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Edmar Castaneda

Edmar Castañeda

Photo: Adrien H. Tillmann

News
Jazz Harpist Edmar Castañeda On New Album 'Family' 2021-edmar-castaneda-jazz-harpist-family-interview

Jazz Harpist Edmar Castañeda On How Spirituality, Injury & Love Inspired His New Album 'Family'

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While making his new album, 'Family,' a fall put Edmar Castañeda in the hospital—and then the pandemic hit. But recuperating with his wife and kids gave the album its heart and soul
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
May 18, 2021 - 5:40 pm

"My Favorite Things" is one of the most elastic songs in the American canon. You can sing it straight, as in The Sound of Music, twist it into a new form like Ariana Grande or blow it to high heaven like John Coltrane. When the COVID-19 pandemic made the world housebound, the song seemed to materialize in a whole new way in Andrea Tierra's house.

"My girl was practicing that [song in Spanish] last year for her music class," she tells GRAMMY.com. "I had all that there ready." But this new version of the song wouldn't just be in Spanish. Such communion with household objects that had special meaning, she thought, would be perfect for her husband, Colombian jazz harpist Edmar Castañeda's, album Family. Aiming to uphold the integrity of the original lyrics, she translated them as cleanly as possible into Spanish. Then, as the world went into lockdown and she spent more time at home, she switched out the objects in the lyrics to reflect her favorite things—and her family's.

This version of "My Favorite Things" closes out Family, which arrives May 21. Featuring Tierra on vocals, Shlomi Cohen on soprano sax and Rodrigo Villalon on drums, Family is a percolating new high watermark for the jazz harpist. The album mixes originals, like "Song for Jaco" and "Acts," with "My Favorite Things" and "Cancion Con Todos," a Latin American standard that nods to the couple's Colombian roots.

GRAMMY.com traveled to Teaneck, New Jersey to speak with Castañeda in his backyard. Eventually, Tierra joined him, and so did their two children, Zamir and Zeudi. It concluded with all of them together, reflecting how Family was a co-creation of the entire Castañeda household. Miraculously, the COVID-19 pandemic and three months out with a broken wrist due to a fall during the album's production didn't derail the creative process. Instead, it imbued it with new emotional dimensions and brought the family closer than ever.

Read on for the full conversation with the Castañeda family as they discuss the place of the harp in jazz, splitting the difference between Colombian and American influences and how all four left their fingerprints on the final product.

Edmar Castaneda

Edmar Castañeda​. Photo: Adrien H. Tillmann

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Are there many jazz harpists out there?

Edmar: There are not many. I haven't met many jazz [harp] players. I know one, but he's in Switzerland right now. Brandee Younger, but she plays more soul music.

Did you play as a kid?

Edmar: I started when I was 13, in Colombia. Then, I came here when I was 16.

How'd you get exposed to the instrument in the first place?

Edmar: The harp is a traditional instrument from my country. In one part of Colombia, the way we play the harp is very [much] folk music. When I was seven years old, my mom took me [to this place] and that's when I met a harpist for the first time. I fell in love with this instrument.

And then, when I was 16, I came to this country, to New York. I [got into] jazz for the first time. I just fell in love with that music.

I generally think of the harp as being a classical instrument… Oh, hey! How's it going?

Andrea [arriving]: Nice to meet you.

Edmar: ... Yeah, it's one of the oldest instruments on Earth.

David plays it in the Bible.

Edmar: All the instruments come from the harp, you know? The piano comes from the harp. It was a very popular instrument a long time ago.

How did you realize jazz and the harp could intersect? Were you into people like Dorothy Ashby?

Edmar: Yeah, I think Dorothy's the only one who really plays jazz, for me. Alice [Coltrane] was mostly a pianist and singer, right?

Yeah, she was a bebop piano player. The harp shows up on the more glissando, open-ended material.

Edmar: It was more experimental music with jazz. But the harp is not a lead instrument like [with] Dorothy.

How did you make that connection, then?

Edmar: I started with folk music. Then, I met jazz with the trumpet—I used to play the trumpet. In high school, they put me [on the] trumpet—no harp for anything. That's when I learned about Duke Ellington, Miles—all these crazy-amazing musicians. I started getting inspired by that and tried to imitate it a little bit on the harp.

Edmar Castaneda

Edmar Castañeda​. Photo: Adrien H. Tillmann

Andrea, what can you tell me about your musical background?

Andrea: I was born in Medellín and my dad is an improviser. An improviser of rhymes. He's a poet. So, I was raised [with] that kind of influence. That's where I started to sing. My siblings are musicians, too.

Edmar: We both come from folk music

Andrea: A folk music background.

What does Colombian folk music sound like?

Edmar: There's many, man. We have 1,000 rhythms.

I figured. Boiling it down to one sound would be like reducing American music to one genre.

Edmar: From my part, it's the harp and it's very flamenco and [mimics chugging train beat]. For her, it's more guitars.

Where do Colombian folk and Colombian jazz meet?

Edmar: For me, I never heard jazz in Colombia. There's great Colombian jazz, too, but when I was there, I was more into folk music.

Andrea: Yeah.

Do you still play the horn?

Edmar: Nah, nah.

Andrea: He teaches our son!

Does he have some chops?

Edmar: Yeah, yeah! He's 10! He's getting there! He likes Clifford Brown and all these great jazz players. For [Andrea], we use more of her background in lyrics. She writes amazing lyrics and we mix them with folk and jazz and world music. On this album, we did a version of "My Favorite Things."

Andrea: We did it in Spanish. It's very, very attached to the real version. I did the translation the best I could. We added a pajarillo, which is …

Edmar: Traditional verses.

Andrea: Traditional-verses music. We mixed a lot of different things in the song.

Edmar: It's very flamenco.

Was it difficult to capture the cadence of the original in a Spanish translation?

Andrea: Yeah. Actually, my girl was practicing that last year for her music class. I had all that there ready. For me, the most important thing was to be so true to the song itself. To the lyrics. It's set the way it is, I fixed it the best I could in Spanish and then added my favorite things so the song would be respected.

It's one of those songs you can keep interpreting and interpreting and it never loses its elasticity.

Edmar: But we couldn't find any in Spanish!

Andrea: It also became so powerful because, during this pandemic, we've learned to live with our favorite things. Those little things you have at home are the little things that make you happy.

Communion with objects.

Andrea: Yeah. I think it's a great song for this time.

Where does Family sit in your body of work? How many albums had you done prior?

Edmar: Sixth. This is my seventh.

How did your recording career get started?

Edmar: My first album was maybe 15 or 20 years ago. It was different concepts with [clarinetist] Paquito D'Rivera, [drummer] Ari Hoenig and [flugelhornist] Mike Rodriguez. And then I did this same group with a trombone—Marshall Gilkes. Then, I did a duo album with Gonzalo Rubalcaba. He's one of the top piano players from Cuba.

Then, I did the World Ensemble, which was a nine-piece band, live at the Jazz Standard. Then, I did a live album with Hiromi, a Japanese pianist [called] Live in Montreal. Then, a duo with [harmonica player] Grégoire Maret. Then, we came to this Family album.

Edmar Castaneda

Edmar Castañeda​. Photo: Alexandre Pinto

What was your artistic intent with Family as opposed to past albums? What did you want to do differently this time?

Edmar: This album I recorded before the pandemic—last November. I had an accident [in which I hurt] my hand. I fell from the attic and broke [points to wrist] this bone and this bone.

That must have been a nightmare.

Andrea: We had just recorded the first part of the album and everything. We had to take him to the ER, surgery, screws, everything.

Do you have your strength in that hand?

Edmar: Yeah, yeah.

Andrea. Robocop. That's what we call him. [all laugh]

Edmar: I got a second chance to play this instrument again. My fate was to believe that it was going to be OK. Then, when I was getting better, I said, "OK, I'm going to start playing and working again," and this pandemic kicked in really bad.

The whole year, I said, "I'm going to finish the album," and I pulled all the energy from what we learn as a family here. I record the harps here and I have a studio here, too, so I recorded everything here with that feeling of gratitude for life. To have my family, to be strong, to believe.

Andrea: He was so strong during the whole thing. All the time, he was smiling like this [makes blissful expression]. I cried more than him! When I sent the first picture when he got out of the hospital, my friends were like, "Is he coming out of a spa?"

How long were you out of commission?

Edmar: It was supposed to be eight months, but in two or three months, I was ready.

The tune that is titled "Family"—I was touring the whole year before with Hiromi and it was really difficult for me to be away from my family. I composed this tune [throughout] the whole year, little by little, everywhere, and when I came home one day, I finished it and played it for the kids.

I said, "Look! I've composed this! Do you like it?" And my kids were like [hushed tone] "Wow!" I said, "What would you name this tune?" My son said, "Family." They gave it a name. Everything was related to family.

What can you tell about the writing process behind Family?

Edmar: It pretty much is originals. We have, what, two standards? "My Favorite Things" and a beautiful tune from South America. [turns to Andrea] You can explain that more.

Andrea: ["Cancion Con Todos"] is about the power of America coming together. It's like a tour through the very important cities and [countrysides] of America. Calling people to be together, you know? To have all those things that make us better. It's a very old tune from Latin America. It's like a hymn.

Edmar: [As for] the rest, I did a tune inspired by Jaco Pastorius. I composed that before I went on tour with Hiromi. She liked it and wanted to record it, but I wanted to do my version with a trio, [which] I never did before. I did this tune inspired by his playing.

Andrea, can you talk about your vocal contributions to the album?

Andrea: I think it was important to bring that folk story or background to the music Edmar does. For me, the message is very important. Especially that it connects non-Spanish-speaking people to our culture, but also how I connect people from my background to jazz culture. The kind of music to which we're exposed [to].

I think that's my primary contribution. Also, as a woman, it's hard to pursue a career or keep on singing when you have two kids who are home-schooled since day one. They've never been to school. They're home-schooled by us forever. 

Trying to keep up with all those things, women often have to divide themselves between those decisions. "Should I pursue my career and my dreams? Should I have kids?" For me, I just want to say, "Come on, you don't have to do that." It's probably harder—you probably have to work a bit more—but I think we are capable of doing both.

[Zamir approaches the table]

Come join us!

Edmar: I'll give you more of the tunes. There's one titled "Battle of Faith." That's the opening of the CD. It's just believing. Never giving up. There's another one called "Acts." It's inspired by one of the disciples in the Bible. I love his passion for the faith of Christ.

Which disciple?

Edmar: Paul.

Paul's a genius.

Edmar: [blown-away look] The determination to believe it no matter what. He's a warrior, you know?

[Zeudi approaches the table]

Zeudi, what instruments do you play?

Zeudi: I play harp, ukulele and piano and I sing.

What about you, Zamir? I hear you're ripping on the trumpet. Like Clifford Brown.

Zamir: I don't really listen to him. I like more Miles.

What's your favorite Miles?

Zamir: "Tune Up."

The whole family's here!

Edmar: It's a family album.

Meet Delbert Anderson, A Native American Trumpet Master Interweaving Navajo Melodies With Jazz

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Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton

Photo: Edu Hawkins

News
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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Paula Cole

Paula Cole

Photo: Ebru Yildiz

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Paula Cole Talks Her New Album 'American Quilt' 2021-paula-cole-american-quilt-interview-hidden-in-plain-sight-premiere

Paula Cole On Bringing Attention To Black Music, The American Experience As Patchwork & Her New Album 'American Quilt'

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When Paula Cole finished an album of jazz ballads, the itch to explore American tradition remained unscratched. Now, she's back with 'American Quilt,' a mélange of folk standards and an original, "Hidden in Plain Sight," premiering on GRAMMY.com
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
May 20, 2021 - 11:54 am

Can an artist of one race pay homage to the art of another? On one side of the debate is disrespectful appropriation—on another, racial essentialism. On her new album of songs—many of them important to Black communities—from the 20th-century pantheon, American Quilt, Paula Cole walks the middle course with dignity and respect.

Among its mélange of Americana staples, like "Shenandoah" and "Wayfaring Stranger," American Quilt, which arrives May 21, does contain one original—"Hidden in Plain Sight (I Dream)," which premieres exclusively below via GRAMMY.com. That song illuminates the role of quilts as coded guides for fleeing slaves during the Underground Railroad. As a white woman, Cole is fully aware that she's not the representative for this subject. But unlike politicians, artists can swim between these boundaries at will.

"I just felt that even though it's not necessarily my story to tell, being a white person, it's important that we remember," the GRAMMY winner and seven-time nominee most famous for 1996's smash hit "I Don't Want to Wait" tells GRAMMY.com. "I created the song to reflect that because there isn't very much out there, and a lot of people don't know about them. They're mind-bogglingly ingenious." That last description could just as easily apply to Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and John Coltrane—Black innovators that Cole highlights on American Quilt and enthusiastically praises through the course of the interview.

GRAMMY.com caught up with Cole over the phone from Massachusetts about her all-over-the-place cultural roots, what compelled her to make this patchwork of American tunes and why music can help bridge the gaps between races and cultures.

Paula Cole

Paula Cole. Photo: Ebru Yildiz

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Nice to meet you, Paula. Where are you located?

At the moment, I'm in Rockport, Massachusetts. I'm visiting my parents quickly, so I'm conducting the interview from my childhood home, which is pretty interesting for me.

How does that feel?

It feels great. I love my parents so much. I had decided to move back to the North Shore of Massachusetts to raise my daughter nearer, so she could know them and the generations would be unified. That was more important to me than other things, like living in an industry city.

Is your childhood bedroom just how you remember it?

[laughs] No, it's different now. They changed it. We grew up in a Georgian house that was built in the 1600s. We're talking about a colonial New England house. George as in King George, you know? It's very small and poky and yet beautiful and historic.

What compelled you to see the American experience as a patchwork quilt?

It was accidental. The music informed the process. Having recorded 31 jazz standards in five days for my Balladsalbum—I should requalify that. They weren't all jazz standards. "God's Gonna Cut You Down" was actually recorded in 2016 in the Ballads sessions.

I was so pent-up as a lover of these standards that we recorded so much music. I released a double album, Ballads, and yet all these wonderful tracks were remaining and I had to shape them up. But I wanted to honor my roots and my roots are so diverse. Genetically, I'm so mixed, and musically, I'm so mixed.

I grew up with a father who was a professional bass player on weekends when I was a small child. He could play Duke Ellington songs on the piano and then folk songs on the guitar or harmonica and upright bass. We listened to country music records and everything. There was no classification or boxing-in of genre. It was meant to be self-made and fun. 

Non-musicians were the ones who classified the music, and they usually did so by gender and race and age. Which still happens to this day, based on algorithms through platforms on which we listen to music. We're classifying and dividing music for all the wrong reasons. And here I am, a mixture. I'm such a mixture. Loving all music. It's a patchwork.

My mom's a visual artist. She's a quilter, too. It just came to me that it was a quilt. That's when I needed to go back into the studio, and I recorded some more folksy Americana songs which reflect all of who I am. That's when I had the "A-ha!" moment that it's a quilt.

I needed to represent the sad parts of history and the honest part of our history. We wouldn't be who we are without the African experience. Slave quilts were these ingenious creations helping slaves flee to the Underground Railroad, to find the clues in the quilts.

The more I researched slave quilts, the more I realized that people didn't know about them. There isn't very much out there about them. Certainly, there was no music, no song I could sing to reflect them, even though there are Christian spirituals that double as protest songs, like "Steal Away." There wasn't anything about the quilts, so I wrote something into that vacancy to reflect a more full and diverse experience of America and our history.

We are a patchwork. We're all part of this diverse culture. Whether our music comes from Scotland or Africa or the cities or the mountains, it's all this American melting pot. That's our strength. [The album] coalesced intuitively. I didn't go about trying to make a concept album. It made itself.

Tell me more about "Hidden in Plain Sight."

That's the one original song I wrote for the album. "Hidden in Plain Sight" is all about the quilts. It's the cautionary tale and the advice from the quilter to the traveler. Each verse of "Hidden in Plain Sight" is a quilting square.

For instance, flying geese is a quilting square. It's a pattern used in quilts to this day. Flying geese in the context of slave quilts meant "Follow geese in spring. They lead north." Or a bear trail, which is a quilting pattern, means to the follower, "Follow the tracks of animals. They take you to water. They take you to safe places to hide."

So on and so forth. Each verse is advice to the traveler from the slave quilt. I created the song to reflect that because there isn't very much out there, and a lot of people don't know about them. They're mind-bogglingly ingenious. I just felt that even though it's not necessarily my story to tell, being a white person, it's important that we remember.

I'd like to explore your connections with all these traditional songs, too.

Sure. Sometimes, it's just because I like them!

That's as good an answer as any! That being said, what attracted you to "You Don't Know What Love Is"?

Oh, that's mostly my love for John Coltrane. I listened to so much from his Ballads album and I really feel the band channeled Coltrane on that recording. The form is the same. How it moves into double-time for the solo. The piano player, Consuelo Candelaria, just branches out so beautifully in her jazz solo. Then, we bring it back down to this very moody, almost spiritual, solemn feeling.

I just wanted to honor him. He was such a gentle giant and spiritual being.

He could play the hell out of a ballad, too.

[chuckles] Yeah. He's a hero to so many.

Paula Cole

Paula Cole performing at Lilith Fair in 1997. Photo: Bob Berg/Getty Images

How about "Wayfaring Stranger"?

See, I'm bowing to the masters here. I'm bowing to Coltrane and I'm bowing to Emmylou Harris, who I think is one of the great American voices. We shouldn't forget her. We should be talking about Emmylou Harris more. I learned "Wayfaring Stranger" from her Roses in the Snow album.

Emmylou is very dear to me. We sang on each other's sets when we were both at Lilith Fair. When I was taking my hiatus from the music business—totally disenchanted with the music business, hating the music business and wanting to leave the music business—it was Emmylou who told me in a very motherly way, "You can't. It just happened too fast."

For me, she said I'm lucky. That I've had a nice, long plateau of a career. It's true; that's the healthier way. That's the way of the proverbial tortoise, and she helped me see that. I love her so much for giving me the right spiritual advice when I wanted to leave the music business. 

I'm honoring that traditional song. Life being hard for early settlers. Life being hard and thinking about death as a place that can be beautiful, where you meet your loved ones again. People would sing these songs to console themselves, to pass time. 

And they span hundreds of years! It's so amazing! But I'm also honoring Emmylou Harris because I associate that song with her.

What made you want to quit the biz once and for all?

Like she said, it happened too fast for me. I'm very much a live performer and a catalog, legacy artist. That's how I see myself. I don't see myself as a hit-pop-song artist. My hits were so huge and there was so much attention. I was terribly introverted, so I didn't deal with it very well, and I just felt I was overexposed. I wasn't being known for what I actually was.

I wanted to have a reset and have my personal life back. I wanted to have a child and I wanted to live a sincere life and make great art. So, I just needed to shed an ill-fitting skin. It ended up, then, that I wasn't going to leave the business. I was just going to reinvent myself, reset and embark upon a more authentic second career.

How does "God's Gonna Cut You Down" speak to you?

I heard that from Odetta and from Johnny Cash. I don't have much to say about it other than it's a traditional song and it's a morality tale. It's nice to have a morality tale right now, especially told from a woman's point of view.

And how about "Shenandoah"?

It lives somewhere in our collective unconscious, right? That one's really profound because it has a lot of American history in it. From fur traders heading west to the Oneida tribal chief. These lonely fur traders going up and down the St. Louis River. Very often, they would marry Native American women and blend with tribes. And, again, people are singing these songs to keep themselves company, going up and down rivers and across oceans. So, the song lives on in an oral history, preserving this culture. The singer is singing to the Oneida chieftain about loving his daughter and wanting to marry her.

I love the melody. It's so haunting and so beautiful. I was kind of possessed by it. I made this very long arrangement that includes the journey of the song. It goes across the ocean in clipper ships to the U.K. by including the pennywhistle, coming back to American soil, and by including the voices of the gospel churches.

That's Darcel Wilson singing with me and also Peter Eldridge. They're both such brilliant artists in their own rights. When Darcel sings at the end, I'm completely transfixed and the hair stands up on my arms. It is so moving to me what she does in her performance. She takes over from the lead singer. It feels prescient. The Black voice taking over the white voice.

What can you tell me about "Black Mountain Blues"?

"Black Mountain Blues," I heard from worshipping at the altar of Bessie Smith. I love her lyrics. Bessie Smith was Janis Joplin's favorite singer and also Billie Holiday's favorite singer. Bessie Smith is so influential to modern music. I don't think we quite understand that.

I like it because it's strong. It's not so much a woe-is-me blues; it's a fierce blues. It's a power-of-woman blues. I'm honoring those masters, like Janis and Bessie. 

Have you read Angela Davis's book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism?

I have it on my shelf and I've poked around in it! I haven't read it cover-to-cover. But, yes, I know what you mean. The feminism in [the music of] Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Ma Rainey.

"Good Morning Heartache." What's your connection to that one?

That's in the book of standards. I literally have a book of standards on my piano that I go to as a place to grow, learn and relax. I always have. I love that song. 

I just wanted it to sound spooky. I produced it in a way that was mournful and spooky. I layered my clarinets, and my clarinet is like my Alfred Hitchcock cameo appearance. I put it on every album I make, somewhere. I put an underwater reverb on it and it gave it a real mood to evoke that sadness.

"Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out" is also Bessie, right?

Absolutely; that's where I learned it. Bessie. The queen. The Empress of the Blues.

What's the title mean to you?

When you're down and out, nobody gives you a break. Nobody wants to hear from you. Most people are fairweather friends. Fairweather fans. Fairweather business. Fairweather everybody. It's when you're down and out that you know the truth in people. That's why she says "Nobody can use you when you're down and out," because people are going to act truthfully when you're down and out.

What a weird part of human nature.

I know! When you're high and mighty and on your high horse and successful, everyone is obsequious. Everyone is trying to get your business and placate you and lie and be two-faced and be sweet and ingratiate so they can be associated with you. When you're nobody, they couldn't care less.

You're back to jazz with "Bye Bye Blackbird." Obviously, Miles had such a beautiful version.

Miles taught me so much about space and being a bandleader. Honoring the rhythm section to be part of your sound. I wanted to vocally improvise on something simple and keep it very sparse and honor Miles, too. And then, "What a Wonderful World." We think of Louis Armstrong, and he was a genius. I don't like to use that word, but there are a few in the world, and he was one. When you listen to all of his recordings, his vocal improvisations, his ears are just astounding. He unified Black and white audiences. He's a beautiful example of someone who was positive and loving and unified people. This song was written specifically for him, so it appeals to Black and white audiences.

Somehow, in my life, that has become part of my mission. To talk about race and to mix genres.

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

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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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Alice Coltrane

Alice Coltrane in 1987

Photo: Frans Schellekens

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Inside Alice Coltrane's Rare Ambient Masterpiece alice-coltrane-kirtan-turiya-sings-inside-long-lost-devotional-album

Alice Coltrane's 'Kirtan: Turiya Sings': Inside The Unearthly Beauty Of Her Long-Lost Devotional Album

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Alice Coltrane only made a few hundred copies of 1982’s 'Turiya Sings,' but it has the ability to change your life. 'Kirtan: Turiya Sings," an unadorned variation of the record, draws you even deeper into its transformative power
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Jul 14, 2021 - 10:05 am

Even if you don't know Alice Coltrane's music or feel compelled to check out a "jazz" artist, there's an ambient tape floating around YouTube that will break your heart. 

Turiya Sings, a droning 1982 cassette of chanted Sanskrit vocals, organ, synthesizer and orchestra, is not only a sad, haunted jewel but one of the most convincing available arguments for a higher power. But for Coltrane's son, Ravi, what sounds like a transmission from beyond was just a fact of life around the house.

"That's the sound I grew up hearing. That is the sound," the now-55-year-old saxophonist tells GRAMMY.com over Zoom. "I'd come home from school and she'd be at the organ, playing these songs, singing quietly to herself." This also extended to when he went to church—a.k.a. services at her Agoura Hills ashram—every Sunday, and Coltrane led the congregation in original devotionals like "Jagadishwar," "Krishna Krishna" and "Govinda Hari."

In both scenarios, Coltrane didn't have a rack of synthesizers nor an orchestra at her disposal, but a simple Wurlitzer. And that's the version of Turiya Sings that is finally getting a wide release, offering an alternative to the spectral tape rip hanging out on the internet. Kirtan: Turiya Sings, a fresh "reduction"—Ravi's word—of the original album, arrives July 16 on Impulse Records/UMe. Now, listeners worldwide—Hindu, Christian, agnostic, or atheist—can access the album's boundless spiritual riches.

Alice Coltrane is often discussed in the shadow of her towering husband, John. But the truth is, her marriage to the groundbreaking saxophonist only spanned a few years; her life and career stretched for years before and after him. When she and John met, the pianist was already a known quantity as a Detroit bebopper in vibraphonist Terry Gibbs' band. And by the time she replaced McCoy Tyner in his group in the final year of his life, she was a downright veteran.

Read More: 10 Essential Cuts From Jazz Piano Great McCoy Tyner

After John's 1967 death from liver cancer, she recorded a succession of albums for Impulse!, then Warner Bros. In the '70s, she moved out of the Long Island home she shared with John and headed out to California, establishing the Vedantic Center northwest of Los Angeles and adopting the name Turiyasangitananda. By the dawn of the '80s, she was through with the rat race of commercial music.

"By '81, she was just done with record contracts," Ravi says. "She felt that she had done everything she wanted to do in music and wanted to shift directions to a more spiritual life, so that's what she did."

Turiya Sings was her first functional rather than commercial work, serving as an offering for congregants rather than something meant for a wide release. Every Sunday, the group would sit on the floor, clad in white, for a kirtan service, shaking tambourines and bells as Coltrane sang and played. ("Kirtan" means "narrating, reciting, telling" in Sanskrit.)

"My mother, who we would call 'swami'—I still called her 'mom'—would sit behind the Wurlitzer," Ravi recalls. "The very same Wurlitzer you hear on the recording."

Coltrane recorded the album in 1981—mostly in first takes—at a studio near the ashram. Then, she overdubbed synthesizers and a self-conducted orchestra, pressed a few hundred copies under the Avatar Book Institute imprint, and sold it in the ashram's bookstore. "This is celebratory music of the highest order," the rear sleeve attested, calling it the product of "a soul that has already traversed far."

Of this sumptuous sound-world, only various secondhand versions were available for years—at press time, even eBay doesn't turn up an original cassette copy. But when Ravi finally heard a stripped-down, Wurlitzer-and-voice mix in 2004, he felt the embellishment-free version was the most gripping and immediate. The only problem was that he couldn't find a 24-track master—until recently when he found it sitting in a closet for decades.

Kirtan: Turiya Sings

Photo: Courtesy of Impulse Records/UMe.

While the original subsumed listeners into its undertow, this bare-bones version bends the ear to its lyrics and melodies. And without the overdubbed atmosphere, you can hear more clearly the gospel-ish angles in the chords and click and clack of the Wurlitzer's pedals.

"As dynamic and bold as the original version is, hearing my mother sing and play in this stripped-down, intimate setting revealed the true heart and soul of these songs," Ravi wrote in a producer’s note. "In this form, I could hear every nuance and inflection in her vocal performance and feel the weight of her rock-solid pulse and timing and (dare I say it) groove on the Wurlitzer. And, most importantly, in this setting, I felt the greatest sense of her passion, devotion, and exaltation in singing these songs in praise of the Supreme."

"It's powerful in a different way," Ken Druker, the Vice President of Jazz Development at Verve Label Group, tells GRAMMY.com. "You can hear what she's doing on the organ. You can hear the gospel influence. As Ravi said, you can hear the Motown in her voice—things that weren't as apparent on the cassette where there were all these other layers going on."

Druker is quick to call Kirtan: Turiya Sings a "variation" of the album, not meant to supplant it. To that end, Ravi says the decision to release this unadorned music wasn't to insert his own agenda but to get at the essence of the work. "That's the primary motivation," he says. "It wasn't me trying to tinker with Alice's creative works. I'm a custodian of my mother's music, my father's music, and a guardian of this music."

As for the lyrics, you don't have to learn a foreign language to feel them—even as a Sanskrit-to-English translation in the booklet helps bridge that gap. "They're just praising the Supreme—the Highest," Ravi says. "They're songs to elevate the spirit, and I don't see this as religious music. I see this as devotional music. Music that is for everyone, from any religious background—or no religious background."

Indeed, Vedic Hinduism wasn't the end for Coltrane, but the means. Even as Kirtan: Turiya Sings is firmly hooked to that tradition, it's meant as a vehicle for universal God-consciousness. 

"People have heard this music and not heard the translations nor the Sanskrit, but they can feel it," Ravi continues. "There's something compelling about these chants and these songs in a way that's not pushing one specific religion's doctrine, but promotes the universal in all divine music."

Despite being just one stop on the long continuum of Coltrane's music, nothing else in her discography quite sounds like it—and now that it's out for real, its influence and impact have the potential to be as borderless as its spirituality. Will Sheff, the GRAMMY-nominated leader of the long-running rock band Okkervil River, found himself bewitched by the original version of Turiya Sings years ago.

"I feel like she's going down to this depth, and the depth is heavy. You're sinking down and down and down and down into the darkness, but I don't think of that necessarily as bad," he tells GRAMMY.com. "That's where everything comes from and where everything goes, or something like that."

For Sheff, the quality of the music—coupled with the fact Coltrane didn't make it as a capitalist object—makes Turiya Sings an incredibly rare bird. "I don't want to get into some kind of weird, purist state of mind, but I guess I just feel like there's something so beautiful about hearing a musician do something where their soul is reaching out to God and they put it out to people who share the same faith as they do as a prayer aid," he says. 

"At no point in that process does 'I want to be rich' or 'I want to be famous' or 'I want to be well-thought-of' come into that," Sheff adds. "That's very refreshing because those are the biggest prizes of our culture right now." This might hold true for the foreseeable future, as far as music is concerned. 

But we'll always have Turiyasangitananda, praising the Most High softly, solemnly, as if singing to herself.

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

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