Modern Jazzman & Tribal Disorder

"I play the history of my art form.  What is my art form?  I must see it as the sum of many parts, each important to who I am and where I've been."

Listen:
 Jazz Sampler

As a trumpet player
My technical objective is to be thorough in my knowledge of the history of my art form.  That is, to be able to play the music of each historical period in jazz and classical.  I call this a technical objective because this is the base needed to express the inclusiveness which is my musical identity.

I play the history of my art form.  What is my art form?  I must see it as the sum of many parts, each important towho I am and where I've been. Jazz-The music of my childhood.  The music of my surroundings from birth.  My parents went to jazz clubs all the time and that's almost all they listened to in the house.  I grew up with the music of Duke Ellington, Cannonball, Dinah Washington, Ella, Miles, Billy Eckstein, Nat King Cole, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Erskine Hawkins, and my mother also listened to Rachmaninoff.



I had taken piano lessons
for awhile before but at 11 years old I started the cornet and played in the school band.  There I gained an appreciation for band music and classical music.  In eighth grade I discovered Dimitri Schostakovitch because of hearing a high school band play the finale to his 5th Symphony and "Festive Overture".  During that time I listened to Doc Severinson and the Tonight Show band.  I was enamored with Doc's power, lyricism, and control.  It was also during that time that Hello Dolly by Louis Armstrong knocked the Beatles out of the number one spot on the pop charts.  I thought about myself more as the aspiring Doc Severinson type than one of the true jazz cats because I could never be as good and as creative as those guys.  I really thought of myself as a student of classical trumpet playing.

I read a lot about jazz though. 
I knew it as the work of great geniuses who suffered to make it happen.  Music for a real reason.  However, it must be noted that I danced to James Brown, and I danced a lot.  I listened to Motown all the time.

When the thing hit me it hit me hard. First it teased me with some jams here and there and I tasted a bit.  Then I got infected with this thing!  I had to play the trumpet for my life and livelihood.  There could be no other way!  My whole being began to be taken up with finding the music.  That meant practicing, listening, reading about, talking about, thinking about music.  Jazz music.  Trumpet from Satchmo to Miles.  Coltrane, Ornett Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Sun Ra and McCoy Tyner.  Booker Little knocked me out and of course Diz ruled.  Cannonball and Nat did something for me too.  Man, chops and soul.  Intellectual and greasy at the same time.  That's me too. 
 






 


 

 


 From the early 70's on,
I've been very interested in cultural interaction in my music.  By 1976 I was beginning to move around a bit and experience more different music like salsa and samba etc. 

Paris 1978-82.  So much different stuff to hear.  Africans, Asians, South Americans, people from the Middle East and Caribbean.  I got to hear it from the inside.  Sulaiman Hakim and I were the horn section or part of the horn sections for many of the recordings of "ethnic music" coming out of Paris at that time.  We were playing gigs with these musicians all over Europe.  I played in Africa, for the President of Gabon, with Gabonese singer, Pierre Akendenge. 

These influences have mingled together in my psyche and make me kind of "World Music" in classification.  However, what I do is actually jazz.  It's jazz in every way.  I make use of my life experiences in my music but it's still jazz.  The music of displaced and oppressed Africans.  The music of my childhood, my mother, my father, my soul.

My trumpet playing descends from Louis Armstrong through all of the notable trumpet players since.  My classical chops give me a high level of control and clarity.

 If I try to place me historically,
as a trumpet player I come after Woody Shaw.  However, what looked like it was to be my time was not to be.  The direction of the music shifted from forward to backward.  There seemed to be no place for jazz of a multicultural nature.  The "jazz purists" took over in 1980 with their champion, Wynton Marsallis. 

Now I'm older and as an artist I am at home in this time period we're in.  Musically, anything is possible.  We're in a time of young listeners being more astute and far better exposed than at any other time in our history.  College radio stations are playing from rock to Sun Ra and all in between.  As composer and artist who is a trumpet player, now is my time.  Jazz for the present and the future.  Music with something to say, a message.  Social commentary, musical parody, and downright blazing jazz trumpet playing with African, Asian, South American and Caribbean influences.  "Tribal Disorder"   Not nice and neat.  Not smooth jazz.  Rough, sensitive, tough, gentle, spiritual, angry, positive music. 

Funky! 
 

 


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