A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH SABIR MATEEN


In the year I was living in New York, there was one band I wanted to catch. The foursome is no run of the mill quartet that plays a couple of sets at the Vanguard (although I am certain they would blow the roof off the place). In the underground, TEST (Daniel Carter, Tom Bruno, Mat Heyner, and Sabir Mateen) was lauded for their guerilla warfare like, impromptu concerts in subway stations. Alas, I am an unlucky soul and never saw them live (a shame since they don't play the left coast either). So records (Eremite and AUM Fidelity) are my only source, and although good, they could never do these cats justice. Mateen has been in my sights since I first heard him on an obscure record, Flight 17 with the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, lead by legendary Los Angeles folk hero, Horace Tapscott. Although the piss ant record label spells Mateen's name incorrectly (Sabia Matteen), it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out it was Mateen's tenor raging throughout the live date. Since, one label in particular has audibly cornered the market on Mateen sessions and Eremite's catalog includes, a burner with Mateen and Hamid Drake (Brothers Together), Mateen with Sunny Murray (We Are Not At The Opera), Mateen's own trio (Divine Mad Love), Mateen with TESTmate Bruno (Getting Away with Murder), Mateen with Raphe Malik (ConSequences), a date with Alan Silva's Sound Visions Orchestra, and the before mentioned TEST record. Not nearly enough documentation for a voice that ought to be heard. The man's got heart, something terribly lacking from music these days. Mateen sat down with the Roadshow to talk about his time with Tapscott, TEST, and his records, as always unedited and in his own words.

FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.

SABIR MATEEN: I always liked music since I was young when I was singing in choirs and stuff like that. It always made me want to get into it. Just from that and I had a cousin who played saxophone and a guy who lived next door to me who played saxophone all the time. When I was little, I used to listen to him through the walls and everything and just listen to him play and practice all the time. That really made me just want to play music and in general, saxophone, even though it took me a while to get to there. Generally, always had a natural feeling liking to do music and that's what I've been doing most of my life. It is just difficult to say, but that is basically what made me get into it. I just heard it and it was the thing that made me feel good all the time. My mother, basically, had most of the singers like Dinah Washington and she used to like Billie Holiday and they liked males singer like Johnny Mathis and Roy Hamilton. So mostly, I was listening to a lot of singers. Then when I was coming along in my teens years, I was listening to a lot of rhythm and blues singers and they really turned me onto rhythm and blues musicians because at that age of growing up in the Sixties, you grew up exposed to a lot of that. It was all around you and everything. You had to be, well, you didn't have to be, but naturally, you became a part of that environment. That's what basically influenced you for me, from seeing all that. I grew up in that type of environment. Of course, I remember my mother singing church songs and everything, so that kind of stuck with me also.


FJ: How did your stint with Horace Tapscott come about?

SABIR MATEEN: Well, what happened was, I was in the Air Force and all my tour of duty was on the West Coast, except for about a year when I went to Asia. So basically, when I got out, I was stationed in San Bernardino, so I just stayed there. I lived in San Bernardino for a while and then I moved to LA, which was in the mid-Seventies. I moved over there and I was playing in several bands, almost everywhere I was going. I was playing in a couple of, well, I enrolled in college in LA too, so I was playing in the college band, jazz band, symphony band, and woodwind ensembles and percussion ensembles. So basically, I lived in LA because I just stayed there through the military and so I stayed out there and I eventually moved to LA. That is basically how I really ended up on the West Coast. I didn't really want to come back to Philly right away. I wanted to live somewhere different from where I was raised and so I ended up in LA at that point.


FJ: Horace spent time in the Air Force as well.

SABIR MATEEN: I found out later, yeah.


FJ: He wasn't too fond of it.

SABIR MATEEN: Neither did I (laughing). Yeah, yeah, a lot of my friends, musicians, who were in the military, they were in the band. For some reason, I didn't want to do it. I wasn't in the band. I was basically doing supply work and stuff like that. I was in a couple of bands on the side. I was in an army band and I was in a jazz band playing mostly standards and mostly funk based R&B tunes. Mostly, I was playing percussion. That's the instrument I started on and later on, I picked up the alto. I was basically playing a lot of alto then and I switched to tenor while I was in the Air Force. I started playing tenor and I stuck with tenor quite a long time and I didn't pick up the alto again until the Eighties. So I was playing a lot of tenor in those bands. Basically, that's what I was doing. I stationed mostly in Northern California, near San Rafael and I was in Okinawa and Thailand. I spent time in the Philippines. I was playing in a lot of bands there, mostly R&B. I was just really learning jazz at that moment, but I was listening to jazz. I was listening to jazz since I was a teenager, or probably since I was a kid because my next door neighbor played jazz and my cousin did. But I was listening to jazz since I was a teenager, so it was a matter of me just playing it, which actually came natural, came very natural to me. Most of my time in the Air Force, I was playing some kind of music in some form or another, even though I was doing this supply work, which was actually like a day job. That is basically what I was doing there. I spent three years and three months there and then I got out, an early out in 1974. I went in '71. At that time, I was playing music from a natural point of view. My interest wasn't towards reading music and all that, so I wasn't interested in it at that time, even though a little later, I became interested in it as I got out. I felt myself limited, so I felt I had to do some other things musically.


FJ: What prompted your departure?

SABIR MATEEN: Well, what happened was, well, I wanted to go back because I really got tired of the West Coast. Main reason why I stayed out there for so long was because I was playing with Horace and I met some really good friends who are good friends for life and I just stayed out there and it just got to that time where musically, I felt I had to do something else so I was with some guys, a couple of people and the experience was mixed, good and not so good, and at that same time, unfortunately, my mother passed and so they wanted me to come back to Philly and I really didn't want to go right away, but when she passed, I decided to go and I decided to stay there. I didn't really want to come back to LA. I wasn't playing too much with the Arkestra then, Fred. There wasn't too much to keep me there and I decided I needed to stay in Philly and see what was happening there. I was really excited about being back home and playing music because I didn't really do that so much in Philly. I really wanted to really play a lot in Philly and really just go meet a lot of people and I knew Trane spent most of his musical education and life in Philly before he moved to New York and I really wanted to see what that was about and see if I could meet some of the people who he came up with musically, which I did. That was a blessing and a good experience for me.


FJ: You didn't have the fairytale welcome when you moved to New York.

SABIR MATEEN: Well, first of all, when I came to the city, I had nowhere to live, so basically, my first night in New York, I slept on the ground, right by the Port Authority. Then I eased my way and I was sleeping in, I was basically homeless for a long time. It was difficult to find work because when I came to New York, I was in my, maybe, close to late thirties, so it was difficult to find work here and there. I came to New York, I worked with a world music, reggae band. I was doing things here and there. But I was playing on the street, which I started in LA. I played the street for eight years in Philly, so I had that going and basically my survival was playing on the street. Before I actually started working steadily, basically, I didn't really start working steady until maybe 1993 or '94. I did my first performance in New York, I had been here three weeks and I did a performance with a musician named Khusenaton and then I did a performance with my own band a year later in 1990. That was pretty good. Then they were sporadically coming, but most of my performance, like I said, were on the street until '94, then things started to come along for me. That was good. Then I was working with, well, in 1990, I started working with TEST, so that was starting to happen in '91. In '91, I was starting to work with TEST.


FJ: TEST is known for its guerilla, impromptu subway performances.

SABIR MATEEN: Right, well, I've been playing in the street close to ten years before I started playing with TEST in the subway. I also did a thing with Tom, Tom Bruno, before TEST came about. We didn't see each other for a while and then him and Daniel were doing things. They had been playing individually in the subway for a long time. They were doing something and then they invited me to do something and it just happened that way. We were basically a trio for at least three and a half years. In and out we had different bass players, but for the most part, we were a trio for three and a half years. It just became natural because we were doing these things daily now. I don't go out as much now, but it was just something we did in getting our sound together to a group sound. Some people might say it was a performance/paid rehearsal or whatever. It was rough at the beginning. It was more rough when you play by yourself, but when you have a group of people with you, it turns into something different, a sense of continuity and communication. You can communicate with each other and like you said, Fred, an impromptu performance.


FJ: And the band is still together.

SABIR MATEEN: Oh, yeah. We have a couple of performances coming up. I'll tell you the most concrete one, which I just got today, which is on December 22, which is at CBGB's gallery. We're opening up for Greg Osby's trio.


FJ: Oz. I applaud that.

SABIR MATEEN: Yeah, I couldn't believe that of all people. Hey, I look at that as an opportunity, not just for a lot of people to see us, but it is the same music. He just has his way of expressing it and we have ours. It should be an interesting evening. I'm trying to get some things for us at the Knitting Factory.


FJ: What stops did TEST play at?

SABIR MATEEN: Well, we have been playing at one for at least ten years because the group's been together ten and a half years, going on our eleventh year now. We've been playing at Astor Place for the last, and Times Square Station, we've been playing at those two stations for the last ten years at least.


FJ: I think I caught a mime once at Times Square Station.

SABIR MATEEN: Yeah, sometimes you do. Average New Yorkers seemed to enjoy it. We had babies dancing and even teenagers doing breakdancing and some people want to come up and rap while we're playing and we even had modern dancers dancing in the subway for us. One time, this really tickled me, because one time, a girl came three times to dance with us and she actually got a gig while dancing with us (laughing) at Penn Station. She was always doing that and somebody actually hired her. They didn't hire us, but they hired her.


FJ: Your first album as a leader was Divine Mad Love.

SABIR MATEEN: Right, I did Divine Mad Love with my trio, my trio that was (laughing) because now I have a quintet. But that was my trio from before. I have Raphe Malik on trumpet. I have Naoko Ono on piano, I don't think her name is so familiar, but it will be. She plays a lot with Billy Bang. Jane Wang (Hao Records), she's a bass player. She's from Boston and she's a very good bass player and a very good cellist too. And Ravish Monin and drums and percussion and his name is starting to be heard a little in New York and he is also playing with Kalaparush. We have a current CD out (Secrets of When) on the Bleu Regard label. That's been getting some play and it is starting to now because the label has new distributors. That's been happening. My latest CD is the one with Hamid of course.


FJ: Brothers Together. You are no stranger to duos with percussions having done records with Tom Bruno and Sunny Murray.

SABIR MATEEN: Yeah, the thing is to try and keep it very productive and interesting. When I play a duet with the drums, I am actually visualizing the drums like I am playing with a quintet or a whole band instead of just the drums. I listen to hear melodically, besides rhythmically where the drums are going. That's one of the things I liked about Hamid, was all the different directions that he goes in, which is not saying that Tom Bruno or Sunny Murray didn't because they definitely did too (laughing). In fact, the duet with Sunny was pretty funky. Hamid was a really, really good experience because it was only the second time we played together. The first time was the day before the recording (laughing). It was really a natural hook up and it was something that we wanted to do a long time. It was actually his suggestion. Actually, both of the duos with him and Sunny Murray, were both their suggestions. That was really, really good. I have one with a young drummer, Ben Karetnick (Sun Xing) that was pretty good too. Getting Away with Murder, we were just playing in Grand Central and Alen Stefanov, the engineer was just recording us and we weren't even thinking about putting that on a CD or record or anything. It just happened that Michael Ehlers, my producer came over to the engineer's house, Alen's house and Alen played it and said that he should hear it and he heard it and liked it so much that he wanted to record it. He wanted to buy the DAT and record it. That is how that happened. But getting back to Hamid, he is just one of the greatest drummers that I've ever played with. What he does, I've never seen any drummer do. He takes the simplest things and he really does create really total music, melodic, rhythmically, and spiritually because he is very spiritual. It really, really influenced me musically where I can just play and be totally free to do anything I want and don't have to worry about anything. That session really made me feel. I really felt good about that and the live performance we did the day before. Hopefully, we will be doing something since that CD is out.


FJ: Critics peg you with the "free jazz" letter A, when more often than not, your music is accessible, on occasion bridging chamber music.

SABIR MATEEN: Sometimes it gets there. A lot of them (band members) studied the music of their culture because Ravish was born in Bombay and he studied Indian music since he was three years old and Naoko, she studied impressionistic music, classical, blues, gospel, and also, she had plays a lot of Japanese music from her culture. And Jane, she used to be a classical musician and she brings that to what she does and she knows a lot of Chinese music and of course, Raphe, anyone who knows his music knows the history of Raphe. He can play all kinds of music. He can play music with changes and everything. That is one of the good things about us on the front line together because we came through playing music with changes and that's where I learned my music and him too. We learned playing standard tunes and when I started playing with Horace, that is where I really learned that I had to do more than play avant-garde, so called avant-garde. I realized that if I really wanted to be free, I had to learn where I was coming from and so I had to learn the blues and everything. To be free, I feel you have to know the whole history of the music. You have to know what is before you before you go ahead. You don't necessarily have to know how to play the tunes from these eras, but I think you have to really learn the language. I think that is what is important. That is what it means to be free.


FJ: With alto, tenor, flute, and clarinet in your bag, any emphasis on one above another?

SABIR MATEEN: No, because I've tried that and for right now, it doesn't work because instruments sometimes are like humans, some kind of weird thing.


FJ: You don't want to ignore one, it might get pissed.

SABIR MATEEN: They do (laughing). It feels like they do, especially if you have been playing one longer than another. Even though I started on alto, I've been playing tenor longer because this whole period of time where I had nothing but a tenor. In fact, I came to New York with a tenor and a change of clothes. Also, clarinet, I've been playing clarinet for a long time. I was playing clarinet on the side. I think I did two things with Horace playing clarinet. They weren't recorded. They were live performances. I did a couple of live performances with Horace. One I did exclusively on clarinet because I didn't have a tenor. Also, I played flute. Flute was the first wind instrument I played. I've been playing flute for quite a long time. I don't have a piccolo or anything like that. The alto clarinet, when I first got that, my clarinet started acting up (laughing). Alto clarinet is the newest and I've been playing that the least. I've just been playing that in the last four years, four, five years. It was given to me. It's a very interesting sound. I really would like to give that a big push because there is not many people playing alto clarinet, not that I know of. The main guy that influences me on it a lot, I have to play with him in the Visions Orchestra, is J.D. Parran. I love his sound on alto clarinet. That's an instrument that doesn't get played much. In fact, on Brothers Together and Secrets of When, many of the writers are calling it bass clarinet. Even though it was written clearly on the quintet CD, but on the Eremite CD, Michael just put clarinet. I try to tell people to distinguish the clarinet so people will know that people are playing that alto clarinet.


FJ: Have you returned to the West Coast?

SABIR MATEEN: The band has never been out to the West Coast. In fact, Fred, I haven't been to the West Coast since I left LA, which is twenty one years ago. I look forward to come out there, but it just hasn't come my way yet, either with TEST, the quintet. I have another group called Juxtaposition and we're playing the Knitting Factory on the 26 with a young cello player that you've probably heard about through the John Zorn camp or Anthony Coleman or some of these other people. Her name is Okkyung Lee. She's a cello player. Matthew Heyner form TEST, he's on bass and Ravish again is on drums.


FJ: She's Korean.

SABIR MATEEN: Right. She's very good. She is very good and people will be hearing more from her. She plays with Butch Morris a lot too. But she is a very interesting player and we're definitely doing something on the 26. I am putting some more energy into that group because that is a very interesting group.


FJ: And studio time?

SABIR MATEEN: That's a good question, Fred (laughing). I'd love to someday. Someday, I would love to. I don't know when, but it would be good to do such a thing. It doesn't matter, TEST, the quintet, Juxtaposition, or I have a group with Roy Campbell. Roy Campbell put it together with me, Roy Campbell, and Daniel Carter called the Downtown Horns. It came about because we were doing a lot of things for a lot of people, the three of us. Roy said, "Let's just the three of us do something." We just played this Friday.


FJ: Having come this far and knowing where you once were, do you take anything for granted?

SABIR MATEEN: No, because once you do that, you're finished. It is just like playing. You can't take your playing for granted. It's like playing a solo. You can't plot your solo. If you play things you know, which there are a lot of musicians that do now. I don't want to get into that bag, but it is not interesting. It is the element of surprise and spontaneity, that's what made all the masters great. One is because they didn't take anything for granted. They took nothing for granted. They just wanted to play their music and they kept their music fresh by playing the things that came spontaneously to them. As Miles Davis put it, "The things that you don't know." He said, "Now that you've played what you know. Play me what you don't know. That's what I want to hear."


FJ: The longer I have lived, the more I have come to realize that people don't know shit, so there is plenty of music to be heard.

SABIR MATEEN: Yeah, that is the thing. That is not to say, don't know your instrument, because in order to play the things you don't know, you have to play your instrument (laughing).


FJ: The force is strong in you.

SABIR MATEEN: Well, I have to keep it going because I am trying to express myself and try to take from what the masters did and try to expand it, instead of playing what they did because that is what made them masters and the people before them. You just have to do it. I am just going to keep trying and as long as I can get musicians because the joy I get is playing with other musicians that can really push me out there. That is what makes a person play is a good band and other people. It is not just the person. It is the people in the band. What makes me have my music and make my music sound great, or good because I'm going to let the people decide on that, but what makes me feel good is to have people who love what I do and appreciate my music and appreciate what I do and love to play with me and help me create my music and push me to levels I have never been before.


Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and is ranked number 2 in the BSC poll and 14 in the AP poll. Comments? Email Him