Interview with David Arner

E: I am sitting at the dining room table of David Arner, free jazz pianist. We just returned from his solo concert at the Uptown Cafe in Kingston, NY and are discussing his work over ginger-lemon tea.

E: The first thing that I am most immediately interested in knowing is just how an improvisational pianist practices for a performance of spontaneous creativity.

D: Well, obviously you don’t practice what you are going to play, since you don’t know what you are going to play. You can practice a lot of different things. You can practice scales- stuff like that- the building blocks of music. But that’s not what I do. What I do is practice a group of classical piano pieces.

E: What are they?

D: Two Scarlatti sonatas, a Chopin nocturne, a Bach prelude in B-flat, a Bach fugue in B minor. There’s a Chopin prelude that I play. The Beethoven “Waldstein” sonata.  Debussy, from Images- “Reflections in the Water.” What else? Oh, there’s a Chopin etude that I play, the first etude in C major- flowing right hand.

The Scarlatti I do for the technique, of just playing technically, getting that kind of precision for jumping around, and for trills and stuff. The Chopin prelude I do (in G major) works the left hand. The Chopin etude really works out right hand arpeggios. Plus musically they are great pieces- inspiring from a purely musical point of view. The Debussy I do- technically there are all kinds of runs worth doing- but I do it specifically for the musicality- how the piece grows, and goes through a lot of textures in a small space of time. And it’s very beautiful. There are chords in it that sound like a jazz pianist- they’re those sounds.

The Beethoven- again, technically it’s a work out. But musically, he’s just such a masterful composer, an architect of organization, of making something beautiful through the organization of sound. It’s inspiring to play through that. Beethoven uses very very simple building blocks. There’s nothing complicated about them. But just to experience having that put together…

I also play the last movement of a Prokofiev sonata- No. 6. It has all these chords, really fast. I like to play fast and I like chords. (Chuckles) It’s a lot of jumping around and getting the piano to growl…

There’s also the Schubert Impromptu in B-flat, which is a theme and variations- the experience of hearing how a simple idea can grow like that. And Schubert is just very beautiful– very crystalline and delicate stuff going on. Beautiful runs.

I think that’s pretty much it… Oh, recently I’ve been going through some pieces by Bartok, called Improvisations Opus 32. I play that for the sounds. I like his textures.

I don’t often practice jazz these days unless, sometimes I go through a period where I’ll play tunes, and work on some runs and work on chords. But more often, what happens when I’m practicing is, I’ll finish something and without realizing it I just start playing- basically fooling around, but it’s not really fooling around, it’s practicing being present. And it’s coming from a very… natural inspiration. It just spontaneously happens, listening, creating a piece. So that performing a piece, an improvisational composition, becomes the same process.

I read somewhere that when Cecil didn’t have any work as a musician he would get home from his job, sit down at the piano and make believe he was performing in front of an audience for a few hours every day. Pure improvisation.

E: What exactly do you mean when you describe a piece as having “texture”?

D: Textures are just different kinds of sound. A melody is one kind of a texture- a single line, that you may sing. And there might be chords that accompany that melody. So those chords form a group- that’s a kind of a texture. And then, if I do something that is neither of those, but is some other cluster of sounds that’s not melodic, not harmonic, it’s just its own thing- that’s its own texture. That quality of sound being unique and of itself.

E: Do you blend textures to create new textures?

D: Sometimes. I like working with different kinds of textures.

E: Is that unique to you?

D: It’s not unique to me, but among a lot of jazz players, they will have a particular texture that they play. That’s what they do.

E: Now, are they thinking texture? Or are they thinking perhaps color or…

D: No, no, maybe they are playing a tune, a particular melody, and then there are chords which accompany that, which are their own chords. Then they work off of that melody and create other melodies. So there is all this melodic stuff with left hand accompaniment. To me that is a texture that’s very specific. To a lot of players who do that- that is their music. There isn’t anything else. But to me that’s a particular texture. To a lot of listeners, what I just described would be- well, normal music. What I do they would recognize as another kind of a texture. But to me all sound is texture.

E: From your point of view, is there such a thing as illegitimate textures?

D: I’m an improvising composer, and as a composer that means I’m evaluating what I’m doing, I’m making choices. Those things I choose not to do are not legitimate in my view! (Laughs)

But, you know, someone else could think what I’m doing is not music, so I guess that would be considered an illegitimate texture to them. Other than that, the answer to your question is no. I mean it’s all up for grabs. The point is, you have to do something with those textures, you can’t just- “texturize.” (Laughs)

E: In the context of any one piece though, are there some textures that you would deem inappropriate.

D: Oh, yeah, I think it’s inevitable. I mean, once you play a note, you’ve got that note. The next note either goes with it or it doesn’t. You are always going to try to be building up from what you are doing when you are improvising. You’ve already accepted the sound that you are doing, or the texture that you’ve created, as the one that you are in and you want to be true to that. If you want to introduce something new that’s fine but you have to get there and it has to work, in some sense. Not everything will work.

E: Now I need to hone in on that. I thought I understood you to have said earlier that all sounds, or “textures”, are potentially legitimate. But now you are saying that some sounds don’t work together and that in order to introduce a new texture or sound you have to do something to build a bridge to it. How are you making these choices as you are playing and what are you using to measure the choices that you make?

D: I see those as different questions, how I make those choices and what defines working and not working. And actually, that last question is kind of unanswerable.

E: Is it strictly subjective?

D: It is subjective. Just keep asking people and you’ll get different answers. (Laughs) You’ll see right away how subjective it is. How you define what works and what doesn’t, defines what you consider music to be.

E: Ok. But for you, David Arner the musician sitting before me, as you are playing, what makes you think, “that won’t work, I’m not going to go there.” Why not?

D: Well, while I’m playing I can’t think that. But as it’s going on I can evaluate what’s going on. But you know, that’s a funny thing too because the fact is that when I’m playing I don’t want to be consciously evaluating anything. I think it’s inevitable that you do because you have to. But, ideally, you are so in the moment that the evaluative process is beneath the surface, it’s not a conscious thing, it’s not even an issue. But let’s just say we’re listening to something already done, listening to try to understand if it’s working or not. How does that happen? Well that happens from… I don’t know… it’s from listening, it’s a feeling. There is a kind of a logic to music.

It would be easier to answer your question if we were talking about classical music, because there are rules of harmony. And those rules of harmony answer that question for you- sort of. I mean, even then you can be listening to a piece of music and saying, “this doesn’t work”, even though the composer thought it did. But at least you are following the same rules to make that evaluation.

In free playing, what I do, you don’t even have those rules, so it’s much more difficult to grapple with the question that you are raising. Which is what makes it fun and interesting to do this kind of thing, and I think that’s the reason why people do it. It’s still the new frontier.

E: But one of the most salient things you said is that it is a feeling that tells you when something is not working.

D: Yeah, I would describe it as having an internal logic. But it’s not a mental process. You can’t explain something that works by explaining technically the mechanics of it. The mechanics of it will be describable, but you are kidding yourself if you feel like that’s the explanation about why you think it’s working. (Laughs) You can do the mechanics of something which is a piece of junk. Sometimes it is really well worked out- the junk.

You can clearly hear the subjectiveness of any discussion about what’s working in music. You can’t get around it.

I have noticed there are times when I’m playing something, and I am thinking, like crazy. And I’m thinking, “this isn’t working, this isn’t working, this isn’t working…” (Laughing) And I can’t just stop and say, “Oh, excuse me, here’s your money back, I’m sorry.” You are there playing and you have to keep going and doing it. Then I listen to it later and its actually good. It’s good. What was I thinking?

E: What were you thinking?

D: That it wasn’t very good. (Laughs) Sometimes it’s just a lot of work to make it all happen…

Sometimes I’m trying to do something that isn’t working and in the process of trying to do that, it’s kind of a noble effort, it’s a successful attempt. It fails at what I was trying to do but it succeeds in some other way.

E: Do you mean it fails in an agenda you had for it?

D: Maybe, though I wouldn’t describe it as an agenda. But, there is a vision of what I’m attempting to create. Maybe “agenda” is a good word because it describes something that cannot be. I mean, I was doing everything I could to get there and what I got was somewhere else.

E: When you say “vision” does that come before you sit down to play or after you strike the first note?

D: It could be either way. But it’s what is happening when I’m playing, either before hand or once I started to do something.

E: When you say, “do something” do you mean describe a mood or…

D: It is responding to an inspiration. And in that case the inspiration becomes a catalyst for something else. Ideally, when I’m improvising I don’t want to be doing any evaluation. I just want to be playing. I don’t want to be trying to figure out, ‘is this working?” because it doesn’t make any difference. I gotta keep going anyway so why am I knocking myself out? You’re in danger of ruining it, if you start worrying about what you’re doing, so it’s not really a good idea. That’s not being present.

E: So if you are playing and enjoying it, does that mean it’s working well?

D: When I was learning, sometimes I’d be enjoying something and it was terrible. And when I was getting stoned and learning, more often I was thinking it was great and wonderful, and it was even worse than terrible. But now, usually if I’m enjoying it, it’s good. And there are other times now when I’m struggling with it, and it’s really good.

E: What is the difference between then when you were learning and now that you are more experienced?

D: I’ve become a better listener. I know what I’m hearing and I know what I’m listening for.

E: Can you explain that?

D: No.

E: (Laughs) Try.

D: This is a big question. Listening is it. When you are improvising, it’s how you get from point A to point B.

E: Are you listening to the notes and where they are taking you? Or are you listening to some divine message?

D: Those are great I like both of those! (Laughs) Listening to the notes, and listening to some kind of a divine message.

E: Is there any kind of dialogue going on with the music. I mean, is there a conversation developing or a narrative?

D: Between the music and the creator?

E: Or even the notes to one another, that might be logical?

D: The notes to one another, yeah. There is a dialogue. There is a communication.

E: So that might be an area that may or may not work, am I right?

D: Yes, yes. There are a whole lot of ways to think about that in terms of what works and what doesn’t.

E: Now, if you come to the piano in a dark mood does the piece that grows out of that inevitably have hues of that darkness you are feeling?

D: There are a lot of musicians who will say that’s what they do. I don’t do that. If I’m in a dark space mentally it’s only going to get in the way. I don’t get up there to express myself. If I wanted to express myself I would use words, actions- we express ourselves all the time.

E: So the piano is not your voice in that way.

D: No. I don’t believe that’s what the arts are about. This whole thing about art being about expression- I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think it’s true. I think even those who say that’s what they’re doing, when they are doing something that’s really working- for them, for me- something else is going on. They’re not really expressing themselves. I think there’s another thing that’s operating.

E: Ok. You sit at the piano and your brooding about something. You hit the first note…

D: On a good day, the brooding goes away.

E: So, how is it that the notes are detached from your mood? If the piano is not your voice what is it?

D: The piano is my voice. But my voice is not the same as my psychology! As an audience member, when you go to a performance, don’t you often come in a bad mood, and you hear the music, and you feel better? And, it doesn’t matter if it’s the blues, about something sad, or if it’s ragtime, that’s all happy and gay. It doesn’t make any difference. Either one of those is going to make you feel better because the music is doing something for you and the something that it’s doing, I think, is just getting you out of your head. You don’t have to be thinking about your bad day or your problems, you are somewhere else.

E: Ok, there it is. What you are saying, if I heard you clearly, is that the music takes you out of your mood—whatever that happens to be–and into the music itself and that is why you think your mood has no influence on how you are playing?

D: Right, there is something else going on. I think that is always true and I think it’s a mistake to think that art is about self-expression.

E: But, I think of Picasso’s “Blue Period”… that there was a connection to his mood and the color he chose. So, it would logically follow, I think, particularly for an improvisational artist where everything is coming out from the spontaneity of the moment that one’s moods would definitely get involved…

D: I don’t think so. And I know there are going to be a lot of upset musicians out there, “what’s he talking about?” Plus, if you read the literature of the romantic period, that’s what defines romantic music. All those composers thought they were expressing themselves. They were quite explicit about it. So, I’m sure I’ll have all kinds of music teachers and college professors saying, “Hey, you can read about this stuff. You can see that it’s well documented.” There are people whose careers are really invested in this idea that music is a form of self-expression.

E: And you’re questioning the integrity of their conclusions?

D: Well I spent a lot of years questioning, not the integrity of what they believe, but the veracity of the claim.

E: Ok. But speaking for yourself…

D: (Laughing) I’ve reached the conclusion for myself that what everybody is doing is something other than expressing themselves!
E: If you are not expressing yourself as you’re playing, what exactly are you doing?

D: I’m trying to be a conduit for the music to come through.

E: And when you say a “conduit for the music to come through”, where does the music come from?

D: (Pause) You know what? I don’t know where it comes from! (Laughing) I’m just really glad when it comes! “Hey where’re you coming from?” (Pause)

It comes from the realm of Spirit. It comes from the fire that created the universe. It comes from the amalgam of human experience expressed through sound. It comes from God. But, it’s not… you know, it’s not coming from somebody’s bad day. It’s not coming from somebody’s ongoing battle with depression. Common view of psychology. I just don’t believe that’s what is happening. There’s something very spiritual about the artistic experience, the creative experience. It’s sacred. And we enter into that as performers and we enter into that as audience. That’s why we do it… (Pause) That’s why we do it.

E: You said that two important qualities required in playing improvisational music are listening and being present. Are there any other qualities required to play well?

D: Not if you’re listening and being present. You got it. You’re done! (Laughs) The music’s going to happen.

E: And when you say, “being present” what do you mean?

D: Being in the moment. It’s not thinking about, “Gee she’s cute in the second row.” It’s not thinking about, “I wish the drummer would stop that.” It’s not thinking about, “How much longer before the break?” It’s not thinking about, “Is this working?” It’s being with the music, being in the music, listening. Staying out of the way. As much as humanly possible, staying out of the way.

E: How do the qualities of listening and being present with the music inform the rest of your life?

D: I try to keep it all the same experience. It’s not entirely the same because as a performer performing there is a lot more responsibility. Whereas, in daily life you just kind of hang loose.

There is a particular kind of listening that happens when you are listening to music or playing it, and there is a different kind of listening you do the rest of the time. But there are connections. I think you have to be conscious of those connections if you want to make use of them in your life. I try to. I think there is something about listing to music as a performer that is very relevant to living. Just to be able to listen to something without evaluating it. You should be able listen to yourself without evaluating.

E: Do you mean listening to your Intuition, for example?

D: Yeah.

E: And what about listening as the audience?

D: It’s about just being with the music. And I think that’s a very important thing for us to do, it’s a sacred experience. And it’s that sacredness which we can carry to something else.

You can be listening to music from a technical point of view- chords and melodies- you can hear that stuff. But that is not the part that gets translated. The technical stuff you know how to listen for is not going to help you in life. But the experiencing of the musical world as a creative life force can be translated into an appreciation of the natural world.

E: Ok. Let’s talk about ending a piece. There were several pieces tonight, in fact, most of them, in which you ended abruptly- no warning. I wondered why.

D: I like surprise. I like to introduce a sound that completely breaks the listener out of what happened before, that is completely different.

E: When does an improvisational musician know when it’s time to end?

D: Sometimes, especially with young musicians, they don’t know. It drives me nuts. I try to be very conscientious about when to end something. You know the three most important things in a piece are the beginning, the middle, and the end. The end is as important as everything else, it’s that big. So, when you end something that is a huge event.

E: But again, how do you know? The beginning is really easy, I’m assuming. You just hit the first note.

D: Actually, the beginning the hardest. The middle is easy, once you get into it. I usually don’t find endings difficult, but sometimes they can be. Sometimes I may just get in a situation where I’ve said enough- and I use the word “said” very loosely- I’ve said enough, and so, why am I playing? You could be kind of stuck, and not have a way to stop. You know, like the soapbox derby here in Kingston every year. You get to the bottom of the hill and, then what? How are you going to bring this thing to…

E: Are we talking about resolution?

D: Yeah. There’s momentum and you have to be able to bring that to an end. Yeah, you have to figure it out. You started it and have to stop it. It’s your obligation! (Laughs) But it can be very difficult to end a piece. Beethoven really struggled with this sometimes. As I said, it’s one of the most important things that happens. It’s especially difficult when it was supposed to happen and it didn’t happen, and then there you are in some other space. So yeah, these things are tricky. You have to know when it’s time and then you have to be able to do it.

E: Is ending abruptly ever a cop out?

D: It could be a cop out, yeah. It could have just been a bad idea.

Seeing Cecil Taylor play, often he would just stop. So, the moment before he stopped would be no different then any other moment except that it happened to be the last thing he did. And that’s one way to end. But that works because of how he plays…
Coincidentally Side A of the tape runs out here and what David is saying ends abruptly.

Side B

D: What better example could we have! One way to end is that that’s when the tape runs out!

E: (Laughing) Right!

Ok, you were saying that the end is determined by…

D: It’s determined by the piece. And the piece is determined by the beginning. You can say the end is in the beginning.

E: What do you mean, “the end is in the beginning”?

D: Well, the beginning determines whatever else happens, and the end is determined by whatever happened.

E: Is this a rule you’re talking about?

D: No, I just made it up. Maybe its gonna be a rule from now on!

E: (Laughing) OK. But there are no rules in improvisational jazz, right?

D: There are lots of rules.

E: Let’s hear some.

D: They are different for every piece.

E: And for every musician?

D: Well, could be. But, no, I think there has got to be a common understanding that everyone is participating together, playing together. But, yeah, there are as many rules in free jazz as for any other kind of music. But, they are different for each piece. And that’s what makes it free playing. The rules aren’t set in advance. (Pause) Supposedly the rules aren’t set in advance. Very often there are unspoken rules that everybody accepts without realizing they are accepting them. Well, let’s take the piece that I played tonight, “Raft.” Once I started it, one rule was, always be soft and smooth. It was a rule. And that rule was not broken. And then it was time to end it, and one way to end a piece is to break a rule. Because once the rule is established, if you break it, then you’ve either started something new, or you’ve just ended everything altogether by interrupting the momentum. But, that’s an example of a piece that had a very clear rule.

E: These rules sound strictly subjective.

D: They pretty much all are. And usually they are not rules that anybody’s ever thought about or explicitly laid out. “Rule” wouldn’t be as good a word as…some other word… It’s kind of a structural framework, I think.

Often Cecil Taylor starts off, very few notes, soft, almost sweet, beautiful harmonic things. But, it then quickly leads into highly dense, complex, rhythmic, percussive stuff. So, that would be like a rule. I know he’s never said, “That’s what I’m going to do.” It just, that’s what happens.

E: It always happens, it’s always predictable?

D: Well, Cecil never sits down and starts out like that and then does a whole piece that remains reflective, chordal, classically harmonically worked out. He has very definite clear ways of working. But, his playing has changed over the years. So, you could say that the rules have changed. Another rule with him is, maintain the energy for long periods of time.

E: Do you mean shear physical energy?

D: Yeah. Just don’t let up. Don’t get into this kind of music if you can’t keep it up. (Chuckles) Stamina is really important. Just play full fire and steam, all full out. Loud, percussive, fast, complex. Don’t stop.

E: This is Cecil Taylor’s rule, not yours, right?

D: Yes, that’s how his music works.

My rules are more like, “consider any rule temporary.” That’s my kind of rule. When I set something up I give myself permission to break it and do something else. But, once I do that then I need to account for the fact that there has been a break. So, now there are two things- the past and the present. And the past cannot be ignored. I can’t just discard it. So, now I’ve got something else going on. So that first thing might need to come back. It must be acknowledged in some way. So that’s how I might get different textures going. And sometimes I get into these things, like tonight- I was working a lot with having things which normally wouldn’t be thought of as going together, going together. I was hoping it was working- I don’t know. But that was the attempt in a lot of what I was playing.

E: Three questions, two go back to the beginning of the conversation, and the other is a concluding question—I think, although more questions may come out of your answers.

D: This whole thing is like an improvisation for you. And you can see how organized it is too! This probably answers a lot of your own questions, just to look at your own process.

E: (Laughing) I guess so!

With the wealth of classical music and jazz you have under your fingertips, do you ever call on some lines or phrases from memory and incorporate them into your playing?

D: I don’t. Some other musicians do, but I actually don’t. It’s one of my rules, I guess. I’m always trying to be in this moment. I’ve made a conscious decision not to learn any of the pieces from my album or play different versions of them. Maybe I’ll change my mind at some point and do it. But for now, I’m not going out and doing other versions of “Blowin’, ” or “Odyssey,”- several of them are repeatable. “Legacy” I could do. The rules are clear enough that you could follow them and get another version of the same thing. But, I’ve chosen not to do that. I’m improvising. This is what I’m trying to do, what I’m trying to promote.
E: Improvising every moment you mean?
D: Yes, right now I just want to see what happens if you really just start from scratch.

E: Do you think that playing tunes is a crutch?

D: No. Well, for some people I think it is. But for people who do it really well, it’s their voice. It becomes their language. Basically traditional jazz is like that. There are these tunes that everybody plays, but it’s only a crutch if you’re not doing it well, if you’re not good at it. Otherwise it’s your lifeline.

But it is a lot more interesting to me right now to do improvisational pieces that come from the creativity of the moment.

E: Does it require more courage of the musician to approach music in that way?

D: Well, yeah, either that or stupidity! Or- hubris. Who am I to say that I don’t have to repeat myself ever? Who am I to say that you should come hear me do something when I have no idea what it’s going to be or if it’s going to work?

E: I found it thrilling just to witness the courage of it.
D: Well, yeah, but I hope that the value of it is not just in the mental pyrotechnics of it. I’m not trying to be impressive, I’m just trying to be creative. But with the idea of really being creative. I mean, you just sit down and you create. Instead of saying, “well what did I do last time?” Well, who cares? So what if I did that last time? That was last time!

What I really want to come through is, for performer and audience to be open to what’s new.

E: Now I want to revisit the beginning of this interview again where we talked about how you practice. You said that the bulk of what you do is to play a specific group of classical pieces. And, as I understand it, you do that because they offer such a breadth of craftsmanship and artistry that they are inspirational and serve as a foundation for your work. Is this method of practicing unique to you?

D: Well, the common view is that the right way for a jazz pianist to practice is to work out jazz riffs and play through tunes. But, that’s not what I do. I do play through tunes of course- that’s how I learn them and remember them, but, well, I studied for several years with Dwike Mitchell- he’s known for his trio concerts with Willie Ruff and Dizzy Gillespie. Every day when I arrived at his apartment in New York he’d be at the piano, playing Chopin or Rachmaninoff- absolutely gorgeous, precise playing. At our first meeting the first thing he did was ask me to play some Chopin. Then he asked me to play a jazz tune. Then he asked me to play the Chopin again. Then he asked me why I played them differently. I said they were different kinds of music. He said, “No, they’re the same. You must play jazz with the same feeling and expression that you do with your classical music.” I was struck by that comment, coming from such a jazz master. Of course there are differences between jazz and classical music. But I think Dwike’s point was that the stylistic differences are not as important as the shared emotionality.

E: Ok. Which leads me to the next obvious question. What defines jazz? What makes is distinct from classical?

D: That’s the big question.

Yeah, because why should what I’m doing be called jazz?

You know, I teach the history of jazz, and it’s interesting to do that. I don’t try to define jazz, just describe it. It’s ongoing. There are people alive now doing it. Some jazz historians today go to 1950 and pretty much stop. As if jazz ended with bebop.

Ken Burns does his history of jazz in episodes, every one of which includes a section on Louis Armstrong, as if the history of jazz needs to have him present throughout. So it’s a history of jazz which basically demands that it be viewed within the context of Louis Armstrong. That’s what Ken Burns does. And this is what dominates the definition of jazz today. The Ken Burns series is the most widely distributed version of the history of jazz in the history of jazz. And it’s a definition of jazz in which people like Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor are given lip service because they are giants, geniuses that can’t be ignored. But basically what they do is not really considered jazz. And, everyone that’s come after that is not even mentioned.

E: There must be enough people out there who consider free jazz a legitimate part of jazz.

D: Yes, there are.

E: Ok. So there must be agreed upon rules for what makes free jazz distinct and viable, right?
D: Yes. As proponents of free jazz we have our own set of rules. But those rules are not the same for everybody within the field. But, for example, Winton Marsalis would not consider free jazz, jazz. He’s pretty explicit about that. And there’s a whole slew of jazz critics who have posts in major universities teaching and writing about jazz who really define jazz in ways that preclude free jazz, quite intentionally. There’s an agenda there. I think there’s a lot of politics in the definition of jazz. It’s a hot topic.

There’s also a lot at stake in terms of jazz as being a black music, for example. Jazz being rooted in blues, jazz being rooted in rhythm, the differences between jazz and classical. Jazz is all those things. But not only those things. All that stuff is up for grabs these days, especially within the realm of free jazz. So you could just live in your music and keep the flame alive and just see what happens. And not worry about the fact that you can’t define it any more.

E: Why can’t you just call it free music? Why do you call it free jazz? What makes it jazz to you?
D: I call it jazz because calling it classical seems worse. The realm of classical music seems less fitting for what I think music needs to be doing.

When I was in college there were only a few avant-garde composers that were exploring the use of improvisation. And the kind of improvisation they did seemed to be along very narrow lines. They would never improvise like jazz players. And besides, classical avant-garde composers don’t generally look at the Art Ensemble of Chicago as being part of them.

E: So, therein lies the key, wouldn’t you say? Improvisation. That’s what makes it jazz?

D: Well, I had a much better idea about what jazz was before I started teaching the history of it. When you really know all the things that have happened and you try to hold it under one roof and define it, you really can’t. Because at any point at which you try to pin it down, something new is going to pop up that changes the rules. The nature of jazz is that it evolves. The obvious thing you can say about what characterizes jazz is that it is forever evolving and encompassing anything around it. That’s how it started.

E: Do you mean musically, culturally, socially…?

D: Musically, culturally, socially, yeah. It started that way. Jazz was something that came from various strains of other kinds of music that were from all over the place. It came from minstrel music. It came from a black folk tradition- field hollers, the blues. It came from American folk dance music. It came from square dance.

It came from classical music. It came from ragtime. Scott Joplin in fact was a black composer wanting to be accepted as a classical composer. Ragtime is just what Joplin did. It came from where it came from, just like Debussy’s music came from where it came from because Debussy was French. Well, Joplin was black and he was living in a white culture and, boom- there it was! (Chuckles) He thought of himself as a classical composer, and why shouldn’t he? He wrote it down and it’s being played today in concert halls. And, jazz came from that!

So, jazz came from all these things, it put all this different stuff together. It came from parades, band music out of New Orleans. It came from barrelhouse piano players in the Midwest. It came from all over the place.

This myth of the poor uneducated black person learning music by ear and having natural rhythm is a good story for some agenda or other, but the fact of the matter is, there were a whole lot of different kinds of black people in America growing up. Some of them were middle class and some were poor, and they were all contributing to jazz. So right from the start, you can see that sooner or later it was going to get a lot more mixed up! (Chuckles).

And hanging out in New Orleans from early on were a bunch of white guys playing the music too. They didn’t think they invented it, they knew they didn’t. But they were still there. So, it’s been a music that has been in a certain way, especially among the musicians, very universal. But, again, it’s its own weird thing because it is universal, but there’s no denying that its black roots are so strong. That’s never going to go away.

I guess there are some people who are afraid that it might go away. Considering it’s mostly white corporations that own and/or distribute the music, there is reason for concern. There’s still a lot of politics around that.

E: Does free jazz also pose a threat?

D: Oh, yeah, it definitely poses a threat.

You know, I guess I’d be in favor of eradicating altogether the difference between classical and jazz, and just calling it all American music- that would save a lot of hassle. I think it becomes more of a difference in style. There are so many kinds of classical music and so many different kinds of jazz that I think there’s a way of looking at the whole field as being, just, the art of music.

E: Where does this tendency to categorize music come from, why do it?

D: What bin do you put it in, in the store? What department do you teach it in, in school? What funding organizations do you approach? But these are all sociological questions. They’re not musical questions. That’s my feeling about it.

E: David, there are a hundred other questions that I want to ask you now but Side B is running out. I guess this means it’s time to end. Thank you for sharing so freely with me.

D: Thank You, Elizabeth. Maybe we can do this again sometime.

Copyright 2003

All rights reserved

Elizabeth Marouk-Coe

Hastings-On-Hudson, NY