Improvising With Professor Lewis on Jazz

For George Lewis, the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia and renowned performer, composer, musicologist, and artist, taking a break is impossible.

“Life just always overflows,” he said. Lewis dons more hats—and all at once—than one can imagine. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, an Alpert Award in the Arts, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lewis is still looking for more creative outlets to explore the connections between all of his areas of involvement.

But Lewis is reluctant to associate the term “interdisciplinary” with his subjects of expertise.

“People simplify it [the term] too much nowadays. It’s actually a lot of hard work,” he says.

But the fundamental concept of interdisciplinary studies—the examination of the coming together of various disciplines—also seems to align itself closely with many of Lewis’ endeavors, in the musical world and beyond.

At Columbia, Lewis is at the helm of the Center for Jazz Studies, an academic research unit that explores the connection of jazz with a variety of extra-musical areas. Through the Columbia/Harlem Jazz Project, the center places these ideas within the context of Harlem, the hotbed of jazz in New York.

According to Lewis, jazz marries external perspectives with internal awareness. “Jazz can take you anywhere,” Lewis argued. “Improvisation [in jazz] tends to open you up to the world of culture, and it is also about introspection and self-expression. You’ve got to be honest about what’s in there.”

This curiosity about internal processes explains Lewis’ fascination with improvisation, which he considers to be the “fundamental aspect of existence.” Improvisation, he said, is about “responding to and analyzing conditions,” which are courses of action essential to survival.

Often, though, and especially in terms of machine-produced music, these skills hold moral, ethical, and spiritual implications. In Lewis’ Musical Interactivity class this semester, students created software that analyzes features of the environment and produces music based on those results. Computer-generated music, Lewis believes, is far from restricted. Instead, he sees it as giving listeners the opportunity to respond solely to the music, free from any limitations imposed by a human performer.

This desire to transcend established boundaries in music was the impetus behind Lewis’ A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, a book on the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians that took 10 years in the making. It was published earlier this year to critical acclaim.

“History is so fragile. There are so many versions of it,” Lewis said of the motivation behind the book. “I wanted to know [how the AACM came to be]. I said to myself, I’m an academic now. I can do it.”

And so he did. Through a series of conversations with important figures involved in the AACM scene, the book examines the voice of experimental black artists since its establishment in 1965. Lewis sees it as an “autobiography of the collective” stemming from his desire to provide an opportunity for scholars to discuss these artists in contexts outside of jazz.

“What happens when the ban [on creating] is lifted and you are given the venue to talk?” Lewis said of the mission of the group. “You must create music that must not be oppressed.”

To this day, the AACM continues to provide a forum for black artists to voice their ideas, encourage musical exchange, and prompt an expanded future in experimental music.

Even now, Lewis is already burrowed deep in his next major project, a two-volume collection of essays on improvisation. It is set to be published within the next year or two. And he is not content with only staying within the musical realm, either: the Studio Museum in Harlem is currently hosting, as part of its StudioSound series, an audio installation by Lewis called “Travelogue.”

Taken from over 20 years of sound bites collected from all over the world, this sonic collage is placed in the lobby of the museum, where it mingles with the sounds of Harlem outside.

“My goal was to capture the tiny phenomena in life,” Lewis said of this piece, which emphasizes the poignant and the real.

“The sound of a haircut with a TV turned up full volume in the background, for example. It’s a very revealing glimpse into black and Latino families, where the TV is on 24/7,” he said.

The beauty of Lewis’ projects lies in his vision, which goes beyond any form of boundaries or limitations. Music is but a stepping stone in the larger scheme of things.

“Your music provides an opening for your audience, and your audience provides openings for you too,” he said.

In his work, Lewis never tires of asking questions. Driven by this fierce sense of curiosity, he continues to do so everyday, prompting the world by asking not about what it already has, but what else he can add to it.

Tags: Arts & Entertainment, Elaine Yeung