On Entertainment
Steven Libowitz has reported on the arts and entertainment for more than 30 years; he has contributed to the Montecito Journal for more than 10 years.
by Steven Libowitz
Puppy Power: Collective Confers Jazz-plus UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Snarky Puppy at the Granada on Sunday, February 24
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rying to pigeonhole Snarky Puppy into a single genre would be a fool’s errand, but suffice it to say that the three-time Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn-based collective that features a revolving cast of up to 25 musicians makes music that’s at once heady, heart-centered, and headed for the dance floor, an amalgam they call “music for your brain and booty.” Many of the members maintain busy schedules as sidemen and/or producers with such artists as Erykah Badu, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and David Crosby, and come together in Snarky to, for lack of a better phrase, let their freak flags fly. Bassist and primary composer Michael League, who founded the band while he was still in college in 2003, talked about its evolution and impetus via email in advance of Snarky Puppy’s Sunday, February 24, concert at the Granada Theatre. Q. You grew up with folk music and a stripped down sound is still a lot of what you play. What fostered your desire to move into jazz and more complicated structures? And how does that satisfy what I imagine is still an affinity for folk/ simplicity in music? A. My interest in jazz came about largely through the influence of my older brother, Panayotis, who was playing jazz drums during my teenage years. He showed me bands like Modereko and Oscar Peterson’s trio, and my dad had groups like Steely Dan in his record collection. I guess I just naturally traveled from CSN to Zeppelin to Steely Dan to Straight Ahead. They were gateway drugs of a sort. What was the impetus behind Snarky Puppy, and how has that evolved over the years? How much reflects a desire to influence the listener vs. simply exploring your own interests? Snarky Puppy was a vehicle for the 21 – 28 February 2019
music I was writing in my first year of college. It was a combination of my new-found interest in jazz and the music I grew up with, which had a more audience-accessible aesthetic. There was no agenda or mission statement. We were only trying to play interesting, original music that we related to. How has going from relative obscurity to relative fame – and Grammy Awards – had an impact on the music? Has the
vision stayed true? If anything, it gave us more confidence to write the music we really want to write, knowing that now people will hear it. It opened many creative doors for us... after all, we were recognized for doing what we love. So it makes sense that the people who recognized us for that would want to hear more of what we love to do. It’s actually been liberating as opposed to confining. Band membership/participation is always in flux; what are the factors that help the group gel as an ensemble with such a flexible roster? I think that the band’s sound is a combination of an initial concept, the various personalities and musical tastes of the players, and the mentality of embracing everything that we experience in order to push our music forward. Everyone has their own voice, and their own story. We try to create a place where everyone can just focus on being themselves while serving the compositions. And I think
that the fact that we’ve played close to 2,000 gigs makes the music gel in way that isn’t possible without that amount of mileage. I read a quote from you: “It’s my instinct to pollute the sonic landscape with as many things as I possibly can.” What’s your process for honing and refining? I’m so aware of this tendency that now I think I’ve gotten into the habit of doing the opposite, sometimes to a fault. I have little tricks I use to limit my instinct to clutter things up. But generally I’ve grown to love landscapes with space, so my intuition is changing towards doing that naturally. If a track sounds full before it’s gone to mixing, you have too much going on. From what I understand, there isn’t much jamming. Is there room for improv or is it more tightly scripted like, say, Steely Dan? There’s loads of improvising. In fact there are very few moments during a gig in which no one is improvising. But “jamming” in the sense of free-form improvisation doesn’t happen much. We have structures within which certain players can freely express themselves, and the structures are the things that make each
ENTERTAINMENT Page 364
SANTA BARBARA SYMPHONY PRESENTS
Dirk Brossé, conductor Natasha Kislenko, piano Santa Barbara Symphony Chorus Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer
Experience the blockbuster film Amadeus with score performed live by the Santa Barbara Symphony!
SAT, MARCH 16, 2019 8PM I SUN, MARCH 17, 2019 3PM I AT THE GRANADA THEATRE Experience the motion picture Amadeus on HD screen while Mozart’s most celebrated works are performed live by the Santa Barbara Symphony and chorus. Winner of eight Academy Awards® including Best Picture, Miloš Foreman’s sumptuous Amadeus is an aural and visual treat for all the senses. MPAA RATING: R
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