Our series of conversations with African American jazz presenters and entrepreneurs last time took us to Brooklyn, NY, via our ongoing research project for the Weeksville Heritage Center (718/756-5250; www.weeksvillesociety.org for more information). In part two of our dialogue with the Brooklyn sage Jitu Weusi we examine the development of the East cultural center, a sadly defunct font of African American culture, education,  jazz music, and pure black energy & spirit.  In part the East grew out of the notorious Brooklyn empowerment struggle of the Oceanhill-Brownsville incident in which African Americans sought to take more control over schools and education curriculum content in the community, which resulted in a bitter teacher’s union strike.  Major cornerstones of the East were the Uhuru Sasa school, a forerunner of the so-called charter schools movement of today, and a jazz concert series. 

How did you and your cohorts arrive at the develoment of The East?

Jitu Weusi

By 1968 we had founded a group called the African American Student Association.  The African American Student Association was comprised of young people 14-18.  I was the adult advisor to this group, I was about 28-29.  These young people were raising new stuff every day; raising new issues, new horizons, new visions, etc., every day.  In 1968 we had the Oceanhill-Brownsville controversy and I was in the middle of that, and that tended to stigmatize me: ‘he’s a troublemaker, he’s a radical, he’s this, he’s that…’  So I knew that my time in public education was not going to be too much longer.

In 1969 I was banned from the campus of Pratt Institute.  We were supposed to have a program there and the president banned me from the campus.  The man didn’t even know me!  He just issued an edict that if I set foot on the campus, the program would not be held.  So the young people said ‘we want to establish our own cultural center.’  So that summer and fall we had gotten ahold of this building at 10 Claver Place.  We cleaned out this building and began to restructure it as a cultural center.  We had a couple of meetings and we came up with the name East.  Basically that was a philosophical thing because we were dealing with Eastern values, as opposed to Western values.  That’s where the name came from, it came from our attraction to Eastern values that we felt were values that dealt with internal values, spiritual values.

What was the mission of the East?

The mission was to bring enlightenment to our people — recreational, philosophical…

So how did you work to achieve that mission?

Through a number of different things; one was through the entertainment that we provided.  Our opening performance was Leon Thomas, and from the very beginning our music was always radical.  HGary Bartz, Freddie Hubbard, Rahsaan Roland Kirk… our music was always out there.  Then one of the first things that we brought into the East was the bookstore.  We pushed reading, understanding, books, studying, and upliftment.  And then the next thing we brought in was a school: the Uhuru Sasa school became a vehicle for us educating young people and adults as well.  The East thing was always an upliftment of a mind, forging of a higher objective, a higher goal, a better person, and self-improvement.

Did you pretty much have seven days of activities at the East?

Seven days — almost 24 hours, because we did everything, and we learned everything.  We did everything on our own; we had a kitchen where we prepared food; we learned how to go to the market and deal with the market — vegetables, fruits, fish markets, meat markets… all those things.  That was part of the enlightenment that people learned was how to deal with all that.  People would come and tell us ‘man, I didn’t know nothin’ about all this stuff until I got involved with you guys…  Now I’m running this and I’m running that…’

Hod did people in the community come to be involved with the East?

It was a membership kind of thing and [members] had to make a total commitment.  If you worked at the East you didn’t make any money; we paid salaries like $100-200 a month, so you weren’t there because of money.  You had to live on whatever you made, how to survive, how to advance.  It was uncanny [but] people bought homes off $200 a month!  We provided things like schooling for [employee’s] youngsters, but people had cars…  People used to say ‘…damn, ya’ll don’t pay any money, but everybody around here looks like they’re well-off!’

Were you the director of the East from the start?

 Yes, I quit the [New York Public] school system in November 1969 to devote full time to the East.

I’m aware of at least two recordings related to the East: Pharoah Sanders’ Live at The East (Impulse!), and the Mtume record Al-Ke-Bu-Lan (Strata East).  Were there any other recordings made there?

Not that I can remember.  We had music on [maximum] four nights a week: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  Some artists only wanted three nights, so we’d go Friday-Saturday-Sunday, or if they only wanted two nights we’d go Friday-Saturday.  We had no official policy, but unofficially the only people who came to the East were black people.  That’s not to say that an individual white person here or there did not come into the East, that would be erroneous.

Initially they didn’t pay us any mind, because [hypothetically-speaking], who was the East?  But after awhile, when the word started getting out that there was this place, that the musicians really played there, and you could hear the music, they [audience] didn’t do no talking, wasn’t no bottles clinking, wasn’t no noise… people were into the music, this was a serious place…  Then people started trying to come, people started coming… and we more or less had to inject that policy.

Was the school at the East — the Uhuru Sasa School — a regular k-12 school?

Yes, it was certified.  One of our elected officials, a state senator, came to the school one day and he said ‘…man, you’d better get this certified, because if you don’t get this [school] certified they’re going to close you down.  So he backed us up with the state Department of Education and he more or less guided us through a number of different situations with the state.

How did the East subsidize the school finanancially?

That was part of what the music did.  The music helped us to pay for running the school.  Take a typical Pharoah Sanders weekend: a Pharoah Sanders weekend meant a $5,000 weekend, which meant we could pay teachers’ salaries, we could buy food, we could do this, do that…

The musicians who played at the East were black musicians, and at least among the musicians you listed who played the East there’s a certain cultural consciousness.  In terms of how the musicians were compensated, is the East a place where the musicians would give you a break, where they might not have given the same fee break to some other venues around New York?

Everybody that played [the East] got paid, nobody played for free.  But they never charged us what they might have charged a Birdland, or the Vanguard…

The food policy at the East was obviously a major component.

Everybody talked about the food at the East; guys couldn’t wait until they had finished their set to send [their food orders] down to the kitchen.  We had chicken dinners, fish dinners, and vegetarian dinners.  We had this vegetarian rice called Kawaida Rice, big green salads, potato salad, collard greens… We used to produce sometimes 300-400 plates of food per night!  That’s a lot of food coming out of one little kitchen a night.  Food became a major way that we earned money through the East to pay for our expenses.

What was the lifespan of the East?

The major duration was from about 1970-1977.  After ’77 was stage two, which went from ’78-’86; in ’86 we closed down.

What was different about stage two of the East?

Stage two was less music; not every weekend, just music every once in awhile.  We moved from 10 Claver Place to an Armory on Sumner; we had a larger venue, but the venue wasn’t as cozy, the sound wasn’t as good, it had a high ceiling which sucked away all the sound.  The venue wasn’t as good so we ended up having music once a month.

The East spurred the development of one of this country’s major black arts street festivals.

It started off as the African Street Festival, later on it became the International African Arts Festival.  In 1970-1971 we noticed a pattern – we would run out of money at mid-end of June, and we’d have debt.  My thing was always pay off debt, don’t accumulate any debt.  So we wanted to figure out a way to make some money to pay our debt at the end of June, because June was the end of the school year and a lot of people would travel.

So the thing was to pay off our debt so we wouldn’t owe anything going into the summer.  We discussed what to do and after awhile we came up with the idea of having this 3-day block party on Friday, Saturday and Sunday on Claver Place, which is a little compact block between Franklin and Clausen, and it’s also where Jefferson Avenue begins, so it’s sorta like a T [configuration].  The idea was to have this block party on this T and invite people to come down, move our whole entertainment thing outdoors, build a stage outside, sell food and have various merchants all up and down the block, sell merchandising space and so on.

The first year we did that, 1972, it started raining on Friday and it rained all night Friday, it rained all day Saturday, it rained all Saturday night.  But when it stopped raining on Sunday morning at about 11:00 and the sun came up about 1:00, people jammed that little block.  There must have been — no exaggeration — 10-15,000 people on that little block, from 1:00 Sunday until midnight, and it was fantastic… music, dancing… it was like something that you dreamed about; nobody had ever seen anything like that in that little space, and outdoors like that.  And everybody made money.  So even though two-thirds of it was rained out, the one-third that survived was enough to tell us that we had hit on something.

The next year, 1973, we cleaned up…  No rain, we ran it for three days, the crowds were enormous… we cleaned up, everybody made money, we paid off our debts, the community was very happy, we were happy…  The only ones unhappy was the Catholic church.  The Catholic church had a yard there and they claimed people were peeing in the yard, different things.  They had some balconies and they claimed photographers would go up there and shoot [photos] from the balconies.

So you had to make peace with the church; how’d that happen?

[African percussionist] Chief Bey — James Hawthorne-Bey — came over to the East one day and he said to me ‘I’m going to take you over to the church and we’re gonna make peace…’  [Laughs]  I’m a warlike kind of person… ‘peace… get outta here…’  But I had a lotta respect for the Chief.  He took me over to the church, we lit candles, prayed, the Father came down and we talked, and when we left there everything was cool, everything was alright.  We reached a compromise that they would let us have the festival that year, at Claver Place, but the next year we would move the festival up to Boys & Girls High School, which had much more space to accommodate what we were doing.

It eventually became the International African Arts Festival.  This is the 39th festival [2010] and the basic tenets are still in place, as far as arts, economics, culture.  It’s very hard to find something that lasts 40 years that is still the same as it was the first year.

(Editor’s note: the new book African Rhythms, the autobiography of Randy Weston (composed by Randy Weston, arranged by Willard Jenkins; Duke University Press) contains a photograph of good friends Randy Weston and the master of afro-beat Fela Anikulapo Kuti when they played the  African Street Festival.  The festival also had a richly-deserved reputation for great black music.)

Next time: Jitu Weusi and several of his cohorts discuss the founding and development of the Central Brooklyn Jazz Coalition.

Yes, jazz radio is alive and… perhaps to say ‘well’ would be stretching the point; so let’s suffice to say that jazz radio is alive… and still striving. To prove that we are featuring an occasional series of observations from jazz radio programmers across the country on their experience in the medium and how they program in their particular markets.

This time we reached out to Denver, CO where veteran radio programmer Arturo Gomez holds down the Music Director chair at Denver’s main jazz radio outlet, KUVO. In addition to his radio responsibilities Arturo was called upon to serve as one of his city’s ambassadors of local culture when the mayor appointed him a Commissioner of the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs.

Known as “The Oasis in the City,” KUVO broadcasts at 89.3 FM and serves other sectors of Colorado through local carriage in Breckenridge and Vail. KUVO is Colorado’s first HD FM radio station.

How long have you been programming jazz radio and how did you arrive at your programming position at your current station?

I began as an on-air host in 1989 at WDNA in Miami.  In 1992 I was appointed Music Director at KUVO, after which the station streamlined its format to become a predominantly jazz station.

Do you have a particular programming philosophy that guides your efforts, and during the course of a normal week how do you go about planning your programs?  What dictates the selections you spin on the air?

My personal philosphy mirrors the policy of jazz89/KUVO/KVJZ [Vail] that was written by my Program Director many years ago.  We consider ourselves to be a “full service” jazz station; in other words we cover he entire spectrum of recorded jazz in all of its many splendored variety.  From the 1920s to the latest effort.  We treat Latin, Brazilian, and World jazz as if it was a trio, big band, vocal ensemble… it’s part of the mix.  We include classics as well as the latest releases, though not many of the classic jazzers are doing any more touring.

We have a “pie chart” for our mix; 3 currents  (new releases), a classic at the top of every hour, plus another classic in the second half of the hour, 2 vocals — preferably 1 male and 1 female — spaced out every half hour, either one or two Latin/World/Brazilian tunes if time permits.  The other choices for the hour are left up to the program hosts.  Mostly we fit nine songs in an hour with occasional 10 or eight song houurs.  We also have a daily birthday list that could influence the choice of artists played each hour, though not all hosts honor all birthdays.

So what’s up at your station?  Give us a shout at willard@openskyjazz.com if you’d like to participate in this occasional series of jazz radio observations.

One of the more fascinating aspects of ancient Chinese cultural history is the distinct African connection of the Shang Dynasty. Traversing the centuries to the 21st century, one musician who has consistently made that connection in the modern world, and who has engaged elements of ancient Chinese music culture in the way he views jazz music and the art of improvisation, is pianist-composer Jon Jang. Encountering Jon Jang is always stimulating; he’s a deeply thoughtful man who also has an enormous thirst for viewing African American culture through the lens of his Chinese upbringing and his life in California, and vice versa. Always a man of deep conviction who has eagerly and successfully collaborated with jazz masters ranging from the ancestor Max Roach to his contemporary  James Newton, and who always seems to be juggling any number of intriguing projects, I sought Jon out with some questions recently.

What has so motivated you throughout your career to bridge elements of your Chinese cultural heritage with jazz music and the art of the improvisers?

When I was an undergraduate student at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music during the mid 70s, Professor Wendell Logan of the African American Music Department was my mentor.  [Editor’s note: Dr. Wendell Logan, who founded and chaired the Oberlin jazz program, passed on to ancestry last June after battling cancer.]  Dr. Logan’s African American music history course had a profound impact on me when he introduced our class to the works of Duke Ellington‘s “A Tone Parallel to Harlem” and William Grant Still’s “Afro American Symphony.”  These works valorize the struggles and contributions of African American people.

Dr. Wendell Logan

Morover, the course covered a broader ground than “jazz,” a changing tradition that must always be traced back to West Africa and the auction blocks of slavery in the United States.  One of the few books we were required to read was Blues People by LeRoi Jones, now known as Amiri Baraka.  I began to gain an understanding about the changing music tradition and its connection to social history.

Dr. Logan’s African American music history course inspired me to recover a history and music tradition that has been silent: Chinese America.  Since then, the trajectory of my musical and life journey has been to compose works to valorize the contributions of Chinese Americans.  Commissioned and performed by the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra and the Oakland East Bay Symphony, my work, “Chinese American Symphony,” pays tribute to the Chinese laborers who built the first transcontinental railroad in the United States during the 19th century.  Not only is it “literally” inspired by William Grant Still’s “Afro-American Symphony,” there is an inherent working class sensibility in the title itself.

W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson inspired me to search for Chinese “sorrow songs” or folk songs in which I recovered later in life.  I also began to learn about the changing music tradition of Chinese bittersweet melodies such as the “Flower Drum Song,” a beggar’s song from the Ming Dynasty, and the “Butterfly Lovers Song” from the Shaoxing Opera, the first all woman Chinese opera company during the 20s.  I “Americanized” these Chinese folk songs into new works of mine, becoming the musical blood of an American-born Chinese composer.

For example, if we examine my work “Variation on a Sorrow Song of Mengjiang Nu” or sometimes called “New Beginnings,” the story ends with a woman killing herself in resistance to marrying an emperor who killed her husband.  The woman, Mengjiang Nu, leaps into the sea and transforms into a silver fish.  By linking it with African American spirituals such as “Wade in the Water” and “Deep River,” water symbolized freedom.  I remember playing a recording of the traditional Chinese melody from Jiangsu Province for Max Roach and he became very moved by the feeling.

In my work, I added a bridge section based on Max Roach’s “Lonesome Lover” because it not only worked musically but also in terms of the whole notion of freedom: “Take me back where I belong.”  Max told me that he and Abbey Lincoln had completely different perspectives when they recorded “Lonesome Lover.”  Max told me that he was making a political statement and said that Abbey interpreted it as a love song.  With me, it was clearer that “Lonesome Lover” artistically and politically complimented the [Roach] works “The Dream/It’s Time” on the politically provocative Chattahoochi Red recording, in reference to the dead bodies of young African American men found near the Chattahoochi River in Atlanta, GA. 

From the unexpected passing of my father when I was two years old to being confused about the status of my surname as a descendent of a “paper son,” which was an act of resisitance against the Chinese Exclusion Act, the trajectory of my whole life has been about discontinuity and recovery, which is very similar to the modes of regeneration, new beginnings and symbolic transformation found in many of the Chinese folk songs such as “Butterfly Lovers Song” or “Mengjiang Nu.”

Are you familiar with the historic African presence in China during the Shang Dynasty and do you find that fairly unknown part of China’s history to be ultimately inspiring to your work in any way?

Yes, I am quite familiar with this.  About twenty years ago during the early 90s, I first stumbled across the African presence in China in a book by W.E.B. DuBois called The World and Africa: An inquiry into the part which Africa has played in world history.  Seven years later when James Newton and I were collaborating on a work called “When Sorrow Turns to Joy – Songlines: The Spiritual Tributary of Paul Robeson and Mei Lanfang,” James gave me a book by Cheikh Anta Diop called Great African Thinkers which also supported the African presence in China and included a photo of black African human statue figures in China!  In both DuBois and Diop’s articles, these people were described by a Chinese source called Chou as “diminutive, black and oily skin.”

Talk about your latest projects, including your collaborations with master pipa player Min Xiao Fen, who has previously collaborated with Randy Weston and Mor Thiam.

Min Xao Fen

The San Francisco Arts Commission awarded me a grant to compose “Angel Voices – Rhapsody from Angel Island Poetry,” a work for poet and chamber jazz ensemble.  The work will feature my ensemble Unbound Chinatown and be scored for pipa (Chinese lute) performed by Min Xao Fen; clarinet/soprano saxophone/bass flute; piano; double bass and multiple percussion.  There will also be poems of “sorrow” and “defiance” performed by Genny Lim selected from Chinese, Japanese, and Russian Jewish immigrants who were detained on Angel Island during 1910-1940 in the San Francisco Bay Area.  SFJazz will present this work on Sunday, October 24 at 3pm at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival.  Collaborating in the presentation will be the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, which is commemorating the Centennial of the opening of the Immigration Station throughout 2010.

I  previously worked with these poems (which are translated in the landmark book Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island by Genny Lim, Him Mark Lai, and Judy Yung) in my works “Island: the Immigrant Suite No. 1” for the Jon Jang Octet featuring Min Xao Fen on pipa and “Island: the Immigrant Suite No. 2” for string quartet and a (pre-recorded) Cantonese Opera singer that was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet.  I was taken with the spirit of the poetry in which detainees on Angel Island waiting for processing by U.S. immigration authorities express both feelings of lament and defiance with regard to their treatment.  Within my efforts to create works that reflect on the history of Americans of Chinese descent, this sense of lament balanced with defiance is a crucial source of “creative tension” that informs my approach to compositional narrative.

The major departure in this new work will be my exploration of poetry from Japanese and Russian Jewish immigrants on Angel Island.  This calls for interpretation of the significance of Angel Island beyondd the experience of Chinese immigrants to recast the multicultural character of the experience on the island.

One of my goals is also to compose five symphonic works.  My second symphonic work, “Symphony No. 2: Echoes from the Grand Canyon,” will be a 30-minute three movement work for orchestra and Native American flute.  The work will commemorate the collision of two commercial airplanes over the Grand Canyon on June 30, 1956.  All 128 passengers and crew aboard on United and TWA died, including my father.  This day transformed aviation history, which led to an overhaul of the nation’s antiquated air traffic control system and the establishment of the Federal Aviation Administration by Congress.  For this new work, it is very important to note that both Hopi and Navajo tribes recognized that all these people had died on sacred grounds.  They both held 24-hour prayer vigils for the victims.

Similar to Olivier Messiaen’s “Des Canyons Aux Etoiles,” which was inspired by the canyons of Utah and Don Pullen’s powerful works on his last recording, Sacred Common Ground, there will be a strong spiritual aspect to “Echoes from the Grand Canyon.”  The collision of the two airplanes over the vast and stunning beauty of the Grand Canyon that left ashes of human remains on sacred grounds creates a powerful image.  It speaks to the universal truths of mortality, fragility of human life, a survival test of the unknown dangers behind the beauty of nature and spirituality.  I hope and pray God will help lead mee to another place with this new work.

You can catch up with Jon Jang and his deeply spiritual work, as well as his various projects and recordings (including his landmark Beijing Trio recording with Max Roach at www.jonjang.com.  In addition to his October 24, 2010 premier of the Angel Island work at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, Jon will be performing as part of the Asian American Music Festival 2010 (broadened from the former Asian American Jazz Festival) in Los Angeles on October 16 in solo piano and at the Japanese American National Museum (369 E. First Street).

 The Asian American Music Festival: October 15-17, 2010 at the Japanese American National Museum, 369 E. First Street in L.A.