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close to the microphone now, wobbled back artfully to the last phrase he had played and slithered to an end.
    The audience stood as one and applauded wildly.
    Kanoon bowed, ever so slightly, a cold smile flickering at the corners of his mouth. Good, really good, he thought, to see the people giving themselves up to Another Music.
    He nodded solemnly to the members of his group, taking the measure of each one as he did so. Armandito on congas, a fiercely proud little black dervish from Matanzas, Cuba, who acted and played as though rhythm belonged to him. Sheikh Baby on oud, Buford Knobbs singing on every sized flute currently known, doubling on chekere and double gong; Pablo Cruz-Extrana playing the cello with so much quickness and grace that people were always asking why the dude was playing this oversized guitar, standing on end like that. Them, that is, who weren’t hip to the fact that Cruz-Extrana was a genius. Baby Blood blew soprano sax and loved ragaic solos, always seemed to be mad at somebody or something, but showed none of that kind of feeling as he spooled out yard after yard of brutally honest song.
    â€œConcerto for Bassoon!” someone yelled.
    â€œYeahhh! Concerto for Bassoon!” somebody else picked up the request.
    He stood at the edge of the stage and let them come at him in full voice before he took a backward step to his instrument.
    â€œYeahhh, gon’ put the pot on!”
    â€œCon-certo for Bassooooooon, Ka-nooooooon!”
    â€œRight on, brother!”
    He picked his bassoon up from its stand, glared the audience into submissive silence, … paused to deep-breathe several times, to tune in with the members of his group, and gestured the music into being “Uh one! uhh two! uh three!”
    Cruz-Extrana loved the Concerto for Bassoon, and it showed in his method of attack. A so-called jazz critic, unable to get past Pablo’s long black eyelashes and his slender, delicately tapered fingers, called his opening statement, the Chinese Blues. Pablo and Kanoon had laughed themselves to tears reading the review. It was obvious that the reviewer had never heard of a saeta, nor had he ever heard La Nina de los Peines or Manitas de Plata’s cousin, Jose Reyes, sing one.
    He slipped Baby Blood in behind the cello’s opening statement, nodding warmly at the Baby’s deep, searching, slurry sounds. Buford trailed in, swiping at the Baby’s tail ends with little melodic swoops and whoops, Sheikh Baby counter-pointed with his oud, Armandito calmly put the chekere aside and got down on his congas with a rhythmic pattern that was almost Hindu Indian in its complexity.
    The unit, jellied into place with the first movement, slowed down to pick Kanoon up in the second section and stretched out from there.
    Kanoon, never content to feel his way up and down old scales, frowned at the familiarity of his first notes, erased the memory of them with a succession of finely woven statements, profound commentaries on his state of mind and the deep regard he had for beauty and the truth that his instrument was capable of exploring. The Gemini lady’s eyes glistened, and the corners of her mouth grew moist as she listened, each of his notes a precious piece of advice to her consciousness.
    Kanoon fixed her mind with a soulful glance at the end of the piece, and told her, in eye language, that he wanted her to follow him back to his dressing room at the conclusion of the set.
    The audience, satisfied with another reading of his trademark work, the avant garde of Another Music, allowed him to leave the stage, opening up an aisle of adoration to his dressing room.
    The Gemini lady, a lyrically constructed, Ethiopian looking cocainist, her head held high, followed him, dazzled by the idea that she was going to be given the privilege of serving the master. Warm applause and many jealous looks followed them as they turned the far corner of the club, another kind of creativity about to