Mona’s San Francisco: 1940s lesbian club

Source: San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project ‘She Even Chewed Tobacco: A pictorial narrative of passing women in America’ in ‘Hidden from history: reclaiming the gay and lesbian past’ by Martin B. Duberman, Martha Vicinus, George Chauncey (Meridian Books, 1989).

This advert for Mona’s Club 440 (440 Broadway, San Francisco) comes from San Francisco Life 1942:

This advert mentions Gladys Bentley, described as “Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs” and “America’s Greatest Sepia Piano Artist.”

In his A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem, Eric Garber mentions Bentley’s appearances in New York in the 1920s/30s:

‘Perhaps the most famous gay-oriented club of the era was Harry Hansberry’s Clam House, a narrow, smoky speakeasy on 133rd Street. The Clam House featured Gladys Bentley, a 250- pound, masculine, darkskinned lesbian, who performed all night long in a white tuxedo and top hat. Bentley, a talented pianist with a magnificent, growling voice, was celebrated for inventing obscene Iyrics to popular contemporary melodies. Langston Hughes called her “an amazing exhibition of musical energy.” Eslanda Robeson, wife of actor Paul Robeson, gushed to a friend, “Gladys Bentley is grand. I’ve heard her three nights, and will never be the same!” Schoolteacher Harold Jackman wrote to his friend Countee Cullen, “When Gladys sings ‘St. James Infirmary,’ it makes you weep your heart out.”

In the 1950s she appeared on Groucho Marx’s TV show:

Thanks to the always excellent History is made at night for posting An 18th century drag ball in London and turning me on to Richard Norton’s Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook.

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A labyrinth is not a maze. There is no intention to fool you: there is one way in and one way out. You simply follow the path to the center and then back out, a metaphorical equivalent to any number of spiritual traditions. Walking a labyrinth can be a walking meditation if you do it with intention.

Placing one foot in front of the other,

Gauging the distance as you frame the intention;

Taking the step, intention inseparable from action.

It falls into a rhythm, step after step, clearing the mind.

For the last  year, I have been working to rewire my brain in response to some neurological difficulties. Choosing alternative modalities of treatment in lieu of the bag of drugs the neurologist handed me, I made steady but uneven progress. Bodywork, meditation, exercise, music became part of my daily routine. Recently, my wife suggested I add labyrinth walking to my regimen: “I think if you walk a labyrinth once a week, you’ll be healed.” She described her experience walking the labyrinth and I decided to give it a shot. A Google search located three labyrinths in San Francisco and I decided to visit the one at Eagle’s Point along the Land’s End trail where the bay meets the ocean. A drive across town and a forty minute hike led me down the bluffs to a labyrinth perched on a cliff. I entered the labyrinth and tried to walk the path with singleminded intention. Maintaining the clarity to keep an even gait was harder than I imagined, especially when the outer circle of the labyrinth passed within three feet of the sheer drop to the rocks and water a hundred feet below. I followed the circuitous path to the center, stood for a while then retraced my steps out of the labyrinth.

Entrance to the labyrinth at Eagle's Point

I left the labyrinth refreshed and inspired, and a little mentally tired. A beautiful sunny day, the experience of walking the labyrinth on the edge of the cliff had left me with the feeling of possibilities.  A number of the healing modalities I’m using are  premised on the theory that brain waves need periodic recalibration. To me, walking the labyrinth was most like becoming absorbed in listening to a piece of music. Like deep listening to music, walking a labyrinth can take you away to another world and bring you back reoriented to this one.

• To learn more about how music recalibrates human brains, read William Benzon’s Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture.
• To learn more about labyrinths, go to Wikipedia Labyrinth page, The Labyrinth Society, The Labyrinths of Grace Cathedral.

I was skeptical when Watcha Clan‘s “world & bass” sound first crossed my path and their first show left me unimpressed (Deciphering Watcha Clan). But there was something there that kept me coming back: the musical goals were ambitious and sometimes sometimes it really worked. Then the second time I saw them it all came together (Watcha Clan, Live in San Francisco). That performance and a conversation with keyboardist left me eagerly awaiting their new album:

…Clement and I talked about the change in the approach Watcha Clan was taking to creating musical fusion on their new album (for release in early 2011). The album will include more North African, Balkan and Jewish songs, including a Yemeni song played in a Balkan way. Clement said it’s in the same format – “traditional plus electric but deeper.” This time, they are spending less time working on the arrangements and putting more attention to finding the emotion. For each song, they start by recording two or three simple vocal tracks by Karine or Nassim. Then when they have a good vocal take, they build a mix around it. The approach seems to be paying early dividends. On Sunday night, the arrangements of the songs fromDiaspora Hi-Fi were more dynamic and felt both more immediate and filled out. They bore little resemblance to the watered-down versions I’d bemoaned last time I’d seen them. Last time, I saw Watcha Clan, I left eagerly awaiting their new album but unsure if I’d see them again live. This time, I’m eagerly awaiting the new album and looking forward to seeing them again when they return for a North American tour next year. And, remember, never judge a band by a single performance.

Debo Band is not about Afro-funk revival, recreating some mythical gilded age of Ethiopian pop. Taking cues from vintage and contemporary artists unsung in the West, they unleash rolling grooves, serpentine melody lines, and urgently joyful vocals….

That’s from the PR pitch for the nine-city U.S. tour that Debo Band kicks off in their home city of Boston on July 27. While Debo Band may not be an “Afro-funk revival” band, they tear it up like a blast from the ’70s heyday of Ethiopian funk with a difference. They’re adding as much as they’re reviving, bringing in a bit of klezmer, avant-garde jazz and rock that highlights their origin in Boston and the diverse backgrounds and musical tastes of the bandmembers.

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR MORE

• INTERVIEW OF DANNY MEKONNEN — first week in August

• CONCERT REVIEW — Debo band will be hitting my home turf on August 6 when the play at Sweet’s Ballroom in Oakland and I’ll be there to see if the live show is as hot as their EP FLAMINgoh (Pink Bird Dawn), four tracks from their 2010 African tour.

Promised Land

 Last week in Iowa, Michele Bachmann launched her bid to become the Republican candidate in the next US presidential election. On the Tea Party far right of American politics, she has a long, lamentable history of anti-gay and anti-abortion activism not to mention whitewashing the history of slavery.

As she made her way to the podium in Waterloo at the weekend ‘Elvis Presley’s Promised Land belted out’. Well the notion of manifest destiny and Americans as the new chosen people is a hardy right wing trope, and at one level there is a connection between the idea of the Promised Land and the American frontier.But we cannot leave the Promised Land in the hands of US Conservatives. The name itself derives of course from the Book of Genesis where God promises Moses the land of milk and honey, not a metaphysical utopia but the actual land of Israel. Over the millennia that tribal foundation myth of a people in the prehistoric Middle East has taken on a universal appeal, holding out the hope of a better world somewhere, some place, some timeIt’s hardly suprisizing that Bachmann chose Elvis Presley’s version of the song, rather than the original by its black songwriter. When Chuck Berry sings it there is no doubt that the songs works on at least two levels. On the surface it is simply a description of a journey from Norfolk, Virginia to California, part of the 1950s/early 1960s mythologisation of travelling across the USA (Route 66, Highway 61, On the Road).

Jackie Wilson’s Melisma – 20 notes for the word ‘for’

‘The extent to which the music is integrated with the literal meaning in soul is apparent in some of its basic stylistic conventions, the call and response structure, for instance, where a phrase from the lead vocalist – which may not even take a verbal shape – is as often echoed by the band as by other singers. Or the distinctive use of melisma – the concentration of several notes into one syllable – by soul performers. The effect of this technique is often to give the impression that the singer is none too sure that the words exist which could adequately convey the power of what he is feeling. When Jackie Wilson packs more than twenty notes into the word “for” in his version “Danny Boy“, the literal meaning of the song is virtually superseded’ (Ian Hoare, Mighty mights spade and whitey: soul lyrics and black-white crosscurrents, in The Soul Book, edited by Ian Hoare, London: 1975)

Check out the closing bars of this song for the example given – 20 notes for the word ‘for’:

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Gadhafi, Dancing and the Communism of Movement

‘A moderate revolution is a contradiction in terms, though a moderate putsch, coup or pronunciamento is not. However limited the ostensible aims of the revolution, the light of the New Jerusalem must shine through the cracks in the masonry of the eternal Establishment which it opens. When the Bastille falls, the normal criteria of what is possible on earth are suspended, and men and women naturally dance in the streets in anticipation of utopia’ (Eric Hobsbawn, ‘Thomas Paine’, New Statesman, 1961)

‘Do as you please. You are free to dance, sing, and celebrate in all squares throughout the night. Muammar Gadhafi is one of you. Dance, sing, rejoice’ (Gadhafi, February 2011)

The festive character of the uprisings sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East has been widely noted (see previous post on Egypt). Just as Hobsbawn wrote of earlier revolutions, everything seems possible as the old regimes crumble and people have literally been dancing, as well as fighting, in the streets. In Libya at the moment it is the fighting that is dominant, hopefully victory and further celebrations won’t be too far behind…. (Check out the rest).

About ten minutes before the meditation period begins, a monk taps out a series of rhythms, hitting a hanging wooden board (han) with a mallet. The process is repeated several times until the soft gong peal is sounded that signals the beginning of the zazen. Then for 30 minutes I sit quietly on a cushion, facing the wall, trying not to think. Thoughts come and thoughts go but mostly I notice the sounds. Traffic passing – the sounds of the building creaking or footsteps on a stairway or plumbing sounds – and the coughing of others sitting in the Zendo (it seems for some a half hour of zazen is like the first ten minutes at the symphony: a time to fidget and clear your throat). My fidgeting is all internal. It only stops when I begin to focus in on the sounds. When I began sitting, I was convinced that if I listened closely enough, a pattern would emerge and I’d hear the music of everyday life. Then I realized that listening to the ambient sounds that come and go around me during a sitting is engrossing and worth the time but it isn’t music. There is no intentionality present, no one is organizing the sounds and silences into meaningful patterns (or subverting those patterns) to transform them into music. When the gong sounds signaling the end of zazen, the sounds go on but I shift my attention back to the everyday and, listening in a different way, I hear them differently. I’m not disappointed I didn’t find a hidden layer of music underlying everything. What I did find is that listening deeply is deeply rewarding regardless of what you find.

Inscription on a Han (English translation)

 

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (founder of the S.F. Zen Center)

 

Buddhist monks make the best nightclub doormen.

You’ve seen him outside the door of the club, checking the list for your name. You ask him to check even if you’re not on the list, knowing he’ll decide if you make the cut – if you’re cool enough. Shaved head, an imposing build, a steady gaze. Some local nightclubs used to import doormen from Manhattan. Local doormen didn’t seem to have the right mix of imperturbable cool and restrained intimidation needed to work a high-class line. When you need cool and intimidation, call New York. It’s no longer necessary, I’ve found a local alternative.

He caught my eye as I walked into the Zendo and leaned ever so slightly into my path, asking, “What’s your name?” I told him and he asked me if I was there for the sitting. I said I was and he started over:

“What’s your name?”

I told him and he asked, “Are you here for the one-day sitting?”

I said I wasn’t and he told me there wasn’t any room in the Zendo but I could sit in the entryway. I bowed and left slightly abashed.

With no false bravado, I can say that it was the first time, I had been turned down at the door. And I’d never felt so handled. The man in the dark blue robes with the shaved head wasn’t physically imposing but he had a quiet intensity and a fixity of purpose that was more effectively intimidating than any man mountain who I’ve encountered working a velvet rope.

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