"Brown-Eyed Woman Who Plays the Bass," by Hans Ostrom (Lyrics) and the F...

Old Funk Band

 The Ohio Players, Jazz Alley, Seattle, 10/2022

The first beat hits
like a boulder dropped on a roof.
Drums and bass hammer hard &
velvet vines of joy entwine from there.

Everything sizzles, black and bubbling--
horns, guitar, keyboards. This

is music for community, to get bodies
up & dancing and minds up to float
above their troubles. Webs of
call-and-response spread. At

least three of these Black men
have been brewing this elixir for 50 years.
The small wizened man
at one keyboard, baseball cap
set back, is the chieftain
of arrangement. Funk, hot

and cool, climbed the highest
mountain of rhythm-and-blues.
Apotheosis, mof-fo. From there,
pop music settled in soft digital foothills,
calibrating robot beats, dismissing
musicians, hiring impresarios
of turntables and knobs. Played

live, funk draws blood from all
the way back to Africa, across
oceans painted by blood-red
moons, up through islands
and land-masses into New Orleans,
then up the rivers to industrial
Black cities. Funk stomps

on evil as it dances. It turns-
on lovers. Funk screams
sweetly, jokes, smiles, winks, punches
in syncopation like Muhammad Ali,
lays out opponents--boredom,
worry, snobbery. Funk

will find a way to turn you into
a dancing fool--the best kind--
even if you just sit there and on the floor
inside your head, roll your
hips, shake your head, raise
your hands, laugh and smile,
hold that other body with you there,
and praise the big-little lord called Life.

hans ostrom 2022

Of Them and Of Hiram

While the others
majored in pre-law,
Hiram majored in post-law.

While they practiced
their interviewing skills,
he fell in love with women--

in particular and as a
concept. While the others
began good careers,

Hiram drove on dirt roads,
found some employment,
and wrote odd poetry.

While they took over a
political Party and insisted
on hating Black people,

Hiram read Black authors,
listened to blues, soul,
and funk, and was politically

powerless. They sold their
souls. He rented his out, but
never for very long.

They dined on the entrails
of the poor. He grew
his own vegetables.




hans ostrom 2013