Duke's collective work sings and "speaks" as a reflection of the social and political economic character of the historic African American culture. It's aesthetic character is itself artistic expression as the most evocative summation of that people, contexted by their mean experience of the "Whole" world encyclopedic African presence as development, journey, summation.
     Africa, the actual, as it disappears into the Been is entrance into recorded history. The music comes from before that, it's blue pentatonic polyphonic polyrhythmic human voice. We are carried with and transformed by him in that becoming, voice to instrument, become itself, from what it come from. Not abstract but the historical materialism of Where's- as Continuum, as Consciousness, Testimony, social presence, art, aesthetic projection, style and confirmation...as the Djeli ya of the Gleemen, by the consummate Djali. (Griot is a French word) of American Classical Music, the greatest keeper of its Afro-American soul. Soul is it's great force, it's Sun, from whence all the colors come~
     Duke's music is the evocative human experience of its Being, Origins, Destiny. In it's multiple forms, vectors, rays, halos, crowns its function as generator and what has been generated.
     Ellington's Blues is his breathing life inside the works. The Blues is always a presence, form, content, spiritual essence and reach. Blues as the Being wherefrom the Being re-being as Music (Thought seen -Sonic Light.)
     But Blues for Ellington is a life and life force- from the "favorite color" it was in West Africa (See, Equiano) stretched twisted tortured. Soaked with a deadly abstraction of invisibility soaked in Blood. Therefore across the whole spectrum of color, sounds, speed, direction, Ultra Violet (invisible as it emerges from Blackness, Indigo as it appears as the twilight diameter of touching worlds, history now memory now Mood- The Doom of the Slave trade and Middle Passage, is thrown dialectically to its origins as Mood (Doom!)
     So Blue (Beauty) post-passage is Loss, Sadness, Memory as Recherché, Redux, yet afire as it remains. Laughter, Joy is often the ironic contemplation of sadness. Happy Blues. Crazy Blues. Billie's Blues, Blue Monk, Potato Head Blues.
      You Blue
      You Blew!!
      Yeh, Blow!!! (Express)
      He really Blew (Like Trane)

The dialectic combines as a link like the "Railroad of Human Bones (Jacques Roumain)...at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. My God! A railroad of human bones!

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