If Jazz Was a Color Exhibition Coming Soon

Our exhibition "If Jazz Was a Color will be opening shotly. It'll run the duration of Carnival season until March 5th featuring New Orleans new, emerging and established artists. We're locate at 1501 Canal Street in the old historic, Texaco building that is part of HRI Properties Bienville Basin Development.


The jazz part of the exhibition is purely a metaphor.  If sound/music is a vibration as well as color, if you switch the genre what color would jazz be?  The artists are to allowed to express themselves in whatever dirction that vibration takes them.








Valentine Pierce, artist




Ayo Scott,artist





Karel Sloane-Boekbinder, artist "Emma Barrett & the Society of Inseparable Friends"


Erika Brady, artist trilogy


Erika Brady, artist pt.2


Erika Brady, artist pt.3








Andrew Wilcox, artist







Jamar Pierre, artist "Jammin' on the Bayou"

Dominque Pierce, artist ""E Lee Music Project (female)"




Ann Cooper,artist

National Poetry Month, April 2013

" and when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me... shine until tomorrow...let it be"~ John Lennon

Amour: Falling in Love at a Farmer's Market

I was inspired but not in the way you think. I walked up to a Saturday Marketplace operated in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. I did not think they were going to be opened so close to the holidays, but there they were!




The first thing I heard as I came around the corner was the sounds of The Neo Collective trio www.neojazz.net

this was before I saw the produce. Today was a gorgeous almost spring day, great skies right temperature & organic foods.



I purchased pumpkin bread, curried couscous & blackeye peas salad from one vendor. Then 3 types of pepper jelly, chow chow (a Louisiana relish) pickled green tomatoes that were to die for and organic,free range eggs from Mr. Cal Crops from chicken he raises.



And then I headed home but before I got to the corner the first line of a poem popped in my head. The thought startled me as I've not been that terribly inspire to write any poetry this year sans one back a several months ago.



It happened because I watched the bass guitarist who happened to be a woman deeply immersed in creating sounds in her head, lost in her own world of sounds.



The last time I wrote something from my If Jazz was a Color series was a poem called the "Sounds of the Men" in 2000 watch a jazz brunch. In fact I paid a nod to it in this poem.



Amazing what healthy food, good weather and change can do!







Until I Saw That Face

By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney (c)12



Until I saw that face

I always thought that deep

powerful

engrossing...

mesmerizing can't get enough of that feeling that comes from jazz

was relegated from that place...

that place

that secret society that held the sounds of the men.

It made me fall in love again

for that 100 thousandth time

with the face of New Orleans.

Just when I had enough

Really enough of

that dark side

that black hole

that keeps springing up at the most inopportune tie

From the gut cramping of near shattered souls that can ever seem to come clean

not unlike that blackened mold & stench out of the intestines of Katrina winds.

My patience had worn thin..

I wanted to run until that highway ran out

just to get away from that surreal vibe.

But then...

like the taste of calamondian oranges made into marmalade

the sweetness and the the sour-ness

I saw in that face

I saw in that face

that face...



that face...

And I fell in love all over again

for the zillionth time...

For the very last time

So I say..

With the face of New Orleans

All rights reservedJHM12-21-12(c)

Poetic License for Sunday April 3,2011~Mr. Saul Williams

Here is my Sunday afternoon poem of the day... There are no words I can add other then there is no age, stature,class or education requirement to feel that kind of love...

This Type Love

 By Saul Williams©06

I want a love like me thinking of you thinking of me thinking of you type love or me telling my friends more than I've ever admitted to myself about how I feel about you type love or hating how jealous you are but loving how much you want me all to yourself type love

or seeing how your first name just sounds so good next to my last name.

and shit- I wanted to see how far I could get without calling you and I barely made it out of my garage.

See, I want a love that makes me wait until she falls asleep then wonder if she's dreaming about us being in love type love or who loves the other more or what she's doing at this exact moment or slow dancing in the middle of our apartment to the music of our hearts.

Closing my eyes and imagining how a love so good could just hurt so much when she's not there and shit I love not knowing where this love is headed type love.

And check this-

I wanna place those little post-it notes all around the house so she never forgets how much I love her type love

then not have enough ink in my pen to write all the love type love and hope I make her feel as good as she makes me feel

and I wanna deal with my friends making fun of me the way I made fun of them when they went through the same kind of love type love.

The only difference is this is one of those real type loves

and just like in high school I wanna spend hours on the phone not saying shit and then fall asleep and then wake up with her right next to me and smell her all up in my covers type love and I wanna try counting the ways I love her then lose count in the middle just so I could start all over again

and I wanna celebrate one of those one-month anniversaries even though they ain't really anniversaries but doing it just 'cause it makes her happy type love

and check this-

I wanna fall in love with the melody the phone plays when our numbers dial in type love and talk to you until I lose my breath, she leaves me breathless, but with the expanding of my lungs I inhale all of her back into me.

I want a love that makes me need to change my cell phone calling plan to something that allows me to talk to her longer 'cause in all honesty, I want to avoid one of them high cell phone bill type loves

and I don't want a love that makes me regret how small my hands are I mean the lines on my palms don't give me enough time to love you as long as I'd like to type love

and I want a love that makes me st-st-st-stutter just thinking about how strong this love is type love and I want a love that makes me want to cut off all my hair. Well maybe not all of the hair, maybe like I'd cut the split ends and trim the mustache but it would still be a symbol of how strong my love is for her.

I kind of feel comfortable now so I even be fantasize about walking out on a green light just dying to get hit by a car just so I could lose my memory, get transported to some third world country just to get treated and somehow meet up again with you so I could fall in love with you in a different language and see if it still feels the same type love.

I want a love that's as unexplainable as she is, but I'm married so she is gonna be the one I share this love with.

Mr. Saul Williams,poet

Creating the Zone~Steppin' Out on a High Note

Today I woke up feeling mighty good despite the lingering effects of the flu.  Sometimes I get my best creative ideas when I am sick. I'll spare you all the technical reasons why it happens, but I've been told by reliable sources that when you body is concentrating on one thing (in this case the flu), it lowers any restrictions or inhibitions in another area (creating).


I know it to be true in my case.


Contrary to popular,contemporary belief, human beings do not multi-task (well).  Our brains are not hardwire to do several things and do them well although we convince ourselves that we are.  The more we learn about the brain, the more scientists are learning why  the way we do the things we do.


I think that is a good thing to let go of feeling we HAVE to do everything right now at the same moment at the same time...


For me, yesterday's creative bursts I believe has allowed for today's high notes. It would be ok to say it the hormone such as endorphins, dopamine yada yada yada, coursing through the veins.  I just think its more but its more fun just to enjoy the high note.


In fact at this moment as I refining the quilt, "Steppin' Out on Dat High Note" for my contribution to the exhibit for the  American Jazz Museum/Buttonwood Art Space.

 "The Note Illustrated~Swingin' Visual of all things Musical" 

opening in a few weeks.




 http://www.buttonwoodartspace.com/event-list  


So I say, let the good times roll (creatively speaking)...

Isaiah 65:17-23

I finally found this wonderful in MJ's on words to Ed Bradley "the most autobiographical song about who he is". For ones who pooh-pooh believe what you want. If you have any kind of a willing to listen heart, show some heart today to pay attention to any of the lost boys (or girls)out here who may not have a place (or MJ's gift) to say:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVJscGa5vbc

Childhood
Written and Composed by Michael Jackson.
by Michael Jackson 2007

1959-2009 Isaiah 65:17:23


Have you seen my Childhood?

I'm searching for the world that I come from

'Cause I've been looking around

In the lost and found of my heart...

No one understands me

They view it as such strange eccentricities...

'Cause I keep kidding around

Like a child, but pardon me...

People say I'm not okay

'Cause I love such elementary things...

It's been my fate to compensate, for the ChildhoodI've never known...

Have you seen my Childhood?

I'm searching for that wonder in my youth

Like pirates in adventurous dreams,

Of conquest and kings on the throne...

Before you judge me, try hard to love me,

Look within your heart then ask,

Have you seen my Childhood?

People say I'm strange that way

'Cause I love such elementary things,
It's been my fate to compensate,

for the Childhood (Childhood) I've never known...

Have you seen my Childhood?

I'm searching for that wonder in my youth

Like fantastical stories to share

But the dreams I would dare, watch me fly...

Before you judge me, try hard to love me.

The painful youth I've had

Have you seen my Childhood....

Linking Up

http://www.playingforchange.com/episodes/9/Change_Is_Gonna_Come

http://galan05.wordpress.com/

First link makes me want to pack up and take the 1st thing smokin' to go home.

It and the latter link makes me want to get out to see the world some more!

Enjoy

Yeah u Wright

Wonderful singer. I hear remanants of Traci Chapman in her voice.

Song is called Stop from 2005 but she is airing on WWOZ-New Orleans as we speak...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll_G4QFYVhA

And one of my favorite Nat King Cole's; Nature Boy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLOPPv6GE7k&NR=1

Don't need No Words...

Blind Willie Johnson 1897-1945

the raw, powerful "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was the Ground", where he sings in wordless hum and moans about the crucifixion of Jesus. This song was a "moaning" piece related to the Bentonia school of blues practiced by such "eerie voiced" artists as Skip James and Robert Johnson.

Dark Was The Night, Cold Was the Ground was included on the Voyager Golden Record, sent into space with the Voyager spacecraft in 1977; this piece was used in the widely seen science show Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan in 1980.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNj2BXW852g&feature=related

From 1927:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R8RuOagzck&feature=related

Every Goodbye Ain't Gon-Katrina series

This was created in memory of Elruad BurtIII, New Orleans jazz flutist who passed away in 2007.

What Color will it Be? 2006

This quilt is from the If Jazz was a Color series, shown here Strecker- Nelson Gallery. It is in the collection of Neil Belensky, president of NC United Way