I Get the Reference

Listening to Lee Morgan’s “Rajah”, the 1966 effort that was only recently released twenty years later, long after the great trumpeter’s death, is fine for the 6:05AM ride over.  Sun’s up.  Passed the first and second and third speed bump in the compound.  Greet the barely awake guard, with a “zao” as I turn outside and ride within the cones to the sound of “A Pilgrim’s Funny Farm” and Hank Mobley’s warm, round tenor runs that follow Lee’s first run.

At the gym though, something else is required.  Get the fifty-pound ring weight and lug it over to the adjustable incline that I start each day on.  Hard bop has its time and place, but I’m tired and I’m yawning and I need something to seize my mid-section.  Still stuck with whatever I’ve downloaded on Spotify, and I notice the green picture of Fela looking out the window on ‘Afrodisiac’ and look no further.  I find the thunder-groove titled: “Alu Jon Jonki Jon.”  Fela states, rather than asks “ready” and now, I am. 

That evening I was brought on to a call with two young professionals in Lagos who run a tech incubator that is planning a trip to China and Japan.  They wanted to discuss my and my partner’s work and see if we might help with their trip.   It was all I could do to not draw reference to their country’s seminal music tradition, not to interrupt the otherwise business-like chatter about startups and technical disruption to say: “I was listening to Fela at the gym this morning.”  To which they might have replied: “That’s nice.  You’re from the States, right?  I had on Glenn Campbell this morning at the gym, myself.”

Once, perhaps ten years ago down in the Guangzhou Westin Hotel top floor lounge, I couldn’t but overhear the conversation at the next table.  Three professional looking businessmen and two business women from an English speaking, sub-Saharan African country were chatting amicably.  One of them said to the other “Him no-be gentleman!”  Then too, I wanted to stand and let them know: “I get the reference!  Isn’t that something?  He put him tie, he put him singlet.”  How challenging sometimes to simply be quiet. 

Thursday, 4/25/19