A FIRESIDE
CHAT WITH BAIKIDA CARROLL
There are significant, yet unheralded, organizations like the AACM and
BAG that help propel this music forward. Baikida Carroll was there during
the early stages of St. Louis' BAG organization and in turn, helped shape
the music we hear today, both in focus and in direction. With a new album
on the OmniTone label, Carroll has returned to the recording scene and
given us more music to ponder over. I spoke with Carroll from his home
and the following is our conversation, unedited and in his own words.
FRED
JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: Well, being in a black community, there is music around all the
time. You never assume that you're going to play it, but at the same time,
it is so around you in almost every aspect of day to day living. When
that came on, it was almost inevitable. I was sitting in my homeroom in
high school in the second half of my first year and someone walked into
the homeroom and said, "Would anyone like the join the band?"
And at that second, I remembered the band members the prior semester would
always get out of school early. They'd have on uniforms and stuff and
then get out of school early. So my hand went up (laughing). And from
that moment on, I've been in music. So that was maybe the impetus or the
moment, but I think once I got involved in it, then everything else, the
allure of all of the other aspects, studying and learning and being exposed
by your buddies and your band director, from that point on, I've never
done anything other than play music.
FJ:
Being anything but a diligent student, I'm curious if you got out of school
by joining the band.
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: Yeah, but just to go out and do a parade and I was in the all-city
orchestra, so we had to go to those types of concerts. So, yeah, I ended
up doing it (laughing). As a freshman, you're sitting there wondering
about what it's all about anyway. So that seemed very appealing to me.
These guys would show up in these fancy, fly uniforms and get out of school
early and so I thought, "Yeah, why not?"
FJ:
Did you ask to play trumpet?
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: No, the drums were first choice. What happened was that I was
in high school with Donny Hathaway and John Hicks' younger brother, Rafael
and they had a trio and they would play gigs and stuff. They had a jazz
trio and Rafael would take a lot of the drums to make a big Buddy Rich
type set up, so my band director said that there was no drums available
so why don't I play a cornet until one frees up and I've been playing
it ever since and that's how I got into it.
FJ:
You went onto attend various institutions of higher learning, as is the
case with numerous black musicians of that generation, a fact that has
become jazz music's unspoken truth, why do you think that is?
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: I think there is an effort to make a difference between the academic
world and the street and when you have people say, for example like Miles
Davis and how he shunned the Julliard School and all of that and he learned
everything from his peers on the street, in the clubs, the school of Art
Blakey and that type of thing. So there is a difference, but I think all
of it is really quite important. The process of learning is everything
that you can absorb. Music is a constant process of learning and everything
that you can learn will benefit you in some way, in some form, even the
things that you may immediately reject. I've been doing music for forty
years now and I have even more to learn. The formal institutions lend
themselves to study, to research. You have knowledgeable people to go
to and get information from. I learned a lot of relative things to jazz.
When I first actually went into it, I was really in classical. It took
me a year or so before I got into Kenny Dorham and Lee Morgan and all
that. But once I got into it, I understood or learned the relative sameness
of some of the things. In classical, there are cadences that you have
to adhere to and in jazz, there are progressions. There are relationships
between the two. So I find that any type of intensive learning process
is beneficial because it's all about study. It's all about knowledge.
That's what it is and people talk about "is that hip?" But I
think that the whole meaning of the word hip is about what you know. Cats
used to travel around the world and learn things. That was hip. You bring
the information to the street, that's hip. So as much information as you
can gather from whatever source: institutions, books, mentors, records,
and you need a little, if not all of them, I think. At the time, I was
in, my dad played, but he wasn't around. He played tenor saxophone. But
at the time that I was really interested in the basics - composition and
theory, harmony, there was a few people, but there was no consolidated
institution for me. That is why I chose to go to college. If there had
been, if I had been in New York and been around a whole school of people
that I was hanging around with that I could have got my information, I
would have been just as happy to do that. But that is why I chose those
particular institutions to seek knowledge of your craft and if you're
going to be an improviser, which is what I've always wanted to be. I've
never wanted to be an entertainer or a trumpet player per say. I've always
been interested in the art of improvisation and that lends itself, that
opens up a lot of other areas that you have to study because you don't
improvise with just necessarily jazz. There is a whole lot of other styles
that you have to learn, types of music, worlds of music. So I tried to
study those things. At that time, I found that the institutions lend themselves
to that more. You could be more concise. You could go right to the library
or instructor and talk to them about that. That's why I did.
FJ:
What is the most critical aspect of improvisation?
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: The ability to listen. I think that's the most important thing,
probably in music in general. You have to, again, absorb. You have to
listen. You have to study a lot of aspects of music, be it harmony, theory,
form, different concepts, different styles, different ways of phrasing,
and be ready to execute at a moments notice in the heat of fire while
you're improvising. And for me, because there's a lot of ways of improvising
and some people will stick to improving within a particular field that
they're interested in. For example, if you are a pop saxophone player,
then you basically learn all your pentatonic scales and a couple of blues
scales and you're over. If you are planning to get a call for that gig,
as well as a gig with Anthony Braxton, as well as improvising with a klezmer
band, and it all has different demands and to be able to respond to those
demands in the line of fire, you need to study because you don't know
what's going to happen exactly at that moment. And if your musical environment
at that moment is a particular type of musician and it's open, the music
that I like to play is more open, then you don't know exactly what's going
to happen at that moment, so you have to be ready and the first thing
to do is to listen while you're playing, constantly listen to what's going
on and then you respond or you put something out there and see how it
responds. And there is all kinds of things you can do in the process of
learning improvisation outside of the styles and the theoretical structures
like learning how to play in opposition, but I think the most important
thing is to listen. You can have very little technique, very little skills,
but if you listen to actually what happens and then respond, if you respond
in a pure elemental way, essential, it will work out because I know some
great improvisers with very little skills.
FJ:
You were there at the inception of the Black Artists Group.
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: I was a few months later. I just got out of the army and I was
in the army band and prior to that, before I went in the army, I was playing
with a lot of the blues bands, Albert King, Ike and Tina Turner, those
types of blues bands around St. Louis. When I went into the army, I found
Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Albert Ayler, and Archie Shepp and I
had an ensemble in the army that I was writing for. We were doing our
regular concerts of classical music and marches and stuff, but at night,
I formed an orchestra and I started writing for it. When I got back to
St. Louis, I realized that I was looking for something like that. I went
back to my own blues bands just for gigs, for bread. I ran into Julius,
or Julius ran into me when I was practicing on the golf course and he
said that they were starting this organization. It was still in the initial
stages and I went over and started practicing with them and playing. Oliver
is the one that really started the Black Artists Group. It was the seed
of his idea. At that point, we didn't have a building. We were doing grants
and also trying to get a point of reference, which the first thing you
need is a building, a place. By the time we got the main building we're
noted to work, I was in on that, but not the initial, the seed of the
idea. It was already formed by Julius and Oliver.
FJ:
During the Sixties, collectives within the black community like the Black
Artists Group and the AACM helped sustain activity for black musicians,
do you find that kind of cooperatives exist in today's individualistic
climate?
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: I'm sure it does, Fred. I'm not aware of everything that is going
on everywhere. Like when we first started, it was really kind of a grassroots,
local venue. A lot of people wouldn't have known about us in New York
even. So I'm sure there is a lot of that going on right now, because they
are getting less and less places to play that is not hardcore mainstream.
If you are not playing mainstream, there is less places to play. Now,
that doesn't mean people are not creating and promoting their own places
to play, but I don't know about them because they're not in the limelight.
So I am sure that it is happening. We were forced for that same reason.
It became a philosophy basically out of necessity because we couldn't
go to the clubs and ask to play or we would and they'd give you the same
line. So it taught us self-determination. Well, we had self-determination,
but you had to rely on that. So you learn how to produce your own concerts,
make your own flyers, do your own stuff, and do the whole thing yourself.
Out of that, from the embryonic points of your learning, it becomes part
of your musical vernacular, to learn how to promote yourself. For example,
you don't hear a lot about the AACM people in the main press, but they
are doing a lot of things. They rent this hall and they do their own presentation.
Most of those people would love to play at the Village Vanguard and all,
but they know that they aren't going to get those calls. But that doesn't
mean you're going to stop. So I am sure that people right this day are
creating and doing experimental things, but your don't hear about it.
It is not in the limelight because we're in the age of information and
the type of information that's out there is so stylized. There is a certain
thing that's out there and anything outside of that is considered not
in vogue, so you hear about the big concerts and you don't hear about
other stuff.
FJ:
Obviously, the dye was cast and even in the Seventies, you must have noticed
the prerequisite to conformity in order to succeed within the juggernaut
that is the American music industry. Is that what prompted you to leave
for European shores?
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: I think we all went for different reasons. I had just come from
Europe. I had been over there three years in the Sixties and I had just
come back and I went back over. A couple of guys hadn't left the city
yet and we kind of exhausted our possibilities in St. Louis. It was limited
business wise. We did a lot there. We did tons of stuff, from children's
lunch programs. We were the place where all the radical organizations
had their rallies. It was a lot of stuff that we had to implement and
see through along with your music. But after a while, you have to find
more areas where you can expound and exploit your own creativity so we
chose Europe.
FJ:
You made reference to radical organizations during the height of the civil
rights movement in the Sixties. It is interesting that when a black man
speaks about freedom, he is radical and when a white man does it, he is
liberal.
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: (Laughing).
FJ:
Having composed a significant amount of film scores, is that any different
from composing for a quartet?
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: Most of the time when people call me to do those jobs, they kind
of know me from my other work, so they expect something within that area
from me. I try to pull from what I know and a lot of times, the production
itself will determine exactly the direction, but I write my way.
FJ:
Are you able to improvise within the parameters of the production?
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: I'm working on a production right now that I'm thinking that
I'm going to have a lot of improvising in it.
FJ:
Let's touch on your latest for the Omnitone label, Marionettes on a High
Wire.
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: We recorded that September 14 and 15: Oliver Lake's birthday,
the 14 and 15 of last year, 2000. Nowadays, they are pumping those kids
out of those schools with such incredible technical ability that it is
mind-boggling for me to see what they can do. It is scary, some of the
things these kids can do coming out of those schools. Technically, it
is not hard to get people that can perform. Thirty years ago, it would
have been harder to put together an ensemble with people that could read
and execute the music to your expectations, or at least close to your
expectations. There's a lot of great players, young players, old players,
that are just fascinating now. So I wasn't really looking for players
that had that. That's what a lot of people are looking for now in forming
a band, people that can really execute and make the music sound what the
composer wants it to sound like. I'm interested in personalities, Fred,
because the thing about improvisation, you have to really pull from who
you are. You play who you are, not what you know. You play who you are.
So it is good to know who you are and I find that these particular players,
all of them, are so dedicated to playing music, but they're good spirits.
That's the main thing. They're not egotistical, so you're not like, "Oh,
man, do I have to put the time in playing this? I got another gig. I can
only make this rehearsal." We rehearsed. We worked. People were coming
over on their own, coming up to the country. I live in the country. We
rehearsed up here, which is hard to get anyone to do, coming up on their
own just to go over something. That's a dedication that is hard to find
nowadays because the economics. I think basically it is the economics
of our time. Inflation has jolted everything way up. But the music economy
is back where it was in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties. So what people
have to do nowadays is they have to work five and six gigs to make one.
So it is not very profitable or even feasible to dedicate yourself to
one ensemble or one situation unless you are one of the top few that are
actually making a lot of money within the business. So it is hard to find
and I understand why people say that they can't dedicate an afternoon
to practice or work on that. They have rehearse for this and go over there.
So it is getting less and less of people doing that. People are going
after the gig as opposed to the musical concept or an ideology that you
want to see through.
FJ:
Does that diminish creativity?
BAIKIDA
CARROLL: Yeah, quite. It lessens everything. The ripples from that concept
is mind-boggling. Oh, because, for example, what I find, I play with a
lot of big bands and so I get to hang with a lot of the younger players
and you talk and you see where they're coming from and they say, "I
need to make it in music. I don't plan to do music and then have my job
as a lawyer on the side." So you look around and say, "Who's
making it?" Well, there are people that are playing this type of
music and so I want to play that type of music. What makes that music
work? Well, it's referring to this riff and that riff because the audience
nowadays with the advent of records, they come with a preconceived idea
of what they want to hear. So what do they applaud? They applaud what
they're familiar with. "Oh, that was a great Dizzy Gillespie lick
you just played," or how high you play, as opposed to sitting then
and saying, "OK, play me something that I've never heard." You
don't get many accolades for that anymore. And the kids are seeing that,
who's making it and so it is changing this whole pursuit of true creativity,
true improvisation, to stand there and make up something. Otherwise, it
becomes classical music, where you interpret. You try to execute what
the composer, exactly what he wanted and maybe the conductor will give
you a little leeway to change a phrase. So I am seeing less. The problem
is teaching. Teaching true improvisation is much harder than teaching
concepts. You can teach someone changes and this scale goes with that
chord and if you play this series of phrases, it will work. Now you learned
all of that. Now forget it. Now respond to the moment. There's nothing
to hang onto. You have an accordion playing a drone. Now play something
over it and make it interesting and tell a story over it. That's the true
art of improvisation, to respond to the moment. They are not being taught
that. They've been taught chords and scales and you have to learn all
of that to be a true improvisationalist, you have to learn all of that.
That's what I like about theater because anytime I go into a theater project,
it takes me down roads that I never dreamed. I did one project where I
was studying Celtic music. Right now, I'm studying fifth dynasty Egypt.
So when I come out of it, that will be implemented somewhere in my improvisations.
There is some moment where that will come up, that knowledge will come
out. But you have to be open to the moment and you have to constantly
listen. You have to be open to creativity and not what you know. I learned
it in school and I'm going to put this line somewhere in this concept.
A lot of kids go into like that. Coltrane played this in '65 and I'm going
to find a place to put this line because I know it works. Once you go
in that line of thinking, you are no longer improvising.
Fred Jung is Jazz Weekly's Editor-In-Chief and is working by firefly light
to conserve energy in the face of California's ridiculous energy "crisis."
Email Him.