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Unknown: Nation movement. This is Lincoln Bergman. I'm with Frank Kofsky who's written a book that's just been published called Black Nationalism and the revolution in music. He teaches at in the history department at Sacramento State College, and

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we're going to talk about the book for a while, and other things relating to music and revolution and black nationalism. The book is mostly about jazz. Is that more or less true, right?

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Except that most of the black musicians don't want to use that word anymore, and that's that's a subject in itself, which I can launch myself on to if you want. Well, you might just just say briefly, exactly why, and

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go to and right, sure jazz is jazz has the same connotation as Negro or colored does. That is to say it's a word that isn't bestowed on black people, on creation of black people by people other than the black people themselves. Jazz is

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basically a white man's word, and not only that, but the connotations it has a very negative whorehouse music, speakeasy music, low life music, dies music, but the people who perform create music feel it that Miss Coltrane expressed it

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in a John Coltrane expressed it in an interview that his music was classical music, and should be given that same kind of treatment, performers should be given that same kind of treatment. So to call a music jazz is one way of dismissing

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it. And I know from sad first hand experience from dealing with various curriculum committees, committees on arts and lectures at our fair, University of California and so forth, that if you talk about jazz, the usual response when we

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get people who conceive their mission as guarding the gates of Western civilization against the barbarians within and without, is to lift their lift in a snare. If you talk about black music, on the other hand, you at least make it clear the

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political dimension of what's involved. And they may be sneering inwardly, but can't do so outwardly. The question that came to my mind many times when I've thought about the way in which the culture, black culture,

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reflects the political revolution internationally and nationally, I've thought about not only music that's black music and has been called Jazz, but also about rhythm and blues, and about blues in general, and and words, music that has words

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and content and right. I'm wondering, in the context of this book, which attempts to to deal with those with black nationalism and with politics per se, with Malcolm X and so on as part of a continuum of black culture. You know why that isn't

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in there or just limited yourself in that respect? Because, because this is one area that had been neglected whereas the other area hadn't worked as much. They've all been neglected, and they've

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all suffered from a kind of pernicious historical interpretation. For example, there's a book out by now by Morton Williams home jazz tradition in which he which is explicitly anti Marcus in its approach. That is, say, the

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author, who makes no bones about his condemnation of Marxism, right in the opening introduction, introductory chapter, where he's trying to set up a frame of reference, and he says the black music and traditional blues has no social

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content. There's no social protest in traditional blues. Now, European scholars have gone into this like Johannes, Henze point, Paul Oliver, from the American, Afro American standpoint, say this is a fallacy. This is nonsense, but

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this kind of tendentious misrepresentation and distortion of the nature of black music is ubiquitous throughout the entire history of the music. It's always being interpreted in such a way as though it has no social content. The reason why I

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limited myself to this so so all of it, that is to say, to answer the second half of the question, all of it has been neglected, all of it has been misrepresented. All of it has been distorted, but I have I restricted myself to dealing

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with so called Jazz for a number of reasons. First of all, that was music that interested me most. I mean, that's music that I love most dearly. So I feel that's music that I can deal with most readily. The title, in that sense, is kind of unhappy.

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Perhaps it should be black nationalism and a revolution of music, because there is a revolution in all of the other kinds of music that you mentioned. VB king now has a song in his repertoire, why I sing the blues, in which he

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talks about waiting in line. Here you've heard the songs you know, waiting in line for the welfare payment, and you can't get an apartment and the rats and the roaches and so forth and so on, Sly and the Family Stone the impressions. Curtis

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Mayfield, these are groups and individuals who are now articulating the protest message. The revolutionary message of black people, and I dare say they would have done this explicitly long ago, were there not the kinds of

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censorship exercise over black music by the people who own it in general are not black. And that, that is a serious topic, and that is a work that deserves to be treated in depth. Charles Keil mentions it in this chapter on fattening frogs for snakes

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and urban blues. But it really hasn't been adequately dealt with as of yet. So Well, I'll just say that is another revolution is related to this revolution is a parallel revolution, and I would hope to see that it is treated but the

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whole area of black culture and black music, as I said, Isn't historically, been one, simply been passed over by white scholars. How would you what would you describe as your essential

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argument for people who are listening who haven't read the book, The essential point that you're trying to get across in the discussion you think there's anybody listening who hasn't

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read the book? Could we really be so bold as to make that assumption? The argument is, of course, that that the music and the culture and the people exist in synchrony, that they can't be divorced, even though most white critics have written about music

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have tried to make that kind of divorce, and that the change in attitude mentality of black people in 1950s and the 1960s is mirrored and manifested in the kinds of music that this particular group of artists play, that is so called jazz

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musicians play, that the timing and the nature of this musical revolution is part and parcel of a larger revolution in the world view of black people, the view that black people have of the world that surrounds them, of themselves in that world, of the

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role of the United States in the international arena of Africa. All of these things enter into their worldview, and all of these things have shaped this new music, it seemed to me, from from from looking at some of the

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interviews but not reading them all carefully, that that often, when you ask questions directly relating to to political figures such as Malcolm X of black musicians, they would relate To that sympathetically, but, the the interconnection in a, in a,

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in a real way, in the sense of, yeah, you know, I know what he stands for, and I support that too, and that's the direction I'm taking, too isn't as clear, isn't as clear as, you know, other than other than a kind of sympathy. It seems to me that

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that there still has been, at least among many black musicians, some kind of separation, a cultural I don't know what it could be called cultural nationalism, or whatever, a separation of the of the music from the entire entire

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stream of black life and black revolt. Well, it may seem that way from the interview, there's a curious thing, and I'd like those people who are interested in the music to follow this thing through sufficiently thoroughly to see

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that what I'm saying is not just something I'm making up. Here's an interview with McCoy Tyner, who the pianist and John Coltrane's group. I take Coltrane as the pivotal figure in the black music revolution of the 1960s and in the same way

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that Malcolm X was a pivotal figure in a political revolution, and I interviewed him in 1966 in the fall of 1966 and I spent three years searching for a publisher, which in itself is is a manifestation of the kind of intentional

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racism that exists among so called intellectual white intellectuals in this country in that all of the publishers, the big name publishers in New York I've talked to, were absolutely convinced there was no necessity for a book on black music and

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black nationalism, and there was no possible way that the interconnection could be made validly Well, in any case. So this interview with McCoy Tyner is now something like three years, four years old. There is an interview with McCoy Tyner on

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the current issue of black scholar, which coincidentally or otherwise uses some of the same questions that I put to McCoy when I had the chance to talk to him, and he is much more explicit about the nature of The connection between politics, the

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politics of black nationalism and his music. In this interview, I regret that I didn't bring along with me. I guess I'll have to take it to the next interview I go on. So the thing is, what, what this, what this book suffers from, is

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the time lag between the time between when I had conceptualized it as a book, and when I was able to get it published, you're saying things have gone a lot further. That's right, that's right. And they're a lot more explicit now, and

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people are now and not McCoy Tara now has when I asked him about black and Henze, they can say, well, I don't know, some people call it that, and so forth, he was sort of guarded and hesitant in his response. Of course, also is the fact that I

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was, I'm white, and he's a. Black, and the other interviewer is black. This may also be a consideration, but the fact is, although that it's 1970 now, and it was 1966 then, and people have become much more explicit and much less guarded in those

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statements, one of the things I try and deal with in the introduction is the fact that heretofore, there has always been a state of almost well unemployment among the community of black musicians, unemployment that is even more predominant

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than it was for the entire country in the Depression period of the 1930s and consequently, musicians, most musicians, have come to take a very guarded attitude about what they will say, especially what they will say to white reporters. It looks

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like some of that is changing in two respects. One, musicians are becoming employed now as part of the Black Studies movement on the campus, in much overdue phenomenon, and their reticence is also vanishing. That is, they are becoming quite outspoken,

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the kinds of things that they said in private, or that they would say to me, but say, don't quote me on that. Those kinds of things are now being made publicly, those kind of statements.

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What kind of response did you get from people in talking about, not only the question of unemployment, which I guess, is the basic economic determinant of the whole music situation for black musicians, but also of the question of commercialization

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and selling oneself and soul and everything else to a record company or a promoter or A an agent. Well, the Vanguard figures in this revolution were explicitly opposed to that. Here I'm including Coltrane himself, who,

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at the end of his life, said he didn't care to play in Cruz anymore, that his dislike for the club was founded on the fact that they were operated by businessmen whose primary concern was the making of $1 that's a verbatim quote and not

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a valid presentation of the art, of course. Cecil Taylor, Bill Nixon, Archie Shepp, these people have been uncompromising spokesman against the white business control of black music. And so they have, early on, found other means of presenting

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their music. I think that they, for the most part, would prefer to play free rather than to play in circumstances they regard as not fitting. Now there we're talking about, I guess, the Vanguard Group. There, the journeyman group who are not

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we're not when in the middle 60s were not as outspoken when I put the same question to them, they were, again, somewhat equivocal. They indicated that they didn't like clubs when there were a lot of aspects of playing clubs that didn't appeal to them. But by

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the same token, they weren't ready to cut themselves off as yet because they couldn't see any alternative though they all endorsed in theory, such things as the jazz composers guild, which was announced and reorganized as a essentially a

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commune, and for musicians to develop a structure outside the established institutions for presenting their music, something I guess we're familiar with in Berkeley. Anyway, let's see one of the things that comes to my mind

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say, when listening to the music or, or certainly when I first heard, for example, Archie Sheps or, or some other players similar to that style, in contrast to the politics. And this is a, this is a question of a judgment on music, judgment on

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the content of music, which is, which is a very heavy, hard, difficult thing to do, and it's extremely subjective, nonetheless, that that it, that it referred that it, that it seems much more reflective to me, of much more reflective to

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me, much more a sense of chaos, a sense of of despair, a sense of Capitola going off in many directions. Not to say it's not not unified behind a rhythm and so on, but to say that that that the mind image it projects, finally, is not one of a clear

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direction going somewhere, see, but as Malcolm is of a clear direction going somewhere, but as much more a has much more elements of, I don't know what, what? What's the best way to say it, confusion, cynicism, just plain reflection, rather than

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reflection plus direction. Well, I think that, as you say, this is a subjective evaluation, and my subjective evaluation is somewhat different. I think that there is this multitude of directions, and I think that

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that's understandable. In the chapter on the jazz revolution, I try and deal with this in terms of the paradigm advanced by Thomas Kuhn for understanding scientific revolution. That is when an existing form, but. Breaks down, what you have then

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is a series of different people, different groups, going off in a multitude of directions, seeking the one that's going to be the most promising in the long run and in the mid 60s. Certainly, I think this could, this could be found there was no clear

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direction mark off as the next one. I think that's less the case. Now this is something I can get back to, but the point is, the what you're in, what we're doing here, is introducing kind of retrospective clarity that didn't exist at the time.

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If you recall when Malcolm Well, period of just prior Malcolm's assassination, Malcolm did not then, as he does now, indicate the direction that would be taken by black people. That is to say you had Malcolm, but you also had Martin Luther King. You

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had a variety of different groups, some of which still exist, which were political nationalists, cultural nationalists, revolutionary Marxist, etc, etc. So it is now we, of course, are preoccupied with the Black Panthers, and we

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can see their lineage clearly back to Malcolm X. So it appears as though there's this kind of clear evolution. But the period I was writing about that same sort of ferment and the same sort of searching for a way ahead did exist, and you can you

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can even see it among people, among the Black Power advocates. For example, Carmichael Charles Hamilton's book Black Power isn't really a book that talks about the same thing that Malcolm X is talking about in the last days with his

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wife. How would you how would you say that has changed now? I mean, who are you thinking of or what kind of example? Well, I've been listening recently to the most current records by Archie Shep and Tara Sanders, and it seems

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to me that the direction marked off in the last years of his life by Coltrane art, is a direction that's being taken, and that is a direction towards polyrhythmic, simultaneous improvisation, which really represents a recreation of an

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African mode and African sensibility, that re emergence of an African sensibility, something that I don't think I brought out adequately enough in the book, and which I'd like to deal with in the second book. This is entirely my fault. Says

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I, too, am the victim of institutionalized racism, and that I don't know enough about Africa again, for the obvious reasons. But in any case, it seems to me that the groups led by Sanders, groups led by shebb, who are, I guess, now that

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Coltrane is dead among the outstanding sacrifice, these groups share a common orientation in that they are trying to set up a polyrhythmic, musical fabric, and they are talking about simultaneous improvisation in much the same

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manner that an African drum or percussion ensemble will do, though, of course, obviously they're going to be differences, because saxophones, pianos, basses are not drums. Couple times during the interview, and clearly in the

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book you quote, you talked about Marxism, and you quoted Tara Marx, I guess in the introduction. Do several times and and clearly you're proceeding from, from what you would describe as a, as a, as a Marxist, dialectical

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materialist, attempt to to analyze the phenomena of black music and black nationalism. I wonder if you could clarify that, say a little more about it specifically, so that it's not just left in people's heads as as a simplistic thing. And

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secondly, to say, if that was in part, if that in part, was the reason for the opposition or resistance or difficulties, it's hard to I'll take the second part of the question. First hard to say I don't know how much intelligence to credit

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publishers representatives with. They're not superficially, they're bright, but actually they exist by picking people's brains to find out what the next fifth thing to do is going to be. So if Abby Hoffman is going to be in or Jerry Rubin out,

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know who to sign up. Or, you know it's going to be Nixon this year, we'll get elder Cleveland, a couple of others, so forth and so on, whether they're capable of seeing any further beneath the surface. And then I am highly dubious. The other part

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is, how does one go about applying Marxism in a cultural perspective and a cultural framework? Well, of course, this is a this is the thing that that where American white critics have been so backwards, and I'm thinking here particularly of

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this book I mentioned before by Morton Williams called Jeff edition. I believe it's so terrible, but in one sentence, in one sense, it really does do one thing very well, and that is it illustrates the cultural provincialism and the anti

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communist mentality of American so called intellectuals. He maintains that black music has no social. Content. Well, I maintain just the opposite. And this is the first place where Marxism proves to be of use in interpreting culture, namely,

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that one interprets the culture of any group of people that has maintained a stable existence over a period of time in a certain place this culture is going to represent, is going to reflect the lives of the people in question. So the people are

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oppressed, the culture is going to speak of the desire of the people to be free from oppression, which seems Elementary, but nonetheless is a point that hasn't been comprehended fully. The second, and I guess a more, more complex

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question is, then, how does one go about understanding changes in this culture when they occur? How does one go about understanding esthetic revolution? Well, I project implicitly in the book, not sufficiently explicitly, I

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guess. I mean, there's a lot of one point where I would critique myself. I project implicitly a way of utilizing Marxism to understand this particular cultural revolution. I say that first of all that the change that takes place in the music is

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not a the kind of change that results from a gradual modification of a pre existing form. On the contrary, the pre existing form of scrap and attempts to modify it to make the music new and exciting and interesting again, the previous

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the pre existing form, this case, would be the beb of Charles Parker vis a block and so forth played in the 1940s attempts to modify bebop in some way to make it workable for the 1960s all turn out to be failures. The most ambitious and

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most successful of these attempts was by Coltrane himself in the sheets of sound period when he doubled up on the number of chords he used, the water arrived, he doubled up on the number of chords he used,

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and he made his music exceedingly dense and exceedingly complex, but ultimately he abandoned that style as being simply not workable. So it is a revolution we're dealing with. It isn't a gradual modification of the

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status quo. The other the also in a in the Marxist frame of reference, one has to deal with the fact that the revolution is a negation. That is it is a dialectical negation of what has preceded it. Certain elements are rejected from the past, but

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certain elements are preserved. So it isn't totally new, but it is a way of preserving the viable and living elements in the black music tradition, or this aspect of the black music tradition, but preserving them in a new form. The form is

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changed so that the content can be preserved into a new day. So the procedures that improvisers use in the new music is not at all the kind of procedures that were used by improvisers in the 50s and in the 40s, not they don't play over a fixed set of

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chords. They've abandoned these this form so that they can preserve the content, which is the African or Afro American content, and so that they can convey the same kinds of emotional and spiritual messages that Parker and Gillespie and

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that generation of musicians conveyed when their music was new and fresh. So so it is a it is a revolution in the sense that it is an abrupt change, and it is dialectical, in the sense that it negates what existed before, to conserve what is the

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essence of that aspect of the black music tradition that's to that's to talk about, that's to talk about, in a dialectical way, to talk about the music itself, and what's going on with the music culture. If we take the

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relationship between the culture and the what they call it, the base, the structure, if we take the relationship between between the music and the art and the culture and what's happening, politically, economically and so on. I've I've been struck in the

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last couple years by by the tremendous, by the by the by the by the way in which the culture, the ideology, the art, can play at sometimes a primary role, a dominant role, in the changes that take place. Certainly that's one of the aspects of the

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Cultural Revolution in China. Certainly it's one of the aspects of the ideology of guerrillas in Latin America, of will and the voluntary nature of ingenious conditions and so on. So what I would ask is, is, how you if that, if that phrase, if.

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Seen that happen, or you see that happening as part of what's been going on in the black movement in the United States, or how you see that relationship in general, whether it's that way or any other way you see it?

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Well, I think so really, I wouldn't want to pose as the white expert, because I think, pardon me, we have really too many white experts, as it is, running around, shooting off their mouths all the time. But it doesn't seem to me that

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material conditions for black people in the United States have changed as decisively as ideological, spiritual, intellectual and cultural conditions have changed. That is to say, black people have themselves redefined, as I said

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earlier, how they look at themselves and how they look at the world. And this has to do with the coming of independence, to independence, political independence, at any rate, of the African nations, the emergence of black nationalism

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as an ideology. It has to do with this new music as well, because people who were playing the music talked about these things, and though they were never popular figures, as we understand that in the sense of selling 10 million records, they

00:26:11.700 - 00:26:28.760

carried a certain weight in the black community, as black preachers, black musicians, black orators, always have carried so I definitely think that that that the role of ideology, the role of culture, can be decisive in precipitating

00:26:30.200 - 00:26:45.160

the determination of the people to reject the status quo. In other words, not dealing with economic determinism. There have not been all such economic changes as there have been in the lives of black people have in many respects, been negative.

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As C Wilson pointed out, in early 60s, per capita income per family income for black people have gone down slightly with respect to comparable incomes among whites. But I don't think those things are as decisive as the cultural shift, the

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ideological shift in the minds of black people themselves. What about what about the audience for the music that you written about, not only in terms of size and so on, but in terms of class and and that kind of thing. That's how has it

00:27:19.500 - 00:27:38.000

changed? And what is it? Well, I don't think it's changed so much as it has, as it has phrased that somewhat it is emerging now with a true audience for the music is. And what I think that audience is

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primarily, is an audience of young people, young black people, but also young white people. I was struck, just to give a kind of off the cuff, sort of impressionistic evidence, the other week when we came into Berkeley to see going

00:27:51.340 - 00:28:05.640

at Coleman, it was a Tuesday night, and he was playing a Mandrake, and he had it packed, so packed that we couldn't get in. We had to wait outside for half an hour. And he packed, I understand that he packed that place every night that he was

00:28:05.640 - 00:28:21.740

here. And the audience was primarily young, white, with the student age at any rate. And these are people who really have not been barraged with it, with intense propaganda about Ornette Coleman being the hip thing to do. Yet, there they were, and

00:28:22.160 - 00:28:39.500

damned if you could get into mandrakes to hear Werner Coleman. So there is an audience there opening my files here, and I know I've got several interesting items. For example, Leonard feather, who's a noted white critic and a columnist for

00:28:39.500 - 00:28:54.460

The Los Angeles Times. He continues to maintain that what he calls the avant garde and jazz gets it's what little support it has from whites. It's not like in the black community. This is a verbatim quote from one of his columns. This is

00:28:54.460 - 00:29:05.760

another canard that's being passed off about black music that really doesn't represent black people, and the only people who support of their whites. What I've seen on the college campus is that wherever there's a black studies program,

00:29:05.760 - 00:29:18.240

there's going to be a black music course or courses incorporated very soon thereafter, and this is going to be at the demand of the students themselves who are black. So Cecil Taylor is now teaching university of Wisconsin, Archie,

00:29:18.240 - 00:29:32.300

State University of New York at Buffalo. Bill Nixon's at Bennington and Vermont, and we're trying at Sacramento State, even under that little, big, glorious backwater of Western civilization. We're trying to hire a very impressive

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musician who was visiting us last week, Julia henzell, now first saxophonist and flute player. So I expect this is really going to be the wave of the future, and it's going to clear up who the audience is. It's going to make apparent that

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the audience is the audience is primarily young and largely black, disproportionately black, and that's going to lay to rest all of these things that feather writes about black. Patronage falling off at Charles manhole, and there'd be no black audience

00:30:03.900 - 00:30:15.780

for the so called avant garde and so forth and so on. How'd you get there? When and how did you get into digging and listening to well, it was like, suppose, one of those bizarre accidents.

00:30:15.780 - 00:30:30.500

Really, I've always been kind of a stupid person and very impressionable. And when I was in my mid teens and preparing to go away to college, which, of course, all Jewish boys do go away to college, I thought it was the hip there. I thought,

00:30:30.500 - 00:30:45.940

you I had this F Scott fitzgill College was supposed to like jazz. So I stayed up late at night in the Southern California looking at gene Norman. He used to have a show presenting Dexter Gray, Dexter Gordon and Wardell, gray tenor saxophone battle from

00:30:45.940 - 00:31:01.500

the California club and Max Roach and Clifford Brown from 11 to 12, he used to play jazz. And then I sort of also got interested in other phases of black music. Hunter Hans program, which was that time called the music he played that

00:31:01.500 - 00:31:19.620

time was called blues. So the result was that I immersed myself pretty thoroughly and then called Jazz. And got to college, and I found out that I was the only person al Farley testified to this around I was the only person who gave a good

00:31:19.620 - 00:31:34.640

goddamn button music at all, and I proceeded to run my second year student body office, the guy who put on the assembly, galleries and so forth, and won the office mostly because nobody else was interested in it. And we had an entire series of jazz

00:31:35.420 - 00:31:52.300

performances that year, and nothing else which annoyed my classmates, no end. But that was how I got into it. And I found out it was a taste that the taste that one is supposed to outgrow when one has sown one's wild oats. I mean, it does have

00:31:52.300 - 00:32:04.020

that F Scott Fitzgerald image of slumming booze nightclubs, if you read the English jab magazines, that's all they were talking about. They go into a bar with a musician and drink up three gifts of bourbon or something like that. But I

00:32:04.020 - 00:32:17.520

didn't outgrow it. And in fact, I was led from curiosity about the music. While I maintained that curiosity, I also began to become curious about players, because I started noticing certain things. For example, a lot of the players I first heard

00:32:17.520 - 00:32:29.780

and first like, were white west coast, they gave like, they threw back and Mulligan and so forth. And took me a long time to get past that into some of the East Coast players, like Penny roller and so called hard boss or funky players. Well, I

00:32:29.780 - 00:32:44.740

noticed there were stylistic differences. There were obvious stylistic differences. So then it occurred to me, well, black people are playing music, music in a different way than than the white musicians. Once I adjusted my ear for the stylistic

00:32:44.740 - 00:32:55.720

difference, so that I came to prefer the work of the black performers in the main and I began to become curious about the people themselves. That's something I have a great deal of difficulty explaining to my department, because they want to

00:32:55.720 - 00:33:08.940

know why I don't have a PhD in all of this. And nobody gave PhDs to this kind of work. I mean, I was here at Berkeley 10 years ago, graduate student in biophysics, and I was reading Melville Herskovits myth of the Negro past because I wanted to

00:33:08.940 - 00:33:20.540

know and there was no way I could get out of any kind of academic curriculum that was around. Then I went to some anthropology classes. I remember, I audited them, even as a biophysics graduate student, and I walked out when

00:33:20.540 - 00:33:35.960

the anthropologist talked about he whistled for his boy who was outside. His boy came in, and they set off into the bush. So that was being that was what was being purveyed then, of all I know now in the citadels of Western culture. So I did it on

00:33:35.960 - 00:33:47.860

my own because I was interested. I wanted to know about the music. I want to know about people who created the music and it still lay is still a second class as far as the academy is concerned. That is to say, you don't get to do this kind of

00:33:47.860 - 00:34:06.420

thing. You just get penalized. He wrote the comics. He traveled around a lot to write the book for a series of years, and did a lot of interviews with people, maybe some impressions of individuals, people of Coltrane to other

00:34:06.420 - 00:34:26.360

people. Well, that you retain most graphically, of course, the most impressive of these people really was Coltrane, not because he particularly agreed with what I had to say, but there was something about the man that

00:34:26.360 - 00:34:39.800

just set him apart as a spiritual figure, as I remarked in introducing the interview in the book that I did with him, there's really no objective reason why he should have consented to an interview with me, because I was then, And

00:34:39.800 - 00:34:53.440

indeed am now, a non entity, and it involved a certain amount of inconvenience for him, and that he had to come down to the railroad station, pick me up, drive around suburban Long Island for a couple of hours while we conducted this

00:34:53.440 - 00:35:09.000

interview. And I'm sure he had better things to do, but he did this for reasons known only to he. And then he also arranged to have Pharaoh Sanders call me a time when I couldn't find Carol Sanders at all. So I was tremendously impressed with

00:35:09.000 - 00:35:25.280

that. And I was impressed with his sincerity while, as I mentioned also in the book, while I was waiting for the Long Island Railroad to come pick me up, take me back to New York, we were on the platform, and we talked about what I was reading,

00:35:25.280 - 00:35:38.060

because John was interested in everything, and he was sincerely interested in bettering conditions for black people. And I explained to him that I was a socialist, and why I was a socialist, and why I thought the example of the economy could not

00:35:38.360 - 00:35:51.040

function in such a way as to provide a decent livelihood for white people, let alone black people. And he was, he was impressed with this by I don't mean to say that he believed me. He swallowed everything I said, but I mean he respected the

00:35:51.040 - 00:36:04.320

sincerity of my conviction. And I had the feeling that he thought, that I thought that there was something in this, and that he this was something that he was going to look into, along with a whole number of other things that he was going to look

00:36:04.320 - 00:36:22.730

into, because he was always looking into everything. But, of course, he died less than a year after that, and so I'm sure that he never really got very far into that. Though I also think that whatever time had been, time had permitted him. But

00:36:23.450 - 00:36:40.910

beyond Coltrane, though it is my impression that me, the people who play this music are an enormously talented, enormously articulate group of men and women. Because my observation is that the black person the function of black person who is

00:36:40.910 - 00:36:51.220

competent, functioning at a certain level. Certain level, and a white person who's functioning at the same level. Generally speaking, the black person is twice as competent and who's the white person, because he wouldn't be there otherwise.

00:36:51.220 - 00:37:07.380

I mean, I compare my black colleagues at Sacramento State College, my white colleagues, my black colleagues, are versed in several areas that again, they didn't. They didn't derive this background from formal, academic words. They picked it up on

00:37:07.380 - 00:37:19.500

their own because they were interested. So they know about Africa. Knew about African rituals and ceremonies, even though nobody bothered to teach them. They were concerned enough to go out on their own. Well, the people who play this music,

00:37:20.040 - 00:37:39.080

Bill Nixon Cecil Taylor, Archie Shep, John Carter, Bobby Bradford, Julia Santa I have enormous respect for them as individuals, because they are all highly literate, highly intelligent, highly articulate, and besides being expert in one

00:37:39.080 - 00:37:53.860

area of news that they conceive of themselves as being responsible for the fate of their people, at least to some degree. And so this is something that always is occupying them. Where this isn't always the case with with white artists who

00:37:53.860 - 00:38:07.500

function in the Western tradition. I was impressed by the Civility which was with which I was received, and it was even more amazing to consider how impoverished these conditions were at that time. I mean, the conditions in New

00:38:07.500 - 00:38:23.300

York, if you've lived in New York for New York Times, those horrible one room apartments with cold water and a bathroom down the hall, I just wouldn't they aren't fit for as concentration camps. They are inadequate as habitation for

00:38:23.300 - 00:38:41.960

civilized human beings. They're out of the question. So my impression of musicians overall is, is a an enormously favorable one, not you know, there are isolated instances when musicians wouldn't let me interview them. There were other

00:38:41.960 - 00:38:53.020

musicians who, in fact, denounced me. I remember doing one interview in the back of those Vanguard, two very famous musicians, and I asked them about the connection between Malcolm X and music, and they said, Why are you always talking

00:38:53.020 - 00:39:07.260

about that negative stuff when people talk about jazz? And I tried to explain to them that why we mentioned Malcolm X. I wasn't being negative. I was being positive, but I never got that across. And that was, that was a bad scene, but that was,

00:39:07.800 - 00:39:22.100

that tends to be a rare instance. One of the things I've always been interested in, I'm not sure if you mentioned about it, if you mention it in the book, is the group dynamics of a group, the leadership dynamics have

00:39:22.100 - 00:39:36.440

improved, the vibrations that pass between the players, other than the sounds, what goes on when they're when they're on, what goes on when they're off, how that relates if there isn't, if there, if that, if, in fact, the could say ideological leader

00:39:36.440 - 00:39:52.960

is many times, often not the artistic leader, or whatever, any anything You found out or have to say about that? Well, the whole concept of leader, in a sense, is archaic. Ralph, Lisa pointed this out with respect to Roxanne's. And I

00:39:52.960 - 00:40:10.320

think this also too with respect to the black music. Lew that the Western capito. A star system of merchandising commodities depends on the star. So therefore, if you have a record with John Coltrane on that, you have to call it a John Coltrane

00:40:10.320 - 00:40:25.040

record. This leads to some bizarre things too, such as a record that was initially recorded with Cecil Tara and John Coltrane under Cecil Tara's leadership now is reissued as Coltrane time as the John Coltrane record. Well, in

00:40:25.040 - 00:40:41.180

general, though, the groups that are stable, that can exist over a period of time, because they received some favorable recognition, economically, seem to operate on a common wavelength, so that talking to one member of the group and

00:40:41.180 - 00:40:54.700

talking to another member of the group together, of the group to get pretty much the same thing. I think this is certainly the case in Coltrane's group, and the interviews are there in the book to lend whatever kind of supportive way they can to that.

00:40:54.880 - 00:41:08.580

But I know this is too awful in Archie Sheps group, when he had a group at that time that could at that point, he'd just returned from tour of the West, and he had a relatively stable group that included Roswell Rudd, who's white Beaver,

00:41:08.580 - 00:41:20.100

Harrison drummer Charlie Hayden, I think, was playing bass. He had a succession of bass players. Well, he talked to Shep and talked to Roswell Rudd. There really isn't any difference. Rudd went up Tennessee, Malcolm X, the same

00:41:20.100 - 00:41:35.600

way shed did and had the same political point of view. So I wouldn't, you know, I'd be a little reluctant to generalize completely, but my impression is said, in the group that is stable, like others generally, some kind of rapport that

00:41:36.680 - 00:41:44.140

exists. I mean, could be, could be said some kind of collectivity. Is a collectivity, right? Precisely. This is one of the aspects of news, life, music. I think that does make it

00:41:44.260 - 00:41:59.860

revolutionary, and that it is, it is a very happy, even cliche written, but it's a people music. It is not the personal property of John Coltrane. Coltrane himself said it's a big reservoir we all dip out of. Quote, close quote. And that

00:41:59.860 - 00:42:12.540

also very African. It is not in a John Coltrane doesn't own it. Archie Shannon doesn't own a pair of Sanders doesn't own it. Albert Ailey doesn't own it. They use the music of black people and just tell the quintessence of that experience.

00:42:13.920 - 00:42:37.640

What about the I've been struck in the past month by when Jim Henze died and when Jimmy Henze died and Jacqueline died, and that whole shadow cast itself over youth culture and black culture, I've been struck by, at least in the beginning stages of

00:42:37.640 - 00:42:54.760

it, a kind of lack of a solidarity among musicians and people involved in the culture. In other words, no other musicians or very few saying something in a massive way immediately about that. I mean, they'll get to it. There's a

00:42:54.760 - 00:43:10.140

question about it. Always have. I mean, there's always been many songs and statements written to musicians and artists who have died. But what I'm asking about is the kind of solidarity on an organizational level. You mentioned in New York

00:43:10.140 - 00:43:22.400

organizations, which is now reforming. What I'm thinking about in the kind of music you were talking about, the black music you were talking about, what kind of relationships of solidarity between musicians are there they I sense that they're

00:43:22.400 - 00:43:36.560

stronger than in than in other kinds of then, certainly in the popular world, and perhaps even in the, say, rhythm and blues. I sense that the notion of solidarity is stronger. But I don't know how to take it much further.

00:43:36.560 - 00:43:53.380

Well, it's it's difficult to hear. Yeah. Scholars, standard dog too, right, precisely, but it's difficult generalize. Well, first of all, I mean, all of these people are functioning to some degree in the capitalist economic framework, which puts

00:43:53.380 - 00:44:09.180

maximum emphasis on devouring one's fellow for one's own gain. I think to some extent, the most conscious groups of musicians have transcended this. New York is the hardest place to get it together, because there the pressures are most intense and

00:44:09.180 - 00:44:21.320

the frictions are most intense. I mean, New York's a place where people scream at you for no provocation whatsoever, and the pressures to go your own way of an individual and leave everybody behind are maximized. Chicago, on the other hand, has

00:44:21.380 - 00:44:36.800

the AACM, which I think stands for the Association for the Advancement of creative musicians. Horace Hans cotton Los Angeles, had the underground musicians Association, UGMA. And I dare say that my colleague, Gene Weldon is tremendously

00:44:36.800 - 00:44:50.380

talented poet. Says that there's a similar it's called black artist group back in East St Louis, black community in Illinois. I imagine that as we investigate more black communities, we're going to find same kind of thing happening

00:44:50.800 - 00:45:05.580

that in a particular area, black artists and black musicians, in many cases, it's a collective of poets, painters and musicians are getting together and trying to. Do something on a communal, cooperative basis. I see the same thing in the Bay Area. To

00:45:05.580 - 00:45:22.040

some extent. I see, for example, in the way that Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Quicksilver will organize things in common. But as far, as far as rock and pop groups go being white, they don't. They are not subjected to the same kind of

00:45:22.160 - 00:45:36.440

racist pressures and being economically successful, they are able to live a kind of life which immunizes them from the day to day path. I mean, nobody Paul canner has been busted for dope a lot of times, granted, but nobody's ever plugged him

00:45:36.440 - 00:45:51.340

over the head with my sister and Miles Davies was to my knowledge. And if I'm wrong, I apologize to Paul, but I mean, it isn't the same kind of thing the white musician has to count on the same way as a Black does. So there's less incentive for

00:45:51.340 - 00:46:07.380

white musicians to operate cooperatively. But I think in the early days of the hate, undoubtedly, that won't happen when the money comes then the standard Western lionization of the individual takes over and lose the Some. Some of the

00:46:07.380 - 00:46:24.560

communal feeling is lost when the tourist busses. But I definitely think there is that solidarity. When you mentioned that in many of these groups, artists and poets and as well as musicians are joined together. It reminds

00:46:24.560 - 00:46:39.920

me at least somewhat of lots of lots of times in a revolutionary movement, or at least, for example, say, in Greece, which I know something about, where certain stages in the cultural movement, all the art forms came together and tried to combine

00:46:39.920 - 00:46:52.120

put things together, put poetry next to music next to songs. So and so. And I know, like there's the Last Poets these days, which does that to some extent. It meant always, of course, have been many things like that. I'm just wondering if you see that

00:46:52.120 - 00:47:03.780

as an increased possibility, increased trend and increased strengthening, larger productions. Maybe that unite all these various kinds of forces together. Yes, and multimedia kinds of things too. Gene Redmond, who I

00:47:03.780 - 00:47:19.800

mentioned before, colleague do my own lot, along with Oliver Jackson and painter, two men who I'm very much indebted to, are both quite heavily into this, especially gene, because he does a lot of poetry readings. He did one at Oberlin Lewis toy

00:47:19.800 - 00:47:37.940

residence, and he had a bass and cello behind them, for example. And he did one last week at Sac State, and he had Julius henzell playing behind him. Now, the poetry to jazz was tried out in a quote Beatrice, quote, quote context in the 50s. It turned

00:47:37.940 - 00:47:56.020

out to be not really very successful for a variety of reasons. It is as far as the African tradition goes, poetry and music have have long since been presented in tandem, I guess. And therefore this is again a revival of an African

00:47:56.020 - 00:48:09.240

tradition that seems to be working out quite successfully. I think, in any period such as this one, that you are going to see artists drawn together for common end, because they realize they have common ends. Are all talking about the same thing as

00:48:09.240 - 00:48:20.900

talking about liberation and ending oppression, creating a new kind of man and a new kind of society. So it's only natural that the embryo of this, they try and create the embryo of this with strong degree of success. Degree of success.

00:48:24.380 - 00:48:41.800

Okay, what more would you like to say to people? Do you have any major more major subjects you should cover? Well, the only thing I'm really the thing that I think that concerns me the most is trying to carve out some kind of niche

00:48:41.800 - 00:48:55.060

to make this, to force the people who have the credentials to bestow, to bestow the credentials of legitimacy on black people from black culture. This is a constant uphill struggle, as far as I can see,

00:48:55.960 - 00:49:08.640

like which people critics, not critics? I think critics are hopeless, really, and they're there. One has to realize that in a revolutionary period, they're going to be some people who are doomed and bound to be on the

00:49:08.640 - 00:49:25.100

common revolutionary side, and unfortunate as it is, and even callous as it may sound, simply not open to any kind of rational conversion. I regard most of the white critics with some happy exceptions, like Ralph Mason being essentially in that camp.

00:49:25.940 - 00:49:40.720

But the thing is, there are ways of mobilizing political pressure to create niches and havens for black music and black musicians. Universities have tremendous amounts of money, and instead of spending it to research how to kill people in Southeast Asia,

00:49:40.720 - 00:49:55.360

which they're expert at, or how to exploit natural resources of Latin America for the benefit of the Mellon family and the Rockefeller Brothers. And they should be forced to part with some of those funds to support black culture level that it

00:49:55.360 - 00:50:07.380

deserves. And I do. I mean the operative word in this context is forced, because they won't do a voluntary. Early, there's an incident I would count the book by going into Cal at Berkeley, maybe on arts and lectures, and saying, why don't you present

00:50:07.380 - 00:50:22.520

some jazz? Well, jazz, low life, low class, no culture. We're interested in serious art, not entertainment. And the lady finally ends up so I examine her scheduling for the coming year, and I see Anna Russell, Music Hall comedienne and I say by

00:50:22.880 - 00:50:36.080

what quantification is Anna Russell, serious music and lamb, Rick Henze and Ross in your entertainment. Lamb, Rick Henze and Ross were a big thing at that time. So at that point, you went into a thing about everybody loved Anna Russell,

00:50:36.140 - 00:50:48.760

everybody, meaning every white, Anglo, Saxon, Protestant of the middle class who is familiar with that tradition, which in this country, I guess you said to define everybody? Well, that's the kind of thing that's got to be stopped. Everybody

00:50:48.760 - 00:51:01.980

does not love Anna Russell. There are people who love John Coltrane more. And so what we have to do is make a university at least provide a certain minimum level of support for this culture. What is taught and what is supported in university

00:51:01.980 - 00:51:17.700

has always been a political question, though my scholarly colleagues still have had this light dawn on them. And since it is a political question, we have to deal with it explicitly in political terms, which means mobilizing the forces of the

00:51:17.700 - 00:51:31.340

Third World to demand that third world culture is not only respected, but that it receives support commensurate with the kind of support that's given to the ruling class culture. But have one other question, which reminded me of as you were

00:51:31.340 - 00:51:47.920

talking, and that is the relationship of women musicians in the whole things I didn't read in the book any place where you discuss it. I know there's Alice Coltrane, of course, and what more you have to say about both the both the aspects of

00:51:47.920 - 00:52:03.360

chauvinism within the culture itself, if you want to say a little bit about that, and But secondly, the actual facts, what it would indeed exist, and what strengths and new pushes and new horizons? Well, the chauvinism is obvious unless you

00:52:03.360 - 00:52:19.080

look at back issues of downbeat, because whenever they review the playing of a female musician, they always say she plays as well as a man. So it's clear that the standards here are male dominated, male chauvinist to begin with. There aren't very

00:52:19.080 - 00:52:36.740

many women who function in the area of black music, and I'm not sure exactly why. It probably has to do with a whole constellation of factors that I'm not sure I could elucidate properly. There have been very few areas in the culture and in

00:52:36.740 - 00:52:52.180

this society where black men could stand up as men, the music is, in some respects, one of them, and for that reason, there may have been a reluctance on the part of black men to allow black women to participate at the same level. But this is

00:52:52.240 - 00:53:06.300

conjecture on my part, and I want to label it that it is clear to me that in a liberated society, of course, since there are women who can understand music and respond to music. There's no reason why there aren't women who can play music

00:53:07.140 - 00:53:20.600

the same level, the same proportion or ratio. And I suspect that what we're going to see more and more in future is that there will be women incorporated into bands. There will be women who will, I think much of this too, as a women

00:53:20.600 - 00:53:35.780

reject music as a career for themselves. And the same reason that they reject other things that is, they're told or cued away from this area into something, something else. Or if they do go into music, they do, pardon me, they go into Aretha

00:53:35.840 - 00:53:52.180

Franklin does, for example, go to on the level of singing and playing the piano. So they're countless. I mean, there are some fantastic girl singers, Dodie groups in in Sacramento, and I'm sure there must be in every, every city or town that

00:53:52.180 - 00:54:08.460

has a substantial black population, but they but it is interesting that women do seem be drawn around that particular set of skills, not say around playing the saxophone or the drums or the bench, not through any lack of talent, I'm sure,

00:54:08.520 - 00:54:18.060

just because of the prevalent stereotypes about what it is acceptable for women to do and what it isn't I understand there's going to be an autograph party in connection with the book

00:54:18.720 - 00:54:29.600

Cody's Bookcafe. Yes, that's what the publisher instructs me to say. There's going to be an autograph party at Kees bookstore on Friday, November 13, at 8pm and so I imagine you'll be

00:54:29.600 - 00:54:46.060

there, and people who've heard this, hopefully heard this by that time, can talk to you more about what you said and argue with you and whatever is open for good pictures. Okay, thanks very much. Fantastic.

00:54:52.960 - 00:54:53.080

You.