Leo Smith (1975) - Bill Smith photo

BILL SMITH: This year, in Chicago, was the tenth anniversary of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (A.A.C.M.) which shows that it isn't exactly a new school of thought. Were you involved in the early movement of that school?

LEO SMITH: Well, I consider very early because I got to Chicago in January of '67.

Bill: You're not from Chicago?

Leo: No, I'm from Leland Mississippi. When I arrived there I had just gotten out of the army and met [Anthony] Braxton. A friend of mine who was playing music with me when I was in the army had also spent some time in Korea, where Braxton was stationed, so they knew each other. He gave me Braxton's telephone number, so when I got in town I called him. That was during Braxton's frantic, real frantic period, you couldn't really keep up with him, he'd be moving, darting here and there. He told me about the A.A.C.M. We played some pieces, some of his pieces, one of my pieces and I had the Ornette Coleman book by Gunther Schuller, but we didn't get regularly started into a group, but we talked about it. Joseph Jarman, Charles Clarke and Thurman Barker did a concert in a coffee house, and at the concert Lester Bowie and Roscoe Mitchell came in and I talked to Roscoe who said, "Yeah man, come over Saturday where we're having a meeting, I'll recommend you to become a member." I had already asked Braxton about becoming a member but it was during a strange period for Braxton, he was a little bit leery, he wasn't sure if he should recommend me, but Roscoe did and I got in the following week. I would say yes I was one of the early members.

Bill: Was Richard Abrams the main motivating force of all that, at that point?

Leo: Well in terms of organization he was and also he had the orchestra, the AACM orchestra. At that time he was doing all the music, basically. After I got in, it began to switch a little bit. I did a lot of music, Roscoe did a lot of music and Braxton brought a few pieces down, that was the extent of other people's contributions. Sometimes Joseph Jarman would bring his music and try to go through it. He'd take it back the same day.

Bill: It was hard in those days, some of the music that people were conceiving?

Leo: All the music was hard at that time. Joseph wanted almost immediate kinds of action. I could understand what he was after, there would be a few mistakes and he'd say, "Well let's fold it up". It was a very good period though, we played a lot of music then when everyone could contribute to the ensemble. Richard Abrams had been asking people to bring music and no one had. So all of a sudden I brought music, Roscoe brought music, everyone had been writing for small ensembles. After that got started the bulk of the music that was played by the orchestra was Richard Abrams', Roscoe's and mine. Just before we went to Europe, which was '69, Braxton brought some pieces and he gave the entire orchestra another picture, so we had four distinct forces that were happening and that was the music that we played.

Bill: Did you play in Mississippi before you came to Chicago?

Leo Smith (1983) - Bill Smith photo

Leo: Oh yes, I don't remember the year, but I've been playing for about eighteen years. I started off, believe it or not, playing drums. The reason I said "believe it or not" is because I lasted on the drums about two weeks. The teacher, a fellow by the name of Mr. Jones, changed me over to French horn, I played French horn for a couple of months and it just wasn't happening. Mr. Jones was still very dissatisfied with the French horn, he came in one day to give me a lesson and got so frustrated he left and went into the next room to give another friend of mine a trumpet lesson. He got very angry with this fellow because he wasn't making it on the trumpet. So in all that confusion he'd taken the French horn from me and the trumpet from the other fellow and switched us around. That was the best thing he did because the other fellow developed into a very good French horn player and I developed into a good trumpet player. This was all part of our school orchestra training, in fact I organized the first jazz orchestra there. This school band was a high school marching and concert band. And that's all we had. Marching music like Sousa, yes those marches, but we had some concert pieces I guess. "Death In The Maiden", I forget who that was by. Some European composers that had been broken down for the concert band size. I had been playing trumpet for two months before I started playing in blues bands. You see my stepfather is a recorded musician who plays the blues, he doesn't play actively now, but in those days he was very active. He had his own radio program, his name is Eric Wallace but his professional name was Little Bill. There are a couple of records that he was on during that time. By being in this kind of home I was able to learn the blues very early. Because of the financial condition of my family I was afraid to bring the trumpet home because I thought that maybe they would feel that it was too expensive to be involved in music. I played the trumpet for about two months and no one knew it, so when I finally got the nerve to bring it home my stepfather began immediately to show me what was happening in the blues. He plays guitar, piano and occasionally drums, he showed me exactly what was happening. A couple of weeks after that I went out and got myself a gig in a blues band because he wouldn't let me play with him to start. I was good, I felt very natural towards the trumpet.

Bill: Do you think that coming from the South has anything to do with the power of the music, as historians wrote about in the books?

Leo: Yes I do. It has been one of the strongest focus points in American musical developments.

Bill: Do you feel there is some kind of relationship between the plantation songs and what has happened in jazz?

Leo: I think so, except I tend to be reserved about the category of vocal (artists) music, and instrumental music. I think it very definitely had an effect on it, it was responsible for a lot of the open areas of sound that was happening. It's interesting because I read about the development of the voice, the black voice in spirituals, from a fellow by the name of Harold Johnston, he was one of the early people to write on the spirituals (black person I'm talking about) who also wrote music. This man said that during the times of the development of the spirituals — he traced it down and researched himself—, what made that music so powerful was that people would sing outside and develop the voice by singing out in the open space. That has been a strong thing. My tradition coming through the high school system of playing outside for football games, as well as basketball, because in Mississippi it was a little later that they built the basketball gyms, so we often played outside. A new kind of power. No microphones, plus in the blues bands we played things like picnics and different kinds of shows that they would have outside. It was a whole experience. I would say in that sense the entire tradition of music being outside and development of the voice outside is part of the same tradition.

Bill: The school system in the United States is unique really. Other countries do not have this school band system to such a degree. Are the teachers teaching in the schools the right kind of people to discover a special talent?

Leo: I... think so. Later after Mr. Jones left a fellow named Henderson Halbert, a very fantastic trumpet player came to teach. I think that was one of the things that inspired me most about playing trumpet, because he played the trumpet, whereas Mr. Jones was a clarinet and saxophone player, and by this man being able to play the trumpet, he could teach me in a very unique way. He never told me anything about technique, about scales, anything like that. He would often get me from class and say let's play these pieces. I learned from actually playing and not from taking an exercise. I didn't know what exercises were until I went in the army. I didn't know what a key was until I went into the army. Everything that I learned through his teaching was done through actual practice. I could play in all the keys. I could play all the music. I could read the music, but as far as the technical side of what was happening inside the different things, he didn't explain that. It was straight ahead. I would say it was a perfect example of a way to teach this music, by participating in it. Army bands are incredibly important. The very first important army band was James Reese Europe. His talent was brought in by the federal government, he was signed in a regular contract and put together an orchestra of all black players. This is a long time ago, during the first world war [1914-1918]. This man put together one of the first bands to tour Europe. In fact I'll tell you an interesting story, it's in one of the books I read. When they toured Europe they played in France. French musicians thought that their instruments were made to sound the way they sounded. They didn't believe what was happening out of the instruments so you know what they did? They switched instruments. After switching instruments the Frenchmen produced the same kind of music they were doing and James Reese Europe's band produced the same kind of music they were playing. So they said okay let's change the music, that's the problem. So they changed the music, they were marches, but when they played those marches, they improvised them in different points, they added, they did the number of things that the creative musician did and the French musicians were amazed. It's what they called at the time syncopated music. That's the beginning of the jazz period.

Bill: Then it was jazz?

Leo: Very close, I think so because Sidney Bechet played in Europe with Will Marion Cook who was the first person to organize a complete show of all black performers. Rewrote all the music and Paul Lawrence Dunbar did the lyrics and text. And they did a performance of "Clorindy, the Origin of the Cake-Walk" in 1898. Those two people, James Reese Europe and William Marion Cook are important links in the development of jazz music, and also the orchestra, because that is what they were dealing in.

Bill: James Reese Europe's band originally was an army band?

Leo: Yes it was an army band, but he had selected all the musicians and they were all signed on contract. The same thing happened with that fellow who wrote "String Of Pearls", Glenn Miller, same thing happened with him. He was in the air force, but he had also selected the players that were going to play in organizing this band. The army bands have played a very strong point in this whole tradition.

Bill: A lot of the players learn the conventional techniques of the music too, don't they?

Leo: I think it's more so because of the opportunity to play every day, rather than the technique, because most of them go in there with the thorough knowledge of reading. Myself when I went in I knew this, I just didn't know what was a Bb scale, what was an F scale, and so forth. The army school of music ran, must have been 4-1/2 months, it was in Fort Pining Wood, Mo. They teach regular theory and then I learned what made a particular scale. I found it very interesting. After getting out of the army I went to the conservatory in Chicago (Sherwood School of Music), where I found that the material I'd go over in a year's time I'd already gone over before in the army in four months. The army had a more advanced way of teaching than they did in the conservatory. We performed in public in the army an awful lot. The most important thing is you get a chance to play every day. That's when I first began to understand the relationship of the newer music that was happening. That's when l heard Ornette Coleman. The same time I bought his book, I put together my own little group with a drummer, bass player, and myself. We worked around through that music, sounding like Ornette Coleman and others. I went to Italy for eleven months. That [army] band was very good. We were a post band, we played dignitary functions, if a senator would come to the country we played those things. We were on a propaganda mission to play in all the villages in Italy. We had a regular season that we would do these things. For five or six months we'd break. I got the chance to hear some of the greatest military bands on earth. I heard the personal band of Nasser. We played the International Military Band Festival. The band there from Egypt was the grandest spectacular thing you'll ever see. Beautiful trumpet players. They improvise in their music while marching. I heard the British International Band of the Queen there, the International band of the Italians, the Germans and Scots. Our band through an error got to participate in that particular performance, which should have gone to the air force band from Heidelberg that represents the United States. They should have gotten that particular performance, not our army band. We played it but we were totally outmatched. They were the best in their country. Our band was good but not the best. It wasn't the best in Europe by far. But it was good. This was in 1963.

Bill: So when you came out of the army that's when you went to Chicago? Did anyone in Chicago at that time consciously know that they were developing an entirely new concept of music?

Leo: I'm sure. In our meetings sometimes we would talk about what was happening in the music. Everybody there was very much aware of what they were doing. Very much aware. Everyone. The music represented a new, when I say new I mean another expression of the level of consciousness about the music. I'm speaking strictly in musical terms. Everyone was conscious of the types of form and types of structures they were using. People were very interested in research. In fact, after Braxton, Leroy Jenkins and I began to play together. Myself, Joseph Jarman and Braxton formed together a little group, not a musical group, just a little inner group, and once a week we'd meet at Braxton's house on the South side and we would listen to music and analyze it. We talked about things we hoped to develop. We would talk about these things. This was as organized as the whole process of sound, rhythm and silence.

Bill: Is it possible that none of it was accidental, the entire concept of improvised music. Historians write it as though it trickled along, it seems perhaps it didn't.

Leo: No. I read about Joseph Oliver and the Dodds Brothers in a book that Martin Williams did. It considers these people in 1923 and 1924 who had considered themselves, and rightly so, serious artists. The tradition has always been there and I don't think that it happened accidentally. I have a theory of accidentalism. One thing, I'll go back to this fellow who asked Sidney Bechet how do you do this, and Bechet said everyone should go their own way. That has to be interpreted, it has to be broken down. It's a way of speaking, a code way of speaking, it's esoteric to say that. The esoteric aspect would be to say what you're doing. There are some players now who feel that way, that they should keep whatever they are doing to themselves, just give the most mystical answer that they can, say that I just played it. The critics unfortunately took that to be literally what was said. That needs to be translated.

Bill: The Chicago school is the first school in the last twenty years that seems musically aware of the past. A lot of modern bebop players knew about Louis Armstrong but they certainly didn't know about James Reese Europe and Will Marion Cook. I find that the new players now are much more interested in where it all came from. They read about it, they listen to records, and this seems to be a peculiarity of the energy that came out of Chicago. Is there a reason you think that all this research is going on?

Leo: Yes, it was the times mostly, during those times by being such an early period. Incidentally, I have selected a particular date that I consider creative music in America started. It started when the Fisk Jubilee Singers, from Fisk University, went to Europe, which was 1865. They went there as a unit singing spirituals. They conquered, when I say conquered, I mean presented — they presented a black tradition of music that the world had never heard before. So I take that date as being officially the beginning of creative music in America. So we had this entire tradition until 1965 which makes a hundred years. Because of the times no one was actually qualified to write about this particular music and certainly black writers weren't getting published then. Harold Johnston, who I spoke about earlier, wrote about spirituals but didn't get published. I do believe that people like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie had a full understanding of the complete span of the music, in terms historically, of whatever was available at that time, because you know that only in the last ten years has there been a really comprehensive type of research.

Bill: A lot of writers have taken this approach in the last ten years. Is this a new era?

Leo: It's a new era but it serves also for confusion, because a lot of people write that are able to put together words and sentences and paragraphs and books who just don't know what they are talking about. It's a beautiful period but the listener and those really interested in knowing about the complete aspects of this music have to read everything and then take the best of it. Because I do that myself. I read everything and I haven't found anything yet that I like. But I read everything!

Bill: Is it possible then that the old media might perhaps have to be abandoned because they don't appear they can change.

Leo: They have to, if not abandon, at least people shouldn't look to them for answers in terms of journalistic things, at this time. Usually magazines cover a certain period. When you plant a new seed out in the woods, or on your lawn, the old tree is there, it should still stay there , You shouldn't take it down but let that new tree grow up also. All these people that are around now, let them stay, and if they are able to grow, include the newer aspects into their way of presenting what they think about music, and newer magazines to deal with this particular area of contemporary music, should either come into existence or the older magazines should bring that into their category.

Bill: Well we're an older magazine [CODA] but we find that you can write about all of it. You shouldn't "periodize" it, say that this is jazz and this isn't, but be left to decide this ourselves. So the magazine doesn't have an editorial policy in that way.

Leo: You don't do that! That's one of the best ways. Some magazines can be very dangerous.

Bill: Is this one of the reasons you've started writing your own philosophies of music and started publishing them?

Leo: This is the very reason. Most of the things I've written, I've done to try to enlighten my people, for this strong reason most of our music has never been exclusively at our disposal. Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton during their early periods, when they reached a certain level in terms of demanding money, immediately were taken out of their neighbourhoods, the black environment in America. So a man here who owns these portions, and controls the clubs, can pay this amount of money, they can easily pull this ensemble, this orchestra, and have it play almost exclusively to white audiences. I think it happened with all of the groups up until the last fifteen years. The same thing can even be said about Ellington. He appeared mostly outside the black community. There's a sociological reason for the music being excluded from black people and that, in itself, boils down to economics, and economics boils down to politics, and politics boil down, in this instance, to racism. That word covers a lot of ground, it covers racism of all levels, social and cultural. In America one of the most effective ways of reaching black people has been through live performances, If the musicians are taken out of the black community at large in America, then there's no live performance. The second aspect is the radio has been a very important tool for black people, for all people it's one of the most effective means of communication. From the very beginning everyone owned radios, so what happens, they don't put it on the radio. You get a little bit here, a little bit there, but exclusively it's not on the radio. Every period that's come along. If you can't hear it on the radio or in live performance there's nothing on earth to encourage you to go out and buy a record. The black environment in America has not had the opportunity to grow exclusively along with the music as it has developed, therefore their preference has been rather strange. And that preference is because of the society and not because of the people.

Bill: What happens when you arrive with a situation like Motown? They've managed to take over radio stations in entire areas of the country. Is this a money/power game?

Leo: That aggressiveness in terms of money comes from the same source. People organized in terms of the money treatment. Motown has the opportunity because of the prestige it has gained through promoting the more popular elements of music that they can sell. My theory is you can sell all of this music if you present it right. Through live performance, broadcasts and also recording and published scores. These four elements can sell all the music that's available on earth. If it's done with the energy, intelligence and great love that's required, it can be done, it would enlighten this entire country. If this would happen people would begin to respect music in a way they haven't 'till now. It's so strange for someone to go to you saying "I like that piece because it's more melodic or melodious, but the other pieces I couldn't take." That division in that particular person, comes from the person, not from the music. But if they had more published music scores, opportunity to hear it on the radio, see it on television and all the media and also local newspapers covered it, then the person would realize the extent of the growth of the music and wouldn't accept one portion of the music while rejecting what they consider to be not important.

Bill: That's been a predominant thing in the whole of jazz from the listening public's point of view. That's why they've developed schools and periods, the cool period, the bebop period, the swing period, the dixieland period, and New Orleans, and now they call the music avant garde because categories are easier to put together. You can sell it if you call it something. I hear you or Lester Bowie or Don Cherry — who almost sound like Louis Armstrong — in your own context. What's going to happen now that the music is becoming such a spectrum?

Leo: If this concept of media can be utilised there's a great revolution that has to happen in America for things to go on as a functioning society. The musics that are happening now are direct announcements of the humanityhood that exists whenever these types of changes are made.

Bill: The very period that your people were developing and becoming public was the same period that the media was announcing that jazz was dead. This meant that the old players who were playing improvised melody forms were dying because they were aged men. Will this take more effort? No one seems to write about it outside of the inner circle of jazz magazines.

Leo: The trade magazines. Being in my home now I should be able to pick up the paper if Anthony Braxton or Lester Bowie play within an hundred miles of here. I think in that local daily newspapers there should be a review of creative music along with the classical music. Now we have them extensively in classical music from here and there. But the creative music... we don't find it.

Bill: Earlier today we discussed something about a black writer who wrote just as irresponsibly as a white writer. Why would he not be defending his own culture?

Leo: For the same reason, he has not had the opportunity to grow along with the music. That's important. There are people who have the opportunity but reject it. I know for a fact that he has read my book and tried to talk about it but everything he tried to talk about was to impose his idea that creative music does not change. Black music, but I for one prefer the title creative music, is moving into a world culture now. We're moving into an area where communication and technology has reached the stage that everyone on this globe, every people, can be seen in their daily activities, also their falls and disasters. Immediately on television and in the press, so if this is happening, which I feel it is, we're moving towards a point where the earth is going to polarize all the cultures. A world music will happen. A world art will happen. A world dance will happen. A world philosophy will develop. By this I do not mean a levelling out of all the cultures into one. That is where you kill the human being. Then you don't have the beautiful reality of the African, you don't have the beautiful reality of the Asian, all you have is a motivating force that would control the world culture, then by all practical points of reasoning it would be European. Everything else would either be sub-bracketed or smoothed into that area. That's the point of the universality of European standards as a measure for what happens on earth. But European music is very late in the history of music. In fact Africans had developed a very distinct music long before Europe had developed itself as a society. The Chinese and Indians, the people in Bali for example. India had a system, if we speak of early India. Four to five hundred BC the Egyptians had a system of notation called Sent [?]. They would organize the tone or sound aspects of a piece of music. The rhythm was not there, the melody was not there, but the entire piece of music would function within that particular sound. It's something like the ragas of Indian music, something like scales in western music, but it was a little bit different because of the amount of vibrations within each of the tones. They would take that and build all the improvisations of it. They would improvise from that. This was four or five hundred years BC. An extremely long time ago.

Bill: I think one of the predominant things that has made criticism have this standard of European music is because the black music of America became notated and organized in European style.

Leo: It was notated back then. If this system in Egypt began four or five hundred years BC with these particular elements of sound notated then in its essence that is the beginning of notation of musical sounds. I know for a fact the Indians had a notation system long before Europe. To sum up the concept of western notation system, the European being inherits, just as we all now inherit, everything from the past. And everything in the future is going to inherit not only what we have but everything that came from the past. So this system of notation is one that's gifted from the progress, the evolutionary stage of human kind.

Bill: It should make us bigger, not narrower. But it is because we were clinging to the one before isn't it.

Leo: That causes the confusion, yes. But in terms of growth, I'm saying that Europe… paper was discovered by the Chinese. They began to write things on paper. In Europe paper was manufactured on a very magnificent, beautiful level. It was innovative. Composition had its greatest moments because of paper. Do you know it took two/three hundred years. In its earliest period, Europe started in a significant sense, during the five hundreds and six hundreds after Christ, they had the chants, that period that was a little notation system. Interestingly enough paper wasn't even in there, so therefore the process of writing out every idea of music had a medium for it, paper. And it developed. It just so happened it developed in Europe which is beautiful. Now we are watching and witnessing another innovation, magnetic tape. Magnetic tape introduces the age of the improviser. Because it's not necessary to write music in its detail whole, it's not necessary to do that, you can structure things, write out what some people call heads, but I tend to call it scores rather than the word head, because word head to me refers to the little part. With the score you've got the entire body. You have structure and form. I tend to use the word score. You can score several different elements that you want incorporated inside the improvisation and go into a studio and play into that mike and that magnetic tape picks it up and that is another medium that has come after paper. That's why the most important thing now, not to say that composition is not important, but the most important media for expressing yourself now is magnetic tape. You can go into the studio and just play out of your head. One instrument. And you've got a beautiful piece of music there before you. Technology is a very important development of human kind, it is going to affect everything, it already has affected everything, including the change that's the weapon for change. Also in terms of how to get people to hear more of this music and put it on the different mediums.

Bill: I feel in twenty years from now it should even out. I'm more excited than I've ever been and I've lived through bebop, post-bebop into the early avant garde. But now there is an incredible excitement going on. Is it affecting you, are you playing more publicly? Are you getting more work, are people recognizing you? Are you feeling this too? Are musicians feeling this too?

Leo: Just the fact that Anthony Braxton and the Art Ensemble have played in Japan is one realization of that. Another fact is that just recently Braxton has begun to play on different continents. That's an exciting thing. People like Oliver Lake are getting their music recorded. Because of the excitement people are not afraid to hear solo music, to hear ensemble music and to hear orchestra music, and recognize it as that. Prior to this period of great change, and partly that is now, who would dare play a solo except the piano player? Before Anthony did his double LP of alto saxophone solos [Delmark] who would consider doing all alto saxophone? Roscoe recorded three solos on "Congliptious" [Nessa], that was first, and also Marion Brown had recorded a solo piece. But that's not the point I'm trying to make. That period was beginning to enter on so-called instruments that don't play harmony. Braxton plays chords, I play chords, Lester Bowie plays chords, Coltrane played chords… Ornette Coleman. They play chords on so-called single line instruments. I would strongly give Braxton credit for being the person to initiate, in an absolute sense, the concept of solo for the greater improviser and also establishing once and for all that the so-called single line instrument has more possibility for solo work and other areas of expression than people have understood. I'm speaking purely in the solo reference.

Bill: Now it's been done, lots of other people are going to do it aren't they?

Leo: Certainly. Keith Jarrett has several solo albums, a three record set of solo piano music. Roscoe Mitchell has a solo record [Delmark], I have a solo record [Kabell] and there are other avenues of solo music. The area that I pursue has not been the one-instrument approach but I approached the solo from the process of the multi-instruments. Not only for texture but because I consider every instrument I play, and those that I may, to be one gigantic instrument. Whatever is being heard is like hearing the high register of the piano that I'm playing on my trumpet, or maybe on my steel form, or my drum, is just one aspect of that entire gigantic instrument. That's the ultimate reason. The secondary reason would be because it gives me a chance to introduce vibrations of the lips which come through the trumpet, the motor action of the arms which vibrate on whatever I'm playing the rhythm on. The metallic aspect of it attracts me. The theatrical element attracts me including not only the drummer but dance. When I move from one instrument to the next I consider that a process of dance. I'm speaking the words to the music. I'm moving through the image of dancing. I'm shaping myself as I move, not in terms of consciousness, but as a result of the music, to play the music. To reach and get my seal horn and blow it is an act of dance. If you notice it was present in the early tradition in the New Orleans aspect of the music. I strongly believe it never left music. When Edward Kennedy Ellington walks on stage and says "Good afternoon, I love you madly" that is pure theatre, that's beautiful theatre. That's serious theatre like Shakespeare, like Chekhov, like Leroi Jones, that's drama. Thelonious Monk. Willie the Lion Smith. When they got ready to play there was a whole beauty in it. Those people who would sit at the piano, when they called the piano "doing tricks", that entire aspect. When one man walks up and tells the other, "Get up son, you're not doing anything. Let me play this." That is part of the tradition. And that's African, by the way. The music is all one and a lot of people are confused by this as well. People have narrowed African music down to riffs and antiphonium setups where one has music placement from several different areas. These aspects have been common property of humankind since they've existed. It is happening in Asia and Europe and Africa. These are not the qualities of African music that I recognize as being foremost priority for me when I listen to it or write in reference to it. The thing that's important to me is the underlying science behind it, the motivating spirituality that's inside of it. Dancing and moving from one instrument to another when playing is one of the qualities in African music, or African culture, that has never left the manifestations of black music in America, black culture in America — it's never left. I feel most strongly that African music is the origin, a scientific way. African music has played the strongest part, if we speak in terms of "newness", that would give it the title of initiating American music. Because if that is so, which is what I feel then the other two elements are Indian and European. We know that the European is probably a little bit stronger than the Indian, but those three elements are there.

Bill: The newer music form has developed it past standard techniques, is this an important step in the development?

Leo: When Joseph "King" Oliver comes out and puts a coke bottle in his trumpet, or a hat or someone's coat over it and blows, that altered and dramatically revolutionized the concept of performing on an instrument. That had never happened before. The new technique that is being introduced now is compatible to the same degree as in that period. By playing many different instruments now you hear different relationships. When I say relationships I mean how these sounds and how these rhythms fit in an organized way for themselves and manifest as music. The relationships are necessitating a new way of looking at how you play your instrument, where you put your instrument on the stage, how you are going to go from one instrument to the next. That's an entire routine. I have on different occasions structured different directions in which I would go from one instrument to another. Physically I have. I did it on paper. I have structurally mapped out a particular direction I would go in one particular piece. For example let's say I have my steel form and the percussion that hangs from it there and I have the gongs here. I have my commercial instruments, by that I mean the trumpet, on this side and over there we've got some flutes. Okay. There were occasions when I've structured to go from the flute to the trumpet and back to another flute, from flute to the trumpet to the steel form, that's almost like a beat. That's a long angle but it's a short angle. From flute to the trumpet and to the steel form, that's a structure you see. (NB: A steel form is the system in which Leo Smith places his instruments about himself).

Bill: When I said technique I meant… I know that Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, who are just three of my favourite trumpet players, had chops all over, they extended the range and flexibility of the horn, but they were confined in a system weren't they? I think that you and Lester Bowie and Don Cherry probably have the same kind of chops as well.

Leo: There's another person we shouldn't leave out and I think he's one of the major innovators on the trumpet, Don Ayler.

Bill: Don Ayler created a different attitude towards it and there was another man, Norman Howard, who unfortunately I've never heard in person,

Leo: I've never heard Norman Howard myself but I've heard other people mention his playing abilities. These players that you've mentioned I know their music, It is a different technique but getting back to another point, I don't consider they were confined. They approached it from a different angle. They made the trumpet more fluent, more dexterous. I've never heard any music anywhere that could enclose the technique or technical proficiency of Navarro, Clifford Brown, Gillespie, Armstrong or Parker just to name a few. Thelonious Monk. Navarro, this man had a natural technique, I don't think he developed it from studying with a teacher. But just on the opposite side you have Clifford Brown and Booker Little who studied extensively; they also advanced the instrument. Now with Don Ayler, Don Cherry, Lester Bowie and myself, and other people, we've all attacked the instrument from a different angle, and have gotten some of the same results from attacking it from different angles, but each of us has gone different ways to present that problem, and as a result there's new technique. On my solo record, the small piece in it for the trumpet, which sounded like air sounds, basically — but that's not the whole story of that — that piece utilized a different technique, takes the entire process of music making and turns it around a different way. When I played that piece, the lip did not vibrate as normal for the trumpet. In this instance — which happened during a period when I was looking for things to do once a week that I hadn't done in another period of my musical life — I would sit in the practice room and never play anything on that particular day unless I could think of something I didn't do before. This particular piece and other similar techniques came out of that particular experience. So how that music is made, the process that manifests that music, is that the tongue vibrates rather than the lip, and the tongue is utilized inside the cup of the mouthpiece, not inside my mouth. Not only do you blow the tongue inside the mouth but inside the mouthpiece. That's what gives that sound. I carve and shape the sound with my tongue. That gives the particular intervals. If I want to go from a low to a medium to a high register, I use a different shape of my tongue to carve the air or put more pressure inside the cup. The sound produced comes from the tip of the tongue vibrating.

Bill: Do you think you're playing jazz?

Leo: No, I look at it in terms of periods. I look at it as when we look at the Baroque period, the Classical period, or the Romantic period. Therefore for me there's the spirituals, the other areas I'm not considering in this particular analysis because of the occupation they are in are field and shout songs. That was during a very strange period of captivity. I take spirituals, the syncopated music, from there into blues into jazz. Ragtime and the related piano music, stride and boogie woogie. Those periods I collect in the different years. Ragtime came along the same time as the spirituals. Long before [Scott] Joplin did his pieces, ragtime was in existence for a long time. In fact ragtime was not just the piano, it was played by anyone who played music. It developed into a piano music, it became a piano music, but it was not a piano music. From ragtime into blues to jazz. After jazz, swing, then the newer period until we get to contemporary music. I for one have decided to call all this music creative music, for myself, that's the way to talk to people in relationship as creative musicians. I should explain that term and why I use it. Creative music means to me — improvisers. Whether they do an absolute pure improvisation where you get there intuitively and consciously, you do it collectively, and play a beautiful piece of music. There have been masterpieces done like that. Or you structure some elements which may be done in a verbal way, or you notate, which is done in the way of a score. Being that as it is, these three different elements, the thing that determines whether it is creative music or something else is if it's predominantly improvised, if it is predominantly improvised to me it's creative music. The players are creative musicians and the form that they use is improvisation. The predominant aspect of the music is improvised. On the other side of the coin we have classical music, composers and interpreters, these people being creative also. Someone asks — don't you think classical music is creative? No, but creative music is the title like classical music. In the negative sense it means that other musics are not classical music. In the positive sense that music which has derived itself out of Europe from the greatest masters is classical music. That music which has the improvisers as the greatest masters, is creative music. Even inside. The different periods are only incidental. I would rather not have the periods just blanket classical and creative music.

Bill: There are a lot of attitudes which say or feel what's happening in black improvised or contemporary music is that it is utilizing a lot of the structures of avant garde white music. Do you feel this?

Leo: No. That's one of the culturist propagandas. As a music there is a tradition that people have looked towards, the Third Stream tradition is a term that comes to mind. Even inside that was not what it was meant to be. The man that got all the publicity and put the philosophy of it was Gunther Schuller, who was a composer. If we listen to that music, that music was essentially composed and incidentally improvised. He had classical musicians there and he had creative musicians there. The creative musicians would function as improvisers and the classical musicians would function as interpreters. That is something which means neither of the two understood each other's music. It sounded that way, certainly. There are several examples of very good music which came out of that period. The Modern Jazz Quartet for example have produced very authentic improvised music, some of the most influential music that you can imagine. It has influenced me and some of the people that others have been influenced by have been affected by that process.

I would say in music the fundamental laws of each music are the same. The improviser, all he does is organize sound, rhythm, silence and space instantaneously, as it is happening. The composer does the same thing on a slower process. His function often being initially inspired, over a period of time, is craftsmanship. It's impossible to tell me that a composer is inspired over a piece of music for twelve years, one composition for twelve years, that becomes a task work of craftsmanship. What I will recognize is that each time that composer works on that piece that he's inspired in the contribution that he contributes to the piece that day. Other than that. Those are things that I can see as common, the fundamental laws. There are people that are actually influenced by each other. Gunther Schuller is one who is influenced by this music or Luciano Berio, the Italian composer, John Cage at various moments in his music. He once said he hated jazz, but interestingly enough the first tape pieces he made were the taping of a lot of creative jazz records, that was the first electronic tape piece he did. His entire chance music process was not instigated by the I Ching book or the Chinese culture as it is, that is a rigid system or philosophy. His process of change, of having events happen very often and on a very creative level which he was after, came out of the improvising tradition, that was already initiated here.

Bill: I was thinking of people that you were associated with — Richard Teitelbaum, Garrett List — who seem to be involving themselves with musicians like Anthony Braxton and David Holland and so on. And Anthony and others seem to be involving themselves with them. That's what I meant by interchange. As performers together.

Leo: In terms of performance, Richard Teitelbaum I consider an improviser not a composer. Now he may disagree with the term. I consider Braxton an improviser not a composer. I consider Ornette Coleman an improviser not a composer. Based on the fundamental laws I feel that I know about the two different musics, the thing that they do most well attracts me as being that point which makes them what they are. If a person lives outside all the time mostly, and only lives inside once, then that person is considered an outside person, he lives outside. One way to teach this music is the way I learned how to play marches, by participating in it. Then by utilizing some of the technical books that have been written since 1908. Scott Joplin wrote a book called "Six Exercises In Ragtime", an exercise book to give people an insight into the rhythmic structure and development of ragtime piano music. After 1906 or 1908, the most important things that have happened in terms of technical knowledge have come from George Russell. That book "The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization" is a very important book. I've read the book, I haven't studied it, which I am going to do. I'm interested in everyone's contribution and I feel in that sense he has contributed vastly. Ornette Coleman is working on a theory book I understand. Last year I completed an exercise book in rhythm that covers every instrument including the voice. The different exercises are written so one person can play the same exercises on any instrument.

Bill: Do you intend to stay here in Connecticut and develop all that?

Leo: Yes. I don't know if I'll teach it on a school basis, because I've had such problems trying to do that on an academic level, but will do it individually with people. Several months ago I did a session called "The Art Of The Improviser". For eight weeks I taught the formal aspects of blues, based on actuality of blues, and my feeling that was actually being said into it, because I feel that blues is a very misunderstood music and I think that it covers two categories: instrumental/vocal music and it's also an instrumental music. Fletcher Henderson plays "The Gold Coast Blues", that was an instrumental blues and the way they played it pertained exclusively to instruments. If you hear Robert Johnson or Joe Turner or Big Joe Williams sing the blues and play the guitar along with it, that's the blues instrumental and vocal. I think it's highly misunderstood.

Bill: Do you feel inclined to do what is traditional for jazz musicians to do and that is go out on the road. Are you involved in that thought?

Leo: I am very much, except I haven't had very much opportunity to do that. I've had a few concerts and I do have New Delta Akri, for which I organized the concept in 1970, and it still exists. I've had two European residences rather than tours, we went there to live and play, we played the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival of 1972 and several other small places we've played, mostly on the East Coast and New York. We are inclined to travel. The current trio, Anthony Davis on piano and Wes Brown on bass. That particular combination was not in the European residence. The first time it was Henry Threadgill, myself and Leonard Jones. The second time was just Leonard Jones and I. After that is when I organized here in Connecticut with Anthony Davis and a bass player.

Bill: The original trio as I understand was with Leroy Jenkins and Anthony Braxton.

Leo: That group was originally called the Creative Construction Co.

Bill: That group actually made a lot of records with Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins and yourself.

Leo: That group was very important in the development of this music, and when all the pieces are out people shall really see another side of what was happening, along with everything else that was going on then. The group recorded "Three compositions of new jazz" on Delmark Records and did two records on the BYG label. Alan Bates has just released one called "Silence" [Freedom]. That was done in 1969, in America, just before we went to Europe. The first concert we played in New York after returning is going to be released, just half of it, another half of it is due to be released. If I'm not mistaken, Leroy Jenkins has the master tape of something we did in the studio. A radio performance was also taped.

Bill: You've just released a new record of the trio. How are you going about letting people know of it?

Leo: I've decided to have reviews on this one because I guess I shouldn't impose my own rigid concept on the people in the group. I personally don't particularly believe in reviews, but there is Anthony and Wes, and I don't think I have a right to impose it on them. I would do that for my solo music but when there are other people involved I think it's impossible to do that, it's like being a king and I'm not a king I'm a worker.

Bill: Do you find this a better method than knocking on doors of record companies?

Leo: Most certainly. I've decided for myself, as long as I'm alive, Kabell Records will be active. I've set for myself to try to release at least one record a year, now that I've gotten everything really off the ground. I've had my record company since 1971 and I've got two records, that's our solo record and "Reflectativity". I have four master tapes here of other materials I plan to release periodically, they are all different instrumentation. I have the master tape of the performance we did at Ann Arbor. That was part of the agreement. I have a radio performance that we did in March with New Dalta Ahkri, with Oliver Lake added. I have that master tape which is good and a couple other tapes of duos that are in my catalogue. I also have another solo performance which I'm going to release.

Bill: So we've got fifty years of Leo Smith music to come.

Leo: On Kabell. I've decided that's going to be my avenue, I'm not going to go to the man at Impulse or the man at Atlantic records or whatever the entire brackets of the people are because I can do it. Eventually it will bring in some kind of income so that I can continue to produce records and put them out. I hope to eventually start releasing my old material through other companies. Give them rights to release for three years, with lease contracts but not an out and out sell. I would never get rid of the masters of any of my music. It would always be limited to a certain geographical area. For example if someone in Europe released them they would have only Europe and only those areas they could work in within certain set time periods however many years they would handle that material.

Bill: Do you feel suspicious of the establishment?

Leo: No. I want to do it this way. If I can do it this way and really make a break-through in this entire crust. There have been many musicians before me that have had these ideas, and I've gained from their ideas, the thing that makes my idea different from theirs is I'm not holding out. I did not make the record to hold out and say, when the man comes along to pay me the money I think I'm worth, I'll let him have the master tapes. I didn't do it for that. I'm not in competition with any recording company, whether it's large or small, it's for documentation reasons, and also a much wider area. I want to influence people through my music. I want people to hear the music, be influenced by it, learn from it to make their lives better. I am speaking in absolute sense when I say influence, I mean in terms of musicians, listeners and other artists, even politicians if they could hear. I would like to change people's lives through my music by having the influence on their psyche of the music.

Leo Smith's website is at: http://music.calarts.edu/~wls/