Bassist Alan Silva, a key figure in New York City’s experimental and free jazz communities during the 1960s and a stalwart figure in France since he relocated in the early 1970s, turns 85 today. I’m posting an interview that we did on WKCR in January 1994. A lot of information contained herein — although it’s not as detailed as the excellent 2002 interview with Dan Warburton contained in this link. (https://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/silva.html?fbclid=IwAR1P_g1OtnDhLnGQ2EQuO4LnN-8tMs3Upw2P93iDszcEulukhgv01ITWryI)
Also, here is a piece about Alan Silva’s mother, Irene Levy, that Stephen Haynes linked to today on Facebook. (https://patch.com/new-york/fortgreene/irene-levy-union-pioneer-and-long-time-fort-greene-reda52a8e546?fbclid=IwAR2KvRFj4g7PI9M2gxIjVoFBOOlex1lHYmnPDoCITO5CAbO8UgFV_aKvl6k)
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Alan Silva (WKCR):
[MUSIC: Cecil Taylor, Enter Evening (Alt. Take)]
Q: You hadn’t heard that up to now. What did you think?
AS: Well, sometimes alternate takes are not as interesting as the original takes. Sometimes you can have that problem, I think. Blue Note put out some alternate takes. But on this piece, I don’t think it’s necessary. Sometimes alternate takes are something you don’t want to hear.
Q: Sometimes it’s preparation for the proper way of doing it.
AS: Yeah. And that might be interesting from the point of view of historical, but some alternate takes are just like mistakes. And they’re good for historians or people who are really interested in music. But sometimes the final piece is the final piece. It’s like going to Picasso’s garbage can and picking out old sketches. I thought that’s what alternate takes really meant. But I don’t see any significance in the piece.
Q: I think a lot of listeners would be interested in hearing about your association with Cecil Taylor, and how and when it started.
AS: Well, Cecil and I… My impact on Cecil was probably from the point of view as a listener. The first time I really had a chance to listen to Cecil Taylor was at the Newport Jazz Festival, where he was playing one of those afternoon discovery bands. I was a very avid Jazz collector, myself as a student, and I went up to the Newport to hear, as usual — like a ritual to go up to Newport. And that day they had Cecil Taylor, an afternoon concert. And that’s when I really heard some very interesting music by Cecil. I was only about 18 years old at that time. And I think that record is out with Jazz Lab on one side and Cecil on the other side.
Q: Around 1957 maybe?
AS: I think so. Like that. 1957.
Q: Steve Lacy was playing?
AS: Steve Lacy, Henry Grimes, I think Dennis Charles. So from my point of view, when I heard the band, and live, I fell in love with the music… At that time I was very much studying trumpet with Donald Byrd. And I sort of thought that was really a great band, too. I mean, they were on the same gig, in fact. So that was my first encounter with the man’s music.
Q: What did you think?
AS: Well, I loved Monk’s music. And I had one Cecil Taylor record done on Transition…
Q: You were a real collector.
AS: Oh, yes. I’m a serious listener of the music. All of the music, in fact, going all the way back. So in the sense that I had those Transition copies… And at that point I said, “Well, this man is really an interesting musician.” And I always liked the eccentric aspects of music-making, people like Red Nichols or Harry Partch. I was always looking for the real eccentric aspects of music. And I was a collector on those aspects. So Cecil really interested me as something that really was emerging there. I found his music as a young musician much more interesting than Ornette when he first came to New York.
Q: Why is that?
AS: Well, because I thought that… I had already heard Charles Mingus’ experimentations and Max Roach’s experimentations from the New York scene. See, you have to realize I’m a New Yorker, raised in New York, and I had a lot of chance to really hear a lot of very interesting music in this town.
Q: Tell us about the environment you were coming up as a young musician, a young listener and so forth. And this will all take us to how you hooked up with Cecil Taylor…
AS: I was raised in Harlem in the early 1950s. I came from Bermuda to live in Harlem. And at that time, in the early 1950s, my father, who’s an avid Jazz listener, Duke Ellington was his favorite… And I had a chance to be very associated with what was Bebop at that time, only at 5 or 6 or 7 years old. I fell in love with music as a listening thing by radio, and listening to Charlie Parker and Classical Music, and I became very much interested in music ethnology, world music very early, listening to Folkways records and stuff like that. And I really accepted Jazz, Afro-American music at this particular point as a very significant body of music. So that took me into being a musician.
But I’m not basically… I’m like an artist. I studied painting. I studied at Art Students’ League. I studied at Hans Hoffman’s School of Fine Arts just before it closed. I went to New School For Social Research and studied theories in music. I studied with George Russell, the Lydian Chromatic Concept. So in fact, living in New York was exposing to the amount of beautiful things that exist as a student.
Q: No better place.
AS: No better place to learn and no better place to experience. So in a sense, Cecil I felt came out of that kind of experience, being raised in New York, too. So I’m not one-sided, in the sense that my listening aspects are quite broad, from John Cage’s music to Harry Partch, to some American Indian music.
Q: Well, let’s talk about you as a musician, then, and your development as a musician, and where you were at in 1957, when you heard Cecil Taylor at the Newport Jazz Festival.
AS: Well, at that point, I was seriously thinking about becoming a painter. And I still loved music, and I was still playing trumpet at that time, and I studied composition.
Q: How long had you been playing trumpet?
AS: I had been studying trumpet maybe two years.
Q: Had you played anything before that?
AS: I had played piano since I was six, and violin. I was in music since the early parts of my life.
Q: Through your parents?
AS: Yeah, through my parents and through the church I was working with in Harlem. So in fact, I was getting ready to prepare myself for a kind of artistic career. I decided to study trumpet with Donald Byrd, because he was suggested to me. I wanted to become a trumpet player. I liked Miles and I liked Fats Navarro and people like that. But in fact, this idea of playing the trumpet was something of a fantasy, actually. I thought I was a good trumpet player. I could read, and I thought I had good technical training, and I wanted to go into Classical, Classical trumpet playing, like at the Manhattan School of Music and New York College of Music. So I began that search. But I didn’t feel that Classical music was what I was really interested in. And at that time, you couldn’t really study improvisation like you have today. So I began to be interested in improvisation as a process.
But as I said before, these things about being fixed are not necessarily my idea of being an artist. You understand what I mean? Like, when I start playing trumpet, I might make a painting. Do you see what I mean? So I’m saying that you have to look at my development.
When I decided to become a musician, that was about when I was…1961 or 1962. But the preliminary aspects: I was still painting, I was still drawing and painting and working on that aspect. So when I met Cecil, I met him on those levels, as a collector and as having an interest in his music.
The first I encountered Cecil on a personal level was when I was working for Whelan Drugstores. I used to work on 8th Street and 6th Avenue…
Q: Ah, yes. Now it’s a Papaya King.
AS: Exactly. An all-night place. Whelan Drugstores was a chain, and I worked there because my mother gave me a gig. And this job was great. I used to meet all the musicians and all the clubowners, who used to pass by at 4 o’clock in the morning and get hamburgers. And that’s where I met Cecil…
Q: Across the street from Nedick’s.
AS: Exactly. So Cecil was sitting there one day, having his hamburger and strawberry malted. And I said to him, “My name is Alan Silva and I’m a bass player, and I’d like to meet you.” So he said, “I’ve heard something about you from Bill Dixon.”
Q: How had he heard about you from Bill Dixon?
AS: Well, Bill Dixon is one of the persons I think that’s very much underrated in terms of the New York scene. Bill and I go back to about 1960, when I had a band called the Free-Form Improvisational Ensemble. The Free-Form Improvisational Ensemble was an experimental band based on totally free music. We did a number of concerts at Town Hall, produced by Norman Seaman. Norman Seaman had a new music series. And Bill came to hear the concert, and he loved the band so much and what we were doing — and he invited us to participate in the October Revolution.
Q: Give us a sense of what that band sounded like.
AS: Well, this band… The problem is that there is no real document… The band was Burton Greene, a flute player, Mr. Winters, a drummer who was an electrical engineer, who was my best friend, and three bassists — one was a history of science major who is a bassist… So it was like kind of an amateur art band. Let’s look at it that way. It wasn’t serious… We began rehearsing in the 1960’s every day…well, four rehearsals a week for three hours, and we recorded a lot of music.
The band was on a separate scene from themselves. The band was a free band. We started working on no writing, no compositions, what we called that. I would say first that this band was trying to sound like a Contemporary Classical music piece that had the energy and had the sophistication, and compositions that were totally organized by the musicians. I’ll say that we wanted to make the band sound as if it was reading music. And that was our goal that we were trying to achieve…
Q: And Bill Dixon heard you.
AS: And Bill Dixon heard us at this time, and Bill asked us to join the October Revolution at one… We did one concert. And then Cecil asked me to play on October Revolution with the saxophone player…with John Coltrane, with Tony Williams playing drums. That’s when I first entered…not actually entered, because I was actually trying to work on the Contemporary Music scene, not necessarily on the Jazz scene per se.
Q: Who were some of your antecedents as far as playing bass?
AS: Well, first of all, Mingus. I studied sometimes with Charles Mingus.
Q: What was that like?
AS: Well, Mingus was a great artist and a great bass player. I learned how to be an individual. I think that one of the great things that Mingus taught me was get your sound, get something that’s really your personal sound. And I think that training was unique, harmonically or the way you touch it, the way you pull it, the way… He was quite a bass player in the sense that he was totally committed to the technical development of a contemporary-sounding bass, slapping the bass… He turned me on to a lot of techniques that I was aware of in contemporary music. Contemporary string playing, for instance. I mean, Mingus was a cellist. So we were all involved with the string instrument. And I thought that Mingus was not trapped in some kind of a Jazz orientation. Again, Mingus is a unique American artist, like a Charlie Parker, in a sense, on his instrument.
One of the things you have to understand is that I was caught in between trying to make American music. And I thought that Jazz or Afro-American music was the music. I just felt as a composer that if I’m going to involve myself in American music, I have to involve myself here. Because I felt a lot of the schools were too much on the European orientation, and I wanted to really penetrate what was…to try to create American music. And I thought that improvisation was one of the key elements that American music needed to have.
Q: We’re eventually going to get to Alan Silva meeting Cecil Taylor and hooking up with him, and so forth and so on. But in this segment of the conversation, we’re talking about various within African-American music/Jazz who were influences. You were studying with Mingus. Were there other people?
AS: I would say Paul Chambers.
Q: A few words about him.
AS: Yeah. Paul, I mean, the bow. Mingus had the bow, too. But Paul really impressed me the way he handled the bow, in terms that he made it sing. Paul had an incredible technique, intonation, speed, phrase, in time — his timing was impeccable. And of course, like, the other one that’s fantastic, who sings with the bass…Slam Stewart. These impressed me. I mean, Slam Stewart was impressive. I mean, to sing along with your instrument… I thought that was fantastic.
If you want to talk about contemporary bass playing, then you would have to say cats like Sam Jones, or the bass player that played with Miles later…
Q: Ron Carter.
AS: Ron Carter. Now, this is… Or David Izenson, for that matter. Who influenced me earlier was Henry Grimes.
We all had Classical training. I studied with Mr. Zimmerman, who was the top-notch bass teacher here in New York, with the New York Philharmonic, for several times. But I was really interested in contemporary sounding bass playing, and that moved me into my own individual approach. And I thought that Cecil’s music would be a good vehicle for the kind of work I wanted to do.
So if you want to place me as a sideman inside a system of searching for new ways of playing, yes, me and Cecil both agreed that we needed to develop new types of ways of playing. And I think that comes simply because we loved the instrument. I mean, if you like your instrument and you like sounds and you’re interested in sounds… In fact, I think that’s what makes, I think, a great African-American improviser.
Q: Now, Cecil Taylor’s sound changed between 1962 and 1966 in a very distinctive way, from the documents that we can hear. Talk a little about that, and the development of his sound. Because it seems that he was, let’s say in ’62, searching for what starts to crystallize in the recordings around 1966.
AS: Yes. And if you have all the documents… I’m talking about Johnny Come Lately from that Transition record…
Q: Or Wobbly Rail…
AS: If you understand… If you have a good ear, and you’re really open, let’s say. Because I think Cecil had a hard time convincing people that he was an Afro-American musician or a Jazz musician. That was one of his hardest things, was to convince everybody. European influence, blah-blah-blah, all this type of period… I mean, even the critics recognized he had an incredible technique, but they didn’t particularly like the music. Do you understand what I mean? It was like technique over music. And I thought that that was not the real issue. The issue is the music first, and then the technique… Cecil had that type of stuff
But the record he made that I think is still a fantastic solo is the one he did for Impulse, on Into The Hot, called Bubbles. Now, this record, with Sunny Murray playing drums… It’s the most incredible rhythm section. The swing is incredible. This very poignant use of space and time, which he was learning from Monk… And what I loved about Monk’s music was his spacing, his idea of space, not cluttering the space up. And I think that this record for me… I used to say to Cecil, “Cecil, if you kept on playing like that, you might have been a little more successful in terms of the stylistic problems,” you understand… We kid him about that sometimes. Because obviously, he’s a very talented, very creative person — he’s got to keep moving. But I felt that this… He swang. The rhythm section was right on the button. I mean, it’s an incredible, poignant solo, very strong.
Then, of course, we started talking about Time, and changing rhythms and things like that. And I think that’s what’s incredible about this period, of what we call Swing; I mean, the idea of what Swing was.
Q: Talk about this new idea of swing at this time.
AS: See, the bass players were the key elements. I felt that bass players and drummers… Because that’s what happened when Ornette came to town with just bass and drums. Now, Cecil was a piano player, and the role of the piano player… And I think that Cecil was trying to change that role. But the bass players and the drummers, see, they had to deal with time and different types of elements.
So when I first heard Sunny Murray, as a bass player, I said, “This is a real interesting way of playing drums and an interesting way of feeling time.” And I had a very good understanding, because I knew about African rhythms, and I was very familiar with Chinese music. So I heard all that when he played. Now, this is the whole problem with people on Sunny. Sunny is a world-class drummer and percussionist. But since people have very little idea of how rhythm is put together, and even this whole idea of Swing… Kenny Clarke, for instance, who was the most fantastic drummer; I played with him in Paris… This idea of swing is really something that flows from the music itself. And we have this problem now of what I call square rhythm, something very definite. But I think that the Bebop…
Q: Rather than circular.
AS: Exactly. Or multi… I call it now multi-layered, you understand. What we try to do with those type of musicians is this multi-layer situation. And I think even in Bebop, in a really good Bebop band (when I say really good Bebop, I’m saying cats like Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers), it’s an adventure. And I think that when you have, like, Sunny Murray and myself and Cecil, there’s another adventure. And we need to have a horn player…you understand…?
So I’m saying when you look at the rhythm sections of that period, David Izenson and Moffett… I mean, there are so many varieties. Or Max Roach and Curly Russell. When we look at it in these ways, it’s not so fixed. And I think that we experimented openly with time signatures and different types of time signatures. So consequently, this was an open period, and it’s come together as a world music, a world-class music. And most of the musicians of my period always had a very broad perspective about what was music.
Q: [ETC.] Alan Silva lives in Paris a good chunk of the time, but he’s in New York now, working on a dance piece at the Dance Theatre Workshop… [ETC.] What we’re hearing now is an environmental piece of yours. So I’d like to talk about (a) the music that’s coming over, and (b) the theatre piece.
AS: The piece that’s coming over the airwaves at the moment is kind of a piece to cool… My current work is how I can make sound an intricate part of the environment. That’s in the sense that I’m trying to work now with this type of development. The piece that I’m working on now with Mrs. Gibson, which is called Buried Oak, is a piece that’s mostly by Mrs. Gibson in the sense that she is a choreographer, and she has written a story or a piece of choreography that I am involved in writing the music to, in the sense that it is a combination of things about expatriatism, and at the same time, how Art can grow in this type of environment. She’s the choreographer and I’m the composer.
I have written some of what I call computer-generated music. I don’t particularly like this word. I’ve been trying to search for more feasible way to understand how does an improviser use a computer. How I use it is simply: This is me, all of me, I might say. I have generated the music simply by my own improvatorial concepts, which allows me to select different times, different instruments. So this piece is based on that. It’s all of me in the sense of being a composer and a player. We’re going to hear a little bit of some of this piece now that we will perform at the Dance Theatre Workshop.
Q: Is the piece computer-generated, or is it being performed by musicians?
AS: No, this piece that you’re hearing is computer-generated. I improvised into the computer, and I selected these sounds.
Q: What sort of parameters are you using in terms of your improvising program?
AS: I like to sit at my synthesizer and organize structures on the synthesizer in terms of, like, I’m taking a solo. I usually do that by organizing six different strata of solos. Then I listen to…not playing against it, but trying to think of how I would play with this instrument. And that’s how I begin to work on my computer-generated music.
Q: It sounds sort of analogous to the idea of multi-layered rhythm.
AS: Yes, exactly. So I try to create something, and then I don’t hear that piece. I try to memorize what I did, and then I sit at the computer and play another track for instance.
Q: The first piece is cued. Do they have titles?
AS: No. Track 1.
[MUSIC]
This was a computer-generated piece I made about the summer of this year for a Florence premiere in June for Mrs. Maxwell. It’s called Buried Oak. Buried Oak‘s opening section now is an Ezra Pound poem, a translation of Chao Tsu, a Chinese 12th Century poet. And this is the opening, we call the procession part of that piece. [ETC.]
Q: We were discussing the very turbulent years during the 1950’s and 1960’s when a new approach to music was being generated by a rather small but highly influential and accomplished group of musicians, many of them, and we’ve been discussing some further implications of what we were talking about off-mike. In light of that, we’ve cued up one track from a number of documents that Alan Silva has recorded with Bill Dixon, whom you mentioned as having heard you with your ensemble in 1960. Now, you’re both painters.
AS: Exactly. In relation to the current work that I’m doing with dancers, I think that Bill was, as a said before, my mentor in this area, with Judith Dunn, who was the principal dancer with Merce Cunningham during the Fifties. We had a small trio, bass, trumpet and dance, and we premiered a piece at the Dance Theatre Workshop at that particular time, in the early Sixties, I think just before we did Unit Structures. Me and Bill were working as a duo, trumpet and saxophone, among the Downtown Art Scene, I would say. That’s with Aldo Tambellini, a very famous environmental video artist.
The idea that Judith had with Bill and I was to create three levels of improvatorial concepts in terms of visual and sound aspects. And I think that because Bill and I were painters, this gave us a pretty much broad perspective of what Art was and what art movements were about. I think Bill was very important in how we were going to use the dance as a score. And I later went on to develop other dance or choreographic aspects. Bill went to Bennington College with Judith to set up the Bennington College Improvised or Afro-American music, Black Studies programs during the Sixties, to develop a very interesting series of dances. I worked with another one called Heidi Stonier(?). She came to Paris, and we did a piece — one of Judith Dunn’s dance students.
So I have three or four lines that I’m working on, as you can see. I don’t like to be considered too much in one area. I like to consider what I’m doing as artistic, in the artistic realm, and crossover — you might use that word. The cultural aspect is very important, you see.
Q: I’d like you to talk a little about the structures of Dixon’s in terms of your performance within them.
AS: Me and Bill got along fairly well, and sometimes we had a lot of fights, simply because I refuse to do a lot of things over and over again, which he likes to do. He’ll always say, “Well, why can’t you play that over and over?” I say, “Look, I’m going to do that one time or twice.” So now we have a clear idea that I would never play so many things over and over again.
Q: That means it has to be a rather special piece of his to have you in it.
AS: Exactly. So he knew exactly that if I’m going to hire Alan for a gig, then he’s got to have his way. I was one of those bass players at a period where I had some ideas such as what improvatorial concepts were in relationship to performance, for instance. In the United States during the Sixties, most composers had complete control of the piece. They received royalties on the piece. But not too many people who improvised on the piece ever received any royalties. I was one of the first guys that started talking about, “Well, look, you didn’t write me anything here. I can play what I want.” So actually, who owns the composition? So me and Bill used to discuss these types of interpretation…
Q: And you’d have a fight once in a while.
AS: Exactly. I love him because… Well, he played trumpet, and I was an ex-trumpet player. I mean, I learned a lot from him as a trumpet player about the way to play trumpet. And when I heard him play, I knew that this really was a fantastic way of playing trumpet. We just sort of blend very well, this trumpet and bass duo, which Cecil always thinks is one of Bill’s greatest moments, and I think so, too, myself… I thought the duo was a very strong duo. And the trio with Judith was a very important musical event for the time, you understand.
We’re now going to play something that Bill asked me to do at the Paris… One of those pieces comes from two events that he organized.
Q: The recording is from 1980, on four records, Considerations One. He writes, “Places and Things (1976) is one of the sections out of the longer work, entitled Autumn Sequences, from a Paris diary. It was composed for and performed for the Autumn Festival held in Paris at the end of September and the beginning of October 1976.
AS: Right. And what was fantastic about Bill in this period… I know the people who do the Autumn Festival in Paris. He did a first concert that I think was twenty minutes. Twenty minutes. There were about 800 people in the room, a small room. And the people who organized the Festival said, “Are you finished?” He said, “Yes. Tomorrow is another day.” And I said, “Bill, we just played twenty minutes. Do we have another set?” “I don’t think so, Alan. I think that will be it.” And we went upstairs and had champagne. I said, “Bill, that’s really lovely. Okay.” I knew that he was very determined to maintain that he was an artist and he had played. And when the lady, who I know very well… She said, “Is he finished?” I said, “We’re going to dinner.”
So his integrity I really respect. And that Bill hasn’t received the tremendous amount of let’s say attention that he deserves… Because if you wanted to write a book about the Sixties, you have to deal with Bill Dixon, especially in New York.
[MUSIC: Places and Things (Bill Dixon, S. Horenstein, A. Silva), C. Taylor/Silva Tales, 8 Whisps]
Q: [ETC.] I want to play Devil’s Advocate with you. The music that you were involved in has been generalized and talked about as Free Jazz, or the New Thing, or the New Wave, and so forth and so on, and a number of either comments or accusations and so forth were thrown at the music. So I’m going to start with a couple of them. I’m going to throw them at you like I’m insulting you or something, and then I want you to respond. First of all, the music has no chord sequence, there’s no structure, there’s no foundation. Talk.
AS: Talk! Well, I think the problems when you have the clear structure, that question, no chords… Maybe we can look at the possibilities of the way people learn how to improvise maybe, and then we can figure out why this group decided to say “No chords,” or why did people seem to think that we were not playing chords.
The problem here is that you have to study… If you were really serious about that question, and you say, “Well, how do people generate musical ideas?”… Well, yes, you could say they are chord-generated, or they are scale or melodically generated. And I think the major issue here is not whether or not a person can play on chords. The major issue is whether or not you can constructively construct a piece of music in space and time. And since improvisation is part of that tradition, let’s say, that you’re able to create something in the moment, then how do you begin to create? So that means that when someone says, “Well, I don’t hear… You’re not playing 32-bar songs” or “you’re not playing a 12-bar blues,” it would assume that these were the only way in which music was created. And I think that that’s quite limited, considering the fact that Nature is quite broad, and there’s many different ways in which creation can be executed.
So my approach has always been to develop… Well, I consider it two ways. I like to listen to Thelonious Monk. I thought Thelonious Monk taught me more about how to improvise than, say, maybe Charlie Parker. You understand what I mean? I like the way Duke improvised. Whether or not we have to learn chords, it’s just simply the fact is, “Do we play on chords?” And I can tell you now from my current research that there are probably 50 or 60 million different ways in which you can organize any kind of scale on any kind of chord.
So the question is, do we play on chords. It depends on the player. So one player may be linear and one player may be vertical, and one may be even horizontal. Some people say you need both of them. I say, “Well, it depends.” So I think the current issue even now in the Nineties is, do people play on chords or do they play on melody. And I think the same issue was for Charlie Parker, and the same issue for Louis Armstrong, for that matter — or go back to the beginning of music.
Q: Now, one distinction might be that in the case of Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong, they were creating something new, and there is a continuum from the idiomatic tradition out of which they evolved their playing style. Does this continuum exist in the music of the Sixties?
AS: Well, I think if you seriously look at the music of the Sixties, with an objective ear, you can start by listening to certain things like what John Coltrane, who was at that point a leading improviser in what we call “chord music”, you understand… I mean, if you really want something about chords…
Q: Up and down.
AS: Up and down! I mean, he created the sheet of sound. So I happened to be there a number of nights that Trane would be with Miles, taking something like maybe 25 choruses, where Miles would say, “Well, man, how much can you have more to say?” So if we take Trane, I think Trane is a unique improviser in Afro-American music, because fundamentally he said, “Okay, I’ve learned that; now I’m going to move into this area.” He did things like Sun Ship, and things like that. And some people didn’t follow this road. But I think he was fully equipped to handle any kind of musical situation.
But in fact, I think he was just like any normal musician who is continuing to grow. And I think this issue is the issue of creativity, if you’re involved in music, and I think Trane or Ornette or Cecil are involved of the process of music. Now, the public has nothing to do with that. This is a professional thing.
Q: And an artistic thing.
AS: Yeah, it’s an artistic pursuit. And this is defined by that very clearly. If the audience doesn’t… Some people say, “Well, I liked Coltrane when he was doing the ballads, but I don’t particularly like Ascension,” for instance, I say, “Well, if you’re really involved in listening to an artist’s work, then you’re involved in his research as much as possible,” you see.
Q: Another thing that was thrown at a lot of the musicians at this period was “They can’t play”…
AS: Mmm!
Q: …or “They’re jiving” or “they’re faking,” or “X, Y, Z, A, B and D can play, but…” — and so forth.
AS: Yeah. I think I’ve heard that…
Q: A couple of hundred times.
AS: Yeah, a couple of million times. Let’s say Sunny Murray. Can he swing? Can he really play time? Can he really play the Blues? Or did Cecil ever play the Blues, or did Ornette… You see what I mean? Consequently, there was not one document that sort of synched(?) it… But like I told you when I began (?) with Cecil… I mean, Cecil was there! If you’re really serious about what he’s doing today, he’s doing what he’s doing!
Q: And going way beyond that.
AS: Exactly, I mean, in fact. So for me, in that particular part, yes… I am a well-trained musician. I studied music. And some musicians who came through New York, intuitively they were beautiful musicians, and it’s best that they didn’t go to school, because had they gone to school they might have messed up their creative energy to a certain degree. And some musicians are autodidactic, or what we call orally trained, are just as acceptable — from my point of view. Such a man who I worked with for a long time is Frank Wright. Frank Wright played the saxophone like no other person ever played the saxophone. And if I listen to Frank Wright, I hear something I never heard before. And that would interest me. If you’re not interested in that, then I’m sorry. You can’t talk to me about that. Because I am interested in the way the instrument sounds, and that’s what….
Q: And a particular individual’s own sound, and the collision or meeting with the sounds of others.
AS: Exactly. And that’s what I think, that the new music again surged into individuality… I think the Free Jazz movement really expressed that, that the spirit of the individual is most important, not fundamentally that the musicality is important. You see?
Q: You’re living in Europe, and you’ve been there for many years, and improvisation is your mode of expression. And in Europe there has developed over the last 25 years a rather substantial community of improvisers, drawing upon their own particular background, resources and so forth. Have you been associated with those people?
AS: Yes.
Q: What are your feelings about it vis-a-vis the broader world of improvising?
AS: I went to Europe in ’72, left the United States. I was very aware of the developments of the European improvisation. But at this time, in the Sixties, I was for Jazz, or improvisation on a world-wide scale. I didn’t segment it in terms of, well, this was American music and this was European music. I just thought if you wanted to improvise, then you’re part of this group, and those people who want to read music are part of this group. I made it very clear. And I remember, I made my first interview at a Swiss radio station, I said, “Well, 65 or 80 percent of the world’s musicians improvise,” so I don’t have the problem about Classical Music, you see.
So I think when I’m looking at the source of the Europeans in the Sixties, we were more collectively identified with each other, you understand. I don’t feel any animosity towards European improvisers in the Sixties, or in the later parts. Some musicians later started to build a “European improvisational group,” trying to establish some uniqueness. For me, I do not like nationalism, and I don’t like this at all. I think that Peter BrÖtzman plays the saxophone in a certain way, and when I pick up a record and I listen to it, it is not a European saxophone player, it is Peter BrÖtzman. Because I believe individuality is the essential issue is the Free Jazz music, the voice thing. So these people start to cornerize the market, like European Jazz is different than American Jazz, and I say, “Unh-uh.” If the guy has got a sound, for me it’s a certain unit.
Well, people say, “We’re working on something a little different than American musicians.” I say, “Mmm. What could be different? You play the saxophone? We play the saxophone. You play the bass…” That’s the only difference. So I think that some people are defending European music not a very good ground for me as a musician, as a worldwide musician. Because I am not trying to interest myself in… I am going to China, for instance, in May. I am only interested in improvisation. And as I said before, I am very clear about that. Some people are not so clear. German musicians are affected by American musicians. As you know now, it’s a big struggle between Europe and America on artistic… [END OF SIDE 2] …product and stuff like this, and the European musicians are feeling affected by the loss of jobs in their own territory. So it’s more economical.
Now, if we want to talk about the source of the music, this is a problem of governmental involvement. Now, we happen to be in America, which…
Q: Or the involvement of the market.
AS: For instance, yes. But the American market is primarily a private industry, and in Europe it’s been a governmental issue. So I think that the problems of European music… So getting back to the real difference between an American musician and a European musician… I don’t think there’s really a difference. I can play with European musicians and I can play with American musicians. This is my own personal thing. But I know that there is a difference, and this difference I won’t…
I will say culturally, yes. Yes, there are some cultural roots in European music that’s different than the American for sure. I’ve known that for years. Like, say, drummers. I mean, they had a hard time really swinging Bebop. That was one of their hardest… I mean, they couldn’t produce a drummer in Europe for a number of years. Bass players, too, until much later. Saxophone players it was difficult, too. Bebop was a difficult music for the Europeans to really grasp and to really articulate.
But a generation later, when we opened the music up to a wider scope, which Cecil did and myself, I thought this… We were all drawing upon a lot of different sources together. Stockhausen, American Indians… You understand what I mean? And these sources are available I think to all people. And this is why I feel… As for myself, I played with the Globe Unity Orchestra, and I’ve played with Cecil Taylor’s Orchestra. Cecil has done now a whole series of records…
Q: Duos and trios with European improvisers.
AS: Exactly.
Q: Which are extraordinary.
AS: Extraordinary pieces of music, and I think they will stand upon their own not because Cecil is Cecil, but just stand upon their own as sound documents. And this is what… I’m very impressed always with Evan Parker. I’m working now with Roger Turner and Johannes Bauer. I’m always impressed with their way of handling the sounds. And I love this. For me, I have no problem with them.
Q: We’re speaking with an individual who has generated one of the most distinctive sounds on the acoustic bass over the last thirty years, Alan Silva. You were speaking of being a world musician, but I think you may even have extended that in the title for your orchestra, the Celestial Communications Orchestra. The following pieces from a 1978 recording, Sun #3, Portrait For A Small Woman
Now, your first orchestral record is a semi-legendary piece of work from 1970, in part because of, it has to be said, the horrible pressing!
AS: Oh, boy, yes!
Q: It’s hard to hear what was going on.
AS: Right.
Q: And that’s I think three volumes on BYG.
AS: Three volume set. I think this was my first attempt in terms of recording… I mean, the tapes were fantastic, but I think everybody’s gotten some real bad pressings on that deal.
Q: The tapes are still around?
AS: Yes.
Q: So they theoretically could still be issued.
AS: Theoretically they could come out. I’m hoping that Charley Records, or Affinity, who has the tapes, would like to release that album. I want to hear it on CD. I’m impressed by the digital process, and especially on this record, which is extremely dense, quite interesting as a sound document.
Q: Well, 1969 and 1970 was a particularly unique time in Europe.
AS: Right.
Q: I know we keep digressing. But that’s when a lot of musicians from the Midwest, the AACM and other places, settled in Paris, intermingled with European musicians… Talk about that period. It was an incredible time.
AS: This piece that I put together in fact was during Christmas, it was December 25th or 28th, something like that… I was on loan in Paris, from the New York scene to the Paris scene. This particular exchange was I think engineered successfully by a producer there. The tricky part about this album is that it would never have existed had it not been for one cancellation of a very famous musician, Stan Getz, who was supposed to do a Christmas concert at the ORTF. Stan Getz could not come to the concert. So one of my friends who worked in the radio said, “Alan, what could you do?” And I said, “Well, why don’t we just put everybody that’s in Paris, and we could make a nice orchestra piece.” That’s the real history of that album. I mean, the Radio house would have never… The Director of the Radio house, who is Mr. Andre Francis, who really didn’t like Free Jazz at all, he was very, very conservative about his views…
So the event took place. And you have to remember that this was ’69, one year after the student revolution. We had almost 4,000 people at this concert that couldn’t get in. In fact, the French security forces had surrounded the Radio House, because there were 4,000 people outside and only 3,000 people inside. If you have a chance to listen to the record, that’s why I put all the claps on the end, I think about five minutes of claps and stomping. Because I was so impressed, I didn’t believe that this ever could… That’s why I did that as an historical piece. I think the musicians that are on it, from the Art Ensemble to German and French musicians… It’s an important document of that period.
Q: This 1978 recording that we will be hearing, however, talk about the genesis of this. The featured soloist on the piece we’ll be hearing, Communications, which you described as “out,” is Jouk Minor, a baritone…
AS: A baritone saxophonist. My residency in France from 1972 all the way up until 1982 has generated a lot of musicians around my work. I made an orchestra at that period, at different periods, that dealt with European musicians, based around my concepts of what I thought the music was. These albums represent some of the people who actually studied music with me, and helped me to build my school. These are the two or three primary players, who now are quite famous in the French Jazz scene, in a sense. So this is some of the work that we had done together in this particular period on that album.
And I think this album represents a kind of retrospect of my work.
Q: Up to 1978.
AS: No, I wanted to put some music on line, orchestral ideas, that I didn’t do on my 1969 record. You understand what I mean? In the sense that it is some pieces that I conceptualized here, like Broadway, from the point of view of this music is not totally improvised. There’s a lot of written music. And this album was conceptualized as a possibility of anything I could do after that, you see.
[MUSIC: CCO, Communications, The Shout, Wright/Silva/Ali, Center Of The World (Pt.1)]
The area between being a bass player, being a composer and bandleader, or being an orchestra leader and a composer during this period of the Seventies, when the last things that you hear are European pieces, and working with Frank Wright, the Center of the World Quartet, which I thought was one of the most successful of what I would call people- living-abroad bands… We were one of the most successful Americans-living-abroad bands in the Seventies that didn’t go back to America — let’s look at it that way. From this resident group of musicians, there were two bands that were left, the Steve Lacy Sextet and the Frank Wright Quartet (or the Center of the World). As you know, Steve Lacy and I have maintained ourselves abroad, and Bobby Few has… So Steve has continued world stature, using Paris as his base. That band he created, the Sextet, as you know is quite well-known on the world-wide scale.
But Center of the World broke up in the late Seventies. Frank Wright went on to make other music with other bands. I went into the educational business, making the Institute for Art Cultural Perception, and the orchestra became my vehicle, in the Seventies and the late Eighties, of my productions. After that I didn’t do too many quartet albums.
[PAUSE]
I’m currently working with two European musicians, an English drummer, Roger Turner, and Johannes Bauer, a trombonist from East Germany (which is now no longer the East) who comes from a very fine family of musicians, the Bauer family, which has Kenny Bauer, Conrad Bauer — I mean, this family is full of bass players and trombone players. We decided to make a little trio, and the success of that has been… We did the Nickelsdorff Festival last year. It’s not currently working that much, but we are now working on a CD which you will hear some tracks from at the present moment.
And I’m working with a man named A.R. Penck and Frank Wolley.
Q: A.R. Penck is another person who is dealing with a dual artistic or creative identity, and is best-known and probably best financially remunerated as a painter.
AS: Exactly. And as a sound document. I like Ralph because Ralph worked with Frank Wright for a number of years, and I thought he did a number of festivals here in New York. I thought he did the Sound [sic: Sound Unity] Festival one year; he sponsored something with Frank Wright and Peter Kowald, I think. He’s done a number of Sound festivals in London. He sponsors himself.
I am currently involved with one of his projects, the trio, called the TTT. Butch Morris, of course, has been with TTT for a number of years, along with Frank Wright. I just joined the organization after the death of Frank Wright, so I decided to join that group. And this record you will hear later today with Jeanne Lee, who has been working with A.R. Penck…
[MUSIC: A.R. Penck/Silva; Bauer/Turner/Silva; Silva (environmental sound piece)]
AS: The last piece is a computer-generated piece which is run with environmental sound of a piece I wrote for an art exposition in the town of Duren(?). If you can hear the water mixing with the sound… It was done for an art exposition environmental sound piece.
The one before that was my new trio, and we hear four short selections that will possibly be coming out in the near future. Here I guess I’m exhibiting myself as a synthesizer player.
So those records have a whole different line of what I’m currently working on, synthesized music, I don’t play too much bass… I use bass inside the synthesizer.
[ETC.]
I have always been interested in institution building. And that means, consequently, that I believe in musicians’ control. And my whole life has been devoted to actually trying to control my art. I would say that Bill Dixon and myself, that’s the problems we might have in contemporary society. See, people who like to control things…
Q: The market. Capital.
AS: For instance. Or the ability to be a producer. Or the ability for some musicians to have some control over their existence. And going further into actually building institutions that really reflect musicians’ attitudes, such as what I try to do at my school, the Institute for Art, Culture and Perception. The most important thing is that musicians of my generation, what I feel was concerned with institution-building… I really respect the people from the AACM for the long work they done in continuing that spirit. We had the Jazz Composers Guild in New York, and we didn’t achieve the objectives set up by the organization. But I am very respectful of the AACM for their continuing to try to be a musician-controlled institution. And this what…
Q: What you’re about.
AS: What I’m about, actually.
[ETC.]
[MUSIC: C. Taylor, Niggle Figgle]
This was a fantastic concert. I think we had just finished doing the two records, Unit Structures and Conquistador, and we came to Paris to do an art project. And this piece I think is probably… Student Studies and Amplitude is really interesting; it’s a longer piece. I like this piece because of the speed at which the energy is flowing. But the other two pieces are very important pieces of Cecil in terms of space, time, energy release. He never curated any pieces like this before, later… I think this band really understood space and time in a very deep sense, and that’s what I really remember about this piece.
Today Is The Question: Ted Panken on Music, Politics and the Arts 