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Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton

Photo: Edu Hawkins

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Anthony Braxton On New Music & American Standards 2021-anthony-braxton-interview-12-comp-zim-quartet-standards

Anthony Braxton On The Radiance Of Standards, His Search For Charlie Parker & The Forces That Divide America

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The preeminent composer, improviser and saxophonist Anthony Braxton has two new releases on the way: '12 Comp (ZIM) 2017' and 'Quartet (Standards) 2020.' At 76, he's at no loss for words about the American songbook
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Jun 4, 2021 - 12:52 pm

When an interviewer once asked Miles Davis about the nature of a standard, the trumpeter exploded conventional notions of the word before his ears. "You don't have to do like Wynton Marsalis and play 'Stardust' and that s**t," Davis told NME in 1985. "Why can't [Michael Jackson's] 'Human Nature' be a standard? It fits. A standard fits like a thoroughbred."

 In 2021, why does the creative-music composer Anthony Braxton plumb the works of Simon and Garfunkel? Largely for the same reason, he says.

"My friends call me Anthony 'Simon and Garfunkel Boy' Braxton," he announces to GRAMMY.com over Zoom, sounding proud. "I have always loved their great music." On his new boxed set, Quartet (Standards) 2020, which arrives June 18, Braxton not only covers luminaries in the jazz sphere, like Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane and Dave Brubeck, but a handful of classics by the folk duo, like "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)."

"We tend to put people in compartments about what they like or don't like," he continues. "It was wonderful to play that music."

Braxton's two new extended releases don't fit into any compartment. The first, 12 Comp (Zim) 2017, is an 11-hour marathon on Blu-Ray, featuring ensembles ranging from a septet to a nonet. The second, Quartet (Standards) 2020, spans 13 discs. At 76, the composer remains preoccupied with deconstructing categories—not only of genres and forms but of race and politics.

When discussing standards, Braxton's mind shifts to his love of the American songbook in all its forms. From there, he sets his gaze on what—or who—seems to be tearing asunder American unity in 2021. Where many see the modern movement christened "anti-racism" as a wholesale positive, this giant of Black American music sees it as a new, insidious form of separatism.

"The new woke academia is like everything else we see in this period," he asserts. "An inversion where far more people can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy."

Read on for an in-depth conversation with Braxton about his progress on an unimaginably ambitious opera system, why Charlie Parker is his North Star and why he feels those who sow disunity between racial groups deserve contempt.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How are you, Mr. Braxton?

I'm doing very well in the sense that I'm coming to the end of a project that has lasted for seven years. I think by the end of this week, I'll finally be finished with the opera Trillium L, which is a five-act opera—part of a system that, when completed, will be comprised of 36 acts that can go into many different orders. I'll talk to you about this more as we move along.

I look forward to hearing more about it!

Look, the way I see it—if you're going to be broke, you might as well do your best! From the beginning, it was always clear to me, when I was 15 or 16, that this is an area which will encompass everything I'm looking for. But it won't have anything to do with making money. I have since always tried to advise my students, as you evolve your music, to be sure to get a job or learn about some occupation where you can support yourself and your family.

Because if you're interested in the zone that I'm interested in, there is no way one can make a living from playing this kind of music. And in a strange kind of way, it protects the music. Because if you're interested in making money, it won't take you long to understand that this zone—the zone of creative music and creativity on the plane of creative music and creativity—is a triplane phenomenon. 

It's a subject that won't involve making a lot of money, and if it's money you want, go into the zones where you can make money. I would love to make money! But it just so happens that I made a decision a long time ago. [Voice cracks with emotion.] Hooray! And so I'm going in the direction of the decision I made as a young man when I found myself listening to Warne Marsh and Charlie Parker and I thought [awed silence] "What is this? What is this?" 

And so I'm blessed to still be alive and to be working toward whatever seems to be it, as it relates to the work that I've been doing for something like 60 years—maybe a little more or less. I'm very grateful that I would have the opportunity to be a professional student of music and that the Creator of the universe [voice cracks again] would allow me to outlive my father, my brothers, all except one. 

And here I am, moving toward 76 years of being on this planet. I can't believe it! That's what I would say.

That central question: "What is this?" when you heard Bird and his contemporaries. Have you spent your whole life chasing that question?

Yes, yes, yes. For me, I was somewhat different than my brothers in the sense that I wasn't what you would call a social guy. I didn't go to parties. I didn't like that. I was the kind of guy who either hung out at the train-freight yards of the great New York Central Railroad or the Great Pennsylvania Railroad along with Howard Freeman and Michael Carter. We would check freight schedules and talk to engineers. 

I wasn't what one could call a real hip guy, but I was fortunate to discover the kinds of things that would help me not just be alive, but want to be alive and to be grateful to have the opportunity to experience a spectrum of focuses. Life is really far out. I'm almost 76, and I must say, how miraculous it's been to have the opportunity to play music, meet people and learn about learning. The challenge of trying to learn about yourself.

As the Egyptian mystics would say, the concept of self-realization is the beginning of developing insight into yourself. Because that's one of the first challenges we all have to look at, which is ourselves, our lives, the experiences that we've had. To somehow bring this information together in a way where you can look at life and know how lucky you are to actually have an experience of consciousness. The wonder of manifestation. Life is really something.

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton in 1973. Photo: Ib Skovgaard/JP Jazz Archive/Getty Images

As far as I'm concerned, what we call being alive in this state is—I'll use the word "superior," but that's not really the right word. I'm thinking of the idea of heaven. The idea of hell. The idea of paradise. I'm saying, "Great, great, great." But for me, what I like is manifestation. A design from whatever perspective or non-perspective or vibration that a creator would declare manifestation in the first place.

So, it's like, "Wow, you know? This is really something!" And not only that, but the discipline we call music is intrinsically embedded in the concept of—I'll say actualization or manifestation, but what I'm really trying to say is that everything is music in various densities and intensities. From there, I would say, "Hooray for the Creator, who miraculously brought in manifestation with consciousness!" It doesn't get any better than that. I'll take it!

"Everything is music in various densities and intensities."

More: 'Bitches Brew' At 50: Why Miles Davis' Masterpiece Remains Impactful

Along the lines of Quartet (Standards) 2020, I'm interested in the role of the standard in creative music. I think of Miles Davis saying "A standard fits like a thoroughbred."

Before answering your question—[raises voice astonishedly] You've heard Standards 2020? Wow! Wow! That means it's really coming! It'll be out soon! OK, let me go to your question. 

For me, I'm just a country boy. [Voice cracks with emotion.] I'm a lucky guy to be born an American citizen. When I think about all the great music that's happening—especially the music that's come from Americans—again, I can only just bow to the Creator. Now, as far as I'm concerned, the work that I've dedicated my life to has never been opposed to the tradition. Rather, I see my work as an affirmation of the tradition. 

What I've tried to do every decade is a project from the American Songbook. From the repertoire of the great American people, we take everything for granted. But, actually, in America, we have so much. We have options on so many different levels. There are so many different kinds of musics. We are so lucky, but of course, not everyone is able to recognize how fortunate we are, because it's all around us all the time.

We're so used to abundance, we have somehow come to take things for granted. We have the creativity. We have the men and women who are dedicated. Our complexity, in my opinion, is not whether or not we have the goods.

It's more like, there is a separation between real America and what is being reported about our great country. More and more, there is an effort to teach our young people that America has not been an agent of something positive, but rather, America has been an agent of something that is negative.

I respect everyone's viewpoint, but I would say this. In my opinion, the United States of America is one of the greatest countries that has ever happened to humanity. I think the men and women of America are some of the best people on this planet. But every day, I look at the internet—I gave up television and the radio years ago—and I'm reading about a perspective that is outrageous.

I'm a guy from Albert Ayler. From Dave Brubeck. From Hildegard von Bingen. I live in all their worlds. I'd better go to work and try to come up with something because one of the traditions that exist is the tradition of restructuralism and innovation and exploration. This is not always understood anymore. Of course, young people aren't being exposed to it. The music is not presented on television. 

In fact, when I think about Sun Ra, I think he was on "Saturday Night Live." He had 10-minute sections; two of them were something where he was able to play. So, what am I talking about? I'm talking about a super-great visionary where, if the children could hear this person, they would have to come to a position on some intellectual, spiritual or vibrational level. But, no, we don't get that anymore.

Read: Sun Ra Arkestra's Knoel Scott On New Album 'Swirling,' Sun Ra's Legacy & Music As A Healing Force

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton with pianist Alexander Hawkins, bassist Neil Charles and drummer Stephen Davis. Photo: Edu Hawkins

How are young people growing up going to learn about Charles Ives? How are they going to learn about Dinah Washington and her great work with Quincy Jones? The new generation of educators don't seem to know that information either. So, we watch the ascension of the great nation of China while, at the same time, our country is sinking because many of our young people are not being taught about what and who we really are as Americans.

I'm happy to be coming to an end with Trillium L, which is a five-act opera from 10 to 12 hours. Now—starting, say, in July—I can move to the next Trillium, which will be about change and change-state logics. In my opinion, [that idea] has real relevance because it seems that we are going through a period that's profound. Either we will rescue America or we will find ourselves dealing with change and change-state logics on a tri-centric level.

My hope is that America can hold together. But if no one respects holding together and what that means—and what it means to have a unified country—my viewpoint is that the breakdown after a civil war will be either three countries or four countries in our place. 

America East, America South, America West—we might lose the West, but certainly Northwest—and there could be an insertion somewhere in Kansas, somewhere in the middle of the country. What am I describing? I'm describing the post-woke time parameter that's coming up. Unless change happens, we will have no way to avoid a cataclysmic experience. It's already starting to happen. 

People beating up strangers walking down the street. What the hell is that? People jumping on someone they've never met and beating them up or bullying them. What the hell is that? If you think it happens to "them," maybe you need to go back and study history. Because you are the "them."

There's always room for improvement, but I'm not interested in utopia. No heaven, no paradise. Give me America! There are good people, so-called bad people, people on the left, people on the right.

Do you believe that the modern movement to combat racism might be contributing to a greater split than ever between communities?

There are complex forces in the air that are very separate from what one would have thought. The majority of the American people have been moving forward on the issue of slavery from the beginning. The whole concept of free states and slave states demonstrated immediately that there was opposition to slavery. 

Not only that: The earliest genesis documentation of slavery was part of the menu that every ethnic group experienced. Blacks enslaving Blacks. Caucasians enslaving Caucasians. You name it, we enslaved it. In America, there's always been a movement to challenge those ideas. But you would not know that today!

What we have in this time period is the concept of critical race theory that is far out. I would say this: The American people have unified in such a beautiful way, in such a quick and short time period, when looking at the subject from, say, the last 3- or 4,000 years, that we have everything to be proud of. And yet, what has happened? I would say this: Certain sectors have been brought in to create separatism that didn't really exist in the same way that we are experiencing it now.

It's very fashionable to be racist against white Americans, especially white men. How far motherf**king out! But this could only have happened not only due to one or two deranged stuggy thug guys who decide they would be super-racist. You can always find individuals who are far out. What I'm saying is that someone made the decision to promote that vibration and put it in a different position.

For example, I could say [faux-screams] "Charlie Parker! Charlie Parker! Charlie Parker!" Would it be reported tonight or tomorrow? Who gives a f**k about a Black guy who likes Charlie Parker? If I would say, "Kill everybody, especially if they have a blue coat," then certainly, I'd be accepted. That's what I'm talking about! Someone is making the decision of who is going to succeed and who is not going to succeed.

What a time to be alive! If we lose America, [voice grows grave and slow] shame on us.

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton with bassist Neil Charles and drummer Stephen Davis. Photo: Edu Hawkins

There's some force that wants to keep us divided by racial lines.

I agree completely. In fact, there are several forces which are slicing and dicing our population. Someone is hated because they're from the South! Someone is hated because they're from the Midwest or something! We're being cut like some kind of chef who has all the knives and knows how to dice it up! They're separating us from one another, and they have been very successful.

But more and more, the American people will hopefully begin to look at this. We elected an African-American president and voted for this guy two times! Certainly, it looked as if things were coming together! And now we're at this place, and it's been solidified within 10 or 15 years. Even 15 years ago, it's been better than this! It's gotten really serious, and it's also become crazy.

In being crazy, we have flex-logic possibilities to start to challenge some of these ideas. How did white Americans get to be so evil? I don't [think that]! I think white Americans have been doing very well! Which is why I love white Americans! [livid voice] What the f**k is happening?

We're seeing young African-Americans say, "No, we want our dormitories to only be Black. We want to graduate in a different ceremony from non-African-Americans." Well, if that's the case, why did we waste 150 years of Reconstruction? 

We're running out of time if our hope is to keep America together and moving forward. This, to me, is frightening and depressing. This is the new intellectualism: Critical race theory. The 1619 Project started out with a fundamental error in the whole foundation, accusing America of being racist, when in fact, the spectrum of historians has already looked into most of these questions.

But the new woke academia is like everything else we see in this period: An inversion where far more people can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy. This has become a problem.

I don't agree with racial essentialism and the notion that anyone is poisoned forever by virtue of their birth, always the oppressor, always the conquistador.

I'm going to say this: That perspective, in my opinion, is evil.

We're running long, but thank you for the catharsis about the ills of 2021.

It's good to talk to someone like yourself about what is actually happening in America.

Virtuosos, Voyagers & Visionaries: 5 Artists Pushing Jazz Into The Future

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James Brandon Lewis

James Brandon Lewis

Photo: Diane Allford

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James Brandon Lewis On His New Album 'Jesup Wagon' 2021-james-brandon-lewis-red-lily-quintet-jesup-wagon-interview

James Brandon Lewis On Evoking George Washington Carver Through Sound, The Wisdom Of Nature & His New Album 'Jesup Wagon'

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The emotionally and intellectually gripping saxophonist James Brandon Lewis did his homework while conceptualizing 'Jesup Wagon,' an album that manifests George Washington Carver's essence into today's world
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
May 17, 2021 - 5:57 pm

Jazz history is full of musicians immortalizing people through sound. John Coltrane did it with "Cousin Mary" and "Syeeda's Song Flute." Miles Davis did it with "Back Seat Betty." Charles Mingus's "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a eulogy for the tenor giant Lester Young. The problem is that if we couldn't flip over the LP and read about it, we might never know—and tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis is well aware of the gulf between music and PR copy.

While paying homage to agricultural scientist and inventor George Washington Carver on his new album, Jesup Wagon, Lewis conjured his essence and wrenched it from his horn. Even if you might need to read the bio to get who he's driving at, there are more profound forces at play. Even as he interpolated spoken word to illuminating effect, Lewis told a story in a way language never could. 

"I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying my best to evoke a deeper thing," he tells GRAMMY.com.

Getting on Carver's wavelength meant digging deeper than the aspects most people learn in public school, like his 300-plus uses for the peanut. Lewis more than did his due diligence, poring over Carver's correspondence letters and bulletins for farmers as well as a litany of biographies of the man. Want to read about Carver yourself? There's plenty of literature out there. But Jesup Wagon, which came out May 7 on the up-and-coming TAO Forms label, can help you feel his presence.

Far from dry history lessons, Lewis' wrenching compositions like "Lowlands of Sorrow," "Fallen Flowers" and "Experiment Station" may act as first steps to lifelong education on and communion with the historical figure. Most importantly, Lewis has a monstrous sound on the horn. Plus, he has simpatico accompanists in the Red Lily Quintet, which consists of cornetist Kirk Knuffke, bassist and gimbri player William Parker, cellist Chris Hoffman, and drummer and mbira player Chad Taylor.

GRAMMY.com caught up with Lewis over Zoom from Switzerland—where he's already plotting his next album—about his journey through a Black genius's universe and his place in the pantheon of the saxophone.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

You clearly had such a vision for Jesup Wagon, and I can't think of a way you fell short of executing it. How did this idea germinate, and would you consider this album your breakthrough?

Definitely. All the parts kind of fell into place. I definitely didn't have any intention, initially, during this COVID period, to do anything to mark the time period. Just because of personal stuff. Losing family members and different things. Not feeling like creating work was necessarily the right thing to do just because people were losing their lives; people were losing work.

But then, eventually, I was like, "I can't sink my own ship. I've got to be strong for other people." So I just started creating music. This came about very organically. The label reached out—for Whit Dickey to have the courage to start TAO Forms during COVID is like, "OK, cool." [They asked me,] "James, do you have anything?" "Sure, I do."

I'm always creating and thinking about the next thing and the Carver project [and my interest in him] was something that had been on my mind for quite some time. So I thought, "Why not?" Maybe people will gain a little bit more insight into him other than, like, "He's the peanut guy." These kinds of watered-down notions of him. Which happens over time to people. I don't think it's done in a malicious kind of way.

And then, the cast. It's everyone that I've worked with over the years. I've only worked with Chris Hoffman once, but that was good enough. It's interesting because when you create, you don't know what the response is going to be. I thought, "This sounds like some pretty good music," and I put my best foot forward with every project, but you don't know which project is going to resonate with people the most.

I'm sure you've done innumerable interviews about George Washington Carver at this point. I'm interested in the tension between the music and the press kit—how you can evoke someone through sheer sound without necessitating that the listener read the one-sheet.

For me, it was a natural process. The older I get, the more I reflect on my past. Just growing up and being interested in many different things. Reading Emerson, being interested in science and jazz. I was just this kind of kid. Now, as an adult, the most authentic or original ideas I can pull from have to be from thinking about my own personal experiences.

In two years, I'll be 40. I think I have a little bit of life that I can talk about. So I think in choosing to do any project, I'm fully immersing myself in being in history. Checking out the bulletins he made for farmers. Checking out several different biographies as well as correspondence letters. Seeing clips of him on YouTube. Fully immersing myself gets me in tune with a little of his vibe.

The more I dig in, the more I feel like it may translate. How it resonates in my soul, I can map that and remember that feeling and then pick up my horn and proceed to play, remembering the feeling of a passage he said or his exchanges with Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee [Institute].

All of these different things and also the idea of him going against the grain in science when that's not necessarily the field [where] you're supposed to go against the grain. You're supposed to be all factual. He's presenting spirituality and telling people he's talking to the plants and they're letting him know what's going on.

It's always a challenge when you're playing music. To have a concept and then [wonder], "OK, well, it's instrumental music. Does it translate?" I think when you immerse yourself in a topic … It's no different than if I was writing a piece and I wanted to evoke, maybe, what love feels like. That's just knowing the characteristics of how to paint emotion with particular sounds.

That's up to the listener, but I feel like I'm in tune with his spirit, with his vibe. As you say, away from any PR or whatever. Any of the PR or any of the things that are out there is stuff that I've disseminated about him in the most truthful way. It's just like my dealings with Robin D. G. Kelly [who wrote a 2009 biography of [Thelonious Monk.] He's such an amazing writer. I've had a relationship with him since, like, 2016, when my No Filter project came out with my trio.

He was familiar with the process of me choosing titles and knowing that the titles were not just random. They kind of guide you. He was able to depict the titles in a really beautiful way that is truthful. They're based on me reading his correspondence letters and checking out his documents. A lot of real research. 

The music is one aspect, but to firmly immerse yourself in something is another thing. I could easily come up with a song and call it "The Peanut"; I don't know if that would be that interesting. I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying my best to evoke a deeper thing. The musicians help that, too. It's not a bad crew to work with!

James Brandon Lewis

James Brandon Lewis. Photo: Diane Allford

It's a co-creation. You've got the best minds on it! And I think I understand now. You don't need to be able to materialize a person, somehow. You're not writing a book. You're just manifesting Carver's essence in an emotional or spiritual way.

Right. Does it relate to someone on an emotional level? Even when I'm listening to it—which I rarely do after I record it—I go, "Yeah." If I hear "Experiment Station," just visualizing George Washington Carver with students, the newness, the childlike behavior of discovery [mimics exuberant melody] then it's like "Wow, this is about to take me somewhere." It's also just about the contour of the line and how you shape things. Descending, the overall arc of things. 

Hey, if it can also reach people emotionally—I'm at a place now where I'm like, "Let me play it for my family." If it resonates with them, then, cool. I think I'm OK. I'm on the right track. If Grandma's movin' and groovin', then that's a good sign.

How did Kelley come into your life? What a great asset.

I had released [No Filter] on a small label called BNS Sessions. He just reached out to me and said he enjoyed the album, and we sparked up a friendship. I also got involved with reading other books he was involved in, [like 2009's] Black, Brown & Beige, which was a surrealist anthology that he edited. That book specifically was influential on the UnRuly Manifesto project I did in 2019.

It's just been a healthy exchange. He's been to some of my gigs. We just sparked a real vibe. I'm thankful. He wrote some ace liner notes.

What tools were in your toolbox while making Jesup Wagon? Which artists were swimming through your mind?

I think I naturally draw from the canon of great saxophone players, just because I listen to them. But for this sound and vibe—I initially wanted to have a kora player on this project. That didn't quite work out, but then, I said, "OK, William Parker plays the gimbri. Chad Taylor plays the mbira. If I get a cello, then we have this earthy [quality]."

Me and Kirk [Knuffke], we definitely have similar interests in terms of all the great Ornette Coleman vibes and tunes. Just the way he plays and I play and we interact with each other, that's definitely a headspace in the ether. Strings, horns, no harmonic instrument, drums.

I definitely feel like I'm in the lineage of a lot of different players, but I don't know if I was thinking of that, necessarily, other than trying to convey the music in a way that felt connected to the tradition. The Coltranes, the Aylers. The Ornette Colemans. The Dewey Redmans. That vibe. Julius Hemphill. All these folks who have these different ensembles. The cello and bass.

My introduction to cello happened in 2009. I was at Banff [International Workshop in Jazz & Creative Music] and I met [cellist] Hank Roberts, who plays with Bill Frisell. And then, later on, I met [composer and cellist] Tomeka Reid when I got to New York. It was a natural progression of sounds.

And then, William Parker! He's also a huge influence [on my] sound. He's had a lot of different ensembles with a lot of different kinds of instruments and things. And Chad Taylor, who's worked with Pharoah Sanders and [tenor saxophonist] Fred Anderson. I think there is a sound universe. I definitely feel like I lean toward a lot of different influences.

James Brandon Lewis

James Brandon Lewis. Photo: Diane Allford

All in all, you may not be able to build a person out of sound, but you can push a hole in the universe and something might come out the other side. Who knows how Jesup Wagon will cause a ripple effect in global awareness of Carver and his contributions?

You know, it's interesting, because I've had different people from Alabama, from the South, who listened to the record, and they're like, "Wow. You really evoked this. We knew Carver when we were kids, growing up in this specific area. This is amazing." That's always a really cool thing. It's nice.

It also manifests itself, because I was just a kid who was curious about this individual, as I am with many other people. We'll see what happens, but I'm glad people dig the music. I don't think this is just a one-time [thing]. I don't know if I'm creating Carver, Part Two, but I will continue to study him. It's manifesting in my own life. He, as an individual, definitely got me thinking about nature. Maybe [making me] a little more concerned with nature as opposed to "This is over here and I'm separate from it and I'm so sophisticated." Caring about it, thinking about it. Contributing to it in a way that's healthy.

Maybe a seed is growing inside me to get some plants of my own and appreciate them. Especially during this time period, it seems like nature is the most calm and sophisticated and knows how to conduct itself.

Inescapable Progression: 10 Jazz Labels You Need To Know In 2021

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Jen Shyu

Jen Shyu

Photo: Daniel Reichert

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Jen Shyu On Rising Above Grief & 'Zero Grasses' 2021-jen-shyu-zero-grass-ritual-for-the-losses-interview

Jen Shyu On New Album 'Zero Grasses: Ritual For The Losses,' Overcoming Grief & Discrimination In Enlightened Spaces

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On her new album, 'Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses,' vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu gazes unflinchingly into the maw of grief and discrimination
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
May 12, 2021 - 8:58 am

It’s a fact: Asian people face discrimination in America. And as composer and multi-Instrumentalist Jen Shyu points out, it happens everywhere—including the conservatories and concert halls on the coasts.

The comments and microaggressions in those spaces come fast and hard. At an upstate artist's residency, she was called "an Asian Meredith Monk." The vocalist/composer is frequently mistaken for various musicians of Asian descent—and vice versa. One time, a composer approached her and complimented her bass playing—and Shyu replied that she wasn't Linda Oh. 

"He scurried away like a rat!" Shyu tells GRAMMY.com with a sharp laugh. "And I just wish I could remember his name!"

Shyu takes these instances in stride and files them away in her memory bank. This is apparent on her new album, Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses, which came out on Pi Recordings on April 12. A harrowing-yet-beautiful grief journey, the album braids the shock of Shyu's father's death with memories of racism and sexism from throughout her life.

On tunes like "Lament for Breonna Taylor," "When I Have Power" and "Father Slipped Into Eternal Dream," personal and global sorrow pool into one. "I just think these themes are interlinked," she explains, in the context of a deadly pandemic and continuing police violence. "You kind of see how differently that manifests for people, depending on your privilege." But by examining both micro and macro grief through the same lens, Shyu sees both with more clarity—and by communing with Zero Grasses, listeners can too.

GRAMMY.com caught up with Jen Shyu over Zoom to discuss the traumatic experiences that informed Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses and how she continues to rise above daily challenges in her field.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This album is about grief in various forms. The pandemic and police killings add new dimensions to global sorrow.

I just think these themes are interlinked. You kind of see how differently that manifests for people, depending on your privilege. Now we're seeing it with Daunte Wright. It's frightening and can be paralyzing. You see no justice being served. It's hard to fight through that and carry on.

When my friend Joko [Raharjo and his family were] killed in a car crash, his mother and I were texting and she wrote, "I've cried all the tears." This is all in Indonesian. "I don't have any more tears left. But we still have an obligation in this life. Those of us who are still alive still have an obligation in this world." That has really stayed with me.

The word for "obligation" is wajib in Indonesian. So, indeed. That is the effort to carry on and inspire and comfort.

I can connect the dots as to how a family dying in a car wreck would compel you to express yourself in an unvarnished way. Loss makes it incumbent to tell people the things you always meant to tell them because they might not be around tomorrow.

Yeah, absolutely. It comes from life experience. I think this will always be part of my artistic output—immediacy. Wanting, being hungry for that rawness. When I created "When I Have Power"—where I talk about the young boy calling me a ch**k—that was written in August or September of 2019. That was before the pandemic. And the text was from when I was 15; it was from my diary. 

So, it's like: "Oh, that's always been there." It just happened that this is coming out when there have been incidents of violence [reported] in the media. These instances of violence have finally been shown. That feeling of anti-Asian racism has always been there. All these things—if they stay hidden and remain unspoken, nothing's going to be done. Nothing's going to change. 

Just to speak these things out: First, it makes people aware, and second, if it's visible, then OK, we can do something.

Jen Shyu

Jen Shyu. Photo © Marco Giugliarelli for Civitella Ranieri Foundation, 2019.

I'm curious as to where this album fits into your larger body of work.

This is my eighth finished recording. The first featured standards done in an unusual way. I did a couple, then, that were just digital. You can find these on Bandcamp. But then, when I started working with Pi, the first album was a duo with [bassist] Mark Dresser, who's amazing. 

After that, I went to Indonesia right away! I got my Fulbright. That was 2011. I became a dual citizen of East Timor since my mom is from there. I came back and did [2015's] Sounds and Cries of the World. It was personal, song-to-song, which I recorded after producing my first solo theatrical work called Solo Rites: Seven Breaths that involved a lot of that music. It was autobiographical in the sense that it was about a woman on this journey to, first, her homeland, and then to all different areas and what she discovers. Very abstract, though.

That was the first time I connected the theatrical and the dramatic with the musical aspects of my vision. Definitely, an early influence on that would be Meredith Monk, whom I got to meet when I was at Stanford. She was kind of the first example of that for me.

Now, funny story! [sharp laugh] This is evidence of what one goes through as an Asian artist. There was this residency I was doing and this very famed composer—more in the classical world—he was at that same residency. I think this may have been at Yaddo, which is an artist residency upstate in Saratoga Springs.

We often do these presentations for each other. It's all voluntary ... So, I presented something and this composer came up to me after. He was like, "Oh, Jen, that was amazing. Your voice is so incredible. You're like an Asian Meredith Monk!"

And I was like, "Oh, thank you! Yeah, she's great!" Because he clearly meant it as a compliment. And then I thought about it: "Oh, I don't know about that!" So, yeah, that was pretty interesting.

Do you get patronizing comments like that often?

All the time. Oh my god! All the time. In different forms. There was a manager who's a veteran. I won't mention her name. She had told me, "Oh, yes, I looked at your work. Ostensibly, you'd be a perfect client for me, but I just signed a koto virtuoso and I think there might be some overlap there."

Noooooo!

[loud laugh] I looked her up and she's not a singer. She's not a composer. She just plays koto, and she does some interesting projects. She's great! But not the same, you know? The only thing we had in common was "Asian woman." Alright.

There are so many examples. First of all, I always get mistaken for Linda Oh, and she gets mistaken for me. Susie Ibarra. We get mistaken for each other. There are so few of us, perhaps. That's a big thing. It's the white male gaze. That's nothing against you personally. A lot of the gaze is from that perspective.

[Being mistaken for Linda Oh], that was at a Henry Threadgill concert.

An academic, learned crowd.

[This guy] introduced himself to me and said, "I'm so-and-so. I'm a musician. I just wanted to say: You are an amazing bassist." I was like, "I'm so sorry, I'm not Linda Oh." And he literally ran away. He scurried away like a rat! And I just wish I could remember his name! It's too bad.

It's even from friends. Recently, a friend just sent me a link to a video that an amazing gayageum player made. She's come to a lot of my shows. She's from Korea; she went to New England Conservatory. Amazing player, and I love her. She made this beautifully edited video that had her singing and playing.

This friend of mine sent me this video and said, "Hey, have you seen this yet? It reminds me a lot of you and your work." It kind of makes sense. She's been following me and she said I've been influencing her. But I kind of just told him, "You know, I've often been told this." People say, "Oh, I saw Bora Yoon and I thought of you!" She's a friend of mine also! But very different! So different!

It's this grouping together that's frustrating. People can't see the difference. It's like, "All Asian people look alike." This is what we're up against. Not only are we grouped and stereotyped, but if that's already what people can or cannot see, then how is our music going to even be appreciated?

I’m an artist who really embraces my ancestry. I go deep into it. That’s my path. But I know how frustrating it must be for other Asian artists who people might expect that of them. They just want to make music, you know? It’s just being the other. I’ve never let it stop me because I’m so hard-headed. I just go forward.

Inescapable Progression: 10 Jazz Labels You Need To Know In 2021

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Vijay Iyer Trio

(L-R) Tyshawn Sorey, Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh

Photo: Craig Marsden

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Vijay Iyer On His New Trio Album, 'Uneasy' 2021-vijay-iyer-interview-linda-oh-tyshawn-sorey-uneasy

Vijay Iyer On His New Trio Album 'Uneasy,' American Identity & Teaching Black American Music In The 21st Century

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On 'Uneasy,' pianist Vijay Iyer bands together with his creative family—bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey—to envisage a more equitable world
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Mar 30, 2021 - 1:25 pm

Vijay Iyer may be one of the foremost academics in 21st century music, but he's far more absorbed in the body than the brain. He peppers his language with references to the heart, spine and hips; his paramount rhythmic value is the pulse. And when describing how a terrific rhythm section glues together, he clasps together his index fingers and pulls.

"Let the record show that I'm making a weird hand gesture right now," the GRAMMY-nominated pianist, composer and Harvard Department of Music professor announces with a chuckle over Zoom. "Kind of hooked and pulling apart, but somehow hanging together." Iyer is describing a musical phenomenon called "the hookup," which perfectly describes the concision between him, bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey in his latest trio.

Oh and Sorey aren't mere collaborators or accompanists; they're educators and composers in their own rights. Of Sorey's drumming, Iyer cites a "life-sustaining kind of magic." And of Oh's bass playing, "Her awareness of and relation to pulse, it's like micro-detail," he says. Those qualities and more can be found on Uneasy, the trio's first studio record, which drops April 9 on ECM Records. The album is a mix of topical material "Children of Flint" with Iyer originals ("Combat Breathing") and standards ("Night and Day") from deep in their wheelhouse.

Most importantly, Iyer considers the pair to be his musical family; together, they're his stronghold through a racially and sociopolitically turbulent time. And with the tragic Atlanta spa shootings in the rearview, the cover—where the three musicians' names float around an out-of-focus Statue of Liberty—is a side-eyed glance at what it means to be an American.

GRAMMY.com spoke with Vijay Iyer about the architecture of a trio record and his feelings on American identity in the wake of anti-Asian violence. Plus, just in time for Music In Our Schools Month, he explores how educators can teach Black American music more fairly and accurately in the 21st century.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I love trio albums. To me, Bill Evans' Sunday at the Village Vanguard is the gold standard. Recently, I've connected greatly with Bill Frisell's Valentine. Uneasy is another excellent one. So, what is it about the power of a trio, in your estimation? To me, it has the integrity of a triangle in architecture.

Oh, so many things. There's both the disparateness of it, in the sense that we're each doing pretty seemingly qualitatively different things. Maybe the piano and drums have more in common, let's say, but still, the materials we're working with are so different.

Then, at the same time, everything is done with the hands and the feet, to a certain extent. In particular, that means that there's no literal breath involved in anything you hear. So there's a certain kind of tactile quality because of that. Every sound you hear is the result of a touch of some kind. 

And, that any lyricism is sort of an illusion, in the sense that when you hear a melody that connects, you are being invited to imagine a voice that's not there, you know? Imagine a sort of breath that is not directly involved in the sounds you're hearing. So, that has a certain kind of suspended quality because of that. It's both a suspension of disbelief and a handmade universe. That's one detail about it that is intriguing.

The other side of it is, at some level, I don't care what the hands are doing as a listener. I care about something more central. Meaning, what do I connect to when I hear musicians in action? What do I, as a listener, as an observer, find myself relating to sonically? What I find myself relating to sonically is a sense of pulse that comes from the center of the body. From the heart, from the spine, from the torso, from the hips, you know? Not from the hands.

So, that's a funny paradox. Why is the trio the rhythm section? Why is it that somehow, by touching and hitting things, we're expressing something central? How do what the hands do reflect where the heart is, or what the center of the body is doing? How do we conjure these qualities of motion that compel a listener to move, to not use the hands, but move the body?

That feels like a paradox to me—or at least a puzzle, or some kind of challenge. How is it that we, through the actions of our hands, can summon the actions of a body—or a multitude of bodies, even? How do we conjure pulse? What that means is that how we play together is by connecting body-to-body in that way—connecting spine to spine. The hands are just kind of—well, they're extremities. So there's sort of the result of deeper connection. The actions of the hands and their apparent coordination amongst all six is the result of something much deeper. And because of that, they can have, like I said, a disparate quality—almost a seeming disunity—on a certain level and still be connected mysteriously from within. 

That allows for a really interesting kind of polyphony—a kind that can have this kind of rough-and-tumble quality. Because it's about things falling. The impulse is previous to it, you know? I guess what I'm saying is that whatever way we're synchronizing internally, sonically, what you hear is merely a reflection of that. The center of the music is somehow not sounded. That's the miraculous, illusory quality of it. I don't if this makes any sense.

Vijay Iyer

Vijay Iyer performing in Berlin in 2016. Photo: Stefan Hoederath/Redferns

It does make sense. Because the way that Bill Evans Trio record fires up—it's a shuffle on the snare here, a piano vamp there, and it's not gelling right off the bat. But then the triangle settles on its base, as it were.

I think my iconic trio music has a different kick to it, maybe. Maybe it has to do with the role of the drummer in particular, as more than an accompanist. I think my iconic trio album is Money Jungle. You know that record?

Duke [Ellington], right?

Yeah. You don't hear them and think, "Wow, these guys have been playing together forever!" or something like that. What you're kind of gripped by is the complex and even contentious relationship among them and how they kind of lurch. The qualities of motion are so intense. There are moments where they're gliding and dancing and there are moments where it feels like combat or something. So, that's one point of reference.

Another point of reference is Ahmad Jamal, Live at the Pershing. Which is so much about groove at play—play in the sense of playing with form and playing with elements. It's not soloistic, for the most part. It's not like, "I'm going to play, then you're going to play. I'm going to comp for you," or something like that. It's actually that they're creating this totality and it keeps breathing and flexing and changing color, changing energy, changing dynamic. So, it's very much a collective enterprise at all times.

Those are two points of reference, but then I also think about rhythm sections, just in general. James Brown's rhythm section, or The Meters. Not piano trio-specific, even. Just how a deep pulse can be expressed in this composite way.

I saw this trio at Jazz Standard back in 2019. It's obvious you, Linda and Tyshawn have wonderful synergy, but I'm curious as to what that synergy is. What do you enjoy about the chemical reaction generated by this specific combination?

I think what anyone wants out of any rhythm section is a certain quality of pulse—a certain sense of drive, what they call "the hookup" between bass and drums, let's say. Often, that has to do with how each one of them relates to the pulse and how maybe that creates a sustained—[clasps index fingers and pulls]. Let the record show that I'm making a weird hand gesture right now—kind of hooked and pulling apart, but somehow hanging together.

So there's something about that balance. It's elusive in the sense that it's not merely like, "Oh, so-and-so plays behind the beat and so-and-so plays on top of the beat." Sometimes it's that, but often, it's a little more nuanced than that.

In any case, there's a real attentiveness to that quality from both of them that I hear in every sound they make together. Like, where are you in relation to time and in relation to pulse, specifically? How are you expressing pulse? How is it being expressed through what you do?

Every sound you make is also rhythm, and every rhythm that you make together sets up a rhythmic relation. So, how is that rhythmic relation being expressed? It pops with that. It has this nice drive and intensity and focus, you know?

The other thing is how they listen, both of them. I've played with Tyshawn for 20 years. He's like family to me. We've had this delightful adventure together for half our lives in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of music-making. Teaching and learning and traveling and eating weird food together and losing our bags. Getting pulled over by security together. All kinds of stuff. There's a deep bond there, and that didn't just come out of nowhere, you know. It didn't just come out because we happened to be in the same place at the same time, or something. It's actually because of how he listens, and how I listen to him listening, and how we relate that way.

It's about his musical memory and how I can attend to that. It's about a certain shared aesthetic, I would say. A certain kind of balance of stillness and wildness. I guess by "wild," I mean a taste for intensity and for even extremes of intensity. Not "wild," per se, because it's not like he does anything that's disordered. Actually, everything he does is generating order. That's one thing I eventually realized in playing with him, is that it's all support. It's all structure, every sound he makes. It's all deeply informed by not just everything that's happening, but by many histories of music-making that he's tapped into.

I've said this elsewhere about him and just about drummers in general. I mean, I've talked a lot about Marcus Gilmore, who I've also worked with for many years. I got to know and work with Ralph Peterson, who I can't believe is gone. I've gotten to know folks like Jeff "Tain" Watts and Jack DeJohnette. And there's Marcus's grandfather, Roy Haynes, who just turned 96!

Getting to know all these incredible drummers—Billy Hart, another—[is a matter of] knowing that they are aware of much more than they're usually given credit for, musically. There's a deep compositional awareness. They're incredible listeners. They hear everything. I'm not exaggerating! Andrew Cyrille, another example. I've had great experiences making music with him.

There's kind of a perspicuous vantage on everything—an awareness of everything. Channeling that, there's a deeply informed and informational way of playing. It's not just playing a groove or playing a pattern. It's actually where you work with sound to complement and lift up what's happening. To conduct the energy of the entire ensemble even while not being given credit for doing so. There's a profundity to the art of drumming that is way beyond the way it's usually characterized, you know? Tyshawn is one of the exemplars of that incredible artistry. That incredible awareness and creative, life-sustaining kind of magic.

Tyshawn Sorey

Tyshawn Sorey performing in Chicago in 2014. Photo: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

With Linda, she came to the U.S. in the aughts—sometime in the early 2000s. I remember hearing that she had done a thesis on Dave Holland and did a bunch of transcriptions of him playing with different drummers. I sort of learned more about her; she had really gone in deep on something. I always appreciated that.

I remember talking to Ambrose [Akinmusire] about her because her first album that she released, Entry, was a trio with Ambrose and Obed Calvaire. That was a bold step, first of all, for a bass player to make an album as a leader at that age. She was probably in her early twenties. And to make it an odd format—there aren't that many records that are trumpet, bass and drums. Maybe a Bill Dixon record somewhere? I don't know—not many things.

So, yeah, the transparency of that. I remember Ambrose saying, "Look, she really has that type of ear. She can hear on a really high level." I knew how Ambrose could hear, which is not that different from how Tyshawn hears, in the sense of, again, that deep awareness of everything. When someone plays something, there's no mystery about what it is. There could be a mystery about why it is. [Laughs.]

But her ability to hear on that level, and then her real detail and care with timekeeping and her awareness of and relation to pulse, it's like micro-detail. And then just getting around on the instrument with real ease. I've heard her in all kinds of contexts, you know. She's got a great career as a composer and a bandleader, but I've also heard her play with Kenny Barron, with Pat Metheny, with all kinds of folks. She always keeps things aloft, and I've played with her many times over the years in lots of different ad hoc contexts.

I just found a photo of her and me and Becca Stevens. We did a couple of trio sets, just the three of us. There's a time when she and I and E.J. Strickland played in a quintet with Ravi Coltrane and Dave Douglas. There's an improvised session we did at The Stone with Imani Izuri and DJ Val Jeanty—DJ and Linda and me and this vocalist. And then there's all the stuff we did at Banff together. Somewhere, there's a recording of her and me and Grégoire Maret, the harmonica player. There's all these wild aggregates where she just holds down the center of things with such clarity and ferocity. It was in the course of doing all these ad-hoc, thrown-together things that we realized we already knew how to play together.

I set up a trio set for us at the Standard, probably the first one you came to, in early '19. Then we were at Banff again that summer, August 2019, and it was toward the end of that program that we just wanted to blow off steam. We said, "Hey, let's just play a trio set. It'll just be for the students. It won't be for an audience or anything," just to do it. Just to serve the music and be a community, you know.

It felt so alive. It had this flash of "Yeah, this is a thing." It had its own truth to it. You can't deny it. Right then, I just said, "You guys want to make a record?" and a few months later, we recorded it. I think what that sound is has to do with that excitement. That spark of possibility combined with that level of awareness that the two of them have about all the musical structure and information. And then both of them as composers having a dynamic sense of what can happen.

Linda May Han Oh

Linda May Han Oh performing in Monterey, California, in 2017. Photo: Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images​

In a recent Zoom panel, you talked about the cover—the Statue of Liberty triangulated by the three musicians' names. Given that the three names recall three different racial descents, they serve as commentary on the nature of American identity.  I'm sure the events of this week gave you pause on the otherness that Americans of different colors and backgrounds are feeling.

It isn't just that it happened. It is that, but it's also what that police captian from Cherokee County said, and also the way it was handled by the media. That's when you go, "This is all connected." The idea that some white kid—not kid, a young white man—who's disgruntled about whatever, his own supposed sex addiction, can blame the most vulnerable people and then murder them. And then that can be treated as almost normal. Almost excusable. The discourse around it was "Well, he had a bad day." 

And then we keep seeing pictures of him and his name constantly essentially glorifying and humanizing him. "He went to church." That whole pattern of humanizing the white male killer, and meantime, I had dig around to find even a mention of any of the names of the victims.

You described Tyshawn as "family." What role does communing with this chosen family and making music together play in that healing process and finding a future through the wreckage?

It is the sound of a certain kind of communion. That was Don Cherry's phrase: "complete communion," which means not just with one another, but with something larger and deeper than any of us. And it's been so long since we've been able to do that, really, in any kind of regular way. 

Being able to put this album now is to say, "We can still do this. We can still be among each other in a caring way, in a way that's about listening and co-construction and facing the world together." That's basically what it means to me.

Because the lead single was "Children of Flint," people might be tempted to think this is all topical material. But from what I understand, some of it is simply material from your wheelhouses. Cole Porter's "Night and Day" comes to mind. What common thread is there between all these tunes, if any?

I wouldn't say it was forced into any kind of common theme. The impulse to make the record was that we felt like as a band. At that level, it's like, "It doesn't matter what we play, actually. Let's just document something so we can remember this sound and share it with people."

That said, then it was a certain kind of curatorial exercise to me to pull together material that I felt like playing with them—that I felt could be given a certain kind of life and context. I wanted to know what it would sound like. I wanted to hear it. I wanted to hear us playing this music, you know? I wanted to hear the two of them take on some of this material.

And then some of it was new. "Children of Flint" was written that fall. "Retrofit" was written that summer. There was another new piece I didn't end up including on the album. "Allomothers," is relatively new, I guess. So, it was about just gathering together a set of stimuli for us, a set of impulses: "Hey, let's work with this. Let's bring this into being."

Some of that involved some studying. Geri Allen's "Drummer's Song" is a piece that you have to study to play. And it wasn't just that it was "Night and Day;" it's that it was Joe Henderson's version of "Night and Day" from Inner Urge. There's something different about that version. [Laughs].

He reharmonizes it in a way that's not exactly Coltrane-esque, but something in that family. [John] Coltrane went through a period in the late '50s where everything had what are called "Giant Steps" changes. "Countdown" is actually his version of Miles Davis' "Tune Up," but with a whole bunch of extra chords stuck in there to make it almost fiendishly hard! What does that elicit from you? There's an etude-like quality in the sense of working through some set of challenges to elicit something new from you. I mean you, the musician. You, the music-maker. You, the improviser.

That's basically what Joe Henderson did with "Night and Day," so it was that. It didn't matter that it was "Night and Day," actually. It mattered that it was that impulse, that transformative gesture that Joe Henderson brought to it. And then it mattered that it was that band playing it. Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Bob Cranshaw, Joe Henderson. That band just sailing through that really wild arrangement.

Then there was, like, "Let's study that," because we study what other musicians have done. We study it hard. We put in the time. That's what both of them do just as a matter of course. What that means is I can just say, "Hey, let's try this," and within a matter of minutes, Linda has learned it. [Laughs.] Beyond that, it's like I'm learning from her about it. 

With my material, it was really curatorial over a span of 20 years' worth of compositions of mine, "Configurations" being the oldest and "Children of Flint" being the newest. 

It's not that any particular album is political, but at almost any moment in my musical life, I'm listening to what's happening outside and that is informing what I do, why I do it and with whom I do it. And for whom I do it. The first two pieces on the album are probably the most "political." But it's more like each of them was serving a specific purpose—serving a specific cause. And by serving, I mean literally serving. Trying to support an existing movement on the ground.

March is Music In Our Schools Month, and I wanted to talk about the intersection between jazz—or, Black American music, whatever language you want to use—and academia. You're in academia, Tyshawn's in academia, I don't remember if Linda is…

Yeah, she teaches at Berklee, actually.

There you go. I don't remember when jazz education began in the U.S., but it wasn't around in the '50s or '60s, as far as I know. Musicians were learning from each other—teacher to student and peer to peer. Now, in many ways, this music lives in universities. Can you talk about that connection and how it can be helpful or problematic in some respect?

[Long silence.] Can I? [Laughs.]

I don't know if I can. I think in both Tyshawn's and my case, neither of us pretends to be a jazz anything in academia. We just show up as ourselves—as the artists that we are. He's a composition professor at the University of Pennsylvania. I started a doctoral program at Harvard called Creative Practices and Critical Inquiry. 

I never use the word "jazz" in any of my courses. That's not to say we don't study this history, but I also appreciate the history of people rejecting the word "jazz." That's a deep history. That's a 100-year-old history of people pushing back against the confining labeling impulse of the music business, which has historically been a white business—a white male-run business.

So when Black musicians have sought to define their work on their own terms, we have to listen to that history. In the '60s, people started using the phrase "creative music." In the '60s! That's more than half a century ago, right? That label's been around for a long time, alongside and pushing back against the label of jazz. 

Also, there's this history of music-makers creating music on their own terms, sometimes in a way that you can't categorize. If you listen to Bud Powell's piece "Glass Enclosure," you can't listen to that and say, "Well, that's a jazz tune," or something like that. You have to crack open all categories to parse it, even—to make sense of it.

Or a moment like "Strange Fruit," Billie Holiday. Very intently exploding the category and defying her own audiences to think about the world outside, you know? And to think about their own relationship to it and their own complicity with it. I would call that something like experimental music, because it's doing something that pushes on every dimension of the category and kind of explodes the frame.

There are all kinds of examples. Afternoon of a Georgia Faun, Marion Brown. Another example. Or Alice Coltrane's recordings. On at least one of her albums, she recorded an entire section of "Rite of Spring." What's that doing on an Alice Coltrane record? What is her relationship to that history? Why is she evoking a Russian composer, a piece from 1913?

I think these categories keep undoing themselves if you really pay attention to what an artist has been doing all this time.

Bird hated the word "jazz." Dizzy hated it. Yusef Lateef hated it. I'm fine with throwing it in the garbage when necessary.

Right. So, how do we teach that? The fraught history of the category, the forces that shaped it and continue to shape it, and the choices artists have made, often in defiance of categorization and larger systems of oppression? It's about looking at books like Amiri Baraka's Blues People, Angela Davis' Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Gerald Horne's Jazz and Justice, Robin Kelley's book on Thelonious Monk, Art Taylor's Notes and Tones and George Lewis' book on the AACM. Understanding how what it really is is a history of social movements, actually.

If you look at the "creative music movement," as Sarita McCoy Gregory called it, what was it that Black musicians were doing in the '60s and '70s, around the time of the Black Power movement? They were self-organizing and making music on their own terms, often starting their own labels, their own venues, their own presenting organizing, their own artist collectives.

If you go to jazz school, like the Manhattan School of Music or something, you don't learn about any of this because it defies the logic of jazz education. Jazz education as we know it today was an entrepreneurial venture by white men in the '60s and '70s.

So when you look at the "Real Book" that was made at that period, that I had in the '80s when I was in high school, what did it have in it? And what didn't it have in it? It didn't have any music by Mary Lou Williams or Nina Simone or Alice Coltrane or Lil Hardin. It didn't have anything you would associate with the avant-garde or the Black Power movement, like Archie Shepp or Albert Ayler. Certainly no Cecil Taylor. Maybe one or two Ornette Coleman tunes from the '50s. So it basically ignored all these pivotal Black women and pivotal Black activists from the '60s. 

Instead, all the Black music it contains is from the past. Some Coltrane tunes. Some Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter tunes from the '50s and '60s. A lot of Duke Ellington, Mingus. But then all the "modern music" is by white men. Chick Corea. Gary Burton. Steve Swallow. Dave Holland. Keith Jarrett. They're all in there, right?

Why are they all in the "Real Book" and why aren't any of these other things? It's stuff like that. We have to historicize what we call "jazz education" and understand it to be this weird phenomenon that emerged in a certain moment and then retold the history of the music in a way that erased more than it retained.

I like that a lot. The idea of telling the story again more accurately and inclusively, rather than locking it in an ivory tower or excluding anybody.

Well, really, hearing it from artists. We had Henry Threadgill in our class. [Saxophonist and composer] Yosvany [Terry] and I co-teach a course this term. We bore witness to his whole life of music-making that starts before any of that happened. 

We also had Cécile McLorin Salvant there. Hearing them back-to-back was like, "Well, they're dealing with similar constraints, and they both have a quirky, defiant streak, and they're both resisting categorization." They're in very different phases in their lives—they're separated by close to 50 years. 

We start to rethink the history from the ground up and try to account for what has been… not forgotten, but sort of left out of the standard narrative. The other side of it is like, "Help people make music together with a detailed understanding of what's happened before and what's possible." But also let people invent, you know? Let people invent together.

I've heard people make some unprecedented stuff, and if you support that process, then you're actually stimulating—or not just stimulating, you're recreating something like what it was like when these artists we know and love came together 50 and 60 and 70 and 80 years ago without the burden of a genre to tell them what to do.

'Ptah, The El Daoud' At 50: How Alice Coltrane Straddled Heaven And Earth

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Annika Wells

Annika Wells

Photo: Graham Wolff

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Singer/Songwriter Annika Wells On Writing For BTS 2021-annika-wells-interview-writing-bts-chainsmokers-jonas-brothers-love-sucks

Annika Wells On Writing For BTS, Her Advice For Singer/Songwriters & The Secret Value Of Making People Mad

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Even when writing for massive artists like BTS, Annika Wells' MO isn't to appeal to the masses, but to be herself — even when it pisses a few people off
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Jul 6, 2021 - 4:12 pm

Annika Wells' songs have been breathed by artists that 99% of us could only fantasize about working with — including the titans of K-pop, BTS. And the 25-year-old got there not by trying to appeal to everybody at once, but by entertaining herself first and foremost — and trusting that the right audience will find her in the end.

"My favorite art is art that's made somebody mad. It means you're saying something new," the Angeleno tells GRAMMY.com over Zoom with a grin. "It's not like I'm trying to weird people out, or not not trying to weird people out. I'm saying exactly what I'm thinking and somebody somewhere is going to resonate with it."

"I would rather make one person's favorite song than 100 people's song they put on in the background when they go about their day," she adds.

For most musicians, unbending devotion to unfettered expression might leave their work unheard in the catacombs of Bandcamp. But Wells cultivated a large audience by dealing in universal concepts, like getting over heartbreak and taking a bite out of life. This applies not only to her work with BTS and Steve Aoki ("The Truth Untold"), the Jonas Brothers ("Like It's Christmas") and BAYNK ("go with u"), but her mouthy, personality-first singles under her own name, like "F**k Being Sober" and "Love Sucks."

Read on for an in-depth interview with Wells about how she entered BTS's orbit, why pleasing everyone is a no-no for artists and why finding success in the music business means "pounding down every door" until one swings open.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Can you talk about your songwriting process, as opposed to your performing process?

I've written for people like BTS, ILLENIUM, Hailee Steinfeld, Maggie Lindemann — a lot of people in the pop sphere. Songwriting has always been my original love. Since I was about eight years old, I've been writing music and have always known that's what I wanted to do. I absolutely love writing for myself and I also love helping other people's stories come to light. Songwriting in any capacity is my passion.

Writing for BTS sounds intense. What's that like?

I actually didn't write with them in the room, especially because they're abroad most of the time. Boy bands and girl bands' schedules are absolutely insane. It's pretty hard to get in a room with them. That session was actually a quick song in how it came about.

I wrote this ballad with one of my friends I went to Berklee College of Music with. He texted me that morning and was like, "Come join this session! Come over to my friend's place!" I was like, "Sure." We ended up writing this song about this unrequited love he had. We all loved it and the song sat around for six months.

Nobody was really picking it up. It's really hard to write a song for a pitch. Nobody was taking a bite. And then, out of the blue, one of the people we wrote it with, their publisher [made a series of connections] and got the song to BTS. [When we heard] BTS wanted to cut it, we were like, "What! That's crazy!" 

It ended up being this collab with Steve Aoki and the song did incredibly well. It was such a cool surprise! I didn't get the opportunity to work with them in person, but it's funny how these opportunities all come about. You never know when something big can happen!

Do you write on a piano? On a guitar? With a digital audio workstation?

All of the above. I started writing on piano. I took classical piano lessons for about 10 years and that has always been my principal instrument. 

But I've been actually writing on guitar recently because I don't know the instrument that well. I've never taken lessons. I feel like with piano, I always overthink it because I know the instrument so well. With guitar, there's room for me to play something wrong and have that mistake be cool. So, it's been fun to write for guitar recently.

Besides BTS, who else have you written for lately?

In the last year, it's been difficult, obviously, to collaborate. I've gone back to working with some people. I've been working a bit with Chloe Lilac, who's an amazing independent artist in New York. I have some stuff coming up on BAYNK's new album. Obviously, ILLENIUM and I are always collaborating. I actually had my first in-person session yesterday, which was so much fun because I'm fully vaccinated. I'm excited to finally get back into this.

What about the songs you write for yourself? Do you delineate between the two when you write, or is an Annika song just an Annika song?

There's definitely an indescribable aspect to it when it feels like me. The music I put out as myself is so deeply personal, and it's kind of the difference [between] "Am I going to tell an absolutely true story today or am I going to put on my imagination hat?" Not necessarily to make something up, but to connect to a real-life experience and tell a story that's not exactly my own.

How would you describe your voice as a songwriter?

My voice, I think, is kind of quirky. "Abrasive" sounds like too abrasive a word, but I think in some ways, it kind of is. 

I want to peel back this veil of what we're supposed to say. Trying to look cool or trying to not embarrass myself. I just want to say what the f*** is on my mind. What I'm actually thinking. It's more about saying what I actually want to say rather than thinking about what the audience wants to hear, and inevitably, an audience does come out of the woodwork that wants to hear that.

My favorite art is art that's made somebody mad. It means you're saying something new. Somebody's getting pissed off by it. It's not like I'm trying to weird people out, or not not trying to weird people out. I'm saying exactly what I'm thinking and somebody somewhere is going to resonate with it.

I would rather make one person's favorite song than 100 people's song they put on in the background when they go about their day.

Which songwriters are you checking out lately?

Julia Michaels has always been a favorite of mine. I've been obsessed with her and Justin Tranter since I was in high school. I remember my mom somehow found an article about Justin Tranter and was like, "You need to hear about this guy! You're going to love him!" I became obsessed with their writing style. I love how Julia started this new era of speaking so colloquially—those talking lyrics.

I also love Coldplay. Chris Martin has inspired so many melodies and also piano voicings. I absolutely love their voicings and how they use these pop chords, but if you actually look at the inversions and structures, it's really complex but they communicate in a way that's so accessible.

Anyone from, say, the '50s through the '80s?

My favorite album of all time is Ella and Louis. That one absolutely stabbed me in the heart. That's the first record I ever bought. Before I even bought a record player, I bought that record and carried it around with me for, like, three years. It's so scratched by now that I need to get a new one since I've listened to it literally hundreds and hundreds of times.

Do you have any advice for younger writers?

My one piece of advice I always go back to in terms of finding opportunities or getting people to hear your music — or generally finding success in the industry — is to get creative with the avenues you're trying. 

The ways I've always found success have been because I've not just knocked on every door, but pounded down every door. Nine out of 10 times, the door's not going to open up! But then one out of 10 is going to open up. If you're the one person who's actively pounding down every door, you're going to be the one who gets through it.

Just try every avenue. Try something weird. Try something people aren't thinking of doing. Just get creative with how you look for opportunities and you're going to find something.

K.Flay On Embracing Inner Wildness & Working With Tom Morello On Her Brazen New EP 'Inside Voices'

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