Booker T & Them: A Blues

Preface

Preface Imagine with me, if you will, what it was like to be a black person of note at the beginning of the twentieth century. The early 1900s was a (particularly) tough time for Negroes, famous or nameless. It was an era when the only acceptable answer to a question put to a person of color was what the white inquisitor wanted to hear. A response deemed, God or Jim Crow forbid, uppity, sassy, or contrary to the questioner’s need to cling to the myth of superiority, could be capricious, unreasoned, or remorseless. The punishment could come in legislative, emotional, or physical form; it could well be worth one’s life. To be black and have your name in a newspaper —not as a statistic in the lynched-this-week log—was, therefore, rare, but likely to subject you to verbal abuse with no compunction regarding its lack of fairness, human kindness, or justice. Despite those givens a number of African Americans lifted their heads, straightened their spines, and rose to course-changing status as they spoke and acted in their various ways against the torrential current of the mainstream. My interest in this bio-poem, set during this so-called age of Booker T. Washington, is the depiction, in historical and imaginative ways, of several figures, with the emphasis on black males in the process of seeking to be men who mattered in a racist America. Also of concern are their effects on history and each other. Call it a gathering of evidence for a hopedfor greater understanding through the poetic route of who they were, and the forces that shaped them. 00 Harris FM.indd 9 1/5/12 8:55 AM ( x ) There are several invented characters—the students and professors of Tuskegee, for instance—whose creation and inclusion are in no way meant to alter the actual history of the period. They are simply aids in the telling of the story and the revelation of our subject characters. All quotes are accurate and from the individuals to whom they are attributed. The emphasis in Booker T. & Them: A Blues is literary. It is not meant to replicate my earlier visit to the period, nor to be guided or judged by the intentions of that effort. It is therefore dedicated to those men, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, William Monroe Trotter, Jack Johnson, George Washington Carver, the blues singers and ragtimers et al., who, defying the tremendous odds and realities against them, proved to be alchemists spinning the straw of improbability into the gold of seized opportunity, and mastered the art of being masters of their moments in time. 00 Harris FM.indd 10 1/5/12 8:55 AM I’m using modes now, because I’m trying to get more form in the free form. Furthermore, I’d like to play something—like the beginning of “Ghosts”—that people can hum. And I want to play songs like I used to sing when I was real small—folk melodies that all the people will understand. I’d used those melodies as a start and have different simple melodies going in and out of a piece. From simple melody to complicated textures to simplicity again and then back to the more dense, the more complex sounds. —Albert Ayler, Notes for “Complete Live at Slug’s Saloon Recordings,” Lone Hill Jazz, 2004 Hum hm hmummm 2-3 Hum hm huummummm 00 Harris FM.indd 12 1/5/12 8:55 AM ...