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It's a protest against a world where fear of creativity has become the norm, where people are more interested in reducing things down to their minimum rather than expanding things to their maximum. And it's a culture that seems to be celebrating the kind of achievements that take very little in terms of wisdom and insight, depth, development and nuance and are much more about "let's get the most obvious thing that we can possibly come up with and then just repeat it over and over and over again."
--Pat Metheny |
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Photo: from WoodrowVillage.com
Kids are much, much hipper in Europe, and even Japan and Asia now just in terms of their awareness of things. It's like I just run into people here and they've never even heard of Miles Davis, let alone whoever else. Like how is it that you can go through your life and not even know who these people are? It's just such a huge part of what's great about our culture. For a lot of kids, maybe it's something that they see on PBS if they happen to tune in... and that's not a great way to get hip, you know? You don't want to get your hipness quotient from PBS. You want it to be part of your world. And there are some groups out there that are presenting some of the aesthetic values that jazz has traditionally represented like Medeski Martin & Wood and a couple other bands, but it shouldn't have to be quite so hard to find. I think it should be more part of the everyday life that we all use, and that ultimately goes back to things you mentioned before: radio and TV and the general ways we get information. And sadly, creative music is very underrepresented there.
I'm glad you mentioned Medeski Martin & Wood as I had thought of them and maybe Fareed Haque and Steve Kimock as sharing kind of a similar musical philosophy that you have. I was curious what you thought of that and if there were any others you felt that have maybe a similar worldview.
Well the thing about Medeski Martin & Wood that I notice is that they are the first instrumental improvisational group that I've seen since us that went out there and played every single place they could possibly play to develop an audience, and this is the most important part -- on their own terms. They pretty much play the way they play, have worked a lot, play a lot -- they've played zillions of concerts all over the place without compromising anything. They found a way to have an audience that responds to what they do. A lot of the younger jazz guys put on their suits and ties and went out and played for a much older audience, and really didn't "take it to the streets" in a way. They didn't develop a group of their peers to follow their music, and what I appreciate about Medeski Martin & Wood -- besides the fact that they're really good musicians -- is that they've managed to present a really uncompromised view of their aesthetic and have proven once again that if you go out there and present it to people, people are gonna dig it. To me, they kind of stand above the other groups that I hear them grouped with in the sense that aesthetically and musically, they're functioning on a higher level.
A couple of other groups that are often lumped together as improvisational bands that created their following that way would be the Grateful Dead and Phish. I've read once before that you weren't really that into the Dead, but given that Trey Anastasio of Phish has seen you perform well over a dozen times and always lists you as a primary influence, I was curious what you thought of them and if you maybe viewed them in a different light than the Dead.
Metheny by Tasic Dragan |
Well I don't have anything against the Grateful Dead at all. There's this big period of musical history that I'm just kind of oblivious to because I was just so far off in another world. I was just so far into the jazz zone that during the time that the Grateful Dead would have been at their peak -- at their most popular even -- I was kind of off on my own trip. I was invited to jam with them a number of times, and it was kind of like "that might be fun, but I've got a gig that night" or "I've gotta go play with Herbie Hancock." It was that I was just really doing my own thing, so I was just kind of unaware of it more than anything else.
Phish, on the other hand, because Trey has spoken often about me, and they've played a lot of our tunes and all that, I have kind of checked that out a little bit. I have a friend that's got a lot of live tapes of them, and I'm totally knocked out with their flexibility and ambition to play all this wildly different stuff... and he's a really, really good guitarist too. And I'm sorry they broke up. They really opened up so many people's imaginations as to what music can be, and again, there's something that happens when you're playing for groups of your peers -- people your own age that kind of look like you and can really relate to you that's different than when it's a bunch of older guys playing. And I think that they really served a very important place, actually, I don't think, I know it for a fact, that they turned people on to what improvisation is and what it can be. And I think they turned an entire generation of people on, who are now John Coltrane fans, fans of our thing and other people just through the example that they offer.
That's completely accurate from my own experience, for sure. I don't want to take up more of your time, but I wanted to finish things off by assessing the current state of music or jazz and asking what advice you have for younger musicians that are leaning towards improvisation.
I have one kind of stock response that I use, which I feel is really good. And it's "always be the worst guy in every band you're in." If you're the best guy there, you need to be in a different band. And I think that works for almost everything that's out there as well.
Nathan Rodriguez
JamBase | Colorado
Go See Live Music!
:|:Hear excerpts from Metheny's new album, "The Way Here" @ www.JazzOnline.com
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