Archie Shepp
"Sundance" - an essay on Jeanne Lee
We're talking about our work at a roof-top bar in the 11th arrondissement where you can see Sacré-Coeur in the distance. The woman teases me with light humour and kindness about the emphasis of my writing; she says that she plans on returning to Senegal, the country where her father was born to find work in an organisation that makes connections between Dakar and Paris. Recently she says she attended a conference about "women in jazz." No, no, she says laughing in response to the expression on my face, it was interesting, really.
"Jazz is a music that combines so many opposites ... You have to find that balance, then you have a guideline between freedom and discipline, between rhythm and melody, between body and spirit, between mind and instinct."
"I feel the music like a dance, I think it's an important part of the music, it has to be felt like a dance."
Jeanne Lee
Few jazz singers, or singers of any genre, could capture the same emotional depth with such ease, as self-described "a jazz singer, poet/lyricist, composer/improvisor" Jeanne Lee who died aged 61 in Mexico, 2000. Compassion, tenderness, levity and freedom can be heard in her voice. More than anything else, even from her earliest recordings and performances with Ran Blake in the 1960s, Jeanne Lee sounds at peace with herself.
Recently I've been ruminating about how our sense of our own identities as women, even as the years pass, is shaped by how we see ourselves in relation to others, how we think about ourselves in terms of how others see us (self as performance, performance as self). I am grateful to Jeanne Lee for the way she seems to have found a way through all this, as an artist she sounds free.
None of this was by chance. Lee's artistry emanated from her conscious exploration of the limits and potential of performance and improvisation, to give voice to her musical gift and experience as an artist and as a Black woman in the United States (and Europe). Yet in the later years of her life, Lee expressed frustration that she didn't have so many recordings to her name (a consequence of raising children, she said) and that the multi-faceted nature of her achievement had not been recognised.
Within jazz, Eric Porter writes on his insightful essay "Jeanne Lee's voice" - first published in Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, Vol 2, No 1 (2006) and then People Get Ready: The Future of Jazz is Now! (2013) - critics often encouraged a binary opposition between the jazz vocalist (woman) with the jazz musician (man/artist).
Yet as Porter notes, Lee's work upset this binary opposition in various ways. First and perhaps most importantly, Lee challenged conventions of what a singer is via her particular brand of improvisation, her use of her voice as an "instrument." But her innovative re-interpretation of standards and the way she positioned herself as a singer within the group are also important, I'd suggest. In one interview Lee stressed that she was not an add-on, the called-in singer, but a musician of equal importance to the others on stage. She performed alongside them.
Porter writes:
"By disrupting the close relationship between jazz singing and the feminized sphere of popular vocal music, and by bringing a level of technical virtuosity to their work, (Abbey) Lincoln and Lee challenged the idea that female vocal jazz artists, while an important element of the jazz tradition, did not quite measure up to the artistry and genius of male instrumentalists and were a secondary class of performers.
That Lee was able to disrupt this dichotomous juxtaposition of female vocalist bodies with male instrumentalist minds is evident in the critical responses to her by some European jazz writers who commended her improvisational skills. As one of them put it: "Miss Lee, as far as I know, is the first to fulfil 100 percent what most jazz singers wish for in their dreams --namely a complete disregard of the former borderline between the human voice and an improvising horn."
Two points to make here: my aim is not to "recover" Jeanne Lee as part of a feminist project, even if that might be a worthwhile task, I am not the woman, or person to write it (and besides, those who know about jazz already hold her in high esteem, obviously). Second, to understand her significance as a Black woman and artist, I'd recommend Porter's essay, particularly for the way it situates Lee's work within her broader cultural and political context, while being acutely alert to what makes her art so distinctive then and now.
I particularly appreciated the way Porter detailed Lee's own perception of her work and its importance, see, for example, how in the late 1970s she referred to herself as a "voice environmentalist," as quoted in Porter's essay:
"I look at myself as already an environment, the environment is there and it comes through me in sound. In turn the music is created as a total environment to the audience. I'm always trying to allow the environment to manifest itself through me [. . .] when I'm working with a musician I'm trying to deal with the sound. When I want to direct the music I create a poem and then there's a more deliberate environmental frame and we all work within that."
This self-perception corresponded with work by her contemporaries, such as Anthony Braxton and Wadada Leo Smith, who Porter writes shared a "Black Arts Movement commitment to community-building through creative educational projects while recognizing the limitations of narrowly conceived identity politics and the necessity of creative exchanges across cultural and national boundaries."
Seeing herself and her art as part of an "environment" reflected her desire to create work that was not hierarchical, but depended on the interpretation of the audience for its meaning in a way that echoed the Fluxes ethos, and Happenings as as well as that of Black American "AACM and multi-instrumentalist Marion Brown, on whose Afternoon of a Georgia Faun Lee performed"
Porter's essay begins with Ntozake Shange's evocation of a 1981 performance by Jeanne Lee at Soundscape, New York:
"On 52nd Street I realized Jean [sic] Lee is clothed and fed by her voice. That's the same street my aunts and uncles were born and black on, so 52nd and 10th means something to me – like a people who come out with what they can carry: love, sweat, blood and song. Though everything we know is wonderful and rich, we, as a people, hide, to keep it safe. Jean Lee don't. [. . .] Aretha addresses God, Billie Holiday seduced him. Tina Turner made the devil think twice/but Jean Lee is mingling among us. [. . .] She is not afraid of all this body that moves so sweet I dare you/ and isn't this more than you ever imagined; her body is song. [. . .] We got a woman among us who isn't afraid of the sound of her own voice. She might lay up nights, wondering how are we staying alive 'cause we didn't hear what she just heard/or sing it. Well. Did I hear the congregation say Amen.
She sings.
Jean Lee/She sings"
Porter's analysis hinges on the striking collaboration between Lee, Andrew Cyrille and Jimmy Lyons from 1979, "In These Last Days" from Nuba released by Black Saint Records:
Porter notes how Lee's poetry prefaced her identity as an artist, a Black woman and a mother.
In these Last Days
of Total
Dis-in-te-gra-tion,
Is a struggle
against becoming
An object in
someone else's
nightmare:
There is great joy
Naima's Mother
and unassailable strength
Porter writes: "The words/lyrics "these Last Days/ of Total/ Dis-in-te-gration/ where every day/ Is a struggle/ against becoming/An object in/ someone else's/ nightmare" are improvised and repeated in different registers, across varying ranges of intervals. There is particular focus on the word "struggle," which is elongated and distorted, ultimately becoming a scream."
But there is also optimism to be found here, as Porter notes, in the final lines when Lee mention the "great joy" to be found in her role as mother, as well as the notion of transformation.
What strikes me about Jeanne Lee's work in the 1960s particularly is how modern (and radical) it still sounds. The poetry she performs on Archie Shepp's 1969 "Blasé" is astounding, her debt to Abbey Lincoln can be sensed in her delivery, but the intensity and the content of her verse have no obvious point of comparison.
Spoken-word before it existed, a revolutionary poetics with a disassembled soundtrack: one woman's lament, a deconstructed Song of Songs, held close.
Musically, it breaks convention just as you would expect from Shepp, but the drumming in particular by Philly Joe Jones stuns for its broken, unexpected counterpoint. (Note the small error in the lyrics transcription in the video: "I gave you a loaf of sugar and you took my womb till it runs.")
"Soul Eyes"
"A soul, I'm told Can be both hot and cold/So how is one to know Which way to go?/ The soul is mirrored in the eyes/But how is one to know When the whole world is full of such lies?/So darling, watch those eyes And even more, those lies/And when you see them smile/For a long, long while Then you know you've found the one/ Who'll always, always be true I know, that it is how I found you"
From Mal Waldron: Soul Eyes (BMG, 1997)
From After Hours (Owl, 1994)
In an interview Jeanne Lee recalled how she first met Ran Blake at Bard College, "I met Ran the first day I was in college, I heard this sound, we were all standing in line to get our classes, we were all freshmen, the sound was Ran Blake playing the piano in the Chapel. We've been friends ever since."
Winning the Apollo Theater's Amateur Night competition led to an album contract with RCA, The Newest Sound Around and a tour in Europe, where as the New Music USA obituary quotes Ran Blake: "She created such a sensation – they called her the heir of Billie Holiday."
But if you listen to Lee's 1966 recording of the standard "Night and Day"
her expressive, experimental leanings can be heard, in a way that differs strongly from the classic Billie Holiday recording of 1939. There are similarities, certainly, in the phrasing (both singers emphasise words you wouldn't expect, for example, "are" as in "you are the one") but the differences are marked. Whereas Holiday's performance is all about her remarkable voice, especially in that moment it becomes fragile when she sings of her "hungry yearning" for her absent love, it remains contained and extremely controlled, her signature as an artist.
In contrast, the Jeanne Lee performance is radically exposed, as she breaks down the song into parts, greatly assisted by Ran Blake's piano accompaniment. If you listen to their approximate contemporaries – Helen Merrill in 1961 or Anita O'Day in 1959, or Ella Fitzgerald in 1956 – you can hear how different their approach is. Whereas Merrill, O'Day, Fitzgerald keep the "swing" of the song, the original speed and verve of it, the Jeanne Lee version, which was released on Free Standards: Stockholm, 1966 is slowed down dramatically, and kept expressionistic as if she is daubing colours of paint, playing with sonic fragments. It's all about the purity of the sound, the phrasing. (Also on the album two very surprising, if sexy/sensual, covers of Beatles' songs: "A Hard Day's Night" and "Ticket to Ride").
This style of singing is relatively common today, so it's difficult to imagine how new this would have been to the audiences of the era. That said Ran Blake's highly expressive style of playing the piano still sounds brave decades on. Listen to this similarly wonderful version of "A Taste of Honey" from the same album:
Or "Summertime" from her RCA début with Blake, The Newest Sound Around from 1961
Notice just before 1'30" when Blake kicks into it as if it were some kind of raw honky tonk piano groove, counter to the typical approach of holding back and being "respectful" (see Mal Waldron, or Tommy Flanagan or any of the other greats in this regard) to the vocalist. You would expect that this would be obtrusive, but in fact it works perfectly with Lee's deeply harmonious vocal style, adding some definition and perhaps encouraging her also to develop more of an edge to her delivery.
Needless to say the above Lee/Blake interpretation from the "Jazz on the Screen" footage is light years away from the Sondheim/Bernstein original from West Side Story (1961).
Found in this performance are the roots of her more experimental vocal work/interpretations. Ben Ratliff wrote in his New York Times obituary that Lee had two radically different styles and that the first was "dry, slow and breathy, influenced by Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington." Lee, in fact, cited Abbey Lincoln as an important early influence, you can hear this particularly in her performance of "Summertime" above.
As Eric Porter writes:
"One of the striking things about the album is Lee's engagement with Abbey Lincoln's music. Lee's vocal inflections resemble Lincoln's and she builds upon Lincoln's explorations of the instrumental qualities of the voice through improvised, non-verbal vocal lines. Lee also performs at the session material written and/or included by Lincoln on her own 1961 album Straight Ahead: Thelonious Monk's "Blue Monk," for which Lincoln had written lyrics; the Billie Holiday/Mal Waldron composition "Left Alone"; and the title track, with words by Lincoln and music by Waldron."
During these sessions Lee also recorded "Straight Ahead" – the title track of Lincoln's foundational 1961 album, the song written by Lincoln, Earl Baker and Mal Waldron. Porter writes:
"Lincoln's work on Straight Ahead represented a critical moment in her flight from the musical and ideological baggage associated with material available to jazz singers. During the late 1950s and early 1960s Lincoln made an effort to move away from romantic ballads that spoke of abusive and dysfunctional heterosexual relationships; she began performing material which described healthier relationships between men and women, provided varying degrees of social commentary, and demanded a more "instrumental" approach to singing. Moreover, Lincoln's shift in material also spoke to her commitment to the mutual liberation of black men and women in the political context of the black freedom movement."
Jeanne Lee was explicit about her creative debt to Lincoln and respect for her work, as quoted in Porter's essay:
"The person who left the most impression on me in terms of life-situations as well as what she was doing with her voice was Abbey Lincoln. From the credibility of her craft and her own reality and not so much as a "style." It was like using the energy as a painting. Billie Holiday too, but she comes from another era, Billie has the same kind of thing musically, but Abbey advances that type of understanding, [. . .] Abbey is more human, it's not just a woman who's a victim of her role. Again speaking about Lincoln, Lee said: "this woman made it possible for me to have faith in the fact that I am a poet and I did not have to sing standards in order to be a jazz singer. I could find a way of putting my own perception into musical terms"
Personnel: Allan Praskin, clarinet (B2) Perry Robinson, clarinet (B2) Mark Whitecage, alto clarinet (B2) Jack Gregg, bass Steve McCall, drums Gunter Hampel, flute, piano, vibraphone, alto and bass clarinet Sam Rivers, soprano and tenor saxophone, flute Marty Cook, trombone (B2) Ensemble tracks recorded by George Klabin, Sound Ideas Studio, New York, February 1974.
"No words, only a feeling
No questions, only a life
No sequence, only a being
No journey, only a dance"
Here is some more from Ben Ratliff's New York Times obituary:
"Because Ms. Lee performed in two radically different styles, her singing was difficult to categorize. One of her voices was dry, slow and breathy, influenced by Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington.
In 1961 she and a classmate from Bard College, the pianist Ran Blake, performed as a duo at the Apollo Theater's Amateur Night contest. They won, and the album they later recorded, ''The Newest Sound Around'' (later reissued on CD as ''The Legendary Duets''), has remained a cult favourite.
In jazz standards and Thelonious Monk tunes on the album, Ms. Lee and Mr. Blake subtracted swing, but added intellectual coolness, abstruse piano harmonies and vocal influences from Holiday and Washington; the record is a series of minimalist dreams. (In 1989 she and Mr. Blake recorded a duet album in the same style, ''You Stepped Out of a Cloud.'')
In her other vocal style, Ms. Lee approached words as sounds; this voice was harsh and booming, and she used her teeth, lips and tongue to wring drama out of each syllable, presaging singers like Diamanda Galas. In the mid-1960's she was a multidisciplinary artist, writing music with members of the Fluxus school like Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins, and gradually becoming more aligned with the rest of the late-1960's avant-garde in jazz."
While it is true that some of Jeanne Lee's work in the 70s particularly played with conventional song construction, I don't recognise the "harsh and booming" quality that Ratliff refers to above as being a key element of Jeanne Lee's work, if anything there is a lilting softness which reoccurs in various ways. See, for example, the wonderfully playful "Angel Chile" from her Conspiracy record (Earthforms Records, 1974).
Or what might be my favourite piece of music of hers, "Your Ballad" from the same album:
Where to begin with this music, with its capacity to hold on to apparent opposites and make them cohere, the simple joy and excitement that plays against deep contentment, music that is slow and leisurely and impatient at the same time: the sweetness of it all.
Added to this are the various personalities of the instruments providing the foundations for Lee's remarkable vocal performance. The ponderous and heavy nature of the bass line and I'm not sure which part it is, most probably the alto clarinet, but it sounds like horns that suggests partial movement, but instead circles as if waiting for direction from the vocalist. Then just before two minutes in it stops to build once more; something similar occurs three minutes later. There is such beauty in this music, each time I hear it it touches my heart.
There are too certainly too echoes of the standard "Lover Man" in this song, the un-sung melody of "where can you be?"which Lee recorded with Ran Blake on her first album, in a typically personal style:
To finish, here is a live performance of Jeanne Lee from 1970, performing with her husband and musical collaborator Gunter Hampel:
(This essay is dedicated to the memory of my late mother and my sister, neither of whom listened to jazz. Jeanne Lee's music has recently helped me in my efforts to come to terms with their absence ... and to all those seeking solace in music)
Related article: Mal Waldron 'Left Alone' (Mal Live 4 to 1, Philips/Japan, 1971; Left Alone '86, Paddle Wheel, 1986; w/ Archie Shepp, Left Alone Revisited, Enja Records, 2002) & Abbey Lincoln published 8 July, 2018
for other pieces of writing on Mal Waldron, Archie Shepp and jazz, follow the tags
Tags: Jazz, Music, 60s, 70s, USA, Jeanne Lee, Mal Waldron, Live Recordings, Archie Shepp, 90s
'Freedom Funk Chant:' an interview with Raw Poetic
January 31, 2018 in Hip-Hop
Madeleine Byrne: Let's start off by thinking about the album title, The Reflecting Sea: Welcome to a New Philosophy, all of this sounds pretty lofty, what are you talking about there?
Raw Poetic: The title is taken from the song 'Freedom funk chant', there's a line in it where I say, 'The sea reflects the reflecting sea' that was basically saying how a lot of things in life mirror each other from the past to the future. I felt like the album even though we are going in new directions, it had a play on a lot of our traditions, where both Damu (the Fudgemunk) and I come from so it's a new way to approach a lot of things we've already gone through.
MB: It's interesting this idea of 'the reflecting sea', as there's an Alice Coltrane record that has a really similar title (Reflection On Creation And Space, A Five Year View, Impulse! 1973) were you wanting to connect your work with, say, artists from the '70s?
Raw Poetic: You know what that never crossed my mind, Alice Coltrane … John Coltrane's wife.
MB: Yes.
Raw Poetic: My uncle was taught by John Coltrane, so as I say a lot of things kind of end up mirroring each other, it just kind of does that sometimes.
MB: We'll talk about your uncle (Archie Shepp) and his influence on your work a bit later on, coming back to your work with Damu, I saw you worked together last year, right?
Raw Poetic: It was an album he did, I appeared on a song …
(To read an interesting article and interview on Raw Poetic's career and verses on 'Openings' go to 'I trust few with my narration': Raw Poetic dissects his 'Openings' verse' by Gino Sorcinelli published in Medium June 9, 2017)
MB: How can you compare the work you've done on this record and previous projects, thinking about the sound of the music and how you position yourself within it?
Raw Poetic: I think Damu and I had more of a collective gathering in terms of putting this album out, in terms of our musical styles. Damu is the producer, he put the soundscape together but on this one I played a lot of the guitar and I also wanted to challenge myself in terms of what I'd done on my solo records and bring it to this one. It was a practice that took many years of going back and listening to it, it was a new approach for both of us. If you compare it to 'Hole Up' where he gave me the beat and I rapped over it and that was it: I was the rapper, he was the DJ with this one it was more of a musical approach for both of us.
MB: You can hear the difference, this release has more depth sure. Is it a mix of live instrumentation and sampling on the record?
Raw Poetic: 'Hole Up' was very boom bap, going back to basics this is who we are and we're from. It was more an introduction. Damu and I have known each other since we were young, but that was the first time anyone had heard us do something together, 'cause I was always working with my band, Panacea for the most part, so when we did that it was like a jolt. But with this one it is more about maturity having built up over the years, like let's be a two-man band on this.
MB: You mentioned you play guitar on some of the tracks, I'm interested in the way Damu recreates the sound of a band (even if it isn't a band) in his music, on The Reflecting Sea was it sampled or mainly live performance that's sampled, could you talk through the process in terms of the music?
Raw Poetic: As for the music, I can't exactly say what Damu does, I know he does a mix of both sampling and playing his own instruments, where he does that is a kind of a mystery. I kind of like to leave it that way, so I never really ask him.
Sometimes I might play through the whole song and then he takes chunks of it – I was sampling myself a lot of the time also.
MB: For example, 'Freedom Funk Chant' that's an amazing song, it's got a lot of depth and interest to it could you talk to me about that song in terms of the music? You say a lot of the album was a collaboration, what was the process for that song, were you given a beat, or did you create it together?
Raw Poetic: That one he gave me part of the beat, that was one where I heard a lot of different chords I could add to it and then we talked about how I should approach the lyrics, a lot of my older stuff was me just speaking poetry, so here Damu was like, 'Yo, can you put some poetry on this?' And I was like, 'Yeah ok, I'll put the poetry here and maybe a guitar riff, chords under that.' When I started doing the chorus it sounded like a chant, that's where I got the title from. I keep saying, 'Freedom da funk da funk' (sings it) so it's a chant and it gives it this warm, tribal feeling to the song that I like. We just went in that direction.
I'm the kind of person where normally everything is done within a couple of hours, with that one I did it all in a couple of hours, 'cause once you capture the zone you have to act on that moment, you know and then I played the guitar track. The process of putting the whole thing together that's where Damu really shines; he took it and put all the pieces where they needed to be, but all the lyrics were done within the day. I'm pretty sure Damu plays the drums on that one also and possibly also the bassline.
MB: He performs the percussion parts in a lot of his songs, doesn't he?
Raw Poetic: A lot of them he does, but he's also a traditionalist … The beauty of what he does is that it's hard to decipher whether it's a sample or not, you got to understand sampling for us and being where we're from – East Coast kids – the sound of the sample is a big thing. If you can mimic that sound live and the person can't tell you've kind of accomplished something, 'cause you don't have to worry about it being stolen by anybody else but it still has that feel, that Old School sound from the early 90s and 80s, you know, but you made it. It's a fun game.
MB: With the title, that choice of the word 'freedom' that word is so full of meaning, it's the classic word in terms of Black musical traditions in the US, isn't it?
Raw Poetic: Yeah, yeah, definitely. That's one thing I always vibe with in general. When I hear that song, I always keep my mother and father in mind who were in the Black Panther Party, so it was always an idea that was big in our household, this constant fight for freedom, especially the times we live in now with a racist pig running our country now. These words matter probably now more than ever.
'Freedom Funk' is kind of like stay active, stay hyped about what you feel and march towards that goal; it's for everyone.
MB: What does freedom mean to you as an artist?
Raw Poetic: I think freedom means a lot of things; one is being able to be whoever you are without judgment, (but it's also) the freedom to live a life that is worth living, for everyone. (It's the) freedom of anybody to be able to step up and be accepted for who they are, without judgment. Being treated equally, which is something that (pauses) I don't know if I have ever really experienced, you know, am I treated as equal in this country I live in? I live in Virginia and there are a lot of white people, and Asians and Black people and everything else, but I know there are so many things I've experienced from police brutality, to seeing what happens with my brothers and things to do with my family …
So, what is freedom to me, it's something I strive for but it's not something I have truly experienced. (This is why) it's not something that I can truly answer even for myself. I think it's something we're still fighting for. It's one of those things (pauses) where, I think, when you find that you've almost reached freedom you realise how far it still is.
MB: You mentioned you live in Virginia, which part?
Raw Poetic: I live in Arlington, Virginia right outside of DC.
MB: What kind of place is Arlington it's a military town, isn't it?
Raw Poetic: Yeah there's a lot of military around here. It's a nice town, I like Arlington but just for instance, just to give an example, about two months ago I was coming back home, and I noticed a police car following me, so I think to myself I got to go to a bright spot to make sure nothing happens.
Now, I'm 6'5, 250 pounds - not a small guy – but me, being a Black man in America I know that there is trouble when a cop is following me, as soon as I pull up the cops surround me and start questioning me about somebody being robbed. Now fortunately a lot of people around knew me, so they came out in my defence. I've had guns put to my head five times by police. I do not have any criminal record - that's what I mean when I say I don't necessarily know what true freedom is because this is something I always have to think about when I step outside the door; and it's (something) that a lot of other people don't have to think about.
MB: Virginia has an awful history in terms of race relations: to take just one example, I was reading some articles (see: 'Prince Edward County's Long Shadow of Segregation' by Kristen Green, The Atlantic, August 1 2015 and also 'The Forgotten School in Brown vs Board of Education' by Emily Richmond, also in The Atlantic May 16, 2014) about how the government defunded then shut down all the public schools for black and white children from 1959 for five years to avoid desegregating them. What's it like there now?
Raw Poetic: I work in the school system. I know that they are trying re-district the lines so some of the kids in the poorer areas don't go to the same schools as kids in the richer areas, that bothers me a lot because I think you learn more when you are surrounded by kids from different cultures and backgrounds. I think that's when you find a lot of people who don't think they are prejudiced are, they haven't really been tested with it. I think this area is very liberal, but once you branch out Virginia is very segregated. Even the people around here they're segregated but they don't realise they're doing it, I think it's a conversation that needs to happen, when that conversation doesn't happen you have people like Trump.
MB: People get a little bit lazy, I think.
Raw Poetic: Yeah, they get complacent and then get shocked by what they see.
MB: Or embarrassed.
Raw Poetic: (laughs)
MB: I really believe that, I think a lot of time when (white) people express shock, it's embarrassment more than anything else.
Raw Poetic: Yeah, I agree.
MB: We're not that ignorant ... You said in your family, your parents were members of the Black Panther Party, is that correct?
Raw Poetic: Yes, my mother and my father.
MB: What kinds of political messages did they give you when you were growing up? You were talking before about freedom, the call for freedom, could you locate that a bit more in terms of the specific messages you received?
Raw Poetic: Well, with my mom she sent me to a lot of Pan-African schools when I was a kid. I remember when I was young the MOVE movement in Philadelphia was a very big thing because it was right down the street from us. Mayor W. Wilson Goode dropped a bomb on those people and he was a Black man, so she was very disturbed by that kind of stuff, she always talked about having knowledge of self and representing your people in a certain manner.
It's not something I broadcast, but the word ni**a is not a word I put in my songs, unless I'm trying to make a point about it, not that I have any issue with anyone who's different, but my mom always taught me when you represent yourself on the main stage you have to remember that you are representing your people. I'm not offended by the word, but I want people to understand that we are more than that, it's more about representing our culture.
MB: One thing that interests me here is that when you look at the pivotal figures in Black music in the 70s the word 'freedom' operated on lots of different levels for them; freedom from racist systems, but also personal freedom, individual freedom, mystical and spiritual freedom …
Raw Poetic: Yeah, in terms of spiritual and mystical freedom, I like to create music that feels like it does not have boundaries. I also like to live my life without boundaries. Nowadays you can step outside of race, you can talk about sexual freedom and gender freedom. I think there are so many lines and demarcations for everyone, sometimes you just want to get away from it. Musically I'm always talking about freedom, full expression.
A lot of people (referring to The Reflecting Sea) are like, I've never heard a hip-hop album like this and I'm like I don't necessarily want it to be a typical 'hip-hop album.' Hip-hop started out like, we don't have instruments but we're just going to make music and even if they say it's not music, we know it is music. We're going to take music from all different parts of the world and make our own music from it. That was hip-hop.
Then it became, a thing like, 'Nah man you've got to have a 4/4 beat and a boom bap sound, that shit you're doing is not hip-hop.' But when you think about the music it's supposed to be about social freedom. …
MB: One of the defining qualities of Damu's music and as you know I'm a big fan of Vignettes is its energy. His music is full of life. 'Freedom Funk Chant' is the same for me, it's really vibrant, what do you think about this comment about the high-energy aspect of his music?
Raw Poetic: I think within the past few years Damu has hit on a level I've never seen him do before, I haven't seen many people do, maybe aside from J Dilla. That's just my opinion, to start to reach a point where these aren't just beats anymore, it's almost theatrical. Just like you sit down to watch a movie, you can sit down and watch a Damu album, it's like your ears are doing the watching for you and the mind goes some place. If you listen to a Damu album there's so much going on and there's so much character with it.
MB: You said that you became friends when you were pretty young, right?
Raw Poetic: Yeah, I'm a little older than him, I was 21 he was 17, so he was a teenager, I'd just reached my 20s. Sometimes with my band … we were like Spinal Tap we could never keep a drummer, so sometimes Damu would come in and he would either play samples, or real drums for our live set. He was always around, we always worked together he and I were super-cool, but he was working with Flex Mathews – another one of his MCs – and then he started Redef (Redefinition Records) with one of his friends.
One day the guys at Redef caught up with me and asked me to do some work with one of his producers and I've been with them ever since.
I then asked Raw Poetic to speak about two of his songs, 'Super' from the Kev Brown-produced Concentrated Maneuvers (Redefinition Records, 2014) and the self-produced 'Suitors'.
Raw Poetic: (laughs) The song is called 'Super' when we were shooting the video it's a battle-oriented song and I'm not really into battling anybody, so we just stepped up, let's put some weird crazy shit in the video and see what people make out of it. It was fun watching people make different meanings out of it, but it was just having fun. There was a horse head, so I was like, 'Yeah, let me battle the horse, you know what I mean, whatever you know.' I think it was a kind of mockery when people get into that battle mode they're kind of like superman with it, with real grimy lyrics.
MB: It's a good song, different – you know with a Damu record the vocals are submerged, here they're very present. The Kev Brown aesthetic is very classic, it's very pure.
Raw Poetic: Yeah it is. It's very back to the roots of the culture with it, I really like that. It was fun. I think a lot of people haven't really heard the battle side of me, I've been in a lot of rap battles starting out as an MC, so I think I wanted to showcase that side.
MB: And 'Suitors' I can't remember the producer …
Raw Poetic: I made that beat, it was me and my cousin MarsV. That version where I rapped on that, I played every instrument on that. I do albums where I play every instrument also, it's going to be on an album of Raw Poetic/MarsV called Paging Planet Earth.
MB: it's got a definite mystical twist again. The title is interesting to me.
Raw Poetic: It was called 'Suitors,' I think on the hook I sing 'Something in your eyes are part of me/Something in your eyes are parting me'(sings). It's talking about being a suitor for an older spirit, you know, trying to represent your history and how you got to dress it up. Don't come looking, you know, you got to play the part to represent your people that's why I called it 'Suitors.' I just thought the beat was kind of smooth when I made it, so I was just like aight, (laughs) suitors you got to look your best when you do this stuff.
It was kind of like travelling through time, you're almost guiding some from time so you're the suitor, let me take your hand and take you on a journey …
MB: From memory there's almost like a double dimension to the lyrics, it's as if it's a love-song-plus it echoes a 'collective' as you say, connecting with the history. Do you feel it has a double-edge to it?
Raw Poetic: Totally, totally. That was a conscious decision for that one, it is a love song and a journey. You know, I mean, when you fall in love with somebody you can't just get to know them on the surface you've got to get to know the inner person that makes them tick. It plays on both of those parts of it.
Interview with Archie Shepp, UNESCO Paris, 2016
MB: Let's move on now to speak about your incredible uncle, Archie Shepp, what kind of relationship do you have with him, are you very close?
Raw Poetic: Uncle Archie calls me probably once every other month, because he knows we're both musicians in the industry. We're close like that, I mean he's a legend, I'm a rapper (laughs) so he's on a totally different plane to the one I'm on, but we're close. He's family, we all know each other. I can call him up if he's not touring, he'll share different pointers with me about the industry and how to go about it. We talked about doing a song together before, but you know he's a busy guy, so we never got around to doing it. We did a song together a while back called 'Back in the world again' my cousin had it on tape, but I don't know what he did with it.
He came to my house, I was living in this rinky dink apartment like I always am, it had no heat and it was in the dead of winter and he came over and he played the sax for like 15 minutes over a track, myself and MarsV had made. It was amazing, like at the time we were like 19/20 years-old so I don't know what we did with it (laughs). Either MarsV has it, or it's gone.
MB: He's done some work with MCs here in France and did a show recently, he's almost 80 I think, isn't he?
Raw Poetic: Yeah, he's up there, my mom is turning 65 soon and he's about thirteen years older so he's got to be pushing 80, yeah.
MB: You said you've talked about the industry with him, has he shared anything about his musical philosophy or the way he interprets music with you?
Raw Poetic: (pauses) Not really, the funny thing is that my grandfather played the banjo, his father, he played the sax, of course, then there's me, my cousin Marlon, my cousin Jerry, my cousin Edward, there are just so many of us who are musicians, I think it's true for my family, and for Archie the goal is to be yourself, make your own lane and move ahead with it.
MB: Some time back I was going to write about different jazz greats and how they (and their career) represent a quality and for me, Archie Shepp, represents the spirit of freedom. When you look at his career it's defined by the fact that he is constantly taking risks, throughout the '60s and '70s he pretty much every year put out a record that was completely different from the previous one, often radically different.
What do you think about this idea suggesting that Archie Shepp as a musician is someone whose work represents freedom?
Raw Poetic: Yeah, I think it's linked to him coming where he's from, Brickyard Philadelphia which is a small section which only Philadelphians know of and I think that he was able to pursue his ideas … Basically when you take a part of a city that is ignored by its neighbouring communities, the ideas and the creativity of the people within it are woodshedded. That's what I think happened in the Brickyard.
I mean, he's like last of the dying breed, coming from a background of people like Coltrane and Davis, he was really pushing the boundaries, I think when people look at his catalogue they'll realise how they were blessed to have someone like him creating music that challenges the ears of the masses for so many decades now. I think a lot of people still are catching on to Archie.
MB: Coltrane is of course extremely important, but with Coltrane there is a kind of through-line, but with Archie Shepp it's constantly changing, constantly.
MB: I was looking again at his discography in the 60s-70s and the amounts of albums that he's putting out then it was just phenomenal.
Raw Poetic: Yeah, I think it's something with him looking at his discography and his track record, he says you got to follow through, saying you have the creativity you shouldn't hold on to it. That's something I did learn from him.
MB: What about the links between Shepp and hip-hop, I mean a record like Attica Blues …
Raw Poetic: Attica Blues, yeah.
MB: It's such a rich album, politically, musically, but listening to it you can hear that it has deeply influenced hip-hop culture, what do you think about that?
Raw Poetic: I think Attica Blues is definitely one of my favourite records of his, if not my favourite. I like that one so much because every song to me goes in so many different places, the one with the little girl singing ('Quiet Dawn') to the one that's extreme funk 'Attica Blues', another part there's an older man singing 'Steam'. It almost has a 40s vibe, someone smoking a cigarette and drinking whiskey.
There are so many different places that album goes, hip-hop is doing the same thing because it is sampling those jazz greats. Lot of times when you sample people you're taking a little piece of their soul and putting it somewhere else and that's what I think he did with Attica Blues. The types of artists he chose to work with on that album, it has so many different elements of soul music, it gives you the same all-around feel that hip-hop gives you.
When speaking to someone who hasn't heard of him I say listen to Attica Blues and watch all the places you go with that album.
MB: And Fire Music .. there are so many other albums to talk about as well, with Attica Blues it always struck me that if you put it side by side with Common's Like water for chocolate you can see that there is the same conceptual logic, you've got interludes then songs then pieces of music; Archie Shepp wouldn't have called them interludes, of course, is this something you could comment on? It seems that there are links in terms of the construction of the record has influenced hip-hop artists as well.
Raw Poetic: I think if you look at it that way, he was probably on to something before hip-hop was doing it, when you look at a lot of his records there are a lot of skits and interludes that help form the project, and his was just naturally on to that. But it did have a kind of wave to it, a kind of sea of emotion that runs through the whole record, so you never get bored with it, it never stagnated. I think hip-hop does that a lot too, probably not as musically as he did it though. The way hip-hop does it, like Common's Like water for chocolate with someone talking, I love that on the first song when it breaks into the African rhythm at the end of the song ('Time Travelin' – a tribute to Fela Kuti) and it's like really cool, I felt like that album is going there, but Archie took it there.
Again, people are still up to what he was doing and that's like a 30-year-old album we're talking about, maybe more.
MB: It's older, it's from 72.
Raw Poetic: Like 40 years, 50 years it's like crazy he was doing it back then and I think we're still catching that wave and also the way he tied it together, he is creating the landscape, like Damu and it's not something you hear that often.
MB: One last question about Archie Shepp, Attica Blues of course is deeply political. Because of its title and link to the Attica Prison riots of 1971, but there's also an argument to be made that this kind of music that is bringing in different voices, sometimes voices that seem to have an apparent reason to be there etc is something political in and of itself. What kind of politics do you think is there in this music, explicit and implicit?
Raw Poetic: (It's important) to talk about where he's from to understand where his politics come from, he's coming from the Civil Rights movement, and (pauses) this is stuff that was going on, I can't say too much stuff about family history. But it's not just political, there were things going on in terms of the social and economic disadvantage that Black people face and where he's from; things that women went through that are never talked about in the inner-city communities. Things we've watched our mothers go through, there's a lot of stuff he touches on. I know this because he is my mom's older brother and I know she went through it, if you want to know more about it she wrote a book (The Keystone by Anita J. Moore) that talks about what Black women went through in those days and what they saw their mothers go through and what Black men went through also.
Our grandfather was the son of an undertaker. He used to wash the bodies of dead Black men who were hung and lynched from trees, so that's where we're from. I feel that when you hear the music of Archie Shepp, you hear the closest version of that narrative you're going to get.
Tags: Raw Poetic, Damu the Fudgemunk, 21stC, Hip-Hop, Music, USA, Instrumentals, Producers, Interviews, Racism, Police Violence, Archie Shepp, Jazz, 60s, 70s