Look at this decade-plus friendship, of two men (who have never met in person) who could not have, on the face of it, less in common, talking on the phone a half-dozen-odd times a year and sending each other stuff... did skin color, social class, urban-v-rural, HBCU-v-HSDO (hi-school dropout), or any other meaningless box to stuff folks into, ever have anything to do with why we two just happen to find each other interesting enough to take an interest now and then?
I was born in Mississippi during a race war and began my schooling in the barely-post-integration Bible-belt south, where the n-word served in everyday parlance in noun, adjective, and verb capacities, and since then ('a long long time ago', as Don McClean once put it) I have encountered every kind of dismissive contempt and unfounded bias I could have ever imagined (and then some) across all nine States I have lived in, and the forty-five I have visited at one time or another, and come to two conclusions about prejudice: that it is largely stupid and unnecessary, and that it is not by any means limited to any one group of people nor determined by their having one skin tone or language or heritage among themselves.
It turns out that among many indigenous peoples across the world, their original name for their own people was..... the people. As if no one but they, are people. Ask anyone over the age of fifty south of the Mason-Dixon what 'white trash' means. Visit any Indian reservation you like and ask around about Certificates of Blood Quantum (CBQ) and how folks with twenty-five percent or less get treated growing up there. Ask around New Mexico among US-born chicanos on what they call Mexican immigrants ('mojados', after the Spanish for 'wet'...), and you might get a bit of the picture I have seen in my American adventure.
Which is what probably drew me to jazz, by about the age of fourteen or so.
When I met and shook the hand of Count Basie at Disneyland back in my SoCal 70s years, he had white guys in his band, and yes they did swing. When I met and shook hands with Stan Kenton at the same Carnation Plaza Gardens venue there (and he later read my lips from the stage and played me a request...), he had black guys in the band and a hispano-cubano percussionist.
Et cetera.
Maestros like Miles Davis, John McLaughlin, Josef Zawinul, Armando 'Chick' Corea, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Oscar Peterson, Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall (!), for heavens sake... what use did any of them ever have for this 'race' business?
I am convinced that the human species needs to banish all governments and 'political parties', and learn to play jazz instead.
Might help make a lot of this needless fuss and bother go away, between folks who have no real grievance with each other (until politics tells them they do), and maybe just learn how to treat each other as neighbors, at long last.
(Oh, and the hottest fusion bassist since Jaco Pastorious or Stanley Clarke, is a young Hindu lady from Kashmir name of Mohini Dey, been meanin' to tell'ya'bout her....)
Look at this decade-plus friendship, of two men (who have never met in person) who could not have, on the face of it, less in common, talking on the phone a half-dozen-odd times a year and sending each other stuff... did skin color, social class, urban-v-rural, HBCU-v-HSDO (hi-school dropout), or any other meaningless box to stuff folks into, ever have anything to do with why we two just happen to find each other interesting enough to take an interest now and then?
I was born in Mississippi during a race war and began my schooling in the barely-post-integration Bible-belt south, where the n-word served in everyday parlance in noun, adjective, and verb capacities, and since then ('a long long time ago', as Don McClean once put it) I have encountered every kind of dismissive contempt and unfounded bias I could have ever imagined (and then some) across all nine States I have lived in, and the forty-five I have visited at one time or another, and come to two conclusions about prejudice: that it is largely stupid and unnecessary, and that it is not by any means limited to any one group of people nor determined by their having one skin tone or language or heritage among themselves.
It turns out that among many indigenous peoples across the world, their original name for their own people was..... the people. As if no one but they, are people. Ask anyone over the age of fifty south of the Mason-Dixon what 'white trash' means. Visit any Indian reservation you like and ask around about Certificates of Blood Quantum (CBQ) and how folks with twenty-five percent or less get treated growing up there. Ask around New Mexico among US-born chicanos on what they call Mexican immigrants ('mojados', after the Spanish for 'wet'...), and you might get a bit of the picture I have seen in my American adventure.
Which is what probably drew me to jazz, by about the age of fourteen or so.
When I met and shook the hand of Count Basie at Disneyland back in my SoCal 70s years, he had white guys in his band, and yes they did swing. When I met and shook hands with Stan Kenton at the same Carnation Plaza Gardens venue there (and he later read my lips from the stage and played me a request...), he had black guys in the band and a hispano-cubano percussionist.
Et cetera.
Maestros like Miles Davis, John McLaughlin, Josef Zawinul, Armando 'Chick' Corea, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Oscar Peterson, Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall (!), for heavens sake... what use did any of them ever have for this 'race' business?
I am convinced that the human species needs to banish all governments and 'political parties', and learn to play jazz instead.
Might help make a lot of this needless fuss and bother go away, between folks who have no real grievance with each other (until politics tells them they do), and maybe just learn how to treat each other as neighbors, at long last.
(Oh, and the hottest fusion bassist since Jaco Pastorious or Stanley Clarke, is a young Hindu lady from Kashmir name of Mohini Dey, been meanin' to tell'ya'bout her....)
Music has no skin color!