Oh, Baltimore. Once upon a time there was a church that was falling apart and couldn't pay their bills, and had been involved in radical stuff since forever, and so they approached the Anarchist bookstore, Red Emma's, and asked if they would like to do community events in the big room in the church. So they helped fixed it up and they have events, even punk shows in there. But what I went to was Jazz Brunch, which I figured would just be a silly punky thing, and I learned a jazz song to sing, "My Cat Arnold", by Karen Mantler. Because I'd heard that if you brought an instrument you got $4 brunch instead of $7. But when I got there it was the sweetest, more commuinity kind of thing I'd ever really seen. It was punks at the door and serving the food, but it was all kinds of people. all ages and not just white. and there was a real jazz band playing that was two kids who were probably about 15, and three older people. And the line for brunch was out the door. there were big tables, lots of them, and a girl with long dreads and a good loud voice who was a welcomer, and welcomed each section of the line, explaining how it worked. The welcomer made it feel so welcoming! So much less confusing and more fun, less alienating. I wish all punk/anarchist spaces would remember about being welcoming, and making a point to really do stuff like that.
Jazz Brunch. I love Jazz Brunch!
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2 comments:
Hey- thank you, so much! This is one of the sweetest things I've seen written about the brunch, and about 2640 in general. It's easy after putting on a brunch to focus on how the music could have been better, or how we could have staffed it better, little things like that- so it's wonderful to see the bigger picture from the perspective of someone new to it. I'm sorry I was not able to make your reading on Monday, I heard it was great. And I really hope you'll come and sing "My Cat Arnold" sometime. If you have the charts for it, I can give them to our rhythm section to learn- that would be perfectly awesome. You (and anyone else) can reach us anytime at
2640jazzbrunch@gmail.com.
Take care,
Tiffany
(the saxophonist, not 15 years old but one of the older people...)
hey this is gabby
i didn't know you had a block and everything. yayy
thank you much for writing awesome things about the jazz brunch, we all appreciate it at Red Emmas.
take care
punk rock y Anarquia
hope to see you in this town again
gabby
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