Dr. Arwulf Arwulf :: The Sunday Best

I was born in Palo Alto, California in 1957 and took a vow of nonviolence at the age of nine. Came up in communities all over the continental United States, including a nice tree-lined university neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio; historic Concord, Massachusetts where I spent lots of time among turtles near a water reservoir or up on Author’s Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, and Bozeman Montana where I mainly sought out the company of metamorphic rocks. Infiltration of Ann Arbor, Michigan began in 1968 and is still progressing. I work full time as an educational media consultant for the College of LS&A at the University of Michigan. I’m a jazz historian, a poet, and a writer. Voraciously bookish, I especially enjoy paging through discographical session indexes. Sometimes I play the clarinet, or paint found objects with bright pigments. I am happily married and devoted to herbalist, activist and spiritual seeker Lindsay Forbes. We are completely enslaved by several hairy little cats. Our guru is Mata Amritanandamayi, who travels the globe hugging people one by one and whose charities feed, clothe, house, heal and educate millions of individuals worldwide.

my name

What about my name? Arwulf is a very old Northern European name, similar to Arnulf. I have been calling myself Arwulf since 1971, when the name chose me. Part of the inspiration to do this arose one night when two young women saw a wolf in my shadow while I was looking at the moon. There are other Arwulves; one (apparently a former music appreciation student of mine who felt entitled to the name) is an aspiring photographer. Another "Arwulf" apparently belongs to some sort of medieval jousting society. I began calling myself Arwulf Arwulf many years ago in response to questions regarding first and last names. As it turns out, doubling the name distinguishes me today from others who feel the need to call themselves Arwulf. But honestly I’d rather not dwell on this topic any further. Vanitas vanitatum.

education

This is not a boring world. I’m fundamentally autodidactic which means I’d rather not wait for other people to teach me. Originally I was exposed to manufactory standard issue public schooling, until this proved inappropriate to the functioning of my neurological structure. I participated in U of M’s experimental/experiential "Solstis School" [yes that’s the way it was spelled] at an old house on Oakland Street during the early 1970s. This would have worked better had I taken a vow of silence. Next, I was enrolled in Community High during its first year (1972-73), but it was too big for the sort of intensive, in-depth alternative education I needed and found during the years 1973-76 at Earthworks High School, initially a Pioneer High pilot program that occupied cramped quarters in a building which today houses the Washtenaw Alano Club on N. Maple. This little school’s co-administrator Thomas Dodd was a major influence. Beginning with Earthworks and up until the present day I have been busy perfecting my autodidact technique, even while sleeping, for a philosopher’s work is never done. I have taught at Community, at Earthworks, for Summer Discovery, as guest lecturer at various educational institutions including U of M & EMU, at WCBN FM and on the streets. My favorite textbook is still the First Surrealist Manifesto.

music

Years of reckless/careful research have revealed that music is far more than "entertainment". At its best, music is transformational medicine. When operating at or near maximum potential, music alleviates suffering and prevents psychic stagnation. That means it’s really powerful and should be handled with care. Like many who thrived in Southeast Michigan’s culturally diverse environment, I was permanently altered by the music while still quite young. During a very impressionable adolescence I was inspired by Leni & John Sinclair and Genie & Pun Plamondon to work as a Psychedelic Ranger (alternative security force) at the 1972, ’73 and ’74 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals. I was given a Fats Waller record in 1975 (a turning point!) and obtained Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Cannonball Adderly, Lou Donaldson, James Moody, Charles Mingus, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton and Rahsaan Roland Kirk records shortly thereafter, pursuing all styles and historic currents of jazz with alacrity and passion as a direct result of music festivals, club gigs, workshops and phonograph records. Throughout these early years of intensive research, I was greatly assisted and abetted by truly amazing amount of live jazz which made Ann Arbor such a great place to visit & live in. One major source of live music for many years was Eclipse Jazz, an organization founded, managed, staffed and steered by U of M students.

radio: WCBN

In July 1977, armed with a stack of 78 rpm platters and several Fats Waller LPs, I infiltrated WCBN 89.5 FM, the student-run experimental radio at U of M, shortly before its frequency was changed to its present bandwidth of 88.3 to ’clear the air’, as it were, for WEMU to begin broadcasting at 89.1 FM. In 1980 I founded a radio show at WCBN called "You’ve Got To Be Modernistic" (Thurs 7 PM) This 60-minute cultural de-worming still airs under its present title of "Face the Music". WCBN, where I once did a three hour show wearing only a bathrobe, operates in an atmosphere of no-holds-barred freedom of expression. Anyone trying to figure out my approach to radio should take into account the underground nature of my work at WCBN, where I’m happy to continue to participate as broadcaster, historian, advisor and rhetorician. This has been a great blessing because I feel that radio is a most grossly abused medium, and I get to work with young people to make a difference. Part of our mission at WCBN is to teach young people to achieve their own balance between freedom and discipline. Everything I do with any and all media access I regard as humanitarian action on behalf of what I call the Underground Intellectual Resistance Movement.

radio: WEMU

After several years at WCBN I was encouraged to continue in broadcasting and to join the staff at WEMU by Michael G. Nastos and was eased into the "Sunday Best" by Michael Jewett in 1986. I’ve been patiently nurtured at WEMU by Art Timko, Linda Yohn, George Klein, and have aired music from there at all hours of the day and night, including overnights. I firmly believe that late night and overnight radio shifts are the training ground for the jazz DJs of tomorrow. Being on the air between the hours of 11 PM and 5 AM teaches you that all kinds of good people listen to the radio all night long, and that anyone listening to you at 3:30 in the morning really needs for you to be there. Broadcasting on Sunday mornings is a great honor, and heaps of fun. A sizable portion of my audience hasn’t even gotten dressed yet, and everyone is generally pretty vulnerable during those hours. Some folks have to work on Sundays, and I’m proud to be there to help them make it through their shifts. One guy likes to listen to the Sunday Best while fishing. Some people hear me on the way to church or on the way home from church. I once had a call from a minister who told me he listened to the Sunday Best between sermons.

philosophy and beliefs

I regard old-fashioned melodies as essentially good medicine, and also greatly value musical forms that transcend traditional and especially conventional notions of what music is supposed to sound like. I consider all music to be relative and listen to a panoramic spectrum that includes nearly everything of substantial depth and sincerity, even that which is sincerely twisted or substantially silly. Ancestral sensibilities fuel a voracious appetite for European chamber & symphonic music, especially lieder, cantatas and opera, as well as 20th and 21st century exploratory forms and sacred music of worldwide cultures including the beautiful bhajans from India. I study history and poetic theory each and every day and consider curiosity & experimentation to be vital components in the evolutionary design of the human animal. The imagination is a living being which requires nourishment. Conformity, as far as I’m concerned, is a degenerative social disease.

writings

After writing for a fledgling publication called Art Light, I composed monthly articles for Agenda, Ann Arbor’s Alternative News Monthly, from 1992 until its demise some ten years later. My intensive theatrical background, shared and steered by my brother, film and TV actor Zach Grenier [see zachgrenier.com] sustains my perpetual development as a performance poet. I have read in public alone, with groups of poets and with my fellow jazz broadcaster Marc Taras. I write poetry every day and night, ransack libraries at will, and have written hundreds of reviews and biographies for the on line All Music Guide. My advice to young writers is to take good notes, and do not panic. Work to alleviate suffering in the world; "all else is drunken dumbshow" (Allen Ginsberg).

my CD

Reproductive Rights for All Women, a double album of Poetry and Free Jazz, was produced in 1998 on Arwulf’s own Nicht Schleppen label. Engineered & co-produced by WEMU’s own Doug Cameron. Contains performances by legendary bassist, thinker and activist Ted Harley, with members of the collective improvisation ensemble, Transmission.

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