Matana Roberts

Anupa Mistry

Our next guest, I think she might be unlike anyone who's been on this couch in the past week and a half, Matana Roberts is a band leader, and a multi-instrumentalist and someone who explores the specificities of American experience through music. She's from Chicago and lives in New York, and has collaborated with a range of musicians including Montréal's own Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a band with whom she shares a label home.

Matana Roberts

Yes.

Anupa Mistry

Please welcome Matana Roberts. Welcome back to Montréal.

Matana Roberts

Thank you. This city is like a second home for me.

Anupa Mistry

Tell me about that. Your label, Constellation Records is based here, but you spent quite a chunk of time here.

Matana Roberts

Yeah. I started spending, I've been coming to Montréal for, I don't know, since maybe the early aughts? I started coming to Montréal regularly thanks to, the Suoni [Per Il] Popolo festival. I got to play that very first festival with the band that I was in at the time, called Sticks and Stones. I made a lot of really fast friends. At the Casa [Del Popolo]. It was so easy to make friends, and I just started coming back regularly. Then, I got to this period in New York where, I was spending a lot of time working, trying to make money to afford an apartment that I really couldn't afford, and trying to figure out, how am I going to do this, what am I going to do, blah, blah, blah. Then I got pulled into a research program that was going on at McGill [University] around improvisation and social practice. It's called ICASP, the institute for something, something, something. I can't remember.

Anupa Mistry

Improvisation, Community, And Social Practice?

Matana Roberts

In social practice, thank you, that's it. It allowed me to come to Montréal and come and spend the legal time that I was allowed to be here for months at a time, before going back to the States. I did that for two years. During that time I would workshop some of my music, in kind of like, live rehearsals for people to see, and also still workshop my music in New York, and other places around the world. Don and Ian from Constellation Records came to some of those workshop-ings and became really interested in the music. I couldn't find an American label to put out the particular music that they are putting out for me. I remember they came to a loft show at a space called L'Envers? Is it still here? No, OK.

Audience Member

[inaudible]

Matana Roberts

The Plant. OK, The Plant. I did a lot of things there, and Don and Ian would come to those shows and one of those shows they came to, or workshop-ings, they were like, "Where's the record?" I was like, "Oh, there is no record." "Oh, it'll be our record, we'll put out that record." That's how things began. For me here.

Anupa Mistry

Can you tell us actually a little bit about that program? Because it sounds kind of interesting. You were working with indigenous communities?

Matana Roberts

I was asked to... ICASP had received this grant from the Canadian government to study how improvisation can foster community building, and so they wanted to bring in different people to consult on that project, and I was one of the people that was brought in to do that. It involved setting up a program in the attic space of this... kid's drop-in center called Jeunesse 2000, sorry if I'm saying that wrong. It basically was a drop-in center for at-risk kids, a lot of at-risk indigenous youth, Canadian youth. A lot of at-risk Afro-Canadian youth. Who would just come in after school, and we would sit with them in this attic space, where McGill and also the owners of Casa del Popolo and the Suoni Popolo festival funded instruments to be in that room for those kids.

It was just kind of like that punk rock aesthetic, of like some of my favorite punk bands, they got together and said, “We're going to start a band.” None of them ever played instruments ever in their lives, and they booked their show, like they had their first show like two weeks after they put their band together. It was like that kind of aesthetic and using improvisation. That program, as far as I know is still going. Yeah.

Am I supposed to look at you? Or am I supposed to look at you? I don't, like, who am I supposed to be looking at?

Anupa Mistry

I think you can look at all of us.

Matana Roberts

OK. Because I'm feeling very self-conscious about that. (laughs) Like, who am I supposed to be... [to audience] Hi, hi, hi, hi.

Anupa Mistry

What did you learn from that program, I'm curious. Do you feel like it was effective?

Matana Roberts

What was really interesting for me, because... Well, yeah I do think it was effective, but also my sojourn running through Canada, it was just really interesting how different Canada and America are. Different. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes, people like to group the United States and Canada together because we are on the same continent, but culturally Montréal is very... I remember the first time I went into a grocery store in Little Italy, my French is pretty bad. If I remained here it would be much better. I had gone into this grocery store, and the woman was speaking to me in French, Québécois French, and I wasn't understanding what was going on. She was getting really irritated. I remember feeling like this huge sense of relief, like, "Oh, that's not racism, it's not sexism. It's this whole other –ism, it’s this naturalism that I've never been exposed to."

Dealing in that program I felt like, kids were talking to me a lot about things of that nature. Then the whole, the indigenous issues, the way Canada approaches indigenous issues, they're still not on point but they're way better than in the United States to me. It was interesting to have a discussion with these at-risk youth about how they felt about their communities. Then, on top of that, the whole Afro-Canadian thing is this whole other thing, that's very different from African American-ness. Where I was already coming from a country where, my president looks like my uncle. I have a different, my whole idea about what blackness is, sort of shifted, in a way that it had not shifted for the youth that I had worked with here. A lot of the Afro-Canadian youth, it was so funny when they found out that I had lived in Brooklyn. I lived in Bed Stuy. They're like, "Yeah, Bed Stuy." Like, "What? Canada, Montréal is great!" "Nah, but it's not Brooklyn." "Yeah, it's not Brooklyn, but Brooklyn is not all that." You know?

It was just interesting. Kids teach you a lot about development and how to be and how to notice nuance and how to really involve yourself into something. I got a lot out of it, and there's still a lot that I feel like will come to me much later down the line still.

Anupa Mistry

You were already working as a musician before you came into this program, what kind of pulled you into the academic side?

Matana Roberts

Oh, I'm not into the academic side. I mean, in order to have a career in music, art or whatever you're doing, you have to stick your toes in as many different fountains. I'm not really, I'm not thick in the academia in the way that some people are, because I don't… A lot of my music comes from here [points to heart], and not from here [points to head]. But I am a thinker, and I do like to kind of critically tear things apart. I also, I grew up around a lot of intellectual circles in Chicago. Just very socially aware groups of people. Within that you had a certain sort of intellectual realm. I have the vestiges of that. I like dipping a toe there, but I don't ever want to be completely there. It doesn't feel right for me.

Anupa Mistry

Mm-hmm. You talked a little bit earlier about Constellation saying, "we're going to give you this home for your record." I don't know if everyone here knows much about Constellation, can you tell them kind of, some of the values behind the label?

Matana Roberts

Constellation to me is the little label that could. Their aesthetic so much reflects what I believe in. I don't value the things that I own. I value the things that I can do. I value the things that I can learn. I value what is inside, not so much what's on the outside, and so Constellation is... I don't know quite how to describe them, but just to say their DIY aesthetic is incredibly important to their foundation, and being socially aware is really important to their aesthetic, and it's a very particular work ethic, that to me is actually very Canadian. They have a very "put your nose to the grindstone" kind of work ethic that shows in everything that they do, and I really needed that music to exist in a space where I felt like it would be cared for in that way, and that's exactly what Constellation has done.

Anupa Mistry

Well, let's listen to some music from your first record, which is part of a series, and we'll get into that in a little bit, but let's play a song to give people a sense of...

Matana Roberts

One of the musicians on that record is in this room. She’s sitting right there.

Anupa Mistry

Marie. (cheers)

(music: Matana Roberts – “Libation For Mr. Brown: Bid 'Em In...” / applause)

That is a song called... That's half of a song, a nine-minute track called “Libation For Mr. Brown,” and it's from the first record in a 12-part series called Coin Coin. Can you tell us, before we get into the series itself, can you tell us a little bit about what we're hearing there, what you're trying to do with that piece of music?

Matana Roberts

Well, that's a rearrangement of a very famous poem by the great late Oscar Brown Jr. He's a great poet, musician. He had one of the very first jazz TV shows in the States for a while, and he has a very prolific family of musicians. His daughter Maggie Brown is this amazing singer, but for that record, I got into listening to auctions and how interesting auctions are in that they sound... They're really hard to sing and they sound sort of happy, but things are being sold, and I was going to write my own. Then I came across Mr. Brown's version and I thought, “Oh, I'm going to do that and then I'm going to arrange that and add to it,” so the last segment of the... I don't listen to my own records. I should listen to my own records, but I haven't listened to that record in a really long time and when I talk about all the things you could do to me, I wrote that segment. I extended his poetry. I like group singing. That's something that I actually got from seeing Montréal bands perform like Thee Silver Mt. Zion, for instance, which is one of my favorite bands of all time. This group singing, people singing together, and this idea... Because I actually really don't like to sing. I really... Like, I play saxophone. That's the root for me.

But in terms of dealing with this particular music, which is so narrative based, I just felt like, OK, I just feel like there needs to be singing, and it needs to be community singing, so each segment of the work, with the exception of the last segment, because it was solo, always explores some area of group singing, and that particular poem is not particularly nice to sing, but it's an interesting... It's a joyful... I find a joy in it for what I know about history. I am so obsessed with American history. The history of peoples, I'm so fascinated with where people come from. What's so great about that song is I know that I sit here today because there were men and women who had to exist in these auction scenarios and they survived. Because they survived, I survived and my life is pretty good at the moment, so there's something to be happy and joyful about there.

Anupa Mistry

How hard was it to actually get behind the mic and sing though, put down the saxophone and do this thing you find difficult?

Matana Roberts

I hate singing because, I mean I don't want to, excuse me if I'm offending any singers in the room. I just… I love and I listen to singers, I love great singing. I listen to a lot of pop music, and I listen to a lot of jazz, I listen to all sorts of things. I also wanted my voice to represent how people… What gave me the push is reminding myself that there's a tradition of people just singing to sing. It's not about trained singing, I'm not a trained singer as you can totally hear on that. How people would just sing to get through things. How when you read about like historical tragedies, or for instance I'm thinking about the bombing attempt in France at the football stadium, remember that? If you saw any of the footage of people leaving the stadium, and someone decided to sing the national anthem and everybody started to sing along. It's like moments like that, or you hear the history of the Titanic, when the Titanic was sinking, there were people singing.

Knowing that people in prison, in chain gangs, they sing. I'm really interested in that blurred line between the joy and the pain and trying to bring that together. That kind of gave me the push to go, "OK well I'll do this." I don't want anybody to ever say I'm a vocalist not because I "hate singing" like I said before, but because I know so many talented vocalists. I don't really have the right to say, "Yeah you know that." Because it's not really my area of study, it's just something I'm dabbling in.

Anupa Mistry

You talked a little bit about the story of that piece in particular, can you tell us a bit about the Coin Coin series and how what you're doing on that song fits into the larger narrative.

Matana Roberts

The Coin Coin series is my attempt to bridge a few things, my interest in… I have a really particular interest in the spirit world and contacting the spirit world, and it's something I've dabbled in since I was a small child. Then I stopped dabbling in it for a while, because usually when you do those sorts of things you need a guide. If you don't have a guide it can lead to all sorts of, apparently can lead to states of psychosis and things of that nature.

It became apparent to me that music was actually supposed to be my guide if I wanted to dabble in those things. It was a combination of that, a combination of my interest in American history. I'm so fascinated by how completely fucked up America… Can I curse in here? OK sorry, yeah. I'm so nervous, this is nerve-wracking.

American history is so just complex and complicated, and there were so many different areas of that history that I've always wanted to look at. I couldn't figure out a way to… Working on music and working on a craft, which is what being a musician should be, takes a lot of time. I was trying to figure out a way I could sort of combine things. My interest in history, my interest in the spirit world and my interests in some sense in my own ancestry. I have records of my own ancestry going back now to about 1750, and I just felt like I wanted to share that somehow and how could I push it together.

Anupa Mistry

Can you tell us about Coin Coin the name, and the person?

Matana Roberts

Yeah so Coin Coin is a nickname of a very famous former slave woman that I'm related to by marriage. It's possible that I'm in there by blood, but I don't know for certain. Who became a very powerful landowner in a part of Louisiana called Natchitoches.

She created this whole area where free people of color could live and exist, and have a really incredible standard of life in America during a time period where you wouldn't expect that to be happening. She was the first strong female archetype I'd been exposed to as a child, my grandfather used to call me Coin Coin and I learned about her before I learned about Harriet Tubman and all these people.

I just decided that I wanted her to, the lore of that work to give me my push off into what I was after. Because her story, I heard about it every year of my life, through family, and so I wanted to do something to honor what her story did for me. What her story did do for me is it just gave me a lot of courage to be who it is I'm supposed to be. To be out here doing what it is I'm doing, to be a black woman in the world was very particular to that story to me. Yeah that's who she is.

Anupa Mistry

You're also foregrounding a lot of women's voices in this work and in your own as well. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of that?

Matana Roberts

Ask me that again.

Anupa Mistry

Foregrounding women's actual voices in the music that you're hearing itself.

Matana Roberts

Yeah I am… [pauses] The way history had been passed down to me, the way ancestral history had come down to me was mostly through the women, and I thought that was really fascinating. At the time that I had started this project, I read a book I cannot... I need to look up the author's name again. It was an indigenous American woman, I think she was Navajo, and she had done research on her family: five generations. She was trying to understand the linkages between trauma that existed in each generation.

For instance, in each generation of her family, there was the trauma of alcoholism. How that just went from generation to generation, but how no one ever really talked about it. I found that really fascinating how… The idea of humor, your sense of humor. People, however funny you are and you want to say that you know where that came from, that sense of humor comes from hanging out with your parents or blah, blah.

Where did their sense of humor come from? Where did their parents… It's this through line that you really can… I feel like my sense of humor for instance, there was somebody on a plantation somewhere being funny, that's why I can be funny. Because there is this through line that happens, and so I really wanted to place women's voices in a very particular way. Not forget about the men, but to have some sort of route for myself in terms of how I feel about a "Woman's place in the world" and how I feel about how people connect or not connect, and how people share stories.

Anupa Mistry

How much… 12 parts… This project you embarked on was originally fashioned as a 12-part series.

Matana Roberts

Yes it was 10.

Anupa Mistry

OK.

Matana Roberts

It was 10.

Anupa Mistry

How much [crosstalk] is involved?

Matana Roberts

It was 10 but then I realized… The other part of the project in terms of trying to multitask all these things like my interest in history, my interest in the spirit world and blah, blah, blah. Is that I also wanted to challenge myself as a composer. I was like, "How can I challenge myself as a composer?" I figured that if I looked at these very particular historical segments that kept popping up, just kind of in the ether in my head, I could use each of those segments to work with different types of ensembles. To work with different configurations, work with different mediums. At this point I'm also working with electronics and video, that was the last record. I saw having that segmented work as a way to challenge myself, but I also really love books, I love reading. I think reading is a real privilege. My great-great-great-grandfather… Wait, great-great grandfather didn’t learn how to read until he was 42. Can you imagine? I can't imagine not being able to read. So I called them chapters for that reason. I do have a writing practice. I was just trying to sew all these things together in a way that made sense for me.

Anupa Mistry

How much of the process of putting each of these chapters together is planned in advance or is it completely improvised with every record as you go along?

Matana Roberts

No. The whole framework has been planned out since 2005. The problem is I didn’t realize it was going to take me as long as it's taking. I started 2005 and I had this whole… I was like, "By 2011 I'm going to have a concert of all the segments." That was it. I said, "That’s what I'm going to do and it'll be like my Ring Cycle or something and that'll be it." Each segment I get really in the world of the segment and then I notice new things that I can try and new things that I can do. It also took some time because it took some time to find the right label.

There was a period where I was performing the work without there being records and then had to back track to start over. Everything's been mapped out. It turned into 12 chapters because I forgot that within the 10 ensemble configurations that I have mapped out that I had forgotten the most important thing that I love doing and that’s solo work, solo saxophone work. Just solo material I think is a really important area of exploration as an instrumentalist. I decided to tack on these 2 solo segments that are very representative of me, myself, more so than this history.

Anupa Mistry

How do you see your solo repertoire as different from the ensemble work?

Matana Roberts

The process is similar but the emotive foundation is different. The vulnerability is way different. Even when I listen to that ensemble record and I go, "Oh god. Yeah, I did say those things and I didn’t mean to say that." Like, “Mr. Drummer give our Mr. Bass Player.” What? Where did that come from? That was recorded live in the studio with a live studio audience so too late, it's committed. God. Every time I hear that it's just like, "Who was that? That was not me." That was me. Chapter three for me is just incredibly personal in a different kind of way. I feel like the solo records have a different sense of vulnerability.

I don’t have a cold. I have a bad allergy reaction today. Long story.

Anupa Mistry

You talked a little bit about how with each record you've learned something different. You had this 12 segment series mapped out that is taking more time than you thought and you're learning things along the way, which is obviously a natural thing that’s going to happen. How much has the process of putting each recording together changed?

Matana Roberts

It's bloomed into this whole other… I'm not in a hurry but it's bloomed into this whole other thing. The third chapter allowed me to explore making more visual artwork. I started making more visual artwork, working with more video. I had my first exhibition of my artwork this year, which was a big deal for me. I never imagined that I'd be able to have a toe in that world but now I have a toe there and that’s interesting. It allowed me to… Just my writing style has gotten richer. I'm really excited working on this next record how my sense and intuition and depth are… They still need a lot of work but they're changing. They're going somewhere else.

Anupa Mistry

How do you hone your intuition?

Matana Roberts

That’s such a hard question. How do I hone my intuition?

Anupa Mistry

How do you… Yeah. If you say your intuition needs work, what does that look like?

Matana Roberts

Intuition is about a certain sort of self-confidence and belief in oneself. It's a really hard thing for artistic people to plug into and to understand that it is your birthright. If you are a creative person and you… We as creative people, we see the world with a third eye. There's a third eye in which we see things. There's a different reach of which we go after things. There's a different way in how we think about ideas. That has a lot of to do with how you utilize your intuition. I think it just takes practice, just practice. The most important word of all time, the most important word of all time for creative people, it takes a lot of failure. I love failure. Failure is awesome. It's just like… I'll tell you, when I had to put together… God. The word 'like' is in my language. That’s a very American thing, “and like, and like, and like, like, like.” I've got to get rid of that.

When I put together the first record, when I finished the score and I was like, "OK, I'm going to do this but this score looks crazy. Who's going to take me seriously with this?" It bloomed into this whole other thing that I didn’t even imagine at the time would happen. That’s a moment that I was able to hone my intuition and knowing that when you as a creative person do something with intention, intention and also humility and just some sort of thankfulness to not some sort of higher power but just like the universe. You're being used as a channel to communicate some really precious information. Once you settle in there, there's no limit on what you can do or there's no restriction. There's only restriction if you think there's restriction.

Anupa Mistry

How much of your… when you’re talking about this actually being quite mapped out and you knowing the different ensembles that you want to work with, so in the actual process of recording or performing this music live, how much of it is improvised or just a composition?

Matana Roberts

It's a mix. I like reading music. I enjoy reading music. I'm not great at it but I'm good enough to do… I've worked as a freelance musician in many different capacities in terms of studio work and side woman on different types of records and all sorts of things. I enjoy reading music. I spent a lot of time learning how to do it. The compositions are a mix of western notation and also a mix of what is called graphic notation. I use a lot of graphic notation, which is pictures and drawings and sometimes words. Chapter 1 was actually a game, a convoluted game piece. I like to use a lot of different techniques within and then some improvisation. I don’t really enjoy for myself just completely improvised sets of music.

Anupa Mistry

Can you describe the graphic notation a little bit more? What kind of images?

Matana Roberts

All sorts of things. Photographs. I collect old photographs from the turn of the century. I also have photographs of my family from the 1870s, 1850s. That got me interested in photography and how you can… There's not a single thing, there's not a single image that you cannot look at in this room and not figure out some way to turn it into sound. You cannot. There's not a single thing I can see where I'd be like, "Oh, yeah. What would that be?" It's like a descriptive process of there's a cup of water, the cup of water is in a glass, and the glass is reflective, and the reflection is showing light, and the light is blooming here. There's so many different ways in which you can navigate that musically. Also, the history that I use in the pieces, there's a lot of... There are layers in those scores that you would only know if I told you they were there in terms of certain years being turned into sounds. You can take the year 1827, and, then, you can look at that and go, "OK. 1, 8, 2, 7." You can look at those as notes. You know what I'm saying? There's so many different ways.

I am all for outside of the box thinking in that way, but you also have to be very careful how you explain that to other musicians, also. Doing this work has also been a practice in trying to make sure that I get better at being able to communicate that to people. Then, when the improvisation comes in, what I love about it in these pieces is it allows for the individuality. Improvisation is a very personal, individual thing, and it allows for the personality and the individuality of the improviser to come through, where you don't always get that in the written or the graphic scored section.

Anupa Mistry

When you first started playing music, you started playing the clarinet, I believe.

Matana Roberts

Yeah.

Anupa Mistry

You were taught to read music. When did you make the mental shift like, "This is not the only way I need to make or play music," because I don't know if that occurs to a lot of people?

Matana Roberts

Yeah. I mean, thank god for music. Thank god for free music lessons in the public school system. That was how I was able to get free music lessons. Music was the only thing that sort of made sense when I was a kid trying to figure it out, but I was still that kid, for any band or orchestra nerds in here, I was still that kid who was always sitting next to the other kid and kind of looking at the other kid while I'm trying to look over here to play music, you know, sort of thing. I remember that change. That was like fifth grade, and it was a band director. Her name was Mrs. Rogers, and she saw me doing that, so she stopped the whole band. She was like "OK." We were playing the "1812 Overture," and she was like "Alright. Clarinets, one by one, I want to hear you play those four measures." Then, she got to me, and of course I couldn't play it. She yelled at me, "You've got to practice. Practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing." I went home that week. I was so embarrassed to be so pushed out like that that I practiced every day, and then I went back, and then she did it again, and I played it perfect. It was like, "Right. So that's what it takes."

When I got further down the line, there were just certain things about music that I still didn't understand from a visual standpoint, from a western standpoint, but I understood it from like colors or like a different combination of numbers. Then, when I went to college, I had some mean teachers who constantly told me I didn't really have much to offer musically and that I needed to find something else to do. My favorite was, "The only way you're ever going to get a gig is you're going to have to marry a musician." That was awesome. That was the ‘90s. Yeah. It was like, "Right." It's like, "No." My compositional style kind of came from trying to say, "No. I can make music any way that I want to make as long as I believe in it."

Also, I was in Chicago at that time, and I was exposed a little bit at that time to The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians with people like Fred Anderson, Nicole Mitchell, David Boykin, Josh Abrams, who wasn't in the organization but played with a lot of AACM people. Those people were doing really amazing... They're all really amazing thinkers. I was exposed to that a little bit, and, then, within my own family environment, I was just always told that I could do anything I wanted to do and that there's no one that can tell me... They can say, "Oh, you can't do it like that," but they can't tell me that I can't do it. I think it was just a combination of people, places, and things, and I owe... It's a long list of people that I owe thanks for that.

Anupa Mistry

Let's listen to another piece of music. This is from the second chapter of Coin Coin. This is a song called "The Labor Of Their Lips".

(music: Matana Roberts – “The Labor Of Their Lips” / applause)

That's quite different from the first piece we heard.

Matana Roberts

Yeah. That's very different, and what's so interesting about that section is it sounds very improvised, but what's happening during that entire section is there's a series. Each of the scores... I really should start loading the scores back up online. There are bits and pieces of the score on an old Flickr page that you can find on my website. There's a series of different cues going on throughout that entire section. There are horn lines that are going on that the musicians know to listen for, that they're supposed to go into certain ideas, concepts. There's some conduction.

I was really influenced by the great late Butch Morris, a New York musician who formed this idea called conduction, a way of conducting improvisers. I used to play in a band for maybe four or five years in New York called Burnt Sugar that used conduction, and I use some conduction in my own music. There's conduction going on where I think there's like a thumbs up, thumbs down that means a particular sort of groove. There's body language. There's a body movement that I do that cues the band to go into a certain feel. Then, when I do the opposite of that body movement, they move out of that feel. Everyone that plays that music, they have to have eagle eyes. It's really fun for me, and I think it's really fun for them.

Then, the opera singer's actually singing music that was written by my great-great grandfather, great-great-great grandfather, the man that I told you didn't learn how to read until he was in his forties. He taught himself how to read by copying snippets from The Bible and placing it on staff paper and trying to teach himself how to write music. He made about a hundred of those compositions. He even wrote copyright on them, because he knew. He knew, he knew. I used that music in that piece, and that's what the opera singer is singing. It's like a collage. I call it panoramic sound quilting, because I'm quilting all these different elements together within also the western notated music that they came out of before they went into that.

Anupa Mistry

Can you talk more about panoramic sound quilting? How did you hit upon this phrase to describe what it is you're doing?

Matana Roberts

It's so interesting. It was a phrase I came up with a long time ago, and I figured people would forget about it. Now that the work has solidified in a certain way people ask me about it. I don't mind talking about it. At first I said, quilting, why did I choose quilting? My Mississippi grandmother grew up in a family, one of 12 sharecroppers, and the family used to quilt together. She would talk to me about what that process was. It really boils down to a strategy of layering. I feel that's what I do with the music. It's a strategy of layering and sewing different pieces together to come up with these full-length scores.

Anupa Mistry

When you're talking about layering you're not just talking about music, you're talking about a kind of narrative. In some ways it's mixed media. In this last record you use video.

Matana Roberts

It definitely is mixed media. I like craftwork, I like making things with my hands. If I'm not making sounds on the saxophone, I like the active feeling, texture, and ripping and cutting and gluing and piecing things together. The way my grandmother used to talk about quilting, it was like, “Where did the quilt come from?” She would say it would just be scraps from everybody's clothing that they had outgrown over the year. You have these scraps that seem like these throwaway things, but then when you sew them together it creates this magnificent array of color, design, and pattern. I think I'm kind of after that a little bit.

Anupa Mistry

You've referenced your family quite a bit in this conversation so far. You've also referenced your fascination with American history in general. How do you see the two linked?

Matana Roberts

I'm so thankful to come from the history that I come from. I'm so fascinated by these themes that no matter what your cultural background is, your bloodline has explored these themes of pain and joy and sadness and complete, utter misery and amazing happiness, trauma. I'm so fascinated by the human experience, what it means to be human and the different kind of terrains that we explore throughout. My hope was this music would allow people to remind themselves that they're actually not that much different from the person sitting next to them, because we have those commonalities.

Personally, I thought that dealing with the history and dealing with American history and coming from a particular cornerstone of African-American history, I thought America is finally ready to talk about these issues. The president looks like my uncle. Forgetting that he barely got voted into the White House, it was 49%, 51% or whatever, and not like he's been the greatest president in the world, but we don't need to talk about that. He's represented a particular kind of progress where it was, “OK, we're ready to talk about difference in America in a different way.” At this point though I feel like that was quite naïve in my part. I just took your question somewhere else. Sorry. I'm a little spacey today.

Anupa Mistry

Why was it naïve?

Matana Roberts

Because Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Tamir Rice (applause). God, it's like a Twilight Zone right now. I don't understand completely what is happening at this time. I feel like it's representative of a previous time that I actually have talked about in the music because I thought, people will listen to this music and they'll be able to see beyond ideas of race and difference and gender and class. They'll be able to see this humanness that I'm trying to get to. No. We are still a mess. That is something that is consuming my thoughts in regards to the direction of the music right now.

Anupa Mistry

I think a lot of times when people put out music that may touch on whatever is going on in the world, often people want to take a step out and say, “But I'm also not trying to be political, I'm not trying to make a statement.” You're clearly saying here that you had a bit of intent to educate. That you want to be attached to a justice narrative in a way.

Matana Roberts

I didn’t… That's the problem with artists talking about their own art, right? There are things that we don't see even when we talk about it. That's just common. The justice narrative for me just comes from my upbringing. I was raised in a really political environment, this constant reminder of history, so it sits there. I did really want to create the work to educate people. I thought that by focusing on these themes that were very personal to me, as a New York-based artist at the time, people would be able to see that...

I don't have an angle. I'm not trying to get one over on people or whatever. I just try to deal with something, explore something, that is really personal to me, and they'll be able to relate to that. I know that when I play the music in places like Poland for instance, Warsaw... The most amazing thing about playing for Polish audiences is oftentimes people will come up to me after those shows and they'll share stories with me about their own humanness or their own family, that shows me that they got something from it that went beyond how it's being placed.

It used to upset me a little bit that people wanted to, when the music came out, it was like, "She's exploring history but it's so political." What? I've actually been turned down for some things because people say it's too political, it makes people feel bad. OK. “I'm sorry it makes you feel bad. History is awesome. I'm not trying to...”

I guess as an African-American looking person who's, I'm so many things, I took all these DNA tests this year actually. I’m so many things. As this person I do feel particular kind of responsibility... I stand on the backs of so many people that never got a chance to express themselves. Everybody in this room can say something like that. I particularly feel, because of what I know about American history, I know that to be true, so I feel a responsibility to make sure I am really reaching and sharing the hard parts, because the hard parts are where you have the real meat and the real transformation.

Anupa Mistry

This kind of message music is making a comeback, certainly in pop music, I think within the last year or so. You mentioned that you listen to some pop music. Do you have any thoughts on whether what people like maybe Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, it doesn't have to be them in particular, but what pop music is doing with message music. Is it effective at all? What are precedents for it as well?

Matana Roberts

It's just so interesting, because to be a black person in America means to pay attention. I'm a pop culture junkie. I pay a lot of attention to pop culture because it informs how people seem to see the black body. It seems to inform… Pop culture informs how police officers are approaching harmless black men who are in their car or pop culture informs how this cop responds to Sandra Bland in her car saying, "It's my car. I can do...” I think she was smoking or something and she said, "You know, it's my car. I can do what I want to do in my car." Pop culture informs that so I do pay a lot of attention to that.

Message music, I just feel like all the music that I've ever listened to, that I've ever loved from Wu-Tang to Johnny Cash, it's all message music to me. What's happening now, I mean, Kendrick Lamar is a really important figure, I feel like, in music in general in terms of the voice he's trying to give. I like to say Beyonce is like... Everybody has a part to play and everybody's doing what it is they can do and I feel like she's doing what she can do, and it's been really interesting how, watching musicians who have to be brand conscious, how they move. The aesthetic that she's sharing now isn't something new, but it's an aesthetic that she had to pull back for a while. Now, she's so established she can do whatever she wants to do. It's fascinating and interesting in that way.

My fear is that what I see happening is the message music is pushing backwards sometimes to an intellectual era that we've already been as a people. That's the thing that troubles me. Some of the language that I hear in the Black Lives Matter movement, for instance. I'm a lone soldier, I'm a lone wolf person, but I do support that movement but some of the words that I hear are words that I also heard in the Black Power movement that my parents were a part of and just trying to figure out, "OK, where did we like make a transition and where is the new language for how we talk about difference and why are we still talking about like...” I hate the word white supremacy, white supremacists. Those words are not in my vocabulary. I don't ever want to even voice them or say them. They speak to an earlier time for me where the Klan burned down my great-grandmother's house and murdered her father and all these things. That's what I think about when I think of white supremacy and white supremacists. What's going on now is way more uglier than that. (applause) Thank you. I'm really hungry for new language in terms of how we talk about these ideas.

Anupa Mistry

Can you elaborate maybe what you mean when you say, “It feels uglier?”

Matana Roberts

It's more sophisticated. Who is that guy who has the... The comedy guy with the afro, Kamau Bell…

Anupa Mistry

W. Kamau Bell?

Matana Roberts

Yes, W. Kamau Bell. He was talking about how subtle racism has become. I've had these conversations, too, where your friends don't even realize that that was a really racist moment that you just experienced. It just completely went over their heads. Racism has a new hidden face that I just don't even know how to, and it's being festered and fostered by people like Donald Trump. Though I appreciate Donald Trump's audacity. (laughs) He's so audacious. It's just, "Wow." He really just lives in his own alternative reality. It made him a billionaire being in this alternative reality but it's feeding violence and it's feeding fear. Racism really just comes from fear. That's what it is. Any -ism is really about a fear and there's just a bubbling under the surface in America right now with that.

Anupa Mistry

How does this bubbling under the surface, the names that you mentioned of these people who've been murdered by police, has that disrupted the work that you've been doing all along?

Matana Roberts

It pisses me off. I know some policemen who are actually wonderful people. I'm just going to say that before I continue, but I have met some incredible people in law enforcement and I've appreciated what they've been able to do in certain communities. But there's something really, really, really rotten that is just festering and it makes it hard for people like me to exist and not have to deal with being triggered all the time by... I mean, and it's a combination of not only these murders but then the media... You could get PTSD from Twitter alone as a black person in America, as far as I'm concerned. It's just like, "OK. Who's the next hashtag?” And blah, blah, blah. Or as a poor person or as all these different things.

I want to have progressive conversations about difference. I want to have conversations in America that go beyond the dichotomy of black and white. I thought we dealt with that. No, we have not dealt with that, but that's the naivety I was talking about. I had come to this assumption of, "Yes." No, as soon as Obama was in the White House, the trolling of the Obamas is so intense. It represents a particular… It's mostly Trump supporters. It's this fear and the work that I'm dealing with is sometimes really painful to deal with in the first place. To have to stack that on top. It's slowed down my process a little bit, but it's also given me more to think about and more problems to solve. I like problem solving.

Anupa Mistry

Let's listen to something from the third chapter. This is a song called “Dreamer of Dreams.”

(music: Matana Roberts – “Dreamer Of Dreams” / applause)

Again, another very different piece of music. In some ways I guess it, to me anyway, it sounds like the most contemporary out of all of the things that we've listened to. Is there a linear progression to the series?

Matana Roberts

Yeah there is, but I've kind of jumbled it up. I mixed it up a little bit. If I had put things in order in the way that I wanted to, this chapter would have been the first record. Then the first chapter would have been the second record, and so on. Some people really hated this record. This is my favorite in the series. It's the one I can really listen to and get into myself without hearing all the things that I might have done differently in all the different roles I was playing in the other records.

Anupa Mistry

What was different about making this record?

Matana Roberts

Well, it's completely... It's all overdubs. That's one. All the process sounds are coming from the saxophone. A lot of people who have written about the music, they don't hear that. It's not really explained clearly enough in the liner notes. Everything is rooted from the saxophone, with the exception of the vocals. It just has a... I wanted to create kind of like a fever dream of sound. It has that for me.

Anupa Mistry

This, it was also about water.

Matana Roberts

Yes. I became really... The last four or five years in New York, I became really fascinated with the water system and started doing more things with water in the city, which gave me a completely different... I imagine I could do that in Montréal as well. I just, like I learned how to kayak, and I was doing like kayaking on the Hudson. I learned how to surf, and I was surfing in the Rockaways. I was doing all these different things, and understanding water gave me a new kind of sense of relief. When you're on a boat in the middle of the water somewhere in New York City, you feel a certain sense of space that you don't feel normally, like being on land.

In combination with that, I started reading this diary of this 1860s ship captain from England. Slavery was banned in England five years earlier than it was in the States. There was this guy, Captain G. L. Sullivan who was put in charge by the Queen, or whomever gave him his order, I can't remember, to intercept these illegal slave ships that were going to the West and to take the slaves back to Africa. He kept a journal of that time. Within that book were some of the very first photographs of enslaved Africans, from that slave trade, that have ever been documented.

I started reading that, and then within that time period I moved onto a boat. Water became this whole sort of thing and this whole new way of understanding not only music, but also understanding life as, you know, when you look at a... I was looking at the water the other day. The water is sometimes still. The water sometimes has waves. The water sometimes has really violent waves. The water sometimes has like kind of really kind of milky waves. The water then is still. That to me is what living life is very much like. It's like it's this, just this movement through, this movement through, and you have to just wait for those moments when things are still again, and you have that for a while. Then you've got to go like that again. Then you got to go like this again. Then you're back here again. I found it very therapeutic for my artistry.

Anupa Mistry

You've talked a lot about history, reading historical documents, your own family history, your experiences being in the world, moving in the world, kayaking, that kind of thing. Where does digital inspiration kind of fit into what you do?

Matana Roberts

Well, I mean the first digital collages to me were like the glory years of hip-hop. You know what I'm saying? The ’90s hip-hop that I came up around. Those were... They were the urban collages to me that I was heavily exposed to while also listening to a lot of classical music and a lot of jazz and a lot of just all these different sorts of things.

Anupa Mistry

What were you listening to, like in terms of…

Matana Roberts

I don't know. I mean like De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, East coast stuff like Nas and again Wu-Tang. The West coast, I've always loved their audacity. That's vibe, but I've never been able to quite... Sonic, like the sonicness of West coast hip-hop I always found really interesting. Just the sample aesthetic in terms of my generation. That is a big thing. If you've ever been with somebody who's like a real bona fide sample crate-digger. I'm talking about like a bona fide crate-digger who's just like in the crates, and just really trying to find that thing and obsessing over like two bars of recorded sound. That's really something amazing to be around.

I feel like my introduction to the digital came through that first. Then went in other direction where I was exposed to many amazing electronic artists like Maryanne Amacher, Miya Masaoka, Marina Rosenfeld, Annea Lockwood, 20th century composers who were working with electronics. I... The great George Lewis, trombonist and scholar from Chicago who is now based in New York, also very much in the digital realm and the sort of the computer world, though computers have been a part of my life all of my life. That's a whole other discussion.

Anupa Mistry

I also wanted to kind of talk a bit about that… about that exactly. We were kind of emailing back and forth, you were talking about the prevalence of computers in our lives and earlier you mentioned Twitter can give people PTSD. How do you... You're synthesizing so much information, something that you might want to incorporate into your music, even, or to your art practice. How are you protecting your brain?

Matana Roberts

I'm struggling. I think we're all struggling, but I try to find different ways to operate. The computer, my family had access to some of the early versions of computers because they're involved in academic communities and are revolutionary. Where knowledge, revolution was about knowledge. They saw the computer, the possibilities of the computer and the digital world, as like a progression of revolutionary ideas in terms of how... This is years before there was the Internet. Just how computer communication could spread revolution. Now in the 21st century, I try to look at the computer and the Internet, for instance, as an arts person, as a resource, I see it. I try to figure out games of which I can play with it where one, I'm learning something, and two, I'm spreading something, and three, I'm connecting and creating community, because that's really what it should be about.

I struggle right now with different social media platforms, for instance. Trying to figure out what is useful and what is not useful. I find Twitter really useful for just spreading ideas, but I also find Twitter can up your personal snark. Oh my god. Your Twitter could just be complaints from your whole day. Your Twitter can up some egocentric stuff. Your Twitter could be about what you ate today, what you bought today, who you hung out with today. Your Twitter can be your sort of, you want people to know just how conscious you are. I struggle with this, so I'm trying to figure out a way... For a while, I was using it as a way to connect. Black Lives Matter supporters and Black Lives Matter people together in terms of, you know, how people will post like, "These protesters need bail here.” Blah, blah, blah. There's all sorts of things you can do like that.

Now, I'm trying to use it as a resource for mining the Internet for ideas about creativity. I found that the political stuff, and I still place... I can't help it, I watched the Vice President debates last night horrified. I could not, just not say something. I try to see the Internet as just different corners of being resourceful and trying to place things. Like Instagram, for instance. I see Instagram as kind of like a game. I've quit Instagram like four or five times. I'm back on it again. That's like the psychotic thing. These tools, these things that are supposed to bring us together are actually acting like drugs where they're upping, you get on them because they up your dopamine levels, right? You get off Twitter. Then, as an artist, sometimes if you get too involved in that whole world, you'll get off the computer feeling like you creatively accomplished something, when actually, you did absolutely nothing. (laughs) You can have a whole career, you can like, build a whole... It's like, what was that game that people used to play? Second Life. It's like you can build like a whole second life between Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, all these things.

I'm just trying to figure out different ways in which I can use them to create community and that's how I'm trying to protect my brain. I am, actually, failing. I said I was going to announce today that I'm about to just quit everything because it's also taking away from art time. I have to make stuff. I make stuff. These tools, though they are resourceful, they typically are also marketing tools. We're kind of in this marketing zone, marketing language, and I find it really, really troubling and I worry about little girls and boys growing up now who are really ensconced in selfie culture and how damaging that is. I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that. Though, I met a kid the other day who's going to high school online and I wish I could've been her. Can you imagine going to high school online? So you don’t have to deal with all the bullshit.

You have to be careful what you take in. Sometimes on my Twitter, I change the location so that all the things that are trending, I have no idea. Like right now, the location is like somewhere in Eastern Europe, a town that I don't really know anything about. There are no hashtags that are going to come up on the trending to give me a heart attack. (laughs) You know what I'm saying? Sometimes, you have to do that or I have blocks on my computer now. I have a couple different ones that you can get that block you off of certain sites for hours at a time. Also, as an artist, you'll have people who are trying to push you into “promote, promote, promote, promote, promote, promote.” Right? There's a limit there. You have to find different ways of dealing with those things.

Anupa Mistry

You talked about younger people being kind of more ensconced in this world. Do you think, and maybe some of the people in this room feel like that is in inevitable part of what it is they do. They have to be on these networks. Do you see a different way through at all?

Matana Roberts

Yeah. I do see a different way. I think the violinist Mazz Swift, who's a really great musician that I really love, said something to me once about, you know, “You should only do the things that you really want to do. You do not have to do what everybody else is doing in terms of...” If you don't want to be on such and such site or such and such site, you don't have to. I remember when I quit MySpace and how revolutionary I thought, "I quit MySpace and I'm never going back to..." (laughs)

Anupa Mistry

Everyone quit MySpace.

Matana Roberts

Right? Now there's Facebook and there's all these things. The start of my career, I really was about shameless self-promotion. That's the way I survived in New York in the beginning, just kind of like, nobody's going to know I'm out here if I don't let them know that I'm out here. That's the power of the Internet in terms of how it allows you as an arts person to remove the middle people that sometimes, those people who really abused artists, you don't need them anymore. You can get out there and push yourself. There's a limit. You have to be very careful in terms of how it affects your ego, in terms of what you think about yourself, in terms of what people say about you. You don't want to take a lot of that in. You have to be vigilant in looking at those things as a segment of what you do.

I know some musicians and artists who don't participate in that world at all. I think there's a possibility in there. I'm more interested, also, in those zones because my largest fan base is in Germany. What? Germany. You know what I'm saying? Germany is great, but that wouldn't have been possible without the Internet. Other corners of the world, people I know are listening to my music because they write to me, but I can't play shows there. How can I connect with them? Well, I can use the Internet. There are different ways, and then that can get really crazy because we... I had an Internet stalker for a while, and that's a whole other conversation of trolling and all these other things that take up time in your brain that you actually need to be making stuff. I sometimes wonder if the quality of art making is going to go down because we're so distracted with these other things. I don't know. It's tricky, and you just have to... You just have to do what... Again, this thing about instinct and intuition. You have to do what feels instinctually right for you. On the Internet, I read this in a really great book about... God I wish I remember the title. About navigating the Internet world. This author said it's important that you be yourself. It's important that what you place in these spaces, they are true. There is truth behind them, because also, the Internet is going to be... I've actually argued with writers who will say, “Oh I know this and this and this and this about you.” Like, “Oh but that's not true.” “Oh, but it was on the Internet.” What? I'm the person who's telling you that it's not true. He's like, “Well, it's on the Internet.” I'm like, “What? So it's on the Internet.” They're like, “If it's on the Internet, it's public record.” What? But it was a mistake. But it's public record. There are these new zones and areas that we have to explore.

At the same time, I really appreciate how the Internet has allowed people to organize. It's really... I believe movements like Black Lives Matter and other things have happened because we also got to see what happened like with the Arab Spring. You know what I'm saying? Because we had... And these other places where people are fighting and standing up for their people are happening because we've got... We're now starting to see ourselves not just as American citizens or Canadian citizens, or North American citizens or whatever. We are global citizens. We are citizens of the world. That's the exciting thing about digital culture to me.

Anupa Mistry

I think it's time for us to take some questions from the participants, and hopefully, there will be a mic somewhere.

Audience Member

Hello.

Matana Roberts

Hi.

Audience Member

First of all, I just want to preface my question by saying, as a female jazz composer, a trumpet player, someone who wants to do loads of different things like conduct and band aid and write for orchestras and small groups... When I was at music college and people were saying, “You can't do all these things because it doesn't make any sense.” When I felt like I didn't have a place in music, and then when I found out about your music, I then had something to push back at them and say, “Fuck you. Yes I can.” So thank you. (applause)

Matana Roberts

OK, thank you. That warms my heart.

Audience Member

Thank you for being part of me.

Matana Roberts

Thank you.

Audience Member

Gosh I have many questions. I kind of feel like you're here for me, in a weird way. I don't want to be too selfish. (laughs) My first question, how do you think we can use music, particularly jazz and improvised forms, to push, highlight and heal the epigenetic and inherited trauma and systemic oppression that the African diaspora feels? How can we heal and highlight this? I mean, there's people doing it on things like social media, but how can we use art? How do you think we should be doing it?

Matana Roberts

I think it's important to share your trauma. I think it's important to share your stories. I think it's important to bring out the most vulnerable sides of yourself to share with people through your work. I think that heals. I think that not being afraid to just place your voice, and to understand that there are people who cannot speak for themselves. We have a responsibility to speak for them if they so allow us to... I really think that what you're asking about starts at a grass roots level. I think grass roots organizing and setting up shows and spreading your music in that way is more important than trying to find some sort of national platform, or international platform in a sense, because it's these tiny corners. It's the people falling into these cracks. It's people being forgotten about. It's communities being forgotten about. I think being able to take your music into those places does a lot more healing for the overall than having to be concerned about the bigger picture.

I think a lot about the dancer Katherine Dunham. She is a very famous dancer. She decided she was going to open a dance school. She could have opened it anywhere. She could have opened it in New York, all these places. Any major city, and she decided to open her dance school in East St. Louis, Missouri. At that time, East St. Louis was a really incredibly crime ridden place. She saw that these are the places that need the outreach. These are the places that need some sort of service. I think seeing your music and your work as a form of service as an artist is really important. That's what I was going to say about the digital world. I see utilizing these different tools like Twitter or Instagram, all these things as a... You have to think about it as service. When you think about it as service, then it takes it away from you the person and puts it back into that healing space that people need.

I think you have the ability to really spread your music really far and wide, in a way that composers that came before us were not able to do outside of touring. I think that's something that could really be utilized. I think just in terms of the African diaspora, the African American-ness, or just African peoples in the Americas, you have to remember to be an ally. Remember that there's a difference between being an ally and being that otherness. Because sometimes that's the thing that's upsetting people. (applause) Yeah. It's a great question. It's a great question. Thanks.

Audience Member

Yeah. Is it okay if I ask one more thing? Does anyone mind? Yeah, I wanted to ask you about your use of words in your work. I remember one time when I was completely horrified during a jazz degree when I heard someone doing standards and songbook stuff. They sang “Strange Fruit” and they had no connection with the words. They were like, “OK, 1, 2, let's just go.” I don't know if anyone knows “Strange Fruit.” Let’s not talk about heinous. You can go off and look at it yourself and take what you need from that. Anyways, I just was completely horrified. Obviously, jazz can be abstract and programmatic. You tell a lot of stories. Do you feel like you need the words sometimes in order to get your message across, and for it to become more accessible, rather than... Because I know for a lot of people who might listen, they might find the instrumental stuff perhaps esoteric. Do you need the words, do you think sometimes?

Matana Roberts

One of my number one goals is to spread ideas of experimentalism to as many far corners as I can. To bring people in to make it a people's music, where it's not... I don't mind high art stuff, but I don't want to be that person. I want the person who's like into the high art stuff, yeah, maybe to like it as I do the guy that sells lobsters around the corner from where I am in Brooklyn, to the church ladies at the Harlem church I used to walk by when I was at Harlem, when I used to live in Harlem. To… the police officer to the drug dealer. You know what I'm saying? I want everyone to be able to find a piece of something within the sound. I find that narrative or the use of words is really powerful, in terms of giving people something to hold onto while they swim through something that's unfamiliar. Yeah. That's it.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Matana Roberts

Thanks.

Audience Member

Hi.

Matana Roberts

Hi.

Audience Member

It was interesting when you talked about water in your life, because a Chinese philosopher, old Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu, said that human life is like water, and, let it just flow, let it spread. My question is, how do you make your academical ideas, or the view of your society, and make that harmony with your musical stuff, because actually, I studied… I never studied musical stuff, or I never be into music stuff before, and I just studied philosophy and political stuff in school, and I came here, I feel like I am a different person from musicians here, so I feel like, kind of, "Oh, what I'm doing here now?" for a while, but I'm really honored to be here, and I'm so happy with great people now, but I feel kind of strange for few days, so I'm curious, how do you make your ideas on your music, because I have some ideas, and sometimes I have… How can I put my words, my ideas, to that abstract art stuff? Sometimes, I have… Can I say? Sometimes I'm struggle to do that, so I'm curious your opinion.

Matana Roberts

That's interesting. It's… You're talking about how you like separating the abstract… trying to connect the abstraction to the things that can be explained, or how…

Audience Member

Have you tried put your many social ideas, or social views, did you… Have you tried to put on music without words?

Matana Roberts

Oh, yeah. That's the basis of music composition to me, in a sense. Or making. Where you can… You think about a feeling. You think about a certain feeling, and then all of a sudden you think about that feeling, and then you close your eyes, and then all of a sudden you hear a sound. You hear sounds, or you hear a melody, or you hear a lyric, or you hear… It's… That's the abstraction for me, trying to… the self-belief in making something out of absolutely nothing, but you have a springboard, and I see the intellectual ideas as a springboard into the abstraction, and so that's something that's really helped me. I don't know if that really answered your question, though. Thanks. Anybody else?

Audience Member

Hello.

Matana Roberts

Hi.

Audience Member

In line with both questions before, I feel like in improvisational music, there is an element of showing to the audience that you can be free, that you can do whatever you want, because there is no score, there is only you and the other musicians trying to make something out of nothing, and I think that's a really powerful element to it. And I was wondering, what do you think is the place for experimental music in a culture such as ours, where I feel like people are really afraid sometimes to hear something that they might not understand at first, or that may not fit with what they expect a music performance to be like? And how do you deal with, on one hand, being free on stage or free with your composition or whatever, and, like you said, maybe using words to give people something to hold onto? What other methods do you have to balance these two sides of the issue?

Matana Roberts

What are the two methods that I have to balance…?

Audience Member

You said that sometimes, words can help people navigate this unknown sonic territory. Besides that, what other tools do you have to help people navigate your sound world, or whatever, and make them get into the kind of thing that you're doing?

Matana Roberts

I try different things. Sometimes, in live performance, another reason there re group singing in those Coin Coin pieces is because in live performance, I make… I call the audience "witness participants." I wish I had a better… I don't like the "participants" part. I like the "witness." Audience, to me, means more this voyeuristic sort of thing. Witness, to me, means we're sort of all in this together, so one of the reasons there are those group singing things is I often make the witnesses sing with us. Making people sing with strangers is such an amazing thing, even if they're not singing words. Sometimes I just make them hum while I play saxophone. I did that recently in Chicago. I just made them pedal for me, and it's a practice that… Trying to plug into the energy of a space, you should… I think it's important to think about that when you play your music or present your art in particular spaces, you really need to think about the energy of the space, and what's… Because the energy of the space, in terms of improvised music, to me, informs the improvisation, and whereas I see… I don't see… Even "free playing" or whatever… People have said that to me, "Free playing it’s like well...” No, just like, each and every person in here we have our own perception about things and your perception becomes kind of a foreshadowing and a projection of your person. I see improvisation, "free improvisation,” as really composition in real time that's really coming from these different perceptions and it's also locked into intuition, recognizing the energy within the silences. So really, there are a lot of different things that you can do, but that's one of the things that I've done.

Audience Member

Sorry, I know I'm not a participant, but I'm very, very curious about something. You spoke about creating allies among social groups, which I find really, really fascinating, especially amongst people like this. We have, as white people, some of us have the fortune of growing up with people of color and befriending them, and I guess, getting a glimpse into their world, about what they experience, and the kinds of oppression that they're subject to. I'm just really curious how, moving forward, you could recommend how white people can stand in solidarity with people of color, in ways that are beyond media or sociocultural sort of ways?

Matana Roberts

It's such a painful question. That's such a painful territory that, in the 21st century, that is a concern that we have to, we really have to talk out, because it's not where it should be. I think just… It goes back to… It's kind of like a plantation politics for me when I think about it, like stories. You see reflections of… I don't know how to explain this correctly. You see reflections of this past history on this present history, and if you read anything about plantations and how… They used to talk about how the slaves used to really watch and really pay attention to the silent nuances of the masters and the overseers to really get an idea of how the master and the overseer were feeling that day, so that you're always kind of one step ahead, so that you know what's coming or what's going to happen, and I feel like that's something that white Americans… Some, not all, have not had a particular training in, of this being able to really pay attention to the nuance and the silences, and being able to really listen.

I bring that up in terms of having to play an ally. I think one of the most important things you can do is just be there. Be there for your friends that are struggling through this constant kind of media trauma that's happening. Be there to listen and not give suggestions, for instance. Just be there. Show some realm of support that's more in this silence nuanced way that you're one step ahead of what you know is coming, because you know another hashtag is coming. You know what I'm saying? You know it's coming. We know it’s coming, we just don't know who it is yet. Try to be that rock, or that friend that your friend can depend on. That's a really difficult question, because again I find it really painful that anybody would have to even ask, "What can I as a white person do?" The fact that you're even asking that question shows that you’re aware, you know what I'm saying? But the fact that we even have to go in that direction, it's an unfinished tale that is not... I don't know where it's going to go, and so I don't know the best piece of advice to give for something like that, to be honest.

Audience Member

Right, but you brought up a very interesting point about the master slave relationship on the plantation and the reason why I'm asking for myself is on a very micro level, but when we extrapolate this it's really the plantation still exists in a master slave way in America, in a really, really terrifying way.

Matana Roberts

Oh yeah. All the things that you hear people who are putting down “the Black Lives Matter movement,” for instance. All the things that they talk about are the people who are putting down the fact that, "Oh, you know, well, the guy he got, when a cop says 'Get out of your car' you should get out of your car," or, "He looked like he had something,” and, “Oh, and it looks like he had pot in his car. Something in his car,” blah, blah, blah, blah. People don't understand how many cycles of generational trauma led to that particular moment. People don't like to look at connections. It's the same in America when the people who say, "Oh, you know, black people don't need reparations. It's not my fault that there was slavery.” Blah, blah, blah. “Those were my ancestors.” The cyclical, just generational connections of poverty and trauma and racism and all these things just build up on themselves generation after generation after generation. They're all connected and that's a big problem. I like the idea of going back and looking at the plantation, in terms of looking at these hierarchies that we still have in America today. It pisses me off that in 2016 we're having to have these kinds of conversations. Yes.

Audience Member

If you don't mind me interjecting.

Matana Roberts

Go for it.

Audience Member

The first thing you can do. Find the racism inside yourself, eliminate it then find all of the racists that you know or no, no, not all that you know, all of your friends, find and locate what that is. Do history on what that did to us and that's a start. It is true that it's very, very difficult to have that conversation right now, but it's so critical because lynchings are still happening and they haven't... Everyone else is shocked. I'm not. Most African-Americans are not shocked. This is the same that it ever was, it's just now it's almost cynical to us because it's like, "Oh, now you believe us?" Because it's on film.

That's separate. I wanted to field a question to you, sis.

Matana Roberts

OK.

Audience Member

In terms of the youth and in terms of what was happening in our community in terms of music and expression, how do you suggest we combat the larger commercial aspect of music taking the children that are lost, the crack babies, and letting them express the basest ideas and concepts? How do we get them to pick up a horn? Not that you have to answer, but I mean to bring up the ideas. We're in this forum where we have all these young people with this opportunity and how do we get them to express themselves as open as possible? I mean, as an example, you're here and I'm here and we're here, but the fact of the matter is we're the minority and the minority of the minority of the minority. Do you think that there's ever a point that we can survive in our fullness in these avant-garde, new, different, unseen, untracked forms?

Matana Roberts

I mean… I feel like I'm from a generation where a lot of people I grew up with, they might have been in the avant-garde but they left the avant-garde to go into popular music because popular music, you can make some money. If you grow up poor, it's nice to be able to make a little something something, you know, but it's left this dearth.

In terms of grabbing the youth, I just feel like that's about exposure and that goes back to the question you were asking earlier where I was talking about grass roots level. It's about taking our art and the things that we're doing into communities that wouldn't be exposed to them in the same way. That's why I really love public art for that reason. Seeing your work, again, as an extension of service. If you see your work as a service and I don't mean to debase you or to debase it, but I think it's really needed right now.

I was in Memphis. I Airbnb'd a tent in some woman's backyard. Don't ever do this. I was desperate. It was $19 a night and I forgot it was Memphis and I got there and she gave me a flashlight, a can of mace and something else because she was like, "It's Memphis. I'm sorry." And she would lock the house at night and you'd just be out there, but anyway, I was hanging out there and I was talking to some elders there and they were talking to me about how the reason the crime is so bad... Memphis is a great town, but it's not that safe. It's so bad because the kids don't have anything to do. They don't have anything to do. They don't have anything to do, because no one's coming into the community to try to expose them to new ideas and to new things.

Sometimes it means giving more than what you think you can give. The only reason that I can say I play saxophone, that I learned saxophone, is because I had a teacher who gave me an instrument, do you understand? Didn't charge me any money for anything. Just said, "You're going to play this." I didn't even want to play the saxophone. I was like, "I'm all about the clarinet." "Nope, you'll play sax." "I can't afford a saxophone." "Here's a saxophone." It takes things like that from all of us in here to reach people. I don't know. It's an ongoing struggle.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Matana Roberts

Thanks.

Audience Member

Hey.

Matana Roberts

Hey.

Audience Member

Maybe circling back to the responsibility of an artist and what Theo just asked for the possibilities of an artist. You being a history buff, talking about that and how you excel at using history for crafting your art. The big problem of each generation, of every generation seems to be, to be aware of their own historicity, in a sense. From that abstract feeling of, "There will be another hashtag." From that feeling of living in a Twilight Zone. How do you make erratic art from the very present?

Matana Roberts

How do you make what art from the very present?

Audience Member

Like meaningful art. Not art of history that has it's own pathos already or the stories that the past brings, but that abstract feeling right now that's much harder to categorize, maybe.

Matana Roberts

Yes and that, to me, goes back to the idea of exploring vulnerability. It's exploring, as an arts person you don't have to, again, I pull on the history because I feel like I have a responsibility and that just goes way beyond art. That just goes back to 1620 or whatever. You know what I'm saying? Exploring vulnerabilities as an artist facing those creative things that scare you the most, the things that you think that you can't do are the things you actually should be doing. The things you think you probably couldn't make or do a good job at are actually the things that you should be making. That's what I feel. Like dealing with the present and just making sure that what you're doing has a truth to it that is your expression because life is so short.

I had friends already who've died way too young who are arts people. They would kill to have a few more years to make something. If life is actually that short, you might as well really do what it is that you want to do and just learn how to weed out the... as you were talking before about teachers telling you, "Yeah, OK, cool. I'm still going to go, I'm going to do this.” You can't… And I get a lot from the punk aesthetic with that where you never have to ask permission to do what it is that you want to do. You just need to do it because you don't know if tomorrow is guaranteed. I'm not… Let's knock on some wood. I'm not trying to say that, but you know what I'm saying? Just go for it with a gusto and don't look back.

Audience Member

Hi.

Matana Roberts

Hi.

Audience Member

I have a question about, you were talking about developing a new language. I was thinking about history and when things keep coming up repeatedly. The old language used in that that might reinforce that issue coming up and up again. Does that make sense?

Matana Roberts

Wait, say it again.

Audience Member

Like certain words or certain for... God, it's hard to explain. You were talking about a new language, what's something like the old language that you think is not working anymore, or do you think there's just certain old language that's being repeated so much that it's reinforcing the same ideas from the past, and they're just going to create this cycle over and over again?

Matana Roberts

In the way that racism has gotten incredibly sophisticated, it means that the words, I feel like the word racist and the word sexist, for instance, when that is directed at your person, or even when I utter those words, there's such an emotionality to it. You feel such an, “Uh,” you know, like, “Uh, uh,” sort of thing. That kind of blocks your intellectual capacity for critical thinking about the actual idea, and so that's like I want to be able... It's like, OK, I take it back to Twitter. It's like how you watch different media outlets report different things and in terms of the language they use to incite versus language they use just to place like, “This is what happened,” like, "Oh, but this is what happened because it happened this way." You know? It's, god, I which I could come up with a really quick example, but it's sort of that sort of thing where we have to find a different way of engaging people who have ideas that are technically racist, maybe technically sexist.

Let's figure out a way to actually talk around that and get deeper into the core issue, which is not even about, again, it's not about color, it's not about gender. It's about fear, people fearing each other. People fearing the things that they don't know. People fearing a cultural understanding that has been co-opted by pop culture in very, almost kind of demonic ways, in my opinion, in terms of demonizing of people just based on a choice. I just, I love critical thinking. I love, for instance, that someone could put on my record and go, "Oh, I really hate, I don't know what she did there, but I hate it." Great, because that means that you're thinking. You're making these categories that will allow you to go to a deeper area of thinking about something that you might like and things of that nature.

I think it's our responsibility with our friends, our colleagues, our patriots, our comrades, or whatever to push engagement, and I think it's really important to push engagement with people you could never see yourself having those conversations with.

Audience Member

Yeah, thank you. That just makes me thing of something like social media, which I'm like, I have so deep aversion to. I could go in and out to because I see all these conversations happening in these fragmented sentences, and people starting these conversations that are the beginning of something very deep, and then someone responds with another short answer, and then another short answer. It's like people are trying to understand each other but it doesn't seem like... It becomes, to me, really confusing, just makes me want to shut it all down because in that way it doesn't seem like the right platform to me.

Matana Roberts

Yeah, you know, it is so interesting. The Internet is supposed to connect us but yet it is making us more disconnected sometimes in that way.

Audience Member

I have just one more...

Matana Roberts

Sure.

Anupa Mistry

Sorry. I've been thinking a lot about culture in the United States because it's really a place of immigrants, a lot of the people living there are refugees, immigrants, or people who were forced to come there. I come from a refugee situation, basically. I don't know anything about my culture and a lot of people don't know. Like the Armenian Genocide, something that we have been trying to recognize, and it's still not recognized by the United States or a lot of places. I think it's real important for people to keep their culture and their cultural identity intact, and I think it's really segregated in the United States. I don't really know how we can start integrating and learning about each other's cultures instead of just making all these sweeping assumptions. We all moved here out of desperation or whatever it is and we just kind of never got to adjust to each other. It's a really amazing opportunity, and it's also really terrible. It just seems like it's never going to stop.

Matana Roberts

I mean, don't give, don't, hey, be an optimist.

Audience Member

No, I know. This thing, no. This conversation could last a really long time. I was kind of fearing bringing this one up because I do have optimism, and I think something about like the Armenians is all we really are asking for is acknowledgement. People want to be acknowledged.

Matana Roberts

I mean, in America, to be quite honest with you, I... America, the United States of America, and I say this as somebody who, you know, I am oddly patriotic in a really weird way. I have a deep hatred for some of that history, but I also have a deep love for it because it made me, so I'm able to kind of like, "OK." It's that double consciousness. The United States of America still has not dealt with its recognition of its indigenous people. It's like in Canada, I feel it's… I mean Canadian indigenous people, there is still a big problem here, but America there is even something more sinister going on with that where everybody is talking about borders, and Trump is talking about borders, it's just like… These were stolen borders. No one is talking. Borders? California used to be Mexico. You know? Say it like what. The fact that, I feel like the fact that America can't even deal with its indigenous issue, until we can deal with that, dealing with other issues of mass genocide and trauma is still incredibly difficult. It requires that someone like you or someone like me, within our particular cultures try to push through that history in a way that doesn't breed contempt, in a way that breeds love. That's what's really missing, the love when everybody is talking about these differences and whatnot. Yeah.

Audience Member

I want to just keep talking to you. Someone take the mic away.

Matana Roberts

It's okay. Great questions. Thank you.

Audience Member

Hello, how are you?

Matana Roberts

Hi.

Audience Member

I wanted to get back to the music a little bit.

Matana Roberts

Sure.

Audience Member

Because I think the solution will be in the music. A lot of music is being made, and it's what's going to heal us even if it's only in 10 years or 20 years like a lot of music you discover, and now what I've discovered. I wanted to ask you if you feel the power or the connection to people who have made music like yours prior to you because I hear it a lot when I hear your music. It reminds me of black jazz, Strata East. It reminds me of what I've heard an artist like Sun Ra call “the music of the spheres,” that kind of like black opera music. It's very, very healing, I find.

Matana Roberts

Thank you.

Audience Member

After hearing the second song you played in your great-grandfather's lyrics?

Matana Roberts

Mm-hmm.

Audience Member

I heard that there, and it repeats itself. I can go back 40 years, 30, 20 and now hear that. I'm asking if you feel a connection to all those artist, that tradition of that music, or if you just kind of came across it through sheer intuition?

Matana Roberts

No, I mean I grew up around... my parents were avid record collectors and show… like they'd take, I'd be the baby at the show. You know what I'm saying? At like the avant-garde experimental show I would be the kid in the corner back there. I took it… Sun Ra was a big part of my, I have some crazy stories about that, just a big part of my upbringing. I have people in my family that lied to get into Sun Ra's funeral saying they were kin. Just stuff like that. I've been exposed to this type of music and avant-garde thinking for a long time. It shows up, but also, in terms of using my great-grandfather's music and doing all this ancestral stuff in a sense. When I pass over, god willing, whenever that's supposed to be, I just want them to know me when I come through there. I think about that a lot. I want them to know that their lives were not, that they did not suffer the sufferings… I have a grandmother way back who was a slave breeder. I have actual documentation that she had 25 children and most of them were sold. You know, and so things like that, I want those people to know that all that stuff that they pushed through made it possible for me to have a really dynamic existence. I think I want to, I think there is some part in my psyche that I want to place that, and that's the connect I see, but yeah…

Then the great, you know, coming out of Chicago, I didn't spend all of my formative years in Chicago, but I spent a fair amount, and the lineage of musicians coming out of there where they all sounded like themselves, I pull a lot from that… Where within like, especially on saxophone, within 30 seconds I could tell you who was playing saxophone. When you listen to some of those old records it's like, "Yes." Or, like I heard the great Anthony Braxton once say at a workshop, he said, "The tradition in this music is about being creative, period. There is no extra. It's about being creative, period." Not being creative this way or being creative that way, just being creative because, again, life is so short you might as well explore what it is you need to explore before you get taken out of here to go to wherever is next.

Thanks very much. Thanks. (applause)