Charles Mingus Jazz Art Painting - African American Art

Jazz Quartet
to Peanuts Taylor
Max Reif

I.
The saxophone makes
love to the mike in cool
excursions to distant
galaxies and back,

The instrument so heavy
in the musician's arms,
so full of metal buttons,
if he'd worn fatigues
you might have thought it
some kind of weird artillery.

Meanwhile, his friend
the bass player's
deft fingers weave
a complex spider web
of all the combo's sounds,

and as the drumbeat
feeds Time's tick
into the mix,
a protean
auditory creature
starts to move,
a benign golem fashioned
from the incantatory strains.

Now the piano takes
its rollercoaster ride
across the keys,
safely above
the net of
woven rhythm.

II.
Every song, though,
seems a mixed drink
poured from the same bottle
brewed with metal, wood, and ivory
and aged in a distillery
where sounds imbibe
from nearby subway trains
and traffic horns.

The blue and purple
stage lights too glint
urban reflections
off the gold and silver metal
and the ivory and ebony,
growing gentler, though,
when shining off
the heart-shaped
chiaroscuro
of the bass.

III.
Later, in a nearby
small cafe,
we hear an old man
crooning ballads
as he plays
a simple keyboard,
and we find
the one part missing
in the jazz quartet's
energetic, ranging beast:
the soul.

The old man smiles
and folds
his hands
in gentle greeting.
Our evening
is complete.
Max Reif

Jazzanatomy
James A. Emanuel
 
EVERYTHING is jazz:
snails, jails, rails, tails, males, females,
snow-white      cotton bales.

Knee-bone, thigh, hip-bone.
Jazz slips you percussion bone
classified "unknown."

Slick lizard rhythms,
cigar-smoke tunes, straight-gin sky
laced with double moons.

Second-chance rhythms,
don't-give-up riffs: jazz gets HIGH
off can'ts, buts, and ifs.