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It comes down simply to an acoustic instrument over a microphone, and it really keeps you honest from a musical point of view 'cause we're just going to be playing whatever sound we can make from the instrument. There's nothing plugged in. I don't feel like it makes us better... it keeps you from being too successful actually is what I could say.
-Peter Rowan |
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Photo by Paul Cheney
It's the same in Jamaica. A lot of those guys get their backing from somebody in England because if you're Jamaican you can live in England because it's a former British colony.
 Peter Rowan by Paul Cheney |
So it's the time of reciprocal colonization from all these former empires, and the music reflects that, comes back and forth. The British in Jamaica put in a whole school system. It was the educational system that gave rise to the first generation of great horn players and studio musicians. The ska players, they were all educated in the British school system, and, in fact, if you wanted to learn a trade, music was part of a trade school. So here's a colonization of a country that gives them what they thought was the best of the imperial educational system and it gave rise to reggae music, which always ended up talking about slavery and anti-colonialism. It's weird, man.
Everything is colonization. You work in a restaurant in San Francisco and you go in the kitchen and you make a dessert from Charleston, South Carolina and people are loving it, right? It's the importation of ideas. Music, because it's so fluid, is a great place for the importation of ideas. Music is feelings. You don't have to really pin it down very much. It's just a vibe. I think the challenge is [deciding] what feeling you're going [for]. Are you going to form a band that's like a Neville Brothers band and just up the dance part of the show? Or are you going to have a subtler band with hand percussion and more of a mystical kind of sound? A lot of ways to go in music.
Someone like yourself, who could call on a lot of people to play with, it must be hard to decide.
Oh yeah, that's all I do is I just go, "Hmmm, whom in my galaxy of musical heroes can I pick now?"
Is there anyone left that you haven't played with that you really want to?
 Peter Rowan by Paul Cheney |
To me, it's always back to the drawing board. A thing comes up in me that I have to let out. It can be any kind of subject. It can be political. I wrote a song about these Iraqi kids fleeing the bombing of Baghdad and this American soldier who sees them coming across the desert like a mirage. His captain tells him, "Lock, load and fire when ready," and he's like, "Oh shit." There are kids on a camel and he has a split second to decide whether these guys are suicide bombers or kids. So there's this suspense in the song, and finally he takes the chance. He doesn't kill them, he doesn't shoot them, and they come riding through on this crazed camel and that's the comedic part of it. That's political, but it's political from the point of view that we understand the human dilemma. Unfortunately the real dilemma is now – that was written three years ago – and now the dilemma is so much more. Nobody knows who to trust. Everything's blowing up.
I did see something interesting. I think for the first time on the front page of the New York Times they showed a body. It was the other day. They showed a guy, a suicide bomber. He was still in the car but they showed it. It was shocking. We haven't seen them. During the Vietnam War, they showed you six months of photos of dead people and the people were on the streets [protesting]. But even the New York Times - that's pretty critical of the administration - they're not showing [it], whereas in Europe they're showing it all the time, in color. You go to one of these international bookstores and buy a German magazine [and] it's shocking. Here, everything is kind of nice, you know, it's not too shocking.
Today we have a volunteer army. Vietnam, when the soldiers came home, they were spit on, thrown rocks at, and those people didn't volunteer to do that, they got drafted. You either shot yourself in the leg, moved to Mexico, or you went.
No, what you did in those days was you put peanut butter under your arms and you went in for your Army physical and they would just take one look at you and [say], "You're out of here, buddy." I lost good friends in Vietnam. You're only in that age group once in your life, and kids you grew up with go off to war and die. Could war ever be justified? That's the big question. Who would you stand up to, if they're coming down the street, and I'm going to save your life? Am I going to sacrifice myself or am I going to defend myself? It may be something stuck in people's heads. Maybe this is the way we're born into this life, with a predisposition towards certain types of activities. And those people, in their heads, think that the nobility of war itself is a good cause or that you're fighting for your country. Cooler heads have to prevail really.
Let's shift back into music. Do you think that traditionalists like Bill Monroe would enjoy today's progressive bluegrass with the new directions it's taking?
 Peter Rowan |
Yeah, but Bill enjoyed all kinds of things. He liked good music, you know? He appreciated craft and inspiration in other people but when it got too close to his territory then he'd pass judgments about whether it measured up. It was almost impossible to tell when Bill was pulling your leg or not 'cause he'd say some pretty funny things about people's attempts. You know what he liked? He just liked music. He referred to it as "music that people could follow." It wasn't too challenging. It was a high level of accomplishment in the playing of music that brings you along into it.
Tells you a story.
Yeah, brings you along, tells you a story, involves you. It's like why he said the band wore white shirts because he wanted the country people to know how much he respected what he was doing. It was unusual. Musicians in those days, well, early on you see photographs in the '30s of even blues players like Robert Johnson in a coat and tie and a snappy brim. All the old-time music guys from North Carolina, they never appeared in overalls 'cause that would be like playing the fool to their own people. When you play onstage in overalls it's either an act or you're being obtuse to the fact that people wear overalls when they're working the ground.
So, these old-time players would dress up a little bit. When Leadbelly got out of prison, Alan Lomax had him in overalls playing up around New York City 'cause he was part of the people. Finally Leadbelly demanded that he got paid. He went out and he bought himself a tailored suit and he never appeared in overalls again. He wore beautiful gold cufflinks and it kind of blew the scene a little bit because it was no longer the convict Leadbelly in overalls. He wasn't going for the Negro image. He was like, "I'll take that fine cut suit, thank you very much." That's really thinking outside the box of stereotypes, you know? Then again, he just wanted to feel grand, and it disconcerted the Lomax people. They were like, "Well, I don't know. He's just going out with his people after the show and getting drunk, and he won't wear overalls anymore."
I just don't think you can tie music down like that. I think that it's a free, spontaneous and energetic expression of, really, joy, underneath it all. If it has to come through a painful disguise then it does that. If it has to come through a jubilant disguise it'll do that. If it has to sound dark it does that. There's an audience for every single kind of sound you can imagine. I like things I hear from all over the world that just spark you. Who can say what music really is? It's a formless energy that moves people. It's a good place to put your head. Whether it's from stuff you've heard or whether it's from stuff you want to say, you just put your head in that space. Sometimes you pick up an instrument and it does all the talking for you. It just leads you, and you end up writing the songs that feel [of] the moment.
Somehow it seems to connect you with other like-minded people.
Yeah, man. It brings people out. It's a joy.
Best concert you ever saw, if you had to pick one?
When I was 14 years old, Chuck Berry, standing up on stage grinning in his green tuxedo and black tie going, "Heh heh, this is my foolishness suit," and playing "School Days."
This interview features contributions from Libre Brousseau, President of Deep Blue Ripple, an international tourism and aid organization.
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