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- AG: There are
some gigs for example that, no matter how great a white musician
might
play, they might not end up doing. But not for racial reasons,
just for social reasons: because they might not happen to be
friends
with so-and-so, or maybe so-and-so doesn't feel close
enough to them to take them on the road. Obviously
these
social factors are very important when you are doing gigs—especially
when you are putting together a band. Sometimes you want not
just the best
musicians, but you also want the best musicians who are fun to
hang with. If you’re black, the law of social averages
here is that most of your friends are also going to be black.
The musicians you
know
and as a result the people you play with might also therefore
mostly be black. That being said, maybe you would happen
to have a white
friend,
or
maybe there
is a white guy you know who is cool with you and your friends,
who you’re down with for whatever reason, and who
also happens to be a great musician. You might call him first
for a gig. For example there are lots of black guys whose bands
I might be in simply because I’m their friend, not even
because I am the best player available. Or it might just be
because
I happen
to be home when the phone rings. It’s not like they are
calling the white guy because he’s the piano player, they
might just be calling the white guy because he’s their best
friend. It happens to be a nice interracial friendship. At this
point,
I
feel like
I have had
a lot of shared experiences with people both black and white.
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- AB: That is probably
extraordinarily unusual, even in New York City…
- AG: But I don’t
think it is so unusual in the jazz world. I feel fortunate that
I have had a lot of long-standing musical relationships with some
black friends of mine. I feel close to them on a personal level,
even though I may come from a totally different background. I
don’t think it’s that rare. I don’t know, man…my
perspective might be skewed but my sense of it is that there are
a lot of interracial bands in New York City, almost every band
I go to see is mixed.
- AB: Do politics
ever come up? You play this music in this little space that
you
create, but the real world keeps impinging on it because you
are not playing music in a vacuum. During the sixties, it was
quite
fashionable to be overtly political and [Charles] Mingus did
a lot of very explicitly political music. How do you feel about
that
today?
Do you seek to do that?
- AG: There is
no question that it was absolutely integral for those people
to
make that music in that time. It was probably
a social responsibility
of everyone living in that time, but not, I think, a musical
responsibility. There was a social and moral responsibility
for everyone living in a segregated America, especially those
playing African American music—whether they be white or
black—to
speak out against discrimination, racism, and segregation in
all its forms.
And to the degree that those things still exist today, it remains
our social responsibility to speak out against them. But do
we have
to do it in a musical context? No, but some people are going
to choose to make their music more overtly political and other
people
aren’t. Other people are just going to try to take a lower
profile. America has made so much progress, despite what naysayers
might claim, that it is possible for a Tiger Woods or a Michael
Jordan to be somewhat apolitical. Even for most rappers today
to be apolitical, just to talk about money and clothes…
- AB: …Well,
a lot of people argue that that is inherently political anyway
because they fetishize clothes and money, perhaps because they
were denied them…
- AG: That’s
not the same thing. You’re saying their rap has political
implications, you’re saying it has sociological implications.
But they’re
not making an overtly political point…
- AB: OK, I should
be clear about intentional political statements versus statements
that can be read or interpreted as political.
- AG: But we are
talking about social or moral responsibility. In the 50s, those
rappers would have been morally corrupt if they had had their
position of authority and not done something with it to speak
out against the gross injustice around them. We have a lot of
political problems in this country today, and I don’t think
that it’s
more important for jazz musicians, or musicians in general, to
speak out against
those things than for anyone else to do so. It’s all of
our social responsibility, no matter what we do, to speak out
against
injustice
in our country
and try to make our country a better place. Taking that a step
farther, maybe trying to make the world a better place. I don’t
think that there is in anyway a requirement that music be political,
in any sense.
- Of course there was a lot of great music
that came out of that time of upheaval. I sometimes think that
if perhaps the political issues of today were more
pressing to all of us, myself
included, then we might actually all be making better music.
I don’t
know if there is a direct connection between the quality of
the
music that was coming out of the 60s and the political situation
of the 60s. Music in that day might have been more urgent in
some
kind of way. That’s not to say there’s not a lot of
great music being made today. I would never say it was an artist's
responsibility to be political in his art itself. Racism was
institutionalized across
the country in the 60s in a way that it is not now. The problems
are pressing and they remain, but they are much harder to get
a handle on, and they are much harder to attack symbolically
through music. They are better attacked through the ballot
box, through
legislation. Music can raise consciousness but it is not so easy
to hammer away at what remains of the Klu Klux Klan through
it…
- AB: The Civil
Rights movement in and of itself didn’t really collapse but
it lost a lot of its steam when confronting very difficult, elusive
problems. Martin Luther King Jr., for example, was fighting wars
on poverty and housing discrimination at the end of his life,
which were more difficult to find. You had to go through housing
department records and find out that they weren’t giving
loans to the right people, things like that. It just became even
more complicated, I guess.
- AG: And I think
the more complicated problems are the more difficult to address
through music. It’s really inspiring once in a while when
somebody like U2’s Bono uses his stature as a musician
and a public figure to come out and tackle some of these very
difficult
issues away from the bandstand. We jazz musicians tend to be
intelligent, politically aware people but not as informed on
a daily basis
as we could
be, and also not as involved in the world outside of our music
as we could be.
- The other thing I was going to say about race and music: I
think one reason there was increased hype about race in
the
late 80s, or whenever it was, was that there were a lot of young
musicians getting opportunities and being put in a forum where
they could express themselves. And I think that young people
in general are immature in their views about race, insecure
about
their racial identity, and about other people’s racial identities.
I remember when I was in music school in ’91, to me race seemed
like
such a much more pressing issue: can you play with
this guy, can he play with you ’cause your
black, white, black, or whatever. In retrospect I think ten
percent of that
was a true reflection
of the jazz community in general because of the fact that a lot
of these young lions were still insecure and inexperienced
and
creating this climate where race was talked about a lot. But
I think that eighty percent of that perception, in my experience
of being young and
thinking
race, was due to my own insecurity. It is sort of stuff you imagine
is going on, a whole bunch of imagined bullshit in each one
of our
heads—at least some of our heads, unfortunately. But after
a while, as you get older you grow out of that stuff. As soon
as
you
are
more secure in who you are, everyone around you is also more
secure in who they are and everyone’s getting along fine—and
suddenly you realize this person that you thought was vibing
you really wasn’t.
You see that they were insecure themselves and they were just
vibing
everyone, black or white. It had nothing to do with race. People
were using race as a kind of scapegoat for their own insecurity,
their own unhappiness, and their own inability to succeed. As
soon as you ignore that stuff, you start to do well and you
start
to see that everyone really is out to find out if you are a great
musician or not. They’re not going to judge you one way
or another on who you are or your skin color. No matter where
you come from.
- AB: I knew this
guy who would come to New York and walk everywhere regardless
of the neighborhood. Sometimes it was probably not so safe but
his point was—particularly in places like 125th St. in Harlem,
which is the main drag—he would walk there and he’d
be the only white face. He said part of the problem is that if
everyone just walked there it wouldn’t be a problem. It’s
like you were saying, the ideas in your head take over and replace
a kind of reality on the street, which is very true for that example…
- AG: Yes, exactly…
- AB: I like jazz
as hopeful, jazz as the model of liberal humanism, or democracy…
- AG: I buy it.
It’s my experience.
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Articles
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Interview
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Berish: Dissections and Intersections
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Review Essays
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Reviews
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Conference Report
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