Listen without prejudice

The world according to our foremost West Indian klezmer hip-hop Latin chamber jazz clarinetist

The great paradox of Don Byron: While he’s been recognized as the world’s foremost jazz clarinetist for nearly a decade, for just as long he’s succeeded in exploring a variety of styles so stunning it seems absurd to even call him a jazz musician.
In fact, by dipping into everything from klezmer kitsch (Plays the Music of Mickey Katz, 1993) to hip-hop beat poetry (Nu Blaxploitation, 1998), from Raymond Scott’s sonic animations (Bug Music, 1996) to Afro-Caribbean sounds (Music for Six Musicians, 1995) and from pop to classical repertoire (both on his latest, A Fine Line: Arias & Lieder, and elsewhere), Byron’s career is a testament to his rare gift at hearing music objectively, free from the subcultures and social signifiers that get in the way of our ability to hear music as simply music. That is, Byron’s clarinet inhabits a world most people will never see — a world free of prejudice.
Fitting then, that this graduate of the New England Conservatory’s Third Stream program (a curriculum based on composer Gunther Schuller’s idea of a “third stream” of music combining jazz and classical elements) would be chosen as the highlight of this week’s “A King Celebration 2001,” a series of concerts, recitals and lectures held on the campuses of Morehouse College, Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University to commemorate the 15th observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
A week before Byron’s arrival in Atlanta, where over three days he’ll perform in four concerts and give a lecture, CL talked with the eclectic musician about his music. Particularly, we discussed his recent release, A Fine Line: Arias & Lieder, which collects music — by Ornette Coleman, Roy Orbison, Stevie Wonder and Stephen Sondheim as well as Schumann, Bernstein, Puccini and Chopin — that Byron views as sharing either the drama of operatic arias or the compositional artistry of classic German lieder (songs).
But given Byron’s participation in the King Day celebration, civil rights seemed to be a good place to start:
CL: On a conceptual level, do you see some connection to Martin Luther King in your music?
DB: Well, I can vote, can’t I? How is Martin Luther King not connected to anybody, really?
But as far as music. Do you see yourself as a product of his legacy, or of that era?
I could say that I’m pursuing some kind of freedom-filled career that might not have been possible before a certain period, maybe. It’s not the easiest career to have, but it probably wouldn’t be possible.
Do you see in your crossing of boundaries an application or a message taken from the civil rights era or from the idea of diversity?
My idea is pretty simple, that I’m going to do whatever the hell I want. I studied lots of music over a long period of time, and I think lots of musicians have studied lots more music than they play. I just play an instrument that automatically has more of an international/world music/concert music implication than the saxophone. So I just tried to experience a lot of the things that the instrument does.
So you’d say your interest in, say, klezmer or classical music or whatever, is mainly having to do with the applications of the clarinet itself, as opposed to your interest in the genres?
Well, I have interest in all sorts of genres. I guess what I’m saying is that if I played, like, slide guitar, I might not be idiomatically experiencing some of these things. If you play tissue paper and comb and want to play a harmonica concerto, you can do it. But you’re not going to find much repertoire for it. There’s all sorts of repertoire for the clarinet. I’ve played more modern styles of jazz, but I also wanted to experience a lot of the other things the instrument does. It’s an instrument that people seem to be able to adapt to their needs.
Is that something that attracted you to the instrument early on?
No, I just had a clarinet and I studied it.
How old were you when you started?
Six or 7.
So did you choose the clarinet or was it chosen for you?
Well, my uncle had a pretty good wooden clarinet that he left to the family. West Indian kids of a certain era had to take music lessons. So that was just part of my family’s education thing.
Your parents are West Indian?
That would make me West Indian, too, yeah.
But you were born here, right?
They were born here too, but they were quite West Indian. And in lots of ways, I’m quite West Indian.
As far as A Fine Line: Arias & Lieder, I know you’ve worked with that kind of repertoire before, but what were the motivations that made you want to frame things in terms of arias and lieder?
A bunch of things inspired it. One thing was seeing Aretha sing “Nessum Dorma” [at the Grammy Awards]. Actually, one of the records that is really a theoretical base for it is that Ray Charles record, Modern Sounds in Country and Western (1962). It’s really about objectifying the music by changing the performance style somewhat. That’s a really beautiful record, a really subtle, quietly mind-blowing record — a lot people don’t understand the significance of what happens in it. The central idea was just to take those two forms and find things outside of classical music that seem to exhibit the formal elements of those kinds of songs. A song like “Nessum Dorma” [from Puccini’s opera Turandot] isn’t really all that complicated, but it has a sort of formal “shout chorus” feeling that the great arias have. So I just looked for things that had that. And I’ve always been a huge studier and fan of [lieder composer Robert] Schumann’s stuff, so I looked for songs that were kind of tricky and had that relationship of words to music and how they combine. Just that vibe.
Arias & Lieder implies classical, but probably the majority of the record is not classical. Was there an attempt to redefine or alert listeners to a new interpretation of what those terms could or should signify?
There’s almost more social issues around people choosing the music that they like. If you go see some thrashy post-Seattle band, there’s a different bunch of people than who are at the hip-hop group, which is different than the people at the symphony, which is different from the people at the Whitney Houston or ‘N Sync concert. And mostly, people choose their music because they want to be down with the kind of people who are into that music. Certainly classical music has plenty of that, in terms of social status, money and certain ways of relating to different ethnicities. Classical stuff has a special relationship to money, status and class. It’s always had that and it probably always will. But that doesn’t have anything to do with music. If you’re a musician and you’re studying [Motown’s rhythm section] James Jamerson and Benny Benjamin, there’s as much to know in that as there is in a Schumann song. There just is, whether you want to know it or admit it. So that’s more my mentality. If you like something, then it’s about taking it seriously and finding out what uniquely happens, technically and musically, and also what the elements of composition are that are being thrown around.
You’re trying to take it out of the social context.
Just out of the social context of the music. One of the songs that didn’t get on the record was an L.A. [Reid] and Babyface song. You know, I really like the way [Babyface] writes music, I think he’s really pretty clever.
What song?
It’s actually this Tevin Campbell song called “Can We Talk.” I just thought it was right on. You know, I hate Tevin Campbell, he’s not my favorite singer, but I thought the song was fabulous.
In framing the album the way you did, you jump into the eternal debate about how we define things as high and low. I think it’s somewhat clear by now, but where do you fit into this?
What’s high is composition. And if people aren’t objective enough to see that composition is or isn’t going on, that’s a problem. If you’re not into Latin music and you hear some that sounds good and makes you want to dance, that’s different than being an aficionado and knowing the aesthetic difference between Charlie Palmieri and Eddie Palmieri, or Ray Barretto and Jose Fajardo. Those are radically different things. That’s like the difference between [Edgard] Varese and something much more inside. Those kinds of differences exist in every kind of music, and usually people are not objective enough to look at different kinds of music and then consistently go to the more compositionally interesting things. Some people can do that for rock. Like, “Oh, I like these really screechy guitar players,” but can they listen to [black jazz/rock pioneer James] “Blood” Ulmer? Sometimes they can, sometimes they can’t, but socially they’re not connected to “Blood” Ulmer in the same way.
That’s a powerful thing, though, the social context of music. Is it always good to try and get past that?
I come from a perspective of really having learned everything in the bedroom of my parents’ house. So I don’t necessarily feel super-connected to anything socially. I grew up being a sickly, asthmatic kid, I couldn’t really leave the house unless I really had to. So I just tend to have this thing where I’m more connected to things in terms of how they interest me compositionally. It’s not like I went to Ray Barretto shows to hang out with other people who were into Ray Barretto. I was never in music for that.
So would it be true to say it’s just your natural inclination to approach music the way you have, as opposed to saying that you actually have an agenda to let people know that high and low is bullshit, or whatever. Is it an agenda?
I’m sure that it is. But all I can say is that the music I put on the record is pretty much the music that I like. It’s not a stunt. When I was a kid, I really got into Mahler and I was perfectly used to seeing the same 40 people that went to all the Mahler concerts in New York. These kind of unkempt pseudo-intellectuals with tattered turtlenecks that were into that music at the time. But I wasn’t socially connected to them, and I’m sure the last thing they were thinking was that they were socially connected to me. But that doesn’t have anything to do with how I understood that music or what I did with it when I got home.
Do you see what you’re doing [combining jazz and classical] as having anything to do with the Third Stream?
I was actually in the Third Stream program at the New England Conservatory [of Music]. I studied with Ran Blake [pianist and Third Stream department head at NECM], so I do know something about that. People don’t necessarily associate me with that style of music, but a lot of what I’m doing is about what that program, at least theoretically, was about. So it’s not like Third Stream. I’m one of the only people holding a Third Stream degree who’s actually pursuing that.
I didn’t realize you were so close to it. Can you give me some historical background?
The best thing about it was that if you were in the jazz program you had to do a certain thing, and if you were in the classical program you had a certain curriculum. In the Third Stream, anybody who would accept you as a student could take you. So I actually could get credit for studying intensely some of the things I wanted to do. It was a feeling of putting things together that I felt I needed, rather than waiting for a school ensemble to ask me to be in it. That has served me pretty well over the years.
Was the program activist in that you felt it was like, “OK, now go out and have a career like ...,” like the one you’ve had?
No, because almost nobody who was in it has gone on to have a career. It was the kind of thing that, unless you were playing on a high level, it made you more a cool guy than it made you able to do anything. One of the weaknesses of it was that Ran Blake tried to design the curriculum around his personal taste. So he liked Stan Kenton records from the ’50s, then he liked some Greek music — not really funky, ethnic stuff, but composer guys — oh, and he loved Earth, Wind & Fire! It’s like, “What does this add up to?” The Third Stream teachers weren’t especially knowledgeable about my program, Eddie Palmieri and Igor Stravinsky — those were the two main things. So if the symbol of the department was this briefcase that had a collection of things in it, what they were almost saying was, “Dump your briefcase, what’s important is mine.” So I could get through working on what they were interested in, but the package I put together for myself was really different from what they did.
Seems there’s a bunch of jazz people doing classical things these days, or maybe the other way around. Have you seen that more recently?
For classical people, there’s a different mentality altogether. They’ve reached a point where they can’t sell that many more recordings of the same pieces. It seems like most of the major classical musicians are doing these incredible crossover things, like Yo-Yo Ma with bluegrass guys.
In terms of jazz and improvisational music, do you think it works?
Classical musicians who want to play jazz? I don’t know. From a business standpoint, something works if people buy it. People buy Yo-Yo Ma and Mark O’Connor, so I’d say it works. Whether it works for me personally? It works OK. It’s not necessarily the way I’d go about it, just like all of this crossover stuff. I’m not trying to make a killing because I can’t sell any more jazz records. I don’t sell any jazz records to begin with, no one does! But, my rationale is really to put out more of a picture of who I really am. And a lot of the music on the Lieder record is historically important to me over the years, from when I first heard that Sondheim song (“The Ladies Who Lunch”) sung, to the first time I heard Arthur Rubinstein play Chopin’s “Larghetto.”
How much of this classical/jazz mix is a marketing thing or is there really room as a jazz musician to explore the classical repertoire?
Well, you have to ask about specific projects, because they’re all really different. Some are hipper than others, some are cornier. I don’t like them all. I don’t know if there’s one thing you can say about them.
Are there general things that you think define what makes them corny or makes them work?
I think trying to be cute is never great. Also, just picking material that is really obvious, I’m not too into that. If I decide to do some classical music, it’s going to be some shit that you’d have to be pretty knowledgeable to even look at. It’s not going to be like a [’70s classical/jazz pop fusioners] Deodato record, or something like that.
Even though at this point you’re sort of a jazz insider, the way you approach jazz on your releases is almost from the outside. Between klezmer, Raymond Scott, the Latin stuff, hip-hop and classical stuff, it’s more from the outside in.
In a way, that’s from the Stravinsky “looking from the outside in” approach. That’s where his influence has really shaped my stance towards doing different kinds of music. He seemed to be able to tackle a lot of different styles and always sound like himself. He had certain harmonic values and rhythmic tricks and intervallic characteristics that you could always tell was him. He wasn’t writing idiomatic jazz things and he wasn’t totally ignorant of them. He was more an impressionist, when you compare what jazz sounded like with what his impressions of it sounded like. It was more a Picasso-esque way of slicing and dicing the stuff up that he was coming in contact with.
So do you even feel comfortable calling yourself a jazz musician?
I feel comfortable calling myself a jazz musician if I’m playing jazz. When I’m not playing jazz, I feel quite irritated hearing about it.
In terms of being a jazz musician, in the big picture, do you find it limiting? In terms of working within jazz, have the possibilities been exhausted?
Well, I thought it was interesting that you referred to me as a jazz insider. I think that’s hilarious.
I just mean in terms of being recognized in jazz as a major figure. Or being on Blue Note. Or being chosen as the top jazz musician in polls. In those kind of general ways, you are viewed as a jazz musician.
Yeah, generally. But there are as many people in jazz who think that because I’ve done some of these things, I’m not a jazz musician at all. Some people have never gotten over the klezmer stuff, some people have really these stereotypes about people they consider avant garde that I go through. So I don’t think I’m a jazz insider in any kind of way.
Do you see a lot of exploration going on that’s interesting in jazz?
No. The current era is just not producing a lot of composition. It’s just this whole vibe that the canon is this and only that. Other than Wynton himself, you don’t even hear about any of those guys writing any music. Like it’s too avant garde to write your own tunes and play them, so people don’t do it. Or if they do, it sounds like a Blakely tune. Or they have open vamps or parallel chords that are fun to play on, but they don’t really do anything.
Is there anyone you’d point to as doing something new?
I think a few of the younger musicians are good writers. Like Antonio Hart. But he kind of went a different way and studied composition. With the repressiveness of this era, there’s all this complaining about how awful the avant garde was, but those people wrote a lot of music. Maybe you don’t want to play bebop the way they tried to play bebop, but they wrote a lot of music. And there was an atmosphere around their work that was very much about writing. You’ve gotta write. If you have a group, that’s what you do. The weakest thing about the current era is that there are young African-American musicians who don’t know how great a writer Henry Threadgill is. Maybe you don’t want to play like him, but everyone should know he’s one of America’s greatest composers. Now the irony of a whole bunch of young black musicians not knowing it, that’s really sad.
How did you get involved with the MLK convention?
I was approached by National Public Radio.
Do you have any connections to Atlanta?
I was the featured person in the Arts Festival of Atlanta, I guess it was the year before it shut down.
Have you worked enough in town to have a perception of the music community here, as far as the jazz or classical scene?
I would say no, because every time I came I just brought my guys. I actually dated a woman who was living in Atlanta, so I hung out quite a bit. It was kind of an odd collection of things we actually did while we were there. We went to the High Museum a few times, we went to one of those FunkJazzKafe things, in that big hollowed out building...
The Tabernacle.
I loved that, that shit was bad, it was really great. I don’t remember who was performing, there were a couple people pointed out to me that had something to do with Dionne Farris’ project, which I was really into at the time. It just seemed like there was a lot of DJs and local musicians, we kind of danced and hung out. You know, so I spent some time in Atlanta. But I wouldn’t say that I was going to see the symphony there. Atlanta wasn’t a city that that would occur to me to do that in.
At least in my case, klezmer seems to be the first thing that I started to hear about you ...
I don’t think that’s really true, because I came to New York and was playing with [avant garde jazzmen] David Murray and Hamiet Bluiett and then worked my way through a bunch of the downtown cats, and it was after that that I did the [Mickey] Katz project.
But you were in the Klezmer Conservatory Group before that, in Boston?
Yeah, but at that point, it was pretty much some provincial music. And it was only for people who were Jewish in a very specific kind of way. It was kind of a provincial ethnocentric exercise.
So it was never something that took up a lot of your time?
No, actually I was doing a lot of Latin jazz around Boston at the time, because there were a lot of Latin musicians who came to school in Boston. And there were people that I played straight-ahead stuff with, and people I played free jazz with, people that I played chamber music with. Klezmer was paying, for all of us who were in that group. But we all did other stuff. I was in the Third Stream while I did that.
Is that something that you ever go back to?
No, I can’t really ever go back to it. A few things happened that I really didn’t like. It went from being a challenge to people about the perception of what a black musician could do, to some cartoonish thing that I could only do that. And I had been a person who really prided myself on being incredibly adaptable and a quick study of several different idioms of music. So for someone to say I could only play klezmer music was the most insulting thing that anyone could possibly do.
I can see how you would see it initially as going along with these ideas of taking music out of its context, with you as an African-American musician, but yet that became the story: Like, “isn’t this weird?”
Definitely, a whole movement started after that point. Right out of the Knitting Factory, where I started to play this music, grew this movement [Radical Jewish Culture] that I started but couldn’t be in. That’s one of the weirder things that’s ever happened for me. I think a lot of people really used it to say, because I could play that music, that somehow this is Jewish jazz. Somehow the stylistic autonomy of jazz was being challenged by the fact that I was playing it, which I never felt. I never thought klezmer was any more related to jazz than Romanian or Bulgarian music, which is where most of it comes from, and I’ve never heard anyone say that Bulgarian music was jazz. The point should’ve been that, “Wow, here’s someone who looks like he shouldn’t know anything about this and he’s quite competent at it. So maybe that means some African-American musicians can express some things other than what people think they can do.” That to me was the message, but it got turned into all this other stuff. Then it became something quite distasteful within the downtown scene, because I think a lot of those musicians felt really left out and marginalized by the nationalistic aspects of the black avant garde, when this whole other movement that they came up with was basically doing a lot of the same things.
Don Byron performs as part of “A King Celebration 2001” with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Carmella Jones and the Morehouse and Spelman College glee clubs, Jan. 11 and 12 at 8 p.m. in Morehouse College’s Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel (the Jan. 11 concert will be broadcast on National Public Radio Mon., Jan. 15; see www.npr.org for broadcast times). Byron also performs with members of the ASO during a chamber music concert, 1 p.m., Fri., Jan. 12, at Clark Atlanta University’s Park Street Church. For information on these performances, contact the Woodruff Arts Center Box Office at 404-733-5000. In addition, Byron and his band play two shows, 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., at the Variety Playhouse, Sat., Jan. 13. For information, call 404-521-1786.