Vijay Iyer: Soaring Above Their Apparatus
Vijay Iyer (photo credit: Lena Adasheva)
When I chatted with Vijay Iyer Sunday night, we agreed that the world had changed from the time we spoke for the interview below two weeks ago. You’ll see that he alludes to the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, but the mass demonstrations and protests hadn’t yet kicked in. Our main focus was the impact of Covid-19.
What a difference two weeks make.
A quote not featured below, as I pared down a 7,500 word interview down to less than 1,500 words, is very telling: Vijay said that:
I think today I'm gonna make something else. What I would channel in this moment as opposed to a month ago [when he released a collaboration with Mike Ladd called InWhatStrumentals] is something more incendiary or something more about opposition, you know, something more about the human part of it . . .
From Vijay’s lips to the movement’s ears . . .
How are you and your family doing, man, in the midst of this pandemic?
We’re lucky to be so far unscathed and not in harm's way.
What do you feel liking creating considering the toll the pandemic has taken on people?
The toll, yes, but also the way that this toll is differentially distributed. What that means is that human beings have this way of visiting arbitrary destruction on one another in ways that we've known for a long time, but we’re witnessing it in real time. And I guess this week of all weeks is like often happens year after year when the weather gets hot. We start suddenly being witness to more and more instances of police violence on black people. . . .
It all points to the fact that we’ve been allowing ourselves to thrive in a system that is like a month away from disaster. How do we let ourselves gamble for this long with systems that don't protect us? I feel we have to focus on each other in a radical way; we have to reorganize these systems around care rather than around profit.
Henry Threadgill
Tell us about some conversations you’ve been having with other jazz artists of note about what’s happening out here.
I was talking to Henry Threadgill recently. I'd been hearing the sentiment, echoed all week long, that we live in two Americas. He said that also. Coming from him, that was different: he's aware of what's happening in the world, but he doesn't get bogged down by it. To hear him sort of enraged and then say that this is where we are: we live in these two Americas. Is that something that can be mended? I am not sure. I’m honestly not sure.
In the ideological divides underlying what’s called the “culture wars” I think at times gender and class trump race. What do you think?
In many ways you’re right. It’s just that there’s an ideological divide around sharing, which seems to trump class. And what it really boils down to is arbitrary aggregates or alliances that human beings will form in order to dominate one another. Race has been one of those things.
The reason for example that people have been tricked into thinking that we should reopen for business [so fast] is that they don't like the idea of certain categories of people having it easy. It's not just that we should all go back to work. It’s that people need to come back to work for me. It’s that mentality of “I’m still above somebody.” There's something about class in there, but it’s less about money than it is about status.
The Reluctant Leader
Let’s talk about leadership. You’re a leader in several capacities: in addition to your academic work at Harvard as a professor and founder of a program, Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry, you lead numerous musical groups and a range of musical projects.
How would you describe your own orientation and stance as a leader?
A writer, about 6-7 years ago, wrote an article about me. His working title for it was “The Reluctant Leader.” [laughter] I follow what feels to me like the need. I take on projects because they feel necessary. Somehow, in my gut, there's some sense that the world needs this. I need to do this because it doesn't exist yet. Usually, it’s some kind of intuitive flash of necessity. From that, a lot of things follow.
The other thing I’d say is that the reason that I would embrace that phrase, reluctant leader, is that it's not really about me, ever. It’s usually about some aggregate of people who are trying to do something that matters, that I happen to be a part of. Maybe it’s me and one other person or maybe it's me and 19 other people, but it’s really about harnessing the power of the collective or power of the ensemble.
Ensemble is a nice word because that has to do with people having different functions, different roles and different kinds of contributions in quantity and kind. I also think of what Wadada Leo Smith said about the term “creative musician.” He will define a creative musician as someone such that if you replace them in the ensemble, the music is different.
Who are some great leaders you’ve worked with?
Wadada, Roscoe Mitchell. I learned a great deal from both of them. It’s something about holding space for others, which you can do in an unassuming way that doesn’t draw attention to yourself first. You don't have to be self-congratulatory about it because then the reward is the impact you have on others.
So, giving others space to flourish and realize their imaginations, space to experiment and even to fail, and then to try again and help them get back up and try something else. For me, when I was apprenticing with other musicians in my 20s, a big part of it was like “Wait, they're letting me do this?” They’re letting me get up there and flail around and not really know what's happening and then find it? With, at times, some gentle or severe feedback. But in a space that was overall safe for me. . . They were able to nurture and guide someone's contributions in a way that they become something new.
You’ve also curated series at places like the Banff Centre and the Ojai Music Festival. How do you approach that?
I’ll bring in people who have not been allowed in before in a way that kind of feels like we're storming the place, but it is a gentle storm. I call it the gentle ambush. You want to highlight what's missing and bring it to the table in a way that changes the conversation—and not be apologetic or half-hearted about it. So, basically, fully realize a vision of what you think the institution should have, or should be, or should embody, until they don't let you do it anymore.
In the 1990s, after you completed your undergraduate work at Yale in math and physics, you originally attend U.C. Berkeley to continue graduate work in physics, while also playing music with Steve Coleman, George Lewis, and others. You ended up getting a interdisciplinary doctorate focusing on embodied and situated cognition in music. What is embodied cognition?
It’s an expanded notion of what cognition is. It’s not just mental representations in an abstract space. It's the way that everything we experience physically and sensorially not just influences, but structures and forms the working of the mind. I guess the easiest way to put it is the brain is in the body. Therefore, the way we learn is through experience in the world. And another way of putting is that what we do with our bodies is a form of knowledge.
So, what does that mean about music? Well, first, that music comes from us or through us, we could say, in a way that’s made of human action. Music is made of human action. For example, what rhythm is is the sound of bodies moving in time, and how we respond to that body to body. What pulse is is a way of experiencing the periodic motion of another body.
Groove is a way of communicating that sense of pulse to somebody else, so that they can move as you move. This kind of stuff. Just putting movement and action and the physicality of our bodies first, in a way that's not reductive or simplistic. This also has to do with breath and with dance.
I guess to me it's all connected.
Thank you so much, man. Very last question. What advice would you have for musicians and others struggling in our current environment?
Do you know that game called magnetic poetry where you just have words that you just kind of move around on the fridge?
Yes.
It was a long time ago. It must have been like close to 30 years ago. A phrase came to me through that. It was: You Soar Above Their Apparatus. That's my advice.
Soar above their apparatus?
That's right.
Damn, I like that shit.
Me too. Yeah. That’s real right there.