Adam
Rudolph: The Mysteries of Creation
By E.J. Iannelli
“I feel that creativity is greater than religion. It transcends
race, transcends socio-political boundaries. It’s one of the
things that defines us as human beings.”
At the risk of oversimplification, you could argue that this statement
is a credo of sorts for Adam Rudolph, the basis of his personal philosophy.
Consequently, it is probably the best starting point from which to
examine the percussionist’s approach to music in its most comprehensive
sense: how it’s produced, how it’s heard, how it’s
interpreted, understood and enjoyed.
Rudolph himself is something of a riddle. He delves further into complicated
theories so that he might arrive at simplicity. He grapples with transcendence
in order to better capture the fleeting present. He values music so
intensely that he refuses to limit his learning to music alone; yet
everything he learns becomes reapplied to music.
With regards to the latter especially,
Rudolph’s conclusions about the world and his place in it do
not derive from a single source or field of study. His philosophy
is infused with the writings of thinkers such as Noam Chomsky and
Friedrich Nietzsche, shaped further by his direct contact with musicians
such as Don Cherry and Yusef Lateef, and one which to some extent
reflects the nebulous spirituality espoused by more than a few of
the Californians among whom Rudolph now lives. And, naturally, this
eclecticism has come to include and influence his chosen artistic
vehicle.
Performing, he maintains, is a matter of “humbly trying to be
prepared to let things flow out,” channelling one’s inner
voice and a cosmic creative power through an instrument. “I
try to tap into that sense. Wherever that source of creativity is,
it feels like something great. You could even say it’s like
dipping into a river. But there’s also something mundane about
it, because all human beings have [that ability].”
For Rudolph, this mix of self-expression
and otherworldly inspiration isn’t an entirely new development.
Since he was first introduced to the hand drum during his youth in
Chicago, he has held firm to the belief that there is more to playing
an instrument than technique, and more to technique than proper finger
or hand placement. He read extensively, travelled widely (first to
Ghana, then to Sweden), performed (branching out into all types of
percussive instruments), composed (alongside world music progenitor
Don Cherry) and studied (graduating from Oberlin with a degree in
Ethnomusicology and later an MFA from California Institute of the
Arts) in order to discover new ideas and then combine them into something
cohesive and useable, always with the aim of advancing his craft.
“If I wanted to have a
long-term, evolutionary life in music,” he explains, “I
had to study and learn everything in music that attracted me. I didn’t
come up as a classical musician. I started out playing hand drums
in the park and then playing with Fred Anderson. And that music was
not western-oriented. There weren’t pedagogical books I could
study.” He had to go in search of learning experiences.
This restless curiosity is reflected
in the sheer number and variety of Rudolph’s musical projects.
He leads the Go: Organic Orchestra, his Moving Pictures ensemble and
the Beyond the Sky Octet, and takes a less conspicuous role in countless
others. But perhaps it is Pictures of Soul, his recent collaboration
with Afro-Cuban pianist Omar Sosa, that could be considered the latest
stage of this long-term musical evolution that began in the 1970s.
“Omar and I had never
played together. We met and he said to me, ‘Let’s make
a record,’ and so we did. We went into the studio and started
listening to each other. We would just start together,” and
the songs would then develop themselves. The nature of this duo work
therefore showcases a more introspective and urgent side of Sosa,
better known for his work with larger ensembles involving eight or
more members. “Omar seems to be a seeker, and I consider myself
an evolutionist and a seeker. He asked me to make this record and
we wanted to make it a duet. I think for both of us it was an opportunity
to work with each other – there was a vibe, a feeling of connectedness
– and also to have something new.”
“In the broadest sense,
I was bringing the sensibility and creative attitude I bring to any
project I would do,” says Rudolph, taking care to note his concerns
with “ideas of emptiness and form” during the session,
“which has to do with being in the moment and bringing your
life experience and technical experience and creativity into the moment
of creating spontaneously in conjunction with other people.”
Paired with the likeminded and musically articulate Sosa, he took
part in a musical conversation in an atmosphere of complete freedom,
meaning in this context a total absence of inhibition and convention.
To wit: in jazz, there is usually an assumption that one performer
will solo while the other marks time. Here, says Rudolph, “we
could both be soloing at once,” referencing a point of apparent
discord in the song “The Call” in which Sosa and Rudolph
are at musical odds with each other. “It was an interesting
moment. He was playing some kind of melodic, romantic theme, and my
playing was something altogether different.”
He explains that this is indicative
of his attempts to balance the musical statements of his collaborative
partner, and vice versa - a dark to offset a light, a yin to match
a yang.
“Sometimes what I wanted to do is provide contrasting elements.
Call it kinetic, call it romantic – to me, there’s contrast,
and if you put red next to blue, the red gets redder. It’s the
poignancy and beauty of hearing a romantic line when it’s juxtaposed
with something else. It’s alchemy.”
This juxtaposition is fundamentally the same as the Indian concept
of rasa, a means of aesthetic evaluation first posited by Bharata
Muni in his ancient theatrical treatise Natya Shastra. It is normally
linked with the word “swadana” to signify the “tasting
of the true flavor.” Rudolph translates the term as “emotional
coloration.”
“We might call it mood. Or a transcendent feeling. I try to
focus like a laser into the emotional essence and expressive quality
of music at the same time as I’m trying to make it as free as
possible. And those are almost diametrically opposed. Maybe the tension
is what creates some kind of beauty in the music. I don’t know.”
“I always think orchestrally,”
he adds, elaborating with a visual illustration of instrumental possibilities:
“You can have parallel lines, oblique lines, a wavy line and
a straight one. When you hold your hand up in front of a window, your
see your hand, the houses, the trees and maybe the mountains beyond,
but these are all distinct entities that you’re seeing. More
than one reality can be described at one time. We don’t have
to experience music in a linear sense, which is what we’re taught
to do.” Keeping this in mind, he aspired to create a “three-dimensional
phenomenon” with “emotional depth” on Pictures of
Soul, just as he does elsewhere in his music.
In the end, though, these principles
always seem to go full circle, ending at their singular origin. “It’s
all about creating in the moment – right now, and then now,
and then now – and being a conduit for expression. Nobody knows
what’s going to happen next. Life is like that too. Philosophically,
only the moment exists. We love to look back and hope or fear the
future, but all that exists is the moment. We live in the delusion
of routine. But it’s an illusion, what they call the eternal
now.”
In this way, Pictures of Soul, released
through Rudolph’s own Meta Records, was for him the fusion and
application of these multifarious ideas. The album’s title speaks
to how this was ultimately achieved: via snapshots of the innermost
regions of the self, the place where the individual mingles with the
universal. But it would be a mistake to think of this album as the
exhaustion of Rudolph’s ever-developing ideas. Pictures of Soul
is only one fraction of an intricate whole.
This month will bring about
the release of another duo record, Beautiful, this time coupling Rudolph
with fellow percussionist and Don Cherry acolyte Hamid Drake. It will
be issued by the UK label Soul Jazz under the moniker Hu Vibrational.
In what might seem like a radical departure from his joint efforts
with Sosa and Lateef, not to mention his larger ventures with his
Organic Orchestra, this project will be “more dance-oriented”
and geared for a slightly more club-going audience. “It’s
all acoustic,” Rudolph notes, as if to pre-emptively answer
purist indignation.
In August 2004, Meta is scheduled
to release another album, Rudolph’s Vista Trio with Sam Rivers
and Harris Eisenstadt. It was recorded the day before the distinguished
saxophonist’s eightieth birthday. “Sam came over after
Harris organized it. We recorded it in a day,” he recalls.
“Sam hears everything: all the overtones, all the tuning of
my drums. He has such an imagination and he has no technical limitations.
That’s a formula for success in creative music-making. The two
most important elements are listening and imagination. When you hear
something, it inspires you to go into different kinds of places. And
if you can imagine it, you can do it.”
Stepping back briefly, In the
Garden, a double-CD concert recording featuring Go: Organic Orchestra
and his longtime mentor Yusef Lateef was issued in late 2003, also
on Meta. Although it was the third Organic Orchestra disc, it was
Lateef’s first recorded outing with the group.
“I’m interested in varying my musical palette,”
explains Rudolph. “Musicians always have more than one musical
idea going on. And I always enjoy working in a collaborative sense
with musicians who I respect and who challenge me and I can offer
something to. I’ve never been a journeyman, where I work with
1,001 people. Yusef is special because he’s been my mentor and
my teacher and he treats me as a peer. He’s opened a lot of
doors both creatively and personally.”
Yet another Rudolph brainchild,
Go: Organic Orchestra is a twenty-four-piece Los Angeles-based ensemble
comprising twelve woodwind players (flutes, clarinets, bansuri flute,
bassoon, oboe and bamboo flutes) and twelve percussionists (udu drums,
congas, djembes, riq, frame drums, tabla, dumbek, bata, gongs). Instead
of relying on written notation, Rudolph conducts them in an improvisational
style using physical gestures and signs.
“We perform in a completely open format. We create this sonic
landscape, but the kind of music we do invites the listener to be
an active participant. And it’s exciting for an audience. It’s
like reading a great book.” Rather than being a major breakthrough
in music, this is merely getting back to basics. “The first
creative gestures humans made had language and dance and music and
painting. Just think of the first time humans came together, gathered
around the fire. You know there had to be some music going on and
storytelling.”
“People listen to music
for a lot of reasons – comfort, nostalgia, background music,
lifestyle. And I appreciate all of that. But I’m interested
as an artist in reflecting my experience as an artist. This is one
of the funny things about CDs, too, because the music should be live
music. The energy of the audience is captured. It’s thrilling
because it has a lot of authenticity and love, and this vision of
real freedom and real democracy in an idealized sense.”
In addition to this push towards greater freedom and egalitarianism,
the Organic Orchestra incorporates several other disparate ideas that
hark as far back as Rudolph’s early experience composing with
Don Cherry in Sweden.
“While I was there, Don started showing me some of Ornette Coleman’s
concepts of composition. I have always had an uneasy relationship
with Western music. My idea is to have an improvisational concert
with as much aesthetic and functional focus in each piece of music
with the least amount of written music possible. I’m trying
to get away from the paper.”
The resulting hand gestures and signs are part of a unified system
Rudolph calls Cyclic Verticalism. This system uses African polyrhythms
in combination with Indian rhythm cycles; this in turn gives birth
to the music/letter grids, language and sonic themes, Indian ragas
and “diadic and intervalic harmonies” Rudolph uses to
conduct the orchestra. It also spills over into his other projects.
“It’s a compositional tool. I wasn’t composing rhythm
figures for the session with Omar the way I do with the Organic Orchestra.
But it’s something I deal with every day, so it’s very
much a part of my hand drum language. I used these grids and graphic
notations that are the cells from which I conduct [the orchestra]
and I gave them to Omar. It was something new for him, some of these
9-tone rows, but he was open to it. He got it. And it worked.”
While all this talk about Cyclic Verticalism and diadic harmony has
the potential to sound like a foreign tongue, Rudolph isn’t
out to alienate anyone. The way he sees it, complexity is another
route to simplicity.
“The thing is,” he says, “in music, the more you
move into higher spheres, it’s like moving into the highest
dimensions in physics. As you step above styles, you see the elements
that go into creating music, and they’re more and more simple.
In terms of tonality, it’s all based upon overtones. Everything
in rhythm mathematically comes in 2 or 3. Odd is the male energy.
Even is the female energy. The tension comes from the male and female
rhythms.”
Rudolph also forgoes heady theorizing
when giving drum workshops for beginners. Because he embraces the
rather generous opinion that the capacity for art rests in everyone,
he doesn’t believe that it’s absolutely necessary to know
the ins and outs of composition in order to create something genuine
and meaningful.
“One of the greatest things is to inspire people to do something
creative themselves. Music is for anybody. We end up creating some
amazing music by the end of the [workshops]. One of the reasons I
started the Organic Orchestra was that I felt that it was time for
me to be doing some mentorship of young musicians. This music is an
oral tradition. It’s not really taught in schools. Miles came
up with Charlie Parker, McCoy Tyner came up with Trane, and with my
own coming up with Don Cherry and Big Black as a hand drummer, and
later Yusef – he’s been my most important mentor since
1988 – I felt like it was time for me to bring more of that
to the scene out here. Not to say that the musicians are all beginners.
Even if they’re the most sophisticated players, there are a
lot of things they haven’t had experience with. It’s just
sharing something. Music doesn’t belong to anybody. People can
argue about what they want to own and have a lawsuit, but at the end
of the day, this is creativity, this is about our humanity and it
isn’t about ownership.”
“The origins of consciousness are in creativity,” he concludes
on a shamanistic note, also – intentionally or not – returning
to muse on his Grundsatz. “I don’t know how it started.
I don’t know where the music is coming from. I don’t know
what that mystery is.”
All material copyright © 2004 All About
Jazz and contributing writers. All rights reserved.
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