Finding the Berkeley vibe in Leimert Park

When I ARRIVED IN LOS Angeles for grad school in 1992, I longed for a Bay Area vibe. Berkeley had spoiled me. Public debaters interrogating foreign policy, nonstudents reading thick books in Cafe Milano, the weekend drum circle, June Jordan, Jesus holding court. But UCLA’s manicured campus lacked funk; I had to go out and find it. Restless, I would drive through neighborhoods all over the city, always in search.

One day I was going down Crenshaw Boulevard when I saw a small mob clustered outside the wide picture windows of a storefront that said World Stage. Blistering trumpet runs and rambunctious jazz drumming blared into the street. I pulled over, jumped out and squeezed to the corner of the window; inside, a quintet played. When the soloists hit an especially creative run of notes, the audience members packed in the 50 seats stood and screamed: “Go! Yeah, do it!”

A neighborhood that had jazz this hot on a Saturday afternoon is where I needed to be living.

Leimert Park, a working-class neighborhood in the heart of the predominantly African American Crenshaw district, is rooted in irony. Up until the 1940s, racially restrictive housing codes kept African Americans out of the mix. Today it is the very center of black art, culture and grass-roots politics and a magnet for the city’s bohemian elements with its numerous cafes, jazz clubs, bookstores and art galleries. Festivals year-round (Leimert Park Jazz Festival, Malcolm X Festival, Black Family Day Festival) repeatedly confirm the importance of community, of how powerful a large gathering of human beings can be.

My first Leimert Park apartment was on Edgehill Drive. Not even a full block from the buzzing activity of the live-jazz coffeehouse 5th Street Dick’s and the dance studios’ whirling dancers and their sweating, shouting drummers. Every Sunday morning, I ritually strolled down Edgehill to the early dance class. The six drummers always had their shirts off, playing the rhythms that have survived the horrors of the Middle Passage, while the women -- their heads and bodies wrapped in bright-colored fabric -- hurled themselves through the air. I would close my eyes and let the drum vibrations move through me.

On sleepless summer nights, I’d climb out of bed and walk down to 5th Street Dick’s at 1 a.m. Lining the sidewalk out front were rows of tables and chairs with dozens of men playing chess. Inside, the ground floor of Dick’s would be packed with men and women flirting, sipping coffee and talking loudly over the bands wailing away upstairs.

I began on Edgehill, and now I’m on Edgemar Avenue, just up the hill. The first thing I noticed when I moved here was that the slight change in elevation came with a consistent summer breeze -- a perfect companion when you work out of your home. But still, I just can’t stay away from the village area on Degnan Boulevard with its shops and cafes. I’m there pretty much every day.

On recent Sundays, I have strolled down to the park around noon to hear the drummers. For two decades now, drummers have been bringing their congas, djimbes and bells to commune in front of the Leimert Park fountain. I like to write to the music, so I bring whatever I’m working on and camp out on the nearby grass. As soon as the drumming starts, a crowd gathers and the dancing begins. The merchants I shop from, and the homeless people I slide dollar bills to, get lost in the music.

When I get hungry, I walk across the street to the Kitchen for its delicious red beans and rice or macaroni and cheese. Some days I’ll spend hours browsing the used books and records section upstairs at Zambezi, a popular neighborhood bookstore and gift shop. It makes me feel good that owner Nzinga Kimbrough greets me by name when I walk into her store and when I jog by her house on my morning run. In fact, one of the most attractive aspects of Leimert Park is that people address each other as “brother” and “sister” when they pass on the street. This small gesture brings a discernible warmth and unity to this urban African American village.

On Thursday nights, the World Stage hosts a jazz jam session. The Stage was co-founded by the late Billy Higgins (along with poet Kamau Daaood), a drummer who played with John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and a list of other jazz legends. Billy’s reputation and popular jazz workshops have made the small storefront a magnet for the best players in the world, as well as cats in the neighborhood.

I recently saw an incredible set with tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and vocalist Dwight Trible. In much the same way that complete strangers can be bonded through the emotion that crisis engenders, the Sanders crowd seemed to gel under the sway of such emotional music. When major jazz artists like Roy Hargrove or one of the Marsalis brothers come to town, you’ll find them, after their show, at the World Stage for the late-night jam session. Good jazz musicians have dexterity that can be spellbinding. An alto saxophonist hopscotching across the levers, while listening to the piano player. The trumpet player squeezing off notes like sustained, automatic rifle fire while the kinetic drummer drives the getaway car. The bassist’s long fingers holding it all together. Seeing the interaction that created such powerful music was -- and still is -- a nonstop source of inspiration for me.

I’d pull out the journal that I always kept and begin to compose a poem about the music or the people playing it, people I came to know well after years of listening to them on the bandstand and befriending them off it. They’d tell me their stories about being on the road with Herbie Hancock and Coltrane, about their hot girlfriends, hotter ex-wives, their dreams and addictions. Their lives would find their way into my poems.

When I first moved to Leimert Park, I helped restart a writer’s workshop that had been previously hosted by the World Stage. From this small but intense literary workshop, major books have been published and careers have flourished, among them Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Ruth Forman, award-winning poet Peter J. Harris and bestselling novelist Jenoyne Adams (my wife). It’s fascinating to watch people in the workshop trying to straighten out their complicated lives between parallel lines, then to see the final product in bookstores.

Here in this neighborhood, among poets and jazz musicians and dancers who know how to fly, where drums vibrate late into the night, I am also working out my own complicated life between parallel lines, and in the process I have found my true community.

Michael Datcher is the director of literary programs at the World Stage and author of the bestselling memoir “Raising Fences.”