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Design Q&A with Charles Eames
KEN VANDERMARK interview – Mutiny #13, by Raine Liimakka
Interview with Joe Maneri, by Stu Vandermark.
Eero Saarinen And The Analysis Of Creativity.
Evan Parker discusses John Coltrane
Interview with Ken Vandermark, Andrew Morgan and David Ryan.
KV 'Illustrated' part 1
KV 'Illustrated' part 2
IN ADDITION: Archive
AN ARGUMENT FOR JAZZ, by Ken Vandermark.
Exclaim! interview with Peter Brötzmann
'Verb List', 'Parcel Images' - Richard Serra
'Principles' - John Cage
Joe Morris Interview (from AudioOne, Vol.1)
Interview with Joe Morris (originally from AudioOne)
Brouillon For Socrate, by Erik Satie.
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION, interview by Lloyd Peterson
GEORGE LEWIS, as interviewed by Lloyd Peterson
A CONVERSATION WITH HAMID DRAKE: Part 1
transcribed by Jason Guthartz
KEN VANDERMARK: I find it really interesting that you've had long standing relationships with people that, to me, are significant "fore- fathers" for the music that we're playing now: Fred Anderson, Don Cherry, and Peter Brotzmann. They're all really different players, and I was just wondering if you felt that there was some kind of connection between them in your mind, or was it just a coincidental thing that you've played with the three of them. Because part of what's interesting is that Fred has devoted his life to doing stuff in Chicago, he's done some concerts outside of it, but he's really spent most of his time here playing, running clubs, and things. Don Cherry seemed very devoted to traveling and incorporating music from all over the world into his playing. Peter Brotzmann has done a lot of traveling and has a very distinctive personality that he's brought to other places, incorporating other kinds of musicians like the stuff you've done with Maqmud. So I was just wondering if you thought that there was anything that you found to be tying these people together, or if there were any other thoughts you had about it.
HAMID DRAKE: The thing about Fred, as far as him staying in Chicago, I know a lot of it had to do with raising his three sons. The family and the house and stuff like that, that was one of the main reasons I'm pretty sure that he stayed. Also, I think Fred felt like he had a sense of purpose, in his own way, to keep stuff alive here. Fred has always been like a school or institution in a sense. A lot of musicians would always pass through his various bands and it would be kind of like a training ground to get a deeper under- standing of improvised music. I know that Fred was one of the first people that I played with that I started to get that sense and that understanding.
Don's very interesting because he's almost the opposite, his family traveled with him when he would go on the road. His wife Moki, and Nana Cherry, and Eagle Eye would travel with him to different places because he felt that the music shouldn't be dis- associated from family life. He made special efforts so that they could go on a lot of his tours. Sometimes Moki would even play with the various groups that Don had, she played tambora or maybe percussion. He had a strong family sense too, just like Fred, except it was the opposite: the family traveled with him. Peter's stuff has been pretty independent, although I don't know that much about his early years as far as his family was involved with the music. But I think the thing that ties them all together is their sense of dedication to playing this sort of music and their really not putting a lot of concepts on the music. To me, all three of them seem to be very open as far as what elements might come into the music. I would say Don was probably the most, for lack of a better way of putting it, "form based" in a sense, where we were playing a lot of the traditional style that we call Jazz. Don probably exemplified that a little bit more as far as "changes" and all that stuff go, but at the same time he took the music very far "out" too. Another thing that ties all three of them together for me is that they all gave me ample opportunities to explore various concepts of rhythm.
KEN VANDERMARK: How would you differentiate the three because they're all very different players? How would you describe playing with each in terms of the difference in rhythmic approach?
HAMID DRAKE: Well, with Don's groups we would do a whole assortment of things. Sometimes with him we might do reggae compositions, or we might do compositions that were very African based. Because he was very much into this instrument from Mali, the doussn' gouni. With the doussn' gouni, when I would work with Don, I would also use the tablas. That was a really great introduction for me, other than Mandingo Griot Society, to implement the tablas and rhythmic structures of the tablas onto that type of music. We might play a Thelonious Monk composition, and of course a lot of Don's compositions and a lot of Ornette's pieces. Don's compositions always had the ability to go in a lot of different directions. Whereas with Peter, for instance, we're doing spontaneous composition in a sense. After going through that training with Don and with Fred I felt like I was able to add those same rhythmic elements, whether it's reggae or funk or just playing more open, with Peter. And since it's just the two of us there's really no constraints. With Fred, when I first started working with him, my understanding of improvised music was very minimal. So I would ask him, "Well, what should I do?" (laughs) And he'd say, "Just do what you feel." At the time, when I first joined Fred's group, one of his sons, Eugene, was playing drums too. So I would kind of check him out and I saw that he was playing very open.
KEN VANDERMARK: What do you mean by open?
HAMID DRAKE: No definite time constraints, or time structures. No necessarily steady pulse. And that's how I would approach it until Fred introduced me to Ed Blackwell. In Fred's group we would always do a piece where we'd play a head and the music could go in whatever direction. It's very interesting, I've never heard Blackwell play any sort of music where he wasn't playing a pulse, but the lesson I got from him was that I could try to play the melodic structure on the drums the same way that the horn players were doing it. So I would try and phrase the head how they were phrasing it, and then go in whatever direction myself and the bass player would try and go. That was an incredible lesson in rhythm that Ed really taught me. Though he didn't actually say I should do this, this is what I got from him. That was a good training ground for me to start understanding rhythm from another perspective. Now with Fred or Peter I just play what I want to play, in a sense. Fred doesn't really put any constraints on me. After we play a head, if I feel that I want to play some swing or something like that then I do it. And if I feel that maybe this is more of a "Latin-ish" kind of thing I do that. Or if it's more open or there's no definite pulse, then I'll do that. And he's open enough to say, "Okay, that's the direction we're going to go in." With Peter it's more of a self-generating kind of thing with everything being built from the ground up. It's very organic in that sense.
KEN VANDERMARK: You mentioned Ed Blackwell as being a big influence. I definitely hear some of his playing in your playing, like the use of the cowbell in a really beautiful way. I've also noticed when we've talked at other times that you mentioned Jo Jones, and there's that thing that you've been working on with the hi-hat. They're definitely coming from very different time periods and places as players. What it is it about them, or other drummers, that's inspired you to come up with your own very individual approach to the drums? I think that when people hear you that's one of the strongest elements of your playing: it's distinctively you. Clearly you've had these influences, but you've adapted them and taken from them things that you find inspiring. What about them has been particularly interesting?
HAMID DRAKE: Well, those drummers have definitely been inspiring to me. But I think what's been the most inspiring is the people that I work with, and people that I've had the opportunity to work with, because that's a real, live situation. I would listen to Blackwell, and listen to Jo and Philly Joe and drummers like that and they would give me the impetus to really want to practice more. And then of course I would listen to their ideas and I would think, "Wow, maybe I could use that in some sort of setting." I think they were very unique rhythmic stylists in their own way: Blackwell, with his studying of the Ghanaian and Moroccan rhythms and incorporating it into this very strict form. Because I think of him as primarily a swing-like drummer, and that's a very strict form, in a sense. His ability to find a way to incorporate those elements on top of that was very inspiring and made me attempt to do that too. And Jo Jones, I mean he was just so smooth, very rhythmic, but he had this type of smoothness to him. He also had an understanding of all the drumming styles that came before him. So that concept inspired me to investigate other forms of drumming because he had checked out the things that had come before him. A lot of the inspiration has come from the people that I work with because each person brings something different to the music and because of that I want to be in a space where I can respond to that and not be stuck in simply my own thing and just say, "Well, this is how I'm going to play all the time." Responding differently to each person that I perform with is the thing that continually teaches me. But also, my influences have been drummers from other traditions too.
KEN VANDERMARK: I was actually going to ask you about that because a huge part of your playing is with the hand drums. You mentioned a while ago, I was asking about the tabla, and you talked about the different people that you had studied with. One thing that you said was that the traditional or classical players on that instrument aren't very open to letting go of the traditional structures or forms. Many times when I hear hand drums in an "improvised context" they seem grafted on or they feel kind of artificial in a way. With your hand drum playing it seems like you've taken these traditional ideas and techniques and you're just as open with those things as you would be on the trap set, it's just a different instrument that you're working with. Do you look at it that way?
HAMID DRAKE: I feel that it's very natural for those drummers, to a certain extent, not to be that open. Part of it is just exposure, maybe they just haven't had the quality of exposure that we've had living here. Also, I think a lot of it has to do with language and if a person has the inspiration to increase their vocabulary they will. Those particular drummers from those other traditions that might not be that open, perhaps they haven't had the inspiration to increase their vocabulary through other means outside of their tradition. I think that's kind of natural because, with the study of tabla for instance, it can be so all consuming that you spend a lifetime doing that and not doing anything else. Because there's so many different schools of tabla playing and there's so much to learn on that instrument. For myself, I had to stop listening to Indian music for a little while because it was just consuming me too much, it was closing me in almost. Their system of rhythm is very strict you always have to be so conscious of "time" all the time. From my experience there is no, what we might call "(free) improvised playing" in Indian music. Even when a tabla player might do a solo, he's soloing within a certain time structure. If it's 16 beats he has to make sure that everything he plays always comes back to the "one". If it's 8 beats or 13 or 15 or 7, whatever it might be, it always has to work out that way. He just can't free float over the rhythm and maybe sometimes come back to the "one" or sometimes not. It always has to be that way and supposedly the mark of excellence of a really good tabla player in that tradition is how well a person can do that. So that music is so huge in and of its own self, I can see how a lot of these musicians would somewhat develop a sense of arrogance about their music as compared to other forms because they're conditioned to hearing a certain thing and when they don't hear that in other forms of music it just doesn't make sense to them. Unless they've been fortunate enough to be opened up to some other things, like Zakir Hussein for instance, a great tabla player. He spent a great portion of his life in America and in the Bay Area. I think his father, Alla Rakha, brought him here when he was sixteen. Being young at the time and also being exposed in that environment to all these different things, I think he found it to be really incredible. Now his father, for instance, was like the opposite. I also find that sometimes with some of the African drummers too, there's a willingness on their part for you to come over to "their side", but there's not always a willingness for them to come over to "your side". It's partly the attitude they have about their music and their culture and the type of training that they went through. I try not to have any sort of bias towards any form because I want to be able to utilize each one to whatever degree that I can. Because I believe that all form arises from the same place anyway. The Buddists call it "Emptiness", this "Open Space", or "Essence". People tap into the Essence and then they filter it through their own process, and because our processes might be various we come up with systems known as Jazz, or systems known as Blues, or Rock 'n Roll or Indian music, whatever it might be. I look at all those forms coming from one place, one central Essence which is an Open Space, and we just have to tap into that. Depending on our cond- itioning, what's going to come through us is a particular style. I feel that once we understand that it's coming from the Essence then we can go into any style or be style-less, in a sense, and just be open to whatever the moment might present to us musically. So I'll take the Indian patterns and the North African patterns and the African patterns and I won't try and graft them on top of a form that we might do with DKV, but just see how the principles of that music merge with the principles with what we're dealing with. So if we're playing something very open, I'm not going try and play some type of Dogomba rhythm or Mandingo rhythm on top of that, but I'll take the technique that I learned from that style of drumming and utilize it in such a way where it flows with what we're doing. We're products of a very unique time. We're saturated with a lot of stuff and a lot of information, and I think it's up to us to go through the process of refinement and just to see how well we can use the information that we've been given.
KEN VANDERMARK: That's something that to me is consistent with the way musicians have worked before us too. It's just that now it seems like there's so much stuff, but if you were in New York when Ellington was playing the Cotton Club there were all these different immigrant musicians. For the first time people were hearing Latin music and Klezmer, all these things- Boom! in the city at one time. Recordings weren't as big a deal, live music was a more vibrant, regular experience at that time. I think that musicians were dealing with similar things. When I listen to Duke Ellington's music and go through the years, I hear someone who was extremely open to all different kinds of influences. You talk about tapping into a common, fundamental "Space". I think that all kinds of music, or any kind of creative expression really, they all come from that Space. Because I know that I can hear a great Blues tune or I can hear something by Beethoven and they will get me to a similar space, in a very different way. I don't listen to Beethoven expecting to hear Hound Dog Taylor, but there's that ecstasy or that power of communication.
HAMID DRAKE: They're all tapped into that creative process.
KEN VANDERMARK: Yeah. So I think there is a real commonality between all different kinds of expression, and I think Jazz musicians are as guilty of a closed minded attitude as anybody.
HAMID DRAKE: To me, the real tradition is just what you said. People like Duke Ellington and other great composers, whatever form they're coming from, have had the ability to continue to move and not stay stuck in just a particular stylistic class- ification. And to me that's what the great tradition of Jazz or any music really is. It's the continuum, it's motion, it's always moving. And maybe there are some people that need to be there to quote-unquote "preserve a particular style", but I don't think that that's what those that we've classified as innovators did. They didn't just stand still, they kept moving.
KEN VANDERMARK: Going back to the individuals we started talking about, look at Fred. He's almost 70 now, and it's amazing to me how open he is. He's one of the most open minded people I've ever met. His music is still changing and growing, and he's still going further. As a younger player it's totally exciting to see that because it really makes you realize that it is a life long pursuit. I think there's something different about people from sort of our "ballpark" generation because there's a huge range of sources now to take from, or to utilize or explore. It makes it kind of overwhelming at times, but when you feel like there's no reason to not pursue that when you have as long as you're given here to deal with it, and you don't have to stop and decide, "Well, okay I'm 40 now, this is how I'm going to play." Which seems to happen. So it's inspiring to see people like Fred on a regular basis and realize that it doesn't need to be that way and there's all this other stuff going on. You've been involved in a lot of other kinds of playing, aside from the improvised stuff. I have been too, actually almost all the musicians I play with have done serious work with other kinds of music for various reasons. How do you feel that stuff ties to your playing in general and how it affects your more improvised kind of playing? What kinds of music do you find exciting to play that aren't considered to be "typical" improvised music, or Jazz music?
HAMID DRAKE: It's interesting, because that's a question that I'm always attempting to answer for myself. Sometimes I don't even know (laughs). But I think, in general, each thing you've spent a lot of time with kind of becomes a part of you. Like with the Reggae for instance. I spent a long time on the path of Reggae, and there was a period of time where I was doing it almost nightly. So you kind of get into that mind space. And then with Blues, as far as just drum set goes, playing standards and stuff... I think what happens, for me, is that there's just like a pool or a well with a lot of different information there. When the inspiration or idea comes I'll just utilize it. I'm still really trying to discover how this all fits together (laughter). As far as being in the process of creative playing because I never say, "Okay, now I'm going to do this Reggae thing." It never happens like that. Like with the group DKV for instance, if I hear Kent going in a certain direction and then if the inspiration or the idea comes then okay [Hamid snaps], it's like that. It's not a thought out process. "This might work, he's going in that direction, so let me try this. Let me try this Ska think or this Funk thing." Or if I hear a certain sound coming from you or certain rhythmic patterns that might move me to go in that direction. So, I don't know. In all honesty I don't have an answer to that question yet.
KEN VANDERMARK: Yeah, it's like doing something that moves you, you don't always know why you're attracted to something, or to a person. You know what I mean? There's a lot of mystery there.
HAMID DRAKE: Those forms of music, I know why I'm attracted to them, but as far as why they might emerge if I'm playing one thing that may be considered a certain style of music and then this other style emerges within that... it goes back to language again. We can draw on different musical languages while we're performing, while we're playing, while we're in the creative process. But each of those forms, you know they really touch me in a very deep way, independently and together. I don't have a lot to say on the initial question (laughter).
KEN VANDERMARK: You've had a fair amount of recordings done. You've played with lots and lots of different people, a huge range of different kinds of musicians. Are there any recordings in particular that are available that you think are represent- ative of your playing? It doesn't matter what kind of music, just things that you think are strong representations of your playing in certain contexts, or certain styles.
HAMID DRAKE: Well, I think for where I am right now, the recent DKV stuff is a strong representation of where I'm at. Also, the duet CD with Peter, Dried Rat Dog. I think some of the stuff we did with Mandingo Griot Society, especially the first recording. For me, when I listen to that, I get hints of the direction that I was starting to look into with the African music. I think the group was very open because two traditions were kind of coming together: the traditional Mandingo music with traditions from America, the Blues, Funk, and Jazz. I feel that the most recent stuff, the stuff that just came out, the stuff with Mats (Gustafsson), and DKV, and the stuff with Fred (Anderson), on a certain level I think it shows what I'm thinking about from a stylistic perspective of what I'm trying to do.
KEN VANDERMARK: It's always the most recent stuff it seems, for us (laughter). Sometimes I get frustrated on the occasions when I've been interviewed because there always seems to be things that I never get to express or comment on, or it seems that they'll ask me questions and then when it gets published important things to me are left out or edited out. Is there anything that you've thought about that's musically related, or improvisationally related, or percussion related, things that are important to you as far as the process that you've gone through to get to where you are now, that you think has been overlooked or that you really haven't had a chance to discuss at all? Because I know with Kent (Kessler), in off handed times I've talked to him, he's mentioned how it's very rare to get someone to talk to a bass player and a drummer about how they deal with "time".
HAMID DRAKE: That's never talked about.
KEN VANDERMARK: Is there anything like that kind of subject that you think has been overlooked?
HAMID DRAKE: I think, for instance, how percussionists might relate to each other. I've had a partner in crime ever since age 14, it's been my friend Adam Rudolph. We've been playing together since then and working on a lot of different concepts for all these years. I've never really seen anything in print about how percussionists or drummers might relate to each other on an artistic level: Us talking about Our language, in a sense. You always see a lot of things about guitar players and horn players and things like that, but the drum, I think in our culture, has always been like a secondary sort of instrument. We've been put in the position really of being "timekeepers" until recently. There's been a few people, drummers who have led their own groups, like Max Roach, Art Blakey, Buddy Rich, and Shelly Manne, he had his own group for a little while, and of course Elvin, he's always had his own groups after Trane. They've been able to explore their ideas, but they've been kind of unique beings in a way. Still, that discussion doesn't seem to take the same sort of prominence as the relationships with other instruments. I think that it would be interesting to be hear how drummers or percussionists relate to each other because we've also been put in this position where we've been kind of pitted against each other. Other than things like Latin music, for instance, where you have maybe a guy playing drum set and a guy playing congas or something and they each have a distinct role and they know how to function together within that. In the Jazz setting it hasn't been that well developed because you'll always hear drummers saying that the percussionist was kind of in my way or something like that. Or the percussionist has been relegated to just "colors": bells, triangles, and all that kind of stuff. I think very seldom do the other musicians move over to the rhythmic language of the percussionists. We're always moving to their language.
KEN VANDERMARK: It's interesting that you mention that because in trying to deal with your playing and all of the things that are going on in it, I've had to listen to a lot of African hand drum music. That's the thing that, for me, is actually the most interesting element of music: the rhythmic aspect. Because what it comes down to is rhythmic expression. You hear this in all the great players and the phrasing that they have whether they're horn players or drummers , piano players, whatever. They'll play sounds or pitches, even the "classic" straight ahead players like Hawkins or Charlie Parker, that are just flat out "out". But the way that they integrate that into a phrase, the way they stop on a note, or extend it and all of those things: it works and that's rhythm. It's also the shape and the direction of the sounds and pitches, but it totally comes out of rhythm for me. It's been very interesting to listen to hand drum music because sometimes it's easier to identify rhythmic phrasing when it's on one drum since it's reduced. I've always been fond of drummers that are very interested in the snare, on trap set, as being kind of the core of the kit. Listening to hand drum stuff has also made me listen to a lot of African vocal music which is something that has, because of my own lack of understanding and my ignorance really, showed me how rich that music is. Because the way they integrate these very complex rhythms with singing, and the phrasing in the singing, has really opened up a lot of ideas for me just in how to deal with that one aspect of some of the stuff that we do. Maybe I'm wrong because I don't know, I haven't studied it really directly, but a lot of the rhythmic phrasing of the vocal lines is coming, to me, out of the percussion. It is being built up out of these sounds and the qualities of the sounds that they're using, and the overlapping, playing back and forth of patterns against each other really seem very tied to the percussive work that happens.
HAMID DRAKE: Because everybody plays the drums.
KEN VANDERMARK: Drummers in the "Jazz" tradition have built up much of their phrasing from horn players, but it hasn't gone the other way that much. My favorite players tend to be people like Sonny Rollins who are rhythmically unbelievable players, or Charlie Parker or Ornette Coleman... The rhythmic phrasing is so tied to what the drummers are doing. It's not the drummer being the Time Keeper. Listening to music that is really very rhythmically based you find there is a whole set of vocabulary and language and stylistic qualities that come out of things that are suited to the drum, that aren't necessarily suited to a saxophone, things that would really build the language of the saxophone.
HAMID DRAKE: I think when Charlie Parker was living and he was doing that music with people like Klook, and the young Roy Haynes, and then the stuff with Max, that was really revolutionary. But I think that the tradition that's called "Bop" now is not like that stuff that they were doing. They were, woo man, they were pushing way beyond.
KEN VANDERMARK: One of the breakthroughs was a rhythmic breakthrough.
HAMID DRAKE: It was a rhythmic breakthrough, definitely. And there was this interplay, you're right, always going on I think with all the musicians, but the drummer wasn't put over there as a Time Keeper. I think that revolution continued, but in another way, later on with people like Ornette opening up the rhythm. Of course people like Sunny Murray came along, and Albert Ayler, and the whole AACM thing. Yusef Lateef did something really interesting. He put out two recordings in the '80's. One was called Yusef Lateef In Nigeria, then the other is Hikma, which I think is a limited edition. I think he really made an attempt, because he spent a couple of years there teaching in Northern Nigeria, to really study the drums. Then he did these recordings out of that study and investigation. To hear him play... they'll be doing these rhythms and he'll play like a blues or something. It doesn't sound corny or cliched or anything, and then maybe he'll do these honks and stuff and then go in a whole other direction. It seems like there was really a communication happening. He got in there and really understood their language and it seems like they made an attempt to understand his language to some degree too, even though they were playing still a lot of traditional rhythms. He really studied the language that these guys used and knew where they were coming from. Then, combined with just his own experience, I think he came up with something really, for that time, really incredible.
KEN VANDERMARK: Mmm. Well, look, I’m gonna let you go ‘cause I know you got to get someplace else. But maybe we can get together one more time...
HAMID DRAKE: Yeah, that’d be great.
KEN VANDERMARK: ...because I definitely want to talk to you more about the percussive thing. The last time we were talking we were getting into a little bit about the relationship between drummers, and your ongoing thing with Adam Rudolph, and you also have that duo with Michael [Zerang]...
HAMID DRAKE: Right.
to read more of this great interview with Hamid, click here!
A CONVERSATION WITH HAMID DRAKE: Part 2
THIS IS OUR MUSIC: PETER BRÖTZMANN by John Corbett
MUSICIANS TALK ABOUT MUSICIANS
INTERVIEW: PAUL LYTTON
INTERVIEW: MICHAEL ZERANG
EVAN PARKER, as interviewed by Lloyd Peterson
JIMMY GIUFFRE INTERVIEW
PETER BRÖTZMANN INTERVIEW WITH KEN VANDERMARK
ARTIST STATEMENTS: ARCHIVE
IN ROTATION: ARCHIVE