KOFI NATAMBU

Ornette Coleman

Photos by Peter Yates

Eclipse Jazz Concert 

February 18, 1982 

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor,  Michigan

Ornette Coleman is interviewed by Kofi Natambu (editor) on behalf of Solid Ground:  A New World Journal.  This interview appears in the Volume One, Number 3/4 Winter/Spring 1983 issue of the magazine

Solid Ground: Ornette, for the past 20-25 years you have played a major role in getting us all to listen to music in "new ways." Within that context you've talked about and played your theory of Harmelodics. Would you share with us what that theory is, and what you mean by that? 

Ornette: Well basically it's a very uncomplicated term. Harmelodics really means that the lead concept of expressing ideas and sequences is made into the kind of logic that has to do with making a musical idea work on any instrument. Harmelodics is a system that will allow the person to lead or to extract any part of an idea in order to enhance the particular philosophy they feel will allow the composition to develop or the ingredients that have been performed for the betterment of the collectivity … or the total sound. In other words, Harmelodics is a philosophy based upon all forms of concepts or ideas being equal in the status of matter. The time, the rhythm, the speed, the harmonics are all equal. The technical term means having to use the basic clef sign as the unisons for the lead of any particular instrument. If the instrument is a 8-flat instrument, then you have the tenor clef, the soprano clef, bass clef and the alto clef as one unison representing the total idea for all those particular voicings. 

S.G.: In terms of your concept of music as a language, how do you tie in the harmelodic theory to traditional forms? 

Ornette: Well for instance, in traditional forms the harmonic structure in most songs is basically the tonic to the fourth, or either the tonic to the relative minor. Most song forms usually have a harmonic structure known as II-V-I in Western music. Well in harmelodic structure, those II-V-I structures are spread out into three basic changes. The major 7th, the minor 7th and a minor sound. In other words, in music you have a major sound, a minor sound and a dominant sound. But in harmelodics those sounds are three individual chords that consist of the whole total 12 pitches in Western music. 

S.G.: You've often talked about the concept of trying to put together 125-piece ensemble. Where is that project now, currently?  

Ornette: Well, it's half written. I started writing this piece called The Oldest Language" for 125 people. I want to use two people from each state in America plus about 25 peo-. Andthe pie from foreign countries. reason why I call it "The Oldest Language" is because it has to do with finding musicians who have been keeping their particular music alive like their traditional ethnical music like folk music. That's what I really wanna do, I want to find players that have played their particular folk music all their lives and haven't really been influenced by any other kind of music. And to bring that kind of concept to a tempered concept. In other words, the tempered music and non-tempered music, I want to bring together to create a psychological sound that I hope will heal the inward feelings of people who are bound emotionally without having to show it. I think music basically frees the emotion to be in a happier state than any other element. 

S.G.: Traditionally since ancient times, music has been seen not only as a philosophical and scientific identity, but it's also been used for spiritual purposes. In terms of your own philosophical concept, how do you try to express spiritual values in your music? 

Ornette: Well, the first thing that I do is try to find a way to express the natural ability to observe the feelings of the environment that I'm around and then to see if I can allow that environment to inspire me to go deep into myself to see if I can actually understand how to relate to that environment in a positive way. In other words, I really believe that all human beings have perfect genetic makings; it's just that the concept of class structure in the sense of having to worry about where you come from and what you have and what you do doesn't make people think that way. But basically I think all human beings have the same genetic structure. What I mean by that is that we all can make mistakes. We can all support something that we believe, or that we all are looking to find something that will bring us closer to the way that we wish to be cared for. I mean no one has to tell you these things; they're already there. You know if you want to be a good person or a bad person. No one has to make you this way; you just naturally know how you want to be. So what I believe is that music is a form of matter that seems to give more people a more accurate account of how they're being affected by something foreign that's affecting what they take into their bodies than any other substance.  

S.G.: Let's look at it in terms of an idea that physicists talk about. Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy or the idea that the closer you get to the meaning of certain elements the more that they change. 

Ornette: You're talking about chemistry, I mean not chemistry but alchemy. Well, I think that what you're really saying is the philosophy of matter does change, because I think they say every 15 minutes the cells in the body decay and then every 15 minutes they regenerate. So since that structure has more to do with how long it is you're going to exist, I would think that the idea of finding out something in order to know that it's going to eventually become lesser ... that you're going to have less of a relationship to it as far as the more you learn about what it does. I don't think that has to be based upon dying or loving or caring for anything. I think it might have to be based upon actually the environment in which you are surviving.  

S.G.: When you look at environmental structures or what people call political or social structures, and looking at it in terms of the recording industry, what impact at this point do you think that is having on the communication of the values of the music to people? 

Ornette: First, as I was saying today in a lecture, I think there are only two kinds of communication as far as sound is concerned. One is the song and one is instrumental music. And unfortunately in the Western world it is the fads that seem to influence what you're seeing than an opportunity for people to find out how to express themselves as individuals. So I would say every 20 or 30 years in the Western world there comes about a certain kind of fad that I think that time has outdated that concept, and what we as human beings are trying to find out is how to express the idea, the meaning and the purpose in a more instantaneous way rather than trying to influence others to go your way. 

S.G.: Is the music that you've done for the film score "Boxoffice" … is that film going to appear? 

Omette: Well, I think that the guy who wrote that film also invested his own money. He wrote the script, produced it and directed it. So I think his investment is probably too personal for him to just think about exploiting to get his money back; so I think he's eventually going to have it on the market. But from working on the film I think the reason why he's going to have a hard time selling it is because he's using so many social images that really irritate people that can't stand to understand why he's doing that. I don't think he's going to let his three million dollars just go down the drain. I think he'll probably sell it to somebody when he realizes that the establishment doesn't care that he's as gifted as he is. You see, mostly when a Caucasion person finds something that he is doing that other Caucasian people aren't doing, he seems to have a better chance to be in control of it than having to exploit it to survive. In other words, this guy put three million dollars in the movie, and all he's worried about is having it in the atmosphere that he believes would be best for him to succeed as a creative person. Whereas other people think that's a low-budget film and it won't bring him the success he wants. I don't believe that his ability to not sell it is going to keep him from having success. Because most people who see it don't think that it's an American person who made the film. The only thing that I can say about my part is when I wrote the soundtrack he didn't tell me where to put the music. I put it exactly where I wanted to put it. For that reason I found it interesting to do. In fact, film scoring is very, very hard. It's not something I'd like to make a profession out of. 

S.G.: When you look at the music of the last decade or so and you see the changes in organizational structures, I'm thinking along the lines of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) or groups of that nature, what do you perceive to be the overriding purpose of these kinds of structures in terms of the music? 

Ornette: Well, I can say this. Basically the black performer who has been playing the music that is called "jazz" has always had to use his skill to be the person out front, the person who's improvising and playing the lead or leading everyone else to the well so to speak. But I think that concept is becoming outdated in relationship to why the person needs to be in competition with another person in order to show them how well they do what they do, but I do believe that the concept of creating ideas that will stimulate people to get together and exchange their philosophy according to what it is they believe is going to get healthier. In other words, instead of the jazzmen of today worrying about having a record out or making a jam session, I think that he should only try and relate himself to those things that will allow him to relate to any kind of environment that will give him the same purpose as if he was trying to achieve his own goals. Regardless of what that environment means, it doesn't have to be any particular kind of music. Whatever the music is, today's jazzman shouldn't worry about the category, style or the concept of how it's played. But he should be able to find a way to express himself through that particular environment regardless of what the conditions are. In other words, he'll be more inspired to take his ideas in a foreign state than to keep trying to play on those same old cliches that identify him as a "jazz musician." 

S.G.: So when you talk about "jazz" and "rock" and all terms being yesterday's titles, what's the foundation for your attitude in expressing that idea? 

Ornette: Well, I think that it's more in the actual performance of what you do. Like tonight when I was playing this gig, the thing that I kept realizing about the way we were playing and the way the audience was listening is that I was aware that the audience was only aware of listening to something that they hadn't heard, but each time we got through playing they acted like they had heard it. Which meant that there was something that we were doing that we didn't have to compromise in order to give them that security to feel that way; yet I know they hadn't heard it. But they were acting like they did. So I would say that I think that any person who makes their living in the public eye should try to relate to what it is they try to do. One doesn't have to compromise to the public to play down the public to give them support. I don't think you have to compromise in order to have someone to dislike you … (laughter). 

S.G.: Did you know Thelonious Monk? 

Ornette: Yeah, very well! I'm sorry that I won't be in New York, if I could I'd go and play at his funeral. I played at Coltrane's funeral. In fact, I played so many funerals for musicians; I've played more funerals I guess than gigs … Since I came to New York, a lot of musicians have passed, and they were my friends; but it's a shame you have to have that philosophy attitude to come to be a musician, because there's a lot of other people who past that aren't musicians and people don't necessarily feel that same way. But with Monk I think that he was given a social opportunity to be heard, but he wasn't given a human opportunity to succeed. But I really believe in the Western world it is more important to be dressed up than to be naked. And most people think that they have to find a way to dress up what it is that they're doing in order to get the approval of the environment to like them; but you know most people enjoy people when they're naked. The reason I'm saying this in relationship to Monk is that most musicians do give a lot of work to critics and people who are involved in the packaging and selling of music, and yet we're all not receiving the benefits of all that labor. And I'm sure when Monk was coming up and he was having a bad time of getting the kind of reviews that he got didn't help him feel that he was getting any closer to the way he wished to be, but I know that he was on the Time cover and they sent some of his music into space and lots of things. But there are a lot of intelligent people aware of his ability but who wanted to have him become successful in the mainstream that was yet to be experienced. Obviously he will never have that experience now. Knowing that many other people could have enjoyed what he did if someone had taken the time to relate that music image of what he was doing to what they were doing. Monk was an incredible composer and performer. He was a very good man, a very good person. The thing about most jazz musicians is our health. When I say ours it's that with most "jazz" musicians the body goes so fast because you live one way on the stage, you live one way in your house, and another way on the streets; and yet you're only one person. And it's hard to do that. For me, I try to just live the same way in the street, the bathroom, everywhere. It's all the same. I put my phone number in the phone book because I don't want anyone to think I'm hiding from anything. There's nothing for me to hide from. And if I have any enemies, I'm sure that they'll let me know by taking everything. So I don't worry about it; I just don't feel like it's necessary to be hiding and feel that you have to be so different in your life that you do something that people admire you to do. You don't have to live as if someone's going to assassinate you because you do it. I'm saying that but maybe that's not the philosophy everybody should take. I just think that way of myself … 

S.G.: A lot of people talk about, well, a lot of artists talk about "success." I mean this constantly comes up, the idea of success. What do you mean by "success”? 

Ornette: Success to me only means one thing: You will always find someone who will care about what you do. And that person is successful for you and to you. Success is not something that you need an approval or a reward. It is something that you acknowledge that you are actually doing. More than something you need approval of. The difference between success and paying a bill is not the difference between broke and not making money. I think the most success any human being can have is one of achieving something that other people will care about you regardless of what the state of your condition is as long as they appreciate what you do. Whether you're rich, poor or whatever. As long as they appreciate what you do and do it in a way that they will . appreciate it, that's·success. The only other thing that's known about success is the environmental reward. And you can only know that by explaining what it is that you do. 

S.G.: Ornette, one last question. What is the function of improvisation as language? 

Ornette: Basically I think improvisation is a term that describes a person having an opportunity to change that which he has al ready been exposed to if it's something new. But for improvising that has nothing to do with changing something that is already done to make it appear as if it's new again. I think that would be a concept called creative composition. In other words, I think that the improvisation you're speaking about is an outdated one. I think the new concept of improvisation is a compositional concept which doesn't have any structure other than its own reward. That's what I think … 

S.G.: Thank you very much for your time. 

Ornette: OK. ■ 

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Ronald Shannon Jackson: ''Rhythm Is Life Itself"

Interview: April 10, 1982 

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Interviewed by Kofi Natambu

Eclipse Jazz Concert

The Power Center

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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This interview appears in Solid Ground: A New World Journal

Vol. 2, Number 2-3, Winter/Spring 1984.  Edited by Kofi Natambu

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Ronald Shannon Jackson

Photo by Deborah Feingold

Solid Ground: We're sitting with Mr. Ronald Shannon Jackson, drummer-composer and leader of the Decoding Society, an outstanding black creative music ensemble. Last night they appeared in concert at the University of Michigan as part of the Eclipse Jazz Series. We're going to be talking with Mr. Jackson about his philosophy of music and its relationship to what he·s been involved in over the past decade or so in this part of the world. I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you Mr. Jackson. 

Ronald: Thank you very much Kofi. The music I play, and the group I represent, is the beginning, the seed. the nucleus of the turning point of our music throughout the land as it has moved before in waves, as our people assimilated the western instruments in New Orleans and created this music in terms of furthering our development as a people in this music. By that I mean we are simply carrying on a tradition that was set in New Orleans and many other places. A tradition that was brought to a very high peak of perfection by Charlie Parker. Dizzy Gillespie. Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, etc. who built on the foundation of Fletcher Henderson, and other great musicians in the "Swing Era" on up to Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Now we're at the point where we have electricity influencing not only music, but life. And since life is music and music is life, it's just the next step in the music. Our group. the Decoding Society, has the good fortune of being a leader in this, so the young musicians in Detroit. and throughout the United States, will be able to really harness their own musical spirit and energy and bring forth what they have to give. It would be a sad thing if we didn't allow our youth to have the necessary philosophy. or understanding the history of oursefves as a people. We have the responsibility of carrying that on. I think that what we're doing will give them that impetus. 

As you know the media has flooded our homes and our people's mind (and especially our younger peoples minds) with a music that is for dancing and only allowed for dancing or made so that everyone can dance to it. Where you go and you can dance the same way every night. When as a people we oome from a background where you had dances for each occasion. Not just one steady rock or disco beat. Now we already have that influence in our homes and in our youngsters. But we can use that same electrical pulse to bring forth our true creativity, which is what we're striving to do. It's just about finding itself, its own roots, and really manifesting itself totally, throughout the whole world. As our art form "jazz" has done.

We're given the dilemma of having the fortune and misfortune at the same time. We are originators and creators of this music. but we're not the benefactors of this fruit. In other words we plow the field, we plant the seeds, we do the nurturing, we even pick the crops. But we don't get to eat the fruit. Unfortunately, that's going to continue. But we as a people have to continue also. We have to realizethat we are given a responsibility to carry on the aspect of creativity in music and man throughout the Universe at this particular time. Nothing is born from the silver spoon. It has to come from the depths of our lives and the suffering that we're going through.  And that suffering is not eliminted by finncial stability. To us, that's only a pathway to bring forth more of the deep, unfathomable crealivee force we do possess. 

S.G.: Throughout the ages, music has been used as a philosophical and spiritual way of acquiring a broader consciousness of one self in relation to the environment. In the context of the Decoding Society, how would you describe what the purpose or the function ol the Decoding Society is in terms of that particular point of view? 

Ronald: Like I stated before, civilization keeps ooming to certain mountain peaks. Every seven years Man changes, every several decades or centuries or so, civilization changes. In this country, at this time, the winds of change are very present. And that wind blows, and those of us who are given the responsibility of carrying on the tradition of our music have to realize this and make it manifast so that when we come to the point of understanding not only our own personal relationship with the environment and society, but our relationship with the Universe as a whole then we will feel that. The Decoding Society is a verification of that. 

In other words, the Decoding Society is saying that joy, that warmth, that inner enlightenment that one sees is a glimpse of the infinite that is there in all our lives. This is present all over. In the same way that a flower can be used to show a horn owl some of the laws of nature, the Decoding Society is a group that shows that this manifestation has appeared now. And it's just the beginning of it. It's the beginning of bringing together spiritual forces. Sure, music has been used in a spiritual, philosophical vein throughout the ages because it is the highest of the art forms. That's because it's sound vibrations. Sound. Music is Sound, and sound creates the whole Universe. We're sending out sound signals now into the infinite or not so much infinite but distance. Into the distant planets and we're listening for echoes and the return of those sound waves to our planet. 

It's the same thing with Man. We send out signals, you and I. We all have fibers that emanate from our center and although we can't see that, it's the same as we can't see our eyebrows, it is still there. It emanates from me to you, and emanates from you to other people. Which is saying we're all connected and when we send our the wrong type of vibes from those fibers, then we see the bad, or wrong type of effect. When we send out the right type of vibes from these fibers that are emanating from us, then we see that beautiful effect and it's embodying a law of cause and effect. Music is the highest cause. 

Personally I practice Buddhism. At one time Buddhism used music to teach people about the awareness in themselves. Because music has, or is the element that will make one look into themselves, as opposed to outside ourselves. So the Decoding Society is a vessel of the manifest realistic entity embodying the forces of music to show that unity exists in Humankind on a spiritual level. 

S.G.: When I listen to the music of the Decoding Society, I get very distinct feelings. Very distinct impressions ... I can actually feel the unity between melody and what people call rhythm. To the extent that you've been involved as a composer of music and as a "drummer," how does the element of rhythm play a part in the music in terms of its energy? 

Ronald: Rhythm is—as you know—life itself. Rhythm is Life and Life is Rhythm. Everything we do is rhythm. Our heartbeat ls rhythm. Our ancesters used rhythm as a way of communicating since they all didn't exist at that time. Our International Telegraph and Telephone or whatever, and we still use it. Some of our relatives still use rhythm to talk with. 

Now in the Decoding Society, I use rhythm and melody to speak the way we've normally been speaking throughout the ages. You see when people said "Jazz has died, Jazz is dead" they were saying something that is not so. You know people at one time were saying that "Jazz is dying." Well we all know that is not true. What happened is that Jazz is such a universal and international force that ways were devised to exploit it and make it more "palatable" to people in terms of putting it behind TV and using it as background music throughout the world. In order to make it so it wouldn't affect you, they took the rhythm out. And that's what you're talking about. You know, that is my personal goal: To see to it that Rhythm is put back in our Music. We can talk, we communicate, we dance from rhythms and we don't, too. We are not just a disco dancing people. All of us who listen or will read what I'm saying will understand that we dance inside in millions of ways. We jump for joy, we have movements for sadness, we have dances for weddings, we have dances for births. We have dances for the celebration of just our pure being and it's not a disco beat. It is the rhythm of our life. That's what I'm doing. I'm using rhythm itself. 

Rhythm is the element that we all have, and if you listen to a dog barking and the dog barks in an angry rhythm, you immediately understand it. Same way as you can listen to the flutter of the wings of a bird and feel the melodiousness behind the rhythmic activity. We all have this in us. As a kid I remember being in the kitchen and my grandmother would be humming some hymn. You know our older women were modest in those days. They had on these long dresses and long aprons. They'd grab the apron and pull it up. Not real high or anything sexually provocative, but they would pull it up so they could get their legs moving and really get in the rhythm of what they were doing. And that's there. I know that's in all of us, our people, and that's what I want people to really understand. We're not alone, you know. It's in all of us. That is the rhythmic aspect. 

Melody comes out of rhythm. You can be playing a rhythm, and once you play it to a certain state, it begins to manifest its own melody. Life appears. It's not something that's mystic or mysterious, it's just there and rhythm unlocks it. Rhythm is the key that says: "Yeah, check this out." It's the same as the air we're breathing and the atoms that surround us, you know. We don't see it but it's there. Rhythm is there the same way. A heartbeat. If your heartbeat misses a rhythm, you know that ... ask anyone who had a heart attack. 

S.G.: That's crystal clear. You've obviously been playing a long time. In the development of your own life, how did you begin to formulate some of the ideas that you've expressed in terms of your playing? Could you describe that process? 

Ronald: Well, actually Kofi it's a process that began before I was born this time. I say that because I knew that I was going to be playing drums by the time I was four years old. And I'd never played any. When I first saw a drumset I was in the basement of a church in Houston, Texas. My mother had taken me to Houston, and it was some kind of kiddie program-the kids were there and I was walking through in a line and this drum set was sitting there on this podium and I just stopped. I let everyone else go. I was just mesmerized at that point. Although there was nobody on the bandstand I could see all the joy in music with the cats playing. I could see this, so I knew that that's what I was supposed to be doing. 

But what I was seeing was not a cat just sitting behind the drums. So the natural forces steered me toward what I was supposed to do. The same as if allof us were allowed to carry out what we see in our minds. Those things we know we're supposed to do in this lifetime. Then we would all be happier people for sure. We could carry out what we're supposed to do. I knew that I was supposed to be playing music and I grew up in a musical environment. My mother was a piano player and played organ. She played on the first and third Sundays in the Methodist Church. On the second and fourth Sunday she played the organ in the Baptist Church, and my father, although he had always wanted to play saxophone, he could never afford one. But when he was young enough to be able to play. But he always carried the melodies he wanted to play. 

I told my people when I was about four years old. I mean they saw me playing. I'd always been playing on stuff, you know. Since I was a very young kid. Imagine this: my little boy now is two years old. He hasn't been around any drums because my drums are in another place, but he goes into the drawer and gets a knife and a spoon or something to play on all the time. So I was the same way. 

Like I said before, we had a piano in our home. So even as a kid crawling around they always kept the bottom off the bass. It was one of those old Stanley uprights, and you could pull your fingers cross the strings at the bottom of it. And from there I could hear all the harmonics. On top of that there was a Holiness Church across the street from where I grew up and they used to get down every day, and all day Sunday (gentle laughter), and then when I got older, say when I got to the third grade, a fellow named John Carter who's a very fine clarinet player out in California, who was my third grade music teacher in school, he started me. Since I played piano he wanted me to play clarinet because he knew I knew how to read music at that point. So it was in the third grade that I first began to really play. After about three or four weeks I wound up on drums. Which was what I told them I wanted to play. They wanted me to play clarinet and I wanted to play drums. 

So eventually I gave them back the clarinet and was playing the drums. From there it just kept developing. I sang in the choir and my father became the local jukebox operator in my hometown. From having the jukebox he opened up a record store and we sold 45s and 78s at that time. Gospel and rhythm and blues and jazz, which only later became distinct terms. 

In the community I grew up in there wasn't any difference. You were just playing music, you know. You get on the bandstand and you went the whole spectrum. It wasn't just one element of it. That came about when people decided they had to have categories to identify what was going on. But we didn't have to have that identification because we grew up with that, you know? Me and a fellow named John Theodore (who lives in Ottawa, Canada now), we started playing what's called "jazz" together a little before we went to high school. Around ninth grade. From the seventh grade to the ninth grade we were allowed to take the instruments home. I was allowed to take the drums home. So I already had cooperation from my family. My aunt would come pick me up, pick me up from school on the weekends and I would take the drums home. Since my uncle was a carpenter we had what's called a "little house" on the back of our house, and on weekends I could set up the drums in there and me and this fellow named John Theodore, we'd just play all day Saturday and Sunday. And we'd take the stuff back to school and proceed on the normal course of going to school. 

By the time we got to high school I was playing timpani and snare and bass drums and we had talent shows. Our high school teacher was named Mr. Baxter. Now Mr. Baxter was definitely a special person. King Curtis, you know King Curtis who arranged and played all the first parts of the music of Aretha Franklin, he was my distant cousin. He was my father's sister's nephew, and he came out of that high school. John Carter came out of there. Ornette Coleman came out of that high school. Julius Hemphill came out of that high school. Charles Moffett came out of that high school and Dewey Redman came out of that high school and myself ... 

S.G.: That's no coincidence, that's phenomenal! 

Ronald: We all came out of that same place. The city recognized his [Baxter] talents and gave the high school all the instruments we needed. And the band uniforms and stuff. We had a whole string ensemble in terms of contrabass, viola, cello, violin. We had all the brass—E flat horn, tuba, baritone horn, French horns. We had all the drums from the snare drum and the bass drum to the tympani. We had all the musical instruments, in other words, at our disposal. And what Mr. Baxter would do is make us practice. We never went to lunch. We played music in the regular band, then he'd lock us in the band room during lunch period. In the course of buying all this equipment he also bought all the equipment we needed to play dance music. In other words,  the same bass drum we used to march on the field with we had foot pedals we could hook up and play jazz on. The same cymbals we used for class we could take the middle part out and he brought the cymbal stands so we could play them. And then we had the sock cymbals. And could use the same instruments. We other words, Mr. Baxter just locked us in the band room and we played music for an hour, while everybod else ate lunch. (laughter)  

That's how we were allowed the access to develop our music. Whether our parents had the money to buy an instrument or not. He taught us music, he [Baxter) was a very disciplined cat. You had to be able to play. He was a beautiful cat man. From there I just went on. When I was about 14 I started playing in bars, and in the local juke joints, you know. Blues. I'd see cats like Jimmy Reed and Lightnin' Hopkins, T. Bone Walker, Charlie Parker, Ray Charles, Sonny Stitt. All these cats were coming through there, man. Jay McShann. It was such a variety and mix of music. I'd see Clara Ward. It was so much music happening. And then we'd go and play this music, you know. Count Basie and the Duke, and the town I grew up in was like a stockyard town. It had a lot of money because of all the cows. They brought all the cows from Texas into this area. It was like the cow depot. It was like the train junction also, so you had the porters on the trains and so forth, cats working the stockyards, so they made a little money, you know, these guys were off on Mondays. The hotels were poppin because of the business element, so there were a lot of places to play, and we began to play gigs. 

Then after I graduated from high school I went to Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. And that was another strange mioho situation, and by mioho I mean the mystic law. My roommate was a fellow named John Hicks, a piano player. I mean my freshman year. Another fellow who was there was Oliver Nelson and he was one of our teachers. He had come back to college, you know. He wanted to graduate so he was teaching also. A fellow named Bill Davis was playing bass and tuba. He plays with Frank Foster now. Julius Hemphill was there. Lester Bowie was there in the band. So again I was in one of these situations where we were just there playing music. I quit going to school because Coltrane was supposed to be playing in St. Louis during the time of the final exam. So Coltrane and the Dizzy Gillespie group were in St. Louis. But the reason I went to that school was because it was close to St. Louis and Kansas City, and I could dig more music live so I just had to tell the school they had to wait until I check this other stuff out (laughter). 

I was going to learn more in checking these cats out than I was going to learn in 50 years listening to that shit they were talking about! (we both crack up) I was finally convinced after the year had gone that maybe I should go back to school. So I went down to Houston. I got in there and I started playing again. I had been playing all the time, so when I got there I went and started sitting in. The local cats gave me all these gigs so I was working in the evening. I worked from 8 to 12 for like a cocktail gig, and from about 1:30 or 2 in the morning to about 6 in the morning I was playing afterhours gambling joints. So I really wasn't any good during the day for going to classes anyway. So that didn't work out, so I just played music there. Then my father got sick and I went home. Then I started playing in Dallas a lot. But around this time they put up Sputnik [space capsule], and I decided there was some information on this planet that I didn't know about. At that time I didn't know what made an airplane fly. Since they were going over my head all the time, I figured Man has some information I need to know something about, other than music, so that I'd also know something about Life. 

So I decided to go back to school. So I borrowed money. I realized I wasn't going to learn what I wanted to know. So I just buried myself in the library. Then I went to school and decided I needed to go up North. I was afraid to go to New York. From what I heard about New York I was really in love with it, but I was horrified of going there. 

So I went to the University of Connecticut. And that way I figured I could go down to New York and check it out and come back. It's only 45 minutes away. I went, and I was studying at the University of Bridgeport, and I was reading a Downbeat (magazine). Art Blakey and his group were playing, and the newspaper said that the piano player was John Hicks, my old roommate. So you know I started going down to the club and sitting in. By this time what I was reading was obsolete information. But I did finally catch up with him, and Betty Carter needed a drummer at that time so John hooked me up with her. So in the meantime I ran into Kenny Dorham and he said they were looking for musicians to give scholarships to at NYU. Since I was going to school at Bridgeport, I said, well, let me go in and apply. I got a scholarship. What happened was the scholarship gave me the money not only to go to school, but they gave me a stipend. So I had money to live and eat off of in New York. So I said, "I've gotto go to New York now. I'm up here in Bridgeport going to school but I'm working part time, so I gotta go." So I went on ... 

S.G.: This is the early '60s? 

Ronald: No, this is the late '60s. I actually moved there in 1966. I was working with Betty Carter, and I ran into Albert Ayler and I worked with him for a long period.

S.G.: What was that like? 

Ronald: A revelation. Albert was a very heavy spiritual cat. Very, very heavy spiritual guy. Albert was a cat who, when he played, you know he'd come into a bar and people would be making noise, music is playing loud, normal shit in a bar right? But once he put his horn in his mouth everything stopped. The cash register stopped ringing, waiters stopped picking up glasses. People stopped talking; you knew something profound was going down. And the only thing you could do was listen. A lot of people would be crying. Because Albert could touch that part which is in each of us that's so true, yet we deny it so much. We camouflage it. We put cigarettes, alcohol and drugs on top of it. We put family and social problems before it, we pile things up on it to try to make it go away. Because society doesn't want to accept us that way. It's easier to make distinctions in terms of race, class, all these other ways to break down things—to make it functional for those who are in control. But the element itself is very true and very pure, and Albert had a direct connection to that. Music connects us to that. That's what makes it so universal. Albert was close to this force. When I met Albert I was recording for another group. He said, "Just play, man." He happened to be in the studio and he said, "I want you to play in my group, man." And he said, "Just play everything you hear." On top of that he just played his soul. It's a pity none of it [our work together] was ever recorded. 

Also, by that time I'd gotten into a financial bind. I had quit working. I'd quit going to school, so that was cut off. Because I had started going on the road. I had a family, then I started working with Charles Mingus. It was paying me a lot of money, and Albert wasn't getting any work that was paying any money. At that time I hadn't moved my family yet from Connecticut. So I brought them down. And it appeared I worked with a lot of "bebop" players, the cats, the musicians as far as I'm concerned. I worked in the Kenny Dorham—Joe Henderson Big Band. Jackie McLean, a few times with Charles Lloyd. As I said, I worked with Mingus, and that was another revelation. I worked with Betty Carter, with John Hicks and Walter Booker. Than I worked with the Ray Bryant Trio. I traveled a lot with the Ray Bryant Trio. Stanley Turrentine—I just worked with a lot of people. The McCoy Tyner Trio. It was a very heavy period in my life. I met a lot of cats and worked with them. By this time I'd lost my fear of New York. 

I met a lot of Detroit cats with Mingus. I'd met Charles McPherson and Lonnie Hillyer directly, immediately—Boom!—that's how it is when you're messing with Detroit cats (laughter). I met Barry Harris during that period. I'd worked with Barry and Charles McPherson had a group at that time. I met Ray McKinney and his group, too. Roy Brooks was there doing his thing, he was really in the mainstream of it. So it was a hell of a period. But then I realized after that period as things moved on that I still hadn't completed or gotten to what I was destined to come to New York to do. And that was to play the music I used to walk around hearing in my head in Texas. 

And I used to hear the rhythms of our people with the melodies of this land. I made a lot of mistakes in searching and seeking for it, as you would do with anything you really have to try. You really have to go and seek what is really there for you. It's the hardest thing to unearth. I came upon the fact that what I wanted to do, I was just knocking my head up against a brick wall. Instead of finding the element that I was hearing, I began to get more gigs and cabarets and weddings and bar mitzvahs. Things that were only supplying me with the income, but not the spiritual revelation of the music that I wanted to get to.

So I was playing a gig with a musician called Onaje Allen Gumbs, a piano player, and he told me about the Nichuren Shoshu Buddhist chant. and I went to a meeting at Buster Williams' house and the rhythm there put me in contact with something that I knew had existed in other lifetimes of mine. And I just glimpsed something that I had only glimpsed in moments of pure music. There are times when you are playing and it's no longer you playing, you're Just One with the forces of the Universe. 

And when I went to the Buddhist Temple and I heard these people chanting, the fear had been knocked out of my life in terms of accepting other elements that had been considered foreign to us as a people. Because I realized we had only been taught in the Western concept, when we're in a land that's as open as the whole world itself. So when I heard the people chanting, it didn't scare me, it didn't frighten me. It just allowed me to stop and realize that here was something that was a part of me also. And the discipline and the practice allowed me to begin to see that I didn't have to be locked into what was socially acceptable. That I had to develop myself. And that meant I had to break away from the norms and go my own separate way. And it just put me in a total financial bind. Because I wasn't able to make a living. But I could see every day through chanting that I was growing into what there was for me to grow into in terms of being a musician, in terms of developing my art and myself. And I just kept doing it. Like a scientist in a laboratory. Every day I wrote out my rhythms and I worked on it. I worked on the patterns I worked on the ideas. Every day I got up, I would chant every morning and I would work on the flute. Because I knew that I needed a melodic instrument to bring forth what I was hearing in the rhythms I was practicing. And it wasn't coming from the piano. It was, it would have to be the same as our brothers in Kenya and in Ghana and in Chad who play, and as you know it's no written form. But there's a musical and social unity that's in music where they play. It's not coming to the end of a cadenza or coda. It's the life of the people. So that when they come to the end of a statement—SMACK!—everybody stops. Together. 

He called me the next day and I got that gig. But things I'd been working on came out in "Dancing In Your Head" [1976 recording by Ornette Coleman]. Also in an album called Body Meta (1978). Then I went back and after I worked with him for awhile and he quit working, I didn't want to work-I just wanted to work on my ideas. Because I realized I was just beginning what I was doing. And I realized through chanting that I couldn't let my Ego take me out in terms of that. I'd been working with Ornette and I had received all this beauty. It's like going to Coleman University, working with him and studying with him. But through chanting I realized I couldn't let my Ego just take me out there. I had to keep going. So I went back and starved even more because I wasn't working at all. And after a two-year period, I had come to a point in what I was working on in ideas. and I didn't have any money, but I went to a Buddhist meeting and after the meeting I got a ride downtown with Buster Williams. And I went and heard Buster play a set up and I was on my way home and my mind just kept telling me to go to the [Village) Vanguard. And I never went out, I never go out hardly now, because I just work on what I have to do. And I hate to see the brothers just there—locked into something that they're not growing In. 

But my mind kept telling me, "Go to the Vanguard." So I went and I walked In and I couldn't see what I was supposed to be there for because the group that was there wasn't really nothing I wanted to hear. So I went in the kitchen and there was Cecil [Taylor) back there drinking champagne and I started talking to him, and he asked me what it was I did. I told him I play drums. And he said, "Can you play?" And I said I'm the best on this earth playing what I play. Cecil said, "OK, give me your number" and I gave my number and for about a month we played together. Just he and I. I only played with him six months. But four records were recorded in that time. And that was a statement A documentation of his art.

But through chanting I realized couldn't let my Ego take me out there either. You know because it's about all people and ALL of life. So I went back to work some more. I got a flute wherever I go, I can alway carry it with me. So all the places I'd go to and all the people I'd meet I'd write about them. All of us have this warmth, this glow about us. If we allow it to exist, it's there. And when I see it and I feel it in myself, then 1 reinterpret it. You know—to give it back. 

So being with Cecil allowed me to see the structure in music. How to structure my music. So I'd kept working on it and I went to work with Ornette again. And this time Charlie Ellerbee, who was still in Prime Time (Omette's group), but couldn't make the tour because he was working with the Trampps who had a big hit out at that time. So [James] Blood went with that group (Prime Time). And so after I stopped playing with that group I started working with Blood's group, you know. But playing the ideas I had been working on still again. And that brought about his Music Revelation Ensemble. But then I still realized there was something else I had to do. I had to go Otlt with these things I was hearing and writing and working on, and develop it among our younger musicians So that they can develop among those to come. So that as a people we can all continue to grow and give. By this time in our 300-400 years in America it sounds like a bad word to give any more. But we're going to have to keep on doing it (rueful laughter). It's just there. It's ours to give. So we have to give it. If we don't we'll all be blown off this planet. 

We just have to realize we can't be selfish. Even though we understand and realize how much we are persecuted and were made to suffer and humiliated and made to feel that we were supposed to be less when we know what our true worth really is. So we just have to keep on giving it. Developing and giving our young people that which is theirs to inherit. To keep and continue on with. (End of Part I)

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