Come Sunday: Jazz, Trouble, Hallelujah

wordpress

2011-05-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

Hello! There is still some traffic here which is lovely, hope you'll all see the new blog at JAZZHALLELUJAH.WORDPRES.COM thank you! josslyn

The Big Move: Special New Years Notice!

2009-12-29T18:00:00.000-08:00

Dearest Jazz Hallelujah readers,

The Come Sunday: Jazz, Trouble, Hallelujah community is on the move!

After a long haitus, I am back and now a little gussied up on Wordpress.
Blogger's been wonderful, I just got the urge to try a little something new, new town, new decade new blog life....

PLEASE VISIT jazzhallelujah.wordpress.com for a new decade of sacred jazz conversation.

With love and gratitude,

Josslyn

My Soul with Your Eyes: Jazz Darsan

2009-07-28T22:05:00.000-07:00

You go to my head, Louis, and my heart, my smile, my swinging hips and tapping toe. I know technically we will celebrate your birthday next week on Aug 4 but I love that during your life you had everyone believing you were born on independence day. That jazz legend lives on with me every Fourth of July when my best (only) effort at patriotism is to pull out "Louis Armstong meets Oscar Peterson (a Canadian, ha!)," open all my windows and peacefully rock in the rocking easy chair on my front porch (and if I'm really on point the smell from the baked beans I try to make as good as mom's and sweet cornbread drifts out to tease the neighbors). But I tell you, everytime I get to "You Go To My Head" I stop rocking. I sit forward. I say "damn" to myself several times, and feel so grateful that you play the full song twice, first horn, then voice. This past Fourth, though I gave the freedom shout in the blog to our beloved Billy Strayhorn, I spent a good part of that day thinking about the power of "You Go to My Head"...from Dinah and Clifford's version (ahhh), to Billie Holiday's (who jumped to record it back in 1938 within a year of its release) to the Louis you reveal here that I'm not sure most folks know...I can hardly catch my breath when you testify:

You go to my head
With a smile that makes my temperature rise
Like a summer with a thousand Julys
You intoxicate my soul with your eyes...

Then come to remember my man Haven Gillespie laid that lyric down, not long after he dropped "Beautiful Love"...what was going on with Haven? Did you ever meet him? What I hear is he was born in 1888, one of 9 kids, poor, white Kentucky family, crammed in one basement apartment, til he dropped out of grade school and moved up to Chicago to live with an older sister. Mr. Gillespie was also a journalist, a man who stuggled with alcohol addiction, and the writer of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." The guy who wrote "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" also wrote:

Beautiful love,
I've roamed your paradise
Searching for love, my dream to realize
Reaching for heaven, depending on you
Beautiful love, will my dreams come true? "

I wonder Louis how you would have responded to the two women sitting next to me the other night at a Kurt Elling concert in Hollywood. They were a generation older than me and one especially seemed like she was in a lousy mood to begin with, but they were quite irked that this white singer was trying to sing the tunes Johnny Hartman ever so masterfully recorded with John Coltrane. I really understand where the hurt underneath the irk comes from, and have shared that same sigh: "here they go again, stealing our genius and selling it back to us" or as Greg Tate brilliantly titled his book about white theft of black culture, "Everything but the Burden..." Louis, I have this feeling you might have just given our two sisters a hug and offered them a round of "sparkling burgandy brew." I didn't do this, though I did kind of want to engage them on the fact that that precious, priceless Hartman/Coltrane collaboration, THE soundtrack of black romance that informed the conception of so many boys and girls of my generation...well, aside from Strayhorn's "Lush Life" every song on that album is written by one of Haven's white, mostly Jewish composer comrades. So Kurt Elling, at least that evening was a white jazz singer singing songs written by other white men 50 to 70 years before him.

If we are to realize your "Wonderful World," Louis don't we need to listen to one another across difference, look for each other's souls with our eyes? I'm just starting to read about the Hindu practice of Darsan, seeing the divine image...one of the most striking ideas right away for me is the idea that in honoring any of the sculptures/representations of the Hindu dieties, it is as important to see the image as to be seen by the image....Haven's lyric "you intoxicate my soul with your eyes," feels right up this same sacred alley. Haven Gillespie had many Jewish song writing collaborators, he wrote one very famous Christmas song, but who knows what else was spiritually spinning round in his brain...Again for the realization, the living breathing, real deal arrival of your wonderful world, Louis, we need you and Haven in Pennsylvania at every public and private swimming pool, goggles off, eyes and souls engaged, warmly welcoming every child. We sure need you and Haven trading seriously swinging eights with the Cambridge PD, right about now. We need that divine seeing, that beauty loving us into your "bright blessed days and dark sacred nights." Happy birthday, Mr. Armstrong, and thank you and Mr. Gillespie for intoxicating my soul July after July.

Moral Freedom and the Listening-Hearing Self

2009-07-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

"He demanded freedom of expression and lived in what we consider the most important of moral freedoms: freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from all self-pity (even throughout all the pain and bad news); freedom from fear of possibly doing something that might help another more than it would help himself; and freedom from the kind of pride that could make a man feel he was better than his brother or neighbor."His greatest virtue, I think, was his honesty--not only to others, but to himself. His listening-hearing self was totally intolerant of his writing-playing self when, or if, any compromise was expected, or considered expedient.

God bless Billy Strayhorn..."

(from Duke Ellington's eulogy for Swee' Pea as printed in the liner notes for "...and his mother called him Bill"--these Strayhorn Moral Freedoms are also found in Ellington's Second Sacred Concert as spoken text within the tune, "It's Freedom.")

Black Gold and My Favorite Luckett Jazz (sub)Urban Legend

2009-06-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

For me the all time jazz urban legend, okay, the Luckett family jazz (sub)urban legend centers around the second version of "Black is the Color" on my fav fav live Nina Simone LP "Black Gold." The traditional tune ends high priestess style, "truuuuuuue, love's hair," then her Juilliard trained piano fades to dusty, deep South acoustic guitar, and we hear a dustier, deeper baritone sounding Nina...I'm telling you my father had us convinced that Nina had dropped a register and flipped the lyric to sing, as a man, the most soulful ballad to a black woman...EVER. Did my young, dreamy teen ears understand this transgender segue as Nina's specific longing to be loved this way, this well? Was this performance, were these words her instructions to her male lover as to how she deserved to be seen, treasured...

"Black is her body, so firm, so bold
Black is her beauty, her soul of gold...
I remember how she came to me
In a vision of my mind
I remember how she said to me
Don't ever look behind,
She said, look ahead and I would see
Someone, always loving me
Her picture is painted in my memory
Without a color of despair
And no matter where I go
She is always there...."

We even backed up this imagined octave drop by claiming to have seen her do it live in the mid 80's when Pops drove me, I think on a school night from Irvine to Beverly Hills to see Nina live. Couple years later I split to New Orleans and hear Charmaine Neville drop Satchmo low like the imagined Nina of Black Gold. On my return to Cali first thing I tell pops, "they got a sis at Snug Harbor sing low as Black Gold Nina!"

Ahhh the crush when at last, not too long ago Black Gold was finally reissued on CD as part of a three album pack, containing Emergency Ward, Black Gold and (my other fav) It is Finished and the full credits were finally included claiming guitarist Emile Latimer sang the second "Black is..." Thank you Emile, but I prefer the Luckett family legend, and I'm sticking with it.

This is all on my mind cause until yesterday that track two, Black Gold version of "Black is..." was for me indisputably the greatest...a very close rival version happened live at Catalina Bar and Grill last night when Brian Blade invited us on his Fellowship Band's holy, haunting completely surprising "Black is..." journey. I kept thinking, is the Fellowship (Jon Cowherd, piano, Myron Walden, bass clarinet, Melvin Butler, tenor, and Chris Thomas, bass) hip to Black Gold?

Before Nina sings Miriam Makeba's prayer, "Westwind" on Black Gold, she turns our attention to percussion masters Don Alias and Juma Santos: "And now I'd like to introduce you to the heartbeat of our organization, the pulse of everything we do is centered around the drums. And if you think about that, really, seriously, you know that your entire life is centered around your heart-beat, and that is rhythm, is it not?" I sure hope Nina got a chance to hear Brian Blade before she joined the ancestors and if not, I gotta hope she was listening in last night.

I turned 40 yesterday. My pops died right before I turned 30. Nina in reality and the Nina he and together we imagined was one of my most cherished gifts from him. Thank you Nina, thank you Brian Blade Fellowship band and thank you pops, thanks for visiting via "Black is..." for a birthday hello, I felt you. I'm still claiming "YOUNG, Gifted and Black" (smile)...without a color of despair...the drum, our heartbeats, the splendor of these ancestral west wind prayers unify us, don't divide us....

" ....And I Know Jazz to be a Good Thing.... " Roberto Miranda's Bass Walk On the Sacred Side

2009-05-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

“God gave jazz to the African American first, and I know it was God that gave it...because James says that all good things come from up above and I know jazz to be a good thing.” As Robert Nesta Marley sang, one good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain, I listen to Bob’s Afro-Caribbean brother Roberto Miranda speak of Jesus and Jazz and think man this guy packs one serious punch and yet I feel no pain. In fact it feels so sweet to be on the receiving end of his blasts of spiritual wisdom, his blows of passionate storytelling, and if you’re like me you want to hear round after round of his bass playing especially when he goes arco on you. “Peter Mercurio looked at me one day and he looked at the bow and he said, ‘This is our breath’...and I said, ‘oh yeah’.” And now we all breathe a little easier from the shared wisdom of one of Roberto’s many brilliant teachers of the bass (he also studied with Verne Martin who was one of Mingus’ early teachers, Bob Stone, Dennis Trembly, Fred Tinsley and two short and powerful stints with Ray Brown and Red Mitchell). Though we think of the bass as the bottom, it was not the beginning for Miranda...Born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents, Roberto’s first music teacher was his father, a professional musician himself who made and played his own percussion instruments and started Roberto out early on the conga drum. “I used to fall asleep to my father’s bands rehearsing in our house...he was really good. In the 1950’s he appeared with his own band on the Ed Sullivan show...which was a big deal.” Roberto poignantly points out that his father always had a day job too, and always instilled in his son that if he wanted to be a musician he must always support his family, “My father taught me by his example and his words, if I was going to be a musician and a family man at the same time that I needed to make absolutely certain that I was in a position where I could provide for my family and that it was not incumbent upon my wife to support my music....Now did I pay attention to him? Yes and no...” and Roberto goes on honestly to say it took a minute for him to get over his stubbornness and pride...but eventually he accomplished both of his dreams of being a working musician, composer and family man. We conducted this conversation on the campus of the middle school in the valley where Miranda not only teaches full time but instituted the first Afro Caribbean percussion courses in LA Unified School District. Roberto is so grateful for his father’s musical lessons and legacy and gives thanks to both his parents for instilling the love of Jesus in his childhood, “I literally cannot remember one day in my entire life when I didn’t know who Jesus was and I didn’t love him.” While his parents were practicing Catholics who also believed in Afro Caribbean orishas like Yemaya and Chango, Roberto considers himself a born-again Evangelical Christian and does not subscribe to the way his parents worship, though he still thanks them for introducing him to Jesus.In terms of sacred jazz, Roberto feels a profound connection and understanding of the concept in the Christian tradition, “When I think of jazz on the sacred side, I think about the history of jazz musicians who have grown up in the church and who love Jesus Christ...now, a lot of people never think about jazz musicians in that way, right? They don’t think about this guy who’s on the band stand four or five nights a week, getting up early on Sunday morning and going to church.” He immediately mentions work like Donald Byrd’s “Cristo Redentor” or “When the Saints go Marching In”...”all of those tunes that are played at the funerals in New Orleans.” Then Roberto gets even more fired up, excited to speak on this connection... “My music is jazz music, there’s no doubt about the fact that my music is jazz music. It’s heavily influenced also by Afro-Latin music...but every single piece of music I’ve written for the past 30 years has either been for Jesus Christ, or for someone whom I love deeply like my wife, or for someone I thank God for like Thelonious Monk...just because I love Monk. So that’s where my music is coming from...and I know that there are other musicians like me...James Newton, Sonship Theus, these people write music for Christ and there’s a history of that in jazz music that goes all the way back to the beginning."From here we speak so dearly about Duke Ellington’s sacred concerts and Roberto wants to tell me the story of how Duke used to travel with a wooden board...draw himself a hot bath and set his bible on the board and read in the tub until the water got cold! We are both grateful for the wisdom we received from Kenny Burrell about Duke Ellington...I tell Roberto that Kenny always reminded me that Duke never referred to his sacred concerts as his greatest work but he said they were his most “important work.” We touch on the great quote from Duke before composing the first Sacred Concert, “Now I can say openly what I’ve been saying to myself on my knees”...and I ask Roberto how his own knee conversations have affected his compositions. He says right away, “I know that I cannot impress Jesus,” we both laugh. “It helped me to be more honest in my writing...because there’s nothing I’m gonna do and he’s gonna say ‘wooo’. So whatever kind of compositional techniques I may utilize in bringing about a desired sonic affect or melodic affect or rhythmic affect...it’s not about being clever...it’s about a gift that I’m offering which I want to be as pure as I can be at that particular moment in time...I just want to bring him glory.I feel deeply moved to have my conversation with Roberto Miranda on the week we remember the Rodney King uprising that left such a devastating mark on our city. When I ask Roberto about the way in which music, jazz in particular has aided in the healing of our city, he easily smiles and says one name: Horace Tapscott. Now Roberto’s reflections on the soul wisdom of his mentor and Pan African Peoples Arkestra leader would take many more volumes, but I will end with an idea he shared about both Horace and Duke, who he felt may not have always talked about the depth of their spiritual beliefs but always brought light and love to every community they served and touched. Roberto said that one of his faith elders once said to him, “sometimes the only bible someone might read is YOU. So it’s not so much about preaching the gospel as living it, in some cases never even saying a word...and that may be what Duke Ellington and Horace Tapscott had to do.”
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The post above is from the program notes of our glorious sixth and final "Come Sunday: Jazz on the Sacred Side" concert May 3, 2009 at the Jazz Bakery in its current location at the Helms Bakery Building. I give tremendous gratitude to Roberto Miranda for taking the series out on such a deep deep sacred sound off...ooooh and especially for that last solo bass "Come Sunday" he sent us home with. While Roberto and his extraordinary musicians (James Newton on flute, Kei Akagi on piano, Sonship Theus on drums, Steve Blake, orator, and Lindsey Willams, vocals) moved the audience so richly, the musicians and I were in turn sooo moved by the presence of our dear Buddy Collette in the house! What a way to close out phase one of this journey. The conversation with Roberto was so intense it will probably warrant a second post as I'm still chewing on some of his thoughts...and of course more will be written in these posts over time about the end of an era at Helms...Love to you all and thank you soooooooooo much to everyone who took part in these concerts from the musicians, to the listeners, to all the sound engineers and staff at the Bakery and again to Ruth for 16+ years of creating a home for this music we value beyond words...

"So That All of Humanity could see that it was One" Birthday Smiles for Brother Malcolm

2009-05-19T22:02:00.000-07:00

Loving Malcolm, this morning on my porch I thought, what small thing could I do today to honor his birthday...the first thing that came to me was smile...I think of all my heroes/sheroes, he's got the most easeful and brilliant smile...his smile was my first invitation to really deeply listen to him...especially as a counterpoint to my father's rageful scowls regarding race matters.
I'm starting this post too late in the evening to effectively connect the music part of this sacred jazz journey I'm on with Malcolm's radiance, but on the interfaith side...I wanted to share this short passage from a speech Malcolm gave at Corn Hill Methodist Church in Rochester, New York 5 days before his assassination. "To straighten out my own position...I'm a Muslim...I believe in God, the Supreme Being, the creator of the universe...I believe in one God, and I believe that that God had one religion, has one religion, always will have one religion. And that that God taught all of the prophets the same religion, so there is no arguement about who was greater or who was better: Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, or some of the others. All of them were prophets who came from one God. They had one doctrine, and that doctrine was designed to give clarification of humanity, so that all of humanity would see that it was one and have some kind of brotherhood that would be practiced here on this earth. I believe in that.""Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace....Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy." Thich Nhat Hanh

Go as a River...

2009-04-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

"If we are a drop of water and we try to get to the ocean as only an individual drop, we will surely evaporate along the way. To arrive at the ocean, you must go as a river" Thich Nhat Hanh

With utter gratitude I thank my "Jazz on the Sacred Side" family, especially Nailah for stepping in for me on Palm Sunday (while I was in India) to host the remarkable Open Hands band. I hear the show was out of this world!!!! I love this photo of Justo and Abe with Nailah in front of our spiritual ancestor, Art Blakey, in one of my favorite paintings in the current Jazz Bakery space in the Helms Bakery building. As you know Ruth Price has announced that May will be the final month for the Bakery in that space, and I stand in profound thanks for all the joy that space has held over the last 15+ years.

WE WILL HAVE OUR FINAL "COME SUNDAY: JAZZ ON THE SACRED SIDE SHOW SUNDAY MAY 3 @ 3PM (jazzbakery.org) FEATURING BASSIST EXTRAORDINARE, ROBERTO MIRANDA, WITH JAMES NEWTON AND SONSHIP THEUS AND MORE...!!!

Here are the notes I put together from a beautiful conversation I had with Mr. Almario before leaving the country. Again I want to thank all my jazz comrades, including January's Sacred Side feature, Eric Reed for coming through for the Open Hands show...while journeying through India reading Thich Nhat Hanh, I felt a special resonance hearing him speak about moving toward peace in community...it's so clear I'm not on this interfaith sacred jazz journey by myself...we go as a river, a deep, deep river.

Gratitude for Open Hands and Mr. Almario...The poet in me could not be more thrilled that a band called “Open Hands” is performing on this special “Palm” Sunday, Come Sunday. Nailah and I drove out to the Valley for the record release party for Justo’s latest and greatest collaboration, Open Hands, a couple weeks before the Palm Sunday gig, and the place was packed. We had to take turns between the ONE empty chair near the sublime Bill Maxwell, and a few empty inches of bar to lean on at the back of the club...and you need something to lean on when you listen to these brothers, because you will fall out. You will also dance, you will call and respond, and if you’re lucky, Justo will lead you in the shoulder roll-rhumba-amen. You heard me right. Now I’ve heard Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel say when he marched with Dr. King in Selma, that he felt as if “we were praying with our feet.” Justo had us praying with our shoulders. A few times I’d watch Nailah raise her hand to bear witness to the grace and groove before us and that struck me too...no disrespect to Tommie Smith and John Carlos, but I’d like to take a moment to lift up the power, the black brown beige all color -power, all faith tradition power of the open hand salute. What makes us lift our hands like that? Is it the same impulse in us now that those hungry for healing folks in Jerusalem had when they raised those palm fronds and shouted Hosanna so many centuries ago? Justo and Abraham, Greg and Bill had us shouting and will surely have you shouting, Hallelujah! Have mercy!...and maybe even, “Stop the madness...” as the playing got so complex, yet so funky and uplifting I lost all sense of space and time...ask Nailah, I couldn’t find my car afterward and I swear I was only high off the power of those Open Hands.

When I spoke with Mr. Almario on phone about his own Sacred Side/knee conversations, he shared that he was blessed with many musical fathers in Colombia who instilled his love of Afro-Caribbean music. He reminded me in the 50’s in his small town there was no electricity, no radio or tv, so his experience of music was always in community, on the street, in people’s homes. When he first had the opportunity in his teens to listen to Jazz on vinyl, hearing Charlie Parker and Cannonball Adderley changed everything. For Justo, Charlie Parker sounded like “a bird set free from a cage...it touched my heart.” And just like that, Justo was off to the U.S...first Boston to attend the Berklee school of music, then later to NYC when Mongo Santamaria invited him to join and ultimately become musical director of his band.Justo thrived on the city, and I have this sudden urge to put on my Salsa heels just listening to him riff about this era when on any given night he might sub for Tito Puente’s band or Eddie Palmieri’s band if he wasn’t already working a gig with Mongo. Or there were nights, like the unforgettable summer night in 1972, when after an early set with Mongo, Justo took the A Train to Lincoln Center to listen to guitar legend Andres Segovia, then raced back downtown to the Village Vanguard to catch, yes, Thelonious Monk. Justo rattles off the names of Monk's sidemen that night like it was last night not 30+ years ago. What tickled Justo most was that on one of the hottest nights that summer, Monk stumbled down the stairs of the Vanguard, wearing a thick wool overcoat and Russian hat...”Didn’t talk to anyone...sits at the piano and plays ‘Off Minor’" laughs, “only in New York!” Justo’s exhilaration when telling the story segues to his celebration of the arts in general...”It’s the best thing in life, the influence it’s had throughout history!”

While Justo could easily brag about the superstars he would go on to work with (okay I’ll brag for him...just a little bit...from Freddie Hubbard, Roy Ayers and Cachao to Jennifer Lopez, Queen Latifah and Chaka Khan!), he would rather talk about the deepening of his Christian faith, his “very conscious awakening” in 1981. He tells me from that point to today, he experiences music as a prayer. And for people coming to listen to him play--people he knows may be going through hard times--Justo prays that his music will offer a sanctuary, where the listener might experience “joy, rejoicing, love, healing where healing may be needed.” He said he hopes his music will “refresh the soul of the listener.” He speaks so sweetly about the way Duke Ellington through “Come Sunday” and John Coltrane through “A Love Supreme” spoke their prayers, and then he reminds me of the line from Coltrane’s sacred liner notes, “Let us sing all songs to God, to whom all praise is due.” Thank you, God. Serious shoulder roll Amen.

At the end of our conversation Justo asked me if it would be okay instead of bringing his own quartet to the Sacred Side show to bring the band he just recorded a new CD with...”Open Hands.” On faith I say yes, not knowing then I was basically saying “yes” to the jazz/blues/gospel masters equivalent to the Four Tenors: Abraham Laboriel, Greg Mathieson and Bill Maxwell. While time did not allow me once we made the change to interview all the guys, I am still full up from hearing them play/pray last weekend in the valley. These are powerful and vulnerable times...in the Christian tradition this Sunday, April 5th marks the beginning of Holy Week, beginning with these waves of open hands and palms, to Good Friday, to the glory of Easter morning. For me this music, this season, this conversation with Justo reminds me to walk this journey with open hands, so I too might receive, embrace all the joy, rejoicing, love and healing where healing may be needed.

Love and deep bows of Namaste to you all from India.
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Please enjoy the full bios of all of the Open Hands legends at openhandsmusic.net
Please save the date for our final Jazz on the Sacred Side in the current Jazz Bakery location: May 3 @ 3pm with Roberto Miranda!

Breaking Bread with Lesa Terry

2009-03-29T00:02:00.000-07:00

“To be sensual...is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.” James Baldwin

There’s a gorgeous book of dialogues between bell hooks and Cornel West called “Breaking Bread” that opens with that quote from Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. The spiritual, “Let us Break Bread Together on Our Knees” is celebrated by hooks for its attention to both community, sharing, breaking bread together--as well as the idea of mercy, the need we have for compassion, acceptance, understanding: “When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun, oh Lord have mercy on me.” I love any opportunity to revisit that tune, that Baldwin quote and this book of dialogues, and talking with Lesa Terry gave me plenty! One of the most moving moments in our conversation happened when Lesa told me about the time she performed “Let Us Break Bread Together” for Marianne Anderson (yes, Marianne Easter Sunday 1939 steps of the Lincoln Memorial Anderson). It began so casually she says...her group the Uptown String Quartet was recording their first CD in the same building The Cosby Show was taped. Max Roach pulled the quartet to his comrade Cosby’s studio for a rap party and there sitting in Mr. Cosby’s dressing room was Marianne Anderson. While the quartet performed, “Let Us...” Lesa tells me she heard Ms. Anderson turn to the person sitting next to her and say, “I used to sing that song...I always loved that song.” Lesa hadn’t remembered that story for some time and as she was telling it she became overwhelmed, “How could I not do what I do? I’ve been given opportunities that are so powerful...how could I not give what I give? I’m very grateful, very moved, I feel a great sense of purpose.”

It was Lesa’s mother, her French/Irish/Welsh mother that first played Marianne Anderson records for Lesa and her sisters as young girls...records she’d check out from the library along with other recordings of spirituals by Mahalia Jackson, Leontyne Price and Paul Robeson. Lesa is so grateful for her mother’s love of this music which she considers the most universal music there is because “It speaks of the human condition...it speaks of triumph and the ability to overcome difficulty...we all understand that.” Lesa credits her mother as giving her so many early musical gifts and spiritual lessons. While all the Terry girls started out on piano, Lesa noticed an old violin in her mother’s closet one day and “I wanted to be independent, do my own thing” so she reached for it. But once she started taking the violin to school, she noticed all the other kids had shiny, new instruments and hers was old and couldn’t possibly sound as good because of that. “My mother looked at me and said ‘Lesa, the sound of your instrument has nothing to do with the instrument itself, because sound is from the spirit and the heart...and when you learn how to make that connection, that’s when you’ll get a new instrument.’ I never forgot that.” Through private and university training in European Classical music, appointments with the Atlanta and Nashville Symphonies, on through to joining Max Roach’s Double quartet (a group that included the legendary drummer’s quartet with bass, sax and trumpet in combination with a string quartet) she never forgot that. Lesa remembers Odean Pope, the saxophonist from the Double Quartet always demanding to look at her fingers, insisting that there must be some physiological explanation for Lesa’s unique sound, he’d say “‘What is it? How do you do that?’...I said ‘Dude, it’s so not that, it’s centered on spirit.’” Beginning with her mother’s lesson she began to visualize sound as a kind of “healing balm that could go out and affect people...you could play on a old piece of drift wood floating down the river and make it speak because you’re just the conduit, you’re not the one...I’m just a vessel that the energy is passing through.” Lesa was gifted too by a particular classical violin teacher, Uli Fischer who echoed the power of what happens when musicians allow the spirit to move through them...he told her about a time when he sat behind piano legend Art Tatum and felt like it was a spiritual experience because how could anybody that was blind play with that kind of accuracy, precision and depth? The classical and the jazz worlds steadily kept intersecting as Lesa’s professional career blossomed. Luckily with Max Roach’s urging, Lesa did nothing but embrace both sides of her musical heritage.“There was one thing Max Roach always said to us, ‘don’t ever get rid of any part of you. You always are adding to your experience, never taking away. You grew up as a classical musician, Lesa, don’t try to change that, that’s part of who you are...but you can add to that...and let me show you who has done it before you’...so he began to help me see that there was a tradition already established with these great jazz violinists, the Ray Nances, the Stuff Smiths, and the Ginger Smocks.” Lesa was thrilled to learn these things and now insists as an educator on passing these lessons down to her students, “How fantastic...there are alternatives musically that we can choose as string players. It fuels my whole thing of trying to expose kids to something different, to reach inside themselves and pull music from their own culture and get to know what that is in its totality...And I don’t have to choose either side. I don’t have to be strictly jazz musician, or strictly classical musician or strictly any kind of thing...it all comes together in a very harmonious way and I think because of that I have a unique voice.” And now, prepare yourselves to be healed...Lesa and her ensemble may have you falling to your knees singing “have mercy.” I’m just saying...
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Keep current with Lesa Terry’s profoundly unique projects by visiting her website: lesaterry.com
Please also treat yourself to the book, “Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life” by bell hooks and Cornel West. South End Press 1991.

Trading Ecumenical Eights

2009-02-26T11:43:00.000-08:00

This stunning photo is of jazz violinist and local Los Angeles tv personality Ginger Smock (1920-1995), who with bassist Vivien Garry once recorded a tune called "A Woman's Place is in the Groove"!!! Hey now! I had never heard of Ginger Smock til Lesa Terry, our March Jazz on the Sacred Side artist hipped me to her....so now, I interrupt this blog to plug the concert: Come Sunday, March 8 @ 3pm for
LESA TERRY'S QUARTET AT THE JAZZ BAKERY!
Info/tickets at jazzbakery.org. Don't miss this Jazz on the Sacred Side!

An expansive teaching moment was launched when I sent an email blast about the upcoming "Come Sunday, Jazz on the Sacred Side" concert along with a photo of Duke Ellington's only violinist and sweetest "Come Sunday" soloist, Ray Nance. I had made a habit of sending out email notices with vintage jazzy, sacred feeling images that capture some nod to the power of the upcoming artist. For Dwight Trible, I chose Mahalia Jackson. For Nailah, I found this sanctified photo of a young Maya Angelou stomping her Africa loving, Southern soil reaching feet. I chose Ray Nance's image as a nod to Lesa's elegance and soulful string swing. Look like it confused some folk that I would choose a male image for Ms. Terry who has been so joyfully steeped in the celebration of women players in Jazz. This created an opportunity for me to listen and learn about new voices in jazz and women's history, and now honestly I can't stand the fact I wasn't hip to Ginger sooner! A perfect example of folks coming together across different backgrounds, impulses and historical information and having a chance to "trade eights" and grow. This is exactly why it is my great hope and intention for this Jazz on the Sacred Side series to grow and stretch its imagination regarding what is "sacred."
"A Buddhist, a Baha'i, a Muslim, and a Scientologist walk into a bar to hear Ray Brown--"...I wanna hear that punchline! I was recently writing a divinity school application where in describing my vision for the "Duke Ellington Center for the Study of Sacred Jazz" I remarked that Jazz is the place where we have always traded ecumenical, interfaith eights, instead of intolerance and hate. If you are reading this now and have ideas about Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and and and musicians who, like Duke, explore their "knee conversations" in their playing, please send them my way! The more we can gather and deeply listen, dialogue, call and respond, trade eights with these voices of faith that may be different than our own, the more we grow, the more we thrive, the more we have a chance as my Rev Ed Bacon would say of experiencing the human race as the human family...I challenge any jazz lover of any faith not to have wanted to hear the gig between the musicians in the photo above (Chick Corea, Art Blakey aka Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, Ray Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock)...that's interfaith sacred jazz ya'll. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

The Bumpy Road to Love, Still....

2009-02-14T16:01:00.001-08:00

"We love because it's the only true adventure" Nikki Giovanni

"A hunch...a hope...the joy in your heart" Antonio Carlos Jobim

Celebrating all loving/creative collaborations, brave leaps and lyrics, wise and foolish hearts.

Spread Joy to the Maximum

2009-01-26T10:23:00.000-08:00

I really feel like there's life before you hear John Boutte live and life after...I've written before here about the amazing Terence Blanchard set at Jazz fest in New Orleans last year, complete with on cue thunderstorms during his sacred requiem for Katrina...but if you want to talk about the hallelujah side of the festival...the John Boutte set on that same stage was glory glory!!!! Please get hip to John Boutte, visit his site (http://www.johnboutte.com/), please visit his city, New Orleans! And all you Los Angeles folk reading this, you can come to "The Joint" this Friday night and visit John in person!!!! Hope to see you there...we have so much to celebrate!

JOHN BOUTTE LIVE! FRIDAY JAN 30 @ THE JOINT 8PM
8771 W. PICO BLVD @ ROBERTSON (310) 275-2619

Oh Happy Day!

2009-01-04T20:40:00.000-08:00

Jazz on the Sacred Side swung in the New Year today in the most joyful and meaningful way...Mr. Eric Reed took us to school and took us to our feet...it's really something when the tech guys hours after the lights have come up are still humming "Oh Happy Day!" I watched Eric living the ministry he's so clear he's here to offer. I felt so much joy too, feeling so connected to my "assignment" to walk and claim and celebrate the gathering force and grace of this music...this music that pours so much love in my heart ...I'm sticking with it as MLK would say..."I have decided to stick to love...and I'm gonna talk about it everywhere I go." Thank you Eric. Thank you to everyone who grooved and clapped and shouted and stood up to sing "Oh Happy Day" with Eric's guest and friend Rev. Calvin Bernard Rhone...I know I'm still singing and smiling...

Here are the program notes...
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Eric Reed walks and talks, lives, breathes and most importantly swings sacred jazz. Now at first he takes me to task on what he calls the nondescript nature of both words...I can take it, I’m ready to grapple. But by the end of our conversation the afternoon of New Year’s eve at my favorite neighborhood joint “Simply Wholesome,” Eric is practically claiming poster child status for sacred jazz, “when I was 5 years old I didn’t realize that all my life I’d be combining the two the whole way through.” Thank God there were no formal anti-miscegenation laws forbidding the marriage of gospel music and jazz, otherwise my bi-musical brother might not have been born nor nurtured so thoroughly from both worlds...and from that possess the ability to so sweetly bless us this afternoon, bless audiences world wide with his particular take on sacred jazz. Almost as soon as he learned to play the piano, he was accompanying his baptist minister/Bay State Gospel Singing father in church. Not long after that, his school teacher aunt and uncle on his mother’s side where hipping him to jazz, taking him to flea market’s in Philadelphia where you could buy an inch high stack of LP’s for 25 cents. He remembers a first stack that included Dave Brubeck’s “Time Further Out,” Ramsey Lewis’ “The Sounds of Christmas,” and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers “Live at the Cafe Bohemia,” at that time featuring Horace Silver on piano... “from the first time I heard Horace Silver, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

His family moved from Philadelphia to the Huntington Park neighborhood of Los Angeles when he was 11...this move broadened both his musical and spiritual horizons. On one hand he and his family were moving from small storefront Baptist churches to larger non-denominational churches now called the Word of Faith movement where Eric wound up heavily involved in music ministries here. He would also receive tremendous instruction and encouragement from the faculty of the Colburn school (at that time called the Community School of Performing Arts) as well as the music educators at Westchester High School. At the time Eric was “in it” and didn’t have a sense about the overwhelming response to his extraordinary talent, “I just knew I was able to get out of class a lot...that was great!” But he was taken out of class to do things like teach...at the age of 13 he was giving performance lectures for the Board of Education. And my goodness can Eric teach! He gives me the lightning speed history of gospel music from “Amazing Grace” (hymn) to “Precious Lord, Take my Hand” (gospel blues) to “Oh Happy Day” (the beginning of contemporary pop gospel), including a most thorough biographical sketch of Thomas Dorsey, before I can finish half a jerk chicken patty.
“Am I going too fast? I have a tendency to rush.” I catch my breath, point to the tape recorder, say “we’re good” and we’re right back in. He tells me around the time of the Board of Education lecture, Eric met the late great radio host Chuck Niles, who as you can imagine, put the word out wide “on this kid!” Next thing he knew, Eric was performing with Teddy Edwards and Ray Brown, swinging in jam sessions at the Musician’s Union, and eventually landing a gig as the pianist for the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. “The Claytons and Jeff Hamilton, they were so tolerant and patient with me because I wanted to play all the time, but in a big band there’s not really a whole lot of room for piano, it’s all about the horns.”

Eric was eager to get to New York City, he always saw himself there and hoped to land a piano chair with either Art Blakey or Betty Carter, but instead he was invited to join Wynton Marsalis’ Septet and begin his long relationship with Jazz at Lincoln Center. Once again Eric struggled with finding enough room with 7 guys to open up/stretch out musically like he wanted to in Wynton’s band. There were several firings and re-hirings with Wynton, never “acrimonious” (okay I don’t tell him to his face, but Eric sends me to the dictionary several times during my transcription process...teach!) and throughout, Eric learned so much from Wynton’s tremendous discipline. He unabashedly praises Wynton for his persistency and consistency, “he always produced on a high level and always held us to the highest standard.” And when Marsalis decided to venture into his own sacred jazz writing, he called once again upon Eric to teach him more about the various sounds of church music, how for example to apply the sound of a gospel choir to his horn section. The resulting “In this House, On this Morning” is for me one of the most tremendous achievements in Mr. Marsalis’s recording history...not to mention one of the most haunting recordings of Eric’s playing out there. Though Eric went on to launch a dynamic performance and recording career as a leader of his own trio, he would return to Jazz at Lincoln Center often for such significant collaborations including a 1999 performance of the music of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts with none other than gospel music legend Shirley Caesar. And most recently, just a few weeks ago, he conducted Jazz at Lincoln center live with the Alvin American Dance Theater for their 50 year anniversary, where once again he learned valuable leadership lessons from Wynton that empowered him to navigate the at times treacherous landscape of conducting live music for dancers used to performing to recorded music.

While the lessons from Wynton have been significant in Eric’s career, he touchingly gives highest props to his father, “My father was definitely my greatest teacher all around, spiritually, mentally, musically.” He poignantly mentions how much he’s missed the opportunity the past 6 years since his death to talk through his many musical and personal achievements...and failures. Eric says, “You learn nothing from success...it feels good, but...you learn everything from failure, if you’re smart and you’re being honest. I learn from it...otherwise I don’t grow.” He’s excited about the future, the unknown, “I’m motivated by whatever it is God has in store for me, however it comes.” We’re talking so deep it takes a moment to realize the tables have been stacked and house music turned off inside of Simply Wholesome. It’s suddenly quiet as Eric closes out talking about how we never fully know what seeds are being planted. The owners of the restaurant offer us champagne, it is New Year’s eve afterall, a time for celebration, a time to joyfully prepare for new things. We pass on the bubbly but Eric still warmly toasts the beginning of this Jazz on the Sacred Side series, claiming “This is the beginning...of an oak tree.” Then he says again how thankful he is for the awesome way that God has moved through his life, and tells me about the other morning when he woke up to write a new song and all he could say was “Thank you, thank you Lord....I’m just a vessel...However it is I’m supposed to be used, I’m going to embrace that...as honest and forthright as I can, without being abrasive... it’s always got to be about love.”

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For more on Mr. Reed please visit www.MySpace.com/EricReedJazz

The Sacred Stomp: Nailah Live

2008-12-22T12:10:00.000-08:00

You know if you were there December 7, Nailah's Jazz Bakery, Jazz on the Sacred Side debut was such a glorious explosion of light and sound, even in this cold weather we're having you probably still feel a glow two weeks out. I truly stayed lit up for days, and literally I just sat in the back of the club that afternoon, tickled, selfishly tickled that I just get to curate a series that personally brings me such joy and fills my soul so completely. Annie Lee captures my hallelujah time in one of my favorite paintings of hers below...

Thank you Nailah, for your voice, your lyrical vision, your choice of such a powerful band, featuring Deron Johnson on piano, Justin DiCenzo on bass, Paul Legapsi on drums, and Matt DeMerrit and Tracy Wannomae as a two man horn orchestra. These are the program notes from that magical afternoon....
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There’s a ritual taught by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, called “The Five Touchings of the Earth,” where gratitude is offered to all generations of blood family, to spiritual teachers and spiritual ancestors, to the land. The ritual then calls for a transmission of energy to all those you love as well as an offering of compassion and reconciliation for all who make you suffer. I mention this because you start talking sacred jazz with Nailah, you better be ready for something that feels like a five part Earth Touching ritual right before your eyes. Right away when I ask her what comes to mind when she hears the words “Sacred Jazz” she says it makes her think of all that the elders who started this art form had to endure “to play and sing and be musicians.” She says it must have been a sacred calling for them to be able to entertain in venues where they could not walk in the front door, perform in hotels where they were refused a night’s rest. She wonders out loud about the decision to claim the greater dignity of allowing God to speak through them, enabling them to perform for people who may not have recognized them as full human beings, “to me, that just makes it so sacred.”

Touching the earth...stomping the earth...that church foot stomp was one of the most memorable sounds for Nailah, as a girl in North Carolina, attending St. John’s CME. Though she was drawn to the music of the Southern Baptist and Pentecostal choirs, Nailah says there was an elder’s choir in her more reserved Methodist church that had a huge impact on her. It was informal. Somebody would stomp a foot, somebody would moan, someone cross the church would match the moan with a “heyyyyy’ then “all of a sudden you’d hear these crazy harmonies. Years later, I’m listening to African music and choirs and I heard those same harmonies...it dawned on me that the harmonies I grew up listening to in my church, that the elders would sing were passed down from the slaves.”

You hear that stomp, that rootedness to the south, the need to compassionately explore all the suffering and sweetness of her Carolina soil in Nailah’s lyrics. You will hear about her blood relations. Please listen for Uncle Cool Jack. When Nailah first moved to Los Angeles from D.C, to pursue her music full time, leaving behind a meaningful and lucrative career as a Capitol Hill lawyer, she had a moment of doubt so great she went back to the safety of her Uncle Cool Jack and Aunt Katie’s Winston Salem home. After telling them how hard it was out west in the industry, Uncle Cool Jack got quiet. And serious. Then says to his niece: “You know I was 45 before I could look a white man in the eye? You don’t know nothin’ about no pain. You better get back out there and finish what you started. Stand up and finish.” Have mercy. And thank god she listened. Nailah came back to Los Angeles, was emboldened by the proud and profound energy of Leimert Park’s Jazz community, fortified by the spiritual wisdom of her Agape community led by Reverend Michael Beckwith, and is here today with us transmitting the energy of all she’s experienced from North Carolina to Capitol Hill, to Culver City with love, with compassion, with gratitude.

"I do not fit into form, I create form"

This line from the poem “Papa, The Lean Griot” written by our Leimert park genius elder poet, Kamau Daaood, written in dedication to his Leimert Park genius elder jazz master, Horace Tapscott, resonates so sweet for me this week as I consider Nailah in the legacy of her genius elder vocalists who recently became spiritual ancestors, Odetta and Miriam Makeba. Nailah’s musical influences have given her permission to create her form rather than fitting into any one form. She gives praise to Sarah Vaughn for the fierceness as well as elegance of her instrument. She then swings from Sarah to Nona Hendryx, sharing how much she loved Labelle, but in that group she was always listening for the bottom, listening for Nona’s harmonies. And again the “fierceness of them stepping out in space suits!” I do not fit into form, I create form. Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott Heron are teachers for their songwriting, their political insight and courage as well. Regarding Cassandra Wilson (who, I swear if my father were alive and heard Nailah sing...he’d say “Cassandra needs to step aside”...he’d say it with the greatest love for his Mississippi homegirl Cassandra and as the finest compliment to Nailah) Nailah gives thanks to Cassandra for making her “feel like it was okay to bring my southern roots into it....the space, the openness and richness of her voice...and somebody who says, you know, I don’t have to holler to be heard.” And, look, if there’s ever a drought, just play James Taylor singing “Carolina” for Nailah, and she will weep monsoon like tears for his soulful crooning about the home state they share and celebrate. Finally, Nailah lifts up Bill Withers, “He’s a black man with a guitar, singing simple songs about Grandma’s hands when everybody was doing funk?!” I do not fit into form, I create form. Nailah eases into the stomp and moan that begin Bill Wither’s “Grandma’s Hands” and the circle is complete. Touching the earth to remember and give thanks and transmit love and healing through song, that’s Nailah. Now, listen close....
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For more on this extraordinary singer and to purchase her latest musical offering: “Life in Session”, please visit Nailah’s site: nailahmusic.com
Two books to check out referenced above are 1. Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World” and 2. Kamau Daaood’s “The Language of Saxophones.”

"We Who Believe in Freedom"

2008-12-04T23:24:00.000-08:00

I feel more gratitude than grief right now as I consider that both Odetta and Miriam Makeba have joined the ancestors since Dia de Los Muertos, since the first Jazz on the Sacred Side. Searching for images of Odetta just now this one of her suited, seated, surrounded by heavyweights jumped out at me...because it makes me pause and remember that when these great figures die, it feels so critical to celebrate them in the context of community...as beloved community builders who would not rest until real love and real community were truly free for EVERYONE to experience.

I always write so long and I want to remember Mama Africa too....breathtaking Miriam...

As I wrote once in an essay on South Africa that I think they should remove the statue of Queen Elizabeth outside of St. Georges Cathedral (Desmond Tutu's old church in CapeTown) and replace it with one of Miriam in this dress from Come Back Africa. But before I go on and on I'd like to remind everyone that we will continue the "Come Sunday: Jazz on the Sacred Side" series this Sunday, Dec 7 with a woman so perfectly in line with the legacies of Odetta and Makeba, my beautiful sister Nailah. Regarding all three of these women I think of a line from my beautiful brother, Kamau Daaood's poem about Horace Tapscott:

"I do not fit into form, I create form"

I feel so grateful to be part of the beloved community we are building with this series, in this city, in these trouble/hallelujah times.

COME SUNDAY: JAZZ ON THE SACRED SIDE WITH NAILAH
DECEMBER 7, 2008 AT 3pm @ THE JAZZ BAKERY
The Jazz Bakery is located at 3233 Helms Ave. LA, CA 90034
(310) 271-9039 or http://jazzbakery.org/ for tickets ($25, $15 students)

"Offer Honey to Musicians"

2008-11-16T11:20:00.000-08:00

Please God, offer honey to musicians
who bring us such joy!

Give them strong and untiring hands
to keep playing their music.

Give them vision so, like birds in love,
they can bring Your message to our ears.

Let them drink plenty from Your river and
grace them with Your strength
so their music becomes the pillar of Your glory.

Rumi

On November 2 at the first "Come Sunday: Jazz on the Sacred Side" concert, as both an invocation and to express my gratitude for Dwight Trible and his magnificent band, I read this piece by the Sufi mystic poet Rumi, from a collection I have of his called "Rumi: Hidden Music: Paintings and Poems translated by Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita Kolin (ISBN 000712032 X) Below you can read the program notes from a conversation I had with Dwight the week before. And in the "We're a Winner" post below you can hear more about the success of the series launch. Enjoy!

About our very special Sacred Side debut artist: Mr. Dwight Trible

Dwight Trible grew up in the Laurel Homes Projects in downtown Cincinnati during the time when Greater Bethlehem Temple, today one of the largest Apostolic churches in the city, got its start in his building’s basement. His mother, who played lots of Mahalia Jackson, would get all seven of her children up Sunday morning and get them down to Sunday school just so she could get a break. There was music everywhere in his home--Mama’s Mahalia in one room while his guitarist brother had Kenny Burrell LPs on repeat in the next--and in his neighborhood, from gospel, blues and jazz to the soulful sounds of early singing influences like Aretha Franklin and Linda Jones. “Most of my influence singing-wise for the majority of my life has been female.” Dwight tried to sing in both gospel bands and various R&B oriented groups, “cause I wanted to be popular too...but after a while I got sick of it. I started wanting to do something else. By that time I had started buying jazz records.” He bought Miles, “cause everybody says that’s what you’re supposed to listen to,” then he got really into Carmen McRae...then one day he saw a two record set in the cut out bin for 50 cents. He says he saw this lady singing, had no idea who she was “at all! But she looks like she’s really singing...I took the record home, played it...she was doing something I had never heard anybody doing.” The singer was Betty Carter and Dwight sights that moment as being one of the most significant in his adult life in terms of shaping what he wanted to do musically. “She was doing something different...as creative as she was, she was also technically peerless...on her game all the time.”

These qualities of technical brilliance, creativity, and rigorous consistency were the elements that would most inspire Dwight about the wise and generous men who were to claim the young singer from Cincinnati once he moved way out west. With love, awe and humility Dwight lifts up Horace Tapscott, Billy Higgins, Harold Land and Oscar Brown Jr. : “It didn’t matter where they were playing, the World Stage, some other hole in the wall or some magnificent place...they did it with all they had, all the time. No matter how old they were, they still gave it all. They didn’t think about, ‘Oh I better watch myself, I might have a stroke up here, I might die.’ No, it wasn’t like that. And that takes a certain amount of faith and courage to do that, and when you see them doing that, you know that’s what it’s all about...And that they somehow saw the potential in me for that, it gives me chills now just to think about that.” He poignantly shared, “Like I said, even though I never made any money to speak of, as of yet, hopefully (smiles)...somehow throughout my tenure, the thing that keeps me from getting discouraged is meeting these great spirits...we had a lot of time together...somehow I’ve been blessed that way and that’s more than money, that’s more than money.” The gifts from these men ranged from original songs to sage advice. Dwight hums the melody of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” and tells me Oscar Brown Jr., before he died was working on a lyric for that and told Dwight, “You know, I can’t sing this but I think you can.” When we talk about the importance of making original, authentic spiritual and political statements because musicians who don’t are quickly forgotten he says, “Billy brought that up to me...’they will forget you’.” Then Dwight reflects that jazz has to be one of the most spiritual forms of music there is, “but most jazz musicians don’t openly give it recognition...most of the standards are about male and female relationships, stuff like that. Of course that’s what made Duke Ellington stand out so much because he chose to actually do sacred concerts. And John Coltrane...when they actually said, ‘I’m gonna put it out there, this is what I believe’...and I think that’s why that sticks out so much. Of course after John, Pharaoh kinda came in and took it up, Leon Thomas and those people...Still today you don’t have a lot of musicians that are openly spiritual or openly political. So I find that to be something strange. I figure, what you got to lose? I feel like, what the heck, I’m too old to be doing anything outside of what I really wanna do....Personally I do the best I can everyday...and I think it’s a great privilege that people will actually leave their homes to come and see me sing. If people are willing to do that, then you owe them the best you have.”

We're a Winner

2008-11-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

"At last that blessed day has come and I don't care where you come from, we're all moving on up...lord have mercy." Curtis Mayfield

What's your November 4 top five? Curtis' "We're a Winner" is still in my car CD player on repeat. I fantasize a resurrected Nina Simone singing "It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me, and I'm feeling good" at Obama's inauguration. I keep feeling Stevie's "Overjoyed." I also keep thinking about this song I heard Hugh Masekela sing at Royce Hall last year, don't know the name but the English lyrics went something like: "This brown color is a winner, it will be my shining armor..." and I thought about my goddaughter, Lotus, whose mother was telling me earlier this year that in pre-school she's already internalizing messages that her combination African American, West Indian, and Filipina brown is not beautiful. Radiant Lotus is and has always been a winner. She's a winner "and everybody knows" she will now have winning role models Malia and Sasha Obama rolling just as beautiful as they wanna be in and out their new house on Pennsylvania Ave. I also loved reading Larry Blumenfeld's Village Voice piece on NYC election night music and politics...apparently Charlie Haden broke into "Amazing Grace" the moment he heard the results in the middle of his Blue Note gig. Blumenfeld reported from New Orleans a couple days later that when John Boutte (if you don't know John Boutte, google and order his music immediately!) was asked to sing "Change is Gonna Come" he said he's not going to sing that song any more because change is here. We're a winner and everybody knows.

What I'm so happy to report locally is that two days before that glory we experienced the most glorious, yes the most victorious launch of "Come Sunday: Jazz on the Sacred Side" with the most transformative performance of Dwight Trible with his tremendous band of John Beasley on piano, Trevor Ware on bass and Clayton Cameron on drums. I had a woman write to me after the show that she was completely healed that afternoon, she specifically said she was "transported to a place where there is no dis-ease"! Come on and heal Mr. Trible! Can't you just feel his power in the photo of Dwight from the "Offer Honey..." post above? I just felt again so overjoyed, overwhelmed, lifted, naturally high (which is why the "smoking out" in this photo of me next to my jazz dia de los muertos altar cracks me up) knowing that this series and this sacred jazz journey is now literally in flight...and rising. I thank Dwight so deeply and I can't thank the crowd of loved ones enough for the support and the reflection of the joy I was feeling. We just had so much fun...you need to know...you need to do whatever you can to experience this gathering in a few weeks when we get to feast together with Nailah on December 7. She's claiming December 7 as her first step to Carnegie Hall...who doesn't want to be there for that historic moment? Please "Come Sunday" December 7 at 3pm at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City.

Jazz on the Sacred Side: The New Series at the Jazz Bakery

2008-10-02T10:28:00.000-07:00

COME SUNDAY NOVEMBER 2, 2008 AT 3PM
FOR THE DEBUT OF THE NEW SUNDAY AFTERNOON SERIES
"COME SUNDAY, JAZZ ON THE SACRED SIDE"
FEATURING DWIGHT TRIBLE
LIVE AT THE JAZZ BAKERY
3233 HELMS AVE, LA, CA 90034
310 271-9039, jazzbakery.org

It's time to take the next step in this sacred jazz journey...I'm so delighted to announce that starting on November 2, 2008 I will curate my first "Come Sunday: Jazz on the Sacred Side" concert at the Jazz Bakery. I'm thrilled to launch this series with one of Los Angeles' greatest vocal treasures, the incomparable Dwight Trible. I often think of the night several years ago when Dwight's group warmed, wait--let me tell the truth--set the stage on fire for our now dearly departed Alice Coltrane at Royce Hall...it was one of those nights I was overcome with gratitude, so steeped in the joy of now. I hear people who miss the great singers of times gone by...shoot, don't I wish I'd been alive and hip enough in 1957 to be hanging in Newport, RI with photographer Lee Friedlander when he took that exquisite shot of Mahalia Jackson above--no question...but what I'm getting at, and why I'm so excited to invite you to this "sacred side" series, is that we are so fortunate to live in the time of Dwight Trible*. I am so grateful to have live access to the voice of my sister and December sacred side artist, Nailah**...right now, right now. So with "Come Sunday: Jazz on the Sacred Side" we respectfully offer these afternoons in the spirit of Duke Ellington, in the spirit of Mahalia Jackson, of John and Alice Coltrane, and so many more jazz artists across a wide range of faith traditions who gathered us together in the past to lift our voices, horns, hearts and hallelujahs...AND the wonderful news is, we have so many musicians right now, today, in this very city, from Baptists, Buddhists, Baha'is and beyond who are going to be swinging on the first Sunday of the month in Culver City, long as we can keep the seats filled up at the Bakery. I want to thank Ruth Price for opening her space for what I do hope will be a long running monthly Sunday series with your support. Spread the word folks! Come Sunday, November 2...what better way to fire us up for election day than to gather with the sounds and rhythms of love, peace, courage, strength and soul of Dwight Trible...sounds that echo the qualities of the man we about to put into office!!!!

Finally, while the interfaith, multi-faith, low faith, high faith, those who have no spiritual practice but are drawn to the force of this music---while the ensemble of ALL of us is crucial in this journey...I want to throw out that the idea of meeting on the first Sunday of the month in many Christian traditions is related to communion, to gathering together to break bread. That excites me for many reasons...many are articulated beautifully in this introductory passage from bell hooks and Cornel West's book of dialogues called "Breaking Bread." In it bell writes about how much she loves to sing the spiritual, "Let Us Break Bread Together on our knees," especially the line, "When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun, oh Lord have mercy on me." She writes: "I liked the combination of the notion of community which is about sharing and breaking bread together, of dialogue as well as mercy because mercy speaks to the need we have for compassion, acceptance, understanding, and empathy." Come Sunday, November 2 at 3pm...break bread at the Bakery!!! How fantastic is that?

*Please visit Dwight Trible's website: http://dwighttrible.com/
**Please visit our December 7th guest Nailah's Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/nailah3

Equalize This

2008-08-03T08:59:00.000-07:00

I'm just back from a writing workshop in San Antonio, Texas...the Macondo Writers Workshop founded by Sandra Cisneros and named after Gabriel Garcia Marquez's fictional landia of "One Hundred Years of Solitude"...Macondo. For some years now, back and forth at this workshop, other writing retreats and right here in my own "rhythm green" (the delicious name of the paint I chose for this room) home office, I've been working on memoir pieces about my father and his guns, his debt, his danger, his joy, rage, depression, and his fierce love of the culture, especially jazz. I cracked up so hard a few days ago free writing about the irony of how my often penniless pops always made sure my brother and I had serious stereo systems. It was especially critical to him that we have great equalizers. He'd come over and set his chair in the optimal listening position in our homes and analyze whether or not we'd set it up properly. It crushes/fascinates me to consider that this man who had no sense of emotional or financial balance was this obsessed with balanced sound. He'd usually play some Brubeck or Miles, music he knew like the back of his hand so he could compare the sound of Paul Desmond or Cannonball Adderley's solo to the way he heard those pieces on his perfectly finessed Bose back home. I wish I had a Youtube clip to share with you of my father straddling a backturned kitchen chair pointing his index finger in time with Paul Chamber's walking bassline.

Last week I was asked, "What is the question of your memoir?" While I'm not completely certain, it did lead me to consider the question I'm often asked at jazz clubs by the older black men, my father's generation and beyond, who love this music and frequent the clubs as much as me: "What brings you here?" The answer is always, "My pops." And that means two things. I'm in love with this music because it was my father's first, best and purest gift of sound to me and my brother...English is really my second language after bossa nova, Nancy Wilson, Miles and Gil Evans, Bill Evans, Nina Simone.... On the other hand, I need this music as a healing force to counter the less than pure, not so joyful offerings from Pops. I'm particularly drawn to and grateful for the images and sounds of black men collaborating in such a profound space of generosity, epic imagination, and the sense of swing that is only possible from sincere listening. I keep writing--and listening--to reconcile, to balance these sounds, to makes sense of my father's trouble and the hallelujah he made sure we heard as clear, as evenly as "Blue in Green."

"We require something that we can hold on to..."

2008-07-02T14:12:00.000-07:00

John Coltrane writes "thank you God" at least 14 times in his poem/praise letter to God inside "A Love Supreme". I'm finally reading Ashley Kahn's book, "A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album" and I'm amazed how not only focused and inspired but efficient the recording was. Kahn collects so many moving testimonies here about the date itself as well as the impact of the sound and the words, both written and spoken. I love hearing about the moment Rudy Van Gelder adjusted the microphone to pick up those spoken words in "Acknowledgement", cause if you notice you almost miss that first "a love"...but you hear "supreme"...Kahn calls it "an unrehearsed move that has never been corrected or erased." And then I love how Alice interprets her husband's choice to speak/chant:

"It's as if he's saying, 'It doesn't matter what we think we play that's man-made. God, you gave all of us an instrument. We can also offer you praise with the use of the voice that you created in us.'"

Then our chanting Buddhist brother, Wayne Shorter breaks it down like this:

"When he started singing the words 'a love supreme' he didn't solicit the vocal expertise of some well-known record-selling singer. I think he was saying you must rely on yourself for communication. I think he was going back to square one where the voice is the first announcement of your humanity--your humanity is your instrument."

Alice thinks of (can't write "thought of" when Alice Coltrane feels so present-tense-alive in the wisdom of these lines) the album like a mantra initiation from a great spiritual guide...she explains that there will be higher tests and higher trials we have to face, so: "We require something that we can hold on to, that serves to build strength up for the next step in our journey. That is A Love Supreme." Thank you God.

I scooped up this book on Love Supreme because of the supremely moving, strength building sacred concert I saw at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival a few weeks back. This event, called, yes, "Come Sunday: Spirituals and Sacred Jazz Compositions" was put together by James Newton, George Cables and the out of this world vocalist, Ruth Naomi Floyd (please visit both her website www.contourrecords.com and James Newton's http://www.jamesnewtonmusic.com/ to hear Ms. Floyd, particularly her collaborations with Mr. Newton). If Harriet Tubman sang like Mahalia, if Sojourner Truth wailed like Sarah Vaughan...no, really I can't even begin to describe the force of this singer...I have to call on icons of that magnitude to give you a sense of her power, the way her voice announces her humanity and liberates our own and the souls of our enslaved ancestors. When she sang "Sometimes I feel Like a Motherless Child" she took us somewhere I've never traveled inside that piece:

"I'm a long, long way from home....
From Africa, From Heaven, my home..."

Altoist, Bobby Watson listened hard to those lyrics then soloed straight to Africa, or Heaven, or...some place where we sure didn't feel motherless, we felt strengthened, found, free. James Newton as musical director gathered kindred, deep reaching musicians to support this sacred journey home (folk like Bennie Maupin, Craig Handy, Billy Hart, Darek Oleszkiewicz) and the performances he and Ms. Floyd inspired them to offer, my goodness! This is what I'm talking about...a willingness, an intentional focus to lift these notes, these lyrics from the most holy place inside of them to balm the most broken place in us. We do require something we can hold onto in these times and when music is offered up like that, it truly is a love supreme.

Near the close of the Sunday morning concert, James Newton and Ruth Naomi Floyd brought us back to that "first announcement of our humanity" by reading Coltrane's liner note love letter...Mr. Newton and most of the audience were moved to tears to speak/hear those words out loud. Go grab your copy of Love Supreme right now and try it, out loud. Thank you John Coltrane, thank you for inspiring all of those musicians and also moving Ashley Kahn to so soulfully gather this luminous material documenting the production and response to this most genius and generous gift from you with God.

"I will do all I can to be worthy of Thee O Lord
It all has to do with it.
Thank you God.
Peace.
There is none other.
God is. It is so beautiful...."

"Now, Dance! Sing! But as you do--Remember" Malcolm's Birthday, New Orleans Blues

2008-05-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

Malcolm X would have been 83 years old today. In July, Nelson Mandela will be 90. It moves me to re-read the "El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz" chapter toward the end of Malcolm's autobiography and hear him talk about his post Mecca trip to Ghana--the one on one visit with Nkrumah, the state dinner held by the Chinese ambassador who screens a film featuring footage of Robert "Negroes with Guns" Williams, and later that night the soiree at the press club: "It was my first sight of Ghanaians dancing the highlife," he writes/tells Alex Haley. He says he was pressed to give a short speech, and he stressed the need for unity between Africans and Afro-Americans.

"I cried out of my heart, 'Now, dance! Sing! But as you do--remember Mandela, remember Sobokwe! Remember Lumumba in his grave! Remember South Africans now in jail! You wonder why I don't dance? Because I want you to remember twenty-two million Afro-Americans in the U.S.!'"

Then later he admits..."But I sure felt like dancing!...One pretty African girl sang 'Blue Moon' like Sarah Vaughan. Sometimes the band sounded like Milt Jackson, sometimes like Charlie Parker."

I like imagining Alex Haley hearing this report...I like to imagine him imagining the Ghanaian Sarah Vaughan...I wonder in 1964/65 how much Haley knew about Mandela and Sobukwe.

There's so much to say...I'm thinking how heartbroken Malcolm would be...ah, by so many things--wait, this must be my own heartbreak, I can't assume to know his. The first I'm feeling in relation to the quotes above is heartbreak about the violence in South Africa this past few days against Zimbabwean immigrants fleeing their own collapsing nation. And now--don't laugh--the New Orleans Hornets game 7 loss tonight in the NBA playoffs hits me hard...boy was I hoping for more victory for that city...I've been wanting to write something about my recent quick trip down there for Jazz fest, but something that went down was so painful I haven't really known what/how to speak on it...

I'm leaving Sweet Lorraine's one night after seeing an old friend of mine perform there...we walk out and witness a straight Rodney King style beat down by New Orleans PD on one random young black man running across St. Claude. Three cops already have this guy's face in the concrete but then a fourth cop, looking like some crazed major PTSD Iraq war vet bolts across the street to hammer this unarmed, already pinned down man with his billy club. We scream for the cops to stop...eventually they jam the kid inside a squad car...away from nosy jazz musicians/jazz club patrons...I can't go right to bed, I need some different image/sound before any chance at sleep...I pop into a Rebirth Brass Band show and the song they're blaring as I squeeze into the mass of swaying bodies is called, no lie, "We Got Trouble." I dance because you can't not dance at a Rebirth show, but there's no way to shake loose the memory of the brutality.

The next afternoon I hear Terence Blanchard's group with the Louisiana Philharmonic play "In Time of Need" and exactly at the moment Terence begins to sing, the sky breaks open. While directly covered by a tent I'm suddenly surrounded by a storm while I listen to the requiem for THE storm. They also play "Ashé." I'm moved because I was so wrecked/so enraged by the white cop's dehumanization of the black New Orleanean...and now I'm surrounded by water and the sound of two breath-giving compositions penned by long time collaborators, musician/composer/comrades of Blanchard's, Brice Winston and Aaron Parks who both happen to be white. I gotta say it keeps me from staying fixed in one narrative...I can't stay fixed in trouble...deep south black/white(and blue) trouble nor deep Southern African/African trouble. In times of need I need the clarity and wide reach of Malcolm, I need the staggering musical wisdom and healing of this "Tale of God's Will." I don't need to be against anyone, I need to be fortified/cleansed to rebuild, to unify, to heal...Malcolm said in one of his final speeches: "We have to fight against the evils of a society that has failed to produce brotherhood for every member of that society. This in no way means that we're antiwhite, antiblue, antigreen, or antiyellow. We're antiwrong."

Back to that night in Ghana, Malcolm was giving a speech for the press and must have had this need in the moment to stay "Honorable Minister" stoic, though I'm certain he flashed that "brother Malcolm" smile taking in all that "highlife"...so today, on his birthday, I want to dance the dance he did not dance that night. Dance and remember. I will always remember brother Malcolm connecting the Congo to Congo Square, to Mississippi, to Milt Jackson and the Blue Moon that sees us all, not alone, with dreams in our hearts, with love.

Dangerously Unselfish Saxophone

2008-04-07T22:08:00.000-07:00

It just hit me that this years 40 year remembrance of MLK's assassination was for me surrounded by saxophone. Come Sunday, March 30, I was blessed with Charles Lloyd, then Saturday, April 5, I was lifted to new sacred space with Sonny Rollins. I really don't have the words yet to describe how meaningful both gatherings were to me, to everyone present for either/both shows...but just now I read this transcript of Cornel West's talk on Tavis Friday, April 4 and something about how West connects Martin and Mahalia resonates with what I experienced from both saxophone giants.

Cornel tells his brother Tavis: "...Martin is inseparable from Mahalia. You're not going to fully understand Martin unless you hear Mahalia sing 'Calvary,' unless you hear Mahalia sing 'Move On Up a Little Higher' because there's no way that that kind of human being, that kind of Christian, that kind of free Black man, that kind of Negro, can sustain himself without spirituality and especially music. 'Precious, Lord, Take My Hand.' Martin needs that music. Why? Because he got to preserve his sanity and his dignity."

So Sonny asks, "Why Was I Born?" and we are invited in to seventy years of his colossal sonic grappling. And Charles pleads, "Please look down and see my people through," as he (with Jason Moran's profound and pounding support) breathes new urgency into Duke's "Come Sunday" prayer. These free black men, these two thriving survivors, Charles Lloyd and Sonny Rollins, did the work to liberate themselves from crippling addictions, and consequently they are still on the planet (hallelujah), aiding in the preservation of our sanity and dignity. I'm so grateful and so humbled by their generosity. And they in turn are so humbled by the generosity that made their way possible...everyone who stayed for the second set at Catalina's Sunday night got to behold Charles Lloyd recite an original sacred poem to honor the presence of his supremely generous mentor, Mr. Buddy Collette.

Dr. King said that night before he died, "Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness." Wow. Forty years ago April 3 he said that and here go Sonny and Charles swinging up and down the coast last week, filling music halls with dangerously unselfish saxophone. Sound to me like these two tenor titans listened hard when somebody preached about a Drum Major Instinct then turned around and transcribed it for horn. Sound to me like Sonny and Charles still believe in freedom and will not rest until it comes. Now, somebody say, "amen."

Eleggua and Dash

2008-03-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to Cachao's "Africa Suite" right now...from "Cachao: Master Sessions Volume 2." It begins and ends with a Yoruba chant to "Eleggua" the orisha who guards, opens and closes all paths. Cristobal Diaz Ayala writes in the liner notes to the disk: "all ceremonies should start and finish with a hymn to 'Eleggua'." I want to learn more about Eleggua and Yoruba and why these traditions were so important to Maestro Cachao. I'm so grateful whoever is guarding my path led me to the music and bass playing of Israel Cachao Lopez. Somewhere in the mid 90's I went mad for him and went to see him perform as often as I could. His joy, the ease and delight in his face while his fingers plucked out those fat/funky grooves, I'm not sure if I'd ever seen anything like that before, the compositional and improvisational command mixed with this breezy Sunday promenade vibe...how'd he do it? Through documentaries both by Andy Garcia and Fernando Trueba I got to hear and understand more about Cachao's deep connection to, respect and reverence for Africa...I'm trying to think of the most positive way to say this...Cachao's specific knowledge about the various regions, rhythms and traditions of West Africa always impressed upon me the need to...notice that my Latino brother Cachao knew much more about Africa than me or many of my black American family and friends did. These moments are such a blessed invitation to revisit and expand and claim kinship vs division with the global human familia. Amen and Ashe dear Cachao...I like to imagine Mingus, who loved you so, welcoming you with a freshly resined bow as the newest member of the ancestral descarga.

All last week...holy week, huh, I couldn't stop listening to pianist, Robert Glasper's cd "In My Element". The energy, grief, and praise coming out of this young man...my goodness! The New School educated, Kangol hat wearing, Houston born and bread (what is going on in Houston??? Eric Harland??? Jason Moran??? okay, I'll get to them next week when they're here to back Charles Lloyd at Catalina's Sunday March 30...now you can't say you didn't know...) Blue Note artist appearing on more hip hop head's Itunes then...well, I don't know...all I'm wondering is how he manages to sample both a voice mail message from QTip and a few bars of "Blessed Assurance" and not sound corny...AT ALL. What freedom and joy. He closes the album blending lines from his mother's eulogy with his original composition "Tribute." His preacher talks about the "dash" between his mother's birth and death dates. The dash is what's important he says, not that she was born not that she died but that she lived. "She LIVED." The dash. I love that.

I lift up with the deepest gratitude the "dash" of Cachao's life and the force of his majestic musical journey. From Cuba to Miami to Calle 54 some serious chants to Eleggua no doubt going down...

"Cuba Linda de mi vida...Maestro Cachao siempre te recordare..."

(a couple obits: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/arts/music/24Lopez.html?ex=1207022400&en=73eaff2dd3461a2b&ei=5070&emc=eta1

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/24/db2402.xml)

Keep Growing Strong...Keep Growing Strong

2008-03-15T16:30:00.001-07:00

Black folks been covering Beatles songs since about 2 minutes after the black music loving lads from Liverpool crossed the pond. But let me ask you this: how many jazz musicians you know swing Lennon/McCartney and the Stylistics in the same set? Thank you Ramsey Lewis. A few tunes after an exquisite rendering of "In My Life", Ramsey went "Betcha By Golly Wow" on us last Saturday night at The Cerritos Center for the Arts (I know, I know, it takes a few freeways to get there if you're a SouthWestSide LA woman like me...but don't sleep on this gorgeous venue...Sonny Rollins will be there April 5). The ladies room was filled with nostalgic chatter at intermission, "They just don't write songs like that anymore." Mr. Lewis, looking just as young and elegant as ever then came back and took us even further back with what he called his "Spiritual Medley". He gave us Amazing Grace, he gave us this blog's namesake, Duke's Come Sunday, and then somewhere in there he played a grief soaked "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child". What delighted me most was that he shot right out of that and went "In Crowd" on us. I kept thinking there was something holy, kinda Easter-ish about the shift from Motherless Child to "I'm in with the In Crowd"...definitely trouble to hallelujah. Again, thank you Mr. Lewis.

My jazz gratitude cup ranneth over last couple weeks, no question. A few days before Ramsey Lewis, I had such a meaningful meeting with Professor, Composer, (dear family friend) and Duke Ellington's favorite guitarist, Kenny Burrell. That it took me this long to get over and speak with Kenny-UCLA Director of Jazz Studies and Ellington aficionado about my idea for the Duke Ellington Center for the Study of Sacred Jazz makes no sense...but I got there at last and thank goodness.

First thing he wanted to do was direct me to his wall of quotes...his office door at UCLA is covered with his favorite Duke-isms, including the one he wants to make absolutely sure I know...

"Every man speaks to God in his own language and there is no language that God does not understand." Duke Ellington

He then scanned his bookshelf and loaned me a copy of the score/lyrics for all three Sacred Concerts. And then like he was my thesis advisor and I was arguing my dissertation on the center for the study of sacred jazz he took me to task on a couple items. First, he doesn't like the word "trouble" in my blog title (for why I'm sticking with it...see my inaugural post for this blog). "Are you saying 'hallelujah' to trouble?" And then he said, "And let me ask you this," long pause, "Aretha Franklin. Mahalia Jackson. Stevie Wonder. Bernice Reagon and Sweet Honey....you see I'm having trouble with the word 'jazz'." I know, I know, I know...and so did Duke who went from insisting he wrote Negro folk music to eventually claiming for his music the compliment most lauded on him: "Beyond Category."

What Kenny seemed to be pushing with me was...wasn't I talking about African American music with a spiritual focus? Yes...and...I still appreciate the word Jazz. I'm clearly not as hip as Kenny or Duke I guess. Ever heard the great Mingus story where he says to Duke, "Why don't you, me and Dizzy and Clark Terry and Thad Jones get together and make an avant garde record?" Duke comes back with "Let's not take music back that far, Mingus." !!!! Yes I'm talking about African American music and please know I'm lighting candles right now that Aretha, Stevie and Sweet Honey will perform at the center of sacred jazz...but I'm sticking to jazz right now because I still feel like it hasn't been loved enough...especially in this country.

While we're rapping, Maestro Gerald Wilson knocks on Kenny's door...okay...just so you know, I don't take all this lightly...I peep that I'm in the presence of royalty. Kenny so warmly introduces me and they check in about the tribute UCLA is giving Mr. Wilson the following week. So I don't go on for ever and ever in this post I now want to segue and just give more love to Maestro Wilson. Dr. Bobby Rodriguez put together one of the most thorough and touching presentations I've ever seen one musician honor another musician with. I was particularly touched when he mentioned how "courteous" Mr. Wilson is and always was from the first time they met over 30 years ago. Dr. Rodriguez put together a tremendous slide show and what I noticed was Gerald Wilson always had the most light in all the photos...he truly showered his fellow musicians, across 7 decades (yeah!) with light, love, listening. Then the nearly 90 year old Maestro took the stage to conduct the UCLA Jazz Orchestra...with more energy than any of the 20 year old college kids in the band. "Keep growing strong, keep growing strong...."

This work is just beginning for me...to stick with this blog, to discuss and gather the right elements to grow this center I'm envisioning...but you see how brilliantly illuminated the path already is with all this energy and light from the masters. Wow... well really a Ramsey Lewis tinged, "by golly wow!"

Return to Snug Harbor: New Orleans Pt. II

2008-02-18T19:41:00.000-08:00

I still have these pictures of me at Snug Harbor summer 1987, my first trip to New Orleans. I'm wearing this floral 1940's dress I probably got at a vintage joint in Long Beach and holding a drink called "Sex on the Beach". Thrift shopping on the beach, yes, sex on the beach? Are you kidding? I was a black teenage girl from lily white Irvine, California, with a dad from Jackson, Mississippi who owned MANY guns...of course I'd never had sex on the beach, the cocktail or any related activity. But all of a sudden I was far from home, in a place where my friend David Gautreaux told me if you're tall enough to reach the bar you can order a drink. I was tall. There are many details to that first trip to New Orleans that are not altogether appropriate to share here, but I will say we left this set of Charmaine Neville with a certain local sax player who offered my friends very strong weed and for me, since I refused the pot and giggled at his heavy handed mack, he gave me a signed copy of book written by a Catholic priest ("Tragedy is my Parish" by the chaplain of the New Orleans fire department!)...I hope that sounds as funny/absurd to you as it does/was to me...see I knew this story would swing back to the sacred...(smile).

There used to be a blues joint called "Benny's" I think it was uptown and we saw J'Monque'D there (if you can get a hold of it, please enjoy his CD "Chitlin' Eatin' Music", he does a version of "My Home is a Prison" by Lonesome Sundown that gets me everytime ) and I would always remember the line he said to me--again I was 18, all wide eyed and straight out of Irvine-- "If I was pretty as you, I'd wake up everymorning and kiss the mirror 100 times"!!! I'm particularly nostalgic about all this because I went on this first trip to New Orleans and later Jackson and Vicksburg with my childhood friend Sheila who happens to be in town this weekend from Oakland. Sheila ended up falling in love with our friend David Gautreaux and moving to New Orleans for a few years immediately following that summer trip. Last night over dreamy pozole, I tell her both about my recent trip and about the documentary, "Return to Goree" that I had just seen at the Pan African Film Fest a few hours before seeing her. I tell her I saw Sunpie! She remembers so well the night we first met him. "He was always such a gentleman" she remembers, "and didn't he also work as a park ranger?" Yes. Please google the fabulous Bruce "Sunpie" Barnes if you're not hip to his harmonica revelry. When we saw him 20+years ago he was playing harp with a blues guitarist, but since then he's become quite a famous, internationally known Zydeco bandleader. Like Sheila, my strong memory of Sunpie was what a gentle soul he was. He didn't try to rap hard to me or offer booze and herb, but instead his sweetness and the way I sensed that he kept a protective, yet unassuming eye on me was completely intoxicating. 20 years later I was a little gaga to lay eyes on him at the uptown New Orleans/Cuban cigar bar, Dos Jefes. I tell Sheila last night, "I think I startled him. You walk up to a musician in a club and say you haven't seen him in 20 years and have something to tell him...who knows what was racing through his mind!" All I wanted to tell him was that that impression he made on me 20 years ago really had an impact...especially because at 18, I had basically only had consistent contact with 2 black men ever...my dad and my brother. I'd struggled so much with my dad's grandiosity and rage and felt such heartbreak as a kid around my brother's lack of interest in blackness...at 18, Sunpie was suddenly this brand new image of black masculinity, so gentle and so strong, so...yum....

So forgive me again if I've slipped into territory that might seem like oversharing for this blog, but I really felt like it was an important and specific memory...particularly as it relates to that first wave of media coverage after Katrina, when the news seemed religious in its determination to demonize the black men of New Orleans as looters, rapists and thugs--and I'm thinking where's the footage of the harmonica playing forest rangers? Where's the footage of the most gentle and kind black men I've ever met...why aren't those New Orleans brothers showing up on Fox and CNN? I'm so grateful for the multiple Sunpie-like sweeties who happily affirm for me every delicious and righteous southern gentleman sentiment and have me involuntarily humming "Do You know What it Means To Miss New Orleans?" at the most interesting moments...

Youssou N'dour was taken to a session of the Mardi Gras Indians (similar to the practice of the Wild Magnolias I blogged about in part 1) by New Orleans born, drumming maestro Idris Muhammed. In the documentary, "Return to Goree" (please check out the website and see the divine trailer: http://www.retouragoree.com/trailer.html) Youssou defines what he's hearing as Ashiko rhythms...he wonders how he's hearing the exact same West African rhythm in New Orleans as he grew up with in Dakar. He even fathoms, "Were these farewell rhythms?" That was one of the most jarring/devastating/supremely moving moments of the documentary...listening to Youssou wonder if those rhythms were the last sounds my enslaved ancestors heard before being forced through the door of no return. Farewell rhythms. Do you know what it means, to miss....home. So there's something extra chilling/thrilling about the cut away in the documentary to Youssou and Idris jamming at Snug Harbor one minute and then back to the harbor of so much trauma in Goree. And then on Goree Island, Idris happens upon a drum circle that he joins in on--and because he's Muslim and knows Arabic, he's able to tell the young Senegalese drummers, "All of what I play I play because of you" and then they share a prayer of gratitude.

You see I'm all over the place with my New Orleans recollections, but they are all so interconnected and profound for me right now...there's definitely a call happening...and I will soon return.

Once Were Warriors, New Orleans Part 1

2008-01-29T20:09:00.000-08:00

"Were you at Jacque-imo's Saturday night?" a man I didn't think I'd ever seen before asks me. Between acoustic Brazilian music from Riccardo Crespo at a stuffy French joint on Octavia and on my way to see Sunpie at a smoky cigar bar off Tchoupitoulas I suffered the hour long wait for the best meal of my trip. So I say, "Yeah, I was there, what'd you eat?" We drool a bit sharing tales of fried chicken, stuffed catfish, garlic butter cornbread and mashed sweet potatoes. Everything about Monday was magic, I mean Saturday, I mean Sunday...the days and all the souls who filled them kept literally overlapping. There was a Santiago de Cuba photo exhibit at the newly re-opened McKenna Museum of African American Art (www.themckennamuseum.com) but see, I found out about it 30 minutes after they closed on Saturday and weren't going to be open to the public again til after I was due to fly back home to Los Angeles. But luckily the dynamic new director, Shantrelle Lewis catches my pleading email and calls me on my cell saying she'll be at the museum Monday and call her and let her know when I want to come by. I come by right as New Orleans ABC news anchor Michael Hill is filming a live interview with her. He's the one saw me at Jacque-imo's. Our conversation with Shantrelle as well as her childhood classmate and close friend who now does PR for the museum, moves from cornbread to Catholic school to the most expansive and complex conversation about the city...but this is so normal now. Sunday night I'm at Fair Grinds, a cafe by the old Whole Foods (that tiny one used to be on Esplanade up near New Orleans Museum of Art, not that mega one on Magazine uptown), and I see three "hip and contemporary" (as Peter J Harris would likely describe them) brothers talking race and theology and I keep noticeably scooting my tea pot and IBook closer so I can eavesdrop. Too interested in the conversation, I just ask if I can join them, and find out I'm suddenly sitting with a priest (in fact, the chaplain of Xavier University), a Dominican Friar, and a young Pentacostal minister from Baton Rogue studying at the Baptist seminary in town. Out way too late Saturday night listening to Kermit Ruffins, I missed church Sunday morning, but that was remedied when Father Ott invited me to noon mass Monday on the Xavier campus. Father Ott is already interested in being the chaplain at the Duke Ellington Center for the study of Sacred Jazz (!), and his music minister at Xavier, jazz pianist Dwight Fitch just lit up when I shared my idea and he immediately wanted to start talking to me about jazz chordal this and gospel phrasing that...Glory be! I know this is a breathless list and I want to break it down and analyze some of the pieces next time, but this is just to let you know in case you don't that New Orleans is tooooo alive, and none of what I mentioned above even has anything really to do with any Mardi Gras Mambo, though I'll get to that...there is so much hallelujah and of course so much trouble, palpable melancholy, sometimes contempt...all of it alive and moving and shifting with such profound potential..."if we can be patient" Brother Herman Johnson stares past me meditating hard on his birthplace, the city he keeps returning to--that he can't stay away from--to minister and inspire, preach and listen.

Next time, I gotta try to describe the practice session I slipped into for the Wild Magnolia's in prep for the parade. If I had a video you wouldn't be sure where you were...Santiago de Cuba? Bahia? Mpumalanga? I remember when I saw the movie "Once Were Warriors" and I watched these Maori detention center boys in New Zealand initially forced to learn their ancestral dances to channel/refocus their passion, to create and inspire discipline and self love, love of culture, family, elders...I remember it came out not too long after April '92 in L.A., the riots, the attempts at gang truces--all that was fresh on my mind--back then I thought, our boys don't really have what those Maori boys have...not exactly...but what I saw a couple nights ago in New Orleans made me say, oh, okay, yep, here it is...here it's been...

More soon after a little re-entry rest...

Divine Dissatisfaction

2008-01-17T16:09:00.000-08:00

"Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds." Swing Martin. "Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security....Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity." King did indeed swing these words during his last presidential address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1967. I love a little bit earlier in the speech when after saying he's sticking with non-violence, he says:

"I have also decided to stick to love....And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go." Love is the one, right? So much saxophone in those wailing metaphors and then he walks just like Jimmy Garrison right back to, "I have decided to love....And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love." (I'm hearing the other John's "Spiritual" right now.)

Then I have to segue to Riverside Church Apr 4, 1967, where he winds down the epic "Time To Break Silence" sermon with: "These are revolutionary times....A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all embracing and unconditional love for all men....When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life...."

And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I seriously do have a dream that those words can some day hover over the stage at the center for the study of sacred jazz while women, men and children jam, swing, sweat and stomp divine and dissatisfied. Love moving against wrong, trouble into glory hallelujah. I have decided to stick to love.

"Happy Birthday to ya..."

Consuelo's Kiss...and a Nun on Beauty

2008-01-08T19:49:00.000-08:00

Jackie Ryan can sing. It's such a joy to come across a REAL jazz singer you've never heard of who feels like she must listen to the same records you've listened to all your life...I kept thinking, okay, I know she digs the Shirley Horn version of this and she's got to be in love with the Betty Carter version of that...but then she even pulled out some Oscar Brown Jr., and I was like, what is happening? Two things especially moved me...performance-wise she was inside of every lyric, in the spirit of the genius story telling singers mentioned above...and then on top of that she had great wisdom to share about the composers and lyricists of the tunes she sang.

I'm a little embarrassed to say that after a life time of hearing "Besame Mucho" I never paid attention to who wrote it. Consuelo Velazquez. In 1940. She was about 25 and says she'd "never been kissed" but was inspired by a passionate farewell kiss she witnessed, and then wrote the song that would become the yearning lovers' anthem of WWII. Velazquez (below...I'm cracking myself up finally figuring out how to add an image!) was born in Ciudad Guzman, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico...probably in 1916...I love learning via a few obits and her Wikipedia listing that she was a classically trained pianist, with a rep for playing Debussy particularly well. And because it was considered too risqué for a young girl from a good family to work in radio...for years she performed on the air with a male pseudonym.

What does all this have to do with "sacred jazz"? Joy. Beauty. Right? I was moved several times during Jackie Ryan's set both because of her performance and all the places my imagination leapt wondering about these composers, wondering about Consuelo. I just love being in this right now...so filled with curiosity and celebration.

I appreciate how this blogging journey has lit such a fire of curiosity, contemplation and dynamic jazz conversations inside and around me...as you see not too many folks are formally posting comments (so many thanks to those who have!), yet I'm high beyond belief about the private conversations going on...A new jazz aficionado comrade emailed over the holidays thanking me for the blog and letting me know he read the posts while listening to Leon Thomas' "The Creator Has a Master Plan"...ahh...

Then today, no joke, I was telling a guy I just met about how I was starting to write about jazz...I didn't even mention the sacred aspect and he spontaneously shared that the moment his daughter was born, he ran out of the hospital room and then back in with a boombox playing Leon and Pharoah, "The Creator has a Master Plan." He was so passionate about wanting that to be the first music she heard! Delicious echoes.

Finally, I can't believe I've gotten this far into the process without a shout to one of my fav theologians and radical Benedictine nun, Sister Joan Chittister. Recently I got an email from her Benetvision site, a mediation on Beauty where she writes:

"Without beauty we miss the glory of the face of God in the here and now....Beauty is the most provocative promise we have of the Beautiful. It lures us and calls us and leads us on. Souls thirst for beauty and thrive on it and by it nourish hope. It is Beauty that magnetizes the contemplative, and it is the duty of the contemplative to give beauty away so that the rest of the world may, in the midst of squalor, ugliness, and pain, remember that beauty is possible."

Thank you Consuelo, Jackie, Sister Joan, and my two Leon Thomas loving comrades...thank you for the beautiful music and exchanges you've given me to contemplate, remember and celebrate.

"Orange Juice for the Ear"

2008-01-01T22:41:00.000-08:00

Before I hit the sack on this first day of 2008 I want to give you a little Oliver Sacks as well as some Duke. I think between the blogging and the Thich Nhat Hanh I'm reading and the little ity bit of meditation/silence practice I'm trying out lately, I'm noticing more and experiencing dazzling synchronicities...wonderful to notice the peace and gratitude with which I'm beginning this new year.

That's my turbo intro to kinda, slightly skip past, but at the same time celebrate that I paid attention to the quote on my Starbucks coffee cup today (smile). It was from neurologist/writer Oliver Sacks, whose book, "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and The Brain" I gotta get (who's read it? what's the word?) I felt excited by his quote:

"Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears--it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more--it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them music is not a luxury, but a necessity." Access to movement...to life...I love that.

In "Music is My Mistress" Duke Ellington writes a sort of poem called "What is Music?" that the Sacks quote seems to echo...here are a few lines:

"Music can dictate moods/It can ennerve or subdue/Subjugate, exhaust, astound the heart...Music is like honor and pride/Free from defect, damage, or decay/Without music I may feel blind, atrophied, incomplete, inexistent."

And just to go out and wish you every joy, jazz and hallelujah possible this year, I share a more often quoted line from Duke's autobiography, from the chapter on the sacred concerts.

"...every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty--trying to communicate themselves, understood or not--miracles have happened."

Thank you Duke! Starting out here with this honestly communicated desire to see a center built in your name to gather folks around music that astounds our hearts, I wonder what miracles might pop up in 08...

"

From the Fatigue of Despair to the Buoyancy of Hope

2007-12-28T13:33:00.000-08:00

In full holiday, high logistics mode, spending a good part of yesterday shuttling car-less family from out of town--I didn't hear about Benazir Bhutto's assassination til this morning. Musically my first thought was "Alabama" by John Coltrane, his deep river lament on the assassination of four little girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama September 15, 1963. Googling a bit on that song made me want to listen to King's eulogy for the martyred girls cause I'd just read a line from Martin Smith, the author of "John Coltrane: Jazz, Racism and Resistance" where he suggested that Coltrane "patterned his saxophone playing on Martin Luther King's funeral speech. Midway through the song, mirroring the point where King transforms his mourning into a statement of renewed determination for the struggle against racism, Elvin Jones's drumming rises from a whisper to a pounding rage." To me Elvin Jones is not so much raging but embodying "the buoyancy of hope," King talked about in his speech. King preached that the four martyred girls have something to say to religious leaders "who have remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows." The girls have something to say to government leaders who feed their constituents "the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism." The girls have something to say and King, Coltrane and particularly Elvin's drums let those freedom voices sing and swing and call us to be "concerned not merely about WHO murdered them, but about the system, the way of life and the philosophy which PRODUCED the murderers," and call us once more to "substitute courage for caution."

This all resonates so close to me as I process Benazir Bhutto's death. I know very little about this woman. I read a moving, frank, personal commentary about her this morning in the LATimes by a classmate of hers, Amy Wilentz (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-wilentz28dec28,0,4296745.story?coll=la-home-commentary) and a few other posts that just gave me a chill that the hard times, particularly in that region just got harder, "as hard as crucible steel" King would say. But King would also say and did say in the final minutes of the eulogy, "...through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transforms dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace." From Alabama to Rawalpindi, be it MLK or Jesus, John Coltrane or Elvin Jones, somebody knows our trouble and can lift us buoyantly to our deeper sense of humanity, our deeper commitment to justice, peace and freedom. Glory hallelujah.

"Goodnight sweet princesses. Goodnight those who symbolize a new day. May the flight of angels take thee to thy eternal rest."

I wonder about the just buried Bhutto now as I listen to those final words of King's eulogy where he paraphrases Shakespeare's Hamlet...I wasn't clear about her currently or historically enough to know if she was anyone's "princess" or a symbol of a "new day", but I feel determined to become more aware and with that awareness stay steeped in the buoyancy of Elvin's swing and King's and Coltrane's call to courage.

(I invite you to check out the 7cd collection "A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." and also the must have collection: James Melvin Washington's "A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr." You can find "Alabama" many places, today I grabbed "The Gentle Side of John Coltrane" cause I thought I might need a little John C/Johnny Hartman too after all this.)

Beautiful Love

2007-12-21T12:59:00.000-08:00

I'm still feeling the love today after two mesmerizing sets of jazz storytelling from Kenny Barron, Kiyoshi Kitagawa and Johnathan Blake at the Jazz Bakery last night that jumped off with "Beautiful Love" and the soul thrilling songs, standards and new originals just kept coming. I'll return to that majestic trio in a sec, but first I have to say I can't really hear that song without feeling Shirley Horn and Toots T in that tug-of-war of yearning when they recorded "Beautiful Love" on my fav disk of hers: "You Won't Forget Me". Toots accompanies her piano-less voice with both guitar and harmonica while Shirley wails:

"beautiful love, you are a mystery
beautiful love, what have you done to me?
i was contented til you came along
thrilling my soul with your song

beautiful love, i've roamed your paradise
searching for love, my dream to realize
reaching for heaven, depending on you
beautiful love, will my dreams come true?"

Haven Gillespie, Egbert Van Alstyne, Victor Young and Wayne King responsible for that beautiful/excruciating love. I have major gratitude for these old Tin Pan Alley cats...did a little googling and found out Young also wrote "When I Fall in Love", "My Foolish Heart" and "I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance" and Gillespie's credited with "You Go to My Head" and (right on time) "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"...I like noticing that Gillespie was still alive for the Jackson Five version...hope he grooved.

This makes me think of one of the last Christmas's my pop's was alive and his main cd that winter was Al Jarreau's live, "Tenderness" and the track that stayed on repeat was Al and Kathleen Battle singing "My Favorite Things." At some point pops is like, "Quiet as it's kept, this is right up there with Coltrane's for me." Then we all had to turn around and give love to Julie Andrews too, no question. And right now I wanna give love to those mostly Jewish composers writing these joints listed above a generation or two before Dinah Washington, Keith Jarrett, Trane, Toots, and the organic Michael Jackson recorded the versions I hold so dear. I wonder what music Haven Gillespie and Victor Young would compose and debut at the Duke Ellington Center for the Study of Sacred Jazz.

If you happen to read this before Saturday night, Dec 22, please catch Kenny Barron's trio at the Jazz Bakery before they head back home for the holidays...as my friend Peter kept saying, "exhilarating! mesmerizing! took us to another level!" And as powerfully as they played, all three were just as gentle and open when they came out after two long sets to chat and connect with the lingering crowd. I kinda stumbled trying to tell Mr. Barron about this blog and my vision for the Duke Center...and he said, "it doesn't have to be religious" ...as if to check in and make sure my vibe was inclusive because for him as long as you come together, totally willing to be in synch like that--he holds the hands I've just watched for 3+hours glide across those keys so responsive and resplendent, he holds them together, well, as if he's saying grace--"I guess it is sacred." Beautiful. Love.

"If You Have The Ear of God..."

2007-12-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

Shout out to the old Musician magazine writers! My brother used to have a subscription to Musician magazine back in the early 80s and it was a big "rule" for him that he got to read his own magazine first. (This makes me giggle now thinking back). But it was great when he left for college and sometimes I'd get to read it first. To begin this journey of writing and thinking about jazz in this more journalistic way (vs the stack of screenplays I have about musicians) makes me think back to those feasts of reading Musician in my early teens. At some point in the 90's a great anthology of the best of the jazz writing from Musician was published and if you can find a copy of it buy it now! The pieces on Lester Bowie, Charlie Haden, Joni Mitchell on Jaco Pastorius will have you swooning...just remembering them gives me chills, so this morning I grabbed the book and re-read the gorgeous piece Chip Stern wrote for/with Sonny Rollins. I just have to transcribe a few quotes here cause they're so touching. The piece was originally featured in the May 1988 issue, "Sonny Rollins: The Cross and The Rose." Stern points out that Rollin's Manhattan workshop had "a neat pyramid of books on Shintoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity...crowned by a portrait of an African drummer dancing against a brooding russet sky..."
At one point Sonny speaks so sweetly about a recent dream he'd had of Coltrane:

"We were hanging out together, like back in the old days. We were talking, and he was telling me some of his stories with his wry sense of humor. It was very upbeat; everything was harmony and love, you know, and when I woke up I was happy--smiling. I'm sure glad he came back."

And then on Louis Armstrong:

"When I think of the spiritual, I think of Louis Armstrong. I read where Django Reinhardt said that the first time he heard Louis Armstrong, he cried. Very spiritual. Very much beyond the physical, it's definitely beyond that--joy!"

The article ends with Sonny talking about the limitless possibilites of new discoveries on his horn:

"And guys say, 'Oh Sonny, that's impossible.' But I don't think there's anything that can't be done. Because music is such a spiritual thing, man. There's a place where I believe you can transcend these metal instruments and go to another area where you can impose a spiritual reality on the music you are playing. If you have the determination, if you have the faith, if you have the ear of God, you can do any of these things."

Thank you Sonny Rollins. Thank you thank you Musician mag for years of inspiration and excellence. Again, try to get hold of "The Jazz Musician: 15 years of interviews, the Best of Musician Magazine" Edited by Mark Rowland and Tony Scherman

Jazz Gather We

2007-12-11T14:14:00.000-08:00

"We can become a 'we' with a little bit of good manners and a little bit of what we call swing." Wynton Marsalis last night on PBS.

I'm so high on Wynton these days. I got that quote listening to a little interview he did with Glenn Close on PBS last night. This year while back in NYC for my friend Nina's wedding, I flew in with just enough time to catch one of the last performances of "In This House, On This Morning" a 15 year anniversary concert in the new house of swing, The Rose Theater at Lincoln Center. It was my first time in the new building and wildly when I got out of the elevators I was greeted by a massive gospel choir singing one of my favorite hymns, "Everyday is a Day of Thanksgiving." It felt a bit surreal, particularly because it's a hymn I so associate with The Glide Ensemble in the tenderloin in San Francisco, and now I was in this fancy high rise off Columbus Circle stepping into a Gospel Festival in progress in the lobby. This is all before the concert. This is all before stepping inside that hall...that, embrace of a hall. And while the concert is astonishing, just mighty, I think I'm most choked up with gratitude recognizing that this is really the only space of this kind built for jazz in the country that built jazz. During Reginald Veal's hallelujah bass solo, "In The Sweet Embrace of Life" he called out, "Somebody say 'Amen'" and I hollered, "Amen" from the balcony. This kind of call and response doesn't tend to happen in Disney Hall, but let me stay on the gratitude tip here. Thank you Wynton, for respecting this music and our ancestors who created it, and for building a spot to gather and consider the sweet embrace. (One day I'll post more on the concert and cd of "In this House, On this Morning" I'm still unpacking it.)

"The Triple J Coalition..."

Now fast forward to this past weekend here in L.A. at the Southern California Library where maestro bandleader, sax and flute supreme, composer, civil rights activist, Buddy Collette was honored and honored us with stories of growing up in Watts, followed by an hour or so of his favorite local musicians playing some of Buddy's original compositions. Buddy's like family--my brother and Buddy used to shop at the same Ralph's and dine at the same Bob's Big Boy 15 years or so back, and particularly in the past 5 years or so, Buddy's claimed us both and enriched our lives with the greatest epic tales. I was particularly touched by a simple tale he told at the library Saturday about growing up and playing with his school friends who were black, Japanese, white, and his mother would come outside and holler that it was time to come in and eat, so he'd say goodbye to his pals and his mother said, "no, not goodbye, they're all coming in to eat too. So we learned something about sharing."

After the program folks were lining up to shake Buddy's one good hand and ask for autographs. I see a young man, who I find out is DJ Kenzo, aka Joshua Aldrete, who identifies as "super mixed but mostly Mexican." He asks me if he's blushing because he's so excited about the thought of having Buddy Collette sign his copy of the book, "Central Avenue Sounds" a book he picked up after reading "Mr. Jelly Roll" and feeling curious about Jelly Roll's adventures on Central Ave. I introduce him to my brother, Jason, and we share a laugh about Josslyn, Jason, and Joshua...Joshua is swift to tag us: "The Triple J Coalition." Coalition. I miss that word. It's a word I heard constantly as an undergrad at UCBerkeley majoring in Ethnic Studies in the late 80's and hear so infrequently in Los Angeles. The media will have all of us believing that blacks and Latinos are only at war (some are) and that all Koreans hate blacks (some do) but I stand as a witness that there are spaces where "we can become a 'we' with a little bit of good manners...and swing." Friday I was a welcome and well fed guest at my Korean friend Esther's mother's birthday party where we noshed on a gorgeous fruit tart and homemade eel sushi and Saturday I was deep in the Triple J Coalition, surrounded by one of the most integrated age and race wise gatherings in Los Angeles, care of this very hip library, dubbed "the people's library" on Vermont, listening to jazz legend Buddy Collette remind us the value of sharing.

This is my super long way of getting back to why I'd want the Sacred Jazz Center to be interfaith. Jazz is a great gatherer and the act of gathering is central to all faith traditions. And as much as a conversation about coming together across racial differences is crucial in my city of angels, world wide I feel like the interfaith conversation is the most urgent one for the survival of our humanity and our home. And it happens to be a conversation that happens so seamlessly on the bandstand.

I recently fell back in love with that great quote at the end of Toni Morrison's "Beloved" where Paul D tells Sethe about Sixo's love for Thirty Mile Woman. Sixo describes Thirty Mile Woman like this: "She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order." Jazz does this. Always has. Thank you.

Check out the library: socallib.org/
Also Buddy's got a web site: buddycollette.com and also check out his tuition free jazz institute: jazzamerica.org
And you can find out more about DJ Kenzo via the very groovy organization J.U.I.C.E. (Justice by Uniting in Creative Energy)
http://www.rampartjuice.com/about.html

Hey, if you're in Los Angeles this week, don't sleep on Richard Bona and Mike Stern at Catalina's (I know, expensive! But the last couple times Bona's been in town he's played at the Bowl, so it will be lovely to hear him in a small spot.)

The Duke Ellington Center for the Study of Sacred Jazz

2007-12-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

This idea came to me so strong a year or two ago...I could see this interfaith center named after Duke, where Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu...and and and all musicians and music lovers seeking to become more human and whole through this music we love would gather and swing beloved community style. Okay now truth is I also had a vision of me being the founder and dean of this spot...then I got all concerned about divinity school and/or phd in jazz studies or performance studies, oh and raising zillions of dollars in grants and finding a space and could you call it after Duke and not launch it in NYC or DC...I'm still wondering about all of the above, but luckily I had Vietnamese food in downtown Los Angeles yesterday, appropriately at place called "Blossom" and my friend says, start blogging on it. Begin the conversation. Ahhh.

Now this friend and most of my friends and family are a thousand times more tech savvy than me...I want this blog to look fine and sound so sweet...I'm going to get wiser soon about uploads and podcasts and groovy/inviting graphics...right now though I just want to start writing some of these ideas down and take 2007 out with deep river music gratitude.

"Now I can say openly...what I have been saying to myself on my knees," Duke Ellington.

That line from the chapter on the Sacred Concerts in Duke's autobiography, "Music is My Mistress" always stays with me. Last thing I want to suggest here is that I know what is sacred and what is not in jazz...I do want to wonder here and as much as possible start asking musicians and documenting what happens with the music that originates from knee conversations/chants/prayers/deeper silences? What happens in the composing or playing journey that feels different? How do we feel when we listen to these pieces alone? In community? With a lover? With our children? The recently retired genius preacher from Riverside Church, James Forbes gave an amazing sermon last winter about the spiritual, "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" where he questions the lines, "Nobody Knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows but Jesus. Nobody knows, the trouble I've seen, Glory Hallelujah!" He says how you gonna have that kind of trouble and glory hallelujah together? But then eventually he gets back to, "somebody knows." Now in the tune and in the sermon, that someone is Jesus...and I'm a huge Jesus lover myself (in profound struggle with "Christianity" but give me Jesus) but for you that somebody might be John Coltrane. That somebody might be Charles Lloyd, Wayne Shorter, definitely Terence Blanchard playing his recent requiem for Katrina...somebody knows and blows our trouble AND hallelujah.

So I want to talk about the music itself that comes from the musicians' knee conversations and also the music that brings me to my knees with that recognition that somebody seen what I've seen.

"& poem is my thank-you for music
& i love you more than poem" Ntozake Shange

That's one of my favorite lines from Shange's "for colored girls"...I think of this new blog journey as just one of my humble thank yous for jazz. I'm excited.