Dance of the Infidels

by Wesley Brown

This long-awaited story collection from Wesley Brown summons up the smoky clubs and gritty streets of a long-gone New York City, one that moved in the frenetic rhythms of jazz. A more innocent city fueled by cool, not money. We meet Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Cab Calloway, and many giants of the era in these sharply observed, carefully intertwined stories. In Brown’s deft hands, these legends become real – like we’ve never seen them before. Jazz has circled throughout the Brown’s work, but now it takes the main stage in this collection of eight unpublished stories. Find out why James Baldwin called Brown “one hell of a writer,” and why so many other younger writers find deep inspiration in the novels and stories of this master storyteller.

162 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 15, 2017

About the author

Novelist, playwright, and teacher Wesley Brown was born and raised in Harlem, NYC. His work includes three acclaimed novels (Tragic Magic, Darktown Strutters, and Push Comes to Shove) and three produced plays (Boogie Woogie and Booker T, Life During Wartime, and A Prophet Among Them).

Brown's work often reflects his political involvement. In 1965, Brown worked with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party on voting registration. In 1968, he became a member of the Black Panther Party in Rochester, New York. In 1972, he was sentenced to three years in prison for refusing induction into the armed services and spent eighteen months in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary.

He is Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University, where he taught for 27 years. He currently teaches literature at Bard College at Simon's Rock, and lives in Spencertown, New York.

Reviews

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wesley Brown writes about jazz like I dance about architecture: fucking fabulously. These loosely interconnected stories feature drop-ins and tight focuses on jazz between the Wars and immediately thereafter. As such, you get a killer's row of earlyish East Coast immortals, and not only the super 'hep' circa [today's date here] owners of "vinyls." Translation: no Coltrane, kids. If you dig Coleman Hawkins? THIS is the Rosetta Stone.

So, too, for Lester Young (endless bonuses for all the Prez love), Lionel Hampton, Ella, Billie, Satchmo, Sarah, and unnamed Miles et al. And, because who the fuck wants to write much less read about interwar NYC jazz without early Gillespie and Parker, Diz and Bird. By end, the two are still relatively young men, but the meat of their section(s) finds them in that first flush of breaking be bop into a thousand pieces and acting like gleeful goddamn idiot kids (the 'clinical' idiot). Seriously: it is historical record that Dizzy and Bird, before Parker's dope got out of hand, were hyperactive levels of goofiness, inseparable opposites whose weaknesses (were there any) were filled in by their partner. As far as platonic male love, Dizzy and Bird are up there with, uhhhhhh, the white and Black jailbirds from that Shawshank documentary? No shittin' ya.

All of which clarifies something even sharper for me: no wonder everyone hated on Ornette, Yusef, Dolphy, Sanders, etc: as much as I love a few of them, they were so goddamn squeaky clean compared to their progenitors. Killjoys, the lot of 'em. I mean, can you even imagine hanging out with the Art Ensemble of Chicago on a social level?

A fantastic final offering by an unsurpassed master. Rest in sound, Mr. Brown.

[Breena · Rating 5 out of 5]

The interrelated stories of Wesley Brown's collection, Dance of the Infidels, open a window on the exciting milieu of jazz age Harlem, in the years just before, during and after World War II. Brown's fictional characters rub elbows with the great musicians of the era's Harlem nightlife: Lester Young, Duke Ellington, Bud Powell, Sarah Vaughn, Lionel Hampton and other legendary names. Wesley Brown gives us the seat we've all dreamed of having in his lyrical descriptions of the styles of these jazz luminaries. The collection leaves the reader wishing for more.

[Sherry Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a book transports you to another time, another place. When a book's characters become your friends; you their shadow. When you hear the music. The saxophone. The high notes and the low notes. When you dance the dance. When you feel the emotion. When you stop and Google: Cab Calloway, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughn, Billy Eckstine and all; and, add their YouTube videos to your play list. That's when you have a book like THE DANCE OF THE INFIDELS by Wesley Brown.