Smoke signals2/19/2023 ![]() “ I had myself a ball,” he effused, adding: “It’s a thousand times better than whisky.” It calmed his nerves and lifted his spirits. During a break between sets at the Savoy Ballroom, the trumpet maestro inhaled his first stick of “gage,” one of the preferred nicknames for cannabis in jazz circles. But he was readily welcomed into the fraternity of marijuana-smoking musicians-the vipers-who gigged in the Windy City. Some bands in Chicago rejected Armstrong because his skin was so dark. As a young man, he joined the great exodus of African Americans from the South who migrated to Chicago and other northern industrial cities in the 1920s, seeking jobs and a better life. Armstrong not only had to ride at the back of the trolley like all African Americans in pigment-conscious New Orleans, he bore the brunt of additional prejudice because his skin was very dark.įor Armstrong, music was a siren call leading him out of misery. American apartheid was imposed by vigilante terrorism and Jim Crow legislation that codified racial inequality. Initially, he was raised by his grandmother, a former slave, in a country where black people were still considered less than fully human. Before Bob Marley, before Muhammad Ali, Louis Armstrong was the original black superstar.Īrmstrong grew up dirt poor, a shy, fatherless child who picked food out of garbage cans and ran errands for pimps and whores. Known affectionately as “Satchmo” and “Pops” to millions of adoring fans, he was a huge international celebrity. More than anyone else, he taught the world to swing. Although he lacked formal musical training, Armstrong rearranged the sonic terms of American popular culture and his innovations reverberated far and wide. Today Congo Square is an open area within Louis Armstrong Park, so named in honor of the jazz marvel, born and bred in New Orleans, who gained fame initially as a horn player and later as a vocalist, a musical ambassador, and a character of epic proportions. From the African dances of the old days would come the driving energy of modern jazz. But music persisted as an indelible aspect of the dynamic cultural legacy transmitted across the ocean and passed along to generations of slaves and their descendents. Several years before the Civil War, African drumming was prohibited throughout the South. This rite was reenacted on a regular basis until slave-owners began to suspect that the complex percussive beats were sending secret, subversive messages to restive blacks. The Sunday swoon in Congo Square, or Place des Nègres, as it was also called, provided a much-needed respite from the dehumanizing grind of plantation capitalism. The dark-complexioned dancers were surrounded by men, women, and children “patting Juba,” an African-derived technique for tapping rhythmically against parts of the body-striking their thighs, their chests, chanting, clapping their hands while others played drums, gourds, tambourines, makeshift marimbas, and banjo-like instruments. Some wore garments ornamented with ribbons, feathers, little bells, and shells. Uncoupled, limbs akimbo, some naked but for a sash around the torso, they gyrated to the beat of the bamboulas, the yowl of the banzas, shuffling, gliding, trance-stepping, crouching (a position that signifies vitality in Congolese culture), and mimicking the cries of animals. ExcerptĮvery Sunday in early nineteenth-century New Orleans, slaves gathered by the hundreds at Congo Square for an afternoon of song and dance. Martin Lee, an award-winning investigative journalist, examines this complex landscape where legal ambiguity meets scientific breakthrough in a panoramic, character-driven saga. Mining the plant’s rich botanical properties, medical researchers are now developing promising marijuana-based treatments for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, chronic pain, and many other conditions. Since 1996, when California voters approved Proposition 215, dozens of state and local governments across the country have circumvented federal authority to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. ![]() From its ancient origins, to its cutting-edge therapeutic benefits, to its role in a culture war that has never ceased, marijuana has evolved beyond its own illicit subculture into a dynamic, multibillion-dollar industry. This is the great American pot story, a dramatic social exploration of a plant that sits at the nexus of political, legal, medical, and scientific discourse. “Hallelujah and glory be to Smoke Signals, Martin Lee’s bodacious new book…Lee chronicles everything and everyone worth chronicling in the annals of marijuana” ( High Times).
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