The Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble plays. Photo courtesy of the Hopkins Center.

I grew up listening to the Pat Metheny Group, Thelonious Monk and the Yellowjackets. I am no foreigner to the world of jazz, yet Big Band Now: The Sound of Young New York was a necessary addition to my jazz education. Don Glasgo and Dartmouth College’s Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble put their best foot forward with special guest, Jason Lindner at the Hopkins Center of the Arts. Pianist, composer, arranger and producer Lindner “is a musical universe” according to prolific pianist and composer Chick Corea. The New York Times takes it a step further, describing him as “only partly interested in jazz’s idiomatic customs. What matters to him is groove.”

The journey began with “Song for Jason,” a piece written for Lidner by his friend and colleague, Israeli bassist Avishai Cohen. Grant Neubauer ‘13’s nostalgic piano solo brought me back to busting afternoons on 34th Street, the notes rushing past me like a line of taxi cabs at rush hour. “Rumors” was supercharged with angst and grit. Lindner spilled his soul all over the keys in an improvisation that sent chills down my spine. Yet overall, the sound was silky and smooth. Alan Gottesman ‘13 lent the smoky sound of his tenor saxophone to the contemporary collage. For me, the piece embodied the rich flavor and glamour of New York, from Greenwich Village, to DUMBO, to the heart of Flushing. “Freak of Nature” was by far the classiest piece, evoking elegance in the midst of hustle and bustle. Trumpet and trombone solos distilled the sweet essence of the music. The saxophones swayed in a group solo reminiscent of mambo. Graduate student Patrick Barter’s drum solo moved the piece to its powerful climax.

“Aquarius,” originally called “Self-Portrait,” is the only piece Lindner wrote in the A key. In an intersection of music and astrology, each of the twelve music keys are assigned their own astrological sign. It just so happened that Lindner’s astrological sign, Aquarius, corresponded to the A key and the name stuck. The piece began with a floating flute solo from Stephanie DeCross ‘13. The song was not only a portrait of Lindner, but a portrait of a sunny autumn afternoon in Central Park, at times soft and warm but a bit melancholy at others. In contrast, “Space” had a cool, blue sound of the city at twilight. The piece listed back and forth like a more traditional 1950s big band song.

Lindner also gave tribute to John Coltrane in his arrangement of “Giant Steps.” While most of the music of the night came from his 2007 album Live at the Jazz Gallery, this piece came from a 2009 album of Linder’s more experimental works, Now vs. Now. “Giant Steps” began with the refreshing sound of an electrical keyboard, and Lindner interwove the keyboard’s unique sound into the waves of energy emanating from the band.

The final piece was “U Near Blew” which started out with a piano piece by Lindner that evoked gospel and 1930s blues. Suddenly the song swelled into a powerful big band number with Katie Pine ‘11 and her lean, mean tenor saxophone at its helm. Then there was a soulful interplay of trombone solos with Chris Martin ‘10 and Erin Michet ‘13 on trombone and Paul Finkelstein ‘13 on bass trombone. Lindner’s piano spoke back and forth with Neubauner’s organ before the meat ‘n’ potatoes of Andrew Lohse ’12’s bass solo. And of course there was a spectacular big band finish.

Lindner’s, Glasgo’s, and the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble’s music was a pleasure to listen to. It was also a pleasure to play. Grant Neubauer will never forget trading solos with Lindner: “Playing in my first Coast concert with Jason Lindner was a truly amazing and humbling experience. He is so talented, and at the same time, friendly, down-to-earth, and an all-around great person. It’s clear that instead of showing people his music, he would rather share it with them… Everyone was so inspired and played with such passion that I was just swept up in the musical energy. I can’t wait for future shows!” Katie Pine also enjoyed having Lindner as a special guest: “Being a part of Jason’s compositions and playing for an attentive, excited audience was thrilling. I’ve never been part of a musical experience so magical.”

Playing Lindner’s “Live at the Jazz Gallery” a day later, I reflected on the fact that he is a native New Yorker as I am. I feel his music did the city justice. The soul of his jazz embodies the soul of the city, an essence easily recognizable to anyone who’s been there. His music pays homage to the big band tradition going back to the “young New York” of 1920s Harlem and Sinatra’s 1950s. Yet it also speaks to the modern feeling of youth and freedom in a world of opportunity—a city like New York, or a college like Dartmouth—where anything is possible.

I had never heard of The Rocky Horror Show before watching the Dartmouth College Theater Department’s production. I bought my pre-season ticket because I was attracted to the show’s unique name. But even when I saw the exciting decorations heralding Rocky Horror all around the HOP, I refused to Google the show, anticipating that which was to be delightfully unknown and grand.

The opening night exceeded my expectations. From the time the usherette, Chiara Klein ‘10 introduced this remarkable “Science Fiction Double Feature” to the starry light of a gorgeous disco ball, I knew I was in for the most extravagant, flamboyant and fun show of my life. When conservative 1950s couple, Brad (Jay Ben Markson ‘10) and Janet (Talene Monahon ‘13) enter Frank ‘N’ Furter’s (David Mavricos ’10) mysterious, out-of-this-world castle, I knew they weren’t ready for this sweet transvestite from Transexual Transylvania’s world of extravagantly sensual surprises.

So much effort went into recreating Richard O’Brien’s powerful story of sex, rock ‘n’ roll, pleasure and freedom. Evan Ross ‘13, who played Eddie, described his experience with the Dartmouth Theater Department as “incredible. They’re wonderful, kind, talented—everything you could hope for. The show was a blast.”

There was Dan Kotlowitz’s psychedelic lighting, Laurie Churba Kohn’s colorful costumes and Georgi Alexi-Meskhishvili’s spectacular set design. Dazzling special effects breathed life into the magnificent floorshow and even a rocket ship take-off. Gregory Daniel’s choreography and the Louis Burkot’s music direction brought the rock ‘n’ roll era to the stage. All of this was guided by director Carol Dunne, who expertly channeled O’Brien’s genius.

And who could forget O’Brien’s genius? Musical numbers like “Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me” and “Rose Tint my World” carried the cult midnight movie classic and the internationally acclaimed theatrical performance through more than three decades. His same-sex couplings, and Frank’s maxim of “Give yourself over to absolute pleasure,” pushed the gender and sexuality boundaries of the time.

Granted, Frank, the supercharged AC/DC of the story, is killed off by one of his henchmen in the end—the predictable fate of a character that challenged the heteronormative status quo back then. Yet, the fact that such a character could exist with such vigor and confidence is a testament to O’Brien’s bravery and the progressive nature of the ‘70s.

The audience is left free to decide whether Brian and Janet understand the implications of their sexual romp through a long, beautiful night or consider the entire debacle a Bacchanalian dream.

Yet, I was touched by what the director’s notes called “a roller coaster of the ridiculous and the imaginative.” I was inspired to live Frank’s words “Don’t dream it, be it.”

The road to personal fulfillment and pleasure doesn’t have to be the broad, heavily-trodden path, but instead a path of one’s own choosing, a path one shouldn’t be afraid to tread.

Liz Canner, award-winning director of Orgasm Inc. visited Dartmouth to talk about the plot by big pharm to sell women on the idea that they need their drugs. Image courtesy of http://orgasminc.org/.

Ah yes, the weird and wonderful world of woman’s sexual health!

On Wednesday, award-winning director Liz Canner returned to Dartmouth College to present her first feature documentary, Orgasm Inc. For an artist who has already won the Visionary Award of the College, Canner has presented an insightful look into the way women feel about themselves (or feel themselves).
In the film, Canner exposes the pharmaceutical companies’ plot to create a new disease, Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD) in order to create a brand new market for female sex enhancement drugs. Canner started this project hoping to film a piece on pleasure.

She took a job at a small pharmaceutical company editing erotic videos for drug trials. However, her interest shifted from porn to pills when she realized that the company’s efforts were just another drop in the bucket for America’s culture of excessive medication.

Shortly after Viagra was developed as a self-help sex-help for men, there was a rush to find an equivalent drug for women. Medical celebrities like Dr. Laura Berman used feminist language on Oprah and other media outlets, urging women to take hold of their withering sex lives and demand their own pill. Their intentions seem pure, but there is a catch. Said figureheads receive oodles of cash from pharmaceutical companies every time they mention the ills of FSD, and FSD is nothing more than a big pharma fairy tail.

Today, while people like Berman are still out there campaigning for a “pink Viagra,” the pharmaceutical companies are in a mad rush to find “the cure” that will generate billions of dollars. However, they are trying to “cure” a “disease” that exists only because of a mass misconception of women’s mental and sexual health.
Whatever “cure” big pharma concocts will at best, be ineffective, and at worst, endanger women’s health and possibly their lives.
Canner’s eye-opening film captures how the pharmaceutical companies are willing to cater to American sexual insecurities, take advantage of innocent women, and invent new diseases, all to earn a quick buck

Where should women look for help with their sexual problems? Not in the doctor’s office it seems. Doctors are paid for the number of patients they see and the number of prescriptions or procedures they order. Most doctors aren’t trained to sit down and slowly work with women (and men) with seemingly non-medical sexual problems. They just want to give you a pill, move on to the next patient, and maybe see you next month if that pill doesn’t work out. And doctors can’t give you a pill if big pharma hasn’t manufactured it yet. And big pharma can’t give you a pill if it hasn’t convinced the FDA that there’s a new disease to treat.
If women can’t go to the clinic for sex help where can they go? For one thing there are many non-medical experts who can help women rejuvenate their sex lives.
Psychologists are always good sources since most sexual hang-ups can be linked to things like stress or more serious problems such as abuse.

The bulk of the mental problems linked to poor sexual performance can also be traced to the media’s emphasis on perfect bodies, happily-ever-after hook-ups and wild, rip-roaring sex. If a random sampling of woman and teen magazines is any indication, society has unrealistic expectations for sex and the women who engage in sex. Women put down the glossy pages thinking they’re abnormal if they can’t orgasm on command, for God’s sake!

Those who believe they can’t compete with whoever is on the cover of Vogue will feel bad about themselves and their sexual ability. And those who feel bad enough will be willing to endanger their lives with whatever new designer drug is on the market.

Orgasm, Inc. is a great documentary if you want to know why women shouldn’t need a pill to have an orgasm. Instead of financing pharmaceuticals, money should be funneled into programs to help women learn to love themselves and learn about what turns them on. Such an approach would be a great alternative to a flawed sex education system that, for the most part, only preaches abstinence until marriage and leaves it at that.

Systematic ignorance has allowed women to be exploited for long enough. Society shrouds female sexuality in mystery and taboo but a pill is not going to help women understand themselves any better. If there’s one thing Canner focused on, it is that women must be allowed to understand themselves if they are ever going to have better sex and reach that coveted orgasm.

Despite his many accolades, Ravi Shankar is a humble man. Dressed in simple white garments, he bowed in respect to the crowd. For someone who has performed and composed with the likes of George Harrison of the Beatles, Andre Previn, Yehudi Menuhin and Phillip Glass in major musical capitals like New York, London, Woodstock and Vienna, his smile radiated not pride, or distance but an aura of quiet confidence and warmth.

When I sat down to listen to him in the Spaulding Auditorium at the Hopkins Center of the Arts on October 20th, I honestly did not know what to expect. I’ve experienced only isolated performances of Indian music. In high school, a Bengali friend was very involved in traditional Indian dance. My experiences with Indian music were limited to the modern hip hop, dancehall and techno infused variations found on albums like DJ Rekha’s Basement Bhangra. But unlike DJ Rekha, Shankar opened my eyes to the roots of Indian music.

Shankar’s musical contribution to the world has been met with honor and appreciation. In his homeland India, he has won three of the nation’s civilian awards including the most imminent prize, the Bharat Ratna or “Jewel of India” in 1999. Shankar was awarded the Commandeur de la Legion d’Honneur, the highest civilian award of France in 2000 and the Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2001. Additionally, he is the recipient of three Grammy Awards, and the International Music Council UNESCO award in 1975.

Onstage, Shankar was accompanied by Ravichandra Kulur on a tradition Indian flute, Tanmoy Bose on the tabla, a pair of hand drums, and Pirashanna Thevarajah on the mridangam, a large double-sided drum. Each of Shankar’s two young protegés played the tanpura, a North Indian lute that resembles a sitar. Shankar’s daughter, Anoushka, could not accompany him that night due to illness. It was, as he said, the first time in fifteen years that she would not be performing with him, yet Shankar was kind enough to still grace us with his performance.

Before Shankar came on, Kular and Bose wetted the crowd’s appetite with a dramatic South Indian hymn to the Hindu god Ganesh. As the tanpuras murmured wistfully in the background, Kular’s flute soared above us all, like bird surveying a grassy plain. Bose’s tabla galloped alongside us like a sure-footed gazelle. Basking in the sunlight of their music, we were carried between heaven and earth. Our hearts were in tune with the joyful ragas of the flute and the drums.
At the heart of classical Indian music is the raga, “a precise, aesthetic, melodic form” says Shankar in On the Appreciation of Indian Classical Music. Although Indian music is characterized as modal, the raga must not be confused as the scale, melody, composition or key found in Western music. A raga can be best characterized as the soul of a piece of music. A saying in Sanskrit translates as “That which colors the mind is a raga.” The raga colors the music, effecting notes and embellishments while setting the emotional tone of a piece. While music students in the West learn through the notation method, in India gurus pass their knowledge of the ragas to their disciples within the oral tradition of classical Indian music. Shankar himself trained under the renowned guru Allauddin Khan.
There are ragas for the nine rasas or sentiments, ragas for particular times of day, ragas for each of the seasons and ragas for every cycle of life. Each raga has a vadi , or principle note, a samavadi or secondary note, and a jan (life) or mukhda (face) which are the cluster of notes that truly define the raga. All these notes make up the characteristic note patterns of a raga. Over 6,000 ragas arise from the permutations and combinations of 72 parent scales.

Shankar breathed life into his ragas. Once on stage, he began the traditional recital with calm and slow exploration of the chosen raga. The immense sweeping song of his sitar ran like a river running through a dusty land. From this introspective beginning, Shankar moved on to the jor, in which different rhythms were used to elaborate and embellish the raga’s basic theme. He then reached the gat, 4 to 16 bars of rhythmic structure and fixed composition within the raga. Here Bose and Thevarajah entered on the drums. Bose also lent his vocal expertise to the piece. The gat culminated in the jhala, a partly improvised part of the raga. The piece reached its climax in the sawal jabab, where there was a beautiful, exhilarating and rapid interplay between sitar and tabla, concluding in a sensual, romantic thumri.

As I listened to Shankar’s sitar that night, the raga, the soul of the music synced with my individual consciousness, my own raga, and elevated my soul to a higher realm of awareness. The soul is a frequency of pure energy vibrating in the shell of our bodies. This frequency can harmonize with that of the universe, thereby enhancing our entire being. “Our ragas are the vehicles by which this essence can be perceived.” explains Shankar. The soul is a wave among waves. Like the sound waves of music or the electromagnetic waves of color, such waves are packed with energy that can be amplified, harmonized and synchronized. When all these waves resonate, when soul and universe harmonize, the subsequent release of energy is not only powerful, but also purifying. It is through this revelation do we realize of the true essence of our existence.

At the end of the performance, the entire auditorium jumped to its feet and applauded long enough for the musicians to bow three times. Shankar is indeed perfected through his music. It does not take a guru to appreciate his musical mastery.

Catherine MacKinnon. Courtesy of soapboxinc.

It was 4:30 in Rockefeller 3 on October 6 and I was about to listen to one of the most-widely cited English-language legal scholars.

Catharine MacKinnon strikes an authoritative figure not only in the lecture room but also in the realm of women’s rights. From representing Bosnian women who survived atrocities during the Serbian genocide to pushing the Supreme Court of Canada to recognize pornography as a civil rights violation, Mackinnon specializes in sex equality with international and constitutional law.

Before MacKinnon got up to the pulpit, she seemed older, frailer, but once she spoke into the microphone, it was as if the legitimacy of her cause filled her with a new fiery passion. I think everyone in the audience could feel the urgency of the message of her lecture, “Women’s Status, Male States.”

With a B.A. from Smith College and a J.D. and a Ph.D. from Yale, MacKinnon was ably equipped to launch into a technical speech on the legality of sexual inequality and rape. Yet she approached the topic with the wit, eloquence and grace of a seasoned teacher. Not surprisingly, she has taught at esteemed universities all over the world, including Harvard, Stanford, Basel in Switzerland, Columbia, and the University of Chicago.

I came into Rocky 3 unsure of what I was going to hear, but that uncertainty was short-lived. MacKinnon shocked her audience early on: the state is a male institution, socially and politically built to enhance male dominance. Really? What makes a state “male?” MacKinnon defines “male” as structures of society based on the ideology of male superiority. Within the male state are “male” politics that write the laws of the male state.

Initially, I could not believe that the United States was male state. Yet, according to MacKinnon, compared to the transnational community, the United States is very much a male state. MacKinnon explained that the United States refuses to follow the European example and decriminalize prostitution. This sounds extreme, but decriminalizing prostitution would allow sex workers to get the healthcare and benefits they so desperately need while the police go after the real monsters: the johns, and the pimps. The United States would probably be even more of a male state if it weren’t for the international community.
I learned that Africa holds the gold standard for women rights policy, with South America winning silver. Really? How could the United States be so far behind?

MacKinnon went on, sharpening her point on the dull whetstone of our hearts. The United States has a democratic deficit. We are so busy exporting democratic ideals to the rest of the world, we neglect our own needs for democracy. We believe we are as democratic as it’s ever going to get, and yet the glass ceiling still exists for women. We have not yet experienced what many nations in Africa and South America have already experienced: a death of state, or rather the death of our male state to the hands of globalization. Our efforts to better the world haven’t yet hit home.

“Don’t women identify more with their nationality than their gender?” MacKinnon threw out to her audience. Isn’t she right? Is this some sort of ingrained misogyny that women perpetrate—an inner misogyny that contributes to society’s systematic misogyny? A hate of women that’s cyclical, branding women with certain undesirable characteristics such as a limited education, and then hating them for not being smart enough? Of course it is.

Within the hierarchy of rights that concern Americans, women’s rights probably come in dead last. Women’s rights is just one of the many “group” rights, as in minority group rights, at the bottom of the food chain. This minority status still holds even when women make up half of the world’s population. Next on the hierarchy comes economic and civil rights and finally the all encompassing political rights that enable leaders, mostly men, to have the right to rule.

If war is male, and peace is female, it is no surprise that in war, the combatants are predominantly male and the civilians are the “women and children” with a smattering of non-combatant men. During war, there is always rape. It’s a weapon used almost exclusively
on women. It’s a war policy on par with murder. Yet, rape isn’t just a war crime, it’s gender inequality.In August 2000, MacKinnon won $745 million in a damage award for Kadic v. Karadzic, a case that finally recognized rape as act of genocide in the eyes of international law.

Why does international law work better than national law in addressing women’s rights? The answer for MacKinnon is simple: it’s a matter of distance. She introduced this comparison—think of a nation as a home. A nation is sovereign, with its own laws, and its own dignity. A home is also sovereign, with its own laws and its own dignity. These laws are usually laid down by the head of the household, usually a male. In the old days, the head of a household was called a sovereign, so this comparison makes a lot of sense.

The home is the most powerful realm of men, and it becomes a place of constant and unhindered violation for the female. The home is sovereign, and the female must abide by the rules of her home. She can only seek help by going outside the home and appealing to an objective male. A male can only be objective in dealing with the situation when he is far enough away from the sovereign to see reality and put an end to the violation of the female. The same principle works for sovereign nations.

Such a sad world we live in when it takes a distant male (or female) to point out another male’s wrong. What’s stopping the locals from stepping in and saving the violated female? Well, for one thing, as much we’d like to term sexual abuse as “domestic abuse,” sexual abuse is anything but private. MacKinnon asserts each “privately” abused female adds to the public dominance of males in male politics. What is male politics? It is a system that tries to place a curtain between private and public, rewards domination, defines power as coercion, and values consent extracted from coercion. Male politics dictates not only how men treat women but how men treat and categorize other men.

MacKinnon acknowledges that male politics exists in transnational politics as well. Male politics reduces the effect of international law when it comes to recognizing and prosecuting gender inequality. The international community is ready to mitigate punishment for gender inequality based on different cultural norms, but MacKinnon insists that this is a bad policy. Not interpreting gender inequality through an objective international standard hands justice back over to the subjective, sovereign nation and its subjective sovereign males. Should “cultural differences”really cover genital mutilation masquerading as female circumcision or the Taliban throwing acid in the faces of girls who want to go to school? In the arena of world politics and morality, those who define women’s rights should not tolerate such cultural aberrations, such atrocities.

International law also has trouble calling a spade a spade. MacKinnon attests that the laws on human trafficking, the drug trade and crime in general are very strict and straightforward, but once someone yells “inequality” the laws become very murky and ineffective. “Call it inequality and you can’t do anything,”MacKinnon said, “Call it inequality, and you challenge the status quo.”

It is not inequality itself that the global community has an issue with, but gender inequality. MacKinnon gives the example of the law’s approach to racial inequality as compared to the worldview on gender equality. The international community realizes that racism is a lie, that racism is inaccurate, that racism isn’t grounded in reality. Racial equality is clear-cut, it’s self-explanatory, and it’s not supposed to be culturally relative but gender equality is not a reality, a fact, or even a moral issue for international law. It’s murky, it’s culturally relative and it’s only a “good idea.”

MacKinnon ended her lecture by sending that arrow thudding into our hearts. It was only through the question and answer session did I learn how humanity might move towards solving these discrepancies. For example, are America’s forays into foreign gender inequality simply hollow protectionism only to be seen in the light of military interests? One audience member wanted to know whether America only taking notice of the Taliban’s abuses of women during the War in Afghanistan was morally unsound. I was surprised by the MacKinnon’s confident response. Her view was that America’s opportunistic paternalism was better than nothing. MacKinnon would rather see women’s rights used as pawn in the public relations war to justify occupation, than see women’s rights not addressed at all.

On why the U.S. still has problem with gender inequality,MacKinnon also had a unique point of view. In response to my private question on whether it was male complacency or female complacency that was holding back women’s rights, she replied that there is complacency in both camps, but while elite women in the political or legal spheres concern themselves with the rights of women abroad, they neglect the rights of women at home. “Why is that?” I asked. There is a communication failure between elite women and ordinary women. The women in the position to do something fail to relate to the women they are supposed
to be representing. Gender inequality is tied to class distinctions.

Finally, if we’ve defined male politics and the male state, what is female politics? What would it take to establish a female state? This was the question I raised my hand to ask, and MacKinnon’s answer
was that there was no female state defined as one with a brand new set of grandiose, utopian rules. Female politics redresses errors of male politics. Establishing a female state is the slow progression from the male state to equality. “What is equality?” asked someone else. “Why, equality is the absence of inequality,” quipped MacKinnon, which drew chuckles from the crowd. What is inequality? Inequality is distinction based on attributes. And gender inequality is what MacKinnon has spent her entire career trying to eradicate.