Are you familiar with
Joe McPhee? I wasn’t till yesterday a
friend sent me a link to his album “Nation Time.” The title song starts out with a,
confrontational call and response where in he yells, “What time is it?” “Nation time.” Edgy, driving, free jazz sincerity. I hear the electric organ and see is enormous
fro on the cover and figure it’s an early 70’s mix and, upon checking, yes, its
from 1971.
I took a look on Wiki and it turns out he’s from
Poughkeepsie, New York where my mom’s family has lived for five generations or
so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_McPhee Cool.
I sent a link to her, a member of the Dutchess County Arts Council,
asking if she was familiar with the man and she upped the ante, sending me back
a link with an interview of him done two years ago at Vassar College, where she
was an administrator. http://pages.vassar.edu/aacvr-germany/
Of Bahamanin descent, born in Miami Florida, he moved at a
young age to Poughkeepsie. He speaks
with pride of having been raised there and how grateful he was that his parents
moved to that city on the Hudson. And
this fills me with a certain pride as well.
Poughkeepsie often gets a bad rap. Like many Hudson River towns, its
glory days revolved around first the river and then the rail and proximity to
New York. And when their importance
waned, and opportunity fled, the city suffered.
But growing up in the town, before the decay, was, as he
said an “Ozzie and Harriet”-like grade school existence in an integrated grade
school with other immigrants from Hungry and Italy and I wondered immediately
if he attended the same school my grandmother taught for so many years, there in
town. All those stories she told about
her good kids and her bad kids. Was he
one of the little guys in the front of the room, behaving himself, no doubt,
because, as she always said, she had eyes in the back of her head.
Harkening back to my posting about jazz in the Egyptian
Military (see “Naveen”) he learned theory, he learned harmony playing in the
United States Army. He wanted to pursue
electronic training in the military but it wasn’t available. So, faced with being canon fodder or blowing
a horn, he opted for music. And like so
many African American service men, musicians, who experienced the comparative
freedom and dignity of Europe at that time, the gall was all the more
insufferable to return home to domestic racism.
He speaks with such a venerable calm in the clip that is a
perfect juxtaposition to the man yelling at the outset on this 1971 disc. The band pushing out boundaries, involved in
some excruciating, beautiful birthing that engenders his poise and
sophistication as a senior. I sure would
like to meet Mr. Joe McPhee and learn more about civic pride and check what
grade school he went to. I hope he does
a gig there in Po-town, when I’m around.
Now let me tell you something, cause I’m in a rush this
morning. I was driving my daughter in to
school, this, my second such trip of the morning, and as I’ve no doubt
mentioned the traffic is abysmal at the school.
(I go on about it at length in the ‘Envy’ chapter of ‘7DS’ that I’m supposed
to be waxing about this week.) There is
a long line that snakes in past one school on into the drop off for the second. People are k-turning in on the right,
k-turning out on the left and the progression is tortuous. But it is made significantly worse by selfish,
anarchic driving. People want to cut
around to the right or the left of the line, into oncoming traffic just to cut back
in, two cars ahead. I do my best to stay
cool. I really do try. But it drives me out of my mind in the instant.
Anthropologically speaking, I get it. The tribe has different norms. I’m in a different aquarium. I need to swim like the other fish. But when someone drives impulsively,
selfishly, expecting me to submit to their whim, it feels like a personal
affront. It feels like someone doesn’t
value my daughter and my life and before I can compare notes with Margaret
Meade, I am livid.
Today, crawling along in line, a white BMW cuts around to my
right, impulsively, abruptly. A bike was
going through as well and we could have easily crunched the person but I broke
hard, rode the horn and raised my hand in a how-can-you-be-so-fucking-stupid,
kind of gesture at some lady my age, driving her kid to school. She scowled back in an
au-contraire-how-can-you-be-so-fucking-stupid-for-as-you-well-know-selfish-driving-is-the-only-norm-and-this-gesture-of-mine-is-well-within-the-bounds-of-expedient-civility-foreign-man,
kind of gesture.
We’ll probably end up manning the booth together and the
school tag-sale and become fast friends.
She’s probably a lovely individual that has sophisticated opinions about
Zhao Mengfu. Always, meditate on the
global access card: 入乡随俗[1] But for that one moment man . .
.
Which reminds me of Poughkeepsie. Driving up Columbus Drive, to the East West
Arterial last summer I stopped at red light before turning left. No one was around. Then dude rode up behind
me and rode his horn, hard. Light was
red. I rolled down the window and said,
“the light is red, man.” He yelled back
at me, “If you lived here you’d know that you can turn left on this red cause
there’s no oncoming.” Hmm. What do I know?
No aquarium’s easy.
Even mine, isn’t mine.
[1] rùxiāngsuísú: When
you enter a village, follow the local customs (idiom); do as the natives do /
When in Rome, do as the Romans do
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