My Musical Biography, Part 5

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel the world while still young enough to appreciate it, and since Kazakhstan I travel with a tenor over my shoulder. I acquired a small form-fitting hard shell case to make airline travel less of a hassle. Work led me to Azerbaijan in 2007, where the driver picked me up one night and delivered me to Baku’s basement jazz club. When the band hit ‘Round Midnight I felt compelled to get over my trepidation, so I got up on the stand and jammed – my first public performance since who remembers when. I got an “ochin harasho” from the drummer…

Steve Black

Dare and George

The next year found me in Fela-land and my very first week in Nigeria I met some local musicians which led to several gigs per week for the rest of the year in bar bands, jazz bands, and highlife bands. What an amazing musical experience. The years of listening to Fela had gotten into my blood – I had been turned on to Fela by Kwame Olatunji in college – and I could play the music intuitively. The Nigerian musicians and fans treated me great – almost reverse discrimination – calling me white brother and asking me how I learned to play like an African. I played with guys whose instruments were held together with tape and rubber bands, real pieces of junk that didn’t stop great music from coming out. The same lesson Charlie Parker taught Phil Woods, I guess. Guys who hadn’t eaten a decent meal in days. I played mostly with bandleader and alto saxophonist Dare Peter and had some fantastic musicians for colleagues like the polyrhythmic drummer George, guitarist King Faj (the Nigerian Hendrix), scat-and-James Brown singer Steve Black, and tenor saxophonist Jonny who taught me highlife licks by ear as I stood next to him on the outdoor bandstand at the legendary Blake. One night one of Fela’s former music directors sat in with us. I actually got asked back for more. 50-year-old basically self-taught white man. There are some videos up on YouTube which I will post later.

Jonny

I’ve subsequently played in Colombo with a straight-ahead jazz quartet (I made it a quintet), had a bi-weekly gig in the Caribbean with Hans and the Hillbillies acting as horn section for a Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash-inspired country rock band (Hans does a killer version of Folsom Prison Blues), in Holland, and even had a few gigs in musically-barren Abu Dhabi at a high-end cigar club. Recently I’ve been in Malaysia and fortunately our multi-talented and good-at-everything daughter Jackie has decided to play alto sax (she already has a killer singing voice, a quick ear, and way more musical talent than I ever had) so we’ve been going out on gigs together. I am getting back at the musical Thatcherites by performing Trane, Miles, Jug, Sonny, Rahsaan, Duke, etc. with her when she's at an age when I hadn't even heard of these guys. It rubs off; she can recognize Dexter on the stereo. We record everything we do in both audio and video. I’m trying to teach her to feel the music, to truly improvise and never play the same thing twice (do you ever feel exactly the same way twice?), to hear the solo inside her head, and to get in the spirit of the music when playing. Oh yeah, and to play long tones.