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I think, at least it was important to me, to try and deal with some of the issues that caused us to move further and further apart. I'm not sure we ever found a full resolution, but ultimately I think the drugs got in the way. Unfortunately, he's totally unavailable to me at the moment, and I don't think anybody really knows where he is.
--Brian Jackson on Gil Scott-Heron |
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Photo: Gil Scott-Heron
"Number one, I do not mind sampling. I do it myself, and I really don't have any problem with loops and samples. On the other hand, I do have a problem with someone who's using samples to get out of learning how to play. You hear something that you like, and you want to snatch it and build on it, fine. We sampled ourselves. We didn't have a sampler or a computer that we could load a wave file on, but we sampled things with our ears. Getting back to The Tradition, I think it's very important to maintain the tradition of actually physically playing an instrument. Even I worry about the electricity going out because I can't carry a Steinway [piano] on my back (laughs). And even a Fender Rhodes without power is not going to carry very far. I worry that it's so simple to just stop all the music. You got to have it in your hands, and it has to be in your brain."
Jackson has spent his life making music that deals with the world in a conscious way, and that revolutionary spirit, televised or not, still burns red hot within him.
Gil-Scott Heron |
"When you speak of conscious anything, what we're really referring to is awareness. An awareness not only of one's self, but of one's environment - an awareness of the results of our actions and the actions of others," explains Jackson. "When I talk about conscious music, I think of music that addresses issues, music that speaks about what one's feeling, music that addresses others in an attempt to begin or continue a dialog, music that informs."
"For instance, a lot of our songs in the beginning, or actually throughout, talked about cause and effect. If we don't put our foot down and stand up for our right to protest, then eventually it will be taken away from us. If we don't stand up for our right to privacy or our right to be safe in our own home, then eventually that will be taken away from us. If we don't address the issues of communication such as the media's attempt to take over our minds and the minds of our children, then eventually we will lose the ability to fight on any level if we are not conscious of what is being done to prevent us from doing that."
This spins us into a brief digression about how America really went wrong during the Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th Century, when the powers that be first gave corporations the same rights as individuals and other systemic problems we face today were first put in place.
"We weren't aware at the time," Jackson states. "We weren't conscious of how many actions by the government and proponents of the government and those of means were designed to manipulate us into a position where we could be taken advantage of even more."
"When I was a kid - and I'm probably from the first generation where television really was really more like a babysitter - what I noticed, from having observed so much television, is the messages we're getting just make us better consumers," comments Brian. "The whole purpose of the media is to cause us to be better consumers - to spend our money, to get ourselves deeper in debt, and to consume the propaganda that's being shoved at us every day. I mean, revisionist history, right? You want to talk about [George Orwell's] 1984, the best delivery system for revisionist history is already in place. Just make a four-hour TV documentary about any subject, and you can convince everybody it wasn't this way, it was that way, and that is now the official history."
It's easy to forget that our society is a nefarious design, and you have to fight against that kind of design with something equally elaborate, equally passionate, hence Brian's answer - music. His official bio ends with the phrase, "This music isn't mine, and the minute I start trying to own it, it's all over."
He elaborates, "A lot of times, people will come to me and say, 'I really love your music. I really like your music.' They keep saying 'your music, your music,' and what I always try to say, in as humble a way as possible, is that this music just comes through me."
"When you're a musician and you play from your heart, you're not really even there sometimes. That certainly happens to me. I listen back to some performances or solos I've done, and I don't remember doing that stuff. Sometimes I like it, and sometimes I don't. Obviously, strangely enough, when I'm listening back to stuff, and I hear something I like, that's usually the times I remember least how I actually did. Which leads me to the conclusion that the more of a meditative state you can get into, the more of an active passage thing you can get into, where you let the music flow through you, you let the spirits, you let the ancestors tell you what to do, and you don't plan it or obsess over it, you can just let it go. You've already studied. I've studied for almost forty-something years now. If you don't know what you're gonna do now, then the best thing you can do is just to let it go. When you let it go, the spirits and the energy of the music comes through and allows you to be the instrument. I don't play an instrument. I am an instrument."
Dennis Cook
JamBase | California
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