I awakened this morning to the news that Israel "Cachao" Lopez left us last night at the age of 89. In many ways Cachao influenced more modern music than almost anyone-- Without him there would not have been mambo, the music of the Latin jazz artists of the 40’s and 50’s, or salsa of the 70’s onward. I owe a personal debt to Cachao, for it was his son-mambo-jazz descarga that most affected the freestyle performances of Urbanos. So, today we must say farewell. He will be missed by generations of artists playing today.

Politics occupies my awareness, suddenly shoved aside by tiny headline... Impossible to interpret exactly-- The passing of a friend? family? guru? ghost? Sometimes as real as my own father. Other times as distant, dream-like as a legend, a shaman, a mythic seer. 32 years a part of every day, then quietly gone in peaceful sleep. Nothing to do. Meditate for goodbye. Om mani padme om.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g9MUBXBQ5Si28xQHK_ZYDxoA48xQD8UKGKJ81

Just added Tim Brickley to my Friends list. Tim, like myself, came out to play solo at a rally marking the 3rd anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. This reminded me it has been two years since then, and the 5th anniversary is this March. Asked to play, read a poem, and speak briefly, I used my time to emphasize that Iraq is not a Democrat-Republican issue, pointing out that the Vietnam War lasted through four presidents, two from each party. I suggested it was a mistake to blame only Republicans when a huge number of Democrats covered their political butts voting to authorize the invasion. The gist of my spiel was simple-- Iraq is all about economics, petroleum-based civilization, and maintaining and expanding the American empire. This reality will remain, as will the sacrifice of American youth and the devastation of Iraq, no matter what happens in the fall elections. It will continue unless, and only if we make it clear that a pledge to withdraw our invading army from Iraq is an absolute requirement for our votes. This means no "lesser of two evils" votes, no begrudged support of Senate, Congressional or Presidential candidates who dance around the issue or obfuscate their intentions with evasive rhetoric-- Talk of stabilizating Iraq, building Iraqi security forces, or protecting American interests are all excuses for keeping tens of thousands of our soldiers on the ground in Iraq for many more years. The only platform acceptable to us, the voters, must be immediate withdrawal.

Now... What has that to do with the musicians, writers and artists who mostly populate this site? Perhaps its time for us to begin to organize concerts/performances/rallies to mark the coming 5th anniversary, to write and publish and call others to a renewed determined resistance to the war, to an insistence on immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq. As a musician and poet, I would gladly participate in any concert event that could help draw attention to this posture. In this way we might just bring the attention of voters back onto Iraq in advance of the fall elections.

Odean Pope at the Blue Note, 1-2-3
(NYC; 12/13/04)



Saxophone Choir


Wall o' saxophone,
Odean reed fat scat honk,
squeezin' eighths.

Gaggle o' saxes spit
sizzlin' sixteenths, squeal
shredding syllogisms,
blowing bop
dialectic.



Terrestrial Naima Jive Song For Sis 1-2-3

1.

Sirocco swirling twilight
desert echo Bedouin
night camel glide
dune sail sand sea wind,
starlight piano key
kind a' purple
sky bass line
caravan white
robes float blown sand
drift...

2.

Indus Valley west
Morocco Naima 2k
dumbek beat now, then
fuse_flow_fly
Sahara bop choir sings
Marrakech market mellow
midday.

3.

Jumpin' Jive, room
alive!
Brecker blows sunset
cool moon rising,
street teeming bazaar...
Tune For Sis rich
Persian weave Basie
ballad passion Duke
nod and wink to
Dizzy pork fat
Manteca morphed,
cous cous and kabob,
Chano's tumbao turned
tam! tam! Tangier
dumbek,
Brecker bleating
sacrificial lamb dancing
Sufi swirling echo,
village street beat,
double-shot snare,
wind whirling
around and around,
'round an' round'
past midnight.

Mambo Urbano



Mambo is
a street beat,
the rat-tat-tat rain
on a tin roof shack,
the swoosh of a wave,
monsoon wind
through wispy willows,
a Gulf Coast shore line...

Mambo is
the boom-boom-boom
bembe beating drum call,
a Dixieland cornet,
Congo Square Black Creole
Mardi Gras Indians,
second line dancing,
the echo of a jungle call
and answer...

Mambo is
Octaroon Jonconnu Trenchtown
redemption songs,
the clackety-clack chink-a-chink
Sao Paolo cable car creeping
steep samba hills,
Carnaval streets teeming
ten thousand bodies bouncing and
the bum-bum-bum badum-bum
bossa beat and bustle of a
Rio night bohemian cafe
thick Bahia twilight mystery
en la madrugada...

Mambo is
La Bodeguita del Media Havana moon,
dockside rumba ritmo,
bawdy bard decima duels,
calling and answering,
boasting and bantering,
beating
from Alhambra
from Santiago de Cuba,
Oriente son and sea meet
montuno Yoruba beat,
cool street and
jungle heat
in the pulse
of mambo...

Mambo is
calloused hands
on smooth skin djembe,
worn sticks striking
hollow logs of history,
rant-a-tang cowbells,
a hundred pan drummers
Trini Fete Jump up! Jump up!
Tuve morning come
Candomble Espirite Brasile,
pocomania downtown
sidewalk Santeros,
tenement saints,
like drumming in the walls
like drumming in the halls
of Harlem and Queens
Port au Prince and New Orleans,
like saxophone sounding
sweet home Southside Chicago,
A Capella singing on
a South Philly stoop,
talking drum whispering,
"a whoop, a whoop",
reed flute whistling
crisp Andean heights,
the ghost of a poet
outside City Lights,
a Salvadoran revolucionista
whose song is conviction,
Jose Marti in Nueva York,
his guajira a longing,
Cardenal en Nicaragua,
his poem revelation,
his sermon revolution...

Mambo is
like rivers that flow
from mountain streams,
restlessly downward
through towering redwoods,
bold balboa,
past Buddha bodhi tree
and blackberry bushes,
past morning doves cooing
in marshland bulrushes,
like the catch-a-chatch chop of
a cane cutter's clave...

Mambo is
the river that flows
through empty hamlets and
half sleeping towns,
silently slipping through
sanitized suburbs
of manicured lawns,
past cold granite court houses
in old town squares,
past playgrounds
the rhythm of innocent laughter,
past parking lot dances
of tires and glass and plastic and metal,
past white-washed warehouse echoes
the songs of fork lift whine
and diesel truck rumble,
through factory gates
that swing like pendulums
under Golgotha smokestacks,
through rust iron rail yards,
under long swaying bridges,
through smoldering barrio
simmering tropic hood,
under 'L tracks and trains
through forests towering
steel and glass...

Mambo is
just down the street,
the pulse and the beat,
tap-tapping feet,
the funky and sweet,
Azucar! Sabroso!
and Roque singing of
"La Augusta Dame de la Clase Media"
of "Buses Urbanos",
and Pablo singing
of poems that rise
from rushing waters,
Papa Hemingway singing
an old man and the sea,
Machito singing
all night Mambo Cubano,
La Señora Celia singing
life as a carnival,
Willie Colon
singing sizzling salsa,
even Allen singing
his saintly locomotive sunflower
singing sutras of midnight jazz,
of beatitudes and bohos,
of painters and prophets,
poesia and pain,
of black cat blues
and hot steam asphalt,
of August rains
and mountain streams,
of cities
of streets
of rhythm
of dance
of the beat
of a taxicab horn
of streetcar rattles
of power line hums
of claves
of maracas
of guiro
of congas
of voices
of rumba
of guaguanco
of bomba
of changui
of son
of mambo
of mambo
of Mambo Urbano.



first printing,
The Caribbean Writer, Vol. 19, July/August, 2005