We have to start seeing ourselves moving by stages. Then we have to decide what projects are reasonable within the resource, and then move, and how that resource and project targets a particular problem we have. Karlton and I wanted to begin with this, and then also to create a forum, a laboratory, where we begin to have the culture, the art showcased, and the experience that you all have had, becomes also a source of education for the people who are coming into the tradition. This way, we can begin to take some control over the definition. Some of think the name doesn't matter, but how you define it.

It has a place from which it comes, and it has a genesis. We began to talk about what we can to talk about reflecting on that, how to take command in defining what that tradition is; what that culture is. Also maybe begin to start having some influence so that legacy isn't lost among the current generation.

It seems also that one other piece that we're going to need [is a set of] people who are journalists and public relations people. So we've got to decide who are some brothers and sisters who have journalistic skills, and who are committed to vision we have. Also a publicist, public relations . . . because we have to be able to counter that. How do we begin to put up a project that would put on a concert that says this is what it is. I think that if we can begin even with some people in this room, and some others, that could become the nucleus for a performance piece that would be dynamite. We hope that people would be committed to be with us on the long haul, because it' just not us.

With that, we have to ask, what's the next stage? Karlton and I saw a period of reflection, refining this, and maybe two months from now, or [will that be] that too soon? And when we broaden this we're talking about the resources.

Karlton and I finally decided to bring together a group of knowledgeable people, interested people, to see where we could go in terms of creating something that had an institutional base. We roughly thought about [perhaps] one summer, since we have a base in Ithaca at Cornell. We'd have people come for a week or two week institute, where we'd talk about the legacy, the origins, the definition, and then also have performance piece with the younger and older people linked up and that could be presented. But those are just rough ideas. So that's what brought us to the table. We hope that this could be a kick off point and see where we can go for the next step.

I learned through some other people, some musicians, and some who are not, that Ken Burns, the documentary maker, who made a film series on the Civil War, is in fact now going to make ten part series on Jazz. He's in charge of it, and then he's got some other people around it. The other is that when you go to most of the blues conferences, it's almost flipped. I mean, there are very few Africans there, they're all mostly Europeans. This kind of inversion, if you talk to most of our young people, they're not even into it.

We want to begin with a certain nucleus, in terms of raising out the ideas. One of the first things we were always aware of is that we have to be careful that we don't defeat ourselves. Our story is such travail that, sometimes [in] reflecting on it, we defeat ourselves. We probably should have began this meeting by paying libation to Thelma Carter and others, who have just recently left, Tommy Turrentine. We know we've had other attempts, and we know those attempts have failed, or they've not come through. But, we've got to keep going, just as our ancestors often tried to get up and get away, but they didn't, but they kept going.

This brother mentions the young people. I just came in here with a young brother who's into the Internet, working for AT&T. Another young brother left Cornell who's into these computers. We have to find a way to begin to widen this net so that they hook to the legacy, but also bring us the technological skill. We want to get out of that and get into places where white people are. Where it's comfortable, where you have cushions, you had nice atmosphere so that we could say we weren't second class. So maybe we've been that way, and that some of us need to start that in those little places; because the tribes that you're talking about, Acklyn, . . .that's how they move. You see, our problem is [] we can't get people to open up fish and chips stores, who've been to Ivy League universities. But them Koreans open them.

We don't have to expose everything we do. You see, we have to also begin to make some of those people who are there understand that we need to operate quiet, because that's how those tribes operate. You see, there's no reason why we cannot have, we've got people who are sitting on top of the popular music thing. If you took what Michael Jordan is doing, and this cat called Prince, and if you took a Quincy Jones, Bill Cosby, and took them way out somewhere, out in the mountains, and just said, "Where are we going to go from here?" What are we going to do. Without it being in anybody's publication. Were hoping, we've got to try to move together.

Randy Weston: Coleman Hawkins said in the beginning, we didn't play in houses of prostitution, we played in people's homes. This was happening in all the major cities. I think two years ago, for Dr. Lynch, was the first time I played for a totally black audience, which is almost impossible, and its very frustrating for us. So, what I was thinking that there is a way we can hook up, and visit various black communities in the US, and establish a chain. If we could [perhaps] go back to the ancestry. I think they had a system all worked out.

We preceded that by seven years. In 1960, we formed the African American Musicians Society. In 1960 a lot of musicians didn't want to be called African Americans, they wanted to be called American Negroes. We had the market place gallery up in Harlem, and we did a mailing for musicians from Maine to Florida, and we had a 3 day conference at St. Phillips Church with the Rev. Weston, and we had African American cooking (we had the sisters assist with the food), and we had as our 2 speakers, John Henry Clark and A. Philip Randolph. And we had separate rooms to discuss labor issues. In fact our organization was the first to have an anti-discrimination clause in 802 union contracts, and we got only about 150 musicians, and the only band leader we got was Ornette Coleman. What we did was we went to all the people involved in the music business, and we gave them receptions where they could give us money so we could organize ourselves and better our conditions. That lasted about a year and we picketed Lincoln Center, because we knew it was only going to be for European music. So it was myself, Melba Listen, Ray Bryant, [and others]. We were like the presidents and VPs. We tried to do that and we [met] a lot of opposition. It was very frustrating. And brothers saying, "Why do you have to say African American, why don't you call it American Negroes, you know."

The second thing I wanted to add is that we were involved in the black community for benefits years ago. We don't do that anymore.

Something else I'd like to bring up. All musicians keep archives.

I have read a lot about James Reese Europe. I've done a research on him in France and here. But, I never read what the structure was that they used for the Clef Club. Has anybody done research on that? How he organized those black musicians, set those bands out, and organized the Clef Club, … Because [the Clef Club] might be a basis, historically. I think it's very important because he's one African man that did it. [During] 1910, 1911, [he was] a very black brother.

Makanda McIntyre: The problem has been that we have allowed our music to slip away. We are such gracious and spiritual people, and wonderful Christians, that we will turn not one cheek or two cheeks, but we will find other cheeks that we can turn so that we will not be considered the bad guy. We're so intimidated, we'll do anything to not be considered the bad guy. And in that process, we are being trampled. This is a billion-dollar industry. We own nothing. If I want to buy a reed, I've got to go to Europeans. If I want to buy anything for my instruments, you can't even buy supplies. [A similar problem exists with] the club owners, the managers. So, no names ride on his coattails and become successful.

My first instrument was piano. I played Beethoven, I played classical music, I'm a graduate from a conservatory. I never played jazz at a conservatory. I've written cannons and fugues. The language that I'm speaking, this is not my language. The name McIntyre, how can that be my name. I have to live with this. I understand the other side of it, but their understanding of the other side of it doesn't exist.

We need to hold African Americans accountable with respect to this music. A tribunal, [or] something like that, where you come before and you answer to why you have not invested in your culture

We are beholden to the power structure that exists. It's very difficult to get anyone to challenge that if their livelihood depends on that power structure. And for most, our livelihoods are dependent upon how we behave in a power structure. We have to recognize that, and then we have to say, how can you enlist others, and then ask what can we offer ourselves in that process? . . . Because there has to be a quid pro quo. If you take this away, what are you going to offer in its place? So this is a big problem, because we cant say that we've set up a circuit, and we have these performances in different homes throughout the Northeast, and we're going to move it around the country, so that there are gigs that are lined up.

Ernie Wilkins, a fantastic arranger and composer. Barry Gordon had Michele Legrand write the music for Billie Holiday's story. I had a fit, so I wrote a letter to the Gordon. I said, "look man, how can you possibly get this cat to write this music, when Billie knew Ernie?" I said, "moreover, Ernie's from Detroit." [I received] no response. Another time I wrote him another letter, because I was at UA [United Artists], and on my second go around, the VP said to me, "well I'm sorry, we're not going to go through negotiations, because we only have you here." [It] was John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, (you might have been in there too Randy), Gerome Richardson, a lot of people signed up and recorded for UA, and he said, well, I'll tell you frankly it's the largest stock. We wanted to have this music, so we just did it for that purpose. I'm learning, I'm saying Oh, so it's a right off. They can invest hundreds of thousands of dollars, and this write up, … solid, okay. So then I write Barry Gordon. There are a lot of cats that play some other kind of music. Why don't you call them into the studio, give them a gig, let them play some music, and put that out there, and you could write it off as a loss, . . . to push that music; . . .[again,] no response. He wasn't about to stick his neck out. We're talking about consciousness, at least, but those of us who are committed to the mighty dollar, that's a, I rest my case.

We need organizers. We all have skills, but it has to become more diversified. The outreach has to be greater. And the thing about it is that nobody wants to see us get this structure. If we have individuals, and the spiritual thing is here, and then intent is here, motivation along the lines that we know is here, but in terms of the structural thing, that is want we need.

Hester: Rarely do I hear confidently said, "this is African American music." If it was indeed comfortable to say that, then just as people say, "I love Jazz," they'd have to be comfortable with saying, "I love playing and listening to African American music."

The other thing needed is getting in direct contact with the community. I think that there are existing networks if we go through churches; that's one means. Also, it gets rid of something that's been attached to the music for a long time, namely the stereotype that it's the devil's music and all that kind of thing. It's a very spiritual music and that would put the music squarely into the context of spirituality. A component of archival studies should be factored into this. I would like to make a proposal, that any meetings that we involve live music. Often times, as educators, we get into a mode that is not inclusive in an African ontology. I am suggesting that we be careful and not let that happen.

Charles Tolliver: Are you familiar with Jim Harrison? He is a lot more suave than people take him for. The holistic approach is what this is all about. He didn't call it that then, but that was really what he was about. 30 years ago, on a place on Lenox Ave. and 110th street, there had been a meeting called. Jim was one of the people who were responsible for it. They sat around a round table, just like, and try to grab a hold of the music, the direction of the music, recording, managing, …the whole bit.

The livelihood of jazz musicians is dependent upon the recorded music, and music doesn't get out to the radio stations, to the bands, to the movers and shakers who say hey, something's going on with that, let's move that artist in there. So the root is the recording music, and I don't accept that musicians who are already out there with a name are risking their worth by getting involved in something that is holistic, and in the final analysis, they can control it. It's only a matter of, it's not even a sacrifice, especially for those who have a name already.

I asked him a question, is the music sitting underneath all this, and Acklyn said we have to deal with a lot more than just music infrastructure, a whole cultural thing. But let me tell you something. [Based upon] the experience that I have, those rappers who decided that they were going to have a whole new cultural thing, didn't care if you called it music or not. They were going to control it to a certain point, as you enunciated, [because they] were smart enough to understand (at first) that what was going to lay underneath all the information they were going to give to us (about how they feel about what's going on in the world), was taken off music that's already been recorded. Who's controlling that music?

When an inquiry comes to me -"Can we use that recording?" [I know] they have already recorded it. If I said no, because I control that recording, they'd have to scrap that whole thing, and they wouldn't even care because of all the money sitting there. Here's where we're talking about the infrastructure. If we're talking ethnically here, super African American lawyers know how to craft contracts that deal with [exploitation], and garner that money that those rappers were letting slip through their fingers by the other controlling factor; [namely, the publishing factor. If you're the publisher, you could take that whole record and control it. So, the rappers were giving us all this heavy-duty stuff, but they wanted to use our music, first. They were using a lot of jazz stuff, and we did not have any control whatsoever.

The health of the music will be fine if we define it the way you have [suggested], through the Internet. That's the deal. We define it. We are the infrastructure, as you say, and that's what this meeting is about, … setting that in motion. I think we should be okay if we do it that way.

Acklyn Lynch: Problem - we don't have an infrastructure in the African world for controlling culture. A total infrastructure that would then allow music to location of performance, to writing, to films, to everything in the culture, to the poetry, to the dance,

… and we have not prepared our children, and in our institutions, where we teach and work, we don't prepare people for an infrastructure in culture to control where there is a banking concept of culture: culture and its worth. Other people in other tribes, mainly Jews and Italians have prepared a total infrastructure: legal, engineering, etc. Solutions along the way that we might be [discussing] here may be patchwork solutions.

Two sets of people may have attempted to have some control over what they are doing and, in each, we have seen some dramatic problems. One is the black church has tried to organize itself on an individual, church by church basis in order to raise money and build an infrastructure. They build an infrastructure by the clients, the choir, the preachers, the deacons, [and] the education that they bring people too.

We're talking about Barry Gordon. It was really the young rap musicians that came from the ground in the 1980s and decide, "we're going to make some money out of this." It went in all kinds of directions. But there was another kind of effort-a tribal effort-at the ground for these cats, and it made a lot of money. But when it made a lot of money, there was no infrastructure to take that money, and do something with it, so somebody else came along and said you could do something else with this money. You could buy rings, ad dope, and cars, and guns, and we could see you all those things, with the money you made. But for a moment in time about 5 or 8 years, these young, untrained brothers got paid in a way that no musician in gospel, blues, your music, had ever believed people could make money. They got their hands on the money.

Randy has brought our attention to something that's important about James Reese Europe. That is he said, "I have read all these things about him, but the one important thing, is what I have no information on. … Nothing at all." This means, therefore, that information [was suppressed]. Somebody knew that this bit of information was not to be accessible to the general public or to musicians, for that matter, and therefore, they don't provide them with that. At the same time, we in the university don't come in to a dialogue either with you, or even use those books to recognize that that one important thing that students should be doing research on, should be done.

You have to work with layers: the layer where we could organize to have these performances in the community, the layer where you could organize in order to deal with the financial implications of the entire industry, the layer where you have to deal with the engineering implications. Every concept I go to, the people who break down and put back up, with all these engineers we have, are white folks. They understood that we had to take care of that part of the industry, and they say, "We're going to take this little piece of the market." That part of the industry may be a billion-dollar [aspect], that they effectively control.

We in the university don't want to learn from people in the street, whereas the people in the street have resolved their problems. Our attacks on rap for morality and everything else [must be reevaluated]. They're making money, and white kids buy their products. However, we're not going to attack Quincy Jones and Toni Braxton half-naked, on the front of a magazine, and her hand in her crotch, because its Quincy, and because we like Vibe.

And for me, on the album when Quincy and them said Rap is here to stay, that was what, 6-7-8 years ago on line. If it's going to be here to stay, then how…to just begin to provide that advice, that knowledge. We're being beaten not at the level of creativity, but knowledge. [We need a] global economical infrastructure.

Bill Hasson: "Music has no bounds."

There's a flaw in what you're saying. They have profiles of products/projects that are coming on line now, and they can research the law. They'll say Charles Tolliver, we got a piece of music they want to use, he's gonna sue us. They can put that on a machine, and how much would it cost you to fight them. And even if they print it, what they would pay, if the numbers come out where the profit is far greater than the settlement, they may not scrap it, they will pay you.

Karlton, if you and James don't do anything else, I think that there are three tracks that you have to be on in this project,

When I lived in Japan, the Japanese used to always introduce the concept of some kind of symbol, and then they moved to that symbol. After WWII, they said, we're going to build a car, and we're going to sell more cars in American than the Americans. Well, "made in Japan" 20-30 years ago, nobody wanted Japanese watch, now everybody wants Japanese things.

So, as I was listening to everybody, I saw 3 arrows in my mind and I said, "what Karlton and James are going to have to do in listening to the musicians is … try to get as much information from these musicians, as you can about what happened." What was the story? There's a great set of books called In Their Own Words, they interviewed surviving slaves, and some told exactly what happened. Well, I think a lot of this, the truth is being skewed, and as the musicians die off. Hell, we don't know what the hell happened. I don't know what went on. I've been in the study 5 years, but unless I speak to Jimmy?, the gentlemen that I've known and the females that I've known over the years, truth is going to be very important. So, one thing that you're going to have to do is to have to have create an oral history component to this. [This should involve a process] where you go around and you talk to these gentleman and these ladies, and all of these people who are the creative artists who start off with silence, and then there's music.

The second arrow I think is, I was listening to the brother here talk about, he's an engineer, and I was thinking about the transition and the transmission of this music is on the Internet now. I think that another component is looking at how are they going to deal with information in the 21st century?

Whatever they're talking about, if you could sit down with a youngster the way they used to do in my neighborhood in Chicago, they said, well, where do you want to go, I said, well, I want to do this, he says, this is what you're going to do. We're going to pay for you to go to school. When you come back, this is what you're going to do. In my case, it [involves] politics. So you build up those people, 10-20 years from now, this is what they end up doing.

You and James protect yourselves legally, in terms of the resources your collecting.

I believe in God. What this music has done for me spiritually, throughout my life. If we're projecting in our minds to 2050, do you think that the music is going to be strong enough to withstand all of the forces that have been bombarding us. More and more, the music is being redefined into something else other than what are intentions are that it should be. I do feel that spiritually, the music will be strong enough to make it to the next millennium. The question I want to ask is a philosophical issue. When I hand my stuff in to my publishers, they ask me, "What category is this?" I say, "Music." I just want to know the health of the music.

Bill Johnson: As someone who comes from a generation where we've benefited from what went on [during] the 60s, we've got the benefit of having spoken to you, and had your ideas become part of the fabric of how we think. And on top of that, [we] now have the access to financial resources, the knowledge of how things happen in this society. The knowledge of what really drives this society. If you don't understand the economics of how this country works, forget it. You can talk about all the ideas and all the concepts, and all the good products, and everything else, but if you don't understand the economic incentive that exists in a democracy based on capitalism, you are screwed in a way. Because you could have the best ideas, and the best products, but if you don't understand how to present them (how to identify your markets, how to package the product, and how to count the money once it does come in, how to build wealth-investing and reinvesting what you do get), so that you have stronger foundation than you had [before, such ideas are of little value]. I know a good number of people who understand these principles, and are committed to a lot of things said around the table. They want to see the next millennium be the one where we do define, articulate and control [our own resources].

Its not just about doing or collecting information, its about not ever losing the information out there. It's easy to get an effort started, and record it, and send it out to people, and because nobody responds, it falls flat. We did it, but we didn't have a strategy for the next step-the contingency plan. I think the next century is about access to information, that's how society is going to be controlled. We need to be on the wave. I encourage everyone to get access to email, so that we can quickly return phone calls. This way, there's going to be action, feedback. Technology is an important thing to incorporate into all of this.

It's essential that we figure out how to get access to the kids, from a performance standpoint, but also from an informational standpoint through the Internet. When we work with kids, we should try to get the real deal in front of them. I think the Internet is something we should seriously consider for voicing whatever it is we have to say when we decide we're ready to say it publicly.

A year ago, I was going to start a publication called The Artist Speaks, whose sole purpose was to reach out to artists like [you]. Let you define [you own music], let you talk about it; in your own style, your own words, your own length, your own anything. It would be an electronic publication; it would be on the Internet.

Al Phillips: I would just like to reinforce a point that he's making. We have an African American student who's graduating now taking a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, and this young man has been in business school, he's been in the NYT, the Cornell publication on the front page. His name is Felix. . . He's perhaps has done the most outstanding bit of engineering that's been done since I've been there. But what is he going to do. His [primary] objective is to become a billionaire in 15 years. He's going to learn how it is that you make large amounts of money.

Benny Powell: One thing that Randy said is "How did he do that?" He probably started off just like this. He had some good minds around him, and organized it. Now, what we've been missing in our structure is what you just mentioned-financial advisors, the other people who, no baseball team is all made of the 2nd baseman, somebody's got to be an outfielders, and so on. Now this is what's been missing from our ingredients: We are the makers or this, but we haven't been the marketers, because we haven't dealt with how its marketed.

You know, how they do the Negro baseball league, etc. We can study the principles of these things work, and apply them calmly. I'm glad this is a calm meeting, because most of the time, everyone gets to stand up and spend 2 hours [discussing] what somebody did to them. I concentrate on solutions. When you do that, the problems diminish. Some people concentrate on [their] problems, and they just get bigger and bigger and bigger.

A solution I'd like to offer is for us to get a resource sheet of how we can begin to correct this. {This involves producing] a list of resources. Next meeting, we can start dealing with how we're going to use those resources. I try to get everyone into a mindset for the next millennium. This pertains to many archaic situations. I'm advising everyone to think of all that bullshit that was created during the 20th century, and to think about solutions as to how we can begin to direct this [knowledge] in the next millennium. Once [we produce] this resources sheet, including people in management, law, performance, and all of that.

I'd like to see the first resource list, and our priority set on schools and churches, predominantly in our own community, because the first minds we have to change is the black minds. If we can show a role model, then it's easier to attract the others.

My thing is how we can stop this (calling the music "jazz") legally. Let us present an entity that can present a jazz festival, as we think it should be done.

I wish this was televised, because when kids don't see things on TV, they don't exist. And they see far too little about jazz, and when they do, it's just a performance. Us being on a program I think would be very valuable.

The artist who really has to tell people what this music is all about, and not have these people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about. I would really call for a panel that would bring some authenticity to the definition and the meaning of this music from the creative artists themselves. When people have the truth, then they're free.

Karlton Hester: I think we should start from a position that we are the infrastructure; perhaps the incomplete infrastructure. If we proceed from there, then the resource sheet has a meaning immediately, because we use the resource sheet to fill in everything that's missing from the initial infrastructure. And, in that seminal infrastructure, we know clearly what [the ultimate infrastructure] should contain. It's everything that surrounds our music in any capacity. That means pretty much everything. So, we need people from all areas to fill in on the infrastructure.

We can get the young people involved in many of the ways that you've mentioned: Number one, we have the question about James Reese Europe, and this kind of thing. So, in my next class, in September, I'm going to put my seminar on that issue. Also, someone mentioned the black baseball teams. We should look closely at the rappers, what did they do in the beginning to set up? That's more contemporary. We look at all that. We pull all those resources, and come up with some models that we can use. What I think we should also try to design ourselves to reflect at all times the model that we ultimately want.

We all have to take ownership of and some of the responsibility for anything is lacking. If we think something's missing, then we go out and we find that element, and we bring it in to make things a little more whole.

I think the question of how we define ourselves is a good symbol. The name, what we call ourselves, is just that, I think. If we get away from the term "jazz" and define it for ourselves, then that gives us an impetus and that gives us a direction. We're unified behind something fairly concrete.

I think we already have central a place - African Research Center. That's something that often times keep us off track. I think that may have been one of the things that the Clef Club had-they had a place, and then they moved from there. Also, every time we sit down, we should come out with something concrete, very concrete. I think, if we came up with the name, that would be something concrete, if we transcribe what we said, and publish that, that's concrete.

We should put something in motion about all the things we talked about, in other words. We talked about, looking at giving performances in homes, churches, or whatever.

Put students on that oral history. Send them around talking to people, throughout the country, and getting information consolidated.

Could we also, when these kinds of things come up, have some kind of forum where you can make those comments, and they get out there. Get our opinions out there of what is jazz and what is not. Know that when people make these kinds of comments, that they can be held accountable in some form.

Just one other thing, in terms of pulling some of these things together on a hard level. I have some money for performance at Cornell, and we usually do an annual festival. I'd like to have that dovetail with something we could do at Africana, so we could both have discussions like this, videotape them, and have a formal presentation where we play and say, this is what the music is. The next time that's going to happen is going to be in April of 1998.

I think that's the main point: to redefine the music ourselves from the creator's point of view.

I've never seen a situation, just doing history classes of the music, where students come in talking about rock 'n roll. Once you gave them the music, and you include a lot of the artists speaking about the music, they never go out talking about rock 'n roll when they finish the class. So, if we get these kinds of things down, and people have access to it, I think it will be the force that we need. I think that whereas before we've always had distribution problems, I think the age of the Internet does open it up…and because of its authentic and spirituality, it will just automatically negate everything that came before that tried to define it for us.