The relationship between the inventiveness of Black idiomatic speech and the improvisational impetus of American jazz are the voices in Tragic Magic that recount the story of a young Black man coming to terms with definitions of masculinity that have shaped him and persist even after two years in prison for refusing to serve in the armed forces during the war in Vietnam. Although the experiences of the protagonist, Melvin Ellington, mirrored many of my own, I had (to paraphrase artist Ben Shahn) to find a form that would shape my subject matter. And while I possessed some fragments of the story I thought I wanted to tell, I found myself following the approach of jazz great Miles Davis (on his legendary 1959 record Kind of Blue) and groundbreaking comedian Richard Pryor, who took a not fully worked out composition or stand-up performance, and riffed on some of their ideas to see where they would lead them.

During the writing of Tragic Magic and anything I’ve written subsequently, I am never without the rejuvenating sounds embodied in the human voice and their equivalent in music. Like any serious writer, I want to be read. But the silence in response to the publication of my novel was, for the most part, out of my control. What I could control, and ultimately of more value to me, are the voices telling me stories that, like Toni Morrison, I want to read. And like her, I continue to try to write them.

—WESLEY BROWN

A Few Words Before the Get Go

A FEW WORDS
BEFORE THE GET GO

AS AN INTERN IN the reed section of sound I have been bucking to win the critic’s poll as a talent deserving wider recognition. I know all the standards and am particularly adept at playing the immortal “To Get Along, You Go Along.” But there are times when in spite of myself I undermine the popular rendition by not playing it as it was written, and flirt with the tragic magic in If, Maybe, Suppose, and Perhaps. When this happens I flash on my namesake, Duke Ellington, and recall what one of his mentors, Dad Cook, once told him: Learn the rules, then forget them and do it your own way. More than once this advice has subverted my best intentions to go along with the program. So at auditions to enter the fold I get the urge to play against the melody, behind and ahead of the beat, to bend, diminish, and flatten notes, and slip in and out of any exact notation of what and how I should play.

I studied up on my problem and discovered it was quite a common affliction. The legendary New Orleans cornet player Charles “Buddy” Bolden exhibited the same symptoms and was committed to a state hospital in 1907. After a routine examination, a doctor, S. B. Hays, gave his assessment of Bolden’s condition.