These great musicians were a major influence on the jazz and mbhaqanga groups I’d played with back home, not to mention my own personal approach to music. I would sit in the Apollo with the animated throngs who screamed and testified at the players they loved, and all I could think about was how much I wished some of my friends in South Africa could be right there with me. Although rhythm and blues, gospel, and salsa were basically new horizons for me, it all felt like I’d been with all these people in another life. The thing I wanted to learn most from these genres was an understanding of their language and slang. This was an English I had yet to decipher. The wonderful thing about music is that, in the end, language don’t mean a thing because when the Latinos hit that stage, I felt I understood everything they were singing about. My biggest wish was to be able to master their dances … shiiit, those folks can move!
Sometimes when we had overdosed on music, we would catch the comedy revues and see Slappy White, Lawanda Paige, Redd Foxx, Moms Mabley, and Nipsey Russell. More than the humor, I took great joy from the fact that people could make fun of just about anything they wanted to ridicule, whether it was the police, the president, music, dance, white folks, black folks, old folks, sex, gender, joy, pain, life, death—you name it. Where I came from, people were so thin-skinned that if you tried to make fun of people and their circumstances, whether you did it on or off stage, you’d be taking your life in your hands. Back then, admission to the Apollo was only one dollar, and you could sit in the theater and watch the same show five times from noon until midnight. I was quickly forgetting about the main purpose of my coming to America, which was school.
After about three weeks, Miriam returned to New York. I had not seen her since earlier that summer, when she came to London to do her BBC television show. As usual, Miriam walked into the apartment with her arms full of gifts for everybody. One evening she threw a welcoming party for me. She invited several of her friends, her band members, Dizzy and Lorraine Gillespie, and the Kerinas. This was the first time I met Dizzy’s elegant and warm wife. Lorraine told me I reminded her of Miles Davis when he had first come to New York from East St. Louis, twenty years earlier.
While I was enjoying myself, Dizzy asked me to walk with him to the store to get some lighter fluid for his pipe. As we walked around the block, he pulled out his Sherlock Holmes–looking pipe, stuffed it with an aromatic tobacco, lit it, and passed it to me after he’d taken a few draws. I had never smoked a pipe before, but at Dizzy’s insistence, I got the hang of it.
“Hughie, is that jacket the only coat you’ve got? If so, you’re gonna freeze your little behind off in that little Italian frock coat, man. It gets colder’n a motherfucker here. You’re gonna need a real winter coat if you wanna live until the spring of ’61, boy. Tell you what, meet me on the corner of 57th Street and Broadway on Monday around three, at a store called Webber and Heilbroner. You meet me there and let’s get you a proper winter coat. Otherwise you gone die in that little thing you wearin’ when it starts to snow here. Then we gonna have to dig you out the snow and thaw you out. Oooweee, ha, ha, he, he.”
Once back in the apartment, I realized that Diz had packed some mean smoke in that pipe of his, because all I could pay attention to was Ray Charles on the phonograph singing “Just for a Thrill” with mellow strings and voices in the background. I couldn’t stop smiling, and I answered everybody with a “yeah” and a grin. Soon I was lost in Ray’s “Georgia” and everybody stopped paying any attention to me; they just carried on with their conversations. It seemed like hours later when the visitors said good night. I stood up to shake hands with everybody. When I got to Dizzy and Lorraine, she gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and said, “Welcome to New York, and don’t you forget to meet Dizzy on Monday, boy.” Dizzy winked at me as he followed his wife up the stairs. “Oooweee, good, ain’t it?” Dizzy whispered, referring to the pipe. All the visitors left, and by the time Miriam returned to the apartment after seeing everyone out, I was out cold in my bed in the guest room.
The next day we all went to visit Central Park and some of the city’s museums. Miriam told me that Belafonte was in the process of setting up a nonprofit foundation that would help me through school, but in the meantime she would take care of my tuition. The next morning we hailed a cab and went to the Manhattan School of Music. I expected the school to be a sprawling, tree-lined campus like the ones I had seen in the American movies. I kept looking for signs of students sporting jackets and sweaters with the school’s name printed on them. When the cab pulled up to 206 East 105th Street, it turned out to be a pieced-together series of three-story brick buildings that used to be an elementary school.
I was to study Music Theory 101, Sight-singing 101, Music Literature 101, French Grammar, English Literature, American History, Brass Ensemble, Chorus, and Psychology. I would have private trumpet lessons with Mr. Vacchiano, the first trumpeter of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. I felt truly blessed and in immeasurable debt to Miriam, who had paid my fare to America and was housing me and paying for my tuition, clothing, and living expenses. When I tried to thank her, all she said was, “Hughie, we are family. Let’s look out for each other. Work hard and let’s keep trying our best to find ways to improve the plight of our people who are suffering back home in South Africa.” Although I found the enslavement of my people by Verwoerd and his minions sickening, I had never thought I could ever be in a position to effect any changes against apartheid through music. When Miriam spoke of improving the plight of our people, it was the first time in my life that I had been inspired to consider the possibility of ever being able to rattle the complacency of Afrikaner racism through my life’s work.
Soon after we returned to the apartment, a limousine arrived and Miriam was off to La Guardia Airport, embarking on a three-week tour with the Chad Mitchell Trio. Later that afternoon, I went down to 57th and Broadway as specified by Dizzy, and waited outside the Webber and Heilbroner store. After about twenty minutes, a tall white man tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, are you Hughie, by any chance?” “Yes,” I replied. The man ushered me into the store. “Mr. Gillespie has asked me to supply you with a warm coat for the upcoming winter,” he said. “Let me show you what we have in stock.”
I was still reeling from Miriam’s generosity, and now this. I picked out a modestly priced brown cashmere overcoat, thanked the salesman, and left. As soon as I got back to Miriam’s, I called Dizzy to thank him, but Lorraine answered the phone. She told me Diz had left that morning for Europe. “Dizzy’s gonna be really happy,” Lorraine said. “He’s been so worried about you freezing to death. I’ll be sure and tell him that you called. Good luck in your studies, and take care of yourself. God bless you, darling.”
The next morning I formally began my life in America. It was a routine that would last a little more than a year. At six-thirty, I’d get Bongi up and get her set for school—fix her breakfast, comb and braid her hair—and we’d be out the door by seven-thirty.
I made friends with some of my classmates: Jimmy Lee, a trombonist from Mount Vernon, who wore thick-rimmed, bebop-style glasses and talked a lot about jazz and came from an allegedly wealthy Jewish family; Tammy Brown, a beautiful black girl from Long Island, who was a voice major studying opera; Fielder Floyd, a black trumpet player from Alabama, whose heavy Southern accent had me calling him “Feelflow” for two weeks until I saw his name on one of his books; jet-black Larry Willis from Harlem, who was already an outstanding opera tenor and basketball player; and John Cartwright, a bass player from Mount Vernon, who was a member of the school symphony orchestra and an accomplished jazz musician. Also in the orchestra was Hugh Robinson, a white trombonist from Jackson, Mississippi, who really wanted to play jazz but only knew classical music. There were a few Asian students from Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong—all outstanding classical musicians.
My fellow students included leading members of the symphony orchestra, opera soloists, top composers, and leading jaz
z musicians like bassists Ron Carter and Richard Davis, pianists Herbie Hancock, Mike Abene, Dave Grusin, and Larry Willis, drummer Phil Rosen, trumpeters Donald Byrd and Booker Little, and many other young musicians who would later become icons of American music. It was in school that I first met Astley Fennel, a trombonist from the Bronx, whose family originally came from Jamaica; Susan Belink, a mezzo soprano from Long Island, whose father was one of New York’s top synagogue cantors; Yoshiko Ito, a great Japanese opera singer; Howie Folta, an outstanding percussionist from Brooklyn; and Sharon Johnson, a beautiful, half-Cherokee French horn player from Cincinnati. The place was like a young United Nations music conference, overflowing with amazing talents and scores of wannabes from almost all over the world. Many of these people would become major influences in my life. Some remain my dearest friends to this day.
On my second morning I was introduced to my trumpet teacher, Mr. Vacchiano, who quickly decided he would be the wrong tutor for me. Vacchiano only taught classical music. I was transferred to Cecil Collins, ex-lead trumpeter for the New York Metropolitan Opera. Collins had lost his front teeth in a hit-and-run car accident at the pinnacle of his career. Most of the non-symphonic trumpet players were assigned to Collins.
For four years I had been playing a German-made F. X. Huller trumpet, the one Louis Armstrong had sent to the Huddleston Band. I had never washed the inside of the horn. On the day of my first trumpet lesson, Collins asked me to play a tune of my choice. After hearing a few notes, he abruptly stopped me. “Your trumpet has leaks,” he said. “The only reason you don’t know it is because dirt inside is blocking all the holes in it. Come with me and I’ll show you what I mean.” My stomach sank at his matter-of-fact dismissal of my cherished instrument; I followed him to the bathroom like a sheep to slaughter. He walked over to the porcelain sink, holding my prized Louis Armstrong trumpet like it was a piece of junk. Collins handed me my mouthpiece and then ran a twig through the stem of my trumpet. When he removed the twig, out came loads of green and gray slimy mold. That shit had been stuck up there for years. He then ran water through the horn and foul-smelling, caked gunk came splattering out of the bell in large, green, nauseating blobs. I was embarrassed beyond comprehension.
Back in the practice room, Collins handed me my horn and said, “Now try to blow that thing.” I tried, but the horn was leaking like a sieve from around the valves, producing a flat, airy sound more like a leaking exhaust muffler system than a trumpet. I wanted to crawl my humiliated ass out of there and hide.
“You have to go to Manny’s Music Store on 48th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues and ask for a Vincent Bach trumpet with a 7C mouthpiece of the same name. These will cost you around one hundred and fifty dollars. You also must buy an Arban Cornet Method exercise book, for about twelve dollars. When you have those things, come back to me and I’ll teach you how to play the trumpet. With all due respect to Louis Armstrong, that thing is now an old scrap that even he would be unwilling to blow on.” Cecil Collins left the room with me standing there holding Satchmo’s trumpet in my right hand. I was totally shattered and speechless.
I didn’t have one hundred sixty-two dollars, and I had no idea where to get it. Two weeks had rolled by, and I could not take a lesson on the instrument that was my major. Collins kept calling me to his tutorial room to ask when was I getting a proper trumpet. “You are falling behind. This is your major. You are scheduled for brass ensemble, too. By the time you join us, if you ever do, it will be too late because we will be way ahead. Remember, with a new mouthpiece and trumpet, you’re going to have to start from scratch. Can’t you let me talk to Miss Makeba or Harry Belafonte about the urgency of this matter?”
“No sir,” I replied. “I’ll figure out something.”
My new world was caving in on me. I could never go to Miriam and ask her for money after all she had already done. I had not yet met Belafonte, and the only money I had to keep me going was what Miriam had left for food and transportation for me and Bongi.
Miriam called one day from Canada to check on things, and Leslie told her about my predicament. Miriam was furious that I hadn’t let her know. She instructed Leslie to go and see Alfred Braunstein, her accountant. He gave Leslie the money. The next day I walked into Manny’s Music Store and purchased my first new trumpet. On the bus ride to school, I thanked my ancestors for their intercession. I also gave thanks to Trevor Huddleston and Bob Hill and Old Man Sauda and Louis Armstrong. I whispered a very special thank-you for Miriam Makeba. I got off the bus and marched up 105th Street with a brand-new trumpet in a leather case, complete with the new 7C mouthpiece and the Arban Cornet Method book. Collins smiled as I showed him my new prized possessions. I was now a full-fledged student at the Manhattan School of Music.
My American History teacher also taught at Columbia University, and hosted an educational television program on the subject on the Public Broadcasting System, which was shown throughout the U.S. He opened my mind and placed into context many of the distortions I had harbored about the United States. I particularly gravitated to discussions of racism, civil rights, and the other human-rights debates. Discussions of communism, Castro, Russia, Malcolm X, SNCC, and Dr. Martin Luther King fascinated me, as did people and organizations like Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Orville Faubus, George Wallace, the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society, and the white Southern Baptist leadership. As part of the large group of Africans immigrating to the United States to study, I was getting a first-class education in and outside the classroom. A few years later, through Belafonte, I performed a fund-raiser for SNCC.
I will never forget an episode in Mr. Miller’s English class. We were discussing George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Miller began comparing the pigs in the book to Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, and Patrice Lumumba, among others. My blood began boiling. I raised my hand and objected to Miller vilifying African liberation leaders. I was joined by Astley Fennel and Fielder Floyd, the only other black male students in the class. In the ensuing war of words, I was branded a Communist and Astley and Fielder were accused of being disciples of Malcolm X by some of the white conservative students, while we branded them children of the Klan. We had nearly come to blows when Mr. Miller, who looked like a U.S. Marines captain, screamed at the top of his voice, “Stop, stop, stop!” He stormed out of the room and returned with Dean Whitford, who calmly dismissed the class and asked us to follow her to her office. They accused me of attempting to create a political forum out of a classroom discussion, which surprised me—I was just responding to what I thought were unfair characterizations of the heroes of African liberation. I stood my ground and told them that I hadn’t come all the way to America to listen to the denigration of people who were dedicated to the liberation of African peoples. Neither was I in the country to be converted into an American right-wing patriot. I had come to America to get an education, and I demanded that Mr. Miller be the one to be spoken to, because he was provoking conflict and confrontation in his English class. The matter was never brought up again, and Miller backed off from making derogatory statements. The white students with whom we had the confrontation never spoke to us again.
Psychology was a class that I could not understand. Freud, Jung, libido—what in the hell was this shit all about? It wasn’t until I went to England thirty-seven years later for substance addiction recovery that I finally understood what psychology was all about. It took that long to break down the walls that had been constructed in my psyche by township life, discrimination, ethnic cleansing, booze, drugs, and sex. For decades I was certain that psychology was some white conspiracy to brainwash people of African origin into being complacent, obedient niggers. I was not stupid; I was just suspicious and not that keen on the subject.
But all in all, I was doing well at the conservatory. Word had gotten around about my jazz improvisational prowess, and when I would do my classical exercises in the basement practice rooms, I’d occasionally break off into some jazz licks or standard ballads. The room w
ould become crowded with other students, amazed at this African taking off on their music. Sometimes Mr. Sokoloff, the treasurer, would burst into the room to remind me that I was in a school of classical music and those rooms were meant for the furtherance of expertise in that medium and certainly not for “jazz riffing.” I was accused of reflecting badly on my fellow students and even my home continent! It was always mentioned that the Ghanaian music professor Dr. Nketia, who had been at the school during Modern Jazz Quartet leader and pianist John Lewis’s time, had never done that sort of thing. This was odd because so many of the jazz players of that time had attended the school; in fact, some of its most accomplished alumni, jazz heads like John Lewis and Max Roach, were always mentioned proudly in speeches and conversations by the school’s administration. It blew my mind that I had to apologize for playing jazz—but it was just another eye-opener to me of the double standards I’d be facing in American life.
Still Grazing Page 18
