Monty Alexander Speaks

Franz A. Matzner

Columnist since 2002

Franz Matzner has contributed interviews and coverage from the Kennedy Center since 2002.

Recent articles (178 total)

Published: October 28, 2003

MA: Thank you! Man, I can tell you something. As the days, the weeks, the months roll by realizations come to me. How come this thing that when in its infancy was happening in these little recording studios in Kingston, with guys just hanging out, how come this thing grabs the world the way it does? First of all, there’s such spirit hanging over Jamaica. It is so strong, whether it’s a brooding thing—people expressing their discontent—or happiness, joy, whatever it is. Jamaica is a powerful, powerful place. Like Cuba is. Like Israel is.

FM: There’s an intensity.

MA: An intensity. And when the guys started playing the ska music...I was a part of that. Fourteen, fifteen years old and I’m playing in those studios. Hanging out, backing up a lot of guys. You didn’t see my name on these things, but I was on a lot of these records. And...when it really got to the people—and I mean the folks that were in the more struggling communities, working hard all week cleaning up somebody’s house or stuff like that, Friday night come, they wanna dance and have a ball—they started copying American recordings of R&B artists...blues oriented artists and guys out of New Orleans, Clarence Henry Frogman, people that when they would record you heard the beat comin’ over the thing that make you get up and move. This to me was the first thing I tried to play on the piano. From seven years old I’m playing a rhythm on the piano. And this is what Jamaicans love. These guys fell in love with Lester Young, and Bird, J.J. Johnson—I don’t know if you’ve heard of Don Drummond—these are the sort of musicians in Jamaica that were very powerful, powerful personalities. This is during the beginning of the whole thing in the late fifties And the rhythm was the key.

FM: You touched on something I’ve been thinking about a lot. The way the rhythmic element speaks out to the people—to people who are using the music as a break from the tedium of their everyday—and without that aspect flowing through the music it won’t connect to the people, and if it doesn’t connect to the people in that way, then it becomes, something else.

MA: Yeah man! And here is what we’re saying. That’s exactly what it was when those bands were up in Harlem, playing at the Apollo, or the Savoy....Friday, Saturday night people would dress up, put on their most beautiful clothes, go and let it out, man. Get on the dance floor. And by the way, the key to this thing—which is why jazz is a different animal today, and I don’t want to frown and throw out things that sound like negative comments—but the truth is, that understanding...is more or less gone now. The music was about getting people to dance. Ellington would never have become the great Ellington if he couldn’t have kept those jobs getting people up on the dance floor. And this is the genius that wrote music that makes us swoon. But the key to what he did, whatever he tapped into, it better get you swingin’. ‘Cause that’s Basie, Lunceford, all those musicians. Fats Waller. When you sat at the piano you didn’t just run off a bunch of notes like another classical this that or the other. This shit had to swing. And that was the key in Jamaica too. Look, I’m not going to isolate this to African oriented people at all. No, it’s about every culture you can come from.

FM: Everywhere. Everywhere rhythm is key to spiritual expression. And sure, some places they use it differently than others. But it’s always there. For example, I don’t think you could say Beethoven didn’t know how to use rhythm.

MA: Indeed. In fact, when that stuff got up off the ground, those people in the Austrian courts, or wherever it was, were swooning just the same. Whatever the expression, if the rhythm is there—instead of all this calculated supposed-to-be-ness, I don’t know how else to put it—forget all this calculated supposed-to-be-ness and just go there and do what you do, be what you are, like Louis Armstrong said. That’s when you have this thing that levitates the human spirit. Which is why people use it in church.

FM: You actually just touched on two things I’d like to ask a little bit more about. First, looking at Impressions in Blue as a follow up to My America , they both have a strong quality of nostalgia, nostalgia for certain elements of America’s past?

MA: Yeah man. Big time.

FM: And the second thing is, you seem to place a strong emphasis on a sense of place. For example, the three Jamaican influenced tracks on “Impressions in Blue.”

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