Oral traditions run deep in Black America where storytelling and sermonizing have had immense social influence, spiritual fulfillments, and magical qualities. To the unique entertainmetn before us - recited and played, musical and verbal - Charles Williams brings his extraordinary baritone and Tom Teasley his battery of percussion. Williams, surely one of God's Trombones! - and Teasley, walking mostly softly buy carrying big sticks and mallets, have devised a riveting hour of tales told with dash and passion.
While most of the poems that Williams rec cites here are firmly rooted in the Black oral tradition, we also hear extensions of that tradition with haiku, Japanese 17-syllable miniatures written by a Philippine American woman. Hughes' view over old world rivers from Euphrates to the Congo, a fold song from Israel, a West African greeting, a jazz llullalby, a golliwog's jitterbug.
All poems should be read aloud, but some should be read louder than others. Poems of joy and welcoming, and celebration deserve intoning by a powerful, assertive, commanding voice such as the voice of Charles Williams.
Their opening welcoming doubles as a vivid valedictory: in this Yoruba song of strong "hellos", echoing across the hills, Williams and Teasley host the world at their movable feast of song. This is family entertainment, all right, and the family extends and is embraced, around this shrinking globe.
James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was best known for God's Trombones but his 1927 collection of Black sermons in verse, two of which are the pillars of this Temple, vividly portray stunning Biblical tales. They must be declaimed in bold, visual strokes. Williams wields the lightning bolts of the God of the Old Testament, then proffers the lilies of Jesus' compassion. He pours "The Creation" forth from his pulpit like Mississippi Genesis and "Go Down, Death" like the eulogy at a Southern Baptist funeral. Teasley backs him with full battery, using an orchestral approach tot eh traditional drum set, then a driving quasi-military snare drum beat to spur that pale white horse of Death.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967), the sage voice of Harel, conveys his ideas by shout or whisper, hot riff or blues motif: his was a more subtle and sophisticated era, of jazz and speakeasies. Surely his "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" has the cosmic sweep and power of "oll' Man River." And "Dancer," brash with spoofing scat, chronicles a showboat bojanges without a rudder. Yet Williams and Teasley most effectively synchronize one of his rhymed lyric prayer-poems, "I Dream A Worlld," with another by German poet Ludwik Askenazy, "The Cry," to anked vibraphone readings of stately jazz classics of Horace Silver and Thad Jones.
Reminders of the Christian forgiveness that touches both poets is driven home with spiritual choruses, "Swing Low" framing "Go Down, Death," and "Since I Laid My Burden Down," proceding "Tambourines."
On another level, this hour moves from the cosmic (seasons, rivers) to universal man (creation, death), from dreasm to youth to birth. We die right along with Sister Caroline in Tamecraw, and we are reborn as a child who puckisly questions being ready for coming tribulations on earth. The very telling of these stories by Teasley and Williams makes us tremble less with fear of dying and fear of breathing, bestows on us instead a feeling of unity and fellowship, a true sense of strength in numbers. Enjoy!
- Fred Bouchard (writes about music for Jazz Times, Downbeat, Boston Phoenix, Bossa, and other publications, and Hosts "Chages" on WMBR-FM (MIT Radio, Cambridge, MA 88.1 kc)
