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PARKER AND BARAKA
RE-READING CURTIS MAYFIELD


About halfway through his ICA show a week ago Tuesday, bassist William Parker made the title of the program clear. It was called "Curtis Mayfield: Inside Song," and for most of the set Parker and his band alternated versions of Mayfield’s songs with jazz improvisations and Amiri Baraka’s poetry. The band had just finished a long version of Mayfield’s Impressions hit "People Get Ready" that meandered from a straight rendition sung by vocalist Leena Conquest to poetic rantings by Baraka to an extended instrumental workout and then back to Conquest, who at one point broke off from the lyrics into a Middle Eastern wail. When it was over, someone said, "What was that?", and Parker responded in mock exasperation, " ‘People Get Ready’ . . . and then the inside song of ‘People Get Ready.’ "

That’s how the whole show went. Conquest sang Mayfield hits (and near-hits) like "People Get Ready," "Freddie’s Dead," "I’m So Proud," and "New World Order"; Baraka read his poetry; and the band jammed. The concert began with Conquest singing a cappella ("Add a little sugar . . . keep on pushin’ "), rhythmically sure, in pure, bluesy cadences. When the band came in, Baraka joined them to voice what would become a recurring motif: "Bush is a counterfeit president! This is a fake democracy!" When Conquest sang in "People Get Ready," "There’s a train a-comin’," the train was love ("Love is all we need"), but when Baraka came in, it was a "storm" that was comin’. The "outside" song was all in Conquest’s sweet, self-determination, the "inside" song in Baraka’s caustic, sometimes quite funny rage.

Parker had assembled a solid cast. Pianist Dave Burrell provided deft accompaniment inside and outside the changes. Saxophonist Darryl Foster and trumpeter Lewis Barnes played gentle soul-music backing choruses as well as fervent solo statements. Drummer Guillermo E. Brown kept good funk time on his closed hi-hat. And Parker offered some of the most impassioned playing I’ve heard him deliver on his many visits to the ICA. Not that the ensemble didn’t have its ragged moments, but it was if anything richer for its flaws.

Meanwhile, Baraka was self-consciously comic, his poetry taking on a sweep that was righteous in its general declamations even if a bit dissonant in the particulars. After delivering a stunning litany of 20th-century injustice, from the Holocaust and the Rosenbergs to Amadou Diallo, all beginning with the question "Who killed . . . ?" ("Who killed Malcolm X?"), he asked about the World Trade Center attacks, "Who told 4000 Israelis not to go to work that day?" Not only was it an idiotic comment on its face, it wrecked the parallel construction of his poetry. Which made it doubly sad.

BY JON GARELICK

Issue Date: April 11 - 18, 2002
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