Hannibal Lokumbe part 1

One day I was riding with a friend through Bastrop. We came across the gentleman above, sans trumpet, riding his old school cruiser bicycle through town. My friend remarked that he guessed the guy on the bike was trying to be green, or energy conscious, by riding his bike.

Of course, I knew who the man above is. He's Hannibal Lokumbe, world famous jazz trumpeter, composer and arranger. I began to tell my friend what I knew of Hannibal.

Born Marvin Charles Peterson in Smithville, Texas, he went on to attend North Texas State University until going ahead and getting on with it and moving to New York to make music in 1969.

He moved back to Bastrop County in the late nineties, after a tribal healer told him to move back to his homeplace for the good of his children. Since then, he now lives in Bastrop proper, with his family.

Here's a New York Times article link about one of his famous compositions and performances back a mere 11 years ago, called "African Portraits".

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/08/nyregion/towns-music-voices-one-continent-influenced-culture-another.html

Hannibal is interesting on so many levels. First, he studied trumpet with one of the most reknown SAXAPHONE players of all time, John Coltrane. Perhaps that's where he gets some of his unique phraseology on trumpet. But normally, students of an intrument study their instrument with someone who plays THE SAME instrument. Not a guy like Hannibal.

Undoubtedly, Hannibal had studied trumpet from great players in high school and college. But then there came a fork in the road, a place where he could go and be like everyone else or where he could go study trumpet under a genius sax player like Coltrane. That choice is fairly illustrious of the person I know as Hannibal.

He donates tons of time when he's home in Bastrop to civic causes. He gives free music lessons to kids, and he's got a kids' choir he's been teaching and composing and arranging for, and they just debuted at Long Center in Austin a few months ago.

I could go on and on with Hannibal stories for days. And I will, in other posts on this blog. He's one of the great things about living in Bastrop.