s Page Fourteen THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, November 12, 1972 Sundav, November 12, 1972 THE MICHIGAN DAILY .-I"T 1%-#%.A 4F , w , -, . --. . -, . I I - Page Fourteen THE MICHIGAN DAILY TO A CERTAIN TYRANT He often came here. Not in riding breeches yet, a plain cloth coat, inhibited and stooped. When later murdering world culture by arresting frequenters of this cafe, he wreaked a kind of vengeance (not on them- on Time) for poverty, humiliation, the cups of putrid coffee, and the boredom, and games of twenty-one which-he had lost. And Time has swallowed up this vengeance now. It's crowded here, with many people laughing, and records echo loudly; but before you take a seat, you tend to look around. There's plastic everywhere, and chrome, all wrong; a taste of bromide soda fouls the pies. And sometimes, before closing, he comes here after the theater, but incognito. When he comes in the people all stand up: some--from duty, the rest i-from happiness. And then the slightest motion of his wrist returns the evening all its coziness. He drinks his coffee-better far than then- and eats croissants, reposing in an arm-chair, so tasty that the dead would shout, "Quite good!" if they were resurrected. January, 1972 Translated by Carl R. Proffer TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: The original is in iambic pentameter, rhymed ababcddc. .:; o , . , ~ : " z; ww "There's something par-a loxical about a fence" H 6 (elebratioti takes TO POEMS by Joseph I ~ to a tj f !, :. i / " Brodsky OJ,HOK/ THPAHY.- OH 3Aecb 6fbtan. Ew~e He B raneeC~, B FnanbTO H13 Aipana, cJ~epw+aHHbl , CyTyJImm, ApeCTOM 3aBcer~naTaeB Ka4~e nOKOHHHe fn03me BC MH-POBON K ynibTypOki, OH 3THM I-'u 661biOTOMCTHJ1 (He PHM, Ho BpeMeHH)3a OeAqHOCTb, yHH)HBHbR, 3a cKBepHbIH Kooe, c~-yi~y H icpmHbRH B ,qABa~IJLJaTb OAHO, fpohr-paHHbIB HM H Bper-1R flOFJOTHJ1O 3Ty McT6. Tenep6 3ALecb J1F0AHO, MHOr~e c CITCR x 3By~-aT nJnaCTHHKH. HO fnpeA TBM, Ha ceCT6 3a CTOJ1PK, RaIK-TO TRHeT OrfJRHyTbCR * Be3Ae nn~aCTIYaCCa, HvI{611--Bce He To.. B n~poH{HbIx i1pMBKyC 6pOMkCTOrO HaTpa. flopoHi, nepeAq 3a~pbTbea, H-3 TeaTpa, OH 3Aecb 66t8aeT, HO HHF{OrHH~TO. Kor~a OH BXOLHPT, BCe OHM BCTatOT: OALHH--nlO cInyH{e, fpO'-He--OT C~acTbli. ABHmHH6M JnaAOHH OT 3anRFCTbF1 OH Bo3Bpau~aeT 66H6epYHJ1T. OH FnbeT C60N R o~e---ny4HwkH, H6M TOr~1a, H- eCT poranlHK, npHlrOCT.IWI-Cb B KpeOJ16, CTOnlb BKyCHb1p 4'-TO H 1MepT~bI6 "O,Ara l" BoC1{J1PPHyfll4 6bi, ecnH 6bi BOcI~pecnfH. IHBap6 1972 r. Are festivals lowering d, Anyway . . . There is a kind of reaissuring predictability about the twelve bar form and the 1-4-5 progres- sion. I always know pretty much where the music's gonna go and how it's gonna get there. In the blues, there are rarely any struc- tural surprises for the listener, Surprises are rare enough to be a welcome change. When some- one d o e s something innovative with the blues and brings it off, it makes me laugh with pleasure. I have in mind early Buddy Guy Jinior Wells and Butterfield just before and after he switched to the larger band. Usually the blues are a very simple and stylized form. The goal for the performer (like all those football coaches are fond of saying) is "proper execution." The objective is to do it right, to share a special message with the audience, to put an ambience in the air, the performer, and the audience's head, to get folks nodding to the rightness of the music and- the lyrics, to generate identification, a kind of appre- ciative empathy. We are togeth- er, knowing how hard it can sometimes be. There is an intensity to all of it, sometimes soft and unassum- ing like John Hurt's music, other times driving frantic and nearly out of control, like Robert John- son's brand. Some folks shout the blues, some whisper them. Bessie Smith must've just wrap- ped them around everybody in range. For a person who's spent most of his young life hurrying along big city streets from one school to another, it is healing to sit on a porch somewhere, listening to someone pick out a soft slow blues, accompanied by a sweet rough voice. "So," you may be asking your- self at this point, "how come this self-confessed aficianado did not get it on with everyone else at the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival? Eh?" The whole music festival scene has already made me very un- comfortable. It's not that I have an aversion to large crowds. I've been to Washington for those wonderful tear gas parties the Government has insisted on throwing for us. I regularly at- tend Big Ten football games and get pretty far into that gladia- torial spectacle. But somehow, I find it impos- sible to enjoy the blues in its contemporary Cinemascope set- ting. I associate that music with tiny clubs and coffeehouses and people's porches. The big busi- ness / mass production ' carnival setting is irreconcilable with my private vision of the blues. I think the music is made lousier in that milieu. In a festival setting, , the cele- bration of life and community often seems to take precedence over what is going on between the m"sicians and the listeners. Who you see and what you've done up is as important, if not more important than what you hear. A festivl aidience responds as readily to its own cues and theater as it does to the per- former's. Audiences have more dlaces to turn for stimulus at a festival. There's little reason to focus all your attention on the stage. There's a lot more going on elsewhere. I hasten to add (nastily) that there has always been something very paradoxical for me in the idea of a festival with a fine strong fence around it. I'm not advocating a full-scale retreat by audiences to an older, more passive sit-down shut-up/ applaud -only-when- it's all-over approach. A lot of the blues is fine dance music and dancing to a person's music seems a pretty fair exchange of gifts. I'm try- ing to say that the meaning -and mess-age of the blues is dissi- pated and rendered diffuse for me by all that festival brouhaha. It seems to have the same effect on a lot of musicians, too. Moreover, the blues musician is also responding to different cues these days. The availability of long-deserved recognition and large sums of money, seems (as far as my jaudiced eye can see) to have changed the emphasis for many performers from mu- sicianship to showmanship. For every five minutes of really fine- the hi assed music you may get from Buddy Guy or Big Mama Thorn- ton these days, you're liable to get ten or fifteen minutes of clowning, jiving, and songs start- ed only to be interrupted for rambling sentimental monologues about the blues. I'd go to a con- cert or a club to hear the blues and instead find myself listen- ing to someone telling me about them. In its own way, showmanship gets people as far off as good music. Showmanship has a very respectable ethic all its own. In fact, the two modes are in- separable. A good musician un- derstands timing, pacing, and presentation. No theater sur- V ov a or sc a to g ti o% ar se n Cc e th to