Black Issues Forum: Branford Marsalis: Master Musician

this three-time Grammy winner with roots in New Orleans now calls North Carolina home meet the masterful and complex Branford Marsalis net on black issues for quality Public Television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting unc-tv hello and welcome to black issues forum I'm Natalie Bullock Brown Branford Marsalis is already well-known as a masterful world-class jazz musician but he's so much more educator humanitarian family man and most recently recipient of North Carolina's top civilian honor the North Carolina award for the past 10 years he's called Durham home and today we'll talk about his recording career and what has earned him this distinction in our state but first here's a brief introduction on today's special guest Branford Marsalis a member of the Marsalis music dynasty that includes patriarch Ellis Marsalis on piano and brothers Wynton on trumpet del FeO on trombone and Jason on the drums Branford Marsalis is an accomplished musician unto his own together with his orchestra and instrument of choice a smooth supple saxophone Branford has mapped a musical journey dotted with Grammy Awards a Tony Award nomination and solo performances with acclaimed classical music orchestras like the North Carolina Symphony Branford's deep soul and compassion have transcended music as many witness through his philanthropy building the New Orleans habitat musicians village after Hurricane Katrina in his most recent musical contribution he's joined by pianist Joey Cal Durazo faces Eric Rivas and drummer Justin Faulkner scheduled for release on CD digitally and on high-definition vinyl the album features a collection of original compositions Thelonious Monk classic and a 1930 standard that delivered the full Branford and plenty of what's made him another gem in the Marsalis music dynasty it is with great honor that I welcome today's guest Branford Marsalis welcome to black issues forum or is it to be here it's good to have you let's start off by getting a little background on what brought you to this area why did you move to Durham and what's kept you here it has great economic diversity in other than being being in New Orleans a Durham looks like a really great place to be a city that knows what it is a city where the people who live they are proud to be from there to the point of irritation like Pittsburgh you know look like Cleveland Chicago people they love being from Chicago Durham Durham i'ts always talking about the Bull City baby that's right I live in term damn right and New Orleans is the same way so I like being in the city that has that kind of a self-assured identity so tell us what about your time in Durham has informed your latest recording songs of north and melancholy should that good it's a it's these these things don't really it's kind of like life there are times when someone can actually point to a specific event that forms your life or transforms your life for better or for worse but I think it most times it's little small events that transform your life over time people who have strong views about one thing over time suddenly their views begin to amend I was I was somewhere and a musician was talking oh the North Carolina Symphony had a concert a great concert kids concert called green eggs and ham this composer came in and he was talking about Mozart and he said to to the children something about the notes that Mozart chose this is why he chose these notes and I turned to the general manager Scott Freck and I said uh I said uh these are the sounds he chose not the notes he chose because notes don't actually exist and Scott gave me that look like you know here you are being a contrarian again and I said it afterwards I said no man it's a very important discussion because when I teach music students it takes a long time to get them to a point because they've been inundated with that idea that notes exist when in fact it's an invisible construct I mean it helps our life it makes things easier it's kind of like words mm-hmm Society existed before words if words were to disappear society would still exist and we would still have conversation there would be many great ideas that would be lost that would be the great tragedy of it but society would exist and when I can get musicians to think in terms of sound as opposed to those technical specificities that are mostly just largely men men invented by mankind it changes how you hear the music and in that that's the thing that we do and so talk about what you've been doing in the education arena in this area you've you're teaching at North Carolina Jennifer and have you also taught at other schools I have I taught at Michigan State I taught at San Francisco State I think that's it when what do you enjoy about higher ed about teaching oh that level just fight fighting with the kids I enjoy challenging them a lot of them are not used to it they haven't been challenged and they resented at first but then there's that moment when the light bulb goes off in their heads and they get it and then I kind of cry kind of cry I cry and then they get even more confused about me but one thing when you when you when you can when you can pressure somebody that to change their point of view and they have to change it you can't change it for them but you just constantly asking them questions and it's amazing how if there's anything that I want to do at Center is just we it's focused on the education side because these kids come in in there their music education is so bad when they come to school that it's it's shocking I'm not going to tell you just unbelievable stories but the the I guess the general sense of it is is that you have kids who come in who have never heard a classical record never heard of jazz record and then come in and they they joined the jazz program Wow have you never heard of jazz record so the first month is just like a horror show for them because they're hearing these sounds assaulting their ears they don't know what it is and my thing is we don't really perform us find their way I'm not trying to develop performers I'm trying to develop thinkers and I want it my dream would be to have 15 or 20 kids who become teachers in this in North Carolina and then at some point you years from now I have a student who come in and say yeah well I'm you know my band director and it's one of our students played this record for me and I've never heard this before and this is what I want to do because there are there are potentially a lot of great jazz players out there they just don't have any access and access is the key to everything let's talk about the classical work that you've been doing sounds like for quite a few years but I want to set it up like this because you've done a little bit of everything you've played with sting you've played an R&B band when you were younger you've played with the Dave Matthews no with Bruce Hornsby Matthews and Dave Matthews probably only right you've done hip-hop I mean you've done and of course you're a jazz musician so what talk about your work with some of the great orchestras of our country but also talk about what draws you to a musical project in general because you don't seem to be daunted by genre I didn't grow up with the idea of genre again it's kind of like the conversation about notes genres don't really exist human beings for whatever the reason we feel we we feel comfort in categorization I think probably because it allows us to not have to think too much what do you mean by that you have people who say I like hip hop so they already know what that is and when you when you watch the reaction in their face when they hear a style of music when they don't know what it is for everyone 25 have an instant opinion about it and it's never a good opinion because it is not what they know they're not even curious but then everybody has a curiosity so as the brain starts to pique the curiosity they choose to suppress that because it's going to it will probably force them like I said earlier it will force them to change their point of view that the to change their that we all live in these narrow worlds that we consider large and expansive and then something occurs that is about to expand your world and you say no no no no I have my world right here I don't need you coming in here and messing up what I know because then that's going to change everything that I think right but then there those people were just like man there's so much I don't know let's go get some of this let's go get some of that let's go find out about this and I was I always had that kind of curiosity and I was lucky enough to live in the city where it embraced that ideal let me ask you something that along those lines because I've been hearing a lot about some things that the trumpeter Nicholas Payton has been saying about jazz and and and calling jazz black American music instead of jazz yeah yeah and so that you know there's sort of an age-old debate about well why don't black people support death and it seems and I'm want to know from you is does it have to do with this this categorization this you stay on that side I don't understand this music so I can't embrace it what about I was asked this question it's very funny it for an article and it's really funny because when I gave him the answer he didn't include the question he didn't include it in the article when you play art music you make a decision i'ma play for the people who like it okay if they green because there's just not enough of them to be warned about what color they are and when Nicholas got into this whole thing and the people who side with him I was reading one of the things I didn't even know anything about it and people started asking me else because I don't really spend a lot of time on Facebook so when I read it I told the musician friend of mine so what do you think about that so it's not really a discussion about music it's a discussion about territory and all I want to talk about in the music world is music so what do you mean territory I said basically he's inventing this new category he's basically saying like jazz is black American music and because I'm black therefore I'm a great jazz musician is that what he's saying or is he saying the black if it's black American music then by default black people should support it no I didn't read that he was saying they should support it he was basically saying that you know his point of view is superior to the other points of view okay and he doesn't use any musical terms to defend it because you read that you read it and then he's kind of attacking jazz writers and attacking this guy and attacking that guy making comparisons between mulgrew miller and Atmel dow who most of the audience won't know who they are so I really didn't want to try to name names because I know they were these people Google Google ads fan google it right you know so it's so they that the whole discussion is about territory and then the people who chiming inside side with him is is that you know because if we really want to get down to it jazz is black American music there was a music that was essentially invented by Africans while playing European instruments and because of segregation it is a music that is an African Americans perspective on people who watched people play John Philip Sousa military marches so because if it was all about Africa then the Sudanese would be the swing and his cats on the planet they are Satan to the blackest and you go to Africa I don't hear any jazz in Africa so clearly there's more to it than just Africa right yeah African American means a lot of things right I mean there's a reason that there's a reason that a lot of us don't look like we're from Senegal anymore so at that point to me what blackness is in America is more it's it's a cultural identity let's talk about the awards you just won the North Carolina award how did it feel to win that and what are you going to do with that experience what does that do for you yeah I'm not really an awards guy I was honoured I got to meet vollis Simpson who's a young man he's not young is 90 years old 93 who builds what he calls worldly gigs up near Wilson North Carolina and he was one of the funniest most generous kind people that I've ever met and that's what I took from it and we're eventually going to get the kids out to go watch his whirligig farm because the city of Wilson has kind of embraced him and they put in a lot of his artwork into the city proper but there's still a few things left and one of the great things he said was I just made stuff that I like and one day some guy showed up and told me it was art and I think that's the best description of what this is it's the best description I don't play jazz because I want to play art it just happens to be art but I just one day I heard it and said now I won't do that what was it like composing for Broadway and then being nominated for a Tony that's amazing well we're back to that award stuff again II don't really Annette answers the same but uh that was a great experience Kenny Leon who was the director asked me to do it and I just kind of used my regular process I bought the play read the play several times I was familiar with the play had seen it and I kind of wrote based on how his writing affects me emotionally and Kenny said nah man that's not gonna work you got to come see the actors this is that is not it's not gonna work that way and my schedule was cramped and I found one day I said I find I come in on this date I fly in watch it and then fly out and by the time they were done Denzel Washington and Viola Davis was weeping at the table Wow and I said okay man you're right I needed to see it because I wrote the music based on my emotional experience with the play not theirs and suddenly when I saw their emotion experience I had to rewrite 80% of it to try to capture what I felt was what they were trying to convey so yeah violas Wow Denzel it was fantastic was it a given since you come from the great Marsalis clan your dad as a musician just by everybody is in your family all your brothers just about our musicians was it a given that you were going to play jazz and what did your dad do to nurture you guys musically it was a given that I wasn't gonna play dead no one thought I was gonna play really I played on beat music when I was a kid but wasn't your dad playing jazz records at home so oh this music oh not yours dude me he played him and then he was when his hour was up then I started playing mine and it was Earth Wind & Fire and my Isley Brothers and Funkadelic and Led Zeppelin I like that King Crimson Hendrix that was my that was my stuff that was my stuff then I turned 19 and something kind of clicked where I got to this place I was playing a gig with this singer William Bell he had a big hit called trying to love to in the seventies and start listening to music and it started to become simpler and simpler to play simple and simple over here and my brain just said I need something else I can't I can't envision doing this for a career because I think that if you're not the singer / songwriter playing that stuff gets pretty droll after a while and I had to find something else in my roommate at the time was Marvin Smitty Smith who was the drummer on The Tonight Show with when Kevin took over Kevin Eubanks took over and he played this Miles Davis record Nefertiti and that was it for me I heard that record and said oh man so jazz isn't just some stodgy old music from the 40s it's this other thing and that that was the thing I say okay I'm in can I tell you something hmm when I was in college I was eighteen and somebody played Renaissance man for me same experience Renaissance man viewers is an album that Branford Marsalis did back in 1909 t-that reg is called Renaissance Renaissance times I never thought of myself as a Renaissance like I appreciate that that was that it did the same way thank you absolutely I got one more burning question to ask you given all of the different music that you enjoy what's on your iPod right now man a lot of stuff is on my ipod what are you listening to yeah that's a fair question right now at this moment mostly a Renaissance music interesting 16th 17th century Italian composer named Barbara Strozzi and Monteverdi magicals and I just bought this this record of music from the 14th century English music from the 14th century by the Folger Consort and it's the name of the record is music in the time of Shakespeare okay so what is this about what are we doing listening to all of this I music is a weird thing you don't really you can't have that like I said the cost-benefit analysis you can't because you have no I have no idea how this will affect how I hear music in the long run but I just get to a place where I need to find something else to listen to other than the stuff I'd been listening to is my brain kind of says okay well it's enough of that you got anything else you know I went through my my hip-hop phase and my arm B phase and my rock-and-roll phasing and I don't attend if I went to revisit music I usually revisit music that is more complex in nature because the stuff that's not complex in nature I can't remember the last time I put on an old be record from us my teenage years and heard something new in them because I listen to them so exhaustively that it's not a lot not a lute and it's a much simpler bass player playing the same line over and over again drummer playing the same beat over and over again guitar player sand playing the same part over and over again there's not any hidden gems why I never heard that before I remember the first time I was real istening to Miles Davis record the song was all folks I guess someday my prince will come in the record and he plays all folks and he plays the a section in the melody I'm right before he gets to the B section he leans in the chair and the chair creaks and I was so excited because I hadn't heard it I've been listening to the record for a lot of years and never heard the chair Creek recordings are funny because when you think about when you listen to music it's disassociated because the sound is coming at you and you like it you sing along to it or you listen to it but you never have the visualization that people are actually in a room doing it right it's just this magic thing you hit the box and you press the button and sound comes out is is amazing I mean but when you hear a chair creaks suddenly you realize there is a human in a room and suddenly the microphone where it is how he's okay now I know he's sitting he's not standing it's like the whole thing changes and I live in that record hundreds of times and had never thought about that so they're also records ever when I hear him in here parts that I didn't hear before and that's usually classical music because it's so involved and so complicated there's so much going on that I listen the traditional American Way I learned the bass the melody line and the bass line and all the stuff in the middle with some of the better composers there's a lot of stuff in the middle and it takes a while for my brain to kind of wrap its head around what that is so whenever I do go back to listen to music that I've heard before it's usually that stuff because I'm just trying to make myself a better musician and give myself more information with which to use in my own writing and my own conceptualization of the muse renewed okay thank you very much ma'am for for being with us we really appreciate you taking time out of your very busy schedule to be with us today my pleasure thank you now let's take a look at Branford Marsalis from a recent performance at the Duke Reynolds industries Theatre in Durham for more information about today's discussion with Branford Marsalis visit us online at unc-tv org slash vif you'll find links to email us your comments and join us as fans of bisque on Facebook or you can call us on the bitline at nine one nine five four nine seven one six seven be sure to meet us right back here each Sunday afternoon at 4:30 for black issues forum I'm Natalie Bullock Brown reminding you to be encouraged no matter what peace and blessings tell us how your life in Durham fed into your latest recording songs of myrrh and oh my gosh I forgot the songs of Merc the melancholy thank you I'm sorry I oh no goodness sorry no you leave that in you know just like a cut it out I was just oh wait a second sorry damn cell phone sorry guys see I would leave that in when anyway no you're not yes yeah oh you're okay well why is the red light off it was off I just saw I see did you think that I think that it was all quality Public Television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting unc-tv you

Channel: PBS North Carolina

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Rating: 4.6279068 out of 5

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Id: X8-7VSgYBu4

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 22 2012