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Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Jayne Cortez — poet, activist, muse of the avant garde — dies, age 76

December 30, 2012 by Howard Mandel

jayne

Jayne Cortez – Atlanta Black Star

Jayne Cortez, a no-nonsense poet who often declaimed her incisive lines of vivid imagery tying fierce social criticism to imperatives of personal responsibility with backing by her band the Firespitters, died Dec. 28 at age 76 (according to NYT obit, age 78). Her deep appreciation of American blues and jazz was another of her constant themes; her son Denardo Coleman played drums in the Firespitters, with whom she recorded six albums.

lynch

one of the “Lynch Fragments”

An activist in the Civil Rights movement, organizer of Watts writing and drama workshops, founder of the Watts Repertory Theater, Bola Press and co-founder of the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, Ms. Cortez was also taught at Rutgers, Howard, Wesleyan and Eastern Michigan universities, Dartmouth and Queens colleges and was a muse to the avant garde. Her husband sculptor Melvin Edwards is well known for his series “Lynch Fragments” and “Rockers.” When Ms. Cortez was a teenager in California, musicians including Don Cherry hung out at her family’s home because she had (as Cherry said) “the best record collection,” and through them she met Ornette Coleman, to whom she was married from 1954 to ’64 and with whom she kept in contact. Members of the Firespitters such as guitarist Bern Nix and bassist Jamaaldeen Tacuma, besides Denardo, played in Ornette’s electrically amplified band Prime Time.

Born in Arizon, raised in Los Angeles, Ms. Cortez was drawn to the arts at an early age. She painted and played cello besides keeping journals, graduated from an arts high school but was unable to go to college due to financial problems. She is sometimes said to have inspired Coleman’s composition “Lonely Woman,” originally titled “Angry Woman” — but the adjectives that seem (in my limited experience) to best describe Jayne Cortez are independent, inquisitive, precise and determined. Rhythm, repetition and pointed rhetoric characterize her poetry, as when she asked, “If the drum is a woman/Why do you beat your woman?”

If the drum is a woman
then understand your drum
. . . your drum is not invisible
your drum is not inferior to you
your drum is a woman
so don’t reject your drum
don’t try to dominate your drum
. . . don’t be forced into the position
as an oppressor of drums
and make a drum tragedy of drums
if your drum is a woman
don’t abuse your drum.

In 2000, I was honored to be invited by Jayne Cortez to sit on a panel for an international symposium she was helping to organize at New York University titled “Slave Routes: The Long Memory.” Sometime later, while writing Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz, I ran into her coming out a Manhattan drug store and we chatted briefly. I mentioned that my topic was the avant-garde, and she immediately responded that “the avant-garde is that in art which didn’t exist before. It’s always hard to introduce, because the avant-garde has to make a place for itself where there wasn’t one, where there wasn’t anything.”

Deeper, deeper, deeper/Higher, higher, higher. Always reaching and urging us to, too, intending encouragement as much as challenge. Thanks, Jayne Cortez, for ideas, spirit, words and music.

howardmandel.com

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Comments

  1. mediasanctuary says

    December 30, 2012 at 5:00 pm

    She will be missed.

    Jayne Cortez “Find Your Own Voice”

  2. John Litweiler says

    December 30, 2012 at 7:48 pm

    Thanks, Howard. Jayne Cortez was special.

  3. Martin Z Kasdan Jr says

    December 30, 2012 at 10:29 pm

    Thank you for posting this. It’s a fine complement to the NPR obituary.

  4. Martin Mueller says

    December 31, 2012 at 11:53 am

    Thanks Howard, an amazing human being. Where are such voices today? Has our musical community lost this social legacy?

    • Howard Mandel says

      December 31, 2012 at 11:59 am

      Hi Martin — I trust voices such as Jayne’s exist and will eventually arise from our creative community, but of course we must create and protect the platforms through which they can be heard. Something to work on in 2013!

  5. Sonny San Juan says

    December 31, 2012 at 2:50 pm

    Wonderful poet, woman-fighter, revolutionary! Ave atque vale, Comrade Jayne! We, comrades from the Philippines, love you as a fellow-fighter and revolutionary!

Trackbacks

  1. AlYoung.org » Blog Archive » JAYNE CORTEZ (May 10, 1936–December 28, 2012) | In Memoriam says:
    January 3, 2013 at 1:15 am

    […] Read Howard Mandel’s affectionate tribute to Jayne Cortez at Jazz Beyond Jazz […]

  2. Jayne Cortez Dies: Poet And Activist Passes Away At 78 says:
    January 5, 2013 at 6:23 pm

    […] to the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, Cortez died of heart failure in New York on December 28. Cortez was a founder of the group, and at the time of her death was planning a symposium of women […]

Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

About Jazz Beyond Jazz

What if there's more to jazz than you suppose? What if jazz demolishes suppositions and breaks all bounds? What if jazz - and the jazz beyond, behind, under and around jazz - could enrich your life? What if jazz is the subtle, insightful, stylish, … [Read More...]

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