Exciting News! The documentary about Rahsaan, "The Case of the Three Sided Dream" will make it's world premier at SXSW Film Festival

this year!  And, of course, I'm extra excited because it's in Austin, where I live, and I get to go and help welcome and host filmmaker and friend, Adam Kahan.  Here's a link to the updated website about the film.  Check it out:  http://www.rahsaanfilm.com/

p.s.  the biopic of Hendrix will also make it's U.S. debut at SXSW.

"We are all driven by an invisible whip." --RRK

Another great quote about Rahsaan from Joel Dorn

"Through the years people who saw Rahsaan in person have often told me how big and powerful he was. Truth is he was about 5'10" and weighed about 160. But the size of his presence was another story. His aura could've gone one on one with Karl Malone."

--Joel Dorn

"Volunteered Slavery" is on this list--"60 Great Albums You Probably Haven't Heard" from the Nov. 19th Issue New York Magazine

http://www.vulture.com/2013/11/60-great-albums-you-probably-havent-heard.html

My essay about discovering Rahsaan is now up and live over at The Rumpus

/http://therumpus.net/2013/11/songs-of-our-lives-rahsaan-roland-kirks-the-inflated-tear/

Geoff Dyer at the Texas Book Festival

Yay!  I get to sneak out to the Texas Book Festival this weekend.  It's a great event--hundreds of authors gathered at the state capitol giving readings and signing books.  Geoff Dyer, who wrote the gorgeous, incredible jazz-inspired book, "But Beautiful" is going to be there and I hope to catch him.  Here's a passage from it:

"He arranged everything and then blew, blew, blew--one arm squirreling up and down the keys, the other hanging limp at his side, dangling there like something irrelevant, heaving and puffing like he was trying to keep death itself at bay....A blind man who had risen from the dead.  Watching him, Mingus felt the red ice of his blood tingle in numb hands."

Dog Years in the Fourth Ring

I came across this box set earlier today and it brought back a flood of memories.

It's a collection of Rah's music that Joel Dorn issued posthumously on his indie record label, 32 jazz.  It's a 3 cd set and the first two discs are from live performances.  The third disc is Rahsaan's only solo album, "Natural Black Inventions:  Root Strata"--a work that refuses to age and only gets better and better with each new listen.  It deserves its own blog post, and as a matter of fact, I have been threatening to write an essay about it because I love it SO DARN MUCH.

But the beautiful flashback I had when I pulled this album off the shelf today has to do with the first track on the first album.  It's called "Box Tops and Whistling Rings" and it's just a 19-second intro. for the music, but why it matters so much to me is that it's from an interview I did with one of Rah's childhood buddies.

I had recently flown back from Columbus to New Jersey (where I was living at the time), and went to the city one day to meet with Joel.  I played him a section of the interview and he flipped for it and marched me back to his office (we were having lunch) so he could make a copy of it.  It's a story about Rahsaan, as an 8 year old collecting the box tops off of cereal boxes so he could get the prize:  a whistling ring.

His music was truly always with him.

Bright Moments always,
May