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Inside This Issue:
Documenting
Calypso by Stephen Stuemple
Brooklyn’s Jazz
Renaissance by Robin D.G. Kelley
Bolly’hood
Re-mix by Kevin Miller
Johanna Beyer by
Melissa J. de Graaf
Exploring Roots Music: Review by
Charles K. Wolfe
Cage and
Carter DVDs: Review by Anton Vishio
ISAM
Matters
Home
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Brooklyn's Jazz Renaissance
By Robin
D.G. Kelley
In March
2003, Jazz at Lincoln Center hosted a forum titled “Jazz and Social
Protest” that drew a predominantly black, standing-room only
crowd. Moderated by Robert O’Meally, director of the Center for Jazz Studies
at Columbia University, the panel consisted of poets Sonia
Sanchez and Amiri Baraka,
and trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater. All
three artists made explicit statements against the war in Iraq.
Coincidentally, three days later the Los Angeles Times ran an
article by critic Don Heckman arguing that there were few jazz musicians out
front against the war.1 From this, he concluded that despite
some historic exceptions, the jazz world simply is not that political.
Of course, critics like Heckman who look for “politics”
in song titles, explicit references to world events, or musicians’
commentary, invariably reduce politics to protest. But during the forum, Baraka
insisted that the language of “social protest” obscures the real
political meaning of the music.
Indeed, the entire panel discussed jazz in terms of building community
and sustaining African American culture, mentoring new generations in the
tradition, recognizing the democratic, communal, even spiritual nature of
jazz performance, and reclaiming and preserving this great African American
art form.
If these issues really lie at the heart of the
politics of jazz, then a revolution is taking place in Brooklyn. While predominantly white “downtown” audiences squeeze
into the Blue Note or the Vanguard to be entertained by the hip, across the
bridge Brooklyn’s black activists and artists are reclaiming
the music’s roots and employing it for the political, social and
spiritual uplift of the community.
Jazz is everywhere in Central
Brooklyn—at intimate
nightclubs like Up Over Jazz Cafe, Pumpkins, and The Jazz Spot; at local
coffeehouses like Sistas’ Place; in community
centers; even in the house of the Lord.
Brooklyn has its own black-oriented jazz magazine, Pure
Jazz, edited by the tireless JoAnn Cheatham.
And as anyone who has attended the annual Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival can
tell you, the audiences for the music are predominantly black, representing
all classes and ages. Quiet as it seems, reaffirming the music’s links
to black community struggles and social transformation marks a radical
challenge to jazz’s current trajectory, which has become deeply commercialized,
rendered color-blind and apolitical, and promoted as American high culture.
The key force behind the Brooklyn revolution is the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium. Founded about five years ago by a group of
black artists, activists, and entrepreneurs, including the late singer Torrie McCartney, trumpeter and composer Ahmed Abdullah,
and veteran black community activists Viola Plummer and Jitu
Weusi, the CBJC set out to promote “African
American classical music” as a collective, community project. The CBJC is made up of several club owners,
nearly half a dozen churches, and a variety of community centers. More than a business venture, the CBJC was
created to spread positive cultural values through the music. Bob Myers,
owner of Up Over Jazz Cafe and original CBJC member, explained, “This
is the African way, to promote the culture through the music and arts, and to
do so not in competition but in cooperation.”2
What the CBJC is attempting to do has deep roots in Brooklyn’s history and its rich jazz heritage. Back in the day, Miles Davis, John
Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, and others
played at Brooklyn venues like Putnam Central, the Blue Coronet, the
Baby Grand, Club La Marchal, or Tony’s Club Grandean. Trumpeters Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan helped
put Brooklyn on the global jazz map in 1965 with the release of Night
of the Cookers, vols. 1 and 2, recorded live at the Club La Marchal on Nostrand Avenue and President Street. Brooklynites enjoyed occasional concerts at the Paramount
Theater, and many danced to big bands at the Elks or Sonia ballrooms. But this barely scratches the surface, for
as long-time Brooklyn resident and former musician Freddie Robinson told
me, “The music was everywhere.
Every little corner bar had jazz.” Some of the better known joints were the
Pleasant Lounge, Club 78, Kingston Lounge, and Club Continental.3
Brooklyn jazz musicians have also been working cooperatively for at least a
half-century. Indeed, one of Myers’s models for the CBJC was Club Jest
Us, a group of jazz musicians’ wives living in Brooklyn during the 1960s who worked collectively in order to secure gigs for
their husbands. A decade earlier,
Brooklyn-born pianist and composer Randy Weston recalled working with his
neighborhood pals, including drummer Max Roach, to organize musicians’
collectives. Weston and other
musicians learned a great deal about cooperation and self-reliance from his
father, Frank Weston, who inspired young musicians at his restaurant with
stories of Marcus Garvey, Africa, and the continuing struggle to uplift the black
community.4
During the 1960s and early 1970s, the late Cal
Massey, an extraordinary composer and trumpeter, turned his Brooklyn home into a veritable community center. Besides writing explicitly revolutionary
pieces like “The Black Liberation Suite,” Massey organized
benefit concerts for the Black Panther Party that encouraged the full
participation of the community, especially youth, by banning alcohol and
providing free childcare. Around the
same time, Jitu Weusi, founder
and current chairman of the CBJC, promoted jazz as a cultural and political
force to mobilize Brooklyn’s black community when he founded The East in
1969. Located in the heart of
Bedford-Stuyvesant, The East was a black cultural center where artists such
as bassist Reggie Workman performed and held workshops for youth.5
During the 1970s and 1980s, in the wake of the
borough’s decline due to high unemployment, federal cutbacks, and
drugs, black activists who sought to revitalize Brooklyn once again turned to jazz.
The Bed-Stuy Restoration Corporation was one
of those institutions that helped pave the way for the current Brooklyn renaissance. The Center for
Arts and Culture at Bed-Stuy Restoration Corp, for
example, trains young people in the art of jazz and runs the Skylight Gallery
where musicians frequently perform.
Myers’s Up Over Jazz Cafe is also a space for community
building. Neighborhood musicians work out ideas through open jam sessions, and
Myers has even hosted several nights of “Hip Hop Meets Jazz,”
where singing sensation Bilal jammed with friends,
including the equally sensational pianist Jason Moran.
Perhaps the best-known and most politicized
community space for jazz is Sistas’ Place on Nostrand and Jefferson Avenues. Run by a collective whose members have ties
to political organizations such as the December 12th Movement and
the Harriet Tubman/Fannie Lou Hamer
Collective, Sistas’ Place hosts a wide range
of cultural activities. Any given week one might hear the Sun Ra Arkestra or
saxophonist René McLean, or check out a Sunday afternoon panel discussion on
reparations for slavery or police brutality.6
The jazz revolution in Brooklyn has not led to a distinctive “Brooklyn aesthetic,” largely because virtually all genres are
represented—from bebop to avant-garde.
Nevertheless, some general characteristics of the music and artists
deserve comment.
The CBJC
encourages young artists by hosting frequent open jam sessions and promoting
conversations between jazz and other musical genres. During the 2003 festival, for example, BRIC
Studio on Rockwell
Place
hosted DJ Logic performing with jazz musicians, and The Jazz Spot committed
its entire March calendar to young women instrumentalists. The most important characteristic of the CBJC’s artistic vision is its reverence for black
music and musicians throughout the African Diaspora and on the
continent. Following in the footsteps
of native son Randy Weston, a pioneer in the movement to reconnect Africa with African American musical traditions, several of the festival
performers incorporate African instruments, Afro-Latin and Caribbean rhythms, as well as various forms of black sacred music. Ultimately, if there is any essential
principle behind the movement, it is to celebrate and reclaim black music for
Brooklyn’s black community.
For CBJC co-founder Ahmed Abdullah, the very
existence of black, community-based spaces for jazz is
“regenerating.”7 Abdullah himself has helped to create these
spaces by working closely with schools and churches. In February 2003, Concord Baptist Church held a well-attended tribute to Gigi
Gryce and Randy Weston, at which elementary school
kids sang Gryce’s “Social Call”
and a teenaged band known as Friends and Strangers struggled valiantly with
Weston’s best-known compositions.
The predominantly black crowd embraced this music with the enthusiasm
of a Sunday morning revival. For the
last two springs, Concord hosted “100 Golden Fingers in Praise,”
a concert of sacred music led by pianist Barry Harris and at least nine other
pianists, including Bertha Hope, Gil Coggins, and
Valerie Capers. Besides Concord Baptist Church, several other religious institutions including St.
Philips Episcopal Church, Our Lady of Victory
Roman Catholic Church, Jane’s United Methodist, First Pres-byterian Church,
and Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church have hosted performances as part
of the Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival.
Last year, Brooklyn’s 651 ARTS and musical director Akua Dixon brought together a jazz ensemble featuring
trombonist Craig Harris with the Total Praise Choir and rocked Emmanuel Baptist Church.
For many of the ministers involved with the CBJC, as
well as for activists like Abdullah, bringing the music back to its roots in
black communities is necessary, both for the music’s survival as well
as for the community’s resurrection.
No one is saying jazz ought to be the exclusive property of black
folk; it never was. Instead, the music
needs to be “allowed to grow in the atmosphere that nurtures its
creative juices,” Abdullah explained.
This is not a tale of protest but a story of social and spiritual
liberation. And for Abdullah, and
presumably most of the folks behind the Brooklyn revolution, thinking of jazz as a spiritually liberating force for a
community in struggle can serve as a model for the rest of the world:
“That’s what the music is about anyway. That’s why
it’s loved around
the world. That’s why I say in
its true essence Jazz is a music of the spirit.”8
—Columbia University
Notes
1 Don Heckman, “Music (and Musicians) as
a Force for Change,” Los Angeles Times (21 March 2003): E19.
2 Bob Myers, interview with author, 21 February 2003.
3 K. Leander Williams, “Brooklyn, New
York,” in Lost Jazz Shrines (The Lost Shrines Project, 1998),
12-16; Bilal Abdurahman, In
the Key of Me: The Bedford Stuyvesant Renaissance, 1940s-60s Revisited (Contemporary
Visions, 1993); Randy Weston, interview with author, 20 August 2001; Bob
Meyers, interview with author, 21 February 2003.
4 Myers, interview with author; Weston,
interview with author; Ira Gitler, “Randy
Weston,” Down Beat (February 1964): 16-17; Arthur Taylor, Notes
and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews (Da
Capo Press, 1993), 20-21; Valerie Wilmer, Jazz People (Da Capo Press, 1977), 79.
5 Fred Ho, “‘The Damned
Don’t Cry’: The Life and Music of Calvin Massey”
(unpublished paper in author’s possession); Eric Porter, What is
This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists,
Critics, and Activists (University of California Press, 2002), 216; Ahmed Abdullah, e-mail message to
author, 17 March 2003.
6 Abdullah, e-mail message to
author; www.millionsforreparations.com
7 Abdullah, e-mail message to author.
8 Ibid.
SELECTED BROOKLYN
JAZZ VENUES
Sistas' Place
456 Nostrand
Avenue (Jefferson Avenue)
Brooklyn, NY 11216
(718) 398-1766
www.sistasplace.org
Up Over Jazz Cafe
351 Flatbush Ave (Seventh Avenue)
Brooklyn, NY 11238
(718) 398-5413
www.upoverjazz.com/index.htm
Pumpkins
1448 Nostrand Avenue (Church Avenue)
Brooklyn, NY 11226
(718) 284-9086
The Jazz Spot
375 Kosciuszko Street (Marcus Garvey Blvd.)
Brooklyn, NY 11221
(718) 453-7825
thejazz.8m.com/home.html
Skylight Gallery
Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation
1368 Fulton
Street (New York Avenue)
Brooklyn, NY 11216
(718)
636-9671
651 Arts
651 Fulton Street (Ashland Place)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
(718) 636-4181
www.651arts.org
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