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Bobby Mcferrin's
Beyond Words
Reviewed by Marvin X
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Bluenote CD:
Vocals, Bobby Mcferrin / Piano, Chick Corea
/ Drums, Omar Hakim / Percussion, Cyro
Baptista / Wooden flute, Keith Rhodes / Bass
and Guitar, Richard Bona |
Bobby is indeed
beyond words. Words cannot describe this bird from
heaven singing outside my window as dawn approaches,
singing sounds without words, beyond birds, beyond
scatting, a world of his own, without peer, conjuring,
configuring sounds that take us beyond the beyond,
stopping by Brazil, getting off the boat in Africa,
passing through America, stepping, prancing, dancing,
chanting, floating on top of the piano and drums as they
carry him along as he joins Sun Ra on some planet, maybe
Jupiter, Mars, who knows where Bobby goes, but we go
with him, enjoying a genius at work. What person on
earth can be without the heavenly sounds of Bobby
Mcferrin's
Beyond Words? We are in childhood, playing in
the mud, it tastes so good Mama has to whip us into the
house, we don't care, whip me Mama, I gotta eat this
mud. Take me, Bobby, into eternity, twist and turn at
the corners of yesterday and tomorrow, never saying a
word, just sounds from the Creator who blessed us with
this wonder child, Bobby Mcferrin.
His persona changes
from lover to friend to trickster: are we hearing the
human voice or an instrument, a trumpet, flute, let it
go, enjoy, stop trying to figure out the magician, we'll
only get entangled up his sleeve, inside his hat, let
the magic soothe, heal, stop trying to figure out what
is and ain't real. Listen to the drummer tell Bobby, "I
got ya [you] back, dance on, fly into the sun." And the
piano says, "If you fall I will catch you, so swim, run,
jump, do anything-I ain't goin [going] nowhere
[anywhere]."
My overall favorite
is "Fertile Field," beginning with a whistle; a
fast-paced, energetic, aggressive, up-tempo piece into
Bobby Land, where few can go. Chick is with him neck and
neck, along with drummer Omar—traveling
the space ways (as Sun Ra would say) with equal energy.
Bobby touches down in South Africa for a quick Miriam
Makeba click, moves on to silence rappers, stop poets in
mid sentence—vocalists,
don't even come on stage; indeed, brother is beyond
words, beyond this world.
Another favorite is
"Pat and Joe," a brief enchanting piece featuring
Richard Bona's guitar, with chorals and Bobby chanting
as it glides into the sunset or over the horizon. "Mass"
is also an enchanting choral piece with Bobby again
chanting throughout? Percussionist Baptista completes
the circle. I see the entire album as a choreographer's
dream. It should make excellent music for a chorus of
spiritual dancers. Maybe I'll choreograph it for my
Recovery Theatre! Just thank Jesus, as Bobby does, and
thank
Chick Corea, piano, Richard Bona, bass and guitar,
Omar Hakim, drums, Cyro Baptista, percussion, Keith
Rhodes, wooden flutes. Go Bobby, go Bobby.
Now the Christians
might say, "That boy [is] talking in tongues," and they
would be right because essentially that is exactly what
he does, transcending not only English but all other
languages, for they have all failed us, yes, even the
varieties of our Mother tongue—obviously
they failed to keep us off the ships, which was their
primary and ultimate failure—yes,
a total, abysmal and horrendous breakdown of
communication, reflecting a degeneration of a people's
soul, heart and mind, but most importantly, a collapse
of all their social institutions, instigated by the
ruling classes who perverted language into a tool of
deception for human exploitation, after all, language
allowed humans to become chattel, persuaded African
armies to capture neighbors and even their own citizens;
allowed judges to falsely charge, convict and sentence
millions to enslavement; language guided us to the door
of no return, along with the gun and rum.
Bobby has
accomplished what many poets attempt after we realize we
are captives of English and seek to liberate ourselves
with pure sound, grunts, wails, moans, anything but
English, the oppressor's filthy tongue, so vile it is
called a bastard language. Bobby has succeeded with
sounds as pure as the driven snow, primal incantations,
fresh as a child from the mother's womb, thus the
healing power of his music: we are forced out of this
world, the oppressive vowels and consonants that make up
the words which are the source of our collective
madness, the vehicle for transmission of myths and
rituals which compose our daily lives, that allow us to
behave like beasts with each other, a constant denial
and misrepresentation of our Divine essence. Man in the
Mirror, look at yourself lost in the Valley of the
Shadow of death, in the matrix of conspicuous
consumption, obsessive materiality, to the extent that
you would employ wage slaves around the world so you can
wear expensive shoes, that you would kill your brother
in the hood and steal his shoes.
Only by returning
to our aboriginal language can we liberate ourselves
from this oppressive social order and begin anew, a new
consciousness, a new mind, a new soul. This is precisely
why the Christians talk in tongues; talk their holy
language, the language of the Ghost, the unseen source
from the primal essence of our soul. When the Christians
heard me recite Arabic at my son's funeral, they said,
"That boy [is] talking in tongues." Indeed, Arabic and
tongues are the same sound, same vowels and consonants.
And we ain't Arabic, but Arabic derives without doubt
from the ancient Himyaritic of Ethiopia, source of the
first man, we are told. Why would the first man come
from there but not his language, and his religion, for
that matter? Ethiopia is the source of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam as well: the Kushites or Blacks
from Ethiopia were the aboriginal Arabians, who dwelled
there before the Semites, inhabiting the land from the
Persian Gulf to Yemen, to Jerusalem, where they were
known as the Canaanites, brothers of the
Egyptians/Ethiopians. Diop, Dr. Ben, Rogers, Du Bois and
other have written on this subject.
Bobby shows us how
to transcend this world and all therein. As Jesus said,
we can be in this world, but not of it. Alas, silence
would be better than bitch, ho, and motherfucker. But
these words are not nearly as detrimental as the
outright abject, obscene, profane defilement of truth
used by political leaders such as Bush, Powell, Rice and
Rumsfeld, and the hypocritical language of religious
leaders who pimp, rob and exploit believers, promising
them residue from slavery in the form of a
fictionalized, juvenile, fabricated, imaginary heaven in
the sky after they die. You religious swine, how dare
you cry about the use of bitch, ho, and motherfucker by
me, rappers or anybody, while you have sex with your own
children, murder in the name of God, sell drugs in the
name of God, Christians and Muslims alike around the
world, from Afghanistan to Colombia. If our tongues are
vile, imagine what your souls look like! May God have
mercy on you vipers. And let us not neglect to mention
the deceptive language of the media-pharaoh's magicians,
whose gross sins of commission and omission keep the
people deaf, dumb and blind-as the media Mongols
confessed after 911-yet they continue in their
inordinacy, blindly wandering on, as the Qur'an says.
The Qur'an also says, "Will you hide the truth while you
know?"
So let us go then,
beyond words, beyond the ship, beyond the shore, beyond
the forest up the mountain path where the Divine awaits
us to come be one and indivisible, to be pure, holy,
righteous and free while we live. Bobby is calling us to
go there: go Bobby, go Bobby.
May 22, 2002
See Marvin X's
essay, "The Psycholinguistic Crisis of the North
American African," in
The Crazy House Called America,, Essays,
Black Bird Press, 2002. Email him at jmarvinx@yahoo.com.
Visit
http://www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com .
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posted 20 February 2010 |
