Summer reading - six American African musicians are asked about their choices for summer reading: Jennifer Holiday, Frank Foster, Nancy Wilson, Wynton Marsalis, Max Roach, and Stanley Cowell - Interview

American Visions, June-July, 1997 by Norlishia Jackson, T. Brooks Shepard

Reading opens you up to worlds you have never known. It expands your conception of what's possible. It gives you a route of escape or a way to deal with a more intense reality. My parents encouraged me to read. I read all the children's books. I read myths and fairy tales and American books, like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (NAL Dutton, 1997) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (NAL Dutton, 1997), by Mark Twain and classics, like Henry Thoreau's Walden: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Harcourt Brace & Co., 1948).

When I was a little older, about 12 or 13, I began to read all of the black polemical books that were out at the time, like Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land (Simon & Schuster Trade, 1990), Samuel F. Yette's The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America (Putnam 1971), James Baldwin's books and Richard Wright's Native Son (Chelsea House, 1996).

I read poetry, too. I enjoyed James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes and William Butler Yeats. As the years progressed, I got into novels, such as those by Faulkner. I went through a Hemingway phase and was checking him out.

I just like to read. I enjoy reading history, also -- A People's History of the United States (New Press, 1997), by Howard Zinn, for instance. Damn, that's a smoking books. I always publicize that book. It's incredible. I love world history.

In regard to my favorite authors, I like Walt Whitman -- he's bad -- and Pablo Neruda. Of course, Ellison: his essays and not just his fiction.

I'm also into music books -- particularly, Frank Conroy. He wrote a book called Body and Soul (Dell, 1994). That's one of the best books ever written on a musician. It's like a music class, but it's not painful to read. I dig Albert Murray's book Stomping the Blues (Da Capo Press Inc., 1989) and Maynard Solomon's Beethoven (Simon & Schuster, 1979). I always find time to read; I make time to read. I take books on the road with me.

There are theoretical books that I read like the composer Schoenberg's writings. You wouldn't want to read his books if you aren't a musician. It's impossible to read if you're not a musician, because it's all about music theory.

I don't have any particular reading plans or goals for the summer, because I'm reading constantly. However, I might try Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (Chelsea House, 1987), which I've been trying to read for about seven years. Maybe I'll deal with that this summer. I'm currently reading the Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats (Simon & Schuster Trade, 1996).

A story can have impact on your music. It can give you ideas for music or help you organize your music. For example, Blood on the Fields was inspired by an Australian book, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding (Random House, 1988), by Robert Hughes, about how they took the English prisoners over there. At one point, the author said the ship was packed like African slaves and they lost 90 percent of their cargo. It made me think that, damn, if they lost 90 percent of their cargo, then how did all of these people make it over here to America? But the book I still dig the most, in terms of high literature, is the Bible.

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, hailed as the most popular and acclaimed jazz musician and composer of his generation, is the April 1997 recipient of the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a jazz artist for music. He received it for his latest work, the epic jazz opera, Blood on the Fields (Columbia 1997). Marsalis serves as artistic director of the Jazz at Lincoln Program, which be co-founded in New York City in 1987.

MAX ROACH

I'm concentrating on my as-yet-untitled autobiography this summer that's what I've been concentrating on for the last year. Actually, I've been working on it for years. It's coming out on Simon & Schuster, and Amiri Baraka is assisting me on it. I'm approaching it on several levels sociologically, economically and politically, in addition to musically. And, of course, I'm dealing with the whole thing.

I try to explain why we came up with John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Art Blakey. There's a reason why we are able to create music in the midst of a hostile society. When you look at all musicians of color, like Louis Armstrong. Philly Joe Jones, Miles Davis, Bessie smith, Billie Holiday and Abbey Lincoln, the question must be asked: How do we produce these people -- this new race?

So this summer I'll be writing history. In fact, most of the things I deal with are really retracing Du Bois, Douglass, Malcolm -- things that have to do with the brothers and sisters. These writers are helping me understand how great we are as a people.

I'm currently reading several anthologies, including Brotherman: The Odyssey, of Black Men in American -- Anthology (Ballantine, 1995), edited by Herb Boyd and Robert L. Allen. It consists of black male writers and has some fine illustrations by Tom Feelings. I'm also reading "Ghost Dance With Chorus and Orchestra," a piece I composed.

This summer I plan to read more of Zora Neale Hurston. I'm fascinated by her writing. I recently visited Eatonville, Fla., where she was born, and I'm looking forward to reading her work. She is an outstanding writer of remarkable depth. I love all the black women writers, but Zora holds a special place among them.