    
Harlemboy
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Username: Harlemboy
Post Number: 2
Registered: 11-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - 12:38 pm: | 
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By Michael A. Gonzales
[A poetic essay]
A poetic essay
Author's Note: In 2002 my friend, Baltimore artist Larry Scott, presented me with a stunning illustration of a jazz trumpeter while we drank coffee at Xano's. Last year, shortly after leaving the same spot, Scott suffered a fatal heart attack. After his sudden death at fifty-years-old on November 7th, 2007, I was looking through a few orginals he had given me over the years and rediscovered the drawing. Following in the tradition of Black artistic continuum, this essay was influenced by Scott's work which in turn was inspired by jazz.
***
Music was the mouth, jazz was the language.
Back in the day when new school jazzbos still sported kinky beards and boomed post-bop noise in funky lofts while rats ran inside the walls, I was just another manchild modernist striving on the so-called mean streets of Harlem.
Regardless of the countless sassy Motown soul singers screaming from jig jukeboxes there was always something fresh happening around the way.
Of course, more than a few years had passed since those those lovely yesterdays when traffic flowed smoother than a Sonny Rollins solo, after midnight jams were all about Minton's Playhouse, Count Basie blared from sweet-shop stereo speakers and sepia heart-breaker Duke Ellington caused young girls to swoon. Still, I felt jazz in my heart from the moment I was conscious that the sucker was beating.
In the golden years of Harlem, jazz was everywhere. There were rumbles in the money jungle while percussionists chilled in the neon brightness of Small's, blue voiced singers screeched in the darkness of Savoy Ballroom and divine swing preachers clamored inside storefront churches where God's voice could be heard gospel booming on Sunday morning.
For the rest of this essay, please go to...
http://www.blackpower.com/arts-culture/presenting-the-harlem-jazziacs-for-larry- scott |
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