The African-American community’s elders and artists played key roles last night in the success of a rousing multi-media event at Mad Art Gallery in Soulard.
“Hoobellatoo: Crossing America” offered, among other things, the rare opportunity to see a great elder posed beside a classic portrait of her, as Sister Ann Pittman received visitors sitting at the feet of Andrea Day’s photograph of her singing in Downtown St. Louis.
Sister Pittman, age 96, is a self-taught musicologist who researched and preserved the spirituals her mother had kept alive in oral tradition and which date back to plantation slave culture.
K. Curtis Lyle was one of two poets (David Clewell of Webster University being the other) who performed Leo Connellan’s epic poem “Crossing America.” Lyle, the American’s culture critic, is the author of the poetry collection Electric Church and the spoken word CD The Collected Poem of Blind Lemon Jefferson (performed with the late, great jazz composer Julius Hemphill).
Local artist, musician and arts organizer David A.N. Jackson played a significant role as percussionist in the folk orchestra that performed an original score to Connellan’s poem. His performance of “Hitchhiked America” on whistle and harmonica opened the piece, echoing the cry of a train and the lonely melody of a roadside traveler, and was essential in establishing the mood of the hobo epic.
Bernie Hayes, radio legend, singer, activist and columnist for the American, hosted a memorial to the late jump blues legend Rosco Gordon, situated in a former holding cell (the performance venue, Mad Art Gallery, is located in a building that once served as a police station).
Hayes, who knew Gordon when both were young performers, greatly educated visitors to the event on the important role of a forgotten innovator. Gordon’s unusual backbeat, expressed on 1950s hits such as “No More Doggin’” and “Booted,” was immensely influential in Jamaica, where it is credited as providing the seed for ska and reggae. Given the worldwide popularity of reggae, Gordon deserves to be ranked with Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley as among the most original and important American songwriters of the 20th century.
