The vibraphone of God
By the foes I was told, either focus or fold — Common
Full disclosure: Growing up in Detroit in the nineties, there was one DJ you had to know: J Dilla. If the Motor City is the Zeus for spinning Athenas, Dilla was a turntable God.
We didn’t meet but I felt my feet as his front-and-follow.
I’m a suburban kid. Misfit white hat prep of anomie -without the hat. I worship Dilla but since I haven’t earned the right to shout out his name, the “Kid” I’m talking about here is he, but you can’t know that.
Only two things which follow are actually true: Dilla and what he is due. So, here is what I know:
Starting at two, The Kid spun records at the jungle gym. He came with his mom, a Fisher-Price in tow.
She sang the blues and taught the keys while dad blew a horn, pulsed a bass, wrote code. One day their boy would be bound for either MIT or Julliard. Not the corner. They gathered their brood in the den Fridays for performance nights. The Kid was building beats while his friends caught Isaiah, Joe D, and the Pistons.
The Snake Pit was gone. What there was was Juan Atkinson, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson. Kraftwerk and what it spawned. Fusion chefs had yet to give vegans a Soul Food taste. Night blazed like a glazed donut. Oil cooking scents busted blocks.
I can hear my mother say, Black kids who play don’t play it ghetto. They play it like it’s played. You play it like it’s played. I can still hear an old teammate say, they play so well because they’ve got an extra muscle we don’t. It was because our coach said we were too flatfooted to win.
The Kid, he had drive. He would flip what records he had until his dad could take him out to see more stacks. I found the place he went but all I could afford was cassettes for the family Pontiac. It collected water in its doors and grew a trim panel tree. I’m not kidding.
My friends watched tv or they read; I picked tracks, made demos. There were no house parties in my circle so I didn’t spin. I was too timid to try and take it where the action was. . . someplace not in the burbs. What I had was an old vibraphone from my grandfather’s basement which I got when he died. It had belonged to a black minister, a former patient whose house band jammed to his sermons. My gramps, who played a bit of everything by ear, could tinkle that phone.
The Kid was out west being produced by the bigs. At my parents’, I would stand at the vibes believing something would come and guide my hands. The spirit of the city, the same rhythm he felt should enter my feet from a drain pipe. The music would come in a torrent and I’d make it rain.
I didn’t.
What I heard is how the angel Lailah visited Jewish kids in the womb where we learned every language on Earth. We’d then forget them at birth. But The Kid, so I was told, wouldn’t sleep unless his dad played him jazz. He shouted for the one tongue.
Had I been that kind of kid, I would have raised myself to play the vibraphone of God.