I remember the very first time I heard the song “Birdland”. I was in sixth grade at I. Ellis Johnson Magnet School in Laurinburg, N.C. I was one of three Afro-descended students in A.G. We were annexed on the school’s west wing so that the bussed in affluent children would not interface with the non-A.G. horde but in three instances: Physical education, cafeteria, and special events.
Of course, the other two black academically gifted students and I knew the non-A.G. horde—they lived in our neighborhoods. Some were our distant relatives, but not mine.
My people were out of Gullah Country, SC. In N.C., my mother’s family, let’s just say, aged out of having kids or grandkids in middle school during my coming of age.
So I walked between two worlds—the affluent A.G. Euro-descended kids from the “nice” side of town and the people we saw every day simply by being outside. Preachers, teachers, number runners, gamblers, winos, uncles, aunts, and saints.
But that first day I heard “Birdland?”? It was a special event at our school. Mars Hill College jazz band had come to perform in the gymnasium. I was excited since I played a mean trumpet (ahem, 1st chair in 7th grade despite my enormous God-given lips). I wanted to hear the music that my baby Boomer-aged parents and older GenX siblings often played in the car on long journeys from Durham to UNC-Chapel Hill, where two of my siblings are alumni.
So there I sat, looking, listening and watching the band prepare the next composition.
I recall looking at my peers. Those big 8th graders were nearby!
One in particular, Ebonie Williams, a tall, shapely girl known to beat people up if they talked about her, looked uncommonly glum.
The word on the street was that she’d just been given ISS (in-school suspension) for pushing someone at recess. Clearly, she had had to teach that person a lesson! Sadly, though, she used violence to do so. Needless to say, she was not in a good mood, and her facial expression, despite the lively music, revealed a determined sulk and did not change.
All of a sudden, I noticed something. One of the trombone players got out of his seat and said, “Play Birdland!” Then, to everyone’s surprise, he got up from his chair, walked over, and extended his hand to Ebonie!!
Ebonie looked at him, smiled, and got up. Some preppy Mars Hill white guy in a necktie surely was no match for her moves! They literally did a ballroom dance to the music playing! They danced to Birdland.
The adolescent crowd ROARED!
Antoine, who always got in trouble, started doing backflips.
I was jamming, too. It was so fun.
THAT is my memory of Birdland.
But…
The song Birdland is not about birds, though. It is a musical homage to Charlie “Bird” Parker and the jazz club in NYC that bears his name. But as a kid, I was at the beginning of my knowledge of jazz standards. I knew Miles Davis, Ramsey Lewis, Herb Alpert, and David Sanborn, but I had much to learn.
So I drove the snowy roads of Dryden, Freeville, Lansing, and Brooktondale to find a few feathered friends. See them here:
Birdland was written by Jay Zawinul and performed by The Weather Report in 1977, two years before I was born.
So many people have covered the song, that for many years I had no idea who made it. Hell I thought the Gershwins wrote it LOL.
Bird Lady of Turtle Island 