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Welcome to Afrissippi
Entry 34 of 40 | show all | print this entry |
(Amsterdam, May 17, 2006)-It's another beautiful spring day waiting for me outdoors on this lovely Wednesday afternoon while I finish up this post and get ready to take my walk along the canals and sidestreets of this gorgeous city from the Leidseplein to the Oudezijds Achterburgwal and the site of the Cannabis College where I'll be hosting An Evening with John Sinclair tonight starting with making a radio program, then giving a talk on the Early Days of the Marijuana Revolution, and then screening my movie 20 TO LIFE : The Life & Times of John Sinclair, a Film by Steve Gebhardt. The Cannabis College is a great gathering spot in the heart of town and I'm hoping to see all my friends here in there tonight.
The College has also been gracious enough to agree to host a second cultural evening on Wednesday, June 7th, featuring a poetry reading by Andrew Jones and myself. I could talk about Andrew Jones until I was blue in the face, but you can hear him talk and read for yourself on the 55th episode of the John Sinclair Radio Show, as appended below:
John Sinclair Radio Show #55
Rock-It Coffeehouse, Amsterdam
Monday, October 10, 2005 (8:45-9:45 pm) [20-0539]
The Rock-It Coffeeshop on the Nieuwmarkt is one of the Radio Free Amsterdam krewe's favorite spots, especially on bright mid-days when we sit in the comfortable chairs out front and enjoy the sunshine. This Monday evening we met at the Rock-It to celebrate the 88th birthday of the great pianist and composer Thelonious Monk with a cast of regular characters including the artist & masseuse Marian, bluesman Harmonica George and the poet Andrew Jones with some great new works, plus music from Monk, the Blues Scholars, Chris Kenner, James Andrews & the 6th Ward All Stars, Alvin Batiste & the Jazztronauts, and a live performance on a tiny keychain harmonica by Mr. George.
John Sinclair Radio Show #55 with Andrew Jones
Playlist #55
[01] Thelonious Monk: Nutty (Theme with Intro)
[02] Opening Tokes with Larry & Henk: Special Bang
[03] Chris Kenner: Rocket to the Moon
[04] 6th Ward All Stars: Yeah You Rite
[05] Comments with Larry Hayden & Interview with Marian
[06] Thelonious Monk: Let's Call This
[07] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Blue Monk Medley
[08] Comments & Interview with Harmonica George
[09] Harmonica George & John Sinclair: Blue Monk
[10] Thelonious Monk: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
[11] John Sinclair & Mark Ritsema: Pannonica
[12] Comments & Interview with Andrew Jones
[13] Andrew Jones: Three Poems
[14] Closing Comments & Outro
[15] Closing Music: Alvin Batiste & the Jazztronauts: Music Came
Host: John Sinclair for Big Chief Productions
Produced & Engineered by Henk Botwinik
Executive Producer: Larry Hayden
Special thanks to Octavio Carrasco
©(p) 2005 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Podcast @ October 10, 2005
Also, here's a great little poem Andrew composed for his friend Rico's new book of music photographs titled Respect, and read last week at the Paradiso for Rico's publication party:
Rhythms rise from the stories of the struggle
Equality checks the mighty laughing in their shadows
Souls hang like poems from trees in the churchyard
Passion frees the voices born of blood and fire
Escape the dark night of hate
Counting the bars through which love creates
Tears of joy and sorrow music of the spirit
* * * * *
In my recent post (#32) with the record reviews attached, I threatened to print here my Honest Tune column on Guelel Kumba & Afrissippi, and here it is, with the Afrissippi and Honest Tune websites following:
BLUES & ROOTS
A Column by John Sinclair
#6: The Sound of Afrissippi
When the Senegalese guitarist, singer and composer Guelel Kumba journeyed to Oxford, Mississippi to attend the funeral of his friend Peter Aschoff a few years ago, he was following a path that had been cleared by his ancestors when they were brought as slaves to work the land of the north Mississippi hill country.
The descendants of those Fulani slaves brought to Mississippi rooted themselves in the hill country after Emancipation and farmed shares or worked their own little hard-scrabble pieces of land. The ancestral music they had brought with them from West Africa and the functions it served were re-rooted too in the hill country soil and began to adapt to their new surroundings and the physical and emotional situation in which they found themselves.
The music took in and assimilated new elements suggested by the immediate environment and the other transplanted Africans they came into contact with, but the music of the hill country maintained its rhythmic and emotive basis in the insistent trance grooves, ecstatic call-and-response patterns and expressive functions of its ancestral forms and idioms.
By the end of the 20th century, the African American music of the hill country had found its fullest expression in the work of guitarists Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside and their associates, and in the fife-and-drum music of Othar Turner and his Rising Star Band. Both strains were starkly evocative of the West African musical tradition and kept the ancestral rhythms and forms alive at their very core.
When Guelel Kumba came to North Mississippi and was persuaded to stay, he would sit for hours and play his guitar, working on both his own compositions and the Fulani songs he'd been taught as a young musician and griot in training. Some of these songs were hundreds of years old yet lived on in contemporary usage, still serving to transmit and pass on the history and cultural codes of the Fulani people.
Guelel Kumba began to meet some of the local musicians and became friends with guitarist Eric Deaton, who started coming over to play with Guelel and exchange their musical knowledge. Eric, a native of North Carolina, had moved to North Mississippi at 18 and apprenticed himself to Junior Kimbrough, backing him up on guitar and bass until Junior's demise in the mid-1990s.
Listening to Guelel play a Fulani tune one day, Deaton flashed that the song was identical in shape and feeling to Kimbrough's composition known as "Hands Off That Girl." Another Fulani song evoked elements of R.L. Burnside's "Jumper on the Line" and "Don't Let My Baby Ride." He pointed this out to Guelel, and the two of them began to realize that they were playing the same music.
Building on this wholly unexpected discovery, Guelel and Eric started finding ways to fuse the Fulani music with the hill country blues. Encouraged by Chad Henson of Two Stick in Oxford, they brought in R.L.'s son Gary Burnside on bass and guitar and grandson Cedric Burnside on drums to further the experiment and prepare for public performances.
Several years earlier, Luther Dickenson of the North Mississippi All Stars and his father, the great record producer Jim Dickenson, had brainstormed a session that united Othar Turner and his band with a number of Senegalese musicians to produce a one-off album called Afrosippi: From Senegal to Senatobia. The name had a special resonance for the musicians in Oxford, describing perfectly what was happening among them as they played, and Guelel, Eric and the Burnsides began calling the group Afrissippi.
The Afrissippi sound was something new and different: Guelel's forceful, masterfully expressive voice out in front, singing in the Fulani tongue songs from years and centuries ago as well as his own compositions over his mesmerizing acoustic guitar patterns and the hard North Mississippi hill country blues backing of Eric Deaton and the Burnsides. Then Guelel would introduce one of the ancient Fulani themes, sing the Fulani text and step aside for Eric to sing the Junior Kimbrough or R.L. Burnside lyrics to the same tune and tear off a slashing slide guitar solo before Kumba would come back with the African lyrics to close it out.
When I first heard Afrissippi one night at Two Stick in Oxford about three years ago, their music blew me away. When "Nduumandii" turned into "Hands Off That Girl" my mind snapped with the realization that the African song Guelel had been singing was exactly the same tune as the Junior Kimbrough blues from the hill country. I had already heard field recordings of music by West African ensembles that was clearly related to the fife-and-drum music played by Othar Turner in North Mississippi, to the Mardi Gras Indian music of New Orleans, and to the music of McComb, Mississippi native Bo Diddley. Now here was the most startling evidence I'd ever encountered that some African root elements had been preserved intact in the melodies, chord structure and rhythms of modern-day blues songs still being played in Mississippi.
The fusion of the Fulani songs and Guelel's African singing with the trance blues rhythms of the hill country musicians wasn't the least bit tentative, either. Their parts fit together perfectly, the groove was strong and authoritative, the guitars meshed smoothly and seemingly without effort, and the numbers where Guelel and Eric both sang were simply stunning. Somehow they'd stumbled across an amazing revelation about the music they were making together, and they were bringing a new form into life right there in front of us.
Eric Deaton and I had been doing some things together with my poetry and his music, and he and Chad Henson invited me to sit in with Afrissippi and see what would happen when yet another element was introduced into the equation: my own blues verses centered on the creators, major figures, development and history of the Delta blues. Guelel Kumba had trained as a Fulani griot, the singers who tell the history and accomplishments of their people in verse and song, and I considered myself sort of an American griot with respect to our own musical kings and queens-creative artists like Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Charlie Parker, Muddy Waters, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Howlin' Wolf, John Coltrane and Sunnyland Slim.
We hit a high point when we found that my poem "Fattening Frogs For Snakes" fit right in after Eric would sing the lyric to "Hands Off That Girl." (You can hear and see a studio performance of this collaboration in Scotty Glahn's 13-minute film that's embedded in the new Afrissippi CD, Fulani Journey.) Then the band invited me to perform with them again, serve as master of ceremonies for their show, and be featured on two or three numbers in their set.
I had wanted to compose a text for the occasion that would explain the story of Guelel Kumba and his music, where he came from and what he was doing up here on stage with a bunch of North Mississippi blues musicians, but when the time came the poem had not been composed and I had to improvise a text based on the things Guelel had told me in conversation about his journey and the history of his people. This piece, performed to the music of Guelel's song "Njulli," became known as "Fulani Journey" and is the title track of the new Afrissippi CD.
Now I cycle through Oxford on my bardic travels as often as I can and get together with Guelel Kumba, Eric Deaton, and the cats from the Taylor Grocery Band who comprise the current Afrissippi line-up: Justin Showah on bass, Max Williams on lap steel guitar and keys, Brian Ledyard on banjo, guitar, mandolin & accordion, and the incredible Kenny Kimbrough on drums. I feel honored to be offered the opportunity to work with this unique ensemble, and I continue to nurture the dream that one day Afrissippi will meet the public it deserves for the innovative musical fusion of Africa and Mississippi the band has created.
Me, I'm excited about Afrissippi and recommend them to you without reservation. This is music that is new and exciting, based in two disparate cultures with a common core, played and sung with consummate artistry and skill, and offered for your edification and delight: what we used to call "edutainment" at the very top of its form. I'd love to be in that number when the festival producers and college music presenters wake up to Afrissippi and put them before the music-loving public where they belong.
--New Orleans
February 24, 2006
© 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Afrissippi Website
Honest Tune Website
* * * * *
My dear friend and comrade Dave Brinks of New Orleans has just issued a terrific book of poetry he calls Caveat Onus and asked me to assess it for him in the hope of gleaning a sound-bite or two for promotional purposes. I really dig the book and recommend it to you without reservation. Be sure to read the "Notes on the Texts" for additional kicks. Here's what I wrote:
Dave Brinks' Caveat Onus
(New Orleans: Trembling Pillow Press)
Dave Brinks' Caveat Onus is a serial work in verse which beautifully demonstrates the poet's mind, heart, poetic skill and grace-a remarkable opus with its roots in Brinks' well developed sense of humor and creative play.
Dave's revelatory "Notes on the Text" illuminate the underpinning architecture, but the great thing is that one may fully enjoy the poems with no knowledge of Brinks' structural intentions and receive wave after wave of sheer delight from the verse itself, like this:
O tough assed angels
deadly reckoners of cheap promises
guardians to the gates of no paradise
(two)
Or this, speaking frankly to his muse:
dear bernadette. . . .
you're a good
example of everything
I've loved
(five)
The Flood struck New Orleans while Brinks was composing his cycle of poems and, like all the poet's concerns, quickly found a place in his verse:
how to say the drowning
city of new orleans
I will never
forgive america
for tying bodies to streetlamps
so they won't float away
(twenty)
and this:
why I brought a camera that day I'll never know
no eyes will ever understand the pictures in my mind
of all the flowers & coffins near the railroad tracks
floated out of their tombs
(thirty-nine)
Caveat Onus: wouldn't that signify Look Out for the Load? Or Beware the Burden? Here's what it looks like to Dave Brinks:
Megan & I get out the car
and see the sky over new orleans
replaced by a giant circle
with a line running through it
and the only thing left is the moon
(thirty-one)
These are four rounds of what purports to be a 13-round opus: 13 sections of 13 poems each of 13 lines. An extra kick is that the four suit(e)s here-Bat, Scorpion, Deer, Owl-lend the work another playful aspect as a deck of cards to be dealt out to the reader, perhaps for divination purposes. After all, Brinks posits the poems as double hexagrams reading down and up to the middle (7th) line which is to serve as axis.
Dave Brinks' Caveat Onus is a thrilling work of the imagination and terrific poetry to boot-luminous, lucid and rhythmically compelling-"and the only thing left is the moon."
-John Sinclair
Amsterdam
May 8, 2006
© 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Dave Brinks' Website
* * * * *
Okay, that's all for now, it's out into the fresh air & sunshine for me....
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