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A Love Supreme on the Paris Stage
Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Jeff Dayton-Johnson is a rapidly-aging economist and return migrant to CaliforniaDongala, who is a professor of chemistry at Simon's Rock College in New York, is an increasingly well-known writer in the US and his more recent work has been translated into English. No translation of his collection of shorter pieces Jazz et vin de palme is available, however. Such a translation would be of special interest to English-speaking jazz fans, as the book includes "A Love Supreme," but also the piece that gives the compilation its title. ("Jazz and Palm Wine" asks two questions. The first may have occurred to science-fiction fans: what if the hostile aliens had landed in Brazzaville rather than Washington, D.C. or London? The second has probably never occurred to anyone: what if those same hostile aliens could be vaporized by the music of Sun Ra?)
An English-language adaptation of Clémentin's staging of "A Love Supreme," with the ever-changing contribution made by a succession of different musicians, would undoubtedly be well-received in the US and elsewhere. In the meantime, we can be grateful to the Tarmac team for their moving tribute and to Dongala for his irreducible faith in an emblematic artist's quest.
