Ben Allison and his Peace Pipe ensemble have just released a new album, and the group will be playing at the University (Thurs, Feb. 5 at Crowell Concert Hall at 8 PM. $3 for students). Jesse Brenner had a chance chat with the musician.
On his background: “I grew up in New Haven and got my musical education at the Education Center for the Arts, but I didn’t really get into music until I moved to New York City to study music at New York University, which was an eye-opening experience.”
On the kora: “I was curious about adding an instrument to the jazz configuration that’s not traditionally associated with jazz. The kora is a beautiful instrument with a history of its own… but I wanted to bring the kora into our own environment, incorporate into what we were already doing, rather than take the sound directly from Mali or Senegal [where it originates]. It has a very percussive sound, a timbre very different from other instruments I usually play with. It adds a whole new set of colors without getting in the way of piano and sax and all those instruments, while producing an interesting sound when those instruments are mixed together.
”There’s a lot of depth to it, but the thing with the kora is that it can tune to only one of a handful of keys. Writing tunes in one key is a challenge for jazz musicians, since we’re used to being able to change keys often and randomly. I was getting a little bored with what I was writing at the time, so I tried to challenge myself by putting myself in a hole that I had to dig out of. The kora was that hole.“
On building chemistry with kora player Mamadou Diabate: ”Some things took a while, some things were immediate…it’s a challenge for me because my music is kind of personal, a lot of it is stuff I can’t notate very well, which fit Mamadou very well because they don’t read Western notation in Mali and he is used to receiving verbal instruction. But my music may have been a little more complex than what he was used to. It took a few rehearsals before everyone loosened up and became a little more spontaneous with it. It was an interesting process, I was amazed with how much Mamadou and I actually had in common. We don’t use the same words to describe it but most of the rhythmic information in jazz comes from northwestern Africa…we all share a common history and it was fun to find out and hear and see what happened naturally.“
On the results of the Peace Pipe project: ”Most of the people who like my music have come to expect the unexpected, so even though Peace Pipe has some difference, it’s still very much my sound and my aesthetic, even some of the same musicians there. Some people were immediately intrigued, others were immediately suspicious, but once everyone heard it people thought ‘oh this is just a jazz album with some new color.’ I like playing with people of all different backgrounds because it keeps you on your toes and there’s always something to be learned from other musicians.“
On choosing to study music at NYU instead of Wesleyan: ”When I was looking at colleges, Wesleyan seemed like just my type of school. I studied Haitian drumming in high school for three years and my teacher had studied with some of the master drummers at Wesleyan. But New York beckoned. Nothing can compete with NYC in terms of the depth and breadth of the scene. It’s pretty profound. I’ve been to many cities around the world and nothing compares to New York.“
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