The 40 Year-Old Genius

The 12-Year Old Genius was Stevie Wonder’s first live album, even though it was released when he was actually 13. He may have been 12 when the recordings were made, so I’m willing to give Motown the benefit of the doubt here. Anyway, it features a bunch of songs that would become staples of his, one of which (“Fingertips”) made it onto the excellent 3-LP Looking Back compilation that I bought at the brilliant used records store (indeed, it’s actually called Marvelous Records) on 40^th street in West Philly.

Genius, though, is one of those tough words. I have to admit that, in general I don’t really buy what the word is trying to get at (and here I am ascribing agency to words!). I don’t really believe that certain people are “geniuses”—somehow above and beyond the usual capacities of intelligence—and others aren’t. I know that it’s a word that gets thrown around a lot in musical/musicological discourse around people like Beethoven, Mozart, Ellington, Charlie Parker, Ray Charles, and my man, Stevie. Obviously, the concept of the “genius” has done a lot of damage in conjunction with European colonial projects, and it has only recently been appropriated by groups (women, people of color, etc.) that were formerly on the receiving end of the genius stick, so to speak. Guy is writing about genius right now, so, who knows, maybe he’ll drop something that will help me come to better terms with the word, though I somehow think that just appropriating the word against the power structure isn’t the answer either, unless it’s a “strategic” (see Spivak) appropriation. Oh, ha ha ha. I’m so clever. Gotta love it whenever you can work in a Spivak reference.

Anyway, the MacArthur genius grants were just announced last week, and I’ve taken something of an interest in them, if only because I personally know fairly well two people who have received them in the past and the MacArthur people have given a lot of much-needed money to jazz musicians over the years (Max Roach, George Russell, Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn). The great thing about the MacArthur genius grants, I think, is that it gives money to interesting people to work on projects that they may have a difficult time finding popular support for.

So this year, Alex Ross, classical critic for The New Yorker, author of the award-winning and bestselling book The Rest is Noise, and keeper of a blog of the same name won a genius grant this year. Now, let me get this out of the way first. I really like Alex Ross’s blog. I really like his writing for The New Yorker. I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Rest is Noise (the book), and I look forward to reading what he writes in the future. I also feel a little bit validated that his taste in music is pretty similar to mine (Dylan, Radiohead, minimalism—though I just can’t get into Sibelius the way that he is. It reminds me too much of bad film music).

But I still can’t help but be a little bit surprised that he won a genius grant. The Rest is Noise is great, but it isn’t really a fresh look at anything. I mean, OK, maybe it was the first time that some of the more recent 20^th century classical composers were talked about in an intelligent way in a book put out by a major press. But there’s nothing revolutionary about the way that he writes the history. It’s incredibly competent, well-informed, with interesting opinions and interpretations. But that’s it.

I mean, maybe the MacArthur people know something I don’t and that he’s got a great project in the works that he just needs a bit of bread to finish, and it’s going to knock us all on our asses. But I somehow doubt it.

I think this is also a case of the rich getting richer. I mean, Alex Ross is probably the best known writer about music (period—classical, jazz, popular, whatever) in the world. He writes for one of the most prestigious publications in the English language. His book was published by Random House and sold a bunch of copies—probably about as many copies as all of the musicological books published last year by university presses combined. (I’m exaggerating. I have no idea what the comparison is. But that seems like it could at least possibly be true.) His book won a ton of awards (National Book Critics Circle Award, and a bunch of others I don’t remember right now and can’t be bothered to look up.) This isn’t a person lacking in resources or recognition.

I have no idea how the MacArthur people pick these things, but I can’t help but think that this was a case of jumping on the bandwagon here. Whatever, I don’t begrudge Ross the money and the recognition because, again, I think he does good work. I just think that there was probably somebody out there doing as interesting work who really could use the institutional support the MacArthur Foundation provides. 500 grand buys a lot of ramen noodles.