In&Outjazz: Hi Steve, nice to meet you, great pleasure! Welcome to the interview!  Would be why are you more sympathetic to the term “spontaneous composition” rather than the term “jazz”?

Steve Coleman: I mean, there’s many many musicinas that don’t like the term “jazz”. It goes back to Duke Ellington, Max Roach and all those guys so it didn’t start with me. We just don’t feel like that word is representative of the music. What do you mean when you say “jazz”? Do you mean Louie Amstrong? Do you mean Kenny G? There’s so many music that’s so far appart and they call them all “jazz” that the term is useless. It just doesn’t mean anything.

What about the term “spontaneous composition”?

Because, the big part of our music, is that the “spontaneous composition” is a big…, is amajor element. The spontaneous part. And it is composition, you know? So it’s just a descriptive term.

According to this topic, we find that two main elements of your music are rhythmic structures and the energy. And you’re always seeking change and spontaneity through these elements. What is the meaning of energy and rhythmic structures for you?

Well I mean, in music of the african diaspora rhythm is one of the main elements, you know? So I’m just part of that tradition. It’s not something that I created, but it’s something that was happening before, before I came along. So all my mentors, all the people who taught me, who I admired, the older people, it was important for them, and so I just come into this tradition. Those things are not things that I created myself. They’re things that were already in existence before I was even born.

And so it’s just part of a culture, like flamenco, like japanese snow music, like indonesian music. These is all traditions, different traditions. And so the things that are important for the different people in different places happen beacuse of culture. It’s not really because of music, it’s beacuase of culture. Cause see, rhythm is important for us in basketball, in boxing, in all of these things, it’s not just music. So I happen to be a musician, so yeah, for me I express music, but Mohamed Ali expresses boxing and it’s the same principle, it’s the same thing. And many people think that it’s special on the music, but no, it’s everywhere.

It’s in the way that people walk, the way they talk. It’s in all of that. And the music comes from that. It’s not the other way around. It’s the culture first and then the music is coming out of it, of the culture.

And so, what’s the lesson that the culture gives music in terms of change? How do you take change into music?

Well, I mean, I think that change is the natural state of humans, I mean, just look at human society. Look at what’s happening in the last hundred years or the last two hundred years, it’s a lot of change you know.

Or the last couple of days

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean there’s a lot to happen, so change is happening all the time and we’re just expressing it in music. I prefer to express this music than war or some other destructive kind of thing, or fucking up the climate or the planet or something like that, but

change is happening there too. It’s happening in politics, it’s happening everywhere. So we just we express this in music. We happen to be musicians, so all these things are coming out of this music. But we’re still human, so the same things that happen with other humans happen with us. You know? Sometimes I go on stage, I have a stomachache or I have a problem with something…

That also takes and important role in how you play?

Sure, sure, because the music is coming from us.

Very nice

Yeah, yeah

And according to this, how important is the intuition?

Well, again, that’s again in human, you know? Quality for humans, intuition…It’s al important, intuition, dreams, what you inhert from the people who came before you, like you DNA and all this, all of this things play a role. But intuition…I don’t think of inuition and logic as really separate things, for me it’s like a holistic kind of thing. Because whatever created people gave you all of this ability. You have te ability for inuition, you hace the ability for logic, you have the ability to dream, so I think you’re supposed to use all of these, this is what was given to you, these abilities. I mean, your not a mosquito right? You’re a human so…

So intuition is not that it is different from the planned structure of the tune you guys are playing. Both things take an important role?

Ah, you ….how we play? Well the best analogy I can give for what the way we play is talking, because language is the thing that I model the music after. So just like we have a conversation and I’ve never had this conversation before with somebody else because you’re saying things to me that other people have never said, and I’m answering to you the other thing you know? But we’re using the same words, the same phrases, we have a language…etc. The music is kind of like this. Every night is like a different conversation but there is a language. If there’s no a language we would not be able to understand each other. If we just take a musician off the street and bring him on the stage is not gonna be the same, because he doesn’t speak the same language. He has his music, but it’s like saying Catalan, English, Urdu, these are different languages, they all sound, but they’re different languages, they have a different syntax, and what things mean and things like this. In one language “ah” might mean one thing and “ah” might mean something else in China, you know?

That’s also the beauty of languages

Yeah sure, it’s like you have all this variety and everything, so whenever you see a group of musicians that have been together for a long time, they usually develop a kind of language that they’re able to speak with each other. So I think of it as language a lot. For me it’s like

conversation. Each concert is like a different conversation.