CHARLES KEIL — OFFICIAL WEBSITE
Writer · Musician · Cultural Anthropologist · Activist
This website follows the recent 50th anniversary of my first book, Urban Blues (once upon a time an Anthropology MA thesis at the University of Chicago), and it is usually still in the top ten of the Amazon "Rhythm and Blues" list of 80 to 90 books. Still useful in a variety of college courses I'm told. It has sold about 70 thousand copies since 1966. In the 1992 Edition Afterword called "Postscripts" I confess to having a light or pale complexion. Some reviewers in the 60's assumed I was black or brown, notably Philip Larkin, the poet, probably because I dedicated the book to the memory of Malcolm X who I had invited to speak at Yale in 1960-61, and at U. of Chicago the next academic year.
Most of my other books after Tiv Song: The Sociology of Art in a Classless Society (PhD thesis at Chicago) have been collaborative or collective in the spirit of Karl Marx and the Marx Brothers, "singing the unsung," hearing from people not ordinarily found in books: Tiv song creators, Polish-American and Slovenian-American polka musicians, 41 children to elders in My Music, Romani instrument players in Greek Macedonia (Bright Balkan Morning 2002).
So, many, many thanks to my wife Angeliki V. Keil (see her Markos Vamvakaris: Autobiography recently translated into English by Noonie Minogue), colleagues Dick Blau and Steve Feld (co-author of Music Grooves), grad students Sue Crafts and Dan Cavicchi, Patricia Campbell who co-authored Born to Groove (2005 on the web, and available 2017 in all formats), and most recently Bill Benzon who compiled, edited and co-authored We Need a Department of Peace: Everybody's Business, Nobody's Job (2016).
For very gracious overviews of my and our academic works, please read Robert Christgau's synthesis in the Village Voice entitled "Up From Darien." and Shin Nakagawa's "About Charles Keil." Both can be found here on the BIO PAGE.
Most of my other books after Tiv Song: The Sociology of Art in a Classless Society (PhD thesis at Chicago) have been collaborative or collective in the spirit of Karl Marx and the Marx Brothers, "singing the unsung," hearing from people not ordinarily found in books: Tiv song creators, Polish-American and Slovenian-American polka musicians, 41 children to elders in My Music, Romani instrument players in Greek Macedonia (Bright Balkan Morning 2002).
So, many, many thanks to my wife Angeliki V. Keil (see her Markos Vamvakaris: Autobiography recently translated into English by Noonie Minogue), colleagues Dick Blau and Steve Feld (co-author of Music Grooves), grad students Sue Crafts and Dan Cavicchi, Patricia Campbell who co-authored Born to Groove (2005 on the web, and available 2017 in all formats), and most recently Bill Benzon who compiled, edited and co-authored We Need a Department of Peace: Everybody's Business, Nobody's Job (2016).
For very gracious overviews of my and our academic works, please read Robert Christgau's synthesis in the Village Voice entitled "Up From Darien." and Shin Nakagawa's "About Charles Keil." Both can be found here on the BIO PAGE.
Steven Feld and Charles Keil recording in Northern Greece
© Dick Blau
An Open Letter...
Rep. Katie Porter
2151 Michelson Drive, Suite 195
Irvine, CA 92616
Dear Rep. Katie Porter:
By way of self-introduction, when I was an American Studies major at Yale (like you, but class of '61) I invited Malcolm X to speak at the Yale Law School auditorium, fall of 1960. It might have been his first opportunity to speak to a predominantly white university audience. Your fellow member of Congress, Eleanor H. Norton might remember the event, might even remember me as someone who helped get Yale's first NAACP Chapter going.
I would like you to get together with just a few law-minded Congress people like Eleanor to draft some Articles of Impeachment in an "originalist," "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," "true to the Ninth Amendment" manner, so that both the Highest of High Crimes (Speciecide, attempted Genocide, illegal/immoral 'regime-change' wars, etc) and the merest of misdemeanors as measured by the two Emoluments clauses, have a chance to become part of the principled impeachment processes recently proposed by Senator Warren.
Pressed for time this Easter Sunday, I am going to briefly annotate some bibliography and a bit of dialogue between two of my least favorite lawyers.
I thought Kavanaugh gave a good and interesting answer to Ted Cruz’s deliberately “stupid” question. Didn’t “dodge” the basics, but wisely acknowledged three overlapping “roads” or paths to the same precedented destination. This makes the Ninth everything but an “inkblot.”
"What do you make of the Ninth Amendment?" Cruz asked. "Robert Bork famously described it as an 'ink blot.' Do you share that assessment?"
Here's some of what Kavanaugh said:
" . . . . the Ninth Amendment, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause, and the Supreme Court's doctrine of substantive due process are three roads that someone might take that all really lead to the same destination under the precedent of the Supreme Court now, which is that the Supreme Court precedent protects certain unenumerated rights so long as the rights are, as the Supreme Court said in the Glucksberg case, rooted in history and tradition. Justice Kagan explained this well in her confirmation hearing,** that the Glucksberg test** is quite important for allowing that protection of unenumerated rights that are rooted in history and tradition, which the precedent definitely establishes, but at the same time making clear that when doing that judges aren't just enacting their own policy preferences into the Constitution."
"In other words, Kavanaugh dodged the question by simply describing the case law." This is from an article in Reason by Damon Root.
Sad to say, but Brett K has given me more info on utilization of the Ninth than I get from most lawyers.
I couldn't find Kagan's words of wisdom on the 9A so easily. Hopefully she gave broad and deep attention to "unenumerated rights that are rooted in history and tradition" like "Reason and Conscience" on the abstract but absolutely basic hand, and rights to clean air and clean water on the more concrete but equally basic other hand. I believe that every Article of Impeachment for Trump/Pence and relevant Cabinet Secretaries, should use the Preambles to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the USA, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). [Just one example, Trump's 8k lies damage "domestic Tranquility" (Constitution) and mess up my personal "pursuit of Happiness" (Declaration).]
The "Glucksberg test" mentioned by Brett K has to do with the right to commit suicide, and to have an assisted suicide, was argued in Washington state (1990s) with Dr. G. and other doctors, 3 terminal patients and a 501(c)3 organization looking for "die with dignity" options, via the 14th amendment "due process" clause. The case went thru a number of appeals processes up to the Supreme Court, where Rehnquist and conservative judges prevailed 5/4 or 6/3 using the idea that "a protected liberty interest" had to be 'rooted in history and tradition' and that British common law and 'originalist' info didn't cut suicides any slack at all, au contraire.
Interestingly, Lynn Hunt's book The Invention of Human Rights (2007) argues, as I understand it, that we only get to know our human rights, our Natural, most fundamental rights, as they begin to disappear or as the absurdities of past brutal practice become obviously wrong. It was a suicide case and a father's cover-up that aroused Voltaire to take a position against state approved and church approved torture to secure confessions first, and a second round of torture to reveal any accomplices. So "rooted in history and tradition" has both limits and some liabilities. Whereas discovering how polluted all of our waters are becoming will lead to a "right to clean water" that must not be denied or disparaged. Surely the children of Flint, Michigan have a right to clean water that would keep their brains safe from lead poisoning -- also an unreasonable and unconscionable physical attack on children's rights to "reason and conscience."
Also published in 2007, Daniel A. Farber's Retained by the People: The 'Silent' Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don't Know They Have is so careful, so cautious, so disappointing relative to its title, that I was frustrated reading it from beginning to end. He doesn't connect 9A with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights! That would have been a real service.
The Forgotten Ninth Amendment (1955) by Bennet B. Patterson is the book to read on the Ninth if you are reading only one. I will copy Sen. Warren with this letter because Patterson is all about the principles and what Kenneth Burke called "the constitution behind the Constitution" --the underlying philosophy of freedom thru rule of law that heightens the sovereignty of the individual citizen and puts limits on what state and federal governments can do.
The single best article I've found is by Sahand Rabbani, "The Rights of the People, Denied and Disparaged". (Ten pages that can be downloaded from his website.) "The most important 21 words in American Law," says Rabbani; and perhaps the key to persuading genuine conservatives, thinking Republican lawyers, some Republican Senators to pursue impeachment as the only way to preserve the Constitution, American democracy and our Natural rights as citizens.
Last and least, Randy E. Barnett edited The Rights Retained by the People: The History and Meaning of the Ninth Amendment (1989) collected 12 articles by lawyers for lawyers that has to be sifted, combed, by us non-specialists for a useful fact or footnote, an occasional insight. Every sentence of Bennett B. Patterson, by contrast, is clear as a bell. And inspiring.
Rep. Porter, Sen. Warren, and fellow citizens: please follow the example of my old friend Jonathan French, a water expert, and write up an Article of Impeachment that pleases you, a citizen of the USA. Put it on the web at Truth and Traditions or wherever. Send a copy to your very own Rep. in the House. Send a copy to David Swanson. Let's go. The Constitution, reason, conscience, clean water and air for all creatures, require it.
Sincerely,
Charlie Keil
cc. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Jahana Hayes, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, AOC, Bernie, etc.
2151 Michelson Drive, Suite 195
Irvine, CA 92616
Dear Rep. Katie Porter:
By way of self-introduction, when I was an American Studies major at Yale (like you, but class of '61) I invited Malcolm X to speak at the Yale Law School auditorium, fall of 1960. It might have been his first opportunity to speak to a predominantly white university audience. Your fellow member of Congress, Eleanor H. Norton might remember the event, might even remember me as someone who helped get Yale's first NAACP Chapter going.
I would like you to get together with just a few law-minded Congress people like Eleanor to draft some Articles of Impeachment in an "originalist," "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," "true to the Ninth Amendment" manner, so that both the Highest of High Crimes (Speciecide, attempted Genocide, illegal/immoral 'regime-change' wars, etc) and the merest of misdemeanors as measured by the two Emoluments clauses, have a chance to become part of the principled impeachment processes recently proposed by Senator Warren.
Pressed for time this Easter Sunday, I am going to briefly annotate some bibliography and a bit of dialogue between two of my least favorite lawyers.
I thought Kavanaugh gave a good and interesting answer to Ted Cruz’s deliberately “stupid” question. Didn’t “dodge” the basics, but wisely acknowledged three overlapping “roads” or paths to the same precedented destination. This makes the Ninth everything but an “inkblot.”
"What do you make of the Ninth Amendment?" Cruz asked. "Robert Bork famously described it as an 'ink blot.' Do you share that assessment?"
Here's some of what Kavanaugh said:
" . . . . the Ninth Amendment, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause, and the Supreme Court's doctrine of substantive due process are three roads that someone might take that all really lead to the same destination under the precedent of the Supreme Court now, which is that the Supreme Court precedent protects certain unenumerated rights so long as the rights are, as the Supreme Court said in the Glucksberg case, rooted in history and tradition. Justice Kagan explained this well in her confirmation hearing,** that the Glucksberg test** is quite important for allowing that protection of unenumerated rights that are rooted in history and tradition, which the precedent definitely establishes, but at the same time making clear that when doing that judges aren't just enacting their own policy preferences into the Constitution."
"In other words, Kavanaugh dodged the question by simply describing the case law." This is from an article in Reason by Damon Root.
Sad to say, but Brett K has given me more info on utilization of the Ninth than I get from most lawyers.
I couldn't find Kagan's words of wisdom on the 9A so easily. Hopefully she gave broad and deep attention to "unenumerated rights that are rooted in history and tradition" like "Reason and Conscience" on the abstract but absolutely basic hand, and rights to clean air and clean water on the more concrete but equally basic other hand. I believe that every Article of Impeachment for Trump/Pence and relevant Cabinet Secretaries, should use the Preambles to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the USA, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). [Just one example, Trump's 8k lies damage "domestic Tranquility" (Constitution) and mess up my personal "pursuit of Happiness" (Declaration).]
The "Glucksberg test" mentioned by Brett K has to do with the right to commit suicide, and to have an assisted suicide, was argued in Washington state (1990s) with Dr. G. and other doctors, 3 terminal patients and a 501(c)3 organization looking for "die with dignity" options, via the 14th amendment "due process" clause. The case went thru a number of appeals processes up to the Supreme Court, where Rehnquist and conservative judges prevailed 5/4 or 6/3 using the idea that "a protected liberty interest" had to be 'rooted in history and tradition' and that British common law and 'originalist' info didn't cut suicides any slack at all, au contraire.
Interestingly, Lynn Hunt's book The Invention of Human Rights (2007) argues, as I understand it, that we only get to know our human rights, our Natural, most fundamental rights, as they begin to disappear or as the absurdities of past brutal practice become obviously wrong. It was a suicide case and a father's cover-up that aroused Voltaire to take a position against state approved and church approved torture to secure confessions first, and a second round of torture to reveal any accomplices. So "rooted in history and tradition" has both limits and some liabilities. Whereas discovering how polluted all of our waters are becoming will lead to a "right to clean water" that must not be denied or disparaged. Surely the children of Flint, Michigan have a right to clean water that would keep their brains safe from lead poisoning -- also an unreasonable and unconscionable physical attack on children's rights to "reason and conscience."
Also published in 2007, Daniel A. Farber's Retained by the People: The 'Silent' Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don't Know They Have is so careful, so cautious, so disappointing relative to its title, that I was frustrated reading it from beginning to end. He doesn't connect 9A with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights! That would have been a real service.
The Forgotten Ninth Amendment (1955) by Bennet B. Patterson is the book to read on the Ninth if you are reading only one. I will copy Sen. Warren with this letter because Patterson is all about the principles and what Kenneth Burke called "the constitution behind the Constitution" --the underlying philosophy of freedom thru rule of law that heightens the sovereignty of the individual citizen and puts limits on what state and federal governments can do.
The single best article I've found is by Sahand Rabbani, "The Rights of the People, Denied and Disparaged". (Ten pages that can be downloaded from his website.) "The most important 21 words in American Law," says Rabbani; and perhaps the key to persuading genuine conservatives, thinking Republican lawyers, some Republican Senators to pursue impeachment as the only way to preserve the Constitution, American democracy and our Natural rights as citizens.
Last and least, Randy E. Barnett edited The Rights Retained by the People: The History and Meaning of the Ninth Amendment (1989) collected 12 articles by lawyers for lawyers that has to be sifted, combed, by us non-specialists for a useful fact or footnote, an occasional insight. Every sentence of Bennett B. Patterson, by contrast, is clear as a bell. And inspiring.
Rep. Porter, Sen. Warren, and fellow citizens: please follow the example of my old friend Jonathan French, a water expert, and write up an Article of Impeachment that pleases you, a citizen of the USA. Put it on the web at Truth and Traditions or wherever. Send a copy to your very own Rep. in the House. Send a copy to David Swanson. Let's go. The Constitution, reason, conscience, clean water and air for all creatures, require it.
Sincerely,
Charlie Keil
cc. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Jahana Hayes, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, AOC, Bernie, etc.