"Every other song of mine celebrates the Goddess. She is Mother Nature. hyyywswedyyu7asAnd we have been placed in the extraordinary position, almost on the edge of extinction, by this totally, overly male view that every resource, every river, every breeze, every cloud, every metal in the land should be raped and pillaged and sold as a commodity. (Donovan) 

He is entirely correct, of course, and what a charge to finally begin plunging/flying deeper into his oeuvre of transfixing and elevating musical utterances of music/lyrics commingling for really the first time among the greatest world music in recorded history since I was a teenager having been temporarily puzzled by impossibly-moronically-articulate rock, folk and pop critics (think Joseph Goebbels the champaign salesperson prior to working for the German government of the thirties and forties of the twentieth century as best deciphered by William L. Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the finest volume by far about Nazi Germany, World War II and the Jewish Holocaust having actually known personally the key leaders in Germany at least - hard to beat that for relevance (!) especially with his towering intellect, prose and sensibilities and Peter Cohen in his film "The Nazi Aesthetic of Beauty: The Architecture of Destruction) devoid of God (Nature) consciousness touching the soul of Sagarmatha, Chomolungma and me, too, and hopefully you, too, to be One for all time. 

All these are central reasons why the singer songwriter Donovan Phillips Leitch is ultimately a greater musical artist than Robert Dylan Zimmerman, Donovan's songs coming from love and kindness rather than death and punishment in a sadistic manner towards males and females he hates. 

Zimmerman sings how we must "Serve Somebody" but not God/Nature only male egos and that of like-minded flunkies both female and male because he became too cynical to believe in God/Nature after not one of his many wives, but a girlfriend caused him to crash his motorcycle which is a very foolish mode of transportation regardless of road conditions including swerving to avoid a raccon.

            This distinction between the two singer-songwriters has nothing to do with age just a relative if enormous lack of sensitivity and veera rasa gulf with musical quality trumping amount of albums and what writings were paid for either directly or through underlings.   

Luckily for myself my primary music teachers were never cynical when I studied with them and Lee Konitz begged me to take over the jazz school he inherited from Lennie Tristano shortly before his death his downfall beginning with horrific music "collaborators" like Alan Broadbent and a misnaming demented male manager from Austria with a female name and his equally confused wife debacle who ruined the last twenty years or so of Lee's recorded albums the evidence is there to hear how they had him recording and performing with musical mediocrities unlike Hal Galper and Red Mitchell, etc.   

And it was a miracle that this came true myself unexpectedly beginning to invent a new form of jazz improvisation at the piano after studies with Jocelyn Robbins Korshak thus fulfilling Konitz's dying wish as he valued music above all else.

   Alto and tenor saxophone and gatra vina are currently being practiced, too, for usage in jazz improvisation and interpretation as well for future albums and live performances both solo and in duet form.          

- Michael Robinson Longhi, June 2025 - January 2026 Los Angeles 

© 2025-2026 by Michael Robinson All rights reserved

Michael Robinson Longhi is a Los Angeles-based composer, pianist and musicologist. His over 200 albums include over 150 albums for meruvina and over 50 albums of piano improvisations. Robinson Longhi has been a performer and lecturer at a number of churches, universities, colleges, libraries, NPR, Pacifica, college and community radio stations, high schools, elementary schools and community centers in America to date and all over the world online.