Scott aTunde Adjuah Ch 2 | The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts

Steve Coleman:

You touched on something about rhythm, and I want to touch on the Caribbean, and specifically Cuba. I've been to Cuba a lot, and I know that there's a relationship between Cuba and some of those places in the southern United States, including New Orleans. And we all know that people like Jelly Roll Morton and different people talked about this.

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah:

Yea, the Latin Tinge he called it.

SC:

Yeah, they talked about this. And of course, this was in an age when the relationship of the United States with Cuba wasn't what it is now. There weren't the barriers that exist today, at that time. Information flowed back and forth freely, So, I want to ask you, what specifically Caribbean or even Cuban influences did you encounter when you were growing up in New Orleans? Because, when I hear The Meters, I hear clave in their music.

CSAA:

Yeah, no, listen, I grew up on that music, and you're absolutely right. If you're talkin’ about The Meters, Jellyroll, Irma Thomas, Professor Longhair or if you talkin’ about Ishmael Rivera, Celia Cruz, Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Chucho Valdes…just watching our people move and how it opens them up. As I got older I wanted to understand why rhythm does what it does, how rhythm does what it does, the counterpoint and harmony in rhythm. A huge part of what we do is also about decolonializing sound, a requisite of that, to me, deals with the rhythmic nature of music and how left out that is. How undervalued that can be in how western music is taught. Once I got to Berklee, I started to hang out with Luques Curtis and his brother Zaccai. We've been making music together for almost 22 years now. It doesn't get any better, these cats really understand how that music is constructed. They played with Donald; Luques has essentially been the musical director for Eddie Palmieri’s band for almost 15 years now. When I got to Berklee and started playing at Wally’s, hitting together and sharing ideas with the brothers Curtis. We all met in Havana, Cuba, in 1999 or 2000, as kids playing with different bands at Chucho's Festival in the old city. They grew up playing Salsa and Latin Jazz; I could hear the relationship to Black Indian music, early Jazz, most New Orleanian music really. The rhythms were virtually the same as we played in New Orleans only the inflections and approaches are different. Home we play the rhythms in a relaxed style a laid back approach, even if the song is feverish and full of energy, the carriage is always laid back. In Cuba, the rhythms feel more locked in. Styles man, that's the difference. The connectedness is incredible. To be real, these are essentially the same people that just ended up in different parts of the diaspora. Often the Crescent City is referred to as the northernmost city of the Caribbean. Luques started playing with Eddie Palmieri and some of the best Salsa bands on the east coast when he was in his late teens, so they were already in that environment. I would go and hang out with him with Jerry González, and cats from Fort Apache (González’ band); Donald played with Eddie Palmieri’s band all throughout the '90s. So by the time I'm like, 17 or 18 years old, I had met Eddie and Chucho. I'm listening to Irakere’s (Valdés’ group), Eddie and Charlie Palmieri as a child, and I'm playing some dates with Eddie's band at that point. So my proximity to a lot of those musicians is just as important in my development as a younger musician, as my proximity to the guys that come from what would be considered a purely Jazz space. To me, Cuban music and New Orleanian music are essentially neighboring branches of the same tree.

SC:

One of the phrases you use a lot is ‘a decolonializing sound’. And I wanted to touch on what exactly you mean by that.

CSAA:

Stretch Music, our approach to creative improvised music, is about dismantling harmful sentiments and practices in music. It is a genre-blind approach that attempts to ‘stretch’ jazz’s rhythmic, melodic and harmonic conventions to encompass as many other musical forms, languages and cultures as possible. Showing the synergy between people and cultures can mend a lot of the unnecessary tension that exists between people. One example of this is our relationship to rhythm in the West. We know that we come from a space where there are hundreds of years of rhythmic history and useful information. We know that. So to learn music in a system that has such little reverence for that fact can be difficult. It impedes the progress and refinement of developing musicians. You may have a natural sense of rhythm, just like you may have a natural sense of harmony. If you're a person who only practices things that are geared to the melodic and harmonic space, versus a person dealing with rhythm, dialogue in rhythm, harmony, melody, counterpoint, vernacular, timbre, texture, sonic agriculture and acoustics, when you and that person are on the bandstand, they're going to have a lot more tools to employ than you.

SC:

Right! I get exactly where you're coming from now with that. Your rap, that you just made just now, cleared up…I mean, I know the concept of what you're talking about. I just don't use those words.

CSAA:

If I'm in a position where I can impart things that I know are valuable, and that help us see each other, no matter what side of the equation you're on - that helps people communicate better. Then it's incumbent on me to be clear about those things, those impediments when I see them, and decolonializing sound is a huge part of that.

SC:

I didn't come from the environment that you come from, which is a musical environment. Nobody in my family was a musician. So I had to figure it out on my own. So that's why when I met Branford, Donald and them, I was impressed because they already had this solid (musical) background from their families. And I didn't have that myself. I was just sort of putting it together on my own, trial and error basically. They had a lot of information that they had gotten from their ancestors. I was impressed by that - that's what I'm impressed about with you too. That's why I asked you those questions in the beginning. That when you come out of this lineage, that’s not only a spiritual lineage, but also a musical lineage. I mean, there's both, you know, And so, to me, that's closer to the way it was in Africa. Where families were blacksmiths because their father was a blacksmith, right?

CSAA:

No, absolutely. New Orleans is definitely like that.

SC:

Yeah, what I learned the most is that everything with these cats was connected with rhythm, no matter what they studied. Whether they studied melody, whether they studied harmony; whatever - the rhythm was a part of it. And that's not true in the Western tradition. They look at these notes as something separate.

CSAA:

Even the articulation of it, how we articulate, just like you're saying, the phrasing…

SC:

Exactly!

CSAA:

Not in like a school setting, but how you learn in the neighborhood. The way you say something, the inflection of how you say it could completely change the meaning of what you're saying.

SC:

Even one word, of course.

CSAA:

So it's really more of that - the articulation - how you're approaching it rhythmically. You’re not saying it, unless you say it in a certain rhythm. When people talk about swinging, and that's what they're really dealin’ with.

SC:

Yeah, yeah, no, you're absolutely right man. I mean, just to give an aside from what you just said, and I'm not gonna include this in the interview, but take a word like motherfucker, you know, I mean, that could be a million different things, right? You know, it all. Context, you're saying it. I mean, I could say ‘Michael Jordan is a motherfucker,’ that means one thing, you know, right, say ‘I don't like that motherfucker.’ That's another thing, and I'm not even putting emphasis on it, you know?

CSAA:

Right.

SC:

It’s the same way with music, you have all these different things, which can mean very different things, depending on how it's played, and all of that. It’s all part of the same thing, its intention - a lot of it is intention - what was the intent? And what are they trying to symbolize? And that goes beyond just rudimentary musical stuff. So I'm on the same page with you, with that.

CSAA:

[Regarding the variety in America] I’ve always thought that it's unfortunate that people refuse to see each other. When you look at the Olympic Games it’s a perfect example of why this place could work if we took the time to see one another. When they all enter the Olympic Stadium you see all the different countries represented, the Chinese Confederation, groups from India, Denmark… You look at all of these different factions…Japan, mainly Japanese people, right? Ghana, mainly Ghanaians, right? Obviously we know they have their own systems of class, cult and ethnicity. My point is when you look at Guatemalans or the Dutch, those teams generally have one ethnic makeup. But when you get to a country like America, when they walk in, the beauty in the American team is that you're actually looking at what it looks like when people from all different races, creeds, and cultural backgrounds are all unified in doing something. We don’t live that way but my point is that, that’s the direction I'd like to build for my children. One of unity, respect, care, togetherness.

SC:

Yeah.

CSAA:

We still have not gotten to the juncture where we fully accept those ideas. And that's where the problem lies. All human beings are valid because they are. My idea is to try and create a world musically and a world outside of sound, that actually references the fact that this idea exists, and that it's a beautiful one, a world where we don't place value distinctions on differences in people.

SC:

You know I've had the pleasure of talking to some elder masters, you know, just because of my age, you know, and one of the guys that I’ve spent some time with is Sonny Rollins.

CSAA:

Un hmm.

SC:

And so, Sonny once told me something that I thought was beautiful. And he said, “Well, you know, Steve, there's really only two kinds of music.” And I said, well, what's that? He said, he said, “there's music that expands consciousness and there's music that contracts it (consciousness).” And I was like, wow!

CSAA:

Wow, that's it.

SC:

I was like, that's the best explanation (that) I've heard of this shit, in all my years that I've been dealing with this, you know. Music that expands consciousness, and music that contracts it. He said most music is music that contracts consciousness; what you see on TV, and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And he said, “I want to be a part of that tradition, which expands consciousness.” And, the reason what made me think about that was what you were just talking about, you know? Because, to me, that's ultimately what, in my mind, what we're trying to do with our music, right? It’s that we’re trying to open things up, you know?

CSAA:

You hit the nail on the head.

SC:

I mean, that's it. That's it. That's it.

CSAA:

Yeah. [Laughs] Damn.

SC:

That’s the same thing I felt. When he told me that I was like, bingo. I was like…

CSAA:

Yeah, right, that’s it.

SC:

In the fewest words possible. That's it.

CSAA:

Yeah, that's it.

SC:

Because it covers all the shit that we’re talkin’ about.

CSAA:

Right! You know, when you think about somebody like Monk, you look at his album covers over the trajectory of his work, you can see a lot there…or someone like Mingus…the expansion. A lot of what we're doing, like what they built, is about creating courage. So much of what we do harkens on that; you're living a reality where there are all of these trials. But you really just want people to know that they're radiant, and amazing, and are better together.

SC:

But see these cats back in the past man, you know, the conditions under which they had to create was ridiculous. You know. I mean, not being treated as human and all this kind of stuff. And in spite of that, man, they came up with this beautiful music.

CSAA:

Right.

SC:

In spite of that. And when I say music, I'm not even just limited to what people call jazz. I mean, to me, it's a whole spectrum.

CSAA:

Right.

SC:

A whole giant, kaleidoscope of stuff. I mean, it's not just the music, but it's the dance, like you said, it’s the braiding of hair, it’s everything. So when you see that, and you see all these different expressions, and all these different individualized expressions of the same thing, and you say, Wow, this shit is just…So when I see a brother like you, I say, well, here's somebody, because to me, the difference is whether you're conscious of it or not. I think that's the main thing. In other words, whether you recognize your place in all this. Or are you just kind of just doing stuff? And it just happens. It could be powerful either way. But I see you as a person that recognizes this and that's why I had the specific questions that I had. I said, ok, this cat recognizes what this is, and his place in it. And I think a lot of that probably has to do with your specific cultural stuff in New Orleans, because you’re part of a tradition that still recognizes things and still sees things as being connected…It's a beautiful thing. It comes with a lot of pain, but it's still beautiful. You know? I'm just, I'm happy to talk to you. I'm gonna digest this.

CSAA:

I'm so grateful for you teacher, I mean, you really don't know, I came up listening to you, and am grateful for you, for all you’ve built and continue to build. For you taking the time to actually impart these things, and to really pow wow with me. I hope to continue building our relationship and would love to be able to talk more.

SC:

Man, we all in the same…I mean, it's the same boat. We all are all in the same boat making the same passage, you know.

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“We create a sound that is genre blind in its acculturation of other musical forms, and languages as a means of building bridges and strengthening the tendons of this generations dialogue.”

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