Henry Threadgill-Brent Hayes: Edward Easily Slip Into Another World

Knoff editions, 2023

I experience, therefore I am. It is the categorical imperative in the art of Henry Threadgill as well as the trait d'union of this magnificent book, written in seven years of meetings with the professor of comparative literature Brent Hayes Edwards. Evoking the title of one of his famous CDs, "Easily Slip Into Another World" constitutes the theoretical foundation of a polycentric discography devoted to the continuous elaboration of new musical worlds.

Like his pentagram, Threadgill's literary narration is characterized by continuous changes of course and digressions, ranging from music to literature and philosophy. An open conception of musical aesthetics emerges, gradually understood as cosmopolitanism (residences in Goa and Amsterdam), fatigue (copyist work), fluctuating rhythm, denotative force, deviation from the rules in force.

Paradigmatic is the influence of James Joyce and his free punctuation on the compositional strategies of the Zooid ensemble where the rhythm is thought in 1/4 with meters that sometimes differ between drums and other musical instruments. It is a text full of anecdotes and information on recordings, human and artistic encounters, musicological articles for AACM publications, stories of projects that have elevated the Chicago composer and saxophonist to the rank of living legend of contemporary jazz.

Among the first-hand memories emerge many curiosities: the collaboration with the organist Jimmy McDuff, a concert in Sicily supported by the son of a mafia boss who is his fan, an adventurous plane trip between Cuba and Trinidad during a Caribbean storm and the conception of a percussive instrument called kubkaphone, used for the first time in Roscoe Mitchell's masterpiece "The Maze".

From reading the 402 pages we learn many other pleasant and unpleasant episodes of his life: the painful experience as a soldier in Vietnam that traumatized him to such an extent that he was unable to sleep for a few years and readapted to the silence of the night, a surreal stop at the airport of Caracas as a drug dealer, the engagement in a support group of the Isley Brothers in Chicago, the non-improvised music in most of the records made with Air.

The merit of Easily Slip Into Another Word is also that of outlining lively human profiles, pausing to point out with almost filial love the infinite humility of John Coltrane, the musical encyclopedism of his mentor Muhal Richard Abrams and the magnetism in Duke Ellington's gaze, capable to transform the tension of the musicians into creative energy.

© Maurice Zerbo