Plucking

I was seven when I first plucked a chicken. Back home, I used to watch older women wetting tiny plumages with their lips and sticking the feathered end into their ears. They sat with their eyes closed, head slightly tilted, and gently rolled a “plume poule” deep inside their ear canal, they hummed and cleared their throats; I thought they were having orgasms.

At twenty, I tried to pluck the bass, but my fingers were too slow to thump the groove, a deep resounding pulse that responded AH HUM when Charles Mingus’ fingers stomped “Better get it in your soul,” I felt a sweet sensation slipping into my ear like the way I felt when saints danced in my sleep, or perhaps the way my body slowly jerked when I introduced wet feather into my ear. My eyes froze in the firmament.

Last year at the Vertigo, I spotted a post card, five by seven, black and white card, a black man dressed in a tuxedo hugging a double bass. It was 1960, Aaron Bell of the Duke Ellington band at a Jazz festival. His eyes were closed, teeth clenched, he was biting the music.

The bass rested on his left shoulder, back arched, head bent forward; he looked as if he were asking the instrument for forgiveness. Sweat glistened on his forehead, his fingers spread over the strings to control partial tones, creating essential moods. His right hand was busy plucking wire strings at the belly of the bass.

Last May, at the Charles Hotel ballroom, Dave Holland’s fingers crawled on four wire strings the way red spiders dash back into their holes. Sound quivered.

He was playing for saints while Joe Henderson’s tenor manifested F and C minor inside his red-headed skull. Plucking and striking chords, he stomped his right foot, lifting his bass from the wooden floor in search of notes. I was jolted with joy, knowing that saints could sanctify harmonies, at least for 2 hours, as long as Jazz is present.