International poet and editor Changming Yuan reveals other aspects of music in his poems: "Jazz on the Animal Farm," "Jazz Impromptu for Allen and George Yuan," and "The Harpist and His Audience." The last poem, in fact, takes us out of jazz and into world music itself. I think that you will enjoy seeing jazz in context. Even though my father is a big fan of Dixieland jazz and used to play tapes of the Dukes of Dixieland on our road trips, I had forgotten that jazz was once rural or at least drew on rural roots.
Jazz on the Animal Farm
Buzz!
Baa! Bark! Bray! Bow-wow!
Chirp!
Cluck! Coo! Croak!
Growl!
Hiss! Howl!
Moo!
Meow!
Oink!
Purr!
Quack!
Rattle!
Roar!
Slurp!
Sniff! Squeal!
Tweet!
Woof!
Yap!
Shh !
Who’s winning the vote
On
the animal farm?
There
is often such a time when you, a tone-deaf
Would
want to sing aloud to yourself, a song
That
everyone else might also love to sing; the song
Whose
lines you never remember, nor can you
Control
your pitch as it rises and falls randomly
On
its own, nor will you keep the tune on the
Right
track; the song whose rhythm you do not
Care
to follow, while lost in your little privacy
The
song that has an evasive melody
Deeply
encoded in your heart
Although
you sound like a duck or donkey
Your
voice is full of euphonies
more than two
thousand earthly revolutions ago
somewhere on the
other side of this new world
a horizontal harpist
named bo ziya
burned his bare but
beloved instrument
and never sang to
any more human ear
upon hearing the
news of zhong ziqi’s death
the only one who
understands and loves his music
even until now
As it turns out, there is a jazz harpist, Dorothy Ashby (1930-1986).
Here are some YouTube videos of her work. As you can imagine from these videos in chronological order, the songs she covered and her style changed radically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwCQZa03MbA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwCQZa03MbA
She also played the koto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl9g10DSQGs
I also want to include videos of Chinese harpists:
And, of course, Livery Stable Blues and a little Dukes of Dixieland for traveling music!
Changming Yuan, an 8-time Pushcart nominee, grew up in a remote village, began to learn English at 19, and published several monographs before leaving China. With a PhD in English, Yuan currently tutors and co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver. Since mid-2005, Yuan’s poetry has appeared in nearly 900 literary publications across 30 countries, which include Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry (2009;12;14), BestNewPoemsOnline and
Links to his websites, including the journal Poetry Pacific are below:
You may also enjoy poet and editor Russell Streur's photographs at Poetry Pacific:
There is still time to enter the contest!
For the other poems that I have published, see the link for Dr. Michael Anthony Ingram's "Billie in the Morning": http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2014/07/billie-in-morning.html
At that entry, scroll down to the bottom for the other poems (Joan McNerney's "Jazz," Avis D. Matthews' "Metaphorical," H.R. Holt's "Mehliana exorcism," Ed Schelb's "Blue Logic," and several ingenuous poems by the dynamic Felino A. Soriano).
I hope that today's entry with its links inspired you!
thanks so much and happy editing, dear Marianne! -changming
ReplyDeleteThank you, Changming :) Good luck with all of your projects!
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