Sullivan Fortner
The weeks that preceded this online Before & After were sheer worldwide overload—murders and marches, more deaths and outrage, widening protests, all during a continuing pandemic. Finally, as people kept speaking out, there was a degree of hope; the shared sense of history in the making was everywhere. In the music community, against this backdrop, there arose questions of increasing complexity: What should music be doing in this moment? What activities should musicians be focusing on? When the economic future of the music scene—jazz especially—is so precarious, already limited to online interaction and transaction, how much business should be business as usual? A day-long blackout initiated by the recording industry, intending to draw attention to social rather than commercial priorities, generated as much controversy as support. Many jazz musicians and enterprises strenuously resisted any degree of silencing, calling it an affront to the message of the moment.
The decision, less than a week after that early-June blackout, to hold a public, Zoom-delivered Before & After with New Orleans-born pianist Sullivan Fortner (his first) was motivated by the desire to keep the jazz wheels turning, with a greater awareness of the current social and political climate. Jazz has always been reflective and porous, absorbing and mirroring what happens in the present tense; so was this interactive event, with more than 50 fans logging on. A few posed questions, including one asking who defines the time in a band. Fortner—just back in New York after two-and-a-half months quarantined in Miami—noted how it was everyone’s responsibility to “guard” the time, and that this had a deeper spiritual significance as well.
“In Roy [Hargrove]’s band,” he said, “if something happened in the rhythm section Roy would get mad at me, and I never understood why, because I always thought that it falls to the bass player [to maintain the time]—he’s the only one playing quarter notes and roots the whole time. But he got mad at me, and I think that was his way of saying, ‘You’re not protecting it, you’re riding on top of the time too much.’ It’s about protecting. When I’m playing with people, I protect them, I protect the tune that they’re playing, the time, the melody, the changes. I try to protect them as much as I can.”
1. Barry Harris
“Indiana” (Chasin’ the Bird, Riverside). Harris, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Clifford Jarvis, drums. Recorded in 1962.
BEFORE: That’s Barry. [] Let me hear how he ends it. [] Who was the rhythm section? It’s really amazing to me how he takes Bud’s language and doesn’t recite it verbatim. He puts a different view on it. Bud was more dirty. Barry is prettier to me. Bud is like Monk in that regard—very when he plays. Barry took that hoomph and presented it in such a beautiful, poetic way. There’s something about Detroit piano players, the way the rhythm feels, a little more flowing, like water, whereas Bud is solid, you know what I mean?
