Late Arcade

by Nathaniel Mackey

  Lambert, that is, to begin, confined himself to a series of grunts in the horn’s lower register, an expectorant tack that offered minimal musicality, bent, it seemed, on redefining musicality, if not discarding it altogether. He picked a bone with any sense of the pure and the proper, shoving these concepts aside and announcing himself done with them. He announced himself done with conceptuality itself even, down to his last nerve it seemed he said. The accent was on strain, exertion, the labor light exacted, effort, fraught sublimity, wrought remit.

  It was as if someone had asked what sound itself was and he was intent on that inquiry, a starting-from-scratch tally and test meant to take inventory, an audit of all it might be at base. He grappled with the rub the thought of primacy subjected him to, taking to it as to a bath of ashes, dry but droll holdout against all odds. One wanted to be a duck sometimes he led us to infer, cracking us up as he did so, grunt gone over into quack before we knew it, Donald Duck ripe with complaint. Was it a way of warding off the balloons, we wondered, beating them to the punch to keep them at bay, no words coming out but the thought of comics or cartoons clearly there, the concept of cartoon broached only to be laughed at, conceptuality itself a joke, a cartoon?

  The crowd at the Blue Light couldn’t have been hipper. They saw Lambert’s cartoon quack, cracking up, cackling, then raised him a hue and cry, a back-to-before-basics tack that had many of them up on their feet, pumping their fists, yelling, egging him on. Lambert heard them, their back-to-before-basics ratification both a boon and a caution. Could a critique of conceptuality be other than conceptually endorsed he wondered, a quandary he could only, could anything be done with it, find a way to let flow, not find a way out of, which is exactly what he set about doing, egged on indeed, a recourse to long tones and trills the way he now went. He was now looping the loop, threading the needle, even squaring the circle could such be done. He was now, in a word, piping, the mouthpiece and reed sheer birdsong, prodigal chirp tugging the floor out from under everything, majestic chirp announcing and annulling all advent.

  The Blue Light, under Lambert’s tutelage, became a live huddle, everyone wanting to know what sound was. We were all, band and crowd alike, bent on hearing blue light’s call, the namesake sonance Lambert let us know was out there, insistent what we heard wasn’t what it was.

  Lambert held the horn high, a bird on a branch, a bird on a wire, a bird bent on infinity worn out by infinity, a bird piping loudly as it flew. There was something weary to what he played, infinity’s blue redoubt, a sense of having come to be daunted by endlessness, bask and abide by and celebrate it though he did. There was, that is, just the right touch of caution, a rind of complaint not inconsistent with the earlier accent on strain. This, one knew, was the meaning of his recourse to circular breathing, the long run of which he chose to take the solo to its crescendo with, conserving and exhausting breath both. The crowd met that crescendo with a bounding round of applause, some of them shouting out their approval (“Yeah, that’s it!,” “Tell it!” and the like), some putting their pinkies to the sides of their mouths and whistling, high-pitched, piercing whistles that were something like answering the sopranino in kind.

  It was, as I’ve already said, a solo none of us envied Djamilaa having to follow, but she took the challenge in stride and took her time and went on, as I’ve also already said, to steal the show. It wasn’t so much a solo she took as a walk over hallowed ground, the closer walk so long sung about in gospel torn a new ken. Right off the bat she made reference to the Paul Bley stuff she’s been listening to a lot lately, the teasing, tangential way she had with it a remove or two or three away from straight quotation. A valedictory caress one couldn’t help calling it, as if having distilled what there was to be gotten from it she bid it lovingly and lightly goodbye, all angle, all approach, all asymptote. By turns it was “Closer” one could’ve sworn one heard traces of, “Nothing Ever Was, Anyway” whose ghost one felt a nudge from, “Mr. Joy” whose prance and whose prod one took to have hold of her, “El Cordobes” one would’ve given an arm to have her come right out and play. Farther on it was “Touching” one was all but sure took the floor out from under one, “Seven” the run whose collapse made one wince put one in mind of, “Turning” whose faux dissolve accosted one’s ear.

  I can’t emphasize enough that none of these tunes got anything near explicit statement. Indeed, soul to explicit statement’s body, the tack Djamilaa took was one of ever so remote adumbration, the ghost of a chance body might be were it, she led one to ask, anything at all. The remote probabilistic wraith all assertion came down to she ran thru a sieve of abstraction, all tune or even tone an extrapolation of aspect only the blind might see. Thus it was one saw in the sense of thought more than heard “Seven,” “Mr. Joy” and so on, blindly saw in some jigsaw way that crossed over into hearing’s near equivalent, listening-for, the closest one would come but still short of outright hearing, teasingly near and far both.

  How close Djamilaa got to the Paul Bley tunes was also how far away she got from “Book of Opening the Mouth,” so far, in fact, her solo seemed like another tune or like a tune inside Lambert’s tune, a new tune or a detour of a tune I indeed couldn’t help calling “Djamilaa, the Beautiful One Has Come.” It also gave rise to something we’ve never had happen before. It was as she was wringing what sounded like the last possible drop from her say-it-without-saying-it allusion to and distillation of “Open, to Love” that it happened, the audience breaking out into loud, uncontrollable applause, yelling, stamping their feet and pounding on tables, some of them rising to their feet as they had during Lambert’s solo, all of it so loud and raucous and all of it sustained so long it required Djamilaa, Aunt Nancy and Drennette to stop playing, the way we’ve heard it done on those Om Kalsoum albums where after one of her unbearably beautiful runs the Egyptian audience goes crazy and she and the orchestra have to pause for them to settle down again.

  Whether it was a conscious homage to Djamilaa’s North African roots or something the audience just couldn’t help or both, it was, as I’ve said, something that’s never occurred before. The three of them stopped playing and the ovation went on for a while after they did so, the audience, it seemed, pleased with the acknowledgment of their acknowledgment and the worked-up, wounded state they were in. It was as if they’d been begging for mercy and were pleased and relieved to have gotten it and could now quiet down, which they began to do. Once the ovation had completely died down and those who’d been standing were back in their seats Djamilaa, Aunt Nancy and Drennette started up again, their closer walk across hallowed ground picked up where they’d left off, Djamilaa’s Paul Bley extract or extrapolation taken up long enough to be played against the next detour she took.

  There was, that is, a strongly pronounced contrast when Djamilaa moved from Paul Bley to Bill Evans, to whom she’s also been listening a lot lately. Radically changing her tack, she alluded to two of the tunes on the Explorations album, “Haunted Heart” and “Elsa,” ever so nimbly quoting from one and then the other, a wisp of outright statement in each case that maintained her theme of ghostliness nonetheless, linking the two, an anonymous haunted heart lamenting some Elsa. Listening, one found oneself haunted by the ghost of “Elsa” and by that of the tune’s eponym as well, mere wisp though it was notwithstanding, a wisp it was all one could do not to be lost in, so thrown one felt oneself to be. One couldn’t help it. It was a wisp that would have none of being done with, a wincing, knee-weakening lilt it was an achievement not to fall over listening to. I for one, for the moment, renamed each and every person I’d ever loved Elsa, so put upon by the ghost of what, Djamilaa had set us up to feel, never was, anyway.

  I also can’t emphasize enough that Aunt Nancy and Drennette were models of co-conspiracy throughout, disbursing supplement and surmise alongside support. Aunt Nancy’s bass waxed as the moment called for and ebbed as the moment called for, singing thru the gaps as Djamilaa’s chiming
touch hung in the air, an aroused “amen” or a bemused “alas” in which all possible sense, all apprehension, seemed tied up in a single note or a quick strum (throb and drop, it almost goes without saying, a never not available resort). For her part, Drennette would not let it be forgotten that the drumset commandeers light, cymbal shimmer and cymbal ping plied with water-wristed aplomb, so brightly the mind’s ear’s eye could only squint. She had a way of letting the side of the stick’s tip roll with its metal address, a lingering ride or regard one heard as tambourine-like, tenor to tambourine’s alto or soprano, baritone sometimes, bright even so.

  The lamented Elsa was every loss, every lost hope, the charm gone from a charmed life. Elsa was the “was” that would’ve been had anything ever been, the “is” the “was” receded from as well. An elapsed albeit echoing recess, Djamilaa made clear, was also what Elsa was, a “was” we’d reminisce as though we’d been there, a “was” we’d spend forever not returning to.

  The audience again got loud and went wild in the Egyptian style, interrupting in the Egyptian style, literally stopping the show again. Again Djamilaa, Aunt Nancy and Drennette stopped playing and waited until the audience settled down to resume, picking up where they’d left off, Djamilaa reiterating her precept or prognosis regarding Elsa as elapsed, echoing recess. Elsa, she again made clear, now driving it across with all the more force, was a “was” we’d reminisce as though we’d been there, a “was” we’d spend forever not returning to.

  It was a solemn prognosis Djamilaa laid out and she laid it out with a steady hand, tremulous truth no disabler, threadbare hope (if not lost hope) no hitch. Indeed, she let a certain stateliness accrue to solemnity or insisted it accrue, her last allusion and quotation, the one she began to end her solo with, coming from Federico Mompou’s Songs and Dances, the opening strains of No. 9, a closer walk mingling near with far, the processional gait won by stoic resolve.

  Djamilaa had sat slumped over the keyboard à la Evans while expounding on Elsa but with the Mompou she straightened her back and lifted her chin, sitting up with model posture as if to illustrate stoic resolve. Aunt Nancy straightened up as well. She no longer draped herself over the bass but stood erect, her head high and her eyes, when they weren’t closed, on the horizon. Drennette did so too, her back ironing-board straight as she rode high on the drummer’s stool.

  Aunt Nancy went from wincing throb to mini-walk, swell to wincing stepdown, a Scott LaFaro reference that kept Elsa close by, but only until Djamilaa drove the Mompou home by humming it as she played, Drennette a muted waltz meanwhile on the high hat. A slow tolling, a slow noting of what one goes thru, prepared the way, toll a tally of cost and a chiming decree rolled into one. It seemed it said gait would be gate, an opening, as they eventually went from Mompou back to the head. Gait was indeed gate as they did so—which is to say, trite though it is to put it so, they swung, solemnity’s unexpected boon or behest, closer walk nothing if not strut.

  Indeed, they swung swing itself, swing so perpendicular to itself it sprang, spring the fey sense one had of it, a buoyant sway and a bit of swag, vintage Elmo Hope. The head, that is, was now a recombinant bounce Djamilaa worked and kept working, a host of collateral chatter among the fingers of her left hand. It all had a way of leaning back even as it sprang, not in posture so much as the actual sound, an acoustico-implicative stride at a slight angle, ambling yet relaxed, laid back. It had a way of bounding, even so, with namesake hope, all-out expectancy, Drennette’s high clamor on the cymbals ladling release.

  The Elmo Hope vibe was Djamilaa’s nod to the audience’s North African salute it occurred to me, oblique but necessarily so. I leaned over and said so to Penguin, who was standing next to me. He agreed and, grinning, added, “If she quotes from ‘Stars Over Marrakesh’ they’ll go crazy again and I’ll be out of here.” He put his hand out when I laughed. I slapped it and turned my hand over and he slapped mine.

  Djamilaa neither quoted from “Stars Over Marrakesh” nor needed to. She continued bearing down on the head, with not only collateral chatter but collateral clack, a nothing-ever-was-anyway bent and burr brushing everything aside. She, Aunt Nancy and Drennette did indeed speak of deserts crossed but that wasn’t the point. Lambert, Penguin and I, given the nod by Djamilaa, came back in, ending the piece with three unison restatements of the head and a stop-on-a-dime return to silence.

  The crowd again responded in the Egyptian manner, clapping, standing, stomping, whistling, shouting. It was a full five minutes before we were able to begin the next piece.

  As ever,

  N.

  13.I.84

  Dear Angel of Dust,

  We’re in Detroit. Got here around noon after an early flight from L.A. It’s the first time in Detroit for all of us. After getting settled in the hotel and resting up a while we went out to take a look—see, as Rahsaan would say, what we could see. We walked around quite a bit and took the bus for longer distances, anxious to see all we could. It’s hard to say, hard to sum up what it all adds up to, could it be said to add up to anything. What it was was random vantages, random veils, no such disclosure as we think a first-time exposure to a city might yield. Detroit was there but not there. Or was it we were there but not there, vantage indissociable from veil, red-eyed as we were? I quickly found the expectation to see and say something about Detroit an irritant, any summing up or desire to sum up an affront. Yes, the monumental architecture seems to cry out for comment, the massive, no-nonsense rectilinearity of the General Motors Building bent on eliciting reverence or ridicule. (Penguin went so far as to call it “their new Parthenon.”) The contrast between that blatant a claim on eternity and the auto industry’s recent troubles makes cultural critics of us all, not to mention the charred, burnt-out neighborhoods, the abandoned houses overtaken by vines and other growth, the naked foundations, the empty lots. Yes, that all the more obvious contrast would appear to put words in our mouths, easy words moreover, no matter how stark what they report. Yes, them that’s got, mostly white, mostly keep getting while them that’s not, mostly black, mostly don’t. This is axiomatic American cud we could chew for days and do chew, chewing or not.

  We strolled, at one point, up Woodward Avenue over to the Detroit Institute of Arts, where we’ll be playing. It was beautiful, quite the promenade, with lovely buildings on both sides of the street, the Institute, perhaps, the loveliest of them. But likewise, once inside, yes, the huge Diego Rivera frescoes, the homage to industrial Detroit he painted in the early thirties, all but jumped out and took hold of one’s tongue, tempting one to wax on about a discrepant relation to what one saw outside. The contrast between epic, heroic dimension and postindustrial diminution came easily to one’s lips—too easily, all too easily, I thought. I found myself resisting the very observations I’d have made, something about them seeming too pat, too obvious perhaps. I had the sense there was an opaque Detroit, a recondite Detroit, a secret Detroit such observations don’t even scratch the surface of. I bit my tongue.

  It’s not that any of that isn’t true, not that easy sociologizing isn’t true, probably more true the easier it is, not that that may not be the job society does. It’s not that it’s not true but that everyone already knows it and is maybe, at some level, okay with it. What, I was asking myself, does waxing on or waxing at all about it mean or do? Meanwhile, all the musicians that’ve come out of here and all the music that’s come out of here are really staggering, really, as we like to say, saying something. If I named Howard McGhee, Tommy Flanagan, Betty Carter, Geri Allen, the Jones brothers (Elvin, Hank and Thad), Yusef Lateef, Julius Watkins, Ron Carter, Milt Jackson, Paul Chambers, Barry Harris, Louis Hayes, Alice Coltrane, Pepper Adams, Kenny Burrell, Donald Byrd, Lucky Thompson, Charles McPherson, Lonnie Hillyer, Sippie Wallace, Hugh Lawson, Frank Foster, Sonny Stitt and J. R. Monterose, I’d just be getting started, even without getting into gospel folk like Reverend C. L. Franklin, blues folk like John Lee Hooke
r, R&B folk like Aretha Franklin and George Clinton, rock and roll folk like Hank Ballard and Bill Haley, pop folk, Motown, etc. At the same time, I both care and don’t care that they came from here. Music is always elsewhere.

  After DIA, we took a bus down Woodward to go to Greektown. At one of the stops a man who I’d say was in his mid-sixties got on. He was wearing a rumpled brown suit that had seen better days, a white shirt that could’ve used washing and dress shoes that were run down at the heels. His hair was an unkempt, salt and pepper Afro, matted down on one side from having been slept on it looked like, his chin and jaws covered with salt and pepper stubble, in need of a shave. He headed for the back of the bus after getting on, muttering something under his breath and making a point of looking at each passenger he passed. His eyes were bloodshot and one could smell that he’d been drinking but he had a kind of elegance about him all the same, no matter his legs were a little shaky and he bumped against the edges of the seatbacks as he made his way down the aisle. He gave off the sense that, like his suit, he’d seen better days. After he and the other new passengers were seated and the bus began to roll again, one heard, coming from the back of the bus, his muttering slowly gain volume, reaching the point where one heard him say, a bit slurred but loud and quite intelligibly, “None of y’all don’t know nothin’ about this!” He repeated this again and again, pausing between repetitions as if to let it sink in throughout the bus or even, perhaps, to assess and be newly schooled by it himself. “None of y’all don’t know nothin’ about this!” he said again and again, his voice raspy, gruff, burning like whiskey.