For Muhal Richard Abrams and the AACM
On the street carrying his horn, looking for a place to set up and play. Chased away from downtown. It’ s come to this. And there are times like now when you might be moving along, one foot then one foot, and you might not know who you are. You can slip away, disappear right from under your own nose. All but the trace that wonders who this new person is and why he don’ t just stop. All but the sound before the sound that would set us free.
Can’ t you hear it?
A cold morning almost afternoon. Noise in his head. A sound that touches the infinite, as though it had formed itself and him from the afternoon vapors—came into being right in that moment on that street, Schiller, walking fast in the rain. By the park, money in his balled fist—he had just finished a gig and wanted to set something up for later. As rain follows mist Schiller becomes Hirsch, streets lined with two- and three-flat brownstones, sugar maples, daffodils, pots of geraniums already, gated plots with spring pink azalea and rhododendron. No, it comes back to him, he’ s been out looking for her of course. Always for her. He knows what she doesn’ t, what he doesn’ t tell her—it won’ t be long now. At the end, he might hear the sound he searched for, might find the silence he secretly craved. Shadows gather; stones moss.
He crosses Western. The rain has stopped; sun bleeds through the cracks in the clouds. He catches a glimpse of himself in a window as he passes—disheveled, gray-coated, needing a shave, a haircut. Tired. Thin. Something sweet scents the wind. Some kids rush past him, talking about the newest protest from La Verdad, a poetess and putative leader of a movement that involves reading poetry bare-breasted on street corners, apocalyptic verses about the end of times. (She wouldn’ t say if she was Puerto Rican or Cuban, from South Shore or Watts. She only ever said “Black is a country. ” She was the closest thing to free he knew.) Naked guerilla poetry, she calls it. Fire gestures like Cecil’ s. Big crowds came to see her. You can never know what they hear, what they’ re listening for. He kept walking, feet familiar with the way.
§
Another night. Red’ s darkened club hushed steps and muffled whispers, salivating drunk hands grope for a hip or ashy thigh. They all make fools of each other. Candles on each table burn, smiles fade and return, all moving down to a flashpoint, a zero, a time when this won’ t be any more. Fear—you can feel it—is this the end? Ligature-tightened wrists loosened. A quintet: woodwinds, trumpet, trombone, bass, percussion. They plan the set, a little agitated.
—Sonny, they ain’ t even listening man, we gotta wake them up!
Is that the answer? Sonny in the spotlight: scarecrow thin, black-coated, unshaven. Call it his victory beard cuz he survived the pigs. By now they all know Sonny isn’ t going to make it and it means something special to them to be part of these shows, three days in Red’ s club, all recorded not that it matters, done on the sly cuz we knew Sonny stopped believing in recording after he heard Dolphy say it all evaporated in the air.
Performance is not a reproduction, reproduction is not a performance. Listening is not just hearing the same thing over and over. Listening is reproduction. It’ s the recognition that we never really heard. It’ s identifying the difference that we never heard, the recognition of difference within the familiar, even when it’ s a recording. It’ s catching those sounds we never quite heard in the first place, so busy watching out the window, sharing a cigarette, a laugh, a smile, a glance: clock resets to zero.
Sometimes they liked to play games. Start with a standard and take it out from there. Sometimes stay all the way inside. Sometimes find out inside, play “Take the ‘A’ Train, ” only the head, for ten choruses. Lights flash through windows, feet on sidewalk stomp puddles still wet from the hydrant opened this afternoon—hot, where’ s La Verdad? Where is anyone? A sound drifting through humid air:
I alone have heard this lovely strain; I alone have heard this glad refrain.
History would not remember this night, an unremarkable night like every other. But the everyday was the substance of history, and of time. The substance of performance’ s space and place making. Black smiles and swelter, the slummers from Lincoln Park and South Shore both, none of them belong—this is our music. Music is our history, vehicle and tenor. The music would remember. The music poor folks started, but we have to be here like the help. Neither heard nor overheard. Our clothes don’ t fit and we don’ t smell good, don’ t look the part, haven’ t eaten in days, tight stomach getting tighter looking for the only thing that will satisfy us. Walking with a swagger and our chests out cuz our pride really is all we got. What you gon’ do when you supposed to know who you are by what you buy and we can’ t buy nothing and get passed by, don’ t own, rent, and try to smile anyway. Don’ t give me nothing, just let me dig the band warming up, let me listen in the vestibule to a tune or two, let me understand what brother Ornette means when he says This Is Our Music, let me be one of us. Let us spill into busy streets all strut, strum, and hum, alive to it all. O let us be fluid.
—Let’ s play one of the new ones, but keep it loose. Funky, you know? Not like what’ s on the radio, but like what’ s in your socks. Ready?
§
Prof. Kenna is involved, recording some of his talks with Sonny, imagining him continuing the legacy of the Lomaxes, already claiming the three listenings as his own; on the tape it’ s Sonny’ s voice: 1. Intimate, 2. Ritual, 3. Critical. Sonny’ s turned away from the search for God Sound these last couple weeks after so many years searching for it and people notice something different in his sound, his approach, when they listen at all. The three listenings aren’ t absolute—each is in play at all times to a degree. Sound isn’ t infinite, listening is. That’ s what Sonny says now :
“I used to think of myself as chasing some demon through my horn, hunting some evil thing always just ahead of what I could think or where I could move my fingers. Then I started to feel like It was chasing me, moving closer and closer to me with each breath I had to take because he didn’ t have to stop or breathe, and that was his advantage. I was afraid of silence when I played, afraid to stop playing. Now, I think I want to stretch out that silence as long as I can stand it. Find the silence within the sound. I started to see that no, it wasn’ t chasing me and I wouldn’ t be able to do nothing with it if I did catch it. It was Roscoe’ s Sound and Muhal’ s Levels and Degrees of Light that made me want to listen differently.
I started to think about playing music in terms of its physical properties—timbre, pitch, duration, rhythm, dynamics. Music is a changing thing. It exists in all of those things and none of them at the same time. The chase was to get music to show up and grace those other elements. This was when I started to practice silence. Personal silence. Just being still for longer and longer stretches. Listening. I started to think of love as that silence that happens between two people where the silence harmonizes. ”
§
When did he stop calling out the names of the tunes from the bandstand? This improvised thing they’ re playing now, this tense melodic minor thing with shifting time signatures… . Now a thing with shimmering cymbals and almost no bass drum… . Now the whole group now just sax and bowed bass playing long notes chasing each other for the root of something more profound than the chord. Something deeper, some heavy, heavy thing. The sound of being trapped in a room you could walk out of if you only realized where the door was—would they really have called it “Cadences ” if it was a song? That’ s the title on the record came out after he died. Would they—the band, the audience—even recognize it? If anybody bothered to ask, would they say they were actually inspired by a dream of peace in Vietnam, a dream of home, a fantasy of some winged thing they don’ t have words for in their experience? Would they talk about the feeling of sitting still and being moved, tugged, pulled along, buoyed? The sound beyond comparison, nothing like a sermon or a voice or anything but itself. Can you say that just because there’ s silence from time to time one song has ended and another begins, that the music that starts after this pause, this caesura, should be called “Obatala ”? The audience listened, transfixed. No chatter, tinkling ice, or ringing cash registers on the record or in the club. A night like every other night, after which nothing was the same, and everything was.
§
Draft copy of Sonny’ s Rejected Liner Notes to Cathexis (Sonny thought the music should speak for itself) which instead features pictures from the studio session of the musicians performing the songs, titles of songs, and run times:
The song says “death is no dream, ” but life is. Embrace the dream while you can still dream it—notice flowers dead on the vine, the peaches that are ripe, and those that aren’ t. People come out and tell you how much they love it—only some of them are really reached and if they’ ve really been reached the only response is silence. That’ s why all songs eventually end, if they naturally end—you find that infinite silence, for a moment, that you’ ve been searching for. Then the song ends. Beware the silence, too, unless you’ re ready for it: It’s a trap.
But who loves the man who turns to the silence, who knows of those special geometries of censure and who lives in the world to be aware of it, really aware of it? You don’ t study music to learn to play any more than you study literature to learn to read or history to know yourself or when you are. You study music, harmony, all that, to learn to listen.
When people ask, I tell them I stopped playing standards because they stopped seeming true to me. Trane kept on playing “Body and Soul, ” but gave up the blues. And he was sick, always thinking about his body, worried about his soul. Anyway, he should have kept the blues, too. Blues is the truth—our truth—given form. The only truth that exists in a form. It’ s the lyrics that get to me, all that stuff about angels and love that lasts forever—it’ s a lie. (Could last forever, but people get in their own damn way and it all falls away. We’ re all so confused, so lost—we always get in our own damn way.
Music, this music, is like when you’ re with someone a length of time, and when you think of her there’ s an almost inevitable possessiveness that will lead you to taint your thoughts and your longing, no matter how you try to avoid it, it seems. You want to keep her from the hands of another. You think of her dressing before you, and it’ s a cause of despair. Not the nakedness, but the thought that when those clothes are pulled off, you may not be there. These songs are that nakedness. We tried to strip it all bare, leave it before those eyes. It’ ll come back to us. This is our letting go, our offering.)
The bottom line is this: Music is the only divinity left, our truest form of prayer, of devotion. The salvation and the loss, the boat and the storm. Pen, paper, music, rebirth—a transliteration of this and all nights, the hope and the despair, the way out and the falling short, for in every translation something is lost and there is always more work to do, steps taken now, tentatively, on the promise of the infinite.
§
Focus. What’ s he playing now? Sonny at this point is interested in that moment sound becomes silence becomes sound, of the distance between the three nodes: intimate, popular (ritual), and critical. Think about those moments outside, communal listening, listening in common when there’ s a noise you don’ t know, no one knows, and now you all stop ears pricked not looking at each other—you with your car keys in your hands, stranger walking his dog, little girls with their jump rope, boys in the middle of raising glorious hell, and there’ s a rustle and it’ s never really silent but there’ s a pause, a breath pause, a caesura: you all stop a beat to identify—what is it? where is it? is it a threat?—and decide—what do I need to do? what does this music ask of me? what do we ask of each other?
—Ek-stasis, Sonny says. He talks to the Professor, who sits smug at his table during set breaks. People who want to understand hover, trying to be unobtrusive. —Ek-stasis, Sonny repeats.
C’ mon, Kenna says with a smile, waving a hand to indicate the small gathering that had been pretending not to listen. And he’ s recording this Lomaxically. What does that mean?
—The soul leaves the body. Stands outside it. The body is an arbitrary resting place for a soul, a focal point. Sound don’ t live in one horn. Soul don’ t live in one body. You know it in moments of intimate listening. The sound of bodies separate and together.
So it’ s like those moments in the church when black people tend to shout?
—That’ s ritual listening. The action is in the sound. When the sound hits a special point, a meridian point, it almost sets the soul free. In churches, sisters in white gather closer, surround the person, remove the glasses, narrow the space, try to contain the soul. The actual moment is fleeting, the rest is performance in a way. It’ s a repeated response, but not rehearsed. And they keep the music going. Same music that makes the soul want to leave can make it want to come back. Same thing in the club, when we listen in the club. Some cats know what to play—when to growl, or play blues scales, when to repeat a figure, to catch a note and hold it; some preachers know how to deliver a sermon, make the congregation say more than Amen. The action is in the sound, not in the playing, not in the saying. It’ s about the way the performance interfaces with the listening, opens the way to ritual listening. But, look, we need those kinds of spaces. The kinds of spaces Muhal and them are trying to make now. If we are going to survive. If the music is going to survive.
I used to think it was about finding a sound closer to God, a sound that would be God, but what’ s the point of God Sound if the people can’ t hear it, if they aren’ t ready for it?
Did you find it?
—Man, you ain’ t even listening to me now.
I think I am. Well, maybe I can ask about critical listening.
—Ain’ t no thinking to it. Critical listening is what you’ re doing, getting tripped up on me saying “ek-stasis ” instead of “ecstasy, ” what you expected to hear. Thinking about what the people would understand, because you’ re assuming they’ re listening like you. The kind of listening that’ s like reading, where everything is a representation, everything has to mean something and mean in a universal way. Ain’ t nothing ever work like that. You hear Dizzy play “Laura ” over the ii-V7-I and you think “Aha! ‘Laura’ fits over a ii-V7-I. How clever! ” But you don’ t really get it. You hear Trane changes and start thinking about secondary dominants, inversions, harmonic substitutions. You hear Bird or Trane repeat a figure and wonder what it means. You hear McCoy’ s heavy comping, the way he opens silence in the songs when he lays out. You listen to Ornette and you search your brain for some understanding of what harmolodics is, you listen for the harmonic flexibility he gets from leaving out the chord instrument. You try to fit Cecil into a tradition. You think it’ s all conversation, that a note is a clue, language in disguise. You have to listen that way sometimes, just so you know where you are, so you keep feeling your soul behind your eyes because you fear what might happen if it left. But you’ re wrong if you think that’ s all there is to understanding. You’ re wrong if you con yourself to think that’ s all there is to listening.
§
His horn is getting heavier to carry. He thinks about going to see La Verdad. Been wanting to incorporate her poetry into his show, like Muhal did with Amus Mor. Have her on the stage, beautiful and naked. Or clothed and naked. Beautiful and sad, but not tragic. What would that do with him? Could he hear it?
Across from Humboldt Park. North Avenue now. From somewhere up the street, hears someone playing Unit Structures, and stops to listen. A new record store. Walks in. Blue Note let Cecil write his liner notes. Smallish record store, walls floors counters all wood, fat white bearded proprietor staring at him, his horns, his bag. Doesn’ t recognize him. Offers unneeded help. Sonny wants to listen. Smiles at the suspicious spectacled shopkeeper, shakes his head, sidles over to the jazz section. Sky outside’ s getting dark—gonna rain. Last song: “Tales (8 Whisps). ” Cecil wasn’ t inspiration—he was a boundary, an edge, a beautiful, shifting milestone.
The song goes off. Shopkeeper finally recognizes Sonny, puts on one of his only records, Atmosphere, which had a tribute to Cecil he called “See the Sun (Anamnesis) ” as the first song, starting with a long bass solo then mounting group improvisation leading to the written head, at about the halfway point of the track, an angular line built around space and large intervallic leaps, leading to a section where time is suspended, then a repetition of the whole figure, the number of times depending on a chance operation employed before performance followed by more improvisation and a stop-on-a-dime ending after a cue from the leader, determined by a separate chance operation. It was all of their favorite song on the session and it took up the whole side. Double trio—two basses, two percussionists, him on his horns and miscellaneous percussion—plus a brother on trumpet whose name he forgot with a sound somewhere between Bowie and Dixon. That brother got himself killed by the CTA, but he couldn’ t remember if it was an accident, suicide, or the police. What was that cat’ s name?
Ornette had done something like it, but Atmosphere wasn’ t Free Jazz. And it wasn’ t what Trane had done with Ascension. The improv was free with respect to meter and harmony, but not with respect to time (or, as Sonny said, instance—time is not a possible object of experience). It was the first time he eschewed formal structure, trying to avoid any relation to time when playing that was future-oriented in the way chord changes required. The idea instead was to fit the evolving group concept, and respond to what you were feeling in any moment. But the time of your playing—entrances, exits, moments when any or all of the players might be playing, and occasional written motifs or ostinatos underscoring the music—was predetermined. There were also planned caesurae, total interruptions of the compositional energy when a member of the ensemble had hit a creative eddy, akin to catching the spirit in church but, ideally, without what he thought of as ritualistic. That way, there would be indeterminacy in the composition itself, since the nature of eddy—one time, one of the bassists and drummers locked into a groove that James Brown would have envied—could help determine which of three possible directions, available at any moment, the performance might go.
The other side of the album had his song “Incompleteness (ineffable cardinal), ” which he’ d written after reading Cantor and Gödel. He’ d intended it to be through-composed, with the harmony modulating to a mathematically determined mode/tone center at the point where the principle figure might resolve. However, this was on the second day of recording and two of the members of the band, Marvin Taylor and Yusef Davis, never showed up (turned out they’ d been in an apartment the police raided—it would be a long time before anyone saw them). So tried to reconceive the piece as a series of duets, paring it down until it was something different from what he’ d intended. People liked it, but he could never listen to it. Would’ ve made more sense with someone on a chord instrument, or with an overdub to suggest the harmonic coloration more explicitly. But if he didn’ t entirely like recording, he hated overdubbing. Then there was a burnout, up-tempo straight-eight modified blues, lots of harmonic substitutions and leaps, an extended coda and groove changes. Called it “Velocity. ” The producer insisted on it, something to get away from the heavier spiritual sound he was gravitating toward, and the math-based compositions he was penning. It was fun for the band to play, but Sonny resented it because the smug producer was the sort who thought he knew what Blackness was better than Black people. They closed the album with “Spirits of the Ancestors, ” a modal, complex-meter tune based on “We Shall Overcome, ” unremarkable except for Lester’ s spontaneous vocal cries during his extended solo. Something like he’ d heard Frank Wright do. Since the tune was too long and they didn’ t have enough material (or money) for a double album, it fades out during that solo. The complete take would be released much later on a different label and it would be where Sonny felt, in his second solo, he made some of his clearest statements on record—none of the strained multi-phonics or overabundance of technique that sometimes muddied the sound.
§
La Verdad walks in at the top of a set wearing slim-leg slacks and a man’ s work shirt, no bra, breasts beating against fabric. After the show, she walks up to him, wants him back, tells him she can’ t sleep without him, her dreams are so very dark. Sonny calls “Atmosphere, ” the modal title track that didn’ t make the finished album, feeling for some reason afraid. The band was cooking, the crowd was into it. An echo in the foyer of the club, a blissful greeting—swishy-kneed fabric sliding through shadow-light to a seat lighted in candle glow, sweet seat visible, baby hair hairline, her sweet smile just for him, yellow baby doll dress, flower tucked behind her ear and the air of mischief. Seeing her invokes her musk, moves him not to silence but to sudden gradual near frenzied saxophone arpeggios and runs, squawks resolving suddenly to beautiful, vibrato-less long tones. Those listening would later say it was as though the room were gradually filling with light, slowly, so slowly you weren’ t aware of it happening until you felt its heat wash over you. Not the tortured soul-wrestling sounds of those who get it wrong but the genuinely ecstatic sound Kenna would never understand. LeRoi Jones had come closest: find the self, then kill it. Let it die, more like it, but both of those needed a remainder, something left behind. Too close to Kenna and his schoolboy psychologism. When La Verdad approaches Sonny, her Jericho, she smiles implacably, the smile of a woman who knows she has nothing to fear.
[Set break].
From Sonny’ s Unpublished Autobiography:
We were in my living room that first night, and I started talking to her, like Red, about things that I’ d been through, people I’ d known, disappointments. And looking at her—nothing she did really, but a feeling came over me: past time is dead time. The dead live in the past. The dead live in the future, too. And it doesn’ t mean anything to live in the present; that’ s just the razor-thin slice of what’ s already been and what’ s about to come. I started to wonder about what it would mean just to be. And I started to see that being is, or can be—should be—infinite.
And I saw it all open up before me, but close too. All the joy. The pain. The hurt. The anxiety. The kid on the street who hasn’ t eaten; my own hunger, past and to come. The woman who cries over the body of her fallen husband or son. The blood flowing ceaselessly into the street down down into the river where it flows back to us and becomes our blood. The father crying because there’ s nothing he can do to protect his daughter or his wife, no amount of strength or bullets to keep them from the real dangers. The fear in hatred, but the hate too—I saw that hate is real. And love. I understood, but only for a second, radiance. My life both had and had not been a waste. There was no one to answer to, no one to ask—just me. And her. Maybe I shouldn’ t say, but I loved her. And I just wanted to tear down those layers, all the built-up calcified experiences like a callus over our lives, keeping us apart. Keeping us from touching or, if touched, feeling. Being yourself was not guaranteed. But being, you could rely on that for a while. And maybe that was enough. Even if it wasn’ t it was enough. I was sure of it.
§
That morning, Sonny talked to La Verdad, his Maia, about aleph numbers until she made him stop. Then he started talking about the ineffable. She smiled. A smile of understanding that was deeper into the idea of what went without saying than his words.
His mind drifted to another street, a bridge with Lester. No. This spot but before. Not this spot but another like it, near Teeny’ s Ribs. Red was there. (We don’ t like to mention it, but some of the things he claims to remember about Frank and Anna are really about Sonny and La Verdad.) Or the two of them are those other two, a reincarnation or reappearance of what never passed. The day before the Atmosphere sessions, we remember her looking young, but displaced somehow. He found out how she’ d moved up here, that cousin she lived with, how her heart had been broken. Times were better. He bought the ribs, the lemonade, the Herbie Nichols record Love, Gloom, Cash, Love, which she said fit her mood. Neither of them would be able to say later how they became a couple, exactly when she moved in. They didn’ t talk about the men from her past, or her present. This didn’ t seem like a new relationship to either, but a continuation, a resumption. None of that eyes-met-across-crowded-space bullshit people talk about. And none of Nichols’ s Love is Proximity cynicism (dig the first track of the album: “Too Close for Comfort ”)—just that feeling of home they would later be looking for, not with each other but with the world.
Sonny spent five minutes in the record store trying to figure out how he knew her, though this was their first meeting. La Verdad was more subtle—mentioning places she’ d been, and, after she found out he was a musician, places she’ d performed. She wasn’ t as young as she said, or at least she’ d seen more than she told. She had wide-set eyes, smooth dark brown skin close to his complexion, and curly hair that smelled like peaches. Neither talked much, but when they did talk it was unrestrained.
She told him about her girlhood down south, about Marco, about Isaiah after she’ d moved up here. She did not speak Congo’ s name. She told him that men would line up to do things for her. Misunderstanding is doom. He listened. It wasn’ t that when you looked at her you felt like you had to have her in your life, some cliché like that. She looked at you and it was like she was her whole self, saw your whole self, invited you to be whole. To become a person in this world, for the first time, again and again, in her eyes. At least, as she was telling Sonny her past, that’ s what he felt. Embodied. Present. Was this love?
And what of La Verdad, usually not taken by the men she encountered because they needed too much, or couldn’ t see her? Sonny, often lost in the web of his own thoughts and theories, was handsome, a little unkempt, a little too thin. He always seemed to belong to wherever he happened to be. And his gaze had such intensity, such honesty, clarity. If he’ d asked, though she’ d never verbalized it in any way, she might have told him that seeing him she was ready to fall in love. But both were smart enough to see through all that, to see the real person beneath it all, at the center. That’ s what we believe. It was the belief that sustained us, the belief that, finally, made a world. That made this world habitable.
Sonny’ s Notes in the Margins of Jones’ s Black Music:
Set theory involved in philosophy of mathematics. Situation where some infinite sets are larger or smaller than others. The axiom of infinite sets should allow for the thinking of absolute infinities—an infinite set of all possible infinite sets, including those inconceivable. [Illegible.] Problem is that there is nothing outside this infinite set, including absolute infinity itself, thus it can’ t be proven or disproved, but its exclusion renders the axiom incomplete. No form [illegible]. Aleph numbers represent infinite sets, ineffable cardinals are numbers that can’ t be talked about, that are provably unprovable. The possible combinations of letters in an alphabet if the strings can be infinite. This is love. Doesn’ t have or need an object. Is.
They lie, both awake, drifting to sleep. It’ s about weight—the hand on a head or shoulder, the heat of a body pressed firm too firm against another in the swells and in the recesses—weight. Until finally each are bound and, loving each other, rebuild each other. It’ s a specific gravity that has everything to do with the world within a world, the world created by and that persists despite this. Weight. They inhale and exhale. They move together seamlessly, like always, but there’ s a heightened passion, a faster-beating heart, especially for her: she’ s into it now. The heat, the motion. There’ s something final in each touch, in each movement, a closing off, a tiny disintegration. Weight. This is their love, their gravity, audible in breath, the heart, the ticking clock. Listen.