a flick from the BlackSocialMusic debut, circa January 2019... back before all the hair
So, who even are you?
Put simply, I'm just a kid from the southeast side of Florida that grew up with the same hoop dreams as the next lanky kid on the block. A common misconception is that I was some prodigy that walked around in bow ties and could sightread Chopin. Although I did have a connection with suits, I was just a regular dude that read biographies and watched documentaries all the time. That's really where I became entranced with telling stories. Writing was always around the house, too. My pops is one of the greatest sports writers to see this side of Heaven, y'all just don't know it yet. Ma dukes was a superhuman editor and photographer... and blogger, and videographer, and manager, and mixing engineer (yeah, I grew up a momma's boy if you can't already tell).
So there you have it, I was pretty much your average neighborhood dork. But, I really didn't like school. I have always loved learning, just not school. Sue me. My head was always in a book, and by senior year, I was pretty much the Malcolm X of my class. I was Mr. Black Student Union and was also the president of the school's chapter of the 5000 Role models of Excellence Project... you don't have to say it, I know I was pretty dorky. I remember posting a video bashing the state of police departments at the start of the Black Lives Matter movement. You couldn't tell me I wasn't Chairman Fred. Of course, 5000 Role Models had me throw on my club tie and re-record the video downtown in MUCH nicer terms. I say all of that to say, if you've heard anything I've performed and wondered why I get all blackity-black-black and then some more black... I've been doing this for a while lol.
At what point did music become your thing?
My mother forced me to join the school band when I was 11. The summer of my 12th birthday, a saxophonist by the name of Joe Donato introduced me to jazz. I played the hell out of Watermelon Man for the next year and a half. That year, a kid in the school's jazz band got a solo only because he could learn the part by ear. You already know I wasn't about to let that ride, so I taught myself piano and then developed my ears. Best believe that solo got split by the time the Black History Month show rolled around. It was only right.
I was hooked from the moment I heard Mr. Donato play. I knew I wanted to play like that. He was actually one of the judges in a talent show that I entered a few years later. Didn't know me from a can of paint, and definitely didn't slide me to the next round. What can I say? I was hooked, but still pretty slaw.
At 12, we moved down to Dade County and I enrolled at what was becoming Arthur & Polly Mays 6-12 Conservatory of the Arts. To us, though, it was the same old Mays Middle that everybody's parents went to back in the day. The school looked like a condensed Underground Railroad. The band director was this lil' dude named Mr. Scavella. Scavella was cool people. Gave me a lot of room to grow. I learned an entire jazz band setlist by ear during my first week of school there because the high schoolers were being stingy with the sheet music. They quickly learned that I was only 12 on paper. I wasn't scared of going toe to toe with anybody, about anything. Let's just say Mays was an... experience. That's where I started arranging music, though. Did some stuff for the marching band, and that was where I started really embracing music as my passion. I was a cocky lil' thing with it, though. Most definitely got bullied on the slick, but we don't have to talk about that.
I reached high school and spent 3 years in the school's JV band. I also was 3rd alto in the jazz band (if you don't know, jazz bands only have 2 alto slots. To this day, I believe the only reason I got in was because I was going to keep auditioning every day until I got accepted). Let's not get it twisted, I wasn't THAT bad. I was just very timid when it came to jazz. I didn't sound like the other guys. I couldn't read changes, but I just had really good ears. When I moved to Memphis as a senior, that's when I learned everything. A look through my bio will fill in the blanks.
When did you decide to pursue a career in music?
It was really the only thing I was noticeably good at doing. At 16, I put out a lil' album of cover songs and I played all the instruments on it. Drums, keys, and sax, and I even wrote a rap verse on a song. Didn't have a microphone yet, just Audacity and a whole bunch of gain on the computer's internal mic. My mom mixed it, and my pops did some Q&A's with me as the interludes. That process showed me two things about myself. For one, I was going to do this music thing by any means necessary. Second, my camp needed to be family. This music thing had to be kept close to the vest. To this day, my collaborators are people that I've known for years and can trust to go wherever we need to go with the art.
I graduated high school and decided to take my chances studying jazz. It was pretty cool being able to call myself an official music student. My passion for the stage came from writing No Better Blues and just talking about the story of the song in a scholarship audition. I won the scholarship, and wrote an entire album shortly after. Formed a group, and never thought about doing anything else ever again.
flick from Camp413, circa September 2019... back when I used to hide my eyes on stage
Where did the poetry come from?
Funny story, actually. My twin sister was the poet of the family. I just wrote love notes all the time. My first time performing a poem was at Berklee when I was 18. "...I see death around the corner, dripped in his all black, telling me this freedom and equality sh*t ain't really all that...", yeah I was still attacking police years after my first radical public statement lol. I didn't recite another poem for months. I met this one girl during like the first week of the semester and wrote her a poem after we got to bonding over music, sending each other Spotify playlists and whatnot. "Nature's Precious Story"... recited it for her one night when I was walking her to her dorm. So now y'all now, the lil' lover boy has been around for a while.
In all seriousness, poetry was something I didn't take seriously until I was about 19. I still don't call myself a real poet. Just a sometime poet. I like telling stories. So the music is the film score and the poems are the narrations. Simple. I used to despise how heavy my voice sounded in a microphone, though. So I just focused on writing and not performing. Then, the band's poet didn't learn one of the pieces, so I had to perform it. "... these are the reasons why ice flows through their bulging veins. They anxiously wait on the Lord to come down. Until then, getting high is their only escape..."/"Watchman, tell us of the night in question. Take us to the light, tell us we'll get to heaven..."
Those words from my song, "Choirboy", did everything I needed. They matched my natural cadence and fit my voice like a glove. I never really looked back after that.
What was it like striking out as an artist before being a sideman?
What most people don't know is, my first gig came when I was 15 or 16. With a bluegrass group. The next gig was with a Prohibition-era type singer named Cesar. I spent so much time playing gigs in different environments and with different styles that it just inspired me to start creating. I fell for the Sonicbids trap and thought I could get bookings from their EPK hosting, and every "no" just fueled me to create more and become stronger in the music. I was still 15 at that time. So while I was doing things as a sideman, I was just trying to emulate the greats whenever I touched the horn.
I didn't see the career path as black or white. I figured my own music would open the doors to becoming a first-call type of sideman. So they worked hand-in-hand. Of course, I became that dude that led a 9-piece group with no money. So I took as many sideman gigs just to be able to put together media and press kits for my group.
I also got my feet wet as a teacher when I was 17. Teaching became something that I couldn't avoid. I act like a teacher even when I'm not in an educative setting. Mentorship was really what was important. Teaching kids on parole how to express themselves through poetry, or teaching Black kids that jazz is steadily becoming institutionalized but it'll never be something that can be stolen from us as long as we lift our voices through the music. Stuff like that has always meant a lot to me. Teaching kids that you don't have to be on track to win YoungArts to have what's considered a "gift". You can find yourself and find your voice as you go, as long as you keep that fire burning inside you. So teaching is an added income that allows me to continue to press forward as an artist and bring my group with me. I force them to agree with my ultimate goal of leading workshops on creativity in underserved communities in whatever city we perform in. It's my way of reaching the musicians that don't have the pipeline access to jazz that leads to Blue Note residencies and Downbeat Magazine features. Coming out the mud gives you a story, and I want to show young minds how to write theirs.
So what do you do to stay inspired?
I fall in love. Then out of it. And I write about both while blasting country music, and some Monica. And if When I See You comes on, best believe I'm putting someone's picture on the mirror and stuttering when I rehearse what I'm going to say to them...
All jokes aside, I just live life and let life be a muse. There's inspiration in literally everything. If you come from a spiritual faith, then you know that everything is constantly aligning and happening and unraveling before your very eyes. Like the bees know exactly when to pollenate (and boy, do they get it in. Kills me every spring) with the flowers. No one ever said, "aye, bee, go do your thing with that lil' flower shawty over there", they just know. Everything has a purpose. So every instance, every encounter, every moment, was written well before our characters were even introduced. So I write as if every moment has its own story to tell. Life becomes a movie when you think pf it that way.
I also like taking drives, listening to people tell their own stories, and I like to cook as well. All of those things that keep me centered and lifted. Then, of course, I do occasionally have a lil' lady friend that gives me plenty to write about.
What's coming up for you in the field?
I'm in a "release" phase. Creating, editing, breathing, and then releasing the product to the world. Southland has some big, big stuff coming up. My brain kind of splits in half for the group's projects and my personal ones. It's all an acquired taste, you know what I'm saying? Concoction of sounds and voices to tell one story from different angles. Kind of like that movie, "Vantage Point". I try to figure out how many different perspectives I can bring to a concept, and then I try to provide the elements for the audience to piece together the puzzle. My personal projects use interpolations like crazy. There's always a hidden trace of another song or work of art that's supposed to plant the listener into whatever space that song was written for. Then you get snapped back into reality and hear all of the other sounds having their own conversations with each other.
I say all of that to say, I've gotten to the point where I can explore those sounds and voices much more often than before. So there are a lot of personal projects that will continue to come out as Southland gears up for the release of the stuff in our vault.
Closing Thoughts?
If you read to the end, peace and love to you. If not, oh well. You really just missed out on some decent recollections surrounding some moderately dry humor.
In all seriousness, thank you for tapping in! I hope you continue to read these blogs. I'll try to keep y'all posted on my thoughts on things that are blog-worthy. Much, much love.
Comments