{"id":259,"date":"2007-02-06T12:01:17","date_gmt":"2007-02-06T12:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/nucleus-import\/?p=259"},"modified":"2007-02-06T12:01:17","modified_gmt":"2007-02-06T12:01:17","slug":"roger-bonair-agard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/roger-bonair-agard\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Bonair-Agard"},"content":{"rendered":"
Roger Bonair-Agard<\/div>\n

\nThe devil in music<\/b>
\nby Roger Bonair-Agard<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2013 for Wammo and the North Stand
\nThey say they want to have a musical change in pan
\nWell I didn\u2019t tell them Yes
\nWell I didn\u2019t tell them No<\/p>\n

The devil in music
\n\u2013 for Wammo and the North Stand
\nThey say they want to have a musical change in pan
\nWell I didn\u2019t tell them Yes
\nWell I didn\u2019t tell them No<\/p>\n

\u2022 Lord Kitchener (from \u2018Pan in A Minor\u2019) <\/p>\n

I\u2019m telling the Texan
\nof the phenomenon of pan in A Minor
\n100-piece orchestras of oil drums
\nharmonizing the songs of slaves
\nwith the twelve notes of the Western scale
\nin unheard-of tonics and chords<\/p>\n

see him grin broad
\nacknowledge the goose bumps
\nas I explain the baptismal swell
\nof savannah dust blooming
\nlike babies\u2019 breath amongst the bouquet
\nof 100 pan men 4 flag women
\nand a moko jumbie<\/p>\n

soak in the ego of my own description
\nlike that is the source of his joy
\npretend I am not a man
\nlost in the land of another
\npretend I am not telling the Texan of this
\nas much to keep the memories fresh
\nas to share this pound of flesh
\nthat hurts more and more every day
\nI move further away from home<\/p>\n

as if my removal from the land
\nof cascadoo and las\u2019 lap mas\u2019
\nis not itself a tearing of flesh
\nthat neither of us is healed from<\/p>\n

like my tattoos aren\u2019t a scarification ritual
\nthat reminds me I\u2019m alive
\nthe ink one big blue-black mark
\nwhere Arouca where Cascade where the savannah
\nwhere Trinidad was ripped from me<\/p>\n

the Texan is laughing now
\nas he tries to picture the bass man
\nspinning like a rooster in a gayelle
\nas he negotiates the six-drum of bass
\nlaughing as he tries to mimic
\nsomething he has never seen
\n100 men jumping in unison
\nas they make music
\nas they pogo like Maasai
\nthrough the diminished fifth (diabolus in musica)
\nand the moko jumbie man is raised
\nto a fever of exultation<\/p>\n

and flag women drop their heavy hips
\ndown and up again to remind us
\nof the struggle and magic of the cane brulee<\/p>\n

and it is 3 AM and the Texan
\nmight as well not be listening
\nbecause I am shirtless and prancing
\nand for five minutes Renegades are on stage
\nmaking Jit look like the genius he is again
\nand a woman in the tightest shorts
\nbetween her and her God
\nand a gold tooth to the front
\nis offering me a heaping plate of pelau
\nfrom a basket to wash down the full cup
\nof hot rum in my hand
\nand the man who is still stemming
\nthe blood from his temple from the bottle
\nthrown there half hour ago
\nis smiling again<\/p>\n

and for five minutes the Texan
\nis laughing background noise
\nand this muggy Brooklyn summer
\nthis four-story walk-up
\nthis fire escape and the gunshots in the distance
\nare somebody\u2019s twisted idea of a joke<\/p>\n

and me and Trinidad are whole again
\nno wounds between us
\nno IMF debt
\nno West Indies losing to England
\nor Australia or India at cricket<\/p>\n

me and Trinidad are whole again
\nno Abu Bakr
\nno curfew
\nbobol is ting to laugh at again
\nbecause Black Stalin\u2019s voice is hoarse
\nbut the North Stand is carrying him
\nPeter, keep de fire blazin\u2019<\/p>\n

and Pan in A Minor is a climax beneath us all
\nJit is pastor preacher communion
\nand Renegades is choir
\nand we are willing submittants to this cult
\nbecause Kitchener decided to explore
\nthe minor chord
\nBeat Pan
\nbefore Brooklyn before Temper Bailey before hurt
\nBeat Pan
\nbefore gang fight before poetry before debt
\nBeat Pan
\nbefore kidnappings before crack
\nBeat Pan
\nbefore reconciliation with my father before eviction<\/p>\n

before this rapture and this bruise this tearing
\nbefore this longing to make it up to Trinidad
\nand have Trinidad apologize to me
\nbefore wear red and lose to America in football
\nbefore 9-11 before cut locks before these poems
\nbefore Bush threatened to cut off aid
\nwe never wanted in the first place<\/p>\n

it was always the Savannah
\nalways the North Stand
\nalways Kitch making the pan sing
\nin chords it never knew it had in it
\nfor Spree for Trinidad for the flag woman
\nfor the pelau woman
\nfor me and a Texan
\nin a hot kitchen
\nin Brooklyn <\/p>\n

“Bonair-Agard is a poet who fixes his experience with memory and uses memory image as analyzer of his experience. A poet of live language mastering it’s literary “statement”. Someone whose poetry can be entered and felt and understood. An impressive work.” — Amiri Baraka<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The devil in music by Roger Bonair-Agard \u2013 for Wammo and the North Stand They say they want to have a musical change in pan Well I didn\u2019t tell them Yes Well I didn\u2019t tell them No<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":550,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/550"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}