Essay, Research Paper

[ The interview day of the months from April

1989. ]

Komunyakaa

Historically, the African American has had to

survive by his or her sheer nervus and humor, and it frequently seems as if we have been forced to

make everything out of nil. Music kept us closer to the kernel of ourselves. Therefore,

there is small admiration that the membranophone was outlawed in certain slave-owning venues. The

membranophone was a menace because it articulated cultural integrity and communicating. But we of

class began to clap our custodies and stamp our pess to prolong that connexion to who we

are. Music is serious concern in the Afro-american community because it is so

elaborately interwoven with our individuality. Most of us don & # 8217 ; Ts have to strive to see

those graceful, rocking shadows of modern-day America in cahoots with the dark in Congo

Square & # 8211 ; perpetrating an act of sabotage simply by dancing to maintain the out Gods

alive.

& # 8230 ;

Jazz besides worked for me as a manner of

restoring a sort of trust. A trust in what I had known earlier. For some ground, I

believe it directed me back to my demand to state something.

What do I intend by that? Whatever it is, possibly

I & # 8217 ; m seeking to state it in these words, in a verse form called “ Blue Light Lounge Sutra

for the Performance Poets at Harold Park Hotel ” : [ Komunyakaa quotes the verse form in its

entireness, whose text is available in Neon Vernacular ( Middletown: Methodist U P,

1993 ) , p. 176 ]

Basically, that & # 8217 ; s what I & # 8217 ; m speaking

approximately. You have to hold that demand to take hazards, and they come to us in varied forms

and strengths. [ Claude ] McKay & # 8217 ; s protest sonnet “ If We Must Die ” took a

hazard in content. Why else was it read into the Congressional Record by Senator

Henry Cabot Lodge? But McKay took few hazards structurally. Poetry has ever been

associated with the elite, the leisure category, with “ high ” civilization of Europe, and

the Afro-american poet of the 1920s was still in about the same quandary as Philli

s

Wheatley when her work was defined by Thomas Jefferson as beneath a critical response.

That is, good into this century the black poet was still draw a bead oning to acceptance by Whites,

still staying for the wand of blessing and acknowledgment as a mere human being.

Consequently, few black poets were willing to

acknowledge the influence of wind because it was defined as “ low ” civilization ; it had been

created by the posterities of Africa. Merely during the sixtiess did we get down to rediscover

that which was ours, redefining ourselves with Africa as an emotional background. Young

black poets began to accept Langston Hughes and Frank Horne and those white poets

associated with modernism & # 8211 ; an American lingua and ear. Indeed, wind shaped the Beat

aesthetic, but that motion seemed a privilege merely whites could afford. Blacks, contending

for inclusion, didn & # 8217 ; Ts have to banish themselves voluntarily. Of class, this was a

cultural paradox. To many the Beat Movement was nil more than the latest folk singer show

in town with the new Jim Crow and Zip Coons, another societal nine that admitted barely any

adult females or inkinesss. Yet they said that Charlie Parker was their Buddha.

The whole thing seemed like a love-hate composite

magnified. & # 8230 ;

[ Note: Komunyakaa & # 8217 ; s last mention is to

Jack Kerouac & # 8217 ; s “ 239th Chorus ” in Mexico City Blues which opens:

“ Charley [ sic ] Parker Looked like Buddha / Charley Parker who late died /

Laughing at a juggler on the Television. ” The legendary fortunes under which Parker died

included the narrative that he had been watching at the very clip of his death Jimmy Dorsey

of the Dorsey Brothers “ Swinging ” Band & # 8211 ; like Parker an alto saxist

& # 8211 ; executing on the web telecasting show whose musical gustatory sensations made it a precursor

of the Lawrence Welk Show. ]

from Robert Kelly, “ Jazz and Poetry: Angstrom

Conversation ” ( with Yusef Komunyakaa and William Matthews ” in Georgia Review 46:4

( Winter 1992 ) , pp. 645-646, 653-654.

358