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competition, he wasn’t afraid of study. He recounts his tenure in Rolling
Stones drummer Charlie Watts’ overambitious big band (which united a
who’s who of the U.K.’s top players from varying jazz genres and generations),
when he and Evan Parker would arrive earlier than everyone else
for rehearsal, just to practice.
Though Pine’s ethos differs from his friend and sometime collaborator
Branford Marsalis (Pine is featured on Marsalis’ 1991 CD, The Beautyful
Ones Are Not Yet Born)—just as a man from London should differ in outlook
from a musician from New Orleans—his conversations often turn to
the necessity of traditional underpinning, and further, the matter of jazz
being a religious pursuit. “It’s the only music where you can’t bluff—you
can tell by the second chorus whether a person can play changes, if they
have a tone, if they have studied, if they know Charlie Parker or Duke
Ellington,” he said. “If that person hasn’t got control, not only of the
instrument, but of the history of the music and I’m talking beyond Louis
Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, I’m talking about Gorée Island—the point
of no return in West Africa.”
Pine elaborates by tapping a triplet pattern on the table, which he considers
a musical transliteration of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, present
and essential to all musics from Brazilian to Yoruban. “This is how
far back you have to research, and if you don’t do that people will walk
out,” he said.
Brought up in the Ladbroke Grove vicinity of London, the site of the
spectacular Notting Hill carnival, which celebrates locals of Caribbean
ancestry, Pine always felt a camaraderie with the island residents and had
the desire to connect. He also collaborated with vocalists, including lyrical
cuts with some of the most soulful singers around, including ex-Supreme
Susaye Greene, with whom he had a hit with “Children Of The Ghetto,”
Working Week’s Juliet Roberts, Carleen Anderson and Wilson, who Pine
featured to stunning effect on “Don’t Explain” from Modern Day Jazz
Stories (Talkin’ Loud/Antilles 1996).
Belying the more tender melodicism of these duets, he would often follow
them with blistering textural attacks on tenor, soprano or bass clarinet,
though always anchored by a new groove. “A lot of saxophonists are
wannabe drummers,” Pine said. “Branford plays drums, Joe Lovano, too.
It’s this consistent thing.”
The cosmopolitan urban nature of his roots, as well as the happening
jazz DJ scene in the ’80s with its dance-oriented elements (drum-’n’-bass,
acid jazz, hip-hop and trip-hop) all collage together in Pine’s jump-cut
conception. Early on he welcomed turntablists to his oeuvre, and he is no
stranger to wah-wah pedal or the octave divider. It might seem a mishmash
to listeners with blinkered ears, but Pine is unapologetic. He is interested
in the confluence of different beats, and despite basic realities, he
disavows overt commercial hankerings.
The place where rhythms commingle is where Pine is most at home.
“If you have somebody playing in 4 and the sax player is playing in 7, 7
times 4—where they meet up—the friction between two rhythms creates a
third. When you listen to that and watch it, you don’t believe what’s going
on, but you can feel this other vibe going,” he said.
Pine’s revamped Jazz Warriors, featuring pianist Alex Wilson, recorded
a live concert at London’s Barbican in commemoration of the bicenteniary
of the abolition of slavery in the U.K. It is the latest release on his
own label. He also recently toured with a Sidney Bechet project, which
featured Cuban violinist Omar Puente. Was this too ostensibly honorific or
canonic sounding for someone projecting the contemporary tip
“It’s going to be a world music record,” Pine said about recording
plans for the Bechet project. “I’m going to do some zouk, highlife, French
Caribbean music and there might be a tango. It’ll be predominantly soprano,
with some bass clarinet, perhaps. That’s the kind of record Bechet
would have done if he had lived. The thing I like about Sidney Bechet was
his energy.”
In assessing his trajectory, Pine said that he has been playing “modern
day jazz” for 10 years now in venues with no chairs or pianos and filling
these venues with new jazz fans. The Bechet tour, which has been conducted
in venues with seats and a piano, “has brought out the more mature
audience and yes, they dance to the music also.”
DB