Paul R. Harding / Michael Bisio / Juma Sultan: They Tried to Kill Me Yesterday

When we speak of poetry and music, should we ask the chicken and the egg question? As in, which came first? Certainly there was music before spoken word, for imitations of bird calls and other nature sounds will have predated language. So, it's settled, right? Maybe, but not so fast. They Tried to Kill Me Yesterday raises an even more complex inquiry that goes beyond the avian and the ovum.

Enter poet Paul R. Harding. His early years found him in the company of saxophonists Archie Shepp and Charles Gayle, two artists that certainly left a lasting impression on his writing and more importantly on his spoken performance. In the 1980s, New York bassist Michael Bisio relocated to Seattle, and the two performed together on many occasions. Harding and Bisio recorded Remembrance (CjR, 2003) at the University of Washington with guitarist Raymond Boni and saxophonist Joe McPhee, a musician also known to insert some of his own poetry into performances.

With Bisio moving back in New York, the opportunities for collaborations with Harding are fewer, but that makes this recording all the more special. It also posits the idea that poetry is spoken music and moreover music, particularly jazz and improvised music, is poetry.

Within the thirteen tracks of spoken word and acoustic bass, we also hear, on six cuts, the percussionist Juma Sultan. Sultan might be renowned for his appearance at Woodstock Festival with Jimi Hendrix, but he has also worked with Archie Shepp, Noah Howard, Joe McPhee, and his own Aboriginal Music Society. Like Bisio, Sultan speaks through his instrument. "Hair Eyes Lips" finds Sultan expounding on among others, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Tony Williams, Albert Ayler, and Muhammed Ali vs. Joe Frazier, chanted over the pulse of bass and percussion. The title track deploys popular culture not unlike fellow poet Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." Bisio's aggressive pizzicato bass attack on "Hard To Watch" articulates sound as if his notes were spoken words. The sung/spoken "If She Cried" trips up, not down, a series of steps. Sultan opens "Let's Get Use To" with a mbira (thumb piano) as Bisio whispers notes before Harding suggests opening the sky to love like Lee Morgan's "Sidewinder," and Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet's sound. The poet dreams and engages the listener here with spoken music, as does Bisio's verbalized acoustic bass and Sultan's talking drum.