Jazz Doctor: Milford Graves
His playful eyes are framed by a bearded face.
The energy comes through the roots, he says.
If you cut the stems, you're truncating power.
His place exhales an alchemical aura.
A stairway painted in bright rainbow colors
leads to the music research laboratory.
Next to it, in the lavish garden citrus trees
grow amidst healing herbs and exotic plants.
The walls of the house are covered
with a rococo of mosaic stones,
pieces of reflective metal
and chunks of discarded marble
that stand apart from the gritty character
of the 110th Avenue in Queens.
The basement glares in psychedelic colors.
The interior is filled with musical instruments
computers, electronic stethoscopes,
botanical remedies and acupuncture dummies
marked with tinted pathways
along the meridians.
Among many other things, Milford Graves
made trips to the Far East, studying with
Chinese and Japanese masters
of acupuncture, as part of his development
as a critic of allopathic mainstream medicine
in the context of western culture.
Many days ago
he was a police boxing champion
and invented his own martial art technique,
a perpetual motion form,
which borrows from aikido and African dance,
sort of a physical jazz
that hits hard and fast.
Milford Graves came
from Jamaica to New York City,
where he liberated percussion
from its timekeeping role.
In the 1950s and 1960s he emerged in America
as an intrepid pioneer of avant-garde music;
an innovative and different drummer
who marches to his own beat beyond bebop.
He altered, extended and broke down
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poem by Paul Hartal
Added by Poetry Lover
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