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Books by
Marvin X
Love and War: Poems /
In the Crazy House Called America /
Woman: Man's Best Friend /
Beyond Religion Toward Spirituality
John Coltrane CDs:
Ascension
/
Ballads
/
Best of John
Coltrane /
Impressions
/
My Favorite Things /
Selflessness /
A Love Supreme /
Giant Steps
Meditations
Kulu Se Mama /
Interstellar
Space /
The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions /
Stellar Regions /
Expression /
Afro Blue Impressions
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Parable of Jazz
By
Marvin X
| Jazz Saved Me
Marvin X
Jazz saved me
this night
jazz
saved me
I was ready to go
jazz
held my arm
reached into my soul
saved me. |
He was so happy to be born a North American African. A
little sad he wasn't born in New Orleans, but happy just
the same to claim his heritage of black classical music,
the most wonderful music in the world. What other music
could come from a people enslaved except jazz or black
classical music? Well, now, don't leave out Vudun,
another music from the African democratic society that
allows the voice of everyone to be heard, recognized,
accepted, and respected.
No matter what name, Black classical music reflects the
black soul and mind, the freedom of the body in the
midst of hell on earth, a transcendence of this world
into the infinity, beyond the pussy and dick of blues,
the nursery rhymes of rap, the putrid mythology of
gospel, though we love the purity and sacredness, but
the mythology is total insanity. 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 a
Christian.
A Muslim elder heard him playing gospel and was
horrified! But jazz/black classical music was his love.
And yet he strayed so far away when he descended into
the depths of hell. There was no music in hell, nothing
but silence in the night and in the day. No one spoke,
no one nodded hello or as-salaam-alaikum. Hell was
silent. Not even a whisper did the devils do in hell.
Only pass the dope. Let the ladies parade butt naked as
on the auction block, though the men did not bother to
look up from chasing the dragon. What beautiful women,
butt naked, but who 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. We will look up their vagina with a
flashlight. We are that sick, that insane. No music in
the Crack house, only the silence of smoke in the air,
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 be outside. They hear us in the
silence. We have tons of dope, they are going 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 the corner. He tried not to hear him in the
Frisco night, but his sound was so beautiful it flowed
through the fog of his mind. He heard the music and knew
he had to run outside to give a donation. It was Sonny
Simmons on the corner from the dope fiend's hotel room
in Union Square. He heard Sonny every night in the most
lyrical language ever heard, calling him home. Come
home, black man, come black to self and kind, let the
ghosts go, let the demons fly away, let the butt naked
women flee into the night. Come home, black man, North
American African.
And yet, it would take years to reconnect with the
music, to return to the music, Sun Ra would go to space
is the place, BJ would go home to jazz heaven, Oliver
Jackson, dead in Paris, Dewey Redman, one of his main
men from Black Arts West, left us with his son Joshuah.
And still he could not connect to the music of his soul,
the healing sounds of his mind.
And somehow, through it all, he made the transition over
the chasm, the precipice of darkness and dread, into the
sound of his ancestors, the living, and the yet unborn.
He reached out into space is the place and grabbed his
mother tongue, the sound of the womb in the ocean of his
mind. He was home.
Note: The poem Jazz Saved Me is from
Confession of a Wife Beater and Other Poems by
Marvin X, Al KItab Sudan Press, Fresno, 1981.
Source:
http://Parables and Fables of Marvin X
posted 10 June
2010
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|
A Love Supreme
By
John
Coltrane
I will do all I can to be worthy
of Thee O Lord.
It all has to do with it.
Thank you God.
Peace.
There is none other.
God is. It is so beautiful. Thank
you God. God is all.
Help us to resolve our fears and
weaknesses.
Thank you God.
In You all things are possible.
We know. God made us so.
Keep your eye on God.
God is. he always was. he always
will be.
No Matter what . . . it is God.
He is gracious and merciful.
It is most important that I know
Thee.
Words, sounds, speech, men,
memory, thoughts,
fears and
emotions—time—all related . . .
all made
from one . . . all made in one.
Blessed be His name.
Thought waves—heat waves—all vibrations—
all paths lead
to God. Thank you God.
His way . . . it is so lovely . .
. it is gracious.
It is merciful — Thank you God.
One thought can produce millions
of vibrations
and they
all go back to God . . . everything does.
Thank you God.
Have no fear . . . believe . . .
Thank you God.
The universe has many wonders. God
is all.
His way . . . it is so wonderful.
Thoughts—deeds—vibrations, etc.
They all go back to God and He
cleanses all.
He is gracious and merciful . . .
Than you God.
Glory to God . . . God is so
alive.
God is.
God loves.
May I be acceptable in thy sight.
We are all one in His grace.
The fact that we do exist is
acknowledgement
of Thee O Lord.
Thank you God.
God will wash away all our tears .
. .
He always
has . . .
He always will.
Seek Him everyday. In all ways
seek God everyday.
Let us sing all songs to God
To whom all praise is due . . .
praise God.
No road is an easy one, but they
all
go back
to God.
With all we share God.
It is all with god.
It is all with Thee.
Obey the Lord
Blessed is He.
We are all from one thing . . .
the will of God . . .
Thank you
God
I have seen God—I have seen ungodly—
none can be greater—none can compare to God.
Thank
you God.
He
will remake us . . . He always has and he
always will.
He
is true—blessed be His name—Thank you God.
god
breathes through us so completely . . .
so gently we hardly feel it . . . yet,
it is everything.
Thank
you God.
ELATIONS—ELEGANCE—EXALTATION—
All
from God.
Thank
you God. Amen.
December 1964 |
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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Africa Makes Some Noise—Documentary on contemporary music from
Africa
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The transcendent power of music has long been recognized as a
vehicle for spiritual practice and a path to spiritual
fulfilment and enlightenment. Spiritual music, a universally
powerful form of prayer, has for millennia provided human beings
with a sense of the greater spiritual universe. Chanting forms
part of many religious rituals, and diverse spiritual traditions
consider music as a means of opening the individual to spiritual
experience. I
n this episode of Global
Spirit, host Phil Cousineau explores the transcendent qualities
of spiritual and sacred music with guests Rev. Alan Jones and
Grammy-award-winning singer and member of the Native American
Onondaga tribe Joanne Shenandoah. Experience the power of
liturgical musical performances in Latin from Grace Cathedral in
San Francisco (where the Rev. Jones serves as Dean) and witness
powerful, live studio performances by Joanne Shenandoah and her
daughter.
This episode also includes
a hauntingly moving, seven-minute sequence from Peter Brook’s
film,
Meetings with Remarkable Men, in which the young
mystic Gurdjieff learns the power of sacred sound as it
resonates from the Afghan mountaintops.—Music,
Sound and the Sacred
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Among the
many forms in which the human spirit has tried to express its innermost
yearnings and perceptions, music is perhaps the most universal. It
symbolizes the yearnings for harmony, with oneself and with others, with
nature and with the spiritual and sacred within us and around us. There
is something in music that transcends and unites. This is evident in the
sacred music of every community—music that expresses the universal
yearning that is shared by people all over the globe.—His
Holiness the Dalai Lama
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John Coltrane A
Love Supreme /
My Favorite Things—John Coltrane
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My Favorite Things is a
1961 jazz album by John Coltrane. It is considered by many jazz
critics and listeners to be a highly significant and historic
recording. It was the first session recorded by Coltrane on the
Atlantic label, the first to introduce his new quartet featuring
McCoy Tyner (Piano), Elvin Jones (Drums) and Steve Davis (Bass)
- neither Jimmy Garrison nor Reggie Workman featured as yet.
It is classed as another album in which Coltrane made a break
free of bop, introducing complex harmonic reworkings of such
songs as "My Favorite Things", and "But Not for Me."
Additionally, at a time when the soprano saxophone was
considered obsolete, it demonstrated Coltrane's further
investigation of the instrument's capabilities in a jazz idiom.
The standard “Summertime” is notable for its upbeat, searching
feel, a demonstration of Coltrane's “sheets of sound,” a stark
antithesis to Miles Davis's melancholy, lyrical version on Porgy
and Bess. "But Not For Me" is reharmonised using the famous
Coltrane changes, and features an extended coda over a repeated
ii-V-I-vi progression.
The title track is a modal rendition of the Richard
Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein's seminal song “My Favorite Things”
from The Sound of Music. The melody is heard numerous
times throughout the almost 14-minute version, and instead of
soloing over the written chord changes, both Tyner and Coltrane
taking extended solos over vamps of the two tonic chords, E
minor and E major. Tyner's solo is famous for being extremely
chordal and rhythmic, as opposed to developing melodies. In the
documentary The World According to John Coltrane,
narrator Ed Wheeler remarks: “In 1960, Coltrane left Miles
[Davis] and formed his own quartet to further explore modal
playing, freer directions, and a growing Indian influence. They
transformed ‘My Favorite Things’, the cheerful populist song
from The Sound of Music, into a hypnotic eastern dervish
dance. The recording was a hit and became Coltrane's most
requested tune—an abridged broad public acceptance.”
A cover of the title track appeared on the OutKast album The
Love Below.
It is one of the most well-known examples of modal jazz, set in
the Dorian mode and consisting of 16 bars of D minor7, followed
by eight bars of Eb minor7 and another eight of D minor7. This
AABA structure puts it in the format of popular song structure.
The piano and bass introduction for the piece was written by Gil
Evans for Bill Evans and Paul Chambers on Kind of Blue. An
orchestrated version by Gil Evans of this introduction is later
to be found on a television broadcast given by Miles' Quintet
(minus Cannonball Adderley who was ill that day) and the Gil
Evans Orchestra; the orchestra gave the introduction after which
the quintet produced a rendition of the rest of "So What".
The distinctive voicing employed by Bill Evans for the chords
that interject the head, from the bottom up three perfect
fourths followed by a major third, has been given the name "So
What Chord" by such theorists as Mark Levine.
While the track is taken at a very moderate tempo on Kind Of
Blue, it is played at an extremely fast tempo on later live
recordings by the Quintet, such as Four and More.
The same chord structure was later used by John Coltrane for his
standard “Impressions.”
*
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Eldridge
Cleaver: My Friend the Devil
A Memoir by Marvin X
Marvin X on YouTube Marvin X Table
Other Books by Marvin X
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|
The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
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What This Cruel War Was Over
Soldiers Slavery and the Civil
War
By Chandra Manning
For this impressively researched
Civil War social history, Georgetown
assistant history professor Manning
visited more than two dozen states
to comb though archives and
libraries for primary source
material, mostly diaries and letters
of men who fought on both sides in
the Civil War, along with more than
100 regimental newspapers. The
result is an engagingly written,
convincingly argued social history
with a point—that those who did the
fighting in the Union and
Confederate armies "plainly
identified slavery as the root of
the Civil War." Manning backs up her
contention with hundreds of
first-person testimonies written at
the time, rather than
often-unreliable after-the-fact
memoirs. While most Civil War
narratives lean heavily on officers,
Easterners and men who fought in
Virginia, Manning casts a much
broader net. She includes
immigrants, African-Americans and
western fighters, in order, she
says, "to approximate cross sections
of the actual Union and Confederate
ranks." Based on the author's
dissertation, the book is free of
academese and appeals to a general
audience, though Manning's harsh
condemnation of white Southerners'
feelings about slavery and her
unstinting praise of Union soldiers'
"commitment to emancipation" take a
step beyond scholarly objectivity.—Publishers
Weekly |
update 28 March
2012
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