Greg Osby: A Candid Conversation

Lloyd N. Peterson Jr.

Contributor since 2008

Lloyd Peterson is the author of the book "Music and the Creative Spirit"

Recent articles (35 total)

Published: January 27, 2010

GO: I found it necessary to seek out a group of younger players, players in my peer group that were interested in incorporating elements from music that existed prior to our arrival in New York as well as music that existed at the time. I also found many improvising musicians dismissive of what was going on in contemporary terms, so I wanted to use everything that existed as a building block, as a steppingstone, and not stay transfixed in a rapt state or try to create a bygone era.

There was also this vast influx of younger players from all over the country who came to New York well prepared, proficient, articulate and ready to learn. This was the beginning of what was unfortunately called the "young lions period." We were also the last beneficiaries of the apprenticeship system and had the grand opportunity to play with our heroes. But after us, a lot of people passed on and stopped having groups, so we became the bandleaders younger players started to look toward. But we wanted it organized.

Greg Osby - Copyright © 2010 Michael Ricci I met fellow saxophonist Steve Coleman and found we had a great deal in common and a great deal of aspiration to revitalize the scene and not just make it this young lions thing. We didn't want to reinforce that. Even though we did play traditional music, we also wanted something that was reflective of what was going on now. We wanted an experimental environment where we could write new music and talk about new concepts, new approaches and implement things that were of our own concoction. Once we were organized, we met once or twice a week in our basements or apartments and talked about music. It was really a self-propellant entity, where if one of the members had a meeting with a music executive, an attorney or had a session in the studio, we would address the group and detail our experiences. Consequently, we all lived vicariously through each other's experiences, and when we had to confront those experiences on our own, we were well prepared. We also pooled our money, and paid for our own studio time, and put on our own concerts as well as starting an outreach program for student teaching with a musicians' referral service. And through these efforts, a lot of the journalistic elite took note and started to call us 12th and Brooklyn, but we wanted to nip that in the bud.

Whenever you think of harmolodics, you invariably think of Ornette Coleman because that's what he named his music. But we didn't want anyone to coin a phrase as something as ridiculous as bebop, which is a phrase that musicians abhorred. So we decided to call our music M-BASE; that is an acronym that stands for "Macro—Basic Array of Structured Extemporization." Roughly meaning a large base, a large group of musicians whose main purpose is to learn and teach each other and to present new methods of composition and environments for improvisation.

GO: It's a new day as far as being a practicing musician and trying to sustain an existence. You have to choose between playing an instrument and playing in creative circles. You can play for money where there is not a great deal of creativity, but you're a faceless, nameless commodity who is doing what they are told and is basically a hired gun. Or you can make less money and sleep better at night by expressing yourself based upon your creative ideals.

I advise younger players to prepare and to avail yourself of the information—free information, mind you—about everybody's job who is involved in this business. You have to be able to speak with them articulately about what you are dealing with at the moment. You need to be able to talk to recording engineers, attorneys and music executives. You will need to know how the record company and contract works—how promotion, marketing and distribution work. Around the '40s or '50s, you went around with a dog collar and people pointed you in the direction you needed to go. That's why a lot of musicians were shafted and died penniless because they didn't have their business together. They were gypped out of all their money by lawyers, managers and record company executives who took all of their royalties, their spoils, and now today, you have to know everybody's job to know they're not doing that to you.

LP: One of the problems with documentation of jazz, such as the Ken Burns' series, is that they spend most of the time concentrating on what jazz created in the past tense and little on what the music is creating at the moment, which to me is the essence of this great music we call jazz. Isn't this a lost opportunity to educate potential aspiring jazz students and people as to what is available to them?

View All 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next »