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He has left this plain of existence, but he is more alive now than ever before. I can still here his sound in my ear. The
round staccato attacks! That bright sound dancing along with Cecil Taylors keyboard. I can still hear his sound and energy
weaving with the sound of Jimmy Lyons Alto Sax.
It was Lester Bowie, Don Cherry and MR. Malik that ruled in the 70's. I mean there were other cats.....but Malik had
that sound...that clarity...clean, Zen like quality . Like travelling through a tunnel. His articulation was awesome!
Raphe Malik gave us everything he had. He was a SuperNova....it wasnt about capitalism (money) the reason he played this
Music . It was a matter of survival. He needed to play to live.
Malik was born Laurence Mazel in Cambridge, Massachusetts on November 1, 1948. He was a regional tennis champion in high school
but foresaw a career in music for himself. Mazel attended UMass-Amherst in the late 1960s, then spent some time checking out
the free-jazz scene in Paris before going to Ohio's Antioch College. There his fate was sealed, as he studied under three
men who would become longtime friends and associates: Cecil Taylor, Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille. After graduation he moved
to New York, where he continued to work with his former professors at, among other things, a 1974 Carnegie Hall performance.
It was then that he set Laurence Mazel aside and took on the stage name, Raphe Malik.
Malik's first appearance on a recording came in 1976, on Taylor's Dark Unto Themselves. Over the next several years Malik
toured with Taylor and made three more albums with the pianist: Three Phasis, Cecil Taylor Unit, and One Too Many Salty Swift
and Not Goodbye, all of which are considered high points of Taylors large catalog. Malik's bold yet melodic approach was an
excellent complement to altoist Lyons and violinist Ramsey Ameen. The trumpeter also continued to work with Lyons outside
the Taylor unit (Wee Sneezawee, 1983), as well as pianist Joel Futterman (Berlin Images, To the Edge) and saxophonist Glenn
Spearman (Free Worlds). He soon became one of the premier trumpeters in American free jazz.
This set is accurately described as "avant-garde lyricism." Although there are many thoughtful moments along the
way, the music is primarily quite explorative, with three of the selections being complete free improvisations, and the others
usually just utilizing sketches. Trumpeter Raphe Malik is a skillful improviser, dueting with bassist Larry Roland on one
piece; with drummer Dennis Warren on another; performing a pair of quintet pieces with Roland or Jamyll Jones on bass, Warren,
and Brian Nelson on the largely extinct C-melody sax, adding tenor saxophonist Glenn Spearman to a lengthy blowout. The music
certainly has plenty of fire in spots and holds one's interest throughout.
- Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
Ras Moshe-Raphe Malik-trumpeter of the high/est order-passed away(made his transition) 9:30 am on the third of march.
"lets play/some music/for him/as/he makes/his way through/the spirit lives/sound is speech/life is eternal/it is
there that we reach"
Kris Tiner-"Raphe was POWERFUL - one of the first sounds that sent me to the outer regions..."
Roger-"I have been listening to raphe's new release 'companions'[eremite] with paul murphy, william parker, and glenn
spearman. my expectations were quite high, but i don't think i could be more impressed. malik sounds exceptional throughout(his
tone and economy of notes), truly the best i have heard him play on record, and that is saying something. EVERYBODY lights
fires here and truly it is bright moment after bright moment, something very special indeed."
Interview
Raphe Malik: Home on the Range
By Nils Jacobson
Trumpeter Raphe Malik first gained recognition as a member of Cecil Taylor's groups. Now,
at the age of 50, he's just begun to achieve notoriety on his own. I caught up with him on the phone from his home in Vermont.
Malik's outspoken voice covered the ground from ballet to farming, with many stops in between. Malik's story about how he
plucked his name from thin air reflects much of his life philosophy. To learn more, read on . . .
What's been
keeping you busy lately?
It's my third year with the garden. It's serious work. What's so fantastic about
it is that my grandfather was born on a farm, so in some kind of way, it's in me. And I feel that. So I go down there and
pull of my shirt and do weeding. It's hot, man. It's some heavy shit. You start thinking about language, black language, African
retention. People would say 'You dig?' or 'Get down!' In arts like ballet, the metaphors have to do with getting away from
the planet -- whereas the imagery used in a lot of jazz and the blues is more related to fertility, planting, cultivation,
and celebrations in relation to that. Also, work songs. Which are an entirely different thing from military songs, which are
the basis for drums and trumpet in Western music.
You know, the environment up here is really beautiful. It's
only the fact that I have a great sense of loss for not being places playing, like New York and other places in the world.
But you have to be engaged, man. They have to want you. So we're just working on that.
So you're not feeling
wanted?
Well, I've been canceled probably one quarter of the times I've been hired. And recently I was canceled.
I was going to be in Europe this summer, but it was canceled, for me. In other words, the festival did not have the money
to bring me, they wanted to. So they said, 'Maybe next year, we're really sorry.' That's not so unusual. I've had tours canceled
maybe a month and a half before the tour. And you know, if you have a day job, you're struggling and muddling your way through
because you have to live, it's hard.
What's your day job right now?
Right now I'm doing home
care for my two children and working some construction part time. Formerly, this winter, I was working as a meat cutter in
the supermarket, Price Chopper here in Brattleboro. But formerly I've done construction, mostly in ceramic tile and marble.
I've gravitated toward the trades over the years. When I was born and raised in the Boston area I went to U. Mass. When I
was in U. Mass., those four years of school were completely in turmoil, '66 to '70. When I left U. Mass. I went to Paris.
That's where I met most of the people I was later very close with and still associated with. I met Frank Wright before Glenn
[Spearman] met Frank, because he came over later. I was over there in 1970. I met the Art Ensemble, saw Sun Ra. Those people
at that time were very very important.
Was Sunny Murray there then?
Yeah, off and on. Well,
I've known Sunny since I was 20. I went to his house after a concert in 1968, the year after Trane died. It was heavy duty,
because in Philly, a white cop had been shot in the ghetto. Because there's really a terrible police relationship in the ghetto
in Philly. At that time, if you were driving in Philly and you were not white, man, they would just pull you over the hood
of your car and fuck with you. And when I went to that concert, that's what happened to us.
Not to you personally?
Well, it was who I was with. You know, I'm a very white-looking person, but I'm not entirely white. What happens
is, I can be very chameleon-like. As a kid growing up in Boston, if I hung out in the south end, I was considered maybe Puerto
Rican or something. However, if I went into the Charlestown area or Medford, something like that, where people were viciously
racist, then if I was with black people I would be considered black. If I was with white people, I don't know if I would be
considered white. Sometimes people fuck with certain individuals out of a white crowd. It just really depends. For me, I'm
very white-looking. I'm Jewish! I'm not Afro-American to begin with. But I know I'm not white, because all my life people
have asked me what I was. It's rediculous, man, you don't ask a white peron if they're white. So after talking to my grandmother
and having done some archival stuff, I found out what's happening in my family. It's not a big mystery, not a big shame thing
or something like that.
What kind of name is Raphe?
A name I made up. It's the seam of a seed.
It's also the root for 'rhapsody.' If you look it up in a great big dictionary, it's a Greek word. It's used in medical terms:
the cerebellum has a raphe. It's usually the seam which connects binary halves. And every living thing, be it a plant or an
animal, has a genetic timeclock that allows the seed to develop or the shoot to come out. And that happens through the seam
in the seed, which is the raphe.
I found that because I was hallucinating. I had a vision. I was looking at
the stars. I was in Ohio studying with Cecil [Taylor]. It was a beautiful evening. I came into the house with my girlfriend,
who was a magical person, one of the most wonderful people I've been associated with. I said to her, 'I'm going to look in
the dictionary and pick out a word randomly, and I bet you don't know what it means.' I picked 'raphe.'
She
and I did not stay together after the program ended. It was a big personal loss for me. I was really upset. I got the gig
to play at Carnegie Hall in the Big Band, which included Sunny Murray, Andrew Cyrille, and a lot of different people. That
was '74. I was one of the soloists. It was a very big moment for me. It seemed to be the real onset of my career, despite
the fact that I'd played in Europe, and I'd played with some really notable people, and I had really enjoyed working. I'd
played pro and semi-pro all my life. But you know, Carnegie Hall with Cecil Taylor, that's another kind of story. What was
kind of crazy about it was that I was so lovesick that I just wanted to use it as my first name. Because I always wanted to
be Malik, which means 'kingdom of heaven.'
In the Russian world, a lot of the Slavic people that have Islamic
background are named Malik, even if they're now Russian orthodox. And so there's a lot of Russian people who recognize my
name. The funny thing is, I've gone to radio stations, and cats wouldn't open the door. I'd knock on the door and say 'I'm
here for the performance.' And they'd say, 'Oh yeah, who are you?' 'I'm Raphe Malik.' The guy goes, 'Oh no, you're not!' and
closed the door. I'd stand there for a while and knock on the door again and go, 'Could you go and get someone else to come
and open the door for me?' I'm telling you, man, the guy was so embarrassed. What was happening when I was Cecil, these people
would think I was the equipment manager, the road manager, the driver, the agent, the publicist, the photographer, anything
but a musician. And then when they heard me that was some other shit too, because you're not supposed to play the trumpet
like that. Historically, we played a lot of gigs, man. I was lucky in the bands I was in with Jimmy Lyons, there were around
seven of them in a five year period. And those groups, we played so many gigs, we were very, very busy.
What
was that 5-year period?
Roughly '76 was the year that we went to Europe. The year that Dark Unto Themselves
was made, the first year I was on tour with Cecil. I did four seasons of European tours. And then I had a break. After the
break was over, I started playing with Cecil again before Jimmy got sick. That's when the Lush Life thing happened, and that
was in the '80s. If you add those two time periods together, it equals five years. There were periods in between where we
weren't that active. And yet we did things with Diane McEntyre, Alvin Ailey, with a larger group, with Craig Harris. We did
a thing with Andy Bey and other musicians. Rashied McCarr joined the group. His wife started singing, and there was a woman
named Eve who was singing. I was in many different groups with Cecil that had totally different drummers and bass players,
which no people know because the only ones recorded were Sirone. Alan [Silva] was not properly recorded. He played with a
group in Europe when there was no bass player very often.
Those recordings were not released. There's a fabulous
concert we did at Montreaux with Alan. I think it was the group with Jimmy, David, myself, and Beaver Harris, and Alan Silva.
I'm really glad Alan's back on the scene, man. He really understands what's happening with Cecil's concept, because he was
there at the beginning. Having invented the voice of the bow, he doesn't have to play his music any more, because everyone
plays it. There's no one playing bass in new music who doesn't play partially Alan Silva.
And Alan's very
contentious because people assign values to him which he doesn't ascribe to. That's a problem generally with artists. Your
music does not represent what people think it represents. It's just there for the value of itself. It's not like art does
not have a cultural value. But a lot of the values are attached for social or political reasons. A lot of the divisions in
life are for the same reasons extant in this field. And it's really a bitter field man, because there's so few crumbs for
the table, in terms of the art being black art. Whether the players are black or not is not even a great issue for me, it's
the idea that the art is black, it's denied its funding, its value, and its intelligence. It's always described as animistic,
athletic, or crazy.
But the blues have been accepted, right?
But if you look at the celebrations
of great black art in this country, Ornette, Cecil, and Sun Ra have not been included in PBS documentaries. And yet they've
skippped right over to rappers. There's a very political reason for that, because the industry can make money from it. So
basically the industry can dictate what is allowed to be purveyed to the people. That's not so unusual throughout the history
of art. What happens is then, separate from the music, musicians have to have an awareness. Which includes a political and
social awareness, and a conscience -- so they can make decisions that allow the music to reach people in a way that's not
dehumanizing to anyone. The big thing in the October Revolution was: why submit to conditions where you're getting exploited?
So we understand that now. However, on a smaller scale, the independent things that have happened have used the same devices
to organize themselves so they're just like small tyrannies instead of large tyrannies. The mass kind of organization that's
needed to galvanize a force large enough to permeate the media... The national media, just like the educational system, should
include this as a good way for people to understand life. But it's just not so.
Right now, the use of music
in schools was jeopardized when funding was shot. Now things are coming back, and they are pushing jazz. It's being used in
almost an educational/industrial sense. Because people are studying swing, and bebop, and they have these jazz bands in high
schools and colleges. I think that's great, man. I'm not against any of that. However, it's a rather incomplete picture. If
you took non-representational art out of the art programs, from grammar school on, there would not be much art going on.
However,
in music school, they teach things by rote which people do not go on to perform. And that's a really big difference. The music
of improvisation is always democratic. People always perform it, even when they're less adept at being players, they're encouraged
to go out and try and play, from the heart, you know, just blow. And this is not really the same thing. So what happens is
there's a fierce undercurrent of repression for anything improvised, within the academy. And therefore I've had colleagues
who turned to me -- composers, wonderful musicians, talented musicians, in a case where I had written a piece for a faculty
ensemble, and I didn't use western notation and I asked them to improvise. The pianist turns to me and said, 'I would have
to be drunk to improvise.' If you really think about that, that would make you cry after a while. If you really believe in
music the way I do. The guy was a really wonderful person, however what he's doing is very cruel by saying that. Because it
implies that there is some kind of loss required to feel that free, and that the loss would have to be substance related.
You'd have to be drunk. You'd have to do something to yourself. You're not normal.
In this way the antipathy
toward art in the academy is one of the reasons why the youth are not drawn toward playing. In the case where they're pumped
through these systems where they learned how to play big band and commercial music, if they get a bachelor's degree, the best
thing they can do is teach in elementary school. If they get a master's degree, they might be able to teach college. However,
this would not allow them to perform the music unless they were really talented, and even if they were, there are no gigs
in that. So if you get your Ph.D. in it, what do you do? You teach.
So basically it's a system of failed performers
teaching other failed performers, and the classical system is very much the same. If you study in college as a trumpet player
-- if you study classical repertoire -- you'll play concertos and stuff like this where the trumpet is the soloist. However,
the guy who's teaching it to you may or may not have played these solos in front of a large orchestra. So basically they're
transferring something they learned from someone else who may or may not have actually played it.
So it's
not a living art.
No, not at all. one of the things that really bothers me is that people do not consider
someone intelligent unless they are really kooky on a level like Anthony [Braxton] is. (I mean kooky not in a bad sense.)
His thing with math is so abstract, people just jump back and say, 'Wow! His next album! EXQ STB! Wow!' There's a reason,
too, if you think about it. It's all codified. So on that level, you could say that man is a genius! But if you're into bebop
and you play avant garde jazz, they won't say that about you. They'll say you're a womanizer, you're into drugs, you have
personality problems, etc. And that's what will follow you around like a little dog, barking and yipping at you.
So
basically, I'm lucky to be alive. These forces out here are very strong. These writers have no idea what kind of power they
have when they write a review. Take as an example the major writers who emerged when I came on the scene, in other words,
the people of my generation, who are now out there. Some of these people are misrepresenting the voice of so-called jazz.
Because they're doing the same thing the academy does: they do not include the avant garde as somehow legitimate, in the sense
of swing. That's the thing, the Lincoln Center rap.
Why is that? Some people would say the avant garde is
too complicated and not accessible.
I think it's very accessible. I think people have always said it's inaccessible.
That's one of the catchwords that people always say, 'It's hard to listen to.' It's not hard for me to listen to. I don't
listen to it very often, I play it. I do listen to other people's music -- I'm not saying that -- but I play a lot. For me
it's like language. And it's not hard at all. It think most people who get inured in anything 20th century would be able to
listen to this music very easily.
So, in the sense of a language, there's a vocabulary involved here, and
lots of people haven't even grasped the fundamentals of that vocabulary.
That's true of the players, too.
Because basically it hasn't been codified. You have a wide difference in people that are considered the same. if you look
at Muhal [Richard Abrams] , or Abdullah Ibrahim, or Cecil [Taylor]. They're very different conceptually, the way they play,
the way they live. But they're unified in some way. They're all playing the same music. They're also called the same thing.
The same thing is true for trumpet players like Lester [Bowie] or myself, or any of the other cats who have played in this
thing, and yet we're very very different players. So what happens is you suffer from not being known as what it is that you're
really doing. And since you don't have as many recordings out, then it's really a mystery what you're about.
How
many records do you have out under your own name?
Mapleshade, FMP, and two Eremites. That means four. However,
two were released in Canada where I am a de facto leader, and all of the ones where I was the composer and musical director
for Dennis Warren have come out as well. So as a leader, I have four. I was 44 before I had one. I really feel different now
that I have these things out. You gotta admit, you can scoff at people who are clotheshorses. You can say that person is so
vain. But if you have something to do, and you wear appropriate clothing, and you buy appropriate clothing, you really feel
much different when you go. Presentation is where it's at. So in music, the fact that Eremite was interested enough was great.
Have you seen this last thing [ConSequences]? The way they did it is very very professional. The way they
used imagery in a mythic sense that was not offensive to me whatsoever. The writing was good. That guy, Michael Ehlers, I
think he's an important person. And at a certain point people will start paying more attention to people like himself. Because
the guy is into poetry. He's a student of politics. He's an avid collector and lover of music, to the point of almost craziness.
He and his friends own hundreds of thousands of LP's, CD's and tapes. Hundreds of thousands. Just as a collector. Plus, they're
not satisfied with one or two copies of really good records. They want all the copies they can get.
In classic
art, the artifact remains. You have the painting on the wall. In ethereal art, or art that travels through the air (which
is music), it's gone. So the artifact in this case used to be script, and now it's recording. For the old compositions, if
you could get the original manuscript, it would be worth a treasure beyond belief. now the same thing is true for these recordings.
They ran out, they weren't big pressings, they weren't a lot of pressings, but they were very important documents.
Some
people have the view that free improvisation should not be documented. Unless you're there making the music, or listening
to it, the meaning becomes false, and the original point is lost.
Craft and art are related. To say that it's
unimportant to document things suggests that the craft involved is one that doesn't endure in the sense that it's worth looking
at. However, ever since I was a child I've had these seminal musical experiences that were very formidable in my consciousness.
These things are mythic in quality for the entire culture.
A lot of times when there's not tape, that's the
best music. And when the tape's on, people mess up, because they're aware that the tape is on. It's more than a notion to
go into a studio. I was in the studio with Cecil for the new world recordings. That room was the one that Trane, Miles, and
Monk played in. I knew that that shit had happened there. I was very aware of that when I entered that room. Those were the
same mics! Some stuff is so good that it has to change. In fact, now, within the immense industry of sound, they're trying
to reproduce digitally, with an add-on tube, the kind of effects these microphones have by themselves.
That's
why Mapleshade was for me really a good idea. It's only unfortunate that he was less secure with putting out my music. He
owes another recording. I don't want to sue the guy. He's a very nice man. He's just overwhelmed with his work. And he decides
what's important, just like anyone else. They guy created a new label for my recording. He couldn't put it on Mapleshade,
so he called it Outsounds. He really mollified me by changing the title. It was titled Companions by me. He changed the title
to Sirens Sweet & Low, because he thought that would lure people in, that it was more mellow.
Now, those
things that he was doing are the things that I really don't like, that people in business always do. they think they know
more about what you're doing than you do, and they want to effect a change in your plan, and what you're going to play, and
your presentation, what you call it, who you play with. none of that stuff is acceptable. That's why I didn't make recordings,
because I didn't want them to tell me to play with so-and-so, and to play such-and-such. It's not because I'm so great --
I just felt it was more important to write music and play it. And I have plenty of documents like that now myself that I'm
sure are going to come out if things keep happening.
I have a tape that I made at Columbia with a drummer
who's never been recorded, with William Parker and Glenn [Spearman] in their first performance together in the 70's. I did
the same thing with Frank Wright the only time that he performed in Boston, and that's a tremendous document. And there's
a lot of stuff with Jimmy [Lyons] too, because I played with Jimmy's groups when I wasn't playing with Cecil.
Jimmy
Lyons was one of the reasons I'm here. Not only musically, but otherwise, because he was a mentor, big brother type. I think
that Glenn really took a lot of the information that Jimmy had, in a very strange way, and took it to California and personalized
it and turned a lot of people on to it. Jimmy's a profound musician, but I think his influence is far, far reaching -- much
further reaching than what people consider as his fame or reputation, or whatever that stuff is about. Because basically Lyons
was so advanced that I found it difficult to listen to almost all the other alto saxophonists after I played with him for
a couple of years, because he was so fast. The guy had a kind of execution and embouchure that was so tremendous. The only
thing comparable is Bird. And you can hear it in the upper register too, because his sound is so beautiful. He sounded like
Bird, although he didn't even play the same notes. Everyone else plays the same notes and doesn't sound like Bird! so you
say what you want about Jimmy Lyons, that cat was the one, man! He was such a beautiful person.
That's what
everyone says. He had a wonderful smile, he was very gracious, he didn't really talk bad about anyone. And that's all true,
but this cat was the baddest alto player to ever live! That's what I was concerned with, because I was on the bandstand with
him, and when he finished, I was supposed to keep going. This guy could say some stuff on the horn. Talk about a language!
Part of the problem in terms of what happened to Cecil when Jimmy died was that Cecil's voice included Jimmy
for 28 years. So I think it was a very difficult transition for Cecil to go on afterwards. I know that personally I took a
total nose-dive. I felt that it was another situation when someone righteous had been snuffed out. You have the whole '60s
and '70s experience of the assassination of great people, and whether or not their value is as true as their myth in every
case doesn't matter.
The idea being that in the melancholy kind of age we live in violence and bombing are
not on a level where they used to be. They're called okay. I know this has happened in different circumstances, and people
were vilified who did this before. And frankly since Vietnam, we're the ones being vilified, because we're the ones doing
it. In the situation we're in right now, I don't want to make a moral judgement, because I feel that with the Islamic world,
this is one of the first times the United States has stepped in. On that level, I applaud them. However, the idea that these
people can be thrown around like bowling pins, and bombed by mistake, is very disturbing. First of all, any time someone can
just go up to someone and say 'you ain't shit' and kill them -- 'Get outta here!' -- there's something wrong. Whether or not
they own the land by rights or not, that's not the way to go. on the other hand, ever since 1900, everyone intelligent, including
John Dos Passos and the writers of the '20s, '30s and '40s, have understood that the multinational corporations make money
out of these situations. It's kind of sinister.
My theory is related to music. Because in what Jung called
the collective consciousness, you have this overwhelming fear that life is not worth anything. At this time, you could be
sacrificed for any number of reasons in a catastrophic sense. This had not existed before World War I, where human waves of
soldiers were mowed down by huge ordinance and artillery. The carnage was unbelievable, and yet countries who participated
made tons of money. Whole fortunes and industries were built during World War II and are still going. For example, I found
out that the guy who was running [W.R.] Grace Company was formerly the Nazi director of bacterial and chemical warfare, and
the guy had made press releases from his offices in Europe to the Grace headquarters in New York about companies in West Virginia
that had asbestos problems. 'Well, they had a good living. They worked for the company their whole life. They have to die
from something.' That was the interoffice memo that just came out. It's just totally unbelievable.
So you
understand that people value, in a corporate sense, is not worth anything. In today's world of attrition and mergers, what
that means is if you get an entry-level job, you might be working with any number of people who are shuffled in and out on
a rotating basis, who never have a future, never have any benefits and never make any real money. It's an underclass. so when
the economy's zooming, it's only zooming for the 3 per cent who own everything. I can't afford to buy CD's -- I can't afford
to make CD's! I can't afford to drive to gigs -- I can't afford to play gigs! I have to tell people, 'No, you're going to
have to give me more money, because I have a family, and I have to drive all the way there. I can't do it.' This is not a
good situation to have to say that in, because I want this music to reach people. That's the point.
I'm very
happy about what's happening right now. Anybody who's reading this interview. That's a very positive thing. There's much more
interest in avant garde jazz then there was 10 years ago. I think there's a reason for it. What happens is that when there's
a vacuum, it's only natural that something fills that space.
Now, this stuff was always happening. So for
example, I got blasted by some writers in the early '70s, late '70s. They said my playing was not so great. But by 15 years
later, I'm still playing the same music, man! And people are saying totally different things about it. It's hard to understand
what's happening. Because I don't think I've progressed as much as people have said I'm so much better than formerly. It's
really more that consciousness is more in tune with having a spirit like that.
Basically, everybody can discount
spiritualism as a hocus-pocus thing, but the basic thing in life is breathing in and out. If you don't breathe, you're dead.
Respiration, inspiration, expiration, they all have spirit in them, and it's all about that. The first second you come out
of the womb, you're breathing. You're no longer in the placenta. The whole thing is breath. There is nobody who's not spiritual.
every being on the planet is worth so much. It's really important to stress that we as people have to recognize each other.
And not revel so much as venerate, and understand each other, and work with each other. The cultural forefront is almost one
of the only ones where it's a good scene that way.
I've had guys coming up to me from the south who happen
to be very Caucasian or whatever, who have tears in their eyes and say they love this music. I think that's a blessing, that's
not a bad thing. The reason why everyone hears this stuff, if you go into the historical precedence for what America stands
for culturally, what America is built on culturally, then you understand that what we're doing is the magical and logical
continuation of it. Basically, Gershwin's exploration of blackness is more easily interpreted by Bird or Trane when they play
a solo, because they're from the community it was from.
America is the larger house of this entire sense of
community. There's no one in the country who turns on the radio that isn't playing obsceiscence to the yoruba and West African
tradition of drumming. And yet not only do they not know that, they don't understand the trap-set is set up from the one man
band, because they didn't allow three black men to play the drums. So the trap set began as a one man band.
These
guys playing rock rhythms with Bo Diddley -- that's the same clave beat which is identified in academic circles as African
Retention. If you listen to merengue, salsa, and world beat, you'll feel the same kind of pulse. Even though the exponential
thing may be different: the soloing, the exposition of the pieces, or the pieces themself, can be totally different harmonically.
There is a unifying factor called the ring shout, and call-and-response, underneath everything. Every religious situation
that ever existed in time is predicated on that spiritual call-and-response and celebration of life. You could look in the
1600's. They had this dance called the Breakdown on these islands off North Carolina. And people we're just talking about
break dancing in the 70s and 80s, right before rap.
The continuity is there, but what is not understood is
the longevity of it. For example, most people got here as immigrants in 1900 plus. However the black community has 8 generations
before that to be culturally attuned to this music. So not only do Parisians have Parisian jazz, and Swedish people have Swedish
jazz, Americans have jazz they don't know about! they don't know where it comes from, they don't know the history of it. They
don't know that it's not something that happened in 1900 as a tin pan alley thing that became broadway and then bebop, and
so on. It's not like that. It's mythically way, way beyond that. The sophistication of it is what overawes people. It's a
very sophisticated art form. The nuance is the same as any great art. The subtleties are really extremely excruciatingly beautiful.
So you can have these kinds of experiences. It's four o'clock in the morning. I'm in the Five Spot. Jimmy,
Cecil, and Andrew are playing this music. There's seven people in there. Two of them are doing these involuntary movements.
I walk out on the street, and there's a 60-70 year old woman in a negligee in the middle of Cooper Union, just standing there,
with trucks and cars going around her. She's talking in tongues. It's just like that, man. You could never forget that kind
of experience.
The thing that I remember was what those guys played. I can remember the solos, man. I couldn't
believe the stuff Jimmy was playing! It was so fast. It was so connected, and it was so complete. It just got better and better
and better as it got faster and better. Andrew, Jimmy, and Cecil were a magical connection, man. It's more than the notion.
It's only a tragedy that Jimmy did not survive, because Andrew is one of the greatest living exponents of this music. I mean,
he's a gentleman, a scholar, and wonderful warm person.
I hope that people can forgive me for all my stupidity,
because whatever problems I've ever had with any musicians, someone like Andrew I really admire. First of all, for someone,
who had played with Cecil, to play in groups that don't play music at all like what Cecil played, he was very criticized by
a lot of these doctrinaire people. Listen, man -- that guy is a very very gifted musician, and those groups that he had were
the best that you could do in those areas. I heard his group at Sweet Basil. It may not be what I would want to do as a performer,
because I can't do it, it'not me. However I admired his group because he's flexible enough to play anything.
It's
interesting, because Sunny Murray in some ways overshadows someone like Andrew [Cyrille]. I don't think overshadows him musically,
really, because Sunny and Milford are very important people. They're God's gift to these music, they're great drummers. However,
I think that Andrew is a complete musician on some level. That's a personal thing for me, and I don't mind saying it in an
interview. I don't work with Andrew, it's not like he's hiring me and stuff like that. It's not like I would be really for
him because I've worked with him. But if you look in this guy's eye, you will know how. You will know how pure that joy and
the spirit is when he plays. It's just something else, man.
I feel like the professionalism that I admire
is what really guides me, because if you listen to recordings that Sun Ra made in the '50s, they're so far ahead of the music
that was being played by other people, in the theoretical sense -- even harmonically, rhythmically, in every way that you
can so-called 'analyze' music, they were very advanced, and yet they had a complete lilting kind of easiness relative to the
music people who liked jazz were familiar with. It was a bizarre kind of thing: you'd be digging it whether you liked it or
not.
Of course Sun Ra was very bombastic, he has Heliocentric Worlds. Galileo, Pythagoras, Plato, Sun Ra.
I think he was making these points for a very specific reason. Because the lack of understanding was deplorable! Someone like
Cecil or Ornette, they should not only be venerated, they should be given these great honors. Because basically they're known
all over the world, they're respected all over the world, but in the United States, if you go into the wrong market, you might
not get served! Today, it's not the way it was in the '50s or '40s, but it's a different kind of rigor mortis now.
New
York and Boston are related as cities. They have the same problems. The police commisioner who went on to New York to enforce
Giuliani's shtick came right out of Boston, right out of the Stuart case, where the guy claimed a black man or a Puerto Rican
had shot his wife -- when he himself had done it -- and jumped off the Tobin bridge when in custody. If you don't consider
that bungling, I don't know what is! So they pulled me over on that shit in Boston, because they said it could have been a
Hispanic guy. The police pulled me over and did a whole number on my vehicle. It was totally malicious. I was in recovery,
as I am now, and at the time I was in total abstinence recovery, I had clean time that was really a big deal for me. I was
like Mr. Recovery, and I couldn't understand it. They said [Boston accent]: 'Shut the fuck up!' Once again, you relive the
same experiences. You could be the minister when they come into his house by mistake and he has a heart attack. It's the same
shit, man.
I think it's endemic to the system because basically they're there to protect people. But their
idea of what it is, and who it is they're protecting, is very arbitrary. Right now the way the system is set up, you could
be arrested at almost any time, because the search procedures have changed. There's no speed limits when people don't go 20
miles faster than the limit, so anyone can be pulled over. And as a result when they profile people then it starts to get
really tricky. Because you could be white and have long hair, that's all it takes. or just look funny. Any kind of anomaly
is always going to be troublesome, man.
Here's my art image to close out the hour. It's such a great one,
man. Beauty in art is really described as symmetry. So if you wanted to describe the classic idea of a beautiful face, what
makes it so perfect is that it's perfect in a binary sense--it's balanced and it's beautiful. However, when you see the fruit
tree on the hillside that's bowed because of the wind, and has a much heavier right side than left (if that's the way the
wind is blowing), that adds some kind of lyric beauty to the tree, because there's a struggle involved in not being perfectly
symmetrical.
So when you listen to 'Ugly Beauty' by Monk, that's what he's talking about. People can not accept
rage. However they accept extraordinary deception, vilification, oppression, extermination, and all this other crap. So what
we really need to focus on is to take the same view and have a different perception of it. And then a lot of the stuff which
seems to be problematic will just disappear. I think a lot of the problems listening to music and accepting musicians because
of who they are, just would disappear.
If you strip the skin off of us, we're all the same kind of organism.
It's like we're now separated by so many segments of differentiation in terms of diversity that it's really getting confusing
to just exist. Politically, feminism for example. Women being empowered by feminism, that was one of the greatest things of
the 20th century. However, if a woman would say, 'I want to cut off his nuts!', that would not be considered out of place
in this arena at the current time, because of the injustice for so long, and the lack of equity. Notwithstanding, a group
of guys could not say to the woman right there, 'I'd like to...' (and then use an image of destroying their genitalia). That
would not be acceptable. So you see what I'm saying. In a sense, we have these sliding value scales depending on what's current,
or what's appropriate within the social more sense.
Even within the avant garde, I've had a lot of people
very upset that I wanted to play anything that had something to do with harmony, because they felt that to be true to new
music, you can't do that shit. However, I don't care what they think. I'm more concerned with the pieces and why it is that
I'm still messing around with them. Basically, I guess I spent half my life before I played this music playing this music
in another sense. So it's part of me that I don't feel like giving up. What confirmed that for me was when I played with Jimmy,
he had the knowledge and the wisdom to point out that that was his point of view too.
Basically, Jimmy gave
me, orally, the rundown. Because Bud Powell had been his friend in high school. So he grew up hanging out with Bud Powell,
Elmo Hope, and Thelonius Monk. Therefore, in the sense that people go to Berklee to study changes, they'll get one thing from
studying the ii-V-I. However, that's not going to be the same thing as Jimmy explaining to me why Bud Powell wrote a certain
ballad, or what he was thinking about, or what he felt changes were. Because a lot of the sense of changes has been addressed
by schools as harmonic, however most of the soloists in the '50s were free. They could play with their right hand. They wouldn't
even play with their left hand if they were pianists. Maybe just what they call little blocks, or touches, or dyads. But in
no uncertain terms, it was like the solo voice that took off. Because of the virtuoso level of Bird, and all the other players.
everyone on that scene. So that in a sense at this point I feel like beginning musicians who do not know their instrument
would say to me, that basically I feel like i'll find out later. That just isn't so.
You really have to know
all of harmony to understand atonality. Without the reference of harmony, atonality doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Because
basically when you look at the extension of the line, then you'd see that Miles was not on a triad when he was playing [hums
three-note melody]. He was on the 9-11-13 part of a minor chord. That kind of plateau is where Trane begins with "After the
Rain." That kind of sustained bass beneath an unresolved sound is mostly the starting point for a lot of new music, because
of its unresolved nature. And because it also has the ability to be in more than one key, or change key, or not be in any
key. So a lot of times, it's only the fact that people are naive that they voice these kinds of opinions. If someone doesn't
understand that blues is what informs the so-called jazz musician, or improvisor, they're nuts! Because blues informs everything!
Dance, speech, it informs everything. Dress codes -- it's just everywhere. Those people are in denial or they're naive, they
don't know.
The other thing is, you get maybe six musicians playing together free, no composition, screaming.
And they're all in one key and they don't know. The bassist is playing one note over and over again, and everyone's playing
a minor third. That's not it, man! You don't have to go back too far to find out that's not it. Unfortunately, I think that's
a rite of passage in a way. And I think acid jazz, and the prevalence of fascination with improvisation by young people, will
just lead them into the real thread of the story of this other music. Because we have players that have to be recognized.
I could just start listing them now. They're the people who are playing at the Vision Festival. And they're the people who
aren't playing at Vision. They're the people who are playing at the Knitting Factory Festival, or the people who aren't playing
at the Knitting Factory Festival. And of course there may be some included that wouldn't have to be. In the sense that they're
included because of business reasons, or people being nice to them. Or they're somehow able to force people to give them gigs.
I don't know how they do it.
In some sense, the only thing that matters is if you feel like you're a part
of it.
What happens, is though, basically, you have to support your family. And if you don't have a family,
you have to support yourself. The main thing I'd like to point out is that a lot of times the music is so far removed from
normal life, in the sense of American culture, that musicians become asocial and they self-medicate, rather than going to
the doctor, and they die. This a tragedy that we have to address. It may not have been necessary for Trane to be in pain the
last years of his life and die like that. It may not have been necessary for Jimmy to die. It may not have been necessary
for Dennis to die the way he did. It's definitely not necessary for Glenn to die the way he did. Then you start to see these
kinds of patterns. You don't have to be a genius to understand that this is the only music where a lot of the great proponents
have been incarcerated. Because it's America! through the 50s and 60s, it's absurd, man! At this point for us to still be
asocial, and still get the short end...
What you just said to me about gigs, it resonates and it's true. But
the problem is, you need the performances, you want to be looked at by the people who give out these jobs as someone who's
really going to do something. Not just in a business sense, but really in an experience sense. Just in the sense of something
courageous, something worth something... some of the people who helped get this music started aren't doing so stellar. It's
a tragedy, man. It's not cool. I know from my experience, you feel so hurt by it. Because you watch the papers, you read the
magazines, you know everyone who's playing gigs anywhere. And yet your name is never there!
Jimmy Lyons wasn't
in any Down Beat polls. He wasn't even in the fucking polls, man! There's a guy who knew more about playing anything you could
play in this music. He introduced me to the Basie band, he introduced me to Dexter Gordon and Buck Clayton. Everybody knew
Jimmy Lyons. This guy could play! All these people knew he could play, not just that he was playing with Cecil. The thing
is, the myth is so overshadowed that to this day I could play somewhere and they'll say 'Cecil Taylor's trumpet player!' I
just turned 50 this year. I haven't worked with Cecil for a while. I'm still in touch with him -- I love him, he's a great
musician -- but come on, man! I'm a person!
What does it take to make it in this music?
I
think it involves this national consciousness. It's gotta be the Tonight Show, the Letterman Show, and all that.
Well,
Branford [Marsalis] was on the Tonight Show.
I just saw Branford play. I went to see him play in New Hampshire.
I walked in and they gave me a $26 ticket. Don't ask me why. I went right up to the front and sat down. (I was prepared to
pay, I was reluctant but I was prepared. In any sense I'm reluctant because I'm cheap, not because I don't think he's worth
it.) So what happens after I get in there is Branford's bass player broke his string, so that was a little problem. However,
his approach to the saxophone, and his sound, is tremendous. He's a very cultivated guy. He knows how to play the saxophone.
I would say that by the end of the performance, the overall schematic idea of his composition was repetitive, because it's
dependent on a kind of sequential harmonic formula. After a while it's predictable. even if it's really variegated, like these
weird chords he's using. However, going from one to another in the same fashion, after a while, it's not as creative as it
might be, if he were interested in other things. It's way beyond me to criticize somebody else. The guy can play the saxophone,
he's a popular musician. I think it's more interesting that his replacement used to play with Sam [Rivers] and Dave Holland.
Kevin [Eubanks] is a different kind of cat.
However, when these guys get in a certain kind of position, it's
the same thing as Wynton. I met Wynton when I was 18, before he knew that I wasn't cool. He shook my hand and was very impressed.
However, at this point, maybe he doesn't feel I'm what's good about playing the trumpet. I don't even know. But what I do
know is that in his kind of portrayal, he does not include someone like Bill Dixon. He would not bring Bill Dixon to Avery
Fisher Hall or Lincoln Center, and that's a tragedy. Because Bill Dixon should be an important person to everyone, not just
Wynton. And most of all, someone like Wynton, who's a younger trumpet player. It's not a moral issue, but it might be better
if he paid some attention to some of the history that went down in the '60s and '70s. It's not what he says it is. That position
that the writers who are around him encourage him to espouse is rediculous. everybody knows it. In fact, it's preventing him
from being able to play. Someone like Bill or myself do a lot more of actually playing the trumpet -- because his power and
his position have eliminated him as a creative musician.
I think the things he's doing with the Ellington
Orchestra are getting better. They blast you with it -- they're going to smack you in the face with it. I saw all the soloists.
I saw the arrangements he was playing. They did the whole thing, man. Now, the soloists: some were weak, some were strong.
The feeling of the band, howeve,r was better than some of the other performances I've heard. I know he's working hard man,
doing that stuff. But one writer who works at Wellesley compares him to a museum curator, because basically what he's doing
is to exactly reproduce these pieces. When Glenn and I did this thing with the ROVA people, the Ascension project, we did
not do it that way. Some guys wanted to do it that way. They wanted to, because they felt more comfortable with trying to
do it the way they thought Trane did it. However, Glenn couldn't do it that way, he didn't want to do it that way. He just
wanted to play and use the piece as a vehicle.
So that's a very strong divide, conceptually and creatively.
You have a school of thought which says you have to reintroduce the masters, otherwise you don't know. And even within the
avant garde, even if they're misled, that's what they think they're doing. The same thing with the neo-bop players, they think
they're introducing or playing even better than the guys who were playing those changes. However, as Jimmy Lyons told me,
they took all the dreams out of it. There's nothing left.
I like to compare it with the ancient sculptors
of Greece and Rome making realistic human figures, and then people come along with infinitely better technology and do those
sculptures all over again. So you've got a perfect image of a human, but what have you added?
You're talking
about stone, I really know about that. Now they cut stone with lasers. The way that it works is, you can have a computer program
that will do the entire detail of the edge and the polishing and the whole thing. Formerly, as you know, water turned the
wheel, and you cut the stuff by hand. a guy stood on a ladder and chipped away, like Michelangelo and these other sculptors.
Jimmy turned me on to this book, it was done by Benvenuto Cellini. A great book. kind of sets the scene in
the time of the Renaissance as so realistic that you could feel like it was like New York was if you were living in New York.
You know how great art can transcend time like that. It's quite amazing. A couple other kinds of things I've read... There's
an account by one of the conquistadors about the things that happened with Montezuma. Even in this being a Spanish account,
there's a sense of shame and guilt at the betrayal of Montezuma at the last minute. So we have our western hemisphere legacy,
and it's a very complex one... It's tough enough, not even thinking about this stuff. But then when you start, theoretically,
...
I wish I could be sitting in there with you, chatting.
I'm so remote up here. We're in
the woods in Gilford, Vermont. As a result, it's like four miles of dirt road after you get off the pavement, before you get
here. I've invited everyone, but no one comes.
I'm trying to propose... we have hay fields, I'm looking at
the next kind of woodstock situation, where if you had the right groups... let's say for example, hypothetically, if you could
have the caliber of the vision festival, or the Knitting Factory festival, in a rural setting in Vermont in the summer. That
shit would be fantastic.
Simply because my wife is Rudolf Serkin's daughter. And he and Adolf Busch, who was
her grandfather, got Marcel Mulé and Pablo Casals and these other people interested enough to start Marlboro.
I think that chamber music, and classical music, changed because of that -- at least partially because of that. And also it
changed everyone's life who played in Marlboro. And the same kinds of institutions can happen for jazz that don't have to
be jazz summer camp, swing, learn to play big band music. It doesn't have to be that limited. They certainly have Banff in
Canada, but they don't have too much like that in the United States. It's time for us to zoom while we can. Because it's a
short process. You never know what's going to happen. It seemed like I was just 19, and now I'm 50! it's going too fast. I
want to get as much done as possible. I never felt better, and that's a weird phenomenon.
You never played
better, either.
You know what's interesting, man, if you get enough time... I got a studio where I can practice
right now, because no one can hear it. I have no neighbors, and it's a sound proofed room in a different building from the
house. So as a result, man, it's given me the freedom to understand myself -- which is really something that a lot of people
don't get. Solitude doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. In a sense, in order to do research of any kind, you really need that
kind of concentration. So putting headphones on and blocking everything out is not the answer. not for me. When I got here
I didn't realize how much I would enjoy being able to play so much.
But you pay a price for that, because
you're isolated from the scene. You gotta travel to do gigs.
Yes, there's a trade-off in anything. Ideally
what happens, if I get a little more successful, I'll be commuting more -- because my kids will be older, and it won't be
so traumatic for me to leave this scene. I have a one-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. I have like four gigs a month,
sometimes less, sometimes more. I value the time with them because they're changing so fast. They'll never go through this
again my son just started walking, he'll never start walking again! It's some fantastic family time. I can't tell you man
how happy I am to be a father. I have a 27-year-old son, and I don't feel that I gave him enough. However, with my kids now
I feel that at least I have the chance to offer them something. And it's so much better, man. They're so wonderful.
I
guess even in the most rudimentary sense, it's so easy to understand. They're so tactile. They want to be held and hugged.
they reawaken your sense of what it is to be held and hugged. even people who have siblings with kids, and they go over and
the kids climb all over them, it makes you feel differently. I've started to look at things differently because my daughter
has the most fantastic imagination. And also my wife and her background. She's a very highly sophisticated person. It's good
in a sense, you know. The only down side is that getting out can be so difficult. You can get so entrenched when you're out
in an isolated situation. You have to have a good reason to leave.
It's the same thing with the store. most
people who live in an urban situation go down the street to the store. And people who live in a suburban situation get in
a car and get to the store in five or ten minutes. However, if it takes you half an hour to get to any store, it's a different
scene. You gotta have stuff at home, because if you don't, you can't just go out and get it in the middle of the night. Thank
goodness they have these 24-hour supermarket situations. Although it's a hell to work in them (it's sort of a skeleton crew),
at least the fact is you can go in there and get something. I think gas stations and convenience stores have taken over the
world. Because the small market has been combined with the idea of moving very fast. Drive-through everything: urban sprawl
is predicated on that stuff. If you go to a car dealer, you gotta go to a place where they have enough floor space to have
all this junk to repair cars, and to hold cars, and to show cars...
I always had this thing where I was shooting
myself in the foot, because I was looking for support where it wasn't. And when I had support, I wasn't even acknowedging
it. At least now I'm trying to be a little more gracious about it. You get so jaded and sarcastic, because everything is so
unequal in life. The haves and the have-nots, on that level. And yet I think it's really important to come out of that, like
you're coming out of the primordial slime. Emerge from it and forget about it, just keep going.
So what do
you think about this guitarist Joe Morris, who's heavily influenced by Jimmy Lyons? Have you heard him?
Have
I heard him, man? He played in my group. When I first got into recovery, I formed a group with Joe, Dennis Warren, and Jameel
Jones. Jemeel jones was then replaced by Larry Roland. And then Joe left the group. He had kind of a disagreement with Dennis.
But I've known Joe because he sought me out. He wanted to talk to me. In fact I gave him a ride to the first Sound Unity Festival,
and so when he was hanging out on the scene, I introduced him to people he ended up playing with. And to his credit, they
accepted him, because it was difficult for that guy, man. He was kind of a strange person to be playing that music, in the
sense that he came out of nowhere and really identified with it.
There was a scene in Boston, man. When I
came up in the early '80s. What has become Billy Ruane's thing and the kind of push that the Middle East has, was not there
when I got there. However, we got it started, because Chris Ridge, Billy Ruane, MFA, Ed Hazel, those people. First they brought
me and William Parker up. Then they brought Jimmy Lyons up, and they brought up David Murray. And they brought up other people.
Billy Bang came up. And it got written up in the trades. So they were off and running. And then it became kind of viable to
have this new music being played in Boston. Previous to that it wasn't. It was happening on an experimental level for the
stars in the clubs.
It was tough for Joe Morris. He was fighting that for a while.
When he
came out, there we no gigs to play. We played at the Middle East before they had gigs there, when they only had a belly dancer
there. I know those guys. They're very nice people. What happened was, the guy loved me, he loved my name, he heard all the
press, he hired me, and then 15 minutes into the set he was screaming and pulling his hair out, 'Get outta here! You're driving
my customers out!' It was not necessarily easy. However, within a couple of years, Rashied Ali had come up, and the guy from
Harvard who would DJ, who was a very big supporter of Frank [Wright], and a lot of other people. He still has a show at Harvard,
Friday mornings. I can't remember the guy's name.
He started bringing other people in, so Steve Lacy came
in, Noah Howard came in. So all that stuff is great, because it wouldn't have happened. Unfortunately noone knows the history
of how 'GBH got started. It was Oscar Jackson. not Eric Jackson, but his mentor, who sued 'GBH for airtime. He was formerly
with 'BUR. He said there was no jazz being played on the air proportionate to the amount of interest. He sued them and he
won! That's how 'Eric in the Evening' got started . However, that cat at 'BUR was playing revolutionary music. You know what
I mean, the stuff from the '60s... I've always believed its true, and you may think I'm completely nuts, but you know what
the Chinese say, 'If you want to kill a snake, you step on its head.' You do not go to anyone on the bottom to effect a change.
You have to go right to the top.
In that sense, it's a fundamental kind of thing to do, to have the nerve
to want to be in the national limelight. Because you see everyone on the talk shows, and they do all these silly routines
that are planned and everything, but the substance involved is not that great until someone extremely charismatic or important
appears, and then the whole thing changes, because it's about something. And this should be that way!
You
can talk about the fact that the United States has a kind of industry incarcerating black youth. The black-on-black crime
is such that the average life expectancy in the ghetto, if you're a black man, is 31 years. One out of four black men are
not in jail by the time they're 25. Come on man, I've been in jail! I've played in the prison system for inmates, in a concert
with Rashied Bakar and William Parker. We did four state prisons in Pennsylvania. They closed down one concert because the
guys were jumping up and down!
So you're a revolutionary.
Because who speaks for the oppressed?
who speaks to the disenfranchised? This music definitely does. It not only does that, it speaks to everyone else, too. So
that's what's so weird about it. Because I think there's a problem with the ones who are less likely to accept change. However,
someone in prison is ready to change, because they don't want to be there. no one in jail wants to be there.
Well,
it's either that or time to practice up and get better at criminal behavior.
You know who Frankie Lymon is?
Frankie Lymon is one of the guys who originated doo-wop. Originated it. Skinny kid, very short guy, got strung out, died tragically.
One of my neighbors was in his group. They guy has an incredible pedigree in terms of his street knowledge. He came over to
my house and said, 'I can pick your lock [which had a safety guard over it] within three minutes.' I said 'I'll give you ten
dollars if you can do it,' and I had to give him the ten dollars. 'My God,' I said, 'Where'd you learn that?' 'Well,' he said,'being
an addict, I was put in jail. The first thing I started doing with my time there was to learn a trade. And that was the trade
that people showed me.'
In a sense people are not wrong when they say that jail is a training ground for criminal
activity. However, the value of picking someone's lock is what we should really be talking about. Because anyone can learn
how to pick a lock. Basically locksmiths do that. That is a trade, that's how they get you into your house without a key.
or in your car.
Like Malcolm C said, or Miles Davis said, if you've got a million dollars, it's one thing
if you're white and another if you're black and you're trying to spend it. I'm not trying to point out differences, man. We're
all the same. The universe is set up in a way that makes each individual feel this unity. It's only a question of awakening
that response. More people are better underneath than anyone would ever imagine. The reason I know this is I'm not as good
a person as I want to be. I always fall into the same traps. And so I'm beginning to understand the fact that it's okay to
have these limitations, if you can deal with them and then try to make some kind of effective change. It's important. People's
lives are at stake, or when you have a family, when you have these conditions the way they are. With this guy [Amadou] Diallo
being shot in New York. It makes the idea that New York is a so-called safer place now to be a rediculous idea. Safer for
whom?
The businesses love it. Hundreds of thousands of jobs lost under Dinkins have now been filled up because
everyone feels safer.
You could say that, but that's a smokescreen, too. I think there's a lot of exploitation
happening now, but it's a different kind of exploitation. Formerly, the push was for people to take advantage of the social
system in order to get more. However, this is getting denied on a national and state level as a valid way to exist. So now
the push is purely one of economics, and accessing the burgeoisie level of being comfortable. I don't think there's anything
wrong with anyone being comfortable. However, if the only kinds of jobs that are out there don't really lead to a kind of
significant change, this could put a lot of people in jeopardy. It's not everyone who gets a lucky break at a high-profile
company as an entry level person from welfare. They showed this on 20/20, but it's an exception to the rule. And in a lot
of cases, people have complicated lives, so they have more difficult problems to solve. I guess that's the easiest way to
put it.
Being very lucky, and coming from a family where my father put himself through college, and my mother
also went to college, it was not only expected that I try and go to college, but it was something that was aimed for. I think
this is something that has improved for everyone in the United States. There are more people in college now than ever before.
However, what's happening in college is not the same. That's what the problem is. Once again, it's the right kind of idea
with the wrong kind of execution.
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