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High Priest: The 11th Annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam |
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Sunday, 29 January 2006 00:02 |
High Priest
The 11th Annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam
November 22-26, 1998
By John Sinclair
High Priest of the 1998 Cannabis Cup
The little bitty lobby of the Quentin Hotel is a viper's paradise. For the duration of the Cannabis Cup--and for several days before and after the official festivities--this cozy space overlooking a lovely canal just off Amsterdam's busy Leidseplein is filled with celebrants variously sorting, rolling, smoking and singing the praises of the vast cornucopia of sacramental materials made available to High Times' celebrity judges by Holland's illustrious seed merchants.
At any time of the night or day a gleeful consort of serious tokers can be found seated around the four small tables and the big couch in the Quentin's warm living room of a lobby, methodically putting something like forty different strains of marijuana to the ultimate test and spreading the wealth around to everyone in the room.
The Honorable Milton Mesirow--son of the legendary Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow, the Windy City clarinet player who introduced Harlem to marijuana--and his wife Gwen, here in Amsterdam to honor Mezz and his cohort Louis Armstrong as this year's inductees into the Cannabis Hall of Fame, hold forth in one corner, while New Orleans trumpet man James Andrews, "the Satchmo of the Ghetto," lounges on the sofa, watching a member of the High Times crew twist up a humongus bomber blended from an assortment of exotic buds with names like El Nino, Pot of Gold, Super Silver Haze, and Jack Herer. The Honorable Jack Bradley, a close pal of Louis Armstrong, shuffles through a cloud of smoke to the tiny bar against the back wall and orders a tasty libation.
For several days a steady stream of judges, crew members, musicians and dancers flows through the lobby of this small Dutch hotel in a heady spirit of comraderie and high times. There is so much reefer on hand that it boggles the mind, and such a panoply of impromptu rituals which attend its preparation and use that anyone passing through can't help but get caught up in the fun. It's the 11th Annual Cannabis Cup in full bloom, and the festivities are about to begin!
This is an auspicious occasion for your humble correspondent, now happily ensconsed in the High Priest suite at the Quentin Hotel and surrounded by my wife Penny, my daughter Celia, the members of my band, the Blues Scholars, our three dancers, filmmaker Steve Gebhardt, and assorted friends from the USA who have checked in with us.
The High Times brain trust has invited me to preside over this year's festivities and--in a stroke of utter genius--has engaged the Blues Scholars to provide the entertainment for each night's gathering at the 1998 Cannabis Cup, which is dedicated to exploring the relationship between marijuana and creativity with a special focus on the role played by weed in the early days of jazz.
The Blues Scholars, a rugged band of life-long marijuana smokers and Drug War veterans based in New Orleans, has prepared long and hard for this assignment. Crescent City trumpet star James Andrews will represent his musical hero, Louis Armstrong, and clarinetist Chris Kohl will pay homage to Mezz Mezzrow in a program of music selected from their recorded works from the 1920s and 30s, including jazz classics like "Sendin' The Vipers," "Really The Blues," "Struttin' With Some Barbecue," "If You'se A Viper" and "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You."
A special text has been composed in their honor as well, incorporating passages from the writings of Louis and Mezz, and endless hours of rehearsal with Chris, guitarist Bill Lynn and drummer Mike Voelker have produced the "Viper Mad" suite, a hard-swinging synthesis of music and verse which will be presented at Wednesday night's Cannabis Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Our friend Ron Esposito has brought his bass all the way from Cincinnati to help us out, and the Bywater Dancers--Katie Euliss, Stacy Scott-Reid and Jaimie Zar--are ready to unleash their Crescent City choreography on an unsuspecting public.
Our preparations for this sacred mission to honor the two legendary pioneers of pot at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam have been undertaken with a spiritual fervor appropriate to the occasion. Mezz Mezzrow and Louis Armstrong have touched and shaped our lives in very personal and particular ways, and the opportunity to pay them homage in the context of the marijuana liberation movement has sent thrills coursing through our beings for the past several weeks.
The Blues Scholars were organized around the concept of turning people on to the great musical heroes of American culture, from Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters to Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, but this assignment has taken us even deeper into the wellsprings of modern life to celebrate the confluence of marijuana and creative musical activity.
Let's say it right out: Louis Armstrong, a serious viper for his entire adult life, was the man who created and popularized the jazz solo and placed improvisation and instrumental virtuosity at the center of American music. He set the pace for the development of popular music in the 20th century, and his achievement lives on in every solo played by every instrumentalist in popular music for the past 70 years.
Mezz Mezzrow was the man who popularized marijuana. A Jewish clarinet player from Chicago who followed Louis Armstrong to New York City in the late 1920s, Mezzrow sold fat, clean, carefully tailored joints of Mexican golden-leaf on a centrally-located street corner in Harlem, the cultural center of African America in the early decades of the present century, and pretty much invented that popular staple of underground life, the nickel bag.
Mezz was also one of the first white Americans of modern times to conduct a systematic attack on racial segregation in public life. He married a Black woman in 1935 and shortly thereafter organized the first integrated commercial jazz orchestra, the Disciples of Swing.
Both men emerged from the terrible background of poverty and racial discrimination which were the lot of Blacks and Jews in the early days of this century. Both served terms in the reformatory during their teenage years, and both were victims of the marijuana laws during the transitional period in the 30s when weed was fully criminalized by the federal government.
Yet neither was swayed from the artistic path each had chosen as youths, and their music remains as vibrant testimony to the power of the creative imagination.
Oh yeah, both men also wrote about their experiences with music and marijuana--Armstrong at some length in a third installment of his autobiography which was never published, and Mezzrow in the epochal account of his life and times titled Really the Blues, written with Bernard Wolfe and published in 1946. This book turned on thousands of innocent young Americans to the wonders of weed and served as a bible for budding vipers in the late 1940s and early 50s.
Here's where I come in, as a teenage rhythm & blues fanatic growing up in a little country town outside of Flint, Michigan in the 50s. Somehow a paperback copy of Really the Blues made its way into my hands at just about the same time Jack Kerouac shocked the nation with the release of his marijuana-drenched underground travelogue, On the Road, and Allen Ginsberg fired his immortal Howl & Other Poems into the heart of American life.
These books illuminated a world I could feel but had never seen, and they irretrievably altered the course of my young life. Thenceforth I would follow without faltering the narrow path mapped in their narratives that led to poetry and jazz, beatniks and marijuana.
By 1960 I had embraced modern jazz and the practice of poetic composition; two years later I finally got my hands on some marijuana; and by 1964 I had entered the tiny community of beatniks and musicians which huddled precariously on the fringes of Motor City society, living the life first limned in Really the Blues and On the Road.
In the fall of 1964 I was arrested for selling small bags of marijuana to friends around the Wayne State University campus. At about the same time I received a flyer in the mail from Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders in New York City announcing the launch of LEMAR, a grass-roots effort to legalize marijuana by challenging existing laws and disseminating public information on the positive aspects of pot smoking. Following the poets' stellar example, I started Detroit LEMAR and began a long period of marijuana activism which would stretch until 1978.
Two more weed busts resulted in prison sentences of six months in the Detroit House of Correction (1966) and a 9-1/2-to-10-year sentence in the Michigan prison system for possession of two joints which culminated in a successful challenge to the constitutionality of the state's draconic weed laws and my release after serving 29 months under maximum security (1969-71).
Based in Ann Arbor after my release, I helped enact the city's historic $5 fine for marijuana possession and was present at the first annual Hash Bash on April 1, 1972, staged in defiance of the state's continued criminalization of this harmless substance.
Then I was elected to the Board of Directors of Amorphia, the Bay area legalization organization that sold Acapulco Gold rolling papers to raise money for its activities--including launching the first California marijuana initiative, known as Proposition 19.
Amorphia was succeeded by NORML a year or two later, and I ended my career as an activist in 1978 after working the Michigan legislature in support of a decriminalization bill as a paid NORML lobbyist. The bill failed, and I withdrew to private life as an arts activist, artists manager and booking agent in Detroit, convinced that America was totally unprepared to give up the ghost of its antiquated pot laws for, oh, the next 20 years or so.
Now that score of years has passed, and I have been drawn back into the legalization struggle by my friends George Kucevich in Boston (here at the Cannabis Cup with us) and Michael Simmons in Los Angeles. Medical marijuana is legalized in California, Arizona, Washington, and other states while the voices in the wilderness who have been shouting that the emperor ain't got no clothes on with respect to the utter idiocy of the drug laws have grown into a mounting chorus demanding to be shown any shred of evidence that marijuana is a harmful element in our society.
The drug law reform community, beginning to wake up after two decades of near slumber, is scrambling to catch up with the mood and motion of the great new horde of weed smokers who have somehow shaped a life for themselves out of the myths and scraps of history passed down to them through the warped lens of popular culture, grafting themselves onto the core spirit of the 60s and instinctively rejecting all the bullshit which has come since. This is the best thing I've seen in 25 years, and I'm happy to shed my long-held cloak of marijuana anonymity if it means we can finally move this issue forward once again.
I re-entered the fray in 1995 as a speaker at the annual MassCann rally on Boston Common, a remarkable event organized by Massachusetts NORML and sponsored by WBCN, the giant rock station, which attracts 60,000 to 80,000 young people to protest the marijuana laws and call for freedom for all marijuana prisoners.
Here I met backstage with Steve Hager of High Times and enjoyed the first of what has become a welcome series of heated conversations about the history of the movement, where it's going, and what High Times is doing about it.
My beef has always been with the general absence of intelligence and creativity in the modern marijuana world and the relentless focus on the plant itself and the many products that may be marketed in its name.
Marijuana isn't about marijuana, I would holler, it's about getting high and what products of your imagination may emanate while you're in an elevated state of mind.
Marijuana is about thinking and doing and making things happen in a mental world of your own creation, a place where you are free to express your creative intelligence in any way and whatever form you might want to fashion.
Marijuana has long been a staple of everyday life in the creative community. Poets, painters, composers and players--along with their many friends--pioneered the concept of daily toking, alone and with others, as an essential lifestyle choice for modern-day Americans.
Millions of great concerts in venues of every size and fantastic recordings in almost every idiom have been produced by musicians who were whacked out of their minds on weed--and maybe even some other substances--while they were playing.
Let's not forget these things, because to me getting high is about turning yourself on to the human universe of artistic creation and its endless galaxy of fascinating constructions.
It's about getting together with other people who are making their own products of the imagination and smoking some joints and ranting and raving about what's on your mind and what you're going to do about it--and then going out and doing it. This is what daily life has been for me ever since I started getting high back in 1962, and believe me, it has served me well and faithfully all my productive life.
Now it's two years before the turn of the century and I'm sitting in the lobby of the Quentin Hotel in Amsterdam smoking heaps and piles of the best weed in the world. This is more like it! Bring on the Cannabis Cup!
Welcome to Amsterdam, where people can enjoy getting high with their friends without all the police-state tension and fear which is an inescapable component of everyday life for recreational drug users in America.
On the other hand, it's not a place where all the citizens are laying around blasted on weed. Most of them are going about their business like anywhere else, but if you're a smoker you can buy several potent strains of pot and hash right off the menu in the city's many coffeeshops, or you can cop some seeds and other implements of cultivation at the smart shops and grow your own.
Free from War on Drugs-type persecution by the state and mass media, marijuana enthusiasts in Holland have devoted the past decade or so to developing ever more efficient and lovely breeds of cannabis and making the seeds available to anyone who wants them.
The Cannabis Cup has focused attention on their heroic efforts for 11 years now, fomenting a fierce but friendly competition among the seed companies each fall to gain recognition for the fragrant, highly-evolved fruits of their labors.
The competition is judged by some 1500 potheads who come to the Cannabis Cup from all over the world, but mostly from Europe and the USA, to pay their modest registration fee, receive their credentials, and blow their brains out on weed, hash and other stimulants for the best part of a week. High Times affiliate 420Tours arranges air travel and lodging for something like 850 Americans, carefully placing them in sympathetic hotels and generally looking after their well-being throughout the festivities.
While the massed panel of citizen judges has the final say in the balloting, there is a special body of "celebrity judges" who play a highly visible but mostly ceremonial role in the proceedings.
The competing seed companies, however, treat the celebrity judges like visiting royalty, openly courting our ultimate endorsement by plying us with fancy cases full of bags and bags of weed and hashish, smoking implements, souvenirs and other goodies.
In turn we were expected to sample as many of their wares as possible before casting our votes on Thanksgiving Day--a formidable task indeed, with more than 40 different strains of marijuana up for evaluation and only five days to devour them.
Official Cannabis Cup activities include an exposition daily at the Pax Party House in another part of town and planned events including cultivation seminars, coffeeshop tours, a trip to Cannabis Castle, a meeting of the Blacks for Cannabis Council, a Sister Council conducted by celebrity judges Patty Collins and Sweetbryar Ludwig, a CD release party for the Hempilation 2 collection with Steve Bloom, a reading by Chris Simunek from his new book, Paradise Burning, and the daily Council Meeting and 4:20 ceremony which is designed to give everyone in attendance a voice in the proceedings.
A series of screenings at the Melkweg club included the world cinema premier of Steven Hager's films Soma, on the ancient ceremonial healing plant of the Hindu Old Testament; Waldo 420; and WHEE2 starring Big Mountain, The Merry Pranksters, Ekoostic Hookah, Ina May Gaskin and the Cannabis Cup Band.
Steve Gebhardt screened a print of his unreleased documentary, Ten For Two: The John Sinclair Freedom Rally, shot in December 1971 and starring John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg, Archie Shepp, Commander Cody, Bobby Seale and a cast of thousands.
But from the moment of our arrival at the Quentin, when we were handed a big bouquet of flowers laced with bags of weed and pre-rolled bombers (courtesy of the Greenhouse), it was hard to leave the comfortable, smoke-filled lobby of the hotel any longer than was absolutely necessary.
This cozy space seemed to contain the very essence of what we were here for: smoking as much of the best weed as was humanly possible. Key figures in the festivities drifted in and out of focus, and it just started to feel like if you sat there long enough, everyone you wanted to see would eventually walk into the room and sit down with you--and light up.
Getting out for breakfast in the morning was always difficult. Once you hit the lobby you couldn't help but take a seat and have a neighborly toke with the production crew, Jiva and her dancers and drummers, assorted members of the Blues Scholars (invariably calling out "Hashey, hashey" in their constant quest for additional hashish), and anyone else on the set.
After breakfast it was the same thing until it was time for the nightly gig, and then the scene repeated itself in the dressing room before and after our performances.
Sunday night we played for the seed company banquet at the Pax Party House, a warm and friendly event highlighted by the introduction of the celebrity judges and the passing out of the bounteous bundles of official bribery.
On Monday night we moved to the Melkweg for the Opening Ceremonies at Hemp Hall, where the Blues Scholars were joined by the Cannabis Cup band for an evening of high merriment and glee. At each event we introduced our new Cannabis Cup theme song, a rowdy little number by Bill Lynn titled "It's All Good."
Tuesday and Wednesday nights were special events designed to honor Dutch medical marijuana pioneer Irene Vorink and the role played by women in the movement, and to induct Louis Armstrong and Mezz Mezzrow into the Cannabis Hall of Fame.
The Blues Scholars presented the European premiere of The White Buffalo Prayer, an extended work dedicated to the White Buffalo Calf Woman of Lakota legend. A great band from Rotterdam closed the show with their salute to the music of Detroit called Roots of Motor City Rock & Soul.
The Wednesday night induction ceremony was a personal high point as the Blues Scholars took the stage before a large and responsive crowd to offer the premiere performance of our new work, the Viper Mad suite, paying homage to Pops and Mezz and the beautiful music they made. James Andrews on trumpet and Chris Kohl on clarinet raised the spirits of these jazz pioneers again and again, bringing our cultural history and the world of today into exact alignment through the power of swing.
Everybody came together for the Cannabis Cup Awards ceremony at Melkweg Thursday night, with farewell performances by the Blues Scholars and the Cannabis Cup band, a crazy Hemp Fashion Show, and the highly anticipated announcement of the winning entries in the marijuana competition.
The polls had closed at 2 am the night before, the celebrity judges had met and ruled, and the winners were called to the stage to receive their awards--some, like the very popular Greenhouse, over and over again.
Their Super Silver Haze and El Nino strains were huge favorites, although my personal pick was their newest breed, Nevil's Haze, a fine smoke with the look, taste, aroma and impact of the classic Colombian Gold pot of the early 1970s.
Strong showings were also made by the Sensi Seed Company, Dutch Passion, and Flying Dutchman, who had tucked their judges' samples inside a wooden shoe.
How can one pick a winner from such a plethora of exotic marijuana, everyody always wants to know, and my method was simplicity itself: you smoke until you get high, then you smoke a different sample, and if it gets you higher than the first one you put that brand at number one until another strain gets you even higher. You pay attention to the look, smell, bouquet and other esthetic considerations, but the ultimate test is the feeling you get inside your head.
By the time we left Amsterdam to return to our homes in New Orleans our heads were spinning with the incredible smoke and beautiful memories of our Cannabis Cup experience. Sad smiles of farewell were on everyone's faces as we prepared to leave the promised land, knowing we'd never forget the friends we'd made and the high times we'd had for the entire past week of revelry.
I know one thing for sure: this is the best gig I've ever had!
--New Orleans
December 21, 1998
(C) 1998, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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