"My music is the spiritual expression of what I am my faith, my knowledge, my being When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups I want to speak to their souls." -John Coltrane
Like John Coltrane I want to speak to your soul...I am enjoying this Afrocentric site...Sharing with and meeting wonderful people... jazz lovers...inquiring minds... Does it get any better this? Welcome and come back soon
Peace,
email: eman49@gmail.com
"The Weary Blues"
Droning on a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway
He did a lazy sway
To the tune o` those Weary Blues.
From: Harlem by Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in thesun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
More Hughes:
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl andto dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me--
That is my dream!
Alfred Lord Tennyson Oct. 20, 1833
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experienceis an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
Ted Joans
This bent metal serpent/ holy horn with lids like beer
mug/ with phallic tail why did they invent you
before Coleman Hawkins was born ?
Arna Bontemps
There is asound of music echoing
Through theopen door
And inthe field there is
Another sound tinklingin the cotton:
Chains of bondmen dragging on the ground
Bob Marley
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
Nonebut oursekves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them canstop the time
How long shall they killour prophets
While we stand aside and look
Yes some say it`s just a part of it
We`ve got to fullfill the book
Won`t you help to sing, these songs of freedom
Cause all I ever had, redemption songs
All I ever had, redemption songs
These songs of freedom, songs of freedom
Ralf Ellison - Prologue excerpt
from his award winning novel:
Invisible Man
I am a invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edger Allen Poe: nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids-and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded bymirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination-indeed, everything and anything except me.
William Shakespeare
All the world`s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking* in the nurse`sarms.
Then thewhining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress` eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard*,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the canon`s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon* lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full ofwise saws*and modern instances;
And sohe plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into thelean and slippered pantaloon*
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his* sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans* teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
(As You Like It, 2. 7. 139-167)
