Jean-Paul Bourelly/Vibe Music
January 6, 1999/Silver Spring, Md.

Photo: Paula Stanley

Thomas Stanley: Bring us up to date on what you've got happening recording-wise.
Jean-Paul Bourelly: Recording-wise. I have a new record coming out in Europe first and hopefully in the states soon after, although as my career has gone, it could be about three or four years after we do it when it drops over here. It's called Vibe Music and it's basically coming out of the Blue Wave Bandits. It's like an extension beyond the Blue Wave Bandits. So basically what we've done, we're still dealing with funk rhythms as the foundation for a new jazz or creative experience as opposed to dealing with swing. I'm doing a lot more bitonal harmonies, which means relative harmonies playing at the same time. Which means you're in A and C at the same time or A and a G-minor at the same time or maybe all three of them. There's certain rules, certain basic rules that go down that the rhythm section understands as to how we modulate between those. So it sounds like it's in, but not quite in or it could be out. It's like out, but not totally out. It's consonant but somehow with a dissonant trap door. You know what I mean?

Q: Who's the group on this one?
A: It's actually not a group; it's like a movement actually of musicians. I have five different formats on this. And basically what I wanted to basically kind of show was that Vibe Music has several different faces. It's just kind of like a concept that I would form as a group if I have to tour. And this was just the first foray into that. This particular album has a seven-piece group that has some African-American percussionists on it. See there's African-American, 'cause they have a different feel when they get on their African instruments than say Senegalese, Dakar, Lagos, you know, Nigerian juju kind of thing.

Q: It's like West Africa translated through our experience here?
A: Yeah, well, it's also, what I find with percussionists here it's also it has that boogaloo vibe on it. They relate to it like an African thing. They're thinking Africa, but it's got that sloppy, half-sloppy boogaloo vibe on it. So it's really something. It's an original American vibe and like most of the percussionists are trying to run away from that, but in running away from it they caught something else that they don't even know that they caught. It's not as defined, as let's say mathematically distinct and how do you say pointed as what the African and Latin cats do. That shit is very pointed, very exact. American guys, Afro-American guys come out of hearing jazz, and doo wop, and all this stuff, and how the percussion relates in that is a little sloppier, a little bouncier, you know, and it actually has its own thing. It's just there. They might have been looking at Africa originally but they end up in Detroit or whatever. So for me it's being all over the world let's say and having played with musicians from all over the world I have really learned to appreciate everything really more for what it is. And I know them cats want to be in Africa, but they ain't never gonna be in Africa, 'cause they're not African. They've got African blood in them, but it's an American, totally American thing which is unique. Which you couldn't melt down and pour into an African guy in the studio and make him sound like that. He could never do it. He could never be that sloppy. It would just be like "I never played that way." But you can take every American cat and put him on a conga and somehow, not every American cat, but the vast majority of them and they're gonna have that kind of character.

Q: Out the basement.
A: Yeah, but they'll also know how to play to an Al Green record. Which an African cat be playing like way too much. Normally. You know, he'll be filling that shit up and soloing all over Al and trying to get fired.

Q: You've done so much work. You've worked with people like Julius Hemphill, Cassandra, Butch Morris...
A: Miles.
Q: Miles Davis. Do people get it when they hear vibe music that this is a species of jazz. That this is music that is very much a part of what's happening in terms of jazz music right now?
A: You know, I don't really know what people get. Because we're living in such crazy times in terms of people's understandings of culture and actually what's happening is we're living in like a electronic media culture, you know, and it's like I don't really know who's getting what. Now you got the internet which brings a whole nother thing into the game. People are like being able to find very detailed specific interests that they have. So, I don't really know who's getting what. I actually stopped trying to think about who's getting what. I put out a record here Rock the Cathartic Spirits, which I thought was me best record. It sold nothing here and that was on Koch International -- a big label.

Q: People don't know about it and it doesn't get played.
A: No? I thought that was my best one. I thought when that dropped
Q: It doesn't get played 'cause the jazz stations don't know that they're allowed to play it and the rock stations don't know that they should play it. Where is it going to get exposed to the people.
A: I mean, I don't know. I always thought that it could get exposed to people on all of them. I think it just relates to the fact that with all these records that you do the people who are responsible for selling that record are different people almost every time. You're dealing with different people because that's just how we have to move given that we are dealing within the creative realm. It scares a lot of people on the business side, but it also attracts new people. So you're always dealing with different people every time, so you never really know who's going to get it, how they're going to stand by it, what connections they have or whatever, you know. The Trippin record that I did many years ago, that sold out of here. That got on every People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, New York Times, blah, blah, blah, you name it, it was on there. O.k. I mean, that wasn't my most distinctive record. I thought it was, I thought all the records are good. I'm just saying that to say that you don't know. I can't, I've stopped investing time in thinking about it. My main aim is to get enough money to do it, do it right, the way I think that it should be done, and to nail it. The last day I e.q. that mug, that last motherfuckin e.q., and that mastering session is done and I got my dough in the bank so I can feed my family and keep things flowing, I basically...

Q: You're done. Let's go back to Rock the Cathartic Spirit, because it is a very, very strong record and not paying attention to who tracks sales myself, I'm kind of surprised that it kind of flatlined in the states.
A: Yeah, I mean it really didn't do anything.
Q: It's a beautiful album. What were you thinking when you pulled it together?
A: I was just going into the vibe music thing. I was really starting to go in there. Now this record goes like a step further, this Vibe Music record goes even a step further. But it was really at that time where I started to say well, ok, like the Blue Wave Bandits vibe basically I ain't got nothin' to say on this no more. I'm still using some of my brothers who were in there, you know, Kundalini Mark Batson, Alfredo Elias, Melvin Gibbs, but I was just at the end where I didn't have anything to say about it. So I started to bring in some other people, Lonnie Plaxico, and Booker T on saxophone. I was just, you know, I needed to put some new branches on this tree so that lead me to where I'm at now. So that's kind of what I was thinking of, I was thinking of working still within the Blue Wave Bandits vibe, but I knew I didn't have that many, I didn't want those same, I didn't really have no more lyrics. I was tired of talking about what I was talking about. I wanted to play and there were a couple of tunes that I really felt I had some lyrics to and they were all talking about some kind of transformation of the human spirit and that was different. With the Blue Wave Bandits, we were talking about a lot of real life tangible stuff. Very specific, concrete, substantive matters. Q: Reality at ground zero.
A: Right, and at that point I started thinking more about myself or human nature in terms of a universal situation and the lyrics more so reflected that on the three songs that I had on there that had lyrics. And now I'm totally into that. In other words I can't even see my existence as a quote-unquote black person as what I used to see it as. I see it in a total world perspective which has been great.

Q: How much of that has to do with you living in Germany.
A: Everything, because, not just living in Germany, but living most of the year outside the United States, you can see yourself as a human being, but also related to other world, other let's say national problems or national situations in other countries. And then you know, it kind of frees you to understand the problem better and not be so emotional about it. One of the biggest clutches, or I should say handcuffs that we have as Black people in this country is that there's too much emotion attached to it. So much emotion attached to it that you can't really get up and do nothing. But when you see the game they're playing on the Catholics in Ireland or the Turks in Germany or the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, you know what I mean. You say, it's the same thing. but it's different. It's different in that one of the most crippling things that has happened to us as Black Americans is that they actually tried to take away the whole history. And they did it. I mean folks are trying to piece it back together, but when they take that away! Whatever the conflict is among people they still have their history and they still celebrate it. I know who I am; I know my people; I know my grandfather; I know my great-grandfather; and you have that to stand on. Well, that was taken away from us and so the game becomes a little more tricky. But still, if you are able to not emotionalize it so much, and the only way that I've been able to do that is to spend some time out.

Q: Is the game to win or to maintain?
A: I don't really understand the question.
Q: Is it a situation of conflict where ultimately there is a winner or a loser or is it just perpetual, you know you have these people whether it's us or the Irish or the Kurds who have somebody's foot on them. Do you ever get the foot totally off or is it a situation where you learn how to deal with life under the boot?
A: No, I think you can get the foot totally off, but what you have to do is you have to be in a position to galvanize your energy to do something and a mass of people have to be able to do that. You know it can't be, there's always people in our society who are able to galvanize their energy to do something important. One here. One there. And there's always been that since, you know, slavery times. There were always special figures who were able to do that. It's another thing when you can create a mass consciousness of people and bring up the lowest rungs of that to their feet, give them a certain kind of consciousness that makes them understand how to galvanize their energy and do something. And that's something that's very hard. It's very, very, very, very hard, especially when you take the history away. Because there's nothing to really hold onto, you understand. What do I hold onto? I got some nigger rhymes I could say, that I heard you know, and I got some rap music, you know, that's basically tel ling me to get a gat and a forty and I'm gonna fuck you up. Rap music started out as a party music. It was party music and then "The Message" came out and then it turned into a message music. So it actually went to two pretty positive phases before they were able to really get that group out in L.A. [NWA] to say some shit, that they say, "Oh, we can just turn this into something totally like, you know monstrous."

Q: Is it accidental, coincidental, or otherwise that rap as a commercial music blows up at precisely the moment that the gats come out and the gangster thing is predominant.
A: Well, I think it runs into the whole history of America. I mean, since the gangster movies, or Jesse James or whatever, they've been glorifying that violence. And you never really know it until, like if you go in some other cultures, it's a different world. This is what I'm saying when you come back into America, it hits you like a ton of bricks because it's quite abrasive. I mean it really is if you haven't been here. It's like sick. It's some sick shit. It's some sick shit the way that they are able to glorify violence. It's all about power or it's like a traffic accident, you know when you see a traffic accident; there's blood and everything and lights, red lights. And what do motherfuckers do? They drive by it and like there's plenty of room on the street for everybody to have the traffic flow nicely, but there's a big old traffic line back and these are doctors and lawyers and otherwise intelligent people who are just gaping at it with this stupid blank stare.

Q: What does it mean for a culture to be that easily distracted by the ugly, by the bloody.
A: There's no easily distracted. In this culture, man, you go in that damn shopping mall and they got the TVs blazing on you. It ain't easy. That shit is hard man. They've got Big Brother up in your head wherever you're going. And they pay for a certain thing. They pay for a certain thing. They say, "O.k., right now, we're paying for guys who are playing 50s jazz who are wearing a suit coat and tie." And they can basically usurp the power of a whole bunch of young geniuses who have the possibility of really doing something creative, something new, something dynamic. And they can just basically steal that power away from them. Especially if a cat's coming from a family culture or has a mindset where money is really important. Which is most people, you know. They can easily just buy that cat's ability and they do it all the time. Some of the most creative people, this is Black, white, Chinese, whatever. It doesn't matter. They just buy that talent up saying, "Yo, we don't care what type of thing y ou are, we're paying for this right now. Then they'll say: "We're paying for rappers to sing gangster rap and we want it hard. We want it hardcore." And sure enough you'll have a bunch of otherwise brilliant cats all trying to funnel themselves into this little narrow hole.
Q: What do you say to the person who would respond. So what. So what, the artist is getting paid. The audience is getting something that they appear to like.
A: I'm gonna tell you so what [raising voice]. I'm gonna tell you so what. You can only appreciate it when you travel all over the world. Let's say it this way, Black culture is everywhere. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. I'm talking about from Duke Ellington to like, you know, rap music, to Al Green to James Brown. I mean it's everywhere. It's in Africa, it's in Germany, it's in Finland. It's everywhere. All these rich details that come out of what could be called Black culture whether it's siphoned through a white artist in some indirect way. Or if it's straight-up through a black artist. Be it a visual artist, or a dancer, music, clothing design, whatever. Guys are walking around right now in Europe looking like they come out of the penitentiary. That shit is like totally like a thing that came out of the ghetto. It's funny man. You know these cats are walking around Switzerland looking like, you know, and like they're the shit in town. Do you know what that really means? And they don't really know what that means and it doesn't really matter. All I'm saying is that culture is everything. Culture is everything. Culture makes a person who he is, his whole understanding of who he is. It gives a person detail. It gives a person a lot of detail in terms of just human dynamics, you know, the human family, the human family tree. Like detailed information about what can be done. I mean, I can't even explain it man, but to hear Duke playing Caravan or Johnny Hodges singing a ballad, or Hendrix's Band of Gypys, it's just like nothing you could say, but if you can understand what they're doing, it tells you everything you need to know about the dynamics of life. Everything you need to know. Like tension and release. How to turn a mistake into something beautiful. Just the power of soul. The power of soul, goddamn, you know what I'm saying. So, if you take somebody's culture from them or if you confuse the culture in some way, and I'm talking American culture as a whole, everything that comes out of this big-assed stew , and it's a lot of rich detail. If you take that and you confuse it, it's very hard for the best and brightest of that culture to continue their work. Yeah, there's some who will survive, there's some who will maintain, but think of a really genius cat who's only maintaining. What the fuck is that? And meanwhile the people who did make statements or who were even able to make mediocre statements, whatever, that shit's all over the world. It's like the great shit and the bullshit is all over the world. Because it's something different. Because America's constantly changing. The greatest thing about America. I'm gonna tell you the greatest thing about America that I saw on a cultural level is it changes fast. Most cultures in the world are not like that. Most cultures don't rebirth themselves every ten years, every five years. And that's just a phenomenon here. And you'll go around and like funk music will be like regenerating itself within slam poetry and then like, you know, pop music will come back as some like retro-seattle shit, but with another type of edge on it. And I think that's one of the biggest downfalls now, they're not letting the precious, most daring stuff out there. Now it's just like they're trying to make one sound at a time. Right now, the worst thing is that the most popular stuff that's coming out of America is stuff that's imitating itself. It's like imitating what was great about America. It's just imitating, like all that seattle-shit, and all of that, you know this new stuff out.

Q: Can you remember that moment in your life where you decided, yeah, I'm gonna try this I'm gonna be a musician.
A: It wasn't really like trying it, I just always knew that I wanted to do it. I had the privilege of coming from let's say a upper middle-class background, where I thought we was rich. We weren't rich, but I thought, my old man had a nice front going, and we thought we were rich, right. So I didn't really think of money as like this hungry-assed thing. Money was something, you know, that you used to buy shit. And I had good shit, my mother bought me good shit, good shit was around the crib, you know it was just good shit. And like I got into cheap shit too. That was an aesthetic. We gonna do this cheap shit now. you know, let's have McDonald's and get these P.F.Flyers and that just like an aesthetic. So fortunately, I'm speaking from that end, and like say some of my friends who didn't have the dough, they would come around and we'd jam all together and blah, blah, blah, and they'd be like, "you're gonna change, man. When you have to get out on your own, you're gonna change man." and I'd be like, "Ok. I'm ope n to that. I see what's happening." And, uh, let's just put it this way, I have always believed in what I was doing and kept doing it. And I lived in some of the worst shitholes that a cat can live in. Up in Harlem, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, rats be crawling over you and all like that. You know, but in my mind I always said I'm doing this cause I love this music. Ok, I maybe wouldn't do that if there were other people involved, but I was a young guy when I did it and I established myself on a certain level. I'm just making it the best way that I can. I just could never live with myself knowing that I was not being all that I could. Look, I get high off of it, like a natural high of being, doing all of what I think is humanly, let's say, imaginatively possible within music. It's fun! Once you go through certain regiments and you understand how to get to like, like the Buddhists call it 'Buddha nature'. Or voodoo thing, or transcending these different deities and all this stuff. It's the same shit. It's fun. You get up in there, you get into that vibe and you know how to set the environment up and you get the right cats and you just get up in there and you just feel so good. It's not a, not a ego thing, you know, it's like you're tasting some of the most powerful and complex and sweetest parts of being human. It's like a fighter plane working at full capacity.

Q: Stop you there. How many people, or what percentage of the population ever gets to feel what you're talking about there.
A: Very few, because you can see that most of the people are in the kind of mode where they're like cattle. It's like you know they're existing. They've been taught that there's a certain way to live. I mean, anybody can be broken. I can be broken, for sure. I'm human. Anybody can be broken. But I think, uhm, people probably...I think it would be a very different kind world if people were protective of their child spirit. Let's say free, no free is a strange word, but their creative nature within them, it would be a different world. Like some of these executives if they grew up like that they'd be wanting very different things. They would think about winning in different terms instead of what can we do to get more dollars on the table. We'll do whatever we have to do. We'll destroy people. We'll like build more jails. We'll start an industry from that shit. What level are you gonna go to? If you gonna start an industry with jails, then what level will we go to to validate madness? You're scarin' the h ell out of me when you're telling me we've got private companies doing this and it's a booming business, we need to do more [laughs].

Q: The schools are falling apart.
A: They're scarin' the hell out of me, but it would be a vastly different world if people appreciated the creative side of theirself and saw it as a beautiful wondrous playground to develop within themself. To me there is no better drug. I can be half sleep, but if I do a good show, I got energy. I don't know where it comes from, but you just get this cycle of energy and that's when you really start to learn and to respect this kind of life force or energy force that can come, one way is through music, other ways I'm sure can be prayer, or whatever, other forms that you can get to this, but you really start to respect it. You know most people want to know what is the payoff. They don't want to do shit unless people can tell them the payoff. And that's the payoff, man. It's a beautiful high. If you can do that and make love, and eat some great food. Damn!

Q: I'm gonna bring this to a close. You talked about 'free' as a funny word, and I know you're from Chicago and it made me think of another great Chicago musician, Sun Ra. And Sun Ra was like " all these people around here trying to be free. I don't particularly respect free. I respect precision discipline." A lot of people will talk about freejazz. This whole country has the used "free" and "freedom" as a kind of rhetoric to sort of numb people, talk on that.
A: Well, I think freedom, they like to glorify freedom and individuality and rebelliousness, this kind of thing. They glorify it, because the bottom line is that it's a lie. You really can't get nothing done just being free. And you really can't get nothing significant done just being an individual. Individual, that means you're alone. That means it's just coming out of you and it's all about you. And there's nothing important that you can do that's just coming out of one individual. Like he's got to be plugged into a group of humanity that's dealing with a certain mentality, you know what I'm sayin'. Within that group maybe one cat will come up and for whatever reason capture the imagination of that particular period, and usually it's not just one. It's four or five cats that could of done it but something happened or something didn't happen. What ever happens it's just that one cat. And then they try to sell this guy back to you like it was just him and he did it all. Like Charlie Parker was just, th at's bu llshit. Charlie Parker came out of a whole lot of guys that was doing a lot of different stuff within that kind of frame of mind. And he came and did his thing and for whatever reason his thing captured the imagination of a certain amount of people at that time. Thelonius Monk was at the same time and everybody saw him as being weird. But Thelonius' music has actually lived probably stronger with the younger generation [than Parker] not to compare the two, but it just goes to show you that nothing is ever as it seems. And all them cats came out of a series of jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse at other different places that related into Parker, Dizz, and all them cats developing their style. And you can name that with any writer, with any artist. Nothing is coming out of a vacuum. It's not coming out of any isolation. So, this whole thing about rugged individualism and all this kind of shit, it's a trick to get people to be that way so that people who are actually really organized, who are dealing in teams and who are very scientific and mathematical about understanding their next move. Understanding how it's going to turn out 'cause they done studied it so much. Of course they can control some rugged individuals. No, let this guy go and we can pick this guy off no problem. I bet you they're sitting up in the boardroom now talkin' 'bout "Ha, ha, we're tricking all these cats into being James Dean." What's to glorify about that cat? Confused looking cat, just out here, The Wanderer. I mean fuck, you know, wanderers be pissing in their pants, ain't got a dime, stinking, and he gets a girl. Right. But Hollywood they can make her into some pretty babe. Probably some trailer broad, you know.
Q: Does it [Germany] feel like home yet?
A: Oh no, I don't think it will ever feel like home. Home is where my family is.
Q: At any given time.
A: Yeah. But in terms of that soil feeling like home. Never, never. Because it's totally anti-, I mean I'm up in Prussia man, I'm up in the north. That shit'll never feel like home. You know what I'm saying, but once again it's like on that mattress with the rats. I'm doing it because...
Q: For the music.
A: Yeah. I'm close to breaking through some shit. If I do, I hope I do man.