(Un-)Learning Jazz

Peter Margasak: Before you went to Juilliard, you were playing in Latin music bands and Polka bands. I know that if you were a working musician, you have to play every kind of style. And in New York, every kind of style was around pretty much. So I assume that was part of your education to just suddenly being in all these different kinds of contexts with different demands.

Andrew Cyrille: Without a doubt, those were the different classes. By playing Latin music that was also played by musicians of Latin culture, I learned how to play the mambos, cha cha, … I played bar mitzvahs, Polkas, music from the Caribbean like merengues and calypsos from Dominican Republic and calypsos from Jamaica and Trinidad. You had to learn how to play that kind of music in order to make the jobs, who were usually for people who were dancing. And you would not only have those genres, but you had the rhythm and blues, the backbeat, shuffle and things like that. You would do the classes over and over again. And when it was time to do something that needed that kind of input of rhythm from the drums, I would have it in my repertoire. Most of us around that same time would do the same thing in order to make gigs, make some money and to learn how to play the instrument.

Peter Margasak: When you taught at Antioch College, was that the first professional teaching experience you had, or at least in a university setting?

Andrew Cyrille: I’m trying to remember whether I had any private students prior to going out to Antioch. I don’t recall. Why did I go to the university? Cecil Taylor asked me to go out to Antioch.

Peter Margasak: Since you hadn’t done it before, was it a real challenge? Did you enjoy it? Did you have an interest in it before he had asked you?

Andrew Cyrille: Not necessarily. You know, I like teaching very much and I still do to this day. I’m getting ready to do my first class of the fall semester at The New School next Wednesday. I like being around students, I like transferring, transmitting information to them that helps them get to where they want to go to learn more about themselves, to do what it is that they feel they would like to do with their lives musically. In a way they say, “help me out, show me what I can do for myself or show me what you do in relationship to something that I may want to do”.

Peter Margasak: You’ve continued to do it now for 50 years, more or less. One thing I’m curious about: With some of the younger people that you worked with in your own bands like David Ware or more recently Søren Kjærgaard, those are people that probably were learning from you in the way that you learned from Philly Joe Jones or other people you played with back in the 50s. Do you feel like there is a continuity with this kind of bandstand learning, or do you feel like these are musicians that had a different kind of interest in working with you?

Andrew Cyrille: Well, again, as we live life in a sense that you’re talking to me, what you do, you know, as a journalist for a living, we continue to learn. So you ask me questions and then you learn about some of the things that I do and that might even also relate to some of the things that you might want to do as far as being a journalist is concerned. Sometimes, there’s a cross-fertilization. So let me get back to your question, which has to do with learning from musicians like Søren Kjærgaard. They learn also and they get their information to some degree from whom I’ve gotten a lot of my information from. For instance, Søren Kjærgaard – coming out of Copenhagen where a lot of jazz musicians live in Denmark – told me that he had studied piano. He knew a lot about jazz piano playing, but he also studied in the classical situation that was presented to him at schools. So he just brought those two things together. When I met him and he had written his compositions, he asked me to bring some of the resources that I had to the compositions that he had written for me. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes I would say, is this okay or I said, maybe you can do this a little differently. And like with other jobs, you know, we have to be creative and sometimes you have to find solutions that solve the problem.

That is more or less what I’m answering your question about. About people, who interchange. Even if I had to play with – and I did do this – with musicians from Japan who didn’t quite play bebop or swing music or rhythm and blues or anything like that, I still had a connection to them in terms of playing sound. So it’s just a matter of attitude, willingness. And when you put it aside, the body, so to speak, it’s the spirit that connects. When I’m playing with somebody in any part of the world, if they want to do something with me, whatever they play, I can hear something and I can relate to it in terms of the vibration, and I bring my vibration to that vibration and sound and we can make some kind of connection in some way. We’re all human beings and though we’re different, we’re all the same, see? So it's how you want to think about, you know, us being on this globe called Earth. And yeah, there are differences, but sometimes, you know, those differences can be put aside.

Peter Margasak: I want to jump ahead to the present with teaching. Things have changed a lot with jazz education. Back in the 60s, there was no formal jazz education. It’s incredible how skilled musicians are nowadays. But it seems to me there’s still a lot of people that are very good musicians but haven’t found a voice. I think at schools there’s almost a danger of a cookie cutter effect where people are very good at learning the things that other people taught them, but they haven’t figured out who they are. What is your philosophy on this?

Andrew Cyrille: I don’t really know what those other places teach. At The New School I have a lot of students from all over the world and each teacher has some sort of biography about some of the things that they do. My biography is what it is. The students can always look to see who I’ve worked with and the things that I’ve done. What I basically do is just talk to them and they talk to each other. I find out what their interests are, I listen to them, and then I find out how I can help them.

My classes don’t necessarily have one kind of student. Sometimes I have two bass players, sometimes I have a drummer, sometimes two drummers, sometimes two piano players. They come in and then I have to see what they do, how they play, what they would like to do. And then I have to find something sweet, like a common denominator that will allow them to express themselves with what they want to do, as well as contribute to what some of the other students might want to do. That’s the way that one becomes professional. You give the people what they want and they give you back what you want, you see. So that's how I conduct my classes. But even though there’s a certain common form that I use, everybody’s a little different. You have to deal with the individuals as they are, and then you have to put them together like you put together a basketball team or baseball team. You have these different personalities, but when it’s time to perform in the game, then everybody comes together and you become a unit.

Now, you know, you talk about cookie cutter. Well, all doctors and lawyers are cookie cutters. You don’t have to go to this one or to that one because they’re all doing more or less the same thing. Now, of course, each doctor has his or her own way of artistically giving you what they think is best for you. There’s always a cookie cutter kind of operation that goes on from the time you’re kid. You say A-E-I-O-U and A-B-C-D-E, and you learn C-a-t – Cat. You learned it from a very basic, a kind that you come on the planet and you have to learn how to do some things and not do other things. And as you get older, then you can take these things and you can do more or less different things with them. Some people are very creative, they think of something that helps everybody. So it’s the same thing with the students. They come into my class and I’m not saying, you got to do this or you got to do that. You do what makes you feel good, what makes you feel happy. If you don’t want to be a musician anyway, you don’t have to be a musician. You don’t have to be a player, if you decide that you want to open a music business. I don’t force anything. They stay there because I allow them to voice what it is that they want.

When I first went to The New School to teach about 30 years ago, Brad Mehldau and Chris Potter were in the same class along with Walter Blanding. Other people came through as time went on, I don’t know where they are right now. But I allow them to make their own choices. So I guess in terms of, you know, what you’re talking about as far as cookie cutter and universities are concerned, there’re always some universities that tell students you have to do this in order to get credit to graduate. These bebop tunes or swing tunes or whatever it is that they say is the curriculum. And when you do that, well, you get judged, so to speak. You get a grade.

Peter Margasak: There is this history of solo records and percussion duos like with Milford Graves and then the quartet thing you did with Kenny Clarke and Milford Graves and Famoudou Don Moye. When you made the first records in the late 60s, outside of Baby Dodds’ record, was there another solo jazz drum record at that point? I feel like your approach was completely new. I’m just curious, this kind of percussion only thing, where do these ideas come from or is it something you would really strive for? You made a new solo record this year, so it seems still like a very valuable avenue for you …

Andrew Cyrille: The last solo recording was what they call “Music Delivery / Percussion”. I had to think of something else to do that was a little different from all of the other things. I have these percussion instruments here, so I decided to do things that were just within that sphere of sound, tambourines and cowbells etc., just cimbals and things like that. So I thought about doing those compositions and about doing something that related to some of the musicians that I had worked with before who are not really greatly well known. I mean, one could always do music by Thelonious Monk or Charlie Parker. I also did a tribute to Art Blakey, and he’s well known. But this time I said to myself, let me do something to some people who influenced me. So one of those musicians is Ahmed Abdul-Malik. He worked with Monk and a few other people because he was a good bass player. He asked me to do a recording with him and Tommy Turrentine.

I remember when I was a teenager, I must’ve been about around 18, I was working at a club in Brooklyn called the Terrible Village. There were a lot of musicians in Brooklyn at that time and Malik was one of them. I remember one night he came in and he heard me playing. And he said, wow, you really sound good, I bet you even know who you are. I mean, I’m 18, 19 years old and that just stuck with me. And then, down the line, he decided that he wanted to use me. I think it was his first recording as a leader, if I’m not mistaken, “The Music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik”. He had this composition called “La Ibkey” and he asked me to play something in seven that would fit with the melody. So again going back to what I said earlier about having references, I really didn’t have any reference for playing in seven for. I thought and thought about it and I said, well, if I play something in six and added one that would give me seven. So I came up with a meter. I said to myself, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, one, two, three, one, two, three, one. So that’s seven. I played that in terms of how I constructed the rhythm on the drum set with the downbeat. A meter is nothing but a count that begins and ends. When I played it for him, he said, oh yeah, that’ll work. But it was something I never heard anybody else do. So what I’m saying is that I got the idea for “La Ibkey” from being challenged by Malik. As a tribute to him in respect, I played the rhythm on that record that I just made: “Music Delivery”.

Peter Margasak: You learn from other people that you’ve worked with or listened to, and then you put them through your own personality, through your own vision. It’s a continuum, it just keeps you always absorbing …

Andrew Cyrille: Well, just let me say this. Maybe I’ll end with this. You know, you talk about education and you talk about classics. Did Monk learn stride piano from people like James P. Johnson? He hung out with him and Willie The Lion Smith, he used to go up to sessions. You know, Mary Lou Williams used to sit down and play stride for me on the piano and tell me how hard it was ... Basically, they learned it from the generation that preceded them. I’m the same kind of person. It’s just that, you know, my chronology happened to start at a certain point and at a certain point there will be some other people who will come after me and who will have more of the same, of what they feel they want to do in their generation.