On the Shoulders of Giants

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Although the physical abuse I suffered at Holy Providence drove me to seek refuge on the basketball court, it also drove me to focus on being, not a star, but a team player. My year at Holy Providence had resulted in a basically friendly boy becoming isolated and marginalized. But on the court, I was part of a team. I wasn’t a skillful part, but I was still a welcomed part. Yes, without that year at Holy Providence I would still eventually have played basketball, but I might have entered the game like so many other kids do, dreaming of being the Big Star, motivated by the lust for sports cars, flashy jewelry, and a fat wad of cash. Of course those incentives occasionally flitted through my mind (with the addition of gorgeous, shapely women), but I never wanted to achieve that by showboating so I could become a media darling. Let’s face it, even when I was a star, I was rarely a media darling. Part of that is because I saw myself more as a team player, not just on the court. On the court, I felt that I was just part of the team, so attention focused on me as an individual made me uncomfortable, almost as if I were betraying the team rather than promoting it. Off the court, I was outspoken about political events that affected the black community, my larger team.

  Basketball made me visible, but my rough times at Holy Providence taught me to use that visibility for something more than seeking adulation. I would try to inspire others as I had been inspired: to seek excellence in personal achievement, but to see themselves within the larger context of a team.

  Postgame Wrap-Up

  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “To be a Negro in America is to hope against hope.” In this statement he was testifying not just to the struggles of black Americans, but also to their indomitable optimism. To me, hope is like some magical telescope that can see into the future, not necessarily the future as it will be, but as it should be. When Dr. King told us he had a dream, he was describing what he saw from looking through that telescope. And we were all energized by that dream because we could see it, too. If we can envision that possible future in our minds, then we can create it in real life. The tools we need to create that grand future come from what we learn about our past, from the examples of those, like Dr. King, who tried to create that future. Both during my career as a professional basketball player and since retiring, I have tried to generate that bright hope in younger generations. I’ve tried to accomplish that in two ways: (1) by being a role model myself as a way of respecting all the role models that helped guide me, and (2) by providing as many other role models as possible for members of my community.

  Believe me, I’m aware of just how self-aggrandizing it can sound to claim role-model status for oneself. In truth, it’s not really a position I sought. Such responsibility can feel like a crushing burden. Who wants to have his every move scrutinized and judged by strangers as to whether it’s “appropriate,” especially appropriate behavior for blacks? The skyhook was meant to lift me above the clamoring throng, to push me past the obstacle in the narrow corridor. Who was I to tell anyone else what to do; I was too busy figuring it out myself. But as I progressed in my career and matured as a man, I soon saw that—like it or not, ready or not—I was thrust into the bright, burning spotlight as a role model, and that relentless spotlight was never going to dim. Once that realization sank in, I tried to behave accordingly.

  I didn’t try to please people by fitting into their expectations of who they thought I should be, either as an athlete or a black man. I tried to act according to my principles. I didn’t drape myself in gold chains and desperate women, I pursued discipline in my job, my religion, my family, my community. In a lot of ways, I was still that nerdy schoolkid with his nose in a book. In fact, when I first attended UCLA, I saw myself standing in a line behind my own role models: Arthur Ashe, Rafer Johnson, Jackie Robinson, and Dr. Ralph Bunche, all of whom created a legacy of black American athlete-scholars. Like them, I didn’t want to just win games, I wanted to win respect—for myself, for my community. For all of us who “hope against hope.”

  I accomplished the “athlete” part of the athlete-scholar equation with great success. I was a team player and my teams tended to win. But I was less successful at the public relations aspect of being a role model. I thought my actions would speak to my character. But actions don’t translate that well to sound bites and interviews. My quiet, diffident manner earned me the reputation of being aloof, nonverbal, high-and-mighty. The perception of the time was that the black athlete should at least give the appearance that he was grateful for what benefits society had granted him. What people really wanted was an athlete who would gush and grin and gab. As much as I would like to have been a person who felt comfortable doing those things, I never did. Instead, I was shy, reserved, a little wary. I realized that a white person looking up at a seven-foot-two-inch black man who isn’t smiling is going to be intimidated. But plenty of white athletes were quiet, shy, or even hostile, yet no one was afraid of them, no one expected them to pretend to be otherwise. I wanted to be judged for my playing ability, my dedication to teamwork, my loyalty to the fans, not my public persona, which, frankly, I was lousy at projecting. It was like Holy Providence all over again: being on the court was a refuge because I was judged for what I did; off the court was brutal because I was judged by what I didn’t do.

  Once I retired, those expectations pretty much disappeared, and I have been able to focus on the scholar part of the equation, which has been just as rewarding to me as the athletics. As a writer, I am judged on the content of my chapters rather than the colorfulness of my public image. And the effect I have now can be even more dramatic. Once I was eating in a restaurant when a man approached me. He had read my book Black Profiles in Courage and told me how he used the different accounts of black historical figures as bedtime stories for his daughters. He said the profiles of these black role models gave his girls a strong sense of pride as well as a confidence that they belonged in America. I’ve since heard from many inner-city history teachers who used the book to create lesson plans for their courses. One teacher told me about a student of his who had had numerous run-ins with the police and seemed on a fast track to prison and a hopeless future. The teacher gave him a printout of the chapter about Bass Reeves, a U.S. marshal in Oklahoma from 1875 to 1905. Reading about Reeves’s accomplishments and how he overcame his obstacles inspired the boy, who went on to do quite well in high school. He had looked through the telescope and seen an alternative future to becoming just another burnt-out inner-city statistic.

  I played basketball for forty years. But basketball never defined me, it provided an opportunity for me to define myself. It still does. I didn’t learn all about the Rens until 1995, but since then they have never stopped inspiring me. Recently, I have had the honor to meet the last surviving member of the Rens’ world championship team, John Isaacs. At ninety, he still has the energy of men thirty years younger. He jumps rope daily, works out with thirty-pound weights, and volunteers at the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club. Though his shoulders are thinner and a little more fragile than when he was one of the top basketball players in the world, they are still mighty enough to lift many of us to glimpse a future where we might all be a little more like him.

  Nearly seventy years ago, a team of brave and dedicated athletes defied all expectations by becoming the first world champions of basketball. Because of them, black players were soon allowed to play on professional white teams. Because of them, I was able to become a successful athlete. Because of them, black Americans could look through that telescope of hope and see a future of limitless opportunities for us and for our children. Their history gave us our future.

  “Musical Fireworks”

  Jazz Lights Up

  the Heavens of Harlem

  Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

  DIZZY GILLESPIE

  Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

  JOHNNY GRIFFIN

  Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of
freedom…. In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.

  DUKE ELLINGTON

  What’s All This Fuss About Jazz?

  For many people unfamiliar with jazz, the word conjures a seedy image of a dark, smoky room, long, spidery fingers banging on a piano in seemingly random notes, a jowly man blowing away on his sax while mopping sweat from his forehead, a hunched bass player wearing sunglasses, behind which are eyes glassy from toking too much weed before the set. Seated in the audience are finger-snapping patrons at small, round tables with the goofy ecstatic expressions of cult followers listening to a fiery sermon. For the well-read historian, the word jazz conjures a definite time, place, and people: an original American musical form, sometimes referred to as “America’s classical music,” originating among the black musicians of New Orleans in the early 1900s. For the trained musicologist, the word jazz conjures a more formal definition: a musical form characterized by blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation.

  But for the jazz lover, the word means much more than the smoky room or its historical context or its technical definition: it is a way of looking at and experiencing life. “What we play is life,” jazz great Louis Armstrong explained. “Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it.”

  Nicely said, might even look good on a T-shirt selling at a French Quarter souvenir shop. But what does that actually mean? What exactly is this jazz that brought forth so much vitriolic condemnation from authorities and yet became so popular as to revolutionize, not just music, but popular culture for decades to come?

  Trying to define jazz is very much like the old Indonesian fable of the six blind men trying to describe an elephant by only touching one part of it. The guy fondling the trunk thought it looked like a snake; the guy hugging a leg thought it looked like a tree. And so forth. But one thing all six men could agree upon is that when that elephant started charging through the jungle, it changed the shape of that jungle. And so jazz charged through the early twentieth century, changing the shape of the landscape wherever it passed through. When jazz charged into Harlem in the 1920s, it reinvented the place, literally changing the buildings, the economy, the way black people saw themselves—and, eventually, the way white people saw black people. No other musical form would have such a pervasive impact on American society again until the advent of rock ’n’ rollers Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard in the 1950s, and then again in the 1960s with the British Invasion spearheaded by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones—all of whose music was greatly influenced by jazz. Today, that same influence is seen not only in the music of hip-hop but in the culture it inspired. As one observer said, “Hip-hop without jazz is like a man without a soul.”

  Jazz is still charging through the jungle. Still affecting our souls.

  At first, the arrival of jazz in Harlem was met with mixed reactions from the architects of the Harlem Renaissance. Some praised it and some condemned it. Many of the Renaissance’s most brilliant and articulate writers and intellectuals—including W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, and James Weldon Johnson—considered jazz to be nothing more than low-class “entertainment” music that recalled the stereotypical image of the decadent “Old Negro,” the very image they were so desperately trying to vanquish. These influential spokespersons that were laying out the guidelines for the sophisticated New Negro preferred the “classier” concert music (though they also appreciated the “Negro spiritual” for its historical context). Jazz musician Benny Carter recalled the attitude of Harlem’s black intelligentsia when he played during that time: “Jazz was viewed either ambivalently or with outright hostility by many of the leading figures of the movement. We in music knew there was much going on in literature, for example, but our worlds were far apart. We sensed that the Black cultural as well as moral leaders looked down on our music as undignified.”

  But that haughty attitude came mostly from the old guard intellectuals; the new generation of writers who were revitalizing the Harlem Renaissance celebrated jazz by incorporating its rhythms in their writing. Benny Carter considered Langston Hughes, who wrote extensively and lovingly about jazz, “the poet laureate of the Renaissance and a man who had much respect for and understanding of [jazz].” Hughes felt that jazz was more than a form of music, it was another crucial note in the composition of the New Negro: “Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing Blues penetrate the closed ears of colored intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand.”

  The battle lines were drawn—and not just in Harlem. The debate swept through the entire country, with public officials and religious leaders condemning jazz as a savage music meant to heighten and unleash people’s darkest desires. Some of the public attacks on jazz were thinly disguised racial diatribes against African-Americans themselves. Just as the old guard intellectuals had feared, white critics were associating the sensuality of jazz with the stereotype of the randy African-American, unable to control his basic urges. Yet, many rose to the defense of jazz as not only an expression of the hopefulness of the times, but as a link to the struggles of the past. Rather than characterizing the black stereotype, they argued, jazz actually celebrated the enduring strength of character in the face of oppression and the indomitable spirit that was at the heart and soul of the African-American. Renowned white classical conductor Leopold Stokowski, who directed the classical music for Disney’s Fantasia, enthused about jazz at the peak of the Harlem Renaissance:

  Jazz has come to stay because it is an expression of the times, of the breathless, energetic, superactive times in which we are living, it is useless to fight against it. Already its new vigor, its new vitality is beginning to manifest itself…. The Negro musicians of America are playing a great part in this change. They have an open mind, an unbiased outlook. They are not hampered by conventions or traditions, and with their new ideas, their constant experiment, they are causing new blood to flow in the veins of music. The jazz players make their instruments do entirely new things, things finished musicians are taught to avoid. They are pathfinders into new realms.

  So, while jazz was creating a new image of blacks as energetic and innovative, the roots of jazz paid homage to the emotional past that helped motivate these changes. Harlem Renaissance writer Joel A. Rogers (of whom W. E. B. Du Bois said, “No man living has revealed as many important facts about the Negro race as has Rogers”) described jazz as a sort of Jungian collective unconscious, a tribal music that many diverse cultures unwittingly shared:

  In its elementals, jazz has always existed. It is in the Indian wardance, the Highland fling, the Irish jig, the Cossack dance, the Spanish fandango, the Brazilian maxixe, the dance of the whirling dervish, the hula hula of the South Seas, the danse du ventre of the Orient, the carmagnole of the French Revolution, the strains of Gypsy music, and the ragtime of the Negro. Jazz proper, however, is something more than all these. It is a release of all the suppressed emotions at once, a blowing off of the lid, as it were. It is hilarity expressing itself through pandemonium; musical fireworks.

  When these musical fireworks came to Harlem, they lit up the heavens above and cast a new light of communal joy on the streets below. Though the hard-knock life of African-Americans left little to celebrate, jazz music found a new and invigorating way to illuminate their daily struggles and express their complex and conflicting emotions: hope, despair, love, hate, outrage, accomplishment. These emotions were going to be portrayed in new ways because these were new times. And if doing so made these musicians outsiders, then so be it. In fact, it was precisely because they were outsiders to the established way of experiencing music that black musicians were free to break all the rules—rules that never did them any good anyway—and create their o
wn music. And wasn’t that New Negro attitude exactly what the intellectual writers of the Harlem Renaissance were encouraging?

  Yet, while these literary writers focused on articulating the new artistic and political movement through poetry, fiction, plays, and essays, it was the musicians who expressed the sensuality of the movement through jazz. They proved that the pleasures of the mind are hollow without the corresponding pleasures of the body. Life may be a struggle, but it was also a celebration. As marching band composer John Philip Sousa explained, “Jazz will endure as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.”

  Where Jazz Came From: Long Ago and Far Away

  Minerva, the Roman goddess of music, was said to have sprung forth fully armored from the head of her father, Jupiter. Jazz, however, did not spring forth fully orchestrated from the heads of frolicking New Orleans musicians. Instead, jazz stumbled into Louisiana after a long and arduous trek across several continents and hundreds of years, not at all looking like the same music that started out on that trip: Every stop along the way shows up in some characteristic of jazz, making jazz a road map of not only the history of the music, but of the cultures of the people who passed the musical torch from generation to generation.

  Naturally, every time one form of music becomes popular, another musical tradition peeks around the corner and claims paternity, saying, “If not for me, kid, you wouldn’t exist.” If it weren’t for the blues, jazz wouldn’t exist; if it weren’t for work songs, the blues wouldn’t exist; if it weren’t for slave songs, the work songs wouldn’t exist; etc. This question of heredity isn’t merely one of bragging rights for who came first and therefore deserves the most credit, it’s one of recognizing that jazz is the culmination of a lot of influences that represent the cultural history of a people. By following the lineage of jazz, one can experience the history of Africans and African-Americans in all its joyous, tragic, and inspirational tradition. When Louis Armstrong trumpets a looooong, resounding note, he is echoing the communal voices that date back over a thousand years.