11 March 1996

WNUR Interview: David S. Ware


Interview Note: This telephone interview of David S. Ware, which I conducted on March 11, 1996, aired on WNUR (89.3 FM, Evanston-Chicago) on March 18, 1996. I would like to thank Jim Zanghi at WNUR and Steven Joerg at Homestead Records for arranging the interview, and David S. Ware for taking the time to be interviewed.
- Glenn Good


Reedist and composer David Spencer Ware was born November 7, 1949 in Plainfield, New Jersey. He has performed professionally for over 25 years, and has worked or recorded with Cecil Taylor, Andrew Cyrille, Milford Graves, Beaver Harris, Ahmed Abdullah, and many others. He began his recording career as a leader in the mid-1970's, and since 1989 has released a series of highly regarded albums on the Silkheart, DIW, and Homestead Records labels. His latest release, Dao (Homestead Records), features his quartet with Matthew Shipp on piano, William Parker on bass, and Whit Dickey on drums.
WNUR (Glenn Good): You've been quite clear in all of your interviews about the purpose of your music. I wonder if you could talk about that a bit, particularly in the context of your new release Dao?

David S. Ware: All right, all right, that's a big order. Basically I think that creative people, all people, need to be aware of where things come from. There's a source to everything - there's a source to music, there's a source to life. In other words, spirituality always runs parallel to whatever I do. I always try to have that as a backdrop to what I do. This aspect of life, the subtle aspect of life, is not really present as it should be, so I like to always put emphasis on this - the creator, the created. We as creatures have to become more aware of our source. This is the only way that we're going to really find ourselves. Our purpose in life is to be aware of our source, because that's where peace is, that's where stability is, that's where security is. So this is always my underlying theme that runs throughout my music, all my musics, each album having a theme of some sort.

WNUR: And what is that theme with Dao?

DSW: Dao is the all, dao is the all-inconclusive, dao is the totality. Dao is the level from which, if you see things from that level, everything makes sense: the dao, the all-inclusive. If you listen to each piece on the album, we're using a different approach, every piece is very different in my mind, but it all fits. In each piece you have something that's very different, but yet and still, it all fits in the totality of things.

WNUR: When you talk about the relationship between music and spirtuality, that's something that reminds me a lot of what I think John Coltrane was into, particularly in the latter part of his career in the 1960's. You were actually hanging out in New York jazz clubs as a teenager in the 1960's, and I wondered if you got to know John Coltrane during that period and if that's where you began to think along the lines of music and spirituality?

DSW: Well, yea, the 1960's was a period for me which was very heavy listening, very heavy in my ears developing. I met John Coltrane one time. I saw him a few times, but I only actually got to talk to him one time, and that was the time that he did Live at the Village Vanguard Again [Impulse Records]. I was at that recording, I believe that was 1966. But Coltrane, just to encapsulate it, what he did for me was the idea of transcendence, using music as a vehicle for transcendence. John Coltrane crystallized this idea, this concept for me, using music as a vehicle for transcendence. That's what Coltrane basically did for me.

WNUR: And another one of your associates from that period is Sonny Rollins, who you got to meet I guess as a teenager and began to hang out with, and a little bit later on he actually became a supporter of yours and someone you practiced with and worked closely with early on in your career. I wondered, did he also have that same connection between music and spirituality?

DSW: Yes, definitely. And the thing about it, I was actually friends with Sonny, we actually hung out together. But Sonny was deeply involved with yoga. So in other words, I heard this in both Coltrane and Rollins, but here Sonny presented me with an actual method to obtain this on a personal level, to make this idea of how to go about this - to personalize the whole thing. So in other words, at that early age I became aware that Rollins was practicing yoga and meditation and these types of things. That made me want to know about these kind of things. I looked them up. I looked up the word yoga, you know, "What does yoga mean?" I went to my encyclopedias, I did this, I did that, and I discovered that, OK, here's a path, yoga being a path to spirituality. Here's a path where you can personalize these things, you know, all these ideas where Coltrane would talk about transcendence and different things on his albums, and what I actually heard in the music. And Sonny being the same thing, just a different stream of it. And Sonny would talk about some of his spiritual experiences, to the effect that there is an experience you can have where you more or less are witness to what you are doing, what you are playing.

WNUR: I see - you're observing it from outside yourself?

DSW: Or another way, from deep within yourself, outside of your everyday self, you might say. Within your real self, within your higher self, you're experiencing what you are doing on an ordinary level.

WNUR: Now you decided at a very early age that you wanted to become a professional jazz musician, is that right?

DSW: I knew at 12 years old what I wanted to do, it just, you might say kind of bounced into my thinking process: "Oh, I wanna do this." I knew that I wanted to do it when I was 12.

WNUR: And as you pursued that over the years and pursued this intense side of things that you do in your music, at the same time you've experienced a pretty severe economic struggle through a long period of your life, is that right?

DSW: Well, let me put it like this. No, I wouldn't say that. I would say that my character has developed. Being committed to this music has enabled my character to develop. The point is, I had to be committed to this ideal life I've had since I was 12 years old, and more or less always knowing that I wanted to do this like this. And so just maintaining that to the point where, hey, whatever you gotta do, you gotta do it.

WNUR: But in your situation that's meant, for example, making your living away from music most of your life, is that correct?

DSW: Well, it's been mixed, I'll put it like that. Since I professionally got to New York in 1973 I have washed dishes, I have been a messenger boy, I have been a walking messenger, I have delivered food, I have been a bike messenger, I drove cab, which is the most lucrative, whatever I had to do in order to just keep playing the music like I wanted to do it, you know.

WNUR: But is that a source of frustration, to have to deal with that struggle of getting by when you feel that you have a lot to offer on the one hand, and a lot that you want to pursue in your music?

DSW: No, the greatest years of frustration, I would say was just very recently, going back just a couple years now. That was the greatest frustration, because we were getting so close. I knew, after all these years of working with this, working with that - over the past several years it all came together for me to do my own thing.

WNUR: As a leader you mean?

DSW: As a leader, yeah. The past several years were, I would not say frustrating, because doing the spiritual practice enables you to see life as it is. There's no illusions, you deal with what you have to deal with, no matter what you're doing. No matter what you're doing or how you're doing it. The spiritual practice gives you the stabiity throughout whatever, however, whenever. So no, I wouldn't say that I've been frustrated. I've been basically at peace with myself. I've always known that to do my own thing in the way that I've always wanted to do it, it would take a bit of time. I knew this, back in the 1970's I realized this. It was like an intuition I had - yeah, you're gonna be involved in music, but in order to really do your own thing, it's going to take some time.

WNUR: And have things come together for you in the last year or two?

DSW: Things have come together tremendously. All kind of things, all kind of sources, all kind of support has come. You know, nature is really now supporting us more than ever.

WNUR: Can you talk about that a little bit? What sort of things are you talking about?

DSW: I'm talking about being recorded on a regular basis, I'm talking about people helping us to get us work in Europe, you know, agents and people. People that hear a certain thing in the music, they're moved by the music, they're motivated by the music to the point where they want to help us. It's just all coming together. It takes a lot. It takes radio promotion, it takes a steady stream of articles in the press, a steady stream of articles coming out talking about whatever, reviews, stories about you, it takes a lot of different things from a lot of different directions, to really build and build and build and build, to the point where you're able to make a living, and people start asking for you.

WNUR: Because as recently as a year ago I saw a publication [Option, July-August 1995] of an interview of you where you said that your quartet was working as little as three times a year, so that situation has changed dramatically?

DSW: Yeah, that's changed quite a bit.

WNUR: OK, great. In reading the liner notes to Dao, I was interested to see that your preparation for this recording session was far different than the intense rehearsing you had undergone for previous recordings, and I wondered why you did things differently this time around.

DSW: Well, just naturally, when the band is working a lot, when you're working enough there's no need for all that heavy rehearsing. When Third Ear [Recitation] and some of the earlier records were done we weren't actually working that much so we had time and space to rehearse a lot, to get the music together. But now, since we're working enough not to have all that heavy rehearsal - you develop actually on the bandstand, on the road, and that's as it should be.

WNUR: So when you said not too long ago that people would be surprised to hear what would happen if you did have the opportunity to work on a regular basis, we're starting to hear some of that now with this release Dao?

DSW: Yeah, I guess so, yeah.

WNUR: I would say that Dao is a little different than your previous release Cryptology in that, as you mentioned earlier, [on Dao] there is a substantial amount more variety. Cryptology was just at the edge of intensity for its entire duration, and it was almost overwhelming, and I wondered what accounted for that difference?

DSW: It's just the natural evolution of the music. I've said this many times, this music is like a river, it's never the same. It's never the same, even if we play the same pieces every night, it's going to be different. That's just the natural evolution of the music. It's innate in the music, it should be. I try to live an integrated life. That goes back to what I said before about not being frustrated. When you're integrated, there's no need for frustration. An integrated life allows me to be constantly creative, to let the creativity flow. When you live an integrated life, you know, you're an artist, the creativity can flow through you. And this is what you get - you don't get stuck. You don't get stuck in any one thing. When you're working, when you're creative, when you're integrated, this is what you can do.

WNUR: People often make reference to your distinctive sound on the saxophone, and I guess that you would immediately come to mind as someone who has an instantly recognizable personal style on the instrument, and I wondered how that came about. Is that the result of a conscious effort, or is it something that sort of flows out of you naturally...

DSW: Are you talking about the sound?

WNUR: Well, the sound and the style in general. People who are familiar with your music could easily identify you in whatever setting they heard you, I believe.

DSW: OK, uh-huh.

WNUR: I wondered, did you have to consciously pursue that, or be pushed into that, or that was something you set out to accomplish, how did that come about?

DSW: Well, let me go back. I'll take you all the way back to 1959 when I first picked up the horn. The order in which I did things was, I guess you might say, kind of topsy-turvy from many, many other musicians. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. Most musicians, jazz musicians in particular, learn how to play all these tunes. They'll learn tunes, this tune and that tune, and they'll know 400 different tunes, and they'll know how to play them in every key and all this stuff. I didn't develop like that. I started out just basically playing, I would just play. I would pick up the horn and I would just play. Because I didn't have a lot of other musicians to develop with in terms of jazz. In terms of jazz, I had basically myself and one other musician, and that was a drummer. I didn't have the rhythm section and this type of thing to develop the tunes with, to learn the tunes with.

WNUR: In particular, no piano player.

DSW: No piano player, no guitarist, no bassist. So yes, I would [also] learn bought the books, I bought the jazz books. I bought the Sonny Rollins books, the John Coltrane books, the Charlie Parker books. I would play the melody, say along with the drummer. And this is basically how I developed. For many, many, many, many, many years I worked with more or less a pure conception of playing. You pick up your horn and boom, you just play from scratch, you just play. I would hear a concept on the record. I would hear Sonny Rollins' conception on the record, his overall concept, Coltrane's overall concept, and then I would just try to just get that concept, that style in the early years. And that's basically how I developed. So now after all these years, after 30-some years, I've basically come full circle to the point where now I feel that I can deal with tunes that I never had a chance to really play before, not really. So now I can put my pure conceptual idea inside of a musical form, inside of a standard, or inside of this, inside of that, without being overshadowed by the form. In other words, it's a way of applying what it is that we do just across the board. I feel that I can do that now. And it took me a long time to come to this. I went through periods, say for example in the 1970's when I was playing with Cecil Taylor, where I did not want to deal with certain forms. I only wanted to deal with the so-called avant-garde. And I say "so-called" because it is so-called - there's only one music, there's really only one music, even if you're talking about just jazz, it's all connected. It's all like a chain, a spontaneous, simultaneous chain at that.

WNUR: You say that you were on your own path early on in your musical development, so it's easy to see how when you went to the famous music school you attended for a couple of years - I don't know if you want me to mention the name...

DSW: No I don't, because I don't want to give them no credit.

WNUR: OK, I won't, you don't want to give it any credit?

DSW: No.

WNUR: But you were at a music school that everyone would recognize the name of if I were to say it. It's easy to see how you didn't fit into the program at that school, is that right?

DSW: Well, my concept of how to play the saxophone was set very early on. And by 17, of course, I was very well set. So I'm going off to music school, and I'm already set. I'm not trying to learn what to play. I'm not looking to try to learn what to play when I get to music school, I know what I want to play. I'm basically playing it, you know? When I get to music school, these forms are put in front of me that I'm not so heavily interested in, but yes, I'm playing in these forms. I was a very well-read musician where I could read anything. I had a lot of experience in reading all different types of music because I went through the whole gamut of playing different types of music in school, all my school years. Junior high school, high school, that's all I did was read music. So I was very accomplished like that. I was in the dance band, the marching band, the concert band, the orchestra, this, that. But the thing about it was, when I got to this institution, basically what turned me off - and you gotta remember, I'm 17 years old, that's a rebellious age. They basically did not want to recognize my heroes at that time, the latter-day Coltrane, the Ornette Colemans. They didn't want to recognize it, so that turned me off. That turned me off, but at the same time, I'm making the honor roll, I'm an honor student there. I'm just trying to set the stage, you know?

WNUR: So they were the ones that were failing, in your eyes? You were succeeding, they were failing?

DSW: I guess so, all right, I guess so, however you want to look at it. Being 17 years old and somebody doesn't want to recognize your heroes, then you're not open to learn from them. You're not open to learn, even if you have the capacity. You kind of like cut it off, I cut it off. I don't want anything that you have to offer, right? So because you don't recognize my heroes, I don't really want to learn anything you have to offer me. And so that's basically what the problem was.

WNUR: You started your professional career around 1970 and throughout that decade worked and recorded with your own bands, with Cecil Taylor and Andrew Cyrille and others. If my information is correct, from about 1980, when you did the Special People session with Andrew Cyrille on Soul Note, through until about 1987 when you recorded with Ahmed Abdullah for Silkheart [Ahmed Abdullah and the Solomonic Quintet], you didn't have any recordings, not only of your own, but of anyone else's as well, you didn't appear on anybody else's records, is that right?

DSW: Yeah, that's about right, but there was activity in those several years there.

WNUR: I guess that's what I wanted to hear about, because I didn't know too much about what you were doing during that time period.

DSW: Yeah, OK. 1981, actually I went to Europe twice in 1981, once with my own band, I took a quartet to Europe in 1981.

WNUR: Who was in that band?

DSW: Gene Ashton/Cooper Moore on piano...

WNUR: Who now has recorded with William Parker on Black Saint [In Order to Survive]...

DSW: Yes. Beaver Harris on drums, and Brian Smith on the bass. That was a helluva band, that was a tremendous band. I'm sorry that we - it almost got recorded, but "almost" doesn't count. '82, '83 was pretty quiet. '84 I did several things around New York City. And also, I believe it was in 1984, I started to rebuild my style. Because I guess I had the time to do it, you know? I started to slow down what I was doing, just take a look at what I was doing, and I started to rebuild in like 1984. I did a few gigs around the city. 1985 I took a trio to Europe, which was, actually it was Peter Kowald, who is a German bass player. And it was supposed to have been Beaver Harris, but Beaver got sick at the last minute, and the drummer on that tour, actually I went through several drummers on that tour.The drummer was Thurman Barker, who started the tour out.

WNUR: Who's from Chicago...

DSW: Yeah. Then I used Louis Moholo on several of the concerts. It was really great playing with him. And actually I used another guy whose name I can't recall, I think he was from San Francisco, but he happened to be in Europe. That was '85. '86 wasn't that eventful. Then in '87 I made the recording with Ahmed Abdullah on Silkheart. '88 I made my first recording as a leader on Silkheart.

WNUR: Passage to Music was the name of that.

DSW: Yeah. And everybody knows the rest from there.

WNUR: Somewhere I read that you had played with Milford Graves, is that information correct?

DSW: Yeah, let me back up, that was probably '82, '83, somewhere in there.

WNUR: Was that your group? He was in your group, or you were in his group?

DSW: We played a couple of duos in New York, in the city, and we played a couple up in Bennington College in Vermont, he teaches there.

WNUR: Any recordings of that duo?

DSW: No, there's no recordings of me and Milford.

WNUR: Because there's an example of another musician who hasn't gotten anywhere near the attention and recording opportunities that he deserves.

DSW: Yes, certainly.

WNUR: Well you started onto something there for a moment that I was very intrigued by. You said that you began to rework your style, I guess that it was in 1984. You said you had to slow down some of your things to figure out what you were doing, and that strikes me pretty odd actually, because it means that somehow you were playing things that you didn't understand exactly what you were doing.

DSW: Well, you know, not to say that - you can put it any way you want, but let me put it this way. Once you have a substantial technique, you run through different passages and things, and you're not actually putting your attention on what you're doing, because you're not learning how to do something, you're actually doing it. You can execute so many different things on your instrument, and you don't always pay attention to exactly what it is that you're playing. You know what I'm saying?

WNUR: Right.

DSW: In other words - let me pick out something, like the tone. You know, everybody talks about my big, fat tone. Well, I never even think about it. It's just a natural thing that I've always done, I never really took a tremendous amount of time to pay close attention to tone development. That's what I'm talking about. So if someone was to ask me another thing, "Well, how do you circular breath?" I would have to think about if for a minute, because I've been doing it so long that you no longer think about it.

WNUR: But you must have thought about it when you started out doing it.

DSW: Well yeah, certainly.

WNUR: So that's what I'm asking, I guess. What exactly were you doing when you said you were slowing down your music? What was going on?

DSW: Well, what I meant was, I started paying more attention to my relationship to chords, what I was doing to my relationship to chords, and scales, and changes. I was starting to pay attention - well, how am I actually moving through this or that? And it makes a difference when you start real slow. You start with just one note and start paying attention to how you move. Actually, what you do, you start analyzing yourself as you're doing it. And believe me, it makes a difference. And so then you begin to see - OK, this is how I'm moving. OK, then let me try this, let me change this little something here and try it like that, and start to paying attention, you're putting your attention on something. It's like we all breath throughout the day, but does anybody really pay attention to your breath? No, you don't pay attention to your breath. It's just something you don't pay attention to. So this is the type of attention I'm talking about.

WNUR: And part of it was to try to figure out how to do something a little differently with it?

DSW: That's right - how to come up with something a little bit different, yes.

WNUR: Now you have lately just been using your tenor saxophone. On the Passage to Music Silkheart album we mentioned earlier you played stritch and [saxello] and flute. [Actually, Ware played flute on both volumes of Great Bliss on Silkheart, not on Passage to Music] You've put them aside for a while, is that right?

DSW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Say after the two volumes of Great Bliss that was just the natural evolution of things to go to the tenor and work with the tenor. Sometimes it happens that you get a little bit bored with your instrument, or you want a change, or you want a different sound, or you want a different challenge. But it was actually through Rahsaan Roland Kirk somewhere back in the mid-to-late 80's that I was inspired somehow or another through Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and it made me want to take up the flute and be challenged in that way, the flute and the saxello and the stritch.

WNUR: Did you ever feel the challenge to play more than one of them at the same time, speaking of Rahsaan Roland Kirk?

DSW: Uh, that's a whole different thing in itself, that's a whole different step to take in itself. No, not really, not really, the time and the effort and the process that you're going to have to go through is quite long.

WNUR: You talked about the Passage to Music recording on Silkheart, your first recording [as a leader] in the late 1980's after a stretch away from the studios. That was just with a trio with Marc Edwards on drums and William Parker on bass I believe.

DSW: Um-huh.

WNUR: No piano, and that harks back to your early days when you said you only had a drummer to play with. But since then you've had the pianist Matthew Shipp on all of your recordings and I wonder if you could tell me what it is that Matthew brings to the group that appeals to you?

DSW: Well I don't know, I've always loved the piano, from pretty far back, I just love the sound of the piano. The piano, to me, it just puts the music somewhere else. If you have a piano there, you can have it play all the time, or you can have it drop out, so there's more possibilities. It's like an orchestra sitting in one instrument. The sound-scape that it can bring to a music is just so unlimited, what you can do with the piano. The piano is there, you can set so many different backdrops with the piano.

WNUR: And it strikes me that that's a particular strength of Matthew Shipp's, is his ability to play very dense, dissonant backdrops on the one hand, and to play in a much lighter, more linear style on the other, and you hear a lot of that on Dao, is that right? Also that different mix of instruments you talked about, sometimes you and the drummer, or piano and drums, you mix it up a lot more on this album than on some of the others.

DSW: Um-huh. Yeah, and his style, his manner of playing fits my manner of playing just like a glove, and it always has from the very beginning. From the very first session we ever played together, I could see that, hey, this fits, this is perfect, this is a perfect fit here. So why not - after we recorded Great Bliss someone said it turned out so well, I think the band sounds so good. I decided to keep these cats together and develop this, because Great Bliss went so well. So I said, well, it doesn't make sense to discontinue this.

WNUR: Although you did have a change in the drum chair. Marc Edwards was your drummer in the quartet, and what happened with that? Did he leave, or you asked him to leave...

DSW: No, he left...

WNUR: You're still friends?

DSW: Oh yeah, matter of fact I just talked with Marc the other night, we had a long talk.

WNUR: Whit Dickey is your current drummer. [Note: Dickey was replaced by Susie Ibarra for the band's tour of Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Chicago in March]. How did that change come about?

DSW: How did it come about? Basically, Marc just reached the point where he wanted to do his own thing, so he just went off to do his own thing.

WNUR: Which he has done, he's got a couple of recordings on the Alpha Phonics label under his own name.

DSW: Again, it's just the natural evolution of the music. It goes back to what you read in the spiritual teachings sometimes. All things change, all things change, no matter how good they are, it just comes a point when things change. This happens in music-making, it happens in relationships, it happens in all areas of life. Sometimes things just want to change. And if you're open to that, and because something was good you don't have to cling onto it, "Well, this has got to be like this, it's got to be like that." No, let things change, let it change, let things flow, you know, let the river flow.

WNUR: And any idea where things are flowing with your quartet in the near future?

DSW: [Laughs...] Into more creativity, that's all I can tell you. Maybe a little bit different way of doing things.

WNUR: What about recordings?

DSW: Yes, well, we've got another Silkheart coming out just right around the corner...

WNUR: What's the name of that one?

DSW: Oblations and Blessings. And we're going to do another DIW in May, so there's two more records coming this year.

WNUR: I thought I heard something about something on Knitting Factory.

DSW: Yeah, that almost happened. We were in the process, it didn't quite work out though.

WNUR: And you mentioned somewhere at least in the back of your mind doing some projects other than the quartet. Is that still something you have in mind? What would that be if you had the opportunity to do some other things?

DSW: I guess that probably came about when I came to Chicago as a single a couple of years ago.

WNUR: That was at the Underground Fest in September of 1994.

DSW: OK. I named that project "Special Project" or something like that. Well, let me say this, I don't have anything specific planned, but there could be special projects to pop up every now and then, there could be. If it's right, then I'll do it.

WNUR: So you mentioned you were in Chicago in September of 1994, about a year and a half ago, and I think when you were here then you said that you had played in Chicago once before that. When was that?

DSW: That was like 20 years ago now, that was with Cecil Taylor. What was that club on Rush Street? The Jazz Showcase.

WNUR: Oh, you played at the Jazz Showcase?

DSW: Yeah, that's the first time I ever played in Chicago.

WNUR: The Jazz Showcase has been closed for a couple of months and is just re-opening as we're speaking, at another location. Actually, it's been in a different location [the Blackstone Hotel at Balbo and Michigan] from Rush Street where you played for 15 years or so, but it's now reopening at yet another location [59 West Grand at Clark]. That's about all my questions. David, thank you so much for joining us, it's been very interesting. Thank you for taking out the time to talk to us.

DSW: Thank you.

jlg
Last Modified: 96/03/29
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