COURAGE
to look

ClARITY
to see

COMPASSION
for our suffering

HUMOR
for our foibles

C OURAGE AGAIN
to act on what we
know to be true 

WRITWRITE TO US AT SUFC2077@gmail.com  

      22 ' Spiritual as Music '  Hours,
​ for browsing, listening, and reading

Hours 1 and 2 with Kidd Jordan and with Roger Lewis and Kirk Joseph of the Dirty Dozen Brass Bandand music from them and many more.

Hours 3 and 4 with Leo Nocentelli and music from him and the Meters and influences such as Johnny Smith and Allen Toussaint.
.

Hours 5 and 6 with Sarah Elizabeth Charles and Christian Scott aTundé Adjuah in Haiti and much music from them.

Hours 7 and 8 with Lolis Edward Elie amd His
Fellow Champions, 1930-1963 and 21 tracks--from Papa Celestin, Ruby Bridges, Mahalia Jackson, ...

Hour 9 with Herlin Riley and music from him, Art Blakey, the Mass Choir, Blind Boys of Alabama, TBC Brass Band, and many more.

Hour 10 with Herlin and music from him,  James Black, John Boudreaux. Earl Palmer, Aretha live, Ray live, and many more.

Hour 11 with David Amram and tracks from him,
Ted Joans, Dizzy, Monk, Langston Hughes with Charles Mingus, and many more.

Hour 12 with David and music from Itzhak Perlman, a Muzzein's call to prayer, the University Choir of Dublin, Los Munequitos de Matanzas, James P. Johnson, Bud Powell, the Cinematic Orchestra with Jack Kerouac reading from 'This Railroad Earth', and much more.

Hour 13 with David and orchestral and small-group tracks from him, Pete Seeger, Dick and Mimi Farina, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Young Timbaleros of Habana, Calixto and Yulien Oviedo, and many more.

Hour 14 with Lil Hardin Armstrong and compositions of hers for Joe Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven and her own Swing Orchestra, as well as tracks by Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Mary Lou Williams (three), and Alice Coltrane.

Hour 15 with William Parker's insights and memories and music from his In Order to Survive and Raining on the Moon and Essences of Ellington., featuring Kidd Jordan, as well as Duke's Orchestra at Newport in 1956. Early on, two excerpts from the clarion voice of Fannie Lou Hamer, the woman of fire and courage who inspired William and many others.

Hour 17 with William Parker and Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind, Jermeel Moondoc, Billy Higgins, William in duets with Hamid Drake and Milford Graves and Patricia Nicholson Parker, as well as Raphé Malik and Jimmy Lyons, Glenn Spearman and Lisle Ellis, and--again--Raining on the Moon.

Hour 16 with William and Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind, soundtrack excerpts from "The 400 Blows". "Alphaville", and 1965's "Alfie" (Sonny Rollins, Oliver Nelson), his own "Station", and how playing with Cecil Taylor was always about getting "all the way into the heart and the soul of the sound."

Radio Free Amsterdam has all of the Hours up on its website,
thanks to John Sinclair,
with excellent annotation and presentation by him,
and you can go to them here.

May 12  Workers' Day Special
Hour 22 celebrates that every day is workers' day and that mothers are--I think--the deepest , most invested and constant of workers. With Blind Willie Johnson; Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer; Bob Marley & the Wailers; Laura Nyro; Cyndi Lauper singing Joni Mitchell; Langston Hughes reading two of his poems; the Pharaoh Sanders Quartet of 1987; Anya Parampil with Tucker Carlson on May Day 2019; John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars 2010; Don Paul & Cacri Jazz in Caracas 2008; Los Bunkers; Boukman Eksperyans; and Tennsessee Williams reading Hart Crane's 'To Brooklyn Bridge.' HERE you go!

May 8  Germain Bazzle. Hour Three
The great singer, musician and educator of New Orleans in interview and performance. Learn more of who we were and who we are through the voice, grace and generosity of Germaine! HERE.
There's a link there to the Hour on Bandcamp and on our great friend John Sinclair's Radio Free Amsterdam.

April 20, Germaine Bazzle, Hour Two' presents New Orleans' superb GERMAINE BAZZLE with two bands and one dazzling Orchestra along with tracks from Alvin "Red" Tyler, Roy Montrell, Porgy Jones, the Ornette Coleman Quartet of 1960 and 1961 and the the New Orleans Contemporeary Arts Center Orchestra, Germaine again has many apt, poetic and revelatory things to say. You can listen on bandcamp as you browse and also listen through Radio Free Amsterdam,

April 13,  '​​Germaine Bazzle, Hour One' continues our 'Spiritual as Music' series. The great musician, singer and educator GERMAINE BAZZLE, another wonder of New Orleans, talks with Maryse Déjean and Don Paul about her life and career from the 1930s' 7th Ward onward. With four tracks from Ms. Bazzle and her 1991 and 2018 bands and music also from Bunk Johnson, Sidney Bechet, Ella, Chick, Charlie, Dizzy, Max and Miles, and from J. J. Johnson, Woody Herman's Third Herd, Stan Getz, Carmen McRae, June Christy, and the Mills Brothers. Read here and listen on bandcamp here. You can listen direct, too, through Radio Free Amsterdam,s thanks in particular to John Sinclair.ir.

Hour 18, April 7,  '​Venezuela, New Century' is the new 'Spiritual as Music' Hour and the new 'Flipping the Script' meld. Music is from Susana Baca, the Bolivarian Youth Orchestra, Inti Illimani, Patricio Manns, Camerata Criolla, and Mercedes Sosa and Joan Baez singing Violeta Parra's 'Gracias a La Vida'. It has many images and links and voices, including President Nicolas Maduro, Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Arreaza, interviewers Max Blumenthal, Sharmini Peries, Anya Parampil, and Rachel Boothrotd Rojas, and poet Gina Pacaldo. It especially has voices from markets and streets you ain't a-likely to hear on Corporations Empowering Corporations Media CECM). HERE you go! Our great friend John Sinclair has 'Venezueala, New Century' and many, many more of our Hours at at Radio Free Amsterdam. HERE!

                           Alfonso Texidor

Alfonso Texidor, skinny hombré
Of sharp angles and fiery eye.
Raises his cane like sword or wand 
To tilt for the insurgent dawn or Don.

Alfonso Texidor, Soul-singer and interpreter,
Declaims between cigarettes and wine
Rebel spirit of the righteous Many 
From Azania to Salvador.

Alfonso Texidor jams together tender
Anger with irony of the Knight pursuing justice.
"Lies, Sir--Don't Believe It!" Alfonso says.
"He hung himself while shaving!"
He tripped on a bar of soap!
While tying his shoelaces!
He exploded from the 90th floor
Due to office-furniture fires!
There is only one of two poss-i-bil-i-ties--
Either you can go on, or you quit,
And you can't quit, so you go on
Till you return again
As a hero for El Pueblo--Si, si—you, you, and you—
Beyond borders that would cripple you more!

Alfonso Texidor!
Call him his name!
Decades for sure, ciertamente, up against walls!
Champion always, siempre, of the heart-sore
Bent but straight on through coffee grounds,
Hasta! Hasta! Potsa lasta! Gris-Gris y fuego!
You hear his voice! Hear him winning!
Alfonso Texidor!



Don Paul, September 29 and October 11, 2018,
Port-au-Prince and New Orleans





Hear Alfonso read his poem 'Call Me My Name!' from the first Rebel Poets album, Worlds Made Flesh, released in 1989, here. You can also hear Alfonso by clicking on the front-cover designed by artist Seth Tobocman. Seth's art is compelling like images by George Grosz and Kathe Kollwtiz, I think. Playing with Alfonso on 'Call Me My Name' are Babatunde Lea, congas, Henri Flood, timbales, John Baker, keyboards, Mark Crawford, drum-set, and George Cremaschi, electric bass.







Hear Hamid Drake and I perform 'Alfonso Texidor' from our unreleased album of poems and percussion, Singing In The Airport, recorded at Rick G. Nelson's Marigny Studio in New Orleans on February 20,  2016, here







Both Worlds Made Flesh and the second Rebel Poets album, America Fears The Drum, 1992, sold out within the first year of their release as cassettes of more than 60 minutes each.

We hope to make both whole album available online and as LPs soon. Both feature many superlative poets and musicians.

In the meantime you can hear several of those performers on two compilations available through soundcloud.

The url for Albums by DP as Producer takes you to 20 selections
from nine albums recorded in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1989 and 1995. Included are poets Boadiba, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, q.r. hand, Daniel Higgs,  and Genny Lim as well as Alfonso.

The url for Compacompilations takes you another 20 selections. Included here are Jerry Anomie and Jack Hirschman from Worlds Made Flesh as well as poets Jeannette Armstrong, devorah major and Opal Palmer Adisa (the Daughters of Yam), Kalamu ya Salaam, the Beatnigs, the Mad Professor, and Ché Guevara.

All of these selections are worth hearing online, but they'll sound incomparably better when we can get them to you in the high fidelity that they deserve.


Read about Alfonso in two publications from the Mission District of San Francisco, El Tecolote and the Mission Local, tributes published after his passing on December 25 (yes), 2014.



You'll gather, I think, what a community Alfonso nurtured and what a community nurtured him, when that community was like sunflowers on Valencia and Crack was like Hell in the Apollo Hotel.