BY ALEX HO

In print | March 1, 2007

“Good evening, all you Slimies, you Swarthmore students” was the quirky, but welcome greeting that Stanley Cowell gave to his audience last Saturday in the Lang Concert Hall. The special performance by his renowned jazz group the Stanley Cowell Trio rounded off the events for this year’s Black History Month. Stephanie Appiah ’10, Program intern for the Black Cultural Center, said, “We wanted to end Black History Month with something big and something musical.”

Cowell is one of the world’s pre-eminent jazz pianists and a professor at Rutgers University in the Mason Gross School of the Arts. Accompanying him were Jerome Jennings, the drummer, and Elias Bailey, playing the string bass. But it was Sunny Cowell ‘10, Mr. Cowell’s daughter, who was center stage, providing her viola and beautiful voice.

The performance was intended not only to treat the audience to some quality jazz, “but also to give a sense of history that informs the music,” said Mr. Cowell. A genre all about subverting traditions and revolting, jazz, Mr. Cowell explained, is as good a place as any for remembrance of the Civil Rights Movement. “I was born in 1941, and things were changing quite a bit in my teen and college years. Jazz artists are always affected by their environments. At this time, it was the civil rights movement, it was South Africa, it was Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Among his many jokingly self-effacing comments, Mr. Cowell said, “You know how jazz musicians like to confiscate things.” The trio put a spin on several old songs. Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus,” which refers to the governor of Arkansas who ordered the National Guard to stop the integration of Little Rock Central High School, took on contemporary relevance, as when Mr. Cowell’s cry of “Tell me who’s a fool!” was answered by Jennings with “Dubya!” Louis Allen’s haunting “Strange Fruit” was given a decidedly modern flavor. The sound of Jennings screeching his drumsticks along his cymbals was disturbingly effective in matching a feeling of heat and rot with the pure inhumanity occurring in the South. The piece was then coupled with “Cherokee,z’ a song by famous jazz composer Max Roach about militancy. The trio played another song by Newark-based artist Art Jenkins named "Just Something Called King.” Mr. Cowell read the lyrics, which spoke of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, before proceeding into the ambling elegiac work. Without the usual iconic sounds of brass, each of the songs took on a distinct freshness from their original counterparts.

The trio also played several of Mr. Cowell’s own famous works. Among them were “Blues for the Viet Cong,” which he wrote in reaction to the draft. Cowell said, “I didn’t mean for the song to be political, but for many people it was.” Mr. Cowell added needlessly, “I think that most will agree that I was right. We did end up rushing into war.” “Blues for the Viet Cong” played with an ironically stereotypical pentatonic melody with a rhythm that evoked images of guerilla warfare in my head. The plight of the black community in South Africa battling the apartheid was also of huge concern to Mr. Cowell. In response, he wrote a song, which “is kind of mean nowadays when you think about it,” Mr. Cowell said. The song was the most prominently lyrical of the concert. Sunny’s nuanced singing - at times wispy, at times heavy and deep - did more than justice to the scathing lyrics — “You took my drums./ You stole my songs./ You told a lie to hide your wrongs …You’re just stealing gold.”

Mr. Cowell ended the concert on a humorous note with the understated, but nonetheless brilliant playing of a finger piano. On the spot, Sunny joined in on the viola, followed by Bailey and Jennings. Mr. Cowell topped the whole thing off by transitioning into some Fur Elise.

Sunny, who has performed on tour with her father in France and Spain and in jazz festivals in Canada, said these experiences were “both a challenge because he’s critical and a pleasure because I know he is incredibly talented… I learn so much and I become a better performer each time.” Mr. Cowell said of integrating his daughter into the group’s performances, “We had lots of fun around the house. I’ve gotten to experiment with her voice.” The trio amazingly only just rehearsed that afternoon, and, according to Sunny, about half the performance was improvised.

“We cannot immediately change everything, but we can always pray for peace,” said Mr. Cowell during the concert. It is the sentiment that the trio brought to their music during that turbulent era in American history and that spoke beautifully last Saturday night.

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