Last weekend, I saw the world premiere of Amiri Baraka’s Jazz Opera, The Sisyphus Syndrome. I read his groundbreaking The Blues People in 1969, when he was still known as LeRoi Jones. It was my first year at UC Berkeley and I had enrolled in a Black Studies Course on music, taught by the jazz musician and composer Ortiz Walton. I had never read sentences infused with so much rhythm – jazz and blues blowing through and loosening up the standard sentence structure.

I remember The Myth of Sisyphus from high school English, and while the discussion was extraordinarily stimulating, it was well, purely mental and thus dry. Not so with Barka’s take of the myth. The entire production is “Pure Energy,” to use the tag line of a local radio station that blasts DJ mix music and Hip-Hop 24/7/365. The actors dance their dramatic movements and rap their lines – well, actually the lyrics of Baraka’s libretto, because for Amiri there isn’t a separation between sentence and music. Six of them, equally divided between men and women, move and chant together as a Greek chorus. The protagonist – Death, a huge hulk of a man with wild hair, half-painted white face, and wearing a black t-shirt printed with night-glow skeletal bones on both sides, embodies the destructive forces that inevitably causes the rock to crash back down on the chorus.

In this opera, these destructive forces represent equal parts the external larger and oppressive, social/political circumstances that oppress a people and of the internal forces of fear, doubt, disunity, greed, and so on that can also bring a people down, time after time (interlinked parts no doubt, but also separate). The character Death continuously mocks, hurls invective, attacks, and otherwise torments the chorus throughout until the end, when he is rendered into a whisper of a tolerated, but unwelcomed guest who with some hesitation, sticks his head out between a break in the rear curtain in his final scene, whispering a final comment. The chorus dismissively admonishes him not to interrupt because “We’re talking.”

Except for Death, the costuming is disarmingly urban, because it’s what you’d actually see folks wearing at the robust, village square like Oakland’s Farmers market on Lake Merritt Avenue on a typical Saturday afternoon and amongst the hustle and bustle of the nearby shops and restaurants along Grand Avenue and Lakeshore Avenue. And also, not so much different from what many in the audience wore.

The choreographer and a cast member in the chorus, Traci Bartlow (also a close friend of mine) hews close to her funk-blues-urban mix moves. She trained with Alvin Ailey, but gave up a chance to join the company in order to return home to tend to family problems. Yeah, Traci is a family values Gurl’. But that Ailey background shows in the occasional balladic leap and lift combinations.

On the left side of the small, yet ample stage, a floor-to-ceiling gauzy, scrim dominates a fourth of the stage, as a screen of images of the Sisyphean Black historic experience flashes throughout the show. This is not your more mainstream of what might be an NPR flavored version of the Black experience, but an edgier, no sensibilities spared version. Yet, because it was so artistically well executed, including high points like the Harlem Renaissance, it did not needlessly jar or turn one off with the uglier truths as it might have in less skillful hands.

But it’s what behind the scrim, and occasionally glimpsed as if in a dream, thanks to the deftness of lighting design, that deepens this already attention grabbing performance into a powerful theater experience, and that’s the quintet headed up by tenor saxophonist David Murray with vocals by the extraordinary strong and yet melodic voice of Kimiko Joy.

There were those wonderful moments as when Joy and Murray face each other, her arms chugging forth as if out of control as when she sang “Rolling Up the Stone,” Murray blowing back at her with his huge tenor sax, and she giving even all that back to him. Murray plays and composes in the soaring, transcendent lineage of John Coltrane and certainly, the music rocketed us all to the higher heavens several times on each of the two nights I attended the production.

But Murray clearly loves wailing in the Bebop tradition of Charlie “Bird” Parker as well, and with Kimiko engaging him along every soaring, jagged rift, one truly understands why the sax is often referred to as the “ax.” Murray’s music simply “tore up,’ as if cutting away and through all of our flimsy reality constructs, and then taking us into some verities of being. It was in moments like this that I understood why the cast sometimes referred to the show as a “Bopera.’

Truly, this was a great show within a show. And so the hugest shout-out to the rest of this awesomely tight quintet, Howard Wiley on drums, David Ewell on bass, and Sister Kee on keys. Murray also played bass clarinet.

In the closing stanzas of “Endsong,” Baraka writes:

Can’t be stopped, keep on pushing like the

Impressions

Said, and we will, believe me, trust me, watch

Me, We’ll reach the top!

Wherever that is

In whatever time and place

There will be a new edition to our

Condition, call it

Self-determination, call it democracy, call it

Free!

In his “contemporizing,” as Baraka describes it, of the Myth of Sisyphus, he places this jazz opera within the cultural context of the African American struggle of pushing the rock up the mountain of democracy, only to have it roll it down on their heads endlessly.

But in the Saturday night Q&A, he emphasized that he actually viewed the rock as the Rock of Democracy. “I love this country,” he prefaced, and then gave us a brief, but encompassing lecture of the McCarthy era, when under the guise of hunting unpatriotic Communists, the government actually, in his choice of words, “…purged…” the ranks of academia, media, the arts, and especially Hollywood of anyone who was exploring the real lives of the American people, including the topics around class, gender preference, miscegenation, people of color, and those who didn’t fit the post-war nuclear, suburban family image. He recommended that anyone who didn’t believe this should watch movies from before the McCarthy hearings and compare to those produced afterwards.

I guess Baraka was reminding us that this was a kind of American Cultural Revolution, where many lives, as well as careers, were destroyed.

I liked the way he said, “I love this country,” so quietly, so quickly, and then went into the rest of his answer. It’s not the accusatory, flag pin wearing, litmus test way, that the Sean Hannity’s of the world say it when they set out to marginalize a guest’s patriotism. For Amiri, his love of country is a passing given, that’s who I am and I don’t need to question yours or wave a flag to prove it.

He concluded his answer to pointing out what I had surmised some time back, that the Bush-Cheney years were one of growing cultural and governmental control, dislocation and dumbing down of the populace, and of a kind of preparation that readily lends itself to American style dictatorship. He pointed to the democratic Weimar Republic that preceded Nazism as a historical precedent that would alert us to ephemeral quality of democracy. I didn’t think this was the most apt historic metaphor, but would have pointed more to Thomas Jefferson’s home soil admonition that “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Also to remind folks to read Sinclair Lewis’ novel, “It Cant’ Happen Here,” detailing a homegrown rise of an American brand of Fascism.

The lyrics of Sisyphus Syndrome were originally created as a commission for a New York based consortium of Black opera singers. It was produced and performed as a European style opera, and as it turned out, as a vehicle for one singer in particular.

Amiria Baraka had always wanted to direct his own version, with music from the African American tradition of rhythm & blues, and of course jazz. So this limited engagement, a three-day run, was a workshop production, and he, along with a very motivated cast, look forward to evolving it into a more final piece. There’s already active interest in remounting more-or-less this version in San Francisco in the near future. So heads up for those of you who can’t wait.

As an exuberant and enjoyable workshop production, there were of course places for improvement, some quite obvious. In mid-piece, Amiria Baraka himself gets ups and reads, a page of lyrics obviously placed behind a kind of colorful shield he was holding with both hands. But whether it was the inadequate miking, or all the music in the background, it was hard to make out his words. His own suggestion was to have over-titles tracking his reading.

The same could be said of the chorus’ lines overall – it was often hard to make the words out. But then, as with Italian opera, it’s not necessary to understand all the lines or to some extent, even the narrative. It’s the feeling and the music and the energy that makes it great, and so while technically remiss, the chorus’s periods of inaudibility did not bother me – they were too infused with musicality, and so readily flowed along with the quick, unfolding drama.

Early in the second half, six teenagers of the Youth Guerrilla Theater, substituted for the Chorus to deliver spoken words. As a change, this started out as a very nice touch, i.e., including the next generation, and what a diverse attractive group, too. But although the music wasn’t playing, it was hard to make out their lines where making out the words did matter. For a youth theater troupe, they didn’t seem to know how to move on stage. At one place, the young actors froze into poses that didn’t really make sense to me theatrically. While I approached the slower pace as we reentered the piece, it wandered into turgidity. If the production continues to include teens, which I think they should, this portion screams for some serious redesigning.

There was an eighth character, “The Guy,” an eye-glass wearing middle-age character, who stands up from amongst the audience in a suit-and-tie and delivers a screed just before the Intermission. In the second half, he reappears in a beret and US Army style jacket and delivers another screed. I didn’t grasp the character’s contribution and if anything, his words seemed redundant.

It’s rare to find actors who are also good dancers, and while each of the cast would look good on the hottest Oakland nightclub dance floor, a few of them came off stiffer than fluid for a stage production.

A cast and friends party followed the Saturday night performance. After the two trays of ribs and shredded pork and ‘tater salad were done justice too along with beaucoup bottles of Merlot, Cab, and Zin, the jam began. Earl Davis, a long-time trumpeter blew with the drummer Howard Wiley, but now on keyboards, and a too young teen -- possibly a boy he was such a slip -- carrying on masterfully on the drums. It’s just this kind of elders letting young talent play unselfconsciously and nurtured by them that I so love hanging with. Made me wish I had kept up my trombone playing so I too could have sat in.

The maestro Douglas Murray sat and listened for about a half-an-hour, once remarking to me on how talented the youngster was. Then he returned with his sax and blew with Earl for a wondrous, longest time. Later, Wiley’s own son joined in with his sax. Even later, others sang, spoke word poetry, and were still jamming when I left at 1:30 AM. Amiri Baraka was still hanging…an elder with his tribe of those following in his pioneering footsteps.

The venue, the East Side Arts Alliance (ESAA) Theater, is an intimate workshop like space located in East Oakland. ESAA owns the multi-use building it’s housed in and is thus financially self-sustaining. Rare for such a young, arts and performance organization.

Of course, most folks think of East Oakland as the land of drive-by shootings, crack cocaine dealing, hookers on the streets, and squealing car rallies. But for those of us who know Oakland, there are several versions of infamous East Oakland. There’s “Deep East,” along International Boulevard and the 80^th to 98^th Avenues, way over towards the Oakland Coliseum, where in fact, much of the media reports of mayhem actually arise. There’s a kind of a “Mid-East” Oakland, more benign, and finally there’s a “Near East” Oakland closer to the genteel Lake Merritt district and Oakland’s comparatively low-key, but thriving downtown.

ESAA is located in the “Near East,” if you will, on International Boulevard and 23^rd St., and minutes from the fashionable downtown loft condos and the Lake Merritt high-rise condo apartments. Yes it is in a ‘hood, the very livable neighborhood of the San Antonio Park district, comprised of residents of all races, ethnicities, and religions. Native American Charter Schools, Vietnamese Pho noodle shops, Chinese Buddhist Temples, Baptist and Catholic churches, Spanish surnamed hair salons, SEIU union halls, pool halls, El Salvadoreano restaurants, ‘cue joints, American breakfast dinettes, shoe repair stores, furniture-on-credit outlets, KFCs, Clinicas, city hall annexes, and off-International Boulevard streets of single-family dwellings with back-yards and kids playing on the streets make up the rich tapestry of life of this slice of inner city diversity.

This coming Saturday, May 17^th, the East Side Arts Alliance is mounting the 8^th Annual Malcolm X Jazz Festival in San Antonio Park, a very nice and sunny city park. I’ve been to two of them and would attend this week, but I’m booked for the Pacific Rim Festival in Old Town Sacramento.

This jazz festival has always turned out to be a mellow day in the park to spread out on a picnic blanket listening to great local jazz, munching on a variety of food (vegan/organic, Asian fusion, ‘cue, etc.) and drink, patronizing local painters, sculptures, clothing designers, and ceramicists, and with latest Green and Ecological campaigns and information at your fingertips. It’s never too crowded and with lots for young kids and teens, too, including Traci Bartlow’s day-long Hip Hop review and contest on the tennis courts.

There are great masseuses body workers applying their healing ministrations amidst the booths. My first year, I discovered a masseur who became my regular body worker for about a year before he moved East.

In fact, that’s really what I like about this unknown, unheralded Oakland scene – it is the Scene, very bohemian and urban innovative in a way that San Francisco no longer is, or can be because the real estate is so highly priced. This part of Oakland is the latest incarnation of spirit of the Bay Area arts scene, from the Beatniks’ own spoken words, hot jazz, and free verse literature to the unbound Psychedelic Era music of the Jefferson Airplane, Carlos Santana, the Grateful Dead, It’s a Beautiful Day, Sly and the Family Stone, the Mahavishnu John McLaughlin Orchestra, B.B. King, Ravi Shankar and so many more musicians playing the stages of Winterland, the Fillmore, the Civic, the UCB Greek Amphitheater, and even the more formal symphony and opera halls.

And it’s the dominant overlaid of African American urban music, dance, and art that makes this Bohemianism so unique and surprisingly to me when I recognized it for what it is a couple of years ago, courtesy of Traci Bartlow, who invited me to many of these underground events. Many of the artists I’ve met are actually from middle-class families, or higher, graduated from university or art schools, and are incredibly well traveled for their ages. In this way, they possess similar characteristics with those of past Bohemian spirited movements of the Bay Area.

When it comes to Hip Hop, they eschew the Gangsta Rap popularized by the mainstream music conglomerates, and stay close to the more civil, socially aware, and progressive lyrics of the Oakland based Hip Hop scene, a music that once credibly competed with Gangsta’ Rap for the hearts and minds of America’s inner city youth, but ultimately lost out to the music machine’s choices. 90’s groups like Arrested Development and Salt and Pepper were in the Oakland groove. Ise Lyfe is a new Oakland based rap artist whose lyrics continue to belt out Oakland style. Oakland's Aya DeLeon's highly entertaining and enriching performance piece focuses on this very point of departure.

When I heard that many of the Oakland dance mixers, dancers, writers, filmmakers, photographers and painters made annual trips straight to Brooklyn, where a similar scene has been brewing for a long time, i.e., going straight to Brooklyn as in skipping Manhattan entirely, I coined a phrase, “from Oakland to Brooklyn…” as the arc of this scene, just as it use to be from Manhattan’s the Village to San Francisco’s North Beach once upon time.

What’s also interesting about this new Oakland-to-Brooklyn scene is that it’s not just a European or African American dominated one, but Latino and Asian Americans are prominent by their presence and contribution. As you can see if you attend the Malcolm X Festival at San Antonio Park this coming Saturday, May 17^th, and other performances and classes at Eastside Arts Alliance.

I hope to cover more of this growing, and media-hyped free (so far) scene in future columns, essays, and journalistic reports.

Peace Out!!!

(C) 2008. William Poy Lee