For this concert, I’ll be collaborating with Kong Nay, guitarist Marc Ribot and drummer Rudy Royston on new musical forms based on Cambodian folk music and American Blues. It promises to be a musical adventure, a true meeting of minds and cultures.

For tickets and more info, please visit:  http://asiasociety.org/new-york/events/kong-nay-special-guest-ben-allison

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This post also appears at brubeckinstitute.wordpress.com

Dear Musicians:

I recently participated as a guest speaker in a web chat hosted by Chamber Music America called “Audio Streams, Downloads and Digital Files” that was moderated by JazzTimes editor Lee Mergner. The discussion focused on the benefits and downsides of streaming music online, what is involved in streaming music via your own website or a site like Spotify, whether to offer free samples of your music for download, and the difference between mechanical royalties and performance royalties. The key question that emerged was how to strike the right balance between getting our music out there and maintaining enough control over our recordings to be able to derive income from them.

The terrain for recording artists, composers, and performers is rapidly changing. Aside from new technologies, we also face issues related to intellectual property and how we should view the recording industry. Many artists feel disenfranchised and disconnected from the very institutions that were set up to protect their rights and represent their interests. I often hear musicians, especially younger ones, questioning why they should bother with ASCAP or BMI if their checks are small, and why they should care about SoundExchange. Musicians are increasingly asking, “Isn’t it better to give our recordings away for the sake of promotion since we mostly make our living from live performances?”

Businesses are happy to broadcast/stream music without paying a decent royalty. Moreover, a growing number of music listeners believe music is and should be free. Taken together, these attitudes are slowly eroding the very idea of intellectual property. In fact, there is a strong movement that wants to do away with the concept of copyright entirely (think “copyleft”).

Thankfully, the very idea of intellectual property is written into the United States Constitution, in Article 1, Section 8 (alongside basics like levying taxes, printing money, etc.):

Congress shall have the power: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The important point is that, like physical objects, ideas have value too. When we buy a CD, it’s not the plastic disk that matters. It’s the music on it that we care about.

RAISING CONSCIOUSNESS

Earlier this year, as part of a group of NARAS governors and delegates, I had the opportunity to meet with members of Congress to discuss issues related to the future of the music industry. Congressman Steny Hoyer from Maryland offered the following comments:

“Stephen Foster died a pauper. Why? Because there were no publishing rights. No one thought they were stealing his property when they played his music and he didn’t get paid for its usage. IP rights in many respects are about raising the consciousness of good people. You’re not going to convince the bad people, the robbers and the thieves. They don’t care. But the good people understand that you are taking something of value, something that gives you pleasure, lifts you up and gives you vision. And that’s worth something. And if you don’t compensate people for creating art, they’re not going to do it. And if they don’t do it, our lives will be less rich and the quality of our communities and civil society will be less rich. The arts help to inspire us and give us vision. The fact of the matter is that art is a universal way to communicate. And we need to make sure that those of you who create art are protected.”

I believe many people would still create art even if they were not compensated. I think this is a primal drive — people will always be making and listening to music. The real issue is how the general public views recorded music and whether or not they believe it has intrinsic value. In this sense, Congressman Hoyer was right on the money. Intellectual property laws are partly about raising consciousness.

THE BUSINESS OF MUSIC

Technology, art and finance have been converging and feeding off each other for the past 80 years or so, creating the “music industry.” I put the term in quotes because I do not believe we should think of the music industry as a monolithic entity. Instead, it is a system made up of many moving parts, some are large corporations, but many are small companies or single individuals, all pursuing their own combination of art and business.

The fact that the “business of music” exists is a good thing. When I was a kid, my friends and I would often accuse musicians of “selling out” when their music seemed to be driven by financial interests more than artistic ones. As an adult, my view is more nuanced. I have come to realize that not only do music and commerce co-exist, they are mutually dependent on one another, at least for people who make their living by composing, recording and/or performing music.

REALITY CHECK

Will choosing to become a professional musician continue to be a viable career choice in the future? Many people involved in creative fields are very concerned — and for good reason. Ask journalists or writers whose works are reduced to a few kilobytes of easily transferrable digital information how their industry is doing. My guess is they would say not so well.

The music industry is comprised of many industries that are interconnected — recording engineers, producers, promoters/publicists, venue owners, music critics, and so forth. Without professional musicians, all of these related industries would likely collapse. Music is at the center of it. Musicians are important, not just to our cultural health but also to the health of our economy.

But we undermine ourselves when we appear in promotional videos for piracy websites like Megaupload. I’m talking to you Kanye West and Will.i.am.

And when we say things like, “Piracy is the new radio.” Neil Young, you’re my hero, but that’s bullshit.

In this fast-changing world we musicians can and should have a lot to say. Becoming as informed as possible about issues that impact our livelihoods and refining our views are important first steps. We have to be comfortable with the idea that our music has value. And we should work to strengthen those laws and institutions that help to protect and enable us to sell our music in a fair way.

Please let me know what you think by posting comments below.

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I just finished my testimony in front of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce regarding performer’s rights.

You can read a transcript here:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/hearing/future-audio

NY Times coverage here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/business/media/radio-royalty-deal-offers-hope-for-industrywide-pact.html?_r=1

It was exciting and gratifying to get the chance to make the case that performers, in addition to songwriters should receive fair compensation when they’re played on terrestrial radio (a right they currently don’t have).

I’m not sure how many people are aware of the fact that, while songwriters get paid when their recordings are played on AM/FM radio, performers (the musicians who played on the recording) do not.

Most musicians know from first hand experience that it’s really the folks in the band that bring a tune to life. I count on the musicians in my group to “put meat on the bones” – to take what I write and put their personal stamp on it. This is is a big part of what gives the music on my albums its character.

After my testimony, I was asked a question by Congresswoman Mary Bono-Mack who is the wife of the late Sonny Bono. Her question gave me the chance to bring up Carol Kaye, the great bassist from the LA recording scene, whose seminal playing can be heard on countless recordings and big pop hits. One such recording was Sonny’s “The Beat Goes On” which Sonny wrote originally as a swing tune. Arguably, it’s Carol’s funky bass line that helped make that a hit. And yet Carol gets no royalties when it’s played on the radio (as it still is). The US is the only developed country that doesn’t have such a royalty for performers. That’s beyond wrong.

Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, also testified. I am fan of Pandora. It’s a really great way to find new music. And it gives a voice to countless artists who play styles of music that might not otherwise make it to traditional radio. Pandora, like Internet radio, satellite and cable pay a royalty to the performers on a recording. That’s fair. It makes sense.

But for reasons I don’t understand (probably based on legislation that was passed before I was born) terrestrial radio is exempt from paying such a royalty.

This has to change.

Ultimately, what we’re talking about here is whether or not people believe that music has value – that after all the blood, sweat and tears that American musicians pour into their craft, they should be afforded the same rights enjoyed by musicians throughout the rest of the developed world.

As I said in my testimony, without the songwriter putting that first note on paper, without the musicians performing that song in ways that move us, without the engineers capturing that performance, there would be no iPods, no Pandoras, no labels, no publishers.

Thoughts?

Aaron Siegel: You have nine or ten records now as a leader, which is a pretty significant catalog. One of the things that was really interesting to me was that up until this point each of the records was mostly your music with one or two covers. Then with your latest record—Action/Refraction—it suddenly goes totally to covers. I use that term loosely, because I think what you’re doing is actually a much more sophisticated and much more inventive response.

Ben Allison: Yes, most of my albums to this point have been centered around my original compositions. That’s an important part of how I define myself as a musician. But I’ve also recorded music by legends such as Herbie Nichols, Andrew Hill, John Lennon, Neil Young as well as some of my colleagues like Michael Blake and Steve Cardenas (both of whom will be performing with me at the upcoming Carnegie Hall concert).

These are composers whose music I really admire, people whose music strikes a chord. It’s a chemical thing. I think the same thing that draws me to playing with Steve and Michael also draws me to listening to those other musicians. There’s something in their music that on the one hand feels deeply personal and original but on the other hand feels familiar. Even if I’ve never heard it before, at least emotionally it gets me right away. I sometimes get this feeling when I’m listening to someone else’s music where I wish I had written it. With some tunes that I hear, I feel almost envious of the composer. I think “I wish I had written that. I almost could have written that, because it sounds so much like something I would want to write.”

Aaron Siegel: Is that where the “refraction” metaphor comes in? Do you see the band refracting these other things?

Ben Allison: The light’s coming in and being split into its component parts. I’m a science nerd, so that’s how I think about things. It’s about taking the music apart and seeing what it’s made out of. That’s the “refraction” part. The “action” part is reassembling it in our own way and trying to find something new to say with it, using the constituent parts of the music as jumping off points.

I call it a covers album because that gives people some kind of a context, but I think it’s a little bit more than just covering someone else’s music. I try to put my own stamp on it. I tend to be somewhat irreverent as a person, at least when it comes to music. As much as I love these great musicians, I also feel that part of the responsibility of any artist is to try to bring something new and personal to what they do. We have to be a little bit fearless in that regard.

Taking something like a Donny Hathaway tune, especially something like “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” and taking it apart and rebuilding it in a totally new way is risky. It feels in one way exhilarating and in another way terrifying—because I admire his music so much, and my greatest fear would be that a relative would call me up and say they hated what I did with his music. At the same time I feel like it’s our responsibility. Jazz musicians have always been a restless bunch. They’ve always been the kind of artists that like to push boundaries, taking elements of other styles and reusing them. The tradition of jazz is non-traditionalism, in my opinion.

Aaron Siegel: I’m thinking about how much the notion of the cover has been a part of the jazz tradition.

Ben Allison: In that era, Charlie Parker’s “tunes” were really solos that he liked and codified into melodies that he could do more than once. He

would take the pop tunes of the day, get rid of the melody, and use the harmony as a jumping off point for a solo. Then, when he played a solo that he really liked, he’d write that down, and that became the tune. It was totally connected with modern American Songbook material.

Jazz at its core is a folk music in that regard—at least it should be. It should be connected to what’s happening now. It’s our responsibility as jazz musicians to keep it relevant, and the way you do that is either write the new standards or use the new standards as a jumping off point.

Aaron Siegel: An interesting responsibility for musicians is the decisions they make about what songs to cover.

Ben Allison: That was actually part of the challenge I set for myself—”Can I take a Samuel Barber piece [St. Ita's Vision] and put it right next to a punk rock-era PJ Harvey tune [Missed]?” Hopefully we were successful. I like the idea. It’s almost a collage approach to writing.

I think a lot of jazz musicians of my generation think about improvisation a little bit differently than in the early days. To continue with Charlie Parker, in those days (as I said) they would have a set of chord changes and a soloist would improvise a melody over the top of them. Their melodies were a language that they were developing—they’re connected to that time and that era. A lot of jazz musicians of today are thinking more in terms of soloing with a genre. While the notes continue to be important, they’re not our focal point. We’re really thinking about genre as the basic building blocks that we can use to improvise over.

What we call jazz has expanded to include almost anything you can think of. The one thing that stays constant is this notion of improvisation. What we’re improvising now is playing with genre and using premeditated composition and spontaneous composition as our tool. Spontaneous composition is basically a fancy word for improvising.

(reprinted by permission from the Carnegie Hall Blog.)

Aaron Siegel: I want to talk about process. I was struck in the video that you did with Rogerio [Boccato, percussionist] that we started to see a little bit of your working process. I was really fascinated by that. Probably if Charlie Parker were alive now, he would have a computer, he would have his ProTools setup, and he would be at home writing these pieces and recording them and listening back to them and seeing how they fit over each other.

The meticulousness with which you’re developing these works struck me. There’s a process of layering and organizing, and it’s not a pen-and-paper process from the beginning. It’s much more like playing around with puzzle pieces. From your standpoint, how does that ultimately affect what the music sounds like? How intentional are you about that process?

Ben Allison: It is intentional. It’s an interesting process. It has changed over the years, but I think I’ve been on somewhat of a constant trajectory since the mid-’90s. I’ve always been interested in playing with genre and mixing and matching sounds.

Back in the day, I had this antiquated system involving tape decks and little keyboards that you could pre-program, but these days I work mostly with Logic (a music sequencing and recording program). For me, composition is a multi-step process. Usually, it starts is with a germ of an idea—just a sound, or maybe a reference to a particular genre or player. Maybe it’s something taken out of my experience improvising with my colleagues. Something interesting happens spontaneously and then I make a mental note or try to capture it on tape so that I revisit it and use it as a jumping off point.

It’s hard to say where the interesting ideas come from. A lot of it is trial and error. This is where the computer comes in because it allows me to layer up different timbres and tonalities. It’s not just about the notes at this stage. It’s more a question of what I’m alluding to with a particular sound. Then I have to get together with other musicians and work it out, see what sounds good. What I eventually end up with is a very basic score, what we call lead sheets. They have bare-bones information. What’s not notated is actually the meat of the tune. All of the genre references, all of the textures and musical concepts are best conveyed through rehearsal and actually talking about it and figuring it out together.

Recently, I had a basic beat conceived for a new tune, which I worked out on the computer. But, of course, I’m not going to use my ProTools or Logic samples on a concert. I have to see what actually works in the real world, what actually sounds good. Rogerio will bring over his set of tambourines, so I’m hearing tambourine on this tune and it’s connected with the drum part. Things like that are actually rather specific. The only way to know for sure what works is to try it in rehearsal. All this stuff seems very antithetical to improvisation, but the point is that once we have these sounds and this landscape mapped out and the musicians have an idea about what the landscape looks, feels, sounds, and smells like, then they’re free to explore within it. Then we’re at the point where we’re improvising and playing around with those ideas. The actual construction part is collaborative, and then of course the actual performance of something is totally collaborative. It’s very important to leave enough room for spontaneity, for people to engage in a conversation.

Aaron Siegel: It’s interesting you say that. Recently, we interviewed Christina Pluhar of L’Arpeggiata, who reminded us that with early music, it’s a case of, “Here are a few notes. Now you go and do the rest.” It’s exactly the same as you described it. Over the centuries, every space has been filled in with notes and directions by composers, but it started out with, “Here’s your sheet. Go away and play.”

Ben Allison: It’s called folk music. As a matter of fact, it has always existed. It has been probably the predominant form of music on earth, because most people just play. Most people don’t go to conservatories and study towards the goal of eventually playing. They just play right from the start and figure things out as they go along. Even in the classical world and the jazz world, where you have people who are very accomplished musicians, my hope is that they still have that mindset, that they’re still collaborating and figuring things out as they go. Part of being a composer is knowing when not to say anything, and that’s often my most gratifying moment, when I’ve written something that’s a nice jumping-off point but then one of the musicians in the band has an idea that’s much better than what I was envisioning, and all of a sudden the tune is so much cooler. It’s easy to take credit for those moments. But in reality, the musicians have so much to do with that. They’re the ones who put meat on the bones and make Frankenstein move.

Aaron Siegel: You have nine or ten records now as a leader, which is a pretty significant catalog. One of the things that was really interesting to me was that up until this point each of the records was mostly your music with one or two covers. Then with your latest record—Action/Refraction—it suddenly goes totally to covers. I use that term loosely, because I think what you’re doing is actually a much more sophisticated and much more inventive response.

Ben Allison: Yes, most of my albums to this point have been centered around my original compositions. That’s an important part of how I define myself as a musician. But I’ve also recorded music by legends such as Herbie Nichols, Andrew Hill, John Lennon, Neil Young as well as some of my colleagues like Michael Blake and Steve Cardenas (both of whom will be performing with me at the upcoming Carnegie Hall concert).

These are composers whose music I really admire, people whose music strikes a chord. It’s a chemical thing. I think the same thing that draws me to playing with Steve and Michael also draws me to listening to those other musicians. There’s something in their music that on the one hand feels deeply personal to them but on the other hand feels familiar. Even if I’ve never heard it before, emotionally it gets me right away. I sometimes get this feeling when I’m listening to someone else’s music where I wish I had written it. With some tunes that I hear, I feel almost envious of the composer. I think “I wish I had written that. I almost could have written that, because it sounds so much like something I would want to write.

Aaron Siegel: Is that where the “refraction” metaphor comes in? Do you see the band refracting these other things?

Ben Allison: The light’s coming in and being split into its component parts. I’m a science nerd, so that’s how I think about things. It’s about taking the music apart and seeing what it’s made out of. That’s the “refraction” part. The “action” part is reassembling it in our own way and trying to find something new to say with it, using the constituent parts of the music as jumping off points.

I call it a covers album because that gives people some kind of a context, but I think it’s a little bit more than just covering someone else’s music. I try to put my own stamp on it. I tend to be somewhat irreverent as a person, at least when it comes to music. As much as I love these great musicians, I also feel that part of the responsibility of any artist is to try to bring something new and personal to what they do. We have to be a little bit fearless in that regard.

Taking something like a Donny Hathaway tune, especially something like “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” and taking it apart and rebuilding it in a totally new way is risky. It feels in one way exhilarating and in another way terrifying—because I admire his music so much, and my greatest fear would be that a relative would call me up and say they hated what I did with his music. At the same time I feel like it’s our responsibility. Jazz musicians have always been a restless bunch. They’ve always been the kind of artists that like to push boundaries, taking elements of other styles and reusing them. The tradition of jazz is non-traditionalism, in my opinion.

Aaron Siegel: I’m thinking about how much the notion of the cover has been a part of the jazz tradition.

Ben Allison: In that era, Charlie Parker’s “tunes” were really solos that he liked and codified into melodies that he could do more than once. He would take the pop tunes of the day, get rid of the melody, and use the harmony as a jumping off point for a solo. Then, when he played a solo that he really liked, he’d write that down, and that became the tune. It was totally connected with modern American Songbook material.

Jazz at its core is a folk music in that regard—at least it should be. It should be connected to what’s happening now. It’s our responsibility as jazz musicians to keep it relevant, and the way you do that is either write the new standards or use the new standards as a jumping off point.

Aaron Siegel: An interesting responsibility for musicians is the decisions they make about what songs to cover.

Ben Allison: That was actually part of the challenge I set for myself—”Can I take a Samuel Barber piece [St. Ita's Vision] and put it right next to a punk rock-era PJ Harvey tune [Missed]?” Hopefully we were successful. I like the idea. It’s almost a collage approach to writing.

I think a lot of jazz musicians of my generation think about improvisation a little bit differently than in the early days. To continue with Charlie Parker, in those days (as I said) they would have a set of chord changes and a soloist would improvise a melody over the top of them. Their melodies were a language that they were developing—they’re connected to that time and that era. A lot of jazz musicians of today are thinking more in terms of soloing with a genre. While the notes continue to be important, they’re not our focal point. We’re really thinking about genre as the basic building blocks that we can use to improvise over.

What we call jazz has expanded to include almost anything you can think of. The one thing that stays constant is this notion of improvisation. What we’re improvising now is playing with genre and using premeditated composition and spontaneous composition as our tool. Spontaneous composition is basically a fancy word for improvising.