Signed by Benjamin Boone, this Origin Records CD features the painting "Distant Soul" by figurative painter Frank Arnold. When you order, mention how you would like it to be signed - for example: "To Chris, Best wishes to a fellow saxophonist, Benjamin Boone"
Includes unlimited streaming of The Poetry of Jazz Volume Two
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes,
took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
Then I walked through the dried fields
on the edge of town. In middle June the light
hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds
were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers
squawking back and forth, the finches still darting
into the dusty light. The woman who sold me
the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone
out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses
praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables
at the road-side stand and urging me to taste
even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way,
she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said,
"Even if you don't I'll say you did."
Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.
My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965
before I went away, before he began to kill himself,
and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste
what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch
of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,
it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
you never uttered because the time was always wrong,
it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,
made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,
in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.
Philip Levine
credits
from The Poetry of Jazz Volume Two,
track released January 18, 2019
Philip Levine (poetry), Benjamin Boone (ss), David Aus (pn), Spee Kosloff (b), Brian Hamada (d)
Benjamin Boone is a jazz saxophonist, composer, professor, and U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Ireland (2022-23), Ghana (2017-18)
and the Republic of Moldova (2006). His Origin Records album THE POETRY OF JAZZ was #3 "Best Album of 2018" in the 83rd Annual Downbeat Readers Poll and featured on NPR's All Things Considered, The Paris Review, and many others. Websites: BenjaminBoone.com & OriginArts.com...more
supported by 4 fans who also own “The Simple Truth”
I was brought here after listening to a live performance of Makaya's on you tube. I instantly loved the song Holy Lands so much that I had to see if the album version was the same rendition as the live one. Then I listened to the whole album! Universal Beings is a just a groove... It's a mix of traditional and something new, very nice. pandr1900
Trio helmed by director, author, and actor Jean-Paul Delore translates various texts by French and African writers into vibrant jazz fusion. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 7, 2024