Too Much Sake

Although much of hard bop and the funky soul-jazz typical of Horace Silver's zenith in the 1950s and 1960s was formulaic, Silver's quintet represented the best of it. Funky, hard-driving rhythms met with endlessly addictive wailing horns and Silver's playful piano improvisations. While this particular gem does not sound "Japanese," like some of the other pieces from The Tokyo Blues, it's evocative of a mood and place. 

Chances Are

Heard this gem via the new Miles Davis documentary. Frances Taylor, who knew little about jazz before her relationship with Miles, mentions liking Johnny Mathis. With songs like "Chances Are," one can understand why she enjoyed Mathis's music.

Lucian of Samosata's A True Story

Enjoy a short video on an ancient science fiction story. This story has everything, including space travel, extraterrestrials, and wonder. 

Aethiopica

Helidorus of Emesa's An Ethiopian Romance is an enthralling read from the ancient world. Telling the story of the "white" Ethiopian Charicleia and her love, Theagenes, a Greek, it features a series of ordeals and tribulations that finally culminates in their matrimonial union in Meroe, capital of the "Ethiopians" (in this case, really the Kushites or Nubians). Divine intervention and fate see to it that Theagenes and Charicleia's foreseen union comes to fruition. But along the way they survive pirates in the Mediterranean, bandits in the Nile Delta, and machinations of foes and others in Delphi, Memphis, and, most dramatically, in Meroe where Charicleia's royal parents reunite with their lost progeny. Much of the novel actually consists of various characters explaining their backgrounds in long dialogues. For instance, Calasiris, the Egyptian high priest of Memphis, tells Cnemnon of his past travels and travails in a long conversation inside the home of Nausicles, a Greek merchant of Naukratis.

The most intriguing aspect of this novel to this blog, however, is its possible influence on Pauline Hopkins and the hidden city of Telassar in Of One Blood. In Hopkins's novel, the descendants of Meroe have established a utopian hidden city, but one in which monotheism appears to be the dominant faith. Nonetheless, her utopian ancient black civilization must owe something to the fabulous and utopian "Ethiopia" of Helidorus. Indeed, there are even similarities between the main characters: Reuel and Charicleia both possess birthmarks that prove their royal heritage and rightful place on the throne. 

Moreover, like Reuel, Charicleia is also "fair-skinned" and "passing" as "white" to those around her. Yet each are bound by ancestry and destiny to return to Ethiopia, although divine providence in the imagination of Hopkins is decidedly Christian. Both Charicleia and Reuell are also endowed with special abilities or powers. The former possesses a gem that protects her from fire while Reuel's mastery of mesmerism and the occult allow him to "raise the dead" (something also accomplished by an Egyptian mother who uses sorcery to force her deceased son to speak). Perhaps even the "hoodoo" and Vodou elements in the Hopkins novel have their equivalent in the "science" of Calasiris and other Egyptian characters, as well as the constant presence of the deities in dreams, visitations, and temple offerings. 

In addition to the parallels between Reuel and Charicleia, the dichotomy of a wondrous, noble Ethiopia ruled by a benevolent king versus the tyranny of the Persian empire suggests another similarity between the novels: "Ethiopia" as a utopian alternative to the oppressive central power of the day. In Hopkins time, African Americans faced an oppressive empire in the form of US Jim Crow while Africa was carved into European colonies. "Ethiopia" as utopia is biblical prophecy in the Ethiopianism of Hopkins, but it also reaches back into pre-Christian Greek notions of Ethiopia as "blameless" or ideal. It's exotic, remote, attributed with the origins of the Nile and Egypt (Calasiris himself studied in Ethiopia), and led by a wise and judicious monarch.

The gymnosophists consulted by Hydaspes may have been inspired by India, but they bring to mind the council consulted by Reuel in Of One Blood, and through their wisdom human sacrifice in Meroe is terminated. In short, the rulers of Meroe are wise, generous, and the ideal leaders. Their Ethiopia is filled with emeralds, gold, African fauna, exotic spices, and access to the luxuries of India and Arabia. Even the Greeks must recognize this African civilization's grandeur as exoticism meets utopia in Helidorus's eyes. Hopkins was surely influenced by this perception of ancient Ethiopia and, reinterpreting it through the lens of African American Ethiopianist rhetoric, modernized it as a redemptive tale for Black America. Tellasar, with the return of its king, will become Ethiopia stretching her hands unto God. 

The Intuitionist

Whitehead's The Intuitionist is something else! Who would have thought a book about elevator inspectors set in an alternative New York City of the Jim Crow era would be so compelling? Blending, in his own unique way, of course, Ishmael Reed and Pynchon, this speculative novel uses the metaphor of elevators to describe the conditions of African Americans. Intuitionism, a successor of sorts to Jes Grew, is the competing ideology of elevator inspection that challenges Empiricism, a "white" system of thought that requires actual examination of an elevator. 

Intuitionism, founded by Fulton, is the new thing on the block that threatens the hegemony of the Empiricists in the Guild (for elevator inspectors) and may hold the secrets to a new, utopian black box which will revolutionize vertical technology. Said elevator will make the cities of the day obsolete, and pave the way for a radically new form of urban modernity. Needless to say, said technology would appeal greatly to African Americans, especially in an era when the vast majority faced nearly insurmountable obstacles to progress, North or South. 

Combining elements of speculative fiction and detective fiction, the novel's protagonist, Lila Mae Watson, must figure out her place in these changing times and if an elevator she inspected was sabotaged. Along the way, the reader is entertained by shifts in perspective and blending of fact and fiction to elucidate the history of elevators and their importance in this alternate reality. Much like Papa LaBas in Mumbo Jumbo, Lila Mae has to locate the "text" which will determine the future of the race. A fascinating and suspenseful thriller that is both about and not about elevators. 

Star Time

"Star Time" is an excellent gem from Sun Ra's Chicago years. It's a quirky big band-styled jazz composition that, quite literally, seems to be shooting toward the stars. One can also easily detect Sun Ra's high regard for the big bands as producing beauty through discipline. Perhaps Pharaoh is not so bad.

Meroe in the Black Literary Imagination

Professor Aljoe speaks on the influence of Meroe in Of One Blood by Pauline Hopkins. Reading Hopkins has actually inspired me to seek Helidorus's An Ethiopian Romance for a much older example of Meroe in novelistic form. "Ethiopia" as a utopian, romantic or exalted place in the ancient Greek imagination must have influenced Hopkins.

Le Vaudou en Haiti

Milo Rigaud responding to a series of questions on the nature of Haitian Vodou as an ancestral cult touching on a number of its various aspects.