James Brandon Lewis: Jazz, Spirituality, and the Art and Science of Musical Abstraction

AAJ: This is a bit of a different vein. You may not like the label "spiritual jazz." I did an interview with Muriel Grossmann who openly embraces the label to characterize her music. She's a spiritual person, but we didn't talk about religion per se. Just thinking that there seems to be a resurgence of people who embrace music of a spiritual quality—music that is deeply felt seems to connect with people in a way. I don't know if this is a product of the times we're in.

JBL: Right.

AAJ: I like all sorts of music and I'm not necessarily hip to pop music. But I do think there's a lot of music that's banal and seems like empty calories. I think music that really resonates with people has a certain soul and spiritual character. People gravitate to that,

JBL: Yeah. Because I think you and I might have had this conversation, prior to this interview. But I think those who are actually living the spirituality they say their music is about—I'm not the judge of that. But good for them. I tend not to label.

I want the experience of my music to reflect a life that I'm actually living. I don't want it to be confused with "am I perfect?" No. Is my music perfect? No. Am I playing perfectly? No. I'm merely commenting. The best way that I can on a life that I'm actually living. The problem that I find with spiritual jazz is that it points to a byproduct rather than a relationship.

AAJ: Can you explain that?

JBL: I would say that I don't think that John Coltrane or Albert Ayler. I don't know if they would call their music spiritual jazz. I don't know if that's a thing, I don't. I think they had a relationship with the Creator. The albums were a byproduct of the relationship. That didn't happen. I don't have any gripes with that other than I kind of feel like when you say something is spiritual, well, what does that mean? Are we talking about the spirituals associated with a group of people that had been through these experiences, and then they made these songs in reverence to God and other categories (e.g., life, death, human dignity)? Howard Thurman eloquently addresses these matters in "The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death," which is an amazing book where Thurman analyzes the different facets of spirituals.

AAJ: Victor Aaron, who was writing for "Something Else," gave a very positive review for Transfiguration. He had an interesting take on the final track, "Elan Vital." He says, "Elan Vital is a jazz sermon with impassioned, elongated notes and tumultuous drums. But Lewis always has his unique twist on things and unexpectedly ends the performance with an uplifting gospel soul flavor." Does that resonate with you?

JBL: Yeah. First of all, "Elan Vital." That's dedicated to one of my favorite philosophers Henri Bergson. I'm into his stuff on intuition and the whole idea that intuition is what he felt was a better way of knowing. Because you're inside, you become the object rather than observe the object. "Elan Vital" means, vital force or impulse, the impulse of life. That song specifically has chordal elements, a vibe that speaks to gospel music for sure. I mean, it's always going to show up in my playing. I can't, I mean, I guess I would have to scrape my insides. Because it's always going to be...

AAJ: Hopefully not.

JBL: Yeah. Hopefully not. I could have ended the album another way, but I felt like that was a piece that I had written a long time ago, not a long time ago, but I'm writing all the time, and it was in a notebook. It depends on where you're at in that song—it has a lot of different influences. The beginning might be leading to a classical vibe and then goes to like some weird '80s thing and then back to church. It's segmented where the melodies are going in so many different directions you don't really know. It's kind of elusive in that way.

AAJ: The track "Empirical Perception." What do you want to convey in that title?

JBL: That's a dedication to Jack Whitten, who had a concept of visual artist, called molecular perception, where he was comparing the ideas of artists to scientists. He was comparing artists to scientists in their ability to perceive things. While we're not scientists, there are similarities. So that's what I was alluding to there. I just didn't want to call it "molecular perception," because I already had used the term "molecular." The concept of empirical perception or the idea of the periodic table or valence structures or atomic numbers have definitely influenced my playing. Hopefully, in about a year and a half, people will have a better understanding of molecular issues, as I am currently in the process of writing a quite comprehensive piece on the subject.

AAJ: You're doing a dissertation.

JBL: Yes, I am. It's taking the life out of me.

AAJ: I've been there.

JBL: I know you have. It's taking the life out of me.

AAJ: I read part 1 on the Arrowsmith Press website. Very interesting.

JBL: Yeah, it's grown since then.

AAJ: I mean, I don't know if my music theory is up to the task—I'll have some understanding of it, but...

JBL: No, I think I think you would have you have a lot of understanding of it. It took me two years to come up with this answer, but molecular systematic music is the use of science as a metaphor to construct music.

There are a couple of ways of looking at it. On the one hand, as a metaphor, it can serve a philosophical purpose. On the other hand, it can take on a more literal meaning, but not literally the DNA sequence. I actually found some German mathematicians that I'll mention in my paper that actually formulated a pitch helix, or the idea of a pitch helix. So, a lot of my natural thinking was actually correct. However, the ideas are still evolving as the research is ongoing.

AAJ: I know some of it is very much forward-looking, but are you re-evaluating your music in that light and saying because presumably, you didn't create it with these concepts in mind?

JBL: But no, I created all the molecular stuff with these concepts.

AAJ: Okay. And before the molecular stuff. What about your earlier work?

JBL: No, no, all of this work, it was it was called a different thing at the time. I was a finalist for Creative Capital (Grants) in 2011 or 2012. But I was not successful. The first iteration was a rhythmic system and that's on, Divine Travels (Sony Music Entertainment, 2014). If you listen to pieces entitled "Desensitized" and "Enclosed." The system at the time was called "enclosed" where I was sonically experimenting with a line within a line. But most people don't know that. Well, now they do because it's in the interview. But it really kicked up a notch. Well, I had already been practicing like this for a while. It's a particular method. I'm going put that all in the book. The ideas predate 2020 when molecular came out. Now, this has been brewing for a while, actually, since 2011. These concepts, but it's been kicked up into high gear just because my work ethic has increased. My playing and my getting these concepts together have increased. And the way in which I practice these concepts is particular to me.

AAJ: John Litweiler's "Harmolodic Life" describes Ornette's music with reference to melodic cells that undergo transformations. Is that something you've come across?

AAJ: No, I didn't come across that, but that's interesting. I recently came across something Ornette was writing about, actually in a surrealist journal called "Free Spirit: Annals of the Insurgent Imagination." It was a surrealist journal that Jayne Cortez was working on. In that article, Ornette was talking about harmolodics. It contains what I feel is a pretty clear explanation of Harmolodics. And one of the definitions in there that he gave was "of highest instinct," "of highest human instinct" which I thought, wow, that's pretty succinct. Ornette definitely has been an influence on my work, but I've never read anything about him saying anything about cellular stuff.

AAJ: You've clearly articulated the mission or purpose of the MSM group. Can you explain the concept or motivation for the Red Lily Quartet.

JBL: It was inspired by the visual artist Jack Whitten, who honored black individuals. A lotus is a lily, and I am fascinated by the story of how it blooms on water. I think of it metaphorically as the story of my life. I originally wanted to get a Kora player in the group. Then, I opted for two strings and two horns to represent the folk essence of life, meaning natural organic nonelectrified.

AAJ: I love the juxtaposition of your tenor and Kirk Knuffke's cornet. It is one of the defining features of Red Lily in my mind.

JBL: I have been working with Kirk since 2013. At this point, we have a way of fitting our sounds inside each other. I don't really think about lineups. I think about the sound of the composition. I had not actively thought about lineups aside from my Molecular Quartet. For example, I had not used a piano since 2010 on my debut album, Moments. I wanted to feature a pianist in the Molecular Quartet and chose Aruán Ortiz.

AAJ: You've played with many great "rhythm sections"—different bass players like William Parker, Luke Stewart and Jamaaladeen Tacuma and drummers such as Chad Taylor, Rudy Royston, and Gerald Cleaver. You seem to forge a unique bond with them.

JBL: I think I am old school in that sense. If the bass and the drums are getting along, you are in a good place. Most of the people I work with and will work with have a good vibe. If that works, 9 out of 10 times it will be a great recording and a great musical experience.

AAJ: Tell me how you came to work with the Messthetics.

JBL: I've worked with Anthony Pirog for 10 years. He has played in a variety of my musical ensembles, starting with the album No Filter I (Bms Records, 2016). He guested on a few tracks. We met via a William Hooker recording session. Then we started touring together. We recorded An Unruly Manifesto (Self-published, 2019) and it came out in 2019. We did more overseas work. In 2019 he invited me to play the Winter Jazzfest with the Messthetics. This included Brendan Canty and Joe Lally (another great rhythm section) from the legendary punk group "Fugazi." Then, later, we played the Bell House in Brooklyn. Every time we played together, the energy was just there. It felt right every time—organic and natural, never felt forced. The Messthetics appeared on my album Eye of I (Anti Records, 2023). They invited me to play Blues Alley in DC and the vibe felt so great. I was asked to collaborate with them on a recording, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis (Impulse, 2024). It's been an amazing experience.

AAJ: I was struck by something you wrote "examining the individual pieces allows one to explore the fragments of beauty itself."

JBL: Yeah. I know what you mean. No, I was just trying to get people to understand what abstraction is and to appreciate the beauty of that. To put that into the simplest terms possible without seeming like I'm offending anybody. But I think that if I used the idea of a glass breaking and deciding that you're going to examine every piece—that is one improvisation while putting it back together is another improvisation. I felt like that was the clearest example to give someone. People need to understand, that is, if you want them to understand. There's a lot of people who think that these concepts are foreign, but they're not foreign. Nothing about it's foreign. It's just that whoever's in charge of the narrative gets to dictate.

That's why I started writing over Covid. I started writing over Covid because I would read some things online about myself, and I say, wait a second, that's not where I was coming from at all. Maybe I should start writing about what it is that, I mean, so that these narratives don't just keep coming out of left field. Sometimes, they're not even close to what I was thinking about or don't really represent me. I read something today that said something like I had just learned gospel music. And I was like, okay, cool. I read all kinds of things. Yeah, I don't get upset. I just chose to write my own narrative.

AAJ: It's hard to control what other people write or think.

JBL: For sure, but I think without asking. I remember one time I read something that was like I was a prodigy. Nah, never was a prodigy. I work hard. That's the one thing I know—I'm definitely not a prodigy. No way. Not even close.

AAJ: I'm struck by a comment that Sonny Sharrock told an interview about a year before he died and perhaps around the conversation of the brilliant album Ask the Ages (Axiom Records 1991). I will put it in the chat. He said "That's not making music; that's putting together puzzles. Music should flow from you, and it should be a force. It should be feeling, all feeling." Ask the Ages is just a brilliant sort of landmark album, perhaps a desert island disc. He wanted to make his purpose clear.

JBL: Right. I'm looking at this quote, and I absolutely agree with it. I was just thinking about that the other day. It's not enough to play the notes, it's not enough. The power of music is to evoke emotions, to evoke sentiment in humans. That's the power of it. The power of it is not the notes. It's the ability to reach an audience. To evoke something from them, to evoke a response.

AAJ: Make them feel.

AAJ: Something—make them feel something right. I think, for instance, that virtuosity is a good thing. It can aid in the imagination. I think that many people would agree with me, when I talk about the things that we like about Coltrane. It includes subjectivity and objectivity. It includes both of those things. What Sonny Sharrock is saying about feeling is true. I think after you get to the technical... It's the feeling that takes the music to another level because it requires a certain level of vulnerability.

There is no hiding in music. I used to think that you could hide behind music, especially when I was a kid. You could just escape. And for years, it was an escape for me. But then, as you grow older, your relationship with things changes. Your way of loving changes. It morphs. And so my love for music has changed—a lot. You know, different versions of love. And I'm in a place now where I feel like, well, the kind of love that music is showing me is that it's exposing who I am as a person, and there's no way to hide it. Music exposes who you are.

AAJ: Okay,

JBL: The feeling. What Sonny Sharrock is saying is right in line with what Charlie Parker said, what Ornette said.

AAJ: Right.

JBL: I would dare to say who wants to hear somebody play about love if they've never been in love? I certainly don't. So, that's something to be respected. But who wants to play about feelings when we can just hide behind a million notes?

AAJ: I think just about all the great virtuosos converge on a place where virtuosity is kind of a tool, but it matters less and less to them as an end in itself.

JBL: I've definitely had my moments where as a saxophonist, I mean, the instrument itself is begging you to play a lot of notes. What I think, and then all the great players that we love and admire, they play. They're playing a lot of notes. Is there? I don't know too many minimalist saxophone players.

AAJ: Lee Konitz, maybe

JBL: Yeah, maybe. I think that I always lean with my heart.

AAJ: Yeah, that comes through for sure.

JBL: Yeah, I like technique, but I don't like technique in and of itself. I think it serves a purpose. But I think those who are able to use it in a way where you barely even notice that they have it. Sometimes, I try to practice intervals, larger intervals, and make them sound like they're thirds.

AAJ: James, this has been a great conversation. Thank you.

JBL: Thank you so much.

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