>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Good morning, my name is Larry Applebaum, a specialist here
at the Library of Congress.
It is a rare pleasure for me to talk with composer,
multi-instrumentalist, and creative improviser Henry Threadgill.
Henry, good to see you again.
>> My pleasure.
>> You notice that in the intro, I never mention the word "jazz."
>> Yes, correct.
>> Okay, and even though most, or I should say,
much of the information written about you is
from a jazz perspective, you don't consider yourself a jazz
musician anymore.
>> No. The word has lost its meaning.
It has no meaning anymore.
It's been diluted so badly.
You know, if we took 10 people and asked them, held up something,
held up my shoe, they would all say it was a shoe.
If we took 10 people and we held up a piece of music
that we called it jazz, we would have 10 different opinions
on whether or not it is or not.
I think it was the music of Buddy Bolden probably,
where that word first came up, and he had nothing to do with that word.
It was just, I don't know how it had originated, but it was attributed
to the music that he played and then the improvisational style of it.
I think we did understand for a long time what jazz was in both America
and Europe and other places.
I don't know exactly when the process of deconstruction occurred,
but everything just fell under the rubric of jazz, so it's just,
I don't subscribe to it, you know.
>> But you're talking about the word itself, and I'm wondering
if you feel the same way about the music.
>> Well, the word represents the music, doesn't it?
What music?
You know, what is the, I mean, when we say,
I mean even the word pop music has been diluted.
What does that mean anymore?
I think, you know, we had a period
of pop music that was real pop music.
Burt Bacharach was a pop music composer.
Johnny Mathis was a singer of pop music.
But now, just about all commercial music is called pop music.
So, there was improvisational music called jazz.
For a long time, I think, we all understood what that was,
but it fell over into usage by commercial entrepreneurs and people,
and they took it and misused it,
and started calling everything jazz, you know.
This is for the sake of selling a lot of times, you know.
Like, I remember at the record company they said, "Well,
what category does is go under?
You know, somebody records something, and,
"What category does this go under?"
You know. We have to market it a certain way, you know.
What is the market category, you know.
So, and like I say, it just goes so far now, I don't even want
to be associated with the word, you know, because you have people say,
you have kids say, "Well, I don't like jazz."
They don't even know -- You say, well there's probably something
that they called jazz that they don't like.
>> But nobody likes everything.
>> But nobody likes, you know so I'd rather for people to engage me
without a label, you know.
I prefer that.
Just come and sample me and don't,
you don't know whether I'm hot dog or a hamburger.
>> Or both.
>> Right.
>> It's interesting because you're an artist.
I mean you're a composer, you're an instrumentalist as I mentioned,
but you're an artist, and yet you make your living
in the world of commerce.
>> Yeah.
>> So, how do you balance those things?
How do you reconcile them?
>> I don't know what you, of course, commerce in that money is exchanged.
Is that what you mean?
Well, I don't, I don't, I don't make any concessions to what I do
or to -- It's never a question
like where artistic control and opinion rests.
It's always with me.
I've never done anything other than that, you know.
>> Let me ask you briefly about the performance last night.
You performed on the stage
of the Coolidge Auditorium with your group Zooid.
Your thoughts about the performance?
>> I don't know.
You know, music goes by fast, you know.
The commitment to play the music at the time, to play for people.
I play for people.
That's what I do.
I play up to people, not down to people.
And it just kind of leaves me afterwards,
the amount of involvement.
When it's over, I might have a moment or two of reflection of it,
but it's like I can't really recall it.
It always requires me to listen to a recording of it or something.
I'm just really not there afterwards.
It's like just a release and I just remember the,
what happened over that period of time, you know.
I mean, I remember incidents like I should've been closer to the mike,
or I didn't hear so-and-so as much as I'd like, but if I just had
to say, "Did it feel good?'
It felt perfectly fine.
I mean, from what we were doing, you know.
>> At one point, probably 10 minutes into it,
I noticed that you got a big grin on your face.
You are just standing there holding the flute while the band was playing
and you start to smile.
I mean a big smile, and I was just curious,
are you ever surprised by --
>> All the time.
>> how your group realizes your music?
>> Oh! I'm not surprised about that but I'm always surprised
about what happens, you know, you know, because the commitment of,
this is by far the greatest ensemble that I've ever had.
>> What makes you say that?
Because you've worked with great people all through --
>> This is the greatest ensemble that I've ever had.
It's the level of commitment, the length of time of commitment,
the depth in which they dig into the different levels of the music
on a notational level and on a non-notational level.
That hundred and fifty percent involvement for this length
of time has caused the connection between these musicians,
a type of telepathy, that has created the highest level
of ensemble that I've ever experienced.
>> Now so much of --
because everybody in the group is an improviser
and improvisation requires being in the moment.
>> Yeah?
>> Is there a way that you prepare to be in the moment?
How do you train yourself to be in the moment?
>> You don't.
You just, you just, you just prepare.
But you know, it's going to be a surprise.
You don't control the factors.
It's like the rain.
You can't get ready for the rain.
>> You can have an umbrella.
>> You're going to get wet.
>> It's okay.
>> Umbrella or no umbrella, you're going to get wet.
You can't prepare for the rain.
>> Do you get wet on stage?
>> Yes.
>> Yeah. It's nice.
>> Yeah. What we do is, the process that I'm involved
in with the musicians is everything.
It is the thing that enables us to handle what happens in the moment.
It's a process that I had learned over the years how to work on music,
and I can't think of the German word,
but I use the German word for rehearse.
It doesn't mean rehearse.
What it means is to explore and search.
The American word "rehearse" is just about going in,
read the text from left to right.
If you read the text from left to right,
you get it correct, you're finished.
There's nothing else to do.
We read the text from left to right, right to left,
tear the whole text down, reinvent it every possible way
that we can imagine, drop out parts of the text, never add anything
to the text but completely destroy the text, re-invent the text over
and over, leave out parts of the text, then we know something
about what we're about to do.
>> You do that strictly in the exploring -
>> Yes.
>> phase?
>> Yeah.
>>Or do you do that at the performance?
>> No. In the performance, we have to, we don't have to,
sometimes we could just come up and just improvise,
but when we're playing material that I've written
that we've been working on, we generally plan a type of course,
but we really don't know what's going to happen in terms of content.
We can plan the course, but what's going to happen in the course?
That is going to be a surprise.
>> So --
>> It's a route, it's just a routing.
We setup a routing, you know.
So you say, "I'm going to stop at First Avenue.
Oh, how long are you going to stop at First Avenue?
Would you going to do at First Avenue?
When we leave First Avenue, we're going to Second Avenue.
You say, "When we get to Second Avenue,
what's going to happen at Second Avenue?
How long will you be there?
How much will be revealed at Second Avenue?
What won't be revealed at Second Avenue?"
And you say, "Well, I've got two more avenues but you stay
at Second Avenue so long that when you get to Third Avenue,
you passed it so briefly, it was like it didn't even exist.
So, it's a routing that I generally arrange or we generally range.
We look at all of the, it's a process is what I'm saying.
Process is everything, and so we arrive
at a routing through process too.
We say, "Okay, what's the routing going to be?"
We start looking at it, so we'll use this for this concert.
This is the route, this is the routing for this piece,
this is the routing for this piece, you know.
And before we play that piece again the next time, it's the same thing,
we go back to deconstruction and rerouting, so that we don't have
to be familiar with what we did before, as much as possible
to avoid what we did before
so that we could have a more spontaneous reaction in the moment.
>> Okay, so a lot of this depends on intuition?
>> Yes.
>> But I know you're deliberate
in the way you construct your compositions.
>> Yeah.
>> So, is there a correct way to play your compositions
or do you allow your musicians to tinker or mess with the DNA?
>> Yes, they can do anything they want, but what happens is,
I bring in a piece of music.
Everything has to be brought in in some order.
That does not mean that that's the final order or the best order.
It has to, so how I bring it in, that's an arrangement
but that arrangement doesn't mean anything.
It has to come in some kind of way, you know.
>> It's collaborative then?
>> After that, then right, it starts to become collaborative, and things,
you know, I start hearing things.
They hear things.
We'll suggest and say, "Why don't we move this over here?
Why don't we shift this over here?
Why don't we not play this, you know?
Everything becomes open
to improvisation, that's the other thing.
In traditional jazz, everything is not open to improvisation.
The form, the form is an improvisation,
everything with us is an improvisation.
There is nothing that is sacrosanct.
Traditional jazz has all these things that you don't touch.
>> So, if somebody wants to study your music, for example,
they can certainly listen to recordings that I'm guessing
that only a small percentage of your composed work has been recorded.
Is that true?
>> Oh, a large percentage of it.
>> Oh, a large percentage?
>> Oh yeah.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> And yet, the composition itself may be different
in certain aspects than the recording.
>> Oh yeah, sure, because I can make 10 recordings
of the same composition, and they'll all be, I mean,
not just the improvisational content
but completely different in every aspect.
It might not even be all the parts that you heard won't be in another.
That's why I say, everything is open for improvisation.
That means the give-and-take, a rearrangement,
and deconstruct of anything.
>> Now, when you conceive of certain processes or certain systems
or certain compositions or structures, do these things come
to you sort of fully realized or do you literally have to construct them
and work on them and build them?
>> That's funny.
I always remember as I was growing up as a kid, I was always curious
about that, and would hear these stories
about composers conceiving a whole entire work at once.
I never believed that.
>> No, that never happened with you?
>> Never happened.
If it happened, why did they have workbooks?
You wouldn't have a workbook if you fully conceived of something.
There would be no sketches, sketch 1, sketch 2, sketch 3.
>> Do you keep all your sketches?
>> I do, just, yeah.
But each piece has its own kind of birth.
I have had things come to me completely, you know,
ideas that exist for this amount of time, but something that exists
over a long period of time, no.
>> So if a -
>> What happens is something comes to you and it has, you examine it
and see what the potential for its growth is, and you follow the paths,
the potential paths of growth,
and using your artistic reasoning, develop it that way.
That's what happens, you know.
>> I assume the growth never stops?
>> It never stops.
>> Does that mean you're never finished --
>> Never finished.
>> With a composition?
>> Well, you have to stop.
You know when to stop.
>> How do you know when you're-
>> That's an artistic decision that you have to make.
That's artistic.
Well, will you know, for myself, you have to wear two hats.
You create something and then you and sit down in front of yourself
and you listen to it, listen to yourself.
>> Interesting.
>> Yeah. Otherwise, you could be very self-indulgent.
You have to tear away from yourself and then go and look
because the baby that you like the most, you better get rid of it
because that's the problem.
But you never know that unless you go and sit in front
of yourself and examine it.
If you just stay on one side, you'll just enjoy which are doing
and could be excited by it.
You have to step away from yourself in order to critique yourself,
and be really really honest with yourself, and say that,
"I'm detached", you know, because you've got to deal
with the whole idea of perception, optimum perception
and other issues like that, you know.
>> Have you always been able to detach?
>> No. You learn things over time.
>> I hope so.
Yeah. Are you self-critical about your work?
>> Very. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
The ability, you have to split your personality
and look at what you're doing.
You can't just create, because you have to, you have to be
in the receptive mode to really examine what you're doing, you see?
>> Does it have --
>> One is like [inaudible] somebody that's sending the signal,
and then there's the person,
then there is something that's receiving the signal.
That's the experience that you got to try to have when you create,
because you can go into, you can overload,
all kind of things you could do.
You could overload, distort, because you're only sending,
but when you step back and look at it then you say,
"Uh huh, this is not right."
You know, it's too much of this, too much of that, too loud, too soft,
too fast, too slow, too soon, too late.
>> And sometimes just right.
>> Right. Sometimes just right.
That's how you get it, and just right for the moment.
Just for now, for what you getting ready to do for now
because the next time I do it, I don't want to see that.
I really want to try to get away from the last thing I did.
If I did, I mean if this particular composition A, when I come back
to it I really don't want to have to go that route,
the same route, you know.
You know, we tend to fake.
Human beings, artists are no different.
We intercept satisfaction, you know.
A person don't get up or go say, "Give me some food that I dislike"
and "Give me those shoes that's too tight."
To know what I'm saying?
No. Give me the shoes that are comfortable and give me something
that tastes good and give me the soft chair not the hard chair.
So, we have to, so that means that you might be apt
to replicate what you did before.
You might start to refer back to something that you did
because of the satisfaction of it, so you don't want to have
to refer back to things that were satisfying
that you thought was okay, you know.
You want to try and find a new act, new way of addressing this,
come at it a new way and not go back to anything, you know.
That's what I do, you know.
>> I know you've said that, "Live music is it."
>> Yes it is.
>> That's the way to really experience it.
>> Yes.
>> And yet, you don't perform that much.
You perform as much as you want.
Is that a conscious choice to not hit the road so much?
>> Well it's the reality too.
You can't -- There's no road to hit.
There's no -- the business is down.
>> I mean, but you haven't been to D.C. in a long long time.
>> I know, but not just D.C. you know.
At this point, I mean like I live in New York.
I would only play in New York twice a year, period.
Or anyplace else.
The opportunities to play don't exist the way they used to exist.
That has changed drastically in the United States, in Europe,
in Japan and everywhere else.
Nobody's working the way they used to work.
The venues, the entrepreneurs, they're not there.
I was talking to some people from here last night about that.
When we were playing here, we were also playing in Boston,
so we could play in New York at that time.
We would play New York, Boston which had more places than D.C. They had
about 4 or 5 places we used to play in Boston.
And the guys would make enough money just going from New York to Boston
to D.C. and Philly, never leave the country, never go to the Midwest,
never go to the West Coast.
They could just sit right out here in this pocket and play,
but that's gone, you see.
>> Do you have a sense for why it changed?
>> There is a lot of reasons for that,
and it happened over a period of time.
How did these venues change in all of these cities.
I mean, we lost all of those places in New York.
There's hardly, look at the performance demographics
in New York now, then Brooklyn.
Brooklyn has all the, they can't afford to live in Manhattan anymore.
Artists can't live there.
It's unfriendly.
>> It's expensive.
>> Economically unfriendly, you know, by design I might add.
>> Even Brooklyn's getting expensive.
>> Yeah, because you see, that's what happens.
When something gets expensive, it spreads,
so all the neighbors start saying, "Well,
he's selling beer for $.75 at the corner.
I'm selling it for $.50.
I'm going to try selling it for $.75."
And nobody's complaining.
>> Bear for $.50.
I'm getting nostalgic.
>> Because that works.
Somebody [inaudible] sells their house for $100,000 --
>> Yeah.
>> Over across the street.
They had been selling it for $65, now they're saying okay,
everybody's now selling for $100,000.
Across the river, you know, into Brooklyn as you get close
to Manhattan, the price goes up.
Now, it's just pushing and pushing and pushing, now they're almost,
the people and the prices have been pushed all the way to East New York.
>> But you still live on the lower East side?
>> I still stay, yeah.
If you've been there a long time like myself, you could avoid a lot
of these economic problems because of the rent laws.
>> I see. Do you receive commissions?
>> Yeah.
>> How often and what did they -- are there strings attached?
>> Well, no, there are no strings attached other then
like what they want you to write for.
Sometimes, I mean, I get commissions to write for anything that I want
to write for, but often times people,
they want something in particular, you know.
>> For example?
>> You know, somebody says, "I want a clarinet concerto.
I want a string quartet.
I want a trio for harmonicas."
You know. That's how most commissions work.
They come with a description of what they want.
>> Got it.
Do your compositions have expiration dates?
>> What do you mean by that?
You mean like a shelf life?
>> Well, anesthetic shelf life.
I mean, for example, the things you may have written for Air
or for Sextet or X75, you're not going
to play those necessarily with Zooit?
>> No, no.
>> So are those just fixed in time?
>> No, not necessarily.
They're fixed in time with me.
>> Oh, I see.
>> I don't go back.
That's not good for me with anything.
Going back has been destructive in my life and --
>> In what way?
>> It's just never worked.
Every time I go back with things, they go wrong.
Foreword is the best way for me, in everything.
It's taken a long time to spread that out over every aspect
of my life but that is the best way.
And it's, the music that I conceived anyway at different times,
I conceived it, if it wasn't for orchestra or chamber orchestra
for something for these improvisations, I don't really want
to go back to that because I had these orchestrations and things
in mind at the time, and I don't want to go back and try to come
up with a new orchestration, you know.
A lot of times, people, not just orchestration, what people could do
and what people couldn't do, I was concerned with,
because it's always interesting what people can't do.
>> That's interesting, actually.
>> Of course is interesting.
I mean, I know that you could jump over the moon
but you can't jump over the sun.
I say, "Maybe I better try
and see how I can get him to jump over the sun."
I know you can't do it but you might really come up with something.
>> Well, everybody struggles with something.
>> Yeah.
>> And that's what makes us human.
>> Yeah, you know.
People say, "Oh, it's so great."
You know what these people can do.
It's not what they can do but it's what they can't do is what I'm
concerned with.
>> For our, for the people who will be viewing this webcast
or maybe listening to the podcast who may not know as much
about you personally, they may know your work but not your life is much,
you grew up in Chicago, yeah?
>> Uh huh.
>> What part of the city?
>> Basically the South side.
Over the years I've lived all over.
I wouldn't say, I never really lived on the West side of Chicago.
I always lived on the South side or the North side.
We don't really call the East side the East side in Chicago.
Chicago is referred to as North side, South side, and West side.
There's an East side, but it's absorbed into the South side
or absorbed into the North side, you know.
>> So, how did living in those neighborhoods inform your love
of music and what you're really drawn to?
>> Well, I don't know about those neighborhoods so much as like,
I wouldn't even say those neighborhoods, but boy,
what I learned when I was growing up as a kid - radio.
>> Radio.
>> And live music in the streets of Chicago.
Yeah, because radio, that's where we visited, you know, so much music.
The Chicago community remember are the 2 largest communities outside
Serbia and Poland is in Chicago, Polish music and Serbian music.
>> And those were the days when radio would play a lot
of different kinds of music, not just one format.
>> Exactly.
So I heard a lot of that as a kid, besides like you know all the music
that came out the black community was on the radio and classical music
that was on the radio, but the Eastern European music
that was being played, and hillbilly music,
what they call country-western music now, that was very prevalent.
Hillbilly music, Eastern European music, black music -
the radio was loaded with that and I just sat and listened
to that is a kid from as far back as I can remember, for hours.
>> Although people--
>> And would hear it in the street too.
>> Yeah. People associate you with playing on the alto,
and yet your first horn was tenor.
>> Yeah, right.
>> And then there's this great tradition of Chicago tenor players,
Von Freeman, Eddie Harrison, John Gilmore, and so on.
>> Did any of those-- I'm sure you went to see them.
>> Of course.
>> Did they share their information with you personally?
>> That's not the way; you know you just have to pay attention.
>> Ah yeah.
>> You know.
You have to pay attention, you know.
>> What does that mean?
>> You don't really -
>> You don't ask -
>> Yes you do, you think that you can ask the people something.
They can't really be telling you anything.
You have to discover on your own and pay attention,
because if I tell you how to do it now you're going
to be doing it like me.
You're going to be doing it like the way I told you, whether I do it
that way -- but how I told you.
Now I've got you locked in.
I put handcuffs on you.
You've got to pay attention, but when you're a kid, you ask
and sometimes you get upset because guys don't tell you things
but that's not the way the education works.
Music education, and the music so-called
"jazz" doesn't work that way.
You have to assess it out for yourself,
as opposed to the way it's done now in these schools and universities.
A hundred kids sit out there and they tell 100 people in the room how
to do something, to tell 100 people how to make this note,
how to play that, how to negotiate this, so they all come
out of there doing the same thing.
Now all the great people in this music called jazz
or pop music - who sounded alike?
I don't think Stevie Wonder sounded like Elvis Presley.
I don't think [inaudible] sounded like Muddy Waters,
or Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis sounded anything like Lester Young.
>> And yet I know you had memorable experiences,
for example meeting John Coltrane.
>> Yeah. Coltrane.
I met, I met so many.
Chicago was hot.
>> Yeah.
>> I mean, it was like 52nd St. here.
Chicago we had live music.
Everybody was constantly in there playing.
Coltrane, Miles, it didn't matter.
You know, Blakely [inaudible].
There was Johnny Griffin, you know Ed "Lockjaw" Davis, Count Basie.
I met Duke, you know.
I met Coltran, and all of them when I was very young.
>> You met Ahmad Jamal?
>> I grew up with Ahmad Jamal.
My uncle played with Ahmad Jamal.
I used to, I first wanted to play base because my uncle played base
when I was living with my aunt and uncle in Rockford.
Devon Wilson, he was a base player, played with Ahmad Jamal.
For a while, they were, you know, closely associated with each other.
>> Was there a recognizable Chicago sound?
Like when you listen to somebody, can you tell that they're
from Chicago when you listen to them play?
>> I could.
It's in the players -- and also Southwesterners, Texas, Oklahoma.
>> Yeah, well what gives it away?
What gives away the Chicago sound?
>> It's not a Chicago sound.
It's the way -
>> Oh, it's an approach.
>> It's kind of the sound as has a lot to do with intonation.
There is a very wide idea about intonation, whereas it's very strict
in other regions, you know, that this note is in tune
and this is what it should be, but Chicago,
the tenor players themselves, they didn't think that way.
It was like, was very very wide what you could do, you know.
>> Von Freeman.
>> Not just Von Freeman.
John Gilmore.
>> Yeah.
>> You know.
>> Yeah. Who was Horace Shepherd and how did --
>> Horace Shepherd, he was a very famous evangelist,
Church of God minister in Philadelphia.
>> And how did you start working with him?
>> He hired me in Chicago at the time at the time I was playing
with the Sanctified Church with Church of God of Chicago,
and he had group that was like,
you know how Billy Graham had all these people with him?
Well, he had a group of people with him that was like really something.
>> Revival or what was it?
>> Yeah. You go around, you know, and like they would just come to
and just roll over places, the talent, the musical talent
that he had up on the stage.
There was nothing like what Billy Graham was doing at all.
I mean, I'm talking about some people
that could really play violin, piano, organ.
I remember the, what family was there?
I can't think of their name right now.
The youngest daughter had perfect recall and perfect pitch,
and there was a great pianist named Alan Turner.
He would sit down and start improvising at the piano,
and she would go to the organ, and it would sound like an echo
because of her perfect recall.
He would be improvising and she would be picking it
up as fast as he could put it out.
I mean, he had a whole, it was like,
it was a traveling review or show in a way.
But we would go to big revival places,
where a lot of times there would be these big,
almost kind of a competition with this minister against this minister.
Who was the greatest minister and stuff.
So like, you'd be a part of that.
We would come into a place and like roll in,
and invariably he would take over.
He was famous when I was a kid.
He was famous as a child preacher when I was a kid in Chicago.
>> A lot of those preachers could really swing in their own way.
>> Yeah.
>> If you break down their cadence.
Some heavy stuff.
>> Yeah.
>> They're very musical.
>> Yeah, oh very.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Is that when you switched to alto?
>> Yeah.
>> And what prompted you to do that?
>> The church that I was playing it, the Church of God, the minister,
Morris was the minister, and I came there.
The first time he asked me to play, I think he asked me
to play a song, what was it?
"His Eyes on the Sparrow", or something like that,
and I went up and played it.
Now this is a sanctified church.
It's quite a bit of difference.
I grew up -- my one grandmother went to Baptist Church,
the biggest Baptist Church in Chicago,
and I had another grandmother who was at Church of God in Christ,
which is a more spiritual type of church.
So, I played it and it just fell flat.
It was like, the people just kind of like "mmmm."
>> Polite.
>> It was a very polite response, and the minister told me,
he said afterwards, he said, "Henry, you know."
He didn't say anything about the performance.
He just said, "You know, up under the pulpit,
I have had this saxophone.
I don't know what it is", he said, "but it looks like it's not
as big as the one you've got.
Why don't you get it fixed up and I'll pay for it?
So I took it and got it overhauled, it was alto,
and when it was overhauled I came back with it and he asked me,
he said, "You know, I want you to play that piece again for me,
"His Eyes on the Sparrow."
And when I went up and played it, "His Eyes on the Sparrow",
it is a big difference in response that was going on in the church.
So, I remember I had this realization right then
that the tenor is a blues horn
and a blues horn is not necessarily a church's horn.
The alto is a church horn.
The register, it's a vocal register is what it is,
it's the vocal register of it, you know.
>> That's a life lesson.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. So there's some interesting things that have happened sort
of earlier in your career where you have this experience working blues,
jazz, and whatever, other kinds of music in Chicago.
Then you go out on the road and play gospel and sanctified music.
>> Right.
>> And then you're starting to mix with and perhaps collaborate
with Muhal Richard Abrams and things that led to the experimental band.
>> Right.
>> But then there's something that happens.
By the way, when did you first meet Muhal?
>> 19, maybe '63 or something, '63 or '64.
>> Same period of time when you met what's his name?
Phil Cohran?
>> Yeah. Actually I think I met Phil, I met Phil on the train,
on the L train before I met Muhal.
Muhal came and played at our school.
We had a music club at college, at Wilson College, and we invited him
with a group to come there.
But I actually ran into Phil Cohran on the public transportation system.
>> By the way, Sun Ra was also living in Chicago at the time.
>> Yes, I grew up under Sun Ra, listening to Sun Ra
on a weekly basis at the rehearsals.
>> So was there cross-fertilization between Ra's Orchestra
and the experimental band?
>> No, they were, that was like three kinds of leadership is going
on there, with Sun Ra, who had been the first one, and then Muhal
and Phil who had been together but then split, so they had,
like both had a different philosophical music camp,
but they all went back to Sun Ra in a way.
He had been the originator of it, and so like a lot
of people would end up playing like Sun Ra, or end up over her
with Phil Cohran, or they'd be with [inaudible] and Sun Ra.
It was just kind of triangle that worked that way, you know.
>> And you gravitated towards Muhal or where did you work --
>> Yeah. I worked with Phil Cohran too, later.
Yeah, I was in a great small ensemble with John Summerfield
and Pete Colsey, Steve McCall, Sonny Rollins's aunt on piano.
[Inaudible].
I think it was Master Henry on percussion.
If it wasn't Master Henry, it was this other percussion player.
It was a great, an incredible band.
>> So things are happening in Chicago, definitely.
A lot of creative musicians and movement, and then at some point
that coalesces into the AACM, the Association
for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.
But you missed the first days of that as you were somewhere else.
>> I was in the service.
>> Where were you specifically?
>> First I was in the States.
When they started up, I was in the States in '66 and I was at,
came back in, I was at a couple of the first recordings.
Not the first, I was at Muhal's first recording
and Joseph's first recording, but I missed [inaudible] Roscoe's,
and then I was gone because then I was in Kansas,
and then I went to Vietnam.
>> Did you enlist, or were you drafted?
>> I enlisted for the draft.
>> You enlisted for the draft?
>> You know what that is, what that means?
>> No, explain.
>> Either you're drafted or you join.
There is another category.
If you're a professional person, you join.
You're a tailor, you're a dentist, you're a professional musician.
If you join, you get to do what you want.
You have a contract with the government.
>> I see.
>> Nobody else has a contract, so if they don't do what's
in the contract, you get honorable discharge, but you stay in -
in between the length of time of a person that's drafted and a person
that joins, 6 months longer than a draftee.
>> So you joined as a musician?
>> Yeah, because my, the guy
at the draft board told me they were getting ready to draft me.
I was like working, trying to save some money to take some more classes
at the American Conservatory of Music and I didn't have,
and so my status was gone, the exemption status was gone.
The government thought that I was still taking a full load,
but they checked the school and found
out I was taking a part-time load and he told me, he said,
"They're going to draft you."
And he told me, he said the best thing you could do, he said,
"You're your musician, right?"
He said, "Join as a musician."
And it worked very, because I actually went
in as an arranger and a musician.
I had the first arranger's job in Kansas.
>> Very good musicians in the service.
>> Oh, you kidding?
That's been the history.
Who wasn't in the, who wasn't?
Name any great musician that wasn't?
>> Charlie Parker.
[Inaudible] So, how do you get from being first arranger
to in the infantry in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive?
>> [Inaudible] because of some music that I wrote.
>> Really?
Because of the music you wrote?
What does that mean, what's the story?
>> Yeah. The conductor of the orchestra, concert band,
had gone away and they had given me a commission to write a medley
of these American, I don't know how to call these American, "Oh!
Beautiful" --
>> Patriotic songs.
>> All these kinds of these things, a medley of these things,
"Rock of Ages" a little touch of that, and all of that.
And I wrote it and it was very, I guess it came across like Stravinsky
or something to these people.
At the time, the musicians in the orchestra loved it
but the band conductor had never heard it,
so the master sergeant was conducting in his place
and I never knew what it was really for.
It was for some big inauguration in Kansas City.
Well, the cardinal, the governor, the mayor, the head of the 5th Army
which controlled that part, they were all on this podium,
and this piece was being premiered and the cardinal was going to speak.
And the conductor came in, was conducting on-the-fly.
I mean he was conducting right at that moment.
He looked over and he had never even rehearsed it.
But that was neither here nor there.
They weren't up on this piece more than 8 or 10 bars
and the cardinal jumped up and screamed, "Blasphemy."
That's what he said, he said, "Blasphemy."
And the governor looked at the mayor, and the mayor looked back
at him, then he looked over there at the heads of the generals,
over at the chiefs of the Army, and looked down at the conductor,
because the cardinal looked and he made it clear that this was like,
this was blasphemy what's going on right down here.
The guy was about to faint.
The conductor was about to die.
So, he looked at the first sergeant, the master sergeant,
who had left him in charge and said, "How did you put me in this suit?"
And then they pointed to me.
I was on the sidelines.
I wasn't even in the orchestra playing.
So it went like, it was all [inaudible].
Conductor to first sergeant said, "Threadgill did it.
Threadgill did it."
We packed up.
We stopped the performance and got back on the bus,
and of course they joked with me on the bus.
"Okay tiger, your back in the orchestra,
[inaudible] tomorrow morning, you know, back in uniform.
I didn't even wear, I was in civilian clothes.
I was just playing around, laying in my bed all day smoking,
eating books, listening to music, writing music.
They said, "Back in uniform and we want you to come back
over to the clarinet section."
This is the next day.
Orchestra then rehearsed, there was a morning rehearsal.
First I came in, you know, and he said,
"You're in second clarinet section."
You know, I said, "Man, now I got to sit back up here and do this again?"
You know. We went to lunch, came back up from lunch.
The afternoon rehearsal at one o'clock,
we come into the orchestra room, sit down.
[Inaudible] the start of music, this guy comes in the door in uniform
in dress uniform carrying a dispatch case, one of those leather cases.
They called and said, "Attention."
This guy opens the briefcase and pulls out these papers.
They told everybody to pay attention, and you know it sounded
like something at the hog races.
This guy started reading off, according to so-and-so
and so-and-so, blah blah blah.
I was a private.
"Private Threadgill so-and-so."
I said, "What did you say?"
And he said, "Shut up."
You know. So-and-so and so-and-so, Private Threadgill, blah blah blah,
has been assigned to the 4th infantry division in Pleiku.
I said, "Plaiku?
Where is that?"
And he said, "Hey!
We told you to cool it."
You know. The guy gets to the end, and he said, "He has 30 days
to get his life in order.
Report to Oakland, California and then on to Pleiku
to the 4th infantry division.
"I said, "What the -- " I can't say it on camera.
"What the - explain it - is this?
I said, "You can't do this.
I'm a clarinet player.
I'm in high demand."
I said, "Nobody gets rid of clarinet players."
I said, "I'm a piece of jewelry here, man, what are you doing?"
You know? In one day!
It was the afternoon performance, 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
This shows you how wheels can grind.
The 5th Army general's command can cut papers overnight, overnight!
One o'clock the next day a guy comes in, reads the riot act on me,
tells me I've got 30 days to get my life in order, report to California,
and sit there and wait on a ship, or sit there and wait for an airplane
to take me to the 4th infantry division.
And I said, "Where is Pleiku?"
In the Central Highlands of North Vietnam.
And so, first thing I thought, I said, "Let me review my contract."
Because it says 4th infantry division.
You can never beat the government.
It can beat them, it takes a long time, but it's very difficult.
I went to the 4th infantry band, but what's the 1st word?
Infantry, band, infantry surgeon, infantry cook.
Any time they get ready, [inaudible] infantry.
It's like a card game [inaudible].
Play your horn today.
They say, get out there tomorrow.
>> Did you see combat?
>> Constantly.
>> You were there during the Tet Offensive?
>> Two.
>> Two offensives.
>> Two, I got blown up in the first one in a Jeep.
I got injured in the first one, in a Jeep.
>> What did you take away from that experience?
>> Oh, so much.
First of all, I got rid of religion.
>> Okay.
>> I found out what spirituality is, and I heard a lot of fantastic music
and met some great musicians, and I ended up seeing another part
of the world, over to Vietnam to Hong Kong.
And where else did I stop?
Someplace else.
You know, that's something you can never put in a nutshell, I mean,
you know, that is a life and death type of experience that exists
on an everyday basis, you know.
Like you said, people always say, "Did you see combat?"
You know, that's probably was the last war that was closest
to the classical idea of combat in terms
of this force meeting this force, but it didn't exist that way except
at certain times because there was a new game plan.
The Vietnamese had another game plan
that the Americans were not prepared for, you know.
Guerrilla warfare and terrorism, real sophisticated terrorism,
I mean, really sophisticated terrorism.
What we're calling terrorism right now is more like game thuggery,
very unsophisticated as far as I'm concerned.
Psychological, you know, let nothing happen, first of all,
calls to action means to focus on something,
something to be focused on, it calls for something to be focused on.
So, there is a heightened sense about something.
They create a heightened sense, and then let it just go on and on and on
and nothing happens except for this heightened sense.
Just when you're about ready to look away, something happens.
Boom! And then, nothing else happens and then it comes back exactly
at the same time, like it was on a new moon
and comes back on a new moon.
But then it never happens again.
This is what I call terrorism because this is all mathematics
and sense of mental mood, you know, that they were playing with,
you know, not just a whole lot of low-ground trickery, you know,
putting things in the ground.
>> They were playing the long game too.
>> Yeah. So if you come away from that is, you know, it was like,
it [inaudible] because like, you know, to see mankind
at the lowest levels, because that was the first time.
I grew up in Chicago.
I mean, to kids nowdays, they're going to do all kinds
of crazy stuff, you know.
Weapons are, I mean, you know was it, you know, this is sad, you know.
I mean, among the Americans themselves,
everything got resolved, you know.
The greatest thing that ever happened as far as I'm concerned
about the Vietnam War is the relationship
between blacks and whites.
That got solved in the wild West way, come out in the street.
What only World War II and the Korean War between blacks
and whites, that stopped you know, the Vietnam War, that stopped dead.
That was like, "You want to do it, let's do it."
The brothers stopped it cold, believe me, cold.
And for the best, because the comradeship between blacks
and whites was for real, they didn't have it before.
And that was the only place they had it, except for people
who were marching for things in this country together,
but that's different than being under this threat
of death on a daily basis.
You understand?
>> Life and death.
>> Yeah.
>> So, you return to Chicago I changed man.
>> Of course.
>> And things had changed in Chicago.
>> Yeah. In this country it had changed.
>> So, the AACM is up and running at that point?
>> Right, and that was a haven for me.
>> Yeah. And then, within a year or so -
>> Okay.
>> Within a year or so, many of the AACM people went to Paris.
>> Right.
>> But you chose not to go.
>> No, because I had just gotten back.
I was landing and I needed to get a sense of what was going on
and get myself together in Chicago, to get my music going.
And by the time I got everything going, the Paris days were ending.
Everybody was coming back.
I mean, that just wasn't Chicago.
The migration to Paris was like painters, everything, you know.
Everybody was there, Johnny [inaudible], Don Byus, [inaudible].
Everybody was in Paris, you know.
James Baldwin, everybody was there, you know.
Dancers, you know.
So, it had just run its course, you know,
and so then we saw the exodus coming back to the United States,
because that's when Don Byus and people came
out here to get [inaudible].
So, by that time I had formed Air, but I had gone
over before that, you know.
I went, I chose to go, I said, "Well,
Paris is always so, I went to Amsterdam.
Amsterdam still had something going on,
but it wasn't like the artistic capital, like [inaudible] or Paris
or Vienna had been, you know,
but there was still something happening there.
So I went to London and then I went to Amsterdam
and there were great painters there.
>> You've actually lived in different places around the world,
not just Vietnam or Hong Kong.
So I know you've spent a lot of time in -
>> Caracas.
>> In India?
>> Yes. Caracas in Trinidad.
>> Yeah. Do you think
of your creative aesthetic as Eastern or Western?
>> Neither, neither.
>> Both? Or everything?
>> Just everything, you know.
You are the sum of everything that you are, you know.
Whatever that might be.
If it's all Western, then maybe the summation is a Western summation.
But I've spent time in the islands
and I've spent time in India and Venezuela.
>> Indonesia?
>> No not Indonesia.
>> No?
>> No, no.
>> Okay.
>> No. India, Caracas, in Venezuela, [inaudible]
and Port-of-Spain, Tobago.
>> Do you believe in fate?
>> You know, I'm not sure.
I'm not really sure.
I've thought about that a lot but I'm not really sure about that.
>> You, I think in February, you will begin your 7th decade?
>> Yeah, yeah.
That's what I've been told.
>> Do you, do you reflect on that?
>> No. I never deal on those kinds of things, no numbers.
They're meaningless to me.
They've always been meaningless to me.
They thought it was something,
my teachers thought there was something wrong with me
when I was a kid because they used to tell my mother,
"He doesn't know his birthday."
I'd say, "You want a birthday?
Here." What do I need to remember that for?
It's just taking up valuable space I need.
I need all my storage space.
So numbers like that I got to remember that?
You know. They said, "He's got 7 birthdays."
So? I don't get it, you know.
>> How much of your life is improvised?
>> All of it.
Yours is too.
That's what's so important about improvisation.
People don't understand.
This is a way to live your life and to solve problems.
An improvisational approach will make you stop doing foolish things
and making the same mistakes if you take an improvisational look
at things in life, you know?
People get faced with things.
That door closes over there.
It gets boarded up.
That's the only way out.
Everybody's looking that way.
Why is that the only way out?
If you turn your head and said, "Well, there's a door over there."
Does that mean you can't get out over there?
Are you understanding what I'm saying?
It's the lateral type of thinking that will keep you
from making bad choices in life.
And a lot of times you can solve a lot of problems in your life
on a daily basis, simple things you know,
because most of our behavior is habitual anyway
and predictable, you know.
And whenever there's conflict, we don't have the reasoning ability
to come up with an acceptable alternative.
We generally have a conflict, you know,
because we're not thinking improvisationally, you know.
>> We have just begun to scratch the surface here.
>> Yeah.
>> I know you have to get back to the hotel.
In fact, you're going to get back on the train.
>> Oh yeah, I'm running behind.
>> Okay. One last question if you don't mind?
As a composer, as a musician, as a man, how do you measure success?
>> That if you are convinced that if you found the thing
that makes you happy in life and that you accept it,
that you want to do it for the rest of your life.
>> Henry Threadgill, continued success.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at LOC.gov.