Music Education According to William Parker | Bklyn Sounds 6/19/2024—6/25/2024
A 2019 interview with New York's legendary free jazz bassist on achieving heaven, and leaving space for mystery + Shows: Dorothy Carter / Yussef Dayes Experience / Stacey "Hotwaxx" Hale / more
Tuesday night, I went to the opening of the 2024 Vision Festival, New York’s annual free-jazz bonanza. Each year, Vision’s first night is devoted to a single classic living musician with a long history in the music, and the program sees a broad variety of their work performed. This year, the recipient of such Lifetime Achievement kudos was the festival’s co-founder William Parker, the 72 year-old bassist, composer, bandleader and musicker whose five-decades-long career in New York improvisation is a key, organic element for the music’s continued local vitality. Parker is one of the city’s ambassadors from its historic free-jazz past—born in Harlem, he studied with Wilbur Ware, Jimmy Garrison and Richard Davis, and played alongside Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry and Amiri Baraka, among thousands of others—to the musical fluidity of Now. And he continues to be surrounded by once and future students at his side on an enormous amount of projects: Tuesday night ended with a performance by Huey’s Pocket Watch, Parker’s cross-generational big band that includes old comrades such as Rob Brown and Dave Sewelson, and young players like Isaiah Barr and Alfredo Colon. The evening featured testimony by the likes of Hamid Drake and James Brandon Lewis about what they’ve learned from him.
This devotion to free music as a method of camaraderie and communication, and as a gateway to mystery, was a main topic of the interview I did with William Parker in July 2019. It was for the “Music Education” episode of City.FM, a summer-long radio program about local New York music that I co-produced for the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. (Shout-out Jessica Weber and the City.FM crew!) Parker is an admitted talk-aholic, but also a great storyteller, with endlessly fascinating stories to tell. So way too much of what we discussed about his life in music education five years ago was left on the cutting room floor. It felt like a great time to revisit the conversation. (And trust me, it’s still less than half of it.) Parker continues to work at a staggering pace: he’s got two new albums coming out next week, and regularly gigs a variety of projects. His life-story was eloquently told in Cisco Bradley’s 2021 biography, Universal Tonality, and his interviews with colleagues continue to be mined in Rogue Art’s Conversations series, volume four of which dropped in late 2023. I am sure I am missing something — William may be 72 but he’s impossible to keep up with.
On Friday (June 21st) William Parker will appear on the monthly Dada Strain Radio (on The Lot Radio) for a chat about…well, it could be one of many things…and an opportunity to listen to just a little bit of the music he’s made, and maybe introduce it to folks unfamiliar with this giant who walks and works among us. He’s got a lot more to teach us.
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Why learn about music? What made you want to pick up an instrument? What was the framework for you wanting to learn about music and to play music?
When I was six, seven years old, every night my father would come home and he'd put on “Diminuendo and Crescendo In Blue” by Duke Ellington, and me and my brother would be dancing to this music and listening to Paul Gonsalves’ solos. He’d play it every night religiously. And then Saturday, his day off, he played music all day long. Later on, I found that it was my father's dream that me and my brother play in the Ellington Orchestra. He came home one day, and he brought me a trumpet and said, “This is yours,” and he brought my brother a saxophone. We were under 12 years old and we began to have lessons at the music school on 149th Street in New York music school there. 75 or 50 cents a lesson. That was the root of music being injected in me. This was a personal thing. He never said, I want you to be a musician. It wasn't until after he died that I began putting two and two together. Although my father never heard me play or anything, but he really loved music. My mother and father met at the Savoy ballroom listening to music. So, it was kind of laid out that I would have a strong inclination to play music.
So, before you study, you have to begin to love music. Music is something you can't see. You can't touch, but you hear it and you feel it and you love it. And every time you listen to it, there's a particular feeling that's just unbeatable. So you're feeling this. Fortunately for me, I went from listening to Ellington to listening to Ornette Coleman. I didn't listen to anything in between — didn’t listen to Monk, didn’t listen to Charlie Parker.And then listening to “A Love Supreme” by John Coltrane, that gave me really the aesthetic reason why music existed: music existed to uplift, to heal people. This was all before the bass. ‘Cause I stopped playing the trumpet, I went to the trombone, I went to the cello in junior high school. It was around that period in junior high school that I began to understand what music was for. And once I knew what it was for, then I could make a commitment. I wanted to be a musician, but I wouldn't do it just because it was laid out for me. So now I knew the reason [music] existed, and I also knew what I wanted to play. So when I got to the Jazzmobile [music school], they were going over, you know, Dizzy Gillespie and Oliver Nelson arrangements. And I was saying, “Well, what about Albert Ayler?” And they said, “Oh, no, no, no Parker, we don't do that here.” What about Cecil Taylor? What about, you know, Sun Ra? They said, “Oh, no, no, we don't do that here.” So I knew what I wanted to play, and then I said, “Well, how am I going to play it?”
The first thing is you have to learn your instrument. I think the first musician I met outside of the Jazzmobile, even before I got a bass, was Charlie Haden. He was doing a series of free concerts at the public library, and I was in my reviewing days, I'd write reviews to send them into magazines to get them published. So I went to review this concert and I told him, “I want to learn how to play the bass.” And he said that he learned how to play the bass by listening to records, and that I should listen to records, and when I got a bass, to play along. “Listen!” is what he was saying. He didn't say you have to learn this scale, or that scale. He just said, “Listen and see what's going on.” I was certainly listening, but I didn’t know the mechanics of exactly how things were supposed to happen.
When I first got my bass—my first bass was from Bronen’s Music, Webster Avenue—I was coming out of the music store, and the guy stopped me. He said, “You a bass player? We're having a jam session, 155th Street up in Harlem, can you make it this Sunday?” And that was like Monday. So I said okay, and I practiced all week on the bass—my idea of practicing, by playing with records—and I went to the jam session. I got there and the guy says, “‘Straight no Chaser’?” I said, “Yeah!” “Which key?” I said, “Any key,” cause I didn't know what a key was. But I played all of these tunes. I was listening. They gave me some solos, they said “You’ve got a good feel.” But my hands were like…I looked at my fingers, they were like big red bubbles, balloons up with blood in there. So I made some kind of excuse, got out of there, and the next week I went to the jazzmobile until I got to begin to get my stuff together. I played anything I could play. And I learned that the main thing isn’t whether I was technically correct, it’s that I was emotionally and inspirationally correct from the beginning. That was my main thing.
Every person's music I played, I learned something from. When I played with Don Cherry, he had no written music. I ran into him on the street, and I walked him up to the Chelsea Hotel. We start talking about religion and the Dalai Lama, we're talking about Buddhism, about the reason we play music. And for The Five Spot, he hired me without hearing me play a note. He would just show you a little bit of the basslines and that was it, anything else you had to listen, because he could go from playing an Ornette Coleman tune to a Monk tune to a Stevie Wonder tune.
What capsulated all of this for me is when I was studying with Wilbur Ware, who, you know, had played with Sonny Rollins, had played with Monk. His lessons would basically consist of him picking up the bass, and him playing a figure, and me playing a figure. If I played the figure like him, he’d say, “Wrong!” But if I played the figure the way I wanted to play it? He said, “That's it.” And that was the idea. I asked Wilbur, “Wilbur, when you were playing with Monk, what did he tell you to play?” He said, “[Monk] told me to play anything I wanted to.” “You mean he didn't give you any changes?” He says, “Changes? What are changes?” That's how he would phrase things. He says, “Everything is a change.” So I said, “What about Sonny Rollins?” [Wilbur] said, “Well, we played. He played what he played, and I played what I played.” So he would give me these answers. One day I said, “Wilbur, but do you know anything about music?”
He'd say, “What's music?” That's how he would answer things. Everywhere we went, the other bass players would see Wilbur and they'd, like, bow down to Wilbur. And I'm seeing that, here's Wilbur, the least academic of all the bass players, but they were bowing down to Wilbur because when Wilbur did his thing he was untouchable. I've read interviews with Wilbur where he says he wished he had learned more about music, but that he was happy with what he did. And so he showed me that there was another way to get to heaven.
So then within this context of there not being a single way to get to heaven, how do you feel about people who try to unify Jazz Studies, who try to basically say that you do have to learn your changes, you do have to learn the songbook and the standards, and you have to practice “Cherokee” seven million times before you can get on my bandstand.
Well, everyone calls their own rules. If a musician from India came into the room and said to the jazz musicians, “Let's play such-and-such raga,” they would say, “What's a Raga? I don't know how to play that.” And if an Indian musician or a musician from Korea or China walked in, and you say, “‘How High the Moon’?” And he says, “Why would you want to know how high the moon is? I don't know how high the moon is. I'm not a scientist.” So I mean, it's just that. Even within improvised music, there's [Black American] improvised music, there's European improvised music, there are all these styles and ideas of how you're going to play music together.
Derek Bailey did it one way, Wes Montgomery did it another way, Sonny Sharrock did it another way and Jimi Hendrix did it another way. So you can't have everyone go to the same school. You can go for the basic idea: “Okay, this is a bass. You have G, D, A, E, and these are the strings, these are the positions. And these sounds, that you can call notes.” (But then later on, I found out that there's a note concept and there's a sound concept, where you’re using sound and texture, and not notes.) After that, you can choose to do what you want with the basics. You can even extend the basics, you can say, “Well, I don't want it tuned to G. I want to tune it to F-sharp.” Or, “I want a tune to E.” Now of course, if you're playing with Bob's blues band, and Bob only plays B-flat blues, and you're not going to get hired. Or you're playing in Bob's Band and say to Bob, “Well Bob, I've been playing with you for five years. And we only play B flat blues. Can we play a blues in F?” Bob says, “No, B-flat blues is my band. You can go over to Terry's band. He plays blues in F. And if you really want to get adventurous, you can go over to Randy's band, he plays blues in all keys.” So everybody has a family or musicians that have the same aesthetic that support them. And this is fine. You have to play with musicians who are going in the same direction, who love going in that direction. And that's the direction you go into. Now, there's some musicians that can play in a lot of different bands, and some musicians that can play on one thing.
I tell my students, “Okay, how about let's shoot for one sound that will save the world. Wouldn’t you like to find that? We're going through all of these patterns and notes, but let's try and look for one sound that will stop people in their tracks, and change their lives, and uplift them.” And they say, “Wow, how do I do it?” I say, “Well let's first think about it, and then let's talk about tone.” The first thing that I would teach is that you have to have a tone or a sound on your instrument, because sound comes before rhythm.
Sound comes before harmony. Sound comes before melody. So if you're ill or you're feeling badly depressed and you run into somebody, all they have to say is, “Hey William…” Just hearing the sound of that voice is already vibrating in a certain way to heal you. It uplifts you. Then you begin to interact in the conversation. Now you've heard the sound and then the poetry comes out. The poetry comes out and you begin to put poems together, sentences and phrases, musical phrases, and then at the end it's about uplifting. It's not about matching the chord changes, not about playing this right and playing that wrong. It's a matter of trying to find out what uplifts people early on. If you come to me and say you have a stomach-ache, I say, “Okay, I am gonna write out a prescription. This is a stomach-ache rhythm. When you have a stomach-ache, you sing this melody three or four times a day, and see if your stomach gets better.”
You start thinking, “When I play this note, some kid in India who can't even hear the note is being healed by the note.” You really begin to get into vast dimensions of a possibility. You begin to believe it, and then you see that it's all about vibration. As you travel the world, as you meet people… Down to Peru where you meet Shamen, you go to Serbia where I just played with a shaman, and you begin to see the similarities. This guy from Serbia, he made all these instruments and sang—and his singing was just like the indigenous people of America. So you begin to understand it's more universal. When you listen to some Russian singing that sounds like Alabama gospel music, and you begin to really put things together. But not to the point where you actually know what you're doing. [The shaman in Serbia] said, “Well, do you know what you're doing?” And the answer is, “I don't even know what you mean by ‘Do I know what I'm doing?’” I mean, I get up, I breathe when I play the instrument, I try to lose myself in it. And that's all I try to do is lose myself in there and be carried with the flow of the music. Now why would I want to know what I'm doing? I believe that there's gotta be space for mystery in your music. Somewhere in there, there's gotta be room for mystery.
William Parker will be a special guest on Dada Strain Radio on The Lot Radio (Fri 6/21, 10a @ The Lot Radio, Greenpoint). The show will feature an interview and music from throughout Parker’s career. If you’re around, stop by, or tune in!
EDIT (6/24): The June 21st episode of Dada Strain Radio on The Lot Radio is up on Soundcloud…or here if you’re into visuals:
This Week’s Shows:
Highly Recommended Juneteenth Celebration I: JADALAREIGN’s Love From the Sun is a late-afternoon/early-evening jam that features tag-team sets from eight of Bklyn’s finest—DJ Tara B2B Niyah West, Donis B2B Devoye, Kilopatrah Jones B2B Rose Kourts, MORENXXX B2B Sterling Juan Diaz—plus local Black-owned vendors and activations. A portion of proceeds will be split between Helping Hand Sudanese Refugee Relief and Friends of the Congo. (Wed 6/19, 2p @ Nowadays Garden, Ridgewood - $15)
Highly Recommended Juneteenth Celebration II: Imani Dennison’s excellent Black Science Fiction community project takes over National Sawdust to present a deep double-bill of current improvisers, Baltimore’s Konjur Collective and Chicago’s Isaiah Collier. (Wed 6/19, 7:30p @ National Sawdust, Williamsburg - $20) There’s also an after-party a few blocks aways at Gabriela, featuring Bookworms, cry$cross, and Devoye. (Wed 6/19, 10p @ Gabriela, Williamsburg - FREE with National Sawdust wristband/$15)
Founded in 1996, Arts For Art’s annual Vision Festival has been a cornerstone of New York’s free jazz and improvised music from the beginning. Its musical programming is an embarrassment of riches: There’s the local community members and the constant stream of visitors, the elders and students and cross-generational pollinators, and a never-ending expansion of sonic textures and dance and spoken-word artists. Each of the six nights (it began on Tuesday with a salute to festival co-founder, William Parker) presents cultural legends and a free-jazz sound you may expect — next to something inevitably new to most (including those of us who attend year after year). This music is always two things at once: an inspiring lesson full of possibility, and a reassurance of tradition’s strength. As some folks started saying again recently, “if you know you know”; but if you regularly read Dada Strain and don’t “know,” I urge you to find out. Highest Recommendation. (Wed 6/19 - Sun 6/23, starts at 6p each night @ Roulette, Downtown Bklyn - $70 per night)
Dorothy Carter (1935-2003) was an extraordinary string musician and multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser and American folk traditions-interpreter, whose homemade 1970s recordings and commune-based lifestyle made her a very-secret hero during her time on Earth. We live in an era when secret heroes are increasingly finding new pedestals, and Carter’s sound—at the intersection of old weird American stories, new age ascension, and the enlightenment of drones—is now influencing everyone from vinyl fetishists to ayahuasca tour-guides. It's good shit! The NYC label Palto Flats reissued Carter’s second album Waillee Waillee last year to much acclaim (Drag City will release her 1976 debut in the fall), and Palto Jacob is behind this evening celebrating Dorothy’s music. It’ll feature Laraaji, one of Carter’s true musical counterparts, interpreting her works, plus archival video of Dorothy by Ben Levine, in a space perfect for all this spiritual history. (Thurs 6/20, 7:30p @ Giorno Poetry Systems, Manhattan - $20)
Earlier this year, long-standing Bklyn musickers, saxophonist Caroline Davis and guitarist Wendy Eisenberg, teamed up for one of my favorite albums of the year, Accept When, which falls somewhere between experimental folk-pop and free-jazz. They both sing on it, which is why The Owl is the perfect “random” place to experience their collaboration. Also playing: Physical Kids and Brent Arnold Quintet. (Thurs 6/20, 8p @ The Owl, Prospect-Lefferts - $15suggested)
The occasional Fire Over Heaven series of improvised music is currently being curated by the mighty drummer, Lesley Mok, whose new electronics-heavy trio project Vehicle/Passenger, with saxophonist/poet Marc Alberto and bassist Florian Herzog, is celebrating its album release. They’ll be joined in improvised electronics-land by HxH (Lester St. Louis and Chris Williams) who are hooking up once more with Speaker Music (DeForrest Brown, Jr.), and if it’s anything like their collaborative debut set at Pioneer Works last year, it’s worth your trek to the Outpost. (Thurs 6/20, 8p @ Outpost Artists Resource, Ridgewood - $15)
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