THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT ]4 JUNE 22-29, 1990
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FESTIVAL
1990
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CO·OP ~

Ci TR

. . _ _.,,.,... & 1ot.• rM presents

An Evening with

KING SUNNY ADE & the AFRICAN BEATS
HEY, IF YOU DON'T WEAR A MUMU,
AND LOOK SILLY IN A TUTU, YOU MIGHT AS WELL
DANCE TO JUJU. TRUST US, IT'LL BE A LULU.
THURSDAY JUNE 21 • Doors: s,oo pm • Showtime: 9:30 pm

Jazz Roots and Branches
T

he du Maurler International Jazz Festival Is here, and Just
about every media outlet In
town-Including all the ones

Off Beat
ALEX VARTY
that routinely Ignore
Jazz-are loudly heralding
the most exciting 10 days of
the musical year. But what
It Is that makes Jazz-and
this five-year-old festival-so enduringly vital?
It's difficult to say.. .almost
as difficult as It Is to pin
down the meaning of "Jazz"
Itself. Ask 10 jazz musicians
what Jazz Is, and you'll get
20 different answers, rangIng from • Jazz Is an obsolete
term that Is no longer valid
to describe today's creative
music" to something along
the lines of "Jazz Is all there

Don Pullen
FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

f,..,J(presents MCA Recording Blues-Rock Guitarist

JOHNNY WINTER with Special Guests
BOB BELL & NECROPOLIS 90 plus MICHAEL VAN EYES
TUESDAY JUNE 26 • Doors: s:oo pm
2ND SHOW ADDED - WEDNESDAY JUNE 27
ROCK TO THE GREAT SOUNDS OF

MYSTERY TRAIN plus THE p AINKILLERS
.

THURSDAY JULY 4 • Doors: 8:30 pm

+~

presents From Australia BMG Recording Artists

THE CHURCH with special guests MCA Recording Artists
BLUE AEROPLANES
THURSDAY JULY 5 • Doors: 8:00 pm

Intuition. But Pullen turns
what might seem a conflict
Into a synergy. and gets both
forces working for him. He's
had to fight against some resistance to his music, even
within his own family.
"When people do hear music
that causes them to think,
sometimes It can make them
uncomfortable .... I've had my
sister say that when she listens to me she has to think
too much," he laughs. "So
she has to take me In small
doses." But fortunately for
Pullen, the world at large Is
beginning to wake up to his
talents.
"The sounds that come
from my Instrument are no
longer strange to people,"
Pullen comments. "The reaction that I got In 1960 or
1965 was one of surprise
and eyebrow-raising and
people checking their own
value systems to see If what
I was doing was valid. Now,
I'm using some of the same
techniques-and hopefully
different ones, or more developed ones-and people
are not amazed. They're not
so surprised that those
sounds can exist."
Some things remain to be
resolved for Pullen: financial
success and recogLltlon at
home. He's a star In Europe
and can live comfortably on
his Income from touring and
recording. but as a Jazz
artist his life Is still economically marginal compared to

Plus guests

STATE OF MIN

SAT JUNE 23

Is, man." But from this confusion, or vagueness, or
search for a new definition,
we can deduce that Jazz Is,
In fact, anything and everything.
Or at least anything and
everything that Is musical.
Jazz began as a hybrid
music , a blend of African
and aboriginal rhythms and
melodies with European Instruments and notation ...
anything and everything
that was at hand In New Orleans or Memphis or St.
Louis or whatever other city
wants to claim Jazz as Its
birthright. Since those notso-humble beginnings-not
so humble, since the earliest
recorded evidence of Jazz
seems to say that It was a
great art form by the time It
was named-Jazz has gone
on to Incorporate Just about
everything that Jazz musicians could get Into their
ears and out of their horns.

others of no more talent who
are working in more mainstream disciplines . And
when I ask him If he feels
that he's getting what's due
him, he snaps "of course
not", and then laughs ...ruefully.
"I don't think any jazz musician Is ," h e continues .
"There are a lot of forces out
there that are working for
Jazz and for Its recognition
and acceptance for what It
Is: the American art form .
And there there are a lot of
forces that are opposed to tts
being recognlzeq. as an art
form and as an American art
form In particular, because
of the racial overtones: it ls a
black creation. So racism
comes Into play, almost automatically. But Jazz ls the
father and mother of all this
music out now; its Influence
goes right across the board
with all the music In the
world. Jazz Is always giving:
the techniques we used to
use 25 years ago are commonplace now, but that's
not acknowledged.
"But I'm happy that things
are developing for me, at the
moment, even though I can
say, 'This should have happened 25 years ago.· And,
musically, I can say that my
growth has been continual,
that my evolution has been
continual in spite of other
circumstances. such as [a
lack of] finance, recognition.
and fame. The music has
continued to be on a high
level."
To which we can only add
our sincere amen.■

To grossly simplify Its
reach, we can say that
Ellington brought Jazz a
symphonic sweep and
grandeur, bop brought It a
wholly modern harmonic vocabulary, cool Jazz came In
with a chamber music sensibility, and the '60s added
their own pan-cultural
ethos, so that Jazz now Incorporates a more conscious
use of African elements, the
Interlocking melodic and
rhythmic parts of Javanese
gamelan , the danc ing.
breathy flute sounds of the
Andes, even the spooky sustained tones of the Finnish
hunter 's horn. And once
these things become Jazz,
they all swing, so as to take
on the proper Elllngtonlan
quality.
What makes the Jazz festival such a grand undertaking Is that Its organizers
know th at Jazz Is anything
and eve rything, and they
program the music accordingly. This Vancouver event
has none of the stuffy puritanism of Jazz festi vals
where those under 50
needn't apply to play (unless
they possess the requisite
suits), nor ls it as exclusive
as the new music events
that all too often deny music
Its Innate corporeality. If
yo u can't get down to
Mahlathlnl and the Mahotella Queens . you can always
snap your fingers to the
Concord All-Stars or boogie
to Johnny Winter.
A few of the groups playing the Jazz festival this year
really seem to take that
message to heart. Locals Lunar Adventures (Isadora's
on June 23, and Jazz at the
Plaza on June 30) mix up
Celtic and (Ornette) Cole man Influences. tossing a
defiant caber at anyone who
dares to suggest that there
can't be such a thing as
Druid Jazz. The Jazz Passengers (Vancouver East
Cultural Centre, June 26)
won fans here last year with
their crazed narratives,
Monkish angularity, rhapsodic violin solos. and New
York City grit and grind.
Today, all of these acts
answer to the call of Jazz. 1n
fact, they are Jazz, as much
a part of Jazz as Joe Henderson. Joe ?ass, Shella Jordan, or Sweets Edison. And
that they can share stages
and spotlights with those elder statesmen and women
should give us hope that
Jazz, Its pure strains and Its
exciting adulterations, will
continue as this century's
most engaging art form. ■

33 JUNE 22-29, 1990

-J ... -~...~---. -~- ................................ .
THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT

,'_~") Dennis's
'i:.
snack

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FESTIVAL
1990
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Dennis's
sport

Pullen 1s Piano Surprises
By Alex Varty

J

azz is a music that
delights in surprise,
that revels in the unexpected twists and turns
improvisation can take, and
that celebrates the joy of discovery. And of all the exponents of jazz, few explore
that side of the music as
thoroughly as pianist Don
Pullen. The 48-year-old musician, who will bring a trio
to the Vancouver Playhouse
on Monday (June 25) as part
of the du Maurier International Jazz Festival, has an
exceptionally vivid imagination, and all of the technical
skills necessary to bring his
visionary ideas into reality.
Indeed, Pullen's skills are
so multifarious that, at
times, three very different
musical entities seem to be
inhabiting his body. His left
hand is a learned historian,
celebrating the stride, blues,
and gospel pianists of the
music's black past, settling
sometimes on a Latin pulse
that in reality has its roots
in Africa, elsewhere hammering on the chords with
the unsubtle energy of an
early rock 'n' roll shouter.
His right hand mixes the
athletic and the intellectual
with an attack that could
crush steel, and a firm determination to avoid, or at
least transcend, cliche.
Lightning-fast, whiplash
coils of melody spring from
this hand, advance and retreat up the keyboard Jn
guerrtlla skirmishes of
sound, and fold into more
accessible passages of simple beauty. Pullen's third
musical concentration is in
his forearms and the backs
of his hands, which he uses
as deftly as his fingers to
bring out skittering leaps of
rough melody and great percussive clatterings of dissonance that serve to express
all the things-truly great
joy, truly mad rage-that
can't be said with conventional keyboard technique.
That Pullen can harness
all these personalities to a
unified musical vision is emblematic of his deeply rooted
musicality, his intelligence,
and his perseverance in the
face of considerable commercial pressure. And to understand Don Pullen's
complex, challenging music,

Don Pullen'• visceral piano balances the avant garde'• wild
explorations with the physical funk of his gospel upbringing.

it helps to look more closely
at these three sides of his
make-up.
His roots, as with so many
of the best black jazz musicians, lie deep in the South,
and in the rugged musics
that his ancestors devised to
act as a balm against the
sting of American apartheid.
Pullen was born in Roanoke,
Virginia, into a musically
gifted family. MMy father
sings," he notes, Mand he
used to dance tap-dance and
play guitar. And so did his
brothers-they all sang and
danced a bit. My mother was
the choir director in our
church. In fact, everybody in
our family sings except me. I
started out as a singer, then
when my voice changed, so
did my singing." He laughs.
MBut luckily I had started piano by then."

Pullen learned about jazz
when he was at college, and
went on to a wide variety of
working jobs, some of them
typical of pianists of his generation, some of them not.
He earned his keep playing
in organ trios right up until
1970. He played piano for
Nina Simone for a year,
which ts in itself a high compliment. He dived into the
New York avant-garde in the
heavy company of Albert
Ayler, Milford Graves, and
Sunny Murray. And he
hooked up with Charles
Mingus in 1972, and played
with the great bassist/composer right up until Mingus's
death.
MAil you play 1s your experience, what your experiences have been," says
Pullen. Presumably, the
breadth and depth of his ex-

pertences in jazz have contributed to the grand sweep
of his music.
That music, and that
scope, can be heard best on
Pullen's most recent album,
New Beginnings, a trio date
(with bassist Gary Peacock
and drummer Tony Williams) released on the Blue
Note label last year. It's a
brilliant album, strong, vital,
and full of vividly expressed
feelings. It sings, in short,
and that is exactly the impression Pullen hopes to get
across with his music.
"The idea is to get the instrument to sing," he says.
MThe voice is the first instrument, and, whatever instrument you play, if you can
get that kind of singing, vocal quality from it, then
you've reached a certain
plateau."
Pullen's use of unconventional keyboard techniques
reaches new heights on New
Beginnings: One rarely hears
a pianist do such unusual
things and make them so
gripping, so moving.
MFor me, personally, I like
to use all the dynamics, all
the different kinds of sensibilities and expressions,"
says the pianist. MThat
makes the music more varied, and it keeps me from being bored if I have a lot of
choices at hand.
MWhat I do at the piano is
not really unconventional to
me. It's just my way of selfexpression a way to express
what I hear and what I feel.
Usually I can do the same
things with my fingers, but
the sound and the texture
are different when I do it
with the backs of my hands
and the knuckles, and it creates a certain effect. The
trick ts knowing how, and
when, to use it, and putting
things in their proper place.
That, I think, takes a lot of
time, and experience, and
thought."
Conversely, Pullen also
says that the success of his
art depends on his ability to
let things flow as much as it
does on calculated effect.
"The trick 1s just to be open,
and to be secure enough to
just play whatever comes to
you without so much editing
during the process of improvisation," he counsels.
Again, there's a split to be
resolved-discipline versus

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Den-nis's
smile

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Jazz OnThe Island

Coming Soon:
HOG July 4 M
BEEF July 8 ~
LAST WILDS
RAS POSSE

THE

Granville Island will be a jazz
mecca for 10 exciting days during the
1990 du Maurier International
Jazz Festival. From June 22 through
July 2, the Island will move to
rhythms from all over the world, with
free lunchtime concerts in the Market Courtyard, and evening shows
at Isadora's restaurant. For more information call the Info
Centre at 666-5784.

- ~~~~

II GranvilleIsland

Canada

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