Transcript

Thoughts About, and Selections

from "Melodic Faces"

We're doing something a little differently for this episode of the Jazz Legacy

Radio Podcast. If you're familiar with the program you know we do interviews

and primarily orate about jazz. But I want to share some music with you. Each

song here, has a particular story and is kind of connected in some ways to

memories and elders and the folklore of the African diaspora that I grew up with.

These are compositions of mine and they're part of a bunch of songs that I've

had in my repertoire for a while; the oldest ones having been written about

twenty five years ago. And last year I selected - well, earlier than last year- I

selected about eleven of these songs, intending to put them out on an album.

And that was supposed to be released in 2020, but of course we had COVID so

things ground to a halt and in 2023 the album was finally released and it's called

Melodic Faces. And there's music you're hearing from it right now.

So, here are echoes of predecessors, reflections of memories by way of song

and music inspired by folklore that I grew up with. So the Jazz Legacy Radio

Podcast presents music from the album Melodic Faces.

Ancestor's View

My Mother, who was Jamaican, was a master at the Island's version of

dreaming up worlds in the air, constructing their intricacies with words;

concocting all manner of circumstances, leading all manner of protagonist into

either merriment or mayhem - you know, storytelling.

Quite often the seemingly hapless, almost-a-complete-foil of narration, was

Anansi, the timeless, generation less, fictional arachnid, simply trying to catch a

break, or get to someplace and back, un-bossed, untroubled, unscathed,

unharmed and uneaten.

As per tradition, the escapades, mishaps and nick-of-time adventures of our

heroic, eight-legged 'everyperson', often began with the storyteller saying,

"Crick-Crack." Hearing these stories in this way was how I grew up. And I was

always interested in how the African diaspora makes such particulars of my

background not solely specific to me. Neither are such things confined to

geography. So I was pleasantly surprised years ago, learning that Haitians have

a tradition in storytelling, where the orator shouts"Krick" and is answered bylisteners who say, "Krack". This isn't completely shocking; after all, the

transatlantic slave trade's history means we find similarities which illustrate how

cultural elements were often divided and wound up separated, with subtle or

overt differences along the way.

Through the years growing up, the more I examined varying differences in the

diaspora's collective traditions, foods, dances and musics, the more I saw

ancestral voices speaking at once; the variations being seemingly endless, but

hailing from common main arteries and traveling into an array of tributaries. To

me, that's the basis of my culture: the kaleidoscope that makes up the African

diaspora, most effectively seen with an eye thinking across time, rather than in

the midst of it. You might call it an ancestor's view.

SONG: ANCESTOR'S VIEW

It's You

Once somebody asked me, who would write their stories, finally listening;

finally giving truth its sunbathing time? Who would, at long last, celebrate what

battles we had won? Who would breathe air and color into the anonymous

translucent faceless, fading inklings of identities who fought and won, or lost- o

What did you think of the program?

Despite what some have said, this music is far from dead.