On a date in the distant past over the horizon of a distant future, a day arose, numbered September 3rd , 1953. A man on a train, in bespeckled frames, to the clink on track, and a click of his tongue, rapping the back of his round top coffee-stained teeth – his utterance, “Rimbaud”. In eager gesture, like a child skipping home to summer pie, and a tulip opening its summer eyes, "you are a poet."
To a cold room, we gallop, a lover's den, heated by fiery minds, tapping toes, and the beating snare of blind hope, “not all is lost”. In a time of sewing machines, torpedo tube Buicks, and cricuts, where the word "faggot" threads the needle of the Chrysler building, whilst down south, my Negro brother hangs like a "strange fruit" not ripe for picking. Toes tap, to the dizzy bepob of the snare drum of blind hope, “that all is not lost”.
Whisking down 5 th avenue, up by Times Square, stubbing my toe on the corner, walking up the curb to the lunch counter. Passer bys in tailored suits, chewing on stubbed cigars, chuckle at my kicking of the pavement. Rather than lament, I clasp my hands, overhead, flip out my tongue, and snarl like a baboon, so they see, I am animal, they are the savage. As eyes of applause, tampered down and subside, the monkeys return to balance sheet talk. I, the circus baboon, trot the line, to whet my teeth and clack my tongue, in Cafeteria talk. Cruising through the double glass pane doors, like a breeze on a warms summer day, seeing Huncke and Jack, stir up hot air, circulating like two dust devils on a barren midwestern field, as hair-net waitress, asks "what it'll be?" "Coffee, Black."
Chatting in smooth phrases, letting em’ know “I dig it”, we rap about a stabbing on 43 rd avenue, junkies, hookers, and the surrealists at the Museum of Modern Art. Somehow in this Cafeteria talk, where a hot meal will cost you a pair of socks, where we discuss a music called Jazz, and the trash on the street nobody else will lay an eye upon, more or less give a dollar to, ( because to them; looking at these people is like looking at a solar eclipse). Too much to bear. Somehow in this Cafeteria talk, we found, “it”. Somehow “it” is germane to the point of life. The "it" of it all… In this universe of Atom Bombs dropped on Japan, and ticker tape stuck in the wet rolled stockings of a hooker - offering good times. We found “it”. Not in the rattling sound of a muffler pipe, scurrying away from the city. But in the rat filled allies, where a sailor lets one off before heading back to his stool, at the bar, to salute his mouth with a pint of ale. Not in the torpedo tubed hunk of assembly line metal, racing towards the suburbs, where a tract of homes, leave tracks on arms, in endless rows, filled with numerous Dorothy’s "speaking there's no place like home." But in the Jazz clubs on 52nd. Where Monk strums white bloused ivory, Dizzy, and Parker blow out into dampened bourbon filled air, in the wee-hours, seducing Odysseus, singing Sirens. Not in the Oz of crystal glasses filled to the brim, as clicking heels with dainty fingers stir gin, martini's. But in the place where a piece of stale bread is the best meal you will have all day. Not where they stuff turkeys, while slipping mickeys, anesthetizing their hysteria. It cannot be found in a tract of hypocrisy, rocking around the clock, finishing dinner just before the stubbed nose, cigar face, flying monkey arrives. This, my reader, is the Beat Generation and we are born. Not of "Star-Spangled Banner," and “honey I am home”, but of "Man, I am Beat."
Beat by police baton and "blacks not allowed." Beat by “up all night in search of the truth.” Beat by a mugger in the park in search for a fix. Beat by words like "faggot" and "jew." Beat by a long day's work assembling refrigerators machines. Beat by a “howling stomach” in the long lonely night. Beat by pigsty living where the squeak of a rodent is my welcoming voice. Beat by running from a roach called poverty. See, we all beat. WE. All. BEAT! We, weh, wea… Arr. Aaare. Aaa, Aah. Aal. All. Beat! We all beat. Beat like a drum tapping out the rhythm of the morning. Beat like a trumpet calling up the soldiers to the firing lines. My reader, we all BEAT!
Beat to the punch, “the more I run from it the more I run into it” as Wynton would say. It’sa time to play on the bandstand and make utterance on the travesties towards humanity. To speak of a Roman culture long yet gone from the annuals of time, still bent on conquest. Stripping, kicking, and setting ablaze my culture. My heritage. Feeding me their unspeakable language, feeding me their indigestible gruels. Taking me cross waters in carriages, shaped as tombs.
In the land not known by my fathers, I am shackled in chains. My herculean strength is tamped down by European tempers, no man can break free. So I sing. Humming my tune, chanting in my rhythms. Speaking my language, my “negro speech.”
Kicking dust in Congo Square, shuffling round n round in a syncopated rhythm. Conjuring Macaya, white man in observation. We headed to a sacrifice. So you too can cough the words cigarette mouthed rebels be killed for. Cause it is not kind to speak on injustice. Cause we in the midst of a cruel kind of people. The kind of people who rip suckling babies from their mothers tit. If dey don’t die in transit, sell them off, silence dey lips, kill dey gods, den force dey ears to hear tones, dey ears not meant to be heard. “Ouende, ouende, [white man!]” Cause this is more than the Beats, this is about Jass.
To be Jass, is to improvise. To improvise, is to live. To live is to suffer, and to suffer is the blues. And under that merciless white man’s sun, that beats down on the black man’s back, beat by the white man’s whip, on the black man’s skin. Tearing open my precious soil as the plow tears open the precious Earth. Jass oozes out! Prickly bulbs, poked by cotton, out these fingers, Jass oozes out. This the music that came up from the earth, cross dem waters, buried in carriages, shaped as tombs.
Jass is the music of life. Of little Louie Armstrong marching out “the Battlefield” born of low stock seeing skies of blue. Jass is the hypocrisy of life. Of Al Jolson crying out “Mammy” into blue ol’ skies. “Mammy”! “Mammy”! “Mammy”! A word not yet uttered by nubby mouthed babes, torn from times past.
Jass, Jasz, Jaaaaz, Jazz. And like that, Jazz is born. A pseudonym for pain. Born of the blues. Jazz is the blues. Jazz is living. Jazz is loving. And to suffer is the blues, and to live is to be Jass. Dig?
Flying over head-a-rumblin’ unheard, shaking and moving, wobbling, in vibrations. Table top, salt shaker, tip-tapping, top-tipping, a topples over, and spills on the, table. Like blood split swerving racism. In a far land, chased by maxim machine gun. We marched. In a regiment of our own, of our own. At home, a Ku Klux Klan page-boy - singing his hookers-tune, hear-ye, hear-ye! Ragtime is over. O sweet mother land of dixie, of the phonograph, and handkerchief suspicion, covering up a wiggly fingers trumpet tune. In the land of exploitation, the white man, takes Jazz to be his own. A music birthed of derision, suspicion, and lynching. Trout sandwich in hand on a northbound train, so long Dixie, to Chicago Jazz flies. A city a buzzing, of speakeasys, singing Tommy-gun tunes. Trumpet screaming louder than the shout of the policeman. Behold the bulging eyes of Jazz arrives.
Over the air, carried like a bail of cotton (fresh from the gin), Jazz sings, over the air, carried by waves. This thing called radio got all the folks kicking in a craze. Swinging and moving in circles. Toes a tapping, hands a clapping, turnstile motions, exuberating motions, fingers pointing to the moon, the sax, upfront, and piano at that, with singer in tow, this the Jazz we call swing. A jungle drum humming, pounding chest, damsel in distress, a King Kong, the music is atop the buildings, in the sky, roaring out into the open air. Chick Webb, a flailing set of arms, spine not correct, making sweat jump off the head of a pin. No body, can stop the roar of this King Kong called swing.
“No body loves me, no body seem to care.” Man got the blues. The Kansas City blues. Speaking a Jazz not contained. Can’t hold it, tame it, codify it, chain it, nor can it, as a Campbells soup. “M’m m’m, Jazz”, Kansas city sweet. Of the Dukes and Counts we must count. The Duke and the Count are the ones to count. And of battles to remember, remember the “Battle of the Bands”. At the Savoy, bullets did not fly, nor did bombs drop, tearing the youth apart. Tempers a flared, and a roaring-sounds from a flailing set of arms, had the youth swinging, limb from limb, all night at the Savoy
“If the moon turns green and shadows come walking round, I wouldn’t be surprised”, sings Lady Day, duchess of the streetwise, and aching purrs, of the opium den. A honeysuckle bloom in a dark shadow of heavenly clouds, Jazz has a voice, singing like an angel tortured by Satin. “Cause you don’t know what love is until you have the blues” and the blues is Jazz. Dig?
In the afterhours, the weary hours, on 52 nd street, under the din of screaming neon’s, a roaming stumbling hiccupping lush, walking offbeat, stumbles past the bemoan of an ally cat (fending off a bleeding arm in search of a fix), to fall face flat on the jungle pavement outside the 3 Duces. A place, a hotbed, a poets rest in the long night searching for the philosopher’s stone. Cause mother innovation is a tune to invocations and incantations. The incantations and invocations heard on Congo Square.
Jass is the music of the slave and Jazz is the music of the liberated. Jass sang in chains, on the gang, to the whip of an oppressors howl. Jass sang the song of the black man’s blues, of the toil in the field, and scorn of oppressor routing his mind. Jazz broke those breakable chains and gave a name to the American soul. As the white man’s God spoke of “let there be light”, “let there be Jazz.”
Let Jazz music ring out into the air waves as a tonic to quell the human disease called oppression. A disease affecting scornful lighter toned skins, that make it their prerogative to kill all the skin tones darker than their own. Jazz is a boundless fire that cannot be shackled (to the end of the world) as a Prometheus for disobedience. For Jazz is meant to roam free. And free Jazz will roam.
Fin.
