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Logan Richardson: To Boldly Go Where No Jazz Has Gone Before
Courtesy Paolo Soriani
Blues People gave me a certain freedom to be uninhibited about the past, to have an eternal feeling of forward direction. Basically, not to give a fuck. Not that I ever really did. But with Blues People and AfroFuturism, I definitely don’t.
—Logan Richardson
Logan Richardson
saxophone, alto
Pat Metheny
guitarb.1954
Warning! Shift sounds positively conservative compared to 2021's AfroFuturism (WAX Industry / Whirlwind). The new album's reference points, either intended by Richardson or imagined by the listener, are shared with those of three other bandleaders who inhabit the broad church that is post-
Sun Ra
piano1914 - 1993
Nicole Mitchell
fluteb.1967
Matana Roberts
saxophone, alto
Kamasi Washington
saxophoneb.1981
Richardson parallels Roberts' use of sung and spoken-word field and archive recordings with sound bites from his great-grandmother, his mother, the rapper Busta Rhymes and the vibraphonist
Stefon Harris
vibraphoneb.1973
Björk
vocals
Frank Zappa
guitar, electric1940 - 1993
Sonny Sharrock
guitar, electric1940 - 1994
Much of AfroFuturism's sound is big, like Phil Spector's would have been big if he had produced a
Charles Mingus
bass, acoustic1922 - 1979
Laura Taglialatela
vocals
McCoy Tyner
piano1938 - 2020
Ezgi Karakus
celloAfrofuturism is likely to receive a mixed reception in the jazz world. The conformists Richardson was talking about in 2016 will question whether it is jazz at all. More perniciously, social and political conservatives will hide behind the same argument to disguise their hostility towards any music which asserts blackness and refers directly to the injustices inflicted on black people. Back in the day, conformists and conservatives (they are not necessarily one and the same) adopted similar positions against
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Orrin Keepnews
producer1923 - 2015
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
In 2021, it is Richardson's turn to rattle the jazz cage and confront its keyholders. Another Kansas City-born alto saxophonist might well be looking on and applauding.
Born in 1980, Richardson was brought up in Kansas City before moving to Boston and New York to study at Berklee College of Music and The New School. He released his first album, Cerebral Flow (Fresh Sound New Talent), in 2007. In 2011, he moved to Europe, living in Spain, France and Italy before returning to the US. AfroFuturism's immediate predecessor was 2018's transgressive Blues People (Brainchildworld). Richardson has set up his own label, WAX Industry, which released Afrofuturism in 2020. He later struck a distribution deal with Whirlwind, which will release physical editions of the album in April 2021.
Richardson spoke to All About Jazz from Rome, where in 2021 he lives with his partner, the aforementioned Italian singer and artist Laura Taglialatela, who designed AfroFuturism's off-planet sleeve art and is featured on three of its tracks. The couple had previously lived in Kansas City, in one of
Charlie Parker
saxophone, alto1920 - 1955
All About Jazz: Do you come from a musical family?
Logan Richardson: None of them were musicians but they all loved music. There was always music. And fortunately for me, everyone had good taste. There were loads of great LPs around the house. " data-original-title="" title="">The Temptations, " data-original-title="" title="">The O'Jays,
Stevie Wonder
vocalsb.1950
Prince
multi-instrumentalist1958 - 2016
Woody Shaw
trumpet1944 - 1989
AAJ: Was the Kansas City school system supportive?
LR: I was fortunate being the age I was, because the city started these "magnet schools," specialist schools for high school age kids. So when I was fifteen I transferred to a performing arts school and I got a school issue alto. Before that I'd been playing one lent to me by a friend—I didn't get my own instrument until I was seventeen. I would skip lunch, I would skip class, I would do anything to practice. After school I would go straight home and practice. I never hung out. Then in 1996 the 18th & Vine Jazz Institute opened. The first week I went
Max Roach
drums1925 - 2007
Shirley Scott
organ, Hammond B31934 - 2002
Bobby Watson
saxophone, altob.1953
Jay McShann
piano1909 - 2006
Kenny Burrell
guitar, electricb.1931
Richard Davis
bass, acoustic1930 - 2023
AAJ: When you were nineteen you went to Berklee College of Music. Why did you leave in your second year?
LR: I had to leave because of financial issues. People went to
Gary Burton
vibraphoneb.1943
Zoot Sims
saxophone, tenor1925 - 1985
Marcus Strickland
clarinet, bass
E.J. Strickland
drums
Robert Glasper
pianob.1978
Gary Bartz
saxophone, altob.1940
Greg Osby
saxophoneb.1960
Billy Hart
drumsb.1940
Joe Chambers
drumsb.1942
AAJ: Were you gigging much by this time?
LR: I never stopped working from when I was sixteen. In Kansas City, I would sometimes do two or three gigs a day, lots of private functions. It was school related so it wasn't a problem. When I was at Berklee I had gigs right away, same when I got to New York. Secretly, I went into my lessons at the New School looking to get gigs. I mean, I'm going to get the knowledge, for sure, absolutely. But the way I'm approaching class is like networking, getting noticed. And it worked. Joe Chambers,
Greg Tardy
saxophoneb.1966
Nasheet Waits
drumsb.1971
AAJ: In 2019, after seven years in Europe, you were back in Kansas City. How did you come to live in Charlie Parker's childhood home? It sounds too good to be happenstance.
LR: The mother of an old friend from high school was a former real estate agent and I mentioned that I was looking for somewhere for me and Laura to live. She said there was this place where Charlie Parker spent part of his childhood and it was available to rent. I was like, "What are you talking about! Take me there!" I did some investigation and it was well documented on the city register. Charlie Parker lived there from 1930 to 1932. It was right in the centre of town but it had a really great, chilled atmosphere. We're back in Rome now. We've got a studio in the house. Much of Afrofuturism was recorded here.
AAJ: In 2020, you released AfroFuturism on September 23rd, John Coltrane's birthday. That sounds too good to be happenstance, too.
LR: Releasing it on Trane's birthday was a symbolic gesture. For me, it's a really special album. When I chose the title it was mainly because it sounded cool. But it is also part of the Afrofuturist genre in the sense that I'm coming from the African diaspora and I employ cutting-edge technologies to make the music. Afrofuturism is like a scientific laboratory that is combining modern inventions with ancient wisdom to create this thing that is new. To me, black people, black culture in general, has to be futuristic. Because basically the only thing that can lift black folks is the future, it's the only thing that can get us through the drudge of what's happening now. For us, futuristic thinking is about survival. Of course, we have to know the past, but we mustn't be mesmerized by it.
AAJ: The album doesn't so much recalibrate the definition of jazz as blow it up.
LR: It was really a natural progression from Blues People. Despite the name, that was basically a rock album. I mean, we weren't doing stuff like
Ma Rainey
vocals1886 - 1939
AAJ: Do you think that being reverential about the tradition, about the elders, can be a handicap to progress?
LR: It's always important to understand the culture of our ancestors. But our minds have to be set on the future. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, they were thinking of the future. "OK, we're going to work now so that in the future we're going to have freedom or something approaching it. In the future we're all going to be able to go to the same schools. This is what we're working towards." So the thought process has to be future-centric. People say it is important to follow the elders, but one of the things they forget to say is that the elders they're talking about were in their early twenties, maybe even their teens, when they made those recordings that shook things up and changed the direction of travel.
AAJ: It's like they're saying that
Herbie Hancock
pianob.1940
LR:
Tony Williams
drums1945 - 1997
Clifford Brown
trumpetb.1930
Booker Little
trumpet1938 - 1961
Scott LaFaro
bass1936 - 1961
Eric Dolphy
woodwinds1928 - 1964
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
AAJ:
Idris Ackamoor
saxophoneb.1951
LR: Humankind began in Africa. We're all part of the diaspora, we're all Africans in some form or other. Some people don't like to hear that. All types of people. The word Afrofuturism makes them uncomfortable. I was talking to Christian Scott the other day about when he did "KKPD Klu Klux Police Department" [on Yesterday You Said Tomorrow, Concord, 2010]. He was saying, "Look at all the brothers and sisters who are trying to be Afrocentric now, because it's popular, and for years I felt like I was the only person doing it. I was ridiculed by the very same people who are coming out now talking about Afro this and Afro that." They were telling him, "Hey, you might want to back off that a bit because it may hurt your pocket." It was black folks saying he might be better off if he didn't stand up for black people. Black people have to stop being slaves in their minds. That's where most slavery exists today. The whips and chains of the slave times were just the beginning of ways to condition people. Personal, mental and emotional well being is at the top of the thing. If your mind is strong, if your heart is strong, you can really survive anything. I believe once those things get compromised then it quickly leads to your body and your life being compromised.
AAJ: Before you talk about your six album choices, please tell us about anything else you've got scheduled for 2021.
LR: I'm actually working on four albums, all for 2021. They're with the AfroFuturism band basically. I'm not big on guest artists, though with Shift I thought I probably could only afford to have Pat Metheny on a couple of tracks. I reached out and explained that and when he got back to me he said, "I'll do it on one condition: I play on the whole album." He didn't want to be a guest artist, he wanted to be part of the band. He was so great.
AAJ: Can you tell us a little about the upcoming albums?
LR: One is the follow-up to Blues People. I'm just putting the final touches to the post production. Then there's a trilogy. I was going to call them The Gospel Volume 1, The Gospel Volume 2 and The Gospel Volume 3. But I found out somebody is releasing an album called something like that, so that title is out. It's jazz but I'm playing around with gospel voicings in the arrangements. I'm in the process of organising the track sequences. I've actually recorded enough material to put out six or seven albums this year, like Miles did with all those albums he made in 1956, or Christian Scott with The Centennial Trilogy in 2017. I'm so full of music I can't stand it, in a positive sense. Man, I'm just trying to get it out. I have anything but writer's block, I'll put it that way.
LOGAN RICHARDSON: SIX ALBUMS OF ENDLESS TRANSFORMATIVE INFLUENCE
These are just the jazz albums I value above all else. I'm also into other styles. Like I'm a huge Prince fan and Purple Rain is a very, very important album for me. And Radiohead, I love everything they've done. Thom Yorke really fucks me up. And Queen. Take "Bohemian Rhapsody." You tell me the difference between that and
Duke Ellington
piano1899 - 1974
The Quintet Jazz At Massey Hall
Debut, 1956
As I said earlier, the first four bars of Charlie Parker's solo on "Night In Tunisia" set me on my course when I was fourteen. I think now that when he made that break the development of the alto saxophone was complete. From the start I was fascinated by how he sounded so different from all the saxophonists that went before. Then later I learnt that he was obsessed with
Art Tatum
piano1909 - 1956
Art Tatum20th Century Piano Genius
Emarcy, 1986
There were certain albums I got when I was in my teens that I didn't fully understand till I was twenty-three, twenty-four. Like this one. I got it when I was sixteen. I knew that I liked it a lot but I had yet to discover its depth. Like Charlie Parker, I want to play like Tatum on the horn. All the range, everything. All this pictographing he does, it's like watching a movie when you're listening to him. For me, whatever instrument you play, whether it's drums, bass, saxophone, trumpet, whatever, Art Tatum is everything. And I actually prefer him when he's playing solo, like here. He doesn't need a band, he's more than enough by himself.
John ColtraneGiant Steps
Atlantic, 1960
Soon after I heard Jazz At Massey Hall, I was staying at my grandmother's house for the summer. On my birthday, my oldest brother bought me this album. He's not a jazz person, but he knew I had started teaching myself saxophone. He said, "I hear this guy is really good, he's called
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Kenny GarrettPursuance: The Music Of John Coltrane
Warner Bros., 1996
At the time I was coming up in Boston and New York, barely anyone was playing alto, it was all tenor players. Most times I would easily be the only alto saxophonist in the room. And this album gave me confidence. I was into Bird, I was into Trane, and here's
Kenny Garrett
saxophone, altob.1960
Cannonball Adderley & John Coltrane Cannonball & Coltrane
Limelight, 1964
This one also came out as In Chicago under
Cannonball Adderley
saxophone1928 - 1975
George Garzone
saxophone, tenorb.1950
Miles DavisNefertiti
Columbia, 1968
I definitely need to slide some Miles in here, he's so critical. There's so many albums I could choose—Kind Of Blue, Bitches Brew, Sketches Of Spain, Milestones, Birth Of The Cool, Miles In The Sky, The Sorcerer. But I guess if I get right down to it, it probably has to be Nefertiti. This is the album that taught me about the importance of setting a mood. Compositionally and also by the way that the band plays, the continuance, the way one person will play and then the next player will pick it up. There was this tremendous flow between musicians that existed in this period of Miles. One person knows what the other person is saying so well that they can finish the conversation. They're all like spirits dancing in the room together. Nefertiti gives me the feeling of being totally lost within this space that they've created.
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Interview
Logan Richardson
Chris May
Sun Ra
Nicole Mitchell
Matana Roberts
kamasi washington
Stefon Harris
Bjork
Radiohead
Frank Zappa
Sonny Sharrock
Charles Mingus
Laura Taglialatela
McCoy Tyner
Ezgi Karakus
John Coltrane
orrin keepnews
Sonny Rollins
Charlie Parker
The Temptations
The O'Jays
Stevie Wonder
Prince
Woody Shaw
Max Roach
Shirley Scott
Bobby Watson
Jay McShann
Kenny Burrell
Richard Davis
Gary Burton
Zoot Sims
Marcus Strickland
E.J. Strickland
Robert Glasper
Gary Bartz
Greg Osby
Billy Hart
Joe Chambers
Greg Tardy
Nasheet Waits
Ma Rainey
Herbie Hancock
Tony Williams
Clifford Brown
Booker Little
Scott La Faro
Eric Dolphy
Idris Ackamoor
CHRISTIAN SCOTT
pat metheny
Queen
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Art Tatum
Kenny Garrett
Cannonball Adderley
George Garzone
David Liebman
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