Description
Book SynopsisIn this revised and updated edition of The Dark Tree, Steven L. Isoardi tells the story of Horace Tapscott and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, a community arts group in Los Angeles that provided community-oriented jazz and jazz training for African American musicians, poets, playwrights, and artists for four decades.
Trade Review“
The Dark Tree is just wonderful. One cannot understand the history of Black arts on the West Coast without a thorough assessment of this movement; Isoardi knows this history so well and tells a much bigger story. The book does a fantastic job of capturing the nitty-gritty nature of the music scene and resurrecting local figures in the Arkestra who have never gotten any press for their astounding musicianship. This is a remarkable book.” -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of * Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original *
“This is a revelatory document, virtuosically combining scholarship and oral history to connect the dots of African American music on the West Coast. Far more than a mere historical ‘overdub’ of an underdocumented scene, this book disrupts the mythic notions of jazz history, showing instead how music and community unfold as one. Both a celebratory and a cautionary tale, it also delivers some of the most frank and eye-opening musicians’ accounts since Arthur Taylor’s
Notes and Tones.” -- Vijay Iyer, musician and composer
“In these pages, Horace Tapscott says to the audience, ‘This is one more you wrote through us.’ And this is what Isoardi has done here: given voice to the nearly lost history of a revolutionary community movement through its key players. Epic in scope, dazzling in detail, and sensual as any Coltrane solo, this rare book—informative, intimate, lyrical, scholarly, nuanced, and essential—reads like no history book you’ve read before.” -- Chris Abani, author of GraceLand
"An impressively constructed tapestry of voices, it includes memories and opinions from myriad people while maintaining a strong narrative thread through lsoardi's authoritative voice. . . . lsoardi's interviews with dozens of members—not one of whom declined to participate—recover a wealth of information crucial to the history of Los Angeles jazz. In the process, he has made
The Dark Tree a truly collaborative project that itself shares in the communal spirit of the UGMAA."
-- Matthew Blackwell * The Wire *
Table of ContentsPreface to the Second Edition ix
Acknowledgments xv
1. Ancestral Echoes: Roots of the African American Community Artist 1
2. Ballad for Samuel: The Legacy of Central Avenue and the 1950s Avant-Garde in Los Angeles 19
3. Lino’s Pad: African American Los Angeles and the Formation of the Underground Musicians Association (UGMA) 43
4. The Giant is Awakened: The Watts Uprising and Cultural Resurgence 69
5. Warriors All: UGMA in the Middle of It 117
6. The Mothership: From UGMA/UGMAA to the Pan Afrikan Peoples Akrestra and UGMAA 141
7. To the Great House: The Arkestra in the 1970s 179
8. Thoughts of Dar es Salaam: The Institutionalization of UGMAA 215
9. At the Crossroads: The Ark and UGMAA in the 1980s 259
10. The Hero’s Last Dance: The ’90s Resurgence 285
11.
Aiee! The Phantom: Horace Tapscott 311
12. The Black Apostles: The Arkestra/UGMAA Ethos/Aesthetic: Music, Artists, Community 341
Epilogue: The Post-Horace Pan African Peoples Arkestra 363
Appendix: A View from the Bottom: The Music of Horace Tapscott and The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, by Roberto Miranda 369
Notes 379
Bibliography 407
Index 425
