Greg Paul: We Can Share These Commonalities

AAJ: I'm looking forward to that.—Completely different question: You are an all-male collective. Is it something people ask you about: Why is there not any female musician? I'm just interested, not complaining about that.

GP: It's funny, no one is really mentioning it (laughs), but it's interesting because all of the features so far that we have on this recording that we are working on, have been women. And it was unintentional at first. I mean it's still unintentional. There are parts where we collaborate with male artists. But it's a cool look to it—incorporate a different energy and insight.

AAJ: Are there any female instrumentalists?

GP: No, no instrumentalists. We have a female rapper as well. Her name is Noname, she is from Chicago. So yes, spoken word as well. I also work with Dawn Richard, she is from New Orleans, she is like electronic dance, she is also gonna be featured on the album. Now, we are looking forward to this—because up until now we are just all-instrumental, like no collabs. But that was unintentional too.

AAJ: One last question: What do you think about the term jazz? What do you associate with it?

GP: When I hear it or when I'm thinking of it personally it is an ever evolving entity, you know. It's like hip hop. When I think of hip hop it's just something that constantly grows... I think of improvisation, I really do think of the spirit of the people that came before—Duke Ellington, Coltrane, and Elvin Jones, Roy Hargrove, just going down the tree. It's a culture if you will, more so than a genre. It's like a life style. But unfortunately, when I hear people say jazz or when people define our music as jazz, it's like this: I get that negative kind of taste that people before us kind of got and felt. When I hear elders talk about or certain elders call something jazz, you know, derogatory and adverse, I kind of feel that same sense. It's like "Oh yeah, this is jazz," it's almost like a way of accepting it, it's like kind of making it more palatable, you know what I mean.

AAJ: Maybe it's like this: when you say "This is jazz music," it's okay, because as a musician you know what you are talking about. But when somebody else who is not a musician—like me by the way—uses the term jazz, it starts to be difficult.

GP: Yeah—it's like you almost want to correct them. Like "No, it's music." Obviously it's music. But you almost want to see what their thinking on it, their approach is when they say it. It's like you want to ask them, "What do you mean by the word jazz?" And again, we're inspired by so many different things just rooted in jazz. I always say that, when somebody asks me to describe what kind of music we make. I say, "Well, it's rooted in jazz. It's growing from everything we have been inspired by." I was born in the late 1980s. So, it's hip hop, it's gospel because it's my upbringing, it's soul, it's world music, it's classical.

AAJ: Yeah, I see.

GP: And the drum set and jazz are pretty much the same age. The invention of the drum set came about around the same time as jazz. The kick drum pedal was invented in 1910, the drum set was born and then jazz—the drummer, it's almost mandatory here.

AAJ: Clarence Becton told me about a situation where he played in an orchestra. They featured Dizzy Gillespie. And the conductor who came from classical music—Arthur Fiedler of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra—told Clarence "Don't play so loud, don't play so loud" several times. Then Dizzy Gillsepie couldn't take it anymore, approached to him and said "You have to realize that this is jazz, and in jazz the rhythm is very important." Arthur Fiedler turned red, as Clarence remembered.

GP: Oh yeah. The perception of what jazz should be—that's why I want to ask, 'What do you mean by jazz? How do you define that?' At the end of the day, everything has a name, like I call this a table.

AAJ: Yes, it gives kind of an orientation—knowing at least in rough outlines what you're talking about—when you're not a musician.

GP: Yeah. If you say "It's a jazz band," and if you'd just listen to it, I don't know if you'd associate it. How would you define Katalyst music?

AAJ: Me?

GP: Yes.

AAJ: I hear the jazz elements in it—or the roots of it, as you put it some minutes ago—and I hear the hip hop elements in it. And I have the impression it's not so much about soloing. There are solos, but I hear predominantly the dialogue or the polylogue. And to me it's a specific form of playing in a large ensemble. Sometimes it reminds me to some of Makaya McCraven's band projects. Laying focus on spontaneous interaction in a quite large ensemble—I see a parallel here: developing a collective sound, collective sounds spontaneously. The music is different, but the approach is similar, at least to my ears.

GP: Yeah, right. I would agree. I really love polylogue, that term. That's exactly what it is—conversation, the group speaking to each other. We can coin that as a genre: polylogue music (laughs).

AAJ: Can you put "jazz" in words?

GP: You figure this word from the same thing—rebellion, like a declaration against the norm of what's going on, or what's happening to the people, that are creating the music. It's both—just a voice for the people, a vehicle of expression, to speak to that specific time. If the people that created hip hop were born in 1910—it would have been jazz, you know what I mean. And—to my uncle's (Clarence Becton) point: It's not about creating anything. We're just channeling what's already there. The first rappers, they have been doing the spoken word. James Brown was kind of rapping. And it's the combination of the resources too, the influences.

AAJ: And hip hop and jazz both come from the urban environment, the buildings, the streets, the traffic...

GP: But again, more so the oppression of it, of living in these spaces, being black in America and using that outlet. We have such a specific connection to the arts, I feel—as black Americans. When I was in London, there was a musician—and he was like: "Man, you as American musicians, you set the standard, the sounds that are setting the trend." But I don't think that's so much the case, that superiority. It's more so—people from the UK and all over the world—not people, black people specifically—we are like the first generation in UK, people of my age, maybe their parents, a lot of them can specifically identify the culture where they came from—like "My grandmother was from Nigeria" or whatever.

AAJ: Yeah, I see.

GP: For us, in America—because of the transatlantic trade I can say my family comes from Mississippi, this is as far back as I can go—the arts are our connection to that sense of home. We cling to it deeply—we just have to channel it, it's more of a spiritual [connection]. Not saying this is not in these other places. But we are constantly searching for it. For us it's the spirit that moves us.

AAJ: Kind of a universal language without reference to a certain nation, a certain material place. By the way—what you describe reminds me to Paul Gilroy's study The Black Atlantic (1993), especially what he elaborates in the chapter about black music.

GP: Yeah. Even within the Kats—we always marvel at our experiences, growing up in church—that was pretty 1000 miles away, but how did you have the same experience! It's so interesting. We can share these commonalities.

AAJ: Thank you very much.