By Nils Jacobson
Is this improvised writing?
It's related thereto, though somehow when you go into the realm of words you're going to get a lot of refraction. There is a certain dictation in a way that seems to come from the nature of words and letters. There's a whole tradition of that. And I listened to Omar Hakim talking on the radio. He said something pretty interesting about style. And I'm sure he means style and content, not just style. That related to Mallarmé and some of the post-structuralist stuff. The idea of inter-textuality, the idea that texts come from other texts. That Mallarmé was saying poems are not so much ideas as they are words, and Omar Hakim says that you develop your style from other styles. From checking out styles. So in the writing, like I said, my heroes and the way they touched me, writing-wise. But then you reach a certain point--with my heroes in music, and this is a similarity with the music--there seems to be a certain transformational point that you go over, a line that you go over where your methodology is very different from your heroes. The thing of TEST or Other Dimensions in Music, you just open up your instruments and you just start playing. Well, most of my heroes didn't do it exactly like that, as far as i know--though I'm sure that somehow, in essence, they might have done much the same thing if not more so because these folks remain my heroes.
Who are your heroes in music?
Miles Davis, Charles Ives, Beethoven, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jimi
Hendrix, Sly Stone, Dewey Johnson, James Brown, a raft of folks from the Hip Hop and Hard Core Punk cultures, Wayne Shorter, Paul Desmond, Dave Brubeck, Eliot Carter, Boulez, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Anton von Webern, Sam Rivers, Sun Ra, Alban Berg, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Mozart, Chopin, Mingus, Monk, Mahler, Wagner, Aretha, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Billie Holiday, Stockhausen, and a whole lots of others that I know and even more that I don't know, not to mention the people that I'm so blessed to work with... And then the countless many who just don't seem to have that name recognition. Because there's that danger with heroes that sort of runs counter to the anarchistic idea... Because I just think it all comes from the people. I think all these great names wouldn't be anywhere if it wasn't for some folks.
I agree with Kwami Ture, Stokely Carmichael. Like Kwami Ture, I don't believe in the great man theory, even though I'm talking about these great guys. Because with every great man (and they don't even hardly allow great women too much), they don't seem to have gotten anywhere without thousands and thousands of the so-called "little people."
What about Cecil [Taylor]?
Even though I worked with Cecil and Sam Rivers and Sun Ra.... See, that's the problem when you start listing people. One time they asked me for a resume, one of the things I hate most to have to do. One time I just sort of listed everybody I had played with in New York--just their names. And I know I left some people out there too. Just the usual luminary suspects, though of course I'm very, very blessed to have played with Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, and Sun Ra. But I'm also just as blessed to have played with the hundreds of others that I have played with through the decades. The People is mainly what's happening and the way the Spirit works through them.
As for Cecil, I wouldn't say because I played with him, because I played with him briefly. I played eight Sunday gigs with a larger band... it wasn't like playing in a smaller group. But even if I had played in a smaller group with him for 8 or 9 or 10 years, like William Parker or Rashid Bakr, I still would list him as one of the heroes. Because of him having stuck to his guns, and he's still doing it! Like the others, especially Coltrane.
I think there's something about when you're coming up, when you're 13 or 14 years old. Sort of that bar mitzvah age, starting to go through that rite of passage, declaring yourself. It's like these people--of course I didn't know all of those people at that young age--but all of the people sort of came in the wake of the people that I did know at that age, like Coltrane and Miles and Monk and Mingus and Brubeck, and Paul Desmond. Some people might be surprised. His name is hardly ever mentioned in the same breath as so-called avant garde or free jazz, except probably for Anthony Braxton. He loves Desmond, and what's not to love, right?
You know, I think there still is something, because we're only at the foot of the mountain of entertaining anything like a really true democracy, or a horizontal kind of thing. I certainly came up in the age where there were these leaders looming so great. And I have to say, "Wow! Yeah man, let me listen to Brubeck, Miles or Coltrane. Rather than let me listen to all these (equal) guys." So that's kind of a contradiction.
A lot of these guys are famous because they made a lot of records. That's the great paradox--you have to sacrifice the ideals you have in order to get the functional output.
Right. Most of the things of mine that have been able to be recorded of late have fortunately been musical collectives.
Tell me how it is playing on the subway or the street. Are people offended?
I've played in the street in New York since probably around '78 or so, and the most negative that I would say, relating to large percentages of people, would be that they were on their way from point A to point B, and they're not paying so much attention, it seems. But I might be wrong. And the last thing a musician would want to do is slight their audience.
I'd like to tell the truth about it. If they actually were clearly offended by it, I would like to have courage enough to say that it looks to me that this is the case: the expression on their face and the way they walk by, shows that they are offended... but it's really sort of ambiguous. It hasn't been clear all this time. Many of the people walk by and don't even hardly seem like they notice. But then there are a lot of people who do take notice, who are interested in it at least as some kind of a phenomenon. Like that they might not always associate with what they think of as music. Some people will actually come up--one of the beautiful things--and actually ask you honestly, without it being a put-down, and say, "What is this?" And some times I might be paranoid and look at is as a put down. Sometimes I sorta snap back and say, "What would you call it? What kind of music does it seem to be to you?"
And some times there might be a conversation and I'll tell them who and what influenced it. And some people come up and say, "Where can I hear more of this stuff?" And some people come up and say that they or someone that they know is getting married! Now that has not happened. But I'd really like to see what kind of wedding would invite this music. I wouldn't be surprised--you know how sometimes people get an idea, and they either forget about it, or they fold back into the hustle and bustle of their lives. This one woman was at an archaeologist convention or party or something, and she wanted TEST to play for it. She brought one of her colleagues down, and they talked about it, and they got conservative ("I don't know if this would be the appropriate place for it."). But she was really inspired by the group.
I'd say that in general, not just about people in the subway, but people in general... People may not be so familiar with the music. And if they have a moment to listen to it, there seems to be an increasingly positive response on the part of the people to this music. There's a whole range of different kind of musics for people to like, and different tastes. But that's one thing that helps the blues that a lot of the musicians that have been playing this music since the '60s might feel in New York. More recently--in the last ten years but accelerating in the last three or four or five years--there seems to be a resurgence of interest in the music. A lot of young people who seem to be busting outta rock and punk rock, and noise music, and different spontaneous musics... they seem to have a regard for what has evolved from the free jazz thing.
That's one of my campaigns, to try to see if more bridges can be built between those realms. Say if more free jazz people could return that respect. Just like in the early hardcore punk days, a lot of those hardcore punks were very good communicators among themselves, and therefore they have good audiences. And a lot of times they didn't benefit. It seemed like the clubs would benefit. But I think now, with the Vision Fest and all that kind of thing, if there could be that outreach to the younger waves of musicians. Even if it's not jazz per se: spontaneous playing, not against written or composed, but whatever this energy is, it seems to be related. Thurston Moore and Yoko Ono did some stuff down at the Knitting Factory. I heard that Roy Campbell and Thurston Moore participated in that. It seems to me that there could be a lot of good stuff with Thurston, Yoko, and waves of young people across the country. Have you noticed that yourself?
Talking about decentralization, that's one thing I noticed doing the tours with the Saturnalia string group down south, and the TEST tour organized by Michael Ehlers. Jonathan LaMaster did the Saturnalia Southern tour including Boston and NYC, and of course Matthew Heyner played bass on the tour. We saw largely young people organizing these places where we could play. In a lot of places, people who had day gigs, and that's a whole nother thing. We didn't talk about the media so much, but the media of the U.S. is not reflecting this kind of thing. If you extend that to not just music, but other aspects of life, I wouldn't doubt that there is a whole other U.S. out here that even the people who are out here in the forefront of these different activities just don't know about. Because we and our counterparts across the country are not being accepted by the media.
Are you familiar with Monk Magazine? These guys, the Monk brothers, took to the highway with their laptops. And they were writing, and they were sending to their friends and family for money, $20 here and $20 there to survive. And eventually they were able to cook up some interest on the part of some people who would publish this stuff and get it out further. You know, if you put a search out there, Monk Magazine. It's interesting along the lines of self-empowerment, mutual empowerment, along the lines of what you're really interested in. Sort of like Joseph Campbell's 'follow your bliss' kind of idea. Buckminster Fuller's 'synergy' and all that kind of stuff.
Not just synergy for corporations, heh heh.
Tell me how you do the street/subway thing.
I played for the better part of a decade by myself, and probably even longer. Because I think TEST didn't get started in the street until the early '90s. So I played in the street. When I went out to play, it was in the three hour realm. I think three hours is a natural sort of time. When I first started, I'd go out all day, many days a week, but thankfully my wife had mercy on me. She said, "This is too much!" So by the time TEST came along...
In New York it seemed like there were more musicians who literally played in the street. Up along Fifth Avenue and in different choice places. And the choice places would be, depending on the loudness of your instrument, where you wouldn't disturb shopkeepers. Maybe some places were better where you wouldn't get chased away by cops, or disturb apartment-dwellers, and you'd learn what worked best. At a certain point when I was working on Madison Avenue and 42nd Street, a woman came up... she left this Music Under New York card in my box for an audition. Now, I thought to myself, "Why should I have to audition to play in the subway?"
The answer to the question would be that you wouldn't be hassled to stop playing. And also, if you're a street musician, you've have somewhere to play that's warmer in the winter. So I went in for that. I just played free, since I don't know any other repertoire. They let me in that. And I heard that became more exclusive, more crazy. People trying to get into that program. They'd give you a pass that would have written on it (you'd get it maybe every two weeks) where you'd play and for which hours.
Now, Tom Bruno is still active in the program. That's the way we play with TEST in Astor Place or Long Island Railroad or Times Square. It's because he gets one of these little passes. I'm still a member of it, but I've been mostly operating under Tom's membership. He's the one who's now communicating with Gina Higgenbotham from Music Under New York. That's the way that's going.
Did they ever shut you down for being too loud or whatever?
Once in a while the cops or somebody from the subway would complain.
And that was one of the rules that we had to play by. Gina told us that if any shopkeepers, or subway officials, or cops, tell us to stop, not to argue. But generally there's communication between her and those other people to make it as hassle-free as possible.
You know, I tell you, the whole thing about playing in the street or the subway--you put your banner out and stuff like that... my critique would be
"Why, in New York City, one of the world capitals of the music, and a veritable nation in itself (New York City has as large a population as some of the smaller nations of Europe)... why on earth can't we get some consciousness in a city like New York, some responsibility on the part of city government, to look out for its musicians, its artists, its writers, its dancers, its painters?!?" Having a Music Under New York program hardly satisfies what is needed. At the same time, many musicians might even almost perish if they didn't have the Music Under New York outlet. I still think, "Shame! Shame! Shame! on the town with Wall Street and Madison Avenue in it, and all the great real estate, and that stuff!"
Can you make money off of this?
I think that some of us are so poor that every two or three dollars that we get counts. I think, like Sabir said in Jazz Times, more importantly it's feeding the soul, rather than the pocketbook or anything like that. But at the same time every little dollar counts. Sabir and Matthew are out there with Tom a lot more than I am. When we started, Tom and me were out there duo a lot. When we had a good day out there, it would be in the realm of between $15 and $20, and that would be good for playing for 3 hours. Now it's more like $6 to $10 or $12 when I go out there with TEST. I'm talking about for each musician
But I don't think a lot of street musicians would call that good money. They can do much much much better than that. I don't know if it's rougher these years, but I recall people talking about making $35-40, maybe a hundred or sometimes even more than hundred dollars. I can't be certain..
But I guess we have to admit it's the music that we're playing. Another claim I'd like to put out there is that in New York City, with all the street musicians and subway musicians that there are, TEST is the only group that I know of that year in and year out has played this music in New York. New York, one of the capitals of this kind of music. I think, without hype, that that sort of distinguishes TEST within the category of free jazz, avant-garde. Where are the other avant-garde free jazz bands? They're all making more money elsewhere? I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to deal with the street, but TEST, in a big way, and Tom Bruno certainly has championed the vibration of the streets and of the subway.
What's the best time to play?
Tom and Sabir probably know the answer to that question more at this point. When I hook up with them it's at Astor Place, it's from the hours of 4 (officially 4, but we get rolling about 4:30) till 7. And the Long Island Railroad from 12 to 3.
Commuter hours?
The 4-7 would be a commuter hours, but 12-3 is the lunch hour? I know that there's other hours that Music Under New York will put you out that will be between the obvious peak hours. But I've been trying to wean myself away from playing the subway, and the only reason I play now out there is because of TEST. I was much more full time years ago. It was something that, after a while, I had as a goal in my mind that I would love to be free of it. If TEST could get free of it, I would like that. But at the same time, TEST is so much a creature of the subways and the streets. That music got developed on the streets and in the subways, much more than on the stage and in the studio. And one of our challenges now is, even though we're recorded now, to try to bring more of the spirit that we've been able to bring in playing in the streets and the subway.
Like that Eremite record with Bruno and Mateen.
Yes. I think, however, that I would put the word out to our supporters to come out here to NYC with a DAT machine into the subways or into the streets and record TEST in order to get that part of the music that we haven't yet been able to deliver over into "conventional" indoor performances/recordings.
We were just playing yesterday. A lot of times I don't necessarily get knocked out. Sometimes it's hard work to just keep on moving forward, but I've been genuinely been knocked out by the compositional aspects of what TEST is doing out there.
