Those who can't do teach ... or not?

Nuit de feu: .amp's lungs are burning, he can barely breathe, YumYum's hair shakes hands with the flame of a candle nearby, there's the sound of rice paper cracking and the smell of chicken on the bbq, we play pool with great balls of fire, temperature as we go for tangents of discussion reaches 300 F. We discuss the morphology of Art. One of the world's first criminal profilers, Lombroso, studied the connection between facial features and predisposition to crime. We wonder about the many wonders of Art and Body, how does the former affect the latter? At Juilliard dancers take Anatomy classes, their chests and legs covered in different colors of tape, showing what muscles are streched and flexed according to the posture. Do Opera singers and horn players use the same sets of muscles? Mr. Seas, trombonist, injured a lateral abdominal while working out: does it hurt when he blows? Apparently not. I whish there was an Atlas of the Human musical body.

Mr. Seas on music critics: nobody, he says, nobody should ever review one single line of music, let alone write about musical theory, unless he's set foot on a bandstand and most importantly jammed all right. Is that right? On the phone with RR, former culinary critic of the city's leading newspaper, current editor in chief of the nation's leading food magazine, the door swings back: "It is a common opinion that in order to be a good culinary critic you have to be a knockout cook...". "Bullshit"

There.

I wonder who's right. Then I think of PS, jazz critic and historian, guardian of the flame, keeper of the gospel. As far as I know he never played a single note (am I wrong?) but no one could question his knowledge of the craft and the spellbounding quality of his anecdotes. Could this be it? He who has witnessed enough and absorbed by osmosis is the ultimate recipient of a Honorary degree in Musical Practice?

I'm working on it. And in the meantime, I keep my motto at heart. See below

Enrico Rava at Milan's castle aka leave the technique, take the heart and keep the storm at bay

It was unquestionably an Italian night.

- the leading daily newspaper runs a story on a special performance by trumpeter Enrico Rava, to be held at Castello Sforzesco, a monumental yet gracefully balanced construction, a remnant - beautifully preserved, tapestries, helm, bricks and turrets - of Milan's past as a feud of the noble Sforzas and Viscontis. Rava is on his way back from Umbria jazz, headed to Iseo Jazz where for the umpteenth time he'll be awarded for topping "Musica Jazz"'s poll on Best jazz musician. The castle is in full revival and hosts a summer-long series of cultural events. It's one of those nights anyone that counts canNOT miss, especially if he or she is into jazz. Or at least claims to be, which usually means a couple of Diana Kralls and Norah Joneses on the mantlepiece, next to the soundtrack from "Ray" and a copy of Nick the Nightfly's latest compilation.
I decide I COUNT and I AM into jazz - no copies of the infamous cds though, sorry. It's free: all we have to do is show up at a specific time and place and get our invitation.

Here's where it gets Italian. I had almost forgotten how much fun my people can be.

1-The newspaper published the wrong date for the invitations givaway. It was the day before. I show up and they're all gone. Suggestion: get to the castle early and do the blink blink. No bling bling, this is Italy yet bribing won't get me nowhere. Blink blink. Mascara galore.
2-I switch to Italian mode, load up on mascara, do my thang. I beat even promoters and security to the gates. When the first people show up I almost move a couple to tears. They both have a spare invitation and basically fight to decide which one I'll use to get in. I get in.
3-SIR Rava is there. I guess he walked into the castle's stunning central courtyard and decided he would be in character. He's sitting by one of those kiosks selling panini and Fanta, his legs crossed, a blue Oxford casually hangin out of his pants, looks relaxed, vaguely blase', greets fans and friends (Romans, gentlemen... lend me your ear...and we will, Henry, we will) and blesses them with minimal gestures of his right hand.
4. I find a seat. Next to me, "Ms. Leech": she's alone waiting for her hubby who's late, spots me from afar, decides she loves me and that she must entrust me with the story of her life, without ever pausing to breathe and possibly within the following half hour. It's not as bad as it sound especially because it turns out she knows Rava, they're acquainted more like, and she has a couple of interesting anecdotes about the guy from Trieste.


"Enrico, he had a beach house in Corniglia, Cinque Terre (that is Liguria) same as my family! He was so grumpy back then (some 20 years ago). Him and his first wife, both always pissy. And we didn't even know he played the trumpet. I guess he wasn't that good at that time. Then he left his wife, sold the house (funny how the two categories are often dumped at the same time) and moved to Chiavari. Anyway, I just spoke to him and he said he would like to get a house on Lago Maggiore... same as my family!"
(AIN'T HE LUCKY?)
Me: so... what about his playing? You like it? Is this the first time you hear him?
(OUTRAGED LOOK)
"Why, no! I first hear him years ago, he went back to Corniglia and played at a sort of homecoming celebration. His trumpet stole my heart. Today jazz is all I can listen to. Jazz and Eros Ramazzotti, but that's more for my husband. You know (KNOWING WINK), he's German"
Me: oh, you're a jazz fan, ain't that great! And what do you think of Paolo Fresu? (for the record, in my record, a much better trumpet than Rava's, and artistic director of Umbria jazz. His "Kind of Porgy and Bess" with a Moroccan oud player creeps under your skin)
"Paolo who?" says the jazz lover...
Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on the point of views - it WAS also night of music. And Rava played.


He plays I'm getting sentimental over you. Easy living. I remember April. Estate. Scrapple from the apple. The man I love. Poiniciana. Misterioso. One encore, a blues. All in one set: we're trying to beat a storm, it's been breathing down Milan's neck the whole day. You can feel it weight down from the sky. People look up every two seconds.
"Enrico said he looks West to see if it's coming. And it's not coming" says Leech.
Also spracht Zharatustra. I feel so safe with Enrico Weatherman Rava watching over us.

He's accompained by Mr. D'Andrea at the piano (who among other notable products delivered the score for "Last tango in Paris"). D'Andrea's playing reminds me of Monk's, but in a messy fussy prissy way.
Rava and D'Andrea stop two bars into the first piece to fix an obnoxious feedback from one of the speakers.
("I don't understand, it was working til one minute ago!" pleads the sound technician, his hands on his waist).
They fail miserably at a first attempt of call-and-response. They're in sync ALL THE TIME, which defies the concept of c.a.r.
Rava breakes the notes more often than I like and he gleefully glides, full slur ahead, on the trickiest fingerings.
On D'Andrea's solos he walks to the back of the stage, coughs and shakes SHAKES his trumpet, valves down, as if it was a wet umbrella. I shiver.


People here don't applaud at the end of each solo nor do they go "m-mmm" or "ahhhhh!", leaving me as the only freak doing it, that is until I decide to act pro and clip my lips and legs. I still do a little neck move, tho. After all, the guy in front of me has been snorting his (unlit) cigar, literally pushing it all the way into one of his nostrils, all the time. So give me a break.

There is all that. And yet, despite all the previous caveats. Yet it turns out to be a precious night.


As Enrico plays I am reminded of the wise words of young sax prodigy FC: "Rava doesn't have a great technique but he has heart". It may be the rusty, rugged, boorish heart of a seasoned sailor, but he has it and that's what he plays with.
I am also reminded of the words of my friend BM, who once said - and scores of jazz musicians and critics before him - there is no sorry musician, no bad piece of music, each and every one of them has a reason to exist and something to offer.
So for once I wash and fold my preconceptions. I forget I don't like how Rava o.d's on mute and long silences and proudly parades his introverted horn. And not only I discover he can play unmuted but also find a reason and meaning for the existence of his broken notes and slurry fingering. I find that meaning in his last piece, the encore, a blues. I find it in a hint of self-mockery (introducing I remember April ... "by an author whose name I don't remember, must be the old age"). I find it in his tribute "to Bix and Louie, who invented jazz". Well said Enrico.

At the end of the night, Leech's hubby joins us (I suspect he's been there all the time, but was trying to avoid his spouse's turrentine chatter). The storm spares us. And as I turn around to chase the echo of Rava's last notes, I realize they bounce against the back wall of the castle. I'm left wondering of other trumpets and other times. When the sound of trumpet was a call to battle. rather than a call to prayer and good time.

Than you Castello Sforzesco. Grazie Milano.

blue black and blues

... But as to the matter of dispersing gloom and spreading glee, evidence in favor of the sorcery of Madam Marie Laveau, also known as the Widow Paris, the most notorious New Orleans voodoo queen, and the mojo hands of Doctor Jim Alexander, ne' Charles La Fountain, also known as Indian Jim, her male counterpart, is questionable to say the very least.

Testimony that the dance-beat incantation and percussion of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong almost always worked as advertised is universal.

Albert Murray, "Stomping the blues"

stupidity has no color

New York subway, n. 1 train, Brooklyn-bound, rush hour.
In one of the priority seats a young black woman plays with her kid, eight maybe nine years old. He has the energy of a newborn, all flip-flops and somersaults, hands and feet on seats, doors and poles, the car is his gymnasium. He sees us without looking, he KNOWS he's performing for an audience and we are nodding, some even cheering. It's July the 3rd, we are looking ahead and seeing the replica of a Sunday, more hours to spend with lovers, music and our own thoughts. We fickle crowd are for once in a good mood and willing to graciously smile at this kid's olympics, train games. We don't even realize how condescending we must look from the outisde.

The duo laughs a lot: son looks happy, mother looks loving and lively; though her missing teeth and the torn denim of her jeans tell a tale of struggle, I feel this kid is in a safe place. "You're a bad, bad boy" she's jokin "and i don't want you with me no mo'". "You don't want me no mo?" he laughs, "they gonna take me if you won't". "Ah yeah?" asks mother, cracking up, "they gonna take you? I'm not sure". "One of them will take me" repeats kiddo, gesturing in our direction.

"Would you take him?" asks mother and Jesus her eyeballs are looking into mine. I hesitate ever so slightly, too concious of the second pair of eyes fixed in mine, his; conscious indeed I am that this is a joke to her, but not to him. Then I roll my eyes in a parody of surrender and go: "all right all right I'll take you". More nodding and smile from the audience - how can they not realize how FUCKING condescending they look?

At this moment, young boy starts enjoying our attention a little too much, drags himself on the floor, does a dying soldier scene, the white of his eyes has a glaze of neon light. Mother starts pulling him up by his elbows, shaking him, "stop it, listen to me! You're making a scene, look at them pants I just got you, so dirty on their knees already. You want me to kick your lil butt? Wait when we get home to your dad...". He ignores her, he's on his knees, elbows in her hands, head thrown back as if faint or dead. More yelling from her, "Jimmy Louie Marshall, I said get UP!".

And then, "You heard me
nigga?"

Oh, the shift in room temperature, did anyone open the window? It feels it most def feels like thick drafts under our collars. And a whole lot of effort to avoid each other's eyes. Kid and mama laugh and seem to be oblivious to the obvious. We the people disapprove. Not of the word per se, no, rather of the kid's reaction: matter of fact, it is a matteroffact reaction, he barely has any reaction at all - just like someone who hears it every day, spoken by the same person. His mama.
As I shake my head in disbelief I see my neighbours do the same and then wonder: how many of you? How many of you have spoken it before and only now realize how bad it sounds?

Will that kid realize that it doesn't sound any better if it's spoken in the voice who gave him birth? Will he realize that stupidity knows no color, no DNA and no love?

Will those of us who tsch tsch and yet spoke it before realize that they ARE stupid?

keep the quote alive

Ben Riley speaking on BET Jazz of "the importance of quoting jazz". Let's climb on each other's shoulders. "Let's keep it alive".

We have got to keep it alive.

lesson in sound

D club, a celebration for Clifford Brown's 75th anniversary. Jeremy Pelt, Tom Harrell, Terence Stafford, David Weiss on trumpet. MISTER Jimmy Cobb on drums.

And lessons in sound.

A) Sound takes 1, 2, 3, 4. Each and every one of them had their own musical signature. A broken smoky quiet whisper was TH's. A screaming strutting brassy uawuaw was JP's. TS is elegance and fire.

B) Sound attitude. JP walks onstage chest first, wears shades, big squared chunky shoes, scans the audience for friends and family, talks a lot and smiles in proportion. TH walks onstage in a leather jacket and a curtain of white scruffy hair. He never raises his head, keeps it down, eyes glued to the floor, all the time.

C) Sound of silence. TH has paranoid schizophrenia. It has been said that his otherwise shattered personality comes together only when he plays or composes. He's on some new medications, hopefully they will increase his confidence. He's seldom and embaressment for his sidemen. Occasionally though he will hear voices urging him to stop the playing as the audience is not liking it and so he will, he will cut his solo short. Or he will misinterpret a gesture, a pose and assume he's not welcome and leave.

It doesn't happen tonight. He wanders on and off focus on his solos, sometime true gems of minimalistic inspiration, sometime confused attempts to get somewhere, somewhere, somewhere. Overall touching and beautiful.

But not as beautiful as seeing him serenade the city. On a pause offstage as DW was taking his solo, TH had his back to the public, and was fingering his trumpet, its bell pointed to the stunning view of the skyline right outside the huge window. He seemed to be at peace.

D) Sound like you want: JP and TH alone onstage, the cocky and the anassuming, one head held up high to the sky, the other bent low as if in apology.

E) Ultrasound: at a table a few feet from where I was, a woman, maybe 8 months pregnant, her hands resting on her round belly, which was barely covered by the thinnest of white fabrics, a Provençal shirt. As the guys onstage were kicking it up a few decibels, the baby started moving, you could see the outline of what was possibly a foot or the head stretch the skin and dance to the waves of sound as they traveled from trumpet to placenta.

A jazz fan is born. Before she is born. I'm sure it's a girl.

X, Y and Z

Thursday night, Hudson hotel, one of those hip New York spots with a life expectancy of one year tops. Ladies dressed to kill - good taste, that is - guys on a mission to conquer booty, acid green lights, hip hop galore, gigantic orchids, lotta plastic elbow to elbow with an Oxford style library bar; could be the brainchild of Philip Stark, maybe it is. I'm having a preliminary meeting with the Daughter of a Revolutionary, she will be featured in one of my articles. It turns out to be one nutty ride, for a number of reasons...

we say praise before eating (at the fancy house restaurant, imagine the scene):

we see a Samantha (Sex & the City) lookalike high on coke and booze crawl her way out of the main door, then give everybody the finger, trip and fall in the gutter; turned down by each and every cabbie (to whom she then again gives the finger), she eventually turnes to the black security guy who has been called to take care of her and goes:
- I'm black
him- and I am white
- I did so much coke... actually I have a lot on me even now. Do you want some? Naw, you wouldn't be able to handle it
him- lady, it's you who could never handle what I got on me now...

my guest is tall and striking, but she also has a manly voice, very dark gums and huge biceps: she makes me touch them and then warnes me "I haven't been working out for MONTHS!!!!". When she laughs she throws her head back and her eyes FLASH. Oh, Lorrrrdy.

she drives a Mercedes, gives a loud squeak when a big fat roach takes a promenade close to our feet as we are on the sidewalk saying goodbye, offers to drive me home, eats pretty much everybody's food, ignores who Basquiat was, has a weird attitude around guys and definitely a diffident, guarded, alert look in her eyes when the subject of her Father life and -violent- death is arised. Me being there precisely to bring it up as much as possible, as you can imagine, it is...hard.



Yet enlightening. I respect Daughter of a Revolutionary very much. She is a monument to survival, to self affirmation in the shadow/light of a heavyweight legacy.

She is a lily with a stem of steel, growing on a ground of sizzling tar.