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BROOKLYN JAZZ CONNECT

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Members: 22
Latest Activity: Nov. 27, 2008

BROOKLYN'S JAZZ RENAISSANCE ~ By Robin D.G. Kelley

In March 2003, Jazz at Lincoln Center hosted a forum titled “Jazz and Social Protest” that drew a predominantly black, standing-room only crowd. Moderated by Robert O’Meally, director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, the panel consisted of poets Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka, and trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater. All three artists made explicit statements against the war in Iraq. Coincidentally, three days later the Los Angeles Times ran an article by critic Don Heckman arguing that there were few jazz musicians out front against the war.1 From this, he concluded that despite some historic exceptions, the jazz world simply is not that political.

Of course, critics like Heckman who look for “politics” in song titles, explicit references to world events, or musicians’ commentary, invariably reduce politics to protest. But during the forum, Baraka insisted that the language of “social protest” obscures the real political meaning of the music. Indeed, the entire panel discussed jazz in terms of building community and sustaining African American culture, mentoring new generations in the tradition, recognizing the democratic, communal, even spiritual nature of jazz performance, and reclaiming and preserving this great African American art form.

If these issues really lie at the heart of the politics of jazz, then a revolution is taking place in Brooklyn. While predominantly white “downtown” audiences squeeze into the Blue Note or the Vanguard to be entertained by the hip, across the bridge Brooklyn’s black activists and artists are reclaiming the music’s roots and employing it for the political, social and spiritual uplift of the community. Jazz is everywhere in Central Brooklyn—at intimate nightclubs like Up Over Jazz Cafe, Pumpkins, and The Jazz Spot; at local coffeehouses like Sistas’ Place; in community centers; even in the house of the Lord. Brooklyn has its own black-oriented jazz magazine, Pure Jazz, edited by the tireless JoAnn Cheatham. And as anyone who has attended the annual Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival can tell you, the audiences for the music are predominantly black, representing all classes and ages. Quiet as it seems, reaffirming the music’s links to black community struggles and social transformation marks a radical challenge to jazz’s current trajectory, which has become deeply commercialized, rendered color-blind and apolitical, and promoted as American high culture.

The key force behind the Brooklyn revolution is the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium. Founded about five years ago by a group of black artists, activists, and entrepreneurs, including the late singer Torrie McCartney, trumpeter and composer Ahmed Abdullah, and veteran black community activists Viola Plummer and Jitu Weusi, the CBJC set out to promote “African American classical music” as a collective, community project. The CBJC is made up of several club owners, nearly half a dozen churches, and a variety of community centers. More than a business venture, the CBJC was created to spread positive cultural values through the music. Bob Myers, owner of Up Over Jazz Cafe and original CBJC member, explained, “This is the African way, to promote the culture through the music and arts, and to do so not in competition but in cooperation.”2

What the CBJC is attempting to do has deep roots in Brooklyn’s history and its rich jazz heritage. Back in the day, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, and others played at Brooklyn venues like Putnam Central, the Blue Coronet, the Baby Grand, Club La Marchal, or Tony’s Club Grandean. Trumpeters Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan helped put Brooklyn on the global jazz map in 1965 with the release of Night of the Cookers, vols. 1 and 2, recorded live at the Club La Marchal on Nostrand Avenue and President Street. Brooklynites enjoyed occasional concerts at the Paramount Theater, and many danced to big bands at the Elks or Sonia ballrooms. But this barely scratches the surface, for as long-time Brooklyn resident and former musician Freddie Robinson told me, “The music was everywhere. Every little corner bar had jazz.” Some of the better known joints were the Pleasant Lounge, Club 78, Kingston Lounge, and Club Continental.3

Brooklyn jazz musicians have also been working cooperatively for at least a half-century. Indeed, one of Myers’s models for the CBJC was Club Jest Us, a group of jazz musicians’ wives living in Brooklyn during the 1960s who worked collectively in order to secure gigs for their husbands. A decade earlier, Brooklyn-born pianist and composer Randy Weston recalled working with his neighborhood pals, including drummer Max Roach, to organize musicians’ collectives. Weston and other musicians learned a great deal about cooperation and self-reliance from his father, Frank Weston, who inspired young musicians at his restaurant with stories of Marcus Garvey, Africa, and the continuing struggle to uplift the black community.4

During the 1960s and early 1970s, the late Cal Massey, an extraordinary composer and trumpeter, turned his Brooklyn home into a veritable community center. Besides writing explicitly revolutionary pieces like “The Black Liberation Suite,” Massey organized benefit concerts for the Black Panther Party that encouraged the full participation of the community, especially youth, by banning alcohol and providing free childcare. Around the same time, Jitu Weusi, founder and current chairman of the CBJC, promoted jazz as a cultural and political force to mobilize Brooklyn’s black community when he founded The East in 1969. Located in the heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant, The East was a black cultural center where artists such as bassist Reggie Workman performed and held workshops for youth.5

During the 1970s and 1980s, in the wake of the borough’s decline due to high unemployment, federal cutbacks, and drugs, black activists who sought to revitalize Brooklyn once again turned to jazz. The Bed-Stuy Restoration Corporation was one of those institutions that helped pave the way for the current Brooklyn renaissance. The Center for Arts and Culture at Bed-Stuy Restoration Corp, for example, trains young people in the art of jazz and runs the Skylight Gallery where musicians frequently perform. Myers’s Up Over Jazz Cafe is also a space for community building. Neighborhood musicians work out ideas through open jam sessions, and Myers has even hosted several nights of “Hip Hop Meets Jazz,” where singing sensation Bilal jammed with friends, including the equally sensational pianist Jason Moran.

Perhaps the best-known and most politicized community space for jazz is Sistas’ Place on Nostrand and Jefferson Avenues. Run by a collective whose members have ties to political organizations such as the December 12th Movement and the Harriet Tubman/Fannie Lou Hamer Collective, Sistas’ Place hosts a wide range of cultural activities. Any given week one might hear the Sun Ra Arkestra or
saxophonist René McLean, or check out a Sunday afternoon panel discussion on reparations for slavery or police brutality.6

The jazz revolution in Brooklyn has not led to a distinctive “Brooklyn aesthetic,” largely because virtually all genres are represented—from bebop to avant-garde. Nevertheless, some general characteristics of the music and artists deserve comment.

The CBJC encourages young artists by hosting frequent open jam sessions and promoting conversations between jazz and other musical genres. During the 2003 festival, for example, BRIC Studio on Rockwell Place hosted DJ Logic performing with jazz musicians, and The Jazz Spot committed its entire March calendar to young women instrumentalists. The most important characteristic of the CBJC’s artistic vision is its reverence for black music and musicians throughout the African Diaspora and on the continent. Following in the footsteps of native son Randy Weston, a pioneer in the movement to reconnect Africa with African American musical traditions, several of the festival performers incorporate African instruments, Afro-Latin and Caribbean rhythms, as well as various forms of black sacred music. Ultimately, if there is any essential principle behind the movement, it is to celebrate and reclaim black music for Brooklyn’s black community.

For CBJC co-founder Ahmed Abdullah, the very existence of black, community-based spaces for jazz is “regenerating.”7 Abdullah himself has helped to create these spaces by working closely with schools and churches. In February 2003, Concord Baptist Church held a well-attended tribute to Gigi Gryce and Randy Weston, at which elementary school kids sang Gryce’s “Social Call” and a teenaged band known as Friends and Strangers struggled valiantly with Weston’s best-known compositions. The predominantly black crowd embraced this music with the enthusiasm of a Sunday morning revival. For the last two springs, Concord hosted “100 Golden Fingers in Praise,” a concert of sacred music led by pianist Barry Harris and at least nine other pianists, including Bertha Hope, Gil Coggins, and Valerie Capers. Besides Concord Baptist Church, several other religious institutions including St. Philips Episcopal Church, Our Lady of Victory
Roman Catholic Church, Jane’s United Methodist, First Pres-byterian Church,
and Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church have hosted performances as part
of the Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival. Last year, Brooklyn’s 651 ARTS and musical director Akua Dixon brought together a jazz ensemble featuring trombonist Craig Harris with the Total Praise Choir and rocked Emmanuel Baptist Church.

For many of the ministers involved with the CBJC, as well as for activists like Abdullah, bringing the music back to its roots in black communities is necessary, both for the music’s survival as well as for the community’s resurrection. No one is saying jazz ought to be the exclusive property of black folk; it never was. Instead, the music needs to be “allowed to grow in the atmosphere that nurtures its creative juices,” Abdullah explained. This is not a tale of protest but a story of social and spiritual liberation. And for Abdullah, and presumably most of the folks behind the Brooklyn revolution, thinking of jazz as a spiritually liberating force for a community in struggle can serve as a model for the rest of the world: “That’s what the music is about anyway. That’s why it’s loved around
the world. That’s why I say in its true essence Jazz is a music of the spirit.”8

—Columbia University

Notes

1 Don Heckman, “Music (and Musicians) as a Force for Change,” Los Angeles Times (21 March 2003): E19.

2 Bob Myers, interview with author, 21 February 2003.

3 K. Leander Williams, “Brooklyn, New York,” in Lost Jazz Shrines (The Lost Shrines Project, 1998), 12-16; Bilal Abdurahman, In the Key of Me: The Bedford Stuyvesant Renaissance, 1940s-60s Revisited (Contemporary Visions, 1993); Randy Weston, interview with author, 20 August 2001; Bob Meyers, interview with author, 21 February 2003.

4 Myers, interview with author; Weston, interview with author; Ira Gitler, “Randy Weston,” Down Beat (February 1964): 16-17; Arthur Taylor, Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews (Da Capo Press, 1993), 20-21; Valerie Wilmer, Jazz People (Da Capo Press, 1977), 79.

5 Fred Ho, “‘The Damned Don’t Cry’: The Life and Music of Calvin Massey” (unpublished paper in author’s possession); Eric Porter, What is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists (University of California Press, 2002), 216; Ahmed Abdullah, e-mail message to author, 17 March 2003.
6 Abdullah, e-mail message to author; www.millionsforreparations.com
7 Abdullah, e-mail message to author.
8 Ibid.

SELECTED BROOKLYN JAZZ VENUES

Sistas' Place
456 Nostrand Avenue (Jefferson Avenue)
Brooklyn, NY 11216
(718) 398-1766
www.sistasplace.org

Up Over Jazz Cafe
351 Flatbush Ave (Seventh Avenue)
Brooklyn, NY 11238
(718) 398-5413
www.upoverjazz.com/index.htm

Pumpkins
1448 Nostrand Avenue (Church Avenue)
Brooklyn, NY 11226
(718) 284-9086

The Jazz Spot
375 Kosciuszko Street (Marcus Garvey Blvd.)
Brooklyn, NY 11221
(718) 453-7825

thejazz.8m.com/home.html

Skylight Gallery
Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation
1368 Fulton Street (New York Avenue)
Brooklyn, NY 11216
(718) 636-9671

651 Arts
651 Fulton Street (Ashland Place)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
(718) 636-4181
www.651arts.org

Discussion Forum

Clubs in Brooklyn

Started by Jeff King Feb. 22, 2008.

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Comment by Jeff King on November 26, 2008 at 6:18pm: Shop Brooklyn
Jazz, Food & Shopping Afroart Designs 316 Stuyvesant Ave Brooklyn NY Saturday Nov 29, 2008 The Jeff King Band 3pm - 8pm
Home Decor , Clothing , Jewerly

Comment by Jeff King on April 10, 2008 at 6:27am: The Jeff King Band Live @ Afroart Designs Saturday April 19th from 4PM to 8Pm Afroart is Celebrating The Fine Art of Jazz Trombonist Dick Griffith( formely with Roland Kirk and many others)
The Affair is free, food served.
Afroart designs
316 Stuyvesant Ave
Brooklyn New York 11233
718- 573-6110

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Dear Tamm E:

Just a note to tell you that it is nice to read about you!!!

You share so much great info about others and about the music, but nice to know that you are WAILIN' yourself and getting appreciation!!

Global Jazz Network is a really important way for all of us to keep hooked up and informed and to SLOWLY BUT SURELY SPREAD THE MESSAGE AND THE PHILOSOPHY of what Jazz is in its many different forms and what the styles are/is all about.

Just played for Paquito's honoring and received gold medal

John Faddis, save Brubeck, James moody and a bunch of KILLER YOUNG players and we all played and spoke about Paquito and jazz and all fine music

and Roberta Gamborini, who was excellent.

wish you had been there!

Through you, Donald Harrison hooked me up with Pittsburgh Jazz info and I feel like i am living there just reading about all the great happenings.

As Fall is here, I am back to my normal insane schedule, but wanted to write you back BEFORE The STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS goes into effect. I am my own secretary, so I am dedicated but SLOW!

And I can't fire myself as my own secretary or I might get hit with an Age Discrimination Lawsuit (in case I decided to sue myself for clerical incompetence).

As of this moment, a new documentary film is being made about me, to be released a few months after my 80th birthday, which is coming up next year Nov. 17, 2010. (12 months from now).

The film will end with the videoing of the big 80th birthday bash at Symphony Space in NYC and then have snippets of films from the past, with all kinds of fun stuff from the 50's thru today.
It will be called "David Amram: The First 80 Years"

Fortunately, I don't have to edit the hundreds of hours of footage or do new music the score, since the film maker, Larry Kraman is also the founder of Newport Classics recordings and knows all my symphonic as well as operatic, theater, film and jazz and world music work, so I am in good hands!!

The same people at Newport Classics Recordings are also making a Spoken Word series for I-Tunes, with me reading from my three books Vibrations, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.

And they are also recording some of my chamber music compositions and a new jazz record,
Next Spring my opera "12th Night", with libretto by Joe Papp (all words of Shakespeare), is having its eighth production and being FILMED!! Even most dead composers aren't that lucky!!!

This last five weeks I have appeared all over the country at concerts of my music, conducting and playing, doing spoken word with music, jazz, folk and world music festivals, film festivals and readings from my books.

Just the first week of October, I played Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival in Lowell Mass, then the at midnight , following my last concert there , drove all night to Lagaurda Airport to catch the early Sunday mornng flight for the annual Farm Aid Concert in St Louis, where i played with Willie Nelson's band. The next morning (Monday the 5th , I flew bck to NYC in tme for my monthly concert at Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village.

The next night (Tuesday the 6th) the memorial at Symphony Space for Frank Mccourt, and the next day Wednesday the 7th) the celebration of the new authorized biography of Thelonious Monk with members of his family and musicians I have known since I first arrived in NYC in 1955!!

The 11th i flew off to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates,( i got at least get a few hours sleep) and tried to catch up on over 200 e-mails during the 13 hour flight, before arriving there and performing a concert of global music in conjunction with the score I composed for Teri McLuhan's new documentary feature film The Frontier Ghandi.

Then back in the USA in time to do programs centered around a performance of my Saxophone concerto Ode to Lord Buckley, in Loudoun Virginia ..

Then I went off to Toronto Nov 1st for a concert and appearance at the Diaspora Film Festival .

Now i am back at home hiding out composing and writing!

I am starting my fourth book "David Amram: The First 80 Years", (the same name as the new doc film being made about me), which will be finished at the end of next year and will end, like the film, with the monstro birthday bash concert for my Big 80... 12 months from now....(Nov 17 2010) in New York.

And every day, still finding time to continue composing a new orchestral work, having been doing it while on the run, and now every minute when I can hide out at the Farm in between travels.

And performing whenever possible with my three kids, each of whom have their own bands.

So as the BIG 80 approaches twelve months from now, (2010) while I may be still shy, I am not yet the retiring type.

Most of my ever-changing my schedule info. when i can get my elderly secretary (unfortunately myself) to type it up, is posted on my web page www.davidamram.com under Upcoming Events.

And my e-mail amramdavid@aol.com is always the best way to reach me as I carry my laptop with me everywhere, and Facebook, MySpace, etc., is hard to deal with and not always reliable!

You might find it fun to access an old performance of my 1971 Rondo a la Turca on the Internet for FREE!!!

The person who is conducting the Chicago Symphony and playing the middle eastern flute (who looks like my grandson) is actually a much younger looking me in 1977, recording for a PBS network TV show about my music. Pepper Adams and Jerry Dodgion are also playing.

In 1977, most of members of the Chicago Symphony who appear on the recording of this performance had never heard, much less ever played, very much music from the Middle East, and since I write everything out on paper accurately to indicate the way it should be played, that's what they were playing, and they actually began to sound like the Radio Beirut Orchestra, and suddenly as the piece went on, they started feeling something different than they had ever felt before, as they played.

It is really fun to watch their faces as they started getting ingo the old time magical groove that Middle eastern music creates and takes you into.

During the first few minutes of the piece, you can see the musicians all playing up a storm but looking as if they were thinking that I was an alien from another planet in outer space, and had brought some extra terrestrial music with me for them to play.

And then as the piece progresses, you can see, as well as hear, that by the end of the piece, the idiom of this music got them excited enough to be actually enjoying playing it!!

And playing it really well!

That's what music, like film, novels, poetry, painting, dance, language and good HOME COOKING does for all of us.

It takes you to that place from where it comes, and makes you feel that you now have a new home in a new part of the world.

I send cheers from that endless road and wish you joy and energy for all you do

David

Hi Tamm E!

I was just saying that you knocked this out of the park with TGJN. We have needed something like this for so long and I am telling my friends about this. I said that it is sort of like a myspace for jazz but it is actually so much more. This is real. The people here truly love jazz and we know people like that are not your average people.

I have felt for a long time that straight-ahead jazz has been slipping away from us. I have hope now that there will be a resurgence (or shall I say an insurgency:-) to bring this baby back full force!

You just knocked it out of the park. Thanks again.

xoxo,
Janie