The use of post-production and editing to shape jazz improvisation into records isn’t new, but no one has done it better than Chicago-based drummer Makaya McCraven. When his In The Moment album came out in 2015 on the International Anthem label, it was a breath of fresh air and landed on many prominent year end lists. His follow-ups Universal Beings and Universal Beings E & F Sides expanded the reach of In The Moment, bringing together the hottest players from Chicago, New York, London, and LA for as good a measure of the current jazz scene as anyone’s put together.
Watching him with an Octet in 2020 at Winter Jazzfest, an ecstatic audience packing the iconic rock club Webster Hall, I was practically knocked against a pillar by the power, the commitment, and the righteous beauty unfolding in front of me. Even more than the specific power of the songs, the power of community, seeing players watch their counterparts intently when they take a solo, and the sense everyone was spurring everyone else on in the most positive way, reminded me what I’ve always loved about jazz (if you want to call it that).
McCraven is coming to the Wexner Center for the Arts on Monday, May 16, (tickets here) and I can’t recommend anything higher. I was lucky to talk with him from his Chicago studio by Zoom about his approach to composing and bandleading, working with the past on his terrific Blue Note album Deciphering the Message and his Gil Scott-Heron reimagining We’re New Again, and which musicians he’s bringing with him on the Columbus visit.
Makaya McCraven and band, photo by Richard Sanford
Richard Sanford: Thank you for talking to me. I saw you play at Winter Jazz Fest in January of 2020, a couple months before everything shut down, and it was one of the most jubilant sets I've ever seen at that thing. I mean, grown men in front of me were hugging while I was watching you play. I loved the records before, but there was just such a feeling of comradery and possibility, that set rang with it, I thought. I’m like, "Man, this is going to be a good year." And then of course everything shut down. Could you talk to me a little bit about how this period has been for you as an artist?
Makaya McCraven: It's been all-encompassing. It's been very challenging in many ways, for several obvious reasons personally and professionally; it's been quite a challenging time collectively. That being said, me and my family [are] very grateful we've been able to survive this period and come out in a good place. And I was still working creatively a lot. It was a nice period for me to slow down the touring and the traveling while working on Deciphering The Message for Blue Note release and working throughout the last couple years on my next release, In These Times. And that wasn't always easy. I definitely found it difficult being isolated and trying to work on music a lot on my own, but I just kind of kept on pushing through. And I'm really grateful for where we are, at this juncture in these strange times.
RS: Sampling and cut-ups in jazz aren’t new but it felt like you set a new standard for it with In The Moment. Could you talk a little bit about your approach to where is that line for you of improvisation and how do you not cut something up so much it keeps the personality of the players?
MM: To me, that period particularly when making that record was in conversation with where does composition and improvisation intersect and where does one begin in the other end? And I think that's not always easy to decipher. We put a series on, with International Anthem when I first met them and they were not even really a label yet, they're just getting the concept together. at a place called the Bedford and it was called spontaneous composition. That was always the idea. So it was not like non idiomatic improvisation where we are avoiding familiar sounds or avoiding cliche or something like that or improvisation where you are just completely free to - I mean we were free to do whatever, but as we're creating, we are always kind of in between composition and improvisation.
I think sometimes people come to me as a jazz musician - if we're going to use this as the term - and be like, "Oh, I could never improvise. That's so amazing what you guys [do], you guys are so free." And I think on the contrary, we all exist in this space, and the thing that is unique is composition and is the choice to edit something: to edit your words, to set them in stone, to say that this is going to happen again and again as the same piece. Yeah, you can cut it up until it's maybe completely indistinguishable, but I think more, I wanted to use this, the moment of creation; the moment of inspiration when we're composing.
We're making choices in the moment to then encapsulate that in a recording session and get those little bits of composition that wouldn't necessarily be written out the same way if I was just trying to dream it up in my own head. But the collective experience of being in the moment with the audience creates some magic and then I try to capture it. And with those pieces being kind of fleeting moments of togetherness or whatever I just was experimenting with, how do I now take those bits and pieces and bring them together for another layer of cohesion? It's a very blurred line. I don't think it's that simple, but I'm interested in exploring those spaces.
RS: When you got into the two Universal Beings, it really felt like a continuation of what you did on, In the Moment. Could you talk a little bit about how those scenes interject, the Chicago Sides, the New York Sides, the London folks on it, like Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia?
MM: Yeah, Universal Being is completely a continuation of In The Moment, After that experience, there's a few things that happened. One thing was me not really being from Chicago and having this moment. feeling like [I was] being very much defined as this guy from Chicago. I very much love the city and have cut my teeth here and owe a lot to the city, but I'm careful not to claim having been born and raised here or anything like that. Because it's such a vibrant place and I think that carries a lot of meaning. [I have] relationships from my childhood on the east coast with cats like Dez Douglas and Brandee [Younger] and having Jeff Parker move out to LA and had started to kind of do things out there and was meeting people.
There was all this talk about - at the moment Kamasi Washington - it was like, "West coast is the best coast." "Oh, everybody check out the blazing new wave of jazz from Chicago." "No, everybody knows New York is the best place for jazz." And then it'll be like, "No, the London scene, the new London cats are the thing." And I had just met Shabaka and some of these guys and part of me was like, everybody's talking about their scene and about how their scene was the best there is, [feeling like] "My team.' I really wanted to, aside from just being there and being like, "Yeah, no, me Chicago, me, me, me." And I was like, "No, I do want to play with people across different places that I don't always get to play with, and I do think there's something special about localized music scenes and cohorts and musicians that build kind of a scene and a sound and have a relationship."
But in this very small world of this music, it isn't to me like, the London jazz scene pushing things forward or Chicago or New York, but within the music there's a movement of artists and young people that are engaging with [each other] and with new music and there's young players and young fans, and I wanted to make a record that could bring that together within the same kind of process as I made In The Moment. And that's what led me to go to this city and that city and try to find musicians that I had connections with and build little units around them to create moments to play together.
RS: And that's an interesting thing. When I was watching you guys at Webster Hall, I felt like I had a record by everybody on that stage that's come out in the last year. It really felt like you had captured some kind of a zeitgeist that was going on at moment right there, no pun intended. Was that something you were conscious of? Or, were these just people you had played with and the stars sort of aligned?
MM: It's somewhere in between that. I think I'm always looking for the very best and most inspiring musicians that I can play with or that I meet, and I naturally connect with. If I meet somebody and I really think they're great and we have a connection that's really important to me - how I develop my relationships with the people I work with.
I do also think, cohorts and relationships of course, are things that make us better and breed whole sounds of music. It's not singular to a band. My favorite band leaders are the ones that were able to pick great musicians, have lots of great musicians. And the big thing for me is I like to work with band leader type people. Not everybody - young musicians, they might not have their project together yet, but I like to work with people who have a creative vision for themself and then they're going to bring that to my band or my project.
And rather than prescribe them to do things, I mean, I have things I might tell people to do here and there, blah, blah, blah. Like you got to rehearse and teach everybody your music, but I'd rather somebody listen and interpret my music and do something that's just how they hear it. Ultimately, I want to have people that are going to do something that I can't bring to the table myself. I want to work... It's like you play something and I'm like, "Wow, I could have never thought of that, that wasn't exactly how I wrote it for you. That was brilliant." Or maybe they take a chance and I have to say like, "Hey, I kind of wanted to, like this.' And then they might still do it the way they hear it and that's cool.
I prefer working with people who are going to have strong personalities in their playing and be boldly looking for what they're looking for, for better and for worse. To me that's the kind of musician I strive to be [and] the people I surround myself with.
Even if it's somebody 15 years younger than me, I pull up, I see a young musician and I'm like, "Oh my goodness, you play so well. You're coming up, you already got gigs." That's exciting when I see young musicians, making moves like that and so I'd love to have some of that. I hope to see the people that are with me do well. I feel like if somebody plays in my band and they go off and they can't play with me no more, because they're doing something awesome, that's cool to me. In that sense, it's like I'm trying to bring good people together that I respect and that have a relationship with, that help lift me up and I can help lift them up and if we split for one reason or other, hopefully everybody's growing, and it works out. That's the goal and how it comes across is whatever.
RS: Can we talk about about your work reckoning with the past? I didn't really dig into the Gil Scott-Heron record until I was getting ready to write this. It just kind of missed it, and it’s full of beautiful moments like that wild cacophony you put in under “New York is Killing Me.” What was the inspiration?
MM: This was really a collaboration with XL and Richard Russell who produced that record for Gil and the whole thing with Gil at the end of his life. On the 10 year anniversary, five years after the first remix of the record, Richard Russell approached me and the label and said they want to do this. And they're like, "You're perfect for it. Is this something you would want to do?" And I definitely had to think about it long and hard just because I was like, it's like, "How can I say no?” But this is a lot to bear.
It felt like a big responsibility, not only on a historical level but just personally handling somebody else's work and just wanting to be respectful to whomever you're working with in a sense, who's not there to work with you back. So yeah, I thought about it. I consulted some of my close consultants and collaborators and then we started go for it. I started to just dig into a little bit more of Gil's work and life. I just started chopping away at musical concepts and some themes that I could try to lock into. Because I was [thinking], how could I bring myself into this? How can I do this and put myself into it as a way to do it justice? Not necessarily like I have to make the music good but let me make sure that I'm putting my best effort [from] that my person into this. Just so I know that like I can walk away and say that I left it all on the field.
RS: That metaphor of leaving it all on the field. I guess that takes me into, Deciphering the Message. What still speaks to you about that classic Blue Note catalog? What made you want to do Deciphering The Message in the first place?
MM: Well, I think the first thing that got me here is just my desire to work in music, technology and budding spaces of repurposing audio and working with audio and whether that's my own audio, which I got led to through investigating sampling. I always wanted to be able to sample records and that led me to sampling myself. When I had opportunity to talk about it with Don Was, we had dinner and he was asking me about my records and how I do stuff and I was talking about things I was passionate about and how I've always wanted to sample classic records too. After that day, later that night he said, "Okay, let's do it [with the Blue Note catalog]." And I was like, "Oh, wow. Okay, great."
So it was a really cool opportunity, definitely... It was easier to have all the ideas and want to do it than to think about it again and sit back and be like, "Oh, wait, I have to do it now." I like to make music in creative ways. I like to experiment with sound, and I interface both with the electronic or the technology side, and playing this music, improvising and taking part in the traditions of jazz. Yeah, I find it's just a good place for things I'm interested in and do to intersect.
RS: Some of the tracks on that, I was just really wowed by. I'm thinking of in particular "Ecaroh.” You've got that iconic Horace Silver piano part. How did you and Joel Ross decide where to put his vibes around that or your own drums around that Art Blakey, you know, all-time drum part?
MM: Well, I go through samples and sounds and songs. That record [Introducing the Horace Silver Trio] was [one] I stumbled upon for this, that I was familiar with but never really sat and listened to the record like I have now. And [it’s] such a great Horace Silver trio with Art Blakey, [with] so many of these incredible catchy, like almost like radio hits, piano trio tracks with like not long solos and really funky playing; really swinging and lots of little riffs and tight stuff. Getting to listen to all these records a lot and dig a bit was a really great experience for me as a drummer and musician as well, not just producing the record. It's like a masterclass in music and listening and music history, a lot of stuff I learned through this and was very inspired.
So part of the process was listening and going through records and investigating, artists a little deeper or artists I wasn't familiar with on the catalog and being like, "Let me check this out and let me just throw this in into my system and let me... What if I mess with it this way or that way?' and tons of little sketches. As I was doing that, I was also making notes, lots of notes of different themes that I was finding in terms of which tracks I was working on that I liked and how they might connect with each other, and how do I find some narrative within all of that.
It was just a combination of just trying and trying and listening and listening and listening to this record and try something from this record and go back in this session and play something over here, how does that sound? Have something kind of finished, send it to a musician and then like, "Oh, wow, I love this. Can I record on it?"
“Sure, great. Send it back." Then that might inspire me to edit that or play some other stuff. Maybe I'll play the bass, some bass parts or some guitar or piano. I'm playing a lot of different instruments over here. Sometimes I'll play some stuff and then I'll you get somebody to replay it because they can do it better than me. And sometimes my own parts stay in there and this is a combination of just like working at it, and then as I get to the end, I start carving away, which tracks? Maybe I'll cut that and this one's too long or this doesn't fit the narrative the way I want on it to. Or whatever. How is this fit within the sequence? I might cut a track or add a track, just because I like to try to figure out the puzzle of the whole record. Rather than just like, what's the best tracks. It's like, "I want to make a record." and that was the goal.
RS: And you succeeded admirably at that because it does feel like a really cohesive whole, it feels like a record instead of like a compilation.
MM: That was a goal too, because with so many different records and so many different musicians in this kind of strange way of putting the music together, [there] was a concern that I was going to have a bunch of beats and I didn't really want to just make a bunch of beats for this. I really wanted to engage in some musicianship and some playing, keep it on the beat side of things and groove side of things, [but] to play with the different types of material and this modern kind of thing. That's why I wanted some good musicians on there and I wanted to keep some compositional elements to the tracks as much as I could. It was just... Just kind of kept on cutting at it until it came together.
RS: That's great. The new record you're working on, is this also for Blue Note or are you on another label?
MM: No. This record I am doing now is entitled, 'In These Times' and it's in collaboration with Nonesuch and International Anthem and XL. We have a kind of a collaborative project that goes with the last three labels that I've worked with, which is kind of cool that everybody's being so friendly. A number of the tunes on this record, I've been performing since I was creating, In the Moment. [The title track and] “This Place, That Place” have been long-time parts of my repertoire. [It] focuses on the way I write where I'm using a lot of odd meter [in] grooves and displaced rhythm, in a very kind of groovy way that's like not like a math exercise for the listener, but it's something that people can enjoy.
And over time as, In the Moment happened and then [mixtape], Highly Rare and so on, when we got to Universal Beings, I had the opportunity to put these larger scale performances. And even though the record is a collection of trios and quartets mostly, when we did the concerts, I had everybody. I had a harp and violin, several horn players, [sometimes] a 10-piece band and that led me to start doing more performances like that. I started to adapt my repertoire. When I play shows, we play about 50% of tunes from my upcoming record and that kind of style. And then material off of the records that I release that I make much more with production techniques. If you've seen me play, you've seen me do this stuff intermixed with the stuff I've been releasing on my record. We did a concert at Chicago Symphony Center with a string quartet, and we also did Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, and and I've recorded some of those performances and mix them with some studio performances, as well as some other live performances, kind of in line with some of the stylistic ways of it making my records but with this other material that we've been playing.
RS: When you're coming to the Wexner center in a couple weeks, who's in the band, who are you bringing, if you know yet?
MM: I have Greg Ward [on alto saxophone], Junius Paul [on bass], and Jahari Stampley who is an incredible young piano player that I've just started working with.