First of all a big kudos to Louis Faye for putting this exhibition together and like a magnet attracting so many veteran Harvey people to the vernissage - people whose lives have been touched in some small or great measure by Harvey Tristan Cropper
Otherwise, posthumously, the great gathering of the tribes in Harvey's honour is usually on Harvey’s Birthday, on the 4th of August, come rain or shine, celebrated annually at Tanto Park, by Hornstull where the venue known as Domino once stood and where in December 1971 my Better Half & I listened to B. B. King telling the audience that the snow-filled streets of Stockholm reminded him of the cotton fields of the Mississippi. before he belted out “The Thrill is Gone “
Indeed ,” so many veteran Harvey people” and listening to Lefifi, Nathan and Bengt’s mini-versions of their relationship with Harvey and how Harvey influenced them and their surroundings, relatively speaking I can’t help thinking of them as Johnny-come-latelies - because I first met Harvey - actually bumped into him at Medborgarplatsen Tunnelbanestation in mid-September 1976 when I was just back from New York (Upper State New York , Catskills Mountains) after a three and a half month hiatus there celebrating 200 years of US Independence etc. If I could say - “ and the rest is history”, that would have been the end of the story. He said,” Hi, I’m Harvey Cropper “ as if that was supposed to ring a bell - like saying, “Hi, I’m Abraham Beame, the Mayor of New York” - anyway, either he gave me his card or he wrote his address and phone number on a slip of paper and I visited him at the studio, a few days later. I had already met Sherman Adams early in 1972 and he had got me into plenty of trouble, beginning with his inspiring me to NOT shake hands with the US Ambassador to Sweden, Jerome Holland when I was introduced to Holland at a lunch at the Grand Hotel In February (1972). Mr. Ambassador had stretched out his hand but I kept mine in my pocket - there was a quizzical look on his face and I wanted to explain to him, GET OUT OF VIETNAM M-F, but I didn’t, because I didn’t feel like discussing the matter with him. I met Clifford Jackson a few months later - through his girlfriend - Cliff was always going on about “Babylon” and I met Allen Polite ( very intellectual, very bright, one of Amiri Baraka’s mentors) much later, in fact had a party that brought him and Harvey together again, late in 1980. Harvey & Allen had one trait in common ; bigging me up whenever introducing me - especially when introducing me to members of the opposite sex. Africans don’t usually do that, they think that you are their rival, if anything they are more than most likely to say that you are a criminal or that you just escaped from some mental asylum, the first opportunity they have to say so behind your back. On our nocturnal prowls Allen would introduce me as a poet. What? All Africans are poets, he told me, privately : they write telegrams. A difference between Harvey and Allen is that Harvey discusses, Allen used to lecture and pontificate a little. I used to listen to him holding forth; he lived at Upplandsgatan 77 or 75 -,I lived at Upplandsgatan 23, so there was a whole year whenI saw a lot of Allen, asked questions and listened good. Eric Bibb lived at Upplandsgatan 17….
To even briefly begin to do justice to what Harvey means and has meant to yours truly would take a few Bible length chapters (of the Hebrew Bible). To this day there is a paradox that I have not been able to solve: We - Harvey and some of the Studio regulars had been celebrating a little at Reisen Hotel, with Bebo Valdez at the piano bar - celebrating with Touchy Grant (a Caribbean troubadour) who had just bought a new Villa at Upplands Väsby. At about one O'clock in the morning he wanted me to accompany him to Upplands Väsby so that he could show off his new acquisition, and out of curiosity, I accompanied him. After we got there, I don’t know exactly what happened or exactly what it was that I had said that got him so really riled up. Maybe, I had said something about “ dialectical materialism” or I was visibly not as impressed as I should have been because the very next thing I heard was him phoning for a taxi which he paid to drive me back all the way home to Vasastan . What’s going on Touchy? I asked him. ” It’s not your fault “ he replied, “It’s Harvey Cropper who has been teaching you to hate White People” he replied. What the hell is Touchy talking about? Nothing could be further from the truth, I told him. ”You came here to praise my enemy ?” He wanted to know. Well, of course, Touchy had also been drinking heavily. On the other hand you take a woman from a fellow black man and you’ve made an enemy for life. That’s how it is. In Swedish the word is “Svartsjuk” -” The Black Sickness “ : Jealousy ! Othello! Much later on I could have patiently explained to Touchy that on the contrary, for instance, in this interview , here’s Harvey’s definition of Cosmopolitan : “If I see a human being, I see one of us”. Once upon a time, during the last year of his life he was sitting on his bed at the far end of the studio and I was on the other end talking to a West African Rhythm section that was being led by Poe Jatta ; I had just started saying to Poe,” We the Black people…” when I heard Harvey’s voice coming like Ogun’s thunder, from the other end of the room, at the top of his voice , very irritated and shouting “ DON*T BRING YOUR RACISM HERE ! “
if only Touchy Grant had been around , hearing would have been believing,
And Harvey was very much a people’s person. As Nathan and Lefifi said, his studio was very much a veritable United Nations Assembly and it got to a point that you had to raise a feather / put your hand up if you wanted to talk, say something At Harvey’s I met a lot of people that I would otherwise, probably never have met. Around the time Lefifi was meeting Harvey for the first time - he says in 1981 I was on my way to Nigeria where I worked 1981 - 1984, but I’m sure that I met Lefifi just before I departed and thanks to Harvey was well read on Kalabari sculptures because he had given me Kalabari Sculptures by Robin Horton . I lived with the Kalabari people 1983 -1984….
Some of the most memorable people - great personalities I got to know through Harvey, to name just a few :Slim - an Ijaw man from Nigeria, Mr. Larry Shekoni - very Yoruba, Wana Makoba, South African - classical pianist ( studied in USSR) and a marvellous, spoken word poet; Hugh Satterfield - otherwise known as “Professor Lobo” - he presented Jazz Programs on Radio Free Berlin - I threw my silver-strung Rudraksha mala into his grave, when he was being interred here in Stockholm ); Peter Weiss - a German writer and painter; Molefe Pheto - South African writer and political activist; in,1985, fresh from Nigeria, dear Johnny Mbizo Dyani - a great Jazz bassist - he gave me the name “Themba Feza “ which means “ Hope to complete” after his trumpeter Mongezi Feza ; Jerry Harris ( African-American Sculptor - he was fond of saying “You Africans don’t understand”) Arthur “Umar” Harris (first African-American Muslim I ever met) Rashid ( Malcolm X’s representative in Egypt) Art Blakey ( Great Jazz Drummer ) Bobby Watson - at the time Blakey’s saxophonist; Peter Radise, exiled South Saxophonist, Bheki Mseleku South African pianist who I was close to for a while, introduced him to Siddha Yoga): Dudu Pukwana - off stage, the most gentle musician I have ever known, especially at his home at 53 Pryor Road, Marble Arch) ; Bola Richards, Ebrima Sam Hydara, impeccable Gambian brothers, Jöran Modéer - a Swedish artist who usually had interminable, one-to-one conversations with Harvey on delicate art subjects, the kinds of conversations that outsider ignoramuses did not like or dare to interrupt. To some extent, ditto with Frédéric Iriarte - a French artist, plastics sculptor and musician; Farouk Cassimjee, South African Bro from Cape Town - who accompanied Harvey to my birthday party at which Harvey gave me one of the three extant copies of his “The Mind Wanderer - Water Colours by Harvey Tristan Cropper “ with this dedication, - his generosity of spirit which more or less says it all. for the time being : “for Cornelius on his 60th Birthday from the mind wanderer to the seeker - Stockholm 2007 - signed Harvey Cropper . Thank you & yours for all the love & feeling you have given me. - HC”
During his sojourn on this planet, Harvey Tristan Cropper served as a mentor and an inspiration to many, including yours truly. Simply put, he expanded our horizons. In no time at all after checking out the UNESCO Music collection devoted to the pygmies of the Ituri forest - once an inspiration to Jazz cat Leon Thomas and his scat singing style, was next on another errand - jazzed up by curiosity, to an ethno-music library checking out some Mongolian yodelling. Several years later towards the end of his earth’s pilgrimage, I remember Harvey explaining to the spellbound group a single poem and the look of awe, wonderment and gratefulness on the face of - let’s call him “David” - from the Gambia . So this is what poetry is all about !!! How thrilling ! Forevermore he started talking about Harvey in the same way that some Pentecostals talk about Jesus - in Messianic terms, and verily, when a disciple starts glorifying you like that, then, to such a one, you are indeed the Messiah! Or, as Brecht would have said, "When you act like the Messiah,then you ARE the Messiah!”. Just ask Cyrus the Great
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