[Discussed: words, Dostoevsky, Freud, abstract expressionism. pulse, Coltrane, Ornette, boldness, academia, Leftism, rye, emancipation, history, cycles, commodification /capitalism, prayer, asceticism, As Serious As Your Life, happenings, writing.]
The dog is growling and squirming inside of an oversized beach bag on my shoulder. His instincts are telling him something that he cannot re- press. He wants to kill the cat. Rather, he needs to kill the cat. This is a flash of instinct, a reckless trajectory with my arm and bag in its way. Teeth are going, catching my hands and anything else obscuring a path to the target. What happens afterward is inconsequential; it hasn’t been considered.
There are musicians in the room, too, and they’re operating similarly, if more peacefully. Reaction, reflex, instinct. Those involved appear to be trained, for the most part. There is a sense of technical competency, of comfort and familiarity with their respective tools. But what’s happening is not a demonstration of skill. This is animal behavior. There’s a saxophone, and a double bass played with a mostly shredded bow. A percussionist interacts with a series of metal items spread across the floor.
The group acknowledges the dog. Jack Wright, seated with the sax, first notes his attentiveness and large ears. The group plays some dog sounds to get a response. Again, the dog growls at the cat.
“True music lovers are viscious,” Jack says.
We’re upstairs on Spring Garden street, somewhere in the University City area of Philadelphia. The house itself was purchased by Jack for a modest sum in 1977. The area was once slated to be taken over by Drexel University, but the project failed, at least partially due to activism by the community. It is one of the first hot days in spring, and two large windows face the street outside, where the neighbors are out on their porches and the smell of charcoal smoke fills the air.
I am nervous about this interview, in part because of Jack’s proximity to jazz fame. He’s 78 and only one or two degrees removed from someone like Miles Davis or Eric Dolphy, characters I know only from records and books. But, truthfully, Jack’s proximity to these legends is one of the less interesting things about him, and this fact is even more intimidating. I’ve just finished reading his 2017 book The Free Musics, which uses jazz and free improvisation as a lens for understanding the broader social, cultur- al, and economic shifts of the last 50+ years.
One of the book’s many strengths is its refusal to succumb to nostalgia. The Free Musics deals with history but, more importantly, it deals with history’s present day implications for music and culture at large. Wright champions free jazz’s once-bold attitude while challenging its eventual pitfalls. ‘Given the sonic (and sociopolitical) possibilities opened up by this movement,’ the book asks, ‘why did the music cease to evolve?’
For decades Jack has toured America and abroad, playing abstract improvised music to small audiences. His habit of underground touring prompted guitarist Davey Williams to call him ‘The Johnny Appleseed of free improvisation’ in the 80s. He lives simply and works as little as possible. It is a situation that leaves him free to follow his creative instincts, uncompromised by concerns of money or prestige.
It’s been months since I’ve socialized properly, and talking with Jack is startling at first, maybe because he’s actually listening intently. Our slow chat that night is a sharp contrast to common NY chatter. I remind myself that Jack is a student of history and of culture, and also that much of music is listening. Whether changing his playing technique or examining his own beliefs, Wright’s ears are wide open, much like the dog’s, assessing what is happening and what is possible.
___________________________________________________________________
[Jack, Adam, and Poison in a room. Adam has a borrowed bottle of fine rye whiskey. Poison’s head is peeking out of a blue beach bag, growling occasionally but mostly staring at Jack.]
I’m looking forward to this training thing. I think I finally have the money, and it’s been a long time coming. Might cause a lot of relief for both of us.
To get the dog trained?
Yeah. He can be really aggressive.
It’s kind of old to get trained, isn’t it?
Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. He’s 6 or so, which I guess is middle-aged in dog years.
I mean, are you ready to get trained? Or you’ve been trained?
I am. I need to be, probably.
Re-trained.... Dogs think they’ve gotten their training in nature or whatever.
He needs a recalibration, I guess.
Yeah. Well, recalibration is to bring you back to your normal thing. And this is like a whole new life! [To Poison:] Can you imagine that? A new life for you. You won’t be as happy, because you won’t be as impulsive. But you’ll be rewarded.
I think I’m an apologist for some of his aggression. I get bit in the face once in the while, and I say, ‘This is an animal. This is the price I pay for having an animal in my house that’s nice to me sometimes.’ Which is probably the wrong approach. That’s what victims of domestic abuse say to rationalize their abusers. [laughs]
[laughs] You’re the one who gets punished!
Yeah, sometimes.
[Jack holds his palm up toward the dog.]
You know Talk to the hand? It’s to put people off. ‘Talk to the hand, I’m not listening.’ I like to think of somebody, an individual, coming up with a gesture, and then others just imitate it and it becomes a thing. You think of words and where they came up with them. Like “bucket.” It doesn’t have any origin other than illiterate peasants, originally Germanic. It was first just a sound. They had something that was a bucket, and somebody made these sounds. It wasn’t derived from anything else.
Improv.
Yeah, in the sense of spontaneous creation. Somehow it happened, these words came about. They needed a word to say what an object was, and so they made a word. It was shorthand for ‘Go get me that round thing that holds water.’