‘Hoobellatoo: Crossing America’ on Nov. 3 will unite a host of creative forces
By K. Curtis Lyle
For the St. Louis American
On Thursday, Nov. 3, I will join my fellow poet David Clewell to read the words of a dead man from the state of Maine, Leo Connellan, who spent the 1950s hitchhiking back and forth across America. Leo’s epic poem, in our reading, will be illustrated by a gang of creative musicians, including free jazz ace Dave Stone and the percussionist (my boy) David A.N Jackson.
This performance of Crossing America, in a genre that producers Lij and Chris King call a “poetry score” or “spoken word folk symphony,” will be accompanied by a photo essay by Andrea Day (also titled Crossing America) and memorials to four departed creative forces: Leo, a merchant marine songster named Pops Farrar, a local rapper turned folky named Hunter Brumfield (aka Toast), and the jump blues legend Rosco Gordon.
Rosco’s memorial – situated in a former jail cell, since the performance space, Mad Art Gallery, is a former jailhouse – will be hosted by the American’s own Bernie Hayes, who knew Rosco early in both of their musical careers.
What unites all of these wildly different people and experiences? Something very hard to define called Hoobellatoo, which calls itself a documentary group and an arts collective, but is that and more.
Anyone who was reading this paper in February during Black History Month learned something about Hoobellatoo without knowing it. The word is from the Grebo language of West Africa, what is now Liberia, and is borrowed from a song by Nymah Kumah, a Grebo elder whose memoirs (as narrated to Chris King of the American) were serialized in the Black History Month special section, as were Rosco’s memoirs, which he wrote by hand and gave to King before he passed away in 2002.
The word “hoobellatoo” means “beautiful people” or “wonderful people.” Nymah Kumah, Rosco Gordon, Pops Farrar and Leo Connellan are or were all beautiful people, all wonderful people. You will have the opportunity to learn more about them on November 3 (except for Nymah Kumah, a special case and still a living artist who will get his own stage in St. Louis sometime next year).
Rosco Gordon was a pioneer during that period in the development of American popular music when rhythm and blues was overflowing the banks of its river and beginning to fill the ocean that would come to be called rock and roll. His influential musical signature was stamped on a brittle and tilted backbeat that Jamaicans would come to call ska, which in turn evolved into reggae. Jamaicans call Rosco the seed of reggae.
Pops Farrar was a Missouri original who traveled the world as a merchant marine. His soft shoe landed on every continent. Each landing gobbled up a folk melody, and each melody rested contentedly inside his harmonica or accordion. Leo Connellan was a poet from Maine who hitchhiked across America when that act was considered a compelling rite of passage, both tragic and joyous, which was the envy of the world.
These men, seemingly with little in common, have been brought together by Hoobellatoo, along with many others, including our own Sister Ann Pittman, a true St. Louis matriarch of the spiritual, who was beautifully photographed by Andrea Day. Both Sister Pittman and her portraits will be present at the Hoobellatoo: Crossing America event.
Beauty is the bond here.
Rosco Gordon may have been Hoobellatoo’s greatest find. (The collective recorded his last sessions before he passed away; they were released last year by Dualtone Music Group in Nashville on the CD No Dark in America.) Rosco was there at the literal birth of rock and roll. His association with the likes of B.B. King, Ike Turner, Johnny Ace and Little Richard and his hip-hopscotching back and forth between the important record labels of the time – Chess, Sun, RPM – put him at the heart of a great ball of fire.
Sam Phillips, Leonard Chess and the Bihari brothers – the most important of the early rock producers – were his confidants. If they were here today they would attest to both his brilliance and his influence. Rosco’s song about Sept. 11, “No Dark in America,” is the most powerful musical response to the tragedy I have encountered. Its triple mix of recognizing fear in the face of misery, embracing the world and the people around him, and transcending it all by doing the thing he was made to do truly signify that there was, for him, no dark in America.
Hoobellatoo: Crossing America will he held Thursday, Nov. 3 at Mad Art Gallery, 1227 So. 12th St. in Soulard. The photo show and memorials open at 7 p.m. with the live performance at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 at the door and include two complimentary drinks courtesy of sponsors Schlafly Beer and O’Fallon Brewing.
