LONGINEW PARSONS

Longineu Parsons

STORY BY BETSY ILER & PHOTOS BY ELIZABETH GEORGE

When Longineu Parsons visits Alexander City Feb. 10, he hopes to deliver more than a stirring tribute to American music master Louis Armstrong. His greater mission will be to spread a message of grace, hope and positivity through his life as a professional trumpet player, university professor and world traveler.

Parsons will present a workshop to students in Alexander City schools and also will appear in concert at Benjamin Russell High School as an Alex City Arts featured presenter. His evening performance, What a Wonderful World, will focus on the great music of the late Louis Armstrong (1901-1971).

“Louis Armstrong is the most important figure in American music,” said Parsons, who holds a doctorate degree in music composition and is a professor at Florida A&M. “To play his music is a privilege.”

Armstrong was renowned the world over almost as much for his charismatic stage presence and his rich, gravelly voice as his skill with the trumpet. He was one of the first black entertainers to achieve popularity with white and international audiences and won a Grammy Award in 1964 for his performance of “Hello, Dolly!”

“Duke Ellington said Louis Armstrong was a man who was born poor, died rich and never hurt anyone along the way. He was known for being caring and loving to everybody,” Parsons said. “I like spreading that word about giving love, being positive, being above negativity. Having enough grace to be above insult. This is my way of spreading that.”

Parsons grew up with his parents playing music – particularly jazz – in his home.

“It all started when my parents gave me a toy organ when I was a child. I started playing their jazz music on my organ, playing the melodies. They realized I had something going on. I played in the school band. For me, it was always something fun to do. I liked that I was good at it, and I worked at it to become good, but I looked at it as recreational because I was sure I was going to be a doctor,” Parsons explained. “I started college as premed, and I had to go back to my parents and say, ‘I am changing to music.’ They told me they knew that, but they had to let me figure it out for myself. “To be a musician means you will not be happy doing anything else. That’s what it takes.” Parsons started his college career at a community college in Jacksonville, Florida. Then he went on to Florida A&M and did jazz studies at Berklee College in Boston. Later, he earned his master’s and doctorate degrees at University of Florida. “Going back to school in your later years is great. You know why you are there, and you can apply Using Music to Inspire your experience to your Above: Longineu Parsons studies. I had a lot of fun. says he loves to spread It felt like an indulgence,” love and positivity Parsons said. through his talent After performing professionally for more than 25 years, Florida A&M recruited him as a professor.

“They reached out to me, and I told them I wasn’t interested, but they were determined I should be their trumpet professor. I came to a homecoming game and realized I had to come home,” he said.

It turned out to be one of the best decisions Parsons ever made.

“I have had the opportunity to work one-on-one

with students for four years. That means not just teaching them to play trumpet or teaching them to compose. I have had students come back to me and thank me for their manhood. That’s better than money or trophies or fame and fortune. We are responsible for people’s children here. It is a privilege to be able to do that, to have this responsibility. How could I ever retire from that?” said Parsons, who will soon turn 70.

It is an attitude he learned to value through his performance opportunities with such music greats as Cab Calloway, Nat Adderley and Nat Adderley Jr., Herbie Mann, Philly Joe Jones, Archie Shepp and others and performing in more than 30 countries. He lived in Paris for three years and has toured in every country in Western Europe. He played in East Berlin when the wall was still up – and again after it was taken down. He has played in Africa three times. He played for the king of Morocco, the president of Gabon, the royal family in Monaco and for UNESCO. He has performed concerts in Japan, China, Taiwan and Thailand.

Thailand was the best trip of his life, said Parsons, who lived in a monastery there for two weeks.

“I spent two weeks in silence, and on Day 11, I jumped up because it hit me what Jesus was actually saying that as Christians we are not supposed to be angry. The real message is that as soon as you respond to negativity, you are now a part of it. We have to be above negativity, not respond to negativity. This is the real calling of what we need to do to make life better for the whole world.”

It was a profound discovery for a man who integrated a white high school in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1966 and was diagnosed with PTSD because of what happened there.

“Years later, I was doing a performance for fifth graders in Tallahassee, and the last song I did was What a Wonderful World. The music started up, and I was about to sing when I looked out, and I saw all the kids dancing together. They were black and white, and they didn’t notice that, and they didn’t care about that. I thought ‘that’s what we did it all for, so it would be like this.’ It brought tears to my eyes. I had to stop, and they had to wait for me to recover, so I could sing. That was my most important performance ever. More than UNESCO, more than the president of Gabon. The most important performance of my life. What I saw that day let me know my work is not in vain,” he said. That is the message behind Tribal Disorder, a collective Inspiring a New Generation movement against disorder among humans. Above: Parsons, “In spiritual terms, this is what one of the it’s about,” Parsons explained. world's finest trumpeters, teaches more than just the art of music. “Going beyond the separation human beings have made for themselves by geography and race and other boundaries. These things are false. I discussed this with Alan Sheppard, the astronaut. If you go into space and look back at the planet, Earth, you don’t see any lines separating us.”

It is a message Parsons hopes transcends the music that defines his 60-plus years of playing and composing music, particularly the jazz of perhaps the most important musician in the history of America, Louis Armstrong.

Tickets for Parsons’ What a Wonderful World concert at the BRHS Auditorium at 7 p.m. on Feb. 10 are $20 and are available at alexcityarts.org. Students and children will be admitted free.

For more information about Longineu Parsons and Tribal Disorder, visit longineu.com.