By Jerry D'Souza
The atmosphere is crackling. Ray Anderson has just come off another high with a performance that has stoked the embers of excitement in a very receptive audience. When he gets off the stage, elation rife on his face, Anderson willingly poses with fans. He mugs for the camera, and answers questions patiently. He is a man without pretension.
Anderson was nurtured in a house where different kinds of music floated around. "There was everything in my house", he recalls. "There were Broadway shows, clarinet concertos and folk singers. There was Louis Armstrong and the Firehouse Five plays Mozart. My father likes Dixieland jazz and the music made a big impression on me. That's why I play the trombone".
He started playing the instrument while in the fourth grade along with George Lewis. "We were the two kids in the grade who decided to play trombone and we are still doing it." The memory kindles a happy laugh.
Anderson moved to New York in 1973. At that time the loft scene was "really jumping and was in full swing. I spent a lot of time in those lofts (listening to the music). That was a wonderful time musically. The center of the whole thing was Sam Rivers and Studio RivBea. And there was Joe Lee Wilson's place right down the street, the Ladies Fort. Those two were really the thing, but I played in a store front on 501 Canal Street with a bunch of folks you probably never heard of. We'd give these little concerts that no one came to. It didn't make any difference. The loft scene was a beautiful thing! The music was more adventurous!"
Almost 30 years on, Anderson still feels the palpable presence of that scene.
"The energy of the loft is still very much alive. It's showing up in places like Tonic and in the Lower East Side like the Internet CafÃÂÃÂÃÂé where people play and don't really make any money. But they can play there and there is creative music going on. There is also the Jazz Gallery that opened on Hudson Street. I played in there, it is just like a loft, it is a loft! That energy is irrepressible!"
While investigating the loft scene, Anderson was playing with Jimmy Giuffre, Barry Altschul and Anthony Braxton. Then it was time to form his own bands. In doing so he dwelt on several musical contexts. The music went from R&B to avant garde, from funk to Ellingtonia. And just as the music is diverse, so are the names of his bands.
"They need to be identified somehow!" he laughs out. "There is the Ray Anderson Quartet which is that really basic group with piano or guitar, bass and drums. The other bands kind of have a concept and that gives rise to the names. The Lapis Lazuli Band was a blues band. I had this idea of Amina (Claudine Myers) playing organ, which she does so beautifully. People tell me that I should sing more so I said okay we'll make a blues band. And the Alligatory Band was conceived as a continuation of exploring the territory of the Slickaphonics which meant having a bunch of dance rhythms in there and songs. Alligatory was named for "Alligatory Crocodile" just like the Slickaphonics were named for the "Slickaphonics Shuffle". Sometimes a band gets named by its signature piece."
Anderson's sense of humor rolls over into the titles of his songs. One of them is "My Children Are The Reason Why I Need To Own My Publishing". At first glance this may seem merely facetious, but there is an ingrained truth.
"That was on a Hat Art album (Cheer Up). Werner Uehlinger has this old style and he insists on having the publishing which, quite frankly, stinks. The least we can do is have a 100% of that little bit of publishing money that exists. Publishing money goes 50% to the publisher, 50% to the writer. It was John Coltrane and Gigi Gryce that figured out, at the end of the sixties, that there was no reason why the publishing always had to be the record company's. There was no reason why they could not have their own publishing company and get the publisher's share of the royalty as well as the writer's share. What is the record company doing for you other than taking your money? If they are doing something, there is a point of negotiation. I have children, what are they going to inherit? They may not get money, but at least they inherit the rights to this music."
With the various bands he has, it is not surprising that there are some musicians Anderson enjoys playing with. There is an immediate rapport between them and they feed off each other's ideas spontaneously. "What the other person is doing makes sense to you right away. I had this relationship with Mark Dresser, Mark Helias and Gerry Hemingway. You know who else is like that? Pheeroan (akLaff). There's a bunch of other people. Most of the cats in the Alligatory Band like Tommy Campbell. Playing with him was a snap. And Lew Soloff. It was wonderful when we had that kind of hook-up. I can play with Craig Harris like a hand in a glove and with David Murray at any time!"
Currently, Anderson has a live album called "Bonemeal", available from www.rayanderson.net. Here as well, he essays an easy warmth with his band, Matt Wilson on drums, Steve Salerno on guitar and Helias. And while recordings are still on his mind, Anderson seeks to navigate other paths.
There is the yearning to teach after he guested for one semester at New York State in Stoney Brook. "That was really fun. I had a good time with these great students. I have been thinking about how to teach creativity, how to teach improvisation. It is being taught, often with the result that people come out of school technically proficient to some extent, but lacking the essential information that they must figure out, that is how to become themselves. I have been interested in that and have done workshops but this was the first time I got to do it for three and a half months. That was quite gratifying and I would like to do that some more."
"At this point in my life", he says pensively, "I am sort of changing over from making a living as a constant touring performer to seeing if I can make a living some other kind of way. I really need to stay home.
"I've been fortunate that I've gotten some wonderful commissions and will be writing music. I have one for a gospel choir and a brass band. This should be recorded and I very much want to do it but I have no timetable or record label. The fact that this stuff exists, will, I believe, cause the recording to come about. I have a commission from the Guggenheim that started in June 2000 and goes on until next June. It is to write music for an entire brass band. It is pretty big, about 13 parts. I am thinking of how to write it so that it can be hip and playable by people who are not master improvising musicians. It has to be useful to someone other than me. To simplify the idea, it is going to be something like John Philip Sousa meets the Dirty Dozen Brass Band at my house."
That would be right up his alley!
