Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Hoffman/Alicea/Vicuta: Channeling Adorno on Jazz

587

Hoffman/Alicea/Vicuta: Channeling Adorno on Jazz

By

View read count
Hoffman/Alicea/Vicuta: Channeling Adorno on Jazz
Quick and to the Point: Vocal recording of a Jazz related séance seeking to contact dead scholar Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno.



Europe’s answer to John Edwards is Mrs. Gaviria Vicuta. “Verrücktes Gespräch mit den Toten,” her popular German TV program, has been translated into 13 languages. One significant difference between Mrs. Vicuta and Mr. Edwards, however, is that the former engages dead historical figures and the former doesn’t. Whereas Mr. Edwards tries to channel lost family members, Mrs. Vicuta claims to talk for important historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, several Roman emperors, Leonardo Da Vinci, Mozart, Saint Jerome, Winston Churchill and even Elvis Presley himself –to the chagrin of his worldwide followers.



Dr. Manfred Hoffman, Director of the Popular Music Department at the Hamburg Verrückt Universitäts, and his protégé José Amorós Alicea from the Ethnomusicology Department at the Colombian Universidad Javierana, contacted France’s best-known spiritualist in order to arrange for her to contact Marxist theorist Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno from the dead and “talk” to him about jazz.

Adorno’s views on jazz and popular music are well documented. He was not a lover of either, declaring throughout his career that “popular music constitutes the dregs of musical history,” that consumers of popular music “have key points in common with the man who must kill time because he has nothing else on which to vent his aggression, and with the casual laborer.” His oft studied and documented take on jazz was just as unfriendly. “To make oneself a jazz expert or hang over the radio all day, one must have much free time and little freedom,” he said, adding that “Considered as a whole, the perennial sameness of jazz consists not in a basic organization of the material within which the imagination can roam freely and without inhabitation, as within an articulate language, but rather in the utilization of certain well-defined tricks, formulas, and clichés to the exclusion of everything else.”



This recording features the voice recording of the channeling session whereupon Mrs. Vicuta claims to speak for Adorno –who seems to be quite updated on jazz even beyond the realm of the living. At present, the material is only available in German, although both English and Spanish translations are in the works. Herein, however, you will find some tidbits:

  1. When questioned about the state of North American popular music, “Adorno” replied that he decidedly disliked the increasing nudity because it wasn’t conducive to social change or deep intellectual discourse. Oddly, he seemed quite interested in Britney Spears' navel.
  2. Adorno also dislikes free jazz, albeit he considers it a promising field.
  3. His favorite record label is ECM.
  4. When Dr. Alicea asked about Latin influences in Jazz, Adorno responded that as long as it was produced in Cuba it was good. When asked whether his opinion on the matter was tainted by political demagoguery, Mrs. Vicuta let out a canine-like snarl.
  5. When asked about All About Jazz, “Adorno” remarked that they were fetishizing jazz to no end and that their work reaches even into the netherworld.


Contact: Hamburg Verrückt Universitäts Archive .

Track Listing

Voice in situ recording of a s

Personnel

Dr. Manfred Hoffman, Jos

Album information

Title: Channeling Adorno on Jazz | Year Released: 2003 | Record Label: Hamburg Verr

Gotcha! April Fools!

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.