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DANCE we’ve got soul BELIEVE IT. R&B IS ALIVE AND WELL ON THE DOCK OF THE BAY. by Kevin Berg- er

eshell Ndegeocello has WHILE THE people who are not me. Not an hour before, the presence of a boxer, the OLD SCHOOL I had been reading a biography of Herman faith of a preacher, the heart HAS SOLD Melville, where I came across these lines of a poet. This past May, in OUT TO from his novel Redburn: “American blood… MADISON a rare club appearance, the is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of AVENUE, M East Bay singer strolled onto the stage at a thousand currents all pouring into one. AND TODAY’S Bimbo’s, a slow, deep funk brewing behind SOUL-POP We are not a nation, so much as a world.” her; a striped wool cap, pulled down over KIDS CARE Lingering over those sentences one minute her forehead, gave her the look of a woman ONLY ABOUT and then living them the next transformed under pressure, ready to burn. She fixed MTV, LOCAL the show into one of those special nights her eyes on the crowd. “Gonna play some SOUL ARTISTS when all of the planets seem aligned. And, ARE KEEPING new shit for you tonight,” she said. She of course, the music knocked us out in all THE TORCH began to sing—a leathery tenor, riveted OF OTIS the right ways. with anger. “You sell your soul like you sell REDDING For Ndegeocello, the gig was a coming- a piece of ass,” she intoned, beats churn- BURNING. out party for her fourth album, Cookie: The ing, tempo rising. “Remember what Jesse Anthropological Mixtape, a musical collage used to say: ‘I am somebody.’” We were of hip-hop and soul, a lyrical farrago of under her spell, willing to follow her down radical politics and dreamy sex. For me, it any dark street. was a heartening return to soul, a musical And we were an extraordinary retinue: field from which I’ve strayed since Prince white, straight, black, lesbian, brown, yel- lost his mind, somewhere over the Graf- low, and gay. We were men in tailored fiti Bridge. To my unending delight, I’ve suits and women in silk gowns, guys with discovered that Ndegeocello defies current gray ponytails and girls in floppy flowered Meshell record-industry conventions and puts Ndegeocello dresses. How magnificent, I was thinking, genuine soul back into pop music, as do shows off her as the deep, dark funk was gathering lighter side. Oakland’s Ledisi and San Francisco’s Mar- steam on stage, to be dancing alongside 88 SAN f r a n c i s c o Photograph by JAMES CHIANG July 2002 89 tin Luther. They’ve inherited the more than a jingle of rampant she never sounds heavy-handed.

THEATER maverick wind of the Bay Area, consumerism, the sound track Rather, she comes across like a which first blew San Francisco’s of a commercial to sell a $30,000 bighearted inner-city counselor, Sly and the Family Stone onto the SUV, a Buick Rendezvous. BERGER’S with nothing to offer but com- airwaves, and later Oakland’s Tony One of the problems with con- JULY MUSIC mon sense and compassion. MOVIES Toni Toné and En Vogue. These temporary soul is that it is the PICKS Ndegeocello, I might add, who three bands, you could easily sound of the marketplace, music Ledisi at times breaks her connection argue, virtually created the mold designed to fit a specific demo- The local soul with listeners with sententious that has been used to stamp out graphic niche. I realize it sounds diva shows her moralizing and hazy metaphysics, BOOKS an assembly line of hit makers in crotchety to complain about the sultry ways with could take a lesson from Ledisi, the past decade—Boyz II Men, streamlined beats and bubblegum pop standards who knows the beauty of a simple Destiny’s Child, and the rest of melodies of Usher and Brandy, on most Monday metaphor and light touch. nights at Mecca the soul-pop kids who dominate which are written for teenagers, Similarly, Martin Luther’s MUSIC and gets down MTV and popular radio stations to whom radio stations and MTV and funky at rockin’ soul, punctuated with rap like our KMEL and KYLD. can sell Pepsi and Sony Play- Cafe Du Nord and turntable scratching, ventures I started wondering about new Stations. But I have the same most Thursday deep into the bowels of urban BOTH TV soul music only a few months trouble with the light jazz or nights. injustice, as only a musician who ago, when on a whim I grabbed acoustic soul or whatever that IN S.F. grew up and still lives in Hunters the indispensable James Brown languid-tempo music is called Mingus Point can. But on his 1999 album, collection Star Time from my that is supposed to appeal to Amungus The Calling, and his recent Rebel ART shelves, dusted it off, and put it people my age, who, apparently, Not only do they Soul Music, Luther always emerg- in my car. It sat there for days have been robbed of all their tap the soul of es on an uplifting note, even with alongside recent albums by sentient brain cells by adulthood. Charles Mingus, a laugh, with some sweet melody they remake the New Order, Bob Dylan, Radio- The first Sade album in 1984 and wicked little guitar riff that DANCE bebop master’s head—typical middle-aged rock was a refreshing blend of exotic tunes in the evoke Donny Hathaway and Jimi critic stuff—until one evening on a rhythms and airy melodies. But I hip-hop image Hendrix, his spiritual mentors. drive to the Oakland coliseum don’t hear any real distinction or of our times. “Ain’t no love, ain’t no trust in I popped it into the CD player. style in Erykah Badu or India.Arie And positively our own community,” he lovingly Somewhere around High Street, or Alicia Keys (although I like the groove live. sings. “The darkness that you JULY 3, YOSHI’S, creeping along in traffic, as last few songs on her monster hit keep inside must one day find the OAKLAND. one musically taut, emotion- album, Songs in A Minor, when light of day.” As a vocalist, Luther ally explosive song segued into she gets way jazz weird). Mostly James Brown sounds on one song as velvety as another—horns charging, rhythm what I hear is a producer in the He’s 69 years Barry White, as jovial on another as old, and age guitars riffing, Brown pleading—I studio saying, “Let’s use brushes funk master George Clinton, who won’t mean thought, “My God, where are on the drums in this song, alto a thing the makes a guest appearance on the the artists like this today?” sax, and wind chimes. That way, moment the new album’s “Pimpmobile.” It’s a genuinely rare experience we’re guaranteed to be played on Famous Flames “I represent the Frisco bay, to hear the pure genius of old quiet-storm radio stations.” rev up and where the best are made, inde- soul music these days. It can only You’ll hear no such complacency the Godfather pendently bred, and I refuse to happen in those Zenlike moments on Ledisi’s vibrant Soulsinger, or, burns through be played,” Luther raps on Rebel the tightest soul when your mind is free of the for that matter, on her album of Soul Music. It’s a playful line, but ever. JULY 17, noise and clutter of the mass sinuous jazz standards, Feel- SOLANO COUNTY it speaks volumes about him, media. For all practical purposes, ing Orange but Sometimes Blue. FAIR, VALLEJO. Ledisi, and Ndegeocello. They the nostalgia industry, made up Instead, you’ll hear the magnetic simply won’t “be played” by the Neville Brothers of classic-rock stations and over- personality, dynamic tempos, and rules of the fragmented market- They are the wrought Hollywood movies star- bold social declarations of Aretha living history place. They are determined to ring Meg Ryan, has ground the Franklin and Marvin Gaye, artists of New Orleans transcend the spiritually empty gears of soul music into dust by who didn’t write for market niches soul, and—as trends of the time and follow the overusing them to create a cheap but for people of all colors and their brilliant, borderless and color-blind music and easy magnet for audiences. ages everywhere. As a vocalist, world-beat- in their hearts. Only months ago, Early soul artists were robbed of Ledisi, who has sung for years influenced I figured soul music had been left album Yellow royalties by double-dealing man- with Beach Blanket Babylon, Moon shows— for dead. But now I’m here to say, agers and music publishers, but ranges far beyond the MTV hit so much more. at the risk of sounding like a chart- how many more times do they makers into the rarefied lands of JULY 18, THE er member of a Bay Area booster need to be repaid? Can the money Sarah Vaughan. But it’s not her FILLMORE, S.F. society, that soul music is alive justify the damage they’ve done technique you notice when you and well in our backyard, played to the joy and romance of their hear her live; it’s her smile and by three artists with their eyes on songs by selling them to Burger passion, which light up the room. posterity, just waiting for us to King? I would like to tell Stevie On Soulsinger, Ledisi sings fear- join them on the dance floor. Wonder that whenever I hear his lessly about domestic abuse and Kevin Berger is the executive edi-

once-blissful “Superstition,” I’m even incest, but, remarkably, tor of San Francisco. Icons by Gustav Katz sickened, as it now is nothing 90 SAN f r a n c i s c o Review, as well as in the United Kingdom’s Listen and the presti- gious PN Review. In the former, she shared pages with such poets as Adrienne Rich and Philip Larkin—in fact, according to the un-beats Pinkerton, every poet in that issue became famous except her. She LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI AND HIS PALS AREN’T THE ONLY BAY didn’t strive for publication and AREA POETS, JUST THE NOISIEST. by Cynthia Haven name recognition, insisting that a poet must choose what he or she wants to be, “a careerist or a seri- sk a random group THE POINT IS Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Michael ous writer.” Serious writers don’t of people to tell you NOT TO BEAT McClure, and Diane di Prima) worry about finding an audience; three local poets, and THE BEATS. overshadowed at least one local they worry about writing. more likely than not BUT THE poetry movement whose work is Her lifetime output is small; you’ll hear names like STANFORD arguably more sophisticated and most of her poems hit the bot- POETS’ WORK A Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, McClure… of greater literary merit. So it is tom of her wastebasket. But then, IS RESTRAINED, In San Francisco, a single group ELEGANT, AND gratifying to see the publication she rarely gets a rejection slip. A of poets dominates the popular METRICAL— of Helen Pinkerton’s first book typical example of her work is a imagination: North Beach’s wild- EVERYTHING of poetry available to a general poem for a new mother inspired eyed Beats of the 1950s and THAT BEAT audience, Taken in Faith (Ohio by a painting by Flemish artist ’60s. Allen Ginsberg, their most POETRY IS NOT. University Press). Palo Alto’s Dieric Bouts, Virgin and Child, celebrated deity, once described Pinkerton is now 75, and her at the California Palace of the

his new way of writing poetry book is an eloquent reminder of Legion of Honor: thus: “All you have to do,” he an influential group that has been Timeless the pose as said, “is think of anything that tagged—when it is mentioned at yesterday’s caress. comes into your head, then arrange all—the Stanford School of Poets. His lips touch hers, his hand in lines of two, three, or four Their work is restrained, elegant, her breast. Eyes lowered, words each—don’t bother about classical, and insistently metrical, Her slender fingers cradle his nakedness: sentences—in sections of two, everything that Beat poetry is not. Innocence in an intimate three, or four lines each.” A gifted Pinkerton is not a new dis- communion. poet, Ginsberg sells himself short; covery. She taught at Stanford Now when I see you hold “anything that comes into your University after getting her M.A. your newborn son head” understates his improvisa- there in 1950 (with time off for a As if the same sight filled tional, incendiary imagery. In fact, Ph.D. from Harvard in 1966 and your eyes, I bless no one is likely to have the tsunami two babies). Her poetry has been Whatever keeps us so. impact Ginsberg had on several privately read, circulated, and Although some say generations of poets and readers appreciated for years. Her limited- Lust informs all love, others say grace ranges anytime soon. But it’s hard to be edition, fine-press Error Pursued Downward, perfecting love a follow-up act to a man who (1959) and Poems 1946–1976 through all its changes. performed the literary equivalent of (1984) were well received. Her taking off his clothes and burning poems, moreover, have occasion- Recently, Pinkerton told me she them in public. ally appeared in the finest Ameri- had also been discouraged by the The Beats (the best-known can literary journals, such as the lack of craftsmanship around her, poets among them include Paris Review and the Sewanee Illustration by SUSY PILGRIM WATERS July 2002 91 the spirit of “anything goes.” In them former poet laureates Robert Our perceptions of literary San

THEATER such a climate, publication can Pinsky and Berkeley’s Robert Francisco seem to have been be a tinsel crown. (She became Hass, as well as Donald Hall, shaped most by the movement a Melville scholar instead.) Half a Donald Justice, Philip Levine, HAVEN’S that eventually caught the times century ago, while she was quietly Timothy Steele, and San Fran- BAY AREA and gained ascendance, and then MOVIES penning her formal, elegant poems cisco’s Thom Gunn, who recalls POETRY chronicled itself. The Beats had in Menlo Park, all hell was break- Winters saying, “We must never PICKS the considerable energies of Fer- ing loose in San Francisco, where lie, or we shall lose our souls.” Robert Horan linghetti and City Lights Books at Ferlinghetti’s obscenity trial for Other protégés and colleagues A Beginning their disposal, an enviable mega- BOOKS publishing Ginsberg’s landmark included N. Scott Momaday and (Yale Univer- phone for any movement. poem “Howl” caused an inter- Winters’ wife, Janet Lewis (author sity Press) is a I have stressed the Stanford national furor in 1957. The poem of The Wife of Martin Guerre). musical, magi- School because Pinkerton’s book cal, and very famously begins “I saw the best In 1971, literary critic and Beat brings it to the fore, but I might MUSIC offbeat read by minds of my generation destroyed advocate Kenneth Rexroth wrote the also note Carmel’s Robinson by madness / starving hysterical admiringly of the Winters circle, late Bay Area Jeffers, whose postmortem recog- naked” and later, in a litany of “As a group there had never been Activist poet. nition is only now reviving after incandescent self-pity, talks of anything like them in the history of decades of neglect, yet whose TV Robinson Jeffers those who “howled on their knees American poetry.” Yvor Winters thoughts on time, nature, and in the subway and were dragged And through their students, Two formidable mankind seem more apt with off the roof waving genitals and Winters’ influence has reached poles of local the years. I might also have ART manuscripts…” Thus began a lit- Stanford’s “grandchildren,” literary sensibility mentioned the Activists, under erary era characterized by celebrity Southern California poet Leslie in the last half- the late Lawrence Hart, a mav- and by poetry as protest and self- Monsour, for instance, and Dana century. Try The erick Bay Area poetry instructor. Selected Poetry expression. Many lesser spirits Gioia, who just won an American W.H. Auden selected two of DANCE of Robinson took up the beat of Ginsberg’s Book Award for his third book of Jeffers (Stan- Hart’s disciples, Rosalie Moore bongos, the whine of his Hindu- poems, Interrogations at Noon. ford University and Robert Horan, for inclusion inspired harmonium, and we’ve (Gioia is also this magazine’s Press) and The in the prestigious Yale Series of been in an era of do-your-own- classical music critic.) Selected Poems Younger Poets in the 1940s. Like thing ever since. As Pinkerton, who edited of Yvor Winters Pinkerton, Moore continued pub- (Ohio University So Pinkerton’s life of scholarship Winters’ Selected Poems, lishing into old age; she died at 90 Press). and thoughtful strolls through describes the Winters gospel: in Petaluma last year. museum galleries will not be to “The feelings and emotional Weldon Kees Pinkerton’s survival and tri- everyone’s taste. It may smack too associations evoked by the words San Francisco’s umph may be another indication compelling, much of the cloistered academia should stand in a rational, com- that it’s time to look again at our enigmatic Kees that the Beats tried to rattle. God prehensible, and just relationship should be better cultural legacy. The point is not knows we can use the flame- to the statement.” In other words, known, and to beat the Beats but rather to throwers, too. The Beats opposed the Stanford School downplayed The Collected stress that the Bay Area has a lit- the pretentious, the obscure, and emotional exhibitionism and self- Poems of erary history as variegated as our the dull, and we could stand indulgent expression. The group Weldon Kees landscape—a story that’s as pas- another such shaking. But it’s been has been accused of excessive (edited by sionate, iconoclastic, and defiant Donald Justice, difficult for others to compete clubbiness, and Winters himself of literary fashion as the Beats University of with a poetry so youth-oriented, so was notoriously controversial and Nebraska Press) themselves, a point they should instant in its impact, so immedi- cranky. After all this time, though, is just the ticket. appreciate even though they ately accessible—especially when their brilliant poetry and the argu- became the fashion. Let us, by all Kay Ryan they’re creating poems that may ments for it should stand on their means, give thanks for the gener- Ryan, who lives not grab you in a single line, that own merits. But that brings up in Marin County, ous, inspired spirit of Ginsberg et may yield richer meaning on sub- another point. is a good liv- al. But let us move on. And let sequent readings or even over the If history is the story written by ing addition to us, please, distinguish between course of years. the victors, it’s significant that in these historical celebrity and artistry, and not The bigger issue is that such Ferlinghetti’s 1980 book Literary hits. Look for suppose that the best of the latter noisy movements roll a heavy San Francisco, Yvor Winters gets Say Uncle will survive without our vigilance (Grove Press), rock atop others of more durable one reference in a summary list and nurturing. her briefest-of- worth, such as the group Pinker- (and his first name is misspelled brief, whimsical Cynthia Haven is a literary critic ton is associated with, the Stan- “Ivor” in the index), Thom Gunn is poems. for the San Francisco Chronicle ford School, led by poets Yvor mentioned only in the caption to and other publications. Winters and J.V. Cunningham a group photograph, Lewis and from the 1930s to the ’60s. (Cun- Momaday don’t rate any men- ningham left for Brandeis in 1953.) tion at all, yet umpteen pages are Many of America’s leading con- given the Beats and the “Howl” temporary poets were influenced trial—one gets the feeling it is the by Winters in particular, among central event in postwar history.

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