{"id":2609,"date":"2019-07-10T14:50:52","date_gmt":"2019-07-10T18:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/?p=2609"},"modified":"2019-07-10T14:51:01","modified_gmt":"2019-07-10T18:51:01","slug":"transcending-toxic-times-with-street-poetry-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2019\/07\/transcending-toxic-times-with-street-poetry-music.html","title":{"rendered":"Transcending Toxic Times with street poetry & music"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My DownBeat article about <\/a>Transcending Toxic Times<\/a>,<\/em> 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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from left: Baba Donn Babatunde, Jamaaaladeen Tacuma (in front), Umar Bin Hassan, Abiodun Oyewole<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I reproduced some of the searing imagery\/lyrics on the recording, and provided background on how these men have been calling out American mendacy and hypocrity for half-a-century, as black street seers emerging in the late 1960s — before poetry jams, signifyin’ djs or rappers — backed by African-American percussion. But there’s more to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jamaaladeen Tacuma at Ornette Coleman’s birthday party;
photo by S\u00c3\u00a1nta Istv\u00c3\u00a1n Csaba<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Firstly: Tacuma, who positions the declamatory truths amid truly music, often ebullient and genre-defying settings performed by his core collaborators, most of whom are Philadelphians, may still be best known for adding profound buoyancy to my hero Ornette Coleman<\/a>‘s electrically amplified band Prime Time. But he’s been a recording artist under his own name since an inspired string of 1980s albums for Gramavision (now only Renaissance Man<\/em><\/a>, second of five, is available as an import, but it’s a good one). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He’s backed vocalists from Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez to Nona Hendrix, and recorded with James “Blood” Ulmer, Vernon Reid, Marc Ribot, Derek Bailey, Kip Hanrahan, Jerry Gonzalez, John Zorn and Arto Lindsay among a host of others. But when Jamaaladeen was working with Prime Time, he was simultaneously grounding poet Jayne Cortez’s unique Fire Spitters<\/a><\/em> (with other Prime Time members including Ornette and Jayne’s son Denardo and the late guitarist Bern Nix). Cortez’s fierce declamations and clear-eyed perspective had a major impact on the bassist at a young age, and initiated his interests in creating music in interplay with words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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