Another timeline I came across today (from Iverson?) is that Wynton will have led Jazz at Lincoln Center for about 40 years when he begins to step down next year.
That interval is the same as from The Hot Fives to A Love Supreme!
Ta-Nehisi Coates, from Between the World and Me (43):
'Serious history was the West, and the West was white. This was all distilled for me in a quote I once read, from the novelist Saul Bellow. I can’t remember where I read it, or when—only that I was already at Howard. “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?,” Bellow quipped. Tolstoy was “white,” I understood him to say, and so Tolstoy “mattered,” like everything else that was white “mattered.”'
And again, from later in the book (56):
'It must have been around that time that I discovered an essay by Ralph Wiley in which he responded to Bellow’s quip. “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus,” wrote Wiley. “Unless you find a profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership.” And there it was. I had accepted Bellow’s premise.’
"Who is the Bach-Beethoven-Brahms of the African-Americans?” Saul Bellow might have said. And with Wiley and you as references, I would respond, “Bach-Beethoven-Brahms is the BBA of the African-Americans!"
Another timeline I came across today (from Iverson?) is that Wynton will have led Jazz at Lincoln Center for about 40 years when he begins to step down next year.
That interval is the same as from The Hot Fives to A Love Supreme!
How time passes when you’re having fun.
Thank you for laying this chronology out. I can’t wait to read your book! I’m sure it will be timely and historic; a must read!
I love the positioning of the dates of Bach-to-Brahms with respect to the dates of the musicians who established jazz!
Now I’ve had a moment to dig this up:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, from Between the World and Me (43):
'Serious history was the West, and the West was white. This was all distilled for me in a quote I once read, from the novelist Saul Bellow. I can’t remember where I read it, or when—only that I was already at Howard. “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?,” Bellow quipped. Tolstoy was “white,” I understood him to say, and so Tolstoy “mattered,” like everything else that was white “mattered.”'
And again, from later in the book (56):
'It must have been around that time that I discovered an essay by Ralph Wiley in which he responded to Bellow’s quip. “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus,” wrote Wiley. “Unless you find a profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership.” And there it was. I had accepted Bellow’s premise.’
"Who is the Bach-Beethoven-Brahms of the African-Americans?” Saul Bellow might have said. And with Wiley and you as references, I would respond, “Bach-Beethoven-Brahms is the BBA of the African-Americans!"