Winter in America

It’s winter…winter in America…and ain’t nobody fighting, ’cause nobody knows what to save.

From the song “Winter in America” by Gil Scott Heron/Brian Jackson

Nowadays when I reminisce about being young and black in America back in the early 70’s I see it as a special time, a transitional period in different ways, on different levels. Personally I had successfully made the leap from grade school to high school and was reveling in my passage into the teenage years,  bolstered by the belief that manhood was just around the corner. 

But things were drastically changing in the world at large as well. Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, and I remember standing on the back porch on the second floor of the apartment building that we lived in and watching the sky turn reddish-orange and black from the flames and smoke during the riots that had broken out. Then a couple of months later I sat in front of our black and white television mesmerized by the news coverage of the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

From what I was told these were good men that stood for what was right and wanted to help make this society, this world, a better place for all people. The fact that they were killed because of their benevolent beliefs was a signal to my young mind that this world was not as nice a place as I thought it was. I guess that it can be said that I had developed a higher level of consciousness about people and the society that I lived in.   

 

Then there was the music. The songs began to reflect the prevailing spirit of the times, questioning and outright challenging long-held notions and beliefs about America and it’s commitment to the principles of justice and equality.

One of my all-time favorite songs of this genre of music is Winter in America, by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson. Released in 1974, the song still powerfully speaks to the pain and disillusionment that stems from decimated dreams and perverted promises and the spiritual toll of struggling against complex forces that suppress and oppress.

One can only hope and pray that there will always be those that will never stop believing in and working towards a changing of the season that leads to the realization of the highest of American ideals…

blow

the notes explode

coming from nowhere and everywhere

singular/plural

notes stone-written

on a dark primordial sheet

subsequent sheets notwithstanding

their authors the authors of death

sheets of ice

sheets of glass

let the historians argue about

texture and truth…

the trumpet never lies

when it whispers or sighs

that jazz is the woman

that is yet to be born.

she can be heard

at the occasional commemoration

the erection of a statue

centerpiece

of a dysfunctional fountain

of gray stone

of grey stone

the color of evolution

of ecstasy and aesthetics

smell the sound

smell the sound from the horn

beautiful

african funk flower

delicious

caribbean funk flower

precious

diasporan funk flower

midnight notes

the moon disappearing

an eclipse forced into

a pink envelope

sealed on third thought

the notes scramble the darkness…

the trumpet never lies

whether it moans or cries

that jazz is the woman

that is yet to be born.

she is the romance that

shines like brass

making eyes water and weep

blurring the reality

blurring the unreality

destroying all the scholarly discourse

invoking the intercourse

of an esoteric era

nubian notes

embraced only by the graced

who may or may not

give grace…

salvation

a screaming solo

that commands the chaos.

two-handed schools (a lesson in Martin and Monk…)

 

the vibrating strings add melody

to words that vibrate the earth

the hands of a musician

the hands of a martyr

are clasped in an image

that goes beyond any piano

that goes beyond any pulpit

mere wood carved

and shaped and commanded

in immortal mold that maintains

the same breath, the same heartbeat

for both prayer and improvisation 

two hands can blur the black and white

that sits idle, that sits ignorant

absent the rhythm and the reason

the flow of blood and thought

that celebrates

life through composition

that celebrates

death through baptism

two hands are brought together in prayer

from right to left / from left to right

two hands caress and pound contrasting tones

(between heaven and hell there is harmony).