Don Byron—On Life Outside the Box

by Makani N. Themba
SeeingBlack.com Political Editor

Certain blacks! Certain blacks do what they wanna…
—Art Ensemble of Chicago

1970. There I stood in the expanse of my elementary school auditorium staring down nervously at my reflection in new patent leather shoes. My weight shifted from side to side as I listened for my name. I was to stand in the middle of the stage and audition for the school play, an adaptation of the then off-Broadway hit, The Me Nobody Knows. The play was a musical made from the bittersweet poetry of "ghetto kids"—a "natural" fit for us at P.S. 28, a school near Manhattan's Harlem-Washington Heights border.

As I began to sing, the teacher stopped me. "Your voice is beautiful but you don't sing very Black. Where is the Black sound? How do you manage to sing without that Black thing?"

I stood silent and confused. I was Black so how could I not sing Black? How could it be anything else? The teacher continued in the dark silence as I stood there blinded—literally and figuratively—by the great white spotlight. "Try it again and this time be yourself. That kind of phrasing is much too complex for people like you."

I just walked off the stage in tears, thinking I might as well have been a gorilla.

Thirty years later and we are still surprised, threatened and titillated when people of color break the bounds of white imagination. In the 1960s, you could do it by being a Black doctor or a Black lawyer. Today, a Black governor, Black quarterback or (gasp!) Black president is still enough to send people into a frenzy. White imagination of Black potential forms such narrow boundaries that is easy to find yourself outside the box of expectation.

Perhaps nowhere are the boxes smaller than in performance art. The fascination such stereotype bending engenders only proves the rule. We might as well all be gorillas. Gorillas playing the violin. Gorillas singing opera. Gorillas reciting Shakespeare...

Perhaps it was my own struggle with both white carnivalization of Black achievement and, simultaneously, the fight to widen the range of what is Black that drew me to Don Byron. The honest truth is that I've been fascinated by Byron for years. The way he stretches the narrow confines of "Black musician." And the way it straight up messes with white folks. Still, Byron doesn't play the "exceptional Negro." In fact, he satirizes it; analyzes it and holds it up for what it is.

His fluid move through various incarnations of jazz (from so-called avant garde to Latin, to straight-ahead), klezmer music, hip hop as well as some incredibly complex, category-defying compositions, have won him both critical acclaim and consternation. He even seems to change physically with each dimension: the cd photo for his quintet recording No Vibe Zone: Live at the Knitting Factory (Knitting Factory Works, 1996) features a smiling, bespectacled Byron looking calmly into the lens. The hip hop flavored, harder-edged Nu Blaxploitation (Blue Note, 1998) has Byron in leather and dark glasses, his hands extended in a rapper's pose.

I wanted to talk with Byron about how he copes "outside the box." What drives him? What keeps him fresh? And from what deep well does he draw his varied inspiration?

We met right after a performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, or BAM as the locals call it. He had just gotten through an hour set with a bunch of kids ranging from fifth grade to high school called Tunes and Toons. The show focuses on compositions used to score cartoons. Byron himself has written scores for the Tom and Jerry Show.

In many ways, the set was a multi-media, instructional version of his album Bug Music, a beautiful big band collection that pulls together the music of Duke Ellington, Raymond Scott, and John Kirby. The title of the album is drawn from a classic Flintstones episode that satirized the Beatles as noisy, dissonant "bug music." Byron, in liner notes that border on poetry, saw the connections and drew it.

Yes he does, in fact, write his own liner notes—painstakingly working to explain the concept behind his art so folk won't get confused. He didn't do a Mickey Katz album because he wanted to break away from jazz but to unite the forgotten, Yiddish inspired music with the rest of the "lost ethnic" music; the music that the white juggernaut of musical convention either crushed or drove underground. Tuskegee Experiments, Byron's haunting, lyrical solo debut (Elektra, 1992) is about what he calls "the two experiments conducted on Black American men at Tuskegee Institute." The first was the infamous federal "study" of 200 Black men with untreated syphilis so that their agony unchecked could be observed. The second was the recruitment of the Tuskegee Airmen. Black men were hand-picked and put through tremendous trials and indignities to prove that Black people might be capable of aviation. Both cases are "metaphors," writes Byron, "for African-American life."

So back to BAM. The show is over and Byron is exhausted and a little miffed. The kids were slightly inattentive—riveted by normal standards but it's still a little disconcerting for Byron's taste. He's concerned about their narrow tastes, their lack of appreciation of music as craft, as work. He talks easily as we wait for the driver to take us back into Manhattan where we end up at a funky French joint in the village that so strongly resembles the genuine article, there are exposed pipes in the ceiling and aging, faded mirrors on the wall. We settle in a dark corner to chat over food and wine. He's animated, thoughtful, gazing over wire-rimmed glasses framed by locks that are wonderfully wild and unprimmed.

During our nearly five-hour chat, I'm struck by how incredibly challenging it is to be a Black musician who dares to define himself. For some reason, I keep thinking of Jimi Hendrix. How he had to fight to break the boundaries. And how white acceptance did real violence to who he was. These folk are still holding him down and trying to scrub the Black off. Yet, you can still hear Jimi cry for help—the way he asserts the blues and funk in everything. Like that riff of Sly in We Gotta Live Together. Byron, too, stays true to his roots as he romps outside the box. All of his roots—Stravinsky, Ellington, Coltrane. Then there's that badass hit of Mandrill (you know, "Mangoooooo!") and Jimi (If 6 was 9) on NuBlaxploitation.

MT: You know I have to ask you the "variety" question. The question that everybody has asked you with maybe a little different twist. My grandmother used to always say there are just two kinds of Black people -- those who are trying to prove those folks right, and those who are trying to them wrong. You play all this different music from all kinds of traditions. Is this about who you are as a musician, or who you are not? I mean is there a common thread that you see that you move between these traditions? Or are you trying to be the kind of musician people can't categorize.

DB: I think a lot of white folks take my work as if it is a stunt to freak them out. And for me, I mean let's face it when somebody is talking about that they are asking, 'Why are you playing that Jewish [crap]? How did you get to that Jewish [crap]?'

MT: Well that's not what I am really asking.

DB: Well, that's not what you're asking, but that is the question usually. For me, part of the reason that I have had this kind of funny path is because I chose to climb into it. Essentially, I could see early on that they weren't letting no brothers play no clarinet for anything important. That was just not going to happen. So I went from basically going to conservatories and studying clarinet, to working with some of the Latin groups in my neighborhood—and trying to get involved in there on a writing level, understanding what was happening. That brought me into jazz. And then out of studying jazz, I went to New England [Conservatory] and somebody started the Jewish stuff.

Essentially, the clarinet pedagogy was so stupid. What they were doing was essentially trying to charm people out of getting involved in improvised music or knowing more about music. Even now, I hear from kids that they are running this [crap] that if you play jazz it will [mess] up your sound. You know all of this stuff is basically anti-jazz and racist at the same time. So, I would say that a lot of the music that I have been through is just a path that I made up. If you want to be, say, a jazz alto player, you could study jazz alto from beginning to end. Jazz clarinet is jazz repertory [crap] played by white guys. There are no Black folks in it. None! You could go to New Orleans and find a hand full of brothers playing jazz clarinet but essentially it belongs in the realm of jazz repertory which is notoriously non-integrated. Its totally like our history has been co-opted.

I was as unwelcome there as I was in classical music. So, part of what's happened to me is that I have made a lot of my own opportunities. I mean even just playing modern jazz on the clarinet is just a hard thing to do because not that many cats are really doing it in an uncorny way. The way that that happened was, when I was in Boston, all of these young lions -- cats like Donald Harrison and Greg Osby—were all around. We were all playing together. And I just wanted to keep up with them. I just wanted to play the same kind of vocabulary that they were playing. And they were brothers. And they were welcoming to me. And I appreciated the hell out of that.

So, I wanted to play on that instrument what the contemporary language was. You know a lot of white clarinet players are really saddled by that Benny Goodman thing. They can't get out of it. They can't get to anything that is contemporary. I was never really welcomed there. I always get the feeling that no matter where I go somebody is always telling me that 'You ain't really this. You ain't really that. You can't hang yet. You ain't smart enough. You don't play good enough.' Those things have always been said to me on the clarinet. And basically I have dealt with them by trying to study more music and study more clarinet.

MT: So let's talk about Dick Sudhalter and his piece in the New York Times about how white jazz musicians don't get their due.

DB: You know, I wanted to see the Wynton [Marsalis] letter, because what is interesting about Wynton is most of the time he is mouthing off about other Black musicians. So I said, "Wait a minute. Here is this paper that is like a mouthpiece for this cat. And is he going to respond to it?" I just wanted to see what he was going to say. He didn't say anything so **** him.

There is this whole vibe that jazz is just too hard for niggers because white people are studying it. Once, when I was at New England and all of the brothers that went to New England were sitting around trying to play Giant Steps. This white guy comes in and says, "Oh, that sh** is too hard for you." Walked into a room full of Black folks and said that sh**!

Reading Sudhalter, it almost sounds as if there were all these afrocentric Black critics. These are all middle aged white guys arguing with each other. And what they did at that [historical] moment was basically—but it was not said—was to differentiate between jazz and pop. Essentially, if there was no American racism there wouldn't be any need for Glen Miller. There were already Black bands that were twenty times as slammin'. That doesn't mean that some white guys didn't come along who were down with the level of intensity that Black folks were playing with, but I mean it is a pop version like Vanilla Ice as opposed to House of Pain, right? House of Pain or Third Bass were not brothers but they were down with the level of intensity, and the actual style of music. Where as someone like Vanilla Ice was involved in doing a pop thing. Now, if you go back and start saying that everything is jazz, it's like saying everything is hip-hop. Everybody knows that Vanilla Ice wasn't no real hip-hop, but that's what they are doing.

A cat like Sudhalter actually learned to play and came up through these systems that are remnants of that whole era of the Glen Millers or some of these "ghost bands" that are still going. And white cats are still coming through those bands. All of this is still going and they are developing young musicians. None of them are Black.

Nobody is not giving props to Charlie Hayden. Nobody is not giving props to Jimmy Giuffre. These cats were innovators but you can't equate somebody who has spent their whole career imitating Bix Beiderbecke, who was imitating Louis Armstrong, and say that he was equal to Louis Armstrong. The question for me is this: can something be considered jazz if it was never intended for "Negroes" to hear it?

Nowadays, when you talk about race you must be a racist. When you are talking about a white band, it is unfair to say it sounds different than Count Basie's band. Of course it did. You go to the Glen Miller gig and people are just kind of dancing like this. You go to the Count Basie gig and mother******* are throwing each other up in the air. It's different music because there were different people serviced with it. They were doing different things on the dance floor. They had different functions in society, especially in that era. Black folks had an underground feel. The whole social context around Glen Miller's music was way over ground.

MT: Much of this is connected to how race and intelligence is so 'twinned' in people's minds. It's like these Siamese twins. Breaking out of those bounds of white perception of what we are 'supposed' to do or know is a political act.

DB: Yeah! It doesn't have to be. But it is. And this is what my last record was about. The new racism is both occupational and intellectual. Except there is a new twist: white folks are entertained by their own racism. Take a band like Hootie and the Blow Fish. I really don't think that much of them as a band but they could only exist because of how they publicized their [act] —the shock of seeing this brother sound like that. That was their whole thing. Those other cats, they could walk around the street and nobody would recognize them. It's all about the brother. The Tiger Woods' [crap]. It's occupational racism.

small window of what I am supposed to know. And that by crossing over—crossing over into sh** that I am not supposed to know and maybe even in some cases sh** that they don't know about—I have this entertainment value. White people are actually entertained by their own racism. They are entertained by Tiger Woods. But you know what is always interesting about that spot, that Vernon Reid spot, that Tiger Woods spot, is that there are never too many spots. That is always the tip off for when it is intellectual/occupational racism.

I always like it when Black [musicians, artists] get interviewed by Charlie Rose. There is always this point in the interview, when what this person has accomplished is reduced to genetics or, "Gosh, that church you were brought up in…" Then, he's got it. Then he can move on because it's not about a Black man making choices or learning some sh** that you know. There are white cats on there that are like, "Oh well, I decided to learn the blues so I learned," but he has never done that with Black folks.

MT: It's some sort of native/influence thing.

DB: It's never an act of choice. And I think that what people really pick up on more than anything is that I do regularly make choices.

MT: I want to ask you a bit more about your influences. What about Wynton Marsalis' comment that avant-garde jazz is like this blip, like this temporary thing, almost like it didn't mean anything? I think I hear its influence a lot. I have heard it in your music if I am not mistaken. I have heard it in Steve Coleman…

DB: You see whenever cats like Wynton and Stanley Crouch say that somebody is avant-garde they are basically doing two things. They are telling you that the cats can't play jazz. And they are also giving people that have had bad experiences with the avant-garde a signal that they are not going to like this music and they shouldn't even bother to check it out. That is the dangerous thing about it. Stanley Crouch came to New York being exactly one of those types of musicians, playing really bad avant-garde drums. He couldn't keep a beat, couldn't keep the time, couldn't do anything. He was one of those cats.

And I don't think avant-garde means much of anything else. Think of the space of all the music that happens in America. I mean people don't even say that a band like Sonic Youth is avant-garde and all they are doing is playing free, playing noise, playing sound. It's always interesting to me how much noise people will tolerate on the guitar. If it's on the guitar you can play like no music at all. That guy [from Sonic Youth] can't even finger a scale. And he'll tell you that. But he is one of the heroes of the guitar. So even meters and stuff like that in the space of American composition, this is nothing. It is really nothing.

But one thing about [Wynton] that really bothers me, and I always wonder about, is that every once in a while you will see him insulting some brother. When he never like calls some white cat on that. Never. I am always wondering like here is a cat that is funded by the Lincoln Center. That's funded by Phillip Morris and has all of this white money and influence and is basically insulting other musicians about their lack of jazz. And like did the people that put him on ever think about the irony in that? Plus if he couldn't play classical music, he'd just be like Wallace Roney. He'd be another trumpet player. He used that sh** to publicize himself even though at this point he's not playing classical music all the time. But that is really what distinguished him from a lot of other cats in that period.

MT: Do you think that part of it is that by playing classical, you become a safe interpreter because you are versed in what they consider "mainstream high culture"? You are, for them, an intelligent critic.

DB: Well there is definitely that but he like publicized himself with all these stunts like marching up on stage while Miles Davis was playing. Dissing Herbie after he played with him. He publicized himself by doing what the white folks thought would make him more "objective".

MT: No, he is "refreshing." That's what white folk call you when you dis Black people… (laughter)

DB: Now that's [messed] up! That is true though. (laughter) That's really true but it is awful. Refreshing. That is awful.

MT: Your music on Nu Blaxploitation, Tuskegee Experiments and other recordings—has a lot of sharp political commentary on it. Is there any relationship between the art you make and some kind of larger social change "thing"? Is there anything that you particularly try to convey?

DB: I just try to be consistent. And I just try to address what's happening currently. It's easy to get down and talk about the past—even Tuskegee Experiments, although its not the safest thing to name your first album after, is far enough in the past that the people involved are dead or in an old age home. So, white people of today can kind of look at them and say, "Oh, those poor misguided [fools]." With Nu Blaxpoitation we were talking about things and people in the present. I think when white folks are talking about racism, their first instinct is often to exonerate themselves. It's like, "Do you think that I am a bad person just cause I am white?" We don't have to go there but let's get to what you think. Let's get to what you do. If you think niggers are criminals and they are stupid. If you think that Black folks can't play or understand classical music or you know we are just about Mandingo-ing and raping [folks] whenever we get a chance—let's hear it.

Like we are supposed to talk about race and not talk about whiteness. That's like doing a piece about slavery with no white people in it. To me that's some sad [crap]. That's about as unthreatening as you can get on a subject that's quite relevant. It always flips me out when I see Black movies and there's no white people in it. It's like, what world do you [fools] live in? How do you make money?

MT: So what is next for you? I hear that you are doing an acoustics thing.

DB: Yeah, I just did a quartet record with Bill Frisell, Jack DeJohnette, Drew Gress—this young bass player who's getting around. It is really nice music. It's funny. That record, there will be a lot of babies made to that record.

-- April 9, 2001

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