[news] Anarchy on the trumpet: Can Jazz Stop Bush?

[Resist!ca]

Charlie Haden was sitting in his car one night, listening to the news. 
Vietnam's neighbour Cambodia was being bombed by the US air force on the orders 
of President Richard Nixon. Haden felt powerless as an individual - but as a 
musician he was convinced he could register dissent, and maybe make a 
difference. He rang his friend and musical collaborator, composer Carla Bley, 
and said: "Let's do an album about the tragedy of what this administration is 
doing in the world." The result was the Liberation Music Orchestra, which made 
one of the most powerful jazz-driven musical statements of the early 1970s with 
its self-titled album. The band was a volatile, expensive one, and many members 
were leaders in their own right, making it difficult to keep it on the road. 
But in the past 35 years, the LMO has returned whenever the rallying call was 
loud. It re-formed in 1982, when Ronald Reagan invaded El Salvador, to record 
the album Ballad of the Fallen. It came back in 1989, during George Bush Sr's 
time, for a rousing We Shall Overcome at the Montreal jazz festival, and to 
record the album Dreamkeeper.

URL: http://resist.ca/story/2004/8/2/193147/1155