On his book Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture
Cover Interview of December 25, 2008
Editor’s note
Originally, this interview ran on the Rorotoko cover page under the headline
“The trumpet as a force in people’s lives.”
We highlighted two quotes.
On the first page:
“When sons and grandsons of slaves created jazz in the early 20th century by playing the trumpet loudly and aggressively, they found a brand new way to assert themselves as men. Any other assertion of masculinity might have got them lynched!”
On the second:
“[David Monette] promised to give me a $200 gold-plated mouthpiece if I could identify several tiny images engraved on the elaborate flumpet that he had made for the great jazz artist, Art Farmer. Knowing that Art switched between trumpet and flugelhorn, Monette invented a horn that was midway between the two, hence ‘flumpet.’”
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
Editor’s note
Originally, this interview ran on the Rorotoko cover page under the headline
“The trumpet as a force in people’s lives.”
We highlighted two quotes.
On the first page:
“When sons and grandsons of slaves created jazz in the early 20th century by playing the trumpet loudly and aggressively, they found a brand new way to assert themselves as men. Any other assertion of masculinity might have got them lynched!”
On the second:
“[David Monette] promised to give me a $200 gold-plated mouthpiece if I could identify several tiny images engraved on the elaborate flumpet that he had made for the great jazz artist, Art Farmer. Knowing that Art switched between trumpet and flugelhorn, Monette invented a horn that was midway between the two, hence ‘flumpet.’”