Dance for the Gone-Befores (Live) 2013

Genre: Jazz, World (West African)

I’ve had many rewarding experiences taking jazz education classes through the Gift of Jazz in Denver. One that particularly stands out was Greg Tanner Harris’s course entitled “Jazz Through the Lens of World and Folkloric Music” in the Fall of 2013. Greg (now Dr. Harris) had studied the indigenous music of Africa and he started every class by having us experiment with a collection of percussion instruments he had gathered in his travels around the world.

Because of Greg’s expertise, the class gravitated to the music of Western Africa, particularly Ghana. The essence of that music revolves around interlocking rhythms, often in 12/8 time. I spent a lot of time trying to internalize that feel (not an easy task for those of us unaccustomed to African rhythms). I never fully got there, but my composition for the class nevertheless shifts from traditional 4/4 to the African 12/8 feel and back again.

Greg encouraged us to start with a simple pentatonic melody for our compositions. With the exception of some classically-inspired embellishments—they may sound more South than West African—the main melody of my finished piece is an elaboration of the first idea I wrote.

The most intriguing instrument Greg brought home from his travels was the gyil (pronounced jill), a Ghanaian xylophone, that has resonators underneath made of hollowed out gourds with holes covered over with spider webs to give it its characteristic buzzing sound. Greg’s primary instrument is the vibraphone, so he was a master at the use of mallets and played the gyil as if he had grown up in Ghanaian culture.

I was so taken by this exotic instrument, I decided I would incorporate it into my composition and since his was tuned to a G major pentatonic scale, I worked my original composition around that key.    

In the process of attempting to learn more about Ghana and its music, I stumbled upon the life and work of Professor Kofi Awoonor, the Ghanaian poet and diplomat, who was among those killed in the September, 2013 terrorist attack at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi Kenya. Awoonor, aged 78, was in Nairobi for a literary conference; he went shopping with his son at the Westgate mall, when members Al Shabab began shooting up the place. His son survived, but he did not, having the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His tragic killing was in the news at the time I was taking the class.

Although not as well known as Nelson Mandela, he is someone I believe deserves more attention, both for his life’s work and the beauty of his poetry.

Kofi Awoonor’s biography is rich. He was born in 1935, studied in Ghana, taught literature at the university there; was further educated in England, traveled extensive in the West; returned to his homeland in 1975; was imprisoned without trial for his political beliefs, then released, becoming his country’s ambassador to Cuba, then to Brazil, and finally to the United Nations, where he served as head of the committee to end apartheid. A full life, even without all the beautiful poetry he was writing over the course of those years.

He was a man who always paid homage to his own traditional culture, but was completely comfortable in ours. He spent time in the U.S. and I found references in his poetry to jazz greats like Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.

I was surprised to find several references to Kalamazoo, Michigan (my hometown) in his poems and later discovered that he had spent time there in the early 1970s, teaching at Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan University (my alma mater), just a little too early for me to have noticed him then. It was unfortunate that it took his death to bring him to my attention.

Throughout his poetry, he speaks of the traditional African connection to the ancestors. As I read through his books of poetry, I was taken by his use of the phrase “gone-befores” in several of his poems, here from an earlier poem called “I Heard a Bird Sing.”

Wipe away your tears
And knock the door of the sacred hut
the gone-befores are waiting for you.
That day when they opened the sacred hut
And made pledges to the gone-befores
I was there
When we pledged to the ancestors
And swore the oath

I dedicated my piece, “Dance for the Gone-Befores,” to the memory of Professor Kofi Awoonor. The composition premiered on Sunday, November 17, 2013 at the old Dazzle in Denver.

That night I had the rare privilege of playing piano on my own tune, the only amateur on stage with the group of skilled, professional musicians. It was one of those rare nights when live jazz can unexpectedly transcend the commonplace. Maybe it was the exotic nature of the instrumentation, the complex rhythms, or Greg Harris’s impromptu and masterful direction, but it was an extraordinary night for me, for the musicians who brought the piece to life, and the audience who enthusiastically embraced the performance.

Personnel for the live performance were:

—Greg Tanner Harris (vibraphone & gyil)
—Josh Quinlan (tenor saxophone & flute)
—Charlie Vavra (piano)
—Charlie Parker Mertens (electric bass)
—Alejandro Castaño (drum kit)
—Koffi Toudji (drums & percussion)

TECHNICAL NOTES: Again this month I employed AI to help assist me in the final result. I used ChatGPT to create a “painting” as artwork for the cover. Also, the most recent upgrade of Logic Pro now includes a stem splitting feature, which allowed me to isolate each of the instruments and apply enhancements that greatly improved the original (somewhat crude) live performance audio.