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  Channelling Charlie Parker - A Conversation with Soweto Kinch
interview 0511 added 10.05.07 words:
Kobi
technical:
QED
When
award winning saxophonist and rapper, Soweto Kinch
passed through the
heart of the commuter belt earlier this month during his hectic touring
schedule, Kobi took the chance to come out of retirement. The boy from
Brum found time to speak on crime in the inner cities, scoring plays,
working with Moira Stuart and his stint on the Pop Idol's house band.
And all that before taking to the stage to promote A Life In The Day of
B19: Tales Of The Towerblock.
 In an age when so much is neatly packaged and labelled for consumption.
Soweto Kinch defies categorisation he is both saxophone virtuoso and
socially conscious rapper.
In person, Kinch is soft spoken and polite. He homes in on a question
without the constant 'KnowwhatImeans and 'KnowwhatImsayings' of many of
his contemporaries. Perched on the window sill of the venue's kitchen,
he contemplates which musicians, if he had the choice, he would select
to join him in The Soweto Kinch Imaginary Big Band: "Joe Henderson,
Coltrane, Sonny Rawlins, just so I can hang with them." he says after a
moment. He then goes on to add Miles Davis and Joe Harriot. After a
further pause, Bob Marley and Fela Kuti also pass the audition because
"their passion went beyond music, money and personal gratification."
Upon witnessing his live show, you can see why he seems preoccupied with
musical expression. At least twenty minutes pass before he finally
addresses the crowd directly. In that time he has rapped and run through
a couple of blistering solos on the sax, and when the music finally
slows down he comes across on stage much as he does in conversation;
approachable and good-natured, but forceful enough to get his point
across. The consummate jazz cat.
Kinch's passion for his work does not begin and end with performance. He
is in the process of scoring Absolute Beginners a play which is due to
run at the Hammersmith Lyric later this year. He has also written a
script and a score for his own play, The Midnight Hop, which will tell
the story of black musicians in the 18th Century. The idea of paying
homage to one's history and heritage while looking to the future
definitely seems to appeal to him.
...Some of jazz's major vanguards have been in their 20's...
 His appeal across the generation gap can only have been increased by his
inclusion of Moira Stuart OBE. As one of the best known black Britons to
have become famous in his lifetime, she was his first choice to play the
role of narrator. "I actually headhunted her," he says "we met her at
the Jazz Awards three years ago. We wanted a female narrative voice
because there's a strong male presence in the story. She read the script
and she was really excited, but she wanted to know if she was
pronouncing everything right." Soweto chuckles at the memory, "Moira
Stuart asking us if she pronouncing something right
" He does, however,
seems a little dubious of Ms. Stuart's recent disappearance from a
regular BBC slot "She was in a documentary about [William] Wilberforce
and asked some quite provocative questions. Maybe that had something to
do with it. The way you have to look at it is, Jonathan Dimbleby and Jon
Snow aren't too old to read the news."
As the support band jam on downstairs, we trawled through one of the
darker parts of Kinch's past. The stint in The Pop Idol house band, Big
Blue. Again, he chuckles "I did that for two weeks, five and a half
years ago." He doesn't refer to the period in a 'I
-was-young-and-needed-the-money-way', but rather as an insight into the
music industry of the 21st Century. The story goes, midway through a run
at London's Jazz Cafι with Tomorrow's Warriors (a group of promising
young jazz musicians put together by Gary Crosby), he was offered the
chance to work on the programme. Before he knew it he was being fitted
up for costumes and witnessing the mass hysteria that Gareth Gates and
Will Young were generating. So, it would seem, that Kinch was present at
the dawn of a new era in music. He got to see the cogs in motion and the
stagehands scurrying about behind the scenes, as 'The Machine' churned
out not one, but two stars that the public played a large part in
creating.
Despite the fact his mantlepiece must be sagging under the weight of
numerous BBC Jazz Awards, the Montreux Jazz Festival's White Saxophone
prize and a MOBO, Soweto doesn't seem overly fussed with the trappings
of celebrity. The boy from Birmingham makes extraordinary music about
ordinary people. People who we could walk past in the street, or sit
next to on the bus. It comes as no surprise then, that as a young black
man he has an opinion about the media's sudden interest in violent
crime, particularly in inner city areas. Tony Blair's recent assertion
that gun-crime is influenced by Afro-Caribbean culture does not sit well
with him: "It's the latest in a long line of affronts to our community
to almost imply that it's part of our culture." He says, before diving
into a discourse on the effects that poverty, the legacy of Thatcher's
'Right To Buy' policy and the emasculation of young black men are having
on today's youth. "Where do the guns come from? We can't grow guns,
there are no gun trees. At the moment they would like us to believe that
it's something that just happens among immigrants but it's a national
epidemic."
...Wynton never said that he didn't like hip-hop. He just believes
that it's not as innovative as it used to be...
 Kinch's pensive approach seems somehow at odds with the more bullish
direction a lot of rap music is going in. At a time when The Guardian is
awarding five-star ratings to rap albums about the highs and lows of
cocaine trafficking, the increasingly manufactured 'cool' of the "urban"
section of HMV seems to be the last place you would find an artist who
claims Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman as his influences.
Having been to all the necessary meetings to make sure his product
received the proper placement at retail, he appears to have mixed
feelings about the nature of the music marketplace. While he was pleased
with the way in which A Life In The Day was picked up by Gilles Peterson
and Ras Kwame on the BBC's analogue and digital radio stations, he
remains wary of the labels that get attached to jazz music. Kinch is
ever mindful of the generation gap. When asked why jazz isn't picked up
on by the same audience who would buy a 50 Cent album, he answers with
conviction: "Before I would have said it's a cultural block. It serves
the industry to have a niche market that protects a few vested
interests." he offers. He's also emphatic in his belief that the sole
ownership of jazz does not rest with the older generations, adding "Some
of jazz's major vanguards have been in their 20's."
He then tells a story about a feature Newsnight ran last year. Wynton
Marsalis, a man who Soweto sees as a mentor of sorts (They met when
Kinch was 13 and again when he was 23. As it turns out, Mr Marsalis had
not forgotten him in the intervening decade) has recently gone on record
as saying he deplores what he sees as the "minstrelsy" in rap music. The
editors wanted him to fight the 'traditionalist' corner, while pitting
him against Soweto, who would be representing the 'younger generation'.
He sounds a little disappointed by what he sees as Auntie's
short-sightedness. "Wynton never said that he didn't like hip-hop." He
says. "He just believes that it's not as innovative as it used to be."
...Where do the guns come from? We can't grow guns, there are no gun
trees. At the moment they would like us to believe that it's something
that just happens among immigrants but it's a national epidemic...
 And with that our time is up. We hear the muffled sound of the crowd
downstairs giving the support act a final round of applause as the DJ
cues up some mood music. Soweto offers a handshake before heading off to
make his pre-show preparations. Later that evening, he will blur the
lines between rap and jazz in front of a crowd that is surprisingly
diverse for a midweek gig in the heart of Surrey. As he takes the stage
and the cheers go up, somewhere the members of The Soweto Kinch
Imaginary Big Band, (whether they are still with us or not), are
smiling. A Life In The Day of B19: Tales Of The Towerblock is out now.
Basement Fables is due for release in Spring 2007 on Dune Records. For
more information log onto
www.myspace.com/sowetokinch.
Thanks to all at Dune Records, The Boileroom and John @ Air.
-
Kobi
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