zakes mda
writer. playwright. educator

Generally when you see Zakes Mda’s name in print it is preceded by the word “prolific,” as in abundantly productive. There is good reason for this. Mda is a playwright, novelist, poet, painter, professor, and, whether he will admit to it or not, a global voice for his native South Africa. Furthermore, like many who have been closely associated with a particular area of soil and earth, Mda is magic. The Whale Caller, Mda’s 5th novel, harnesses the writer’s magical quality to create a tale that lives on all levels of South African life. The past, present and future of South Africa relayed through both a realistic and metaphorical prism, and then neatly wrapped up in 240 pages of prose. Mda is magic.

In the months leading up to the release of The Whale Caller, writer and editor Ben Austen had the opportunity to sit down with Mda and discuss the South African’s thoughts on his country of birth, the differences between resistance and protest literature, and the author’s own particular brand of alchemy (i.e. his large body of work). When two expansive minds come together the only thing that doesn’t get chopped-up is time. So in the interest of time we have separated the interview into two parts so time is saved and no words are lost.

BENJAMIN AUSTEN: Would you tell me a bit about your background? Where you were born? Where you were raised? What your childhood was like?

ZAKES MDA: I was born in Herschel, which is a district. Dobsonville is in Soweto; that’s where I grew up. I moved when I was a baby. My parents were working in Johannesburg. Herschel is in the Eastern Cape. It is a very rural area.

BA: Your birth name is Zanemvula Mda. When and how did you get the name Zakes?

MDA: Zakes is the name everyone uses. It has been like that since I was a little boy. It is a name I got in the streets of Soweto. I was named after a jazz musician, Zakes Nkosi. He was current at the time. He died many years ago. In my books I’m still Zakes Mda. I tried to switch back to my original name—African pride and all that. But people insisted on calling me Zakes. So I had to be Zakes again. I’m Zakes now. On my passport and everything else, my ticket for coming here—its Zanemvula.

BA: Your father was politically active during your childhood, right? During apartheid?

MDA: My father was one of the major founders of the ANC Youth League. So people like Mandela, Oliver Thambo, Walter Sisulu served under him. He was their president. He was actually their mentor. If you read the biography of Nelson Mandela, A Long Walk to Freedom, he mentions that. Sisulu mentions also how much—. My father was more of a back-room boy, a theoretician, who mapped out policy…

BA: Why did he eventually have to flee to Lesotho?

MDA: When he was practicing law, in a small town called Standspreit, he was arrested for his political activities. He had the opportunity at some stage, because of the trial, to escape from jail. You see this town is not very far from the Lesotho border. When we lived in Soweto, he was a school teacher there. Then he went back to school to study law and practiced as an attorney in the Eastern Cape, in Standspreit. So we all went there. In 1963, he went to Lesotho as a refugee. I joined him a year later, and the rest of the family—my mother and my brothers—joined us after two or three years. We lived in a small town in Lesotho. I lived in Lesotho for many years. I went to high school in Lesotho, then went to university abroad but returned to Lesotho. My first teaching post was in a mountain village. She Plays with Darkness is modeled on this mountain village.

BA: When did you do your studies?

MDA: I did not go to UCT until much later. I taught at that secondary school for several years. At that time I already had two master degrees from Ohio University. I went back to work at a television station in Lesotho, then went to teach in the mountain villages. Then after that I went to teach at the University of Lesotho. I was a lecturer, teaching African literature and drama.

BA: How did you end up in Ohio?

MDA: I went to Ohio University because I was already a published playwright, well staged and published, and I was admitted on the strength of my work as a playwright. The plays were put on in South African mostly, because I was writing for the professional stage at the Market Theater and the State Theater. Initially I was writing from Lesotho, which is just across the border. The plays were produced elsewhere as well, in Europe and other African countries.

BA: Were you very active politically at this time?

MDA: In the seventies I was active politically through my work. I was directly active in the fifties, soon after I arrived in Lesotho to join my father. I went to high school there, and I was a political activist. Soon after that, you see, I decided to direct my energies to be a political activist through my work. My theater was very political, you know. It was during a period when artists in South Africa generally used their art as a weapon against apartheid. We didn’t create art for its own sake. Our theater served the important function of at first protesting against apartheid. But then after some time, especially during the 1970s, we changed from protest theater to a much more militant theater, a theater of resistance. And this was a kind of theater directed at the oppressed, with a view of mobilizing.

BA: This seems a bit of a semantic distinction. What are the different characteristics—in both aesthetic and practical political respects—between protest and resistance theater?

MDA: You see the distinction between protest art—theater in this case—and a theater of resistance is mainly that—. You see in protest theater, the message, the mode of communication, and the art itself is directed toward the oppressor. You see, because to whom do you protest? You protest to the person who is oppressing. With a view to appeal to the oppressor to stop. But sooner or later we realized that the oppressor knew exactly what he was doing. The best thing that we could do was direct our theater toward the oppressed, with a view of mobilizing the oppressed to fight against the government. You see this became a much more radical kind of theater. Rather than the public theater, which was mostly a theater of self-pity: Oh look how we are suffering, your laws and all that. The new theater, rather than a theater of weeping and self-pity, was mobilizing people.

BA: Did you feel compelled to make your work part of the struggle? Could you have written about other topics?

MDA: You see we shifted with the times. Because there is always a symbiotic relationship between the art that we created and the discourse of the times. Our art informed that discourse but that discourse also informed our art. When our theater changed, it was a shift that was in the politics of Africans in general in the 1970s with the advent of the Black Consciousness Movement. There was a definite shift in the general politics, not just in the art. Our art followed that. But then our art also informed that shift, especially because the Black Consciousness Movement was the first movement in South Africa to actually use culture as a weapon in struggle. It was basically a national movement; it often gave people the awareness to liberate them psychologically and so on, and culture was a weapon in that.

BA: What were the actual practical applications of this art?

MDA: Development and literacy happened later. That had nothing to do with South Africa at that time. Because politics of development are not politics of an oppressed society. Developmental discourse is a discourse of a liberated people, because soon after liberation they can concentrate on development. Look at all the struggle of the world: the development only comes after independence. It doesn’t come before. Before independence the focus is on national liberation. Then there will be development there. In fact, that was what was very distinctive about the BCM. For the first time we saw a political movement that doesn’t focus only on political liberation; they were actually involved with developmental projects in the cause of fighting for liberation. They established clinics in the rural areas, they had community garden, they had things like that. When a government is involved in development—because now they are a “free” people, or “free” in quotes—then they can have those programs. That is a focus of a free people. We never talked of development. We talked of freedom and liberation. It would have been ridiculous to have campaigns for development when we are not free, because development itself is not only driven by the people it is driven by the government itself. And if that government is oppressing you why would you want them to develop you. It would be a negative kind of development. A kind of control. Literacy theater, development theater, took place in countries like Lesotho and other places where we went about development using theater as a vehicle for community dialogue. People should discuss their issues from their own perspective and come out with solutions that are not imposed from outside. It is a kind of theater that creates critical awareness rather than imposed expectations. People should analyze what their needs are, and they should be helped in that process of analysis. Self-analysis. Working through problems. This is the kind of theater that takes people through those steps. It is in fact geared toward lessons. In South Africa, theater has always been effective for that kind of thing. That’s why your advertisers, your commercials, you don’t have talking heads say use this product and so on; you have a dramatic act. It is dramatized.

BA: You returned to South Africa in 1995, I think, after decades in exile. What was the trajectory of your career, of your movements, before that return?

MDA: I left South Africa in 1963 for Lesotho, and then to Europe and then to America. I went to Europe to study art, to Switzerland. Then from there to Lesotho. Then I went to study law, because, you see, that’s the family profession: everybody’s a lawyer there. I struck out from that law thing and went to Ohio to study theater and radio and television. I did my PhD at UCT when the changes were already happening. I graduated in 1990. Then I came back to the States. I first went to Yale, as a visiting research fellow, then to University of Vermont as a visiting professor. Then back to South Africa. Now I commute. I’m like a migrant worker in Ohio.

BA: How often are you in South Africa now?

MDA: I go back to South Africa in June, July, August and December. Because I have a number of projects there. I have a beekeeping project that I am doing in the Eastern Cape, with a rural community there. It is funded by Americans, by Kellogg Foundation. I studied beekeeping before establishing this. All of these things really flow from my literature. If you read The Heart of Redness, for instance, some of my ideas about community development feature there. I went to this village in the Eastern Cape, which is my ancestral village—my great-great grand people came from there. I thought, I need to set a play there. I was commissioned by a Dutch theater company called DNA (The New Amsterdam Theater Troupe), and the play had to be set both in South Africa and the Netherlands. That was the only condition. I could write about anything. So I thought, Why don’t I write about a play in my ancestral village. I had only gone there as a kid, many years before. So I decided to go there just to take a look and maybe something will suggest an idea, and then I will link with the Netherlands and have a play. I got to that village and was fascinated by the beauty of the place. It is a very beautiful village. Modern houses you find in a town. But also nice mountains. But what struck me was that it was very poor. And why people were poor there was that in years gone by they depended mostly on their labor in the mines and on farms, but mostly in the mines, and in the past few years people had been fired from the mines. Unemployment in that area is as high as eighty percent. This village is up there in the mountains, near the Lesotho border. Not near the city. So I tried to find out why no farming is happening. In South Africa people will starve but they won’t cultivate the land. In Lesotho, there is land, but they import cabbage from South Africa. It never occurs to them that they can grow cabbages there. But now in this case people they do try to farm, but there is no farm. Such mountains and rocks. Those mountains in the spring, they are pink with flowers from the rare aloes. I think, this mountain cannot be beautiful for nothing. There must be something that the people can benefit from this beauty. Otherwise it is just as beauty is there for them to see. So I thought, flowers, maybe then bees. But I knew nothing of bee keeping. I only knew that flowers and bee keeping go together. I looked through farming journals and found a bee keeping school in the outskirts of the city and studied bee keeping. I then went back to the village and talked to the chief and the village leaders and all that, both the political leaders and the traditional leaders, trying to introduce the idea. They know honey. But for them honey is just some wild thing that you go and get. So I tried to introduce the idea that you can cultivate honey and you can market it. A village meeting was called and I addressed the people on that, trying to sell this idea of bee keeping. Many thought I was being ridiculous, but there were those who were hungry enough to say, What do we have to lose? We will form a cooperative society, and then you go out there and get us funds so that we go for training. Then we looked for funds. We were helped by a South African corporation. They sent ten villagers to bee keeping school and trained others in business management. It took a long time to start the project. There were only twenty people remaining. I went to foundation people who had read my work, and they were eager to help the villagers there. So you see how my literature forms from reality.

BA: Is this an aspect of protest literature under apartheid that remains part of South African writing today? Do writers still feel the need to make their work political?

MDA: I don’t know if other novelists are doing that. I think that J.M. Coetzee is not doing that. He is like a novelist in America. But also more black novelists are not doing that. It’s just that I have an interest. I have a political commitment, which comes as a result of my upbringing having lived with my father and having interacted with the Mandelas and the Sisulus.

BA: Do you see yourself as a South African writer? Meaning, do you set out to write South African novels?

MDA: Other writers are rebelling against the idea that they are writing for the country. We are a new generation of writers now, the Sello Duikers and so on, with a much broader perspective of writing. But generally we will view ourselves as South African writers, and there is still that pride of being South Africa. We have just come from a long struggle, and we are victorious there, and we are still celebrating that.

BA: Is there pressure on writers to be positive? To present the new dispensation, the country post-apartheid, in a hopeful light?

MDA: There is no such pressure at all to present the country in a positive way. The politicians obviously would rather see a situation where you are on their side on any political issue. I teach a course on Coetzee and most of the critics we use our American critics and British critics who say the work is bleak. And there are many others who view Disgrace as an allegory instead of a report of what South Africa is about. It is a debate that happens everywhere. There was that expectation during the liberation struggle. We can’t actually call it pressure. We didn’t feel it as a pressure. It was something we wanted to do. Debates about writing were much later, even ANC leaders like Albie Sachs, there was that kind of debate. People wrote what they wanted to. They sensed that they had that obligation.

BA: How did the end of apartheid change your writing?

MDA: I am free now. And the end of apartheid also freed the imagination of the artist. I tell stories now. But of course these stories come from an environment that is highly politically charged. So they will be political. But my main mission is to tell a story, rather than to propagate a political message. During apartheid it was the other way around. I went out of my way—and no one pressured me to do that. It was part of my political commitment. I wrote plays. I only started writing novels after the political changes. My plays before were literature, because they used artistic devices to achieve that, they used literary techniques. It doesn’t mean that if the work is political that it isn’t literature. Some highly political works are classics today. You look at Brecht, you look at Dickens—which is highly political, protesting against work houses in England and so on. If your work addresses political concerns it does not mean it is no longer art. It just matters how proficient that artist is. There are lousy artists in any event, who would be lousy even if they were not writing politics. There are writers who can handle any subject and make it come alive. Why may plays have survived apartheid, even though they are so political, is because there is more in them. They are human stories.

Benjamin Austen is an associate editor of Harper's Magazine. His essay,
The Pen or the Gun on the fiction of Zakes Mda, appeared in the
February 2005 issue of Harper's.

I’m a media nut. I can’t help but tune into Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN as I fiddle with my remote. During a stop in the action of a football game or when C-Span gets too dry to handle, I always end up drinking in the high fructose corn syrup, red dye #5, body temperature fizz drink that is cable news. And, like a 12 year-old hopped up on a 64-ounce Mountain Dew Big Gulp with no ice, I, too, get rowdy and tempestuous. I end up in some kind of mania about what their “coverage” of current events and figures leaves out or adds in. Just like a bubbly soda, these “news" channels seem to leave out essential nutrients like social/historical perspective and extensive critical reflection, adding artificial ingredients like polarizing political polemics and sensationalism instead. And nothing got me more sugared up than the piss poor coverage by the major television media following the recent death of the mother of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks.

On May 30th of this year, a perky, nubile 18 year-old blond (ironically) from the great state of Alabama celebrating her recent high school graduation on the Caribbean resort island of Aruba came up missing. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, up to this very day, the name and shrouded fate of Natalee Holloway has endlessly been the topic of many a primetime program on cable news networks across the board. From the “political” news program The Scarborough Report to the fairly credible yet unapologetically sensational Larry King Live, Natalee Holloway’s disappearance has been examined and picked at by lawyers, private investigators, family members, friends, neighbors, teachers, fellow drill teamers, prom dates, ex-judges, forensic, criminal, and psychological experts, Aruban citizens, the driver of the taxi that took Holloway from the airport to the hotel, and even experts in ESP. No holds have been barred in uncovering what really happened to that poor girl. All the news directors and producers at these cable news channels know how sensational the whole affair is, and they ain’t missing one chance to give folks the opportunity to tune in one more time or for 1 hour longer. Thanks to the suits, viewers get to see the same photos and grainy video of a pretty, taut, and blond 18 year old and wonder exactly what happened to this promising young girl. I can’t blame these channels, it’s a classic whodunit with a beautiful victim. It’s a story that writes itself.

On the flip side, however, a woman of incredibly significant global historical consequence dies quietly and news channels let it pass. There were some video spots of Rosa’s bravery in 1955, and coverage did seem to pick up when her body was laid in state inside the U.S. Capital Building and her 9 hour memorial in Detroit took place. But this seemed to be because people like U.S. Senate majority-leader Bill Frist and many other leading Washington politicians attended these events, bringing some level of attention to her death with them. On cue, the news seemed to follow where the leading figures were. But I was waiting for more. I was waiting for tsunami type coverage, endless, dramatic, and intense. Ronald Reagan, granted an iconic American president, was buried on every channel on television. America heard every speech and saw every tear Nancy dropped. But, Rosa only got some crawl time, a few segments on her sacrifice, and some mention here and there by civil rights leaders and family members.

But where was the attention the missing white girl got? Rosa Parks ain’t freed nobody? She ain’t put into motion one of the seminal movements in modern human history? She ain’t won no Presidential Medal of Freedom or had libraries, high schools, or streets named in her honor? I mean what Parks did on that December day exactly 50 years ago and the subsequent Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott was on par with the great freedom movements in human history. Gandhi in India, Mandela in South Africa. All of these huge. She was huge. Her death was huge.

What her life and sacrifice represented was only about human freedom. That’s it. But, if you watched the major news networks, you’d never know the significance of it all. It seems as though black life and sacrifice, no matter how great or significant, will never measure up to the value of a young white girl to inspire and sell in this country. In the end, Rosa Parks just wasn’t white enough…again.

CD is a Seattle, Washington based writer and educator. He is the architect of the Headknot music review series. he can be reached at insightdeluxe@yahoo.com.

+ click image to enlarge

one9

painter. multi-media artist. filmmaker

One9 is an artist specializing in multimedia video production, painting and graphic art. He acquired his unique moniker, which represents the balance the numbers one and nine hold within the numerical world, during his formative years when he was writing graffiti on the streets of Washington, DC and cementing his status as a patriarch of the capital city’s B-Boy culture.

Now all grown up, One9 juggles his projects with a veteran’s aplomb. It’s a good thing too, because the cat is busy. There is the documentary Time is Illmatic, which details the relationship between Hip Hop lord Nas and his blues musician-father Olu Dara from a historical and personal perspective. There is Fiyah! a raw look at the roots of Dancehall culture featuring Beenie Man, Firelynx and John Hype. And there is the painting. Always the painting.

We had been planning to sit down and rap with One9 for months but for one reason or another it just hadn’t come together. When we finally caught up with the cat on the roof of his laboratory in the Bedstuy section of Brooklyn, he was in an expansive mood.

Nat Creole: You are doing so much these days. Which one of your projects are you feeling the best about these days?

One9: This is a good transition period. Its 2005 and I’ve been involved with art a good portion of my life, 20 years or maybe more. So lately I’ve been looking to embark on new directions, looking for more opportunities to mold audio and visual all into one package.

Right now I’m working on a documentary on a father-son relationship between a Blues artist and a Rap artist. Specifically speaking, we are talking about Olu Dara (Blues and Jazz legend) and his son Nas (Hip Hop legend). We’re taking it from Mississippi in the 1940’s all the way to the time that Nas dropped Illmatic (Nas’ seminal hip hop classic). The documentary is called Time is Illmatic

NC: Working on that project has put you in touch with a crazy list of personalities. You have people from across the spectrum of public life. What was the idea behind getting such a variety of perspectives on the subject?

One9: That’s the beautiful thing about the project. The improv. Our main intention going in wasn’t to bring the story out like this. It started out as the story of Illmatic and how that album came about. But you have to give Eric Parker the credit for initially coming up with the idea to interview Olu Dara and video tape it for the project. After the interview, we realized that we had a really heavy story. The link between a father and a son, the challenges that take place when the father is going in and out of his son’s life. Its about how life really takes shape. And how the generation gap grows- Blues to Hip Hop/ The South to the North

NC: Do you think that your approach and particular work-style allowed you to come in and say Hey we’ve got a bigger story than we thought here, and then make the proper adjustments to go beyond your original plan?

One9: Myself, Eric and Tuma Basa put our heads together and mapped it out. It really started to take shape when we began dissecting the interviews and realized how powerful the story of Olu Dara is. The story of a blues musician traveling from the Mississippi and meeting all of these interesting jazz musicians, playing with them, traveling all around the world, immersed in the arts and books. It’s the story of a full cultural experience.

NC: A continuum of music. Blues to jazz to hip hop, Dara was connected to it all

One9: That’s right. And he passed it on to a son that embraced it and took it upon himself to be a free thinker. That’s what Dara gave Nas, the courage to be a free thinker.

NC: Speaking of “free thinking,” what do you say to people who want to put you in a box creatively and try to limit the ways you express yourself?

One9: I really like the work to speak for itself so I don’t put a label on it and I don’t restrict it. It’s all really based on raw emotion so if you feel it, you’re really going to feel it. From writing graffiti on the walls to big wild-style burners to editing to producing spots, whatever it is that I’m doing you’re going to feel it. There is going to be a lot of raw energy running through your body.

It really starts from the different types of music I listen to. It’s a kind of rechanneling process. I see different kinds of music, interpret them in my own way and then express it to you in art form or film. It’s all based on rhythm.

NC: Explain that part about rhythm

One9: I listen to straight-ahead John Coltrane or Jimi Hendrix or some Mobb Deep beats, whatever the mood may be. I interpret the sounds and put forth a visual depiction of it. It may not even be music that’s composed. I listen to different sounds off the street, different voices, anything that has a certain spontaneity and rawness to it. I pick it up and interpret it in my own way. Most of my art is based on interpreting music. Different moods. Different textures

NC: What do you get from Charlie Mingus?

One9: Space- whether it be negative space or convoluted space, composition and freeform. That’s what I get from Mingus, his ability to provide structure so he can play with space and time without clutter. He and Miles. Miles had a freedom to his music that you couldn’t label. The schism between pleasure and pain, he had a balance. And really, that’s what its all about- the balance of extremes

Contact One9 at one9@boelaboratory.com with any commentary, questions, entreaties etc.

national underground railroad freedom center
cincinnati, ohio

According to the welcoming brochure of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, Robert F. Kennedy said “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, building a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” It is a fitting welcome.

Architecturally the antithesis of the nature and substance of the dark history it was built to convey, The Freedom Center is open and airy and light. It’s also situated perfectly. From the balcony one can see, in one glance, the northern shoreline of the state of Ohio, the Ohio River and the banks of the state of Kentucky, all of which are seminal elements of the story the center tells.

Probably, the strongest testimony I can give is that the Freedom Center offers insight to all patrons no matter from what platform of knowledge, as to the bittersweet history of this country, their journey is launched. Without straying from its emphasis on the Underground Railroad experience, the Center takes you from the interior of the Mother Land to settlements of the successful “Freedom Seekers” in this country and Canada. The Center’s content gives you the gore of the slave system and the glory of the people who actively fought and overcame it. The contributions of ordinary people doing the extraordinary acts that made these journeys possible are highlighted. Dr. Spencer Crew, the Center’s Executive Director, is quoted as saying that the Underground Railroad is “the nation’s first interracial human rights movement” and the diversity of people involved prove this to be true.

The stark reality of an actual “slave pen” that was found locally and the palpable drama of the video depictions set a human emotional tone and perspective. The artifacts (yellowed advertisements, quilts, old photos, shackles) lend detail. Exhibits for school-age children explaining slavery and the Underground Railroad; presentations on the detrimental effects of slavery on African, North American, South American and European civilizations; and an exploration of how the spirit of the Underground Railroad is evidenced in freedom movements throughout the world are well drawn out and presented. In fact, a person of any age, race and individual perspective could spend two hours or two days- 8 hours was not nearly enough- and come away significantly enlightened on some aspect of the experience to which he or she hadn’t been exposed.

Most importantly, the Freedom Center shows how individual acts of courage and creativity can spark reform. As Dr. Crew is quoted, “We want to carry these stories from the past to the present. Freedom is still an issue across the nation and the world.”

Visit the Freedom Center vicariously at www.freedomcenter.org and then gather up your family, real or extended, and make the next trip to Cincinnati, Ohio.

P.S.: And since you’ll be in the neighborhood, I would also recommend a short side trip to Ripley, Ohio for a visit to the river side home of the feisty, slightly mysterious John P. Parker. Parker was a former slave, entrepreneur, inventor and front line “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. Also, up the hill (which you should try to imagine climbing wet, shoeless, in rags and in the dark), is the home of Reverend John Rankin, a Presbyterian minister and educator who, together with his sons and neighbors, was purported to shelter and provide “passage” to over 2,000 Freedom Seekers.

Get out there. The glory of your past, the pride of your present and the seeds of your future are waiting.

Sunni Knight is a freelance writer and cultural afficionado based in the DC metro area.

HeadKnot. by CD

dave brubeck & gerry mulligan in concert

@ concert hall. chicago, ill. mid 60's

Orchestra Hall, a monument to Beaux Arts architecture located just a little south on Chicago’s “Miracle Mile”, was designed before the days of equality for the masses. It was, up to that point, a place to enjoy opera and symphony and such. In order to get to the cheap seats you hiked up 7 (or was it 10?) stories through a winding, narrow, windowless corridor that only accommodated one way, single file traffic. This set up allowed adoring, but economically challenged, fans to get to seats in the roost without disturbing the “real” customers. The seats ran to the top of the Hall and the incline was as close to 45 degrees as engineering could safely construct. This may not sound like a recipe for having a good time but the Hall lived up to its conceit in some ways. The acoustics, for example, were celebrated and legendary. Also, in the 50’s, a “jazz concert” as opposed to a “jazz set”, particularly in such rarefied air, was a different kind of party and a bow to Jazz’ growing recognition as a “legitimate art” form.

The night of the event was cold and punctuated by some sort of weather disturbance that I, and my crew, (obviously) thought unremarkable for a Chicago winter. We were there to see the Dave Brubeck (featuring Paul Desmond) and Gerry Mulligan Quartets. And if we had to sit on top of the building we would have. We were young enough to make the ascent to the top with minimal damage or complaint and the prospects were way too delicious to be dampened by weather and steps. As long as our noses didn’t bleed from the altitude we were happy.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet was scheduled to go first. After some announcements that I don’t remember, the crowd quieted and exhibited the decorum to which the high-toned venue was accustomed. The curtain parted and there THEY were at a casual ready. There was Ron Crotty on the bass, Lloyd Davis on the drums, Paul Desmond on the alto sax and Brubeck, with huge glasses rimmed to match his shiny black grand piano, on the keys. The set immediately and unceremoniously opened with one of the soon-to-be-jazz classics which are now recognizable by the first bar - and proceeded from there. Can’t remember the exact offerings but I can remember how it felt.

Subsequent liner notes have said it all in better words that I can command. Genius; Controlled soaring; Astonishing…respectful… challenging interplay. Innovative timing. Surprising improvisation. In addition, there was just enough of an interjection of a classically trained mind to let you know how Bach devotees, back in the day, felt upon first hearing his music. The absolute artistry of everyone involved ate away at the reserve the Hall usually inspired. The atmosphere became infused with the hums, wry smiles and spontaneous claps and responses of a real JAZZ audience, which, we would soon learn, was the same no matter the venue.

At the break it was announced that Gerry Mulligan’s flight had been delayed as a result of the weather. Small decorous groan. Brubeck and company resumed but in the middle of an offering, a harried and bedraggled looking Gerry Mulligan lurched on to the stage (half carrying/ half propelled by his ridiculously large horn) with his group straggling behind. Any Orchestra Hall-tied decorum that had been left at that point in time was immediately lost.

After some adjustments Mulligan took the floor and proceeded to exorcize the frustrations that accompany delayed travel, nasty weather and other assorted challenges to his usual cool. The group- usually sartorially perfect in (very) narrow suits and ties but now mismatched and rumpled- pushed, drove, strode, charged and jammed for another hour. The audience went into tent revival mode.

But there was more…

Just about the time that we were sure we were going to be thrown out, Brubeck and Desmond returned – just ambled back out from the wings. All hell broke loose.

With a minimal amount of chit chat – or that’s the way I remember it – everybody involved launched into the first piece of another full set. Desmond and Mulligan romanced, challenged and dueled. Brubeck, hunched over the shiny black grand, flashed his devious cleverness and exhibited a little less cool and a lot more intensity. It was at least 1 am and nobody was moving an inch.

About an hour later, we found ourselves on a crisp, deserted Michigan Avenue. I don’t even remember the descent from our perch high above the stage. The audience was still in the unity of the experience and had not yet disintegrated into individuals. They still carried the awe and were congratulating each other on being in the right place at the right time. And then the famous Chicago “hawk” reminded us of where we were. We moved deeper into our coats and hurried to our cars but we were warm all the way home.

Sunni Knight is a DC metro based writer.and soldier in the fight against family violence.

+click image to enlarge the
king of broadway
+story copyright 2005, Michael A. Gonzales
+art copyright 2005, Larry Scott

1978

The gray sky over Harlem had been crying since noon.

Swaying from a dead tree inside the stately uptown cemetery, Blaze Garcia was still dressed in his shabby Catholic school uniform and Pro-Keds sneakers the autumn afternoon the fuzz discovered his dead body. Besides the muttering of cops, the only sound heard in the quiet block was his haggard mom’s shrill screams as she stared at her son’s corpse, strange fruit swinging from a thick oak tree branch. Below his dangling feet, Blaze’s black graffiti sketchbook laid open in the brown grass.

Hours earlier, me and the crew had waited for Blaze at Jose’s Candy Store over on 150 th and Broadway. Rowdy as usual we were, in our own minds, a combination of the Wild Bunch without horses, the Wild Ones without motorcycles and the Dirty Dozen without a war.

Clad in our St. Catherine’s monkey suits and rain soaked sneakers, we ruled the candy-shop that had been the crew’s official hang-out spot since forever. Between the flashing lights of the KISS pinball machine and the hypnotic bleeps of the newly installed Space Invaders, shiny quarters flowed like a glimmering river from our hands into the slots. “What’s taking Blaze so long?" Smokey asked, his long fingers flicking the pinball flippers. “I done spent most of my change and I'm 'bout ready to roll."

“He had to finish that damn high school admission essay,” I answered. “Sister Marquez was helping him out.”

In the next few months all of us would be graduating from St. Catherine’s, traveling miles away from home on rickety subway cars or overcrowded buses. No more would we saunter to school together in the chilly mornings, ranting about bony-booty J.J. on Good Times episodes, cool ass Fonzie on Happy Days or riotous Walt Frazier busting butts on the Madison Square Garden court.

Already, I had been accepted into Rice High School, while Voodoo planned to go public domain at G-Dubs and Smokey was going over to Cardinal Hayes to shoot hoops. Crazy about drawing pictures, both Blaze and C.C. had developed elaborate portfolios which they later presented at Music and Art. Of course, we had hoped to occasionally hang-out, playing basketball at the Battlegrounds and popping shit in our favorite movie dive The Tapia. Still, we were well aware that this was the last year our lives would be so simple.

Graffiti comrades Blaze and C.C. often chilled in the scruffy 145th Street station. The sullied porcelain walls were a testament to their personal rebellion. With a small army of virtuoso vandals, they boom box-blasted Grandmaster Dynamite mix-tapes while bombing the underground. In their private world, bombing was the equivalent of breathing; as long as there was a steady flow of paint, the world was a perfect place.

"If you dress flye, you can fool the cops," Blaze advised. "Them pigs think that all graff writers got to look all busted, so ya’ll put on them party clothes and make them walk right past you. While they thinking bombers are bums, we’ll be wreakin’ shit."

Sharply dressed in sheepskin or Corderfield coats, straight-legged Lee jeans and stylish suede kicks, they trooped boldly through the dark, dank tunnel where the subways were laid-up. An underground train yard that extended from 145th Street to a 137th Street, it was where they both painted their first whole car.

With stolen cans of Krylon, Red Devil and Rustoleum, they avoided the 11,000 volts of the third-rail and a loco spic gang that called themselves The Ballbusters. With paint and Pilot markers stashed in their pockets, they inhaled toxic fumes while creating elaborate masterpieces. Caught-up in a desperado mindscape, Blaze and C.C. existed in an alternative universe where aerosol artists were royalty and the rest of the world were merely toys.

Afterwards, chilling at the 125th Street el station, the boisterous boys crowded the splintered platform bench. A few held boxy Kodak cameras, snapping shots of the multicolored pieces when the subway finally roared into the station: Sky High 149, PESO 131, STAN 153, MAG 151, LSD 3, Lee 163, Crash, KOOL AID 131 and countless others. "You watch, one day I'm going to be one of the kings of Broadway," Blaze declared. Dude was pumped with adrenaline during those bench sessions.

"Niggers soon gonna be talking 'bout my style. I'm on some McFadden & Whitehead shit now," he joked. Bugging out, Blaze stood-up and spun on his sneakers like a Soul Train dancer. "No stoppin', no stoppin', no stoppin'...no-stop-in!” Everybody laughed. Blaze might have his problems, but that crazy bro always had jokes.

***

Inside the warmth of the candy shop, I hungrily munched from a greasy bag of Wise chips.

"Maybe Sister Marquez wanted him to do more than make-up that test," Voodoo Ray sniggered, his mouth full of chocolate Hostess Cupcake. Sloppily spraying moist crumbs onto the Space Invaders screen, Voodoo’s teeth were turd brown, but that didn't stop him from shoveling junk food into his trap.

"Have some respect," Smokey snapped. "Don't you know you can go to hell talking bad 'bout a nun?” For a stone cold player, Smokey acted more like a protective priest whenever anyone ranked about Sister Marquez.

Staring at Smokey with amused eyes, Voodoo remained silent. We all knew that dude was like a short fused firecracker, and it didn't take much for him to explode. Crumbling the crinkling chip bag, I said, "You know Blaze could be anywhere.” Everybody nodded. Hell, it wasn't weird for Blaze to drift away on a solo mission, his smooth face lost in a crimson cloud of red spray paint vapors, eyes hovering in front of a blank wall or subway car like a ghetto Picasso.

Blaze and I had been homeboys since the days when we both reeked of spilled milk and soiled diapers, which made me well versed in the sordid history of his bugged-out family. "I’m just tired of all their shit," he once confessed. "I wish I could get away from all the screaming and arguing. You know, do some Huck Finn stunt and just sail down the Hudson on a raft."

On those few occasions when I trooped upstairs to their sloppy sixth floor apartment, angry screams erupted through their dented bedroom door. Over the din of salsa blasting from a battered stereo, Blaze's drunken parents argued about money, the smell of whores on his pop’s body and their two bum sons. Once his bitter mother began ranting that God in heaven was punishing her, Blaze packed his sack and fled the house.

Silently we walked to a 153rd Street, towards Blaze’s sanctuary under the dead oak tree inside Trinity Cemetery. Constructed over a century ago, the gray stones still sparkled under the glimmering sun. Wild ivy scaled the graveyard walls from Broadway to Amsterdam, and a rusty wrought-iron design on top was supposed to keep the riff-raff from climbing over.

Many a twilight, Blaze and I roamed the ancient burial sight, throwing rocks at vicious squirrels and puffing potent bags of Buddha Bless. "Don't you think this is kind of ill?" I asked, as we strolled through the labyrinth of grassy paths. Carrying hefty school bags, we looked for the perfect spot to park our butts. "Why you wanna hang-out in here all the damn time is a mystery."

"You sound like one of those punk kids from a Disney movie," Blaze teased. "Don't worry D., I got a ghost repellent bop gun stashed in my bag," he snickered, squatting next to one of the decayed mausoleums.

"Yo, I'm not afraid. This shit is just weird."

"Chill out," he mumbled, tossing a few new glossy covered comics in my lap. "Shit, it's spookier in my crib than it is in this motherfucker."

"All right, sorry.” Instead of talking, we flipped through the four-color wonderlands of his newest comic books, sharing a taste for the angst-ridden universe that Stan "The Man" Lee and Jack Kirby had constructed. Lately a crew of new jacks that included Berni Wrightson, Jim Steranko, Barry Smith and Neal Adams had taken the graphics to a different level.

Studiously studying their styles, Blaze later incorporated bits of the comic book art into his own pieces. Pulling out his black sketchbook and a pack of magic markers from his bulging book bag, Blaze experimented with different (robotic bubbles, wildstyle characters) letters. The more weed we smoked the crazier were the graffiti theories that tumbled from Blaze’s tongue.

"It's all about style you see," Blaze schooled me, passing me his sketchbook. "Brothers that don't experiment with style just taking up space on the cars. Like that cat Vulcan once told me once, 'Style is the thing that separates the men from the toys.' Maybe all that ordinary shit was cool in the days of Taki 183, but I want to change the world."

"You gonna pass that joint first, ya klingon?" I joked. Although I did my share of scribbling, for me graff writing was not really my can of Coke. Unlike Blaze and C.C., the art thing was lost on me. "Yo, what's up with that scrub Blax 178? Heard ya'll still had beef?" Not that anyone we knew ever saw that dude Blax 178, but for some reason dude had started crossing out Blaze’s tags with his own infantile scrawl.

"Man, that toy scared to surface," Blaze laughed. "He crossed out another one of my pieces on the number one train. Nigga got nerve to put crowns over his name like he thinking he a king or something.”

“Smokey thinks he might be down with the Ballbusters,” I said, referring to the notorious Rican street gang known for jackin’ brothers in the shadowy train stations.

“Man, that punk ain’t down with no Ballbusters,” screamed Blaze. “He just another chump trying to absorb fame off my name.” Blaze beat on his chest like Tarzan. "Man, there can only be one king in this jungle, man. That’s me."

***

As the sun began to dim, Smokey won another free game of pinball, but passed it off to some goofy kid wearing a Planet of the Apes t-shirt. "Maybe we should walk over to the school and see what the problem is," I suggested.

Moments later, we were standing outside. "It’s freezing out here," C.C. sneered, buttoning his sheepskin coat. “At least the damn rain finally stopped.”

It was almost four o'clock and darkness slowly spread across the dreary sky. Yet, no matter how frosty it might have been, our neighborhood still managed to sustain a festive flavor where hustlers lounged in gaudy rides, grandmothers dragged shopping carts spilling with groceries and sharp dressed corner boys shot dice against a tenement wall. A grisly bum trapped in a trance of intoxication stood next to the Chow Wong’s chicken wing joint, with its sticky bulletproof glass and soiled floor. Bopping in beat-up shoes, the destitute dude weaved in front of a raging bonfire.

"Wait up a sec," shouted Voodoo, stopping in front of the weed spot. His older brother Red had recently moved up in the world from a loose joint hustler hanging in pissy doorways to opening a small black door storefront that specialized in the uptown highs Buddha Bless and Panama Red. It only took a few minutes for him to make the transaction.

"We got that shit now," Voodoo howled, and even Smokey smiled for once. We walked down the street smoking the thick joint as if the shit was legal, yet it was C.C. who first spotted the police cruiser parked on the corner of 153rd Street. A red siren light atop the car rotated in its glass dome.

"What the hell is going down now?" I wondered aloud, and flicked the reefer roach into the gutter. The quiet block was littered with chubby cops and a wagon from the coroner's office.

"Those are his friends!" screamed Mr. Mancini, the Italian janitor from St. Catherine's. “Dese boys…dese boys are his friends.”

Staring at our blood-shot eyes, a baby-faced rookie sternly ushered us through a blue barricade into a surreal circus of chatter and tears. Quietly, as we moved through the whispering crowd, I peeped the swinging silhouette of Blaze's skinny body hanging from the tree. Like one of Smokey's beloved pinball machines, our perfect world slowly tilted.

Vomiting on sight, pieces of potato chip bile splattered on my Pro-Keds.

"My baby, my baby, my baby..." Blaze’s mother babbled madly. “Please God, please God, please God…” Breaking away from her strong husband’s weakening grip, Mrs. Garcia flung herself to the ground, her claw like finger nails scratching the concrete. A few feet away, Sister Marquez stood, silently clutching her rosary beads.

"Get these damn kids over to the side," a gruff black detective snarled. "They don't need to see this shit."

Before we were led away from the rustic gates, a beautiful gold and black butterfly fluttered above Blaze’s head. An exquisite powdery dust shimmered on the bug’s shuddering wings. Indeed, if only for a moment, Blaze had finally earned his shiny crown. "All hail the King of Broadway," I whispered, wiping away the tears.

The End

Harlem native and Brooklyn resident Michael A. Gonzales has written cover stories for Essence, Vibe, XXL, America and Latina. His fiction has appeared in Trace, Russell Simmons' OneWorld, Untold.UK and Brown Sugar: A Collection of Black Erotica. Currently his column On the Corner appears in Popmatter.com.

Whenever I think of South Africa, I think of my father who was a staunch anti-apartheid activist and one of the most intelligent and well-read people I have ever known. His library included the works of Baraka, Lenin, Marx and Stalin. He had street credibility because he could run numbers with the best of them, he would smoke a pack of menthol cigarettes daily, and pull women like he was picking apples off of a tree. He would talk with everyone about what was going on in South Africa on the street or in the classroom. His intelligence was unmatched, and he could debate for hours about any topic without making you feel like a complete idiot although you knew you had no business trying to oppose him intellectually.

In my family, we often call our fathers and uncles “Baba” which is a Swahili word denoting our ancestral relationship to them and a term of respect. I still remember Baba’s red, black and green hat that said “Free Mandela” and his use of the word “Amandla”. I would sometimes laugh at him with my teenage arrogance and ask him why his latest “soap box” issue should garner any of my attention. And with sadness in his voice, he would tell me that until Nelson Mandela was freed the world just wouldn’t seem right to him. For some reason, I understood that this wasn’t one of his typical radical arguments. This personal quest to see Nelson Mandela free represented something much more deep and painful. It seemed almost too painful for him to discuss with the same fervor and passion that he argued about money, politics and religion. He wanted to go to South Africa to fight firsthand alongside those that he viewed as his brothers and sisters in the freedom movement. He told me about the oppressive Bantu education, and the violent uprisings of students who refused to continue to be taught subservience.

Recently, I was able to study abroad in South Africa as part of a doctoral program focusing on educational policy. We traveled there to study the educational system, and the country’s efforts to overhaul the damage that years of oppression had on their educational institutions. Our greatest challenge as students was trying to conceptualize what this meant for the millions of South Africans who wanted to pursue higher education. We constantly talked about the roles colonialism, hegemony and racism played in the Apartheid structure, but I don’t believe that any of us could fully grasp how this impacted the lives of people living this experience on a daily basis.

Our South Africa study abroad provided us with a snapshot of what it must mean to work within a system that has historically prevented all students from receiving access to the best education possible. We attended lectures at the University of Pretoria, the University of Witwatersrand, and Tshwane North College for FET. At these lectures, there were administrators, professors and students. Each of these people provided us with a lens by which to view the transformation of the higher education system of South Africa in a post-apartheid system. I saw the influence that the apartheid regime had on the socio-economic status of many Black South Africans. The stratification that existed as part of apartheid was evident although the system of apartheid had ended over a decade before.

When I took pictures of young children in Soweto who were begging for Rand (South African money), I felt more emotional about the bridge that many of the educators were trying to build for those who had historically been disadvantaged in their country. I wondered aloud how these educators could attain their goal of achieving integration at schools that were historically categorized by the four races in South Africa: Whites, Indians, Coloreds and Blacks. I didn’t understand their racial categories, their monuments to Dutch colonists (Voortrekker), or how and why whites still maintained control of many of the businesses and real estate in the country.

I visited the former home of Nelson Mandela which stands in a small area in Soweto not far from the Hector Pieterson Museum. Mandela’s former home has become a museum where a person can walk through the house of the man who was imprisoned for 27 years on Robbin Island. In this Mandela Family Museum, the tour guide took us to the kitchen and told us how, for the time that they lived there, the Mandela’s (both Nelson and Winnie) often had a lock on the refrigerator because they had been told that their food would be poisoned. The tour guide took us through the tiny house and explained that Mandela attempted to move back to this house after his release from prison but was only able to stay there for eleven days because reporters from around the world camped outside of the house.

Later on the same day, I visited the Hector Pieterson Museum. I saw pictures of the students (many of them children) who protested during the Soweto student uprising, some of whom lost their lives as police shot at them. The Hector Pieterson Museum is surrounded by vendors that tell you their stories in their deeds and words. Some are relatives of the deceased children, and they will tell you which one was theirs and how they were related to them. These relatives wanted to see if we appreciated what took place at this historic site when Hector Pieterson and many others gave their lives in the name of freedom. Hecter Pieterson is the dead 12-year old student that is featured in the famous photo of two children in school uniforms carrying his bloody body after the police shot him down. During the uprising the Soweto students shouted “Amandla” which means power to signify their solidarity with the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and the activist organization, the African National Congress.

A few days into my trip we visited a place called God’s Window in Mpumalamanga and I was struck by the beauty and hope that still remained in a place governed for so many years by fear, hatred and pain. While standing at God’s Window, I no longer focused on the hegemonic practices of European countries that colonized third world countries around the world. Instead, I thought of my father and I remembered his energy and spirit.

I was eighteen years old when Paul Nakawa Sanders passed away in August of 1988. Amiri Baraka eulogized my Baba in his book, entitled Eulogies and he noted that Nakawa transitioned from the Black Nationalism of the 1960s to a better understanding of the need for global activism or internationalism in his latter years. My father never lived to see the man that he admired, who was unjustly imprisoned for twenty-seven years, become President Nelson Mandela. His “Abolish Apartheid” t-shirts were faded and torn by the time apartheid was actually abolished. But I saw all of these things for him. I stood on the mountaintop at God’s Window and I saw that the beauty of South Africa is that it still exists. It stands in all its glory as a symbol of all that can happen when people- simple citizens, some children, some adults, some former revolutionaries, and even their skeptical daughters- believe enough to ignore those that would oppress them and continue on in their quest for Black liberation.

Kijua Sanders-Mcmurtry is a doctoral candidate at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA. She is also the fruit of the black power movement.

On Beauty tells the story of two families, the Belseys and the Kippses. The Belseys, a liberal middle class American family consists of Howard, a fifty-seven year old white English-born art history professor, Kiki, a full bodied, warm hearted African American woman and his wife of thirty years, and their three children Jerome, Zora and Levi, each of whom is in search of an identity beyond the Belsey name. In contrast to the Belseys are the Kippses who all share a singular identity on the surface. Sir Montague “Monty” Kipps, a Trinidadian born Christian conservative (and Howard Belsey’s often publicized rival), sits at the helm of this clan that includes his wife Carlene, a seemingly proper English woman, and his son Michael who both have all but assimilated Monty’s identity. Carlene submits out of love and duty and Michael mostly out of a lack of a worthwhile identity of his own. Victoria, Monty’s teenaged daughter, seems to be the one person in the Kipps household not inherently bound to Monty’s ideals.

With On Beauty Zadie Smith has carefully crafted a multi-layered masterpiece that compels the reader to look beyond the characters’ roles in the story and examine the characters as she deliberately dissects everything from race and class to politics and ultimately relationships. At the center of this thematic amalgamation lies the professional and ideological debate between the liberal Howard and the conservative Monty. The root of this debate stems from their opposing positions regarding the true value of Rembrandt’s works. Ironically, the liberal Howard argues against the genius. As Monty joins the staff of Wellington, the liberal arts college where Howard is a professor, Smith brings to the forefront the politics of class and privilege.

Despite his liberal politics, Smith depicts Howard Belsey as an emotional conservative. As he struggles to salvage his marriage following an affair with a friend and colleague, Howard realizes that he is no longer in control of the family that he loves. Smith skillfully uses each member of the Belsey family to provide commentary on the relationships between upper middle class’ privilege and lower class’ circumstance, between the practice of affirmative action and the “boot straps” theory, between a man and a woman, between friends and enemies. The failing marriage of Howard and Kiki Belsey, although an unlikely occurrence, represents Howard’s inability to express emotion or use for anything beyond his intellectual world. His daughter Zora, the child most like Howard, crosses a similar line as she embarks upon a relationship with Carl, a talented young poet from Boston’s inner city who despite his disdain for academic institutions, finds himself intoxicated by it’s false sense of importance. Smith also explores the antithesis of this relationship through Howard’s youngest son Levi. As Levi indulges in his youthful infatuation with the “streets” and “street” people, he befriends a group of young Haitian immigrants and finds himself overtaken by the plight of this impoverished nation.

As the title suggests, the subject of beauty is also a central theme, though not in the manner one might expect. Instead of relying solely on the stories –and perhaps Smith’s—obsession with physical beauty, she chooses unlikely subjects, such as the simple and overweight Kiki Belsey or her ill-fated counterpart Carlene Kipps, to interject the idea of a beauty based on deeds. Relying more on emotion than intellect Kiki Belsey chose to exist at the heart of a matter and not the academic dressings her husband so often used to mask them. In much the same manner that she uses Howard’s assertions on Rembrandt to ask the question “What is genius,” Smith uses Kiki to ask “What is beauty?”

On Beauty was meant in part to serve as a tribute to fellow English novelist E.M. Forster, admittedly a huge influence for Smith. In fact, On Beauty can, at the very least, be categorized as a re-working of his classic novel Howard’s End. Toward this accomplishment, Smith has done quite well. She consistently weaves together narratives creating images and characters that reveal not only an ironic wit but also an impressive command of language. Even when faced with Smith’s obvious failure to fully develop certain characters these images are impossible to ignore. Images that dispute logic, encourage debate, inspire awe and invoke emotion—images of freedom and despair, ugliness and …beauty.

Al Burton is a Chicago, Ill based freelance writer.

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