Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal/Europe ran my interviews with John Cale, Robert Glasper, Joan as Police Woman and Ari Picker on the future of music. Since the Europe edition is unavailable in North America and my interviews needed to be shortened to fit, I thought I'd make them available here in their entirety...
Robert Glasper, 35, won a Grammy this year for his album Black Radio. The jazz pianist's follow-up, Black Radio 2, will be released in the fall...
"Jazz over the next 10 years will continue to evolve—just as it has for the past 100 years. How quickly new styles emerge, however, will depend on the willingness of jazz musicians to listen to other forms of music and adapt them in their own expressions. Most jazz today is still rooted in the past or is so far-out that it’s lost on many younger listeners. Too many jazz musicians have given up on melody and instead play to impress other jazz musicians—not the listener. To be fair, it’s a struggle today. Jazz musicians used to connect with listeners by re-interpreting familiar tunes or composing new melodies. But today’s popular music has changed—leaving jazz musicians with less to work with. You don’t hear too
many new songs with melodies you can hum. Instead, the emphasis is on beats and bass lines. But a new jazz form is emerging from musicians who are mixing hip-hop, soul and R&B with jazz. Some older musicians have complained that the results sound more like R&B than jazz. I disagree. We’re just stretching the boundaries and thinking of jazz differently. Jazz doesn’t have to use old Songbook standards or sound crazy to be considered jazz. Album soul from the 1970s offers jazz musicians an entirely new and exciting Songbook. I like to draw from this era and what’s happening now without losing the jazz characteristic. I do this by keeping my acoustic piano in the mix and not electronically looping anything. Part of what makes jazz special is the feeling that a human being is playing every note. This doesn’t mean that musicians have to play extended solos. In the future, I think long solos will be replaced by a greater emphasis on new sounds, layered music and samples—and shorter solos. My music is textured this way—without giving up the jazz idiom. Jazz, ultimately, is a mood, a feeling. That won’t change."
John Cale, 71, is co-founder of the Velvet Underground. His 15th solo album—Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood—was released last year. He will release a single later this summer...
"The future direction of music demands that musicians today lose themselves in technology and learn from their mistakes. In the past, musicians tended to view technology as a nuisance—something someone else did so they could be left alone to create. But technology and music are merging rapidly—forcing musicians to view software as part of their composing and arranging palette. Performance rock, in particular, is becoming granular—meaning artists must find new ways to make the most of small things. Young bands don’t have the gear major bands do, so they will have to focus on getting big sounds out of more meager resources. Performance artists also will have to become sound designers. How you bathe the listener sonically needs to be considered from the start. Technology and risk-taking
will be key. The only way I can approach writing now is to start each song from a totally different place —words, music and phrases and beats. This exercise pushes me to leave pre-suppositions behind and enter unfamiliar and even awkward creative territory. Lately I’ve found myself working more on arrangements using traditional instruments but looking for ways to bolster their intensity with technology. On my last album, I recorded about 20 tracks of the same viola part and stacked it, glued it and tortured it. Some critics thought I had hit a software button, but I hadn’t. The sound I'm after is a true hybrid of real instruments and technologically altered sound. Experimenting this way starts out as a great mish-mash and only gets better with practice." [Photo above of John Cale by Shawn Brackbill]Joan Wasser, 42, is a formally trained multi-instrumentalist who performs and records as the indie rocker Joan as Police Woman. Deep Field was released last year. Her fifth album will be out early next year...
"Before I share my thoughts about the future, you need to know I still record the old-fashioned way. In the studio I’m meticulous about how real instruments sound, and I continue to write songs with a beginning, middle and end. Even my stage name has roots. When I started performing solo in 2003, I felt I needed a name that would adequately describe my music—a difficult predicament. One day I was walking down the street wearing this '70'S baby-blue polyester three-piece suit
when I ran into a friend. He gushed, “Joan, you’re channeling Angie Dickinson from ‘Police Woman.’ ” It has been my name ever since. I think about music the same way. I’m constantly looking for new ways to make my music relevant and seductive. I love combining fake sounds with real ones—overlaying electronica with the violin, piano and horns. I’ve also been using more computer technology on my albums. I’ve been taking classes in Ableton Live—music-recording software that can be used as a live instrument. It’s great for beat-making, loop-making and sampling. Today’s software is mind-boggling—you can severely alter any sound. In my apartment, I have a piano, guitar and amp. That’s still the way I write songs. But over the next 10 years I’m sure technology will play a bigger role in my performances and recordings. That doesn’t mean my music will be synthetic. My songs and arrangements will have to sound like they came from me in some way. I’ll just have more sounds available to illustrate what I’m feeling and imagining."Ari Picker, 31, is founder of the orchestral-pop band Lost in the Trees. A Church That Fits Our Needs was released last year. His next album will be released early next year...
"Over the next 10 years, producers of electronic dance music and hip-hop will continue to have a huge influence on all forms of music. Hip-hop and dance production styles have the flexibility to merge with almost any other type of music. This allows for a lot of cross-pollinating, and it’s creating some genre-bending stuff. Many artists now are trending in this direction because of the music’s immediacy. The ability to make people want to dance is such a powerful way to communicate art. I’ve been
fascinated by the current music climate. Our last album—A Church That Fits Our Needs— was dense with classical concepts and orchestral textures. But my new one will be more minimalist and beat-driven. We brought on a producer and I let him lead the project, which was an amazing experience. He helped me hold the music out in front of me so I could manipulate it in an objective way. A good producer today can push you in directions that initially think are too far. As more artists seek the help of good producers, more of them will become comfortable with discomfort—and you’ll hear that reflected in their music. A good producer has intimate knowledge of what’s going on in many forms of music. As the number of artists and albums released grows, this knowledge will be critical for artists to stay current and stand out. Artists tend to be stuck in their own creative worlds and don’t always know the wide range of possibilities out that there available to them. Good producers do."
Used with permission by Marc Myers
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