Orbital Rings of Saturn: A Conversation with Tyler Mitchell and Marshall Allen (Part Two)

We continue our conversation with Mitchell and Allen with a deeper dive into Dancing Shadows (Mahakala Music, 2022), including Mitchell’s choice in compositions and the absence of a piano. We also discuss the influence of straight-ahead music and music from different cultures around the globe. And we conclude with thoughts on the influence of the Sun Ra Arkestra in the early Twenty-First Century and how Allen maintains such a high level of energy at 97 years old. The first part of our conversation can be found here.

PostGenre: Now, Marshall has suitcases full of compositions by him and Sun Ra…

Marshall Allen: I have so much music that it is stacked up to the ceiling, almost. [Laughing]. Some things I still play, some things I don’t play, and others I forgot. But I’ve got the music there, and if I put it all together, hey buddy, you’ve got something else. Sun Ra wrote music every day. New parts, every day. And I still have most of it. I’ve got more music than the Arkestra even plays.

PG: Tyler, what was your process for selecting, out of so many, the Sun Ra pieces to use on Dancing Shadows?

Tyler Mitchell: Well, there are certain songs Marshall composed himself that I always wanted to record but hadn’t before. Others we’ve done with the full Arkestra. Since I’ve been part of the Arkestra for a while, we didn’t need a lot of preparation to put those songs together. Especially since some of the others in the group – the drummer Wayne Smith and the percussionists Elson Nascimento – are already in the Arkestra with us and already knew the music. Most of the work came in getting our horns together.

MA: Yes, this group has two new people, not from the Arkestra- Nicoletta Manzini and Chris Hemmingway on saxes. And so it was a little more work for them than for the rest of us, just because we are so much more familiar with these songs.

PG: It seems like many of the Sun Ra compositions selected for the album are from the earlier years of the Arkestra. Was that intentional?

TM: It wasn’t intentional. I just picked songs that I like and, I guess, I like the older versions of these songs. You know, as time went on, Sun Ra recorded a lot of songs again and again, slightly different each time. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower. Different key changes. And I just picked the versions I liked the best, which happened to be the older ones.

PG: Do you think playing this music with a smaller group is in some ways more freeing than with a larger Arkestra?

MA: It doesn’t matter.

TM: Sometimes, it was more difficult with fewer musicians because Sun Ra and Marshall wrote so many different parts for Arkestra pieces and you have to find ways to fit them into arrangements for fewer musicians. You may have three or four horns on the original part and have to find a way to make just one instrument play those parts. So, that’s definitely more difficult. But it also changes the style a little bit, which I like. Sometimes instead of a horn section playing behind a soloist, you have only one horn player behind the soloist. It produces a different sound.

PG: Of course, Sun Ra was also known for his unique arrangements, whether standards or Disney songs. Dancing Shadows includes a funky version of Monk’s song “Skippy.” Where did you get the idea to arrange “Skippy” in this way?

TM: “Skippy” came about mostly because I wanted to have a James Brown kind of funk beat meet up with the avant-garde and free blowing. I wanted the two worlds to come together. The original version of“Skippy” has so many chord changes in it. It seemed like a nice place to put a horn section behind the beat to create a groove instead of playing all of those changes. I mean, we still played the changes in solos but otherwise didn’t follow them. I mostly wanted to state the melody and turn it into a grooving song that we could just blow on.

PG: And speaking of the avant-garde, Sun Ra and the Arkestra play a significant role in the development of avant-garde music, but his songs are also often very melodic. You’ve also both played with some fairly straight-ahead players. Marshall with James Moody for a while and Tyler with George Coleman and Wynton Marsalis. How do you feel those experiences shape your music when you play a bit more “out”?

TM: The straight-ahead music, to me, is the foundation. A lot of guys play free music, but they don’t have the foundation. They don’t know the standards. And if you don’t have that, I don’t think you can play free stuff all that well. You need to have some of the straight-ahead stuff in your repertoire to have a concrete foundation. And then, when you stretch out from the standards and straight-ahead stuff, it is a lot easier because you have a vocabulary to build off.

PG: And, Tyler, you also studied with Malachi Favors, right?

TM: Yes, I studied with Malachi. He was interesting too. He was really into the bass itself and getting certain sounds. Things like how putting the bow in a certain place and your fingers in another can give you a different kind of sound. I learned a lot about the anatomy of the whole bass from him. He showed me another side of the music that used more than just notes and scales.

PG: Dancing Shadows also features original compositions, a few by one of the group’s saxophonists, Nicoletta Manzini, and some by Tyler. Tyler, how do you feel your work with the Arkestra has influenced your compositional approach?

TM: I approached the compositions pretty much the same way we do with the Arkestra. The original tunes were improvised pieces to a very high degree. I came up with a theme and the rest of us built off of it. There wasn’t much written out for the original compositions, they were just built off of ideas we were using at the moment. Those songs sound more thoroughly composed than they are; we were just very much in tune with each other when recording. It also helps that Marshall can direct a band so well. He can direct incredibly well without music, relying only on sound. It was a lot of listening to each other and just following each other’s cues.

PG: It is also interesting that there is no piano player on the album. While Sun Ra has done many things, his primary instrument was the piano. Was it intentional to keep a piano off of the album?

MA: No, no. As I said, we’ve explored Sun Ra’s music with a band of one up to 100. I’ve even performed solo shows by myself in London. The exact instrumentation or number of instruments doesn’t change things.

TM: I left the piano off of Dancing Shadows because even though Sun Ra was a piano player, I didn’t hear the piano in the compositions and arrangements we were doing. Instead, everything the piano would be doing if the Arkestra were playing the piece is spread throughout the different parts. So, for example, we don’t have a pianist playing particular chords but may have each of the horns playing notes that collectively would make up that chord. So, the chord is still present, just in a different form. It was still the essence of the piano but through the horns.

PG: That is one of the more interesting things about this album; how you have moved the piano part off to non-chordal instruments. Essentially, using the chords without using them.

TM: Yeah, that’s what I mean. You don’t miss the piano on Dancing Shadows.

MA: We played a gig in the Village during the ‘60s where they didn’t have a piano at all. Sun Ra played bells and accessories to try to make up for it not being there. It was just the tenor, alto, trumpet, and drums playing with the bass with a piano-less Sun Ra on bells and accessories. [laughing]

TM: [Laughing]

MA: And we made it sound good too.

PG: Do you think people are starting to catch up to what the Arkestra has been doing for decades? It certainly seems like there has been more press coverage over the last handful of years.

TM: I think people keep coming around to us. Sun Ra was so ahead of his time, and I think many people are starting to catch up. The Arkestra’s latest record, Swirling (Strut, 2020), was even nominated for a Grammy. Hopefully, that will open some more doors to us too.

PG: In recent years, the Arkestra has played with musicians a little more removed from big band or avant-garde music. For instance, the Arkestra has performed with U2 and with Solange. Do you see a significant difference between their music and what the Arkestra does or what you do on this new album?

MA: One of the great things about Sun Ra’s music is that it allows you to open up and make it work with anyone.

TM: It is interesting because many people grew up with the Arkestra’s music, Solange being one of them. And so when they wanted us to bring some music of Sun Ra, they knew what they were looking for and how it could fit into their music. I guess the group’s music is catching on.

PG: And it seems that the reaching out of musical ideas may be a two-way street. Both of you have performed music from other cultures from around the world. Tyler, you had worked in Latin America for a little over a decade?

TM: Yeah, Mexico and Cuba. I went down to Mexico to take a break and tried to bring some jazz there. They didn’t have a lot of musicians from the US touring down in Mexico because they can’t afford to have musicians come down. I went down to perform at a jazz festival and just ended up staying. I didn’t plan to stay so long, but it was a good experience. I got into a lot of Latin music and got a lot of people down there into jazz.

PG: And Marshall played with [Nigerian drummer Babatunde] Olatunji.

MA: Yeah, yeah, I played African highlife music and learned it from Olatunji. I was mostly playing bells and flute. And every time I would do something wrong, he clunked me on the head with a stick. [Laughing] I had to learn the rhythms and keeping the beat and stuff. That was something, boy.

PG: How do you feel your experiences with the music of other cultures has influenced what you have done with the Arkestra or on this new album?

TM: It definitely enters into what you do and you add these ideas from other cultures into your compositions or ideas. Sometimes you do that consciously but, other times, it is not a conscious thing at all.

MA: You learn many things from all of those kinds of experiences and you definitely keep them, one way or another.

PG: One final question for Marshall. In a recent interview, Henry Threadgill said the following:

“[Marshall Allen] should have the highest award that can be bestowed on any artist for performing one-nighters at age 97. They should make up an award for such a person… [yet] he’s going unrecognized. It is a travesty. Can you imagine doing one-nighters at 97 years old? And then going out dancing afterward? [laughing]. It’s unbelievable that anyone could have that kind of stamina.”

Anyone who has seen the Arkestra perform live can vouch for Threadgill’s statements. How do you keep such a consistently high level of energy as you get closer to the hundred-year mark?

MA: If you don’t play the music for your well-being, how are you supposed to give someone else something? The first thing I do is play for my own well-being. And if that does me some good, I will give you some of it to give you some good. The music is keeping me well, so I’ll go ahead and share it with you.

Tyler Mitchell’s Dancing Shadows Featuring Marshall Allen will be available on January 28, 2022, on Mahakala Music. It can be purchased on Bandcamp. More information about Tyler can be found on his website. There is also more on Tyler, Marshall, and the Sun Ra Arkestra on the Arkestra’s website.