Writings And Other Manifestations of My Mind

On June 15, 2003, the lights dimmed in San Francisco’s Herbst Theater. Seven musicians walked onstage, picked up their instruments and started to play. A “tropical vibe” of South African rhythm, melody and harmony wafted across the room and transported me to another hemisphere. Then Hugh Ramopolo Masekela, the father of South African Jazz/mbaqanga, came onstage and the celebration began. Having listened to and enjoyed his 1968 commercial hit “Grazing in the Grass,” I was looking forward to seeing and hearing him perform live.

“Stimela (coal train)”, the song I enjoyed the most, is a tribute to the men who work underground in Johannesburg and its surrounding metropolis, mining for diamonds. This dramatic composition vividly depicts the workers and their situation. Masekela plays an urgent 4/4 rhythm con moto on the cow bell and the drummer and percussionist join him. Their musiking gradually increases from a whisper to a scream, then segues into a few bars of commentary played by the guitarist, bassist, and a musician on the synthesizer. Thus, the psychological, emotional and spiritual atmosphere of “Stimela” is set. Masekela declaims the names of the various places of origin from which the trains come to Johannesburg. He recites the details of the dangerous and exploitative labor the men perform underground, and the wretched condition of their lives above ground:

There is a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi.
There is a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe.
There is a train that comes from Angola and Mozambique,
from Lesotho, from Botswana, from Zwaziland.
From all the hinterlands of Southern and Central Africa.
This train carries young and old African men
who are conscripted to come and work on contract
in the golden mineral mines of Johannesburg,
and its surrounding metropolis.
Sixteen hours or more a day for almost no pay.
Deep, deep, deep down in the belly of the earth,
when they are digging and drilling
for that shiny mighty evasive stone.
Or when they dish that mish mesh mush food
into their iron plates with the iron shank.
Or when they sit in their stinking, funky, filthy,
Flea-ridden barracks…

At the end of his full-toned recitation, Masekela executes a vocal imitation of the train’s forward movement over the steel tracks. He punctuates this passage with a perfectly pitched reproduction of the train’s shrill whistle. He imitates the whistle once more, and the driving 4/4 beat that begins the song recapitulates more forcefully and louder, and it reaches a crescendo. The saxophonist wails wistfully and mournfully on his instrument, which lament is shot through with self-awareness, indignity, and determination. A cow bell obbligato evokes the miners rallying to protest against their situation. This statement segues into a recapitulation of the driving 4/4 beat that is heard at the beginning of the song, and the crescendo is followed this time by an authoritative trumpet statement from Masekela that is rife with bold, impassioned horn flourishes. The reflective and rational tonal quality of his statement evokes the weight that burdens the miners’ physically, emotionally, and spiritually; and it comes across as the advice that an older veteran worker gives to his younger fellow workers. Thus, the imminent protest is quelled. Then, Masekela and three of the band members sing of resolution, determination, and hope in one of the several languages spoken by black South Africans.

Hugh Ramopolo Masekela was/is a gifted musical artist; a venerable eulipion. Listening to him and the band perform “Stimela”, I was there on the train with the miners. I felt the powerful vibration of its swift, forward motion in my own body, and the collective mood of the miners in my heart and mind. Their discontent resonated with my dissatisfaction with the current racial, economic, and political situation here in the United States of America.

Masekela was/is a conscientious artist who takes it upon himself to ensure the remembrance of certain things that they not be forgotten. The seventy-four-year-old musician was variously South Africa’s elder jazz statesman, a child of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and a perceptive commentator on the expressive style of today’s Hip Hop celebrants. He alternately played the trumpet and cow bell and danced and sang with a vigor that belied his seniority. For me, the nimbly executed steps were a small album of kinetic snapshots: glimpses of his youthful Arian personality; the feeling that apparently fostered desire in him to become a musician; glimpses of what he has experienced down the decades of his years; what he has done with his life and who he has done.

Early in the evening, before intermission, he told us the concert commemorated ten years of a free South Africa. He thanked us for our support and effort toward the abolishment of apartheid, and then he invited us to stand up and shake our backsides. Many in the audience did just that. As a dancer/teacher/choreographer, I could not help but notice how they shook their booties not inside the rhythmic “tropical vibe”, which Masekela told us he and the band were offering, but outside of it. I, myself, did not stand up and shake my booty, because it did not need shaking. I was there in the Herbst Theater to witness a favorite elder perform his musical stories live and receive the spiritual nourishment therefrom. The audience’s outside-the-music dancing aside, it was a memorable concert.

Copyright © 2019 Trifoglio

 Hugh Ramapolo Masekela 4 April 1939 – 23 January 2018  

 Everywhere I go, the same ugliness 
 the kind old folks saw back in the day
 and said to each other from shared experience
 “The Son of God better not come this way”
 
Programmed females and docile males
walking in lockstep, duty-bound
misinformed of life beyond their noses
blissfully unaware of the law of karma 
 
Dreams of global grandeur on their faces  
chauvinism in their imperial poses
such a tired display of tinsel gaiety  
these pretenses, that sound, those giggles
 
What air of presumption in their behavior
neither a glint of generosity nor love in their  eyes
only denial, suspicion, and cold calculation
even though the wind done gone
 
No hint of reverence or compassion
but a whole lot of imperial aspiration
which spectacle of arrogance and collusion
is reminiscent of ancient Rome’s dissolution 
Copyright © 2019 Trifoglio   
 
 
 
 

 Ferrying a restless current
thinking “Was what it was, is what it is”
 she recalls the spring of her years 
 when, in 1970, heads turned all over Manhattan
every time she made her way
on Lenox Avenue, Fifth Avenue
and the West Village 
  
Gone are the days
when she greeted the sons and daughters 
of students she once taught
ballet lessons with Maestro Odukudovsky
infusing Martha Graham’s technique with Mother Africa's vibe 
having her say on David Susskind's Show
and rebuffing the flattery of tired brothers
whose off-key words lacked a proper tonality
  
The moments stream through her memory
as sympathetic understanding 
brings this insight:
"The most painful tears are not those that flow 
from the eyes and cover the face
but the ones that fall from the heart and cover the soul"

She meditates
on her fallings and risings along the way
and tells herself 
the given descriptions
of her Cancerian personality
 were/are a just combination of zodiacal fours, fives, and thirteens
neither the account of her legendary career
nor the autobiography of her regal days  
Copyright © 2024 Trifoglio 
   

When you leave Leland House
and follow your heart south to Florida
the soil of your birth
I wish you high joy on seeing flesh of your flesh

You sang in the Chocolate Factory
that Sunday afternoon, May 1998
it was an experience I shall not soon forget

Your clear, soaring tones
were as satisfying as cool well water on a summer's day
evocative of lone windmill palms 
swaying in praise of soft breezes and ocean waves

I wish that the Floridian sun shines on you 365/12
that each morning be dedicated to keeping
faith with Great Mother Spirit 
that the subtropical environment stimulates
songs of witness, sincerity and truth in your heart
so the home folks may hear, as I did
the beauty of your voice

When your way becomes difficult
and doubt hinders your ability to cope
breathe in deeply,
bide your time through anxiety
keep the faith 
and send up a prayer to the Creator of we
Copyright © 2019 Trifoglio 

(Peggy Campbell is Native American. She was a resident at
 Leland House while I was employed there, and a member 
of ACT UP; an international grassroots political group working 
to end the AIDS pandemic during the ninth decade 
of the Twentieth Century.) 

 wouldn’t it be lovely—
 no top and no bottom roles
           but equality?
  
 wouldn’t it be lovely—
 no more haves and no have-nots
           but wide charity?
  
 wouldn’t it be lovely
no more race and no color
           but human beings all?
  
 wouldn’t it be lovely—
 no more us and no more them
           but same-cored folks all? 
  
 wouldn’t it be lovely—
 no lies, greed, hate, fear, war, bombs
           but sense and reason? 
   
 Copyright © 2012 Trifoglio 

 07.11.05
 The thrill I felt
 when I dreamed of becoming
 a grown-ass man
  
  
 07.13.05
 While you were sleeping
 your curled body tensed and jerked
 then day broke from night
  
 I slept not a wink
 “Let it be,” the voice counseled
 “You are not alone”
  
  
  07.27.05
 That old blonde heifer
 had neither the sense nor mind
 to cover her ass!
  
  
  09.27.04
 My favorite what?
 I don’t have one, I have two—
 They are green and blue
  
  
10.15.06 
 I did not find it
 and I looked everywhere
 down the long decades


11 March 2004
In conversation
 With the element below
 What commerce there be!
  
  
21 July 2004
Olive, black, brown, blue
 Garb of one who misses you
 And I really do
  
  
 26 July 2004
 The wind blows, trees dance
 A spread of fog envelops
 The Golden Gate Bridge
  
  
26 July 2004
Have some backbone, folks
 Stop beating around the Bush
 We have work to do!
  

Earlier today 
 while sweeping up pine needles
 I wondered anew 
  
  
And the tendency
 of my deep innermost self
 is to honor life


 10.06.2011      
 That staccato pull  
 of dap polyrhythmic beats
 penetrates deeply 


 07.28.05
 Between you and me
 the correspondence is dope
 let’s swing this feeling
  
 What we do and how
 is a matter of freedom
 let there be no name 

Copyright © 2019 Trifoglio 

  
 When routine no longer gives the reason
 When discipline and enthusiasm waver
 What gives meaning and flavor
   To days of rising, becoming, dreaming? 

Copyright © 2018 Trifoglio