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The
Characters |
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Director's Notes Sitting one Sunday evening in the Squawkers Club in the Soho District of Pittsburgh with my granddaughter and members of Kuntu, I heard Joe Harris, a jazz bebop drummer, entertain his audience with a beautiful story. It was a story of the drums. The first story carried his enthusiastic audience through a journey beginning in West Africa with stops in Germany, Brazil, Sweden, Japan, and ending in America. Each stop along the way, Joe was narrator and drummer, described and recreated, the pulsating rhythms unique to each culture. On a second visit to the Squawkers Club, Joe again narrated and demonstrated how the drum set came into existence, how each unit of the set functions-the bass, snare, tenor, and cymbals. In addition, he shared how the famed Pittsburgh drummer Kenneth Clarke acquired the title of Klook because of his use of the cymbals. In a discussion with Joe Harris during intermission, he expressed a desire to play himself in a musical drama written about him. My response to him was I thought it was a great idea. This could expand the concept, conceived by Gladys Goodman in 1981. She asked that Kuntu develop two dramatic collages on Black Pittsburghers based upon the research of Larry Coleman and published in the Pittsburgh Press and on the Homestead Grays of Homestead, Pennsylvania. At this point, I new what was originally a three part series on black Pittsburghers, would expand into a four part series which included Crawford Grill Presents Billie Holiday, Black Pittsburghers: One Hundred Years of Progress, The Homestead Grays vs. the Pittsburgh Crawfords, and Clean Drums. |
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Playwright's Notes "Clean Drums is, as I describe it, an "auto-biographical jazz bob play." The focus of the play is Joe Harris, a great Afrikan American drummer. It is so much about Joe Harris that it is, in part, truly autobiographical. Not only does Joe Harris portray himself but his dialogue is mostly direct quotes from him. It's biographical mainly because I wrote about Joe Harris. The
glue that holds it all together is the spirit of the Music and the
male and female musicians who give the Music its force and meaning.
Color, sensibilities, and sounds flow from the conflictual consciousness
of the younger musicians who represent what they call "free
form" playing and the older musician, Joe Harris, who represents
the classical jazz tradition of Louis Armstrong, Bird, Diz, Billie
Holliday, Sara Vaughan, etc. |
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Director - Vernell A. Lillie Production Stage Manager - Cynthia O. Lockett |
Kuntu
Repertory Theatre
University of Pittsburgh
Dept. of Africana Studies
4140 Wesley W. Posvar Hall
230 South Bouquet Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
412-624-7298
E-mail: info@kuntu.org
