I saw an ad for rare books recently in the back of The New York Times Book Review which included for sale a signed copy of THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL with a drawing of a Campbell’s soup can on the same page as the signature. They were asking 6,000 bucks for it. I have one exactly like that on my bookshelves.
I used to collect books pretty regularly, (at used book prices or now and then newly published prices, like the Warhol), not for resale value, or even rarity bragging rights, but just because I love to read these particular authors and in certain editions (first editions are usually the most gratifying, not necessarily because of the value but because they look and feel like originals, have the presence of a work of art, at least for me).
At the same time I was constantly getting rid of books, selling them to bookstores (there used to be more that bought them for resale or for collectors than there are now) (in fact I helped feed my two oldest kids and me on bags of books sold at The Phoenix Book Shop in Greenwich Village or The Strand over near Union Square).
These days there are only a handful of authors (out of what used to be hundreds) whose books I still collect because anything they write interests me (or books about a few people whose lives or art also makes me want to own every book written about them). I made a list of them last night to help me get back to sleep (just the dead ones to keep it simple) which turned out to come to 33, or eleven triplets that seem to go together (be interesting to see if you can figure out what the three in each triplet have in common, at last in my mind):
Laurence Sterne
James Joyce
Samuel Beckett
Walt Whitman
William Carlos Williams
William Saroyan
Rainer Maria Rilke
Blaise Cendrars
Roberto Bolano
Jean Rhys
Lee Miller
Martha Gelhorn
Charles Reznikoff
Louis Zukofsky
George Oppen
Henry Miller
Henry Roth
Hubert Selby Jr.
Francis Picabia
Francis Ponge
Larry Eigner
Dylan Thomas
Brendan Behan
Jack Kerouac
David Smith
Eva Hesse
B. J. Kitaj
Christopher Isherwood
Irene Nemirovsky
James Schuyler
Frank O’Hara
Ted Berrigan
Joe Brainard
There are plenty more whose books I still keep, but not their entire output, having let go of some books of theirs I know I’ll never reread again nor even look into (like some of W. B. Yeats’ books, or Gertrude Stein’s, or Turgenev’s or Pound’s or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s or Zora Neale Hurston’s or Thomas Merton’s, etc.).
And there are those who I may start collecting (as I recently have Bolano) and some in the above list who I may soon stop collecting. It’s an always changing marker of my developing literary taste or appetite. I used to say, looking at what was on a person’s bookshelves was like reading a graph of their minds. I guess the above is the core of mine these days.
[PS: Can't believe I left off these dear friends whose books I continue to collect since they passed:
DARRELL GRAY
ED COX
TIM DLUGOS]
Sunday, November 16, 2008
PITTSBURGH (THE MOVIE)
It came out in ’06 or ’07, but I didn’t catch it until today on cable and it’s a treat.
It’s like a cross between a Woody Allen and a Christopher Guest movie, like say aspects of Woody’s HOLLYWOOD ENDING (or BULLETS OVER BROADWAY) with aspects of WAITING FOR GUFFMAN (or FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION) and a pinch of John Cassavetes’ OPENING NIGHT thrown in.
It stars Jeff Goldblum as himself making the choice to return to Pittsburgh to star in a two week run of THE MUSIC MAN in the local (and beautifully refurbished) theater.
It co-stars Ed Begley Jr., Illeanna Douglas and Moby (who turns out to be a great comic straight man), all playing themselves as well, but in ways that occasionally stretch credulity for the comedic effects but also sometimes are dead on realistic as far as the real back scene scenes in Hollywood go (from my personal experience, and full disclosure Begley is an old friend I haven’t seen in a few years but still consider one of the nicest and smartest people I’ve ever known (back when Trivial Pursuit was all the rage in Hollywood if you had Ed on your team you were guaranteed to win) and Goldblum I met a few times through Begley but don’t really know).
It’s a treat, and I’m surprised I hadn’t heard more about it. A great insight into the acting profession and “stardom” and the kinds of ego struggles many actors and “stars” seem to go through, despite their obviously being pretty much like anyone else, just magnified by the extreme attention, both from audiences and themselves.
Worth catching.
It’s like a cross between a Woody Allen and a Christopher Guest movie, like say aspects of Woody’s HOLLYWOOD ENDING (or BULLETS OVER BROADWAY) with aspects of WAITING FOR GUFFMAN (or FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION) and a pinch of John Cassavetes’ OPENING NIGHT thrown in.
It stars Jeff Goldblum as himself making the choice to return to Pittsburgh to star in a two week run of THE MUSIC MAN in the local (and beautifully refurbished) theater.
It co-stars Ed Begley Jr., Illeanna Douglas and Moby (who turns out to be a great comic straight man), all playing themselves as well, but in ways that occasionally stretch credulity for the comedic effects but also sometimes are dead on realistic as far as the real back scene scenes in Hollywood go (from my personal experience, and full disclosure Begley is an old friend I haven’t seen in a few years but still consider one of the nicest and smartest people I’ve ever known (back when Trivial Pursuit was all the rage in Hollywood if you had Ed on your team you were guaranteed to win) and Goldblum I met a few times through Begley but don’t really know).
It’s a treat, and I’m surprised I hadn’t heard more about it. A great insight into the acting profession and “stardom” and the kinds of ego struggles many actors and “stars” seem to go through, despite their obviously being pretty much like anyone else, just magnified by the extreme attention, both from audiences and themselves.
Worth catching.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
PS TO LAST POST
The Asssociated Press is reporting that death threats toward our President-elect are the most ever recorded.
That's the difference between the rigthwing and their perceived "enemies"—"liberals" "lefties" et. al.
We have a president who has bankrupted our country, destroyed our economy and in fact the world's, lied us into a war that has caused seemingly endless death and destruction, ignored the Constitution and invaded our privacy, taken away centuries' old citizens' rights, divided the country in ways it hadn't been for decades, created an atmosphere of "them or us" throughout the world and here at home that has undermined any attempts to join with others to resolve some of our problems and in fact contributed to making them worse, single handedly destroyed our country's reputation making him the most despised worldwide public figure of our time as well as the most derided and for many of us the most embarassing, failed to achieve any of the goals he set for his administration before 9/11 and even more importantly afterward (except for helping make the rich richer and removing Saddam from power, and the latter goal of course was followed rapidly with the creation of a power vacuum for that country which is still creating problems, including the deaths of our troops, for us, and a power vacuum in the region, which has made Iran much more powerful than it has been in centuries, and as for the former, that helped lead us into the economic catastrophe we're in now), et-endlessly-cetera.
But death threats toward a President-elect who hasn't even taken office yet are greater than those against Junior.
Why?
Because those opposed to Junior are "liberals" "lefties" etc.—and now even moderate and centrist Republicans, or just realistic ones. And liberals don't solve problems with violence, unless it's the only solution left. But rightwingers reach for their guns at their first feelings of fear, either metphorically or literally.
And rightwing ideologues continue to foam at the mouth over imaginary crimes and "evils" credited to our President-elect and foment firghtened and vicious attacks on him, real and imagined.
Let's pray none of these frightened little misfits succeed.
PPS: As I began pointing out when they were happening in the 1960s and have continued to in some of my published prose and poetry (see my last book, e.g. MARCH 18, 2003), all the successful assassinations of political figures back then in this country only occurred for those who began to articulate a vision of redressing the injustices suffered by the poor and working class. As long as RFK for instance was about hardball politics, even his taking on the Teamsters didn't get him offed, but when he started talking about the poor, bam. Same with King and Malcolm X, as long as they focused on "race" no problem, but when they redefined the main issue as "class" and from the perspective of the poor, bam bam. I'm not saying there was a cabal of vested interests that made it happen, but then again...
Suffice it to say that among my many friends and acquaintances throughout the world, the ones crying the hardest over the economic turn of events these days, are usually those with the most. The rest of us, down here on fixed incomes or dwindling resources and no backup property or collateral to use for loans or to sell etc. are bracing for the impact or already feeling it and making do. But many of the wealthy with millions still in reserve are squeeling like, well you know the rest of that cliched simile.
My last thought is how come the kind of provocative instigation to hate and harm toward our President-elect that you still see and hear coming from some Fox commentators or Rush et. al. isn't illegal in some way, at least on the airwaves—though it should be true on the net as well, and yes, the Secret Service and other agencies are investigating any online or real world direct threats of physical harm, but I'm talking about those who instigate those kinds of threats through their lies and violent rhetoric. If you can't say a few foul words on the air, how come you can still spread lies about people, especially our President-elect, and make naked attempts to inspire plots to somehow (any how?) keep him from governing.
That's the difference between the rigthwing and their perceived "enemies"—"liberals" "lefties" et. al.
We have a president who has bankrupted our country, destroyed our economy and in fact the world's, lied us into a war that has caused seemingly endless death and destruction, ignored the Constitution and invaded our privacy, taken away centuries' old citizens' rights, divided the country in ways it hadn't been for decades, created an atmosphere of "them or us" throughout the world and here at home that has undermined any attempts to join with others to resolve some of our problems and in fact contributed to making them worse, single handedly destroyed our country's reputation making him the most despised worldwide public figure of our time as well as the most derided and for many of us the most embarassing, failed to achieve any of the goals he set for his administration before 9/11 and even more importantly afterward (except for helping make the rich richer and removing Saddam from power, and the latter goal of course was followed rapidly with the creation of a power vacuum for that country which is still creating problems, including the deaths of our troops, for us, and a power vacuum in the region, which has made Iran much more powerful than it has been in centuries, and as for the former, that helped lead us into the economic catastrophe we're in now), et-endlessly-cetera.
But death threats toward a President-elect who hasn't even taken office yet are greater than those against Junior.
Why?
Because those opposed to Junior are "liberals" "lefties" etc.—and now even moderate and centrist Republicans, or just realistic ones. And liberals don't solve problems with violence, unless it's the only solution left. But rightwingers reach for their guns at their first feelings of fear, either metphorically or literally.
And rightwing ideologues continue to foam at the mouth over imaginary crimes and "evils" credited to our President-elect and foment firghtened and vicious attacks on him, real and imagined.
Let's pray none of these frightened little misfits succeed.
PPS: As I began pointing out when they were happening in the 1960s and have continued to in some of my published prose and poetry (see my last book, e.g. MARCH 18, 2003), all the successful assassinations of political figures back then in this country only occurred for those who began to articulate a vision of redressing the injustices suffered by the poor and working class. As long as RFK for instance was about hardball politics, even his taking on the Teamsters didn't get him offed, but when he started talking about the poor, bam. Same with King and Malcolm X, as long as they focused on "race" no problem, but when they redefined the main issue as "class" and from the perspective of the poor, bam bam. I'm not saying there was a cabal of vested interests that made it happen, but then again...
Suffice it to say that among my many friends and acquaintances throughout the world, the ones crying the hardest over the economic turn of events these days, are usually those with the most. The rest of us, down here on fixed incomes or dwindling resources and no backup property or collateral to use for loans or to sell etc. are bracing for the impact or already feeling it and making do. But many of the wealthy with millions still in reserve are squeeling like, well you know the rest of that cliched simile.
My last thought is how come the kind of provocative instigation to hate and harm toward our President-elect that you still see and hear coming from some Fox commentators or Rush et. al. isn't illegal in some way, at least on the airwaves—though it should be true on the net as well, and yes, the Secret Service and other agencies are investigating any online or real world direct threats of physical harm, but I'm talking about those who instigate those kinds of threats through their lies and violent rhetoric. If you can't say a few foul words on the air, how come you can still spread lies about people, especially our President-elect, and make naked attempts to inspire plots to somehow (any how?) keep him from governing.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
THEY'RE NOT JUST GONNA GO AWAY
The country proved it has gone beyond its racist past and even beyond the divisiveness of the past few decades.
But that doesn't mean the right wingnuts are going to go along with these times that are a'changin'.
There's been a lot of reports about the pockets of rightwing extremists and their often racist actions and the rightwing media nuts egging them on as they have been for decades but especially virulently during this campaign.
Here's a link to a pretty funny and pointed reaction to that reality.
But that doesn't mean the right wingnuts are going to go along with these times that are a'changin'.
There's been a lot of reports about the pockets of rightwing extremists and their often racist actions and the rightwing media nuts egging them on as they have been for decades but especially virulently during this campaign.
Here's a link to a pretty funny and pointed reaction to that reality.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
One of the things I like most about Mike Leigh’s movies is I never know where they’re going. HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is no exception.
It got me from the opening credits with lightly swinging (early) ‘60s upbeat pop movie music under partial screen shots of Sally Hawkins as “Poppy” riding her bicycle through the streets of an English seaside city (I don’t know them well enough to know which, maybe it was just parts of London that aren’t iconic).
With the bright colors and the fizzy music, the opening felt like a set up for one of those light French romantic comedies. In fact the whole premise of the film could have become AMELIE like. The mood was so unlike a Mike Leigh movie, even if I hadn’t heard that this was some kind of departure, it was immediately obvious.
But then, every movie he’s made has been some kind of departure from what his previous movies portend. And this was no exception.
But the subject matter does at first seem new for Leigh. Because the subject is happiness. HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is a deep attempt to get at what it means to be happy, especially in the face of so much that tries to counter it.
As always, Leigh gets greatest performances from his actors, especially from the lead, Sally Hawkins. What a revelation she is, and what a brave performance, as almost all are in a Leigh movie, because of the intense way he “writes” a film.
My old friend Hubert Selby used to talk about how in his fiction he would create a character and it would tell him where the story was going. A lot of fiction writers say that. They create a character and suddenly their creation has a mind of its own and determines the storyline for the author rather than vice versa.
Leigh uses a similar technique in making his movies. He creates the characters—with the help of the actors—and has the actors become the characters as much as humanly possible before even beginning to settle on what the characters will be doing let alone saying.
I first heard about his radically unique way of creating a movie from Gary Oldman after a star studded Hollywood party when I was still living and working out there. A handful of us were still standing in the wee hours after most of the rich and famous had left, or rather we were sitting on our hostess’s couches and easy chairs in one of many rooms in her Hollywood hills house.
Somehow Oldman got around (I’m not trying to impress you, this is the only time I met him and I was only there because I was good friends with our hostess, in fact, at this party another seemingly anonymous person, the only other one as far as I could tell at the party, approached me and asked “Who are you?” and then wanted to know what I was doing there when she didn’t recognize my name and I said I was a poet who acted in films and on TV (which I did at the time) for my day job and was friends with our hostess—then I asked who are you? And she told me, the daughter of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and a really great person who I saw around now and then after that party and was always happy to see) to sharing his first experience with Leigh, which may have been his, Oldman’s, first movie (though it may have been originally for the BBC).
At any rate, Oldman said Leigh had him become the character and stay in character for months before any filming actually began, with Oldman living in his character’s apartment/set built in an old warehouse, and he told of going to buy a pick up some groceries and coming around an aisle in the market and catching Leigh spying on him to see if he was still in character.
It certainly works. Sally Hawkins IS “Poppy” in ways that make the movie almost seem like a documentary. And what an incredible character she and Leigh have created. It’s worth the price of admission just to watch and listen to her. But it’s worth even more to experience the ways in which Leigh keeps you, or at least me, off balance through the whole film waiting to see if reality will diminish the bright soul that “Poppy” is, or is determined to be.
By the ending, I felt like Leigh had anticipated the direction the world seems to be yearning to take in the face of so much bad news—choose happiness, and stick to the choice no matter what.
It got me from the opening credits with lightly swinging (early) ‘60s upbeat pop movie music under partial screen shots of Sally Hawkins as “Poppy” riding her bicycle through the streets of an English seaside city (I don’t know them well enough to know which, maybe it was just parts of London that aren’t iconic).
With the bright colors and the fizzy music, the opening felt like a set up for one of those light French romantic comedies. In fact the whole premise of the film could have become AMELIE like. The mood was so unlike a Mike Leigh movie, even if I hadn’t heard that this was some kind of departure, it was immediately obvious.
But then, every movie he’s made has been some kind of departure from what his previous movies portend. And this was no exception.
But the subject matter does at first seem new for Leigh. Because the subject is happiness. HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is a deep attempt to get at what it means to be happy, especially in the face of so much that tries to counter it.
As always, Leigh gets greatest performances from his actors, especially from the lead, Sally Hawkins. What a revelation she is, and what a brave performance, as almost all are in a Leigh movie, because of the intense way he “writes” a film.
My old friend Hubert Selby used to talk about how in his fiction he would create a character and it would tell him where the story was going. A lot of fiction writers say that. They create a character and suddenly their creation has a mind of its own and determines the storyline for the author rather than vice versa.
Leigh uses a similar technique in making his movies. He creates the characters—with the help of the actors—and has the actors become the characters as much as humanly possible before even beginning to settle on what the characters will be doing let alone saying.
I first heard about his radically unique way of creating a movie from Gary Oldman after a star studded Hollywood party when I was still living and working out there. A handful of us were still standing in the wee hours after most of the rich and famous had left, or rather we were sitting on our hostess’s couches and easy chairs in one of many rooms in her Hollywood hills house.
Somehow Oldman got around (I’m not trying to impress you, this is the only time I met him and I was only there because I was good friends with our hostess, in fact, at this party another seemingly anonymous person, the only other one as far as I could tell at the party, approached me and asked “Who are you?” and then wanted to know what I was doing there when she didn’t recognize my name and I said I was a poet who acted in films and on TV (which I did at the time) for my day job and was friends with our hostess—then I asked who are you? And she told me, the daughter of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and a really great person who I saw around now and then after that party and was always happy to see) to sharing his first experience with Leigh, which may have been his, Oldman’s, first movie (though it may have been originally for the BBC).
At any rate, Oldman said Leigh had him become the character and stay in character for months before any filming actually began, with Oldman living in his character’s apartment/set built in an old warehouse, and he told of going to buy a pick up some groceries and coming around an aisle in the market and catching Leigh spying on him to see if he was still in character.
It certainly works. Sally Hawkins IS “Poppy” in ways that make the movie almost seem like a documentary. And what an incredible character she and Leigh have created. It’s worth the price of admission just to watch and listen to her. But it’s worth even more to experience the ways in which Leigh keeps you, or at least me, off balance through the whole film waiting to see if reality will diminish the bright soul that “Poppy” is, or is determined to be.
By the ending, I felt like Leigh had anticipated the direction the world seems to be yearning to take in the face of so much bad news—choose happiness, and stick to the choice no matter what.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
THREE QUICK THOUGHTS
1. BAILOUTS
If we’re gonna bail out banks and car companies and financial whatevers, why not at least make it a prerequisite before they get the funds, that all the folks in charge who led them into the mess they’re in get fired first and replaced with people who have a track record of more success and financial stability? (Thanks to many who have had this same thought and communicated it to me, especially Tom, not Alameda or a few other of you Toms, but the Southern California (these days) Greek-American one).
2. CONTRACTORS
Since the present administration changed the ways our country fights wars by farming out a lot of the security and prestige war gigs to private contractors, why can’t the Iraqi government use some of that giant surplus they’ve amassed while we’ve been paying their bills, to pay these same contractors to stick around and supply the same security etc. for them while our troops come home to a deserved rest.
3. VETERANS DAY
And speaking of our troops, on this Veterans Day when my eleven-year-old doesn’t even get off from school, hopefully one of the first things Obama and this Democratic Congress will do, with the help of decent Republicans in Congress, will be to make sure returning Iraqi and Afghanistan War veterans are getting the medical and psychological and financial assistance they need to readjust to civilian life, as we did with our veterans in previous wars, even the Cold War (which I benefited from).
If we’re gonna bail out banks and car companies and financial whatevers, why not at least make it a prerequisite before they get the funds, that all the folks in charge who led them into the mess they’re in get fired first and replaced with people who have a track record of more success and financial stability? (Thanks to many who have had this same thought and communicated it to me, especially Tom, not Alameda or a few other of you Toms, but the Southern California (these days) Greek-American one).
2. CONTRACTORS
Since the present administration changed the ways our country fights wars by farming out a lot of the security and prestige war gigs to private contractors, why can’t the Iraqi government use some of that giant surplus they’ve amassed while we’ve been paying their bills, to pay these same contractors to stick around and supply the same security etc. for them while our troops come home to a deserved rest.
3. VETERANS DAY
And speaking of our troops, on this Veterans Day when my eleven-year-old doesn’t even get off from school, hopefully one of the first things Obama and this Democratic Congress will do, with the help of decent Republicans in Congress, will be to make sure returning Iraqi and Afghanistan War veterans are getting the medical and psychological and financial assistance they need to readjust to civilian life, as we did with our veterans in previous wars, even the Cold War (which I benefited from).
MIRIAM MAKEBA R.I.P.
Miriam Makeba was for me, and I know many of us, the first South African we knew by name, and probably felt we knew personally since her music was so much a part of our lives back in the day.
Before Mandela—or before Miriam married (I think) trumpet player Hugh Masakela, another South African whose name became internationally known for his musicality—Makeba became famous, especially among those of us who were into jazz in the l950s and '60s, for her "click" song, in which she sang in Xhosa, her tribal language, which included the tongue clicking against the roof of the mouth to make a sound like those little metal crickets the nuns would squeeze to make the noise we Catholic school kids would genuflect and then rise to on entering and leaving church, click, click.
In 1964, when I married my first wife Lee, God rest her soul, I was stationed outside Spokane Washington in the Air Force and Miriam Makeba came to town to do a show in a huge auditorium there with either the Kingston Trio or the Limelighters, two very popular folk singing groups of the time (I can no longer remember which unfortunately, which shows how much of an impact they had on me as opposed to Makeba).
Makeba was famous enough then, this relatively small, black, South African woman who sang in a language probably no one in the audience could understand and in a musical style that was a cross between African traditional and American jazz, and yet was able to rouse a huge auditorium filled with a majority of white people in a town, Spokane, that had yet to entirely recover from the Great Depression and had a banner hanging over its main street that declared "WELCOME TO JOHN BIRCH COUNTRY"—!—(and if you're too young to know the significance of that, the Birchers were like the KKK in suits).
Fortunately, Lee knew one of the members of the folk group that had probably been the main draw for the crowd, which nonetheless totally appreciated and gave a long round of applause to Makeba. So, we got to go backstage to the dressing room and hang after the show and even went out later to a local club.
That was the one and only time I met Miriam Makeba in person, and fell even more deeply under her spell than I had just listening to her on a record. She was majestic, charismatic, gracious, and even more beautiful in person than I'd imagined.
She helped change not only the world of music—bringing "world music" to America long before people like Paul Simon and David Byrne would be credited with doing that many years later—but she helped change the perception of white Americans about black Africans, which up until then were mostly known from Hollywood movies, where they were usually represented as mostly naked and primitive, or from English movies where they were usually referred to as "poor devils."
She not only brought a new image and idea of who black Africans really might be to this country, but she also brought dignity and warmth to that image and in the end a better idea of what we all could be, as influential in her own way as Dr. King and the prominent African-American Civil Rights leaders here.
If you have it, or if you can find it on the web, go put the click song on right now and dig some deep history.
[PS: I always forget you can find almost anything on the web. Here's a link to Makeba doing the click song two years after I saw her doing it, though in the show I saw she was dressed in much more traditional African garb with a bright head cloth wrapping as a kind of African queen crown, and layers of equally bright cloth wrapped around her body. But look how beautiful and vibrant she is in this faded black and white film and hear what made her so unique, and remember she had been banished from South Africa for several years by this time, but had yet to marry the U. S. Black Power movement leader Stokley Carmichael, which virtually ruined her career in the U.S. How wonderful that she lived long enough to see the son of a black African become president of this country and the most powerful person in the world in many ways!]
Before Mandela—or before Miriam married (I think) trumpet player Hugh Masakela, another South African whose name became internationally known for his musicality—Makeba became famous, especially among those of us who were into jazz in the l950s and '60s, for her "click" song, in which she sang in Xhosa, her tribal language, which included the tongue clicking against the roof of the mouth to make a sound like those little metal crickets the nuns would squeeze to make the noise we Catholic school kids would genuflect and then rise to on entering and leaving church, click, click.
In 1964, when I married my first wife Lee, God rest her soul, I was stationed outside Spokane Washington in the Air Force and Miriam Makeba came to town to do a show in a huge auditorium there with either the Kingston Trio or the Limelighters, two very popular folk singing groups of the time (I can no longer remember which unfortunately, which shows how much of an impact they had on me as opposed to Makeba).
Makeba was famous enough then, this relatively small, black, South African woman who sang in a language probably no one in the audience could understand and in a musical style that was a cross between African traditional and American jazz, and yet was able to rouse a huge auditorium filled with a majority of white people in a town, Spokane, that had yet to entirely recover from the Great Depression and had a banner hanging over its main street that declared "WELCOME TO JOHN BIRCH COUNTRY"—!—(and if you're too young to know the significance of that, the Birchers were like the KKK in suits).
Fortunately, Lee knew one of the members of the folk group that had probably been the main draw for the crowd, which nonetheless totally appreciated and gave a long round of applause to Makeba. So, we got to go backstage to the dressing room and hang after the show and even went out later to a local club.
That was the one and only time I met Miriam Makeba in person, and fell even more deeply under her spell than I had just listening to her on a record. She was majestic, charismatic, gracious, and even more beautiful in person than I'd imagined.
She helped change not only the world of music—bringing "world music" to America long before people like Paul Simon and David Byrne would be credited with doing that many years later—but she helped change the perception of white Americans about black Africans, which up until then were mostly known from Hollywood movies, where they were usually represented as mostly naked and primitive, or from English movies where they were usually referred to as "poor devils."
She not only brought a new image and idea of who black Africans really might be to this country, but she also brought dignity and warmth to that image and in the end a better idea of what we all could be, as influential in her own way as Dr. King and the prominent African-American Civil Rights leaders here.
If you have it, or if you can find it on the web, go put the click song on right now and dig some deep history.
[PS: I always forget you can find almost anything on the web. Here's a link to Makeba doing the click song two years after I saw her doing it, though in the show I saw she was dressed in much more traditional African garb with a bright head cloth wrapping as a kind of African queen crown, and layers of equally bright cloth wrapped around her body. But look how beautiful and vibrant she is in this faded black and white film and hear what made her so unique, and remember she had been banished from South Africa for several years by this time, but had yet to marry the U. S. Black Power movement leader Stokley Carmichael, which virtually ruined her career in the U.S. How wonderful that she lived long enough to see the son of a black African become president of this country and the most powerful person in the world in many ways!]
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