How can music disrupt oppression & bring about social change? - Highlights - JAKE FERGUSON, ANTHONY JOSEPH & JERMAIN JACKMAN
Duration:
14m
Broadcast on:
02 Jul 2024
Audio Format:
mp3
How can music challenge systemic oppression and bring about social change? How can we envision alternative paths while avoiding the pitfalls of past paradigms?
Jake Fergusonis an award-winning musician known for his work with The Heliocentrics and as a solo artist under the name The Brkn Record. Alongside legendary drummer Malcolm Catto, Ferguson has composed two film scores and over 10 albums, collaborating with icons like Archie Shepp, Mulatu Astatke, and Melvin Van Peebles. His latest album is The Architecture of Oppression Part 2. The album also features singer and political activist Jermain Jackman, a former winner of The Voice (2014) and the T.S. Eliot Prize winning poet and musician, Anthony Joseph.
JAKE FERGUSON
I think as humans, we forget. We are often limited by our own stereotypes, and we don't see that in everyone there's the potential for beauty and love and all these things. And I think the architecture of oppression, both parts one and two, are really a reflection of all the community and civil rights work that I've been doing for the same amount of time, really – 25 years. And I wanted to try and mix my day job and my music side, so bringing those two sides of my life together, but because I'm not a spoken word person...well, I can write a good story. I can write a good essay, but my ability to write stories or write lyrics is very limited, hence why I was so keen to get Anthony and Jermain involved.
And Jermain is somebody I've worked with for probably about six, seven years now. He's also in the trenches of the black civil rights struggle. We worked together on a number of projects, but it was very interesting to then work with Jemaine in a purely artistic capacity. And I think the bringing together those two worlds really created the album. You know, I wanted to create a platform for black artists, black singers, and poets who I really admire. And it was a no-brainer to give Anthony a call for this second album because I know of his pedigree, and he's much more able to put ideas and thoughts on paper than I would be able to.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sam Myers and Lyle Hutchins. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Associate Text Editor was Nadia Lam. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.
You're listening to highlights from the Creative Processes interview with Jake Ferguson, an award-winning musician and political activist. I've been with the heliocentric for 25 years and we actually did a number of sessions with Anthony in a few shows. Some time ago we played in Sardinia together and Anthony will know that the heliocentric like himself, we have loads of musical references from legends and whether they're from jazz, psychedelia, poetry, spoken word and I think with the sort of musicians that allow those influences to come out into our own productions and our own compositions and I find life very complex, very rewarding at times but also very depressing at times because I think as humans we forget we are often limited by our own stereotypes and we don't see that everyone has the potential for beauty and love and all these things and I think the architectural repression both parts one and two are really a reflection of all the community work and civil rights work that I've been doing for the same amount of time really 25 years and I wanted to try and mix my day job and my music side so bringing those two sides of my life together but because I'm not a spoken word I'm not very good well I can write a good story, I can write a good essay but my ability to write stories or write lyrics is very limited hence why I was so keen to get Anthony and Jermaine involved and Jermaine is somebody I've worked with for probably about six, seven years now he's also in the trenches of the black civil rights struggle and we worked together on a number of projects but it was very interesting to then work with Jermaine in a purely artistic capacity and I think the bringing together those two worlds really created the album I wanted to create a platform for black artists, black singers, poets who I really admire and it was a no-brainer to give Anthony a call for the second album because I know of his pedigree and he's much more able to put ideas and thoughts on paper than I would be able to. Personally I think we probably all got a slightly different take on this but I've always been massively impressed by a guy called Eugene McDaniel, he was a writer and a ranger for Roberta Flack and Roberta Flack's made some of the best protest music I think but Eugene McDaniel's did his own take on it so he started off as an R&B soul singer and then I think was affected by the civil rights movement and then started to dream a little bit different. It was that his ability on tracks like Cherry Stones and Unspoken Dreams of Light which were on his Outlaw album just the way he presented the sort of black struggle differently I was just really impressed by that. I was lucky though because when I was a kid, my dad had a few records and he would play Gillscott Hammer in 1980, Secrets album, a bit of revolution will not be televised so from a very early age that stuck in my mind but I was also impressed by people like Prince because what I love about Prince, I mean I don't like his later music but certainly early stuff, he just did it his weight, he claimed shit for himself and he wasn't following any particular tribe, he just said I'm Prince, I'm gonna be Androgynous, I'm gonna speak to my feminine and masculine side, I'm gonna be this virtuoso, I'm gonna paint the world pink or in his later period, what was his look, it was black peach, what do you say, fuchsia, purple, well he started off as the purple legend didn't he but then in Simon the Times he sort of went a little bit peach didn't he but yeah just artists who just they don't hold back, they give you the listener their whole self and I think that's important to me when I'm looking to be inspired by anybody, I don't deliberately go oh I must listen to every single civil rights record there ever has been, you hear it a few times and you should really give you enough fuel for your own, and one of the things that we all do I think as artists, Anthony you recognize Anthony's voice, you recognize his prose as soon as you hear it, Jermaine's voice, you know it straight away and hopefully my music will be something that people go oh that's definitely the broken record, I know it because it's got such a distinct style, you can't, you can't expect people to have a certain view about you, you just hope that they pick up on what's really been said by the music, so yeah Anthony I'm sure you've got a whole library of black, white poets who've inspired right, yeah I've got a lot of folks I think one of my, influences is a funny thing, I mean Gil Scott Heron a lot of people have compared what I do to Gil Scott Heron, but I started writing when I was 11, I didn't really hear Gil Scott Heron until properly until I came to London in 89, so that's a long gap, when I heard people like Gil Scott Heron and the last poets and stuff it was more, it was influential in the sense that they weren't at the root of what I was doing, but they definitely would have checked the things that you sprinkle on top, the sort of inspirations, the things that make you think oh I can do this as well, I can do this, or I can try this, or I can, they gave you, they made you see that you wasn't, you went in a vacuum and that there were things that you could try, but my influences as a writer would be my grandmother who would tell me stories, really surreal, weird shit that she would just make up on the spot, that was really interesting, and I grew up listening to Calypso, I think Calypso was the first, probably one of the first sort of revolutionary responses to slavery and colonialism was the Calypso, these guys in the Caribbean in the 1800s that were using language to fight against enslavement in a very witty and clever way, which became the Calypso, that is a revolutionary act, to find a way to speak about a slave master in a way that sounds funny, but when you listen to it, there's a message of revolutionary action in there, in the same way that you have, I mean I'm kind of going everywhere now, but black American spirituals do the same thing, go down Moses and steal away and you know, swing down sweet chariot, they're revolutionary coded songs that are inviting people to take action, and Calypso is a similar thing, it does that, so that was an inspiration for me, the Calypso, but it's sort of surreal, the surrealism, the wit, the fun of it and then I was really influenced a lot by surrealist writing, like Amos's heir from Martinique Ted Jones, African-American surrealist poet, I was really interested in black surrealist, absurdist language poets, you know, Bob Corfman, who is this amazing mixed race poet from New Orleans, Jewish mixed race poet from New Orleans, who for a long period of his life didn't write anything down and was just, would just recite poetry, really interesting, [Music] When I'm writing music anyway, I just play whatever comes, and then it's a bit like painting lots of layers, because I love the idea of big orchestras, right, and if I had all the money in the world, I would have a big orchestra and it'd be Anthony and Jermaine and the other vocalist up front, and I would either be the conductor or just playing a little instrument at the side, but I love big arrangement, I love using strings, horns to play melody lines, I love using the voice to almost be a string instrument, I'm a member of the orchestra, so I didn't really set out to try and play two or three fast songs, slow songs, a couple of love songs, a couple of, you don't know where you, the way I compose, I don't know where I'm gonna go, and often I go too far and I've got to roll back and go, "Mmm, I put too many instruments on that, I need to just strip it back to what is the real core of what's being said here, what am I actually trying to communicate?" So I wouldn't say that any of the tracks are particularly linked, but what I did say to Anthony and all the vocalists I worked with was, "Look, dig deep into your mind and try and write something that represents your sense of place in this world." And also, you know, what is it you want to say about systemic racism? And for some, that was more of a struggle than others, so Percy Pea, you haven't really done a political with a small pea record before, he was a rapper, did his thing and he talked about what it was like to live relatively poor upbringing, but to then overlay that with his view of systemic oppression was a struggle for him, you know, he didn't send me the lyrics for about a year, they came, I was happy, I was really pleased with what he'd done. So each track had its own evolution, I wouldn't say I've got a formula really, I don't start by playing the bass always, although obviously that's my main instrument, but for me there has to be a strong mood from the outset and then I go with that mood, but that mood might change because I might spend the whole week doing a track and by the time I've got to the weekend I'm actually a really good mood and that positive feeling starts to weave into the latest stage of the track. What I'm trying to say is there isn't a formula, there's not one way of doing things, the song speaks to you, especially when you put lyrics on it, it really tells you what the music should be. "No prayer can hold your house when it's time to fall." There's something will rule about the architecture of oppression, both part one and part two. There's a role, realness and authenticity in that, in those songs that can't create. There's a little experience that AI won't understand and there's a feeling in those songs and if it's not just in the words from spoken artists, it's not in the instruments that are being played, it's in the voice that you hear being singed, you hear the pain, you hear the struggle, you hear the joy, you hear all of those emotions in all of those songs and that's something that they make up or create. You can play, so Anthony will know this from rehearsing for a show, sometimes you play best when you're in a rehearsal room as opposed to in front of a crowd because there isn't the pressure of having to perform or somebody looking at you or any distractions and actually, especially with music where you've got, the rhythm is quite important and the groove and the swing. I think swing probably is the most important thing, you have to feel it and it's hard to put into words but when I'm playing with Malcolm, the drummer of play with, as long as I've known, Anthony if not a bit longer, 28 years now, we both can anticipate each other's next move and so our subconscious is listening to his subconscious but then when we're in the present, we're also saying to each other, oh you're slightly behind the beat there or can you just be a bit more ahead and sometimes that can make you angry because somebody's telling you that what you're doing is not good enough but what so long as you focus on the end goal which is to create something that really does a lot together, then any criticisms or diversions that you are bothered by, you just really focus, as bass player and drummer, we call it the one and James Brown used to call it the one which is, you know, you hit that beat together. I think there's a magical element to at least the writing poetry because you are using materials, the material of the poet is what everyone uses, words, everyone uses words, everyone that's speaks and has the ability to speak, we're using the same tools and the musician as well, you're using the same tools as everybody else, you've got a certain amount of possibilities, I'm not sure musically how that works but I'm sure you're using a particular scale or you're using a series of scales that is available to everyone but you're able to craft something out of that which is uniquely your vision or your voice and I think that's the spiritual act in itself, you're creating something that transcends, is quite transcendent and has the ability to move people, to make people weep, to make people happy but you're using the same tools as everybody else and how are you doing that, that is mystery, that is a mystery, no one can really describe, I mean Jake couldn't tell you how, you know, how exactly do I put these notes together that makes in this minor key or whatever that makes you feel this particular thing, he can't explain that, it's just a magical process, I can't explain a lot of stuff that how the poetry works, it's a magical process that you get from devoting a lot of years to your craft, I think, I always remember this quote that I heard Tony Bennett the singer, the American singer say one time in an interview, he said it takes 10 years to become a consummate artist, so you got to work at whatever craft it is, whether it's bass playing bass or singing or writing poetry, you got to work at it for 10 years before you can get to a point where you might even mastering it but you feel that you can do it, you can definitely play bass or you can definitely write poetry and at that point it's really about moving outwards into the world and spreading, spreading it out, so that's how I see it, I don't get too tied up in the sort of esoteric thing, I think it's all tied to, the spirit is tied to work, the spiritual is tied to the work that you do, you have to put the work in and the working, working and working at a thing, eventually the universe will give up its secrets to you, I'm sure you, you know what I mean, you work at something, I mean, Amiri Baraka, American poet, African American poet has, actually no, it's not him, this is an African proverb that he quotes one time but it's, anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough, you know, that's what it is and if you love the music like Jake and I does, it will give up its secrets and you will be able to harness the power of the thing because you love it. 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