Quest for the third ear: recording a sonic odyssey
All musicians are the sum of their musical influences. Their third ear makes a mashup of them all to derive a meaning that becomes their own distinctive voice.
I was weaned on bebop and only got to reggae in the 70s. If you listen you will hear the bebop influence in the reggae music on my debut album ‘Treesongs’.
My own sound odyssey began as a child. Earliest musical memories (pre-5): Charlie Parker: Groovin High, Millie: My Boy Lollipop, John Coltrane: My Favourite Things, Billie Holiday: Summertime, Dusty Springfield: Anyone Who Had A Heart.
Tubby Hayes, Bobby Wellins, Ronnie Scott, Jack Sharpe and my single dad practicing all night in some hotel or at home. And I’m there, wobbling on my feet. The years I dreamed of cocoa and a clean warm bed. I really didn’t appreciate them on the sax because of the sleep deprivation and neglect of those years. I could hear what they were doing. They all wanted to be Charlie Parker, and Tubby was obviously closest, but they all bored the kishkas out of me with all their doing difficult things at superspeed, especially at four in the morning. I didn’t actually mind Bobby’s playing so much, he came with a more gentle vibe sometimes, just didn’t like Bobby, not till I grew up. Ronnie I always liked as a man and a player, especially when he whispered on the horn.
Out and about in down time or hanging and chilling at home: soaking it up with Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Milt Jackson, with Errol Garner on the living room piano as the lovely Rita Marino smiles. It was the only normal I knew, but I sensed from age 6 that I could never match up to such elders. I tried all the instruments, blowing, tapping, but couldn’t make them do what the grown ups could.
I tried again with drums, age 10, when long-term house guest Mikael Silva (from Sammy Davis’ band) set up his kit in the living room. Then with Phil Seaman. Then Victor Feldman (who made drum-lesson tapes and sent them to me after he went back to LA for Steely Dan). Nothing was formally arranged. They just happened to be around. Must have had a year or so’s learning with each, just long enough to set me on the path. Drums it would be.
Ginger Johnson opened my eyes to the Ancestral African drum vibe at my coming of age. Ginger, the pioneer who influenced Fela Kuti to undertake his path. I have enjoyed playing traditional African hand drums ever since, including briefly with Rebop Kwaku Bah in 77. Never played with Speedy though I liked him better; don’t know why not, I generally saw more of Speedy than Rebop or Ginger, especially at Ronnie’s club, but I guess the moment just never presented itself. Like with Bob.
In the 70s I plugged into my Caribbean roots too, with Island’s Lesley P and others bringing me into the circles of Rico and Bob. The 80s also saw me vibesing with Pablove Black, Culture, Mad Professor, Hugh Mundell, Freddie McGreggor and others. In the 90s I worked with Byron Wallen and with a Tanzanian drum troupe, and was close to some of the souljah founders of the potent North London underground Soul scene.
Not much playing since the 2000s, not until the past year - when the Treesongs album emerged like magic. Everyone I’ve ever been blessed to have as a musical presence in my life is in there.
Till now, I only played music because of growing up immersed in it. When I was around musicians in my 20s and they felt my experience they were usually glad for me to play with them. I really had learned the music right alongside spoken language and I thought in music, mostly bebop, as much as in words as far back as I can recall. Because it was my home language I’d always assumed a certain level of feel and knowledge as just normal. I’d never studied or practiced, except drums.
I never considered myself a serious a musician, an intentional one. I never stretched myself, never had to put any effort into learning so I didn’t bother. It was all by ear and feel. I heard Tubby and my dad experimenting with the cycle of fifths on their tenors one night down at the old place behind Harrods, must have been 8, and recalled it by ear when I was gifted a marimba 10 years later. I don’t do score or know what all the chords and scales and stuff are called, but I know what I want to say when I’m playing and trust to my body-memory to find the notes I want when I want them.
How I play: Bebop is Drunken Master style in music: deceptive, full of incredible surprises, sounds like it’s tipping and tripping any second, but stays up on its feet, second liners wobbling with wings, miraculously, how do they keep marching on, these saints?! I don’t do much of the split-second greased lightening miracle stuff on vibraphone, not like Tubby or Victor or Milt. It’s never been my thing because I’ve never been a bebop purist. But like the beboppers, I never know what will be played until it comes out, the notes and phrases on the album are as much of a surprise to me as to the listener. Improvisation: trusting your instrument to allow the flow of your stream of consciousness in real time.
First you have to know your instrument of course. Years of marimba gave me a head start on vibes. Melodica was a new trip for me, and one that turned out to feature as lead on some tracks on the album. It’s a great instrument to play, so expressive, you can use it a bit like a voice, hear it talking. Important to tell the truth with an instrument like that. If you listen closely you will hear Billie Holiday phrases in a couple of tunes, the instrument invites her kind of approach: doleful and soulful to merry and gay (in the old sense of the word). Obviously, my greatest influence on melodica is Augustus Pablo. I saw him play once and knew right away that he was the greatest and truest jazz musician in the reggae world. East of the River Nile, killer album.
Because the jazz world was just part of my childhood normal, I never realised what it meant for me to be playing with big names from my own generation like Mad Professor or Byron. What I was playing was not as skilful or intelligent as Milt Jackson, Dizzy Gillespie, Errol Garner, Tubby Hayes and the rest of the immortal giants of jazz I was raised among. ‘What’s to be so proud of?’, I thought. I was right in a way, but not because bebop is the ultimate, it isn’t, it’s just an ultimate, like dub. No, I was right because I never really stretched to make a musical language or style of my own, it was just a bit of easy fun. I was lazy.
TreeSongs is me playing with purpose and belief for the first time ever. Stretching and putting in some care, some effort to give my best. Finally giving expression to the sounds of that third ear. Driving it forward with conviction and swinging it hard for a reason.
With this debut album I’m finally owning and using my musical odyssey instead of being held back by it. And with that comes a responsibility to pass it on, as Bob would say.
With the ‘TreeSongs’ album I have properly entered my musical prime, probably because all my creative powers are now activated by completion of my debut novel: ‘The Songtree: A Windrush Tale’.
I am no longer ashamed of not being Charlie Parker. Proud to be Remi D. Proud to have inherited hints of Charlie Parker, Milt Jackson, Theolonius Monk and Billie Holiday in my playing, right alongside elements of Jackie Mittoo, Bo Didley, Augustus Pablo, Fela Kuti, Lennie Hibbert. It’s rare that an album has a style so different that it can start a new category. Reggae with an Afro bebop twist, though. That IS different! And that is ‘TreeSongs’, the album! A brand new groove.
Can’t help being curious to see how people will react to the album as there is literally nothing else like it out there: kinda like the old Count Ossie and Studio 1 style but in a 21st century vibe and with a bebop accent.
For more on all topics to do with Abracadia and its work, don’t forget to check Abracadia’s weekly spoken word offering at the ‘Bit Of Soul Podcast’. Come and say hi, pass by for a try. Be great to see you there. Just roll up anytime to listen, chill and reason at the lush and refreshing oasis that is Abracadia.
Until such time - In Ubuntu
Remi