Thursday roundup

 It's been a while since LITD has served up a smorgasbord of recent attention-worthy essays I've come across.

Herewith is rectification of that paucity.

At U Discover Music, there's a great look at what made Rudy Van Gelder such a legendary recording engineer:

Blue Note’s founders, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, signed some of the most brilliant musical minds in modern jazz. From Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis to John Coltraneand Ornette Coleman, they recorded the music’s best and biggest names. But arguably, the most significant person they got to work for the company wasn’t a musician at all. He was, when they first encountered him, a part-time, self-taught sound engineer named Rudy Van Gelder. A professional optometrist by day, at night Van Gelder, also a jazz fan, recorded musicians in a studio he had set up in the living room of his parent’s home in New Jersey. It was in that house, located at 25 Prospect Avenue, Hackensack, that what we now know as the Blue Note sound was born.

Blue Note had been operating for 13 years when Alfred Lion met Van Gelder in 1952. Lion had been impressed by the audio quality of a session by saxophonist/composer Gil Mellé, recorded by the engineer at his Hackensack studio. Lion wanted to replicate the album’s sound at the label’s usual recording home, WOR studios in New York City, but was told by its resident engineer that it wasn’t possible and that he should contact the person who made the Mellé recording. And that’s how Blue Note found the man who would give them their classic sound.

Blue Note began recording exclusively at Hackensack from 1953 onwards, and the impeccable sound quality of their Van Gelder-engineered sessions – defined by clarity, depth, warmth, and sonic detail – didn’t escape the attention of other jazz labels. In fact, rival jazz indie Prestige, run by Bob Weinstock, also began hiring Van Gelder’s studio and services in an attempt to emulate the Blue Note sound. But this didn’t trouble Blue Note – rather, the improvement in audio quality benefitted jazz as a whole, and the label’s albums still sounded unique. That was a result of Alfred Lion being particular about what he liked. Evidently, as a producer he was more specific than Weinstock – he liked the music to swing, for one thing – and, consequently, was more organized. Lion had clearly focused goals in mind and paid the Blue Note musicians for several days’ rehearsal before the sessions. In contrast, Weinstock and Prestige just brought the musicians in cold to the studio to jam without much prior preparation. There was a gulf in quality that gave Blue Note an advantage.

At World, Andrew T. Walker asks, "What does Christian Nationalism Even Mean?"

I have sympathies with some of the ideas commonly associated with Christian nationalism. I understand and appreciate the unique role that Christianity played in shaping our nation’s tradition and values. Neither do I want that Christian influence to recede. As a conservative, I believe resolutely in the need for traditions to shape our common culture. Cutting a culture off from its good roots is nothing less than cultural self-hatred. Moreover, apart from a transcendent foundation for law and morality, no nation can long survive. I want a public morality influenced by Christianity but done so organically from the bottom up by the genuine and voluntary religious commitments of its people.

I also have major concerns with Christian nationalism. As a Baptist, I am convictionally opposed to identifying regeneration with nationhood. The Christian faith comes down to personal salvation and regeneration. The apparatus of government is ill-equipped to promote the supernatural end of man even if government requires supernatural foundation to keep it accountable (“In God We Trust” works for me). Whatever the personal faith of the office holder, I am opposed to magistrates as magistrates dictating theological matters for others.

Nicholas Harris, writing at UnHerd, demonstrates that the cat is out of the bag regarding Greta Thunberg. She's blossomed from a climate alarmist into a full-service leftist:

Interspersed among the usual directives about the need to pressure political leaders, her message was more radical and more militant than it has been in the past. There is no “back to normal”, she told us. “Normal” was the “system” which gave us the climate crisis, a system of “colonialism, imperialism, oppression, genocide”, of “racist, oppressive extractionism”. Climate justice is part of all justice; you can’t have one without the others. We can’t trust the elites produced by this system to confront its flaws — that’s why she, much like Rishi Sunak, won’t be bothering with the COP meeting this year. COP itself is little more than a “scam” which facilitates “greenwashing, lying and cheating”. Only overthrow of “the whole capitalist system” will suffice.

Frederick Hess of The American Enterprise Institute wonders how a man of actual depth and substance like Ben Sasse will fare as a college president in an age when that role has become largely ceremonial:

. . . the reality is that presidents generally don’t have that much real authority to shape a major university. They’re constrained by a board of trustees, faculty governance, entrenched campus power centers, endowment rules, major donors, and sprawling bureaucracies.

The day-to-day of the job tends to be dominated by its ceremonial, political, and money-chasing dimensions, with the president responsible primarily for fundraising, forging relationships with public officials, and serving as the public face of the institution. If one wants to get comprehensive, the job also includes financial management, working with the governing board, and leading the executive team.

Once upon a time, things were different. A half-century ago, it was expected that college presidents would be public intellectuals. They wrote influential books, gave major speeches, and were seen as major national voices. Today, it’s safe to say that most Americans would have trouble naming a single university president. Moreover, presidents just don’t have much day-to-day influence over curriculum, hiring, or what gets taught. And, as should be obvious, their views on same-sex marriage, gun control, and abortion don’t have much impact on campus life.  

At Glenn Loury's Substack, he and John McWhorter have one of their customary rollicking conversations, the kind that one can only have with good buds who understand each other well. This one focuses on the upcoming Supreme Court decision about affirmative action. Along the way, they talk about the problem they both have: their books, regardless of subject matter, getting relegated to the "black studies" sections of bookstores:

. . . you're going to go to something called a “bookstore” if it still exists. And you know where they're gonna put it. They're gonna put it in “African American Issues,” “Black Studies,” as if that's all that you are. I've seen some of my books put in the black section that weren't even about race, just because my name is mine. And that's the way it would be. Even on websites: “black books.” That's where they're gonna put you, and that's where they would put me, as if that that sums up our entire existence. 

At Merion West, Matthew Wardour asserts that, while we generally elevate authenticity as a virtue, those who have gained their celebrity with some degree of fakery have a lesson for us:

Many of us also like impostors because, deep down, we understand that to exist only matter-of-factly, without fiction, would be intolerable. Sir Walter Scott in his Journal, one of wisest autobiographies ever written, wrote that “Life could not be endured were it seen in reality.” People with no feeling of the romance of the world are among the people I least trust. Possibly their plainness ought to be interpreted as honesty, but I fail to see it—quite the opposite, in fact. I have sometimes reflected that Jesus’ desire not to reveal himself publicly until a later date has a jolly, even playful quality that makes him, paradoxically, more trustworthy and believable. This humble hoaxery distinguishes him, as far as I know, from any other god-figure.

Carl Trueman has a piece at World on the cost our society is paying for putting a higher priority on identity politics than on public health:

There are so many predictable aspects to this debacle. There is the obvious subordination of public health to identity politics. This is not the first time this has occurred. Who can forget the fact that churches meeting during Covid were considered highly controversial because of the risk of spreading the disease, while Black Lives Matter protests were seen as legitimate? This exposes the duplicitous rhetorical imperative, “Follow the science.” Following the science is always an empty term because science is descriptive, not prescriptive. It can tell you how to save a life, but it cannot tell you why a life is worth saving.

In short, science is not, in and of itself, a social policy. Social policy surely takes account of science but then must be formulated in terms of other factors, such as risk assessments in the light of a hierarchy of social goods. 

Further, we see the lengths to which the modern world will go in its desperate need to keep alive the myth that sexual activity is a cost-free recreation. For many years, society has taught us that, if all participants are in agreement, no particular sexual act or pattern of behavior can be rejected as wrong. Now it seems that this type of political judgment is to be extended beyond morality to matters of health as well.

And finally, my latest at Precipice is actually something that first appeared at Medium five years ago. I hadn't looked at my archive of pieces there for a long time. I thought this essay on profanity, entitled "Expletives and Blasphemy: As With Pungent Seasonings, Easy Does It," merited a re-up. Hey, our culture sure hasn't become any less coarse in the last half-decade.