By Nils Jacobson

Introduction

David S. Ware (b. 1949) picked up his first instrument at the age of 9. He soon devoted himself to the saxophone, exploring every opportunity available in high school. He entered the Berklee School of Music at the age of 17, where he decided to focus exclusively on the tenor saxophone.

Ware moved to New York in 1973. He played with Cecil Taylor during the '70s and later worked with Andrew Cyrille. These early experiences influenced his sound and spurred him into new territory. He released his first two recordings as a leader in the late '70s, then remained relatively quiet until 1989, when he led Passage to Music, a defining trio record, on Silkheart. Since then, he's recorded almost exclusively with his quartet, whose members have always included bassist William Parker and pianist Matthew Shipp. The drum chair has rotated through a select handful of players, leading to the current configuration with Guillermo E. Brown.

Ware's sound on the tenor is profoundly spiritual and evocative, drawing upon the roots of the free jazz revolution of the '60s but building a progressively more personal and stylized approach. As a standard-bearer for the current free improv scene in NYC, he's made 13 records with his quartet on various labels, including a recent 2-disc stint with Columbia. Each new record in this series offers a fresh angle on Ware's sound, and his latest, Corridors & Parallels, breaks through a number of barriers--including the addition of electronics, via Matthew Shipp's work on the keyboard.

(Interviewer's note: this is a long interview, which evolves gradually from some initially rocky conversation toward an intimate sharing of deeper and more personal ideas. By the end, Ware offers a definitive and profound statement about why he makes music.)

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AAJ: What was it like during the period before you were recognized as a player and a leader? Were you able to support yourself from the music?

David S. Ware: You know, basically, I would find myself little jobs here and there, messenger jobs or...

AAJ: Taxi driving?

DSW: That came a little later. And you know, I did drive a cab in the '80s. I did start to drive a cab in New York in the early '80s. You know, I went through periods where I would not really be focusing on the music as to make a living with it. I wasn't focusing on it like that, but I always kept on my horn. I never put my horn down. I was always practicing and thinking about my music, and more or less trying to reorganize it at certain periods I went through in the mid-'80s. You know? So, as far as jobs went, I always kept a job that was flexible. And cab driving was very flexible.

Actually I had started cab driving about 10 years prior to that. I had done it for a short while in Boston.

AAJ: In the '70s?

DSW: Yeah, I started, probably '70, '71 in Boston. And I let it go. And the next time I came back to it was in '81.

AAJ: When did you live in Boston?

DSW: I was in Boston from '67 until '73. I really don't want to draw on that too much man, because cats, you know, people done read that stuff so much already.

AAJ: Yeah, I hear you. You mentioned a phase during the '80s when you reorganized your music. How did you do that?

DSW: Just by slowing it down. You know, just by slowing everything down and taking a look at what I was doing. Analyzing what I was doing a little bit as far as what intervals, what scales, what tonalities, what I was doing and how I was moving around on the horn, and so forth and so on...

AAJ: Can you offer any concrete examples? What direction were you moving in?

DSW: Well, you know, the direction I'm doing now. I mean, as far as how I move on the horn, man. The intervals and stuff. Basically, it was to think about intervals, being conscious of the intervals that I play. And how I move through tonalities and how I move through scales and how to keep them more flexible and freed-up. And to be able to play in a tonality and at the same time not be so bogged-down by it. Still having a sense of freedom no matter what tonality I'm playing in or around or whatever.

AAJ: You have a very broad tonal range too, in terms of the overtones and the growls and the squeaks and everything in between. Was that part of the change?

DSW: No, that's just a natural thing that had always been there.

AAJ: That's not something you consciously think about, or does it just come naturally? What goes on in your head when you color clean notes?

DSW: Well, you know, there's only 12 notes in music--in Western music, that is. There's only 12 tones that you have to deal with. So, you want to deal with more than that, you know. If you practice a lot, if you play a lot, you want to deal with more than that. So you start dealing with what's in between.

Some of that comes out of the harmonic series. You hold one note, you play one note, and within that, if you lip harder on that one note you get the tones within that. You get the fifth and all of that as you go on up. So a lot of it comes out of that.

Then you have to play in between the hard notes. The in between sounds. You know, after so many years you find out different grades of how to play in between notes and get sounds that are so-called "not clean." Its just something that develops.

AAJ: And was that part of what you described as working out the intervals?

DSW: No, that's another thing. The intervals are another thing. The intervals are something that's not going to move. But just being aware of what intervals you're playing and how you move from interval to interval, and then you come up with a different sound.

AAJ: With all these day jobs in New York and Boston, when did the music start taking over in terms of your life and your way of being?

DSW: Well, wait a minute. See, I don't want to paint the wrong impression with you. Music was always the center of my life. Music was the center of my life always. I can go back to junior high. Music has been the center of my life. It's just that that doesn't necessarily say you're making a living with it. So you need to rethink this whole thing: music was always the center of my life. Everything I did was around the music. You know, everything. From the very first time I took up the saxophone, I was involved in all the musical activities of the school: the dance band, the marching band, the concert band, the all-state band, private lessons. Went to music school. So music has always been the focal point. There hasn't been a time when it hasn't been. You know, I knew what I wanted to do since I was 12 years old. So I don't want to paint the wrong picture to you here.

AAJ: I'm thinking in terms of time. Being able to spend your time on it, rather than doing other jobs.

DSW: That's what I'm saying, man! You gotta understand! That's all that I did. That's all that I did! Just because you're working another job doesn't mean you're not spending time on your music. I'm not in my mid twenties and then decide that I'm going to be a musician. Music is and was my focal point. My high school music teacher had to go around and tell my other teachers that I was highly gifted in music so therefore he should pass me. So everybody else could give me a passing grade because I excelled so much in music. So it's not like I decided all of a sudden in my mid twenties or thirty years old that I'm going to be a musician. Music is all that I know how to do.

AAJ: How old are you know?

DSW: I'm 51 friggin' years old, man! I'm 51.

AAJ: I hear you about your devotion to music. But at some point you started putting out recorded music. The Silkheart stuff, and you started putting things out as a leader. You got more gigs and more attention and more critical acclaim (or whatever). And a lot of this crossed over into alternative music circles. Did that change your way of doing things.

DSW: No, no. It didn't change my way of doing things, man. It didn't change my way of doing things. I had a band back in my early Boston days, OK? We used to create our own things back in Boston. We produced our own concerts. We played on the radio. We did everything that Boston had to offer. And then in '73 we moved to New York.

I was doing my thing with my own bands. And I started playing with Andrew Cyrille, I started playing with Cecil Taylor. All the time still with my own focus also, in the back of my mind. I wanted to do my own thing. I had been doing my own thing.

AAJ: What did you pick up from these two musicians?

DSW: I picked up all kinds of things. I picked up awareness about composition. I picked up awareness about the blues. I picked up awareness about my own potential, in terms of what was buried deep in my style. The older style that was buried deep in my so-called "avant garde" style, from playing with these guys.

AAJ: What did you pull out of there that you didn't know you have?

DSW: For example, when I was playing with Cecil Taylor, somebody made a comment. "Yo David, you sound like Ben Webster. You're playing those lines of Cecil's and you sound like Ben Webster." Well, you know, that was kind of a surprise to me. Because I was trying more or less to not be dealing with those cats, in a certain kind of way.

So that made me realize that it's true that this music is a chain. It's all one music. What I do is the same thing. It's the same music that Hawk and Lester Young and cats have been playing. It's all the same thing. It's a line. It's a line, man. It's not possible to do what I'm doing now if it wasn't for all the cats that came before me.

AAJ: So you're part of the tradition?

DSW: I certainly am. I certainly am.

AAJ: Of these people in the line before you, who did you learn the most from?

DSW: There's dozens of them, man.

AAJ: Ah yeah, I know. [laugh] The one thing that everybody says about your playing is that you sound like Albert Ayler. And you're no doubt sick of hearing that.

DSW: That's bullshit, man! That's bullshit! Them days are gone. The few cats who are saying that now, they just don't want to face up. There's certain other musicians who say that bullshit. And if there's any critics by this time who are saying that, they're just full of bullshit. They don't want to look at the light on what's going on. Because we're way past that shit. They were saying that shit about me 30 years ago! When I first came to New York, they were saying that shit.

That is over, man. That is over. We're way past that bull shit. Anybody who says that is just friggin' lazy. They're just lazy. They say "He sounds like Albert Ayler." That means that they don't have listen to me closely. They don't have to analyze anything. They don't have to use their friggin' brains... if they say shit like that.

AAJ: That doesn't work for you.

DSW: No, man, that shit been over 30 years ago.

AAJ: So let's go past then, along that line. I'd like you to point out a landmark, or a figure, or an important player. Who do you dig? Who do you draw ideas and inspiration from?

DSW: Now?

AAJ: Yeah, now.

DSW: Myself, man!

AAJ: Of course, of course. I know that.

DSW: I don't listen to anybody at this point. You know, I did all my listenings to cats. I don't listen to nobody and draw inspiration from them. I'm too busy focusing on my own music. I don't listen to jazz radio. I hate jazz magazines. I don't buy jazz records. The only records I have are things people give me.

And I'll tell you why. And that's because the standard has dropped so much, man. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that there's cats out here that are not playing beautiful saxophone. I'm not saying that. But as far as who I draw inspiration from... Sonny Rollins is the living master of the tenor saxophone. You know, I consider him my father. Now, anybody else, I don't think so. Not now. They're all dead.

AAJ: You went to school and you're done with that.

DSW: Hey man, you know, I'm not saying I'm not learning. I'm still learning, but there's different stages of learning. I'm saying right now I'm not so much listening to other cats to learn.

Now when I'm on the road, I hear cats that I wouldn't normally hear, whoever they might be. And I listen closely and I go to their concerts and I check em out. And I find that most of the time, I'm not inspired by it. Beceause I'm listening closely, and I recognize the virtuosity on the horn. But most of the time, the style is immature. They are fine, very fine players. Some of them have a whole lot of technique, they got a whole lot of things together. But as far as style, direction of the band... it's not there. If it's not there, they're copying somebody, they're copying somebody that did shit 40 years ago. I don't know if the audience can hear it, but I certainly can hear it. And those around me can hear that.

And they're getting away with it because that's the overall climate of what's going on today. There's no standard in this music. The standard has dropped. There ain't no standard!

AAJ: Who's setting the standard?

DSW: I'm not going to tell you who's setting the standard. You have to take a concensus of what people are saying. You have to read what the critics are saying, and what people are saying, and you have to decide for yourself who's setting the standard. I ain't going that way. I leave that to others. I know one thing for sure, and that's that the standard is very, very low at this time. It's very low.

AAJ: Why is that?

DSW: Because times have changed. Times change things. You know, time changes everything. The standard to get into music schools is nothing now, that's one reason for it. What is the pop scene? The popular music of the day is so dominating that that's all people know. That's all they want to know. You go around here to New Jersey, and you compare it to say 40 years ago, when I was taking up the saxophone. You go around to these music stores today, and you can't get the simplest thing, because there's nobody interested in it. The simplest accessory, you can't find it in the these New Jersey music stores, because there's nobody interested in it. There's no real serious music students, as compared to what it was. There's always going to be a few. But as to what it was overall, say going back 40 years ago to when I was coming along... it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist.

And the music in the school. I got friends that I went to high school with who are teaching music in different high schools around. And they don't have even a band room. They have to teach outside in the parking lot. They have to give private lessons in closets. And this kind of thing. Because there's no band room. There's no consideration for the music. That's all part of it. You know what I'm saying? So it's a lot of different reasons.

AAJ: Don't you think things have changed in the last five, ten years? There's been a lot more attention to these free players who have their own sound. The mainstream jazz press is hopelessly lost, but it seems like there's a nucleus building up now. The Vision Fest has gone from being small to being a major event. It wouldn't work if there wasn't somebody there to enjoy it. So there must be some kinda progress going on. Yeah?

DSW: I go out when I play. That's the only time you'll see me. Very rarely do I go out. It's gotta be a special cat... what I consider special. Otherwise, I don't go out. I don't go to these places. I play in the Knitting Factory, or wherever we happen to get a gig. The Vision Festival, and that's the only time I'm out to see what's going on. The crowds look like they're fairly respectable, but as far as it growing... I don't know! Maybe that's correct. Maybe it's growing by leaps and bounds. But I wouldn't know. I'm not the one to comment on it. You know what I'm saying?

I still have this model in my head. Because like I say, I have to go back to when I was coming along. And how different things were then, as what they are now. It's no comparison, as to what I understood about what was going on in the clubs at that time, who was playing in the clubs at that time, who's playing in the clubs now. And this kind of thing. To me, it's all been turned upside down. It's upside down from what it was.

For example, we just did a gig at the Blue Note, after how many years? We shoulda been in there all the time. After all this time, after all these years. I've been in New York since nineteen friggin' seventy-three. And now we just invited in the Blue Note. When we should have been playing these places all the time. When I was came up, when I was a teenager, I went to all these places and they had Sonny Rollins, they had Coltrane, they had Monk, they had Miles, they had Charles Lloyd, they had Roland Kirk. They had all of these cats. And they had two bands: they'd have Sonny Rollins and Roland Kirk or Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk. And the friggin' place stayed open all night.

And now, we're the heirs of these cats that I just mentioned. We're the heirs of these cats, and we're not allowed. We can't go in the Village Vanguard. Because she don't like the music, we can't go into the Village Vanguard. And that friggin' place was built on our fathers. Our fathers are the ones who built that place up.

AAJ: Things are different in Europe, right? I don't know how much time you spend there...

DSW: We spend 99% of our time in Europe! But the thing is, still, the major festivals are still closed to us. The major festivals over there are still closed. They still don't want to deal with us. The major festivals still don't want to deal with us. You know what I'm saying?

So yeah, there's a lot more work in Europe. A helluva lot more work in Europe. You have to press forward to get that work. And the thing about it is that it takes a while to get some of it. You may work a lot in one country and nothing in another country. And you need a person in each country that believes in you, to break the ice. That's what you need. And when you get that, that country will start to open up. These people that you might get: they had this idea (that's why it takes so long) about, "Oh, so-and-so is avant garde. The music is too out. The music is too much for the people. They're not going to understand it." And all that. And they find out that it's not true. They find out that the music is for a lot more people than they thought when they start really listening closely. For some of the latter stuff that we put out, they find out that "Oh, hmmm, well, OK. I thought that ... blah blah blah ... but I see now."

AAJ: Who opens those doors for you?

DSW: I got a woman who works for me in Europe, Anne Dumas, she handles all my booking. She's French.

AAJ: I'd like to talk a little bit about your records, and the changes you've been through since 1988.

DSW: That's not correct. I put out a record in the late '70s, The Birth of a Being on Hat Hut.

AAJ: OK, I stand corrected. My question is: what made you settle on a quartet; and this particular quartet as the unit where you make your statement? (Even though you've been through a few drummers.)

DSW: Well, because it works. It worked from the very beginning and I decided to try and hold it together, man. And as far as the drummers go... I fired one person, but all the rest of them quit. The one that I fired, he kinda fired himself. He put himself in that situation. It was their choice to go about their business.

AAJ: What makes it work?

DSW: Our vibrations make it work. The way we vibrate, the kind of people we are.

AAJ: You're all sharing the same frequencies.

DSW: The kind of desires that we had when we were coming up makes it work good. The musics that we were listening to when we were coming up make it work good.

AAJ: What do these other players bring to the group? William Parker, for example. He's got his own ideas and his own musical universe. He brings something to the group which sets him apart.

DSW: Well, we're able to fly together. We're able to fly. We all have a similar sense of musical launch and musical flight. And we can do it together and not clash. He's [Parker's] got his own style, like you say. He's got a unique sense of the function of the bass, and he knows how to expand the function of the bass from just ordinary anchor. The bass is like a horn to him, it's like a choir, it's like light. Matthew is the same thing. He knows how to expand and fly. He has a unique style. But you know, this all works.

AAJ: You've been with this group for a while. And then you did these two records with Columbia. How did that work?

DSW: It was simple. It only takes one person. Like I said about opening up the countries in Europe... it only takes one person to believe in you. Branford [Marsalis] believed in us, so he called me and said, "Look, I want to record the band... blah blah blah... are you free to record?" "Yes," and that was it.

AAJ: People have said the records you did for Columbia didn't get the support of the publicity arm of the label.

DSW: The first one did. But the second one didn't. Because people didn't do what they were supposed to do on the second one, and they were in the midst of changing administrations again. And they just didn't get what was supposed to get done. That's just part of life, you know. I came in on a new administration and I went out on a new administration. It's only a matter of one person. Whoever is the jazz director. Branford was the jazz director; he liked what we were doing. The other guy came in; he didn't like what we were doing. It's that simple. It's one person. It ain't no big thing, it's just one person.

AAJ: Do you think being on a major label made any difference for you in terms of getting gigs and getting people to listen?

DSW: No. We didn't get nothing. We talked about it, but it didn't have a chance to materialize. Things that we had in mind didn't have a chance to materialize. Didn't have a chance. The short time I was on it, it didn't really make a difference in us getting gigs, not really. We had more people at our disposal to work for us... then again, what happened is that they came, and they left. These major label situations are very unstable. They're very unstable, because there's a Sony in every country. So you gotta deal with that. You're not just dealing with Sony in New York. You're dealing with Sony in every country that we go. And it's up to them to take care of publicity and certain other things. Some of them did, some of them didn't.

AAJ: So you moved on.

DSW: Yep.

AAJ: I was reading Phil Freeman's new book, New York is Now, and he spent some time with you while you recorded your new album (Corridors & Parallels). I haven't heard the new one yet, so I can't comment or ask specific questions, but it does strike me as quite a change to have Matthew Shipp playing the keyboards. How does that change the music?

DSW: It's just an expansion. It's just another chapter that is added to the overall work, to the library.

AAJ: But what makes that chapter different?

DSW: It's dealing with an electronic situation, which brings forth all these sounds that are different from the acoustic. I wanted to explore that. So this is only the very beginning of that. We're going to get a lot deeper into that, over time.

AAJ: So that's where you're headed.

DSW: It's not going to be either/or, it's just going to be an expansion into, an addition. It's not an either/or. It's an expansion using that synthesizer capacity.

AAJ: Do you think you'll ever use electronics on your horn?

DSW: You mean put some kinda gadget on my horn?

AAJ: Yeah.

DSW: No. I may start using some of my other horns, like I did at the last Vision Festival. I pulled out the stritch. Some people might not even have known there was a difference, because I think there were a lot of people there who had never heard us before, probably. I probably should have announced that that was the stritch.

AAJ: So you're not married to the tenor.

DSW: I guess I am, in a way. But it's something that I had made a decision on back in the early '90s: to just play tenor, because it's a certain thing that I wanted to establish on it. And it seems to be working pretty good. So I think that 'round about now I can maybe pull out another horn or two if I feel it.

AAJ: You speak in terms of vibrations, and coherence, and flight--these abstract, intuitive things. But what is the philosophy behind it? A way of thinking that drives you?

DSW: You know, when you pick up that instrument, or you pick up that pencil, you are in fact a co-creator. You are co-creating. God creates, God improvises. That's how the universe is. God improvises. and really, He (or It or She) is the master improvisor. And the universe has been improvised. It has been improvised. Literally, improvised out of the mind of the creator. So as a true musician, this is what you sort of mimic. You're sort of mimicking the function of God, or the Creator. And, you know, that's why it's such the silliest thing. And it requires a lot of sincerity, and a lot of understanding, as to what forces you are really tapping into when you improvise.

When you improvise, when you create, you are fulfilling something that is very dear to the Creator, I would think. Because He himself is a creator, an improviser. A master improvisor of the divine order. It's one of the highest things that human beings can do is create, or improvise, in some formal fashion. So this is the line that I'm thinking along, as an improviser. I'm drawing from something that is unlimited. It's like a reservoir that's unlimited. It's a universal reservoir that's unlimited, with ideas and melodies and harmonies and rhythms and whatever you have.

This society doesn't really grasp that part of it. Everything now is all so superficial. It's used. Music is being used, not as it was intended, as far as I'm concerned. It's not being used in this very high way. Things that you see and hear going on: it's like an abuse of creativity, and improvisation. It's not very uplifting, but it dominates. So therefore when someone comes along as a serious musician, as a true musician, and you're overlooked, basically. As far as the world is concerned, they can hardly even recognize you. You're hardly even recognized, because the overall climate of how people use music in this age is pretty low.

AAJ: So how does somebody like that become recognized?

DSW: Well, you just aim at one thing to do, and you've gotta just keep doing what you're doing.

AAJ: And hope someone's listening.

DSW: You just don't stop, that's all. And then gradually you pop through the surface every now and then. And you just can't stop: that's the gold key. You don't stop. Because it's easy to stop, and all kinds of forces want to stop you. And I don't mean external forces only, either. There's internal forces you have to deal with within yourself that can stop you. You wind up freaking them out or killing them, or whatever. You just have to duck and dodge all of that and keep going forward.

AAJ: Do you see this situation of the music not popping through changing eventually? Or are you forever doomed to being on the periphery?

DSW: It's all in how you look at it. It's all in your perception of what's going on. I mean, you can look at it any way you want.

AAJ: How do you look at it?

DSW: We look at ourselves as kind of being on the top of the bottom. Kind of the top of the bottom rung in the music world. You're on the top of the bottom. Now, something that's growing very nicely, which is a whole different thing, that's our reputation. Our reputation is growing by leaps and bounds every year. You know, that's good. And then it comes to the real world and dealing with getting gigs and things, and it's a little different situation.

AAJ: But you don't see any forces that will open any doors for people in your position who don't necessarily have a reputation.

DSW: No, not really. Basically, they're going to open those doors for themselves. Because you have to--especially in this time in civilization--you have to create your own internal motivation. Your own internal powers. You asked me way back in the interview about who do I listen to... it all comes from within me, man. My lifestyle allows me to draw upon something that's keeping me going, that's allowing me to overcome the forces that exist in the world, in order for us to be able to make a living. And so forth and go on, and keep growing stronger, and keep going forward. Keep progressing. This is from my own internal reservoir of strength that I have learned over the years to tap, and keep going forward. You tap that and you're able to live a life of dynamic activity, by tapping these subtle forces. And that's what it was all about for me.

AAJ: And you don't foresee those forces ever drying up?

DSW: No, they won't dry up. No. No. The body may fade away, but these forces will not dry up. No, it's not possible. No, it's not possible because these are the forces that maintain the universe, man. No, they're not gonna dry up. When they dry up, the universe will disappear. So no, they're not going to dry up. My body may fail, but these forces won't dry up.

AAJ: So who is there outside the musician category who is making it possible for people to see this, and give it some visibility? Who is moving the music to where you think it should be?

DSW: Well, I'm not so up on that, man. I'm not so up on that, outside the people that I deal with and I have dealt with, and am dealing with. I'm not so up on that.

AAJ: Who's done it for you, then?

DSW: This woman in France, Anne Dumas... I'd probably still be driving a cab if it wasn't for her. She has really, of her own free will, worked for this music. Worked for this band, my band. I don't know about nobody else's. I can only comment on what's happening with me. She works with free will to see that this band is hired all over Europe. So she is one of the cornerstones of why we have had the success that we have had.

Steven Joerg, over the years. When he was at Homestead, he was a big helping hand. Now he's got his own label, AUM Fidelity, you know. He's trying to do something. DIW, you know I worked with DIW. I worked with Silkheart. All these people had their ideas... Let me explain to you, man. To me, the forces that I access each and every day: they are responsible for bringing to me what it is that I need to do what it is that I do. They are responsible. Because left to me on my own, I don't know where I would be. I would be dead, probably, if it was just me, just my personality. I would be dead long time ago. So I give all the credit to the soul forces that I love so very much. Because they have brought me this way. Wherever I am, they have brought me here.

I like to think that it's really their message that flows through my music. It's really their message that I have. So it's to everybody's benefit that we try to continue to do it as we're doing. Because it's a positive message! It's an uplifting message, you know. And I think that people can hear it in the music. I think that they get this in the music. A few of them, anyway. This is what music-making is all about for me. It's all about being able to bring something down. Metaphorically, you're bringing something down, something that's very high. But when we say, we mean subtle. It's very subtle. Something that comes from the subtle realms of life, man, and it's brought down to a realm: the earth plain physical. And we get it through the five senses. We listen to the music through five senses and through the spiritual senses. And this is how we take it in. This is how we make it and this is how we take it in. And it goes on.

AAJ: So how do you think it's different to experience the music firsthand live, versus the records? What's the role of recordings there?

DSW: When you make a record, you're freezing something in time and space. The thing, a certain experience, is frozen. And at the same time, music is so spiritual that it almost can't be frozen... in the sense that you listen to great music, and every time you listen to it, it changes. It does something. You hear something different. That's the spiritual quality of it--that you really can't freeze it. So these discs serve to preserve it throughout time, and it will continue to change throughout time when people listen to it. When people listen to it a hundred years from now, it will change. Because the sense of man will have changed, will have progressed. They're going to be able to hear something in it a hundred years from now that they can't hear in it now. Their senses are not refined enough to get it all now. So it's a very progressive thing. This music making is a lot heavier than what people think just on the surface. You take cats like these great European composers, man. In their day, I don't think that the music that was heard was appreciated like it is now. There's a lot of heavy reading for that.

AAJ: A lot of that music ended up on paper, which is an inferior kind of documentation compared to a record. So it's interesting that you say that, because they didn't leave as much of a document as you're able to leave now.

DSW: Yeah.

AAJ: You were talking earlier about how God improvises in the universe, and we live in an improvised world. How does composition fit into that?

DSW: Well, composition is nothing more than an improvisation. It's also an improvisation. It's no different.

AAJ: But it stays fixed, in some way. It's not flexible. Maybe in a general sense, but that's why it's called composition. There's an element of that which is frozen.

DSW: When you look at a composition and you play it, it changes from player to player, because you have to interpret.

AAJ: That's the whole idea behind standards: you can leave your own personal flavor on a structure that people might recognize. I don't know if you're thinking about composing standards for the next generation, or if you're thinking more about composition as a vehicle.

DSW: If you look at composition in a certain way, it's not frozen. If you play with it in the slightest bit, you can come up with something different, without changing the notes or the rhythms. If you just apply a different tempo, for example. You can apply a different tempo to the same exact figures on a piece of paper and come up with something different.

One thing that I've learned is that if you play one thing--you play a figure--and then you play that same figure speeded up, you get a different music. Slow it down, you get a different music. So music exists in layers and levels and strata. It's a lot more flexible. Written music is a lot more like ice than most people think. And that's something I learned from Beaver Harris. This principle also connects music here with music there. It connects music from the past with music in the present. It connects music in the future with now. It connects past, present, and future. This principle. Because if you do a certain thing to a piece of music and play it in a certain way, you'll get the future. Play it in a certain other way, and you'll get the past. So it's all together, you know. It's all simultaneous, just like the universe.

AAJ: So what does a composition do for you that you couldn't have otherwise?

DSW: When you write down something, you preserve it in a certain way. You can call on it and you can play it the same way if you want, or you can tap into it and get another music, you know? You write down something so that many musicians can deal with it. It kind of makes it easier when you write down something and it's in front of everybody. Then you have a basis to draw on. You say, I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to do the other thing. And everybody's looking at the same thing. So it makes it easier like that. Because a lot of musicians may not have that intuitive capacity sharpened. So to have it on a piece of paper might make it easier.

AAJ: So when you compose things, is it a chart?

DSW: It's notes, man, but I don't like to freeze the rhythms. I like to keep the rhythms flexible, so a lot of the time there's really no frozen rhythm. I might write something in eighth notes or sixteenth notes or triplets, but that's really just an approximation of what I might want, you know.

AAJ: That sounds a lot like Cecil Taylor's compositions.

DSW: Yeah, he doesn't write no rhythms, you know. You have to just intuit the rhythms. They kind of play themselves, though. If you're open, they just play themselves.

At this point, maybe it's not fair for me to say this, but I don't consider myself a serious composer at this time... in the sense that I believe my concepts are very advanced, but they are not complicated. Well, I dunno, they might be to some musicians, so it all depends on how you look at it. But from my standpoint, my compositions will develop more and they will begin to be more full. You'll see as time goes on. You'll see. Everybody will see that as time goes on. But for right now the focus has always been on having something to improvise from. To have an idea, or ideas. Motifs, lines, phrases to develop.

AAJ: I've been reading a book by John Miller Chernoff called African Rhythm, African Sensibility. He's a sociologist, and he went to Ghana to learn how to play the drums. And he learned and became a student of the master drummer. There's a strong sense of community in African music. Now I'm white as snow, but I firmly believe that this music has heavy roots in Africa. That comes most obviously from the rhythm, but also from the way the players interact and how they improvise off each other.

I think that's a real problem with this music (that you make, or Matt Shipp, or Joe Morris, or whatever). It doesn't have that cultural involvement going on. You make the music, we listen to the music... rather than people participating. Does that make any sense to you? When you're playing live, and people are with you, they're into the music, they're catching the vibrations, and they're feeding back. That has to change how you play.

DSW: There's all kinds of music, man. There's music for bodily movement. There's music that's meant for movement of the heart and the mind. It all overlaps, but this is what I think. Bodily movement can (not necessarily) be a distraction with certain music. (And vice versa.) So there's different strata of music, where you dance on another level. You don't dance physically. But you can dance physically. But that is a whole nother level of dancing. Just talking about my own music and how I see it, it's more of a music to travel. It's more of a music for travel. If you close your eyes, you can travel with this music. It's moving within oneself. It could be like a moving meditation through music. So it's different functions of music. It has different functions. Different rhythms do different things. When you write something in one key as opposed to another key, it does something different. It can conjure up a different atmosphere. Rhythm and melody are the same thing. Depending on what key it's in, and what scale is being used, and all that.

Like I said before, it's not an either/or thing. It's a different music. There's different musics. A Beethoven piece is going to make you move different than a Coltrane piece. But they're supposed to. One piece may note make you move physically. You don't want to move physically. Certain other music is designed for that. I don't see a problem with this music in terms of that: in terms of you can't dance to it. But if one did see that as a problem, then they should look at their perceptions. Because if you wanted to, you could dance to it. But you'd have to do a different kind of dance. It would be a different kind of dance with a different kind of frequency, which would involve different kind of movement. But you'd have to be a pretty advanced dancer to do that.

AAJ: That's why improvised music is so great. Because formal dance rhythms might be included as nuggets here and there. And when the music is being improvised, the dance is being improvised. And this can also be the dance in the head. But this is the kind of dance that's dynamic and in-the-moment. The main thing I want to get at is this: how do you see the role of audience participation (of whatever kind) in your music?

DSW: That's the thing: when you close your eyes and you travel, you're participating. When you come to a concert and you sit down in total silence, let's say, you are participating. If your attitude is one that you want to travel, you want to transcend with this music, you are participating. Believe me. Just as much as the physical dance. The physical dance can be a very superficial thing.

I think that's one of the functions of this music, overall and in general: it allows people to come to a music that is not oriented toward the physical. And they can have a chance to transcend through music, and travel through music. Without the superficiality of the physical. When I listen to Coltrane, I don't want to dance. I wanna travel with the music, which is mental and spiritual.

AAJ: As a performer, you're on the other side of the coin. When you see people moving (not physically, but the other kind), how does that change the way you play? Or does it? Do you view your music as an interaction with an audience, or are you speaking from the heart, regardless of what's happening in the room?

DSW: I'm sort of speaking to myself. I'm sort of in communication with subtle forces. I would like to think. I'm in communion with an inner world that the music is drawn from. However you can feel the presence of the willingness of a crowd--whether it's heavy and wants to stay earthbound, or it's light and wants to rise up--you can feel that. And some times the music feels very difficult to launch, and other times it's very easy. That's a lot of things, if you really want to get down into it. It's the audience: it's their relationship to the universe, also. It's the day, and the time, and the time of the year. And what position everything is in. Because our physical selves are connected to the outer universe: the stars and the planets and all that have a corresponding anatomical relationship toward human beings which modern man doesn't realize. But that's ancient knowledge, but the universe is a replica of what's going on in our brains and nervous systems and our bodies. So that's one reason that Coltrane was able to launch as high as he did, was the time. The time he was living was a ripe period for that. And the audiences were ripe for it. He didn't have to drag them along, they were willing to come. And it made all the difference.

AAJ: You feel like you're dragging people along a little bit?

DSW: A lot of times, yeah. A lot of times, yeah. Some of them, you're dragging them, and they show their appreciation at the end some times. But you felt that drag, that weight. And it's just the times we live in, a lot of it. This is a very materialistic time. Modern man doesn't take the time to really perceive that. He doesn't look at the broader scope of things. Maybe he doesn't know about the ancient past, and how it was back then as compared to how it is now, and how it will be in the future. I'm of the school where... you know, I've done a tremendous amount of reading and a tremendous amount of studying and a tremendous amount of meditation. And I've come over the last 30-40 years to realize that everything man needs is here. It's here. Everything that's being discovered now is from nature... You find that all the future is in the past.

AAJ: It's funny that you make this comment about science. Because that's my day job. I work on cancer research. Everything's pretty cut-and-dry there, you know.

DSW: So that's not a bad thing. It's a certain method that's being used. That's all. It's a certain method, but there's a lot of methods that can be used to arrive at something, you know. See, what spirituality demonstrates is that you have a law. You have these laws that scientists know. Okay, for example, you have a law of gravity that pulls things down. But you also have a law that overcomes that, you have a law of anti-gravity, a law that allows you to float.

AAJ: Which takes energy, which actually makes a lot of sense.

DSW: You have these opposite laws. Because it's a universe of opposites, and it's just a matter of gaining access, which the spiritual geniuses over time have discovered... the ways in which to access these hidden laws of nature. And they're able to become masters of nature. We're in a situation where we're fighting against nature. It's like man against nature, because man thinks he's something outside of nature. And he doesn't realize he's a part of nature. And we destroy the earth: do not respect the earth, and we take, take, take, take from the earth.

AAJ: And that's why it's so important for you to create.

DSW: Yeah. That's why it's so important for me to do what I do, because the whole message behind what it is I do is that we are part of nature. And realize that, and access that. So there's more true harmony amongst human beings, and in nature. We're not separate from nature.

AAJ: Because we all share the same thing.

DSW: So live accordingly.

AAJ: As we close the interview, I'm kind of curious about how you feel Guillermo Brown has changed the way you sound. To me, he's got a really distinctive approach to the drums. Sure, each drummer has their own sound and their angle. But his way seems very heavy--not in a gravity kind of way, but in an anti-gravity kind of way. I'm curious what kind of thoughts you have on that.

DSW: See, Guillermo is more aware. He has more awareness of rhythm, and he's more conscious. He's a very conscious drummer. There's no accident, trial-and-error, and all that. He's a studied drummer, and he knows the difference between this rhythm and that rhythm and that rhythm and that rhythm. You know, a lot of these people don't. A lot of these so-called "free" drummers don't know the difference between this and that. They can't play this rhythm and then play that rhythm and then play that rhythm.

AAJ: And that's why Andrew Cyrille is so good, because he can do all that.

DSW: He can do all that. And he's very aware of the differences and the subtleties.

AAJ: So how does that change the overall sound? How do you feel the group has changed?

DSW: I can call up anything that I want to call up, you know. And it's not going to be all the same one-sound-fits-all. It's gonna be different, like it's supposed to be, from piece to piece.

It's not all the same thing, one sound fits all. Like "I'm this type of drummer, so therefore it don't matter. You can play anything, and I'm going to play this." Of course, you can't play anything else. You don't know how. You haven't studied enough. You're not able to play things of distinction, you know?

So it makes it a lot easier on the band, and what I can call up.

AAJ: It gives you more flexibility.

DSW: If gives you more flexibility to do what you want to do. He knows how to play the drums. You know, there's a real art in playing a hit, for a drummer. There's a real art in that. To be able to play a hit with a band. It's a real art in being able to do that. And not all cats are gifted in doing that.

AAJ: What do you mean by a "hit"?

DSW: I mean a melody of a tune. To be able to play along with the tune appropriately, as the rhythm part of it. Being able to hit the right accents and catch the right phrasing and all that. Along with what's going on in the melody. Not everybody can do it.

Needless to say, a cat like Beaver Harris was gifted at doing this. You bring up a new piece in front of Beaver, and he says, "Okay, play it one time." And then, "Okay, it's alright. I got it." And the next time he got it, he got it perfect. He got it right because he's gifted like that, man. And not only gifted, he's studied. He's a studied drummer. He knows what to play and when to play it, and what's effective and what's not, and so on and so on. He's right with you. And this is all part of music making.

AAJ: How'd you end up with Guillermo Brown?

DSW: He kinda came to me through a friend.

AAJ: Just like Matthew Shipp.

DSW: Yeah, he came to me through a friend. And he was told to call me, and he called me, and I went and listened to him, and that was it.

AAJ: So, at this point, on this day, with this music, are you satisfied with what you're doing?

DSW: Yeah, I'm satisfied with what I'm doing. I'm very satisfied with what I'm doing. I feel that at 51 years old I'm maybe at 30% of my potential as a musician. I've got a lot that I can do. I've got a lot that I can do on other instruments. I've got a lot that I can do compositionally. I've got a lot I can do to develop my ear, which just takes time. But I'm in no big rush. It's gonna unfold very naturally as we get more work and so on and so on. I'd say I'm at 30% of what I can do.

AAJ: That's interesting, because you have to have some sense of your potential. As a scientist, you're measuring the unmeasurable there. That's hard to know. But the basic point is that you're pretty humble about where you're at, and I respect that.

DSW: I truly believe that. I think I'm probably around 30% of what I can do. There's a lot that I haven't done, man. There's a lot that I have not developed. You know, it's just not time for it yet. I'm in a certain stage now, I'm doing a certain thing, and we're doing good at it, and it's just going to take time for other things to come into other phases of it.

AAJ: Where are you headed? What's your momentum, what's your velocity, what direction?

DSW: I would like to mimic the music of the spheres, you know. Cosmic spheres. That's what I want to more or less mimic. The music of the spheres. Which I have heard, and which is a very real thing. I want to more or less mimic it and I want people one day to hear that. And I want them to lose control of themselves. I want them to be so divine that they lose control of themselves and just break down and cry. That's what I would like. For a whole auditorium full of people to do that. Then I'll know that I'm getting closer to be able to manifest that which goes beyond language. I want to be able to manifest that through music. I want to have a room full of people, whether it's an auditorium or a club or whatever it is, an audience... everyone in there coming away with no doubt... everyone coming away a changed human being. Something took place in there that changed their life. They walked away from the concert and they were never the same again. You know, the force of the music did that. This is where I'm trying to head.

AAJ: So you're looking at music more as a medium than a language.

DSW: Well, both. I'm looking at it both ways. I want people to have an experience of transcendence through my music, which means that you have stepped outside of time and space. And you have stepped into the subtle realm. And you are touched by what is there. And then you come back into the world of time and space, and you're changed. Something happened. You don't know what happened, but something happened. It's like you've gone through some kind of initiation through that experience, and you go on through the rest of your life, but something is different.

AAJ: Sounds like that's what you've been trying to do your whole life.

DSW: We try to do it in quartet form now, and it'll expand. One way or another, it'll expand somehow. It'll take on different shapes.

AAJ: You have pretty much stuck to the quartet, at least in recordings. That Netherlands solo concert just got released. But that's the exception more than the rule. Are you headed that direction? Larger groups? Smaller groups?

DSW: I hear both things in a certain context. I hear solo saxophone surrounded by a very broad background with certain instruments. And I would like to delve into that a little bit in the near future to see what I can come up with that. To put my saxophone in a different context, so people can hear the thing from a whole nother angle, a whole nother setting. I'm going to try to get to that in the near future. It's going to take some time, and it's going to take some study.

AAJ: One step at a time, right?

DSW: Yeah. But this quartet thing and this tenor thing: I did want to establish a certain sound. And I think we're well on our way to establishing that now. So it's about the time to expand, broaden out into some other areas.

Discography as leader:
(Adapted from the AUM Fidelity discography.)

Corridors & Parallels (AUM Fidelity, 2001)
Live in the Netherlands (Splasc(H), 2001)
Surrendered (Columbia/Sony, 2000)
Go See The World (Columbia/Sony, 1998)
Wisdom of Uncertainty (AUM Fidelity, 1997)
Godspelized (DIW, 1997)
Oblations and Blessings (Silkheart, 1996)
Dao (Homestead, 1996)
Cryptology (Homestead, 1995)
Earthquation (DIW, 1994)
Third Ear Recitation (DIW, 1993)
Flight of I (DIW/Columbia, 1992)
Great Bliss, Vols. 1&2 (Silkheart, 1991)
Passage to Music (Silkheart, 1989)
The Birth of a Being (Hat Hut, 1979)
From Silence to Music (Palm, 1978)