New Day Jazz

Justin Desmangles

Eric Dolphy (June 20, 1928 – June 29, 1964)

 

"Study of the history of liberation struggles shows that they have generally been preceded by an upsurge of cultural manifestations, which progressively harden into an attempt, successful or not, to assert the cultural personality of the dominated people by an act of denial of the culture of the oppressor." ~ Amilcar Cabral

 

"The struggle between the artist and the state can best be seen in performance in general and in the battle over performance space in particular. . . . With the emergence of the state, the artist and the state become not only rivals in articulating laws, moral or formal, that regulate life in society, but also rivals in determining the manner and circumstances of their delivery." ~ Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Song of the Son by Jean Toomer

Pour O pour that parting soul in song,
O pour it in the sawdust glow of night,
Into the velvet pine-smoke air to-night,
And let the valley carry it along.
And let the valley carry it along.

O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,
So scant of grass, so profligate of pines,
Now just before an epoch's sun declines
Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee,
Thy son, I have in time returned to thee.

In time, for though the sun is setting on
A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set;
Though late, O soil, it is not too late yet
To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone,
Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone.

O Negro slaves, dark purple ripened plums,
Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air,
Passing before they stripped the old tree bare
One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes

An everlasting song, a singing tree,
Caroling softly souls of slavery,
What they were, and what they are to me,
Caroling softly souls of slavery.

 

 

Genre

Blues & Classical & Experimental & Jazz & Poetry & Literature

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