Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, this is Sugar Steve from Quest Love Supreme. This March,
Speaker 2: we're celebrating women's history at QLs, something that we've done
Speaker 2: for years. Back in March of twenty twenty two, we
Speaker 2: spoke to Terry Lynn Carrington about her years as a
Speaker 2: jazz prodigy, some of the prejudice she faced as a
Speaker 2: young female drummer playing with elder males, and how she
Speaker 2: kicks down the doors for others as founder and artistic
Speaker 2: director of the Berkeley Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice
Speaker 2: as a jazz guy. I really enjoyed this episode. Whether
Speaker 2: you heard it when it was first released or this
Speaker 2: is your first time, we hope you enjoyed.
Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, another episode of Quest Loves Supreme. I'm
Speaker 3: your host Quests Love. We got Team Supreme in the
Speaker 3: hit House Fontigolo. Wow new If Bill Sherman were here,
Speaker 3: he would notice that you're in yet another room in
Speaker 3: the house.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is my studio. It's just easier for me here.
Speaker 4: I normally recording my living room, but my.
Speaker 3: Son was going to school out uhstairs, so I just
Speaker 3: bring it upstairs to the studio.
Speaker 4: And do it here.
Speaker 3: Wait, virtual school is still going on or is it
Speaker 3: optional them as well?
Speaker 4: We yeah, it's option. We did it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he'll be going back to classroom for the junior year,
Speaker 3: but for this year it was just the numbers around
Speaker 3: here were crazy, so we put him in virtual Smart.
Speaker 4: We gotta be smart man. Uh, Steve, where are you
Speaker 4: at right now? I'm where you are?
Speaker 2: In the sixty seven degrees at thirty rock.
Speaker 4: We're freezing in thirty rock right now.
Speaker 5: And yeah, keep that covid out.
Speaker 4: It's cold. I know, Yeah, I freeze the COVID out definitely. Uh.
Speaker 4: Where are you at with black part behind you?
Speaker 5: Lamert all day?
Speaker 4: That's where I yoh, yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Forgot to tell you you was here.
Speaker 4: I took my first visit to Lahmurt Park.
Speaker 5: You know why I can't stand.
Speaker 3: I only had only had like thirty five minutes to
Speaker 3: run the Juneteenth.
Speaker 5: He was at the June teen festival.
Speaker 4: I think I was in a legit episode of Insecure. Yo.
Speaker 5: Somebody told me they saw black thought I thought they
Speaker 5: was lying.
Speaker 4: It was awesome. Yeah. I went to uh juneteen for
Speaker 4: half a second. Then I went to.
Speaker 3: Uh the Body Rule party like in another side of
Speaker 3: l a like Saturday.
Speaker 4: Man, it was.
Speaker 3: It was one of the nicest, blackest experiences I've ever
Speaker 3: had in Los Angeles.
Speaker 5: People don't know about that. I'm glad you said that.
Speaker 4: I forgot. Yeah, you're you're a Lamert Parker. Did you
Speaker 4: enjoy it?
Speaker 6: I loved it? This was an amazing Juneteenth weekend. I mean,
Speaker 6: thank god we came through. It was looking sketchy for
Speaker 6: a minute because of Walmart and then but it came
Speaker 6: through nicely.
Speaker 4: Damn ice cream.
Speaker 7: You know, Bill, you know Billy Higgins had the World
Speaker 7: stage there, so you probably if this is kind of
Speaker 7: a Lamert Park yeah, then you never experienced that. But
Speaker 7: that was really dope back in the day.
Speaker 5: I'm learning.
Speaker 3: I'm learning, well, you know, if we if we bring
Speaker 3: the festival back to Los Angeles, I think we're going
Speaker 3: to travel with it, so we're looking at like Texas
Speaker 3: and other spots.
Speaker 4: But I definitely want to do another student team. Oh god, yeah.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, did you did it?
Speaker 4: You did well?
Speaker 3: There's nothing exclusive about one in the spread the June
Speaker 3: teenth Love a Round anyway, y'all. As I was saying,
Speaker 3: you know, I would say that this year for me
Speaker 3: has been an awesome year for bucket listing, and I'm checking.
Speaker 4: I guess I could say I'm checking a lot.
Speaker 3: Of my musical heroes, bringing them on the show and
Speaker 3: neuro and out on them. And our guest today is
Speaker 3: absolutely no exception. I'll say that she's probably the first
Speaker 3: young person male or female, the first young person that
Speaker 3: I ever saw on a drum set. And I guess
Speaker 3: at the time when I first I forget the name
Speaker 3: of the show was like on PPS, like Rebop or
Speaker 3: something like that. I forget what it was, but it's
Speaker 3: definitely one of those like local Boston shows or whatever.
Speaker 3: And to see a young kid on a drum set
Speaker 3: definitely made an impression on me when I was a kid.
Speaker 3: I forget what year it was, like, I was like
Speaker 3: six or seven when I first saw you. I think
Speaker 3: you were like twelve, thirteen or whatever.
Speaker 4: But she's literally done it all.
Speaker 3: Grammy's college professor, two time late night bandleader, activist, producer,
Speaker 3: collaborated with such luminaries like the great Clark, Terry, Wayne Shorter,
Speaker 3: Herbie Hancock. I know that you have to be in
Speaker 3: the meditation if you if you have if you collaborate
Speaker 3: with those two.
Speaker 7: But I'm a bad Buddhist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's Ron's Spalding the whole mosaic project with you know,
Speaker 3: Diana Crawl and and and the likes al Ji Rostan
Speaker 3: Gets Clark, Terry Wood he Shaw.
Speaker 4: I can go on and on and on. This has
Speaker 4: been a long time coming.
Speaker 3: Thank you for your patience, because this is one of
Speaker 3: these episodes where, you know, because of the courses and
Speaker 3: the events of my life in the last month or so,
Speaker 3: I've had to put this off the least three or
Speaker 3: four times.
Speaker 4: You've been very patient.
Speaker 3: Finally I can say, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Quest
Speaker 3: of Supreme Terry Lynn Carrington.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Yes, I appreciate it. Thank you. How are
Speaker 4: you today?
Speaker 7: I'm great. This is my pleasure talking to you. I'm
Speaker 7: a big fan and I love everything that you do.
Speaker 7: So the aberration is mutual.
Speaker 3: We've never had an in depth, heart to heart like conversation.
Speaker 3: So whenever I hear through other people like oh, you know,
Speaker 3: Terry Sis, what's up or whatever, you know it Occasionally
Speaker 3: you've come by, like I've seen you play a few
Speaker 3: gigs or whatever, and I'm still mind blowing, Like there's
Speaker 3: there's always this thing where you know, jazz musicians are
Speaker 3: so not above the fray, but just like above whatever
Speaker 3: is below them as far as pop music concern is
Speaker 3: concerned or whatever, like it's all one thing.
Speaker 7: It's all black music, you know, Like I mean, it's
Speaker 7: all comes from the blues. So there was something something
Speaker 7: would be wrong with me if I didn't appreciate what
Speaker 7: you did, you know, that would be like if any
Speaker 7: you know, if I had a jazz friend, you know,
Speaker 7: didn't appreciate you, I would be looking at them sideways.
Speaker 4: Well, I thank you for that. I appreciate.
Speaker 3: Where are you talking to this right now from you
Speaker 3: have a very interesting background. It looks like a mall
Speaker 3: in a prison. At the same time, I have.
Speaker 7: A few backgrounds. I'm at home, but that's just my
Speaker 7: Berkeley background. Here's another Berkeley background. Yes, here's an animated
Speaker 7: one with I don't know who's that, Chicak Yoh's red
Speaker 7: and Alice Coltrane. Just when I just want to see
Speaker 7: Obama drop the mic when I'm missing my grandmother. Okay,
Speaker 7: there's our slogan. You can't really see it, but it's
Speaker 7: jazz without patriarchy. Oh and this one you might recognize.
Speaker 7: This is from soul because you know, I was a
Speaker 7: consultant on soul.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I know, like they went above and
Speaker 3: beyond the call of duty to ask every wow jazz
Speaker 3: Luminaria for their for their advice.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was fun doing that, was doing some meetings.
Speaker 7: The first one Herbie was that I was probably the
Speaker 7: only one in the room that you know, might have
Speaker 7: a difference in opinion, you know, with Herbie and be
Speaker 7: able to actually say it right, you know what I mean,
Speaker 7: because everybody gets scared. So yeah, wow, here's my biggest mentor. Yeah.
Speaker 7: So anyway, we.
Speaker 5: Just had him on the show shorter.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah cool.
Speaker 3: I'm going to say I was shocked at the amount
Speaker 3: of feedback we got for that particular episode, like a
Speaker 3: lot of heavy jazz heads hit us because kind of
Speaker 3: thank you just for asking questions that we nor like
Speaker 3: aren't normally asked, you know, and other.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just letting him talk, That's what we did.
Speaker 4: We let him talk exactly.
Speaker 7: That's the right thing.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna start with you, Terry, the way I
Speaker 3: always start the episode. Can you tell me what your
Speaker 3: first musical memory was?
Speaker 7: Wow, you know, they happened so long ago that it's
Speaker 7: kind of like a movie that I'm a part of
Speaker 7: that I watched and it feels real because I watched it.
Speaker 7: But was I really there, you know what I mean?
Speaker 7: Like I played tambourine when I was five years old
Speaker 7: on stage with Ross and Roland Kirk, and that was
Speaker 7: probably the first time I was on stage.
Speaker 4: How many saxophones did he play?
Speaker 7: Always at least three until he had a stroke, and
Speaker 7: then I'll see him after that, and then he played
Speaker 7: with one hand, one of the saxophone, but he might
Speaker 7: have even worked too with the one hand, right, No, any.
Speaker 4: Of that's surreal to you. I mean, I'm with the movie.
Speaker 3: Those kids that I see, especially kids that are I
Speaker 3: guess you could say progeny of like other I know
Speaker 3: that your father and your grandfather were musicians as well,
Speaker 3: so oftentimes you know, at least there's a realization moment
Speaker 3: of what you're really into, but that usually comes in
Speaker 3: your teens. But in the beginning, it's just like, Hey,
Speaker 3: this dad and this granddad and here's some musicians around
Speaker 3: the house. Like, but anything strike you odd about this?
Speaker 3: You know this this guy with dread or I don't
Speaker 3: know if he had dread locks back then, but playing
Speaker 3: three saxophones at the same time, Like, nothing seemed odd
Speaker 3: about that to you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but you know, when you're young, you don't really
Speaker 7: pay attention to all that, like you're just doing you
Speaker 7: And I was having fun so and I was getting attention,
Speaker 7: So I knew I was different from the other, you know,
Speaker 7: elementary school kids that I was hanging out with, because
Speaker 7: Ebony came to school to take pictures of me. You know,
Speaker 7: I was a flex.
Speaker 4: After that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I mean from the black kids. You know,
Speaker 7: there might have been I don't know, six or seven
Speaker 7: in my class, so of course they knew what was happening.
Speaker 7: The other kids, I'm not sure they knew what evan
Speaker 7: it was.
Speaker 4: But where did you grow up? Where were you born?
Speaker 7: In Medford, Massachusetts?
Speaker 3: How far is that from Boston to anyone outside of
Speaker 3: New England, like Massachusetts, just like Boston, and then a
Speaker 3: bunch of suburbs areas.
Speaker 5: Where New Addition is from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Roxbury, whoa, Oh damn, you grew up in Roxburgh.
Speaker 7: Oh hell no, okay, you go to Roxburgh and my
Speaker 7: dad would remind me, you know, you're from West Medford,
Speaker 7: but our area of town, West Medford was the most
Speaker 7: heavily settled black area outside of Boston. So like, for instance,
Speaker 7: in my high school's four thousand people in high school,
Speaker 7: close to four thousand, and at a time when I
Speaker 7: was in high school, there were three hundred and sixty
Speaker 7: five black kids, which is not quite even ten percent.
Speaker 7: But when we had lunch, you know, I'm sitting with
Speaker 7: two hundred black kids, So it felt like it was,
Speaker 7: you know, it was a black environment.
Speaker 4: You know, for our circle, it was Boston, the south
Speaker 4: of the North.
Speaker 3: Again, like I'm so triggered by anything to do with Massachusetts,
Speaker 3: I just naturally think that Massachusetts is just one of
Speaker 3: these states that escaped you know, the Confederate you know,
Speaker 3: just based on what we've learned about it. But like
Speaker 3: in your childhood, was it like that at all?
Speaker 7: Or I mean I came like right after the busing situation,
Speaker 7: and there was like a bit of a riot at
Speaker 7: my high school about you know, surrounded by some kind
Speaker 7: of race or about some kind of racial incident. But
Speaker 7: I haven't right before I got to high school, and
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, I was going into Boston weekly.
Speaker 7: At least. I got a scholarship to Berkeley when I
Speaker 7: was eleven, and I was going weekly.
Speaker 3: I got to say, you went to Berkeley while still
Speaker 3: in in junior high school?
Speaker 4: Correct, So I.
Speaker 7: Was elementary when I started, but that I went once
Speaker 7: a week. So it wasn't like that big deal. You know,
Speaker 7: I went after school once a week and took private
Speaker 7: lessons and ensemble deal special. But what I mean is
Speaker 7: it wasn't like stressful.
Speaker 4: Berkeley reject that's a big deal.
Speaker 7: Well that's their loss, right.
Speaker 4: Damn right. I'm not bitter at all.
Speaker 7: But what I'm gonna say though, is, you know, Boston is,
Speaker 7: in a weird way, is kind of the most liberal
Speaker 7: and conservative places you'll ever be. It's a total, you know,
Speaker 7: dichotomy of these things. And everybody hates the Celtics and
Speaker 7: all that, but you know, nobody ever talks about how
Speaker 7: we had the first black coach and one of the
Speaker 7: first black players. Hmm.
Speaker 5: I never thought that about the Celtics for real.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just saying, like, there's a lot
Speaker 7: of things wrong racially with what's happened here, but you know,
Speaker 7: there's it's it's not all bad. And there were, you know,
Speaker 7: places like where I grew up, I had heavily populated
Speaker 7: black areas, and it was very you know, rich in culture.
Speaker 3: All right, So if ever the Patriots or the Celtics
Speaker 3: went again, I'll add you to my new edition file. Like, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: at least you seven are happy.
Speaker 5: So universal health care? Mayor Massachusetts did that first too?
Speaker 5: Remember free health care?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, if you're from a place, there's
Speaker 7: got to be some love, you know, Like I used to.
Speaker 7: I used to hate to go to Philadelphia, but you know,
Speaker 7: I got happier as I went, you know, so as
Speaker 7: I learn more about the city. Really, you know, I
Speaker 7: used to not like Chicago, you know whatever. I'm like,
Speaker 7: you have these experiences, and it's just as you grow
Speaker 7: you have the other experiences that can make a place.
Speaker 7: I have some nostalgia at the very least you.
Speaker 4: Didn't like traveling in general or just.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, well I liked it. Now I don't
Speaker 7: particularly care for it. I have a love hate relationship
Speaker 7: because I am happiest sometimes when I'm just in a
Speaker 7: hotel room and can close the shades and no block
Speaker 7: everybody out. I know, because I'm not dealing with Oh,
Speaker 7: I got to fix this in my house. You know,
Speaker 7: I come home and I get stressed. I'm like, oh
Speaker 7: my god, I got that paint the house, I need
Speaker 7: a new roof, you know, all those things start kicking in.
Speaker 7: But when I'm away, I can just I can just
Speaker 7: focus on whatever it is I'm doing.
Speaker 6: Can I ask a question, because I just want to know,
Speaker 6: you say, from the jump, jazz was in your life
Speaker 6: in the sense that like no other you weren't even
Speaker 6: as a kid in school, because I mean you said
Speaker 6: Berkeley when you were eleven.
Speaker 5: So I'm like, did anything.
Speaker 6: Else ever get into the household, er into your ears
Speaker 6: outside of the lot?
Speaker 7: Okay, yeah, I mean I was. I mean I listened
Speaker 7: to the radio, and I listened to you know, like
Speaker 7: my father started me off listening to what he would
Speaker 7: consume more rhythm and blues, which at the time we
Speaker 7: were talking about the early seventies. But for him, like
Speaker 7: he played in horn sections with James Brown and Ruth
Speaker 7: Brown and people like that when he was in college,
Speaker 7: and so that's the kind of music he started me
Speaker 7: off listening to because he thought I would be able
Speaker 7: to relate to that, you know, more than John Coletrain
Speaker 7: and Miles Davis. So I was listening to lots of Oregon.
Speaker 7: You know lots of blues Jack McDuff, Jimy McGriff, and
Speaker 7: you know some rhythmic blues of course, James Brown, Ray
Speaker 7: Charles Raytha Franklin. And those are the records, you know,
Speaker 7: a lot of the records that I remember, you know,
Speaker 7: as a kid.
Speaker 3: Can you tell me the first out that you purchased
Speaker 3: with your own money? Not just that around the house,
Speaker 3: like oh, let me see what dad's James Brown's altmore
Speaker 3: into but like, yeah.
Speaker 7: You know, like I don't know if I purchased it,
Speaker 7: but I think I must have asked my parents to
Speaker 7: get get it for me, because I'm not sure they
Speaker 7: would have. For whatever reason, I was obsessed. And I
Speaker 7: remember I had one of those kids it was green too,
Speaker 7: one of those kids, uh phonograph players that had a
Speaker 7: little speaker built in.
Speaker 4: Right post preschool or whatever, Fisher Price record players. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I feel like I know what this record or what
Speaker 4: was the record?
Speaker 7: Oh no, it was the Fifth Dimension. It was. I
Speaker 7: was obsessed with Aquarius. H yeah, for some reason, the
Speaker 7: age of the Aquarius, Like are you one? No no, no,
Speaker 7: I'm a leo. Okay, I forget it for that being
Speaker 7: the record.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm just saying, no,
Speaker 3: it's for being a leo.
Speaker 4: Get extra points if you're in a query for drumming.
Speaker 3: Though, you know, I know that there's a sect of
Speaker 3: people whose opinions are like, you know, at least for
Speaker 3: ginger pairing, Like there are instruments that it probably deemed
Speaker 3: that men should use only as far as masculine or
Speaker 3: feminine whatever, like the women on drums really, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: like an adjustment pre nineteen eighties. But at all, did
Speaker 3: anyone ever discourage you, like, well, why don't you try
Speaker 3: the piano or maybe a guitar, violin, yeah, clarinet, Yeah.
Speaker 7: I don't you know, I don't know if anybody really
Speaker 7: ever discouraged me. And I was, you know, I was
Speaker 7: confident at a young age, so like, I think what
Speaker 7: tells us story about that? For me, the best is
Speaker 7: when I met Buddy Rich for the first time. I
Speaker 7: was ten. I was a guest with Clark Terry nice
Speaker 7: to you. Well, that was the thing. Everybody said, stay
Speaker 7: away from him, he's in a really bad mood. And
Speaker 7: I didn't care, and I went up to him anyway,
Speaker 7: And so then somebody stepped in and said, well, let
Speaker 7: me introduce you to young Terry. She's a guest with
Speaker 7: Clark Terry. And he said, oh, yeah, you better not
Speaker 7: be any good. And I just looked at him and said, well,
Speaker 7: who's going to stop me?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 7: And then he said he kind of took a step back,
Speaker 7: and then he said, you want to come play with
Speaker 7: my band? Oh? You see what I mean? Flax flax? No,
Speaker 7: but it well, it wasn't that it was beautiful flax.
Speaker 7: Well yeah, because I think it's how you're raised and
Speaker 7: I was raised that this is my music.
Speaker 5: Where did that confidence come from? Terry? Like, do you remember,
Speaker 5: like did your parents something say to you? Like the
Speaker 5: impetus of that, Like, I think.
Speaker 7: It's who you are. And that's why I do so
Speaker 7: much gender equity work now because every woman shouldn't have
Speaker 7: to be like me. I would go ahead to head
Speaker 7: with any man, you know what I mean. And I'm
Speaker 7: not intimidated by anyone. I can be I can be shy,
Speaker 7: and I can be insecure. Of course, we're all insecure.
Speaker 7: If I was playing a gig next to you, I
Speaker 7: would be insecure, especially if I had to play groove,
Speaker 7: I'd be like, oh man, he's sitting next to me.
Speaker 3: Damn, you're talking about sugar Steve and his engineering skills.
Speaker 7: What I'm just saying, No, I'm serious, And so I'm
Speaker 7: just saying that doesn't mean I think you can be
Speaker 7: confident and that be a part of your personality, which
Speaker 7: doesn't mean there's these other things that you know aren't
Speaker 7: there as well. But you shouldn't have to be like
Speaker 7: me to make it, you know, and you shouldn't have
Speaker 7: to have that kind of personality as a woman to
Speaker 7: to have the opportunity or the access or mentorship or apprenticeships.
Speaker 7: And so that's you know, when I realized that. That's
Speaker 7: when I because I had been looking at women saying, well,
Speaker 7: what do you mean just do it? You know, like,
Speaker 7: what do you mean just later for them? You know,
Speaker 7: like something discourage you, that should give you more impetus
Speaker 7: to you know, And then I realized, you know, they
Speaker 7: have a nervous breakdowns and shit, you know, like, so
Speaker 7: I had to look at it differently.
Speaker 5: Because everybody doesn't have a foundation.
Speaker 6: Because you still had some type of foundation to let
Speaker 6: you know that that is the way to think, and
Speaker 6: these women didn't have that.
Speaker 7: So and they don't need to. That's the whole thing.
Speaker 7: We're all different, you know, we don't have to be.
Speaker 7: I was nothing around nothing but men playing, you know,
Speaker 7: for a long time, and so I ended up kind
Speaker 7: of acting like them, you know, and not be you know,
Speaker 7: having a problem being around man all the time. So
Speaker 7: I think that, you know, we should celebrate our differences.
Speaker 7: And what does a woman's aesthetic sound like in the music?
Speaker 7: You know, I think that's the question we should start
Speaker 7: to ask.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever went public on record with
Speaker 3: In high school, I once had a masterclass kind of
Speaker 3: session with a well known patriarch of jazz music.
Speaker 4: I guess you could say he was a total dick.
Speaker 3: And you know, that's actually where I was leaning towards it.
Speaker 3: Like especially, there's a there's a generation of cats who
Speaker 3: were sort of in the game in the fifties and
Speaker 3: the sixties and the seventies, who you know, don't mince
Speaker 3: words at all, they don't suffer any fools. They're very
Speaker 3: blatant and honest or whatever. And this guy just tore
Speaker 3: me up, man like everything. I didn't even get on
Speaker 3: the set, and he just looked at the loud shirt
Speaker 3: I was wearing, look at my hair. It's like, oh, see,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't hire you because your hair is just like
Speaker 3: a girl's right now, you know, with that with them
Speaker 3: snakes in your hair or whatever.
Speaker 4: And like he was just going in and.
Speaker 3: I remember like after that day, that day, I like
Speaker 3: distinctively remember like I'm not going the young lion route
Speaker 3: because you know, I went to school with Christian McBride
Speaker 3: and Joey at Performing Arts High School, and so I
Speaker 3: was on that that sort of track every day trying
Speaker 3: to keep up with those two and become a young lion, like,
Speaker 3: you know, because all those cats in Philly were just
Speaker 3: like even in high school, like doing sessions and what
Speaker 3: I you know, I had the opposite reaction.
Speaker 4: I actually that kind of like just got in my.
Speaker 3: Head and you know, maybe like a year later, that's
Speaker 3: when I decided, Okay, I'm gonna go to the roots
Speaker 3: route because you know, he told me that I don't
Speaker 3: look like a serious jazz cat, and you know it's
Speaker 3: I'm I'm I'm glad you can buy him, right.
Speaker 7: I love to say, where was you? No?
Speaker 4: No this this?
Speaker 3: You know, this guy's a legacy god in the world
Speaker 3: of jazz right now, you know, no longer with us.
Speaker 7: But you don't want to you don't want to name
Speaker 7: his name.
Speaker 4: You know, hey, dog Ellis Marcellus, I'll just let it out.
Speaker 7: Well, I just mean, you know, he was, you know,
Speaker 7: very kind to me. Actually he coached us once.
Speaker 4: But I feel like you're a disarming person.
Speaker 3: I feel like at the age of ten, you were
Speaker 3: very disarming with anyone that you met, you know, that
Speaker 3: would encourage you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I think that that's helped, you know, with
Speaker 7: the gender equity work now, because I'll get a lot
Speaker 7: of older musicians calling me saying, you know, I guess
Speaker 7: I've been an old fart or you know, thanks for
Speaker 7: pointing this out. But you know, the bottom line is
Speaker 7: he shouldn't have to be that, and people should recognize
Speaker 7: what they're doing. And there are a lot of older
Speaker 7: musicians that basically bought into this, you know, patriarchy and
Speaker 7: brought brought into the hyper masculinity. And what I'm finding
Speaker 7: is there's a lot of young musicians from teaching at Berkeley,
Speaker 7: a lot of young male musicians that aren't digging the
Speaker 7: hyper masculinity. So they actually come to our institute because
Speaker 7: some people get it twisted and think that our institute
Speaker 7: is for women musicians or non binary musicians. It's a
Speaker 7: space that they can come and make mistakes and learn
Speaker 7: the music without having their guard up. But we have
Speaker 7: about fifty percent young men in our institute as well
Speaker 7: because they're rejecting the hyper masculinity in jazz as well.
Speaker 7: And I think that we're really seeing a turning point
Speaker 7: right now. It's starting to really shift, and I think
Speaker 7: that the music needs that for it to live up
Speaker 7: to its full potential.
Speaker 6: So let me ask you as a professor, then this
Speaker 6: is about the patriarchy, because how do you since it
Speaker 6: was an art form built on that, doesn't it come
Speaker 6: to a certain point where you're at an impact ask
Speaker 6: and explaining and you know, because I feel like we're
Speaker 6: in this point too of sometimes either that's what it
Speaker 6: was and we're trying to change it, or how do
Speaker 6: we make that still legendary even though that was a problem,
Speaker 6: Like how do we keep that?
Speaker 7: You know, the patriarchy was patriarchy was never good. It
Speaker 7: wasn't good for anybody, right, It's white, white male patriarchy
Speaker 7: to be specific. But you know, I think that the
Speaker 7: oppressed learned how to oppress without trying. It's just you know,
Speaker 7: that's what happens, and I felt I feel like this
Speaker 7: was you know, this is just you know, my opinion,
Speaker 7: but I feel like jazz was a space for black
Speaker 7: men to uh, you know, really feel freedom, right black
Speaker 7: men exactly, you know, because I mean, well, you go back.
Speaker 7: You know, I've talked to Angela Davis about this and
Speaker 7: different people, because when slavery ended, you know, black people
Speaker 7: couldn't travel, right, they you couldn't go anywhere. And then
Speaker 7: when slavery ended and there was a little bit of freedom,
Speaker 7: the first one I think that people took advantage of
Speaker 7: was being able to move, you know, being able to
Speaker 7: to go to another town and you know, whether you're
Speaker 7: playing on the street or in a juke joint or
Speaker 7: wherever you could bring your guitar and you could. But
Speaker 7: it wasn't safe still for women to do that, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 7: And these places were not places respectable women should women
Speaker 7: should be in.
Speaker 6: But they were there enjoying the music though they.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but not all women, you know, brothels and the
Speaker 7: music was in these places. So yeah, so it was
Speaker 7: that's what the music kind of where it was birthed, right,
Speaker 7: So it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't spaces necessarily for
Speaker 7: women to discover their artistic uh you know, the discover
Speaker 7: that they could actually do this. So they were always
Speaker 7: off to the side in the house, in the church wherever,
Speaker 7: you know, and of course playing piano. And that's why
Speaker 7: I think that's so acceptable. You know, women always play
Speaker 7: piano in the house in the church.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: So then when women started traveling and getting into you know,
Speaker 7: music and the blues, a lot of it was as singers, right,
Speaker 7: as vocalist. Then you have like you know, Bessie Smith
Speaker 7: and Mamie Smith and you know, some of the first
Speaker 7: blues women my Rainy, but they became also like sexualized,
Speaker 7: and they had you know, they were entertainers. You know,
Speaker 7: it wasn't necessarily as considered serious work. Musicians were doing
Speaker 7: the serious. You know. It was like, let's commodify this.
Speaker 7: We can commodify this, you know, woman standing up front
Speaker 7: singing the blues more than we can commodify the dude
Speaker 7: with the guitar kind of singing the blues. So those
Speaker 7: blues singers, the women, they sold more records, you know,
Speaker 7: but Bessie Smith was selling Yeah. So my point is
Speaker 7: it started off like that and you know. Then later,
Speaker 7: of course, in the forties, when the war happened, all
Speaker 7: the women emerged playing because so many men were gone.
Speaker 7: What blows my mind is that when they came back
Speaker 7: from the war, it seemed like the women disappeared, you know,
Speaker 7: it came back to the you know, those practices, and
Speaker 7: none of this really, you know, surprises me. Like when
Speaker 7: I look up, I was ignorant to the story of
Speaker 7: Liberia and I just kind of found out about that
Speaker 7: the return. Yeah yeah. And like when I saw some
Speaker 7: footage of all the black people with the top hats
Speaker 7: and looking trying to look British and then colonizing basically
Speaker 7: the Africans, I'm like, well, why would I expect anything
Speaker 7: different in jazz? I mean, you know what I mean,
Speaker 7: it's kind of we're in music. You know, it's like
Speaker 7: you're oppressed. You just like that, you take that nature, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 7: without even knowing it's wrong sometimes.
Speaker 4: So do you feel like the age.
Speaker 3: Of the abusive, like and where we are now, like
Speaker 3: hip hop is is changing where you know, there's a
Speaker 3: sort of like a slow seed change of a lot
Speaker 3: of toxic attitudes that were long associated with hip hop.
Speaker 3: You know, we're now just starting to see the seeds
Speaker 3: of it growing, and you know, I will will assume
Speaker 3: that if it's still a thing in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 3: twenty fifties, twenty sixty, that we'll see a total turnaround.
Speaker 3: But like kind of the the age of the abusive
Speaker 3: actor and Whiplash.
Speaker 4: Oh whipla J K.
Speaker 3: Simmons, How abusive he was?
Speaker 4: Whiplash? When you see Matt it was? Was that to you?
Speaker 4: Was it triggering?
Speaker 7: Yeah? I didn't see Whiplash, you know what.
Speaker 3: Everyone when Whiplash came out, Literally everyone asked me about it.
Speaker 7: People one about the drummer too, right, the one that
Speaker 7: was lost his hearing. I didn't see that was the
Speaker 7: one with your boy.
Speaker 4: Uh about to say Freddie Mercury.
Speaker 7: Uh, yeah, but I saw that.
Speaker 4: The sound of metal that's the name of that movie,
Speaker 4: is amazing. That is great.
Speaker 7: Yeah. I have so many thoughts, you know about that,
Speaker 7: But the first one that just came to my mind is, damn,
Speaker 7: how do I say this politically correct? I just mean, like,
Speaker 7: you know, I'm not so attracted to uh, you know,
Speaker 7: white dude suffering from some drum lessons. It just feels
Speaker 7: a little like.
Speaker 4: This god damn from the book of.
Speaker 7: Trauma by Trauma. I just mean, like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 7: so like for me, like there's a lot more suffering
Speaker 7: that I'm gonna focus on if I spend any part
Speaker 7: of my days dealing with that. I'm glad they made
Speaker 7: a movie and the drums are in it and that
Speaker 7: people liked it. But you know, he could walk away
Speaker 7: probably a lot easier than you know, somebody else. And
Speaker 7: he actually, if you know, historically he has all the
Speaker 7: tools to you know, fight back a little more than
Speaker 7: some of us. So I don't know, but anyway, uh,
Speaker 7: just as far as that whole method of teaching, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 7: this this of course, like I had like a well
Speaker 7: known drummer who's passed away and who was my teacher,
Speaker 7: and he threw a book at me once. But he said,
Speaker 7: you know, he was frustrated with his career and he
Speaker 7: quit teaching right after that. He was teaching at Berkeley,
Speaker 7: and he said, you're playing my ship. You're not supposed
Speaker 7: to play my ship.
Speaker 5: And then he that, yeah, you know, because I was
Speaker 5: just thinking that's got to be something for.
Speaker 7: All these Yeah, I mean it's okay because I saw
Speaker 7: him and we you know, I had a beautiful time
Speaker 7: hanging out before, you know, shortly before he passed and
Speaker 7: he was living in Europe and it was Keith Copeland.
Speaker 7: Uh you know, so it's like I didn't even I
Speaker 7: loved him, and I felt like he loved me, and
Speaker 7: I never I think my parents were a little more
Speaker 7: upset about it than me, you know, because I just
Speaker 7: I shrugged it off, you know, that was I think
Speaker 7: that's been my way. And that's another thing I just
Speaker 7: wanted to point out, since we're talking about it, everything
Speaker 7: that's happened, like anything negative, I've had to shrug it off.
Speaker 7: For me, I had to just act like it didn't happen,
Speaker 7: to keep moving and you know, beating in my brain
Speaker 7: double that's not gonna stop me, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 7: and so then you look back and it's hard, you know,
Speaker 7: you start thinking, like when I started playing with Esperanza
Speaker 7: and Jerry Allen, they started talking about, oh, this feels good,
Speaker 7: like this is a space where man, I can let
Speaker 7: my hair down. I don't have you know, I'm not
Speaker 7: what's the word. Uh, you know, there's a like a
Speaker 7: protective layer face armor. Well, I was trying to think
Speaker 7: of how es Browns will put it, and she just
Speaker 7: started talking about an armor that she was able to
Speaker 7: let go of, and then Jerry was agreeing, and I
Speaker 7: was only once sitting there saying hmmm, like really, oh okay, cool, Well,
Speaker 7: whatever works for you. It took me years after that
Speaker 7: to understand, oh, I have those issues too, but I
Speaker 7: just sweep him under the rug so well that I
Speaker 7: don't deal with it because it's just it's not useful
Speaker 7: to me.
Speaker 5: I thought you were like the most free individual I
Speaker 5: ever met.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was about to say, this is very unusual.
Speaker 7: Yeah, what do you mean.
Speaker 3: No, I'm just saying, so many people plant seeds, and
Speaker 3: you know, they plant seeds of doubt in your head
Speaker 3: and you live with it. And I just love the
Speaker 3: fact that that wasn't even like you just duct it
Speaker 3: like a boxer.
Speaker 5: But it goes somewhere, exactly, It goes somewhere. And that's
Speaker 5: what she's saying. That's why I know.
Speaker 6: That's why I take back what I said, because I'm like, oh,
Speaker 6: she puts it somewhere.
Speaker 5: It ain't.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I mean I wasn't conscious of it though,
Speaker 7: because you know, you know what I'm saying, and so
Speaker 7: that's just a layer. That is the way I see it.
Speaker 7: It's just hard enough to learn how to play music,
Speaker 7: any kind of music, but jazz. I mean, it's really
Speaker 7: fucking hard, right, So who wants that extra burden? Who
Speaker 7: wants that extra layer of Oh? And I have to
Speaker 7: deal with this, you know, like somebody hit on you know,
Speaker 7: I don't. I don't get hit on a whole lot,
Speaker 7: you know, without wanting to. But you know, if a
Speaker 7: band leader hit on me in the middle of a
Speaker 7: rehearsal or you know, I would just be like, oh man, really, well,
Speaker 7: you know, fantasies are good, Let's go back to playing,
Speaker 7: you know whatever. And I never thought for one minute
Speaker 7: I'm thinking of somebody, and I'll say it, it was
Speaker 7: Stan Getz. And I never thought for a minute that
Speaker 7: it meant that I would lose the gig. And then
Speaker 7: when I start talking to these young people, all of
Speaker 7: that is going through their brain.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, all of us going through their brain. And
Speaker 5: they're not standing for it.
Speaker 7: Well no, but now, but I'm talking about five ten
Speaker 7: years ago.
Speaker 5: You know, we just had to suck it out.
Speaker 7: You just suck you just yeah, you just they were wondering, well,
Speaker 7: what do I do like you know, am I going
Speaker 7: to lose the gig or you know how? And they
Speaker 7: start thinking I realized, Wow, that never crossed my mind.
Speaker 7: I told him, you know how to let's go with rehearse,
Speaker 7: you know, and it never crossed my mind that he
Speaker 7: would hold it against me.
Speaker 6: So that means technically, you've never been disappointed by your
Speaker 6: heroes in that way.
Speaker 7: Oh maybe not in that way, you know, not. I mean,
Speaker 7: you know, I'm sorry, I just had a flashback. But
Speaker 7: even that, you know, like if somebody, you know, you
Speaker 7: you know, somebody's over your house, you come out and
Speaker 7: they're like sitting there naked or something, you know, even
Speaker 7: that would make me laugh, you know.
Speaker 5: I know, it depends on the legend. It could be
Speaker 5: real sad though Terry. It could be like, damn, come
Speaker 5: on man.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but you know, there's a lot of love and
Speaker 7: I think that black women have historically taken in consideration
Speaker 7: all these things. And I'm like, as long as I
Speaker 7: don't feel like, you know, you're about to physically harm me,
Speaker 7: then I'm not really worried about it, you know. But
Speaker 7: what I'm what I keep trying to say is you
Speaker 7: shouldn't have to be that way. She shouldn't have to
Speaker 7: go through the extra burden, and that's what I will
Speaker 7: then take somebody down for. So I have to talk
Speaker 7: myself off a ledge now all the time. But that's
Speaker 7: for other people. For some of my students, I'm like,
Speaker 7: they say what and I'm like, trying to go to
Speaker 7: the runt of the school and beat somebody down. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 7: we can't do that, right, you know, I got to, like,
Speaker 7: now try to intelligently talk to this person or use language.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Terry, I always wanted to know, simply
Speaker 3: because I'm I'm I'm so drenched in hip hop.
Speaker 4: I have to be a shape shifter.
Speaker 3: In other words, any track I hear, my first question
Speaker 3: I'm asking is how would DJ Premier program this, or
Speaker 3: how would see FERRONI drum on this?
Speaker 4: Or how would Tony Williams play this or whatever?
Speaker 3: So oftentimes, you know, I'm shape shifting kind of in
Speaker 3: the name of being a human sampler. But when you're
Speaker 3: starting to drum, who is the who's the drummer? Who
Speaker 3: sound that you were most attracted to when you first
Speaker 3: started based on you know, you left Arcinio a thing
Speaker 3: in eighty nine, so based on your simple work. Always
Speaker 3: thought that Tony Williams might have been in your North Star.
Speaker 3: But you know, for you, who were your three gods
Speaker 3: of drumming that you had in your mind when you
Speaker 3: were drumming.
Speaker 7: Well, at the end of the day, it became well,
Speaker 7: let me see, when I was eighteen seventeen, it was
Speaker 7: Jack de Jeannette and he became my biggest mentor. I
Speaker 7: purposely stayed away from trying to mimic Tony Williams and
Speaker 7: Elsen Jones to a degree too, because their styles are
Speaker 7: so individual that if I hear somebody playing like them,
Speaker 7: it sounds like a caricature of them more than anybody else,
Speaker 7: I think, because their styles are so strong.
Speaker 3: So even when you're playing with Herbie or Wayne or Combo,
Speaker 3: it's the temptation to not.
Speaker 4: Go there doesn't hit you at all, no.
Speaker 7: It Unfortunately, when I played with Herbie, especially in the
Speaker 7: earlier years, well see the thing is, you know I
Speaker 7: played in six or seven different bands of Herbie's, so
Speaker 7: you know he's supporting, yeah, exactly. So it was the first,
Speaker 7: the first long, you know, term gig I had with him.
Speaker 7: We were supporting this is the drum, and then I
Speaker 7: had to play these grooves like with uh, with computers,
Speaker 7: you know, which I had never done. Uh, and then uh,
Speaker 7: you know, Trio Quartet and then Gersha was well just
Speaker 7: those were more acoustic. But then the The Future of
Speaker 7: the Future, which you know, was more It had you know,
Speaker 7: some hybrid hip hop stuff in there as well, but
Speaker 7: it was all, you know, mostly grooves. So when I
Speaker 7: was playing straight ahead in the beginning, yeah, Tony Williams
Speaker 7: would creep out because I realized whenever I heard Herbie
Speaker 7: from all the records, it was mostly Tony playing with him.
Speaker 7: So that is the sound, you know, my spirit related
Speaker 7: to Hervey, which was interesting because he told me that
Speaker 7: Jack Deson it was his favorite drummer and that's like
Speaker 7: my guy, yeah yeah, back then, yeah, and that's my guys.
Speaker 4: So Tony.
Speaker 3: So Jackie's net was Tony's sort of north starts as
Speaker 3: far as.
Speaker 7: No, no, no, I'm saying, Herbie told me. Herbie said that
Speaker 7: that Jack was his favorite dramma overt. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 7: he told me. Wow, okay to play with this is
Speaker 7: you know, after you know, many years after that, plastic
Speaker 7: Miles David Quintest so he if you notice, I mean,
Speaker 7: he hired Jack on you know, some of his records.
Speaker 7: But anyway, so I thought, oh, this that's my guy.
Speaker 7: So I'm good. You know, that's great, that's who. That's
Speaker 7: my north star. But then once I started playing all this,
Speaker 7: Tony snuck in, you know, which is interesting just because
Speaker 7: having heard him with Herbie all those years.
Speaker 3: What is because a lot of the Jack stuff that
Speaker 3: I heard was more like fusing, like his seventies fusion
Speaker 3: work or whatever. How like for me, Tony is so
Speaker 3: heavy on symbol work that you automatically and his ability
Speaker 3: to stop time and just you know, for listeners today
Speaker 3: that you know, I guess you can say that sort
Speaker 3: of the way that Chris Dave's relationship with time, where
Speaker 3: you know, it doesn't exist in his world but it exists,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't exist. Tony was sort of you know
Speaker 3: that way straight ahead. But what do you think that
Speaker 3: Jack's trademark.
Speaker 7: Was, Well, I think I disagree a little bit about
Speaker 7: Tony in the time existing and not existing because I
Speaker 7: feel like, you know, Tony's beat was pretty, it was beautiful.
Speaker 7: It was so beautiful his time feel.
Speaker 4: Oh no, he would say on rhythm, but do all
Speaker 4: these counter rhythms that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, But that's to me mathematics, you know what I mean,
Speaker 7: Like the counter rhythms, it's polyrhythms. There's things that work
Speaker 7: within the structure of a beat. And so what attracted
Speaker 7: me to Jack was the opposite of that, you know,
Speaker 7: of the time being elastic and like hear him on
Speaker 7: this all it's slinky like a snake. You know, it's
Speaker 7: in his touch. You know, I can tell Jack within
Speaker 7: a second of hearing him, you know, on any recording,
Speaker 7: because it's his touch. Any great drummer, you're right, it's
Speaker 7: the rise symbol. You know, any great jazz drummer, their
Speaker 7: their identity lives in their rise symbol. Now, some people
Speaker 7: like Tony, like a lot of great drummers like Tony,
Speaker 7: like Art Blakey, Max Rusch. Also part of their identity
Speaker 7: is what they've you know, developed soloing, so their their licks.
Speaker 7: There are things that are signature, right, So there are
Speaker 7: signature licks that you can say that Art Blakey, or
Speaker 7: Tony Williams or Philly Joe Jones. But with Jack it's
Speaker 7: not really signature licks. There's no licks. It's like it's
Speaker 7: all more organic and the same thing. All my favorite drummers,
Speaker 7: Roy Haynes. It all begins and ends with Roy Haynes.
Speaker 7: He's the hippos. Jaz I was, I was so glad.
Speaker 6: She said that, Oh God, my dad would be so glad.
Speaker 6: She said that, I just want to say this real quick.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, I mean to interrupt y'all, but for some
Speaker 6: of us, eighty nine is when you ended our Senio.
Speaker 6: It's a whole generation of other folks that go from
Speaker 6: my father who go little Terry that was Rory Haynes's
Speaker 6: protag and all that. So it was just for me,
Speaker 6: I'm continue on Terry Ipoplois.
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, it's beautiful, you know, just a sidebar. His
Speaker 7: son sent me a video last night of his granddaughter daughter,
Speaker 7: which would be Roy's great granddaughter. They had been asking
Speaker 7: if she had been asking for sticks, and he finally
Speaker 7: about this little kid. She's three little kids set and
Speaker 7: sticks and it was the first time you ever held
Speaker 7: a pair of sticks. And she was like and she
Speaker 7: ended and flipped the sticks and put him under her arm.
Speaker 7: He was like, you're the first person I'm sending.
Speaker 4: This to for our listeners that don't know. Roy Haynes
Speaker 4: is probably.
Speaker 3: The the elder statesman. I think between him Roy is
Speaker 3: ninety seven or ninety eight, still playing, still playing like
Speaker 3: forty something. Yes, that's crazy, like it's nothing, you know,
Speaker 3: and you know and and with and his son Graham
Speaker 3: and and whatever like literally.
Speaker 6: Yes, just mentioned he taught my dad too. That's why
Speaker 6: he's so important to him to geniuses.
Speaker 7: Who's your dad?
Speaker 6: His name is Ron Saint Clair. But my dad had
Speaker 6: a nephew that he taught named Dennis Davis.
Speaker 7: So we're just a fan. Yes, yeah, dunnis to play
Speaker 7: with Stevie.
Speaker 4: Yes self slaying me. Were you part of the in
Speaker 4: bass circle?
Speaker 7: Yeah? I was there when Steve named it, like he said,
Speaker 7: I came up with this thing, you know, macro dash
Speaker 7: basic array of structural extis. I was like, good luck,
Speaker 7: let's see if that's going anyway.
Speaker 4: I did I know BASE was an acronym.
Speaker 7: What is it for macro ah Basic array of structural
Speaker 7: extemporizations deep? But yeah, we have a We did a
Speaker 7: record which I think was really the beginning of M
Speaker 7: BASE that never came out. It was for Gramma Vision.
Speaker 7: It was Graham, the horn section was Graham, greg osby
Speaker 7: Steve and h Whoman missed and it was four Robin
Speaker 7: You Banks and then the rhythm section was Vernon Reed,
Speaker 7: Jerry Allen, Me and Kevin Harris. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh man, you just opened up a door because I
Speaker 3: had a manager who was one of the top jazz
Speaker 3: DJs at Temple RTI in Philadelphia, and you know, in
Speaker 3: his mind, like m base was the future, which is
Speaker 3: the reason why like a lot of MBASE, including like
Speaker 3: Cassandra and everybody like was on our first view records.
Speaker 3: Did you at the time when you're in this movement,
Speaker 3: did you feel as though, like, Okay, we are the
Speaker 3: new generation, we're the native tongues. We're gonna you know,
Speaker 3: push forward. How much pushback at the time from like
Speaker 3: jazz traditionalists were you getting?
Speaker 7: H Well, you know when that started, Like I moved
Speaker 7: shortly thereafter to La to do the Arsenial Hall. So
Speaker 7: actually I was moving anyway, and then I got the show,
Speaker 7: and that just made my move have to happen. In
Speaker 7: a week, I was out there looking for apartments. I
Speaker 7: was staying with Patris Russian.
Speaker 3: And what was the aficial process, Like, you just dropped
Speaker 3: a lot in that one sentence.
Speaker 5: You sure did. He has another former guest of Quest
Speaker 5: left Spree.
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, yeah, So I was playing with Wayne Shorter
Speaker 7: at the time, so, and Diane Reeves was my best friend.
Speaker 7: She lived in LA. I met her at that same
Speaker 7: time when I clarke Terry. So she was nineteen and
Speaker 7: I was ten. We were both guessed with Clark that
Speaker 7: time when I told you about the Buddy Rich store.
Speaker 7: So when I went to LA and you know, with
Speaker 7: hers with Wayne we went to Japan, I would just
Speaker 7: stop in LA and stay for a while and stay
Speaker 7: with Diane and then in Patrise and Patrise she was
Speaker 7: on joy Rider, you know, with us. So it was
Speaker 7: around that time, and so the three of them convinced
Speaker 7: me to move to LA. So this was the end
Speaker 7: of eighty eight. So I went right around Thanksgiving to
Speaker 7: LA and looked for an apartment. And then somehow it
Speaker 7: was Nary, Michael Walden and Patrise maybe one other person
Speaker 7: that recommended me for the Arsenio Hall show. And so
Speaker 7: I went in and I just played a couple of
Speaker 7: tunes with them and I got the gig. But they
Speaker 7: were like, you got to be back here next week
Speaker 7: we start taping, you know, we start next week the
Speaker 7: day after New Year's Uh. So I had a week
Speaker 7: to go home and pack up in Fort Green and
Speaker 7: it was to Glendale, California. But yeah, I stayed with
Speaker 7: Patrise while I was looking. So the audition process wasn't
Speaker 7: very I don't even know how many drummers they had
Speaker 7: they had audition.
Speaker 4: Uh Sanders, okay, keep play funk, play jazz.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and you know, Michael Wolf was there. It wasn't
Speaker 7: it wasn't any heavy funk, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: It wasn't any Yeah, but it was a good, great experience,
Speaker 7: you know, and I feel like it set me up,
Speaker 7: you know, more for doing the Vibe TV show with
Speaker 7: great filling games, and that was you know more more
Speaker 7: of of a band that could play with anybody. So
Speaker 7: like we played with James Brown, we played with Aliyah,
Speaker 7: we played with Destiny's Child, we played with uh, I
Speaker 7: don't know, Rick, James, we played with you know, just
Speaker 7: a lot of It was an amazing experience playing with
Speaker 7: all those people, whereas the first one we didn't really
Speaker 7: play with that many people that came on. But you
Speaker 7: were saying something else I fell down. Uh. So what
Speaker 7: happened was they were moving on. And when I look
Speaker 7: back and like when that record we made, everybody had
Speaker 7: to bring in a song, and Steve had made this
Speaker 7: like kind of criteria for the music of it not
Speaker 7: being straight ahead and having you know, rhythms or grooves
Speaker 7: kind of from more modern because he was into James Brown,
Speaker 7: but you know, more modern grooves but with harmony and
Speaker 7: stuff moving like jazz but not necessarily in the traditional
Speaker 7: kind of two five to one way, and things that
Speaker 7: weren't in that kind of form, like no aaba forms
Speaker 7: and that kind of thing. Right, So what I wrote
Speaker 7: was more poppish, so to say, and if you if
Speaker 7: you would listen to it, like my song was the
Speaker 7: outlier on the record because I listened to everything he said,
Speaker 7: and I did everything literally in these little sections odd
Speaker 7: time signatures or whatever. But it really pointed to something
Speaker 7: more commercial, so to say, than they're writing and you know,
Speaker 7: I know so many it was like a potpourria music,
Speaker 7: which was probably good that the record never came out.
Speaker 7: But so I didn't feel so connected. I feel like
Speaker 7: I was there in the beginning, but I wasn't super connected,
Speaker 7: and I was playing with Wayne and I was really
Speaker 7: just trying to do that gig because I hadn't really
Speaker 7: played a fusion gig, like when I auditioned for Wayne.
Speaker 7: It was fourteen drummers, and you know, I got the
Speaker 7: gig somehow, and that was my first real foray into
Speaker 7: just you know, playing group stuff. But I had been listening,
Speaker 7: of course, to Weather Report and all of that, and
Speaker 7: you know, coming up, I mean Arsen when the Fire
Speaker 7: was my favorite band. You had asked earlier if I
Speaker 7: was listening to all this other music. I mean, I
Speaker 7: remember the first place I was when I heard Go
Speaker 7: Go at a party.
Speaker 5: Excuse me, where'd you hear Go Go? At a party
Speaker 5: in West Medford?
Speaker 7: In Medford?
Speaker 6: Well, I said there was a black community. See it's not,
Speaker 6: but it's so go Go is so localized. That's why
Speaker 6: I'm like it made it up there.
Speaker 7: Okay, yeah, of course, yeah chuck frown. And then I
Speaker 7: remember the first time, you know, I was at another
Speaker 7: one of those parties. You know, I heard rappers delight.
Speaker 7: You know, it was my first introduction to hip hop.
Speaker 7: I didn't know what was happening before that, but yeah,
Speaker 7: you know, so like I was listening to all of
Speaker 7: that stuff coming up, and you know, just as a sidebar,
Speaker 7: I was in B Street, so I feel like I was.
Speaker 4: Actually stop, stop, come back.
Speaker 1: You did know that no, yeah.
Speaker 7: I'll say to a little clip. It was just like
Speaker 7: a quick cameo.
Speaker 4: But wait when they were doing the ballet thing on stage. Yep.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but I was brought in from Medford, Massachusetts by
Speaker 7: Harry Belafonto to play like this little drum fill.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry these sentences are so compound that you give.
Speaker 7: My hair.
Speaker 5: Belafonte for the Beach Street came.
Speaker 7: Because, yeah, because he was the producer of Beach Street
Speaker 7: and was playing in his band. So I had made
Speaker 7: an album that's actually gonna come out forty years now
Speaker 7: with Kenny Baron, Bussell Williams and George Coleman, and I
Speaker 7: was I was sixteen at a time, so we had
Speaker 7: just done it. So at this point now I'm seventeen
Speaker 7: and uh, Diane came to Boston with Harry. So I
Speaker 7: hadn't seen her since this Witchita vessel when I was ten.
Speaker 7: So we had a big reunion and she I gave
Speaker 7: her this tape of my album. It was a green
Speaker 7: cassette tap and she gave it to Harry and then
Speaker 7: out of the blue, he just called and we thought
Speaker 7: it was a joke. You know, there's a couple of
Speaker 7: people that called. We thought it was a joke. Benny
Speaker 7: Goodman call once too. We definitely thought that was a joker.
Speaker 7: It was, and them like yeah with Harry though.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we were coming from you are making the wrong
Speaker 6: movies around the wrong people.
Speaker 5: I'm like, when is this movie?
Speaker 3: Literally I'm literally okay, I'm watching the scene right now.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I had to pull it up with my monitor.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: No, I was talking about Terry lynk care into movie
Speaker 6: about her life because it's r never in my whole
Speaker 6: there's never been, never never.
Speaker 7: It's just it's funny. It's yeah. Yeah, So I feel like,
Speaker 7: you know, like some weird in some weird way, that
Speaker 7: was you know, that was the word I'm looking for it.
Speaker 7: I was kind of predicting. You know, I've always felt
Speaker 7: connected to all the genres. You I've always been a
Speaker 7: bit of a bridge, you know, with all the genres
Speaker 7: because I mean, I'm a jazz head, of course, but
Speaker 7: I mean I went through many years when I lived
Speaker 7: in La saying, don't call me a jazz musician. You know,
Speaker 7: I'm just a musician. Then you know, I had to
Speaker 7: come back, you know, like my dad was like, you
Speaker 7: can't run away from who you are.
Speaker 5: And also you stay collaborating with folks.
Speaker 6: So I'm like, I know you still got your ear
Speaker 6: to the streets because you know, you still got folks
Speaker 6: like Rhapsody on Records and whatnot.
Speaker 7: So yeah, I'm doing an R now for a Candid
Speaker 7: which is an old label that John Burke and the
Speaker 7: team that he's with, Acceleration Music. They're by labels. They
Speaker 7: bought Alligator Records. They about Candidate about a hip hop
Speaker 7: label too. So I'm doing it, you know. So it's
Speaker 7: a dream that I always wanted. I always wanted to do.
Speaker 7: I read hit Man back in the day and I
Speaker 7: wanted to do an R. And one day I was
Speaker 7: walking and I said, well that's.
Speaker 4: When you know you've read hip Man and then still
Speaker 4: wanted to be in the industry.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, that was what I wanted to do.
Speaker 4: Light to be like, nah, don't don't come here.
Speaker 7: I wanted to you know, I wanted to be Clive Davis.
Speaker 7: I wanted to be you know, like and so I
Speaker 7: felt like, you know, there was only two black women
Speaker 7: you know that we're doing. We're doing that right, Suzanda
Speaker 7: Pass and Sylvia Rome. Yeah, so when people ask me
Speaker 7: about glass ceilings, that's what I say as a producer,
Speaker 7: as an R person, those are the places I felt
Speaker 7: more of a glass ceiling and playing the drums.
Speaker 6: Necessarily, like you ain't got the ears?
Speaker 7: Yeah, like like I've mean or like I'm in some
Speaker 7: little jazz box over here that you know, because I'm
Speaker 7: like all of those people were attorneys. They don't have
Speaker 7: no years on me.
Speaker 6: So what are you an r and for right now? Specifically?
Speaker 6: Like what do you what?
Speaker 7: You Well, the idea with Candida, and it's all relatively new,
Speaker 7: but is to try to find people that are really
Speaker 7: merging jazz with hip hop.
Speaker 5: And that's fun assignment, yeah.
Speaker 7: Exactly, but just it's a catalog label too, and we're
Speaker 7: not going to say no to certain cool records. So
Speaker 7: the first record that I got done happened to be
Speaker 7: a live record with Wayne Shorter, Esperanza and myself, and
Speaker 7: so that's gonna be coming out in September, I think.
Speaker 7: And then I have a new record that would be
Speaker 7: coming out on it too. And then the other person
Speaker 7: I signed was Morgan Garn who's been playing in my band.
Speaker 7: But he's like a program, dude. It's not necessarily hip hop,
Speaker 7: but it's like I don't know, it's kind of like
Speaker 7: if you took Wayne Shorter and had him like today
Speaker 7: and programming and using you know, all of the right
Speaker 7: things that are available today.
Speaker 3: You know, So I have so many questions. But since
Speaker 3: we're just going all over the place as a professor,
Speaker 3: coming full circle now back to Berkeley.
Speaker 4: Do you find yourself in a position?
Speaker 3: So the year that I left NYU, I did n
Speaker 3: YU for like four or five years, and my last
Speaker 3: year I kind of had an O ship moment when
Speaker 3: I realized that my students knew more than I did.
Speaker 3: You know, we were talking about I think my last class,
Speaker 3: I believe we taught about Thriller, and they had a
Speaker 3: lot of synth questions like synth choice questions that I
Speaker 3: had to do extra homework, and I realized, like, yo,
Speaker 3: these kids are smarter and shit like, they know more
Speaker 3: than I do as a professor, especially with where music
Speaker 3: is going. And now I don't know specifically the class
Speaker 3: that you're teaching at Berkeley, but you know, there's so
Speaker 3: many levels of musicianship as far as like gospel chop
Speaker 3: musicians and broken beat musicians. I guess now there's lo
Speaker 3: fi kind of that genre of music or whatever in
Speaker 3: your mind, not do you feel as if you have
Speaker 3: something to contribute, but do you sometimes feel like a
Speaker 3: stranger in a strange land With the way that musicianship
Speaker 3: is approached now. For instance, I have a member in
Speaker 3: my group right now who we don't know exactly how
Speaker 3: to describe what Stroe Elliott does where he plays a
Speaker 3: drum machine as if he is Taikowski, or like a
Speaker 3: piano player where he's playing samples and whatnot. So with
Speaker 3: this whole new generation of musicians there, like what is
Speaker 3: teaching a student at Berkeley in twenty twenty two henceforth,
Speaker 3: when it seems that now is the time when the
Speaker 3: rules are being just washed away and new rules are
Speaker 3: coming in.
Speaker 7: Well, I mean that's really interesting because that taps on
Speaker 7: a few things for me. I try to stay around
Speaker 7: young musicians. I mean, everybody in my band is younger
Speaker 7: than me, and people that wrote in a different way
Speaker 7: than than I do. And I'm talking about the Social
Speaker 7: Science band. So if you if you heard that record,
Speaker 7: I think it definitely pointed to something different than I
Speaker 7: would have been able to do on my own, you know,
Speaker 7: because of the writing and uh and the players you know,
Speaker 7: like Morgan and uh, and you know Matt and the
Speaker 7: ideas of mixing other genres, like you know, somebody like
Speaker 7: Matt Stevens mixes more indie rock, Aaron Parks is you know,
Speaker 7: like leads into classical composers. You know, Morgan's into you know,
Speaker 7: more of the kind of new school jazz. Uh. And
Speaker 7: then I had Casa Overall, who is not really with
Speaker 7: us any more. Kokaia's doing it, but Cosa uh, you
Speaker 7: know is definitely kind of into more cocaine, yeah, jazz
Speaker 7: me hip hop. So that I did was for me
Speaker 7: to recognize kind of like you know, Prince did, right,
Speaker 7: And Uh, that's my favorite part about Purple Rain is
Speaker 7: that Prince was like finally like, oh, like, you know,
Speaker 7: I need to in order for me to remain relevant,
Speaker 7: I have to let Wendy and Lisa write, you know.
Speaker 7: So for me that was kind of like my reckoning
Speaker 7: with I'm gonna do much better, you know, with this
Speaker 7: kind of collective. So I feel like I've always tried
Speaker 7: to keep my ear and my spirit to what's happening now,
Speaker 7: even though I can't do it like you know, like
Speaker 7: they do. You know, I never had gospel chops or
Speaker 7: something that I just never did it, never went to church,
Speaker 7: never you know, played in church, and never developed that
Speaker 7: kind of technique. And I don't really hear the drums
Speaker 7: like that. But I can't see how, you know, listening
Speaker 7: to this younger generation, how it has influenced me to
Speaker 7: some degree, you know. And so as far as the
Speaker 7: stranger strange land, I don't really feel that. I feel
Speaker 7: like I'm constantly being fed, you know, and it kind
Speaker 7: of you know, in the end, you know, comes up
Speaker 7: my way, and I still feel like I can comment,
Speaker 7: you know, on what they're doing.
Speaker 4: So you're still at Berkeley.
Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely, I'm always a student, always a student. But
Speaker 7: you know, what that also taps on, though, is how
Speaker 7: jazz education has screwed up jazz because what I'm dealing
Speaker 7: with mostly are people that come out of jazz programs.
Speaker 7: And now the people in the jazz programs are mostly affluent,
Speaker 7: you know, from certain cities. So I don't know, like
Speaker 7: it's all over really, but people that had programs in
Speaker 7: school and jazz was kind of more street music, you know,
Speaker 7: I mean it was from the people and their experience
Speaker 7: academia exactly. So the academia they started, you know, they
Speaker 7: were able to codify it in a way and then uh,
Speaker 7: you know, uh, what's the word make money from it?
Speaker 7: Monetizer monetize, But there was another word modify, commodify. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: And I feel like now to get into a school,
Speaker 7: you have to be on this certain level and have
Speaker 7: gone through this system, which is you know, is still
Speaker 7: dealing with you know, it's yes, it's prohibitive for a
Speaker 7: lot of people. Yeah, there's a racist, sexist system.
Speaker 5: You know, so income based what else?
Speaker 7: What I mean, that's why it's racist. Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's a certain side of musicianship that I'm seeing now
Speaker 3: with younger people in which they're able to do whatever,
Speaker 3: fly to the bumblebee levels of speed and and literally
Speaker 3: just packing everything in the first one minute, whereas where
Speaker 3: I tell them to do something like my dad had
Speaker 3: a trick where he would make musicians just play a ballot,
Speaker 3: play something very simple, and man, they will all fall apart,
Speaker 3: one by one.
Speaker 4: They would just like fall this like if.
Speaker 3: You ask them to play tea for two or chopsticks,
Speaker 3: it was like asking them to play rights to Spring.
Speaker 3: So as as a teacher, do you find it that
Speaker 3: more students are now in this We're in an era
Speaker 3: now where like your Instagram stories is fifteen seconds, like
Speaker 3: your TikTok is thirty seconds, Like you got to have
Speaker 3: all the impact of an entire performance in thirty seconds
Speaker 3: with you know, they don't believe that much in space
Speaker 3: or quietness anymore, like have is there such a thing
Speaker 3: as a drummer who just plays straight ahead and gives
Speaker 3: what's required?
Speaker 4: Or are you dealing with like.
Speaker 3: More gospel chops people that have to like have bells
Speaker 3: and whistles and firing, eating and everything.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I love it. Time field is the most important
Speaker 7: thing period right for a drummer, Like if you don't
Speaker 7: have a time field it feels good, then nothing else
Speaker 7: really matters, no matter what the genre, you know, and
Speaker 7: then it needs to be you know, I'm into playing
Speaker 7: free these days. You know, it's just kind of where
Speaker 7: my head is. But there's time in that, you know,
Speaker 7: it's not it's not like free means absolutely no time.
Speaker 7: And I think the people that play free the best
Speaker 7: of once they have good rhythm. But as far as
Speaker 7: the students are concerned, I don't teach drums anymore. I
Speaker 7: haven't done that in probably like six years or so.
Speaker 7: I just have ensembles and right now, I'm the artistic
Speaker 7: director of an institute, but I do have two ensembles
Speaker 7: in that institute, and so I'm just dealing with the
Speaker 7: overall sound of the of the group more than individuals.
Speaker 7: But it's the same thing with all the instruments.
Speaker 3: What you're saying, is that hard to convey now to
Speaker 3: a generation that feels like to me, all Star games
Speaker 3: are the most boringest games ever in basketball because you know,
Speaker 3: gonna try to show off, whereas a Golden State Warriors
Speaker 3: in Boston. Sorry, by the way, you know, it's literally
Speaker 3: about teammate and you putting in your twenty percent and
Speaker 3: him putting in his twenty percent and doing one hundred percent?
Speaker 3: Is that harder to convey on students now? As far
Speaker 3: as ensemble is concerned, well, I.
Speaker 7: Mean sometimes I'm actually asking them to play more because
Speaker 7: that's the part of me that is like old school
Speaker 7: and jazz, like you know, like you gotta like I'm
Speaker 7: finding that a lot of them can't play consecutive ace
Speaker 7: notes and construct lines that are interesting. You know, they've
Speaker 7: gone into this like moved into something else, and I
Speaker 7: think they're using too much space sometimes. Like what you're saying,
Speaker 7: I would have thought, like a little bit back in
Speaker 7: the day where everybody was just blazing all the time,
Speaker 7: and yeah, that's tiring. I get tired of listening after
Speaker 7: you know, a minute or two. That's why. That's another
Speaker 7: reason why I don't really listen too much or prefer
Speaker 7: to listen to the gospel chops drumming, because I'm bored
Speaker 7: after I you know, it's just I get bored, you know,
Speaker 7: because I'm not a geek, a drum geek, you know,
Speaker 7: So I don't really care about that. And I think
Speaker 7: at the end of the day, that's what your job is,
Speaker 7: to make the listener care, right, what is it that?
Speaker 7: Why do we even do this? You know? So if
Speaker 7: you feel like it's to make them groove that they care,
Speaker 7: you know, that's a level of care, right. But I
Speaker 7: also feel like, you know, kind of coming out of
Speaker 7: the way short of in Herbie Hancock book, I think
Speaker 7: it's about touching the humanity in them, you know, exploring
Speaker 7: what it is that you share in common. So how
Speaker 7: do I inspire you? That's my humanity relating to your humanity,
Speaker 7: and so that's where my head is. And so sometimes
Speaker 7: when I'm listening to some of these young musicians. I
Speaker 7: can't get past their sound, let alone the notes, you know,
Speaker 7: because there's nothing in there sound yet there's no pain,
Speaker 7: you know, I don't hear the joy, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean. So I try to get them to, you know,
Speaker 7: go back to the beginning. Like I remember once being
Speaker 7: on some I got honored and there was a I
Speaker 7: can't remember who it was, but there was a pro
Speaker 7: ball player, must have been for the Patriots, and because
Speaker 7: it was in a Boston event, and he said, and
Speaker 7: I'll never forget this because this is how I feel
Speaker 7: too it in music. But he said, you know, he
Speaker 7: was all star in college and then when he got
Speaker 7: to the Patriots, they said, now let us show you,
Speaker 7: you know, how to throw the ball or how to
Speaker 7: catch the ball. He had to like go back.
Speaker 5: He played it a little bit and.
Speaker 7: Burn go back to the basics. So for me, that's
Speaker 7: the same with sound, you know, like why is it
Speaker 7: Dwayne Shorter could play one note and break your heart?
Speaker 7: Like it's about what you're projecting, you know. So the
Speaker 7: greatest compliments I ever get is when somebody said, damn,
Speaker 7: somebody else just played that drum set. But then when
Speaker 7: you played it, like wow, you know, the sound changed,
Speaker 7: and that's when I know that's right, that's what because
Speaker 7: it's the sound is your spirit, right, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean?
Speaker 3: I would say probably the Mosaic project is one of
Speaker 3: your most beloved projects. Could you tell me about just
Speaker 3: the whole concept of doing that album and and gathering
Speaker 3: these uh these women together to do this album and
Speaker 3: how it came to fruition.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I did gig in Israel. I had a gig
Speaker 7: in Israel called Esperanza. It was the first time, well
Speaker 7: the second time we played together, and she was still
Speaker 7: like she had come out of Berkeley and started teaching
Speaker 7: at Berkeley, and that's when I met her her first
Speaker 7: year teaching. So I called her and Jerry Allen and
Speaker 7: a saxophone player from Hall and Tennka Postma. I realized
Speaker 7: I called three women for a gig just based on
Speaker 7: the way they played. I didn't realize that it was
Speaker 7: three women and this was going to be an all
Speaker 7: women quartet until after I had, you know, booked them.
Speaker 7: So it wasn't anything I was trying to do. I
Speaker 7: just wanted to play with the three of them, and
Speaker 7: I was like, Okay, this is a big deal for
Speaker 7: me because Throughout my whole career, people had asked me, oh,
Speaker 7: could you do this women's festival? Could he play with
Speaker 7: these women? And I was kind of like, you know,
Speaker 7: when I look at somebody like Mary L. Williams who
Speaker 7: didn't want to play with other women, she said, well,
Speaker 7: why would I want to play with them when I'm
Speaker 7: playing with the best, you know, And.
Speaker 5: I was wondering how you felt about this? Yes, okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: And so I shot away from it my entire career,
Speaker 7: and there was always be somebody like, you know, I
Speaker 7: played with Ingrid Jensen or you know, Rennie Robinson, with Wayne,
Speaker 7: with Bernard Wright, you know, Rest in Peace, and there
Speaker 7: was always a woman here or there, you know, Jerry
Speaker 7: Back with Mbase and before that actually, but never all together,
Speaker 7: you know, And I really shot away from it. So
Speaker 7: I did it, and then I said, this is a
Speaker 7: moment that I really want to celebrate and shine some
Speaker 7: light on. So I started with just the four of them,
Speaker 7: and then I just kept adding people and it just
Speaker 7: became like twenty one women and that's really just how
Speaker 7: it started. And I wasn't really trying to make any
Speaker 7: kind of political statement other than, oh, there are a
Speaker 7: lot of amazing women that play and let me just
Speaker 7: put through this record, you know.
Speaker 5: So this is how the sisterhood started?
Speaker 6: Then, because I want to ask you, is there a
Speaker 6: sisterhood in well, I was gonna say jazz. Really, of course,
Speaker 6: jazz when it comes to musicians, you know of a
Speaker 6: sisterhood that way.
Speaker 7: I mean, there is, But there's a lot of women
Speaker 7: that are playing jazz that still they think about it.
Speaker 7: How do I say, not as much like a sisterhood
Speaker 7: because you know, we're affected by the patriarchy too, right,
Speaker 7: So women are invested in it. Yeah, they don't want
Speaker 7: to play with other women because they feel like it's
Speaker 7: a step down. That's something.
Speaker 5: But as more greats are coming out of the fold,
Speaker 5: how does it be? How is it a step down?
Speaker 5: And to play with Terry Well.
Speaker 7: That's the well, I mean, that's the point that there's
Speaker 7: only going to happen. That's why I started apprenticeship program,
Speaker 7: the mentorship program New Music USA, because there's a lot
Speaker 7: of mentorship programs, but apprenticeship means you have to put
Speaker 7: them on the stage with you. And so we got
Speaker 7: a grant of one point two five million dollars to
Speaker 7: do this three year program. And we have a these
Speaker 7: six applicants this first year, and we picked seven and
Speaker 7: so like I did pairings and so some of the
Speaker 7: mentors are Bob McFerrin and Wayne Shorter and you know,
Speaker 7: watch the different people. But some of the apprenticeships are
Speaker 7: with Chris Potter, Linda Mayhanou Esmanza, Marcus Miller. He took
Speaker 7: one Alexis, which is great. She's having a blast playing
Speaker 7: with him. So I just feel like, I thought, how
Speaker 7: do we get more men to hire women, because if
Speaker 7: they don't really do it on their own because they
Speaker 7: need to, you know, they don't necessarily know that they
Speaker 7: need to contribute to this shift, how do we get them?
Speaker 7: So I said, pay them, you know, the.
Speaker 6: Men din women, then the women will start hiring women.
Speaker 7: You know what I mean is once you know, everybody
Speaker 7: has to be invested in gender equity because it's for
Speaker 7: the good of everybody. And I just felt like one
Speaker 7: way to get people interested is is have an affect
Speaker 7: their wallet. If they're getting a free musician and getting
Speaker 7: you know a little money on top of that, it
Speaker 7: might make it easier. And it's you know, so far
Speaker 7: kind of work. You know, this is our inaugural year.
Speaker 7: But anyway, I think that this last record, though, the
Speaker 7: Waiting Game is the one. It's the only one I
Speaker 7: can listen to. Let's put it like that. The other
Speaker 7: ones is I can't. I can't really listen to a
Speaker 7: Waiting Game. I could still listen to. So I think
Speaker 7: that's for me my favorite of all the elbows real
Speaker 7: because I don't cringe when I listen.
Speaker 3: So you're still like in your head about like I
Speaker 3: could have did that better, We could have did a
Speaker 3: big different take.
Speaker 7: Or yeah, or just sometimes like Mosaic Projects, the first one,
Speaker 7: I mean I like things on the second one too,
Speaker 7: but the Mosaic Project, I think that the playing is
Speaker 7: good overall. There's like some sound things, like you know,
Speaker 7: some production things that really both me. But you know,
Speaker 7: playing is good overall, but it's a little bit far
Speaker 7: away from where I am as a musician. There's a
Speaker 7: little bit of my writing that bothers me. You know that,
Speaker 7: I'm like, oh man, I could have really developed that
Speaker 7: idea much better, and I've improved as a writer since then,
Speaker 7: So that's what you know. But overall, I think, you know,
Speaker 7: the playing is okay.
Speaker 5: Oh so you're writing writing these lyrics on waiting game.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, you've been also singing on all of your records.
Speaker 3: That's you've sung on it since your first album, You've sung.
Speaker 7: Yeah, except this last one. I didn't, you know, way
Speaker 7: to give it, but I wrote all the lyrics, but
Speaker 7: I tried to sing a little bit.
Speaker 4: Man. You you got to.
Speaker 3: I guess bucket list check a project before she died,
Speaker 3: maybe like six months before Amy Winehouse died, she was
Speaker 3: stalking me daily telling me that her and I were
Speaker 3: going to redo Money Jungle and Money Yeah, the Money
Speaker 3: Money Jungle album from Duke Ellington and Max Wroton and
Speaker 3: Charles Minkus, the famous trio record.
Speaker 7: What I did that record?
Speaker 4: I know? And you wound up pulling it off.
Speaker 3: So we were planning me her and most Step and
Speaker 3: a few other musicians were going to cover.
Speaker 4: The entire album. Oh my god, right.
Speaker 3: And she passed away and ah, man, I was just heartbroken.
Speaker 3: And then a year and a half or for the
Speaker 3: for the fiftieth anniversary, you actually, what made you want
Speaker 3: to cover that entire album?
Speaker 4: Because when I see it, I was like, wow, what
Speaker 4: the hell?
Speaker 3: Like it came out? But I wasn't even mad at it.
Speaker 3: But what made you want to cover that album?
Speaker 7: You know, people ask me that all the time, and
Speaker 7: I don't know, it's just it haunted me. I don't
Speaker 7: know what made me choose it, other than it just
Speaker 7: kind of haunted me. And I started reading all these
Speaker 7: Duke Ellington biography books and and I was transcribing, you know,
Speaker 7: in the piano, and I realized these are all mostly
Speaker 7: blues based songs, probably the easiest stuff that Duke Ellington wrote.
Speaker 7: And I knew that it was as far as I
Speaker 7: could go, you know, like with transcribing Duke Ellington a trio.
Speaker 4: Record, you know, and that's the easiest.
Speaker 7: Yeah, this, and it wasn't complex, you know, in general.
Speaker 7: So uh, I kept flipping like, you know, some of
Speaker 7: the songs to the point it didn't sound like it
Speaker 7: so even you know, Christian said when he came in
Speaker 7: the session, he said, you know, you really could have
Speaker 7: just called most of these songs something else, you know,
Speaker 7: but you know, I just I wanted to make sure
Speaker 7: that I wasn't bastardizing, you know, Duke Ellington's music. And
Speaker 7: I read enough interviews, like he said, jazz, we stopped
Speaker 7: using that that word in nineteen forty seven. He said jazz.
Speaker 7: That just means freedom of expression. And so when I
Speaker 7: realized that's how he felt, then I felt, okay, you
Speaker 7: know about changing his music to that degree.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: And at this phase of your career, and you pretty
Speaker 3: much have done everything. You've You've done scores, you've taught television,
Speaker 3: you've done everything. Is there something that you had yet
Speaker 3: to embarkle on that you wish to do for this
Speaker 3: phase of your career right now?
Speaker 7: Oh man, I'm just getting started as far as I can.
Speaker 7: I mean, I'm doing I'm doing so much now that
Speaker 7: I'm a little pissed that some of these opportunities didn't
Speaker 7: come before. I'm, you know, a little tired. I'm fifty six,
Speaker 7: I'll be fifty seven and two.
Speaker 5: Months on somebody's baby.
Speaker 7: Thank so I'm a little tired, you know, and I
Speaker 7: wish that I had some of these opportunities earlier. Like
Speaker 7: right now, I can tell you a couple of things
Speaker 7: really right, really.
Speaker 3: Tell you about in the fifties, Like I've been waiting
Speaker 3: for this at twenty.
Speaker 4: I think it's the time you're at least forty one,
Speaker 4: at least thirty nine. Say that again now, because you're
Speaker 4: ready for it now. If you got any twenties, you
Speaker 4: would have sucked it up.
Speaker 5: Hello, well not maybe.
Speaker 4: A mirror, Yeah, everybody would.
Speaker 5: Everybody he started so early.
Speaker 7: So I don't know, I know, but I hear you.
Speaker 7: I hear you, I feel you because I feel the
Speaker 7: same way. And honestly, I hear what you're saying. We're
Speaker 7: wiser and maybe we're doing it better or different, but
Speaker 7: I feel like I'm the same person really, you know,
Speaker 7: twenty years ago, I would have been going on thirty
Speaker 7: seven even fifteen years, have more energy, and I feel
Speaker 7: like I knew most of the things that I know now.
Speaker 7: I just have a little more confidence now because I'm older.
Speaker 7: But if I had gotten opportunity, unities, because the way
Speaker 7: I see it is, there's a lot of and I
Speaker 7: say this when I talk to young women that feel like, oh,
Speaker 7: we're not ready to be in the if they're at
Speaker 7: North Texas or something, they say, we're not ready to
Speaker 7: be in the one o'clock band. I don't want to
Speaker 7: get the opportunity to play in the one o'clock band
Speaker 7: when I'm really two o'clock band material, you know, And
Speaker 7: I'm like, wait a minute. There's a lot of marginal
Speaker 7: white men that have had these opportunities, you know, like
Speaker 7: that weren't ready and why do.
Speaker 5: We have to be like three times, Oh, we have
Speaker 5: to be super dope. No, that's just the program that way, right,
Speaker 5: Like right, So.
Speaker 7: That's what I resent. I resent not having some opportunities
Speaker 7: when I was in my thirties and forties, when I
Speaker 7: really had the energy. But now I'm you know, I'm
Speaker 7: burning a candle. I mean writing, you know, projects, writing words,
Speaker 7: you know, like I'm writing the children's book, I'm doing
Speaker 7: some film for an exhibition.
Speaker 6: As anybody approach you about a something about your life
Speaker 6: because there is no one about you. There's nobody like
Speaker 6: you in the world, Like it's.
Speaker 7: Just nobody's nobody's approached me yet about that.
Speaker 4: No memoir.
Speaker 7: No, I'm just trying to get my dad. He's gonna
Speaker 7: like start because he has a better memory than me
Speaker 7: and he's eighty four.
Speaker 4: Interview your dad right now.
Speaker 7: Yeah, what I'm doing I'm currently.
Speaker 4: In Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm going to interview my mom.
Speaker 3: Like just I think generally like everyone should just interview
Speaker 3: their elders and get all the stories out so that
Speaker 3: way that they're they're preserved, you.
Speaker 7: Know, and I also want to say to you too,
Speaker 7: I use I tried to you might not hear the inspiration,
Speaker 7: but break you off. You know that end drum thing right,
Speaker 7: break you off, so like I have an end drump
Speaker 7: thing on a tune of mine on the second Mosaic
Speaker 7: Utrich Russian song when I found you, So that was
Speaker 7: like your inspiration. I'm going to break you off is
Speaker 7: what made me write that section at the end. But
Speaker 7: this is in fifteen, but I think it's fifteen. But
Speaker 7: if you check it out, I don't know, you know,
Speaker 7: I said once the Wayne Shorter, I wrote this, you
Speaker 7: were my inspiration. He was like, oh yeah, wow.
Speaker 5: We should have asked.
Speaker 6: When we ever see y'all on a stage together on
Speaker 6: We Never damn should have asked that question because y'all
Speaker 6: never been on a stage together.
Speaker 7: Never too late.
Speaker 4: Now, now, now's the time before.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna tell Christian. I'm gonna tell Christian, make it happen.
Speaker 4: Here you go.
Speaker 3: This is long overdue. I thank you so much for
Speaker 3: coming on that show. You got to come back because
Speaker 3: I've skipped so many, so many questions I had about
Speaker 3: your career that I've skipped.
Speaker 2: Because about your fuller Lester Bowie, Diana Crass.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jimmy jam episode, sure you like. Terry's actually like
Speaker 3: a four hour episode on the real. So I'm at
Speaker 3: my day Jo sneaking on my lunch break.
Speaker 6: Thank you for existing, Terry, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: No, that's real like you.
Speaker 3: You know, I saw you drumming mad early and you
Speaker 3: know you were You were the first kid that I
Speaker 3: saw doing.
Speaker 4: What I wanted to do for a living. That was
Speaker 4: that was really inspiration.
Speaker 7: See and thank you pretty wild. I never would have
Speaker 7: imagined that, and really that makes me feel really good.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
Speaker 7: Alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well on behalf of like Sugar Steve, Unpaid Bill
Speaker 3: and fon Tickeolo.
Speaker 4: This is Quest Love and we will see you on
Speaker 4: the next go round on the next episode of Quest Supreme.
Speaker 1: Piece we'st Love Supreme is a production of iHeart New Radio.
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