{"id":3503,"date":"2021-12-11T21:13:50","date_gmt":"2021-12-12T03:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=3503"},"modified":"2022-01-17T12:14:38","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T18:14:38","slug":"four-score-wadada-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/four-score-wadada-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Score: A Conversation with Wadada Leo Smith on Turning 80 (Part One)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Many people, as they get older, tend to slow down and reduce their workload. Some even step aside and retire entirely. Wadada Leo Smith takes the opposite approach. Over the past year, Smith has been perhaps more productive than ever. 2021 has found him behind a 3 CD solo trumpet box set (Trumpet<\/em> (TUM, 2021)), a series of duets and trio with Bill Laswell and the late Milford Graves (Sacred Ceremonies<\/em> (TUM, 2021)), a trio with Mike Reed and Douglas R. Ewart (Sunbeams of Shimmering Light<\/em> (Astral Spirits, 2021)), a trio with Jack DeJohnette and Vijay Iyer (A Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday <\/em>(TUM, 2021)), and a second multi-disc outing of his Great Lakes Quartet featuring Henry Threadgill, DeJohnette, and John Lindberg (The Chicago Symphonies<\/em> (TUM, 2021)). It seems he will be just as prolific in 2022, including releasing an album featuring compositions he has been working on for almost sixty years. In the interim, he will be having a special concert performance – available on his website and Youtube – on his 80th Birthday, December 18th. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across Smith\u2019s life, we find an artist of unbridled creativity flourishing in a less than nourishing environment, beginning with his growing up as a Black man in segregation-era Mississippi. Now an elder, he still expresses concerns about discrimination and racial justice. But throughout his ingenuity has shone through his surroundings. Over the years, he has become one of the most acclaimed creative artists of his time. The trumpeter\u2019s music, which he dubs \u201ccreative music,\u201d partly to avoid preexisting labels, lives up to its name. Part of this comes from the fact that though a historian, he is always looking forward. And he exhibits a fearlessness in being himself. He seems to be eternally searching for new ways to look at things and to express his craft. This includes the use, since the late 1960s, of his own compositional language for many of his pieces. Manifested as colorful paintings, Ankhrasmation scores are utterly unique. The scores themselves have even been showcased at various museums to much acclaim. His music has also earned him the honor of a 2013 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Ten Freedom Summers <\/em>(Cuneiform, 2012), a work covering pivotal moments in, and figures from, the Civil Rights Movement between 1954 and 1964. He has also won a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award and an honorary doctorate from CalArts. We are honored to sit down with Smith to discuss various points across his career thus far and, equally as importantly, what he has planned for the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PostGenre: What does it mean to you to be turning 80?  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wadada Leo Smith: Truthfully, it means I\u2019m alive. The rest of it is not worth talking about much. I still have to deal with all the other things you encounter when you are a human being born into a society that overwhelmingly does not value Black lives. You see so many problems from the early stages of your life onward. I\u2019m shocked to be 80 years old and living in a society that is still dealing with these problems. Probably the most beautiful thing here is to still be alive.  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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