Martin Speake, a British jazz “composer, saxophonist, academic and educator” is preparing a lawsuit against Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance over a cancel campaign that targeted him after he criticized the school’s “BLM/anti-racist policies and initiatives” and denied that there was “systemic racial inequality in the UK jazz scene.” His case is strikingly similar to other targeted professors discussed in my recent book on free speech.
The controversy began when Speake was asked to give feedback on the policies. As he later explained, he was immediately set upon by critics calling him a racist. He stressed his bona fides:
“I hold a true and genuine belief in the equality and dignity of all human beings. I have been politically expressive about this and was even arrested in 1977 for protesting against the National Front. More recently, I co-organised the initiative ‘Long Tones for Peace’ in London’s Union Chapel, with the aim of inspiring the peaceful co-existence of all people worldwide.”
They did not help.
Some time later I forwarded this email to a student with whom I had had a stimulating conversation on the topic earlier that day. This student showed the email to some peers, but didn’t forward it to anyone. Nevertheless, as some students heard about it, the email began to attract some discontent and speculation within the student body. TL [Trinity Laban] then halted my teaching and pressured me to consent to the circulation of my email to the entire jazz department.
Speake said that Trinity Laban “threatened” him with “disciplinary action,” and he was subjected to the all-too-familiar cancel campaign, including a boycott of his classes.
Students complained that his view of the jazz community had “affected their mental health” and a Change.org petition created by “Distressed Student” complained of being “deeply affected” by Speake’s view and how it “perpetuated harmful and defamatory narratives about black musicians in the jazz industry.”
Most disturbing may have been the knee-jerk reaction of the London Jazz Orchestra. Speake was the lead alto saxophonist for 15 years, but he was requested to take a leave of absence.
So, the London Jazz Orchestra forced a musician to take leave after he exercised his free speech rights. He would not have faced such action if he had supported the policies. He had voiced a dissenting note on such policies, and the Orchestra tossed a fellow artist to the curb.
So Speake is now persona non grata because, by offering his view of these policies, he allegedly showed a “lack of sensitivity” and “created an uncomfortable and distressing learning environment.”
Speake later announced that “with a very heavy heart I had no choice but to resign from my post with [Trinity Laban] in November 2024 as my working environment had become unbearable.”
He has filed a complaint against Trinity Laban.
George Gershwin once said that “life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise.” However, Trinity Laban and the London Jazz Orchestra would add that musicians should not take such freedom beyond their music. Improvisation in speech is likely to get you canceled. When it comes to free speech, the jazz community is perfectly Gregorian.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Drake Sues UMG for Defamation in Kendrick Lamar Song
(Bloomberg) — The rap artist Drake has sued Universal Music Group NV for defamation in US federal court, accusing the company of putting his life in danger by releasing and promoting a song by his rival and labelmate Kendrick Lamar.
In a complaint filed in the Southern District of New York on Wednesday, Drake — whose given name is Aubrey Drake Graham — detailed multiple incidents of violence that occurred at his home in Toronto last spring after Universal released Lamar’s so-called diss track Not Like Us. The song, which was part of a high-profile public dispute carried out through a barrage of releases from the two artists, “falsely accuses Drake of being a pedophile and calls for violent retribution against him,” according to the complaint.
By: Ashley Carman ~ January 15, 2025
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/company-news/2025/01/15/drake-sues-universal-music-for-defamation-in-kendrick-lamar-song/
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
Case 1:25-cv-00399 Document 1 Filed 01/15/25
———————————————————————
AUBREY DRAKE GRAHAM,
Plaintiff,
v.
UMG RECORDINGS, INC.,
Defendant.
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/drake-UMG-defamation-complaint.pdf
FWIW I first got into Jazz back when I was a kid, and one of my cousins gave me several Zenith Presents albums, one of which was Jazz Set. It had Brubeck’s Take Five on it. The album is still available on ebay for pretty cheap. She also gave me The Folk Song album, and Hitmakers, from the same series.
First heard Pete Seeger’s Follow the Drinking Gourd, and Robert Goulet renditions.
Anyway –
* Paul Desmond comp. Breitenfelds go back generations to Vienna as musicians. Jewish.
* Take 5 references the 5/4 time signature making it unusual. 5 beats per measure rather than 4. Poetry is similar to some jazz. Literature also can be written in iambic pentameter as in John Updike and Shakespeare. Yes, Floyd, take 5 is a piece of work.
Do Jewish lives matter? JLM?
* it’s not sloppy…
Oh, I meant to add this music link – Chet Baker and Aranjuez – I love this piece.
Brubeck with Desmond, along with Julian “Cannonball” Adderly were my early jazz influences. I played sax for about 25 years. I was OK, but not very good at improvised solos.
Chet Baker had more personal problems than a pound dog has fleas, but he may have been the most talented “natural” trumpeter who ever existed. Never had any instruction, just picked up the horn one day and started playing. He played a ton in Skinny D’Amato’s 500 Club and other Atlantic City venues in his prime (a few years before I was old enough to get into those places). If you are willing to do the downloading, there is a pretty good collection of the music of jazz greats including Baker, Brubeck, and others available at archive.org.
Sounds like a mirror image of Robert Heinlein’s “Coventry”.
” The community of jazz musicians have always been integrated as I far as I know.”
That actually is not the case. For a very long time African American jazz musicians were excluded from performing in “Swing” jazz bands and combos, even though swing was ultimately based on blues and other music of AA origin. It was clarinetist and band leader Benny Goodman (aka “The King of Swing”) in the late 1930s and early 1940s who brought the two elements together, and began including black musicians in the eponymous “Benny Goodman’s Big Band”
“The community of jazz musicians have always been integrated as I far as I know.”
That is actually not the case. For a very long time, African American musicians were excluded from “swing” jazz bands and combos, even though that music was ultimately derived form blues and such forms. It was clarinetist and band leader Benny Goodman (aka “The King of Swing”) who began including black musicians in “Benny Goodman’s Big Band” in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Dupe comment sue to delay posting…
* “there’s a girl here, she’s almost you”
Dang, Chet Baker!
* Chet Baker was a severe heroin addict. He fell from a second story window in Amsterdam after he put heroin and cocaine into his blood vessels.
No one really wanted him around. People don’t like drug addicts. He has a sleepy sound in his singing.
I once subscribed to a Jazz magazine. I loved it. When this issue came out, I cancelled it –
http://larryblumenfeld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Jazz_In_The_Age_of_Trump_JAZZIZ-Summer-2018.pdf
* Adolphe Sax, a Belgian,
invented the saxophone. He was white. Take all the saxophones away. Only Belgians can use them.
The email can be read on Google easily written by Mr. Speaker. He said it’s a socioeconomic problem and not restricted to blacks. Poor people can’t afford instruments he said.
I don’t care for jazz. Now make all music jazz and torture people with it.
WGAS
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
– Plato, 300 B.C.
__________________
Merit is the overriding and compelling dynamic.
Affirmative action, quotas, DEI, social engineering, redistribution, etc., all constitute charity, bias, and favor and, as such, are unconstitutional.
Americans certainly enjoy the natural and God-given right and freedom of choice—to accept or reject.
Majority rule means the minority does not.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
People must adapt to the outcomes of freedom.
Freedom does not adapt to people…
dictatorship does.
At this point, it is my opinion that most, if not all, of those indoctrinated into the cult of wokeness/progressivism are beyond redemption and need to be safely removed from society and left to age out in secluded reservations created for the safe keeping of those who pose a threat to rational civilization. I can’t think of any other efficient method of removing this infestation of lethal ideologies short of the 1789 creation of the guillotine.
@Whimsicalmama
Completely agree. We have two generations on our hands that will have to simply age out, they will never be compatible with a sane society. It is tragic. If you are the parent of a child, take heed of the missteps of the past 25 years, we can’t continue this way, society could collapse all at once if at some point in the future we rely on these people. Look at the CHAZ autonomous zone and grasp the impact that might have if it were the basis for governance. We really need to hope and act as though this is being bred out of us, and we are very close to that point today.
* It’s all God’s work. It isn’t true. He makes massive mistakes. The UK is alive and well in heaven.
I can’t get the thought out of my mind that LA is more reminiscent of Sodom & Gemmorah than a Santa Anna wind.
“[H]e criticized the school’s ‘BLM/anti-racist policies and initiatives’ . . .”
I don’t think a trumpet cares what color your lips are.
As a listener, I don’t.
If you do, you are a racist.
It is a bid odd that the Jazz community is having this issue. It is perhaps the most inclusive of the music genres. The community of jazz musicians have always been integrated as I far as I know.
So a student unidentified is having emotional distress due to an email he probably did not read. I had plenty of distress when I was young. It was called growing up. Maybe that student should grow up.
I have not read the email, so I have no opinion on it. Yet, to remove a renowned musician due his personal beliefs does not help the creative process and potentially stymies all.
I hope he wins his case for no other reason than I am done with political correctness.
For all we know, the professor could have expressed concern that DEI/racial sensitivity policies could backfire and injure those students the administration is purporting to help. In music, placing a player in an ensemble for which she/does not have the chops is unfairvt both the individual player and the ensemble.
I read the email. There’s nothing distressing in it. Hysteria
Like the California wildfires, this metastasizing intolerance for disfavored speech spreads so easily and takes root in the embers.
And like California, it will continue to look like whack-a-mole unless we can NEUTRALIZE MEDIA SLANT and provide the public with equal access to countervailing information. How many of us would have known of this effort against Speake -but for reading this? THANK YOU JONATHAN TURLEY for your efforts toward that balance.
“The controversy began when Speake was asked to give feedback on the policies.” If there’s a chance you may not like the answer then perhaps it’s best not to ask the question?
Music itself is an expression of Speech, It is aural as One’s voice; Talking and Singing – Jazz, Rap, Country, Rock, the National Anthem are all included.
“… He had voiced a dissenting note on such policies, and the Orchestra tossed a fellow artist to the curb. …”
But why (ret) should I have to endure “Oh say can you See” before a Ball Game, when People simply can’t “See” or “Hear” that the Speach in that melody hurts Others ears.
It depicts; War, Massacre, Majestic Imperialism and Patriotic Facism. But I digress … Simply cut the Audio portion completely off the Media presentations,
The UK can enjoy their Soccer Games without Sound. XM radio, FM Radio, AM Radio, can all go silently Off-AIR. Unplugged would truly be Un-Plugged, Hairy Armed Women Liberationist can Burn their Ear Plugs, and the High School Dance can be a thing of the past.
The Inscets and Birds would like that, it provides an Environmentally safer environment with less MHz cross-traffic flying through the Ethos of Earth’s Atmosphere (It’s a Green Thing too), You know, Earth’s Security Blanket the life-sustaining air we breathe that envelops our planet like a pale-blue security blanket.
So I guess if People would just ‘Shut Their Trap ‘ and listen to the Sounds of Silence, the World will be a better place, that according to some. A world without Jazz would be deafening to Others.
If I had to choose between a World with Censored-Speech or Free Speech, I choose Free Speech.
Give Me Jazz or Give me Death
Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley – PJI
https://www.jazzalley.com/www-home/calendar.jsp
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“Music itself is an expression of Speech”
I somewhat disagree. That is undoubtedly part of it, but I think that music transcends the influence of human speech to include many other sound sources.
Good luck to him in the UK, as his rights are not protected there, he has courage to be sure. Hopefully this madness is on the way out.
I keep thinking about the reasons why our people took up arms back in 1775. The UK had made much progress in many areas of it’s democracy but has never quite taken the final step to a real, written constitution, that stands above all, whether it be King, Parliament, or a Music Conservatory.
Even though the Biden Administration has done its best to negate or even crush the 1st Amendment, it still stands there like a beacon for all to see. And it stands above the President, the Congress, and the Supreme Court.
The UK and much of Europe, at least at the governmental area, just cannot quite make that leap that the government is the instrument of the people and that it stands below the people and their god given rights, or natural rights, whether you are religious or not.
As more and more has come out about the suppression of free speech by the Biden administration and some of it’s educational, legal and business minions, the greater faith I have in the constitution as the final arbiter of our legal and civil rights.
I wish Mr Speake well in his quest. The result of the suit may tell us a lot about which way the legal winds are blowing in the UK. Right now turbulent is about all I can see there.
Interesting that Martin Speake wishes to speak freely. Could not have asked for a better name or play on words.
I keep thinking about the reasons why our people took up arms back in 1775.
Well done GEB. Wouldn’t it be great if that was a common way to think?
My answer to your question is not something I recall ever being taught in school. It’s called salutory neglect.
It took the British Colonists about 100 years of relative independence from England to transform into Americans. By the time the King and parliament began the Intolerable Acts, they were dealing with “subjects” in name only. Once these Americans got a taste of freedom, self-reliance and voice in how government should work, there would be no going back.
You can’t fix this kind of stupid…
https://stevewitherspoonhome.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/hatespeechequalsmurder.jpg
True enough, but he has other claims to make, such as defamation. Even here in the US free speech is not a “right” that can be asserted against a private party.
–Students complained that his view of the jazz community had “affected their mental health” —
When people talk like this you know that they are a bunch of stupid, whiny little shits. Never bend the knee to the passive-aggressive nutjobs. Never let them have their way. Fight fight fight.
Speech that the left doesn’t want to hear is violence, but burning down neighborhoods in Minneapolis after George Floyd is free speech – they’re just expressing themselves.
His main obstacle will be that this is the UK, where the freedom of speech is not recognized as a right.