Quiet Mountain Essays
Copyright©, 2005
Stella Marrs, Jazz Diva and Activist!
A Birthday Tribute To An Unusual Woman
by
Frieda C. Groffy
We met for the first time in 1976, in Belgium. Stella Marrs had been invited to make a small tour
of the jazz clubs in the country by Roger Van Haverbeke (one of the best Belgian jazz musicians
then) after he had met her in New York. I just started working as a freelance journalist for a local
magazine, and because of my interest in jazz music I was send to the concert to meet her for an
interview. That meeting would make a deep, permanent ‘mark’ in the book of my life.
She was tall, slim, with a beautiful Afro, and she had a natural elegance that made her a ‘lady’ in
every sense of that word. She sang with an easy smoothness, a smiling warmth that made the
audience surrender to her charm from the first song on. So did I! Being an actress and performer
myself, I have always had an enormous respect and admiration for performers with that rare
quality of honesty and genuineness in what they do, which has nothing to do with celebrity or
stardom, but transforms them into that special brand of artist we never can cherish enough.
She was the first African-American woman I had met - at a time when the Civil Rights struggle
still went on ( did it ever end?!) and the Black Panther Party wasn’t yet erased completely by
Cointelpro, so being an activist myself, when we finally sat together for the interview we had a lot
of talking to do, and not just about music and all that jazz. More then an hour and several cups of
coffee later, two people who had met as strangers, left as friends. In time, after that first meeting,
we became sisters. Heart, mind and soul sisters.
The tour was such a success, with the production of an LP called "Stella Marrs meets Belgium",
and a T.V show with Toots Thielemans, that arrangements were made for Stella to return the next
year to participate in the Middlelheim Jazz Festival in Antwerp. During that period of a year
between the two tours, we became very close.
On the New York music scene Stella Marrs was quite a name- a Diva, known as "Ms. Soft Soul".
She shared the stage with Clark Terry, Yussef Lateef, Tooti Kumba Heath, Ron Carter, Curtis
Boyd, Chris Woods, and sang with the band of Lionel Hampton, who called her ‘the girl singer’.
She was also one of the first (if not the first) female dj’s who had a radio programme-on the jazz
station WRVR, wrote a musical, and is still a member of the International Association of Jazz
Educators (IAJE).
Stella knew the bitter taste of racism and humiliation but it didn’t embitter her as a person. On
the contrary, it turned her into the strong, warm, proud, combative woman she still is and always
will be, a real Warrior Woman in the most positive sense of those words.
Stella introduced me to the poetry of Nikki Giovanni and Langston Hughes, for which I owe her
eternal gratitude. In those days, except for James Baldwin, who had already been translated into
Dutch, black poets and writers were rather ‘unknown’ in Europe. And even now, only the
translated writers like Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Sapphire, Rita Dove and Toni Morrison are
reaching a broader audience.
So Stella didn’t just use her voice to sing, but also to protest, to inspire, to march, to fight the
righteous struggle against bigotry, inequality, hate and intolerance. A small bright light to make
the difference in the darkness.
Though the second European tour, professionally, was as successful as the first one, I knew she was
disappointed by the attitude of several people around her and that she had returned to the States
with an unhappy feeling. Then, a short while later, although I don’t know why, we lost complete
track of each other. It did hurt a lot, but during all those years, I always had this strong feeling
deep inside that one day we would meet again.
Finally, a little miracle happened almost two years ago. Due to the ‘magic’ of cyberspace, I found
her again. Not as a singer (though she’s still performing), but as the director of the Martin Luther
King Multipurpose Centre in Spring Valley, New York. The circle was again complete, the broken
chain linked back together, with all the warmth, the love, the friendship, and the ‘sisterhood’ of the
past, we picked up where we had left off. It reminded me that when bright moments like that
happen in your life, you feel very humble and you count your blessings.
With her sharp mind, her commitment and her generosity, Stella Marrs is the kind of woman that
is a credit to society. Any society. I know, sister, you don’t make much fuss about it - simply
doing what you think is the right thing to do, 12 hours a day if necessary - but it fills me with joy
to pay you this little tribute. You deserve it all the way and back.
I would like to end this unusual story in an unusual way - with the song I once wrote for
you:
Blues for Stella
She came out of nowhere / on a frosty autumn evening / out of nowhere on a frosty autumn night /
she was a woman with a smile like a warm summer morning and a heart as wide as the sky / the
gutter of the street where she was born, was much dirtier then mine / her skin is African but her roots
are in Harlem / and I feel good whenever she is near / for she’s that push in my back / the pat on my
shoulder/ the understanding without even a word /she’s the smile in my eyes / our hands talk the same
language/ with her I never feel cheated/she’s my victory without a price / she came out of nowhere / on
a frosty autumn evening / out of nowhere on a frosty autumn night / and though the whole bloody
Atlantic is streaming between us / I know that she exists and that is all I need.
Contributor's Notes...
Ms. Groffy is a busy spoken word performer and traveler, based in Belgium. She is a frequent contributor to
QME, and has a spoken word CD out called "Voices with Scars", which was inspired by her first visit to
South Africa. Find out more about this Belgian poet/author through her website: http://www.friedagroffy.be
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