Archie Shepp interview: “Freedom is something that has to be constantly monitored and watched”

Some artists will be forever synonymous with a particular type of ensemble. For the most part, Duke Ellington means big band, and John Coltrane a quartet. Inspired by the former and mentored by the latter, saxophonist Archie Shepp has recorded in and with many ensemble sizes during a 60-year career, but the duo is one of his defining musical vehicles. His piano partners, especially, form a notable international Hall Of Fame: Horace Parlan, Joachim Kuhn, Tchangodei, Siegfried Kessler, Jasper Van’t Hof, Dollar Brand, Mal Waldron.

Intriguingly, if not a touch mischievously, Shepp says that a drummer and double bassist might have joined these pairings if he’d actually had his way.

“Most of the duos have been induced by a producer,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. “Normally, I prefer to record in quartet situations, but fortunately the duos seemed to have worked out rather well.”

The most wry of smiles momentarily flashes across a Zoom screen that shows Shepp sat calmly in the well-appointed reception room of his Paris home.

Regardless of whether two has trumped four by accident, the duo remains a key feature of Shepp’s body of work, and now a new name joins the illustrious lineage of his musical partners: Jason Moran, a brilliant composer and creative dynamo who has won a worldwide following over the last 20 years by way of his energetically subversive trio, The Bandwagon, and work with saxophone legend Charles Lloyd, with whom he has played both in a small group and duo. Moran and Shepp first appeared together at festivals in Belgium, France and Germany between 2017 and 2018 and were so garlanded by audiences that a recording of highlights of the concerts was inevitable.

Let My People Go has just been issued on Shepp’s own Archieball imprint. With a repertoire that includes the gospel anthems ‘Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child’ and ‘Go Down Moses’, as well as originals and standards (Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Lush Life’, Strayhorn-Ellington’s ‘Isfahan’, and Coltrane’s ‘Wise One’), the album makes for a rewarding, moving listen due to the emotional charge of the songs and the skill of the artists.

“I found Jason to be a very receptive accompanist, and he plays a diversity of styles. Right from the beginning I found him an extraordinary pianist, and I had no problem with him as an accompanist and composer himself,” says the 83 year-old of their first encounters on stage. “He’s a very original young man.”

Indeed, the fact that 45-year-old Moran is a visual artist, curator and composer whose profound interest in African-American culture has materialized in inventive projects that celebrate the legacies of early 20th century legends such as James P Johnson, James Reese Europe, Fats Waller, and Thelonious Monk may well have resonated with Shepp, also a known polymath. He is a playwright and poet as well as musician who now has bona fide icon status. Along with the likes of Marion Brown and Pharoah Sanders he was one of the Trane-stamped saxophonists who came of age in the mid 1960s and cut a string of albums that made Impulse!, one of the game-changing labels of the era.

Shepp was last seen on these shores in 2018 when he brought his ‘Art Songs And Spirituals’ project to the London Jazz Festival. The concert was inspirational for the way it foregrounded the repertoire of the Black church, also showing its extensive relationship with improvised music. This back and forth between sacred and secular has long been of great interest to Shepp. Throughout his career he has played in a wide range of styles borne of the African Diasporan experience, from blues and jazz to funk, Afro-Brazilian, Latin and hip-hop. But gospel has a special place in his heart, above all because of the balm it provides in times of trouble, and as far as Shepp can see its rousing melodies are a vital antidote to the many toxins of the Covid-19 era.

“Absolutely, the suffering of many people during the pandemic [calls for gospel],” he states resolutely, his expression unerringly authoritative under the brim of a black hat. ”My own experiences as a young man, growing up in Philadelphia, having been born in the South, and then personal experiences, like the loss of my mother who was just 50 years old, the relationship between her and my father which was very difficult… so a song like ‘Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child’ carries a lot of meaning to me. My grandmother frequently took me to church and introduced me to a lot of that kind of music. So there’s a lot in terms of memory and my experience of that song.”

His speech is a touch slower than when we last spoke, a few years ago. There is perceptibly less vigour than in his heyday – an unforgettable 2005 appearance at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall saw him engage in a magical song and dance routine with drummer Steve McCraven, father of Makaya – and the saxophonist makes it clear that music is not his sole focus at this point in time: “I’m concerned with my own health right now, and trying to recover from various problems that I’ve had.”

Despite these challenges, Shepp still has a deeply languorous saxophone tone that keeps alive the spirits of Ben Webster and Don Byas, as well as a poised, down-through-the-ages lyricism that shines through on Let My People Go. Perhaps more importantly, Shepp has lost none of his political spark. The man who made seminal statements on the oppression of Blacks and ethnic minorities in the ‘free world’, expressing revolutionary fervour on the 1971 album Things Have Got To Change, would yet willingly extinguish the riotous fire lit by 'Make America Great Again'.

On the day we spoke, the Senate was hearing Donald Trump’s impeachment on the charge of ‘incitement of insurrection’ following the storming of the Capitol back in January, an event that did not cause Shepp to raise an eyebrow. As far as he is concerned, the former president has simply made endemic prejudices more brazen.

“We live in a time where things are coming to a head,” he says in an authoritative tone. “Racism is an open fact. It’s not something that people hide. Racists are getting their thing together…. the Proud Boys, the various One Percenters… they’re all now collaborating with each other, and over the past four years they’ve been able to be quite open about their feelings. I wasn’t surprised by this shocking event [the Capitol raid] I was more surprised they were given a lot more leeway than Black Lives Matter.

“Maybe we’re on a track where we are closer [to freedom] than ever with the selection of Kamala Harris as Vice President,” enthuses Shepp, who can recall first hand the hope embodied by Civil Rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr and Malcolm X and the despair caused by their deaths. “For a long time I have thought that racism was recurrent, particularly in the American experience. No sooner than we arrive at a point of liberation, as it were, for example in the 1960s, we were able to create positive change in the United States… only to have those things rolled back.

“Later, as Blacks began to evolve into the middle class and there was more of a separation between the middle class and the working class, people were left behind. Part of this is through African-Americans themselves. We were not attentive enough. We didn’t pay enough attention to the gains we had made. We allowed the things that Martin Luther King and Malcolm arrived at to disappear… we didn’t protect the freedoms we had gained. Freedom is something that has to be constantly monitored and watched. It is not a permanent event because there are always people and forces that are trying to undo the liberation that might have been achieved,” he cautions.

Is that why ‘Let My People Go’ is a pertinent spiritual and political message today?

“Oh yeah!,” he answers emphatically. “Perhaps it always will be relevant because the forces that exist don’t want to let my people go. Not only my people, but people all over the world who are abused and whose freedoms are limited…. they have to strive for ultimate liberation, and if liberation is achieved to protect that state of being.”

Such convictions are framed by a long career that has involved much research. As much as he embraced the experimental ways of forward thinkers such as Don Cherry and John Tchicai (appearing with them in the New York Contemporary Five), Shepp always harked back to the earliest forms of African-American music, above all because he realised that many late 19th century and early 20th century players had an imaginative zest from which any so-called ‘modernists’ could learn a great deal.

Along with such luminaries as Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith and Art Ensemble Of Chicago, he was part of the cohort of African-Americans who emigrated to Paris in the late ‘60s and made many influential recordings for the BYG label among others. There was a greater receptivity of European producers and audiences for what was called avant-garde, a term which Shepp viewed with ambivalence given his professed love of founding fathers such as Ellington, Armstrong and Fats Waller.

Shepp would broaden his cultural and political horizons, taking part in the Pan African Festival Of Algiers, an historic manifesto for African Liberation movements in the 1970s, and also perform in countries such as Senegal and Mali. He has lived the life of an African-American who has seen much more of the world than the bulk of his peers and forebears and acquired a handle on global affairs and human nature he pours into his music.

“Absolutely, that’s probably the most fundamental thing about playing the horn,” he agrees heartily. “It’s the chance to express my life experiences and I have tried to express the meaning of that journey over the years through my recordings. The events are profound and they have deep meaning for me.”

Now a venerable elder statesman of Black music, Shepp remains a living link to several groundbreaking figures such as trumpeter Bill Dixon and singer Jeanne Lee. Less well known is his relationship with Thelonious Monk, whose timeless anthem ‘Round Midnight’, with its masterly light and shade, features on Let My People Go.

Shepp has a story to tell about the visionary pianist that shows how the course of an individual’s life may change, and how the echo of a single decision lingers over time.

“I happened to meet Thelonious Monk, he asked me to join his quartet at a certain point,” he reveals. “But I had to turn it down because I was married at the time with children and it wouldn’t have afforded me enough work opportunities to take the engagement. I reluctantly called his home one day… and I told his wife that I had to turn down the opportunity and she said well, Monk wouldn’t want you to do anything that would be bad for you. His wife Nellie, she understood my situation. It was an opportunity for me that would have been like going to University. I always regretted that I couldn’t. When I play that song [‘Round Midnight’] I have a special feeling for it.”

Archie Shepp and Jason Moran appear at the Barbican, 12 November, as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival. Find out more: efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk

This article originally appeared in the April 2021 issue of Jazzwise magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today