♪♪ Jazz music was born to heal the brokenhearted.

But what has it become?

Today, we'll talk to two incredible jazz artists about the healing power of music and a generation desperate for a freedom song.

Giovanni: And that's what love is.

Love's got your back.

Woman: It's a reaching.

It's a yearning.

It's an aching.

Adamu: I think silence prohibits expectations.

Rodriguez: Are we being heard?

Are we being seen?

Woman: I think people feel safe when they can define you.

Vivion: We created this show because the world is changing.

Our first guest is as versatile as she is daring.

Winner of the 2019 Harlem Stage Emerging Artist Award, she's a drummer, composer, and producer.

"Modern Drummer" magazine once said, "She is all over jazz," and that's no exaggeration.

Having performed with everyone from Kenny Barron to Christian McBride in clubs across the globe, she is the modern face of drumming.

Hailing from Oakland, California, please welcome my lifelong friend and supreme talent, Miss Savannah Harris.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you for being here.

At 14, I saved up money for my first job to see our next guest perform.

I was transported instantly to another world.

She's a musical prodigy turned phenom called "the jazz genius of the 21st century."

She's a five time Grammy Award winning bass player, composer, singer, and songwriter.

Her most recent feats include writing and performing an opera alongside the great Wayne Shorter and a professorship at Harvard University.

Please welcome my personal musical hero, Ms. Esperanza Spalding.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you!

So today, we're going to talk about healing -- healing in music, healing in our generation healing in society, and I want to start with you, Esperanza, 'cause I know your latest album is called "Apothecary," and "Apothecary" deals with medicine and healing.

So where was healing at in that process of making the album?

Well, the reason that I chose to use the word "apothecary" is because it encompasses this time in medical history where people who would have, I think, in our times, be called, like, witch doctors or soothsayers were starting to try to quantify and measure and track what the effects were of these different elements coming together, and actually, apothecaries were part of the journey of chemistry becoming what it is today... Mm-hmm.

...of tracking what would happen when certain elements were put together.

Right.

It speaks to a time of experimentation, but there's a longing to offer salutary effect to the person who's coming to the apothecary, right?

Right.

So I feel like that word describes so perfectly this intersection that I feel myself in, you know?

It's like a confluence, I would say...

Right.

...of different streams of practitionership coming from music therapy or neuroscience or, you know, developmental therapy... Wow.

...definitely music as healer and musician and performer and songwriter and all of these, you know, all of these interrelated lineages that have their own very distinct histories.

So to me, "apothecary" really encompasses that practice.

Right.

Like, we're looking for ways that we can put elements together in the music...

Right.

...to offer a very particular affect for the listener.

Experience, right.

Yeah, Yeah.

Right, right.

What about you, Savannah?

I know you're a composer in and of your own right, so is that sort of how the process looks for you -- that -- that sort of confluence that Esperanza's talking about?

Definitely.

I think for me, like, from the background of being a drummer, like, my emphasis is on orchestration and how all of these elements kind of conflate and take each other's place and how to move these kind of things around a soloist or a vocalist or whatever's happening on stage.

But in a composition realm, I am at the center of that.

So I'm actually in the process now of figuring out how to orchestrate around myself.

And that's a different -- it's a different feeling.

And it's -- And it's a lot rawer and... more vulnerable of a -- of a process.

Well, that's what I was gonna ask, because the position that you're talking about is one of a giver, of someone who is bringing something to give to the audience or to create an effect for that audience.

But where do you get your healing from?

Like, where does it come from before you put it in the music?

I guess we're diving right in, so... Well, it doesn't -- that's interesting that you framed it like that.

Mm-hmm.

It doesn't feel like that to me.

It's not one sided.

Yeah.

And -- And the idea of, like, giving a thing called "music" feels so abstract to me because everyone present is implicated in the vibrations and frequencies that are happening.

I mean, whether you want to be or not, you know?

You hear it, yeah.

Unlike visual mediums, you can't remove yourself from the experiencing of the sound, you know?

'Cause even if you don't have the capacity for hearing, your body is being affected by the vibration.

Sure.

So we're in this milieu...

Together.

...of energies flowing around.

And I don't know that there is a way for -- let's say a practitioner who works with music to not be involved in the effect of the sound that they're making, you know?

Of course, influenced.

And maybe a musician isn't writing something for, like, an explicit affect.

Right.

But likely they're -- we are writing it to produce some sort of effect that we need first as human beings.

Like, I think that's why many of us are drawn to the music, 'cause we recognize that it's doing something for us.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

You know?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I want to direct, you know, towards you, Savannah.

Like, when did you realize music was healing you or maybe an intersection in your life?

For me, it's been every single intersection of my life, there was a song, there was an album, there was Stevie Wonder, there was Nina Simone, there was India Arie, there was Esperanza Spalding.

You know, there was so many intersections where I was like, "I need this so badly."

Where -- Where did you go?

Where -- Where's that?

I can think of one really particular moment.

Please.

So my parents met at the Coltrane Church in San Francisco.

Oh, my.

That's where they met, and so I grew up Muslim and also at the Coltrane Church, which is a very interesting spiritual...

Right.

...medley of life.

And what kind of place is that, for viewers that don't know?

The Church of St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane in San Francisco was a church that was developed in the late '60s, and it's definitely not worshiping John Coltrane or anything like that, but it does use his music in a liturgical sense as, like, the -- in place of, like, gospel, for example... Wow, yeah.

...or in place of -- it's like, you know, substituting hymns over the melodies of John Coltrane, and you're playing, and you're playing those grooves, and you're getting into that space, and that's the space from which your worship is happening.

And your parents met there?

My parents met there in the '90s.

You were planned, yeah, through that.

Yeah.

That's how I came up.

Yes, yes.

And so as a kid, I was playing drums in that church.

And so there was a moment where we were playing, and I just started the waterworks, just started sobbing behind the drums.

And it was just that first feeling of, like, "This is powerful.

Like, this is not a game.

Like, there's something that we are creating together that's not tangible.

You cannot see it, but it's happening, and it's -- it's bringing something out of us, and it's resonating with our spirit," you know?

Mm-hmm.

And that continues to be, for me, the most powerful aspect of what we do, is just, like, as soon as we hit the stage, we don't have to talk about what we're gonna do.

Mm-hmm.

As soon as we start playing, if we're tapped in, it will unfold itself.

Mm-hmm.

And -- And that's, like, a -- for me, something really do.

Ooh!

So powerful.

I feel that so much.

One thing that I love that you all say about healing is this idea that there has to be an enjoyment in it.

And I think, when I think of, like, our generation and kind of, like, the wellness industry, how they think of healing, it's very serious.

It's like this kind of, like, dealing with your demons, going through, you know, therapy.

Like, it's a very serious process.

But the way that you all are describing it -- and either of you can comment on this -- like, there seems to be this sort of light heartedness that you're bringing it, that there has to be a sense of joy or this kind of light or release.

I think joy is very different to me than happiness.

Mm-hmm.

And so I can experience, like, great tumult and also joy in -- in neighboring moments or at the same time, and so as far as healing is concerned, yeah, you got to dredge up some uncomfortable things in your life or in your environment, in your relationship to others in order to really examine that.

But at the same time, like, I think you can hold space for the joy of, like, the hope of getting to be in a new space or getting to get past this, or if you can't even see that far, just the joy of being able to be able to enjoy the experience of making music with another person.

Right.

There's also moments of -- of having these great accomplishments, that bringing such joy and bring such exhilaration and feel like, "Oh, I'm healing them, I'm getting somewhere," and then I also have to reckon with the parts of myself that -- are, like, "Hold on.

Like, there's still more to look at here, or here's still more to deal with here or delve into."

And so I think of it as a "both and," rather than an "either or," you know?

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Ha!

It's so much.

There's just so much to touch on when you open up the portal of, you know, exploring what it -- what is healing, you know, what goes into healing.

What's coming up is I recently got to take this beautiful class on conflict exploration.

Hmm.

And the teacher -- Not resolution, but exploration, yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And the teacher was just that -- reorienting us to say, like, there is a kind of longing for control and closure that a lot of people bring to conflict, and that that has a pressure on the "process" of resolution itself because you're hoping for an outcome already.

I feel like time is the only thing -- my grandma always said, "Time heals all."

I feel like that's even built into jazz music in a way that it's like something is happening over the course of music, specifically in that kind of -- I won't even call it a genre, but in the jazz tradition... Mm-hmm.

...that it's like we're not the same at the end of the song as we ever are at the beginning.

I definitely feel that when I think about literally John Coltrane's "Resolution," you know, from "A Love Supreme," it's like something is being resolved here, and it doesn't feel, when you're done, like, oh, it's ended, like, it's resolved, you know?

Yeah.

And sometimes resolution is a shift in our relationship to whatever we're addressing.

Yes.

It might not have to be about changing the focus -- the object of our focus, or the circumstance of our focus.

It can be -- It can be about coming to peace.

Yeah.

Or coming to acceptance.

Or -- Or coming to, like, re-narrativize you know?

Yeah.

And just to kind of touch into jazz lineage, since you brought it up, I think it's important to remember that this particular lineage of music grew from a people who had no way out.

Yes.

Hmm.

So just to try to, like, zoom back and think about these men and women.

And let's just be real -- predominantly Black men and women who truly hadn't ever had an experiential possibility of an alternative to this inescapable system of oppression.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

In times where, truly, there seemed to be no way out, what emerges?

Right.

This medium, this phenomenon that later gets called jazz.

Mm-hmm.

So, in a way, I feel the music became the avatar for the existence that couldn't be realized yet.

Yeah.

And we've heard it said again and again.

It's almost like speculative fiction.

Wow.

Right.

You know what I mean?

That then becomes reality, because we -- we've heard our -- our heroes, our prophets of this music speak about what the music can open up in the imagination... What it can do.

...and what it can open up in reality.

I want to bring you into that, Savannah, 'cause I know, you know, drumming especially, like, how -- are you having a moment?

Girl, you already know I'm having a moment.

I'm just -- ooh!

I love that.

I love -- what's going through your mind when you hear that?

It's so real.

Yeah.

What's going through your mind as you hear that?

I just, you know, you -- you get -- there's levels, right?

And you get to a certain place where you're like, "I can't take this for granted.

Like, this is some special stuff that we're working with," and it's not to say -- to take anything away from any other medium, but this has such a specific history, as you're talking about.

Mm-hmm.

And I love rap.

I relate this to rap.

Mm-hmm.

I just can't help but relate it to rap.

Yeah.

And I can't help but relate it to, you know, different art forms that have emerged in the last 30 years that are a little bit more recent than jazz.

Jazz was that then, and through the alchemy, there is this opening of the physical world, this spiritual world.

Yeah, to be able to move.

To be able to move.

To move.

And you can move on.

And move on.

Yes, and I have to add something to that, because...

I think sometimes that becomes the temptation inside of suffering, that we need to get out to somewhere else.

And actually, I -- Oh, speak on it.

Yeah, when I think about alchemy, I actually think about, again, thinking about this music coming from people who had no way out.

Yeah.

That I actually think about, even with healing, like, you can't get out of yourself.

Right.

You can't escape yourself.

You could try.

I'm thinking about musicians I know who are in the same town that they grew up in...

Right.

and are cultivating this alchemy without the expectation of going somewhere else, that the alchemy itself is -- is transmuting the circumstance.

It's transmuting the environment.

It's transmuting their reality.

Oh, my God, I'm having a moment.

The first episode I filmed, Nikki Giovanni, when I asked her about, like, you know, revolutionary moments and she starts talking about slavery, she says there's something powerful about those who escaped.

She's like, "But there's something powerful about those who stayed."

Yeah.

It was radical in the 1800's, or maybe the 17-- to run away from slavery.

Mm-hmm.

But it was also radical to stay.

She's like, "There's something powerful about someone who planted crops in the ground and was there to see them grow.

And we don't think about that, because we're thinking about freedom, about escape, about moving on.

She's like, "But so many people -- the -- the history of the South, the history of slaves, it was people that remained," and that's what you're kind of saying.

And, you know, just to remember that the "get out and go make it better over there once I can," is part of the roots of colonialism.

Right.

And I know we want to detangle ourselves from these ideologies, so -- and it's not to diminish the gift and the blessing of us -- I mean... No, absolutely.

...I feel like I definitely got out of some stuff.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, right.

But it's also to say there's another dimension of the -- the potential of this art form that we practice... Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

...which I think is to support us in remaining.

Where you are.

In remaining and alchemizing from there.

It'll hold you where you are.

Yeah.

You know, which I feel -- hoo!

That's -- It's hard.

I'm saying this, feeling like, "Whoa."

it's challenging for me to even embrace that and accept it because it is a time -- us millennials or Gen Z's we can go anywhere and do anything.

It's like, yes, that's true, and what do we miss of the alchemy's potential when that's the only pathway that we're using it toward?

I want to bring in -- I would be so remiss if I didn't ask this question, 'cause I know so many people are gonna think about it -- you two, as women in this thing that we're calling jazz, I mean, so much of that -- the lineage and the tradition and the face of jazz and really the sounds beyond just, like, vocal artists, it has been very male dominated.

Do you ever think, like, "I am... a woman or there's this feminine thing involved in the kind of music that I'm making or how I'm participating in this tradition"?

I don't think about, like, femininity... ...being some sort of, like, fundamental element of my musicianship... Yeah.

...um, like, in the work that I make.

But I do notice the ways that growing up inside of, like, a shifting patriarchal structure -- I'll put it like that, and when I say that, let me just be clear -- it has nothing to do with resenting men.

It's just any -- any power structure that's catered to and places the preferences, the power on a specific person... On a specific group.

...is problematic.

I don't care who that person is.

Right.

Right.

And I can say, as a woman, I definitely noticed, growing up in this music, a difference between how I was being treated.

Yeah.

And I kind of decided early on, like, "Oh, I'm gonna show you."

Hmm.

Oh, and you have.

And that's not -- And you have.

Sis, you -- you have.

Let me just say that.

I just want to say, though, that that's not a dependable engine.

Yeah.

And I want to speak to what Terri Lyne Carrington's doing with the Jazz and Gender Justice Institute, because the reason that she created that is because she recognized -- "Oh, my God, if we're depending on young girls having this kind of, like, Grr!

-- you know, fight to be able to push back against the oppressive forces of patriarchy, we're gonna miss...

So few are gonna... ...we're gonna miss a lot of women who have a lot to contribute to this music.

Mm-hmm.

So her whole mission was, like, actually, we need to make a place, a pathway, so that young women who feel attracted to this music can travel uninhibited.

Uninhibited.

At least by the social things.

Wow.

All the challenges are still gonna be there, 'cause it's challenging, you know, as a form.

Right.

But at least don't let it Be social challenges.

At least let it be because it's just difficult.

Right.

Technical challenges.

You know what I mean?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And honestly, something that I even want to play with that is so crucial is that resentment or that kind of bitterness or just that kind of fight.

It'll -- It'll get you only so far.

Mm-hmm.

And then the rest of the way, like, I feel like that is where the necessity of healing comes in, especially 'cause you have this Girl Boss generation, especially you have, "Let's break the glass ceilings.

Like, that'll take you -- I think that took me maybe through my freshman year of college.

It's like, "Okay, I want to do it."

It takes you right up to the line.

It'll take you right up to the line, but it doesn't -- it doesn't grow you up in that way.

And I -- And I meet a lot of artists that I can tell -- actors directors, whatever -- they still have something to prove.

And what is that contortion doing to your spirit?

Exactly.

What is the contortion doing to the craft that you have to offer?

To the art, yeah.

It's -- It's really tricky to detangle that.

Right.

It's really tricky.

And it's hard, yeah, because with the ambition of it, it's like that'll be the driving force and the thing that gets you up in the morning.

It's like you got this chip on your shoulder, but it weighs you down.

It weighs you down, and I wonder, you know -- think about what you have to say about it, Savannah.

Like, where do you put it down?

Where do you put that chip on your shoulder down as an artist or as a person?

I feel like I have the inverse chip.

Hmm.

Because my family dynamic was -- was different, and I really grew up in a jazz scene that was heavily populated with middle-aged men.

So I grew up really measuring myself against those standards... Mm-hmm.

...and maybe not questioning it all that much.

I mean, I think it was later that I started to be like, "Hold on."

Like -- Like, I mean, I knew from the beginning, like, this is a system that I'm acclimating myself towards.

But it took a while for me to say, "Well, like, who is this self that's acclimating towards this system?"

and to figure out -- when you're socialized in this way, what does it then mean for you to be an adult woman... Yeah.

Right.

...behind the drums and not necessarily always, in certain spaces, queer presenting?

So there's all of these elements that, like, I'm cognizant of on the -- on a daily basis about how, as a woman... Yeah.

...I relate to my instrument and my role as a practitioner of the music and as a drummer and what that means very specifically, you know?

And so I guess the chip on my shoulder has been... more recent, and me kind of trying to fight for myself in the sense of like, "Well, what does it just mean for me to authentically show up to the gig and play the hell out of the gig and feel good about it and feel good in myself and not feel like I had to contort in all these ways?"

Or had to be the female drummer.

Or had to be the female drummer, and I'd get a lot of feedback, particularly from older women, at the end of shows, where they're just like... they're like, "What?

Like, this feels so great to be able to watch you as a woman doing this.

I didn't even think it was possible."

It is great.

Right.

And at first I was a little uncomfortable with this feedback, but as, you know, I am attempting to mature, I have understood that, like, that's real.

Like, that is real for them, to be like, "I saw Sheila E., and that was it.

I never saw anyone else do this," even though there have been many.

And so I accept it, and I accept the mantle, and I accept the responsibility, if it is that, of just bringing myself to the forum and allowing that to be enough, you know?

Right.

So I want to end the show by asking you each what you're working on, and you can interpret that however you want.

Esperanza, what are you working on now?

One of the things I'm working on is a dance company.

I just -- I just -- Wow.

Come on.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's so deep.

It's so deep.

It's so deep.

Go.

Legend.

We're -- We're in this.

We've been doing it for -- Do you have a name for it?

Yeah, I don't want to say it yet, but -- no, it's okay, it's okay.

Okay, don't say it, don't say it.

But when it was in its lab form, we called it "Refacing Gods," because I -- it actually was a lab that I-I curated this spring at Harvard.

Mm-hmm.

And I call it "Refacing Gods" because -- ha!

-- "jazz" is one of the only diasporic music forms -- folk music forms where dance has been separated from the music.

Hmm.

Hmm.

I don't know that there's another one where they've been separated.

Yeah.

And for years, I've been longing to re-experience -- and I say re-experience because I think we all experience it in some way.

Like, just the cipher that happens with your friends.

Like...

Right, right.

...it's already a part of what we are and who we are, that when there's rhythm, you move, and when you move, there's the music.

And it's just -- it is what it is.

And there's been this bifurcation in this thing called jazz, so I call it "Refacing Gods," because I really do feel that the original, original, original, original, original kind of, like, portals of spirituality were music and dance.

Yeah.

So it's inviting those gods to really, like, reface each other and engage and have that dance...

Without a question.

you know, and through location-based research and collaboration, we're just finding ways from our center of cultural authenticity to bring these back together and have it feel like a place... Yeah.

...that everybody can get involved, you know?

That's wonderful.

Yeah.

What are you working on?

I'm just -- I'm stunned.

We're -- yeah, we're just taking a moment.

I'm stunned.

We're taking the moment we have.

I'm working on some recordings right now that are my attempt at joining my selves and making them integrated so I can just go forth as myself, because I grew up obviously, in a jazz family, jazz-based family, but, like, I'm a hardcore kid.

Like, I like punk, I like hardcore, I like techno, I like house music.

I like all these different things.

I love flamenco.

I'm like hardcore into -- so it's all this elements of myself that I definitely tie in to the shared diasporic language of the drums because it's all there.

It's all present there.

It's all accessible there.

Yes, yes, yes.

You could just grab it and stick it in, you know.

So that exists already, but in terms of compositionally and just in terms of crafting and producing, I've been hard at work on that and figuring out how that can feed my own evolution just as a person, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

My heart is full, and I thank you both so sincerely for being here, for participating in this healing practice and this conversation, because I know this is a generation that needs the people that they look up to, the artists, the -- the women, the healers.

They need to know, "I have permission to be okay."

And I think that's what I've gotten from this conversation, is to say, "It's okay to be still.

It's okay to move on.

It's okay to sing.

It's okay to dance, even if you're not a singer or you're not a -- or you don't feel that way."

And I think you all, the giants that you are, even in my eyes, to give me that permission, to give them that permission, it means the whole world.

So thank you so much for holding this space.

Thank you.

Wow.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

It's been a blessing to share this space, yeah.

Absolutely.

I'm Bianca Vivion, and this has been "Generational Anxiety."

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