Be there : July 13th in Paris La Bellevilloise
Soyez là : Mardi 13 juillet à la Bellevilloise !
NEWS : Here is a podcast of José James’s songs by Gilles Peterson. Here is the tracklist of this podcast with new songs : The Dreamer, Save your Love For me, Vijay Iver Trio : Mystic Brew (only song that is not from JJ – great tho!!), Touch, Blackmagic, Warrior and Dretoit Love Letter.
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Here is the tracklisting of the upcoming album (January 2010) “Blackmagic“:
1 CODE (prod. by Flying Lotus)
2 TOUCH
3 LAY YOU DOWN (prod. by BILO)
4 PROMISE IN LOVE (prod. by DJ Mitsu the Beats)
5 WARRIOR
6 MADE FOR LOVE (prod. by Flying Lotus)
7 SAVE YOUR LOVE FOR ME
8 THE GREATER GOOD
9 BLACKMAGIC (prod. by Flying Lotus)
10 DETROIT LOVELETTER (prod. by Moodymann)
11 LOVE CONVERSATION feat. Jordana de Lovely (prod. by Taylor McFerrin)
12 BEAUTY
13 NO TELLIN’ (I NEED YOU)
I just realized that the website schememag.com wasn’t working anymore. I had done an interview of José James for this mag in early 2008 so I just wanted to put it back here.
I’ve seen José James for the first time in Paris in 2007 for a free show at La Flèche D’or. It was an amazing night with Soil and Pimp after José James’s show. The music was beautiful, the energy unique. When I was living in NYC in 2008, I’ve decided to contact again José James to do an interview of him, he nicely accepted it. We’ve met in NYC, at this time I didn’t really know the city as I was new there. If my memory is well, we’ve met in West 4 with his drummer at this time Steve Lyman and had a nice walk until we found an empty place to sit, eat and do the interview. I really like the energy of JJ, on stage and as a human being, it’s all about positive energy without avoiding the reality. Rare and unique artist, I am truly waiting for his new album in January “BlackMagic”.
Hope you will enjoy the reading.
Can you tell me more about your debuts? How did you start playing Jazz?
José James : One day I was listening to the Radio, I was like fourteen, « taking the A train » , and I’ve never really listened to big band’s stuff. All the Jazz I knew was very confusing, I didn’t understand it. And I heard this very powerful song, I got very excited. It was so much different from the hip hop of the 90′s that I was use to. And I really liked this thing it made me very happy. And then I heard Duke Elligton, Chalie Parker, so I bought those people. And I just listened to it over and over, for like a summer. And I said « whoah, i really like this music, it‘s interesting». But I didn’t think I wanted to do Jazz. I just liked to listen to it. Then, I just bought more and more album of everything, but a lot of jazz stuff, like Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and I just sort of work my way through Nate King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, and Wes Montgomery, un till I got to John Coltrane, and when I heard that song « Equinox », I felt very passionate about it. And I was trying to find singers who are like sort of complementing the instrumentals too, like Lester Young and Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker. But when I heard John Coltrane, I couldn’t find any singer who could sing the same stuff. You have Betty Carter but she wasn’t as avant-garde. So I felt like there was something missing, and I couldn’t find any recording like « central park west », so I started writing lyrics to it because I started singing in high school a little bit. It was just for fun, not professionally, but then I started showing that to the people and they were very impressed. So I started performing really at seventeen and became very serious about jazz and John Coltrane, I would do « equinox », I would do « Mingus » just stuff like that. But also « Blackeyesusan , “summertime”. So that’s how I started it.
Why did you choose to do a jazz album as a first musical project? Knowing that you told us 2 months ago you were planning on doing a soul record? Did you want to introduce yourself as a jazz singer?
José James : Well, I may definitely consider myself as a jazz artist. I had originally plan to make kind of straight ahead projects with the John Coltrane‘s stuffs. And then we didn’t get the publishing right for it. So I had to write my own stuff, which is good. But I definitely like the people that started this whole soul stuff after jazz singers like Al Green, Marvin Gaye, etc, earlier stuff. I’ve always been more attracted to the jazz stuff, because it’s more complicated, and I dont know, it’s just different. I can’t explain why but when I do jazz, and hear jazz, it makes me feel like a different thing than soul and hip hop or anything else. And I wanted to give back. For my first album I wanted to do more of a classic project, classic thing because I feel like so much, so many albums, like them for couples months and after you never listen to it again. Even the very good artists and I feel like it’s sad, you know, because even the artists I really like, as Mos Def, Erykah Badu, or Andre 3000, I don’t really find myself listening to their albums so much a year later. And I think they are the best. So I wanted to make something universal, and classic. And for me jazz has that quality.
What’s the story behind this album? Can you tell us about the people you’ve met such as Gilles Peterson and the musicians that play with you ?and how long did it take you to put it together?
José James : It’s kind of a long story. At first I got to this jazz competition in 2006 in London and I wanted to make a CD to bring with me, for a demo. So I made it just two weeks before I left for London, I made a session with Luke Damash on drums, Alexi David on bass, Nori Ochiai on piano, Omar Abdukarim on Trumpet. And it wasn’t really a band. I was trying to put a band together but we came together to make the album, we did « the Dreamer » , « Equinox » , « Central Park West » and two others songs. That’s how the first session happened. And then Gilles Peterson heard that album and contacted me about making a record. They used “The Dreamer” for Brownswood Bubblers, One. So he was interested and he said he wanted to make an album because he liked the John Coltrane stuff. So I recorded ‘Resolution’. I wrote some of my own stuff too but it was more about the Coltrane project in the beginning. Then when we didn’t get the publishing rights for that, after a month of trying to figure it out we decided that we couldn’t use it, so I had to go back in the studio and record tones of more stuff. Because we wanted to make a Coltrane EP vinyl that didn’t happen. So I needed to figure out the next step. And the more I wrote and then having Steve coming on drums changed the sound. It made it more, just different, very strict. It’s not swimming, but more contemporary. And we made the others stuff such as« Spirit Up above », « Park Bench People », that we planed to do anyway. But having Steve, just the all sound of the band changed. So I started writing news songs based on that sound, like « The Desire », « Red ». It was just like a responsive, a new sound. And it just started to envolve to a new project, which helped me envolve as a song writer. That’s how it happened, « The Winter », « Desire », « Red », all the stuff later in the album was the later sessions. It just sort of became my own voice, it’s really really good. We’ve been recording that for like a year and half. And then we pushed back the album, it was suppose to come in September but we had the push it back.
The food came, we’ve decided to make a little break to eat, to finaly continue a little later.
Is “the dreamer” a tribute to MLK, or is it something else? What is the meaning behind “the dreamer” ? Who is “that dreamer”, and what does he dream of?
José James : The original title was « The dreamer, For Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.», but I think that maybe it was too political or whatever. So I just left it as « The Dreamer ». My birthday is on January 20th and every year MLK celebration day is around that, like the 21. So I always grew up thinking about him, because it’s like around my birthday, and his birthday. So it was always like special to me. And this song just came, I didn’t just sit down and said I want to write a tribute to him. It was just like very beautiful moment, like when you’re giving a song like a gift. And I was writing down, and I was like « woah, this song it’s about Dr, King, the message. » So he is the Dreamer. And there is a beautiful picture of him at Washington DC, giving this « I have a Dream » Speech. He is like waving his hand up in the air to people and that’s what I saw when I read the lyrics.
You talk a lot about Barak Obama on your myspace blog, you seem to support him… Is he a part of “the dream”? Was he already a part of “the dream” ?
José James : I was in NYC in 9/11, and it was very scary, people were very scared here. It was the first time that a lot of people had any consciousness of what’s happening in the world. So there were all this fear and it‘s still here. So George Bush was able to capitalize off that fear and do all this terrible things, because people were very scared and said it was okay. And since him there hasn’t been anybody who make people feel hopeful. I think that people in America are good, generally, I think the spirit of the artists are good but it’s such a young country that it could be led in any direction by the government, basically. If they say « we gonna do this, and be positive, this is what I’m telling you » and the people say « cool ». But if they say “we gonna kill this people because it’s right” then they do that , people don’t really know what’s right. So for me, Barack Obama, is the first president who speaks for the young people here, to black people. A lot of black people just have completely giving up on the politic, after Katrina, after the riots, after Rodney king, after a million things. And people always got shot here by the bad police and in nyc etc. It’s terrible. So I think he is inspiring because he is taking on the white money system but in a different way, he is a part of it, a big part of it. But he is saying that he want to work with that, and bring it to a different way. So I think the dream is equality. But it’s different for everybody. But I think most people here just want to send their kids to college, have health care and to have a house, a job… That’s basically what people really want, so I think he speaks of that dream. And for me like an artist and as artist of color, he represents the new face of America, that hopefully we can show to the world.
The track “Nola” is an extract from She’s Gotta Have It, a Spike Lee movie. It was composed by Bill Lee, Spike Lee’s father. There’s also a track originally composed by Rahsan Roland Kirk that you re-interpreted with Junior Mance, “Spirits Up Above”, and you also sing on Equinox by Coltrane… Why do you re-interpret those songs in particular?
José James : « Spirits up above » was a song that I just heard and I wanted to have Junior Mance to play on my album because he is a legend and he played with everybody, I was very excited. But also by the time he came to the project, he was not such a jazz jazz album, it wasn’t really like a straight jazz album anymore. He is definitely a traditional player, so I needed to find a song he would be comfortable playing but that correspond with the vibe of the album. And I heard « Spirits Up above », and I just thought it was such a good song because the spiritual vibe of it, it’s sort of a gospel song. And I looked at the Charles Mingus’s work, his writing because he fuses a lot of gospel and modern jazz in an interesting way. So I thought to take it more bluesy, because Mance is more a blues player, to not make it like a gospel song but more of a blues and jazz song than Charles Mingus. And Alexi David he is really into Mingus. He is like a mingus scholar, so I asked him to do a Mingus style arrangement, and I thought it worked really well.
“Nola” and “Park Bench People too”, Gilles Peterson specifically asked me to cover those songs. He really liked those, and thought it would be a good fit for the album, I wasn’t sure about “Nola”, at first because the original version is so different, it’s very happy, it’s totally different and my style is more dark and introspective. So I had to work very hard on changing it. So I put into 44 times, and I re-harmonized the bridge, to make it more intention and I wanted to make it more contemporary. I wanted to make it more sad because I think the story of the actual song is not happy. I thought the original was like a summer park thing and I said no, the story about this woman who is trying to find independence, she doesn’t want to be with just with this one man, because she likes thing about the three of them, all together they satisfied her. And if there was all those qualities in one man she would be happy, but they weren’t. I thought it was interesting. I wanted to tell more her story, more her pain. So I made it sadder and darker. I thought it worked better.
And then “Park Bench People“, was like the hardest song on the album to do for me. Because it was an hip hop song.
It’s jazzy hip hop.
José James : Yeah, but I don’t think there’s ever really been a good combination between jazz and hip hop. I can’t really think of any jazz vocalist that interpret an hip hop song ever successfully. I’ve never heard it. It’s just a totally different way of looking at lyrics. And they weren’t any lyrics sheet for me, I couldn’t understand a lot of the word, so I spent two weeks just listening over and over with Ryan and trying to get it, he is really into Fellow Ship and 90’s bea area, San Francisco hip hop scene, he really loves that and I didn’t know much about it, so he helped me a lot so I made some changes but the original song was from Red Clay, so I totally used Red Clay. It’s a song on the album that people really like, because they can refer to it.
Have you ever thought of doing rap?
José James : I did, when I was in high school, I totally idolized the dude from Digable Planets, it was Butterfly. He was like my idol when I was a kid, the way he raps, Ice cube, A tribe Called Quest. Actually, I really wanted to be MC, but I didn’t think I have like a singular speaking voice. Because it’s not about singing. And every rapper I really like, like Andre 3000, snoop or Biggie or 2 Pac or Q-tip, all these people have this voice that you really love to hear. And I tried some stuff but I didn’t really like my voice. Before it was very about a singular voice. Now anybody raps you know. Now, it doesn’t really matter if you have a cool voice or not. So I just decided that “well I can write but i don’t have this voice, I think I could rap but I don’t have the cool voice“. So I said “Fuck it”, you know. But my voice changed, I have this deeper voice, so I tried jazz instead. But I did think about it.
What are your biggest jazz inspirations/influences? Coltrane for sure.
José James : Yeah, I mean Coltrane is really the one artist I really looked to for inspiration. More than anything, what I like about him, is that he was able to change so dramatically, in his carrier. He really made the change, even if he lost a lot of audience. He did a lot of work that people weren’t ready for. I really admire that courage, especially in the 60’s, being a black artist at that time. He could have played “ My favorite thing” for the rest of his life, and be a millionaire, he was that popular. He had like the number one jazz group in the world, and he gave it up, to the change. I really like his writing too. I mean I listen to Hip Hop, that’s what I came up on, and hip hop is like one or two cords musically. . It’s not really like a cordial movement, but you don’t miss it you know. And I think a lot of that comes from that kind of blues, like the all modo jazz period, where you just played on some cords and I wanted to combine that like on «Red » for example or « Desire ». It’s very simple, it’s just two cords. Because I really like simple song than have complex things on the top of it. So I really love his spiritual quest.
They are singers like Billie Holiday, she is like my idol. I think she is the only jazz singer.
What about Nina Simone ?
José James : Nina Simone, I don’t think she is a jazz singer. She is a world singer. Because she sings anything. She was a true interpreter, she could sang jazz, she could sang blues, she could sang anything, pop…
Steve Lyman (drummer) : She sang more pop.
José James : To come back to Billie Holiday, to me, her phrasing, her style, I took so much from her, I learn so much from her. And if you took all the instrumental tracks away and just listen to my voice alone, you will heard so much of Billie Holiday. Like the way I phrase and I’m also always behind the beat. And also, most importantly, she is like an instrumentalist jazz singer. She was one of the most important jazz singer to really learn from the horn player like Lester Young, and I learn so much from John Coltrane. So for jazz those are my two major influences.
But I like Marvin Gaye, he is my favorite singer of all time. I just love what he does with his voice, he is such a passionate person, and I love his honesty, you feel that you believe what he is singing all the time. And he has a very sweet voice with a lot of pain in it. I’m really attracted to things that seem more real, a little rougher. Because I’m like that too.
You did a song with Flying Lotus. He is the nephew of Alice Coltrane. Was the fact that he is her nephew important for you ?
José James : Yeah, I mean I wish I could’ve seen Alice before she passed, I was so sad when she passed away, before I have the chance to see her. To me, I think Flying Lotus represents a very important future of music. And when I listen to him, I feel the same spirit of the Coltrane family, and I didn’t’t know he was the Alice Coltrane nephew at first. But it made sense, when I found out. Because I feel he approaches his composition at the same searching way that they do, because he is never contempt to just make beat. And I think it’s very important that he doesn’t have a tone of hip hop dudes on his albums, rapping or whatever. He makes music, it’s avant-garde, sophisticated, really complicated, spiritual, electronic music.
I think like Alice and John, he transcends the gender of music that he’s in and leads you somewhere else. He is somebody that I look up to a lot for contemporary musicians who are taking the language of today to a new place and the fact that he is the Alice’s nephew, it’s huge, honored to work with somebody that’s royal blood
Is this track going to be on his album or yours?
José James : It’s not gonna be on his album, but it might me on my next album. We’re definitely talking about doing some collaboration.
There’s only ten songs on the album… was it done purposely to fit the classical jazz form? Like Herbie or Coltrane, short albums with tracks that go beyond the 4 minutes limit?
José James : We made actually 30 tracks on that album or 28. We made a lot of different tracks. I definitely wanted to make a jazz album, the way we approached it, we didn’t write a lot. I was just catching on the track. I wanted to do an album like Miles Davis, a kind of blues. We just get the good musicians together and just play. I gave to the musicians the cords, and the drums, talking to Steve, I kind of told you about the song.
Steve Lyman : He gave me the words.
José James : Yeah the lyrics. I gave the people the lyrics to read. I had pretty much the idea in my mind first, how I wanted to sound and I knew the right people. But I didn’t really write like a melody, for any song. I wanted it to be really fresh. I wanted it to be really improvisational. I had the lyrics in the studio and we were just playing, I was just singing and improvising. So it was like real jazz. And pretty much for all the song. Except for « Spirit up above » etc. I mean, all of my songs, I just let the lyrics sort of dictate what the melody where going. It’s actually what, I didn’t know at the time, john Coltrane used a lot on his album, Alabama was based on the speech that Dr. King gave.. Love supreme , he was just reciting his poem. So it was another Coltrane connection that I realized the last later, and in term of the length some of the tracks such as “Velvet” and “Love” were actualy longer so I had to do some editing so it could fit in the album. I didn’t really think about doing a pop record or a soul record. And I wanted to give musician time to play.
What do you think of contemporary jazz? Do you believe there’s still a place for Jazz nowadays? I mean, do you think there are enough young jazzmen, like you, talented enough to keep jazz alive? I’m talking about vocal jazz.
JoséJames : I think it’s very hard, I mean I can’t really tell you one main jazz singer of my age that I look up to. And I looked very hard. Men singing jazz it’s always a very small thing anyway. There haven’t been that many jazz singer really. And I thing more and more the perception of jazz has crystallized into a sort of 1958, always b bop quintet for instrumentalists. And my style have a lot to do with that. And for vocalists, it’s very crystallized around Ella Fitzgerald style. And I respect all that music a lot but I don’t feel like it’s necessarily moving forward. So it think that the challenge, because a lot of people ask me why do I sing jazz or where are the young people singing jazz , I think that the reason is money and it’s hard to sing jazz and to win respect from the jazz community. There are a lot of people who don’t like what I do in the jazz community right now. And it can be hard , because it’s a small community and you want people to respect your work. That’s the challenge. And most jazz vocalists aren’t considered seriously if you are under 30 by jazz people. Most jazz vocalists, if you are like 35, 40, 45, 50, that’s a jazz singer. I think the challenge is like, how do you sing jazz now? We all try to figure it out. I watched the two singers I really look up to when I was like in high school, Kurt Elling and Cassandra Wilson, I think they are 1990 singers who started to sing song that they grew up with, 70’s song and 60’s. And I thought it worked for them, but for me not at all. I think the problem is that « how do you find the way to keep the spirit of jazz strong but using a cotemporary language? », because a lot of older jazz artists don’t really think that hip hop or rap or electronic music is music actually. And they don’t respect it. But for people like me and Robert Glasper, younger people, maybe early 30, maybe 40, you grew up with hip hop that what you listen to and that’s what we consider music, so it’s not so much of the issue. But I think that what is hard is depth of communication if you’re not using a band. If you are on a tracks. I think that Flying Lotus does electronic music in a way that has spirit of jazz, but I think that Hip Hop music are cool but you don’t have the same interplay that you do with jazz. So it’s hard to make changes, it’s kind of very complicated. It’s just very hard t figure out, it’s kind of long answer but I think that every jazz singer that I know that are like my age, are struggling because nobody really wants to hear them sing standards but it’s kind of expected to sing standard, I’ve been singing standard my whole life
But I knew that when I made the album I couldn’t make a standard Album. Because Billie holiday sang the best standard album that we ever will, I dont care how good you are. So you just basically have to write new song. The challenge is that standards were such good songs, and that whole era of song writing was amazing and it’s really hard to do anything that matches that. But the thing that I understood was that it is not necessarily my audience anymore. I want to make jazz for hip hop generation. Hip hop people don’t have a problem to listen a song with two cords if it’s interesting. And I think that for Jazz people, used to Be bop, they are like « well, there’s nothing going on? », it’s not complex enough.
I don’t think there is really a clear answer to that because they are a lot of jazz singers and jazz musicians but it’s hard to find a relationship to music now.
Performing seems to be very important for you… each week you add an incoming show on your myspace page! You have performed a lot in Europe, thanks to your label I guess.
What is the difference between performing in Europe and performing in the US?
José James : There are definitely a lot more respect of jazz in Europe. In New York, nobody care about jazz basically. In the United State, NY is the last place where jazz is special. We have Chicago, we have New Orleans, San Fransisco and LA and in Minneapolis where i’m from. There are jazz scene in every major city in the US but the festivals and appreciation and criticisms and the radio play it’s not there than the same way it is in NY. It’s totally different. I mean jazz in NY is great, serious, there are tones of students and teachers, clubs, living master. But there aren’t that many jazz festival in United States. There might be a hundred or less per year. In Europe you’re talking about 800 easily. That’s a big different. Also there are very little funding from the States for us at all. When you go to Europe, people seem to really understand what you are trying to do and the background of the music and it treated like an art form. But here, they care more about the shoes that you have on.
Steve Lyman : There is an healthy scene in Brooklyn of people my age and younger, people from all over the world. New York is very interesting, because it is not really a city but a place where people come to. And the thing about jazz in the United sStates is that there’s not a lot of jazz appreciation but there is a lot of jazz education because there is money to be made in jazz, so you have the finest student coming and it makes the music new, and it’s still the place where the music is being pushed. It’s there you just have to find it, it’s there and exists, it’s just not popular. Tt’s still healthy, fresh and brand new.
Jose James : We’s talking about instrumental jazz now, not vocal jazz it’s a big difference.
Steve Lyman : The good thing about José is that he is not the typical artist you play with, he encourages his band to really play, he is open. And I’ve worked with so many singer that are so caught up with their own ego, that they don’t even know how to play their own music. José trusts and interacts with his players, he is a great vocalist but also improviser, so it’s just fun playing with him.
Jose James : I’m like half between vocal jazz and instrument jazz.
Steve Lyman-talking to jose: Yeah but you know how to connect with the people, you have a great stage personality. A lot of people are like saying “fuck you” pardon my french but that’s what it is, Jose have the hability to bring people in and that’s the reason it’s working so well like our last show in Berlin during our tour in Europe which was our hardest show, every show is sold out. Our live show are insane, if you go online you will find out that this is something that we are good at.
Jesse Boykins III is a singer I am still discovering – his voice, his music, his spirituality. I totally slept on his music when a friend of mine told me to listen to him because he was « the new (and nowadays the only one) neo soul singer » – dixit Jamal. As for me neo soul is Bilal and D’angelo, nobody can really do better than them but we have to leave a chance to the new generation, mine, the youngest. I listenned and weren’t that much impress at first. Then I saw a video live of Amorous and I totally felt in love with the music. The song is beautiful, Jesse Boykins III is really great on stage. He looks like he did that forever; He is natural, funny, plays with the audience (the feminine part of the audience, lol), is in harmony with his band. It’s really pleasant to see artists like this on stage, just having a great time and so giving a great time to the public. This is why I contacted him to ask him a few questions about his music, his influences, his move to NYC, his friendship with Bilal and the future. Yes, Jesse Boykins III is working on a new album called « Love Apparatus ».
You were born in Chicago but grew up in Jamaica. How long did you stay there and what was the music you were listening to ?
I was in Jamaica for about 8 years… most of my childhood. I grew up listening and being around mostly gospel, church hymns but my uncles always jammed reggae in the car and when the family get togethers.
Why did you move to Miami and what did you do, musicaly speaking ?
At the time my mother was in miami, while I was in Jamaica. I just wanted to be with my mom, hence the move. I owe a lot of my sound and influence to my move because that is where I met my mentor Ms Shenita Hunt. She was my middle and high school choir director. She basically open my ears as far as what and how I listened to music.
How was it to come to NY to the New School University ?
The New York move happen so fast. I remember getting a phone call on tuesday requesting me to make the orientation and being on a flight the next day, with one suitcase some socks and underwear, a pair of jeans, 3 t shirts and a sweater. I forgot to pack a towel… HA! I was glad to be in a new surrounding though. I was on edge for my 1st week in NY.
Is it where you met Bilal, Glasper & the musicians from the Beauty Created?
Yeah, Bilal and Glasper were both students there prior to me attending so they would always be on the scene at jazz spot and little school gigs. I had listened to Bilal CD that summer about a million times so when I first saw him I was a little star struck but it took him about 4 time to remember who I was. The forth time is when I asked him to be my voice trainer, it was my sophomore year. Cats like Glasper would come through to the school and chill with us take us to lunch and tell stories about the music and just living in NY. I appreciated those times because thats when I learned the most.
Can you tell us about your friendship with Bilal? I heard he gave you some voice lesson.
Bilal Oliver is very underrated as a person. He is a wise individual and has been through a lot. It beams in his music. I make sure to remember every conversation I have with him, because I always feel like he is testing me. I remember our first voice lesson. I went to his house in Jersey at the time, we didn’t even sing. I just remember listening to “Kind Of Blue” (Miles Davis) and him asking me how the music made me feel. No one had ever done that. He taught me how to connect with every element of a song. He taught me singing was spiritual no matter what you sing about. He taught me music was spiritual.
Are you planning to collaborate with him ?
I would def love to work with Bilal on a record. Yes, I’m sure it will happen. There is a timing for everything.
Let’s talk about your albums now. How did Dopamine come out ? Did you work alone for this one ?
I look at Dopamine as a 20 minutes therapy session. At least, that’s what it was for me. Just sitting down and remembering all the moments in a relationship. The good, the bad, the great, the terrible and turning it into music, people as a whole could relate to. I initially started working on it myself but my good friend and band mate Marion “Ojay” Ross III (trumpet player) would come through and drop some knowledge on me. I always had cats play on my tracks and I would edit it to my liking, production in a nutshell (Steve Wyreman, Jeremy Most, Anthony Coleman, Jamire Williams, Justin Brown Warren Fields, Devory Pugh, Earl Travis : now the Beauty Created). Most of what I wrote was poems and I just put melody to it.
I would like you to tell us the story of The Beauty Created from the very beginning with the guitarist Steve Wyreman to the end with the search of the album’s name.
I remember moving into a new apartment and unpacking boxes I had in storage for about a year and a half and I had this collection of movies. Most of them were Spike Lee movies. So I pretty much started like that. From there myself and Steve would just be jamming and freestyling things I thought was worth recording. After we would lay his guitar parts. We built from there but it usually led to the band at my house recording on top of everything me and Steve started. It was a NY Summer coincidentally when Spike shot most of his movies. So I would write and record with a Spike Lee Movie on but muted. That’s the original inspiration for the album. I named the album “The Beauty Created” because I saw it as a way of showing my band my appreciation for them because they influence me greatly and I would play music for friends before I released it and they always said “this is beautiful”, only seemed right.
You did some collaborations as with Afta-1, Theophilus London, Melo-x with a production of ?uestlove etc. Did you heard of them before living in NYC ?
No, I met all these cats while living in NYC… just doing shows and being in the same place at the same time. Brooklyn, they all influence me a great amount. Afta is actually from and in California. I heard his stuff through a friend and just hit him up. But Theoph and Melo thats Brooklyn. Great artists with a great vision.
I read some interviews of you and a lot of questions were about women (how they act during your shows etc) and relationship. Aren’t you afraid of becoming a king of a new sex symbol for women and be seen less like a true artist? Is it something you try to think about ? (one of the best exemple is D’angelo)
I definitely think about it but I feel the music will always speak for itself. It’s hard singing songs about love and relationships and not being looked at a certain way. If I was singing political songs or something and still being looked at that way then I would worry about the whole true artist thing but I feel as long I still put out honest music for myself then everything else is cool. At the end of the day you can’t always have control of how your depicted by other people. So I’ll just stay focused. and Positive Energy in any form is good to me.
Something I wanted to know is about you being involve in every aspect of your music (production, cover, lyrics…). You are not only a singer, aren’t you ?
I always joke around and say I just sing but no. I see myself as a visualizer and a conceptualizer. That’s basically what a songwriter is anyway. I do more than just song-write though… I self record and arrange most of what everyone has heard. If not everything. It is easy to express a vision you see when you can handle the aspects needed to do so. So I pride myself in being able to sit down in front of Protools and Created whatever it is buzzing around in my head.
When did you start doing shows and how is it so far ?
I remember my first official Jesse Boykins III show was like summer before senior year. At this little spot called “Remote Lounge” in NYC. I had a 3 pieces band and we opened for a dance group. I was extremely nervous. It was the 1st time I had actually heard my originals with a band but I like doing shows because it helps me document and see my progression in a more authentic physical form. A lot of artists are afraid to perform but I Love it.
What is the biggest thing that happened in your musical career since Dopamine ?
I can’t say but I think I’ve accomplished a lot in a year and a half. I would probably say being given the #2 vid for BETJ on the Billboard Charts for Tabloids, it’s the most apparent. And secondly the release of “The Beauty Created” in Japan. Two things I really didn’t have on the list of goals starting off.
Are you working on a new album ?
Yes, I am in Creation Mode. Working on a new album titled “Love Apparatus”. Release date not yet determined, but maybe next Spring/Early Summer.
There is something I like to ask american artists… Do you know some french artists?
I only know one, Edith Piaf. I am slacking I know…
What should we wish you for 2010 ?
More shows in Europe and just outside of the US and I will never say no to new fans.
Thanks to JB3 !
The interview is just in english for the moment because my computer just messed up and I have lost the translation that took me two hours …
L’interview est pour le moment seulement en anglais car mon pc a buggé et le fichier s’est perdu, traduction qui m’a pris deux heure à faire… Si la traduction vous intéresse, n’hésitez pas à me demander.
[ English Version after the french one ]
Spaceship George (aussi connu sous le nom de Kwesi abbensetts) est un photographe qui habite Brooklyn, un endroit, une atmosphère qui l’inspire énormément. L’énergie de Brooklyn, les ombres, les lumières, les habitants propres à ce lieu sont présents dans beaucoup de ses photos. Un des autres ingrédients de George est le naturel, comme dans ses nus dans lesquels il rend un bel hommage aux femmes, on sent une grande part de spontanéité, « je ne peux pas dire que je prépare vraiment – les séances photos. Cependant je peux avoir une idée et partir de ça mais pour la plus part tout se fait spontanément. ensuite ça dépend aussi de comment se déroulent ces moments entre toi et cette personne. »
Ce naturel s’explique par un autodidaxie, étant ainsi loin de toutes institutions et de tout standard, « j’ai fait une école de cinéma et durant ma dernière année j’ai acheté un appareil photo numérique, là a commencé mon désir pour la photo et puis je ne comptais pas passer une 4ème année à l’école ». Son autodidaxie lui permet aussi une liberté rare, le stimulant à repousser toutes limites, à oser, « je n’ai pas de limites, il y a un ordre mais limiter signifie ne pas savoir quoi faire d’autre. Le meilleur moyen d’apprendre est d’expérimenter et de faire ces joyeuses erreurs. Ces erreurs qui sont la gestation de quelque chose de nouveau. ». On retrouve sur certaines de ces photos des mots, des phrases écrites de couleurs différentes, à la façon de Basquiat, très brut, « Je peins aussi et parfois tu prends une photo mais il n’y a rien de spécial et j’ai pensé pourquoi ne pas en faire un genre de peinture. Donc ça a commencé comme ça. Ensuite, c’est devenu un dialogue des petites réflexions de ma vie. ».
Spaceship George est un photographe en perpétuel devenir, s’essayant au noir et blanc, au numérique, à l’argentique, à photoshop, au nu, au photo de mode, au portrait. Un photographe qu’on ne catégorise pas, qui essaie, ose, surprend, touche et repousse chaque limite comme si il n’y en n’existait aucune. « L’existence précède l’essence » disait Sartre, « l’expérience précède l’essence » serait un bon moyen de définir l’art de George.
ENGLISH VERSION
I sent to Spaceship George some questions by email. It’s a photographer I really love because he experiments lot of thing. Plus, his love for women can be feel through his pictures and this love is amazing to me.
It’s been a while i’m looking and following your work.. What I love the most in all your pictures are the nude and mi-nude. I love nude in general but what I really like in yours it is the intimacy that you have with your models, we can feel it by looking at them, instead of Thierry Le Goues for example that does his nude in a studio, with lot of make-up and preparations. Yours are really natural. What are the preparation for the nude photograph? Do you have an idea before or do you do it naturally ?
Spaceship George : Well I won’t say I prepare much. Though, I can have an idea and I run with that but mostly everything is done quite spontaneously. Then too it’s dependent on how the moments are with you and that person.
for Installation #45 Face, you made some really nice portrait, really deep in black and white, which material did you used ?
Spaceship George : That, I did in photoshop. I think I may have done some overlaying. Lots of times, things just happen and then I say – it looks done now.
Are you a self-taught person ?
Spaceship George : Yes, I am. I went to film school and in my last year I bought a digital camera and my lust for instant gratification began. Plus, I was not gonna spend another 4 years in school.
I see in your work a lot of experimentations, do you have limits? How do you look back at your work ? what are your favorite pictures ?
Spaceship George : I don’t have limits, there is an order but to limit is to not know what else I could have created. The best way to learn is to experiment and make those happy mistakes. Those mistakes are the gestation of something new.
I have no favorites because the next one is always my favorite. There is one thats a black and white where two people are walking and their shadows cross, I like that one (clik here) a lot.
On some of your pictures you wrote words, sentences using a pen tool from a sofware (photoshop i guess?), when this idea came up and how? It reminds me of Basquiat.
Spaceship George : Well I paint also and sometimes you take a photo where there is nothing special about it and I thought why not make it into like a painting. So it started from that point. And then it became sort of a dialogue about little reflections of my life.
Do you sometimes use manual camera ?
Spaceship George : Well, I shoot manually most times, the lens is on auto focus but settings are mostly manual.
