Michael Overleaves Appendix (Redux)

Montpelier Plantation Nevis

In the process of updating the copyright dates, I managed to have tidied up and properly alphabetised the Overleaves index.  Beautifully organised, I think that it will prove more appealing now.  Do enjoy!  

https://dreampoetica.com/michael-overleaves-appendix/

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Photo: Ficus Benjamina tree on grounds of Montpelier Estate, Nevis, West Indies.

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©2013-2023 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Being of Service… Fulfilled.

ulm-cathedral-germany

Ten days after that operatic flying dream – part of which I am now convinced were glimpses into a past-life passed at the courts of King George III and King George IV during the Regency years – which is herein entitled: Time-Travelling late-Georgian/Regency Dandy, https://dreampoetica.com/2013/02/26/time-travelling-late-georgianregency-dandy/ I would dream these next three dreams.  They were beautiful dreams and there was also a tie-in to dreams dreamt years earlier whilst Merlin was then incarnate.  Those dreams were also shared herein and are entitled: Ensouled Proboscis Simian Humans – https://dreampoetica.com/2013/02/20/ensouled-proboscis-simian-humans/ .  These were rather ravishing dreams and as was the custom that time, there was also some sexual play engaged during the dreamquest. 

These dreams were lucidly lived on Wednesday, January 27, 1993.  At the time, the Moon transited both Pisces and my tenth house.  Moreover, the dreams were audiocassette-recorded on tape one hundred and forty and are yet to be found in volume XIV of the dream opus.  Dream with the greatest of wonder and awe because regardless others perceptions of you, it is just that – another perception and has no basis in the truth of who you are at the fabulously beautiful core of your being. 

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hrh-diana-charles-soeul-korea-1992

In the cobblestoned square of an old city’s campus, it was heavily raining.  Also, I was part of a great entourage.  This place felt like England as it was moored under a flock of grey, rain-soaked, stationary, low-hanging clouds.

Indeed, it was depressingly sombre.  I was with HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales.  HRH Princess Diana, Princess of Wales was about but they were in separate entourages.

We were to attend a church service but in separate entourages.  All of this was done on Princess Diana’s insistence.  She was very forceful and had quite the temper when she needed to have the final word.

There was going to be no compromises in her position.  She was, in fact, rather stubborn.  This gave the sense of her that she would not age very well.  We were in a courtyard before coming out to be seen by the press.

Firmly, she insisted that they do everything separately.  She was a vocal, strongly male-energied powerhouse.  As well, she refused to stand in back of him.  Moreover, she definitely was not going to be anywhere near him.

The staging was such that they would never be captured on film in the same shot.  Somehow, I was serving as a valet in HRH Prince Charles’ entourage.  We headed, it seemed, along Hoskins Avenue on the north side and eastwards to Toronto’s Queens Park Circle.

In the circle, stood an incredible Gothic cathedral made of red clay.  This was an architectural wonder, it was so massive.  Built of the same red stone as the Ontario legislative building is, the structure was rather impressive.

This building was so unique and extraordinary.  To experience this building was as exciting as experiencing a great work of art.  This was architecture that was rousingly uplifting.

Also, this structure was several times larger than the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, in New York City – the largest in the world.  There was a wonderful wooded area which encircled it.

From amongst the towering trees, the spectacular work of architectural art triumphantly soared.  The door to the cathedral was easily thrice as high as the doors to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Moreover, the gargoyles here were supremely realistic.  A superb masterpiece of Gothic architecture this cathedral was.  Marvellous flying buttresses, which were even more impressive being in this tone of stone, girdered the magnificent Gothic structure.

Not unlike Notre Dame Cathedral, it sat in an island of sorts.  This place was easily four times larger than Notre Dame Cathedral.  Since it was still raining rather heavily, I held an umbrella for HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales.

We had had to go to the church on foot.  When we got to the traffic light, it took forever to change.  This soon made HRH Prince Charles irritable and he abruptly took off.  He did resent being publicly humiliated by HRH Princess Diana, Princess of Wales who had had them proceeded on foot – in the rain no less.

Her whole scene publicly was about emasculating him; she was intent on showing him as a man with no control or power.  Totally at the service of the women in his life, as it were, was he.

Obviously. from their interactions, these two did not like each other.  He suggested that we return to the residence where both entourages had started out.

The residence turned out to have been a very beautiful Gothic palace.  This palace was a long, dark-stoned mossy complex.  Soaked for eons in seasonal rains, the palace had a moss-blackened exterior.

The weather here was interesting because the rains never really let up.  Quite simply, the rains progressed from downpour to downpour and were sustained by ubiquitous drizzle.  Grey and autumnal, it was beautifully relaxing, humid air.

HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales wore a light grey, London Fog coat.  This was an exceptionally tailored coat.  Holding the umbrella, I was always on the prince’s left.

We then came back to the very stately furnished apartments at the Gothic palace.  HHR Prince Charles was not cohabiting, at this palace, with HRH Princess Diana.

Once we were alone, he asked if I would give him a back rub.  Seemingly, he suffered rheumatoid aches because of the rains.  He began absently talking and clearly was in a deep funk about his relationship with HRH Diana, Princess of Wales.

When he asked for the back rub, I thought it strange that he had said please.  He then let me know how much he appreciated me.  I was good for him, to have around, said he, and he wanted me to know how much he appreciated my being there.

What he really appreciated was my loyalty to him, said he.  Then he told me that I did have healing hands.  On coming inside, we had been properly soaked to the bones by all that rain.

His cheeks were red; a very ruddy complexion his, I noticed both when holding the umbrella for him.  I knew that when we got in, that we would both relish a glass of sherry, to warm us up.

I was really concerned for him that he would catch a cold.

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citroen-2cvb

In what proved the second dream, I got into this tiny cab; it was in the middle of the street and I got in on the driver’s side in back.  I had gotten in whilst traffic was dashing past.  I had trouble getting the door to close after me.

Once inside, it was much smaller a cab than even it had looked from the outside.  Black plush leather wonderfully complimented the deluxe look and feel of the cramped interior.

The driver was French and this clearly was in Paris.  We were caught in busy afternoon traffic.  In a bid to cross the street, lots of people kept getting off the sidewalk and stepping into traffic.

For my tastes, it was far too chaotic with the traffic a gridlocked and bottled-in mess.  For that reason, pedestrians would simply step off the sidewalk and into traffic without looking for advancing vehicles at their rear.

At the time, it was summertime out with lots of bare-armed, floral-printed dresses wafting by.  Open-toed and heeled shoes busily paraded the crowded wide sidewalks.

If only to protect against Sun damage, several persons wore hats.  The ladies were very conservative and proper.  Rather than the 1990s, one had the sense that this was Paris of the 1920s to 1930s.

From the textures, styles, even to the hairstyles, it was definitely not contemporary times.  Even the ambiance was more so 1930s Paris.  On a cobblestoned road, we began going around a circle but not the Place de L’Étoile.

Then the cab driver stopped without having gotten me to my destination.  Soon, we both got out with me being understandably pissed off at him.  We then abandoned the cab and proceeded walking through the traffic-choked street.

This was when I saw a dashingly handsome Black man walking with a White woman.  He was on her left, his moustache a distinctive, well-groomed signature.  He wore a white shirt and these wonderful khaki slacks.

He was simply handsome… extraordinarily so.  The Sun simply loved this man’s face.  His skin, bone structure, eyes and teeth simply made the light glow that much more beautifully.

Goodness, this man was dizzyingly good-looking.  Smooth, jet-black skin, it looked as though it had been pounded by some shamanic West African tanner/sculptor.

This man had all the elevated sophistication of Duke Ellington but was, of course, considerably darker than the Jazz genius.  The moment that I saw him, I knew instinctively that he was the man whose faded photograph I had seen in that unoccupied house back on February 16, 1989.

Perhaps, this was myself or Essence Twin, living a very urbane life in 1930s Paris.  Nonetheless, I totally connected with him; he was as familiar and connected as James Tramble or, for that matter, Merlin.

On seeing him, I became at once thrilled and uplifted.  Soon, it was obvious that they could not see me.  I was as if travelling back in Time and getting a glimpse into that past life.  Just as now that organic bungalow was also seemingly last occupied in the 1930s.

The driver then slapped me from my euphoric daze when demanding that I pay him 160 FF.  More to the point, the bum had not even gotten me to my destination!

Then again, in terms of having served as an astral guide, he had handsomely performed done his task.  After all, had we stayed in the cab and driven on, I would never have seen that man whom, at the level of soul, I so intimately knew.

“What?!  Are you dreaming?  I’m not going to give you no more than 60 FF.  Even that is too much, you still haven’t left me anywhere near rue de Grenelle in the sixth arrondissement.”

He was short, dark-haired and moustachioed.  A swarthy, provincial Frenchman he proved.  I most certainly did not give him a cent – let alone the rest of my time.

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dream-lover

In what proved the third dream, several trunks were standing about the Crab Hill, Sandy Point, St. Kitts house; several of them were standing on end.  A little lapdog busied its short-legged self by scurrying about the house.

Everywhere, there were trunks packed and in the centre of the rooms.  In the study, there were candles; so, I went there and began closing the windows.

As I went about closing the windows, I wondered how one could have gotten so lapsed as to have not kept the place closed and more secured.  For fear that it could start raining at any time, I then began closing the doors.

Besides which, it was coming on to nighttime.  The study was filled with innumerable volumes; the books were bound in rich leathers and cluttered everywhere.  I really enjoyed being in the room when drinking the vista of its wealth of knowledge.

As I had closed the window, I saw Yvette Morehead’s sizeable brood outside on the steps of her house playing.  Max Worsthorne was up in his house whilst looking down at me.  He was very stout and handsome.

When I went to close the rest of the doors, I noticed that the papaya tree – which I had planted in childhood – had grown quite large.  I came out to admire the fruit tree that I had planted and, on stepping onto the steps, saw Gowan Dalrymple outside in the yard.

He went into the old kitchen and was wearing an overall.  He was so handsome and alluring-eyed.  I was really warmed to have seen him.  Soon, I decided to seduce him because he was one of the warmest sensualists that I met during my teenage years.

We were quite hidden from view; thus, I went into the kitchen after him and closed the bottom door after me.  Whilst I was in the old kitchen with Gowan Dalrymple, Max Worsthorne could not see us.

I did, though, recall those memories of seeing him naked when a child and what an oversized cock he had.  Stooping to my knees, I began giving Gowan Dalrymple a blowjob.

He had been standing there waiting; his readily tumescent cock disturbed the draping of his overalls.  Opening up the blue denim overalls, I got out his cock.  Before going down on him, we made very long, intense, soulful eye contact.

His were such warm, smiling penetrating eyes – they certainly are in the waking state.  The thing about this experience was how awakened it was.  I could smell his breath as he yearningly breathed past parted lips.

Everything about the encounter was real; the encounter was astral planed.  Going down on him, I could taste the slight briny sting of his precum.  His balls smelt really loud – like a man ought to.

Even whilst on my knees, I spent most of the time whilst performing fellatio, looking equally unflinchingly into his eyes.  During our awakened astral plane encounter, we had hardly said a word to each other.

Gowan Dalrymple shuddered throughout as I gave him the slowest, most nerve-wracking blowjob.  The sexual play truly was a sensual massage that transcended the physical bounds of his senses.

Whilst performing fellatio, I was simultaneously massaging myself to an orgasm.  This, though, occurred without him or me masturbating my cock.  This was a purely spiritual experience.

What we shared was essence contact… in the true sense of the word.  The massage of his warm, moist, throbbing cock against my lips and into my mouth was sensually overwhelming.

This was a peak experience; it easily transcended that blowjob that I performed on the actor Mel Gibson in the dream of June 21, 1992 – the summer solstice.  The feel of this motion was sublime; it was akin to the arousal of spirit one feels for watching Evelyn Hart pour her soul into an emotive port de bras.

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Photo Credits: Ulm Cathedral, Germany

Diana, HRH Princess of Wales & HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales.  Soeul, Korea 1992

1940s Citroen CVB

Model by © Francisco Martins Photography.

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© 2013-2023 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

On The Sunny Side of The Street, It’s Black History Month!

Happy Black History Month!  Who cares about the Oscars?  The most important point of power in all situations is being able to see through to the structure of anything.  Those who cannot manipulate real time events to show themselves, chosen, entitled, special, ‘genius’ and all that nonsense will ever cheat, lie and steal.  Please do tell in in what other universe would there be a tie between Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand for Best Actress but in this one where the most venal racists run the show and everyone looks like another variation on Jackie ‘blasted god-fugly’ Stallone.

Go on, give each other awards; what does it finally matter when you know nothing of being cool and sophisticated as in those whom you so revile, vilify, loathe, incite others to hate – all the while crying of being victimised.  You know… those marvellous people whose spirit you will  never crush, despite the attempts of Orly Taitz and the returned de Torquemada – now no less fugly got up in reincarnational drag – Jackson, Woods and Cosby and you just know that the swine has only just begun.  They, those marvellous people, who like dreams – wherein only truth and beauty exist – are the ones to have invented Jazz and whose spirit will never be eclipsed by your god-fugly ugliness.  Yes, them… they who don’t need awards to show how special, chosen and what marvellous geniuses one so over-compensatorily is not!

Alas, for the truly marvellous people every day of the year is awards season; despite your alarming ugliness, you have positively no power over any of us when we set feet into our homes.  There, despite your lunacy, we affirm our creaturehood, our beauty or phenomenalness and we turn on some Jazz which can speak to no one else as it speaks to every last one of us – not you!  So while you infest the culture, like some fetid mould – which thankfully are never lasting – just know that the ugliness of your lies can in no way invalidate the beauty of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, Lena Horne, Anita Baker, Sarah Vaughan, Diana Ross, Natalie Cole… and countless others.

So go on and speciously raise your rear right leg and take to the airwaves claiming, “Jazz has its roots in Klezmer!”  Just remember this: forgiveness is the price a damn fool would gladly pay to forget anything.  Clearly, you do not know Black people and come November, we won’t collectively have taken leave of senses and do as you would wish… not after Orly…  Who cares about the Oscar vote?  Our vote is the one that truly matters…  Remember eight years ago… “I’m Voting For Her!”  We do not forget… where is that displaced haus frau anyway?  You know, the one who was partout on TV demanding that the unchosen sheeple, “Vote For Hillary!” followed by that demented laugh of hers… perhaps, she is too distracted these days trying to recall with which hand she ate last night.

Truly empowered are they who always say what the fuck they mean and never leave any doubt as to their resolve.

Incidentally, all the Jazz artists mentioned in this blog, I have to date done their Michael Overleaves.  Some are listed in the Michael Overleaves Appendix page those which aren’t were only recently channelled; they are… Natalie Cole, Anita Baker and Lena Horne.  Not in the least surprised was I to have found that Natalie Cole is an entity mate.  Every time I hear her voice, I am instantaneously catapulted to a groove that I can only call a soul high…  So then here are her Michael Overleaves with one of my favourite video performances of hers.  Every idiosyncrasy of hers resonates to the very core of my being… God she could represent!

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*Richard is New York City academician whom Merlin met during the final couple of years of his life.  This man had the most uncanny resemblance energetically to Merlin and I only met him a week after Merlin’s passing as he ventured to Toronto; he had previously planned to, to bid Merlin farewell.  Alas, unlike Joe Morton who flew in from Los Angeles for 24 hours to be with Merlin, Richard  had been too late but came nonetheless; the gesture was truly noble of spirit and was greatly appreciated.

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©2013-2023 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Natalie Cole 6/2/50_31/12/15

Natalie Cole

Natalie-Cole

natalie cole2

natalie cole3

Cole, Natalie 6/2/1950<O>31/12/2015

Michael: This fragment was a fifth level mature artisan – 3rd life thereat.  Natalie was in the power mode with a goal of growth.  She was a sceptic who was in the moving part of intellectual centre. 

Natalie’s was a Saturn/Mars body type. 

Natalie’s primary chief feature was stubbornness with a strong secondary chief feature of self-destruction which was primarily internally focussed. 

Natalie’s casting is in the fifth position of the fourth cadence in the second greater cadence – she is a cadence mate of Richard E. White (he is in fourth position).  She is a member of entity six, cadre one, greater cadre 7, pod 414 – another entity mate. 

Natalie’s essence twin is a discarnate artisan and her priest task companion was known to her. 

The three primary needs for Natalie were: expression, freedom and power. 

There are 12 past-life associations between Natalie and Arvin whilst there are 16 past-life associations with Merlin.  

natalie cole4

I am so devastated by this loss that I don’t even have the time to do the usual due diligence of listing credits.

So poised, elegant, admirable, fabulous, fantastic… could scat/vocalese just as stratospherically as Ella Fitzgerald.

From seeing her at Ontario Place’s Amphitheatre in the ’70s, whilst she did her funky soul diva incarnation, to the sheer brilliance of her sophisticated Jazz syncopation, there was no one else who could make me feel more fuck-all fabulous pride and take seriously this joint call being Black.

Natalie got to the very essence of who we, a proud noble people, truly are.  Her album: Take A Look (1993) literally afforded me the grace and dignity to get through the most hellish experience of being in a workplace surrounded by people who haven’t a clue that they are crazy – a people who collectively render us as invisible and who relish at every opportunity the racially predatory thrill of talking about us and openly ridiculing us as though we were a weeble-infested bag of flour in the corner.  These marvellous people for whom the gun is g_d incarnate and for whom it has never once occurred that we possibly could perceive them as crazy – crazy as in having invented something as absurd as Apartheid, crazy in openly gunning us down because well… one can, crazy as in busing, crazy as in building latter day landlocked Mayflowers whose hull hold a cargo that staves off the flowering of the next Coltrane, Tatum, Monk, Ellington et al… crazy as in harvesting a most strange fruit from poplar trees whilst crazily dressed up in the coward’s garb from pointy head to toe, crazy as in then having the fuck-all temerity to squat all over the culture and ape, ape, ape like crazy every thing we do culturally, creatively…. alas, who else but the crazy would openly hate you then turn around and ape everything you do from Jazz, to Hip-Hop, to Rap and all the while, like the truly crazy then somehow think that we never notice that they never ever have personal relations with Blacks… la Krall, Bublé and Eminem to name but a few readily come to mind.

Every day in Vancouver, for having survived and gotten one day closer to triumphantly getting through 24 months of workplace probation, it was to my lovely art-filled West End apartment that I retreated where this lovely beauteous-eyed goddess, Natalie Cole, would greet me with a voice that would truly embalm the soul from the bilious dissonance of the racial predator – those who haven’t a fucking clue that they are crazy…  And how the crazy people love to laugh at everything.

Sweet and blissful dreams dear Natalie, you proud noble griot who came to remind us that we are the most beautiful lotus to have flowered from the hellish swamp known as the semi-feral well-armed racial predator’s paradise.  What a positively rich, layered, textured, august life you accomplished…

A better place this world, a more grounded people we are, for you having chosen to be focussed herein at this time, in this place.

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*As I had always planned on doing Natalie Cole’s Michael Overleaves, they had not been done at the time of her passing and my having penned this impassioned tribute.  A couple of weeks later when her overleaves arrived, it was one of the rare times that on receiving someone’s overleaves that I broke down crying.  I always felt strongly connected to this woman – she was family.  Here then, at this juncture, though they have been added previously and subsequent to this original post – it is now December 2016 as I change the copyright time stamp – are Natalie Cole’s rather august Michael Overleaves – Natalie’s overleaves are now listed above.

There are these little things that bind us for being entity and cadre mates… at the end of the video for Route 66 which accompanies this tribute post, Natalie Cole can be heard saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah!”  This is precisely what fellow artisan and entity mate Attila Isaksen and I would repeat to each other as a greeting or when slipping out of inner musings after long pleasurable sexual play.  END..

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©2013-2023 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Hymn to Freedom.

© 1964 Oscar Peterson Trio Live in Denmark.

© 1962 Oscar Peterson – composition.

© 1963 Night Train – Verve Records.

Piano: Oscar Peterson

Bass: Ray Brown

Drums: Ed Thigpen

Heals the very soul every time!  When in Winnipeg at the school of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, I was the only student not included in the mounting of Romeo and Juliet, the company’s first full-scale ballet since David Peregrine and Evelyn Hart had won the bronze prize in Varna, Bulgaria.

This music, this giant of a genius, this album literally saved my life.

I felt such shame at having been excluded; having been properly isolated and rendered invisible, one then had to proceed as though one’s exclusion was not the most hurtful rejection.  The only thing that spirited me away from the abyss of self-implosion was this music.

A beautiful, male Jamaican-born nurse had given it to me on the second weekend of my stay in the city.  He had played the album after his truly elephantine cock had just ravaged my soul and I did nothing but stay there in bed flying-without-moving – and he was a damn good cook too!

Years later, after Merlin’s passing, I sat in the corner curled up with sage entity mate, Daryll Newcombe – now dead of AIDS, at every performance of Oscar Peterson at the Bermuda Onion Jazz Club on Bloor Street between Bay Street and Avenue Road.

The Bermuda Onion had great atmosphere.  More than that, it proved the only Jazz club in Toronto where one’s race did not preclude entry therein.

I was truly healed for being at those performances; I had survived Winnipeg and gone on to meet Merlin.  I had to have attended each performance, for Oscar’s sheer genius had not only enriched but it had literally saved my life.  So it was that, in later years, I was grossly disappointed by his glaring humanity.

His self-karmic issues notwithstanding, this was one genius of towering, staggering magnitude.  Much of the beauty of this giant’s genius is how pure, simple and warmly enveloping it ever was.

Indeed, one has much to be fiercely proud of in celebrating Black History, Black culture, Jazz, because of shamanic healers of the soul like Oscar Peterson.

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© 2013-2023 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

The Mooche.

© 2011 Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra, leader Wynton Marsalis

1928 Duke Ellington and Irving Mills

http://www.jazz.org/JLCO/

This evening – Wednesday, February 11, 2015, I went to the hallowed temple, Massey Hall and got my soul good and besotted on the masterful soufulness that is the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra led by Wynton Marsalis.  Boy, did I come undone when the Cuban balladeer not only danced but scatted like it was nobody’s business.  Now if this concert does not prove the leap off point for some truly poetic dreams then lord help me…

Happy Black history month!  Sweet dreams as ever!

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© 2013-2023 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Strange Fruit… The Gold Standard.

© 1992 Diana Ross Live

© 1993 Diana Ross Live.  Stolen Moments: The Lady Sings… Jazz and Blues.

Bass: Ron Carter

Trumpet: Jon Faddis

Trumpet: Roy Hargrove

Without doubt, the strongest Diana Ross live performance ever.  Poignant.  Moving.  Those large beauteous eyes mirror a lot of pain and rage during its performance.  Again, if you can’t sing it because you know damn well you can’t, why bother wasting the time on the likes of you?

A true mystery to me it remains why when one hates Blacks with such unbridled passion, one would end up squatting all over Black culture, Jazz, as though it were the latest Settler craze.  More to the point, there are no racially predatory persons creating Haida or Inuit art… and with good reason; then again, neither are expressions of Black creative genius.  Culture is a non-negotiable.

Alas, there is the racial predator aggressively overrunning the culture then turning around and acting as though to somehow include Blacks in Jazz – which after all one has already declared does have its roots in Klezmer – is tantamount to the Oscars where every 3/4 centuries or so, one will deign to consider tossing a best actress Oscar a Black female’s way.

The same Black female whom, in this the new age of minstrelsy, Diana Krall in her invisible blackface can never proximate.  However, this is about market share and having the right look and simply getting the lion’s share of fame and fortune for being born of the womb of the racial predator.  La Krall who in the pop idiom would have never risen stratospherically to the heights she has; certainly, she would never have had more than a second album.

She is a marvellous enigma – an icon in that sense for what she represents.  “I can get more market share than you” and that’s that.  She is cold and sterile like the gun that gunned down way too many young Black men – like the gun that set Ferguson, Missouri ablaze – whose lives clearly do not matter to some.  To see what a true fraud La Krall is – she who seemed nothing more than a venereal wart on Oscar Peterson’s arse, an arse which was too good to be wiped by mere Blacks when finally he was parked in palliative care – just listen to her do a damn good Joni Mitchell impersonation on her current album.

Sitting there at the piano, botoxed within a breath of being on view in her casket, La Krall coolly cops that ‘phuch ewe’ swagger she owns so well – just as Eminem does.  Yes, indeed, it is all about money and as race ever trumps either class or reason, there she drifts through life in Bentleys where others, the real McCoys, can hardly afford a Lada.

Again, why should we Blacks culturally settle for a Lada when we can, by right, damn well afford a Bentley?  Alas, who knows whether Cassandra Wilson is dead or alive anymore?

More than ever, these pale imitators no more give a damn about Blacks or Black culture than the next Klansman.  Roberta Gambarini is the best impersonator of Carmen McRae going… nothing more.  There they squat, this elephantine, oppressive presence all over Jazz, pulling an Eric Garner thereby suffocating and stifling the very breath of Black culture.  Seriously, who are Emilie-Claire Barlow, Holly Cole, Sophie Milman but mirrors of the grudging contempt for which one holds Blacks and Black culture.

Never once did I, or Merlin and I for that matter, manage to gain entry into Montréal Jazz Bistro when it sat on Sherbourne Street.  Indeed, the one time, we made it to George’s Spaghetti house, having previously tried to without success, was as the guests of David Tipe; the evening was cut short after a stranger wondered over to the table where we sat and in the midst of making small-talk blurted out something about ‘niggers’.

Without the support from the moneyed classes, there can be no arts, no culture.  Racism is economics and the result of the focussed economic oppression of Blacks – all fostered by the demonisation, marginalisation and dismissal of Blacks, in particular Black males, by a cinema/television culture, the architects of whom are the same persons who squat all over the culture and would be so smug as to blithely claim on live radio that Jazz has its roots in Klezmer.  Some alternate reality that.

Thank goodness there was a strong Black middle class, little more than a century ago, without which there would have been no birth of Jazz.  No Coltrane, no Ellington, no Mingus and on and on and on.  There has been a steadfast erosion to near obliteration of the Black middle classes such that anyone today without an awareness of music history would think it incredulous that Blacks should claim to be the innovators of Jazz.

Naturally, of course, the same cinematic agendum that would keep Blacks all but invisible and extinct when not risible, violent and or marginalised has never once seen fit to have cinematically documented the lives of any of these true geniuses of Jazz which one keeps claiming is a true American art form, yet until Michelle Obama took up residency in the White House, it had never before been performed therein.

Black history month is about celebrating and most of all it is about never for a nanosecond losing sight of who the racial predator is and despite Nikki Yanofsky – the darling little Montréalaise with the bought career – claiming, “Oh Ella we love you!” well to channel the very spirit of Frederick ‘Mr. Hat’ Jones, I declare, “Bitch please.  Ella don’t give no damn if you can turn piss into wine.  We ain’t having it!”

Sing Strange Fruit or just go make country music; an idiom, I might add, where you never see Blacks claiming ownership thereof or time-wasting patronising.  After all, Country is the music of the very people about whom Strange Fruit was penned.

Alas, your racially predatory animus is so intense that you can’t but squat all over the culture, with total disregard, and thereby make it your own.  Besides, what do you care what we think?

Go on, go ahead, let’s see you sing Strange Fruit with all the pain and rage as Diana Ross… to say nothing of Billie Holiday.  

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© 2013-2023 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Do Nothing ‘Till You Hear From Me!

© 1994 Lena Horne music by Duke Ellington & Sidney Russell

The first time I heard this music, I was arrested by the opening chords as I stood still in the middle of my living room on the third/top storey of 878 Gilford Street in Vancouver’s West End.  At the end of Lena Horne’s passionate singing, I screamed and laughed uncontrollably with tears running down my face.

I had been standing half naked before getting ready for work and decided that the experience was too great to do something so ridiculously banal as go in to work that day.  Naturally, I had been standing with tape recorder in hand – after having just recorded the dreams dreamt.  Quickly, I grabbed a new cassette and recorded the newly released song from the CBC FM radio station as Ross Porter had waxed on long enough about the new Lena Horne Jazz recording for me to have pounced into action.

I spent the rest of my stay in Vancouver listening to this recording at least four times weekly.

This is the music that let’s you leap off into truly sublime dream experiences.

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© 2013-2023 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.