Steve Coleman on Dave Holland

And in a way it was similar to the move Dave had made about ten years earlier. After his health problems, he had reached a point where he decided he needed to go out and lead his own band. He had been playing with Sam and all these other people, and then he made the move.

I told him, "You did the same thing when you were my age. You went out on your own."

I felt like I was doing the same thing. I thought I was actually making the move late. Some people had their own bands when they were 21. But for me, that was the moment.

That was what I felt I needed to do.

AT: That must have been a difficult decision to make.

SC: I was grateful for the nine or ten years that I played with him because that gave me a lot of experience, a lot of confidence.

It was an important period for me.

I had been able to develop my own music while playing with his band, but eventually I felt like I needed to put all of my energy into what I was trying to do.

That was really how I felt. I couldn't guarantee that my own band was going to support me. I didn't know what was going to happen. But I knew I had to make the move.

And I had those nine or ten years behind me. I wasn't starting from nothing. I had all that experience—touring, recording, being in a working band, dealing with all these different musical situations.

So even though it was difficult, the time with Dave had helped prepare me to do it

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Epilogue

Listening back to our conversation, it's clear Steve and Dave's relationship was primarily built upon exchange—two musicians from different generations and disparate backgrounds finding common ground within an ever-evolving musical tradition which I prefer to refer to as Creative Music of the African Diaspora. Neither musician came into this simply looking to confirm what he already knew. Both came from what appear to be, in some respects, quite different musical philosophies. Yet there was a mutual respect. Each seemed to recognize something of great value in the other.

Ideas traveled in both directions, through compositions, rehearsals, books, conversations and, most importantly, years spent playing together. Over the course of almost a decade, the sum of those parts formed what would eventually become a new branch within the "jazz" tradition, which in turn gave birth to a series of groundbreaking recordings under Dave's name.

Perhaps there is also something fitting about the way this chapter eventually came to a close. Earlier, Dave had reached a point in his own life when he felt compelled to step forward and build something new of his own. Roughly a decade later, Steve found himself facing much the same situation. By then, the younger musician Dave had invited into his band had developed his own musical language, a community and a working ensemble of his own, which spawned what would later become an entire sub-genre, influencing countless musicians around the world.

When viewed over time, and from the macro, Steve would always have had to eventually leave in order to follow that path fully, just as Dave did. But, as he makes clear, the years spent playing with Dave were part of what made that next step possible.