Switched on Pop - Vijay Iyer on why jazz has always been political

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

When you think of jazz, you might think of La La Land, luxury car commercials, or fancy dinner parties. Cool, sophisticated, complex, jazz today seems to signify the epitome of class and taste. For pianist Vijay Iyer, that view gets the music completely wrong. Jazz isn’t cool. Jazz is countercultural. Jazz is alive and relevant. Jazz fights racism and injustice. And for those reasons, maybe we shouldn’t be calling this music “jazz” at all. With a trio of Linda May Han Oh on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums, Iyer has recorded a new album, Uneasy, that continues the defiant political legacy of improvised music. Through songs that tackles the Flint water crisis, the murder of Eric Garner, and social unrest, Iyer connects to the key of issues of our day without saying a word. While his songs speak to our chaotic present and crackle with fierce urgency, they also reach back to elders like John Coltrane, Geri Allen, and Charles Mingus—musicians who never shied away from a fight.  Songs discussed: Charlie Parker - Ko Ko Charles Mingus - Fables of Faubus, Original Faubus Fables Vijay Iyer - Children of Flint, Combat Breathing, Uneasy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Okay, on this episode, we're going to do something a little unusual. We're going to talk about one of my favorite musical genres, jazz. Oh, fun. What is jazz? Have to do with popular music?

I hear you ask. Everything? Nothing? I don't know. Everything and nothing. I mean, jazz was the popular music. It was synonymous. It was inseparable for a long time. And that relationship has changed, but I think what's really exciting about a lot of jazz musicians right now is that they're trying to make this music relevant to society again. And one of the ways they're doing that is by tapping into the political, history of this music. Charlie, today I'm very excited because I'm talking to the pianist, Vijay Eyre, who has a new album of improvised music with his trio called Uneasy.

He tackles themes of injustice, the Flint Water Crisis, the murder of Eric Garner, I mean, heavy stuff, all without saying a word. Wow, that's very powerful. It's a really striking album, and it makes me think about the perception we have of jazz and improvised music and how it doesn't really jive with what people are actually doing right now. Yeah, I'm interested to dive into this conversation because I don't really see how live improvised instrumental music can connect to larger themes. Like, it feels like that could be a stretch. So how does this work?

Well, first, I think we got to get familiar with the kind of associations we have with the word jazz today. I don't know about you, but for me, when I hear jazz, something that might pop into my mind is like a car commercial that I remember seeing when I was a kid in the 90s. We're in a swanky nightclub. Thank you. What makes you happy? What brings you joy? There's some cool jazz playing. Our protagonist, played by the actor Jonathan Price,

is wearing a suit. He's standing next to an infinity car. What catches your eye? Thinking of you, infinity. It's all very elegant and sophisticated and cool. And the idea, I think, is that jazz will give you, that same elegance and sophistication that you'll get if you buy an infinity car. Certainly has an association with a certain elitism, I guess.

A certain elitism, a certain sense of something kind of rarefied and luxury, definitely. I think this commercial, while perhaps very effective for getting you to purchase a luxury sedan, is maybe misrepresenting the history of jazz. It comes out of an idea of jazz being this virtuosic, difficult music that was started by bebop musicians like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie during the 1940s and 1950s. But they weren't just trying to create this cool, sophisticated music. They were trying to reclaim a musical tradition from white band. and leaders who had appropriated and profited off it.

Break that down for me. Sure. And let's actually start with a song. From 1945, it's by Charlie Parker called Coco. It's at a breakneck tempo of 300 BPM plus. It's using these complex chord changes and angular melodies. If jazz was a music invented by black musicians and then appropriated by white musicians,

this song is a way of saying, I bet you can't play this. I bet you can't steal this. Yeah, that is at a breakneck pace. That is a really awesome track. And it's fast for a reason. It's supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to reclaim a musical tradition.

And that's why jazz was cool, because it was countercultural. Fast forward to this infinity commercial And it's like we've retained the cool But not the counterculture Yeah So how can we put that resistance That political consciousness back into our associations with jazz?

One way might be to listen to A famous jazz composition In a new way So Charlie come, if you will, with me Back to 1930. 59 and let's listen to Charles Mingus and his recording of Fables of Phobis. We start with this melody played by some low reed instruments. And then on top of that, this very staccato and kind of shrew.

short melody comes in. Ooh, this is fun. We've got a conversation going on here. Do any associations come to mind, any emotions, any images when you listen to this first 30 seconds of this track? It has a bit of like a spy noir kind of sound to it. It definitely feels a little soundtracky because I feel like so many, kind of like that same commercial he shared earlier, which took place.

It's like dark at night. This guy with a hat on kind of look like a detective. I feel like this has been used over and over in film. You know, your jazz... And then you have the slow thing happening, that first melody. And then the second melody, dun, dun, dun, dumb. Kind of adds this intrigue.

Like, something's happening. There's some action, some movement. So it's definitely bringing me into the world of cinema a bit. Okay, cool. So you're feeling like a Cold War espionage thriller? Exactly. What about a minute and 30 seconds into the recording? Tell me what you hear.

The first note of it takes me back to hearing like a very early jazz ballad, but then it becomes, again, a conversation with multiple soloists. It seems like everybody's had a few too many drinks. It's very late. It's a jam session. People are kind of stepping on each other, just a little bit out of tune, but having a really good time. Okay, I love your interpretation, Charlie.

And now I want to explode it. Great. And let's start with the title of this track, because that's our first big clue. Fables of Fobis. Who was Fobis? Any ideas? Educate me. Orville Fobis was the Arkansas governor in 1957 when the first

black students tried to enter Little Rock High School, and he sent the police in to stop it, resulting in the Little Rock crisis, which became a national flashpoint. Wow. Martin Luther King Jr. intervened. Dwight Eisenhower sent in the National Guard to escort these students to their first day of integrated school. He was someone who used white supremacy for. political gain and along with George Wallace and other southern segregationists really held this

line during the 1950s. Wow. Okay. So my read is way awful. Well, understandably, because there was another version of this song that Charles Mingus wanted to record, one that had lyrics that would have let you know exactly what this song is about. But, his... His record label, Columbia, did not want him to record them. So instead, the version we hear, the version that has been passed down to us by musical history is the one without any lyrics. It's just instrumental. But once Mingus was out of his Columbia record contract, he recorded for a small label, a version he called the original Fabus Fables. Recorded after the original, but it's the real original.

Yes, and now we can hear the lyrics that he originally intended. Oh, Lord, don't let them shoot us. Oh, Lord, don't let them stab us. Oh, Lord. Don't let them tell us. Oh, no more, it's much because. Oh, Lord, don't let them shoot us. Oh, Lord, don't let them stab us.

Wow. That's that slinky reed melody that you heard as like a spy thriller. Hmm. And then that staccato melody that comes in, here are the lyrics for that section. Name me someone who's ridiculous, Danny. Why is he so sick and ridiculous?

He won't for it. I'll say it in school. Then he's a boo. So that's Mingus in dialogue with his drummer, Danny Richmond. He says, name me someone who's ridiculous, Danny. And Danny yells back, Orville. for bus

this racist governor it's like it's not pulling any punches yeah it is an extremely potent song and then there's that section that you heard is everyone kind of leaning back you know maybe having a sip of whiskey smearing their notes

a little bit let's hear what the lyrics to that section are boo Nazi fascist supremacist boo Ku Klux Klan with your Jim Crow plan wow and then the music It was nuts. And you can hear the trombone.

I love the trombone. He's like literally boo. He's like blowing her ass race. He's like, wha! Booh, you jerks. It's like... I don't mean to laugh. I mean, obviously, this is an incredibly powerful moment.

And the music plays this great character and announces what the meaning of the lyrics is saying. Exactly. And once you hear this, I feel like it changes your perception of the, you know, original. Like, indulge me, let's go back to that instrumental version of Fables of Fobbis, the famous one, the iconic one, the one that's been reprinted countless times. And let's listen to it and see if we hear it differently having listened to the version with lyrics. My association to this jazz sound is so influenced via cinema. Let's call it the La La Land effect. Sure. Right. The way this kind of music is.

has been scored to represent a very different idea and a set of symbols, has changed my association to those sounds, and that I've been completely mishearing Mingus for my entire life since I was introduced to him when I was, I don't know, like 15 or so. And why wouldn't you? The cues we get from popular culture, like La La Land is a great example, tell us to listen to jazz is this expression of elegance and coolness and suavness, but often leaves out that highly political side of the music's history. So I agree, like, that's how I want to listen to this music,

even when there are no lyrics with an ear towards that political edge. And that's how I listen to the music of the pianist Vijay Ayer, whose album Uneasy with the bassist Linda Mejano and drummer Tiber Tiber, Sean Sori confronts some of the civil rights issues of our time. So I got to speak to him about making protest music without saying a word after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work

ethic and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey.

Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop. Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Vijay Iyer, welcome to Switched on Pop. Thank you. Really happy to be here. Tell me about the themes on your new album, UnEasy.

Themes, themes on an album, it's funny, they have a way of sort of emerging. We were in the studio in December of 2019, which was certainly like the throes of U.S. madness under a genocidal fascist regime. And then, you know, the three of us is different artists of color and the face of that, facing that in different ways. But that was all before the pandemic. And so then the incredible uprising that kicked. off last summer, you know, that massive response, not just in the U.S., but worldwide, to police violence

here, anti-black violence in particular. So when you see a movement like that, it's about hope, right? It's about people fighting for their futures. And so we were in this environment that felt like apocalypse. You know, that was the word that people would use, this sort of sense of Right, right. An ending of worlds. That was kind of the tone of the conversation. And yet then here was this gesture of fighting for the world to come. So I guess I found myself right in the middle of all that,

trying as an artist to imagine a future for this music. I want to talk about a specific song from the album, Children of Flint. It's one of the most perhaps overall. political titles in the collection. And I hear it as a reference to the Flint water crisis. Is there a parallel between the dynamic and playing in an improvisational trio and the political reference in the song title? I mean, that's a good question and it sort of is maybe best left as a question.

You know, in a way that's sort of what a song title does is it poses that question for you. What might this group or... group of sounds have to do with that reality out in the world, you know. And I remember, actually, we had done a few takes of it, and it's not that easy to play, actually. So sometimes, like, when musicians get into this thing of like, oh, I'm playing something that's hard, you know, then they start playing it hard. They're like, you know, it sort of becomes about achievement. And finally, we kind of arrived at this realization, like, well, that's not with this

about. You know, it's not what it's for. So, in fact, we had to kind of back off from it and make something that was gentler and more spacious that invited a listener in to kind of be in that space with us, that space of contemplation. I wanted to say subdued, but maybe that's not the right word. Maybe more like haunted. sort of haunted feel.

Yeah. That's how I put it. And then, you know, I also wanted it to be something I would feel comfortable playing for children. Like, this is a song for the children of Flint. And it basically is asking people to support the children of Flint. So how am I doing that, you know, and how am I the aesthetic of the song do that or serve that, serve that movement, serve that community? You referenced this song, Children of Flint being hard to play. And that makes me think of the second selection on this album, too, which is called Combat Breathing,

which features an unusual and I think to many difficult time signature of 11-8. But it also grooves, as probably my body motions are. right now what what led you to this to this time signature or if it happened more organically what what function do you think it serves within the track this kind of off kilter 118 meter so-called odd rhythms I remember going to this Greek wedding in New York like on Long Island and there was this moment where everyone was dancing in 11 it was like not a big deal. And I mean everyone, like the grandmas, the little kids,

you know, basically everyone except me. Because I was like, how do you all do this? You know, so I think the thing is like people find ways. And in fact, that's where these rhythms come from. They come from ways of moving. But then here's the real thing, which is that this piece was first written in, December of 2014 as the score to a collective action at Brooklyn Academy of Music. That particular moment, as you may recall, that was the year that Michael Brown was killed. It was the year that Tamir

Rice was killed, and it was the year that Eric Garner was killed. And then I was like commissioned to play at this solo piano piece at Brooklyn Academy of Music. And in fact, what I chose to do, was give all the commission money to this collective called Dancing While Black and to have them basically do the event and actually what they did was

a kind of die-in that basically was a way of not starting the show. So it was like a die-in that then we called it Dying in and Standing Up because that, It started with a diet, and then they, as I played this piece, they stood up and faced the audience, which was a mostly white audience. So it was kind of about that. It was about that moment of confrontation.

And for me, that 11 was about Eric Garner's final utterances, which were those 11 times saying, I can't breathe. And so that is the 11 that this piece is actually carrying. It's 11 measures and it's 11 beats per measure. And the baseline is that phrase, in fact. It's sort of about both the tragedy of it and the defiance of that movement that was the Black Lives Matter movement as it was being born. So it was really about serving that movement. And that's basically what this piece is trying to do.

As we're talking, I hear these myriad musical references going into the creation of this album. And I wanted to listen to the title track, UnEasy, and go to a moment about four minutes in that really caught my ear. it's a moment when I mean this song I hear it as something it starts with this kind of subterranean baseline

that gradually seems to bubble up to the surface over the course of this nine minutes song and there's a moment about four minutes in where your left hand on the pianos playing these I think these

diads that sound a little a lot to me like power chords. They sound like something that are like a rock guitarist, like Pete Townsend in the Who would be. Reading up on this record in advance of our conversation, I see a lot of publications refer to you as a jazz pianist, but I also see that you don't use that term. Maybe creative music is a label that you use when required to.

Why might one avoid the term jazz? What might be some of the limitations of that as it would apply to the sounds that you're engaged in on this recording? Well, first of all, the fact is that black musicians have resisted that word for 100 years. So I learned that from elders that this is not the word for us. That's basically, you know, like there's a famous interview with Coltrane from 66, when he's in Japan, Japanese interview asked him something about what's your opinion on

state of jazz today or something like that. And he responds, he says, jazz is the word they use to sell our music. But to me, that word does not exist. So all I'm saying is that I did not make this up. Okay, this is like, this is the tradition. Or like, you know, more famously probably

is Duke Ellington's, line of well there's two kinds of music good music and the other kind right you know so there's all of these yeah moments where artists have strategically resisted that word because what it does is it delimits what they seek to do you know and it it revokes their ability to define their work on their own terms. You know, I think many people might not think of instrumental music as a form of protests. You know, when we think of the kind of canon of protest music, it tends to be lyrical. It tends to be songs with messages that are often unambiguous and direct. How can instrumental music still communicate a message of protest?

That's a hard one, and I'm not sure it does. I mean, in the sense, like, you know, if we did a blindfold test or something and we just play a piece of music without telling you the title, what's it doing? You know, I can tell you what it contains, but I can't necessarily. And, you know, it might also do something to me emotionally or just at the level of sensation or movement, you know. But to connect that to something quote unquote political. is

you know that's maybe I'm not sure it's the right question and I guess like what I often the distinction I often try to make is not like whether or not a song is quote unquote political because like you know yeah a title can announce and insist to you

that that's the case but I guess I think more about what kind of political work is being done in a certain creative circumstance, like in an artistic circumstance. I'm not going to call myself an activist. I think that would be a true exaggeration, you know. But I will say that I will be honest about why I made a certain piece of music and for and then know that it's going to probably.

circulate without that information. Well, I can speak for myself that it's also an invitation to listen in a different way, maybe than I'm used to. Yeah. And I find that very invigorating and very refreshing. And my interpretations of these songs may be based in my own agency, and my own background of what I'm hearing and indexed against your song titles and your imagery and your and your and your names but that's its own kind of act I suppose to be an engaged

and aware listener and to listen with a little more with your antenna up so to speak yeah is new for me and and and refreshing that's great the J Iyer thank you so much for joining us thank you so Sean Pop is produced by Nate Sloan and me Charlie Harding we're edited by Jolie Myers engineered this week by Ben Montoya social media by Abby Barr and illustrations by irs Gottlieb. Our executive producers are Nashat, Karwa, and Hana Rosen. We're a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. You can find more episodes anywhere you get podcasts, Spotify, Apple Podcasts app, our website, Switch onpop.com, and you can talk to us on Twitter and Instagram at Switched on Pop. We love hearing from you. And it's also, incidentally, where we get

most of our best ideas for episodes. Check us out next Tuesday when we'll be back with another episode. And until then, thanks for listening.