Taylor-Starks-Byrd-Norvel Panel

[!] Oral History/Interview

Panel Presentation:

Dr. Billy Taylor, Dr. George Starks, Dr. Donald Byrd, and Dr. Derek Norvel

Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University
April 1998

This panel discussion took place as part of the 7th Annual Cornell University "Jazz" Festival (Karlton E. Hester, Artistic Director)

Well, I’m from South Carolina. I’m a country boy, which may make me a little different than the rest of people up here...ha-ha...and uh, there’s no question in my mind as to where the music comes from. For a number of reasons. One, is because of my experiences growing up. The other has to do with my experiences as an academic, so to speak. When I was at Western University, Professor McIntyre suggested...did you suggest...or did I...anyway, I ended up going to the sea islands and doing some work. That really solidified in my mind the origins of the...someone suggested something about the rhythms, the multiple rhythms when I was walking up. That was one thing that really blew me away. I recall playing some music down there for a friend of mine who was a musician, and he thought in fact, that he was hearing drums, when he was hearing hand clapping and foot stomping of the people on the island. Not only were the rhythms multiple, but the people extract different types of tones from their hands when they clap them. In the same sense as the African drummer extracts different tones...and they have bass claps, and soprano claps, and tenor claps in the same sense that the African drummer does that. And it was not just those musical things, the conceptual things, the things the music did for the people. I’ve seen old folks walking into church service, and they could hardly walk...music starts and they’re doing the holy dance. Church service is over and they can’t walk anymore. So the therapeutic power of music became very apparent to me, and of course, music is a healing force in a lot of places around the world.

And I even think of that when I try to play. I can recall one time I had a saxophone teacher who told me I played funky, I was doing...this is before I ran into Makanda. And I think that was because there was still some of that South Carolina in my playing, the man said I was playing...funky. But even our approaches to our instruments, and I’m sure people have talked about this. This thing about intonation and hearing someone playing out of tune when that in fact, is the way that we hear music. The tone qualities, you know. I heard someone talking about reading the New York Times and what someone might hear as harsh and...harsh...For example, you hear a player like Pharaoh Sanders who is a very lyrical player, and some people write about him and they hear something totally different. So. One of the bad things about music writing and music criticism is the fact that the aesthetic from which the music emanates has not been the dominant one. It has had a very difficult time finding its way into music criticism. I see it as affecting a lot of things. Dr. Taylor was talking about Louis Armstrong when I walked in. So, you pick up the books and you read about Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke, the trumpet players...And you don’t hear about Clarence Miller and you don’t hear about Jambo Smith, and you don’t hear about Red Allen. There seems to be something wrong when these people who bring the whole aesthetic to the fore in very important ways are missing. You read about saxophone players but you don’t read about Earl Bostick (?). From just about any standpoint you can talk about, from a technical standpoint...and from a standpoint of sound, the Africa-derived concept of sound too somehow has not found its way into the whole mix. I don’t know anybody who did that better than Earl Bostick. There are just so many things...

Yes, yes. As things stand, we’ve kind of defined the territory. But, what are some ways...some things that need to be done to have history written where it does mention the people that are critical to the development of the music? It seems that part of that would be taking ownership, redefining who it is that sets the standard and defines the music, and presents the histories, and the criticism and these kinds of things that might be...

Last night Johnnie Cochran was here and there were more African Americans there than there were here. It would be interesting to me, in this particular place, to have many.... [tape is muffled for about 20 seconds of Taylor speaking]. That’s a vacuum that exists to my knowledge and so, to fill that vacuum, and to hear who this great artist was and this is what she did, here’s someone who had a mark influence on at least two...three important jazz musicians: Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell. So if she didn’t have anything else on her own, that is at least something to write about. He was talking about her religious things and other aspects of her work. What we need is for people to look for their own image in the music. Now, many people mistake what I mean when I say that: okay I’m looking for image and I don’t happen to be African-American, so I’m going to find a white guy. Okay. That’s been done throughout our history, but every person that I know of who isn’t Black, plays the music very well and there are many....has come to the community, learned from the community, become a part of the community. So whether you are Jack Teagarden comes immediately to mind because he worked side by side with Louis Armstrong and Louis had a lot of respect for him because, first of all, he could play. He could play the blues, he could sing the blues, he could do the things that Louis held in high regard. It wasn’t a manager or somebody that made him perform with this white artist, he liked it and he said that. I remember Coleman Hawkins giving an interview where he was putting down the interviewer. The interviewer asked him what he thought of soul food--this was back in the 60’s--and so he said “well, soul food, I think the first time I ever had soul food Jack T. took me up to Harlem and somebody he knew...she really cooked some soul food . Well obviously, he was putting on and it didn’t phase him. He said “oh really” and he went on to the next question. This is the kind of thing that has become part of the record. Dizzy G and Charlie P were ...masters at doing this kind of thing. And so a lot of things that are taken as gospel because it was said by a great artist, is not necessarily so. I would hope that in the defining of things that we--all of us that have had these kinds of experiences--and I think that to share some of them is sometimes helpful.

Since we are at an educational institution, one of the things that some way we need to find a way to do is to have more of an African presence on faculties. It blows me away to look at Jazz Studies programs and more times than not, you find faculties that are devoid of any black presence. And I’m not saying just in a place like South Carolina--a place like my hometown--where you may even be able to understand it, but even if you look at some faculties in NYC. Uh, you find that to be the case and that is one important thing that has to be looked at, particularly since so much of the learning of the music goes on in situations like this.

Let’s be specific. There are more than 40,000 in IAJE according to their counts. There are more than 40,000 jazz ensembles in schools around the country. As members of IAJE, we know approximately how many of those are involved with African-Americans. I think it goes beyond those of us who are in music. It merely speaks to the community itself, which means that at some point along the line, we have to reestablish the bonds that Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong--even though he was a millionaire--lived in a black community until he died. He could have lived anywhere he wanted, he could afford it, but he lived in Queens, NY and he lived very modestly. The people in the community loved him because he was a good neighbor, he loved the kids in the neighborhood, and I think we really have to look at some of the things along the lines that Donald Byrd has done. If he can go into a Howard University or another place and establish this type of presence, then that is one thing. But somebody has got to pick up. It is a relay race. Nobody’s gonna run the whole distance. Somebody’s gotta pick up the baton when he puts it down, and we don’t have enough of that.

I’d like to add to that. In the fifties, I got my license as a NYC schoolteacher and back then, they had about 3,000 positions that were licensed for elementary, intermediate, and high school. When I checked with the board not too long ago, I got that there were 200 teachers in New York. I mentioned that at a concert that Billy Taylor asked me to perform at with his trio at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC. Dr. Crew, the head of New York Board of Education, said and had asked the professional musicians in New York if they would volunteer and come in and teach music in NYC. As a professional, we work for money to make a living. We said “why don’t you do the same thing as head of the Board of Education, why don’t you volunteer?” Okay. That was to me, music education. I told you before, I got my beginnings starting with Billy. When I look at arts ed, and he can speak more on this than I can, I was a panel chairman at the... but he was, you were on the board, on the national thing. But anyway, when I look at education today and I’ve been around the country, around the world; everywhere I go, I get involved with education. When the Nadir of education, and I’m gonna say just like I said at Billy’s concert and so forth, what they are talking about in education today--very successfully, very candidly--they are lying. They have made that a big social issue. They keep from telling you the truth. If they wanted, if education and music were that important, they would have it included. Then, I went back to my years at Columbia, and I was thinking about how I had to study “principles of education” and all that kind of stuff in the European tradition. Every philosophy, everybody always had something to say, a treatise, about music and the arts and so forth. You weren’t considered, I don’t think today, unless you know something about... if you studied philosophy or anything, that there is always something about the arts. You go back even into the Egyptian societies and so forth, there was always something on music and art. You were not considered educated unless you knew something about it. How is it today that these people in Washington and the other places here in this country can teach you and talk about education without mentioning art or something like that? That’s a part of the culture. How could you go through the educational process without it? The real deal. A principal in a high school can add a music program if they feel like it or they can get rid of it and add another math program so that they can try to score higher in the New York Post and the Daily News in the rank and file system of who is number one. You can’t have a one. Everybody, P.S., whatever 131, or where I was teaching at P.S.55, in the Bronx, Alexander Birgan.. I taught at music and arts. Every joint in NYC. You can’t have one. You got that 1, 1, 1,2, 1,3 ...Everybody can’t be number one. But then the thing is that they are so involved in the politics of education, that they totally forgot what the process was. I wonder, in Guiliani’s background, did he ever play an instrument? Probably not, I don’t know. But, the thing is that they are teaching people today and totally omitting the arts out of education.

The other thing about even American history. One of the solutions...why not add so-called African-American history to the education process...history. How could America have a history without talking about Black folk? What’s that all about? Okay. I just studied my mother’s and my family’s history, okay. I went to VA, and I found out that my mother came from Clarksville in VA. That my family is Ibos mixed with the Okonishi (?) Indians down there, right outside of Williamsburg on the Roanoke River and all of that kind of stuff. And the Okinishi Indians go back to 9000 BC--before Christ was born. They were moved out by Nathaniel Baker and when they chased all of the Indians out of the East coast across the country. Okay? I went to Williamsburg to the place there where they were doing ads about culture and check out the history. Not in Williamsburg, but outside of Williamsburg, they have a plantation, and I been doing all the plantations from VA, MD, everywhere...all the way up to Delaware. And all the plantations you go to, you got the place where all the white folks are buried and the whole thing. And then I said to them, where are the Black folk buried? “Oh..Oh, somewhere over there.” Dover, DE. Big Plantation, Dickinson Plantation. Go out there, where’s everybody, you know, where’s...the slaveowner, yeah he’s buried over there, his wife, his family and all this kind of stuff. Okay, where’s the Black folks? “Uh, they used to bury them out there wherever they stayed in the fields and so forth.” Okay. Solution. Why don’t we have when we go to those places, why is it that these places that are national monuments and so forth...why is it that they don’t do something about the Black folks that lived there? A couple of the plantations in Clarksville, VA, where my mother lived, the Presswood (?) Plantation. When you go there, check it out. He had six or seven hundred enslaved people, you say, not slaves, but enslaved people...that...on the plantation. But then I said to him, “where are the Black folks buried.” “Over there.” But you better be careful when you go there. You better wear boots because the snakes and everything else are out there and the monuments have been overgrown (?). But a guy told me at the Dickinson Plantation--a white man said to me at the Plantation-- stop saying African-American, like your history is separate from everyone else’s. That there wouldn’t be no American if it weren’t for us. There wouldn’t be no South without George Washington Carver. You noticed that they don’t teach you this in your history books. You gotta look twice. But look, the Black folks who built all the rice mills (?) in your state, South Carolina. But they don’t teach you all of these facts that Billy, George, and all of us are talking about in your American history book. The solution: Why don’t you try incorporating that and telling people about this, the kids and so forth. Because the thing is that not only are the Black folks being denied, but some of the white folks--y’all don’t know nothing either. Okay.

I have traveled all over the world. I was on tour not too long ago by Phillip Morris. We were sent over there to promote cigarettes and what was funny on the tour...out of almost 30 of us, only about three people smoked. Okay. But the point is that I got to see how this works. I lived in Europe for four years. I studied with Nadia Boulanger. You see, there are a lot of things even about jazz music... I know some inside stuff, too that they don’t write about and omit. Like the truth--who wrote “Summertime?” You see, during that time and Fats Waller (?)... and this was told to me by an old man that everybody’s talking about--Eubie Blake. There used to be a time when the musicians, and I’m talking about social power and control....There used to be a time when Fats Waller and all the other musicians used to sell their tunes for $50. And whoever sold a tune, owned a copyright and when they copyrighted it, it became their possession. But all the things that we are talking about up here--Billy mentioned, George, everybody, Derrick--is not African-American history that you’re hearing, it’s another side of American history that is completely covered up all of the time. Enshrouded in darkness. Just like they say “the dark continent” or the third world. If the first people came from Africa, that’s the first world. Okay? But I’m just saying, these are contradictions and things like that. At this point in my life, I’m not trying to run a popularity contest...I’ve made over 70 albums under my name, even stupid things like you look at Budweiser, I’m doing the hip-hop commercials. So, I know my mother and father...I have no problem about who I am and all that kind of stuff. But the thing is that you are denying yourself an opportunity when you open your books and they don’t mention any of us and things like that. I’m looking at, now here we are a year and a half from the 21st century and I just got the Britannica encyclopedia on CD. I got the Brawleans (?); I got all those things. And then I look at African-American history. The other day, Britannica came out with an African-American CD, okay, and that to me, is like totally ridiculous. But then the thing is, I’ m lookin at how are the kids going to look at us in the 21st century, okay. They had a little blurb on Clifford Brown, one of the greatest trumpet players of this century like Mohammed Ali, which they voted the other day was the best boxer of this century. Okay? But I looked, and I’m looking at these entries, and I say you mean to tell me that grandchildren and great-children and people like that, is this education? Is this what’s happened? Is this same thing.. .I’m looking at the fact that here it is 25, 40, 50 years later and they just recognize Paul Robeson. When I started the jazz program at Rutgers University, and the reason they brought me there was to keep everybody calm in 67, in 68, to keep them from rioting. And when the president the other day at Rutgers said, “yeah, who’s that on the bell curve, Black people score 10 % lower than bright people.” The president from Rutgers. When they hired me down there, it was to keep them from raisin all that hell because they were supposed to name the gym at Rutgers after Paul Robeson. Why? By a lettered man, Phi Beta Kappa, went to Columbia, was the first in the law school to graduate and so forth. And we scored 10% lower? Put me in that crowd. Okay. If a man like Paul Robeson, who was denied entrance to Princeton, is scoring 10% lower, then name somebody who ever went to Rutgers, since its inception, who did better. I’ll drop it at that.

There’s a solution right now here in NY that you can all be a part of. There’s a bill that’s pending from state senator David Passlehoff (?). It’s called the people history project and in it, they are trying to address the fact that there have been histories and cultural histories that have been totally left out of the picture of NY. For instance, the first African American holiday was celebrated right here in NY, in Albany and in lower Manhattan--it was called Pinkster. It had a Dutch name, but there were 11 Angolans who were the first Africans brought to NY who had festivals related to Pinkster. They brought their festival which was the Pinkster festival and it became known...A--Cooper wrote a book about, a short story using Pinkster as a background saying that this was African, the North American santanalia of North American Blacks. They elected an African king for each year of the festival. Some of the kings are buried in what is known as the African Burial Ground project in lower Manhattan. And they also had African kings that were part of the festival that might be buried in Kingston Hill (?) where the state capital is. But this was a major celebration, it was a major music celebration, it was a major religious celebration because it was really Pentecost. And all..the customs and the things that happened out of that, that developed In African American culture and music came out of festivals like that. The juba dance...many of the juba dance contests came out of that festival. In fact, it was Charles Dickens who came to NYC to see one of the famous juba dancers of all time...and I shared a story about him. And this juba dancer had this tradition that went all the way back to Pinkster and the Pinkster king. So its holidays like that....Pinkster, by the way, was outlawed by the city parlors and state parlors of New York here in the early nineteenth century because they erected booze, they sold wares, they had this big party and it was no distinction of racial difference and even slavery difference...slavery didn’t end until 1825 for adults. But children, it continued until they were 25 years old. So really, in New York, slavery didn’t end until 10 years before the Civil War. And just in time for the Fugitive Slave pact...to force people, slave patrollers to come to New York and Boston and other places and from the south and say you look like my kizzy and they say I don’t know what you’re talking about and snatch these people and take them further South to be introduced to slavery again. But we need the people’s project bill to be passed and some formidable people who may or may not be in sympathy with that bill...for instance, Senator --(?) was saying that there are some people that people we need to convince like Senator Bruno and other people....

So we....write your state senator and say that you want this bill passed. It’s not just for African Americans; it’s a people’s history project of everybody that is in the state--Native American history, Asian American history...there’s a lot of history in NY that has never been documented. Irish-American history and the rest....For instance, there’s another place in NYC that there has been a stir over and I’ve been involved in that...In Central Park, they found two AA cemeteries. They are part of an area known as Seneca Village. These people were forced off of their land to make way for the park. It was a village that was started in the 1820’s--1827 and lasted up until 1858 when they were getting ready to decide they wanted a park and they decided they wanted it in this area and they moved these people off of Seneca Village. Sometimes the village was even called Nigger Village. One of the reasons they moved the people away was because it was a hotbed for getting people from the underground railroad and getting them North to Canada. And so, the city fathers said we’ll kill one bird with one stone...stop all this abolitionist agitation and disperse these people, and so the park was sacrificed. But there are two burial grounds there...cemeteries...one is a cemetery of the AME Zion church and the other is a cemetery of the All Angels Episcopal Church...that was affiliated with St. Michael’s, that is affiliated with the big St. John the Divine itself. So of the cathedral of St. John of which I’m a member of. Very, very passionate about preserving these cemeteries in light of the fact that a lot of privatization is going on with the park under the Guiliani administration. So these are things that we need to have in a bill like that with the people’s history bill, so it can be taught...taught to kids in the schools. When people find that their culture is beautiful and each other’s people’s culture is beautiful, then we can have a real democracy. Then we can have a real participatory type of civilization. But if we have this divisive thing, we can never get together. We can never get together as a real community to work on those things that are good for the community as a whole. And we need the educational things as a counter to what’s going on on television. We need to take the real educational things and put them on tv and in the media instead of a lot of trivial stuff. The other point with education in NYC, I can speak to in all kinds of ways. I have my certificate as a teacher in the city schools and it’s horrendous. And all of a sudden you’ve got this thing on VH-1...save our schools ...save our music programs. All of this johnny-come-lately stuff and getting Aretha Franklin out of the woodwork here and this one over here to save the schools when..I can tell you , it’s a struggle trying to preserve and keep music programs alive in the public schools. I went to performing arts and just recently, last year, was performing arts at a concert in which they had Richard Dreyfuss come over, the Mr. Harland Opus Fund (?) to raise money for instruments for the school of performing arts. The famous school is falling apart, they couldn’t maintain the instruments. They have no money for it. Sam Asher, all the money Sam Asher (?) makes...Sam Asher came out with a special check for... I think it was for a little over a thousand dollars. Everybody said whoopee, this kind of thing. It’s sad, when I teaching at performing arts as a sub, I was shocked by the fact that students...you know, you’re teaching orchestra, teaching chorus and that... all of a sudden, a student would be pulled out of his class, or particularly if it was an after school thing, a concert going on, pulled out of class because the gym teacher needs him because they are having a track meet, they are having this that and the other. I have nothing against Physical Education. But I’m saying, this student has a concert...they’re the major soloist in this thing, you can’t just pull them out. Somehow there was this arrangement made that the PE department had the total clout to do whatever they wanted to do regardless of what the music department was there about. And I said wait a minute, kids at age really don’t know what they want to be, one day they want to be a violinist, the next day they want to be a track star. And so, it was like kids were being torn between these two things. They were being torn out of the music, pulled out of dance, pulled out of drama, you know, but track, basketball, and the rest...and I’m saying this is a school of the arts. If they want a school of athletics, let them have a school of athletics. But you just don’t pull the students out. I was upset about this, and they said no this is a special deal, I was told by the principal, where you have to go along with it. I said this is a performing arts school. There’s some student pulled out for some track or basketball...there’s a concert coming on next week; are you mad? No, no making waves, be cool. And that...that’s tragic.

I just want to want to leave a little time to open up for questions from the audience. We’ve raised a lot of issues, but I think that the question of solutions is a good place to start. We talked about having a community and everyone learning the music. If you’re gonna learn the music that we are talking about, then it has to be learned from the community. But the community has shifted, as Derrick says, it has been shattered in a lot of senses. And so now, a lot of the educating that goes on is in institutions such as this and those that each of us are either associated with presently or have been associated. So, maybe we can focus in on solutions with those things in mind and open it up to the audience.

Living Encyclopedia of Global African Music
Transcribed: Fall 2000
Posted: 07/24/2002