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.
55 min