Dylan, the Band, and a Broadway musical
Robert Robertson Won’t Stand on CeremonyRR: I just like the challenges of different things. Like right now I’m doing this Native American Broadway Musical. It’s really pushing me up against the wall and making me do some stuff that I’m excited about. I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m working with brilliant people on it. That’s really interesting to me. I’ve just done some music for Martin Scorsese’s new film, The Departed. I’ve worked on most of his movies ever since The Last Waltz in one capacity or another. Sometimes it’s not even describable exactly what it is that I’m doing on some of these movies, but it’s really just brainstorming and figuring out and trying and going against the grain and trying some things just for the filmmaking experience. So, that’s always fun and Marty’s a really good buddy of mine. I always like the opportunity for us to do stuff together. So, I’m doing that and I’m working on a collection of music for children. None of it’s got anything to do with the usual path.
posted by Rob at 12:48 AM
9 Comments:
Writerfella here --
What a slog -- delving through an 'all in praise of me'-type article to read the same 30 or so words, with no title or timetable or template for the purported "Native American Broadway Musical". For all writerfella could intuit, Robertson is doing Disney's POCAHONTAS...
All Best
Russ bates
'writerfella'
Robertson's connection to Dylan may be of interest to some. Think of the subtle Native ways he may have influenced Dylan. But this is why I helpfully post the key passages for readers...so they don't have to slog through whole articles.
Writerfella here --
Speaking of whom -- the soon-on-the-stands 1/29 - 2/5 '07 issue of U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT has a long and multi-faceted article on "Jamestown - The First Americans" that focuses equally on Powhatan's people and their relations with the EuroMan settlers/invaders. One sub-article is two pages that demythologize Pocahontas, making for a highly agreeable read.
BUT -- a sideboard piece told writerfella that 'experts' on native history slowly are coming around to the kinds of knowledge he already possesses, specifically the researches of population archaeologists that show the population of the Americas exceeded 100 millions in 1492. They're closer but not quite there yet. The Text:
'A CONQUEROR MORE LETHAL THAN THE SWORD.'
Colonizing was a deadly business. Of the 7,500 settlers who came to Jamestown from 1607 through 1624, fewer than 1,100 were alive in Virginia in 1625. In other words, not 1 in 6 had survived.
Yet, as grim as those figures were, the people displaced by New World settlers suffered far worse. Once Europeans arrived, scholars believe the Native communities of the Western Hemisphere lost 50 to 90 per cent of their populations.
The No. 1 force that conquered the Americas was not a weapon the conquerors from Europe relied on -- the likes of guns, swords, or even the holy word. Instead, it was something inadvertent: the cataclysmic loss of Native life from Smallpox, measles, typhus, and other Old World diseases to which Indians never had been exposed.
DEVASTATION. The carnafe began in the West Indies. Only 25 years after Columbus' 1492 landing, diseases and taskmasters reduced the Arawak population of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican republic) from a quarter million down to 14,000.
From Hispaniola, Smallpox spread westward, infecting Mexico just as Hernando Cortes` plotted the capture of the Aztec capitol. "Clearly, if Smallpox had not come when it did, the Spanish victory would not have been achieved in Mexico," wrote historian William McNeill in his book PLAGUES AND PEOPLES. Nor, he added, could Francisco Pizarro and his 168 Spaniards have conquered a Peruvian empire inhabited by millions of Incas.
When the Pilgrims landed on Cape Cod in 1620, they behld an astonishing sight. Awaiting them was an empty Indian village, Patuxet, and abandoned cornfields. Bones of residents lay scattered about. All of that resulted from an epidemic of unknown form that broke out along the New England coast four years earlier, perhaps from germs of a French fisherman or a sick sailor on an English ship that made a brief stop.
Experts believe that in 1492 perhsps 10 million people lived above the Rio Grande -- twice as many as may have inhabited the British Isles at that time. The hemisphere's population possibly exceeded 15th-Century Europe's 70 million. But by 1650, records suggest that only 6 million Indians remained in the New World. The catastrophic loss of Native life, wrote Alfred Crosby, author of THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE, "was surely the greatest tragedy in the history of the human species." --L.L.
And writerfella adds, all who still say that they 'had nothing to do with that,' please stand up in plain sight for the snipers on the hill!
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Why so critical of Robbie, Russ? Robertson's an icon, and he's earned it. More power to him. If his 45-year career as a songwriter, musician and producer is evident of what to expect, I'm anxiously awaiting to see what he comes up with. Sound like you're eatin' too many sour grapes lately...
Writerfella here --
writerfella knows that when an Indian beats his own drum, the temptation is to beat it one time too many...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Are you sure that subheading was DEVASTATION and not DECIMATION? ;-)
Writerfella here --
Absolutely not, as 'decimation' from the original Latin meant 'one in ten'. In fewer words, 10 per cent. Of course, this would be an excellent example of 'semantics', where the meaning of a word changes over time. writerfella has been accused of such but his accuser does not truly know the meaning of the word, 'semantics'. And it is not 'one in ten'...All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Needless to say, we've already discussed the (present) definition of "decimation." And I shared the definition of "semantics" with you in my response to Adam Beach's Big News.
Writerfella here --
Are you not sure that 'semantics' is the name of a Native tribe mostly found in Florida?
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
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