Jalalu Kalvert-Nelson in conversation with Christoph Gaiser at Rainy Days Festival 2023
Jalalu Kalvert-Nelson in conversation with Christoph Gaiser
Jalalu, you are not only writing music, but also poems and prose. In your book Words by Memory and Other Words from 2019, there is a section called «Sightings, Meetings and Writings». What is this section about?
Well, there are accounts of famous people I actually met, like Ralph Ellison, the novelist, author of Invisible Man. We went to the same High School! Then there were Duke Ellington and all the other ones. These people gave me a vision, they inspired me. The «sightings» are accounts of people I have never met, but seen them on the street. In New York City, I onvce passed James Baldwin who was together with Rosco Brown, they walked along 57th St, I saw these two animated guys and then I realized who they were, in their own world…not noticing anybody, just dancing down the street in their own way. Few people even recognized them, but I did!
I’ve been writing a diary since I was 16, it was a natural thing of writing your thoughts down. And I kept it all the time, until now. And now I put it into book form. Sometimes what I have to say I can say it only in words sometimes only in music, but I also make visuals, painting, pictures. Sometimes I write a poem. I have a Piano Piece called Souvenir and I have a poem called Souvenir which I put at the beginning of the score. So I have got to listen to what the impulse tells me where to go. Alfred Schnittke once said «I am just the vehicle, the music passes through me», I have to listen to see what the music wants to say. I try to listen where the music wants to go. That’s the way I create.
So writing down memories has a very personal aspect. But we need to see the term «memories« also in a broader, almost political sense, don’t we?
Our memories were stripped away from us Black people during the history, one way to try to re-capture this memory where we came from, DNA physical remnant of your past, in your family archive, going back to Africa. I am trying to recapture. I have a collection of photos from my family history spanning a good hundred years. In my family, I had to be the record-keeper to show the world that these people existed and against all odds, they had integrity and beauty and grace, they were proud people. So it’s not politics, its showing their humanity. Even though if we have lived hundreds of years together in America, white people don’t know black people. They think they do, but they don’t. We are still strangers in the same land, you can see that today. You see «them», as long you see «them» you do not see who they are. You have to see them as yourself, like you. As long as you do not do that, we are strangers. White people are always trying flee from black people, in the whole history. So they live in these fortified neighbourhoods so that they can be away. I see that much better since I live outside of America. It’s even more prominent now, as they are trying to even wipe the history of the Black people out, like a Disneyland. (…) People are not being taught history anymore. (…) People are no longer educated as people, as culture, that’s over. That’s very dangerous!
You have been living in Switzerland for decades. How do you feel there a Black composer of classical music?
It has been quite difficult, as there is a lot of racism in the classical music world. I’ve been living here for 29 years, up to now, I have not one piece performed by a major Swiss contemporary Music ensemble, And for many years I tried! In Switzerland, one good thing is that I had support from the institutions, so I could curate my own concerts and this is what saved me, that I could hear my own music. (…) A few years ago, the Lucerne Festival had «Diversity» as its motto. They flew in a lot of people from New York. Actually there are two Black composers living in Switzerland who are writing classical music, I am one of them. Both of us we were not in the programme! So to me it felt like a Minstrel Show, they could say «we did this and that’s it»! So in their panels about Diversity, they were not talking about Europe, they were talking about America. I know about Diversity in Europe. So if you are flying in people who then leave, nothing happens, nothing will change. In a way I’m very happy that I was not in this festival! If the gatekeepers don’t change, nothing will change. For me the problem is not sexism, it’s not racism, you have to deconstruct the institutions that make things happen and not happen. If you don’t put people of colour in the background, nothing changes! I don’t believe in panels about diversity, I want to get my music out there! I don’t want to suffer what happened to my very dear friend: the Julius Eastman Syndrome: «When I die, everybody plays my music».
What gives you the energy to walk on that not-very-beaten path? Do you have role models?
In 1969 I attended the first Black Music Conference at Indiana University and I met all these great Black composers who were still alive: William Grant Still, Errol Smith, Arthur Cunningham. I saw what could be possible as a Black Composer! After Martin Luther King died, there was «Black Awareness», and a label like Columbia Records published a series with Music of Black American Composers! I had all this great encouragement by all these composers who became lifelong friends when I moved to New York City. When George Floyd died, I had the strange feeling «I have been here before!» Always some Black man has to die, before the world tries to change. But somehow I hope, more than fifty years after Martin Luther King’s death, it will be a little different. At least in America. For me one regret is that I cannot be in America this time, to be more part of the conversation. Here in Switzerland, I am isolated.
I do have noticed, I can be critical, that some Black Composers write music on a certain theme that they know it will be accepted by the General Public, …they write these «victim, victim, victim» pieces, and for me, that’s OK, but it’s beyond that, too. It’s about the music, too! Many white people think only Black people are interested in this problem about race. We are not interested in talking about Astrology or astronomy or science. What about the stars, you are human, too! That´s another kind of inert racism. I have to fight for these kind of ideas.
In recent times, we could see more awareness for musicians and composers of colour, they are more frequently programmed. Can you relate to that development as well, regarding your own work?
Indeed I got more performances as I met a group of young American musicians from Frankfurt who played in the Ensemble Modern, a collective, called Broken Frames Syndicate. They like my music! They premiered the piece last November in Frankfurt, they will perform it in New York City in February 2024. In October 2023 I had a premiere in at Wien Modern, and since then, things are going up and up…finally! In Spring 2023 my Third String Quartet with countertenor was premiered, in October 2023 a piece for trumpet and percussion will be premiered, another piece for bassoon and piano in Chicago in November 2023. And I am working on an opera for 2025 in Vienna. I work on pieces a long time, the idea for that opera came 1977. It´s about my childhood. It’s called Memories “ShadowsBetweentheVoicesbetweenthShadows”(please correct the title!) It´s about Black people in these times before I was born had to make safe spaces for themselves to live in and to flourish in. We had our love, our dignity our culture within our world. That’s how we saved ourself, how we endured. But work is not only about Black lives. It’s about all lives in general. And we seek to create a sanctuary for those that we love and care about. This an innately human desire. And beyond any color of the skin. It’s. natural and human. And in this sanctuary, we very rarely discussed race. It was about dreaming and making those dreams come true.
Let’s talk about a little more about your music. In your work catalogue, there is a piece entitled I can’t breathe…
I wrote this before George Floyd died, it’s a memory of Eric Garner, the first guy who said «I can´t breathe». And I have the name of his daughter who so gallantly fought for him. But I show this piece to America, and no one wants to relate with it, so it is yet to be performed! Because it´s just another reality…A lot of my music has not been performed, I compose from a personal need, whether it´s performed or not.
In Jim is still Crowing the second section is explicitly about Memory. It’s a slow movement. Does all music about memory require a process of slowing down?
You can portray memory in different ways. It could be a violent memory like the section «Impulse-Disruption», the ninth section in Jim is Still Crowing. It’s about the kind of experience I see in society. The quiet second section is more of a contemplative idea, I was kind of influenced by harmonies of Duke Ellington, a kind of Big Band harmony
When I was listening to that section, I was also reminded of Messiaen…
Sure! I’m of course influenced by Messiaen, how his tone-colours and his rhythms unfolds. How he has he has certain musical phrases repeated. (…) Coming back to your question about role models and encouragement: When I was young, after church, I was always listening to the New York Philharmonic on the radio. And I was listening to all these new music people like Webern or Stravinsky. And I fell in love with Xenakis, the Greek composer. I went to this shop and I saw a record with music of Xenakis, and I took it up to the counter to buy it and the shopkeeper said «this is not music, this is nothing but noise! You can have this record for free!» And three years later, he became my teacher at Indiana University. This was 1969, but the circle ended many years later, in Paris. I was living near where I knew he lived, near Pigalle. We went to have a walk, I went to a shop…there he is! With his wife. I said «Yannis, how are you doing?» He said «Aren’t you rich yet?» I said «No!», and he said «Well, keep going!». Four years later he died.
Das Gespräch wurde am 21. August 2023 per Telefon geführt.