Courtesy insureourcondo.com

Romantic

My love said take
All my books,

You can take all my clothes,
My hats, my shoes, my gloves,

You can have my watchband,
Take my sifters,

You can have my glass head
And my silver darts,

Take my wild boar, my astronaut,
You can have my pots & pans,

And my replica
Of the United States, and take,

While you’re at it, all of the
Presidential figurines,

You can have all my matchbooks,
My binoculars, my exceptionally fine

Collection of cleaning products,
My one-of-a-kind snake-charming horn,

Take my sand dollars & beach glass,
Take all of my spices and salt & pepper,

You can have my smoked ham & brown mustard,
You can take my Progresso soup,

Take away my bread, take my spoons,
You can have my sheets and my pillows,

Take my rugs and my three erasers
Take my pitcher and the scarf you gave me,

Take my feathers my fox took
From my hawk, take my walking stick,

You can have my broom and my glass eye,
You can take away my atomic clock,

Take my dog, take my rule book.
Take my decoy and my bamboo cage,

You can take my girl waiting on
Her suitcase, my Michael Jackson doll,

You can take my mother and her priest
And their holy-water basin,

Take my drill and my hammer.
You can have all my brushes & combs,

Take my handkerchiefs and my scissors,
Take all of the keys you can find

In the house, take my scythe, my hoe,
My rags, my lamp with the lovers

Asleep in one another’s arms, take
My sprite sitting on a stump daydreaming

Over an empty book, take my moose,
Take my coffee can of loose change,

Take all of my ant traps, take my
Windowpanes, take my steps and my doors,

Take my chicken shack & my wheelbarrow,
Take my combat ship plaque, take my

Vatican champagne flutes, my earplugs,
Take my quilts, take all of my quilts,

I would not take one stitch
Of one of your quilts, though I love them,

I sweetly interrupted.

– Dara Wier

Video still of Dara Wier courtesy umass.edu

© Dara Wier, all rights reserved; reprinted with permission of the author; from DARA WIER | SELECTED POEMS, Wave Books, 2009

www.wavepoetry.com

Dara Wier in recent conversation with Cynthia Arrieu-King at Jacket2 Magazine

Poems by Dara Wier at PoetryFoundation.org

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How Dara Wier’s poem “Romantic” now links to Mae Ola Varner’s obituary at AlYoung.org

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” … The moon, the whole moon, and nothing but the moon.”
– Al Young
from 22 Moon Poems | Heaven: Collected Poems 1956-1990

© fullmoon.com

FullMoon.com

Everything you wish or need to know about full moons past, present and future.

Never miss another full moon.

© fullmoon.com

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Image credits: jamesgoulding.com | Michelangelo/FreakingNews.com | nabuzz.com | theorlandobloomfiles.com | Leonardo daVinci | Creative Commons

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Carroll Weisel Hall, CCA, San Francisco

Page devoted to an exciting class from beginning to beginning.

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Click red link for details
5 pm | Friday, January 28
Project One, 251 Rhode Island Street, SF 94103
MAP

© Jeff Von Ward

Student Selections

(Posting of selections temporarily slowed due to technical and design considerations)

Burt Ritchie
WHAT HAVE WE DONE FOR US LATELY?

Originally written for Al Young’s Drive-By Love class (CCA Spring 2010), this hilarious short story of Burt Ritchie’s may now be enjoyed online at Ishmael Reed’s Konch Magazine

Kate Haskell
THE BREAKS

If you are going to walk through San Francisco’s Tenderloin by yourself, you are going to need to learn how to use tourists as human shields. When you are coming up to a street corner, where a sketchy ass man with a sketchy ass cup is haggling passersby, and you see a group of hapless strangers wearing brand new sweatshirts with “SAN FRANCISCO!” across the front, you need to seize this opportunity. You need to scootch around them quickly so they become a barrier between yourself and harassment. You might have to join their group for a moment, but don’t be afraid. They will be too overwhelmed by the whipping cold of July and their eyes will be darting around nervously, searching in vain for the source of trolley clanging in the distance. Trolley? Trolley? they ask each other stupidly. Where we find trolley? So they won’t notice you and won’t understand your intent, and if they do, it will be too late. But you’ve reserved this right because you, you have put in your time. You’ve been yelled at, spit at, chased down streets, and called a bevy of unpleasant slurs, among them cunt, cockshitmotherfucker and, of course, the always popular, bitch. You know how to navigate these streets, but the bus, the bus is a whole ‘nother ball game.

For example:

You are waiting for the 19 that just went from “Arriving” to “23 minutes.” You have already waited twenty. Your toe taps and you scan the horizon, winding and unwinding your headphone wires around pocketed fingers. You think, the system’s just wonky, it’s going to arrive, any second now, it’s going to turn the corner, but no such luck. It’s raining. It’s coming down storks and giraffes. Or cats and dogs. Or just like, really fucking hard. You are hungry and tired and thinking about the crackers at the bottom of your bag, how you forgot about them when you shoved your books in carelessly, how you dropped the bag hard on the concrete ground when you ran into your best friend on the street earlier. They are dust, you think, but this is what you do, you don’t take care of your crackers.

You are starving.

So the bus finally comes, and you are really happy, as you’ve been thinking about cracker dust turning to a heavenly mush in your mouth for the past twenty-two and a half minutes, but refuse to pull out that powdery ziploc in this rain, as that would most definitely ruin everything. The bus door opens and your shaky hand lurches forward, grabs tightly onto the rail. You can’t believe you just touched that, think you must be losing your mind, you need to eat, your guts are swirling around and the juices are saying, feed me in gurgling burping gasses that transmit the message more effectively than language ever could. You are making all these mistakes! Pay attention! You pay the fare and take your transfer and eye up the bus as fast as you can, like when you were five and played musical chairs, only then someone usually sat down on you and sometimes it would hurt, but most times you just never seemed to get a chair and watched everyone else play while you listened to the music from the sidelines, and really, you were okay with that because it was painless and stress-free. The 19 bus is like this as well, only the people smell much worse. One time a little French lady looked up from her romance novel and said to you in a thick Parisian accent, I zimply loooove zis city because zere’s no need to go to zee zee-uh-tuh, Just ride zee bus! You sounded out zee-uh-tuh in your mind because you thought it sounded funny, and you weren’t sure what she meant and then you realized she said, theatre and you wished you had a French accent, thought about adopting a fake one, decided that was super lame, and then said, yeah, totally.

On the bus now there’s no Parisian lady, but there is a man. A man with wild eyes that poke out at odd angles, bulging. Bloodshot. The eyes of crazy. He zeroes in on your face, and you quickly avert your eyes focusing on the variety of trash around you on the floor. You see a banana peel, and find yourself once again amazed by the number of banana peels you find on the streets of San Francisco and think, this must be where that gag started, and then you remember walking down an alley you don’t know the name of somewhere in SoMa and coming across a box of half rotten bananas just sitting in front of an abandoned warehouse and you were really happy, because someone chose not to throw those away. A half empty Nantucket Nectar bottle rolls back and forth in swaying rhythm with the bus, roll roll roll, chink! roll roll roll, chink! You think about the person who left that there, made the conscious choice to buy a Nantucket Nectar only to abandon it, half full on the 19 bus. But maybe the person was just really thirsty and that was the last drink the street vendor had left, you think. The cracker dust at the bottom of your bag calls out to you, eat me! Eat me! and you start to move your hand closer to fish them out, but the bus driver makes a sudden jerk to the right, then a jerk to the left and somehow in the process, the man with the scary, bulged out face thought you were waving to him.

You make eye contact and know that now, now you are really fucked. You whip your head left and right, checking to see if there is an unsuspecting tourist around. Nada. The man crazy-eye-balls you and you look away, because his pants, see, his pants are what you might call, “ass stained.” They were at one time a pale, heather gray, but the streets have turned them earthy, brown, patched with oily spots and well, yes, ass. Snot hangs off the end of his nose, he slurps it up, fails, and moves his hand from the silver bar, rubbing it all along his drippy, wet nose. Of course, this is the moment you look up, transfixed on the glistening mucous trail down his hand.

You grimace.

You can’t help it. You stood in the rain forty minutes waiting on the worst fucking bus known to man, near starvation and then just, just when you are about to experience the sweet relief of food, of not even food! Of cracker dust! He wipes gross snot all over? Your stomach churns. Your grimace turns scowl.

He takes this as a challenge.

Looks you dead in the eye as he slides his hand down into the depths of the ass-stained sweatpants and starts rubbing up and down his ass crack. He turns around so you can get a better look, so you can really be sure he really did it when you tell your friend about this later over shots of whiskey, and just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, when the gurgling burp in your stomach screams, Out! Out! You’re going to barf! That, that is when he gives himself one last, deep slide up and out of his pants, a look of ecstasy lighting up his street worn face for a brief moment before screaming, AHHHHHHHHH! and then shouting at the top of his lungs, NINETY-NINE BOTTLES OF BEERS ON THE WALL! NINETY-NINE BOTTLES OF BEEEEEEEEERZ! over and over and over and over as he runs up and down the length of the bus, hands slipping and sliding and gliding across the smooth metal of the rails and before you think too much about the ass and the snot and the germs and disease on his hands and the rails that you’ve touched. That you touched! You touched them! In that moment before you realize this, you think to yourself that he’s a gymnast hoisting and flying through the air on parallel bars. But now, now the reality of the shit show before your eyes sets in, your throat is hurting, am I sick? Could he have gotten me sick that quick? What is the average flu’s incubation? Hands: shaking, stomach: twisted up and spazzing gurgles, and you need to eat: Must. Find. Food. Then it hits you, gets really bad, unbelievably bad. You see it. There. In your dark apartment. Sitting on your desk, next to a Roberto Bolano novel you’ve been reading for over a year, underneath the rent check you were supposed to drop off two days before. Yes, that is where you see it: your hand sanitizer.

So this, this is why when you are walking through the Tenderloin, alone, and you hear half German half English, and you see that crazy dude who tells you, you gots a fiiiiine ass on you, yes indeed, and eye rapes you before asking for his birthday kiss, chasing you down the street, don’t feel bad when you yell, Schau! Ein wagen! or, Look! A trolley! and make your great escape at the cost of an innocent tourist or two, because you see, them’s? Them’s the breaks.

Copyright © 2011 by Kate Haskell

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Fall 2010 September 8-December 15
WRITE-602-04 (510)

Sensual Text ~ Wednesdays 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm, Graduate Center Bldg 1 | Room GC2

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Al Young
alyoung@cca.edu
(Yes, now you can actually reach me at the above CCA email address). Or at:

therealalyoung@aol.com

www.alyoung.org | Website

CLASS EMAIL ADDRESSES:

Camacho, Lauren J.
lcamacho@cca.edu

Cherney, Max A.
mcherney@cca.edu

Grover, Martha J.
mgrover@cca.edu

Haskell, Katie B.
khaskell@cca.edu

Ishofsky, Daniel M.
dishofsky@cca.edu

Kadner, Kristen E.
kkadner@cca.edu

Leija, Luisa A.
lleija@cca.edu

Lohmann, Heather N.
hlohmann@cca.edu

Nichols, Alexandra
anichols@cca.edu

Ritchie, Robert B.
rritchie@cca.edu

Rodriguez-Laracuente, Vanelis D.
vrodriguez-laracuente@cca.edu

Thomas, Summer R.
sthomas@cca.edu

Von Ward, Jeff
jvonward@cca.edu

Whitcomb, Amelia M.
awhitcomb@cca.edu

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Assignments

“Every time I get a script it’s a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It’s like falling in love. You can’t give a reason why.”– Paul Newman

“Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it.” — Susan Sontag

“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind — mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality.” – Marshall McLuhan

“Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.”  — John Lennon
Sensual Text

SEPTEMBER SYLLABUS  |  2010

Text: THE BOTANY OF DESIRE: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan | Random House Trade Paperback | ISBN 978-0-375-76039-6

Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.

– Féderico García Lorca
(“Romance sonámbulo”)

Student storytellers and poets will submit accounts of their offline encounters with live or recorded musical performances, formally exhibited or found art, places or scenes they’ve never before visited, and the worlds of food and drink. The uses of sense-focused writing are boundless. Emphasis will lean on learning to use sensual imagery to evoke pictures of ideas and emotions in the minds and imagination of readers. Sound, sight, touch, smell, taste, smell and motion — each will always be crucial to metaphor and simile, to say nothing of description, portrayal and characterization. Key to vivid writing of all kinds, the elements of hands-on experience, unblinking presence, and the power of detail loom large in this course in creativity.

September 8
First day of greetings, good intentions, bureaucratic chaos, and anecdotal introductions. Your first assignment: Write 2-3 pages (700-750 words) about a process with which you feel or are in fact familiar.

Email it to me and your classmates by Sunday night (September 12).

September 15
Start 0bserving and thinking about and noticing plants in general and a “single” plant in particular. Just before we break November 24, Thanksgiving Eve, you will complete an send out an assignment I’ve been thinking about all summer. I as inspired by Stephen Harrod Buhner’s THE LOST LANGUAGE OF PLANTS: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines to Life on Earth  |  (Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont).

“I have learned,” Buhner writes, “that an energy flow exists between people and plants. It can be looked upon like a yarn weaving us into the web of life, a direct connection that exists between people who know plants and their characters, and vice versa. Plants have people friends as people have plant friends. The flow is equally as strong from plants to people, yet more subtle. We humans live in a realm a thousand times faster than plants and rarely do we slow down enough to hear them speak.” [p. 265]

From my own gardening experience, I can verify the truth of this teacher-healer’s disclosure. It is from Buhner that I borrow the idea of having you hang out, as it were, with a plant – one that your yourself are cultivating, or one with whom you sense or feel a connection. Observe and pay attention, both. If you “talk with” your plant, be sure to “listen” as well. Take notes of course, but don’t overlook the two-way, dialectical process inherent in every living encounter, interaction and experience. Then, in 1000-1,500 words (roughly 5-7 double-spaced pages of text), report what’s been happening. Or going on, or taking place.

Assignment: In 2-3 pages, write a piece sparked by an overheard conversation or chance remark.  (Due: September 22)

September 22
In class we’ll continue reading your captivating responses to the Process assignment. But do read reflectively Michael Pollan’s introduction to The Botany of Desire (“The Human Bumblebee”) and the opening section (Desire: Sweetness / Plant: The Apple). Jot down your thoughts, distill, and know that someone sitting across or down the table from you will have reached an altogether different conclusion. Because Pollan’s text is part-essay, part-memoir, part-poem and part-fiction, it lends itself grandly to intellectual, poetic, spiritual, emotional, scientific analysis, and wild socio-political discussion. I expect our reactions to extend into next week’s session.

(Due today: Assignment based on a chance remark or overheard conversation)

September 29
Continuation of our class discussion of “The Human Bumblebee” and “Desire: Sweetness / Plant: The Apple” – and then we turn to your responses to Chance Remarks and Overheard Conversations. Start thinking about taste and gustatory stuff.
other things gustatory or tasty – or things altogether repugnant or downright nasty.

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Sensual Text
OCTOBER SYLLABUS |  2010

Text: THE BOTANY OF DESIRE: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan | Random House Trade Paperback | ISBN 978-0-375-76039-6

HOT OCTOBER

On another October day when heat raged
in San Francisco and home-eating fires
attacked Southern California, you, in love again,
stepped out into the glory of another afternoon.
Clutched in the utterly solar caress
of this endless embrace, you saw yourself.
In everyone you greeted or benignly ignored
you saw the same unending birth of light
die on daylight savings time. You saw
the steps you’d have to take to move
from momentariness back into eternity.
You wandered into this dwindling October,
where you’ve dwelled for ages. Eternity
and maternity share more than earth-
churning cycles; both turn on the moment
just ended. Each spins on the moment just begun.
Never out of step, advancing Pied Piper style,
her slowing march on winter made a rat out of you.
Almost over now, October spread herself
across the landscape, cocksure of getting over.
As warming to the eye as to your touch, October,
moreover, no stranger to the flash and shimmer
of gold and burnt sienna, red and sunburst
green, October reminded. “Time may have
a stop,” she said, “but life does not. Life goes.”
And at her gung-ho go-away party, you hoisted
your glass: “To moist October, quencher of flame.”

– Al Young (from Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons)

September 29

“Eighty percent of success is showing up.”– Woody Allen

Assignment for October 6: Show up at an art exhibit (an actual gallery, a museum or a show here on the CCA campus will do; a virtual museum crawl will not). In 2-3 pages, describe a particular work, its meaning to you, and the mood of the venue in which you experienced the object or installation. Deadline: Wednesday, October 6. But feel free to email your piece ahead of time to the rest of us.
– Michael Pollan (Epilogue to The Botany of Desire)

Continuation of our class discussion of “The Human Bumblebee” and “Desire: Sweetness / Plant: The Apple” – and then we turn to your responses to Chance Remarks and Overheard Conversations. Start thinking deeply about taste and gustatory stuff. While such thoughts seem to point automatically to food and comestibles, our sense of taste functions in countless other ways, and serves us incalculably. Old-fashioned Arctic peoples, for instance, distinguished kinds of snow by smell and taste. Consider taste, the word itself and all the English idioms wrapped and curled around it.

Consider the sociological/anthropological concerns with taste as set forth in the wiggly Wikipedia: “While taste is often understood as a biological concept, it can also be reasonably studied as a social or cultural phenomenon. Taste is about drawing distinctions between things such as styles, manners, consumer goods and works of art. Social inquiry of taste is about the human ability to judge what is beautiful, good and proper.”

Start reading Chapter Two of The Botany of Desire | Desire: Beauty, Plant: The Tulip

As writers you can never give enough thought to metaphor and symbolism.

October 6
Art Exhibit pieces are officially due today. Of course we will begin sharing some of them aloud in class.

“Our brains developed under the pressure of natural selection to make us good foragers, which is how humans have spent 99 percent of their time on Earth. The presence of flowers, as even I understood as a boy, is a reliable predictor of future food.”
– The Botany of Desire, p.68

“Natural selection has designed flowers to communicate with other species, deploying and astonishing array of devices – visual, olfactory, and tactile – to get the attention of specific insects and birds and even certain mammals. In order to achieve their objectives, many flowers rely not just on simple chemical signals but on signs, sometimes even on a kind of symbolism. Some plant species go so far as to impersonate other creatures or things in order to secure pollination or, in the case of carnivorous plants, a meal. To entice flies into its inner sanctum (there to be digested by waiting enzymes), the pitcher plant has developed a weirdly striated maroon-and-white flower that is not at all attractive unless you happen to be attracted to decaying meat. (The flower’s rancid scent reinforces this effect.)”
– The Botany of Desire, p. 69

So, even though today’s discussion may dwell on slippery concepts of floral beauty and “mass-produced eye candy,” it is quite thoroughly permissible to let your thoughts stray toward food in general and so-called soul food in particular. By soul food, I don’t mean fetishistic and commercialized southern African American cuisine (grits, fried okra, gumbo, fried green tomatoes, black-eyed peas, cornbread, collards greens, ham-hocks, chitlins, barbecued ribs). Focus, rather, on what we sometimes now call “comfort food,” a particular dish or meal that soothes or placates; food that you associate with family, with ethnic or cultural identity, or any other kind of deeply-rooted, emotional experience.

Assignment for October 13: Explore in 2-3 pages a “soul food” or cuisine that you regard as special or crucial. As Vanelis has written so mouth-wateringly of the humble plantain, so you may rhapsodize or merely describe – from a cook’s, a diner’s, a reviewer’s perspective — the foods or dishes that hold you together, body and soul, or meaningfully make you remember. Dig in.

October 13
“Soul Food” assignment due.

“There is another word for this extremist noticing – this sense of first sight unencumbered by knowingness, by the already-been-theres and seen-that’s of the adult mind – and that word, of course, is wonder.”
– The Botany of Desire, p. 168

Believing music to be a force that regularly knocks us out of the cozy box of our bullish, fool-proof beliefs and  preconceptions, I ask you to attend a live event at which music is performed (preferably live, but canned will do), then report on the music’s effect on you and everyone else in attendance.

Assignment for October 27: Write 2-3 pages about a live event at which music is performed or electronically provided. Pay particular attention to the effect of the music on the event of which you as reporter, of course, play an indispensable role.

October 20
At length and in-depth we will read and discuss the Soul Food assignment, hopefully touching upon and  glimpsing ways the countless ways that sweetness, beauty and intoxication mix.

As we deepen our discussion of Beauty and the Tulip, I will invite you to select a page or short passage from Michael Pollan’s text to model or faithfully imitate – for fun. This will be an in-class exercise that you may turn in to me or not turn in to me, as you wish.

Style and sound in writing – on and off the page – and the musicality of poetry and prose will come up a lot this afternoon. While we will largely look at and listen to class work, the passionate among you should feel free to bring in a published poem or prose passage that you especially admire. Be prepared to share the reasons for your enthusiasm.

Start reading Chapter Three of The Botany of Desire | Desire: Intoxication, Plant: Marijuana

October 27
Music Event pages due. We’ll begin reading and discussing the experiences the assignment has  evoked.

Other discussion topics: intoxication, ecstasy, and altered mind-states.

November Syllabus 2010

In The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann’s character calls music  “politically suspect” art because of the way it can move people by appealing directly to their emotions, swaying their moods, even inciting them to action against their better judgment. But by the same token, music has the power to remind, soothe, heal … Think of the way that music consoles at weddings, marches, funerals. Think of how some pieces send chills up the spine – the last movement of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5, for instance, or Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Music in a quick tempo in a major key has been shown to produce in listeners many of the physical changes associated with joy: excitement, rapid heartbeat, release of endorphins, goose bumps. Music of slow tempo in a minor key elicits changes linked with sadness, an experience of “negative” emotion that, oddly enough, is considered rewarding by most people and sought after as pleasurable and comforting.
– Jennifer Ackerman (Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body | Mariner Books, 2008 | © 2008 by Jennifer Ackerman

November 3
Bring in the paragraph or passage from Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire  that you admire or like well enough to model or “write through” as assigned. The idea here, as I’ve explained, is to let you see for yourselves how you as writers can expand your own bag of licks (stunning sentence patterns, ways of turning phrases, syntactical dazzlers, etc) by brazenly imitating the writing of others.

November 10
The Power of Detail
Re-read or re-think pages 160-165 of The Botany of Desire, then reconsider the power of descriptive detail laid out in language. In Reality Sandwiches, a distant poem collection by Allen Ginsberg, he prosaically describes what he saw when he looked closely at a one-dollar bill. This opened my eyes to the sheer joyfulness of paying attention. Yes, I do agree with the question Raphael Mechoulam emailed to Michael Pollan (“Do you really want to remember al the faces you saw on the New York City subway this morning?”), just as I grasp George Eliot’s eloquent contention: “if we could hear the squirrel’s heartbeat, the sound of the grass growing, we should die of that roar.”

In Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream, science writer Jennifer Ackerman states: “If I put a small microphone to my sleeping husband’s ear,  I might well hear his hair cells hard at work. In a quiet environment, the hair cells in most normal human ears are turned up to amplify softer sounds – turned up so far that they sometimes generate faint but constant tones of sound, like the feedback noise from an electronic amplifier. In a loud environment, a thunderstorm or rock concert, the hair cells adjust, turning down their amplifiers. It is thanks to these mini-amps that we can follow ten to twenty distinct sounds per second, distinguish a pitch, and hear noises that last only a few thousandths of a second. // We rarely notice the sound made by our hair cells because the brain filters it out. Likewise, when we speak or sing or vocalize in any way, the brain halts the firing of our auditory neurons so that we won’t be swamped by our own song. So, too, the brain allows us to suppress a whitewater of auditory stimuli – the buzzing, banging, humming, thumping background noise of our typical morning routine – so that we may hear what interests us; the rest fades into a kind of muted roar that we hear with just “one” ear at first, then with no ear at all. // This is one example of desensitization, the same phenomenon that makes the aroma of bacon or reeking garbage fade from perception, that helps our eyes adjust to bright light, that allows us to forget the rub and weight of clothes on skin, and that attenuates the nervous jolt initially provided by coffee. Desensitization can take place over seconds (light), minutes (smells), or days (caffeine).”

ASSIGNENT: In 2 to 3 pages compose a description or catalog of any closely observed phenomenon or process that meets the eye, ear, nose, tongue, touch, or any combination thereof. Bear in mind the way artist Betty Edwards opens her classic Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: “Drawing is a curious process, so intertwined with seeing that the two can hardly be separated. Ability to draw depends on ability to see the way an artist sees, and this kind of seeing can marvelously enrich your life.”

READING: Chapter 4 | Desire: Control / Plant: The Potato

“To my eye, there are few sights in nature quite as stirring as fresh rows of vegetable seedlings rising like a green city on the spring ground. I love the on-off digital rhythm of new green plant and black turned loam, the geometrical ordering of bounded earth that is the vegetable garden in May – before the plagues, before the rampancy, before the daunting complexities of summer.” – Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire

November 17

Rhythm and the Sense of Time

Today’s off-page assignment: Tell a story to the class. Bear in mind that in a story, something happens. If nothing happens, then you may have yourself a sketch, a vignette, a post-modern monologue, or a prose-poem. This is fine, but today you will tell us a story. Our job: Listen, pay attention to the spoken stories, noting especially any rhythm or sense of time built into a particular story’s construction or unfoldment.

On-page assignment: In 3-5 pages write a retelling of one of the stories you’ve heard during this session. Feel free to make any creative departures or embellishments you think necessary to dramatize the story’s essential point; its crucial “happening,” as it were. Due: December 8th.

Make mental notes about the retelling process that you wish to share in class.

November 24 [Class cancelled]
Since we have voted to meet on this pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday, know that your living-with-a-plant assignment is due. In class we’ll begin reading and discussing your pages and the insights and observations that informs them.

A look back at page 203-204 in Michael Pollan’s astonishing narrative-discussion of The Potato:

“In his articles [the radical journalist William] Cobbett depicted ‘this damned root’ as a kind of gravitational force, pulling the Irishman out of civilization and back down into the earth, gradually muddying the distinctions between man ands beast, even man and root. This is how he describes the potato eater’s mud hut: ‘no windows at all; … but a hole in one end … surrounded by a few stones.’ In Cobbett’s grim imagery, the Irish had themselves moved underground, joining their tubers in the mud. Once cooked, the potatoes ‘are taken up and turned into a great dish,” Cobbett wrote. ‘The family squat round this basket and take out the potatoes with their hands; the pig stands and is helped by some one, and sometimes he eats out of the pot. He goes in and out and about the hole, like one of the family.’ The potato had single-handedly unraveled civilization, putting nature back in control of man.

“’Bread root’ was what the English sometimes called the potato, and the symbolic contrast between the two foods loomed large in the debate, never to the spud’s advantage. Catherine Gallagher points out that the English usually depicted the potato as mere food; primitive, unreconstructed and lacking in an cultural resonance. In time, that lack would itself become precisely the potato’s cultural resonance: the potato came to signify the end of food being anything more than food – animal fuel. Bread on the other hand was as leavened with meaning as it was with air.

“Like the potato, wheat begins in nature, but it is then transformed by culture. While the potato is simply thrown into a pot or fire, wheat must be harvested, threshed, milled, mixed, kneaded, shaped, baked, and then, in a final miracle of transubstantiation, the doughy lump of formless matter rises to become bread. This elaborate process, with its division of labor and suggestion of transcendence, symbolized civilization’s mastery of raw nature. A mere food thus became the substance of human and even spiritual communion, for there was also the old identification of bread with the body of Christ. If the lumpish potato was base matter, bread in the Christian mind was its very opposite: antimatter, even spirit.”

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]]> http://alyoung.org/2010/09/28/sensual-text-autumn-semester-2010-california-college-of-the-arts-san-francisco/feed/ 1 http://alyoung.org/2010/05/14/peter-s-beagle-song-for-james-d-houston-1933-2009/ http://alyoung.org/2010/05/14/peter-s-beagle-song-for-james-d-houston-1933-2009/#comments Fri, 14 May 2010 19:23:36 +0000 Al http://alyoung.org/?p=14349 _________________________________________________

James D. Houston

SONG FOR JAMES D. HOUSTON: 1933-2009

When I think of you,
in this year of death,
when the great sequoias of my youth
are snapping like saplings in a storm,
one by one,
the wise and the wild alike,
I think of your laughter,
head thrown back,
that laugh exploding
rolling out of your belly and your throat,
and your eyes,
wrinkling and squeezing shut,
with such surprise,
as though you had never heard such a joke,
such a riddle, such an epigram
in all your life, not ever.
And I would come away from your high house,
thinking, If Jim thinks I’m funny,
maybe I maybe am,
and I would laugh with you,
puzzled but grateful for my own apparent wit,
and for the gift of your laughter,
so grateful still,
hearing it yet, through the rising storm.

— Peter S. Beagle

© 2010 by Peter S. Beagle

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© 2009 and 2010 by Mayne Smith; reproduced with permission of the author.

This essay, which was revised and updated in April 2010 by the author, debuted and endures at Pieces of Our Mind.

Download the updated version from MayneSmith.com by clicking the Adobe PDF button below.

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© Gail Wilson-Smith

Scholar-songwriter-performer Mayne Smith

Preview

A Shuffle in Charlie:

Technical Communications
Among Improvising Musicians

By Mayne Smith

This piece originally appeared in a collection of essays published to honor Neil Rosenberg on the occasion of his retirement from the Department of Folklore at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland (see the bibliography below under Smith 2005). I made some additions and corrections in October of 2009 for republication on my website. The essay concludes with a lengthy glossary of brief definitions for the italicized words, followed by a bibliography of cited publications. Any contributions, comments, or corrections are quite welcome. 
Email: mayne@maynesmith.com

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In a jam session, with or without an audience, improvising musicians in North America inevitably need to share coordinating technical information. For instance, with a group of jamming country or rock players onstage somewhere, you might hear one call to the others, “A blues shuffle in Charlie. Start with a turn-around. One, two, three, AND …” (The italicized words are defined in the glossary that concludes this essay.) They may be strangers to each other, but if the key musicians are competent, the music will start in a properly organized manner and the performance may continue with alternating vocal and instrumental solos climaxed with a strong ending, as if it had been rehearsed.

What magic makes this happen? Cultural magic: a body of conventional knowledge that is shared among a huge number of musicians, most of whom are scarcely aware of it. (By “musicians” I mean people who make music on a regular basis, whether they are amateurs or full-time professionals.)

Fundamental Knowledge

Consciously or not, when they improvise together all musicians rely on shared, unspoken knowledge — much beyond that needed to perform alone.

This essay focuses on vernacular music situations where written music is not supplied and is not commonly used in the learning process. Keep in mind, though, that the use of music notation does not preclude interpretation and improvisation. The jazz world frequently uses head arrangements where specific notes are learned in rehearsal, based sometimes on lead sheets that consist of melody lines with chord-names added. In the sphere of art music, conductors and performers rely on written musical scores to determine which notes will be played and when. However musical notation’s symbols are used and interpreted differently in different musical-cultural contexts. Written notes function in art music, theatrical, and jazz spheres in disparate ways.

In the country and rock worlds, various types of chord charts are often used as the infrastructure for improvising in recording sessions, in live performances, and sometimes in jam sessions. One type is just a step away from lead sheets, with chord names written between bar lines on a musical staff, sometimes with marks indicating the number of beats devoted to each chord. A second approach involves writing the chord names on plain paper, with vertical lines or boxes indicating separate measures.

A third type of chord chart is commonly referred to as the Nashville number system. This employs Arabic numerals to represent the scale notes on which the chords are based, and various other symbols to indicate rests, note durations, etc. The exclusive use of chord numbers rather than names makes it easy to transpose a complex arrangement from one key to another — very convenient when there’s a modulation or when a singer needs to change to a more suitable key. The number system is very compact, so it can be written on note cards or scrap paper. A simple spoken language is derived from the system: musicians can be told that a song will begin with a “fifty-five eleven turn-around,” meaning that there will be two bars of the dominant (5) chord followed by two bars of the tonic (1). On paper these four bars are represented by the numbers 5511. A 130-page book by Chas Williams covering many variations on this system is available on the Internet (Williams 2005).

When players are improvising on stage together, they need to share a lot of background knowledge. In most styles where improvised jamming occurs, lead players will trade solo breaks or rides backed up by the rest of the ensemble. (But the term “break” isn’t universal, and could be interpreted to mean that the musician should stop playing.) Instrumental solos are allocated to individuals on some basis, perhaps alternating with leads by one or more vocalists. In written or head arrangements performed in public, solo breaks are not necessarily given to all lead players, especially in a group numbering more than five. The more informal the jamming situation, the more likely it is that solo breaks will simply be sequenced in clockwise or counter-clockwise order among all musicians. In a non-public context, it’s likely to be assumed that every player will get a solo break — including drummers and bassists in the jazz world, not necessarily in others. In some styles or contexts it’s considered appropriate to improvise backup (contrasting responses to the lead) but not always. Another example: in the country scene, solo and backup roles are commonly traded off every 8 bars (two lines of a verse or chorus). In bluegrass or jazz, where instrumental virtuosity is held in especially high regard, instrumentalists are more likely to trade off every 16 or even 32 bars. The musicians have to know or deduce such varying and unspoken rules in order to participate fully.

There’s also the question of how tunes are chosen in a jam. I frequently participate in jam sessions where the choice of numbers passes among all the musicians around a circle as in a poker session, and the dealer calls the game. But in less familial contexts there will be a limited number of preeminent singers or players who feel free to suggest songs or tunes as vehicles for jamming. Musicians need to be careful in unfamiliar jam scenes and watch for cues that they are committing sociomusical errors. In many contexts there are standard canonical pieces that journeyman musicians are expected to know, often including exact solos and hooks from famous recordings. In the bluegrass world, players are expected to be able to play (and maybe sing harmony with) almost everything Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, and Flatt & Scruggs recorded before 1960. In the jazz world, the list of canonical pieces may cover Louis Armstrong’s hits or Duke Ellington’s or Miles Davis’, depending on the sub-style involved.

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© Hugh Peterson

Mayne Smith in performance in 1963 at the Cabale, Berkeley’s fabled folk music club.

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Calling the Key

In a jamming situation one of the necessary preliminaries to playing is selecting what key the next piece will be in. Although there are standard keys for canonical pieces, particularly in jazz, whenever singers are involved standard keys may need to be changed to suit their vocal ranges. Jazz musicians can signal key changes for modulating with fingers held up or down to indicate the number of flats or sharps in the key signature (MacLeod 1993:74). This system would be lost on country and blues musicians, who typically are not very familiar with musical notation, much less key signatures. Yet in both musical worlds, experienced musicians expect a modulation to occur by way of the dominant chord of the new key.

Among country musicians, especially when there’s enough audience noise to make conversation difficult, the leader for a given tune will simply call the next key out loud, but will use whole words to avoid confusion between B, C, D, E, and G, which share the same vowel sound. Onstage, I’ve heard words like Boy, Charlie, Dog, Echo, and George used to call the next key. There are also joking key-designators in use among folkies in informal settings: the Canadian key (A), the Mexican key (C), the key of love (F), and the people’s key or God’s key (G). I’ve proposed the Buddhist key (B).

A unique, simple, and subtle way of signaling the key was used by bluegrass bandleader Bill Monroe. He would lightly play a chopped chord on his mandolin in the desired key, enabling the guitar and banjo players to position their capoes while he was speaking to the audience.

Establishing the Rhythm

In the art music world, a conductor typically raises his baton to prepare the ensemble and then makes an upward stroke in-tempo before bringing it down on the first beat to be played.

Starting an improvised ensemble performance in a jazz session is not very different. The leader will call the name of a tune and begin it by stomping off a bar or two of the tempo; for standard tunes the musicians are assumed to know the meter, the key, and any conventionalized melodic head that may be expected. Jazz players have used the stomp-off for something like a hundred years — no count, just four hammers of a heel on the floor. In public performances — particularly while the band was returning to the stand after an intermission, Duke Ellington would often improvise introductory material on the piano, ending up with a lead-in that set the tempo and cued the beginning of the next piece (Hasse 1993:315).

In a loud, rock-oriented context the drummer may click his crossed sticks together in front of his face, effectively providing both visual and audible information. In public performances, he may befed a “click track” through ear phones.

Studio musicians and most pop-music performers must know how to count off, verbally establishing a beat so everybody can come in together. Before the 1970s, blues, bluegrass, and country players seldom counted off; instead, an instrument had to play a few notes to kick off a tune. Often a number would be started by the fiddle using ’taters (in the rhythm of “one potato, two potato, three potato, four” ). One or two bars of a simple rhythm pattern on the tonic chord to kick off dance tunes is still a common fiddle device, sometimes used by the banjo too. (My friend Bob Applebaum claims to have originated the term “potatoes” for this way of starting.) Increasingly as time goes by, bluegrass and country players have learned to use an audible count-off — and it does take some practice to do this properly.

One humorous but effective way of giving a verbal count for a moderate shuffle beat — I can’t recall where I heard it first — went: “a-ONE and a-TWO, you KNOW what to DO.” This is used mostly in non-public situations.

Tempo equals speed, and it’s easy to communicate a desired tempo by simply making a measure’s worth of percussive beats with a foot or instrument. But, particularly in the country, blues, and rock scenes, if the chosen tune isn’t known to the participants there is another critical distinction to be made before the drummer can be sure of avoiding a glaring error: is the meter going to be in shuffle or straight time?

Before the 1960s, this problem did not arise in country music. Then, as now, you could simply count off the major beats of a waltz or a fast, two-beat rhythm (e.g. “Coming ’Round the Mountain” ) at any tempo. If the meter was a medium or slow 4/4, the count-off would give four beats with the expectation that each beat would be subdivided into triplets, which theoretically should be transcribed as three linked eighth-notes with a 3 written above them. What is commonly notated as two eighth-notes or a dotted eighth plus a sixteenth on paper is actually played as two-thirds of a beat followed by a shorter pulse lasting one-third of a beat. That’s essentially what a shuffle or swing beat is — in jazz, blues, and the rest of American pop music as well as country and western swing — four main beats to the bar, with a triplet rhythm underlying each beat. (The classic 1950s pop-blues song “Kansas City” by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller fits the pattern.) Jazz and blues bands habitually play with an ever-present tension between the underlying triplet-based rhythm and lead parts played the way the music is actually notated. I had been playing shuffles for years before I ever heard the term or recognized its distinction from a straight beat.

In the middle 1950s came a change, when the music of Mississippi bluesmen like Muddy Waters and early rockers like Chuck Berry popularized another kind of 4/4 rhythm in which each major (quarter note) beat was divisible by two eighth notes of equal duration (for instance Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and later John Fogarty’s “Proud Mary”). This is what’s conventionally called a rock beat.

When I started playing mainstream country music in the early 1960s, you could count off a medium-tempo song without comment unless it was a rock beat — in which case you might have to warn the other players it was a rocker. But a significant change was brought about by Merle Haggard’s early country hits like “The Fugitive” and “Sing Me Back Home.”  Now there were not only rock songs but gentler, medium-tempo numbers played with the major beats divided by two, producing something like a Latin feeling. Since this happened, country players have often had to make the meter clear to the drummer before counting off slower straight eight (or easy eight) tunes.

In the commercial country world there is also the double shuffle (or Texas shuffle) beat, which was made popular by Ray Price in the late 1950s and used extensively by other honky-tonk stylists like George Jones and Buck Owens. In standard country shuffles, for instance Hank Williams’ “Your Cheating Heart,” the bass plays on the one and three beats and the off-beats come evenly on the two and four. In a double shuffle (as in Price’s “Heartaches by the Number”) the bass and kick-drum play all four major beats in the bar — a walking bass — but the beats are still subdivided as triplets and the off-beats come on the third pulse of each triplet. Jazz-pop artists like Louis Jordan and Cab Calaway sometimes used shuffles like this in their 1940s recordings.

The only other meter that is likely to occur in jam sessions is waltz time, with three beats to the bar (3/4). This meter occurs at various tempos, mostly in country and bluegrass, but the major stress is consistently on the one beat; secondary emphasis is usually on the third beat.

Signaling in Midstream

Signals between musicians while they are actively playing together can be fairly subtle, given that the instrumentalists usually have both hands (if not also their feet) committed to their instruments. Duke Ellington played the piano while directing his players. With his body position and facial expressions he could raise and reduce the volume and pace of the band. He thus approached the kind of control over his musicians that orchestral conductors exercise, although the people in his band (frequently over a dozen) were brilliant improvisers. This strikes me as a rare blend of art-music and jazz conditions, where improvisation was expected only in very specific situations but there were often no written parts — the head arrangements played were elaborate compositions with shifting and diverse textures, allowing little room for error. Surprisingly, it was only in the later years that Ellington’s band began using written arrangements (Hasse 1993:159-160, 321).

In more informal, relatively intimate situations, where musicians are more likely to be trying out tunes that are unfamiliar to some of the players, technical communications can be critical. If all the musicians can see and hear each other plainly, as in a studio or a small club, a simple nod or a look with raised eyebrows is sufficient to cue the next person to take a solo break. In the song-based genres (blues, country, bluegrass, folk) the lead singer will usually be the person calling the shots, and can simply start singing at the appropriate points between breaks. If microphones are in use, moving into singing position before the mic is a very effective way of signaling the intention to start or resume singing. A look or a motion of the head can call any additional singers into action for harmonized vocals.

Sitting in a circle or semi-circle, country and blues musicians frequently read the chord changes a rhythm guitarist plays simply by watching that player’s left hand. The ability to “read” guitar chords is a widely-held skill in the guitar-based musical genres. Correspondingly, the guitarist may make a point of keeping his or her left-hand positions as simple as possible until it’s clear everybody has caught on to the changes. Frequently even a simple indication that a chord change is coming up can be helpful. This approach will not work in situations (common in jazz and swing) where guitarists play complex strings of passing chords, changing far too often for others to follow.

In such situations, where the improvisers may be hearing the tune for the first time, there are auditory musical tactics that can help prevent errors. Most experienced lead musicians know how to play licks that will fit any of several logical chord changes at key points. They also know musical cues, both harmonic and rhythmic, that will help their fellow players anticipate the chord changes and other aspects of song or tune structure. Runs played on the guitar or bass frequently signal an impending chord change. Reliably, except in the blues, adding a flatted seventh tone to a chord will usually signal that the next chord will be based on the fourth note in the scale starting on the first chord’s root tone. This cue is used most frequently with the change from the tonic chord to the subdominant (IV) chord of a piece. It is also integral to use of the famous cycle-of-fifths principle, which, for example, declares that when you are in the key of C and an A7 occurs, you are almost certainly going to continue with D7 and G7 before returning to the tonic chord.

Occasionally, where there are only a few chords but a tricky melody, people will hold up fingers to indicate changes among the I, II (or ii), III (or iii), IV, and V chords. However, one hand isn’t enough if the VI (or vi) chord is needed, or if the chord is based on the flatted seventh of the tonic scale (which may be called the subdominant of the IV chord, e.g. Bb in the key of C). Holding up even one hand’s fingers will make it impossible for the signaler to play, so it isn’t very practical except for use by singers.

Ending

Cueing the end of a tune is easy in an informal country jam situation. You can lift a leg (a convention that appears to go back at least to the 1930s), make a motion with your instrument or a hand, or play an indicative lick. Furthermore, in country music, songs often end with a turn-around (repetition of the last line); this is signaled with a circular motion of a finger or instrument. In a bluegrass jam, I will lift the peghead of my guitar and strum hard on the second beat of the last measure, cueing the now-ubiquitous SHAVE-and-a-HAIRCUT — SIX BITS motif that ends so many pieces in North American music. (Has anybody studied the origin and meaning of this seven-beat pattern, which coincides with Bo Diddley’s most common meter?)

Players in old-time fiddle bands didn’t always end at the same time, much less use the seven-beat ending, but on some old records you can hear someone call “Goodbye” to get everybody to stop at the end of the section that’s currently being played.

In contrast, jazz musicians use very different hand signals in jamming situations. Extended fingers can indicate not only the number of flats or sharps in a new key signature, but they can also show that they want to trade four-bar or two-bar breaks by flashing four or two fingers. They can also indicate it’s time to reprise the head of the piece by pointing to the musician’s own head; this will lead automatically to ending the tune.

A context calling for broad gestures can be illustrated with an example based on my own experiences when I was part of a band that hosted after-hours jam sessions in a very large club every Saturday and Sunday morning from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. Musicians from all over the Seattle area would come to join us, and onstage the jammers frequently numbered eight or more. Not every musician could see everyone else, and there was often so much noise that we couldn’t hear each other at a normal conversation level. In addition, the musicians’ backgrounds were diverse, so some of us would frequently be ill-acquainted with the chosen tunes or common arrangements. Under these conditions, the subtle improvisational cues were often insufficient to get the job done. When I was singing and leading, my guitar chords could not be audible or visible to every musician. On the other hand, we could shout to each other, and it was perfectly appropriate to use big body motions for communication. This is the context in which my opening example occurred.

At the Riverside Inn in Tukwila near Seattle, in the fall of 1975, it is about four o’clock in the morning. The jam has mellowed out, and we have a strong rhythm section (bass and drums), good keyboard and guitar players, a fiddler, and a cool tenor sax guy. It is my turn to lead some tunes to keep the jam going, and I feel like singing the blues, knowing that the twelve-bar structure will be familiar and comfortable for all.

Standing at the main vocal mic, front-and-center on the large bandstand, I turn to face the rest of the musicians. “A blues shuffle in Charlie. Start with a turn-around. One, two, three, AND ….” (Alternatively, I could have said “Off the five chord.” ) The drummer whacks the snare and a tom on the four-beat and everybody hits the following one-beat with a G7 chord. We all understand we’re playing a turn-around, the last four-bar line of the blues structure in the key of C, but immediately there’s a question: Is the next bar going to be a V or a IV chord? Still with my back to the audience and dancers, with exaggerated motions I play an F# chord on the final beat of the first bar; this gets all the jammers to watch me and listen to my electric guitar. The F# chord creates a momentary dissonance, but it tells everyone that we’re going to a IV chord (F) in the second bar; this also informs them how we will play this part of the blues structure throughout the rest of the song.

While the put-together band is playing the last two bars of the turn-around (I and V, C and G7), I turn around to face the crowd and get close to the main vocal mic. I hadn’t been sure which set of blues lyrics I would sing to this groove we’ve started, but at the last second I decide to go with a sure thing, a song we’re all certain to have played many times before and one that the crowds generally enjoy. So I lean in toward the mic and start, “I’m going to — Kansas City, Kansas City here I come.”

The lead guitar player inserts some tasty fills between my words, and the sax and keyboard players are consulting each other about something — doubtless developing a riff pattern they can play together as the texture of the performance builds. My first sung verse is ending and I need to cue a soloist for the upcoming break. I want to save the sax for later, and the guitarist has already been busy behind my vocal, so I elect to point at the keyboard man as the soloist — and because it’s late and we have plenty of time to fill and some enthusiastic dancers, and also because he’s a strong player, I call out “Keep it up” several times and he takes two choruses. Then I point to the fiddler and say her name into the mic. She takes two choruses, with the sax and piano beginning to riff quietly behind her; their riffing will continue to build through the rest of the song, and the fiddle will join them.

I sing another verse and give the next solo to the guitar player — two choruses as before. Then comes the part of the song where the band stops on the next three one-beats to let the singer’s words (“I MIGHT take a train …” ) fill in the rest of the bars before the instruments resume the normal rhythm pattern. I raise my right arm into the air, make a fist, and pump it down to cue the stops. The fat texture and the drummer’s style make this section sound great and give me an idea for the sax solo. When I’ve finished singing another complete verse, I turn and point to the sax man, then raise my right fist again. Fortunately all the players are watching me so my gambit works fine; the sax player’s break starts from the dramatic base of three stopped chords before launching into a gliding orbit. After the second sax chorus, I call in the guitarist for his climactic break with the sax, fiddle, and keyboard riffing strongly behind him. Then I return to the mic and sing a final verse.

Now it’s time to end, and I have a choice of several signals here. If we were all country-based musicians and presenting ourselves in the typical laid-back C&W manner (remember this is 1975) I would bend my right knee and lift my heel. But since all are in boogie mode, as the final chorus ends I raise my right fist and bring it down to stop the band and sing “I’m going to get me one” over the resonant silence. Immediately the entire band (without having to think about it) plays the conventional seven-beat ending pattern at full volume, closing with a sustained chord under which the drummer bashes his cymbals and tom-toms until I once again use my arm to cue the final dead stop and the applause swells.

This fabricated example, close to many actual performances I have experienced, could occur in most parts of North America. Yet, like most aspects of culture, musical improvisation depends on knowledge and communication that look more complex the closer we examine them. I hope this paper has answered as many questions about musical behavior as it has exposed for future study.

GLOSSARY

Included in this list are terms and usages that are not to be found in standard dictionaries of music. My source of information is mostly personal experience, but also a music dictionary and a fair amount of writing by other musicians.

Art music — Music that is self-consciously intended as Art. I prefer this term to “classical.” This definition now fits a lot of contemporary jazz, but I don’t use it that way.

Backup — An instrumental part, generally improvised, that complements the main lead part (whether vocal or instrumental) without contesting its dominance. Usually consists of a mixture of fills and rhythmic elements.

Baritone — In country singing, the second part (after tenor) added to the melody line. Typically finishes the song below the tonic on the fifth note of the scale, but is sometimes sung above the tenor (“high baritone” ).

Bluegrass — Music derived ultimately from the style of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in the 1940s.

Break — The portion of a musical piece in which an instrumentalist plays lead, supported by the rest of the ensemble. A musician is invited to play a break, or take a break, or he may be asked “Do you want some?” Different players will be expected to take breaks during the playing of a piece. The alternation of sung verses with instrumental breaks is the basic structural principle of most vernacular music styles. See also ride and solo.

Bridge — Most properly the B section, as in the 32-bar (AABA) song structure that is standard in the pop music world. Sometimes used in folk and country circles as a synonym for chorus, more properly designated as a refrain.

Changes — The sequence of chords used to accompany a given tune, as in “Run through the changes for me before we start to play.”

Chart — Used by itself, “chart” can mean either a written musical score or a “chord chart,” which diagrammatically represents the chord changes of a music piece and (usually) where they occur in relation to the bar lines. There are at least three basic formats for chord charts.

Chopping — Chords played on the mandolin, banjo, or guitar and immediately damped by either hand for percussive effect; usually used to emphasize upbeats (like a snare drum in rock or jazz).

Chorus — Used in jazz and pop to mean a complete iteration of the tune being played; as a striking example, at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, tenor sax player Paul Gonsalves improvised 27 choruses of “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” at the urging of bandleader Duke Ellington (Hasse 1993:320-321). (Interestingly, this usage is also current in France [Bouchaux 1992:58].) In the world of folk and country music, the chorus is synonymous with “refrain” : that part of a song that is repeated after every verse (or two) of lyrics and is most likely to be sung by more than one voice. See also bridge.

Counting off — Using a numerical count to establish the tempo of a tune and enable all players to start playing a piece at the same time.

Country music — Among musicians this term refers to music that is based in traditions from the South and Southwest, including Nashville, Austin, Bakersfield, and Hollywood, even though the connection with fiddle bands and ballad singing may be hard to detect.

Double shuffle — A shuffle beat with a walking bass (played on every major beat) and off-beats played on the third pulse of each eighth-note triplet. Also called Texas shuffle.

Double time — When the meter is changed to twice the number of major beats per bar; typically the bass, bass drum, and snare shift from two beats per bar to four beats.

Easy eight — See straight beat.

Fills — Melodic elements played to fill in the gaps between lead phrases. Typically, fills begin on the last beat played by the lead voice and end precisely on the beat when the lead part resumes.

Folk music — Used here to mean an ill-defined group of music styles that includes pretty much everybody who applies the label to themselves, plus those to whom most folklorists would apply the term. The core concept is that the performing style has something in common with oral/aural, non-written, musical traditions.

Half time — When the meter is changed to half the number of major beats; typically the bass, bass drum, and snare shift from playing four beats per bar to playing two beats per bar. See also double time.

Hook — A simple instrumental motif used to give unique character to a particular song or tune. Similar to a tag, but not necessarily used as an introduction or closing element.

Head — The first chorus or two of a jazz performance, played simply in unison or harmony to establish the melody before the freer improvisation begins. The head is likely to be repeated at the end of the piece.

Head arrangement — A setting previously agreed upon for musical piece, repeated by memory rather than a written score.

Kick off — In bluegrass and country, the use of an instrumental passage to start performance of a piece. Kick-offs are assigned to specific players.

Lead — As a noun, the lead voice(s) or instrument(s) is the one that is articulating the melody or predominant voice at any given time, supported by the other members of an ensemble playing backup and rhythm.

Lead sheet — A simple score that contains only the melody and lyrics of a tune or song, commonly with the names of the chords used in accompaniment.

Lick — A short musical pattern played usually by one instrument and based on distinctive elements in the player’s style or the characteristics of the instrument. A lick becomes a riff if it’s used repeatedly in a piece and played by more than one person.

Meter — The number of beats in a measure (bar) and the pattern of duration and stress given to each beat.

Off-beats — Between the major beats in a given meter come the off-beats, or back-beats, which receive less emphasis. In a standard shuffle, the emphasis comes on the first and third beats in each measure and the off-beats come on two and four. In a double shuffle, the major beats are one, two, three, and four, each divided into triplets; the off-beats come on the third eighth note of each triplet. In a waltz, the major beats are on the one and the off-beats come on two and three.

Passing chord — Chords containing “accidental” notes, used to transition between the essential chords in a piece of music. Augmented and diminished chords are used in this way, but so are many other chord forms.

Pop music — Broadly speaking this can refer to anything that doesn’t belong in the folk or art music categories. More narrowly it specifically includes songs from Tin Pan Alley and Broadway musicals.

Ride — Used in some country circles as a synonym to break, as in “Take a ride, Mayne.” See also solo.

Riff — A short musical pattern played by one or more instruments and used repetitiously through a piece, often in support of soloists. See also lick.

Rock beat — see straight beat.

Roots music — Refers to folk songs and other music that relies heavily on vernacular sources and styles

Run — A short series of single notes typically leading to a chord change, used especially by rhythm guitarists.

Shuffle beat — The common 4/4 meter in jazz, swing, blues, country, and general pop music. Each beat of the measure is subdivided into triplets. When played slowly, this rhythm can be notated in 12/8. See also straight beat and double shuffle.

Solo — The portion of a song performance in which attention is focused on a single player or singer. (Not used, as sometimes in classical music, to indicate an unaccompanied performance.) See also break.

Stomping off — Using the heel of a foot to establish a tempo and set the beginning of a performed piece; used mostly in jazz.

Straight beat — Distinguished from a shuffle in that the major beats of the measure are subdivided into two eighth notes instead of the shuffle’s eighth-note triplets. Also called a straight eight, easy eight, or rock beat depending on the speed and intensity of the rhythm.

Tag — A special riff or melodic and rhythmic motif used as an introduction or concluding phrase, usually based on the turn-around. See also hook.

’Taters — Simple rhythmic patterns used by an instrumentalist (commonly fiddle or banjo) to establish the tempo and starting point of a piece in country music. This term is said to have been coined in the New York folk and bluegrass scene in the early 1960s. “Potatoes” and “’taters” are both in common usage now in the bluegrass world.

Tenor — In country singing, the first harmony part added to the melody, typically staying just above the lead and finishing on the third above the tonic note. See also baritone.

Time — Can refer to any rhythmic feature of music (as in, “He keeps good time” ) but usually pertains to tempo.

Turn-around — The last line of the song’s melody, played as an intro or concluding pattern and sometimes between verses as a minimal structure for breaks.

Vamp — A rhythm patternrepeated ad lib as the basis for improvisation.

Vernacular music — Musical pieces and styles that are familiar to ordinary members of some cultural group and require little formal training to perform or appreciate.

Walking bass — A shuffle rhythm with the bass playing all major beats in arpeggio patterns.

Waltz — This meter has three beats to a bar, with primary stress on the one beat. Much more common in country and bluegrass than in blues and rock.

REFERENCES CITED

Bouchaux, Alain, Madeleine Juteau, and Didier Roussin. 1992. L’Argot des Musiciens. (Illustrations de R. Crumb.) Paris: Editions Climats.

Hasse, John Edward. 1993. Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington. New York: Da Capo Press.

MacLeod, Bruce A. 1993. Club Date Musicians: Playing the New York Party Circuit. Music in American Life Series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Smith, Mayne. 2005. “Technical Communications Among Improvising Musicians,” in From Bean Blossom to Bannerman, Odyssey of a Folklorist: A Festschrift for Neil V. Rosenberg (ed. Martin Lovelace, Peter Narvaez, Diane Tye). St. John’s: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 415-426.

Williams, Chas. 2005. The Nashville Number System, 7th edition. Nashville: www.nashvillenumbersystem.com; no publisher listed.

THIS ESSAY WAS LAST REVISED BY MAYNE ON 22 OCTOBER 2009

Mayne Smith is a singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist (guitar, dobro, pedal steel), known for many years in bluegrass, country, and roots-music circles. As a performer he started in the folk music revival and expanded to bluegrass and electric country music; but his songwriting also encompasses blues, R&B, rock’n’roll, Tex-Mex, jazz, and pop. Besides performing at folk festivals and clubs all over North America as well as in Europe and Japan, Mayne has written songs recorded by Linda Ronstadt, David Lindley, Rosalie Sorrels, and others. He has recorded and/or performed with well-known artists including David Lindley, Geoff Muldaur, Doc Watson, Jim Kweskin, Laurie Lewis, and John Fahey.

Mayne Smith’s official web site

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© Kristen Loken

Freight & Salvage, Groundbreaking, April 1, 2008, Berkeley

L to R, Eric Thompson, Bill Evans, Danny Carnahan (rear), Suzy Thompson (front), Laurie Lewis, Harry Yaglijian, Mayne Smith, and Tom Rozum.  “It was a great honor to lead the finale of the groundbreaking ceremony,” Mayne Smith reflects, “with an adapted version of the old gospel song, “Working on a Building.”

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“I Am the Goddess”

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La Tigresa and The Tongues of Flame perform at Taste of Rome in Sausalito, California.

To purchase the audio CD, Naked Sacred Spoken Word, visit LaTigresa.net

“What gives this book of La Tigresa (Dona Nieto) its real power … comes … with the genuine relationship the Tigress has with nature’s gifts: insects, rocks and the moon. I’ve never read a poet … who could evoke so much from an encounter with a butterfly! … with a charm that is unforgettable.”
–Jack Hirschman, San Francisco poet laureate emeritus

“In its passionate embrace of sensuality and society, the poetry of La Tigresa (Dona Nieto) purrs and growls, but rarely meows. [She] knows what she’s doing as she plugs touch back into every page — along with voice, heart, gut and every other sense … La Tigresa celebrates the body electric and the body politic with sheer pleasure, devotion, intuition and wit … In her stand-up presence, under her spell, you smile, recognizing the underlying question that drives these poems in which corporate and human agendas collide.”
– Al Young,
California poet laureate emeritus

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Clickable

WATCH

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Listen to the CBC Radio 2 series Inside the Music

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Frank Zappa’s album covers in narrative sequence

Ruben & the Jets: “Anything” (vinyl version)

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Courtesy photo

I am all Day and Night: The Music of Frank Zappa

A 3-part Philip Coulter Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio-documentary on the American iconoclast Frank Zappa

“One of the most ear-opening documentaries on the creative process I have ever experienced.”
— Al Young

© Shore Fire Media

Bebop Tango rehearsal, Sweden, 1973

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Cocaine is not grown in the ghettos,
big drug money not laundered there.
Trees with greenbacks for leaves
decorate streets and alleys.
Carrion birds pluck rotting frames,
smothered grasses wither in dust.
Leached lives teem in these ghettos,
blood siphoned to vases afar.
The yoke on their necks is held tightly
by gold-plated buzzards who soar.

— Adam David Miller

© 2009 Adam David Miller

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THE PROBLEM WITH BEING A FAT GIRL

Boys ask for dates,
but only because they want to mock you.
The fake suitor approaches,
grin dripping with malice,
behind him, his posse
ready to snicker.
They want you to say yes,
see your pudgy face
swallow your brief smile,
then flood with tears
as they oink at you
and hit you on the head
with pencils.

When you’re with friends,
you can never say aloud
“I need to lose weight”
without them being silent, awkward
like the squirrel contemplating
how to leap across a river
without drowning.
Or someone will say
“Oh you’re not that big.”
The girl half your size
can say she’s fat, and she will be
showered with consolation
and complimented on how she is pretty
just the way she is.

Your family constantly laments
losing the pixie version of you,
“What happened? You used to be so cute!”
Aunts ask your weight
and pinch your jiggly arm
as if it were a slab of meat
ready for slicing.
Your parents tell you
that you could be so beautiful
if you’d only lose that second chin
and big bellybutton,
not knowing they’ve made you
feel ugly as a skunk.
But even after all this fuss,
they still fill up your dinner plate
and give you an extra chicken leg.

© 2009 by Lisa Kwong

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SEVENTEEN SYLLABLES OF FAME

Camera flashes,
artificial stars gone like
fame’s lusty glory.

Rumors, ripped magic
carpets, crowd the air, their threads
twisting and turning.

Lonely man takes night
walks, hopes for conversation,
goes home empty-souled.

Gossip, words with black
wings flying across blue skies,
sears friendship’s clasped hands.

Slave to fame can’t see
ghosts creeping in the hallways
of his lonely heart.

Lies, fishnets of hurt,
flood life until the truth is
shipwrecked, buried, forgotten.

A cracked mirror, fame
shows him the scum, flashes love,
then takes it away.

© 2009 by Lisa Kwong

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Lisa Kwong received a B.A. in English from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Her poems have appeared in Ishmael Reed’s Konch, www.news.appstate.edu, Floyd County Moonshine, and The Sleuth, a magazine dedicated to all things Nancy Drew. As a poetry ambassador, she has organized
National Poetry Month readings since 2004.
A student of classical clarinet, Lisa Kwong
currently lives, works, and writes in the New River Valley of Virginia.

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Courtesy Photo

Eddie Lang (1902-1933)

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This is Blind Willie Dunn talking to ya (G7)

Nobody else (Am) you can see my

Nimble fingers even if (F major)

I can’t see yours what happened

What happened I’ll (E9) give ya

The straight dope (C major) I got no

Reason to lie Eddie I sd Eddie (Em)

I don wancha (C major) to go into that

God damn hospital you know (C major 7)

People die (G7) in hospitals Jesus Blind

(wch is what he called me, Am) Crosby

Said to do it and (E9) I tell ya Crosby

Knows what he’s talking about and Kitty (Cm)

Sd it was ok so why (G7) should I

Worry Christ (D7) nobody worries about tonsils

Gimme (A major) the racing form I wanna

Pick a winner (G7)

And (I Am) (I Am) (I Am)

He died

– Jack Foley

© 2009 Jack Foley

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The Official Eddie Lang Website

Sally-Ann Worsfold: The Quintessential Eddie Lang (1925-1932)

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Ruth Etting and Eddie Lang:
“Without That Man” (1932)

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Katherine Hastings

Jack Foley

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ekleksographia: wave two
issue four | november 2009
edited by Judith Skillman

features exciting new poetry, prose and drama

by Jack Foley

© Timothy Cross

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