By Andrey Henkin

AllAboutJazz: What was your musicla background growing up in Germany?

Gunter Hampel: "Well, my grandfather was a composer and he played many instruments. And my father, he was an incredible piano player and also an amazing violinist. So the first things I can remember in my life is hearing my father playing the piano and the violin and every time he played it was something around us, it was like sunshine on a rainy day. So I was hooked up to play music as soon as I could reach the piano keys. From then on, sound was something to me that was very alive it was because it had been practiced. You see, when people came into my house and my father started to play and people started to dance. Sometimes he played classical music and so forth and so it was a way life at home to play music. As I was 2 or 3 years old I started to play on the piano because every note made me excited. It's the way you become a musician. You love the sound. You love music. You love instruments. Its your world. All of a sudden the tones are expanding that was usually feel and taste and smell. Its just like another perception of the world around you. And so soon as I was 4.5 my father gave me lessons and then he didn't have enough time so I got a piano teacher. I was very lucky I had a piano teacher which his first question was "what can you play". I was five years old so I sat down and played one of the tunes I'd made up. At that time, I said that I'd made them up. He recognized that I had a composing talent. He wrote the tune down which I played and he put two more voices for the left and right hand so we played the tune. Also he encouraged to me from the first lesson that I come back to the next lesson with another tune. I overheard a conversation with him and my father saying that "he's not only talented, he also has the capability of composing which when you are four or fives years old seemed to be a very rare thing to have. So actually I was encouraged by my father, My mother, she wasn't into music too much, she was the business partner for the family. From then on I learned the recorder and the recorder is just entry to play clarinet or saxophone because it has the same fingering so I get after the recorder I learned clarinet and saxophone and the vibraphone came into the picture when I heard Lionel Hampton and there was a local musician in town who played very well so I got to have lesions from him. I also went to the symphony orchestra and they had a very good percussionist in town and he taught me the classical way of playing the marimba and the vibraphone. When I was 13 I played the clarinet pretty well. At that time there was a lot of dances with live music and they played all the ethnic music and people danced and the celebration of harvesting. Germany has many tribes,. When Marion Brown was later in Germany he always told me that Germany was the white man's Africa because of the tribes, all the Germans before the Christians came, they worshipped the wind and the weather and the stones. Same like Africans. He was very fond of Germany and he made me aware of the good things we also have in Germany,.

AAJ: How did you become interested in jazz?

GH: So that's the music education. How did I get to jazz? It was actually by Louis Armstrong. It was when I was 8 years old, it was 1945, the war wasn't even over yet and Gottingen, my home town I lived next to a big company which was responsible for telephone cables so when the Americans moved in our town they placed 3or 4 of their trucks right next to our house because of the cables and the GIs, they were listening to American Forces Network (AFN) which was when America is at war, it can be heard all over the world. One day I was going over to the truck because those GIs, they always gave us chewing gum and bananas, we didn't have all this in the war. There was Louis Armstrong singing on the radio station. I had learned a few words of English so I asked what that was and the guy he explained to me, he said it was jazz music. I didn't understand a word that Louis was singing but there came something over me, a feeling I never knew before or maybe I dreamed it. It touched me and I'm not the only one who got hooked to jazz by Armstrong. He had this way of singing right into your heart without you understanding a word because he was so much behind the words, he was so much telling us the feelings and the parts of your body that music comes from and he was taking over totally. So from that moment on I wanted to know everything about jazz and years later I had a chance to see Louis in a movie so that took me totally. I already played clarinet. I started to play jazz. Luckily there were some older jazz musicians in my home town, and they taught me and I listened like the way when you grown up, you listen to records and you try to play the tunes and write the down from the chords the tunes and one older saxophone player told me to write down an improvisation. I mean listening to your record, write down the improv so you can write down...(Hampel's son Romi enters)...

Then after that experience I became a jazz musician, it as simple as this. A lot of people in the US they still wonder how me as a German is playing jazz because they can't think of it as being spread all over the world. Most Americans, they don't even know that there are jazz musicians all over the world. I am traveling. I was in Asia. Each country I travel there are always people who play jazz. We all know the jazz somehow started here in the US and basically New Orleans when all these cultures from Africa and Europe came together and this improvisational music came into being. When they travel a lot all those American musicians, when they travel they have this experience and they know it, that jazz is not only…Lets face it, people say its African music, sure its African music to the rhythms is 50% the other 50% is from all over the world, basically from Europe because when the black people started to play jazz they used European instruments and in using European instruments they changed totally their way of tuning because in Africa you have 5 notes in an octave, well it varied from country to country if you are from Senegal or Ghana or wherever there are five tones within a octave in different positions in our scale. But playing the piano with a well-tempered tuning, it means that the influence of European music is there as soon as you touch it. And the trumpets and trombones and violins and guitars and other things tuned the European way. Main thing is that jazz music is probably the first music in the world where all the different ethnic backgrounds came together and its the first world music. Its stupid to say that Europeans cannot play jazz or that Russians cannot play jazz or Asians cannot play jazz. Sure we play the jazz different because we have different heritages and come out from different backgrounds. There was a DJ on WBGO, Jim anders from Philadelphia, he was one of Sun Ra's percussionists. One night he got very excited explaining to all of us what jazz is, and he said jazz music is the new bible. I think he wasn't too far off. Since the beginning of jazz music up till now we have established a big catalogued documentation from people who have put their souls and feelings into this music . We have, the same as the bible witnessing certain happenings, we musicians witnessing life on this planet all different. I think that jazz music, like I said the other night in the concert, we're packing a lot of backgrounds and knowledge and truth and whatever, sometimes we don't even know what we put in there. But jazz documentation played by good musicians, it is more valuable then a Picasso that costs millions. Its like a mirror, if someone listens to jazz you can see your whole life in a different light, in a different way. This is what I know now, but when I started to play jazz I was probably hoping I would learn more about this life.

AAJ: People spend their lives learning one instrument yet you play three masterfully [vibes, flute, bass clarinet]. How does this affect your music?

GH: Yah that doesn't cover it. I am a composer. So I go around with all these melodies in my head. Its like when you're a writer and you have all these thoughts and if you don't write them down they are gone. So I wake up in the middle of the night and I have part of a tune. I write this down. So use all my different instruments trying to find out, if I play a melody on the piano or the vibraphone its different when I play it on the flute or the bass clarinet or the saxophone. It doesn't just sound different. It is as if it was another person when you play it through a saxophone or a trumpet. That's why we have so many different musicians in the band so that all these many aspects of the melodies come together. Since I was playing the piano, the vibraphone wasn't so far way because the keyboard is the same. Once you learn one woodwind like the clarinet or the flute, its easy to play the saxophones, you just make different adjustments in your mouth and blowing the air is different. Once you master a instrument, the instrument is no longer a piece of metal or a piece of wood, its an extension of yourself, its like you're growing more hands, and when I play the fl or bcl or vib the way of playing all comes from the same place, you just have to adjust it, like if you drive a bike or a car or fly a plane , you adjust too. Over the years the adjustment goes faster and faster so I can even change instruments in a tune. Its expression. You express something. If you a thought a musical thought, well first comes the decision to have a thought. And then you put this thought into music then it goes either way, either on the vib or the fl or the bcl, you can add different expressions. With the horn, and I'm blowing, its air and I play vib with the mallets, its air too but its made by the hands and the woodwinds I'm blowing them. Its different approach to making the music so the music its inside of you and it wants to go out. It's a concept that you only understand if you are a musician. When I played with Perry and Lou at the KF we played with each other, we have a tune that combines us like on a sport field, combines us to be in the same place, we play with each others feelings, with each other thoughts, we accompany each other, the more instruments you have available the more expressions you can put into it.

Sometimes I only have a flute available when I am in the hotel room or somewhere so I am trying to figure out how the melody goes, when you compose a melody, its fresh, its like you don't know exactly in the first moment how its going to be. So when you practice it on a instrument it might may take a different direction and composing is not just one way, there are many different ways of how you receive it, the usual composition in jazz, with the example of Charlie Parker, you take a tune and write a new melody, that's what the bebop people used to do, so they took common tunes and used the changes because every musician in jazz at the time they could play the same tunes. The worst what could be is that someone takes a tune and rewrites it a little bit and puts it out, there are many ways of fooling around with a composer, but I am writing original stuff. These tunes are not influenced by another tune. Composing is one thing. Writing a melody, composing a melody, having the intuition to make a melody, that's easy. The second part, arranging, that's where the art of jazz comes in. This is why I came to the US, because they are such great arrangers. I wanted to learn from them how to arrange tunes. By the time I finally came here, I think I had gotten it out by myself. The only way to write a good arrangement of a tune is to listen to a tune. The tune is going to tell you exactly what kind of clothing, dressing, it needs. Most music which I hear on the radio is been arranged by something which has already been arranged by someone else before. This is why I seem to know al the music on BGO even if it was just recorded last week. But to write original stuff, that's rare. I was lucky when I was in Germany and I started out playing music, I always found good musicians, some of these musicians are still working today. There were some very good ones, so I learned from them and they learned from them.

AAJ: How di you and your peers in Europe aproach jazz?

GH: My first band, the Heartplants quintet with Schoof, Schlippenbach, we matured while doing, first we learned from Charlie Parker and Gillespie, Dolphy, Monk, Mingus, Ellington, and whoever put some great stuff together, but then when I started to play with black musicians, they always talked about Africa, Africa Africa but I was not an African, I was a European so I got more and more aware by checking out my own heritage and by doing so, I didn't have to discover it because I was growing up with it but now I had more substance to see what it was. I learned more about our own European or German or Austrian music and especially when I heard Ellington say there are so many great composers in Europe we can learn from them, about how to get away from the 32 or 12 bar standard jazz grooves, these people like Ellington and Mingus and Cecil Taylor among many others, they were the first ones, they always pointed out that this European composer was influencing them. I had all of this around me and I got more a more involved over the years. I learned how to appreciate my own heritage and from there I learned about forms and started to play with great composers from the classical field or from the new music field because they were in awe of our improvisational skills. And since I was a jazz music I started to improvise with European harmonics, especially with the 12 tone experience, we were capable of improvising in that area and in this way we got close to people like Stockhausne and Penderecki, and a lot of other composers who never had learned how to improvise. Actually, my father he was an improviser too, only he played our traditional ethnic music from which my grandfather, who I mentioned was a composer, he had written some of the stuff I used to play for dances and then I talked with Marion Brown and he told me when he was growing up they were playing at weddings they sometimes played the same tunes I was playing when I a kid. I played for dances and weddings because when you are a jazz musician, you have to have some other experiences of music, its not just money, it also the experience of playing in a group, in a team, in a band, in a orchestra and then people coming and singing tunes and they never play the tunes in the keys you are used to playing them so you transpose keys from one another which is a very good experience for young musicians, transposing and being capable in many keys. I played with Shepp in Sweet Basil 10 or more years ago and he never said what tune we played, he just put the microphone into his saxophone. The bass player was the first one to play and find out what key it was and then we had to be very flexible, we had to know all of these tunes and play them in any keys, he would just start playing, so that's important for a jazz musician when you start out playing straight music, you don't practice the tune in one key, you practice it all keys, so you are flexible, and this flexibility also made it possible for us later to play our free music because when you heard us play on Sunday at the KF you saw us exchanging melodies and doing nice tunes, but we guide that through all the keys there are and play with each other in tune, the freedom we have each is not just squeaks and sounds, it also melodious free improvisation which is the latest stage I have come to. Perry is just such a wonderful musician and we get it right away. I have a band, a trio, in Germany, a saxophone, drums and me plus two breakdancers, but we play jazz music, we don't play hiphop music. So we improvise with each other in very melodious ways. We have a free jazz revivial now, when I go Tonic or other places, I hear people play free music. That's stuff we played 40 years ago. 40 years ago we had to make room for our improvisations so we were kind of fighting our way and we wanted to wake up the people so they start to listen and don't just want to hear what they already know. There was a big process going along with our revolution, evolution, I call it evolution, and now after playing that 40 years, anyone who has followed my music through my recordings, they know that we already have approached over the years a more spiritual and more listening to each other way of playing then these people do these days when they play this free music that sounds like we played it 40 years ago. The evolution goes on, a lot of my colleagues, they still play the same music like 40 years ago but not me, I have developed further and further into the music and that's why I'm always coming out with new ideas, like the idea with the breakdancer. When I started to play jazz music back in 1953-55, people used to dance to our music. We played on dances and we played jazz, what you call now standards. And its great when you play and you have people dancing to it because that feeling of dancing comes back to you as a musician, you are more loose, you just play better. Concerts are nice too, I love to do concerts too when people sit there listening and imagining things in their mind, but when they move its much more of an exchange. The movements that people do come back to us and the breakdancers they are with their movements probably the closest dancing I have had to my music. Most dancers I have had the favor to work with have come out of ballet, out jazz dance which is a form of ballet done with jazz music, but the breakdancers, those kids they don't know that hiphop and braekdancing, that's just jazz, I mead its just a form of jazz. You just saw my son, when he was 16 or 17, they did all this rapping, I was like every other jazz musician, I said there was no melody in the music, its just boom boom boom, and I was right and I still am right but these kids today they are not aware that jazz is the big mother, that all that music that is around, rock and roll and r&b and hip hop, has its roots in jazz and those people better stick to those roots if they want to learn something and add something to it because it has become very commercial thing in the hands of big corporations and companies and they make a lot of money and they make a lot money in keeping it at that low level. Prince Alegs, the breakdancer that was with me at the Triad gig, he has played with me for 3 years, he has a crew and I am teaching them about jazz and those people who are willing to learn they are very thankful that I do this. I had an invitation from a German hiphop organization called Jazzcanteen and they asked me and nils wogram, the trombone player, and they sometimes have all these people from james brown, I was playing jazz with them and the people loved it, I was playing front of 1000s of kids every night. One day, I had 5000 people, playing in a soccer stadium, 12o000 people in the audience listening to our music I and extended my performance with that hiphop organization. In doing animations with the audience, when you have rapper who animates the people to sing or repeat words, I played a vibraphone solo and I did a happening with 12000 people, which is something I could never do was long I was playing free jazz because I always have big orchestra and I sometimes play parts or sections, when I play just by hands signs, I tell the saxophone section to stop or play a certain riff that I indicate with my hands and this time in front of 12000 people I had a happening using my vibraphone going right in front of the audience and conducting the audience with my mallets and the orchestra and I put the free jazz interplay between hand signs, I guided the orchestra through riffs and guided the audience through riffs and had them sing and play and talk and whisper and holler and yell all together all by my hand signs. And they loved it. When I play free jazz here in NY there comes 50-60 people, but there I had 12000 and I made them all sing and it was the first time they experienced free jazz firsthand and from that moment I was a big star and I still am when I'm over there. Sometimes they invite me just to do animations, we did some at the world exposition in Hanover in 2000. People came every night, 4-5000 people to our concerts, and when they came in the door they yelled my name like they wanted to sing, they wanted to participate. Kids and young people they like it very much; older people they like to listen to good music which is fine with me too but the kids they like to be in it, that's the change of generation, that why we don't have so many new audiences for jazz these days, because you have to sit down and listen and be quiet, the kids today they want to dance, show off, be part of it, having those breakdancers with me I give them a reason to come to our concerts, some start to dance in the concerts, even older people start to dance, in America they are not used to this thing, because it is a new thing that came to my mind. To do this, it freshens up the excitement when we play with great collective improvisations, the audience receives it by moving and that's a totally different way of experiencing music and our societies are going into that direction. And I think that jazz music had to find out ways of going along with giving something to the audience that they can participate in a positive way, these animations and this dancing is maybe the way to get the audiences again. It has the best rhythms in the world, the best melodic concepts., I mean jazz music is to me the superior music at this time and shouldn't be only leftover to these commercial entities, if I put the radio on, I only hear Wynton Marsalis, that's not right. There should be all these great bands and composers should be heard and recorded. Its too bad they are not open to the real music and they only want you to play, if I go to a big company they want me to play standards so they can sell it but they don't like me to do my tunes or do the music like I do so that's why I don't go to them and that's too bad because the real stuff gets hidden away from the audience and the kids and me participating with hiphop organization in Germany playing jazz with them made those kids aware that vibraphone solo is sometimes even more exciting than a rapper doing some crazy words, though there are good rappers and good texts doing good stuff fore the audience. But you see if we want actual information being handed down to younger generations, the we have to make the move towards younger generations, and not stay on this high sophisticated platform saying jazz music is so good, nice harmonics and nice rhythms. I'm doing children's' workshops now with my drummer my saxophonist, with myself, with Alegs the breakdancer, with my rapper, so we involve kids in making up their own rhymes, because kids like to rap especially between 5 and 13, they want to be rappers, so we teach them how to make their own poems, we set music to it, perform it together, the breakdancer is using the body movements to make the people ready to feel the groove, because if you can't move you can't feel the jazz groove. You have to be able to move with your body to those grooves in order to fully dig or understand what going on when a jazz band is playing. I am trying to revitalize our kids to be more loose and not just buy the next video games and sit at home and get fat. If you watch the bodies of young children who do nothing but move their thumbs on the computer games, they get big hips, they get overweight, their legs are not walking right anymore, they walk outwards, they 're going to be sick when they are 20. That's not right. You cannot make people lose their joy to live so we should be very careful in educating our children if you have them. The have been told through the media that this is for old people. Look well into the information kids get through the magazines. It's a matter of education. One example. Last year in Germany in we had a jazz week in Gottingen, and I was doing a vibraphone solo on the marketplace, there was 500 people standing there and listening to the music and before the concert was happening I was calling up all our jazz organizations, we have a jazz union, jazz federation. I called them up and said do you have any little brochures I can hand out to people who have never known anything about jazz as an introduction when they hear I'm playing the vibraphone or bass clarinet so they can learn more about it. I want to give them a piece of paper that says listen to this record or listen to this radio station or buy this book. There was none of these brochures available. And I think if I would ask this question in this country no one would think I was in my right mind to ask this. But this is what is lacking. We don't now make advertising for jazz. The only thing I hear on the radio on BGO is they are starting a series in Brooklyn to teach 12 years old how to play jazz. That's one way. That's a very good way to start to start with 12, 13, 14 but what about a kid getting 12 that has never had the chance to get an introduction into what we call jazz. That's why I do these children workshops. I start with the children to move and out of these movements. You see, before someone can play rhythms they must be able to walk or to run. And from running and walking you can take the walking or running rhythm and let them play on drums or with mallets on the floor or with a percussion instrument and I let run and walk and play these things and then we sit down and play the things we have running and we do pantomimes with the children. Alegs is doing all these body movements, stretching their bodies, moving around. We're making calls and answers with each just from body movements. Miles Davis was a boxer and this was all very important to the way he played the trumpet. When I start making kids aware of their body movements and dancing and moving to the music, they learn in the workshop in 3 or 4 days times. And since we are making them see how its being done, they learn fast. And we a do a concert at the end of this workshop and its not us doing a concert, it's the kids doing the concert. I have a wonderful tape from the opera house in Leipzig during the jazz festival I was allowed to do this workshop on a big stage and I run with them, I walk them I play ball with them I have a basketball and I kick the ball to one of them and the kids improvise on an instrument. I involve them in playing be cause we call our music playing music, so there is a connection, playing music means playing and kids love to play, kids like to play some senseful game not just running around, They like to do something. When you give them music instruments and show them how to use them and how to communicate with them as in calls and answers and collective playing, and movements they catch up so fast its unbelievable. This is I would like the bring to the US like I brought for the first time jazz and breakdancers together. People never thought that this could be brought together because the breakdancers here they go to Fatbeats on 6th Avenue and the jazz fans go to Tower Records and Downtown Music Gallery. So they don't know each other. When I go to Fat Beats, people look at me like I don't belong there but once they talk to me and I am a jazz musician and I appreciate their stuff, they are all over. They say I am the first jazz musician to come to their place, that I am the first jazz musician to even dig what they are doing. Because the kids they are trying to do something like what we jazz musicians did but they don't know its out there. I was at the Pier with Price Alegs, there was a big hip hop meeting some famous groups played but it was all commercial. It was all like its been done like its been done for 10 or 15 years, there's no growth there, no evolution. Its all commercial, Who's record is selling fast? They are there but they play the same thing like the hiphop masters played 10 or 15 years before. But that's too bad because jazz music is still evolving. Most people don't know about it because those people who are renewing the stuff they can't be heard because the commercial companies make everything so that they cannot be heard. They don't give them record deals or performances. Let me be very harsh. The reason why jazz music is dying out is because the commercial industry in the mid '80s has taken over the jazz music totally. There was a switch from the LP to the CD. It was so drastic, almost overnight, that my whole LPs disappeared from every record store in the world,. It was like I never existed because I didn't have any cd's out. This is how drastic it was. The companies they had in their vaults all the old stuff from Parker to Ellington. They put out the old recordings they had on cds and there was only the cds in the stores with the old music. There was no contemporary music. And from that moment, the schoolings and the universities where you can learn jazz, they mostly and naturally teach you about the historical music because that's what they know best and that's what they teach and that's what people come to learn. These two things, the commercial industry and the schoolings, are part of why jazz music has stopped evolving at least in the public eye. People like Anthony Braxton, they teach in universities, they have a certain circle around them which learned from them but this is not evolving. This is only a small number of people who stay on the current evolution. I think that, even the big corporations, they have to wake up if they want to sell their jazz or our jazz or whatever in the future, they have to do some more steps than what they are doing now. It the exact same as having the old music published for free. They never paid the musicians for it. I know some published my records. I wasn't even notified that the record was being put out again. I never saw a penny. I know from Jeanne [Lee] and Anthony and from some other people that they never got paid either. So if that's the way its been done, they made a lot of money and now they don't sell anymore so now they are closing down. Even Blue Note is stopping certain issues of certain records now, great stuff they sell for $7 in the stores now because they are the last ones. They throw them out. That's not fair, just to make money on us and when it doesn't make money anymore, throw the whole thing away. This documentation about jazz music is as important as if it was the bible. Every tune from Horace Silver or Art Blakey are valuable. Silver even pointed out that his music is a healing source. These things shouldn't be forgotten. There are certain kinds of museums all over the world that collect jazz and you can go there and rent a cd if you want to but this is not the way like it should be. We all should make an effort. You make an effort in making this newspaper so that people are aware at least in their own neighborhood. Its is a great effort to put it all together so that anyone who wants to go listen to some music can find it fast. And we have to make our education in the schools better. I was trying to put my kids workshop on television in Germany by they don't want this. If I was a big company trying to sell cds and giving them money, I would be able to do something. But just to make a workshop so the children can learn, television is not interested in this. They want to make money. They don't want kids to learn. They want to train kids to eat all the damn food and play the video games which makes everyone sick. That's what we are facing right now. Plus, the war on terrorists situation doesn't make things better. I remember when Clinton was president, he always talked about education but one man alone cannot change a whole country. Even Bush when he was started to become president, in his campaign he promised better education to the people. But what I mean with better education is that the people learn about culture, about music about the arts, because if you don't have any way to understand that this body is not just a car that you drive, our body is also a spiritual vehicle or we are a spiritual vehicle for our body. We have to learn about these things. But we don't. No one tell us anything. We have to but how many people have time to find out about these things. How many people in this world even know that they can think? How many people know that listening to music is meditation or that even thinking is a meditation or meditation is thinking. We have all have so many questions and thoughts in our head but since we don't learn about our body and its incredible extension, we don't know about this universe so there is so much more to do but instead we are drawn into wars and consumer affairs. The education, that's they key. If you want that more listen to jazz, we have to give them a better education. That's why I am starting with the children and why I'm joining up with the hip hop organization because there is coming 15, 16 17 years old to the concert and they've never seen a vibraphone in their life and they've never seen a jazz musician. And when they have a chance to get this strong improvisation to them, they love it because they feel the energy. They feel all of a sudden that something's coming to them, that I'm talking to them.

This interview first appeared in the September 2002 issue of All About Jazz: New York.