The Kashmere Stage Band: Seeing the Future Inside of Us

Kashmere Stage Band

The splendid 2010 documentary 'Thunder Soul' (directed by Mark Landsman) tells the story of the legendary Kashmere Stage Band, as its alumni gather to play a tribute concert for their beloved leader, Conrad ‘Prof’ Johnson. 

Interviewer: Where does the feel to play come in?

Conrad Johnson: Well, I would say that the feeling comes, many times, from my demanding it.

In the late ‘60s and ‘70s, Johnson, a teacher at the Kashmere High School in Houston, Texas, coached the institution’s Stage Band into an  elite outfit. His success demonstrates that strict discipline, high expectations and inspirational vision can create a compelling cocktail, and that music education plays a special part in shaping young lives.

‘The focus was on moving forward. Get your education. There’s nothing that you can’t do. You’ve seen what has happened in the past. Now you take what has happened, you take it and you move forward.‘

Kashmere Stage Band member

In his youth Johnson had performed as a musician in the clubs of Houston, and had at one point played with Count Basie. He chose to pursue a career in education, and, once established at the Kashmere High School, formed its Stage Band. 

‘I got the idea to start a band and build a band out of young people that was equivalent in sound and in appearance to that of the professionals.’ 

Conrad Johnson

Johnson was a strict disciplinarian, and he demanded high technical standards. 

‘When they first come to me, regardless as to what kind of tone they have, I work to develop that tone. And that’s the first step. Learn to play the instrument. Then the music.’

Conrad Johnson

‘You came into this room with your focus, ready to play. Do not come into this room late. Do not talk. Do not interrupt. Do not this, that. I don’t care if it’s chewing gum. You cannot. And when that man says stand up, everybody stood up in synch. It was like a military sergeant.’

Kashmere Stage Band member

Conrad “Prof Johnson directing a band member

As the ‘60s drew to a close, Johnson sensed that the mood in his predominantly Black school was changing. The Civil Rights struggle had evolved into the period of Black Power. There was growing spirit of confidence, independence and resolve. 

‘This was the ‘70s. We were just coming out of the Civil Rights movement. And so there was a lot of pride. There were a lot of good things going on.’

‘Our parents had fought long and hard and it was time for us to shine.’
Kashmere Stage Band members 

Johnson determined to channel this new mentality into the Kashmere Stage Band.

‘Prof knew it was a time for change. He had all these kids in the band that had all this high energy. They wanted to play funk.’
Kashmere Stage Band member

‘I try to give them a chance to express themselves in the way that they are.’
Conrad Johnson

Many schools in the United States at the time had their own Stage Bands. These mostly white orchestras played sanitised, somewhat anaemic versions of pop and jazz standards. Johnson, by contrast, wrote original jazz compositions that absorbed the influence of James Brown, Sly Stone, Parliament and Funkadelic. The Kashmere sound was founded on intense rhythms and urgent harmonies, fierce beats punctuated with sharp stabs of funk.

 ‘At a time when they were still saying that ‘Black kids couldn’t learn, Black kids were inferior, they were violent’, the Kashmere Stage Band was our representative.’
Kashmere Stage Band member

Johnson also decided to introduce a performance element to the Band. He choreographed the guitarists to shuffle, the drummers to sway, the brass section to dip, twist and turn. The Band became a thrillingly precise, living music machine. 

‘I felt like the music wasn’t enough. Because there were people listening to the band that weren’t musicians. It wasn’t enough. So I put the show into it. And no one had thought to do that.’ 
Conrad Johnson

The Kashmere Stage Band won a succession of state and national competitions. They toured Europe and Japan and recorded eight albums, which were subsequently extensively sampled by hip-hop artists and DJs, including DJ Shadow and the Handsome Boy Modeling School. One number featured on the soundtrack of the movie 'Baby Driver.' 

‘The other bands were technically good. But they didn’t have the feel. They didn’t have the soul.’

‘Winning just gave us a sense that we were invincible when it came to competition.’
Kashmere Stage Band members

In the wake of the Stage Band’s countless victories, Kashmere High School’s football, track and basketball teams excelled. Its officer training corps, drama and debating sides won championships. And grades and scholarships rose across the board. A rising tide lifts all boats.

‘The Kashmere Stage Band gave the community part of its identity.’

‘It made everybody proud because we were kicking it.’
Kashmere Stage Band members

It’s clear that Johnson’s influence on his young students extended well beyond music and performance. He taught them life skills as well as technical skills.

‘I was kind of shy. I would basically hide behind my instrument. That’s where my power was. I didn’t have that thing that would get out and tell cats: ‘I’m here.’ I didn’t possess that. So my vehicle for that was the Band.’

‘People would make remarks like: ‘A girl on a trombone? Trombones are for boys. Girls don’t play trombone.’ They made me want to play it even more so.’

‘I grew up a straight-up thug… That man kept me alive. He moulded me into a whole different expression.’ 

‘He reached into our soul. He could see the future inside of us.’
Kashmere Stage Band members

Kashmere Stage Band with Conrad “Prof Johnson in pinstripe suit on left

In 1978 Johnson became dispirited by the politics, petty squabbles and jealousies that success brought with it. A new principal had withdrawn funding and, after a thirty-seven-year career, Johnson decided to retire.

‘I think that any school administrator that goes for taking music out of the system should be fired.’
Conrad Johnson

In 2008, thirty original members of the Kashmere Stage Band, all in their mid-50s, reunited for the first time in over three decades to pay tribute to their legendary leader, then 92 years old. In the documentary you can see that he was bowled over by the performance. 

Conrad ‘Prof’ Johnson died a few days later.

‘I gave them pride. I gave them honour. I gave them exceptional performance. And they knew it. And they appreciated it…But we had to work to do it now. It didn’t just come natural.’
Conrad Johnson 

'If you want me to stay,
I'll be around today,
To be available for you to see.
But I am about to go,
And then you'll know,
For me to stay here, I got to be me.

You'll never be in doubt,
That's what it's all about,
You can't take me for granted and smile.
Count the days I'm gone,
Forget reaching me by phone,
Because I promise I'll be gone for a while.

And when you see me again,
I hope that you have been
The kind of person that you really are now.
You got to get it straight,
How could I ever be late,
When you're my woman taking up my time?’

Sly and the Family Stone, 'If You Want Me to Stay’ (S Stone)

No. 528

Robert Moses, ‘Trapped in a Dream’: How a Leader Can Go from Hero to Villain

Robert Moses, urban planner. Roosevelt Island, New York, 1959.Credit...Arnold Newman/Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery

Moses: The dynamo of capitalism is restlessness. Nothing is ever enough. For us, nothing is ever settled. We are always on the move.

I recently watched ‘Straight Line Crazy,’ a fine new David Hare play about the urban planner Robert Moses. (The Bridge Theatre, London until 18 June)

Moses: Once Americans cease to believe they can remake America better, then it ceases to be America.

Though he was never elected to any public office, Moses was often described as the most powerful man in New York. As head of the New York City and Long Island State Parks Commissions between 1924 and 1963 (along with holding many other official roles), he built a system of 627 miles of expressway, connecting the city to the great outdoors. He created bridges, parks and swimming pools.He led the construction of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs in New York and helped persuade the United Nations to locate its headquarters in Manhattan. 

Moses: A leader makes the mood, he’s not a victim of it.

Moses began his career with an avowed intent to improve the lives of ordinary city dwellers. But he ended it a pariah - criticised for the destruction of communities to make way for his road schemes; for his unwavering commitment to the car; for his refusal to embrace mass transit; for his disregard for public opinion.

Moses: Your principal error is this: to imagine that the people’s views are of any importance at all…We must advance their fortunes without having any respect for their opinions.

Moses provides a case study in how a leader’s resolute commitment to a vision can evolve into intransigence and anachronism; how a hero can over time become a villain.

Moses: People may not like me, but they need me… I’d rather be right and alone, than be soft and with other people.

Robert Moses with a model lower end of Manhattan and the bridge with which it is proposed to connect Battery Park with Brooklyn, March 1939. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

The play focuses on two significant years in Moses’ life: 1926 and 1955.

We begin with a young Moses planning a scheme to build two big expressways across Long Island. Alert to changing social needs and aspirations, he wants to give New Yorkers access to the region’s woods, open spaces and beaches.

Moses: The people have discovered a new occupation. It’s called leisure. And one day it will be as popular as work.

Long Island is peaceful, sparsely populated and controlled by a few aristocratic families who are united in their opposition to his scheme. Moses has learnt that in order to get any project off the ground, he needs to be comfortable with confrontation and conflict.

Moses: People characteristically revolt against any innovation…Nothing worthwhile has ever been achieved without initial resistance.

Indeed Moses is prepared to press ahead with road construction ahead of attaining final sign-off.

Moses: Once you sink that first stake, they’ll never make you pull it up. Public work relies on one thing. Impetus… Anyone can argue about where a freeway ought to be. But it’s pretty damn hard to argue about where it is.

Moses is highly intelligent, hard working, rational and uncompromising. He has fixed views, and is particularly convinced of the liberating power of the motor car.

Moses: People like cars. You own something and you’re in control. That’s a nice feeling. When I was young, America was sitting there, like a tin can. The car was the can opener. Still is.

Though Moses is reserved, socially awkward and wary of the public stage, he is driven by a fundamentally democratic urge. 

Moses: I’m in a hurry, and I’m in a hurry to help – to help the millions out there who have no access to a good life. And if a few fences get kicked over in the process, does that really matter?

At length Moses achieves his objective on Long Island with the help of a supportive Governor, a sympathetic New York Times and an amenable judge. 

The play then leaps ahead to 1955. Moses is proposing to put a four-lane highway through Washington Square in Manhattan. The scheme will alleviate traffic congestion in the area and create horizontal routes to match the existing vertical expressways.

Moses: What kind of city have we created where roads run up and down, but nothing runs across? …It’s an offence against logic and against reason.

Moses has little regard for the impact the development will have on the local neighbourhoods.

Moses: Things must exist for a purpose. SoHo has no purpose. Vitality is dependent on function. And when function decays, so does life.

However, Moses comes up against a group of community activists, foremost amongst whom is architectural journalist and writer Jane Jacobs. She challenges his view that the automobile should drive decisions about urban development. And she thinks he is ‘straight line crazy.’

Jacobs: Mr Moses is a man under hypnosis. He got hypnotized at the age of twenty-five by two ideas and they’re both delusions. First, he has this insane idea that the answer to the problem of too many cars is more cars. And second, he’s convinced the answer to the problem of congestion on our roads is more roads.

Jacobs believes cities are vibrant, organic ecosystems that should be planned from the bottom-up. 

Jacobs as chair of a Greenwich Village civic group at a 1961 press conference

Jacobs: Cities grow up. They just happen. Bit by bit. Hand a city to the planners and they’ll make it a desert. Hand it to the people and they’ll make it habitable. Robert Moses looks at the West Village and he sees a slum. I look at the West Village and I see a healthy neighbourhood. I see life.

We realise that Moses’ forceful, top-down style of leadership, which once made him so successful, now represents an impediment. He has lost touch with public sentiment. He’s a man out of time.

Moses: The people lack imagination. The job of the leader is to provide it.

Ultimately Moses is defeated by an alliance of middle-class campaigners, political progressives and broader public opinion. In the play his long-time colleague Finnuala Connell (a fictional character) summarises the cause of his demise.

Finnuala: Once you believed in cars because you thought they would liberate people. Now you force people into cars and you force cars onto roads because you want to be vindicated. It’s no longer about the people. It’s about you…You’re stuck. You’re stuck with an idea you had thirty years ago. And you can’t move on. Is there anything worse than being trapped in a dream?

Robert Moses provides a lesson for us all. Leaders need insight into cultural change, a vision that addresses that change, a strategy to deliver and the iron will to see things through. Moses had all these capabilities. But as the world evolved, his views remained the same. What once was self-confidence became arrogance; what once was resolve became intransigence. He loved progress, but only in the direction he envisaged. He liked to regard the city from a distance, from above: all grand schemes, expansive concepts and logical systems. But the broader his perspective, the less room it had for empathy and community. And in the end he was wrong.

This does not mean however that Moses’ opponents were entirely right. At the close of the play Jacobs reflects on the fact that theirs was a hollow victory.

Jacobs: Our efforts to preserve Greenwich Village and SoHo succeeded in transforming it into the most expensive piece of real estate in the world. What was once a community was cleansed of everyone but the rich. The Village was saved, but it was also destroyed.

[If you’re interested in learning more about this subject, I’d recommend the 2016 documentary about Jane Jacobs, ‘Citizen Jane: Battle for the City’.]

'Oh, can't anybody see,
We've got a war to fight?
Never found our way,
Regardless of what they say.
How can it feel this wrong?
From this moment,
How can it feel, this wrong?’’

Portishead, ‘Roads’ (B Gibbons / A Utley / G Barrow)

No. 369

The Quiet Achiever: Learning Lessons from RBG

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Photograph by Irving Penn / © Condé Nast 1993

'I am a Brooklynite, born and bred, a first generation American on my father’s side, barely second generation on my mother’s. What has become of me could happen only in America. Neither of my parents had the means to attend college, but both taught me to love learning, to care about people, and to work hard for whatever I wanted or believed in.' 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I recently watched an excellent documentary about US Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (‘RBG’). It’s the story of an incredibly talented, resilient woman who overcame the odds, step-by-step, to help build a secure legal framework for women’s equality in the US.

Ruth Bader was born in 1933 in a working-class neighbourhood of Brooklyn, and earned the family nickname Kiki for being a ‘kicky baby.’ She was encouraged to take her education seriously by her beloved mother, who passed away just as she finished high school. She studied government at Cornell and married fellow student Martin Ginsburg a month after graduating. They had their first child in 1955, and subsequently both enrolled at Harvard Law School.

Soon, however, Martin contracted testicular cancer. Ruth found herself caring for her young daughter and convalescing husband, attending both his classes and her own. 

This was challenging enough. But at Harvard Ruth also had to endure a hostile, male-dominated, environment. There were only eight other women in her class of more than 500, and on joining they were admonished by the Dean for taking the places of men.
 
When in time Martin recovered and graduated, the couple moved to New York so that he could take up a job as a tax lawyer. Ruth completed her degree at Columbia Law School, and was the first woman to be a member of both the Harvard and Columbia Law Reviews. In 1959 she graduated joint-first in class. And yet, when she went looking for work, she didn’t receive one job offer from a New York law firm.

'I was Jewish, a woman, and a mother. The first raised one eyebrow; the second, two; the third made me indubitably inadmissible.'

Ruth settled for a career in academic law, teaching at Rutgers University Law School and at Columbia. At Rutgers she was informed she would be paid less than her male colleagues because she had a husband with a well-paid job. 

No surprise perhaps that Ruth gravitated towards the study and teaching of women’s rights. In most states at that time you could be fired for being pregnant; banks required a woman applying for credit to have their husband co-sign; marital rape was rarely prosecuted. Indeed hundreds of separate statutes across the country discriminated on the basis of sex.

‘The gender line helps to keep women not on a pedestal but in a cage.’

In 1972 Ruth co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).  Rather than seeking to end all gender discrimination at once, she determined to take it on one law at a time. As Director of the ACLU she challenged laws giving different access to housing benefits to male and female service members; different survivor benefits to men and women; different minimum drinking ages for men and women. She challenged a law enabling women to opt out of jury service. And more besides.

Methodical, precise, considered, Ruth gradually chipped away at the edifice of sex discrimination. She concentrated on winnable cases. Sometimes she represented male plaintiffs to demonstrate that gender discrimination harmed both men and women. She referred to gender rather than sex so as not to distract male judges.

‘I knew that I was speaking to men who didn’t think there was such a thing as gender discrimination. And my job was to tell them that it really exists.’

Between 1973 and 1976 Ruth argued six gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court, winning five. This was a step-by-step revolution.

‘This opinion does mark as presumptively invalid a law that denies to women equal opportunity to inspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on what they do.’

In the documentary Ruth’s children bear witness to her phenomenal stamina throughout this period. Sustained by coffee and prunes, she worked into the early hours every night, and was at court by 9-00 the next morning. At the weekend she slept.

Beyond working incredibly hard to achieve one’s goals, there are a number of lessons we can learn from Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She teaches us to be clinical and cool headed in the design and execution of strategy; to pick our battles; to fight them in the right order; and to be sure of winning. That way we will win the war.

I was particularly struck by Ruth’s working method. She was not a militant firebrand, given to marching and demonstrating. Rather she was serious and soft-spoken, cautious and careful, reserved and restrained. Her colleagues report that she didn’t do small-talk. She just focused on getting the job done.

'When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.'

Ruth Bader Ginsburg At work

Ask yourself this: Do you have an RBG in your office? Sitting silently, working diligently. Meticulous and methodical. Shy and self-effacing. The quiet achiever, the unsung hero.

What if she or he is being shouted down, pushed aside, managed and marginalised? What if the conversation is being dominated by the most vocal rather than the best qualified people in the room? Are you doing enough to ensure that the quiet achiever can still be heard?

'We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, 'We, the people.''

In 1980 Ruth Bader Ginsberg was appointed to the US Court of Appeals, and in 1993 she became the second woman Justice on the US Supreme Court. In recent years, with liberal Justices in the minority, she has often been a dissenting voice.

Sadly Martin Ginsburg died of cancer in 2010. He and Ruth had been married for 56 years. In December 2018 Ruth, already a two-time survivor of cancer herself, underwent surgery for lung cancer. She was back on the Supreme Court bench eight weeks later. She has recently turned eighty-six.

Just over five feet tall; hair neatly tied back with a scrunchie; serious glasses; vintage earrings; silk shirt and scarf. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is asked how long she can keep going. With lips pursed, she pauses for thought.

‘I will do this job as long as I can do it full steam, and when I can’t that will be the time I will step down.’

Full steam ahead, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

No. 222