What a powerful document. You can almost smell the little bean pies hawked by the bowtied Nation of Islam at the Watts Towers Jazz Festival in the 1970s, feel the summer scorch rising off the asphalt, and hear the joyous tumult of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, with its three basses, two drummers, choir and dozens of horns, as pianist-conductor Horace Tapscott stretched out his long arms to whip them into a final frenzy, closing the afternoon.
Thanks to this image-heavy book, you no longer have to imagine the colorful African-inspired attire of the attendees, or the political context from which the Ark arose, or what kind of People these Pan Afrikans were and are. Years of archival research by a large team have brought together a comprehensive, eye-popping 368-page package.
The photos, the posters, the artwork -- all come crashing at you, big and bold as the Black Power movement. Intimate moments, stage scenes, studio shots, fliers, articles, places lost to time, get you wondering whose closets and garages yielded this history, and whose persistent love brought it to light.
The words offer their own valuable dimension. After having authored or co-authored several books on related subjects, Steven L. Isoardi presents as concise a cultural overview as his sweat glands could have permitted. Writer Greg Tate has a short but penetrating talk with Tapscott. Writer Lynell George pinpoints the centrality of Leimert Village to Afro-American culture.
Many narrators reminisce about Tapscott, including Ark members Kamau Daáood (poet, pictured), Miguel Miranda (bass), Maia (multi) and Mekala Session (drummer, current leader). It's a conversation, much like the community and the ever-shifting ensemble Tapscott helped organize. The names, the names! Arthur Blythe, Billy Higgins, Dwight Trible, Bobby Bradford, John Carter, Derf Reklaw, Jesse Sharps, Michael Session -- it takes three pages to list them, and that's just the band members.
Of special value is a section devoted to reflections on Linda Hill, without whom Tapscott's Union could hardly be imagined. In addition to providing her tireless cooking services and her home as practice space/crash pad, Hill sang and played piano in the Arkestra, composed well, and even learned to score music so she could help with that mammoth task. From this writer's experience, when asked about Hill, Tapscott would refer to her simply as a storyteller, probably assuming it was as close as he could come at the time (1989) to a common word expressing a respected keeper of community knowledge, i.e., a griot.
"Leave It to the Children" does a lot to keep the knowledge alive. Another part, of course, is the music, which you can still hear in today's iteration of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and on recordings. Seek out the roiling "Flight 17," taped in 1979 and featuring two compositions by Herbert Baker, an Ark pianist who died in a car accident at 17. Tapscott often used Baker as an example of how African tradition can survive after the flesh has faded.
Or, as Joshua Myers writes herein as a Tapscott maxim, "It was the sound that was freeing us all along. Listening was the only way to invite ancestors back in."
"Leave It to the Children" is available online and in bookstores.