African Writers’ Corner

1926 Miles of Training

Karest Lewela

2008-12-17, Issue 413

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/52783

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He picked up his tenor saxophone and played from memory Coltrane’s Naima. The style was not the usual hard bop. It had an overly intense feel, filled with staccato punches as if Blakey in his prime was teaching an Art class, pure drums and no cymbal. Most critics would have said he played like an amateur whilst the ones who consistently feign some form of enlightenment would have said he was borrowing heavily from bebop. It reminded him of his many struggles, most of them hidden under his ever so cool demeanor and the social expectations that arose with his manhood without even the pretense of his consultation or training. He could hardly remember when he became a man, not in that sense at the very least. He was no fool. However, he somehow seemed to have missed an important lesson over the years. The indications were there: deep husky voice that took him away from soloist roles, stubby chin with inconsistently sprouting hairs, broad shoulders that made his life a nightmare in an overcrowded city and that very tuft of not-so-public hair that he still didn’t understand the purpose it was meant to serve and whether or not his newly acquired manly status called on him to groom it or not.

He picked up his tenor saxophone and played from memory Coltrane’s Naima. The style was not the usual hard bop. It had an overly intense feel, filled with staccato punches as if Blakey in his prime was teaching an Art class, pure drums and no cymbal. Most critics would have said he played like an amateur whilst the ones who consistently feign some form of enlightenment would have said he was borrowing heavily from bebop. It reminded him of his many struggles, most of them hidden under his ever so cool demeanor and the social expectations that arose with his manhood without even the pretense of his consultation or training. He could hardly remember when he became a man, not in that sense at the very least. He was no fool. However, he somehow seemed to have missed an important lesson over the years. The indications were there: deep husky voice that took him away from soloist roles, stubby chin with inconsistently sprouting hairs, broad shoulders that made his life a nightmare in an overcrowded city and that very tuft of not-so-public hair that he still didn’t understand the purpose it was meant to serve and whether or not his newly acquired manly status called on him to groom it or not.

As if the physiological elements were not confusing enough, there was this concept of being a man often whispered about and widely (if not dogmatically) accepted. Everyone knew what it meant to be a man. Strangely no one could explain that to him, and not because everyone had taken an oath of secrecy. In his infinite wisdom, he understood that this was one of those concepts like his father’s love for him. It was understood but never voiced. He believed it existed, but had no proof for it, other than from the angle that the father had taken his obligations as the head of the household with such piety that it would be insane not to see this amorphous, overbearing and yet invisible love for him. At times, the love would take a physical form, but such memories of a hollow bamboo cane, the pith filled with his father’s mysterious love were not happy thoughts.

As reminiscence brought bamboo to skin, again to prepare for the mantle of manhood, Naima was sounding like the beats to a Missy Elliot song with the nagging resounding clang of the Isikuti jingle that soon becomes enjoyable, especially with the sobering thought of how short life is.
You see he was beginning to figure it out. Being a man had something to do with love, and not that kind of stupid love that makes you do things you don’t want to or even enjoy in exchange for hope for something that you haven’t even defined for yourself. No, we are not talking about the one that makes you defiant to rationale like the actualization of weather forecasts. We are talking about the stable, reliable love, much like his father’s love for him. He also had this gut feeling that this manhood was linked to the form that the faith that the preacher at his church always had, more
evident when he stood to call on the offertory as opposed to the altar call. He was thanking the Lord for the broad shoulders, for the enormity of this task that mimicked faith, love and mystery was beginning to sink in. It was as at the end of a certain hour, the Universe had gone through a fundamental shift much like the tectonic movements history was debating during that era.

However, there was still an unexplained gap. When did all this happen? Why was everyone so angry with him? What is this they expected him to know and do? Oh, and whilst we are at it, what was wrong with Naima?

Naima had yelled at him today because he had missed to come in on an offbeat. He was struggling to understand the motions behind her fury. She knew very well he was a jazz player, and improvisation is what had brought the two of them together. A few years back, he had brought Naima into the band, not because she was an extraordinary singer, but because she looked good! In that period, his tenor was creamy rich, the sort of voice that sneaks generosity into the mind of the meanest wallet holder and gushes out in crisp and silent money, nothing of the percussion kind if you get my drift. So he would sing, and they would drool over Naima. Times had changed, and he had caught the grown-up disease, and his voice had become husky rendering him captive to a shoddy delivery of the sotto voce part of Mozart’s requiem mass:

Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus

The only problem was that he hated Mozart. He detested the soutenu air of classical music, as it always cut off his supply of oxygen ending in a long yawn. So he had stopped crooning altogether. Lucky for him, as his gigs became popular, Naima’s voice had grown richer. Naima had picked jazz very quick, and her agility coupled with the rich tremor of her voice (largely linked to cheap tobacco), allowed him to make her the lead singer and experiment with a rebellious sound that attracted all the geniuses and the drug addicts into The Maestro Cat Club everyday. The swell of intellectual debate, the intensity of dark poetry, the ambience of smoke-filled dim lights, the scandal of scantily clad and generously sexy foxes (none of that chicken stuff that was being foolishly predicted to come in the 21st century). Naima was a steamy fox that not only inspired his music, his band, his style but also his manhood. He would write poetry so fresh it rivaled a good cup of coffee, and late in the night as he fitted the rhymes into freshly spun rhythms, she would churn out melodies so passionate, creative and free that the score would have to be recorded the morning after. Theirs was a life of symphony in and out of bed, so powerful that when the gales of gaiety lifted it up, an improvisation on stage would create an alternative sound.

Today, he had pushed another limit on stage, he shifted partially from 4 time to 3 to 2 and syncopated on G flat at the point when she was lulling an E flat into a diminuendo. The effect was shocking and refreshing, until she paused and yelled at him. The yell was full of anguish, as if he had betrayed her. She stared at him and coldly muttered: “When will you grow up and become a man?” He had quickly looked at the score, trying to locate these lyrics – a mixture of disbelief and hope. She had run offstage, a drama queen in action, toppling the drum set. A brawl had broken out after that, as addicts struggled with harsh reality, demanding refunds from the peddlers for the inferior batch of cannabis that had been sold that night at The Maestro. Reality like, being a man, was too harsh an edict and unfathomable.

He had walked out and headed straight to the studio where he picked up his flute and did a rendition of Trane’s Naima. Naima was irritating, so was his playing of Naima. So I suggested we play Flamenco Sketches, for if feuds be in the real world, art must play its part: mimic or inspire.

Miles versus Coltrane.

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