Interviews

Osby's Odyssey Exerpts from Beat Down Magazine

By: Charlie Braxton

Saxophonist Greg Osby is a visionary. He is part of a rare breed of young Jazz musicians who understand that Jazz is not a stale archaic music that must be reserved from other forms of popular music in order to maintain it's pure qualities. Jazz, like it's musical cousin, Hip Hop is an innovative and evolving music reflecting the times and timbre of the people who give the music life. And that's homeboys and homegirls like you and me who live and breathe the music each and everyday of our natural born lives. The ties between Jazz and Hip Hop are a lot stronger than some care to admit. And to many Jazz critics' chagrin, Osby has been experimenting with Hip Hop and Jazz for quite a while.

(BEAT DOWN) Greg, there are a lot of Jazz artists who have jumped on the band wagon of using Hip Hop beats for a song or two and then abandoning it when it's no longer profitable. You, however, have been experimenting with Hip Hop rhythms for quite some time now. And there seems to be some level of commitment on your part. Why are you so into Hip Hop?

(G.O.) Well, of course I have a deep respect for the music and most of it's participants who are sincerely attempting to do something fresh. Secondly, I recognize it (Hip Hop) as another leaf on the tree of Black Music that is available to me. I try not to let anything go to waste that I consider a valuable resourse, something that can be a really worthwhile component to a creative project. And that's the key word here, it has to be creative. I just attempt to take things and cultivate them into something useful - and then take those things and create a challenging, provocative musical environment for myself.

(BEAT DOWN) Are there any similarities between Hip Hop and Jazz, particularly vocalese (the act of singing wordless lyrics to a Jazz instrumental) scatting and free-styling?

(G.O.) With such a heavy emphasis on ryhthm, Hip Hop doesn't have that much of a harmonic base per se. My concern is the juxtaposition of rhythm and various sonic nuances, the hybrid areas that are created when you combine things from completely different sources. I respond most to the combination of unrelated textures. That's one of the most valuable benefits that I get out of experimenting with Hip Hop as well as other types of folk music. Also, the Hip Hop scene in general reminds me of what the Jazz scene was probably once like and should return to. Especially the camraderie and the sub-culture that emerges from it. It's like a group that flourishes and exists from within a larger group.

(BEAT DOWN) You, along with Steve Coleman, Cassandra Wilson and a host of others formed an organization known as the M-BASE collective which is seen as radical in the eyes of mainstream critics. Why?

(G.O.) Because at the time that we decided to form our musical union (circa 1985), it had become common for musicians to be a lot more accomodating in their presentation which meant playing songs in an environment that laypersons more readily recognized and that had already been clearly defined. We (The M-BASE Collective) were tip-toeing, musically speaking, into areas that weren't really clearly defined because we were always in various stages of experimentation. We utilized components from things that we were familiar with based upon our separate backgrounds but when combined created a completely different musical child. As we were originaly from different regions around the U.S. we took our various loves for funk, R&B, world beat, folk, ethnic musics, European traditional music as well as Jazz and juxtposed and combined them in various unorthodox configurations. We did this, as opposed to imersing ourselves into strict Jazz-only based forms of presentation, to creatively propel ourselves into areas that would require intense study and specialized conceptual thinking.

(BEAT DOWN) Yeah, because Jazz musicians have been doing that for a long time. Look at Miles Davis' foray into what is now known as fusion but basically what he was doing was combining Jazz, Rock and Funk. Look at the Soul period when artists like Cannonball Adderley, Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, Grant Green, etc.., were combining elements of spirituals and R&B with Jazz. It's not entirely a new concept. Do you think a lot of critics look down on this sort of thing because they fail to understand the history of Black Music and how it intersects?

(G.O.) Clearly many music journalists haven't done thorough or proper reaserch about their subjects. I, consider that, in and of itself, an act that is dissrespectful to any profession. One should always advantage themselves with the proper information. If not, then just sit back, shut the hell up, and listen intently - there may just be a lesson in there somewhere. Personally I am baffled by whatever could contribute to a writer's need to cover subjects and material that they obviously have only a marginal knowledge of. Dealing with new (young, unknown, largely undeveloped) artists and their concepts would surely expose the writer and his blatant lack of knowledge and information for all to see. But far too many so-called "critics" get away with not fully knowing what they are talking about. They are allowed to write about music in extremely general and simplisitic terms with stock phrases and literary cliches in an effort to mask the fact that they truly don't have a clue of what they are supposed to be listening for. Many get free product (CD's, cassettes) get to go to clubs and concerts for free and the only thanks we artists get is to have our work irresponsibly and haphazzardly reviewed.

(BEAT DOWN) Whew! Ouch. Improvisation is a major component in Jazz. It's also a major component in Hip Hop with the advent of free styling and turntable technics...scratching and so forth. Do you think this is a coincidence?

(G.O.) No, things are turning around now espesially in Hip Hop because for a while there was a period when free styling and improvising was outright discouraged. I wasn't happy about this because freestyling, or verbal improvisation, was the element that appealed to me in Hip Hop in the first place. The fact that someone could make logical and rhythmic sense out of wordless syllables, sounds and utterances is quite encouraging. But once again the hidden powers that be, in order for them to label art, categorize and systemize it, it has to be something that is a constant as opposed to an mutating, progressive variable. And now, due to the frustrations of the public's impatience with uncreative music and efforts of bringing order to something even that they don't understand, people are starting to freestyling again. Therefore, I see the music in a transitional state once again. Basically, that's what has been missing in Jazz for some time now. it was starting to creep, but it had become so instututionalized that you began to see more cats on the bandstand reading charts instead of really digging into the heart of a particular piece and improvising from it. One of the major criticisms of Jazz has been that the musicians were a lot more important than the pieces that they were playing. In European, so-called "classical" music the piece itself is usually considered more important. If you change that you're charged with re-interpreting the music in a contemptuous manner. I feel that the music should only be a blueprint...a structural basis designed to maintain a sense of order.