I have known and worked with Anthony Brown for decades. He has always been a musician with a vision that embraced and transcended his art form. A grammy nominated composer, arranger, drummer/percussionist and recording artist, he tours nationally and internationally and always includes his world view and life imperatives as a foundation to his art.
How did you come to the drums as your instrument(s) of choice?
My older brother, Mike played guitar and I wanted to be “like Mike.” He taught me some chords and the blues when I was 10, while we were living in Japan. This was in the early 60’s, pre-Beatles days when we listened to Chuck Berry, James Brown and early Motown records. I switched to drums after seeing his band play at my junior high school because the drummer looked like he was having the most fun. Mike would later go on to play bass with R&B legend, Bo Diddley.
How do your expressions change between traditional African drums and percussion
instruments and the western trap drum set? Does one cultural approach or medium inform the other? How?
There are fundamental commonalities between West African and jazz drumming since the rhythmic element known as “swing” or cross-rhythm in jazz originates from West African musical practices. The context determines the conceptual approach and performance conventions appropriate to the musical performance.
If I’m performing in a traditional West African drum ensemble, I have a more fixed role as a support drummer in a group, whereas the lead drummer has considerably more freedom. In a modern jazz ensemble, the drum set is usually the sole percussion component of the group and the drummer plays an integral role in the improvisatory dialogue with the other musicians in the band. Jazz is a collective creative process that valorizes finding one’s own voice, and that is a fundamental difference in the roles of all the musicians in the two performance contexts.
Your orchestra has a wide range of ethnicities and instruments yet you call it Anthony Brown’s Asian American Orchestra. Why this name and how does it encompass the world you (re)present?
The Asian American Jazz Orchestra was founded as a collective ensemble twenty years ago as a component of a federally funded consortium multimedia educational program on the Japanese American Internment experience of WWII titled, Jazz & Justice: Big Bands Behind Barbed Wire. The ensemble toured nationally with San Jose Taiko and recorded its first CD, Big Bands Behind Barbed Wire. As program director, I continued the group after the funding ended as Anthony Brown’s Asian American Orchestra in the tradition of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and Machito and his Afro-Cubans.
We recorded Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn’s masterpiece, Far East Suite, which received a GRAMMY nomination in 2000. Our third CD, Monk’s Moods reimagines music by Thelonious Monk with guest saxophonist and former Monk collaborator, Steve Lacy and was co-produced with Monk’s original producer, Orrin Keepnews. Monk’s Moods was rated by DOWNBEAT magazine as a “five-star masterpiece, Best CD of 2003.”
The Asian American Orchestra will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2018. It is the flagship ensemble of the Asian American Jazz Movement, which began here in San Francisco in the early 1980s. From the beginning, it has always been intercultural with its roots in the student and social activism of the late 1960-70s when coalitions were formed among people of color. Asian American jazz musicians joined forces with African American musicians who listened to John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and others whose music carried the message of freedom. Japanese American musicians such as Mark Izu felt a particular kinship since his parents and family were unconstitutionally interned during WWII. Wayne Wallace and Dr. Hafez Modirzadeh were charter members of the original Orchestra, and most incarnations of the ensemble have increasingly included diverse women artists. Come to think of it, King Oliver wasn’t even a Creole, and only three of his eight band members were!
Come back next week to hear about his other work. Until then for more on Anthony Brown, including hearing some excerpts of his work please visit his website . You can also seek him out on Facebook.