Composed
via mail during the course of 1996 and 1997, the Jazz-ku was the
brainchild
of Arizona Zipper and Bob Richardson, two artists who shared a love
of Ella Fitzgerald's scat style with the wish to find relief from
turbulence in their respective personal lives.
Bob Richardson
was a jazz drummer who had worked out of Montreal for a number of
years. Arizona Zipper had first encountered renku in 1980 when he
and Cor ven den Heuvel went over to Eric Amann's House one night during
the Haiku Canada Conference for a bit of recreational writing. In
the intervening years Zipper had studied the genre somewhat and now
Zipper and Richardson were resolved to try an experimental fusion
of music and poetry.
Both wanted to
do a piece based on Jazz; Zipper mailed the hokku to Bob to start
things moving. Bob Richardson was reluctant to think of the piece
as a "scat" as he didn't think the underlying structure
was free enough ... Zipper having suggested that they follow
the 5-7-5
7-7 syllabic pattern. Bob thought this idea was too confining though
he stuck with it, initially at least. Later the variations were
to make themselves more forcefully felt. Indeed, one of the most
fascinating aspects of this piece is to see precisely how, where
and when the
cadence does undergo major fundamental change. No less instructive
are the subsequent choices made by the artists in respect of
the initial form of the poem.
The Jazz-ku was
performed by Arizona Zipper and Raffael de Gruttola at the Deer
Tree
Summer Theatre in Harrison, Maine in the Summer of 1999, Zipper playing
an African rain stick as a background accompaniment. The piece
was
delivered unrehearsed and without preamble to a packed house. It
received a standing ovation. Zipper and Richardson performed it
a capella in July of 2000 as part of the Second Alternative Poetry
Conference at Lesley College in Boston. Again it was received with
great applause.
It is believed
that a tape of the Lesley College performance may still be in existence.
Zipper and de Gruttola are reliably reported to be willing to organize
a performance at a venue near you. As for Bob Richardson
... he was last seen heading somewhere warm in his VW bus. Should
anybody answering this general description be heard to utter the following:
aaaaROOM FAFLOOM
floomp floi
zhi zhi zhi zhi aaa rAARR ZOOOOM
... floof floink fluuf ZYOI zooooph
the reader is advised to respond with:
ma hoot
ma toot ma poot
be beep
