JAZZ FORUM NO.55 5/1973

A DIFFERENT DRUMMER |BACK

For twelve years, percussionist Andrew Cyrille propelled the Cecil Taylor Unit, one of the most significant groups in contemporary music. With altoist Jimmy Lyons (and occasionally with others), Cyrille's accomplishments with the Unit are documented on "Unit Structures," "Conquistador," the three-volume "Second Act Of 'A....... Buku Akisakila Kutala" and "Spring Of Two Blue-J's." During his career, Cyrille has also had productive associations with Walt Dickerson and Mary Lou Williams.

Cyrille's home turf is Brooklyn, New York, where musicians have learned to be self-reliant. In 1973 he and another outstanding percussionist, Milford Graves, recorded "Dialogue Of The Drums" as the first IPS institute of Pericmsive Studies) album. This association led Cyrille to concentrate on his own writing and conceptualizing skills. He also formed Maono (feelings), the group with which he has recorded "Celebration" and "Junction" for IPS. On these recordings, Cyrille's percussive work acts as a unifying force for David Ware's driving and rough textures, Ted Daniel's experiments with electric hookups for his trumpet, and the coy, dancing vocal stylings of Jeanne Lee.

At present, Cyrille is part of the Leroy Jenkins unit with George Lewis and Anthony Davis that performed a succession of spell -binding concerts this past spring throughout New York City. This interview took place early this year at Cyrille's studio.

RON WELBURN: Andrew, you were born in New York City, but you're of Haitian background. As a child were you exposed to much Haitian music?

ANDREW CYRILLE: I heard people like Alphonse Cimber, who happens to be one of Haiti's great hand drummers. He digested the vocabulary and literature of Haitian rhythms that apply to all of the dances, sacred and secular, and is comparable to TI Poro (another master drummer). Cimber did "Celebration" with me. I used to hear him when my mother and aunt belonged to the Haitian Alliance club which sometimes gave dances and parties. I can remember when I was five or six, running around the dance floor like most kids and watching him play the drums. Those were the earliest experiences that I saw of the Haitian musician playing indigenous Haitian music. But really, my roots are right here in America; the people from whom I formally learned music were the black Americans. There were also white teachers in my development, but they were isolated with established schools like Julliard.

RW:Could you tell us more about your background?

AC: I really started playing music in a drum & bugle corps in my grade school, at age eleven. I went from there to the high school band and also played in some drum & bugle corps. Eric Gale was a year ahead of me in the same high school, St. John's Prep on Lewis Avenue in Brooklyn. Anyway, we teamed up with Leslie Brathwaite, who has recently worked with saxophonist Harold Ousley. We decided that we would be the progenitors or conveyors of jazz among the teenage peer group in our Brooklyn neighborhoods. So, we got our first group together and played dances and concerts and we rehearsed every week, trying to play the tunes we heard on the records. Every so often, professional musicians who were on the scene would come by and give us pointers. It was a good beginning, a good childhood, in terms of being exposed to music and having some good friends to try to develop with. This was the middle fifties.

RW: When did you feel that you wanted to stick with the drums?

AC: I never really gave it too much thought. From the very beginning when Obdulio (Pop) Jansen, the musical director of the drum & bugle corps, asked, the children in the classes whether they wanted to play drums or bugle, I decided I wanted to play drums. I was a small kid, so the snare drum was probably almost as big as I was. They used to call me a "broken-down drummer," because the drum was so heavy that I guess my shoulders would sloop forward from the weight. I found a voice for myself, as far as being able to express myself in a musical way. The other kids in the class took note and in some ways I became a little special, a little bit different from the rest, in a way, because I could play and I could remember certain kinds of beats. And people said I had natural hands, etc. Actually, these people who encouraged me were already professional musicians, like Willie Jones, who was then playing with people like Thelonious Monk and Lester Young. Willie was a colleague of Max Roach. Through Willie I met Max; also, Max was married to my best friend's sister. Lennie McBrowne also came to that bugle corps location in Brooklyn. Also, Lee Abrams, who was Dinah Washington's drummer for many years. They all used to give me pointers. So, those roots of mine, accidentally I'd say, gave me a firm foothold in terms of being able to recognize myself and being able to recognize a certain aspect of black culture that I probably wouldn't have been sensitive to, if it wasn't for those people. A case of being in the right place at the right time.

RW: Were there any particular tidbits about drumming that these musicians showed you that stayed with you as you were developing and that you recall today?

AC: The key to all of it, which I would hear from many of them, was to listen, and to listen in a way whereby I would understand what I was listening to and at the same time listen to as much music as possible, and after that try to play a whole lot. I can't remember any particular things except that technical things were more outstanding. What we use to learn from them were sticking patterns, commonly known as rudiments. That seemed to be what the older musicians liked to focus on; a musician being able to read, and being able to swing. The drummer being able to play things that are suggested through a certain kind of notation; bringing some things to the composition that the composer might intuitively want to hear, but might not necessarily know how to write for drummers. I would say it also was as much a social and political consciousness that came through the music as it was to actually sit down and learn the techniques of music. The techniques were learned through the application and experience of playing, and by talking to the musicians I was working with. I met Philly Joe Jones a few years down the line and he used to, talk to, me about music and other things that he was tryina to do. He would take me to those sessions that he used to do with Miles Davis, Evans Bradshaw. Stan Getz and Bud Powell. I was like his young protege. I used to be around him quite often,. More times than not, it would just be talking rather than sitting down going over sticking patterns and things of that sort.

RW: By the time you started working with Walt Dickerson, what other experience had you had, particularly on record?

AC: None. Walt Dickerson, gave me my first recording date, "This Is Walt Dickerson" (Prestige/New Jazz). Prior to that, I had no commercial recording experience. I had working experience, though, with people like Mary Lou Williams,, Illinois Jacquet, Olatunji; and there were people I used to jam with like Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley. I was in a band with Freddie Hubbard, Sadik Hakim, Leroy Standard and Al Dockery, which worked at this club called Turbo Village. A number of well-known musicians used to come through and play, like Horace Silver, Slide Hampton, Wayne Shorter, and Frankie Dunlop, Max, Philly Joe, Bill Hardman, Lou Hayes, Charles Davis, Cecil Taylor, etc. Bud Powell, too,, as a matter of fact. A bunch of people were coming through there all the time, so you always had a well-spring of talent.

RW: As I recall "Relativity" (Prestige/ New Jazz), Dickerson had a very fleet expression and you seemed to be very much with him as far as the percussive undercurrent that you provided. This seemed quite in tune with his style. How did you feel about the confluence of styles at that time?

AC: I thought it was fantastic. But remember, I was still learning and still a developing musician then, but I had matured to a large degree. Walt was the leader and had written the material. In that band was Austin, Crowe, a pianist from Indianapolis who's very good excellent, in fact. From time to time, we had, different bass players like Ahmed Abdul-Malik or George Tucker. Walt gave me the opportunity to find a place for myself and develop within his musical context. I think why we stayed together and had such a good rapport was because we wanted to make it a steady group which would be known as a good, viable jazz group that played good music that people would support. That- never -came to pass, however. I would say that both of us were thinking about the same things at that time.

A lot of it had to do again with the evolving consciousness of black people since slavery, and what the music meant to us and why we were doing what we I were doing culturally at that time; what all of that meant in terms of where we were going and what we were doing with the music. The music was almost therapeutic because it reinforced our roots and it always gave us the feeling that we were in the mainstream of whatever the struggle was; and in the music we would try to, put cut front as much as possible what we felt about the struggle in the black community from our perspective. How, perhaps, we could help the whole society with the information we'd been gathering through music.

RW: Were the recent recordings you did with Walt Dickerson from a tour or were they just get-togethers?

AC: Yeah. "Peace" was done for Steeple Chase in Europe and "Tell Us Only Of The Beautiful Things" came out on Why Not in Japan. They were done in 1975 and also show the kind of confl.u,ence our musical association has. We happen to be two, people who can, just about at any time, sit down and make music together. I think the way we're made and the music we carry in us always seems to relate and emerge in some magical way. I hadn't seen Walter in eight years before we recorded "Tell Us Only Of The Beautiful Things" with Wilbur Ware (,on bass) - I think I had talked to Walt somewhat about the music only once, down at his house in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next time I saw him was in the studio. I felt it came out excellently; so did everyone else involved. It was done spontaneously. "Peace' was even more spontaneous. I saw Walt a couple of months after the first date, we got together, went into the studio, and each take for both sides was a first and only. I think "Peace" is a fantastic album.

RW: On "Peace" the tension seems to be more elastic. The earlier Dickerson recordings seemed to have more intensity.

AC: I wouldn't say that "Peace" doesn't have moments of tension. It has a lot of tension and intensity. Perhaps what you're thinking about is how you resolve the tension. The forms we used just happened to resolve spontaneously and intuitively, whereas on the previous albums, like "Relativity" and "Lawrence Of Arabia:," the music was prearranged, though still organically beautiful.

RW: When did you first get together with Cecil Taylor and what is your assessment of those years in terms of your own work and development? I saw you first with him in late 1964 at the "Four Days in December" concerts at Judson Hall here in New York that were produced by the Jazz Composer's Guild.

For more information about,the Institute of Percussive Studies and its recordings write to:
IPS Records, P.O. Box 329, Lincotnton Station, New York, N.Y. 10037, U.S.A.)

ANDREW CYRILLE: The first word I would say in terms everything that you've said would be "nonpareil!" The next one would be "extraordinary!" and all those great adjectives that would support positive musical growth. Actually, I met Cecil before I met Walt Dickerson, back in 1958. I was a chemistry major at St. John's University. I met Cecil through Ted Cursion. One day, Ted asked me to go to Manhattan with him to come hear this guy who plays piano very differently. Ted had a gig with him ancf they were rehearsing at Hartnett, a music school on 42nd Street. I had a snare drum with me and I set up while Cecil was practicing. After a while, we just started playing together. Ted played also. He left before us, so Cecil and I decided to go uptown to play some more at a place on 158th St. called Pigalle. I had never heard anybody who played that way; but I was just playing along with him, just playing what I thought fit with what I heard. After that we spoke to each other for a while. I saw him afterwards on a number of occasions. I decided to get into music as a career rather than chemistry. ||TOP||

AC: I remember I sounded like Philly Joe Jones, and Cecil'd comment, "I hear you playing all those Philly Joe Jones licks." At Hartnett, I was studying with the big band and studying composition. He would be rehearsing. One day he asked me what I was doing; I think Sunny Murray had left the band, and he asked me if I could make a concert with him at Brandeis University. That was in 1964. That was the first time I worked with him on a professional basis. From then until 1975, I worked as a percussionist solely in 99 per cent of the gigs. He never worked that much. Consequently, I was able to do a host of other things and still be involved. But usually when he got a gig, if I was doing something else I would get a substitute or nix that and do the job with him. I had a very strong belief in what Cecil was trying to do and how he wanted to play music. I remember him asking me how I perceived playing rhythm, and I told him I thought of it in relationship to the dance. That struck a responsive bell in him, because he's interested in dance himself. From that point of view we kind of got together. I also, remember telling Mary Lou Williams once that Id like to, find someone that I'd be able to play some different things with stylistically 4Dn drums. Like instead of playing the ride beat like it was a quarter, dotted-eighth, and sixteenth note, I would change it around, not necessarily abandoning the swing or the energy, but at least doing it a different way. She said, "Well, yeah, you'd probably be able to try that with a number of muscians, but you'd never get any work." Cecil came along, exploring new territories harmonically, rhythmically and melodically, and I decided that he would be a good person to try to explore some of those things with. In other words, he was an innovative partner. it became a working relationship 'because both of us were thinking in a parallel direction about how we wanted to make music,. Ensuing from those first years, most of the musical relationships I've had with Cecil Taylor have been nothing short of extraordinary. ||TOP||

RON WELBURN: There's a tremendous confluent compositional sense in the trio, particularly with Taylor's piano and your drumming not to exclude Lyons, of course that I think led rather positively into the "What About" (BigActuel) album you did in Paris. flow did that come abgut? That was an early solo drum recording.

Andrew Cyrille: No, it had nothing to do with the Byg people's suggestions. I wanted to do that. There were solo drum albums by drummers before that one. Maybe stylistically that was the first solo percussion album to, feature the methods that I used in a solo setting. Baby Dodds made solo recordings; Max Roach made "Conversation On Drums" and I think one called "Sfax." I think Milford Graves had recorded a drum duo with Sonny Morgan for ESP.

RON WELBURN: Blakey did a bunch of "Drum Orgies" for percussion ensemble.

Andrew Cyrille: Art did a thing with Sabu, "Message From Kenya"; and he did a one-track solo, Nothing But the Soul, on a Horace Silver album with Curley Russell. I knew of those things and had heard some. I also listened to, the Indian drummers, like Chatur Lal. They have a great -traditio@n of solo drummers; half of their music is based on the drum. And the Africans, without a doubt, with their drum choirs. I had a pretty good idea of people who had done these kinds of things before. I thought about it long and hard and worked out how I could express something that came from my soul and mind which also related to what precedc-d it, like those things that Art and iiax did, even Baby Dodds. I, thought of five shapes which I could present that I thought would be able to relate to all of those things, especially concerning some of the ingredients and structures of how I would make music. I Would say the forms were different. The difference between "What About" and maybe what Art did was how he played in the singular 4/4 meter on Nothing But the Soul. I didn't necessarily think of my recording in terms of 4/4, but I used pressed rolls and various other strokes. I could have been using the same things, nevertheless, looking for different results, using the same ingredient,s.

RW: Certainly with the whispering in "From Whence I Came' on "What About?" the material is very different conceptually.

AC: Yes. That was a philosophical thing I thought about, with the idea of the whispering representing the soul and the strokes on the drums representing the body. Body and soul, meaning "from whence I came." The body coming from what we know here on earth - YOU know, the "ashes to ashes" thing - made from chemicals and whatever it is that we are as creatures of this planet. I thought about that in relation to the "breath of life" being transformed or putinto, an organism which would be growing andevolving. This is why it started off at a certain dynamic level and evolved,and then recapitulated again into a subdued ending. ||TOP||

One more thing about "What About?" I was able to do that so well because I had a lot of experience playing for professional dancers. Accompanying dancers makes a drummer exceptionally strong, because you have to be strong in order to move those bodies. You have to give those People inspiration for to do whatever it is they think or feel. consequently, doing this kind of work day in and day out gave me the ability to hear myself and at the same ilme put structures together that I knew would be palatable in a musical sense.

RW: Were the recordings that you made with Maono the first of your own cornpositions besides those on "What About?" to be conveyed through a more or less Conventiona- instrumentation?

AC: Yeah. I guess that -was someth ing I always wanted to do, probably because of some of my associations with hearing Sazz bands live at first, people like Gigi Gr-yce, Cedar Walton, Al Drears, Jackie McLean, Max's band, I heard those kinds of things when I was 16 or 17 years old, and it was just the magic of hearing that sound. Now that I've matured, I think'about getting some of those cornpositional goodies myself. I've learned how to write using certain techniques; I like to score sound, too,. I would say this about conventionality: I have not used a set personnel, and that has much to do with circumstances. I could have a violin, saxophone and myself, or a flute, bass player and' myself, or just do a duo with Milford as on "Dialogue Of The Drums." Sunny Murray and I did a duet up at Woodstock that was very interesting - I'd like to do more of that. So, conventionality is not enonfined any more to the group having to have a bass player, a piano player or a trumpet player; it just happens to be things that are functional at the time because circumstances perhaps won't permit anything else. Essentially, the music comes from within, and even if I have to get up and do it solo, I think the music will still be vital regardless of what the instrumentation of the compositions are.

RW: Did you supplement your playing with Cecil by playing rock 'if roll or something else you haven't mentioned?

AC: I played most of that stuff when I wasi in high school. R 'n' B is not that different from what's going on now. The guys have gotten a little more sophisticated in terms of how they separate beats or the way they may place the left-hand instead of right-hand accents; they may put it on the snare drum instead of on the cymbal, or on the sock-cymbal or the bass drum. In general, it's the same 4/4 idea. I enjoy that kind of music and listen to it now on occasion. ||TOP||

RW: Have you had the opportunity to do many workshops in communities here New York or while traveling?

AC: Not many, no. I'd like to, though. But it seems to be like a divorce' between the community, like'Harlem or Bed-Stuy, and the actual functioning of the musicc. We don't get a lot. Of support from the black community. I'm not sure why. It's a long story. I think a lot of the reason is became people buy what they hear advertised. The local musician is not as functionally important now as at the turn of the century. People have record players. If they want to go out and get Isaac Hayes or James Brown, they can get them here or in Iowa, in Bermuda, in Africa - though, the African thing may be a little different. Here, in a technological society, everybody feels good with the mechanical thing. Of course, they can appreciate another musician who is well-versed performing live, but most people seem to, gravitate to musicians whom they know through the media.

RW: What are your plans- compositionally? Have you considered anything for drum choir?

AC: Yeah, I think about that all the time. It's just the opportunity of being able to do that. Now, Milford (Graves) and I also, have this non-profit corporation, called The Institute of Percussive Studies, and we're waiting for our tax-exemption. We intend to have a school where people who are,interested in percussion can come and get some ideas and study with either of us or some other guest artists. We would also like to be able to contact percussionists from other parts of the world, other cultures, to give lecture-demonstrations and have a two-way conduit or viaduct between their cultures and our culture. We're trying to find things that will cause us to think about music differently. We think about doing a whole educational idea through the vehicle of percussion. It's happening now; it's just that we have to get all of the mechanicals in the right place.  

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