Mindflux said:

Much like yourself not much time at the minute (busy weekend, etc), but I just wanted to say while looking at your profile the other day I went aha - this guy has just gone up in my estimation - he's heard of Eat Static. I was going to mention it in my previous post, but it was beginning to turn into a book, and then I forgot. And now you tell me you were in Ozric Tentacles! Well fuck me sideways with a spoon! Do I know yem, oh yes, although mostly occasional encounters - I have heard far more Ozrics at parties and such than I actually own - but I do have The Hidden Step / Waterfall Cities (double cd) and intend to increase the collection (long term project, lots of bands to catch up on).

Yep, I think we may well have plenty to dicsuss, I look forward to it.

Huggiebear said:

----
I doubt from your comments you have ever really taken a look at 'so-called coon art from the 20's and 30's. The cover is more like the Ernie Banks drawing famous from "Good Times" You have got to be awful young not to know this and I hate to break it you but black folks have full lips.(LOL)

fenderbender said:

ugh. i would give my left nut for a version fo that album with all the crappy darth vader voice removed. the anti-semitism, sexism, and religious jibberjabber would still annoy the hell out of me, but at least it wouldn't have that crappy voiceover.

I don't see how Prince's TRC can be considered "anti-semetic for this purpose."
Prince is of African descent. Africans are the mothers/fathers of all humanity, including all people who fall under the Semitic category (Ethiopians/Arabs/etc.)...therefore for him to be labelled as anti-semetic is for him to be labelled anti-himself

As for TRC in entirety, I think its one of his most conscious releases ever. I waited 4 the day that Prince would sing/speak to issues concerning African people, and finallly he did that, acknowleding that dimension of his self. Family Name is a powerful statement; think about it, the majority of black people in the USA have lost their original names to due the holocaust of enslavement.

But, TRC suggests something higher...a stronger deeper unity...which is likened unto the keys on Prince's piano black and white aka THE RAINBOW CHILDREN

1ness and pax.

MyLawd said:

judaism is explained away by being black?



while semitism is a term that includes more than just jews, no one uses the term anti-semitism to describe racism towards anyone but the jews.

and the names he uses in the lyrics are all jewish names... pearl man or perlman, rosen bloom or rosenblum, and gold struck which isnt even a real name, it's an old jab in terms of the stereotype of jews as money hungry and cheap.

and the jews weren't even the ones selling slaves for the most part, another example of prince's misplaced anger and needless anti-semitism in this song.
[Edited 10/26/09 23:44pm]

cborgman said:

if you study the etymology of the word/concept "semite" then you will find that it refers to a linguistic group of languages/people...not just those known as jews.

and yes, blackness is all-encompassing, meaning, that for a black person to be anti-semetic would be anti his/herself, as the origin of all human beings. as for the jewish sounding names in TRC, those names are names of black people as well...to view them as only jewish is limiting and illustrative of a victim-type mentality

as for the sale of slaves by jews, i never brought that up, you did...but it is true, jews were major traders in African slaves, and holders of slave plantations in the so-called new world.

for what it's worth, Moses wife was an Ethiopian, and Ethiopia was the name used to describe the entire African continent before it was known as Africa. Hence, this is more reason for the label of "anti-semetic" against Prince or any other "Ethiopian" to be debunk.

We also need to distinguish between "Jew" and the ancient Israelites; they are not necessarily one and the same.

MyLawd said:

can you show me some proof of the jews as "major traders in African slaves, and holders of slave plantations in the so-called new world"?

and alright... semantic wordplay aside, the song is anti-jew.
[Edited 10/27/09 2:42am]

cborgman said:

no, this is not about semantics, and you cannot/could never read Prince's mind; are you a mind-reader? unfortunately, the majority of the people of the world have been brainwashed into seeing jews as the only semites, for political and questionable purposes.

as for jews as slaveholders, the history/documentation is endless...but since you requested, visit this site:

http://www.blacksandjews....wners.html and

http://www.rense.com/general76/ssje.htm

The following Jews were known dealers, owners, shippers or supporters of the slave trade and of the enslavement of Black African citizens in early New York history.

Issack Asher, Jacob Barsimson, Joseph Bueno, Solomon Myers Cohen, Jacob Fonseca, Aberham Franckfort, Jacob Franks, Daniel Gomez, David Gomez, Isaac Gomez, Lewis Gomez, Mordecai Gomez, Rebekah Gomez, Ephraim Hart, Judah Hays, Harmon Hendricks, Uriah Hendricks, Uriah Hyam, Abraham Isaacs, Joshua Isaacs, Samuel Jacobs, Benjamin S. Judah, Cary Judah, Elizabeth Judah, Arthur Levy, Eleazar Levy, Hayman Levy, Isaac H. Levy, Jacob Levy, Joseph Israel Levy, Joshua Levy, Moses Levy, Uriah Phillips Levy, Isaac R. Marques, Moses Michaels, (E)Manuel Myers, Seixas Nathan, Simon Nathan, Rodrigo Pacheco, David Pardo, Isaac Pinheiro, Rachel Pinto, Morris Jacob, Raphall Abraham Sarzedas, Moses Seixas, Solomon Simpson, Nathan Simson, Simja De Torres, Benjamin Wolf, Alexander Zuntz

MyLawd said:

the first link is dead.

the list from the second hardly qualifies as "major players", even if it is true. it's less than 50 names, many from the same family and one peculiarly named gomez.

and yes, the song is anti-jew. it doesn't take a psychic ability to see it, just half a brain. "goldstruck"? tell me how that isn't anti-jew

cborgman said:

are there jews with the surname Goldstruck? Is there not an expression "to strike gold?" I think you're being a bit too personal.

there are endless sources of info documenting jewish involvment in slavery, just google...there is no point in re-stating the same thing over and over.

books document the process of enslavement of africans by jews, but i never suggested that jews were the major europeans involved in this process, compared to other colonial forces

MyLawd said:

no, there aren't jews with the surname goldstruck... that's kind of the point. it's an old stereotype, not an actual surname.

show me some of them, then. show me the huge history of jews being, to use your exact words, "major traders in African slaves, and holders of slave plantations in the so-called new world"

to borgman, this was written by a jewish rabbi: (same source)

The following passages are from Dr. Raphael's book Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History (New York: Behrman House, Inc., Pub, 1983), pp. 14, 23-25.

"Jews also took an active part in the Dutch colonial slave trade; indeed, the bylaws of the Recife and Mauricia congregations (1648) included an imposta (Jewish tax) of five soldos for each Negro slave a Brazilian Jew purchased from the West Indies Company. Slave auctions were postponed if they fell on a Jewish holiday. In Curacao in the seventeenth century, as well as in the British colonies of Barbados and Jamaica in the eighteenth century, Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated.

"This was no less true on the North American mainland, where during the eighteenth century Jews participated in the 'triangular trade' that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies and there exchanged them for molasses, which in turn was taken to New England and converted into rum for sale in Africa. Isaac Da Costa of Charleston in the 1750's, David Franks of Philadelphia in the 1760's, and Aaron Lopez of Newport in the late 1760's and early 1770's dominated Jewish slave trading on the American continent."

Dr. Raphael discusses the central role of the Jews in the New World commerce and the African slave trade (pp. 23-25):

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES JEWISH INTER-ISLAND TRADE: CURACAO, 1656

During the sixteenth century, exiled from their Spanish homeland and hard-pressed to escape the clutches of the Inquisition, Spanish and Portuguese Jews fled to the Netherlands; the Dutch enthusiastically welcomed these talented, skilled husinessmen.

While thriving in Amsterdam - where they became the hub of a unique urban Jewish universe and attained status that anticipated Jewish emancipation in the West by over a century - they began in the 1500's and 1600's to establish themselves in the Dutch and English colonies in the New World. These included Curacao, Surinam, Recife, and New Amsterdam (Dutch) as well as Barbados, Jamaica, Newport, and Savannah (English).

In these European outposts the Jews, with their years of mercantile experience and networks of friends and family providing market reports of great use, played a significant role in the merchant capitalism, commercial revolution, and territorial expansion that developed the New World and established the colonial economies. The Jewish-Caribbean nexus provided Jews with the opportunity to claim a disproportionate influence in seventeenth and eighteenth century New World commerce, and enabled West Indian Jewry-far outnumbering its coreligionists further north-to enjoy a centrality which North American Jewry would not achieve for a long time to come.

Groups of Jews began to arrive in Surinam in the middle of the seven-teenth century, after the Portuguese regained control of northern Brazil. By 1694, twenty-seven years after the British had surrendered Surinam to the Dutch, there were about 100 Jewish families and fifty single Jews there, or about 570 persons. They possessed more than forty estates and 9,000 slaves, contributed 25,905 pounds of sugar as a gift for the building of a hospital, and carried on an active trade with Newport and other colonial ports. By 1730, Jews owned 115 plantations and were a large part of a sugar export business which sent out 21,680,000 pounds of sugar to European and New World markets in 1730 alone.

Slave trading was a major feature of Jewish economic life in Surinam which as a major stopping-off point in the triangular trade. Both North American and Caribbean Jews played a key role in this commerce: records of a slave sale in 1707 reveal that the ten largest Jewish purchasers (10,400 guilders) spent more than 25 percent of the total funds (38,605 guilders) exchanged.

Jewish economic life in the Dutch West Indies, as in the North American colonies, consisted primarily of mercantile communities, with large inequities in the distribution of wealth. Most Jews were shopkeepers, middlemen, or petty merchants who received encouragement and support from Dutch authorities. In Curacao, for example, Jewish communal life began after the Portuguese victory in 1654.

In 1656, the community founded a congregation, and in the early 1670's brought its first rabbi to the island. Curacao, with its large natural harbor, was the steppng-stone to the other Caribbean islands and thus ideally suited geographically for commerce.

The Jews were the recipients of favorable charters containing generous economic privileges granted by the Dutch West Indies Company in Amsterdam. The economic life of the Jewish community of Curacao revolved around ownership of sugar plantations and marketing of sugar, the importing of manufactured goods, and a heavy involvement in the slave trade, within a decade of their arrival, Jews owned 80 percent of the Curacao plantations. The strength of the Jewish trade lay in connections in Western Europe as well as ownership of the ships used in commerce. While Jews carried on an active trade with French and English colonies in the Caribbean, their principal market was the Spanish Main (today Venezuela and Colombia).

Extant tax lists give us a glimpse of their dominance. Of the eighteen wealthiest Jews in the 1702 and 1707 tax lists, nine either owned a ship or had at least a share in a vessel. By 1721 a letter to the Amsterdam Jewish community claimed that "nearly all the navigation...was in the hands of the Jews."' Yet another indication of the economic success of Curacao's Jews is the fact that in 1707 the island's 377 residents were assessed by the Governor and his Council a total of 4,002 pesos; 104 Jews, or 27.6 percent of the taxpayers, contributed 1,380 pesos, or 34.5 percent of the entire amount assessed.

In the British West Indies, two 1680 tax lists survive, both from Barbados; they, too, provide useful information about Jewish economic life. In Bridgetown itself, out of a total of 404 households, 54 households or 300 persons were Jewish, 240 of them living in "ye Towne of S. Michael ye Bridge Town." Contrary to most impressions, "many, indeed, most of them, were very poor." There were only a few planters, and most Jews were not naturalized or endenizened (and thus could not import goods or pursue debtors in court). But for merchants holding letters of endenization, opportunities were not lacking. Barbados sugar-and its by-products rum and molasses-were in great demand, and in addition to playing a role in its export, Jewish merchants were active in the import trade.

Forty-five Jewish households were taxed in Barbados in 1680, and more than half of them contributed only 11.7 percent of the total sum raised. While the richest five gave almost half the Jewish total, they were but 11.1 percent of the taxable population. The tax list of 1679-80 shows a similar picture; of fifty-one householders, nineteen (37.2 percent) gave less than one-tenth of the total, while the four richest merchants gave almost one-third of the total.

An interesting record of interisland trade involving a Jewish merchant and the islands of Barbados and Curacao comes from correspondence of 1656. It reminds us that sometimes the commercial trips were not well planned and that Jewish captains - who frequently acted as commercial agents as well - would decide where to sell their cargo, at what price, and what goods to bring back on the return trip.

http://www.rense.com/general69/invo.htm

cborgman said:

see my latest post...it should provide you with the type of info you're seeking

Ultimately does it matter how people of the past treated others? Surely the only important thing is how people are treating each other now and how they plan to in the future?

Venom for RC? I don't listen to lyrics and seldom read them so for me that part of RC is not a problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...nd_slavery

Allegations that Jews dominated the slave trade in Medieval Europe, Africa, and/or the Americas often appear in antisemitic discourse as a part of "Jewish domination" or "Jewish persecution" antisemitic canard. It was alleged that Jews controlled trade and finance and hatched plots "to enslave, convert, or sell non-Jews". Such allegations are denied by David Brion Davis, who argues that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery.[71]

One of the latest examples of such accusations are made in the Nation of Islam's 1991 book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.[72] These charges were widely refuted by scholars.[73][74]

According to a review in The Journal of American History of Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight by Eli Faber and Jews and the American Slave Trade by Saul S. Friedman:

Eli Faber takes a quantitative approach to Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade in Britain's Atlantic empire, starting with the arrival of Sephardic Jews in the London resettlement of the 1650s, calculating their participation in the trading companies of the late seventeenth century, and then using a solid range of standard quantitative sources (Naval Office shipping lists, censuses, tax records, and so on) to assess the prominence in slaving and slave owning of merchants and planters identifiable as Jewish in Barbados, Jamaica, New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, and all other smaller English colonial ports. He follows this strategy in the Caribbean through the 1820s; his North American coverage effectively terminates in 1775. Faber acknowledges the few merchants of Jewish background locally prominent in slaving during the second half of the eighteenth century but otherwise confirms the small-to-minuscule size of colonial Jewish communities of any sort and shows them engaged in slaving and slave holding only to degrees indistinguishable from those of their English competitors.[75]

While acknowledging Jewish participation in slavery, scholars reject allegations that Jews dominated the slave trade in Medieval Europe, Africa, and/or the Americas; Jews were no more or less involved in the slave trade than any other ethno-cultural or national group.[73][74]

MyLawd said:

well, the info i am seeking at the moment is where you got the idea that goldstruck is an actual jewish surname.


.
[Edited 10/27/09 3:32am]

cborgman said:

i don't know what your understanding of "prevalent" means, but the above info surely tells me that the people under discussion surely had their hands deep in the slavery cookie jar.

the history is probably hard to accept if one wants the whole world to feel only feel the suffering of one particular group of people, as compared to what that group of people did to others (dispelling any myth of being chosen)

in addition, i don't think Prince is anti-Semetic because as a descendent of Africa, the Semites are his children, he is also Semitic



but this is getting tedious

MyLawd said:

but this is not "major player"

and frankly, i'm not jewish. i just know anti-judaism when i see it. and "goldstruck" and unfairly targeting the jews exclusively for slavery is anti-jewish, all words games aside.

cborgman said:

You are completely wrong on the anti-semitism slant, in my view.

The point you are missing is that those names are used as examples of how "indigenous" (for want of a better word) names were changed to suit that particular society. Jewish names were Americanised (like Pearlman), so Prince is actually showing that it is not just people of African origin that this applies to.

Secondly, and even more blatantly obvious, is Prince's inclusion of a section of a Martin Luther King speech, which says ""Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will
b able 2 join hands in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
"free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last!"

How is that an anti-semitic statement?! That is Prince showing his stance, for people who have still managed to miss what is quite obvious! If you can't successfully argue against those points, you must reconsider your perception of these lyrics.

Mindflux said:

what?

the lyric is "but you still got your family name, pleased to meet you mr. perlman/rosenblum/goldstruck" not "i guess they changed your family name too, mr. goldstruck"

perlman and rosenblum aren't americanized names, those are jewish names. the americanized names would likely be pearl and roosevelt or rose.

and as i mentioned before, goldstruck is not a jewish name. it's a made up one playing on the stereotype of the greedy gold-hungry jew.

if what you were arguing was true, and it isn't, the lyrics would not be using jewish names, it would be using non-jewish names that they were forced into as the slaves were.



.
[Edited 10/27/09 15:43pm]

cborgman said:

Prince is addressing the majority of his listeners when he says "you still got your family name".

He then uses names that also have an artistic interpretation alluding to the rich master/slave scenario whilst also showing that Jewish names were subject to the same bastardisation (again, you are wrong about the name; Pearlman - Americanized form of Ashkenazic Jewish Perelman. You can't dispute that - it is a fact.) Your point about stereotyping jews as "greedy gold hungry" says more about your own take on jewish people than it does about Prince's.

And, finally and perhaps more importantly, you still haven't answered as to why, if it is anti-semitic (even your narrow view of what that means) would Prince include a speech that talks about JEWS and other Christian denominations getting together - again, I ask, how is that anti-semitic? If you wanted to give that vision, you would NOT include that statement.

Oh and, by the way, Rosenblum is German

It remains a crapfest of an album:

Tiresome seventies jazz-rock / fusion: technical shit, without soul.

Brainwashed / shortminded lyrics stuttered by some confused individual.

4 out of 10, nothing more.

Mindflux said:

alright... let's pretend for a moment you are right.

explain his use of the name goldstruck.

cborgman said:

music is a form of art; there is no one interpretation for his use of the name Goldstruck ... but, Prince could be directing listeners to their own thoughts

Riverpoet31 said:

i think ppl don't like it when Prince explores his black side, which TRC clearly does. personally, i really dig TRC...i find it to be experimentive and versatile in the genres of music it explores



turn on 1+1+1+=3, and see if your booty doesn't do some moooving

The only Prince album of the last 20 years that I love all the way through. I don't agree with anything he says on it, but then I don't go to Prince for that sort of thing (a philosophy masters does that for me), but I never tire of listening to it.

I love the production, the musicianship, the flow of the songs, and I think it's one of his better cd covers too!

Floats my boat.

My favorite tracks on "Rainbow Children" are: "She Loves Me 4 Me", and "Everywhere". The rest of the CD I can take or leave. The Rainbow Children is probably one of the least listened to Prince albums in my collection.

I remember when my friends and I first heard this CD being played at the celebration in 2001, we did not like it AT ALL. We were like, "What IS this shit?!" My one friend said that she would buy the album to complete her collection, but that she was not going to listen to it.

The only song that really jumped out at me upon first listen at the celebration was "She Loves Me 4 Me". I loved that song the first time I heard it, and wanted the DJ to play it again.