Friday, April 9, 2010

for horace silver (7)


for horace silver
(1929 -- )


yrs is a style of meaningful simplicity,
profound, rhythmically infectious, that
defined a genre. u coaxed the blues --
skulking like a vagrant among all those
intimidating scales, arpeggios & chromatic
ornaments -- to come out in front & out of
hiding, to colonize yr compositions like an
occult infection. u called the gospel down
to possess yr melodies, make them shout,
speak in cloven tongues, elicit thunderous
blakeyian press rolls, cross beats & fills;
quiet tremblings that grew into frenzied
explosions. u broke free of bebop, keeping
the bop, firing it up to make it hard & ductile;
distanced yrself from the so-called cool
& chamber jazz forms. u showed the way
for others to follow, especially the sons
who would write songs for the father –
that would be u, the intrepid pop & now,
perhaps, the venerable hard bop grandpop!



©Joseph McNair;2010

4 comments:

  1. "skulking like a vagrant among all those
    intimidating scales, arpeggios & chromatic
    ornaments."

    Wicked!

    ReplyDelete
  2. To me he was a better saxophonist than pianist.

    "u broke free of bebop, keeping
    the bop, firing it up to make it hard & ductile;
    distanced yrself from the so-called cool
    & chamber jazz forms."- I liked his Blues feel and Mainstream Jazz style.

    ReplyDelete
  3. For horace silver

    You can feel the jazz stream just from the poem, it's soothing and relaxing. Though there is a sense of power in it because when you mention the gosple, it shows that he wasnt just a musician he had some insperation under everything. It took a lot out of him to get out of his element, but still he wasn't faced with fear. He was faced with courage to show the world what he had.

    ReplyDelete