The PAUL Review October - November 2020

Photos Courtesy of The Colored Girls Museum

Photos Courtesy of The Colored Girls Museum

Denys Davis and her creative partner Monna Morton curated the Washer Woman
Exhibit to shine light on the often overlooked and underappreciated role of the
washer waman. A common line of work in the generations of their grandmothers
and great grandmothers, the work helped provide for their families.

Source: WHYY.org

Suite Seven
"Beloved""

Photo by Zamani Feelings

Photography: Aysha Ray Walker
Zamani Feelings

Room Installation: Shawn Theodore
Other artists include:
Lavett Ballard
Natalie Erin Brown
Barbara Bullock
Patricia Coleman Cobb
Asake Jones
Makeba Rainey

Marie-Monique Marthol

Ms. BeBe by Patricia Colemen Cobb

"Ms. Be Be" Soft Sculpyure by Patricia Colemen Cobbs

"Folashade & Issa"
Digital Print on fabric by

Makeba Rainey

Suite Eight
"Sula"

Wire dress sculpture by Kristine Mays Wood, Panel Collage by Artist, Lavett Ballard

"33 Dresses " by
Janet Taylor Pickett

Painting by Artist,
Nile Livingston

Hanging Vessels by Artist, Linda Grace

Domiciliation: Settle/Unsettle Installation

Artist: Shervonne Neckles

Our Curators

Michael Clemmons

Michael Clemmons (right) is a Visual Artist/Curator and the Associate Director of Temple University’s
Center for Social Policy and Community Partnerships. In his art practice, Clemmons uses a cultural
palette, creating mix-media paintings referencing timeless landscapes, West African and personal
iconography, ceramic sculpture and installations. Educated at the University of the Arts, Temple University
and The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, his work is represented in collections internationally. With 30 years’
experience in community engagement and project development from inception through implementation, he
builds and coordinates strategic partnerships, facilitates programming, while advancing the goals of
community and mission of the University.

Ian Friday

Ian Friday (left) is the Performance Curator and Associate Director of TCGM. Founder of Global Soul
Music, Ian produces music that archives and uncovers ongoing black musical cultures, connecting
house, soul, afro beat, jazz and world music. As Associate Director of The Colored Girls Museum, Ian
leads the museum's marketing and social media platforms. He is also responsible for programing the
museum's performance sector. Ian has been making an impact within the arts community since the early
1990’s as the founder of a non profit arts organization called The Tea Party Inc., which provided a
platform for emerging and established artists.

Additional Artists, Exhibits & Installations

Transitions, Passages, Journeys: “Graduation Nite”,
The Colored Girls Museum Installation for
“I found God in Myself” created for the African American Museum in Philadelphia, 2016.
Featured Artists: Barbara Bullock, Devyn Briggs, Natalie Erin Brown, Michael Clemmons,
Rhashidah Perry Jones, Toni Kersey, Betty Leacraft, Monna Morton, Marie Marthol Clark,
and Lorrie Patrice Payne.

Photo Courtesy of The Colored Girls Museum

Inga Kimberly Brown Toni Kersey
"Tea Time in the Hen House of the Long Hairs" "Mirror as Metaphor"

Joy Ude Matriarch "Emma" by Lorrie Patrice Payne
"Matriarch" Award designed for Barbara Bullock

Natalie Erin Brown, wood burning Michael Clemmons "Things Not Seen"

Celestine Wilson-Hughes Lavett Ballard
"Spiritual Harmony" " Sittin Pretty"

Asake Jones Pharalyn Dove

Monna Morton

Photo by Julie Rainbor from her "Elders" Series

Photo by Beatrice Joyner
"Bea's Early Selfie"

Barbara Bullock. "The Child in the Land of the Spirit

Alicia Garrison Mosaic "Prayer Closet " glass ceramic and mirror

Robin Turnage Cloud Mural ceramics on shelf and cloud sculpture on chair
site-specific 2015

Dolls by Lorrie Patrice Payne, Story Quilts by Betty Leacraft
From the Installation: "Open for Business"

Artists: Linda Grace, "Slayed" Artist: Betty Leacraft, Story Quilt

M. Nzadi Keita

M. Nzadi Keita, 2017 recipient of a Pew Fellowship for poetry, is a Philly-born writer, editor, scholar and
teacher. Her most recent book, Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the life of Anna Murray Douglass
(Whirlwind Press), was a finalist for the 2015 Phillis Wheatley Poetry Prize from the Quarterly Black Book
Review. In it, Keita imagines how the free-born, illiterate first wife to Frederick Douglass saw the world as
an independent woman, mother, and abolitionist in her own right.

Keita is a Cave Canem alumna. Her poems appear in literary journals such as Crab Orchard, and Poet Lore.
Anthologies featuring her work include Peace Is A Haiku Song, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, and
A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. Grants and fellowships from the
Penna. Council on the Arts, the Leeway Foundation, Yaddo and the Fine Arts Work Center have supported
her creative adventures. Keita has done consulting with the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and
Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program. She is an associate professor and coordinator of the African-
American/Africana Studies Program at Ursinus College. More info at www.zeekeita.com and @zee_keita.

Mrs. Douglass Takes Tea At the Anti-Slavery Society

Lips alone make so much to study.
Let your eyes take in some quiet. Wait until a shoulder turns.
Look again.
Those lips steal the story,
from twig to branch to ash.
Add the eyes, the hands, the shoulders,
and you’ve got a book: the cover, the marks, and all the pages.
Every sound my heart holds back
to sit and handle in the dark starts with lips.
Sour fruit that I’ve seen shriveland come back to life. Cleaver. Torch.
Broken shell of an egg,
fish scale, soup spoon.
The longer you look, the more comes true.

Installation by Emily Carris

Installation by Emily Carris

Dress Installation created by Sara Bunn
Harlem Toile fabric designed by Sheila Bridges

“A woman is free if she lives by her own standards and creates her
own destiny, if she prizes her individuality and puts no boundaries

on her hopes for tomorrow.”

-Mary McLeod Bethune

Keynotes

Life, Music & Gumbo

A Conversation with
the Legendary Bert Harris

by Robb Fire

Robb: What is your earliest musical memory?

Bert: Probably listening to my mother play hymns on the
piano when I was about 5 or 6 years old in Salisbury North
Carolina. Like Gospel tunes... waking up in the morning and
hearing Mahalia Jackson and smelling my sister's hair being
burned as it was being straightened... (Laughter) In the
kitchen, I'd be upstairs hearing the Gospel music. The
straightening comb had a distinct smell to it. And then my
mom would have Mahalia Jackson on and in the afternoon
she'd play the piano.

Robb: What was the first instrument you played?

Bert: Primarily I'm a bassist. I messed around with the guitar and piano but just for composition. I wouldn't
play those out but I find it easy to find melodies on the guitar and the piano and then apply those melodies to
my bass lines. But what led me to wanting to be a musician was James Brown, Maceo Parker... I actually
wanted to play saxophone. I went to the music store to buy a saxophone with my best friend at that time, we
were in high school. There was a music store in Media PA called Skip's Music Store, so I went there to get a
saxophone but they didn't have any saxophones. So, my friend said "Why don't you try the bass?" So, I got a
bass and after that, just those bass lines of James Brown's music just kind of mesmerized me. I always
thought of the bass as more than a rhythmic instrument. I often thought of it as melodic instrument. That's why
I'm so into a lot of bass players like John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and I love Paul McCartney's sense of
melody. And then once I started getting into Jazz, there were a lot of bassists who were able to keep the
bottom but also play melodically - cats like Jimmy Blanton and Scott LaFaro. Ray Brown would often say the
bass should be able to carry the tune without a piano player. You should be so melodic and rhythmically
locked in that everyone knows where everything is without a piano player, without a guitar player.

Robb: You mentioned some of your early bass influences... who are some of your other "bass
heroes?"

Bert: Well, once I got into Jazz those were some of the guys, but in the beginning it was Bernard Odum with
James Brown, Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone, Kool Bell from Kool & the Gang... the 70s
were an amazing time for Rhythm & Blues and Funk music. The bass really started to step out.

Robb: Guys like Louis Johnson...

Bert: Oh yeah, he's amazing. I could never slap like that, or like Larry Graham or Stanley Clarke or Marcus
Miller, but I admire those guys. If I hadn't turned into an upright bassist, I would probably be a bassist like
that but once I got into the upright, it was such a demanding instrument of my time and my focus on the
electric bass kind of fell away, until I got into Reggae and with Philly Gumbo and that kind of stuff. But I
wanted to become a Jazz bassist. The warmth of the [upright bass]... I like the physicality of the
instrument, when you stand next to it, you can really feel the soul of the instrument, the warmth of it.
It really demands a devotion to play it. I guess any instrument does but the upright bass is kind of like
drums, you really have to commit yourself to it. It doesn't give its sound up very easily. It's an instrument
that really requires devotion... it's very physical, it requires your fingers to be strong... you have to pull the
sound out of the instrument. I took some lessons for about a year and a half with Buster Williams, and he
really just opened my head up to the importance of being able just to play acoustically without an amplifier
and to develop your own sound. Certain bass players in Jazz, when I hear them, I can identify that that's Ray
Brown, or I can identify that that's Paul Chambers, or I can identify that that's Scott LaFaro. Just like when
you hear electric bassists, you can identify that that's Jaco Pastorius -- he has a voice. I'm still working on
that! (Laughter)

Robb: We play in a band together, Reggae Thunder, and that's one of how many bands that you have
currently?

Bert: Philly Gumbo, Gumbo Social Club, Gumbo Nouveau, Melange, Timi Tanzania and the Dubway
Reggae Band, The Willow Trio, Jazz Planet, Project Bop, Rocksteady and the Philly SkaJazz Quartet. All
with various levels of activity. And the Weezthepeeples Collective with Karen Smith, and also the Good
Trouble Quartet.

Robb: How about historically? How many bands have you played with? Going through your timeline,
who did you start out with?

Bert:: When I was about 17, the band was called the Guerilla Band. As in "g-u-e-r... " (laughter) We went to
great lengths to let people know that, that was the name of the band. That was with some childhood friends -
- Giles Whitsett, David Lacour, Robert Davis. We were really kind of an early, jam band thing. This was in
the late 60s early 70s, but we would just show up to gigs. We would have some songs but really the whole
thing was to start playing and then let it go. Surprisingly, I'm not really into all these jam bands now, but back
then, that's kind of what we did.

Robb: And that was on electric bass?

Bert: Yeah, and you'll like this, I had one of those Dan Armstrong plexiglass basses... I wish I still had that thing.
That thing was gorgeous. I see them now for like $5000. And the Travis Bean was my second bass. I wish I still
had that one too. That had an unbelievable sound. It was white with an aluminum neck all the way through the
body. Heavy as shit! They kind of reminded me of Steinbergers, the kind of sustain they get and the power of the
sound. The solid graphite. Once they were sold to Gibson, it started to become a composite and kind of dumbed it
down. But I have an original. I think the serial number is like number 82 or something like that. So, it's really really
early. I saw Jamaaladeen Tacuma playing one. That was the first person I saw playing one. I didn't even know
what it was when I first saw it. He said it was a bass and then when he started playing, it was just unbelievable.
He's amazing, first of all, and then the sound was like nothing I'd ever heard. And then I got one. One of the
reasons Ruth and I are so tight is because she bought me that bass. Like 1982. But, so Guerilla Band was my
first band, and then Philly Gumbo was really the second band, going on 40 years now.

I really felt like I learned how to play bass in that band. Because I came from that Funk improv, really
freewheeling kind of style, and PhillyGumbo music was completely the opposite of that. It's covers and it's all
pocket music. It was Blues, Rhythm & Blues, New Orleans heavy and Reggae and you can't be going off. The
first couple of months I played with them I wasn't sure it was gonna work out because they kept telling me
"you gotta just keep the bass line." I didn't really come from that environment, but I eventually really got into it
and really respected it. I totally dug it and I dig it to this day. I mean you can't get much better than the bass
line from "Hey Pocky Way."

Robb: You are not only a bass player, you're a composer. How many pieces have you composed?

Bert: Right now, I have about 10 pieces... and a lot of pieces in my head that need to get together but 10 actual
pieces on sheet music ready to go. I've been playing most of my original music with a group called Melange. With
Lauren Bass and then the Philadelphia Jazz Project did a couple of my original pieces for some of their shows. I
think it was February, the last really nice gig I had was for Jazz Bridge. Jazz Bridge is a foundation that raises
money for musicians who need support. They've been around for years and put on neighborhood concerts
throughout the city. Like if you have a musician who's in his 80s and just needs help, there's a fund of money that
they have for them. It started about a decade ago by Suzanne Cloud and Wendy Simon, two Jazz vocalists. But
yeah, we put on a concert in February with all of my compositions. I'm going to be doing a show with Elliot Levin,
Terry Lawson and Kevin Obatala in January. Erica Corbo is a really interesting piano player who's been having a
series for the last year called Warp Factor 9 in a Suzuki Studio out in West Philly. It's a forum for all kinds of
music, but she really wants to get musicians who play experimental music, avant garde music and free jazz. So, I
have this quartet that I'm with called the Good Trouble Quartet [with the above mentioned musicians.] I have
some original compositions that I'll do with them.

Robb: These are more in an abstract vein?

Bert: Influenced by Thelonious Monk and Sun Ra, inspired by them, but also inspired by South African Jazz. Like
Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masakela... South African Jazz is probably my favorite kind of Jazz, that Apartheid-era
Jazz just knocks me out.

Robb: Who are some of your favorite current artists?

Bert: Abdullah Ibrahim is still living, William Parker, he's a bassist out of New York, he's an avant garde bassist, but
when I say "avant garde" people think you can get up and do whatever you want, but it's not that way. It's like
structured improvisation.

Robb: Well, I definitely want to check out this upcoming performance...

Bert: It's gonna be a live stream, January 21st, called Warp Factor 9.

Robb: Getting back to your musical history, what was the next band you were in after The Guerilla Band
and Philly Gumbo?

Bert: Jazz Planet was a trio, and then Byard Lancaster and I did a lot of work together. We recorded two CDs.
We were playing up until his passing. That was also a high point musically for me because he was the kind of
cat that... you could play Reggae in a couple bars then you could go off to do straight-ahead Jazz in the next
piece and he'd be right there. Really nice guy.

Robb:: When you envision your ultimate musical achievement, what does that look like or sound like?
What's the most amazing thing you can imagine doing in a musical context?

Bert: That would be doing a gig in New Orleans... any club or festival that would have me.

Robb: With a Jazz combo or Funk combo? What do you see...

Bert: Actually, I have two bands now that I run that have "gumbo" in the name. One's called the Gumbo
Social Club, and then we started a new one called Gumbo Nouveau. I'm gonna do this whole "gumbo"
concept. (Laughter) Just a "gumbo" collective.

Robb: So for your ultimate musical achievement you'd like to take a "Gumbo" in some form and gig
down in New Orleans...

Bert: That'd be ideal. Like with a 4-piece horn section, snappin' rhythm section and I'd be playing upright...
have some tunes that are originals that are New Orleans-inspired

Robb: How about as a composer... what's the maximum scale you can imagine composing on?
Anything orchestral?

Bert:: No, nothing that big. I didn't go to music school, and I really wish I had. So, I can't write for E flat
instruments or even B flat instruments... I'm really into treble clef and bass clef, so... I wish I had gone.
That's like one of the losses of my life I guess. I wish I had gone to music school, but it wasn't in the cards.

Robb: These days, there's all kinds of software that automatically notates and orchestrates...

Bert: I just bought a keyboard that has MIDI capacity so I could do that, but I find with that stuff though...
when you get the package, it's like it's Greek to understand. There needs to be a good tutorial or I would
need somebody sitting next to me who understands that stuff. That's what turns me off about it.

Robb: Speaking of new software like this, what kind of
new trends, new developments, or even new
styles of music... where do you see the future of music
going?

Bert: I think because the world is so global now, it feels
like a lot of the categories have bee dissolved. You
know who I really dig is Snarky Puppy. They're
amazing. It feels like every tribe on Earth is represented
in that band. Their music is really amazing, but I also
want to stay in the roots of the music. That's really
where I'm coming from. Like Africa really. One of the
best videos I ever saw on YouTube was this American
Jazz sax player who was out in the bush of Africa with a
drummer and bass player. Playing his f---in ass off. Just
literally out on a dirt road in the bush. That would be my
ideal... not Carnegie Hall, that wouldn't be it for me. Or
the Philharmonic or the Lincoln or something. But
ideally that's what I would love to do. A small quartet
just playing out in the bush of Africa. Just upright bass,
a drummer and sax player... That won't happen for a
while tho...

Robb: Last question: what's the wildest gig you ever played? Craziest gig, where you were thinking
"Oh man this is just nuts."

Bert: Oh boy, that would be with the Guerilla Band. We had a gig in Connecticut, so we drove all the way
from Philly, well Media actually, that's where I grew up, all the way from Media to some place in
Connecticut. By the time we got there, the party was in full swing. This is the late 60s, I'm sure there
was acid... it was a house party, some really wealthy dude. What I remember is the lead singer swinging
on pipes, singing his ass off and also going out in the audience taking drinks from people, consuming their
drinks and they didn't care. But that was wild. Everybody was just stoned out. Some of the nights at
Bacchanal with Philly Gumbo were pretty intense too. There were some really nice times there because
there was just so much unity. You'd see guys who you'd think would work in a bank, along with people who
were artists... tattoo artists.. whatever... people just dancing their asses off. It was just a great sense of
unity and humanity.

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