Yusef Komunyakaa's New Blues

On a night in early summer, I was upstairs at the Blue Note, floating on air, after experiencing a superb performance by vocalist-composer Cassandra Wilson. Her great big heart issuing from her voice, and her turning and tipping the song this way and that to make it new had touched me to the point where I had to thank her; so there I was on the second floor, waiting while the band packed up for the night. I browsed through the postcard rack, partly to choose souvenirs, partly to glimpse the faces of legendary people "in the business" and wonder at the fact that some of them had (at some time or other) claimed the stage downstairs for a few hours. I finally bought three postcards, one of Aretha Franklin, one of Cecil Taylor, and one of Howlin' Wolf and his band. I don't know where Howlin' Wolf was when this photo was taken, but he is strumming his guitar, looking up with his mouth open as if he were in mid-song, talking back to the moon beyond the ceiling. One thing's for sure, he is gigging, telling it like it 'tis.

Something about the look on Howlin' Wolf's face, perhaps the knowledge that we didn't invent the world or the world's troubles, but we do have to live in it and die trying, something about Howlin' Wolf's stance reminded me of a Yusef Komunyakaa line from "Beg Song": "I'm down here in somebody's dream / and I'm up there on the big wide screen / my hands are on the driving wheel and my mind's on the sky."¹ Many people the world over have heard Komunyakaa's prizewinning poetry, attended his plays, or read his essays, but few people know he writes song lyrics.

The poet's lyrics promise and portend as, for example, in "Changing the Change," the title song of our upcoming CD:

I can change your image
By changing your destination
Change a curse to a good advantage
By changing your destination.
I can change your mind.²

The song promises to trick fate or, barring that, to reverse fate's disastrous effects. The words admit that we sometimes find ourselves in "bad situations," seemingly impossible predicaments that require more than prayers and strong medicine. That's when a different kind of healing is in order—conjuration (the other side of prayer), with its big apple cap askew, as the lyrics go on to say: "And I'm not Cinderella / looking for a good fellow / at a quarter to twelve / I can change your mind."

For nearly a year and a half, we have been working on a CD project titled Changing the Change. The CD is a compilation of some of Yusef's lyrics set to the music of Tomas Doncker and myself, the music and poetry of Estella Conwill Majozo, and some of my words/songs, or (in contemporary parlance) spoken words. Yusef and I actually began discussing this project in Detroit, Michigan, at the 2003 Cave Canem workshop.³ I was honored and delighted when Yusef suggested we work together on a CD. In fact, I had been considering the idea for quite some time, but here was someone giving me that extra push, the affirmation that one sometimes needs to go ahead and pursue and dream. We met later in the summer at the Callaloo Creative Writers' Workshop, where the idea really began to take shape.⁴ One afternoon, Yusef asked me to look at a handful of lyrics that he had written in his neat script. As we sat in the Subway sandwich shop that day, I remember appreciating the vitality of each piece and its musical possibilities. I was particularly drawn to the brashness of "Gotta Have," a romping blues piece that hummed right there on the page. True to Texas hospitality and a kind of heard-it-all savvy, the folks in the sandwich shop didn't bat...