Home » Jazz Articles » Interview » Victor Lewis: The Drummer's Spirit
Victor Lewis: The Drummer's Spirit
Stan Getz
saxophone, tenor1927 - 1991
Dexter Gordon
saxophone, tenor1923 - 1990
J.J. Johnson
trombone1924 - 2001
Chet Baker
trumpet and vocals1929 - 1988
George Cables
pianob.1944
Woody Shaw
trumpet1944 - 1989
Kenny Barron
pianob.1943
Bobby Watson
saxophone, altob.1953
In this interview, Lewis tells us about his coming up as an aspiring musician in the midwest, as well as the musicians and groups he's worked with over the years. To the mix of recollections and reflections, he adds some fascinating ideas about jazz rhythm and drums, emphasizing their roots in African tribal music, human life, and, above all, what he calls the "spirit," the source of all music and rhythm that exists beyond the ego, a source to which he listens and which provides his inspiration.
AAJ: Let's start out with the notorious desert island question. If you were going to that desert island, and only had access to a few recordings, which would you take with you?
VL: I'd definitely take
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Nat King Cole
piano and vocals1919 - 1965
Dakota Staton
vocals1932 - 2007
Larry Young
organ, Hammond B31940 - 1978
Wayne Shorter
saxophone1933 - 2023
Woody Shaw
trumpet1944 - 1989
Tyrone Washington
woodwinds
Sarah Vaughan
vocals1924 - 1990
Joe Henderson
saxophone1937 - 2001
Woody Shaw
trumpet1944 - 1989
Elvin Jones
drums1927 - 2004
AAJ: What is it that appeals to you about Miles' album Four and More?
VL: I'll tell you a story about that. Growing up in Nebraska, one of my best buddies was also a drummer. His father was a trumpet player who idolized Miles Davis, and he'd always get Miles' records as soon as they came out. So me and my buddy were about 12 or 13 years old, and we had already heard most of the big band drummers that had come through our home town of Omaha. We saw and heard
Sonny Payne
drums1926 - 1979
Count Basie
piano1904 - 1984
Buddy Rich
drums1917 - 1987
Sam Woodyard
drums1925 - 1988
Duke Ellington
piano1899 - 1974
Tony Williams
drums1945 - 1997
AAJ: Since we're on the subject, I was going to ask you which drummers you especially prefer and/or who influenced you the most.
VL: When I was a kid, my teacher took me to see Count Basie several times, and the first time was with Sonny Payne on drums. It knocked my socks off, his dynamics and his showmanship. It made me aware of how visual the drummer is. All of that physical energy and movement!
So, Sonny Payne. Then, of course, Tony Williams. All of the masters: Buddy Rich,
Elvin Jones
drums1927 - 2004
Grady Tate
drums1932 - 2017
Roy Haynes
drums1926 - 2024
Art Taylor
drums1929 - 1995
Billy Hart
drumsb.1940
Milton Nascimento
guitar and vocalsb.1942
AAJ: I'm surprised that you didn't mention
Billy Higgins
drums1936 - 2001
Kenny Clarke
drums1914 - 1985
VL: What an oversight! Billy influenced me a lot in terms of touch, that a drummer's signature is not only what he plays but his touch, the texture, the way he hits everything, the sound. Kenny Clarke was for me one of the "point of departure" guys. Maybe the pivotal guy.
AAJ: Nor did you mention
Max Roach
drums1925 - 2007
VL: Max, of course. Max's playing was very intelligent and deliberate. He had a very strong musicality in terms of how he wanted to shape the tune. And he would put something into the music that was out of the ordinary. Then, of course, there are the funk drummers, like Clyde Stubblefield who worked with James Brown; Bernard Purdy, Harvey Mason, and Steve Gadd.
I should mention a few other important influences and experiences that affected my playing a lot. When Miles Davis came to play in Omaha in August of '69, his drummer at the time,
Jack DeJohnette
drumsb.1942
Before Jazz became an art form with performance standards similar to classical music—with the rhythm, tone, and so on somewhat standardized and teachable, each musician had no choice but to define his own style. During my first year in New York, to the best of my recollection it was
Clifford Jordan
saxophone, tenor1931 - 1993
I also absolutely must mention drummer
Ed Blackwell
drums1929 - 1992
Don Alias
percussion1939 - 2006
Ray Mantilla
percussion1934 - 2020
Sammy Figueroa
percussionI also want to mention that many of the "underdogs" taught me a great deal. These are the special guys in New York and around the world who are insufficiently acknowledged in the press but who are playing their ass off. They keep me humble, and I'm forever learning from them.
Coming of Age in Omaha, Nebraska
AAJ: Let's go back to your childhood and work our way back up timewise. So, you grew up in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1950s-60s?
VL: Yes. My father played a lot of instruments, mainly tenor saxophone. My mother was a classical and jazz pianist, and a fine singer as well. She had a music degree. I grew up listening to everything from Stravinsky and Debussy to
Ben Webster
saxophone, tenor1909 - 1973
Dinah Washington
vocals1924 - 1963
Nancy Wilson
vocals1937 - 2018
But my father didn't want any of us to have a career in music. He himself had two day jobs and did his music gigs at night. He wanted us to do something different. He said, "All black people play sports and music." As a result, my siblings did something different, except for me, being the baby brother, the musical calling was just too strong.
AAJ: Your father sounds like a very intelligent guy who really knew how to relate well to his sons!
VL: He really was! I'm 63 years old now, and even now things he said fifty years ago kick in. I have to admit I had two of the most fantastic parents of all time. I was very lucky.
AAJ: OK, so your dad cajoled you into taking up a musical instrument. But I'm always somewhat puzzled as to why anyone plays drums, since you can't really play a tune on them. Yet some guys have a passion for drums, even as kids.
Mickey Roker
drums1932 - 2017
VL: Yes, it was the same with me! I started the drums at 11, but before that, I had spent a year learning the cello around age 6, and then took up classical piano from ages 7 to 11. Before the cello, I had gravitated towards the upright bass but was too small to play it! So they bought me a small size cello, and I did OK until the teacher pulled out a bow and made me play "arco" (with the bow), and I wanted to pluck pizzicato like the jazz bass players. Who knows, if I'd been big enough for the bass, I might be playing it today!
So fast forward from age 6 to 11. It was the fourth of July, and there was a parade on the near north side of Omaha, and they had a drum corps. And I really dug it. The director of the best drum corps in Omaha happened to be a good friend of my father. I got excited. On my nights to do the dishes, it took me a long time because I started using the knives like drumsticks on the counter! I was giving my folks big hints, lobbying, but because I kept changing instruments, including French horn in junior high, they didn't trust me. So my father rented a snare drum, bought me a pair of sticks, and sent me to take lessons with Luigi Waits , who became my first teacher and my mentor until I left Nebraska. Luigi was a major figure on the music scene. He took me to see Count Basie, Buddy Rich, and Duke Ellington. He told me about Max Roach and all the great drummers. He let me join the contemporary jazz scene.
AAJ: It sounds like you instinctively went for the drums, like you knew they were for you.
VL: Yes. Sometimes I wonder if puberty had anything to do with it! I hit 11 years old, and all of a sudden it wasn't masculine enough for me to play classical piano, which I studied from when I was 7 until 11! So maybe it was a "man thing."
AAJ: Testosterone levels.
VL: So, on Christmas of my 13th birthday, they gave me a full drum set. Boy, talk about an excited kid! On the advice of my teacher, they bought me a fantastic set of year-old Gretsch drums with cases. So, boom, here they are. But then I realized that I'd never set up a drum set before! So I spent all of Christmas day trying to figure out how to put this drum set together!
The Territory Bands
AAJ: For some, the instrument becomes almost a part of the musician. But it takes time for that to happen! To change the subject, I wanted to ask you about your exposure to the "territory bands," the groups that travelled around the west and midwest in the 1930s and 40s. How did those bands influence your musical development?
VL: They were a major influence. My father was a part of the midwest territory big bands. He was from Birmingham, Alabama, and the band he belonged to moved around and he ended up in Omaha like some of the other musicians, settling down, getting married, getting a day job. And so, one of my first gigs was with this band called the "Savoy Seven." The name didn't make any sense because there were eleven cats in the band! [Laughter.] We'd play small big band charts at dances. We had some Basie charts, Duke charts. That was my first experience as a working musician, playing with these guys from the territory bands.
AAJ: I take it they were mature musicians, while you were a kid at the time breaking in with them.
VL: I started playing with the Savoy Seven when I was fourteen. They were as old or older than my father.
AAJ: So in fact your introduction to playing professionally was with a territory band.
VL: We stayed within the Omaha area. We'd load up the bus and go an hour or two down the road. Here's a funny story. One time my mother did a gig with us as a vocalist, and we played a New Years Eve gig a couple of hours away. And so, coming back, we're all lit up, and everybody's giving New Years hugs, and I had to pull the trumpet player off my mother! [Laughter.] He was a bit too zestful, as I recall.
AAJ: So far, the way you describe your youth in Omaha, it was almost magical, ideal, idyllic. But when you gave a short talk at the Dexter Gordon 90th Birthday event (February, 2013) at Dizzy's Club Coca Cola, you were very frank about the nightmare of racism, and how the black musicians like Dexter courageously stood up to it. Did you yourself encounter any of that hostility towards blacks?
VL: It's something that I don't talk about much, but yes, I did encounter some of that disillusionment and disappointment. During my freshman year in college, in Lincoln, Nebraska, I got a call from a guy I had played with asking me to do a big band gig at the Elks Club. I got really excited because the band had all the "big boys" in the area. So I painted my initials on my bass drum, and was really turned on. But the guy called me a couple of days before the gig and said, "Victor, I don't know how to tell you this, but you can't do the gig. The Elks Club won't allow any blacks in the club." That was a huge disappointment, and I really didn't anticipate it.
Also, my father had encountered racism, and the way he dealt with it showed me what a man he was. He was on a gig with my teacher, Luigi Waits, who told me the whole story. During the break, a guy walks over to my father and says, "Hey, man, you sound good. You sound real good. But you know you're just a nigger, right?" My father just smiled, and walked away. So the other guys said to my dad, "Hey, you got a right to punch this cat out. Why don't you just punch him out?" And my father calmly said, "I have responsibilities. I can't afford to get into any riff raff." I thought that was pretty deep—he was thinking about us, his kids and family.
AAJ: A rare individual, who was thinking about others' well being rather than himself.
VL: He was thinking about the big picture. So the point I was trying to make at the Dexter Gordon event at Dizzy's was that we don't realize what hurts Dexter and many others went through in the course of a day. It's impressive how they could remain noble about the music and not be bitter about what happened to them on a daily basis. After encountering one slight or another, they'd come to the gig, embrace everyone, be positive, and stay in the moment. Every day, they were excluded from this or that restaurant, had to go to a segregated men's room, couldn't stay in many hotels, and so on. Nobody talks about the grace with which these men handled themselves in those situations.
AAJ: We know about the facts, but not all of us know how it felt. We don't realize how devastating it was to be demeaned and excluded day after day, year after year.
VL: And sometimes it would just come out of nowhere. The unique thing is that among the musicians themselves, there were very few color lines. So the blacks and whites would get cozy on the road, and then the black guys couldn't go in the restaurant! It worked the other way too. At some black restaurants, whites weren't allowed! My college roommate, Don Gorder, who now teaches the business aspect of music at Berklee Colllege of Music, would hide in the car while I went in and got us some barbequed ribs!
AAJ: Music often breaks down barriers, but then the barriers remain in the society-at-large.
VL: For sure.
AAJ: We know that Dexter Gordon experienced some very heavy racism in the armed forces.
VL: He went through a lot of shit, yet he remained very positive.
Impressions of Some Iconic Musicians
AAJ: I'd now like to fast forward, and I'd like us to try to give our readers a sense of what it's like working with these top musicians on a day to day basis. So I'm going to state a personality trait you might encounter with a co-musician or leader, and you tell me who immediately comes to your mind as a prime example of that trait. No thinking- just whatever comes out of your head! You've played with legions of musicians, many among the tops in the business. So, among them, who was the most demanding to work with?
VL: I would say Woody Shaw. But in a positive way. Woody helped me get over my fears, and he pushed me to play like my life was at stake. I'll tell you a little story. I had broken up with my first girlfriend in New York, and Woody got us a gig in Knoxville, Tennessee. So I show up at the club, down in the mud, depressed, pouting. We play the first set, and then during the intermission, Woody comes up to me and says, "Can I speak to you for a moment?" So he takes me way away out of earshot from the guys in the band, and he shouts, "Mother fucker, what the fuck is wrong with you?" [Laughter.] I told him I just broke up with my girlfriend, and he says, "Fuck a girlfriend!" And he continued to machete whatever I could muster out of my mouth as an excuse for why I wasn't givin' it up. And then he stepped off and left me there in a tither. My eyes start to water, I got that lump in my throat, my adrenalin starts to go up, and I'm gettin' mad at myself. And then I came out to play the second set. I surprised everyone and myself, and I really went for it. And he turned to me, and said "That's what I mean: play for your life!"
AAJ: So it wasn't just his temper. He had a strategy—he was trying to teach you something.
VL: Right, right. He helped me overcome my fears. Another time, I was playing in a lackluster way, and Woody comes to me and says, "Don't just beat time! Start something! Instigate something!" But what really scared me was when I started taking those risks, how amazingly he responded musically to it. It made me realize that in a small jazz group, there's really no hierarchy. Everyone is needed musically. Everyone has to arch up and be aggressive and have conviction and be part of passing the ball around, like in basketball when you have the ball, you've got to have the conviction to take that shot. You've got to step up. It creates a ripple effect in the band and affects the direction of the music.
AAJ: The analogy to a sports team is very relevant. Teamwork is crucial to the outcome.
VL: Yeah, an NBA basketball team is a lot like a jazz quintet! Five players, the ball gets passed around, making plays, and everybody bounces off what the others do.
AAJ: So, who is the most inspiring musician you worked with?
VL: I would say maybe saxophonist
Pharoah Sanders
saxophone, tenor1940 - 2022
AAJ: He's a guru!
VL: Exactly. He was really inspirational. I felt like a set with him was an event! I've played with a lot of great musicians, but with Pharaoh it was different. You didn't have to rehearse much- you just had to pay attention, and things would just materialize. You just had to follow Sanders, and play from your heart, play the vibe.
AAJ: I've heard from a number of musicians that during the moments when they're playing at their best, they have no idea where the ideas are coming from.
VL: That's right. It becomes like a "channeling" experience. I often feel that when I'm playing my best, it's not just me that's playing.
AAJ: Which musician would you say was the most personally caring and compassionate?
VL: I would say trombonist
J.J. Johnson
trombone1924 - 2001
AAJ: My first real exposure to your work was when I reviewed J.J. Johnson's recording The Brass Orchestra (Verve, 1997) for his own website. Around that same time I also heard you live at the Blue Note with J.J.'s group that included saxophonist
Dan Faulk
saxophone
Renee Rosnes
pianob.1962
Rufus Reid
bass, acousticb.1944
VL: J.J. was a perfectionist about performances. I used to call him "Mr. Mission Impossible." At one point, he moved back to his home town of Indianapolis, and he'd mail me these little packages in preparation for an upcoming record gig and so on, Usually it was an audio tape with a lecture by him. So I called him "Mr. Mission Impossible," you know, "Should you decide to take on this mission." [Laughter.]
AAJ: He was a brilliant man, and probably had more to say than one would like to hear sometimes!
VL: Yes, he was a genius, and a consummate gentleman too. He was a good guy, a "standup" guy!
AAJ: I know that he went to court to help some of the musicians who couldn't get cabaret cards because of racial issues.
VL: He stood up for me at times. The powers-that-be on that Brass Orchestra record didn't want me on it. And J.J. said, this is my recording, and Victor is who I want.
AAJ: Who was the most stingy?
VL: [Chuckles.] Stan Getz! Without mentioning names, and to protect the innocent, a bassist whom we all know and love was on a stint with me and Stan, and he would say to me, "OK. I can understand a leader making three times as much as his side men, but no leader is worth a hundred times more money than his sidemen!" In comparison with other groups, working with Stan was good money. But in terms of what he was making himself, it was a small piece of the pie.
AAJ: OK, so who was the most brilliant and insightful player?
VL: There are many. But I would say maybe Dexter Gordon.
AAJ: Which would you say was most able to express his personality and emotions in the music?
VL: Oh, definitely Chet Baker. I did a tour with Stan Getz and Chet, and Chet came across as one of the most vulnerable players. He wreaked emotion. A melancholy and vulnerable cat, I guess you could say.
AAJ: Some critics really put him down, but I think he was one of the greats for exactly the reason that you're stating.
VL: I agree. But there was a certain sadness in his story. On one of the first gigs I did with him, we're finishing the head of the first tune, and Chet says to Stan, "Can you take the first solo—I have to go and glue my teeth back in." This man's playing trumpet with dentures! [Chet Baker had a heroin addiction which can lead to physical maladies such as loss of teeth.—Eds.]
The Experience, Technique, and Spirit of the Drums
AAJ: Thanks for your candor about your cohorts. Now let's move on to your work as a drummer. First of all, in recording studios they often isolate the drummer in a separate room so they can mix the sound in any way they like. I've always felt badly for the drummer, in a little room with a window and a headset. How do you feel about that?
VL: It varies. Some rooms don't make you feel so isolated. And some rooms make you feel that you're in another building in another time and place from the group. Sometimes, I couldn't even see the band. It's worse when they try to isolate the drummer in a studio that wasn't built that way. One time, I was placed in a hallway and couldn't see anybody! They segregate the musicians for mixing purposes, but a lot of the great jazz records were done without so much isolation or even with as many microphones as they use now. The problem with using many mikes is that they dis-assemble the sound, and unless the engineer is really good at putting it back together again, the result is disappointing, not the best sound. For my money, the engineers from the '60s and '70s were better than after that. When digital recording came in, it's very cold-blooded, and it will only seek what you program it to look for, as opposed to analog, which picks up more of the nuances, including the ambience of the room. What can compare to Rudy Van Gelder's recordings from the 1960s?
AAJ: Simplicity and spontaneity is so much a part of jazz. You don't want the recording to lose the feeling and atmosphere of the session.
VL: Exactly. I totally agree.
AAJ: Let's talk about your style of playing the drums.
Jim Miller
drums1954 - 2019
VL: It's been my goal for some time to not be just a drummer but to be a total musician and to participate in the musical dialogue and also to bring up the right texture.
AAJ: "Texture" is a good word for that special quality you exemplify.
VL: I think I was influenced in that regard when in college I majored in classical percussion. From that experience, I don't think of driving a drum set. I think of being a percussionist in an orchestra, where you embrace the sounds.
AAJ: Did you play the timpani, where you have to adjust the pitch? I'm very struck by how well your playing flows, resonates. It's a very beautiful sound, which you can't say for all drummers.
VL: I like to have what I do be transparent and organic at the same time.
AAJ: Somewhat related to what you said about "channeling" the music, do you ever have a sense of "floating above time" rather than punctuating it?
VL: On a good day, time isn't in increments. It's flowing.
AAJ: It's as if you're above time, watching it?
VL: Right! I like the way you put that! I like to think that on a good day, it's almost like you can sit back and watch yourself play.
AAJ: I'm interested in world music, and I wonder if you have any sense that your drumming goes back to African trance music, which was imported to the U.S. through the Carribean and New Orleans at the end of nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. There are early recordings of African trance drummers, and the rhythm is remarkably similar to jazz.
VL: Oh yeah. For sure. It's the dialogue. You've got the guy who's "talking," so to speak, on his drums, and then you've got the other guys who are "responding" on their instruments. In my opinion, the rhythms from Africa are the basis of all rhythms that exist. You mentioned Third World music. I see that as the future of music. I tell my students, "The future of music is going to be the synthesis of everything you guys like." For example,
Dizzy Gillespie
trumpet1917 - 1993
AAJ: Which particular musical cultures do you personally relate to the most?
VL: The Brazilian. No question about it. It's funny, because I never actually went to Brazil with Stan Getz. He played in Brazil a lot, but by the time I was working with him, I think he had had enough of the bossa nova days. By that time, he had only one medley of bossa nova tunes in a set to please the crowd. For him, the bossa nova days were over.
AAJ: In the later years, Getz returned to bebop and hard bop as his main fare. It's interesting you are attracted to Brazilian music, yet you don't often perform it.
VL: I don't play it a lot, but I listen to it a lot and keep up with the concepts. It's not only the rhythm that I like but the sense of romantic harmony. The Brazilians are a romantic people, and I think I'm a hopeless romantic!
AAJ: The classical composer Villa Lobos comes to mind.
VL: I love Villa Lobos, I love Dorrival and Nana Caymmi, Milton Nascimento, Ivan Lins. I have buddies in Brazil, and when I go down there, we hang out and exchange ideas. It's like a two-way street. Jazz has had as profound an effect on Brazilian music and Brazil has had on jazz.
AAJ:
Antonio Carlos Jobim
piano1927 - 1994
Gerry Mulligan
saxophone, baritone1927 - 1996
Joe Jones
b.1926VL: I use the concept "ride lead." When musicians listen to the drummer, they're focusing mostly on the ride cymbal, which gives them the sense of time. The ride cymbal tethers everything that's going on around it. As a term of endearment, some players call me their "ride."
AAJ: The ride cymbal carries the group forward. I wonder if different drummers make different use of the ride cymbal.
VL: Some drummers like their voice to be more on the whole drum "kit," the composite rhythm, which I also do, but for me everything bounces off the ride cymbal. Fusion drummers may not see the ride cymbal as so important, but with swing, the ride cymbal is the focal point.
AAJ: I thought the ride cymbal emphasis came out of Kansas City rather than swing as such.
VL: Right, OK. But the later swing bands seemed to absorb that influence and the ride cymbal came to be focused upon, as opposed to maybe the back beat on the snare drum.
AAJ: I would say the ride cymbal had a lot to do with the evolution to modern jazz and bop.
VL: Yes. And for me, the ride cymbal seems to make the time more elastic.
Composing as Catharsis
AAJ: Let's talk about your composing, which is fairly prolific.
VL: I've been a composer since high school. I would transcribe
Horace Silver
piano1928 - 2014
AAJ: Do you ever compose more extended pieces?
VL: I did a recording called A Family Portrait (AudioQuest Music, 1992) which is like a series of tunes related to my family. For example, "A Mis Padres," "To My Parents," and then a tune for my little sister, so you could say it's a musical suite dedicated to my family. I recorded it after my parents were deceased, and it was an acknowledgment of how much they helped and supported me with my music.
AAJ: You really use composing to express your feelings and emotions, like a catharsis.
VL: It's a lot cheaper than seeing a shrink. [Laughter.]
AAJ: Did you ever have to write a tune on the spot at a gig?
VL: I never had to do it myself, but I've witnessed it. I did an album with
Bobby Hutcherson
vibraphone1941 - 2016
Personal Life and the Understanding of the Spirit
AAJ: I'd like to ask you a bit about your personal life. Are you single, attached, any kids?
VL: I've been married and divorced three times. I have a daughter and a stepdaughter from my second wife. My stepdaughter just made me a grandfather a couple of weeks ago. Artist manager and publisher Joanne Klein has been my partner for thirteen years. Her mother is going to be 89 years old and still spry and active. Joanne's father had suddenly died of a heart attack in his fifties, and her mother never remarried. I guess it was hard for her to be intimate with anyone else.
Tags
Victor Lewis
Interview
Victor L. Schermer
United States
Stan Getz
Dexter Gordon
J.J. Johnson
Chet Baker
George Cables
Woody Shaw
Kenny Barron
Bobby Watson
Miles Davis
John Coltrane
Nat King Cole
Dakota Staton
Larry Young
Wayne Shorter
Tyrone Washington
Sarah Vaughan
Joe Henderson
Elvin Jones
Sonny Payne
Count Basie
Buddy Rich
Sam Woodyard
duke ellington
Tony Williams
Grady Tate
Roy Haynes
Art Taylor
Billy Hart
Milton Nascimento
Billy Higgins
Kenny Clarke
Max Roach
Jack DeJohnette
Clifford Jordan
Ed Blackwell
Don Alias
Ray Mantilla
Sammy Figueroa
ben webster
Dinah Washington
Nancy Wilson
Mickey Roker
Pharoah Sanders
Dan Faulk
Renee Rosnes
Rufus Reid
Jim Miller
Dizzy Gillespie
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Gerry Mulligan
Joe Jones
Horace Silver
Bobby Hutcherson
David Sanborn
CYRUS CHESTNUT
Curtis Lundy
Terence Blanchard
wynton marsalis
Terell Stafford
Sean Jones
Quincy Jones
Comments
PREVIOUS / NEXT
Support All About Jazz
All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.
Buy Now
