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- A Tribute To Oscar Brown Junior
This article was orginally published in The Rising Firefly volume 1.10. We are republishing it as a tribute to the late Oscar Brown Jr. ³Interview with Oscar Brown Jr² by Baabe Irving III
One of Chicagoıs most prized jewels, poet, playwright, songwriter, singer, professor, and I am adding metaphysician, Oscar Brown Jr., is truly a genius. As a creative force within our culture, Oscar Brown Jr. has written lyrics to the music of Miles Davis (the popular ³All Blues²), Nat Adderly, Mongo Santamaria, and Scott Joplin. He set the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Gwendolyn Brooks to his original melodies. His compositions have been recorded by Mahalia Jackson, Abbey Lincoln, Billy Eckstein, Sammy Davis Jr., Barbara Streisand, Nina Simone, Joe Williams, Lou Rawls, Diane Reeves, and Kevin Mohogany. Oscar Brown Jr. has been featured as a television host and was a cutting edge radio journalist at the age of 22. The winner of two Emmy Awards as a performer/actor, Brown is not resting on his laurels at the age of 72. Instead, he maintains an active schedule of travel, lecturing and performing around the globe. Often the true essence of an artist is found by looking beyond the art. Before turning on my recorder to begin the interview with this fascinating human being, he captivated me with his philosophical reflections as a theorist in the area of physics. Two minutes into his highly intellectual discourse, I began to realize that the interview was already in progress and asked if it was okay to begin recording. These are excerpts from that session:
Baabe: Your music and your artistry continue to speak for themselves, but you are more than a musician and writer. Your earlier comments display your affinity for physics. This is something which we share in common.
OBJ: I looked up rhythm in the dictionary. It doesnıt use the word ³time² in defining rhythm.
Baabe: Interesting
OBJ: Yeah, it should have been interesting to Scott Joplin, playing ³ragtime² rhythm. How could you and why would you want to define rhythm without time? Time has no meaning without rhythm. Time is the rhythmic repetition of occurrences. Otherwise, what is it? They claim to be able to measure energy. With what scale? They say that the whole universe is vibrating with resonant patterns. How do you know? Well, if its said to be resonating, that means somebody is listening. What kind of receptor are they using to gather this information? Anything which is flaccid is not vibrating.
Baabe: So, is that to imply that if everything is vibrating then everything has rhythm in time and space?
OBJ: If strings are vibrating they first had to be fixed. That implies that there had to have been tension applied. Where was it applied? What and/or who applied it, and to what degree? Baabe: So, if these questions can be answered with regards to a bass string then, scientists should be able to answer these questions regarding their Big Bang Theory.
OBJ: Exactly - Big Bang in comparison to what? I donıt know, maybe it wasnıt a big bang, but rather a ³little poof² relatively speaking. Could a vibration on a string go from top to bottom and will it take ages? I have more questions than I have answers. But, they make these assertions with a confidence which ignores the facts. They need to think about that.
Baabe: So is it true that all are scientists who question ³established² reality?
OBJ: Physics boils down to three questions: Whats happening? How does it work? And why? Everybody has the right to contemplate these questions. No select group has a monopoly on the theories of reality. Even music has more exclusivity than that. One doesnıt suddenly decide ³Iım going to play like Baabe Irving.² I donıt think so. Why, they donıt even know what gravity is. I canıt describe this as a functional chair if one leg is missing. If you want to know the answer to the question ³what is reality², you have only to ask what ³is² is. So in a physical universe, how do you think you can measure that which is less than nothing? If all this mass energy was thrown into space time, as masses approached each other, they had to make a ³deal² to collide. This centrifugal force created by the balanced deals between orbiting bodies is gravity. Itıs a deal that takes you (other planets) around (orbiting). The information about these deals are ³checked² at points I call harmonic balance beams of equity (BBE). The implication of any disharmony at these checkpoints would be immediately felt everywhere.
Baabe: This infers that gravity has an intelligent source.
OBJ: Gravity has no particle but is a by-produt of force flowing throughout the entire universe. How much does gravity cost? I have to pay gravity every day. It requires an expenditure of energy. Gravity relinquishes nothing. People blame God for certain disasters, but you never heard of anyone blaming gravity for the baby falling out of a window.
Baabe: Bo Bo (OBJıs deceased son, extraordinary bassist/composer Oscar Brown III) and I once had a conversation about your ³theory of double dutch². I found it to be captivating.
OBJ: I was on the wrong track at first. I was thinking of getting a computer model that displayed the muscles and sinews; the requirements for an individual to jump double dutch. I discussed this with a woman in LA who began to bob back and forth. I asked, ³What are you doing?² She said, ³Trying to find a place to get in.² Now I was onto something. I wasnıt looking for a mechanical thing but rather a ³sense² of timing and rhythm. Each rope possesses a separate circumference moving in opposite directions. When you combine them, you create a dual circumference that is neither one nor the other. I call this the ³DD dimension² or ³dual dimension². Now when you land in this dimension, you canıt just stand there because you immediately have to square it in terms of your time space activity by jumping twice as fast. If youıre skillful enough to pop up periodically you are into DD four squared. If you can turn a summersault than you are in DD 16 squared.
Baabe: One of Bo Boıs questions was, how can young girls be naturally endowed with the ability to intuit such a complex rhythmic and timing problem?
OBJ: The turning ropes create balance beams of equity into which one can jump. The planets in their orbits possess the same BEQ (pronounced like ³bec²) points in which one can ³jump in².
Baabe: As in the case of satellites being launched into orbit
OBJ: These are points of ³harmony². Iım not a mathematician, you can figure out the exact calculations but the point is that the entry into the first DD is by implication. The person entering this dimension is getting information from the ropes. Listening and looking at the ropes is not sufficient to get you into the ropes. The information has to be implied. The implication of the first DD implies the rest, all the way into infinity. The implication comes faster than the speed of light.
Baabe: Isnıt jazz, likewise, produced by implication?
OBJ: Where is the music coming from? How do I utter a note, check its relativity to other notes without any delay whatsoever. At the same moment this is communicated to an audience without any passage of time. It has been done and has impacted on everybody. It is processed and leaves a picture of the ³tree² which can substitute itself in the place of the ³tree². Even the audience response creates some kind of vibration. Itıs not just a one-way street.
Baabe: So there is no difference between oneıs contemplation of a tree in the future, or of the memory of the same tree in the past and the actual tree in the present...
(At this point, Oscar Brown Jr. then began singing the entire lyric to the Charlie ³Bird² Parker tune, ³Nowıs The Time,² finishing with the line ³A moment is present from the past that the future receives.²)
³Space in print² would not permit me to share Oscar Brown Jr.ıs exploration into ³space and time² to the fullest extent. Nevertheless, he has raised questions which place the ball in your court. I encourage interested readers to respond with your thoughts on these matters and to also visit www.oscarbrownjr.com to check out the genius of Oscar Brown Jr. and to purchase his CDs, which are certainly collectors items, at www.amazon.com
