Bird, strings, Big Chief: 100: Harlem (For Charlie Parker/Donald Harrison/Harlem Symphony Orchestra) | Black Agenda Report

Bird, strings, Big Chief: 100: Harlem (For Charlie Parker/Donald Harrison/Harlem Symphony Orchestra)

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence

08 Sep 2021

🖨️ Print Article

Photo: Janine Robinson

Bird, strings, Big Chief: 100: Harlem

(For Charlie Parker/Donald Harrison/Harlem Symphony Orchestra)

Gathering witnesses bearing beautiful collisions—

Kansas City, New Orleans, Harlem—in Harlem. Only

Harlem fetes YardBird in Marcus Garvey Park. Only

Harlem has Big Easy Chief of Congo Nation do the

honors. It’s still a COVID 19 scene and Black masking’s

an act of communal resistance…

It’s still a COVID 19 scene and the virus’s variations

are playing “Giant Steps” within Monk’s complicated

compositions. It’s still a COVID 19 scene and greed

driven confederate governors are playing with lives;

Playing simple songs sounding like “Mississippi Hot-

dog”/“Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars and Bars…”

Spy Boys check Jazz Tribe temps and statuses.

They buy Big Chief time to procure and secure

Suspenders; adjust his invisible headdress and

prepare sacred songs for meeting The Peoples’ Tribe.

Charlie Parker’s music’s magic—Blues magnet gathering

grassroots, salt of the earth—Harlem’s finest—like

shavings of steel hardened by white heat and hammer

A drizzle decrescendos and morphs into the perfect

prelude, into micro climate mist—handing humidity a

rare defeat. The weather’s a bittersweet reminder of

Impermanence. Change—spiraling lower to higher—birth

to death; reminding us who are “Just Friends,” “Now’s

The Time” to connect—this evening’s the only time we own…

Older gentlemen—second wave Jitterbugs—with

muscle memory of Lindy Hop to Bebop honor the

Moment. They select skilled younger partners to

Swing, spin, twirl; showing off middle year bodies

more beautiful than perfect: cleavage, calves and

sculpted thighs revealed as colorful knee-high skirts rise

Maybe they couldn’t keep Malcolm alive or hold on to

Houses grandparents paid off. But tonight they hold

on to one another—hold on to Charlie Parker—Bird

with strings attached…

Former forklift driver/warehouse worker/janitor, Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC. You can Vote for his work at:

GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-town-criers-big-tooth-fund

PayPal: paypal.me/towncrierRNT

© 2021. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Music

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.

More Stories

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Black Politics in San Francisco, Part 2
16 Sep 2022
Jemma Decristo is a community organizer in San Francisco, where a Black mayor, London Breed, continues neo-liberal and pro-police policies and where gentrification and displacement continue. She…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
FBI Surveillance of Aretha Franklin
16 Sep 2022
Afeni is a community organizer and writer who is co-authoring an article soon to appear in Rolling Stone about FBI surveillance of Aretha Franklin. Afeni is joining us from Washington DC.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
The U.S. Instigates Conflict in the Horn of Africa
16 Sep 2022
Thomas C. Mountain is an historian and educator known as a widely published independent journalist in Africa. He explains U.S. interference against Ethiopia and Eritrea and how the TPLF, Tigray…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Decolonizing the Mind
14 Sep 2022
The word decolonization should not be treated as trendy slang. It describes an important political and psychological process. Media and state attempts at indoctrination show just how…
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: Behind the Mau Mau: George Padmore, 1953
14 Sep 2022
George Padmore’s account of British rule and Black resistance in Kenya reminds us that “Queen” Elizabeth is both the symbol and beneficiary of the savagery of colonialism and white supremacy.