West Coast Connection Forum
DUBCC - Tha Connection => Outbound Connection => Topic started by: Elano on February 19, 2008, 07:55:24 AM
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It’s 1951, Natchez, Mississippi and those black and white photos, turned sepia, that your grandparents captured, are reality for a Charles Jones, III, a small boy captivated by his environment. The woods, local guitarists and country dialect kept Jones on the edge of his seat, destined to discover the world, in hopes to touch his dreams of exploring life’s riches.
Those riches would turn out to be golden memories of Africa, unforgettable explorations and late nights full of Jazz performances and intimate discussions about progression and happiness. Through self-discovery and an expedition to Africa, Jones would soon become Olu Dara, move to New York City and plant a seed in a woman by the name of Fannie Ann, and through that connection, Dara made sure that love would be the foundation of his son’s traditions. January of 1973, would be the year Dara’s dream would come true, and Fannie Jones would give birth to a new form of music- a genre by the name of Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones.
Daru’s son would listen to music and be taught trumpet lessons at a young age and through the love language of music, Nasir was inspired to engage in art.
In 1978 Hip Hop was introduced to New York City, and in parts of The Bronx, the infection of drum patterns, disco grooves and spoken word spread across the city like Ebola. Countless girls and boys would engage in “break battles,” barbecues in the park and “street corner ciphers” became the way to converse. In Queens, Nasir was a victim, caught by the rapture of love.
By 1986, Dara would break up with Fannie Ann and Nasir, moving on to studying African culture, listening to music and carrying on traditions. He stayed engaged with the music.
In 1991, Nasir would record his first verse to a song entitled, “Live at the BBQ,” on Main Source's album, Breaking Atoms. This would be the start of a new era, for the Jones family. In 1994, his passion for music and his lessons invested as a child, would inspire him to create his debut album, Illmatic.
The album went on to be a Hip Hop classic and 14-years later, a 35-year old Nasir is now Nas, a critically acclaimed Hip Hip artist, known for his deep lyricism, his melodic poetry and his longevity.
From “Life’s a Bitch” to “Bridging The Gap,” neither Olu Dara nor Nasir Jones lost focus of the little boy in Natchez, Mississippi, dreaming of exploring life’s riches.
This month, we celebrate black history and black music with an intimate, one-on-one with Olu Dara, to discuss his near seven decades on Earth, his relationship with music, the NIGGER album and Fanny Ann’s one and only genre: Nas.
HipHopDX: Olu Dara, meaning “God is good” in Yoruba language, is your name. How much has Africa and spiritually played in the role of your music?
Olu Dara: Everything. It was there in my heart when I was kid, when I first realized I was alive. It was in Mississippi and that’s as close as Africa as you can get. With that experience, at the age of 20 or so, I traveled around Africa on a ship with the Navy. I got a chance to leave Mississippi and basically go straight to Africa, after a couple years of college at Tennessee State University in Nashville. Africa has always been apparent.
DX: As a young boy growing up in Natchez, Mississippi what did you listen to and whom did you aspire to be like?
O: I was in an area where there wasn’t much radio. I didn’t get a chance to listen to much radio until I was 12 or 13 and most of the music I listened to was the old people, the guitars, the juke or the people in the neighborhood. Mississippi is half Opera singers and the roots are deep. We had the Blues, but no big cities were in Mississippi, but it was right in these small neighborhoods and in the woods (where you’d live sometime) where you heard the music. I thought the whole world was like that, until I left there and found out that it was a very unique place to be.
DX: [Laughing] Yes, it is.
O: [Laughing] I don’t know how it is now, but Jackson is the largest city there right?
DX: Yes, I actually go to school here.
O: How did you wind up down there? [Laughs] It’s so many different ways you can live there. It depends on which city you live in and that determines what the land is like. There are different ways of living and thinking in Mississippi, believe it or not. There’s different ways of living, depending on where you are. I would go into different towns playing and found that people are completely different, in regards to the way that they think and everything. The culture was still harmonious at that time amongst the black people, when I was growing up. I don’t even remember hearing a loud argument or seeing fights, it was lots of calmness then. I’m ancient. I was born in 1941.
That’s not that old for people who really know what life’s like, but my experience was different. I was right in a neighborhood of black people who were lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, builders- it was like everybody was going off to college. My father’s generation was probably the first generation that a lot of people were looking forward to college and back then they had the G.I. Bill, during World War II. I was the generation after that and back then so a whole lot of black people in Mississippi went to college. It was like a prerequisite. You stay home, go to the military or go to college and most likely they were trying to get you to go to college. It was a wonderful experience
DX: Speaking of experience, Jazz has been a huge part of your life. Take me back to the days of the 1960s and so forth and create a vivid picture of black music and the experiences that you went through.
O: Woo, I had never saw anything like that before or any music experience like that afterwards. That was an unusual environment. That was a unique period where, something was happening where, there was unlimited varieties of music that black people were making. They weren’t stuck in a situation where they were they had to play anything. You could make up your own style, from which was happening. You wouldn’t hear one singer sounding like another singer and it was the same thing for musicians. Nothing sounded the same. The bands in each city had different types of music. You went to Vicksburg, they had their own music, if you went to Washington, D.C. they had their own music, if you went to New York, there was different types of music and it was beautiful. Everywhere you went, it as different. It was nothing like it is now. There is less variety in the music now. Also, something happened to regional sound and the music industry wasn’t interested in it. They wanted one voice, so to speak. Today, you see how some male vocalists have similar voices or how some female vocalists have the same voices?
DX: Yes.
O: Yeah, they don’t have the regional sound and you can’t hear the dialect anymore. You understand what I’m saying? You don’t hear the raw country-ness in them anymore. You really can’t hear the rawness. It’s not as funky in the end. There’s less variety. Why? I don’t know, but it was a beautiful nurturing place for me- especially as an artist.
DX: People might not know that you taught Nas how to play the trumpet at the age of three or four. Let me know why you felt like music was so important in your child’s life.
O: I found freedom in it. I looked at the world in my own eyes and the only thing that I found was free, creative and Godly was in music. I was fortunate enough to know because I was trained as a professional before I was 20 years old. I got a chance to see different environments and different people and it horned my social skills. I traveled. I got to see what the world was really was like, I learned my history and I got to see the Earth change. You can see how the world changes, right through your eyes, by moving around the Earth at different times and seeing where people are going. I saw that as a gift from the heavens. Then to be able to recognize and realize that music is a healer, I decided I wanted to be the doctor of all things. It makes me smile and laugh and that’s where found my freedom. The rest of life is just work.
DX: Word. You were part of on of Hip Hop’s most acclaimed and genius albums of all time. You played the cornet on “Life’s a Bitch,” on Nas’ Illmatic in 1994. What do you remember most about being approached about the track? How did he come to you about it and what was your response?
O: Well, we went there together on the train and I remember he lost his lyrics on the train. We got off the train and I asked him, "What happened to you lyrics?" He said he must’ve left them on the train on the bench. Okay, well that’s it. We had to create. We went inside the studio and he didn’t have them. I don’t know how long he had them, but he just went freestyled on it. I thought it was a hip thing to lose lyrics like that. It just comes out my mouth. He started, he said, "C’mon daddy, lets do some freestyle. Rap on this." I said, "Nah, I ain’t gone be the oldest rapper on Earth." [Laughing] You can almost hear Jungle on one of those tracks like, "What the fuck is going on?" Nas breaks in and starts flowing. One second you can almost hear Jungle like, "What’s going on?" [Laughing] Then he was like, just play on “Life’s a Bitch” then and I played my number and I went on back home and that’s what happened. I heard the track and I loved it. I loved the sound of him and AZ’s voice anyway. When it came, he’s like, "Do you want to play right there?" I said yea and I played the horn.
Some years past and I heard some kids, humming the solo. That’s a wonderful thing to hear the kids humming the cornet. I almost, forgot it was me.
DX: [Laughing] You almost forgot it was you until 10 years later you and your son make, “Bridging the Gap” from his album, 2004’s Streets Disciple. How is it to know that you and your son’s music are still relevant in a forever-changing industry?
O: It was normal for me. I’ve been a musician my whole life and my father was musician and my great uncle was a musician. It’s definitely in our blood, but not just music but visual art as well. We do it because we do it, you know? It was nothing unusual. That was a natural feel for me, as well as him.
DX: Well, it’s 2008 and Hip Hop has become a huge impact on pop culture, what are your biggest fears in regards to Hip Hop and its role in the black music experience?
O: You said fear? Nothing to fear about that. If Hip Hop wasn’t around there wouldn’t be a lot of happiness- a lot of absent smiles. As far as fear, I never think of it as that, Hip Hop is like a wild flower. It grows the way it wants to grow. You lay down on the side walk and the flowers bust in through the cracks. It’s going to always grow and the name hasn’t changed. They always change the names of black music. Just like we change names like from colored, to Negro, to Afro-American to African American. Things change. Nothing is fear.
DX: So with the struggles and disparity that happened in the black American experience, and the passion that has been displayed through black music, do you think Nas’ new album NIGGER is justified through the current state of the black experience in America?
O: Do you think it’s justified because it’s in the dictionary? It was in the dictionary before we were born. Nobody ever said anything about it. [Laughing] All it is language. There are many words in languages that can be misinterpreted by others, not knowing the language of the culture or having knowledge of the culture or not knowing the history of the word. Some words aren’t bad, but they were changed into bad, but that’s because people don’t understand the language nor their history. Everybody looks at the words and thinks ‘this is terrible.’ They don’t understand the word, the pronunciation or enunciation. People don’t know language. People can pick any word and say its bad. Like when they called us "colored," "African" and people like, "Nah you ain’t Kunta Kente." You know what I mean? In our world, they’ve been changed our language around at will. What you got to understand is the last thing in the world that a human being gives up. A person will give you their land before they give you their language.
DX: That’s true.
O: All that is, is language and different cultures within the cultures and people are scared to use certain words amongst those social groups. We live in a culture where we are having a language war- what different cultures mean by what they say and stuff like that. We live in a multi-cultural society and it’s all confused. You say watermelon and they like, "Don’t say watermelon…what is that? Say auqamelon." [Laughing] Some people down south, we say, "Niqqa. What up niqqa" What word, nigga are you trying to say?
DX: [Laughing]
O: My thing is, you put a word in a dictionary, yet you want to make it illegal. You might as well make them all illegal. Webster, one man defined what the word meant. Why he gotta talk about us like that? That ain’t what we mean when we say that. [Laughing] You gotta understand the language. When you have a society wrapped around language and dialect, you’ll always have problems with what you mean when you say words like "muthafucka." I’m sorry muthafucka; I didn’t mean to say it like that. Nah, how am I gonna argue about that? You say potato, I say patotoe. Wise people never let grammar and language get in the way of your progress in the world. That’s how you get slowed down, by dealing with something as mundane as that. If you think about it, that’s ignorance. I don’t care is discussing it. All it does is slows down your creativity.
DX: You named your son, Nasir meaning “helper and protector” in Arabic, do you think your son has been a reflection of that?
O: Yeah, he’s done that as a human being. Not only through his art, but through his altruism and just by doing the best that he can do- as one person. I think he’s a hell of a guy. He’s just a regular person, as he should be. In my family we don’t allow men to get too out of pocket. They would be ashamed to do it, because that’s how we all connect.
DX: If you could pick any figure in history to compare your son to, who would it be and why?
O: I can’t find anybody because they can’t compare to Kid Wave. That was his name during the break dance era and that’s how he became known. If they can’t dance, I can’t compare him to any of them. I don’t trust people who can’t dance no way. I like them though.
DX: [Laughing] That’s funny.
O: [Laughing].
DX: At the end of your life’s span, what is it that you want Olu Dara to be remembered as?
O: Just as a regular family type of person who loved people and who liked to create. I love to create, from my own mind. I like instant creativity that leads to happiness. That’s giving. I said a lot, but all I meant was a guy that was doing the best he could at all times. I like that. I’m a non-slacker. You gotta be a slacker to be a non-slacker.
DX: Ha. Do you feel like you and your son have bridged the gap in black music?
O: Oh yeah. I think we did. We never thought that we would be well known or anything like that. I noticed you called me a Jazz musician, but that’s because I’ve played with Jazz musicians. I got my name through Jazz, but I didn’t grow up in the Jazz world, because there was no Jazz world in Mississippi when I grew up there. I became a Jazz musician because there was nothing else I could do, that would give me recognition and there was nowhere else I could make money at the time. It was good thing that I did go into it, but I never studied it, I solely felt it. I was going through he roots music of Mississippi. I was in a position to do world music, because nobody was really accepting that music. I was in Jazz for less than ten years. When I got the opportunity to do it again, I did.
DX: How big of a role do you think black music plays in the role of black progression in America?
O: Well, it plays the entire role, basically. This is how black America really communicates. We don’t have the time to hang around each other every night. They communicate closer through music and it’s been that way since the beginning. Even when we don’t directly communicate with each other we can communicate with the universe. The music helps other people of other cultures, even if they despise us. It’s the feeling and it’s eccentric. Without music, it would be nothing out here.
DX: How do you think your life has manifested through your son?
O: Well he’d doing what I did for my father. They were artists and we kept the tradition going on. It happened way before I was born. My aunt told me my great uncles traveled through “Rabbits-Foot” shows. Rabbit’s Foot [click here] was shows back in Mississippi and the last show was in Natchez, my hometown. My great uncles, used to play in those places with Ma Rainy and Bessie Smith. It's been going on for generations in Natchez. He didn’t even think he was doing anything special and neither do I. We do it because it’s who we are.
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good shit 8)