Jay Wrote

Manoomin by Jay Wilkinson Shake, shss, shss, shake, shhss, shss. Manoomin whispers against the sides of a birch bark makak, stitched with strips of black spruce roots. Not actually rice, but the fruit of a tall green grass that grows on the lakes of northern Minnesota. Grains the shape of a tun­dra spruce’s shrunken needles; the color of the gray and brown underside of a raccoon. Each like a piece of faded amber, hard and smooth; they snap in half from the pressure of a thumbnail pressed against a grain bridging the gap between the tips of index and middle fingers. Manoomin contrasts with the pellets of black paddy rice in Uncle Ben’s blend boxes. That is an agribusiness item, altered for commercial production, grown in petro-chemical sloughs in Califor­nia, harvested by Korean-built combines. Look at it—indistinguish­able from mouse turds. A joke from my Anishinabe friend, Pat Bellanger: “How you cook paddy rice: Put paddy rice and water in a pot with a stone and boil. When the stone ...

Le Percheron, An Appreciation. Hard use, sweat and passion have stripped the varnish from the neck of Adam Linz’s bass.   The worn surfaces fit in just as well as Emel’s classy black beret at the Khyber Pass last week.   Le Percheron (Linz, Noah Ophoven Baldwin (t) and Cory Healy (d), with Levi (vibes) out ill) settled in quietly at Khyber Pass on November 1.   I’d forgotten Linz’s propensities with titles:   maybe Linz’s childhood memories, perhaps offspring of Magritte or maybe Dillinger Four discards….     Big Bear Chases Me started with a seductive rhythm from Linz to which Healy’s drums added funk and soon enough, Noah’s trumpet murmured across the sound stage, adding greater emphasis as the bars passed until Healy’s aggressive rocking drumming reverted to sharp and quieter raps on the rims.   These introduced Linz’s solo on his plucked and lightly amped bass, full of inventive melody and passion, well-accompanied by his vocal...