[Trombone-l] Valery Ponomarev in Paris

[Bill Dinwiddie]

Has anyone else heard about this one yet? It was sent to me by a friend who 
read it on the website http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/16/72849/4595

I have sanitized it slightly, replacing some of the more colorful language 
with the following symbols ***********



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Let me tell you a story...it won't take very long...about how far the 
doctrine of fear and power has spread.
How far, how deeply and how dangerously it has spread.

Security people at Charles DeGaulle airport broke the arm of the 
internationally famous jazz trumpet player Valery Ponomarev last week...an 
American citizen for over 30 years...because he argued with the gate people 
at an Air India flight to New York when they demanded that he gate check his 
trumpet rather than bring it onto the plane. A trumpet that:

A...Fits with no problem whatsoever in the overheads.

and

B...Had been properly tagged as carry-on baggage before he got to the gate.

Read on.


  a.. roysol's diary :: ::
  b..
Now you must know that musicians try very hard to get their instruments onto 
planes whenever they can do so. Baggage handlers are notorious for breaking 
things, and a broken instrument is painful in any number of ways. So is a 
lost or misrouted instrument. It's not like you can just pick up another one 
before the gig and play at your usual level of competence. Even if you are 
lucky enough to FIND one, every instrument has its own quirks and 
personality, and most professional musicians own instruments that are not 
easily replaceable. Older instruments or ones that were custom built or 
modified to their specifications. And since 9/11 and the whole Homeland 
Security/Terrorism scare-scam, if you DO carefully pack an instrument in a 
special ape-proof flight case and allow it to be checked as baggage, the 
minimum wagers that are doing "security" work in the baggage department are 
often capable of opening the case, taking the instrument out to see if it's 
a bomb (Duh...a trumpet or violin REALLY looks bomb-like on an X-ray 
machine.) repacking it backwards and upside down and then forgetting to 
close the latches.

I have SEEN this happen.

So Valery... 63 years old, maybe 5' 5" tall, 140 lbs... pitched a fit at the 
gate when some p******-off functionary at a loading gate decided to pull 
rank on him. They called security and four (as he so colorfully put it to me 
today when he told me the story) "giant ******* cops" took him someplace 
where there were no witnesses, tried to forcibly take his trumpet away and 
when he would not let go of it with his right hand, pulled his left arm 
behind his back and broke it.

And people sniff and moan when the word "fascism" is used to describe what 
is happening in America and in much of Western Europe as well.

Vaslery did not try to fight these people. As he related today (I wish I 
could reproduce his great Russan accent) "I grew up in Soviet Union under 
Stalin and Khruschev. I know enough not to try to hit a cop. Let alone four 
of them. Big, stupid **************." (Here he stands on tiptoe and raises 
his remaining functioning hand as high in the air as he can.) "They were THS 
BIG!!! FOUR of them!!! I am not THAT stupid."

And indeed he is not.

Here is a man who grew up in Russia when playing "jazz" was almost an act of 
open rebellion and got so good that Art Blakey hired him to join the Jazz 
Messengers in the late '60s. And if you do not know how serious THAT 
was...Blakey was possibly the only equal to Miles Davis in terms of hearing 
and hiring the best of the best in the post-bop era.

Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter...that level.

The BEST of the best.

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So.....comments?

Bill Dinwiddie

billdin at comcast.net