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Riffs
Backstage With …
By Aaron Cohen
Lewis Honors Lincoln: Ramsey Lewis
is composing a major piece that will
commemorate the 200th anniversary of
Abraham Lincoln’s birth. The composition
will premiere at the Ravinia Festival
in Highland Park, Ill., in the summer of
2009. Details: ravinia.org
Parlato Signed: Singer Gretchen
Parlato has signed on with ObliqSound,
which will release her debut full-length
disc in 2009. Details: obliqsound.com
Songwriters Sought: The New York
Songwriter’s Circle is accepting submissions
for its third annual songwriting
contest. The deadline for entries is Sept.
30. Details: songwriters-circle.com
Hyde Park Fest Returns: The second
Hyde Park Jazz Festival will be held
throughout this Chicago neighborhood
on Sept. 27. Featured musicians include
Reginald Robinson, Nicole Mitchell, Ari
Brown and Corey Wilkes. Details: hydepark
jazzfestival.org
Jazz Church: New York’s St. Peter’s
Church will honor trombonist Benny
Powell and pianist Jane Jarvis as part of
its annual All Nite Soul event on Oct. 12.
About 150 musicians are slated to perform.
Details: saintpeters.org
Indy Confab: More than 100 jazz musicians
with roots in Indiana gathered at
the Indiana History Center in
Indianapolis to pose for photographer
Mark Sheldon. The resulting photograph
is being sold as a poster to raise
funds for jazz education in the city.
Details: agreatdayinindy.com
RIP, Bobby Durham: Drummer Bobby
Durham died of lung cancer in Genoa,
Italy, on July 7. He was 71. Durham,
who was known for his sensitive brushwork,
served as a sideman for Duke
Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Dizzy
Gillespie.
Gilberto
Gil
Gilberto Gil has been at the forefront of
Brazilian music for more than 40 years.
After co-creating the Tropicalia revolution
of the ’60s, he took the lead in shaping a
Brazilian take on funk and reggae while
helping spark a revival in rural baião.
Currently serving as his country’s minister
of culture, he’s been seeking innovative
means to connect Brazil’s most disparate
communities. He spoke after his concert
last June 19 at the Ravinia Festival in
Highland Park, Ill.
You have an interesting take on copyright
and ownership of your own music and
performances.
I’ve been trying to experiment with some
possiblities in terms of open access, easing
some ways of providing access to my
music. The technology and opportunities
are so open that we have to try things. I’ve
been asking people to upload material
from my concerts and licensing my songs
so that they can be used for recombination
and reprocessing.
What aspects do you control
I control the whole thing, but I allow people
to do whatever they want for non-commercial
purposes. They have to be authorized
for commerical purposes. They can use
material for different cultural purposes, like
remixing, reassembling, recombining and
having it in different ways on the Internet
or for experimentiaton with their own
musical groups.
What do these open remixes of your
songs sound like
The remixes are basically emphasizing the
PATRICK GIPSON/RAVINIA FESTIVAL
drum beat for a hip-hop
model, but some people
reshape them for a bossa
nova, soft mellow way.
You’ve been active in linking
up all of Brazil—even
the most remote regions—
to the Internet in a way
that presents their music
to the rest of the country.
How has that program
been going
Now we have 1,000 hot
spots. At least half of those
are able to connect through
the Internet using digital
devices and they’ve begun
being able to record, film and upload and
download. In the Amazon, we have a boat
that travels different rivers and the boat
takes news and gets them connected, films
the communities, records the communities
and brings news of different places of the
world. The Indian groups in Amazon are
asking to be part of music festivals in different
places in Brazil.
How much has your advocacy for computer
connectivity shaped the sound of
your recent disc, Banda Larga Cordel
A little. I’m a humble and modest user of
the Internet. The word processing programs
enabled me to be in hotel rooms
and write songs and experiment with cut
and paste and reshaping. In the studio, my
son Ben and the producer were in charge
of experimenting with different sound programs
and you can hear a little bit of it in
the record.
At your concert here, you’ve honored the
baião music of Luiz Gonzaga.
It’s obligatory for me to have some of
Gonzaga’s songs. I am so inside that culture,
it’s an important part of my own
growing process as an artist.
If the United States were to have a minister
of culture and pick a musician to be
the minister, who should it be
It’s a difficult question to answer. But I
would go for someone like David Byrne.
He’s been trying to work on cultural diversity
and creating a dialogue. He understands
how complex North American culture is,
and the relations it has to establish more
profoundly with the rest of the world. DB
14 DOWNBEAT September 2008