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JAZZ - When I was in college, I met a jazzman named Clifford Thornton. He taught an improv and experimental jazz class in the department of Ethnomusicology and was the kind of laid back visiting professor who had no problem with a bunch of undergrads coming over to his place to listen to albums and generally talk music, politics and life. Sam Rivers, another reknown jazzman and friend of Cliff's, was usually somewhere in the mix. Cliff, like many a radical Black man who had been abroad in the early '70s, was sure he was on The List and his phone was probably tapped. He said it didn't bother him --- much.
I was thinking about Cliff today when I got back from my tax appointment because the only thing I felt would consume some of my anger, frustration, and free-floating angst would be to listen to some good jazz.
So I surfed over to Kerbango and tuned in WSHA from Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, a station which had been referred to me by my good brother, Darryl. I was not disappointed. No "Smooth Jazz" here, no Kenny G saccharine bull for the masses, this was jazz from authentic players, jazz in all its wonderful, cerebral complexity.
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Listening got me thinking about Cliff because he would talk sometimes, with no little anger, about how tough it was for jazz players to get good, steady playing gigs here in the United States. That's part of the reason he had spent so much time in France, like many a jazzman then and now.
It wasn't right, Cliff felt, considering that jazz (like blues, r & b, soul, hip-hop/rap) was an original American form of music. I didn't have the audacity to remind him of the "a prophet isn't appreciated in his own country" maxim.
The real issue, after all, is that each of these American art forms is also a Black art form. You don't hear a lot of white people talking about the cerebral nature of jazz, because Black people are not supposed to be cerebral. We're supposed to be athletic, rhythmic, emotional, violent, shiftless, but not cerebral. "Shiny eyes and big white teefes."
That is why I have proudly modeled this magazine on a jazz band, the highest exhibition of Black artistic production. Like a jazz band, we don't take an exclusionary stance and say that only Black people can produce this art, but we do say that everyone who steps onto the stage should be able to blow, to wail, to shift tempo, to go atonal if need be.
If anything, we say that jazz frees us of exclusion, it is the music of the soul, that transcends race, class, economics and all those other categories which we use too often to divide us.
All you need is the ability and talent to free your mind....
Here's an irony: If you were inclined to do a Web search at your favorite engine on Clifford Thornton, you'd find his name in disc- or biographies of Sun Ra, Sam Rivers, Carla Bley, Archie Shepp, Joe McPhee, and on and on. You find references to his "Freedom and Unity" recording and performances. BUT because Cliff was associated with the Black Panther Party, he's almost invisible on the Web. It's like, everywhere you turn when you read about someone else, they were side men in Cliff's bands, or Cliff played in their band. But Cliff? Where's Cliff?
This reflection is not meant to lionize Cliff Thornton, by any means. He put his pants on one leg at a time like the rest us. He was as flawed and deluded by the insanity of the world.
But it is meant to focus your thoughts on what it might be like to wake up every day and KNOW that --- because you are the physical embodiment of what James Baldwin called "The Other" --- nothing, NOTHING you would or could achieve as an artist or person would get the props that A LESSER EFFORT by a member of the dominant group produced.
There was a time, at the beginning of the last century, when some intellectuals had the audacity to suggest that the true energy of American creativity sprang from the creative energy of African people's contribution. From Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" to the experimentation in dance of Martha Graham to Picasso's obvious references to African art, the opening of the twentieth century saw a homage to the influence of The Other... the hated, and "mysterious" Other, who represented some link to an essential human quality that seemed loss to the dominant culture, a dominant culture whose hands dripped blood, exploitation, and ennui.
How many times, alone among ourselves, have I heard Black people say to each other, "You know, Europeans must really be crazy." It echoes the quote from the great Chief in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee who exclaims, "They would poison the very air..."
So I close this foray listening to WEMU another great jazz and blues station, out of Ypsilanti, Michigan. Did I ever tell you the story of Sherrie, the girl from Ypsilanti I almost married? Maybe one day I will.
One of my favorite Blues lines:
"What did the frog say to eel?
"The more you wiggle, Baby,
"The better it feel!"
RDR RECOMMENDED SITE OF THE DAY: SearchProcess is a French research engine you just might want to give a look. It's unique! (Yes, we gave you the English language version. Duh!)
