My Story, My Song
(featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
the past predicts the future
(for narvalee)
when you get closer to yr relatives
you will be surprised
at how black they are,
they feel
the fit and familiarity of their emotions in the twilight
how much of your pain they understand
with a knowing smile, and how much of their pain
you never knew, thus you frown
embarassed by your ignorance
and turn to yester-world
altared on the mantle piece:
ancestral photographs, amazingly graceful figures
whose dominant features are boldly ironic eyes
which seemingly float effortlessly just above the surface
of the cream colored paper, inscriptions in unfading black ink
on the reverse "me & shane, dec. 1934"
a small, soft purple, velvet box enshrining a plain gold ring
a slip of torn paper from another era unthrown-away
seven quickly scribbled numerals, the abacadabra key
to a birth, a midnight move to another town, or even
a pledge cut short by accidental death, "oh, it's just a number,"
the slow, quiet response to your investigation
so you pick up a pencil gilded with the name of a 1947 religious
convention attended and delicately place it down beside
an 87-year-old hand mirror (you resist the impulse
to look at your reflection, afraid that you might see
unfulfilled family aspirations), this mirror is atop
a piece of lace, pressed, folded, ancient matriarchal adornment
you will be surprised to learn,
as the years go on, everything
your people say sounds like something
from your life story, something
you wondered about sitting in the car
the other day in the hospital parking lot before the visit,
before the treatment
especially if you are intelligent
paid more than $10 an hour
carry credit cards rather than cash
and climb aboard a flying machine more than three times a year
you will be surprised that although you live in some other city
there is a spot with your familial name
blind embossed and hand engraved in the heart-home
of people you seldom see, surprised
that much of your life had already been accurately predicted
by an aunt who knew you before you were born, i.e.
when your mother
and father were courting, staying out later than curfew
and clutching dreams tightly in the naked embrace
of yr conception
—kalamu ya salaam
in the custody of love
eat of me, drink
my brilliant eyes
and ecstatic grin
i was traveling the road of normalcy
lost to love when i detoured
deep into your mountains, there
i experienced both eagles and turtles
the savor of wild berries
blazing in my mouth,
i am breathing so hard, so hard
my heart is trying to escape confinement
at certain moments beneath your interrogation
i scream out every secret i know
strip off all my acquired manners
and dive into your eyes
reborn in a fusion of flesh
and sharp emotions rising
like a rainbow in the desert
unbelievable, miraculous
satiating, your wetness
all over my face, i leave you
i'm babbling and
dazed out of my senses
drunk from our sacred feast
dancing down the street
the smell of love all in the air
around me
—kalamu ya salaam
Fireman's Ball
glistening in the heated night glow
yr arced torso radiates
the sculpted bronze intensity
of an earth toned ewe passion mask
yr hypnotic breasts
are brown mesmerizing eyes, yr nipples
dilated pupils aroused into
elongated surprise
yr navel a heavy
nose
flaring
with every sharp breath
& listen
that dark forest, yr sideways mouth
silently chants the sacred syllables
of my secret name
as i plunge into the discovery
of its musky depths
unable to stand
i joyously recline
jumping in the happy immolation
of yr explosive flame
—kalamu ya salaam
___________________________________________
Kalamu ya Salaam – vocals
Stephan Richter – bass clarinet
Wolfi Schlick – tenor & reeds
Frank Bruckner – guitar
Roland HH Biswurm - drums
Recorded: May 31, 1998 – Munich, Germany
What Took You So Long?
We've Got To Have A Video For This. Meaningless As They Be, Here Are The Images--All We Did Was Round Up All The Usual Suspects: For these young-stars, while the weather never was cold, the "forties" always were. Plus seems there was always this one cutie who could blow smoke rings out her thing. Toke a big blunt with her labia major, and puff a thick blue cloud of chronic. No shit. The first time she did it in front of Eazy all he said was "whoa, now dat some bomb ass pussy!" (I'm telling yall all this shit so you will know the context. This is the expository part of this story where I do the detailing. Wax and shine the ride and grease down the cow hide. Gas it up to full and bump the tapes up past ten on the 14-inch speakers in the Alpine system.)
OK? Got it? Are You Suitably Distracted? Confused? What Did That Naked Woman Have To Do With The Story? Oh, I See You're Getting The Picture. You Were Looking At The Picture With The Sound Sense Off. OK, Now Cut The Tee-Vee. Ignore The Video. Listen.
So Eazy and Tupac sayz to each other:
EAZY: Yo bitch, how I know I'm alive?
TUPAC: You don't, unless you die.
EAZY: You mean I got to die to live?
TUPAC: No, I mean you can't prove you lived unless you die.
EAZY: And so what happens when I die?
TUPAC: One of three things. One. You meet God and the Devil and they decide which one of them two mothafuckaz is your old man and who is going to own up to you for eternity.
EAZY: You mean my mama don't get no say so about this shit?
TUPAC: Eazy, man, you always was slow. Your mama deal with you when you alive. Your daddy deal with you when you dead.
EAZY: Oh, I see, what you sayin'.
TUPAC: No, that's the whole point. You don't see. You don't see shit while you alive. You don't get to see nothing til you dead. While you alive, you just live. Do whatever the fuck you want and then when you dead...
EAZY: You get to see what you did?
TUPAC: Yeah! That's one option.
EAZY: Oh, I get muthafuckin options?
TUPAC: I don't know, I'm just speculating on how a nigga be making it after he done passed on.
EAZY: This some of that Panther shit?
TUPAC: Nigga talking to you is like talking to a brick except you ain't even solid enough to build nothing with.
EAZY: I know this bitch-ass momma's boy ain't tryin' to bag on a man. Yo shit so weak til the last bitch you fucked charged you with sexual harrasment AND YOU
GOT CONVICTED, motherfucka!
TUPAC: Alright, whatever. At least I know how to count my money, instead of slaving for a white man, "let's see, one for me, and one for you, and one for me, and one for him, and one for me, and one for Cube, now we all got an even cut." Eazy, you like the clown in class cracking jokes so nobody notice how dumb he is.
EAZY: This ain't school. You ain't no teacher. You just mad cause I know how to read ya.
TUPAC: Alright, alright. Option two is that after this shit play out, that's all she wrote. You had your little fifteen minutes of fame and now it's all over.
EAZY: That's wack. If this is all there is, I want my money back cause I been jipped.
TUPAC: Option three is that this shit is a cycle and we come back over again.
EAZY: What you mean come back?
TUPAC: You get born again but instead of being a gangsta, you come back as a bitch.
EAZY: I know you trippin'.
TUPAC: I'm just saying it's an option.
EAZY: But Pac, if you come back as somethin' else, then it ain't really comin' back. It be a whole new thing. Like if you fuckin' this cutie and the shit is bangin', but then when you go back the next night, she don't be there. Her sista be there. Then you ain't comin' back. It's a whole new thing.
TUPAC: Nigga, why you got to reference everything with your dick.
EAZY: I ain't got to. It just feel better when I do.
TUPAC: Yeah, whatever.
EAZY: So how you goin' out?
TUPAC: Like a man, mothafucka. However it come, I'm going out like a man. My boots on, looking the bullet dead in the mothafuckin eyez. You know what I mean?
EAZY: OK, like I got to bounce. I got some beats and shit to put down in the studio.
TUPAC: Nigga, I heard some of that shit. That shit sound...
EAZY: It don't matter to me how my shit smell to you, what matter is that muthafuckaz buy the shit I do.
TUPAC: Represent and get paid.
EAZY: I'm gon do that. What you gon do?
TUPAC: I been thinking about getting out of the being real biz and getting into some real fake ass shit. That way I get to play hard on the screen and then live soft on the titty for a long ass time. Instead of making five records and then having niggaz saying "Tupac who?" I'm thinking of jumping off into film and shit. I can make movies til I'm sixty-two and people will still dig my shit. Kind of like that muthafucka John Wayne.
EAZY: Fuck John Wayne.
TUPAC: Not even with your dick. I'm just saying homey, I been thinking...
EAZY: Yeah, you done got philosophical as a muthafucka since you took them bullets in yo ass and done a lil time in the joint. Tell me, you ain't got but one nut left.
TUPAC: My one weights a ton, and it's twice as heavy as both your pebbles put togetha. By the way, howz your boyfriend?
EAZY: Nah, there you go. You know you got that shit assbackwardz as usual. That's yo boyfriend and my ho...
TUPAC: Blahzy, blahzy. Whatever. Say Eazy?
EAZY: What?
TUPAC: After we gone, what do you think they'll say about us?
EAZY: Who?
TUPAC: You know, all them magazines that be writing about what color toilet paper we use and when was the last time yo mama sucked my dick on the beach.
EAZY: Nigga, I know you don't believe none of that shit.
TUPAC: I ain't asking about what I believe, I'm asking about how people be pimping us.
EAZY: Pimpin' you! Ain't nobody pimpin' me. I ain't no ho.
TUPAC: Well bitch, I hate to be the one to tell you, you got the claps cause you done been fucked so much, but all you got to do is look around and it's plain enough to see how these muthafuckaz are profiting off of you and me. If we go straight they picture us in white. If we be real they picture us in black. No matter what we do, they sell our picture.
EAZY: I still ain't no ho!
TUPAC: No, Eazy, what you mean is you still don't want to be no whore, but as long as you selling to make a living, you tricking and whoring. Why you think we making all this money?
EAZY: Nigga, you talkin' some bitch shit. I'm gettin' paid cause my shit is the rage and everybody like the way Eazzzzyyyy does it.
TUPAC: Eazy, you dumb as they come, but you still my nigga. After you gone, I ain't never going to forget you.
EAZY: Pour a sip on the curb, shout out a good word for the gangstaz like me and you that stayed all the way true to the real of gettin' fucked, gettin' ducs, and doin' whatever the fuck we wanna do. Peace out, muthafucka. And besides who gives a fuck what happens after I'm gone?
TUPAC: Word. And Eazy, if I get to the otherside before you do, I'ma keep a warm seat at the welcome table, a cold forty in the box, and a light on the front porch so your sorry ass can find your way back home.
EAZY: Yeah, you do that. Meanwhile, I'm outta here.
* * *
So Eazy slid into a coma, and even before he eased out of here, his peeps was fighting over his shit. Who would get what? They couldn't hardly bury him straight behind all the lawsuits.
For a minute the magazines talked about AIDS and the radio advised safe sex when getting laid. But only for a minute and then the 24-7-365 was on again. Because in the muzak biz, the death of a star only makes more room for the wanna beez. And the hungry ones just keep on coming, keep on scheming, keep on dreaming.
The seduction of glamour and gangsterism is real. The high of being invincible, of dodging death and indulging every desire. Living large enough to make a cartoon out of life is the bomb, until it explodes.
Tupac was no fool. Undisciplined--maybe, self-indulgent--surely, and even ocassionally willfully crazy, but nobody's fool. He could see the moving light headed his way from the far end of the tunnel, and though, every now and then, he couldn't help thinking aloud about turning around, he just kept on trucking. He had shook hands with death before and still had all five fingers to prove he knew what he was doing. He was a fighter and a survivor and real men don't cry. So he sucked up any regrets and kept on stepping.
Everytime the light inched closer towards him, some other kind of good shit would happen to make Tupac disregard the upcoming collision.
God, he loved Iron Mike. The way Mike never let nothing keep him down. And Suge, that nigga is so for real. He covered Tupac's back and had a limo waiting out front when he made the bail.
Inside of Tupac's head the party was in full effect: Did you see how Mike smoked that dude in the first round? And look whose driving me around, the president and me. Two multimillionaires... the light blinded him this time as death took a firmer grip. When four bullets said hello, there was no place for Mr. Tupac to go except to step off into the void of the great beyond.
So when Tupac got to the other side, the first person he saw was Eazy-E and Eazy said to Tupac: "What took you so long?"
And Tupac, still a little dazed from the suddeness of the trip, haltingly replied, "I was having second thoughts about living."
—kalamu ya salaam
when you said you loved me
what did you do with it
after you didn't anymore
after the rain of love dried
after laughs
after baths
after toast & watermelon
after cups of water in the night
after morning smiles & phone calls
i know what i did with mine
i have a wall of pain painted
nigerian indigo,
created lyrics for a howlin' wolf,
fashioned a mask of brown sadness,
& in a midnight hour
buried love's corpse quietly
watching dry eyed
as the heart-red crypt slipped
peacefully deep into
the sea of my experiences
where the brackish-green, obsidian
sealed sepulcher shall sleep
untroubled by resurrection attempts
when you said you loved me
i never thought of it in the past tense
what did you do with it
after you didn't anymore
_________________
Kalamu ya Salaam – vocals
Stephan Richter – clarinet
Wolfi Schlick – reeds
Frank Bruckner – guitar
Mathis Mayer - cello
Georg Janker - bass
Michael Heilrath - bass
Roland HH Biswurm - drums
Recorded: June 14, 1998 – "ETA Theatre" Munich, Germany
—kalamu ya salaam
Horace Silver Where is the orange pumpkin face with the lit candle inside? Where the wide snaggle tooth smile like the one Ma'dear used to beam at us? But she also used to bust our butts and that warm smile would turn to a grimace just like the one you got now, and just like I never pleaded with Ma'dear to slack up on whipping us, I'm not going to beg you to stay. You used to glow radiant like you were plugged into god's bright light when you first came here in that happy yellow dress I liked to see you wear. Although you arrived in December, in winter, your aura was so unwintery, plus you had yellow shoes with spaghetti straps. From the beginning you were always munching fruit. "You like jazz?" I asked. You nodded. I gestured toward the sofa and dropped a record on my system. You sat listening attentively to Horace Silver blowing the "Tokyo Blues." I don't know why I chose that album to play to you, or why I asked did you like jazz, or even why I invited you over. You were so thin, thinner than any woman I had ever been with at that time. I don't even like thin women, so I mean you were already way ahead of the game. Maybe it was the geisha girls on the cover with Horace sitting between them that caused me to pause while flipping through the stack searching for suitably impressive sounds to play. Maybe your bright red lipstick, the rouge tastefully spread on your cheek, and, of course, your quietness reminding me of the way I imagine Japanese women are, and your carefully painted fingernails, and the small amber ring you wore, with matching earrings, your legs crossed listening to "Cherry Blossom," saying you had that record in your collection. Before the LP was over you looked up at me. I was standing tall. You smiled and then sat back and looked away briefly, then looked back and gave me a full, big eyed stare like you had already figured what you wanted out of this. I was just steady looking at you, at how small your breasts were and trying to think was this going to be worth my time. If I knew what I know now, I never would have cared about you, but I didn't know. You let me fall in love with you, and now that I do, you don't care. I still remember standing in my living room the evening of the first day. It was already December dark even though it was only like a quarter to seven. You were admiring my African sculpture that my sister gave me from her trip to Ghana and I had on a cranberry colored sweater. Horace Silver was spinning exactly at 33 and 1/3 revolutions a minute. The orange lights on the turntable gauge where perfect squares standing still. I remember all that. I just kind of stood there listening to Blue Mitchell's exuberant trumpet calls and was wondering what all this was about. Yeah I'm a little upset. I mean I care. Yeah, I would prefer if we worked this out, if you would glow like you used to when you looked at me with your huge brown eyes telling me about some book you had read or how you liked the way I touched you, glow like you did that first evening when I was standing surrounded by Horace Silver's hip sounds washing over us and you returned your face to me and told me, "I don't want anything serious. I want this to be light. I want us to enjoy it. I'll stay as long as it's light." I suppose I was supposed to kiss you at that moment, but Horace was playing so beautifully I had to be more subtle than that. So I squatted in front of you, touched your knee briefly and simply said, "yeah, that's what I want too. As long as it's good." I never intended to really, really love you. I mean you wanted it "light," and I imagined this could be very convenient, us seeing each other and seeing other people too. I asked you if you wanted something to eat and you held up the apple you were chewing and smiled. You never liked to cooked. I never met a woman like you that was so open about not wanting to cook, about refusing to cook. I cooked more than you did and I can't cook, and my surprise to learn you were a school teacher. I guess I thought all school teachers were also supposed to know how to cook. You never corrected the way I talked so I couldn't imagine you an English teacher but I guess you had to be something. I never really knew you before that day you came over and right now I'm realizing that I have never really got to know you since. It's only a few months later. The weather has just turned to spring, nevertheless, here you are intoning in that husky voice of yours (a sexy huskiness that first attracted me to you, a voice which initially sounds too deep for such a petit body, that voice which tipped me off that maybe there was more to you than it looked like there was), here you are saying "Harold, it's not light anymore." When did it stop being light. It's still light for me. For a teacher you sure do get a lot of stuff backwards. Winter is heavy, spring is light. Look at you right now, you're hunched into that frog position you like so much lately: your heels pulled up on the edge of the chair, your arms wrapped around your legs, your chin on your knee. "Is this because I don't want to drive to Atlanta to see Nelson Mandela?" You answer "no," dragging out the short response, but it sounds like yes to me. "Was it about that AIDS walk I didn't want to go to and you went by yourself?" You answer me "no" but here we go again, it sounds like yes. "Is it because I don't want to use condoms? I mean it's mainly you and me right..." You slowly close your eyes. "I mean you did say you wanted this to be light, right?" I can hear you not listening to me. "What do you want? You want us to live together? You already said you don't want to be married. What, huh? I don't understand..." I looked at you. You are fading before my eyes. I reach out to touch you, to hold you. My hand goes right through your body and touches the back of the chair. —kalamu ya salaam
WORDS. a neo-griot (writing with text, sound and light) manifesto. —kalamu ya salaam (kalamu@aol.com) words. words are the basic element of all writing. seems obvious. except the obvious is misleading. for the last 400 years or so, western culture has defined the "word" primarily and almost solely as "text." enter the mating of digital technology with african-heritage aesthetics, and we are on the verge of liberation from the tyranny of text. we can step back to an old aesthetic in order to boldly create a new paradigm. sankofa fetching an ancient worldview to help fashion a future vision. in the beginning was the word. and it wasn’t text. in the beginning the word had sound and gesture as well as meaning. indeed, sound and gesture were part of the meaning. guttenburg’s printing press combined with the alphabet to mute words; stripped words of sound and gesture. (that was not the first instance, but, thanks to western military hegemony, the roman alphabet became the dominant form of word discourse. today, even the chinese use that alphabet, even though their glyphs are older and their language spoken by more people.) western imperialism ensured that the muted text of the printed page became the standard for literature, for writing. following the first revolution of the printing press, came the 2nd revolution, the reproduction of sound for mass dessimenation via recordings and radio. that happened around the turn of the 20th century. sound was re-mated to words. although most recordings were used for music, radio, for a long while, hung in with all kinds of "talk" shows, from political speeches to orson wells declaring interstellar war had arrived, from cartoons come to life (like the shadow do) to declarations of what soap made you whiter, i mean, cleaner--question: was the golddust twins more clean than the ivory soap chile? even today, talk shows still have a major foothold on radio. the third revolution is digital, and digital completes the turning of the word back onto its original self: the trinity of sense (literal meaning), sound and gesture. talking cinema, which had its popular birth with al johnson’s "jazz singer" in 1927 was the opening salvo of putting gesture back with the word. and then in the fifties came television. but the distinction is that it costed a lot of money, as well as access to and expertise with highly technical equipment, in order to produce movies and television. the girl next door and the guy in the mirror were not able to make their own movies or produce their own television shows. the significance of the third communications revolution is that with digital, we can all make movies, we can all present our words with sound and gesture as well as sense. digital is completing the re-animation of words via high quality sound and gesture. the democratication of mass media through the digital revolution is perhaps the most significant development in terms of the preservation, creation and propagation of third world cultural activities and products. as a writer using digital technology, i can concentrate on what it is i do best, i.e. use words to convey ideas and emotions. and i can do it from the holistic african-heritage perspective which tends to mix and almalgamate rather than specialize and segregate. moreover, digital makes it possible both technically and financially for me to "write" about my culture in its fullest expression and to do so without regard to the strictures of the market place. i can make a movie about the sister next door who integrated her elementary school fifty years ago, or the brother down the street who joined the deacons for defense after he came out of the korean conflict—you don’t know who and what the deacons for defense was, well, that’s precisely why the digital revolution is so important. digital will make it possible for us to tell all the tales and present the total vision that up til now has been severly limited. digital technology allows us to produce broadcast quality work that can compete in the marketplace. for example, thanks again to the digital revolution, our work can be distributed on cable television. the days of major network strangleholds on mass communications are coming to an end even as there is more and more concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. global capitalism is moving toward monopolies, but the underside is that the communications infrastructure has a voracious appetite for content. 300 cable channels require over 2.5 million hours of content to operate year round. there will be room, indeed, there will be a need for locally produced content. if one needs an example of how thorough going the digital revolution will be and of how deeply we can participate in this revolution, i give you "rap" music. if there was no digital technology, there would be no rap as we know it today. yes, i understand that rap started with analog equipment and the human voice, but that’s not what it is today. the rap that dominates musical culture worldwide is produced via digital equipment. rap is the electronic enhancement of words. electronic machines turned to drums supporting the wit and wisdom of human speech. the digital revolution is all in our face but many of us don’t see it because some of the chief practictioners don't have white faces, ph.d. faces, or technical "you-got-to-be-technically-trained-to-do-this" faces. the truth is that brothers and sisters at the street level have completely revolutionized the making of music, indeed, revolutionized the very definition of music. and the greater truth is that black dominance of music happened with the previous revolution of sound reproduction at the turn of the century. jazz stood the music world on it's head. indeed, from ragtime to rap, black music was the dominant sound of the 20th century. my argument is not that all writers need to become rappers. my argument is that rappers demonstate what we can do if we are willing to grasp existing technology and use it to facilitate our self expression. and this is not simply a question of music. we have so many stories that need to be told, sounded, shown. digital technology and our own human will to create makes it possible for us to truly and fully express ourselves. as writers, as cultural workers, our task ought to be to investigate our past, critique our current conditions and create visions of our future. so, on the one hand, with digital we can tell our story in our own way. although the aesthetics question is a story onto itself, suffice it to say at this moment, with the ease and affordability of digital we can present our culture in our own way like never before. on the other hand, local, national and global audiences want our content. now is the time. there are, of course, issues to be dealt with, obstacles to overcome, and cultural battles to be waged, but there is a future if we are willing to seize the means of production and actively participate in the distribution of our vision. and it is no accident that i distribute this manifesto via the internet rather than as a pamphlet or an article in somebody else’s magazine. can you hear me now?
bb explains why…
(a haiku for mr. king)
we’d be so damn mean
if me and lucille couldn’t
sing these sad ass songs
—kalamu ya salaam
A Gun In The Hand Is Worth...
it was a cliche
in a sad sort of way, the way
these weird, oppressive social
games are played
it happened in a community center (so called)
a food stamp office
she was old, tired,
had an injured hip, a
pillow and a cane,
and was number two
hundred and one
when the cut-off was
two even, brother man
on guard dumbly overdoing
his duty invited her
to stay out, she asked
to rest inside, he denied
then like a saturday poker game
with a newcomer taking all
the chips, it turned unnecessary
nigger ugly, "bitch, if-in
you wasn't so old
i'd go upside yo haid,
this here office is closed
i said,"
"son, what did you say?"
the repeat hissed snake like
cross his teeth, calmly
her old hand went
inside her old bag
and came up with her
old gun and with her
old voice she slowly
repeated an old phrase:
"well play like I'm
sweet sixteen and
hit me...!"
—kalamu ya salaam