My father’s music
Jazz was not my music. When I think of jazz, I see that as my father’s music. When I was growing up in the South Bronx, before I came to Washington, D.C., I was listening to folk rock. I was listening to Dylan and Phil Ochs and hanging out in Greenwich Village.
I think that without Bob Dylan, I probably don’t start writing poetry. I did not grow up learning African-American poets like Langston Hughes and others. So it’s not until I come to Howard University in ’68, after the student protests, that I start dealing with jazz. Many times, when you go off to college, your music changes. And I started listening to Pharoah Sanders, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp. Before A Love Supreme, I’m listening to Karma by Pharoah Sanders. If you came past my dorm room, that’s what I was listening to.
At my first poetry reading, in 1969, I’m reading at All Souls Church with Carolyn Rogers and Askia Muhammad Toure — but I’m also reading with Marion Brown. And that was my introduction to Marion Brown. A very nice person. I corresponded with Marion Brown after that reading. He had all these instruments he had made. He was playing solo. And that was my introduction to being on a program with a jazz musician.
Then around ‘69, ‘70, I took a “history of jazz” seminar taught by Donald Byrd. And Donald Byrd gave me either a D or an F. He asked the people in the class to do a project based on their field or discipline. Well, I was in Afro-American Studies, and I was into literature. So I decided I was going to put together all the poems that people had written about John Coltrane. I’m going to create a magazine. The model for me was For Malcolm, an anthology that Broadside Press put together after Malcolm X was assassinated, edited by Dudley Randall and Margaret Burroughs. Because when you look at African-American poetry during the Black Arts Movement, certain names pop up: John Coltrane, Malcolm X.
So I pulled all that together. And Donald Byrd was like: “Well, you’re not even doing your own work.” Hey, I printed all these magazines man — what are you talking about, I didn’t do any work?!
As told to Giovanni Russonello