There Is Still Some Great Stuff Left: Pharoah and Hargrove
By Amiri Baraka
These days when the peoplescape of the music is being changed before our ears, it seems to be rarer than ever we can get to some deeply gratifying Vonz (40’s Bop-really hip stuff). But recently, Amina & I have got to and under some real vonz. That is, we have got to some extra thrilling music for which everything be praised!
Just after the great Jitu Weusi passed, he a real and even slightly legendary figure in Brooklyn,1st as a defiant master teacher in Brooklyn’s school system, one of the earliest to demand community control of the schools and then as the Master Mover when he opened The East, which for many years was the capital of Great Things in the music and in the agitation against national oppression. At any rate, that history still has to be written. But after his death there were a couple weeks of events, celebrations, other laudatory gatherings raising his name and image against the depressing silence of death.
When we finally got over there to the last marvelous place he was publicly associated with, For My Sweet, at 1101 Fulton St, in the heart of, what it was had spilled into a large garden. The first person we ran into was Pharoah Sanders and after the extended greetings of old friends, the embraces, the raising of fond memories...Pharoah’s LP, Live At The East. But always too modest, we don’t find out until the word lunges out just before the event, that Pharoah is going to play, right now, at this Celebration of the late, great Jitu (Swahili for Giant) Weusi, likewise for Black.
So we rush down to where the musicians are quickly assembling, including Randy Weston’s uniquely sitting, uncommonly funky, bass player, Alex Blake! Certainly everything that brought us down to Deepest Brooklyn and all the stuff that preceded this appearance raised it all and us all to another state, but whatever the sweet mix, the music, and Pharoah’s incredible playing was some of the absolutely strongest Vonz I have dug in too long a time!
Ditto Brother Blake who, obviously inspired by Pharoah took his always exciting playing to the same level. The WOW! Level. Take my word, and any of the other diggers that afternoon, if you can track them down, it was some Heavy being passed. And we have witnessed Pharoah’s grandeur many times over the years, back to his first days in the city, when someone spoke of “the new dude” called “Little Rock” who strode the lower east side like his feet hurt or else he walked that way like he was stepping over some stuff in one of them Arkansas fields. People used to wager who had the tenderest foots Pharoah or Archie Shepp! but local color and nostalgia aside, what we must always remember is The Music!
xxx
Speaking of music that opens up the world and its deepness, we got into one of the original sanctuaries of wonderful sounds, The Village Vanguard, still guarded by the wife of the original Max, one of Newark’s Furies, She, and so apparently especially raised for this gig.
This night we went to check out Roy Hargrove, the flashy young Texas trumpet, whose rise I slept, but with his quintet, the last couple of times at the Vanguard (Justin Robinson, the dazzling alto, Sullivan Fortner, highly innovative pianist, Ameen Saleem, the serious listening rhythmically precise bassist and the bombardier, Montez Coleman on the boomaloom) Hargrove and his whole assembly rose in my hearing. Plus, Hargrove has them into the stage presence, the mise en scene, of the earlier boperators. Hargrove, the last time, even sung, what?, Never Let Me Go, a priceless presentation. Then ending the set with the musicians ceasing to sit, one at a time, until the last musician is left playing until he ups and marches on out, Ameen once, Fortner another time, marching around the club as they leave. It brings the trad funk back up front. The music, mainly Hargrove’s own, avant hummable, a note that he wants What? to swing. Rumor, he’s back at Lorraine’s joint (the same VV, officer) with a big band Aug 20. You’ll love me for squealing!
From August, 2013
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