A Conversation with Jack DeJohnette – HuffPost 2.27.12
Mike Ragogna: Jack, you’ve got a new album, Sound Travels, which comes off like a collection of tone poems, all having different identities. Let’s start with “Salsa for Luisito.” What was the inspiration for that song?
Jack DeJohnette: Well, I love Afro-bouncing music. I love playing with percussionists, which, in Luisito Quintero’s case, is Venezuela. But I love percussion, obviously, being a drummer, but working in collaboration with other drummers. So, here I’ve worked on a formation that I had for the Latin project, which had another great conguero, Giovani Hidalgo. We worked really well together so we all inspire each other, call and response, and we also have friendly battles, duels. But at any rate, for this piece, for the whole CD mostly, I called on Luisito – to work in tandem with the rhythm team. He is such a beautiful guy and he always knows what to play. So, I wrote this in dedication and my appreciation of his contribution.
MR: You have a couple of fun guests such as Esperanza Spalding. She is so hot right now, what did you do to coerce her to jump on the project. You’re pals?
JD: Esperanza has a family of musicians and people that she really likes a lot and hooks up with. I hooked up with her. I had heard of her through her associations through Joe Lovano, and we got a chance to hook up during Herbie Hancock’s 70th birthday celebration a couple years ago. We played in a trio with Herbie at The Hollywood Bowl that same year. She’s very fired, apart from being a fantastic, multi-talented artist. She is a very bright, intelligent human being who cares about the environment. She is very socially, economically, and politically and spiritually interested. So, she has all those bases covered and is always curious, wants to find out and research everything. She is innovative, also.
MR: Yeah, I was going to say that in addition to her vocals, her bass playing is pretty wonderful too.
JD: Yeah, her bass playing, her writing, her singing, everything. I’m appearing on three tracks of her Radio Music Society, which should be coming out a little later too, along with some other great friends — Joe Lovano, Terri Lynne Carrington, Billy Barty, Gretchen Parlato. She’s got a host of people, but the music’s really slamming. But anyway, back to this, Luisito Quintero. We also have Lionel Loueke who is an incredible on rhythm guitar. Also, on the trumpet playing that melody and that great solo on the track is Ambrose Akinmusire.
MR: Yes, and Ambrose is also on “Dirty Ground.”
JD: Originally, “Dirty Ground” got its title from Bruce Hornsby who wrote the lyrics and melody to it. I had written and arranged all the tracks that were recorded, the new tracks, on my synthesizers so that everybody would have an idea how they would go. I played with Bruce on his first Jazz album called Camp Meeting which featured myself and Bruce and Christian McBride. So, I called Bruce, cause we speak to each other, and said, “Listen, I’m doing this recording and I’ve got this piece that’s in seven, but it’s very interesting and it grooves, and it reminds me of Levon Helm from The Band.
MR: I’ll bet all you had to say was “The Band” and Bruce was on board. (laughs)
JD: Well, Levon and The Band meets New Orleans. So with that, he took off, and he came back with these lyrics and the title “Dirty Ground.” The first lyric is a non-toured Levon, which is something you would imagine him singing, and the rest is for the hurricane victims and New Orleans and also the Mardi Gras Indians and New Orleans.
MR: Jack, the vocals were engineered by Wayne Pooley, which means he recorded them elsewhere, right?
JD: We sent the tracks to Bruce and his engineer, to his studio, and they did it to our satisfaction and that was the result.
MR: Nice, let’s go to “Oneness” with Bobby McFerrin. You played piano on that one and left percussion to others.
JD: It’s a delicate piece and Luisito, like I said before, knows exactly what to play and where to play it, so I don’t have to tell him. We make a great team, it was really great. We worked together, or improvised, I should say, together over many years in different circumstances. We’ve worked together in duo with Lyle Mays, with his orchestra, with Chick Corea, and every time we do it, we don’t rehearse, we just go for it. In this case, I just had this particular piece in mind. I thought Bobby would be perfect for it and sure enough, he was.
MR: You start the album with the delicate piano piece, “Enter Here,” on which you set the mood for Sound Travels. The track is reminiscent of the music on Peace Time.
JD: Well, the album on the surface may seem quite simple. But if you go a little bit deeper, there are a lot of subtle layers in it. The more you listen to it, the more you hear. So it’s like you said, a tone poem. It’s 46 minutes, but it doesn’t seem short. It goes by slow and it’s this point I just wanted to make, and some music is grooving with beautiful melodies, and bring smiles to peoples’ faces. So far, that’s what I’ve been hearing back from reviews and programmers.
MR: What was the inspiration for your redo of “Indigo Dreamscapes”?
JD: That was originally recorded on an album I did with Herbie Hancock and Pat Metheny called Parallel Realities. The song, the wave, came about, the nice chord changes, the nice melodies, and it just evoked that title for me.
MR: Jack, you won the Grammy Award in 2008 for Best New Age project, for Peace Time, right?
JD: Right.
MR: I also wanted to bring up your association with Keith Jarrett, one of the great improvisational instrumentalists
JD: Keith and I have had an affinity for over 40 years, actually. We worked with Miles. Our chemistry is just magic, we never really have to talk that much about the music.
MR: Was that the same kind of creative approach that you had with Miles and Bill Evans?
JD: Sort of, yes. It’s a sort of trust of how you approach the music. There is a language in this. There’s a lot to be learned, but it’s implied in the music as we play it, as the music is a work in progress, playing it night after night, you change it and it morphs into something.
MR: Because you’re a pianist, a percussionist, and drummer, how did you dive creatingSound Travels?
JD: I set the goal for myself to write tunes with grooves and nice melodies, and also for the players who are involved. We also have another pianist, Jason Moran, who played in “Deco Dreamscapes” and also brought in Tim Ries, veteran saxophonist and composer who plays with The Rolling Stones and also is a great composer and saxophonist in his own right. We had quite an array of musicians to play this. When I was writing, I wrote from the piano mostly, and also the keyboard. On the keyboard in particular, I use the synth and I can play out the parts. I can play the drum parts, I play the bass parts, I play the horn parts, the piano parts, or guitar parts. It’s fun for me and I can realize, through the electronic medium, my compositions, and then send them as MP3 files to the musicians and the producer, who in this case is Bob Sadin, who helped out immensely with the conception of this record. It makes it very easy for me to clearly get my thoughts across so everybody knows what I have in mind.
MR: John, what advice might you have for a new artist?
JD: Being a musician today is different than it was 20, 30 years ago. One has to work hard to develop excellence in their field and also, one has to learn how to navigate the internet and be an entrepreneur, and try to create an audience, develop that. Also, networking and working with musicians who know a little or a lot more than you do and have an exchange with possibly older musicians that you can talk to who don’t talk down to you but talk to you as a youth and have an exchange.
MR: Do you ever think, when listening to some of the music by the younger artists that are out there, “If only they used this chord instead of that one,” etc.?
JD: Not too much, because there is so much information available from the past that they have their iPhone or iPad and they’ve done a lot of listening, they have a lot available to them. Musicians like Esperanza, Marcus Gilmore, Ambrose Akinmusire, Lionel Loueke, Grace Kelly — the young 18-year-old saxophonist from Boston — they are pretty sharp. I mean, the drummers and saxophone players…there’s a lot of talent around, they just have to develop and it’s harder for them because there’s not too many groups that are out there like the Jazz Messengers. A lot of the youngsters have to start being bandleaders early, so that’s a pretty tough one. But they’re equipped to do it and they learn as they go, so I think the next round of these musicians are going to make some very good contributions to music.
MR: Wonderful, I appreciate it, thank you very much for your time.
JD: My pleasure.
Transcribed by Narayana Windenberger