ReCOVery: A Conversation With Ashlin Parker
Words by George Wilde / Edited by Sam Ferguson / Photos by Katie Sikora
This interview is part of an ongoing series of interviews with New Orleans creators entitled ReCOVery: Conversations In Creation.
Ashlin Parker is a trumpet player and leader in the New Orleans musical community. His endeavors include local, national, and international performance with groups such as the Ellis Marsalis Quintet, New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, and his own brass collective Trumpet Mafia. This conversation took place April 14, 2020
George Wilde: Is it kind of your regular students, or is it anybody else?
Ashlin Parker: Well, this is my last semester at Tulane, so I gotta teach a Jazz History class with fifty students.
Wow, you’re doing Jazz History? I went to Tulane. I took that class.
Who’d you take it with?
John J. Joyce Jr. He’s not around anymore.
Yeah, I’m not hip.
Yeah, he was a real character. Yeah, it’s kind of — I would have learned a lot more if it had been Ashlin Parker.
Well, it’s definitely expanded because of all this drama, so, you know, it’s more about what jazz can teach you, you know? There’s a lot of non-musicians in the class, so, I have to make sure that they’re still understanding that you can still learn from people that don’t do what you do. And, you know, I guess at their age it’s hard to be really that interested in it. But in the circumstances, they all come to class! I had fifty students today.
Wow.
Because you know attendance starts to get flaky during this kind of stuff.
Well yeah, and in springtime regardless. So what is it that jazz can teach them? What are they learning?
One of the things that I did prior to the shutdown is explain the importance of liminal spaces. We don’t speak about that so much as we speak about subliminal. It makes liminal a little bit more understood. But, it’s that threshold between what you know and what you don’t and that transitional, that transitional space. And transitional space is very uncomfortable.
Yeah, give an example.
Quarantine, (laughs). It’s completely an overload of unpredictability that we have no idea what’s going to happen, where we’re going, and it creates a lot of anxiety.
And that anxiety, if we learn how to hold that, we can come out of this thing stronger, grown, another…adapted, all these kind of things. But this is kind of where creativity lies. I asked my students if they knew that Miles Davis threw up every night playing with Charlie Parker. Like he used to throw up; the stress and the anxiety used to literally paralyze him. That put him through a kind of wringer that then, when he finally felt, when he finally figured out to hold on for dear life, more people resonated with what he did.
It’s almost like he lasted, his impression lasted in a more wide-ranging, longer way than just Bird alone.
Right. And so a liminal space, when I explained to them before, it would have been like, you know, you go home and you got a slip on your door that says you got six days to vacate the premises. And so in that time you either call all your friends and make it a “Look, they only gave me six days, can you believe that? Who would do something like that?” You can do that for a whole six days, or you can look for a new place. [Laughs]
Right.
That has a bigger pool, that has a better view. You can be in a better situation, but anxiety can eat you up and have you on the street in six days asking for favors.
So when you bring up liminal spaces to your students, when you reference that in terms of jazz, are you talking about the improvisatory experience? Are you talking about the moment of creation being the moment in which the musicians are performing?
I speak more of liminality as the nature of improvisation, dealing with the unpredictability and all kinds of stuff. But the actual liminal space, I like to describe some important liminal spaces or times, if they’re physical spaces or not, but sometimes they’re times. Like, Reconstruction. Beginning of jazz. Slaves were chilling out here with marching band instruments. “What are we supposed to do? Well, let’s make something up.” That was a space of uncertainty; they literally had no idea what’s next.
Right, if you think it’s uncertain now, try changing the course of three hundred years of history in a moment.
Exactly. And then the famous ones that show up are…obviously New Orleans is always dealing with the liminal in some kind of way…but, [for example], those famous Kansas City jam sessions that went on to daylight. When it was like basically the new Storyville.
You’re talking about the like 18th and Vine period, big band era?
Correct. The fact that so many of those Count Basie tunes are written on the gig. As in the gig lasted longer than the repertoire, so what do you do? You repeat songs? Or do you just start playing some riffs? Blues in D-flat, slow blues in D-flat, fast blues in D-flat.
Play this [riff]!
Minton’s Playhouse for be-bop. This is where you get your shit together. There’s a space for experimental music. They didn’t know where that was going to go.
That seems like something that students would respond to more than just like a dry, “This is what happened with jazz.” And I have also experienced first-hand the apathy of the Tulane students, so I’m curious…
Right. So my thing is, I’ve had to, from the very beginning I’ve studied engagement. Human engagement and core drives, from them. There’s this activity called ‘octalysis’. Like eight, right. And I could send you my handouts for this.
I would love that.
But, there’s eight core drives, and in previous semesters or previous lessons I find myself trying to get them motivated. “Well you guys aren’t engaged, you got to get motivated.” It’s not true, it’s just where their motivation is. Avoidance is a motivation. Fear of failure. Fear of looking a certain kind of way. I dealt with that and I battled it and instead of trying to get those kids to…to, like, say the core drive number-one is your epic calling. What’s bigger than yourself, right?
Uh-huh.
For me, struggling, trying to get them to make that their core drive, that’s what a lot of people would be doing. Like, “Why don’t you care about this as much as me?” It’s like, that’s not their CD-1! They’re going to be a nurse! You know? So speaking of nurse, you know that’s those whose CD-1 is triggered the most right now. In hindsight, since I’ve already trained them on this shit, and we can talk about this stuff, and I can say CD-1 and CD-7, and they know exactly what I’m talking about.
And this is in jazz history class?
This is jazz history class, correct.
Wow.
But here’s the thing, the first activities I give so they’d understand these motivations is deal with jazz musician quotes. Like a Wayne Shorter quote, when he says something like “Jazz is not something that’s required to sound like jazz. Jazz shouldn’t have any mandates. Jazz should be more than getting an ‘A’ in syncopation. It’s dealing with the unknown. Then how do you rehearse the unknown?” So a non-jazz musician reading that shit is like, “What the fuck, like what are you saying?” And I get it. So I’m like, where are they speaking from? You can see what’s driving what he’s saying. There’s trigger words, stuff like “It’s more than an A.” Like it’s more than achievement and accomplishment. And it’s moving that into unpredictability into where we are right now. So when Miles Davis says, “Play what you know and then play above that.” They’re immediately like, “How can you play above what you know? I don’t understand what that is.” But the trigger word is — you got it, though — it’s “more than you.” How can you play above what you can do? OK, epic calling and meaning; it’s bigger than you! So that’s from CD-2 to CD-1. Right? And you start to be able to codify some of these remarks, and hopefully then can start to get fluent on this language.
Right.
Then it’s like, yeah, I ask their final project to intersect their [interests], [how] jazz intersects with, whatever, neuroscience if they’re doing neuroscience. If they’re doing law. Whatever they’re doing. Health. Cool, they intersect. They all intersect; we’re humans.
Absolutely.
Right, so, why I have them do that is I finally get a taste of their CD-1. I get a taste of their epic calling along with jazz. The papers that I get from these kids are my — I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I have all this, I need a platform to get this conversation rolling.
That’s fascinating. That’s a different approach to what I think a lot of music, music history, and musicology professors would engage with. Especially the Tulane population which, you know…
You know the way they engage. They engage in achievement and accomplishment. Right there. That’s it.
Most schools do. Much of the school tradition has to do with achievement and accomplishment, and I guess the jazz tradition, improvised music couldn’t have less to do with that. At least the practice of it. Certainly there is that thing. You can be on the cover of Downbeat, but is that why you do it?
Correct. Correct. I like the Coltrane quotes because they’re all CD-1. Like, everything he said can be all put right there. He just speaks epic calling, every time.
So what’s number three?
Number three is creativity and empowerment. And creativity/empowerment is — so, alright, I’ll get through them all, and then I’ll show you where I’m guiding them now. Four is ownership and possession. Five is sociability and relatedness. Six is rarity and scarcity or, you know, stuff like that.
As in, like, limited number of resources to go around?
“We’ve only got two left, get ’em now!” Oh, they’re all fucking marketing. When I see the marketing, I know what they’re trying to get me to do. I get it. I see through that shit. And I want people to be able to do that, too. And so seven is unpredictability and curiosity.
Interesting, that’s a drive?
And eight is avoidance and loss.
So, not dying.
(Laughs) All kinds…fear of missing out.
What’s two again?
Two is achievement and accomplishment.
Right.
So I’ve organized these — I’m not the only one — I’ve organized them on a graph. One, two, three leave a good taste in your mouth in excess. Four, five can go either way. Six, seven, and eight will leave a negative taste in your mouth in excess. I don’t like to refer to them as negative and positive because, look, jazz lives in number seven. Unfortunately, so does the fucking coronavirus. And so, in excess, one day of quarantine can be enlightening, but a fucking month-and-a-half can be fucking depressing as fuck. You know, not knowing one tune on a gig is cool, but every tune? That’s a little bit too much. And then it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, right? It’s just a balancing act. If you try to avoid number eight you’re in number eight.
So to balance number seven, unpredictability, it looks like two to three and five would be the best way to try to balance that, you know? And stay busy, learn some shit, try to get creative, and we have a lot of breakdowns in number five of course right now because of the nature of what’s going on with the technology and everything.
Right, we’re isolating. Yeah, we have social distance. Which may be a misnomer because it’s really physical distance with social closeness being more important than ever.
You’re preaching, bro. I had a post a week-and-a-half ago that said, “Physical distancing is greater than social distancing.” What a language issue! With people really, like, not calling people.
Yeah, or I saw at the grocery store today, and it said, “Social distancing, please; stay six feet.” And I’m just like, “But I can still chat with that person from six feet away.” I’m still talking to the lady in the checkout line, she’s just six feet away from me. That’s the difference.
Interesting language that kind of hypnotized some people.
I think it does hypnotize people. I think it’s also fascinating that, OK, you’re relating a lot of things together all at once. You have these core drives, and still, in the context of the jazz history. Well it sounds like the class is about jazz history as much as it is understanding the practice of the music.
Mhmm.
And the ethos of the music.
Mhmm.
How do you apply this understanding of the core drives to your students’ understanding of jazz music?
What’s interesting about showing them the music is that it’s all super-human. And they really struggle trying to see the humanity in a lot of these folks. So, this helps. This helps. Also the documentaries. The documentaries obviously really help put people’s journeys in perspective. I have them watch the Clark Terry [documentary] “Keep On Keepin On,” “Chasing the Trane,” “I Called Him Morgan,” and really start to get an idea of these people man. These are people!
You mean that they can’t feel the humanity, when they listen to the music they can’t relate to it, it’s superhuman in that respect?
It’s just music. It’s all music. It is supernatural in a way. You know what I mean? It’s like trying to study Frank Lloyd Wright by just looking at his buildings. I mean this is — he had philosophies, he had principles, he had family and shit like that. So I like to humanize it to make you understand that Coltrane wasn’t always a god. He was a novice at one point, and look at all the interaction, look at the bands that he came up in. Look at all this human coordination going on, you know?
I’ve eased up on the research papers at this point and gave them a way out. I was actually one of the first ones in the school to offer — in the music office meeting I offered, “Can we go to a pass/fail?” This was, like, five weeks ago? Folks are going to get sick. I might get sick. We’ve got to take some pressure off.
Their families might get sick, who knows?
Yeah! We got to take some pressure off. I asked my students to do reflections. This is the stuff that I ask them to do that I take in for homework. I’ve now replaced ten reflections with their final paper which is like, not the same amount of work at all.
Right.
It would be a one-page reflection, minimum, on a live performance, a full album, or a full documentary, ninety minutes or more or whatever. And as they started coming in, I realized how much their English teachers may have screwed them over. Because they don’t know what a reflection is. They’re sitting here telling me, “So in the beginning of the movie, Miles Davis does this, blah blah blah.” You’re giving me a summary. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, nooooo.
You don’t need a summary.
I’ve seen the movie! I didn’t ask you to hand me in proof that you saw the movie. Imagine if we’re out to dinner after a movie. Are you gonna be like, “The movie started with an opening scene, started with a shootout.” And I’m like, “Wha? What the hell? Are you a robot? I can’t tell if you’re a bot or a person.” What I’m asking you is actually probably something your English teachers never asked you. “What did you feel about the intro? What did you feel about the introduction?”
Yeah, maybe more than just the English teachers but maybe something culture, society, people’s parents, friends, and loved ones also have not asked you to do.
Come on now. Come on now.
Which is to express the feelings. How to express your feelings about something. How to connect with something on an emotional, spiritual level. That’s what you’re asking people to do.
Yeah! And mixing that with your intellect! That’s a reflection. That’s a reflection. And the funny thing, you nailed down the cultural thing. Because my Spanish students, I’ve got five or six now, none of them are having this issue.
That’s something that’s also culturally present where we live here in New Orleans, and not so culturally present in places all around the country. When I have people visit here one of the things that they notice and comment on is the vulnerability that people display on a daily basis. And it may be that it’s uncommon, [but] it may be more uncommon than we think. And it may be a strength.
And I’m watching them grow. I wrote them a thing last week because I asked them to do one on Ellis. And I also returned a few that were just merely about his piano playing. I said, “Guys, as amazing a piano player as he is, and composer, bandleader, they’re only thirty percent of his legacy. Only thirty percent of his legacy. So I give you a thirty for this reflection.”
[Laughs] Oh, that’s one way to give a Tulane kid a heart attack. That’s fascinating.
These are bright kids, some of them nailed it. I gave them some bread crumbs in my original email. A video of him saying, “Teaching jazz is an oxymoron,” and then it cuts to a music scene. That’s got to drive them crazy. Like, what? Research! Curious! You’re supposed to be curious at that point. Where is that going? What does that mean? And a lot of them really fucking nailed it. Found all these interviews and found all the CBS stuff from, you know, thirty years ago, and I’m like, “Come on! Give me hope! Y’all giving me hope!” They really are.
Some of them were able to dig in to the fact that Ellis represented like a pedagogy of jazz before such a thing was really possible. And also kind of exhibited that, well, I mean my impression — well, yeah, tell me more about that.
When they say he’s a prolific teacher, I’m like, to me that deserves follow-up. You know what I mean? It seems when someone’s talking about someone’s teaching, when are the lessons going to show up in their thing? Like, when you talk about his playing you start talking about songs and certain performances. But teaching starts to sound like — prolific teaching, is that just quantity? It was a lot of quantity! He taught a lot of students! But I would argue that what he was teaching — that’s his prolific-ness. I guarantee you, if you start looking at what he’s teaching, I don’t care what you do in your life, you’re going to learn something. It’s all relative. All that shit is relatable to life.
What do you take away from Ellis’ pedagogy?
I mean, I have a list of thirty-eight books. I mean it’s not going to be done in a sentence. Around his pedagogy it would have been to get critical thinking happening, you know. My first encounter of E was at UNO, 2007, in a master class. He walks in. Everybody’s quiet as hell. The band — the student band — plays their best number, and then he just paces around. Just paces around. After they play and they’re just waiting for an assessment, you know? They’re waiting for an assessment. And he doesn’t give one. He points at the first person and says, “What’d you hear?” First person just was like, “Uh, uh, uh uh….” OK, makes sense. Points to the next person, “Uh, uh, uh, uh….” Points to the third person. The third person finally is like, “Ah, I had enough rehearsal with the other two, so now I got something: ‘Um, we counted — we played the song too fast.’” He says, “That’s subjective.” Then goes to the next one,
“What’d you hear?”
“The horns weren’t balanced.”
“That’s subjective. What’d you hear?”
And so, really, all my criteria of grounding of any assessment that I ever fucking make starts to point back at E. How do I ground an assessment, you know? How can I point at shit? And being that, if I can point at it, I’m a step closer to grasping it. If I can grasp it, I’m a step closer to owning it, you know? But if I can’t point at it, we’re not starting that train, you know what I mean? So. That’s 2007 with E.
That’s day one.
That’s the introduction. That’s the intro, you know what I mean?
Wow.
Trumpet Mafia is a microcosm of E’s bandstand. E has people that worked for thirty years, for twenty years, for a year. You know? You got fifteen-year-olds sitting in. To me that’s what he’s representing — bridging that gap. And basically making sure that there is never no gap to even worry about. I think that’s what the Center will be celebrating. The Ellis [Marsalis] Center now is going to be pretty much the center of his legacy. So I know that probably sounds like a pressure-inducing thing for them, but, man, we got to have him for, we got to have him for years and years.
Right.
Years. That never happens. That he gets to be the artistic director of his own school that’s built to live past him? You know? So we got a lot of lessons that we were given that are just going to get passed down and it will be very much in the spirit of E. One thing I’d like to start seeing is stuff like Germaine Bazzle presents Gabi Cavassa. And then Gabi Cavassa, in the middle of her set thanks Germaine, they can do a duet song, and she brings her student on. Then Gabi brings her student on.
There you go.
If you ever see Trumpet Mafia, it’s three-tiered. It’s me and my colleagues, the next generation, and then like an OG.
Sure.
Everybody’s on their top game, and it makes so much sense for a young kid to play in a professional band being that…You remember when you were twelve and you had the Fall Concert, you had the Spring Concert, bro. And they tell you to practice, “You need to be serious. You need to practice.” And I’m like, “What? For this stupid third trumpet part? I got it!” You know what I mean? Why would I need to do that four hours a day? And if you don’t show them some other kind of image of success, and what it really looks like, what are they practicing? Why would you tell them to spend that much time on…what? When the kids get on the bandstand, they’re looking up beside us. They’re like, “OK, I get it, I know what I’m practicing: to be able to do that.” And they can point at it. They can point at it.
Mhmm.
Also the audience, yeah, it’s a tear-jerker moment for the audience, great. But at the same time, I challenge the audiences. Well, first of all, on the kids’ perspective, that’s not your parents clapping for you anymore. That’s your community. You know what I mean? That’s a little more honest than just — your parents always think you’re the best, you know? So maybe that’s not the feedback you’re always seeking? For creativity/empowerment. For CD-3.
It gives them a way to participate and it sounds like that by participating it feeds a cycle of growth, among the musicians, between the community and the musicians…
As much as I think that that is standard in the whole history of this stuff — just like I was talking about Trane and Dizzy and all this stuff — I don’t know if it’s a golden rule. I leave New Orleans and I’m lucky to see one sit-in at a gig where I have to pay a cover charge for it.
Yeah, what’s that about?
It’s a cultural breakdown. I mean, to me, I learned the music one way. And the fact that I can’t share — to me, it’s blasphemy. From the music that I play and the culture of this music and the history of this music. It’s blasphemy. I’m not saying everybody should always be able to sit in. But if you don’t allow sit-ins, you’re probably not allowing a lot of other stuff in your life as well. [Laughs] It’s just weird. And it’s selfish.
I think a lot of people associate jazz — they don’t associate it with inclusion necessarily.
They don’t. It’s exclusive.
It’s exclusive. But it sounds like your approach…
CD-6. CD-6.
CD-6. Rarity, scarcity.
Yeah, exclusive.
You can charge a premium for something if you can box people out.
Exactly.
It’s interesting though because it sounds like your reading of the history focuses on the way peoples’ paths wind through one another and winds through peoples’ creative approaches. Coltrane plays with Miles’ band, and he gets one thing out of that. And then Miles has a different quintet and he does something different with that. What do you gain from hoarding it? Or did musicians always hoard it?
CD-4. CD-4 can go either way.
Ownership.
CD-4 can be your record collection but it also can be you hoard it.
Hoarding your own gig.
Yeah. And I just don’t see that benefitting pretty much anybody but you. And I don’t even believe it does that. Miles Davis might have been the least social in passing down of the shit that he was passed down with. But, the liminal spaces that he created, whether if it was Bitches Brew or — everybody that played in Miles’ band it was a university for them. So he, in a way, maybe he didn’t open for sit-ins like, “Oh, whatever.” He didn’t give people hour-long lessons once a week. You know what I mean? But man, he gave a lot. He gave a lot. You know? He’s not an exclusion from this thing. At least he gave Wallace Roney what he didn’t give anybody else. He still gave it to somebody.
What’s that? I don’t know the story.
I mean, it would be like ceremoniously he passed it down to Wallace. You know? And to me that’s — from Bird, to Miles, to Wallace, in a way.
Hmm.
I mean Wallace was his only student. He’s the only one who can say, “I got lessons from him. I’m his protégé.”
Wow.
And the organic-ness of how that became is even more beautiful.
What’s that story?
It’s the Montreux Jazz Festival with Quincy Jones producing.
OK.
When Quincy Jones redid all the Gil Evans stuff.
OK.
Miles was failing in health; this is his last gig.
Wow.
And they hired Wallace to handle some of the parts for rehearsal.
Got it.
To give Miles a break. And Miles was like, “Who is this dude? Play the gig!” He told him to play the gig, too. And he says, “You want me to play the gig? I’m just here for rehearsal.” Like, no you’re doing the gig too. And even more organically, Miles was choppin’ out on some of the gig. Like, he was missing parts, and Wallace just jumped right in and just intuitively finished the phrase, you know? And they had something really special, man. Really, really special.
That’s fascinating.
And I was teaching them about Wallace Roney. They were all doing reflections about Birth of the Cool when Wallace Roney passed. “Like, I was reading about him last week, I was learning about him last week and he’s dead this week, this is a crazy life”, you know?
It is.
I had one day to grieve about Wallace and then fucking E passed.
Wow.
So at this point they’re living life through the lens of jazz. They’re learning all-out life through the lens of jazz. It’s so widened, at this point.
That’s a gift.
Mhmm.
That’s a gift. If you come to New Orleans for school for whatever it is and you leave with one thing, that’s something you can work with.
Right.
I think when we talk about people playing in New Orleans and coming to town and getting out on the scene and playing professionally, I think the importance of mentors comes up often.
Mhmm.
The importance of, like, how you pay your dues.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I wonder if there’s something unique about this place, if it’s a cultural feature that often it’s demanded of you to take on a mentor.
I think it is. And I think if people are associating themselves with transplant communities, they’ll miss that standard. You know? And if transplants were more on a solo journey, they would find it. But if they just hang out with their peers…a trumpet player can live here five years gigging and not know who Leroy Jones is.
That’s a crime.
I know these people.
That’s a crime.
It’s a crime! If you say you love New Orleans, then don’t work against it.
What do you mean?
Well, I feel like playing this music and five dollars doesn’t go into Leroy Jones’ tip bucket. I would argue five dollars a week! But like, never?! It’s just like take, take, take. I’ve been here since 2007, and I’ve never asked for one gig. Yeah, it’s great, yeah, OK, I could play enough that I could, you know, I was good enough to work and whatever. I get the other side of that thing. But I could say that I’ve never worked against the city. I’ve offered my services by showing up with a horn, by showing up, and if they call me, they call me. And then I love to sit in. I mean, I sit in! You know? And every time I sit in, it’s as if I’m gifting these elders with something. I’m like, “Are you kidding?” If that’s what I’m giving you guys, I will be here every fucking week.
You mean the elders are very appreciative to hear your sound?
Yeah! And that I would spend a Friday night there. “You could be anywhere, but you came here, Ashlin.” That shit is so nice but almost backwards in my brain. So, but I got to learn how to take a compliment.
Well, right.
And also just make sure that they’re good. They need anything? At the end of the day that’s where I’m ending up. The conversation? You good, you need anything? Because I’m actually here more in servitude than in pyrotechnics and shit.
Yeah, perhaps more in servitude than to profit from the…
I never came to New Orleans thinking I was going to buy a boat. The power was off in half the town when I got here. That’s never what I thought was going to happen. I also still don’t have a boat. [laughs]
So here we are! All these years later!
I’m killin’ it, bro.
It’s fascinating to hear you talk about it. Because now, in many ways, you represent the shed, and the culture, and offer your mentorship freely to others.
Free as in, I could post right now, “Has Ashlin Parker ever charged you for a lesson?” I’ve never charged for a lesson. Never charged for one. It’s been a couple people that just sent me thirty dollars.
That’s selfless. And now we’re in a time where we need it more than ever.
Now I might change that tune. Especially internationally. There’s folks, they got that boat. If you got the boat, you got to pay for lessons. That’s my prerequisite. That’s all it is. But for the most part, even then, man, I feel like, look, I’m coming from…I saw a cliff. And it’s huge. And it’s a canyon down there. And I’ll start walking back your way and you’re walking toward the cliff and I’m gonna tell you there’s a cliff there! I been there! I been there.
Is that [with] respect to musicality, with respect to your approach to the music? What’s the cliff?
When someone’s asking for coaching, first of all, that’s how it done. It’s invited. I would never assert that shit. “Hey man, you know what you need to do?” No, no, no. That’s how fights start. Well, at least where I come from that’s a good way to start a fight. Just assert some coaching. So if they’re asking, they already have a sense that I have something, that I know something that they don’t know. And if that something is something as simple as “There’s a cliff that way,” then I’m going to tell you! Especially if I can see that you’re going towards that cliff.
Mmm.
To me that’s not something you have to thank me for. “Bro, you were going to go straight there! I’m thanking you for not making me watch that.” You know? And on the other hand, in other universities, you could be teaching a scientist, but that doesn’t mean that’s going to be your coworker in the future. I’m teaching my future coworkers. I got to deal with you. All these lessons got to get to you because I’m not trying to fire you, or have that come back to me in the professional realm. I mean you’re actually — that’s how much coordination — that’s why jazz musicians have more bands than… “What band do you play in?” That’s not jazz. That sounds more like a law firm. Or more like an architecture firm where they deal with six people they deal with and that’s just what it is. No, we have to deal with fucking hundreds of musicians. Thousands of musicians. Especially if you’re going to be in the New Orleans scene. You can’t do that.
That’s interesting. There’s a lot of threads that all come together here. You’re talking about how jazz musicians don’t exist in a band, one group. I wonder what you would think…when you make the music you’re giving of yourself, and in order to make it truly, and great. In a way you have to know yourself enough to give it? It sounds like that’s something related to what you teach at Tulane and something that’s related to what Ellis offers.
Personally, the way I weighed it is more on the social — CD-5. This shit’s got to get into a social thing. We have to do this together so that everybody’s got to be pretty much on the same page. Folks that think it’s cool to be weird. Are we calling social ineptitude weird? Or are you just wearing weird clothes, but you can not make me feel weird on a gig? Is your weirdness going to make me feel weird? Because otherwise, we’re all weird, aren’t we? Aren’t we all weird? We’re fucking individuals. We have shit that’s different, and that’s what you’re calling weird. And so, my thing is, yeah, we all have to, if you want to be in a van with me for nineteen cities just because you have CD-2 together doesn’t make it work. CD-2 is not enough. You know what I mean. It’s great that you can play. I don’t feel good playing with you. So you have a huge CD-5 [deficiency]. I don’t relate to you. The shit has to relate.
Sociability is key. And the culture of sitting in really fosters that.
Exactly. In New York, they might say, “Dude, you fucking suck. I don’t want to see you again. Don’t come by here.” And here they say, “Hey, dude, you fucking suck. What are you doing at noon tomorrow?” You know what I’m saying? I have to see you tomorrow! It’s too small! It doesn’t necessarily work like that. It’s a village. It’s a village. You can’t just, you know — that kid’s going to be the one that burns the village down if you kick him out. That’s an old saying, that’s an old African saying. I’m paraphrasing but, like, “The forgotten kid in the village is the one that burns it down.” And so I feel like they all have to have that personal attention. I’m really hard on CD-5. You don’t get that shit together, you’re going to suffer.
Mmm.
And so if that means they need to get diagnosed bipolar, they have learning disabilities, that shit needs to be diagnosed quick. You learn different, you’re going to have to color-code shit. You’re going to have to take courses in a way that helps your learning.
Mmm.
I have students who, in their reflections, finally disclosed to me that they had such severe learning disabilities that they were projected to live in assistance the rest of their life. And they’re my college students.
Wow.
Right! At what age are you going to deal with that? Are you going to be, like, 39 fucking, like, making up excuses for why you’re socially inept? And trying to say it’s about these changes and shit? It’s more about something else than relating with the people you’re playing with? Or playing for? If your epic calling is so fucking big that it don’t relate with anybody else, then go do it by yourself. Go do it in the woods.
I think there’s something powerful about a jazz musician in the 21st century. You know, obviously “jazz,” or whatever you want to call the music that’s made, talking about sociability and relatedness. There’s so much caché to being above the ability of the average person to relate. Or hoarding the music so that other people can’t relate.
I hate that. And the most unrelatable person, John Coltrane, told you, he told you the key to that. I don’t care if you understand it, you just feel it. He had to let folks understand the criteria about how to relate to [his] music. But I don’t think he ever really wanted to be greater than the listener. I don’t think so. I think that’s a misconception about the masters, and also it’s crept up into the pedagogy. I don’t think there’s one course on sociability and relatedness for a young jazz musician. Being that that’s the key thing to get them work, you know what I’m saying?
You play with who you can get along with generally.
Yeah, exactly. And it’s also what gets you to keep a gig. That’s the difference between you getting a gig and keeping a gig. The bad dudes will always get the gig. You’ll always get the gigs. The related ones are the ones keeping the gigs. And actually having some substantial membership in some groups. But a lot of folks don’t realize that. And they don’t want to. They don’t care. But you realize your job — you’re coordinating with humans.
And ideally resonating with humans, too.
Yeah. I mean, go play for fish if it’s really about that. And a month in isolation they’re starting to re-evaluate their primal need for belonging.
Talk about that because I think a month in isolation does matter and does change people’s perspective.
Yeah, you start to realize, damn, I need people. I need these people. I kick myself every time I thought of all those opportunities that I missed. To me that’s grieving. That’s what I had to deal with last week. Sadness versus grieving. Sadness is the loss. Grieving is the loss of possibilities. And that whole loss of possibilities and denying the possibilities and accepting the ones you lost. It’s a tornado of emotions that everyone’s going through. Wouldn’t it be nice to literally just sit beside you and not talk? That would be nice. Just a foot in distance. How much I took that for granted. What a fucking hug feels like, you know what I mean?
Boy, remember hugs?
You know what I mean? You know? It’s all I’ve been craving was a fucking hug. It’s like, damn, how many times I told myself, “I don’t need no fucking hug. What’s a hug gonna do for me?” Like, really meaningful hug, that just broke me apart? Just by the touch of it, just like broke me down? That’s probably what that hug’s gonna do to me.
Right.
It’s gonna break me down. It’s gonna be like, “Yeah, man. What’s up. We’s up. Yeah, man, give me a hug,” and I’m gonna start crying like a baby.
That’ll feed the soul.
[Wallace Roney died at the age of 59 on March 31, 2020, at St. Joseph’s University Medical Center in Paterson, New Jersey.
Ellis Marsalis passed away in New Orleans, LA at the age of 85 on April 1, 2020.
The cause in both bases was complications arising from COVID-19]
