Said Qutb on the Arts in America (Muslim B'hood Founder on 'Negro Music')

The American is primitive in his artistic taste, both in what he enjoys as art and in his own artistic works.

“Jazz” music is his music of choice. This is that music that the Negroes invented to satisfy their primitive inclinations, as well as their desire to be noisy on the one hand and to excite bestial tendencies on the other. The American’s intoxication in “jazz” music does not reach its full completion until the music is accompanied by singing that is just as coarse and obnoxious as the music itself. Meanwhile, the noise of the instruments and the voices mounts, and it rings in the ears to an unbearable degree… The agitation of the multitude[2] increases, and the voices of approval mount, and their palms ring out in vehement, continuous applause that all but deafens the ears.

But despite this, the American multitude attends the opera, listens to symphonies, crowds together for the “ballet,” and watches “classic” plays—so much so that you will hardly find an empty seat. It will happen sometimes that you do not find a place unless you reserve your seat days beforehand, and that at the high price of the fares for these performances.

This phenomenon misled me at first; I even rejoiced at it, down to the depths of my soul. For I had been feeling constantly “begrudging” at the fact that this people, which produces marvels in the world of industry and of science and of research, should have no store of the other human values. I had also been terribly afraid on behalf of humanity that its leadership will pass into the hands of this people that is altogether poor in those values.

Therefore I rejoiced when I saw this phenomenon. For the public that takes an interest in refined art is not to be despaired of no matter what its faults may be, and when this window on its feelings has been opened, there is great hope that many other rays may diffuse from it.

The importance of this phenomenon pushed me to investigate everything about it, in different surroundings and in numerous cities. But when I tracked the expressions on faces, and conversed with a great many of the men and women[3] who visit these places (those I knew and those I did not know), all this revealed to me—with regret—how wide a chasm still separates the spirit of such humane art from the spirit of the Americans. Indeed, their feelings about it[4] are even concealed in all but rare cases; they only look at the matter from a purely social angle. For the cultured American must of necessity see these sorts [of shows] and go to these places in case there should be a conversation about them in any group of people taking part in conversation together. For it is a matter of the greatest shame in America that anyone should fail to take part in the conversation—especially in the case of young women, since what is demanded of them is that they should always find subjects for conversation. So if young women visit these places, they add new subjects to the perpetual American subjects [of conversation], i.e., ball games, names of films and of actors and actresses, cases of divorce and marriage, markings and prices of cars…

This is the very spirit in which the crowds visit the art museums, passing rapidly through the halls and the exhibits in a way that does not suggest any enjoyment or love of these works [of art]. In just the same way they go (individually and in groups) to get a rapid view of natural spectacles. Passing by places and spectacles at the cars’ top speed, they collect conversational material and also comply with the natural American inclination toward collection and enumeration.

At the beginning of my stay in America, I would hear that one of them had visited X cities and countries and sights and spectacles and had gone X miles in his tourist journeys and knew X friends, so that I was astonished at this capacity for producing such things and wished that I were capable of any of it! Then I discovered afterward how all these marvels took place… One of them drives his car on a journey, alone or with his family or friends. He races it at top speed, taking it through cities and over distances, passing by sights and spectacles, while recording in his notebook the names and the mileage… Then he returns, and see! he has seen all of it, and he has the right to converse about it! As for friends, it is enough that one be invited to get-acquainted parties. There he encounters their faces for the first time, and the host acquaints him with the attendees one by one (men as well as women)[5], and he asks whoever of them wish to do so to write down their names and addresses, and so they in turn do with him. After some time, his notebook is full of names and addresses. And see! he has a great number of friends (men and women)[6], and perhaps he is even victorious in the competition undertaken in pursuit of this goal. How great, how strange are the competitions here!

Thus your knowledge and your culture[7] are often measured by how much you have read and watched and heard. It is the same as the way that your material riches are calculated by the quantity and amount of the cash and real property that you own: without any distinctions!

And this is not the mentality of the multitudes only, but it is also very much the mentality of the thinkers and the researchers. For it had occurred to the thinkers in America that it was not right that their country should be the richest country in the world, and their people the greatest people on earth in terms of industrial civilization and scientific civilization, while they should have no artistic wealth like that of poorer peoples such as the Italians and the Germans.

They have money—and money works wonders—so it was only a matter of years before they had museums of drawing and sculpture more magnificent and larger than those other peoples’. These museums have accumulated for themselves works of art from everywhere and have filled up with the rare and the costly among these works, which they[8] have not been stingy about buying with money. These are all foreign works save a few, since American works are primitive and plain to the point of being laughable next to those splendid worldly treasures.

Likewise, [it was only a matter of years before] they had some performing orchestras and some dance troupes of the “ballet,” most of which [demonstrate] expertise and proficiency. And most of the conductors of these orchestras and the directors of these troupes [demonstrate] genius and originality…and all of them[9] save a few are foreigners.

Thus there emerged[10] precise enumerations that indicate what America possesses in the way of great artistic riches, purchased by money. But there remained one little matter: Does the American soul have any share in these riches? Does she even have mere artistic enjoyment of this costly human inheritance!

It occurred to me to examine these points in the art museums just as I examined them at the opera houses and such.

I went for the tenth time to the museum of art in San Francisco and made one of the picture halls of French art the subject of my examination. I distributed my attention over all the pictures inside it, but I concentrated on one outstanding picture named “Fox in the Chicken House.”[11] There are no words that could relate to the reader the beauty of this ingenious picture, in which the artist depicted several profound, complex feelings in a painting where there is no human face to make it easy for the artist to depict those feelings… A fox is in the chicken house, the sky is suffocatingly dark, and the fox has just attacked a chicken, a nesting mother, who appears in distress and exhausted in the claws of the wild beast baring his teeth; her little ones are terrified and the eggs remaining beneath her are scattered; her fellow hens meanwhile are scattered throughout the space of the painting, and the rooster—the man of the house—stands helpless, at a loss to find any salvation for his spouse in distress, although he is her guardian! As for the other hens, one is anxious and taken by surprise, another is despairing and disgusted that there should be all this atrocity in life, while a third is at a loss, asking: “How did this happen?” And the entire sky and the colors in this ingenious painting depict that which words cannot grasp.

I took a rest on one of the seats that the halls do provide with singular[12] courtesy for those visitors who are tired of looking and of walking around to rest on, and I rested, inspecting the features and expressions [of faces] and listening to the remarks and comments.

Four full hours passed over me in my seat, during which 109 persons passed by me, singles and couples and groups, of whom the majority were among the [many] young women and young men[13] who make appointments to spend some time in the museum’s garden and then in the museum itself, since it is proper for the social young woman to share in conversation and to find subjects for conversation.

On [the faces of] how many of these 109 did it appear that they were feeling anything of what they were seeing? Only one lingered for about two minutes in front of the picture I had selected, and he lingered in the whole hall for about five minutes…then he flew off.

I repeated the experiment in the other halls of the museum, and then repeated it in other museums in several cities. Again I arrived at the point where [I could say that], out of the great mass of visitors comprised in my enumerations, only a rare minority comprehended anything of these tremendous artistic riches that the dollar has gathered from all the places on earth; all that remained for the dollar to do was to create artistic sensation, but apparently that does not respond to the dollar’s charms!

The only art in which the Americans are proficient—although there are other [peoples] who still surpass them in it as far as artistry goes—is the art of the cinema. This is natural and logical given the phenomenon that makes the American unique: the height of industrial proficiency combined with primitiveness of artistic feelings. In the cinema this phenomenon is very much manifest.

By its nature, the cinematic art does not rise to the loftiest regions of the arts—music, drawing, sculpture, and poetry—nor for that matter to the [level of the] art of the theater, although in the cinema the possibilities for artistic craft[14] and the possibilities of production are much greater. And in terms of originality, the art of production in the cinema has gotten only as far as the farthest point reached by the art of photography. Moreover, some distance remains between it and (for example) the art of the theater, just as some distance remains too between depiction by photography and depiction by a [painter’s] brush. In the latter is expressed genius of feelings; in the former, expertise of craft.

The cinema is the popular art of the multitudes, so it is the art in which one finds expertise, proficiency, magnification, and approximation. By its nature it relies more on expertise than on the artistic spirit… in it the American genius[15] can exercise creativity… yet despite this, English, French, Russian, and German film all remain superior to American film, although they are inferior to it in craft and expertise.

In the great majority of American films, one sees manifestly primitive subjects and primitive excitement; this is true of police/crime films and cowboy films. As for high, skillful films, such as “Gone with the Wind,” “Wuthering Heights,” “The Song of Bernadette,” and such, they are few in comparison with what America produces. Such American film as does reach Egypt or the Arab countries does not resemble this family, since the majority of it comes from among the superior, rare American films.[16] And those people who visit the regions of the land in America are those who reach that tiny family of valuable films.

There is another art in which the Americans are skillful, because in it there is more of expertise in craft and production than there is of high, genuine art… It is the art of depicting natural spectacles in color as if [the depictions] were photographic, true and exact[17]. This can be seen in the museums of land and water animals, since these animals or their embalmed bodies are displayed [there] in the likeness of their natural habitats, just as if they were real. The artist’s brush is skillful in depicting these habitats in cooperation with the spectacle’s artistic design; it reaches the point of creativity.

Said Qutb is quite the cultural critic, coming from a place and a religion that proscribed music and art from its very beginnings. How does spending one’s life in the cold, dark, stone tomb of Islam prepare someone for a life as a cultural critic? His intellectual foundations were devoid of the stimuli of music and painting, yet Qutb, forges ahead, undisturbed at the ultimate hypocrisy of his position. He obviously doesn’t compare America to Egyptian art, since that ceased when Islam took over 1400 years ago, but European art, much of which was Christian inspired and Church sponsored.

The other disturbing element is the “primitive inclinations” of the Negro that Qutb talks about. I am not Chris Matthews but that sounds awfully racist to me.

Not so surprising to learn that other translations had gaps in the text.

Did he ever experience American TV? He would have absolutely loved "Charlie's Angels."

“Jazz” music....is that music that the Negroes invented to satisfy their primitive inclinations, as well as their desire to be noisy on the one hand and to excite bestial tendencies on the other.

Nope, that's why they invented Rap and Hip Hop...

I have known about this piece of human excrement for quite a while. When I mention “it” to folks they give a puzzled look. If you do some looking you’ll find that he was indeed instrumental in re-starting the “muslime” brotherhood on it’s road to terror after many years waiting in the shadows. If I recall correctly he went to school in Colorado and was appalled at the way the girls carried on there. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong on the Colorado connection. I seem to remember that he was a hero to OBL. Or was it BHO??????

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. (Post Christmas greetings)

“Jazz” music is.. music that the Negroes invented..

What a complete waste of bandwidth. My brief forays into musical epidemiology taught me that Jazz was a derivative of Jewish Kletzmer music (originally from the Old World), that early Negro musicians picked up when learning to play instruments from Jewish instructors.

Jazz is in 4/4 time, as is Kletzmer, while African tribal music is in, typically, 3/8 time.

Said is a monumental boob.

Thanks for posting! Although - as always - no matter what subject Muslims are writing or talking about (even my favorite: culture) they manage to bore the be-***** out of me.

The beauty of Western society is that the greatest art has been made accessible to most Westerners. If you go to the Louvre, you will see hundreds of Europeans and Americans passing by the Mona Lisa. They may not understand it’s importance in art history, but they’ve just been exposed to the potential of developing an interest in the visual arts. So this dopey idea that hundreds of people passing before a painting makes it a meaningless experience just doesn’t cut it with me.

Also, I am amused that a so-called cultural critic would laud “Song of Bernadette” as a great work of art while apparently dismissing a film like “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (cowboy movie!) or “The Godfather” (crime movie!). I think I’ll stick with Pauline Kael.

These jihadist bastards have been racist from the start. I cannot understand why any Black person would adopt islam. It should be recalled that the islamists continue to practice slavery in the Sudan on Black Africans even to this day.

Gay closeted hysterical is what he seems to me-—>>>>>
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from WIKIPEDIA:
Though Islam gave him much peace and contentment,[16] he suffered from respiratory and other health problems throughout his life and was known for “his introvertedness, isolation, depression and concern.” In appearance, he was “pale with sleepy eyes.”[17] Qutb never married, in part because of his steadfast religious convictions. While the urban Egyptian society he lived in was becoming more Westernized, Qutb believed that ‘the current ideas of the society and its prevalent traditions apply great pressure - back-breaking pressure, especially in the case of women; the Muslim woman is really under extreme and oppressive pressure’.[18] Qutb joked to his readers that he was never able to find a woman and had to reconcile himself to bachelorhood.[19]

“Jazz” music is his music of choice. This is that music that the Negroes invented to satisfy their primitive inclinations

It cracks me up that idiots from Cat Stevens to Jihad Johnny Walker credited black music with turning them toward Islam.

I suspect a HUGE portion of jihadists, are indeed, homos. “Women for breeding, boys for pleasure” and the act of child rape perpetuates itself in a new generation of homosexualists.

I'd imagine that the multitude of contradictions in jihadi life (allah telling them they are the best amongst people, yet they live in sewage pits, that homosexualism is sin yet they all take part in it) might be the cause of some of the rampant psychosis.

Still, I'll go into wikipedia later and make it clear for anyone to see that this guy was a sodomite.

So this dopey idea that hundreds of people passing before a painting makes it a meaningless experience just doesn’t cut it with me.

The author has not described my experience with art museums. I've seen many people linger before paintings, sculptures, etc. and discuss them. A goodly amount are listening to the rented audio commentary on each work. There is much enjoyment and contemplation, not just a crowd of people looking to get their cultural tickets punched.

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