BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY
Jayne Cortez
| Jayne Cortez | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Sallie Jayne Richardson |
| Born | May 10, 1934 Fort Huachuca, Arizona |
| Died | December 28, 2012 (aged 78) Manhattan, New York |
| Genres | Avant-garde jazz, Free jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Jazz poet, spoken word artist,writer, small press publisher |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 1964–2012 |
| Labels | Bola Press, Strata-East Records, Verve Records,Giorno Poetry Systems |
| Associated acts | The Firespitters, Ornette Coleman, Denardo Coleman,Bern Nix, Bobby Bradford, Ron Carter, James Blood Ulmer, Al McDowell |
| Website | JayneCortez08.com |
Jayne Cortez (May 10, 1934[1] – December 28, 2012) was an African-American poet, activist, small press publisher and spoken-word performance artist[2] whose voice is celebrated for its political, surrealistic and dynamic innovations in lyricism and visceral sound. Her writing is part of the canon of the Black Arts Movement. Biography
Jayne Cortez was born Sallie Jayne Richardson on the Army base at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, on May 10, 1934. Her father was a career soldier who would serve in both world wars; her mother was a secretary.
At the age of seven, she moved to Los Angeles, where she grew up in the Watts district.[3] Young Jayne Richardson reveled in the jazz and Latin recordings that her parents collected. She studied art, music and drama in high school and later attended Compton Community College. She took the surname Cortez, the maiden name of her maternal grandmother, early in her artistic career.
Ms. Cortez was the author of 12 books of poems and performed her poetry with music on nine recordings. She presented her work and ideas at universities, museums, and festivals in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, the Caribbean and the United States. Her poems have been translated into 28 languages and widely published in anthologies, journals and magazines, including Postmodern American Poetry, Daughters of Africa, Poems for the Millennium, Mother Jones, and The Jazz Poetry Anthology.
In 1991, along with Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo, Cortez founded the Organization of Women Writers of Africa (OWWA), of which she was president. She was organizer of "Slave Routes: The Long Memory" (2000) and "Yari Yari Pamberi: Black Women Writers Dissecting Globalization" (2004), both international conferences held at New York University. She appeared on screen in the films Women In Jazz and Poetry in Motion. Ms. Cortez also directed Yari Yari: Black Women Writers and the Future (1999), which documented panels, readings and performances held during the first major international literary conference on women of African descent.
She married Ornette Coleman in 1954 and divorced him in 1964. She was the mother of jazz drummer Denardo Coleman.
In 1975 she married sculptor Melvin Edwards.[4] She lived in Dakar, Senegal, and New York City, where she died.
Career
Jayne Cortez wrote and performed with an uncompromising intensity all her own. Acerbic, hard-hitting, unsentimental and scathingly honest, her take on reality is so potent — and even pungent — that many poets may seem benign, or even superficial, by comparison.
The musicians with whom Jayne Cortez aligned herself reflected the sociopolitical and cultural elements to which she attached the greatest importance. Born in Fort Huachuca, Arizona in 1934, she grew up near Los Angeles under the spell of her parents' jazz and blues record collection, which also included examples of Latin American dance bands and field recordings of indigenous American music. Early exposure to the recordings of Bessie Smith instilled in Cortez a deeply etched sense of female identity, which, combined with a strong will, shaped her into an uncommonly outspoken individual. She became transformed by the sounds of Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and no-nonsense vocalist Dinah Washington, whose visceral approach to self-expression clearly encouraged the poet not to pull any punches.
Cortez, who respected the memory of independent performing artist Josephine Baker, preferred to name inspirations rather than influences, especially when discussing writers. Those with whom she identified included Langston Hughes, Aimé Césaire, Léon Damas, Christopher Okigbo, Henry Dumas, Amiri Baraka, and Richard Wright. Parallels with the ugly/beautiful poetics of Federico García Lorca also suggest themselves. Her words were usually written, chanted, and spoken in rhythmic repetition that resembled the intricate, tactile language of African and Caribbean drumming.
In 1954, Cortez married jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman when she was 18 years old. Their son Denardo was born in 1956; he began drumming with his father while still a child and devoted his adult life to collaborating with both parents in their respective careers.[5] In 1964, Cortez divorced Coleman and founded the Watts Repertory Theater Company, for which she served as artistic director until 1970. Active in the struggle for Civil Rights, she strongly advocated using art as a vehicle to push political causes, with her work being used to register black voters in Mississippi in the early 1960s.[6] Ms Cortez traveled through Europe and Africa, and moved to New York City in 1967.
Most of her recordings have been issued under the auspices of Bola Press, a publishing company that Cortez founded in 1972. She cut her first album, Celebrations and Solitudes, at White Plains, New York, in 1974. A set of duets with bassist Richard Davis, it was released on the Strata-East label. The first Bola Press recording, taped in October 1979, was called Unsubmissive Blues and included a piece "For the Brave Young Students in Soweto." Cortez commenced delivering her poetry backed by an electro-funk modern jazz group called the Firespitters, built around a core of guitarist Bern Nix, bassist Al McDowell, and drummer Denardo Coleman. For years, the Firespitters and Ornette Coleman's Prime Time coexisted with Denardo as the axis and various players participating in both units.
In 1975, Cortez married painter, sculptor, and printmaker Melvin Edwards. His work has appeared in her publications as well as on some of her album covers.
During the summer of 1982, Cortez delivered There It Is, an earthshaking album containing several pieces that truly define her artistry. These include: "I See Chano Pozo," a joyously evocative salute to Dizzy Gillespie's legendary Cuban percussionist; a searing indictment of patriarchal violence called "If the Drum Is a Woman"; and, "US/Nigerian Relations," which consists of the sentence "They want the oil/but they don't want the people" chanted dervish-like over an escalating, electrified free jazz blowout. Recorded in 1986, her next album, Maintain Control, is especially memorable for Ornette Coleman's profoundly emotive saxophone on "No Simple Explanations," the unsettling "Deadly Radiation Blues," and the harshly gyrating "Economic Love Song," which is another of her tantrum-like repetition rituals, this time built around the words "Military spending, huge profits and death." Among several subsequent albums Cheerful & Optimistic (1994) stands out for the use of an African kora player and poignant currents of wistfulness during "Sacred Trees" and "I Wonder Who." Additionally, this album contains a convincing ode to anti-militarism in "War Devoted to War" and the close-to-the-marrow mini-manifestos "Samba Is Power" and "Find Your Own Voice." In 1996, her album Taking the Blues Back Home was released on Harmolodic/Verve; Borders of Disorderly Time, which appeared in 2002, featured guest artists Bobby Bradford, Ron Carter, and James Blood Ulmer.
In 1991, Cortez co-founded the Organization of Women Writers of Africa with Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo, and served as its president for many years thereafter. Ms. Cortez was planning a symposium of women writers to be held in Ghana, May 2013.[7]
An educator, publisher, and internationally acclaimed writer whose works have been translated into many languages, Cortez appeared in the films Poetry in Motion by Ron Mannand Women in Jazz.
Her impact upon the development of spoken-word performance art during the late 20th century has yet to be intelligently recognized. In some ways her confrontational political outspokenness and dead-serious cathartic performance technique place Cortez in league with Judith Malina and The Living Theater. According to the online African-American Registry, "Her...ability to push the acceptable limits of expression to address issues of race, sex and homophobia place her in a category that few other women occupy."
She maintained two residences, one in New York City and one in Dakar, Senegal, which she said "really feels like home."
Jayne Cortez died of heart failure in Manhattan, New York, on December 28, 2012.[8] A memorial celebration of her life, organised by her family on February 6, 2013, at theCooper Union Foundation Building, included tributes by Amiri Baraka, Danny Glover, Robin Kelley, Genna Rae McNeil, Quincy Troupe, Steve Dalachinsky, George Campbell Jr.,Eugene Redmond, Rashidah Ishmaili, and Manthia Diawara, as well as musical contributions by Randy Weston, T. K. Blue and The Firespitters.[9] The Spring 2013 issue of The Black Scholar (Vol. 43, No. 1/2) was dedicated to her memory and work.[10]
Selected awards
- American Book Award
- Arts International
- International African Festival Award
- Langston Hughes Medal
- National Endowment for the Arts
- New York Foundation for the Arts
Poetry books
- On the Imperial Highway: New and Selected Poems. Hanging Loose Press. 2008. ISBN 978-1-931236-99-7.
- The Beautiful Book. Bola Press. 2007. ISBN 9780960806287.
- Jazz Fan Looks Back. Hanging Loose Press. 2002. ISBN 978-1-931236-10-2.
- Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere. Serpent's Tail/High Risk Books. 1997. ISBN 1852424222.
- Fragments: Sculpture and Drawings from the "Lynch Fragment" Series by Melvin Edwards, with the Poetry of Jayne Cortez. Bola Press. 1994. ISBN 1852424222.
- Poetic Magnetic: Poems from Everywhere Drums & Maintain Control. Bola Press. 1991. ISBN 978-0-9608062-6-3.
- Coagulations: New and Selected Poems. Pluto. 1984. ISBN 978-0-7453-0078-8.
- Firespitter, Bola Press (1982)
- Mouth on Paper, Bola Press (1977)
- Scarifications, Bola Press (1973)
- Festivals and Funerals, Bola Press (1971)
- Pissstained Stairs and the Monkey Man's Wares, Phrase Text (1969)
Discography
- As If You Knew (Bola Press, 2011)
- Find Your Own Voice: Poetry and Music, 1982-2003 (Bola Press, 2004)
- Borders of Disorderly Time (Bola Press, 2002)
- Taking the Blues Back Home (Harmolodic/Verve, 1996)[11]
- Cheerful & Optimistic (Bola Press, 1994)
- Poetry & Music: Women in (E)Motion Festival (Tradition & Moderne Musikproducktion, Germany, 1992)
- Everywhere Drums (Bola Press, 1990)
- There It Is (Bola Press, 1982)
- Life is a Killer (compilation on Giorno Poetry Systems, 1982)
- Poets Read their Contemporary Poetry: Before Columbus Foundation (Smithsonian Folkways, 1980)
- Unsubmissive Blues (Bola Press, 1979)
- Celebrations & Solitudes: The Poetry of Jayne Cortez & Richard Davis, Bassist (Strata-East, 1974)
Videos
- Find Your Own Voice (Sanctuary TV, 2010)[12]
- She Got He Got (Sanctuary TV, 2010)[13]
- I'm Gonna Shake (Sanctuary TV, 2010)[14]
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