TONIGHT
E-mail a friendChick Corea, Bela Fleck
airdate May 25, 2007
Chick Corea is a jazz pianist/keyboardist and composer, who has been described as one of the most significant jazzmen since the ‘60s. Béla Fleck is a virtuoso banjo player, well known for his work with the band Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Combined, the two master musicians have earned over 20 Grammy Awards and 67 nominations. Though they've played together in the past, the two giants of the jazz world have collaborated for the first time on a full-length project, the new CD, 'The Enchantment.'
Chick Corea, Bela Fleck
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Chick Corea and Béla Fleck to this program. Chick, of course, is a legendary artist who, along with greats like Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock, helped bring jazz fusion into the forefront of American music. Béla Fleck is best known for his work with his band, the Flecktones. Love that name. He's credited for reintegrating the banjo back into Black music, particularly jazz.
Between the two, they have won twenty-two Grammy Awards. Their new CD is called "The Enchantment." Later on, they'll perform a song from the disc. But first, I'm honored, Chick Corea, to have you on the program.
Chick Corea: Yeah, nice to be here.
Tavis: And, Béla, nice to see you as well.
Béla Fleck: Thank you.
Tavis: Let me start with you, Béla, since you're closest to me. This banjo. I was fascinated to learn that you have spent some time, of course, studying this instrument. When I think of the banjo, I must honestly tell you, you know what I think of? The theme from the "Beverly Hillbillies" (laughter). I had no idea that this instrument had roots in the part of the world where it had roots. Tell me about it.
Fleck: Africa.
Tavis: Africa.
Fleck: It's an African instrument.
Tavis: Who knew?
Fleck: Well, some guys used to know, but I guess they're all gone. But, yeah, the banjo came over with the slaves and recently I got to go back to some of the places where it came from like Gambia, Senegal, Mali. I also went to Uganda and Tanzania and filmed a bunch of music with some great musicians over there.
Tavis: Tell me what you hear and how you reintegrate this instrument that we think of so much connected to country or country western into Black music. How do you do that especially like right about now?
Fleck: Well, you know, I grew up listening to all the music I guess we all grew up with during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, so my natural thing is just to make it fit in with what I hear. So if I'm playing with someone like Chick, I'm trying to figure out how to make it fit. If I'm playing with guys in Africa, I'm doing the same thing, just bringing my sensibility to it and playing it. It's just music. You know, it's the same notes.
Tavis: I wonder whether or not - this is a dumb question, but it won't be the first or the last - can any instrument, to your mind and to your thinking, be used to integrate into any music style, any music genre?
Fleck: It depends on the musician as much as the instrument. Also there's a lot of personal taste involved. Like one person might say, "Well, that didn't work" and another person might think it did. But it really comes down to, if a musician is sensitive, he can usually find a way to play with another musician and that's what being a musician is all about, trying to find those connections and making things into pleasing music.
Tavis: So what made you think or believe - and I have the evidence here, "The Enchantment" - that this instrument could work with what you and Chick wanted to do on this project?
Fleck: Well, I think Chick is the one who believed it because I kept -
Tavis: - he talked you into it.
Fleck: Yeah (laughter).
Tavis: Shut up, Béla (laughter). All right, Chick. You're on.
Corea: I think it's like one hundred percent the musician and zero percent the instrument. It's like if you can hear it, if you can conceive that it's going to work, you know, you just make it work. I mean, the banjo is particular because it's got such an association with like, you know, whatever and like that. It's got such an individual sound, but if the musician is there communicating, you can make it work.
Fleck: But also, you think about that association, we're talking about a recent association. But a few years back, you might think, okay, Louie Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Jelly Roll Morton, and that's a banjo too. It's just a way of playing that is not done very much anymore.
And then the Bluegrass and the country styles of banjo have continued in a more vital way, so those are the ones that we're associating it with now like Earl Scruggs on the television show you're talking about. You know, the banjo has a long history and that's just the most recent.
Corea: Well, when we're playing in concert, I'm not playing with a banjo. I'm playing with Béla (laughter).
Tavis: Playing with Béla Fleck, yeah. Tell me about this project, Chick, and how you would describe "The Enchantment."
Corea: Well, you know, after so many years of us sitting in with one another, me on Béla's record, he came and sat in with my band. We were kind of admiring each other's music, trading notes every now and again. The idea kept forming, you know, let's do something together. We thought, well, hey, this might be a good period because Béla had some time off from the Flecktones and I was floating doing various projects, so we put it together like you compose some and I'll compose some.
Tavis: Let me take you back into your not too distant past, Chick. When I think of jazz fusion, there are some names that come to mind immediately. You know, you come to mind and Herbie comes to mind. Take me back to those days and how that sound was created and how, again, you knew that jazz was ready or not ready, as it were, to be pushed in that direction.
Corea: Well, you know, it was me being involved in a kind of movement. New York's been a central place for where all these kinds of things happen, so right after high school, I said that's where I want to go because that's where Miles was, that's where my heroes in music were.
I started to connect and, by the end of the 1960s - like I joined Miles' band in 1968 - so by the end of the 1960s, there was this change happening in music and there was kind of a surge and Miles Davis was a cheerleader. He was an innovator. He was trying things. Into and out of his band, I made a lot of friends and connections and connected with Herbie, with Joe Zawinul, with Stanley Clarke and, you know, with John McLaughlin.
There was this idea of experimenting and also reaching out because jazz before that was kind of like a little bit of - it became serious in the 1940s and the 1950s. I mean, it was extroverted before that. Louie Armstrong and Duke Ellington were like entertainers, but in the 1940s, some drugs came on the scene, you know. I think associating with rock music kind of brought jazz out.
Tavis: You were how old when you joined Miles' band?
Corea: I guess twenty-five or so.
Tavis: What do you make now looking back on your career? I mean, now that he's gone, of having had a chance at twenty-five to play with an icon?
Corea: Well, you know, it was a culmination of, I don't know, fifteen years of tracing his development. I started listening to him on 78 rpm vinyl my dad had. Miles was like eighteen when he played with Charlie Parker and Miles made his first solo record in 1951. I remember that because I was waiting at the record store to buy it. So by 1968 when I worked with him, you know, it was a thrill working with my hero.
Fleck: Which is where I'm at right now.
Tavis: Hanging out with Chick.
Fleck: Because I saw him when I was sixteen years old playing that music that you're talking about with "Return to Forever" that came out of Miles, and now I'm getting to play with him. So it's funny how those things -
Tavis: - who would you say, Béla, this kind of record is for when you sit down and, pardon the pun, fuse your sounds and your styles together for this project? Who do you have in mind for the kind of a purchaser of a project like "The Enchantment"?
Fleck: Open-minded listeners. It's pleasant to listen to, but there's also challenging things going on. It has a chamber quality, so it's not like a big drum and wild fusion thing. It's actually very gentle and subtle, but it also really cooks. So it has this chamber thing and a rhythmic aspect as well that, with just two people creating it without a rhythm section, that's one of the things I like about the record. It really cooks.
Corea: We're trying to figure out in performance like who we're playing to because we've already done a bunch of gigs. It's like is that Béla's audience? Is that Chick's audience? It's like who are these people? It's interesting to start to work it out.
Tavis: Well, speaking of gigs, they've got a gig right about now that they have to go play. They're going to get up off this couch and we're going to move this set out of the way and they're going to gig for us now. They're going to perform a song from the CD, track number four. It's called "Mountain." The new CD is called "The Enchantment" by Chick Corea and Béla Fleck.
Up next, a special performance from these talented musicians, so stick around. From their acclaimed new CD, "The Enchantment," here are Chick Corea and Béla Fleck performing "Mountain," Enjoy, good night from Los Angeles, and keep the faith.
[Musical performance]
Back to May 25, 2007