What is Classical: Henry Threadgill Speaks, Part 2

Photo by John Rogers

by Rob Shepherd

In part two (check out the first part here) of Henry Threadgill’s interview with The Jazz Gallery, the saxophonist-composer discusses his longstanding group Zooid, the interplay between composition and improvisation, the AACM, and the importance of making music for people.

TJG: In terms of pushing new ideas and sounds, Zooid just turned twenty years old as a group. How do you feel the band has changed over the two decades?

HT: Hmmm. I have never thought about it. I don't know how it's changed. All I know is it just it always feels like the band is going forward. I don’t feel like I ever have to go backward with this group. It’s always going forward.

TJG: Why is that? Is it because of who you are working with or the compositional approach?

HT: It’s because of the musicians. You can’t do anything beyond where the musicians stop. Wherever they stop, that’s where you are going to stop. The composer is always limited by the abilities, skills, and attitudes of the players. They’ve got you locked in. Beethoven, I think when he was working on string quartets, had heard that one of the musicians complained that the music didn’t seem to make sense to him, that it was too hard, or something along those lines. And Beethoven’s response was “don’t worry about it, this music is not for you anyway.” [laughing].

TJG: So, what do you think sets the most recent Zooid album, Poof (Pi, 2021) apart from the other recordings you’ve done with that band?

HT: Oh, I don’t know. As I said, I don’t really know if I can compare anything in my music. I think Poof is closer to the last record [In for a Penny, In for a Pound (Pi, 2015)] in the sense that I’m still trying to concentrate on the individual instruments and players. I am still exploring that. I didn’t want to do that sort of exploration for only In for a Penny so continued that idea.

But back to Beethoven, he didn’t write only one string quartet. The only person who wrote only one string quartet was Debussy. Painters often paint works that are similar to other ones. You get all of these portraits. Portraits upon portraits upon portraits. It takes a minute to see how many concertos somebody wrote or how many blues songs Muddy Waters did. In for a Penny was just kind of the beginning of something I will still be continuing to work on in the future because when you keep digging in a little bit further, you keep finding new things. One of the most common things people often ask me about Zooid is how I try to make the most out of what the players in the group can do. But I don’t have to worry about that. I pretty much know about what they can do. I’m more concerned with what they can’t do. Or what I haven’t heard them do before. I need to find out what it is they can’t do.

TJG: So you can see how far you can push them?

HT: Yeah, pushing them. But I also don’t know everything about them. The music brings out things about them I didn’t know before. It shares hidden abilities to interpret a piece a certain way that I may not know. My constant focus is to keep the other musicians under a microscope so I have more room – territory – to explore.

TJG: You’ve mentioned both Beethoven and Debussy. And certainly, there is some influence from classical music in your compositions but, in reality, your music through the years has borrowed ideas from all sorts of different kinds of music. Among others, influences from ragtime, circus marches, classical, jazz, reggae, and funk have found their way into your various groups over the years. What is your view on jazz as a genre form?

HT: I don’t think in terms of categorizing music. As Muhal [Richard Abrams] once said, with music “everything is just raw material.” You can find things in any kind of music. No one owns any of these processes. You can learn something by listening to Chinese opera, or kabuki, or Japanese Noh theater.

Now, if you just try to emulate it, to me, that’s very tacky. Either you can do it at the level that these other people are doing their craft or you shouldn’t touch it. But you can still learn from it. I’ve learned from many forms of music and use processes, compositional thoughts, and different things like that from them. I can listen to Bartok, certain Indian music, Romanian choirs, or pygmies in Africa. All of these different places and pick up something. But I don’t listen for specific things to do but rather, philosophically, use them to think about and approach music in different ways.

TJG: So, to incorporate these approaches, do you have to deeply study these other musical forms?

HT: Yeah. Though my studying is primarily in listening to it. I don’t go in and take it apart. I listen to it and that’s as far as I want to go with it. Because the thing is that the deeper you go into things, the more it’s going to get all over you. [laughing]. Now you’re going to have a problem getting it off and trying to sound like yourself.

As an example, when I was coming up, Sonny Rollins was a hero of mine. I’d listen to and explore his music a lot. But then when it came time to make my own music, at a certain point it became difficult to get his influences out of my system so I could better define myself and my own sound.

TJG: So you are not just copying whatever they did.

HT: Yeah, but it’s not just copying. You also have to avoid emulating. You do need a beacon, someone to guide you in this stuff. You need to find somebody that leads you. Nobody gets in on their own. And that’s not exclusive to music. James Joyce, Emily Dickinson, or [Pablo] Picasso. None of them got in on their own either. But the problem comes up in the time after you are in. Other peoples’ processes can take over everything that you are doing if you let them.

TJG: In terms of artists finding their own voice, before your time in the military, you were part of the Experimental Band with Muhal, essentially a precursor to the AACM. Then, once you came back from your service, you joined what was then fully known as the AACM. At what point did you realize the AACM was doing something incredibly special?

HT: Oh, I knew that from the beginning. Because with the AACM you had a bunch of people who all wanted to do their own thing. There was nothing else around that was like that. I knew a lot of musicians that wanted to play everything that was popular. You know, they’d perform Charlie Parker’s compositions, for instance. I knew what we were doing was something different because we weren’t doing that. We were all people trying to instead just do our own thing. And at that time I said, “well, we will see how this works out.” [laughing].

TJG: Has it been interesting to you to see these younger musicians—actually, Vijay and Dafnis are good examples of many—who at least partly built some of their music off of what you and others in the AACM had been doing, and are still doing? Is it interesting to see the passing on of some of these ideas?

HT: Yeah, because, you have to remember that we did the same thing with what Charlie Parker and others did. And by that, I mean that Parker was doing his own thing. Same with Duke Ellington. And rather than trying to emulate it, we tried and—and still try—to find ways to build off of the previous generation of music. Younger musicians have, and are, doing the same thing. Again, it’s about avoiding emulation.

Music has a shelf life. It’s produced by people during a specific social or cultural period. And if you come along later and try to redo their music, I don’t care how hard you try. It’s not going to work. You’re not going to be as good as those people. Art is made in time and there are so many factors in terms of aesthetics and cultural and social life plays a part in artists manifesting what they do. While artists can do many things, they can’t manufacture those circumstances. You don’t see that happening. Now, classical,  so-called “classical,” music, that’s different.

TJG: Why is classical music different?

HT: Because the object of so-called classical music is primarily to perform the pieces pretty much the same way. It’s not common to veer away and do something different with it unless you are someone like Glenn Gould. But until fairly recently in terms of history, everybody was trying to play it all the same way. Same tempo. Same phrasing. But improvisation-based music is different in that you are trying to find a new way to do things, period.

I call the music from Europe “so-called” classical music because classical music comes from many different places. The music from Europe is no more classical than any other music coming out of this country. All music is classical. I can’t see music as being anything but classical in a real sense. If music is not classical, what is it?

TJG: Why do you think more prestige is often given to so-called “classical” music?

TH: Well, the people that came here came from England and brought with them the European processes of making music. Slavery and interactions with Indigenous People brought in ideas that were new to them that those in power tried to ignore. And the same with Chinese and other Asian immigrants who brought in their own cultural influences. Different music, which didn’t match their perspective, came into the equation. And it should also be noted that even among the white population, the poorest people made what is sometimes called hillbilly music. All of these different cultures brought in music that was original but frowned upon by those in power. Their music was also classical music. The stuff they were doing was original. Just copying what Europe was doing wasn’t. The music white America was ashamed of was a goldmine of creativity. [laughing]. That was the funniest thing to me as a kid.

TJG: In terms of talking about the legacy of music, you were recently named an NEA Jazz Master, which is one of the highest awards one can get in that field. And, of course, In for a Penny, In for a Pound won a Pulitzer Prize in Music. I could go through a long list of very well-deserved awards you or your works have received. Do you put much weight in these kinds of awards?

HT: Yeah, I appreciate these things. I mean, everybody wants to be recognized for what they do. Even the street cleaner wants to be recognized for what he does, you know? But one group we don’t sufficiently appreciate in this society is teachers. Look at what we pay teachers. We wouldn’t be able to communicate with one another if it wasn’t for teachers. We are having this telephone conversation because of teachers.

But recognition from the people is always more important to me than from institutions because I make music for people, not institutions. I do appreciate all awards but, ultimately, I make my music for the people. So, when people recognize my work, that’s very high on my list. That’s the highest you can go. There was some Chilean artist who wasn’t concerned about making art for people. That’s a strange thought to me. If you’re not making your art for people, who are you making it for? Birds? Bumblebees? [laughing].

TJG: You’ve performed at The Jazz Gallery several times since 2001 and have led workshops there. I believe you even donated a piano to the Gallery at some point.

HT: That’s right.

TJG: What do you appreciate most about the Gallery?

HT: Well, the Gallery has been a home for more than one type or style of the music. That is probably the most important thing. This music comes from many streams and all you are doing when you only focus on one stream all the time is killing the music. That would be like having only hamburgers for every meal. Can I get a peanut butter sandwich or a hot dog or something? No, only hamburgers. A burger is great and all but for every meal, it gets tiring. We have a lot of places that do that with music. These venues  only serve hamburgers; they represent only music from one stream. They say their motive is economic and that people will  come and pay to hear only certain things. But how do you know if people will or will not pay for something else when you never even try to present other things? In reality, the music comes from many avenues, many streams. Music all over the world is the same way. There are all these different streams. That The Jazz Gallery is willing to show these different streams is something I greatly appreciate.

The Jazz Gallery has also been there for a lot of younger and newer musicians. They let people try. They let people bring in new things. I don’t even know who some of these younger musicians are, but there are so many of them and I know one thing: they can't all be doing the same thing. All of these are new people because all of the old musicians are gone now. There’s very few left. [laughing]. It’s true. All of the old musicians are either my age — mid-70s — or in their 80s. A few make it to their 90s if they are lucky. And even those who do get to their 90s often don’t perform as much as they used to. One massive exception to that is Marshall Allen. He’s the oldest one performing, period, in the United States of America. He should have the highest award that can be bestowed on any artist for performing one-nighters at age 97. They should make up an award for such a person.

TJG: And he’s not dialing it in either. He’s consistently going out there with a ton of energy.

HT: Right. And he’s going unrecognized. It is a travesty. Can you imagine doing one-nighters at 97 years old? And then going out dancing afterward? [laughing]. It’s unbelievable that anyone could have that kind of stamina. And he’s got a brother running around in a car in California selling something. He’s 105. [laughing]. It’s true! But we can’t all be Marshall Allen and I’m thankful for The Jazz Gallery’s support of younger artists and giving them an opportunity to explore.

The performances in which Henry Threadgill was set to perform in a trio with Vijay Iyer and Dafnis Prieto were originally scheduled for Friday, December 17, 2021, and Saturday, December 18, 2021. In light of Mr. Threadgill’s unforeseen absence, Friday night will instead find Mr. Iyer and Mr. Prieto joined by Graham Haynes and Ravi Coltrane. Saturday night will feature Mr. Iyer, Mr. Prieto, and Mr. Haynes with Joel Ross. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. E.S.T. $35 general admission ($10 for members), $45 reserved table seating ($20 for members) for each set. Livestream (Saturday Only) is $20 ($5 for members). Purchase tickets here.