Released in 1971 . . . for years, this album was cherished by crate diggers. Now, the music has been brought back into circulation . . . It is the Porgy and Bess for our time.
The most famous example of a jazz opera is George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. It tells the poignant story of Porgy, a disabled beggar, and Bess, a woman longing for love and stability amid hardship and abuse. Porgy and Bess is celebrated for its enduring musical contributions, with songs such as “Summertime,” “My Man’s Gone Now,” and “I Loves You, Porgy” that have become jazz standards.
The central theme of the jazz opera The Descendants of Phoebe and Mike: A Spirit Speaks, is the tragic story of Mike and Phoebe, two enslaved individuals whose love is doomed by the cruel forces surrounding them. Their separation is not merely a personal loss, but a direct result of the inhumane system of slavery. The slaveowners, wielding absolute power, tore these lovers apart, demonstrating the way slavery was built upon the commodification of human beings. The descendants are Consuela Lee Howard (piano), Bill Lee (string bass), A. Grace Lee Mims (soprano voice) and Clif Lee (fluegelhorn). In this album, it is Mike and Phoebe’s spirit that speaks through the music. And it is a spirit that will not be silenced.
In the blues “Two Songs for a Boy Named Mark,” we learn of the birth of a baby, whom the singer fears for because she sees the world as a dangerous place, not ready to embrace freedom and love.
Another song, “Coltrane” begins with Bill Lee’s bass, that suggests the origins, the void from which is born the piercing light of Clif Lee’s fluegelhorn, a ray of hope.
Here I am reminded of John Coltrane’s struggle with heroin addiction in the 1950s which he overcame seven years later after a spiritual awakening that led him on the search for mystical truth, which he expressed powerfully in his masterpiece A Love Supreme; his music became a devotional offering for God and humanity. In the title song “A Spirit Speaks” we hear A. Grace Lee Mim’s soprano voice accompanied by a piano trio; she expresses desire and longing as invocation; as the voice soars, the spirit arises, no words are necessary; soon we hear Lee’s fluegelhorn, the light in darkness, along with Mim’s soprano voice, evoking the ancestors, those men and woman who transformed their suffering into music; I am here thinking of the blues; in fact the album opens with the sound of the blues played on the piano by Consuela Lee Moorehead. On “Don’t be a Stranger,” Moorehead plays a haunting melody on the piano filled with desire and longing; near the end of the song there is a flurry of notes, that decrease in volume until she is only plays single notes, that get lower in volume, like sound just drifting away on the wind. “Too Little, Too Late,” a duet between Mims and Lee is in waltz time, and they speak of a love that doesn’t die, even though it didn’t have time to develop before the lovers were cruelty separated.
The song “Attica” refers to the riot that erupted on September 9, 1971, within the walls of Attica Prison. On that day, prisoners seized control of the facility’s control center in a desperate and dramatic act of revolt.
It concluded with a violent confrontation between the police and inmates and at least 39 people lost their lives—ten correctional officers and civilian employees, along with twenty-nine inmates—most killed by gunfire from law enforcement. The refrain in the song, “Attica” asks a simple but profound question: “Why did they [the inmates] have to die?” I am reminded of the Clash: “I fought the law and the law won.” But even though the battle was lost we must never rest until the war against oppression and injustice is won. This is the message of this album.
The Descendants of Mike and Phoebe: A Spirit Speaks reminds me that the order of things is always maintained by erasure, destruction, induced lack of memory, detention, punishment; the visible, as the State, is given priority over the invisible, the silent university, the migrant, the trans person, and asserts its dominance by the use of techniques of violence (against women, against children, against non-white men and women, against animals, against the planet as a whole) and surveillance against those whose gestures and appearance are not socially accepted and considered inferior. Released in 1971, The Descendants of Mike and Phoebe: A Spirit Speaks is about politics and its devastating effects on love. But the doomed lovers Mike and Phoebe speak above centuries of repression and attempts to erase their past. Their voices echo deep in this music.
For years, this album was cherished by crate diggers. Now, the music has been brought back into circulation due to the efforts of Ched Tolliver, who has begun reissuing the Strata East catalogue. It is the Porgy and Bess for our time, offering a powerful indictment of racism and injustice. It poignantly illustrates the ways in which authority seeks to silence voices that challenge the status quo. At its heart, the album is about a love that transcends the boundaries of time. This love, even when stripped of its physical presence, endures in spirit and song. Through its music, The Descendants of Mike and Phoebe channels the enduring strength and resilience of those who have suffered, transforming pain into art and giving voice to those silenced by history. What it says affects all of us. It is music about our collective experiences, and it is relevant to our troubled times. It calls for solidarity between our brothers and sisters. I would like to close with these words from the original notes on the back of the album cover by Howard A. Mims: “These musically gifted descendants of Mike and Phoebe have joined together to keep alive a vital spirit; they seek to raise a musical monument as a memorial to their stalwart ancestors.”