One response to “What I Listened to on Spotify in 2024”
-
I’m sorry, Jacob, I don’t have Spotify. The name has always brought to mind an attempt to mass produce some kind of generic dog. I have been listening to a lot of Glenn Gould lately, and the brilliant jazz harpist, Dorothy Ashby. A couple of days ago, I listened to Shostakovich’s harrowing Fifth Symphony. He wrote it supposedly as an act of penance for his slight deflection from Stalin bootlicking, but nobody who has heard it has ever believed that it was anything other than a shriek of existential misery about The Terror. You’ll read that Shostakovich appears to have gotten away with fooling the evil pig, but I don’t believe it for a moment. I’m sure Stalin knew exactly what Shostakovich was saying with his symphony, and being like all sadists a psychopath, enjoyed it all the more because it was so obviously what it was. If you haven’t listened to it, do, sometime in the next couple of snowbound days. I watched the Frankfort Symphony Orchestra’s performance of it on YouTube.
Soulfood 
Leave a comment