by Matt Lavelle.

photo: Joan Fluer

A few months ago,.Giuseppi Logan called me up and said,.”man,.we have to work,.I can’t get any work,.I’m broke man.” Giuseppi is under the impression that we can make enough money playing music to have our rent paid,and and enough food in our stomachs so that they stop growling at us.I had exhausted all my limited options,.and now started to understand that Brother G has just not been received back even close to how brother Grimes was a few years ago.Giuseppi has never been stronger in the time that I’ve known him,.and we’ve had some BRIGHT moments,.notably in Philly,.when Dave Burrell came by and we just BURNED the ARS nova arts center to the ground.We opened the ESP Albert Ayler festival about a month ago,.which was also great.G’s CD has actually just sold out.

BUT,.that hasn’t changed the fact that he has just about no money to live on on a daily basis and has become so much a part of Tompkins square Park in NYC,.that if he wasn’t there playing during the day,.the park might not even EXIST.Still,.we refuse to just let it go,..after all,.music is all we have.The 35 years between us don’t amount to a hill of beans next to our mutual addiction to music.Play the music we live or die.Being down and wasn’t going to stop us.Not this time.

So I reached out again to folks that might be able to send G some LOVE,.and brother John Zorn responded,.literally in about 5 minutes from my email,.saying he was taking action,.knew Giuseppi,.and had heard him in the park.A very short time after that,.Brother G had a gig booked at the STONE.Maybe the number one spot in NYC for the music we love.

Our usual crew was out of town so we called up G’s personal friend,drummer Gerard Faroux,.a sweet cat that can swing.Another brother G,.Gerard grew up in France.He’s just about the same age as Giuseppi.He was subbing for drum legend Warren Smith.My long term brother Francois Grillot was actually in France,.so we reached out to one of the greatest and favorite bass players in NYC,.brother Hilliard Greene.The stage was set for our concert,.last night,.a 10pm Sunday set.

I had to take a cab from the West side,.after a concert with my great friend Ras Moshe,.and asked the driver to drive up Giuseppe’s block.Sure enough,.there was G and his alto boppin up the street,.in a suit and sneakers,.and his wild white beard.I asked the cab to pull over and got G to jump in.”Hey man,..where’s this Stone at?

9:59:There’s about 4 people in the audience,.but G and I are amped up anyway,.ready to play,.to REALLY play,.and he’s playing piano for himself as a few people watch,.not sure what’s happening,.and then..

BOOM! The place is packed,.and people have that eager anticipation thing going,..somehow just knowing there about to experience something special.I myself was tired from really going for it on the show bout an hour before,.but as soon as I saw Hill next to me ready to go,.I felt like Lee Morgan himself was the front row.

“Show me what you got.”

Then,.it just HAPPENED…

Giuseppi started into his tune BOP DUES.Everyone thinks of him from his records as the mystery OUT cat,.and he IS that guy,.but he also wants to just PLAY,..the best he possibly can,.and once we escape his crisp little swinging bop line,.we just start bReAkInG iT DoWn.SwIrLiNg and tWiRLInG.I came out and did some WhirLInG.Hill chose to BOB n WeAvE,.while Gerard did the crisp BRisK n’ wHisk.

3 different generations,.both In and Out,.free,.and swinging,.all there TOGETHER,.trying to just BE together.Somehow Jazz,.whatever it’s supposed to be,.BECAME,.and a slight clue as to what she really is was revealed.Wasn’t about the right changes or the most complicated heads.It was about our SOUNDS,.and the stories of our lives.It was freedom of expression above all.Sing your song where you FEEL it,..play the sound of your life.

People may not know what they were being a part of,.but they FELT they were and started yelling to us in support and also letting themselves be a part of us being together.They were now part of US and we were ALL together.I thought about Charles Mingus,.and just why we play.It doesn’t happen that often,.but every now and then the music reminds us that what we are really does mean something important,.something special.

It means,.that were alive.

Giuseppi wasn’t done,.not by a long shot,..as we got into “Under My Skin”,.”Cherokee”,.”Over the Rainbow”,.and more,.all G style,.which had everybody dancing in their skin.Giuseppi finished every one off with his vocal from record,.”Love me tonight”,.as he told me,.”I Want them to Love me!,.I want the people to Love me!” Afterwords a dear friend of mine came to me with tears in her eyes and said,.”Bless you”.Well,.all of us our blessed with the ability to actually be who we are every now and then.Giuseppi helped show me that to in his own G way.

“We can play man! We can play!”

See,.it could be that in that end,..all Jazz really is,.is a 4 letter word..

…

for Love.

photo: Joan Fluer

Original Post

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viola and Casio SK-1

Composition by Alan Sondheim based on a composition by A.S.
This is a country blues bona fide channelling through A.W. by A.S.
This is an authentic experience.

The Ensemble
Theresa Wong – Cello, Voice (US)
Emilio Tamez – Percussion (MX)
Marko Novachcoff – Various Winds (US)
Alexander Bruck – Viola (MX)
Ava Mendoza- Guitar (US)
Julián Martínez Vázquez- Violin (MX)
Vinny Golia – Various Winds (US)
Carmina Escobar – Voice, Electronics (MX)
Thollem McDonas – Piano, Artistic Director (US)

MP3s of Improvisations Mexico City – Nov. 8th, 2009

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Calendar 2009
November 7th, 8th, 9th Recording in Mexico City at Sony BMG Studios
November 10th at Festival Internacional de Puebla, Puebla Mexico

About the ensemble
This ensemble, made up equally of musicians from Mexico and
the U.S., is one of two components of the Americas Comprovisers
Exchange Network (ACEN), whose intention is to foster more
communication and collaboration between musicians of our two
bordering countries as well as a better understanding of and
appreciation for the citizens of our countries in general.

The verb estamos in Spanish means ‘we are’ in the non-permanent
sense. This is intrinsic to the nature of the Estamos Ensemble.
Eventually each year the ensemble will be led by a different
musician who will hand-pick a fresh ensemble of new performers
and composers. As well, each performance will be fresh in the
hands of great improvisers and some of the most accomplished
composers from both sides of the border. This concept is in the
spirit of the project: always changing and open to new and
different kinds of involvement.

The ensemble consists of nine musicians, four musicians from each
country, and myself as musician and Artistic Director. The criteria
for the selection and invitation to perform in this ensemble was
based first on individuals who expressed a connection with the
spirit of the project and who see the need for this kind of
collaboration and exchange. Secondly, it was based on the
individuals’ experience and ability.

I chose musicians who bring a lot of flexibility to the ensemble,
who have experience playing the works of living composers, who
are also improvisers, and who also play a variety of instruments.
The ensemble represents a cross-section of both countries, ethnically,
generationally, and in terms of gender. Taking advantage of the
flexibility of the individuals, the ensemble will perform the works
of living composers from both countries as well as spontaneous
composition (free and structured improvisation).

I hope this ensemble plays a role in creating healthier relations
between the two countries through the concerts as well as
community involvement. Ultimately, I hope the individual
members of this ensemble use Estamos to branch out in many
directions, collaborations, educational and community programs
in partnership with their counterparts across the border!
Sincerely, Thollem McDonas

http://www.thollem.com/EstamosEnsemble

Ashley Paul “To Much Togethers”

REL

Even before opening up the package, it’s pretty obvious that this release is a very personal operation. The gorgeous letterpressed cover holds artwork by Ms. Paul’s mother, a lovely abstract ink drawing with blotches of color evocative of sunset, or an Eastern-inspired print. Stuffed in a little pocket inside are an assortment of colorful letterpressed cards containing credits and more little abstract art pieces, commemorating an edition of 300. The music on the disc is just as individual, well-chosen, and consistently compelling.

[Read more →]

Funk, with Beards

by Brad Cohan

New York City has been the progenitor of myriad music scenes: punk rock, No Wave, noise-rock and more recent fads like dance-punk and Ivy League rock.

Indeed, something is amiss when the sound filling Issue Project Room’s cavernous courtyard isn’t aping the usual. Instead, a long-haired stoner beardo, draped in an ancient guided by Voices T-shirt and clutching an oboe, announces to the crowd gathered under the hot summer sun: “It’s OK if you want to dance, we’re a funk band!” Such is the universe according to CSC Funk Band, an ever-expanding crew (at press time, a 10-piece) comprised of all white dudes and one brave lady defying the requisite post-punk retreads and avant-garde noise-isms and inciting a DIY dance riot by channeling not Eno or Bowie but James Brown. [Read more →]

A Bluesman at Home in New York Jazz

By LARRY BLUMENFELD

In June 1986, Sun Ra, a pianist and bandleader with an adopted name, who claimed Saturn as his birthplace but was really from Alabama, and who cloaked his unclassifiably swinging music in celestial references, inaugurated SummerStage, a concert series sponsored by New York’s City Parks Foundation.

The next year, SummerStage’s headliners included Olu Dara, another inventive musician with an invented name, who proudly claims his actual birthplace of Natchez, Miss., and whose eclectic songs feature earthy details—chickens in the backyard, a peach tree, the dust of unpaved roads. Mr. Dara, who will play a free SummerStage show at Queensbridge Park in Long Island City on Wednesday, has been elemental to the series, which this year celebrates its 25th season with more than 100 events, nearly all free, throughout the five boroughs. A nine-minute version of his “Your Lips,” drawn from his 2004 appearance, appears on “Live From the Heart of the City” (Sunnyside), an album marking SummerStage’s 20th anniversary.

Jack VartoogianOlu Dara, seen here performing in 2008, is scheduled to play a free concert in Queens on Wednesday.

DARA

For four decades, Mr. Dara—whose given name is Charles Jones III—has popped up throughout New York: Whether playing cornet or pocket trumpet (and, occasionally, wooden Aboriginal horn) or strumming his Gibson guitar as he sings, he radiates off-handed confidence. A darling of the 1970s avant-garde jazz loft scene, Mr. Dara, 69, has also composed music for August Wilson plays and worked extensively with choreographer Dianne McIntyre. Though his music touches on references ranging from early jazz to Afro-Latin rhythms, avant-garde improvisation to R&B, he is a bluesman at heart, spinning yarns about, say, his favorite vegetable, okra, or the nature of desire. (His slow stomp, “Rain Shower,” describes a man who, sans umbrella, slides home to his woman.)

If Mr. Dara has marked New York’s cultural scene, so has the city shaped him. “I always refer to Brooklyn as my second home,” he says, “because it’s where I really started my own world.” While in the Navy, he met the Yoruba priest who gave him his adopted name (meaning “God is good”). After a final year of service in port at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he stuck around, working a succession of jobs: delivery driver, nightclub manager, hospital attendant. He held on to his horns and his Gibson and began sitting in with bands. He played in drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers for a year. His purposeful cornet tone soon grew prized, especially by the avant-garde jazz musicians he worked with in the ’70s.

“Olu can play with one note what most people can only play in a whole solo,” conductor Butch Morris once said.

“I never considered myself a jazz musician,” says Mr. Dara. “But I had a jazz sensibility, which I didn’t find out until I worked with Blakey.” Still, such music-making felt more like work than honest expression, so he formed his own band. It swung hard, drew audiences into a deep blues feeling, and often incorporated theatrical elements: Once, women with washboards, soap and water scrubbed away to the band’s rhythms onstage.

If mystery shrouds Mr. Dara’s music, it’s not just his shape-shifting aesthetic: It wasn’t until 1998, at age 57, that he made his recorded debut as a leader with “In the World: From Natchez to New York” (Atlantic). A live album, “Neighborhoods,” followed in 2001. “I was just never that interested in recordings,” he says. “I’ve always been after the live thing.”

Mr. Dara has inspired many musicians, especially younger ones who, like him, arrived in New York from other places. For singer Cassandra Wilson, who hails from Jackson, Miss., “Seeing someone who was as country as I was and who did not try to hide it was important. Olu never talked to me about what was technically driving the music. He talked about what was emotionally driving the music, what was the story inside.”

And his influence extends to his eldest son, Nasir Jones, better known as Nas, the most successful rapper to emerge from the fertile hip-hop scene in the Queensbridge Houses project. On a 2004 single, “Bridging the Gap,” which features his father, Nas raps: “Born in the game, discovered my father’s music like Prince searchin’ through boxes of Purple Rain.” A bit later Mr. Dara sings, “Little Africa is where we lived, better known as Queensbridge.”

“That’s what the neighborhood elders called this place,” says Mr. Dara, who now lives in Harlem. When he plays Queensbridge Park on Wednesday Mr. Dara will make a resonant homecoming: to a concert series he’s helped shape and the place where he raised his sons, in the city where he found his muse.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383082715952778.html

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Azure’s new song:
creatures – solo — creaturesv – w/violin — creaturesvv – w/violin mod –
creaturesvvv – w/violin mod

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Murmur (Creatures)

Creatures neath the surface/ murmur among themselves
Softly mewling in silt/ tender touching/ lovely
Many eyes wide open/ to stirrings of the surface
But remaining in the depths/ everything blurs smoothly
Some come with memories/ of others offered/ bartered
What could be given then/ but creatures warm and floating

Turning and mourning/ turns mourning and turning
Many eyes shyly close in comfort/ and close comfort
Many sights to see/ and many seas are sleeping
Many creatures slipping/ many mourning/ drowning

Creatures neath the surface/ murmur among themselves
Softly mewling in silt/ tender touching/ lovely
Many eyes wide open/ to stirrings of the surface
But remaining in the depths/ everything blurs smoothly
Some come with memories/ of others offered/ bartered
What could be given then/ but creatures warm and floating

Turning and mourning/ turns mourning and turning
Many eyes shyly close in comfort/ and close comfort
Many sights to see/ and many seas are sleeping
Many creatures slipping/ many mourning/ drowning

Azure’s dark robe:
darkrobevv – w/violin — darkrobevvv – w/violin

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muteute – violin solo

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“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”
                                                         “could
           life turn out to be a dirty trick?” – T.K.

Tuli Kupferberg, Poet, Songwriter, Anarchist, Agnostic Jew -
Dies at 86
Born Norman or in Hebrew, Naphtali on Sept 28, 1923 (one day
and 22 years before me), poet, singer-songwriter, revolutionary,
publisher, street vendor, historian, mentor, sage, wise man and
wise guy, forward-thinking artist, activist, intellectual,
pacifist,anarchist, teacher, dreamer with a desire to
contribute his ideas for the construction of a better world,
boho and dear friend Tuli Kupferberg has gone on to wherever one
goes on Monday at N.Y. Downtown Hospital in Manhattan at the age
of 86 after a prolonged battle with Life and all its joys and
griefs, after suffering two debilitating strokes. Though never
really considering himself Beat he was anthologized as early as
1959 in Fred Mcdarrah’s The Beat Scene.

In the 1964 at age 40 he went on to become, in own his
words, ‘the world’s oldest rock star’ after co-founding the Fugs with
poet Ed Sanders, and then-member Ken Weaver. They were, in my
opinion the first poetry/folk-rock band and a definite precursor
of punk, bawdy and politically outspoken. Their first lp was
produced by the equally legendary Harry Smith on Broadside
and later re-issued on ESP along with their other lps. His first
solo record, No Deposit, No Return was also issued by ESP. At
the height of their career during the psychedelic era the group
was signed by the then co-owned Frank Sinatra label Reprise who
also signed Hendrix among others.

When very young he worked as a medical librarian.

Tuli lived 2 blocks from my apt. We first officially met while
both of us were hawking our wares on the street though I had
known him through the music scene having first seen the Fugs
play way back in the ’60s in various venues such as a loft space
on Great Jones street, the Provincetown Theatre, The Astor Place
Theater, and once at a free concert in Tompkins Square Park,
where, standing behind me to my amazement was none other than
Charles Mingus. When Tuli and I first conversed some time in the
mid-70’s he was hawking these pamphlets which were I think, like
$1.29 for one and 99 cents for two, the catch being the more you
bought the cheaper they became. Though I could be wrong , memory
being what it is ( Hey Tuli help me out here.) Yiddish was his
mother tongue and he had an interest in Yiddish theater which he
shared with fellow poet and street vendor Harry Nudel and though
he loved being a Yid was an avid supporter of Palestine. Tuli
always told me he hated poetry and the scene in general thogh je
tolerated me and a few others. He was never hierarchical
and didn’t choose his friends on their status in the art world
but on his ability to share with them his knowledge, sharp wit
and love. There were the many times we sat together in the park
sharing a pint of Haagen Daz or a Good Humor bar. He loved ice
cream. Particularly chocolate.

Tuli’s great songs included Morning, Morning, Kill For Peace and
Nothing. On their last CD he wrote the poignantly beautiful
“Where is My Wandering Jew Tonight” never forgetting his roots.
Another song in that vein was chameleon which included the lines
” In winter i’m a buddhist / In summer I’m a nuddist/ In
Jeruselem…Talmudist.” He also wrote a mocking protest tilted
“Backward Jewish Soldiers” a para-song based on “Onward
Christian Soldiers.”

Tuli became something of celebrity when he was mentioned in
Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ as being the one who “jumped off the Brooklyn
Bridge” then walking away “unknown and forgotten.” It was actually
the Manhattan Bridge but the Brooklyn Bridge seemed more
romantic and he didn’t walk away but was brought to Gouveneur
Hospital with a spinal fracture.

He created and published in such zines as Birth and Yeah and
was the first to publish the African – American Beat poet Ted
Joans as well as over 50 of his own books.

He loved to take familiar tunes and write his own lyrics to
them, calling them the afore-mentioned para-songs . He did this
more and more in later years. While bedridden he wrote a series
of short pieces he called “perverbs” twisting well-known
aphorisms and posting them on YouTube. He’s had a long running
MNN public access TV show called Revolting News which currently
is filmed and edited by his partner Thelma Blitz . She also
videorecords and produces his YouTube and DailyMotion channels,
‘tulifuli’ and posts Tuli on Vimeo in her own channel ‘Thelma Blitz.’

Tuli’s cartoon prints were sold on the streets of Soho for many
years at the vending stand of his partner Thelma Blitz , where
Tuli would occasionally hang out to shoot the breeze with other
locals such as me. I was directly across the street selling lps
and books. He inspired many of us to not give up despite the
adversities of government, war and $$$$. He embraced his
“Bohemian” lifestyle, as a friend once told me I should. He
never shrank from his commitment to protest injustice. Never
gave into the “MAN”. Never took the straight and narrow path.
Always fought against war, corporate interests and a greedy,
demonic capitalistic value system.

Long time drummer for the Fugs Coby Batty told me this story on
the phone the day Tuli passed that one day while walking in
Brooklyn Tuli turned and said that he wanted his epitaph to read
“What the hell was that?” – and as he mentioned in one of his
perverbs – “Life is funny, you can die.” How Jewish can ya
get??

His is survived by his wife, Sylvia Topp, three children, and
one grand child.
from: Where Is My Wandering Jew

Did Hitler survive in the heart of the beast?
Is happiness there when we seek it least?
Does the Baal Shem dance at the President’s feast?
O where is my wandering Jew?

Is loneliness cast at the center of life?
Is peace our reward at the end of this strife?
Is our time’s music the Gun and the Fife?
O where is my wandering Jew tonight?
                 Where is my wandering Jew?

And O where is my wandering God tonight?
Where are my children, where is my wife?
Where is the song I once called my life…
Where is my wandering Jew, tonight?
         O where is our wondering life, tonight…
          Where is our wonderful life?