elegant in one culture is considered noise in another culture. That's the first thing. The second thing, you have an Africanism in the approach to rhythm because what makes American speech so profound, and we're not even aware of it because it's just in us, we have it but you go around the world and the way we talk and the way we carry on is unique, it's unique because of the rhythm of our speech, it's hypnotic in a way and there's a difference, we talked about this at Emory today, between meter and rhythm. Meter is what happens when a metronome clicks and a clock, when the second hand goes around, it ticks, it's a mechanical sub-division of the passing of events. It's an invention of Western culture to make business happen, right? We all agree what noon is and so we all can do business, that's really the essence of the clock but that's not rhythm. Rhythm is what happens when the tide goes in an out. Rhythm is what happens when crops grow and crops are harvested. Rhythm is what happens when your heart beats and if you listen to your heartbeat, the heart goes, baboom, baboom. It doesn't go, tick, tick, tick, tick, right? The baboom is in musical terms called a dotted eighth and the dotted eighth is what makes music swing. Music that swings and the idea what is swing, people say what is swing? The heart of swing is this idea of long short tension release. It's right in there. It's who we are. That's ... on the one hand, that's the popular ... the aspects of popular music that were brought from the African culture. What did the Jews bring? Well, quite simply, first of all, the Jews brought an ability to monetize. I know there's ... the cliché, we all know the cliché but the fact is because the Jews didn't have a homeland for generations, what they did is they set up networks all over the world with Jews among Jews, we're able to trade things. They financed the governments that won't let them be citizens. When they came to the United States ... here's a story, Stephen Foster, the great composer who wrote Swanee River and Oh Susanna and all these great tunes died broke. He died with 39 cents in this pocket because the music publishing business which is created by Jews hadn't been created yet. The Jews took a penny business and made a business of it, so that's not nothing, that's something but the other thing that Jews did that created this music is they brought a tremendous interest in Western harmony. If you were raised in a Shtetl in the Pale of Settlement, the only way you would be allowed into Moscow is on a scholarship to a music academy. That's why there's so many Jewish violinist coming out of Europe because they were allowed into the city. The parents said to the children, play an instrument because you can get on so the Jews came here with a great understanding of Western Harmony. When you take the Africanisms and you put it together with Western Harmony, you come upon the invention by Jerome Kern and George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and Harold Arlen of what's called the 32 bar song form. The Great American song book. Popular music in America is built on this template of the yearning, the emotional, I mean, all these guys went up to Harlem. Harold Arlen adored Harlem stride pianos so did Gershwin. They went to school on Willie The Lion Smith. At the same time, they had this harmonic sense that they knew from their tradition. Jazz is in fact, the coming together of these two things, without the harmonic structure, there never would have been what we know of as jazz or swing or what we call popular music today. Without the Africanisms, we'd still be back in England, we'd be in London today there wouldn't be American music, there would be fake English music.
Dwight Andrews: That's fascinating, we talked briefly about the Nickelodeon and I was fascinated by the story of kind of Nickelodeon and kind of how that all got started and it really was secondary to kind of the interest in the garment kind of ...
Ben Sidran: Well, yeah, this is ... history doesn't happen in a straight line. History goes in all directions at once, like you throw stone in a pond and history is all those ramps. The Jews were not allowed to have a business in Europe, right? They got in the rag, what they called the rag business. They could take old clothes and sew it together. When they came to the United States, you see pictures of the Jews on the lower east side and they got a sewing machine under their arm, right? What they're doing is they're creating a garment business. Well, in the process, the Jews, created exact size clothing, up until then, if you didn't have money, you basically didn't look particularly good because you couldn't afford a tailor but the Jews invented this idea of exact size clothing. Not arbitrarily, it just came out of the fact that they created retail clothing for the masses. They went from the rag trade to starting these retail outlets in New York City and Thomas Edison invented the film camera and Nickelodeons were popular, these little ... you look in them and you put a nickel in there and you could see a little movie of somebody sneezing and that was a big hit. That was a hit. Sneezing was a big hit. A horse running was a big hit. These were hits. A lot of these Jewish merchants on the lower east side put a Nickelodeon or two in their clothing stores. They did so much business in the Nickelodeons that eventually they got rid of the clothing. These were the first movie theaters and eventually, Thomas Edison sued a lot of them because they were making their own movies and Edison had the patent. All these Jews move to Hollywood to get away from Thomas Edison. At one point, in the 20s, the major five film studios were run by guys who grew up within an hour of Warsaw, Poland and that's a fact but they also these same guys who did rag business, did publishing, song publishing and songs ... here's something that's really interesting, that I love. What we consider just as part of the world that's been there forever, popular music. We have popular ... whether you like the Beatles, whether you like Stevie Wonder or whoever you love, that form of popular music is American. It did not exist anywhere else and it came out of this intersection of blacks and Jews and I have a little way of looking at it and it's this. The opposite of love is not hate, right? The opposite of love is indifference. You care or you don't care, all right. If you hate you still care. The opposite of love is indifference. The Jews have this saying, it's called tikk where the highest thing you can do is try to heal the world and there's this mystical image of the world being like a mirror that was shattered years ago and our job is to put the mirror together again so we can see ourselves, so we can know ourselves. What these Jewish American songwriters did in creating these songs with an eye and an ear toward the African-American experience and in many ways, in solidarity would give us, you're tired, you're poor, you're hungry, you're tempest-tossed, that poem on the statue of Liberty, that's a Jewish poem that was written by Emma Lazarus, a Jewish girl. In solidarity with this of America being a beacon for the underclass, the Jews started writing songs about a boy and a girl. Today, we'd say so what, of course, it's a song about a boy and a girl but consider this, 120 years ago, the songs were not written about a boy and a girl, they were written about kings and queens and people that had nothing to do with their lives. The Jews wrote songs about average everyday people. You can see when a boy and a girl hold hands and they fall in love, such as it is, that's a little piece of caring. Caring is the opposite of indifference. You can see in this world of popular music an urge towards something greater, toward a more spiritual basis for who we are and what we're doing here. What we're doing here isn't about money. What we're doing here isn't about conquest. What we're doing here is about caring. What we're doing here is about being part of something bigger and again, I go right back to 40,000 years ago on those flutes on the floor. I don't think it's new. I think we've been doing this and we are part of a very long revolution. The revolution has been going on for thousands of years and it's going to go forward, we're going to survive this and we're going to go forward.
Dwight Andrews: Well, let's hope so because I was going to ask you, so what happened? I mean, what happened to the caring? What's the nature of American popular music today? I mean, I don't know that I get the same sense of kind of the humanity in the music business and the music. What's your sense of how do we get here and where are we?
Ben Sidran: Okay, you found me out. You're absolutely right. I despair. I do despair. I don't find caring in the popular music today and as a matter of fact, they're developing as we're sitting here, artificial intelligence that's writing popular songs. I despair. I despair because of the lack of care for what's true and what's real. I despair because there's no cultural memory anymore. I mean, look at what's happening in Washington where you can say something different every hour or two and everybody forgot what was said an hour ago, there's no memory. There's no sense of ease. There's a sense of anxiety. It does feel like we're all suffering from a kind of PTSD right now. Everybody is kind of on edge. Everybody ... like if a glass dropped, we'd jump. We're all ... we don't have a sense of grounding. You're absolutely right, and I worry about that because I personally feel for the first time that technology which always has its own agenda, technology ... this is so interesting. Technology has its own agenda. It shows up. For example, somebody invented ... the cymbal, the cymbal in Jazz is a wonderful thing. There's a cymbal originally at the drum kit, it was hang on a cork, right? When the drummer hit it, it would make a splashy sound and it would reverb, right? Later, they found a way to anchor the cymbal on a stand with a wing nut and then it didn't just ring, and so then ... well, in the high hat, that's exactly right. They put two of these on a stand and what that did is it changed the time so you can play four, four up here and the music would swing in a different way and that was because technology has an agenda. Along with technology comes a lot of things that we're not anticipating, unintended consequences. I mean, if you remember just 10 years ago, the Utopian things that we're saying about social media, how it's going to bring everybody together. My god, it did just the opposite.
Dwight Andrews: Yeah.
Ben Sidran: Technology has unintended consequences and now, technology is breeding on itself faster than people can stay on top of it.
Dwight Andrews: Yeah.
Ben Sidran: Yes, I despair, the music that we hear on the radio today is faceless, it's faceless. It's not about a boy and a girl holding hands anymore. I think about how ... in the 50s, the music was kind about romance, it is romantic and in the 60s, it was about love. The 70s, disco is about sex, right? In the 80s, it became about violence. In the 90s, the music became violent. It's a continuum that doesn't go on a great direction.
Dwight Andrews: I've been thinking about this a lot as we try to figure out where we are culturally and one, how we push back against some of the ways in which technology seems to govern much of our experience. I have students who go out on a date and they both have their cellphones and they sit across and rather than looking at each other's eyes, they're texting each other and they're right there, I mean, like in the same room, at the same table and there's a way in which we become so screen driven, that I actually think we become more separate and the whole notion of community listening to music as a community as opposed to listening with our headsets, the way in which we privatize the experience of music and sound, I think also goes against this sense of community and of a shared experience.
Dwight Andrews: I also have my own kind of cynical view that all of this serves a kind of capitalist trajectory in the sense that once you can commodify everything, once you can commodify violence and say that violence sells and not only sells but sells well and once you can separate that from any kind of cultural memories so that it doesn't matter what ethnicity you are, you buy the violence because you have been trained and groomed only to consume. It seems to me that all of these things are pointing us away from our own humanity and I really fear that unless we have conversations like that and we're in synagogue or in the temple or in some place, in the church, in a room where we're breaking bread, I wonder how we counter the ways in which commerce has become the new spirituality and kids and adults and their grandparents all are consumed by consumption.
Ben Sidran: Absolutely.
Dwight Andrews: That to me is terrifying, when we look at the kids that got into the colleges because their parents wrote a big check to university or Harvard, wherever. I mean, the idea that that could be bright ever is astounding to me and when we look at all of the things around Washington that really are symptomatic of something much greater, that's when I despair because we wouldn't be in the present moment were not for a lot of people who think that this is okay.
Ben Sidran: Absolutely. People are making a lot of money today.
Dwight Andrews: I think we're trying to find our way back to our ... both to our memory and to our sense of value.
Ben Sidran: Let me ask you something because I don't understand it. The trajectory of music in the African-American culture has always been so profound and one of the greatest gifts, right? As it became more sophisticated and it became ... I mean, today, it's more of a lesson of art music which is unfortunate I think because the power of the music was, hey, it's Tuesday night, let's go to the club and hear the music and as Art Blakey said, the music is there to wash away the dust of everyday life. That's why we have ... they have music. We all see the arc of what happened in black music and it became all about bling and it became all about money and getting ours and it became violent and misogynistic. How is the black community experiencing that in terms of how they arrived through America in the 20th Century. How do you look at what's happened with this magnificent tradition?
Dwight Andrews: Well, it's only possible because I don't think that black people as a group are thinking about it in those terms at all. I don't think there's a lot of reflection going on at all. I think we are really the products, I'm talking about not only blacks but blacks and whites and all of us but especially, I think the black community has been most really impacted because when we talk about the great eras of black music, they came out of the black community. The black community determined that it was Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. They were the portal, the Apollo was the portal, right? The black community said, yes, Duke it's important. This is our guy. What has happened is the power of the cultural control has been rested from the black community. The black community doesn't control black music. The black community doesn't control hip-hop. The guys that control hip-hop are the guys that control all of it. I think we should be very afraid because we've groomed our young black consumers to think that bling is what's important, right? When we look at the kind of the social dysfunction, the suicide rate, the community health rate, the mental health illness in our affluent families, black or white, I think it is really a result of this being completely engulfed in this kind of material folly, if you will and then people decide and once they have all the bling, why don't have I meaning in my life? I'm still not feeling satisfied and I think it's product of that. I think the myth of black music today is that, that it's been somehow or rather informed by black people. Black people are really at the end of the food chain, not at the beginning of it anymore and I think that that is a problem that black critical thinkers are not addressing and in fact, have commodified why hip-hop is hip and so we have all the theorist, theorizing which has also become its own commodification and I have dear colleagues who have made a living talking about how important and why it's important and it really colludes with the commodification of the culture.
Ben Sidran: Yes, because ... there's always an impulse to find meaning in what's happening. We should point out and there's a truth to the cliché, for many years the Jews ran the record business and the music business. As soon as the corporations took over, this is no longer the case and when the corporations took over, the music tanked, right?
Dwight Andrews: That's interesting. Yeah.
Ben Sidran: There wasn't a person behind it. There was an algorithm behind it. The advantage of the corporation of making music, that's violent and brutal is as they say in the newspaper business, if it bleeds it leads, it's the easiest thing to get somebody's attention and if you don't have real artists, you don't have the problem of dealing with artists, you just sell the music. It is commodification and it's commodification without people behind it. If you go into record companies today ... well, for example, Capitol Records, one of the great record companies, it's the building in Los Angeles that looks like a stack of records, a famous place. Capitol Records is empty, there's nobody in the building anymore. They're going to convert it to condominiums and apartments. There's nobody there, right? What's going on today is happening right in front of us but the infrastructure that our culture has relied on up until the 21st Century is gone. It's gone and it is being driven by algorithms that generate profits. That's what's happening. Here we are. I mean, are we living in the cave, is this 40,000 years later and we're in the cave and you know, we're talking about on the outside of the cave are the beasts? What do we have?
Dwight Andrews: I mean, I think that's the question of the age and I think that is the question but I think what I'm encouraged by is moments like this where sometimes we raise a question that goes out into the atmosphere and we try to find a better answer than we presently have but I think that we do have to act. We have to continue to create and I think my biggest sadness in the present moment is, it's not just the quality of the music and so many of our communities, young people don't get a chance to make a sound. They don't blow a trumpet or bow a string and if you've never created a sound, if you've never sung, you don't have to be a great singer, you just need to make a note. If you've never had that experience, in some ways, your power has been taken away from you and you only think that you can buy it or get it in Sound Cloud or something else. You were talking earlier about the way which the music industry had changed because even the idea of a CD or a DVD, all of that is going away and so now, where is the music to be monetized and ...
Ben Sidran: How are we going to support the musicians? How are we going to support our professional musicians? This is a wide open question right now. We are literally on the cusp of something in terms of popular culture right now, and that, there were used to be cylinders and then there were 78s and there were LPs and then there were CDs and each step along the way, this was an artifact that you would take home and it was mediated by the packaging, you'd look at the package, you'd see the picture, you'd read the notes, you'd become involved, you'd hold it, you'd have this thing. You would exchange money for it and the money would go to the people who made it more or less hopefully. I mean, you never knew. This was a way that people supported themselves by supporting each other. Now, we're on the cusp of a world where that will not exist anymore, the latest iteration was CDs and next year they will no longer make CDs. Only people of a certain age have CD players anymore, they don't put them in cars anymore and everything is streamed from various services. Without getting into the mechanics of how that money is distributed, you can be sure it's not distributed to song writers who aren't connected to big money somewhere. We don't know what will support the culture, the popular culture but one thing is for sure and that is, it's just what you say, you have to get out of your house and come into a room with one another. This, as simple as it looks and as simple as it seems, is revolutionary. There are two things that I think are revolutionary actions today. One is to find a way to be happy because the way we're controlled is by being scared and if you can find a way ... Johnny Griffin, the great saxophone jazz, excellent player once said, Jazz is music that's made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.
Dwight Andrews: Amen.
Ben Sidran: It's revolutionary because if you can find a way to feel good, you will not be led by the nose down the path. That's the first thing but the second thing and it's so important because as you say you have a boy and a girl sitting across the table and they're texting each other. It's so important to come out and be in a room and see that you're not alone and see that you're part of something greater and that you're problems are shared all around, that's revolutionary and there's a thing in the Jewish tradition of a minion, you need 10, it used to be men now, you can have women there, it took only 3,000 years to recognize 50% of the world. They have to be in the room together. You can't tweet a minion. You got to be there and there's something about being there and that's the other thing we can do and the more we do something like this come together, have a drink. Enjoy ... I say, when I perform in clubs, enjoy yourself man, you're already at the top of your class, you came. You could have done any number of things tonight but you came here. You're already way ahead of the curve, be proud of that, that you came out tonight. That is something. It's not nothing and I think that's the hope.
Dwight Andrews: You put it right in the place because we want to open this up to a conversation, I want to hear from some of you only because we can talk about this for about 40 days and 40 nights.
Ben Sidran: Absolutely. Right.
Dwight Andrews: Not to be biblical but we could be here a long time but I want to open it up because I'm certain that people are going to have a couple of thoughts or comments or questions and so what I'd like to do is to see if we could turn on the house lights to wake everyone up and we're going to ask Ben or I'm happy to kind of respond to a few minutes of questions but first of all, let's give Ben Sidran ...
Ben Sidran: Thank you.
Dwight Andrews: If we have a question, just stand up and bark it out and let's see if we can ...
Male: Where is the music?
Dwight Andrews: We're going to play some music but we want to make sure that anyone that's pent-up with a question or a comment, we want to make sure that we make this a conversation. Yes, Dana.
Ben Sidran: Well, the question is how do you change this situation? It seems like we're going in a direction where we don't need people anymore and people are going to become irrelevant. It's just going to be money, generating money and artificial intelligence is generating artificial intelligence. I don't believe that. I really do feel that this experience that we have, being together, talking, communicating, this is the essence really of who we are and food that's made in a Petri dish, doesn't really taste good. The movies that are being made don't give us anything and the popular culture, the way it's being presented is not fulfilling, it's not nourishing and gradually, the humanity that we have, that we've spent thousands of years developing who we are. Music is in many ways the best of who we are. It's what we did. It's what made us human. Animals don't play the blues. I mean, there's something else that I like to point out and that is, there's something called collective entrainment that animals do, like when you see birds flying in the sky and they do this together or a fish swimming and they do this together, it's a quality that animals have but only humans can be collectively entrained by rhythm and music. It's a human element. Food, music, culture, family, friendship, these really are who we are and yeah, we're going to lose a lot of people along the way. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I think a lot of people will be seduced by the shadows on the wall but that's not humanity, that's not humanity and it's up to each one of us to maintain our humanity. I mean, we really have to look after our own bodies and try to help the ... love and protect the souls.
Dwight Andrews: Absolutely.
Ben Sidran: I mean, that's our job so in the end, I think humanity is going to survive, let me put it this way, in the long run, it looks good. In the short run, not so much.
Dwight Andrews: Good rabbi. Okay, we have ... yes sir, go ahead. Stand up and then speak up if you could. We should brought a mic.
Ben Sidran: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Of course there are. Of course, the question is ... this is a very long conversation because it goes into how music is manufactured and marketed and how music gets to the public and how determines what music survives and what music doesn't and how is that orchestrated by the economy. Well, almost nothing is on the radio and the reason is because all the radio stations in the United States are owned by one company now.
Dwight Andrews: Yes. Yeah. No, no, go ahead.
Ben Sidran: It's not programmed. The radio in Atlanta isn't programmed out of Atlanta. You might get local weather but the music you're getting are the same songs you're getting everywhere else and that's bought and paid for. I mean, it's all ... everything that is in music today is bought and paid for. That doesn't mean, there aren't wonderful musicians out there, fabulous musicians of every stripe, color, sex, everything. They're out there, they really are and when you get to know the young people, you do become optimistic because it's wonderful. It's what we're all up against at this point because in the name of efficiency, we've lost the ability to communicate with one another. Yes, there are ... boy, you stumble across something great and your heart just melts because it's been so long since you've come across something that moves you. It's out there. It's just harder and harder to find.
Dwight Andrews: The racial aspect of it is simply that there's certainly are black artists that are creating beautiful love songs and other kinds of popular expressions. The issue is the trope of what's being presented as black music and most people would think that black music, black popular music is hip-hop, period. It becomes kind of the main narrative of what it means to be black and urban and whatever you want to call it. The problem with that is of course is that it represents all of the most negative tropes about African-Americans that have ever been created. It's a recollection of the worst stereotypes of minstrelsy. You have oversexed men, you have women who are loose and immoral and that is what our kids see in all of the lyrics. It's not that there isn't variety but to Ben's point, the way in which the industry no longer is local in any sense of the word, radio and the various outlets for the media have now kind of homogenized and they, in a sense are the vehicles for the most negative aspects of the stereotypes that are being continued and have been continued for a century. That's the danger that there isn't ... and this is the irony of the digital age, that there isn't a variety that we all anticipated once we got the internet and when we got all of these new means of streaming music. The main narrative of who black people are, it puts forth a very, very thin slice of the African-American experience. That I think is ... does a great detriment to all of us as Americans. Yes, ma'am.
Ben Sidran: The question is, a comment on indie artists and the whole indie movement, the house concerts and also, the resurgence of vinyl and what that tells us. Well, this year for the first year, vinyl out sold CDs for the first time in a long time. However, the overall numbers are very small, right? Vinyl is fashionable, it's kind of part of the hipster experience. The indie life is vibrant. House concerts are vibrant. It's in many ways, too little too late if you ask me because the only way an indie artist can be discovered is through massive social media and every now and then, indie artists get lucky. People get lucky. They've always been lucky. If you found ... like Bob Dylan. He got lucky. How many Bob Dylans didn't get lucky, we don't know. The same thing with indie artist today, they have 400 million hits on a particular Facebook thing or whatever. That's somebody who got lucky. For every one person out there like that, there are thousands and thousands of people striving to do it. The real problem is the infrastructure of the musical life is gone. The infrastructure is gone. You cannot really go from one town to another with a band and make enough money to not only pay the transportation and the food and the hotels but pay the musicians. The infrastructure is not there. Likewise, all the music now is being streamed and the model of streaming, I'll just describe it to you briefly. They used to ... record companies used to be interested in hits. You make a hit, you sell the artifact, you make money, the person who wrote the artifact gets paid hopefully, whatever, right? Now, nobody cares about hits. What they care about is market share and the way that works is with these streaming services like Spotify or whatever, they generate hundreds of millions of dollars and add revenue and signing up fees, how does that money get divided? Well, the top five record ... five record companies, Universal, Sony, whatever, go to Spotify and say, we have a 40% market share, we want 40% of your revenue. Spotify says okay, because they need to play all the music that Universal has, whoever they have. The little bit that's left at the end has to be divided up among the indie artist. You get a check for 40,000 plays and the check for $12, okay? The infrastructure isn't there now. That's the problem. Yes, a lot of people are making great music. Yes, with the technology everybody has access to great recording, technology and you can print it and press it and you can do all this stuff yourself and you can even get it out there and theoretically your music can be heard around the world. That doesn't mean you can go and play a gig. It's very strange. Well, as I say it, we're living at a very interesting time. Nobody has the answers, believe me. It's not like this room is any different than anywhere else.
Dwight Andrews: We're going to take just a few more questions. Okay, we got ... don't worry, we're going to get to everybody. We'll get this young lady and then the brother right here and I want you to come back to talk about the 360 deal, the way it was, the three ... because that's very important for people to understand how the music business works but first we'll take your question. Yes, ma'am.
Ben Sidran: Yeah, right. The question is, how can we address the fact that the school is basically a dropped music programs, there are no instruments for kids to play. They don't physically have their hands on it. Quite simply get instruments into the schools. By any means necessary because if you're a child and you're given an instrument, right away, what you're doing is you're actively not doing a lot of other stuff you shouldn't be doing, right? You have something. You have something that has a wonderful outcome because when you play an instrument, those times when you're sitting there playing that instrument, you're really working on yourself, you're learning to play the instrument but I'd like to say, you can spend 20 years blowing through a copper tube. That copper is not going to change but you will be totally transformed. If you get instruments in the hands of kids, it's a major thing. You can do that. You can go, you can start 501C3 a nonprofit. The goal of the nonprofit could be to get instruments in the hands of school children. You can go out and raise funds and buy instruments and do it and that's doable, you can do that.
Dwight Andrews: The other part of that is, because I have so little faith in public education in the United States is that we can't wait for the schools to decide the music education is important. The public education system has been dismantled for very, very clear reasons and it's to create a permanent underclass of people who will never be able to participate. That's why the temples, the churches, your community centers, big mama in the neighborhood, needs to have people over after school and you make institutions where kids can get instruments and we can't wait on public education anymore because there was a dramatic change in public education, after the 1950s, when anybody was educated in the 50s and 60s, everybody had to sing in the ... play in the band and sing in the choirs. You had to do all of that. That was a part of your preparation as a citizen in an enlightened democracy. The dismantling of public education has one clear intent, it's to dismantle the democracy, right? It's so that you won't have any understanding of your own creative abilities. That's why at this little church, we're really intent on creating programs that will allow kids to have some musical encounters and we won't wait on the schools because the schools have become so encumbered and they become such political footballs and they're being run now by people who are themselves, miseducated so they have no sense of value. This is our opportunity to really become radical revolutionaries and to do it wherever we can do it, if we do it on the church on Saturday, and then synagogue on Sunday, I mean, you all can figure it out but we can get that done and I don't think it takes a legislative act because I frankly think that it's going to be a long time before our legislature moves to rebuild the fabric of public education in America.
Ben Sidran: Yes and ... yes, you've described the situation we're in perfectly but I just want to say, for years, we've found bad guys. I don't think it's bad guys. I think it's capitalism. I think it's the system we're under. I don't think there are guys saying, we need to disenfranchise everybody so that we can increase profits. No, they just say, we need to increase profits, right and along the way, these things are collateral, this is the collateral damage.
Dwight Andrews: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, absolutely.
Ben Sidran: I think it's important because if we get distracted into finding enemies, everywhere, we're not going to do the work we need to do.
Dwight Andrews: No. You're absolutely right but I think that that is the point that the system is creating this collateral damage in which we are all kind of lessened by it. Let's hear from this person. Yes, sir.
Ben Sidran: The gentleman was talking about the positive aspect of people, young people particularly today who have found new ways with the technology to bring new music to market and that we're being over-nostalgic about the past because in the past, people didn't get paid and the system was inequitable and that's all absolutely true. Reverend Dwight wanted me to talk about the 360 deal because it's part of the evolution of the recording business. The recording business has only been this huge thing for about 50 years. Up until the 50s more or less, records didn't sell millions of copies, a big selling record might have been 100,000 copies. There wasn't huge dollars in the record business and in the 30s, during the depression, when the major companies like RCA ran into financial difficulties, the first thing they did is they offloaded any specialty recording that meant any ethnic recording, what they called race records at the time but also any country whatever. Those records, that business was picked up by small entrepreneurs, most of them Jews as it happened because it was a penny's business and nobody wanted to get into it. The Jews some of them were fans and very enlightened like the guy who started Blue Note Records and Jerry Wexler who's at Atlantic records, these were people ... or Milt Gabler. I mean, God bless Milt Gabler who put out Billy Holiday's strange fruit and who recorded Louis Jordan. Amazing stuff. These were visionary guys but they were also guys who got in the business, there was one guy, Hy Weiss, these guys, some of them were in the injection molding business during World War II, making toilet seats and they realized, they could also make records. I mean, it wasn't about art and a lot of people did not get paid. There's a lot of animosity historically about that. Hey, you made all this money and I didn't but the fact is, that money by and large was made after the Rolling Stones discovered Muddy Waters. When Muddy Waters was making records for chess. It was a penny's business. Yes, there were a lot of abuses but the business was totally different. What happened in the 60s really with the peace and love, when the numbers grew up, really what it was about was the teenage culture, when young people got their hands on money, and they became an identifiable market, we're going to sell to young people, it exploded and the record business exploded and all the old guys from the old days, guys like John Hammond, Goddard Lieberson who were aesthetes were replaced by guys who were looking for the edge, looking for the extra dollar and they didn't know how to get it so for a while we had wonderful free form radio that played everything and we had record companies recording everybody with whatever. Statistically, in the record business, even today, but all through the business, only let's say 5% but it's probably less, of the releases made money. About 5% supported the other 95% of what was put out there and that was an acceptable risk because when they made money, they made so much money that there was largest everywhere. Well, eventually, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, one thing led to another where only bigger sales would do. I mean, I could explain how that happened with the companies expanding and deciding they were going to own their own distribution networks which increase their overhead and one thing got into another. By the 90s, record companies had invented something they called the 360 deal. I'm going to waste so much time here but it's important. There are two ways you get paid when you make a record. One the record company is supposed to pay you if they sell it, right? That may or may not happen. The other way is the song itself, if you write the song, there's a copyright that's protected by federal law and that's a separate payment. When The Beatles wrote, I Want To Hold Your Hand, they got paid something for the record but they also got paid for the song. The money that comes to the song, for every 10 cents that comes in, 5% goes to the writer and/or writers and five cents goes to the publisher. Who is the publisher? The publisher could be a gangster, it doesn't matter. The publisher is somebody maybe who made the deal, who's in the middle of it and so if you look in the records in the 50s and 60s, a lot of people's names who were on records, they had nothing to do with. They were DJs and they would say, well, look, if you play the record, I'll give you a piece of this. The drilling down into the asset is what the record companies got good at and by the 90s, then they had done so many stupid things, I mean, really, the whole business that we're in right now, the business model is because the record companies sued Napster. It seems so simple but it's the fact. Napster was passing around free music. Well, radios pass around music for free too but there's a model for monetizing radio play that goes back to the creators. The record companies were so determined to be in charge and to control everything, that they sued Napster not only Napster, they sued kids who had downloaded from Napster. Well, the horse was out of the barn. They lost. They lost credibility and subsequently, they were scrambling to find a way to make money and they invented something called the 360 deal, where if they signed you, they got a percentage of your gigs, your life gigs, they got a percentage of your T-shirt sales. They got a percentage in fact of all your activities. I like to say, that includes theoretically, if you create a cure for cancer, the record label owns piece of that. That was what happened. Well, eventually that whole system just toppled. Except today, anybody who's signed by a major label, if they cure cancer, the company is going to own it. That's the truth.
Dwight Andrews: Scary. Okay, last question because I want to get a chance to hear Ben play something and so, yes sir, you get the last word.
Ben Sidran: He was talking about blockchain which is behind Bitcoin. What you're talking about is the upside of technology. The technology is not only evil, it's also ever evolving. Well, I hear you. Okay. Technology can't be evil, only people can be evil. Yeah, but the point is correct. The future could very well bring new ways to get paid equitably and quickly. I mean, I for example started recording for Capitol Records in 1971. That first record came and went in a heartbeat. Eventually got put out on CDs. Eventually, it was sampled by some group called Cash Money Click. All this stuff, I never got paid. I never sought any from it, from the record. To that gentleman's point over there, I mean, we didn't get paid. Now, where there's no distribution, all my old records that are getting played on Spotify, I get the check for $12 and it comes regularly, right?
Ben Sidran: Yes, there's that and I'm one of the lucky ones because I'm grandfathered in. I'm old enough to have made records that showed up on Spotify so I can get my $12. There is a possibility in something blockchain which is a secure way to maintain contractual relationships, that can't be changed. It works. Hey, I've got a song I'd like to do that speaks to what we're talking about. Can I do this?
Dwight Andrews: Yes, please. Ben Sidran.
Ben Sidran: By the way, thank you for staying with us, you've been wonderful, you've been with us and we can feel your presence so thank you for hanging in. (Singing).
Dwight Andrews: Ladies and gentlemen, Ben Sidran. Let's hear it for him.
Ben Sidran: Thank you, Dwight.
Dwight Andrews: Thank you Ben. Thank you Ben. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been a wonderful evening. We're close to our time but I want to do one last thing. Joe, I want you to come and give a share, I want the two of you guys to close this out because we're almost at time. Don't forget out. All of you know Joe Alterman as the head of the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival. He is fantastic pianist. We want to put these two guys together so that they can close this out because these are two very, very talented cats. Let's hear it for Joe Alterman and Ben Sidran. All right. I feel like I'm an owner of a club. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Alterman on the piano. Ladies and gentlemen, Ben Sidran on the piano. Before we go, we want to tell you that Ben had some books on sale and I assume some other market, some CDS. We want to thank you for coming because this is important.
Dwight Andrews: Doing what we're doing tonight is important. We want you to come back to First Congregational Church on the first Friday of every month. We have first Friday Jazz and so we want you to come and join us. When you're not in synagogue, you can come to church on Sunday, 11:00 and so, we'll see you one place or another but I want to make sure you get a chance to buy books before we have to close out the care parking lot. Ladies and gentlemen, let's thank Ben Sidran one more time. Thank you Breman Museum. Thank you the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Blessings to you and Shalom.