Anthony Braxton lunch on March 31, 2007, at noon, at BenAsh Deli on
7th Avenue and 55th Street.

by Don Phipps

The following details the "no holds barred" discussion about music,
culture, and events with Anthony Braxton on March 31, 2007 at a
luncheon held in his honor by members of the Anthony Braxton Yahoo
User Group at BenAsh Deli on 7th Avenue and 55th Street, New York
City. The event was affiliated with Anthony's performance at the
Iridium night club in the Times Square area of New York.

In attendance were several members of the Anthony Braxton Yahoo User
Group, including Jonathan Piper, Jason Guthartz, John Sharpe, and
Timo Hoyer. He began by expressing his gratitude towards the many
people on our group that are interested in and follow his music.

As he discussed his music, his past, his thoughts on contemporary
culture, and his plans for the future, Anthony spoke with grace and
humility, especially given his stature as a musical genius. The
group peppered him with a number of questions which he patiently
answered, and were rewarded by a revelation of his future work, an
interactive bringing together of multiple art disciplines, the Echo
Echo Mirror House music and the reasons for it (discussed below).

He responded to a question about his upcoming concerts with Cecil
Taylor by saying he is playing three concerts (these have still NOT
been confirmed) with Cecil, two in Bologna, Italy (October 11 and
13) – a duo and a quartet (Tony Oxley will be the drummer but he
could not say with certainty who the bass player would be), and a
single concert in London on July 8 – a quartet (Tony Oxley again the
drummer, bass player yet to be determined). He also said that he and
Cecil had never played together, even though they hung out together
at Antioch College during the 70s.

He spoke of his personal history. For example, in 1970, he said he
left Chicago for New York, driving to the Big Apple with a small
group of musicians, which included Amina Claudine Meyers, Ajaramu,
and Billy Hart. When he arrived in New York, he said he stayed with
Leroy Jenkins as he had only $50 in his pocket.

He told the group that his influences included Stockhausen, of which
he said, "even the pieces I don't like, I love!" He said he was
overjoyed and insanely jealous to find that a friend had the complete
recorded works of Stockhausen. He said Stockhausen will someday be
honored in the same way many honor Wagner. He gushed about Wagner,
who he said was "more significant than purely intellectual
modeling." Wagner, he said, was "holistic," and Wagner's
music "helped us to understand the music of the future."

He admitted that as a young man he hated opera, but mentioned that he
now considered the operas of Wagner and Shostakovich's "The Nose" as
significant works of art. He said he believes that Wagner is "the
most important music I've ever listened to," and said it represented
the beginning of the modern era of music. "I rejoice in Wagner," he
stated unabashedly. In discussing musical systems, he pointed to
Scriabin, who was on the verge of a composite system and
Shostakovich, who he said was building an opera system with "The
Nose" that rivaled Wagner.

He said he recently played in Milan with Hamid Drake and William
Parker. He also played last week with Barry Altschul at Wesleyan
University. Of Hamid, he said he had known him for 20 years and was
familiar with Hamid's work in Chicago (back then, Hamid primarily
played the bongos), but the Milan concert was the first time he had
played with him since then. He confessed that there were many others
he would like to play with, citing Milford Graves, Bill Dixon, Sal
Mosca and of course Cecil Taylor. But, he felt pressure given the
finite time anyone has to enjoy life. "Time is running out," he
said, and he needed to spend the majority of his time on his projects
and his music. His major thrust in the future would be composing and
performing his own music.

He discussed his Ghost Trance Music (GTM), which he said requires 12
musicians to realize fully the quadrant potentials. He said that
unlike his previous systems that were built on "abstract logic and
the beauty of mathematics," GTM had a spiritual component. Trance
music, he explained, was about the relationship between music and
spirituality and reached a "different plain of methodology," beyond
the 12 methodologies and syntax he had used previously. He said that
the "ghost" in GTM represented known and unknown influences.
Returning to Wagner, he said Wagner was a form of trance music, and
he used the words "dream space time" to describe Wagner's version of
ghost trance.

He discussed his admiration for his student performers and looked for
ways to get them to improvise within the GTM system, a system he said
was "multi-hierarchical." He said his role in GTM was to define the
primary composition but that once the music was underway, there were
options of reconfiguration open to the musicians. And he said he
encouraged a kind of a healthy competition between segments of the
septet by telling his youthful colleagues to take the music in new
directions or he would. He said that this was not unlike Charles
Mingus, who pushed his musicians to reach new heights.

While he remained concerned about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
(he believes the war in Iraq could be the single biggest mistake in
the history of the United States), he said he does not write music
that reacts to contemporary issues. He did agree that others had
used music to react to their times, for example, Shostakovich and
Xenakis to name two. He mentioned the civil rights movement as
something that affected him personally but whose issues did not
inspire his music. He said musically he was "not interested in
ethnic affirmation" or a commentary on his time space.

He believed that in the future, there would be a Wagnerian cross
collaboration of artists of all disciplines (visual art, dance, and
writing) with music and suggested that these cross disciplines would
play a role in his new area of interest, the Echo Echo Mirror House
music, which will use interactive video and electronics to create a
holistic form of composition. He suggested again that this "goes
back to Wagner."

He surprised us with his list of early influences, which included
Bill Haley and the Comets (as a kid, his reaction to this music
was "it doesn't get any better than this") and the Dave Brubeck
Quartet, specially the play of Paul Desmond, which he said "blew him
away." He recalled the first time he played the Dave Brubeck Quartet
and listened to Paul Desmond on the standard "All the Things You
Are." In his youth, he said he was put off by John Coltrane's
abstractions and wondered, "Why can't he play like Paul Desmond?" He
also mentioned that he would argue with his childhood friend (and
fellow musician) Thurman (T-bird) Barker over who was better, Paul
Desmond, or Thurman's choice Eddie Harris.

Going back to Cecil, he said that Cecil finally admitted to the
influences of Lennie Tristano and Dave Brubeck on his playing. He
said that Cecil's reluctance to admit these influences were the
result of the nationalism that evolved in the African American
community of the 60s and early 70s. He said that his music was "not
black enough" for Cecil but that Cecil had changed his mind when he
ran into musicians in New Orleans who said Cecil's music was not
black enough for them.

He admitted that there were culture wars in Black music today,
especially as he discussed the attitudes of those like Wynton
Marsalis, who control the agenda for Lincoln Center. He described
these gatekeepers as "African American elites," who he said came to
power in the "jazz purges" of African American musicians in the
1980s. As a result, he said, he was extremely grateful to the
Europeans, who at that time, "took me in and gave me the opportunity
to perform." Likewise, he said Max Roach saved him in the late 70s
by agreeing to do the double album with him. He said at the time it
was released his critics had basically written him off and it was Max
that came to his rescue, i.e., stuck up for him against those
musicians that were willing to turn their back on his efforts.

He discussed the role of Albert Ayler and why he uses the
phrase "post-Ayler" to describe music. He said "Albert Ayler's music
summarized everything that was happening in the sixties," and that
jazz's contribution to music at that time was "collective
improvisation." During the 80s though, he said that jazz was boxed
into a narrow canyon of "swing.' "Doesn't swing" was a means of
excluding him and other musicians from the American stage. He said
that to the gatekeepers, Ayler was not jazz.

He went on to say that it all fell back on cultural myths
like "African people have more rhythm; Europeans have more brain
power but they don't have rhythm." The "land of Black," he
said, "starts there (with rhythm) and ends there (with rhythm)." And
he said this affects music right up to the present day. He said the
current music scene was stalled within the African American community
itself. "Iconic devices (like rhythm) have become a trap to keep
other influences out."

He told how Bill Cosby, one of the gatekeepers, had emailed his agent
to ask him to participate as a session musician in a band Cosby had
organized for the Playboy Jazz Festival). He described how bitter he
was towards Cosby's use of his name in his TV show. He said that on
the show, the son Teo, was looking for drugs and the pusher was named
Anthony Braxton. He (like anyone else) took great offense to this.

He also suggested that the Lincoln Center crowd was nothing more than
a cultural gatekeeper which filled the antebellum role of "house
negro," the ones who would report the goings on of the "field negro"
to the masters of the plantation. He said that while Wynton Marsalis
and Stanley Crouch should be commended for their work in bringing
Ellington to the schools of America, he said the AACM would've done
likewise if they had had the funds. But, he said that these
gatekeepers had used money and power to exclude music that "doesn't
swing" or is "not black enough" and to, using a Noam Chomsky
expression, "marginalize" musicians like him. He rejected outright
any nationalist thinking that "African equals good; Europe equals
bad."

He cited his love of technology and encouraged its use in the music
of the future. He jokingly blamed Yahoo group member Jason Guthartz
for his exploration of "galactic pieces." He said he was in a good
place now. And finally, he called his contrabass saxophone, "Big
Mac."

This was our afternoon lunch discussion with the master Anthony
Braxton. There was more that he said, but my limitations as a
journalist, especially without a tape player, are probably evident.
But I did want to give the group a feeling for the scope of the
discussion. I hope I've been able to do that.

John Sharpe recorded some of the discussion and may post excerpts.