Kickstarting The Grandson of Charles Mingus

Photo by Jason Hickey

 A grandson who never knew his grandfather searched for the story.  You can help support this project and become part of the story.  What I know is that the story is complicated, so I am hoping the grandson gets to tell it in full.  He needs our support.  Common people supporting amazing projects.  It feels good.

supporting the work of Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn on Jazz Tuesdays

Anat Cohen playing with the boys

Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn has a dream to make a movie about women who play jazz. To celebrate them.

I support this. You can too, at Kickstarter.

Jazz on Tuesdays--- K is for Kickstarter

Mosaic Woman took care of J is for Jazz, so I will do J tomorrow.

It is all about supporting artists and becoming a part of their success. Launching their success. It is about musicians, who want to pay their band and their engineers a good salary. It is about dreams that have been percolating in a creative mind that is connected to a soul lacking funds. It is about being joyful when success is reached. It may one day be about the sadness of a project that does not get funding. I hope to miss out on that feeling. So far we are four for four. It all happens at Kickstarter.

The second project was jazz by Jim Kuermmerle. Blogged here. The project is complete. The music is amazing.

The third project was fully funded so it was recorded last weekend. The leader, a bass player by the name of Daniel Ori.

The fourth project was one I began to have doubts in being success. Pledges were flowing in but time was running out. My hope was that someone out there was waiting with a big check to push Reginald Cyntje over the top. Well I just read his blog post about all the hard work it took.

This morning I was stopped by a long red light and a commuter train and the news was not inspiring me, so I grabbed the iPod and wondered what to listen to, what to listen to??? Well my new twitter friend, spoonysdiary (great music blog) was talking about Jason Parker. Yes, Jason was our first project at Kickstarter and the only one I had with me. I never got past the first tune on this tribute to the songs of Nick Drake. It was so perfect for a morning commute (and then an afternoon commute) it played over and over. Jason hands over the feel of the album to his band. In fact, he appears to have trusted his piano player immensely with making a first impression. Then the drums and bass enter in and when the singer showed up I was fully enraptured. Jason's trumpet does not come in until after a few minutes, but it shows that he was listening to what his band was up to and his playing melted my heart.


and the Nick Drake Lyrics that resonated with my troubled mind:

Time has told me
You’re a rare, rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind

And time has told me
Not to ask for more
For someday our Ocean
Will find it’s shore

So I’ll leave the ways of making me be
What I really don’t want to be
Leave the ways that are making me love
What I really don’t want to love

Time has told me
You came with the dawn
A soul with no footprint
A rose with no thorn
Your tears they tell me
There’s really no way
Of ending your troubles
With things you can say

And time will tell you
To stay by my side
To keep on trying
‘til theres no more to hide
So leave the ways that are making you be
What you really don’t want to be
Leave the ways that are making you love
What you really don’t want to love

Time has told me
You’re a rare, rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind

And time has told me
Not to ask for more
For someday our ocean
Will find its shore

Jazz on Tuesdays: Labor History composed by Jim Kuemmerle

Mosaic Woman and I had just completed our first of what would be four interstate moves in 1987. I had a teaching job at a residential school which required me to work every Monday evening and every fourth weekend. Which meant that once a month I would go to work on a Friday morning and leave the school Monday night. Can you imagine the teacher's squawks?

At some point in my three year tenure, which placed me high on the seniority list (and thus better assignments on those weekends), Mosaic Woman took a class on Labor History. I would hope that I learned something in high school about how unions struggled to make the lives of workers livable, but conversations with Mosaic Woman opened my eyes more fully to the need for those battles and the brave men and women who fought it, and yes it was a fight.

This past weekend, I suggested that once a month we give a little bit to a jazz artist trying to get a project off the ground. So we headed to Kickstarter and there we found a most interesting project. The Triangle Shirtwaist Jazz Project by Jim Kuemmerle.

Kickstarter makes you want to promote the project because if they don't make the goal by the deadline, they get nothing. That is why I blogged about the first project we sponsored and I am proud to say that thanks to us and many other jazz loving folk, Jason Parker made that goal and is making music with the joy of paying people fair wages in the process.

Mosaic Woman had lots to say about this too.

As the project moves forward you get updates. Today Jim sent this joyful note to us:

Quick update:

My 21-month-old son, with no coaching from anybody, has started saying "New Backer!"

As if anybody needed YET ANOTHER reason to pledge. :D

Jim is 7 dollars away from 80% of the goal. In football terms he is nearly in the red zone. I don't know what that means for the success of kickstarter projects, but he is on a roll and I hope the momentum makes this happen.