On the fly

Don Byron's groundbreaking Bug Music

by Jim Macnie

Jazz is a language with several vernaculars and loads of lingo, and Don Byron's career path reflects that diversity. The thirtysomething clarinetist leads a freebop band, works with poets, rocks with Vernon Reid's Masque, scores for silent film, and, most famously, has updated Mickey Katz's crazed klezmer. Scrupulously addressing the particulars of each, he offers not only a personal, but a novel, spin. That individuality often comes from the determination that's found at the center of his music. Byron's work carries a commitment to nuance that most agents of omnijazz either can't muster, or choose to fly without.

Take the Bug Music ensemble that Byron will bring to the JVC Jazz Festival this Sunday. It's a mid-sized team that operates in strict compliance with the detailed scripts that make up its book. Comprised of somewhat daft and intricate pieces by John Kirby, Raymond Scott and Duke Ellington, its hallmarks of etiquette and amusement are impossible to mistake. All three composers are heroes in Byron's eyes. The bandleader spent a lot of time transcribing their gorgeous, odd tunes; he wants the arrangements to firmly guide the proceedings. On '96's Bug Music (Nonesuch) and the three concerts I've seen the band perform, they have -- without forsaking the charisma of their naturally droll side.

This kind of craft is crucial to Byron's agenda. Unlike the ensembles of many prog jazzsters, his bands are invariably well-rehearsed. Distinguishing the subtleties in a chosen piece is important to the clarinetist. Example: one of his complaints about playing on the sessions for Robert Altman's Kansas City (besides wearing a wool suit for 12 hours a day) was that the arrangements were concocted on the fly, far too hastily for any kind of true accord.

"In the black avant-garde, there's a thing about something being complicated if it's falling apart. I want to hear whatever I write played correct," Byron explains. "I just try to be accurate about whatever language I'm playing in. There are rules to each, and they do matter. The cats I really like bend the rules a little bit, but I studied them, too. Like Eddie Palmieri is great, but he's weird; his stuff oscillates between the poles. That's the esthetic position that I try to take."

That means Byron's collaborative muscles are steadily being flexed. His previous work with Bill Frisell, Mark Ribot and Ralph Peterson brought out various aspects of his playing. Interestingly, he pooh-poohs the notion of it being "fun" to flit from branch to branch.

"I actually have a very 9-to-5 way of viewing it," he says soberly. "I show up and Ralph Peterson is sitting there, and I've got to play some straight-ahead shit that's in the zone, which is that free-for-all, middle-Blakey-with-Wayne, bashy stuff, with the in and out playing. He knows what I like in that music, and I know what he likes. We just do it."

The notion of intra-group rapport being elemental to achieving a musical goal is also squashed by Byron. "I don't want to mention names, but I've played interesting music with people I didn't want to talk to about anything. That cliché about being a happy family on the stand is ridiculous. The most important thing is empathy. When I show up, I try to apply the mind meld. It's empathy over technique and empathy over study, though not precluding either of them."

Although Vernon Reid and Byron are friends, it's a music thing that ultimately binds them. Byron admits that the guitar was once his least favorite instruments (save those of Pat Martino and Johnny "Guitar" Watson), but he deems Reid's moves unique. You'll find Byron on Masque's Mistaken Identity (Columbia) -- his clarinet is in there with bass, drums, turntable and theramin. "I don't use him because we're pals," assures Reid. "It's something I hear in his sound, absolutely. The clarinet and the guitar create an interesting timbre together. It's evocative. Whenever a sexy girl enters a room in one of those cheesy movies, a clarinet shows up. Or it can evoke a sentimental moment, too. The thing that's interesting about Don's playing is that his approach to the horn is very unsentimental. So there's real tension there. He can play the classics, all the things associated with the clarinet. But he's a modernist, too. He never gets hung up on that `I'm only doing my new shit' stuff to the degree that he ignores the history of the instrument."

Byron has just as deep a vibe with pianist Uri Caine. Caine's way of bouncing while stretching is advanced, and the level of communication between he and Byron has been honed on countless gigs. Last summer in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, the pair were heard offhandedly blowing through some unabashed swing that contained elements of stride and boogie. Caine's Toys (JMT) contains a duet by the pair on Herbie Hancock's "Cantaloupe Island." And Bug Music finds them sharing the action on Ellington's "Blue Bubbles." The maneuvers are the kind you'd find happening on both a chessboard and a playground.

On Bug Music, only "Blue Bubbles" breaks from the dapper arrangements to allow room for extended improv. The record is Byron's salute to the edifying rigors of writing. One of Nonesuch's press blabs has him declaring that composition is the "only universal truth in music." The shared traits of the pieces chosen from each composer are buoyancy and puckishness. Kirby's music in particular has been on Byron's love list for awhile.

"His stuff hasn't reached the hipness thing that Scott's or Esquivel's has," Byron explains. "He was a brother and he had a whole range of popularity in his day . . . he pioneered a lot of shit. His was one of the early bands to have its own radio show, to play society gigs in mixed company -- a lot of firsts associated with his group. They worked the good side of the Lawrence Welk vibe -- this sprightly thing. But when you try to play something like that, you realize how difficult it is to correctly catch."

The cummerbund decorum is in high relief on pieces like "Frasquita Serenade" and "Royal Garden Blues." It's a music of intricacy, which is partially why it shares a spot on the disc with Scott's timeless mania. The swinging Rube Goldberg aura to "The Quintet Plays Carmen" is just as elaborate and whimsical as Kirby's take on Tchaikovsky's "Bounce of the Sugarplum Fairy."

"It's amazing to read Gunther Schuller's book and hear what he says about about Scott and Kirby, because -- it's like, `Am I listening to the same cats?' People resent black musicians for stepping outside what they're supposed to know. Somehow it was an offense for Kirby to step outside of jazz, not be a real Negro. On the other hand, both guys are linked, because it was definitely the small group success of Scott that inspired Kirby. The record is about the Kirby vibe, because I sympathize with him. In those days, they didn't have no brothers in the New York Phil. Back then it was something just to be able to hear how great Tchaikovsky or Chopin's stuff was, and want to participate directly -- `Hey, lets play that!' I do that in very a different way, but I definitely know what that impulse is . . . and it's natural. Because if you're a real musician, wherever you hear the shit you recognize it. If Stravinsky was in a room with Coltrane, he'd recognize it, and vice versa. It's smaller minds that can't dig the achievement of another person just because they're not of the same genre, social strata, or ethnic background."

That kind of intercultural myopia is what led the clarinetist to title the record Bug Music. It's taken from his favorite episode of The Flintstones, where Fred and Wilma's "hillbilly cousins" hit Bedrock for a visit and turn out to be atrocious house guests. A visit to the World's Fair is the crux of further argument, because they're going to present bug music there. It's a typical mid-'60s spoof on the Beatles and the British Invasion bands.

"By the time I saw it, nobody would ever be thinking about the Beatles that way," Byron clarifies. "So it became this fable of subjectivity. Things can change so much; what needs to last and what needs to be discarded are always being discussed. In different ways, Scott and Kirby are victims of that. Yet for me, compositionally they're the closest to the early Ellington period. So I put some of the Ellington, played both in my vibe and in the authentic vibe, next to the scholarly takes of Scott and Kirby's music."

Byron had his own run-in with bug music at home. A guy who gushes about Dionne Farris' first album, he explains how knowing about many musics is integral to an effective musical personality. He watches MTV, VH1, and listens to a lot of radio. With a dead serious look, he assures that opportunities for potent collaborations are formed best when jealousies are given the old heave-ho.

"There's this longstanding image of the jazz musician as someone uncritical of music outside of jazz -- that shit needs to go. For example, my father plays the bass, and when I was a kid, all the jazz musicians resented the Beatles. I remember watching them on Sullivan and my dad would be running this incredible stuff. He'd say, `Oh yeah, well, Herbie Jones, he's playing behind the screen there, Herbie Jones. Those boys can't play . . . they ain't good musicians . . . that ain't bop, that ain't swing.' Hahaha! In a way that shit still exists. Like a lot of these jazz cats could understand some Nirvana shit, but they don't want to do it, they don't want to go there. They'd rather than just make fun of Cobain for making money. I mean, c'mon, you just have to get past jazz."

Don Byron's Bug Music will perform at the JVC Jazz Festival on Sunday. See "Concerts" in Listings for complete details.