JazzNation Talks With: Soweto Kinch

10.2.2004

Award winning alto saxophonist Soweto Kinch is one of the most exciting and versatile young musicians on the British Jazz scene. Essentially self-taught, Kinch has attracted the attention of two of the most important jazz luminaries in Britain, saxophonist Courtney Pine and double-bassist Gary Crosby. Whilst his music is firmly rooted in jazz, Soweto has been deeply influenced by artists such as De La Soul, The Roots and Q Tip. From an undisclosed location in central London, Jason Caffrey talks to THE KINCH.

JC: Which comes first, hip-hop or jazz?
SK: I think firmly, at the moment, the saxophone playing. My explorations into the world of spoken word and hip-hop are still in their infancy. I'm always moving towards a closer connection between the two, a closer synergy, but certainly my reputation is being forged as a saxophone player - for the moment.

JC: What are your thoughts on the relationship between jazz and hip-hop?
SK: I mean, for me there's always been a close parity between the skills involved. At the same time as getting into Charlie Parker and Coltrane in my teens, I was rapping and freestyling with my friends, so in addition to buying that music that was out there, from Tribe Called Quest or whoever it may have been, it was just a 'lived' experience, freestyling. And the same art of improvisation, the same art of collecting and gathering information to then reproduce in your own way - you know, 'imitate to innovate' - is what's common to both. And I think they've achieved varying degrees of sophistication artistically over the years, but I'm keen to combine my skills and interests.

JC: Coming back to jazz - you've played instruments from a young age, and were influenced by Wynton Marsalis...
SK: Sure. I mean, the Wynton thing figures so strongly in my memory because it was a personal encounter with him after a gig. He invited me backstage with the cats, all the band were there, myself and another thirteen year-old drummer, and he sat down for an hour-and-a-half and chatted to us, engaged us both in conversation. It was quite rare for a mature jazz star at that time, to take that kind of time out. So that really stuck in my memory and influenced me wanting to become, not just a musician, but a 'jazz musican', the entity, the character, the personality that I saw him embody. So yeah. It's a combination of that and listening to records, picking up on the influences that were around at the time too, Courtney Pine, Steve Williamson. At the time I was just getting into jazz, Beki Mseleku had 'Celebration' out, which was a big influential album for me too.

JC: So the British-based jazz musicians have provided a guiding hand?
SK: Yeah! A guiding hand personally and a template artistically. You know, they set the standard. For me, Courtney Pine has been one of the most technically prodigious musicians the planet's ever seen! I mean, it may be my limited experience, but he's incredible and he set the gold standard that was something to aim for and hopefully surpass. And Steve Williamson too - his concepts, his ideas, the things that he worked on were so new then, that I think we're still gonna be grappling with them in ten, fifteen years time... maybe a hundred years time.

JC: Do you enjoy winning awards?
SK: I'm very, very chuffed to have garnered a lot of the critical acclaim and the awards, and the attention really, if only because I think it's taking our music, our message out from the ghettoised underground that it could've languished in, and taking it out to a much wider audience. The Mercury nomination, for example, being televised, people hearing it on radio, and a certain amount of currency being added to our name as a band and myself personally, means that now, once we have the rostrum, once we have the pulpit, we can begin our sermon, whatever they may be.

JC: Although your album is recorded with a quartet, you previously worked with a trio. Didn't that group offer you more space to manoeuvre in?
SK: Yay and nay. I think there is a stage within an artist's career, especially a saxophonist's, where the trio does afford you that kind of freedom. Once you know the harmonic background and foundation that you're working from, it does give you that freedom without the comping of a piano player or a guitarist. But I think in terms of communicating what exactly was going on in my mind and putting that idea across in a way that a fresh audience to my music would understand, the addition of a guitar was particularly useful. It has the quality of being like a horn, of having more sustain than the piano at different points and more of a percussive quality, so I think that enabled me to communicate perhaps better where I was coming from.

JC: Tell me about the album.
SK: Conversations with the Unseen, is a reflection I guess of maybe three years of composition, of working in some shape or form with either the trio or the quartet. It's really the coming to fruition of philosophical and spiritual bits of inspiration that I've had. An attempt, on 'Split Decision', to kind of combine and look at what my varying interests in jazz and hip-hop were. I describe jazz and hip-hop as if they're two different women competing for my attentions. One's rich and young and loves the fast lane, and the other is more bookish and reclusive - so you work it out! It was kind of fun and also allowed me a vehicle to explore musically where hip-hop and jazz could be taken.

JC: What about your influences amongst the jazz heavyweights?
SK: The canonical past masters? Ornette Coleman has increasingly become an influence, his compositions, his sense of freedom, his awareness of freedom. Eric Dolphy I guess, for similar reasons. And over here, more recently, Joe Harriot. I was fortunate enough to do a tribute to Joe Harriot recently and really understand the power of his sound, how much of the be-bop idiom, how much Bird he had down, but in his own way. What a forceful sound he was, and also his freeform music, his daring to attempt to do what nobody else was doing in his direct sphere of influence, daring to attempt to break with what were perceived modes of what was right and acceptable in jazz, and develop freeform music...

JC: Both jazz and hip-hop are urban styles. You grew up in Birmingham. How much of an influence has that environment been on your work?
SK: I moved to Birmingham from London when I was nine. And if you wanted to get into the more abstract ways in which the cityscape itself affects your understanding of swing and jazz and the kind of things that you visualise when you write a composition, well, those things are all certainly true. But really, it was the people, it was the involvement in community projects that got me practically understanding and needing to master jazz quickly. I ran a jam session in Birmingham called the Live Box, which we're soon to get kicking up again, and that happened for three years. So it's always amused me slightly when journalists have said 'oh, this guy's come out of nowhere', 'almost overnight', 'meteoric rise', when I know that four years ago we were eking out an existence in small pubs and then gradually increased and built up to some of the concerts that we're doing today, with the help of Dune records and Gary Crosby, and also the grassroots work that we did in Birmingham with Live box. So it's certainly not out of nowhere.

JC: What's next?
SK: There are some great new things that we're planning for 2004, not least recording 'The Jazz Planet'. It's a new poem/hip-hop/jazz piece which looks comically at what the world would be like if jazz ran it. And I think once we've released it we're gonna go on and storm a couple of government residencies and administrations, and install our own jazz despotic regime instead!

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-JN-