Feldman's Faves: March 27, 2023

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE AND Ramadan Mubarak to all those celebrating!

My Final Four picks were in fact, UCONN, Miami, FAU and SDU, said NOBODY ever…. In fact, if any of you actually picked FAU to go to the Final Four I will take you to any restaurant of your choice for lunch or dinner. What a crazy weekend of March Madness it has been.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to meet Joanna, I strongly urge you do so. She is a great addition to our team and is hitting the ground running.

Also, please join me in welcoming Jennifer and DJ to our section for the final Articling Student rotation of the year (time sure does fly). They are eager to jump into work so please involve them in your files.

No theme this week.

Half Blood Blues By: Esi Edugyan - Two topics that are always of interest to me intersect in this very creative and easy to read Booker Prize nominated novel. Half Blood Blues tells the story, that is really two stories about a group of jazz musicians that were creating incredible music during WWII as a “mixed race band” and the struggles they faced in occupied Paris (which the author describes in incredible detail). The story also moves ahead in time to the early 1990’s as the band is set to reunite in Berlin. This device, while used very often (think of The Nightingale) is effective in helping the reader understand how past events shape people’s lives. As one reviewer notes, “Not unlike its counterpart rock ‘n’ roll, memorable jazz novels occupy a pretty slim shelf at the local bookstore. Though the music has been gracefully spun into fiction by Roddy Doyle, Michael Ondaatje and — most distinctively — Rafi Zabor in the surreal, ursine-centric “The Bear Comes Home,” it’s a fringe topic for the most part. Maybe that’s because when people want to read about jazz, the characters behind the real story are rich enough to transcend any fiction — or maybe it’s just a reflection of how well-meaning writers can run into trouble once they start putting into words something as ephemeral and personal as a saxophone solo. Enter Esi Edugyan’s “Half-Blood Blues,”…. On the surface, with its colorful scenes of playing, drinking and bickering among a mixed-race ensemble called the Hot-Time Swingers, Edugyan’s second novel could be a relatively conventional story of the jazz life. But she tweaks the formula by splitting the book’s action between the chaos of 1939 Europe and modern times as old friends struggle to reconcile with a past that shaped them as men and as artists. At the center is Sidney Griffiths, an African American bassist who performed with the Swingers in Berlin during the rise of “the housepainter” — just one of the bent nicknames that pingpong through Griffith’s narration with the true echo of a snare drum’s crack. In Griffiths’ casual, jazz-hipster patter, everyone is a “jack,” “gate” or “buck,” including his bandmates in brash drummer and childhood friend Chip C. Jones and a quiet, 20-year-old phenom named Hieronymus Falk (or “Hiero” for short, introducing a rather tasty homophone). A mixed-race “mischling” born in Germany with roots in Africa, Falk spends much of the book as a haunted figure, an outsider even in his own country who eventually falls under Griffith’s wing. Though Edugyan spends comparatively little time trying to put jazz into words, she includes lovely allusions to Falk’s assured genius on trumpet, comparing his sound to “a thicket of flowers in a bone-dry field” or, to Griffiths’ doubtful ears, “a country preacher too green to convince the flock.” Edugyan starts the book with a taut, war-time confessional of sorts as Griffiths describes a sickly, desperate recording session in occupied Paris for the song that gives the book its name. Eventually arrested by “the Boots” in a French café, Falk and his music would’ve been lost to history were it not for a single pressing that Griffiths hid away only to be found after the war Falk quickly becomes a cult figure, and Edugyan colors her description of his influence with a record nerd’s eye for detail, elevating him as a mythic cross between Robert Johnson “a German Louis Armstrong” with reality-blurring cameos from Bill Coleman, Albert Hammond Jr. and Wynton Marsalis. In “present day” 1992, a forgotten Griffiths is invited by Jones to accompany him to a jazz festival in Berlin for the premiere of a documentary on Falk. Now touring jazz royalty, Jones sweetens the deal by adding that their long-lost bandmate Hiero is alive and hoping for a visit from them in the Polish countryside. What follows is Griffiths’ account of the Hot-Time Swingers’ being branded degenerates and bottled up in a club after a violent encounter with German police. Slowly losing members to tragedy or circumstance, the group makes a tense escape to France after catching the eye of Louis Armstrong, who appears as a wise but crumbling monarch in a Parisian apartment. Along the way Griffiths and Falk get tangled with one of Armstrong’s associates, a beautiful singer named Delilah, who falls into a turbulent relationship with Griffiths that all too easily brings out the envy and insecurity in his artistry with ugly, disastrous results. Though “Half-Blood Blues” is a jazz book, its greatest strength lies more in the rhythms of its conversations and Griffiths’ pitch-perfect voice than in any musical exchanges. A simple, one-word sentence that could be just an expletive — “Hell” — becomes so much more as Griffiths watches Nazis march into Paris under “that dancing black spider,” and his dazed account of a band of weary survivors coalescing around Hiero’s “Half-Blood Blues” is intoxicating enough to send you crate-digging through a record store’s back room for anything like it. If there’s a better description of jazz and its brilliant, in-the-moment power, you’re not likely to find it.” This book deals with so many complex issues but is written in quite an easy to read manner (musical almost) that I strongly suggest you give it a read. Here is a good review from Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11076123-half-blood-blues

Spark & Fire: Fuel Your Creativity - Find the people who see your dream: Actor Aasif Mandvi – Aasif Mandvi is a great actor and comedian. I particularly liked him in the movie The Internship with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan when he played a recruiter at Google – a great role. This PODCAST focuses on his now quite famous play, “Sakina’s Restaurant”, which is a one person play he wrote and performed in that speaks to his and his family’s experience growing up as an Indian family in New York. It was quite innovative and unique at the time and we learn about Mandvi’s struggles and triumphs as he puts this work of art together. Here is an excerpt from the PODCAST itself, “In the 1990s, Aasif Mandvi was a struggling actor looking for roles that didn’t seem to exist. So he wrote Sakina’s Restaurant — a solo show about an Indian immigrant family who owns a restaurant in New York City. When Sakina’s Restaurant premiered off-Broadway in 1998, there was really nothing like it. In this episode, Aasif tells the story of writing and starring in this pioneering one-person play. Perhaps more than any other medium, a one-person show appears to be the work of only one person. But Aasif’s story shows it takes a number of people — who share your dream — to bring it to life. In order to break new ground, you need to find allies who see your dream”: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/spark-fire-fuel-your-creativity/id1544310633?i=1000599724939

Thank you for your ongoing engagement and participation.

And remember to stay safe, stay healthy and to docket daily.

Jon