short descriptive story: A night at the Bassline

A Night @ the Bassline

The mic stand stood centre stage, turntables to the right, drum kit and bass guitar to the left: an army to assault the silence.

Four warriors take to the battle scene. The tallest clutches the mic, takes aim, and begins to sing. The smooth voice over the spinning vinyl jazz beat replaces the hush and the girls in the front, like victims, begin to scream. The bullets, the bass guitar's deep tones and funky riffs, hit the audience forcing heads to jerk to the rhythm the soldiers play.

Fingers traced the grooves of the liquid vinyl under the blue tinted light. The hand glides, the record skips and the beat goes from smooth to groove. Bodies move in perfect timing to the quartet's sound. The lyrics are acid nursery rhymes, they paint the mind in shades of lime green and neon pink, Andy Warhol's silk screens resemble the images the vocalist on stage sings.

The words "I am counting sheep walking around in their sleep" are twisted, shaken, stirred and served on ice, a cocktail of static meets scratch. The needle floats across the vinyl realising the beats the record holds captive in its black valleys.

After a clash of music versus the mind I give in. The last defender of rational thought goes under to the warped ideas of these four Dadaists who go under the guise of entertainers.

The assailants begin to exit the battleground, victorious. The audience unable to defend themselves from the unexpected warfare of jazz blends and heavy beats turned into the musical equivalent of the atom bomb dropped in hip hop rhyme, clap their hands for their new leaders.

One lone warrior remains (armed with two turntables and a crate of records clothed in his battle dress of headphones and baggy pants) he plays the night out with melodies dipped in soul and funk driven by poetry disguised as rhymes disguised as words. I vanish into the smoky room, which swirls in the bass and throb of sound; my mind exits my body and spirals off with each bass line and each punch line till I am one with rhythm and word.

Eventually each and every member of that audience will find themselves at home, in bed, reciting the very poems they heard that night, who needs politicians when you got musicians.

*note the Bassline is one of the orginal jazz clubs in Johannesburg.