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Today we pledge allegiance to what Ralph Ellison called a sorrowful laughter for all, and we open with “Waitin’ for Benny” a jam session from 1941 featuring jazz and swing guitarist Charlie Christian, an artist who, like Ellison, discovered the New World of Jazz in Oklahoma City. In Ellison’s 1958 Saturday Review essay “The Charlie …

In 1884 Parsons wrote in her well-known essay, "To Tramps":

...can you not see that the “good boss” or the “bad boss” cuts no figure whatever? that you are the common prey of both, and that their mission is simply robbery? Can you not see that it is the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM and not the “boss” which must be changed?

Sometimes an easy way to confound one's historical simple-mindedness is to juxtapose events and dates that often aren’t thought of together. This can help undermine a nationalist progressive narrative. For instance, Ulysses S. Grant died in 1885. His funeral in New York City was an immense spectacle, attracting a reported 1.5 million. His pallbearers included both Union and Confederate Army Generals ; Karl Marx, who reported on the US Civil War for the New York Tribune, died in London, a stateless person, in 1883, with a reported 9 to 11 mourners. One might make special note that both men died destitute.

In 1887, the year Walt Whitman died in Camden, New Jersey, Albert Parsons was hanged in Chicago for being an anarchist rather than throwing a bomb in Haymarket Square as there was no evidence that anyone on trial had anything to do with the bomb. Emma Goldman, radicalized by Haymarket, perhaps the most famous anarchist this country has known, would surely cite Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, as an essential work of anarchist ideals.

In 1872 Albert Parsons, a white man and former Confederate Army soldier, married Lucia Carter, born of an enslaved woman, in Waco, Texas. They quickly moved north to Chicago as the brief hope of Reconstruction gave way to the entrenched racism expressed in Jim Crow laws. Lucia Carter became Lucy Parsons, Goddess of Anarchy, the woman the Chicago Police claimed was more dangerous than 1,000 rioters. Chicago was bursting at the seams with anarchists though, being home to a large number of German immigrants, and was, at that time, the home of Johann Most, the popularizer of the so-called “propaganda of the deed,” violent actions intended to incite revolution. And it is here that we find dynamite; it is here, in the midst of the Gilded Age, that we find an America much like it is now, with wealth amassed in the hands of the few and the masses living in poverty. It is here that wage-slavery is the best life to be hoped for and monopoly capital rules (its ethos valorized and enshrined in a board game). And It is here where Lucy Parsons fashions her identity as one of the most eloquent and incendiary speakers of the age. In a coincidence we like to figure as fate, Lucy, Lucia, means light.

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GUEST

Jacqueline Jones is Professor and Chair of the History Department; Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History and Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History. She is the author of several books, including,

In 1884 Parsons wrote in her well-known essay, “To Tramps”: …can you not see that the “good boss” or the “bad boss” cuts no figure whatever? that you are the common prey of both, and that their mission is simply robbery? Can you not see that it is the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM and not the “boss” …

Best known for his path-breaking work on the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins, published in 1938, Trinidadian C.L.R. James was often at the center of revolutionary politics and theory in the 20th century; a one-time Trotskyist and fully informed by a study of Marx, James’s greatest work extends from beyond the boundaries of politics and reaches into an attention to and analysis of pop culture as it reveals the workings of our social order: from his insightful study of Melville’s Moby Dick to his becoming one of the premier sports writers of his age through his writing on (and love for) cricket, as well as his fascination with movies and television. Scratch the surface of any important thinking from the 1930s through the late 70s and you will find James has been there and influenced so many that came after him.

“Property-owners are the most energetic flag-waggers and patriots in every country, but only so long as they enjoy their possessions: to safeguard those they desert God, King and Country in a twinkling.”

― C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

SEGMENT ONE

We’ll first hear from Paul Buhle on the life of C.L.R. James. In 1967, Buhle, along with his wife Mari Jo, founded and edited the journal Radical America. And it was through Radical America that James was “reintroduced” to the Left. An entire issue was dedicated to James in 1970 creating the first anthology of his work to be published in the US. In our conversation Buhle demonstrates the depth and breadth of James’s writing noting especially how his work draws attention to the ways racism and class struggle are deliberately entangled. We begin in Trinidad with the Young C.L.R. James.

SEGMENT TWO

Paul Le Blanc charts the intellectual course for us showing the importance of Marx and Trotsky in James’s work; he also details the era’s socialist factionalism. Along with Raya Dunayevskaya and Grace Lee Boggs, James was a founder of the Johnson-Forest Tendency, a radical left tendency in the United States that focused on black activism and held that the Soviet Union under Stalin was state capitalist, not a bureaucratic collective.

SEGMENT THREE

Law Ware shares with us a personal response to James as an exemplar of the black intellectual, proof to Ware that he could follow that path also. Of course, Ware notes, James isn’t perfect, showing little regard for women in his work (even though women were his greatest collaborators).

GUESTS

Paul Buhle is the author of C.L.R. James: The Artist as Revolutionary (Verso). He is one of the foremost historians of American Radicalism and the American Left having authored or edited over 30 books, including works such as Images of American Radicalism, Marxism in the United States, The Encyclopedia of the American Left, and Radical Hollywood. He is also the editor of 12 comic art books that are wide-ranging yet consistent in Socialist and Radical perspective: There are books on Jesus, Lincoln, The Beats, Bohemians, The Wobblies, Rosa Luxemburg and most recently on the Irish martyr James Connolly who was executed by the British for his role in the Easter Uprising of 1916.

Paul Le Blanc is an historian and activist. He's a Professor of History at La Roche College in Pittsburgh whose most recent books are October Song: Bolshevik Triumph, Communist Tragedy, 1917-1924, and Left Americana: The Radical Heart of US History, both published by Haymarket, and author of Choice Award–winning book A Freedom Budget for All Americans.

Lawrence Ware is co-director of the Africana Studies Program and Teaching Assistant Professor and Diversity Coordinator in the Department of Philosophy. He is a contributing writer to Slate Magazine, The New York Times and The Root.

Best known for his path-breaking work on the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins, published in 1938, Trinidadian C.L.R. James was often at the center of revolutionary politics and theory in the 20th century; a one-time Trotskyist and fully informed by a study of Marx, James’s greatest work extends from beyond the boundaries of politics and …

Our opening song, "Civilization's Dying," features our guest on vocals. Our show today is a brief course, though a long Interchange, on the History of Punk Rock. This is a special 90-minute program detailing some of the greatest rock bands of the last 50 years. We’ll travel from Indianapolis, Indiana to Lima, Peru, by way of Bloomington to track the birth and course of Punk Rock, which according to Paul Mahern came screaming into the world in 1964 with the song "Demolition" by Los Saicos and continues its "Teenage Rampage" in garages and bars all over this wonder world. We’ll hear songs by the usual suspects, the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, but also by Death and Bad Brains and even hear Lesley Gore’s 1963 feminist pop song “You Don’t Own Me” the lyrics of which are “pure punk.”

I think Never Mind the Bollocks is a perfect record. It's my favorite record ever made.

GUEST

As a 17-year-old Paul Mahern fronted the punk rock band the Zero Boys, formed in Indianapolis in 1979. Their first full-length album was Vicious Circle. Moving on from performing to producing Mahern became and is, among many things, a rock and pop record producer, mixing and mastering engineer, and a singer and songwriter. He is also a professor and yoga teacher and you may hear a few Yoga terms sprinkled throughout the conversation. As a producer Mahern has worked with acts such as John Mellencamp, Iggy Pop, Willie Nelson, Okkervil River, Afghan Whigs, Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band, Magnolia Electric Co., and Neil Young, among many others.

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MUSIC

"Civilization's Dying" by Zero Boys

"Surfin' Bird" by The Trashmen

"Territorial Pissings" by Nirvana

"No. 2: Rataplan (Bouncer's Song)" by Arthur Sullivan

"Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" by The Ramones

"Livin' in the 80's" by Zero Boys

"No Institution" by Raw Power

"Demolición" by Los Saicos

"...Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears

"Holidays in the Sun" by Sex Pistols

"You're Gonna Miss Me Baby" by The 13th Floor Elevators

"Raw Power" by Iggy and the Stooges

"Trash" by New York Dolls

"Teenage Rampage" by The Sweet

"53rd & 3rd" by The Ramones

"No Feelings" by Sex Pistols

"California Über Alles" by Dead Kennedys

"My Shadow" by Jay Reatard

"The Look On Your Face" The Cowboys

"Pay to Cum" by Bad Brains

"Politicians In My Eyes" by Death

"You Don't Own Me" by Lesley Gore

"Oh Bondage Up Yours!" by X-Ray Spex

CREDITS

Impresario: Doug Storm

Executive Producer: Wes Martin

Our opening song, “Civilization’s Dying,” features our guest on vocals. Our show today is a brief course, though a long Interchange, on the History of Punk Rock. This is a special 90-minute program detailing some of the greatest rock bands of the last 50 years. We’ll travel from Indianapolis, Indiana to Lima, Peru, by way …

We open with "Ça ira" (the Sans-culottes version) performed by Edith Piaf. "Ça ira" is an emblematic song of the French Revolution, first heard in May 1790. The title and theme of the refrain were inspired by Benjamin Franklin, in France as a representative of the Continental Congress, who was apparently quite popular among the French people. When asked about the American Revolutionary War, he would reportedly reply, "Ça ira, ça ira" ("It'll be fine, it'll be fine").

Some Lyrics from the Original version…

Let us rejoice, good times will come !

The French people used to keep silent,

The aristocrat says, "Mea culpa!"

The clergy regrets its wealth,

The state, with justice, will get it.

Thanks to the careful Lafayette,

Everyone will calm down.

Ah! It'll be fine, It'll be fine, It'll be fine

By the torches of the august assembly,

Ah ! It'll be fine, It'll be fine, It'll be fine

An armed people will always take care of themselves.

We'll know right from wrong,

The citizen will support the Good.

But we opened with the “Sans-culottes” version: Sans-culottes literally translates “without breeches” and refers to the common people of the lower classes in late 18th century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution in response to their poor quality of life under the Ancien Régime.

This version delivers the “threat” of the revolution…

Ah! It'll be fine, It'll be fine, It'll be fine

aristocrats to the lamp-post

Ah! It'll be fine, It'll be fine, It'll be fine

the aristocrats, we'll hang them!

If we don't hang them

We'll break them

If we don't break them

We'll burn them

It is often said that modernity begins with the French Revolution and that this is the first great historical experience of the emptiness underlying established structures, and therefore of the possibility of radical transformation.

And at its center, reaping the whirlwind, came the "The Reign of Terror." It’s beginning is disputed but there is a general consensus that it ended with the fall of Robespierre who was executed on July 28th 1794. Robespierre gave his famous speech on political morality on February 5, 1794, proclaiming, "If the mainspring of popular government in peace time is virtue, its resource during a revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is merely terrible; terror, without which virtue is simply powerless." It can be read as doublespeak or as a statement that certain things are worth defending, even if doing so requires violence.

But what comes to the fore in this conversation with Rebecca Spang is that the French Revolution is likely best thought of as a civil war and in that context the so-called Terror might be better understood as a desperate attempt to stabilize a government which brought the hope for equality (to begin again) and bequeathed to the world The Declarations of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

GUEST

Rebecca Spang a professor in the Department of History at Indiana University, and is the Director of the Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies. She has published primarily on the interaction of politics, culture, and consumption in the 18th and 19th centuries. Her most recent book is Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution, a new history of money and a new history of the French Revolution, showing that revolutionary radicalization was driven by the ever-widening gap between political ideals and the experience of daily life.

MUSIC

"Ça ira" (Sans-culottes) performed by Edith Piaf

"Carmagnole"

"Patriotic Song on the Unveiling of the Busts of Marat and Le Pelletier"

"Funeral Hymn for General Hoche"

We open with “Ça ira” (the Sans-culottes version) performed by Edith Piaf. “Ça ira” is an emblematic song of the French Revolution, first heard in May 1790. The title and theme of the refrain were inspired by Benjamin Franklin, in France as a representative of the Continental Congress, who was apparently quite popular among the …

Phillips de Koninick, Portrait of a Boy (1673)

Provenance refers to the origins of an object or work of art. Historically it’s been used to describe the process of validating authorship— is this really a Picasso or a forgery? But since 1933, it has also referred to establishing rightful ownership of a work. From 1933 until the end of World War II, a number of Nazi units known as the Kuntschutz, plundered gold, silver and important art works from all over Europe. Although many of these items were recovered by Agents of Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program —also known as the Monument Men— many are still missing. The Eskenazi Museum of Art on IU Campus is one of the institutions involved in Provenance initiatives, designed to restore works of art to the institutions that originally owned them. And when the museum re-opens in 2019, it plans to highlight provenance as part of several galleries and exhibits.

IMAGES

Georges Braque, French, 1882–1963

The Napkin Ring, 1929

Oil, sand, canvas, mixed media

16 x 47 1/2 in. (40.6 x 120.7 cm)

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Henry R. Hope

Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 69.56

This painting belonged to French Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg, who sent it to safety in the United States in 1939. Rosenberg himself immigrated to the US the following year.

Philips Koninck, Dutch, 1619–1688.

Portrait of a Boy, 1673

Oil on canvas 29 1/2 x 25 3/4 in. (74.9 x 65.4 cm)

Bequest of Herman B Wells

Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2001.45

GUEST

Jenny McComas, Curator of American and European Art at the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, who specializes in issues of Provenance.

MUSIC

"Nuages" by Django Reinhardt

"Heebie Jeebies" by Louis Armstrong

"Raus mit den Männern ausm Reichstag" by Claire Waldoff

"Opus 33a" by Arnold Schoenberg, performed by Walter Robert

CREDITS

Guest Host and Episode Producer: Joan Hawkins

Producer: Doug Storm

Editor: Rob Schoon

Studio Engineer: Bryce Martin

Executive Producer: West Martin