Jesse Sharps [photo by Jared Zagha]
At high noon on October 10, 2005 -- on what would have been the 88th birthday of Thelonious Monk -- a unique group of musicians gathered for a recording session at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, about 45 minutes north of Los Angeles. Many of the elders there were graduates of pianist Horace Tapscott's mighty Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, a musical insurgency formed in almost complete cultural isolation amidst one of the most violent and confrontational decades in American life.
Los Angeles in the 1960s was a city, like the nation, split down the middle over the subject of race, both sides staying behind their battle lines, eyeing the other with suspicion and rage, rarely venturing over to the other side, preferring to let their minds run rampant with the worst nightmares of what "They" were capable of. But, as Rick Perlstein writes in his current book Nixonland, in which the 1965 Watts Riots plays a central role: "Only one had the power to put the other in jail.”
What does this have to do with jazz? In South Central, this "hot" time gave new urgency to the Arkestra's gelling as a unit of musical and social change; Tapscott, whose mantra was "Contributive, Not Competitive,” adored children and used his "guerilla street band" to draw them from the dark lures of street life into musical transcendence and self-reliance via the Ark's signature woodwind-heavy Afro-jazz. One of those children was a 13-year-old named Jesse Sharps.
When the curfew was lifted after days of violence in Watts in August 1965, Sharps wandered out onto the National Guard-patrolled 113th Street, leaving behind a violent and tense home life, and wandered through the smoking ruins of his neighborhood ten blocks north to 103rd Street, the main artery of South Central. "I thought it was the end of the world," Sharps later told an interviewer. He came across a towering figure in a leather jacket and black tam tilted to one side, standing on the street with his arms crossed, looking out over the razed city with a wounded scowl on his face. "I thought he was a Black Panther, I thought he was one of Huey Newton's guys," Sharps recalled. It was Tapscott. "He was mad. I could read his mind: 'What happened to my community?' He didn't like what he was looking at. He did not like it one bit." Behind him, the Ark was playing in front of the embers of their destroyed concert space. "They weren't just 'playing' -- you could tell the music was telling you what just happened in the riots." If there ever was a life changing moment in Sharp's life, this was it.
The Gathering, Cal Arts, October 10, 2005
Flash forward forty years later to the stage at CalArts. Sharps, now in his 50s and a formidable composer/bandleader in his own right, is the driving force behind The Gathering, a CD and accompanying DVD released this week that chronicles a meeting of minds between, as its subtitle says, "The Roots and Branches of LA Jazz." The "roots" included many who began their distinguished careers in the Ark: saxophonist Michael Session (the current bandleader after Tapscott's death in 1999), singer Dwight Trible, poet Kamau Daaood, bassist Roberto Miguel Miranda, flautist Kafi Roberts, saxophonist Azar Lawrence, French horn player Fundi Legohn -- as well as other elder statesman of the SoCal scene: trombonist Phil Ranelin, drummer Ndugu Chancler, trumpeter Richard Grant, and percussionist Taumbu. The "branches" were up-and-comers young players like saxophonists Kamasi Washington and Randall Fisher, bassist Nick Rosen, pianist Brandon Coleman, trombonist Nathaniel Brooks, bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck and violinist-viola player Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, cellist Peter Jacobson, bassist/clarinetist Tracy Wannomae and English horn player/oboist Myka Miller.
Recently, we sat down with Mr. Sharps and producer Tom Paige at the World Stage in Leimert Park -- Taspcott's base of operations for many years and where he made connections with many of the musicians listed above -- to talk about the motivation behind The Gathering project. As Paige told writer Mimi Melnick, the title of the CD and film "truly conveys both the past and present Leimert Park connection that all the musicians shared, whether members of the Ark, friends of Jesse Sharps, longtime as well as recent players from the area, or other musicians who came in through their connection with those involved." (For a wonderfully comprehensive account of The Gathering session, as well as the deep history behind it and a virtuoso run-down of the songs performed, read Melnick's superb liner notes here,)
Did you guys plan to do The Gathering on Monk's birthday?
Jesse Sharps: Well, kind of. We originally were trying to do a recording of the Ark featuring Horace's music. We wanted to break out old tunes like "The Golden Pearl" and the "Ghetto Suite," which is a big long huge piece [around 45 minutes], so we were working on that, but for various reasons we couldn't do that. But we already got everything in motion, we went through a lot to get all of those people together, so we said, "Let's just do something."
You once told an interviewer that L.A. jazz has a "specific sound" to it. The popular assumption is that it has no specific sound -- unless, of course, you're talking about West Coast Cool or Smooth Jazz...
JS: Oh but it does. If you think about Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Gerald Wilson -- there is an actual West Coast sound. I think Mingus really helped set that sound up, Dolphy too -- those guys were playing really really hard, doing a lot of experimental sounds. Dolphy was coming up with his own sound, definitely no music quite like what he was doing, right? So we had a lot of things going on out here. I think the thing about being on the West Coast, you have more time to experiment with things, you're not under a lot of pressure here like in New York, with everybody is expecting you to play and perform, you gotta be hot, you gotta be very competitive. You're not under the gun like that out here. Here you write something, you coax it out, just to see what it sounds like. In fact I heard some guys playing some experimental stuff here just last night, experimental big band stuff. You don't have to describe it as anything. It's just happening. When it happening you know it, you feel it, people start yelling and testifying...I mean, this music was so spiritual, these young guys just breaking off into these tunes. You got people out on the street stopping and looking in, 'What's goin' on in there?' I said, 'The best music happening on the planet right now!' It's like, 'Oh man I'm at church now, thank you Jesus!' [laughs] I thought that music last night would stand up anywhere in the world: New York, Europe, anywhere. So it's still interesting out here. We got lots of space here...The east coast is real tight, geographically, the clubs, the buildings, everything is smashed together. Here everything is so spread out, you got space. In the East Coast, everybody knows everybody right off. Here it's the opposite. There's maybe a guy you've never seen or heard of before who blows you away and you think, 'Where's this cat been hiding?'
Phil Ranelin
Why did you choose the songs you chose for The Gathering project?
JS: It was kind of a hit and miss thing, sort of played by ear. I like stuff like that. You can't really go too wrong when the musicians are paying attention [chuckles]...Sometimes some of the best stuff comes out of situations like that. Naturally, we didn't have a lot of time to practice and we only had two or three rehearsals, so that's a minimum time to get things together. If we would have did the [original] Tapscott thing we would've rehearsed a lot more, because it's more involved. It's a different way of approaching it. You come together and you rely more on the abilities of everyone to play music in the moment and make it happen and make it seem smooth.
Azar Lawrence
Tom Paige: One interesting thing was the song "Lately's Solo." It's a staple in the Ark and a challenging piece. It wasn't just a jam, it had to be really worked out. It based on a single solo by [late Ark trombonist] Lester "Lately" Robertson, a motif, and you had an entire big band playing that motif as one, a big band doing not just any solo but a really musically intense and complicated trombone solo. All at the same time. When you transcribe a solo, as Horace did Lester's, it is one thing to play it yourself. It is another for en entire big band to play it in time, with heart, and together.
From left: Joey Dosik, Michael Session, Tracy Caldwell, Kafi Roberts (partially obscured), Fundi Legohn, Richard Grant (partially obscured)
I also noticed that The Gathering took place in 2005. That was ten years after the Ark's legendary appearance at the Moers Jazz Festival, which was an odd triumph because it was sort of a coming-out party for a band that had already been around for 35 years. It's also where Tapscott's score got stolen right off his piano...
JS: Yeah, well it wasn't exactly stolen. Horace left the music on the piano and they never got it back. I know Moers, someone just probably came along and said, 'Well, the concert's over, these guys went home' and whoosh, right in the trashcan. [laughs] It's a trip. It reminds me of when I was going through the [Tapscott] archives. I found stuff that was missing, lost. One page missing from the score here, couple pages missing from another score there -- that's not good. Like one of my tunes, "Desert Fairy Princess," the original score is gone. There's a bridge on that tune that had never been played again. It's on Adele [Sebastian's] album [Desert Fairy Princess], the original bridge, the original score. But it's the only recording of it. When we finally got to the archiving, it was hard because we had to zoom in and really look at [the music] to decipher it. You look at the score it just has a bunch of names, it doesn't even have what part it is. We stopped doing that back in the 80s. I told [Ark cofounder and pianist/vocalist] Linda Hill and Horace: "You write a score and you put 'Richard,' 'David,' 'Willie' when in thirty years from now these guys won't be here, especially in 100 years." Now who's gonna know who these names are in 100 years? Nobody! Even I don't know some of those names. I gotta call up Bill Madison or Donald Dean -- they know a lot of the old guys. But that's it. So we don't do that anymore. You put down a name you still gotta put a part: 'Trumpet 1'; 'Trumpet 2.' Trying to figure that out is hard. I was just doing this the other day, writing down some scores: "Oh man, who is 'Willie'?" There's a lot of brainwork in deciphering that music and getting it right and getting it out there.
Roberto Miranda
OK Tom, let's give Jesse a break. How did you come across the music of Horace Tapscott and the Ark?
TP: I stumbled across it through [clarinetist] John Carter's music. I was driving home with a friend one night and I hear Carter's Fields album on the radio. My friend's talking to me and I said, "I can't talk to you anymore because I'm hearing music on the radio that I've never heard before," just so different and incredible. When John Carter played with Horace at Catalina's, I went to see them. I had seen John a few times before that, but seeing both him and Horace, that was it. Wow. This is just beyond words. I couldn't believe that there is a composer on this level, and players like Mike Session, Fritz Wise and Roberto Miranda playing this good in L.A. After Horace passed, I read his autobiography for a second time. Watching Roberto, [pianist] Nate Morgan, [drummer] Don Littleton do a show, I started rethinking about doing the John Carter documentary and realized it would make more sense to start off focusing on Horace and his impact on this community, what he brought to the Arkestra, was so big and so epic and his story and what happened here is just amazing. I thought it would make more sense to do something on Horace. So then I started approaching people like Roberto, [historian] Steve Isoardi and the Tapscott family and realized that I was just on the outskirts of this. There was so much more going on. This town is a really really tough town musically. Being a musician here, no matter what style you're in, it's so spread out and disconnected. There's no real community here in the broader sense, no real cultural center. Communication is not so good: You just don't know when things are happening. It's frustrating. And it was way more so about four or five years ago. It's gotten a little better because people are a little more Internet savvy...but you could still spend years in L.A. and not realize what was going on five miles from your own house. And I grew up here. If you want it, you have to go out and find it. It's out there, but you have to spend some effort.
Kamau Daaood (left) and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson
Jesse, you once called L.A. "one of the coldest cities in America." That's a direct quote...
JS: Yeah. Well for one thing, when I was here the last time and I left to go back to Europe I stopped off in New York, and it's a lot nicer city than it is here. When you come to L.A. you can feel the tension.
TP: Everybody's on the freeway here. Everybody has their own car. Everybody's driving around by themselves, isolated. Nobody talking to each other. It is more of a personal space thing and not a lot of people are aware of it.
JS: Information is slow, too. Rudolph [Porter] came to me once and said, "Hey George Harper is having his thing over at the hotel." I said, "Wait, where? When? Why didn't I hear about this?"
Joey Dosik (left) and Ndugu Chancler (drums)
So, how did The Gathering even come off in such a disconnected place?
TP: Well, Leimert Park is still a community and the musicians and people interact and see each other. Horace hooked up with a lot of the people here. I was working on the Horace Tapscott documentary with the family, knowing that Jesse was coming back into town, which was important. [Tapscott archivist] Michael Wilcotts was talking of doing some recording of Horace's music, and that seemed like a good opportunity to get this done. There were talks back and forth with the parties involved, and when that fell through for the various difficulties of being a complicated process, it was just a real letdown, and it seemed to impact a lot of musicians. There was a lot of disappointment. It just made sense to try to make the recording still happen. And that's what Jesse wanted, so I put some financial support in, and we talked about wanting to film whatever would transpire from this. I did not know how big and historic this was going to be. I had an idea from the rehearsals [but] in the recording it soon became very obvious that this was something on a whole other level. Jesse managed to put something together that was really special.
JS: If I had to do right now today I don't think I could form a group exactly like that. Now all those people are unavailable at this moment. I mean, you cant get Ndugu Chancler, he's busy now, Brandon Coleman, the piano player, I don't even know where he is now. Everything's different. It's just at that moment, you think: 'Whoa I hope this works out.'
Dwight Trible (left), Taumbu (congas), Roberto Miranda
Would it have worked out the same if Jesse wasn't here?
TP: Oh, it never would have happened at all. A lot of the reasons the guys were there was because Jesse was here...He has that ability to bring people together, and that's not a common thing, especially in this town. It's very hard. It's respect and trust and if Jesse is involved they know it'll be something really special. He was the main motivator in getting this wide-ranging group of musicians to come together...When you get these people together, it's not just like any other session. These are guys that understand the community, and I gotta believe, Jesse, that when you were choosing people for this, that you were choosing people who would bring something of that spirit. You said it many times: 'We gotta choose the right players.' And he did.
JS: I remember after we recorded "Lately's Solo," Tom comes up to me and said, "Hey man, what happened right there with Kamasi? He kinda changed the vibe up!" It was real intense, all these solos, just building and building on top of each other, getting more intense by the second: Bam! Here comes Michael Session; Bam! Here comes Phil Ranelin; Bam! Here comes Azar...Then Kamasi stood up and just started "whispering" with his saxophone, and the rest of the band was looking around to see what was going on. It made them start playing soft. Kamasi was saying with his solo, "Hit the brakes!" and that whole band literally went [makes sound like car breaks squealing], without saying a word, without making any signals, just his body language. He eases into it. A great musician can do that. He can change the whole tone. That's the sign of a truly great player. Coltrane could do something like that. No matter who just took the blazing crazy solo, they can bring it back down and rebuild it back up, and make the players around him do the same.
TP: It was an amazing moment!
JS: [laughs] Yeah, and Tom slides up to me and just said, "Wow, what's going on here, Jesse? The music is changing!"
TP: I remember asking Jesse, "How does that happen?" and he said, "It just happens."
Jesse Sharps (left) conducts Kamasi Washington, Randall Fisher, and MIchael Session
The Gathering CD and Film, as well as bios, photos, and musical excerpts from the performances are available here.
