WHY ARTISTS ARE THE ANTENNAE OF THE RACE
Subway Tales
Dante and Charles Mingus
66th and Lincoln Center. Mingus, a leather overcoat draping his shoulders like a set of wings, sits on a bench with his enormous stand-up base. Like the roots of a massive tree, it is as if the instrument sheafed in a brown bag is an appendage of his body: stout, round, and large. Dante sits beside him. Upright and enameled in dignity and graciousness from all the years of being other people’s guests. His Emilio Zegna black suit is as quietly dignified as his long locks and Roman nose.
CM: Duke once told me that great minds are meant to meet.
D: Mr. Mingus, he was so right. Finally, in this century, America is seeking to become great again. We meet.
CM: You down for pleasure or business?
D: A combination of both. But more the latter, I’m afraid. To see with my own eyes and bear witness to what is transpiring in this country of yours, Charles. There are a number of us who’ve been summoned.
CM: Tell me, D.
D: I begin with an observation. My land was the land of operas. America is the land of soap operas and reality TV. You know I’ve seen this before. In what you call antiquity. But here is the difference: masses were ignorant in the 14th century. Yours are educated. Yet their knowledge of history is like a windshield wiper. I’m down as a witness if you must know. And you?
CM: Black History Month. Came to see if my grands are happy and following their joy. You might say. Back in my day, we had no month set aside to honor us. It was enough to get club owners to pay you fairly and record labels not rip you off. That’s why Max and I started our own label. But neither of us had an ear for business.
D: You are referring to Mr. Roach. Yes?
CM: Only one. Played drums like Apollo came down for a residency. Listen, D, are you cool with a personal question?
D: Of course.
CM: Is it true you got thrown out of Florence by the authorities?
D: It is Charles. Although I was never taken into custody or tried for crimes. You might call it a kind of house arrest. I was found guilty of corruption and was forced to leave Florence. The last 20 years of my life were spent on the road, as you Americans might say. Always depending on the goodwill and love of friends. Yes, I was denied the right of passage and prohibited from free association or travel outside of my own land. It’s not quite the same thing as racism, but equally as debilitating. To be held captive in your native land.
CM: I’ll be damned. One of the Western civilizations leading writers was exiled from his own land. At least in America, at our own peril, we could travel the segregated highways and hotels of the Jim Crow South. No different, though, when your right to work, to assemble, to travel to, is taken away. That’s also captivity. I understand that as a black person in America. You dig that, Dante. Power corrupts, yea, but Power can also be overcome by wisdom, love, and the insistence on truth.
D: That is precisely why the artists’ lives are rarely in harmony with the state or the church. Nor should it be. We are the antennae of the race, and like that broadcaster fellow of yours once said, Howard….(a long pause)
CM: Howard Cosell.
D: Yes, Cosell! Who said, “We tell it like it is.” In my case, I did. Retribution works in universal ways. You’re seeing evidence of it right now, Charles. Power never forgets when it’s been called out.
CM: I hear you, D. I lived in a different kind of exile here. A black man in America, well, you know the tale. You cats invaded, enslaved us, and called it progress and history. I mean Dante, born as an out-of-bondage black man; I believe if I had been born in another country or born white, my life would have been creative years before. I’ve come to see the more we’ve struggled, the stronger our work. I never lived a day when I was not the underdog. Hell, I never breathed a day of life without struggle.
D: The irony of exile was that, at that time, I was more productive than at any other period in my life. Crisis works that way. Thrown out of the city of my birth and family, I chose to write this grand allegory of heaven, hell, and purgatory, and I got to put all the detectable and greedy people of Florence and Rome in hell. All the church and government officials. The icons of hypocrisy and cruelty. But it was pretty much sealed by lifelong exile. Kind of like your Pete Rose. Except I did not cheat. I was a whistle-blower.
CM: You know comin’ from the south, the church is where we discovered the spirit. The blues, gospel came as natural as rain, and for cats like me comin’ up, jazz was the language for joining both worlds and making something new. Jazz, you see, Dante, gave us a spiritual language and away to say No. It’s our idiom of resistance and of renewal. That’s why jazz is always in the key of life.
D: I only knew of music in the courts and kingdoms of the wealthy. I never heard of music for the people.
CM: Yeah, well, cats like Archie Shepp, myself, Ornette, Sun Rah. Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Jackie McClean, and a whole bunch of others understood our roles. Sister Abbey of course. And then there was Max. We were educators and activists who used the music to tell our stories. Thing is, I just had all this fury in me that I never conquered. Truth is, violence in America, is also an outgrowth of poverty. Pathology that has worked its way into America’s psyche. That’s what worries me. I should know. Let the children hear music — and not some godamn gunshots on their blocks or police alarms round their schools.
D: America has, like the Rome of my time, become a living contradiction of itself. A nation-state that has outgrown the truth of its founding principles and become a parody and a tragedy.
CM: Ain’t that true. Now skinheads everywhere Dante. Only they be wearin’ tailored suits with American flags in their lapels. And their slick-backed hair.
D: We are living in a very dangerous times Charles, like your great writer James Baldwin said. “menaced by not only external forces, but from ones within.” I’m from the 14th century and I’ve never seen anything quite like this.
CM: Me too. I mean this beats Nixon, McCarthy, Roy Cohen, George Wallace, Spiro T Agnew, and J Edgar all rolled together.
D: You are referring to your new regime. The newly elected felon-realtor- wrestling promoter who abandoned Atlantic City and wants to build a new Las Vegas out of the ruins of Gaza. Displace all Palestinians. And his side kick, the Neo Nazi Billionaire at his side?
C: You’re a funny man D. Got to be. Listen in the 60s in the South they unleashed the hoses and the German shepherds on us. You knew because you could see it all on Walter Cronkite or the nightly news with Huntley and Brinkley. But this shit, this cleaning of the swamp shit is insidious. Anyone for massive relocations? They ready to round up and relocate anybody who doesn’t look like them or speak the same bad English. Yeah, scary times D. Trail of Tears times. Time we learned history D. Andrew Jackson my black ass….This aint no rerun. This is a sequel.
D: The state and church for that matter, Charles, eventually collapses until it gets it right. Look at my case. It took the Vatican 700 years to rescind my exile from Florence.
M: Yeah exile D, I understand. In my time we called it losing your club license to perform. Like they’ve done to Billie, Thelonious and Lenny Bruce. Racism operates in so many undercover ways. Why’s it been so always hard earning a living as a jazz musician in America? We was a fringe before Seattle grabbed that name. You understand what I mean?
D: I do Charles.
CM: Exile was actually a temporary blessing for cats like Sidney Bechet, Dexter, Johnny Hodges, Eric, even Bud Powell. They chose to go away. Europe let them live and be celebrated as free men who took music to new places. But they all returned home. Have to. That worked for them. Not for me. Like a bear, I need my grits and greens and fried okra. I could do gigs abroad. But never live there. Too much Chicago and New York City in me.
D: I do not wish to bore you though with the pessimism of exile: of lost fame and separation from all that one loves. Rather I should want you to know Charles I have only the highest regards for musicians of the court and I’ve also had a special place in my heart for Joe Williams, with the Count Basie orchestra of course.
C: Impeccable taste D. Speaking of anger. I used it to work through me. That’s where “Let My Children Hear Music,” “Haitian Fight Song” and “Meditations on Integration” came from. Was composed out of America burning up from Newark to Watts. Yeah it was a mass uprising, August 65 to be exact. That’s how I gave voice to that anger and indignation and my plea for social justice. You know Dante, I never left America, but I sure as hell felt like I lived in exile here.
D: You know Charles both of us held mirrors to the world and we did it with truth and accuracy and artistry of its profound beauty and its infinite capacity for evil.
C: You got that right D. Despair was never an option. Only cause I’ve ever believed in was life. Not ideology. I’m down with that.
D: In the end, I found meaning in and through love. Charles. What about you?
CM: The music was my love. Duke called her his mistress. The one constant that was always changing and emerging. I made life and love through my music Dante. I taught brothers what I knew and what it took to be a musician. I composed my soul from the only real truths I knew paying tribute to my ancestors you know, from Bird to Lester Young.
D: Charles, forgive me for asking, but I’ve never been to the Dominican side of Washington Heights. That’s still Manhattan, Charles, isn’t it?
CM: Indeed it is. And home to some of the finest Dominican kitchens in NY. Have you ever been on the A Train?
D: Hoping you would ask Charles.
CM: Dante, you good with fried yucca, plantains, meat empanadas, and yellow rice with black beans?
Subway Tales is a series.
Click here to subscribe to Contemplate’s newsletter.
Spring 2025 Online Writers Retreat. Three days of intense writing and
