jazz ambassadors - cold war hot war

Recently I downloaded an i-Player app for BBC radio and immediately searched for “jazz.” The first programme catching my ear was a 30 minutes’ slot about jazz musicians acting in ambassadorial roles for the USA government in the 1950s and 60s.

The USA at the time had a poor image internationally and the government hit upon the bright idea to polish off the tarnish by exploiting its most popular export – jazz. The US organised a series of goodwill concerts around the world, sending orchestras led by such luminaries as Ellington, Gillespie and Armstrong. Primarily they went to those places which could be regarded as trouble hot-spots, usually where the US government was frightened the USSR could gain a foot-hold. This was the era of cold war. Musicians travelling were troopers holding back a perceived rising red tide. Unlike Joshua, they were gifted with the task of maintaining walls, such as they existed.

For many musicians, the tours were life-changing experiences. They were appalled by the poverty, brutalism, hypocrisy and corruption of some of the places they visited. And mostly these were musicians having to fight their own battles for equality at home, but in the meantime they visited places such as Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Congo, Pakistan – and many others in their roles as jazz ambassadors extraordinary.

What hit home for me was that I recognised all the places where they performed not from the Times Atlas of the World, or from history lectures, but from yesterday's news. In other words, in over 60 years nothing has altered, unless conditions have worsened. Perhaps ideologies have changed; different mantras and slogans are chanted, but these places are still being torn apart by nothing but senseless self-interest. Shame! Shame on the international community. Shame on leaders and politicians world-wide. Shame on religions. Shame on you and me. Shame on the human race.

joe harriott - charles mingus

I'm a little vague about law of copy and intellectual rights, so I hope I'm not trespassing where the more knowledgeable fear to tread.

A fairly recent purchase is "Chan," a book of poetry by Hannah Lowe.

Among the poems is one titled "Mingus"

                            Charles Mingus on the ward at midnight, come
                            through rain and hail in dripping gabardine
                            to matron, standing firm and handing him
                            a pen. A note? Say what ma'm? Please. Goddam.

This short verse puzzled me. I know Mingus was in and out of hospital himself but I couldn't quite put this forlorn picture of him into any context until I found notes in the back of the book.

Quote - Charles Mingus broke off his UK tour to travel to Southampton to visit Harriott in hospital. They had never met but Mingus arrived late in the night and was refused entry. Harriot died shortly afterwards. Unquote.

The great die young. Joe Harriott was 44. A thrusting southpaw pioneer, he probably upset quite a few jazz purists in his day. Chris Barber recorded his composition "Revival" in (I think) 1962, quite a surprise for me steeped as I was in British Trad and swing at the time and only recently discovering that I quite enjoyed 'modern' jazz. After playing bebop, he teamed with Shake Keane (flugelhorn) and started to develop free form jazz (which then I didn't understand and still struggle with) and also produced a fusion of jazz and traditional Indian music. Harriott refused to be constrained by ropes; he fought outside the ring.

Even Hannah Lowe, obviously an admirer of Harriott's work, wrote in her poem "What Is and Isn't Jazz?" (a question I ask repeatedly) the following closing stanzas:

                             Mr Harriott's laboratory tests
                             are in the early stages
                                                 and though
                                  he should be admired
                                                                  (perhaps)
                             does jazz need constant broadening?
                                              Are fresh kicks desired daily?

                              Mr Harriott, stop crying
                                             through your horn
                                                     and start playing again,
                                                                   please!

I've been listening to jazz in most incarnations for over 60 years - and in my opinion Ms Lowe's question is one of the most pertinent I've ever encountered in the genre - does jazz need constant broadening?  What is the answer?

strollin' by charles mingus

The title is a deliberate misrepresentation. This entry has nothing to do with Charles Mingus, but everything to do with strolling, being a sequel to my last post about coddiwompling.

To coddiwomple means to travel in a determined fashion towards an indeterminate destination, and in conversation with a friend of equal abstraction, a few more words for walking began to seep into my frontal lobes. "Flaneur," for example, a word with provenance attributed to Baudelaire, meaning a person who saunters urbanely, a stroller at leisure. "Boulevardier" another French word, this time implying a socialite, strolling around town not for the purpose of seeing but in order to be seen presumably dressed in expensive finery.

This led to a more detailed examination of words in popular use to describe walking or walkers. The list below can't pretend to be exhaustive, but what came out of this casual anecdotal study is that no word is a precise synonym of another; they all hint at something slightly different, a bit like the claim, perhaps apocryphal, that Eskimos have a vast lexicon of terms to describe snow.

Here's a few, verbs and nouns mixed randomly:

Wanderer; pedestrian; wayfarer; tramp; nomad; promenade; peregrinate; roamer; rambler; ambler; hike; rover; trekker; cruiser; noctivagent; trudge; traipse; divagate; perambulate; potter; march; stride; travel; journey.

If anyone can add to this list, especially obscure and foreign words, I'd be delighted to hear.

coddiwompling through music, books and life

This week reintroduced me to a new word, or rather a forgotten word, a verb: to coddiwomple, old English slang for travelling purposefully towards an as-yet-unknown destination.

Everyone coddiwomples through the race of life, because no matter how meticulously plans are made at the outset, few actually cross the finishing line where expected. But then life would undoubtedly be too dull if we knew exactly where we’d be tomorrow, or next week, yet alone 50 years hence.

Coddiwompling through reading materials is enlightening too. Pick up a book by one author and, if the text inside proves as alluring as the cover, rather than reading the entire oeuvre of that one author, take a look at what that author reads, which writers she or he has read and perhaps is recommending. The chances are that if we enjoy one author, we’ll also enjoy the writings that author chooses to read. Thus our reading interests bifurcate repeatedly, until we have a reading list which isn’t a linear litany at all, but a gloriously huge literary-family tree, a vast oak spreading higher and wider through constantly changing branches. Acorns and oak trees.

It’s standing me in good stead. In such a way I’ve discovered Robert McFarlane, W. G. Sebald, Nan Shepherd, Edward Thomas and the next couple I’m on the look-out for, Lascelles Abercrombie and Dubose Hayward. These and many more luminescent writers came to me late, but then the best journeys are the long ones which never quite arrive at destinations and instead divert us onto previously untrod fascinating paths.

An added advantage is that as long as we never actually arrive, we’re bound to keep moving and, therefore, we’re more difficult targets for those snipers in our lives to hit. So coddiwomple all you want, and if anyone tries to tell you that you lack focus, or have difficulty setting goals, tell them to fuck off. Being single-minded about meeting an objective will mean not spotting opportunities. Whatever you’re doing, coddiwomple away. All roads lead somewhere and if you’re lucky, you’ll turn off before you get there.

if charlie parker were a gunslinger...

Charles Mingus wrote a number titled “Gunslinging Bird” with the subtitle “If Charlie Parker were a gunslinger there’d be a whole lot of dead copycats.”

No doubting the truth of that.

I’ve just cycled 20 miles from “In Search of England” to “In Search of Scotland,” the exercise bike being set up in my study in front of book shelves. All the way I listened to “Fontessa,” a 1960 album by The Modern Jazz Quartet. To be truthful, it didn’t inspire me to ride faster but then I suppose John Lewis never anticipated that one day he’d be used to alleviate the boredom of 25 minutes going nowhere.

However, the thought struck me that, as far as I know, nobody ever copied The Modern Jazz Quartet. It was an acquired taste, a little like coriander and leek soup, and while their chamber-jazz music was immensely popular at the time, I’m not sure the market could have had the resilience to take more than one such band. I enjoyed the sound then and in small doses I enjoy it now. It was certainly unique, partly with the scoring and performance, and partly because of the pairing of Vibraphone and piano in a day when jazz fans would tend to scratch their heads if the front-line didn’t include a saxophone or a clarinet.

Laid back; relaxed and perhaps a little romantic – that was the band’s inimitable style… late night music for half-way between turning down the lights and having a cigarette. Well – the first track anyway. It never worked for me, but then I had other problems; it seemed to work for my friends. Today, laid back and relaxed isn’t the ideal motivator for trying to burn a few more calories than yesterday. Tomorrow, I’ll return to Mingus and something which gallops – perhaps “O.P.” or “Hog Callin’ Blues.”

The album is:  The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife – CBS Jazz Masterpieces 4608222

                        The line-up of Gunslinging Bird is:

                        Dick Williams (tpt) Jimmy Knepper (tb) Booker Ervin,
                        John Handy, Benny Golson, Jerome Richardson (reeds) 
                        Roland Hanna (p) Theodore Cohen (vibes) 
                        Charles Mingus (b) Dannie Richmond (d)

                        Recorded: New York 1^st November 1959.

last words - the exegetes

Over the holiday, I’ve compiled an eschatological list of triadic words from some of my favourite novels. It makes uninteresting reading, so I reproduce the litany here in no particular, but reverse, order:

10.on the shore - The Waves, Virginia Woolf

 9. lost for ever - The Rings of Saturn, W. G. Sebald

 8. of the future - Threads, Julia Blackburn

 7. England I said - In Search of England, H. V. Morton

 6. tales the Bible - Wild Wales, George Borrow

 5. from the mountain - The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd

 4. one spring day - Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas

 3. and twenty eight - Orlando, Virginia Woolf

 2. forever he said - Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 1, and he slept - East of Eden, John Steinbeck

From these ten triads come this poem, an unwitting collaboration between authors, only one of which is not a posthumous contribution, nevertheless involuntary:

And twenty eight tales the Bible

Of the future lost for ever

From the mountain on the shore –

England I said; forever he said.

And he slept one spring day.

Poetry is not simple or precise. It demands effort from the reader. It matters little what the author intended, because the essence is not in what is intended to be said, but how the reader, the poetry lover, interprets the message. Therein lies the craft of the skilled poet.

Here is my interpretation of what the authors mean in the poem above:

Twenty tales, could imply one told per day, therefore = February (assuming not a leap year) The Bible of the future is an allegory for apostasy and atheism.

Lost for ever = once we lose faith it can never be reclaimed because gods will vanish.

The mountain = reaches up to the Heavens and is there to be climbed, but is rooted on:

The shore = the mountain starts at the shore but never quite reaches the sky.

England = another allegory, this time for a nation looking backwards to an age of elitism – or

                             England could be conflation of Heaven and the nation state.

Forever = an axiom, nothing lasting for ever, and therefore is probably an allegory for hubris.

And he slept one spring day = just when he should be awakening, he falls asleep. Mistiming.

I = the guilty party.

He = the metaphorical he, the central epitome of humanity which really only wants to sleep.

Sleep = head buried in the sand (or up his own arse if he or she is a politician).

In a nutshell, the poem forecasts that in February 2018, religion will die because gods have turned their backs on humanity, preferring not to exist rather than be accountable for the hopeless mess which priests and arch-bishops blame on them. Even the highest aspiration is rooted in the soil, (mountain on the shore) hence grounded, so humanity will be culpable for the loss of those things which hitherto have met our inherent need to find things to worship. And all “the man” can do is pin his (or her) hopes in a futile dream of little proportion in comparison with the vastness of the universe – England the tiny puddle against the immensity of universal oceans. So at the end of February, the beginning of spring, “he” falls asleep.

In short, we’re doomed and it’s all our own fault. Considering nine out of ten of these authors are long dead, their abilities at prophetic poetry is astounding. If they’re right, fasten your extra-terrestrial seat belts because we’re in for a bumpy ride.

Happy New Year.

larking again

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he so loved larking

And now he’s dead

it must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

they said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving, but drowning.                                    (Stevie Smith)

Somewhere I read that Philip Larkin enjoyed this famous poem because he could imagine the first line of the second verse was “Poor man; he so loved Larkin.”

I love Larkin for his poetry and his wit, but mainly for his honesty when writing jazz reviews, such a contrast to today’s obsequious and fawning pundits. In 1969, for example, he wrote:

“If I were to frame Larkin’s Law of Reissues it would say that anything you haven’t got already probably isn’t worth bothering about. In other words, if someone tries to persuade you to buy a limited-edition of the 1924-5 sessions by Paraffin Joe and his Nitelites, keep your pockets buttoned up; if they were any good, you’d probably have heard them at school, as you did King Oliver, and have laid out your earliest pocket money on them.

                Everything worthwhile gets reissued about every five years.”

We have to bear in mind that Larkin was at school in the middle-to-late 1930s, one of the true golden ages of jazz, so he’d have been buying contemporary stuff released before the shock of the be-bop era and the inception of baffling forms of jazz such as free, acid, funk and smooth (smooth! makes sign of a crucifix). He wrote his Law of Reissues over thirty years later, by the lamp glow of the residual radiance of jazz’s silver age, light-years away from where we are now. Jazz was yet to arrive at the Darwinian multiple-bifurcation which would eventually lead to universal chaos.

What would he make of today’s scene? He was certainly a waver, but I have the feeling that he’d now be more of a drowner. And I suspect he’d have trouble finding anything to buy other than reissues. An emerging previously never-released King Oliver, originally rejected because it wasn’t good enough, would seem a jazz detectorist’s dream.

“Nobody heard him, the dead man; but still he lay moaning” just about sums it up for me.

Happy Christmas