What's up everybody? Lenny white here and I want to welcome you to the iue universe podcast on this podcast. I want to invite you the listening. He joined me and my guests as we discuss music, arts, science, some amazing personal journeys and everything in between. The cat is Norbert Karen Statutes, last name spelled backwards, the group performance original composition that combined elements of modern Jazz R and B, Middle East in Afro, Latin and rock, creating a musical popery creative sound. The cats is a seven piece band led by Norbert Statute on tenor and Soprano Sax, Bass Clarinet, flute and Karen Satchel playing flute, Alto Flute and Piccolo along with various talented and highly in demand musician, but statute has toward recorded and performed with power power flora and Freddie Hubbard, Roy Hargrove, Prince boss, scaggs, Roger Waters, and countless others. Karen Stepchild, because released three albums as a solo. She works as a professional jazz and classical flutist in New York City and prior to that in San Francisco Bay area, she can be heard on several movie soundtracks and commercials and Norbert are both members of Wallace. Rodney's office. I recently stopped by and spoke with Norbert and caring after their release.
Speaker 2:What's up everybody? Lenny white here and welcome to another iue universe podcast. And today my special guests are going to be, they actually part of the iue universe because we have done a project together, but I want you to welcome Karen and Norbert Statute. Hello. Hello. How are you guys? Good. Good. Now there are probably a lot of people that don't know who you guys are, but I'm quite sure if they look at your credentials, you have played on records and in situations and made music, uh, so that they would say, Oh wow, he's on that. Or She's on that and you know, so, uh, that would be kind of interesting. And where are you both from Karen First, where are you actually from? I say I'm from Tacoma, Washington because I was, my dad retired there and so I spent a few, few years of my childhood there, but we traveled a lot. So you, you were born. I was born in Washington, Washington state, state, and Norbert. I was born in Vallejo, California. And so where did you guys meet and how did you. Well first I have to say that Norbert and Karen are husband and wife and they are very, very, very, and they are very, very busy working musicians. You guys play all the time and you've made thousands and thousands of records. But how did you guys meet?
Speaker 3:I'll tell the story and. Oh, we can both. Energetic, of course. Um, there is uh, a place called[inaudible], which is a, an Ethiopian restaurant and the owner of the restaurant likes live music a lot and he and he has an affinity for jazz. Where's this restaurant? It doesn't exist anymore, but it was in San Francisco at the corner of Divisadero and California. Yeah,
Speaker 2:I know that very well. Both an club was near data. Which one? The both an oh, okay. The visit Arrow? Yeah. I, I didn't, I wasn't around the scene at that time. Uh, I don't think w w what years was that? Probably 70. Okay. Yeah, I was, uh, I was how old I'm going to give away my age. I think I was nine or 10. Okay. Wait, wait. Seventy, is that right? Am I adding correctly? Yeah, I was nine, so I wasn't on the scene yet, but I remember the name. Right, right. There's some great music at the visit, at that club. Major ponds was around there, right.[inaudible] company, major pumps. But, but uh, man, I played there with woody. Sure. And Bobby Hutchison. Joe Henderson, you know, the fan club was a. That was where you were, you came, uh, when you play jazz in San Francisco. I mean after the, I think the Black Hawk was in San Francisco. Black Guy. Yes, exactly. And then workshop. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. And this was before the keystone corner. Oh Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Karen's was playing at
Speaker 3:resolve those and she was leading the band. We didn't know each other. I only knew one person in the band who was a pianist named[inaudible] who used to also be in the San Francisco Mime Troupe. And uh, so, uh, you know, I, I used to go there when I wasn't working just to hang out and uh, try to be social and find music opportunities. And, uh, I was saying, who's this, you know, and I asked musicy Karen's pianos to introduce us. So he did, it was who's in your band that time? Parents. Uh, it was, um, I think it was a lea convy on drones who moved to New York. He lives in Brooklyn now. And I'm trevor done or could have been ellen hall. It was on drums. I kept going through a few changes, visual, all San Francisco musicians and Trevor Dunn. But Norbert came up after we played and he introduced himself and he goes in his line was, would you like to see my Powell flute? And I did. I flew player. Yeah, I wouldn't see your power back in those days. I was pretty nuts. I, uh, inherited the family, a Chrysler 300 gigantic boat of a car with a huge trunk. And I used to, for some reason I would keep all my woodwinds in the trunk and that was a big mistake later on, I learned the hard way because stuff was stolen. But, uh, I, I think I had a recording session earlier that day or the night before and I was too lazy to take everything out of the trunk and I was living in El Sorito in a safe neighborhood, so I didn't have to worry about it really. Where did you go to music school? What did you. Well, I was very fortunate that, uh, in junior high, it was a very, uh, um, dedicated music teacher in Valeo. No, actually I was born in Vallejo, Kaiser, but my parents at the time of my birth lived than a chicken ranch, Cotati, California, which is in Sonoma county. And uh, we raised chickens. My family raised chickens and when I was four we moved to El Cerrito. Okay. Which is in the East Bay. And uh, I'm losing my train of thought. Uh, your schooling? Oh yeah. Schooling. Well, junior high school is when I really picked up the saxophone before that I tried to mess around on trumpet and it didn't work out for me and I just couldn't figure it out. The whole armature thing that I switched to trombone and same thing. It was frustrated in order to where, how far to put your arm out for this slide and all that kind of thing. So I gave up. My brother talked me into playing saxophone. Uh, there was uh, a berry, a band called the sons of chaplain and my brother, I remember never them and my brother had his, uh, his, uh, what were those things called? Those eight tracks or for track players than in your car? That was a track and he had two sons of chaplain Jimi Hendrix, all this great stuff. And uh, I always loved the sound of the saxophone that I heard when I was a little kid when he was playing the eight tracks of sons of chaplain and he says, if you like that, you should try playing that instrument. So I tried in junior high school and it worked out and I, it felt natural to me and I enjoyed playing it. Did you go to any, um, I guess what your musical institute of higher learning and. No, but I have to say that I was so fortunate when I got to high school, I went to John F Kennedy High School in Richmond, California and the music teacher there was also an extremely dedicated teacher named Alan clothes and he would recognize interest in young kids and he would take them under his wing personally and spend personal time with them and present John Coltrane records and Charlie Parker and Johnny Griffin and he was a jazz musician. He was a jazz saxophone player and that's. That's kind of great. You get exposed to exposed to that age music that I think that's one of the problems today is not enough exposure of that. Those kinds of different kinds of musics. Yeah. For kids to kind of grow[inaudible], but all of the schooling and all of that was in the bay area. Yeah. I didn't go on to study music in college. I didn't really. I didn't really go to college. I went to junior high and dropped out of Karen Youtube.
Speaker 4:Right. I got my Ba Everett, which is now called East Bay University or something like that. Which a cal state, hayward and then my masters from San Francisco State University.
Speaker 3:Whoa. Whoa. Your masters? Well, well
Speaker 4:yeah. Back then they didn't have much for jazz in the higher education, so I was always interested in classical music. So. So you played a lot of classical music? I studied classical music. Did you, did you play in a lot of walkers? I played in a lot of orchestras. Uh, I was pursuing that for a long time, but I was also at the same time pursuing jazz. So it was a two things. Sometimes the orchestra would take over then sometimes the jazz part. Okay. Now
Speaker 2:who were your, uh, who did you kind of want to try to fashion yourself after and in that time period playing flute? I mean, what? Herbie Mann, uh, you know, Hubert laws, it wasn't few people all horn. I listened to all those guys. Right. But the one that was the most prominent was Hubert. Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, when you see flute in the dictionary, it should be a picture of even last, next to that, you know? Yeah. He's, he's a master musician and, and nobody, I mean, who are your saxophone? I mean, aside from like being in school and being exposed to Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, was there any contemporaries that you listened to that were in the bay area or whatever that kind of inspired you at that time period?
Speaker 3:Uh, so you mean people that were accessible to me directly in the local situation in the bay area? Yeah. Uh, well, an early when I was in high school, I'm in an early saxophonists that came to mind that lived. There was Mel Martin. He had, he had a group called listen. And I liked the fact that he played all these different instruments. He wasn't just a tenor player, just announced will player. He enjoyed playing lots of different kinds of music. And that was part of my whole music, a mystique of what got me interested is that it doesn't just, I mean it's, it's fine for a person if they just want to play one specific kind of music, but I've always been interested in the possibilities of combining different kinds of music or learning how to play different kinds of music and letting it be a natural thing, you know, find my voice. And that's how I found my voice. So Mel Mel's one. Uh, Vince. Oh, what was his last name? Vince Wallace. He was another bay area legend Sax Player. Um. Oh, of course. Why am I not remembering that Hadley Hadley Callinan having. Because I played sweetheart,
Speaker 2:I played with Hadley and I played with Mel. Mel and I were in a band.
Speaker 3:It was so cool. And so a male. Well, I have to be careful what I say, but I'll say it this way. Hadley was the kind of person that was so supportive and he, when he saw someone really loving something and wanting to grow and learn, he was so encouraging. You know, not everyone is that way. I have to say, but Hadley was very encouraging, uh, as a, as a saxophonist and a knoll jukes. Who Know Jukes. Not
Speaker 2:Too many people know about them. Oh, okay. Okay. Heavy, heavy barrier. Saxophone player. Multi-Instrumentalist. He played bass too. So. So Karen, had you moved to the bay area at this point? Right? I moved down there right after high school basically. Okay. So music brought you guys together, right? That was the invitation. Yes. And so where did it advance to the point where like you just decided to share lives together?
Speaker 4:Well, we, uh, we started out playing some music do. It's this with flute players like to do. Oh, he played flute, let's play duets. This what? We started doing it and then we became friends before anything but it grew. And uh, and now it's been how long? Twenty three years
Speaker 2:since 26 since we met at Russell is congratulations guys. And actually did meet once before that at the greater making musical. I don't remember if Karen was on a date and I was, I was playing with a band with Ray Oviedo at, at the great American Music Hall. So Karen, um, you basically pursued classical music and then play jazz on the side?
Speaker 4:Well, my dad was a jazz saxophonist and he knew what it was, like he knew the life of it and he didn't want me to deal with that. So he had, he made records and. No, he, he's uh, he, he was in big bands and he had eight kids to support so he didn't want to, you know, be just music, jazz music. He couldn't,
Speaker 2:right. They do that. So he's in his own, in his own time. I'm sure you know the people, he hurt his knee. Was it? What is a disease? It's Oscar Burleson. Okay. And he's in his nineties now, so, and he's still kicking. Wow, that's really hard. That's great. That's great. So did you just go and play with orchestras or did you have any bands that you got into in the bay area?
Speaker 4:Uh, well I was mainly when I was doing work, it was mainly orchestral work in, in music sessions and sessions I was doing. I was doing commercials, I was getting called for commercials and soundtracks, but mainly a orchestra
Speaker 3:work. Now of I do know that you played with a legendary San Francisco band tower power. And how was that? How did you get to do that? Well, I had always been a fan. The same guy, Alan close in high school who turned, uh, all the kids that were, even if they weren't interested, he would still make it present and he would show people a art tatum and Bud Powell and felonious munk and Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and miles Davis. In addition to that, he also presented tower of power and the way he presented them as he thought that he could reach the kids better if he, uh, use them as an example of a band that played some music that combines jazz harmony, jazz sensibilities with a little bit of a Latin rhythmic feel and RNB and soul and a little bit of rock that combines it all together. And, and that, that the fact that they were successful, reasonably successful from the bay area and he thought he could reach and tap into kids' interest more in, in high school. What year was this that you went to high school? And, and, uh, exposed to this teacher expects you to, to the music. It was 1974. Is that right? Seventy, 74 through[inaudible] 79. Okay. And so when you, when you joined or 76? I'm sorry,[inaudible] 76 through 80 or something like that when you, you played with tower from 76? No, no, no, no. Um, that's when Alan Klose presented the music and that, uh, I was really interested. I go, wow, that's a great sound. That became a fan right there. And then before that I didn't know about them. And then I would, whenever they were playing in the bay area, I would try to go to see them and um, for some friends of mine played in the band before I ever played in it. Uh, a gentleman by the name of David Kay is his middle initial. Matthew's David Matthews is an organist and pianist. He's now, he's been with Carlos Santana now for about six years. Six, seven years. Maybe a little longer than that, but he was in tower power in the 19 eighties. And uh, I used to play in the Pete Escovedo Orchestra since I was 19 years old. This is really interesting how your past history kind of overlaps with mine. I know, I mean, I didn't know this until today. We're talking about it, but those, you know, Pete Escovedo as Mel Martin, we all played together and Azteca. So I mean,
Speaker 2:and Azteca was happening pre, pre, before I can write that flip Nunez. Yeah. Yep. I used to play with flip a little bit and, and so, you know, like I was in the bay area around that time period, you know, and it's so deep that when I met you both, it was here on the east coast doing something totally different music than you had done and I had done. And so now we're playing this wing shorter music universe, which is very dense music and um, miss amazing music and then we sit down and talk and I wow, your history goes back and we kind of crossed is kind of interesting situation, you know. But it's interesting because also the fact is that the music that you made that is on your new cd and get me the please pronounce it the right way because I really messed it up.
Speaker 3:Well, the name of the CD. Yes. Yes. Well the name of our band is our last name. Statues spelled backwards. So let's say cats like hats, right? Uh, and uh, at any French people listening, it's not a mispronunciation of the shot, so I apologize, but it's not a, it's just our last name spelled backwards. And the name of the recording is movement to egalitarianism. Egalitarian. Yeah. Which is a fictitious name that I guess I kind of made up. And what does that mean? It was a fictitious place. Basically. It's a fictitious place. It's like a utopia of sorts. There's a movement called the egalitarianism and a person that is a part of that way frame of thought isn't an egalitarian. And basically in a nutshell, from my understanding is if you agree with what egalitarianism stands for, that means you want a, a, a frame of mind and thought were any human beings should and have the same opportunity for success in life regardless of your background, your upbringing, your economic level, a what group you belong to either visually or historically or by bloodline and, um, or by gender or by religious belief. And so I figured, hey, maybe that would be a nice place, would be
Speaker 2:nice place when you find that, let me know, you know, um, but what, when you guys played me the music, I really enjoyed it. And then you asked me to be a part of it and it was really great to do that. But what was interesting to me is that it was really like Latin. Yeah. And so you guys across now, you said that route, why she had played in a pizza pan. And Karen, I mean, did you play a lot of, a lot of latin bands and the bay area? No, but I did gravitate to passing new business and all that with the flute. It's so nice to play that kind of music, but uh, yeah, that's the Norbert thing. He wanted to do a Latin record. Don't ask me why, but he did. Let me ask you, you know, we were talking a little earlier about, uh, the fact most of us just think about making music, whatever kind of music is getting it to a point where we can record it and just put it up. So guys, let me ask you, you guys have been in the music business for awhile. You've recorded your own records many. How many times have you been
Speaker 3:dundas where like you've recorded your own CD and put it out? Well, how many do you have? To be quite honest. It's kind of a new venture for me. It's something I've always wanted to do since I got into music professionally, but a w for whatever reasons I was scared or apprehensive to myself speaking about myself to make it happen. So to this date, uh, with Karen, we've together, we've done two recordings and Karen's done and several honor her own some, which I've been involved with, some not, and I've, I've done one solo recording before we did our first Karen and Norbert record. So that's about four or five. Yeah. But I'm on, I'm on lots of, as a sideman what is, you know, I understand that, but the, the being entrepreneurs and doing it yourself and putting out music. That is your music.
Speaker 2:You've done it about four or five times. I've done three on my own too with Norbert. That's five. Yeah. Um, so now you've done this now for what? Maybe seven or eight years. You've done this, you put music out? My first one came out in 93. Oh Wow. Okay. So how has it changed back in[inaudible] 93. It was like cds were brand new and it was like, right at the turning point where he's like, do you want to put out a CD or cassette? And I thought, who's going to own a CD player? So I put out a cassette. We should do that now. For you know, it was a different, different world. It was a different world because of the fact that there wasn't as much music as there is now. I mean, and the total exposure to music was a lot less than it is now. Now it's would totally saturated. So how do you find your space? What do you think that you need to do? It's a conversation between artists to find a new paradigm in how we should present our music.
Speaker 3:Well, speaking from my own way of relating to your question, I would have a tendency to go into a panic mode in my past and worry about being successful. I have to be successful. A person has to be successful. Your family wants you to be successful at your inner sense of yourself, wants you to be successful, successful, successful, make it get over, become successful, you know. But then, you know, before we started running the recording, we were talking about, well what's the purpose of this? You know, we're, we're doing art, we're not doing this for money. You know, we're not, we're success can be. Yes, it could be a monetary thing. And we live in a monetary world, but if we don't feel like we have, uh, the, the situation to express ourselves and to be artistic and, and to contribute to this life in a positive sense, something that we believe in and feel is an offering to our part of what we are in humanity. If we cannot do that, then then all the worrying and the stress is for not, you know, why you. So the way I'm thinking for myself is that it's time just to really try to connect with an internal vision or dream of what it can be out of honesty as an and of course to hope for success on some level and in recognition of course, because, you know, I have an ego, of course I want to be recognized. Of course someone have opportunity to be heard and for people to like it, enjoy it. You know, you've played in bands that had been hurt. He didn't. You play with the. Roger was Roger Waters. Yeah. But I was just, uh, a guy a hired gun to imitate the saxophone that was on the record's done 40 years ago. I wasn't expressing Norbert statue and it wasn't me, it's not my music.
Speaker 2:Now you have an opportunity to do your music. Yeah. You know, a lot of people measure success by how much money that you make or how many things that you acquired. But um, you know, there are a lot of different definitions of success and one that I really kind of held onto was successes, the constant realization of a worthy goal. And so making music back. When you started to make music when it was very, very special for you, when you both wanted to become musicians was really special for you. It made you, it shaped you to become the people that you are right now and you law student musicians. How has that changed in the music that you hear today?
Speaker 3:You mean as to, as far as making a judgment of other people's music?
Speaker 2:Not so much a judgment and other people's music. I mean, artists are artists and we all create and what we create is being judged all the time, but just the aesthetic, the aesthetic about how you create what it is that you create, what's behind, what's the motivation behind what it is that you create and where you want, what you create heard, where you want, what you create accepted. Is this what you think about when you make your music? Is it what you thought about when you first started to make music? When you wanted to, when you heard the saxophone and wanting to play the saxophone when you wanted to play the flute or these things that are still inherent and what it is that you do and do you still hear those different things in the music that you listened to today?
Speaker 3:Well, my answer to is a I. I have decided in a way I don't want to waste time doing something that doesn't come from a personal motivation and I always remember when I first started doing something that made me feel good about myself. When I picked up the saxophone and I put the read on in the right place and a nice tone came out and had, wow, I can do this, this is making me feel good. I sound good to myself and this is fun. And I still look for that now in the music we do together. Karen and I,
Speaker 4:that feeling when I do music now, it's two get some kind of spiritual growth going on. It's not just to play notes. I mean, yeah, when we were putting together this record,
Speaker 5:every
Speaker 4:everything, all the songs that I wanted to feel something with each song and uh, I think we, we did. But then I, and then at the end when we finished it all and we listened to it over and over, it's like, is it special? I mean, to us it's special that in the whole pot of everything, is it going to stand out? Is it going to float up to the top? Is it really? To us, it sounds like fantastic, but who's going to really hear this stuff? Who Do you think that that is a, um, a pressure that artists put on themselves or is it something that society puts on you? I think both from, for me, you know, you can say I'm not in it for the money, but you know, we have to work to pay our bills and you know, it would be nice to do it a job that you love doing, which is playing music onstage, you know, I'm getting paid well for it and the kind of music that you choose to play, right? So you do want that kind of success, you know, and then six society, you know, they have different guidelines and different statuses of whose music is, is supposed to be out there being exposed to be heard. So it's being shaped as opposed to just artists creating what it is, whatever it is that they want to do and trying to get that exposed. Right. You had to conform somehow just like our music is, you know, we have a Latin record out, how do we fit in the radio stations? I mean, you know, straight ahead. They're not going to want to hear our record, but there are some straight ahead type songs on it. Put you still continued to do it. Let me still continue because of that original
Speaker 3:fire that you had when you first wanted to become musicians, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's a fire, there's a spirit and there's the, you know, the self gratification thing of doing an act that makes you feel good about yourself. What was your most favorable musical memory?
Speaker 5:Hm.
Speaker 3:That's a tough one for me. Maybe you should say.
Speaker 4:It's interesting. We just, we went to a west coast tour and we ended up in Hawaii and I'm on the big island. No one, 100 Lulu. We had about five gigs there in this one club. Jazz mines. You've heard of it? No, no, he, he wanted. He let us play there and he says, but you can only play bebop. Okay. So okay, well let's just play viva up so he couldn't play any of our own music and put it. That was the best gig. Actually.
Speaker 3:Eddie headed out of your comfort zone. You're right, right. Eddie Henderson sat in with us, right? Yeah, he was there hanging out. He had something else going on on another day in another venue. Right, right. But I know it, I know Eddie way back when I was in high school because he kicked him and Joe Henderson came to our high school, uh, to be guest artists with our big band and to like do guest lecture and I would see Eddie all always on the scene in San Francisco at all the jam sessions and he's from the. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I met, I met him. I'm in the bay area too, so a lot of great musicians and a lot of great music happening in the bay area and this. Fantastic, that's for sure. My favorite places on earth, you know, it's a little different now. What's different about it? I think the new creativity in the barrier is a in graphic arts and filmmaking and the tick explosion. What said? You could say that for every area. I mean those things
Speaker 2:are prevalent in all, all the big cities. So you're basically saying that you don't think that there's a musical persons anymore?
Speaker 3:Well, the area, there might be some types of music, but not the kind of music that I've found myself playing, you know, that it's always been,
Speaker 2:well a lot of rock, but a lot of great jazz oriented musicians come from there. But when did you guys move to New York? Two thousand two. What do you think of the difference between the West Coast experience in the east coast experience? I think
Speaker 4:we just experienced teaching at the jazz school over in Berkeley last month, teaching this guy who had to. Berkeley, California. Berkeley. Yeah. California. We had to teach the student who was going to perform with this, but that was part of the deal. We had to give him a lesson
Speaker 2:and um,
Speaker 4:and I really started as well. I'm so glad I got outta here because it's like you don't learn what you need to learn.
Speaker 2:Well, what, what, what, what is stopping students from learning in on the west coast? I mean, you know, this is a generality now because there are institutions and students that are learning great things and but just speaking from a personal standpoint, what is it that's blocking the students? Students from learning?
Speaker 4:I think it's the attitude there. They don't, they don't understand. You know that a jazz player has to have clubs where they can hang out in here, other players and grow like that. They don't seem to appreciate that kind of environment. Very interesting. Whereas here it's like that's what you do when you first land here, you this would you do good and do, you're going to hang out to clubs and play period.
Speaker 2:Well you get, you get to rub elbows with the local and here the logo vernacular and New York being the center of the universe. I mean like a, you can come here and almost learn anything that you really need to know. It's so weird.
Speaker 4:10 here compared to the students here, they are hearing all this. So there's a much higher level of musicianship, jazz musicianship here because they are competing with each other when they go out to the clubs.
Speaker 3:Well, in my opinion, I'm kind of feeling things from the vibe of the vibe of this place here called New York and the vibe of the place in the barrier quality of life. Um, this, the intensity of the beauty of the barrier, I think, uh, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? A kind of pulls people's attention away from focusing on, on the internal part of developing a musical craft in the same kind of intensity as focusing that kind of way on your craft as one does here in New York. Because this to me, I mean, I'm sure there'll be people that'll disagree, but there's, there's a, an, an air of I'm immediacy here and the level of competition and having to do which you're going to do because if you don't do it, someone else is going to do it. And it's, this is not a super beautiful place to live there. There are beautiful areas. Well see, that's why I say assemble that well, but that's, that's my perception is absolutely gorgeous. I mean, it's not New York, not just New York City that's stand that it's not just men. Of course. I mean that there are areas, I mean New York state not talking about the state of the boroughs compared to my experience in, in the bay area for what? In my lifetime, what I've, what I've experienced, the barrier is so chill because it's got this easy pace. California. It's okay. You can enjoy aspects of life without worrying or being paranoid that you're going to lose your opportunity. It's a different feeling. And here, do you, do you think the urgency
Speaker 2:and, and that attitude is what makes the difference between how musicians here I'm really into respecting, uh, and, and uh, representing a specific thing as opposed to just being chilled in California
Speaker 3:for me. I can just by experience couldn't. I can quite clearly say that when I was in the barrier was much more distracted about him because I know great musicians that I grew up with here on the east coast who was a got to a particular
Speaker 2:a stature move to the west coast to make more money and to do more, have more opportunities to do things. And these are some of the worst. Some of the real high powered musicians of the times and they left the east coast and went to the west coast, excuse me, and made lots of money. So, well, my, my answer to that would be that, you know, sometimes if you come from another place and you moved to a place where you're not from either your held on a higher esteem, you know, I was asked to move to the west coast. It didn't suit my, uh, I guess my pursuit was different and I believe that, you know, musicians all have their own pursuit of something. And if you could find it on the west coast, that's where you would be. If you could find it on the east coast, that's where you would be, you know. Um, but I do agree with you that there is a different set of values on the east coast. Um, yeah, there are a different set of values. But basically now what my question is for all of us is how to read, how do we rekindle those values wherever we are, whether it's the east coast, west coast, Europe, Africa, wherever. Should we define what those values are? I think those values are to bring back to music to a higher state than what it is now, to bring back to music to the point where there is accountability to bring back to music to a point where it represents forward movement. You got the floor? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What, what I, my take on that is that a creative music dealing with spontaneous composition, improvising in the jazz idiom or any idiom that has improvise, improvise, improvisation and interaction of the moment in real time where a bass player and a drummer don't know exactly what they're going to play, but they follow each other a lot harmonically with the piano or guitar and uh, in a, uh, a single note instrument player, like a saxophone or flute or a trumpet or a guitar or guitar is a harmonic instrument as well. To me, things in a way have gotten somewhat stagnant in a way. It might be my way of relating
Speaker 3:to what your comment is, is that there's a, we're in a. we've been in a period of repetition and renaissance of reevaluating what greats of the past that were, uh, uh, discoverers of thej of Jazz, you know, the miles Davis is the, the thelonious monks, the Charlie Parkers, you know, the Dizzy Gillespie's, the inventors of the sharp 11 and an extended harmony. And, and, uh, all the, all the technical ways of describing these things, the, the, the growth has somewhat gotten a little stifled and some of the, the nature of what's possible in insolvable interaction has gotten kind of mechanized and, and, uh, a homogenized sounding to me.
Speaker 2:But is that because of the musicians or is it a manifestation of what's happening in society?
Speaker 3:Well, historically speaking, sociologically, I think one is a reflection of the other and like in this so many incredible things happen in the sixties, there was so much world wars and Vietnam and, you know, all this stuff going on. Uh, you know, just incredible things happen in the sixties. Well,
Speaker 2:if you look at what's going on outside of music, it's like the car das, Ian's trump, you know, so in the majority of people listening to these things and watch what's going on in the news and it was up to artists to change those values. They don't value art here at Umuc it's gotten worse and you're right, I mean the fact closed down, but, but what we used to do is to change the paradigm. All the things that were counter culture people got into and they became the culture. I think so brainwashed people are brainwashed nowadays. So how do we get it back, Aaron? How do we get them back? Can we get them back to the music that you make?
Speaker 3:We have to unincorporated ties, a human thinking, you know, I think people want to, they feel comfortable with, with a, with a package, something wrapped in cellophane rather than use their own mind and brain and go, hey, this is good. You know, I'm going to figure it out for myself and ask questions rather than blindly believed the TV commercial. Yes, I agree with you.
Speaker 4:I'm just asking how can we change that as musicians? I think we have maybe have to go where they go. You know, I just realized that the millennials are bigger generation than it didn't. The baby boomers I heard about that night. It's like they are bigger and so we have, if we want an audience, we have to go to them and you do it the way they listen to music, how they find their music. We have to become a bridge. Yes, I would agree. I would agree with
Speaker 3:that. I would agree with that, but also I, you know, just like trump is, is a succeeding in, in this separate people becoming separate and disjointed. I think a comment Louis said off of the record before we hit record that you were saying lenny earlier on, is that I think musicians should be responsible to this thing of being a musician and network more like we're doing right now and more than musicians need to brainstorm and try to come up with ways to bring the grassroots element of, of the purity of music back to what it's supposed to be. We have to
Speaker 4:be come cause to create effect.
Speaker 3:See, right now it seems like everyone is searching for their success. Everyone trying to make my money. I'm trying to pay my bills. I'm trying to be successful because that's what you're supposed to do, but why don't we do it together? Figuring out a way to do together. It's not competition. It doesn't have to be a competition. I agree with you. We have to take back our music. Yeah. Especially now. I mean with because the record companies and what's been happening with the music itself, it's become free. It's like air, so we have to take it back and give it value again.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, lenny white here again and thanks for listening. Stay tuned all summer for new podcasts coming from the AIU universe. For more information, visit our website at[inaudible] dot com and that's spelled y o u w.com. See you next time.