International Jazz Day 2015
Dominican Republic Tour with Performance at Belles Artes, Santo Domingo.
This was a very, very special trip. My terrible photos don’t do it justice. I find it hard to step outside the moment to photograph it, especially on this tour.
A jazz radio station in the Dominican Republic were playing my album, The Secret of a Rose to its listeners with such a warm response, the good people of the radio station decided to invite us over to give a concert. Our concert would celebrate their radio station Jazzomania’s 20th anniversary in broadcasting.
Unfortunately the video recording of this concert was lost. However, I can tell you that the invitation to perform in the DR drew me into a research of its music and literature. I discovered Pedro Mir and how he beautifully represented the troubled history of the Dominican Republic in his writing. I had the privilege to collaborate on a musical and dramatic setting of the poem, There is a Country in this World, with Nobel Alfonso. He read parts of the poem in Spanish, and I, in English, to music improvised by my trio, Johnny Taylor, piano and Damian Evans, bass. The poem is reprinted below.
I also discovered the work of composer, Rafael “Bollumba” Landestoy whom I also had the heartwarming privilege and pleasure of meeting. I had been particularly moved by a piece of his called Romantico to which I wrote lyrics. Bollumba was delighted. We performed Bollumba’s music to my lyrics and it was a very moving experience and very warmly received. I always wanted to record it and send it to him, but, sadly, he died in 2018. I still hope to record the song though.
Bollumba came onstage at the end to thank us for the concert. He liked the concert but he gave me one note! He said it was clear when I sang that I loved to dance, And that I should “let the dancing out more.”
with Bollumba Landestory, April 2015
Some concerts and experiences stay with you long after the fact and our experience in the Dominican Republic is one of those. We worked with such extraordinarily warm and kind people. I learned so much. What a fascinating, fascinating country. Thank you to Carlos Elios who was the visionary to make the whole thing possible. Thank you to his friends and colleagues for their help and kindness. Thank you to the staff at the beautiful Bellini Hotel who hosted us and every restaurant where, without fail, we were treated like kings and queens! To all at Belles Artes and Diana Valck, who facilitated us to the last detail so that we could give our best in concert. To the little girl at the end who came onstage to present me with a bouquet of red roses. To all the staff of Jazzomania. Thank you also to Dominic Reilly of Dublin Jazz for his assistance in all things contractual.
There is a Country in this World
by Pedro Mir
There is
a country in the world
situated
right in the sun's path.
A native of the night.
Situated
in an improbable archipelago
of sugar and alcohol.
Simply
light,
like a bat's wing
leaning on the breeze.
Simply
bright,
like the trace of a kiss on an elderly
maiden
or daylight on the roof tiles.
Simply
fruitful. Fluvial. And material. And yet
simply torrid, abused and kicked
like a young girl's hips.
Simply sad and oppressed.
Sincerely wild and uninhabited.
In truth.
With three million
life's sum total
and all the while
four cardinal cordilleras
and an immense bay and another immense bay,
three peninsulas with adjacent isles
and the wonder of vertical rivers
and earth beneath the trees and earth
beneath the rivers and at the edge of the forest
and at the foot of the hill and behind the horizon
and earth from the cock's crow
and earth beneath the galloping horses
and earth over the day, under the map, around
and underneath all the footprints and in the midst of love.
Then
it is as I have said.
There is
a country in the world
simply wild and uninhabited.
Some love will think
that in this fluvial country in which earth blossoms,
and spills over and cracks like a bursting vein,
where day has its true victory,
the farmers will go amazed with their spades
to cultivate
singing
their strip of ownership.
This love
will shatter its solitary innocence.
But no.
And it will think
that in the midst of this swollen land,
everywhere, where mountains roll through valleys
like fresh blue coins, where a forest
sleeps in each flower and in each flower life,
the farmers will walk along the sleeping ridge
to enjoy
struggling
with their own harvest. [End Page 851]
This love
will bend its luminous arrow.
But no.
And it will think from
where the wind buffets the inmost clod of earth
and transforms it into flocks of peaks and plains,
where each hill seems a heart,
in each farmer spring upon spring will go
singing
among the furrows
his land.
This love
will reach its flowering Age.
But no.
There is
a country in the world
where a farmer, cut down,
withered and bitter
dies and bites
barefoot
his defeated dust,
lacking enough earth for his harsh death.
Listen closely! Lacking earth to go to sleep in.
It is a small and beleaguered country. Simply sad,
sad and grim, sad and bitter. I've already said it,
simply sad and oppressed.
And it's not that alone.
Men are needed
for so much land. That is, men are needed
to strip the virgin cordillera and make her a mother
after a few songs.
Mother of vegetables.
Mother of bread. Mother of the fence and the roof.
Caring and nocturnal mother at the bedside . . .
Men are needed to fell the trees and then
to raise them high against the sun and distance.
Against the laws of gravity.
And to take from them rest, rebellion and light.
And men to lie with the clay
and leave her giving birth to walls.
And men
to come to understand the river gods
and to raise them trembling in the nets. [End Page 852]
And men on the coasts and in the icy
mountain passes
and in all desolation.
That's right, men are needed.
And a song is needed.
Emerging from the depths of the night
I have come to speak of a country.
It so happens
poor in population.
But
it's more than that
A native of the night, I am the product of a journey.
Give me time
courage
to forge the song.
Feathers from a moon-high nest
health of gold a generous guitar
journey's end where an island lies
the peasants have no land.
Speak into the wind the names
of the thieves and the caves
open your eyes where a disaster lies
the peasants have no land.
The sudden swish of a brief fist
that stops moving beside the stone
opens a wound where two eyes lie
the peasants have land.
Those who steal it have no gift
have no crown between their legs
have no sex where a country lies
the peasants have no land.
They have no peace between their eyelids,
they have no land they have no land.
Improbable country.
Where the earth sprouts
and spills over and cracks like a bursting vein,
where it rises to the height of frenzy,
where birds swim or fly but in between [End Page 853]
there is only land:
the peasants have no land.
So then,
where has that song come from?
How can it be?
Who says that among the fine
health of gold
the peasants have no land?
That is another song. Listen to
the delightful song of the sugar and
alcohol mills.
I see a sudden rush of rails
they belong to the company
their railroad ties of native green
belong to the company
and the gentle mountains of origin
belong to the company
and the cane and the grass and the willows
belong to the company
and the wharfs and the water and the lichen
belong to the company
and the road and its two scars
belong to the company
and the little virgin towns
belong to the company
and the limbs of the simplest man
belong to the company
and his youthful veins
belong to the company
and the guards with rifles for voices
belong to the company
and the lead in the groin
belong to the company
and the boundless fury and hatred
belong to the company
and the sad and silent laws
belong to the company
and the sins that are without redemption
belong to the company
twenty times I say it and I've said it
they belong to the company
"our fields upon fields of glory"
they belong to the company
in the shadow of the anchor they endure [End Page 854]
they belong to the company
though they cast the onus of the crime
far from the port
with blood, sweat, nitrate,
they belong to the company.
And this is the result.
The luminous day
returning across crystals
of sugar, first finds the peasant farmer.
Soon after him the woodcutter and cane
cutter
surrounded by his children loading the wagon.
And the boy with the cane juice and later the serene old
man with the watch, that looks at him with its secret death,
and the young girl sewing her eyelids
into the hundred thousandth sack and the trail of wages
lost among the timekeeper's tally sheets. And the sweaty
profile of the loaders wrapped in their cloak of dark
muscles. And the celestial mason
placing in the heavens the last brick
of the chimney. And the gray carpenter
nailing together the coffin for the urgent death,
when the whistle sounds, white and final,
shrouded in repose.
The luminous day suddenly wakens
on the people's backs, runs along the rails,
climbs up the derricks, falls on the stores.
In the courtyards, at a washerwoman's feet,
it crackles soaked in songs and becomes young again.
It protests in the street vendor's cry. Scarcely
does its foot appear than it shatters cradles.
It runs through the cities filled with lawyers
who are no more than tablets and silence, with poets
who are no more than mist and silence, and the silent
judges. It climbs, jumps, raves on streetcorners
and the luminous day is transformed into an impending dollar.
A dollar! Here is the result. A torrent of blood.
Silent, terminal. Blood wounded on the wind.
Blood in the cash profit of bitterness.
This is a country unworthy of being called a country.
Call it rather tomb, coffin, hole, or sepulcher. [End Page 855]
It is true that I kiss it and that it kisses me
and that its kiss tastes of nothing but blood.
That a day will come, hidden in hope,
its basket filled with relentless rage
and taut faces and fists and daggers.
But beware. There is no justice if the punishment
falls on everyone. Let us seek out the guilty.
And then let the infinite weight of the people
fall upon the shoulders of the guilty.
And so
moon-pale
desolate
and rustic travelers of the dawn,
mountains and valleys along the river
headed toward foreign ports.
It is true that in the river's passage
mountain chains of honey, gorges
of sugar and sea crystals
enjoy a metallic free will.
and that at the base of the common effort
appears the proletarian instinct
But drunk with oregano and anisette
and martyr to the torrid countryside
there is a man standing at the gears.
An exile in his own land. And a country
in the world,
fragrant,
situated
right in the path of war.
A trafficker in lands, yet landless.
Material. A dawn man. And an exile.
And it cannot be like this. From the sierra
will come an enlightened murmur
probably harsh and scattered.
Probably in search of land.
It will go through the fields and the heavenly
sphere from east to west
stirring up the last root [End Page 856]
and shaking the heroes from the tomb
there will again be blood in the country.
There will again be blood in the country.
And this is my last word.
I want
to hear it. I want to see it at every church
door, where an open hand
begs for a miracle from the brook.
I want to see its necessary bitterness
where man and beast and furrow sleep
and dreams become light in the bud
of quietude that prayer makes everlasting.
Where an angel breathes.
Where burns
a pallid, secret supplication
and following the rutted wagon tracks
an oxherd is engulfed in twilight.
Afterwards
I want only peace.
A nest
of constructive peace in each palm.
And perhaps with relation to the soul
a swarm of kisses
and forgetfulness.