Tag: poetry

Glittering Up The Darkness: April’s Offerings to My List of Best Rekkids of 2026

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Yes, Virginia, there has been some good—some GREAT—music released this year! It’s not like “music” is collapsing, too! Uh huh, I know about AI, but music is looking for its slingshot. I will not overtax your time here and get to the very notables:

Anthony Joseph’s on a run of four consecutive terrific poetry-with-rhythm recordings, and the sound behind his new release seems to signify outreach, a fine thing. I’ve long been a fan of Sasha Geffen’s groundbreaking alternate history of pop, Glitter Up The Dark, and it’s inspired a joyous, ebullient record from Jesse Desilva. I continue to be so bewitched by the seemingly endless flow of recordings from the Nyege Nyege Tapes label that I have dreams about a future box set and keep promising myself to create an only-the-wildest mixtape; both new offerings below spring fascinatin’ rhythms. One afternoon last month, I was trying to nap, running my “Records to Check Out ’26” Apple Music playlist on shuffle to try to catch up subconsciously, when my nap was spoiled/made moot by a cool is-this-r&b-and-if-not-whatzis flow of songs; thus, XG has made me a K-Pop X-Pop fan! It’s tempting to claim that everything Zev Feldman’s found in his deep bag of archival jazz concerts is amazing—it’s close—and his 2026 finds from Joe Henderson and Ahmad Jamal cast no doubt on that. Garrett T. Capps is MAFA (“Making Americana Fun Again”). Los Thuthanaka’s street-sweeper dance (?) music continues to stupefy, and I do not use that verb pejoratively. I tried to turn Nicole on to Robyn when she was recently on SNL—I failed, and even I thought her performance there was flat—so don’t tell her how much I love her sexplosive new one. Finally, This is Lorelei’s deluxe release almost gave me the fantods with its pop ’n’ roll rush and loving covers…almost. Have fun and take a chance!

SPOTLIGHT ALBUM OF THE MONTH

Anthony Joseph: The Ark

(Heavenly Sweetness) *****

New in March (click this for the Jan-Feb list; this for March’s list—I’m gonna hone it into one list eventually)

No asterisk = good / *** = very good / **** = great / ***** = really great / Italics = an excavation

Rodrigo Amado/Joe McPhee/Kent Kessler/Chris Corsano: Wailers (European Echoes Archives Series) ***

Angine de Poitrine: Vol. II (self-released)

Black Nile: Indigo Gardens (Hen House Studios)

Garrett T. Capps: I Still Love San Antone (self-released)

Caroline Davis: Fallows (Ropeadope) ****

Jesse DeSilva: Glitter Up The Dark (Nine Athens) ***

Antoine Dougbé et L’Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou: 1977 – 1982 (Analog Africa)

EDU & JUDGITZU: Nuku (Nyege Nyege Tapes) ****

Joe Henderson: Consonance–Live at the Jazz Showcase (Resonance) ****

Ahmad Jamal: At the Jazz Showcase–Live in Chicago (Resonance) ***

Kehlani: Kehlani (Atlantic) ****

LOS THUTHANAKA: Wak’a (self-released) ****

Branford Marsalis Quartet: Belonging (Blue Note) ***

MC Paul Barman & Kenny Segal: Antinomian Pandemonium (Fused Arrow) ****

Myra Melford & Satoko Fujii: Katahari (Rogue Art) ***

Robyn: Sexistential (Konichiwa/Young) ****

Adam Rudolph: Sunrise (Meta) ****

Serokolo 7: Maramfa Musick Pro (Nyege Nyege Tapes) ***

Sonic Youth: “Diamond Seas” Plunderphonics RSD Mix 12” *** (Check eBay….)

Starker: Living Type Dangerous, Volume 1—North Face Nace (self-released mixtape) ***

This is Lorelei: Box for Buddy, Box for Star (Super Deluxe) (Double Double Whammy) ****

Various Artists: Fight The Fire—Digital Reggae, Conscious Roots and Dub in Nigeria 1986-91 (Soundway Records)

Jessie Ware: Superbloom (EMI) ***

XG: The Core (XGALX) *****

Vintage Albums I Deeply Enjoyed This Month

Ornette Coleman Quartet: The 1987 Hamburg Concert

Dead Moon: Trash & Burn

Joe Dyson: Look Within

The Fall: Bend Sinister

Andrew Hill: Dance with Death

The Essential Billie Holiday, Vols. 1-3 and 8

Hot Chocolate: Cicero Park

Abdullah Ibrahim: Water from an Ancient Well

International Submarine Band: Safe at Home

Gene Jackson: 1963

Gene Jackson: The Jungle

Jlin: Black Origami

The Essential Joyce 1970-1996

Larry Levan: Journey Into Paradise—The Larry Levan Story

Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage

James Brandon Lewis: For Mahalia, with Love

James Brandon Lewis: Apple Cores

Michot’s Melody Makers: Blood Moon

Jimmy Scott: Dream

Sir Victor Uwaifo: Guitar-Boy Superstar 1970-1976

Various Artists: Big Apple Rappin’—The Early Days of Hip-Hop Culture in NYC 1979-1982

Various Artists: No New York

Various Artists: North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic, Vols. 2 and 3

Various Artists: RED HOT + RIOT

Mal Waldron: The Quest (with Eric Dolphy and Booker Ervin)

Hey! I Read, Too—and So Should You!

Paul Alexander: Bitter Crop—The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday’s Last Year

Adele Bertei: Now New York—A Memoir of No Wave and The Women Who Shaped The Scene

Brandon Hobson: Where The Dead Sit Talking

Bob Proehl: Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin (33 1/3 #61)

Lisa Sandlin: Sweet Vidalia

Stephanie Shonekan: Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Sorrow Tears and Blood (33 1/3 – not numbered)

Bryan Wagner: The Wild Tchoupitoulas (33 1/3 #142)

James Edward Young: Nico—Songs They Never Play on the Radio

Follow me on Instagram and Substack if you get the notion! Also, more of my education adventures found here.

Paul Blackburn, “Listening to Sonny Rollins at The Five Spot”: When Jazz Poetry Works

No one should be surprised to learn that an attempt to parallel the rhythms, inventions, and effects of jazz has fueled a raft of poetry over the years. Just as great jazz is difficult, so is great jazz poetry. Here’s a stellar one that, to my eye and ear, is a spectacular success. It’s called “Listening to Sonny Rollins at The Five Spot,” and it’s written by Paul Blackburn:

THERE WILL be many other nights like
be standing here with someone, some
one
someone
some-one
some
some
some
some
some
some
one
there will be other songs
a-nother fall, another ­ spring, but
there will never be a-noth, noth
anoth
noth
anoth-er
noth-er
noth-er

         Other lips that I may kiss, 
but they won’t thrill me like 
            thrill me like 
                          like yours 
used to 
     dream a million dreams 
but how can they come 
when there

           never be 
a-noth ­ 

Just for fun, play this clip of Rollins playing–what else?–“There Will Never Be Another You.” The venue isn’t The Five Spot, and Rollins is incapable, I think, of duplicating an improvisation,  but I think it might go a long way towards proving Blackburn’s triumph in the above poem.

Note: The song “There Will Never Be Another You” was written in 1942 by Harry Warren (music) and Mack Gordon (lyrics) for the Sonja Henie musical Iceland. I believe I am right in saying that jazz musicians have put the song to more lasting use (try Chet Baker’s, too).

The Wrong Notes (A poem Thelonious Monk caused)

My truck cab is compact

But built for euphony.

I squeeze in for a ride,

Disc in hand

To fit my feeling,

Slide it in the player:

No place for sound to go

But to besiege me beautifully.

I don’t even know I am driving

Sometimes.

A splendid day.

Sun’s rays,

Monk’s notes,

And a healthy engine

Turn me

Half my age as I

Cruise the main drag.

No beer between my legs

But my fellows are using their

Turn signals

And eschewing phones

Out there.

Hardly does this bliss

Settle when a crabbed image

From our sick spirit

Troubles my sight:

Four rumpled men

With signs and staves

Shouting at girl

Ducking in a clinic door.

I want to blast my horn as I pass.

Backs to the road,

They stand a yard from the curb.

Heart attack, perhaps?

They could be ministering

To the poor

Instead of fouling this child’s day

And mine.

As I ball my fist

Another sound intrudes.

The cab is tight.

It’s Monk,

Hammering out

A dissonant smear

(Like that picket gang)

To break the ear’s ease

In half.

Like the porter’s knock,

To break the spell,

But of pleasure,

Not horror.

Either spell is

Chicanery in our

Quest for truth.

Monk, those notes

Were right.

I drove past

Silent

As one you suspended.

 

“Texas Playboy”: The Only Poem I’ve Written in the Last 15 Years

…and it’s no surprise it’s about Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. This comes from maybe 6-7 years ago. I was teaching seniors at Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri, and trying to persuade them to shoot high in preparing for our class poetry slam. Nothing was seeming to work (strategies, videos, models, exercises, live readings), and, mildly crestfallen at my failure, I was surfing YouTube when I came to this video:

As usual, contact with Wills’ music banished the blues, then it occurred to me, “Hey, I’ll write my own poem for the slam, and surreptitiously introduce them to one of my all-time idols. If you know anything about The Youth of the ‘Oughts, you know any hope of them welcoming music like Western Swing with open arms was going to be dashed on the rocks. Still, I plunged blindly ahead. Here are the results, and after almost a decade, I guess I like them, because I am posting it:

“Texas Playboy”

After class one day,

Kid asks me about Howlin’ Wolf.

I submerge into pure joy for ten minutes

Channeling some Delta griot’s ghost that

Mastered me when I was the kid’s age.

When I surface, flushed but conscious,

The kid gapes at me with worried eyes.

Stutters, “So who’s your favorite?”

Speechless, I lie.

“That’s a parlor game, kid, shows

Free enterprise won’t even let you

Think about art without having to

Declare a winner. Good Lord.”

Kid shrugs, looks at his shoes.

“What a dick,” he thinks.

 

Fact is, I know all about such games.

Play them myself all the time.

Playing one now.

Have a favorite.

Looking at him now

On You Tube,

This portal for dead musicians

And hoarded cathode memories.

He is fat,

His belt sitting atop his navel

like a rough uncle.

Blatant toup wraps a head

Split by cophragous grin.

Squat, he struts the stage

Like a doctored chicken

In white cowboy boots.

White.

His axe?

A fiddle.

He is everything I know

Of cool.

 

This explains the lie, kid.

 

Old black and white short

From the Forties.

Crowded by a sextet,

Crouching as if to make,

He points fiddle bow at pianist,

And looses two euphoric syllables:

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh-ha!”

Bouncing saloon tinkles

Trigger steel

Trigger guit

Trigger trumpet

Trigger drums

Trigger fiddles.

Swing emerges,

Magic, ecumenical,

Impossibly joyous.

 

Wine tasters raise my hackles.

But permit me this:

If you could drink this sound

You would taste

Africa

Germany

Scotland

Our own maligned Texas.

 

Two choruses in,

He whirls and stabs bow

at the other fiddler.

“Ahhhhhhhhh, Joe D.”

By tune’s end,

All have shone.

 

Foreground:

Couples shelve grievances,

Embrance and spin,

Imagine, believe in,

Harmony.

 

He takes it home,

Raises fiddle to chin,

Graces band with a

Smiling, peripheral gaze.

 

So, kid—Bob Wills.

In my fantasy, I both

Point the bow

And wait my turn.

It flowed out if me in about 15 minutes, then I took about an hour to hammer at it. I read it to the kids the next day–of course, I showed the above video, and had to do a verbal version of footnotes, but they did not throw anything at me. And…every student wrote a poem and participated. The class elected its own judges, and I held myself out from the competition, obviously, but guess what won?

A poem that read like the lyrics to an Usher song, but, as its punchline revealed, was about washing and waxing…a car.

You can’t win ’em all. Or maybe you can.