Parable of Jazz
Jazz saved me
this night
jazz
saved me
I was ready to go
jazz
held my arm
reached into my soul
saved me.
--mx
He was so happy to be born a North American African. A little sad hewasn't born in New Orleans, but happy just the same to claim hisheritage of black classical music, the most wonderful music in theworld. What other music could come from a people enslaved except jazz orblack classical music? Well, now, don't leave out Vudun music, another musicfrom the African democratic society that allows the voice of everyone tobe heard, recognized, accepted and respected?
No matter what name, Black classical music reflects the black soul andmind, the freedom of the body in the midst of hell on earth, atranscendence of this world into the infinity, beyond the pussy and dickof blues, the nursery rhymes of rap, the putrid mythology of gospel,though we love the purity and sacredness, but the mythology is totalinsanity. And he loved gospel music more than any Muslim who ever lived.A woman said she never knew a Muslim could love gospel more than aChristian.
A Muslim elder heard him playing gospel and was horrified! Butjazz/black classical music was his love. And yet he strayed so far awaywhen he descended into the depths of hell. The was no music in hell,nothing but silence in the night and in the day. No one spoke, no onenodded hello or as-salaam-alaikum. Hell was silent. Not even a whisperdid the devils do in hell. Only pass the dope. Let the ladies paradebutt naked as on the auction block, though the men did not bother tolook up from chasing the dragon. What beautiful women, butt naked, butwho cared, pass the pipe. Let us chase the dragon into the night.
Maybe we will share with the ladies for a moment, only for a moment. Wewill look up their vagina with a flashlight. We are that sick, thatinsane. No music in the Crack house, only the silence of smoke in theair, the flies are dead on the floor from the smoke. Open the window,let some air in. But, no, don't open the window, the police might beoutside. They hear us in the silence. We have tons of dope, they aregoing to raid us. Play some music. Wait. No. Be quiet. No music!
There were years with no music, no jazz, except for the musician on thecorner. He tried not to hear him in the Frisco night, but his sound wasso beautiful it flowed through the fog of his mind.
He heard the music and knew he had to run outside to give a donation. Itwas Sonny Simmons on the corner from the dope fiend's hotel room inUnion Square. He heard Sonny every night in the most lyrical languageever heard, calling him home. Come home, black man, come black to selfand kind, let the ghosts go, let the demons fly away, let the butt nakedwomen flee into the night.
Come home, black man, North American African.
And yet, it would take years to reconnect with the music, to return tothe music, Sun Ra would go to space is the place, BJ would go home tojazz heaven, Oliver Johnson, dead in Paris, Dewey Redman, one of hismain men from Black Arts West, left us his son Joshuah. And still hecould not connect to the music of his soul, the healing sounds of hismind.
And somehow, through it all, he made the transition over the chasm, theprecipice of darkness and dread, into the sound of his ancestors, theliving, and the yet unborn. He reached out into space is the place andgrabbed his mother tongue, the sound of the womb in the ocean of hismind. He was home.
--Marvin X
6/8/10
The poem Jazz Saved Me is from Confession of a Wife Beater and OtherPoems by Marvin X,
Al KItab Sudan Press, Fresno, 1981. For more poems by Marvin X, go to www.academyofdacorner.blogspot.com
https://theblacklist.net/
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