Jerry Dammers / interview (Future FM)

Jerry Dammers – founder of The Specials and 2Tone brings his SPATIAL AKA ORCHESTRA to Norwich on 26th May 2012 for the first time as part of the NNFestival. Future Radio’s Kate Roma caught up with Jerry earlier in the week to find out more :) Date: 24/05/12 Length: 11:37 minutes http://www.futureradio.co.uk/podcast/2012/may/kate-roma-interviews-jerry-dammers

Jerry Dammers / The Spatial AKA Orchestra 18/11/11

Jerry Dammers / The Spatial AKA Orchestra 'Barbican 18/11/11

It was an absolutely brilliant concert: surprising, stimulating, awe-inspiring, tender, funny, and above all musical: it made me think again about tunes I thought I knew, and introduced me to wonderful songs new to me (in particular Blue Pepper by Duke Ellington, and I'll wait for you by Sun Ra). The band consists of...wait for it....27 musicians (or thereabouts - there were also a number of mannequins positioned in and around the band, some of them apparently playing instruments, which made counting people difficult!): 9 brass and woodwind, 5 strings, 3 guitars, 2 keyboards, 4 drums, percussion and vibes, and 4 singers. The music was eclectic (an overused word I know but absolutely precise in this case), encompassing Captain Beefheart, 'Library Music' (not sure what this is), Ellington, Coltrane, a reworked and even more doom-laden Ghost Town by the original Specials, cheerful ska classics, Edgar Broughton, Johnny Clarke, Dvorak, In the Bleak Midwinter, and especially the music of Sun Ra, pioneer and promoter of black consciousness and interplanetary travel, spiritual mentor and forerunner of George Clinton and Funkadelic. Spatial AKA, like the Sun Ra orchestra, were kitted out in glittery and vaguely Egyptian robes, hairpieces, sunglasses and/or masks, arrived on stage piecemeal from amongst the audience, while making a collective sound like a gathering storm of didgeridoos (one instrument unaccountably absent from the proceedings). They played continuously for three hours, and then for another half an hour out in the lobby as everyone was leaving!

Visually, the movements of the band members and their costumes were augmented by a strange set involving already mentioned mannequins, three of which were painted silver and suspended above the band as if flying, along with what I gradually realised was a small lunar module about to crash to earth. Behind the band was a continuously changing and layered projection of slides, videos, and psychedelic lightshow, the like of which I haven't seen for years: it took me happily back to New Riders of the Purple Sage at Surrey University in about 1972! But this backdrop wasn't just for decoration, it imparted a powerful cultural and political flavour to the music, so that even though there were almost no overt political statements or references during the set, the whole experiene was flavoured with a clear enough set of political messages and affiliations.

There were so many terrific musical and visual moments: Alcyona Mick playing whirlwind piano solos while apparently motionless, a kettle drum solo involving continuous de-tuning and retuning of the drums during the solo, wonderful ensemble arrangements and solos amongst the brass, woodwind and strings sections, complex textures added by percussion and vibes, and poetry and scat singing as well as a joyous impersonation of the late great Captain Beefheart by Edgar Broughton, himself something of a legend in his own lunchtime for those of us of a certain age, singing Frownland from Trout Mask Replica. Johnny Clarke, the great Jamaican reggae singer, came on like a cheerful psychedelic Santa Claus, all in yellow and with locks reaching down to his calves! For me the single best moment was Francine Luce singing Sun Ra's I'll wait for you, in memory of her father. The band's website has a few short clips of music, and there are more on Youtube, but don't let anything stop you from seeing them live if you can.

Why am I writing about the Spatial AKA Orchestra here, in a blog focussed mainly on education? Well, the sheer size of the band got me thinking about the kind of organisation needed to put a concert like this together, and this led on to a perennial topic of thought and conversation with me: the qualities needed by the people who run such enterprises. I'd love to talk to Jerry Dammers about this: his must be an incredibly complex and difficult job. He is thought of as a song-writer and arranger, but he's obviously much more than that. The economics of big bands can't be easy: many, if not all, of the individual members of the Spatial AKA are absolutely at the top of the tree in their various specialisms, and they all need to make a living. I read somewhere that Miles Davis's legendary Birth of the Cool septet only existed long enough to make a single record, and didn't play any gigs, because even with only seven they couldn't earn enough in New York in the late 40s. Ellington and Basie managed it somehow, but for them it may have been easier because popular musical taste demanded large dance bands, at least during some periods; that is hardly the situation in 2011. Captain Beefheart's uncompromising vision led him, allegedly, to shut his band up for a year to practice, hardly feeding them anything, let alone paying them, until they were note-perfect on Trout Mask Replica. The band-leader's job, apart from choosing and arranging songs (for 27 parts!), includes all the organisational issues of publicity and marketing, negotiating and agreeing contracts with concert halls and promoters, travel and accommodation (for 27!), and then, most interestingly of all, the people-management issues within the band itself. There must be so many potential headaches among such a large group of creative people! Is Jerry an Arsene Wenger, an Alex Ferguson, or an ashen-faced Ron Knee? His musical arrangements depend for their success on the skills of all the individuals playing them: suppose some of them aren't so enthusiastic about them? This is analogous to footballers having to play within the tactical system designed by their manager: we know all too well how easily confidence of the manager in the player's capability, or of the player in the manager's system, can be broken down - similar issues must arise in big bands too.

All of this points to the fact that an enterprise like the Spatial AKA Orchestra is no trivial project, and this makes me marvel all the more at last week's gig: it was a triumph not just of musical creation and re-creation, but of leadership and organisation too. Each depends on the other. Thanks to everyone involved!

http://jayoptimistic.blogspot.com/2011/11/creativity-and-leadership-jerry-dammers.html

Jerry Dammers’ The Spatial AKA Orchestra / The Barbican 2011

Following their highly acclaimed national tour and appearances at Glastonbury and on Later with Jools Holland, Jerry Dammers’ Spatial AKA Orchestra return to play a London date at the Barbican.

The Specials and 2 Tone founder Jerry Dammers’ funk and dub influenced arrangements of his selections from cosmic jazz, reggae, exotica and library music, have formed backdrops for some of the country’s finest jazz improvisers, in his highly acclaimed orchestra.

Orchestra favourites, new selections paying homage to a variety of futurist musical dreamers, adaptations of Dammers’ own songs, and a small amount of original material, are now moving the orchestra beyond its “Sun Ra Tribute band” starting point. Alternative musical styles, not always associated with jazz (from rock to jungle or dubstep) are also somewhere in the mix.

Featuring: Jason Yarde, Denys Baptiste, Larry Stabbins, Nathaniel Facey, Shabaka Hutchings, Terry Edwards (saxes), Finn Peters (flute), Robin Hopcraft (trumpet), Harry Brown (trombone), Anthony Joseph (vocals), Francine Luce (vocals), Alcyona Mick (piano), Roger Beaujolais (vibes), Larry Bartley (double bass), Patrick Illingworth (drums), Crispin “Spry” Robinson (percussion), Steve Gibson (percussion), Ollie Bayley (electric bass), Patrick Hatchett, Guy Clarke (guitars), Jerry Dammers (keyboards).

http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=12611

Jerry Dammers Collaboration With Anthony Joseph

Anthony Joseph & The Spasm Band
Rubber Orchestras
22/09/11



01 Griot
02 Started off as a dancer
03 She is the sea
04 Cobra
05 Tanty Lynn
06 Bullet in the rocks
07 Money Satan
08 Speak the name
09 Damballah
10 Generations (Produced And Arranged By Jerry Dammers)
11 Bossa for Dalston (bonus track)


Jerry Dammers (with whom Anthony Joseph has been playing for years in a project called The Spatial AKA), has also come to the banquet. The legendary founder of The Specials, one of the most important UK bands of the 80s, took to the controls to arrange and enhance a visionary and revolutionary poem, the iconic suite called ‘Generations’, which distils the essence of the songwriter’s message. “Those lyrics, which talk about my relationship to my land and its history through my ancestors, they struck a chord with Jerry. He definitely wanted to be part of it and it was an honour for me to have such a genius and visionary mind helping us. What’s more, it’s the meeting of two generations who look towards the future while still having a keen sense of the past.

http://www.anthonyjoseph.co.uk/main.html

http://www.hmvdigital.com/artist/anthony-joseph-the-spasm-band/rubber-orchestras

http://musique.fnac.com/a3675587/Anthony-Joseph-Rubber-orchestras-CD-album

http://www.africa-news.eu/entertainment/44-entertainment/3293-anthony-joseph-develop-something-truly-unique-and-different.html