{"id":1157,"date":"2012-12-30T14:30:24","date_gmt":"2012-12-30T19:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/?p=1157"},"modified":"2019-09-12T18:23:27","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T22:23:27","slug":"jayne-cortez-poet-activist-muse-of-the-avant-garde-dies-age-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2012\/12\/jayne-cortez-poet-activist-muse-of-the-avant-garde-dies-age-76.html","title":{"rendered":"Jayne Cortez — poet, activist, muse of the avant garde — dies, age 76"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"jayne\"<\/a>

Jayne Cortez – Atlanta Black Star<\/p><\/div>\n

Jayne Cortez, a no-nonsense poet<\/a> who\u00c2\u00a0often declaimed her incisive lines of vivid imagery<\/a> tying fierce social criticism to imperatives of personal responsibility with backing by her band the Firespitters,\u00c2\u00a0died Dec. 28 at age 76 (according to NYT obit<\/a>, 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"lynch\"<\/a>

one of the “Lynch Fragments”<\/p><\/div>\n

An activist<\/a> 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<\/a> 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,<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0Rhythm, repetition and pointed rhetoric characterize her poetry, as when she asked, “If the drum is a woman\/Why do you beat your woman?”<\/p>\n

\n

If the drum is a woman
\nthen understand your drum
\n. . . your drum is not invisible
\nyour drum is not inferior to you
\nyour drum is a woman
\nso don’t reject your drum
\ndon’t try to dominate your drum
\n. . . don’t be forced into the position
\nas an oppressor of drums
\nand make a drum tragedy of drums
\nif your drum is a woman
\ndon’t abuse your drum.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a>.” Sometime later, while writing\u00c2\u00a0Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz<\/em><\/a>, 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.”<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

howardmandel.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribe by Email or RSS<\/a><\/p>\n

All JBJ posts <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jayne Cortez, a no-nonsense poet who\u00c2\u00a0often declaimed her incisive lines of vivid imagery tying fierce social criticism to imperatives of personal responsibility with backing by her band the Firespitters,\u00c2\u00a0died 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1i3CL-iF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1225,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2013\/02\/dr-donald-byrd-rip-jayne-cortez-memorial-photos.html","url_meta":{"origin":1157,"position":0},"title":"Dr. Donald Byrd, RIP; Jayne Cortez memorial photos","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"February 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Dr. Donald Byrd was a trumpeter with an ear for the vernacular and fresh talent.\u00c2\u00a0Jayne Cortez was a radical poet -- both esthetically and personally. Butch Morris was a jazz cornetist, composer, conductor and\u00c2\u00a0conductioner. Let's celebrate the lives and creativity of all three. Strangely,\u00c2\u00a0reports by a nephew of Byrd's death\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"Singer","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Singer-300x199.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":79,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/03\/political_poetry_in_bedstuy.html","url_meta":{"origin":1157,"position":1},"title":"Political poetry in Bed-Stuy","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"March 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\"They want the oil\/but they don't want the people,\" Jayne Cortez declaimed over and over again, her inflections expressing frank assessment, sheer disbelief, scathing cynicism and many nuances in between, without ever stipulating who \"they\" or \"the people\" are. She didn't have to, we all knew. It was Saturday night\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2609,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2019\/07\/transcending-toxic-times-with-street-poetry-music.html","url_meta":{"origin":1157,"position":2},"title":"Transcending Toxic Times with street poetry & music","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"July 10, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"My DownBeat article about Transcending Toxic Times, the compulsively listenable, critically political album by the Last Poets produced by electric bassist\/composer Jamaaladeen Tacuma, includes a lot of quotes from my interviews with him and poet Abiudon Oyewale. from left: Baba Donn Babatunde, Jamaaaladeen Tacuma (in front), Umar Bin Hassan, Abiodun\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jamaaladeen-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jamaaladeen-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jamaaladeen-1.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1273,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2013\/03\/happy-birthday-83-and-82-ornette-coleman.html","url_meta":{"origin":1157,"position":3},"title":"Happy birthday 83 — and 82 — Ornette Coleman","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"March 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Ornette Coleman turns 83 today -- and is celebrating it privately. That's unusual, as he has thrown great parties, often full of live music (at his former Harlem Studio and one year at Joe's Pub), always attended by fabulously interesting people -- like the one last year for his 82nd\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"ornettecakemini","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/ornettecakemini.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1606,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2014\/05\/celebrating-ornette-from-philly-in-photos.html","url_meta":{"origin":1157,"position":4},"title":"Celebrating Ornette! from Philly, in photos","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"May 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Ornette Coleman recognizes beauty everywhere and in everyone.","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/ornette-portrait-santa-e1398543336666.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":303,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2010\/03\/happy_birthday_ornette_roots_a.html","url_meta":{"origin":1157,"position":5},"title":"Happy Birthday Ornette Coleman, roots avant-gardist","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"March 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Composer, conceptualist and multi-instrumentalist Ornette Coleman, b. March 9 1930, is widely known for \"free jazz\" -- which is routinely depicted as the most abstract and daunting music to emerge from the U.S. But this overlooks Ornette's deep roots in blues from the Southwest and his fealty to the freedom\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}