Stand Up Straight and Sing! (35 page)

It was therefore a dream come to reality for me to be a part of this celebration of the African American cultural legacy. The three-week-long, fifty-two-event celebration in March of 2009 took place in many different venues in the city of New York, with immensely talented singers, instrumentalists, dancers, actors, scholars, and all who shone a bright light on the contributions of a people and a heritage of which I am rightfully proud. We were fortunate in having Mellonee Burnim and Portia Maultsby’s 2006 compilation
African American Music: An Introduction
as a marvelous guide: a timeline for the development of music ranging from the Spiritual to the blues, on to bebop, into jazz in all its variations, and rhythm and blues with all its machinations, on to pop and off to hip-hop and whatever comes next. We presented and celebrated it all.
Sacred Ellington,
my production of music taken from the three different sacred concerts composed by Duke Ellington, employs jazz band, jazz combo, piano, string quartet, gospel choir, a tap dancer, a spiritual dancer, and yours truly. It was a blessing to be able to present this production in the very same place where the Duke himself performed his sacred music concerts: the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.

At Carnegie Hall, the premiere of a multimedia extravaganza,
Ask Your Mama!
Twelve Moods for Jazz
by Langston Hughes and with music by Laura Karpman, was presented as part of the festival. At the Apollo Theater, a gospel fest for the ages was offered. The wonderful Shirley Caesar was in rare form. It was also tremendous to hear a children’s gospel choir.

From the time its doors opened in 1891, up until the
Honor!
festival in 2009, Carnegie Hall had welcomed some nine hundred African American musicians, actors, lecturers, and more to the stage. During the festival, Toni Morrison, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Derrick Bell, Maya Angelou, Terence Blanchard, Harolyn Blackwell, the Roots, and many more would take the stage at Carnegie. What splendor. What a gift to us all!

I thought of the enduring strength and genius of Louis Armstrong, who, invited to offer a performance somewhere in the South, found that his audience would in fact be segregated and that neither he nor his band would be permitted to enter the premises via the front door. His integrity led him to refuse to perform, and to pay his band out of his own pocket. It would be Bing Crosby who would insist that such a talent as rarely walked this earth should enter through the front entrance of anywhere in this world. Crosby insisted that Armstrong walk with him through the front door, which Armstrong did, on the condition that his band members be invited to do so, as well.

That was just one of the incalculable number of incidents of intolerance, but it was conquered by a higher degree of humanity and the simple wish of an African American to offer a gift, a talent. Armstrong played Carnegie Hall, as did Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway: the list is long and wonderful.

It was pure joy to stand on this stage, Carnegie Hall, and speak their names, and honor them as they honored us.

BY NOW, I UNDERSTAND
completely that life does not occur in straight lines and that thinking of it as such only establishes the perfect environment for disappointment. The reality of peaks, valleys, and curves becomes clearer with experience, with time, with living.

I think that growing older in grace and with grace has a great deal to do with one’s attitude toward life’s progression and exactly what that means. I have decided that time has something to teach me. That I might now implement ideas that for various reasons were left by the wayside of life.

There will always be the various camps of music enthusiasts, some who feel that the works of Mozart and Beethoven, for example, are so superior to everything else that one need nothing else. Or the Wagner devotees who offer their sympathy to those who do not possess their depth of understanding or appreciation of Wagner’s music. And let us not forget the camp that feels a trained opera singer is somehow “breaking ranks” by adding the music of different genres to his or her repertoire. Woe unto the opera singer who finds joy in the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein!

Such opinions are not a part of my choices in life. As has always been the case, I sing the music of my heart.

Roots: My Life, My Song
is an example of breaking ranks. I absolutely adore singing such classics as Harold Arlen’s—but really Lena Horne’s—“Stormy Weather.” When I was considering including this song on the CD, I called Miss Lena (I always called my pal “Miss Lena,” which always made her laugh) to ask her permission. She responded, as usual in her goodness, “Oh, girl. That song does not belong to me. Go ahead and sing it and have a good time.” And that is what I am doing with this music, having a good time!

I THINK, TOO
, that the passage of time can be so instructive and rewarding if we allow the respect and space for it. And I wish that we women could somehow relieve ourselves of the notion that at age sixty, we need to look like we are thirty-five. Time settles in and your hair changes and your skin becomes a little less firm and wrinkles settle in and your body does not sit easily in the same positions it did when you were young and spry, but there is beauty there, if you let it be. I suppose it is pop culture and our own sense of mortality that lead so many of us to think there is something wrong with letting it be, but I disagree. I say always that fine wine becomes even better in the bottle over time. I have decided to be a Pomerol.

One of the things that gives me joy is the sheer look of flowers. When one considers the many hundreds of books written on the subject and the number of gardens everywhere, it is clear that a love of flowers is universal. I am drawn particularly to orchids. I had no idea of the thousands of varieties of this flower until I visited an exhibition in Tokyo some years ago. Some orchids grow only in Africa, others only in Malaysia, others only in the Amazon, and so forth.

With this knowledge now under my belt and with my love for this flower only increased, you can imagine that I was floored when the French National Museum of Natural Sciences and the National Botanical Garden invited me to be present at a ceremony at which an orchid would be named for me. My reaction upon hearing this amazing news was stunned gratitude.

On a beautiful, sunny morning, we found ourselves in the warm and humid home of the orchid garden of the National Botanical Gardens of France, which is in Versailles. Live music played quietly and everyone spoke in lowered tones, which somehow seemed to fit this atmosphere completely. I was transported.

It was there that I would learn that an orchid grower in the South of France had given seven years to the development of this perfectly gorgeous Phalaenopsis: a beautiful ivory flower with a tinge of light purple at its head. I was presented with a specimen in the loveliest of ceremonies, with poetry from one of my all-time favorites, Paul Verlaine.

A specimen of this plant can now be found in the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.

Amid such beauty, the spirit floats, soars a bit, and rests again in complete joy. Flowers make their own music.

I listen to a good deal of instrumental classical music and jazz and allow it to calm me and lift my spirits, and on occasion to teach me. There is great value in listening to such giants as Ellington and Fitzgerald, Monk, Coltrane, and Vaughan, among countless others. The phrasing, the wonderful use of blue notes, the pleasure that seems to spring from an Ella Fitzgerald CD, serve to nourish the spirit. By contrast, I seldom listen to opera, as it is nearly impossible to listen and not sing along. This is not relaxing as it is nearly impossible to simply listen and not jump in to sing a phrase or two.

I derive great pleasure, though, still and forever, from my work. I am so grateful and so very happy that my voice and I are enjoying a fine relationship at this time of life, a time when our voices are subject to the same vagaries as the rest of our bodies.

Living changes the voice, and it can be in a positive way. Life changes the way we think about a song, or an aria, or an entire operatic role. Living gives us more information.

I had the experience recently of working with a conductor who, in preparing for our performance, listened to a recording that I had made twenty years ago.

It took me a moment to explain that “love” is one thing at age thirty-five or forty, but it is a different thing, perhaps a more urgent wish, at age sixty—and that my singing of this song has changed with me. Life had intervened and taught me much more about love and longing.

My conductor understood and we had a beautiful time together.

THE EXPERIENCE OF LIVING
can be wonderful in the insight we are able to offer those of fewer years. I am so grateful to have been blessed with a group of women a generation and more ahead of me in years, on whom I rely for wisdom. My aunt Louise is about to celebrate eighty-seven years, with the brightness and keen-minded sense of life and living that have only expanded with her years. She still has one of the very best collections of hats around, and wears them, with her jewelry and high-heeled shoes! She does not fret about things over which she has no control. One seldom sees a frown in that wonderful face.

I would like to be an Aunt Louise.

My pal Christine, in her twinsets, pleated skirts, pearls and all, is another one to emulate.

She is so circumspect in the way she carries herself that if the word
damn
passes her lips, as it did when we spoke recently, the world practically rocks. She stated that when you have managed to reach a certain age, you do not give a
damn
what others think about what you feel, say, or do. I have come to some conclusions about life, she said, and I am comfortable in speaking to those conclusions. Why suffer fools if you do not have to do so? she asks. Why do anything that you do not really wish to do, if it is not going to cause harm to another person? I embrace these sentiments.

From my own ancestry, there are stories of strong and wise women. I saw a photograph of my great-grandmother once, which is odd enough, considering where she lived and when she lived. Somehow, in its early decades, the art of photography found its way to Georgia, to her little corner of the world. She lived to be nearly ninety years old. I remember looking at her face and then back at my mother’s, searching for evidence that the two were kindred. My mother explained how an African American woman living deep in the backwoods of Georgia at the turn of the century, in the midst of the danger that came with simply being African American, could not only live to see ninety years, but look as beautiful as my great-grandmother did in that picture. For one, she had a very healthy lifestyle. She spent a lot of time outdoors, much of it exercising. Except no one really called it exercise. She walked the hillside, carrying water, searching for berries, moving with great ease as she worked the land. My great-grandmother washed her face with red clay, too, which, when I was very young, seemed very odd. But of course, we all know now that you can buy such products in small bottles these days for great sums in our fancier stores. The water my great-grandmother used with that clay was also free of pollutants and acid rain: pure. No doubt, as people in the country in those days tended to get up with the sun and go to bed at sunset, she had gotten plenty of rest and, living on a farm, the blessing of an abundance of vegetables and fruit. All these things I am rather sure contributed to her looking simply terrific in that photograph, which, in fact, had been taken near the end of her life. She lived a wholesome lifestyle free of the vices that consume all too many.

The same is true of my grandmother, who was beautiful, strong, and independent well into her many years on this earth—well after her twelve children were adults and had left the farm to forge their own lives. There was a considerable amount of time and effort poured into trying to convince Grandmother to leave the farm and move in with someone who would be responsible for taking care of her. My uncle Floyd, whose farmland was contiguous to hers, thought he would be successful in convincing her to leave the farm and live with him, as she would not have been leaving familiar surroundings. But Grandmother would have none of this. Now well into her eighties, she made it clear that this farm was her home. She had lived there happily with Granddaddy and all those children, working their own land in grace. She remained there to live out her years.

WHILE I MAKE MYSELF
comfortable on a daily basis with the passing of time, I would not mind fewer bits of correspondence from the AARP. Those envelopes with the big red letters that appear as if by magic on such a regular basis can put a damper on your thought of using that new blue eye shadow! When that correspondence began arriving, I thought surely there must have been some mistake. Some days, I still think someone must have made a clerical error somewhere along the line.

This brings me to the subject of love, friendships, families: life. The sensations of romantic love make us think there must be extra air to breathe—that the world has righted itself on its axis and that the sun shines only for us. I live in love and in passion practically every moment. Still, it is simultaneously amusing and perplexing that because I have not married or had children, casual, and may I say insensitive, observers relate that I cannot possibly have a “full life” since my life most probably does not resemble theirs. It is a most false assumption. The truth is that life is full to overflowing, satisfying, generous, and most assuredly blessed. Those with whom I share my personal life know this well. We celebrate it. And if we find that in order to keep our relationship safe, we must keep ourselves and the way we feel for one another out of the view of the curious, then so be it. Friendships of all kinds are to be cherished and nourished—wrapped in limitless love that glows and grows from that deepest part of knowing that the ones we love walk into a special room in our hearts and minds and sit there with us, content, independent of outside influences, sure that there is nowhere else they would rather be. I like that. It is private. It is personal. May it ever be so.