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Category Archives: History

ISIS

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria-Levant

I’ve been wondering why a militant Arab organization chose an English acronym to advertise its jihadist movement. After all, if it feels obligated to occasionally kill co-religionists, shouldn’t it do so under a banner written in its own language: Al-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah fī al-ʻIrāq wa-al-Shām.?
Maybe ISIS thought its Arab name would not trip so lightly off the tongues of Englsh language television commentators, nor prove to be a memorable catch phrase with western audiences. Tis indeed a mouthful for non-believers.

Regardless, I have for too long been subjected to the shenanigans of Hamas, Mossad,Taliban, Israel, Palestine, Iran, Syria and all the Arabs and Jews who perennially kill each other, without regard for collateral damage. ISIS is only the latest and most virulent of the lot. As George Orwell predicted, war, in this case terror, has become a constant presence, distracting us from the unquenchable greed and insufferable stupidity of those who find chaos politicallyuseful and profitable. Religion, politics and money are fracking civilians. War has become boring and death mundane.

Which brings me to our own shenanigans. We are as militant as Jihadists and Jews. Rather than kick our bloviating politicians in their asses, the dictators of our publicly owned airwaves are allowed to maintain a 24 hour middle-east Jamboree. So screw our fellow citizens, those who lost their homes and dignity in New Orleans, our young students and their parents strung too tightly by usurious fees and our middle-class wealth subsumed in the maw of Wall Street. These are too depressing for western television and, methinks, too dangerous. Our media provide suicide bombers, rockets and amputees as diversions from our home land casualties.

So, what’s to be done? In his book The Limits of Power, the End of American Exceptionalism , Andrew J. Bacevich [1.] suggests, among other things, the United States dissengage itself from the middle east and allow them to get themselves sorted out without any intervention from us or anybody else, Much like the Russians and the Chinese have done and Christianity did during its Reformation.

Bacevich’s strategy reminds me of the New York City policeman who, when asked if he was concerned about a spate of mob killings, said, “As long as they’re killing each other I don’t see any reason to interfere.”

Apologists for imperialism stress a need to bring freedom to millions of people oppressed by malevolent dictators. Their impetus is merely a version of The White Man’s Burden (1899), subtitled The United States and the Philippine Islands, a poem by Rudyard Kipling in which he expresses a vision of men like himself civilizing the world. Today our burden has been updated to favour oil companies and armorers, otherwise the goal remains unchanged. Take all the natural resources we can use. That’s what the Brits did and it’s what we’re doing now. A profit motivated aggression hidden behind obfuscation, disambiguation and a war on terror.

An intense loathing by much of the world has been our reward. Now the world’s un-washed are fighting back and the only answer we can muster is, “Let’s drop the big one now. They don’t like us anyhow”. [2.]

“It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”

-Samuel Langhorne Clemens aka Mark Twain, on US policy viz a viz the Philippine Islands, New York Herald, October 15,1900. [3.]

[1.] Henry Holt & Co. – 2008. Andrew J. Bacevich, Jr.(1947-) is an American political scientist specializing in international relations, security studies, American foreign policy, and American diplomatic and military history. He studied at West Point Military Academy and Princeton University and is a retired U.S. Army Colonel. He teaches International Relations and History at Boston University. His son, also an officer in the U.S. Army, was killed in 2007 in Iraq.

[3.] The 1898 Treaty of Paris, surrendered control of Cuba and ceded Puerto Rico, parts of the Spanish West Indies, the island of Guam, and the Philippines to the United States.

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Posted by robinengelman on July 16, 2014 in Commentaries & Critiques, History

Tags: Andrew J. Bacevich, George Orwell, ISIS, Jihadist, Mark Twain, New Orleans, New York Herald, Randy Newman, Rudyard Kipling, Student debt, The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, The White Man's Burden, treaties of Paris, United States imperialism, Wall Street

A Painter’s Drummer, Chapin Family Update.

14 Jul

I received a letter from Ms Dana Chapin concerning my article, A Painter’s Drummer. Ms Chapin is the daughter of drummer Jim Chapin and the grand-daughter of painter James Ormsbee Chapin. Her letter contained important facts about the Chapin family that I had not uncovered or about which I had been mistaken. I apologize for those errors and, in the hope of informing those who have already read my original article, reprint Ms Chapin’s letter below.

Mr. Engelman,

I so enjoyed reading your piece on visiting the Phillips Memorial Collection and seeing one of the Marvin paintings done by my grandfather James O. Chapin. I will have to get there myself one day. Another Marvin portrait was recently included in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum called Portraits. George Marvin and his daughter Edith I think. The Marvin paintings are a very special American series that not too many people know about.

I felt I must correct you on some points of family history. My grandfather had one child with his first wife Abby Forbes, my father Jim Chapin. But their marriage was relatively brief for the times. He remarried a woman named Mary and had two other sons, Elliot and Jed. They were of draft age during the Vietnam War and had to head to Canada to avoid the war. He and Mary followed them and he became a Canadian citizen before he passed away. Elliot Chapin has two sons and lives in Toronto and Jed has two sons and lives in British Columbia. The family runs to sons. Dad had seven sons and three daughters by three different women.

The Chapins have a further connection to Canada. My half-brother Steve Chapin bought Ovens Park in Nova Scotia over 20 years ago and he and his family run it seasonally. They host a music festival every August where many musical Chapins perform along with local talent. My other half-brother Tom and his wife bought a home near the Ovens and their daughter Lily (James O.’s great grandchild) will get married there this summer. Canada is a very special place to all of us.

My grandfather never seemed to hit the big time although he was widely known and admired. Sometimes his illustration work and drawings show up on eBay. I was so glad to run across someone who appreciated his work.

All the Best,

Dana Chapin, NYC

Approve Trash | Mark as Spam

A Ruff Death, (1634-2008, Requiescat in pace)

26 Jun

During the winter of 1778, as George Washington’s infantry rehearsed the manoeuvers of Baron von Steuben,[1.] it was the sound of an English drumming tradition that filled the parade ground of Valley Forge.

Over time the hand to hand beats played by English drummers had been grouped into short rhythmic patterns, given names, codified and passed on to colonial drummers. Some of the patterns signaled soldiers to perform camp duties such as getting fire wood or water, whilst other patterns directed their movements in battle.

In the hands of creative drummers, these patterns could be combined to enliven popular melodies which eased a soldier’s weariness or emboldened fighting men in the face of an enemy. Drummers were required to practice these patterns assiduously.

Eventually they were known as the Rudiments of drumming and the drumming style, Rudimental.

The word rudiments first appeard in a drum book in 1812. On page 3 of A New Useful and Complete System of Drum Beating, Charles Stewart Ashworth wrote, Rudiments for Drum Beating in General. Under this heading he inscribed and named 26 patterns required of drummers by contemporary British and American armies and militias. The word Rudiment was not used again in US drum manuals until 1862. George B. Bruce began page 4 of Bruce and Emmett’s Drummers and Fifers Guide with the words Rudimental Principles.

Beginning with the long roll, Bruce listed 35 patterns concluding with a paragraph titled Recapitulation of the Preceeding Rolls and Beats. On page 7 of his 1869 Drum and Fife Instructor, Gardiner A. Strube wrote, The Rudimental Principles of Drum – Beating, and followed with 25 examples, each named Lesson.

The National Association of Rudimental Drummers (“N.A.R.D.”) was organized in 1933-34. The men of the N.A.R.D. were well known teachers, performers and composers. Some of them had studied drumming with Civil War veterans, whom they referred to as The Ancients. The N.A.R.D. was formed to enhance, preserve and disseminate what in their minds was an endangered style of drumming.

They combined Gardiner Strube’s 25 lessons, added the long roll and perhaps for the first time in history, unambiguously declared each heretofore lesson, pattern, beat, or principle, a Rudiment. They called the first 13 rudiments “Essential”. These were used to test applicants seeking membership in the Thirteen Club.

Another list of snare drum rudiments was compiled in 2008 by a group of drummers from the Percussive Arts Society (P.A.S.) Marching Percussion Committee. Their compilation contained 38 rudiments of unspecified origin including 24 of the “Hybrid” variety, and the 26 N.A.R.D. rudiments, making a grand total of 64 rudiments.

Drummers can become attached to a rudiment. Its appeal can be historic, or the feeling in the hands when its played. Even the onomatopoetic nature of its name may endear it. The Paradiddle and Ratamacue are examples of the latter. If one repeats these names, one can imagine how they’d sound played on a drum. [2.]

Along side the Flam, my favourites have always been the Ruff and its relative, the four stroke Ruff. These rudiments are to my mind, the most elegant and useful beats in a drummer’s repertoire.

The Ruff’s soft R suggests a variety of nuances. The four stroke Ruff, played as a roll can substitute for the five stroke roll. However, the Drag’s consonant D, limits expressions. Even so, the P.A.S. committee changed the name of the Ruff to Drag.

Had the N.A.R.D. made their list to read Ruff, Ruff tap and double Ruff Tap, the P.A.S. committee may have followed suit, allowing a continuance to the life of Ruffs.

In May of 2011, a group of very good drummers began a contentious and sometimes humorous exchange of e-mails after one of them was criticized for using the word Drag rather than Ruff. If the statute of limitations runs out before I die, I may publish their correspondence.

Perhaps all this Tea pot tempest could be ameliorated by shifting the conversation to Strokes. As the inimitable John S. (Jack) Pratt said,

“Drum rudiments are exercises. The rudiments of drumming are strokes”. [3,]

Without preamble I asked a group of friends, all prominent teachers and performers, how many strokes were used in snare drumming. Their answers ranged in number from 1 to 11, and one person replied, “Is this a trick question?”

If no agreement exists among some of the best drummers in North America about the number of strokes needed to play a snare drum, might not arguments about Ruffs and Drags be considered akin to bickering?

Today, within the ranks of Fife and Drum corps drummers, the Ruff’s proud name, it’s romantic evocation of history and onomatopoetic pedigree survive, but outside that cozy womb of nostalgia, in the brittle, frenetic world of Kevlar heads and carpal tunnel syndromes, the Ruff is only a memory, if that.

Now, after its first appearance in print 370 years ago, the Ruff is no longer a part of an academic drummer’s lexicon.

The Ruff is dead, Viva la Ruff!!

N.A.R.D. rudiments 8, 9, and 10.

PAS Rudiments 31, 32 and 33

Notes:

[1.] Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben was of Prussian birth and a soldier, though he seems to have awarded himself the title. He knew19th century infantry tactics, taught them to the Colonial Army and authored an illustrated compendium of his military learning, popularly known as the Blue Book because of its cover’s colour, but officialy entitled Baron von Steuben and His Regulations.

[2.] In fact, the verbal repetition of onomatopoeia was sometimes used to teach musically illiterate young drummer boys. Today it is still used as a kind of verbal short hand.

[3,] Jack Pratt used the English language carefully. He took a Master’s degree in English with a thesis about poet John Keats. He was a published member of the New Jersey Society of Poets and taught English in a local New Jersey high school until his retirement. Jack is also a virtuoso performer and prolific composer of drum solos in the so called Rudimental or military style. His carefully drawn manuscripts bear witness to his meticulous nature. Jack’s lengthy and detailed Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame acceptance speech is the stuff of legends.