The
music that we play is often compared to that of 40 years ago,
1960s avant-garde jazz stuff: BORING! It's old. It's been done.
People need to move on, but they can't because they're invested
in it. If you practice for years to play something, you can't
just play something else.
The
energy way of playing, though, is the way for us. Fire and energy
is the way, but it has to be with something different.
I
don't want to lose sight of my folk roots and the music I was
inspired by. And the music of my imagination, the music of the
slave brass bands, who I've only seen pictures of. We're not talking
about marching bands; we're talking about bands that used to keep
brass instruments in the shed out back. On Sundays they'd go back
there and they'd play their music on these horns. That's important
music and it's lost. I only have in my imagination how that sounded.
It was free. Just like blues singers down in the Delta - sometimes
they'd sing a 3 beat measure, a 5-bar phrase, stop in the middle,
grunt a little - that's where I want to go. It's the feeling of
that.
What
we do is not exotic. The lifestyle is difficult and at a basic
level it comes down to a way of coping with living. Most of us
who do this music are a little insane, but we have been able to
make this insanity work for us. Probably it was the same in the
past. The difference now is having so many ways in which to communicate.
The crazies are more in touch with one another and don't feel
so alone.
And with Triptych Myth I never feel alone.
Cooper-Moore |
