Pushkin. A month ago at the Grammys, Alicia Keys gave a beautiful speech while accepting the Global Impact Award. Part of her speech was dedicated to the women producers who power the industry, women like Patrice Russian, Missy Elliott, Linda Perry,
and others. This was top of mind for me when I sat down with Esperanza's faulding at the Blue Milk Club in New York, where she was in the middle of a residency, not only because she just produced a gorgeous new collaborative album by the unheralded Brazilian genius Milton Ostumento. Na'turally called Milton and Esperanza, but she's self produced just about all of her own projects from the very beginning.
Esperanza and I talk about why she's been producing herself from the jump in this episode, what it's been like working so closely with master mentors like Milton Nostrumento, but also Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, and Espernza tells me what she views as the rocky begins and in her career. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. If you'd like to watch the video version of today's episode, visit our YouTube page, YouTube dot com slash Broken Record podcast.
Here's my conversation with Esperanza Spaulding.
He's just such a fan girl for He's not even gonna he's not gonna own it, like he's cool, he's cool.
Yeah, he's probably playing it cool.
I think so because he knows they're gonna roast him about it all the time.
That's so funny. Cool. Yeah. No, but I'm happy. Uh, I'm happy this work out to do too though, because yeah, I'm like, uh. As soon as the album got announced, I was like, you gotta be kidding me. This is the most amazing thing I've ever heard.
That's what I also felt, this is the most crazy thing that I've ever heard. When when his son asked me to produce it, So yeah, is that.
The origin of the visit. So it's going to be more you producing a Milton.
Well when the in the same moment that his son was like, oh you should produce this record, he said it should be Milton and Esperanza. He kind of he framed it as like, oh, it'll be a duo project. You know, you and him should do this project together and you produce it. And I mean I when you revere somebody's work that much, it can almost it felt hard to almost like insert myself into the like pallette of sounds. You know, maybe I felt an initial temptation
as a producer. It's just kind of like I just want to bring stuff together and just you know, bask in the glory of your songs, in your sound. He Milton and his son were like, no, no, you know, we go do it together. It's gotta be it's gotta
be your stuff too. It's got to be what you want and that so that that actually made it scarier, I think, because ooh, it's kind of like, hmm, can you it's almost like a challenge to the to the mentee or the younger person, like can you stand by what you've developed at this point in your musical life, you know, and consider it a contribution to the same global cannon of music as your you know, mentor.
And because that's that felt like the that feels.
Like it's always the invitation with every next generation, like you can't just keep you know, revering and bowing to and like, oh, you know, holding on this like silver holy platter.
I don't know, the works are the ones.
Before you like you have to sit in and live in and find out about what you've made inspired by them.
You know, it was initially just maybe so to be just you producing a Milton record, but then it's sort of no, it.
Was he always his son always framed it as you produced a record, and it's going to be you and him.
I just found that scary, you know.
As a conceit of like, oh, it's going to be both of our music or both of our kind of you know, esthetic voice or presence on the album. I felt intimidating as a conceit as a producer, and also ass like a person who's so inspired by him and feel so affected by his body at work, you know.
Yeah, I mean you collaborated also very closely with Wayne Shorter with the albums dedicated to Did It Feel? I mean, I guess and are you are you just not used to are you not yet used to working so closely alongside your your hero or is it just never Is that something you just never grow accustomed to when you revere people When.
Yeah, I mean, when you put it like that, it sounds like there's just this long line of people a on the level of Wayne and Milton that like you could go, you know, like, oh, and the next.
You'll go work with. To me, those two people are like my number one and number two.
It's not in any hierarchy of order, but really in the uh in the history of music that's affected me
that I've loved most deeply and studied the deepest. Wayne and Milton are it, you know, So this weird kind of like timing, I guess of working so closely with Wayne for a decade, approximately a decade on this opera project, and then in the year that Wayne passes this project with Milton coming up that I don't know what to say about that, even I think that's the first time I maybe said that sequence of events out loud.
And I don't know what to do with that.
I don't even know how to process that, because you know, I know these humans. You know, they are people that I love and revere as as folks. You know, people that I know that I talk to and call and know. And also they are the two of the profoundest musicians to ever walk the earth, just period, and and the like, the circumstances that conspired for me to even know them and to even meet them connect with them, and then get through. These projects are just ridiculous, like it's it's unbelievable.
So all that to say, no, I'm not accustomed to working with people like Wayne Shorter and Milton because there aren't people like Wayne Shorter and Milkon. They are both so singular, and yeah, I getting to know both of them in the different ways and the different journeys that brought me to both of them have have just been miracles of my life, you know what I meant. And when the opportunities opened, or the invitations really i'll say, came for me to work with them, I just said yes, what not.
Really asking like am I am I ready for this? Am I equipped to do this?
I said yes? Because I love them? You know, how could you say no? And that's what I can say about that. So yeah, also with also, I don't want to like conflate the two of them because working with them with their own very distinct journeys and projects and pretexts. But it's really something. So it's like a.
Perpetual kind of.
Sticks boob like dual state of existence where you're like, okay, this this person in front of me, we got.
This work to do. We're just trying to figure out the key for this song or like that, you know, whatever.
Is the detail in front of you, and then the other part of you is like, oh my god, this is Milton. Not to mental, you know, just trying to actually stay present and not swoon and like faint at the immensity of your hero sitting in the room with you.
You know, so I imagine the like focusing on the details and just the task at hand is definitely the way to just get your mind out of the fawning and the yes.
One step at the time.
And also, I mean, you know, since we're talking about the record with Milton, Milton is a very kind and generous person. You know, he makes it easy for you to be around him, like if he likes you, if he's messing with you. He makes it easy for you to just be in space. You know, he's telling stories. He's he's telling them like something will happen with the song or in the room that reminds him of a story, and then he'll tell you a story and make sure
you understand, you know, the punchline. And so felt it felt very like you know, familial to be in the space and create and and the we had work to do you know what I mean. Like, he's a person who is very specific about what he's put into his songs and why, you know, down to like the voicing of a chord. And you know, here I was saying like, oh, I'm gonna, you know, re harmonize some things, like do these little arrangements and this and that, and.
He was cool a lot of the stuff that I propose, and he.
Would get so specifical like oh no, wait, wait, wait, no, that chord has to be that those notes, because it really felt like there's like a poetry to how he puts.
The songs together.
And because I'm not the poet, I don't know why he put that chord there instead of one that maybe sounds similar, but he does. And so it was it was deep to learn about that specificity of his craft that he's like, no, this, this chord has to be right because it's doing something, you know, in the logic
of the whole thing. And that was like a great you know lesson too of that that like kind of standing up for the specifics and then also being flexible to the new voice of somebody else who's hearing something new with what you.
Made there is I mean it's it's fascinating to hear that there's these certain details that he feels and need to be there because he has such a I don't even know how to I wouldn't know how to describe his music other than that, you know, and there is Maybe it's just because they collaborated and I conflate them in my mind, but Wayne and Milton both have this to me ineffable quality to the music that's just so beautiful and so you know, just to hear that you're
there and there are these sort of key Yeah, there's these things that are key to him and key to what he does. I mean, do you feel like you understand those things better now?
Oh?
Boy?
What I can? I I don't know if it's understand but.
I maybe feel the his archetype as a creator more as a poet than before. I mean, I remember asking him once about his songwriting process. I think I was swooning over some lyrics and it's like you know how, but.
Like how did you do that?
It was some image in a lyric, like did you did you see that image first and then write it?
Like?
How how did you you know? What?
Was?
What was that process? I think I was asking more about like what was the creative process?
You know, did you sketch it? Was it somebody else's idea or a story you had in mind, or you know, like how did you craft it? And he just said, I'm a poet, you know, that's that's what I do, you know, And that landed at that time in relationship to like the construction of narrative and a song and beetting a little bit closer to that singularity and that specificity around the music. The musical elements are like, Oh,
I'm not a poet. I don't identify as a poet, but I can appreciate that craft where like there's a science as a math, like what the sense soial image that you want the person to receive, you know, like their imagination has to put your symbols together, and there's like this like chemical reaction of like imaginative chemistry where like oh they get the sense loyal image, and it's like it's got to be those words and that sequence
and that part of the poem. And I I think I perceive him doing that with all the parts, all the parts, the tambore of his voice, what register he's singing in the instrumentation, the texture or the harmonic progression.
The intro, the outro.
You know, he's doing that kind of like architecture, you know. And I do think, I mean, I don't want to conflate them either Wayne and Milton, because there's such distinct singularities and that intentionality, that care into the minutia, that care of the minutia is something that Wayne definitely embodied in practiced down to he wrote every note of his symphonic score is by hand now with pen, with pen, so you know, the whole score, all the instruments in
the symphony. He wrote every note, every single note in stem and line and sharp pen a hand. And the music, the symphonic music he was writing always had like.
A big theme, you know, a big ooh.
Story or feeling or idea, and he would be writing into the note in that passage of the music. It would it would be some aspect of the larger theme, you know, So he'd be writing into the note like the intention of that part.
Of the music, like with his hand from his heart.
He'd be you know, like imbuing the note head with that that idea, just the way he just everything. Yeah, he would he would be like thinking about it and like, yeah, this I want I want this third violinist, I want
this obo's to like feel this right here. So I'm gonna I'm gonna write that in to the to the to the phrase, and I mean then you zoom out and you're like, Okay, a twenty five minute symphonic piece that this person wrote, and every single note that he wrote is like imbued with this this like message and prayer or intention for the player is It's just it's
mind boggling. It's like a whole ecosystem, you know. So anyway, they're both their own singularity, and maybe that depth of care and thoroughness is something that we could say, you know, I've witnessed in each of them, you know, in their own in their own ways.
It's interesting too, because you know, I guess you know, sometimes I think there's the temptation with things with with music to just think that things just are like all I mean, there are playing I think happy accidents that occur in music making, but not everything is like some there are like I mean, there are some things that are are intentional and specific to these people that they they go out of their way to imbue, you know, their music with when do you think.
About when you talk about happy accidents.
It makes me think of, well, yes, there are lots of happy accidents, and it's like.
What do you do with those happy accidents?
You know that that, to me is where the brilliance happens because there's so much happening real time when you're playing or improvising or composing. Even you know, Wayne needs to always say composition is improvisation slowed down? So yes, these things were like, oh emerge, yeah, I know he's full of Yeah he was like he would say playing is compositions sped up? And composition is soloings slowed down?
But yes, these miraculous your hand you're trying to play one voice and like ooh your hand falls and another ways like oh okay, that's interesting.
But you know what's compelling.
I guess where the like brilliant slides in any artists, Like what what you see in that the potential that you recognize in the quote unquote happy accident and how you how you shift it, you know, how you integrate it. And on the record, you know, we on the Milton and s Bronza record, we really wanted to do this way.
Short song one You Dream because of course we were thinking of him, uh, from son up to some doown, you know, being in Brazil with his dear friend, and Leo Genovese was there, and Leo was very close to Wayne.
Actually, the last.
Grammy Wayne won, he won with Leo Genovese. It was the first time that two jazz instrumentalists shared the same Grammy for Best Jazz Performance. Yeah. Incredible, Yeah, incredible player, incredible composer. So yes, So we're in this room, you know, and all of us in the room had had some kind of a connection to Wayne.
He had departed.
In his own last words, he said, I'll be back soon. I gotta go get a new body so I can continue the mission. So we're all just you know, with that immensity of his influence on our life and being in the studio with Milton and wanted this song, and I had done this whole arrangement. I spent weeks prepping it and it was not working. It was just not working, and I could feel it and I could own that it wasn't working. But we just wanted to do it
so ad you know. So we're like we keep, you know, carving at it and trying to rework the clay.
It's just not happening. And then we like stopped. I felt so defeated.
I was like, ah, the night started remembering or hearing Wayne's voice like, you gotta have fun. You know, it's suposed to supposed to have hell of a good time. You know, in everything, you're not having fun.
Why do it? You know?
And it's kind of like we started sharing these like quotes and things that we had heard, you know, remembered him saying or doing.
And then we.
Like threw the arrangement away and we said, let's just go for broke. You know, let's just let's just play it. You know, the melody is alive in us, and we're gonna like let whatever tumbles out.
There's this line from a great poem that the.
Police tumbled out of the back of a van like oranges. Anyway, it's like that feeling of like, you know, it's just yeah, just telling out whatever gravity is working on you, the forces of the world working on you.
Let it go.
And you could say the whole song, the whole song is like this unfurling cascade of happy accidents. Because we didn't have like an arrangement in mind, you know, we were in real time, responding to the cascade of you know, encounters from what each of us was playing that felt fun or felt good. And I feel like that what ended up on the record is this beautiful portrait of like when when you when you usher in, are you
steward or you you trust? The kind of chaos of many brilliant people pouring out, you know, the ingredients for happy accidents to happen sequentially through the song.
We'll be back with more from Restaurants Spalding after the break. I think, you know, it's like that. That was one of the things. You know, Quincy Jones just died too, and that was one of the things people kind of talks about with him in terms of just the way he arranged sometimes was like just getting people who were really good at what they did and you could trust and just let them go. And I guess that's a similar thing, like if you have players who you know,
you know, bring a certain thing to the table. It's like what I'm doing with.
The exactly that's one of good producing is well, I guess you can because sometimes you're run in to produce and it's already a group of people that you don't you know you don't necessarily have history with but I like the agency and the it's almost like a composition of people. You know, the composition process starts with the people of just what you said, you know, how the chemistry of the folks work. You know, kind of like
the chemical reactions of these group of people. And you know, I mean Quincy was definitely a master that, but all great band leaders that's what they're doing, you know, that's I remember. I mean I think about like Terryln Carrington, who's a phenomenal producer, phenomenal producer, phenomenal arranger, drummer, yes, a band leader, all the things.
And it's like she can see, she can like foresee miracles between players that I think most people wouldn't give the opportunity to to flourish. And she particularly kind of
has that. I like the potential of young musicians. You know, it's like maybe they're not quite there today, but she can like sense or smell like, but if I bring them into this band with that person, that person, you know, that gift, that thing that they have is gonna open up and flourish in the right you know, chemical reaction with with the other parts that are here. And that is maybe a easy to miss superpower.
Do you think you have that?
I may, but I don't. I don't have a lot of opportunity to find out because I play with the same people. I have been so.
Lucky to encounter these players through my life that are just you know, just gems, just so who like Leo, like folks in this band, Eric Dude, Matt Stevens, Morgan Gharrion, Justin Tyson, Corey King.
You know, these ones.
Who I just know, like I just I trust them so deeply and to the point where I also know they won't let me jump off any cliffs that I can't fly back from, you know what I mean. And that's also people that can give you like honest critique and honest feedback. So I'll say, maybe I have that skill, but I'm not putting myself in the circumstances to flex that musclefully if it's indeed there. Yeah, okay, I will find out, maybe you.
Kind of from the beginning. I've just been producing your own records.
Yes, I've been producing my record since the first record and in I guess two thousand and six six, WHOA.
That's weird.
Yeah, well, I guess I produced them two thousand and five and it came out in two thousand and six, twenty years ago.
That's shocking. WHOA, what do you put it like that?
To find a point on it.
I'm like, WHOA, is that true? Yeah?
And that's I don't want to say that's easier, but I feel.
It's a It's a really different.
Creature when you're producing in a way that's ushering someone else's vision, you know, into fullness. I have immense respect for the producers who do that for a living.
You know, I can't imagine producing your very first record is any easy because you're kind of like, I mean, now you know what to expect of yourself in a situation going into produce another artist you might not know. That's like, but like so, I mean in the sense of your first albums, and you're kind of like an unknown entity to yourself in some ways in the studio. As much as strange or someone you're producing got to be scary, it had to be weird.
The truth about that.
First record is I wasn't planning for that to be some sort of like representation of me as an artist, you know, at that time in my life in music, I was playing all kinds of records.
I was playing.
Anybody and everybody's record because I was in school and you just your make a record left to right. You're going down to the studio from the two am to six am recording session. You just here's here's playing and
doing things. I have made a lot of little demos for myself, and you know, when this label called ava A y v A approached me like, hey, you want to do a record with with you know, just a project that you have, I was like, cool, I had this little you know, I don't want to say whatever, but just two of the many dozens of people that I was doing projects with.
It was and Francisco Mela and yeah yeah, but I mean it gets twenty years ago, like we didn't.
Know who A and Francisco I was gonna become their teachers and students in Boston. So I was like, hey, you guys, you want to get in the studio, will make a record for this Spanish label like cuckoo cool?
I mean it really didn't.
It didn't have like gravitas, it didn't have like weight. You know, we have been doing tons of gigs around Boston with various configurations with you know those two folks, and so we just went in the studio, played some of the stuff we play, played some improvised stuff.
Cool.
Yeah it was, and I'm thinking like this is going to be some little like niche record from this niche label in Spain.
The end next kind of like thank you.
That was a nice little archive of this band, this Boston local Boston project.
Cool, like what's next? You know?
Then I have played a song by a phenomenal Argentining composer called I'd heard a version that Lilyanarrero and Juan did of this song called that, which is on the record thank you. I love that song and also check out and Lillian Nearreo because their version. Anyways, at a Spanish management company there happened to be a man from Argentina.
So when this teeny little label was looking like shopping the album looking for you know, promotion, they shopped it to this other Spanish company and they're like, ugh, no, you know, we're not taking projects like what little just this free jazz stuff like whatever. But then one Argentina guy was like, wait, what why is this girl?
Why is this black girl in Boston?
Know this Argentina composer and just because of that, this company reached out and they were like, okay, who are you, what are you doing?
Kind of thing?
And then that was the only album that I had made technically, so that became my first record, you know what I'm saying.
Yeah, so and way you didn't expect it to be like a college card or.
Even looking back, I'm like, that is just okay, yeah cool. If it's almost like, oh, if you can.
I think my beautiful face helped. But I was like, if y'all can listen to that, I guess I give you anything.
I've listened to that, your first two records a long time, okay, really good, really good, because I feel like the artists sometimes you get like a narrative, either maybe you've you embraced a certain narrative or people overlay a narrative, and I feel like that sometimes, or if I were to just think about it, like so, I feel like maybe the narrative is like that you've stretched out a lot, and you obviously had, you've done so much, but like
but that that those are kind of more just straight ahead, just kind of funny. But really but when I put them on, I was like, WHOA. I was kind of surprised at actually how good they really are. Yeah, yeah, I thought you're not great.
No, but I hear you. Yeah, I was twenty years.
Old and needs to be discounted. I don't think I.
Receive it, and hey, hallelujah, that's a I do think. I do think of the ways you can come into the music industry. Just looking back now from that perspective, it's funny.
It's funny, it's kind of like cheeky. It actually matches the truth of my personality. It's funny that the first record was just like weird, random kind of avant garde trio free thing with these two black Huban men who were way freakier than musically, way freakier than what's even on that record. Like, I like that.
There's something kind of like trickstery about that being the first calling card. And in a way, you know, when when anybody wants to say like, oh, you know you're taking it too out or like you know, do that s side of the STU be like, no, there's a precedent here here for being you.
Know, on the edge.
Yeah, would you do you think you would have if you if you had known that that was gonna be Oh, I would.
Have done it completely different.
Of course, do you think you would have overthought it or do you think you have done different stuff?
Would you have done? Like looking back, what do you think you would have done?
Look him back, look him back. I would have put my songs, like my own songs on it. I would have sung more. I would have had arrangements, you know, more like horn arrangements and vocal arrangements, and oh, I'm sure I would have done especially if there was the lack of oversight like there was, because it really was.
It was the sweet It.
Was like a father son duo who ran this whole album, and it was very there was like free artistic license, like it was really just like here's the funds, just bring us a record, like whatever you want to do. And it was a short timeline, so I was like, all right, who's who am I?
Who am?
I already have a thing with oh YouTube, we've been doing gigs all you know all season.
Let's go in the studio real quick.
It's kind of the classic way. I don't know, that's a great way.
I feel like that was like representative of the like the portrait of the artists and then the.
Not the problem because I like the second record, Esperanza. But what I'll say.
Is then other people's money and agenda was wrapped up in the album I was making. And so I will never dismiss or disregard the incredible support and work that that first kind of swath of like my team did for me. They fought for me so hard and all this stuff. That's like I mean, of course that's my
hard work and my great music. But like all these opportunities that keep you know, tumbling talk about tumbling out from those early days of my career are really thanks to you know, the devotion and the like hustle and the whatever was.
Driving these men you know in the industry who like you know it was it was Montuno Productions, and it was Dave Love, and it was Concord Records.
It was John Burke and Mark Wexler, and you know, these ones who like they saw like ooh, we know what to do with this. It was that kind of like I'm gonna say, they saw the commodity value, and it's not to I'm sure they cared about me as a human on levels. And they're in the music business and their dubs to sell music and artists as Amadie and and I remember having these conversations with the label. My first album came out on Heads Up, which hadn't yet been purchased by Concord, you know.
A KA universal.
Then they're there, whatever you call it, the overarching companies, university, conglomerate, thank you. I think it is SO or parent company or whatever. So I remember, you know, I had I wrote a lot.
In those days.
I had like so many songs, so many arrangements, and I remember the head of the of the label be like, but we have this grid. You know, you have to the songs have to fit in these categories on the grid, and so you can't put that a grid. It was like, you know, songs that have this vibe, songs like a ballad like and it actually became of a joke between me and musicians like old, don't mess up the grid. Wait now we can't make sure. Don't think he's going to get you. And and this is, oh, you know,
where's the hook of the song. I was like, hook of the song. Don't you know what kind of musician I am?
I don't know hooks and whatever.
So I at my little twenty two year old self I remember this like icky kind of tug of war with these humans who had more experience than me, were older than me, saw me as a kid who hadn't know what I was doing, and were really putting a lot of pressure on me to make these decisions about the music that was gonna get end up on this record. And I did fight and push, but it was a
tug of war. So that means there are compromises that I felt like I had to make because these were the money people and the folks who knew the industry and I didn't know.
Of course, their ultimate agenda.
Was like you know, you have you had the potential to be big in jazz, you know what I mean.
I was trying.
To no, because you would never say that to somebody, you know.
And I don't know if my brain would have registered the depths of.
You know, the power dynamics at work there with all these like white businessmen who were seeing this like young you know, I didn't. They were my representation and my label and my you know, so here I'm this like little young, like naive critter who's just like I just gonna make neat songs, you know what I mean? I don't think I could have comprehended the layers at work there in the whole dynamic.
But they could.
They definitely could comprehend the layers of potential and you know, you know, income potential and commodity potential and brand potential and all the things.
So all that to say.
From June Joe to then the first album like it's to Esperanza, it's a great album.
I'm like, Wow, yes, I can stand by it, and I feel very aware.
Of the compromises down to the budget was what it was, which wasn't great, and so for the engineer to really do the great engineer to do the job, they wanted producer credit, you know, and stuff like that. And you're like, I don't know what that, but you know what that meant, you know what I mean? Like I wasn't paying attention to that part of the contract negotiations. My manager was doing it, who was also friends with the label, who
was friends with the you know what I mean. So you're not tracking this at twenty two you don't know how the music industry works yet, and I'm not This is not a SOB story.
I'm so grateful everything that happened happened.
It just it just is what it is, and it's things like also how I think like labor gets invisibilized.
I think, especially.
Early on for the sake of you know, people want to cut the of the narrative or a cut of the credit or a cut of the whatever. And you know, I'm sure the people in the room will tell you the musicians produced that record. I produced that record. I chose the music. You know. It was like, but my name's not on there as a producer, you know what I mean. And and there are elements in that record that I roll my eyes about now because there were
decisions made for the grid. You know, for someone in the industries talking about jazz music as industry, it's like a joke. For some people, it is their industry and that's how they pay their mortgage, and so.
It's doing a thing a lot of them for error. So maybe that's so I guess that's where the grid comes from.
I guess that's where the grid comes in.
It's just I now, at twenty years later, am clarified that then it was about what it's still about for me now, which is you know, putting your the sounds that you're hearing into the world.
That's the assignment. That's what I think the assignment is.
And I say no when the option is, hey, you know, put this thing on this record that's going to live in the world forever for the sake of potential. I don't know, like it could go further quote unquote, or you could sell more. You know, I'm always gonna say no if it's either or between that choice or the representation of what we heard. You know, what the musicians like felt, heard, saw and were able to craft in a way that someone else.
Could hear it and see it.
Do you think there's more truth in that spending more time getting exactly what you hear in your head, or in just getting out what you can in the moment. Well, I I.
Don't mean what we heard in the sense of like a tyrannical you know, it must be it must match exactly the image of my brain.
That's not what I mean by what we heard. I mean what's true.
You know, and what we heard can encompass what happened when we started with the sketch.
But these five people in a room whoa found another thing, And you know, it's more about the truth.
It's more about telling the truth of who we are, you know, and the we is the humans who have dedicated this time to be doing this and nothing else, to create this thing called music that is so mysterious. And I think I feel so holy. And I don't mean it in any particular denomination or a religious paradigm or cosmology, but you know, I think whatever the word holiness is trying to speak to of a of a something that is possible or is amongst us in this world.
I feel the presence of this thing that I would use the word holy to describe that emerges when people are making music, and that thing that, like you use the word ineffable earlier, that like feeling or who our presence is the thing that I want to share.
That to me, that is.
The thing worth efforting to carry it, to give, to give, to give, to give it to each other, and to give it to somebody who's gonna take some of their time out of their life to listen to you.
Like that's a bit. I think that's a big ass deal.
Like your attention, your time, that's all you have, and we don't know how long any of us are going to be on this earth. And like a human being, another human being that I don't even know that doesn't even owe me anything, like I'm not even their family, being.
Like oh yeah, okay, cool, Like I.
Will dedicate some of my time, some of my attention to this thing that was created. I feel it's our responsibility to just try to just deliver who that holiness that we can conjured, conjure a company usher through us.
And and I think.
Somewhere I knew these things at twenty, but I didn't have the confidence to fully advocate, and I wanted to honor the investment other people were making in me, so I made a lot of like eye rolling concessions. But now people like that around, So now I said that I can stand by the last few and be like, yeah, that's what we meant. That's exactly what we meant.
But it came from It's interesting to though that those compromises did come from a good place in you, in that like you're like, at least it came from I just I just want to honor that these people are trying.
To yeah, and just be getting tired of arguing or just being like, well, that's what we gotta tape. That person can't come back to the studio, so Let's make the best with what this is.
You know.
And also, you know the contract that you signed coming into the world to be an artist isn't like everything I do will be perfect. I just was watching this beautiful excerpt of an interview with Maya Angelou last night, who's talking about recognizing that she's a being in process above all else. She's a being in process, so she doesn't try to affix herself to any version that worked in the past, and nor is she even fully committed to stating this version of who I am. What I think,
what I'm giving is final because we're in process. And I feel it's really important for musicians of all ages. But I want to say, especially young musicians, to stand by the archive of what they give to the world, because the archive also teaches about our evolution as creators. You know, there's things that I've done that I ooh, they're out in the world for every and I cringe, you know, and it's like, well, that's part of the archive that shows a human in process and evolution, and
that is that's what is interesting to me. I guess about being on this journey of being someone who creates that you can well, yep, That's what I was tripping on listening to reading, and I really wanted to share it forward.
Now maybe I.
Completely disagree with that, but there you have it, and now I can show the evolution from there to hear.
Yeah, after this last break, we're back with the rest of my conversation with Esperanza Spalding. That's why I really also respect like people like well, the people who are around like I mean, I guess Miles too, but that's more as a state, but like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, who like the guys who still actively make records, but they also are constantly just going through the archives and releasing old sketches of things, like you know, and You're like,
it's it's really valuable. It's really valuable to hear.
I think Mitchell too.
I mean, I think you're kind of talking about big names, but I think Jerry Allen was also doing that. I just last night was listening to the Marylyn Williams Collective, and you know, that sounds so different than Grand River Crossings, which sounds so different than the trio work with Paul Motion and Charlie Hayden at the Vanguard, which sounds so
different than timelines. I'm just like, whoa you know, WHOA here is a person who's like letting the whatever was however the last project metabolized like what it brought, like, you know, letting that point to whatever's next.
It's really possible.
I mean Wayne Shorter is a person like that. Ess Mental a person like that. Tarylyn Carrington is a person like that.
You know. Also the way Milton returned, like there's so many there's something there's so many versions of Milt of Milton doing his own oh yeah, you know, and I just do like on any giving he's like that, I love the first record, yeah, and it's like I love all those songs.
Yeah.
And then it's like sometimes I like I want to go just hear it, like the CTI version you know, even later or you know that is also there. It is incredible. At what point do you feel you finally were able to put something into the world that felt like this is what I intended to put out.
I really feel that Twelve Little Spells is what I intended to put out. Like I feel like we and Emily duplus evolution. Maybe it started with Emily du plus evolution, but also at each point of creating or putting the records out, like okay, we can really, I mean I signed off. I'm like, okay, we can release this, you know, so I'll say that, you know, I can stand by them all. And I remember the feeling of Emily's Day plus Evolution being like, you know, like nobody was gone
on this one. And also with twelve Little Spells, it just felt so protected, you know, like we it felt so much about the folks in the room were only people who really cared about the music we were making and really delivering like the potential, the fullest potential of what these creators around this theme and this body of
work could give. And I want to leave you know, the future open to maybe answer that question in ten years and be like, oh, actually it was the one that you know happened eight years from.
Today to the May angela point of never see a fixed yeah right, yeah, and it could be the one so now yeah yeah.
And also just because to like puncture the potential of grandiosity or narcissistem to swell in this conversation, like it's also like, yes, I think music is one of the most powerful holy forces of Earth, and it's also just music. You know what I mean, Like, it's also not that deep, Like it's not like we make songs and we play them and we put them out in the world, and it's like just to be able to do that and make a living, do that like good night, We're done here, fantastic,
everything's working good. You know, let's go plant a garden. I also just don't want to get too precious or too concerned or.
I don't know, make it like a bigger deal than it needs to be. We're just doing our job. You know, this is my job.
I do this for a living, and I do this out of the deep passion in my heart that I have for creating and for sounds and for working with people. And like the worst thing that we could do some records, like oh that's awful. That was all compromised for the forces of industry.
So it's like and right, so what that deep?
Yeah, it'sody somebody, somebody's out there making the record. You know, We're just one little cell in the body of music on this earth, and that is such a privilege. So I feel like even sometimes younger musicians will have this kind of like almost like desperation in their voice, like how do you find your voice, like how do you how do you get into the industry, and like find
your voice and do your thing. And I can remember that kind of like pressure, that feeling of pressure like uh oh, you know, I gotta go do something as a grown up now and make this thing I've invested in work.
And I also try to.
Remind them like, you can't help it, you can't whatever the hell you are whatever, even if you just want to do Lady Gouggug covers for the rest of your life in a club in South Korea and you know, or whatever, do Elvis in personation, like whatever, whatever the hell your thing is, it's gonna come out. It's gonna beautiful, it's gonna be what it is. And the main thing is are you enjoying doing it?
Can you do it? Do you want to do it? And just in this life to get to find a thing like that, you're winning.
Yeah.
So it's kind of like whatever the whatever you can.
Find at this point in time, that's a thing that you like, that you do, that you sound like, even if you think you're faking it, great, do that and that's great, And then make sure you call your elders, help your friends, who have kids, you know, support folks who are disenfranchised, pay attention to your local politics, engage.
You know what I mean.
It's like kind of like, don't fill your brain with all these existential concerns of the arts. Like you're a human in a world and this is the job you get to do and if.
You just keep doing, it's gonna work.
Don't worry, and now make sure you pay attention to all the other stuff, because we can get very self absorbed.
It's amazing though, how you can't just accept it's at a young at a tender age. It's hard to just accept, like you can know that to be the absolute truth, and it's really hard to sometimes accept that, right because I can remember similarly the same things, you know what, like those feelings, it's very hard to hard and.
We're being bombarded with the like messages of the hero I'm using Lea Penman's phrase, the hero industrial complex, this idea of like it doesn't count unless I'm the hero, Like it doesn't count unless I am the star, right, And that is a very that's that's like that's an ominous weight. When you have a gift, you know, or you have this thing that you love to do like, oh, I love to play piano, and I really like like I love soul music and I.
But we don't.
We don't have a lot of glorified images of like a side person or a happy producer or an a ranger, like a person who's film scoring, they're living their best life. I feel, particularly, maybe particularly for musicians, this is kind of like this pressure of like, oh my god, what do I have to do to like make it, you know, on top, or like get my esthetics together or whatever. And that feels like pressure and concern that can be
kind of a waste, you know. Yeah, And I just wonder about musicians that are pushing themselves past the place that they'll actually derive the most pleasure and be able to contribute them most because of this kind of pressure to be more, do more when and the the also when we get the kind of very two dimensional representations of the artists that we love so much, they're completely decontextualized from their family, their community, their elders, their teachers,
their students. So it can also be really hard to get a sense of, you know, an artists at work in their ecosystem, and the music industry has no is not interested in your long term wellness. So it's also something about maybe what I really mean, what I was
just being mean, like, don't become a narcissist. I think what I really mean is like, actually learning how to cultivate one's gift in a in a healthy balance with being available to and in accountability to your community is actually the most sustainable and uh nourishing, soul nourishing way to go about this. And you can't sustain as a musician if your soul isn't nourished. So maybe that's that's what I'm really trying.
To speak to.
You know what's interesting? I mean, you know, you're you're right, like there aren't like we I was reading when Benny Golson passed away. I found power, Power, Power. I found a what do you call it? A an oral history interview that he had given maybe in like two thousand and two or something, and I was reading through it and he was talking about Oliver Nelson going to Hollywood to score film and TV. And you know, I mean,
sadly Oliver, you know, doesn't liver. He passes away in They're seven seventy one, seventy two, forty forty one, forty two, you know, like, but you think about it, like I was thinking about Oliver Nelson, and it's like, here's this person with an immense talent that I don't think unless you really care about the music that you might not know you're not gonna his name is not gonna you know,
fel like Duke Ellington, you know what I mean. So, but it's like, is this guy who like had all that talent led a band like and probably had design, probably wanted to continue to bleed a band, but it's like what was available was to go do this work and doing filming TV. And like I think Benny's point from remembering correctly was like people kind of looked down
on it a bit. But then also a lot of people are going to him from work too, you know, so at some point it's like you kind of just you know, you do the work you can where you're able to do it. Who cares?
Well?
The funny thing is a haha.
You know, it's uncomfortable to admit or it's uncomfortable to broach the subject.
But there are the strands of desire for validation woven into our pursuits of notoriety, right, I mean isn't that part of what notoriety is. You have a lot of people in your inner circle and outer circle.
Validating the value of what you do, and I don't know what you do with that. That can be a very powerful motivating force that gets people practicing or finishing that song or getting that heartbreak out into a tune that becomes a hit that reaches somebody in the remote corner of the world that needed to hear that song
that made them want to get up that day. You know, it's like, it's not to judge the motivation, but it's something to check out because it begs the question, like, huh, what's going on with the musicians who are not as attached to the external validation but are deeply invested in the relationship with their music and deeply passionate about finding and cultivating and creating and maybe don't see themselves as ever having because of how they look, or their stature
or their class or who knows what, and it changes across different decades, But who either are not motivated by that potential for validation or don't believe that they have, you know, whatever it is to even go achieve that validation and instead turn that energy towards their other things, and you know, allah the story about Oliver Nelson, and really so many I can think of about thirty five people just off the top of my head who are not interested in that part of it, the external validation
and or maybe of their own self esteem or you know, messages they've gotten from the industry about like oh you don't quite fit, you know, let's expected, and how are you going to show up? And they have thriving, economically viable lives in music, and that's just something to know about, you know, it's something to contemplate. And I think for artists creating, I don't think we should ever shame our motivations.
Ever.
I don't think we should ever like shame or feel humiliated about the shadow motivations that maybe get us from point A to point B. But that doesn't mean that we can't investigate them. Yeah, and once we become aware of them, you can.
Make decisions, informed decisions, informed decisions like ooh, am I am. I stand up all night every night hustling.
On this project because I just want to be seen as being able to do or like whatever.
Maybe is that what I really want to do? Or is it for the money or is it for the and do I feel do I like that?
Is that?
Is that what I want to be driven by or invested in? And like there's no wrong answer.
You want to be money In the moment, I got it. Sometimes I'll tell.
You right here, right now.
The only reason that not the only reason, but the main reason that I propelled myself forward to go like accept this scholarship at Berkeley and moved to Boston. I was very happy in Portland is because somebody had a crush on went to MIT and I was like, oh, well, I'll be in Boston, like I'll be closer, like maybe you know, like worked at this whole fantasy in my mind, and it's like, is that a petty I was seventeen years old, you know, but hey, that motive, you.
Know, the passion got me there.
Yeah.
I never saw the person again, but I was in Boston and my life blossomed. So it's just something about the exercise of investigating the motives and then, like you said, making informed decisions.
And it's you know, when I think about how messed.
Up and you know, sick and egotistical and womanizing and abusing some of.
My favorite musicians were.
It's like, wow, you know, medicine and beauty can really come out of anywhere.
How do you? Yeah, how have you? How do you square that? I guess it just managed that you don't you do well?
We're more than I think.
We're all more than our shadows, We're all more than our wounds, we're all more than our egos, and we're all, let me not say more.
We have a lot of qualities, we have a lot of things.
To give, and I don't I don't believe that, you know, a person's folly or humanness is grounds for dismissing the totality of their contribution. So a person who's abused women, who has you know, betrayed people's trusts or been engaged in womanizing behavior, if they can make, if they've made some medicine that helps me identify like my gifts and nourishes me and helps me heal and move forward in my life, I'm.
Going to use those gifts. I'm going to use them wholeheartedly.
I might investigate some of their you know, guidance or you know, testimony about what it is to be a humanist. Well, I might look at it with like a little grade of assault, we be like, okay, but yeah, I think, you know, allowing that immensity of complexity and contradiction that's inherent in being a human is an important thread of like abolitionist work too, And I really like, I couldn't call myself an abolitionist because I'm not doing the work
actively in community. But oh I'm wearing my Innocence Project sweatshirt, which is definitely a part of abolition work. But I feel abolition and the work of abolition asks all of us to embrace the totality of our humanity and know that we are all in process and know that none of us are only the worst things that we've done are the most harmful things that we've done. Yeah. So so almost like the same way that dimensions of abolition ask that we still consider folks who have done heinous
things members of our community that we're responsible for. Kind of like you practice that internally with the members of your internal community, you know, or the the internal community of the artists or crafts people or creators or philosophers or whoever whose work is nourishing you. You know, it's almost like by taking in their work, they become a part of your community.
And I don't know in ways that are instructive too, Like I feel like we have sometimes when you cast away or write off people who have done even heinous things, let alone just maybe morally a little off putting, like you're almost like not almost, Sometimes I feel like it's you're you're then casting You can learn as much from the negative examples as the positive, and so it's like someone's acknowledging that, Wow, maybe I'm also capable of those things.
Keeping those people as a part of your community, not completely right in the moth, allows you to realize that we're all sort of capable of both really amazing things and really maybe also awful things. And how you then make how can I actually make decisions to not do that thing, you know, and maybe do more of that thing?
Yes, and.
I feel like the tricky part, Yes, I agree with that, and I would add to it. You know, the practice of keeping like tending community which includes humans who have done things you don't agree with, isn't just for what the benefit can have to you. It also says something about, like I'm actually willing to invest in the keeping of another human because they're another human.
You know that there's not a.
Contingency on a person's right to be a member of community. And I also think about the fear that maybe that the subconscious fear that we have around tending really complex conflict and even what seems like antagonism because most of us have never actually been through the cycle, like we don't know what's on the other side of saying Like I think about, you know, what's been happening with what was happening a lot in a particular season in the
jazz world of these educators or band leaders. It coming out that they had done these like really icky, not okay violating actions, you know, towards students, like sexually inappropriate behavior. And we're talking, yeah, in the last I was like last decade, and this happened with a dear mentor of mine in Portland, and what I saw happening was this iron curtain or ironwalk coming down. It's like, oh my god, we don't know, we actually don't know how to deal
with this. We actually don't know what reconciliation and community could look like. We don't know what accountability and repair could look like. We actually we have we have so little idea that the only option on the plate is like you have to go like by you don't exist anymore.
It's like that, It's like whatever.
Other connections or contributions up to that point, it was just like you're out.
And that.
I agree, It doesn't matter what I think, but I'll say just my little two cents in at all is like protecting people who have been violated absolutely prior to number one. And what I feel that whole response exposes is how inequipped we are actually as humans in quote unquote community, whether that community is an institution or a field like jazz music, to like stay with the trouble, to stay with the trouble and go like, actually, what
if we don't just get rid of this person? Like what is protection and repair and accountability and responsibility actually look like? And that like stew of questions feels like what so scary that you're just like, ah, you know, it's like get out. I can't. And I I wish I hope for me and and all humans and.
Folks who have been through all sides of you know, harm.
I wish for us more robust palette of options, you know that we can utilize when harms happen, because we are gonna harm each other that's right. We're we're really messed up, you know, most of us are really just by the time you get to the point of leaving.
Your house and seeing another person, you already messed up.
So I mean important too, It's just that's here we are, you know. So yeah, I'll just add that I wish that for my community and musicians. I wish that for my community, my family, and the community of folks I work with in Portland, and it really just anywhere there's humans who have the POTENTI the harm. I wish for us to have a more robust, like I said, pallette of tools and skills, and there are a lot of people who are tirelessly cultivating those practices, you know.
So it's not like we're in a void. They're there.
It just.
The images of car serial response is what we see the most often. So I think the knee jerk reaction is to go to that.
It's our default.
Yeah, it's a default.
So much more I want to talk about, but I don't do it another time. Thanks so much for making the time. We put links in the episode description to Milton Esperanza's collaborative album and also the two playlists featuring some of our favorites from both Milton Nastrumento and Esperanzis Spaulding and again. To see the video version of this episode, visit YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod.
You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Holliday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple
podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.