Motown – Dreams are the poetic expression of the soul.

By now the effects of the stewed fruit at breakfast has seen my waist shrink; I am grateful. The morning after the night that was, I am still elated and humming away that catchy melody from Ludwig Minkus’ greatly composed ballet.

After breakfast I decamped at Leicester Square where it was time to enjoy the bright, cool sunlight and catch a movie. The Vue cinemas are rather interesting; I was keen to know if I would have a repeat of what had transpired last winter.

Back then, I was upstairs at the same cinemas watching, Darkest Hour, which proved a real tour de force performance from Gary Oldman. Sat in the back row, soon I became bloated and expansive. Though not the least bit drowsy, I felt wide-open and lucidly self-aware. Next, as the film progressed, I watched as several pure white humanoid forms simply stood up and walked to the sides and quite seamlessly walked through the very real walls of the cinema.

One of the things that Merlin and I always loved doing, was seeing a film during its opening weekend. Naturally, so close to the anniversary of his passing, I was keen on seeing a film. J. K. Rowling is among my favourite contemporary writers and having seen the first film in this series, it only made sense to go.

Whilst waiting for the cinema to open, I caught a series of items; all are favourite actors of mine, especially Sir Kenneth Branagh.

The first screening of the day was a special affair with about one third of the theatre occupied. A lovely Chinese couple sat to my right with their precocious son of about ten years stuck between them. We chatted briefly and I thought it so strange that conversation with strangers is almost unheard of when attending a Canadian movie.

I emerged into the crisp Saturday morning in Leicester Square a bit teary eyed as thoughts of Merlin at one point during the film overwhelmed me. It was after all the eve of his passing some 29 years earlier.

Slipping inside this tiny joint – I always favour hole-in-the-world, ma-n-pa joints, I got a couple of really good slices of pizza whilst pouring through the Times of London. There was conversation close by, which struck me as interesting; it went from Theresa May and Brexit to Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex. I soon realised that both persons were openly criticised chiefly for being women; in the case of the Ms. May, she is dismissed and not taken seriously chiefly for being female. As for Meghan, like every woman who marries into the BRF, she is readily reviled, though, some of this has bordered on racial hysteria and seriously threatening.

In a bid to cleanse my very soul, after all that, I slipped from Leicester Square for the uplifting sophistication of the National Gallery where I deftly moved through my favourite salons with usual mercurial speed, taking the time to pause and admire the key works of art that bring me the greatest pleasure.

Well, after all that art, it was time for more prowling the decidedly unCanadian wintry streets of London. Along Shaftesbury, I strode my Crockett & Jones booted and blistered feet into Neal Street where my favourite hippy-dippy (as Merlin would remark) New Age store, The Astrology Shop in Covent Garden. Though, it most definitely does not have the best choices, I still love the feel of the place and their sagebrush collection is second to none.

Along with marvellous pieces of crystals and a wonderful Citrine, I really connected with this gorgeous agate ring. The moment that I saw it, I really resonated with me and it felt so right.

After a rather warm conversation with a green-eyed, redhead, she was fascinated by my custom Reuben Mack messenger bag.

I then headed back to The British Museum for more shopping. As it was the weekend, there was now a sizeable lineup to gain entry. As though my impatience with crowds were not enough but soon, I had two Torontonian women doing what Canadians do best; they spent much of their time gawking at me, talking about me and cultural appropriation for wearing the custom Reuben Mack messenger. Standing there in line, I was reminded of what petty, small-minded bigoted jackasses the average Canadian can be and god do they love being openly racially predatory towards blacks.

Never once had I experienced a scintilla of racial animus from a Briton or for being in London to that point; there you have it, the land where racism is enshrined in law: employment equity law of Canada: All employers must employ, Caucasians, First Nations persons, Disabled persons and visible minorities and therein is the framework of Canada’s own form of Apartheid – state sanctioned racism. All employers, in particular crown corporations (government agencies – federal and provincial) employ visible minorities to the exclusion of blacks and if and when they do employ blacks, they then hire blacks only as casual workers which means they are not entitled to benefits, pension and guaranteed hours.

So smugly established is this state of affairs that the current prime minister refused to attend the 50th anniversary of Caribana – the nations West Indian community’s gift to Canada on its 100th birthday in 1967; however, he attends ever Gay pride parade in the same city as Caribana, Toronto, and has repeatedly been to India, to dress up and act a right clown because who gives a damn about blacks in Canada. As one friend said, blacks over the past three decades have become as marginalised as First Nations persons. But enough about aggressive young souls and their racialised worldview. Meanwhile, as they were openly rude towards me whilst queueing to enter the British Museum, I grabbed my phone and pretended to film them to which one of them suddenly became enraged, demanding that I not film her… You have to laugh or truly you would go mad. In any event, I got the feisty Buster a nice but scary Egyptian stuffed cat – he is actually afraid of it.

On my return to the hotel, a couple of blocks from The British Museum, I slumped into bed and decided that my aching feet needed a break from the rest of the day’s planned events. To that end, I stayed in that night rather than return to Barbican Hall to catch a celebration of the Windrush Migration. At that concert were to have been Calypso Rose and The Mighty Sparrow; though it had been years since last seeing either performer, I just was not into it. Moreover, I wanted to take the time to be with myself and reflect on the eve of Merlin’s passing some 29 years earlier.

As ever, thanks for your ongoing support and ever remember to push off and start flying.

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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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Dreams are the poetic expression of the soul.

Tag: Motown

The Day After the Night that Was.

Strange Fruit… The Gold Standard.