Here is my secret for living in DC. You do not find it in the gestalt, staring at the monuments. There are weird little pockets all over where you can see a new thing every day until you die. Baltimore is exactly the same way. I spent from 2015 until 2024 finding out what DC and the burbs were like- now I am relaxing into the vibe of the Chesapeake Bay. Washington is about the image. Baltimore is about the land.
I’m a Virgo, an earth sign. I will always choose the land.
For instance, feeling too hyped up to go home after seeing Jason Moran at the Kennedy Center a few years ago. I decided to get lost on purpose and I walked from the Lincoln Memorial up to the Zoo. The best thing I’ve randomly found on the street were jazz clubs on U. I did not know they were there and my face lit up, because that is not just a jazz club, that is a time machine back to Maynard Ferguson, Dizzy Gillespie, and club soda with lime because I was underage.
Dizzy Gillespie signed my Arban book, and I probably still have it somewhere at my dad’s house. The Arban book is the book that all trumpet players start with, and I thought he would think it was funny. That book gives us all the shakes. Indeed, he laughed very hard as he was writing.
But it’s through those small jazz clubs that I meet local musicians, the ones that are superb and yet no one knows their names. I used to be one, I’m just not anymore. I gave up trumpet a long time ago because it causes physical pain. My embouchure is just not what it was, so I enjoy singing now.
But when you hang with no name jazz clubs, you meet the people you want to meet. The ones where meeting Robert Glasper is not a big deal because they played together three gigs ago. Same for Jason. I am not about performance, and I don’t like “fans,” whether they’re mine or someone else’s. I do not worship Beyonce, though I think she’s great. I wish we could go for coffee because she got to PVA the semester after I left and I want to hear her stories, particularly because we both had Mr. Seible, her at school and me at church (Bering UMC).
The way I relate to musicians is that I’ve met big names, but first of all I met them 30 years before they were big names and second of all, I was a musician myself. No matter whether you make $50 a gig or $50,000 you understand the culture. Jazz at HSPVA was not just “being in a band.” It was a kiln. Jason Moran and Robert Glasper are the best of us…. but they’re not the only names. They are the only names that were there at the same time as me. Doc Morgan’s legacy is hundreds of musicians that made it, and hundreds of jazz fans who are willing to shell out real money…… because I personally do not want to go out on the road and I understand that it takes money to do it. Not every person who goes to HSPVA chooses gig culture, and I didn’t want it as a trumpet player or a singer. I do believe I was capable, however. I just didn’t hone my talent in the right direction.
Trumpet was a lost cause, and my voice training went rapidly. I went the wrong direction and it’s okay. I can still train in church programs because that is the place where I excel the most. It’s not about performance, it’s about community. And in fact, that’s what gives Glasper’s music such a feeling of home for me. The first “Black Radio” album is not just an album to me. It is a worship service. Glasper and I were both raised in the church, but our influences are different because white church and Black church are not the same denominations or culture. They’re not even the same system of governance. But what they do provide in musicians, white or Black, is that feeling of presence. The “we are gathered here in the presence of something greater than ourselves” aspect whether Christian or secular. Robert is a master at it, and “Black Radio” is my “dearly Beloved….”
Back to you, Bob. Let’s go to the phones.
Jason graduated and I transferred to Clements, but Robert was still there when Beyonce was. That’s the throughline and how I know these absolute stars as regular people and not gods walking the earth. My ultimate fantasy meeting is having Robert as the “person I already know” in the group and going to Frenchy’s or Brasil (depending on vibe) with everyone- but let’s add Lizzo because I do not know her and want to. She did not go to HSPVA, but she did grow up in the area and went to TSU. Lizzo comes from our lineage, and I’m not exalting myself. Just naming the fact that I am old as dirt and Lizzo is not.
The vibe is not “let me fangirl all over you.” It’s “we’ve all done Midtown and Third Ward separately since we were children. Let’s hang together.” I want to know things, like whether Lizzo lived on campus at TSU or drove in from the burbs every day. We can absolutely connect on the horror that is marching band in the Houston heat. It’s fun, but Christ on a cracker.
I owe everything I am as a marching band member to Crystal Light. It is the joke that is not a joke. Lemonade kept me regulated in the heat. THANK YOU.
But here is where my path really diverged from Jason, Beyonce, and Robert:
When I transferred to Clements, not all of my credits counted toward their degree plans, and I had to improvise my senior year. I took Microcomputer Applications in order to get an Advanced Diploma. It lit my fire for the hacker aesthetic, and I gravitated toward it like white on rice…. being clear that a hacker just means “likes to figure things out,” not “has malicious intent.” That is a cracker, and I cannot even program. In order to hack into the Pentagon, I would have to start at “Hello, World.” The United States government is not worth that kind of time. I have things to do.
What does interest me is reading about other people’s legitimate hacking projects or watching them on YouTube. For instance, learning how to lock down my home network, and learning how to admin the increasingly prevalent Internet of Things (ioT). My interest is not in breaking into anything, but in using my Raspberry Pi to run my life and keeping other people out of it. I write enough here to provide a complete picture. No one needs more than this, and that is a mantra.
My education did not go to waste at HSPVA because even as a writer, I think like a jazz musician. My entries are obviously improvisational, every stream-of-consciousness entry equivalent to a solo. I think of Aada and Tiina as my bandmates, the ones who have shaped my writing the most (in addition to Dana, but that was many years ago). Jazz is not just having played with big names in my youth, it is my entire operating system.
It’s the improvisational nature of my mind and essential to my worldview because jazz history is Black history. Therefore, I am by no means an expert on Black history and would not presume to say so. But what being a white jazz musician gives you is an awareness of what is happening in the room racially that other people might not notice…. not out of malice, but because for me, learning jazz was growing up in Black spaces. It’s an awareness that is not taught to most white children.
HSPVA and Summer Jazz Workshop during the week led to James Cone and Howard Thurman on the weekends….. along with learning that queer people are also among the disinherited and tapping into liberation theology even stronger. Bayard Rustin was the throughline to Black people teaching queer people how to survive politically- not that there aren’t Black queer people, but that is where intersectionality with white protestors lined up.
It is barbaric that there is racism in the queer community, and among women as well. It has long been a complaint that the political organizing behind queer people and feminists is too white, and I agree with that assessment. It is an ingratitude- steal the political playbook that worked for Black people, then ignore what they need when you use it.
That math will never math.
These days, the political climate is so harsh that I find myself focusing on music. Aada and Tiina make my heart feel so light and pure that I tend to put on songs that are full of life. We may not be talking every single day like we used to, but they’re definitely in the car when I’m rolling around Baltimore….. metaphysically speaking, of course. Don’t make it weird.
The one that makes me smile right now is “Play That Song” by Train. It’s built on “Heart and Soul,” therefore it is just about at my level of complexity should Aada and I decide to play it (I do not know if Tiina plays the piano.). The feeling I get from the song is just euphoric, and the walking bass could have been mixed a lot louder, according to me.
So this is for my girls, who make me feel invincible.
Stories That Are All True 