Film Review: “A Complete Unknown” — A Fable Well Worth Telling

BY TIM JACKSON

Focusing on the years between 1961 and 1965, director James Mangold turns Bob Dylan’s creative journey into a better-than-average cinematic biography in which the singer ends up riding off on his motorcycle and into history.

A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold. Screening on screens around New England beginning December 24.

In Bob Dylan’s imaginative memoir, Chronicle, he begins: “I’d come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.” It is an apt summary of James Mangold’s film A Complete Unknown. With a script by Mangold and Jay Cocks based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric (Arts Fuse review), the film covers Dylan’s arrival in Greenwich Village in January 1961 and ends with his legendary performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The reinvention of Bobby Zimmerman into Bob Dylan was swift; he took the city and the folk world by storm. Mangold gleans Wald’s book for references and details, painting a clear if occasionally fanciful portrait. Dylan was already an obsessive songwriter at twenty. His songs and lyrics were highly personal, unlike the traditional songs performed by his peers. His performance at Newport with electric instruments was transformative, a radical departure from what was the standard for ‘folk music’, which was resolutely acoustic.

Playing Dylan, Timothée Chalamet might earn his first Oscar. There is a passing physical resemblance between the two of them; but more important, the actor plays the guitar and meets the challenge of duplicating Dylan’s nasal vocal style. (The rest of the cast also perform their musical numbers.) Chalamet suggests that Dylan’s mumbling speech might be the way the man used to emotionally distance himself from the world and close relationships. That reticence is understandable. As Dylan sings in “Maggie’s Farm”, ‘I got a head full of ideas that is drivin’ me insane’.

At age 20, Dylan is seen in the film moving into her apartment with a New York girlfriend, where he writes compulsively. Soon after that, Dylan shacks up with the already famous Joan Baez. (As Baez, Monica Barbaro has an unaffected singing voice that resonates with Baez’s, though the original is a tough act to duplicate.) Initially, Dylan had commented to manager Albert Grossman that Baez was “pretty,” adding “maybe too pretty”. Arrogant, unshakably confident of his own vision, Dylan later tells Baez to her face that: “Your songs are like oil paintings at the dentist’s office.” Baez’s understandable response: “And you’re kind of an asshole, Bob.”

The narrative’s accuracy regarding times and places is shakey. It is true that Dylan met and played with the legendary Woody Guthrie during his first week in New York. A Complete Unknown places his initial visit at New Jersey’s Greystone Psychiatric Park where Guthrie, played by Scoot McNairy (also in this year’s Nightbitch), lies in bed, unable to speak, his career cut short after a long battle with Huntington’s disease. But it is film fiction that Pete Seeger was at Guthrie’s side at the time. Edward Norton’s fatherly demeanor and vocal inflections imitate Seeger perfectly — his performance is among the film’s highlights. After Dylan plays “Song to Woody” in the hospital room, the pair sit without comment. The silence of this moving scene makes a dramatic point: we’re left to infer that both of the older artists recognize that this young minstrel from Duluth might be the pioneer for a new generation of folk artists.

Grossman soon signed Dylan into his stable of artists, which included the biggest stars of the scene, such as Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary. A Columbia Record contract followed. Grossman was a music industry powerhouse, but Dan Fogler’s interpretation of him is a bit clownish. Grossman soon recognized that his other artists could cover Dylan’s quickly expanding repertoire, earning all concerned a fortune in royalties.

In the film, Dylan falls into a relationship with activist and artist Sylvie Russo, played by Elle Fanning. This character is a substitute for Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s actual muse, the woman who graces the cover of 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. (It is one of the few name changes in the film.) In Chronicles, Dylan describes meeting Rotolo: “We started talking and my head started to spin. Cupid’s arrow had whistled past my ears before, but this time it hit me in the heart and the weight of it dragged me overboard.” He later wrote the song “Ballad in Plain D” about their separation. In 1985 he said ”Oh yeah, that one! I look back and say, ‘I must have been a real schmuck to write that.’ Of all the songs I’ve written, maybe I could have left that alone.” After recording it, he was never known to have performed it again.

The fine supporting cast includes Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash and Norbert Leo Butz as Alan Lomax. Many key figures are skirted over in this telling, such as journalist Bob Shelton and folk singers Phil Ochs and Peter Yarrow. Others, like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, receive peripheral cameos. One notable scene comes when Dylan makes an unexpected appearance at a TV show hosted by Seeger, in which the guest is a mythical Delta Blues singer named Jesse Moffett. The blues guitarist Big Bill Morganfield was brought in to play the role. Moffett and Dylan play a wonderful duet; it’s a made-up performance, but it adds some blues bona fides to the film.

Dylan’s wealth and status came fast. By 1964, he was a star. The civil rights and anti-war movements embraced the performer as their premier spokesman-troubadour. But soon a a radically altered Dylan would emerge, one that alienated many of his fans and admirers. That’s the subject of the second half of A Complete Unknown, which leads up to Dylan’s infamous appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

George Wein began the folk festival in 1959 with Grossman. It was to serve as a platform for live performances in the acoustic tradition, the lineup structured to include emerging folk artists (Joan Baez and the Kingston Trio), traditional bluegrass acts (Flatt and Scruggs), aging blues masters (Son House, Odetta, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee), and many more. Wein was creating a community made up of musicians who were dedicated to the progressive ideals of a generation, artists who had come of age amidst the battles against racial segregation and McCarthyism. There was also the assassinations of John Kennedy and Malcolm X, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. War was escalating in Vietnam. At the center of the movement and its ideals was the perpetually engaged Pete Seeger. But Dylan was a musician and poet first, not an activist. His sudden fame made him uncomfortable; he resented being labeled or pigeonholed. He had a working knowledge of a vast range of American music and loved rock and roll as much as folk. Given that his songs and lyrics were being interpreted by many as speaking for the conscience of anti-establishment culture, a conflict was inevitable.

In March of 1964, Dylan recorded an electric album, Bringing It All Back Home. Dylan, backed by members of Paul Butterfield’s Chicago Blues band, opened at the Newport Folk Festival with an electric version of “Maggie’s Farm”. Many in the crowd booed: it was seen by some as an affront to the acoustic roots of folk. They shouldn’t have been so surprised. The truth is, Dylan always wanted to be a rock star. Unacknowledged is the fact that the Butterfield Band had performed loudly that same afternoon with electric guitars. But Dylan’s performance ended up creating an angry division between Seeger, the traditionalist, and Dylan, who was upset and confounded by the hostile reaction. The folk world was forever changed.

The performance was not as much a revolution as an evolution, a change that is at the heart of A Complete Unknown. As befits a Hollywood biopic, it fabricates and simplifies details for the sake of creating drama out of Dylan’s break with the past. There’s added soap opera: an awkward episode about a romantic break-up. Nevertheless, by focusing on the years between 1961 and 1965, Mangold turns Dylan’s creative journey into a better-than-average cinematic biography in which the singer ends up riding off on his motorcycle and into history.

Given that America today is being ripped apart by another traumatic political divide, this is a story worth telling. Particularly for generations only vaguely familiar with the embattled evolution of one of America’s visionary artist poets,

Dylan aficionados will no doubt grumble. Chronologically, songs are performed before they were actually written; there are incidents that never happened, and various events have been consolidated for dramatic purposes. Rolling Stone magazine has published a list of 29 fictitious events and/or details in the film. Purists should turn to numerous books on Dylan’s life and music. Besides Dylan Goes Electric and Chronicles, it is worth looking at 2022’s Philosophy of Modern Song, in which Dylan analyzes and riffs on tunes over the course of over 60 essays. In film, there are Martin Scorsese’s documentaries, 2005’s No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and 2029’s The Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story. Also worth taking in: Todd Haynes’s terrific I’m Not There and D. A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, which covers Dylan’s 1965 concert tour in England.

Dylan, who is on record as admiring Chalamet’s performance suggested on X, “After you’ve seen the movie read [Wald’s] book”. The book and film fit together well; they present a complete picture. In a recent interview with Zane Lowe, Chalamet explains: “This is interpretive. This is not definitive. This is not fact. This is not how it happened. This is a fable.”

Footnote:

I was at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. I had just gotten my driver’s license and I drove to Newport from Connecticut with two friends. We slept in sleeping bags in the dirt and washed at the local YMCA. I owned the double side 45 RPM record of “Like a Rolling Stone”. That electric version, along with British adaptations of American standards, such as The Animal’s version of “House on the Rising Sun”, were blowing our young minds. All day, you could attend what were called ‘workshops’ with roots artists from America and around the world. The most vivid of those in my memory: Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Doc Watson and his son Merle, Rev. Gary Davis, Son House, and Lightnin’ Hopkins. In those days you could gather informally around a folk singer like Taj Mahal singing under a tree in the afternoons. I’ll never forget an impromptu performance featuring Peter Schumann, co-founder of the Bread & Puppet Theatre, who did some improvised storytelling while Eric Von Schmidt unrolled a long sheet of paper attached to a fence and drew illustrations as he went along.

That evening, we expected Dylan to “go electric.” We had been soaked by the rain and couldn’t afford the ticket price, so we listened from outside the gates. We were pleased to hear the electric guitars cranking out “Like a Rolling Stone”. A decade later, working with folk singer Tom Rush, I wrote a piece for Black Sheep Magazine called “The Folkie’s Fear of Drums”. A positive letter of response was later published from none other than – Pete Seeger!

Tim Jackson was an assistant professor of Digital Film and Video for 20 years. His music career in Boston began in the 1970s and includes some 20 groups, recordings, national and international tours, and contributions to film soundtracks. He studied theater and English as an undergraduate, and has also worked helter-skelter as an actor and member of SAG and AFTRA since the 1980s. He has directed three feature documentaries: Chaos and Order: Making American Theater about the American Repertory Theater; Radical Jesters, which profiles the practices of 11 interventionist artists and agit-prop performance groups; When Things Go Wrong: The Robin Lane Story. And two short films: Joan Walsh Anglund: Life in Story and Poem and The American Gurner. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. You can read more of his work on his blog.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Bob Dylan And The Creative Leap That Transformed Modern Music

BY TED OLSON

PROFESSOR OF APPALACHIAN 

STUDIES AND BLUEGRASS, OLD-TIME 

AND ROOTS MUSIC STUDIES,

EAST TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY

The Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” starring Timothée Chalamet, focuses on Dylan’s early 1960s transition from idiosyncratic singer of folk songs to internationally renowned singer-songwriter.

As a music historian, I’ve always respected one decision of Dylan’s in particular – one that kicked off the young artist’s most turbulent and significant period of creative activity.

Sixty years ago, on Halloween Night 1964, a 23-year-old Dylan took the stage at New York City’s Philharmonic Hall. He had become a star within the niche genre of revivalist folk music. But by 1964 Dylan was building a much larger fanbase through performing and recording his own songs.

Dylan presented a solo set, mixing material he had previously recorded with some new songs. Representatives from his label, Columbia Records, were on hand to record the concert, with the intent to release the live show as his fifth official album.

It would have been a logical successor to Dylan’s four other Columbia albums. With the exception of one track, “Corrina, Corrina,” those albums, taken together, featured exclusively solo acoustic performances.

But at the end of 1964, Columbia shelved the recording of the Philharmonic Hall concert. Dylan had decided that he wanted to make a different kind of music.

From Minnesota to Manhattan

Two-and-a-half years earlier, Dylan, then just 20 years old, started earning acclaim within New York City’s folk music community. At the time, the folk music revival was taking place in cities across the country, but Manhattan’s Greenwich Village was the movement’s beating heart.

Mingling with and drawing inspiration from other folk musicians, Dylan, who had recently moved to Manhattan from Minnesota, secured his first gig at Gerde’s Folk City on April 11, 1961. Dylan appeared in various other Greenwich Village music clubs, performing folk songs, ballads and blues. He aspired to become, like his hero Woody Guthrie, a self-contained artist who could employ vocals, guitar and harmonica to interpret the musical heritage of “the old, weird America,” an adage coined by critic Greil Marcus to describe Dylan’s early repertoire, which was composed of material learned from prewar songbooks, records and musicians.

While Dylan’s versions of older songs were undeniably captivating, he later acknowledged that some of his peers in the early 1960s folk music scene – specifically, Mike Seeger – were better at replicating traditional instrumental and vocal styles.

Dylan, however, realized he had an unrivaled facility for writing and performing new songs.

In October 1961, veteran talent scout John Hammond signed Dylan to record for Columbia. His eponymous debut, released in March 1962, featured interpretations of traditional ballads and blues, with just two original compositions. That album sold only 5,000 copies, leading some Columbia officials to refer to the Dylan contract as “Hammond’s Folly.”

Full steam ahead

Flipping the formula of its predecessor, Dylan’s 1963 follow-up album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” offered 11 originals by Dylan and just two traditional songs. The powerful collection combined songs about relationships with original protest songs, including his breakthrough “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

“The Times They Are A-Changin’,” his third release, exclusively showcased Dylan’s own compositions.

Dylan’s creative output continued. As he testified in “Restless Farewell,” the closing track for “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “My feet are now fast / and point away from the past.”

Released just six months after “The Times,” Dylan’s fourth Columbia album, “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” featured solo acoustic recordings of original songs that were lyrically adventurous and less focused on current events. As suggested in his song “My Back Pages,” he was now rejecting the notion that he could – or should – speak for his generation.

Bringing it all together

By the end of 1964, Dylan yearned to break away permanently from the constraints of the folk genre – and from the notion of “genre” altogether. He wanted to subvert the expectations of audiences and to rebel against music industry forces intent on pigeonholing him and his work.

The Philharmonic Hall concert went off without a hitch, but Dylan refused to let Columbia turn it into an album. The recording wouldn’t generate an official release for another four decades.

Instead, in January 1965, Dylan entered Columbia’s Studio A to record his fifth album, “Bringing It All Back Home.” But this time, he embraced the electric rock sound that had energized America in the wake of Beatlemania. That album introduced songs with stream-of-consciousness lyrics featuring surreal imagery, and on many of the songs Dylan performed with the accompaniment of a rock band.

“Bringing It All Back Home,” released in March 1965, set the tone for Dylan’s next two albums: “Highway 61 Revisited,” in August 1965, and “Blonde on Blonde,” in June 1966. Critics and fans have long considered these latter three albums – pulsing with what the singer-songwriter himself called “that thin, that wild mercury sound” – as among the greatest albums of the rock era.

On July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan invited members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band on stage to accompany three songs. Since the genre expectations for folk music during that era involved acoustic instrumentation, the audience was unprepared for Dylan’s loud performances. Some critics deemed the set an act of heresy, an affront to folk music propriety. The next year, Dylan embarked on a tour of the U.K., and an audience member at the Manchester stop infamously heckled him for abandoning folk music, crying out, “Judas!”

Yet the creative risks undertaken by Dylan during this period inspired countless other musicians: rock acts such as the Beatles, the Animals and the Byrds; pop acts such as Stevie Wonder, Johnny Rivers and Sonny and Cher; and country singers such as Johnny Cash.

Acknowledging the bar that Dylan’s songwriting set, Cash, in his liner notes to Dylan’s 1969 album “Nashville Skyline,” wrote, “Here-in is a hell of a poet.”

Enlivened by Dylan’s example, many musicians went on to experiment with their own sound and style, while artists across a range of genres would pay homage to Dylan through performing and recording his songs.

In 2016, Dylan received the Nobel Prize in literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” His early exploration of this tradition can be heard on his first four Columbia albums – records that laid the groundwork for Dylan’s august career.

Back in 1964, Dylan was the talk of Greenwich Village.

But now, because he never rested on his laurels, he’s the toast of the world.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

New Book On Bob Dylan Will Feature Hundreds Of Rare Images

Arts & Entertainment shows “Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine,” a 600-page book of images from the archives of singer-songwriter. The book, expected in the fall, will include dozens of essays, with novelist Michael Ondaatje, critic Greil Marcus and former U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo among the contributors. (Callaway Arts & Entertainment via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of rare photos and other images from the archives of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan will be featured in “Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine,” coming out this fall. The new release also will include dozens of essays, with novelist Michael Ondaatje, critic Greil Marcus and former U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo among the contributors.

Callaway Arts & Entertainment announced Thursday that the 600-page book will come out Oct. 24. The founder of Callaway, Nicholas Callaway, said in a statement that “Mixing Up the Medicine” will “introduce the full scope of this artist’s monumental creativity and achievements to a new generation.”

The book is edited by Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel of the Bob Dylan Center, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “Mixing Up the Medicine” refers to a line from Dylan’s classic “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”

According to the publisher, “Mixing Up the Medicine” will include draft lyrics, photographs, drawings and other materials. The release has a list price of $100.

A Random Thought

I’m not sure what to call myself anymore with the way society dramatically changed which did make hardliners look like punks with liberals sinking deeper and deeper and scary, while libertarians are evading both sides of the political spectrum as it has evidently turned the status quo into something else beyond ones imagination. I have quite often asked myself why the whole world seems to be losing its sense of purpose, going toward a different direction from around which nothing apparently would be the same again. And I am still wondering while penning this piece, why is it that peace shouldn’t be given a chance. Perhaps it has been beyond my reasoning which probably amounts to Bob Dylan’s perception that "it’s not dark yet but we are getting there." I have been bent worrying about the whole concept on why murder is a commonplace thing in the society that we live in today; why incest is no longer a taboo in this our beloved place called Earth; why brothers are killing brothers over greed and material rivalry; why politicking has become the most dangerous game in the universe with premeditated acts of Genocide—the Pogrom in my native land nobody wants to talk about, the Rwandan Genocide shown on live TV while the leaders of the world watched and did nothing about it when it unfolded, the murderous conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Ivory Coast and the list goes on and on—and those that runs the affairs of state uttering no word but strong of the opinion that a stable world is being kept in place through diplomacy and dialogue meaning there must be wars to stop the rogue states from harming the rest of us.

I find that very disturbing on many grounds. Now from the scheme of things many are wallowing in sorrow caused by human nature. The ongoing war in Iraq, and how national security is tied to oil. The Genocide in Sudan, the restlessness and Al Qaeda in Pakistan, the troubled Gulf States, and the Niger-Delta militants in a troubled and confused Nigeria are among a whole lot of mess that keeps one wondering if the world leaders are for real.

Take for instance, the entrapment called Nigeria. Nothing will be the same again ever since the beginning of its geography. The fabricated nation is not getting any better rather it’s getting worse by the day and the riff raffs are applauding because the leftovers are good enough to make them not worry in a nation corruption is baked in every gene. Most "Nigerians" who don’t seem to realize the dangers of an emerging, call it fledgling democracy with a gullible and vulnerable citizenry which empowers the ruling elite to take advantage of their weakness, makes a nonsense of that very experiment on the basis there is no resistance demanding equity, freedom and justice for all. We have been experiencing kangaroo courts and money bags exchanging a pleasantry which has let inept and corrupt politicians off the hook. The now shackled Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is not expected to be doing much with Nuhu Ribadu’s exit which gives every criminal minded and crooked politician the impetus to embezzle money without questions asked whatsoever.

As one dabbles into Nigeria related news stories and freeze journalists who are now writing as if all is well with a state that is bent on destroying what is good for the people, I have been reading a whole lot from our flamboyant newsmen, but with a very few who are focused to keep up with the unique tradition of journalism, the rest seems to be driving aimlessly in pursuit of what has to do with credible and investigative newsreporting. The sensational tabloid Daily Sun is good at doing that. To be precise, not even a Nigerian newspaper is worth reading these days. I had given the Guardian and Vanguard the props but they disappointed me when little office management issues came its way and shut a major newspaper down for weeks, especially the Guardian. What would amount to Guardian’s closure sending its online and on the street readers elsewhere beats me when one considers the magnitude of the nation’s leading newspaper I thought had been independent and free of sponsored and "carry go bring come" journalism. Any Guardian reader who was shut out for weeks would agree with me that the Guardian staff and management team did not care about the street vendors and news-thirsty populace who pay to read its daily; and of course, the advertisers whose source is what keeps the premium paper afloat.

For sure, the Guardian was not shut down as in a case of one operating under a tyranny where press freedom has its limits, or a case of a bully who runs his own paper his own way negating the tradition of quality journalism. Considering the fact that during the era of military juntas newspaper business was a gamble and an act of power play which sent shocking waves to entrepreneurs who eyed the press, for the press, the unofficial fourth organ of government has been the mouthpiece of the people even though it had been done under series of threats by dictators who are allergic to press freedom.

If a newspaper survived the days of Olusegun Obasanjo’s brutality of the press when the nation’s authentic newsmagazine, Newbreed run by the late Chris Okolie was permanently shut down and going through critically dangerous regimes of Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha, why would a token be reason for Guardian to close its doors for weeks to a point of dissolution? In many discussions I had engaged with my colleagues about the workers’ strike at the Guardian, I spoke with near certainty that the giant newspaper will not be making it back to the news stands, talk less of the web, knowing what that country stands for and how it goes about its business. I was wrong, the paper made it back but I’m sure it lost many of its online surfers. Frankly, I have not been checking it out much, lately. The reason is for weeks I couldn’t read from a daily whose quality work was desired and going elsewhere to pick up junks that may not be reliable I switched to getting my news wired directly into my mail box.

Virtually the Guardian workers’ strike boiled down to one thing: Money, money, money! "Show me the money." "Who has it?" "Who is getting paid, and who is not getting paid?" "Show me the money." "I want more money and I want it right now." "What are you going to do about it?" "Show me the Money." "I ain’t got it, what are you going to do. Shut this place down?" "What you are demanding is too high a stake for our management. I can’t afford it, and now what?" "Show me the money." The square off dragged on for weeks until somehow, who knows, the Guardian management team buckled up coming to terms with reality its paying a terrible cost which did increase defections of its readers to elsewhere.

My problem of early morning news read had just begun. I barely check my mails at this particular mail box I had used as conduit to read African-related dailies, but ever since that move in applying for direct mail box news related articles and journals, my appetite for news read died instantly. I mean, where do I start? It’s hundreds of mails one can’t even figure out which is junk and which is spam, the kind of stuff that could destroy your computer because hackers or the so-called black hats are out there looking for ways and means to level whatever one has built. I may be giving my readers a clue that is if they don’t already know about an unfiltered substance that runs through ones mail box. Meanwhile, I’m looking for another strategy. Maybe I should go back to my old ways, getting my news directly from the source on the spot.

I fancy journalism, but I hate the guts of those who think money buys everything on Mother Earth, the vulnerable ones whose concepts are "you give me money, I write good about you" even when it’s obvious the subject in question has been nailed in the court of public opinion. Nevertheless, the love of money has its own fair share, too. For those that think capitalism should be blamed by money being the root of all evils, equally money is the root of solving all problems in a society enslaved by bills of all kinds, from the gas company to the water and power company. There are no ways to go about it except if you live in the jungle where there are no rules and regulations and where only the fittest survives. But in our own very society of Homo Sapiens, the modern humans, life is supposed to be easier, meaningful and much, much better. The good things of life may have eluded us with what is going on right now and money shouldn’t have been the object. Just take a look around you and see how the world is drowning according to the Biblical revelations. It’s war all over which continues to amaze me.

The elections and uprising in Kenya is one perfect example to start with. Innocent people are dying for a man who stole the people’s mandate and for a man who is saying he’s the rightful winner and power should belong to him. Imagine! Do they really care about these hungry folks whose demand shouldn’t be far-fetched if it was in an organized society where good governance and rule of law is upheld? And why are these folks dying senselessly for political gangsters who are destined to destroy every aspect of civil liberties if nothing is going their way? Does it really matter who won the election when the pathological lying politicians will never live up to what they pledged during the campaigns? We’ve seen this over and over again, particularly in Africa which makes one begin to question what’s wrong with that continent, a continent blessed with every resources including human capital.

Where in Africa would one say a sound democratic fabric is making progress except and I think South Africa? Besides South Africa and perhaps Ghana after going through several reforms, the rest of the countries in that continent are a human tragedy and it is only a radical step like in Ghana that could turn things around. Zimbabwe is a case in point in this aspect. During the struggle for its independence, the founding fathers—Joshua Nkomo, Abel Muzereuwa and Robert Mugabe--had a platform. A platform that would in its totality bring Zimbabwe to an entirely free state which was the basis for the struggle to attain sovereignty. Zimbabwe’s independence was so unique all black nations embraced it which however signaled a trend that would free South Africa from an Apartheid regime. Eventually the walls of Apartheid came tumbling down and blacks in South Africa regained their freedom. But in Zimbabwe today, Robert Mugabe who has been power drunk since the nation’s independence in 1980, a whole lot has changed and putting it concretely Zimbabwe is worse than its colonial era. Mugabe, the dictator that he would be has chased away all his political opponents including protest musicians like Thomas Mapfumo who has been in exile ever since for his protest against misrule through his Chimurenga and the struggle to fight against tyranny.

So too are other nations in the continent. Nigeria for example is not getting any better since its fabrication as a nation state. The schools left by the missionaries long time ago has become an object of caricature. The once existed equipped school labs have all vanished. The playgrounds now have a resemblance of the jungle with thick forests. The youths are no longer interested in academics but the easiest way to make money. The culture-based programs have collapsed. Young girls are now “free” doing whatever that pleases them and parents have nothing to say for time has changed. Whiskey and whores is now a way of life in our institutions of higher learning and no one seems to be paying attention on the basis it is an acceptable behavior, coming with time. Struggling college professors are paid to grade students who ditch classes, in most cases, if not all, girls of easy virtue who are out there on the streets coupled with unbecoming conducts. This is of course widespread in the Igbo-related states which are the easiest explanation to this phenomenon. The case of Nd’Igbo is troubling and the reason for that is lack of profound leadership. A people whose history has been that of political impotence, powerlessness and the inability of its intellectuals and thinkers to put things into perspective considering how a colonial mandate put together a people with different nationalities which has nothing in common, from botany to cultural anthropology.

Given the historic attitude of the Yorubas and Hausa-Fulanis toward Nd’Igbo, it should be natural that Igbos anywhere on the face of this planet incline to ignore whatever that is taking place in that country and begin in earnest to building community. But how could that be achieved when Igbos home and in Diaspora are drenched with one Nigeria attitudes and assumptions? Up until now, there is no single Igbo newspaper out there that could teach generations of Igbo how to wield power and successfully defend Igbo interest. Check all the papers and the ones that just popped up—Guardian, Vanguard, Daily Independent, Daily Champion, This Day, The Nation, Leadership Nigeria, Tribune, Daily Trust, P.M. News, Observer, Independent Online, and the list goes on—none is Igbo owned except the Daily Champion owned by Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, which is national in tone. Obi Nwakanma writes all the time and where else? Vanguard Newspapers. Chuks Iloegbunam wrote extensively before becoming Governor Peter Obi’s special assistant, and where else? Vanguard Newspapers. Veteran Igbo journalist and Maharajah of the press, Okey Ndibe, had his column all over and where else? The Lagos-Ibadan axis press. And the list goes on and on.

For Igbo to pursue a political wisdom compared to her Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani competitors there must be an independent Igbo newspaper that teaches Igbo ideals and cultural relativism. And it means, in pursuing that one needs books to read, essays, stories, folklores, magazines and articles to read—all of Igbo interest.

I remember reading all the classics while growing up. Igbo folklore and tradition was the key to a successful Igbo upbringing. Today nobody reads Chinua Achebe. When I was growing up everybody read him which paved way for our path to cultural and political wisdom. Achebe, the man with vision no one seemed to recognize—the international community included—wrote "Things Fall Apart" when many of us weren’t born. We discussed Achebe at recess and the long holidays and our social concepts of Karl Marx theory had begun to emerge. What else could be compared to a book that foresaw a failed state fifty years ago? "Things Fall Apart" was a masterpiece. It told us before hand that nothing will ever work in an entrapment and fabricated state.

That reminds me of a kid I encountered sometime while attending a function at a nearby high school in the Los Angeles area. In exploring this kid and many other kids as we know them are likely to be in the know of their cultural heritage and why we should care, I sought out Igbo literature to check out their Igboness and what they have been up to. The Yankees have turned every structure of our second generation upside down; so perhaps not surprisingly, one of my encounters was with this kid, a teen we can call Chukwuma. Meanwhile the vibes of Jay Z, Kanye West, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg and the rest Hip-Hoppers is spinning into his head. I begin my conversation by introducing myself. I am Igbo and I speak the language fluently. How about you?

Chukwuma paused. "Nope" he would say. My parents are Igbo but I don’t speak the language. They try to get me to do that, Chukwuma explained. Chukwuma who wants to be a communications major plays football and hopes one day he will join the NFL for the money, not for knowledge-based programs, for instance, embarking on research work to understand the history of his parents who are Igbo. Chukwuma also told me there are many Nigerians in his school and from my understanding none speaks the language of his or her parents, and that they once had a classroom assignment culled from Achebe’s "Things Fall Apart" which is already out from his memory. He doesn’t remember any line or what the subject matter was all about. That’s another Igbo tragedy.

So as our second generation are now embedded into a popular culture that comes with the time, who should be sharing the blame for a lost generation whose parents refused to teach their children about their own cultural heritage? Would it be the 24/7 working parents who have no time to sit down with these kids teaching them the morals of our unique tradition? Would it be the high-pitched age of a nuclear society where kids are sent to day care institutions run by different ethnicity which deprives these kids of who they really are? Would it be Igbo Diaspora laid back and did not build community upon exploring the New World? Or would it be we lacked a sense of purpose and community?

I freely must confess that all the above questions are reasons why we have raised a lost generation. Compared to other communities—Jews, Armenians, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, you name them—Igbos are the worst bred of second generation immigrants. For years, series of Igbo organizations have been holding conventions of all sorts for projects grand and small. Among the gigantic project is Igbo Cultural Center projected as a structure to research, teach and learn everything related to Igbo culture. The question now is: What happened to all the money that was raised for the projects? Who are the bookkeepers? Why is nobody questioning their conducts when there is nothing to show for the money donated and contributed all these years? Is there any evidence that funds for these projects are available when needed? Where are the records to show there is a valid account on behalf of these organizations? What are the names of the financial institutions holding these accounts?

I am afraid I'm trying to raise another Igbo hackles here when I have been confronted in the past to stop attacking Igbo "elites" for doing nothing to address the plight of Nd'Igbo. I'm not sure if I really meant to attack Nd'Igbo as presumed, based on my writings which suggests the Igbo leadership is taking us to hell, and that it requires a change of the guards. But in an organizations where the bookkeepers and managers maintain funny books, shouldn't it be appropriate for its members to ask what is being done to the funds owned by the entire members of the organization?

For the time being, leaders of these Igbo organizations are getting away with what should have taken them to the courts for embezzlement and misappropriation of community funds. But the irony is that members of these organizations who sit down and watch their hard earned money slip away into the hands of the organizations' funny bookkeepers and managers should have nobody else to blame but themselves for saying nothing. And keeping quiet and not reacting will continue to encourage the funny bookkeepers and managers with the belief that nothing is wrong and everything is in order.

Ekwuchanam!