Rez Abbasi: When Everything Else Fades, Sound Remains
The Pakistani-American guitarist and composer opens up about expanding his long-running acoustic ensemble, the philosophy behind 'Sound Remains,' and finding musical magic through non-attachment.
Today, the Spotlight shines on guitarist and composer Rez Abbasi.
Rez’s new album with his Acoustic Quintet, Sound Remains, puts steel-string acoustic guitar at the center of a deeply personal meditation on presence and impermanence. The album adds master percussionist Hasan Bakr to Rez’s long-standing quartet with Bill Ware, Stephan Crump, and Eric McPherson, creating what Rez calls music where “often the only thing that remains is sound.”
The 2021 Guggenheim Fellow has spent decades finding his voice in jazz, blending his Pakistani roots with American musical traditions. Sound Remains, dedicated to his late mother, finds Rez returning to acoustic intimacy while furthering his exploration of mindfulness through music.
(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Sound Remains by the Rez Abbasi Acoustic Quintet)
Dig Deeper
• Visit Rez Abbasi at reztone.com and follow him on Instagram and YouTube
• Purchase Rez Abbasi’s Sound Remains from Whirlwind Recordings, Bandcamp, or Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choice
• Rez Abbasi: Top 5 Must-Hear Picks
Current Band Members (RAAQ):
• Bill Ware, vibraphonist (Steely Dan)
• Stephan Crump, bassist (Vijay Iyer Trio)
• Eric McPherson, drummer (Andrew Hill)
• Hasan Bakr, percussionist - master of Gullah-Geechee traditions
Musical Influences and References:
• Keith Jarrett - constant musical touchstone
• Bill Frisell - guitar influence and open string techniques
• Ralph Towner - acoustic guitar pioneer
• Jack DeJohnette - favorite drummer
• ECM Records - influential label aesthetic
Compositions and Standards Discussed:
• Keith Jarrett - “Questar”
• John Coltrane - “Lonnie’s Lament” from Crescent
• John Coltrane - “Giant Steps” - practice standard
• Django Reinhardt - influence on Django-shift album
Global Music Connections:
• Ustad Alla Rakha - master tabla player and teacher
• Min Xiao-Fen - Chinese pipa master
• Qawwali music traditions from Pakistan
• Gullah-Geechee cultural heritage
• Latin percussion traditions
Additional Projects:
• Invocation - South Asian influenced ensemble
• A Throw of Dice - silent film score (1929)
• Kiran Ahluwalia - frequent collaborator and life partner
(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)
Lawrence Peryer: It has been thirteen years since we first connected.
Rez Abbasi: Oh really? Geez. That's crazy.
Lawrence: It's a lot of music, a lot of life.
Rez: I know it's a drop in the bucket, but still it feels like a lot going on in retrospect.
Lawrence: It's definitely preparing for this put me in a little bit of a reflective headspace. You know, it just happens. Time does that.
Rez: I know. Totally.
Lawrence: It's the new record with the acoustic quartet. You've got this expanded sort of addition with percussion.
Rez: Yeah. Quintet. I guess—
Lawrence: Yeah, that's right.
Rez: Still starts with a Q, so that's good.
Lawrence: Oh, I was going to say, you know, I didn't come here to do math.
Rez: Well then the name of the band is RAAQ, right? So I was like, oh wait, good. I don't have to switch that.
Lawrence: You have to stop at five, I suppose. RAAS wouldn't be good. Tell me a little bit about what led you to expand the group this time, other than the convenience of Q still being in the title.
Rez: Well, that was the only reason. No, just kidding. I've always wanted to do something with sort of a Latin percussion avenue. I mean, I've done it with Indian music, you know, with tabla and various Indian Persian instruments. But the Latin thing, I don't know, there's something different about it.
Not only the feel, obviously, that's the number one thing, but even the sonority of the way they play. You know, all these instrumentalists play with their fingers basically. But I think with the Latin side, they kind of hit—I'm not an expert at this, but they kind of hit it with the side of their palm sometimes, and it's just a different sort of reflection of a skin percussion instrument.
And of course, you know, the tradition of it all. When you find these percussionists, they generally teach you a few things from the Latin world or the African world. And that's something I've always been interested in. I've done a little research into it, but not nearly as much as I feel I should.
Lawrence: And so is that your attempt now to just sort of explore the sonority like you mentioned, and explore for the purpose of just understanding?
Rez: Oh, no, definitely not. Just for the purpose of understanding, the music has to engineer itself towards that feeling.
And a lot of it is twelve-eight or six-eight, or that kind of triplet, either that or triplet feeling. It also has to do with the personnel in the group. Eric McPherson's on drums. And I would say this is the third record that we've done so far with this group, and it's a very percussive ensemble given that there's vibes, which is really a percussion instrument in some sense, and guitar, which is, you know, you're plucking it. That's very percussive. And Stephan Crump is also a very percussive bass player. He's very funky and he digs in.
Interestingly enough, as percussive and funky as Eric McPherson is, he plays with a lot more space than a lot of drummers. So I knew somehow—you know, my last two records were a little bit more, for lack of a better word, spacious, you know, in terms of they grew and they moved forward and all that, but they also contained this magical element that I don't even know how Eric does it, quite honestly.
He is very open-ended in his drum approach, and it's a great thing for a lot of music. And then for some things I, you know, when I started writing this project, I thought it'd be great to have Eric do his thing, which I'm pretty familiar with, along with a percussionist who can sort of accentuate Eric's thing and sort of fill in the gaps. Eric, he doesn't need to continue to play more, but he can play him completely. I don't have to tell him, "Hey, can you play more here?" It's like, just do your thing. This guy will fill up the rest. And so I did hear a denser way of approaching this record. And that's where it comes down to. That's what it boils down to.
Lawrence: Something that's really been interesting to watch over an extended period of time in your work—you know, you have all these different palettes and playgrounds you can work in, whether it's an electric setting or Invocation or with your wife. It's really amazing to see, and even with other collaborators like you, you get to stretch a lot of muscles and explore and research.
What is it about RAAQ that brings you back? Like, this is—you know, you mentioned you've got a few albums under your belt now with these guys and with this particular palette. What itch gets scratched for you here that's unique to this?
Rez: I think the all-acoustic sort of idea for one, rather than playing electric guitar like you mentioned. So that's one thing, although, you know, I did a record called Django Shift, and that was all acoustic also. That was a tribute to Django, but through the lens of a modern musician like me, originally from Pakistan, grew up in America, you know, that kind of thing. And but that was with mostly electric synths and stuff like that.
So this is the idea of the sound quality, the textural aspect of this kind of hit home when I first started it. And so I wanted to keep on exploring, and that's why adding Hasan Bakr as the percussionist—that's why it really intrigued me to see if I could write more for this group. It's been about ten years too, so it's, you know, you want to bring them back, bring back some of these people you've played with before.
The main thing is the idea of Bill Ware's sort of tone on the vibraphone is very unique to me. I discovered him probably twenty—oh my God, I don't want to say my age, but, you know, twenty-five years ago or something like that. And I thought, man, this guy has a tone on the vibes that really is inviting, even when he hits hard. See, that's the thing, it's sort of a thud. I don't even know how to describe it, but I've asked him about his mallets, but that didn't answer any questions because it's all technical stuff.
So I thought I could find a reason why his tone is his tone. But I couldn't, other than his Bill Ware. So, you know, that along with my acoustic guitar, I thought, wow, what a combination that would be. So sort of first, I was thinking of a ballad record years ago when I just got like, wow, you know, it would be an amazing thing to have a record with a ballad—just all ballads with either duo or trio or something like that. And that was all sonority thinking, you know?
But then I thought, okay, well I can extend that to different kind of material too. That along with acoustic bass and a jazz drum set, I just thought, wow, that would be a really great idea to grapple with. See, you know, what the potential could be. And of course Eric and Stephan are a great team as well.
Lawrence: I was going to ask you a little bit more specifically about the guitar-vibes pairing later on, but since you went there, two of the tracks that really sort of grabbed my attention as a listener were "Folks' Song" and "Spin Dream."
They really highlight that guitar-vibes interplay. Could you tell me about those two tracks? Anything about them—as a listener being so drawn to them, I'd love to hear a little bit of the stories behind both of them.
Rez: "Folks' Song" with apostrophes is dedicated to my parents, but really all folks, if you know what I mean. You know, I remember I called it my folks' song and then I thought, well, you know, everybody has this feeling for their folks, most people.
And so my parents were going through a lot before my mom passed. I was visiting a lot, and so I started writing this tune, and I go, okay, this is a dedication I had to finish for them. So it came from there and I decided to do it as a duo because again, I wanted that sort of spatial quality to it. I'm sure it would work as a group song, but there's something—the bareness of just hearing vibes and guitars is really beautiful.
Then in "Spin Dream," that was a title that I didn't come up with. The actual title was something one of my late friends came up with. He was going to create a film company called Spin Dream. And you know, so he was one of my best friends, so I figured he'd be okay with me borrowing it now that he's not using it, if you know what I mean. So it's sort of like a personal dedication to him.
So that tune, you know, I just came up with the first groove on the guitar. I thought it sounded nice to go from those two chords—E major seven to F major seven with the open strings on top. And this is what's so great about the guitar versus maybe the piano. You know, the piano has its great idiosyncrasies for sure. But the guitar is cool because in a way you can push notes down, but you also have these open strings for those who don't really know the guitar—which is probably nobody out there at this point. Everybody probably knows what the guitar is about now.
So I'm really trying to compose with a lot of the open strings now, more than ever. You know, people like Ralph Towner and Bill Frisell have been very influential to everybody when it comes to sort of those open string kind of chordal meshes, you know, or harmonic movements.
Lawrence: Take me down that rabbit hole just a little bit, especially for listeners who may not totally get the significance of that. So what's the importance or difference? You know, what's going on there? When you talk about the open string, how would a listener understand that information from you?
Rez: I'm not sure how to contextualize it in the sense—I mean, it's a closed string, obviously on the guitar where you're pushing down the left hand. And you can move chromatically all over the place. But the beauty is that if you take like, let's just say two notes, a G and a D, and you play the top two strings open, which would be like a B and an E, you can move the G and D all the way up chromatically while holding onto the top open strings. So they never change—the B and the E.
So then you end up with all kinds of harmonies that are totally different and things you may not have thought of in terms of like the closed voicing structures where a closed voicing you can move all over the place. There's no open string there, let's say, and it's the same exact chord, but it's just moved into different keys—C minor, C-sharp minor, D minor, and so forth.
Now if you have an open string on top of all that, it suddenly becomes D minor with something, you know, with the ninth. And then when you go to E-flat minor, it becomes E-flat minor with a flat nine. For instance, it's a little theoretical, you know, but that's what happens with the guitar and it's really an opening that should be definitely dealt with, considered when you're composing and whatnot.
Lawrence: Hearing you describe it, it returns me to this idea of color and palette. These are just—
Rez: Well it also sounds different too. I mean, it's—the open strings are very different sounding than the closed strings. That's a huge component right there too. And I was just talking about harmonic speak, you know, but in terms of textures and whatnot, it's very different sounding.
Lawrence: You know, we started talking earlier about life milestones and time that's passed since we first connected. When I was preparing for our time together, a couple of things landed for me that I wanted to share with you because I think it relates in their own ways to this record.
When you and I first spoke, it was at the end of the year in 2011. My father had just passed away about three months prior. Now here we are all these years later and my mom just passed away about three months ago.
Rez: Oh man. Sorry to hear that. I know how that feels.
Lawrence: Thank you. I know you do, and I am sorry for your loss as well.
It obviously—you know, between checking in periodically as we have over the years and following your music and just having these sort of strange bookends to our conversations and the sort of synergy with what your record is informed by, it merited mentioning. I'm curious about—you talk a lot in the press material for the record about the notion of impermanence. That's really the meta theme we're dancing around in this part of the conversation.
You know, as a man of a certain age, as I am, as you know—you sent me a birthday greeting yesterday, and I thank you for that.
Rez: Oh right. Totally.
Lawrence: Well, you know, that notion of impermanence starts to become a little bit of a constant companion. He's there. I just rejoined that thing too. What is that? What does the role of that impermanence and what is that sort of travel companion saying to you at this point? And how is that informing your work?
Rez: Well, I don't know if it's informing my work as much as my overall life. You know, music is music and when I hit the guitar it's like, you know, it has decades of history so that I can't get rid of, nor do I necessarily want to get rid of, you know. I want to implement it with new stuff. So that's sort of a sidebar, but life in general, it—I guess the way it affects my music is to basically remind myself not to be too attached to the music, but also to anything, you know.
It's the spiritual route that I've taken for years, decades, although I will most readily admit that it's hard to implement for me as a human being. And I think it is for most people in the path. The idea that life, you know, you have this outside life and you have this inside life. Inside life is telling you that the outside life is pretty impermanent. It's, you know, don't get too stressed. Don't take this seriously if you have an opportunity that doesn't come through, which happens all the time in music. And with everything really.
But if I was a doctor, I guess I wouldn't be thinking like this as much, or, you know. So that's the idea is to lessen the egoic mind, if you will, which is really just the mind altogether. It's not even just—it's not a separate part of the ego. It's not a separate part of the mind. It's really just the mind—sort of lessen those attributes in daily life and sort of allow yourself to realize that impermanence is not a bad thing, you know, because it's something that no one wants to talk about because it doesn't really register with the way you move through life.
We're not sitting there walking around, "Oh, hey man, look at that sunset. This isn't permanent." And there's a good reason why we don't do that either. I'm not saying that's something you should do, but you know, when you lose someone as close as a parent that you love dearly, like you said, it's a constant companion. After that, it's sort of like, oh man, you know, it's through that person that you lost that it becomes a reminder of impermanence.
And so for me, I've always grappled with impermanence for literally twenty, thirty years now, but this album is dedicated to my mom, along with being dedicated to the idea of impermanence and how I've dealt with that through meditation and contemplation and reflection and self-inquiry, all that stuff.
So this has really hit another plateau for me in terms of, wow, now I have to really deal with impermanence. It's not just about career, which is really petty in the scheme of things, you know, especially what's going on in the world right now. Like, am I really going to think about, "I didn't like my solo"? You know, I mean, like seriously, you know. It's not saying it's not important to me, but it really is not important to anybody.
Lawrence: I think what's really interesting—I mean there's a lot in there obviously that's interesting, but something that as an initial reaction, it seems like there's a lot of value in that mindset as a musician who works in improvised realms. Because I would think it would allow you so much freedom as an improviser. Have you felt that, as you've grown in your practice, have you felt that in your music in any way?
Rez: That's a really great question and it's a great way to sort of couch this idea of impermanence is through improvisation. And I'm very lucky to be able to have this music—and when I say this music, I mean jazz and improvisational music—as a tool to habituate and reprogram myself as to what the spiritual path really calls for, which is less ego and letting go and non-attachment, all those things.
It's very easy to get tied up into your own playing. I'd love to talk to more musicians about this because it's something I don't talk about that often to people, only the very few friends I have, but it's the idea of just like—when you're playing, how much are you actually self-absorbed as compared to environmentally absorbed or musically absorbed?
Actually, Bill Frisell actually said something I've been thinking about for years, but then when he said it, I was like, oh my God, that's—and I hear it in his playing, but he said sometimes it takes a lifetime or lifetimes to not sort of—I'm paraphrasing, but to not sort of think about your own playing when you're playing and really just listen and not focus on yourself. When I read that, I was like, oh my God, that's a really great way to just place what I've been sort of thinking about for years in sort of one sentence.
And it's true. That's the most important aspect for me of playing jazz, particularly jazz because it is such a collective improvisational music. Even if there's form or a standard or whatever versus completely free improv, it's very much the same attitude if you ask me.
But the great thing is, it's become such a fantastic tool to filter this experience. Now, unfortunately, a lot of people won't even think like that. You know, fortunately or unfortunately, I don't know. But it takes a lot to get to that point of letting yourself sound bad in a situation because no one wants to sound bad. I mean, I don't know one person on earth that I could say, "Hey, would you like to sound bad on your solo tomorrow?" Absolutely not. Zero percentage would be like that.
And that is something you've got to embrace wholeheartedly. That's the hard part. You've got to really embrace it to really move through it, move past it. It's almost a conundrum. It's tough. The mind really gets in the way.
Lawrence: It's really interesting because I would imagine that as a developing player, one must reach the point where you want that transcendence and you want that letting go, but it also must—before you learn to do it, it must be the most terrifying prospect. What will happen if I'm not in control?
Rez: Exactly. And that sort of expands into daily life in general. Not just music, I mean the control thing. Do I have insurance? Do I have enough money in my bank account? What's going to happen? Your imagination can very much be your worst enemy, you know?
And that's not to say, sit around and not think about future. No, it's not like that. I mean, if I want to play over "Giant Steps" better, I'm going to sit down and practice "Giant Steps." I'm not going to just think about it and say, you know—so it's, I mean, that's a very basic example, but that's kind of what's going on here.
You know, it's like, you do have to sit down and think about the future, but the idea of me wanting to play "Giant Steps" now if I sit there and think about it twenty-four seven when I'm not actually playing, that's when it gets off the rails and that's not healthy.
Lawrence: Or thinking about your insurance situation while you're playing "Giant Steps." (laughter)
Rez: Never.
Lawrence: I can't see how that would help.
Rez: Either one of those are too difficult.
Lawrence: Tell me about the album's title. Tell me about Sound Remains.
Rez: Sound Remains came from the idea of my meditation experiences, which I'm still sort of grappling with sometimes. I'm also my worst enemy in terms of, you know, I sit down and meditate every day. I know where I want to be, which is already sort of the antithesis of meditation, you know. It's not about where you want to be, but it gets deeper and more refined as time goes.
But when I do get into those states of nothingness, I guess, I notice how everything stops except for sound, and that's why it's called Sound Remains, because it's sort of like, yes, I'm still using my sense of listening and whatnot. It's even hard to describe right now because you get into that state and it doesn't necessarily last that long. But these are the states where all the yogis have talked about for millennia, you know—just that state that is sort of beyond thought, really is beyond thought. It's beyond intuition, it's beyond—it's just being and that just always noticed that sound is the last thing that goes. It's sort of like, I still hear something.
Lawrence: Yeah.
Rez: And it's sort of a metaphor in some ways for listening to music. That's also—I didn't talk about that in the liner notes, but that's also the reason why I called it Sound Remains because it just seems more and more I see people listening as a sidebar. It's background music. Even myself, I hate to say it, God, this is hard to admit, but like I used to actually listen to full-blown albums or two, you know, one or two albums a day, and really just sit there listening to the whole thing and say, wow.
And, you know, I would make my judgment calls, of course. But it would be like, you know, at least it would be towards the music I'm listening to would be about something else.
Lawrence: Yeah.
Rez: So to me, it's like, when you listen to music, it's good to, for me to try to actually listen to the music. And that's where the title kind of comes, the Sound Remains. It's just the sound. I'm not thinking about tomorrow, I'm not thinking about yesterday. I'm not thinking about, "Oh, I should practice that." I'm just listening and whatever it shows me, it shows me without my thought.
So it's really based in this idea of sort of separating your thoughts from the actual doing of things, you know. Very Zen kind of, but it's beyond just—it's Zen and it's yogic and it's, you know, it's not necessarily Buddhism or anything. It's all—it's Hinduism, Buddhism, and yogic tradition.
Lawrence: It's really interesting how of all the senses, like all of the senses have an element of distraction to them. Like you can hear a sound that you can't get out of your head or you could be speaking with somebody and there's something going on over there and you have to keep looking at it. Smells are the same way. You can have an itch that's bothering you, but sound is unique, at least in my perception and experience in that not only does it distract, but it can absorb you in a way that other senses can't, like you can be enveloped in sound in a way that I don't feel like I can point to examples of experiencing with my other senses.
Rez: I pretty much agree with that. But that's because probably because you are musically inclined and I'm musically inclined. Now, if you weren't musically inclined, you may not be saying that, because the visual thing is supposed to be the one sense that I think we use more than anything. I think I've heard that somewhere. And so if you're looking at a sunset or something, you know, that's like, wow. Like, you know what I mean? But I see, I know what you mean. For us, I think I agree with you.
Lawrence: It's also interesting how, and again, you know, this is like, I'm going to badly paraphrase the science here. So we could put an asterisk on everything I'm about to say, you know, you hear those stories, I don't—whether they're apocryphal or not of like people who are in comas they can hear people talking. It's advised to play music for them. I've heard of things like when you're sleeping, you can take in information if a recording's played. That seems very intriguing to me about what's the connection between the ear and the inner mind.
Rez: It's totally—we haven't scratched the surface of any of this stuff. You know? It's beyond my fathoming. I mean, it's like, it's incredible. I mean, once you, you know, and I mean, we explore the universe and we are finding new ideas about that. It's just like, oh my God, let me know when you get there, kind of thing. Because it's just too much for me to handle. Like, I don't know, you know, in this little body, in this—how many galaxies and this and that. It's like, ugh, I'll never get anything done if I start going there.
Lawrence: Well it's funny though because I think that also points to a lot of the—you know, you talked a little bit earlier about how we listen differently now when we're consuming music. It seems to be different than in other times. I think those things are related because we're—you know, and listen, I'm not saying we shouldn't be exploring all the mysteries of the universe. But we are so—we understand still so little about our minds and how things are impacting us, that these new advancements we're not really prepared for so much of it.
Rez: And that's not even talking about AI. I mean, that's—we don't know about how that's going to unfold. I mean, is it going to be destructive like some people are, some of the naysayers are saying, or is it going to be helpful to humanity? Is it going to take away all half the jobs?
I mean, I personally—I mean, I love technology and geez, I mean, look what we're doing now. I mean, it's outrageous how far we've come in the last hundred years. More than—it's like a thousandfold more than before previous, everything combined or something like that. You know what I mean? It's unreal.
But of course I have to ask, it begs the question like, where do we stop? Isn't there a diminishing return sort of area that like, and I'm thinking AI, that we have potential to do so many things, but do we really want to go there?
Lawrence: It's hard as a species to say no.
Rez: Exactly.
Lawrence: And we seem to have this mindset that just because we can, we should.
Rez: Exactly. You just nailed it. That's exactly what I was trying to say in a nutshell.
So clearly you think about, and you live with philosophy and philosophical concepts and you know, you talk about your own spiritual work or self-inquiry. I realize this is a little bit of like looking into the peeling back your head and peering inside, but could you talk a little bit about—I guess I'm asking you a process question at heart, which is how do these concepts make their way into your music? Compositionally, like what's—I understand intention plays a role, but is there a functional role?
Rez: Well, that's the million-dollar question. I mean, you know, it's sort of like if I were to give an answer to that, I—it can't be the right answer. So like, you know, I can approach it for this interview, but after this, I'll walk away and say, wait, that wasn't right. You know, because how do we contextualize, quantify all that? How do we do all that while we're doing it? I mean, it's sort of like the intuition that we have, that each individual has is so made up I think of, you know, like I'm not a scientist, but I think it's made up of our compound experiences and the conditioning we had growing up.
And that's not even including, and this is veering off into a different subject, the idea of reincarnation. I don't know if I believe in reincarnation. What does that mean? If I believe it or not, it doesn't matter if it either exists or it doesn't. It doesn't have anything to do with me believing it.
So, but if it was in existence, if that was part of the cycle we go through, then what are we dealing with here? Then we have lifetimes of experiences within this body. Now this is one way of thinking of it or approaching it, but we have so many lifetimes that we're grappling with. And what does that mean for subconsciousness? I mean, what does that mean for like, you know, we're surface level thinkers. Most of us, we just enact our lives through the surface. Hey, this every day goes by, you know, that is all punctuated by our subconscious. Whether we know it or not, our subconscious is very powerful.
So what is the subconscious? It's like, is it lifetimes of stuff? Well, yeah. So then it makes you think like, okay, so was Beethoven reincarnated into Keith Jarrett? You know what I mean? Like it starts making you wonder how these eight-year-old kids are phenomenal players, like, how is that possible when someone else has been doing it for twenty years and they don't come close?
So these are the ideas. That's the long answer of why it's hard to actually state anything specific in terms of how it goes in my compositions. But let's just say we don't reincarnate and we're just here now—conditioning for sure. You know, the way you grew up, the way you're influenced by things, who you're influenced by. All that stuff makes for, it paves the road to what you're going to end up saying as a musician.
You know, I listened to—like when I was probably like nineteen or twenty, I remember everybody around me was listening to Blue Note stuff. Now this is just my own story and I was certainly doing that as well. I had a lot of friends that sort of were limited in that scope. You know, "Oh, check out this Jackie McLean record, check out this," you know—and I did listen to a lot of that stuff, but I was really into, for lack of a better word, the ECM kind of school of music, you know?
I mean, it's a bit of a myopic way of looking. It's not a blanket statement, but people like Jan Garbarek and Keith of course, and Ralph Towner and, you know, people were just coming out of that school for good reason, man. So I was really into that and I think that that along with coupling with all the straight-ahead, if you will, the Blue Note stuff and the Verve and all this.
I think that whole thing gave me a great education at that young of age. Twenty-one. I mean, that's a mature palette of music to be listening to at that age when I—now that I look back on it, back then, I was just doing it. It's no big deal. But when I see the students that I have now, that are nineteen, twenty, they're pretty much listening to everything. You know, it's like, because of the whole technology of streaming. I mean, they're listening to like, "Hey, have you checked this out?" I mean, they're naming things that I've never even come close to hearing. And not just jazz, but I mean like, "Check this guy out. He's jazz influenced, but he is playing, he's doing all this other stuff."
We didn't have necessarily that when I was growing up, the streaming thing is really—it's unfortunate, but it's also a pretty amazing tool. I have to say, these kids wouldn't be listening to half the stuff they're listening to if it wasn't on streaming. Because they pull it up in the lesson, "Hey, check it out." I'm like, okay, they're not—here, let me go home and borrow, you know, I'll bring a CD you can borrow for one week. It's deep, man.
Lawrence: I agree with you. You know, on both the obviously the challenges around it, especially of people trying to make their living in the arts as well as the really kind of exciting aspect of it, and it's reflected through young people, which is, you know, I see with my own son, he's twenty, he comes across all this music that I came across as a part of a longer journey, and he's finding stuff even, you know, deeper than I've been able to go. And something that's been so intriguing to me about it is—it may sound like a negative when I say it, but I find it so intriguing, which is there's like a lack of context. There's not this recognition, which I think is freeing between like high and low or pop and academic or all those different distinctions become important in their own way, depending on your application or path like you might want to study third stream music in a very specific way or what have you, whatever the example is. But as a listener, it's kind of exciting to not be concerned with genre or context in that way. It's like it's just music in that way, and it's like, do I like it or do I not like it? There's something very pure about that when it just comes to the listening experience.
Rez: Absolutely. And I mean, we had that, you know, when I was twenty, we—I can't say that wasn't there either. It was just harder to either grasp or get ahold of, you know? You would actually physically have to go to a store and put down some bread, which is like, ah, maybe not, you know. Here it's like playlist. You know what I mean? Like every playlist just runs random, run through all these things. So it definitely has that idea of less genre and also, you know, look as we evolve, I mean, all the genres sort of cross over. I mean, that's inevitable and that's the way it's been forging for decades and decades, you know?
Jazz came from blues. Now that's a bit of a crossover right there, you know, I mean, and it came from ragtime and then whatnot, and then it evolved, and then it went into this, what they call fusion. I don't even know what fusion means. I mean, everything seemed to be a fusion to some degree with more or less sort of added elements, you know, but there's nothing like this just pure down to the—or even the blues. I mean, you know, I play a lot of Chinese music with Min Xiao-Fen. We do—she has a score for silent film and I've done that several times. And you know, I hear blues all day long coming out of her instruments and you know, from Pakistan to Ali singers, it's all blues.
You know, so I don't know how to define what blues means, you know, other than through an American perspective, if you are defining it through that. Sure. Okay. It means this, and that. The slaves for sure. And but if you see it in a larger scope, then it doesn't just mean that—it's the form of the blues, but it's not necessarily the feeling. It's not where the feeling started. It's just all human, you know.
Lawrence: You know, when we first spoke back in 2011, some of the things you're saying now remind me of some of the notes I pulled out of that conversation, which was you were very sort of thoughtful about talking about cultural integration and music. Because at that time we were talking about—we got together because there was a new Invocation record. That was why we were talking. We spent a lot of our conversation talking about Qawwali music and Sufism and just sort, you know, and what was going on at that time, especially in New York around that—to dread to refer to it this way, but like the Southeast Asian movement that was happening in creative music at the time. But you were talking about, you know, being really careful about this sort of overt blending of jazz and South Asian musical elements. You know, influence feel is one thing, but like not creating like this obvious fusion.
Now with Sound Remains, some of these themes we've been talking about are even more like universal, less specific to any, you know, they're more specific to the human experience, which makes them more universal. And I'm curious how you're thinking about cultural identity and these notions of like specificity in the music or in the message. How has this evolved since those intervening years?
Rez: I think it kind of hit a zenith at that point when we were talking. Maybe it was even coming down from the mountain at that point. At the time, it was a bit novel for me to—like you said, somewhat overtly, I never wanted to be overt about things, but you know, internally overtly, which means like, okay, I'm going to see what I can do with my influences from India, Pakistan.
Which, you know, which are kind of minimal, quite honestly. That's not like I've studied sitar and went there for five years and studied. No, I mean, I know people who do that too, and they know a lot more than me. They're not even Indian. So it's all good. You know, I'm not trying to be the spokesperson. I never was, but I felt like, since I was born in Pakistan and I was four years old when I moved and being around the cousins and families and weddings, so there was something in there that was bubbling.
And so, fifteen years ago or so is when I thought I hit this zenith of where I wanted to go with that, and the records after that basically are just not really devised to even think that way. I mean, they're just—okay we're, I sort of let things happen. I don't double-take things. I don't think overly about like what's next and, you know, it sort of has been really somewhat natural in the way things have been coming sort of to the foreground in terms of musical ideas or bands that I put together. But at that point, like I said, about fifteen years ago, it was about the time where I hit that top where it was just sort of like, okay, well this is what I've done now. Now let's move on, you know, kind of thing. As an artist, I want to keep moving.
Lawrence: In that sort of spirit, in that idea, revisiting, even though you've gone from the quartet to the quintet, how does the sort of longstanding relationships musical and otherwise in this group—I guess I have two questions about this ensemble. One, how do you think that longer term relationship supports the sort of more contemplative nature of the music with this record. Two, how do you think those longstanding relationships contribute towards this notion of like, moving forward? Because the last time we spoke, you talked about—I'm going to badly paraphrase you but you used the word underutilized. You said the guitar you felt like had always been underutilized in jazz, even though it had always been there.
Rez: That's fine.
Lawrence: You know, it seems to me your body of work is really like pointing in a direction of like, see what the guitar can do. See how good the guitar can be. (laughter)
Rez: Oh, that's interesting. Maybe some subconscious little chip on the shoulder. You know, kind of like, you know, that's why I play acoustic. I play fretless guitar. Electric of course is maybe what I'm known for, but I've done several records then with acoustic, which is kind of making me think like, wow. What you said. And it's subconscious, like, you know, I'm saying it's not like a choice. "Oh, this—I'll do an acoustic this." It's rarely like that. It's sort of like, what does the music need? And then suddenly, like for this group, I'm not going to grab an electric guitar and play one electric guitar tune or two or something like that. It just would be a mismatch.
Although, playing electric with vibes, we've all seen that before. It's just electric guitar—that's not the mismatch, but just particularly this, with this group, it would've been like—for instance, we did "Questar," you know, that's the Keith Jarrett tune, and I just hear that on an acoustic guitar. You know, I don't think it would work on electric guitar as much. I don't know why. And I don't really—
Lawrence: And you seem to have heard "Lonnie's Lament" on a fretless guitar, which was really kind of cool.
Rez: Exactly. Because there's got to be a reason to play these tunes, you know? And for me, the reason is—and that's very interesting, is to show the underutilization of guitar on—maybe this is you're bringing this out in me right now, is to show the aspect of different guitars on this music that we all love and that hasn't been done on guitar. Like "Lonnie's Lament." I'm sure there are versions out there. I don't mean it's never been done, but to use the fretless guitar on that was the reason why I recorded it. If it wasn't for that idea, I probably wouldn't have picked that tune. Although I love the tune, but I'm not going to play it on electric guitar. That's just, you know, that would be fun. It would be nice, but it wouldn't get to that mixed level on expectation, you know? Like not knowing what—like, and now you listen to "Lonnie's Lament," suddenly like, whoa, listen to that. Kind of way he approached that note microtonally and so it's, there's another level of magic in there and that's what I'm looking for in all my music is another level of magic.
Because magic is already in the music. That's no problem. You can keep on putting out tons of records that have magic. If you just keep on pushing a little bit more magic, ten, twenty percent then, and if you could find that, then I think you're onto something. The number of musicians who are doing that, you know, and then number of musicians are not doing that. So just a mixed bag out there.
Lawrence: Before I let you go, would you mind telling me whether it's current or like all time or whatever, could you share with me a couple of pieces of music that you revisit frequently as a listener or maybe that you're listening to these days? I'm really curious. I love to hear other artists talk about the music they're listening to.
Rez: But it depends on the week. I understand that. So I don't remember like anxiety, but it's funny, I told a friend the other day, because he was asking me, it was almost like a friendship interview. Like, he was like, we're at dinner, like, "Hey, what do you like, how do you compose like your thematic ideas?" And like, you know, it doesn't sound like lines and licks. It just—and so I thought of that and I was like, wow, that's a deep question, you know?
And I was like, the thread all these years for me, it's the thread that from like thirty years ago till now, and the person I keep coming back to, regardless of what recording they put out, is Keith Jarrett. And I'm not talking about Cologne Concert and all that. That's—he's famous for that. I don't even listen—I don't even think I've heard the Cologne Concert. You know, maybe just a couple minutes in there, but it's the vastness of his playing. The idea of his improvisations—they just take up so much room in my head in terms of or space in terms of like the possibilities of music that—and also the trio stuff.
That I just keep wanting to go back there and listen to, you know, and Jack DeJohnette happens to be my favorite drummer all the time, so that helps, you know, when I listen to the trio, it's just, there's some joy in there that I just, you know, on any given day, if I'm either happy or if I'm sad, I'm just put on one of many records. "Oh, wow, this so uplifting." You know, Coltrane is like that too, but Coltrane is a little heavier listening experience for me. Like, I've got to really be more in the mood to listen to, you know, ten, fifteen minute solos and not be distracted from anybody.
Alongside of the technology and the whole idea that we have these companies like, Spotify and all these companies. I do listen to—I mean, I have Tidal is what I use and so I do listen to a lot of playlists also, just to—just streaming is the word I'm thinking. I do listen to a lot of streaming stuff just because I want to know what's out there, but that's more of a sampling kind of thing. It's not a deep listening. It's because I often move forward. I mean, I can't hang on too much. You know, sometimes something comes out and I'll listen to the whole album, but then also I go back to people like, the great composers like Debussy and Stravinsky, and I just put myself in the madman zone and just listen to thirty minutes of music and see where those composers take me. So.
Lawrence: It's funny when you were talking earlier, I was thinking about, man, remember how infuriating it would be when we were kids and you'd buy a record and there'd be like two songs on it and you're like, "I just spent nine bucks on this." But you had to do it. That was part of the risk and reward of buying records when we were kids. It was like, what is going to be on here? What's going to be going on here?
Rez: Exactly. But the reward is when you find a record that actually has a lot on there, and that's the reward that streaming might not give you these days because it's just too many candies in a candy shop. You know, it's sort of like, it's like the reward. Once you find a great record, you're going to live with that record and really listen to it and internalize it as much as possible before you move on. And that's the thing, I'm not seeing these days as much. Maybe with students. And even myself.
Lawrence: You're not forced to have that experience of like, "I spent ten bucks on this record. I better learn to like it, so I'm going to keep going back to it."
Rez: And if it's a great record, you don't even have to go through that conversation.
