Day 287: Jazz Band

 

How to describe jazz? Well, poetry comes pretty close to capturing how it bebops in your soul - with its spontaneity, enthusiasm, passion, rhythm and rhyme, pulse and pizazz.  

It's a music genre intimately related to poetry. And one that feels its way along, using emotion and the senses rather than thoughts and logic, for a finish that is quite sublime.
 

Jazz Band - Frank Marshall Davis


Play that thing, you jazz mad fools!
Boil a skyscraper with a jungle
Dish it to 'em sweet and hot -
Ahhhhhhhhh
Rip it open then sew it up, jazz band!

Thick bass notes from a moon faced drum
Saxophones moan, banjo strings hum
High thin notes from the cornet's throat
Trombone snorting, bass horn snorting
Short tan notes from the piano
And the short tan notes from the piano

Plink plank plunk a plunk
Plink plank plunk a plunk
Chopin gone screwy, Wagner with the blues
Plink plank plunk a plunk
Got a date with Satan--ain't no time to lose
Plink plank plunk a plunk
Strut it in Harlem, let Fifth Avenue shake it slow
Plink plank plunk a plunk
Ain't goin' to heaven nowhow--
crowd up there's too slow . . .
Plink plank plunk a plunk
Plink plank plunk a plunk
Plunk

Do that thing, jazz band!

Whip it to a jelly

Sock it, rock it; heat it, beat it; then fling it at 'em

Let the jazz stuff fall like hail on king and truck driver, queen and
laundress, lord and laborer, banker and bum

Let it fall in London, Moscow, Paris, Hongkong, Cairo, Buenos Aires,
Chicago, Sydney

Let it rub hard thighs, let it be molten fire in the veins of dancers

Make 'em shout a crazy jargon of hot hosannas to a fiddle-faced jazz
god

Send Dios, Jehovah, Gott, Allah, Buddha past in a high stepping
cake walk

Do that thing, jazz band!
Your music's been drinking hard liquor
Got shanghaied and it's fightin' mad
Stripped to the waist feein' ocean liner bellies
Big burly bibulous brute
Poet hands and bone crusher shoulders -
Black sheep or white?

Hey, Hey!
Pick it, papa!
Twee twa twee twa twa
Step on it, black boy
Do re mi fa sol la ti do
Boomp boomp
Play that thing, you jazz mad fools!