Hailed by some as the “best bassist in the world,” Gibbs expands his palette further on his forthcoming record, Ancients Speak, including tastes of Brazilian hip hop and African Yoruba culture.
Jazz bassist Melvin Gibbs is an extremely diverse musician, and this musical diversification is exemplified by his new project, Melvin Gibbs’ Elevated Entity.
Hailed by some as the “best bassist in the world,” Gibbs expands his palette further on his forthcoming record, Ancients Speak, including tastes of Brazilian hip hop and African Yoruba culture.
In a conversation with contributor Joe Kurowski, Gibbs discusses Brooklyn’s influence on his music, the effects of a trip to Brazil, and his time as the world-music buyer at Tower Records.
You grew up in Brooklyn. Tell me how you started making music.
Essentially, I started to make music with this guy who lived next door to me. I always wanted to play bass or percussion, or be a DJ, but he told me that there was no money in DJing and that I needed to learn to play an instrument.
There was this place I played at called The Muse, which was kind of like a cultural center where I met Reggie Workman, who played with Coltrane. I met Vernon Reid (Living Colour) in one of the practice rooms at Medgar Evers College through a mutual friend, and that’s how I ended up joining Vernon’s free-jazz band. Then I ended up in a band playing with Alphonia Tims. We’d rehearse over at Ornette Coleman’s loft and he would sit around and critique us.
Then there was The Mama Theater, which was on the Lower East Side on 3rd Street. There were always musicians in there that you could just go and jam with. I met Joe Bowie there, and it was through him that I met James Chance. I had a little “try-out” with him, and that’s where The Contortions came from. And later that turned into Defunkt.
What was the Defunkt scene like?
There is a whole part of history in the ’80s that they left out. There were a whole lot of scenes, but ours is usually skipped over.
Actually, the person who introduced me to Vernon Reid was my roommate and one of the very first graffiti artists in New York. He went by the tag name WG. One of my other friends was the head of these ex-vandals, not really a gang, but this organization with all the graffiti artists in Brooklyn.
For a while in the late ’70s, there was a loft jazz scene. A bunch of people would get together at someone’s loft and we’d have little shows. Any jazz musicians that would come through town would always come and play with us. Warren Smith had some places where we would go and jam. James Chance used to go to these jazz lofts.
What was one album growing up that influenced you to start writing music?
In Brooklyn at that time, I obviously came up listening to funk. I was big into the DJ culture, into the remix guys and all that. I was a big avant-garde head, listening to Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sanders, and what ended up becoming acid jazz, like The Blackbirds.
There was this one record store that I used to walk by everyday, and one day I was walking past and heard a record and just flipped out. I was like ‘Who is that?!’ It turned out to be a Fela Kuti record.
This guy imported all of the African records, and I spent a lot of time in that store. I probably bought out the guy’s whole catalogue. (Laughs) It’s hard to pick one, because they’re all good. But I’d have to say The Gentleman is probably my favorite Fela Kuti album.
What’s the concept of your new album, Ancients Speak?
Basically, the concept is really about making the connection. For me, going down to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil in ’97 really affected me. We started an organization teaching kids to play instruments.
I want to stress that they have a lot of community groups there that are really Afro-centric. The thing that interested me about Brazil, though, is that they’ve really built an extensive palette with a whole lot of African music.
I wanted to make something that was spiritually influenced. So I started looking at Yoruba culture, in Cuba and Trinidad. I really appreciate the historical circumstances, how they kept their religion intact. They made a point of reestablishing the same customs that they had in Africa.
The new album is based on the ideas of the Africans who ended up here [in the US]; we’re really all related. But the bigger metaphor is that the whole world is related, and that we all ultimately came from Africa.
In New York, you deal with so many cultures, and everybody seems so different, but they really aren’t. I remember that in high school, I used to ride the subway and just get off at a random stop, and it would seem like I was in a different country.
Getting off at Astoria felt like you were in Greece, and Sunnyside was like Ireland. Nowadays, 116th St. feels like you’re in Senegal. The whole world’s in New York, and that’s the point I wanted to get across on the new record.
You’ve had a long career. What’s one of your biggest personal accomplishments?
One thing that I always wanted to do — I remember sitting on my mom’s living-room floor, saying that I wanted to play at the Grammys. Then, when I was up there on stage [at the Grammys], I started thinking about all the little gigs that I loved.
I played with Olodum once, the band from Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints album. I marched with them once, and played surrounded by a huge group of drummers. It was a great feeling. I was 1 of 120 drummers. It kind of felt like Woodstock with Rollins Band, where we were playing to 150,000 people.
There are some big names on the new album. How did you get all these musicians together?
Well, P-Funk was always a template for us. Once I became big enough to make myself known to Blackbyrd McKnight, I did. And Blackbyrd used to have this group of guys that I’d play with sometimes. They were like Fishbone and the Chili Peppers, but crazier, and everybody who wanted to play funk could come and play.
It was the era before hip hop bled into LA, and there was a real different way of playing. For Blackbyrd’s track on this album (“Sun of Shango”), he recorded his part in LA and we uploaded it to the computer and mixed it in New York.
I was very excited to have Pete Cosey on the record, to go back to No Wave. And we have one of the best Brazilian underground rappers on the album, B Negão. I was able to hook up with him through Arto Lindsay, who produced the Red Hot + Rio compilation.
There are many different genres blended into this album. Where did the idea for such diversity come from?
I used to work at Tower Records for a while as their world-music buyer. A lot of people don’t know that. But while I was there, there was a record that I always wanted in the store.
I’d listen to the first batch of albums we’d get in, like Paul Simon, and it was a really Western style appropriated onto another part of the world. The next batch would be some French cosmopolitan African guys. But I really wanted to hear the African-American take on that African music — like an African group working with their cousin from the country, like Dr. Dre or something. (Laughs)
For this record, we really wanted to meld both styles, something that wasn’t too country. And we’re really lucky to get the record to come across that way. I feel like here I get pretty close; as I record, I always wanted to hear as a buyer.
– Joe Kurowski
Melvin Gibbs’ Elevated Entity’s Ancients Speak hits the streets on March 17, 2009 via LiveWired Music.
Melvin Gibbs: www.myspace.com/melvingibbs
LiveWired Music: www.livewiredmusic.org