BRATTLEBORO-Brattleboro poet Naima Wade joins Kwartetto Mambo for a special collaboration of poetry and music at Marigold Sunday, June 21.
The local group, whose original works feature Latin, jazz, and free improvisation among other styles, consists of French horn, bass, percussion, piano, and trombone.
The event features the quartet’s usual fare with the addition of Naima Wade’s work.
Wade, founder of Wade Consulting Teaching Services, first came to Vermont from New Jersey as a high school student, then moved on to earn degrees at Goddard College, the School for International Training, and University of California, Santa Barbara.
A teacher at many levels, she founded various diversity programs in the state, among them ALANA (African, Latino, Asian, Native, and American), an organization created in 1993 to dispel the growing racial tension in Brattleboro middle and high schools.
A multifaceted humanities educator, Wade says, “I’m a writer more than I am anything else.”
The author of books, theater pieces, lyrics, and poetry says she “grew up writing” and penned her first poem at age 10. Recalling fruitful collaborative experiences with area poets over the years, she says, “I think I probably did poetry before I did anything else in this town.”
Wade has been on the roster of juried teaching artists with the Vermont Arts Council, through which she performed statewide in her one-woman show, The Jessie Daisy Turner (1883-1988) Family Story, about Turner, an African American storyteller and poet from Grafton.
Out of the crucible
Newfane musician Dan DeWalt, Kwartetto Mambo’s pianist/trombonist, says that Wade agreed to collaborate “in view of the nightmare we are now living through.”
“It was the current political crisis that prompted us to connect and our mutual need to speak to these times with our art,” he says.
Wade sent a poem, “Hearts Rent Twain, Hearts Rent Asunder,” the closing line of which is “none of these sufferings shall vanish without hope for a brighter day and a better tomorrow.”
“I composed a piece of music for it,” DeWalt says. “She came over to a rehearsal. We played that for her. She loved it. And then she read a couple of pieces and we played behind them.”
“Out of the crucible come works of beauty and power (we hope),” he adds. “As much as we’re all established and have done lots of creative work, the times we are in demand more from us.”
Of the collaboration, Wade says in good humor, “He kept bugging me, [asking] can I perform with him because he’s known me as a performance artist. And I said no until June 21, which is Jessie Daisy Turner’s birthday.”
A piece dedicated to Turner appears in Wade’s 2020 anthology War Is Over We Are Unbound: Poetry Armor for Now in America. She will perform that, too.
“Beyond the composed tune, the music we’re doing with Wade when she’s reciting is spontaneous composition,” said DeWalt, “just creating something with no basis behind it other than, in this case, the words you’re hearing.”
Wade said she admires DeWalt and his work.
“His innovative perspective of music provides a chance toward a community centered around creativity — and not for profit,” she says. “He reached out to me for the common good, and he knows that I’m very much into global well-being.”
Noting DeWalt’s “transparency, ethics, rigor, rationality, creativity,” she adds, “every bone in him is creative. I can see that.”
Of the band, she says, “It’s mainly their consciousness, their attitude for this collaboration that will move the music” forward “using my poetic and lyrical voice.”
At her first rehearsal with the band, she recalls, “Dan told me he put the lyrics to music.” The band played it and, she says, “it floored me. Tears came to my eyes.”
Wade’s work has been based in the arts and extended into the environment, conservation, activism, and education. For her, the arts are transformative and thus a powerful vehicle for change. Artists, she adds, “are the gatekeepers of truth.”
“I see something called human values in what I’m doing. I’m past all the other fighting stages, and I consider myself a peaceful warrior. I don’t wave, I don’t get out there like I used to in front of the post office holding up signs. But I was right, the Civil War is not over.”
Making music ‘more resistance oriented’
In addition to DeWalt, Kwartetto Mambo includes John Clark, on French horn, who has performed and/or recorded with a host of musicians, including Ornette Coleman, Gil Evans, Jimmy Heath, Jerry Mulligan, Jaco Pastorius, and Spiro Gyra. He’s been heard with the Turtle Island String Quartet, Glen Velez, the Paul Winter Consort, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
Bassist Wes Brown cut his professional teeth at age 18 on the road with legendary pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines before studying music at Wesleyan College and performing and recording with Wadada Leo Smith and Fred Ho’s Afro Asian Music Ensemble. An original member of Royal Hartigan’s Blood Drum Spirit, he performs with Matan Rubinstein and other jazz artists.
Percussionist Julian Gerstin specializes in African and Caribbean traditions and popular styles, as well as jazz. His credits include stints with experimental jazz composer Joel Harrison, Afrobeat legends Orlando Julius and Babá Ken Okulolo, Cuban folkloric ensemble Iroko Nuevo, and Puerto Rican folklore ensemble Bomba de Aquí.
DeWalt has led the jazz group Green Mountain Mambo and for more than 25 years was a founding member of the popular area world beat ensemble, Simba.
A trombonist with Latin big band Joe Velez y Creación, DeWalt has composed and performed original piano accompaniments for several silent films over the years and serves as an accompanist and coach for musical theater.
In addition to the collaborations with Wade, Kwartetto Mambo will play an Eddie Palmieri tune, a Cuban tune from Buena Vista Social Club, and some vocal numbers.
”Recently we’ve been doing more reflections on where we are,” says DeWalt, “reflections of where we find ourselves,” and how that informs their music.
“Because obviously I’ve always made a bunch of noise about this kind of stuff,” the longtime activist says. “We just are evolving more and more into making our music more actively resistance oriented.”
Kwartetto Mambo and Naima Wade’s collaboration can be heard at Marigold, 157 Main St., Brattleboro, on Sunday, June 21 at 7 p.m. There is no cover; food and drink will be sold at the café and bar. For more information, visit marigold.org.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.