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CDs by Rahsaan Roland Kirk
Blacknuss
/
Volunteered Slavery /
Bright Moments /
Brotherman in the Fatherland /
The Inflated Tear
Music Video:
Rahsaan
Roland Kirk
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The Best of Rahsaan Roland
Kirk
Linear Notes by Ira Gitler
1971 Atlantic Recording
Side One 1.
Volunteer Slavery 5:40 2. The
Inflated Tear 4:46 3. Lady's Blues 3:45
4. Medley 4:50 5. Search for the
Reason Why 2:04
Side Two 1. Making Love After
Hours 4:20 2. Black Root 3:17
3. One Ton 4:55
4. A Laugh for Baby 2:47 5.
Rahsannica 3:40
In Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz
in
the Sixties (Horizon Press) Roland Kirk was described as
unclassifiable "either as an avant-gardist or as a
traditionalist; he is a completely original performer, a category
in himself . . . ." That statement, written in 1966, has
become more of a verity with the passing of the years.
Rahsaan--as he is now known, after hearing
himself called by this name in a dream--is more than a category.
he is a complete musical experience, predictably unpredictable, as
can be heard in the gamut of moods and emotions he runs in this
"Best Rahsann Roland Kirk."
Early in his career Ra Ro suffered the zings
and callows of outrageous critics only to rise from the hashish
like the kleenix (which rises faster than the phoenix because it
pops up into position). The kleenix was once only white but now it
comes in colors. Rahsaan's color is black although he can't see
it. But blackness isn't just color as much as it is the proud,
positive heart of an enduring, surviving people. Rahsaan feels it
and plays it. He is a living musical history book--a giant ear,
suffused by sound, who hears all, digests it and recycles it in a
continuum as circular as the breathing which allows him to play
for min-eternities.
"Volunteer Slavery" is many sounds,
instrumental and vocal, exploding all over in a contemporary
spiritual. Dig the insert from "Hey Jude." Kirk brings
out his strong, guts tenor saxophone on this one.
The glocken sounds of the flexafone begin
"The Inflated Tear" before two reeds are brought into
play simultaneously to announce the lovely Ellingtonian theme
which graduates into a harsher reality and back to serenity. The
chimes of the flexafone conjure up the innocence of the nursery
where baby Rahsann was given too much medicine in his eyes by a
careless nurse who began "The Inflated Tear." Out of
great pain came great beauty.
"Lady's Blues" is, Kirk explains,
"for a lot of beautiful ladies, but especially for Billie
Holiday." He flutes his gorgeous melody backed by the Gil
Fuller-arranged strings. His solo contains some guttural singing
and a burst of bracing double-timing.
The Medley, consisting of "Going
Home" (from Dvorak's New World Symphony),
"Sentimental Journey," "In Monument" and
"Lover," is from an in person performance at the Village
Vanguard. First he introduces "Sentimental Journey" and
"Going Home" separately and then plays them
simultaneously.
The same technique, theme and bass line, is
used on his own minor-key "In Monument," dedicated to
Art Tatum. Finally, in a fantastic display of duple virtuosity,
and miraculous, and miraculous breath control, he launches into
"Lover," including a quote from "My Favorite
Things" just to keep things in the Richard Rodgers songbook.
The Rahsaan Roland Kirk Spirit Choir is
featured on Kirk's lilting, uplifting "Search for the Reason
Why" which moves along on an Afro-Latino beat.
With a heavy back beat kicking him on Rahsaan
is into flutin' the blues in "Making Love After Hours."
He also enlists the aid of his nose in a duet of metal and plastic
flutes. Lonnie Smith plays some two-handed, driving piano and
Kirk's reeds are a pulsing ensemble.
"Black root" is some primitive soul
as Rahsaan blows black mystery ("a piece of bamboo and a yard
long metal tube--two pipes are played simultaneously. The long
tube is the drone tube which is in the key of G.") and
accompanies himself on bass drum and cymbals. Kirk's vocal sounds
are slightly disturbing, like meeting of Stone Age man at the
mouth of his cave.
"One Ton," a fast, pounding blues is
from Rahsaan's set at the 1968 Newport Jazz Festival where he
scored a huge hit. A flute solo, self-accompanied with singing
turns into a flute-nose flute duet and then he makes the flute
twang like a guitar, punctuating the whole trip with his siren
whistle. Wheeee!
The happy, light-spirited "A Laugh for
Rory" is an appreciation of his young son delivered by flute.
Drummer Jimmy Hopps is taking care of business and pianist Ron
Burton has a fleet solo.
A journey into Rahsaan exotica, "Rahsaanica,"
is the closer. he begins on piccolo and then goes to flute while
accompanying himself on the harmonium. When I asked producer Joel
Dorn how Rahsaan did that, he answered, "With his
thigh." Maurice McKinley is on conga and Joe Habao Texidor on
tambourine.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the total music fount, is
a sightless visionary.
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Rahsaan Roland Kirk plays tenor sax, stritch,
manzello, B. Flat & E Flat clarinettes, flute, black puzzle
flute, nose flute, black mystery pipes, harmonium, piccolo,
English horn, flexafone, whistle, bass drum, thundersheet, sock
cymbal, bells, music box, palms, typani, gong and applies the use
of bird sounds and is also heard vocally on "Search for the
Reason Why."
He plays the above instruments individually and
simultaneously and it is impossible to determine which and how
many of the instruments are played at any given moment on any
selection. Source: Atlantic Recording Corporation, 1971 * *
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Rahsaan
Roland Kirk on YouTube
Volunteered Slavery /
Bright Moments, part 1 /
Bright Moments, part 2
Nightmusic /
I Say A Little Prayer /
Balm in Gilead /
Buddy Guy, Roland Kirk, and Jack Bruce
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RRahsaan Roland Kirk (August 7, 1935 – December 5, 1977)
was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played tenor
saxophone, flute and many other instruments. He was renowned for
his onstage vitality, during which virtuoso improvisation was
accompanied by comic banter, political ranting, and the ability
to play several instruments simultaneously. Kirk was born Ronald
Theodore Kirk in Columbus, Ohio, but felt compelled by a dream
to transpose two letters in his first name to make Roland. He
became blind at an early age as a result of poor medical
treatment. In 1970, Kirk added "Rahsaan" to his name after
hearing it in a dream.
Wikipedia
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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Ratification
The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A notable historian
of the early republic, Maier devoted a
decade to studying the immense
documentation of the ratification of the
Constitution. Scholars might approach
her book’s footnotes first, but history
fans who delve into her narrative will
meet delegates to the state conventions
whom most history books, absorbed with
the Founders, have relegated to
obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local
counties and towns, they influenced a
convention’s decision to accept or
reject the Constitution. Their
biographies and democratic credentials
emerge in Maier’s accounts of their
elections to a convention, the political
attitudes they carried to the conclave,
and their declamations from the floor.
The latter expressed opponents’
objections to provisions of the
Constitution, some of which seem
anachronistic (election regulation
raised hackles) and some of which are
thoroughly contemporary (the power to
tax individuals directly). Ripostes from
proponents, the Federalists, animate the
great detail Maier provides, as does her
recounting how one state convention’s
verdict affected another’s. Displaying
the grudging grassroots blessing the
Constitution originally received, Maier
eruditely yet accessibly revives a
neglected but critical passage in
American history.—Booklist |
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update 10
March 2012
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