Crossing Party Lines – Creatively

When angry goons with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders banged on the door, the man who later married us opened with a big grin and invited them in for tea.

Such was the spirit — and cross-cultural savvy — of John Markarian, the founding President of the Armenian-American College of Beirut, a post in which he served for three decades. The date was October 26, 1975 — in the depths of the terrible civil wars that destroyed Lebanon’s old image as the Switzerland of the Middle East.

John’s invitation to the goons was the first of several similar incidents in which he effectively saved the college. A devout Presbyterian minister with a Ph.D. from Princeton, he knew Muslim society almost as well as he knew the Bible. His actions at the college door — and later the title of his autobiography — came to him from the Book of Proverbs, and Paul’s Letters to the Romans: “When your enemy is thirsty, give him a drink.”

Leaving their weapons near the door, the would-be assailants happily sat down and sipped Arab-style cups of tea with John and his wife Inge — then departed, leaving the college alone.

Not that a similar strategy would necessarily work in Cairo today. Still, it’s worth remembering that fixed positions often lead to fixed bayonets.

I am glad the U.S. State Department is no longer led by Condoleezza Rice. In Cairo, near the beginning of her term, she announced very publicly to Hosni Mubarak and the listening Arab world that the U.S. was about to confer democracy on the Middle East.

I did work out of Beirut as a photojournalist in the 1960s. For many more years I have worked as a fine-art photographer, and for even more years I’ve been a semi-professional jazz clarinetist.

But some of my richest experiences were as a devotee of spiritual master Baba Muktananda in India. The rules in his traditional Hindu ashram were strict. More broadly, that experience freed me  to more fully appreciate, later, the achievements of many other deep masters, such the Dalai Lama.

Now pushing 80, I have been assembling my jazz pictures and memories spanning six decades. Crossing – or not crossing – party lines can have consequences in this field as well. Originally a fierce traditional-jazz purist, I gradually modified that position. For one thing, I noticed that the jazz masters were less often purists than many of their fans. They played as they played — and were cordial with their colleagues across the aisles of nightclubs and recording studios.

Twenty-five years ago, in Mendota, Minnesota, I had dinner with famous bassist Milt Hinton before working a gig with him. Showing me layouts of his new photo book, Milt told me how he had transitioned through every style of jazz, from the 1920s, through years on the road with swing bands, to studio gigs in the “golden age” of modernism and after.

Later, I met other major musicians of today, like Dick Hyman, Shelly Berg, and Arturo Sandoval — all of whom continue to cross over, easily, among jazz styles.

As for me, I still just play funky New Orleans clarinet from the earliest period of jazz. The other night we played a Lindy Hop swing dance with Clint Baker’s band: not even a bandstand, and the light I could see in the dancers’ eyes and feet had no name or form.

And Egypt?

The politics appear far from hopeful for the foreseeable future.

That wonderful land, with its vast plurality of peoples,  has a long habit of being governed by pharaohs.

We can only hope Egypt, with its sophisticated depth, soon finds its way back to a sense of unity in diversity — a vision of its own stillness at the core.

Above: Pastor John Markarian officiating at Ulla’s and Bill’s wedding, March 23, 1985.

Below: Dick Hyman at Filoli, near San Francisco: the fleet, versatile jazz pianist is known for his expertise across the “party lines” of many styles and periods, from  ragtime to swing to contemporary.

Photograph of Dick Hyman © William Carter 2010

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