The Independent Ear

Presenter’s POV: IAJE ’08

Posted on January 17, 2008 by The Independent Ear

IAJE Invades Lovely Toronto

 

Toronto, a place I’ve enjoyed visiting since my childhood in Ohio, is a  wonderful city with a truly diverse and hospitable populace and a vigorous arts & culture scene.  And Canada is home to a broad range of exceptional jazz artists and the absolute best jazz festival circuit of any country on the planet.  Toronto played host last week to the annual conference of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE)and I came away wondering if Toronto was an apt conference host.  On the whole the conference lacked its usual juice; somehow the energy level was decidedly down, not to mention conference registration.

 

Perhaps the major reason for this is because for one reason or another the jazz industry simply did not travel this time around.  Some blamed it on the weather — which though chilly was never truly cold and lacking precipitation was quite manageable even for those not housed in the Intercontinental Hotel adjacent to the conference site at the convention center.  It seemed that at least the threat of inclement weather was enough to cause some of the senior jazz artists usually in attendance to bag the trip, as was evidenced in the case of NEA Jazz Masters attendance.    And let’s not forget how notoriously lazy and provincial certain members of the New York-centric jazz industry and intelligensia are about traveling to the "provinces."

 

Consequently, though expertly programmed as usual, the conference’s Industry Track offerings were in many cases — some glaringly so — under-attended and lacking their usual buzz.  Maybe it was the perception in certain corners of the jazz industry of a lack of the usual sidebar meeting opportunities; Toronto was definitely absent the hang-out atmosphere of the New York conferences where many folks skip registration but hang out at the HQ hotels all day taking advantage of their peers being on-site for the annual confab and the joys of simply connecting with friends and colleagues in the business.

 

One notable example of low session attendance was the annual Grammy Soundtable, which always plays to a packed house.  Perhaps it was the emphasis on historic recording engineers (Phil Ramone, Al Schmitt) that didn’t exactly resonate with conferees.  Whatever the case, I had to dash off to another session but when I left the room was barely 1/4 occupied!  DownBeat’s live Blindfold tests are always SRO sessions; but this year’s participants, the distinguished NEA Jazz Master David Baker and educator Jamey Aebersold didn’t have quite the pull of the usual all-star draw. 

 

Howard Mandel (catch his blog link on this site) seemed to be everywhere, wearing his Jazz Journalist Association hat proudly and chairing a couple of sessions.  One in particular, a roundtable on the digital age, featured the erudite Canadian critic James Hale and the brilliant Canadian keyboardist-composer Andy Milne.  I counted less than a dozen in the audience for what could have been a lively discussion. The evening concerts, though blessed with their own charms, lacked the draw of the usual evening events at the New York conferences.  And the exhibit hall was decidedly low-key and down in terms of vendor participation.

 

All that aside it was still a good hang; an excellent opportunity to connect with industry friends and jazz peers.  Among the highlights were gala awardee Bill Strickland’s heartfelt acceptance speech and the performance of the Sisters in Jazz on the Wednesday event, followed by a sparkling performance by the New York Voices at the evening concert.  Frankly I had tended to somewhat dismiss the New York Voices as a bit slick around the edges; my ears were indeed opened by their IAJE performance, which was augmented by special guest NEA Jazz Master Paquito D’Rivera’s usual joie de vivre.  The truly original young guitarist Lionel Loueke essayed his forthcoming Blue Note debut with aplomb to close that particular evening.

 

The next morning — and here is truly one of the best reasons to attend IAJE, notice I said morning — at 11:00 the promising young acoustic bassist-vocalist Esperanza Spalding, who will release her Heads Up debut recording later this spring, gave a fine account of her blossoming skills.  I was particularly delighted to hear the engrossing young drummer Otis Brown, who had been a guest on my Jazz Ed TV show on BET Jazz some years back as a student, and Cleveland homeboy Jamey Hadad on percussion assisting Ms. Spalding, who has special talent written across her forehead.

 

One of the best organized and most heartfelt sessions, and one which did draw a packed room, was the Thursday afternoon Wynton Kelly and the Musical Company He Kept, a loving tribute to one of the swingingest pianists this music has ever produced.  Kelly was remembered principally by drummer Jimmy Cobb, bassist Paul West, and his cousin NEA Jazz Master Randy Weston.  And just to put the man in the house as it were, the session ended with the screening of a Jazz Icons DVD performance of Kelly in the company of John Coltrane rendering "On Green Dolphin Street."  Immediately following that, in an obvious statement of IAJE’s usual embarassment of riches, Dan Morgenstern ably pinch-hit for Billy Taylor in a NEA Jazz Master’s conversation with Roy Haynes, which was followed by an NEA Jazz Masters roundtable with three of their Advocacy category Masters: John Levy, Dan Morgenstern, and Gunther Schuller.

 

The NEA Jazz Masters day was actually Friday and in addition to the two sessions above, A.B. Spellman ably interviewed the 2008 NEA Jazz Masters recipients: Candido, Quincy Jones, Tom McIntosh, Gunther Schuller, and Joe Wilder.  Trumpet master Wilder opened by recalling his former early bandleader Lionel Hampton as both musical giant and midget in the way he often mis-treated his musicians, observations which drew knowing chuckles from the large assemblage.  Full disclosure: I work intimately with this program as coordinator of the NEA Jazz Masters Live project.

 

Friend and colleague Larry Blumenfeld, who has been a tireless champion of all things New Orleans in pointing out the ongoing ills and disparities of the post-storm recovery as part of his ongoing book project (also see the three installments of my New Orleans newcomer’s diary elsewhere on this blog and read Blumenfeld’s linked blog for his potent commentaries), chaired a rewarding session titled In the Number which included live testimony from Scott Aiges of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, and Blumenfeld’s revealing taped interview segments.  Alas, though heart was deep in this house, session attendance was pitiful.

 

The following Saturday morning was another of those AM performance gems one often finds at IAJE.  Bassist and Berklee educator Oscar Stagnaro directed the IAJE Latin America Jazz Ensemble under the auspices of the Puerto Rico chapter of IAJE (hey, how ’bout an IAJE conference in San Juan?) in a crisp performance thoroughly en clave, richly in the jazz tradition.  Various sidebar meetings that afternoon and a final run through the exhibit hall prevented attendance of Saturday panel sessions.  Thankfully I came up for some fresh air at 4:00 and copped a comfortable seat for yet another strong performance, this time by the very complimentary and creative duo of saxophonist-clarinetist Marty Ehrlich and pianist Myra Melford, who has certainly come a long way from the shy young woman I first met as a finalist at the Thelonious Monk piano competition years ago.  Back then Myra wasn’t quite sure of her direction.  Now she is an entirely assertive, first rank pianist and composer with a growing and impressive discography.  And having Marty Ehrlich and Paquito D’Rivera on the same conference provided the keen of ear a delicious opportunity to sample the state of the jazz clarinet.

 

Later that evening over a delicious Indian meal in good journalist company, career jazz record man Ricky Schultz, salting the conversation with a particularly humorous recollection of his MCA days encounter with the legendary Lew Wasserman, unveiled his promising new station at the fresh approach of Resonance Records, a new not-for-profit model.  Stay tuned for some good music from that port.  There are major changes afoot at IAJE central — again, stay tuned…  It will be quite interesting to see how next year’s conference, slated for Seattle, turns out; a real test of whether or not the conference should permanently root itself in New York.  But let’s not get too rash, after all the 2011 conference is scheduled for the Crescent City — and that’ll be a guaranteed blast.

Posted in The Presenter's P.O.V. | 705 Comments

New Orleans Newcomers Diary #3

Posted on January 16, 2008 by The Independent Ear

A Bit of the Yin & Yang of Life in the Crescent City

Columnist Chris Rose, in the 1/16/08 edition of The Times-Picayune newspaper, wrote a humorously penetrating column on the eternal question those of us who live in NOLA inevitably face when venturing out: “How’s New Orleans Doing?”  This question is particularly acute for someone like me who is still a relative newcomer to the city, and may even be posed in a more pointed manner.  My standard response is this city is a place of enormous Yin & Yang — a term loosely generalized here to denote Positive & Negative — and the Yin outweighs the Yang… so far.  Or as Rose characterizes it: “things are much better than they are worse.”

 

It’s so easy to forget for a moment the Yang of life in New Orleans, to momentarily dismiss the misery index that might be lurking just around the corner.  If one were to confine oneself to the areas most visitors experience — namely the French Quarter, the Garden District, and most of the Uptown area (where we live and where the Monk Institute is housed at Loyola University) — one would get the impression that all’s well nearly two and a half years after the calamity that is referred to here as The Storm. 

 

The Monk Institute engages jazz masters to visit Loyola on residency teaching gigs with its grad students on a monthly basis, for weeklong stints.  Thus far such illustrious artists as Ron Carter, Lewis Nash, Nnenna Freelon, Danilo Perez, Benny Golson, and John Scofield have come down.  Danilo Perez in particular got an eyeful.  Initially once on the ground he hopefully exclaimed that all seemed well, all appeared to be back together, up and running.  That is until the program’s education coordinator Jonathan Bloom (musician and member of the family of the late clarinet master Alvin Batiste, Edward “Kidd” Jordan, Kent Jordan, Marlon Jordan, Stephanie Jordan, etc. and a family musician tradition going back seven generations), who literally knows where all the bodies are buried, took him on the obligatory Yang tour of such neighborhoods as the now-infamous Lower Ninth Ward, Gentilly, and Lakeside.  To see street after street of either ruins or ghostly concrete slabs where once were lively homes is a sobering immersion into the Yang of New Orleans ’08.  And we’re talking about black folks’ neighborhoods here — but not purely poor folks’ neighborhoods; black folks of all stripe have suffered over the last two+ years of lingering misery index.  The gap between have and have-not in New Orleans is as stark as any I’ve envisioned — even dating back to my former life in the euphemistically titled “criminal justice system” in my post-grad days.  Danilo and the other masters who’ve been on this tour through the lingering misery came away changed.

 

The Yin: the spirit here remains very high.  I have a friend who lost four houses to the Storm.  After decades of paying out homeowners insurance he settled for a grand total of $80K… for FOUR HOUSES!!!  But like so many he is determined to slowly but surely remake those houses, to make them viable dwellings once again — on his own.  You see and experience so much of that spirit that it raises your own sensibilities and optimism.  All over town are legions of work crews, largely Latino, working steadily to rebuild the many ruins.  Traveling a short distance from home to the monthly and quite bustling outdoor marketplace (for a Midwesterner who spent 18 years in the Northeast, the mild, often balmy winter weather here is a major Yin) at Freret & Napoleon on a lovely Saturday afternoon in January we navigated our way around work crews and the occasional neglected ruins — caved in roofs, sides ripped off, in all manner of disrepair — sitting starkly alongside homes brightly decorated for the holidays.  The market was buzzing — a blues band raucously followed the Treme Brass Band onstage while we were there soaking up the spirit… the Yin of New Orleans.

 

It’s Mardi Gras season and the spirits are further boosted.  The markets are chock full of seasonal king cakes and all manner of goodies designed to get your food & drink on for carnival season.  And if you think Mardi Gras is all about that fratboy French Quarter nonsense you see on television… think again.  We’ve learned in no uncertain terms that idiocy ain’t the real Mardi Gras, and we should prepare ourselves for a grand old time.  This weekend is the must-see Krewe du Vieux parade with its over-the-top humor and jamming brass bands — the Yin fo’ sho’.  All these years of disinterest in Mardi Gras based on no interest in that other ridiculousness appears to have been missed opportunities.  We’ll be right there chasing down the Mardi Gras Indians activities like so many Mardi Gras season revelers.  At times like these its so easy to forget the misery index… but it’s here, perhaps just around the corner. 

 

But again, the spirit is strong & high and the will to overcome must inevitably triumph.  The Second Line parades have been jumping every Sunday since late summer.  The rich African cultural traditions embodied in those parades is soul deep and yet more manifestation of the Yin of New Orleans.  The community radio station here, WWOZ 90.7 FM (sample it’s eclectic, New Orleans-centric music menu around the world at www.wwoz.org), is supported nearly as much by folks outside this region who yearn for that New Orleans’ sound as part of their daily life rhythm.  Each odd hour of the day WWOZ runs the Live Wire, detailing who’s playing the clubs.  For a city whose populace is still creeping towards 300,000 from it’s pre-storm 400,000+, the amount of musical joy to be found in its myriad clubs on a nightly basis is amazing.  And some of these joints have 9:00 a.m. hits and others that begin at 2:00 a.m.!

 

After 18 years on-air at beloved WPFW in Washington, DC part of my New Orleans’ Yin is finding opportunities on WWOZ, a station about which I’ll speak in detail next time.  Stay tuned…

Peace,

Willard Jenkins

Jazz Cultural Warrior

 

 

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Think you’re ready to play a festival? Part 1

Posted on December 12, 2007 by The Independent Ear

My experience as artistic director of two jazz festivals — the 29-year old Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland and the emerging, 7-year old BeanTown Jazz Festival, produced in Boston by Berklee College of Music, tends to load my snail and email boxes with inquiries from artists and bands seeking employment.  But festivals are a different animal from clubdates and concert engagements.  In the case of Tri-C JazzFest, the nature of our festival suggests that it is difficult at best to present artists making their first appearance in our market.  Our audience can be characterized as a ‘show-me’ audience; they’ve got to have some measure of comfort with an artist or concert billing in order to plunk down their well-earned ticket dollars.  Put simply, rarely will our audience buy tickets to artists they do not know.  BeanTown is another matter entirely, primarily because its core event is free of charge.

 

Recently I was afforded an opportunity to speak with the student musicians of the Thelonious Monk Institute’s graduate studies program at Loyola University on the subject of artist readiness in terms of approaching jazz festivals for performance opportunities.  Here are some of the stress points of that conversation:

 

Do your research

  • Get the major jazz magazine annual festivals directories which list pertinent festival information and contact information.
  • Investigate festival web sites: Determine who, what, when, where info, but also carefully research their booking patterns, who and what type of artists they are likely to present.  Ask yourself a question: do they book and present lesser known or emerging artists?  Is there a place at this festival for my kind of music?  Do they present student ensembles?  Do they have a significant jazz education component?  (These last two points were stressed to the Monk ensemble because they are uniquely poised to work education-based jazz festivals.)  Educate yourself thoroughly on what these festivals present, how/where they present (# of venues, etc.).

You must have a recent recording.

  • To exemplify who you are and what you play, to use as a "calling card" to substantiate your artistry; a recording to be made available to the presenter for the targeted festival’s local radio outlet and PR/Marketing efforts, etc.  NOT a demo — a commercially-available recording, even if it is only available through web or downloads.

 

Communications

  • Communicate with festivals and presenters in a collegial manner; don’t be "pushy"; keep them abreast of your activities without pushing or being an annoyance; be in touch respectfully.  Be pleasant and persistent but NOT insecure and pushy.  Take the position in your mind that my music is so good that sooner or later this person is going to hire me.  Be confident and savvy in your communication.  Make it your point to meet & greet, but not in a pushy way — there’s a fine line you need to walk.

This is the first in an occasional series of tips towards festival readiness for artists and bands.  Your response and input is welcome.  I should note that in the case of Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland as a means of presenting newer artists to our community in situations that do not have ticket sales pressures we created our Debut Series of free concert performances.  Drop us a line if you’re interested in how to be part of our Debut Series.

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Remembering Sekou

Posted on December 12, 2007 by The Independent Ear

Last April one of the highlights of the 28th annual Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland was the appearance of poet-writer-conceptualist Sekou Sundiata as our special guest at our now-annual Jazz Meets Hip Hop evening.  What began eight years ago as our effort at bridging the gap between our festival’s core music, jazz, and the late-20th century music phenomenon known as hip hop and a means of showing the commonalities and root source relationships between the two genres has now blossomed into an essential annual component of the festival.  Throughout these eight years the one constant has been our music director for that evening, drummer-percussionist Bill Ransom.  Working closely with Bill we’ve engaged rappers, turntablists, and a variety of instrumentalists steeped in both genres as guest collaborators with Bill’s core ensemble to present evenings that were decidedly more jazz in their leanings but that boasted a vibrant hip hop component as well.  A few years ago, inspired by his two amazing CDs Long Story Short and The Blue Oneness of Dreams, and having met the man through my occasional working relationship with the Brooklyn-based arts presenting organization 651 Arts, Sekou Sundiata was invited to participate in Jazz Meets Hip Hop.  On the occasion of the Langston Hughes Centennial Sekou and I co-produced an amazing evening of poetry and music for 651 Arts at the St. Ann’s space in the lower Brooklyn area near the river known as DUMBO.  I was eager to get Sekou into the Jazz Meets Hip Hop mix because although he was neither a rapper nor a product of hip hop culture, the relationship of his brilliant performance poetry style (many remember his kinetic performances and out-of-their-league maturity alongside the other fairly green performance poets on Russell Simons Def Poetry Jam on HBO) to hip hop — a relationship not unlike that of jazz master and emerging artist — compelled his participation in our series.  So powerful was his first appearance, which also included his music director at the time pianist-keyboardist Marc Cary (another true seeker), that we brought him back for a joyous return — this time working alongside a rapper — for the 2007 edition of Jazz Meets Hip Hop.

 

I also felt a closeness to Sekou from his very unique relationship with good friend and fellow WPFW programmer Katea Stitt.  Katea was one of the real beacons of my 18 years on the WPFW airways.  In 2002 Katea, her then significant other Sven Abow, their lovely daughter Johanna, Suzan and I traveled to Fes, Morocco to produce some special programming for WPFW from the annual World Sacred Music Festival.  We returned the following year to do likewise at the Gnawa and World Music Festival in Essaouira, Morocco.  Backing up a bit to Sekou, about a decade prior when the poet was in desparate need of a kidney transplant it was Katea Stitt who gave him that wonderful gift of life.  Katea had provided Sekou with management services for years; so I felt an even greater sense of closeness to this incredible poet.  Thus the shock was doubly deep when Sekou passed on to ancestry last summer after suffering a major heart trauma.  In September, 2003 I interviewed Sekou for the former webzine Africana.com.  You may have missed that piece so as The Independent Ear’s way of remembering Sekou Sundiata, here’s a re-print of that piece.

 

The Africana Q&A: Sekou Sundiata

by Willard Jenkins

    Poet Sekou Sundiata is in the vanguard of American poets.  He writes, records, and performs on a broad range of topics, including: growing up in Harlem, Amadou Diallo, slavery & reparations, Mary J. Blige, making bombs from bullshit, and Jimi Hendrix – in short, he has referred to his style as "Rhythm & News."  He delivers his brand of R&N in a subtle, baritone voice that won’t blast you out of your seat, but will leave you with an impression of great substance.

 

Sundiata, a tall, medium built man of chocolate complexion prone to wearing hip hats (dig the great red straw on the cover of his album Long Story Short), is a man of easy manner, good humor and deceptively languid eyes that somewhat mask the intensity and keen socio-cultural awareness within.  Blessing The Boats, Sundiata’s current one-man production, deals with his past as a kidney disease survivor and kidney transplant recipient, an understandably essential element of his life.

 

We spoke with Sekou from his Brooklyn home about the state of performance poetry, his current show, his inspirations, his recording career, and the planning process for his forthcoming major production.

 

Willard Jenkins: In light of the seemingly increasing currency of poetry slams, culminating in HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, on which you made a notable appearance, do you consider yourself a performance poet?

 

Sekou Sundiata: No, not at all; this thing about spoken word artists and performance poets, I think of it mainly as marketing categories.  I’m satisfied with just calling myself a poet.  The way I came through, in terms of studying poetry and the people I came up with in poetry, we all identified ourselves with the whole tradition of poetry, going back to ancient times.  Performance poetry, spoken word and all that, I think that goes back to… I don’t even know if you can go back 25 years with that.

 

WJ: I guess it’s kinda like musicians who have little use for categories and would prefer to be just known as a "musician" rather than an X-category musician.

 

Sekou: Exactly, and also under the banner of performance poet and spoken word artists, some people are poets and some are not; some are actors, comedians… and that’s okay, but its very different from thinking of what tradition you ground yourself in as an artist.

 

WJ: What is the current state of performance poetry?  Has it been taken to new heights through venues like Def Poetry Jam?

 

Sekou: That’s a big question [chuckles], I don’t even know if I can assess that, if we talk about performance poetry or even more especially spoken word, there seems to be a lot happening, a lot of different types of venues and opportunities: slams, open readings, open mic, etc.  But in the larger world of poetry, including poets who are not performers but who do read, it’s always been one of America’s best kept secrets.  There have always been thousands of readings each year, many poetry festivals and series at universities across the country.  But it looks pale when you compare it to a mass market-driven, commercial art kind of thing.

 

WJ: Certain elements of the so-called mainstream might have you think that there is increasing energy for poetry being performed onstage, in light of things like Def Poetry Jam.  Where would you say Def Poetry Jam fits in all this?

 

Sekou: I think there is a level of activity — some of which I think relates to poetry and some of which doesn’t, but that falls under the category of performance or spoken word.  I think that has a great deal of visibility.  So what many people mean when they say poetry, they mean that and only that.  There is a much broader world of poetry and poets that has a long-standing tradition in this country.  It’s very highly organized.  That hasn’t enjoyed as much attention as the spoken word realm, but it is durable; you would think it was a secret.

 

WJ: You’ve worked with bands in the past.  What kind of ensemble are you working with these days?

 

Sekou: I’m in a transition period.  I’ve been working with one band for the past five or six years and I’m getting ready to begin another project that is more related to improvisationally-based music, which I guess some people would call jazz, but I shy away from that term as a descriptor because I think at this point in time when you say that, unless you can really explain what you’re talking about to people [jazz] means so many different things to different people, and so many things fall under that heading now.  Things that I never would have thought of as jazz before you see programmed in a jazz festival for example.  But the key thing I’m working with now — I’ve been working with it all these years but I’m really trying to highlight it now — is this marriage of composition of black music, especially music we call jazz.  One of the cornerstones is this meeting of composition and improvisation; what is scripted, what is given, and then what happens in the moment.

 

WJ: When you say improvisation, are you suggesting that there could conceivably be situations where you would be working with a band and you might go onto the stage without any kind of blueprint and basically freely improvise?

 

Sekou: No, there’s always a blueprint, and I improvise now, meaning that things are not laid out; meaning that — in terms of the texts that I’ve written, I add lines, I take away lines, I repeat lines, I change structures around in the course of one performance, I change the way one piece flows and segueways into another, in terms of what’s written and how I perform it, all those techniques, I do all of that now, I’m just looking to do it in a more heightened way — always with some sort of blueprint in mind.  It’s not just starting out completely from scratch.

 

WJ: Is there any relationship between your work and rap?

 

Sekou: I don’t know, I guess the first thing that comes to mind is the most obvious — spoken text over music.  On my last recording I used some "hip hop beats" but — first of all I don’t really rhyme, sometimes I rhyme but it’s not a goal, to rhyme.  My approach to the beat is really displaced, off-centered, as opposed to kind of loked-inside the beat; so only in a very general sense [is there a relationship to hip hop].  In terms of theme or thematic approach, I like to think to some extent what I might have in common with an MC is that I’m trying to bring the news of the day.

 

WJ: I ask that in light of Def Poetry Jam being a program that is centered around poetry and poets but is hosted by Mos Def, who is identified as a hip hop artist, though it is clear that he has a lot more to say than most of the pop-level hip hop artists.  Are there any correlations between what you do and what he does, for example?

 

Sekou: Mos Def does sort of stand apart from the crowd in his knd of rootedness in black culture and black tradition, you certainly hear that in his work and that’s always been at the center of my work as well.  I think that’s something you find in the most conscious hip hop artists, this idea that we didn’t just grow whole, we come out of something, and that there’s a rootedness there and at the center of that root is black culture and tradition.  By that I mean particularly black music traditions, black language, black linguistic strategies, humor, what we think is hip and beautiful.  If you listen to some of Mos Def’s rhymes or some of the ways he uses language we could have a conversation about those linguistic strategies.

 

WJ: In your pieces you write and speak on the human condition.  What has to happen before an inspiration kicks in to energize you to write?

 

Sekou: Not much [laughs]; it doesn’t take much man, I mean at this point poetry is an art but it’s also a craft, which is to say it’s also a practice.  Part of that practice is that in some way I feel like I’m always writing.  I’m always collecting lines, images, and titles… in many ways it’s a way of life; you’ve got to be open to what the moment to moment possibilities of any day are.  I was laughing, but it’s really true. it doesn’t really take much.  I just got through teaching a class this summer and ended up talking about Parliament Funkadelic.  There’s a tune that P-Funk has where they sing that the funk not only moves, but it removes.  And I just off-handedly said, ‘boy that would make a nice epigram for the beginning of a poem!’  In my mind it’s always like that, its always kinda churning.

 

WJ: One influence and reference in your work is an Afro-Latin sensibility.  I guess that stems from your coming up in Harlem.  Living in New York you can’t help but come under that influence in your art.

 

Sekou: Yeah, and even inside of that even more particular; I was born in Harlem Hospital, lived in Harlem and I grew up in East Harlem, so my closest friends were black and Puerto Rican kids.  I grew up at a time when there was a very close relationship between blacks and Puerto Ricans and Cubans.  We wore the same clothes, we dated each other, we ate at each other’s houses, we all danced to the same music…  All the black kids I knew… if you couldn’t dance to Latin music you couldn’t dance.  It wasn’t enough that you could do the boogaloo, you had to be able to Latin too.  So we went to the Latin dances and our heroes, as well as the Motown heroes, were also Eddie Palmieri, [Johnny] Pacheco, Tito Puente, Johnny Colon, the Lebron Brothers, all that stuff…  We bought those records, went to the Palladium and Hunt’s Point Palace…  We couldn’t understand a word of the lyrics they were singing [laughs] but we’d sing ’em all in our beat up Spanish and we’d sing them from our hearts.

 

So I think about it, in some way, Spanish — as it was spoken by Puerto Ricans and Cubans in New York — is somehow a part of my linguistic vocabulary.  Some of my first thoughts come in Spanish, and I’m not fluent in Spanish!  I don’t know if that’s true in generations after mine.  This kind of split happened between Latinos and black people, much of it in a very false split for political reasons having to do with the War on Poverty and the way money went down, and all that kind of stuff.  I don’t think you have that kind of cultural unity [now], although hip hop does bring people together.  One thing I love about Latino culture, to this day, they really are into live music.  And they get dressed up, any day of the week, especially at the Copa where top bands play, people get dressed up and they go dancing.

 

In October, 2003 Sekou was in residence at the Kennedy Center for a project related to his kidney disease and subsequent transplant titled Blessing The Boats.

 

WJ: What do you generally do in the course of such a residency?

 

Sekou: In this case, with this particular piece, which is my show Blessing the Boats, a contemplation of my years of dealing with kidney disease, dialysis, transplantation…  This work falls into this category – art and public dialogue; so that as the piece travels, I usually do a residency which involves hooking up with either the state or regional organ procurement network, National Kidney Foundation, medical schools, and they bring nurses, surgeons and other health care professionals.  We do panel discussions and forums, generally educating and promoting the idea of organ and tissue donation.  There’s an organization called MOTTEP, which was founded by a Dr. Calendar in DC, which really focuses on organ and tissue transplantation.  It’s a national organization, especially around African Americans and kidney disease, given the fact that African Americans have the highest rate of kidney disease in the United States, and also the highest rate of kidney disease in the world, which I just found out in the last few months and which is really astounding.  Even more so than black people from elsewhere in the Diaspora!  So those are the kinds of things we’ll be doing; it’s a one-man show, I use recorded music and really beautiful video projections,

 

Fortunately Sekou next realized a dizzingly brilliant major performance piece called Dream State, a potent commentary on the human condition that employed a band, vocalists, and extraordinary video projects before he passed on to ancestry.  You owe it to yourself to seek out his recordings The Blue Oneness of Dreams and Long Story Short.

 

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NOLA Diary Pt. 2

Posted on December 7, 2007 by The Independent Ear

Second to no other U.S. community New Orleans is steeped in it’s own set of cultural traditions.  Every Sunday beginning around the end of April through years-end there’s a Second Line parade in town.  Reading news of Brad Pitt’s well-publicized and strikingly sincere Lower Ninth Ward housing renewal project (go online to the Times Picayune archives and search through the week of December 3 for details) he remarked about why he and Angelina Jolie have purchased a house in the French Quarter and plan on spending significant time in the Crescent City.  He spoke of the surprise joys of a parade going by his house one Sunday — for no apparent reason he knew of — and how such occurrences help sustain his love of the community and deepen his desire to do his part for the city’s post-Katrina renewal (including putting up $5M of his own money towards his current housing development project).  This is one celebrity project that seems to be about more than self-aggrandizement.  But I digress…

 

One well-chronicled parade tradition is the New Orleans jazz funeral, an especially rich tradition when it honors renowned local legends.  Allow me to introduce you to Doc Paulin.  Trumpeter Ernest "Doc" Paulin was born June 22, 1907 and passed on peacefully to ancestry 100 years, five months, and 28 days later.  In between he left an indelible music legacy, which I unfortunately was only introduced to at his passing.  Raised by Haitian grandparents in rural Louisiana, Doc’s trombone playing uncle introduced him to music at a young age and encouraged him towards the cornet because he evidenced such proficiency in the art of whistling.  Young Ernest Paulin, who only later became known as "Doc", was hooked and soon became good enough to play around his area.  At 21 Doc moved to New Orleans because that was the place for serious musicians.

 

He soon organized a band that performed at various haunts in the legendary Storyville District and joints on South Ramparts Street.  Encouraged by his brother Doc moved to New York and once he learned the ropes he found himself on several famous bandstands, including Harlem’s Cotton Club and the Zanzibar.  Following his discharge from the Army in 1945 Doc returned to his beloved New Orleans.  Thereafter he ran numeroous brass and traditional jazz bands.  Doc and his wife Betty grew a family that included six sons who matriculated to the Paulin Brothers Brass Band, which has paraded various New Orleans functions for over 40 years, including numerous performances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. 

 

Doc Paulin considered it his mission to keep the brass band traditions of New Orleans alive and functioning and was a mentor to numerous young musicians around the Crescent City in that signature idiom.  He was also described as a community activist in his obituary, including voting rights activism.  His last official gig came at the ripe young age of 96 at the 2003 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.  Given such a background it was no surprise that Doc Paulin’s funeral would represent the essence of New Orleans jazz funeral tradition.

 

I’ve never been one to attend funerals or memorial services of those I don’t know, but persistent email messages from well-respected New Orleanians like Don Marshall, executive director of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, jazz writer Geraldine Wycoff, and through the encouragement of our friend Nancy Oscenslager who lives the most active retirement I know after 30 years at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and a nursing career, Suzan and I determined that this was a funeral parade not to be missed.  We were also compelled by the Thanksgiving weekend visit of our daughters and our desire to give them some "real" New Orleans experiences on their visit.  It seems that experiencing such an event is tantamount to becoming immersed in the cultural traditions of New Orleans.  And besides that, every message we received about Doc Paulin made it clear that here was a truly important figure in 20th century New Orleans music.

 

When we arrived at the Holy Ghost Catholic Church on Louisiana Avenue in the Uptown area of the city it became clear immediately that we weren’t alone in the curious "interloper" category as numerous folks who apparently had no deeper ties to Doc or his family than we did had gathered in anticipation of the funeral parade — which incidentally was mapped out in several emails I received, as is the case with the weekly Sunday Second Line parades.  Shortly after we arrived those who had celebrated Doc’s life at the funeral began pouring out of the church; numerous trumpets, cornets, trombones, tubas, clarinets, snare drums, and bass drums among the masses.  The brass band musicians, including the Paulin Brothers Brass Band and members of the marching Men of Labor assembled at the front of the processional.  Behind them were other gathered celebrants — later to become the Second Line — and behind the Second Line was a horse drawn hearse bearing Doc Paulin’s remains and a shiny limousine bearing Doc’s widow and some of his prodigious family (Doc and Betty gave the world 13 children).

 

Driven by assorted traditional dirges the likes of "The Old Rugged Cross", the musicians and traditional marchers led the police-escorted Second Line down Louisiana Avenue to St. Joseph Cemetary No. 1 at Washington Avenue and South Liberty Street.  All this transpired while numerous video cameras whirred, and assorted newspaper & art still photographers captured the moments.  Though any funeral is a somber occasion, when one lives as long and rich a life as did Doc Paulin one’s passing on to ancestry is cause to celebrate a life well-led.    New Orleans is one of the few cities in the world where cemetaries are tourist attractions, primarily because due to it’s below sea level existence those deceased who are buried in New Orleans proper are buried in crypts above ground.  This tradition gives New Orleans cemetaries a look like none other; rather than assorted low-lying plots and headstones marking below ground burials as one might see in most other locales, a New Orleans cemetary is one of vividly visible mausoleums and assorted above grounds structures marking final resting places.

 

Once at St. Joseph Cemetary No. 1 the processional halted as the horse drawn hearse arrived at Doc’s designated mausoleum.  The Rev. David Thereaux further eulogized Doc and a rather stentorian younger man gave remarks relative to his life well-led, including a remarkable breakdown of Doc’s life from years to months to weeks all the way down to the many million seconds of life Doc Paulin enjoyed on this plain.  The sheer mathematics of this breakdown was impressive, not to mention the breadth and depth of Doc Paulin’s life.  That was followed by a young woman facing west and delivering a beautiful muted taps, not like what one might experience at Arlington Cemetary, more Crescent City-style and quite moving.  Her performance elicited several "that girl sure can play that horn" asides from assorted celebrants within earshot.

 

The time had arrived to truly celebrate Doc Paulin’s life New Orleans-style.  The assembled brass and drums struck up a joyous processional that included numerous old standbys of joy mixed with some decidedly non-traditional (but perhaps soon to enter the lexicon) numbers such as strains of Herbie Hancock’s 70s hit "Chameleon", several umbrellas danced in the arms of participants, including a traditionally-garbed woman who seemed to serve as parade marshall, and steps lightened in Second Line tradition as we made our way joyously back up to Louisiana Avenue and a restaurant repast destination.  This was truly a moment to be experienced only in the Crescent City.

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In what was characterized as an unusually early press conference, the New Orleans jazz & Heritage Festival held one on November 15 to announce what was obviously big festival news: the return of the Neville Brothers.  Anyone who has experienced Jazz Fest, particularly the closing weekend, knows that traditionally the Neville Brothers have delivered the Fest benediction on the fairgrounds’ big stage.  That tradition, along with so many others, was disrupted by the catharsis of the dreaded Hurricane Katrina.  Spread far and wide — as far away as Massachusetts — by Katrina evacuations, the Nevilles have missed the last two Jazz Fests.  Invited to return in ’07 Aaron Neville, the heavenly falsetto voice and for many the signature voice of the crew, who had relocated to Nashville, angered some locals and Fest goers with his refusal to return to NOLA due to what he feared were the environmental dangers to his asthmatic conditions.  That prompted a certain curious backlash from emailers who were greeted with the news of the Neville Brothers return to the Fest in the Times Picayune.  But for most what some considered an affront to their city, the news was yet another joyous symbol of a fervently hoped-for return to normalcy for the Crescent City.  Older brother Art Neville, on the cusp of his 70th birthday, was on hand to lend some funky keyboard to a performance by the Neville youngsters, including Aaron’s guitar playing son, who comprise the burgeoning offspring unit known as Dumstaphunk. 

 

Art later surprised and delighted Suzan by telling her that he was eager to come by the Monk Institute’s Loyola classrooms to experience the classroom science dropped by the auspicious crew of jazz masters who are imported to teach the Monk graduate studies students.  So far those master teachers have included Ron Carter, Lewis Nash, Danilo Perez, Nnenna Freelon, and Benny Golson, with John Scofield, Jimmy Heath and Kenny Barron soon to follow.  Art Neville was particularly eager to experience the teachings of Kenny Barron, proving once again that one is always a student of one’s craft.

 

Peace,

Willard Jenkins

12/2007

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