“Your Black Friend” by Ben Passmore
This is a situation where I want to grab frame or two to put here, to entice you to click through and read the whole thing. But at the same time, I don’t wanna grab a full frame, b/c every frame of it—and the way the entire thing locks together—is So. Damn. Perfect, and such a perfect presentation of the thing it’s trying to talk about.
I love it. There’s nothing left to say. It’s 100% perfect for me. It is MAUS for this moment.
I take exception to Tom Moon’s characterization of Dorothy Ashbury (quoted as the title): she isn’t just among “the most unjustly under-loved jazz greats of the 1950s”; she is almost certainly the most inexplicably under-appreciate jazz great ever.
Born in 1932 in Detroit, Ashbury broke barriers at every angle: a Black female professional artist in a male dominated industry, Ashby established the harp as an improvising jazz instrument, cracking open both mainstream society’s notion’s of what was and was not appropriate for a Black woman to do (playing classical harp) and cracking up the counterculture’s notion of what could and could not be done (bringing “novelty” background instruments like harp and koto to center stage, bringing global cultural and musical tropes to Euro-American-centric jazz).
“It’s been maybe a triple burden in that not a lot of women are becoming known as jazz players. There is also the connection with black women. The audiences I was trying to reach were not interested in the harp, period—classical or otherwise—and they were certainly not interested in seeing a black woman playing the harp.”
Dorothy Ashbury
But I kinda give zero shits about any of that; just listen to her music:
Don’t you dare click away from that track before you cross the 1min20sec mark! “Joyful Grass and Grape” is, like, 90% of the way to being a Wu Tang banger all by itself, just add some ODB and RZA.
This is why I love Ashbury: the deep, quiet Afro-futurism of this music that came 40 years earlier than it had any right to. She was sampling and mixing and beat juggling in her head, without the benefit of turntables and a sound system. In it’s infancy hiphop constantly justified itself by pointing to jazz—and sadly somehow missed its most obvious Matriarch. I am so delighted to have algorithmically stumbled upon Ashbury that my outrage about her erasure is itself entirely erased.
Here’s the initial track that joyfully blew my goddamned mind:
And there’s much much more out there. Listen. Listen!
I want to write about the protests I saw yesterday, with my daughter, who is an 8-year-old string-bean, blonde and strong.
There are the protests we see on our screens—the photogenic protests, the darkness and fire, the police taking a knee, screams and smoke, rods and shields. We all see one picture, and we all feel the protests are one thing.
But they aren’t. Even in one place, on one street, they are many things at once.
I saw two protests yesterday, here in Michigan.
The first was a lone Black woman—young, maybe just a girl. She stood flanked by the trees at the edge of Washtenaw Ave—four lanes of fast traffic, a commercial strip connecting this town and the next. She wore a blue surgical mask and gloves and a plaid shirt, buttoned to the wrists and neck, despite the heat. Her head was bowed over a wide cardboard sign, particolored letters:
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
The other protest was a march down Industrial Ave—which is exactly what it sounds like: an industrial strip of carpet stores and auto shops, a car wash and a bowling alley, the old rail line running along the backs of their lots. I stumbled into this protest with my daughter, after going to the hardware for lumber and locks and candles and a garden hose.
We watched them pass. They were silent. No songs, no shouting, no slogans. It was like no protest or rally I’d ever seen, not in decades of attending protests (occasionally to protest, but far more often to watch or report or chaperone teens).
This was like a funeral procession. So quiet. So steady, implacable. Not mournful; dignified.
Many ad hoc and improvised signs, scraps of cardboard, mostly BLACK LIVES MATTER riffs. One said “DO NOT AVERT YOUR EYES.” And so I did not—it was only in seeing that sign that I realized that it was my inclination to do so, even though I’d come down the street specifically to see what I could see.
Those who walked were Black and White. Young. They wore their masks and shorts and t-shirts—it was hot, and the sun fierce on the street.
Another sign, the largest, a flattened refrigerator box, read:
STOP KILLING BLACK PEOPLE
The sign’s bearer was extremely light skinned, a Black & White son in black shorts and t-shirt. My heart always goes out to the kids who are neither fish nor fowl. I’m with you, brothers and sisters: The world constantly demands we not be half of what we are.
I raised a fist. Eyes turned to me, fists raised in acknowledgement, and my heart stopped. It was like being saluted by ghosts.
The procession had a police escort. An SUV slowly rolling to the fore to clear traffic, another slowly rolling behind, protecting the procession from the impatient cars piling up. No lights. No sirens. A couple more SUVs scurried ahead, blocking each intersection before the procession arrived. Like school crossing guards.
What are you seeing where you are?
