Jayne Cortez (10/5/34 -28/12/12) Revolutionary Jazz Poet R.I.P

It is with sadness that I have discovered that poet and spoken word performer and civil rights activist Jayne Cortez has died aged 76.
An activist in the Civil Rights movement, she was an organiser of the Watts writing and dance workshop. She was also the founder of the Watts Repositary Theatre, Bola Press and co-founder of the Organisation of Women Writers of Africa.
In her poetry, she spoke of revolution, which she believed could be used to heal us all, using her voice in a powerful incantory way, using the rythyms of blues and jazz to deliver her messages of fierce, biting, social criticism to be used as imperatives of personal responsibility and change. A devotee of the artistic impulse that is jazz and blues, its impulses were to become a constant theme, using its rythyms as sparks and she became a close friend to many of the jazz greats and members of the avant garde fraternity.
I first discovered her through my own love of jazz, she was married to Ornette Coleman from 1954 until she divorced him in 1964 and I subsequently used to have some of her work on a compilation of freejazz, with her voice used as a bridge between tracks, wish I still had to it. She is best listened  to when heard, rather than directly from the page, a precursor to what is now known as hip hop.She and  Ornette had a son together, jazz drummer Denardo Coleman who she collaberated with on a number of occasions in his firespitters band. She later remarried in 1976 to sculptor Mel Edwards.
Her work has since been translated into many languages and I am widely used to seeing her name published in various anthologies over the years. Using her voice to challenge and the travesties and injustices of our world. Her voice is celebrated for its political, surrealistic pulse and dynamic innovation, with her use of lyricism and visceral sound. Using her voice to represent to the world the perspectives of an African-American feminist, revolutionary in an oral tradition stretching back centuries. Remaining independent, determined, with her singular strong voice, her spirit and ideas savaged silence and the conformity of the masses, raging against the excessives of man and all his brutality.In all her rage she spoke of survival too.
Long may her voice sing with all its energy and passion and its force hit with vivid intention.
Jayne Cortez - Artist on the Cutting edge

Jayne Cortez as she appeared in the 1982 film 'Poetry in Motion'

Jazz Fan Looks back - Jayne Cortez

I crisscrossed with  Monk
Walked with Bud
Counted every star with Stitt
Sang "Don't Blame Me" with Sarah
Wore a flower like Billie
Screamed in the range of Dinah
& scatted "How High the Moon" with Ella Fitzgerald
as she blwe roof off the Shrine Auditorium
                             Jazz at the Philarmonic

I cut my hair into a permanrnt tam
Made my feet rebellious metronomes
Embedded record needles in paint on paper
Talked bopology talk
Laughed in high-pitched saxophone phrases
Became keeper of every Bird riff
every Lester lick
as Hawk melodicized my ear of infatuated tonques
& Blakey drummed militant messages in
soul of my applauding teeth
& Ray hit bass notes to the last love scene in my bones
I moved in triple time with Max
Grooved High with Diz
Perddoed with Pettiford
Flew home with Hamp
Shuffled in Dexter's Deck
Squatty-rooed with Peterson
Dreamed a "52nd Street Theme" with Fats
& scatted "Lady Be Good" with Ella Fitzgerald
as she blew roof off the Shrine Auditorium
                             Jazz at the Philarmonic


There it Is - Jayne Cortez

And if we don't fight
if we don't resist
if we don't organise and unify and
get the power to control our own lives
Then we will wear
the exagerrated look of captivity
the stylized look of suicide
the dehumanised look of fear
and the decomposed look of repression
forever and ever and ever
And there it is


If the Drum is a Woman - Jayne Cortez

If the drum is a woman
why are you pounding your drum into an insane
babble
why are you pistol shooting through the head of your drum
and making a drum tragedy of drums
if the drum is a woman
don't abuse your drum don't abuse your drum
don't abuse your drum
I know the night is full of displaced persons
I see skins striped with flames
I know the ugly disposition of underpaid clerks they constantly menstruate through the eyes
I know bitterness embedded in flesh
the itching alone can drive you crazy
I know that this is America and chicken are coming home to roost
on the MX missile
But if the drum is a woman
why are you choking your drum
why are you raping your drum
why are you saying disrespectful things
to your mother drum your sister drum
your wife drum and your infant daughter drum
if the drum is a woman
then understand your drum
your drum is not docile
your drum is not invisible
your drum is not inferior to you
your drum is a woman
so don't reject your drum don't try to dominate your drum
don't become weak and cold and desert your drum
don't  be forced into the position
as an oppressor of drums and make a drum tragedy of drums
if the drum is a woman
don't abuse your drum don't abuse your drum
don't abuse our drum.....


 .

Emma Goldman (27/6/1869 -14/5/40) - Free Love

From

Marriage and love

Anarchism and other Essays

1911

perhaps 2013, will be the year of Love and unity

and staying free.                                                    

Renewal

As time  passes amongst us,the bridges are falling,
beyond the labyrinths,beyond the caves.
Take giant steps, sing your own requiem,
walk among rainbows pulse.
Echoes in distant waters,
crack the prism that contain us,
hope landscape of tomorrow is irresistable,
and our feet find safe routes.
Liberation is never a solo piece but an orchestra.
It is the encaspulating efforts of millions  of strands,
struggles large and small leading to a progressive sea change in society.
In our outposts  masts  fly high, as the winds of the people sustain,
let our voices be heard,  and together lets follow humanity's assured steps,
moving inch by inch, everything or nothing. All of us or none.*


Happy new year

Remember,  no borders are necessary

heddwch/peace

* Last line 'everything or nothing. All of us or none'
from Bertolt Brecht poem - All of us or none

Octavia Paz (31/4/14 - 19/4/98) January First/ Primero de enero

The year's doors open
like those of language
toward the unknown,
Last night you told me: 
                                  tomorrow
we shall have to think up signs,
sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan
on the double page
of day and paper.
Tomorrow, we shall have to invent,
once more,
the reality of this world.

I opened my eyes late.
For a second of a second
I felt what the Aztec felt,
on the crest of the promontory,
lying in wait
for time's uncertain return
through cracks in the horizon.

Butno, the year had returned
It filled all the room
and my look almost touched it.
Time, with no help from us,
had placed
in exactly the same order as yesterday
houses in the empty street,
snow on the houses,
silence on the snow.

You were beside me,
still asleep.
The day had invented you
but you hadn't yet accepted
being invented by the day.
- Nor possibly my being invented, either.
You were in another day.

You were beside me
and I saw you, like the snow,
asleep among appearances.
Time, with no help from us,
invents houses, streets, trees
and sleeping women.

When you open your eyes
we'll walk, once more,
among the hours and their inventions.
We'll walk among appearances
and bear witness to time and its conjugations.
Perhaps we'll open the day's doors.
And then we shall enter the unknown.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1 January 1975

Las puertas del ano se abren,
como las del lenguaje,
hacia lo desconocicido.
Anoche ne dijiste:
                           manana
habra que trazar unos signos,
dibujar un paisaje, tejer una trama
sobre la doble pagina
del papel y del dia.
Manana habra que inventar,
de neuvo,
la realidad de este mundo.

Yatarde abri los ojos.
Por el sgundo de un segundo
senti lo que el azteca,
acehando
desde el penon del promontorio
por las rendijas de los horizontes
el incierto regreso del tiempo.

No, el ano habia regresado.
Llenabo todo el cuarto
y casi lo palpaban mis miradas.
El tiempo, sin nuestra ayuda,
habia puesto,
en un orden identico al de ayer,
casas en la calle vacia,
nieve sobre las casas,
silencio sobre la nieve.

Tu estabas a mi lado,
aun dormida.
El dia te habia inventado
pero tu no aceptabas todavia
tu innencion en este dia.
Quiza tampoco la mia.
Tu estabas en otro dia.

Estabas a mi lado
y yo te veia, como la hieve,
dormida entre las apariencias.
El tiempo, sin nuestra ayuda,
inventa casa, calles, arboles,
mujeres dormidas.

Cuando abras los ojos
caminaremos, de neuvo,
entre las horas y sus invenciones.
Caminaremos entre las aparienciones,
daremos fe del tiempo y sus conjugaciones.
Abriremos acaso las puertas del dia.
Entraremos entonces en lo desconocido.

a l de enero de 1975.

Reprinted from

Vuelta ( 1976)


Happy new year, lets try for another world, don't let the bastards grind you down, we will need all the strength we can muster for 2019. Spread solidarity, heddwch/peace. Let freedom ring and truth and justice prevail. Its o.k to say no. We can shape a new reality

Patti Smith (b 30/12/46) - Happy Birthday Warrior Poet.

In this video, Patti Smith reads from Woolgathering and shares memories of growing up in Jersey and New York. The Los Angeles Times described this book as a " mix of the practical and the mythic, like the marriage of rock n' roll and poetry". A wonderful 80 minutes worth of her genius. So happy birthday to this warrior poet, 66 today, still fighting for beauty truth and  and justice. Long may she continue to inspire.

Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud
clip from Stephen Sebring's 2008 film documentary
"Patti Smith- Dream of Life.

Patti Smith - Howl, Florence 10/9/09

Wilderness - Patti Smith

Do animals make a human cry
when their loved one staggers
fowled dragged down
the blue veined river

Does the female wail
miming the wolf of sufering
do lilies trumpet the pup
plucked for skin and skein

Do animals cry like humans
as I having lost you
yowled  flagged
curled in a ball

This is how
we beat the icy field
shoeless and empty handed
hardly human at all

Negotiating a wilderness
we have yet to know
this is where time stops
and we have none

Reprinted from
Auguries of Innocence
 2006

Charles Baudelaire ( 9/4/1821 -31/8/1867) - CROWDS

 ' It is not given to everyone to take a  bath in the multitude; to enjoy the crowd is an art; and only that many can gorge himself  with vitality, at the expense of the human race,whom, in his cradle, a fairy has inspired with love of disguise and of the mask, with hatred of the home and a passion for voyaging. Multitude, solitude: terms that, to the active and fruitful poet, are synonomous and interchangeable. A man who cannot people his solitude is no less incapable of being alone in a busy crowd.
The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege that he can, at will, be either himself or another. Like those wandering spirits that seek a body, he enters, when he likes, into the person of any man. For him alone all is vacant, to his eyes, they are not worth the trouble of being visited.
 The solitary and pensive pedestrian derives a singular exhiliration from this universal communion. That man who can easily wed the crowd knows a feverish enjoyment which will be eternally denied to the egoist, shut up like a trunk, and to the lazy man, imprisoned like a mollusk. The poet adopts as his own all the professions, all the joys and all the miseries with which circumstance confronts him. What men call love is very meager, very restricted and very feeble, compared to this ineffable orgy, to this holy prostitution of the soul that abandons itself entirely, poetry and charity included, to the unexpectant arrival, to the passing stranger.
It is good occasionally to bring home to the happy people of the world, were it only in order to humiliate for a moment their inane pride, that there is a happiness superior to theirs, vaster and more refined. The founder of colonies, the pastors of peoples, missionary priests exiled to the ends of the earth, doubtless know something of this mysterious drunkeness; and in the heart of the vast family which their genius has created for itself, they must laugh sometimes at those who pity them for their destiny that is so unquiet and for their life that is so chaste.'

Reprinted from Petits Poemes en Prose
Translated as Twenty Prose Poems by Michael Hamburger (22/3/24-6/07)

HAPPY CRASSMESS | There Is No Authority But Yourself

The above  'There is No Authority But Yourself' is a Dutch film directed by Alexander Oey documenting the history of anarchist punk band Crass. The film features archive footage of the band and interviews with former members Steve Ignorant, Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher. As well as reflecting on the band's past the film focusses on their current activities, and includes footage of Rimbaud performing with Last Amendment at the Vortex jazz club in Hackney, a compost toilet building workshop and a permaculture course held at Dial House in the spring of 2006.

The tile of the film is derived from the final lines of the Crass album Yes Sir, I Will; "You must learn to live with your own conscience, your own morality, your own decision, your own self. You alone can do it. There is no authority but yourself."
There is No Authority But yourself premiered at the Raindance Film Festival at the Picadilly Circus, London Trocadero in October 2006 and was part of the Official Selection film programme at the Flipside film festival in May 2008.
I remember when I first  heard Crass many moons ago, their lyrics taught me to question and took me on  a journey of discovery.Led by radical free thinkers   Penny Rimbaud, a ex-art teaching, middle class situationist and Steve Ignorant who was a working class street punk.Their songs offerered meaningful angry thoughts on societies many ills, and led many people to question injustice. Their angry defiant polemics and messages at the time chiming with the underclass that was emerging from the wreckage of Thatcher's Britain. They based themselves at their Essex communal house called Dial House, and from 1977 until their demise in 1984 released a succession of powerful provocative albums and singles. With words they articulately explained the ideas by which they were living, and with deeds , promoted a fierce critical viewpoint, financially supporting the peace movement and a whole myriad of radical causes.Many people taking their ideas further in a series of anti-capitalist Stop the City demonstations, held in the financial centre of London, between 1883-84, and the emerging New Age Traveller movement. They came to be seen as central to the opposition of  the cruel redundant social and economic policies that were being pushed at the time, which have direct parallels to what is being pushed by our current incumbents..
Their refusal to compromise was inspiring then, and  continues to be today, to all who dream of  peace, freedom, love and justice. Cental to their core was a a  D.I.Y Punk ethic which they used to preach subversion,whilst  living by their ideals and words, advocating a form of  individualism, hence the title 'there is no authority but yourself.'
I have never personally  been a purist, but there are some  people around today that say that Crass sold out. Crass were accused  of lifestylism, back in the day, not engaging with wider struggles.Currently there are  arguments raging about copyright law, with Crass apparently not allowing people to share their music on file sharing sites,  like Media Fire, but their original message for me still worth savouring, still worth sharing, which will  hopefully continue to inspire, and perhaps tomorrow  there will emerge people with even deeper truths. Perhaps the higher we set our ideals the deeper we fall, but the overall result is the fact that none of us are perfect. Crass only offered us suggestions, they served as a pulse, absorbing and spreading ideas, and it was directly because of Crass's ideas that many people engaged in the battlefield of radical ideas, some taking up the ideology of anarchism, some taking their own path, but inspiring many to start creating another world, and challenging the system, and all its failures,  it is I guess, up to us, in which direction we take it.
At a time of socio-economic decline, we should not get sidetracked, distracted. Division does not make the world a better place, Crass promoted  solidarity,by action as well as words. That for me is something we should be grateful for. Am also eternally grateful to them, because they inspired the artist and musician Jeffrey Lewis, who released one of my favourite albums in recent years, with his own homage to Crass.
The message still rings out, another world is not only possible, it is inevitable. We must not give up on our dreams. Become your own spark.
Almost 30 years later Crass's legacy still ripples with much symbolic potency.

Not sure when I'll be back, probably when the libraries reopen.
Next year sometime...... in the meantime Happy Crassmess.
All the best.....heddwch/peace

Crassmess

You must learn to live with your own conscience

your own morality,

your own decision,

your own self.

You alone can do it.

There is no authority but yourself

                                                     Crass - Yes, Sir , I will, 1983

"It was meant to be great but it's horrible- - Santa Claus 1968

Poster done by King Mob

The late British Revolutionary Situationist Group

based in London from  the late 60s onwards.

An old message for today......

Albert Einstein (14/3/1879 - 18/4/1955) - A human being is part of a whole, called by us 'the Universe' - a part limited in time and space.

'A human being is a part of the whole called by us 'the Universe', a part  limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something seperated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricts us to our personal desires and  to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely for such achievement is itself a part of the liberation and a foundation  for inner security.'
               

Breadline Britain by Luciana Berger

.

At the moment almost seven million working age adults are living in extreme financial stress. 3.6 million households have little or no savings, nor equity in their homes, and struggle at the end of each month to feed themselves and their children adequately. People are increasingly unable to cope on their current incomes and have no assets to fall back on, many people across Britain are now using food banks to get their daily sustenance.In 2008/9, 26,000 people in the U.K relied on emergency food aid, now as 2015 draws to a close   this figure is set to reach the truly shocking level of a million people and counting. The sad fact  is in 21st century Britain a significant number of people are going hungry.Welfare cuts are a significant cause. I know of many people who at the moment are probably skipping a meal or two in order to ensure their food supplies stretch out a bit.
This is a savage indicment of Tory Party policies which are increasingly taken us back to the dark old days of Thatchers Britain, a direct result of their savage economic/political austerity programme.. Food prices are rocketing, bills are getting higher. It's going to get even worse.
This scandal of British food poverty should shame us all.

Breadline Britain - The Communards