Words by David C. Obenour
Perseverance Flow hangs well as the title for the latest release from Natural Information Society. Following inspired collaborations with Bitchin Bajas and Ari Brown, the four members returned to the studio and emerged with a single 34 minute continuous track. Opening with sparse percussion from Mikel Patrick Avery, Lisa Alvarado’s harmonium breaths life into a hypnotic grove that lasts through the final note – when the spell breaks. Further ideas are weaved in through Jason Stein’s bass clarinet and composer Joshua Abrams on West Africa’s guimbri. They come. They change. They go. They return again. And then it ends, at least until it starts once more.
Off Shelf: You played the guembri on Perseverance Flow. Do you remember how you first meaningfully engaged with it as an instrument? Is there a recording or performance that stands out for you?
Joshua Abrams: The first time I heard with a guimbri was Maleem Mahmoud Ghania’s album Trance of Seven Colors with Pharoah Sanders. That record is mesmerizing. Then in the late 90s I had the chance to go to Morocco at the end of a tour in Europe. I took a train from Casablana to Marakesh and heard Maâlem Hassan El Gadiri play several nights in the Djemaa El F’na. Later that trip I met Maalem Najib Soudani in Essaouira and got to spend a couple hours with him, listening and observing how the instrument is played.
I played the guimbri on Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake’s album From The River to the Ocean. Hamid, who was producing the album, decided Fred and I should play a duo so he could have a chance to interact with the sound of the guimbri without other instrumentation. I also played it in a group piece with Fred, Hamid, Jeff Parker and Harrison Bankhead. Another early recording was Hamid Drake’s CD, Blissful. William Parker and I played a guimbri duo as an introduction to one of the pieces. Hamid was always very supportive of my engagement with the instrument, often requesting I bring it to gigs we were playing together. I later had a chance to play it in a large group meeting organized by Jeb Bishop between Chicago improvisers and the late Kora master Toumani Diabete and his ensemble.
OS: Can you talk about your particular instrument that you played? These seem like they would be rather individual and unique, given how they’re made.
JA: My instrument was built by Maâlem Hassan El Gadiri, who I mentioned previously. It has a goat skin, gut strings and a detachable metal rattle at the end of the neck called a “sersera”.
OS: Unfamiliar with much of the other music that utilizes it, would you say that your playing here aligns with the traditional West African approach? If more adapted, how so?
JA: I’ve never formally studied the Gnawan tradition but have listened to it extensively on record and it has affected me. I find inspiration in world folk traditions throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The guimbri is an ancient and futuristic instrument. Some believe it is an ancestor of the banjo. I often imagine it as the original 808 since it functions as both drum and bass simultaneously. In Chicago there is a tradition of experimentation and I decided to create a setting to write new music that included the guimbri. It seemed to offer a pathway to bring many of my interests in sound together. That decision ultimately led me to forming Natural Information Society.
OS: In the materials for the album, I was really intrigued how you mentioned that Perseverance Flow “has sympathies to some of the more rhythmically intricate dance musics out of Chicago and Lisbon” – could you expound on that? What musics are you hearing and how do you see that serving what you’re doing?
JA: Much of the music emerging from Teklife and Principe over past decades are inspiring. I had the privilege to record with the legendary RP Boo a couple of years ago and hope that sees light one day. There is an intersection between sample based music, traditional musics, soul musics, minimal musics that feels vibrant to me.
OS: As a quartet, do you feel your approach either in performing or recording has changed following the recent collaborations with Ari Brown and now again with Bitchin Bajas?
JA: Our approach as a quartet maintains a consistency and embraces what we learn from our new experiences individually and collectively. We work with compositions for many years creating sustained spaces that respond to each particular performance situation.
Working with Bitchin Bajas, the writing is mostly collective composition except for the piece Always Nine Seconds Away which I wrote for the collaboration. Playing with the Bajas inspires me to consider new approaches to working with amplified sound in Natural Information Society. Cooper Crain and I spent a long time sculpting the material for Totality. He is an excellent engineer and it is big fun to collaborate with him and the Bajas.
Ari Brown is a master musician and a titan of the tenor saxophone. Playing together in any capacity always inspires and reveals new pathways for approaching material and getting the music to a place where musicians and listeners all feel better for the experience.
OS: Meditative is often a word that is associated with your music. Does that resonate with you? Is it an intentional connection or more of a result from other inspiration?
JA: Music has the possibility of offering shelter for mind and spirit. I think that is an outlook we embrace while also knowing that possibility can be sympathetic with a good time.
OS: Either in the studio or performing live, is there any space for improvisation within this composition? Does anything about it feel different from what you had envisioned from before?
JA: I imagine the compositions as occasions for the group to learn something new each time we play. There is always room for individual sounds, decisions and embellishment. At times live there is outright improvisation although on the recording of Perseverance Flow we played the piece without exploring any wide open spaces. In concert I continue to re-arrange the pieces and that leads the group to new directions.
For example these days we’ve been stretching Perseverance Flow to an hour or longer. I try to listen for a moment of balance between the musicians that feels like it can go on forever and then try ride with that. That moment can come about through subtle and large adjustments to the space, the situation and the frequencies of how the musicians are interacting. It requires a collective awareness that isn’t pre-determined. For me that awareness aligns closely with the practice of improvisation.
OS: I noted that you had previously received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award in 2018. While I’m unsure of their funding, as other federal dollars are being taken from so many organizations, can you speak to that and what grants such as these can mean to an artist?
JA: I think receiving support from any grant as an artist has multiple layers of meaning. The material support is important but so is the confirmation of one’s practice. The FCA is an amazing organization providing many levels of support to artists from private donation and works donated by artists rather than federal funding. The grant winners do not apply, they are nominated and selected anonymously.
I think it is important to remember that federal funding for the arts should not be seen as something frivolous to society but rather something that is essential. It is important to remember that the government spends the people’s money, not the other way around.