Poem of the Week: jewels of thought (for gil scott-heron)

jewels of thought (for gil scott-heron)

Ras Moshe

to all the times i saw you/floating/passing through the streets
all bones and clothes
eyes ablaze
a lightening rod for new york elements
but quite ready to put some disrespectful child in check with wisdom at any given time/we still laugh with you
i actually saw your pain when you realized that this revolution is televised after all/dashikis and pharaoh's records collecting dust in the closets of the defeated
i hope you can see that some of us took heed to your etchings in red/the point of it all/made very clear/these earthly battles fought

but, what if there's only a battle here on earth and not in the star trek hereafter? ah yes..that's what you were saying after all.
we rode the no. 2 train together and that was like a lifetime of school for me/class in session/the end of concession
we be your graduates/in jazz splendor


 


[Ras Moshe is  a NYC-based jazz musician and composer. A good interview with him is here. If you are in the New York area his gigs at the Brecht Forum are well worth catching. This appreciation of Gil Scott-Heron is based on actual experience, and addresses in passing what the British Marxist historian Christopher Hill called "The Experience of Defeat." ]

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Commonwealth Bands: Bottom-up Socialism in Jazz

I'm reading a book, One O'Clock Jump, on the legendary jazz band, the Oklahoma City Blue Devils, a "territory band" that played, in various incarnations, from about 1923 to 1933. Their fame resides not in their output--they only cut one lone 78 the whole time--but in the players who cut their teeth in Blue Devil ranks en route to bigger gigs and lasting fame. We're talking about the likes of Lester Young, Jimmy Rushing, Oran "Hot Lips" Page and Count Basie, to name a few. Hell, Ralph Ellison jammed with them as a high schooler.

What struck me, for purposes of this post, was the following sentence:

We do know that the Blue Devils were a democratic entity, a "commonwealth band" as they termed it, with no leader who received more money than the others.

The author, scholar Douglas Henry Daniels, goes on to flesh this out, explaining that at different times, different members took on the role of manager for a couple of years, adding that

these members did not make decisions for the band; in other words, they were not managers whose word was final. The Blue Devils' motto was "All for one and one for all"--like their heroes of the movie based on Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers. Members had some say in their choices and they all voted on major decisions.

According to Daniels, this was a common practice among the jazz bands of the Southwest until the Depression. How do ya like that! Cultural workers, famously individualist, spontaneously choosing an essentially socialist organizational model. And these outfits, evolving toward the swing bands of the thirties, could have a dozen members or more!

If, dear reader, you know anything else about this phenomenon, please drop a word in the comments. Come to think of it, surely there's a book in here someplace, on economic (and artistic) democracy in popular music, with more on the territory bands of the Southwest and later but smaller jazz combos and with plenty of experience from the rock and roll world to look at, both positive and negative.

I leave you with a taste of what the Blue Devils contributed to jazz, a Soundie from the thirties featuring at least two of the band's alumni, singer Jimmy Rushing and pianist/bandleader Count Basie.

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