Nothing warms the soul like the beauty of the Black voice in musical flight; it is the very essence of who we are. This is why, Jazz has always been and will always be Black culture… know that. Happy Black History month because we matter!
Just look at this transparent campaign for hosting the Oscars in 2023… Every two nanoseconds, this snivelling weasel is gum-flapping about Will Smith. So good of you to criticise the Academy’s decision to have only meted out a decade-long ban on Will Smith and to not have taken away his best actor Oscar, 2022. Better yet, how about your green card be taken away? You do not stand a flying chance in hell of hosting the Oscars in 2023. That job goes to the very gracious and truly American – we know that Blacks don’t factor for you Britons – Chris Rock, who has conducted himself with the greatest tact and maturity, which is far more than can be said for yet another opinionated Briton with an alarmingly racist perception of Blacks. Does this little runt honestly believe that Whoopi Goldberg, who does have some clout in the Academy, is going to have Chris Rock passed over in favour of a mere foreigner whose isle of boars have proven themselves rabidly racist… Meghan & Harry, Duke & Duchess of Sussex and their vilification come to mind. Perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of the boorish White Briton, what does this snivelling little bigot do, as vilifying Meghan, Duchess of Sussex was so successful for them, he takes on not just Will Smith but attacks Jada Pinkett Smith for a health condition of hers, all whilst parading all the American awards this ungrateful race-baiting coward has collected along the way for being holier than though and merely for being White rather than not – as all Britons know, racism is America is good business for them. It has allowed them to sneak in on safari and clutch some prize game: Emmy, Oscar, SAG, TONY et al.
Listen to that vile sophist, who naturally is possessed of 9 in their numerological makeup and of course considers it perfectly okay to cast aspersions on Blacks… well, because one can. It/They are so fabulously, fantastically fake. Sat there in their poundland begot Castle Goring; how they must thank their stars that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, the most reviled Black woman on the planet, has appeared on the timeline, affording their pretentious hide a new income stream as it/they peddle in racist hate, lies and innuendo. As if it were innuendo to state of ‘them’ madam Poundland themself, an obvious man. Then this cross-dressing, big-handed man has the gall to be inferring that Meghan is not really a woman but likely a hermaphrodite – you seriously cannot make this specious fare up. Naturally, the pregnancies were fake and there was clearly surrogates involved; furthermore, Meghan was a yacht girl, it/they boldly assert. Usually, to be a successful yacht girl, you have to be pussied and yet there is no evidence that Meghan was kicked to shore, for proving a hermaphrodite masquerading as a woman on the yacht circuit, as alleged by the racist boor it/themself on their money-scamming YouTube soapbox; however, go right ahead, spreading their innuendo and lies to your gaggle of racist boors as there is never a fabricated lie that isn’t soon become plain-as-irrefutable-fact truth. Just listen to the lies it/they speciously drool whilst carefully speaking so as to not have it/their teeth come unglued. That’s right, said the unpussied one themself, who managed to fool someone into marriage on the proviso that they wait until marriage to get at one’s pussy. Well that didn’t last long and since they still couldn’t breed naturally, trots off on its hind legs and acquires two boys and not girls…. no wonder they never talk about paedo Andy…
Time and again, they keep dripping with specious innuendo about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex based on their royal source. Key in all their posturing BS is the imperious royal. Not once does that Poundland Lady-My-Ass shyster ever utter, ‘British Royal Family’ because it/they no more know any BRF member than any Black person, whom they falsely claim to discuss Meghan with, has time to waste their spit on this hideous, racist opportunist. Her royal is yet another ancien royal who happens to be Russian. No matter how this Drag Race reject blab, it/they need to explain how possibly Meghan, Duchess of Sussex used the race card?
Let’s then review facts… The featured Rhino-legged hybrid wore the infamous blackamoor brooch to HM The Queen’s Christmas lunch in 2017 at Buckingham Palace. This brooch is as offensive to all Blacks, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex included, as much as if Meghan were Jewish and Madam Rhino-hooved had sported a swastika – this I ought to know for being also of Sephardic heritage. Meghan, claimed in the 2021 Oprah Interview, the appalling racism to which she and Harry, Duke of Sussex were subjected – that’s four years after The Queen’s 2017 Christmas lunch. The offensive brooch-wearer was not strapped into a wheelchair the past 40 years, drooling on herself without a frigging clue; rather, she spent much of the 80s 90s jetting to NYC during the jet-setting social seasons, which means that there is no way that the pompous minor royal could not have been conversant with the racist offense the blackamoor brooch would provoke.
If after the Oprah interview, pompous Fraulein Rhino wore said blackamoor brooch as a defiant fuck-you to the Sussexes for speciously alleging that the BRF were racist when they weren’t, then one could justifiably allege that Meghan used the race card. Deny racism all you want but rather elegantly enraged, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex was sat with Oprah and by merely eloquently stating fact, caused Commonwealth member states to begin the process of divesting themselves of the Crown. Of course, to send an immediate signal, Barbados bypassed a referendum and simply speed-tracked the process of becoming a republic and by year’s end, voilà, Bajans said, ‘Sorry, we have no time for this BS.’
Sarah VaughanMidnight Sun
As ever, life is like a flying dream; if you look down, you’re fucked. Enjoy the ride and fear no one!
Michael: No, this is not the fragment who was previously Dorothy Dandridge. This fragment is a second-level mature artisan – second life thereat. Halle is in the observation mode with a goal of growth. An idealist, she is in the moving part of emotional centre.
Body type is Solar/Venus.
Halle’s primary chief feature is skewed impatience and the secondary is stubbornness.
The fragment Halle is fifth-cast in second cadence; she is a member of greater cadence three. Halle’s entity is six, cadre one, greater cadre 7, pod 414 – an entity mate of both Merlin’s and Arvin’s.
Halle’s essence twin is an artisan and her task companion is a slave.
Halle’s primary needs are: exchange, adventure and freedom.
There are 16 past-life associations with Arvin and 12 with Merlin. ________________________________________________
As I am a sceptic, I looked on at Halle’s historic best actress win speech and though I trembled and cried, I was also detached and shrewdly aware why she had won. Indeed, she was the vessel, at long last, because months earlier the twin towers were felled and who knew what strange new nightmare we had entered. Just to be safe, what do you know, none-too-liberal, the archly discriminating gatekeepers in Hollywood decided that it fiinally was time to “let’s make like nice, whatta say, let’s give her the award.” Oh Please!
In a truly great American cinema, Dorothy Dandridge was just as deserving to have won best actress Oscar for “Carmen Jones” as was Elizabeth Taylor damn well deserving to have won best actress Oscar for her riveting performance in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Naturally, to cancel the threat of the very brilliantly talented Diana Ross, singer/actor, winning the best actress Oscar in 1973 for “Lady Sings the Blues,” she was pitted against my father’s paternal first cousin, the actor Cicely Tyson in “Sounder.” A Briton, Maggie Smith was a spoiler vote, so that the sizeable British voting members of the Academy, could cast her a vote rather than vote for either Black nominee. Then there was another foreigner, Liv Ullmann, when the Academy awards are an American awards rather than film festival – the difference is plainly obvious. All this left one other candidate for best actress Oscar, Liza Minnelli, who was just as vapid and untalented as she has remained. And thus, neither Cicely Tyson nor Diana Ross won a best actress Oscar that night in 1973 and, of course, neither would go on to do so.
Just look at the 02:13 mark of the featured video of Halle Berry’s best actress Oscar acceptance speech for her turn in “Monster’s Ball” in 2002, there was sat Helen Mirren, onlooking as though she were looking at this imposter freak, someone being allowed to take a damn award that rightfully ought to have gone to, Judy Dench. There sat Helen Mirren who did not stand up as Halle, an American actor, winning an American award, said, “tonight this door has been opened.” Helen sat there livid at Halle high-jacking the awards with all this affirmative action claptrap. Never mind the Briton small-minded bigot, at least Sidney Poitier (old soul sage) was present to witness the historic moment. Well, you can bet Prada-heeled Britons in Hollywood, went all out to quickly slam shut that door because why should ‘they’ have received such a prestigious award? They are not even RADA graduates. Americans fought a war to rid themselves of the tyranny of these people and their colonising conceit and arrogance. Let’s face it, a BAFTA award hasn’t the cachet of an Oscar; it should be of negligible worth if an American actor is either nominated or wins a BAFTAaward. It is not an Oscar.
Barbara Stanwyck
circa 1940s
Photo by A.L. Whitey Schafer
Why in the hell is American cinema being steamrolled and bullied into submission by these holier-than-thou poseurs? No Briton with the exception of Elizabeth Taylor, who was riveting and compelling in every role she ever played, been deserving of being awarded an Oscar. What right have Kate Winslet, Olivia Colman, Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson, to name far to many, to be in the same league as Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Grace Kelly, Mia Farrow, Meryl Streep to mention a mere few?
Ever since the fairy dust of Chuck & Di’s 1981 pantomime, arriviste Hollywood have been bowing and scraping as though these were pre-1776 times. Since that best actress Oscar acceptance speech by Halle Berry in 2002, there has been a plethora of decidedly non-American actors, walking off with an Oscar in a parade of spiteful arrogance. Why Kate Winslet has won a best actress Oscar is beyond me, her every performance is just plain, insipid… uninspired. Winslet and her foreign colleagues are void magnetism and merely use the snobbish hauteur of their British accent as their cachet for being perfectly entitled to an Oscar. Who are these people to be in the same league as Faye Donaway, Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep.
Let me tell you something, that award right there is the most bold-face looting in recent memory. Just like Angela Bassett was robbed of the 1994 best actress Oscar for “What’s Love Got To Do With It” so, too, was Viola Davis robbed of the 2017 best actress Oscar. Viola won best supporting actress Oscar for a role in August Wilson’s “Fences,” which won best actress Tony on Broadway; it is not a supporting role. They even tried to see if they could snatch it from Viola’s rightful clutch, as they did with Cicely and Diana in 1973, in 2017, by also putting Naomie Harris and Octavia Spencer in the mix. Not only was it insult enough to have been misplaced in the nominations category but there was a strong likelihood that Viola could have lost out, just so that she could be put in her place for being so damn good. Bar none, she is the best actress under 60 in English-speaking cinema. Period.
Seriously, though, what can one expect of Hollywood when they had the temerity to tear their arses in the world’s face by having you and me believe that the statistically impossible truly had occurred, affording a tie in 1968 to Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand for best actress Oscar. An Oscar has been of negligible worth since. And as such, it has become a members only club, to keep Black actors at bay; indeed, they go looking elsewhere for actors to whom they award Oscars, chiefly to Britons. To hell with Mr. Darcy. American cinema, to say nothing of actors, are being robbed. Where are the films, telling the story of Cuban-Americans in Miami, Lakota families and their rich history in the north. There are a thousand stories to be had in each of the 50 states of Black, Latino, Jewish, Irish, Mexican, Cuban… all Americans and it is not being told. Yet, you have these arrogant Britons, dragging on a fag and copping hauteur, though no doubt more jizzed than a Grand Central Station urinal during evening rush-hour, grabbing an Oscar time and again and toffing up their accent to bedazzle the none-the-wiser, silly little Yanks.
The one thing that the past five years has taught us, is that Britons are alarmingly racist and not only are they more racist than Americans but unlike Americans, they refuse to admit to being racists. Whether you are black or white, you are American and Americans are second to no one. Period. Why is the acting heritage of American greats like Hepburn, Davis, Stanwyck et al being eclipsed by non-Americans, chiefly Britons, marching in grabbing an Oscar; obviously if an Oscar had comparably less cachet than a BAFTA, no British actor would time-waste, courting an Oscar. Indeed, the age of neo-colonialism is upon us. Helen Mirren is leaden and starchy and does Helen Mirren, time and again. Same with Maggie Smith, Judy Dench (the dame means nothing to Americans) Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Olivia Colman the whole lot of them, it is all third-tier smoke and mirrors by way of copping Toff hauteur and using voice (à la Dune) by way of that accent on the oh-so-unsophisticated Yanks. Hell, in 2016 Helen Mirren even argued that there was nothing possibly wrong with only one Black American female having won a best actress Oscar to that point, in the 78-year history of the Oscars.
There are two types of looting with which we are all familiar. One, Black people looting at the drop of the hat; it is expected and an excuse to be reviled by the rest of society. Secondly, though not readily admitted, planetary looting of which we as a species are wholly guilty, which will cause our civilisation’s ruin in due course.
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Paul Buck/EPA/Shutterstock (7717380be)
British Actor Colin Firth Holds Up His Oscar For Actor in a Leading Role For ‘The King’s Speech’ During the 83rd Annual Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood California Usa 27 February 2011 the Oscars Are Presented For Outstanding Individual Or Collective Efforts in Up to 25 Categories in Filmmaking United States Hollywood
Usa Academy Awards 2011 – Feb 2011
Diana Krall at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, Staples Center, Los Angeles, CA. 02-13-11
Ah yes, then here we have the most invidious looting. Britons looting an American award because clearly the BAFTA award hasn’t the same cachet. The Academy awards are an American award; they are not part of a film festival, which by its very nature is open to all nationalities, they are a uniquely American award. Then, there is the most egregiously invidious looting: Whites looting Black culture because… well, one can. To fuck with you, Jazz is too good for you; to hell with you, you could not possibly have invented this… This is American music; if indeed it were American music, god only knows you would never have deigned to have afforded us access – like your Oscars – to the art form, which boasts an unrivalled pantheon of musical geniuses. But hey, stay over there in your parallel universe, making your trifling music, as if anyone Black, on returning home after racism’s bile being spat their way 1 to 1000 times for heading out the door could care less. Please go ahead, piss yourselves silly, thinking that somehow any Black has time to waste when at home, to listen to music of the people who hate us, who murder us because… well, one can. Stay there in your parallel universe, lying to yourselves about how great you are – greater wealth and market share does not make for superior art; it is merely damn good business as much as so as are drugs. Don’t, however, for nanosecond get carried away with your deluded, revisionist sacrilege, talking knee-on-our-neck odious crap, “Jazz has its roots in klezmer!” “Jazz is American music! Nope, not having it!
Red Azaleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music
Acrylic on Canvas
73 3⁄4 × 158 1⁄2 × 2 1⁄2 in.
Alma Thomas
1976
Provenance: Smithsonian American Art Museum.
________________________________________
How could you possibly expect us to suffer you anywhere near Jazz? Your perception of us; indeed, your notion of what we are and how we should be perceived and celebrated, are as dumb-no-fuck, bug-eyed blasted coons at whom you get to laugh. An Oscar is nothing more than these TV singing competitions where the winner is determined by the votes of well-groomed Joe & Karen Bigot where the outcome will almost always be predictably White. Imagine that, the year that Jennifer Hudson appeared on American Idol, she did not win the competition. The Academy has deemed that Black women are not deserving of a best actress Oscar, anymore than they can damn-well sing. Imagine, Bette Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan to name but a handful’s legitimacy, determined by the purely predictable, racialised bias of the Academy and its none-too-liberal members. There really ought to be litigation all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court to determine once and for all, if foreign-born actors are eligible to win an American award, the Oscar, when the awards are an American rather than a film festival’s prize. The very heritage of American cinema demands nothing less.
Jazz is Black culture. Jazz is Black high art. Jazz is Black spirituality. Jazz is the assertion of our humanity in the face of your savagery. Jazz music is the language of Black culture’s high-priests, its poets, its genius visionaries. Jazz… it’s about us.
As ever, life is like a flying dream; if you look down, you’re fucked. Enjoy the ride and fear no one!
One thing that the marriage of the TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex has revealed, is just how hideously racist Britons are. Naturally, as all bigots especially the most invidious racially predatory will have you know, ‘It has nothing to do with race!’ The DailyMail has made an industry of acting as a de facto wing of the EDL in its campaign of destroying the marriage of the Sussexes.
Every single day its gaggle of writers launch another volley of hate to feed their hate-filled multitude of devotees whom they simply abuse in their quest for more advertising revenue. Last week, their legions of bigots were gleeful when not only was the Duchess of Sussex not at Royal Ascot but neither was her husband. Naturally, the rumour was that Her Majesty The Queen had banned the Sussexes from attending Royal Ascot. Of course, last year when Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge was on maternity leave, she did not attend Royal Ascot. Furthermore, not once did her husband attend Royal Ascot. That is the tradition.
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Naturally, when these photographs of this year’s Royal Ascot emerged, the plethora of bigoted DailyMail trolls were celebratory of how happy and wholesome everyone looked. Of course, they were commenting on the homogeneity of the group; their was even talk that the RF looked so much happier without the American in their midst.
The following day, it was announced that the Royal Foundation was disbanding. This not only gave cause for wild celebration by the DailyMail trolls but in hindsight, it was speculated that the group looked as happy as they did at Royal Ascot because at that point, the dissolution of the Royal Foundation would have been known to all. This was seen as more proof that HM The Queen did not want Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex around Indeed, clearly, the Sussexes were headed for divorce and it was only a matter of time before there would be an announcement to that effect.
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By no means was tabloid culture then what it is today; however, there was no getting around the fact that there was unrelenting animus that was decidedly racist towards Yoko Ono because she was non-white. Of course, at the time as now and is always the case, there was strident denial that there was prejudice involved in the animus towards Yoko Ono. Heaven only knows that Linda Eastman was not a Briton, yet she was not reviled and hated for being an outsider as was Yoko Ono.
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So intense was the racial animus towards Yoko Ono that John Lennon had to relocate to New York City to seek peace away from being unrelentingly reviled by Britons, who were nothing more than unmasked Klansfolk; though there were three other wives, Yoko Ono was solely to blame for the demise of the Beatles. Indeed, Britons have John Lennon’s blood on their hands for having racially preyed on this man and his wife to the point where he had to flee and take refuge in a land where guns rule. Paul, Ringo nor George had to flee England because Britons did not approve of their choice of a wife.
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Neither Linda Eastman nor Montréalaise Autumn Kelly were subjected to the same animus as Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex for being outsiders marrying much-loved Britons. True, every woman marrying into the BRF experiences blow-back. Sarah Ferguson, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Catherine Middleton and on and on. Truth be told, neither Linda nor Autumn were subjected to similar animus as Yoko or Meghan simply for being Caucasian and therefore, deemed acceptable.
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Britons may well succeed with running TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex out of town as they did John Lennon and Yoko Ono but know this, Tungsten has got powerful players in her corner. For starters, if the Sussexes were exiled, Oprah et al have the power to have her appointed as honorary chairperson of the Academy Awards – some such title of an American-British film society – not the American wing of BAFTA – which would see Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex each year present the award for Best Film at the Academy Awards.
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More to the point, when are Americans going to stop kowtowing to Britons because of the latter’s archly over-compensatory inferiority complex, of all things, masquerading as posh, sophisticated, superior and aristocratic. Why should an American actor, after having graduated with distinction from Julliard sit by and watch yet another English actor waltz in and claim the American award for best actor in a film which was not even an American production; this has repeatedly happened in the past. And so like Britons it is; they are the only island dwellers in the English-speaking world who never lose their god-awful accent regardless how long they sojourn abroad. Whether five years or fifty, you can also count on the expat English to maintain their posher-than-though English accent. Some may be readily charmed/fooled by all that posh posturing but it is so much obvious BS.
Glenn Close did not win the Best Actress BAFTA in 2019 that honour went to Briton, Olivia Colman in The Favourite. Ever possessed of this obsequious need to suck up, the Academy and its members voted Olivia Colman Best Actress at an American Awards show when the production was not an American production and Glenn Close was not going to win the Best Actress BAFTA and did not. One thing is clear from her acceptance speech, Olivia Colman is a one-hit wonder and will never win an Oscar again, just as Matthew McConaughey never will; after all, his Best Actor award was by default – so great was the need to deny Chiwetel Ejiofor an Oscar for his masterful performance in 12 Years A Slave.
When Britons prove themselves such ugly racist boors as with Yoko Ono and now Meghan Markle, why indulge, suffer or tolerate these people overlong? Throwing Oscars at them because they talk as though they’ve got a horse’s hoof stuck up their arse, there is nothing much to celebrate when one’s claim to fame is having subjugated 2/3s the world way back when and having enslaved and or brutalised those persons.
Of course, Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex chose not to move next-door to the Cambridges at Kensington Palace. For one, there is every reason to believe that the Cambridges’ marriage currently is nine parts façade and with a numerology attitude of 9, HRH Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, apart from not being the sharpest tool in the box, is also conceited, stubborn, bigoted and intolerant and also is in tight with those pompous-arsed minor royals the Michaels of Kent et famille who with their racist perspective were none-too-shy about showing their true colours, blackamoor and all with Meghan suddenly in their midst and to whom they would have to curtsy.
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A den of racial predators is no environment in which to bring up black children and that would also include those generational members of Kensington Palace staff, who would think nothing of being openly racist towards Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex and her children, For Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex the minor royal Micheals of Kent are no different to Samantha Grant and Thomas Markle Jr. She endured the racially predatory bullying in childhood, which is precisely why she has absolutely nothing to do with them and with damn good reason. Trust you me, there is not a single black person on this planet who would suffer any such environment. It is not human, not civilised and a goddamn waste of time.
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Carping on about how much better Cressida Bonas would have been as a wife to HRH Prince Henry of Wales, is a moot point. Who knows, perhaps, Harry was being forced into the relationship so that his older brother could have access to Cressida’s older sister, Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe. Is it any wonder why Sam Branson keeps his wife as far away from the isle of England as possible. Of course, had Harry married Cressida, this newfound media love for Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge would not have eventualised. She would be portrayed, even more so, by the DailyMail as workshy and they would even up the practise of only printing photographs of her when her face is at rest, which is a decidedly hard affair. For being blonde, blue-eyed and with an artisan’s fey beauty, Cressida, had Prince Harry married her in May 2018, would currently be eclipsing Catherine, who is now being seen as a fashion icon. No matter how DailyMail repackage and champion Catherine, she is a relative dud when publicly speaking as Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex has time and again proven. The Duchess of Sussex’s commanding performance at the 2018 British Fashion Awards at Royal Albert Hall truly was a study is grace, poise, elegance and commanding stage presence. You’ve either got it or, as in Catherine’s case, you don’t. Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex is quite confidently aware that a mic is Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge’s kryptonite.
The DailyMail and its gang of racist boors can vent and gloat all they want but if HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex were to have married a conservative Muslim and converted, for fear of ending up with their fetid skull on the small of their back, every one of their cowardly racist boors would know to keep their damn mouths shut. Of one thing they are certain, fucking with blacks will earn you no serious repercussions. The DailyMail‘s hacks have proven that England is the isle of the original hooded klansfolk; they are just a little bit more evolved to the point where their hoods have become invisible but no less ugly are they. In the end, who could give a fuck; the boors of the isle of England most certainly did not invent Jazz and speaking of which…
After having pored through this year’s TD Toronto Jazz Festival lineup, I knew that there was only one show that I cared to attend. The Diana Ross show at the Sony Centre though tempting, however, the centre is just too cavernous a space. Jazz needs the warmth and intimacy of a smaller venue. Besides, I knew damn well that coming the day after the Pride parade, there would be queens aplenty in the audience. Most of them would be expecting the usual Diana Ross show; however, this was going to be a Jazz show.
As ever, I did not attend Pride parade, never have. Back in 1986, Merlin and I hauled arse to a dinner party in the Annex where an artistic director associate of his, held court. Frankly, neither men liked each other but for professional reasons one endured much. Among the group of 8 souls was a redhead interior decorator from New York City who was the most vile dirty-arsed bigot conceivable. Naturally, with yours truly present, he just had to wax overlong about what a scourge on human civilisation blacks the world over were.
Merlin stealthily reached across my plate and removed my steak knife from the plate and placed it to his left as I sat on his right. Finally, when we got home by cab as Merlin sought to shift my mood by playing some Miles Davis, I went and retrieved a pair of scissors and demonstrated to him on returning to the living room, “That’s it, I am cancelling my membership in Gay society. God only knows it is not as if these blasted, motherfucking lisping, bottom-feeding people invented Jazz.” For me what really settled it, was the redhead boor’s decree, “Sorry dear but there is no black in the rainbow.”
Of course, a couple of years back the Black Lives Matter delegation, which had been invited to march in the Gay Pride parade, were booed, heckled and pelted with unopened water bottles. That very day on my way home, I was also attached and it was much fuelled by the general anger at having had the Black Lives Matter contingent in the parade. To this day, the pride community are still mad at the Police and had banned them from participating in the parade, all because they allowed the Black Lives Matter group into the parade. Even though the group had been invited, they were treated by spectators as though they did something as irresponsible as simply showed up and high-jacked the parade.
The above photograph was the look for the opening act, one of those regrettable experiences, which alas the Canada Council foists on one, god only knows why. Banal and as sexually intriguing as a live webcam set up on a couple of koala bears in repose, some things just have to be endured to get one through to the real deal. As my date, an ageing Jewish actor/writer with the most wicked sense of humour is always great company, we sat in the back row, all to ourselves, in fits of delicious giggles – we were poring through online photographs of Céline Dion parading in haute couture in Paris in the lead up to Paris Fashion Week; when asked what I thought of her whacky, over-the-top, beyond desperate behaviour, I flatly put in, “it ought damn well to be kept leashed and staked out back.”
Next, it was my turn to come undone when no sooner than having slipped in the breath mint that he whispered, “those are the new mint-flavoured super laxatives, I was telling you about.” How soul-gnawing is emulative institutional Jazz whose practitioners know nothing either of blacks or black culture? Hell, even after the bass solo, there was no applause from the house.
Finally, like a lover with the most foul breath but whose girthsome jousting simply won’t be denied – then the malodorous rogue leaves and you shudder in disgust and return to breathing like a human rather than a goddamn humpback whale – the opening act vacated the stage and when the stagehands were done, only the grand piano was left. Out then walked Cécile McLorin Salvant with a puckish accompanist and it was readily obvious that there is an indelible soul connection between the two, which speaks to intimacy most rare and also more than a dozen past-life connections. Even Cécile’s body had changed, she looked more lived in, she was getting good loving and it showed.
Before proceeding, let me just state that this was the most phenomenal and best Jazz concert that I have ever attended. From Hoagy Carmichael, to Barbara Streisand, to Bessie Smith, every song was her own and every song was a master class in musicianship and phrasing. Then two things happened that blew me even further away; firstly, she sang, Midnight Sun. This is a song that for me as long as I live, will always evoke the most pleasurable memories of living at John Hirsch and Brian Trottier’s Moore Park Home at 187 Hudson Drive in the summer of 1990 after Merlin had passed and I reinvented self and took the time to travel. Until this concert, no one had ever done a better version of Midnight Sun than Sarah Vaughan, whose version daily played at that lovely Moore Park home.
Secondly, Cécile paused and asked if anyone in the audience was French, to which there was a boisterous response and then she asked to sing a song in French. By the time she was done, I was reduced to tears, even my usual jaded friend was blown away. At the conclusion the house went wild and I was reminded of those years living in Montréal and attending all those summer festivals across the province.
Let’s see Canadian, Diana Krall sing en Français in this supposed bilingual country and I am not talking any of that tawdry attempt at French musicianship as with the likes of Emilie-Claire Barlow et al. Unlike those frauds who suffocated the blackness out of Jazz in the 90s and beyond, Cécile is the real McCoy. The primary musical instrument in human civilisation is the voice and when it comes to Jazz, not only is it a language that is the extension of the griot tradition, nothing sounds like, feels like, moves you like the instrument that is the black voice; there simply aren’t any comparisons. This is the voice, the instrument, when on walking through your door can revivify and empower you like no other instrument can and most especially so after having experienced racial animus for the 14th millionth and fifty-seventh time in this lifetime.
During the course of the show, her accompanist did something that I had never before witnessed, Sullivan Fortner got from the piano stool to reach inside and pluck on the strings, making for all intents the most beautiful mbira imaginable. Sullivan proved himself the perfect accompanist to Cécile and it was clear by the end of the concert that these two lovely, magical and gifted souls have thankfully found each other and how we are better for them being in the world. The love and harmony they share, was as rich and smooth as the warmest honey satiating the palate. Even the encores were concerts onto themselves. If there is anything that can be said to be good, to have come from Roy Hargrove’s passing, is that it created the opportunity for both Sullivan and Cécile to form a most productive collaboration.
As we left Koerner Hall, both of us giddy with joy for having been richly inspired, there was a guy outside the theatre, hawking the program for Jazz FM. Brusquely, I declined taking one, I soon explained that I had no desire to be associated with the Jazz radio when they went and hired someone whom Merlin dismissed back in his early on-air days as VJ at MuchMusic as a smug bigoted asshole. Indeed, an ageing leopard does not his spots lose. Just for writing a few hit songs and having made a few million dollars changes nothing. As Merlin always said, “a man changes clothes and nothing else.”
Though last year, there were three good concerts during the Jazz Festival; this year, one only needed to have attended one concert and boy am I richly inspired for having done so. On parting, we both agreed that it really was an awesome concert; more than that, we admitted that it was high time that we saw Rocketman before it goes to video.
For your ongoing support, I am ever grateful. Buy my glorious books, the incomparable series with Michael overleaves appendices; truly, they are human civilisation’s first dream memoirs.
Dreams are the poetic expression of the soul. 