All Singing Together: A Conversation with William Parker (Part One)

Some recordings are fun listening experiences. Things you can put on, enjoy the groove, and go about your day. William Parker’s Universal Tonality (Centering/AUM Fidelity, 2022)  is not one of these albums. Do not misconstrue that statement. The album is enjoyable and enlightening. But those looking for something short and jaunty best look elsewhere. Instead, the bassist’s sonic thesis provides commentary on heavy topics.

Parker’s contemplativeness should surprise no one attuned to his music. Throughout his five-decade career, he has engaged in deep conversations with other artists at the forefront of creative music, including Cecil Taylor, Peter Brötzmann, Derek Bailey, Bill Dixon, Milford Graves, and Anthony Braxton. Honing in on works under Parker’s name, one finds a no less voluminous array of solo works, small ensembles, and large orchestras. One recurring concept in Parker’s output is that of universal tonality; the idea that if one were to put musicians from all over the world into a single room, they would create incredible music. Their work speaks to some higher power that transcends their cultural, linguistic, or artistic differences. Or, as Parker puts it, “the concept that if we’re all breathing together, we’re all singing together.”

True to its namesake, Universal Tonality captures a live performance from December 14, 2002, by an assemblage of a wide range of artists from around the globe. They congregated with no preconceived plan and very little prewritten melody or harmony. The members of the eighteen-piece ensemble come from diverse and differing backgrounds. One thing they do have in common, however, is a shared openness to new sounds. This list of artists participating in Parker’s experiment is unduly impressive, including Miya Masaoka on koto, Billy Bang and Jason Kao Hwang on violins, Joe Morris on guitar, Dave Burrell on piano, Steve Swell and Grachen Moncur III on trombones, Daniel Carter on horns, and Gerald Cleaver on drums. The evening potentially runs the risk of turning into a convoluted mess. 

Instead, the record testifies to the soundness of Parker’s theory. Despite their differences and no pre-stated common ground, clear themes emerge through the album, primarily the importance of maintaining an individualistic artistic voice. The fact that clear yet unplanned melodies emerge from the lack of planning speaks volumes about the soundness of the leader’s concept. But, to further drive the message home are the lyrics vocalized by Leena Conquest. Phrases like “[h]ope is relentless, it will never die” transcend cultural biases as all people have had to be resilient at one time or another. At the same time, “there is no escape from the self.” “Cloud Texture (Death has Died Today)” makes evident that even in the most difficult circumstances, where society tries to crush it, the individual human spirit continues to flourish and persevere.

Far from turning into a jumbled disaster, Universal Tonality instead makes one question the purpose of music. Reliance on individual expression is precisely how the recording avoids becoming a mutilated mush of middling mediocrity. The more distinctive the artist’s voice, the more vibrant the conversation. Not only does the recording provide credence to Parker’s theory, it further cements him as not merely one of the finest bassists of his generation but one of creative music’s most significant minds. We sat down with Parker to discuss Universal Tonality, its conceptual underpinnings, the significance of improvisation, and the origins and meaning of music.

PostGenre: Universal Tonality was recorded back in December 2002. Why did it take almost 20 years for it to be released? 

William Parker: Well, like most in the music community, I’ve done a lot of concerts. Performances with Odean Pope, Don Cherry, and Frank Wright. A duet with Cecil Taylor. A lot of these performances were recorded but just sit there without being released to the public. The next thing you know, it has been ten or twenty years, and the right opportunity arises for it to come out.

PG: 2022 was the right time?

WP: I thought this would be the perfect time to release the recording. The concert was the first where we used the concept of universal tonality. The biography [ed. Cisco Bradley’s excellent Universal Tonality: The Life and Music of William Parker] had just come out with the concept of universal tonality in its title. It seemed like a great time to release the recording of the concert.

PG: Did the fact it was a concert recording delay its release?

WP: Possibly. When you record something in the studio, it’s often released the same year. But that is not the case with live concert recordings. When you go into a studio to record, sometimes the album comes out a little quicker than if you do a concert recording. With a concert recording, sometimes you do not even listen to it for a long time. Later, you may come across the recording from another period, realize it is very good, and want to see if you can do anything with it.

Another thing to consider is that during those twenty years, the music industry changed. In 2002, the focus was on CDs. Streaming did not really exist. Now, in 2022, people hardly make hardcopy CDs, and streaming is the norm. The whole medium has changed. I still like vinyl records, which are coming back in style. I like the idea of listening to the music and not just going from an unknown source into your head. But I’m glad that the ability to release music digitally has allowed me to put together this recording. 

PG: So you see the rise of digital distribution models as a mixed blessing? 

WP: Well, the problem with my career is that I’ve got so much music that, if it is going to be released physically, it must come out in double, triple, eight, or ten CD sets. If I were to release only one CD a year, only a very small portion of my music would get out. I’d be off the planet and gone, with so much music still in the can. And once you die, you no longer have control over what and how it is released. Cecil Taylor, for one, has so many unreleased concert and studio recordings. They’re just sitting there. I don’t know if they’ll ever come out. Now with things like Bandcamp, it is much easier to release music than it was with physical copies. 

PG: Going back to Universal Tonality, there are some excerpts of the written score provided with the album. They seem to use some Western notation but are generally more reliant on artwork and the issuance of less specific directions to the musicians. How important is it to you that the music not be completely written out and that you instead follow a more loose approach?

WP: It’s very important because I’m coming out of the idea of non-notated performance and not relying on a chart to tell you which way to go musically. But it takes a while to develop that concept, especially as a larger group. It takes years of playing together to hone in and perfect it. Also, it is always a growing thing. 

As a composer, melodies have been coming to me for many years. I’ve been writing music since I was fifteen or sixteen years old. Even last night, I was writing solo piano music at four o’clock in the morning. The music just comes through me, so I write it down. It’s like a gift. But, at the same time, as a performer, I’m really into calling unknown factors into the music. People write scores mostly to get royalties and say they are a part of the tradition of Western European composers. [But] I’m not interested in being called a composer. I’m interested in people listening to the music. I care less about what I’m called than that people listen to my music and are inspired by it. That’s what I’m interested in. 

PG: Though some would point out that improvisation is a form of composition.

WP: That’s how I look at improvising. Even when you improvise, you have a pedagogic language that you develop. Sometimes you play the same thing as before, but it always comes out differently because the time and space are different. 

Whether the music was totally improvised, based on a riff you thought of at the moment, or some magic riff or melody comes to you, they are all connected to healing. What you play interacts with the organs in your body, helps you heal, and helps stimulate good blood circulation. It’s also about vibration and how you play it. It’s about what zone you’re dealing with and your area of maximum vibration. But if you listen to some people, like Albert Ayler, he would play an old song like “Goin’ Home” or “Old Man River” and his tone is function. So much of the music of Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster is also about listening to the tone. No matter what they play, the tone is vibrating and bounces off to you and heals you. The focus on whether music is notated or improvised completely misses the bigger picture of whether the music heals people. Whether it causes plants to grow or to die. I am much more interested in healing than creating a written score simply so I can refer to myself as a “composer.”

PG: But you do use some notation, particularly graphic notation.

WP: The graphic notation is a colorized version of where the sounds may go. The dots, dashes, and squiggly lines follow the flow of what the sound could be. They are never exact because they are just a guideline or reflections of the music. Or they could be not helpful at all; we could all come in the room and say, “Okay, boom, let’s play.” Over the years, with The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, half the time we have purposely chosen not to rehearse. All the musicians come in, play, and react to the music. All they have to do is come into the room and bring their own personality. I hired them to be themselves.

PG: The liner notes to Universal Tonality suggest that improvisation is an evolutionary step beyond pre-composition. If that is true, why do you think so much reliance is still placed on pre-composition by most musicians? 

WP: Because it dominates all music pedagogy. The universities downplay improvisation. They deal with modes, scales, chord changes, and playing standards. They never talk about playing open improvisation. I remember when Wayne Shorter had a group, and they were talking about how Wayne was doing total improvisation now, but they played an introduction and then went to a tune. To many people, it is a foreign idea that you can come into a room and play music without any preset ideas; you summon the music, and it comes through you. 

I’m pushing for open improvisation because the other system- one focused on notating and composing – is still being pushed in classical music. And Afro-American culture has evolved from the rituals of people who use repetition, rhythm, and pulsating heartbeats as the flow of music. Tapping into that flow doesn’t necessarily require a written score. The emphasis is not so much on preconceived composition and more on improvisation, which is less respected in a lot of Western music. 

PG: Outside of the circles that emphasize improvisation.

WP: We as improvisers respect improvisation. But to get money and respect from some people, I gotta say, I’m a composer and that I write things down. There is a perception that if I write things down, I must be superior to people who don’t write things down. To me, that’s musical racism. It is no different than saying you are better because of your clothing or language and everyone else is a savage. It’s the same as acting as though your writing is more civilized if you use script than someone who uses hieroglyphics. 

But the most important thing is whether your music works. The idea of music is to inspire people to activate their own creativity and learn how to live, treat each other, respect each other, and love each other. That’s what music is really for. That’s it. That’s the bottom line, regardless of whether it’s written or not written, whether you can repeat it or not. What matters far more than music’s technical components is how it hits your heart. 

PG: Then, of course, you have someone like Milford Graves, who focused on the rhythms of the heart. One excellent story of yours is the time Milford recorded your heartbeat. When he played it back to you, you didn’t know what it was but guessed it was your bass because the two sounded so similar. It seems to speak to how important it is that your music reflects you as a person and not just some set of notes or rhythms.

WP: Definitely. 

PG: Why do the musical institutions not more heavily emphasize individuality in playing?

WP: Well, it is because of people who need crutches. Some people haven’t looked inside and heard their heartbeat; heard their own music.

If you pulled a saxophone or trumpet up onto a tree and the wind blew through the horn, what would it sound like? It wouldn’t sound like Charlie Parker or any other musician. The sound an artist constructs in his or her music might be so different than anyone else. It is those differences that we, as artists, need to tap into and not be afraid to adhere to how we hear the music working through us. The things that make an artist’s music unique sound different for everyone. People even have their own different concepts of music. We all have our own musical DNA. Just following someone else’s guidelines on how music is supposed to sound keeps us from ever tapping into what makes us unique. 

PG: You have worked with the other artists on Universal Tonality on various projects over the years. They each not only have a unique voice on their instrument of choice, but they all have very diverse backgrounds. You previously mentioned that you had an idea of getting musicians from everywhere around the world and putting them together into a room and seeing what they do. Was that part of the guiding force behind picking such a diverse lineup of musicians?

WP: The group was a sort of a microcosm of that idea. Another way to think about it is that if you bring a kid to a playground with other kids from all different countries, they will play together. Even if they don’t speak the same language, they’ll find a common unity and play with each other. In some ways, it is the same with musicians. And that’s really where the idea of universal tonality comes from. I had a concert years ago with Steve Turré and Andrew Cyrille. We played with Cherokee Indian dancers and didgeridoo players. None of us said a word, but musically, we all came together perfectly. I think everybody was truly themselves. 

I had a similar learning experience playing with Derek Bailey. We came together musically by totally being ourselves. We ran in parallel lines. Derek used to say to me, “William, you’re the only person that plays free jazz, because you’re not playing like me, you’re playing your roots. And you’re not making the sounds I’m making. You’re running the blues lines and doing what you do. And that’s how everyone’s gonna sing this song. But if you step back and listen, you hear this beautiful song that’s all connected like a painting with different colors.” We’re all different colors. If you sit back and look at the music, it’s like an image of rain and a rainbow. Or the sunset on a mountain.

We should all learn not to try to base our lives on somebody else’s life. I can play all day and all night. But, ultimately, I can’t play the music from Paul Chambers’ soul because I’m not Paul Chambers. What I had to do was find what William’s soul sounds like and just play that. Just trying to sound like someone else won’t work.

PG: It seems that emphasis on sounding like yourself may even be unrestricted by tradition. One fascinating thing about your music is that, besides the bass, you play many other instruments from different cultures around the world. On those instruments, you do not confine yourself to the traditional way they are played, instead playing them based on how each speaks to you.

WP: Well, I know a few musicians here in New York who play the shakuhachi and have studied the traditional Chinese or Japanese methods. And if you think about how many people play kora from West Africa, they all play the same songs; they have the same repertoire. How can you be yourself in that repertoire? It’s very difficult. So you have to investigate how the instrument, when you play it, sings through you.

When I went to Japan, I played the shakuhachi for some other shakuhachi players. Afterward, one approached me and asked where I was from. I told him I was from the Bronx, New York. He responded that I play the Bronx, not how they do it in Japan, and to keep doing what I am doing. Some people will say that if I play a particular instrument, I must play it the way others have done. But we all have the liberty and right to play any instrument in any way we hear it. 

PG: Has playing these other instruments changed your approach to the bass?

WP: No. However, they confirmed that my bass playing came from Africa. I always felt connected to Africa, particularly Mali. When I did my ancestry.com genetic test, the first countries that came up were in Africa, particularly Mali and Senegal. I have always felt that my bass line was not Europe-based because I . on the drum. With my playing, it is always about tonality, not notes. I have always felt a connection to the instruments of the world. 

PG: It seems many artists who take a more expansive view of music tend to be more appreciative of the musical ideas of different cultures. You even met Marshall Allen through playing the kora? 

WP: Yeah, I met Marshall in the Bronx through us both playing the kora. I’d heard of him before I had a kora. I met him and other guys from Sun Ra’s group around 1973. They were so nice to me. Marshall told me I should just play the kora how I hear it. That also led me to meet Don Cherry in 1975. I also met Donald Raphael Garrett, who was making his own wooden flutes, around that same time. Both also emphasized finding your own personality and sound on all instruments. Who is to say what is the correct or wrong way to play any instrument?

PG: The concept of universal tonality transcends cultural biases, and you have indicated in other interviews that musicians did not invent music; that it was here when humankind arrived. If that is true, where does music come from?

WP: Music comes from creation. It comes from the Creator if you believe in the Creator. It comes from nature. If you hear a whale, it has a clear call. Thunder and wind can sound like drums. Music is a living force that was here when we got here. As musicians, we are allowed to tap into that force. It comes through us through instruments, as we choose our voice, our way of speaking. No individual invented any music; we just discovered what was already there.

Click here for the second part of our conversation with William Parker on universal tonality. 

Universal Tonality is now available for purchase on Bandcamp. More information on Parker can be found on his website. Cisco Bradley’s biography of Parker, Universal Tonality: The Life and Music of William Parker can be purchased from Duke University Press.

Photo credit: Peter Gannushkin