Pine goes back to Genesis
Like Greenbelt, Courtney Pine is taking the opportunity to examine his roots. In his case, it’s the Caribbean and the Methodist church. He talked to Jonty Langley ahead of playing the festival this August.
Multi-instrumentalist jazz pioneer Courtney Pine is a professor of music, a Commander of the British Empire, winner of multiple jazz, urban music and MOBO awards, a DJ and occasional TV presenter. He’s also something of a Greenbelt veteran and his latest album, House of Legends, which draws on Caribbean styles, is just the latest in a career that has seen him mix jazz with world, drum ‘n bass and hip hop. He’s also a thoroughly nice chap, and took some time to talk to us about faith, the Caribbean origins of jazz, losing a child while on tour, and his feelings on first playing Greenbelt.
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Greenbelt is a festival of almost infinite variety in terms of acts, beliefs, people. Do you enjoy that aspect of it?
Oh without a shadow of a doubt. I really enjoyed my first experience of Greenbelt. I usually walk around before we go on stage, and being a jazz musician, I’m not a celebrity: I can walk around without people recognising me. So I get to the venue and I walk around and speak to people, and it was just great to meet so many varied people, varied ages. I can remember having to play after a band called Nu Colours, a four-piece Gospel band, and they’re brilliant, but they state it in words. And then I have to come on afterwards and improvise. I mean that’s a huge difference. It’s one thing saying lyrics, but when you play it without lyrics, will people get it? It was a frightening experience for the first tune, but once the response was there, it was just amazing. I try and play jazz in places where you wouldn’t see jazz, and I thought this would be a great challenge. I’d played in church back in the day, but not at an event like this! But the response was so amazing. It confirmed my belief. It’s one of my favourite gigs of all time …
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At this Greenbelt there’s a sense of looking back to where we’ve come from and your latest album is something of a return to your roots, too.
You can’t play jazz unless you know about the past. Jazz has lots of different chapters, and every ten years there’s a new ‘thing’, supposedly. I think it’s generational. And with my stuff there’s a sense of different tones, different chapters. It’s still all about improvising, but there’s different versions. This latest one I’m on is all about the Caribbean. It’s taken me a long time to get brave enough to do it, but I just felt it was about time. If you start looking into yourself and your culture and where you come from, it’s amazing the experience. It’s a muse. It’s hugely inspirational.
My parents are from Jamaica, and I never knew that the music I knew from the Caribbean was a big part of the origins of the music that we call jazz. But when you look into the history of the music, you suddenly realise: oh, he’s a Cuban; he’s a Jamaican; oh, he came from Trinidad. Jelly Roll Morton, one of the first jazz pianists – the guy who claimed to have written jazz down for the first time – his mum’s from Haiti. Then you start listening to Calypso music and you hear the jazz chord changes. You suddenly realise, with great legends like Sonny Rollins, the connection between the Caribbean and jazz music. I used to think talking about that was a forbidden thing. But they say you can’t love anybody unless you love yourself first. And I think it’s the same for artistic endeavour. Unless you know who you are, you can’t really present your art to other people with a lot of conviction.
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Can you tell us about your take on spirituality?
My parents came over to Britain in the late 50s, early 60s, at a period of time when the place was war-torn, really – unexploded bombs, that sort of thing. And a lot of the people who came over from the Caribbean to better themselves in Great Britain, their first port of call… was the churches. In the churches they were allowed to develop friends, and extend their culture with British culture. Some were turned away, as we know now, but many were allowed to meet up and join with British culture.
I grew up in the Methodist Church – was baptised in a Methodist church. Spirituality at that time, growing up, gave me the opportunity to go beyond a lot of places that I thought I would go. And as I grew up, I started to get more intrigued and reading a lot of books and looking out into the world. And then I started travelling, and it strengthened my belief.
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That’s quite different from the tired narrative of beliefs falling apart through more experience of the world …
No, no, no, it’s the opposite. You can write a song about a trip to a Buddhist temple or a trip to somewhere that you’d never dreamt of being … All your experiences. There are so many natural wonders in this world. I’ve sat down and spoken to Aborigines in Australia. I’ve been to the townships in South Africa. I’ve been to places – I sound like the android at the end of Blade Runner, but it’s a bit like that. When you see things that are bigger than yourself, bigger than your imagination, you can either dismiss them or you can absorb them, and luckily for me, I’m a musician, so I actually utilise it in my work, in my art. Being a musician is amazing, because you’re able to bring all that together and physically realise it in sound.
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Does expressing musical ideas or feelings in jazz, without words, lend itself to expressing the spiritual, even something of worship?
Oh even more so, yes. I personally believe it reflects even deeper, because it’s up to you [the audience] to put in the lyrics. And if you have a thousand people there, a thousand people will have different versions of what you’ve just played. We use language to talk to people, but imagine if we took those languages away, and we just had sound. I enjoy a good song, but it’s a different kind of place. Not deeper, but a different form of expression. And an improvisation, where somebody’s actually creating this thing in front of you at the spur of the moment, with musicians on stage, with a live audience … I think this is the most extreme form of musical expression that we have on the planet. And when it is done well, it is amazing.
Being a jazz musician is like being a surgeon. This is what we do – we do surgery on scales and rhythms and melodies, and piece together folk songs which mean things to people, and present them in different ways. Not all types of music do that. Jazz does go that bit further.
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Is there a negative side to a successful jazz career?
The only dark side I can really talk about is being away from home. Being on tour. We had a child who died when I was on tour in Canada. She was alive for two weeks, and I wasn’t able to get back to see her. One day I was a father and elated, and the next day it was the total opposite. The worst part of that was not being around to be able to support my wife, or to be a father for two weeks. But that’s the only bit – you have to travel and be away to present the music. But it’s great when you come home. I’ve never had a hit record, so I don’t have that problem of being an artist known for one song, and I’m still able to do concerts, which is quite remarkable. So it’s all good, really.
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Are you excited about Greenbelt this year and what can people expect from you?
I am really excited about being at Greenbelt. House of Legends is about my Caribbean culture and we talk about people like Claudia Jones, who was deported from America, ended up in Notting Hill Gate – the area I grew up in – and came up with the idea to quell racial unrest with a carnival. I am sure Greenbelt festival will understand where I’m coming from when I present this music. Britain has such a connection to the Caribbean, and to get a chance to do this at Greenbelt is a dream come true. I’ve always had a fantastic time at Greenbelt, not just in turning up and performing, but in seeing the people there. Other artists. And just being a part of such a fantastic festival.