Aberjhani - Creative conversatin' with Toussaint St. Negritude, Part Two

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Creative conversatin' with Toussaint St. Negritude, Part Two

Read Part One of this interview at Aberjhani's Black Skylark Z-Ped Music Player

Creative Conversatin' by Aberjhani

With Toussaint St. Negritude, Part Two Taken from The Keepers of Their People’s Spirit by Aberjhani

“The birth of a true poet is neither an insignificant event nor an easy delivery. Complications generally begin long before the fated soul carries its dubious light into whatever womb has been kind enough to volunteer the intricate machinery of its blood and prayers and muscles for a gestation period much longer than nine months or even nine years. For most true poets tend to be a long time coming. Consider first of all that such beings rarely result solely from the happy minglings of human egg and sperm but evolve out of forces as seductively commanding as the magnetic pulsings of jazz and as numinously elusive as the whispers of an Ethiopian priest confirming remembrances with his God in the bright silence of a small dark hour. “Consider secondly that even as the body of such a one journeys from infant to adult, feeding upon the grains and meats and disillusionments of his North American homeland, his spirit engages a different order of hunger and grows aware of itself as something more informed than a sociopoliticohistorical construction. It allows the soul of his being to look back, wander forward and dance sideways through the many many mansions of unfolding consciousness: kneeling in joy before the flames of divine manifestation; weeping in wonder at the miracles of Mahalia and Malcolm, Baldwin and King, Mandela and Morrison; sighing with liberated love before the glorious spectacle of a new millennium. Having sought and found the threshold of such unrestrained revelation, one is not allowed to succumb to pain but becomes obligated to embrace it with the full might of earned wisdom and truth and grace. Such has been the birth and death and double-death and rebirth of the poet known as Toussaint St. Negritude."

Aberjhani:	By learning to play the clarinet and incorporating it into your poetry performances, you’ve undergone an amazing creative transformation from poet to jazz musician. How did you make the creative extension that allowed you to go from being a spoken word artist influenced by jazz to becoming a jazz musician with a solid foundation as a spoken word artist?
Toussaint:	I do very much enjoy the oral interpretation of my work and of all poetry, and just the history of oral interpretation, especially from the African-American perspective. It is such a key inspiration to me. I’m a poet. But I don’t really adhere to the term “spoken word artist.”
Aberjhani:	You don’t? In light of the way you perform your work with very stylized inflections of jazz and the blues, I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear that.
Toussaint:	I respect those that do call themselves spoken word artists but I’m still putting pen to paper. One of the things that I noticed when I first started performing in the early 1980s, before spoken word became a term dejure, was that they were using the term “performance artist,” and that ended up being my ticket. It wasn’t the term I chose or would choose but suddenly there was all this money for galleries and different places to pay poets to come and recite our work under the heading of being a performance artist.
Aberjhani:	Yes, what used to be the underground tradition of reciting poetry in coffee houses, garages, and jazz clubs all of a sudden received some kind of official cultural sanction that moved poetry closer toward the literary mainstream. Libraries, schools, prisons, some of everybody started featuring poets, as you just pointed out, as “performance artists.”
Toussaint:	I would be on these stages where another person performing might be chewing on a yam or jiggling their toenails and they’re performance artists who’re getting thousands of dollars more than I am. Then I get up and I’m just doing my poetry. And, uh, it is a voicing of our culture which is rhythmic, it is melodic, and emotional, and those things come out in recitals. My voice, for whatever reason, has always been more of a jazz or blues voice. One thing I noticed after years of performing in that scene, and when it went from performance art to spoken art, is, uh, it became a tool to separate black and white poets. Or traditional and nontraditional poets, or respected and non-respected poets. So another individual might be described as a poet and what I’m doing is spoken art. My definition of spoken art wouldn’t involve any pen or paper, but I’ve spent too many hours trying to connect these words so give me my title.
Aberjhani:	And now you’re combining the traditions of poetry and jazz.
Toussaint:	Going from poetry to jazz ended up being a very beautiful transition. I have always been inspired musically and directly it goes into poetry. And of course the first poet that I really read anything of, starting back in the fifth grade––that was a really pivotal year for me because that’s when I discovered Langston Hughes, Frederick Douglas, and other figures of African-American history. But Langston was really my primary influence, and hearing his inspiration, particularly from the blues. Then Nikki Giovanni, at the time, and H. Rap Brown, and Amiri Baraka, and just that whole movement [1960s Black Arts Movement] of a kind of defiant poetry.
Aberjhani:	Those individuals were often thought of as revolutionary literary artists in the past. What they brought to poetry was a spirit and intention very different from what generally came out of American classrooms or universities.
Toussaint:	There are some cultural differences: in your standard academic world of poetry there are certain rules and expectations. In the poetry of African-American culture, we use repetition for emphasis and we use inflections. In some of my English classes, teachers would want me to curb some of those elements and keep it as dry as possible.
Aberjhani:	That’s difficult to do when it’s your cultural nature to go in the opposite direction.
Toussaint:	I think it was in Haiti that I learned the word “cadence.” There’s a style of music there called “cadon,” and it was really the first time I learned the significance of the word cadence. When people talk about a great comedian, they may talk about the comedian’s timing, the timing of a good joke. Unfortunately, in western culture, rhythm is so inappropriately and incorrectly diminished and looked at as something, in their language, as “primitive.” Especially playing this bass clarinet, which is a reed instrument. You know, the literal process to make the horn make sound, the reed vibrates, vibrates, that’s rhythm, the reed vibrates and then you have a note. The bow goes across the violin: it may look smooth but it’s a series of vibrations, which causes the violin to play. Vibration is the basis of all life [laughter] all functions of it. Physical love is not made without some repetition, even if you’re the quickest humper in the world you have to at least do two humps. Vibration is the root of all things.
Aberjhani:	I hear you; it’s integral to our existence. So how exactly did you go about switching vibrational frequencies from poetry to the clarinet and actually teach yourself how to play? Did you shut you yourself away in your apartment, move out of San Francisco, or what exactly did you do?
Toussaint:	It was a crazy thing because I had always listened to a lot of John Coltrane, play his albums over and over again as a listener, just trying to aurally pick out what the man was saying through his music. I had done that for years, but shortly before my fortieth birthday, I was listening to this one Coltrane album––Live at the Village Vanguard––with Eric Dolphy, and, uh, also listening to a lot of Ellington. [I kept] hearing Dolphy on the bass clarinet. One thing I’ve learned since playing the instrument, which gives a real low deep tone, is how the vibrations affect the chakras and literally enter your body and enter your soul.
Aberjhani:	That’s the kind of thing that an indigenous tribal shaman who literally uses music as a tool for healing might say.
Toussaint:	We can see this very basically in the way, you know, if you’re at a club, you tend to feel the bass in the lower part of your body, or in your heart deep inside. You may feel the flute or a higher instrument somewhere else. Hearing Eric Dolphy on the bass clarinet, it was just so personal. I had this weird sort of awakening. I recall one of my uncles, when I was in my early twenties, giving me a few albums of his. He was a jazz fan and gave me a Coltrane LP called Live At Birdland. It has “Afro Blue” and “Alabama” and some of his other classic songs on it. I had this old record player that I played it on and set it at repeat and let it play over and over, all day long. It was like there was something I needed to hear. Especially [in the music from] that latter point of Coltrane’s career when he was playing so, what sounds, erratically. Like he was playing a thousand notes a minute and all over the place. As wild and incomprehensible as it sounded, there was still something in it that I needed to hear. By the time I listened on this one night to Live at the Village Vanguard, and when I was getting more deeply into Ellington, I started to hear the music talk to me. That sounds crazy but instead of me trying to figure out what John Coltrane was trying to say, suddenly the music was speaking itself. And said, “Oh, he’s telling a story, he’s talking about, you know, starting here then going over there. Then things get hard.” The music was literally talking. Talking! That’s when it hit me that I needed to really dive into this.
Aberjhani:	So you experienced both a calling through the music itself and a profound creative revelation, basically.
Toussaint:	Yes, a major revelation. It was such a surprise to me because until that point, with all the appreciation that I had for music, the furthest I could see myself going would be becoming a critic. And a staunch defender of the music. I didn’t think I had the chops to actually play. And the clarinet in particular! As far as reed instruments go, I had mainly listened to the saxophone and that would have been the more logical instrument for me to go with, particularly after hearing Coltrane. But the clarinet just really…it was love at first sight. I didn’t know what [would happen] but that was where I had to go.
Aberjhani:	It’s interesting that you say “love at first sight” and not love at first hearing it. Does that mean you were attracted to the bass clarinet largely because it appealed to you visually?
Toussaint:	Yeah, I think sight, it makes sense to me because you know you really see this music. You hear what it’s saying. One thing I particularly love about jazz, and the clarinet that I was hearing on some of the Ellington albums, is its versatility. Louis Armstrong had this more New Orleans style playing the traditional clarinet. What Dolphy was playing was this more modern style to suit modern jazz. So on one hand I was hearing this more modern approach to playing the bass clarinet, but at the same time I was hearing this just incredible style of the New Orleans clarinet, where they were really getting into these growling sounds, the animal sounds, laughing sounds, and crying. And I realized they were really making that instrument talk. And not only is the instrument voicing, but it’s painting a scene. It’s really capturing our experience. As a poet, as any artist, we’re always reaching, grabbing, for that next greater expression, that next greater way to express this muse that’s channeling through you. And for me it was the bass clarinet.
Aberjhani:	And then you ended up going to a pawn shop to buy your first clarinet.
Toussaint:	Yes, the bass clarinet was what I wanted. I called around to different music stores in San Francisco, and the first thing I found out was that the instrument was obsolete, no longer common or manufactured. The cheapest used one I could find was $3,000.
Aberjhani:	Three thousand bucks for an obsolete clarinet?
Toussaint:	Yes, and I’m working at a café, happy because I bring home $20 in tips. But when I decided I want something, I have to have it right now regardless. The day I decide it’s time for me to drive a Rolls Royce, I will be in one.
Aberjhani:	[laughter] This is really profound because apparently here you were desiring this instrument for its musical capacity and then you find out that it’s basically been relegated to the status of a collector’s item. So in a way, the interest you are now investing in it is kind of helping to bring it back from being nothing more than a decorative collector’s item.
Toussaint:	That is so true. And there must be some connection with me and bringing things back, or reconnecting with things because that seems to be a reoccurring pattern in my life. One that I discovered with the bass clarinet…at that point the only person I had heard play it was Eric Dolphy. I only knew it as having that sound. He played it as a lead instrument, playing solos that would go on for hours at a time, and tearing this instrument up. But once I got started, I went to the library, and typical of me, when I get started on an idea, I checked out every single book I could find on the clarinet, the history of the clarinet, you know, all of the clarinets from the traditional clarinets, which is the soprano, all the way up to the bass clarinet, and really exploring it. I discovered that Eric Dolphy had pretty much been the only person to play it as a lead instrument, uh, in any discipline but that prior and beyond him evidently still to this day, it basically has been used as a classical orchestral instrument, and solely by one of those musicians in an orchestra who has three notes, like bah-bah-bah-bah! And that’s all it’s used for.
Aberjhani:	So it’s used to punctuate everybody else’s musical phrases.
Toussaint:	Yes. And here I’m choosing this instrument to be my voice. One great and beautiful thing that Dolphy did, and I think this is so inspiring for any creative person, he showed the world that, you know, here’s an instrument that cultural critics, or even jazz critics, might say is not physically equipped to convey to as many emotions as say, other pop instruments might. Dolphy proved all of that wrong. As all clarinetists have. So I knew it was definitely possible and that this was the voice I needed.
Aberjhani:	It’s fantastic to hear you speak of a musical instrument as the voice you needed. In writing, whether dealing with prose or poetry, we often talk about the need to develop one’s individual literary “voice,” but I don’t think you would fine too many poets who would think of a musical instrument as part of that voice.
Toussaint:	With the poetry––it’s kind of interesting leading up to this revelation–– I had been working 10 or so years prior to that toward some sort of musical accompaniment that I could use to further extend the music of my poetry, and so I thought about the traditional things, you know, the guitar or whatever might work. I knew I couldn’t play the guitar because it hurt my fingers so I just sort of put the idea on the back seat. And that’s when this bass clarinet stepped in. So I decided I would just go to a pawn shop, get a regular clarinet, start from scratch, learn how to play that, and just visualize that maybe someday I would get a bass clarinet. And uh so that’s what I did.
Aberjhani:	You just kind of planted a seed of faith and let it grow?
Toussaint:	You know it’s always amazing how when you start out on a mission, even if you don’t have the money or a road or anything to really go on, but if you really set out on it, you know that the road will follow and amazingly people and things will show up, signs pointing out which way you should go. And I just met someone that just happened to mention that they knew of a pawn shop in the Mission District in San Francisco that was particularly devoted to musical instruments and they actually repaired them. And although called a pawn shop, it was really a very thorough poor person’s musical store and had a good reputation. So despite the various stories I’d heard about pawn shop swindles, I went there completely blind and vulnerable. Rather than worrying that somebody might take advantage of me, I stated my needs.
Aberjhani:	“Stated your needs.” That’s reminiscent of the famous line from Tennessee Williams’, “I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers.” You were relying on the integrity of whoever might help you in this pawn shop.
Toussaint:	Even if I know the person I’m dealing with might be a no good dog, I trust the integrity of the spirits that watch over us, and somehow even if it’s a dog, somehow those spirits will turn that dog into an angel.
Aberjhani:	Oh really? I’ll have to remember that.
Toussaint:	Fortunately I’ve encountered many more angels on my path than dogs. So I go to this pawn shop looking for a clarinet without knowing anything about the instrument. I wanted to get something good. I had $200 taken out of my rent money. [laughs]
Aberjhani:	Man, you were serious about this clarinet!
Toussaint:	Yeah, and uh, I love those moments when I’m so committed or serious about something that I’m willing to take a risk. One of the owners of the shop was there to help me out and pulled all their clarinets down off the shelf. Clarinets were traditionally made out of wood but in more recent years have been made out of hard plastic, making the wooden ones more expensive. Naturally, I wanted a wooden one. And it’s certainly about the clarity of sound. If you’re given the choice between a plastic piano or a wooden one, or a plastic drum or a wooden one, your hands are going to go to the one made of wood. So the owner showed me this beautiful wooden clarinet, made in Paris, with an alligator case. It was $150. I ended up getting it along with some reeds, took it home, and started attempting to play.
Aberjhani:	Without previous lessons or an instructor or anything you just dived straight into it?
Toussaint:	It took several months just to get one clear note. In the first couple of notes, it was just the air. I knew that…you know it’s weird, but there are some things you can take on and have extreme difficulty with and you tell yourself to forget it because it’s just too much. Then there are other things that are just as difficult with no guarantee. I figured if I was able to get some sound or noise out of it, and that was the best I could do, then that would be enjoyable. So I practiced as much as I could at home without disturbing my roommates, then I’d go out to the city park, or the beach, especially at night, and I would just blow and blow for hours. I had a little instruction book, and as soon as I would learn one note, I would go on to the next one until I had completed the scale.
Aberjhani:	Apparently all of your determination paid off because in 2001 you recorded your first CD, that having been “Live At the Koret Auditorium” at the San Francisco Main Library. What prompted you to make this recording at the library?
Toussaint:	I was ready. I had not done a major performance in a while and I was anxious to get back to performing with the poetry and the horn. My original idea, which is still my focus, was bringing the instrument into my performance of the poetry and creating a performance that would involve both the horn and my voice, or the poetry. I reached a point where I was ready to bring it to the stage and uh I wanted a decent auditorium to perform in ––and getting back to what I said about how the universe would provide, a customer just happened to come into the café where I was working and mentioned he had seen something recently at the library. He said they had this fabulous auditorium, and because the library is a city public property, the auditorium is available to anyone free of charge for public use. That blew my mind. I went to the library, found out what the procedures were, got an application, and got a date booked.
Aberjhani:	That is truly phenomenal to go from being your own student and musical instructor to becoming your own producer as well with an operational budget of ––forgive me for saying so––pretty much nothing.
Toussaint:	It was a surprise to me. It’s a beautiful auditorium, a modern space, a recent building for the library. It holds about 200 people. So I arranged to do the performance. Several months in advance, I sent out all my press releases and really worked it out. I also really kind of did it as a dare to myself: like, ok, it’s time to take this to the next level. Step up to the plate. And um with all the jitters and the fears, doubts, I’ve always felt a confidence that once I let the art take stage, it would be alright. All worries and fears go out the window. Coltrane said let the music speak for itself, so that’s how I approached it.
Aberjhani:	So having let your art take center stage, what would you now like to see it do?
Toussaint:	I would like to reach the point where I am regularly performing as a concert poet bass clarinetist, somewhat like a concert pianist or concert musician. With the writing and the instrument, I am kind of straddling two different worlds, two different mediums, and there will be moments when I may not be able to do both at the same time. And I will sometimes have to do one or the other or take breaks. I need to have those. I think my greatest classroom is performance, putting it out there. That’s where the goal is really tested. There’s something about creating the composition, or writing the poem at your desk and working it out and musing it over in your head and reaching total contentment with it. But there’s something else further about actually putting it out there. And that’s where my gift belongs.
Aberjhani:	Live performance of one’s writings or music does tend to bring it into this whole other dimension both for the performer and for the audience. Writers get to experience their work outside of their own heads, so to speak, and audiences get to experience it off the page.
Toussaint:	To really answer the question, I’m inspired to believe, just as my earliest experiences of feeling this music speak to me, literally, where I’m realizing that this is a language happening here, this note means this word and this other note means another word: that’s my direction. I would like to become so studied and proficient in this language that I can use it to actually help people.
Aberjhani:	By “help” you mean like we said before: using music as a tool for the healing of the mind, body, and spirit.
Toussaint:	I think that was the goal of our elders. At one point I thought this was just some crazy idea about conjuring that I had in my head. Then I was reading some interviews with Coltrane and he started talking about how he had felt the same things and then how he really believed at some point that he would come to understand how to play a certain code, or certain note, and help a person with a cold to stop sneezing. Or play it in such a way it causes you not to be depressed. I really think this is a healing art form, as all art is, and so that’s the best answer I can give you so far as my creative destination is concerned.
Aberjhani:	Hey man, that is beautiful. It is now thirty minutes past midnight so I’m going to conclude our interview for the time being and thank you for joining me in this session of "Creative Conversatin’."
Toussaint:	Thank you, it’s been a wonderful experience.

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Toussaint St. Negritude, is a jazz musician and poet. The first part of this interview is on my Black Skylark Z-Ped Music Player site. At present, this is not featured anywhere else, on or off the Internet, and part 1 of the interview is one of the most popular pieces on the Black Skylark site.