Dear Friends,
Having a normal childhood in Palestine is almost impossible today. We have been there and seen the reality.
We also know that music heals.Will you please help to support these children through the program, ‘For my Identity I sing’.
Without your help, the program will fail for lack of funding. Any amount is welcome! Just click on the link and read their story.
Thank you!
ina and john mclaughlin
You’re an honourable man John. It was you, along with your band-mates, who took it upon yourselves to play Ramallah…TWICE. Who amongst your peers or otherwise has the initiative to do the same? Roger Waters berates Israel and calls for boycotts, but he won’t do what you and your friends did. Bless you John.
Marvellous programm for these unhappy chidrens victims of
the war!
Music is for us a necessity and therapy
Thanks Ina and John sustaining a very charitable cause .
John,
I’m a huge fan of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Shakti. But I’ll never buy anything from you again.
Tell me you have no problem with Hamas, whose charter quotes from Mein Kampf and pledges the killing of Jews everywhere. Right, they espouse genocide.
And yes, children in Gaza do suffer. Do you think they would suffer as much if the Hamas government didn’t teach them to become terrorists, hate Israel and wage Jihad? Check out the children’s shows on Al Aqsa television from Gaza. Enjoy the cartoons depicting Jews as murderers. And don’t miss the summer camps Hamas sponsors where they teach children how to kill Israelis.
It’s not a matter of occupied territories. No amount of returned land will change Hamas’s desire to wipe out the Jews. You’re free to ignore that. Israel can’t.
Good-bye John. I’ll still listen to the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Shakti. Just like I listen to Wagner and Richard Strauss.
I find this posting very sad. Even if your take on Hamas and the history were accurate (which it most certainly isn’t – it’s about as partial and one-sided as one can get), can’t you find any compassion for the brute reality of children’s suffering? It’s HEALING that’s needed in this awful historical conjuncture (awful for everyone, that is – on BOTH sides) – and with this work John is more likely to bring healing, reconciliation and understanding to this appalling situation than any number of Machiavellian power-crazed politicians. I think you fundamentally misunderstand what John’s work is all about; and while people on both sides continue to take up the polarised position you show in this post, can’t you see that nothing will ever change? Finally, I have huge respect for John and his people for retaining your post on this site and not removing it – and I hope that at least you can respect that, too. Go well.
Richard House, Stroud, UK
Gad Meiron raises many valid points. And if JM is indeed siding with the so-called Palestinians, then he is siding with terrorism. And Richard House is dead wrong. The reason that Arab children are suffering is not because of Israel, but because the Islamic terrorist leaders WANT them to suffer. There are several Muslim billionaires and multimillionaires in the Middle East who spend vast sums of money funding terrorism and don’t spend a dime on the impoverished children in the region. If JM is supporting them over Israel, which has done far more for the Arabs living in Israel than the Arabs nations have done for their own people, then JM is a dupe and dope. If he doesn’t want to educate himself about what’s really going on in the Middle East, then he should stay out of politics altogether. Most musicians are total idiots politically anyway. Roger Waters is another example–though a far lesser talent than JM. He puts Islamic terrorism on a pedestal and castigates Israel, easily the most civilized and democratic nation in the region.
Dear Ina + John, last sunday I had a terrific experience listening to « remember shakti ». As expression of my gratitude I made my contribution to project. – My experience included even a vision how to fund the lacking $ 30’000, but it needs your help. – Would you hear about it?
Ina and John thank you for highlighting the plight of the children of Palestine and taking positive action to help them. My estimation of you as a human being has gone up tremendously. I hope my small contribution will go towards helping these children, and anyone in the fortunate position of living in relative peace and prosperity will contribute towards this noble cause.
Why did you remove my comment? It was very positive and the only political aspect was to say the Palestinian children’s leaders are complicit in their suffering. I’m very sad about this.
John McLaughlin’s support for boycotts of Israel is clearly a response to his personal realization that apart from his early work with Miles Davis and two LPs with the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the 1970s, he is totally irrelevant musically and as a person.
Real artists that still have soul and genuine passion for music would never think to boycott Israel, the only democratic nation in the entire Middle East, while tacitly supporting Muslim nations that sponsor terrorism and mass murders.
That’s why when John McLaughlin eventually dies, along with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Edward Van Halen, Steve Vai, Eric Burdon, Elton John, and Paul McCartney, to name a few, people will still remember and enjoy the works of Clapton, Van Halen, Beck, Vai, Burdon, John, and McCartney — while McLaughlin will be just about forgotten. Same for Roger Waters and Carlos Santana and other sound technicians who have no soul or genuine musical passion.
McLaughlin should read the book « The Israel Test, » by George Gilder. If he’s too lazy or mentally deficient to read and understand the book, then perhaps he might at least try watching and listening to this 4:37 minute video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfN2IvnIA4M
Disgusting comment, the kind one expects from a Zionist. Btw, McLaughlin’s huge contribution to music will live for as long as there are humans (therefore excluding cloth-eared, bullying Zionists) on the planet.
I can’t allow these recent vituperative posts on John’s website to pass uncommented upon. It would be all too easy to throw around unhelpful terms like « Extremist Zionism », but I’m going to resist that easy target and try to open up some thinking here, rather than closing it down with yet more simplistic yay-boo sloganising.
A dear Jewish friend of mine recently said to me that the people making these posts here are [quote] « rabidly defensive of Israel (I should know – I was one of them previously), and are unable to look beyond their immediate defensive reactions ». He continued that he has only himself been able to relinquish this kind of polarised thinking by discovering and embracing the idea of a kinder type of politics and a more equal world, as set out in the visions of political leaders Bernie Sanders (himself a Jew, of course) and Jeremy Corbyn. And finally, he said « I feel that we first need to move people towards that level of thinking before we can even hope to get them to change their perceptions of the Middle East. »
I want to add to this, as a psychotherapist and cultural theorist, that the core problem is that each polarised position on BOTH sides is rooted in psychopathology; and the positions you each take up actually create « the other », and then serve to hold that demonised other in place. And of course when you treat people as if they are demons, then demons you’ll create – locked into a poisonous, self-reinforcing dynamic of hate and extreme psychological projection and scapegoating.
The implication is that until one of the sides, at least, has the maturity and the magnanimity to shift their position and rise above the hate, admit to their suffering, pain and vulnerability, and then begin to see those on the other side as suffering people also, then absolutely nothing will change, and your hate-filled lives and those of your descendants will continue, ad infinitum. For the sake of all the suffering people in the Middle East, I just hope some of you can start to make this shift – then, hopefully before too long, humanitarian work of the kind that John McLaughlin is doing just won’t be needed any more. Please try to start bringing that day nearer, my friends.
Go well.
Also, note, as another example of my point above, that Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Jean Luc Ponty, Frank Gambale, and Lenny White performed in Israel during one of their world tours together. Although McLaughlin was once thought to be of their musical caliber, time has shown that is no longer true, as those other musicians were and continue to geniuses. Is it just a coincidence again? I think not. Gilder’s « Israel Test » explains why it’s not a coincidence.
Here are two clips of Corea, Clarke, Ponty, Gambale, and White performing in Israel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgkVK7PRvLA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJp6UOgnz00
Is there time for McLaughin to become enlightened and recognize the errors of his ways? Perhaps. But it seems unlikely at this point.
James Feldman …. All the musicians who quoted, even putting them together will never arrive at the SKILL is GENIUS and HUMANITY of this NAME John McLaughlin MAN
I have read the above comments. I am shocked. I feel that there is great misunderstanding taking place. John McLaughlin does not need me or anyone to stand by his side to explain and clarify. His mission seems to have been one to concentrate on musical notes and not words; this should have been clear to all of us. For him to witness oppression and to then make an attempt to improve the lives of others through music is an innocent quest. Nowhere do I see or read that he takes a position of political theorist, historian, world event scholar; presumptuously stated, most of those that have written above have taken strong offense and this is a choice not based in rational reason; it appears to be an emotional reflexive response based on misinterpretation of one’s simple love for fellow man, woman and children, and more over, love for God and all that God has created.
I encourage all that wrote and drew such strong conclusions to note that John’s request for musical healing support for these children has been politicized by you, not by John McLaughlin.
Mr Feldman, you wouldn’t be « pooshoodog » by any chance, would you?
James Feldman, why don’t you go back to writing critiques on the absolute dearth of Babylonian zither technique? Like your critique of John, nobody would really give a damn and you could consolidate your absolute irrelevance to the human race at the same. I imagine it’s been relatively easy to fine tune your inbred racism, so the zither awaits.
Your moronic Judeo-supremacism is becoming the laughing stock of the whole world; posterity will not be kind to your ilk.
However, you have indeed earned it.
Van Halen!? Just how ignorant are you? His entire catalogue can be overwhelmed by one solo from Holdsworth, or John.
Say what you will, I don’t imagine John will be playing Haifa or Tel Aviv anytime soon, and that’s his democratic right.
His charitable work in Ramallah lays waste to your feeble attempts at criticism.
John McLaughlin is an honorable man.
Shut up and learn, student
John McLaughlin is today merely a guitar technician, not a musician. And you cannot mention a great musician like Allan Holdsworth in the same sentence as the artless technician, John McLaughlin, unless you are attempting to contrast the two. Holdsworth, for your information, has played in Israel. Here’s a video of him: vhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwxpxQaIqfo.
You cannot compare a real musician like Allan Holdsworth to an artless, unimaginative technician like John McLaughlin. And Allan Holdsworth, by the way, has played in Israel. Here’s a video link of him performing there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwxpxQaIqfo
The conflict between Israel and Palestine is profoundly complex. If you are attempting to teach by adopting the position of a classical Socratic Idiot then I would agree that john is not in the same class as Corea, Clarke and Lenny White. He is up there with Keith Jarrett and Vladimir Horowitz.
No, McLaughin is not « up there with Keith Jarrett and Vladimir Horowitz. » Both of those stellar musicians have performed in Israel.
So much hate-driven bile about dear John, fuelled by vicious-noxious religious ideology. How sad that the aesthetic judgement of some of these posters is hopelessly distorted by religious bigotry. A fantastic 9,000-word published interview I recently conducted with the great man is about to appear – watch this space. « Guitarist Jeff Beck has called John ‘the best guitarist alive’. A major influence on a number of prominent musicians, according to jazz guitarist Pat Metheny McLaughlin has changed the evolution of the guitar during several of his periods of playing, and he continues to be a boldly innovative player and composer to this day. »
Amen.
Not true, Richard House. Those who oppose Israel and support Islamic terrorism and their financiers are the noxious hate-driven Leftist ideologists and biggots. McLaughlin, unfortunately, in pandering to the Left, has trivilialized and debased himself. He is now the musical category of Roger Waters and Elvis Costello–light years away from the truly great musicians, and sinking further into the abyss as he goes the easy route of claiming his market share of Leftist-funded dollars. Sure, he will make money doing that. But at what cost to his soul? The deleterious results sadly show in his futile attempts at music. He will need to undergo a dramatic cosmic mental, spiritual, and emotional change to clarify his deeply impaired perceptions, not unlike the one he underwent back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to get back on track again.
John McLaughlin has made me sadder on learning of his hateful boycotting. He now uses music to divide people.
He declines to play in Israel and persuades others over whom he has influence, such as Zakir Hussein, to join his boycott. Compare this with Leonard Cohen, who offered to play in both Tel Aviv and Ramallah or a joint concert. Unfortunately, Cohen’s offers to play for Palestinian audiences were rejected because he did not boycott Israel altogether. Nick Cave and Ian Anderson say that music should unite rather than divide, and they play in Tel Aviv.
John McLaughlin has played in Australia, China, France, India, Spain, Turkey, USA, etc, despite alleged injustices or atrocities said to be committed by their governments against minority populations. But he plays in Ramallah despite the explicit public incitement to hatred and orchestrated violence by the dictatorship there. Sadly, his political activism has a limited focus, i.e. against the Jewish nation. We who love his sublime music can only mourn his vile racism.
For me, unfortunately, learning that this disease lives behind the music means that it now also brings pain. Within the soaring guitar notes there is now an awareness that is nausea and despair. It symbolises the hatred warping human achievements that has darkened our past and clouds our future.
How did this happen?? We can plead defensive excuses: the musical genius with a global travel schedule lacks time to learn and think deeply about what he says and does? Just the foolishness of the 60’s generation’s hubris when a person seeking spiritual grace falls into spiteful arrogance? Is it common ignorance masked as superiority? Is it the fault of cultural background or family influences toned with anti-Semitism?
I can only say that I feel let down and will never be able to enjoy John McLaughlin’s music the way I did, now knowing that its sublime shining chords also gleam with an ugly commonplace evil.
John McLaughlin has made me sadder on learning of his hateful boycotting. He now uses music to divide people.
He declines to play in Israel and persuades others over whom he has influence, such as Zakir Hussein, to join his boycott. Compare this with Leonard Cohen, who offered to play in both Tel Aviv and Ramallah or a joint concert. Unfortunately, Cohen’s offers to play for Palestinian audiences were rejected because he did not boycott Israel altogether. Nick Cave and Ian Anderson say that music should unite rather than divide, and they play in Tel Aviv.
John McLaughlin has played in Australia, China, France, India, Spain, Turkey, USA, etc, despite alleged injustices or atrocities said to be committed by their governments against minority populations. But he plays in Ramallah despite the explicit public incitement to hatred and orchestrated violence by the dictatorship there. Sadly, his political activism has a limited focus, i.e. against the Jewish nation. We who love his sublime music can only mourn his vile racism.
For me, unfortunately, learning that this disease lives behind the music means that it now also brings pain. Within the soaring guitar notes there is now an awareness that is nausea and despair. It symbolises the hatred warping human achievements that has darkened our past and clouds our future.
How did this happen?? We can plead defensive excuses: the musical genius with a global travel schedule lacks time to learn and think deeply about what he says and does? Just the foolishness of the 60’s generation’s hubris when a person seeking spiritual grace falls into spiteful arrogance? Is it common ignorance masked as superiority? Is it the fault of cultural background or family influences toned with anti-Semitism?
I can only say that I feel let down and will never be able to enjoy John McLaughlin’s music the way I did, now knowing that its sublime shining chords also gleam with an ugly commonplace evil.