Among the many activities undertaken during his 76 years so far on this planet, Milford Graves has been an herbalist, an acupuncturist, a martial arts instructor, a college professor, a medical laboratory assistant and a scientific researcher. These disciplines all seem to inform, and are informed by, the work for which he’s best known: drumming. Playing conga and timbales for Latin bands around the Jamaica, Queens neighborhood where he was raised and still resides, Graves’ gravitation to jazz drumming coincided with the explosion of creativity and experimentation the jazz world underwent in the 1960s. He appeared on multiple recordings from the influential ESP label, playing alongside forward-thinking musicians such as Albert Ayler, Paul Bley, Andrew Cyrille, Pharoah Sanders, and with Roswell Rudd, John Tchicai and Lewis Worrell, formed the New York Art Quartet. In 1973 Graves accepted Jazz Composer Guild founder Bill Dixon’s invitation to sign on as a music instructor at Bennington College in Vermont, where he taught until 2011. Graves went on to conduct extensive research on the potential healing properties of music, particularly its relationship to the human heart, and most recently investigated music as a means of stem cell stimulation. He is the subject of a new documentary, Full Mantis, which will screen during the Big Ears festival.
I recently interviewed Milford Graves via Skype, and what follows is an edited and condensed transcript of our conversation.
You started out as a conga and timbales player in Latin and Afro-Cuban bands and were in your early 20s before you had own full drum kit and started to play with jazz musicians. Were you listening to much jazz or paying attention to any particular jazz drummers around that time?
Milford Graves: The first drum set I had I borrowed from a friend of mine who lived in the same housing project, and he invited me up to his house to play these drums. And I played timbales, so I had no idea what I was supposed to do with my feet. And I had this guy’s drums for a week or two, and I finally figured out what to do with my feet and I started just dancing with the pedals. Because when I played timables or conga drums, we used to always do these dance movements while we were playing. So I played the high hat and the bass drum the same way. Because jazz didn’t turn me on too much, my greater interest was playing rhythmically with other drummers. Probably the jazz drummer I listened to the most was Art Blakey. Any record that had a conga player on there I would listen to, and he was using Sabu Martinez. I finally bought some drums in 1963 from Hal Galper, the piano player, and I met Giuseppi Logan in a club and invited him to my loft and we started playing. And he invited me to a session with Roswell Rudd and John Tchicai and they said, “Hey you’re the kind of drummer we’ve been looking for,” and that’s how I got into it. [The trio, along with bassist Lewis Worrell and later Reggie Workman, would form the New York Art Quartet.]
It’s interesting that jazz is a music that is very self-conscious of and builds on its own tradition, but when you came along there were many other players like yourself looking to break away from that and try new things, and free jazz and avant jazz started to develop.
Milford Graves: Well I’m a drummer, and unfortunately I’ve always said drums have almost a minor role, like a timekeeper, and everything else gets built on top of you. I wasn’t used to that when I came in. The drums had a much more vital role. I just came in and did what I thought I was supposed to do. And for most people, that was really out there. And I was always amazed how people would say, “Wow you’re really out there, you’re avant garde, freestyle,” and I never thought of it that way, I was just doing what I thought was supposed to be done. I was getting a lot of respect from drummers, but not the press. You had these guys that had their styles, playing in a singular way. You could distinguish the major players at that time, Philly Joe Jones and Art and Elvin and Max and Roy Haynes and a few more guys, but they still had that basic pattern they would play a lot, and when I came along I was so drastically different I was drawing attention among a lot of musicians. But in print I was always lumped in with these other free jazz drummers. But nobody ever asked me about what I was doing. When people say I was part of the free jazz movement, I don’t think that’s the real story behind what I brought to the way of playing drums.
Along with that, you don’t see a lot of drummers as band leaders or solo artists. Obviously there are exceptions, and you’re one, as are some of the guys you mentioned, but I wonder if you’ve thought about why that doesn’t seem to be as common.
Milford Graves: Well Art Blakey and Max Roach led great bands, but Roy Haynes never got the respect he deserved, he was always a side man. And I don’t know if that has to do with the history of drums in this country, ‘cause as we know it was forbidden for Africans to play drums when they were brought in. I don’t know if that’s it, because it represents a form of communication that can bring revolution or insurrection. In European history, the drum was never a melodic instrument like a violin or piano, the violin was boss. And I think drummers have accepted that role. But I refused to accept that role.
In the 1960s when the music some called free jazz or fire music was happening, there was also a political element tied in with much of it, with Black Nationalism and Amiri Baraka’s connection to it. I wonder if you see anything like that today, a connection of jazz or other types of music with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Milford Graves: I don’t see it as much as it was in the ‘60s. And sometimes when I see people try to politicize the music, it just don’t feel right. This is my personal experience, but I find that a lot of white musicians that come to me are ready to get out of the conservatory system and are looking for a more innovative way of doing something. And I see more black musicians worried about getting their Masters or PhDs.
So things seem sort of reversed from the ‘60s?
Milford Graves: It’s reversed! When I came up in the ‘60s it was the opposite! More of the white musicians were stuck to this system, they were locked in and didn’t really think about how to do it from the outside. And now with black musicians I don’t see much from the political sense, but how they can be composers. I have no problem with a person wanting to be a composer, but I always ask a person, “So, what is a composer, man? Is it someone trying to put on paper their emotion and their experiences and telling another group of musicians: play what I feel?” To me, I don’t like that. I want to inspire somebody to do what they’re capable of doing. And that way, if you’re inspired, and I can feel that, then you’re going to inspire me and we’re going to have this great thing going back and forth. So as far as any political thing going on, maybe it’s going on in hip-hop and rap, but I don’t see it in jazz.
You’ve been involved with many different things besides music in your life, but you’ve always seems to tie music back into what you’re doing. You’ve researched the connection between not just the rhythm but the pitch of the human heart beat and music, and more recently you’ve been experimenting with stem cells. I tried to read the article you co-authored but have to admit I don’t quite understand what’s going on. Could you explain it in a simpler way, or can it even be explained simply?
Milford Graves: My collaborator, Carlo Ventura, he doesn’t mess around. He don’t care if you’re a doctor, a biologist or a layperson, he talks that one language: high scientific language. So I always try to translate this stuff to the layperson. When you talk about stem cells people get a little nervous because of embryos, so we always tell people this is non-embryonic stem cells we’re talking about. We’ve been collaborating four or five years. I supply frequencies from human heart sounds I record. I isolate melodic tones out of there, and they cause sound waves to stimulate stem cells. And the objective was to find the frequency that would cause these stem cells to differentiate into other types of stem cells. And they’ve had great success in getting down there and effecting the proteins in the cells. So instead of injecting stem cells into the body, what we’re talking about is stimulating the body with these frequencies that would stimulate your body to produce its own stem cells to build new heart tissue.
Let’s talk about Big Ears. They’re showing the documentary about you, and you’re playing solo, and also with Jason Moran. Have you played with him before?
Milford Graves: No, I haven’t and everybody’s saying it’s going to be very interesting! Certain musicians are saying, “You and Jason Moran’s going to play together?” Everybody’s trying to figure this out! Because of the way he plays and I play. I met Jason two years ago when he was curating Park Avenue Armory and he invited me to come do a solo there. And I thought that was cool of him that he invited me, and he said, “We’re going to do something together one day.” And when Big Ears came up he said both of us are going to be there, I think now is the time to do it. And I said fine. And the only thing I told him was, “Jason, I’m going to make you play like you’ve never played before!” Because if you play like you’ve never played, I’ll probably do the same thing myself. Because my objective is to stimulate you. Because if you get stimulated and I see you feeling good, I’m gonna feel good!
• Milford Graves will perform a solo set at the Bijou Theatre on Friday, March 23 at 4:30 p.m.
• Milford Graves and Jason Moran will perform at the Bijou on Saturday, March 24 at 5:00 p.m.
• Full Mantis will screen at the Regal Riviera Friday, March 23 at 7:00 p.m.
