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I'm a big fan of Jazz/Funk/Rock/Afro/Blues/Hop & Beyond - Guitarist Jean Paul Bourelly. Although he's from the midwest, he's still a virtual unknown here in the US....fortunately, he has enjoyed some critical and commercial success over in Japan and Europe...

Raised in Chicago IL, and Moving To NYC in later years, the guitarist began his professional career when he landed gigs with the likes of Muhal Richard Abrams, Roy Haynes, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones. He launched his solo career launched in the late eighties, and soon ended up playing on one of Miles Davis' latter-day recordings, Amandla.


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In addition, Bourelly became heavily involved in the Black Rock Coalition along with Vernon Reid, while continuing to play with others including Buddy Miles, Jack Bruce, and Terry Bozzio and especially Cassandra Wilson, who has several albums featuring Bourelly as both producer and guitarist.
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Bourelly's solo albums are a raw, heavy mix of genres---if you can imagine a place in the universe where Hendrix gets a chance to jam with Miles, James Brown, Fela, A Tribe Called Quest, Sly, Trouble Funk, Son House and Albert King, all at the same time, you get a good indication of the range of sounds in the stew. --Yet Bourelly always manages to keep Funk at the base of his sound explorations. His latest, entitled Cut- Motion uses that base to explore the vast international and historical musical terrain...




Along the way, Bourelly has continued his collaborations with others: Vernon Reid (the Reid/Bourelly Project), former Prince drummer John Blackwell, Marc Ribot, Defunkt, Jamaladeen Tacuma, David Torn, TM Stevens, Henry Threadgill, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders Elliott Sharp, Angela Gabriel, the Haitian group Ayibobo....and most recently, the Gypsies Reloaded project, with drummer Cindy Blackman and bassist Melvin Gibbs...

I cama across this interview JPB did with Michael Beihn from a few years back where, Jean Paul gets a chance to talk about the music and all it's nuances, from the artistic to the political to the spiritual....

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(Melvin Gibbs, Mark Battson, Will Calhoun, and Bourelly)


(Bourelly, with TM Stevens and John Blackwell)


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Where and when were you born?
JPB - in Chicago-- November 23, 1960, 5:30 am.
- What is your social background - what did your parents do?
JPB - Father, medical doctor. Mother, educator.

- Your surname is French?

JPB - Well, my father was born in Haiti and was actually a French citizen, until they told him that he had to fight in the war for a country he had never been to-- but his French education was the reason for my name. It wasn't easy growing up in a place (South Side of Chicago) were the kids could not pronounce your name correctly. But later on, the girls really liked it! They thought it was cool and different, and that was cool by me!!
- Had your parents influenced your music?

jpb - Oh yeah. My father would bring home popular music like Mancini's Peter Gunn, and some Count Basie, and whatever was hot in America at the time (60's). That along with my mother and father both playing the piano, really put music in the air. My mother could sight read classical music better than I ever could. And the old man would play this Haitian style tango that was part meringue part Viennese waltz and part syrup, and we had a dog that used to howl while he played (laughter) - I'm serious. Every night pops would come home from work, drop his medical bag at the door and sit on the piano and the dog would take his position under the piano and howl. He wouldn't stop until my father stopped. Really the funniest thing you ever saw.

- Have your brothers influenced your music?

Yes, Carl, and an older brother of mine named Marc who is a sax player, he probably was the reason I believed that I could be a musician. He used to play us things like Miles's "On the Corner" or Flamenco guitarist Manetus De Plata before I even played the guitar and analyze for us why this tune was hip or play a passage over again for us to hear and say things like, "Didn't you hear that?... did you hear that?!"
Me and Carl would look at each other and just laugh like silly ass kids. I think he dug hearing himself talk, but he knew his stuff and as I looked back, it sure was a very important period for me. They were both far more learned than I was, and having them close exposed me to a wide variety of things.

- What music started you up?

JPB - Well, my cousin Brian played me this record when I was nine. He said, "I got something you're gonna like," cause he had been playing all of the Stylistics stuff and Chi- Lite's stuff that was really popular around Chicago, and I liked it, but wasn't reacting, I guess, with alot of excitement. So he first put on Santana's album, "Abraxas", and I said, "Yeah, that's hip - I'm feeling that." Then he put on (Hendrix's) Band of Gypsies and that's when the sky opened up. I not only felt the music in a deep way like it was a part of me, but I felt I knew what they were doing. I know it sounds strange, but I absolutely knew what they were doing. I just needed to learn the language on an instrument."






- When did you start playing?

JPB - I didn't start to play until 4 years after that night because I was into sports and didn't have patience for praticing but I knew I would play at that moment.

- What instrument?

JPB - I had been taking piano lessons since I was 4 years old, and I still couldn't play a tune on piano (laughs). The guitar came after I heard a friend of mine named Lamont play bass. He was so funky and only like 13 years old, and I said, well I'm feeling what you're playing, but I'd like to play over that. So the guitar was more an instrument to suit my adventurous curiosity, and living in Chicago there were tons on guitar players to vibe on.

- Who did you practice with as a teenager and where?

JPB - During that time, I'd practice sometimes 12 hours a day. I didn't even count the time, it was all so interesting for me.

Man, I had a highschool band with the son of Ramsey Lewis, and we used to use all of his father's equipment, and that was great because they had everything! It was like a music store. Ten different kinds of amps and a bunch of effects to fool around with. The band was not so great but we used to just play for all of these private school types, and I dug doing it cause you could actually play originals and they wouldn’t be asking you to play the latest hit record.
Most of the time though I played in my basement; it was a pretty well-known place with the young cats. It was a place where all of my musician friends could hang out, because my mother was real cool about playing loud and everything. Some great musicians came through there. Darryl Jones (bass), Michael White (drummer) Steve Coleman (Sax), Freddy Cash, and Reggie Washington (Bass).



Inspiration and sources

- Which sources of music do you listen to now?

jpb - All kinds of stuff. Every day it changes. I'm usually listening to a lot of music when I'm stuck, but normally I don't listen to a lot of music cause I'm trying to catch a sound in my head that is constantly 5 steps ahead of were I'm standing. It's both frustrating and beautiful, because it's like my own strange little radio station going on in my head, with bits and pieces of ideas I play over and over again till I get them right. My late wife would ask, "Why are you beating on the table again?" - "What is that strange noise you're making?"(Laughs)

She was Moroccan; Did her background influence your music?

JPB - Of course, she turned me on to Gnawin music and all the hip ghetto stuff coming out of Casablanca and Tangier. It changed the way I hear tonality. Now I can't stand to hear people talk about someone being out of tune. It sounds so naive, cause once you really start hearing and taking control over the quarter tones, it adds another dimension.


- What living guitarists inspire you, as guitarists?

jpb - As a younger musician, many: Wes, B.B. King, Hendrix, John Mclaughlin, Jimmy Nolan, Curtis Mayfield (his chords), Benson, Scofield, Santana, Bill Connors, George Freeman, Sonny Greenwich, Blood Ulmer... but now I'm just dealing with subtlties most of the time. I liked how this guy used a certain hammer-on style, or how this guy was using his effects. Tone, tone, tone - I'm still a sucker for a cat with a big tone and control over his vibrato; that stuff is timeless.

There ain't many cats who impress me on guitar in this category, I must say. That's the guitar as a voice type of thing that's so personal. I go for horn players in that case like Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders. It's the wind man, the wind!


- What composers do you like to listen to?

JPB - "Jobim, Robert Johnson, Threadgill, Ravel, 60-70's Herbie Hancock...


- Do you ever listen to classical composers - new / old?

JPB - The modern stuff(Bartok, Stravinsky) a lot more than Bach and Shubert, etc. That sound is too inside for what I'm trying to hear in my head. I also miss a lot because my creative process doesn't involve a lot of listening to others play music at this point. Earlier in my career it most certainly did.

- Which other guitarists' sounds makes you tick?

JPB - Albert King, George Freeman playing a ballad, Wes Montgomery - all those cats have breath in their playing. It sounds like they take a breath and that is wonderful. I've heard great playing, but it seems I always come back to the cats who take a breath. I want to listen to it.

- Which other vocalists make you tick?

JPB - Shirley Horn, Nana Cayimi, Nina Simone, Björk, the Senegalese singer Abdourahman Diop.


Impact

- Which other collaborations have influenced you the most - Defunkt, Elvin Jones, Cassandra Wilson, Miles, etc.?

JPB - Definitely Elvin Jones and my association with Olu Dara.

I came to N.Y. to see if I could play with Elvin. I wanted to check out his rhythmic approach. It was two and a half years of experimenting with one of the greatest drummers of our time. I would play rhythmic solos between his polyrhythms. Some nights it was really new music.
Olu showed me how to keep it real and not get trapped in a whole bunch of notes, just breathe your spirit through a few rather than skate through a million. I played with him for 3 years.
When I first got in the band I would be playing all of this deconstucted complicated stuff, and then he and Threadgill used to come up and play this lyrical soulful southern thing, that was also very modern but simply the crowd would flip! It would wipe me out every night too! So I had to learn it. Phillip Wilson was the drummer and he used to coach me. They were like my first big brothers in the music. That was one of the deepest bands I ever played in and it was never recorded!


- What was it like to play with Miles? How did this cooperation come accross?

JPB - It came from bassist Marcus Miller and they needed someone who could funk but also play changes.






- Your potential was not used very much on the Miles Davis album 'Amandla' - why?

JPB -well, it was a pleasure to do that record on an emotional level. I listened to Miles as a kid and then I played on his record.
That, of course, was a great feeling, but on another level there was a lot of politics around Miles at that time. His operation was more radio-oriented, not like the records that made me get into his music in the first place, those sessions where the cats were just playing mistakes and all.
That session was done under very controlled circumstances; they made sure no mistakes saw the light of day. There was a lot of computer automation going on, and I think they (the producers) were trying to highlight Miles's working group and Marcus as a composer, and so they mixed and edited the session that way.
It turned out to be a nice record, but I could see I wouldn't be highlighted too much, because a few times I cut loose on some takes, and I saw one of the producers' face kind of look down at the floor, and I knew then my shit was up, Lol!!

But those cut loose takes are on a master tape somewhere in the Warner Bros. vaults, It's in there SOMEWHERE! music politics, man ....



- What is jazz?

JPB - Well this whole shit kinda pisses me off because the word jazz has meant so many things over the years that it doesn't mean anything anymore...



At this point, "jazz" is a term used by the industry to categorize music that either can't be categorized by narrow industry standards or where there is improvisation as a fundamental activity within the music.

I have no personal opinion on what "jazz" is. But I know all of the music that can be found in the jazz section of a record store is not same type of music. So obviously there are huge inaccuracies.

For me, people like Muhal Richard Abrams (who would be considered jazz) have more in common with people like Frank Zappa (considered rock) or Hindemith (modern classical) than they do with people like Wynton Marsalis (considered jazz).

I think even these artists who would like to convince the world that "pure" jazz was a certain style that started with people like Jellyroll Morton and continued along the lines of Coleman Hawkins, Parker, Coltrane and stop the development during this era, are totally off base.

To me the purist is the artist who continues to experiment with the popular elements of the time, because that has been the history of the development of that line of people. If you don't continue to do that, then you are more a disciple of those contributors, which is also cool, and one can produce good music from this as well, but the so-called "purist" people are not following any "pure" form other than the "pure" form of copying.

- What do you think of sampled music?

JPB - I see it as collage paintings as opposed to seamless images. It's another tool to use.

- Techno music?

JPB - just straight up techno? No thanks. It sounds like a programmer who didn't want to work too hard. No imagination! NO BREATH! No finesse! I hope them cats don't fuck like that...(laughter)


Making sound

- What is so appealing about the guitar?

jpb - Guitar is one of the few instuments that you can play chords, percussion and singing melodies proficiently. Those three elements give you a lot of expressive possibilities. You can also bend tonalities so it's not fixed like a piano. It's a fascinating instument!

- Do you ever play acoustics?

JPB - I'm playing one right now. I do almost all my writing on acoustic.



- What does the voice mean to you - as an instrument or as a means to communication?

JPB - Another way to communicate and it also gives the guitar playing and composition another percpective. For example I can set up a visual image through the text and just through my delivery and then I can use my guitar solo to extent the feeling of what I setup or make the guitar the foil and create some tension for what I started with the lyrics.
drumming.


- What instrument is the "weakest" part of the chain in a band? (I think Pete Townsend once said that a rock band will never get better than the drummer)

JPB - For me it's definetly the drummer. You fly with a great drummer and you can die a slow death with a bad one. There is very little you can do as a guitarist to make a bad drummer sound good, but a good drummer can make a shitty guitarist sound average.



- What is technique about?

jpb - For me, technique is the mechanics to express what you hear in your heart. There are two basic kinds. The first one you usually learn is execution based: Where you can get around on the instrument learn different chord fingering, play fast, etc. This one you can accomplish with a lot of practice and the right people showing the instrument.
The second has to do with subtleties: The sureness of your notes from one to the other. The deepness of tone and grace within phrasing. This part is much more difficult because it comes with time and can't be hurried or crammed. It only comes as you develop as a person. I'll probably try to fine tune this part for the rest of my life.


- Are you religious in any particular direction? Blackadelic-Blu made me believe you were muslim. Then On your later albums, there are title references to Buddhism...

JPB - I'm very much into the best part of all religions - information and Spirituality! I do like rituals cause they give people a chance to connect with each other and to the spirit world, but I don't like to feel one (religion) is better than the other.
They are sources of great information and as an artist I can use those sources. I don't want to limit it to one source, but I also believe that through one source you can find everything if you look at it as universal and limitless, it's just not my way till now.
I also feel that the music is a spiritual source. We have our rules that we must respect, but then through that form you can feel the power of the creator, if you are willing to surrender and let the process carry your soul.

- What is a musicians life?

JPB - I don't really want to know, because I think it's cheap to live your life reacting to the music business. I try to live my life in the way anyone who's trying to enjoy life would.
I feel myself more as an artistic person than a musician. Some musicans who just think within the identity of a musician I have little to say to, because I don't feel it like that. I could probably hang out with a plumber who really gets into the finer points of pipe fitting. We could talk!


Music & politics

- I saw recently a documentary about Band of Gypsys. Is this documentary there was a lot of emphazis on the fear the music industry had about Jimi suddenly had an entirely black band, and that this could cause the audience not to buy the records. This proved not to be the case. The audience wanted his music. Is this fear present in the music industry today?

JPB - Of course it is. It's deep, but not because anyone thinks people will not buy the records. It's more hideous than that. It's about image marginalization and the impact that has on the world order. Most of the people who control the image making of the entertainment world, lie on the outside of Black culture and although many people know better, the system is racist---- so even If you're black and you work in the system, at many points during your day you will contribute to that system by just doing your job.
So you can imagine what type of crap is being thrown on the image of black people. Man I don't even want to talk about it, because it's disgusting and there's so far to go, that I can't imagine a day when the consciousness gets raised out of this garbage.

As far as Hendrix, well by the time Band of Gypsies came out, Jimi had already reached his audience with the English lads, so I don't think we can say how people would have received him, if he had an all black band from the start, other than it would have been real difficult. I'm sure his management knew this as well. They knew their audience.

- I found it a bit unnatural that you were not interviewed in this documentary.... (SMILE)

JPB - Man, I'm sure the guy who did that show probably doesn't even know who I am. He probably never heard of John Coltrane. That's the level that's out here now.


(In the studio, with Melvin Gibbs)



- In this documentary, Lenny Kravitz said that he and Jimi had the same problem, they were mostly addressing a white audience, though more than anything else, they wanted to sell records to their "own people".
Do you feel this problem, and if yes, why does the black audience buy something else?

jpb - I don't know man, it's a very bizarre situation. It's like playing Bavarian folk music, but being only popular in Japan and Taiwan. Most Bavarians probably couldn't imagine this, but it's an everyday problem with Black American artists.

I used to take a taxi from my apartment in Harlem, N.Y. to the airport, and these cats on the block I see everyday, never heard me play...ever.
A lot of the Black audience in the U.S. buys something else, because they are being marketed certain things in a limited, narrow way-- They are having their perceptions of themselves marginalized, and because of this, they have lost contact with their great artists that exsist outside R&B and Rap. And even this is limited to a certain type of R&B and Rap. It's a ghetto of the mind that has been developed, but it's actually true for everyone in the USA now!

You have to keep in mind that the Black Music industry has always been controlled by people outside of that culture, who have had the power to define that culture back on to Black people the way they saw acceptable.
Over time it gets so ingrained in everyone, that Black people in management position will now follow this same path.

- But somehow what you describe, is what easily happens with the comercialization of almost any cultural expression?

JPB - You are right that much of the reaction to selling out, it's the same with any product. But it has had a devestating effect on Black America because of the history. You are talking about a group of human beings, who had their culture stripped away from them and replaced with another culture, fed to them by people who did not have the best intentions ! Black people developed their history through a survival spectrum. The africanisms that survived in Black American culture, went through a huge fire storm before they ended up as a funk beat on your local rap video channel.

It's not just about oppression, it's about the positive and powerful things that over came oppression.Many peoples of the world have been totally wiped out from this kind of thing.

- How do you see the "political correctness" thing ?

JPB - Political correctness it seems, was developed because of insensitivity toward groups of people.
It's a silly kind of semantical chess game, that seems to have come out of this, where every group of people wants to be recognized as this or that, but it was this insensitivity and (in many cases) inhuman treatment that brought all of this on. So, I feel that's were the focus should be, not on some misguided issue that arose out of a real problem.










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[Edited 6/28/07 14:47pm]

Thanks for posting that. I've always dug his playing and music since the early 90's. A friend of mine heard him cut live in the studio one time and he said there were moments he kept looking up because he thought Jimi had crept in and took over. Definetly underrated.

SPYZFAN1 said:

Your welcome!!



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Very very nice.
More folks need to hear his work.

I used to take a taxi from my apartment in Harlem, N.Y. to the airport, and these cats on the block I see everyday, never heard me play...ever.
A lot of the Black audience in the U.S. buys something else, because they are being marketed certain things in a limited, narrow way-- They are having their perceptions of themselves marginalized, and because of this, they have lost contact with their great artists that exsist outside R&B and Rap. And even this is limited to a certain type of R&B and Rap. It's a ghetto of the mind that has been developed, but it's actually true for everyone in the USA now!

You have to keep in mind that the Black Music industry has always been controlled by people outside of that culture, who have had the power to define that culture back on to Black people the way they saw acceptable.
Over time it gets so ingrained in everyone, that Black people in management position will now follow this same path.

...The sad truth.


Beware of the "Bootleg Afro".


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431
[Edited 6/28/07 8:10am]

theAudience said:

Yeah, Don't Come down to the club like that!


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theAudience said:

That's the biggest problem--Most of his stuff is only available as Japanese or European imports (if they're in print). The new CD, which IMO is one of his finest, is even more difficult to grab...so far, it's only available on a German site called Phonector: http://www.phonector.com/







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[Edited 6/28/07 8:27am]

SPYZFAN1 said:

His album Rock the Cathrtic Spirits is one of the best guitar albums I've ever heard...






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"Spirits" is the shiznit..That's my Sunday afternoon CD. Just great playing and his wah sounds HUGE!! I also liked his Jimi tribute CD.

Did you catch him with the African ensemble on BET J last year? He rocked it!

SPYZFAN1 said:

Yup, with Ayibobo!! You know I had to Record that!!!




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