The New York City Jazz Record Interview:

With Fred Ho
By Ken Waxman

Composer, bandleader, baritone saxophonist, political activist and cancer survivor, Fred Ho has forged a singular path since the mid-1980s. Known for his multi-media creations, evoking his Asian heritage alongside African-American influences, Ho has received numerous awards, while his fight with colon cancer is documented in a new book.

The New York City Jazz Record: Both of your big bands are being featured this month. What distinguishes one from the other?

Fred Ho: My core band is the Afro Asian Music Ensemble [AAME], founded in 1982. The AAME is a sextet often used as the instrumental ensemble for many of my operas, for example, Warrior Sisters, Night Vision, Voice of The Dragon Episodes 1, 2 and 3, etc. The Green Monster Big Band was founded at the end of 2008 just after my diagnosis of a third cancer tumor and I was only given 1 in 30,000 chances of living. I wanted one last venture with my favorite musicians so a big band was logical. Until The Sweet Science Suite: A Scientific Soul Music Honoring of Muhammad Ali which premieres this month and includes dancers-choreographed by Christal Brown, the AAME was the group that played the scores to my operas. The AAME celebrates its 30th season for 2011-2012. Before composing new works for the Green Monster Big Band I listened to all the important big band recordings of the 20th century in order NOT to regurgitate any of these influences, but to create a big band repertoire that would represent the apex of the African-American large form.

TNYCJR: Are there musicians in the bands who have played with you over that 30 year period?

Fred Ho: No one has played with me for the entire 30 years. The tenures of my AAME are drummer Royal Hartigan since 1987; saxophonist Masaru Koga: since 1998; saxophonist Salim Washington and I didn’t professionally perform together until 2006 although he and I were musically collaborating since our days as teenagers at Harvard University; bassist Wesley Brown since 1995; pianist Art Hirahara since 2000. [Saxophonist] Sam Furnace played with me for 20 years before his death in January 2004.

TNYCJR: Most of your works over the years have been extended compositions. Were they extension of concepts by Duke Ellington and/or Charles Mingus you appreciated when you were younger?

Fred Ho: While I love the music of Ellington and Mingus, I have chosen not to regurgitate anyone or any influence. My extended works are the result of my desire to compose film scores of fantastical imaginative new worlds and new beings. The closest comparison is to Sun Ra’s cosmo-dramas, though my works are more narrative and utilize more stage production craft. I call my operas ‘living comic books’ or ‘manga operas’. The concept of opera is very radical, ‘root’ and ‘experimenal’ according to dialectical definitions: literally in Latin, to be ‘The Work’ and not just with singing and staging. For example, my martial arts operas feature martial arts instead of singing.

TNYCJR: Saxophonist Archie Shepp and trumpeter Cal Massey influenced you as a younger musician. Can you describe what each contributed to your work?

Fred Ho: I was a teenage when I studied and performed with Archie Shepp, in the early 1970s, when he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where I grew up. Archie then had a great sensibility about theater, and uniquely for a ‘jazz’ artist, had some of his early plays produced in New York. Archie had met and formed a close bond with the older Cal Massey, who Archie described as ‘the Coltrane collaborator.’ Cal’s music was at that time an important part of Archie's repertoire, including the musical, Lady Day, for which Archie, Cal and Stanley Cowell were musical composer/collaborators. I was very fortunate to not only be exposed to this music, but to perform in it. Cal’s music especially resonated with me, for its searing revolutionary politics, harmonic complexity and clarion soulful melodies.

TNYCJR: Were there other pivotal musical influences on you?

Fred Ho: All the baritone sax players, from Harry Carney, to Leo Parker, to Serge Chaloff, to Pepper Adams, to you name it, influenced me greatly, so much so that I clearly did not want to regurgitate any of them. I’m Chinese American. I wanted to play Chinese/Asian American baritone saxophone, not ‘jazz’ baritone saxophone. All the big bands influenced me. So did all the great composers. I revere the music and the artists so much so that I never want to replicate or allow them to have any direct influence upon me. Sun Ra influenced me to create cosmo-drama-like epic musical journeys on a shoe-string budget.

TNYCJR: Most of your projects celebrate such non-mainstream figures as Malcolm X, Mao Zedong and the Black Panthers. What difficulties have arisen trying to perform and/on record music involved with subjects like these?

Fred Ho: I was told by a celebrated record label and its executive producer that if I had Malcolm X on my album cover, with the U.S. flag turned upside down that the recording wouldn't be distributed in the U.S. I was told by the first executive director of Jazz at Lincoln Center that while I am a talented composer and arranger, that I was completely wrong when it came to politics and ‘jazz’. I was told by the director of a division of a major music licensing agency that I would never ever have a career again for opposing racism in the music business. Repression against me wasn’t blatant or conspiratorial, it was ‘ignore him, he'll be marginalized and that’ll be his end’. The carrot and the stick. The carrot as many hope that if they keep their politics hidden, obscure or unnoticed, that they’ll have a chance to become ‘stars’. The stick as a former executive at a one jazz label I recorded for said to me: ‘This won't sell’.

TNYCJR: Your newest work honors Muhammad Ali. Isn’t he a more mainstream and less revolutionary figure than some of those who you have composed works about in the past?

Fred Ho: Damn man, Muhammad Ali was a revolutionary. After he wins the Olympic gold medal in boxing, but is refused service in his hometown diner, he throws his medal into the river. After he becomes the youngest heavyweight champion of the world, , he announces that he has joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali. Ali opposes the U.S. war in Vietnam, citing ‘No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger!’ He is stripped of his title, denied a career in the U.S., imprisoned for six months, vilified as an un-American draft evader, loses every penny he’s made, barely able to make a living, and can’t box professionally in the U.S. for over three years, at the height of his abilities. Against a far superior opponent, given no odds to win, the only boxer to knock out George Foreman, Ali, regains his title, becomes a hero beloved among the Third World and among all anti-racists and anti-imperialists, and has achieved world-wide recognition. If that isn’t revolutionary, then what is? My personal interest to homage Ali is motivated by how much his courage inspired me to fight on during the darkest days of the cancer war.

TNYCJR: Many of your CD length suites include what many would consider less-than-serious song as well as other material, including the Spiderman Theme and ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’. How do these pop-artifacts fit in with your other work and why record them?

Fred Ho: Again, a spurious dichotomy when what I do is create a ‘popular avant garde’. I have recontextualized ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ to be about the fall from the Garden of Eden. Did you examine the score? It is far more sophisticated than you might presume; for example, the voicings. The Spiderman theme is a blues. Is any blues less or more a pop-cultural artifact? Mission: Impossible theme is in 5/4 meter and I regard it far ‘better’ than Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’, which is supposed to be less a ‘pop’ piece because it wasn't a TV theme. I picked Spiderman because he was a breakthrough superhero character who had neurotic problems, human faults and weaknesses, etc.; ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ because it took up an entire side of a pop record album, the first time this was ever done. It’s often used in zombie and horror films for its ‘pagan-istic’ quality, but I chose to create a contrary view; instead of the prevailing and predominant view of human history as an ‘ascent’ from the primitive to the modern and civilized, but rather, as a descent from nature.

TNYCJR: In the past you have said that you dislike the word ‘jazz’ to describe your and others’ music because it is used pejoratively by whites to denigrate the music of Black Americans. Do you still feel that way? What about that the ‘jazz’ word seems to have been taken over by black conservatives such as Wynton Marsalis?

Fred Ho: Does the fact that gangsta rappers use the word ‘nigga’ lessen its deprecation? ‘Jazz’ is a racial slur and the continued usage ghetttoizes the art form, meaning, if it is truly America’s classical music’, then why call it ‘jazz’? Russian classical music isn’t called Ruzz. French classical music isn’t called Frazz. Chinese classical music isn’t called Chazz. I discuss this topic in an essay ‘What Makes 'Jazz' The Revolutionary Music of the 20th Century, and Will It Be For The 21st?’ in my book, Wicked Theory, Naked Practice. Wynton Marsalis is a Negro comprador. It makes sense he perpetuates the Auto-Oppression Syndrome so prevalent among the colonized and oppressed.

TNYCJR: Many of your CDs say that the ‘old’ Fred Ho died on August 4, 2006 from advanced colo-rectal cancer and notes that the ‘new’ Fred Ho was born on August 5, 2006. How is the “new” Fred Ho different from the “old” Fred Ho?

Fred Ho: I am 54 years old and simultaneously six years old. This is not gamesmanship or trying to be eccentric, it is very palpable. I am far more creative than ever before, and have reached a higher level mastery of baritone saxophone playing eight octaves. Here is the new Fred Ho: a. Eliminated ego; b. A part-time farmer and aspiring Luddite; c. Committed only to his mission on the planet to do the music/art and politics that no one else can or will do. d. Committed more than ever to living the impossible. e. Living life while prepared for death

TNYCJR: How will your health affect your future plans?

Fred Ho: One is never ever free of cancer. On one hand, the physical losses are tremendous; on the other, the philosophical and creative gains are tremendous. I have let go all baggage from the past and am only future-forward-minded. I have something few people ever have: the ability to see beyond corners, edges, boundaries and lineaments.

Do I sound like I have a chip on my shoulder? My legacy far exceeds that of ‘jazz’ and it is precisely this reality that is unfathomable and inconceivable to almost everyone in the ‘jazz’ industry On top of this, I’m financially more successful than the heralded ‘stars’. The enigma of Fred Ho is akin to giving Fred Ho one in 30,000 chances to NO chances of living from cancer.

--For New York City Jazz Record November 2011

November 10, 2011

Monk’s Music Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making

By Gabriel Solis
University of California Press

Originally scorned, then patronized, yet eventually lionized, the career and compositions of Thelonious Monk (1917-1982) offer a lesson in the evolution of musical reputations. Today, both jazz’s neo-conservatives and its avant gardists claim the pianist’s as one of their own. Each makes its claim based on interpretation: fidelity to Monk’s scores or his ideas.

This volume synthesizes the situation, but except obliquely, comes down on neither side. Gabriel Solis, a professor at the University of Illinois, analyzes Monk in terms of sometimes bewildering academic theory, provides notated transcriptions of Monk’s records and compiles opinions of more than a dozen musicians. What emerges confirms his statement that “looking backwards and forward are not necessarily mutually contradictory.”

First active in the mid-1940s, Monk was a bop fellow traveler, but never a bopper with his anti-virtuosic approach to rhythm and harmony. Famous by the 1960s, he maintained his idiosyncratic style. Monk’s compositions’ playful mix of linear and cyclical motifs is defiantly post-modern. In his self-contained world, he re-recorded the same tunes and often refers to others he had written during improvisations. Cast in standard head-solo-solo-head formation, the compositions are inimitable. As pianist Jessica Williams says: “A musician playing a Monk tune sounds like Monk because Monk tunes sound like Monk tunes.”

Following Monk’s death however, the burgeoning jazz repertory movement turned from the ideas of older musicians who interpreted Monk’s challenging music their own way. As Solis writes: “All jazz performances involve …the act of molding something new out of something old [from which] … musicians develop the sense of their own place in music”.

Instead Monk’s son, drummer T.S. Monk, under the auspices of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, created authorized scores, “classicizing” the music as a link to the mainstream that went back to Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and forward to the neo-boppers, including trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and pianist Marcus Roberts. These classicists “advocate a right way to play Monk’s music along similar lines and each have borrowed extensively from the cultural legitimacy of the Western classical tradition,” writes Solis. He asks: “Why would a canon developing in the final years of the 20th century, for an African American music … itself primarily a product of that century, follow a number of modernist aesthetic ideologies more reflective of 19th century European music?”

Although Monk sidemen such as saxophonist Steve Lacy relate that once Monk decided on a method of playing his tunes he stuck to it, they also mention his humor. This quality is missing from bland Monk tribute CDs analyzed by Solis. Marsalis plays Monk in “a mannered fashion” and Roberts presents “perhaps the purest canonical approach to constructing Monk’s legacy” on a recording permeated with “the portentous air of seriousness”.

When “outside” musicians interpret Monk, however, as the Art Ensemble of Chicago did with pianist Cecil Taylor, they re-contextualize the melodies with additional rhythmic inflections as well as quotes from other versions of the piece. “The avant garde sees Monk’s music as a set of vehicles for improvisation that extends the expressive registers available to performers,” Solis writes, concluding that “they rather than the institutional mainstream can be seen as the real keepers of jazz’s core tradition.”

As he writes: “Conflict between mainstream and alternative orientations in jazz and Monk’s place in the conflict can shed light on … the uses of music in the making of socio-cultural positions … and … allows for a consideration of alternatives to the classicizing model of historical jazz repertoire”.

For someone as idiosyncratic as Monk, that judgment appears just about perfect.

-- Ken Waxman

In MusicWorks Issue #101

July 2, 2008

ART BLAKEY: JAZZ MESSENGER

By Leslie Gourse
Schirmer Trade Books

Art Blakey was the hard bop drummer par excellence. The versatile percussionist could accompany anyone from Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver to Dr. John and Billy Eckstine, amplify their ideas and make them sound better. Furthermore legions of promising soloists passed through the ranks of his Jazz Messengers during its more than 30-year existence, honing their skills and being trained as potential leaders. You could almost say that the mainstream, neo-con version of jazz was created and nurtured by Blakey with many of its most prominent figures -- definitely including Wynton Marsalis -- former Jazz Messengers.

At the same time, the poorly educated, Pittsburgh-born drummer was an inveterate liar, not above telling several versions of a story to anyone who would listen. He was often untrustworthy and treated money haphazardly, always partying and lavishly spending more than he had. His careful placement of accents when he played wasn’t reflected in his driving, which was erratic and sometimes dangerous. And if his habits meant coming up short in the wage department for his sideman, it didn’t seem to bother him. Which may be another reason the Messengers “graduated” so many musicians.

Married -- and divorced -- four times, with three of the relationships legally constituted, Blakey, the casual bigamist, was also the father of 10 children, most of them legitimate. Additionally he was a junkie for most of his life -- favorite kick: heroin -- and someone who unlike Miles Davis or Gerry Mulligan, for instance, who both finally went cold turkey, never stayed off the needle for very long.

Trying to traverse the contradictions in Blakey’s chameleon personality would be a major project for anyone. Leslie Gourse, author of 30 books, who made her reputation with best-selling biographies of less mercurial types like singers Nat “King” Cole, Sarah Vaughn and Joe Williams is somewhat out of her depth dealing with Abdullah Ibn Buhaina to use his Muslim name.

You can tell Gourse, who never interviewed Blakey when he was alive, is having trouble when you note that the slim (209-page) volume, begins with three pages of the drummer’s “words of wisdom, mantras and maxims” and eight pages of chronology. Furthermore, the book has no discography, although she frequently interrupts the narrative to run down the personnel of nearly every later Blakey LP and cites contemporary reviews of the sessions.

A proud fighter for jazz -- every one of his performances included a plea to the audience to buy more jazz records by anyone, not just the Messengers, Blakey was also a proud African American. Associated with the hard bop genre that was almost exclusively black, his take-no-nonsense attitude left him with a serious head injury after he acted too “uppity” on a Southern tour in the 1940s. Yet he harbored no racial animosity. Two of his wives and many of his sidemen were white, and he always insisted that jazz was an American, rather than an exclusively black contribution to music. His conversion to Islam also seemed a catch-as-can decision, since reconciling a heroin habit with the Koran would take some doing, and his few attempts to follow a proper, no-alcohol Muslim diet and lifestyle were doomed to failure.

That’s the frustration with this book. Although Gourse seems to have done impressive legwork, interviewing as many people who were associated with the drummer and reading as many press accounts as she could, she ends up with factoids rather than insight. Perhaps, as can be expected from someone who has also written a book on Marsalis, she overvalues the tenure with the Messengers of someone she characterizes as “the handsome wunderkind”. Still, readers with the sense of humor Marsalis lacks, will probably the amused by the drummer’s oft-repeated opinion that Marsalis should have stayed longer with his band to learn more about playing jazz.

Other than that, most of the anecdotes that don’t suddenly turn into stories not involving Blakey -- a common failing when dealing with someone who was in the centre of the gossipy New York jazz scene for more than 50 years -- tend to be of the common hero worship or petty annoyance variety. Sidemen, friends and relatives rely petty grievances, while other sidemen, musicians, journalists and bookers explain what a great player Blakey was and how this or that situation was affected by his attitude and skills.

Gourse is also so unfamiliar with the scene or unintentionally naïve at times. In what might be the understatement of all time at one point she writes that: “If anything put a damper on Blakey’s life during this time -- aside from the American public’s lukewarm attitude towards jazz --…” and goes on to describe the murder of Lee Morgan. Cocky Morgan, the Jazz Messengers’ earliest star trumpeter, was spectacularly shot to death on stage at New York’s Slug’s Saloon by his jilted common-law wife. Witnessing the shooting may have affected patrons and other musicians on the stand -- many of whom were also former Blakey sidemen -- a lot more than the drummer, who was so busy working he didn’t attend the funeral. The incident also (ahem) “put a damper” on Morgan’s life and career.

Because of his important work codifying hard bop and creating one of the most powerful and most instantly identifiable drum styles, Art Blakey obviously should be honored with a serious biography that outlines his achievements. Gourse tries, but unfortunately she seems out of her depth. If you’re an absolute completist when it comes to Blakey or hard bop, then definitely investigate the volume. It has some telling anecdotes and good research

The rest of us can hope that someday someone else can pick up the drummer’s story and tell it as well in prose as Blakey did on his kit.

-- Ken Waxman

March 24, 2003