1. Haiku #1: Columbus, Quiet
Imagine 3am, walking home from a gig, the city deserted – no people or cars, and you can walk in the middle of the avenue as the snow falls and the street lights turn colors.
2. We Used to Dance
A love song about raising a family in the neighborhood – a multi-cultural neighborhood with rich and poor along with the adversity of crime, crack and budget-cuts the whole city was dealing with. There was also hidden but well-known red-lining on many blocks and buildings. To me the neighborhood was safe haven away from the racism of the “Archie Bunker” neighborhoods I saw on television and the news but then I realized were it not for my white father coming alone to rent the apartment, we would never have been there. In the 52 years we lived there we were the only family of color (1967-2019). This pattern was well documented in other buildings and streets in the neighborhood.
The music is heavily influenced by “Latin” music. The sounds of salsa seemed to be everywhere in the neighborhood. I use Son Montuno and the very Cuban, Changuí as the foundations of the rhythm. And the next movement has Bembé (Cuban 6/8 groove) as inspiration.
3. Love Can’t Live on Nostalgia
Some of my earliest memories were of buildings being abandoned and eventually torn down. Eventually new buildings were built and we are still in this building frenzy. For long periods of time there were abandoned buildings or empty lots sometimes taken over by neighbors and turned into gardens or playgrounds or crack houses. My friends and I would sneak in the construction sites after hours and on Sundays. I have memories of my parents’ discussions talking about how people were being paid paltry sums to leave their apartments. What do I remember? I was just a kid – some vague memories of tastes, smells, sounds and scenes…nostalgia I can’t hold on to.
4. Haiku #2: Life of the Playground
Speaking of abandoned lots – this was my favorite! The NY Times did an article in 1969 about the playground on my corner (west side of Columbus Avenue between 87-88th streets) that I called the Fire Engine playground. There was a REAL truck from the 50s or 60s, roofless and doorless but an amazing REAL truck kids could get lost in – forget about Tonka trucks! Also there was a REAL 8 passenger life boat and a REAL, huge propellor from a tug boat – so big 10 kids could climb on it…and two REAL bollards (or cleats) huge enough for cruise ships to tie to – painted as sailors! Not to mention the handball court and the colorful murals on the sides of two buildings. I saw a post on Facebook where a guy said what he remembered about that playground was broken glass and the smell of pee – those are not my memories!
5. A Walk in the Hood
The Upper West Side is really a bunch of neighborhoods lumped into one name. The southwest side was San Juan Hill. This is the neighborhood that was razed to build Lincoln Center. 7000 families and 800 businesses were evicted. It was not made of the Jets and Sharks gangs from West Side Story. It wasn’t even predominantly Puerto Rican. Mostly African-American, the name came from the United States Army’s black 10th Cavalry, which fought at the battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War in 1898. The Jungle Cafe was a jazz music venue in this area. Check this for more info: http://www.noirguides.com/newyorkcity.html
Thelonious Monk was a resident of this neighborhood as was James P. Johnson. Other jazz personalities moved to the neighborhood. In later decades Miles Davis lived about fifteen blocks up on 77th street. My guitar teacher lived on his block and I once walked by Miles on the way to a lesson. Duke Ellington moved further uptown – thus, the city officially named Monk’s Circle, Miles Davis Way and Duke Ellington Boulevard all on the Upper West Side.
The piece, A Walk in the Hood, starts by imagining one of Monk’s famous “walks in the hood.” The music is based on three songs Monk played often: Lulu’s back in Town, Sweet Georgia Brown/Bright Mississippi and Green Chimney’s. I use them as the basis for new melodies and added lyrics.
I thought of Monk’s friend, the Baroness Pannonica (Nica) de Koenigswarter who lived at the Bolivar on Central Park West. Then thought of Harry Belafonte who bought a building on the upper west side that had refused to rent to him! Another story of red-lining in our enlightened neighborhood. Check this article for more info: https://ilovetheupperwestside.com/harry-belafontes-upper-west-side-legacy/
Tommy Flanagan and Max Roach lived within blocks of my home. Lee Konitz was around the corner on 86th street and played at Stryker’s jazz club across the street in the 70’s along with Chet Baker who lived on 87th street for a moment.
My block was 87th street…who lived there? It was the last home of Billie Holiday before she passed away in 1959. When we moved there eight years later some of the greatest black opera singers were across the street – Betty Allen, William Warfield and his wife, Leontyne Price (divorced in ’72). I was proud of my mother being one of the great singers too – in my opinion, the greatest ‘Serena’ in Porgy and Bess.
Jazz people on my block? The great bassists Richard Davis and Walter Booker, Ron McClure still lives there! Saxophonists Tim Reis and Bob Beldon used to hang with my mother who knew everyone on the block. Alan White, co-writer of the 1956 R&B hit After the Lights Go Down Low made famous by Al Hibbler, lived across the street and told me pianist Andrew Hill spent time with him there too. Alan also wrote an autobiography that fully documented his time with aliens. He swore that a woman he lived with was an alien. No joke – there were regular meetings of many upstanding people where they discussed connections with extra-terrestrials!
The great saxophonist, Mario Rivera, father of drummer Phoenix Rivera of my generation, used to have late night jam sessions in his apartment on Columbus Avenue above a club called the Cellar and just a few blocks down from Mikell’s Jazz Club where I used to hear Art “Buhainu” Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Dewey Davis, Thelonious Sphere Monk and so many more would hang late at night! Dewey’s “sucker punch” referred to in the lyrics is from a story Phoenix told me.
Other jazz clubs mentioned are the West End (by Columbia) and Augie’s that evolved into Smoke (just off of Duke Ellington Boulevard). Birdland (not the original) was on Broadway on the same block as Augie’s. I remember trumpet player Manny Duran walking in the hood and the list goes on and on and on! The clubs were packed with young and old.
Eventually the music transforms from swing and “Latin” to funk or hip-hop as it tells stories from the 70s and 80s and my youth.
6. Haiku #3: Lost MJLP
Tells my story, coming home from school alone on the 104 bus down Broadway and losing my cherished MJ LP – his (Michael Jackson’s) first as a solo artist and one of my first albums I had gotten for my birthday. Sad day!
7. My Home Sings
About growing up with the songs heard from those wonderful opera singers mentioned above, wafting out of windows on hot summer days.
8. Haiku #4: High-rise Kiss
My first girlfriend’s apartment on the 27th floor where one could clearly hear arguments on the basketball courts below!
9. Kid’z Rhymes: Remember This?
My memories of playing on the street as a child, from 6 to 16 roughly…remember that Fire Engine playground mentioned above? Kids of all ages, hanging in packs, parents down the block seeming miles away…
The music is inspired by West African and Malian griot music, specifically the beautiful mode of the pentatonic scale that the melody draws from – so simple yet not in our “western” vocabulary. Half way through you’ll hear a transition to the U.S. with an African-American hambone-like acapela/hand clap jam of rhymes of memories from childhood. The same five notes are the building blocks of this section but in a more familiar form before we return to African version.
INTERMISSION
10. Haiku #5: Always Be Aware
The end of a gig and the walk home. Talk to people about the 80s and they’ll mention crime. I hardly had problems but I was always aware and sometimes walked around the block if I saw something suspect.
11. Roses and Rubies: The Cost of What We Lost
This is addressed to those that seem to remember the dark side. I saw roses and rubies – neither is the truth, or both are? But what we’ve lost goes from individuals and communities to lifestyle and the esoteric essence of the times…or maybe only the memories. Either way, it all depends on your perspective.
12. Haiku #6: His Bed is a Box
The dark side mentioned above also coincided with a crisis of homelessness which we seem to still be dealing with amongst the new and incomprehensible wealth that defines gentrification today. It’s dedicated to our neighbors that we see, or try not to, as we go about our daily life.
13. Moses the Pharaoh: Who will stay and Who will go?
Robert Moses, the “Power Broker” conceived and orchestrated so much of the development that happened in the 20th century and still defines us as a city. Parks, highways constructed, whole neighborhoods razed, people evicted, buildings built, protests for and against – benefits, detriment. It goes way beyond the Upper West Side, all of Manhattan, Bed-Stuy, Paris, London. Cities always evolve but how much of evolution involves making the cities too costly to live in for ‘regular’ people? What happens to day to day life for those lucky few who manage to stay? For many it’s positive I’m sure and for others it’s time to find new land and new communities.
14. Haiku #7: Central Park Life
Dedicated to the space that was the saving grace of the neighborhood and borough. It also has been a place of tragedy. Side note but not insignificant – In the construction of Central Park a predominantly African-American village was removed. Read here for more about Seneca Village: https://www.centralparknyc.org/articles/seneca-village
15. Finale – Spoken Word, Haiku #8
After all this heavy stuff I thought it was time for the band to shine and celebrate life. It sets the more contemplative Spoken Word, Haiku #8 and Last Song: It’s time to Say Goodbye in a different light. Optimism despite adversity and change.
16. Last Song: It’s Time to Say Goodbye
A love song that says goodbye