Wadada Leo Smith and Vijay Iyer on their new album, ‘Defiant Life’ : NPR

The reside spark and open give up of musical dialogue has lengthy been a founding precept for trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and pianist Vijay Iyer. Every is a justly heralded composer who usually strikes a negotiation between freedom and kind. Smith, 83, has been a artistic visionary for the reason that late Sixties, creating his personal musical language — Ankhrasmation, a colorfully visible substitute for traditional notation — whilst he engages with touchstones of Black historical past. (His sweeping 2011 album Ten Freedom Summers, in regards to the Civil Rights Motion, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.) Iyer, 53, first met Smith just a few many years in the past, later changing into a protégé and collaborator; his many accolades embrace prestigious fellowships from United States Artists and the MacArthur Basis.

Each artists are drawn to work that pursues revelation. And whereas they arrive from completely different life experiences and generations, their improvisational observe as a duo accesses a deep, transferring present of mutual discovery. They’ve a powerfully transfixing new album, Defiant Life, simply out on ECM Information. Recorded over two days in Lugano, Switzerland, it is a follow-up to their earlier duo album, A Cosmic Rhythm with Every Stroke, which met with overwhelming acclaim upon its launch in 2016. (It landed at No. 2 within the NPR Music Jazz Critics Ballot.) However because the title implies, their new album additionally brings concepts of resistance and liberation into major focus. It is a manifestation of core convictions for Smith and Iyer, arriving at a charged and turbulent second.

The 2 artists will carry out this music on the Massive Ears Pageant on Saturday. Final week, on the eve of the album’s launch, they convened at NPR’s New York bureau to speak in regards to the intention and inspiration behind their new music, the inherent problem of spontaneous invention, and the ability of artwork to assist us think about a greater world.

This interview has been edited for size and readability.

Nate Chinen: This album is clearly a testomony to the deep relationship that the 2 of you might have, and in addition to a shared set of convictions. What kind of dialog did you might have going into the recording?

Wadada Leo Smith: One of the best ways to consider it’s as a notion of dialogue, the place you have a look at the necessities, and also you have a look at the chances, and also you have a look at that which is important. We do not attempt to prophesize as to what it’ll be like, or sound like, or how we’ll do it. It is extra akin to permitting every of us to attach via this dialogue, and to maneuver previous former concepts about how we felt.

Vijay Iyer: Mr. Smith simply mentioned that we do what’s needed — however it’s not that we do what we’re “supposed” to do. So it is not ruled by any preconceived concept or enforced notion of kind. It is actually that we convey all the knowledge we’ve about form and sequence and relationships into the current second, in order that it is all being made earlier than us and thru us. By way of what we have been speaking about, I imply, it was onerous to not discuss all the things that was occurring outdoors of the studio, in the remainder of the world. However truthfully, that is what we have at all times achieved. I keep in mind our first tour, which was precisely 20 years in the past in Europe with Wadada’s re-formed Golden Quartet, which included myself and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and bassist John Lindberg. And I keep in mind these lengthy prepare rides the place I realized a lot, simply sitting amongst these guys, about historical past and our place in it. I really feel like we have at all times been in that type of dialog.

Chinen: Every of you introduced a composition to this session. Vijay, I wish to deal with the dedication of your piece “Kite,” for the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who died in Gaza late in 2023. I am assuming the kite is a reference to his poem “If I Should Die“…

Iyer: That is proper.

Chinen: It is a poem that has traveled far, for actually horrible causes. It concludes in a second of imagined magnificence that has been wrought out of dying and destruction. I might love to listen to you discuss that, and the precise inspiration you drew from that poem.

Iyer: Wadada has jogged my memory {that a} kite is, usually talking, a common image of freedom. The way in which it reveals up on this poem, which Refaat wrote truly fairly a while earlier than he was killed, is that he invitations the reader to make a kite and fly it so {that a} little one would possibly see it and picture that it is an angel. And so, as you mentioned, the way in which that it would spark some second of inspiration or creativeness within the observer is the important thing perception. It is form of like the entire poem hinges on that reality, and so it felt like the very best I might do in tribute to him was to do what he requested, and to attempt to construct a kite, a sonic kite.

Chinen: What was it like for the 2 of you, translating that intention to a musical syntax?

Iyer: I believe I can say that every one of this music flowed the way in which it at all times does for us. I will not say that it is not tough, or that there is not work concerned, however it feels easy by some means. It at all times feels appropriate to me. We simply did one take of this piece, and it arrived totally fashioned in that means. There’s only a fragment of notation, and it had a excessive observe in it. I mentioned, “Mr. Smith, are you able to play this excessive observe?” He mentioned, “I am gonna attempt,” and he did.

Chinen: Bringing the kite aloft.

Iyer: That is proper. It turns into a pinnacle of the piece, and actually of the entire album, for me. This second of magnificence. So, yeah, I’ve at all times felt that our music, although it’s usually involved with moments of battle or resistance, it itself doesn’t really feel like that. It at all times flows.

Chinen: Wadada, the opposite piece that was composed earlier than the session is “Floating River Requiem (for Patrice Lumumba).” With that dedication to the slain Prime Minister of the Congo, the track has a historic reference level. But it surely’s clearly nonetheless very, very related.

Smith: Properly, Refaat and Patrice, they each died attempting to liberate their homelands. They’ve the identical concept and quest for liberty and justice. Patrice, differently: He realized that the one means that an African nation might actually construct its sources, and its communities, and its folks’s wishes and needs for a future, was to assert all of the sources within the nation. That hasn’t been achieved earlier than. And I consider that is his largest legacy.

However let me communicate in a extra symbolic means. The picture of Floating River comes from the final second when Patrice Lumumba, who was in the course of the river together with his household, appeared again and noticed that his comrades had been captured. He might have gone all the way in which to the opposite facet, which might have been his escaping from that space. However he selected to let his household go throughout and he got here again, with a view to sacrificially be together with his comrades. Every of them was killed in a most vicious, violent means. So, symbolically, we’re a person that selected his future by an act of nice defiance. With “Floating River Requiem,” I am additionally imagining a river that is within the sky, floating with a sanctuary on the backside. And that sanctuary on the backside is the vitality power that reclaims the land and reinvigorates a continent. And simply to point out you why I believe it is prophetic, proper now in Africa, largely Western Africa, they’re creating their very own drugs and analysis about pathogens and pandemics and issues like that. They’ve this lovely dedication to create a medical community that doesn’t want the skin. And the rationale they’re doing that’s as a result of throughout the time of the pandemic, the USA and Europe shared vaccines with one another, however they did not share them with Africa.

Chinen: Proper.

Smith: So I believe that is one of many prophetic strikes proper there, is self reliance, independence. And asking nobody for something.

Iyer: Yeah. Steadfastness.

Smith: Steadfastness.

Chinen: There’s a creative corollary to that, and I take into consideration your life in music for instance. Figuring out your individual path, setting your individual phrases, and never ready for anybody to current a chance. You have actually created these areas and alternatives for your self. Is {that a} honest analogy?

Smith: That is a transparent and really precise analogy. I can let you know that on the age of 12, I realized then that you do not ask no one for one thing. And the factor that I produced that I did not ask anyone about was my first composition. I wrote it after I was 12. I had academics, I might have gone and mentioned, “Educate me the right way to compose.” However I did not. I wished to compose, I had the urge to compose, I composed. And after I completed, I spotted that that was a alternative that I made, to be self-reliant. And now at 83, I can look again and say, “Clearly Wadada had an urge to be heading in the right direction.” Why would a 12-year-old child do this? As a result of my grandfather and his brother did not work for anyone. They created their very own jobs, you see. They developed patches of land to develop meals. They usually grew to become self-sufficient. I labored with them as a younger child, from 7 as much as 11 or 12. These sorts of issues present you that there are different methods of doing stuff in a society that has prohibition in opposition to no matter you wish to be.

Chinen: It has been virtually 10 years because you recorded your earlier duo album, A Cosmic Rhythm With Every Stroke, which was properly acquired. Sure issues are clearly constant, however there’s a completely different sonic character to Defiant Life. I might love to listen to you discuss that.

Iyer: Within the pacing, for instance, and the main focus, I might say that the music was made in very a lot the identical means. However possibly what’s completely different is us, on some stage. Not simply every of us as people, but additionally what we perceive about what we will do. For instance, once we made the primary duo album, we had performed many instances collectively in Wadada’s band, and we would performed a handful of duo live shows. However most frequently the duo sound emerged within the context of Wadada’s band, usually out of necessity.

Smith: When issues break down.

Iyer: Proper. When, for instance, what was speculated to occur did not occur, after which one thing else wanted to occur. That is once we arrived at this means of transferring step-by-step into an unknown area that then felt full simply by itself by some means. It got here to have its personal wholeness and its personal inside sensibility, its personal means of transferring. So that is what we wished to honor with that first album. The primary album was extra smaller episodes, and with this one, we will consider a compositional kind sprawling over 12 or quarter-hour, and having its personal inside shifts and inside dynamics, and that that entire factor is perhaps an entire assertion. As composers, each of us are conversant in creating on that point scale. However to do it collectively on this very targeted, artistic collaboration, that’s one thing I believe we have cultivated. And it is knowledgeable so many different issues I’ve achieved; it is actually turn into part of me on this significant, important means.

Chinen: One factor that strikes me about this recording, with respect to what you simply mentioned, is your use of electronics and the Fender Rhodes. It’s liberated from any type of grid — it is extra like a change in atmospheric situations. If that is not a brand new improvement, it appears a minimum of like one thing that’s prioritized on this file.

Smith: Yeah, it units up what one might probably name a vertical stream. And I do not imply streaming vertically, however the width of the vertical stream that is bigger than, we could say, between right here and Jupiter, and that the sounds which can be being emitted via that stream have every kind of saturations of goodwill, or concord. While you hear that, and it is coming via your ears and thru your physique, and you’ve got a trumpet in your hand, you both look ahead and pull the set off on the valve, otherwise you decide up the mute and insert it and nonetheless pull the set off on the valve. And what comes out, nobody is aware of till it is over, as a result of throughout the course of, it is such a deepening and widening command. You do not know the time span that you simply’re transferring via it till you might have completed it and look again over it. That occurred many instances throughout this session.

Iyer: Yeah.

Smith: The place we fall fully silent afterwards. And never a silence in a means during which we’re intimidated, however a silence in a means during which we will think about that we’ve simply made a journey, and do not understand how we received there.

Chinen: I actually recognize that reply, as a result of it frames what we’re speaking about in experiential phrases. So the language of musicology or evaluation shouldn’t be actually satisfactory. It is one thing that you’ve lived via, that you’ve moved via.

Iyer: One of many first issues I realized, working with Wadada, was that it was doable to discuss music in human phrases, and in addition that it really works higher. It’s extra correct in some methods, and it is richer, these sorts of descriptions. Like, I keep in mind him saying: “You do that, and I’ll play throughout it.” And I might by no means heard it phrased that means earlier than. So even simply that specific preposition was like a revelation to me. It is like, properly, that is how we do all the things: We transfer throughout and thru. It is all about relationships, truly. It is all about human motion and relation. After which it is also about dreaming and imagining. About imagining past ourselves, imagining past the human — you realize, stretching out to Jupiter, and past.

Chinen: This appears like a superb second to return to that phrase, “defiant.” We have talked about a few highly effective examples of embodied defiance. However how did that phrase animate this music?

Iyer: As you talked about, the Palestinian poet and the Congolese chief, each have been assassinated, have been killed in a battle for liberation. We hadn’t consulted with one another earlier than arriving in Lugano, Switzerland, apart from to say: “I believe we should always make one other file.” We each agreed that it was the precise factor to do, and the precise time to do it. However we hadn’t mentioned what’s it about or who’s it for, or why it ought to exist. Besides to proceed this lifelong dialog that we have had about music and life and all the things else. Wadada’s music could be very a lot recognized for considering these extraordinarily important historic tableaus, or moments or tiny stretches of time. Just like the seconds earlier than Medgar Evers was killed, for instance. These scenes that bear the load of all that is come earlier than, and all that comes afterward.

I believe possibly there was a way that I realized from him about this explicit type of focus, that it wasn’t nearly placing it in a title, however truly an all-encompassing technique of making. These two named items — the 2 single-page items of music that we used as tent poles for the entire mission — they stood for all the factor. They knowledgeable all the things else that was on this suite of music, and collectively they articulate a a lot bigger concept about defiance. And about not simply defiance via being martyred, but additionally what’s it to reside on. The phrase sumud, which I realized in my research across the Palestinian battle, means “steadfastness.” Like, how do you reside on within the face of this? And in addition not simply reside on mournfully, however reside on and have a good time life defiantly — reside on in a means that truly is filled with goal and pleasure, even within the face of state terror. And that form of grew to become the spine: not simply an act of mourning or tragedy, however truly celebrating what one does within the face of it, and seeking to these points that make up the historical past and the way forward for liberation. Once I consider titling an album, generally it may provide a companion to the aural expertise, in order that they full one another, they complicate one another, they fill and empty one another. So what might this sign to a listener, to any viewers, to anybody who holds it of their hand? Might it work in the identical means that kite would possibly work for a kid in Gaza — as one thing that prompts the creativeness?

Chinen: What you are saying emphasizes that within the title phrase, it is not simply defiance, proper? “Life” is the opposite phrase, and the 2 should not in opposition. They’re, actually, throughout the identical breath.

Smith: Frederick Douglass mentioned that whoever wishes to hunt liberty and justice should struggle every single day. As a result of the victory itself on Thursday doesn’t final via on Friday. So one should continually exert a defiant motion in the direction of their very own realization of being. I prefer to suppose that magnificence is contained in the thriller of defiance. I might say that understanding that your life goes to be snuffed out in just a few seconds — a view that none of us have ever had, or can have till it occurs — that is the thriller. However what counters that thriller on the opposite facet is the view that appears into the long run, as Martin Luther King mentioned: “I’ve been to the mountaintop, and I’ve seen the promised land.” That too is a part of that thriller, as a result of that one who can see either side, the facet of transition and the facet of mobility. Magnificent thriller.

Iyer: A religious energy is what it’s, proper? It is a very particular type of enlightenment.

Smith: Yeah.

Chinen: As you are speaking, I am fascinated about ritual and ceremony, which feels pertinent on this album. Not simply because there’s a procession, there may be an elegy, there’s a prelude, there’s a requiem. What’s created on this music appears like a meditative and maybe religious area. It is a area for contemplation, for receiving. Is {that a} dimension of this be just right for you?

Smith: Properly, evidently the frequent notion about meditation is to type of chill out and get right into a zone. However this type of meditation that we’re scary, via sonic artwork, is definitely to propel, to ship out like a missile, this fixed need for stability and concord, liberty and justice. The notion of regulation and rule of regulation, the entire gamut of residing.

Chinen: That course of is at all times unfolding, and endlessly unfinished. The way in which that the 2 of you join, musically, it appears like tapping into some factor of the everlasting.

Smith: Yeah, collaborations are onerous. And the factor about Vijay and I, we’ve a lot success at it. However it’s truly onerous, as a result of there is a second once we are taking part in the place there is not any data in any respect about what’s occurring.

Iyer: Mmhmm.

Smith: It is an lively, evolving second. By some means, once we end it, we all know what it is about — however we by no means talk about it, as a result of, as they are saying, it is not a secret, only a thriller.