WASHINGTON — 

Stephen Strasburg took his turn silencing the Cardinals’ struggling bats, Nationals postseason star Howie Kendrick doubled three times and drove in three more runs, and Washington moved one win from the city’s first World Series appearance in 86 years by beating St. Louis 8-1 Monday night to take a 3-0 lead in the NL Championship Series.

After Nationals starters Anibal Sanchez and Max Scherzer flirted with no-hitters in the first two games of the best-of-seven series, Strasburg wasn’t quite that untouchable: He allowed a double in the second inning, six later singles and one unearned run. Still, he was rather dominant for seven innings, striking out 12 batters and finishing off each one with an off-speed pitch.

The Cardinals, quite simply, can’t hit in this NLCS: They have a grand total of two runs and 11 hits through three games. Washington’s three starters have a combined ERA — no calculator necessary for this one — of 0.00.

Yes, that’s zero-point-zero-zero.

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Now it’s Patrick Corbin’s chance to see if he can match his rotation-mates. The $140 million lefty will start for the Nationals in Game 4 on Tuesday night, when they can close out a sweep at home. Rookie right-hander Dakota Hudson will be on the mound for the Cardinals.

Washington hasn’t put a baseball team in the World Series since 1933, when the Senators lost to the New York Giants in five games. The nation’s capital owns only one MLB championship; the Senators won all the way back in 1924. There wasn’t even a baseball team at all in Washington for more than three decades until the Montreal Expos franchise moved to town before the 2005 season and was renamed the Nationals.

Until this season, the Nationals hadn’t won a playoff series, going 0-4 since 2012, but they sure look as if they’re making up for lost time.

It all starts with the pitching.

Against Sanchez in Game 1, the first hit for the Cardinals arrived with their 27th batter. Against Scherzer in Game 2, it was their 21st batter. But even when the Cardinals did something right against Strasburg, they erased it by doing something wrong.

Their fourth batter, Marcell Ozuna, doubled to the left field corner in the second, then quickly erased himself with some poor baserunning, going too far toward third on a comebacker and getting tagged out by Strasburg, who is enjoying a postseason to remember.

He was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 amateur draft, then was infamously shut down before the playoffs three years later to protect his surgically repaired right elbow. Strasburg is now hale and hearty, throwing 117 pitches Monday, his most since totaling 118 in a May 2017 game.

And this sort of October excellence is what the Nationals were hoping for: Strasburg now has a 3-0 record and 1.64 ERA, with 33 strikeouts and one walk — he didn’t issue a free pass Monday — in 22 innings this postseason.

Much to the delight of a red towel-twirling crowd of 43,675, Washington’s batters kept delivering, led by Kendrick, who has eight RBIs in the past four games, including a 10th-inning grand slam in Game 5 of the NL Division Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Nationals roughed up Jack Flaherty for four runs, all in the third inning; the Cardinals’ 23-year-old starter hadn’t allowed that many in a game since July 2, a span of 18 appearances.

Seven of Washington’s eight runs came with two outs, and there were contributions from up and down the lineup: Ryan Zimmerman delivered two run-scoring hits, Victor Robles homered in his return after a five-game absence with a leg injury, and Anthony Rendon heard “MVP!” chants after a slick defensive play at third base and an RBI double.

Monday, October 14th

CITY

EAST VALLEY LEAGUE

Grant 39, Chavez 14

Sun Valley Poly 28, North Hollywood 0

NORTHERN LEAGUE

Los Angeles Wilson 21, Torres 8

VALLEY MISSION LEAGUE

Panorama 37, Van Nuys 0

WESTERN LEAGUE

Palisades 38, Venice 14

SOUTHERN SECTION

OLYMPIC LEAGUE

Village Christian 64, Whittier Christian 14

PACIFIC LEAGUE

Crescenta Valley 28, Glendale 0

Muir 20, Burbank 15

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SAN DIEGO — 

The Trump administration’s recent announcement that it would lower the ceiling of refugees permitted into the U.S. to a historic low reflects the reduction of refugee arrivals both in San Diego County and nationwide. Now, refugee resettlement agencies and refugees are predicting fewer arrivals to the U.S. again this year.

This cap will affect not only refugees hoping to come to the U.S., but also those who are already here. Nadine Toppozada, who directs Catholic Charities’ Refugee and Immigrant Services in San Diego, said the new cap may prolong family separation because refugees have the right to request that their family overseas come stay with them in the U.S.

“With the cuts in number of arrivals, we have people here in San Diego waiting much longer in order to be reunited with their families who are in refugee camps across seas,” Toppozada said.

The cap has dropped down from 30,000 to 18,000 this fiscal year. It dropped from 45,000 to 30,000 last fiscal year.

The number of refugees who came to San Diego County rose by 27% between fiscal year 2018 and fiscal year 2019, even though President Trump lowered the ceiling by a third. This is largely because the U.S. did not bring in nearly as many refugees as it said it would in 2018.

This fiscal year, the U.S. welcomed 29,999 refugees, exactly one short of the 30,000 cap. Last year, despite the 45,000 ceiling, only 22,491 refugees resettled.

The low number of refugees in fiscal year 2018 is likely due to the travel ban that the Supreme Court upheld in December 2017, restricting most travelers from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Chad from coming to the U.S. and temporarily pausing the refugee resettlement program. In San Diego County, refugee arrival counts dropped immediately to single digits in the months after the ban went into effect.

Refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo remained the largest group to come to San Diego County this year, followed by Afghans, keeping the same trend from last year.

The number of Syrians arriving in the country increased to 29 this year in comparison to only two arrivals in fiscal year 2018.

Samar is one of those refugees who came from Syria this year. She does not want her last name used for fear that her family in Lebanon and Syria could be targeted.

Seven months ago, she came to San Diego from Jordan, where she had been waiting to move to the U.S. She brought her husband and her two daughters, 14 and 6, with her.

Samar and her family fled Syria’s civil war, which has raged on for nearly a decade. Before she left, she had pulled her daughter out of school and stopped going to work. She was a teacher and was so afraid her daughter’s schools would be bombed that they both stayed home.

“I prefer to stay at home, to die with all my family,” Samar said. “I prefer to stay with them. To stay together, to live together, or to die together.”

She still remembers the sounds of the war in Syria, even though she hasn’t lived there for years — the sounds of bombs, screams and violence.

Many of Samar’s siblings are still in Syria and Lebanon. When she speaks with one of her sisters in Lebanon, they talk about life in the U.S.

“She dreams, and I hope to help her,” Samar said.

The new cap for 2020 will make it even more difficult for Samar to bring the rest of her family to the U.S.

Samar and her family were refugees in Jordan when she received her first phone call from the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration, asking if they wanted to come to the U.S. That was seven years before she stepped foot in the country.

According to Donna Duvin, executive director of the International Rescue Committee in San Diego, the average length of time that a family spends in a refugee camp before it is offered an opportunity for resettlement is 17 years.

For Samar, the period between that first call and her arrival to the country was a time of worry, frustration and anxiety. Some days, she thought she would never make it to the U.S. At the same time, she felt stuck in Jordan. If she left, she couldn’t return. But she didn’t want to stay, either.

Today, Samar is volunteering at the IRC in San Diego, conducting driving classes for refugees. Her husband is working and her children are in school, and she dreams of owning her own business one day.

In defending the lower refugee cap to Congress, the State Department said that “the current burdens on the U.S. immigration system must be alleviated before it is again possible to resettle large number of refugees.”

Its report to Congress says diplomatic tools such as foreign assistance, economic and political engagement, and alliance-building would help more people, and more quickly, than resettling refugees or granting asylum in the U.S.

The increasingly lower ceiling is worrying to Duvin and refugee resettlement agencies like the IRC.

“It’s very disruptive,” Duvin said. “It’s a system, when you think about it, that has really been formulated to succeed over a great period of time. Now that the pace has been disrupted, the chance of seeing that system also dismantled is great, and a significant concern for all of us.”

Resettlement agencies work with partners to secure housing and employment for incoming refugees, and by drastically adjusting the number of refugees allowed in the country, relationships with their partners and the flow of the system suffer.

Jewish Family Service of San Diego is another resettlement agency heavily affected by the new cap.

“We are astounded and dismayed that the federal administration has lowered — yet again — the refugee admissions ceiling from 30,000 last year to now only 18,000 for Fiscal Year 2020,” Chief Executive Michael Hopkins said in a statement. “To repeatedly gouge this number betrays our nation’s founding principles and turns away our brothers and sisters seeking safety, freedom and hope.”

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The slash in the refugee ceiling also affects funding for refugee resettlement agencies. Agencies are paid for each refugee they help resettle. With fewer refugees comes less revenue.

“At some point, you can barely sustain staff, let alone a vehicle to pick up clients from the airport,” Toppozada said.

The White House has also set priorities for certain nationalities for fiscal year 2020. The U.S. will allow 5,000 refugees under the Lautenberg Amendment, which is a program from the 1990s that includes refugee Jews from the former Soviet Union, as well as persecuted religious minorities in other countries, such as Bahais from Iran and evangelical Christians from Ukraine.

The number of Ukrainians coming to the U.S. in recent months has been increasing, specifically to Sacramento County — last year, it overtook San Diego as the top refugee resettling county.

The U.S. is also planning on bringing 4,000 Iraqis and 1,500 people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. It is unclear how the U.S. will track refugees from the Central American countries, as there’s not much infrastructure in place to identify refugees in the region, unlike the Middle East and Africa.

About 7,500 will be left for all other nationalities.

These priorities are a departure from previous years, as people from Africa and the Middle East have historically made up the largest groups of refugees.

Tebor writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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It brings great sadness today to mourn the loss of our own, the beloved Captain Albert Torres of the Los Angeles Park Rangers Captain Torres dedicated over 40 years of service to the parks of Los Angeles. He has left an everlasting impact on many. He has provided safety to the public, sharing his vast knowledge on plants and wildlife and his constant willingness to offer mentorship and counseling. Over the course of his career, he has worked in every one of the parks in the City of LA. Captain Torres has worked every position and assignment in the Park Ranger Division, including acting Chief. Captain Torres created the “CityWide” Unit which focuses on the homeless outreach and cleanups throughout all of the City of Los Angeles. He is survived by his wife Cheryl Torres, daughter Elizabeth Torres and son Brian Torres. Captain Albert Torres, A true Park Ranger E.O.W. 10/12/19 0713hrs #cityoflosangeles #losangelesparkrangers #recreationandparks #captainalberttorres #citywide #thingblueline #thinredline #thinghgreenline #mountedunit #parkranger #toprotectandpreserve

A post shared by L.A. Park Rangers L.E. Div. (@laparkrangers_) on Oct 12, 2019 at 5:01pm PDT

Cpt. Albert Torres, a veteran L.A. Park Ranger of 40 years, had a heart attack Friday after he had been patrolling the parks affected by the fire. He died the next morning in a hospital.

According to officials, Torres worked in every Los Angeles park in every position and assignment, including acting chief. He created the CityWide unit that focuses on homeless outreach and cleanups throughout Los Angeles.

L.A. City Atty. Mike Feuer remembered Torres as a dedicated and upbeat park ranger.

“What an incredible public service legacy for Los Angeles. We will miss him,” Feuer wrote on social media over the weekend.

Torres is survived by his wife, Cheryl Torres, a daughter, Elizabeth Torres, and a son, Brian Torres.

Lois Arvickson

Lois Arvickson, 89, died in a mobile home park in the 1100 block of Villa Calimesa Lane that was destroyed by the Sandalwood fire. Family members said neighbors reported seeing her get into her car, but it’s unclear what happened next. Her son saw TV news coverage that showed her home being destroyed by the fire and her car still in the driveway.

According to Riverside County coroner’s officials, Arvickson died in her home.

Unknown victim

Late Friday, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department reported that it had found the remains of a second person in the Calimesa mobile home park. Deputy Robyn Flores, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Department, said she did not have more information about the person’s gender or age.

Riverside County coroner’s officials have yet to identify the remains.

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Los Angeles arson investigators confirmed Monday that, although the cause of the Saddleridge fire remains undetermined, the blaze started Thursday beneath a high voltage transmission tower.

The Saddleridge fire broke out in Sylmar on Thursday night and was fueled by Santa Ana winds, burning almost 8,000 acres, destroying 17 structures and damaging 58. A man in his late 50s died after suffering a heart attack while talking with firefighters early Friday, officials said.

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The confirmation comes after Sylmar residents told news outlets and fire officials that they saw a fire burning at the base of the transmission tower near Saddle Ridge Road.

According to preliminary information from the Los Angeles Fire Department, the fire is believed to have started in a 50-foot by 70-foot area under a transmission tower near Yarnell Street and the 210 Freeway in Sylmar. The exact location wasn’t immediately available.

Capt. Erik Scott, an LAFD spokesman, said in a video news release that investigators are working to determine the cause of the fire.

“They’re looking at the burn pattern, they’re combing through the debris, they’re talking to witnesses, they’re looking at surveillance, and they’re literally hiking up that hill placing stakes in areas of interest, putting colored flags to look at where the burn pattern went, how the flames were reacting against rocks, how the bushes were burnt, and really stepping back and reenacting scene[s] where that fire went through to get exact data and detail to have a conclusive answer,” Scott said. “So it takes time, and we certainly appreciate people’s patience.”

Scott added that there was no evidence of a homeless encampment in the area.

Edison said in a statement Monday that “out of an abundance of caution, we notified the California Public Utilities Commission on Friday, Oct. 11, that our system was impacted near the reported time of the fire…. As reported, during a period of high winds and low humidity, a
fire began at approximately 9 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 10, near Yarnell Street and Saddle Ridge Road in Sylmar which quickly spread westward in the northern part of Los Angeles.”

SAN FRANCISCO — 

A brazen thief stole a Salvador Dali etching valued at $20,000 from a San Francisco gallery, then walked off down the street with the work in his hand.

“Burning Giraffe,” a 1960s hand-colored, limited-edition surrealist work, was stolen in seconds Sunday afternoon from Dennis Rae Fine Art off Union Square.

Rasjad Hopkins, a gallery director, said he was working alone and may have turned his back away from the front of the store, where the piece was displayed on an easel facing the window.

“He was in and out of there in a shot. He probably did it in less than a minute,” Hopkins said Monday.

The gallery has a video camera, but it wasn’t on at the time, Hopkins said.

But surveillance video from another business showed the man strolling down Geary Street with the artwork in his hand, KGO-TV Channel 7 reported.

The etching normally was secured with a tether, but it wasn’t at the time of the theft, Hopkins said.

KGO-TV said the etching would have been secured with a lock and cable that are missing and may have been cut off by the suspect. But Hopkins said he doubted that. He suggested the tether might have been removed a day earlier for a showing and was not replaced.

Although art thieves sometimes have clients who pay for certain pieces, “I think it was a theft of opportunity,” Hopkins said.

The etching was insured, he said. It was one of about 30 pieces on display for the gallery’s Dali exhibition.

Hopkins said the etching is relatively rare. “I’d say it’s one of the most desirable pieces out of that period,” he said.

It is well-known and is also numbered, Hopkins added.

That made it unlikely to be sold online, another director, Angela Kellett, told KGO-TV.

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Anyone with information on the theft can contact police.

MOUNT SHASTA, Calif. — 

A Northern California man has been arrested on suspicion of killing four people after he showed up at a police station with a body in his car.

Police in Mount Shasta, Calif., said the man turned himself in Monday afternoon and told authorities he had killed people at his apartment in Roseville, more than 200 miles away.

Roseville police said they found three bodies at the apartment.

It appears the man knew the victims, police said.

The names of the suspect and the victims and details of the killings haven’t been released.

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President Trump took a short break from campaigning for himself Monday to campaign for someone else: Sean Spicer.

Trump hopped online to tweet his support for the former White House press secretary, who is competing on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.” The controversial contestant, who resigned from his position in Trump’s administration in 2017, also turned to social media to thank his former boss for spreading the word.

“Vote for good guy @seanspicer tonight on Dancing With The Stars,” Trump wrote. “He has always been there for us!”

Spicer actually exited Trump’s staff less than a year into his term amid reports that the president was unhappy with his communications team. During his brief White House stint, Spicer developed a reputation for spinning facts and picking fights with reporters.

“Thank you @POTUS @realDonaldTrump,” Spicer responded Monday, pinning the tweet to the top of his profile. “Appreciate all the votes on @DancingABC tonight.”

Given his track record, Spicer’s “DWTS” casting announcement in August sparked immediate backlash from Trump critics, “DWTS” fans and even Tom Bergeron. The longtime “DWTS” host penned a lengthy statement, shortly after the network released this year’s slate of talent, expressing his disappointment with the show’s producers for recruiting a partisan figure.

So far, Spicer has survived the first four weeks of the program’s 28th season, dancing with pro partner Lindsay Arnold. The fifth episode, themed “Disney Night,” airs tonight on ABC.

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Logan Roy wanted a killer, and he got one.

Going into the Season 2 finale of “Succession,” the question was who would be the “blood sacrifice” — the person to take the fall for the scandals engulfing Waystar Royco’s cruise division. But it ended with a twist that was as exhilarating as it was shocking. (Caution: Spoilers for the finale lie ahead.)

In a live press conference at which Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Logan’s second son, was to have accepted blame for the company’s wrongdoing, he instead blamed his father (played by Brian Cox), calling him a “malignant presence, a bully and a liar” and warning, “This is the day his reign ends.”

As Kendall dropped a proverbial bomb on live TV, his father, thousands of miles away aboard a yacht off the coast of Croatia, watched silently from the couch.

Rather than exploding in anger or disbelief, the media mogul — who’d just told Kendall he wasn’t enough of a “killer” to take over the company — looked on almost admiringly. The episode, “This Is Not For Tears,” ends with a closeup on Logan, a barely perceptible smirk spreading across his face.

What did it all mean? Why did Logan decide to sacrifice Kendall, who has spent most of the season in a state of blind obedience to his father, rather than his dopey, incompetent son-in-law, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen)? We spoke to Brian Cox to find out.

Well, that was a satisfying episode of television.

Apparently. The airwaves have been going crazy with it all morning. It was very gratifying. I was particularly pleased; there were were some edits in it which I thought were really good and smart. It was such a good episode. It really couldn’t have been a better finish.

Can we talk about the smirk?

It’s a look of triumph and disaster. I think the key to it is the fact that Logan is a realist. He understands the reality of certain things and how it all shapes up. Especially when [the shareholders] say, “Look, we think you should be the one, you should be the guy,” he realizes that rather than being sacrificed by a bunch of shareholders, he would rather do it through the exigencies of his own family.

He sees his children emerge in that last episode and he sees the source of Siobhan’s neediness. He begins to see the tremendous potential of his … son, Roman, which is quite considerable, showing a remarkable vision that’s been absent until now.

So when he comes to the decision that he’s going to sacrifice Kendall, he believes that this may be the shock that his son needs to step up to something else. It’s a gamble. It comes out of this speech about being a killer. That’s what triggers it all, and that’s where [Kendall’s] kiss comes from. I know they’ve been comparing it to the Fredo kiss [in “The Godfather Part II”], but it’s not that. That’s obvious. It’s not the Judas kiss. It’s actually a kiss of love, it’s a son going, “What am I doing to do, where am I going to go? This is my father whom I love, but my father is a monster.”

There is a kind of pride in what he does, a sadness in what he does, but also an understanding that perhaps Kendall is finally released.

Do you think Logan is pleased Kendall finally showed he’s a (metaphorical) killer?

It’s such an awful notion, the idea of being a killer, it’s something that to Brian Cox is completely abhorrent. But in terms of the drama, I would say “understood” rather than “pleased.” [He’s] pleased for Kendall, but he understands is [the thing that’s] more important.

Did you do any takes without the smirk or with different reactions?

That was always there. We agreed on that, that’s something that came from me. It was suggested in the script. I just said, “I think that’s key, I think that’s important.” Even more so is when he puts his finger up to his mouth [to shush Roman as he loudly reacts to Kendall’s press conference], he wants the whole sense of what that act of apparent treachery is about.

Did Logan decide to sacrifice Kendall because of Shiv’s plea to save Tom?

Tom was never in the frame, he’s too weak. He hasn’t reached some level of profundity, so there’s no point in sacrificing Tom. He’s trying to save his daughter because his daughter is very important to him. We saw it very clearly — that Tom does ground Shiv in many ways, even though she’s a very naughty girl.

Shiv seems to be Logan’s favorite.

I think he feels more relaxed with her. I think he’s also now got a whole new respect for Roman because he feels that Roman has come of age. Roman’s defense of Gerri, which is very admirable, but more so his recognizing the fallacy of the whole Middle Eastern trip. Roman seeing through that, that really has got him thinking, “There’s more to this boy than meets the eye.” I think that’s something that will emerge even more in the next season.

Most of the episode took place on board a yacht in Croatia. That must have been an interesting production experience.

To be honest with you, I would never want to go on a cruise in my life. I see these adverts for Viking Cruises and I think, “Well, that’d be interesting,” but having spent two weeks on the boat — and I was not on the boat all the time — I just thought no, I’m done with boats. Also, the opulence of the yacht is just a bit cloying, it sort of sticks in my throat. It was incredibly opulent, that yacht.

Did you get seasick?

I never get seasick. It was beautiful. To be in Dubrovnik was lovely, so was Korcula, that’s where the boat went. That aspect, none of that bothered me. Just the idea of being locked in a boat with a bunch of people, in normal life, you’d avoid like the plague. [Feigns screaming] “Ahhhh, no! No!” Our cast is very loving, so I didn’t have that problem.

So I take it you didn’t go off the inflatable slide?

No, no, I’m far too old for that.

Jazz critic turned music historian Ted Gioia’s “Music: A Subversive History” is a dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched labor of cultural provocation.

In what he has described as a popularized summary of three briefer and more focused but equally ambitious histories — “Work Songs” (2006), “Healing Songs” (2006) and “Love Songs: The Hidden History” (2015) — Gioia means not merely to summarize the world history of music in 472 pages but to establish that other writers who’ve tackled versions of this task have badly missed the mark. Their crime against scholarship: underplaying “essential elements of music that are considered disreputable or irrational — for example, its deep connections to sexuality, magic, trance and alternative mind states, healing, social control, generational conflict, political unrest, even violence and murder.”

It’s often hard to tell exactly who Gioia is arguing with: mostly “classical” music specialists, I’d venture, in part because few others attempted music history at all until ethnomusicology took shape after World War II.

As someone who’s spent years researching such matters as the music of the ancient world and the age of the troubadours while also tracking current releases, I’m pleased to report that Gioia taught me plenty. But both formally and polemically, he’s swimming in deep water. Its prose pragmatic and its structure baldly chronological, his grand overview is doomed by its very ambition to a sprawl with little chance of achieving all it sets out to. These flaws weren’t inevitable.

Inspired to investigate further, I went on to read Gioia’s “Love Songs,” which I found gripping, sometimes a page-turner — as with the chapter called “The North African and Middle Eastern Connection,” which focuses on a medieval genre called muwashshahat that topped off verses in classical Arabic with codas in colloquial Arabic or, more remarkably, the local Mediterranean vernacular. But where occasionally Gioia interrupts his rapid progress to devote a few pages to an interesting tale — Abélard and Héloïse, Mozart’s lifestyle, the tragedy of Kurt Cobain — these often seem more like arbitrary place markers and changes of pace than stories whose detailed scale is essential to his argument as a whole.

Nor did I always find his overall thesis persuasive. He overstates the significance of the anthropological findings he begins with. Proving music’s “deep connections to sexuality, magic, trance and alternative mind states” by establishing its undeniable roots in hunting, battle, healing and procreation doesn’t distinguish it from any other human endeavor, all of which sprung from those fundamental activities as human life began to evolve. He’s also rather too impressed at how the history of music is dominated by innovators who are first shunned by establishment tastemakers and then absorbed by them. That’s how human progress works, especially in the arts.

What I found most memorable in this exhaustive history is a six-page, 40-point epilogue called “This Is Not a Manifesto.” Some examples: “3. Songs served as the origin for what we now call psychology — in other words, as a way of celebrating personal emotions and attitudes long before the inner life was deemed worthy of respect in other spheres of society.” “9. Diversity contributes to musical innovation because it brings the outsider into the musical ecosystem.” “21. Music is always more than notes. It is made out of sounds. Confusing these two is no small matter.” “32. Even love songs are political songs, because new ways of singing about love tend to threaten the status quo.”

Not all 40 are as striking, and many aren’t especially subversive. But all counteract the Confucian-Pythogorean rationalism dispatched in No. 19, which was and remains not only elitist and anti-materialist but also sexist: Starting with the so-called Song of Solomon, Gioia details many instances of male authorship attributed to songs almost certainly created by women as well as more general attacks on supposed musical “effeminacy.”

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I was happy to read Gioia on many fascinating topics: the songful Sumerian priestess Enheduanna; the musical innovations of Sappho; Plato on his deathbed summoning an aulos, the bassoon-like “flute” he had long disparaged; the bells that dominated the “soundtrack of European life for a thousand years”; Christianity’s propensity to condemn and nurture music simultaneously; the thralldom wealthy patrons forgotten by history imposed on composers who are now household names.

Inevitably, I was less taken with his account of 20th century pop, particularly the rock era. But I was also struck by earlier lacunae. Gioia never mentions that cross-cultural hotbed of female musical innovation, the pharaonic harem. He ignores Dionysus and “Dionysian” Greek tragedy, much of which was sung with aulos and kithara accompaniment. While challenging the truism that troubadour song was invented by noblemen, he gives short shrift to the wandering jongleurs who sang in medieval taverns and hostelries. He never differentiates Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa. He glosses over the musical usages of blackface minstrelsy. He ignores such dance crazes as the waltz, polka and foxtrot.

Significantly, many of these information failures involve a term Gioia is ambivalent about: “entertainment,” which he brands “mere,” “idle” and “escapist” at various junctures. I find the jazz, rock, punk and hip-hop Gioia praises as meaningful as he does. But I would also characterize the good fortune that befell unprecedented numbers of ordinary people in the 20th century as a leisure explosion that liberated citizens to “waste” their newfound “free time” on entertainment while also delving into the meaning of life, not least because what began to be called fun less than two centuries ago is a crucial component of the meaning of life.

Both Gioia and I are all too aware that there are still precincts where it’s “subversive” to argue that popular music radiates meaning. We have different ideas about how best to grab hold of that meaning. But I hope we can agree that one of music’s virtues is that it’s ultimately inexplicit, leaving human beings free to pursue its secrets as they will.

—–

“Music: A Subversive History”

Ted Gioia

Basic Books: 487 pages, $35