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William Parker is the central figure of the free jazz
renaissance of the last ten years.
Born in the Bronx and rooted up through the Loft Scene of the 70s, he
is an extraordinary bassist and equally gifted composer for his Little Huey Creative
Music Orchestra and trio and quartet configurations. He is the co-curator with wife Patricia of
the annual Vision Festival in New York City.
His earnestness as a musician is only rivaled by his compassion as
human being. He is known by his colleagues
and New York City audiences as the Mayor of the Lower East Side, often seen
performing several times a week all over the city.
William is a member of virtually every one of the most significant free jazz
ensembles active today, including Die Like A Dog with reedist Peter Brotzmann
and drummer Hamid Drake; the David S Ware Quartet with pianist Matthew Shipp
and his twenty-year relationship with trumpeter Roy Campbell, saxophonist
Daniel Carter, and drummer Rashid Bakr funneled into the telepathy of Other
Dimensions In Music. This interview
was conducted in 2002 and aired in four segments on WZBC.
At an early age
On bass teachers
You have to be in the moment
On the 70s loft scene
We don’t want to get too hung up on technique
On Albert Ayler and the evolution of free jazz
If you sit on a rock in the desert…
On individuality
The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield
On small ensembles and the clarinet trio
On Anti-Pop Consortium, DJ Spooky, and the younger
generation
Little Huey and The Tone World
BC: Can you tell me the first
record or poem or film that you remember that started you thinking about
taking up this art form of creative music as a profession?
WP: Well, I guess several things...I
remember listening to the MJQ [Modern Jazz Quartet] and some recordings they
did on Atlantic and listening to the things that Percy Heath was doing that
were placed differently than walking bass lines. He was playing some bass parts that stood
out in that particular ensemble. Then
of course, later on I listened to the music of John Coltrane...Ornette
Coleman...and Albert Ayler. But maybe
one of the initial romantic ideas of playing music came from when I was a kid...I
used to watch a movie by Francois Truffaut called Shoot The Piano Player, and there is a short scene where a bass
player is carrying his bass out of the club.
I remember as a kid watching that and that sort of caught my early on.
Also I listened quite a bit to the bassist John Lamb, who used to play with
Duke Ellington’s band, and he impressed me a lot also. I also enjoyed the work of George Duvivier.
BC: How did you
arrive at the bass as your primary instrument? I read somewhere that you started with the
trumpet.
WP: At an early age, when I was eight
or nine, my father got me a trumpet and we did mail-order lessons – you pay a
dollar a week and you get a lesson in the mail. It was a whole trumpet study course, so he
got me that. But I wasn’t seriously
interested in it at that time, and later on I switched from trumpet to
trombone, then trombone to cello. And
when I was in junior high school, I remember beginning to be attracted to the
low sounds and to the bass – they had one bass in the ensemble, and I was
playing the cello. I sort of made up
my mind at that time that I would probably end up playing the bass. And then layers of things began to
happen...listening to music, like the music I just spoke about, and
eventually just making that decision.
BC: Can you speak about early
influences in other art forms. For
example, I read that you studied poetry and film as well...you cited Patchen,
Maya Deren, and Stan Brakhage, who are filmmakers I have recently been
studying...it seems you were taking in these experimental filmmakers and
artists at an early age...did they inspire you to think about music in like
terms?
WP: Well...you begin to put the things
you read and study at the time into context.
During high school, I was studying the music itself just by listening;
I was studying and reading the poetry of Kenneth Patchen. And what I was learning is that art had an
effect on people, particularly myself.
I was beginning to make sense out of life. You know, when you’re young and growing up,
one of the hardest things to do is make sense out of life...what are you
going to do, who are you going to be, all of these things become difficult
tasks that young people have to confront by experimenting and trying
different things.
Things just suddenly began to make sense for me. I was studying some religious books at the
time, Bhagavad Gita, the compassionate teachings of Buddha, and things just
finally started to solidify in my sort of acknowledging that art or music was
one of the keys for me to put my life together, and also to project out onto
the world.
BC: You
studied early on with a number of bassists, including Richard Davis and Jimmy
Garrison. Can you talk about what you
remember most about these lessons.
Were the lessons in the form of formal sit-down lessons, or more in
the form of informal conversations about experiences...
WP: Well my first bass teacher was
actually Paul West, the bassist with Dizzy Gillespie, and then I studied with
Richard Davis, and then Milt Hinton, and then Arthur Davis, up at the
Jazzmobile School. And then I studied
privately with Jimmy Garrison and later on with Wilbur Ware.
Each professional musician, when they teach...they have a different approach
according to what they’ve been taught and where they’re coming from, and what
they would like to sort of have you remember or learn from them. Richard Davis, for example, was very much
of a professional. He played all kinds
of music. He was very creative in the
jazz domain, but he also played classical and R&B and folk music and
Latin music. And his approach was to
learn the bass from top to bottom and try to play as many kinds of music as
you can, the idea being the more things you can play, not only could you make
a living, but it would also enhance your music. And there was really nothing to fear as far
as style.
Milt Hinton was talking about projection and simplicity. He would tell me to play a blues in C, just
play the note C. Just play one
note. And just play the tonic and work
on playing one note before you go to another note. And Art Davis was talking about using cello
techniques on the bass. On the bass,
on your left hand, you use the first, second, and then the third and fourth
fingers to put down together. And Art
developed a technique much like the cello where you use your third and fourth
fingers separately to hit different notes...he was talking about that kind of
arco and fingering techniques. Now
Jimmy Garrison wasn’t particularly interested in playing all kinds of
music...not that he could or couldn’t do these things, but he was interested
in doing what he was doing. So with
him, we spent time on the bass, but he also told me about the music business
a little bit. And Wilbur Ware would
just sort of play things and then hand the bass back to me, and I would play
things. So everyone had a different
approach. You learn by what they’re
actually telling you, but you also learn more by just being inspired that
they exist, and have reached a level or proficiency and excellence and are
striving to really be a human being on a high level. And this gave you something to work at and
to strive for. So it was not just
teaching, but being a source of inspiration.
BC: This music
seems to open up the possibilities for new discoveries on the bass by its
energy and openness. Do you often
discover new techniques in live concert settings and is there a recent
revelation you could share with us...do such revelations occur regularly?
WP: Well, there are periods where you
are discovering things in a sort of serendipitous way, where you don’t set
out necessarily to find a new sound.
But music is like grass, it just wants to be alive...so even when
you’re not looking for things, things come up. You begin to just place your bow on the
string and you turn it a little bit, and a new sound comes out. Or you just sort of bow a certain way or
pluck a certain way or move your left hand a certain way, and a different
sound comes out, and you being to develop that sound and if you wish, you can
add it to your vocabulary. And
sometimes you repeat it. Other times,
you may play something and never play that sound again. And you try to do it, but it just doesn’t
come up. So when you’re playing music,
you give birth to things, things come through you, and sometimes you keep
them...and sometimes they never appear again.
BC: You started playing with Cecil
Taylor early in your career. I
remember speaking with Sam Rivers once about playing with Cecil, and he spoke
about these marathon sessions with Cecil as necessitating the need to explore
other avenues of sound and color, in order to not fall into the same
patterns. Is that a constant challenge
when you’re playing this music, to keep things changing...how do you find
ways to continually change and move forward and not fall into the same
patterns?
WP: You know, you have to think on
your feet, while simultaneously not think
when you’re playing music, meaning that you practice and you train yourself
in order to negotiate sounds and rhythms and melodies on your instrument, and
to know where to place them. And this
is your vocabulary where you’re constantly doing split-second composing,
alterations of sound, and at the same time your mind and spirit are open and
empty to the music flowing through you...it’s like a wave. So in a sense, you’re not working that hard
at it. What you work at is to know how
to ride the wave. And once you know how
to ride the wave, you can play for hours and hours and hours, and you don’t
get tired, and you don’t really play the same things. I mean, every time you play, it wants to be different. And it’s only the same when you try...and
this sounds funny, but when you try to make it different sometimes, it ends
up being the same.
So you have to be in the moment, and that’s very hard for musicians to do
because musicians are trained to control the music, and what you want to do
is not control the music, you want to surrender to the music. And at the same time, you want to be able
to guide it, but you want it to guide you simultaneously, and that’s kind of
hard to do, because it’s against a lot of the music school principles, where
you have to be in control of it every second.
I think the music is bigger than us, so we just want to flow with
it. And once you get in the flow, you
really don’t have to worry about playing the same things, and the deeper you
go, and the more you play, the more things you’ll find to play. It’s just an endless, endless stream of
colors and shapes and sounds that the music can formulate...it’s like
raindrops and snowflakes...just an infinite number of possibilities.
BC: How often do you feel outside of
yourself when you’re playing, where you’re just a channel, and does this vary
with all the contexts you play in?
WP: Well, there are all kinds of
musics, and things that people are doing.
If you play trance music, and trance / cosmic music – cosmic music
going into trance, then that’s a particular area of the music. Charlie Parker got into that area. Everyone gets into this area because it’s
an area where the music finds itself going, which is when the music is
happening, there’s this trance happening.
And you really want to get that happening every time you play. Of course every group has a different
sensibility. Like Milt Jackson and Art
Farmer, if you listen to these guys improvise...Milt Jackson could just play
chorus after chorus after chorus, and connect the phrases off of any tune,
and that was a kind of trance, that was a kind of connection. And Art Farmer could do the same thing with
ballads. But it was in a certain area;
they painted with certain colors. A
musician like Bill Dixon – he paints with another shade and hues of colors,
and he has a certain energy that’s put in the music. But it all can live in the same area of
life as any great music. Any great
music is on the same level as any other great music; it just manifests itself
in different ways.
So for a master musician, the idea is that every time you play something
magical happens. And you can hear that
with certain musicians -- they play one note, and it’s there....there’s no warm-up, something’s happening already, it
begins to bubble. And other musicians
they hit a note and there’s no buoyancy, it doesn’t have the same vibrational
quality. And that’s what you’re training
for, to try to consistently have this lifeforce in your music every time you
play. Whether you’re playing long form
for two hours intensely, or whether you’re playing a ballad for two minutes,
or thirty seconds, you need that same energy.
Because if someone only has thirty seconds to listen, you’ve got to
have that energy for thirty seconds.
And regardless of style or form in the music, it’s the underlying
spirit and vibration that really makes it happen.
BC: You
mentioned that you had performed at Studio Rivbea, performed with Cecil
Taylor and his orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
What was the scene like during this so-called “loft scene” era, and
does it parallel in any way with what’s going on today in New York?
WP: Well, in the early 70s, you had a
lot of musicians coming to New York.
New York has got a particular energy already, because you have so much
happening. But around that time, you
had musicians coming in from Chicago, St Louis, Los Angeles, and they were
all coming to New York ready and wanting to play. So people were finding storefronts, lofts,
and creating and producing their own concerts because the established clubs
were not that receptive to hiring them.
So you had all of these musicians who instead of staying at home, came
out and created work for themselves, performing and recording their
music. So it was very lively at that
time. And there was a lot of energy in
the air...it was a nice fever-pitch happening. Rashied Ali had a club, Ornette Coleman had
a place, Sam Rivers had a place, Joe Lee Wilson had a place, there was Studio
We run by James Dubois and Juma Sultan, and then John Fischer had a
place...so you’ve got six to ten places that are run by musicians where
musicians can play. Which is a big
difference from what’s happening now.
Mind you, the real estate is way up now, but in those times musicians
were running their own places...at Rashied Ali’s, you could play for a whole
week!
BC: Wow, I didn’t realize there were
that many places...
WP: Oh yeah. And there were even more under the surface,
some that were really small. There was
Sunrise Studios on 2nd Avenue, there was a place called Inroads on
Mercer Street. I pulled out a book of
old flyers and there was some place where you could rent the St Marks Church
for twenty-five dollars! So that was
the big difference for me, was that musicians were not so much going to
Europe during that time, but staying here and trying to play and develop the
scene.
BC: I read that you met David S Ware
on a Cecil Taylor orchestra performance at Carnegie Hall in the early
70s. When did the David S Ware Quartet
start coalescing?
WP: Well, I met David Ware I guess in
1972 or ’73, because when I played with Cecil Taylor in ’74 at Carnegie Hall,
David was in the band. And in ’73
David had a band called Apogee with Cooper Moore and Marc Edwards, and they
rehearsed at 501 Canal Street. So I
met him then. And then we did some
things in the 80s with Marc Edwards and Cooper Moore, who at that time was
known as Gene Ashton. And I think
David stopped playing for a bit, after we had done a trio with Denis Charles
-- which was my project, and then after that, he came out again and we
started rehearsing as a trio around ’85 or ’86. I think Matthew joined the band in ’86, so
the band has been together about sixteen or seventeen years, with the core
being David, Matthew, and me. So
outside of Other Dimensions in Music and bands with Daniel Carter, who I’ve
played with since ’72, this band has had quite a bit of longevity. And it keeps growing and changing and still
remains very vital and interesting music that we’re doing.
BC: Regarding your compilation Through Acceptance of the Mystery Peace...was
the original intention to take isolated recording dates from the 70s and put
them together on an album for release, or was this decision to compile these
sessions onto one album something that happened more recently?
WP: Well, at that time I had done a
session at WKCR radio, which was the initial session for the recording. I think we only used one track from that
record, Rattles and Bells and the Light
of the Sun, but there is maybe another hour of music from that session
that I’d like to put out at some point.
But I didn’t really decide to put the record out until a few years
after that, so I wanted it to have different selections from different kinds
of music I was doing during that time.
So initially it was four tracks, and on the CD reissue we added the
string piece with Tristan Honsinger, William Connell, Jason Hwang, and Polly
Bradfield.
BC: Frank Lowe’s Black Beings with Joseph Jarman is one of those landmark records
in free music, and this was one of your first recordings. How did you meet Frank Lowe and how did the
recording date come about?
WP: Well, I had been going down to Studio
Rivbea. I think I first started
playing down there with Jemeel Moondoc.
And a lot of the musicians lived on the Lower East Side on 11th
Street between B and C. I used to
rehearse with a group called The Juice Quartet down the block on 11th
Street, where Wilbur Ware lived and Charles Brackeen lived around the
corner. Andrew Hill lived down the
block, and Rashied Sinan lived in the neighborhood. So you saw a lot of musicians down there
and you just meet people. I think I
saw Frank down at Studio Rivbea playing with Sunny Murray and Bill Lewis, and
we spoke and I’m not really sure how it came about, but he asked me to do
this concert with him with Joseph Jarman at Ornette Coleman’s loft, The
Artists House. So that record was
recorded at 131 Prince Street and was a two-day concert. There’s quite a lot more material from that
date with Rashied Sinan, Raymond Lee Cheng playing violin, Joseph Jarman, and
Frank Lowe.
BC: You also played with Don Cherry
during this timeframe?
WP: Yes, I played with Don at the Five
Spot in a group with Frank Lowe, Hakim Jamil, Roger Blank, Denis Charles, Ed
Blackwell, and Billy Higgins, and we played for a week. It was during the period of the Brown Rice record...we played some of
the music off of that record. There is
a tape of that week we did at the Five Spot, which was played on the radio,
which I’d like to get a copy of at some point.
BC: I was listening to the solo record
Lifting the Sanctions last night,
and you can hear the bass being used as a percussive instrument. And in the liner notes, you list something
like fourteen different techniques:
four basic techniques and then ten arc techniques on top of that. Do you find yourself often moving into more
of a percussive role when you’re improvising, and do you still use these
techniques you described?
WP: Well, I
think now I’m just more concerned with the music. At that particular stage of my development,
I was really in some musics relating the bass to a drum set, particularly
when I played pizzicato, and I still do that, but now I’m not really thinking
about it. That’s just a
sub-thought. So now I don’t really
think about technique, I just combine all of the techniques together in
whatever the music needs. So you might
hear me playing in a particular group and I might incorporate some percussive
things and then also use certain fingering patterns, but it’s all sort of
used as I need it as a means to an end.
So I’m not really thinking about technique. Technique is now, for me, is not really
important. What’s more important to me
now is just playing the music.
I think people get hung up too much on “extended technique”. Meaning if you’re a human being, an
extended technique might be helping a poor person, but that shouldn’t be an
extended technique, that should be part of your life! And it’s the same way with music. To me, what we call extended technique is
what India would call normal technique.
What we call microtonal music is in Africa just regular music they
play all the time. It’s all perspective,
you see. So I think extended technique
is essentially meaningless to me at this point. Whatever you use to make a sound is what
you use...so we don’t want to get too hung up on technique.
BC: You certainly hear a lot about
“extended technique” these days...
WP: Yeah, like growing up in the
projects, or growing up wherever you grow up as a kid, you listen to all
kinds of music. I mean, the electric
bassist James Jameson, he had to do a certain thing on the electric to get
that sound and to play those rhythms.
Ron Carter, when he was playing with Miles Davis, had to do certain
things to make the sound that he was getting.
And Reggie Workman has to do certain things to make the sound he
gets. And so you have this huge well
of things you listen to and draw from, and different musics call for
different ideas of methods to play the bass.
It’s all accessible to you, and there’s nothing weird about
it...there’s nothing extended, it’s just sound.
BC: I want to get your thoughts on
where the music has come since the work of Donald and Albert Ayler, who
called his music “freely spiritual music”.
Donald Ayler once described what he called “listening aids”, where he
said, “You have to relate sound to sound inside it. You have to try to listen to everything
together, follow the sound, the pitches, the colors, you have to watch them
move. Do you feel your music stems
from Ayler’s contributions, and if so, can you expand on how these comments
about how to listen to this music based on where you and your peers have
taken us since?
WP: I would say that
the musicians who I have played with and the music that we’ve developed over
the last twenty-five or thirty years, deals with in one way group
improvisation, and that is having not just one person soloing, but have four
people play together and not really have a soloist. Now this isn’t new, this is something in
the Baka or Pygmy Music, where you have four different parts going
simultaneously. Our contribution to
it, I think, is the fact that when you play together for twenty years, like
Other Dimensions In Music, we’re able to shift rhythms from cells of sound
every second or every minute and constantly spontaneously shift and interact
on these rhythms, go back to them, feed off them, and also have a group
sound. And in the ensemble MUNTU the
work I was doing with drummer Rashid Bakr was to be able to navigate, to keep
the music afloat by shifting, by pushing and pulling, by constantly varying
the colors and rhythms. And doing all
of this very, very, very, very fast...all of the time. And so in a sense it’s hard for people to
catch. Critics who sometimes review
this music don’t really get exactly what we’re doing because it just kind of
goes past...they don’t really see it.
Also there’s the idea of how the rhythms sort of circle around themselves off
of the pulse of the human beings, and then we sort of sing together, then
come out, swell up, then speed up, then slow down, have fast against slow,
slow against fast, have all of these meters happening. And this is not pre-composed, this is
spontaneously done in that particular group.
In the group MUNTU, we explored these things but we had some preset
themes, but in the improvisations, you’re constantly developing the ideas of
shifting of rhythm and floating harmonies, where on the bass, every note I
hit is a chord change, a harmony.
I think Albert Ayler was really...Albert Ayler, you know. And you can’t really get next to that. You can’t really even attempt to get next
to Albert Ayler or John Coltrane, because it’s a very personal music. We were definitely inspired by Albert
Ayler’s cry and his spirituality and his purpose as a musician, but as far as
what he was doing sound-wise, I mean I wouldn’t even attempt to get very
close to that. Just a little insight
when I talk about Albert Ayler – when you listen to Albert Ayler on My Name Is Albert Ayler and you listen
to Chinese double-reed music, and you hear the way Albert’s playing the
soprano on “Bye Bye Blackbird” -- not that Albert was listening to that music
in particular -- but that’s the connection.
Albert is bending the
notes...it’s essentially non-Western music!
And if you use a Western criteria, which is what people have been
doing, then of course it sounds out, of course it sounds like just screaming
or playing out-of-tune, or strange.
You know, Kenny Dorham said Albert Ayler’s band sounded like the
Salvation Army band on LSD...
BC: [laughs]
WP: ...which is quite a
compliment...[laughs], because you say, “Wow, I got to go out and buy that
record, because what does that sound like?”
But again, if you listen to some of the brass bands in Mexico and
India, and you begin to study the music of the world, you find out that
Ayler’s music was much more connected to the world than it was to jazz.
Everyone has their own approach, and that’s the wonderful thing about
it. And if you think about it, you can
break down what everyone’s doing. The
musicians from the AACM in Chicago, one of the things they did was to add
silence...if you listen to the music of bebop, there’s no silence. So one of the things they used was the idea
of space in their music. They’d use a
sound and then a long silence and then have another sound, you see? And just that opens up a whole new realm of
possibilities. There were no sounds in
Albert Ayler’s music, necessarily – he was calling to the spirits, it was a
completely different approach. So
everyone finds their space in which they can exist and breathe and commune
with the spirits.
BC: In your music for the Little Huey
Creative Music Orchestra, I hear all sorts of influences, everything from
call-and-response to gospel to trance...are these inspirations, and is the
orchestra a culmination of these influences?
WP: Oh, yeah. I mean, as far as inspiration, every music
that I’ve heard has been an inspiration to me. Everything from Ellington to the Benanzuli
Pygmies, call-and-response, the gospel church, rhythm and blues, blues
itself, Tibetan music, music from China, music from Japan. And when I say influenced, I don’t mean
“We’re going to strive for a Tibetan sound today”, but I mean influences
inspire you to seek sound.
If you sit on a rock in the desert, you will eventually find that you’re
playing the same sounds as the people in the Philippines...without ever
hearing that music...because all music is in the air, it’s universal, and
eventually you come upon the same ideas.
What you need is, you need a cry...you need a speech-like quality, you
need a human quality, you need a conversation. You need a call. You need a response. You need a canvas. So if you have a canvas, you need some
yellow. You need some white...well,
the canvas is white, so you need some blue.
You need some green. So if you
just paint white on a white canvas, you don’t see any contrast. But you learn if everyone’s painting green
and you put a little drop of red in the middle, it stands out more than if it
was red and you put red in the middle.
You see? So if everyone’s
playing fast, play just one note. If
everyone’s playing high, play a low note.
You see, that’s why you say that the best music teacher is an oak tree. These are all natural occurrences in
nature! Learning music is a very, very
natural process because these things all run into accordance with the way the
universe is set up, and the way things are existing out there, in a certain
order. And eventually you’ll discover
them, and the more you get into it, you find your own way of putting it
together, because your call-and-response will be different than Ellington’s
call-and-response. You have to
remember that as great as the past masters are, you can’t really copy them!
BC: It’s very true, and it reminds me
of something you speak to in your book The
Sound Journal, where you talk about pre-shaped forms: “Music is not about pre-shaped molds, it’s
about the second-by-second discovery of sound.” Is this what you mean by pre-shaped
forms? Can we not have new sounds
based on juxtaposition of the old forms?
WP:
Well...let’s put it this way.
Coleman Hawkins plays a B flat...he plays it at 8:00, and then he
plays the same note at 8:05, and it’s different, it’s new, because it’s in a
different situation and it takes on a different nuance, and it just breathes
differently, even though it’s the same sound.
We don’t speak a different language every day, but we *use* the
language differently every day. You
know, if I see you on Monday and I say “Good morning”, then I see you on
Tuesday and you say “Good morning”, it’s the same “Good morning”,
but...believe me...it’s *not* the same.
It’s a different time, time is always moving. So improvisation doesn’t necessarily mean
finding new sounds all the time, as much as it means how old sounds *become* new
sounds when they come to life. The
birth of the sound automatically makes it new.
BC: You also write about how “recipe +
individuality = song”, where a recipe equates to some compositional
ideas. Do you believe I can still use
an old recipe from say the past masters, and create a new song if I insert my
individuality?
WP: Oh yeah...because it’s DNA! Most people spend quite a bit of time
trying to find their sound. Often the
best way to find your sound is not to look for it. When you’re born, you’re different from
anybody else that’s ever been born. So
if I put a horn in your mouth and tell you to blow it, it’s going to be
different than anyone else that’s ever blown a horn. You see, except when you go to music
school, they tell you that you’re wrong!
You see, in our society it’s wrong to be you! [laughs]
But it’s okay to be Charlie Parker.
It’s okay to copy Charlie Parker but to be you is wrong!
BC: Oh...how true...and individuality
seems to get lost in the process.
I remember when you came to Boston last year with the Little Huey Creative
Music Orchestra, you mentioned an upcoming tour with Leena Conquest with this
new project inspired by Curtis Mayfield.
And it made complete sense to me, because of the obvious cultural
relationship and genesis of where this music is coming from. Do you feel there’s a underlying, direct
connection between your work and the music of Curtis Mayfield, and can you
speak to that connection?
WP: Well, to me,
in the 60s, when the Civil Rights Movement was going on, there was always –
at least in my community – there was always a soundtrack. And part of that soundtrack for the events
that were going on was the great Black Music, fire music, avant-garde, free
music, and the other part of it, largely, was – for me -- the music of Curtis
Mayfield...because Curtis Mayfield was very relentless in his
consciousness-raising efforts through his music. It’s the kind of thing that could slip away
from a person, because he had some hits and his music was very melodic.
One of his main ideas was uplifting of the spirit and of the people who were
living in black neighborhoods. I mean,
his music was universal, but a lot of it was geared toward the black
community. So I wasn’t a heavy-duty
listener to his music, but it was resounding and ringing in the background
along with this other music. And I had
come up with the idea of doing the music of Curtis Mayfield and got invited
to do the Banlieues Blues Festival in Paris last year. We performed in two sections with a
ninety-piece choir with children and the group featured Dave Burrell, Hamid
Drake, Leena Conquest, Darryl Foster, and Lewis Barnes. We had a ninety-piece choir plus a
twenty-five piece jimbae ensemble. We
did that in two days.
The premise of the whole project is called The Inside Songs of Curtis
Mayfield, meaning that what we’ve heard is the outside songs, we’ve heard
what he’s done. And that – to me –
cannot be improved upon. I mean, you
can’t outdo Curtis Mayfield doing Curtis Mayfield. And Curtis Mayfield could not outdo the
music that we do, the idea being that everyone’s got their own music. So the Inside Song is the extension of the
ideas in the songs, and that’s where Amiri Baraka comes in, so I asked him to
extend upon the themes of some of the songs that we were doing. And I’ve written a bunch of interludes that
come after songs that are responses to his song, so in a sense we’re doing
his music, but his music has also inspired us to come up with different
music.
BC: Of your other ensembles, your
latest is the O’Neal’s Porch quartet.
Was this ensemble a way to continue working in the small ensemble
context after In Order to Survive?
WP: In Order To
Survive did their last gig at the Guelph Festival in 1999. And so that was sort of put on hold, so I
started the O’Neal’s Porch Quartet. We
had done a couple of dance performances actually playing the music we
recorded and I liked it quite a bit. I
knew Hamid was coming into town and we recorded that record and since then,
we’ve done another record called Raining
on the Moon which is the quartet plus the vocalist Leena Conquest. That will be out I think in May.
So the area I’m looking at going into in the future seems to be vocal music
and also the kind of music Hamid [Drake] and I did on the latest duo
record. I would like to do that kind
of music with a quartet or even a larger ensemble, where I’m playing other
instruments outside of the bass. I’ve
been working on the guimbri (the Moroccan bass), and I’ve been playing the
Dozon n’goni from Mali, and I’ve been working on double reeds for the last
couple of months. I mean I’ve always
played these instruments – I started playing on double reeds in 1972. But now I’m really getting more and more
into playing them on a daily basis, and really working at them to bring them
out more, and to incorporate the sounds of those instruments and elements of
meditation, prayer, and the trance musics into the trumpet/alto music we use
in the quartet with the vocals.
Then I have another outlet, which is the clarinet trio with Perry [Robinson]
and Walter Perkins, because that’s an entirely different thing. There I’m just basically playing the bass
and we’re doing compositions that are very open-ended and free and that have
to do with the particular way that each of those guys play. A lot of people say it’s more connected
with traditional jazz than my other ensembles, but again, I’m not really
concerned with what it’s connected with or the style. I just like playing in that setting where
you can go anywhere. In the clarinet
trio, I can play a waltz, I can play a samba, I can play fast 4/4, I can play
no time, it can go anywhere it goes.
And that’s really great. The
idea of free music is that you’re free to play anything you wish to play. And there aren’t many musics where you can
play almost anything you want to play at any time. I mean, if you’re playing in a polka band,
you’re playing polkas all the time.
You can’t just stop and play something else!
BC: [laughs]
WP: [laughs] ...you know, if you’re
playing in a meringue band, you’re playing meringues. Everything has a form. If you’re playing in a bebop band, you’re
playing bebop. But in bands like the
clarinet trio, we can play meringues, polkas, bebop...anything we want! And that’s the beauty of it. So all of these groups cover different
areas or interests of music that I like to see come out.
BC: Your collaboration with drummer
Hamid Drake has developed into one of the most powerful rhythm sections of
our time, and the “Piercing the Veil” record documented your duet work with
Hamid. The group Organic Grooves recently
used this record as source material for their electronic record “Black
Cherry”. And there has been a recent
movement of the juxtaposition of improvised music and electronics, with the
material on Thirsty Ear, for example.
Are you open-minded to further explorations with this medium?
WP: Well, I played
a couple of weeks ago with the Anti-Pop Consortium. And I did a record last week with DJ Spooky
and Matthew Shipp and a European tour.
In order to keep the music that we do alive, we’ve got to expand our
audience, because the so-called “jazz audience”, they seem to stay where they
are. Like there are some listeners of
jazz that say “Oh, I only like Miles Davis.
I’m just a Miles Davis man.”, where he has all Miles Davis records but
he won’t listen to Kenny Dorham. And
they don’t grow. But the young
people...we’ve got to keep pumping new blood.
So the collaborations are – to me – not restricting; they can in fact
be very interesting.
I think the record “Black Cherry” was less of a live collaboration in the
sense that they took we what had already recorded, and then put their thing
on top of it. But the other things
that we did with Anti-Pop and DJ Spooky, we were there doing live
performances with them or they gave us suggestions of what to do, so it was
more of an equal collaboration. So
that’s very interesting to me...and I think it’s good to try to tap into
other audiences, because we’re not really making a sacrifice, because again,
when we say music, it’s not about style.
It’s not like “Well you play avant-garde, so you can’t play a
beat”. I mean who says you can’t play
a beat? Who says you can’t play with
electronics? It doesn’t make something
impure. These younger musicians are
doing some interesting things!
Now, I haven’t initiated these things myself.
I mean, I’ve been called on to work on these projects with
people. I myself don’t have any
particular interest right now in doing something with beats, but I’m
certainly willing to come in and add something or play on interesting projects. I also played in a group called The
Roots..and that was fun.
BC: I want to now ask you some
specific, directed questions about your orchestra work. I understand there have been a few
permutations of the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra over the years. And I’m wondering about the bulk of
material you have written. I know Sam
Rivers has talked about the hundreds of compositions he has written for the
Rivbea Orchestra, and the ongoing struggle to release as many as
possible. How large a library of
orchestra compositions do you have over what we have heard recorded, and do
you plan to release more?
WP: Well, we
don’t usually play the same piece twice.
We usually perform a new piece every time we play. So yes, I would eventually like to release
a box set of the Little Huey orchestra.
We did some very, very interesting compositions throughout the
years. We did something at the St
Marks Church with singers that was Madrigal and Mass for Leroy Jefferson
[??], and it was recorded but never released.
And there are a number of pieces we have that were released. We’re beginning to do a new series coming
up soon of all new pieces. So
eventually I would definitely like to release some more things...we have
quite a large repertoire.
BC: And do you plan on distributing
the compositions to universities for study in the future as a way of sharing
your legacy?
WP: Sure, eventually I would like to
release more songbooks. I have
published two and will be releasing another one. I would like to of course have all of that
together where it can be reproduced and extended upon by high schools and
colleges.
BC: How do you go about recruiting for
the orchestra? We’ve seen people come
and go...
WP: Well, you know, people move
away...and I don’t really recruit. I
let people come to me who are interested and...it just happens, you
know. I think eventually I would like
to get the orchestra back up to a larger size, but right now it’s a smaller
size because of gigs and trying to work...the more people you have, the
bigger the budget is…
BC: Does the group rehearse on a
regular basis?
WP: It hasn’t this year because I’ve
been on the road constantly, but I have planned several periods throughout
the year when we’ll have weekly rehearsals.
But that is in the agenda, because I have a lot of new music. And you also have to sort of concentrate on
the band, because having a band is like having a...you know, it’s like having
a company. People devote their time to
it and they make commitments, so it’s my job to try to keep it going and
provide some sort of work when we can for all of these ensembles.
BC: I’ve noticed
a common thread running throughout work, particularly in your orchestra work,
which is that of children. In
your book The Sound Journal you talk
about the Tone World and characters such as Raspy Voice and Little Huey
continue to come alive in your music and your poetry. Can you speak to how the world of children
and these characters translate to your music?
WP: I think children are very inspirational. We refer to the Tone World as the place you
go when you’re playing music and really into it, and you step outside of
yourself. You’ve stepped into the Tone
World. Whether you’re a big kid or a
little kid, when you wake up one morning and you open the curtain and there’s
a brand new bike and you ride that bike the rest of the day, you’re just
*happy*...you’re not thinking about anything else. You’ve stepped in the Tone World. When you come home from school and you’re
feeling bad and your mom is really nice to you, makes you a cup of tea and
gives you a big hug, you’ve stepped in the Tone World. Any positive act that draws us out of our
mundane and takes us to another level, that place that we go is Tone World,
the Color World...it just takes us up a step to another consciousness. And there ....[whispering]...when you’re
playing music and it’s working, your feet don’t hurt, you don’t have a
headache, you don’t owe any rent...
BC: [laughs]
WP: [laughs]...you know, you’re not
hungry. Everything is perfect. And so in a sense, that’s what we’re
seeking, we’re trying to get refuge there, because there, we’re safe. We’re safe in the Tone World. Because there’s no politicians in the Tone
World starting wars and trying to destroy the world, and if we can stay there
as much as we can when we play music, we learn. We get into learning the secrets of life
there.
And we get back to the characters and they enter these different enchanted
places...you know, you begin to believe in these things! There’s a record called Compassion Seizes Bed-Stuy. It comes from the time when I was a kid, my
brother and I were in Brooklyn and these kids robbed us of our money. But I took it another step, and I put a
story where we’re getting robbed, but...they’re sitting on their stoop
counting their money and this rain comes down, and the musicians begin to
play. And they are so full of
compassion, the guys who did this dastardly deed, they come and they
apologize and they give us back our money.
A negative turns into a positive.
So with all of these things...you have to be as real as possible. You have to really believe in things when
you’re a musician. You have to believe
that every time you play, that a miracle can occur. This may sound corny, but you have to
believe it. I think that’s what
separates the musicians who can really do it from the musicians who can’t,
because you have to believe that what you’re doing is the most important
thing in the world when you’re doing it, and that all these wondrous things
can happen.
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© Free Association 2002
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