Suleiman’s Psalm

A NOVEL

The unvoiced lyrics in Bach’s Arioso, played on the cello by Jonas Starker on the cello, were the seeds for Suleimān’s Psalm. As such, music frames the manuscript and the cello is an important character. Since music is the primary organizing principle, rhythms erupt in the rhyme, the slang, and the cadence that mark urban life in one of Philadelphia’s African-American communities.

The characters play out life on Greene Street, a street where I once lived before moving to Indiana to teach at Indiana University in Bloomington. The primary thematic thrust centers on the dichotomous play of ignorance and wisdom embedded in the contradictions that frame culture and ethics. The language is urban and raw, but the use of such language has the power to either liberate or condemn, and its use in this manuscript hopefully directs the reader to consider that judgments about the text, as well as the actions performed by the characters, only reflect the contrivances of their minds and thoughts.

While the primary theme is wisdom and the manner in which wisdom reveals itself through the sights and sounds found in everyday existence, everything in Suleimān’s Psalm has a voice and is filled with magic and mysticism. Ammeah, an anointed and Ascended Master, appears out of ether to protect and guide Miss Jessie, Miss Floreen, Miss Clara, and Miss Ida Mae, women who live out their lives on Greene Street. Flowers are not lifeless, without voice or presence. Even tin cans tap and rattle to the sound of the wind. The rain has a rhythm and a voice, the weather with its tumultuous winds sounds approaching violence, and humans communicate, but they are often never what they appear to be on the surface. Suleimān’s Psalm has a musical quality that comes not only from the cello’s music, expressed as lyrics, but various scenes in the manuscript were inspired by musicians like James Earl Hooker’s and his “I’m Bad Like Jessie James” which resulted in the Blues of Chapter 15, Sur: Regreso Al Amor, Fugata, and Milonga del Angel inspired the street scene in the Barrio in Chapter 20, when June Bug ventures into the Latino section of North Philadelphia, and Bachianas Brasilerias No.5 (Äria) inspires June Bug’s rhythmic assault through the barrio in Chapter 21. As such, the manuscript, with its accompanying Song Book, has the potential to be a performance piece on the Broadway musical stage and as a dramatic Hollywood depiction of urban life.

Suleimān’s Psalm accentuates the slang of urban life as an attempt to contrast and integrate it with more formal and acceptable speech. This also highlights the selective judgments people make about situations and the people they encounter based upon the sounds they hear and images they perceive and what these sights and sounds mean from the person’s cultural perspective. Therefore, Suleimān’s Psalm depicts a magical universe and it engages all the senses to demonstrate that the universe is constantly directing us toward a greater understanding of the individual situations with which we live. A Glossary and Song Book also accompany Suleimān’s Psalm. The Song Book contains the lyrics sung by the cello while the Glossary provides the definitions for the urban slang of the rap and hip-hop beats found throughout the manuscript.