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Cool, sophisticated, complex, jazz today seems to signify the epitome of class and taste.
For pianist Vijay Iyer, that view gets the music completely wrong.
Jazz isnt a dying art, jazz is alive and relevant.
Jazz isnt about virtuosity and technique, its about fighting racism and injustice.
And for these reasons, maybe we shouldnt be calling this music jazz at all.
Nate Sloan: Tell me about the themes on your new album,Uneasy.
That was all before the pandemic.
When you see a movement like that, its about hope, right?
Its about people fighting for their futures.
And so we were in this environment that felt like apocalypse, this sense of ending of worlds.
That was the tone of the conversation.
And yet then there was this gesture of fighting for the world to come.
I want to talk about a specific song from the album, Children of Flint.
I mean, thats a good question, and maybe is best left as a question.
In a way, thats sort of what a song title does: It poses a question for you.
What might this group of sounds do with that reality out in the world?
It sort of becomes about achievement.
And finally, we arrived at this realization: Thats not what this is about.
Thats not what its for.
I wanted to say subdued, but maybe thats not the right word.
Maybe more like, haunted.
Thats how I would put it.
And then I also wanted it to be something I would feel comfortable playing for children.
So how am I doing that, you know?
How can the aesthetic of the song serve that movement or serve that community?
You referenced Children of Flint being hard to play.
What led you to this time signature?
Or if it happened more organically, what function do you think it serves within the track?
That particular moment, as you may recall, that was the year that Michael Brown was killed.
And then I was commissioned to play this solo piano piece at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
What they did was stage a die-in that basically was a way ofnotstarting the show.
It was about that moment of confrontation.
And so that is the eleven that this piece is actually carrying.
Its 11 measures, and its 11 beats per measure.
So it was really about serving that movement.
And thats basically what this piece is trying to do.
Creative music is a label that you use when required to.
Why might you want to avoid the term jazz?
What might be some of the limitations of it as applied to the sounds that youre engaged in?
So I learned that from elders, that this is not the word for us.
or something like that.
And he responds, Jazz is the word they use to sell our music.
But to me, that word does not exist.
So all Im saying is that I did not make this up.
