March 01, 2004
Jazz Mastery
It isn’t every day you can walk into a store and bump into a living legend. Nor is it common to see upwards of a hundred people jamming store aisles while a concert goes on.
But both occurrences took place in downtown Manhattan when a true jazz luminary, the great drummer Roy Haynes and his quartet performed an hour long set at J&R Music and Computer World , as guests of Saturday Afternoon Jazz on WBGO-FM .
The diminutive and dapper drummer, who Esquire magazine once called, “the best dressed man in show business” earned his position of stature after more than a half century of performing with some of the jazz world’s brightest stars. The list reads like a history of music itself: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Chick Corea, Joshua Redmon, John Patitucci, and Danilo Perez, to name an impressive few.
Haynes will turn 79 on March 13 but you’d never know it from the energy he generates. Perhaps the thrill of performing in front of appreciative crowds like the one he had Saturday keeps him young. Or maybe it’s the talented young crowd he runs with. He was joined most capably this day by Marcus Strickland on tenor and soprano saxophone and bass clarinet, Dave Kikoski on piano and John Sullivan on acoustic bass. 
They dazzled through selections off Haynes latest CD, aptly titled Fountain of Youth (Dreyfus Records), including Twinkle Trinkle, Inner Trust and the classic Greensleeves. The CD interestingly was also recorded before a live audience, at Birdland in NYC.
During breaks, Haynes told radio host Monifa Brown that performing in front of an audience is what he enjoys the most. From the look on the faces of fans at what is quickly becoming a great free jazz hang, that enjoyment is mutual.
Mammy Dearest
Connections to past icons with more subtle social significance got a dramatic treatment in the Off Broadway one-woman show, The Mammy Project, written and performed by Michelle Matlock.
With satire and wit, thought provoking insight and heartfelt empathy, Matlock uses a series of short vignettes in an hour long examination of American societal fascination with the “mammy” image; large Black women usually working in caretaker roles in White households and seemingly selfless in their willingness to put their employer’s needs ahead of their own.
Despite a history of mammy images dating back to slavery, the subject matter had particular significance for Matlock, who as a freelance actor with her size and complexion, was once sent to audition for an Aunt Jemima commercial. She didn’t get it, but set out to learn why the imagery persists even in this day and age.
What resulted was a solo performance piece that has gone through revisions over time, and in its latest incarnation now loosely tells the story of the original Aunt Jemima, a former slave named Nancy Green who was first hired to pitch the pancake mix at the Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
But rather than being a straight forward historical recitation, Matlock takes some liberties and weaves in original rap songs and modern day references to illustrate how times may have changed, but mammy figures have remained throughout.
And she does it in quite clever ways. Showing us the insidious nature of the slave auctions that placed value on buxom Black women deemed good for breeding, she performs the role of the auctioneer pointing out a slaves best features, then turns around and shows us the slaves-eye view, reacting to the descriptions. She does that part in eery silence, a frightened smile plastered on, hands and feet together as if shackled. The period of silence is long and uncomfortable.
Mammy exists because it is a comforting image for White people. Sexually non-threatening to White women, while being cheerful, strong and supportive. Matlock riffs comically on the images created by Hattie McDaniel in “Gone With The Wind” and turns a scene from “Imitation to Life” into a lesbian seduction. She contends current depictions in roles played by Nell Carter, Whoopi Goldberg and the popularity of Oprah are all manifestations of this same phenomenon.
While this classically trained actress performs quite capably in the show she has created for herself, if there is any weakness it is in the writing. Most individual scenes are interesting, but those that aren’t cause the show to drag and when she lapses into chronological progressions, it has aspects of story theatre.
But on the whole this was a worthwhile production. Sunday’s performance was the end of the run at the soon to close Palace of Variety on 42nd Street. Let’s hope the show finds another home again in the future.
