From Thelonious to Felonious

The genius jazz musician Thelonious Monk once drove down to Baltimore from New York for a gig. He asked his friend Nica driving the car to stop for a moment at a motel in Delaware because he was thirsty. Here is the account Robyn Kelley gives of the incident in his book Thelonious Monk: ( pp. 253-54:)

“…Thelonious entered the motel and asked for a glass of water. The owner’s wife demanded that Monk leave immediately. Her husband called the police, who arrived in minutes. Nica intervened and they physically escorted him to the car without arresting him. (But seeing) a white women and two black men driving around in a $19,000 Bentley was enough to pique the trooper’s suspicions. As soon as they left the parking lot and headed toward Route 40, the same state troopers pulled them over and ordered Thelonious out of the car. Monk refused, asking Officer H. Thomas Little, “Why the hell should I?” Little had called for backup, so now several troopers appeared in patrol cars with handcuffs and weapons. 

 

According to Nica, 'Thelonious was so mad, he wouldn’t move. He took hold of the car door and couldn’t be budged until one cop started beating on his hands with a billy club, his pianist’s hands.' Nica jumped out of the car and pleaded with the police not to beat him mercilessly with night sticks. He was finally dragged to the ground, handcuffed behind his back, and thrown on the floor of a patrol car…several officers continued to pummel him while he lay handcuffed. They beat him severely… 

 

All of this happened the man who had recently performed at Carnegie Hall and won the Downbeat Poll as Best Jazz Pianist of 1958. The beating was for the crime of asking for a glass of water in a Jim Crow motel and having a white woman as a friend. Not only did this send him spinning off into a deep depression , but it resulted in the third time the NYPD took away his Cabaret Card, both of which affected his livelihood and his ability to support his family. 

 

Now look at today’s news. Hordes of white supremacists break through police barriers in the middle of a Congressional session, vandalize the offices and interrupt a sacred tenet of Democracy. And what did the police do? 

 

Not much. 

 

Compare those two crimes (well, one crime—Thelonious did nothing illegal) and the responses to those two crimes and if you tell me that you still don’t understand how white supremacy works and how the police, an institution that grew out of the old slave patrols, have consistently supported the rich and powerful and abandoned “law and order” whenever it applied to people of color, then I don’t really know what to say to you. 

 

Of course, one needn’t go back into history to find such stories. Right after reading that passage from Monk’s bio, I saw the headline “Kenosha officers won’t be facing charges in Jacob Blake shooting.” Shot seven times in the back by officers of the law with no consequence. 

 

But now this is new territory. The President of the United States telling the traitorous and treasonous terrorists that “he loves them and they are special” while police take selfies with them is beyond anything this country has experienced. And some Republicans can’t help but notice. Finally. 

 

In the face of it all, I do believe the tide is turning and this is the last gasp scrambling of heartless brainwashed white folks desperately trying to hold on to a privilege and identity they never earned and didn’t deserve. Their time is done. And hopefully that time for the assaulters will be spent doing time in jail. Right next to the deposed President.

P.S. The day began with the remarkable Georgia victories, but this quickly rained on that parade.

But we should still have that parade!

 

  

Saint Stacey

The number of Catholic women saints is impressive. And what did they do to achieve their status? St. Faustina had visions, St. Joan of Arc led her people to victory in the 100 Years War, St. Katherine Drexel grew up wealthy and gave all her money and time to the poor, St. Theresa (Mother Theresa) cared for the sick, the poor, the orphaned children, St. Elizabeth Seton founded free Catholic schools for girls, St. Rose of Lima practiced severe penance, St. Catherine of Siena crusaded against the Turks and worked to create peace between rival Italian territories, St. Bernadette saw cured people from a spring of pure water— you get the idea. 

 

And so I wonder if, as the second Catholic president, Joe Biden has the authority to confer sainthood on Stacey Abrams. At this writing, it looks like Warnock has definitely won a Senate seat and Ossoff is likely to and both can thanks Stacey Abrams for her tireless and dedicated work in getting out the vote in Georgia, as she has done throughout the last fifteen years or so. She is tireless, intelligent, funny, humble, strong, dedicated, compassionate, level-headed with a vision for a more just and equitable society and the determination to do the work to move the moral arc towards justice one inch at a time. If that doesn’t qualify for sainthood, I don’t know what does. 

 

I’d also nominate her as a Buddhist Bodhisattva, a Hindu guru and a Nobel-Peace-Prize-worthy crusader. And if all these honors were publicly conferred upon her, I imagine her responding with “Thank you. Now if you excuse me, I have some work to do.”

 

Thank you, Stacey Abrams. You make me proud to be an American. 

 

Georgia on My Mind

Clearly the song of the day, as all eyes are on Georgia tomorrow to see if democracy will take yet one more step toward its restitution. A song that was written by an Hoagy Carmichael from Indiana with lyric help from his roommate Stu Gorrell. The song was inspired by a challenge by saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer from Illinois (“Why don’t you write a song about Georgia?”), was written by Carmichael when he was living in Queens, New York and first recorded by Bix Beiderbecke from Iowa. Some of the early memorable recordings of the song came from Louis Armstrong (New Orleans), Coleman Hawkins (St. Joseph, Missouri), Billie Holiday (Baltimore) and Django Reinhardt (France). Are you following me here?

 

It wasn’t until 1960 that a native Georgian recorded it and that was Mr. Ray Charles. Other versions by Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, Willie Nelson and others helped move it to the no. 44 spot in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of greatest songs of all time in 2003. The highest ranking of any jazz standard, though it’s unlikely any of those readers ever heard Billie Holiday sing it or the Keith Jarrett Trio play it (in Poland!) in 1985.  (Check it out at https://youtu.be/N0SejD3-Aec)

 

Thanks to Ted Gioia’s fascinating book The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire for the above information. He writes a page or so about each of some 250 songs to give some intriguing and little known information about this repertoire that has definted so much of American musical culture. 

 

As for democracy and Georgia’s crucial role in its revival tomorrow, I personally have a new-found faith in Georgia voters, but none at all in the Repugnitans lying and cheating to discount votes. Yes, I know some people believe that the recent Presidential election was stolen, but that is based on this new idea championed by the Trumpists that what you want to believe to be true is true just because you say so. Meanwhile, voter fraud from the Republican side is actually based on evidence and hard facts and has been going on forever—watch Freedom’s Summer  and All In if you want some documentary evidence. 

 

So let’s keep Georgia on our mind, make those last minute phone calls, pray to the gods of your choice and hope that our rediscovered determination to do what’s right, to hold the cheaters accountable, to keep that moral arc bending toward justice, will come to pass. Let’s get it all moving and grooving with the energy, integrity and soul of the Keith Jarrett Trio’s version of the tune. Yeah!

 

New Calendar

The New Year has turned and is gaining momentum, the rains have come in San Francisco and now is the time to look ahead. A friend sends last year’s jokes to me, things like:

 

“2019 resolution: Stay away from negative people.

  2020 resolution: Stay away from positive people.”

 

And then: 

 

“Worst purchase of 2020: A calendar planner.”

 

And yet, I put my new calendar up and begin to fill in those little squares. The weeklies— Zoom music class with my granddaughter’s 3^rdgrade in Portland. The bi-monthlies—Men’s Group starting our 31^styear together. The monthlies—Zoom alum sing, live neighborhood sing. I have three Orff workshops in January, one in February, one in March and the hope for part III of my 6-week Jazz History Course starting in February. So the old adage of the three things that make life satisfying—worthy work, something to look forward to, someone to share it with—all look promising in the months to come.

 

But compared to other years, so sparse. Of course, none of the school ceremonies—MLK celebration, Spring Concert, Samba Contest, etc.—no annual Oscars as we’ve known them, no new movies at the local theater or lectures at the local auditorium, no SF Jazz Concert or Family Workshops that I’ve given. All the things to look forward to diminished, the people to share it with reduced to screened squares, the worthy work shrunk to a fraction of its full dimension. The one ritual I never look forward to— preparing my taxes—should be interesting. Not much money coming in these days. 

 

And yet each day calls to us with its promise and instead of the big events that mark the week or month and give character and meaning, it’s the small ones. The daily walk or bike ride, the meals well cooked and savored, the piano practice, the next TV series and/or book at night. It’s a life I’ve accommodated myself to, as each of us has done in our own way and truth be told, the introvert in me who thrives on Solitude as much as leading classes and workshops, is quite content.

 

Amidst the challenges ahead, hope is on the horizon— a vaccine, the prospects of a kinder and more competent government and the 9-month practice of resilience and adaptation. Whether the calendar squares begin to fill up or stay empty, the world awaits us and invites us to meet it with the full measure of our intelligence and compassion. On we go.

Caravan

“A self-sacrificing way, 

But also a warrior’s way, and not for brittle, easily-broken, glass-bottle people. 

 

The soul is tested here by sheer terror,

As a sieve sifts and separates 

genuine from fake…”

 

At the same time that I’m reading biographies of Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, I’m dipping back into some Rumi poems and though separated by centuries and continents, they have a lot to say to each other. “What Is the Path?” is the Rumi poem and those first lines well describe what both Bird and Monk went through in their jazz initiations, playing at jam sessions where a drummer threw a cymbal at one to humiliate him and critics repeatedly published the fact that the other “couldn’t play.” Most of us glass-bottle people would have shattered from shame, but driven by some inner certainties, these two continued past the terror and proclaimed their genuine artistic soul. 

 

“…And this road is full of footprint! 

Companions have come before.

They are your ladder.

Use them!

 

And so both Bird and Monk took the baton from Duke and Fats and Art Tatum and Coleman Hawkins and climbed higher up the ladder into the next level of the overtone series and rhythmic conception. 

 

“Without them you won’t have the spirit-quickness

you need. Even a dumb donkey 

Crossing a desert becomes nimblefooted

with others of its kind.”

 

Spirit-quickness, indeed! One of the unteachable tenets of jazz. Unteachable, but not unlearnable. It is a human faculty cultivated and grown through constant conversations where one learns to respond to the calls and call to the responses. So the path of jazz requires not only conversation with those ahead of you, those jazz elders, but those at your side, your fellow explorers in the jazz journey entering new unmarked territory with each encounter on the bandstand. Putting your foot down and testing the weight of the sand and gradually developing some sense of how to walk nimbly through the treacherous chord changes, in company with others. 

 

“Stay with a caravan. By yourself,

you’ll get a hundred times more tired,

and fall behind.”

 

There is certainly solitude in your practice, Bird practicing at home some 11 hours a day for a few years, Monk falling asleep at the piano after endless hours of trying to work things out. But it is in the caravan of fellow jazz musicians that the real journey begins and ends, the immersion in the group vibration and spirited musical conversations.

 

And so with anything. Zen students sit together in the zendo, Orff folks gather for workshops and summer trainings, athletes practice together. You don’t get to consciously choose your family, your neighbors or your colleagues at work, but when you wholly commit to a path, you must choose the caravan you will join. Which is yours?

The Company We Keep

In the spirit of the old joke “I intend to live forever. So far, so good,” 2021 has been a great year! Spent the morning at the piano in company with Bach, Handel, Grieg, Chopin, Fats Waller and Sonny Rollins and then went to another gathering with Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Hopkins, Yeats and Frost, where I recited their immortal words by memory while walking through the park. And yet another gathering with actually physically present human beings, my old colleagues James and Sofia along with assorted friends in Alamo Square Park looking out at the Painted Ladies. (For those unfamiliar with San Francisco, those are houses.) Then walked some more with Michael Meade as his voice rose from my phone in my front pocket telling creation myths. 6.4 miles of energetic walking on a beautiful day in a beautiful city before I returned home, cooked dinner and spent the evening with the cast of the Danish mini-series Borgen  (highly-recommended).

 

We are the company we keep and if I’ve done anything right in this world, it has been choosing the presence of such pleasurable people to hang out. Including, of course, every child I’ve ever taught. Rumi says: “Be with those who help your being.” David Whyte suggests: “Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive, is too small for you.” Rilke says: “This is how he grows—by being in the presence of constantly greater beings.” 

 

And so it was fine to spend the first day of the year in such exalted company. It is a good start to what we all hope will move us from the stasis of despair to the movement of hope.

 

One down, 364 to go. 

Resolution

Each morning I greet the day with a half-an-incense stick of meditation. Legs crossed, back straight, arms circled and hands touching in the ancient mudra, I breathe myself into the world. Sometimes entertaining the planning mind’s projected program, sometimes letting it flit by and dissolve as a good Buddhist should. 3 bows at the end, out to the deck for another bow to the Kwan Yin (Goddess of Compassion) statue that looks over our garden. Back in for my 3-minute back stretches and to the table for breakfast.

 

While I have been sitting zazen, my oatmeal has been absorbing the boiling water I pour into the bowl and then cover and the timing is impeccable. I breathe in the air, the oatmeal the water and we’re both ready at the same time. I deal out the cards for my ritual 3 games of solitaire and eat while I ponder the possibilities of which card to move.

 

But today, I decided to eat the oatmeal before playing, with full attention to its taste, texture and temperature and that felt right. A step back from the hyper-speed of multi-tasking that has modern culture skating over the surface of life without taking the needed time to savor. It tasted delicious, warming both the body and the spirit. And then even more attention to the games that followed. 

 

And so I publicly proclaim this as my New Year’s Resolution. This I can do. Away with the boring “lose five pounds,” the grandiose “work for World Peace,” the good-intentioned-but ain’t-gonna-happen “love everyone more and forgive all those who’ve done me wrong.” Well, all of those are fine as far as they go, but usually they go as far as January 2^ndor 3^rd. This feels more realistic.

 

Eat oatmeal attentively. Then the cards. 

 

It’s going to be a great year.