Lewis Jordan performing at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery

On October 4, 2008, musician Lewis Jordan performed a series of poems, musical improvisations and jazz standards on top of the grass mound. I initially asked Lewis to perform as part of this project because I was interested in having someone who was versed and had participated in the experimental or avant-garde jazz scene in San Francisco and beyond. This scene to me seemed to flirt with Utopian ideas both in its experimentation and in its individual narratives. Lewis accepted because he said he was both enamored with the idea of playing on top of a grass mound, which was saying goodbye to utopia, while also being expressly dubious about the idea. You can read more about this below in the interview that I made with him and/or you can hear his performance reacting to the site in the MP3 podcast available below. This was the fourth of six events that I produced as part of A Grass Mound (With Kind Regards to Utopia).

Lewis Jordan Freedom and Intonation

I wrote this following poem, which I read prior to Lewis’ performance as a kind of introductory speech. It dealt with my love for jazz, especially experimental or avant-garde jazz, and my fascination with the moments when jazz (or any genre really) has pushed against the categories that initially defined it. These moments of tension could often produce some of the most amazing creative expressions and sentiments, as well as some of the most terrible. The poem below was written in direct response to interviews I read with two major players both Archie Shepp and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, two jazz groups that typified Jazz’s Utopian potential while also great criticism of the genre.

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Where’s that driving music man?
Where’s that driving music man,
who used to wail out back?
Never knew where he came from.
Could have been a castle or a shack.
He had a priceless song, to sing,
His music tell you where it’s at.

- Bartholomew Gray from Archie Shepp’s Attica Blues

Is jazz revolutionary?
Can any music still be revolutionary?
Can we demarcate the edges, or are we beyond them?
Is the bullshit even thicker when it sounds silly to say we need a revolution?
If our subject is possibilities,
Exploiting them, discovering potential,
can we still push the margins when we keep loosing ownership of our words?

I fall back on the art, music and writing of earlier times.
Is it envious, fetishizing those bygone days,
Reveling in the clarity of their arguments,
And the definability of the structures to be fought against?
But it was not any easier then:
Clarity is only visible in retrospect.

They say John Coltrane did not talk much.
His conversations were mostly silence.
But on the stage,
Well, that was a different story;
A story,
To which, we, definitely listen.

Whenever I think of steam,
Like Archie Shepp,
I think of something that rises and disappears,
Combining with the air.
But there is still a sense,
Of that hot breath left,
In the air we breathe.

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This interview between Lewis Jordan and Anthony Marcellini took place on September 9, 2008, at the Hudson Bay Cafe, Oakland.

Anthony Marcellini: The overall theme of this project is to consider different ways that people express other possibilities in life (what I am calling Utopia or Utopias) through their creativity. After reading several texts by both performers and historians of free, improvisational and experimental music, they seemed to express the visionary aims of that music; and after considering how avant-garde jazz during the late 60’s and 70’s really reflected the political struggles of that time, I became interested in the Utopianness of these intentions or goals. I invited you to take part in this event, partly because I knew that you have had quite a long involvement with the jazz and experimental music scene and could therefore reflect upon my presumptions but also because I felt like you might share a interest in these notions of the Utopian quality of jazz, improvisatory and experimental music. So how do you think about this presumption?

Lewis Jordan: Well on the simplest level I think Utopia is like Eden, where everything is right. I can imagine a lot of your interpretation is to focus on what we mean by Utopia. For those of us who think that there is a better society then Utopia is the best. But what does it mean for things to be better?
As an artist what I’ve imagined, and this is what I’ve imagined most artists should want, is to encourage or to incite consciousness in more and more people and to a higher and higher level. I’m sure there is a difference of opinion among artists, but I’m imagining that what I do as an artist enables folks to be more creative in their own lives. And I guess Utopia, or a better society to me, means that somehow as-many-people-as-possible would be able to follow their creative instincts. Creativity is…something that everybody should recognize they are capable of and entitled to. It’s not like there are ‘the artists’ who are creative and everyone else has to be drones. So, to imagine that everything would be perfect in society, that is too hard for me. To imagine that things would be a lot, lot better, that’s not too hard.
In terms of the music when I heard free improvisational music there was a psychological freedom in that for me. It was immediate and I was with it, right then. It was clear. I have been continually drawn to new forms as I realize how easy it is to be attached to things that don’t serve you. The ability to appreciate new things to be open-minded means that you will see new things, I believe that we have to do things differently than we have done them before. What artists do is remind us of what being open is all about, and they remind us of the ways that we are closed.

AM: I suppose, how I see Utopia, is that Utopia is always this thing on the horizon, one that you can never reach and are aware that you can never reach it. I don’t want to appear naive about this. Nothing will ever be perfect. In a perfect society, as Plato would say, there would be no art, no artists. Everyone would be happy and so there would be no reason for difference. Everyone would be so open and free that no one could be any more open than anyone else. That is the ideal Utopia, which sounds horrible and becomes some kind of dystopia. But I think that having something in the future is important for us, the knowledge that there is a better world. But no one really wants perfection. Have you ever seen a painting that is too perfect, and right next to it is one that is a little off. Well I always like the one that is a little off better than the one that is perfect.

LJ: Well the one that is a little off is perfect. We can still keep an idea of perfection.

AM: Right, but you always want a little failure to know that there is still something else to be done. You are not finished when there are still more possibilities.
I really liked what you said about creativity. Artists being creative people remind us that we can be more open, more creative. Though I think this notion for a lot of people can be very difficult, because it makes them feel less. And counter to this, I really like the essay you wrote on your website, where you tie creativity, improvisation and experimentation to education and that they are a large component to learning.

LJ: Well improvisation demands open-mindedness. So what does that mean to be open-minded? I think it becomes clear that being open-minded is risky. I think a lot of folks don’t like improvisation because they don’t want to take the risk. This is not what they want out of art. Though I don’t understand what you might want out of art if you don’t want surprise and disorientation. What does art mean without that?
I was thinking that Utopia to me might be group improvisation. In group improvisation what is demanded of everyone is that they listen and are supportive to each other. Those two things take everything you’ve got. It means that you cannot be supportive of somebody if you have not heard what he or she has expressed. You have to listen. Everyone has something to say but we cannot say it all at once. You must have to have the confidence that you have something to say and the confidence that you will get your say in. You have to have confidence that everyone is there to be supportive to each other. This can be a real struggle for people.
In terms of education there are a couple of ways in which I can see how improvisation occurs. One is, for instance, if I come into a classroom with a lesson plan, I can do that without paying attention to what is going on. But very often students have other things going on with their lives. Say they come into the room and the teacher has a game plan, maybe they will say, “well this subject matter is out of context.” I think improvisation helps in the classroom because it allows for some open space in the interaction between the teacher and students. If you believe in education you want to help the students understand that what you are teaching is part of their world. You have to convince them that this information will help them in the world that they are living in and that that world is the same world you live in.
Another way to look at it is this. Sometimes you have students with different abilities, different backgrounds. Maybe one student’s answers are very articulate, but another student just can’t get their answers out right. You have to give them a chance; language can be intimidating. You have to let them know that language is not set in stone. We have to be able to be flexible with one another.

AM: Yeah, you have to be able to change your plans. Just like in music where someone who you are playing with does not respond exactly how you thought they would, then you have to change the note or notes that you were thinking of playing.

LJ: Yeah that can happen. Sometimes you play something…and then someone else plays something…and you say to yourself, “man that is off, that is not where I want to go at all”. So then maybe you play your thing again and they respond the same way. Then you’ll hear it differently. So now we have a counterpoint going on. This is where you have to be open-minded. You have an idea, but you cannot get stuck in it. If someone else has an idea, you can’t make it a struggle between two competing ideas, because that music will probably fall apart.
I remember I was playing music for some time and I began to, I hate to say it, study improvisation. I got more involved in talking and writing about it. At some point somebody says to me, “do you know the definition of improvisation”, and I’m thinking this person is really out. And they say “it’s, yes and.” I had never heard that before. If you have done theater improvisation that is probably one of the first things they tell you, yes and. And as soon as she said it I thought yeah, I guess that is it. In theater improvisation if somebody starts a scene and says, “Hey would you like a cigarette,” you don’t respond, “I don’t see a cigarette in your hand.” You would have brought the exchange back to zero. Where does anybody go from there? The whole idea is that you keep it moving.

AM: It sounds like there has to be some kind of acceptance. Not only do you have to have faith in what you are saying but also in what the other person is saying and then you even have to ask for more. This is also how I hear the “yes and.”

LJ: Or, for instance say you are doing improvisation with another actor and somebody says “hey, it is a really hot day on the moon today”, you don’t respond “what are you talking about, we’re on earth.” Then that outcome is nothing. You have to respond “Yes, it is hot, and I see a few rain clouds over there.” And then the response is “Yeah, don’t you love those purple rain clouds.” And “oh yeah, and don’t you love it when the green sun comes up.” Now you are off on a riff. You are creating a world and you are creating some ideas but you can only begin to do that once you have joined in some enterprise together. You have to say “Yes” and then you can move together. Though it is interesting, if you put me in a room with another musician and say improvise, I understand, yes and perfectly. But sometimes I go to theater improvisation workshops and I find myself stepping on other folks all the time. They will say something strange and I won’t do the yes. I know what I am supposed to do but I still won’t do it. But in music I have no problem with that.

AM: When you talk about a hot day on the moon and the green sun it makes me think about Sun Ra, and his interest in outer space. It makes me wonder does it help to think that we could be in a different place when we are performing?

LJ: Well when I was first performing, I started to realize my own interests in terms of performance. I realized that I was very sensitive to the performance of music. I felt as soon as you were up on stage the performance started. I didn’t enjoy from an audience standpoint when the musicians were, milling about on the stage, telling in-jokes, or laughing together as if they were in their own world. I always preferred it when you didn’t see the band until they were ready. It was more effective and more compelling. I felt that on the stage the band should be like actors on the stage. I was always going for the more theatrical aspects of the music. Which is why I really liked the Art Ensemble of Chicago. I thought that was what you do. You play some music and put some theater in there to. It keeps the audience off balance. When you bring theatrical elements in you help everyone stay a little honest. In one of my groups we brought in poetry and it would always throw everyone off. They would question who we were. When the people who understood free jazz heard poetry it would make the whole thing different for them.

AM: Can you talk a little more about another group you were in that I found really fascinating when we talked last time called “The Sound Clinic”?

LJ: Well the theory behind the group. Well it was a horn trio. And the name came from the idea, that probably in a Utopian world that people who had grown up in a dystopian society, would need to learn, unlearn and relearn how to listen to what music was or could be. You were so exposed to commercial music and other ways that sound is presented in our society that you got used to certain sounds. So the sound clinic would be somewhere that you would go and hear new sounds, and learn to listen with fresh ears.

AM: And how did that manifest itself in performances.

LJ: Well with two saxophones and a trumpet, and that’s all you are, you hardly have to do too much (laughs). Well mainly original compositions but it wouldn’t be like you have heard before, no bass, no drums, no piano…no audience (laughs).

But I guess early on I got attached to the idea that music was a community event. When you are playing something new you are presenting it to the community and it is something that a community can enjoy in and be challenged by.

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Lewis Jordan is a practicing musician, poet and math teacher. He was one of the founding members of the San Francisco group Untied Front and the conceptual jazz group the Sound Clinic.He has performed with Brenda Wong Aoki, Anthony Braxton, Juan Ceballos, Mark Izu, Jon Jang, Kash Killion, James Newton, Donald Robinson, and Cecil Taylor among others. His recent album is More Travels of a Zen Baptist on Music at Large records.