Everton Sylvester and Searching for Banjo at Mass MoCA (1/16/01)
By Seth Rogovoy

(NORTH ADAMS, Mass., January 17, 2001) - Everton Sylvester’s lyrics are so much better than 99 percent of even the best popular song lyrics, and Searching for Banjo’s music is so much better than 99 percent of the best of what you hear on the radio or MTV, that after sitting through their spoken-word-with-music performance at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art on Tuesday night, it makes you want to turn your back on all the rest and devote yourself to Sylvester and his ilk for the rest of your life.

And why not? Why do we have to struggle with the bad song lyrics and pseudo-poetic drivel that comprises the vast majority of even the best singer-songwriter material? Why can’t our modern-day bards be real bards in the best tradition of reciting versifiers? Why must we settle for the sort of solipsistic confessionalism that struggles to make anything of musical or lyrical consequence when we can have provocative, engaging wordplay and imagery along with the grooviest music in service to the words? In a phrase, why can’t we have our cake and eat it too?

Well, we can, and we did on Tuesday night. It will probably be a long time before an audience enjoys the sort of surprising lyrical and musical twists that Sylvester and his trio provided, surprises at every turn that had listeners on the edge of their seats dancing in their minds to Sylvester’s burnished Jamaican cadences and the hip noir-jazz riffs of his bandmates.

More than last winter’s performance, this time out Sylvester and Searching for Banjo modeled their performance after a rock concert, with each poem-with-music delivered like a song, each taking listeners on a small journey or side trip to one of New York’s boroughs or to Sylvester’s native Jamaica.

The ostensible topics of Sylvester’s lyrics - one hesitates to call them poems for fear of making them sound too literary or inaccessible, and one hesitates to call them raps for fear of diminishing them - ranged from racial politics to emotional politics to family politics.

But these weren’t lectures, either. Sylvester favors narratives, and most of his lyrics tell short stories: of relationships on the brink, of cases of false arrest, of terrible misunderstandings by people unwilling to see beneath surfaces to a more complex human reality.

Sylvester also relishes language, and phrases like “We sucked sea salt from each other’s lips,” “Gloved fingers fumble” and “Burrito for one from Benny’s” packed resonant, emotional wallops.

Searching for Banjo’s rhythm- and riff-based noir-jazz provided underlining, emphases, punctuation and accents for Sylvester’s lyrics. The trio’s versatile palette included Latin, funk and even a seemingly impossible display of drum ‘n’ bass by percussionist Daniel Sadownick using just a stick, a cymbal and a conga drum.

Double-bassist Booker King provided a steady funk pulse, while multi-woodwind player Paul Shapiro alternated jazzy and r&b riffs on flute, clarinet, and tenor and baritone saxophones.

A concert or recording of Searching for Banjo’s riveting, pulsating soundtracks alone would be reason to celebrate. An evening with an unaccompanied Sylvester would be a one-man show worth traveling a great distance for. The two together made you rethink what a rock concert, which it wasn’t, could be.

Great art is all about shifting paradigms, and those in attendance on Tuesday had their paradigms rocked to Gibraltar. The only problem is, now what are we supposed to do?

[This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Jan. 19, 2001. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2001. All rights reserved.]