The Backstory
The Backstory
Q & A with Jeff Newell about Sousa
and the New-Trad
What Does “New-Trad” Mean?
Trad is a slang term that musicians have used for decades to refer to traditional New Orleans jazz. I incorporated it into our name to represent taking something old and distinctly American and making it fresh and up-to-date, i.e., new. I guess you could say it’s another way of saying “Neoclassic.” Our music is to Trad music what Stravinsky is to Mozart. We’re not trying to recreate the past here, we refer to historic American music within a modern rhythmic and harmonic context.
Why John Philip Sousa?
I’m surprised how few people on the street today have any idea who John Philip Sousa was (wasn’t he a baseball player?). A hundred years ago, Sousa and his band members were the pop stars of their day, among the first in America, along with Mark Twain. As such, they had a huge influence on our culture and on the music that came after them. At the same time, Sousa was constantly being influenced by the music of the masses, using the syncopation of ragtime and early jazz as well as the music of early immigrant groups. This is part of what we demonstrate to students in our school social studies residency, “Sousa, Music of All Americans,” how the music of the people, especially people of color, influenced the “March King,” a darling of the upper class.
What have you done to our grandfather’s Sousa?
The All-American Sousa was a first generation American, his father being from Spain, of Portuguese descent, and his mother from the Bavarian region of Germany. In our New-Trad arrangements, we’ve taken the music of this son of immigrants and added the rhythms of more recent waves of immigration—primarily Haitian and other Caribbean music—as well as a more modern harmonic and melodic approach. The goal of this approach is to highlight Sousa’s relevance to modern American culture with its global outlook. It’s meant to honor our nation’s history and the millions of Americans, immigrants all—in one way or another, who have contributed to our culture.
How did you go about creating these arrangements?
I was really looking to recreate a cultural process. As Sousa’s musical influence spread across the continent during the brass band era, many small local bands were amateur groups made up of musicians who did not read music. They learned everything by ear and by rote. In early New Orleans, these were called “routine” bands. They would catch pieces of the melodies they heard other bands play, or on early recordings, and teach them to each other. In this process, the music was also being filtered through the musician’s own cultural and musical experience to bring forth a unique version of the piece. I could have easily found the published scores of these pieces and worked from them, but I decided to work from a CD of old wax cylinder recordings of Sousa’s band. As I listened to and transcribed the marches from these scratchy old recordings, the same ones many late 19th-century musicians got Sousa’s music from, I purposely filtered these original versions of the pieces through my own cultural experience as a jazz musician, a descendant of subsistence farmers in the rural Midwest, and a sax player in Brooklyn who had been spending a lot of late nights playing in Haitian “Kompa” bands.
Is that why you brought in the Haitian influence?
Yes. At one point, I had been listening to these recordings a lot during the day and playing all night with Haitian bands. As I was experiencing these two, seemingly divergent, styles of music day and night, I began to sense the commonality between them—the pulse that has to do with being alive, being human, and needing to keep moving. I love working with Haitian bands! The pay is never that great but, rhythmically and from a cultural perspective, I feel it is some of the hippest—and most African—music I’ve ever gotten to play. I was especially fascinated by some of the “Kona” groups I would hear at Haitian festivals. There would be choirs of homemade trumpets, made out of tin and looking like traffic cones, playing these rhythmic patterns. Each trumpet can only play two or three notes—like the root, the fifth, and maybe the third—but the sound and the grooves are incredible. I tried to recreate that in our arrangement of “The Manhattan Beach March,” where the horns set up a drone-like rhythmic setting and the rhythms section plays the melody.
How did the New-Trad Octet get its start?
It started out as a trio of sax, tuba, and drums. I became interested in the role of the tuba…it’s a very versatile instrument with an incredible range. The New-Trad Octet evolved as I began to conceive of a New Orleans brass band melded with a modern jazz group. After a few initial gigs with my buddies in Chicago, I moved to Brooklyn and began looking for the right musical personalities to fit the concept. It took about seven or eight years, and I’m really excited about the musicians I play with and the way the East Coast Band has evolved. At the same time, I’ve been able to keep things going with the musicians in Chicago—I call it the Middle Coast Band. Though we play the same book, the musical personalities involved give it a different feel. It’s a delightful experience for me as a composer-arranger and bandleader, getting to work with these two groups of amazing musicians. Thanks to them, I’m continually discovering new things in the music I’ve written. It’s really exciting!
Friday, August 5, 2011