A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH OLU DARA


For the longest time, I merely knew Olu Dara for his avant work with David Murray and Henry Threadgill. That is until his Atlantic debut, In the World, which blew those perceptions out the window. Shows how much I know. But as the father of Nas, I would not expect any less. I still miss Olu Dara the free jazz trumpeter though. Olu Dara spoke with me by telephone and gave me significant insight into his life, his loves, and his music, as always, unedited and in his own words.


FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.

OLU DARA: I met a man, who had just moved in town that day, one day, I think I was seven years old and he started me off with the clarinet, all forms of art, visual arts or whatever, and eventually, I moved to the cornet and piano. I think we started a band maybe a year or two after that. My mother says we started the band right away. I don't remember that, but I do remember playing in a small band with him and traveling around Mississippi and Louisiana. And from that point on, I went really into show business, as they say, giving concerts at schools and performances around the neighborhood in Mississippi, Louisiana, with the band and sometimes by myself.


FJ: It almost sounds like it was work for you.

OLU DARA: I don't think I was really enthusiastic about music. To me, it was just something that I was taught to do and something that I knew that the townspeople appreciated seeing, seeing young people, the group was integrated age-wise. We had young adults and we had college people in the group and there were kids that were in middle school in the group. I think it may have been a nine-piece band. But to me, it was just something that I did, just like having a job for the community really.


FJ: So there was no interest to play like a Louis Armstrong?

OLU DARA: We didn't have, I don't think we listened to radios in the house. We didn't have record players. My parents were not really interested in that and so it was live music all the time and that spanned from opera to country blues and everything in between in a small town. We had people who could perform any type of music and of course, Mississippi is known, especially the river people, they are known for doing all kinds of music.


FJ: Why did you decide to leave the Mississippi Delta for bright lights, big city?

OLU DARA: Yes, I came here. I was still in the military and I was discharged from the military, the navy in 1964. I had played music in college and also my duration in the navy, which was four years. I got stranded in New York. I ran out of money and I stayed here, but I never really had any intentions of becoming a professional musician in New York. It never entered my mind. So I did other things for many years, maybe six or seven years before I got back into music.


FJ: How did you pass the time?

OLU DARA: Oh, many things. I worked in the administrations office at a hospital in Brooklyn and worked at the navy yard in administrations over there. I worked at a youth, child detention home in the Bronx, teaching music. Let's see. What else did I do? I ran discothèques in Brooklyn. I worked in real estate for a minute. What else? A Japanese newspaper company. And eventually, I got back into music.


FJ: With such a lapse in time, did you find it difficult to get your chops in order?

OLU DARA: No, I found it, I thought it would be. That's why I never really attempted to do anything in New York City. But once I got back into it, it was relatively easy. Right away, I started working, as soon as I got a horn. I started to work in rhythm and blues bands and I went on the road with the road company of the musical, Hair. I think it was 1970. And then after that, I came back and worked with Bill Barron and Carlos Garnett and Art Blakey. I just stayed into it.


FJ: During the better part of the Seventies, you were the trumpet player of note in the free jazz movement.

OLU DARA: Well, to be honest, Fred, I had no interest in it at all. Musicians liked me and they hired me and it was nothing else at that period musically to do around this area. There was no jobs, no money. Everything was on the low end. Rhythm and blues was going locally and bebop was going locally and that was the only thing there and I was coaxed into playing with these musicians that migrated to New York from various areas of the country like Chicago, St. Louis, and L.A. and trumpeters wouldn't play with the so called avant-garde and so that was an opportunity for me to play, although I had never really listened to it or I had never experienced playing it. But once I was in it, it was just something to do and I could do it well and I did it until I got an opportunity to form my own band.


FJ: So you played not for your own fulfillment, but out of circumstance.

OLU DARA: I never really enjoyed it because it wasn't anything I grew up listening to. I mean, it was never really in my immediate environment. I just never did it. I never thought about the music. I didn't know it existed until I started meeting these musicians. You have to understand, Fred. I'm from a small town and these people are from large cities, urban areas, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles or whatever, so their music was really not in my life at all.


FJ: But you worked with free jazz heavies like David Murray and Henry Threadgill. Did they impart anything to you?

OLU DARA: I was a more experienced musician, I think, than they were. So I think I was the one giving (laughing).


FJ: Did you ever consider yourself as being a jazz musician?

OLU DARA: No, I never called myself that. I never considered myself that. I found out, just from observation that although I was known to play jazz, I played in the rhythm and blues group, Caribbean blues groups, African groups and all others, but they never gave me a name when I was playing with those groups. They never called me an African trumpeter or a rhythm and blues trumpeter. But when I played with, I think, the first jazz musician that I played with, all of the sudden, it was important to be called a jazz musician and develop a popularity. I never could figure that out or why they pick one music to be more important than another. That name was put on me. I used to laugh when they called me that. I said, "My God, I'm not a jazz musician at all." It never entered my mind. When I observed that situation, I saw the dichotomy. I saw the attitudes about music and what's important, what's not important, although, I felt that the other stuff I was playing was much more important than the jazz I was playing.


FJ: So who is Olu Dara?

OLU DARA: A musician/songwriter.


FJ: During your on and off spells in avant-garde, did you field offers to record as a leader?

OLU DARA: I got one offer in '77, when I first came across the water, I mean, across from Brooklyn. I did one concert and got a record date out of that. I recorded two full albums and I was basically doing what I'm doing now and those records never came out. After that, I didn't really think about recording after that. It was never anything that I was thinking about doing for myself anyway. Normally, I just recorded with other artists for survival, make a nickel and dime here just to support my family or whatever. I wasn't interested, after that first thing because my band, I had organized my band and we were very popular locally and semi-national. So we worked all the time. We worked dances, theaters, theater gigs, dance companies, we were always working and we were very popular. We would play all the clubs. And because I didn't have any records out, I played all the clubs and venues that musicians who may have had twenty records could not play. I felt fortunate so I didn't really think about recording because I was already satisfied with the band and the popularity of the band. We made a pretty good living for many years like that and I didn't get many opportunities during the early Eighties because they were really looking for me to record what they call avant-garde music or some forms of bebop, which was not my interest at all. Most of the record companies were basically interested in me doing that and they looked at my band like it was something out of the hills of Appalachia or something they're not interested in. To me, what they were really saying was that he is not sophisticated enough. Some did tell me that. They wanted more of a European element in the music like I thought the avant-garde was and the bebop. That's what they really were looking for, for documentation. I knew that I did not want to be known or represented like that because it wasn't me and I knew economically, it would not be feasible. And I got no enjoyment in it. I'm a smiling type of person and I stopped smiling when I played that kind of music, so I wanted to get as far away from that as I could and I finally did.


FJ: Your Atlantic debut, In the World: From Natchez to New York, was certainly a departure.

OLU DARA: Well, they had been coming to me for almost ten years.


FJ: To do an avant-garde record?

OLU DARA: No, they didn't say what. They were coming to me at that time, but we never really talked and they would call once or twice a year. The producer, Yves Beauvais, said to me one time, "Look, I'm going to keep calling. Do you mind?" I said, "Well, I'm not going to sign anything." And he said, "I'm going to keep calling anyway. Do you mind?" I said, "No, I don't mind." So one day, one of my sons called and my family and my friends and my sons, they pushed me to do something and I still refused. My son was on Columbia. He called. That's what really got my mind and ears perked up. I figured that it meant something.


FJ: For those not in the know, who is your son?

OLU DARA: His name is Nas. He's a very well known hip-hop artist.


FJ: You must be proud.

OLU DARA: I'm very proud of him. I think he's more proud of me than I am of him because I few him as my mentor. I really do because during the days I wanted to make my split from the so called avant-garde and I was pondering over what should I do because people were giving me problems and a lot of musicians and record people would say, "That stuff you play is not cool and you should play this other stuff." I was playing my music at home and my son would listen to my music and he would listen to the other stuff I was doing and he'd say, "Look, what you're doing is right." I talking about he was seven or eight years old. "Mix all the things that you know in." This is what he said to me. He just reaffirmed what I was thinking all the time and what I was doing. Him being my son and being so young, I started to listen to him and he's the reason that I kept doing what I was doing because at one point I was thinking about not doing it anymore. He was the reason and that's why I consider him a mentor. He's very advanced musically and artistically.


FJ: Nas is one of hip-hop's superstars.

OLU DARA: Yes, he is. I'm very proud, but at the same time, I kind of figured it would happen.


FJ: What gave it away?

OLU DARA: The family, just the family. I know how our family runs. Each generation has done a different type of music and we've all been respected in our own thing. I'm just the first one to record. No, no, Nas recorded before I did. But we were the first ones to record, but we've always had great artists in our family from generations. So I expected my sons to follow suit to what they were doing for their time. He had quite a few records out. He had three or four records out before I recorded.


FJ: Those who are familiar with your work in free jazz expected In the World to be an avant-garde record.

OLU DARA: Yes, they did, not only the writers but the musicians too. Musicians were shocked. They still are today. They're speechless.


FJ: Did you get a good laugh?

OLU DARA: Yeah, I was laughing. (Laughing) I laughed all the time. I was in New Orleans a few months ago and Terence Blanchard, who I had met many years ago when he first came to New York. He's living in New Orleans now. He came and said, "Man, I came to hear that trumpet. I didn't know you could sing." I played maybe three notes on the trumpet all night (laughing). But he came to hear some trumpet (laughing). But it was cute. It was very cute. I had a lot of fun with that.


FJ: People shouldn't be so surprised since your roots were in the blues and African-American folk music.

OLU DARA: That is what surprises me also. I think what happens is that when you move to a large, urban area, people seem to dismiss, especially if you're in America, they dismiss Southern heritage, Mississippi heritage like that, as opposed to dismissing someone from Argentina or Jamaica or whatever. They'll see a Jamaican and say that he's going to play Jamaican music because he's from Jamaica. But in America, they don't know that we have regional music.


FJ: Obviously people were not familiar with your ability to sing, but you also played guitar on the album as well.

OLU DARA: Yeah, I've always had one around since I was a kid, but I've never really played guitar, conventional guitar with six strings. I always had one or two strings, sometimes three and that was it. I was playing with just one string, one string, plucking it or either with a slide and then eventually, I would go to two strings sometimes and then three strings. But that was something that I did on a personal level at home around friends. I never took that public. I never did plan on taking that public until I started doing more acting and writing plays. I would always have a guitar and singing the blues in theatrical productions. So people who knew me in the theater knew nothing about my trumpet playing or jazz world. That was something too. I had two lives. I had two or three lives. So I surprised the theater people with my horn playing and the knowledge of my jazz once they started reading the things about me and hearing more things and vice versa.


FJ: And somewhere in there, you found time to compose.

OLU DARA: Yeah, yeah, I compose music all the time. In the theater, I must have written, in the last twenty years or so, I must have written an average of one hundred songs a year that were done publicly around the country. I got a chance to see, almost every song I wrote, I got a chance to see it performed in each production I did.


FJ: How did you choose what songs would make it on the album?

OLU DARA: It wasn't difficult. What happened was that I wouldn't really choose anything. Once friends of mine knew I was making the album, they were requesting songs. They'd say, "Why don't you do this song? I always liked that song." Or either my producer, who would come around and hear those songs in theatrical productions, he suggested some songs he liked and a lot of songs I had written for one night or something and forget about it. But people would suggest these songs and that's what would happen. Some songs are over twenty years old. Some are brand new. Some I made up on the spot and the same with the new album. Some of the songs are twenty years old. Most all these songs were suggested to me. I never said, "I'm going to put this on my record." Most all of them were suggested other than the ones that I make up on the spot.


FJ: Having been quite familiar with your work in the avant-garde, where did this singing come from?

OLU DARA: I was just a guy who sang, not in the shower, but I'm a couch singer very quietly to myself when I'm playing the guitar or whatever. Or I would call myself a mental singer. I would sing to myself in my mind all the time. I never uttered a sound of hardly any volume up until I started playing with my band. And when I started my band years ago, I didn't plan to sing in the band because singing was a no, no back in those days. If you sang, it was like you would get funny looks from the musicians and everything. So I didn't sing. It was all instrumental. I just started singing one night just playing around and people came back the next night and wanted to hear me sing again and I didn't and they complained to the club owner. The club owner just made a remark. He said, "Those people came last night and they were really disappointed you didn't sing." I had forgotten that I had sang the night before. I was just messing around.


FJ: The new release, Neighborhoods, has you paired with Cassandra Wilson, whom you've collaborated with before.

OLU DARA: Yeah, I got a chance to return a favor and we've done a lot of things together, live and recording. We have a very close feeling.


FJ: Is Atlantic coming to bat for you and supporting a tour?

OLU DARA: Yeah, we will tour. We'll start in a week or so.


FJ: Do you like the term crossover?

OLU DARA: I like it if it is used in the right context. My music already has. It already has. I am able to play all types of venues, which I love. At the jazz festivals, I'm accepted there. At blues festivals, I'm accepted there. If there is a folk festival, I'm accepted there. If there is jam music, I'm accepted there and so I am able to play all these venues, which is very good. But more than crossing over, it is crossing back and forth, crossing up, crossing down. There is all kinds of stuff.


FJ: Having recorded some stellar sessions in the avant-garde, guested with your son, Nas, on some of his releases, and now, with a couple of your own dates, blurring the lines between blues and folk music, is there any idiom you would like to get your toes wet in?

OLU DARA: Yeah, I need time to do at least twenty more CDs (laughing), so I can get all these different genres that I really like and I'm well versed in and document those. I really do wish I could get to that point. My sons want me to do a hip-hop album.


FJ: Do it.

OLU DARA: Well, now that you've cosigned on that, Fred, I think I will do it now (laughing). Olu, the hip-hopper (laughing). We said it with a straight face, Fred.


Fred Jung is Jazz Weekly's Editor-In-Chief and calls South Central home. Email him.