“I think that’s what music is all about. It’s something that naturally lives within daily life. Not about whether you’re good or bad at it. It’s about having feelings inside—wanting to share them, wanting to sing, wanting to enjoy.”
When I was creating the RIP Papi page, these words came to mind.
And it made me think all over again.
When did music become a commodity, a consumable object?
In Cuba, I used to watch my friends pass around a basket to tourists after playing. I hated that sight. But that’s what it was. Even so, they played in front of tourists, collected money in the basket, and split it among the band. For Cuba, those people lived relatively well and had an income.
I see… Before the Civil Rights Movement, Leonard Gaskin, Grady Tate, Bob Cranshaw—maybe it was the same for them. Of course, I’m sure playing music was a joy for them, too. But it was for survival. For a living.
The other day, I watched an interview with Max Roach.
Well, jazz is, to me, a nickname. To me, it’s synonymous to “nigga” and things like that. That’s not the proper name for African-American instrumental music. It never was a name that we as musicians gave to it. It was a name that just was given to it.
Back in the 1990s, when I was living in New York, I sometimes went to the Village Vanguard. Because I went alone, I could sit right in the front row for relatively little money to see famous musicians.
There, I would observe the musicians’ behavior and listen to their sound.
One time, looking around from near the boundary line between the stage and the audience, I realized something. There was no real music here.
Maybe this was just music delivered to order for white people and tourists.
Then where can you hear real music?
Before that, what even is real music? To me, it’s something with a living conversation and energy. Especially among musicians—is a conversation happening between them? Enjoying that conversation and feeling that energy was what I loved about experiencing live music.
In my country, Japan, the post-WWII occupation policy included the supply of “entertainment” for stationed soldiers, and Japanese people were taught jazz on the spot. They worked in camps and dance halls, and by interacting with Americans, I suppose they could live relatively comfortably.
It resembles what I saw in Cuba. But the difference is: while the musicians in Cuba and pre-Civil Rights America played their music for white people and tourists, Japan was playing jazz—a music with Black roots—to soldiers from a country they had been fighting and killing each other with just until recently, dropping countless bombs, people who were likely mostly white.
Music, originally, must have been for faith, rituals, and communication among human beings. But nowadays, it feels like something you study at university to sell as a product, something you can’t learn without money, where educational background dictates your career.