Action Réfugiés Montréal

There is no entry fee for Sunday Jazz – however donations are received. Donations go evenly to defray the cost of the jazz series and to Action Réfugiés Montréal. This clip will give you more of a sense of the work of Action Réfugiés:

love

Our Jazz Vespers with Chad Linsley, held on February 6th of this year, had love as its theme (since the the vespers was held just in advance of Valentine’s day). Yes, love in the romantic/erotic sense, but also pushing to a broader and deeper account of love as expressed in the Christian narrative of God with his people – a love particularly expressed in the humble service of Jesus. Our reflections for the vespers were built around several poems by Micheal O’Siadhail, the Irish Gaelic poet to whom we have turned previously. The poems were taken from his recent collection, Love Life, in which he explores more than thirty years with his wife, his beloved. Here is one of the poems, entitled ‘Long Song’, with clear echoes of the ‘Song of Songs”:

 

Fragrance of your oils.
L’amour fou. Such sweet folly.
Your haunting presence
Distilled traces of perfume.
Resonances of voice
Dwell in my nervous body.
My skin wants to glow,
All of my being glistens.
Divine shining through.
Your lips like a crimson thread,
Your mouth is lovely…
You’re all beautiful, my love.
Honeyed obsession
Of unreasonable love.
Pleased, being pleased,
I caress this amplitude,
Eternal roundness.
Voluptuous golden ring.
Sap and juices sing
Eden’s long song in the veins.
Spirit into flesh.
The flesh into the spirit.
A garden fountain,
A well of living water,
Flowing streams from Lebanon.

jazz poetry

At the outset of our Jazz Vespers with May Cheung we read a poem by Creole scholar and poet Sybil Kein, formerly of the University of Michigan, now living in New Orleans. Professor Kein was and is a pioneering scholar of Creole culture and among her publications is a book of poetry entitled Gumbo People.

The poem I read, simply entitled Jazz, gives a real clear sense of the varied musical traditions that make up Jazz, and also a sense of the roots Jazz has in the gospel – in hope for a new world, a world of justice and hope. It is that theme of justice and hope that shaped the vespers reflections and prayers.

A couple of names from the poem that could helpfully be clarified:  Jelly Roll was an early (some say the first) jazz pianist and Satchmo is the nickname of the incomparable Louis Armstrong.

Jazz

            From Storyville, Vaudeville, Cabarets, and Tonks

            We played Blues, Marches, Spirituals, and Rags.

            And we laid down the burden of

            Massa, slave, and bastard.

            We laid it down in sassy syncopation.

            Old New Orleans danced with

            Quadrilles, Rhumbas, Shimmies, and Grinds

            We laid that burden down.

            Jassbo and Jassebelle,

            Congo drums and Creole songs,

            We laid that burden down.

            No need to study war no more;

            When those saints go marching,

            We will be in that number:

            Satchmo and Jelly Roll,

            The ebony and the ivory,

            Playing sweet harmony

            “One Mo’ Time”!

 

finding our muse

Micheal O’Siadhail is remarkable Irish poet whose poem ‘Madam’ provided a fitting introduction to our December 13th Jazz Vespers with Ranee Lee. In the poem O’Siadhail identifies madam jazz as his (our) muse – the one who supports and inspires him in art and life. In the context of Jazz Vespers, jazz similarly functions as a muse, supporting and inspiring our reflection about what it is to a human being alive in the world.

 

                Madam

 

          In the beginning the jazz. An uncontainable theme

          Spills out its tunes. Both whole and spendthrift

 

          As though full grows fuller. O insatiable Madam

          Of variations, self-fulfilling in your self-gift.

 

          Immensity of a theme just for a while unwombed

          In me. And small wonder our spoilt bodies bend

 

          Under its weight. Variations unique and subsumed;

          A music sustains us and brings us to our end.

 

          Chaos in order, order at the heart of chaos.

          Theme and overflow and all that sweeps between them.

         

          Spilling of contingency shape the ends of a theme.

          Nourish me, my jazz. Play this tune to its close.