Jazz music was born to heal the broken hearted, 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.

And that's what love is.

Love's got your back.

It's a reaching.

It's a yearning.

It's an aching.

I think silence prohibits expectations.

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 and 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.

Thank you for being here.

At 14, I saved up money from 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, Miss Esperanza Spalding.

Thank you so much for being here.

So today, we're going to talk about healing, healing and music, healing and our generation, healing and society.

And I want to start with you, Esperanza, because 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?

Mm.

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 we call, like, witch doctors or soothsayers, people who are in other lineages of healing 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, of tracking what would happen when certain elements were put together.

And the reason I wanted to use the word is because it speaks to a time of experimentation.

But there's there's a longing to offer, salutary effect to the person who's coming into the apothecary, right?

So I feel like that word describes so perfectly this intersection that I feel myself in.

You know, it's more like a confluence, I would say, of the different streams of practictionership coming from music therapy or neuroscience or developmental therapy, 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 I see the apothecary as like a place where we're kind of standing in that confluence of all these waters and just starting in our cultural authenticity, right, from this historical location where we are.

We're not trying to emulate the way it's been done in another time or in another culture, because, you know, I am from where I am from, and that's important, you know, to show up in the practice from a place of authenticity.

So, to me, Apothecary really encompasses that practice.

Like, we're looking for ways that we can put elements together in the music to offer a very particular effect for the listener.

Experience.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What about you, Savannah?

I know you're a composer in an of your own right, so is that sort of how the process works for you, 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 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 am 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 a lot rawer and more vulnerable of a process.

Well, that's what I was going to ask, because the position that you're talking about is one of a giver of someone who's 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.

Well, that's interesting that you framed it like that.

It doesn't feel like that to me.

It's not one-sided.

Yeah.

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

Unlike visual mediums, you can't remove yourself from the experiencing of the sound, you know, because even if you don't have the capacity for hearing, your body's being affected by the vibration, you know?

So we're in this mileau 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, and one thing that I feel is important to note for anybody who's curious about this intersection of like, "Where does the science and the medicine meet the music?"

is to remember that most music being used in clinical studies was not written for a therapeutic purpose.

Explicitly.

Yeah.

Which means...

So true.

...there's something already going on in the music.

Like, if it's shown to have a benefit to the patient or to the -- I know the music I fall asleep to is not written for sleeping.

That part.

That part.

So it's also something about noticing that maybe a musician isn't writing something for, like, an explicit effect.

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

I think that's why many of us are drawn to the music, because we recognize that it's doing something for us, you know?

But do you think that that is particular to jazz music?

Because I know that there's certain types of more perhaps commercially produced music where maybe it does feel like commercialized and product, you know, commodified to a certain extent, and, like, you are performing for the audience.

It's not that sort of exchange, that sort of metaphysical thing, and I think that that's one thing that when I look at, like, popular music, I'm like, "Mm, this is dangerous because it can have that impact of healing and fortifying and regenerative effect, but it can also tear down.

It can also jar you, you know?"

Those vibrations can do something completely different than what you're talking about.

And maybe, Savannah, you'll speak to that.

But, you know, I know jazz has this higher level thing going on.

And then there's music that's just -- I think maybe, but I also think that, like, you know, if you're in rap world, you still have to go into the booth and comp those vocals and it's still an energy that you're producing in that moment that's going to be transmitted to other people, and there has to be part of you that's committed to that, to that moment, and it could be through a narrative or a story that might be viewed as negative for others, or maybe not healing or maybe not constructive for healing purposes.

But I think if you're in it and you're embodying it, then there's something that you're getting from that and there's some healing that you're getting from that.

So I don't know, I tend not to... To vilify.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was so beautiful how you articulated that.

Thank you.

I wanted to make a seemingly random allegory, but I'm going to try anyway.

Bring it on.

Bring it here.

Because I think what's important to remember about this music that is named jazz is it's from a cultural place.

Yeah.

It's from a people.

You know?

This can happen in dance too, when something becomes -- it's turned into a pedagogy.

Yeah.

And it starts to get, you know, methodized -- I don't know what the word is -- it's easy to, like -- Dissected.

Yeah, maybe.

You can forget that it's coming from a context and -- An organic one.

Yeah.

And the context is undisputable.

If that's what people felt they needed musically to serve that function at the time, then it's real, then it's valid, and it did what it needed to do.

And it makes me think of the psychic surgeons of the Philippines, because there's been so many efforts to disprove what they're doing, you know, and I don't have an opinion about it.

I'm just using it as an example... Sure.

...that you have people in rural villages, very rural villages who don't have access to the kind of Western medical care that we think is real and true.

Yeah, right.

And so for these communities of people, this is a method that they turn to for wellness.

Yeah.

Now if I were to go there, I would bring my judgment and my particular tuning of what I need to be happening for me, for me to feel like I can trust this method, like I can surrender to this method and be helped by it.

But for somebody who's in a rural town in the Philippines who doesn't have access to anything else, and that is part of their cosmology, that is part of their understanding of anatomy and the world around them, is helpful, you know, and I think about that often because I think it's very tempting to project onto other modalities that really have their own -- they have their own cosmology, like my values and belief systems or like what I can recognize that work.

Right.

So I, like, would translate that to all musics because I don't think music is one thing.

I think it's similar to like, healing modalities.

Yeah.

There are as many musics as there are healing modalities.

And I think there are actually very few people who get into music just for the commercial purpose.

Of course.

There's something bringing them to that devotion, you know?

One thing I love that Thelonious Monk said -- someone asked him, it's like, "What came before music?"

And he said, "Dance," you know, and I think about that all the time because it's born out of this bodily need.

It's like we had a need to dance, a need to move, and then you get the rhythm and it's like, you know, if you turned off all music in a room, like, you would still hear, like, the pitter patter of feet, you'd hear bodies moving around one another.

And he was like, "This is a need.

People need to dance."

And so that's why he was like, "That's why I'm playing."

And I think that's kind of what you're talking about, is different communities have these different needs.

But then I kind of try to grapple that with when Fela Kuti said music is a serious thing, you don't play with music.

And sometimes I hear, you know, certain kinds of =just outright violent, like, violent sounds, and I'm thinking, like, maybe this is cathartic for the listener.

And I definitely know the neighborhood that I come from, that you come from, Savannah, like, people hear that and they're like, "Okay, yeah, this is what I'm living through," but it doesn't give you that way out.

And I feel like that kind of way out is so important.

So I'd love for you all to speak on that.

It's spellcasting.

It could dig deeper into it or it give you a escape route, and sometimes you've got to go deeper into it to get -- you know what I'm saying?

So I think that, like, like a healing process, there's a cathartic, you know, moment.

There's a moment of grappling with who you are, of being shown who you are.

And so you have to go through this entire process to get to, you know, the arrival point of feeling like you're in a better spot than you were three months ago, a year ago.

And so, I think the same goes for music in terms of creating it.

You need something that's going to accurately reflect where you are at any one of those stages, and we all need that.

We go to different artists for different things for that purpose, you know?

Well, you know, I'll shift this to you, Esperanza.

Like, I know now you all are occupational musicians, which is, like, you know, it's where you do the work and it's your work, and we're blessed to have occupations as artists, but do you have a memory or a moment where you're like, "I can go to music to be safe?

Music is the place that I'm going to find a sense of home, a sense of freedom"?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I want to also just touch on something you said about this Fela Kuti quote.

Yeah.

It makes me think of how there is a version of everything to meet every person's need.

You know, and I get frustrated sometimes.

And it's silly, but I do.

The judgmental part of me gets frustrated sometimes when I witness musicians that I think have a lot of potential that, according to my judgment of what they should and and shouldn't be doing, aren't, like, taking it seriously enough, are like, you know, offering as much in their performance as I know they have as musicians.

And by that I mean, like, maybe I'm judging, thinking they're, like, dumbing things down or to track a certain way in the world.

So, like, that is my judgment, you know?

That's not silly at all.

Well, it's like a palate.

It's like a taste palate.

You know?

You can't fake your reaction to music.

Like, you can't force yourself to feel connected to something musical that you're not connected to.

Yeah.

You can act like you are, but down deep inside, you can't fake that.

Yeah.

So it's something about -- I believe in something that my friend Victor calls quantum resonance.

And I believe that even if -- you know, let's say there's a musician who's cultivated all this capacity or even has a certain, you know, just calibration as a human, you know, the person that they are before they play a note, I think that even if they're playing a music that doesn't, like, fully embody that immensity of their personhood, I think even in the simplest note, that essential frequency of who they are is going to be transmitted.

You know, it's like what Quincy Jones said, You can only play what you are.

And so, it's something about, I guess I want to say, like trusting music, trusting it more than even our own capacity to analyze it and trust that, you know, even those decisions that might be informed by, like, the forces of the market, trusting that there can even be a poetic logic to that, that okay, maybe this individual's resonance needs to come through this, quote, unquote, like, "simplified", or, like, "dumbed down" music because somebody needs to hear in that simpler melody the essential vibration of this person.

You know what I mean?

And I trust that.

I think that in some ways, that's happening with pop music, that there are these beings, you know what I mean?

And in our our attraction to them, I think, is more than just like, they're prettier, they're cool.

There is something.

There's something in their personhood that transmits through the frequency of their voice or of their music.

And people need that frequency for whatever reason, for whatever reason is needed.

And so it travels, you know?

It travels the way that it needs to travel to meet the people who need to receive it.

And I really trust that.

I mean, I feel like I'm, like, holding two things at once.

And so, I just want to, like, bring that in to the Fela Kuti quote because I also really -- I hear that, you know.

I also hear that.

And it isn't something to play with.

Like, it's medicine.

You wouldn't play with brain surgery.

Like, it is brain surgery.

It's another kind of brain surgery.

I love that.

But I just feel like they can both be, you know, present.

There's space for both of them.

Yeah.

Well, I want to direct it now 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 in 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 did you go?

Where's that -- I can think of one really particular moment.

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

That's where they met.

And so I grew up Muslim and also at the Coltrane Church, which is a very interesting spiritual -- And what kind of place is that, for viewers that don't know?

The Church of St. John William Coltrane in San Francisco.

It was a church that was developed in the late sixties, and it's definitely not worshiping John Coltrane or anything like that, but it does use his music in a liturgical sense as, like, in place of like gospel, for example, 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.

Oh, so you were planned, yeah, through that.

That's how I came up.

So, as a kid, I was playing drums in that church, and it's like a formative experience for me.

Most drummers come from some form of church background, not all, but many.

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 -- Back to the, you know, tying this to alchemy, like, there's something that we are creating together that's not tangible.

You cannot see it, but it's happening and it's bringing something out of us and it's resonating with our spirit.

And what did that do for you as a young girl?

It just totally shifted how I looked at this.

As a responsibility or as a... Yeah, as a responsibility, as something, you know, to take seriously, but also as something to enjoy and have fun with.

And really, like, for me, my parents are musicians, so I've had my own process of wrestling with what this is for me versus what this is for them, and for me... Preach.

...this is like my opportunity to connect with someone else above whatever else is going on, and to just be like, you know, like God, me, you, God, you, me -- like, just for this to happen and us not even have to talk about it, you know?

And that continues to be, for me, the most powerful aspect of what we do, is just like, you hit the stage, it doesn't matter what kind of day you had.

As soon as we hit the stage, we don't have to talk about what we're going to do.

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

And that's like, for me, something really beautiful.

I feel that so much.

I feel that because for me, as a writer being my main medium, people don't understand.

Like, sometimes writing is very -- it can trap you because you're constricted by language.

And for me, the English language, you know, I'm not like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez, where he's writing in Spanish, then he's writing in English, and that has very different modalities, very different emotions.

For me, I'm like, I'm in English, and sometimes I'm in slang or, you know, Southern English or whatever, but I'm really like where I am, and I think music is that way of being like, "Here's the door outside of things that you can say and can't say," and that's what I kind of found.

But, you know, makes me think of you, Esperanza, because I know when I first even came into contact with your work, the word prodigy was you so much.

It was "Prodigy, prodigy."

Like, I know you were marked a very young age as, like, a musical genius or a musician.

So I wonder, was there a moment when it became your own, when you were like, you know?

This is -- Ha.

That's funny, because I was not marked as an early age at all.

Really?

I was just a regular, degular, schmegular kid playing okay violin.

You know what I mean?

No, I was a regular kid playing okay violin.

I know.

We were both kids playing some schmegular, regular, degular -- With the recorder.

Yes, there were also some woodwinds involved.

I was uninhibited as a child in the music, partially because I have this little insubordinate streak.

It's not little at all.

I never believed or entertained the thought that it had to be exactly this one way.

Mm-hmm.

So, I remember being, like, in orchestra when I was a kid and not enjoying practicing these simple third violin parts.

And I knew I could just hear them by ear.

So when it was my time at home on the violin, I would be playing things that I liked how they sounded.

I'd be trying to emulate things from TV or from the ending credits of some shows or just songs on the radio, and then I didn't realize that I was practicing being a jazz musician in orchestra because I would just by ear just be able to pick up what the people next to me were playing and, like, do that, you know what I mean?

Right.

And then when it came to anything, like, serious, about measuring my musical facility, I would always be at the lower end of ability because I -- Third chair.

Yeah, I wasn't studying in that way.

Things definitely improved in my violin life, but I think maybe the thing that brought around this word prodigy, which I definitely do not identify as, because I remember the hours that went in to moving from each, you know, stage of ability to the next stage of ability and also know the things that I skipped, you know, and the things that the prodigies that I do now had to cultivate to be able to do what they're able to do technically on the instruments.

Yeah.

But I think people seeing me do something that felt atypical, like singing and playing, there just was less familiarity with what it took to be able to do that.

And so this word -- Like, "prodigy" means like, miraculous, right?

It means, like -- Your ability doesn't match, you know, the time you've had to develop it.

But I think that my ability, singing, playing does match the time that I put into it.

And I just think when people, like, got a sense of what I was doing, they didn't know how it got put together.

Yeah, because you were very young, 'cause you're still very young.

Yeah.

Yes, I am.

We are going to be forever.

Yeah.

So the thing about, you know, coming into one's own voice musically -- I guess I just -- I so believe that there's no way to skirt the truth in music, so that even if you're somebody who wants to emulate other people's sound, that's still the truth.

Yeah.

Hmm.

That's still your truth.

Right.

Like, I hear a lot of questions from younger musicians.

Like, "Yo, when am I finding my voice?"

I'm like, "Whatever your voice is right now, that's the truth."

Authenticity over originality every day.

Definitely.

I'm just saying, it's always the truth.

Going through a period where, like, "Ah, man," like, I was on some Joni Mitchell stuff for a while.

Like, that was the truth.

So that wasn't my voice.

It didn't mean it wasn't my voice.

That was my voice because it was revealing the archive of that time of my life.

You know what I mean?

And I mean, I didn't grow up with parents who are musicians.

So I think that's something to reckon with of like, "Wow, what does it mean to them versus what they're telling me versus, like, what I'm actually wanting?"

It just felt like such a tumbling forward every step of the way, with all the mistakes and traps and getting caught in things that later I'm like, "Wow, I was tripping."

Like, that was not, you know, that wasn't authentic.

But that's still true.

That is so true, and it happened.

Yeah.

So now I want to shift the conversation to our generation, the millennial, Gen Z.

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 therapy.

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, in music, especially -- it's funny because jazz music is often considered so serious -- you know, there seems to be this sort of lightheartedness that you're bringing it, that there has to be a sense of joy or this kind of lighter release.

What do you think about that?

I think joy is very different to me than happiness.

And so, I can experience, like, great tumult and also joy 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 enjoy your coffee or to be able to enjoy the experience of making music with another person.

Right.

Because for me, I mean, being at the beginning of what I hope will be a long, juicy career, you know, there's also moments of having these great accomplishments that bring such joy and bring such exhilaration and feel like, "Oh, I'm healing.

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.

There's still more to deal with here, delve into."

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

Wow.

Yeah.

It's so much.

There's just so much to touch on when you open up the portal of, you know, exploring what is healing?

You know, what goes into healing?

What's coming up is just a longing to acknowledge that there are so many versions of what healing is and looks like and is experienced as, and sometimes, you know, I try to remember that I'm often dealing with a healed version of someone or something, even though it still feels uncomfortable or even it still feels like, "Oh, it's not where I wish it was," or whatever.

Just to acknowledge that, you know, all of our bodies are in this room right now because they have healed from whatever we have gone through in our lives, you know, whether that was like minor colds or major injuries or, you know...

Broken hearts.

Yeah, major losses.

You know, so many things.

Like, we are embodiments of healed states already.

So just remember that.

And even I can think of some people, you know, in my community that are really challenging, you know, to deal with and seem like they're really messed up.

And I have to remember, like, no, they're survivors.

And what I am working with is a healed -- They have healed.

This is the other side of healing and is also continuing.

Right.

And then another piece I just felt like it was important to bring in is I recently got to take this beautiful class on conflict exploration, and the teacher -- Not resolution, but exploration.

Yeah.

And the teacher was just 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 completely agree.

I hate when people pressure things into resolution.

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

And it doesn't heal all, but it does heal many, many things.

But it's just like, we need time.

I feel like that's even built into jazz music in a way, that it's like, over the course, like, something is happening over the course of music, specifically in that kind of -- I wouldn't even call it a genre, but in the jazz tradition, 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 like when I think about literally John Coltrane's resolution 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.

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 about coming to peace.

Yeah.

Or coming to acceptance or coming to, like, re-narrative-ize, you know?

And I think since you put this in the context of millennial, Gen Zs -- -- I think in a time where there is a lot of sense of, like, being able to manifest and, like, go get things, get information, like, learn, I can put this image out, I can learn about this, I can see that, maybe there's sometimes a potentially harmful expectation that we can get around and get on and grab and, like, modify or manipulate something that may not be for us to manipulate or modify or changing it around, and just to kind of touch into jazz lineage, since you brought it up, this particular lineage of music grew from a people who had no way out.

Yes.

That's something we don't have to sit with.

Most of us don't have to sit with that... Yeah.

...experientially We might know somebody who's incarcerated.

We might know somebody who's, you know, been a victim of slavery or human trafficking or had to flee persecution.

I think most of us experientially don't actually know what that means.

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.

So, again, talking about, quote, unquote, "resolution," you know, 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.

Before it has a name, you know what it is.

You just spoke to it.

It's a place.

It's a domain.

You've called it liberation music.

It is.

And I am sorry for how abstract this might sound for someone who hasn't played this music, who doesn't have a relationship to it, but as you get into it and go into it, it does create this place in this space.

And when we talk about the change, okay, what are changes?

Changes are these things coming at you that you don't know what they're going to sound like.

You might know the form, but when you're having fun, you don't know what sound is going to meet you next.

You don't know what challenges is gonna meet you next.

But the practice of the music is anything that happens, we can make coherency and beauty out of.

Now, just remember that this, as a practice, grew out of people who had no way out.

Right.

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

And we've heard it say again and again.

It's almost like speculative fiction.

You know what I mean?

That then becomes reality.

Because we've heard our heroes, our prophets of this music -- Sun Ra, Mary Lou Williams, Pharaoh Sanders, rest his soul, who just left us recently, speak about what the music can open up in the imagination.

And I want to bring you into that, Savannah, because I know, you know, drumming especially, like, are you having a moment?

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

I love that.

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

Yeah.

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

I mean, it's...

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 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.

And because I grew up in the nineties, and I love rap.

I relate this to rap.

I just can't help but relate it to rap, 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 it was that -- It's from the hood, and it was that pathway for people to go to Paris, you know what I mean?

Or I'd think about now, like, even the ability that I have to travel, to play music, and you know, going to Europe four or five, six, seven times a year, that's not something that would be happening for me if not for this.

And it's not to glamorize or glorify travel to Europe in any way, but it's just to say that, like, through the alchemy, there is this opening of the physical world, the spiritual world... To be able to move.

To be able to move.

You can move, and you can move on.

And 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 -- 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.

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

Right.

You can try.

I'm thinking about musicians I know who are in the same town that they grew up in and are cultivating this alchemy without the expectation of going somewhere else, that the alchemy itself 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 1800s, or maybe the 17-- when away from slavery.

But it was also radical to stay.

Because, 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, with so many people, this the history of the South, the history of slaves, those people that remained.

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

And I know we want to detangle ourselves from these ideologies.

And it's not to diminish the gift and the blessing of us.

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

You know what I mean?

But it's also to say there's another dimension of this.

There's another dimension of the potential of this art form that we practice, which I think is to support us in remaining.

Where you are.

It'll hold you where you are.

And alchemizing from there.

You know, which I feel -- Whoo.

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.

Also millennials or Gen Zs -- 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 mean, I relate to that because, like I said, I heard your music at 14 or 15 years old and I was in a studio apartment or a one bedroom with two sisters and my mother confined, and I was hearing this music and I was feeling bigger, blooming, but I wasn't thinking, "Oh, one day, I'm going to be in New York City, you know, sitting across from Esperanza having a talk show."

I was just in that moment, confinement, and then I heard you or I hear Stevie Wonder or I hear these people, and suddenly, I'm transported.

And I think that what you all are saying about finding a way to remain, it's good for young, young people to hear that, because every time I talk to the 14 year olds and the 15 year olds, it's always about, "I want to get out.

I want to move to the city.

I want to be somewhere far away from where I am, far away from the experiences that bind me."

And so, they're looking on the Internet, they're looking for other worlds, and I think that you saying, like, there's a way to heal and to remain and to find an alchemy in the where we are at.

And I want to transition quickly and to say like, you know, inherent, like, genre is like a very manufactured, delineated thing.

Jazz and blues, they seem to coincide a lot.

And I just want to ask you all, like, do you think our generation has a kind of blues or that we're going through a kind of blues and can you speak on that?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Like, a friend of mine who is a well known rapper, but they made this joke about Future being a blues artist.

Mm.

And I just was like, I really see it.

And this is like, you know, this is a bit -- but if you think about it, like, Howlin' Wolf, was talking about being a back door man.

You know what I'm saying?

Or I asked her for water.

She gave me gasoline.

This is like a different metaphorical way of of speaking about stuff that is just regular interpersonal, "We in this together, we in the trench together.

This is what we're dealing with."

And so I try to destigmatize, in a sense, like, the narratives that are being shared because it's, like, if you go back and you listen to the blues, it's not...

It's poetry, but it's not to, like, glamorize or beautify an experience that is difficult.

It was difficult and the language is difficult.

And it's, you know, their version and what they were able to say on wax.

Mm.

Right.

Because, you know... Don't forget that part.

Right.

What was allowed to be recorded.

We don't know what all was being sung and played in the little juke joints and the -- Exactly.

We weren't sure.

I've never thought of that.

in my life.

And there weren't, outside of, you know, certain individuals making field recordings or something like that, we don't have that, right?

We can't access that.

You had to be there or you had to be told about being there, and so... Mm-hmm, That's so deep.

Well, it's ugly sometimes, you know?

And like, I think it's okay for us to acknowledge, back to what you were saying about authenticity, to acknowledge that as well.

You know?

I want to bring in -- I would be so remiss if I didn't ask this question because I know so many people are going to think about it.

You two as women in this thing that we're calling jazz, I mean, so much of 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.

But now you two are coming in, literally, what your shirt says, as a life force, and it's like, when you think about composition and healing and femininity and how you bring that in, like, does that factor ever?

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?"

Because women have a history of healers.

Like, we don't have to -- you know, that's just -- That's clear as day.

As black women and in the history of America and the history of any domestic household around the world, it's like, women are the ones that are treating wounds, that are creating the Red Cross, that are dressing soldiers, things like that.

So how does that intersect with your work?

And it can be for either of you, because... Yeah.

I don't think about, like, femininity being some sort of, like, fundamental element of my musicianship, 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 power structure that's catered to and places the preferences, the power on a specific person 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.

And that influences me as a person, and I don't know how to differentiate what in the music is of that because it's just so much of what it is to be a person growing up in this world.

But I think in some kind of roundabout way, becoming aware really early of the difference I was being treated with because of my gender or the gender that I present as, I kind of decided early on, like, "I'm gonna show you."

Oh, and you have.

And you have.

You have.

Let me just say that.

That's not a dependable engine.

Yeah.

And I'm able to access that engine because my mother is so hardcore.

She's so unapologetically, like, nobody is going to tell me anything.

Mine too.

You know, I mean, she receives loving, you know, criticism and feedback and all of that.

It's more about I watched her pave this road.

She was the first woman construction worker in our city.

You know, I just watched her do this unapologetically, "I'm going to do what I'm going to do" thing.

So I was raised with that.

So, I already had that, like, engine behind me, feeling that other engine of like, "I'm going to show people."

But I just want to name that that's not dependable, because that hasn't been everybody's experience.

And some of us are really susceptible to the programing of patriarchy.

And it really feels like it's the rules and it feels like there's going to be harm to our body or to our psyche or to our opportunities if we don't play along.

And I want to speak to Terri Lynne 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, [grunts], you know, fight to be able to push back against the oppressive forces of patriarchy."

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

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.

All the challenges still going to be there because it's challenging, you know, as a form.

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

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

Right.

Technical challenges.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's what I can say.

No.

And honestly, it's something that I even want to play with that is so crucial, you know, speaking to just the larger audience, is that resentment or that kind of bitterness or just that kind of fight, it'll get you Only so far, and then the rest of the way -- Like, I feel like that is where the necessity of healing comes in, especially because you have this girlboss generation, especially you have "Let's break the glass ceilings."

Like, I think that took me maybe through my freshman year of college.

It'll take 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 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 that contortion doing to the craft that you -- This is the art.

Yeah.

It's really tricky to detangle that.

It's really tricky.

And it's hard, yeah, because with the ambition of it, it's like that will be the driving force and the thing that gets you up in the morning, is 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 because my family dynamic 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, and maybe not questioning it all that much.

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

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 the 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 a daily basis about how, as a woman, 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 and of trying to fight for myself ad 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 of myself and not feel like I had to contort in all these ways."

Or had to be the female drummer.

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

And at first, I was a little uncomfortable with this feedback.

But as you know, I'm attempting to mature.

I've 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 form and allowing that to be enough, you know?

I'm going to do a little thought exercise.

I'll give you guys a few seconds to think about it.

But if you were going to give somebody the healing song or the healing album, which one would it be?

For me, Stevie Wonder "Songs in the Key of Life."

Easily.

That's a solid choice.

"Comfort Woman", Me'shell Ndegeocello.

That's for me one that I would hand somebody and just be like, "Just sit with this," because it feels so good and it's resonant in a deep place.

It's just like, I can rest in this, you know?

I can really just lean back in this and be cool.

That's one for me.

Oof.

I mean, to me, it would depend on where a person was at.

Like, grief is different than a heartbreak.

So true.

Yeah.

Gorgeous.

Yeah, So that's hard to say.

I think I definitely have the ones that are healing for me that I come back to a lot.

But one thing that I am excited to, like, propagate and keep encouraging people to remember is that they know what they need musically.

Yeah.

You know, and -- Well, give us yours.

I will.

Just through the exploration of exposing yourself to a lot of music, you know, you'll kind of develop this archive of things that you'll remember you can turn to when you need that thing.

So I guess just giving people more permission, and then I would say we are music makers.

That's part of our species.

Whether or not you have the capacity to make sound with your vocal cords, whether or not you have, you know, aural capacity or whether or not you have sight, whether or not you have limbs, part of our species is being a musical entity, and that includes what they call audiation, which is hearing the sound inside.

So, I just want to remind people that you always, whether you have an iPod or -- nobody has an iPod anymore.

Whether you have Spotify or anything like that, you have the capacity to make the sound or hear the sound that your system needs.

And sometimes, it's just asking yourself like, "What do I need to hear right now?

What do I need to hear right now?"

And either, like, inviting that to come out of your voice or, you know, maybe bang on something a rhythm that you need, or sometimes it's like allowing yourself to internally hear the sound that you know helps you.

You know, that could be a bubbling brook, that could be a Stevie Wonder song, that could be your great-grandma's voice, that could be something you've never heard before, but just we have a lot more capacity, I think, to, like, show up for ourselves musically than we're used to practicing, particularly for musicians.

So I would say that.

That would be, like, my answer for a person, and then an album that I come to a lot is an album by Milton Nascimento called "Minas".

That really, like, whoo, does a thing for me.

When I think of healing, to be honest, I think of the process of coming of age because so much of my work surrounds coming of age, but so many people, I believe, are not allowed to come of age.

Like, they're stifled from this sort of blossoming or this thing that I'm calling becoming and healing is like the process of being like, "Okay, now I can be myself.

Now I can be who I am."

And I feel like everyone pretty much has to heal from adolescence just because it's like a sense of destruction of the internal body, of what you believed, of your parents household, and Zora Neale Hurston says, "I'd like to see the light at dawn even if I die at dusk.

Too many women never see it at all."

And when I think of healing, I think of that.

And so what you're saying here, where I'm at in my healing process is just learning to trust myself.

Like, I always have -- My internal voice is always two voices.

I think it's partially being a Libra.

Like, that's just some indecisiveness.

It's like, "Do I really believe that?"

And then always needing this external music, this external sound to be like, "Yeah, that's what's going on."

I'm finally learning to be of like one mind, of one voice, to be like, "Yep, that's it."

When I think of that internal sound, like, "What do I need right now?"

And then believing it without picking up the phone or seeking it out.

So that's very, very powerful, just hearing you say that.

I want to speak to something that you mentioned about this becoming in relationship to, you know, the coming of age, you know, the growing through adolescence.

I think one thing that musicians, particularly who play improvisational music, get to experience again and again and again is this sense of my authenticity simultaneously showing up for and with others.

And I think a big part of adolescence is this, like, narrowing of the sense of self, and, like, the narrowing of the area of concern.

And to me, a part of coming out of adolescence is starting to learn how your self actually is interwoven with everything.

And that's the part so many people never do.

Yeah.

with your purpose, with, you know, so many things, and one of the very profound elements of our music, and I learned this from Charles Lim, who's a neuroscientist, he's a brain surgeon who studying the nature of creativity and improvisation that, you know, when we're speaking, the part of our brain that forms the "I" narrative is active, and it's a different part of the brain than the part that can make sense of other narratives coming in.

And just in everyday language, those two parts of the brain are never active at the same time.

But when you're improvising, they're active simultaneously.

So to me, I really feel it's really deep.

I truly feel that this music is kind of a key to helping -- All of us are trying to come of age.

All of us are trying to figure out, like, "Wow, what is my thing?"

Now that I see how connected I truly am to the whole and how my wellbeing ain't gonna go anywhere if it's not in relationship with community and others.

This music is like a key to that because when you're inside of it, whether you are trying to or not, you are feeling your I merge with the we and it is a simultaneous co-creation.

It's not something else.

I feel like that is healing when it is not done, but that's the apex of healing.

I recently had a friend, she was getting out of a really bad relationship and, like, she has the tendency when she gets, like, into her -- you know, the emotional waves that come with that, she isolates, and I called her and I said, "Listen, there's no right way to do this.

I don't care if you go back and then you leave again.

I don't care.

However you choose to do this," I said, "But wherever you walk, just don't walk alone."

And I feel like that's what, you know -- jazz music, it's not -- you know, I think it's become -- it's elevated into that thing where people can see it as like an isolated, like, music, you know, fancy form.

But really, it was like, I start playing and then you start playing, and then you start playing, and suddenly we're doing something together.

Like, the togetherness of it, for me, like, that is the apex.

When we're doing healing well, I don't think of it as like the solitary genius psychiatrist's office telling you, like, the Freudian theory, and there's a place for that, of course.

For me, it's the gospel.

It's what we're doing here, honestly, with this show.

Like, it's this, like, now we're here together.

Now we can talk about it.

Now the pain we were hiding, it has a place in the open with you.

I can leave it with you and you can leave it with me.

And if it was broken in me, if I hand it to you, then now it's something enmeshed.

And I don't know, like, I want to end on that, of what healing for you is or what you see in the greater whole of young people or this generation when you're like, "Let's walk together."

Like, what does that healing look like?

I just hope for... ...untethering from cognitive control, because I think it's tempting to think our, quote, unquote, "healing" is going to happen up up here.

So I just hope for all beings to be able to access modalities of engaging with the somatic experiencing of connection, the somatic experiencing of release, and let the soma, let the experiential, let the collective experiential, like, trickle up to the cognitive sensations.

When you say somatic, what do you mean?

I mean of the body and in the body, you know?

And it can also be, you know, group.

I mean, the words ceremony and ritual have so much baggage attached to them, and I understand that.

So I'm using them, you know, hopefully in their more spacious capacity.

You know, going to a concert and dancing is a ceremony.

It's a ritual, you know, and there are also really people who are, you know, doing trauma informed facilitation of group therapy sessions where you do help your body discharge trauma that's stored in it, and I just really hope for those of us who are in an era with so much information coming in our eyeballs and being processed up here and getting this sense of like, "Oh, I got it because my brain got it," I just really hope for us to seek out and explore many, many, many, many body-based, movement-based, sound-based modalities for processing and moving and exploring the healing of whatever we can recognize that's ailing us, you know, from addiction to fossil fuel to trauma in your family, you know, all of it, you know, just helping the cognitive -- ha!

-- cognitive dictator kind of like -- ha-ha -- loosen its talons and receive from the bottom up other ways of experiencing each other in the world.

Yeah.

Hmm.

What about you?

I love that.

That was like -- That meant a lot to me as somebody who doesn't always resonate with the concept of being embodied.

Like, it's taken me a long time to be like, "I'm in this thing."

That's strange.

Because we met as dancers.

Right.

Right.

And I play a very physical instrument.

Right.

But there's a real disconnect there between, like, how I experience myself is very up here and here, but the rest of this gets neglected.

And so in, the last couple of years, I've been, like, very focused on that, and one of the things that I started doing was, like, I just started going to the club more.

Like for real.

You heard it here first, folks.

Yeah, literally.

Like, I just started going specifically to just go dance.

Like, my sister Crystal's the same way.

Yeah, like, shout out to the dance community in New York.

That has made it very easy to just pull up and dance for 4 hours and just get your life.

And that's something that has felt really good for me.

And in terms of healing on a collective basis, it is these spaces that provide that for me and I think provide it for a lot of other people.

And I would love -- I'm seeing it already, but I would love to see jazz... ...stretch and expand again.

I feel like it's been in a contracted space because of some of the academic leanings and some of the ways that institutions have kind of, like, you know, attempted to shape jazz in some ways.

But I would love to see it expand again into something that encompasses a party culture, into something that encompasses.. Yeah, jazz is like the stolen artifact in a British museum.

It's like, it could be looked at and it can be voyeured there, but when it's, you know, where it's home, when it's home, when it's home, it does what it's supposed to do.

A great place for all of us to meet.

You know?

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?

Okay, Well, I love that -- Oh, I just love that what you just shared about -- and what you just shared about the jazz as being this, like, artifact in a museum that can be voyeured.

That's very powerful.

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

I just -- Come on.

Right?

You can't just hit us with that.

You heard it here first.

It's so deep.

It's so deep.

GOAT.

Legend.

So, 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.

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

But when it was in its lab form, we call it Refacing Gods, because it I actually was a lab that I curated this spring at Harvard, and I call it Refacing Gods because -- ha!

-- quote, unquote, "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, 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.

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 just -- it is what it is.

And there's been this bifurcation in this thing called jazz.

So, I called 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.

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

So the company, we're like a research based company and we're inviting this re- engagement from these lineages, you know, each of us coming from our backgrounds.

So, you know, obviously, I'm in my ways associated with the jazz lineage.

The musicians in the company are all coming from a jazz lineage, and the dancers are coming from contemporary and ballet lineages, but most of them are people of color, black folk.

So they have, you know, so many vernacular languages of dance in their bodies, 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 that everybody can get involved, you know?

That's wonderful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Congratulations.

Thank you so much!

Congratulations.

It's really special.

I hope you'll be a part of.

I would love to.

Okay.

Done.

Wow.

What are you working on?

I'm stunned.

We're just taking a moment.

We're thinking the moment we have.

I'm working on some recordings right now that are my attempt at joining myselves 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, there's all these elements of myself that I definitely tie in to the shared diasporic language of the drums because it's all there.

It's all accessibly there.

You can just grab it, right, stick it in, and -- 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 we got some mutuals in common.

I've been working with my friend Morgan Garron, who also works with Esperanza.

[ Speaking Spanish ] You know what I mean?

So we've been working on some stuff.

And also a friend of mine, Mike Halderman, who was the guitarist for Moses Sumney, but he's also this insane, incredible multi-instrumentalist.

And then my homegirl, Trey Morales, who's a great producer, keyboardist.

She works with Amber Mark.

She works with John Babb.

She does different things.

So we've been in the studio making crazy music.

Really enjoying the process together.

And so that's kind of what I've been working on and figuring out how that can feed my own evolution just as a person, you know?

Yeah.

That's so exciting.

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 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 dancer 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.

Thank you so much.

It's been a blessing to share this space.

Yeah.

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

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