Interventions

Welcome to Interventions, an experimental space where authors rehearse new ideas, reframe questions, or play unbridled within Arcade’s field of the humanities in the world. These short posts embrace the incomplete, the imperfect, and the indeterminate, but they may become much more: for example, the record of a thinker’s turn toward a new paradigm or the rough draft of a chapter in a new book. Rapid publication and immediate responses permit Interventions to foster conversation. The tone of the posts may range from personal to political, while maintaining a critical edge. 

Published regularly, Interventions are often freestanding contributions to Arcade, but some may join our feature called Colloquies. Inquiries and submissions are received by the editor of Interventions.

 

What is fundamentalism?
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Used to describe a particular variant of religious belief, the concept of fundamentalism has its origins in relatively recent US Protestantism, where it was positively connoted by those who identified as fundamentalist in reaction to liberal theology and biblical criticism.
Theory of the Lilt
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The phenomenon of "swing" has received a lot of attention.  Does it swing or doesn't it?  Today I'd like to consider another quality, which I am going to call the "lilt," a rapid up-and-down motion seen in stride piano and in later forms of jazz as well.  (I'll get to my related consideration of "swing" in a subsequent post.)
Concerning Street Life in the African City (1)
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The evidence of material on African cities does not inspire confidence.  They are increasingly overcrowded with no clear plan for matching population growth to available facilities.  Sewage and garbage disposal are perennial problems. The hope some five decades ago when many countries gained freedom from their former colonial masters was that the cities would act as engines of growth.
These Are Powers offer no easy answers
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One reason I stopped being a full-time music writer is that I hate feeling compelled to write about what I'm hearing when language fails to do justice to the sound. It should also go without saying that, at times, what one sees at a concert actually seems even more important than the music.
Here Comes the Rain Again
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Fall has arrived in Seattle.  The first cold rain began on Friday.  I've been holed up at home, avoiding the wet as long as possible.  While going through boxes in my office, I came across a book that I must have bought in Moscow in 1990, though I can't remember doing so:  Nikolai Nekrasov's Selected Works. 
Improvisation
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What does "improvisation" mean?  In the first place, every performance takes place in time, and will vary from any other performance.  Someone playing the melody of "Stardust" pretty much "as written" will still be improvising the phrasing, tempo, etc...

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